The Final Fantasy XIV Thread [Dawntrail - 7.00]

[Lex]

Holy shit Dragoon though. There's some crazy suped-up Gierskogul, another BotD dependent move and a cool looking kick move. Also finally a new jump move hnnnng

i am concerned by that new action bar tho, what is that

EDIT: LOL JUST WATCHED SUMMONER, BRB MAINING SUMMONER
EDIT 2: did that warrior just quadruple fell cleave what am i watching
EDIT 3: oh I see how DRG works now, I like it. BotD moves change colour depending on how long you have the gauge going apparently

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Woop! Bahamut summons for real!

But... It looks like from the GUI that the stacks of Atunment replace the stacks of Atherflow. So does this mean we can't have 3 stacks of Aetherflow and 3 stacks of Atunment at the same time? 'Cause that would suck for those of us who refresh Aetherflow stacks right before we go into Dreadwrym trance so that a good chunk of Aetherflow CD happens while we're trancing.

On the other hand, we can't see the normal buff bars. So there's no way to tell if that's what's going on until then.

It'll be interesting to see how much of a benefit the Bahamut summon is compared to the other ones (yes, I know it's supposed to be OP). 'Cause the reason nobody uses anything but Garuda is because Contagion (DOTs get 15sec extra time) outdamages anything Ifrit brings to the table.

Ah... I love figuring out mechanics...

I am wondering what all those job-specific UIs will do/represent. The one thing I am worried about is screen real estate and whether those are just a more obvious form of specific buffs that are already on the buff bar. 'Cause if they're already on the buff bar, then I'm probably going to want to turn them off. If they aren't on the buff bar... I do not want to keep track of 10+ different HUDs...

 

[ForceStealer]

I thought it was just colored on top of each other (for attunement/aetherflow).

Also, I never really thought about it before, but hearing Yoshida speak, it's weird that Japanese still gets -ra, -ga, -ja while English just gets the numbers. Why is that? I don't remember a game since 7 having numbers.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^One of the books in Great Gubal Library (Hard) pokes fun at that issue (the Ampador White Mages were getting confused on which Cure spell was the most potent, so they changed it to Cure I, Cure II, etc.). I think it's because "-ra -ga -ja" is really arbitrary while the numbering system isn't. It also takes up less room (in English at least). Also, -ga and -ja are pronounced similarly to each other...

 

[ForceStealer]

But the game is filled with ridiculous skill names. Convalescence, Paeon of War, Luminiferous Aether, Diurnal Sect, Enochian, Geirskogul, etc. etc. etc. And they were worried about people understanding the basic spell convention from the last 20 years? And now it's even less of an issue given that a lot of those spells will now take up a single ability slot. Why would ga and ja's pronunciation matter? And why are they more similar than ra?

Also I'm pretty sure Fira, Blizzara, Thundara, etc. are all shorter than Fire II, Blizzard II, Thundara II.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It has more to do with how you read stuff in a hurry. "Fire II" ends up reading like "F--- II" once you've seen the word "Fire" often enough. "Firaga" ends up reading like "F-----" if you're not paying attention ("Firaja" is "F-----" also). The spaces work like a mental break that help you pay attention to the next word. I've always hated that they took out the numbering system after FFVII because it takes me longer to read spell names when scrolling though menus/looking at tool-tips as letter order is more arbitrary then number order. R comes after G which comes before J, etc.

Also, all that is for English. Japanesse is probably a whole different ball game. I have no idea how "-ra -ga -ja" look like there.

 

[ForceStealer]

ラ、ガ、ジャ, respectively.

The numbers just...sound less like magic spells. More like movie titles.

 

[Joker]

I am wondering what all those job-specific UIs will do/represent. The one thing I am worried about is screen real estate and whether those are just a more obvious form of specific buffs that are already on the buff bar. 'Cause if they're already on the buff bar, then I'm probably going to want to turn them off. If they aren't on the buff bar... I do not want to keep track of 10+ different HUDs...

WATCH THE STREAM SUCKA

they are intended to make it clearer what's going on with your job specific things so you spend less time looking at your buff timers and the like - i.e. chakras and greased lightning stacks for monk, time left on blood of the dragon, enochian, astral fire/umbral ice, etc, as well as making you aware of which tank stance you're in (or if you're in one at all), and so on, so that you're not staring at those timers and missing cues in a fight rather than seeing the important stuff from the corner of your eye

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Probably has to do with how I set my UI up then. My buff bars are right above my HP and right below the bosses Debuff bars/Hp bar. Like, where am I supposed to fit another (larger) buff bar with the set-up below?

Spoiler

What I would really want is to have buff icons I could stick on a hot bar alongside the skills that have procs. Then it would be more flexible then a huge job-specific UI (that is too graphically distracting to provide me with information). All I know is that that's probably the first thing I'm going to remove from my HUD.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

*watches stream*

Yeah. Really want to throw some UI designers though a wall. The least they could do is make all the job specific gauges the same dimensions so I could have one overall UI. Having to come up with a different UI for each job is going to be so much fun. And apparently they have gotten rid of the old buff icons so you have to use the new ones. I just really hope someone in development gets the idea to have a simplified UI in there 'cause some of us prefer our info being in the same place visually on the screen instead of looking pretty. Like, those gauges are the most visually distracting thing on the screen for me. And it takes me longer to figure out what then mean then Roman/Arabic numerals over icons do (see my stance on Fire II vs Fira, same deal).

There are times I wish I wasn't so sensitive/easily distracted by visuals...

General stuff....

The TP based ranged classes have their mobility back. I'm betting Summoner is going to have less instacast spells and be about as immobile as a Black Mage that does not have Ley Lines up is. So TP = Mobility/Utility, MP = Power probably.

All Tanks have gauges to manage in addition to managing aggro. Like aggro wasn't something hard enough to deal with? Unless it ends up being really intuitive (aggro generating moves build gauge, damage dealing ones spend it?) or something, I'm predicting less tanks overall. On the other hand all the TP classes now have gauges to build/spend so that might just be a new skill floor everyone has to get used too.

Spells in the same series replacing each other as you level up (or level sync) is interesting. It makes sense for all flat damage spells and all non-stacking DOT spells. Stacking DOT spells gets a little weird though. Part of what gives DOT spells their power at high levels is that they can stack (IE: Bio II doesn't replace Bio because both can be on a target at the same time). The only way I can think of it working for DOT spells that previously stacked is to increase the damage of the "II" spell to compensate for the loss. I'm also curious as to what will happen with the spell series that have both cast times and no cast times (Ruin vs Ruin II). Instacast spells are used when traveling and it would be a shame to lose that option on mage classes that can currently do it. On the other hand... Bard and Machinist have no cast times now so all mage DPS classes might be loosing instacast damage spells to further the divide and create a niche for Red Mage which does have instacast spells.

Stuff I actually like:

Paladins get Shield Oath at Lvl 30!

The rework of cross-class skills. This has been a long time coming. And this looks so much saner then what they currently have. It also looks like this is an area where personal playing styles can come more into play.

PvP changes. Just the PvP hotbar alone would be good. A full rework is even better. Gear/Stat values being made the same across the board removes a major hurdle in getting into PvP in the first place. The thing I'm curious about is how combo chains now only take up one slot on the hot bar. I could see a lot of people basing macros for PvE off of that...

Healers use Mind for damage! No more worrying about if you turned on Cleric Stance at the wrong time! Using DOTs and damage spells if your regen/shield spells are keeping up with damage is totally doable now.

Changes to Accuracy and Parry and Piety. Losing the utility stats is good. I don't know if we really needed more role specific secondary damage stats though. Figuring out stat weights is going to be even more complicated then it used to be. Shame about Accessories being Role Locked though. I always liked that I only had to get one copy of an Accessory for glamour purposes...

Job jump potions. At this point in the game it's a good idea. I'm glad they're limiting it to one per account for the period of patch 4.0 - 4.1. It would be way to abusable otherwise. I can't help but wonder why the Job and MQ jump potions are different. I guess the idea is that you can jump jobs that you haven't leveled up to 50/60 yet...

Job Specific Stuff

Astrologian
Don't know if giving AST more cards was a good idea or not. Or if giving their cards more uses then just buffing was a good idea or not. Currently, the only cards you really want to pull are Balance and Ewer/Spire for the AOE effect. Everything else is just filler for the most part (at least at casual levels). Whatever cards are added or skills they're now used for have to be worth not getting a party-wide 10% damage increase as often. Also, their card game has gotten more complicated. So higher skill floor there. AST looks like it's going down a road where the good ones are not just good at keeping everyone alive, but figuring out what different card effects would be best and that's a hard skill to learn even with the easier system we have right now.

On the other hand, AST probably needed the biggest damage buff out of all the healing classes and it looks like they have a new AOE with damaging capabilities. I kinda hope they get some of the levels they get damaging skills at played with as well. It's really annoying to be doing Lvl 50 content and having no damaging AOE while White Mages have Holy and Scholars have their DOTs + Bane damage...

Summoner
Really gotta wonder how long SE has been sitting on that fire-breathing lizard... It must have been so hard for them not to put it in the Benchmark...

From the looks of it Attunement stacks are now like Atherflow stacks in that they do not have a duration. So no more wasting them because there's nobody around to use them on, the boss is invulnerable, etc. Nice. Also, it looks like it's not going into DW Trance that's charging up the Bahammut summon, but the Deathflare cast. So it might be possible to miss a Bahammut summon if Deathflare isn't cast. It also looks like the Bahammut "charges" don't have a duration either.

On the flip side... There's chains over the Atherflow stacks wile in DW Trance, so it looks like you can't have Atherflow stacks while in Trance anymore. Bummer. Probably have to start DW Trance when Atherflow has 20ish seconds of CD time left to go instead of refreshing Atherflow before going into DW Trance. Which is a tad harder to juggle as full Atherflow stacks aren't waiting for you right when you come out of DW Trance...

What isn't part of DW Trance is the Bahammut summon. And you can have Atherflow stacks when he's out and all the skills they showed you using when he was out had cast time, even the Deathflare. Fun observation: the animation around the "Ruin" spell is the same graphics the Hyperconductive Draconomicon (one of the SMN Anima weapons) has on it. I'm betting that Summoners are going to go from a 60 sec "rotation" to a 120 sec "rotation" centered around

Other random observations about Summoner. We've got a new Atherflow skill. We've got two new non-Atherflow skills, both of which look similar to other DOT animations. One has a cast time and one doesn't. While Bahammut is out, we've got a new Ruin skill and a new Deathflare skill. Both of those have cast times.

*eyes wall of text*

Why no, there's absolulty no correlation between me being a game-mechanics nerd and my main class's lore having to do with a bunch of mad scientist nerds doing magic with numbers and geometry and thinking that copying Allagan magic is a good idea... none at all...

 

[Joe]

A friend of mine shared the same general concerns. Like with Ninja, the Huton hud timer looks awesome and actually shows you the seconds above the 1minute duration. But is it going to incorporate every timer and buff the job has to keep track of? Doesn't look like it.

What this basically means is having an additional area of the screen to keep looking back at, on top of what we currently have. Bad decision there.
Unless we get the option to include the old hud system too and/or can play around with it. That would be the smart choice.

ALSO BAHAMUT. And Red Mage looks even flashier than before. So glad Summoner levels with my Scholar otherwise picking which dps to level would be hard.

 

[ForceStealer]

AST in particular looks to benefit from the icon, the ability to see your cards laid out seems a lot more convenient. As for the others, I think they all look pretty good except black mage, which looks confusing.

I also like that your single ability slot will use the appropriate move when you are synced down

 

[Joe]

Honestly my hud concerns are such a tiny factor beside my huge excitement. On top of the awesome new content there's a whole bunch of quality of life improvements and changes. Being able to use Job abilities in /gpose is something I'm excited for sooooo much!

 

[Joker]

tbh the solution here is easy

put your job gauge in that empty space on the left between the party list and everything else, and then move your buffs to be above or below it

at least, that's what I plan on doing, and my ui setup is very similar

 

[Joker]

ALSO, I think the most important thing here was missed

new tank role skill - an aoe fucking provoke biiiiiiiiitch

 

[Obsidian Fire]

put your job gauge in that empty space on the left between the party list and everything else, and then move your buffs to be above or below it

You can't see it well in that screen shot, but that's where my enemy list is. The best I've been able to figure out is to move the enemy list up and try to fit the gauge below that. It would probably work if they gauges were all the same dimensions, but no, they're all different...

And sorry for bitching about the UI so much. It's just something I look at all the time so any there's no way to get away from it.

 

[Flare]

I got the game now, it arrived sunday evening and I installed it and am no longer on a trial so I'm part of TLS's FC now! <3

I did Brayflox's dungeon last night with Flint's help. As per his advice I decided to continue leveling up Gladiator to 15 so I could unlock Warrior finally.
Gladiator is interesting, it doesn't make me feel like quite as Tanky as Marauder. It's a bit hard to describe but yeah. Maybe it get's better as you level it up and gain more abilities. But Marauder all the way for me, as far as comparing those two go.
Also, even though it was at first intimidating and even now I get a sense of pressure at times, I really like being the Tank. I like being the defense of the party basically, I want to be someone people can rely on to keep them protected. I just like that feeling. IRL I probably can't physically protect people much, but in this game I can be the big motherfucking tank that people get behind. It's pretty nice. A big job sometimes but nice

Spoiler: Anywho, Brayflox, yes;

it was definitely more challenging. I felt a step up with Haukke Manor, but this was an even bigger step up. At one point in the big marshy area, we pulled like 3 enemies, which turned into 4, which turned into 7-8, and it got a little hairy Flint almost died, at the same time he said something I pulled all the enemies back to me and I started feeling like I was doing a good job as a tank. No one died, sooo Final boss was fun too, that poison was spreading but I kept him out of it for the most part and we got him in a corner with no poison to kill him.
I freaked out when the dragon killed the salamander boss though. All in all I feel like I did good as a tank? I got a commendation so yay

Spoiler: Tangent about Rogue/DPS

I did one dungeon as a Rogue, and it felt... hmm idk, 'easier' in a sense. It was also interesting because the tank who came into the dungeon was AFK for the first 15 minutes (said he was trying to get his baby to sleep or something, probably a legit reason because he eventually joined up), so the three of us went on without him for a bit. Firstly, me not being the Tank, I experienced sort of being at the mercy of a Tank who was afk, whereas normally I'd just charge/lead the party on right away. Then I was just, idk, attacking enemies. Didn't have to worry about pulling them all to me, but it also made my job feel less important, though I know I was doing more damage than I normally do as a Tank. I mean I had to go after the adds but that felt like the only duty I had to do in a way. Idk, if I want to run some dungeons and not care to be as attentive as usual, then DPS is the way to go (though I have heard that later dungeons (50-60 lvl) challenge DPS classes more?)

Anyways, my thoughts so far on Tank, DPS, and Brayflox. Gonna play more now so

 

[Flintlock]

At one point in the big marshy area, we pulled like 3 enemies, which turned into 4, which turned into 7-8, and it got a little hairy Flint almost died

I think it would be more accurate to say that everyone almost died. I was using my biggest heals (Benefic II and Essential Dignity) on you as much as I possibly could but I just couldn't keep up with the damage you were taking. We simply pulled too much by accident, which can easily happen in Brayflox and a couple of other dungeons with wide-open areas like that. Everyone was getting hit but I didn't have time to use any AOE heals or you would have died. If either one of us had gone down then the rest would have immediately followed. But we made it, and those are the moments you remember later.

 

[Joker]

Don't forget to use your defensive cooldowns in situations like that! In later dungeons, especially once you hit the dreaded 44, you're going to find it easiest in most dungeons to pull two sets of enemies at once and use a cooldown or two (Foresight and then later Bloodbath should be enough tbh).

 

[Flare]

At one point in the big marshy area, we pulled like 3 enemies, which turned into 4, which turned into 7-8, and it got a little hairy Flint almost died

I think it would be more accurate to say that everyone almost died. I was using my biggest heals (Benefic II and Essential Dignity) on you as much as I possibly could but I just couldn't keep up with the damage you were taking. We simply pulled too much by accident, which can easily happen in Brayflox and a couple of other dungeons with wide-open areas like that. Everyone was getting hit but I didn't have time to use any AOE heals or you would have died. If either one of us had gone down then the rest would have immediately followed. But we made it, and those are the moments you remember later.

I wasn't paying attention to anyone's health but the enemies; nice to hear how bad it got
Okay well it was pretty exciting so I'm glad we survived

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Renders of the new Job Gear is now up on the Stormblood site (look under Media).

Spoiler: Paladin

Spoiler: Warrior

Spoiler: Dark Knight

Spoiler: Dragoon

Spoiler: Ninja

Spoiler: Samurai

Spoiler: Bard

Spoiler: Machinist

Spoiler: Black Mage

Spoiler: Summoner

Spoiler: Red Mage

Spoiler: White Mage

Spoiler: Scholar

Spoiler: Astrologian

 

[ForceStealer]

I wonder if they'll actually give them to you this time instead of stashing them behind freakin Allied Seals or whatever. :/

Also, all the Summoner equipment has paled in comparison to the original artifact armor, imo. Warrior looks great though. Astrologian is pretty good, White Mage is very Yuna. And the more Vivi-esque Black Mage gear is good.

 

[Flintlock]

I got both my Healer and Cleric sets without having to spend any seals; they were rewards for WHM job quests. Dunno if that's because I joined so late though. Or are you talking about something else?

Edit: looked it up myself, I guess you were talking about the HW "iconic" gear sets. I never bothered with them.

 

[ForceStealer]

Yeah, those. It annoyed me that we didn't get those for the level 60 quests. Again, I don't really care for the Summoner ones, but that's not the point I did want Dragoon.

 

[Joe]

Couldn't disagree more on Summoner tbh. I liked the original artifact armour for SMN but they went in an awesome direction afterwards. The horn combined with almost tribal/primal wraps makes it stand out amongst all the samey WHM white robes & BLM black robes (ft samey hat).

They mentioned in a Live Letter that the gear will be coming from Job quests btw, which I think we all wanted. A little disheartened by the looks of the SCH gear. So similar to the old artifact gear like what is the point. NIN looking good though.