Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,728
5,380
It is what the game is based around. If you do the MSQ now, with the exp increases from the start of heavensward, you do not actually have to do anything else. Us normal people grinding through Heavensward had to quest/fate grind/leve/etc. for about 50% of the exp.

Malakriss Malakriss - On the subject of boost pricing, Yoshida wanted to make sure that boosts were affordable, but not automatic. Make them too cheap, and there’s no longer any push to level normally; make them too pricey, and they have the same problem of creating a wall between players. The price for both a story and leveling skip will be roughly equal to that of a new game, so new players can choose whether they’d prefer to catch up immediately or work through older content; players are certainly not expected to be buying the boosts as a matter of course. As time goes by, the restrictions and prices on these boosts will be evaluated.

Lifted from this interview posted yesterday - Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood preview: Our interview with Naoki Yoshida . I'm not sure if one trumps the other or if it's still in flux. None of it really matters to me as my lowest battle class is like 50 or 51 with 7 of them being 60 and you can't buy one for Samurai which I think is what I will play.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,639
11,968
Says I can use a recruitment code, which I guess is a friend code..

Anyone got one?
Their system isn't intuitive, you'd need to PM a person your email address and they'd have to go into their account, enter it in and send you the invite to the program.
 

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
My mindset on the content skips and story gates etc is that the content is all new to the player (since they haven't beaten it in the first place) and thus skipping it is skipping actually viable content for them and their character. It isn't like they are going to release *better* level 60 dungeons with the expansion that are gated by the storyline; they are introducing post 60 content. And people, due to the nature of the game's general design, will still be running those dungeons etc. It's why there's still people running CM to this day that aren't fresh 50s; there's incentives to do the older stuff even when you are in the new stuff. I'll admit that coming from zero and going through the 50 stuff (60 wasn't nearly as bad imo) takes a little bit of time, but it isn't like the content is old hat for the player, and skipping it is literally skipping playing the game you paid for in order to access content you haven't seen... by skipping content you haven't seen.

I dunno; I get the reasoning to a small degree about it, especially if you are super stoked to run 4.0's version of Aetherochemical over and over and over with some friends or something. But it just seems weird to me that people complain about being gated by content that is literally all new to them in the first place.

Maybe a DPS queue thing? Now -that- is going to take a bit of a shit with the expansion for sure hah.
 

Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,555
2,294
I have found myself missing this game, I quit before Heavensward ever dropped because my crew got stuck on something, maybe Bahamut Coil 4? Anyway I think I'm gonna pick up Stormblood and play through all the shit I've missed. I have a gay level 50 bard - I assume advice will just be to play through story missions? How much grinding do I have to look forward to? Are there other classes I should consider that are similar play style? Note: I play with a controller.
 

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
My memory of when Coil 4 dropped is super hazy (positive there's a website that details that shit though!) but you have a bit of a slog through the MSQ at 50 ahead of you before HW opens up. The good news is that you are probably geared enough to just complete all that crap without having to worry about ilvl, so you can just keep queuing and doing the story quest. Then it's just MSQ like normal through HW and then another few hours at cap to complete all the current storyline. You most likely won't need to grind at all, but you do have a bit of text to and dialogue to sit through at a minimum. You will most likely need to grind a little bit at 60 to get the ilvl needed to finish the story quest before SB, but if you don't mind missing the initial rush through it, they are making it super easy to gear up for non-SB stuff once it has launched.

As for class, healers/tanks like always have the shortest queues, and this isn't changing anytime soon with SB. Bards are still great DPS and aren't gimps or anything, but standard DPS queues can be cancer at times. Make friends with a healer or tank and be golden hah.

Edit! Just actually clicked your link; you'll need a little bit of poetics gear (default level 50 tomes, you will probably have a chunk of older tomes that can be turned in for poetics on you) and then it's just getting to right ilvl, which I'm pretty sure is 90 for the final story quest. You're close; a couple poetics pieces will easily get you there, and there's a good chance you already have that with your older tokens to turn in etc.
 
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Fennin

Golden Knight of the Realm
555
58
I have found myself missing this game, I quit before Heavensward ever dropped because my crew got stuck on something, maybe Bahamut Coil 4? Anyway I think I'm gonna pick up Stormblood and play through all the shit I've missed. I have a gay level 50 bard - I assume advice will just be to play through story missions? How much grinding do I have to look forward to? Are there other classes I should consider that are similar play style? Note: I play with a controller.

Bard changes pretty drastically from 50-60 as some abilities require you to cast in place, in Stormblood Bard is getting a complete rework with no cast time abilities again and will play like nothing else in the game currently. Machinist is the same role as bard, and is also changing pretty significantly in Stormblood by also removing cast time abilities and adding a new gauge for resource management.

Stormblood bard is going to be a stance dancing singing machine. Group buff songs will be added to the role list as press em and forget long cooldowns with no damage penalties, while the Bard itself cycles through 3 stances on something like an 80 second cooldown, under each stance/song you have different attack abilities.
 
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Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,555
2,294
Just watched a video on bards in SB and I'm gonna have a lot of re-training to do. Not played since patch 2.3 or so and god damn they look much more complicated now.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,209
2,361
Honestly compared to HW rotations it doesn't really look much harder, it might require better planning ahead of your song rotation though cause you'll want to be in the right song for the right buff at the right time(or well try to). Interesting part is there's kinda 3 different "playstyle" for each song where the procs and what not do different things so that's gonna be interesting. I haven't played bard in HW cause I didn't really like the idea of minuet anyway but I think I'll give it a try in SB.

As someone who "main" PLD/SCH/MNK/BLM, I'm pretty interested in the classes I used to play at least, they didn't get the short end of the stick. I'll probably try RDM before BLM though, and add AST(which I actually leveled first in HW, but then leveled my SCH cause AST was pretty weak all things considered).

I assume there's still gonna be some changes before live version though, there's some weird things going on with some classes. WHM is getting a lot of bad feedback, RDM apparently has no mana regen other than the cross class(which both wastes a slot and isn't really that good either), there was some complaining about DRK I saw on reddit, Kripp made some good points about Ninja it seems so yeah, doesn't sound all that great.

There's also the issue of inaccurate tooltips, the english translated ones differed from the japanese ones on certain points(some very important ones too, for example overheating on MCH is apparently a 20% dmg BOOST instead of a 20% nerf, which, well, yeah).
 

StoiCynic

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,013
Thanks I'll keep and eye out

I was curious about this as well and logged in last week to see if anything popped up and sure enough I was automatically put on a 7 day trial. Prior to that, last time I played was after HW before 3.1.

Idk if I just got lucky or if I was previously flagged from some promotion, but I recommend just trying to log in. Might get lucky.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,639
11,968
Finished my 275 relic, I was planning on being casual until the expansion release but A1S bonus was too good since you can crank out the 270 step in only 3 bonus windows with decent parties. Been doing some revamped Diadem since i doubt it will be popular once it's old content. Actually isn't bad at all for spoils if you're just getting the pegasus and minion out of the way. RNG factor on gear and difficulty in obtaining 4 parties that know what they are doing for the emergency mission kind of kills any chance at 280 weapons though.
 

Nola

Trakanon Raider
2,983
1,427
I haven't played this game since 2014. So I'm guessing alot has changed and since now I'm a filthy casual what's a good solo pve class to play? Mainly to do solo content and group up for dungeons/raids if I have the time for them.
 

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
Literally anything if you aren't planning on doing bleeding edge raids etc. For shortest queue times on dungeons/trials/etc, play a healer or tank. So warrior, paladin, dark knight, astrologian, white mage, or scholar. Bonus points on scholar for also leveling summoner so you can dps if you want to.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,639
11,968
Managed to clear A9S six times for my belt, christ the PF for that is russian roulette. Most tanks/healers seem to know what they're doing but DPS cannot figure out how to split Acid Rain or when the hell scraplines happen apparently.