Final Fantasy XIV

What point are you at exactly? The level 50 2.0 quests before the credits, or somewhere in that ballpark?

Huh? No, the latest ones, after defeating Vishap and then doing all those dull-as-dishwater walking around talking to people and killing simple enemies ones. Redeemed somewhat by the fact that Tataru is apparently up to something, and there are traitors within the Crystal Braves. Guess I'll find out more about that later though.

Oh. I actually let those sit for the time being after Steps of Faith. Really can't stand the World Of Warcraft questing model.

I already know the details, so I'm not particularly concerned with sitting down and finishing until closer to Heavensward.

Yeah it's two sets of cutscenes nearly an hour each.

It's a lot. Bring tissue.

My word, the length of a feature film to conclude a story arc. Boggles the mind, and makes me wish I had been following it more closely. Discussion elsewhere in this thread made me see that some of the finer points have escaped me. Probably doesn't help that it was delivered in chunks, weeks or months apart.

You can always read the journal entries in game to get a tl;dr version of the scenes.

Nah, I'll watch them. That's not a bad idea to give me a reminder of what has happened previously though.

Welp, I got the game two weeks ago, been having a pretty fun time with my lancer so far, then hit a brick wall with the story mode Garuda fight. The tank, who was the only member of our group who had done it before, said we weren't giving enough DPS or heals, so I guess I'm going to try increasing DPS in order to kill the feathers quicker.

Woohoo, level 50!

Gear check: is all your equipment up to level?

It will help if you get to level 45 and do your class quest, which gives you the first four pieces of your level 50 class gear.

You didn't say what jobs you're playing so can't give tips there, but I don't believe story mode Garuda has any hard DPS checks.

Benchmark is live

everyone make your au ras

My laptop can't handle it, so I get to wait till June. :(

I literally skipped right past the character creation, imported my main's character data, plopped him in the AF 2 and went straight into the video. XD

I scored around 11800 on the benchmark at max settings. I think I'm OK.

@Sivartis: There is a dps check of sorts on Garuda, if you can't down the feathers fast enough, then they will cut the pillars and you will get wiped by the huge aoe.

An option in that case is to protect one of the pillars (one in the back, usually), without bothering for the others. If you have a complete pillar for the aoe, everyone should survive. Theoretically.

A complete pillar AND a tank limit break.

I remember having to use a tank limit break to survive that the first time I fought Garuda NM. It's one of the few times a tank LB is useful. A shame the guy just gave up on you, but yeah, it'll be worthwhile to get to level 45 and do your job quest to get the armour, since it'll be the best available to you at that point.

I've had my share of people quitting today too. Doing the Steps of Faith on one of my alts took all afternoon because no-one was willing communicate properly and quit at the first whiff of a fail.

Time for a new graphics card, looks like.

Step of Faith is almost a Meaningful Name at this point. Based on what I been reading and hearing, no one ever communicates and even when people do try to explain the mechanics, people still screw it up anyway. It got to the point where a lot of people are swearing off of the trials roulette and will gladly eat a 30 minute rage quit penalty if they get queued up in that specific trial.

I did get to that point. In one run, once it became apparent we weren't going to manage it, one tank started calling everyone noobs, asked to be kicked after the wipe, I'd already started a vote dismiss because of his attitude, but it was rejected, so he just sat at the edge and refused to participate. Everyone else started the battle again anyway, and partway through I got so fed up I was willing to take the penalty to get out of it, but I couldn't leave while in combat. After a while some others managed to get out, and I quit at that point with no penalty, and reported the offending tank.

But yeah, you very rarely get a party that communicates, and yes, even when someone has tried to, they don't really explain it fully, or people neglect to assign roles, or someone doesn't properly understand their role (for example, firing the Dragonkiller before Vishap is snared). I ended up simply googling the strategy.

The kick in the teeth is that the only way to fail is if the boss reaches the end of the bridge before its HP reaches zero, so even if its clear well before then that it's going to be a fail, you can't simply all die and start over, you have to wait for it to get to the end.

I had the same problem with the Chrysalis in the previous update. People didn't explain the mechanics, or if they did, people didn't listen and still messed it up, and then people quitting after one wipe. Neither Chrysalis or Steps of Faith are particularly complex or difficult duties, it's simply down to the players not working together.

Some people suggested a "vote to restart" feature for the steps of faith, which is not a bad idea, but I think the time limit should be extended by another 30 minutes because one hour to do the duty is not enough when you have several failed runs.

I was lucky enough to do the duty on launch day and succeed after going through a few parties and I am thankful I don't have to do it again. What also doesn't help is most of the content in the game is so simple to do, and then we have fights like the Steps of Faith and Chrysalis that demand more mechanics to be paid attention to and that's where people start to completely fall apart and blame everyone else.

There's a video of someone beating it with a party made entirely of dragoons.

Well of course that's possible. I once ran Amdapoor Keep (not hard mode) with a few buddies where 3 of us were healers and the other was a tank.

Fuck, I want to do that now.

I once did a 4-PLD Halatali HM. Was fun.

I heard tell that when Rogue came out people were doing all-Rogue runs of low level dungeons, to beat the queues.

I still have to beat Steps of Faith one more time on my last alt, but I feel confident enough in my knowledge of it now that I can step up and direct the party if no-one else is willing to do so, so I don't think it should be too much of a problem. Chrysalis was also much easier by the time I got around to doing it on that character, simply because by then everyone knew the mechanics.