Final Fantasy XIV

Dark Knight will definitely be one for my Warrior, maybe even his new main if I like it enough. He can give whatever the gunner class is a go too.

I want to see the finale of the Crystal Tower.

There are at least a few Nexus relics that are considered best in slot for raiding, two of which I know for sure are Warrior and White Mage. I've been using a Rosenbogen (soldiery bow) since I got a tomestone from the first couple weeks of Syrcus Tower but with the patch I'll probably finally finish my Artemis Bow Atma and start progressing that.

I always did want to tank in this, and now that they're bringing in the 2nd of my favorite FF classes, I can hit two birds with one stone.

How many of you played 1.0? Every now and then on the official forums, there will be a few people demanding that the game bring back elements from the first game (overleveled mobs outside of dungeons, no way to easily insta teleport, traveling is slower, etc). Based on what you experienced in 1.0, do you think elements from there should be revisited?

So many baby ninjas. So many groups that need a White Mage to heal them. It's a beautiful symbiosis.

speaking as someone who played 1.0..No..most of what was retained from 1.0 already is the good stuff. Most 1.0 fetishizers just miss the game resembling a super oldschool MMO

There was a thread in the forums of people wanting the old graphics and weather effects back. They tried to compare the textures by zooming in really deep for 2.0's textures that looked obviously blurry up close. I get 1.0 was graphically pleasing, but it just wasn't optimized for the general market and reminds me too much of devs thinking graphics is all you need to sell a game.

I carried to fresh Rogues through a low level dungeon as my lv50 WHM and one of them gave me 10,000 gil for partying with them.

Damn, it may be time to fire up Ye Olde Low-level Roulette when I get home instead of farming sands/oils out of ST.

Enjoy your 30+ minute queue :P I queued for Sastasha (was only 15, and need 16 for low roulette) for 30 minutes with no hits, until I got someone to tank for me, and then last night I queued for the roulette, but forgot I was queued about ten minutes later and summoned my chocobo.

I mean as tank.

Oh, right. Yeah, you're gonna do fine.

I forget if I have mentioned it before, but I've seen people offering their healing/tanking services for low-level runs. One guy wanted 100,000g for it.

Even before 2.4, tanks and healers always get instant queues because no one really plays as those roles. Everyone just wants to nuke stuff as DPS, resulting in longer wait times.

Healers don't. We have much shorter queues than DPS, 5-10 minutes, but there are quite a few of us around.

Yeah, tanks remain the rarest role in... pretty much every MMO, this one being no exception. XIV shot itself in the foot even more by fixing classes to an immutable role, too, something I think is a little at odds with its "modern" MMO design.

It was a very smart decision to make one of the edgiest, most popular classes in the franchise a tank, though. The shortage will reinstate itself at higher levels when people get bored with the novelty, but early on in the expansion's life, and probably for a long time in at low levels, tanks will be everywhere.

Speaking as someone who's main character is a tank, I don't understand why people seem to avoid the role.

On a related note, I queued for low roulette as my rogue for 90 minutes, only to end up in Sastasha with a shit party (tank didn't always hold aggro, healer let the tank die a couple of times, monk had his own ideas about which enemies he was going to attack, and the tank left us to take on some more enemies without finishing off the ones we were currently dealing with) who then voted to abandon after the tank got his knickers in a twist about something (I have no idea what, they all spoke German) and refused to play any more.

I was very fucking angry.

That's why I'm glad I have my own people to run shit with.

I also (used to?) main a tank, my only complaint is that I seem to suck at it.

I'd gladly do low roulette with friends if the game allowed you to queue for it in a party. But it doesn't.

I think it's because Tanking is considered one of the hardest things to do in an MMO. As opposed to "getting 1337 DPS". Basically people would rather rack up high damage numbers like they were playing Disgaea instead or struggling with holding aggro

edited 1st Nov '14 12:31:34 AM by MorningStar1337

That's definitely the gist of it. More than anything else, tanking is about managing both the enemies and your party. Even your most basic function is party dependent: tanking is only viable if your healer is on point and if DPS is clearing enemies at a reasonable pace. DPS only have to focus on their rotation and avoiding AO Es, while healers, though it may be frustrating seeing party members take unnecessary damage, can at least actively remedy their party's mistakes. But tanking means even if you yourself play perfectly, if your party isn't doing its job, you're going to die, and then you're the domino that wipes everyone else.

It's simultaneously active—you need to manage aggro and draw it off party members—and incredibly passive—you need to wait for your party to finish the encounter. So I can see how it's stressful and unappealing.

That's pretty much what made me shelve my Warrior for anything other than the occasional Low-Level Duty Roulette run - more often than not, I would end up with a nineball healer who tunnel visions on my HP bar and completely ignores everything else - DP Ses taking non-avoidable damage, Do Ts and debuffs that need to be removed, Ao Es that the healer needs to dodge, etc.

But of course, the wipe is always my fucking fault (though that's true no matter what role I play)

edited 1st Nov '14 10:55:44 AM by Reflextion

Healers also get the same flak; if the DPS players aren't paying attention and start taking unnecessary damage, the haler has to waste MP keeping them alive and lose focus on the tank. If the healer gets damaged for reasons beyond their control (widespread AOE, certain mechanics, etc), then the healer has to shift focus on himself so that he doesn't die and screw the team over.

No matter what, the healer will get as much shit as the tank for "not keeping the party alive"

That too, I'm all too familiar with that from having started out as a healer - which is probably why the above bothers me as much as it does ("Dammit, don't suck at healing worse than I do!").

Or maybe I need to just learn to calm the hell down and/or never try to heal or tank while sober.

edited 1st Nov '14 10:58:39 AM by Reflextion

Healing in this game at low levels (compounded by the ingenious decision to lock out skills if you level sync down) is also really, really boring and not indicative of what you'll be doing in the future (notably, the Conjurer class quests don't really teach you how to play beyond "heal me, X!" unlike the sometimes really elaborate other class quests), so that doesn't help either.

For me as a healer, if a DPS dies more than twice in an encounter—usually in a big pull or against a boss—they immediately drop to the bottom of my priority list. Dying more than twice will massively debuff you anyway, and is indicative of bad habits in play, like tunnel vision, carelessness towards drawing aggro, or ignorance of mechanics. Then we either make it through, or wipe and discuss what needs to be done next time. That's how I stay sane as a WHM.

Fortunately, I've been mostly lucky with DF in getting cooperative groups, especially since the hardest content I've done has only been the EX primals. I don't even want to consider doing Coil with terrible DPS wasting my time as a healer.