[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I didn't want to make a whole new thread for this...

I have always played a Black Mage in FFXIV. I played all the way through ARR and started into HW on this Black Mage. Unfortunately the mechanics of the BM just seem so mind numbingly repetitive. My mains in WoW are usually Frost Mages. So, there is always something proccing or something I can instant cast (Frozen Orb, Ice Storm, etc.). But in FFXIV the BM system is Fire until out of mana, then Frost until mana is back up, switch to Fire and then repeat.

I know that that is an over simplification, but that is what it felt like for the dozens of hours I played. Does it change at all as you get to max level? Or should I look into another range caster class?

Red Mage is really simple. You have two bars: white magic and black magic. Each time you cast the black spell, your black bar fills up, and vice versa. You want to keep the bars balanced, so you alternate between pressing your black ability and your white ability. Once both bars are filled up, you then do your melee combo, which resets the bar. Rinse and repeat. Real simple. The fun part comes from Red Mages having a passive called "dual cast", which makes it so that whenever you finish casting an ability, your next ability will have no cast time. Thus, you want to first cast a spell with a short cooldown, and then instant cast a spell that would ordinarily have a long cast time. This allows gives you a lot of mobility.

I've been leveling up a Summoner, and so far it's about micromanaging your dots and your cooldowns. Try to make sure as many of your dots are up on as many enemies as possible, try to use aetherflow whenever it's off cooldown, etc.

[Redwyrm]

Red Mage is really simple. You have two bars: white magic and black magic. Each time you cast the black spell, your black bar fills up, and vice versa. You want to keep the bars balanced, so you alternate between pressing your black ability and your white ability. Once both bars are filled up, you then do your melee combo, which resets the bar. Rinse and repeat. Real simple. The fun part comes from Red Mages having a passive called "dual cast", which makes it so that whenever you finish casting an ability, your next ability will have no cast time. Thus, you want to first cast a spell with a short cooldown, and then instant cast a spell that would ordinarily have a long cast time. This allows gives you a lot of mobility.

I've been leveling up a Summoner, and so far it's about micromanaging your dots and your cooldowns. Try to make sure as many of your dots are up on as many enemies as possible, try to use aetherflow whenever it's off cooldown, etc.

Red Mage sounds a little like Balance Druid when they had that Sun/Moon mechanic. Constantly watching a bar fill up. Maybe I am not fully understanding the Red Mage mechanic until I actually play one. Maybe I'll try a melee class. Hopefully there is at least one melee that isn't movement/position based.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Red Mage sounds a little like Balance Druid when they had that Sun/Moon mechanic. Constantly watching a bar fill up. Maybe I am not fully understanding the Red Mage mechanic until I actually play one. Maybe I'll try a melee class. Hopefully there is at least one melee that isn't movement/position based.

Samurai doesn't have any positionals, and is a fairly easy class to play.

[Kaelwryn]

Samurai doesn't have any positionals, and is a fairly easy class to play.

Samurai does have positionals, and missing them is a decent chunk of damage lost because you're losing out on kenki. At lv52, when you get Kenki Mastery, Kasha and Gekko will give bonus kenki upon doing flank/rear.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Samurai does have positionals, and missing them is a decent chunk of damage lost because you're losing out on kenki. At lv52, when you get Kenki Mastery, Kasha and Gekko will give bonus kenki upon doing flank/rear.

Oh really? I never knew.

[blackblade]

It's alluded to a few times throughout the story that the Scions have a relatively large number of very capable people among their ranks now, since the end of ARR. Also, a large majority of the people in and around Mor Dhona are staunch allies of the Scions, predominantly the Domans who made their homes there after the exile.

Even without the heavy hitters, the bodies of the Scions on the First are well protected in Mor Dhona.

It's also the HQ of the adventurer's guild - which is basically a large organization of poorly disciplined, armed to the teeth vigilantes.

[Nasuuna]

Red Mage sounds a little like Balance Druid when they had that Sun/Moon mechanic. Constantly watching a bar fill up. Maybe I am not fully understanding the Red Mage mechanic until I actually play one. Maybe I'll try a melee class. Hopefully there is at least one melee that isn't movement/position based.

all 4 have them, ninja is probably the least important (ninja flank vs rear finisher is only 20 different)

It's quick to get use to once you actually play them though

If you want something similar to frost mage, dancer is heavily proc based

[Katchii]

Red Mage sounds a little like Balance Druid when they had that Sun/Moon mechanic. Constantly watching a bar fill up. Maybe I am not fully understanding the Red Mage mechanic until I actually play one. Maybe I'll try a melee class. Hopefully there is at least one melee that isn't movement/position based.

Unlike Balance Druid where you used one type of spell until it filled the Sun gauge to power your spells and then used different types of spells to fill your Moon gauge to power them up, Red Mage has to fill both the White and Black gauge to 80 before they can unleash their full melee combo (which consists of three moves, with each move consuming a portion of that 80...you just need 80 to have enough to do all three moves). At later levels, doing the final move in the combo gives you a proc that allows you to cast a powerful spells (either VerHoly or VerFlare) instantly and at max level casting one of those provides another proc for another hard hitting spell to be used.

I love Red Mage, it's probably my favorite caster to play because it's so versatile. It's not the best caster DPS but it's no slouch and it more than makes up for it in the ability to throw heals and rezzes around as necessary. Anyone who's ever played a Red Mage can all tell you stories about how they saved a party and/or raid with their clutch heals and rezzes. A Red Mage can rez like 4 people in ~6 global cooldowns with a combination of Dual Cast (instant cast spell that occurs after every spell a Red Mage casts that has a cast time) and Swiftcast.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Beat 2.1 through 2.55 in 10 hours 42 minutes.

I thought that it would have been longer. I distinctly remember 2.1-2.55 feeling like it took far longer than 2.0 did. Or maybe that's just because I focused on the 2.0 storyline and got it done quickly, and then began doing other things like leveling alt classes, the Crystal Tower storyline, Chocobo breeding, playing the Gold Saucer, etc, and thus spent more time in the 2.1 through 2.55 era?

It's also the HQ of the adventurer's guild - which is basically a large organization of poorly disciplined, armed to the teeth vigilantes.

Shadowbringers 5.0 ending spoilers

Spoiler: 

Nabriales clears it up. At first it seems like a throwaway explanation, but in retrospect it seems to have been foreshadowing that everyone except Elidibus, Emet, and Lahabrea were sundered, and thus their power pales in comparison (to the power demonstrated by Emet at the end of Shadowbringers: recreating an entire city, a reenactment of the Terminus, and ascending into a god monster). This seems to be at odds with the power demonstrated by Lahabrea, as he was easily defeated both times the WoL fought him.

Based on what we learned in Shadowbringers, the Ascians plan revolves around causing specific aetheric imbalances to coincide with the predominant aetheric property of the shard they are working on rejoining (ie causing an imbalance favoring water aether when trying to rejoin with the water shard). This means that the balance of aether on the Source has to be kept in check so that they can manipulate it more easily so they can continue with their plan. How the balance actually affects the planet and what the consequences are hasn't been well explained, though hopefully that will be explored in the later Shadowbringers patches as they hopefully explain wtf the "sound" that caused the whole mess in Amaurot actually was.

Shadowbringers 5.0 ending spoilers

Spoiler: 

As I understand it, each time a Rejoining occurs, a shard is liquified into aether and that aether goes to the Source, adding more aether to that world. The Seventh Calamity should have added an entire shard's worth of Aether to the source. By this point, the First's aether should be heavily Light aspected, with Light Aspected aether trickling into the Source in anticipation of another calamity. I was quite surprised to see this.



So apparently there is a hole in the system. That aether is going SOMEWHERE. Either it is falling out of the Source to another place (perhaps the Aetheric Rift?), or it is being deleted/destroyed entirely. As I understand it, Primals are dangerous because they straight up destroy any Aether consumed (so continued Primal activity would eventually result in all aether in existence being consumed?). If Hydaelyn is a Primal, then does that mean she is eating up that Aether? That would contradict the theory that she doesn't eat aether because she was created by self sacrifice.



If Hydaelyn is weakening, then perhaps she is eating Aether to try to hang on?

[blackblade]

Sure, but all that is pointless in the face of Garlean air superiority. Which is a topic that really hasn't been addressed much in the story, honestly. We just kinda pretend they're too busy with other stuff all the time.

The last time they tried to do an aerial assault over the region a giant dragon ate their ship, I would be hesitant to dedicate more ships to the region after the last time they said 'oh come on these savages can't do shit about our airships'.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The last time they tried to do an aerial assault over the region a giant dragon ate their ship, I would be hesitant to dedicate more ships to the region after the last time they said 'oh come on these savages can't do shit about our airships'.

That was over fifteen years ago. The Empire had more than enough time to have their agents infiltrate the city state armies, attain the status of a high ranking officer, and send key information back to Garlemald. They should know that Eorzea is pretty much completely defenseless against an air assault (unless mages can nuke their airships from the ground, which has yet to be demonstrated in the game).

[Byleth]

My bet is they won't ever rethink that limited job idiocy and BLU will remain a fucking waste of time.

Pretty much, it's just too hard to balance.

I do enjoy BLU for mucking around with though, it's fun to do when you want a break from the norm.

[Katchii]

[SNIP]

From the ShB MSQ, a heavy infusion of light aether stops all aether from moving, which is why Black Rose was so effective on the Source, it heavily infuses light aspected aether and causes all other aether to just stop moving, which would seem like an ambient decrease. Just look to most of the planet on the first, but it's shown through the Eden quests as well.

[Katchii]

That was over fifteen years ago. The Empire had more than enough time to have their agents infiltrate the city state armies, attain the status of a high ranking officer, and send key information back to Garlemald. They should know that Eorzea is pretty much completely defenseless against an air assault (unless mages can nuke their airships from the ground, which has yet to be demonstrated in the game).

I'm really not sure why that needs to be demonstrated, it's magic, it goes wherever the mage wants it to. I'm sure the issue is simply range and power.

A single mortal mage on the ground MIGHT be able to attack an airship but wtf is that really supposed to do against a giant airship specifically designed around decimating ground targets? The airship would barely even notice the attacks vs the mage getting absolutely ripped to shreds if they were even able to get a spell off before the airship hit them from outside of their range.

Unless there was a large group of mages all attacking in unison I don't think they'd really even be a threat, but again, the range would come in to play.

Think ground troops shooting at a high flying bomber with an RPG.....it's theoretically possible (as long as the RPG actually has teh range to even get that high), but not likely at all to be effective for a variety of reasons (aim, time to target to allow for dodging, ability of the bomber to decimate the ground target before they're even noticed, or before the RPG could possibly hit them, etc...).

[Faroth]

That was over fifteen years ago. The Empire had more than enough time to have their agents infiltrate the city state armies, attain the status of a high ranking officer, and send key information back to Garlemald. They should know that Eorzea is pretty much completely defenseless against an air assault (unless mages can nuke their airships from the ground, which has yet to be demonstrated in the game).

Their forces were devastated, the entire fleet was completely wiped out at Silvertear, and they've fallen into two civil wars over those 15 years as well. Add that there are competing factions on how to approach conquering Eorzea and it stalls any serious efforts.

And now the Eorzean Alliance arguably has the dragons as actual allies rather than acting on their own against the Garleans.

Keep in mind, they had just concluded a war campaign in Ala Mhigo before trying to move into Eorzea.

So you've actually got loss of forces in a war, complete annihilation of forces against the dragons, a period of recovery while Baelsar initiated his plan with Ultima weapon, two civil wars, and you've also got their resources spread thin trying to maintain control over Doma, Ala Mhigo, plus other occupied territories.

It's not like they have infinite airships to just fly over everywhere and conquer it, then maintain control everywhere at all times.

On top of all that, you've got the fact that the Garlean Empire controlling everything is not necessarily conducive to the Ascians plans. And they're pulling strings in Garlemald all this time as well.

Perpetual war is more beneficial to the Ascians than a conquered world under Garlean rule.

- - - Updated - - -

Not to mention that it wasn't Eorzean adventurers - guys carrying swords and spears around - that defeated them, it was dragons. Now they know full well that Midgardsormr is sitting "dead" in the lake now and that the dragons aren't going to be around to save the day anymore.

There's never really a lot of explanation as to why Garlemald doesn't just continue to use their total air superiority to dominate everyone else. Other than it just not fitting well in the current plot and "Well, they're....busy...."

Midgarsormr took out their main ship, sure. But there's still a lot of dragons and they would be foolish to assume they're going to just let Garleans fly in and desecrate a revered region that's even more revered as Midgardsormr's resting place.

On top of the reasons I've noted above. The Garleans don't have infinite airships that are instantaneously created. They've suffered countless set backs over the past 15 years.

[blackblade]

At least they do address the problem of their air superiority once in SB, with Seiryu's Wall and the issue of fuel. So it's not totally ignored, just kinda on the back burner a lot.

They also deploy airships to Ghimlyt, it's hard to say - canonically - what the current state is of the imperial castrums are in Eorzea, but I am guessing they chose that angle of attack for a reason.

[Justpassing]

One thing I never got an answer is why all the "powerful" characters speak ye olde english gov'na? Do they speak ye olde in German or French localisations aswell?

[shaggawoolin]

Is there any other way leveliing beyond level 20 than dungeons yet?

[Faroth]

This is really the only explanation that would seem to make sense when trying to explain how guys toting around swords and spears are continually ruining the military plans of a highly technologically advanced society like Garlemald. That the Ascians are somehow creating the political strife within their nation that keeps them from really focusing on crushing opposition.

The Garleans use sword and spears as well, which further supports the notion they're limited on how much tech they can churn out. The fuel has always been an issue, mentioned as far back as ARR.

And we've seen a single mage destroy a magitek armor. We've seen magitek armor's cannon fire blocked by a WHM's shield spell. Their advanced technology was a solution to the problem of being vastly outmatched by magic, which they are incapable of using. Their technology basically evens the playing field against armies wielding magic.

But with the reveal of Black Rose, the intended use of it, everything we learned about G'raha Tia's future, the Rejoining, the founding and purpose of Garlemald and Allag, and so on...the idea that the Ascians want or need to have a stalemate on the Source seems to not make sense anymore. Indeed, it seems much the opposite. More like Garlemald languishing is greatly hampering their plans. It would seem much more likely that the Ascians would love for Garlemald to be dominant - or at least push them to pursue said dominance relentlessly - and more easily usher in the next calamity.

Factors seem to be in flux a lot with their machinations on other realms dictating how they maneuver things on the Source. Who knows.

At least they do address the problem of their air superiority once in SB, with Seiryu's Wall and the issue of fuel. So it's not totally ignored, just kinda on the back burner a lot.

That was brought up in ARR with Ceruleum not being an abundant resource which fuels their magitek.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Garleans use sword and spears as well, which further supports the notion they're limited on how much tech they can churn out. The fuel has always been an issue, mentioned as far back as ARR.

FFXII had the justification that while there is advanced technology like airships and shield generators, the medieval combat and lack of tanks is explained by the presence of ravenous mites which are attracted to and consume metal. Thus, heavy technology should be relegated to operation above the clouds where mites cannot reach (ie, airships).

Given how unstoppable the Magitek Scorpions were depicted in the 3.5 ending, you'd think that automated, armored warfare would dominate battle. Then again, that portrayal is inconsistent with adventurers casually ripping them apart while strolling through dungeons.