FFXIV

[Positive Touch]

just do frontline roulettes. you get so many wolf marks from each round that you'll have a full outfit in like under two weeks.

[Bebpo]

Played a bit of HW, explored around Falcon's Nest.  It's good but a little different than I expected.  I thought being an expansion, new worldmap it'd be like totally different from the very start.  Like I thought Foundation was just the base and Ishgard itself was in the sky, so I thought once you left Foundation you'd be flying around in majestic sky world.  But it's like just the same aesthetic as Coerthas, snow/ice/medieval.  I'm guessing Dravania will be different and unique.  Music is great so far though.

Also did the first Ninja lvl.50 quest and was kinda bummed the lvl.50 quests don't give any new moves and just unlock the HW job storyline.  But I guess since you got moves at lvl.50 already in ARR it sorta makes sense.  The lvl.52 smoke bomb quest move seems kinda lame.  Looking forward to getting something new that I'll actually use and will change up my rotation.

Also started the Dark Knight quest, did the job unlock.  Yeah, starting jobs at lvl.30 is so much better than lvl.1 since instead of like 1-3 moves over and over you start with like 12 moves and a decent rotation.  I gotta imagine starting at lvl.50 with the SB jobs will be neat starting at a full lvl.50 rotation with no prior work.  Otoh it's kinda weird that new jobs start 20 levels below where HW story starts.  Like if you walked into HW and thought "hey I want to be a Dark Knight as my main" you'd have to stop, level grind for 20-30 hours to lvl.50 and then you could play the HW MSQ as the new job.  Like I sorta feel the new jobs should start at the level of the first MSQ for an expansion.  Like even though these new jobs may be cool, I don't see myself touching them until I'm caught up on MSQ so I'll just keep sticking with my ninja so I can play the MSQ.

Thinking about it, doesn't this kinda fuck up the job variety/popularity on a server?  I mean outside your main starting job, once you get to HW or SB and you have 5 jobs that cover the 3 gameplay types that start at lvl.30 or lvl.50, if you're feeling like picking up a 2nd or 3rd combat job why would you ever want to pick a job that starts at lvl.1?  I mean if I want to heal I'll just use the lvl.30 healer rather than my lvl.15 conjurer since it saves me a bunch of time and is more fun off the bat.  Even with Tanks it's like I have my Paladin at lvl.38 but if I backtrack just a little I can start a Dark Knight at lvl.30 which isn't that far behind and actually has a tank stance while my Paladin still doesn't! (since they get it at 40).  Just feels like the new jobs kill incentives to start up an original job.  If they go ahead and kill the class system and let you jump into any ARR lvl.30 job at some point that will totally fix this.  I'm not sure how they'd be able to do it since the lvl.1-30 stories tie into the lvl.30-50 job stories slightly.

Also I'm a little disappointed at the lack of voice acting.  I was really happy with 2.2-2.5 how they kept making more and more of the MSQ fully voiced to the point where in 2.5 almost every scene in the MSQ is fully voiced.  I kinda thought that meant they had more budget and everything from that point on for MSQ would be fully voiced outside minor quests.  But like in HW the opening quest was voiced and since then nothing has been voiced.  Just makes the story telling much less dramatic imo.  One of the reasons why I really enjoyed 2.5's MSQ and got into it was all the voice acting.  Maybe at some point like Stormblood they'll have the budget to voice pretty much the whole MSQ?  I'm not even asking for 75% of the 10,000s of lines of text in the game to by voiced, just the MSQ would be 100% acceptable for me (although it'd be cool to have VA in job quests...)

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Voice acting is great but expensive. Believe me, there is voice acting during the parts that matter, specially as you get into it.

Class balance isn't messed up because leveling 1-30 past your first job is super trivial and there's tons of ways to do it.  I know people who got DRK/MCH/ASTRO to level 50 the very day HW dropped just to be able to do the story with those jobs. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[Bebpo]

Isn't the fastest way PoTD floor 1-10?  You get 1/3rd a level in 10-15 mins.  So 60 runs = around 15 hours to quick grind one job 30-50?

1-15 takes about 2 hours, 15-30 probably takes about 5 hours.

It's all doable, but it's all a grind.  The 30 hours to get a second character to 50 is 30 hours you could've played through an entire single player rpg.

Anyhow, I finished watching the Dragoon job quest through 50 and it's weird because it doesn't really sync up with Einstein's scenes in 2.5.  If you did the Dragoon job quest through 50 does the 2.5 scene with Einstein's introduction play out differently?  Because if it doesn't it totally would not make any sense.

[Bebpo]

Also VA isn't that expensive.  I bet it's more of a time issue with the multi-language release schedule.  Lots of crappy low budget Idea Factor or NIS games have full voice acting.  Hell, Cold Steel has more VA than FF14 at this point.

[Positive Touch]

doing the dragoon quests only changes a few lines to show that Estinien knows you. it's pretty weird;it seems like the one storyline I've seen that doesn't match up with later content. it just doesn't make much sense having you become an azure dragoon too.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Palace of the Dead is only one way to level up (and its not a good one, because it doesn't teach you how to actually use your job in a dungeon/trial setting), and it didn't even exist before a few patches ago. Between challenge logs, roulettes, exp manuals, FATEs, increased xp gain in general, the armoury system, and the many accessories that boost xp gain before level 30, getting a job to 30 is utterly trivial once you know what you're doing. Yes, it'll take hours. But then, anything in any video game ever has a time requirement, so that's not exactly a good argument. Time spent leveling my other jobs that I can then use to play with friends is more valuable to me than playing another game.

I would not look at the voice acting in Idea Factory/NIS/Kiseki games where a large amount of the budget DOES go to VA due to them playing up "we got so and so popular VA to voice our game!" as an argument for it not being expensive in general, specially with some of those games having partial dubs. 

Estinien's story from the drg quests matches up fine. He gets beat up at the end of the 50 questline (with Alberic himself mentioning that he's still alive), flees back to Ishgard to recover, then pops back up when re-introduced during 2.5 no longer under the Eye's control. There being two Azure Dragoons is also fine:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Azure Dragoon is a dragoon that is capable of utilizing the power of Nidhogg's eye: a vessel of power with a will of its own that is capable of choosing who it will grant its power to, with Alberic being chosen for that position before Estinien. The Eye chooses whoever it deems most powerful/capable of fully utilizing its power.

When you first meet run into Estinien, the Eye sees the Warrior of Light and decides that he/she is also a capable vessel for its power. Which doesn't make much sense initially, until a certain revelation in Heavensward:
Bebpo Spoiler:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The fact that there are two Eyes in existence, one whom chose Estinien, and the other who chose the WoL.

[close]

 

[close]

[Positive Touch]

it more seems odd to me because the azure dragoon is a high-ranking and well-known position in Ishgard. they're like the leader of their special forces basically. they're also entrusted with one of the city's most important relics. yet WoL comes along and they're like "sure the positions yours! great job!" to someone that isn't even allowed into the city. doesn't seem to make sense, especially considering how much Ishgard stresses status and tradition.

/nerd

[The Legend of Sunblade]

I mean, its not like they have much of a say. Ishgard has that position in high reverence, but The Eye of Nidhogg chose the WoL to be an Azure Dragoon, it's not like they can impose rules on an ancient dragon artifact. 

Also, they aren't entrusted with shit. The reason Estinien has the Eye in the first place is cause he stole it. 

[Positive Touch]

true. thinking back on it, i thought it was weird that the trials in the dragoon quest were too easy that it seemed ridiculous that that was all someone had to do to be the azure dragoon, but in the context of the msq it works better.

[Bebpo]

Eh, still feels like a pain in the butt to me (I started Lancer the other day and got through lvl.6 or 7 in like 45 mins doing hunting log and it was boring and lost motivation to keep at it).  Healer hunting logs are the worst, but I guess you can buy the respec potion and respec your chocobo as an attacker to help do real damage.  My chocobo after like 200 hours is still only lvl.4 (I bring him out everytime I fight on the overworld) and has no attacking/tanking abilities since cure is #4 on healer and that was what I needed the most as DPS. 

But maybe someday I'll grind those afternoons.  Would be nice to have all of the jobs at lvl.30+ so I never have to do the boring 1-30 shit again.

[Bebpo]

Yeah I know all that since I ran it all when I was leveling my Gladiator as my alt.  Roulettes each day, hunting log complete, clear every dungeon/guildheist for the first time.  Then when you're done with all that it's either grind Fates or PoTD until you hit 50. 

It's not terrible and the game gives you a good amount of options, but it still isn't really "fun" and is a waste of time.  The sooner they let you jump into any lvl.30 job off the bat, the better.  1-30 as a healer for instance is fucking awful.  STONE...STONE...STONE

Anyhow, the endgame for Adventurer Squadron fucking sucks.  You can only do 1 of the lvl.40 quests per week, your max level for each character is lvl.50 and on top of that the rewards are kinda shit from the lvl.40 quests (like the survival manuals for gathering/crafting aren't even the +50% ones, they're the +20% ones come the fuck on).  Only good thing I guess is that the team chemistry means they do stuff like bring back 9 pieces of decent level materia if I send them on a mission.  Otherwise this whole grind of getting to this point has been a total waste :|

Also, noticed I'm sitting at 100 leves max again.  Time to do a bunch of trade ins for my crafters this weekend I guess.

[Positive Touch]

I'd take grinding 1-30 any day of the week over grinding 30-50. now THAT is a shitty grind. there's a bunch of items you can get that make the class grinding go by fairly quick. but 30-50 it's fucking roulettes and fate grinding in coerthas/n thanalan AGAIN. fuck that shit so hard. really hope there's some kind of bonus for those 20 levels that comes with sb.

[Bebpo]

Got my crafters/gathers to 30+ across the board now and Goldsmith up to 41, miner at 36.  I think I'm gonna try to get all of them to lvl.50 pretty soon.  Feels like with levequests if I spent a weekend grinding for 20-30 hours I could get them all to 50.  Then if I just use the XP from GC turn-ins until SB should be able to get them all to 60 before SB comes out.  Would be nice to go into SB with a lvl.60 Ninja and lvl.60 all crafters/gathers.  Then once I get them to 70 I can start working on other battle classes.

I kinda want to get main combat & crafters to max level before working on additional battle classes.  Eventually I'll catch up on MSQ, catch up on levels and then it'll be a good time to play around with battle classes getting them all to max level.  At some point might get burnt out though.

Like sometimes I wonder why I'm spending 100-200 hours leveling all the crafters/gathers to 50/60, like what am I getting out this?  And I think maybe I'm just leveling things for leveling sake like my adventurer squad -_-

[Akala]

It got you!   

[Bebpo]

I think people forget over time how terrible the 1-15 is.  I just spent almost 2 hours getting my Lancer from lvl.6->14.  This is with +30xp ring, +20%xp hat, +3% xp food, +50% resting bonus, +100% armory bonus.

Hunting log rank 1 done, took me through lvl.9, did 4 or so battleleves to get to lvl.10, both Guildheists + entire hunting log rank 2 done outside the last 3 entries got me to...lvl.12 and the last 3 entries being lvl.18-20 even with all HQ gear I crafted + accuracy food can't hit them as the level spread is a bit too much gotta come back at lvl.15 for them.  So what's left at this point at lvl.12 is battleleves...which all have shit xp payout, lvl.12-13 is 23k xp, lvl.13-14 is 26k xp and lvl.10 leves at bentbranch on max +4 difficulty only pay out about 5k xp, so after 10-15 minutes of leves or so hit lvl.13, then another 10-15 mins of leves hit lvl.14 and at this point I'm logging out for the night.

At least once you hit 15 you get multiple guildheists and a dungeon.  Once you hit 20 you've got a handful of dungeons/guildheists and rank 3 hunting log.

But 1-15 is just awful.  You can do it in a night but it's like a full entire dedicated 4-5 hour night session or 2 nights of regular couple hour sessions...and it's not fun at all (Lancer 1-15 rotation is so boring).

Thankfully after I hit lvl.15 on Lancer only have 2 jobs left under 15, Archer & Arcanist.  If I bite the bullet and grind those to 15 then I'll never have to do this lvl.1-15 shit again, which would be nice.  If 15-30 isn't bad I might bring all my battle jobs up to 30 before I get further in HW.  Will try it out with Lancer first (since I need to get to 34 anyhow to get B4B for my Ninja) and see how 15-34 is.

[Bebpo]

Also new job is Samurai and it's a...DPS?  Ugh, now I gotta juggle between Ninja & Samurai for my DPS.  Guess I will main Dark Knight for my Tank and Astrologian for my Healer.  I mean having a sword slashing heavy hitting focused DPS class sounds good as it's kinda missing, but Samurai is also kinda a bulky armored tankish job so hmmm.

But yeah queues gonna get worse for sure since more people playing DPS and fewer people playing tank/healer.  Would be a good time to try to main a tank/healer through the MSQ. 

Doma is cool though.  Looks nice.

[Freyj]

That's very odd. I thought Samurai was a lock for Tank.

Guess they're just gonna try to focus on making the existing tanks and healers more appealing, but this will definitely increase queue times.

[Positive Touch]

I can't believe we get a whole new continent omfg i figured we'd never actually be able to visit Doma holy jeez I'm so pumped

[Akala]

looks pretty good, hype for sky 2.0 

I was in Vegas last October and on a Saturday wife and I were going to some craft brew thing at the cosmo we were invited to. found out around noon it was canceled due to high winds in the area, so we figured we'd walk around and drink while looking for something else to do.

walking into the Paris casino I saw....a MOOGLE. started to notice cat ears on people and kids wearing fan fest labelled drawstrings and got a bit hype. was not really playing at the time, had no idea it was same weekend we were going to be in. stopped at a machine and looked at the event on phone, was sad to see it was completely sold out.

we people watched for a bit and went on through the walkway to bally's. there were a lot of people there for it (pretty easy to spot), but most were in groups and I didn't feel like interrupting anyone.

after grabbing a drink, were about to head over to the Cromwell when saw a guy just kind of chilling. I asked him if they announced the expansion, and he said they had and we chatted for a bit. I mentioned how cool it was and that I didn't even know it was going on, bummed it was sold out, etc. Turned out he had to leave early, and gave me his lanyard and pass so I could at least check it a bit! Wife wasn't thrilled but it was still pretty early in day so she indulged me and said I was fine to go for a few hours.

finished drink with wife, grabbed another then went over to check it out.

there weren't a ton of people in as it was kind of in between events.  there was a fat chocobo statue in the entryway, and a giant one people were lining up to ride on/get their picture taken. there was a big screen for the presentations, it was PVP championships or something. tons of lans set up on almost 1/4 of the room, didn't really see what that was all about. lots of great cosplayers. there was a RL triple triad game and card hunt, but as I didn't have the swag book/entry deck they wouldn't give me any. saw the merch area and it was awesome. was going to grab a vegas fan fest shirt, the lore book, and a coin purse for my wife for being a sport. I then realized I was in the viewing/pickup area and there was a line. a donkey line. I grabbed a pic of like half of it apparently.

wasn't going to waste my afternoon in a line that didn't look like it was moving. was kind of annoyed, but continued looking around. as said, there was a PVP tournament going on that I found boring, and not really much else at that point. the live letter didn't start for another few hours. I was losing my buzz and didn't see anywhere to grab a drink so ended up leaving to meet back up with wife. If she would have been able to get a ticket, I would have probably dragged her to the live letter and concert so she kind of lucked out on.

All in all pretty cool. I don't know if I would plan a trip around it/go again as it's not really my thing, but glad I was able to at least check it out!

*edit - pics borked and don't feel like resizing! http://imgur.com/a/qOEPu

[Bebpo]

Got my Lancer from 14-20 in a couple hours.  It's still slow and dungeons are reaaaaally slow compared to lvl.50 dungeons, but I do appreciate that from lvl.15 on you get enough xp from dungeons to get you to the next dungeon so you can pretty much just chill and run dungeons/guildheists/trials.

Lancer seems pretty sucky compared to Rogue.  Like it feels slower and weaker damage output.  The little bit of extra reach doesn't really seem to make a difference it's not really ranged or anything.

[Bebpo]

So duckroll joined and he's just getting to the dungeons now.  I went to party with him on party-finder for sastasha since he's on ultros with gaf, but party finder doesn't unlock until after sastasha.  I pulled up my Marauder/Conjurer since it'd be helpful for queuing and they were both lvl.15 so since for Tam-Tara/Copperbell I'll need to be 16/17 I went ahead and geared both out and did the lvl.15 guildheists & sastasha with my healer and lvl.15 guildheists with marauder (will do sastasha tomorrow).

First time healing in a dungeon and wow, THIS IS FUN.  Like lvl.15 healer is sooooooooo much more fun than lvl.15 lancer was.  I like how healing jobs are exciting as you're trying to get the most DPS in as possible while also keeping everyone alive and not cutting it too close to scare your party.  We had an epic moment even in the first dungeon where they pulled way too many enemies at once and the tank and dps thought we were gonna wipe but switching between cures/medica & cleric stance/aero/stone it was close but I kept everyone alive and made it through that moment.  Was pretty great.  I can see healing being a fun alternate job to NIN DPS (I really feel like I only need 1 DPS, they all play pretty similar going by NIN/Lancer/Pugilist, I'm actually gonna skip Samurai in SB now that it's a DPS -_-).  Which of the 3 healers has the best DPS?

Also, DPSing as a healer makes me notice that when I play with random people the reason some of these early battles seem to go slow is because the healer is not DPSing at all.  When I was DPSing along with the team we blew through Sastasha FAST, things died quick.  When I did it the other day with Lancer maaaaan that was a long 30 mins.

Also got back in the swing of things no pun intended with Marauder and eh, it's ok.  Definitely more fun than Gladiator even at this point (overpower >> flash), but still a bit dull. 

[Akala]

heals da best. my main is WHM lol.

from what I've seen SCH is more and easier DPS, also a bit more ezmode to play. I am only ~50 with it so haven't really had much high level experience with it though. if in a competent party my DPS as WHM can be pretty legit, tends to go off rails some if big pulls or constant heals needed.

I haven't really touched AST, it used to be bad but apparently it is best/most in demand now for endgame due to chance of stacking buffs.

curious to see changes in store for WHM.

[Bebpo]

Also, I know 3.5 introduced the selfie camera, but how do you access it?  Is it a lvl.60 unlock?

[Akala]

The /gpose thing?

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/7335298/blog/3093948/

[Bebpo]

Wait you just type /gpose to activate it? 

Gonna go try this now.

[Bebpo]

Oh wow, that's easy and has tons of options.  Shit, as a digital photographer hobbiest myself I can see myself spending way too much time taking photos now.

Did Tam-Tara with my Marauder, got to lvl.19, man playing with bad DPS as a tank is rough!  I was fighting the squid boss guy and at times he gets a purple line to an imp and becomes invincible.  Normally the DPS would go and pick the imp off the my 2 DPS just kept attacking the invincible boss and I had to run over and kill the imp myself as the tank.  Then the next time the imps spawned they still didn't get it and I had to go kill both imps.  I gave them nice advice afterwards about killing adds as DPS.

But yeah I don't really care for tank.  DPS/Healer all the way.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Seeing Samurai DPS was a bit of a swerve for me. Two new DPS means DPS queues will be gutter trash for a long time, but I guess that's good for me as a tank. I understand the reasoning of not wanting to add fuel to the already messy tank meta right now, but I still woulda liked a new toy to play with. 

[Bebpo]

Aren't queues still gonna be bad as a tank or healer because you'll need to wait for the other tanks/healers?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

 

No such thing. The biggest perk to playing a Tank or a healer is that your queues will almost always be instant for relevant content, because there are always going to be 100x as many dps players as there are people willing to do those jobs. It's the reason why the Adventurer in Need bonus for roulettes is pretty much TANK 24/7. This will only be exasperated once everyone and their mother is trying to level up their new DPS jobs from 50-70 but there aren't enough tanks around for people to do that stuff. Tanks suffer a bit during 8 man raids initially because its only 1 tank per party, but even that gets alleviated after a bit.

When Ninja first came out on its own during 2.3 or 2.4, people were legit selling their services as tanks for anyone that wanted to do a dungeon because getting into duty finder as a ninja was impossible. I might do the same thing once SB comes along.

[Akala]

My old PLD from 1.0 is parked at 50. After I top main I may bring it up in the SAM/RDM army. Assuming they make it better.

[Bebpo]

Well I should be level 60 with my Ninja so I'll be going through SB with it.  If I happen to have any other classes at 60 when SB comes out I can switch to them if the queues get bad, but probably just want to stick to Ninja.

[Lucretius]

A little disappointed they didn't announce Dancer. I've been playing FFXI this past week leveling a RDM/DNC. Would love to see what Yoshida could do with a melee healer.

[Lucretius]

Ultimately FFXIV's character development system is too closed and linear to do justice to many of the esoteric jobs of older Final Fantasy games. I can't see it doing justice to something as open-ended as Blue Mage, which by design can be made to be overpowered.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Blue Mage would be a tank. They need to get hit to use their opponent's abilities, tanks are getting hit anyway. 

[Bebpo]

You know, I was thinking, at some point will the battle system get elemental affinities/weaknesses?  Because like I can up my elemental resistance, but otherwise there doesn't really seem to be any elemental focus in the game yet pre-HW.  Like it'd be neat if a boss was weak to fire so a mage could make all the DPS weapons on fire or something like you would do in a single player rpg with elements.

[Lucretius]

You know, I was thinking, at some point will the battle system get elemental affinities/weaknesses?  Because like I can up my elemental resistance, but otherwise there doesn't really seem to be any elemental focus in the game yet pre-HW.  Like it'd be neat if a boss was weak to fire so a mage could make all the DPS weapons on fire or something like you would do in a single player rpg with elements.

Your character has certain elemental resistances in your stats.  I believe these are based on which deity you choose when creating your character.  But these are just vestiges from 1.0.  Some early raiders toyed with those Fire Ward potions during the final phase of T5 when the off tank would end up having to stand in the fire puddles to soak the eggs.  Some of the 2.XX primal weapons had elemental stats, i.e. Shiva's weapons would have Ice Resistance +19.  But there has never been a situation in-game in which you would want to choose a weapon with good elemental resistance over another weapon with a better primary weapon damage stat.

And as far as I know, there are no enemies that resist any elemental attacks to the extent that a mage would ever change his rotation based on that.

[Lucretius]

Blue Mage would be a tank. They need to get hit to use their opponent's abilities, tanks are getting hit anyway. 

It certainly is a cool idea, but I can't ever see them implementing it in XIV.  Part of the cool thing about BLU in XI was the effort of seeking out and farming spells throughout the world in your own order and how customizable BLU is in XI.  XIV's job progression is always just... "talk to this guy and go do a fetch thingy.  congrats!  you now have the same abilities as every other person playing your job."

I mean, it would have been pretty rad during T13 progression to be all, "Now the TANK can cast Akh Morn on Bahamut Prime!"  And then we'd never use any other tank in the game. 

[Positive Touch]

wouldn't that just create situations where ppl would get pissed at the Blue Mage for not having a certain ability?

and given the way Black Mages work in 14 i can't see them ever implementing an elemental system. it'd require a total revamp of not just the class but so many other things too. it definitely felt weird to me at first to have a final Fantasy game with no elemental weaknesses tho.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Elemental resistances are still used in the game, but they're more background changes you don't notice than anything. For instance, the bubble in Garuda EX that lets you shrug off Mistral Shriek raises your wind resistance by like 1000%, and it's viewable in the chatacter window that shows those stats.

[Lucretius]

wouldn't that just create situations where ppl would get pissed at the Blue Mage for not having a certain ability?

In FFXIV, you are absolutely correct. With very few exceptions, for each job in FFXIV there is one set of cross class skills that is ideal for all fights. And people are totally correct to ge pissed if you ar doing serious endgame content without them. 

What?  You're a Bard who wants to do progression in Savage but you haven't leveled Lancer to 34 to get Blood for Blood?  GTFO!  And don't get me started on Warriors and Dark Knights trying to do endgame having never leveled Gladiator to 22 for Provoke. The point is, XIV's cross class system doesn't really create flexible play styles the way XI's sub job system does.

[Lucretius]

Also I hope I don't come across like I'm criticizing XIV in favor of XI. Love them both.

[Bebpo]

I kinda thought healer was easy mode in MP since you just sit back and heal the tank or medica and get some dps in no worries.  Then I did the Ifrit battle!  Managing healing the tank, healing other members getting hit by AoE who might not be close enough for Medica to get everyone while dodging the AoE's directed at you..caught me by surprise and was a bit chaotic.  Definitely broke a sweat.

What are some good tips for Conjurer/White Mage? 

And I have esuna but haven't used it yet.  How do you see what negative status effects your teammates have?  Normally there's just a list of effects next to a name, but most of them (if not all?) are buffs.  So how do you tell when a teammate has a debuff/status effect that needs healing?

Also what class do you get swiftcast as a cross-class skill from?

I probably should go and do the job quests to get the job quest skills.  I'm lvl.20 now, so I can go get Water if I do 5/10/15 and then cure II at 25.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Almost all debuffs have a red background to their icons and appear before the buffs on the party list. For example:



Note the debuffs with the red icon facing (with the arrow-shaped corner facing down) versus the multi-colored buffs with the arrow tips facing upward. Not all debuffs are cleanseable, however, and part of the challenge of healing is learning which are and which aren't.

You get Swiftcast from level 26 Thaumaturge. It's pretty much a requirement for every caster class to have it.

[Bebpo]

Do all debuffs have a "1" or some other number?  That would make it easier to tell what's a debuff for sure.

Also I realized I didn't post last night.  I played some more HW and went to Alba~~ continent in the clouds.  Now that's more like it!  That's the kinda of flying fantastical location I was hoping for in HW vs just more ice/snow/medieval Coerthas (also Foundation has great music, but from the 2d art I was expecting a shining elegant city in the sky.  Not just like standard beatup medieval castle).  The only thing about Alba~~~ is the lack of teleport points really sucks.  I'm not a fan of huge area maps if there aren't a decent amount of teleport points throughout to make easy access to get around.

And playing ARR I sorta was expecting when I got to HW maps to see TONS of people running around since I thought the lack of people in ARR maps was because almost everyone is 50-60 and in HW areas.  But like in Alba~~~ I ran for a couple hours around the first chunk of the area and while it's very cool looking, it was totally lifeless.  I saw one guy fishing and that was it.  No one doing any fates.  Even fewer people than ARR.  West Coerthas kinda felt like that too.  The problem is if there's no one in these areas than there's basically nothing to do.  They make big cool maps with zip to do besides run to the next quest marker.  Kinda a shame.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

You're playing the expansion areas during the tail end of their lifespan when most people already did the things there are to do in them. They aren't quite as lifeless as the ARR zones, but most people will be either up in the air or going straight to what they want.  That said, most people in the Sea of Clouds zone hang around the upper area of the map, cause that's where one of the beastmen are located.

And nah, those 1 numbers are just from stack-based debuffs. Like I mentioned, debuffs will always show up before buffs on the party list, have red icons and be pointing downwards compared to the upwards facing ones.

[Bebpo]

Oh, didn't catch the downwards thing.  That's helpful.  I'll try to work on my healer.  Since duckroll's in a different timezone we're having a tough time playing together so he keeps beating dungeons/trials while I'm asleep and I gotta keep up with my healer if I want to run healer co-op with him.  Good thing about healer is the instant queues, so if I just do my daily dungeon I'll get like 1-2 levels in < 30 mins at this point.

[Lucretius]

Note the debuffs with the red icon facing (with the arrow-shaped corner facing down) versus the multi-colored buffs with the arrow tips facing upward.

I've been playing since 2.2 and never noticed the direction of the icon point corresponding to the buff/rebuff. Thanks!

Always something to learn in this game. Reminds me of how I didn't get the Mapping the Realm achievement for Sastasha Normal Mode (first dungeon in the game) until the week before Heavensward released. There are some optional side rooms I'd never been in.

[Lucretius]

You know, I was thinking, at some point will the battle system get elemental affinities/weaknesses?  Because like I can up my elemental resistance, but otherwise there doesn't really seem to be any elemental focus in the game yet pre-HW.  Like it'd be neat if a boss was weak to fire so a mage could make all the DPS weapons on fire or something like you would do in a single player rpg with elements.

This episode was just released today talking about the vestigial elemental resistances from FFXIV 1.0. 



This guy has been doing a fantastic series on 1.0, btw.  They're all worth checking out.

[Bebpo]

The nighttime piano music in foundation is really nice.  I wish there was more of a reason to stay in that area since you're either running into the inn where the music changes or just running up the stairs to upper foundation which has different music.

[Bebpo]

Oh and did a healer run of lvl.20 Ifrit and saw the party wipe.  Didn't even know it was possible on that version.  Myself and one DPS were hitting the one nail (cleric mode, aero, water, stone II) but the other DPS stuck to the boss with the tank and Ifrit jumped before the nail was gone and wipe.  We gave the new dps a little direction after that and it went fine, but yeah I didn't think XIV had any party wipe mechanics before the first boss of Qarn.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Ifrit's nail is the very first party wipe mechanic in the game, yeah. Even shares it in hard / extreme: if you hurt him too much before taking out the nails, or dont kill them in time, he wipes the party. Had my fair share of parties who didn't get that back when the game launched.

[Bebpo]

Spent 3 hours today leveling Arcanist from 1-15, since my Conjurer is lvl.25 and I wanna be able to go straight to White Mage once I hit lvl.30.  1-15 was boring as always, but arcanist is sorta fun with all the million DoT debuffs + carbuncle. 

Now I only have 1 job left to do the 1-15 grind at some point, Archer.  Will be glad when that's over.  Then it's the 15-30 grind for all classes to have all jobs available.

[Bebpo]

Oh and I did a dungeon today as healer and was with 3 first timers and the arcanist DPS decided they wanted to be THE HEALER and would keep healing the tank instead of dps-ing.  I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be an ass but I was think STOP HEALING, DO DPS THAT IS YOUR JOB.  So instead I went cleric mode and did nothing but DPS as Conjurer lol

Like, the arcanist seemed worried everytime the tank HP would drop down like 100HP and he'd instantly go into a heal.  For me I don't worry about healing the tank until their down to about 30-40% HP unless they are constantly getting hit hard where I'll heal them non-stop.  But if it's just some trash mobs, I don't see any problem in DPS-ing until the tank is down to 1/3rd HP and then healing the tank back up and going back to DPS-ing and repeat.  But I can see how that might scare some people seeing the tank HP dropping down to 1/3rd.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Arcanists with Topaz Carbuncle out instead of Ruby. 

[Bebpo]

PoTD with random people and that 1 guy who wants to kill every enemy on every floor -_-
...and then leaving and a few mins later doing the next set and getting that same guy in your party again -__________________-

My bad experiences with PoTD are what keep me from sticking to it for leveling purposes on 2nd classes.

[Lucretius]

if I'm close to finishing a weapon in PotD, I like killing all the enemies because every enemy has a chance of dropping silver chests.  There's a pomander that increases those chances too.

[Bebpo]

Well if I just want to gain one level as a lvl 25 mage, taking over an hour to get through floors 1-20 is mumblegrumblemumble.  Wanted an alternative to dungeons/hunting log for a break but too slow for my tastes if played in that style.

[Bebpo]

So I gotta say I'm having too much fun with FFXIV.  Like I'm not addicted to the point where it's interfering with my life/work/social life, as I'm still doing all my normal stuff and don't play games any more than I normally would, but what it is doing is taking over ALL of my gaming time.  Like I got Nier Automata & SRW V and started both and they're great, but when I have free time I feel a stronger pull towards turning on FFXIV and running some dungeons with my conjurer to hit 30 and get my white mage job.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the completionist in me is not going to feel satisfied until I've finished 3.5 MSQ and every extreme/savage fight at least once, and gotten every job to lvl.60.  Like the whole "multiple jobs on a single character + cross-class skills" is such a good/terrible hook on SE's part.  If I wanna improve my Ninja, gotta level Dragoon to 34 for B4B, which also means Marauder to 15.  If I wanna play a good White Mage I gotta level Conjurer + Arcanist to 15 + I need to level Thurmatage to 28 for swiftcast.  I feel like it never ends until you've gotten every job to 60.

I think I'm not going to get a lot of games played in 2017 and 2017 will basically be the year of me putting in 1000 hours (already at 350 almost) in FFXIV and getting every job to lvl.70 and finishing the SB content that's out.  At least after that point I should be good and able to stop playing FFXIV for another 1.5 years until the next expansion comes out and raises the level cap again, since the small amount of MSQ added between won't take up too much time.

But yeah, it looks like 2017 is the year of FFXIV for me.  Also this is why I will never play another MMO after this.  But I'm committed for the rest of FFXIV's lifetime.

[Freyj]

That is precisely why I don't understand complaints about sub fees. Good MMOs consume your gaming time as a working adult. $12-15 a month for the entertainment value is insane.

Unrelated: have we heard anything about the combat changes forthcoming in SB? They've got to be doing something with ability bloat.