Various Thoughts

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.

So I’ve briefly mentioned crafting before… but didn’t really say anything about it. The thing is, all the crafting classes have the exact same abilities and produce items in the exact same manner. It’s just the items they can create are different.

Early on you don’t have to worry about anything other than using the Basic Synthesis ability. Once you need to start crafting high quality items for class quests it gets a bit trickier, since quite a number of the abilities are traps.

A simple (if highly risky) way of handling them is by starting with Inner Quiet and then using some combination of Innovation, Waste Not, Hasty Touch, and Basic/Standard Touch combos. Any Tricks of the Trade that trigger can be used to replace Hasty’s with Basic’s, just make sure to use Trial Synthesis beforehand to see exactly what kind of synthesis combo you need to finish with; Basic Synthesis || Veneration + Basic Synthesis || Name of the Elements + Brand of the Elements.

Once you hit level 50 though you’ll want a reliable process to quickly craft the various master gear. Pretty much all of the macros I’ve seen around are for level 70 crafting and aren’t applicable for new(er) characters, so I put one together myself and it makes perfect high quality 80 durability level 50 items with a single button press (no high quality ingredients required):

262 CP (with at least 280 Craftmanship and 255 Control)
/ac “Inner Quiet” <wait.2>
/ac “Hasty Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Hasty Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Hasty Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Hasty Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Waste Not II” <wait.2>
/ac “Innovation” <wait.2>
/ac “Basic Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Standard Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Basic Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Standard Touch” <wait.3>
/ac “Great Strides” <wait.2>
/ac “Byregot’s Blessing” <wait.3>
/ac “Basic Synthesis” <wait.3>
/ac “Basic Synthesis” <wait.3>

Decided to go with the second option, which is to say switched over to Conjurer/White Mage to continue the main questline… and yet again I hit level 50 before finishing it. After the level 41 quest this time.

The healer role is quite a bit more involved than the DPS role. Rather than simply attacking the weakest target(s) until they die while trying to avoid telegraphed attacks, you have to watch your party’s status while at the same time hopefully getting in a few hits of your own. Moreover, unlike DPS which mostly just has to worry about accidentally drawing too much aggro, the healer has to worry about both the tank and DPS classes drawing too much aggro.

There’s nothing quite so annoying as a tank running ahead to pull 6+ enemies and getting themselves killed in less than 5 seconds. Seriously, how exactly am I supposed to react to that?

On the positive side of things there really does seem to be a dearth of people playing healers, as the mandatory party quests (in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier, there are more at levels 24, 28, 32, 34, & 41) launched almost instantly this time around. It’s also pretty easy to rake in player commendations so long as you display the slightest bit of competence.

My strategy as a White Mage ended up being quite simple:
1) Cast Regen on the tank and any melee DPS.
2) Cast Aero on any enemies.
3) Cast Cure on the tank if necessary, otherwise use Stone if it’s a boss/miniboss.
4) Repeat from the top.

You’ve got to watch out for unavoidable AOE attacks of course and the lack of fast mana regen can certainly be an issue if you spam Cure II too much (Lucid Dreaming helps). This is the reason to not bother casting Stone on basic enemies in the dungeon; the DPS classes should be able to handle them fine (especially with Aero support) and that mana may be necessary to spam Cure II or Medica if the tank gets overzealous.

All that aside, since I just hit 50 again it seems time to switch to another class. Arcanist is all that’s left of the basic magic classes, and interestingly enough it has both a DPS and a healer specialization. Which fits quite nicely into this character‘s theme.

Of course shortly after I posted about not having to join a party I run into the mandatory party quests: There are 3 immediately following the ‘visit the other two starting cities’ main quest (for levels 15, 16, & 17) and another as the first level 20 main quest.

They’re… not great. While it helps quite a bit that apparently any player who’s completed the quest before can join up, there’s still notable wait times (expect at least 10 minutes for a DPS class) and playing with random people who may or may not know what they’re doing (and I include myself in that group) is less than ideal. I don’t like the rigid 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS party requirements either. I’m not looking forward to future instances of the mechanic and wish they had added that NPC party option introduced in the most recent expansion to the earlier content.

In other news I tried out crafting; it’s a little overwhelming with all the various quality-related abilities. The way the system is set up, making a high-level item is almost like fighting a turn-based battle. It’s a bit odd really and kind of annoying in regards to crafting low level items even despite the ‘quick synthesis’ option.