Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Some classes are certainly more boring than others all the way through. Paladins is the most obvious, but some others too. People find BLM boring, even though the fact it hinges so much on limiting movement and managing your random procs well makes it actually quite interesting to me(but you technically only use 5spells for most of the fight).

There's certainly a lot of downsides to the combat system. Some people don't mind or appreciate it, some do. If you do, well there's not much else to do about it, you're not gonna like the game, not really a big deal. I like the slower pace personally. Some stuff could be better, but it's not terrible and I find the gameplay at cap is pretty interesting for most classes.

Now leveling though, and low level stuff especially tends to be terrible. Dragoons literally only spam a single skill over and over in dungeons until like lvl 30 or whatever they get True Thrust at. BLMs only do Fire spam > Transpose > Blizzard spam > Transpose > Firespam until 44 or so. Ninjas do a lot of 1 2 3 and one/two step ninjutsus until 40. WHMs when not grouped basically only use 2 skills, Stone II and Aero, with maybe the off GCD cooldown push thing when it's up. Warriors mostly use one combo until they unlock the 2nd chain at like lvl 30 or whatever it was.

Overall I'd say their leveling experience on most classes is fairly awful. You get the important shit too late. Once you get it, it changes the way you play the classes and a lot of classes actually become pretty fun(like Dragoon), but until then it's fucking garbage on a lot of them. The leveling isn't super long, but it's not super short either it's decidely average, so that reinforces the issue when you unlock your key shit at 40ish, which is almost near the end of your leveling process.

I've been subbed to this since last fall, but only get to play like once/twice a month for a bit.

I have been levelling conj->whm and hit like 44 recently. The final 8 levels are going pretty slow. I found everything up to that point to be pretty quick, though. Of course I tend to have full rested and 100 leve quests available each time I log in, so that might be affecting my experience.

Anyway, its the only really playable MMO besides WoW. That's what I would say for it. Its not shit. Its not perfect. But it is playable, and by that I mean when I log in I don't dread logging in. Usually by mid levels in a game I'm bored to tears and hate logging in and that's when I unsub.

Harkon_sl said:

I started leveling my drag today and was reading old guides saying not to spam impulse drive and was so fucking confused since the positional requirements have now been removed. Its a true button mash class when leveling.

Click to expand...

Even back then you spammed Impulse Drive, you just needed to stay behind mobs to get full damage but that wasn't very hard unless the tank was an idiot and flipped shit around constantly, or you pulled aggro. Now you don't even care anymore.

It gets better as you level up though and the endgame dragoon rotation is pretty nice, multiple chains/dots and lots of oGCDs to weave inbetween.

Jackdaddio_sl said:

FFXIV's problem is that they take the old formula of turreting classes and then expect them to be mobile. It's kind of a retarded preposition when you think about it. You'll start casting or your melee chain and then AOE time.. run or hide, then hope you can get back on the boss in time to finish your rotations. In some cases classes like BLM or WHM can almost be completely cancelled out in terms of dps or heal effectiveness because of this.

If you look at the last update, this game introduced more AOE in the game just about everywhere that more resembles a Titan fight as normal content. I understand why they want the challenge for players, but you don't give them the tools to effectively to do the job.

I really thought SE would have learned from FFXI about static casting classes after over a decade.

Click to expand...

I don't think that's true at all though. You do have to run, but only a very specific times in a fight in general, and at least for healing, there's on very key component to these phases that you don't see in other games: bosses actually cast their spells. They don't just shit a ground marker then a fireball comes out of their ass and hit the ground area while he's still pounding on the tank. No instead he'll turn(or not, that kinda depends), and stops all actions for the cast time, then resume attacking once he's done.

This is a key difference because it means that when you're supposed to dodge, the boss isn't fucking the tank up like crazy. The other thing they do is they only force target one healer out of two, give the boss low damage, or make the movement phase predictable(% or time based) so you can get HoTs/shields rolling on the tank before you have to move.


I've healed Final Coil, and while some fights are very much "dodge all the things", such as T11, none of them actually penalize you for dodging by making the tank dead. In fact in T11, the times when you have to move around is when you get time to catch up on healing, because the boss damage stops entirely for an extended period of time while he does his dodge shit, and you have time to stop inbetween each move to land a heal, plus hots will heal people back up during that time or preshield the incoming aoe damage next.

Other fights have mechanics that simply ignore healers entirely, for example Earthshakers in T13 which forces you to have 2 people dodge shit while taking unavoidable damage, meaning they require healing. Healers never get targetted by those because it'd make the fight impossible since you can't heal yourself and dodge shit at the same time efficiently(not at that speed at least). And while this shit happens, tanks take no damage. Though right after it ends, tanks take a large burst, so you still need to keep an eye on it and make sure he's topped off at the end of earthshakers and if he's not, that's when you burn the instants to catch up. They give you limited tools to deal with movement or mechanics, but they always design the fights with these limits in mind.

Now BLM is a different thing, but BLM is one class. None of the melees have to stand still, at the very worst, they have to position to get max dmg output on that specific move, and I guess monks drop their stacks if they have to dodge for extended periods of time but that doesn't happen very often(and can be worked out via changing the strat slightly like keeping some adds alive during phase transitions)/is balanced by monks superior damage.

BLM suffers on some fights when they get randomly targetted. But that's also why they have the highest DPS out of all the ranged classes when standing still. It actually adds an interesting depth and higher skill ceilling to being a good BLM, if you can minimize the requirement imposed by certain mechanics by good use of Swiftcast, holding Firestarter/Thunder procs, using Aether Manipulation, using Mana Ward or Mana Wall, your DPS will go up and reach a very rewarding level.


I think the game actually mixes it well and has a different take on the dodge all the shit systems. The much slower boss attacks, the larger but predictable hits, the set rotations rather than random patterns for abilities, the damage output being such that a single healer can cover for a short while(or most of it depending), the Scholar having access to a 3rd "healer" that isn't affected by 99% of the mechanics and as such can keep healing at all times, it makes it so there's not really a "bullshit" moment in healing in my opinion. The closest would be lag issues and how playing from europe on top of the typical healing delay means sometimes I see a heal land but it actually lands after the hit on a dead tank or doesn't shield the hit I wanted to shield, though this is mostly the result of me cutting corners with DPS rotations and starting heals a bit late.

I mentionned Final Coil because it is the hardest raid and as such as the most complicated mechanics(though T9 and T5 are up there also). The fights aren't easy, but they not made hard because you have to move and heal at the same time, but simply because you have to move at all, and the fight is for the most part equally hard for classes that don't have to stand still like bards. Being able to cast on the move wouldn't change the fact you have to move, which is why most people seem to fail(on multiple levels, moving isn't just necessarily moving out of ground stuff, you have to move at the right time, to the right place and quickly asses wether you specifically or others have to move and so on). A dodge roll would probably make it easier by providing faster movement, however all it'd really do is accelerate certain effects to take into account that faster movement. They wouldn't design encounters that are made trivial by using an ability that is given to everyone.

The fact is, I don't think dodging stuff in Wildstar or GW2 was any easier than in WoW or even FFXIV. The time required to move is always factored in the time you are given to move. If you can move instantly 10yards in any direction, then you'd get 1sec warning at most and you'd be expected to use that instant movement to get out of it. If you played a game where you could only walk, then you'd be given ample time to actually walk out of the circles. But overall, all of them would give you say .5 to 1sec of time to notice you have to move, and then add how long it takes to move, and that's the total time you have to move. The first value tends to be a constant in every game and the second varies depending on movement options. Given more movement options would simply reduce the time on the 2nd part and the time on the first part, which is what bad players fail at, would remain the same.

Every class can still perform their job while moving or isn't expected to perform their job while moving, with the only exception of the BLM, for whom the entire mechanic is standing still. It's a bit similar to the Esper in Wildstar in that regard, but less shitty. See because Wildstar was such an ultra mobile game with the dodge and sprint, they felt compelled to completely liter the ground with telegraphs all the fucking time everywhere. And for the most part, it was good design because you're given such powerful movement abilities, it forces you to use them. Only that if you were an Esper, you were getting fucked by that design.

But FFXIV isn't quite the same. You used Titan as an example earlier, but Titan only forces you to move like once every 15 to 30seconds(depending on the phase and the part of the rotation). Most of the time you're in fact, standing still(or moving frantically from side to back if you're a monk and jumping off the edge doing a repelling shot at the wrong angle if you're a bard). You are asked to move at specific times, times that are well known in advance if you learn the rotation.

I think that's where your argument isn't correct. You said they give you turret classes(true at least for casters) and you're expected to move a lot, but you're not expected to move a lot. You're expected to only move at specific times, which are most often not random(there's surprisingly few random stuff happening in this game, though with long enough rotations people tend to lose track of what comes next and might assume it's random), and only a bit at a time. And when you're expected to move on healers as I pointed out before, the fight basically stops with the boss casting the skills. You're meant to either move, or cast. You're not expected to do both, because you cannot really do both. That's why the hard casts work fine.

Rescorla_sl said:

I can see your point about telegraph reaction time being relatively equal across multiple games. With that said, the reverse argument also holds true for the 2.5 second global cooldown. If a game isn't going to have action oriented combat like Wildstar, TESO, GW2 and Neverwinter, what is the justification for making such a long global cooldown? Why not just make it 1 second and balance the game accordingly? The animations I have seen so far are completed within 0.5 seconds so you are just sitting there waiting 2 seconds to press another ability.

I'm up to level 13 now and the slow combat is the one thing I have not been able to come to grips with yet. I will reassess things after I get to 15 and go tank a dungeon.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure there's any link between those 2 elements. A game that has a faster pace in movement by having dodge rolls is more likely to also have a faster pace in combat with a lower GCD/fast animation locks. A game with no fast movement doesn't necessarily needs more speed. Sure it can be done because of the low movement not detracting from it, but it also doesn't have to be done.

I think at the core, this game has a slower GCD for one main reason, it's so it's easier to be played with a gamepad. 1second is not much time to input several commands in a row using combinations of L/R, for the average player. Meanwhile 2.5secs is a solid amount of time to think about your next step and select the correct input.

As I said, this is very much a matter of preference, I never said this system was superior. Nor the hardcast/low movement system either. They work well together in my opinion, and I like how the combat flows in this game, but it's very unique in its "slowness" and there is absolutely no reason why it'd be considered superior objectively to a faster pace, it's just a different thing. Some people won't mind either(like me), some will mind the faster pace(casual console players), some will mind the slow combat(lots of people who are used to faster combat), but it's very much a subjective matter I'd say in what you like as a person.

If you don't like it, well it's not really gonna get any better, I'd say. I mean it kinda does get better, once you have to choose the right action at the right time, but the depth of the combat system in terms of twitch reaction is close to null for an experienced mmo players in the end. It might take a few days to get used to a specific class rotation and rythm and because the UI sometimes is a fucking disaster to get your shit running correctly(like keeping track of dots in certain situations and what not). I find most of the fun of the combat is actually learning the details of the encounter I mentionned above, to know exactly what's going to happen next and make your time more efficient.

I don't remember reading ahead as much when I played wow, mostly I had the boss addon tell me when shit was happening and you'd react reactively a lot with the only real proactive gameplay was stacking HoTs as a druid or refreshing Earth Shield as a shaman(in terms of healing that is) and the rest of the time was spent either spamming free heals(back when downranking was a thing or when healers couldn't run out of mana using their smaller heals like mid-end BC and such) or spam casting them and cancelling if they weren't needed. I don't think it necessarily has to do with the speed but the design of the gameplay, it's a slower approach that relies less on twitch and more on thinking ahead and I kinda like that, it's more relaxing I think.


As for 15 and a dungeon, I wouldn't expect anything. Paladin is boring till 50 and at 50. Like literally the most boring class. At 15, it'll be exactly the same, and the first dungeons are a snoozefest too, they don't technically require a tank, just someone who can cast heals(doesn't even have to be a healer class at that point). Damage is so low there's almost no risk of ever dying unless your healers is retarded, which sadly happens all too often, but that's basically the only thing that matters at these levels. I'm a bit surprised you're only 13 though, I guess maybe because you don't like the game but it doesn't really take that long to level up. I'd say 30 is a better place to judge the gameplay, but that takes I wanna say 15hours the first time due to all the storyquest shit on the way and what not. And I'd change to Warrior(marauder) asap if you don't want to fall asleep tanking. It's both flashier and more fun to play.