Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

sukik said:

Does the squadron system give any worthwhile rewards? 500 marks a day to keep it going doesn't seem worth it while I'm trying to go through the MSQ. I'm level 57 and I'm only up to 2.2. It feels like I'll hit level cap before I even get to the heavensward content.

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It is worth it imo.

What squadrons do eventually is 2 things.

First they act like retainer ventures, you send them out, they bring back stuff. If you spec them properly, they will bring back GC seals(so free trips), crafter or gatherer red scrips(free money more or less) or crystal clusters. On top you eventually unlock weekly missions at 40 and 50(they have high requirements though so you might not be able to do them reliably until 50/60) that give 5/10 tickets that provide the FC lvl III buffs for 2hours. Those don't stack with the FC buffs, but they let you customize the buffs you want. This is especially good for leveling crafting and gathering if you don't control the buff in your FC, since you can get 20%xp to either for 10/20hours per week via these. I'm stockpiling a bunch for next expansion. You can also get less used shit like more GC seals before you do a round of gear turn in, or more MGP on sundays/saturday evenings to get your jumbo cactpot+fashion report done at the same time and get 15% more MGP(69k for fashion report and jumbo cactpot varies depending on your luck).

Second, once you've done some mission you can use them for squadron command missions. These are standard dungeon runs, only you play with your squadron instead of random pubs. Surprisingly, while the squadrons are dumb as shit(the only command you can tell them is follow/disengage and attack that target) they are still very good and often better than random pubs because they cheat(no cooldowns, no mp). The tank will hold aggro(somewhat), the DPS do stupidly high damage and the healer can keep a tank up pretty easily through 2-3trash pulls. You only have a limited choice of dungeons to run however, but they're a very good alternative to PotD on alt classes when you're tired of spamming that shit. You will also technically need to do this to continue with your GC ranks, as the last current rank is unlocked by running 5 different command missions.

It is also possible these will be needed for the Trust system being added next expansion. That's purely speculation, but since the system will probably work in a similar manner, it might be linked to it.

a_skeleton_02 said:

My end game raiding in wow ended in wotlk and started/ended again in legion. I'd say wow raiding is harder at the top end than FFXIV Savage but FFXIV raids being only 8 people make the personal responsibility much higher.

No one can fuck up

Also I disagree with Rezz, 2/4 on Savage ATM as a Warrior and you would get the boot from most groups if you stayed in tank stance during raids.

Non Tank Buster damage is very manageable and abilities come in at a timed intervals.

Midgarsomir has the hardest hitting Tank Buster so far and it has a 4 second cast time plenty of time to pop into tank stance and hit a cooldowns to negate.

No reason to stay in the stance if you know the encounter.

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Raids and general play are very different in terms of tank stance requirements. Yes for savage you definitely will want to optimize your DPS stance time, as in, it should be 100% unless you use tank stance as a "cooldown" for certain things, and maybe on pull for initial threat if you don't have a ninja.

For casual play, DPS stance can be definitely worse. This is especially true in 4man dungeons you don't overgear(like current experts) on trash pulls. Fact is, pulling 2 packs of trash in a relatively close ilvl dungeon will generally mean you're taking more damage than any savage boss does, for an extended duration. Sure there's no tankbuster or mechanics to cooldown through, but the damage output of 2packs of trash mobs is consistently several times higher than what a savage boss autoattack does.

That's why you have to cooldown trash packs and that's where DPS stancing does the least amount of good. If your healer is well geared and good, they can probably weave in some damage between heals, but the less defenses you have, the more they have to spam actual GCD heals, and that in turns can be less damage than if they could cast aoes instead(especially WHM/AST).

Now on top of that you have the issue of bad DPS in pub dungeons, so a trash pull that should take about 35secs, most of which will be during defensive cooldowns, letting you offset the DPS stance defense loss, if the DPS are shit, and they're often shit, that same trash pull will take over a minute, and that means you'll spend a noticeable amount of time not having any cooldowns up.

Threat shouldn't be an issue, but also can be one if your tank is undergeared(weapon especially) and you're grouping with a max ilvl char. This happens if you do expert roulette at min ilvl, or worse, 70 roulette at min ilvl(so you can be in i290 job quest gear doing Ala Mhigo and grouped with an i400 Samurai who's also being a retard and not popping Diversion, then good fucking luck tanking in DPS stance, even tank stance will struggle).

What I recommend for any new tanks, is to first tank stance everything, then DPS stance bosses only, and only DPS stance trash pulls if you're well aware of the trash damage output(some hit harder than others) as well as your healer AND DPS ability to deal with the packs. Generally in 90% of the pubs I'm in, this means tank stance trash if I don't want to waste more time(possibly wiping too because healer is shit).

Trials and shit depends on your experience and gear, and how good and comfortable your healers are with the fight. I tend to still tank stance most EX primals because even with tank stance it's not uncommon for me to have to clemency myself to actually survive due to healers focusing on other shit(Suzaku is a good example with the dance and shit, a lot of healers tend to "forget" about the tank). If the group is good though I'll DPS stance, to an extent, my gear being kinda shit I'll still adjust depending on which part of the fight it is and what cooldowns I have.

Once you get to high endgame, then you will want to learn how to maximize your role efficiency like everyone else, and that does involve DPS stance tanking and learning the encounters so you cooldown appropriately. But this isn't something that requires extended practice since for the most part the tanks play the same in DPS stance than they do in tank stance(WAR is a bit different but still) and as such it's not something that you have to bother learning doing leveling dungeons or whatever. Hell as I pointed out, 4man dungeons are very different in terms of damage intake than savage raids. The danger in terms of tank damage in 4man dungeons are the trash packs, not the bosses

gshurik said:

It's better to learn correctly, than to learn incorrectly and then have to relearn it in a trial by fire as soon as he starts doing extreme content.

Dungeons are some of the easiest group content in the game, it's a perfect place to be learn how to play without the pressures of a single fuck up resulting in a party wipe.

I know so many people who still play 100% in tank stance, or refuse to DPS as a healer in all content they play.

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You're not learning correctly if you just DPS stance every dungeon regardless. In dungeons, the correct way is to asses your and your party's gear, as well as how they're playing and use the appropriate stance for that. DPS stance in 4man pub dungeons always depends on other stuff than yourself. Learning correctly is how to asses such things, and it'll be a lot easier to learn that by starting from the "not wiping" part then seeing how far you can go, rather than starting at the "wiping to trash packs" part.

As someone who plays healers pretty often, I'll take 100% tank stance for 4man pub dungeons all the time over 100%DPS stance, because turns out many of the 100%DPS stance tanks are also fucking clueless and do that with terrible gear, or not using cooldown rotations appropriately, and it just makes the runs way more annoying for me, and slower since I can't get nearly as much DPS in. The 100% def stance tank mean I can full DPS the entire run. Bardam's Mettle during SB launch was a fucking disaster because of all the DPS tanks who wouldn't sprint or cooldown appropriately or worse lost aggro, all that in their fully str accessories, because all they did in HW was endgame raids and expert roulette where that shit was fine.

a_skeleton_02 said:

We are comparing apples to oranges then, a_skeleton_03 doesn't need to know how to learn how to "tank" 4 man dungeons since they are pants on head retarded easy like all MMO group content.

I tanked the Burn/Arboretum the same day I hit lvl 70 on my warrior and i never tanked in a MMO before in my life. You spam your AE moves and blow a cooldown on each pack of mobs congrats you are tanking.

Group or casual content should not even be a discussion in terms of "how to play" Party Finder Alphascape 4 and you'll see people who just chain die to mechanics over and over again and you still can kill the mob with ease.

You won't learn how to play doing that content unless you go in with the mindset of learning how to do the harder stuff.

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Because they're apples and oranges, tanking 4man dungeons in DPS stance isn't going to help you tank savage in DPS stance. There's no relevant skills that translate from one to the other. For PLD and for WAR, tanking in DPS stance isn't some arcane system that you have to get used to. For PLD especially, you literally just press the other Oath button, tada you're now tanking in DPS stance doing the exact same thing you were doing before. WAR skills change, but the gameplay is fairly similar. Only DRK has some kinda substantial changes due to gaining more MP with the 2nd attack in Grit than they do out of Grit, so your mp management is different. Still it's something you'd learn when doing the offtank role on any 8man content.

You can't really state that "you should always DPS stance tank" just because that's how the endgame content is done. The endgame content is done because the fights are designed in such a way that it's possible and everyone tries to perform in a way that allows it. You can try DPS stance tanking savage without anyone using threat abilities and see how it goes. Even spamming the threat combos you'd get ripped by most DPS.

Meanwhile you enter some random 4man dungeon and you have a healer with a weapon 60ilvl lower that clicks his spells, a highly geared DPS who will go balls to the walls burst every pull but won't ever use any threat ability and a clown who still hasn't understood how combos work after 80hours and do 950DPS with his full i380 gear his friend crafted. You might make it in DPS stance but wether the run is faster or not, that's not guaranteed at all, and if the healer is shit there's also a chance you'll wipe on the first big pull.

If you know a crafter you can cut the costs A LOT. Base materials are pretty cheap for the crafted gear. Largest part is the gyr abanian alchemic since they can only be bought with yellow crafter scrips, but on my server with shitty supplies it's still "only" 70k, and the total rest of the mats for most pieces is around 30-50k depending on which(less for accessories). So you can generally get a full set at about 100k a piece on average. You do need to know a crafter that's willing to do all the combining and shit. Just the weapon would be a big improvement however since it kinda lets you bypass all the weapon farming shit and most crafters in a FC would be willing to craft a single item at no cost with basic materials on the spot, shit only takes like 3mins and can be done with cheap food.

With all the new skills the requirements for 100%HQ crafting are stupidly low this expansion.