[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[dope_danny]

Man i have watched a friend straight up carry P4 fights full of people wiping because they refuse to watch for the tells and nobody wants to raise anyone and these 40 minute odd long pulls are ending with them rolling 5 or less on the last item they need every time while the worst player is getting the item every time.

They have significantly more patience than me.

[Kyriani]

You disappoint me. I expected you of all people to be able to think this through before making absurd statements like that.
a) WHM always had weave windows after using Dia, a Lily or Regen.
b) yes we do have a few oGCD's but most of them are cooldowns. You don't just spam a Temperance, an Aquaveil or an Asylum so you can fill the void after a glare cast. You use these skills with a purpose, especially in higher end content where you have to coordinate with the other healer (ofc you can just lolspam them in a freeloot dungeon at your leisure).

WHM already had more weave windows than skills to weave which leaves the new "you can now do something between 2 glare casts!" pretty much as an annoying void most of the time.

I'd like to see the WHM lily abilities off the gcd. That would open up much more in the way of weaving opportunities IMO.

[Wrecktangle]

You disappoint me. I expected you of all people to be able to think this through before making absurd statements like that.
a) WHM always had weave windows after using Dia, a Lily or Regen.
b) yes we do have a few oGCD's but most of them are cooldowns. You don't just spam a Temperance, an Aquaveil or an Asylum so you can fill the void after a glare cast. You use these skills with a purpose, especially in higher end content where you have to coordinate with the other healer (ofc you can just lolspam them in a freeloot dungeon at your leisure).

WHM already had more weave windows than skills to weave which leaves the new "you can now do something between 2 glare casts!" pretty much as an annoying void most of the time.

Don't misunderstand, I was merely supporting the statement that quite literally half of your abilities are indeed weaveable. SHOULD they be? That's an entirely different statement for sure and much more in line with what you wanted to say (or who knows maybe I misread, I've been unbearably lazy these days).

Aside from the fact that a lot of jobs desperately need some more frequent oGCDs, It'd be nice especially if healing required you know... actually healing with some urgency or frequency lol.

I mean hell, the most fun I've had this expansion is me solo healing as a PLD trying to keep my MP up and keep my party healed using my self heals and cover and CDs intelligently because we didn't have any raises. I wish I could share this feeling with healers, but content design just doesn't support it.

Fun fact, I've solo healed every single dungeon boss this expansion. Every single leveling one and every single 80 one. Hell I've even solo healed Trial 1 EX the last 25% with both healers down.

[Merie]

[BiggestNoob]

You disappoint me. I expected you of all people to be able to think this through before making absurd statements like that.
a) WHM always had weave windows after using Dia, a Lily or Regen.
b) yes we do have a few oGCD's but most of them are cooldowns. You don't just spam a Temperance, an Aquaveil or an Asylum so you can fill the void after a glare cast. You use these skills with a purpose, especially in higher end content where you have to coordinate with the other healer (ofc you can just lolspam them in a freeloot dungeon at your leisure).

WHM already had more weave windows than skills to weave which leaves the new "you can now do something between 2 glare casts!" pretty much as an annoying void most of the time.

We never realistically had weave windows. You had to clip constantly. You didn't wait for dia or waste a lily just to get a weave window. It was highly situational. Every other Assize was a clip. And without an idealized amount of sps your dia drifts so it doesn't align with major CDs.

You should be using those abilities far more than you expect, basically constantly. You can use Temperance 3-4 times in a fight, Aquaveil on basically every tank buster. Even if you don't have something to weave, you can actually move without downtime. Hell, I used Rescue like 10 times doing panda all in weave windows.

Both extremes can be done gcdless. You'd have dropped multiple GCDs in shb, on top of needing to waste GCDs to movement.

[Tojara]

The raid fights were pretty good, especially the last encounter. Did everything in random pugs and didn't really wipe to anything except the last boss, which we wiped like 4-5x too. Good lord people were slurping up vulnerability debuffs left and right, our LB3 on the kill was a healer one when it was just myself and the other healer alive. The nice thing about the fight (the last one anyway) is that the tells were pretty clear.

The rest of the encounters were pretty mixed to me. Hard to really absorb them (especially the second and third) because we didn't have to repeat them.

[Granyala]

I'd like to see the WHM lily abilities off the gcd. That would open up much more in the way of weaving opportunities IMO.

Would be cool but probably too OP.

- - - Updated - - -

Even if you don't have something to weave, you can actually move without downtime.

That's the only good thing about this change but the "nothing happens except glare mashing" phases (which will only get more pronounced when we get more gear) annoy me to no end now. I just can't cast fluidly anymore. I either have to watch the GCD to issue the next command or I have to mash the buttons.... I hate mashing buttons.

- - - Updated - - -

It'd be nice especially if healing required you know... actually healing with some urgency or frequency lol.

Dunno, man. Both the first and the last story primal were pretty darn stressful, given that people fail mechanics left and right and gobble up vuln stacks as if they were candy. I've healed current savage raidbosses that were less intense. :'D

Yeah, healing gets really boring if people play correctly. Nothing makes that more clear than primal #2 when you do it with the trust buddies.
I'm enjoying the big trashpulls in dungeons right now. People have crap gear and eat a ton of damage, to the point of me using healing CDs. Alas, that too won't last and it'll be back to exploding lily spam per usual.

[Wrecktangle]

The raid fights were pretty good, especially the last encounter. Did everything in random pugs and didn't really wipe to anything except the last boss, which we wiped like 4-5x too. Good lord people were slurping up vulnerability debuffs left and right, our LB3 on the kill was a healer one when it was just myself and the other healer alive. The nice thing about the fight (the last one anyway) is that the tells were pretty clear.

The rest of the encounters were pretty mixed to me. Hard to really absorb them (especially the second and third) because we didn't have to repeat them.

I wish I had your experience. I forgot why I hate normal mode raids on release, but today reminded me lol. The literal worst of this playerbase is found here. If ACT were working I would bet money I had 2 DPS doing sub 2k DPS because 1, 2, and 4 each took over 12 minutes to kill, 2 of which were almost no deaths which makes me even wonder what were they doing. None of those fights are 12 minute fights on savage, let alone normal except probably the last one.

Dunno, man. Both the first and the last story primal were pretty darn stressful, given that people fail mechanics left and right and gobble up vuln stacks as if they were candy. I've healed current savage raidbosses that were less intense. :'D

Yeah, healing gets really boring if people play correctly. Nothing makes that more clear than primal #2 when you do it with the trust buddies.
I'm enjoying the big trashpulls in dungeons right now. People have crap gear and eat a ton of damage, to the point of me using healing CDs. Alas, that too won't last and it'll be back to exploding lily spam per usual.

All vuln stacks mean is that you have to actually use some GCD heals and look at health bars. Otherwise passive healing and oGCDs does everything for you, at current ilvl/current content. Does actually change too much, just which spell you spend on GCDs, DPS or AOE/ST heal.

[Tojara]

Do you play a tank as well? I don't know if I got lucky or not, but I'm pretty sure there was about 30 deaths on our kill attempt. Pretty much everybody was chain dead except for myself, with the only vulnerabilities I took virtue of nobody standing in the mechanic that you're suppose to have two people in. About half way through one healer in our group started to understand the mechanics as well, so it was basically the both of us "carrying" the group. Not much you can do though, especially if your DPS are dead constantly.

I generally do around ~4.2 to 4.5k damage on my DRK (only know because somebody I was doing trial 2 with kept talking about his parses non-stop).

It's a learning week I guess so I don't really mind. The first boss took my group what seemed like ages to kill as well, and nobody died on that one. The last one was a shit show though.

I generally like tanking in this game especially when things are fresh because you normally don't need CDs that much anyway. If an ability comes up on fresh blind prog that I have zero clue what it does, I can just over do it, while everybody else normally dies, allowing me to see/experience more mechanics anyway.

The game is obviously balanced around rezzing in combat, but the last boss for my pug group probably would've taken a massive amount longer if you couldn't get back in the fight. Obviously the wiggle room is much diminished when you do extreme or savage content (especially the third/fourth boss in savage).

Finally it was kind of nuts to see how much faster some of my extreme groups could kill bosses from my pugs. Some were 5% off (granted a few deaths) when the "you wipe" ability was being cast, others killing it cleanly when the you wipe ability is being cast, with the other group of people I was with sometimes killing it about a minute ahead of the enrage timer.

[Mojo03]

Is doing roulettes for tokens the only way to get gear for pandaemonium?

[Tojara]

Is doing roulettes for tokens the only way to get gear for pandaemonium?

What do you mean?

As long as you can get into the raid (you're over the iLvL cap) you can get 1 token for each unique boss in there per week. Once you obtain a token from boss 1, you're locked for that bosses loot until week (afaik). Leg/Chest require 4, helm/gloves/boots are 2, and accessories are 1. You also get a weapon token automatically from the last boss, and I think it requires 6 total?

Unless you're talking about getting gear to do the raids themselves? If that's the case you do roulettes that reward them, hunts and a plethora of other things. Pretty much any EW content will reward them in some variety, even if you've done the daily stuff already. I don't remember what the iLvL floor is for the raids, but I think its 565 to do normals? The class based gear you get for leveling is 560, and you can get a bunch of accessories from the max level dungeon that EW has. After that you would only need half of your gear to be from the tomestone vendor.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is doing roulettes for tokens the only way to get gear for pandaemonium?

Fastest way to get high enough ilevel to meet the 565 requirement for Pandaemonium is to open up party finder and join trial 1 extreme runs. It is very easy: the enrage timer is very generous, and as long as there is one person in the 8 man raid who knows where all the safe spots are, any group can do it so long as they just follow him. Each run takes about 11 minutes to kill him. You get accessories, tokens to buy accessories, and tomes to buy gear. You'll be high enough ilevel within about an hour of farming.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I was starting to get a bit bored with the rotation of SMN, but I gotta say the elemental mastery update at lvl 86 was a nice change of pace, though I'm not entirely sure how much I like having to bumrush the enemy during the ifrit phase. :P

Edit: Though it still feels kinda bad that we still use Fester at lvl 90. They could have really updated that mechanic a tiny bit over time, making it more than some andom ogcd that you just burn the first chance you get. Ruin IV also feels just weirdly tacked on compared to the core rotation now.

[Granyala]

All vuln stacks mean is that you have to actually use some GCD heals and look at health bars.

While dealing with unfamiliar mechanics yourself, yes. If you weren't so incredibly jaded, you would realize that can be stressful.
Or maybe I am just to stupid in order to breeze through unfamiliar encounters with ease.

Naturally, that all goes away once you are accustomed to the fights but healing needs to be balanced around suboptimal situations too. If you design healing to be super intense when everything is done right, randomly assembled groups would never clear any content.

- - - Updated - - -

Fastest way to get high enough ilevel to meet the 565 requirement for Pandaemonium is to open up party finder and join trial 1 extreme runs. It is very easy: the enrage timer is very generous, and as long as there is one person in the 8 man raid who knows where all the safe spots are, any group can do it so long as they just follow him. Each run takes about 11 minutes to kill him. You get accessories, tokens to buy accessories, and tomes to buy gear. You'll be high enough ilevel within about an hour of farming.

Yeah... if you get a group that can actually kill it in the first place. You could also join 5 groups and waste hours w/o a single kill to show for it. *chuckles*

[KrayZ33]

I will never understand how healing in this game (if you actually focus on healing) can be stressful. At least for current EW content that is available.
I'm pretty sure I can almost kill the 2 ex-trials as a DPS without the need of any healer in the group and just Dancers and my own personal melee CDs.

If it weren't for the 1 HP ability that is.

But thats like... 1 heal required every 5 minutes or so.
So when people fail, it still feels like 1 heal every minute for everyone who isn't a tank.

I only did 2/4 for the normal raids yet but the first two bosses were less serious than the dungeon bosses.
The first one in particular was an absolute joke (he has to be the easiest FFXIV boss in the last 5-6 years or so, both in terms of damage and abilities) and WoW-LFR feels like mythic raiding in comparison.

If I take a look at my Zodiark logs for the trials there is a spike in damage taken every *2-flipping-minutes* there is literally 0-damage taken in between that. So even if people mess up, healers have more than enough (o)CDs to take care of them.
So indeed, I can actually heal all that with Bloodbath myself.

[Granyala]

I will never understand how healing in this game (if you actually focus on healing) can be stressful. At least for current EW content that is available

By going in with unskilled people that don't know the fight. Especially if it is your first time as well and you didn't cheat by reading up on guides beforehand.

Your group makes or breaks your experience as a healer and compensating their shortcomings is where you experience stressfulness and get to shine as a healer at the same time.

Naturally, if everything goes according to "plan" nobody panics.

Or maybe it doesn't apply to online-forum demigods... I don't know.

[KrayZ33]

If everyone is shit then that is another story. But mentally challenged people that struggle in dungeons shouldn't be the measuring stick for *anything*. Since you were saying this:

If you design healing to be super intense when everything is done right, randomly assembled groups would never clear any content.

And even if they are that challenged, you are probably better off simply not reviving them until there is a boss phase that allows you to do it without breaking a sweat (of which there are like 20-30 occasions in Zodiark as well)

FFXIV only has strict failures outside of savage and ultimates where dmg reduce cooldowns actually help out a little.
And I can stack 2 Vuln-debuffs before the next ability would (probably?) one shot me as a DPS in Trials.
That means I can fail 2 mechanics before I need healing, which I can heal myself.

Keep in mind that both Dancers and Reapers have group healing abilities now that heal like 10k each for each player. That's already 25% of your health.

So even if we ignore all that, it's still like 1-2 heals every mechanic at most for the group.
A healer in a *good* Zodiark group usually has 60s cooldown abilities as not only their most efficient but also their most *used* healing ability in a 9 minute fight. In doesn't turn into a 1 heal every second thing just because the group is getting worse. So it's really weird.

[Faldric]

I was starting to get a bit bored with the rotation of SMN, but I gotta say the elemental mastery update at lvl 86 was a nice change of pace, though I'm not entirely sure how much I like having to bumrush the enemy during the ifrit phase. :P

Edit: Though it still feels kinda bad that we still use Fester at lvl 90. They could have really updated that mechanic a tiny bit over time, making it more than some andom ogcd that you just burn the first chance you get. Ruin IV also feels just weirdly tacked on compared to the core rotation now.

I grew tired of it as well and changed job after the MSQ. Once the novelty of summoning the actual primals fades the rotation really doesn't feel good. Maybe it would have been more interesting if the 3 egi phases lasted longer so you can't fit all 3 in completely and actually have to choose which one fits the moment better. As is you can cast everything each phase anyway so unless heavy movement is involved the choice doesn't matter.

I feel like they kept fester and ruin 4 around to not make the summoner class quests even more confusing than they already got with the change. AFAIR there was one especially tailored to fester. And yes the ifrit one feels especially weird. I play mostly melee now to not lose time during the animation to better fit everything into the phase.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I feel like they kept fester and ruin 4 around to not make the summoner class quests even more confusing than they already got with the change. AFAIR there was one especially tailored to fester. And yes the ifrit one feels especially weird. I play mostly melee now to not lose time during the animation to better fit everything into the phase.

Which is why I would have updated them, maybe something like extending the stay of an elemental? There are plenty of ways. It is just an alien element to the rest of the job right now. I also have to say while it's cool to summon the actual primals, they are also quite annoying because they take up way too much space on the screen, especially titan that fat chunker.


After finally unlocking the city bicolor gemstone vendor I just found out about the 500 voucher thing.. though I doubt I will ever manage that. I get something costing 50 million gil, because that has many ways to earn it, but the gems have only 1 source and I won't ever do 3600 of them in the next 5 expansions.. Well anyway, SMN lvling done, onto the next. I guess paladin it will be. Though I'm contemplating if I should finish my "of magic" achievment only AST and SGE left.

[Granyala]

If everyone is shit then that is another story.

And that other story would be: "the reality of the actual game" instead of what forum heroes propagate.
YMMV, since it seems to vary from server to server but there is a reason why I abhor random groups in savage/extreme and rather not do the encounters at all unless I get the lucky happenstance of my buddies tagging along.

Especially when content is still fresh and 90% of the people you get are unfamiliar with it.

Most people do not play this game like savage raiding professionals do.