Got all my DPS classes up to Lvl 61! Now I can dungeon grind on all of them at least.
Go figure... I have Wind-Up Ixion (who is joining Fenrir Pup and Griffin Chick as one of my "always on my hot-bar" minions) and the Ixion housing item (his electric horn) but not the Ixion mount... yeah...
Unlocked Emanation today, tried it twice, but the lag was UNREAL. I was unable to play it at all, so I still have to get through that so I can move on :/
I just discovered that FFLogs compiles aggregate statistics as well as individual/party rankings. I expected as much, but the site is kinda badly designed, so I hadn't noticed it before.
Here's a sample graph. It shows the one-week rolling average 50th percentile parses for each DPS job in O1S, going all the way back to its launch.
I chose this graph because O1S isn't too difficult, so a lot of players of varying abilities will have cleared it by now. The sample size is about twice as big as O4S (Neo), for example.
The first thing I noticed is that 4.1 massively helped Summoner. Move over Samurai, Summoner is now the top DPS! This isn't an anomaly, either; it's true across most raid-and-percentile combinations. A couple of random examples: 10th percentile on O2S, 90th percentile on O3S.
This leaves Black Mage in a pretty bad spot, since it puts out less damage than Summoner and offers virtually no raid utility. Red Mage has Verraise and Embolden but its personal DPS is dead last across virtually all percentiles. Red Mage also seems to have hit its ceiling a good few weeks before the other jobs, perhaps because its rotation is quite easy to optimise.
Most jobs took a dip the week after 4.1 launched and I'm not really sure why. Perhaps people were focused on other things. Machinist fell the furthest but has since recovered. Its DPS is pretty solid across the board, even topping the rankings here and there, such as the 50th percentile in Rabanastre. It does appear to be the least played job by some margin though.
Here's the equivalent graph for healers:
This disproves a misconception I'd held since Stormblood's launch, which is that White Mage has the highest personal DPS of the three healers. Again, the graph isn't an anomaly; it's reflected elsewhere too. White Mage is in a similar position to Black Mage in that there exists a job, Scholar, which provides both more damage and utility. Just like in Heavensward, it's only really useful in progression for its big heals.
Tanks:
Dark Knight is the loser this time; Paladin has better mitigation, Warrior has better utility, and both have better damage output.
How I think it should be, DPS: Samurai (most DPS, least utility) > Black Mage > Monk > Summoner > Dragoon > Machinist > Red Mage > Ninja > Bard (least DPS, most utility) How it is: Summoner > Samurai > Monk > Machinist > Dragoon > Black Mage > Ninja > Bard > Red Mage
How I think it should be, healers: White Mage > Scholar > Astrologian How it is: Scholar > White Mage > Astrologian
How I think it should be, tanks: Warrior > Dark Knight > Paladin How it is: Warrior > Paladin > Dark Knight
Key: Green if a job is higher in the list than I think it should be, yellow if it's where I think it should be (plus or minus one position for DPS jobs since they're pretty close), red if it's lower than I think it should be.
White Mage and Red Mage at least have some value in progression, but Dark Knight and Black Mage should probably be buffed. I won't say that any job should be nerfed because nobody likes a nerf.
As someone who mains SMN... that job's rotation is so ridiculously difficult to figure out and optimize (and to pull off) that it really needs high DPS to make it worth using. Otherwise BLM and RDM give way better returns for a lot less effort. The other thing, is that SMN is horrible for progression. On all those graphs, SMNs DPS for the first two weeks of raid is rather average (or even the worst) of all the other classes until the boss mechanics are figured out. Then when raids hit the farming stage, they really start to shine. Also... if you die as a SMN... good-bye DPS. You'll need at least 2-3 min to get your DPS back to normal.
What 4.1 really did for SMN was fix all player-based clunkyness of the job. That generally brought up all the average SMN players to be closer to the really good ones. And the really good ones got even better. What still needs to be fixed is the pet-based clunkyness. And well... the SMN player base has been asking SE to make it more fluid ever since ARR was launched. As the job has gotten more fluid, it's DPS has risen and I know that a sizable portion of the informed SMN community would not be opposed to a potency decrees if the job's clunkyness finally got fixed.
The biggest problem with BLM is that it's too stationary for the style of raids that are being designed right now. RDM has every-other spell as instant cast. SMN can have every spell be instant cast and have massive DOT/pet damage. BLM... if they have to move that much to deal with mechanics, then they'd better hit hard when they can stand still.
The thing with SCH is that I kinda feel like it should be top Healer DPS. It splits off from Archanist which is a damage class after all. Having it not being good at DPS would feel weird. WHM is kinda like the RDM of healers. Good at prog, but not for farming. And AST... so long as Balance is in their deck... who cares about their DPS?
Yeah... the DRK community has been asking for another mitigation ability ever since SB hit. The main offender is Dark Mind which only reduces Magic Damage (it's the only tank ability the mitigates one damage type now). The other weird skill is Dark Passenger which costs as much MP as Dark Arts, and does less AOE damage then Abyssal Drain and is on a 30sec CD to boot. Making those useful would be supper helpful.
Welp! Unending Coil still hasn't been beaten yet. In fact, nobody has managed to get past Bahamut Prime yet... those phase transitions though... epic... very epic... no really, one is called 7th Umbral Era... yeah...
And I am a grind masochist... I got all the Yo-Kai Watch weapons. I also got RDM from Lvl 60 to three quarters of the way to Lvl 63 just from FATE grinding for them. Welp, back to grinding out Zodiacs...
at an average price of 230k each thinking the market could support a much higher price, and while the next one did sell for double what I paid, undercutting quickly brought it right back down again. I'll keep one for myself and try to sell the others to break even but if anyone wants one, let me know. I also put one in the Company Chest, so someone can take it in exchange for a reasonable donation to our FC. Soldier 1st should be able to take stuff out of the chest IIRC.
So I finally unlocked the Shirogane castle schematic. The first step already requires the person submitting the materials to be a level 68 carpenter and a level 66 alchemist. I haven't even touched crafting classes since Stormblood launched. I currently have every crafting class at 60, but this is still going to take awhile. We can still gather mats while we get the required levels though.
Friends, we could do with some of your knowledge/experience.
Darth and I gave been wanting to play this game since forever many years ago. Finances have never been on our side though. But now they've been doing the trial thing that I don't remember seeing before? I dunno, the steam page is kind of confusing, and I find the website to be a similar CF.
Point is, the trial is an option. My question is: with the limitations on the trial accounts, is it worth the time, or should we wait until a year or two from now when we might be able to afford it?
Saying that though, ZAR/USD just breached R14 to the dollar again this week, so it might be wishful thinking.
The trial is no longer time-limited, so you can start whenever you want. The only danger is you'll get addicted and feel the need to subscribe before you can afford it.
^Basically what he said Although once you hit lvl 35 on one class you can go right to the next one and keep leveling everything up to 35 if you wanted. XD
I played the trial for quite a while (couple months or so??) til I finally started subscribing.
Soldier 1st should be able to take stuff out of the chest IIRC.
