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[studyguy]

Healing is an exercise in masochism to me.
I don't think I find anything less fun than healing in this game. If I play them, I only do it in easy content, if I do it at all, it's only well after they've realeased content I can watch something else in while doing it like POTD.

I don't heal. I appreciate good healers, but I don't heal.

 

[royox]

Joined a training PF for Lakshmi EX.
Killed at 2nd try.

Then we also went to Susano EX.
1st Try we had one dps offline the whole fight and wiped because enrage
Killed at 2nd try


So....what the actual hell? Did Zurvan EX scare Squeenix SO BAD?

 

[hosannainexcelsis]

I mean... that is a constant issue in any MMO I've played. People like to DPS. They don't like to Heal and they don't like to tank.

I believe he's saying there shouldn't be tanks or healers - the game should be designed around having no distinct roles, thus allowing everyone equal queues.

 

[kromeo]

I believe he's saying there shouldn't be tanks or healers - the game should be designed around having no distinct roles, thus allowing everyone equal queues.

It sounds great in theory but Guild Wars 2 tried it and the dungeon content ended up being awful

 

[Stone Ocean]

I believe he's saying there shouldn't be tanks or healers - the game should be designed around having no distinct roles, thus allowing everyone equal queues.

The game already has enough balance problems without throwing non-specialized jobs into the mix and at the end of the day someone will still have to tank and someone will still have to deal with the healing.

Even if they make tanks as fun as DPS people will still flock to DPS because most players don't want to deal with the responsibility. That's just the way MMOs work, tanking and healing are stressfull roles.

 

[studyguy]

That hybrid job meme died ages ago

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

I believe he's saying there shouldn't be tanks or healers - the game should be designed around having no distinct roles, thus allowing everyone equal queues.

That sure worked for GW2...

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

I mean... that is a constant issue in any MMO I've played. People like to DPS. They don't like to Heal and they don't like to tank.

Pretty much. I don't think I've ever seen an MMO that has the trinity system with a Tank or Healer population that is larger than DPS.

It sounds great in theory but Guild Wars 2 tried it and the dungeon content ended up being awful

Guild Wars 2 dungeons are lame from my experience.

But again, execution is what matters in regards to whether any concept is good or not.

There are plenty of trash Tank/Heal/DPS MMOs out there and they don't magically make the non-trash ones bad by mere association of concept.

Blade & Soul has no roles and plays just fine. Extremely well in fact that I enjoy it a lot more than Final Fantasy XIV combat but there are too many other points that FFXIV has over it that aren't combat-related that make me more likely to play it than Blade & Soul currently.

I'll mention TERA as a game that uses Tank/Heal/DPS but has tanking that is a step above the norm.

Playing a Warrior in TERA is sort of like playing Monster Hunter, in the sense that you have a ton of cool moves to use and you have to be vigilant and watch enemy telegraphs in order to uses iframes on certain moves to dodge enemy boss attacks.

It's a ton more engaging to tank in that game versus FFXIV's comparatively inactive bosses. Although that doesn't mean much in regards to the queue issue which is what I was complaining about originally.

FFXIV will never step away from the trinity so I'm mostly venting.

 

[Ravelle]

I decided to jump back in and bought Stormblood so I could join up with a bunch of friends, but they're on a different server that's locked down all the time. I tried on both late and early hours to make a character but had no luck so far.

This is't very new-comer friendly at all, my game-time's ticking away while I can't even join the server I want.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Those games, from my understanding, plays more as action games, so it makes sense. For games like GW2 or FFXIV that are somewhat in the middle of the road that would mean basically starting from zero, and they aren't gonna do that now. Maybe for the next MMO

Spoiler

I wonder if there will be another FF MMO

 

[LordKasual]

Joined a training PF for Lakshmi EX.
Killed at 2nd try.

Then we also went to Susano EX.
1st Try we had one dps offline the whole fight and wiped because enrage
Killed at 2nd try


So....what the actual hell? Did Zurvan EX scare Squeenix SO BAD?

For the time being, i prefer PUGable primals to ones that require dozens of wipes per member to clear.

Coming into content late, getting clears on the EX primals felt like hunting for a fucking job out of college. Most parties are "Farm, No bonus". Clear groups with silly ilvl requirements. No learning parties in PF. It was asinine. But at this difficulty, people are confident enough to actually run the content.

I'd rather them just dump all the difficulty into the Omega Savage raids. Alexander was thematically pretty boring. I'm hoping for Coil level fights this time around though.

 

[piratepwnsninja]

Hm, do I try to do some side quest grinding on in-air wifi during my trip across the Atlantic tomorrow.

 

[iammeiam]

Joined a training PF for Lakshmi EX.
Killed at 2nd try.

Then we also went to Susano EX.
1st Try we had one dps offline the whole fight and wiped because enrage
Killed at 2nd try


So....what the actual hell? Did Zurvan EX scare Squeenix SO BAD?

This was what was running through my head the first time through Lakshmi:

I think the lowest point for me, was when my pf group tanks couldn't survive the tankbuster, and not because they weren't swapping I was like "what!". I doubt seriously that the PLD was using intervention on the DRK, or they were actually using CD's at all...

This is depressingly common, but it's also one of the reasons I don't think Susano is particularly hard. The actual check on Stormsplitter is just "Did you push a cool down y/n?" Followed by "Did you tank swap y/n?" The cast bar is reeeeally long, so you've got tons of time, but a lot of tanks either don't CD it, or don't see any reason to use shirk which makes tank swaps less smooth than they could be.

My biggest takeaway so far is they have really, really failed to close the skill gap with the expansion. People's general reluctance to push buttons won't be addressed by shrinking the number of buttons. Healers that don't do anything half the time (I at one point had a WHM who every pull had 11-12 casts per minute; how is that even possible), tanks that don't mitigate properly or understand threat management enough to tank swap, DPS that don't ride the GCD and just kind of hit skills at random... It's been an educational couple weeks.

Healing is an exercise in masochism to me.
I don't think I find anything less fun than healing in this game. If I play them, I only do it in easy content, if I do it at all, it's only well after they've realeased content I can watch something else in while doing it like POTD.

I don't heal. I appreciate good healers, but I don't heal.

TBH I'm not sure they have a clear picture of what they want for healers at this point. They gave them a bunch of skills in SB that seem like they would have been super useful in a world where Clerics still exists, but removed Clerics and severely stifled the damage rotation.

 

[Lonestar]

Yeah I've been loving some of the combos you can do now . But my question is: is it mana efficient to cast Flare at the reduced mana cost versus just sticking to doing Fire II? I think I will take a look when I log on again.

I don't have actual numbers, but it seemed like Fire 2 gives in the area of 2-5k AOE damage per hit, and Flare in the 8-11k AOE range, and with the Triple Cast with the caveat that you have MP for each flare, you are far beyond whatever you can get with Fire 2 in the same time period.

But yeah, without triplecast or Quickcast up, I don't see a reason to blow the MP on Flare.

 

[hosannainexcelsis]

I decided to jump back in and bought Stormblood so I could join up with a bunch of friends, but they're on a different server that's locked down all the time. I tried on both late and early hours to make a character but had no luck so far.

This is't very new-comer friendly at all, my game-time's ticking away while I can't even join the server I want.

Which server are they on? If it's a high-population server such as Gilgamesh or Balmung, Square is actively trying to get players to leave those servers and spread out population across servers more, so you'll never be able to make a new character on it unless there's a mass exodus.

 

[mcw]

Uh...

Is this the place to talk about the game if you're new to it...?

 

[kromeo]

Uh...

Is this the place to talk about the game if you're new to it...?

Of course, the best of places

 

[DarkKyo]

Think I found my next armor glamour to go after

That one is awesome! I rocked it for awhile before Stormblood. I particularly like how bulky the coat is, makes your character look 50 pounds heavier.

 

[Ravelle]

Which server are they on? If it's a high-population server such as Gilgamesh or Balmung, Square is actively trying to get players to leave those servers and spread out population across servers more, so you'll never be able to make a new character on it unless there's a mass exodus.

Odin (EU)

 

[studyguy]

Uh...

Is this the place to talk about the game if you're new to it...?

Ya absolutely, welcome

 

[Wilsongt]

Uh...

Is this the place to talk about the game if you're new to it...?

Only if you hate lalafells.

 

[Lonestar]

Only if you hate lalafells.

and apparently like Pineapple on pizza.

...

 

[Aeana]

I mean... that is a constant issue in any MMO I've played. People like to DPS. They don't like to Heal and they don't like to tank.

I still don't know why. Healing is literally The Best.
DPSing is boring! Rotation rotation rotation. abcabacabc
Healing is dynamic! Something different is always going on.

 

[Severance]

Healing is an exercise in masochism to me.
I don't think I find anything less fun than healing in this game. If I play them, I only do it in easy content, if I do it at all, it's only well after they've realeased content I can watch something else in while doing it like POTD.

I don't heal. I appreciate good healers, but I don't heal.

Haha, healing is the only class I can main in MMOs in general. I get so bored playing DPS and keeping up rotations. I like the more reactionary playstyle of healing. It can be a bit all over the place though. Sometimes it's downright stressful and other times it is easy going. I can appreciate all aspects of it.

 

[Mister_Ruck]

I still don't know why. Healing is literally The Best.
DPSing is boring! Rotation rotation rotation. abcabacabc
Healing is dynamic! Something different is always going on.

I agree 100%. There's not a single thing that a DPS does that a healer doesn't also do, PLUS a healer has to actually heal. I don't understand how people can find it boring. Healers are literally DPS with more responsibilities.

 

[studyguy]

You guys ever wonder how gathering gear is supposed to improve abilities for gathering. Like my mining AF looks helpful for mining, hard hat and thick gloves. But this new 70 poncho and poof hat? Like how is this supposed to help me hit rocks?

 

[chogidogs]

Should I buy either of them now or is it going to take me hundreds of hours to even get to that content?

Also, will I be able to stack the free month that comes with them onto my subscription?

Thanks for any insight!

I played vanilla ARR and just came back last week for Stormblood. I'm one story arc away from starting it so if you intend on catching up, you can probably do so in a week or 2 if you mainline the story.

 

[mcw]

Thanks for the welcome, folks.

I've jumped in and out of this game since ARR launched and it's connecting with me now more than it has in the past. I can only play for an hour a night but I'm having a lot of fun so far. There's so much to do!

My son, who is two, loves to watch and is always interested in looking at everything. It's making me really appreciate how beautiful and detailed the game is. We can make a story out of everything. I spent ten minutes with him coming up with a story for why the flowers are glowing inside of the Conjurer's Guild in Gridania.

I'm a little worried about reaching the point when I will stop enjoying the game because I won't be able to do anything without joining a group. I don't know anyone else that is playing this. I'm also not sure how folks communicate in the game. I imagine most folks use a keyboard, even PS4 players like me, and that's not really an option with my setup. Can you guys share your own perspectives?

Also, is there any benefit to playing this on PS4 Pro? It seems pretty great on my regular PS4.

Also also, is it true the Mac version is not very performant?

 

[creid]

Do leves while you wait for the unspoiled nodes to respawn + commercial manual spam. Took me like 4 hours yesterday to go from 60 to 70 on my MIN

I was using regular nodes instead of unspoiled, since the unspoiled collectibles seemed to only give 2x more XP for much more effort. Am I missing something?
IIRC commercial manuals only give 150k XP worth of bonus, right? If there isn't some easy spot to get a ton of them, I'd probably use all of mine up long before I got a single level.

My gatherers are both 64 and that's just from messing around while in queues, they feel pretty fast to me. That has been with with rest bonus though

I've got a rest bonus but it doesn't look like it does any good when handing in collectibles. I guess I need to pay more attention to how much XP I get from a single hit during a leve.

 

[Stone Ocean]

I was using regular nodes instead of unspoiled, since the unspoiled collectibles seemed to only give 2x more XP for much more effort. Am I missing something?
IIRC commercial manuals only give 150k XP worth of bonus, right? If there isn't some easy spot to get a ton of them, I'd probably use all of mine up long before I got a single level.

Unspoiled nodes give more red scrips
More red scrips = more commercial manuals and Hi Cordials, which means much faster leveling. Grab all 3 leves for your level range, burn GP on an evaluation leve, gather GP on the other leve types, cordial up, unspoiled node, rinse, repeat.

 

[studyguy]

PS4 will work fine, but apparently it really shines on PS4pro.
If you're still rolling through ARR, then you can probably just duty finder (group up queue) whatever you need to do pretty quick. ARR definitely has some group content, but even early ARR was like... a bunch of single player story beats, then a group gated dungeon, bunch of story beats, group dungeon, story, group, story group.

I feel like there was more group content post base 2.0 but for the most part the game is pretty okay at letting you get through most of the main story of whatever content patch you're working through without having to deal with other people.


Also I thought MAC was dead for XIV, we had a discussion earlier about it last OT, someone else said it wasn't I think? Don't recall.

Unspoiled nodes give more red scrips
More red scrips = more commercial manuals and Hi Cordials, which means much faster leveling.

Peak leveling: Food buff, Free Company buff, Commercial manual, those manuals you get through squad missions. All at once.

 

[LordKasual]

My biggest takeaway so far is they have really, really failed to close the skill gap with the expansion. People's general reluctance to push buttons won't be addressed by shrinking the number of buttons. Healers that don't do anything half the time (I at one point had a WHM who every pull had 11-12 casts per minute; how is that even possible), tanks that don't mitigate properly or understand threat management enough to tank swap, DPS that don't ride the GCD and just kind of hit skills at random... It's been an educational couple weeks.

The gap is absolutely shorter than it was in HW comparatively

but there is only so much you can do about players just being bad at the game. That just isn't going to change.

 

[JoeyJungle]

I'm a little worried about reaching the point when I will stop enjoying the game because I won't be able to do anything without joining a group. I don't know anyone else that is playing this. I'm also not sure how folks communicate in the game. I imagine most folks use a keyboard, even PS4 players like me, and that's not really an option with my setup. Can you guys share your own perspectives?

Also, is there any benefit to playing this on PS4 Pro? It seems pretty great on my regular PS4.

Also also, is it true the Mac version is not very performant?

You don't really need to chat for most group events related to the MSQ, pretty much all I ever say is "Hi!" and "This is my first time, but I watched a guide! Sorry if I make any mistakes!"

Also I recommend watching guides for anything in the duty finder, the queue is going to take you 20 minutes minimum and the guides are usually about 5 minutes. It helps to know about any tricks in advance, so that people who have already run the dungeon 20 times don't get annoyed that not everyone in the group knows the mechanics.

 

[Stone Ocean]

You guys ever wonder how gathering gear is supposed to improve abilities for gathering. Like my mining AF looks helpful for mining, hard hat and thick gloves. But this new 70 poncho and poof hat? Like how is this supposed to help me hit rocks?

I work harder when I look fabulous

 

[Dougieflesh]

Thanks for the welcome, folks.

I've jumped in and out of this game since ARR launched and it's connecting with me now more than it has in the past. I can only play for an hour a night but I'm having a lot of fun so far. There's so much to do!

My son, who is two, loves to watch and is always interested in looking at everything. It's making me really appreciate how beautiful and detailed the game is. We can make a story out of everything. I spent ten minutes with him coming up with a story for why the flowers are glowing inside of the Conjurer's Guild in Gridania.

I'm a little worried about reaching the point when I will stop enjoying the game because I won't be able to do anything without joining a group. I don't know anyone else that is playing this. I'm also not sure how folks communicate in the game. I imagine most folks use a keyboard, even PS4 players like me, and that's not really an option with my setup. Can you guys share your own perspectives?

Also, is there any benefit to playing this on PS4 Pro? It seems pretty great on my regular PS4.

Also also, is it true the Mac version is not very performant?

Glad you're able to enjoy the game with your son. I also play on Ps4, and while I do use a keyboard to type, you can can also type with the Ps4 UI using the controller. I also got a Pro on Saturday and from what I can tell, the framerates in the crowded hub towns are much better due to the improved tech. Also the 4k display option makes a beautiful game even better.

 

[JoeyJungle]

So I'm thinking of leveling up a Paladin, is there a guide to playing a tank? I've played DPS in every single MMO ever.

 

[hosannainexcelsis]

Odin (EU)

Odin is considered a congested world, so you won't be able to make a new character on it ever. Either you'll need to convince your friends to move to a less populated server or just rely on the cross-world Party Finder if you want to play with them.

 

[Dreamwriter]

I was using regular nodes instead of unspoiled, since the unspoiled collectibles seemed to only give 2x more XP for much more effort. Am I missing something?
IIRC commercial manuals only give 150k XP worth of bonus, right? If there isn't some easy spot to get a ton of them, I'd probably use all of mine up long before I got a single level..

I believe Commercial Manuals are 300k, it’s the Company Manuals that are 150k

 

[iammeiam]

The gap is absolutely shorter than it was in HW comparatively

(Citation needed)

I mean, maybe? But that doesn't match what I'm anecdotally seeing and while FFLogs is super spotty right now, the % of Damage Difference between the 10th and 50th percentiles on the current EX primals in most cases extremely close to the % of Damage Difference between the 10th and 50th percentiles on Creator Savage (the 10th percentile in most cases is still about 78-ish%-80% of the damage of the 50th percentile. There are some exceptions, but that seems to be the overall pattern.) There's zero indicator so far they moved the floor closer to middle, and actually looking at the job rotations as they exist now there's zero reason to expect it to.

I don't really see anything to justify "absolutely" shorter

but there is only so much you can do about players just being bad at the game. That just isn't going to change.

True, but I'm not the one branding an entire combat reboot as supposed to narrow the skill gap, and then totally failing to provide players with useful tools on how the reboot is supposed to work. Remarkably, jumbling up buttons itself doesn't do much.

 

[Arkeband]

I hope the next class shares gear with DRG because I feel hosed blowing all these tomes on gear that doesn't share with 2-3 other classes.

Joined a training PF for Lakshmi EX.
Killed at 2nd try.

Then we also went to Susano EX.
1st Try we had one dps offline the whole fight and wiped because enrage
Killed at 2nd try


So....what the actual hell? Did Zurvan EX scare Squeenix SO BAD?

You got incredibly lucky, since one person queuing with bad DPS will sink you.

 

[dramatis]

My gatherers are both 64 and that's just from messing around while in queues, they feel pretty fast to me. That has been with with rest bonus though

Gatherers have the most arduous grind between 1 and 50.

To compensate, they are the easiest to level between 50 and 70.

 

[Ravelle]

Odin is considered a congested world, so you won't be able to make a new character on it ever. Either you'll need to convince your friends to move to a less populated server or just rely on the cross-world Party Finder if you want to play with them.

Bummer, I had a character on Odin some time ago but I could not get it resubbed or upgraded for some reason so I had to make a different service account.

This seems a bit shitty though, I can imagine servers have characters on it that have not logged in for years while others are standing in front of the door waiting to get in. It doesn't seem like a realistic rule to have. The term massive multiplayer means less and less with things like this when they're alienating newcomers.

 

[Thorgal]

Odin (EU)

Odin( my server ) to my knowledge is not one of the servers that got locked .

that being said , it is currently a very high congestion world due to many people coming back for SB.

best advice i can give you is to try at very early morning or very late evening to find the server open .

edit oops ; seems i was wrong apparently .

 

[kromeo]

Bummer, I had a character on Odin some time ago but I could not get it resubbed or upgraded for some reason so I had to make a different service account.

This seems a bit shitty though, I can imagine servers have characters on it that have not logged in for years while others are standing in front of the door waiting to get in. It doesn't seem like a realistic rule to have.

You'll probably be able to transfer over once things calm down a bit from the expansion, you'd have to pay of course

 

[dramatis]

I was using regular nodes instead of unspoiled, since the unspoiled collectibles seemed to only give 2x more XP for much more effort. Am I missing something?
IIRC commercial manuals only give 150k XP worth of bonus, right? If there isn't some easy spot to get a ton of them, I'd probably use all of mine up long before I got a single level.

I've got a rest bonus but it doesn't look like it does any good when handing in collectibles. I guess I need to pay more attention to how much XP I get from a single hit during a leve.

Don't do unspoiled nodes at your level.

For 50-60, I did the level 50 unspoiled node only, because once you're higher level you can squeeze more collectables at the required collectability out of one node. Since each collectable is a chunk of exp, oftentimes grabbing more collectables nets you more exp than grabbing less collectables of nodes at your level.

The same applied when leveling between 60 and 70. I only bashed the unspoiled 60 node, supplemented with leves which were really generous with the exp. Plus hq gc hand in.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

(Citation needed)

I mean, maybe? But that doesn't match what I'm anecdotally seeing and while FFLogs is super spotty right now, the % of Damage Difference between the 10th and 50th percentiles on the current EX primals in most cases extremely close to the % of Damage Difference between the 10th and 50th percentiles on Creator Savage (the 10th percentile in most cases is still about 78-ish%-80% of the damage of the 50th percentile. There are some exceptions, but that seems to be the overall pattern.) There's zero indicator so far they moved the floor closer to middle, and actually looking at the job rotations as they exist now there's zero reason to expect it to.

I don't really see anything to justify "absolutely" shorter



True, but I'm not the one branding an entire combat reboot as supposed to narrow the skill gap, and then totally failing to provide players with useful tools on how the reboot is supposed to work. Remarkably, jumbling up buttons itself doesn't do much.

I guess the intention is to closer the gap to the middle tier to the upper tier. Not the "I don't even care about what buttons I'm pushing, I just want to do Midare Setsugekka over and over" tier.

 

[duckroll]

I believe he's saying there shouldn't be tanks or healers - the game should be designed around having no distinct roles, thus allowing everyone equal queues.

That would be a terrible idea because it would mean that while everyone has equal queues, the odds of any given queue leading to absolute failure is also pretty damn high.

 

[iammeiam]

I guess the intention is to closer the gap to the middle tier to the upper tier. Not the "I don't even care about what buttons I'm pushing, I just want to do Midare Setsugekka over and over" tier.

That runs directly contrary to a bunch of interviews they gave about why they were making the change in the first place:

F: What about tanks?

Y: The current three tank jobs will share the same abilities. By introducing defense abilities such as physical damage resistance 20% up into role shared abilities, in their stead, we can create new unique abilities for jobs. You might think it will become easier, but the matter of fact is that it won’t. We will remove useless parts in order to strengthen party cooperation and skill rotation. By making the system simpler, we can go much deeper with the battle system. But, we don’t plan to widen the gap among players because of player skill, so I think that the gap will be somewhat filled between casuals and hardcore players. However, you will see a gap open between intermediate and advance players.

F: When talking about the current state of BLM, if your Enochian wears off at the wrong time, you fall in a situation where you can’t do anything but spam fire, and it is hard to recover.

Y: I think that players will be divided into advanced players and intermediate players in the future, but we plan on leaving some space for working things out, so please try things out. We won’t make changes that will damage good players, so stay assured. Top players are top players for a reason.

I feel like there was another interview that was much more blunt about it, but the run-up to SB was all about bringing the low end closer to the middle so a weak player wouldn't hurt a group as much, while accepting that minmax nerds gonna minmax nerd, so the upper tier will always stay its own wacky thing.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

We all laughed, but the system of kicking everyone before peak hours, is actually working.

116 queue in Ragnarok (used to be around 2k before)

 

[Ravelle]

Odin( my server ) to my knowledge is not one of the servers that got locked .

that being said , it is currently a very high congestion world due to many people coming back for SB.

best advice i can give you is to try at very early morning or very late evening to find the server open .

edit oops ; seems i was wrong apparently .

If this is the case I'll keep trying.