[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Graeham]

I'd never let the tank drop that low in raids for extended periods of time. There are tons of things that can go wrong and result in a wipe.

Yep.

I've had people gamble with my health and then complain when I die because they let me get to 20% or 10% health only for some other player to accidentally drop an AoE on me.

[Lane]

What I'm getting from this is that I need to get over my aversion to character deaths. :P I blame WoW and their stupid death counter for that.

Anyway, I watched through the DRK questline. The 30-50 arc was great. The rest of it was kind of meh except for the ending. Guess I should've tempered my expectations.

[Granyala]

What I'm getting from this is that I need to get over my aversion to character deaths. :P I blame WoW and their stupid death counter for that.

If you want to step into raids? Yes.
That is quite a weird aversion to have in an MMO.

Out in the world I'd say that it's quite a bit harder to die compared to WoW.
Mainly because mobs hit less hard, stick to you for a shorter amount of time and are easy to circumvent.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Anyway, I watched through the DRK questline. The 30-50 arc was great. The rest of it was kind of meh except for the ending. Guess I should've tempered my expectations.

Yeah the community overhypes the 30-50 DRK questline to high heaven. It's decent in comparison to most of the job questlines in the game. I think the only really good ones are the Samurai 50-60, the Gunbreaker 60-70, and the DRK 60-70, but don't expect anything amazing.

[Lane]

I'm surprised we aren't seeing an explosion of machinima for FFXIV yet.

DO NOT CLICK THESE LINKS UNLESS YOU'VE COMPLETED 5.3!

I stumbled across two animations recently of the short stories Through His Eyes and Ere Our Curtain Falls. I enjoyed them, you might too.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

DO NOT CLICK THESE LINKS UNLESS YOU'VE COMPLETED 5.3!

I stumbled across two animations recently of the short stories Through His Eyes and Ere Our Curtain Falls. I enjoyed them, you might too.

Ty for the link

[Merie]

PLD main here. Always trust your healer at first. If you're not dead they're doing their job, regardless of whether I'm at 1% HP or 100% HP. I love seeing a healer push the envelope and put out really respectable damage and keep me on the edge. If the healer messes up, as long as they own it and fix it we're all good. More often than not if I do die, it's usually an error they made or the DPS were just downright cabbage (i.e. tank/healer #1 and #2).

I'd rather have a healer who tries and fails then an AFK cure/fairy bot ANY day of the week. Dying in Sastasha is an accomplishment though. You don't actually even need a healer if everyone else is pushing buttons...

I would mind the just-in-time healers less if Hollowed Ground didn't take a full second to activate after pushing the button. Often times it goes on cooldown making me wait before using it again, but I still die. Divine Shield in WoW never had that problem.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I feel like people are treating this as too binary an issue, to be honest. Which is usually what happens in these discussions, everything is argued from both extremes.

I don't think anyone really minds going into normal trials and 4 man dungeons blind. My biggest woe is when I queue for mentor roulette and some sprouts queue for EX trial and have zero clue how to do it. If we do a couple of pulls and it's very apparent because they die 8 times in the first minute, I ask them if they didn't know about the unsync feature and if they didn't, I'd just offer to unsync kill it for them to get it done for their quest.

If they want the "real experience" of learning blind, 1. queueing doesn't give you min ilvl or silence echo, so that's not even the real experience people had of doing it when it was fresh 2. They should use the party finder to find a group of like minded people to tackle it together. If you queue for it, you're going to get a bunch of mentors, and even though that's kind of the point of mentors, most don't have the time nor the patience to teach an extreme trial.

[StrawberryZebra]

I would mind the just-in-time healers less if Hollowed Ground didn't take a full second to activate after pushing the button. Often times it goes on cooldown making me wait before using it again, but I still die. Divine Shield in WoW never had that problem.

Like most tank cooldowns, Hallowed Ground is best used preventatively rather than reactively. I tend to use it shortly after rounding everything up to give the healer time to nuke freely and I can just stand in whatever I need to for maximum DPS uptime in dungeons.

Insta gib kills are extremely rare in FF14 outside of mechanics fails, and practically never feature in 4 man content. Dying as a tank is a slow, drawn out process which takes 15-20 seconds before it actually happens, giving you plenty of time to use self heals, potions etc. Hallowed Ground really isn't worth saving as an emergency cooldown in my opinion. You've got that many other cooldowns that you're bound to have *something* ready if you ever do get into trouble.

[Soikona]

Like most tank cooldowns, Hallowed Ground is best used preventatively rather than reactively. I tend to use it shortly after rounding everything up to give the healer time to nuke freely and I can just stand in whatever I need to for maximum DPS uptime in dungeons.

Insta gib kills are extremely rare in FF14 outside of mechanics fails, and practically never feature in 4 man content. Dying as a tank is a slow, drawn out process which takes 15-20 seconds before it actually happens, giving you plenty of time to use self heals, potions etc. Hallowed Ground really isn't worth saving as an emergency cooldown in my opinion. You've got that many other cooldowns that you're bound to have *something* ready if you ever do get into trouble.

That’s what I love about FF14 tanking compared to WoW tanking. As a paladin in FF14, I actually feel like a tank, actually standing my ground. While in WoW, I am running about the place to kite, at least in keys.

[Dakhath]

That’s what I love about FF14 tanking compared to WoW tanking. As a paladin in FF14, I actually feel like a tank, actually standing my ground. While in WoW, I am running about the place to kite, at least in keys.

That's the nature of the content though, would it be any different if there was a +15 in FF14?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Being a DPS attacking the back ankles of a giant dragon, or slashing at the back of the Warrior of Light isn't very epic, IMO. Neither is being a tank who stands away from the rest of his men.

[Frostfred]

Like most tank cooldowns, Hallowed Ground is best used preventatively rather than reactively. I tend to use it shortly after rounding everything up to give the healer time to nuke freely and I can just stand in whatever I need to for maximum DPS uptime in dungeons.

Insta gib kills are extremely rare in FF14 outside of mechanics fails, and practically never feature in 4 man content. Dying as a tank is a slow, drawn out process which takes 15-20 seconds before it actually happens, giving you plenty of time to use self heals, potions etc. Hallowed Ground really isn't worth saving as an emergency cooldown in my opinion. You've got that many other cooldowns that you're bound to have *something* ready if you ever do get into trouble.

Aye, as a healer I love tanks that actually use their CDs more on rotation and try to mitigate some damage coming in, instead of just sitting on them and not using them once in the entire instance. There are some terrible tanks around (I've seen some on all levels till now, not only sprouts), who take so much damage that it's almost impossible to do anything than just try keeping them alive on trash. I guess the biggest culprit of that was in one of the Heavensward instances yesterday. I supposedly let him drop / stay low on a boss, that doesn't do any unpredictable damage, just to see if he uses any CD. And he did! "/p I would take a heal now" was the def-CD of his choosing.
On others, just the off GCD heals are enough and I can spend more or less all my other casts doing damage, even on fairly large pulls.

I usually don't mind too much either way. When I'm forced to only heal, because the tank doesn't want to use any CD and sometimes stays in stuff, it only goes a bit slower. But the difference between a good tank and a bad tank in terms of damage taken is HUGE in FF14 - not just due to gear differences.

[StrawberryZebra]

That’s what I love about FF14 tanking compared to WoW tanking. As a paladin in FF14, I actually feel like a tank, actually standing my ground. While in WoW, I am running about the place to kite, at least in keys.

I suppose it depends heavilly on which WoW tank you play. I play a Paladin in WoW and I mix things up between tanking and healing, I normally tank raids but I do M+ with the Druid I co-tank with and we switch up who's tanking them.

Depending on the Affixes, and the quality of the DPS, the Druid can get away with some absolutely crazy stuff with their cooldowns in +16-18's. Like wall to wall pulls in Spires of Ascension. Or pulling the entire Ardenweald section of De Other Side in one go. He has to scale it back a little for 20+, but that's largely due to DPS not being able to kill things fast enough before he runs out of cooldowns rather than the damage intake. He's never had to kite in M+ outside of Necrotic weeks. Bear Druids just don't give a fuck.

Demon Hunters on the other hand seem to be a lot more fragile outside of their cooldowns, and need to kite in between to survive bigger pulls. They're prone to just getting squished by large pulls if they don't have some kind of defensive on hand.

As a Paladin, I feel like I fit in between those two extremes. I do occasionally have to kite, usually when I've pulled multiple groups and have misjudged the DPS, or if there are dangerous (de)buffs that I need to kite out. It's not a regular thing like it is with DH's. At the same time I'm not sturdy enough to get away with pulling everything in sight every couple of minutes. I can do large pulls more often than the Druid can, but I can't compete in terms of numbers at any one time.

I've not really played with Warriors, DK's or Monks so I don't feel comfortable commenting on them. The general trend though seems to be that the more mobile a tank is, the worse they are at handling big pulls. On that front, my assumption would be that DK's don't need to worry much about kiting and can face tank everything, while Warriors and Monks need to kite more often. Again, that's an assumption, not a fact.

Aye, as a healer I love tanks that actually use their CDs more on rotation and try to mitigate some damage coming in, instead of just sitting on them and not using them once in the entire instance.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think that tanks have too many cooldowns right now and could probably afford some pruning going into Endwalker. Warrior is the tank I generally default to and it's extremely rare for me not to have at least one cooldown up for a pull. I typically just rotate them knowing full well they'll be ready again for the next pull. Even a Nascent Glint is more than enough to completely top myself up and that's on a tiny 25 second cooldown.

Partly that plays into healers too, as you say generally oCGD's are enough for the entire dungeon. I don't think either role is really getting the best possible experience, but trimming away some of the cooldowns (from both, healers have a *lot* of oGCD's and almost never have to hard cast anything that isn't a DPS spell) would open up more skill expression for both roles in 4 man dungeons.

[dlld]

I hear ultimate is very hard but how tightly tuned is it in terms of rotation? About how many mistakes is one allowed to do before the loss of dps is too much? I assume there are hard or soft enrage mechanics for these fights. I'm not talking about tank getting one shot because he forgot to use a defensive CD but like clipping a GCD by being to slow with a OGCD or miss a proper GCD because you had to move out of range as melee because bad positioning or something.

[Dakhath]

I hear ultimate is very hard but how tightly tuned is it in terms of rotation? About how many mistakes is one allowed to do before the loss of dps is too much? I assume there are hard or soft enrage mechanics for these fights. I'm not talking about tank getting one shot because he forgot to use a defensive CD but like clipping a GCD by being to slow with a OGCD or miss a proper GCD because you had to move out of range as melee because bad positioning or something.

An old guildmate from WoW has been raiding in FF14 for a few years now, he has said that Ultimates are on par with late or end of tier Mythic raids, the big difference is that eventually mythics go though several nerfs and Ultimates don't. They are also more demanding on an individual due to the smaller size, like if you took your best 8 to a WoW mythic boss and then your worst 8, it would be a sizeable difference.

[ThatOtherGuyOk]

I hear ultimate is very hard but how tightly tuned is it in terms of rotation? About how many mistakes is one allowed to do before the loss of dps is too much? I assume there are hard or soft enrage mechanics for these fights. I'm not talking about tank getting one shot because he forgot to use a defensive CD but like clipping a GCD by being to slow with a OGCD or miss a proper GCD because you had to move out of range as melee because bad positioning or something.

For the most part, the community oversells just how tightly tuned they really are. There's a UCoB clear with 21 deaths, for example.

[KrayZ33]

For the most part, the community oversells just how tightly tuned they really are. There's a UCoB clear with 21 deaths, for example.

That's a number you said there - but what does it mean
Not sure how that number works related to how difficult/tuned it is.

It's not like the first clears only took that?
And DPS numbers between good players are relatively equal.
a 90% parse and a 50-70% one is like a weapon upgrade away.

FFXIV works in a way that when you know how to do the mechanics, you can easily achieve optimal DPS rotations.
Well, at least some classes can, I'm not playing every single one myself.
So I'd say good players that bother with this content know what to do and play relatively optimal.
I'm pretty sure we couldn't carry our 20 grey parse BLM through it even though we can do it safely in E8S (pre Echo)

[ThatOtherGuyOk]

That's a number you said there - but what does it mean
Not sure how that number works related to how difficult/tuned it is.

It's not like the first clears only took that?
And DPS numbers between good players are relatively equal.
a 90% parse and a 50% one is like a weapon upgrade away.

FFXIV works in a way that when you know how to do the mechanics, you can easily achieve optimal DPS rotations.

There's not much to analyze here.

The question was how tightly tuned the encounters are in terms of DPS. If it can be cleared with 21 - or any number of deaths, really - then clearly it's not tuned to the "Being optimal down to the GCD" level.

You're right that if you can do mechanics, you can kind of get away with anything in most fights.

[KrayZ33]

There's not much to analyze here.

The question was how tightly tuned the encounters are. If it can be cleared with 21 - or any number of deaths, really - then clearly it's not tuned to the "Being optimal down to the GCD" level.

You're right that if you can do mechanics, you can kind of get away with anything in most fights.

Ah, that death, I kinda translated that into "wipes".