[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Wrecktangle]

Do you play a tank as well?

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).

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.

Correct I play a PLD and 4.2-4.5k DPS is great, nice work. Not sure how new to the game you are, but this type of kill time spread is very common. Gearing in this game scales VERY quickly with stats and the robust skill levels which players operate at can swing kill times by INCREDIBLY large margins, even larger than your examples.

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.

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*

You're not stupid. Healing does need to be balanced around sub optimal situations. I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is that healing is so overpowered and busted in this game that it's BARELY balanced (i.e. still overpowered as hell) in the most DIRE and ridiculous situations, that makes it trivial in anything but, that the only way to stress a healer is put you with a team of 7 other people you're not confident could pass a 4th grade class.

I don't need to use CDs as a tank honestly at all in 8 player content to survive (which is comical and an issue). I would need to use no CDs and have 3-4 vuln stacks to get one shot by a tankbuster in the current EXs/normal mode raids. I know because that's what it took one pull when I lagged horribly and when the desycn ended that's how I died immediately after.

I actually killed EX trial 2 in 5 pulls in a blind learning party. We got really lucky and figured out lightwaves in a single pull because myself and another healer kept each other alive to see the pattern. 75% of our wipes were trying to figure out the add phase which took trial and error, one of which I could have saved if I wasn't an idiot and read debuffs (I kept mistaking that the adds couldn't be brought together or they took no damage, but that's inaccurate).

EX trial 1 was actually hard for us at first because SOMEONE and I won't name names (me I fucking suck) just cannot visualize a rotating room. My brain short circuits every single time. It wasn't until someone told me their solution for it and I was like oh, it's just an if then statement that's easy.

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

Most people who do week 1 EX trials are playing the game like savage raiding professionals though. It's 100% the BEST time to do them. Trying to do them now or even later is just being stuck with the riff raff who barely pass normal mode raids, let alone anything more demanding. I generally don't count these scenarios in my discussion but rather gameplay with like minded/skilled players.

I've always said mixing player skills creates nearly 100% of this community's toxicity and should never be justified as a benchmark. I.e. "good" healers with "bad" players, or vice versa. I don't think you're a bad player, I think you're just using more demanding content with players who don't belong there as justification for your argument and I fail to see why that should be the benchmark.

[dope_danny]

Levelling Reaper through Shadowbringers has reminded me of something that might in part be why i preffered its levelling story over Endwalkers. From start to finish you are fighting Sin Eaters right till the final zone starts the Ascian stuff. Meanwhile we fight Blasphemies/Terminus Beasts in 2 dungeons and in one its kind of debatable.

Looking at both now they are finished storys i think Endwalker could have done with stretching out to be the patch story as well, maybe ending with the trials but then 2 or 3 patches watching the final days get worse and worse as we figure out the trigger and how to get to the final boss rather than doing it over a couple of hours at the end.

Whats there isn't bad but revisiting the two the impact of Sin Eaters just feels way more present and urgent in retrospect and i think i preffered that over the Endwalker story treating it outside of thvanair like a preventative pest control situation.

[KrayZ33]

EX trial 1 was actually hard for us at first because SOMEONE and I won't name names (me I fucking suck) just cannot visualize a rotating room. My brain short circuits every single time. It wasn't until someone told me their solution for it and I was like oh, it's just an if then statement that's easy.

And the funny thing about that boss ability is: As long as you don't get hit by everything, you still survive, even as a non-tank class.
So the most difficult boss ability in that fight doesn't even kill you if you mess it up. Only if you completely ignore it.

[Merie]

Got a commission of my character and I'm so proud of it I had to link it!

[Delever]

Got a commission of my character and I'm so proud of it I had to link it!

May I ask for the artist? This is beautiful af. I m considering commissioning them myself.

[Granyala]

You're not stupid. Healing does need to be balanced around sub optimal situations. I agree wholeheartedly.

That's basically all I wanted to say.

The problem is that healing is so overpowered and busted in this game that it's BARELY balanced (i.e. still overpowered as hell) in the most DIRE and ridiculous situations, that makes it trivial in anything but, that the only way to stress a healer is put you with a team of 7 other people you're not confident could pass a 4th grade class.

Maybe but it also what makes healing fun. I am powerful I can actually compensate the inability of others. I agree that healing is super boring in groups that are awesome. Thankfully most groups are not awesome, so healing gets interesting up to stressful.

I really, REALLY hated the healing revamp WoW did back in Cataclysm. I felt so hilariously weak as a healer, constantly having to beg my group members to obey mechanics because I neither had the mana nor the throughput to compensate for shit. Naturally, gear cured that later in the expansion but in the beginning there were far too many failed 5man dungeon (WTF, I know) runs to make it fun. I'd hate for FF to go the same way, I'd rather they give us healers more interesting DPS options for our downtime.

Most people who do week 1 EX trials are playing the game like savage raiding professionals though.

I am dead certain that I would not manage to measure up to their exacting standards, so the point is rather moot. I agree that extreme trials aren't difficult. Most of them never have been but the first in any given expansion are always rather lax. I still remember doing Titania and the Light Dude from ShB with my raid group before my retirement... so easy.

[Wrecktangle]

Got a commission of my character and I'm so proud of it I had to link it!

Looks great! Really did a great job with the details even though I'm not 100% sold on the face (might just be I don't like your characters face lol), but the art style is great. I'd be curious what something like this ran if you don't mind sharing or if you want to PM. I know I've had a painting of my past cars commissioned and they were really reasonable pricing wise.

That's basically all I wanted to say.


Maybe but it also what makes healing fun. I am powerful I can actually compensate the inability of others. I agree that healing is super boring in groups that are awesome. Thankfully most groups are not awesome, so healing gets interesting up to stressful.

I really, REALLY hated the healing revamp WoW did back in Cataclysm. I felt so hilariously weak as a healer, constantly having to beg my group members to obey mechanics because I neither had the mana nor the throughput to compensate for shit. Naturally, gear cured that later in the expansion but in the beginning there were far too many failed 5man dungeon (WTF, I know) runs to make it fun. I'd hate for FF to go the same way, I'd rather they give us healers more interesting DPS options for our downtime.


I am dead certain that I would not manage to measure up to their exacting standards, so the point is rather moot. I agree that extreme trials aren't difficult. Most of them never have been but the first in any given expansion are always rather lax. I still remember doing Titania and the Light Dude from ShB with my raid group before my retirement... so easy.

I just envision MP being a real resource that requires management and your class resources help offset it for emergencies. Stuff like fast powerful heals, but rapidly drain MP, slower more efficient heals, or faster, but weaker efficient heals and multiple tools and mechanic timings to help utilize it.

[StrawberryZebra]

You're not stupid. Healing does need to be balanced around sub optimal situations. I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is that healing is so overpowered and busted in this game that it's BARELY balanced (i.e. still overpowered as hell) in the most DIRE and ridiculous situations, that makes it trivial in anything but, that the only way to stress a healer is put you with a team of 7 other people you're not confident could pass a 4th grade class.

Even then I'm not sure that would stress healers. As a Scholar, I find I've got 5 different abilities for every situation and, honestly, it doesn't matter which one I choose. Even if I pick the "wrong" one, I've both got 4 other skills on hand for when it happens again so it feels as though it's of no consequence.

It has too many generalist skills to solve any problems and not enough specific tools. All healers do. I feel as though that leaves them in a position where they've got very little skill expression in the healing department, hence why comptant healers are always trying to push the envelope with their DPS.

They could really do with a proper deep-dive prune to get rid of the multiple minor variations on the "Heals a target for 700 potency" type skills and instead look to replace them with more specialised skills like, for example, "Heals for 200 potency and restores HP equal to the value of any absorb shields on the target" - That creates a more specialised ability with a very strong usage case. Something like this allows for a good healer to use it well, and a poor healer to use it badly making it useful as an expression of player skill.

That is if players need healing anymore to begin with. I had a healer DC on me in Ktisis Hyperboreia before the first boss and I just carried on tanking nothing happened. Between Nascent Flash and Shake it Off I had enough healing for my group needs.

Also, while I appreciate that healers have all had external tank cooldowns added, I also think that tanks have way too many cooldowns for themselves too. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I've not had something on hand as tank when needed.

The whole tank-healer relationship needs to be re-examined imo. Given the choice I'd rather have a tank and 3 DPS in my groups at the moment than a healer. The tanks are too strong. The healers are too strong. They both need to be reigned in to a reasonable level imo.

[Tojara]

Correct I play a PLD and 4.2-4.5k DPS is great, nice work. Not sure how new to the game you are, but this type of kill time spread is very common. Gearing in this game scales VERY quickly with stats and the robust skill levels which players operate at can swing kill times by INCREDIBLY large margins, even larger than your examples.

Yeah I've been playing since the start but took a break between HW and ShB, playing both SB and ShB near the end of ShB lifespan. My raiding experience was mostly normal and dabbling in some of the ShB stuff.

I actually joined a blind prog trial 2 and one shot luckily. The group had to have been close and their tank must've left. I winged it completely and died during the wave movement phase. Not sure how I would wing that portion. Farm parties were a mixed bag though on trial 2, and despite seeing the encounter it was obvious a lot were basically carried through various portions.

I'm kinda bad at the movement rotations in trial 1 but never bad enough that I die or take more than one vulnerable stack. I'm basically good enough to dodge the fire line and stand in the right place, but I don't always visualize the birds right. Thankfully, and this goes for DPS too.. those are spaced out enough that you won't get multiple vulnerability stacks unless you suck at the other mechanics (which are pretty easy).

Hard to gauge overall throughput but I'm too lazy to download addons and I don't care enough in both this game or other MMOs to get too mad at people. Low throughput is annoying, but what annoys me most is people who are absolute dead weight regardless of pull count, or serial afk type players that you see in a lot of Alliance raids (which is why I only do them once in FF and I never do LFR in a game like WoW).

Maybe savage is tuned way harder, especially the later ones but tank defensives are something I only really press for tank busters (TBN is all I need). It's generally bad practice in organized groups, but for pugs I save then when mass people are dead to give healers a chance to rez. That or when I'm doing light parties I chain them on trash so we can pull as much as possible. I'm sure if I was in a static I would space them out in a way that healers could do more dps.

[Merie]

May I ask for the artist? This is beautiful af. I m considering commissioning them myself.

https://www.deviantart.com/forum/jobs/services/2657128

When I commissioned him for my friends' pieces a year and a half ago he would have a turn around of anything from a day to a week, but the last two I ordered I didn't get done for six months so definitely ask for a completion date before handing over your money.

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Looks great! Really did a great job with the details even though I'm not 100% sold on the face (might just be I don't like your characters face lol), but the art style is great. I'd be curious what something like this ran if you don't mind sharing or if you want to PM. I know I've had a painting of my past cars commissioned and they were really reasonable pricing wise.

Here's how my friends' face came out in comparison. XD




And it was a steal for the $55 I paid over a year ago. But still a decent value at the $95 he charges now. You might be able to negotiate him down five or ten bucks though if you're reasonable.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Man camping Chi is really soul crushing .. of course it spawned twice in the 10 minutes I was healing a quick dungeon and won't spawn in the 3rd instance at all now...

[Ladey Gags]

Man camping Chi is really soul crushing .. of course it spawned twice in the 10 minutes I was healing a quick dungeon and won't spawn in the 3rd instance at all now...

I can’t imagine camping it. I didn’t get the frog mount or costume until 5.4 where just waited for a discord announcement and world hopped. I got both of them in 2 days while doing actual in-game content. Camping this stuff right now seems like a monumental waste of time

[Cosmic Janitor]

I can’t imagine camping it. I didn’t get the frog mount or costume until 5.4 where just waited for a discord announcement and world hopped. I got both of them in 2 days while doing actual in-game content. Camping this stuff right now seems like a monumental waste of time

I was doing fate leveling/bicolor gemstone grinding originally anyway, so it wasn't that bad. But after I finished my AST it just became me struggling against the sunk cost fallacy..

[Granyala]

I just envision MP being a real resource that requires management and your class resources help offset it for emergencies. Stuff like fast powerful heals, but rapidly drain MP, slower more efficient heals, or faster, but weaker efficient heals and multiple tools and mechanic timings to help utilize it.

Honestly, I don't think it would make healing that much more interesting.
You either have the resources to heal or you don't. If not -> tell group to "git gud" and that's it.
Using slow and lame heals and switching to fast powerful for emergencies only may sound enticing on paper, in practice it's a very dull experience. Been there, done that. Wasn't fun.

It's pretty much the same now, where we are effectively GCD limited.
If the group takes too much damage due to stacks and mishandled mechanics, ultimately our throughput will be insufficient.

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That is if players need healing anymore to begin with.

Dunno about you but I heal plenty in wall-to-wall pulls. Good luck trying that w/o a healer lol.
I grant you that dungeon bosses hit like wet noodles.
Well they always did, sadly. Large trashpulls have always been much more interesting from a healer PoV.

I found Pandaemonium decently engaging to heal. Fun but not overly stressful. Well balanced, I would say.

[StrawberryZebra]

Dunno about you but I heal plenty in wall-to-wall pulls. Good luck trying that w/o a healer lol.

I can't speak for other tanks, but as a Warrior I was just fine with it. I admit I had to use my cooldowns liberally, but I'd be doing that even with a healer anyway.

Due to getting a flat 400 Potency heal for every mob you hit with an AoE, uncapped AoE and Bloodwhetting being on a short cooldown with a reasonably high duration means you can get away with pretty much anything as a Warrior. Bloodwhetting is broken right now, it's got an 8 second duration with a 25 sec cooldown which means it's up about a third of the time and on a big AoE pull it's practically an instant full heal and prevents everything but one shots for the duration. The more mobs you tank, the more you self heal and it scales linearly to infinity.

The biggest danger was I'd dip quite low when I was tanking too few mobs to get enough healing. I didn't actually die due to Holmgang, but it was a close thing in places.

Is the Warrior an outlier? Perhaps, I've not had chance to try the other tanks yet. It definately seems to be very powerful right now - Too powerful in fact. I'm expecting some nerfs in the pipeline already.

[Devilyaki]

https://www.deviantart.com/forum/jobs/services/2657128

When I commissioned him for my friends' pieces a year and a half ago he would have a turn around of anything from a day to a week, but the last two I ordered I didn't get done for six months so definitely ask for a completion date before handing over your money.

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Here's how my friends' face came out in comparison. XD




And it was a steal for the $55 I paid over a year ago. But still a decent value at the $95 he charges now. You might be able to negotiate him down five or ten bucks though if you're reasonable.

That’s some sweet art right there.

[Ashleyxoxo]

I love this e-dating sim, when will it be available again for purchase???

[Saradain]

Square Enix's customer support is abysmal once again. Friend got hacked, gil stolen. She wrote a ticket 2 weeks before Endwalker, after countless re-opened tickets because the customer support kept closing her tickets for whatever reason (that may, or may not have been her own fault?), they finally today returned her gil...But in year 2021, rollbacked her account so she lost all her progress since over a month ago, including sage/reaper levelling. They also failed to revert her quest status, so now she has no access to reaper or sage or expansion content at all, and she also somehow lost hundreds of some exp boost items (that apparently have a limit of 5 per week or something, that she had farmed for a long time).

Time for another ticket, another month wait-up. Can we take Blizzard's customer support team over to SE and send SE one to Blizzard, since at least that would keep the quality of each company consistent

I personally got hacked in WoW, in 2010. It took 5 mins for Blizzard to answer to my ticket, and 2 hours to restore absolutely everything to tiniest detail, no negative setbacks or results other than 2 hours of my time. How in the fuck is SE so incompetent in the year 2021 that they need to use methods from early 2000s to fix simple shit in their ultra successful game? The company still thinks the game is in it's 1.0 version, hence why the lack of funding??

[Merie]

One of the few things I miss from WoW was their top notch customer service. Yoshi always does such a bang up job in their PR that one can sometimes almost forget Square is nearly as sleazy a corporation as the rest of the AAA developers. But stuff like their direct service to customers always throws cold water over that facade.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Christ man why this cynicism? I dont doubt that a lot of things, if not most are done for PR reasons but to be fair with them they ve been quite transparent on the server issue for a while now and I dont think its just an issue of being cheap fucks. If anything they re losing a months worth of subs by giving 21 free days (if not more in the future should this persist) plus halting online sales and advertisements for a bit.
It genuinely just seems like they re trying to handle a difficult situation in a decent way until the hardware is there. I m not fanboy deffending them here but I just dont think they ve earned such a level of mistrust yet.

SE always does right by its subscribers. They've also built a huge bank of trust among long time players because of this, meaning that those who aren't just late arriving bandwagoners have a lot of trust and love for SE.

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Yoshida might be the best PR man this company ever had. Fencesitters will go to their local store to grab a copy of the game and get in now. Game gets publicity on news outlets and makes it look even more popular. Free sub time makes everyone feel good. The man has been milking prime advertising material from this.

Seems that the situation has gotten so bad that the multi-billion dollar company has finally decided to pony up extra money to get those servers expedited faster, hence why we are finally getting an ETA on an ETA. We're in Star Citizen territory now!

SE has already offered to pay over double for server infrastructure. They're still not gonna get it while hospitals that desperately need electronics are on year+ waiting lists.