FFXIV: A Realm Reborn

[Razgriez]

We'll see what happens with how the changes affect the classes/jobs overall, but from what I'm seeing in opinion/news break down videos, and official post, I wouldn't say that WAR is becoming the better tank in general, but rather, they're becoming a better tank in a specific type of tanking (I.E. versus foes who have a habit of dealing a lot of Burst damage, such as Titan with his Tumult's, or as I so "Lovingly" call it due to my bad luck of accepting raises during them if I die, "Titan Tapdancing" for hopefully self-explanatory reasons. Or during the final phase, that attack which, for lack of remembering it's name at the moment, Titan's coffee table flip attack). That's where I see WARs being outright better than PLDs, where having higher HP, and HP recovery might be a slightly better proposal over say the PLD's Block/Parry and Stun/Silence/Pacify Style Tank style

That said, I do see the concern over certain combinations of WAR's buffed abilities. That's the one way I fear that at the very least, will turn WAR into a "Flavor of the month" job, where people will rush to WAR because they're getting the massive early Christmas buff wish list, and at worst, will outright overtake Paladin (again!) by being outright stronger. Especially when you consider that upon reaching level 40, Sword Oath get's very quickly trumped by Shield Oath in most typical situations for a PLD. When you add that factor to Defiance's outright massive buff which has been currently explained as a constant, flat 20% (That's 5% more than the current 5 stacks of wraith bonus) HP Cure buff. This on top of it's other major buffs to the Enmity gain buff, HP buff, and so on. Something in return I think, has to be done to buff Sword/Shield Oaths in the future. Sword, so that Paladins have more reason to use it after unlocking Shield Oath, and Shield Oath, to make it somewhat on par with the Buffed Defiance

As for the other jobs being affected in this patch:

Spoiler

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- DRG Jump buffs: Awesome, now I can properly weave in my job's core abilities properly, AND it act's more like a WS with greatly reduced Animation lock. The Powersurge Cooldown Reduction is also greatly appreciated. This receives my Dragoon Seal of Approval

-MNK Greased Lightning, Rear attack combo Buffs: again Awesome and needed. As it currently stands in ARR, Monk's are the rarest of the classes I see in general. People just don't seem to want to play it because it has a much higher learning curve than the other DPS classes/jobs. At the end of the day, who do you want to be? The DPS who can stand back and shoot arrows without regard to position beyond "Am out out of aura style burst AoEs/Line AoEs/Cone AoEs". The one who's like the above, but doesn't have to worry about staying in range of other party members, and blast away without impunity. The one who has 2, very simple and easy positional combo's. Or the one that has to be in near constant motion through out the fight,while trying to string combo's together for max effects? This will hopefully make the class a bit more tempting and worthwhile to play.

-General Melee Damage Per Second receiving a 10% damage buff: Again... DRAGOON OF THE VENGEFUL LANCE SEAL OF APPROVAL

-Bard Cross Class changes: So far we seem to know that Blood for Blood is not staying. I know some Bards are upset about this, but really, to be honest, I kinda suspected this was going to happen eventually. Despite (or rather, In spite of) the 20% damage debuffs they take while singing MP/TP refresh songs, a Bard could pull off some really impressive bursts thanks to them being even more naturally inclined to have Critical hit buffs than the melee DPS classes. Add to that mix at least 5 abilities they could use to power up to absolutely ridiculous levels (Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Hawk's Eye, Internal Release, and Barrage) all hint that it wasn't going to last forever. Blood for Blood is just the most obvious, since it's designed to be a High Risk, High Reward ability for Melee combatants, but on a Bard, that risk is nearly non-existent


I know some people are actually suspecting that maybe either Lancer, or Pugilist will be replaced by a different class. But given that most of the time the theory goes right to being "Conjuror", I' suspect this is less actual theorizing, and more wishful thinking of Legacy veterans hoping for a return to 1.0 Legacy Bard dual role of DPS/Healer. Given the increased speed and pace of 2.0 though, I'd prefer if SE sticks to the more DPS, with some support abilities plan, and leave the "Damage dealing + Support healing" to the new SCH job

Good King Moogle Mog XIII,and Mog Weapons return/buff: SWEET. I am quite happy about this news.

In other news, got my first Titan win thankfully with a good party that was actually interested in fighting Titan for the sake of beating him, and not simply for Gil bribes. Onwards to Myth gear and more tome farming!

[Talderas]

Especially when you consider that upon reaching level 40, Sword Oath get's very quickly trumped by Shield Oath in most typical situations for a PLD. When you add that factor to Defiance's outright massive buff which has been currently explained as a constant, flat 20% (That's 5% more than the current 5 stacks of wraith bonus) HP Cure buff. This on top of it's other major buffs to the Enmity gain buff, HP buff, and so on. Something in return I think, has to be done to buff Sword/Shield Oaths in the future. Sword, so that Paladins have more reason to use it after unlocking Shield Oath, and Shield Oath, to make it somewhat on par with the Buffed Defiance

So funny story. I was tanking HM Ifrit and a marauder was joking that he was going to pull threat (this was a server group of PLD, PLD, WAR, MAR, WHM, WHM, WHM, SCH). So I told him to go ahead and try. I put on sword oath and he didn't come close to stealing threat. This group then went on to kill HM Garuda with 7 sets of adds. Long story short, sword oath generates far more threat than shield oath. I tank HM Ifrit, HM Garuda, AK, and WP and never touch Shield Oath unless I'm pulling multiple groups of mobs.

[Rising Phoenix]

So funny story. I was tanking HM Ifrit and a marauder was joking that he was going to pull threat (this was a server group of PLD, PLD, WAR, MAR, WHM, WHM, WHM, SCH). So I told him to go ahead and try. I put on sword oath and he didn't come close to stealing threat. This group then went on to kill HM Garuda with 7 sets of adds. Long story short, sword oath generates far more threat than shield oath. I tank HM Ifrit, HM Garuda, AK, and WP and never touch Shield Oath unless I'm pulling multiple groups of mobs.

Any Marauder worth their salt will have no problem pulling hate off a paladin assuming roughly equivalent gear :).

[Talderas]

Any Marauder worth their salt will have no problem pulling hate off a paladin assuming roughly equivalent gear :).

I doubt this. The facts surrounding the situation do not hold up your assertion.

Here's the major reasons that go into it.

• Potency is essentially a multiplier of weapon damage. So a 300 potency attack deals weapon damage * 3.
• Auto-attack potency is auto-attack damage / weapon damage * 100. So a curtana, for instance is 34 auto attack damage and 44 weapon damage meaning it's auto-attack potency is about 77. The bravura, for comparison is a 50 attack attack damage and 44 weapon damage for an auto-attack potency of 113. However sword oath increases paladin auto attack potency to 127. Since both weapons have the same weapon damage it means that a sword oath paladin is dealing more damage per auto-attack than the warrior and he's making more auto attacks (2.32s Curtana vs 3.44s Bravura). This is the major hurdle that either a warrior or marauder has to overcome when attempting to out-dps a paladin.
• The DPS rotation for paladins and warriors is approximately identical in potency. Presumably this is the same for marauders.
• The DPS combo for warriors is different from the threat combo while the two combos are identical for paladins.
• A paladin in shield oath generates about 10% less threat than a paladin in sword oath.

Those five points lead to a number of conclusions.

• In identical tanking gear sets or identically stated DPS sets, a DPS paladin will pull and hold aggro against a DPS warrior/marauder or tank paladin/warrior/marauder by virtue of dealing significantly more damage due to auto attacks (vs paladins/marauders/warriors) and having threat multiplier abilities in the DPS combo (vs marauders/warriors).
• In order to have any opportunity to break this, we have to give different gear sets to the other classes. This essentially requires the DPS paladin to wear a tanking set while giving DPS sets to the other classes.
• Marauder is probably only class that might be able to break the DPS paladin's DPS or pull threat but this is going to be based entirely on the greater selection of cross class skills and whether these can actually be leveraged and requiring the paladin to use a tank set while the marauder uses a dps set.

I just simply don't see how a Marauder can easily peel threat of a sword oath paladin without stacking things in the marauder's favor.

[Rising Phoenix]

I doubt this. The facts surrounding the situation do not hold up your assertion.

Here's the major reasons that go into it.

• Potency is essentially a multiplier of weapon damage. So a 300 potency attack deals weapon damage * 3.
• Auto-attack potency is auto-attack damage / weapon damage * 100. So a curtana, for instance is 34 auto attack damage and 44 weapon damage meaning it's auto-attack potency is about 77. The bravura, for comparison is a 50 attack attack damage and 44 weapon damage for an auto-attack potency of 113. However sword oath increases paladin auto attack potency to 127. Since both weapons have the same weapon damage it means that a sword oath paladin is dealing more damage per auto-attack than the warrior and he's making more auto attacks (2.32s Curtana vs 3.44s Bravura). This is the major hurdle that either a warrior or marauder has to overcome when attempting to out-dps a paladin.
• The DPS rotation for paladins and warriors is approximately identical in potency. Presumably this is the same for marauders.
• The DPS combo for warriors is different from the threat combo while the two combos are identical for paladins.
• A paladin in shield oath generates about 10% less threat than a paladin in sword oath.

Those five points lead to a number of conclusions.

• In identical tanking gear sets or identically stated DPS sets, a DPS paladin will pull and hold aggro against a DPS warrior/marauder or tank paladin/warrior/marauder by virtue of dealing significantly more damage due to auto attacks (vs paladins/marauders/warriors) and having threat multiplier abilities in the DPS combo (vs marauders/warriors).
• In order to have any opportunity to break this, we have to give different gear sets to the other classes. This essentially requires the DPS paladin to wear a tanking set while giving DPS sets to the other classes.
• Marauder is probably only class that might be able to break the DPS paladin's DPS or pull threat but this is going to be based entirely on the greater selection of cross class skills and whether these can actually be leveraged and requiring the paladin to use a tank set while the marauder uses a dps set.

I just simply don't see how a Marauder can easily peel threat of a sword oath paladin without stacking things in the marauder's favor.

Are you accounting the possibility that the warrior may not have been using it's enmity inducing abilities? But in any case cool beans.

My group is currently stuck on turn 2 of coil, we keep bringing ADS down to 8% hp then something goes wrong and we wipe ;_;

[Sajiri]

Speaking of turn 2, I did that yesterday, first time in coil too. I got to tag along with the group my husband regularly fills in for because they seemed to be missing a healer (as I found out later, he didn't tell them I was the scholar he was inviting at first, so when I joined the group leader was all 'thats your wife isnt it ' but aside from the one time I got hit in a line attack by ADS when my hp wasnt topped up and killed me, I didn't mess up.

I did notice damage going pretty crazy later in the fight, and occasionally Rot got passed to the wrong person when people were dodging aoes and running into the person with it who was passing. We came really close to winning, but I think some people were too tired. The leader of the FC they were all in though was leaving Rot on him until literally the last second and I had to run over and take it off him myself a few times after he wiped us..I guess he was having a bad day but wasnt sure I wanted to point it out to them ^^; I enjoyed it either way, the group is past turn 2 already but decided to start over. Hopefully next week I get a chance to go with them again.

[Talderas]

Are you accounting the possibility that the warrior may not have been using it's enmity inducing abilities? But in any case cool beans.

Yes. A paladin has two combo rotations.
Fast Blade (150 potency) -> Riot Blade (200 potency, +MP)
Fast Blade (150 potency) -> Savage Strike (200 potency, +emnity [x3]) -> Rage of Halone (250 potency, +emnity [x5])

So if we take 6 GCDs (15 seconds). You would complete 3 Riot Blade combos for a total potency of 1150. In that same time frame you would complete 2 Rage of Halone combos for a total potency of 1200. They're obviously close but Rage of Halone is the better DPS for a paladin. Halone is undisputed as the tanking combo with Riot Blade only being used if you need mana (practically unheard of in boss fights). So since I was tanking these bosses I had no reason to go with Riot Blade and was using Halone under Sword Oath.

A couple of things that I've read that are rather obviously not true.... Shield Oath does not confer a x2 multiplier on emnity generated, unless it's using D&D math where x5 and x2 actually means x6. If it were a solid x2 then a sword oath paladin would not even come close to stealing aggro from a shield oath paladin regardless of gear which is something I see with regularity.

Comparatively, the Warrior threat combo is only 10 potency higher means only any extra 20 potency over 15 seconds. This is more than offset by the increase in potency for auto-attacks provided by sword oath which gives the paladin about 10 more potency per auto-attack at about 3:2 for auto attacks. I basically don't see anything about the situation that could possibly provide a warrior the ability to strip threat.

My group is currently stuck on turn 2 of coil, we keep bringing ADS down to 8% hp then something goes wrong and we wipe ;_;

My group started last week with a paladin tank subbed in. PLD/PLD/WHM/SCH/BRD/DRG/BLM/SMN. We got a tank recruit for this week who is both PLD/WAR and our SMN is converting into a BRD. We basically have an ideal party. The only thing that might be an improvement is DRG->MNK but I actually prefer the DRG for some possible strategies that may work in Turn 4 that leverage a DRG's superior defenses.

We put down Caduceus sloppily last week after about 70 minutes of attempts. I would have rather we wiped than got the kill. The other tank died and along with him everyone but the SCH (who was healing me) and the BRD (which I have no idea how he didn't die). So I merged the two and did emergency kiting (kite clockwise never counter-clockwise). The bard DPSed, LB filled to three and he popped his limit break reviving the party. I died but the other tank was able to pick up the boss for the party to kill him. One thing we did which helps on two accounts is that at the split the DPS stays on the MT's target until about 5% before swapping to the OT's target. The major benefit is that the OT has plenty of time to build up threat so the DPS can save all their CD's for bursting the OT's target as soon as they get on it. Then you just return to the MT's target and drop a MNK/DRG LB to finish it off.

--

I did notice damage going pretty crazy later in the fight, and occasionally Rot got passed to the wrong person when people were dodging aoes and running into the person with it who was passing. We came really close to winning, but I think some people were too tired. The leader of the FC they were all in though was leaving Rot on him until literally the last second and I had to run over and take it off him myself a few times after he wiped us..I guess he was having a bad day but wasnt sure I wanted to point it out to them ^^; I enjoyed it either way, the group is past turn 2 already but decided to start over. Hopefully next week I get a chance to go with them again.

The big thing with rot is making sure that you have 5 characters that don't stand in melee. Once you've successfully passed it (with about 5s remaining) among those 5 raid members the mechanic is trivialized by stacking on top of each other. When rot is passed it gives you a debuff that prevents you from gaining rot again for a certain period of time. If you pass with 5s remaining that debuff essentially wears off once the 5th person has around 5s remaining. So at that point rot just passes itself without issue. At that point the big thing is for the ranged people to dance to avoid the bad and stick together. Rot self manages at that point.... at least from what I understand.

With that done, it's just a matter of hitting the interrupts (best done with 2 BRD) and tank swapping (avoiding either tank getting more than 5 stacks of the debuff) without issue. Now execution is a whole different story.

Our turn 2 on ADS was not going well, much so because I was stretched too much in keeping track of what players were doing. Neither or bard or the other paladin had the ability to voice chat so I was trying to coordinate the brd and myself for silences while trying to coordinate the tank swapping with the other tank. I was not pleased with that tank, he messed up tank swaps too often by failing to stop his aggro during the swap leading to situations where I would get one debuff stack, he'd pull aggro and refresh his stack (not a good thing). Even though I told him that the swap would occur with 4 stacks of the debuff I still had to prompt him every time that a swap needed to happen (which I wanted to do anyway for healer benefit) but he wouldn't even taunt when I had 4 stacks and didn't call it... then I saw myself creep up to 6 stacks where I called the swap and he would do it. I probably could have gotten away with not having the BRD and myself do silences but I didn't want to pursue any strategies that are reliant on a sub and rather buddy with the bard so he gets practice for when our second bard comes online.

[Sajiri]

Yeah we had our 5 ranged in formation at the back of the room, it was mostly that one guy who wasnt paying attention and passing it on time, either wiping us or making me run over to grab it off him since I was next in line, except I was healer and he was black mage, which meant I had to stop healing for a moment and the other healer was not so great either (As I understand he's usually a dps, but both their healers were missing that day so he switched to whm). We had a few other situations where rot got passed to the wrong person, because of people dodging aoes and running inbetween the person with rot and the one they wanted to pass to, and the time I accidentally gave it to a tank <_< I raised him, got rot a bit later, didnt realise he was still hanging out there back in my corner after I healed and buffed him up, so it passed straight onto him.

[Rising Phoenix]

Well my group made it all the way to turn 4 last week and we plan on besting it this week. I got my allagan boots of healing and today I will be getting my AF2 Scholar pants. Happy days!

Ads is so much easier when nearly all the dps in the group is ranged...

[Sajiri]

Im not sure when I'll get to do coil again, Im not really interested in joining random groups and I dont know if they'll be short 2 healers again next time ^^; I think I'd have to buy a mic before next time though, I was playing wow when my husband came in and told me to log in 14 and come to coil without much warning. As much as I hate voice chat online, I had to grudgingly admit it would have made things a lot more simple if I didnt have to type all my responses when they talked to me on raidcall

[Talderas]

Im not sure when I'll get to do coil again, Im not really interested in joining random groups and I dont know if they'll be short 2 healers again next time ^^; I think I'd have to buy a mic before next time though, I was playing wow when my husband came in and told me to log in 14 and come to coil without much warning. As much as I hate voice chat online, I had to grudgingly admit it would have made things a lot more simple if I didnt have to type all my responses when they talked to me on raidcall

Voice chat is a practical necessity. Party chat is just not convenient or practical to use during the fight so if something went wrong for a player without voice chat it can't be communicated timely enough to adapt if adapting is possible.

[Sajiri]

Voice chat is a practical necessity. Party chat is just not convenient or practical to use during the fight so if something went wrong for a player without voice chat it can't be communicated timely enough to adapt if adapting is possible.

Yeah, like I said though I didn't have much warning. My old mic broke some time ago and I haven't had much reason to go out and buy a new one before now

[Talderas]

For anyone interested, I'll be streaming my Coil group tonight from 9pm to midnight eastern. It's only our second week so we'll probably suck. Additionally it's from tank perspective so how much you can see will vary depending on a specific fight.

[Talderas]

Two weeks of raiding in, two Caduceus kills, and we have yet to kill an unmerged Caduceus. While last week was a sloppy kill after a merge (healer LB used). This week the off tank (a substitute) for some bloody reason merged them before I could my away.

Oh well, I now have two reasons why the strategy of single target DPSing is superior to split DPS.

#1 - If you have 3 DPS that do the same damage type and they can apply a debuff on the target to increase DPS (DRG/BRD/BRD) then splitting between the clones only lowers overall DPS since one BRD in that scenario won't get the benefit of lowered piercing resist.

#2 - Since our strategy involves attacking the MT's clone first so that the OT has time to build threat so DPS can enter a burn immediately when targeting it, the MT then gets an ample time to build more threat on his target. In the event of a merge after DPS has swapped the MT will have a huge threat lead over the DPS. That let's them DPS without issue for longer while the tank kites.

[Sajiri]

So it sounds like I'll be doing Coil again today...awkwardness because I already promised to go for old raids in WoW today too. Didn't get around to buying a mic either oops <_< They want me to be a fill in healer for when their usual are missing, and I think one of their usual healers has just had a baby so may be MIA for a while.

If I go, here's hoping I get past ADS this time

[Talderas]

So it sounds like I'll be doing Coil again today...awkwardness because I already promised to go for old raids in WoW today too. Didn't get around to buying a mic either oops <_< They want me to be a fill in healer for when their usual are missing, and I think one of their usual healers has just had a baby so may be MIA for a while.

If I go, here's hoping I get past ADS this time

I'm not sure how your ranged formation is setup but we use a trapezoid. 5 is our WHM which lets him hit all the ranged with Medica. I like it because it simplifies party healing and is well setup for rot. If the tanks swap as soon as they possibly can that reduces the damage they take. At that point it's really just making sure interrupts get taken care of and Rot gets passed.

4   5   1

  3   2

[Sajiri]

4   5   1

  3   2

Did that rotation the week before, but we ended up oneshotting it this time (if you dont count the first wipe on ADS because one of the bards left Foe up which accidentally pulled and wiped all the mages the moment we came down the stairs). We had a few pugs in the group, and everyone else except me and a tank were on jobs they didn't normally play, so the leader decided for fun to try the rage tactic he'd heard about and...it turned out immensely easy.

Ran through turn 3 which was..interesting. I died partway down, went back to the start then others made it to the finish. I was trying to find something to kill me to send me back to the start but then things were glitching out and not attacking me, just following me. Didn't get around to doing t4 because of the earlier mentioned nobody on correct jobs issue.

Of course now they've decided they want to change days because not enough people were showing up on weekends, which means my husband can't make it. I mentioned I probably can make it since I have 2 weeks off work coming up and have one weekday off, which they seemed really interested in. I think apart from me there are no dedicated healers.

In other news, 2.1 today! First thing Im doing is looking at the hairstylist. My FC were working towards getting a house, but it turns out for Hyperion the largest plot is 625mil smallest is 20mil. That wont be happening any time soon. I'll be looking forward to trying out Crystal Tower too

Edit: Just visited the official forums there too to join the hype of update day...seems everyone there is still into whining and complaining I really should learn to stop visiting that one.

[Talderas]

In other news, 2.1 today! First thing Im doing is looking at the hairstylist. My FC were working towards getting a house, but it turns out for Hyperion the largest plot is 625mil smallest is 20mil. That wont be happening any time soon. I'll be looking forward to trying out Crystal Tower too

First thing I'm doing is earning 3 ToM so I have 495 to buy my Boots of Valor....

The prices on housing depreciate 10% every 6 hours to a floor price. I'm not sure what the floor price is.

[Sajiri]

First thing I'm doing is earning 3 ToM so I have 495 to buy my Boots of Valor....

The prices on housing depreciate 10% every 6 hours to a floor price. I'm not sure what the floor price is.

I thought the prices listed were meant to be the floor price (thats what I was told, could be wrong) and they're based on the amount of gil circulating in the individual server. Thanks to all the RMT and some hackers (I recall seeing screenshots a while back of one guy with 99,999,999 gil), some servers are completely screwed. I'm still okay with it though, if it's a limited amount of plots designated for FC housing per server, and personal housing comes later, I wouldnt want everyone snatching up those plots right away. When it was announced FC housing would be first, there were plenty of people that made FC's just for themselves because they wanted a house and didnt want to wait a few more months after for personal.

[Talderas]

I thought the prices listed were meant to be the floor price (thats what I was told, could be wrong) and they're based on the amount of gil circulating in the individual server. Thanks to all the RMT and some hackers (I recall seeing screenshots a while back of one guy with 99,999,999 gil), some servers are completely screwed. I'm still okay with it though, if it's a limited amount of plots designated for FC housing per server, and personal housing comes later, I wouldnt want everyone snatching up those plots right away. When it was announced FC housing would be first, there were plenty of people that made FC's just for themselves because they wanted a house and didnt want to wait a few more months after for personal.

It's the starting price. The number of plots is semi-finite. They will generate more housing instances as necessary. What conditions are required, I have no idea but I would suspect they may do it if all of a particular size of plot are bought up.

[Rising Phoenix]

Did that rotation the week before, but we ended up oneshotting it this time (if you dont count the first wipe on ADS because one of the bards left Foe up which accidentally pulled and wiped all the mages the moment we came down the stairs). We had a few pugs in the group, and everyone else except me and a tank were on jobs they didn't normally play, so the leader decided for fun to try the rage tactic he'd heard about and...it turned out immensely easy.

Ran through turn 3 which was..interesting. I died partway down, went back to the start then others made it to the finish. I was trying to find something to kill me to send me back to the start but then things were glitching out and not attacking me, just following me. Didn't get around to doing t4 because of the earlier mentioned nobody on correct jobs issue.

Of course now they've decided they want to change days because not enough people were showing up on weekends, which means my husband can't make it. I mentioned I probably can make it since I have 2 weeks off work coming up and have one weekday off, which they seemed really interested in. I think apart from me there are no dedicated healers.

In other news, 2.1 today! First thing Im doing is looking at the hairstylist. My FC were working towards getting a house, but it turns out for Hyperion the largest plot is 625mil smallest is 20mil. That wont be happening any time soon. I'll be looking forward to trying out Crystal Tower too

Edit: Just visited the official forums there too to join the hype of update day...seems everyone there is still into whining and complaining I really should learn to stop visiting that one.

How geared were you when you used the rage tactic? My group is pretty much half decked out in level 90 gear and we're not sure if we could pull that off...

[Sajiri]

I'm not sure about the others, I was mostly darklight with af+1 body. I'd say they were better geared but again, they weren't on their main jobs so they weren't as well geared as usual. We had 2 whm's just spamming medica/2 while I used succor and sacred soil on cooldown. The 2 bards rotated ballad and..battle voice? so we didn't run out of mp (it was close though). It actually was incredibly easy, the difficult part was the leadup to ADS with only one tank.

The two whms just curebombed him to be safe while I alternated adlo and stoneskin so he basically never took direct damage. If I was off even a second with keeping one of those shields up he'd drop to like 1/3 HP instantly (which is why whms just kept curing).

Both of the whms were in darklight, at least one of them had relic weapon. I think most of the DD had at least some darklight still, I dont know how much af+1 or allagan gear they had.

[Rising Phoenix]

I'm not sure about the others, I was mostly darklight with af+1 body. I'd say they were better geared but again, they weren't on their main jobs so they weren't as well geared as usual. We had 2 whm's just spamming medica/2 while I used succor and sacred soil on cooldown. The 2 bards rotated ballad and..battle voice? so we didn't run out of mp (it was close though). It actually was incredibly easy, the difficult part was the leadup to ADS with only one tank.

The two whms just curebombed him to be safe while I alternated adlo and stoneskin so he basically never took direct damage. If I was off even a second with keeping one of those shields up he'd drop to like 1/3 HP instantly (which is why whms just kept curing).

Both of the whms were in darklight, at least one of them had relic weapon. I think most of the DD had at least some darklight still, I dont know how much af+1 or allagan gear they had.

And your dps was obviously sufficient to do that. Interesting.

[Sajiri]

And your dps was obviously sufficient to do that. Interesting.

Apparently DPS was 'low' compared to usual, which is why they didnt bother doing turn 4, so..it can't be that hard. Just have the bard/s helping the mages with battle voice and ballad and keep up the healing while everyone goes nuts. I -think- our setup was 1 pld, 2 whm, 1 sch, 2 brd, 2 drg...the only one Im unsure about is if one of the drg was something else, but Im pretty sure that was it.

[Sajiri]

This update has done wonders for the game already. The only new content I've actually done was unlocking the aesthetician (and was disappointed to see the only hairstyle midlander got added was the Lightning style...which everybody is using), but I decided to level bard before experiencing any of the new stuff so I have a dps job to do solo stuff on finally, and so if I want to group with my friend who mains bard, we dont have to fight over who goes healer.

I went 25-37 just in dungeons over the weekend playing a few hours at a time. The exp is significantly raised, duty roulette really breaks up the monotony (although I've just been spamming brayflox since 32 trying to get that damn infantry body >_<), and thanks to the introduction of vote kick and player commendations, I haven't seen any elitism, nobody being rude or anything. People are actually chatting in dungeons now.

It's also good for fates. I always hated the fate spam, in theory they were a great idea, something you could just run in and do solo whenever you wanted, but thanks to it being the best way to exp, there were so many people forcing your into a party just to get exp. Now thanks to a combination of people doing dungeons for exp, and the fate difficulty scaling based on how many were at the previous fate, you really can just run in solo and still easily get gold ranking in between waiting for dungeons. While I was running around doing class quests, I'd notice maybe at most only one fate party in a zone and a handful of soloers. Far more pleasant than it was.

[Talderas]

This update has done wonders for the game already. The only new content I've actually done was unlocking the aesthetician (and was disappointed to see the only hairstyle midlander got added was the Lightning style...which everybody is using)

Fantasia to female roegadyn, they got 3 new ones (including Lightning).

I went 25-37 just in dungeons over the weekend playing a few hours at a time. The exp is significantly raised, duty roulette really breaks up the monotony (although I've just been spamming brayflox since 32 trying to get that damn infantry body >_<), and thanks to the introduction of vote kick and player commendations, I haven't seen any elitism, nobody being rude or anything. People are actually chatting in dungeons now.

Duty roulette is only worthwhile the first time of the day, that's when you get the xp boost, or if you're queuing as the in demand role, which gives a flat gil/xp bonus. Outside of that you're probably better off just queuing for the top 2 dungeons you can do.

Crystal Tower has lived up to my expectations. Which is to say, my expectations were very low. The fights are fun but SE screwed up and marginalized tanks too much. Which leads to the inevitable tank epeen contest. They have the same problem that they have with Titan, namely that 2 tanks in a party is an overkill. Not that anyone in SE reads this but.... marginizing tanks does not make them fun to play. Fights like HM Ifrit (where paladins Auto-Attack and interupt eruption) or King Behemoth (where 4 tanks stand around and do nothing but activate a tower, while very important are also very dull and unrewarding. Yes, there's those iron giants that spawn in the final fight, which you could argue justifies 4 tanks, but the reality is those are always dead before the MT needs to go back on the final boss.

Edit: SE also needs to do some sort of conditioning for what DPS gets put into a party or provide a mechanism to move members between parties. I've seen a Crystal Tower where group 1 was 2 tanks, 4 monks, 2 healers. Group 2 was 2 tanks, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps, 2 healers. Group 3 was 2 tanks, 3 bards, 1 black mage, 2 healers. Specific DPS doesn't really matter so much but balancing out two monks for two ranged would have really helped out with Atomos plus it would let alliances distribute classes to parties to avoid double rolling on potential loot.

[Rising Phoenix]

So the enrage method of taking on ADS is so easy that it's wrong.I the scholar and the white mage of the group had no issues in keeping everyone topped in the 40 seconds that it took us to burn the big bad evil ball to a crisp.

Crystal tower is a lot of fun, but I would REALLY like it to run it with my FC so that we can communicate verbally. I also dislike the amount of ********s you can get there- e.g. people who get their drop and the bail...

Duty Roulette is probably the best thing they implemented in this patch imo.

[Togath]

So I just realized I've been looking at the prices for the collector's edition instead of just the standard disk/digital download...
I may actually try this game for 15-30$ instead of 60-70$ :3

I figure I should ask though, how hard to run is the game?
I don't know the specifics of my laptop, but I do know it can run Guildwars 2, World of Warcraft, Rift, TF2, and Borderlands 2 at 60-80 fps, and Skyrim at 30-40.

[Sajiri]

Duty roulette is only worthwhile the first time of the day, that's when you get the xp boost, or if you're queuing as the in demand role, which gives a flat gil/xp bonus. Outside of that you're probably better off just queuing for the top 2 dungeons you can do.

That may be true but for enjoyment duty roulette is amazing. It gives a bonus at the end if you're overleveled for it, it's still better to do whatever dungeon fits around your level but not that much better that its not worth it at all to do the old ones. I'd rather take a little hit to my exp and do random dungeons rather than burn myself out on the same one over and over..even though thats kind of what Im doing with brayflox right now. Why won't that body drop >_<

So I just realized I've been looking at the prices for the collector's edition instead of just the standard disk/digital download...
I may actually try this game for 15-30$ instead of 60-70$ :3

I figure I should ask though, how hard to run is the game?
I don't know the specifics of my laptop, but I do know it can run Guildwars 2, World of Warcraft, Rift, TF2, and Borderlands 2 at 60-80 fps, and Skyrim at 30-40.

If you can run Skyrim Im sure you can run this, it's not particularly intensive, at least compared to 1.0. It has a lot of flashy effects you can turn off too if you need a boost (most turn them off anyway because they're a bit much in large groups).

[Togath]

I'll probably get it then =)
One thing I am curious about(less a buy it or not buy it sort of thing, more just something I'm interested in); are over world zones instanced(in the style of Guildwars 2, Neverwinter, and EQ2), Dungeons(ala DDO) or Open World(in the style of World of Warcraft, or single player sandbox games[TES, Fallout, and such])?