[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Nasuuna]

What kind of food buff/consumable should you use as a Dancer?

Indeed it seems to be pretty difficult to find up to date guides for FFXIV classes, the Balance Discord is one of the few sources but otherwise there isn't anything you could just google and get results unlike in WoW.

the Det>crit one, forget the name.



Also, in queue for the final trial of Shadowbringers MSQ, it is legit one of the most hype endings to ANY game I have ever played, and holds up on the 2nd run.

[Granyala]

Also, in queue for the final trial of Shadowbringers MSQ, it is legit one of the most hype endings to ANY game I have ever played, and holds up on the 2nd run.

You should do him on extreme. Much more fun encounter. I was lucky to experience it before I stopped raiding.

[Sharby]

Came back to the game after a long hiatus and I forgot how annoying it is to level alt-jobs even with the XP boost.



Really wish side-quests were viable XP wise I much prefer questing over instances for XP. :-/

[StrawberryZebra]

Yes I expected more of the joke. Sth like... being offensive, perverted, funny, sarcastic, mean... anything. Except for a sentence that does not make any sense at all.

Someone pointed out that my character looks like Snoop Dogg. He doesn't but I ran with it anyway. The punchline was about me taking two Black Mages (Read: Ho's) to the FC house to get Wet.

I suppose you could call that perverted, depending on your sensibilites. I figured that people both old enough to know old school Snoop would be old enough to deal with that kind of content. I mean, I get that Wet wasn't Snoop Doggs biggest hit, but I'd already done Gin and Juice and Drop it like it's Hot. Not a lot of other places to really take that one *shrug*.

Came back to the game after a long hiatus and I forgot how annoying it is to level alt-jobs even with the XP boost.

No arguments there. Been leveling Warrior and, honestly, it's a bit of a slog. Once you're done with roulettes you've used most of the good sources of XP for the day.

PotD and HoH can help, but they get old fast. FATE's are both poor XP and I often need to spend time waiting for them to pop again after clearing them. Honestly, no idea why they didn't bother to add XP to New Game +. The content is already there, and it's an easy way to both incentivise people to run it again and to give a purpose for it in the structure of the wider game.

I would be fine with just grinding them out, if it wasn't blatently clear from the tiny amount of XP you get that it's clearly not intended as a viable means of leveling.

There does need to be something else in here though really. Options for solo leveling either have a daily limit on them, or are orders of magnitude worse than options that involve grouping up.

[Nasuuna]

You should do him on extreme. Much more fun encounter. I was lucky to experience it before I stopped raiding.

funny enough, thats the only extreme i havent done yet the expansion

already have e5s down on my alt. should be able to get 6 and 7 done, probably not 8 tho

[Granyala]

There does need to be something else in here though really. Options for solo leveling either have a daily limit on them, or are orders of magnitude worse than options that involve grouping up.

Hmm. I think that's intentional. They want people to flock to group content.
FATE grinding should be doable though. If you REALLY want to push it. Personally, I never saw a point to rushing, if I do all random dungeons It'll take what.. 2-3hours? I certainly do not want to do that every day.

Best dungeons to level:
Alliance Raid
Main Scenario
Leveling
Also do not underestimate Beast Tribe Quests. Especially the Pixies give tons of xp for like 5 minutes of playtime.

The rest is small fry.

[Silent Earth]

FF14's community seems to be more passive aggressive. Where they'll either bottle up issues and pretend they don't exist, or else ignore them and hope they go away. It seems like a far more toxic environment for me to be in where issues are ignored and pushed aside becasue players are averse to having those discussions and bringing those problems out into the open.

Any form of criticism, however constructive or mild, has players rushing to put out the fires. I don't know, I just feel as though FF14 is a place where people are constantly afraid to voice their opinions for fear of them being shouted over by people going "La la la everythings perfect I can't hear you!". That culture of silence and closing ranks gives the impression that it's a more friendly community, but thats really nothing more than a veneer.

Welcome to Japanese culture, aspects of which have spread to the western audience as well.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In my defense though, they did say they were a "mature" guild. I suppose that's an easy mistake to make

From what I've seen, any guild that claims to be "mature" never actually is.

I'm pretty sure I'd thought he was weird as well, due to him to make a complete arse of himself, behaving like some immature kiddo.

Kicking people over a joke that fell flat?

FF14's community seems to be more passive aggressive. Where they'll either bottle up issues and pretend they don't exist, or else ignore them and hope they go away. It seems like a far more toxic environment for me to be in where issues are ignored and pushed aside becasue players are averse to having those discussions and bringing those problems out into the open.

Any form of criticism, however constructive or mild, has players rushing to put out the fires. I don't know, I just feel as though FF14 is a place where people are constantly afraid to voice their opinions for fear of them being shouted over by people going "La la la everythings perfect I can't hear you!". That culture of silence and closing ranks gives the impression that it's a more friendly community, but thats really nothing more than a veneer.

I'm lucky to have found a good FC but I definitely have to concur. I think @Katchii 's statement from last year, that "WoW is like a seemingly bad neighborhood but the people are actually good, whereas FFXIV is a seemingly bad neighborhood but when you interact with them they're elitist and get trigged by anything".

Came back to the game after a long hiatus and I forgot how annoying it is to level alt-jobs even with the XP boost.



Really wish side-quests were viable XP wise I much prefer questing over instances for XP. :-/

Only reason to do sidequests is at the end of 2.0, when you are two quests away from the ending but just need a tiny bit of EXP to reach 50, so you do five minutes of sidequests instead of a 15 minute dungeon. Otherwise, random dungeon roulette is the fastest way to level up.

[KrayZ33]

Hmm. I think that's intentional. They want people to flock to group content.
FATE grinding should be doable though. If you REALLY want to push it. Personally, I never saw a point to rushing, if I do all random dungeons It'll take what.. 2-3hours? I certainly do not want to do that every day.

Best dungeons to level:
Alliance Raid
Main Scenario
Leveling
Also do not underestimate Beast Tribe Quests. Especially the Pixies give tons of xp for like 5 minutes of playtime.

The rest is small fry.

Don't forget squadrons for leveling up, up until somewhere in heavensward. 40-50 level in one weekend while afking 95% of the time, there is hardly anything better.
Just play a different game and press the "attack" button every other minute in FFXIV. Ideal when you have 2 monitors of course.
As for the last 30 levels, I agree, take it slow and do beast tribe quest during roulette queues.

[Nasuuna]

From what I've seen, any guild that claims to be "mature" never actually is.



Kicking people over a joke that fell flat?



I'm lucky to have found a good FC but I definitely have to concur. I think @Katchii 's statement from last year, that "WoW is like a seemingly bad neighborhood but the people are actually good, whereas FFXIV is a seemingly bad neighborhood but when you interact with them they're elitist and get trigged by anything".



Only reason to do sidequests is at the end of 2.0, when you are two quests away from the ending but just need a tiny bit of EXP to reach 50, so you do five minutes of sidequests instead of a 15 minute dungeon. Otherwise, random dungeon roulette is the fastest way to level up.

Ya I avoid any group that says they are Mature, Tolerant, Fun, ect.

They almost never are, or at worse the opposite


I think Proudmoore on WoW was one of the least fun servers I have ever played on, it was like walking on eggshells the entire time, and they claim themselves the most tolerant.

[Hyral]

I think Proudmoore on WoW was one of the least fun servers I have ever played on, it was like walking on eggshells the entire time, and they claim themselves the most tolerant.

I was thinking what to compare FFXIV to and that's exactly it, both communities are pretty much the same. On the surface it seems everyone's nice but if you try to engage with more than just "o/" and "tyfp" you'll begin to see the cracks on the masks.

"WoW is like a seemingly bad neighborhood but the people are actually good, whereas FFXIV is a seemingly bad neighborhood but when you interact with them they're elitist and get trigged by anything"

I'd say WoW is a bad neighbourhood but at least people leave each other alone. FFXIV is a nice gated community of incredibly insufferable people once you start talking to them.

[Thestrawman]

I was thinking what to compare FFXIV to and that's exactly it, both communities are pretty much the same. On the surface it seems everyone's nice but if you try to engage with more than just "o/" and "tyfp" you'll begin to see the cracks on the masks.



I'd say WoW is a bad neighbourhood but at least people leave each other alone. FFXIV is a nice gated community of incredibly insufferable people once you start talking to them.

The fact he never put what the joke actually was makes me think it'd get him an infraction here. Probably for the best he was kicked. I wouldn't want to deal with that either.

[Granyala]

Kicking people over a joke that fell flat?

Never said anything about kicking but such behavior would certainly make an impression.

[lollerlaban]

In FFXIV, the game is balanced around healers having enough time to top the tank off, and then be able to lean back and DPS for a little bit, and actually contribute a significant amount of DPS, enough that healers are EXPECTED to DPS when they can and the raid will fail a DPS check if the healer doesn't pull their weight. IMO, this makes healers far more fun than in WoW, because you are alternating between healing and dealing damage, and it spruces things up.

It also makes them incredibly fucking dull when you basically only have to heal with a few oGCD fizzled in. When you're dps'ing more than healing then what's the fucking point?

[KrayZ33]

It also makes them incredibly fucking dull when you basically only have to heal with a few oGCD fizzled in. When you're dps'ing more than healing then what's the fucking point?

The point is to keep the group alive with timed heals whenever needed and also contribute to the dps side of things. Granted, that was way more fun when healers did have actual rotations and several dots to keep up, but it's just another way of doing things.

[Schmittay]

It also makes them incredibly fucking dull when you basically only have to heal with a few oGCD fizzled in. When you're dps'ing more than healing then what's the fucking point?

It's a preference thing. I love that my job is basically DPS. Oh and keeping people alive. Well it depends. I mean Glare is almost finished casting...and I have insta rez up so chill.

[lollerlaban]

The point is to keep the group alive with timed heals whenever needed and also contribute to the dps side of things. Granted, that was way more fun when healers did have actual rotations and several dots to keep up, but it's just another way of doing things.

The problem arise when the actual healer class is spending more time dps'ing than actually healing, because FFXIV is super scripted due to awful server ticks. When you don't have to hard cast any heals because everything is covered by oGCD then it's just a dps spec for people who can't grasp actual dps specs, which sadly is the category a lot of the healers in FFXIV fit into.

In the other spectrum you have people who ONLY heal, even in dungeons. Then it really shows you how boring and dull the gameplay of healers really is because you're doing absolutely nothing, even though they promised us more damage in Shadowbringers which i'm still waiting for.

[KrayZ33]

The problem arise when the actual healer class is spending more time dps'ing than actually healing, because FFXIV is super scripted due to awful server ticks. When you don't have to hard cast any heals because everything is covered by oGCD then it's just a dps spec for people who can't grasp actual dps specs, which sadly is the category a lot of the healers in FFXIV fit into.

That's not really a/the problem. That's just a different way of doing things. The problem is that they pruned a healer's DPS abilities because they promised "more stuff to heal" when it didn't really change at all.

Healer specs were the busiest class by quite a margin before that.
Especially due to stance-dance. I'm glad that the stance-dancing is gone, but I'd love to have my abilities back.

I wouldn't really blame server ticks either, because dots are after all on a global timer. It wouldn't require much to keep healers occupied if they'd just add some raid wide dots, or dots that only afflict 2-3 players alongside raid wide damage. Not sure why they aren't doing what they promised.

Just take a look at E7S for example. The add phase is basically without any raid damage if you ignore the stack mechanic that only comes once every 30 seconds or so.
Why not have the adds pulse out damage every other tick, that can't just be healed with Medica 2 for example.
I personally believe that they are too scared of designing encounters like that, because one healer might be superior to the other. Players are always quick to complain "WHM is superior here, I'm not getting into any raid groups" after all.

I hate it when people think anything but the meta is "unplayable". I'm glad that in FFXIV, people don't really care, but encounter design shouldn't have to suffer from that.

It's not like they have to design bleeding edge hard encounters just to keep healers occupied. There is always a "middle ground".

[La]

That's not really a/the problem. That's just a different way of doing things. The problem is that they pruned a healer's DPS abilities because they promised "more stuff to heal" when it didn't really change at all.

Healer specs were the busiest class by quite a margin before that.
Especially due to stance-dance. I'm glad that the stance-dancing is gone, but I'd love to have my abilities back.

I wouldn't really blame server ticks either, because dots are after all on a global timer. It wouldn't require much to keep healers occupied if they'd just add some raid wide dots, or dots that only afflict 2-3 players alongside raid wide damage. Not sure why they aren't doing what they promised.

Just take a look at E7S for example. The add phase is basically without any raid damage if you ignore the stack mechanic that only comes once every 30 seconds or so.
Why not have the adds pulse out damage every other tick, that can't just be healed with Medica 2 for example.
I personally believe that they are too scared of designing encounters like that, because one healer might be superior to the other. Players are always quick to complain "WHM is superior here, I'm not getting into any raid groups" after all.

I hate it when people think anything but the meta is "unplayable". I'm glad that in FFXIV, people don't really care, but encounter design shouldn't have to suffer from that.

It's not like they have to design bleeding edge hard encounters just to keep healers occupied. There is always a "middle ground".

It's also that most of the healing comes not just from oGCDs, but also they're always just AOE heals. I think a big reason for a lot of these issues is due to it being on console. If you healed in WoW, and then healed in FF14, it isn't just the fact that in WoW you actually feel like a healer and are generally always healing, it's that it also has such a "smooth" feeling to it. In 14, it's so slow, it's so clunky, just like the bossfights and how static and same they are, you know?

These devs have made healing worse and worse, and have taken more of the enjoyment away than they have given them in return, and it really, truly shows they are absolutely clueless when it comes to what to do with healing. They just do not have people who work on other jobs having the same type of direction.

So, yeah, I think it goes far beyond "they pruned healer DPS abilities" If a major talking point for how engaging a healer is comes from their DPS, there is inherently a massive flaw in the design, because you are a healer, not a DPS. Though, healers themselves would really benefit from having a simple, 4 button DNC/RDM proc type damage rotation. It still amazes me they gave healers, none of which any reason to be in melee, melee AOE's, and then remove SCH DoT spread and devolve it into mindless AOE 1 button spam because you aren't gonna DoT 10 mobs up each.

[KrayZ33]

As I said, it's not really a problem that you DPS more than you actually heal, that's just a different design decision. Not all games work like WoW's holy trinity where a healer is a fulltime job. It doesn't have to be that way and I believe there are just as many "healers" who don't want it to be that way and act as a "support heal".

It's just that they lost the support heal role when they decided to prune most of their interesting damage abilities and downgrade their support abilities.
The reduction or removal of meaningfull DPS increasing auras from the fairy for example, the reduction in power from cards, the inability to properly spread dots using a ressource that would require you to sacrifice some healing potential.
That's by itself interesting design and did actually fit really well in how FFXIV designed it's raid encounters.

Then there were people who complained about not being a proper healer, which is by itself nothing to complain about, just something they didn't like. In the end, SE decided to listen to them, even though their gameplan is absolutely unfit to provide the necessary challenge to those who wanted to heal. Or at least, they didn't follow up on their promise. Hardly any dispells, hardly any damage over time effects, hardly any non-tank damage that isn't healed by AoEs.

Now you are left with former DPS-Support healing roles, that lost most of their DPS support and are only left with healing abilities that aren't challenged enough.

edit: basically, what I'm saying is, it's more of a "the chicken or the egg" thing. It depends on how you look at it when it comes to who's at fault or what was better. Back then, when their DPS stuff was more convoluted. Having to use oGCDs for healing or the occasional AoE heal or shield while the fairy or hots keep up the tank alongside a few single target cures outside of tankbusters or mass aoe pulls, was fun.

Now, you are basically spamming one button and then another 1 or 2 and that's about it. I never understood why they wanted to go away from the previous, more complex stuff, the only thing they had to remove was the damage-stance so healers wouldn't be scared / have to switch into it and not be able to react in time to get the heals out.