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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT2| RIP Bowmage 2015-2017.

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B.K.

Member
Seven Vilekin from 45 leve allowances. That's better than last time, at least. I wish I had paid attention to stat allotments and hadn't messed it up. I thought I had to allot stats in later steps, too, so I didn't really pay attention during this step. Now, I'll have do it it all again. At least next time I won't need Umbrites.
 

Squishy3

Member
Oh. I was confused cause i thought SE's intent this go around was to make the rotations less complex and easier to understand so more people could "get" it and thus DPS would improve in general.

I guess that the worry isn't totally unjustified, but if they are really simplifying rotations overall I'm not too concerned myself. Although with a lack of PTR it's hard to tell.
Yoshi said the level 70 rotations would be about as complex as the current Heavensward ones, just without as much buff timer watching, since as evidenced by stuff like Ninja's Shadow Fang applying both the DOT and slashing debuff you won't need to think about those kinds of things. Doing the rotations properly will have the necessary buffs applied 100% of the time.
 

iammeiam

Member
Where it's going to get tricky is that Yoshida's going to design around a hypothetical straightforward rotation, not actually tell the players what it is, and then it's going to hit the player base and they're going to tear it apart and reconstruct some max potency thing. The dev team often manages to overestimate the low-end of the player base and underestimate the high-end. I really, really wish they'd figure out how to do some kind of combat PTR with no story content in advance of this stuff, because whatever they release for SB we're going to be stuck with. They'll do adjustments but won't do major swings mid-expansion, which is a worry.

I would like this. This and the idea of Hawk's Eye giving Direct Hit bonus would be pretty great. Machinist would probably need some sort of aura effects too though to compete with bard, since bard songs still help the party (like 2% crit rate so I mean pretty much not at all?) and yeah I was kind of right since the aura is set to like 20 yalms down from 25, so maybe that reigns in movement question mark.

I'm expecting MCH will get something to compensate for the death of hyper charge, but it's hard to guess what. It'd be neat if they, say, modified Wildfire to store all damage done and actually process a small percentage of party-wide damage into the ensuing explosion, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. If the group buff is minimal enough tuning on physical ranged becomes even more important and I sincerely hope they drop the nerfed weapon damage if for no other reason than that it's annoying as hell to not get a WD out of a 5 ilvl boost when everyone else does. 20y song range is still pretty decent-- a little wider than AST expanded card range, so in theory it shouldn't be that hard to maintain--so it's probably back to Bards hopping around the battlefield again, they'll just make sure to hop in circles near the boss. If anything I could see this being more annoying for BLMs--put your leylines in the wrong spot, party moves, Bard follows them, rip bonus damage. One thing I will miss about turrets-as-regen is the ability to throw them at healers who are determined to stand next to each other on the other frigging side of the map.

It does really sound like they may just go for broke with full flexible party comp, though, which is going to make whatever meta everyone's chasing this time interesting.
 

EndcatOmega

Unconfirmed Member
It does really sound like they may just go for broke with full flexible party comp, though, which is going to make whatever meta everyone's chasing this time interesting.

8 Red Mages.
Did they explain what that fake Scan ability did? That feels like it might be a boss debuff and some kind of replacement for hypercharge (though that begs the question what the SCH actual-Scan does).
 

iammeiam

Member
8 Red Mages.
Did they explain what that fake Scan ability did? That feels like it might be a boss debuff and some kind of replacement for hypercharge (though that begs the question what the SCH actual-Scan does).

RDM apparently has raise so why would you even think about bringing anything else at this point.

As far as I know they've said nothing meaningful about MCH beyond "cast bars are gone." Since they did the role action preview on BRD we haven't even seen MCH hotbars and are only guessing at what's missing. There's been a lot of speculation around the job action video and most of what we think we know comes from there (Wildfire being 10 seconds now, ammo powering Ricochet, the role-based TP regen move being the orange AOE thing since Bard did the MP blue one, etc.) Persisting turrets being absent from both the job action video and, as far as I can tell, the benchmark is probably a thing but they haven't mentioned it at all.

I'm just skeptical of anything with a cool animation because of Rend Mind and Dismantle.
 

Kenai

Member
Yoshi said the level 70 rotations would be about as complex as the current Heavensward ones, just without as much buff timer watching, since as evidenced by stuff like Ninja's Shadow Fang applying both the DOT and slashing debuff you won't need to think about those kinds of things. Doing the rotations properly will have the necessary buffs applied 100% of the time.

I see. Maybe my misunderstanding stems from the idea that I thought people included self buffs like Hot Shot and DoT up time and mover order when mentioning a rotation. Or is that considered more of a priority list? I dunno.
 

CLBridges

Member
I've taken up Mining in lieu of the wait for SB. It's kinda relaxing and considering I have max leve allowances available, may as well use them. It's the first non battle class I've gotten past level 30 and I've been playing since 2.0 lol. I wonder will SE ever release another DoL/DoH class?
 

Omni

Member
I've taken up Mining in lieu of the wait for SB. It's kinda relaxing and considering I have max leve allowances available, may as well use them. It's the first non battle class I've gotten past level 30 and I've been playing since 2.0 lol. I wonder will SE ever release another DoL/DoH class?

At this point isn't it just redundancy to add another DoH/DoL class? What could they add, even.
 

iammeiam

Member
They kind of fumbled fishing in HW, though, so hopefully they'll use underwater to make fishing print money great again.

(Magic bucket was great, but making it nontradable kind of sucked.)
 

B.K.

Member
They kind of fumbled fishing in HW, though, so hopefully they'll use underwater to make fishing print money great again.

(Magic bucket was great, but making it nontradable kind of sucked.)

I need to try fishing sometime. It's the only gathering class I haven't touched. It just seems too complicated to me.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
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They could add diving. It's like fishing + mining. Random nodes of fish you dive for.
 

iammeiam

Member
I need to try fishing sometime. It's the only gathering class I haven't touched. It just seems too complicated to me.

It's not complicated but can be kind of an inventory hog; this website is basically the FFXIV Fishing Encyclopedia and will give you more than you could ever possibly need.

It's a lot more RNG-based than the other classes, but for most of the day-to-day stuff (like fishing up stuff to make Seafood Stew to sell to crafters for a ton when that was a thing) it's just going to a fishing hole, casting, waiting, reeling in. If you got the thing you want, neat. If you didn't, throw it back and try again.

Going for the rare fish turns into a clusterfuck of weather patterns and triple-mooches, but most of the useful fish this time were catchable while alt-tabbed watching Netflix and a controller with vibration on and a one-button-macro.

Catching the Magic Bucket Minion is just a matter of going to the right fishing hole, using Brute Leeches as bait, and casting until you get one.

It's a good way to kill time while waiting for raid to start or whatever, and in the case of some fish a not-bad way to make a little money while paying 0 actual attention to the game.
 
So I blew through Utawarerumono, Persona 5 is done, Nier Automata is done, Prey is done, Trails 3rd is finished.

I have 19 days and next to nothing to do! *sob*

I guess it's Overwatch or Planetside 2 until early access. Uuugh.
 

Luigi87

Member
Haven't played for a week... I think I really need to start going through some HW stuff this week. No more crafting or gathering!

Edit: Saw the Cactpot winning number was 1111... fuck everything D=
 

iammeiam

Member
It's also rare as all hell, but them's the breaks. At least it's not like the ARR one hour window fish, I got Of Dragon's Deep before any of those bastards would appear.

Wait seriously? I didn't even know it existed until I saw it on Reddit and went out on a whim and pulled it up in like 10 casts. I just assumed it was semi-common at that point, and since it was untradable the whole "having to actually go fishing" kept it kind of rare to see around.

I should probably go back and fish up the ARR swimwear fish; I could see the swimming stuff in SB making those worth something again.
 

duckroll

Member
So for underwater swimming in Stormblood, will we have to attune all the water currents in a zone before we can use an underwater mount? :p
 
Would a laptop with a GTX960M w/ 2GB dedicated memory be enough to comfortably run this game? I'm in the market for a laptop that I'd be using mostly for productivity, but would also like for it to have some light gaming capabilities on the side. Currently debating between something with an 960M or spending a bit more to get a more recent 1060.

I used to play on a i5/gtx860m machine and it ran just fine on the "standard laptop" settings. High pop towns like idyllshire might chug a bit but instances should be fine
 

duckroll

Member
So in that case what sort of mundane gathering activity will Stormblood have that forces players to explore the maps and hit various checkpoints outside of quests? Maybe most of the zones are under imperial control! And you have to "liberate" all the imperial posts in zone before you can freely teleport within it!!!!!!!
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
I wonder if there's going to be an in-lore explanation of not being able to swim in pre-SB areas. Doma water is magical and the other isn't?
 
So in that case what sort of mundane gathering activity will Stormblood have that forces players to explore the maps and hit various checkpoints outside of quests? Maybe most of the zones are under imperial control! And you have to "liberate" all the imperial posts in zone before you can freely teleport within it!!!!!!!

What do you think this is, an Ubisoft game?
 

Squishy3

Member
So in that case what sort of mundane gathering activity will Stormblood have that forces players to explore the maps and hit various checkpoints outside of quests? Maybe most of the zones are under imperial control! And you have to "liberate" all the imperial posts in zone before you can freely teleport within it!!!!!!!
We already know aether currents are coming back for flying, presumably there's just a certain quest in the MSQ that you finish and you unlock the ability to swim. AFAIK they've only shown one zone with swimming in Stormblood.
 

Sorian

Banned
People still whine about aethercurrents? Sorry that you have to explore the zone before spending the next two years flying up over it all and never looking at it ever again.
 

Moaradin

Member
I don't remember having any issues with aether currents. Been 2 years, but I don't remember it being tedious. I liked exploring the new areas for the first time.
 

EndcatOmega

Unconfirmed Member
Wait seriously? I didn't even know it existed until I saw it on Reddit and went out on a whim and pulled it up in like 10 casts. I just assumed it was semi-common at that point, and since it was untradable the whole "having to actually go fishing" kept it kind of rare to see around.

History's greatest monster (the mooch fish are more RNG but I think bucket is one of the worst single cast ones in HW?).
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
You will be able to swim in some pre-SB areas, such as Costa del Sol.
Oh really? That's cool.
I don't remember having any issues with aether currents. Been 2 years, but I don't remember it being tedious. I liked exploring the new areas for the first time.
I think there have been a few which gave me problems due to their tricky locations, but the annoying part was not knowing which sidequests chains you had to do to get the quest ones.
 

duckroll

Member
People still whine about aethercurrents? Sorry that you have to explore the zone before spending the next two years flying up over it all and never looking at it ever again.

I don't think the problem is exploration, but rather how it is presented. If the game offers some sort of compass to detect currents and it encourages you to actually explore and follow cues to tune each one, that would be great. As it in though, it's just another mundane checklist item which shows up in a menu, and after you attune all the ones you managed to spot while playing normally, the majority of players will check a guide to fill in the gaps to waste the least amount of time. There's no way at all to tell where the ones you missed might have been, and without flying in HW zones, traversal is definitely less than ideal.

I don't think aether currents are particularly frustrating, I just think they're just another feature that adds time wasting elements to the game as filler without actually being a substantial benefit to the game experience. Along with how the majority of quests are designed and the endgame grind, it all adds up.
 

KuroNeeko

Member
Man, Tam Tam (Hard) was good sheet! I love how they connect
the seemingly innocuous Edda story line from the Normal version of the quest with this and DD.

That ending was AWESOME!

Are all of the Normal → Hard dungeons like this? Anything else similar? Gonna hit Haukke Mansion next!

edit: Also, kind of looking to take a break from Ninja. I did a lot of Fates last night to unlock MSQs (rescuing
Wedge
in 2.1) and there were a ton of fates to get through. I like how the Fates chain together, but I was getting destroyed just through attrition as an ilvl 80-ish NIN last night. At one point, I was kiting like eight Cultists with Dotan and Death Blossom.: /

I'd like to go back to SCH, or maybe SUM, for a bit, but am waiting for Swiftcast / Cleric Stance changes before then. Recently, doing eight-mans has be doubting my ability to keep everyone alive. lol Looks hectic af.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I don't think the problem is exploration, but rather how it is presented. If the game offers some sort of compass to detect currents and it encourages you to actually explore and follow cues to tune each one, that would be great. As it in though, it's just another mundane checklist item which shows up in a menu, and after you attune all the ones you managed to spot while playing normally, the majority of players will check a guide to fill in the gaps to waste the least amount of time. There's no way at all to tell where the ones you missed might have been, and without flying in HW zones, traversal is definitely less than ideal.
the endgame grind, it all adds up.

giphy.gif
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
There is really an aether compass and I'm trolling you.
 

duckroll

Member
You did Churning Mists without using the compass. Churning Mists (Savage).

It was actually the easiest of the 3 zones. I got almost all the currents just from doing the MSQ. The only one I missed the first time through was the one at the back path of Moghome leading upwards, because I got a free ride up to the top while doing the initial moogle quests thanks to helpful GAF FC peeps.

The quests were pretty straightforward too, since the blue quests show up on the map the moment they are unlocked.

The first zone was the worst. I missed so many because I wasn't sure wtf they were originally, and it was a pain using a guide to go back to find them all.
 
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