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[Anoregon]

Quick question. What is considered "good" dps, and what is "bad" numbers wise? Like, lets say I were to play dragoon, what would be considered "average" in current savage?

Based on years of MMO experience, I can tell you with confidence that this is how it works:

"Good" DPS - anything higher than what I do, but those people are all tryhard nerds

"Bad" DPS - anything more than 0.001% off of what I do, those people are objectively terrible at all things

The perfect amount of DPS that is only done by people who are great at the game but not total losers because they go out and bang all the hot babes: whatever DPS I am currently doing

 

[Frumix]

Based on years of MMO experience, I can tell you with confidence that this is how it works:

Sounds like a bunch of salty excuses by the guy who couldn't get good tbh and a complete reduction of the issue of a large population utterly refusing to improve even when attempting content that's supposed to test your skill.

 

[iammeiam]

You know who would take a monk to savage: ME that's right, I'll take any two dps (except BLM) play what you love and come join my raid group! If you are on the primal data center PM me if interested!

^- this is literally the only thing that matters for anything currently in the game

The only groups that should be shutting out casters or monks are dedicated supramax-every-pull, no-WHMs-allowed speedkill groups, and people trying to get into those are already going to be prioritizing the meta over enjoyment of a given job.

Any group that's trying to cram optimal DPS comp down your throat for just clears in a post-24-man-upgrade-items world is overcompensating for something and deserves a side eye. Do what you like and the rest will take care of itself. Current gearing available to everyone at this point means if you're hitting enrages you've got deeper job issues than just the comp meta.

And who the fuck knows what Stormblood's doing to everyone. Everyone's just rerolling RDM anyway.

 

[Anoregon]

Sounds like a bunch of salty excuses by the guy who couldn't get good tbh and a complete reduction of the issue of a large population utterly refusing to improve even when attempting content that's supposed to test your skill.

Someone replying to my tongue-in-cheek joke post about the notorious toxicity of MMO communities with a "ur just bad" post is the most meta thing that has ever happened to me. I have reached a new level of internet.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

Someone replying to my tongue-in-cheek joke post about the notorious toxicity of MMO communities with a "ur just bad" post is the most meta thing that has ever happened to me. I have reached a new level of internet.

As an aside to this, I'd just like to say that my experience with groups since returning to the game has been nothing but positive. Like, I've been tanking for the first time in the past week or so, and I always make sure to let the group know in party chat that I'm new to tanking, and everybody's been really understanding and even helpful, offering tips and advice. It's been really great.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

Lmao, my first time playing MNK in Dun Scaith and I shoulder tackle off the airship. That was so funny.

 

[Squishy3]

Thanks for the info guys. Was just curios.

Wait, did they remove the limit on getting 250 alexandrian gear? cause if so then ho boy have I been wasting my time...

Yeah but as an aside it just makes it harder to get the stuff because everyone's rolling regardless of if they actually need the gear or not.

 

[wamberz1]

Yeah but as an aside it just makes it harder to get the stuff because everyone's rolling regardless of if they actually need the gear or not.

Yeah, I've noticed. Last week it took me like 12 a10 runs to get a bolt, was wondering what the hell was going on.

 

[Frumix]

Someone replying to my tongue-in-cheek joke post about the notorious toxicity of MMO communities with a "ur just bad" post is the most meta thing that has ever happened to me. I have reached a new level of internet.

You replied to an honest question of a person looking out for their performance with a diatribe that's basically "You don't have to care about that because a bad guy on the Internet will call you out anyway". Who's toxic really?

 

[Anoregon]

I'm sorry that clearly unserious posts may cause people to project so heavily. I guess I'll try to keep that in mind next time.

 

[WeaponKnight]

You know who would take a monk to savage: ME that's right, I'll take any two dps (except BLM) play what you love and come join my raid group! If you are on the primal data center PM me if interested!

Tomo is afraid of me playing another class!

 

[Omni]

What the fuck, these are some of the best abilities NIN has

Haha, yeah omg

Man whenever I'm tanking in pugs, it's an auto-comm to the Ninja whenever he uses his enmity stuff. Even with a decent pull macro it seems most don't even bother ;____;

 

[aceface]

Tomo is afraid of me playing another class!

I've seen what happens when you play SMN.

 

[tiggerkiddo]

Might be tempted to try out but I haven't touched 9 and 10S in so long, I can't even remember anything.

 

[Haly]

I rolled NIN to run around with airplane arms and use forbidden jutsus, not to manipulate enmity.

If you guys desire enmity manipulation so much ask SE for an Orator (ORA?) class, or give it to an actual support like AST, SCH or BRD.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

Do you guys think SE/YoshiP's team will provide some sort of an in-game item/mount/equipment/etc for players that attend the XIV Scrap Escape room?

 

[Squishy3]

Do you guys think SE/Yoshida's team will provide some sort of an in-game item/mount/equipment/etc for players that attend the XIV Scrap Escape room?

Maybe a piece of armor or something but I doubt they'd include a minion or mount. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just an "I escaped from Dalamud" tshirt or something for completing it though, I doubt they'd give them anything in-game, unless it's stuff like the stuff you get for winning those contests. (Gaelicap etc.).

It's already ridiculous enough that stuff like the wind-up Bahamut is no longer obtainable (was only included with the ARR OST Blu-ray, and even if you find a copy with an unredeemed code the code is already expired while the in-game codes from 1.0 haven't expired yet.)

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

Maybe a piece of armor or something but I doubt they'd include a minion or mount. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just an "I escaped from Dalamud" tshirt or something for completing it though, I doubt they'd give them anything in-game, unless it's stuff like the stuff you get for winning those contests. (Gaelicap etc.).

It's already ridiculous enough that stuff like the wind-up Bahamut is no longer obtainable (was only included with the ARR OST Blu-ray, and even if you find a copy with an unredeemed code the code is already expired while the in-game codes from 1.0 haven't expired yet.)

Wow yea wtf. Why does digital anything have an expiration date? Someone had to actively implement that.

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

I rolled NIN to run around with airplane arms and use forbidden jutsus, not to manipulate enmity.

If you guys desire enmity manipulation so much ask SE for an Orator (ORA?) class, or give it to an actual support like AST, SCH or BRD.

FFXI Ninja had some enmity stuff (or was it Thief?) so it carried over to Ninja in FFXIV.

If they want to cut down on bloat they could probably just cut out Smokescreen since it's just a poor version of Shadewalker. Buff the % of enmity directed with Shadewalker if needed.

Pretty much.


They can go the WoW route and add a cooldown to a lot of skills, while consolidating some oGCDs. Most jobs don't need to have several buttons that amount to "deal X℅ more damage for Y seconds", and as buffs are multiplicative this is one of the biggest contributors to the skill difference between players who know their stuff and those who don't.

Like, they could take Rouse away while buffing Spur and it would remove button bloat without dramatically affecting SMN (I'm aware that this would be nerfing SCH's fairy as a side effect but that's probably happening too).

The second thing separating players is their uptime. While you can't magically fix a player's uptime, you can make it so having low uptime doesn't affect performance as dramatically (this is what auto-attacks are for), especially when it comes to maintaining timers. Yoshida already gave Enochian as an example of skills they're adjusting, although he was vague regarding their plans to reward great play, he just said they planned to.

Remember that he said difficulty would be about on par with level 60 rotations, what they're aiming to reduce is the gap between low-skill players and mid-skill players.

Yeah I'm expecting things like increased debuff/buff/DoT durations. Maybe some jobs having some DoTs removed completely in lieu of something else if they want to get rid of timers to keep track of (except for jobs like Summoner where DoTing stuff is their thing).

I think they should have a tutorial for the new rotations too, at least something to give new people an idea of how they should be using their abilities since the intent is to make things more manageable/easier.

So if they succeed with this the end result should be less buttons to push and less/more lenient timers to keep track of while having more difficult mechanics to focus on. I do like the sound of that since mechanics heavy fights tend to be more enjoyable to eventually overcome imo.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

I just want to see more customization options at fanfest. Please, skip SAM reveal for it even!

 

[Squishy3]

Wow yea wtf. Why does digital anything have an expiration date? Someone had to actively implement that.

Stuff that's digital having expiration dates isn't that uncommon, the problem was how oddly short the expiration date was. It expired about a year after the soundtrack came out, while stuff from the 1.0 release of XIV (which came out in 2010) is still valid.

 

[iammeiam]

FFXI Ninja had some enmity stuff (or was it Thief?) so it carried over to Ninja in FFXIV.

If they want to cut down on bloat they could probably just cut out Smokescreen since it's just a poor version of Shadewalker. Buff the % of enmity directed with Shadewalker if needed.

Smokescreen's raid utility is distinct from Shadewalker; this would be awful.

 

[Kenai]

Something they did in WoW that might sorta work here once enough classes are out is homogenizing buffs/debuffs or other certain skills since they are already most of the way there anyway with a lot of things, or at least want to be, Protect Provoke tank CDs healer CDs damage boosting CDs, stuff like Virus/Disable ect. They are different and a bit weird now but making an actual dev checklist type thing and then applying it properly shouldn't make classes feel too different from how they do already while adding some consistency.

That still leaves room for class flavor that matters (AST cards, NIN mudra, SCH fairy, MCH ammo) while setting a baseline of expectations that can be met for said role. It's likely that at least one patch during the expansion might slightly favor one class thing over another, but as long as that isn't consistently better throughout the entire expansion that should be fine.

I personally don't think WoW implemented it all that well (not for a long time anyway) but that was in large part due to other problems specific to WoW like PvP affecting PvE skills, and one class having multiple specs for different roles causing even more inconsistency, and general dev development cycles with classes vs content and whatnot, but I digress. No class in this game feels bad to me, and the few times there were real issues (2.0 WAR and DRG, 3.1 AST) they were looked at in a timely fashion and fixed long before the expansion's end so they could party up and take down the last boss without looking even a bit out of place. Pretty good track record really.

 

[Haly]

Smokescreen's raid utility is distinct from Shadewalker; this would be awful.

How so?

 

[Qvoth]

isn't smokescreen basically an ally targetable quelling strikes?
i know ninjas that use it on me when fight starts (i'm a blm, but i always start with quelling anyway)

 

[Ken]

isn't smokescreen basically an ally targetable quelling strikes?
i know ninjas that use it on me when fight starts (i'm a blm, but i always start with quelling anyway)

yeah

like when healer needs to mass heal but not pull adds smokescreen would be A+ there

 

[Gattsu25]

I forgot how good the Harvest Dance is in this game.

Literally the best dance emote in any RPG or MMO.

 

[kagamin]

I forgot how good the Harvest Dance is in this game.

Literally the best dance emote in any RPG or MMO.

But... that'd be ignoring the Manderville, which is literally the best dance emote in any RPG or MMO.

 

[iammeiam]

How so?

isn't smokescreen basically an ally targetable quelling strikes?
i know ninjas that use it on me when fight starts (i'm a blm, but i always start with quelling anyway)

Basically that. Smokescreen reduces the threat being generated on everything by the target. This means smoke screening a healer will always reduce the hate their healing generates regardless of what the ninja is doing; sometimes bosses will keep generating hate when they're off-screen and nobody can attack them, meaning a healer could theoretically 'catch up' and cause shenanigans when the boss comes back (T9.)

Shadewalker transfers a portion of the ninja's enmity to the selected target; this is good for helping a specific person build a threat lead on the target. It's useful for helping a tank maintain a threat lead over all the DPS without needing tank stance, since Smokescreen would only reduce the threat of one person, or smoothing out a tank swap, etc. It's useless if the ninja isn't attacking what you want threat controlled on. It's also good for trolling your raid group if you shade walker the wrong tank during tank swaps, since they can't click it off. Smokescreen is less effective trolling since it can be clicked off.

 

[Haly]

How many encounters is the difference between Smokescreen and Shadewalker actually relevant in? Because a mechanic that's useful only 1% of the time is not a very good mechanic at all.

Like, they can just reduce the Enmity on AoE heals, and give me a skill I actually want to use, rather than turn up enmity and then saddle me with a skill to compensate for someone else's costs. They make up 2/5 of NIN's new HW skills! That's madness. If I told you two of your main's five jobs in Stormblood are to clean up after someone else's mess, would this get you excited? Assuming you're not a healer. Or if you're a healer, let's say two of your next abilities the following expac are an oGCD nuke and another damage over time to use along Aero/Combust.

 

[Gattsu25]

But... that'd be ignoring the Manderville, which is literally the best dance emote in any RPG or MMO.

I...don't have that dance yet....

Fine. Now I know what my mission for tomorrow is.

 

[DrForester]

Moondance Emote > All Other Dances

 

[iammeiam]

How many encounters is the difference between Smokescreen and Shadewalker actually relevant in? Because a mechanic that's useful only 1% of the time is not a very good mechanic at all.

Like, they can just reduce the Enmity on AoE heals, and give me a skill I actually want to use, rather than turn up enmity and then saddle me with a skill to compensate for someone else's costs. They make up 2/5 of NIN's new HW skills! That's madness. If I told you two of your main's five jobs in Stormblood are to clean up after someone else's mess, would this get you excited? Assuming you're not a healer. Or if you're a healer, let's say two of your next abilities the following expac are an oGCD nuke and another damage over time to use along Aero/Combust.

It's relevant in a surprisingly high percentage of encounters where actually doing things properly matters. We literally use shadewalker in every raid floor, in situations where that smokescreen wouldn't assist. The situations where we use smokescreen, shade walker would not help. It's possible to function without most, but both those skills are a huge reason to bring a NIN. Not because people make mistakes, but because it gives you more flexibility in what you can do to optimize that you wouldn't have without it. That most of the game is faceroll doesn't negate the validity of skills that have real measurable benefit. The solution wouldn't be lobotomizing skills that are good when the game gives you situations that matter, but increasing.

So two of WHM's skills new skills in HW were Aero 3, an AOE DoT, and Stone 3, which is Just Stone 2 But More. These are generally regarded as good strong additions because they shored up where the job was falling short before. Balanced kit that gives a job strength in all scenarios is desirable, and what WHM probably needs in SB isn't more healing skills, it's more utility.

 

[Haly]

I'm of the opinion 36 binds for a role is too much. And I don't think it's controversial to say the majority of FFXIV players are not into regular day 1 progression and probably pug their content well into the life of an expansion. This means Shadewalker and Smokescreen are relevant, in the grand scheme of the game, for maybe a fraction of the content for a fraction of the playerbase. At the same time, it affects what NIN's toolkit is for every player who rolls it, in that we have this skill, and not a more fun skill instead, that is relevant more often.

The situation you're describing is more akin to a SRPG/CRPG where flexibility and maximizing efficiency is the name of the game, and that's a totally valid, classical approach for MMO design, but that's definitely not the direction FFXIV's heading in.

And this discussion started off as a spinoff of the inevitable pruning they must do if they want to have room to add more skills without crowding our bars. What would you really prune from a class, abilities they use 95% of the time or abilities they use 5% of the time? To add new things, and also keep niche skills, while suppressing binding/rotational flexibility, is describing a completely different game than what FFXIV is. For example, if all the classes were retooled so you don't need to press a button every GCD, yeah, I could see Smoke Screen and Shadewalker being good skills for a game like that, where enmity/aggro really mattered for every pull, like it used to in the days of yore.

But that's probably not happening ever. Enmity/aggro manipulation is a dead design paradigm for a reason (the average player doesn't enjoy it), and I don't see it coming back, nor do I see merit in halfheartedly pushing it on players.

 

[iammeiam]

The situation you're describing is more akin to a SRPG/CRPG where flexibility and maximizing efficiency is the name of the game, and that's a totally valid, classical approach for MMO design, but that's definitely not the direction FFXIV's heading in.

The situation I'm describing is relevant in FFXIV raiding today, after we're all overgeared, in the easiest raid tier in memory. These skills are a huge component of what makes ninjas desirable in the raiding community, which is a community that they're going to continue supplying content for going forward. These skills have legitimate uses unless they're going to base rework how aggro works overall. I'm sorry you don't like that your job has utility I guess? But there's a differentiation between generally bad and relatively useless skills (Hide, One Ilm Punch) and skills you don't like because you personally don't like chocolate in your peanut butter utility in your DPS.

 

[Squishy3]

FFXIv having the unique push pull of "Can I take these tankbusters without tank stance?" is super interesting. The only thing that probably needs to go is accuracy. This isn't other MMOs, it's XIV.

Having played a tank in WoW for Legion it's fucking boring.

 

[Haly]

I like utility when it's not so narrow. If Smoke Screen debuffed mobs with Blind around a target, yeah, I'd like that. It's useful for me, it's useful for the healer, it's useful for add spawn phases, it's useful for PVP. It's mechanically flavorful. Same with Shukuchi. It's good in any high mobility environment, fits with what a ninja is supposed to be, I guess it could be a little faster. Damage, and abilities that directly affect damage, is always relevant. Mobility... depending on encounter design, is also frequently relevant. Enmity is only relevant in very specific contexts. What does it matter to me, as a Duty Finder player, what strats the top raiding guilds have for Shadewalker? Why can't a utility skill be both relevant at the top end and at the median?

As it is, if there's going to be pruning I'd rather it be Shadewalker than, say, Kassatsu. Or even Dancing Edge.

 

[Squishy3]

I like utility when it's not so narrow. If Smoke Screen debuffed mobs with Blind around a target, yeah, I'd like that. It's useful for me, it's useful for the healer, it's useful for add spawn phases, it's useful for PVP. It's mechanically flavorful. Same with Shukuchi. It's good in any high mobility environment, fits with what a ninja is supposed to be, I guess it could be a little faster. Damage, and abilities that directly affect damage, is always relevant. Mobility... depending on encounter design, is also frequently relevant. Enmity is only relevant in very specific context. What does it matter to me, as a Duty Finder player, what strats the top raiding guilds have for Shadewalker? Why can't a utility skill be both relevant at the top end and at the median?

It just has the most utility in high-end content but it's not like it has no utility in stuff like EXDR. You can throw it out when you're running with that tank that only has a 235 weapon when you'e rocking a 260+ weapon.

I'd say Ninja is one of the jobs where outside of Hide in PvE content I'd say no skill slot is wasted, while the other melee DPS all have skills that are useless: Monk has One Ilm Punch, Haymaker, Feather Foot and situationally Arm of the Destroyer where it's only worth it on 5+ mobs or as a silence but there are way better options if you need a silence in raid content since Monk also has to be in Opo-Opo form and Dragoon has Feint and Keen Flurry.

 

[Haly]

I use Feint in Frontlines because NIN has no natural slow.

It's actually quite depressing not being able to hold people down.

Assassinate is also another ability I really dislike. First, it doesn't very hard for a skill called "Assassinate". Second, it only activates in 20% range. Third, its animation lock is brutal, although it's a sweet animation. I'd rather it be rolled into Jugulate, or or just straight up replace Mutilate.

Has the dev team ever addressed why they don't use "proc" abilities? Like, X skill has a Y percent chance to refresh Z skill. It'd be nice if I could Assassinate regularly during an encounter.

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

Well, eventually we'll be able to see what gets cut with the whole redundant skill reassessment thing.

Probably not till June though.

 

[Meowster]

Took some pictures tonight while playing with my friend.

 

[iammeiam]

Enmity is only relevant in very specific contexts. What does it matter to me, as a Duty Finder player, what strats the top raiding guilds have for Shadewalker? Why can't a utility skill be both relevant at the top end and at the median?

It absolutely has utility in median content--being able to dump threat onto the the tank in a 24-man is incredibly useful given that aggro flips to overgeared DPS aren't exactly uncommon. Being able to force quelling on an overgeared DPS or bail out a healer because 24 man tanks aren't always on top of snap aggro is a useful thing. You don't see it used much because everything is so undertuned that aggro pingpong in Dun Scaith isn't a guaranteed wipe, and a large chunk of the player base doesn't read tooltips, but it doesn't mean it has no utility. The usefulness scales up with the difficulty of the content, but that's true for everything.

I'd put aggro management in the same tier as Eye for an Eye, in terms of a skill most players don't understand, but is actually useful overall.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Took some pictures tonight while playing with my friend.

Looking like a full grown Lalafell.

 

[Ken]

Has the dev team ever addressed why they don't use "proc" abilities? Like, X skill has a Y percent chance to refresh Z skill. It'd be nice if I could Assassinate regularly during an encounter.

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/River_of_Blood
http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Firestarter

 

[Haly]

Ah right, I forgot about firestarter.

Well more classes can use it and I want to proc Assassinate.

 

[Ken]

I think NIN has enough OGCDs as it is so adding a reset-able one would just mean stuff getting pushed back more often.

 

[Squishy3]

I think proc abilities are mostly boring in MMOs, especially having gone back to WoW where most of the classes just have a filler ability they spam while waiting for procs to happen. It makes sense for procs to exist on classes like BLM, Machinist and Bard (and SMN to a degree with the DOT crit spell speed trait) as they all have cast times but if stuff procs it usually becomes an instant cast, but it doesn't really lead to interesting gameplay on other classes.

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

I was actually thinking about Blade&Soul.

Classes in that game have more skills than the ones in FFXIV but on much fewer buttons.

In that game you use 1234, F, TAB, ZXCV, QES and both mouse buttons. For a class like Blade Master for example they have 47 skills/individual actions in total, all on 15 buttons.

That's because they're context sensitive. So making a melee combo context sensitive would be putting the whole combo on LMB for example, each move in the chain executed one after the other with each button press.

Another example would be their V skill Flock of Blades, when used it summons a bunch of floating swords and when this happens your Z, X, C and V skills are all changed to skills that use the blades while they are active, then they change back once the duration has run out. There are a bunch of moves that require conditions like knockdown/stun/etc in order to use them and every class has ways to inflict these to open up the path to using these kinds of abilities. It all works pretty well. Also there's nothing like playing Warlock and spamming Dragoncall procs during Leech.

Of course I expect that whatever changes they are making will not come anywhere close to what Blade&Soul is doing but when I think of "less buttons/less difficult rotations/more difficult mechanics" I think of Blade&Soul.

I think proc abilities are mostly boring in MMOs, especially having gone back to WoW where most of the classes just have a filler ability they spam while waiting for procs to happen. It makes sense for procs to exist on classes like BLM, Machinist and Bard (and SMN to a degree with the DOT crit spell speed trait) as they all have cast times but if stuff procs it usually becomes an instant cast, but it doesn't really lead to interesting gameplay on other classes.

Try playing Blade&Soul. I don't think WoW really makes use of procs in cool enough ways. Like the example I mentioned before, playing Warlock in B&S and spamming a shit ton of Dragoncall procs during Leech (basically super saiyan mode) is immensely satisfying. Loved that class and it sucks FFXIV don't really have a cool DPS/pet class like it.

 

[Ken]

bns also has butts and that's where the real argument should be

 

[Alfebit]

I will play Monk forever.

Monk til I die