Board 8 > Late to this party, but Return to Ivalice in FF14 is incredible.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's a bunch of alternate universe FFT fanfiction written by the Ivalice development team and it fucking rules. Constant references everywhere while still weaving an interesting narrative that doesn't rely on the fanservice to be good, and the fights are some of the best in the game.

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plus a math test

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I still don't get how to do that. Sets my number 8 to, tells me to divide by 3??

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I love the Orbonne Monastery

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KamikazePotato posted...

I still don't get how to do that. Sets my number 8 to, tells me to divide by 3??

IIRC, there are four circles that number 1-4, when you stand in one it adds that value to your HP. So just stand in one of the circles that gives you an HP value that meets the cast name.

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BK_Sheikah00 posted...

I love the Orbonne Monastery

The four fights + atmosphere were stellar.

dexter28 posted...

IIRC, there are four circles that number 1-4, when you stand in one it adds that value to your HP. So just stand in one of the circles that gives you an HP value that meets the cast name.

Fuck.

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Yes, the whole series is amazing. Really glad that they made it required for ShB relics to force more people to run the raids.

The Mana Sword posted...

plus a math test

<3 math

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Also making my way through Stormblood and I gotta say, it really sucks that I can't do any of the Extreme fights because no one does them anymore. I like doing them just for fun but oh well. Glad the Alliance Raids still exist to satisfy my thirst for blood.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Also making my way through Stormblood and I gotta say, it really sucks that I can't do any of the Extreme fights because no one does them anymore. I like doing them just for fun but oh well. Glad the Alliance Raids still exist to satisfy my thirst for blood.

People definitely do them (just not synced). They all drop mounts, so people farm those. You need to go through party finder though, not duty finder.

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Unsynced kind of defeats the purpose. I want the experience of figuring out the fights and conquering them through hardship. I'd be more disappointed if Shadowbringers wasn't waiting in the things, but still.

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you have to find specific groups who do older fights synced (and at min ilvl, otherwise it syncs you to the gear from the end of the expansion so the earlier fights are still too easy)

you can put up a PF for it and get people, plus maybe find some connections to linkshells/discords for others who do that. i've got one on aether if you want, but it's not very active anymore

i'm definitely with you though, i really don't like what i call "unsync culture", where people care more about grinding for cosmetic rewards than about actually, like, playing fights for fun. i suppose it's just what happens in the MMO genre though.

i find "you can still do them, just unsynced!" to be a pretty weak claim. like, by what definition is going in with an overleveled group that can kill the boss in a few hits while taking 0 damage, "doing the fight". i wouldn't play a game on very easy mode with cheats for infinite health and 10x damage and then say "yeah i played it"

The 50 and 60 fights are a joke unsynced, but for most of the 70 extremes you need to at least do the mechanics, and you'll likely wipe a decent number of times learning a few of the fights if most of your group is new (and this is even more true of the savage fights; it took several nights for my fc to finish O12S the first time unsynced).

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Back when Binding Coil was getting a second wind in Heavensward, I found one group dedicated to running through it synced. It was awesome. Then it imploded after five days.

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A couple of months after Shadowbringers came out, a group of us from Board 8 went through BCoB from start to finish for the first time, on min ilvl. We could only raid one day a week so it took us a few months but we managed it! Definitely worthwhile if you can manage to find a like-minded group (with a lot of patience).

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Oh, I also really liked hearing all the FFT music. I've been a big fan of that soundtrack for a long time.

I'm not on Aether so unfortunately I can't join the linkshell. I'll try to hunt down a Discord group.

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true black mages will understand

https://i.redd.it/j1ljii27hzv21.png

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but on topic yeah, SB alliance raids are top tier. I also agree that unsync culture is bad and useless, but theres no getting around that to do fights synced you need to find 8 people, since if you try to queue you'll just get burger king crowns abandoning on you (and honestly i don't really blame them). Which blows.

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What classes does everyone here like to play? I main Ninja although I'm somewhat mixed on the Mudra changes. Leveling Dork Knight now and it's a lot of fun too. Considering dabbling dipping into White Mage as my first healer but selecting party members with a controller is kind of a pain.

I also miss how broken Ninja was in Heavensward/Stormblood (10% Trick Attack boost while still being able to top the parser was dumb) but I can't complain about fair balancing.

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i mostly do pld in 'serious' content and rdm when queuing with pubs, but i have everything leveled to 80 and will randomly hop classes for fun

monk is stupid fun even though i am not a good monk at all, so i love hopping on that randomly

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I looked up some recent Class Satisfaction rankings and Monk was dead last. I guess most people don't like positionals?

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I main Gunbreaker, which is insanely fun. Leveling Ninja on the side right now, and I've got Warrior (my original class before I reached GNB), Red Mage and Dancer at 80.

EDIT:

I looked up some recent Class Satisfaction rankings and Monk was dead last. I guess most people don't like positionals?

Monk's problem isn't positionals. It's that its core mechanic is trash, slow to raise and punishing to lose. Nobody likes Greased Lightning, which is why YoshiP has confirmed a remake is coming for it, likely on 5.4.

(To expand on the above, put it this way: look up the level 80 abilities Ninja, Samurai and Dragoon get on the job guide. Then go look at what Monk gets. Greased Lightning has badly held back the class for literally seven years, and at this point people have given up on monk because it's so much work for so little reward.)

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I cast fire 4

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playing monk is accepting life is pain and you will always be losing damage because (INSERT:[your tank, yoshi p, your party, god]) hates you

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Also even if I don't end up sticking with Dark Knight as my tank, it's been worth leveling just for that class story.

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Black Mage seems fun. I'd probably be into it if it was my starting class, but Ninja has instilled a sense of nervousness in me that if I'm not getting carpal tunnel and constantly running around in circles playing my class, then I'm doing something wrong.

I like the flavor of Monk so I might check it out if that rework comes out. Leveling is going to be a pain though. I know it's the MMO life but I wish leveling was faster without having to pay real money for it.

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getting to 50 is the real hurdle, once you get there you can do it slowly over time with daily roulettes (although atm you're probably doing that with dark knight)

best low effort way of grinding sub 50 is imo with the grand company squadron dungeon missions, at least for dps. the other three AI can handle all the mobs just fine so you can just kinda move forward once every few minutes and let them handle stuff while you rake in exp. Its ok, they don't mind waiting for their fearless leader

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I did a lot of Palace of the Dead. Which I enjoy more than the average person but still.

Also, part of the reason I dropped off is cause I found the Stormblood story content in the initial expansion to be underwhelming (loved Doma but Ala Mhigo was eh), but the post-4.0 story content leading up to Shadowbringers was top tier. Haven't started Shadowbringers yet because I'm clearing my backlogged Stormblood stuff, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

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I used to main black mage but I got annoyed every time I had to move

switched to machinist and I like it a lot better
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Machinist rules, almost as cool as Dancer

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Drakeryn posted...

I used to main black mage but I got annoyed every time I had to move

switched to machinist and I like it a lot better

who needs to move

blm definitely requires knowing the boss patterns will, but once you know where to position yourself you dont actually need to move a ton, and there are enough ways to instant cast now that its not too bad when you need to be mobile

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Positioning for weird mechanics is my biggest weakness by far. I can get very good DPS damage and dodging standard ground-marked AoEs is a cinch, but every now and then I'll have an oopsie when trying to remember what to do for a specific mechanic and now I'm dead. This problem disappears when I get to run a fight more than few times but that doesn't happen for a lot of content due to how impatient people are. When I was doing Orbonne Monastery for the first time last night, we trudged through four vote abandons because people were dying (not just me!) and apparently people having to learn mechanics is a travesty. We didn't even wipe very many times, people were already dropping after Mustadio headshotted half the alliance once.

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I play, uh... mainly PLD, SCH, DNC, sometimes BLM, RDM, occasionally BRD. WHM if SCH slot is taken.

PLD and SCH back during 2.2 for second coil

then 5 years off

PLD was my first 80 and i cleared the edens with it and then used it for my static in 5.2 eden

did coils min ilvl as SCH earlier this year and then switched to DNC for alexander, currently on a8s (we also only raid once a week)

mainly i do DNC now because i got burnt out and am only staying for the group, so i just want the job with the least buttons and least responsibility

to be clear, not that i don't like DNC. it's a super fun class. maybe less so at 60 without its most important skills. i love playing DNC in general, but it's also the easiest class to play so.

I main WAR but I have everything at 80 and am at least slightly conversant in everything (except SMN, SMN breaks my brain).

Currently reprogging TEA on MCH with some friends. There are few feelings in life like hitting Drill on your Jagd Doll, getting a direct critical hit, and seeing 50% of the HP bar evaporate in a moment. It's a real butthole puckerer.

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ah yes, a fellow never-SMN

i've tried it, because, y'know, i have it at 80. but i don't think i'd ever be able to wrap my brain around that class

i can basically play anything except melee and SMN. positionals just break my brain, even non-MNK ones.

the only class i've never played at all is ninja, which also seems like it'd be really complicated.

Found a poll from July 2019

https://i.imgur.com/BLOAia4.png

Honestly while my class experience is limited, Ninja doesn't feel that difficult to play once you memorize the Mudras. Like Summoner seems way more of a headache.

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Is Red Mage really easier than Dancer? I love Dancer but it aint very hard to use

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Monk and Ninja are both high skill cap jobs. You have to be very good at them or else it feels like you aren't getting a payoff equal to the effort you need to put in to play them.

Summoner is also high skill cap, but for a completely different reason. It's like one long flowchart where you have to maximise the uptime of three different stances that lead into each other over the course of around 90 seconds before it loops around again, all whilst monitoring DoT uptime, aetherflow stacks, Ruination stacks as well as occasional Ifrit-egi micromanagement if it isn't just one enemy for the whole fight. It's even harder if you're trying to learn a fight on top of that, but at least you get the payoff of big dps without sacrificing rdps.

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While I'm posting stats, let's look at a Class Satisfaction survey (gonna have to maximize this image in a new tab to read it)

https://i.imgur.com/5AnCF5v.png

What's up with the healers

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GANON1025 posted...

Is Red Mage really easier than Dancer? I love Dancer but it aint very hard to use

I thought Red Mage must be the easiest class when I unlocked it and got it to 80. But then I did dancer.

Red mage isn't particularly hard, but there's some complexity when it comes to choosing the right moment for all your oGCDs. As a dummy, I often have trouble picking a good time for Acceleration, it seems to come up when my mana's like, sort of high, but not quite close to 80, and then I'm not sure when to use it and sometimes I end up wasting it or delaying too long. Or I'm not sure the right time to use Embolden. Or the cooldowns of the mana-doubler and the in/out jumps don't line up quite right, idk. I'm bad, but those are a few of the things that I struggle with when trying to play RDM at a proper level.

Whereas on dancer I just. There's just no difficulty really. The only hard part is pooling exactly 3-4 fans for your burst phase and then spending them all properly, depending on proc luck you might lose one of your flourish'd skills sometimes if your saber dance bar fills up over and over again in those 20 seconds.

But I guess that stuff is "advanced", at least, it's not "casual." At "casual" level, RDM is a simple flow between black > jolt > white > jolt > repeat > in > melee > out, and dancer is just... hit the glowy button. Dancer is still easier by that metric.

Not to mention ranged is just easier than caster due to the mobility and lack of cast times

that gunbreaker satisfaction ranking speaks to me

The class really is 100% made up of people who thought Squall was an absolute badass and love how well it imitates him and Seifer huh

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KamikazePotato posted...

While I'm posting stats, let's look at a Class Satisfaction survey (gonna have to maximize this image in a new tab to read it)

https://i.imgur.com/5AnCF5v.png

What's up with the healers

When you're looking at polls like these you have to consider where the jobs came from and what they're like now in comparison. WHM didn't really change that much in the StB -> ShB transition - it got a few instant cast heals and Afflatus Misery, but fundamentally it's still the same as it ever was. Popular opinion on SCH and AST is that they've both been changed for the worse, however.

In StB, SCH was more complex to optimize both in terms of DPS (having 3 dots to maintain) and healing (Selene and Eos had different skillsets you could swap between, and using fairy abilities took no time at all so you could hit Ruin 2, weave two OGCDs, AND hit a fairy ability and all three would come out without clipping your next GCD). All of that's gone now. Biolysis is one single dot, which takes much of the complexity out of optimizing your damage. Meanwhile, fairy commands are now normal OGCDs with normal weaving limitations, plus Selene and Eos are functionally identical. Many people who are unhappy with the job feel it's just boring to play now.

Meanwhie, AST has since its inception been based around its RNG card system, distributing buffs to party members in exchange for lower personal DPS. In StB, two cards were DPS gains (most notably the Balance), one was possibly a gain if used on a particular job, and the other three were by and large useless in a party with competent players. Shadowbringers converted all the cards to doing basically the same thing while also removing the complexities added by Royal Road, Minor Arcana, and Spread. AST also lost Time Dilation and had the effects of Celestial Opposition overhauled, further reducing the optimization possibilities the cards provided and reducing interplay of the job's kit. Those unhappy with the job largely think it's boring and homogenized compared to Stormblood's iteration.

I don't really agree with either camp (I think SCH's issues run deeper than just the lost dots or finicky fairy, while AST really only ever wanted to draw the Balance in StB so I like making every card give the effect the Balance did), but those are the most common reasons I hear for why people don't like SCH or AST.

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Ninja's trick attack window was overwhelming at first. Having to cram so much in so little time. But once you get a hang of it it's super fun.

I main PLD, and have WHM, NIN, DNC, MNK and RDM at 80. All really fun in their own ways, except MNK which was my starting job and abandoned as soon as it hit 80.

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SCH was also broken stupid good in Stormblood and now it's not

players whine when you nerf their OP shit so it's very unsurprising SCH is less liked now (and it's also kinda boring too)

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KanzarisKelshen posted...

SCH was also broken stupid good in Stormblood and now it's not

I remember back in the days when Trick Attack was 10% instead of 5%, and Ninja also regenerate Stamina for a party member, and reduce aggro on a party member, and increase aggro on a party member, and apply slashing debuff, all while having DPS only beaten out by Samurai and Black Mage. Those were the days.

Although I honestly just miss the old way Mudras work. Having them be on a GCD feels clunky, even though I understand the class used to be literally unplayable for people with poor ping.

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Black Mage has a lot of things you have to know and keep track of between Enochain, Ley Lines, and the procs, but boy do you feel like a rock star when you nail it. Triple Cast and Xenoglossy helps smooth things over.

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KamikazePotato posted...

I remember back in the days when Trick Attack was 10% instead of 5%, and Ninja also regenerate Stamina for a party member, and reduce aggro on a party member, and increase aggro on a party member, and apply slashing debuff, all while having DPS only beaten out by Samurai and Black Mage. Those were the days.

Although I honestly just miss the old way Mudras work. Having them be on a GCD feels clunky, even though I understand the class used to be literally unplayable for people with poor ping.

It's not just that it was unplayable if your ping was bad, it also felt bad in general because literally all your potencies were garbage after the shadowbringers adjustments. The 'Trick tax' was very real. By contrast, NIN potencies are at their highest point ever now that Trick's been adjusted, and they even have one of the most satisfying buttons to press in the entire game in Hyosho Ranryu imo. There's no beating the fun of a skill that does 200k damage if you get the crit + direct hit with it in terms of satisfaction. NIN was probably stronger in Stormblood, but having better personal highs is probably a fair trade for that power.

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