Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Angry Crustacean]

Leveling dungeons are casual content. People being upset that casual content is possible to complete with non-standard groups is retarded. These people talking about going on strike are really stupid.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

because some faggot streamer cleared the first dawntrail dungeon without any healers.

Unless you have no friends still playing (rip), you've been clearing out the daily roulettes with 1 tank 3 DPS whenever possible. It's considerably faster, with zero risk unless you have a serving of lead paint with every meal. You don't need a healer in dungeons, period. Like, fuck me, go ahead and look at Shake It Off and explain to me why you would need a healer when that thing aligns with every boss's AoE move.

I've been on strike in the sense that once I got my healer to max, I never played it - because it's boring. And when I say 'it,' I mean all four of them. They're effectively the same exact job in 95% of content.

Boo fucking hoo, play a job that does something then.

I think they want to is the point. Even when you're doing very difficult content, your job isn't really involved. More importantly, you can't save runs in the harder content.

Because so much high-end content has body-check and tight damage timers, if a retard dies - it's often the case that you're just done for, because you won't be able to meet the timers or you might not have an instant-rez ready to go for a mechanic that needs everyone. Since failing most mechanics and standing in the bad is usually an instant-death, healers can't even work overtime to make up for shitters.

This is not to mention the crazy amount of bonus healing all of the healers are getting, which leads me to believe we'll see necessary use cases for them in the next savage tier. Could be hopium though.

This was said about Endwalker. Didn't happen, lol

Now, in fairness, there's the one fight with hefty-ass bleeds that did actually put the pedal to the metal, and as a result a lot of shitters cried about it. But a part of the trouble is that the way that this game is balanced - their idea of "more damage" has translated into "make the DPS rotate mitigation or everyone dies," which individual healer skill... still has no influence on.

There's no fucking way most people are clearing TOP without healers.

There's no way 99.9% of people are doing it, and the point of clearing it without a healer wasn't to make a point that the role is literally useless - it was to make the point that the sustain of every other class has gotten out of hand, if it's literally possible to do the absolute-hardest content in the game without one third of the trinity even involved.

Current healer design is pointless and superfluous, which isn't even the problem-per-se. It's that it's a superfluous role that's boring as shit to play and has no real means of skill expression, with 4 reskins of the exact same fucking thing. Each of the four will, in 95% of the game's content, just do 12111111111111111111111121111111111 with the occasional OGCD weave.

Give me Aurum Vale on steroids

Maybe just "something where you can die if you're wasted out of your mind and half blacking-out." The only time I've died in the EW dungeons as a tank was when I didn't understand the alternating-lasers mechanic in Smileton.

They're complete faceroll, and the only step above them is to dip your toes into something hyper-punishing that demands you adhere to a fairly well-defined meta -- there's really no content for players who aren't quite into top-end raiding but who also don't regularly eat crayons. Bozja was a nice in-between in SHB, and so maybe the DT equivalent will fill that gap better, unlike EW's various deep-criterion-etc things.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

Dungeons like The Burn and Pharos Sirius had to be nerfed because some of the bosses and pulls were too much for healers and parties had a harder time clearing because the one person in the party who's supposed to keep them alive just couldn't keep up.

Really? I mean I wasn't around for Pharos Sirius but I was absolutely around when The Burn came out and played it on release. I have literally never heard of this complaint that it was too healing intensive.

I agree with the healer strike that the game really does have no place for them. That is definitely a valid concern because it's true. Healers have this amazing kit with lots of options that is totally and completely unnecessary. But it is also true that the game is this piss easy because healers suck ass and are too worried about their DPS optimization instead of keeping the party alive. And again, the game never challenges anyone to do better. It doesn't teach players that healers are expected to heal, not do a DPS rotation. Instead the game breezes you through content telling you you are amazing for letting your fairy solo heal the early dungeons. Then they hit random difficulty spikes like The Burn I guess that they're completely unprepared for.

Maybe the game needs a version of Stone, Sky, Sea that, instead of beating on, you need to keep alive for the duration while it drains health. Maybe dungeons need to be properly scaled early on so that people will learn to use the kit they have. Maybe healers need to stfu and get good. To me it seems like everyone is at fault here.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Really? I mean I wasn't around for Pharos Sirius but I was absolutely around when The Burn came out and played it on release. I have literally never heard of this complaint that it was too healing intensive.

For the burn it was like the last 2 trash pulls before the last boss and then the final boss itself. It destroyed healers. Literally every time I got it, the healer would die or let everyone else die because they couldn't keep up with the damage output.

For Pharos it was the first boss. He pumped out a ton of damage with all the explosions and if healers didn't keep the party topped up, people would drop dead in 2 explosions. There was also the issue with Sastasha hard where healers were just too dimwitted to esuna off the DoT so that the boss wouldn't kill people with its tail twister move. So they kept letting people die due to being too fucking stupid to realize that the DoT was killing people, not the attack itself. So they would sit there and spam heals without removing the DoT and then sit there confused when the attack designed to reduce a target's hp so single digits would bring people within range to die to the DoT at the very next tick. The 2nd boss killed people too when the boss would do an attack with stacking damage output and healers couldn't keep people alive long enough so that the dps could knock him out of it and if 1 dps died, the other wouldn't have the needed dps to stop the phase and they'd end up dead too.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

But it is also true that the game is this piss easy because healers suck ass and are too worried about their DPS optimization instead of keeping the party alive.

Tankbuster hit? Lustrate. Well, actually, Exoc probably already took care of it, so nevermind. AoE damage? Indomitability, followed maybe with Embrace if it was especially bad.
I'm using SCH here because I'm more familiar with the names. Congratulations, with these three or four OGCDs, I have done all of the healing I will need to do for a given fight.

If you fuck up a mechanic, I will throw out a lustrate if it didn't immediately kill you, and that'll do the job. Only in prog content will I need those Aetherflow stacks and not wind up burning 3 of them on Energy Drain because I want to avoid overcapping, and only in prog content will I have any real reason to actually try to make use of Dissipation or Seraph as something other than "it's off cooldown, so I should press it." Even in these avenues, actually pressing Adlo (unless it's spreadlo) or Succor is not really something you do unless something's gone horribly wrong. Healer's kits just don't match up with the reality of how damage works in this game.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

I would say it's a mix of people both being bad and the damage being too negligible to warrant even trying.
On one hand I've done content as a healer where my party is so bad that I've wanted to rip my eyeballs from their sockets in frustration and spending every encounter with my mp bar barely hanging on. On the other hand, I've also done content as a healer where it's a total snooze fest and I don't so much as heal as I just toss out an oGCD to keep someone alive every now and again while my brain proceeds to shut off for the rest of the duty.

I think I would be happy if they made the damage output of mobs and such much higher. It's exciting and challenging trying to keep a tank alive who's wall to walled a bunch of mobs that are moments away from killing him. Like the pulls in the first dungeon of shadowbringers. I enjoy that as a healer because it causes me to actually pay attention. Most fun healing I had was in shadowbringers dungeons.

 

[RIPRhongoBongo]

Since we're on the topic of dumb changes no one wants or needs, I want to be able to pick where my Wonderous Tails seals go. Will I cheat the system? Fuck yes. Would it be worth it? Absolutely.

 

[Higgs Bonbon]

Since we're on the topic of dumb changes no one wants or needs, I want to be able to pick where my Wonderous Tails seals go. Will I cheat the system? Fuck yes. Would it be worth it? Absolutely.

farming retries is basically the same thing.

 

[std::string]

Healer's kits just don't match up with the reality of how damage works in this game.

The line between "I can do this with hardcasts" and "the floor is going to file a sexual assault lawsuit against this tank" is very thin.

WoW has a lot of ways you can absolutely shit out healing if you don't care about your mana bar. FF14 just doesn't.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

Tankbuster hit? Lustrate. Well, actually, Exoc probably already took care of it, so nevermind. AoE damage? Indomitability, followed maybe with Embrace if it was especially bad.
I'm using SCH here because I'm more familiar with the names. Congratulations, with these three or four OGCDs, I have done all of the healing I will need to do for a given fight.

If you fuck up a mechanic, I will throw out a lustrate if it didn't immediately kill you, and that'll do the job. Only in prog content will I need those Aetherflow stacks and not wind up burning 3 of them on Energy Drain because I want to avoid overcapping, and only in prog content will I have any real reason to actually try to make use of Dissipation or Seraph as something other than "it's off cooldown, so I should press it." Even in these avenues, actually pressing Adlo (unless it's spreadlo) or Succor is not really something you do unless something's gone horribly wrong. Healer's kits just don't match up with the reality of how damage works in this game.

It's that easy now because people who were bad at healing complained rather than improved. SE was too quick with nerf bats before putting in better teaching tools. Now the game has the hall of novice, and healers have a much more robust dedicated healing kit. But this came after they already started to nerf content to make healing a passive role. I agree they don't match up but that's why. The healer kits are fine honestly. Maybe I'd reduce the reliance on instant cast spells. What we need now are encounters that ask healers to actually spend time focused on the party's health. I would also remove the extra LB for healing critical health. It's an interesting idea but it also sends the message that you aren't supposed to be actively healing, you should only do it when it's required. We need to give players a reason why they would want to keep the party topped off so overhealing isn't as punishing, and means all healing matters, not just the one before the tank dies.

WoW has a lot of ways you can absolutely shit out healing if you don't care about your mana bar. FF14 just doesn't.

FFXIV lacks any kind of resource management at all and that's a shame. Pressing every button mindlessly as often as I can maybe works in a game like Diablo or PoE where fights last a few seconds at most. For an MMO where you are expected to be in an encounter for several minutes I find it much more interesting to have to pick and choose between my abilities and decide what I need right now. DPS and Tanks should have it too. Can I afford to spend all my MP or TP right now to make this fight go a little faster, or should I hold back because I need it for a sudden burn phase. Should I use an extra damaging combo or should I try to draw extra aggro instead?

 

[Well Intentioned]

Orthos is also, at least at lower levels, not a very interesting dungeon aesthetically. Even for an Allagan structure it doesn't really wow me. The mobs are dragons, magitek bits, and whatever those big claw guys are that one shot the entire room. It doesn't really make me interested in what might be next, especially since the first couple floors are already such a chore. I like how PotD and HoH were a little squishier because even though you have 200 floors to climb you could run through them pretty rapidly. Orthos feels like a slog to progress. I don't even have max aether in it. The others I could comfortably solo or at least level through matchmaking. Orthos feels off the table.

Having soloed all 3, I'd argue that Orthos is the easiest BUT it's the most boring by a far margin.

So long as you're familiar with what everything does, you won't have any issues, and I'd argue there's 2 bosses that give people fits, neither of which are particularly difficult. It's also very generous with pomanders so you don't run the risk of being pom-screwed like in HoH or (moreso) Palace.

The issue is that you're just slogging through these HP sponge mobs at the lower floors. It just feels tedious (and not in an MMO-dopamine-number-gets-bigger sort of way) especially when compared to the other two. And if you fuck up, it's a huge pain in the ass to go through it, again.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

WoW has a lot of ways you can absolutely shit out healing if you don't care about your mana bar. FF14 just doesn't.

It's funny, because WoW also has far more variety in how the healers play, generate, and spend resources. While it has suffered from the homogenization creep over time, it's variously had healers that have had to use melee abilities to generate resources, healers that excel at single-target healing and have to come up with creative workarounds for group damage, healers that suck at actual healing but provide an absurd amount of shield-based mitigation, healers that heal over time, healers that wipe the floor with AoE healing but have comparatively weaker single-target heals, and all of that in addition to the various different forms that WoW's talents and glyph systems have crawled through over the years, offering up even more customization options (even if there are obviously still meta picks).

Meanwhile, FF14 has arrived at the point where it has one healer with 4 different skins.
Because the way it's designed, they can't actually balance the game around having 2 distinct and different types of healer.

The healer kits are fine honestly

They're bloated with pointless cooldowns whose only existence is to fit within the 2-minute-cycle that everything is built on.

Returning to scholar, Fey Illumination is essentially just a mitigation button that doesn't need to be there, which is a use it shares with Sacred Soil. Sacred Soil also provides a HoT to a job whose pet is already effectively a HoT, which also has Whispering Dawn up 1/3rd of the time. Deployment Tactics serves literally one purpose - spreadlo - and Emergency Tactics exists only for the "heal up from 1% HP" checks.

Dissipation is a boring DPS cooldown that can clip faerie abilities if the pet doesn't feel like responding, which remains as clunky as it always has been. Chain Strategem is just a button you press every two minutes without a moment's thought, Fey Union is another HoT which doesn't do enough against very hard-hitting encounters but does just enough to ensure you don't need to waste GCDs on the tank in dungeons, Recitation exists only for Sprealo, Fey Blessing is an almost completely pointless and redundant AoE, Seraph is just another Fey Union that allows you to ignore healthbars in normal content, protraction is one of the most lazy filler buttons I've ever seen, and Expedient is actually interesting but so fundamentally clashes with encounter design that it's been repeatedly nerfed into the ground.

Adlo's main use is spreadlo, and Succor's main use is that Indomitability is a level 52 ability. Physick's main use is to loudly announce that you are dead weight and a burden to everyone around you, or that you're in one of the game's first three dungeons.

You could remove half of Scholar's buttons and I wouldn't even notice they were gone. This is why there was so much outrage about Energy Drain being taken away, despite the fact that Energy Drain is boring: it's a button you actually press, so people noticed it. The kits are trash.

What we need now are encounters that ask healers to actually spend time focused on the party's health.

That is a complete redesign of encounters and more broadly job design that the game currently does not support. Lucid covers all of your mana problems unless you're a drooling idiot, and even then if a healer actually sits there and spams healing GCDs, the amount that they output vastly outpaces incoming damage in all but the tippy-top of content. And that's ignoring that the issue with those encounters is still not that they have to actually struggle with their output, but instead that people just need to not fuck up instant-kill instant-wipe mechanics.

 

[RIPRhongoBongo]

I never appreciated those random yellow mark quests until I decided to finish leveling my Sage. I cleared 5 areas, and 3 1/3rd levels just between those and the EW role quests

 

[Kotol]

I also like some of the yellow/brown quests just because they flesh out an area and some of the NPCs if you care to read it all. I recently did some ARR sidequests to level Ninja and read around two thirds of the quest texts. Some of the small storylines are nice and don't overstay their welcome. Like a guy in Central Coerthas Highlands being imprisoned for deserting, who was actually just sneaking off every now and then to make a deal with Ul'Dahn merchants to get buy expensive medicine for his sick wife. After you get the potion from a hidden stash and save his wife, you bust him out of prison, and he promises to eventually return to flee with his gal.
It would be pretty cool to see him again in Heavensward maybe, but I probably won't.

Anyways, other quests flesh out the culture or beliefs of the people inhabiting the zones. Once again, in Central Coerthas Highlands I hacked a guy's dead wife out of the ice near Snowcloak and he told me that an avalanche took her while he was dragged to safety by a crowd of people. He asked me to pick up her wedding ring so she could hopefully find a new mate and marry again in the afterlife.

Finally, you get some great quotes from those quests sometimes, like a Roegadyn asking for clear quartz, and once you give it to him he says. "Aye, that's what I've been talkin' about. Clear as a god's piss."

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Hah. I just think it's funny that I have these videos floating around in my feed now.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

Desolance released a new video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgsz8TN-maw

40 minutes of semi-coherent raging against xeems and xiv. I couldn't watch more than a few minutes and I suggest you don't even waste that amount of time on it.
He was having a moment in chat before the video dropped:

Spoiler: Desolance raging/celebrating Xenos deleting his vods to nobody

Xenos posted why he deleted the vods:


One of like 5 schizo community post in response:

I got my lolcow chips on this one and I'm investing early. I wont shit up the thread with more of this unless it's funny though.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Yeah, that's just sad at this point.

I wonder if Xeems reports him for breaking his court order if the police will arrest him again.

 

[std::string]

I also like some of the yellow/brown quests just because they flesh out an area and some of the NPCs if you care to read it all. I recently did some ARR sidequests to level Ninja and read around two thirds of the quest texts. Some of the small storylines are nice and don't overstay their welcome.

They vary a lot in quality. Like, Azim Steppe is really good but the rest of the SB zones are kinda meh. I swear half the quests are like "hello I am a rice farmer can you kill the monsters in my field so I can farm rice did you know we eat rice?"

 

[King Of Braves]

I never appreciated those random yellow mark quests until I decided to finish leveling my Sage. I cleared 5 areas, and 3 1/3rd levels just between those and the EW role quests

It's pretty damning evidence of the poor XP rewards for side quests currently when you barely got three levels on one job for doing every quest in almost every area of an expansion, plus role quests.

 

[Angry Crustacean]

It's pretty damning evidence of the poor XP rewards for side quests currently when you barely got three levels on one job for doing every quest in almost every area of an expansion, plus role quests.

I sidequest to clean the digital feces off my map. That's my main reason.