Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Gravemind]

Honestly pugging is such a crap shoot in NA (JP's pug scene is solid for a pug scene from what I've been told), so many people have no fucking clue what they get themselves into (and it'll be way worse today due to massive influx of new players in 2021) and just expect to be carried. Sometimes you get the most patient of saint white knights who will defend shitters because "Everyone needs time to learn" or whatever when they've wiped the group for an hour straight and are unapologetic about it. It truly is best if you want to pug efficiently to form psuedo statics with other good pug only players which does boil down to take some sort of notes on who is actually good, and pruning from there silently people you know are awful.

This is what broke me from pugging a damn thing in this game.

Also, the pruning process is sometimes highly skewed towards blatant nepotism in my experience. You can be doing everything right, one other retard can be doing everything wrong, but the retard might just loudly and incessantly pass the buck to you for their own fuckups and, thus, get you quietly booted because their buddies will stick up for them.

I really don't think there's any good practices in this community and it's one of those "You have to find the diamonds in the rough" type situations. Except there is so much rough shit you have to sift through.

 

[Well Intentioned]

There is also a problem of farm vs clear vs prog throughout the weeks, the faster you get to farm and clearing each fight and getting to the next fight the better off you'll be, This is because it means fewer shitters squeak on by especially by the last fight because the 3rd fight is a massive wall for the average PF shitter especially for the first month or so. So yes, if you want the absolute best chance at full pugging Savage as painlessly as possible, being this autistic is actually a boon.

This is what happens when you use "You don't pay my sub" and its various alterations as a legitimate argument for playing like shit.

Truly the later you leave things the harder it becomes, I know savage is way more difficult than EX trails, but even last night in HydaelinEX I had a tank trying to stack on melee dps for the shared tank buster, through out the entire fight he murdered all of the dps multiple times, I don't know how we got the clear to be honest.

This is coming from the perspective of a former WoW player, but all of this comes off as shit you'd want to be doing if you were world first chasing or whatever, not simply trying to get into endgame duties.

I sorta figured that as things would progress and the expansion got older content would become more familiar and shit. But, as I progress through MSQ and get to higher and higher level duties I'm amazed at just how horrid some of these types are, so I guess I see what you're saying.

 

[Gravemind]

Patch notes are up, lads.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

This is coming from the perspective of a former WoW player, but all of this comes off as shit you'd want to be doing if you were world first chasing or whatever, not simply trying to get into endgame duties.

I sorta figured that as things would progress and the expansion got older content would become more familiar and shit. But, as I progress through MSQ and get to higher and higher level duties I'm amazed at just how horrid some of these types are, so I guess I see what you're saying.

It is more for your personal sanity imo, you can avoid this if you have patience and all that (or just have a static that isn't aids and is competent enough) but their is a very real difference in doing progression on savage 3 in week 2 vs say week 10. Fights 1 and 2 are as easy or easier then EX trials, but fight 3 and 4 are a different but very feasible sort of beast especially on the dps check where seeing enrage is a very real possibility. The only reason they're so difficult and seemingly impossible in a pug, is because some shitters refuse to have even the most basic level of group responsibility or respect.

That and you got some people who vehemently refuse to look up anything and wish to "do it blind" which is a very different ball game as Savage can have some somewhat esoteric mechanics if you aren't paying attention to literally everything on your screen (background, floor, boss movements, your debuffs/buffs and what they say, etc across the entire group). Blind prog tends to require the group to decipher what's going on as sometimes different people get different things, and you all collaborate information to understand what to do so "going blind" solo actually doesn't work without a keen eye.

Eden 8 Savage for example was one of the biggest clown fiestas in history because you could approach one mechanic in about...6-8 different ways and they all technically work without death, which made pugging fucking impossible as every party knew a different strat.

World first autism is pretty much just "login as soon as patch goes live, smash out fights for the next 24 hours and then you'll probably be done" though their are alt autism where you effectively push for at least the dps to all have raid drops going into the last fight so you beat the dps check if the enrage is particularly tight. WF is a sprint that usually goes somewhere between 18 hours and 2ish days tops. I'm expecting some fuming rage to occur if some world first racer's internet or power just randomly goes out and they're just stuck in queue for 2-3 hours at say 7 pm or something.

 

[Tachibana]

This is coming from the perspective of a former WoW player, but all of this comes off as shit you'd want to be doing if you were world first chasing or whatever, not simply trying to get into endgame duties.

I sorta figured that as things would progress and the expansion got older content would become more familiar and shit. But, as I progress through MSQ and get to higher and higher level duties I'm amazed at just how horrid some of these types are, so I guess I see what you're saying.

Players in this game have an intense fomo syndrome. I can't quite explain it. I've helped players clear some later fights weeks +10 and we managed. However we did look at logs and kicked players who had insufficient damage in prior floors; you will not clear if someone isn't pulling their weight.

That said, the percentile doesn't matter as much as the raw number. Damage goes up as players acquire gear.

Patch notes are up, lads.

Dancer and Paladin are looking pretty bad right about now. They are the jobs getting the shaft. Reaper is leagues above everything else.

 

[Gravemind]

Dancer and Paladin are looking pretty bad right about now. They are the jobs getting the shaft. Reaper is leagues above everything else.

What's wrong with Paladin again? Feels pretty fine to me so far.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Lol.

Only nerf Reaper got was having their already shitty HoT halved in potency. My guess is that they want to see the jobs played in savage content before making the real changes to the jobs.

In terms of pugging, I've pugged all the content I've done since ARR and I've had good time and bad times with it. Some times I get the best parties and we can clear super consistently and everyone does so much damage we skip past phases etc. Then other times you'll hilariously watch someone die to the same shit over and over and over again while they cry in chat about how "omg i'm not usually this bad".

Even if I get shitty parties, unless I'm really in a foul mood, I'm rarely bothered and just have a good time regardless. It's only when someone is a shitter and being pompous about it that I start gettin' peeved i. e. someone coming in and demanding that we use a strat no one else in PF uses and that we (everyone in the party) will have to conform to them. Them dying to every mechanic while blaming everyone else for their deaths because we didn't use the strat they wanted to use. Them just generally bossing people around while simultaneously being the worst of the group.

 

[CharcoalChkn]

Reaper is leagues above everything else.

I laughed at the Reaper "nerf" I can play that class one handed and still pull my weight.

 

[Tachibana]

What's wrong with Paladin again? Feels pretty fine to me so far.

Its damage is low, on a concerning degree. At 75 percentile, Paladin doesn't even reach the same damage as a 50 percentile warrior. This translates to roughly a 8-10% dps deficit whilst having to put in more effort. This sort of balance is unusual for this game.

Every other tank in within the same damage range.

Dark Knight suffers from an opposite problem. It does the most damage but has the most unfun boneheaded design decisions.

 

[Gravemind]

Its damage is low, on a concerning degree. At 75 percentile, Paladin doesn't even reach the same damage as a 50 percentile warrior. This translates to roughly a 8-10% dps deficit whilst having to put in more effort. This sort of balance is unusual for this game.

Every other tank in within the same damage range.

Dark Knight suffers from an opposite problem. It does the most damage but has the most unfun boneheaded design decisions.

I'm a casualfag so I never really noticed but that is something I had some concern about looking over Paladin's potency changes/comparing them to the other Tanks' potency changes back when all the 6.0 skill changes got leaked.

I've said it before but it seems like they fully intend for Paladin to lack in damage but make up for it in healer support. Ergo, Paladin is meant to be the dedicated "healtank".

Problem is, a lot of that "heal support" utility really isn't feeling like it's amounting to much in practice. At least I have marginally more self-sustain now.

 

[Tachibana]

I'm a casualfag so I never really noticed but that is something I had some concern about looking over Paladin's potency changes/comparing them to the other Tanks' potency changes back when all the 6.0 skill changes got leaked.

I've said it before but it seems like they fully intend for Paladin to lack in damage but make up for it in healer support. Ergo, Paladin is meant to be the dedicated "healtank".

Problem is, a lot of that "heal support" utility really isn't feeling like it's amounting to much in practice. At least I have marginally more self-sustain now.

Paladin doesn't even have that over the others.

The tanks were standardized so much that every other job has some form of equivalent ability. Warrior has Shake it Off and Nascent Flash for party support. It has Raw Intuition, Bloodwhetting and Equilibrium for self sustain.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Lol.

Only nerf Reaper got was having their already shitty HoT halved in potency. My guess is that they want to see the jobs played in savage content before making the real changes to the jobs.

To be fair Reaper's defense utility for its damage was actually dumb (next to Samurai in damage btw). I don't care if Reaper does good damage, it shouldn't have such an available and consistently usable healer aoe. That thing was roughly as good as Scholar/Sage's off gcd aoe when it popped and the shield was so weak that it popped to basically every aoe ever. I don't think Reaper needs less damage, Ninja, Samurai, and Dragoon just need more to better close the gap which 2/3 were accomplished I think. I can't fully understand the effects of the Raiju change besides that it removes the "forced gap closer" jank and you don't have to force both of them into Trick Attack. Arcane Crest is better then Mantra due to how accessible it is and it has a 4th of the CD and Reaper does more damage, so nerfing its defense utility is fine enough imo.

What's wrong with Paladin again? Feels pretty fine to me so far.

Paladin's damage is too low if you get full uptime on a fight and you can't pad on adds or something. It does about 500 or so less then Drk and War is only 200 behind Drk while being about as easy to play, good uptime tools (due to Primal Rend being a gap closer and 3 onslaught charges) and having so much self sustain. Warrior basically can't die to boss damage in EX (aka you do mechanics right and all healers need to do is heal aoe damage, you don't even need Lustrate or anything) due to Bloodwhetting, Thrill of Battle, and Equilibrium heals being so powerful and free unlike Clemency memes.

So Warrior is the most brainless tank to keep alive, has the best invuln for cheesing, and pays relatively little dps cost for these tools in Gnb/War vs Gnb/Drk. While Paladin pays a sizeable amount of damage for less defense besides having Passage of Arms (which is jank to use without gimping your damage, but useful) and Clemency clutch plays unless their is some jank strat with Cover.

Paladin would need some very unique jank strat around its ranged phase that increases uptime or something to make up for its dps differences. Is it garbage? Well this isn't HW, so no but it is relatively bad for this game since post HW and especially post ShB where all tanks were so close to each other. It should be the lowest dps potential due to it having Req phase for uptime, but it is too low atm imo.

 

[Gravemind]

Paladin doesn't even have that over the others.

The tanks were standardized so much that every other job has some form of equivalent ability. Warrior has Shake it Off and Nascent Flash for party support. It has Raw Intuition, Bloodwhetting and Equilibrium for self sustain.

That's more or less been the case for a long while now. I was mostly just throwing out speculative conjecture for the decision to change Paladin in the way that they've been adjusted while also acknowledging that the devs pretty much shit the bed in that regard at the same time since you have a Tank like Warrior that does what Paladin does, but better in every way.

Casualfag though I may be, even I got the feeling that the whole "healtank" focus really wasn't going to pan out like the devs thought it might, but I was really hoping I'd be wrong about that too. Would've been neat to see traces of the old Warrior/Paladin synergy brought back in a new way, with Warrior being the big dick and Paladin being there to help pad the healers.

 

[Fcret]

People are already talking about PLD and are pissed, Very odd for the poster job of the xpac to get shafted this hard.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Ver archivo adjunto 2856695
People are already talking about PLD and are pissed, Very odd for the poster job of the xpac to get shafted this hard.

Samurai was actually kind of hot garbage (relatively speaking) considering it had no raid utility and its damage wasn't nearly that good to compensate for not just running 4 rdps boosting jobs. Especially when Piercing debuff Drg was still a hard locked spot. Samurai and Black Mage as "carry selfish dps" weren't good until 4.4 iirc and Dnc in 5.X pushed that role over the line to being worthwhile. Monk was also sort of sketchy (Remember Earth Tackle?) and had to use the ultra jank Tornado Kick rotation to keep up with Drg/Nin.

I don't know if Paladin is that terrible really, safe uptime can sometimes be sketchy in the last fight in Savage and 8 ranged gcds is a very good way to maintain uptime and potentially make a very helpful early prog strat (especially if Rdm needs to melee during something with limited melee space).

I'd still probably make peak Pld dps should only 100 or so behind War instead of 300+, but I think Pld being the lowest isn't unreasonable at all. To me Dnc, Nin, Drg, and Smn are in a worse spot atm *unless their buffs prove to be significant) unless uptime is so sketchy that Smn is worth bringing over Rdm.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

FFXIV usually, usually does pretty well with numerical balance. This is why the community will always preface every balancing speech with the now-tired "but everything is viable and play what you want!"

FFXIV is notoriously pretty bad at balancing when it comes to "job A does 1% more damage than job B so they're really well balanced! Oh except job A also has more defense and more offensive utility and better movement skills and better gameplay and is objectively superior to job B in basically every single way".

XIV is decent at DPS balancing, kinda awful at creating actual tradeoffs where jobs are better in different circumstances. Often (especially on tanks and healers) the "better" job is just better to a confusing, laughable degree if you look beyond damage contribution.

 

[Fcret]

Early reports from the marketboard - prices crashed within an hour or two of the servers going live. If you're looking to make big gil day one, it's probably already too late.

 

[Tachibana]

FFXIV usually, usually does pretty well with numerical balance. This is why the community will always preface every balancing speech with the now-tired "but everything is viable and play what you want!"

FFXIV is notoriously pretty bad at balancing when it comes to "job A does 1% more damage than job B so they're really well balanced! Oh except job A also has more defense and more offensive utility and better movement skills and better gameplay and is objectively superior to job B in basically every single way".

XIV is decent at DPS balancing, kinda awful at creating actual tradeoffs where jobs are better in different circumstances. Often (especially on tanks and healers) the "better" job is just better to a confusing, laughable degree if you look beyond damage contribution.

Utility is damage most of the time and is numerically accounted for. A large amount of players played SMN when it was clunky as fuck because it did damage. Then all the flavor of the month players moved on when balance changes happened.

I think the matter of effort is also important. AST required so much more effort than WHM to pull out ahead in Shadowbringers, but it was never on a 10% difference. Sweaty people would favor AST regardless.

Now Paladin requires more effort than a middle of the road warrior to not even do the same damage.

If anything, this patch will reaffirm meta people picking jobs off initial impressions as Square Enix doesn't fix them.

Early reports from the marketboard - prices crashed within an hour or two of the servers going live. If you're looking to make big gil day one, it's probably already too late.

There are just way too many gatherer/crafters for the amount of people raiding and bots go unabated.

This is surprising given the pain in the ass that is usually crafting master recipes. Having to sit there for 1-2 mins for macros to complete is not fun.

 

[Fcret]

There are just way too many gatherer/crafters for the amount of people raiding and bots go unabated.

This is surprising given the pain in the ass that is usually crafting master recipes. Having to sit there for 1-2 mins for macros to complete is not fun.

The breakpoints are also ridiculously low for the new recipes. People are cranking them out with a single overmelded VIII and single overmelded VII on their left side and tools with only guaranteed melds.

Basically if you spent time actually pentamelding your crafting gear, you wasted your time. Doubly so if you pentamelded mostly Xs and IXs. Bravo for nuking another endgame, Squeenix.

 

[Tachibana]

The breakpoints are also ridiculously low for the new recipes. People are cranking them out with a single overmelded VIII and single overmelded VII on their left side and tools with only guaranteed melds.

Basically if you spent time actually pentamelding your crafting gear, you wasted your time. Doubly so if you pentamelded mostly Xs and IXs. Bravo for nuking another endgame, Squeenix

I did overmeld all of my gear with Xs and IXs. My gatherers also meet the breakpoints for the new nodes as well at 900GP.

I'm not disappointed given that I never expected to make the "big gil" on day 1. Day 1 tends to just be the market crashing and undercut wars nowadays.