This is actually an amusingly complicated topic. On the JP servers, you learn the fight for the first time in a premade, and then do clears in the Duty Finder. On NA/EU servers, it's kind of the other way around. NA premades usually expect people to know the fight and have cleared it before. The Duty Finder usually ends up with several people who haven't done it before, so they're pretty hit-or-miss.
Now, it's very early in the expansion, so premades are probably more lenient and willing to take first-timers.
Alliance Raid > MSQ > Leveling
I know the Main Scenario Roulette puts you into dungeons with a ton of cut scenes, but the amount of xp you get from it really is bonkers and totally worth it. If leveling is your purpose for doing the roulettes you're doing yourself a disservice by skipping out on the MSQ roulette, though I do honestly understand why people don't do it. A Praetorium run is like 10-15 minutes (maybe) of actual combat and 30+ minutes of cutscenes. Castrum Merdianum is a lot better with it being split 50/50 with less cutscene time so the total is less than Praetorium. But you get like 30-50%+ worth of your xp bar for completing it (amount varies based on what level you are).
You can, however that means you're missing out on use of your Fairy Gauge, which should be a more important part of the job, considering how long it takes to build up and how little impact spending it actually has. At the moment it's very much "Meh, whatever".
In a nutshell however, my main complaint is that your MP is your most valuable resource, when you have two others which are of a more limited nature. Your limited resources should be the valuable ones, not the one that's super abundent. The entire job design just seems to be backwards.
At the end of the day, I dislike that playing optimally means throwing efficiency out of the window because you want to generate as much MP as possible. Playing efficiently with your resources means you're playing sub optimally because you're leaving a ton of potential MP on the table. Trying to play smart is always going to be a lose-lose situation for the player, and that just feels bad from my perspective.
I'd be all for having a dedicated shielding pet. It would add some differentiation in how you use them, because right now Eos and Selene are just cosmetic. Giving them a different purpose would make each of them more defined in their use. Which is good, because then you'd have to choose which one you'd want to use for a given situation.
It's the acrobatics between strikes that bother me with Ninja. To the point where in the past I've joked that we'd never get a Dancer Job because the Ninja had Capoeira on lockdown. I know they've tried to make them look flashy and impressive, but doing a cartwheel in place after a dagger strike never sold me on the whole "Being a Ninja" theme. I'd have expected more in the way of precise and efficient strikes rather than super flamboyant attacks.
It just really throws me off the job because the animations don't line up well with the theme.
Which is a fair criticism, I'm just arguing that as unfun as it is, that AFK time is actually time you're investing into leveling up and is worth it because of how much xp you get for completing the MSQ roulette. As counter productive as it seems, I used this time to watch videos on the Shadowbringers trial clear strategies.
But I'm fairly sure that having a solid dungeon grinding group or FATE group that cranks out those things efficiently would be just as good or better. The problem is getting a group that can perform consistently enough to compete with the brain dead easy efficiency of the MSQ roulette.
That's the beauty about MMO's in general though, multiple ways to play and accomplish a similar goal.
I have two monitors.
MSQ roulette is research time for melding/new skills/theorycrafting, or looking at what I want to add to my private room/house.
Or any other number of things I need to do. It's actually pretty useful to get something done in game while knocking out some emails for work after hours too, cleaning up personal email box, or doing some online shopping!
I would actually like to see them expand the Trust system and apply it retroactively to past expansions. Early dungeons could simply use guards from the closest City States - Twin Adder members, etc. Letting new players have the option of running these, all the way up to MSQ dungeons and be able to see the cut scenes, etc. without concern would be a nice way to adjust things. I'd really like to see the Trust system expand for your squadrons since you can basically build the squad the way you want and glamor them to boot.
MSQ roulette would drop back down to less xp with skippable cut scenes.
Last edited by Faroth; 2019-07-11 at 05:37 PM.
I finally managed to get a large yesterday! It was my favorite plot in my favorite district, The Lavender Beds. I was shaking by the time I got to the plot, couldn't believe it was finally happening after nearly a month of checking every single hour while at home. What was even better was that in the first hour I had met 3 of my nearby neighbors. In my previous ward I had seen about that many people in two years. I had nearly passed up checking for plots that day because I had just gotten home from work and was ready to take a shower but it was 4:04 so figured it was worth checking and I'm SO happy that I did
I'm very pleased by how far the game has come since the days of Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium. At the time of their initial relevance they had a bit of bite to them but the game is just vastly improved as a whole. The contrast between the former two and something like the level 80 dungeon is incredible.
the main scenario gives you 10 million xp which is still a third a level at 79-80. They bumped them up but the same scaling persists so you can get a level or two at first then half a level doing them all at the final level and can basically get a job to cap per week just doing daily roullettes same as every other expansion.
Your milage may vary, but I would consider a Job that only functions close to properly on the most difficult content to be one that is fundamentally flawed. In my opinion, Jobs should function properly and be fun to play at any level of content. Astrologians work correctly in groups of all sizes in all forms of content. So do Warriors, and Samurai and Bards. The Scholar on the other hand... Eeeh, not so much.
I'd also argue the Fairy Gauges implementation is still broken. It never feels like a worthwhile pay off for the build up, it effectively amounts to a more powerful version of Embrace, which is still very awkward and difficult to use effectively for it's level of power, or a rather weak AoE heal, (Mine currently heals for ~6k with alrightish gear) on a lengthy cooldown.
I don't think tuning would help the situation too much there. The skills are just quirky additions that do little of note and nothing unique. If Squenix want the Fairy Gauge to be a key part of the Scholar, they need to embed it at the core of the Job, not have it as an afterthought.
Most of the time, you have one or more Scion waiting outside when you're completing a dungeon. It wouldn't be too out of place for them to accompany you. They'll still come and go as the story demands of course, but I don't think it entirely unreasonable that you could run a dungeon with say Alphinaud, Cid and Haurchefant tagging along with you.
This is the first FFXIV movie and takes places long before Shadowbringers so I don't think it's a spoiler. But still, it's very intriguing in hindsight.
0:25 Ardbert is at Eulmore getting guildleves from the guy who's now the bartender at the Crystarium that starts you on the four role quests.
0:49 Map of Norvrandt
1:30 The "echo" gives Ardbert a vision of The Source.
6:05 I'm not sure what the echo is trying to show him here, but it seems pretty significant. "Sharding" perhaps?
Last edited by Merie; 2019-07-12 at 09:49 PM.