Final Fantasy 14 thread: Dawntrail

Javen

I think most of the praise that stormblood raids get is from the fanservice (which is good)

Polaritie

Stormblood raids were an excuse to bring in a lot of bosses from the series. Like Exdeath and Kefka.

Badablack

Poor Phantom Train never gets any respect

Polaritie

Cant believe they didnt work a suplex into that fight somehow.

Aldo

It also had Nero being 100% goofball, so that was fun.

Fig-D

Polaritie wrote: »

Cant believe they didnt work a suplex into that fight somehow.

If there had been an Active Time Event to input [Button] [Button] [Down] [Up] I would have yelped, cheered, and failed the command.

Tcheldor

Stormblood is the progenitor of the 4th fight 2 phases thing.

Ex death phase 2 is a real good one and phase 1 sucked. Kefka was fine. No clue how the they feel nowdays.

Carpy

Dinged 74 on RPR last night, can't wait to burn a roulette on DPS just so I can spam Hellsgates to hit (probably) useless Harpes

Jars

I liked reaper quite a bit in EW but the new skill totally throws off the enshroud rythm and I am not a fan

admanb

How does hitting one button at the end throw off the rhythm?

Javen

I don't main reaper but what I gather from people talking about it is that it's a pretty tight window to fit perfectio into the 2 minute burst rotation, and since perfectio doesn't generate gauge, and the GCD that used to occupy that spot in endwalker did, it makes resources tighter, which can make disengaging from melee costlier later

Jars

not perfecto, the ogcd that only works during enshroud

admanb

ohh that. Yeah I can see that. The Reaper rotation is so chill that it doesn't bother me.

Javen wrote: »

I don't main reaper but what I gather from people talking about it is that it's a pretty tight window to fit perfectio into the 2 minute burst rotation, and since perfectio doesn't generate gauge, and the GCD that used to occupy that spot in endwalker did, it makes resources tighter, which can make disengaging from melee costlier later

The gauge drift is real, it's true. Though disengaging on its own doesn't cost you anything as long as you don't miss ranged GCDs, but it is very easy to fall behind and have your burst window slip.

Aldo

I ended up doing the raids 1-4 anyway and got 2 gear upgrades out of it. I'll grab the chest and pants from tomes and I'll have my WAR on a high enough item level to be set for 6.1.

Pretty satisfying how easy it is to improve your gear

AshtonDragon

I'm wondering if you guys can help me settle a debate with my friends. We've been playing together since ARR (technically 1.0, but we didn't stick with that trash fire for long), and until Shadowbringers we basically did the same thing every time. Get through everything in a couple weeks, raids release, start raiding for a couple weeks, bail before actually clearing the tier. We never stuck around long enough to even do the first alliance raids when they were new, let alone the second and third raid tiers of each expansion. That changed in a big way in Shadowbringers.

Anyway, our memories of what we did in ARR and Stormblood are consistent. In ARR, we got up to turn 5 of coil before throwing in the towel. In Stormblood, we never cleared O3S. In Heavensward, though... a few of my friends swear that we were up to A4S, but I don't think we stuck around long enough to even start on the savages, let alone get through frigging Pepsiman. And my duty finder menu backs that up! In there, I can clearly see that I don't have checkmarks on A1S-A3S (I do on 4, because I later solo'd it for the mount). But that doesn't convince my friends, who point out that check marks weren't even added to the duty list until later. Can anyone confirm that those check marks for old content are actually reliable? Is there any other way to confirm 100% about what we did or did not clear? The other idea I had was to just load into A3S and see if the cutscene would get skipped automatically, and it did not.

BahamutZERO

No idea here

SCREECH OF THE FARG

AshtonDragon wrote: »

I'm wondering if you guys can help me settle a debate with my friends. We've been playing together since ARR (technically 1.0, but we didn't stick with that trash fire for long), and until Shadowbringers we basically did the same thing every time. Get through everything in a couple weeks, raids release, start raiding for a couple weeks, bail before actually clearing the tier. We never stuck around long enough to even do the first alliance raids when they were new, let alone the second and third raid tiers of each expansion. That changed in a big way in Shadowbringers.

Anyway, our memories of what we did in ARR and Stormblood are consistent. In ARR, we got up to turn 5 of coil before throwing in the towel. In Stormblood, we never cleared O3S. In Heavensward, though... a few of my friends swear that we were up to A4S, but I don't think we stuck around long enough to even start on the savages, let alone get through frigging Pepsiman. And my duty finder menu backs that up! In there, I can clearly see that I don't have checkmarks on A1S-A3S (I do on 4, because I later solo'd it for the mount). But that doesn't convince my friends, who point out that check marks weren't even added to the duty list until later. Can anyone confirm that those check marks for old content are actually reliable? Is there any other way to confirm 100% about what we did or did not clear? The other idea I had was to just load into A3S and see if the cutscene would get skipped automatically, and it did not.

i dunno about the checkmarks but you and your friends did not clear a1s-a3s and forget entirely about it. you'd remember.

Donnicton

I didn't start until much later so I wouldn't know something that specific about menu function, but given this is Gordias we're talking about, it doesn't sound immediately consistent to me that a group that wishy-washy about the game is going to have made any headway into Gordias savage.

BahamutZERO

Unless it was later in the expansion after it got nerfed maybe

AshtonDragon

Pepsiman being so infamous is what prompted the debate. I was talking about that, and then one of my friends said that we beat it. I think I have them convinced now after digging up a video of the world first clear, but even that isn't conclusive, because he doesn't do anything too dramatically different from normal mode. Still splits into two hands, still has the adds phase with the magnets, still creates the three whirlpools.

Seg

That was a long time ago, memories not being consistent is perfectly normal. Is it possible you left the game while your friends stuck it out a couple of extra weeks?

admanb

The world first for A1-4S took 34 days so it would've been a bit more than a couple extra weeks.

Neveron

IIRC at launch Gordias was, like, mathematically impossible to beat with min ilvl gear? It taking weeks of gearing to beat A4 was intentional. They later backed down in later tiers, of course, given how Gordias kind of killed the raiding scene for a hot second and was a huge disaster for CBU3.

(These days, of course, potency creep has caught up and made min ilvl possible - plus IIRC it might've gotten some nerf at some point?)

BahamutZERO

I'm pretty sure they went back and nerfed it after the initial design went over so poorly but I'm not certain

Sir Fabulous

I'm sure potency creep plays a huge part but just recently doing it min ilvl, A3 was not noticeably more challenging than everything else.

Both Manipulator and Brute Justice took my group way longer than Living Liquid.

admanb

besides potency creep it's important to note the game was just worse eight years ago. Class mechanics were jankier and had a less intuitive path to mastery, and latency both in terms of the networking itself, FFXIV's networking code, and the mechanical design were all worse.

Jars

a 3 dot fester was like the strongest attack in ARR and did... 300 potency

SCREECH OF THE FARG

https://x.com/Kotaku/status/1830962848983355848

Huh i never knew about these benefits. Maybe ill attempt the grind

admanb

it's wild that Kotaku still publishes thoughtful reviews and industry thinkpieces from people like John Walker

and that they also publish... that

Aldo

admanb wrote: »

besides potency creep it's important to note the game was just worse eight years ago. Class mechanics were jankier and had a less intuitive path to mastery, and latency both in terms of the networking itself, FFXIV's networking code, and the mechanical design were all worse.

Stance dancing for tanks and even just giving tanks time to build up aggro...

SCREECH OF THE FARG

Stance dancing on tanks was fucking badass. So was being able to equip dps accs. Let me edge, take off the bumpers. I care not for the casuals whos ball discovers the gutter...

admanb

all accessories are dps accessories now

SCREECH OF THE FARG

admanb wrote: »

all accessories are dps accessories now

hm...what could i have meant then

BahamutZERO

that feels like an AI generated article

Kana

I really like the idea of black mage but good lord I don't know that I'm gonna be able to stick with it for very long. Playing the level 100 fights feels like it turns the regular fights into extremes, everytime you can actually smoothly complete a combo it feels like a big win.

And then after trying that hard I look at the aggro list and I'm on the bottom of the dps, including bards and dancers and the other "non-selfish" dps. Meanwhile I can just sleepwalk through the fight on any of my other dps and do well.

black mage just kinda feels like fundamentally not designed for the fights they make now.

Badablack

I just finished the last dungeon and yeah I dont think I want to do that on a black mage. Fifteen thousand lasers turning me into that guy in the hallway from the resident evil movie was terrible enough n a job with mobility, while BLM's big 100 skill just makes them less mobile.

Polaritie

Black mage is known to be the hardest job to play in high level content, yeah. It takes more work to get the same results. It's absolutely doable but you need to know a fight inside and out. And also slidecast like crazy.

Donnicton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Pq7POjWm0

Zython

Managed to do something the other day.

Recleared it without too much trouble tonight, as well:

Cinematic parallels

Donnicton

Meanwhile we've had to boot our newest(and third overall) tank this tier because he decided to go lock himself to m4s midweek because a buddy promised to give him the weapon coffer if he went and cleared with them instead. And in the same night the other healer decides to quit wholesale because it's his first raid tier and he wanted to try savage but kept dying Midnight Sabbath and he ended up too tilted to want to continue raiding. Fuck's sake.