Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Black Mage was originally my main but I got sick of how bad it was for instanced content when you are still learning mechanics. Some fights felt like I spent half the time just running around casting Scathe. It's an awesome class for soloing outdoor stuff though. I've switched to Gunbreaker+White Mage main - queue times helped encourage that!

xmod2 said:

I know, I work on cloud infrastructure all day. The fact remains that it's a good fit since with an MMO you will always be sitting on too much or too little hardware. You can either plan for xpac launch and then sit on a bunch of idle iron the rest of the time, or have big queues and 'congested' servers during patch/xpac releases.

Let's not have lowered expectations of sqex just because they're not other game. Marking certain servers as 'congested' and not allowing people to roll on those servers is a huge failure and they should be embarrassed / shamed for it. I hope some fucking japanese sysadmin committed seppuku for his lack of foresight.

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Then you should know about the false latency problems present with Cloud Infrastructure, it's really really apparent with WoW when they switched over..

Cloud Services are not ready, they won't be for maybe another 5 years at most, and with the recent shortage of silicon it might even be longer.

How would SE know that Blizzard would literally shit the bed with not only the lawsuit, but the shit show that was 9.1?(A lot of people were leaving before the lawsuit even came around at all)

I don't think any admin at SE would get fired cause they can't tell the future, it was an unknown they are doing the best they can with what they have, and I'm pretty sure they are not gonna cannibalize there new DC.

Chris said:

B Tier: Bard, Red Mage

Bard gameplay varies over time as you switch between different song cooldowns but Machinist seems to outclass it.

Red Mage is a bunch of fun when you hit the melee finisher, but it's pretty annoying doing the white/black mage build up. It can heal/raise but so can Summoner.

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I'm actually shocked you'd rank these jobs the same. Bard feels awful to play and Red Mage flows so nicely, not to mention hits about 5x harder with it's abilities. The two arent even close to the same tier imo. Bard is D tier imo. Hahah.

Cyni said:

I'm actually shocked you'd rank these jobs the same. Bard feels awful to play and Red Mage flows so nicely, not to mention hits about 5x harder with it's abilities. The two arent even close to the same tier imo. Bard is D tier imo. Hahah.

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Granted I'm biased b/c I've mained Bard since 2.0, but it weirds me out when people say it feels awful to play. Bowmage shit in Heavensward felt awful to play, Bard feels better to play now than it ever has to me at 80.

Merrith said:

Granted I'm biased b/c I've mained Bard since 2.0, but it weirds me out when people say it feels awful to play. Bowmage shit in Heavensward felt awful to play, Bard feels better to play now than it ever has to me at 80.

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Maybe that's why... i'm lvl 62 on both classes.

Guys stop telling me you can't judge at 30 or 50, I'm posting it for people who are just starting the game and want a fun combat experience right away.

Cyni said:

I'm actually shocked you'd rank these jobs the same. Bard feels awful to play and Red Mage flows so nicely, not to mention hits about 5x harder with it's abilities. The two arent even close to the same tier imo. Bard is D tier imo. Hahah.

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It just feels like busy work alternating between black and white magic when the spells are identical if you ignore the animation and name.

The other classes with alternate rotations give you buffs in one phase and damage in the other which makes it feel more rewarding.

It does have the most satisfying finisher phase with the melee stuff and vaulting around the battlefield so I am being harsh.

Chris said:

Guys stop telling me you can't judge at 30 or 50, I'm posting it for people who are just starting the game and want a fun combat experience right away.


It just feels like busy work alternating between black and white magic when the spells are identical if you ignore the animation and name.

The other classes with alternate rotations give you buffs in one phase and damage in the other which makes it feel more rewarding.

It does have the most satisfying finisher phase with the melee stuff and vaulting around the battlefield so I am being harsh.

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The "alternate and fill the bars evenly" minigame actually turned me off RM. Feels totally tacked on, regardless of how easy it is to accomplish, and the only payoff for doing it the right way (and for how long it takes) is being able to actually USE the melee combo at the end of it all. Yippee-Ki-Yay mother fucker... now lets do it all again! Pass. I hope they rework it.

Argarth said:

The "alternate and fill the bars evenly" minigame actually turned me off RM. Feels totally tacked on, regardless of how easy it is to accomplish, and the only payoff for doing it the right way (and for how long it takes) is being able to actually USE the melee combo at the end of it all. Yippee-Ki-Yay mother fucker... now lets do it all again! Pass. I hope they rework it.

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Yeah. It would be cool if you could fill the gauge in different ways.

Like you can choose to balance them like how do now OR purposefully max out white and not black to cast Holy or max out black and not white to cast Ultima and those spells have different effects.

Even mix in some Spellblade stuff so you can buff your weapon with an element to have a much longer melee sequence, unless they plan to make Spellblade a class one day.

Pyros said:

There would be a better way(as in higher dmg), and that'd be what you'd end up doing though. And filling just one bar is even more boring, since you're literally just spamming the same 2 buttons as it fills up. The class is boring and I hate it, but it's designed to be simple for people who don't like the more complicated stuff. It's easy to learn and simple enough to play you don't have to think much about it, with a fair bit of leeway to fucking up your balancing(need to fuck up several times for one element to become unbalanced).

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Makes sense, so ditch the gauge completely and start again. I'd be happy with that. =)

Argarth said:

Makes sense, so ditch the gauge completely and start again. I'd be happy with that. =)

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Yeah that's not happening. RDM has been one of the most complete and non cluttered job since its release. SHB just added a new finisher and tweaked the AOE rotation. People would be up in arms if your burned the job to the ground.

Malkav said:

Yeah that's not happening. RDM has been one of the most complete and non cluttered job since its release. SHB just added a new finisher and tweaked the AOE rotation. People would be up in arms if your burned the job to the ground.

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Fair enough, no argument with that. Of course I'm more than happy to just play something else.

As an aside, I'm really intrigued to see how Sage turns out. Even though I quite enjoy WHM, hoping they can mix it up a little, and make something really quite unique. Haven't seen any news or even a hint of where they're going with it yet, though removing Nocturnal Sect from AST in Endwalker may be related.

Argarth said:

Fair enough, no argument with that. Of course I'm more than happy to just play something else.

As an aside, I'm really intrigued to see how Sage turns out. Even though I quite enjoy WHM, hoping they can mix it up a little, and make something really quite unique. Haven't seen any news or even a hint of where they're going with it yet, though removing Nocturnal Sect from AST in Endwalker may be related.

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Yeah, we all have jobs we're not fond of.

Endwalker is going to be interesting for healers. Most healers have been complaining for the entirety of ShB after the design changes they get at expansion release (single button DPS rotations for everyone among other things). EW will see extensive changes in healers since YoshiP has stated that the healer role will be split between pure healears (WHM and AST) and shield healers (SCH and SAG).

We will probably know more mid september when we get the press tour and the job changes Live Letter.

Given the energy around this game at the moment I thought some might find it useful to get a complete noobs perspective on it. For context, I played EQ and WoW since beta although I quit playing WoW seriously around the Panda expansion. I've dabbled in many other MMOs since but none of them really stuck. I'm playing this game casually for fun with no real thought to min-maxing. So far I have around 80 hours since I started 3 weeks ago and just finished the ARR storyline. I'm not rushing anything.

What I Like

• The community is vibrant and welcoming. This sounds like marketing shill-speak but so far it has been true. People in general have been happy and kind to me as a new player. I never felt like a burden learning new content. People are friendly in general. There are lots of guilds recruiting. I haven't met any real assholes. For comparison, I briefly returned to WoW around 5 years ago and thought it was a toxic fuckfest.
• The glamour game is great. I was shocked to find myself getting into this. There is really a lot of scope for customization and expression. Its fun. It reminds me of the older EQ experience of seeing some genuinely shocking gear on people and wondering at their achievements. Since the game is so mature there is a lot of cool stuff around, but you still see stuff that is uber-rare now and then (and it shows).
• The combat is fun. I'm maining a BLM because I like blowing stuff up. A lot of the other classes are a lot more dynamic but I like the way combat flows, it is engaging and colorful and I like the mob design.
• The story is above average (but also see below). I like most of the characters and I thought the ARR story was well conceived. Because you have to plug through the MSQ this is an important factor. I'd say I liked the story more than I was expecting. Mostly I either hate or don't care about story in games, unless I am specifically playing a story game (which I don't often do - I'm a gameplay first guy).
• There is lots - and I mean lots - to do (but also below). I've enjoyed doing the MSQ, my job quests, random dungeons, fishing and exploration. There is never a shortage of carrots. Hunting log plus duties makes it really easy to just log in and get drawn into something. No friction. It is a brainless experience to just have some fun.
• I have no intention of playing PvP. I think it wouldn't be good. I play other games for PvP.
• You're not going to play this game for the graphics but I don't think they are horrible given how long the game has been around. I'm playing on a 3090 so everything is maxed. Latency is a non-issue.

What I Struggled With

• I got really bored around level 30. I was expecting the graduation to BLM to be more interesting than it was. I almost quit but I'm glad I didn't. I also almost switched jobs but I expected that way led to madness. My advice is like everyone else's having now gone through it: stick with one job until you finish the MSQ and get to 50+. The path there is more fun after 30. This kind of implies that the best path forward is to continue grinding the MSQ through the expansions to REALLY start having fun at 80. I'm not sure that's what I'm going to do. It might burn me out. I'll probably fuck around for a week before returning to the expac MSQ.
• There is really an overwhelming amount of shit to do at this point in the game's lifecycle. You could easily spend hours doing something pointless. It gets a bit much. I still don't know what my Squadron is supposed to do. I don't know what NG+ is. Having 45 different kinds of currencies gets confusing, etc. I just managed this by ignoring everything else than what I was enjoying: leveling, MSQ, job quests, grand company leves and fishing. I'm not playing this game as a contest so I don't give a fuck if I'm doing things inefficiently.
• The story. There is a TON of running about that you'd just have to streamline if you were planning it today. Tons of unnecessary back-tracking between NPCs. It got tiresome. There's also a ton of detail and names that can get a bit overwhelming. The design of the story quests is really old-school. Tons of bear ass collection. I would have preferred way less long-winded and streamlined but, hey, this is still a game designed years ago now.

Bottom Line

• I think this is probably the 3rd best MMO I've played.
• I bought the full edition and expacs after about 20 hours and don't regret it. The game is basically fun and has a high ceiling. With a new expansion coming out in the Fall there's ample time to get into it, have some fun, get some experience and decide then if you want to go hardcore or just enjoy the new content as it arrives. It isn't buggy and it doesn't have a bunch of broken shit.
• If you want a story-based MMO experience this is the one to get into.

Level 25-35 was absolutely awful. I remember spending 2 hrs running around looking for wine for a "feast". What a joke. Gets better after that thank god.

I hated teh game until around level 42, then you get some fun shit on Black Mage. Now I'm enjoying it other than unskippable cut scenes and how they do quest dialogue.

Quest dialogue improves post ARR. people become less long winded

Arr could use some trimming and simple recaps to build the world

Malkav said:

Endwalker is going to be interesting for EW will see extensive changes in healers since YoshiP has stated that the healer role will be split between pure healears (WHM and AST) and shield healers (SCH and SAG).

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So this is for sure happening? I guess I don’t follow as closely as some of you guys, I hadn’t seen or heard this talked about anywhere except here, and only in passing just today and maybe a month ago, forgot who mentioned it back then.

I’m kinda salty about this tbh, I really love how AST can currently do either. It’s a big part of why I picked the job up when it came out, and has since remained my only healer job. Not to mention, I really like Nocturnal and use it almost exclusively unless of course I get paired with a scholar or another AST who puts Noct on first.