Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Pyros

Pyros

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Stoneskin is shit, and you definitely don't need it if you don't want to lvl CNJ. The amount it blocks on non tanks is completely trivial and won't help for shit so wasting time stoneskinning people prefight is worthless(unless you're a WHM, then you just cast a single spell so why not) and on tanks it's still fairly shit, due to a high mana cost and stupidly high cast time. It can be remotely useful to put on a tank before a pull, to mitigate some early burst but most mobs don't actually hit the tank hard until like 10+ seconds into the fight so you have time to settle down anyway. It's especially shit as a Scholar, for whom it's worse in every aspect over casting an Adlo, minus the extremely situational case of the tank having an undispellable healing reduction debuff(and even then they need to be in full vit gear or the reduction needs to be crazy to equal Adlo heal+shield with 1sec faster cast time).

All in all, it's a shit spell, it used to be semi ok for WHM in combat due to being 18%, which was useful for large tank busters, and I guess it's still useful for WHM/AST during said tank busters since it beats healing for 0, but for a Scholar, Adlo is just way better, and the other healer will stoneskin so there's no real point in doing adlo+swiftcast stoneskin either.

The one you really want is Swiftcast, and then from CNJ protect/cleric stance. After that it's kinda meh stuff, but Aero is nice for damage and Blizzard II is not too bad for aoe damage. It's mostly a choice between stoneskin and blizzard II, and in general blizzard II is more useful, which says a lot considering it's not very good to begin with.
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Stoneskin is useful for WHMs on fights like T10 with the Prey/Erratic Blaster mechanic. I would absolutely recommend picking it up in case this mechanic ever shows up again and you find your raid without a SCH or AST.
 
Valderen

Valderen

Space Pirate
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Pyros_sl said:
Stoneskin is shit, and you definitely don't need it if you don't want to lvl CNJ. The amount it blocks on non tanks is completely trivial and won't help for shit so wasting time stoneskinning people prefight is worthless(unless you're a WHM, then you just cast a single spell so why not) and on tanks it's still fairly shit, due to a high mana cost and stupidly high cast time. It can be remotely useful to put on a tank before a pull, to mitigate some early burst but most mobs don't actually hit the tank hard until like 10+ seconds into the fight so you have time to settle down anyway. It's especially shit as a Scholar, for whom it's worse in every aspect over casting an Adlo, minus the extremely situational case of the tank having an undispellable healing reduction debuff(and even then they need to be in full vit gear or the reduction needs to be crazy to equal Adlo heal+shield with 1sec faster cast time).

All in all, it's a shit spell, it used to be semi ok for WHM in combat due to being 18%, which was useful for large tank busters, and I guess it's still useful for WHM/AST during said tank busters since it beats healing for 0, but for a Scholar, Adlo is just way better, and the other healer will stoneskin so there's no real point in doing adlo+swiftcast stoneskin either.

The one you really want is Swiftcast, and then from CNJ protect/cleric stance. After that it's kinda meh stuff, but Aero is nice for damage and Blizzard II is not too bad for aoe damage. It's mostly a choice between stoneskin and blizzard II, and in general blizzard II is more useful, which says a lot considering it's not very good to begin with.
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Thanks to you and others who replied.

I'll be skipping it...or do it later if I ever feel like leveling conjurer. I was planning on Swiftcast, that one seemed like a no-brainer.
smile.png
 
Needless

Needless

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misery_sl said:
Do that shit every day. For the first week or two I didn't get shit, then a couple of days in a row I got 10,000 MGP twice in the same day, and a few more in the coming days. Also, if you can time your visits so they happen around the time when GATES occur, and if you get a decent one (fuck you skinchange) you can get some extra MGP. I hear that TT is also decent for getting MGP if you play loads of it, but I don't play a lot at the moment.

As for stoneskin, I mainly keep it on the deeps and ignore the tank entirely except for at the very start of the dungeon/trial/raid, or the start of a hard encounter. It's really an oh-shit buffer for the squishies. If you get an unsuspected AOE, or they eat a few hits on accident, it could save their lives, or make the fights a lot smoother at the very least. If you're hot shit you can time it with tank rapers like final sting to ensure your tank stays off the ground. Other than that, don't heal with stoneskin, just don't.
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Yeah i'll keep trying it, the first two games i didn't know what the fuck i was actually doing but i figured it out on the third one lol

^ swiftcast is like 100% needed for insta cast raises. Do it up homeslice, doesn't take too long either with the buff to the armory bonus
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Kriptini_sl said:
Stoneskin is useful for WHMs on fights like T10 with the Prey/Erratic Blaster mechanic. I would absolutely recommend picking it up in case this mechanic ever shows up again and you find your raid without a SCH or AST.
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Yeah but like, if you're a WHM, you have stoneskin, because well, you're a WHM. The question is wether or not you lvl CNJ for the cross class if you play SCH or AST, as AST I could see it being kinda useful rarely if in Diurnal but on SCH it's pretty bad. In the case of T10, the only class that would need it would be an AST if grouped with SCH, since they wouldn't want to go Nocturnal but would still need a way to get some of them to help the SCH. If grouped with a WHM they can go Noct, and if it's SCH/SCH they can both adlo fine, so yeah, very limited uses.
 
M

misery_sl

shitlord
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Harkon_sl said:
FFXIV Cactpot Solver

Bookmark, use, your welcome.
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This is alright, and I use this sometimes when I can't find a winner.

You don't really need it though most of the time if you try and get the 10k, just always open the middle result, and try and open lines with 1, 2, or 3 in them. 7, 8, 9 are also high winners I think if you can't find any with 1, 2, 3. Solvers are only semi-useful if you don't know what to look for. If you can't get the numbers you want, you might want to use a solver to see which one is most likely to give you the 1k or 720 etc.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Kriptini_sl said:
Lol, my brain turned off while I was posting that, I guess.
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Well I think I see what you could have meant, is that stoneskin itself isn't useless, to WHMs. For SCH it kinda is though, and for AST it's a mixed bag, but I'd generally say it doesn't really matter. The spell really isn't that good that you absolutely need it. I'd say something like Awareness for example which is kinda borderline, is still more useful due to the fringe cases where it's useful actually making it really good, while stoneskin can be replaced by a bunch of other shielding mechanics like adlo and aspect benefic in noct stance.
 
Harkon

Harkon

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misery_sl said:
This is alright, and I use this sometimes when I can't find a winner.

You don't really need it though most of the time if you try and get the 10k, just always open the middle result, and try and open lines with 1, 2, or 3 in them. 7, 8, 9 are also high winners I think if you can't find any with 1, 2, 3. Solvers are only semi-useful if you don't know what to look for. If you can't get the numbers you want, you might want to use a solver to see which one is most likely to give you the 1k or 720 etc.
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It helps you maximize your gains when you cannot get a 10k or a 3.6k result which generally is the case.
 
M

misery_sl

shitlord
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Harkon_sl said:
It helps you maximize your gains when you cannot get a 10k or a 3.6k result which generally is the case.
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True, but most of the time I only find out that I can't get 10k after I pick the only possible lines that could give 10k or the 7k, which there is usually one or two for me. I used to use it every time, but now I rarely use it once in 3 tickets.

I also got the 10k 2 times 3 days ago, one 2 days ago, and once yesterday. Stroke of luck I guess.
Yet somehow I haven't ever gotten a single number correct on the big cactpot. I get the damn consolation prize every single time.
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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Stoneskin is useful in the following situations:
1) Start of the fight, in these cases usually a WHM will just Stoneskin II.
2) When someone dies or is otherwise weakened and you know they can't take the next party wide attack without Stoneskin (see floor's three and four of Alexander when people are dumb)
3) When you see a tankbuster incoming and you have mana to waste.

In conclusion, Stoneskin isn't terribly useful but it has its corner case moments.
 
hodj

hodj

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Ao-_sl said:
I'm at the same point (actually, just getting into 2.4) and I'm already tired of the same bullshit.
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At least the Keeper of the Lake and Nabriales fights are decent and the storyline picks up some after 2.4.

I've got some piddly BS quests and Steps of Faith left at this point before the xpac, and a lot of the Fedex shit is dull, but this stuff does have its high points. Nabriales was a pretty tough fight. Took 3-4 tries to beat it with pick ups.
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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hodj_sl said:
At least the Keeper of the Lake and Nabriales fights are decent and the storyline picks up some after 2.4.

I've got some piddly BS quests and Steps of Faith left at this point before the xpac, and a lot of the Fedex shit is dull, but this stuff does have its high points. Nabriales was a pretty tough fight. Took 3-4 tries to beat it with pick ups.
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You're going to want to start watching the cutscenes now if you haven't started already. After Steps of Fun, get some popcorn ready. There's about 30 minutes of back-to-back cutscenes, but they're extremely well-done.
 
hodj

hodj

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Kriptini_sl said:
You're going to want to start watching the cutscenes now if you haven't started already. After Steps of Fun, get some popcorn ready. There's about 30 minutes of back-to-back cutscenes, but they're extremely well-done.
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Them's some serious grade A shenanigans going down!
 
Blitz

Blitz

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Absolutely do not like the Eastern styled art etc... But clearly to some degree this is a good, at least solid game. As someone who really liked EQ and, WoW (especially circa Vanilla-Wrath), how does this compare? Personal opinions welcomed. Debating on downloading the trial later this weekend.
 
hodj

hodj

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More casual oriented than either EQ or WoW Vanilla - Wrath.

Also its big time fan service.

I enjoy it. It has its flaws, those flaws are serious but not critical, as in, they don't make it unplayable imo.

If I had to put it one way I'd say "This is the only halfway decent MMO on the market right now that isn't WoW"
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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Basically it goes like this:
- Pre-level 50 storyline is OK, but slow and feels like the after thought it was while they rebuilt the entire game from scratch after the disaster of the first version.
- 2.1 - 2.4 storyline is much better than the pre-level 50 storyline but still has a lot of rough spots.
- 2.4+ the storyline is much better, has less filler, and the characters are more engaging (especially after 2.55...).
 
Xalara

Xalara

Golden Squire
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As for casual-ness: I'd say FFXIV is more casual in the sense that the dungeons can be easier, but everything such as crafting and gathering, it is much more hardcore than WoW.
 
C

Cathex_sl

shitlord
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hodj_sl said:
"This is the only halfway decent MMO on the market right now that isn't WoW"
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Basically.

Quite enjoyable as an EQ/WoW vet myself. Nothing groundbreaking, but fairly polished. Crafting, job switching, music, and visuals in Heavensward are rather significant positives. Raiding, IMO, isn't as fun as it is in WoW. Playerbase, again IMO, is more friendly/mature than in WoW on average. Starts very slow and requires perseverance to really enjoy the game.

Definitely worth doing a trial run.
 
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