[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Deleted]

The thing is there are SO many variables in the equation it's hard to pin down.

Bottom line is uptime is king. Even with a sub-optimal rotation and gear, you can outperform someone who is only active 85% of the fight if you're active 95%+.

Assuming equal uptime, I'd argue that rotational mastery will have more effects than gear, but it depends largely at what level mastery you're performing at.

Let's say you get 2 DRGs in your dungeon run, Both are active DPSing 95% of the time.

One who operates at a 50% rotational mastery, and is in solid gear say i210.
Another performing at 90% mastery and in i180.

Who does more DPS?

As a non raider, I hope I don't have to farm that place for mats or anything. That would kinda defeat the purpose of making it "easily craftable".

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I think you quoted the wrong person.

Boss RNG can be pretty brutal as SMA. You can fuck up royally and totally gimp your DPS, depending on how much the boss "likes" you.
Not sure it would amount to a delta of 30% output though. A difference that large can usually be attributed to "less raw stats than the other dude".

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Rotational mastery of 50% = pressing the wrong button 50% of the time?
I doubt that you can salvage that with a difference of 30 item levels.

What about: 210 dude performs @80%, 180 dude @90%?

180 dude is clearly the better player, but won't stand a chance against the 210 guy.

Player A/Guild A is running Mythic weeks and month before Player B/Guild B for a reason. That's all there is to say about the skill vs gear discussion.
They all start with the same gear and the drops are limited each week... , gear gives you the edge if your are "skillwise" equal to another person, but in the end, so is RNG and a few hundred different factors.

Which is why

Wrong.
In MMOs with exponential scaling it is ALWAYs about the gear. If your gear sucks, you will never stand a chance against an equally or even lower skilled player. Depends on the suction™ of your gear. :<

is *wrong*. It's never only about gear. Or rather, I don't understand what you are trying to say here, considering it was an answer to someone saying "plain rotations will result in low skillcaps"
The way I understood you was: "Skill is irrelevant, it's all about gear anyway"... otherwise I don't understand why you'd say he is wrong.

[blackpink]

Which is exactly the state of WoW currently. I call it "big dick measuring". Oh, look how good I look in Recount, I must be so leetz!

No joking, my last hardcore raiding was Siege of Orgrimar, and people fought over who would get the Rogue's tricks. And who would get the healer cooldown so he doesn't need to move out of the mechanic and look good on Recount. And the top of the cherry, Mythic Garrosh, we had a Monk to kite the adds on Phase 3, one of the officers, a huntard, AOE'd them so his DPS skyrocketed every single try. Of course, one of the tries he took agro from the adds, causing the entire raid to wipe. Lots of bitching in TS, and yet he kept doing that, just a bit more lightly to try not get agro.

No, keep Recount and this damm atitude out of FFXIV.

Plz don't remind me of this crap. The amount of fucking padding in wow is gross.

[threads]

you guys act like fflogs doesn't exist. the game already has lots of dick measuring and cheesing for ranks going on in savage.

the only thing i would like is for some system that makes people more aware of how to properly play.

one thing i dislike is class quests giving you abilities as a reward at the end. it'd be so much better if you were given an ability and they made it essential for completing that current job quest.

[Faroth]

you guys act like fflogs doesn't exist. the game already has lots of dick measuring and cheesing for ranks going on in savage.

the only thing i would like is for some system that makes people more aware of how to properly play.

one thing i dislike is class quests giving you abilities as a reward at the end. it'd be so much better if you were given an ability and they made it essential for completing that current job quest.

That's what they're hoping to start fostering with the training dummy, training hall, and mentor system. I like their approach, looking to foster education and training to make players better rather than "here's an arbitrary meter number that people will judge you and say you suck with no input for improvement, git gud nub"

[blackpink]

you guys act like fflogs doesn't exist. the game already has lots of dick measuring and cheesing for ranks going on in savage.

eh, it's not nearly as bad in this game, yet. Who knows where it will be few years from now though.

For one, you don't have chat filled with "lol 200 dps scrub, get good" in every instance, or that guy linking recount/skada after every pull in this game.

As for cheesing parses in savage, what else are people gunna do after clearing a4s (or when other fights are on farm)? Trying to get ranks and other stuff like that once you clear is fine. I've personally never have seen people intentionally try to pad meters during progression in this game, whereas it has been the norm for me in wow.

[threads]

That's what they're hoping to start fostering with the training dummy, training hall, and mentor system. I like their approach, looking to foster education and training to make players better rather than "here's an arbitrary meter number that people will judge you and say you suck with no input for improvement, git gud nub"

Yea it looks like a good start. Hopefully it can evolve and include things like aoe and utility aswell.

[Deleted]

You re ignoring the fact that just because they are abused it doesn't make them a bad tool to use. Like I said above if we re hitting enrage on a boss while doing all the mechanics correctly what other way is there for a raid leader to tell who is doing shit dps and keeping the rest behind?

[RohanV]

Meters are a double-edged sword. Without meters it's a lot harder to tell what you need to improve to actually beat a fight that you are having trouble with. With meters, you get jackasses causing drama on successful fights, simply because some people may not have lived up to an arbitrary standard.

I actually like FFXIV's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. You get meters for static progression to help your team improve. But there's no meter drama in random, easy content.

[Binaris]

Instead of dps meters, they need to calculate, per fight, what a good dps level is for that fight to beat it. They have the math to do this. They could simply put an indicator on the screen to let you know you aren't pulling your weight.

Somewhere on your screen it should say.

Bosses name
Dps required to pull your weight for an average kill or to beat enrage
Your dps


The problem with meters is seeing other peoples stuff. Not seeing your own. So give us our own and something to gauge it against so people can at least get the message they have room for improvement.

[threads]

yea idk why they didn't add a personal meter to the new dummy training thing.

[Graeham]

The information is out there, though. If people genuinely want to improve their skill they can look online for tips or even make use of the new mentor system for additional assistance. If people aren't willing to do that then there's a very high chance that they don't care enough to improve their play even if they did have a flashing indicator on their screen.

Not to sound mean but a lot of players aren't really cut out for group play in MMO's in the present day - even at a very basic level. Take Steps of Faith, for example, or Nabriales. Both have or rather had a reputation for people dying and wiping due to the 'difficulty' of each encounter. In reality most players only had to do 1-2 things and tune out everything else in order to succeed.

[Granyala]

Player A/Guild A is running Mythic weeks and month before Player B/Guild B for a reason. That's all there is to say about the skill vs gear discussion.
They all start with the same gear and the drops are limited each week... , gear gives you the edge if your are "skillwise" equal to another person, but in the end, so is RNG and a few hundred different factors.

Yeaah sure that's why them hardcore guilds do multiple runs per week with raids 1/2 alts 1/2 mains in order to gear up faster....
Your "uber mythic guild" will have a noticeable higher item level due to that than the mom and pop guild that runs the place with all mains 1x week.

The way I understood you was: "Skill is irrelevant, it's all about gear anyway"... otherwise I don't understand why you'd say he is wrong.

That's PRECISELY what I am saying. And that's the truth if you look at moderate differences in skill. Sure, gear won't help you perform if you are a complete failure.

In WoW I will NOT have a chance wearing item level 700 vs a person that wears 725+. Doesn't matter if we are equally skilled or even if I am slightly better than the other dude. He WILL outperform me. Stating otherwise is being dense and ignoring the math.

The effect isn't as pronounced in FF yet, but in 1-2 expansions it will be. There is already a pretty steep difference between a 180 geared char and a 210 geared char.

I know the intention of its use is good, but it will be abused. The cons just far outweigh the pros.

Ah yes.. because some people are too dumb to use a tool properly and others get ruffled feathers as soon as their "godlike gaming skill" gets questioned, we should not have tools.

Dear lord I wonder where we would be IRL if humanity had this kind of mindset.

Instead of dps meters, they need to calculate, per fight, what a good dps level is for that fight to beat it. They have the math to do this. They could simply put an indicator on the screen to let you know you aren't pulling your weight.
The problem with meters is seeing other peoples stuff. Not seeing your own. So give us our own and something to gauge it against so people can at least get the message they have room for improvement.

a) USELESS. As a raid leader I NEED to see how everyone performs for diagnostic reasons.
b) I need to see A LOT more than a single number per fight in order to make an assessment. Special tasks result on personal DPS, class mechanics, boss mechanics (some bosses just suck for some classes), DPS in different phases, DPS done to specific adds, DoT uptimes, time it takes people to switch.... THAT ais data a raidleader needs. Not: "overall E-Peen length" which is actually the least useful thing Warcraftlogs can give you.
c) Why the hell not? Everyone can see tanks fail. Everyone can see healers fail. Why should DPS be excluded from that? Failure to DPS should be just as obvious as fails of the other two.

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Not to sound mean but a lot of players aren't really cut out for group play in MMO's in the present day - even at a very basic level. Take Steps of Faith, for example, or Nabriales. Both have or rather had a reputation for people dying and wiping due to the 'difficulty' of each encounter. In reality most players only had to do 1-2 things and tune out everything else in order to succeed.

Finally someone says it.
I guess this is what you get if you make your game appealing to the masses.

[Madruga]

Dude, chill. If the boss is on farm, measuring your virtual privates is all there is for the next 5-9 month, considering Blizzards glacial patch cycle.

Also it can be a lot of fun to compete on a usually dull raid evening.

You misunsderstand... The boss was NOT on farm. People were worried about looking good even BEFORE the boss was downded!

The Mythic Garrosh case I spoke, indeed, was in the week of our third kill, and we did kill it the other night... But the ammount of padding people did on it and before severely gimped our progress, we could have one or two nights off, but no, Recount was more important.

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And that's why Square has their "don't be a dick and we'll look the other way" policy. But making them standard in-game and giving everyone access definitely leads to some negative aspects. Yoshida has spoken to this effect before and I totally agree with their current stance being a good middle ground.

Exactly, we all know FFXIV DOES have dps meters. You just can't brag about it like in WoW. It works the way it should be, a tool for the raid leader to check problems. And I hope it keeps this way, something like the Fight Club.

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The information is out there, though. If people genuinely want to improve their skill they can look online for tips or even make use of the new mentor system for additional assistance. If people aren't willing to do that then there's a very high chance that they don't care enough to improve their play even if they did have a flashing indicator on their screen.

Not to sound mean but a lot of players aren't really cut out for group play in MMO's in the present day - even at a very basic level. Take Steps of Faith, for example, or Nabriales. Both have or rather had a reputation for people dying and wiping due to the 'difficulty' of each encounter. In reality most players only had to do 1-2 things and tune out everything else in order to succeed.

Wipes still happen in both. Specially Steps of Faith, but because clicking the chains is so hard. Nothing related to playing your class, but situational awareness.

[Binaris]

a) USELESS. As a raid leader I NEED to see how everyone performs for diagnostic reasons.
b) I need to see A LOT more than a single number per fight in order to make an assessment. Special tasks result on personal DPS, class mechanics, boss mechanics (some bosses just suck for some classes), DPS in different phases, DPS done to specific adds, DoT uptimes, time it takes people to switch.... THAT ais data a raidleader needs. Not: "overall E-Peen length" which is actually the least useful thing Warcraftlogs can give you.
c) Why the hell not? Everyone can see tanks fail. Everyone can see healers fail. Why should DPS be excluded from that? Failure to DPS should be just as obvious as fails of the other two.

It would not be useless to the individual. You have the tools to assess your raiders. act does that for you. Yes it is third party, yes it is a pain in the ass to set up at times. But it is there. SE doesn't want to give you the tools to assess other people because when given those tools, people will assess strangers in duty finder and become even more annoying elitists.

As for assessing mechanics. If you need a meter to see that some dipshit died to yet another meteor, then god help you. DPS isnt everything. i well aware of that. But the ability to push higher numbers is still key and when it comes time to put up or shut up, you can dodge all the meteors you want, but you will still hit enrage if dps can't meet the benchmarks.

All im saying is having an individual meter, and something not biased telling you that you arent meeting your classes potential would be far more beneficial to the player than giving you recount and unleashing you on the masses.

[Granyala]

You misunsderstand... The boss was NOT on farm. People were worried about looking good even BEFORE the boss was downded!

The Mythic Garrosh case I spoke, indeed, was in the week of our third kill, and we did kill it the other night... But the ammount of padding people did on it and before severely gimped our progress, we could have one or two nights off, but no, Recount was more important.

In that case, the raidlead needs to step up, analyze the logs (encounter knowledge can reveal useless padding-DPS quite easily) and discipline the members of the raid accordingly.

It would not be useless to the individual.

Actually it is. There is so much more to complex bossfights than your average DPS. You can have awesome average DPS and still royally fuck your raid by refusing to DPS important adds. (just one obvious example).

I think such an indicator would have the same effect than "personal" recount: people would fixate on it and do everything in their power to keep it in the "green" range. Just like people fixate on their recount bar, attempting to make it as long as possible.

As for assessing mechanics. If you need a meter to see that some dipshit died to yet another meteor, then god help you.

Not every mechanic is as glaringly obvious as a big rock falling on the head of your raider, instantly reducing him to red goo.
Oftentimes people die to a combination of things and it takes a bit of analysis to separate the avoidable from the unavoidable in order to reveal the mistake.

SE doesn't want to give you the tools to assess other people because when given those tools, people will assess strangers in duty finder and become even more annoying elitists.

To be perfectly blunt: i think people blow this recount "mobbing-drama" way out of proportion. God knows I don't always perform exceptional in WoW. Esp when playing my alts. But if I go into LFR (the cesspool of flaming retards) I go in when I can play my class at 80%+.
Yeah my DPS will suck, because my item level sucks, but everyone knows that.

Not once have I been flamed for it.

People in i700 doing 10K dps and being half AFK pressing a button now and then while watching netflix... In my opinion these people deserve to get called out Insult free ofc, I don't tolerate rude behavior in video games.
Be direct, sure.
Be clear.
Be so in a polite manner.

[Keltas]

so just confused, what was the reason astrologian, mech and drk don't require 2 base classes? I just find it strange that they actually take from 2 base classes but they are not required to be one.

It's a little late, but I didn't see anyone answer this for you.

They don't like base classes, and no jobs in the future will ever have them again. On that livestream they also said they want to remove base classes altogether, but it would be a significant amount of work and probably never going to happen.

So in the next expansion the new jobs will be the same: start at 30, start with crystal that is auto equipped with your weapon, and will crossclass from old existing jobs but never new ones.

They have mentioned they might remove crossclass as well. It would be a lot less work to do so and I would actually kinda expect that to disappear within an xpack or two. It'd be a good way to fix some button bloat and the only real changes would be to give tanks all their own taunt. (protect is nice but they could easily give other healers their own unique buffs too)

At this point they consider cross classing and base classes relics of 1.0 and they won't ever be added upon.

[Faroth]

In WoW I will NOT have a chance wearing item level 700 vs a person that wears 725+. Doesn't matter if we are equally skilled or even if I am slightly better than the other dude. He WILL outperform me. Stating otherwise is being dense and ignoring the math.

The effect isn't as pronounced in FF yet, but in 1-2 expansions it will be. There is already a pretty steep difference between a 180 geared char and a 210 geared char.

I dunno. Unsync in 210 gear, Coil fights still tell you that mechanics and skill trump gear and stat boosts. Considering people were doing that stuff in what, 150 or 160 ilvl?

Granted, that's the top level fights as an example, but still worth considering. XIV has a lot of fight where gear doesn't matter because not doing what you're supposed to will wipe the group. I've seen i200-210 "badasses" nearly die in dungeons because they thought they could just ignore a boss and got whammied. Luckily for them, the healer saved their bacon.

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Exactly, we all know FFXIV DOES have dps meters. You just can't brag about it like in WoW. It works the way it should be, a tool for the raid leader to check problems. And I hope it keeps this way, something like the Fight Club.

*snicker* The first rool of XIV DPS meters....

[Binaris]

XIV has a lot of fight where gear doesn't matter because not doing what you're supposed to will wipe the group. I've seen i200-210 "badasses" nearly die in dungeons because they thought they could just ignore a boss and got whammied. Luckily for them, the healer saved their bacon.

Thats the thing, with alexander gordias and 3.0, it was no longer doing the dance of mechanics to kill it like in 2.0, there was far more emphasis on killing the boss before the dance is over otherwise you die. Enrage mechanics are used a lot more now as crap way to add difficulty. I personally preferred where fights that were largely mechanics which then the occasion dps check for a phase, like killing titans heart in time.

Mechanics should never be ignored, but when the game starts putting more and more emphasis on doing a fight faster instead of doing a fight right, the consequences are game changing.

1 tanks spending a hell of a lot of time in dps stance even while tanking.
2 healers putting pressure on one healer to heal while the other dpses almost full time
3 dps tunneling to max dps as much as they can, they ignore all utility and get sloppy with mechanics.

For example, Wardens Paean is getting an esuna effect, but it doesnt matter. it will still never get used as that is 3 seconds that could be spent dpsing, even if the healer is silenced, chances are the dps will risk the group wiping to push numbers.

Or another, Clemency, even if it got reworked to be instant cast and only castable on others, paladins would still rarely use it as that is still a gcd used for somethign other than dps.

They are pushing to dps agenda and losing sight of what I believed was a good balance in 2.0 between putting out numbers, and performing the mechanics.

[Deleted]

Yeaah sure that's why them hardcore guilds do multiple runs per week with raids 1/2 alts 1/2 mains in order to gear up faster....
Your "uber mythic guild" will have a noticeable higher item level due to that than the mom and pop guild that runs the place with all mains 1x week.

Yet they do each clear with much lower itemlevels than the avg. 1st kill of most guilds... that's the difference. And it's not like itemlevel is stopping guilds from progression in mythic, why do we even have this discussion? If you believe that itemlevel is that important and pretty much the only thing holding guilds back, then you are wrong. You get loot *after* you kill the boss and not before you even try it out.

That's PRECISELY what I am saying. And that's the truth if you look at moderate differences in skill. Sure, gear won't help you perform if you are a complete failure.

In WoW I will NOT have a chance wearing item level 700 vs a person that wears 725+. Doesn't matter if we are equally skilled or even if I am slightly better than the other dude. He WILL outperform me. Stating otherwise is being dense and ignoring the math.

The effect isn't as pronounced in FF yet, but in 1-2 expansions it will be. There is already a pretty steep difference between a 180 geared char and a 210 geared char.

If you are playing equally strong, then of course equip will give you the edge, but so does first hit and crit luck... the thing is however you said it's wrong to assume that skill plays a role in how much dps I do and that's just bullshit. There is absolutely no reason to believe that.

More difficult rotation = higher skillcap = gear becomes "less of an issue" or "skill becomes as important as gear"
In PvP, skill becomes even more of an issue, since PvE is rather simple and PvP relatively complex (timings, burst, reactions, positioning, zoning etc. etc.)

So no, it's not the truth... you clearly misunderstood what Palinn tried to say there, otherwise I don't know what gave you the impression of how gear works in MMOs. He even gave you the perfect example of how skill can make a huge difference -> Affliction Warlock, when snapshotting was a thing.

[Granyala]

So no, it's not the truth... you clearly misunderstood what Palinn tried to say there, otherwise I don't know what gave you the impression of how gear works in MMOs. He even gave you the perfect example of how skill can make a huge difference -> Affliction Warlock, when snapshotting was a thing.

The problem is that you constantly yap on about unrealistic scenarios where one player is 1337 and the other is braindead. I already stated that gear cannot compensate gross failure.

I am talking about interesting scenarios in which the players are almost equal. Then the player with better gear almost always wins.

Where did I get that impression of how gear works..
Oooh I don't know.. maybe my 8 years of raiding in WoW, being paired with equally skilled persons and having experienced both good and bad loot RNG?
I had times where my co shadow could fight as much as he wanted, he didn't stand a chance against my gear and I had times where that scenario was reversed.

if you believe that itemlevel is that important and pretty much the only thing holding guilds back, then you are wrong.

I don't, and never intended to state something like that. Oo

I dunno. Unsync in 210 gear, Coil fights still tell you that mechanics and skill trump gear and stat boosts.

I thought we were talking about raw DPS and the influence of item level vs playerskill differences and not: "you no kill dis boss b/c you too dumb to do mechanic".
Ofc gear won't save you from mechanical oneshots. Painfully obvious and always funny if you go into Mythic Tier minus 2 and current HC raiders think they are the bomb because "high gearz and DPS".