The Final Fantasy XIV Thread [Dawntrail - 7.00]

[JechtShotMK9]

Me and my Tank friend decided to go in blind on Ravana EX, because we're tanks, and we can do that.

Worst mistake ever.

2 hours later, I had my sexy new "Finder of False Gods" title, a major hand cramp, and an irrational desire to go murder an anthill.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before here or not, but it really does need to be said.

The Heavensward Soundtrack is fucking amazing.

That is all. Off to listen to a 24 hour loop of Imagination.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^This. One thing I wish I could do is turn the track that plays while ridding mounts off so I can listen to the normal background track. I've totally decided to walk/sprint paces sometimes just to listen to the soundtrack.

 

[Lex]

^You can do that. It's in configuration - sound - "Play music while mounted" and it's a checkbox

Pretty much anything you want to do can be done in that respect. I'm sure there's even an option to stop the volume levels changing with your movement.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I thought I looked though there... but the amount of customization that doesn't have any attention brought to it is appalling. I didn't even know the UI was scalable until I searched up custom UIs. Which means that I now have everything that has to do with battle info down in the lower half of the screen, specifically the lower left-hand area... no more searching all the edges of the screen for information!

 

[Miscreant]

I thought I looked though there... but the amount of customization that doesn't have any attention brought to it is appalling. I didn't even know the UI was scalable until I searched up custom UIs. Which means that I now have everything that has to do with battle info down in the lower half of the screen, specifically the lower left-hand area... no more searching all the edges of the screen for information!

You can do a lot with the UI, i have mine set up really weird compared to most people as I play with a Razer Naga and a Logitech G13. I set up my UI so that my hotbars match the keys on my G13 (in the middle, used by my left hand) and Naga (on the right, used by my right hand) using a combination of horizontal and vertical hotbars. With clickable abilities that I don't frequently on the left. Heres a screenshot of my UI

I find scaling individual UI elements better than scaling everything as a whole too, as you can vary the sizes based on priority, e.g. I like my status, target and focus target bars to be big so that I can track my dots as well as my targets and focus target actions without much effort. Where as I know my Hotbar layout well so I don't need each individual icon to be too large, the hotbars in the lower right are even less important so I make them really small. I need my party list to be a decent size though as I do mouse over healing and if it's to small i might miss click a heal and kill someone. Playing around with your UI is something thats very personal though, you build it for your needs as its not very often that 2 UI's will be the same, well unless they are default anyway.

I wish you could turn off the battle music like you can with mounts, I tried to ask if they could add the feature at UK Fan Fest but they chose the guy behind me, who asked for a job instead of a game related question

 

[Joe]

As a SCH main I just want to say there are aspects of your ui that I adore. Gonna switch things up a little when I sign on next.

 

[Miscreant]

As a SCH main I just want to say there are aspects of your ui that I adore. Gonna switch things up a little when I sign on next.

Thanks

Just figure out whats good for you I guess, mine is very tailored to my needs when raiding. I have one serious inflexibility where I don't have enough space for all my pet actions, I could fix this by writing a macro to replace my pet abilities on summoning a pet, but I usually pick a pet and stick with it for a given fight. E.g. A5S is solo healable so I use Selene, A6S I use Selene to Silence the Blasters Mind Blast and her Fey Caress is helpful if people get hit by the Chakrams. Where as A7S and A8S are heal intensive, Eos's Fey Illumination is like an extra Divine Seal for my Whm, Rouse + Whispering Dawn is like a second Medica 2, and Fey Covenant can really nerf the damage dealt my Sizzlesparks etc. If I ever have to start switching pets mid fight than maybe I should fix it, but for now theres really no need

 

[Obsidian Fire]

This is what my set-up is like:

First version:

Second version:

 

[Miscreant]

I'm not sure if you know about it, but there is an option to hide unused hotbar slots, it might help you clean it up a bit

Keeping your target/ focus target central is definitely a good idea, I tried it but couldn't get used to it, but in my head it seems more efficient.

 

[Lex]

^Me too, I'm too used to the target bar being up top. I moved the focus target bar to be above my hotbar, but I've found myself missing casts/ not looking at it.

 

[Miscreant]

Thats exactly what I did, then Tanks started dying and I had to go back to where I have it now.

It makes a lot of sense to keep it in the middle though as you can follow whats going on onscreen and casts easier, so it's better to get used to it before you end up stuck in your ways like me and Lex

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I play a MOBA called SMITE which is also in 3rd-person perspective and everyone's HP bars above their heads or in a mini-list to to the left of center. So I was already used to having everything HP based in the middle of my screen. The outer edges are for things that aren't associated with battles.

The other thing is that I have "mouseover" targeting macros for the few support skills Summoners have, so having the party list where I can quickly move the mouse over to them is really useful.

And I'm now Lvl. 46 and there's a three level gap before the Main Quest picks up again. On the other hand, there's a ton of daily quests to do to get there, so it's not like that will take all that long.

My current past-time of playing Triple Triad has been going well. I've now got 60+ cards, which means I can have as many 3* cards in a deck as I want and am rocking the <Deck Hoarder> title. I'm also snickering that defeating 30 NPCs at Triple Triad is the only way to get Squalls card...

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Woop! The big Lvl. 50! Which means I can now slow down and pay attention to some of the side quests that I havn't been paying attention too...

 

[Obsidian Fire]

So I've spent the last two days power-leveling Black Mage up to Lvl. 30 so that I can have Swiftcast for my Summoner. It was interesting seeing how different the two damage magic classes handle.

Black Mage does burst damage and they pretty much have to stand still to do it (all their spells have cast time). They also have to watch their MP gauge like crazy. On the other hand, they don't have that many abilities to keep track of. Summoner does DOT damage and a good portion of their spells don't have a cast time so they can move out of the way without causing their DPS to suffer as much. They've got a lot more abilities to keep track of then Black Mages do though as their pet does nearly as much damage as they do. They don't have to pay all that much attention to their MP though as one of their abilities gives them 20% of their MP back and it's got a 60-sec cooldown. Given as that's the ability that gives Summoners the stacks to do their burst damage, you're pretty much never running out of MP unless you really mess up.

And now back to getting to Lvl. 60!

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I got my second level 60 today. Brand new ninjy with my super expensive Princess Jasmine Poofy Pants. It's been nice DPSing for a change, though.

 

[Miscreant]

Have you guys seen about The Palace of the Dead?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/4m55y7/the_palace_of_the_dead_ui/

It looks really good!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

That's awesome.

And how do the PS4 people get along with only four hotbar crosses? I haven't yet gotten the Lvl. 50+ skills on my Summoner yet and already I've got three hotbars full of skills and I use all of them (and that doesn't count the pet hotbar 'cause I havn't figured out how to remap those keys yet)... Welp, I guess that means the Alt key is going to get used for hotbar number 4... Current hotbar keys are 1-4, Q, E, R, F, Z, X, C, V (all the keys around the WASD keys).

Currently working through the pre-Heavensward quests and doing Lvl. 50 dungeons (oh man, the nostalgia trip on a lot of the bosses!) and unlocking all the raids/trials. At least getting Ironwork armor is easy; I've got a whole set and am now just letting tombstones pile up.

 

[Cthulhu]

You probably don't need all of those skills tbf, .

 

[Geostigma]

You probably don't need all of those skills tbf, .

I played FF14 a year ago so maybe its different now but I recall (especially for casters) that the different spell levels actually did have different effects and uses.

I.E. Drain 3 is not just a Drain 1 that does more damage. Often times I recall that the lower level version of a spell was more ideal or would result in higher dps etc. then the max level version due to the varied effects.

So it could be that they are necessary still

edit:

As an example here is a discussion i saw last week about min/maxing potency in a summoner rotation

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/4kotld/smn_energy_drain_is_a_dps_gain_over_painflare_for/

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^Yep. Bio 1 and Bio 2 are two different spells and you want to use both of them for max DPS. One doesn't replace the other. Similar thing goes for Miasma 1 and Miasma 2. Miasma 1 is single target DPS, Miasma 2 is for 3+ AOE DPS. Ruin 2 is a straight upgrade from Ruin 1 though (Ruin 2 is instacast), and you've got Heavensward, Ruin 3 can only be used in very specific circumstances.

Also, Summoner has like, three major sources of DPS; The DOT damage, the Pet damage and then Ruin and the damage that comes from Atherflow stacks and you only get three stacks every 60 sec (with 20% of your MP back). And all those three damage sources have multiple keys that you need to manually use. And Summoners don't really have an enforced/suggested rotation by the game... there's some obvious (and not so obvious) combos to use, but it's not like the game is putting blinking borders around icons for what skill to use next to maximize your DPS. Hence why you'll see Summoner guides online saying that Summoner's aren't really on a rotation system so much as they're on a priority system...

Just don't try to get burst damage out of a Summoner, they're not built for that.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I'm getting married XD

Shotgun wedding between sexy dragon girls FTW

 

[Cthulhu]

I'm just bitter because I've spent hours in the game hitting 1, 2 and 3 in a row, . 4 and 5 were added at top level / expansion I think.

I may also be quite bad at the game, but then, tanking4lyf.

 

[Miscreant]

For controller hotbar space you don't actually only have 4 crosses, you actually have 8.

L2 = 2
R2 = 2
L2 + R2 = 2
R2 + L2 = 2

Then you can rotate other hotbars with R1, outside of Scholars and Summoners you should be able to fit all of your abilities on your hotbars, but then I personally hate playing Scholar on a controller (I played on PS4 just before 3.0 and it's really inefficient for pet based roles) that being said I love playing Monk on a controller.

 

[Lex]

I'll admit now that I play inefficiently. Or what some would deem inefficiently. I use controller on PC but without the L2+R2/reverse combo. With all the heavensward abilities I considered using it but I just hotbar switch (that's where the inefficiency comes in). You can absolutely fit everything you need on 32 buttons in the classes I tend to play (DRG, WHM, WAR).

It actually makes sense (to me) for WHM and WAR, because I have healer/tank stuff on the first and DPS stuff on the second. As DRG though, there are times I've thought I really should start using the additional button combos rather than hotbar switching. Only because there are (incredibly rare) instances of having to wait an extra move to use an off-GCD move. It doesn't happen often. Prior to HW all the base DRG moves, power ups and off-GCD's fit on one cross hotbar with AoE/ moves you rarely or never use on the second. Since HW I've basically got those and the HW moves on the second hotbar, so when doing 50+ content I have to hotbar switch, but I'm so used to it that it's not an issue.

Also for the record I'm a filthy hotbar cycler, I don't actually manually choose the hotbar when switching. I just make sure I'm limited to two hotbars (the third is locked across all classes for class switching/ mounts/ teleport etc). It's more efficient in battle to press R1 to cycle than it is to hold it in and choose another hotbar.

I wouldn't say the controller is in any way limiting to DPS, ability to heal or ability to tank especially if unlike me you use the additional combo hotbars. Until they release new moves with an expansion and the rotation totally changes, I can't see me changing to KBAM for DRG. The only thing I'd maybe say is that I'm giving myself more work than the role needs to be, but I'm so used to it now that my performance in the role would suffer for quite a while if I re-trained. I may try the additional cross hotbar thing when I start playing again later today since I've been away for two weeks. The way I do it is kind of awkward to explain/ talk about, so I may make a video at some point to show you all what I mean.

For pet-based roles yeah, it really should be KBAM. Not that being top-tier in those classes is impossible with a controller because it's certainly not, it's just a bloody headache for micromanaging the pet (repositioning pets is an absolute pain on controller).