[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Anzaman]

A special winter sale is now underway on the Mog Station. Don't miss this chance to save on optional items! Furthermore, we're pleased to announce the all-new Aquamarine and Citrine Carbuncle mounts, the Emerald and Topaz attire, and the Pretty Please emote!

* The price of the retainer's Tales of Adventure item has been marked down 20%. All other sale items are marked down 30%.

[Graeham]

I was hoping that the Carbuncle stuff would be available in exchange for achievement certificates as so far there isn't anything to use them if you already have all the veteran rewards. In hindsight, I probably should not have expected any different when it comes to Square Enix and the Mog Station.

[lawow74]

It would be nice, but I don't look for them to give anything away for achievement certs they could expect to get actual money for. I was surprised they brought back old events with rewards instead of putting them on Mogstation too.

[Granyala]

Poor SCHs. What is, essentially, a class mount is only available for RL cash.
Disappointing for a sub based game, but Blizzard set the precedent and people lapped it up.

[lawow74]

To be fair, none of us know what their bottom lines really look like and how important that revenue is, but it's easy to think of it as naked greed. It's the double-edged sword of success, in a world where the first rule of business is 'grow or die'. I don't dispute there are some shady practices out there (see all the lootbox fiasco stuff going on right now) but when the question gets asked 'Would you rather have no game, or a game with microtransactions?' there's going to be a pretty mixed bag of responses.

[Kazgrel]

Yet we've had games, MMOs even, with no microtransactions, so it isn't a clear-cut black/white decision. Unfortunately, I think that ship has sailed for video games at this point, at least with AAA releases.

The price of these things is just silly, imo; I could see 20ish USD for the mount + outfit, but that runs a cool $42 (with current pricing) were you to do that...and that's for one color combo. To each their own, but considering that's almost 3 months of sub time, I'd rather just give the cash to SE so I can actually play the game. Kinda hilarious to think that the mount is almost as much as getting the complete edition...y'know, the game itself.

Course, the irony's a bit thick coming from someone who has tossed cash at frivilous shit in games many times before (see current avatar as evidence).

[Granyala]

To be fair, none of us know what their bottom lines really look like and how important that revenue is, but it's easy to think of it as naked greed. It's the double-edged sword of success, in a world where the first rule of business is 'grow or die'. I don't dispute there are some shady practices out there (see all the lootbox fiasco stuff going on right now) but when the question gets asked 'Would you rather have no game, or a game with microtransactions?' there's going to be a pretty mixed bag of responses.

Umm we already BUY the game. Then we continue to PAY on a monthly basis to be able to play at all.
There is 0 financial need for microtransactions.

SE has a record and a habit of being greedy. Just look what they did to Deus EX.

Fact of the matter is: gaming companies only do all this stuff because people are dumb enough to trow their money at them.

I agree with Kazela though: it's is very unlikely that this trend of milking the gamer will end anytime soon.

[Remilia]

I do want the mount...

[Mordin Solus]

the mount is prety but i think it fits better for lalas than the other races ^^'

[Granyala]

the mount is prety but i think it fits better for lalas than the other races ^^'

Male Roe probably looks hilarious riding it.

[Sesshomaru]

Need to let out some steam.

Before anything is said, I am glad and disappointed to reveal that I've downloaded ACT with a plugin which shows real-time DPS, HPS and incoming damage + heal accourdingly, as it helps me (and infuriates me) to hand out Commendations (or prioritize less) to other players.

So, I decided not to queue during peak today as I felt a bit sick, therefore I signed up for one about 1 hour, 20 mins ago (at this time of writing). 19 mins in queue and got Skalla. We did as normal, but for some reason it took ages to kill the first set of trash/add pack, so I checked the parse I downloaded a few weeks ago.

Our composition for this random group was: SMN (Me), PLD, BLM and WHM. I checked the outcoming DPS of me and my total damage% throughout this add pack and saw myself doing a whopping 67% of total damage.
(First trash pack)

Spoiler: 

Thinking we had a passive healer, that's fine and all and perhaps the BLM was relatively new to 70.
The BLM in question had Susan weapon and FULL Augmented Lost Allagan left side, with a mix of non-Augmented and Augmented right side.

You are all probably thinking then, "perhaps AoE is not his forte" or "he held back some of his CDs to burst later on." All I can say is that the former is true and is valid at even (99% of) stationary fights, which was even worse.

Hrodric Poisontongue

Spoiler: 

Also, in this case, the last healer left a few minutes before because of family issues and got a new (and far more competent) one.

I felt frustrated as this one had nearly BIS equipment, with the exception of Susano's Rod (item level 320; Lost Allagan weapon is i330 and Augmented is i340), yet had no clue at all on how to play one.
Must be because he was French.

This has been a rant by me and hopefully I am not the only one who hates to pick up the reins of a falling sleigh because Santa decides not to do anything or less than what he normally does.


In other news, I like my little Aquamarine Carbuncle, which is really the only color variant of the two I enjoy. All hail the three summons and their Aquamarine color, as I've Egiglamoured them into one and same.

[Kazgrel]

The joys of PUG content brought to you by ACT

That first pull in Skalla (assuming it's everything up to the first wall) is annoying as fuck because the mobs have such large hitboxes, so it spreads them out enough to where it's possible to not hit all of them with Fire 2 and even Flare/Foul. That being said, the BLM you had there was simply super bad.

Oddly enough, I think I've run BLM in that dungeon maybe once; more often than not, I end up in it as tank or healer. But to barely be ahead of the tank and healer on last boss...maybe they spent half the time running around for whatever reason? I have no idea.

SMN is simply better than BLM currently in all aspects, though, for what that's worth. Eager to see what they do with BLM dps in 4.2.

[Sesshomaru]

That first pull in Skalla (assuming it's everything up to the first wall) is annoying as fuck because the mobs have such large hitboxes, so it spreads them out enough to where it's possible to not hit all of them with Fire 2 and even Flare/Foul. That being said, the BLM you had there was simply super bad.

Oddly enough, I think I've run BLM in that dungeon maybe once; more often than not, I end up in it as tank or healer. But to barely be ahead of the tank and healer on last boss...maybe they spent half the time running around for whatever reason? I have no idea.

SMN is simply better than BLM currently in all aspects, though, for what that's worth. Eager to see what they do with BLM dps in 4.2.

True, BLMs isn't really in the spot they should be in, considering their contribution to the party is minimal and all they have are spells that pack a bit of damage with.

To add to what I wrote, while he had mostly i340 gear with a i320 weapon (Susan for that matter), he rarely, if ever used Fire IV, which is the spell that contributes to most of BLM dps. I asked him why he didn't use Fire IV more, as apparently from what I saw (both from spells and dps), he was dropping Enochian all the time and even used Transpose at half MP in Astral Fire to Umbral Ice and then proceeds to cast Blizzard 3. He never answered me regarding Fire IV or Enochian.

Let me put it this way; the healer got my commendation and all of my Mana Shifts when it came off CD as he at least dealt damage regularly and also used Holy.

Personally, I wish I could use my casting set as a default for all my casters, but as I am focusing Crit/DH instead of SS to maintain a healthy balance for SMN and RDM, I can't pull out the same numbers as those two.
Ah well, come 4.2 and I'll purchase the SS Creation sets to up my BLM build into a more normalized one.

[Kazgrel]

True, BLMs isn't really in the spot they should be in, considering their contribution to the party is minimal and all they have are spells that pack a bit of damage with.

To add to what I wrote, while he had mostly i340 gear with a i320 weapon (Susan for that matter), he rarely, if ever used Fire IV, which is the spell that contributes to most of BLM dps. I asked him why he didn't use Fire IV more, as apparently from what I saw (both from spells and dps), he was dropping Enochian all the time and even used Transpose at half MP in Astral Fire to Umbral Ice and then proceeds to cast Blizzard 3. He never answered me regarding Fire IV or Enochian.

Let me put it this way; the healer got my commendation and all of my Mana Shifts when it came off CD as he at least dealt damage regularly and also used Holy.

Personally, I wish I could use my casting set as a default for all my casters, but as I am focusing Crit/DH instead of SS to maintain a healthy balance for SMN and RDM, I can't pull out the same numbers as those two.
Ah well, come 4.2 and I'll purchase the SS Creation sets to up my BLM build into a more normalized one.

Funny enough, I went with DH > Crit > SS substat priority on my gear, despite being a BLM main, since I can get more value out of that across all 3 than having 2 out of 3 caster jobs with rather gimpy substats. I haven't noticed the lack of SS hurting me that much, but that's also because all of my 340 stuff is augmented creation, so it has a lot of spell speed on it by default.

[Graeham]

Blergh.

34/100 Rival Wings victories so far. It would be a lot easier if people stopped obsessing over the generator and spread out more to tackle other objectives. More often than not I can gather five ceruleum tanks from around the map and spawn a mech before the generator war is even over. If I'm not doing that, I'm escorting mammets and inflicting some major early damage on enemy towers.

[Granyala]

Thinking we had a passive healer, that's fine and all and perhaps the BLM was relatively new to 70.
The BLM in question had Susan weapon and FULL Augmented Lost Allagan left side, with a mix of non-Augmented and Augmented right side.

You are all probably thinking then, "perhaps AoE is not his forte" or "he held back some of his CDs to burst later on." All I can say is that the former is true and is valid at even (99% of) stationary fights, which was even worse.

Either he was incompetent (you'd need to go beyond DPS analysis and check which spells he used to determine that) or he simply didn't give a f***, since DPS is rather irrelevant in 4man content.

In general: Don't look at ACT in random groups. Just ... don't. All you will achieve is being frustrated by the revelation of how rare it is to be grouped with people that can push adequate numbers.

[Anzaman]

Wonder how many years we'll need to wait for those Angel/Devil outfits they showed us earlier.. seeing how we got chocobo bardings ages ago.

Wallet is just waiting.

[Wrecktangle]

Need to let out some steam.

Before anything is said, I am glad and disappointed to reveal that I've downloaded ACT with a plugin which shows real-time DPS, HPS and incoming damage + heal accourdingly, as it helps me (and infuriates me) to hand out Commendations (or prioritize less) to other players.

So, I decided not to queue during peak today as I felt a bit sick, therefore I signed up for one about 1 hour, 20 mins ago (at this time of writing). 19 mins in queue and got Skalla. We did as normal, but for some reason it took ages to kill the first set of trash/add pack, so I checked the parse I downloaded a few weeks ago.

Our composition for this random group was: SMN (Me), PLD, BLM and WHM. I checked the outcoming DPS of me and my total damage% throughout this add pack and saw myself doing a whopping 67% of total damage.
(First trash pack)

Spoiler: 

Thinking we had a passive healer, that's fine and all and perhaps the BLM was relatively new to 70.
The BLM in question had Susan weapon and FULL Augmented Lost Allagan left side, with a mix of non-Augmented and Augmented right side.

You are all probably thinking then, "perhaps AoE is not his forte" or "he held back some of his CDs to burst later on." All I can say is that the former is true and is valid at even (99% of) stationary fights, which was even worse.

Hrodric Poisontongue

Spoiler: 

Also, in this case, the last healer left a few minutes before because of family issues and got a new (and far more competent) one.

I felt frustrated as this one had nearly BIS equipment, with the exception of Susano's Rod (item level 320; Lost Allagan weapon is i330 and Augmented is i340), yet had no clue at all on how to play one.
Must be because he was French.

This has been a rant by me and hopefully I am not the only one who hates to pick up the reins of a falling sleigh because Santa decides not to do anything or less than what he normally does.

Yep that's like 50% of the DR content I do.

That first pull in Skalla (assuming it's everything up to the first wall) is annoying as fuck because the mobs have such large hitboxes, so it spreads them out enough to where it's possible to not hit all of them with Fire 2 and even Flare/Foul. That being said, the BLM you had there was simply super bad.

Oddly enough, I think I've run BLM in that dungeon maybe once; more often than not, I end up in it as tank or healer. But to barely be ahead of the tank and healer on last boss...maybe they spent half the time running around for whatever reason? I have no idea.

SMN is simply better than BLM currently in all aspects, though, for what that's worth. Eager to see what they do with BLM dps in 4.2.

My buddy BLM main (granted he's a top performer), consistently averaged 5k DPS across an entire 15 minute dungeon run in full 320 gear back in the day. So, in this case I can say with certainty this guy is just bad.

Either he was incompetent (you'd need to go beyond DPS analysis and check which spells he used to determine that) or he simply didn't give a f***, since DPS is rather irrelevant in 4man content.

In general: Don't look at ACT in random groups. Just ... don't. All you will achieve is being frustrated by the revelation of how rare it is to be grouped with people that can push adequate numbers.

Incompetent and being downright lazy are mechanically identical if you think about it. Both give identical results. Frustration to team members and a less fun environment for others. IMO of course.

[Granyala]

Incompetent and being downright lazy are mechanically identical if you think about it. Both give identical results.

I disagree.
Incompetence means inability to do harder content.
Lazy means being able to assess whether top notch performance is required for success and if that is not the case, allowing one to slack.

Seriously, it was a friggin dungeon. No one cares about DPS, because stuff dies anyway, which is why I don't recommend even paying that much attention / running ACT in there. All @Sesshomaru would do is frustrate himself, b/c 80% of the people in FF-XIV do not pull proper numbers in dungeons.
I used to rage too when I got incompetent healers that don't DPS or lame DPS players. Nowadays I just direct more attention to my second screen because it's not worth it to get upset.

Raids, where damage is critical to success are another matter.

[Kazgrel]

My buddy BLM main (granted he's a top performer), consistently averaged 5k DPS across an entire 15 minute dungeon run in full 320 gear back in the day. So, in this case I can say with certainty this guy is just bad.

Absolutely. I've pulled 4k overall in Skalla on BRD before, a job I've played a fraction of the time I've played BLM and have far less gear on (321ish ilvl). I have zero reason to believe a BLM (especially one in 335ish ilvl) couldn't at least equal that.

Incompetent and being downright lazy are mechanically identical if you think about it. Both give identical results. Frustration to team members and a less fun environment for others. IMO of course.

Incompetence can be fixed, though, provided the incompetent person isn't lazy as well. Course, then we get things like "u dnt pay muh sub" as a response. So while one could be easier to resolve, it doesn't change the fact that it's irritating no matter what.

- - - Updated - - -

I disagree.
Incompetence means inability to do harder content.
Lazy means being able to assess whether top notch performance is required for success and if that is not the case, allowing one to slack.

Seriously, it was a friggin dungeon. No one cares about DPS, because stuff dies anyway, which is why I don't recommend even paying that much attention / running ACT in there. All @Sesshomaru would do is frustrate himself, b/c 80% of the people in FF-XIV do not pull proper numbers in dungeons.
I used to rage too when I got incompetent healers that don't DPS or lame DPS players. Nowadays I just direct more attention to my second screen because it's not worth it to get upset.

Raids, where damage is critical to success are another matter.

As I mentioned to Wreck, incompetence can be fixed, provided that the same people aren't lazy on top of that.

I've gone from being frustrated with group to basically laughing as I answer in my own mind "How much am I going to carry this group?". Arrogant, yes, but for dungeon level content, I have to do something to keep myself awake. So ACT in dungeons has turned into it's own form of entertainment for me.