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[Pyros_Eien]

The opener and the TA > TCJ lining up probably helps overall DPS a large bit if you fit the Raiton from TCJ into the TA proc(which makes it better than the doton). Wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't noticed the katon > doton TCJ is stronger than Raiton > Suiton too adding some more potency they didn't see. It's most likely nothing to do with the rest since it's all very standard otherwise.

It's also possible they hadn't accounted for Shadewalker being a raid DPS gain as much as they should have. Not sure if that was a factor.

 

[Docpan]

New to the game.

Currently a level 19 Gladiator. I wasnt enjoying myself much but upon completing the second instanced dungeon certain aspects of the gameplay are beginning to click.

I'm not sure tank class is the way I want to go anymore. I played with this dude dressed like a samurai and that seems fairly badass to me.

To switch classes, do I just walk into a guild and just show up? Is that even advisable at this stage of the game for me and will i revert to lv 1?

Also, I know some classes are locked behind the expansions. I only have ARR. Is it advisable to buy the other 2 or wait until I finish mainline ARR then proceed in order?

Halp.

 

[scy]

Yeah, it being the bugged Doton JCT makes it awkward since this means that +60 potency + bugged trait cost NIN effectively ~300 potency in the same timeframe.

It isn't arrogance either, they are humble and honest about changes and take player feedback very seriously.

I mean, this isn't really a completely true statement you could say about them? Historically their response to claims is "Nah, you're doing it wrong" and then a patch or so later having to go "Well, nevermind." They're pretty quick to shift the blame.

What is it then? Are they actually just really, really, really terrible at their own game for some unexplainable reason?!

That makes it seem worse for them / inflates the playerbase but, sort of? It seems mostly like they have a very small range in terms of people playing all of the jobs and an underlying theme of 3.X was a misunderstanding / mishandling of how well players would try to align raid cooldowns. So a bit of not having the most time with the jobs in the content and then not as much of the optimizing side of it.

But that's just the like micro level of the min/max; there's a lot of SB changes even at a macro level that seem questionable in the context of their design. At this point, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out they basically just tried 8-10 jobs in the content and just winged the rest based off dummy tests.

 

[Vic_Viper]

Melding is the process of applying materias to gear basically. It can be done by the right crafter or by the NPCs you can find in most towns(icon is a blue stone, basically a materia). Costs a pittance in gold to have the NPC do it. For most combat gear the NPC is basically equal to a crafter, but crafter can overmeld(ingame called forbidden meld) on crafted gear, which lets you put more materia than the slots, up to 5. Probably won't be relevant for much combat wise though and crafted gear always costs a fortune anyway plus overmelding also costs a fortune cause it has a low % to succeed and all.

You can also combine materias to upgrade them to the next tier, that's done in Central Thanalan where you get the materia quest(might need lvl 20+crafter to get the quest though).

As for what materia, it seems currently for most classes Direct hit > Crit > Det.

Thanks for the info!

Any NINs here have trouble with the final Job Quest at 70? The fight isnt bad until the guy does a substitution jutsu and turns into like 10 copies of himself and just spams Fuma Shurikens. Im still using lvl 68 gear and am about to do the Ala Mhigo dungeon to hopefully get some better gear before trying the fight again.

 

[Trojita]

So they didn't even mention fixing Life of the Dragon/Nastrond?

 

[iammeiam]

Why do you think this is so though? Certainly can't say they are inexperienced. They weren't when ARR launched, and even if they were, we're 4 years in and at the second expansion now. They aren't terrible developers either, many of them come from solid teams within the company which worked on big titles. It isn't arrogance either, they are humble and honest about changes and take player feedback very seriously.

What is it then? Are they actually just really, really, really terrible at their own game for some unexplainable reason?!

They take some player feedback very seriously. They also really, really like pointing the finger at players when things go south ("harder than FCoB" does not mandate A3S/A4S no matter how often Yoshida wants to blame filthy raiders for them), or dismissing player feedback for some mystery length of time hoping the problem just goes away (see: the whole WHM lily "wait for early access, the media tour build was outdated!"; they didn't change the stuff people were actually unhappy with, they just punted the issue. Or 3.0 MCH with "the job is fine you all just need to learn to play."). It seems to largely be XIV's MMO component being heavily based on the WoW model with a dev team that approaches the actual development from a single-player perspective and the gap in what the former needs to be successful vs the latter.

It becomes problematic because over the years they've made no movement to actually address the gap. We're not going to get a PTR. We don't get the details on changes until servers are down to implement them. Communication is pretty poor overall, with Yoshida as the information chokepoint through Live Letters (dude is not going to be intimately familiar with every rotation, and that's perfectly fine! maybe rotate in the actual combat dudes more frequently!) It's not killing the game, but there's no reason to expect that stuff like "gosh we didn't think Ninjas would push all their buttons in an opener!" or "who could have foreseen tanks, who used slaying accessories all the way until we made VIT impact their DPS, starting to use slaying again when we removed VIT from their DPS calculations?" or "Zurvan's going to be a pretty hard primal, guys, please don't get mad!" will stop happening when their actual approach to balance doesn't change.

PTRs and publicly released patch notes and beta information are important because they allow developers to crowdsource things they might not have thought of on their own, and they at least allow for potential glaring problems to be caught prior to go live. Like, there's no reason they couldn't have dropped a comprehensive list of planned changes for 4.05 today alongside the Live Letter, aside from their innate aversion to actually telling us stuff. Any glaring potency stuff could be theory crafted out in advance, and if the community found anything super-damning they'd have a headstart on the necessary balance tweaks. The opting for secrecy at all times prevents that, and means they'll perpetually be catching up to the playerbase.

 

[Abstrusity]

Needing to take damage to activate the Greased Lightning refresh is some BS when half the fights in the game still don't do damage when they wander off to force a loss of your stacks. I bet whoever designed this was a goddamn Ninja main.

 

[Crosseyes]

Man I do not envy trying to balance the game around a whining mass of idiots that you have to somehow please as many as possible. You release everything with jobs already quite well balanced within each other and now you bring out changes that have been asked for for the past few weeks and the new loudest voices come out about 'it should have never gotten to this point' or people who wanted the exact opposite get their voices amplified by salt.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

The opener and the TA > TCJ lining up probably helps overall DPS a large bit if you fit the Raiton from TCJ into the TA proc(which makes it better than the doton). Wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't noticed the katon > doton TCJ is stronger than Raiton > Suiton too adding some more potency they didn't see. It's most likely nothing to do with the rest since it's all very standard otherwise.

It's also possible they hadn't accounted for Shadewalker being a raid DPS gain as much as they should have. Not sure if that was a factor.

I doubt shadewalker was a factor since it was so useful all through 3.x. if anything it's usefulness diminished with tanks being able to shirk each other higher and higher on agro

 

[Zomba13]

New to the game.

Currently a level 19 Gladiator. I wasnt enjoying myself much but upon completing the second instanced dungeon certain aspects of the gameplay are beginning to click.

I'm not sure tank class is the way I want to go anymore. I played with this dude dressed like a samurai and that seems fairly badass to me.

To switch classes, do I just walk into a guild and just show up? Is that even advisable at this stage of the game for me and will i revert to lv 1?

Also, I know some classes are locked behind the expansions. I only have ARR. Is it advisable to buy the other 2 or wait until I finish mainline ARR then proceed in order?

Halp.

To unlock different classes you just go to the guild and talk to the person at the desk to unlock it and then you become that class by equipping the weapon. Dark Knight, Machinist, Astrologian, Samurai and Red Mage are locked behind expansions, Heavensward for the first three and Stormblood for the last two. Classes have their own exp so switching to a Lancer would make you a lvl1 Lancer but you are also still a lvl19 Gladiator, you just need to pick up a sword again to go back.

 

[Stone Ocean]

Man I do not envy trying to balance the game around a whining mass of idiots that you have to somehow please as many as possible. You release everything with jobs already quite well balanced within each other and now you bring out changes that have been asked for for the past few weeks and the new loudest voices come out about 'it should have never gotten to this point' or people who wanted the exact opposite get their voices amplified by salt.

Wait what

 

[Crosseyes]

Wait what

Of fucking course they were already pretty good, overreactive whining doesn't suddenly make it so. There were a few outliers like MCH being a bit behind and PLD being a bit too far ahead but there were not gaping chasms between the jobs. There almost never is.

 

[dimb]

It's just not feasible to come up with every single possible scenario. Multiplayer games manage a semblance of balance - also the game is nowhere near as imbalanced as complaints make it out to be - but they constantly fuck up and have to quickly fix shit. League of Legends constantly puts out overpowered/underpowered champions because players come up with builds that the devs didn't envision or champs are garbage vs experienced players.

You simply can't expect a couple hundred people to figure out things as fast as several thousand players running this shit for several hours a day.

Come on....
There is only one way to play the jobs in this game. There aren't variable points in skillsets, and statistically players follow a fairly linear path towards certain armor sets at level cap. Stuff like League has tons of variables and also needs to account for more abstract contacts like how powerful mobility, ganking, or vision is. Even with those factors at play most characters fall within a few percentage points of each other when it comes to winrate. XIV is pretty binary in terms of character power. Throughput is everything, whether that's DPS or HPS. And yet looking at stats there's a severe difference between the top DPS job and the lowest, and players on the worst job have no real path to doing better other than to switch to a different job. Healing numbers (and I would imagine tank numbers) are even more egregious. There is no excuse for how bad the balance in this game is. The scope is not even that crazy...like they only have three different healers to balance and they still can't get it right.

 

[SoundPulse]

New to the game.

Currently a level 19 Gladiator. I wasnt enjoying myself much but upon completing the second instanced dungeon certain aspects of the gameplay are beginning to click.

I'm not sure tank class is the way I want to go anymore. I played with this dude dressed like a samurai and that seems fairly badass to me.

To switch classes, do I just walk into a guild and just show up? Is that even advisable at this stage of the game for me and will i revert to lv 1?

Also, I know some classes are locked behind the expansions. I only have ARR. Is it advisable to buy the other 2 or wait until I finish mainline ARR then proceed in order?

Halp.

You won't be able to change to Samurai until you have a job leveled up to level 50, and have purchased Stormblood if you already haven't. But otherwise, yes, if you want to change to any of the ARR classes, just go to the corresponding guild and talk to the receptionist. You will start at level 1 in that class, but you could easily swap back to Gladiator and resume where you were by simply equipping your sword again. Feel free to experiment to find out which battle class/job you like best, keeping mind that they change quite a bit as you level. A gathering and crafting class would be a nice investment as well. Mining is a good option.

As for the expansions, I would purchase them when you hit the level cap so you don't lose out on exp while you're capped. You do get Heavensward when you purchase Stormblood, so there's that as well.

 

[Trojita]

Man I do not envy trying to balance the game around a whining mass of idiots that you have to somehow please as many as possible. You release everything with jobs already quite well balanced within each other and now you bring out changes that have been asked for for the past few weeks and the new loudest voices come out about 'it should have never gotten to this point' or people who wanted the exact opposite get their voices amplified by salt.

Edit:

Of fucking course they were already pretty good, overreactive whining doesn't suddenly make it so. There were a few outliers like MCH being a bit behind and PLD being a bit too far ahead but there were not gaping chasms between the jobs. There almost never is.

Oh man, you're serious.

 

[Crosseyes]

Edit:



Oh man, you're serious.

I mean you can be a laugh all you want but IMO the percent DPS difference the classes were off doesn't need major handling.

The 'fun factor' of classes differences has my attention more like what they'll do to address DRG coming up in 4.05. I was having a lot of fun with it myself even in its current state so even more improvements for me is just gravy.

 

[Bebpo]

I saw a quick thing on job role skills at lower levels, but did they say anything about the issue of doing <lvl.50 with some jobs being broken because of main skill removals/changes?

 

[Gnomist]

Historically their response to claims is "Nah, you're doing it wrong" and then a patch or so later having to go "Well, nevermind."

I suspect some jobs will be waiting for 4.1 for a proper balance pass. Most of this likely comes down to the limited amount of testing they're able/willing to do. There's no PTR for them to gather feedback. They've mentioned that they basically test jobs in a vacuum and not always actual content, and then try to make adjustments after the problems are encountered by the players. They have a long tradition of shipping content that isn't working and then not being able to get around to fixing it for months/years. To me this suggests limited time and man-power, and that they're following a mostly set schedule without being able to always respond in a timely fashion.

At any rate, we still need to see exactly what goes life on Tuesday. Hopefully they get it right with this first round of changes.

 

[Bowlie]

Man I do not envy trying to balance the game around a whining mass of idiots that you have to somehow please as many as possible.

I mean you can be a retard all you want but IMO the percent DPS difference the classes were off doesn't need major handling.

Real good way of starting a conversation with that ableist language. And I caught your edit.

 

[Frumix]

I saw a quick thing on job role skills at lower levels, but did they say anything about the issue of doing <lvl.50 with some jobs being broken because of main skill removals/changes?

You can probably just forget about it. No one's going to retune NIN because it does half the DPS of everyone else in Sastasha.

 

[Sylas]

Of fucking course they were already pretty good, overreactive whining doesn't suddenly make it so. There were a few outliers like MCH being a bit behind and PLD being a bit too far ahead but there were not gaping chasms between the jobs. There almost never is.

There were/are definitely differences between jobs balance-wise that needed to be addressed. The issue is that 99% of people who are crying for it to be addressed have no idea what they're screaming about. There's an outlier of people who genuinely know (and who it'll matter to) while everyone else just sorta... Likes to scream about it. Not to say it doesn't need fixing/changing, but the overwhelming majority of people only know that an issue exists because someone else is telling them their is and they have no understanding of what the problem actually is other than "it feels bad."

Which is definitely part of the larger issue. The fact that we don't get a PTR definitely contributes to things feeling bad (though if you look at WoW and the sheer number of balance changes that go into regular hotfix patches you'd see it doesn't alleviate the problem by any means), but by and large you just have a lot of people screaming about a number they saw on fflogs.

The sad thing is? The people who actually understand the issue are a lot nicer about addressing it and are more welcoming of people who don't care about it when compared to your average fflogs user.

 

[studyguy]

The dev team not knowing a NIN's optimal rotation that was found when the game went live is pretty nuts.

Wonder what j missed when I knocked out at 4AM

 

[Altered Juice]

Dat obvious 4.1 vercure nerf. Hopefully blm/smn will stfu about rdm

it used to be that higher difficulty meant more DPS. We will be scaling down this factor.

Gotcha ass!

 

[Bebpo]

You can probably just forget about it. No one's going to retune NIN because it does half the DPS of everyone else in Sastasha.

Har har

It's not about some dumb lvl.20 dungeon.

It's about stuff like DRK and MCH start at lvl.30 and other jobs as well and 30-50 dungeons have issues. Grind PoTD until you hit 50 isn't really a good answer...

 

[Stone Ocean]

Come on....
There is only one way to play the jobs in this game. There aren't variable points in skillsets, and statistically players follow a fairly linear path towards certain armor sets at level cap. Stuff like League has tons of variables and also needs to account for more abstract contacts like how powerful mobility, ganking, or vision is. Even with those factors at play most characters fall within a few percentage points of each other when it comes to winrate. XIV is pretty binary in terms of character power. Throughput is everything, whether that's DPS or HPS. And yet looking at stats there's a severe difference between the top DPS job and the lowest, and players on the worst job have no real path to doing better other than to switch to a different job. Healing numbers (and I would imagine tank numbers) are even more egregious. There is no excuse for how bad the balance in this game is. The scope is not even that crazy...like they only have three different healers to balance and they still can't get it right.

That League comparison was bad, I admit. It's just that optimization has been a big factor in this game's balance so I prefer to give the devs the benefit of the doubt sometimes - like I expected Trips to make up for BLM's shortcomings.

And then you get stuff like WHM skills and STR accessories which completely contradicts whatever argument I might have in their favor so nevermind me in hindsight.

Of fucking course they were already pretty good, overreactive whining doesn't suddenly make it so. There were a few outliers like MCH being a bit behind and PLD being a bit too far ahead but there were not gaping chasms between the jobs. There almost never is.

But balance is most certainly borked. It's not big enough to matter as far as viability goes but lets not pretend for a second that SAM, NIN, RDM, MCH, DRG and PLD are anywhere near balanced in relation to other jobs in the same role.

 

[Omni]

I doubt shadewalker was a factor since it was so useful all through 3.x. if anything it's usefulness diminished with tanks being able to shirk each other higher and higher on agro

I wouldn't go that far

The tanks in my static aren't even in tank stance when pulling bosses anymore

 

[iammeiam]

Har har

It's not about some dumb lvl.20 dungeon.

It's about stuff like DRK and MCH start at lvl.30 and other jobs as well and 30-50 dungeons have issues. Grind PoTD until you hit 50 isn't really a good answer...

They've basically said jobs will feel like crap before cap, dealwithit. Which is awful but means I wouldn't get my hopes up for them making pre-64 MCH not a hash.

And then you get stuff like WHM skills and STR accessories which completely contradicts whatever argument I might have in their favor so nevermind me.

The WHM situation is fascinating to me because they've created a setup where WHM's success and failure for the rest of the expansion seems to pivot entirely around how the other two healers are tuned. WHM's already fine for all the stuff it does, the actual problems come in for the stuff it literally just doesn't have skills for. They can't balance tweak WHM to fix anything, it just constantly relies on Noct AST being really good and SCH not being an auto-include anymore. If they touch Noct or give SCH sufficient buffs that it is far superior to Noct again, WHM suffers.

It's just incredibly weird.

 

[Frumix]

Har har

It's not about some dumb lvl.20 dungeon.

It's about stuff like DRK and MCH start at lvl.30 and other jobs as well and 30-50 dungeons have issues. Grind PoTD until you hit 50 isn't really a good answer...

I just did Brayflox on MCH and it felt okay.
You have no buttons but it's okay.
Hot Shot getting 8% is such a low-level buff it won't be too bad down there (even if boring).
We'll have to see what they're gonna do to DRK's damage abilities but the same would probably apply.

Anecdotally it feels like lower level dungeons go faster nowadays than they used to across the board.

 

[Killthee]

I saw a quick thing on job role skills at lower levels, but did they say anything about the issue of doing <lvl.50 with some jobs being broken because of main skill removals/changes?

Yes.

Q16. Due to the large amount of job action changes in 4.0, some jobs may feel very different when level synced in dungeons level 50 and below. Concerning tanks, in 4.01 it became easier to maintain aggro. Will other jobs see similar changes?

A16. Adjusting each job’s skills according to each level synced low level dungeon isn’t very practical. Dungeons will be undergoing overall adjustments, such as actions used at low levels, and the HP of mobs in dungeons.

So....

 

[Stone Ocean]

I just did Brayflox on MCH and it felt okay.
You have no buttons but it's okay.
Hot Shot getting 8% is such a low-level buff it won't be too bad down there (even if boring).
We'll have to see what they're gonna do to DRK's damage abilities but the same would probably apply.

Anecdotally it feels like lower level dungeons go faster nowadays than they used to across the board.

It's not really anecdotal, a lot of early level skills got buffed because they got rid of a lot of meaningless traits on top of some potency changes and the new jobs being quite strong as far as sub level 30 goes, things are definitely faster overall.

 

[R_thanatos]

The dream is dead.

Well my 2 retainers are full , their selling lists are full my inventory is also mostly full and i'm just begining to start heavensward (lv54 )

I need more space.hankfully i could unload stuff into my guild safely but still

more space is needed

 

[R0ckman]

Oh they knew, they just gave the fans exactly what they wanted in this case.

Egis were designed small to not clutter the screen and people demanded large summons because duurr we are summoners we need big shit and now they are going "shit is too big!"

They can plau zoomed out during battles, so why is the new summon an issue?

 

[Stone Ocean]

They can plau zoomed out during battles, so why is the new summon an issue?

Because even while zoomed out it can be a pain in the ass.

 

[iammeiam]

They can plau zoomed out during battles, so why is the new summon an issue?

To shamelessly steal a picture from Reddit:

That's dumb. Zooming out doesn't make him not potentially block the entire group from view. Since he just mindlessly follows summoners everywhere and can't be sent to stand in a corner, the only option is for the entire rest of the group to adjust camera positioning to account for Demi Bahamut's oversized butt.

He attacks from range. He should just be /place able instead of on constant stalker mode.

 

[Bebpo]

Yes.



So....

lol, thanks. So basically their fix will be to make everything <50 easy and quick as hell so they don't have to try to balance/tune jobs at pre-50.

I'm really glad I jumped on the game last November so I hit 60 with my main battle class before these changes hit. I gotta imagine going from lvl.1->50 through ARR feels even worse/more boring than it used to now.

 

[Edzi]

Is WAR stance change penalty being removed confirmed?

Any other WAR news?

 

[Stone Ocean]

Is WAR stance change penalty being removed confirmed?

Any other WAR news?

More damage on Path combo
Shake it Off being reworked in 4.1
Other stuff that they won't go in detail, look forward to patch notes etc etc

 

[Killthee]

Is WAR stance change penalty being removed confirmed?

Any other WAR news?

Q3. Currently Paladin feels like it excels both in offensive and defensive capabilities, are there any plans for adjustments to Warrior/Dark Knight?

A3. We will be increasing Warrior and Dark Knight damage.

Making the cast time for Paladin’s Holy Spirit so short made it too powerful, so we will be making adjustments around that point. We’ll also be removing the reduction in the Oath Gauge when switching oaths.

Warrior’s Shake It Off will be adjusted.
Plans for adjustments are currently being talked over, and will be implemented sometime after 4.05.

We have removed the halving of the Beast Gauge when changing stances.
Additionally, the potency during Storm’s Path combo will be increased starting 4.05.

Dark Knight will see potency increases in combo damage.

 

[MechaX]

It's being pulled into 2 different directions and suffers from being attached to SCH (well, and SCH suffers too as a result). It's like 2 iterations away from being good. I liked the 3.x gameplay but I have so many issues with its current incarnation. It's frustrating.

I think at a certain point they are just going to make Summoner do it's own thing, and have an entirely separate class dedicated as a strict DOT class (I don't mean juggling all of two major Dots, I mean a lot; unfortunately, I don't know how many Warlock has now, so I don't have a frame of reference). And that's going to be around the time they finally kill the SMN/SCH split.

 

[Ragingnight]

SE is iffy on balancing and adjusting classes. Just look how they handled range classes in HW.

Bards just needed a few touched in HW and they would be fine. The warden touch was amazing. The amount of potency buffs? head scratching. All they had to do was give blood letter a charge system so that a reset wouldn't be wasted if it was back to back. That would have fixed 1) their burst 2) touch their dps a bit.

Instead BRD became a monster in the last tier of raiding and was the highest individual dps and highest raid dps contribution.

I saw what they did to mch and just SMH. The QOL approach is nice but that huge ass potency buff on overload? Serious?

In terms of dps balance at this point pre 4.05.

DRG: just need a very good QOL change with their whole gauge system and MAYBE a slight dps buff (but the QOL could have already touch on this).
MCH: needed a QOL touch and only slight dps buff and just a little more utility that used their mp.
WAR: basically fixed; they were already in meta in speed run groups
SCH: MP adjustment slightly and QOL touches. All of which have been addressed in this live letter
BLM: This one is a head scratcher. It def ups their dps but they needed more QOL touches. They already out dps RDM/SMN if they are allowed to turret. Once BLM optimize they should pull ahead. QOL changes helps reach that point.

The rest of the dps classes are fine. There could be some adjustment but overall everything is in a solid spot (brd buffs not effecting brd is silly but whatever). People asking for SAM nerfs have no idea what they are talking about. If DRG is ever buffed just a tad too much the comp will 100% be NIN/DRG/MNK/RDM if triple melee is allowed. In the case its not its RDM/BRD/MNK/NIN. Right now at the high end mnks do like 100-150 dps less than a sam while bringing brotherhood? yeah SAM are fine.

Though I pray to god they never buff piercing debuff %. If that ever gets buffed and brd/mch get slightly buffed then we'll see the return of double range + nin + drg comp. I mean just look at this. https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/15/#boss=1036&dataset=99 If BRD/MCH get brought up to like 200 dps more and get a 10% piercing then a drg would bring approx 600 dps approx from just disembowel alone. After that its not a far stretch to think that the buffs brd/mch would bring simply outweight the raid dps brought by SAM/MNK. Not sure on RDM.

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

Dat obvious 4.1 vercure nerf. Hopefully blm/smn will stfu about rdm



Gotcha ass!

Vercure getting nerfed?

Switching to Samurai.

 

[Frumix]

Vercure getting nerfed?

Switching to Samurai.

The thought that they gave RDM vercure out of sheer class fantasy considerations and didn't even think about practical applications of it keeps me awake at night.

 

[Haly]

Come on....
There is only one way to play the jobs in this game. There aren't variable points in skillsets, and statistically players follow a fairly linear path towards certain armor sets at level cap. Stuff like League has tons of variables and also needs to account for more abstract contacts like how powerful mobility, ganking, or vision is. Even with those factors at play most characters fall within a few percentage points of each other when it comes to winrate. XIV is pretty binary in terms of character power. Throughput is everything, whether that's DPS or HPS. And yet looking at stats there's a severe difference between the top DPS job and the lowest, and players on the worst job have no real path to doing better other than to switch to a different job. Healing numbers (and I would imagine tank numbers) are even more egregious. There is no excuse for how bad the balance in this game is. The scope is not even that crazy...like they only have three different healers to balance and they still can't get it right.

I made this argument in WoW as well. It's not like modern MMOs are some complex multivariable balancing act between multiple synergies. A straight up percentage based buff should be enough to bring classes within 5% of each other and yet Blizzard is still struggling with it. Every time a new balance patch comes out I look forward to the utterly lopsided parses my WoW friend links me. It's unbelievable.

And FFXIV is a simpler game in terms of number of classes and mechanics.

Originally posted by Blizzard (View Original)
Hi Cats,

We have a number of changes to Feral Druids coming soon.

...

The most major changes:
All damage done increased by 33%.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

I'm overwhelmed by all the new modes unlocked after Ifrit.

Should I bother with PVP now?

And I have seen so many random lvl 50 monsters. I didn't know they were hunts. Should I report their location on the GAF FC chat?

Also I really want to buy an armor set of my GC but seals are kinda hard to come by, and I feel like they'd be best invested in rank progress?

And every time I see you guys making parties I never volunteer because I think I'm too low level (37 archer, 2x botanist and carpenter).

Right, wrong? I'm a lil lost.

 

[darkside31337]

I'm overwhelmed by all the new modes unlocked after Ifrit.

Should I bother with PVP now?

And I have seen so many random lvl 50 monsters. I didn't know they were hunts. Should I report their location on the GAF FC chat?

Also I really want to buy an armor set of my GC but seals are kinda hard to come by, and I feel like they'd be best invested in rank progress?

And every time I see you guys making parties I never volunteer because I think I'm too low level (37 archer, 2x botanist and carpenter).

Right, wrong? I'm a lil lost.

I'm also confused by this hunt business. I've killed a -lot- of those level 50 mobs I see lately just for fun... am I doing something bad?

 

[Anfang]

So is the Gaf FC full atm?

 

[Haly]

Hunts: World bosses that grant rewards on kill

Hunts come in 3 ranks, B, A and S.

B gives nothing unless you have the corresponding "Hunt Bill", which is like a weekly special target. These are not worth fighting or calling out except later on where people are actually looking for them. You can recognize them by their light blue starry symbol next to their name, which indicates that they're not hostile (don't aggro unless attacked).

A and S give rewards on kill. A's are on a 4 hour spawn timer. S are on a 3 day spawn timer, so as you can imagine S's are very sought after. Sometimes if you see a location call out in a zone, this is what that is. It's best to join a group for these because getting full credit (credit scales based on "contribution") is very difficult solo. Announce these in your FC if you want to be helpful. Both A and S are hostile mobs and will aggro anything close enough. S's are much larger than A's, the size of raid bosses.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

Well I haven't tried yet but apparently you get seals if you kill them. And at level 50 you can officially unlock hunt quests? Idk.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

Hunts: World bosses that grant rewards on kill

Hunts come in 3 ranks, B, A and S.

B gives nothing unless you have the corresponding "Hunt Bill", which is like a weekly special target. These are not worth fighting or calling out except later on where people are actually looking for them. You can recognize them by their light blue starry symbol next to their name, which indicates that they're not hostile (don't aggro unless attacked).

A and S give rewards on kill. A's are on a 4 hour spawn timer. S are on a 3 day spawn timer, so as you can imagine S's are very sought after. Sometimes if you see a location call out in a zone, this is what that is. It's best to join a group for these because getting full credit (credit scales based on "contribution") is very difficult solo. Announce these in your FC if you want to be helpful. Both A and S are hostile mobs and will aggro anything close enough. S's are much larger than A's, the size of raid bosses.

Hashdkdkdsss that explains why some people were sending yell messages about "A's location" and then suddenly everybody started teleporting.

I was in the middle of a story quest so I didn't pay them too much attention. Lol.

 

[Haly]

Yeah you need to be 50 and a certain rank in your GC to get credit for A's and S's.

They give a special currency called Allied Seals for 50 and Centurio Seals for 60 and 70.