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Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood |OT| Y'all Need to Calm Down

MCH got absolutely wrecked in 4.0. Guess they didn't want to make it OP and instead the Balance team undertuned it so hard it must have found hell at the core of the earth.

Yeah, MCH got owned pretty hard this go. On top of it I don't really dig the new playstyle when I tried it on my alt 60 MCH.

SAM being bonkers strong gives me life though.
 

Sky87

Member
All this talk about DPS of certain classes, how do you even monitor that? Third party tool? How difficult is it setting that up, and is it safe to use? I've heard people can get banned if they harass people about their DPS for example.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
After the difference n A12S dummy difficulty between Bard and Machinist I kind of just ignore them.

Speaking of DPS:


Summoner, a job with a high penalty for failure that can throw things off for quiet a while after the initial minor mistake, is #2 in terms of DPS.

Machinist, a job with a high penalty for failure that can throw things off for quiet a while after the initial minor mistake, is #9 in terms of DPS.

I can't even with this. Can't even.

They're a thousand DPS behind Samurai; Hypercharge got nerfed, most of the CC skills got moved to cross-role, instead of expanding on the damage reduction MCH had a monopoly on in HW they handed it to Bard, and the damage sucks.

Probably worth noting that that list is a copypaste of a copypaste of a copypaste from 2ch and nobody ever shown SSS screenshots or god forbid parses certifying those numbers.

But they do look quite realistic.
 

iammeiam

Member
Because why does he need the extra 2 ilevels when he's slaughtering everyone already.

MCH got absolutely wrecked in 4.0. Guess they didn't want to make it OP and instead the Balance team undertuned it so hard it must have found hell at the core of the earth.

I'm mostly unhappy with how they made everything worse. And we still didn't get a Wildfire detonation button. Worse at support, worse at rDPS boosting, worse at personal damage, etc etc etc. And for this they junked the entire existing system and replaced it with something else. And we know at one point the JP tooltips had Overheat at 20%, which means somebody looked at it and was like "No, this is too OP."

It's just total system failure; MCH as designed right now fails at the basic fundamental purpose of the combat revamp.


Do you think that part of this could be simply the nature of the the expansion having just launched, and the most important content they worked on to ship the title would be for the majority of players? I'm not saying this is surely the case, you've played the game far more than I have, but it seems like we're still within the first week of launch, and some of you have not only cleared the game but all the available post-game content.

The problem is largely that this stuff has to last. These are the first two primals of the expansion, yes, but they're also the only fights harder-than-a-dungeon but easier than a Savage raid that the game gets for three to four months. There should be meat to it. The fights already exist in an accessible-to-all format, and everyone sees them in the story. That's cool. The problem is that in theory the EX primals are supposed to be the mythical midcore content; and it's not just that we can go in and beat them, it's that I can team up with six random strangers and we can all go in knowing literally nothing and kill it in 30 minutes.

From my perspective though, it seems a bit odd to expect there to be something right now which would be sufficiently challenging for players of your level, because the stuff you are talking about (extreme Primals for example) are things that I expect I would be able to clear too after beating the game later on, maybe in another week, maybe in 2 weeks, I don't know. My expectation isn't that once I complete the MSQ, that the stuff coming after is going to be impossible unless I'm on the ball 100%.

The problem we get into here is the attempt to try defining player levels, and who is too good or who should struggle with what. It's not about preventing people from doing anything; it's more about urging the game to position it as sometimes things take time. If 70% of the game is stuff that could be termed faceroll, is it really out of line to expect 20% require putting in some effort and working to improve? Because while, yes, the primals hit with the expansion, they're also supposed to last months. Not for me, because in theory I'm going to be raiding or whatever, but for the chunk of the player base that wants something to strive for without the commitment of srs raiding. There's basically nothing for these people before 4.1 at the earliest, and that sucks.

Like, there was nothing that prevented a casual player from clearing Thordan? Fight was forgiving as hell, had a lenient DPS check, etc. You maybe couldn't go in and beat it on your first lockout, but spend a couple of nights in PF and it was accessible. It was achievable by anyone, it just took work. It stands in stark contrast to what came after, which I think is why it gets used as a touchstone a lot.

This is less me complaining about nothing2do--because I have at least one more job to level and gear up before raid stuff hits because I'm still not sure what I'm actually doing long term--and more just worrying that the population spike will dry up even faster than the HW one did. Most of the first month of the game isn't for me, and that's fine, but if they're ripping the combat system down and totally rebooting it to bring up the skill floor, they need to marry it with content that encourages people stepping up. And this is where the EX primals fail, and were there's going to be a gap for the next three to four months. It just seems odd to me to intentionally create a gigantic content gulf by stomping down the only content you had designed to be midcore (which in turn makes me wonder if Omega will be taking the midcore slot but who knows.)

I expect that eventually in the coming months they will release optional content that might be too hard for me, but by then I would be pretty satisfied with how much I have gotten out of the expansion, and focus on many other things I haven't done yet, like crafting/gathering classes, and bonus content I skipped along the way in previous expansions.

First raid tier should hit early July; part of the concern related to the primals is that it, too, will follow the flattening and ultimately be underwhelming. Because again Lakshmi and Susano aren't the start of the concern, they're a continuation--and given that the driving thesis of the expansion was making classes easier so they could bring the skill floor up, dropping the difficulty further than the 'norm' for Exes seems counterintuitive.

So I guess what I'm saying is, do you think they are really flattening the difficulty curve because they have no good solution, or do you think part of it is because with a new expansion they want the majority or all of the shipped content to be doable by everyone? That seems fair to me no?
As an example from an earlier post, someone said that since Thordan EX all Primals have been getting easier. But Thordan EX is an extreme trial for the final boss of an expansion. Is there an expectation that regular Primals in the next expansion would have harder extremes than that? With each expansion, it should be a curve right? Not a constant hill? Am I mistaken here?

It has nothing to do with the new expansion, though. People cite Thordan from November 2015; it was the first patch Primal of Heavensward and it's been downhill since. The difficulty decay crept into raiding in Creator, into some of the job squish stuff, etc.If this were a clear one-off situation, people would probably be less concerned, but Yoshida blew a lot of good will when he ran around telling everyone Zurvan EX would be hard and then it was... Zurvan EX. Thordan is a weird offshoot because of the specific circumstances of the game at the time (it was a reaction to a brutal raid tier more than anything, and served largely as a celebration of mechanics from Coil), but the problem is less "everything is easier than Thordan" and more "everything is easier than everything that came before." People's nostalgia for Thordan is less that everything needs to specifically be that hard, and more that it's the last stop before the free-fall primals have kind of been in since.

Edit: I'm struggling to articulate this, but arguably a video does it better . I don't know where you stand on content spoilers, but this is the tail end of our second clear. We start dying because we still don't know all the mechanics in the fight, it's just everything is so undertuned you can straight up not do parts of the fight and it doesn't matter. I also run around for like... ever... doing nothing. The issue isn't that the fight isn't super tough, it's that you can literally just ignore giant parts of it because it doesn't want to kill you.

Probably worth noting that that list is a copypaste of a copypaste of a copypaste from 2ch and nobody ever shown SSS screenshots or god forbid parses certifying those numbers.

But they do look quite realistic.

The MCH numbers looked pretty in-line with what I remembered from Aiurily's stuff, and some of the others kind of fit with ballparks I've heard tossed around, so they seemed legit enough to discuss.

Plus I'm like mega-salty about it all that this point.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
I was dead set on making RDM my main day 1, but after getting to 67 with BLM, I think I might keep playing this class instead.
I'll still probably get RDM to 70 soon, but the Enochian changes and the addition of Multicast make BLM much more fun to play than before. And the best part is that unleashing all that triple Fire IV burst is not a problem, because of the new role skill cutting hate in half.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
tbqf Bismarck was an utter joke and Ravana... well, besides Final Liberation, was it really harder than Lakshmi-chan

Now, I do not trust them to make Deltascape a challenege - and they shouldn't by all means, but I honestly can't remember HW release primals being any kind of mainstay either.
 

iammeiam

Member
tbqf Bismarck was an utter joke and Ravana... well, besides Final Liberation, was it really harder than Lakshmi-chan

Now, I do not trust them to make Deltascape a challenege - and they shouldn't by all means, but I honestly can't remember HW release primals being any kind of mainstay either.

Bismarck required some baseline understanding of the mechanics, though. Like, if your tanks biffed swapping the serpents, or everyone stood in the wrong place during a weather pattern in i170, you were gonna wipe. Ravana likewise week 1 had stuff you had to know because if you just didn't do the mechanics you would wipe. Both were doable but if you went with random PF, you were likely going to be in for some struggle.

Lakshmi is a concern because you legit do not need to understand what is happening because even in week 1 gearing you can just kind of roll her since nothing matters. I get the impression Susano is the same but will need to like... go do it at some point.
 

Guess Who

Banned
Like, there was nothing that prevented a casual player from clearing Thordan? Fight was forgiving as hell, had a lenient DPS check, etc. You maybe couldn't go in and beat it on your first lockout, but spend a couple of nights in PF and it was accessible. It was achievable by anyone, it just took work. It stands in stark contrast to what came after, which I think is why it gets used as a touchstone a lot.

Even if I agree with some of the "where's the hard content" stuff in general, stuff like this makes me suspect some of you live in some kind of raid bubble.

I was in one of those raid groups that Gordias tore apart, so I had to pug Thordan EX, and "a couple of nights in PF for Thordan EX" is understatement of the fucking century. I spent weeks pugging that shit daily to no avail. I felt blessed most nights to even get a party that could get past the two paladins phase. If we got past meteors? I clung onto the party for dear life and never let go. And then, after a month or so of this, I still struggled to get any further than that through pugging to the point of exhaustion where I unsubbed until like, 3.4.

"A couple of nights in PF for a casual player and achievable by anyone" is, like, Sophia EX, not Thordan. Right now, sure, you're probably clearing Susanoo and Lakshmi EX in PF without that much trouble, because the kind of people who are level 70 and well-geared less than a week after early access even with 2-3 days of most of the playerbase being unable to progress through MSQ are almost by definition hardcore. Once average players start hitting those primals?
 
Someone yelled spoilers in the shout chat and now I know the ending. I knew this shit was gonna happen when few people would make it through while others couldn't. I'm going to bed pissed, I just needed to rant that I'm mad about it.

I had shout/say/yell in their own separate window until I finished the story. Was pretty sure it was going to happen at some point so took no risk with that, and it's not like I needed to read shouts the rest of the time anyway.

Since I only really did 2.0 primals, how they compare to them? The new ones I mean.

Do you mean the 2.0 primals in EX? Cause EX was added after 2.0, all there was back then was hard mode. I think EX Titan was harder than both the current or HW ones, but there was a lot of different stuff going on like worst classes overall, lag issues and people weren't as experienced with dealing with this kind of stuff.
 
Someone yelled spoilers in the shout chat and now I know the ending. I knew this shit was gonna happen when few people would make it through while others couldn't. I'm going to bed pissed, I just needed to rant that I'm mad about it.

I'm sure it won't ameliorate the situation but if you have a screencap, I'd report them. I'm sure that's bannable or at least suspendable.
 

duckroll

Member
I can certainly understand that there's a desire for content that feels satisfying for your skill/gear level. No one likes to be handed a win. Being able to win even when you feel you're not putting in any effort, and not even really dying, can be a shitty feeling. But that's where I feel maybe there's an expectation issue here. We're talking about EX Primals from the story mode, not raid content, not even special EX final boss fights. Stormblood has been active for less than a week. For many people, two of those days were gated off on some servers because of Raubahn Extreme and Pipin Savage. Other people were hit by the Susano bug. In the face of all this, I would say that anyone who is able to queue right now on the DF or PF for EX Primals in SB are super duper hardcore players. It doesn't matter if it's a fixed party or totally random people. That's a reasonable conclusion right?

In the past few months I've played through all of ARR, HW, and now I'm going through SB. I feel that I'm absolutely a casual player. I'm here for the story, I like the gameplay too, and I appreciate mechanics, but I'm not someone who is a) very good at the game, b) heavily competitive in terms of wanting to be ready for the very latest super hard optional content. So my impression of playing through SB so far is that I don't think they made the game easier in the mechanics, its just been pretty different. They seem more interested in introducing new types of mechanics which makes fights feel fresh, at least for the first... 10 times you do them I guess? The nature of such games is that everything gets old when you grind it enough. I appreciate the fact that SB doesn't feel like HW reskinned at all. So that's cool. Maybe I have low expectations of MMO content though?

Looking forward to being a huge burden to serious players when the Return to Ivalice raid hits! I'm sorry! :D

I had shout/say/yell in their own separate window until I finished the story. Was pretty sure it was going to happen at some point so took no risk with that, and it's not like I needed to read shouts the rest of the time anyway.

I turned all those off completely before SB was released, because that's what people here told me to do. Lol. I'm not even sure if I ever want to turn them back on, because the only chat I really want to see is FC/Party/Alliance/Linkshell chats. :p
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
how do i get that one loche's aether current on the bridge north of the aetheryte

you know the one

Go northeast and then west, and loop down from the other side.
 

duckroll

Member
I guess the first two Ex primals are closer to the original hard primal fights from 2.0? That would make sense.

The EX Primals from the story in HW were fucking nothing too. I mean, I guess that's part of the "slippery slope" problem he is talking about, and I can relate to that even as a casual player. EX Primals in ARR can be hard for some players even now if you do it synced, which is why people prefer to just do them unsynced when helping friends through.

The HW EX Primals for Ravana and Bismarck were basically facerolls because by that point in the game after beating HW you would have a great understanding of the fights already (or should), and the people you do them with have all beaten HW too. I imagine the EX SB ones are the same. That's not to say they're bad fights (I think Bismarck is one of the most fun Primal fights in the entire game), they're just not really challenging, instead they're interesting. The combat scenarios are unique. Susano follows in this tradition - it's not hard-hard, but it's an interesting fight with a lot of neat stuff going on which you won't see in other battles.

HM 2.0 fights is actually a good comparison yeah, now that I think about it. Since "normal" fights in HW/SB are now "hard mode" anyway. The labels are whack.
 

iammeiam

Member
I don't know how else to break out of the raid bubble, short of posting PFs only asking for bad players so that I can finally have a valid viewpoint. Like, I've PF'd a lot since 3.4; and in my experience Sophia was like.. two hours, not a couple nights? And that's trying a month and a half in after it'd already been farmed to death and abandoned.

But that's where I feel maybe there's an expectation issue here. We're talking about EX Primals from the story mode, not raid content, not even special EX final boss fights. Stormblood has been active for less than a week. For many people, two of those days were gated off on some servers because of Raubahn Extreme and Pipin Savage. Other people were hit by the Susano bug. In the face of all this, I would say that anyone who is able to queue right now on the DF or PF for EX Primals in SB are super duper hardcore players. It doesn't matter if it's a fixed party or totally random people. That's a reasonable conclusion right?

It's really not a reasonable conclusion for a few reasons. Relationship to the MSQ has traditionally had zero meaning for the accessibility of primals. Like, Titan EX was the great wall Back In The Day, but it was fine because ti was an EX and EX was not designed to be story content. That it reuses models and movesets from story content was originally a way of designing content on the cheap, as opposed to having to develop a bunch of new stuff. Presence in the main quest line has no relationship with difficulty of EX primals, essentially. It's possible they're repurposing what an EX primal has traditionally been (literally the only midcore content in the game) to be "story mode but tuned slightly higher", but trying to tie EX difficulty to story relevance is out of sync with how these things have traditionally worked.

Additionally, the people you get in PF or Raid Finder right now (because, FWIW, you cannot queue for current Extreme Primals in DF, they're RF-only until they're obsolete. It's part of the historical difficulty distinction inherent in the EX Primal thing) will be people who play a decent amount, but there's never been much relationship between time logged in-game and actual skill. The Raubahn and Pipin things actually made the PF pool slightly worse, since the actual super hardcore would have beelined to the end and been in there day 1. The technical difficulties mixed the groups up.

Looking forward to being a huge burden to serious players when the Return to Ivalice raid hits! I'm sorry! :D

It's a 24-man; the standing expectation is that half the party is /afk, dead, or playing with their feet at any given time.

This is why the secret is to run it once when the servers come up and never ever go back.

also:
The EX Primals from the story in HW were fucking nothing too. I mean, I guess that's part of the "slippery slope" problem he is talking about, and I can relate to that even as a casual player. EX Primals in ARR can be hard for some players even now if you do it synced, which is why people prefer to just do them unsynced when helping friends through.

Did you do them in HW starter gear? Because that's the equivalent of what we're talking about now--Lakshmi legitimately feels like doing Ravana a couple months later after everyone was already i190, as opposed to hitting it week one i160. Going back and doing them now in a group that's like... i250 or whatever... is nothing like what the fights were at the start. I know in hindsight people have reclassified them as not a big deal, but I also remember infinite arguments with people insisting the super tight DPS check precluded range, or that the tank swap was an epic struggle. I had to set up a special filtered chat tab to stop seeing them because I was too prone to arguing back about it. It was A thing.

They weren't devastating, but the fights in 2016/2017 being trivial is unrelated to how the fights were in 2015.
 

SilverArrow20XX

Walks in the Light of the Crystal
Just met
Lord Hien
and heard the theme that played. Only then did it dawn on my that his father's name is
Kaien (Cyan)
. Amazing.
 

Makikou

Member
I don't know how else to break out of the raid bubble, short of posting PFs only asking for bad players so that I can finally have a valid viewpoint. Like, I've PF'd a lot since 3.4; and in my experience Sophia was like.. two hours, not a couple nights? And that's trying a month and a half in after it'd already been farmed to death and abandoned.



It's really not a reasonable conclusion for a few reasons. Relationship to the MSQ has traditionally had zero meaning for the accessibility of primals. Like, Titan EX was the great wall Back In The Day, but it was fine because ti was an EX and EX was not designed to be story content. That it reuses models and movesets from story content was originally a way of designing content on the cheap, as opposed to having to develop a bunch of new stuff. Presence in the main quest line has no relationship with difficulty of EX primals, essentially. It's possible they're repurposing what an EX primal has traditionally been (literally the only midcore content in the game) to be "story mode but tuned slightly higher", but trying to tie EX difficulty to story relevance is out of sync with how these things have traditionally worked.

Additionally, the people you get in PF or Raid Finder right now (because, FWIW, you cannot queue for current Extreme Primals in DF, they're RF-only until they're obsolete. It's part of the historical difficulty distinction inherent in the EX Primal thing) will be people who play a decent amount, but there's never been much relationship between time logged in-game and actual skill. The Raubahn and Pipin things actually made the PF pool slightly worse, since the actual super hardcore would have beelined to the end and been in there day 1. The technical difficulties mixed the groups up.



It's a 24-man; the standing expectation is that half the party is /afk, dead, or playing with their feet at any given time.

This is why the secret is to run it once when the servers come up and never ever go back.

also:


Did you do them in HW starter gear? Because that's the equivalent of what we're talking about now--Lakshmi legitimately feels like doing Ravana a couple months later after everyone was already i190, as opposed to hitting it week one i160. Going back and doing them now in a group that's like... i250 or whatever... is nothing like what the fights were at the start. I know in hindsight people have reclassified them as not a big deal, but I also remember infinite arguments with people insisting the super tight DPS check precluded range, or that the tank swap was an epic struggle. I had to set up a special filtered chat tab to stop seeing them because I was too prone to arguing back about it. It was A thing.

They weren't devastating, but the fights in 2016/2017 being trivial is unrelated to how the fights were in 2015.

To me it sounds like Lakshmi EX (and Susano) are more like Hard modes of said primals than EX.

Sounds disappointing and i'm not a HC player of this game but I still like a good challenge especially when its basically top tier gear at this point (i320)
 

kaze343

Member
Bismarck required some baseline understanding of the mechanics, though. Like, if your tanks biffed swapping the serpents, or everyone stood in the wrong place during a weather pattern in i170, you were gonna wipe. Ravana likewise week 1 had stuff you had to know because if you just didn't do the mechanics you would wipe. Both were doable but if you went with random PF, you were likely going to be in for some struggle.

Lakshmi is a concern because you legit do not need to understand what is happening because even in week 1 gearing you can just kind of roll her since nothing matters. I get the impression Susano is the same but will need to like... go do it at some point.

went into susano with 0 exp. 20 min(with 10 of that 20 shooting the breeze with the party) we made it to 7%
 
I mean, you could say that Titan EX was the wall back then for midcores, but he wasn't there on 2.0, before EX version there was a Hard version non-related to the MSQ fight. And you look now at that version and laugh at it, I healed it with AF gear as a total WHM noob with no problem, but at launch people strugled to it, a lot of people, I was one of them.

You had people who cleared quite fast and then the vast majority of players, that barely knew how to play the game, that all these mechanics that they never experienced were overwhelming.

I think the intention is similar here, you have people with story potions and job potions, people that will get carried easily to past content, that are gonna experience their first real content, and you certainly don't want them to fall to despair that fast. It would be a clusterfuck.

I'm fine with the first endgame content being more manageable rather than totally hard or even Titan EX level of hard. Specially considering a lot of people didn't played fpr several years and will be able to tell several mechanics on first sight.
 

scy

Member
To me it sounds like Lakshmi EX (and Susano) are more like Hard modes of said primals than EX.

Sounds disappointing and i'm not a HC player of this game but I still like a good challenge especially when its basically top tier gear at this point (i320)

For what it's worth, I liked the fight for what it was trying to do as a fight (outside of one mechanics reuse, albeit extremely forgiving and lenient here). It's just it feels like Shiva EX as far as a tuning is concerned? Except it already feels like you're tackling it a patch later but for current rewards. It's not outright a bad thing by itself but as part of the whole "They're making jobs more streamlined so fights can be more involved" angle, it's kind of funny.

Realistically, in like two weeks when capped tomes are added and this ends up being filler gear, it'll long be forgotten and be in this spot of i330+ only birbokami farms. I respect that it's really nice to have the fights that you can reasonably expect to PF a clear out of (I wouldn't be terribly surprised to get RF clears under the completed flag), but I am sad that the two EX Primals don't exist as a goal for people to clear but instead the goal is when they'll finish farming all that they want from it; I guess maybe they just want more and more people to view the actual raid as that.
 

Makikou

Member
For what it's worth, I liked the fight for what it was trying to do as a fight (outside of one mechanics reuse, albeit extremely forgiving and lenient here). It's just it feels like Shiva EX as far as a tuning is concerned? Except it already feels like you're tackling it a patch later but for current rewards. It's not outright a bad thing by itself but as part of the whole "They're making jobs more streamlined so fights can be more involved" angle, it's kind of funny.

Realistically, in like two weeks when capped tomes are added and this ends up being filler gear, it'll long be forgotten and be in this spot of i330+ only birbokami farms. I respect that it's really nice to have the fights that you can reasonably expect to PF a clear out of (I wouldn't be terribly surprised to get RF clears under the completed flag), but I am sad that the two EX Primals don't exist as a goal for people to clear but instead the goal is when they'll finish farming all that they want from it; I guess maybe they just want more and more people to view the actual raid as that.

Yeah maybe, but i'd rather see EX primals really be extreme. I mean we had (Hard) versions in ARR so I dont see why not do that kind of difficulty curve again with NM/HM/EX
 
So I've redeemed both my pre-order code and my collectors edition code but I've not received the bonus items despite the Mogstation showing that I should have them. Am I missing something here?
 

iammeiam

Member
I mean, you could say that Titan EX was the wall back then for midcores, but he wasn't there on 2.0, before EX version there was a Hard version non-related to the MSQ fight. And you look now at that version and laugh at it, I healed it with AF gear as a total WHM noob with no problem, but at launch people strugled to it, a lot of people, I was one of them.

My point wasn't that Titan EX was a launch primal, just that he's one of the very first EX primals and a fantastic exhibit of "being tied to a MSQ primal doesn't impact EX difficulty at all." It's an important distinction to me because limited resources are always a struggle, and I'd vastly prefer that content aimed at the player base minority involve reuse of assets vs generation of brand new ones.

If we want to go the Titan HM route, Lakshmi lets you fail to kill the heart equivalent in time, have the entire raid eat Landslide, and then all stack up and stand in Weights and still survive, essentially. My biggest complaint isn't the fiddlyness of rotation stuff or whatever, it's that you can clear it while not understanding a giant chunk of the last phase and so failing the mechanics in week 1 gear. Lakshmi is bad as a training primal because she basically trains in bad habits--mechanics are optional, it'll all work out. It's the opposite of the level 65 dungeon second boss, kind of.

I'm not asking that EX's require people at the top of their game and 100% on point with rotations, just that they ask people to actually learn and understand the fight.
 

R0ckman

Member
I really dislike how every primal fight after Thordan ex has been getting progressively easier

Idk, after doing and beating Titan Extreme with randoms I don't think I'll ever feel anything is harder, that felt like hell. The music didn't help. And when you just have to sit at the bottom and watch his health bar go down while the remaining party memembers health bars are jumping up and down, thats just bad for your blood pressure altogether.
 

aravuus

Member
Planning on getting the scenario skip boost cause I got bored of ARR's main quest, but I'm very interested in HW and SB's stories. How necessary would getting one or two of the job boosts be? To survive HW etc. IIRC, I had just went from Arcanist to Scholar when I stopped playing, so I guess I'm around lvl30-35 as ARC and a bit lower as SCH.

e: also should I maybe read a summary of the ARR story or something before I jump into HW?
 

Makikou

Member
So I've redeemed both my pre-order code and my collectors edition code but I've not received the bonus items despite the Mogstation showing that I should have them. Am I missing something here?

Stupid question but did you check delivery moogle already? Maybe relog in?

Planning on getting the scenario skip boost cause I got bored of ARR's main quest, but I'm very interested in HW and SB's stories. How necessary would getting one or two of the job boosts be? To survive HW etc. IIRC, I had just went from Arcanist to Scholar when I stopped playing, so I guess I'm around lvl30-35 as ARC and a bit lower as SCH.

HW content is 50 onwards.
 

MikeBison

Member
Planning on getting the scenario skip boost cause I got bored of ARR's main quest, but I'm very interested in HW and SB's stories. How necessary would getting one or two of the job boosts be? To survive HW etc. IIRC, I had just went from Arcanist to Scholar when I stopped playing, so I guess I'm around lvl30-35 as ARC and a bit lower as SCH.

e: also should I maybe read a summary of the ARR story or something before I jump into HW?

You can't access HW until lv50 so you'd have to either level up to there or use a level skip (will take you to 60)
 
Planning on getting the scenario skip boost cause I got bored of ARR's main quest, but I'm very interested in HW and SB's stories. How necessary would getting one or two of the job boosts be? To survive HW etc. IIRC, I had just went from Arcanist to Scholar when I stopped playing, so I guess I'm around lvl30-35 as ARC and a bit lower as SCH.

e: also should I maybe read a summary of the ARR story or something before I jump into HW?

Heavensward's story starts at level 50, so you'd need to have a job there to begin it.

HW starts with a quasi-reset story-wise, so it's not really necessary to read an ARR summary beforehand.
 
Stupid question but did you check delivery moogle already? Maybe relog in?

That was a fair question given the reason was pretty dumb, turned out my mailbox was full. I figured it was probably me being dumb and missing something super obvious but for some reason I didn't think to check the delivery moogle.

Thanks for that.
 

MikeBison

Member
I see, thanks. Would grinding to 50 be viable then, or is it something that'd take days/weeks? I'd rather just get the lvl boost too if the alternative is grinding duties for dozens of hours.

Shouldn't take too long at all. Many of us are in the same position, grinding from 50-60 to play SB with SAM or RDM. Takes a few days.
 

Caelestis

Member
Yeah, current Ex primals are a complete joke. Titan Ex took some training back in a day and Bis and Rav Ex needed at least a lockout or two with a decent static. Here we got Susano done in 40 mins and Lakshmi on 2nd attempt. You can wipe the floor left and right and still recover pretty easily in these.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
The EX Primals from the story in HW were fucking nothing too. I mean, I guess that's part of the "slippery slope" problem he is talking about, and I can relate to that even as a casual player. EX Primals in ARR can be hard for some players even now if you do it synced, which is why people prefer to just do them unsynced when helping friends through.

The HW EX Primals for Ravana and Bismarck were basically facerolls because by that point in the game after beating HW you would have a great understanding of the fights already (or should), and the people you do them with have all beaten HW too. I imagine the EX SB ones are the same. That's not to say they're bad fights (I think Bismarck is one of the most fun Primal fights in the entire game), they're just not really challenging, instead they're interesting. The combat scenarios are unique. Susano follows in this tradition - it's not hard-hard, but it's an interesting fight with a lot of neat stuff going on which you won't see in other battles.

HM 2.0 fights is actually a good comparison yeah, now that I think about it. Since "normal" fights in HW/SB are now "hard mode" anyway. The labels are whack.
I might be misunderstanding something, but I think the biggest reason HW EX primal fights are so easy now (and were easy when you got to them) is because everyone and their mother is so overgeared for them, so you can ignore many mechanics which could easily kill you before. I remember having problems with both Ravana and Bismarck (not huge problems, like with turn 9/13) when they were new, because of dps checks etc.
 
I see, thanks. Would grinding to 50 be viable then, or is it something that'd take days/weeks? I'd rather just get the lvl boost too if the alternative is grinding duties for dozens of hours.

Grinding pre 60 doesn't take very long, although it's pretty boring. Mostly you'll do palace of the dead with the roulettes to break the monotony. It takes like 2.5 potd runs per level or so until 55, potd takes about 10mins and has virtually no queue regardless of class, so it's pretty fast, but repetitive. The daily bonus on roulette makes them worth running(well leveling one, guess you can't really do most of the other ones).
 

ebil

Member
Ninja is so much fun with the QoL adjustments alone. I'm not even 62 yet so I cannot comment on the new stuff, but I love how they streamlined its rotation and allowed for a ton more ninjutsu and Aeolian Edge combos.
 

aravuus

Member
Grinding pre 60 doesn't take very long, although it's pretty boring. Mostly you'll do palace of the dead with the roulettes to break the monotony. It takes like 2.5 potd runs per level or so until 55, potd takes about 10mins and has virtually no queue regardless of class, so it's pretty fast, but repetitive. The daily bonus on roulette makes them worth running(well leveling one, guess you can't really do most of the other ones).

Oh yeah, POTD! Always see people talking about it but I never got to even see it myself when I was playing ARR.

Thanks, grinding it for a couple of days shouldn't be too hard on my patience then since it's completely new content for me. Getting pretty excited actually, I was planning on waiting until I get home from this music festival I'll be at most of next week, but I might resub as soon as I get home today.

e: oh wait lol, I can't. After the festival, then.
 
Thordan was tuned to help out people stuck in Living Liquid. It should by no means be the basis of EX difficulty.

That said, I do wish trials were at least on Sephi's level. Damn that fight is fun.
 

eliza0224

Member
Depending on how good you are at it find the best leve for the range you are at and HQ craft that item and turn in the leve over and over until you hit next five level range and repeat. The guides unfortunately assume you are rich enough to buy the levels up (as in buy the HQ items you beed to turn in), but its much more rewarding to craft them yourself so you actually know how to do it.
Agreed, I'm not that rich yet haha. I have all the crafting classes to 15 or more except culinarian and alchemist, so I better get to crafting HQ stuff!
 
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