Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,331
11,713
Because they had to code for console versions they couldn't have sharp spikes in load so they actually phase out other players past 100 or something when you have hundreds in town or hunting the same S rank. Back at original release they had an Oops with this because they didn't flag Behemoth and Odin to always show on your screen and they would phase out the same as the players.
 

Kriptini

Vyemm Raider
3,636
3,535
I'm very conflicted about BLU. The class itself is really fun to play but all of the idiotic design shit surrounding it ruins a lot of the fun.

Pros:
  • BLU mage style of combat is fun and a nice refresher from strict rotations
  • Being able to choose different moves for different situations is a fantastic feeling, makes me miss things like AA and talent trees from other games
  • Learning spells from overworld mobs is actually pretty fun
  • The Carnivale challenges are fun and each of them can be solved a variety of different ways, depending on what spells you have
Cons:
  • Leveling as this job is awful. After spamming Water Cannon at marmots for a few minutes I said screw it and used the switch job exploit to get the class to 50 in about an hour.
  • The restrictions on the type of content the job is allowed to participate in is inane. There is no reason why a BLU couldn't fill a DPS slot in level 50 dungeons.
  • Because of that having to learn spells from dungeon bosses and trials is absolutely retarded. While thankfully some of those spells can be learned in the Carnivale challenges, it still does not excuse the magnitudes of dumbfuckery involved in the decision to put exclusive spells in content that the job is not allowed to go into (unless you undersize).
  • YOU CAN'T EVEN TAKE BLU INTO COMMAND MISSIONS WITH YOUR SQUADRON. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING REASON FOR HAVING THAT RESTRICTION.
  • The drop rates of spells from dungeon bosses and especially the extreme primals is far too low. The only way to realistically obtain them is to fight the primals with an unsynced party containing a few 70s so the low drop rate is meant to be an artificial extension to the game's life, nothing more.
If you have any interest in playing BLU, I highly advise taking advantage of the switch job exploit to level it up before it gets patched in 5.0.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,050
2,257
I don't think the switch job exploit is necessary at all. I leveled the normal way and it was just fine?

I mean yeah you have to do some water canoning for a whooping 5mins at the start, which is exactly what every other class has to do too while you do the hunting log to get started and can enter potd. You can learn a bunch of skills right away too. The most important one is probably to go find a group of goblins(there's some in middle la noscea for example) and get Bomb Toss. You can do that literally at lvl 1. Now you have an aoe. Set your chocobo to healing(needed early on), pull a few mobs together, and spam bomb toss. 3bomb toss tend to clear all the mobs at this lvl. 3mobs is like half a level until 15+. Now you can repeat this process to cap, adding more aoes and options. Once you have white wind you can set the chocobo on damage instead to speed it up, using offguard to kill targets fasters, using Bad Breath for reduced damage+poison and Mind Blast for paralysis and replacing the spam spell with Plaincracker from golems keeping the bombs for the stun itself.

The class is perfectly able to level on its own without using the exploit.

I just don't see much point in skipping the leveling considering it's one of the best part of the class. The endgame is actually the worst other than the carnival. But I mean if you want to skip ahead sure whatever, just the class is perfectly able to solo its way to 50 on its own at a good pace(5-6hours if you do just that). It's like way way faster than leveling any other class and aoeing packs is kinda fun in its own right imo and few classes can do it otherwise(and it's just not worth it). It reminded me of solo questing on SCH back at release where I'd see other healers pick one mob at a time slow as fuck and complain about healer DPS meanwhile I'd just dot 5mobs together and kill them all together.

Primals grinding suck dicks however. And generally speaking, the class sucks at 50. It can do some cool stuff in some dungeons if the bosses are not immune to instadeath, but a lot are just immune and the class DPS is just bad compared to a standard 50 class. It also could use more synergystic skills so you don't end up mostly spamming one button. In the carnival you might switch due to element weaknesses/strength, but in normal content there's no reason to not be spamming Glower or Ram's Voice or whatever 130potency spell you prefer, and only use the other stuff situationally with Fire Angon/Sharpened Knife to weave in primal oGCDs/OffGuard/Magic debuff and Song of Torment for dot. I guess it's not a bad lineup of skills for a 50 class however compared to the rest, just feels weird that I only use like half my bars and the rest is there for carnival.

They have skills that do stuff when the target is affected by x, but they're either weak(Aqua Breath > High Voltage is still 130potency per hit and Aqua Breath needs the dot to run to do its full potency) or require status effect which don't work on bosses(Ram's Voice > Dragon's Voice require freeze to actually hit).

Overall a fun experience as side content, but the class itself feels wholly unfinished, and for a limited class, it's not nearly powerful enough to warrant all the limitations. It should be able to actually solo relevant 50 content, but it can barely do that decently and in some cases just can't do it at all(for 4man content that is, everything else isn't even close to soloable).
 
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Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,417
12,040
I do agree the leveling flow is clunky. There is sort of this deadzone between the high 20s and mid-40s where there are only a few world mobs you can realistically get the spells from /w help (basically the mid-40s/50s shit in Mor Dhona and N.Thanalan) and everything else is level gated behind dungeons/trials, so your spell collection slows to an absolute standstill. Around that time 1,000 needles also stops 1-shotting stuff (usually takes 2 casts for the low/mid 30s stuff), so it becomes much more of a grind to level.

Plus gear is clunky as well. You level fast enough so that gear doesn't stay useful for long, so it encourages you to just do the job swap exploit so you can just focus on level 50 shit instead of having to craft new armor every few levels.

The class concept is cool, but the fact they gated SO much stuff behind trials/dungeons and throw massive restrictions on who can join/how they can join is going to create problems down the line. Right now it isn't 100% unbearable because enough blue mages are leveling and still farming spells so you can find help in party finder, but once that starts to die down, you're going to have problems getting undersized parties for random low level dungeons. This double hurts because the class quest even requires spells from dungeons to progress. I took like 5 Deepcroft runs and 10 Haukke Manor runs (we used the suicide cheese strat to redo the boss if the add didn't give petrify level 5 so we didnt have to redo the entire dungeon) to get spells. Luckily, every blue gets the spell if it drops in a dungeon, but the low drop rate makes it a huge RNG fest.
 

dvoraen

Lord Nagafen Raider
515
181
I'm going to ditto what Pyros Pyros said. The biggest issue I have with BLU is that some of the potencies and skills are either redundant, and/or are meant solely for the Carnivale because of the elemental weakness factor. Some of the synergies aren't the greatest, either:

- Water Cannon's potency is too low; Glower and almost every AE skill tops it. It really should be raised to 150-180 baseline, if not more.
- Sharpened Knife gets you 2-3 casts at most, assuming you stunned the target using Faze, and is melee range on top of that. I'd really like it to include Paralysis, which would make it awesome, or have other skills it can combo from/into.
- Aqua Breath's dot potency. :p I'm okay with Bad Breath sucking, because Bad Breath has a non-diminishing damage down debuff that goes with it.

I also really want to know if BLU gets a penalty to the learn rate if you do it unsync'd and/or with 70s, or if it gets a higher chance to learn if you do it sync'd/min ilvl. You get bonus drops for music, why not this too?
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,050
2,257
Honestly based on my anecdotical experience, I'd say there's no penalty, it's just pure RNG. I've taken 10+runs to learn dungeon stuff in full BLU groups, and 1-3runs to learn other stuff with a 70unsync. I've also learned all my primals shit unsynced obviously. And again, super RNG. Garuda was like 25runs, Shiva was 7runs(but then I ran 27runs for the other 4 guys and it never dropped for them), Titan was 51runs, Leviathan was 30ish runs, Ramuh was 12runs. I haven't done Ifrit yet I'm just waiting for them to fix normal mode dropping it and then I'll solo that.

Dungeons stuff for the most part was fast but a couple took a lot of runs. Glower took 21runs iirc? Missile took 20ish runs and so on, while others I was done in 2/2 parties in like 5runs total, so yeah RNG gonna RNG.

Honestly my biggest petpeeve with the class is basically, it's not worth the limited tag at all. There's only 3 things that I think would need balancing if the class was to remove the limited tag:

- Make sure every boss has instadeath immunity. Currently, some do, some don't, and obviously on the ones who don't, BLU is retarded. As in you do 200k damage on your first missile, at i130. Shit doesn't even generate threat so it's not like then you have to tank. And Doom obviously guarantees a fight will be 15secs at most(well after it lands but it seems to land fairly often tbh).
- Probably nerf White Wind and or put a Healing efficiency penalty on Mighty Guard(maybe potency reduction on the aoe part only, so it can be used for self healing but not group healing). White Wind is too potent of a skill on a DPS class in its current state, and is absurd for threat building with Mighty Guard, although due to the lack of tanking tools, that wouldn't be an issue on actual challenging content
- Buff fucking everything. The class is just not good enough atm so if it was to be a normal job, it'd need a ton of buffs. More potency on shit, less reliance on primal skills for damage, add some combo system, even as a trait for BLU(Every skill you use grants a small bonus of damage to every other element for 15secs, stackable, so you're incited to use various skills in a row instead of spamming just one for example, simple and easy system). Probably also limit Mighty Guard and possibly White Wind to PF/solo, you don't want a fucker using these in a tank/heal/2DPS queue, it's way way worse than using Titan-egi on SMN which is already pretty bad.

But honestly, in the state of things, the class is hardly gamebreaking and these changes would be minor enough. They just need to make instadeath immunity tag on mobs default to on, otherwie they'll forget some savage boss down the line and the world first will be a BLU tailscrewing it for 999.999.999 on pull and leading to a 1sec time, tweak White Wind/Mighty Guard which only serve a purpose for BLU groups but not so much in normal parties and would create imbalances, and then tweak damage numbers up. Since the potency are similar on all skills tbh it wouldn't be too hard to model.
 
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Nola

Trakanon Raider
2,961
1,391
So I decided to try to buy a plot on Gilgamesh and talk about a pain in the ass. I can't find one to save my life. If one does free up then you have about 10 players perma-camping it until the timer expires. I know that's one of the cons of a high populated server but how about opening up more wards based on sever population? Goblin my old sever has tons of plots open so they wouldn't need more wards but Gilgamesh needs a few more. Then there's this one player named "mew" and he has 21 plots tied up in Mist under that one character and no telling how many more under alts. So annoying.
 
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dvoraen

Lord Nagafen Raider
515
181
Ishgard housing will be coming at some point in the new xpac.
I seriously hope they gate it so that the crafters/gatherers who accrue a certain amount of contribution and/or do it every week are the first to do so, perhaps in Wards 1/2, before opening the floodgates to the rest.
 

Magimaster

Trakanon Raider
536
1,330
Far as Blue Mage is concerned, I have just dabbled in it. I assume the thought process was release it as a Limited job to see if/how badly the players can figure out how to abuse it. tweak it later on and buff it up to a full class once the dust settles and they see how it initially pans out.

Other than that, I'm just into Stormblood now. Finished Heavensward which was quite the ride. Got War and Sam to 60 so probably will get those to 70 then start working on some other jobs to level.
 

a_skeleton_02

<Banned>
8,130
14,248
So I decided to try to buy a plot on Gilgamesh and talk about a pain in the ass. I can't find one to save my life. If one does free up then you have about 10 players perma-camping it until the timer expires. I know that's one of the cons of a high populated server but how about opening up more wards based on sever population? Goblin my old sever has tons of plots open so they wouldn't need more wards but Gilgamesh needs a few more. Then there's this one player named "mew" and he has 21 plots tied up in Mist under that one character and no telling how many more under alts. So annoying.

We had our entire FC camp out at a spot in the mist and took shifts passing our entire guild bank to person to person while we went to work or slept.

It was awesome TBH reminded me of EQ, having a house is a big deal.
 

dvoraen

Lord Nagafen Raider
515
181
We had our entire FC camp out at a spot in the mist and took shifts passing our entire guild bank to person to person while we went to work or slept.

It was awesome TBH reminded me of EQ, having a house is a big deal.
Yes, but it could be an Ishgard house soon. I foresee more camping in your future.
 

Onoes

Trakanon Raider
1,409
1,070
Well fuck, friends just talked a few of us into joining up, I'm currently downloading the client, but apparently they are on Gilgamesh. One friend is at char creation and its full, some googling makes it sound like the only real option is starting on another server and paying to transfer over... or you just get lucky. >_< Not off to a great start! haha
 

dvoraen

Lord Nagafen Raider
515
181
They're going to be putting in "soft" (and free) server xfers in the next few months, so all that really will matter by then is that you create on the post-split Aether data center.

Any of: Adamantoise, Cactuar, Faerie, (Gilgamesh ofc), Jenova, Midgardsormr, Sargatanas, and Siren will do.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,050
2,257
Well fuck, friends just talked a few of us into joining up, I'm currently downloading the client, but apparently they are on Gilgamesh. One friend is at char creation and its full, some googling makes it sound like the only real option is starting on another server and paying to transfer over... or you just get lucky. >_< Not off to a great start! haha
If you try again during the day or whatever, it'll generally go in. They have char creation restrictions based on server pop updated every few hours, so at prime time generally a lot of servers are blocked. Otherwise as mentionned you could make a char on any server on the same datacenter and play cross server dungeons/stuff, using a cross server linkshell to communicate ingame(or just discord). Then in april or so use the free server transfer to get on the same servers. Could also benefit from making a char on a preferred server using this system, to get the Road to 60 xp buff.
 

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,417
12,040
I just need to buy a plot so I can move it once the ideal plot location becomes free.

Goblet is usually the least popular area and your best bet. There has been open small plots next to the pools on my server there for about 5-6 months now (Malboro).
 

Nola

Trakanon Raider
2,961
1,391
Goblet is usually the least popular area and your best bet. There has been open small plots next to the pools on my server there for about 5-6 months now (Malboro).
How populated is your server? But yeah that's what I been doing lately. Checking each ward on Goblet every few hours to see what's available.