[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Keltas]

PLD is significantly tankier than WAR or DRK.

Like I don't understand how you think they aren't. The ONLY reason a DRK was a better main tank (defensive wise) in Gordias was because all the tank busters were magic damage. They have already said that won't be the case anymore and in the last interview they specifically said that paladins would have much higher survivability than the other two tanks in this tier.

AoE dps is useless outside of dungeons in this game. Yeah paladins need some AoE damage on flash or something, but that wasn't going to happen in a patch.

In a real encounter, PLD and DRK don't run out of TP unless it's a very long sustained fight, of which there are none in gordias that have zero tank downtime, and when they do, the melee probably need some as well, so have your bard/mch sing for like 10 seconds and you won't have any problems at all. IF your ranged refuses to sing at all, get a new one, it's his fucking job. (literally).
I'm a mch/brd main, and I can tell you now there are plenty of times they can give you TP in the very very few places you actually need it.

[Enkidulgaa]

I'm a mch/brd main, and I can tell you now there are plenty of times they can give you TP in the very very few places you actually need it.

Sure sounds like it going by your statements. DRK were still the preferred tank for A3S even though the tank damage in that fight is 100% physical like whats up with that? I thought PLD were invincible walls? Or at the least, DRK was preferred until people just started running double WAR since at this point LB no longer matters.
And I find the whole notion of "not a dungeon = AoE is useless" hilarious. You've never seen a WAR that AoEs during the tornado phase in A3S? It's literally free damage, and quite a lot of it too. What about: T4, T12, T13, A2S? You're right, in this game no raid encounters ever have use for AoE.
And PLD being "significantly" tankier than WAR is a myth that I'm honestly tired of seeing since it's being perpetuated for 2 years even though it hasn't been true since 2.1 and even less so since HW

[Keltas]

Sure sounds like it going by your statements. DRK were still the preferred tank for A3S even though the tank damage in that fight is 100% physical like whats up with that? I thought PLD were invincible walls? Or at the least, DRK was preferred until people just started running double WAR since at this point LB no longer matters.
And I find the whole notion of "not a dungeon = AoE is useless" hilarious. You've never seen a WAR that AoEs during the tornado phase in A3S? It's literally free damage, and quite a lot of it too. What about: T4, T12, T13, A2S? You're right, in this game no raid encounters ever have use for AoE.
And PLD being "significantly" tankier than WAR is a myth that I'm honestly tired of seeing since it's being perpetuated for 2 years even though it hasn't been true since 2.1 and even less so since HW

The only reason people brought DRK for A3S was because the dps difference was huge and it has a shitton of dps checks. Our main tank has both geared and plays them about equally and he takes way less damage as a paladin. Also, a huge amount of that fight is magic damage, like most of it is. So DRK still had a pretty good advantage on mitigation.

Yes, AoE IS useless for the tank in pretty much anything in the last couple tiers.
Yeah t4 but that was over 2 years ago at this point.
In 12 you couldn't AoE more than maybe 3 GCDs before you ended up having to drag them out one at a time.
In t13 you didn't AoE as a paladin, the war did that and you didn't group the adds up.
On A2S you don't really spam AoE at all and almost every wave has one of the tanks doing full single target damage. If your all 210 then sure you might aoe the fuck out of it but that's not progression anyways.
A3S you can AoE if the adds spawn close together, but they usually don't. If they do then sure you can get some extra AoE out but it's not nearly as much as you make it out to be unless you get super good spawns.


If you aren't tankier on PLD than you are on WAR than you are playing PLD wrong because blocking alone gives them a huge damage reduction and they have such stronger defensive cooldowns.

[Deleted]

The only reason people brought DRK for A3S was because the dps difference was huge and it has a shitton of dps checks. Our main tank has both geared and plays them about equally and he takes way less damage as a paladin. Also, a huge amount of that fight is magic damage, like most of it is. So DRK still had a pretty good advantage on mitigation.

Yes, AoE IS useless for the tank in pretty much anything in the last couple tiers.
Yeah t4 but that was over 2 years ago at this point.
In 12 you couldn't AoE more than maybe 3 GCDs before you ended up having to drag them out one at a time.
In t13 you didn't AoE as a paladin, the war did that and you didn't group the adds up.
On A2S you don't really spam AoE at all and almost every wave has one of the tanks doing full single target damage. If your all 210 then sure you might aoe the fuck out of it but that's not progression anyways.
A3S you can AoE if the adds spawn close together, but they usually don't. If they do then sure you can get some extra AoE out but it's not nearly as much as you make it out to be unless you get super good spawns.


If you aren't tankier on PLD than you are on WAR than you are playing PLD wrong because blocking alone gives them a huge damage reduction and they have such stronger defensive cooldowns.

Pretty much. My FC was realm first to clear savage the main grp now uses PLD from A2 and A3 as soon as they started meeting the dps requirements cause it felt a lot better and the PLD takes a shit ton less dmg.
Fucking sheltron ffs and the damn shield

[Veluren]

Looks like they're finally adding the gear from the XIII event to the cash shop, wonder if that means that Snow and Lightning's hairstyles will be just baseline unlocked or if it will stay exclusive, I can't imagine it will.

Also shoutouts to mentor system, this will either go great or become a trade-chat like cesspit, I'm glad Square's going to be watching people's behavior on it like a hawk.

[Kaelwryn]

Looks like they're finally adding the gear from the XIII event to the cash shop, wonder if that means that Snow and Lightning's hairstyles will be just baseline unlocked or if it will stay exclusive, I can't imagine it will.

Also shoutouts to mentor system, this will either go great or become a trade-chat like cesspit, I'm glad Square's going to be watching people's behavior on it like a hawk.

I think the Snow/Lightning Attires might have it? Idk, cuz they have Attire and then they list the outfit pieces individually.

[Berethos08]

Looks like they're finally adding the gear from the XIII event to the cash shop, wonder if that means that Snow and Lightning's hairstyles will be just baseline unlocked or if it will stay exclusive, I can't imagine it will.

Also shoutouts to mentor system, this will either go great or become a trade-chat like cesspit, I'm glad Square's going to be watching people's behavior on it like a hawk.

Might be like the Minfilia outfit, where you buy the whole thing at once and it comes with the haircut as well.

[Sorrior]

I think the Snow/Lightning Attires might have it? Idk, cuz they have Attire and then they list the outfit pieces individually.

I have a few characters with the gloves but nothing else. It was a staggered quest where you got pieces at different levels.

[Aruhen]

Welp time to gear up all my jobs with those price reductions hehe.

Liking the Paladin changes myself too, there are other things that they can do but its a nice step forward.

[Wrecktangle]

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.

What I was referring too by posing artificial percentages was that someone who let's say a DRG drops BotD 50% of the time in a fight, and the other only drops it 20% of the time. In my experience DPS does go down, but not by some ridiculous margin. In your proposed example it's clearly and irrefutably that gear, especially 30 ilvls worth will outpace a measly 10% more mastery in the class. My example was more drastic, but not unreasonable and demonstrated the point a bit better I think.

In addition I remember when I was ilvl 102 and did on average 50 more dps than my 107 set (450 dps T8, vs. 400 dps, clear times within 10 seconds of each other). 5 ilvl did nothing for me because it was all superfluous stats. I traded over 100 det back in 2.2 for a mix of sks and crit and despite strength gains saw lower ~12% lower dps.

This talk about dps and rotations actually makes me glad there isn't an easy to see in-game meter. Who cares as long as the boss is downed? You get a meter into it and people start nitpicking every little thing, start insulting everyone that isn't playing to their view of perfect, and generally making a bad atmosphere during runs. It might make people start playing better, but then fights have to be more rigorously tuned, which makes people angrier when others mess up. Which means that they'd have to bring up separate difficulties, one for those that are into running challenging content and playing as optimally as possible, and one for those that just want to chill and enjoy running dungeons. Then the feeling of segregation sets in, and those that just want to have fun without being anal about numbers feel poorly treated with weaker gear or second rate cosmetic pieces (you know, like WoW's heroic mode in WoD). Then it just turns into a flaming argument about hardcore vs. casual. Gross.

Many people care. The problem is that you falsely assume the meter is the problem. That's like saying guns are the problem because people kill people with them. No. People are still the root cause. Not guns. I could go on with other examples, but it's not necessary.

You also assume that players should be entitled to the best of everything regardless of their skill level? That's absolute nonsense. To get the best rewards you need to train and engage in the hardest content. Alternatively, you can take place in time gated content to receive desirable rewards.

In addition your assessment of "hardcore" versus "casual" is a fallacy. You can be hardcore and be terrible. In fact I'd posit that 80+% of FF14's playerbase falls into this category. People who log on every single day, run every single roulette, have every single class maxed out, have a house, a chocobo, etc. Those are hardcore players. I can be an elite skilled player, who merely logs on 2x a week to raid, that does not make me a "hardcore" player.

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.

With all due respect, that sounds like your guild was just a pile of trash. None of the guilds I raided with (and I have some highly ranked top US clears) ever experienced anything like this. We had a few issues with people trying to pad, they got called out on it, and stopped. In raiding career I have rarely, and I mean RARELY encountered the description you posted.

I once kicked a DRG from my static during progressions cause he was doing bellow the 1000s with 207 ilvl....

What fight was he doing less than 1k (assuming end of fight, no deaths)?

Well to be fair though if the boss is going down I wouldnt care. But if the boss is hitting enrage with no one dieing and you can't tell who is the one that is playing badly then parsers come in handy.

Agreed. This statement is completely irrefutable to anyone who thinks parsers aren't needed.

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.

Trust me when I say that competition is indeed extremely important in the raiding world. It's what pushes people to try harder, learn more, collaborate, etc. I agree with your statement.

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.

Their current stance is garbage. You have to download a clunky third party program to measure your performance in game. No thanks. The parsers aren't the problem. Players are. If a player harasses another player. They should be warned/punished. SQEX just doesn't want to have to hire people to handle that customer service.

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

I could see a utility that only shows you your own numbers and abilities being useful, help you to improve yourself. But when you start involving other players, the witch hunts begin. Then it devolves into a "who plays more perfectly" situation, and competition ramps up, emotions get tense. Only pro would be to prevent those enrage wipes, doesn't seem worth it.

Your assessment is again inaccurate. The abuse occurs already regardless, except some players who are excluded or abused don't have the same information to abusers have so they don't know why. That's not a good situation.

Your description of how it evolves is a correct that it EVOLVES (not devolves) into a who plays better and competition increases. This is a good thing. This nonsense about emotions is completely subjective and in my experience not an actual factor. Emotions get tense for a lot of reasons, weak link, slow learner, poor performer, etc. Meters have nothing to do with that.

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.

I used to give DPS log reviews for people. There are so many little tips & tricks that people wouldn't employ. Skill is clearly the most important metric in a vacuum, but gear is definitely relevant. I actually think Gralaya has a valid point, but explained it incorrectly. His example was also way too extreme.

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

Agreed. Padding is a major issue, but any good player knows who's padding and laughs at them. I used to be 6-10th (lol ret's so good, not) overall, but looking at actual target damage (and not slag elementals), I was top 3 if not top every single pull on every single priority add).

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.

ONE OF THE BEST IDEAS I'VE SEEN IN THIS THREAD.

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"

None of that is honestly going to help, especially considering the "guidelines" to be considered a menter in no way shape or form give way to someone who is guaranteed to provide solid class knowledge or feedback.

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.

I agree with this as well. People blow this issue way out of proportion.

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?

Agreed. I genuinely have no idea how some people miss this?

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.

I don't. I had to use a wonky third party program, and couldn't use it to help players who may or may not want help with their performance. In addition, the meters aren't the problem it's the players harassment. Make harassment punishable. Problem solved.

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.

WAYYYY more to meters than DPS by the way. Uptime, buff, debuff, GCD usage, etc. DPS numbers in a vacuum mean absolutely nothing.

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.

Agreed that the info is out there, a significant portion of players don't want to have to go looking for it though and I don't blame them. Game needs a MUCH stronger feedback loop.

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.

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.

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.

FF14 does NOT have dps meters. ACT makes a third party program that happens to work with FF14. Not the same thing. Your guild also sounds really awful, especially if your raid leader didn't squash that stuff that raid night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agreed 100%

I've been in a server first guild myself and even in a guild like that, you could tell the difference in skill between players of the same class.

Agreed, I've replaced a LOT of other Ret's in top US guilds. There is a lot more to skill than people think. In almost every example I was worse geared yet outperformed in all metrics by a fair bit.

But not necessarily by looking at his overall DPS.
Other factors such as DoT uptime, time to switch, general awareness are more telling than raw DPS, which can be higher because he simply has more stats even if he effectively played worse.

That is my point.

You'd have to make rotations pretty damn complex and/or neuter gear power creep to get rid of that effect.

Agreed a bit with that.

Why would you want to get rid of it though? gear is there to give you more power...
If a person less skilled than you is doing more dps because of better gear then when you get the same gear as him you ll destroy him.
Also this is not the case in FFXIV anyway because a player with no skill and 210 gear cannot realisticly meet the dps requirements in a3 and a4 savage.
Stating otherwise makes me automatically assume you have 0 experience with either one of the fights.

The problem is that gear doesn't give you more power, it just changes your numbers. No gear makes any changes to how you play the game or do your damage. It's just a flat change to your damage. Honestly they could get rid of stats completely, and just give us some paragon level bullshit to update our stats and have gear be entirely cosmetic and literally nothing would change from a combat perspective. That's an issue.

[Granyala]

In addition I remember when I was ilvl 102 and did on average 50 more dps than my 107 set (450 dps T8, vs. 400 dps, clear times within 10 seconds of each other). 5 ilvl did nothing for me because it was all superfluous stats. I traded over 100 det back in 2.2 for a mix of sks and crit and despite strength gains saw lower ~12% lower dps.

If you enter item level deltas that small, I think class balance in terms of stat coefficients can kick in.
As a shadow priest in WoW that wanted to play AS I regularly had to choose lower item level over higher item level because crit is (was? not sure now) the lifeblood of the spec.

[Deleted]

If you enter item level deltas that small, I think class balance in terms of stat coefficients can kick in.
As a shadow priest in WoW that wanted to play AS I regularly had to choose lower item level over higher item level because crit is (was? not sure now) the lifeblood of the spec.

Shadow priest has had its fair share of problems dmg wise in the last 2 expansions sadly so even with optimal gear their dps was sub par compared to other classes and its a pity as it was a very fun spec :/

[Granyala]

Shadow priest has had its fair share of problems dmg wise in the last 2 expansions sadly so even with optimal gear their dps was sub par compared to other classes and its a pity as it was a very fun spec :/

Yup.
Being sat for classes that do more DPS in HFC (before the buff happened) was one of the last straws needed for me to discontinue raiding.
I'm just sick and tired of Blizzards inability to balance Shadow and how terrified they are we might do too much because of multidot capabilities...

[Graeham]

PLD is significantly tankier than WAR or DRK.

Like I don't understand how you think they aren't. The ONLY reason a DRK was a better main tank (defensive wise) in Gordias was because all the tank busters were magic damage. They have already said that won't be the case anymore and in the last interview they specifically said that paladins would have much higher survivability than the other two tanks in this tier.

AoE dps is useless outside of dungeons in this game. Yeah paladins need some AoE damage on flash or something, but that wasn't going to happen in a patch.

In a real encounter, PLD and DRK don't run out of TP unless it's a very long sustained fight, of which there are none in gordias that have zero tank downtime, and when they do, the melee probably need some as well, so have your bard/mch sing for like 10 seconds and you won't have any problems at all. IF your ranged refuses to sing at all, get a new one, it's his fucking job. (literally).
I'm a mch/brd main, and I can tell you now there are plenty of times they can give you TP in the very very few places you actually need it.

...and what if they decide to buff WAR and DRK to appease those who will no doubt complain about PLD being the 'ideal' tank for the upcoming tier? The changes are nice, don't get me wrong, but they're quite obviously scared to tone down WAR or DRK damage when such a thing is sorely needed.

PLD is 'easier' to tank with, arguably, compared to DRK or WAR. Yet I've encountered many WAR or DRK who are far from squishy assuming they follow their rotation to the letter, don't get hit by stuff that can be avoided and use their defensive abilities effectively.

Both WAR and DRK also have pretty great sustained AoE - which is something that PLD severely lacks. They added the ability to go back and solo old dungeons more easily. Yet a PLD cannot do this in an efficient manner because they lack sustainable and reliable AOE.

Will the changes help? Definitely - but they still don't address every major issue. I can only hope they continue to give PLD some further attention in the future and give them a major rework by the time the next expansion swings around - since that will allow them to adjust and remove abilities as needed.

[Berethos08]

FF14 does NOT have dps meters. ACT makes a third party program that happens to work with FF14.

"Happens to work" is a funny way of saying someone wrote a plugin specifically for reading the combat log in FF14, which ain't all that different from having someone write a third party mod that plugs directly into the game and reads the combat log.

[Granyala]

"Happens to work" is a funny way of saying someone wrote a plugin specifically for reading the combat log in FF14, which ain't all that different from having someone write a third party mod that plugs directly into the game and reads the combat log.

There is a difference.

In WoW everything is read from the CL because the game was designed with that in mind.
In FF DoTs and HoTs have to be simulated.

ACT isn't as accurate as Recount or Warcraftlogs, but it is accurate enough for general purpose assessments.

Also there is a BIG difference between a mod, which works within the confines of the game itself and a 3rd party application that has to sniff memory and network traffic in order to obtain data.

[Berethos08]

There is a difference.

In WoW everything is read from the CL because the game was designed with that in mind.
In FF DoTs and HoTs have to be simulated.

ACT isn't as accurate as Recount or Warcraftlogs, but it is accurate enough for general purpose assessments.

Also there is a BIG difference between a mod, which works within the confines of the game itself and a 3rd party application that has to sniff memory and network traffic in order to obtain data.

I'm aware there are clear differences in how well they work and ultimately how they obtain the data (though both parse combat logs as their ultimate goal), but that wasn't my point.

My point was that in both cases you have to go to a third party to get a DPS meter (in one case the whole thing is designed for the one game, in the other case it's a plug-in designed for the game that works with a general tool) and install it separately from just installing the game, so treating one game as if it has a DPS meter and the other as if it doesn't is silly.

[Granyala]

so treating one game as if it has a DPS meter and the other as if it doesn't is silly.

I can concur with that.

At least until Blizzard adds recount to the default UI (fat chance, since it consumes way to much CPU power).

[threads]

So I finished my anima today finally, then I realized I still hadn't done the 3.1 main storyline

[Keltas]

So I finished my anima today finally, then I realized I still hadn't done the 3.1 main storyline

It's super super short. Like 2 hours at most without any skipping. You should be fine.