The Final Fantasy XIV Thread [Dawntrail - 7.00]

[Jason Tandro]

This is great but I really wish they'd taken the time to do their own subtitles instead of leaving it to the whims of Youtube.

1. It makes it all the harder on me to rewatch once I've downloaded it.

2. The Youtube captions half the time make no sense because of the atrocious grammar.


That said this was a great ride and even though I've watched a lot of 1.0 vids I'm still learning new things, like I'd never heard of the Great Goobue Wall before.

===


Edit: So won't be back to discuss this too much but I had to commemorate a certain major spoiler moment with screencaps of the kind that I don't think too many people will have - NPC placement after said event, basically impossible to reproduce outside that moment.

Spoiler: Story Spoiler, sort of, for "The Die Is Cast" (Lv 67)

Literally everything about that last cutscene in the castle tore my soul apart by the way...

 

[Obsidian Fire]

That's really neat.

One of the first things that struck me when I started playing FFXIV last year was that it was very apparent that the main devs had done their homework on MMO designs and at least spent some time playing the game themselves. The amount of quality of life fixes in most patches further reinforces that perception.

Incidentally, Koji Fox is not only the head of localization, but he's also the writer of most of the song lyrics for FFXIV.

 

[Lex]

This is great but I really wish they'd taken the time to do their own subtitles instead of leaving it to the whims of Youtube.

1. It makes it all the harder on me to rewatch once I've downloaded it.

2. The Youtube captions half the time make no sense because of the atrocious grammar.

They did do their own subtitles. It's in the settings button - subtitles. There's an option for Japanese Speakers Only, which is the one I used.

 

[Lex]

They nerfed enmity, I just found this out on the XIV reddit. As in, the reason I've been losing aggro slightly more often as WAR than I used to isn't because I'm totally shit at it lol. Kind of a relief tbh.

 

[Joe]

Oh god I didn't know you hadn't clocked that. Seriously it's so noticable as a DPS. Even using the enmity reduction cooldowns I am pulling aggro regularly in the middle of pulls and sometimes during a boss fight.

 

[Lex]

I'm just so used to pulling from the tank as DRG I assumed the new rotation was a bit OP while I was levelling through SB lmao. Turns out DRG damage has actually decreased a bit in relation to the other classes due to overall group utility. When I was levelling WAR I just thought I was being a shit tank. Now I feel quite good about my performance on both counts

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I hadn't really noticed the reduced aggro generation...

but then again, most of my tanking experience has been as a Dark Knight spamming Abyssal Drain for Samurai (and often Red Mage) in SB dungeons. It's kinda hard not to hold aggro with that even if you aren't in tank stance.

What I have heard other tanks mention is that it helps if the DPS don't all go after the same mob, but focus on different ones. That corresponds with how a lot of AOE attacks now have damage falloff so I'd think you'd want to be focusing on different mobs to make up for the falloff anyway.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

What happened was the attack power for tanks, which was previously calculated as a combination of VIT and STR, is now based entirely off STR.

This has led to a bunch of tanks using 270 STR accessories instead of up-to-date fending ones in order to maximize their DPS, since aggro is based off damage done. These tanks can hold aggro better than the ones decked out in full tank gear.

The problem is, Stormblood accessories are role-locked, meaning as DPS get stronger and stronger, Tank enmity generation is going to be increasing at a fraction of the rate, as STR is not included on right-side tank gear, and they can't equip STR gear from Stormblood.

The tanks are gonna need some adjusting in order to keep up with this in the future. I'm predicting a return to HW's STR +VIT system, or some major buffs to Tenacity, which isn't all that good a stat right now.

 

[AvecAloes]

^^ yeah this is worrisome for me. I was finally enjoying an easier time keeping aggro and now I'm terrified to even try queueing as a tank

 

[Obsidian Fire]

What it's really going to do is cause the worth of Strength V and VI materia to skyrocket. Along with all the crafted tank accessories. I wouldn't be surprised if the good tanks move to overmelded crafted accessories as that's a guarantied 50 extra STR with two VIT VI materia melded into it, puls whatever other Strength materia you can get to fit on it per accessory (+250 STR overall minimum). On the flip side, it'll be really expensive and will effectively lock how easy tanking is behind a gil (grind) paywall.

On the other hand... tanks have been played more like DPS with a huge HP pool for a while now. If SE really wants to make tanks act like takes again, then they might not think it needs fixing. 'Cause if you think the point of tanks is to hold aggro and not be damage dealers, they play just fine. It's only when they try to both DPS and hold aggro that they run into problems.

 

[Jason Tandro]

And here I was going "well maybe it's time for me to suck it up and level a Tank" but now I'm worried. I'll stick to leveling my White Mage, Samurai and Monk in the background for now.

That said I do want to eventually have at least one high level healer and tank for helping out in queues. I am not a poor tank but I am an inexperienced one. I seem to do okay as a Healer, juggling healing and tossing DPS when appropriate seems to flow better with my thought process, but we'll see how it goes when I get to the Level 50 content (I'm up to Level 38). My best tank is DRK, Level 38 which is a lot of fun to play but I think if I want to Tank in group I'd rather have my WAR or PLD. Is it just me or are DRKs more... squishy than the other two?

DRKs do make pretty solid Off-Tanks though.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It feels like DRKs have the least amount of defensive oGCDs, at least in early leveling. Which depending on weather you like a lot of oGCDs can be either a good thing or a bad thing (I don't like having lots of oGCDs). They are the only tank who has a defensive oGCD specifically for magic damage.

They do have the easiest gauge management though (I can't wait to get Bloodspiller so I have something to use my constantly full gauge on) and stance swapping is still a thing with them as it costs MP instead of gauge (which is what it costs PLD and WAR). As in, they don't get a gauge until Lvl 62. So do go into DPS stance as aggro allows...

And because their AOE and single target skills are split between MP and TP, it's really hard to run out of TP on them. I don't think I've ever run out of TP while bossing and that with me spamming my combos like crazy. They've got the most complex MP management out of all the Tanks though as they can't regen MP during battle or by outside regen effects. Instead they have to use their Soul Siphon skill. And they want MP for anything AOE or to run their DPS combo (which has Soul Siphon in it). So they're constantly generating and using MP if they're played right. They are very much a Tank that plays a lot like a Mage.

 

[Joker]

bloodspiller is the tits, but tbh I prefer using gauge on quietus and new!delirium

also lol I lost aggro during a boss fight for the first time ever and was really embarrassed - now I know not to be thank god

re: drk - the thing is that they were originally designed as a kind of middle ground between the mitigation of the paladin and the self-heals of the warrior (kind of like ast being the middle ground between whm and sch vis a vis sect swapping). Now, though, warrior is by far the worst tank, and paladin is by far the best, with drk somewhere juuuust behind paladin. It's a dark (pun intended) day when a paladin out-damages a dark knight. That being said, drk's level 70 ability is Stoneskin on a 15s cd, except the shield is based off of YOUR health, rather than the target's, and it will give you half a gauge every time the shield breaks. Which is op as balls.

bloodspiller for prez 2020

 

[Jason Tandro]

^ Even back in 2.55 people were telling young fresh-faced JT that Warriors "weren't real tanks" and they were just "DPS with Tank Role". Naturally my first Tank was a Warrior (I had to get MRD to 15 to go DRG, a system which is also now kaput) and yeah the damage deals were great.

I don't know how it is now personally but I remember low level tanking all three and by far the most painful before Level 26 (when you got Provoke) Paladin was insufferable. I would lose Aggro like a motherfucker and have to constantly spam flash and do the 1,2 punch. I remember Bards especially could tear an enemy off me like nobody's business. Warrior had Overpower which was one of my favorite "crowd control" skills even if it was just a frontal cone and not a ring, but damn was it fun. Too fun in fact, when I was starting out I overused that and ran out of TP. By the time I started playing with DRK I knew better than to abuse that awesome claw-ring move... but I still did sometimes.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^Well, the issue with Paladin is that Flash just generates aggro, and doesn't do any damage. Both DRK and WAR's AOE abilities do both which helps a lot with aggro generation before tank stance is gotten.

And we'll have to see what happens with tank gear... that i270 STR Sharlian accessories are looking promising if you don't have VIT issues...

 

[ForceStealer]

Here's the last part of that cool documentary,

 

[Jason Tandro]

^ Woooo!

Edit: Thank you for being ominious as all fuck, Yoshida-san.

 

[Flare]

Yeah I wanna chime in on that less aggro thing, I've definitely noticed it and have been confused about it, it's harder for me to keep aggro now. Originally I thought it was maybe the RDM just being a bit overpowered (I noticed it while doing dungeons with Joe and him being a RDM and almost always pulling aggro at some point in fights), but it's obvious that it's also WAR (and other tanks?) in general.

I don't like this, I was just feeling pretty confident as a Tank and then this happens, now I feel bad when people keep pulling things off of me and they shouldn't be unless I'm not doing my job. it doesn't happen allll the time but, a fair bit more than it used to.

 

[Lex]

^I think it's happening more because aggro is based off STR, so as tanks we're supposed to meld STR to all our gear. But obviously while levelling people don't really bother to do that. If we were fully melded it'd happen less often.

 

[Flintlock]

IMO the XIV team dropped the ball with job balance in this patch. With two new DPS jobs they really need to give people a reason to play tanks and healers. Instead they only made one of each feel worthwhile to play.

Still. Stick with what you enjoy, right? There's always another patch around the corner.

 

[Lex]

I've been parsing in the extreme primals and only manage to come first when I get Nastrond ;-;

still beating samurais even though their dps is supposed to be 700 higher than drg

 

[Joker]

I was hitting 13k crits on setsugekka at sub-60. Made me feel so good mmmmmmhmmmmm.

re: warrior - it USED to be the undisputed best OT in the game. It certainly has the best defensive cooldowns (still), but with the changes to the way the class plays vis a vis job gauge, it's currently sitting at the bottom of the pack. Shake it Off is garbage, and when both DRK and PLD get huge potency abilities, the 500 on Fell Cleave just ain't cleavin' it anymore. They used to be pretty mandatory because slashing debuff increased the damage output of ninja and the other tank by 10%, and it was part of their basic rotation. But NOW, with a slashing debuff being part of samurai's rotation, it's like...what's the point?

seems to me the best 8 man comp atm is pld/drk, sam OR nin/drg/brd/rdm OR smn OR blm, ast/either

no warrior, no monk, no machinist, because the other classes just...outclass them. i m o

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The problem tanks are having is that Aggro is calculated from the damage they cause. Tank stance and any skill that generates aggro acts like a multiplier on the damage that the tank is putting out. So if you're not doing a certain amount of damage you won't generate enough aggro to keep up with the aggro everyone else is putting out.

In HW, tank damage scaled off of both STR and VIT. The big takeaway from this was that VIT accessories contributed to a tank's damage the same amount that STR accessories did. Now, tank damage only scales of STR, probably because of how the Weakness debuff was changed. So now VIT accessories don't give tanks any Main Stat damage increase. And SE has role-locked accessories so that they can't get any new STR accessories. So basically, tanks are only getting their damage increased in a meaningful way by their left-side armor/weapon, that is, they're getting like, 2/3 the damage Main Stats everyone else is. Which if it only effected DPS, might be okay if that's the direction SE wants tanks to go damage-wise. But what it really means is that tanks are generating 2/3 the aggro they should be and having to make up the difference by spamming aggro generating skills more.

Further complicating things is that currently, tanks don't need all the VIT on those accessories anyway to survive the current tankbusters that are out (if they know how to use defensive oGCDs). So people who know what they're doing with tanks are wondering why need to wear the new VIT accessories when they can still wear the iLvl 270 STR accessories which give way more STR then melding STR VI materia onto VIT accessories ever will. For comparison's sake, you can get 250 more STR by melding STR VI materia on the new accessories. If you use the old iLvl 270 STR accessories, you get 390 more STR.

This is also what's been contributing to the overall lack of tanks. Not only did we get two more DPS classes, but tanking got a lot harder to do in general and the stats are messed up, so people have even less of a reason to do it. A lot of people are probably waiting for the next patch to see how SE will address the whole mess.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I was hitting 13k crits on setsugekka at sub-60. Made me feel so good mmmmmmhmmmmm.

re: warrior - it USED to be the undisputed best OT in the game. It certainly has the best defensive cooldowns (still), but with the changes to the way the class plays vis a vis job gauge, it's currently sitting at the bottom of the pack. Shake it Off is garbage, and when both DRK and PLD get huge potency abilities, the 500 on Fell Cleave just ain't cleavin' it anymore. They used to be pretty mandatory because slashing debuff increased the damage output of ninja and the other tank by 10%, and it was part of their basic rotation. But NOW, with a slashing debuff being part of samurai's rotation, it's like...what's the point?

seems to me the best 8 man comp atm is pld/drk, sam OR nin/drg/brd/rdm OR smn OR blm, ast/either

no warrior, no monk, no machinist, because the other classes just...outclass them. i m o

I'm not sure where SAM would stand in raid composition right now. As far as DPS go, Ninja has a guaranteed spot because they are the kings of utility, with Trick Attack, a slashing debuff as part of their rotation, three different aggro moves, a gap closer that doesn't require a target, and a silence move just for the lols. SAM doesn't really contribue anything on its own, since Ninjas will be mandatory (seriously, if there is one DPS that is overpowered right now, it's Ninja), besides massive DPS, but this also makes them the best targets for DRG buffs. With Disembowel weakened, DRG isn't really mandatory for piercing debuffs now, especially with MCH being kinda shit. Monk has Brotherhood....but meh. RDM will probably be in most early groups, because they are the DPS kings of progression, but we'll see how that goes when people start perfecting the fights and the extra healing utility isn't necessary anymore. BLM, as I see it, will be bigger later on, but not so much now. No clue on Summoner.

I'm predicting a NIN/SAM/DRG/BRD DPS meta, with the focus being on buffing the shit out of SAM while applying Trick Attack as much as possible. Healers are gonna be WHM/AST, for sure, since #RIPScholar, and Tanks will be PLD/DRK, unless groups decide that a PLD/PLD combo is worth the LB penalty.

Of course, this is still early on, and there is no doubt in my mind that WAR, SCH, and MNK will probably be buffed. Ninja may get some kind of potency nerf (they were barely touched at all in SB, and their new skills are insane), and I'm reeeeeaaaalllllyyyy hoping they address tank enmity scaling.

 

[Joker]

the change to bard's songs make them so much stronger, and while the piercing debuff was lessened, drg still increeases their damage (plus their own)

HOWEVER

battle litany is still amazing, and dragon sight is now a thing

also people are going to take red mage for embolden more than the extra healie dealies, since they buff physical damage

(which isn't to say that red cure isn't good, mind)