Various Thoughts

Just maxed the last class on my 3rd character, meaning that combined with the previous two I’ve now maxed out all classes in the game.

Dragoon is an annoying class because you have to constantly switch between two attack lines (if you want to keep your damage buff up) while simultaneously keeping track of your positioning. And it certainly doesn’t help that its questgiver is located out in the middle of nowhere. It has quite a few instant attacks however and ends up fairly decent at evasion once you get the hang of them. The party buffing abilities are a nice bonus.

Samurai gives you a bit more leeway with your buffs (they last longer), but forces you to keep track of an expendable resource in addition to adding a 3rd (shorter) attack sequence. That combined with the focus on high skill speed results in a class that’s extremely busy and a real pain to play optimally. The main saving grace here is that there’s no need to worry about positioning. One other thing to note is that, unlike all other classes, its level 60 quest requires an ilevel of 200+ to beat.

Paladin turned out to be a hybrid Tank/Healer; in addition to the standard suite of tanking abilities it also gets a strong single-target heal and some attack magic. The shield starts showing its worth once you get Sheltron at 35 and yeah this is definitely the class with the most survivability. It’s just generally good all around.

Warrior is sort of odd. It swaps out some of Paladin’s defense for more offense, but that offense is quite limited and not really worth the trade unless you’re doing solo duties/quests. Personally I only ended up using it for PvP.

Dark Knight has been my go-to tanking class and is quite a bit of fun. It’s magic themed, meaning it has some defensive abilities that only work against magic attacks (which I often forget to use) and uses MP to provide both more offense and more defense. The MP shield, Blackest Night, is fantastic and can even be used to defend the main tank if you happen to be off-tanking. Probably the busiest of the tanking classes though with all the instants and resources you have to keep track off.

Finally we come to Gunbreaker, which is a hybrid Tank/DPS with a bit of Healer thrown in for some reason. The healing abilities aren’t anything to write home about (beyond that they’re instant), but its DPS-like attack combo makes it one of the more aggressive tanking options available thanks to having a relatively short cooldown time.

Ultimately, tanking is quite a bit of fun and vastly preferable to playing melee DPS or (gods forbid) Healer. All you really have to worry about is keeping the boss faced away from the party (Hansel/Gretel fight excepted) and using defensive abilities if/when the boss uses a tankbuster attack. Most mechanics don’t even target you, and those that do will often barely hurt even if you mess them up. It’s great.

One thing I have noticed however is that tanks on the Aether data center in general seem to absolutely hate having their tank stance on (presumably because it used to lower stats?). Meaning if you aren’t tanking there be prepared to get swarmed by adds during raids and have your healers blitzed if/when the MT dies.

So I’ve been working on a secondary character for a while now to try out the Ninja, Monk, three ranged physical DPS classes, and Culinarian/Fisher classes.

Ninja is an interesting class that boasts both melee and ranged options for attacks and does similarly well against both single targets and groups. The rub is that using all of these attacks requires quite a bit of clicking and memorization. You can’t macro the Ninjitsu attacks (or base combo) and if you try to perform them too quickly they can causing clipping and fail. So it’s moderately skill intensive.

Monk is… kind of plain really. It just punches/kicks things at close range; no ranged attacks. That its damage over time attack is sort of hidden is also a mark against it. On the plus side you can easily macro the combos and it doesn’t require much manual dexterity to play. It does require a bit of memorization though, since some attacks are only effective from the sides, while others are only effective from the back.

Bard is a mix of pure offensive and offense-focused support abilities. It can do solid single target and AOE damage while concurrently buffing your party members. It also has two damage over time abilities and a couple no cooldown attacks that can be semi-spammed (making it highly mobile). There’s really nothing at all to complain about here. Meanwhile, Machinist is a little strange. It’s actually better against groups most of the time since its single-target damage primarily relies upon using a (non-macroable) 3-part combo. Sure it has a bunch of instants, but (apart from Drill) they don’t really do much damage and in effect have longer cooldowns than the Bard’s. So it’s odd. Not bad… just… sort of weird to play.

Dancer on the other hand is a ton of fun and vaguely like Red Mage in its mix of offensive and support abilities. It’s equally good against groups or single targets and has some pretty impressive high-damage attacks. I was worried that the ‘dancing’ mechanic was going to be like a QTE, but turns out its pretty laid back and simple to activate.

Getting to the non-combat classes now, apart from some notable restrictions Culinarian is mechanically identical to the other crafting classes. Those restrictions being that it can’t repair anything, can’t craft Glamour Prisms, and can’t desynth its own creations (only raw fish). So it’s essentially flat-out worse. Speaking of raw fish, that’s what the Fisher class gathers.

Fisher turned out to be quite a bit different from the Miner/Botanist classes. Mostly in detrimental ways. See, with fishing you can’t see what fish are in a gathering location until after you’ve caught them somewhere (and can never see your chances of catching them). Fishing also requires buying bait and/or lures, which take up inventory space. They take up a lot of inventory space. And even worse, Fishers can’t directly gather crystals (Culinarians can desynth fish into water crystals). So what are the benefits? Um… they have their own special ‘Ocean Fishing‘ leveling duty. That’s all I got.

In other news I’ve also been playing daily Frontline matches. This PvP mode is pretty fun, seeing as how it’s both chaotic enough that tight teamwork isn’t necessary and matches tend to play out quite differently from one day to the next. I’ve avoided The Feast (too competitive/teamwork heavy) and Rival Wings (reeks of DotA) so far though, and will probably continue to do so.

The experience this time around overall has been much smoother since I’ve been skipping any sidequests that don’t give equipment rewards or unlock something. Sure the tons of exclamation points on the map are annoying… but actually completing the quests would be more so.

The third and currently most recent expansion to the FFXIV MMO is the first to actually deliver on fans’ repeated assertations that “the game gets better in the expansions“.

It does this in two main ways. The first being that sidequests, including repeatable Beast Tribe quests, are now level-synced. So they now serve as a pretty decent alternate source of leveling XP for your non-main class. The second being the Trust system.

That feature lets you challenge most multiplayer dungeons added by the expansion with a group of NPCs instead of other players (meaning there’s no longer any waiting to find a party). Even better, the NPCs have infinite MP and don’t get caught off-guard by boss mechanics; so long as you follow their lead in avoiding attacks it’s pretty hard to get killed. The drawbacks are that they’ll only be the minimum level required to challenge the dungeon, and if you do die it’s considered a full party wipe. So while a good option for DPS classes, tanks or healers may want to stick to partying with PCs.

As far as plot development goes… while I’d have to say that it’s certainly better than Stormblood‘s overall, the writers seem to be having a contest as to who can write the most idiotic character behavior. And while I wasn’t really thrilled by the FFT-themed raids there, the Nier Automatica ones here are far more ill-fitting.

Some other minor annoyances would be how you now have to purchase the basic fast travel upgrades (with a new currency gained by clearing FATEs) rather than get them for free, and how the crafter quests have backslid somewhat. Here they behave like the Custom Delivery system, except you have to use standard (possibly quite expensive depending on marketplace availability) ingredients to craft the items instead of exclusive merchant-sold ones. The only saving grace for omnicrafters is that rather than one questline per class it’s one questline per class type: One for smiths, one for Weavers/Leatherworkers, and one for Alchemists/Culinarians. Miners/Botanists also get a shared questline (which behaves in the same way), while Fishers end up with an exclusive one.

Class quests meanwhile have also been condensed. There are four questlines based on role (tank, healer, magical DPS, physical DPS), each corresponding to one of the ‘Warriors of Darkness’ you may remember from earlier in the game. These are handled surprisingly well, and clearing them will get you access to sets of class-specific equipment (that unfortunately can’t be dyed at the moment) near the end of the main quest.

Speaking of endings, I just so happened to reach the end of the existing ShB content the day the newest patch dropped, which was incredibly fortunate timing since that patch both removed some weekly equipment reward restrictions (a bullshit system if ever there was one) and made it possible to easily upgrade Exarchic gear to be on par with the 2nd best gearset.

So I’m basically almost done with this character. Just have to finish upgrading my Resistance Weapon (the special instance here is, albeit similar, notably better than Eureka as far as progression goes), and then ~maybe~ complete the Blue Mage quests/spellbook.

The next character will tackle the Ninja, Monk, ranged physical DPS classes, and PvP. I’ll also probably check out the Deep Dungeon feature as well… something I completely forgot about after unlocking.

FFXIV’s second expansion is something of a mixed bag.

While it’s true that most sidequests are back to the base game’s standard of repetitiveness (not sure whether I hate the ones that require the use of emotes or the ones that require you to say stuff in chat more)… most of the excessive back-and-forth traveling has been moved into the class quest lines. So clearing general sidequests is no longer a chore, but clearing the class quests kind of is (particularly since you only get a decent reward for the last one in each line). The exception here being the crafter quests, which are a massive improvement over Heavensward‘s. They behave more like the beast tribe crafter quests now and no longer require any grinding and/or large amounts of money to clear.

Speaking of grinding, this expansion decides to gate some story content behind its relic upgrade mechanic. Rather than have to grind FATEs or dungeons to upgrade the new relic equipment this time around, you instead get to visit a special area where you’ll have to re-level yourself from 1-60 while collecting new varieties of crystals that (infrequently) drop from enemies. I briefly tried it out and gave up at level 5 or so after realizing the only way to efficiently advance is to co-ordinate with other players to form impromptu parties.

Aside from that though, I’ve been able to clear every other Stormblood quest without much trouble. This is in notable contrast to the base game (where it’s pretty much impossible to find groups to beat the Extreme primals or Bahamut line synced) and HW (in which I couldn’t get Extreme Ravana to launch even after 2 days of trying).

Meta and gameplay issues/improvements aside there is one other key area this expansion stands out in: Plotline development. The various questline developments which occur here are… how should I put this… utter trash. Worse than those in the base game. Not only is summoning shoehorned into all sorts of places it has no business being in, but the game seems to want to present you as both an infallible god-killer and an underdog freedom fighter. It does this by having you dispatch massively powerful primals with ease on the one hand while forcing you to lose horribly to one of the Empire’s middle managers (two of whom you’ve already wrecked) in a couple of scripted solo duties. It’s garbage and the goofy nemesis subplot does it no favors. I’m not thrilled about how the epilogue to FFT plays out either; Delita is far, far more cold-blooded than he’s depicted here.

Getting back to the gameplay now, here’s some thoughts on the classes I’ve been playing:

Red Mage is awesome if for no other reason than you can instantly cast Resurrection spells all day long. The only real flaws are a lack of (non-dual cast) instant-cast and damage-over-time spells, and you have to keep track of quite a few abilities in order to maximize your damage output. The second issue can be alleviated a bit with macros:

/macroicon "Corps-a-corps"
/macroerror off
/ac "Corps-a-corps" <t> <wait.1>
/ac "Embolden" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Riposte" <t>

/macroicon "Redoublement"
/macroerror off
/ac "Redoublement" <t> <wait.1>
/ac "Displacement" <t>

/macroicon "Jolt"
/macroerror off
/ac "Verfire" <t>
/ac "Verstone" <t>
/ac "Jolt" <t>

I’ve sort of lost interest in Black Mage since it mainly comes across like an inferior Red Mage. Sure it does more damage, but it’s far less mobile, requires better timing in switching between abilities, and lacks any healing capacity. Summoner meanwhile hasn’t lost any of its charm. It’s still highly mobile, can resurrect in a pinch, and gains quite a number of high-damage instant-cast abilities at later levels.

The flipside to Summoner is the Scholar, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of this class. The trick is to throw up barriers/shields before your party gets hurt and then sit back and DPS away until they need to be refreshed. This is in notable contrast to White Mage and Astrologian, both of which are better at healing large amounts of health quickly. They’re also both better at doing AOE damage… which puts Scholar at something of a net disadvantage.

All 3 of those healer classes are pretty ability-heavy when you get to the later levels though. So once again I ended up turning to macros to help lighten the load:

/macroicon "Raise"
/macroerror off
/ac "Thin Air" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Swiftcast" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Raise" <t>
/ac "Raise" <1>
/ac "Raise" <2>
/ac "Raise" <3>
/ac "Raise" <4>
/ac "Raise" <5>
/ac "Raise" <6>
/ac "Raise" <7>

/macroicon "Cure"
/macroerror off
/ac "Tetragrammaton" <t>
/ac "Afflatus Solace" <t>
/ac "Cure II" <t>
/ac "Cure" <t>

/micon "Medica"
/macroerror off
/ac "Assize"
/ac "Plenary Indulgence"
/ac "Medica II"
/ac "Medica"

/macroicon "Asylum"
/ac "Asylum" <t>

/micon "Whispering Dawn"
/ac "Whispering Dawn"
/ac "Succor"

/macroicon "Sacred Soil"
/ac "Excogitation" <t>
/ac "Sacred Soil" <t>
/ac "Lustrate" <t>

/micon "Emergency Tactics"
/ac "Emergency Tactics" <me> <wait.1>
/ac "Fey Illumination" <me>

/micon "Benefic"
/macroerror off
/ac "Essential Dignity" <t>
/ac "Benefic II" <t>
/ac "Benefic" <t>

/micon "Draw"
/macroerror off
/ac "Play"
/ac "Draw"
/ac "Sleeve Draw"

/micon "Helios"
/macroerror off
/ac "Earthly Star" <me>
/ac "Celestial Opposition"
/ac "Aspected Helios"
/ac "Helios"

With those I can keep my number of go-to hotkeys down to a manageable 6 or so, while only having to use direct hotbar selection for emergency or niche situations.

Now it’s finally time to see whether the touted NPC party members introduced in the third expansion can actually credibly replace use of the Duty Finder (which seems to always be in desperate need of tanks recently).

The vast majority of the content included in the first expansion to Final Fantasy XIV is… notably worse than that found in the base game. The sidequests, in particular, are soulcrushing timesinks.

First of all the expansion adds several new world maps to explore. Maps which are extremely large, sparsely populated, and must be crisscrossed back-and-forth innumerable times.

Second, both crafting and gathering have been made more difficult. Instead of four nodes relatively close together, you now have three groups of two nodes spaced widely apart. So gathering materials takes more time. The new craftable items, meanwhile, now require more ingredients to craft. So you’re hit both ways. It’s far more efficient to just buy whatever you need from the marketplace… though that will end up running you close to a million (or more if you’re a full omni-crafter) to clear the various crafter quests.

The main questline is more or less on par with the Astral Era quests, though it introduces a new ‘solo’ duty feature. Which are basically Duty Finder instances where NPCs take the role of other players. And while that’s something I specifically desired, the implementation here is lacking. Most of these duties feel empty/artificial and much of the NPC behavior is heavily scripted rather than dynamic (to detrimental effect in the case of One Life for One World). The last one before Stormblood actually features what appears to be dynamic behavior (in addition to heavy scripting) though, which gives me hope the future NPC instances will be better handled.

The aforementioned sidequests are where the pain truly lies however. Pretty much each and every questline requires running back and forth between two locations 5+ times. Trips which can take 1-2 minutes each way due to the size of the maps and lack of teleporters. It’s insane. I’m ~told~ this sort of quest design fell out of favor in the next and later expansions… but then, I was also ~told~ that the game got better in the first expansion when it unequivocally does not.

We’ll see if that’s a lie as well.