Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Yeah some classes will feel bad to level due to lack of skills but other than that there aren't really bad classes.

And then you have the usual mmo advice, tanks get instant queues, healers get fast queues, DPS get long queues. Long being 15-20mins generally speaking, but if you're leveling through the MSQ and have to take 20mins breaks(sometimes longer due to being older content, roulettes help but 30mins queues can happen for shitty trials and what not) it can be frustrating, so leveling a healer or tank can help alleviate that.

Tanks also have actually reasonable personal DPS for solo questing, much better than healers, but being a new tank might get people to yell at you and be annoying cunts and pull shit for you because they expect you to know the dungeons.

Finally worth noting, Summoner and Scholar are both part of the same base Arcanist class, so leveling one levels the other, which means you can for example play Scholar for group content for healer queue times and play summoner for solo content for higher DPS. Gear might be a problem however since they use different gear and you need ilvl to do group content, which means you'd have to pick healer gear from rewards, and then your DPS on summoner is going to not be very good, although it should be possible to get someone to buy you white vendor gear from the next expansion when you reach 51 and 61, which would help tremendously.

... said:

is dark knight still decent? i played it back in heavensward and had a good time with it.

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Someone posted a few posts above that they're lagging behind, but it's the usual XIV behind, as in they're slightly less optimal. I also remember the world first for ultimate ultima was with a DRK even though at that point everyone was saying they weren't as good, so yeah. That said they changed it a bunch since HW, mechanically, so it might not be as enjoyable for you as it was back then. Mostly they simplified it, they did that for all tanks and healers which is a bit sad, specifically mp management is a lot easier with current DRK than old one. On the other hand, they gave DRK one of the coolest looking attack in the entire game in their new skillset, even Sepphiroth wish he was that edgy. And The Blackest Night(yes, there's a skill called The Blackest Night) is a really cool skill overall, makes their tanking feel pretty unique, kinda like how Clemency, Veil and Intervention for PLD makes them feel unique and warrior DPS dump burst.

Personally I didn't like them mind you, but they're definitely useable for everything but bleeding edge progression on super savage content, and I believe they said they were done adding these this expansion, so they'll be good for everything for the next 9months or whenever 5.0 is.

Oh yeah forgot about that too, it sucks dicks until you get the new ressource spenders, which comes way too fucking late for whatever reason. Same with MCH leveling, it's so fucking meh until you get heat management tools and suddenly it's pretty fun, then it ends because you're 70 right after. Well for me at least since I had no interest in playing them further.

I kinda hope for new players they're going to rework some of the leveling shit with 5.0. Skills should come faster, leveling should be shorter. Some classes feel fine to play even at lower levels but some are fucking awful for a long ass time. I think it's bard that gets no relevant skill between 26 and 48 or some shit, you get songs but because they changed how songs work they literally do almost nothing because you dont have the finisher until 62 or some shit. It doesn't concern me too much since I have every class at 70 for next expansion, and I had most classes at 50+ even for SB but some of this early shit is just terrible design, and I did level MCH from 32 to 70 and it was fairly awful, even when playing in PotD so I had at least more skills to play around with until 50.

They tied skills to quests for HW so these are fucked but it wouldn't hurt to move some of the SB skills to pre 50 to make the rotations more whole or more interesting as you're leveling, even if it means only get 2-3skills from 60 to 70 as a result(maybe give some of the 5.0 skills earlier to compensate, as quests that aren't in the new areas so they can be done without finishing SB MSQ).

Kriptini said:

You and I both know they won't do shit. Leveling in this game has been fucked since Heavensward lol.

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Sure but it's getting worse the more shit they add, so they really should think about it. New player experience is pretty important for mmos and especially during new expansions, that's why wow always gives people free level boosts every expansion so they can just get a char up and running right away in all the new and exciting shit. Meanwhile in FFXIV you have to drag ass in old as shit 2.0 areas and play with literally 3 buttons combat for a fucking long time for no reason. You can story skip but you have to pay for it and it's not even that great because you can't story skip all the way right at release(assuming they do it like SB release where you couldn't story skip HW right away iirc), and you still have to level so you need both skips if you really want to.

It's honestly not a great system. Maybe they should stop selling story skips and add a "memory" system where you can basically skip the stories, but at any point you can go somewhere and turn on "memory dive" or whatever and that puts your story progress back to 2.0 or 3.0 story and you can do these nicely in order if you want but without gating current content. But that'd have them stop selling story skips, so that doesn't sound like it'd happen. I guess they know how much money they make with these and if it's worth it based on player retention after people skip versus not.

Oh well regardless I'm excited for 5.0 so far, played the story up to 4.4 and that shit really picked up, there's A LOT of new questions and cool reveals for the old stuff. I was hoping for maybe a tease of a new class but besides the one gunblade which isn't new, there wasn't anything sadly.

Harkon said:

So how is the new patch, good time to come back?

Left at 4.0

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I only quickly went through the story, don't want to spend too much time doing side shit I'll look back into it near 5.0, but current patch is apparently good from what I'm reading, the primal fight is fun and hard and the last raid wing is also fun and challenging without too much bullshit apparently. And the story is great. Most of the shit people seem to be complaining about is the fact the content is kinda the same every patch(dungeon/primal/raid etc) and the new Eureka seems to be mostly a flop, with the first version being ok-ish but boring to play and the 2nd version being too annoying and grindy. 3rd version for 4.45, then probably they'll nerf some of this shit leading into 5.0 for easier catchup, so that's when I'm considering doing it.