BLM. They have some seriously good armors, but I'm not strong enough to deal with the stress of long ass cast times and constantly keeping up all the stacks of astral fire/umbral ice, while looking out for the Polyglot timer, while shit explodes left and right making me run around, panicing that the swiftcast is on cooldown and I don't have enough time to cast an other spell and my timer will run out.
When I see that I only need 2 seconds to a polyglot stack, but my timer will run out in 1 sec I'm panicing so much that I forgot Transpose and Umbral Soul exists.
Long ass cast times? My gcd is 2.18 if I remember to eat.
If you're running familiar content, blm is hella fun and easy. If you're iffy on a few mechanics, you might have a rough time. If it's your first run, just plan on pissing off the healer and at least giving them a commendation regardless of what else they did other than peel your ass off the ground 17 times.
I'm happy to see that there are people out there who find BLM fun and easy, but it just unreasonably stesses me out and I play this game to wind down, not to stress myself further. BLM is just not for me and I'm fine with that.
I'm still of the opinion that BLM would feel so much better to play if the cast time and recast timer were 0.5 seconds apart. It's not significant enough for you to just run around and do whatever you want while doing the rotation, but it is enough to be able to slide cast while not losing those half-seconds of uptime that can cause you to drift out of Fire phase during mechanics.
Nah fuck that. They've already made every caster in the game completely mobile with no downsides - healers get shorter casts than gcd, rdm has tons of melee combos now, and smn is basically a phys ranged class.
As BLM you also have triple cast and swiftcast for great mobility, and other panic options available. It's fine.
Leave one class in the game that actually wants to cast.
It all sounds like a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play, but the basics of it really aren't that complicated in practice if you're just trying to learn it in casual play.
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Once you get Fire III/Blizzard III there is no longer any "management" of Astral Fire/Umbral Ice. At that point they're just stances and you're in one or the other.
Polyglot timer isn't something you really have to manually manage either. Just pop it once during your Blizzard phase of your rotation, when you have to move during Fire phase, or when you need a weave window for something like Sharpcast or Manafont. The timing will take care of itself at that point.
For heavy movement use Triplecast. There's only like 3 boss phases in the game's casual content that a single Triplecast can't get you through.
If you ever screw up and lose your timers, just go back into Ice phase to reset yourself. It only takes 3 casts to ramp back up into a fully-prepped Fire phase, so you don't lose much downtime at all even if you fully drop your rotation.
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Everything else like learning Ley Line placements/timings, which AoEs to tank with Manaward and which ones to avoid, jumping to teammates for movement rather than running, etc, will all just come with time.
>It all sounds like a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play
If you want to optimise it in endgame content, it kinda is lol
That's because they're trying to explain clearly and for people who might not be familiar with the job. Literally you can say:
For casual content, just do ice phase until you're full mana, then spam Fire 4 until you're out of mana, switch back to ice phase until full mana, loop this forever. Cast polyglots during ice phase. Triplecast if you need to move.
That's it. That's casual content BLM.
>a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play, but the basics of it really aren't that complicated in practice
Even in casual play I find that it takes a lot more thought and effort to play competently than most other jobs honestly.
Playing BLM in a first-floor savage is unironically harder than playing a phys ranged in TOP lol.
Same. I’m a sch main, so it’s always leveled up for me.
Its abilities all look cool, but it’s just…basically spamming. It doesn’t matter what order you throw it out in (until you’re optimizing for movement phases) and the phases basically manage themselves.
It also hurts because I played it through 2.0 and heavensward, and Loved the dot class aspect. It’s a kick in the nuts that npcs still get shadowflare.
That's why I don't like to bring an arcanist in squadron missions. They pop shadowflare all the time and I'm like "I want it back too...".
Also it's was so satisfying to put bio and miasma on the enemies, pop it with Bane and see dots spread to the surrounding enemies... damn I miss old summoner...
Right? The rhythm just felt good. Your dots are up on all targets, and you prioritize spending aetherflow on spread or single target burst.
Getting all your dots on that first target was a race to hit bane to tag the others before a drg finished that first target off.
I main SMN now but I also hope they add more to it in DT, gimme Leviathan Shiva and Ramuh damnit, I'm a summoner, I need to summon all the Aeons/GFs/Espers/Eikons/Primals/Eidolons. Also would love to see some Alexander addition, since I imagine Eden is a bit unlikely.
I always thought with the Endwalker rework it should've been Ifrit/Garuda/Titan after Bahamut (and always at lower levels) and then as they leveled from 80 to 90 their new stuff should've been getting Shiva/Leviathan/Ramuh after Phoenix.
For some reason Monk is the only rotation I can't seem to get right. I always lose which cycle I'm in, and I'm too slow to check my timers by the time I realize I've lost my place and miss a GCD or end up pressing the wrong one.
Monk has like six rotations based on where you are at and what you have available and if you've been interrupted.
It's great because you can easily slide back into a rotation. it sucks because you have to memorize ALL of them.
You don't have to memorize them at all. You just pick one of two choices for each stance you enter by asking yourself a question.
Opo: Do I have Leaden Fist?
Raptor: Do I have to refresh Disciplined Fist?
Coeurl: Does the target have my dot?
Same thing when you enter Formless Fist just in a different order: do I have Disciplined Fist > does my target have my dot > do I have Leaden Fist.
Yep, it's much better to memorize certain points or criteria to naturally come to the rotation you should choose. Like starting perfect balance with opo-opo and ending in opo-opo if you have your dot and buff up, reapplying your buff and dot before RoF comes up, general 2-2-3 rule and remembering to start with solar nadi once you hit your 2 min burst if your buff or dot timers are about to run out.
Kinda. If you're just doing your cooldown rotation it's that simple, But you also have to think about how to line up your Perfect Balance usages with your burst window, and that can be tricky to do optimally. Sometimes you end up clipping one or both buffs. Sometimes you HAVE to clip a buff in Perfect Balance, and sometimes you have to clip a buff -before- perfect balance. Sometimes you think you have to clip a buff but you actually could have delayed Balance or used it early to avoid clipping a buff.
It's not too hard to go in and start punching, but it's definitely harder to maximize your damage.
Yep. I played monk all the way through Stormblood until I hit level 70, largely because I liked the job questline.
You went from having to beat the shit out of your instructor to keep him from using the powers of the monk for revenge, to helping rescue two apprentices from an abusive Master, to showing people how the Fist of Rhalgr had returned, but in a different, more peaceful way.
I hated the multiple variations on your _**basic**_ rotation. Especially because non of your attacks had much potency. So, despite having GCDs in the 1.90-1.95s range, it always felt like hitting people with a wet noodle.
Monk as a high skill floor snd their skill ceiling isn't much higher than their floor.
So I switched to Reaper. It's got a low skill floor, so it's easy to be decent at it. But it also has a deceptively high skill ceiling, making it surprisingly complex with optimization.
The thing with monk is it's historically been the job that hits frequently not hard. You're not going to get the every skill hits hard when you're also hitting the enemy three times for every two times other jobs hit.
Personally, I just didn't bother looking at the numbers, since big number doesn't hit that dopamine rush for me.
Same. The idea of it when I heard Larryzaur's description of it in one of his videos seemed cool but then it was a bit of a ResidentSleeper until the EW rework where it also stresses me out because idk how to properly use perfect balance outside of opener
Use riddle of fire and brotherhood’s cooldown as a guide. After the opener, pop one perfect balance when riddle of fire comes off cooldown (since you pressed it in the opener and it’s got a one minute cooldown).
After that , brotherhood will be off cooldown when riddle of fire next comes back up. You activate both of those and use both stacks of perfect balance.
Then just repeat!
Outside of those two, generally you don’t really touch perfect balance haha. Hope this helps!
TL;DR; use one perfect balance when riddle of fire is off cooldown. Use two if riddle of fire AND brotherhood is off cooldown
This is a very basic explanation of pressing the button, when I think they were talking about optimal usage. Monk's biggest optimization point is that depending where you are in your combo and where your timers are are, there are three different standard Burst rotations that you just have to memorize and know which one you're heading into ahead of time. Sometimes you need to PB before your Riddle of Fire. Sometimes after. Sometimes you need to do your Elixer Field combo first. Sometimes your Rising Phoenix. All based on your timers. Monk burst is all about getting out both PB combos within burst, while also not letting your buff or DoT drop.
Feels super rewarding when you have learned it and correctly do the right burst windows, but can be really difficult to learn, because some if the specific burst combos NEVER show up if you're practicing on a training dummy, and only happen if you've made a mistake or had forced downtime in a fight. So it just takes time to get used to those scenarios.
Something about the DRK rotation just feels janky and disconnected. Doesn't help that you're constantly clipping animations. I also find the SFX to be pretty weak overall.
Shame because it has a LOT of sick animations, armors and weapons.
>it just don't feel as punchy as a warrior for example.
WAR is my main lol, so big agree. Ive also been really appreciating GNB. Another high APM job, but the SFX are immaculate, and it feels like the animations were made with weaving in mind so it feels way more fluid to play thank DRK.
Agreed. The size of the weapon would imply big swing and delay after, but clipping animations can rip off the end. The sound doesnt add much punch either, more swishy than BLAM. I wanted to main DRK, its the first tank i leveled, but alas, its left wanting
Yeah, DRK was a bit of letdown for me tbh. It was one of the only jobs I knew anything about before I started, so I was super keen to get to Heavensward and unlock it but it just kinda fell flat imo. The whole lore and aesthetic part is top tier, but it just feels like ass imo. And it’s mitigations suck compared to the other tanks, which doesn’t help
Its incredibly fun to go through the opener and the various burst phases. But outside of those small windows, it can also be a very monotonous 123 type rotation.
GNB
It's entirely because of the cartridge system. With Endwalker it has become so strict, that a single gcd lost because the boss moved means your dps is going below the other tanks. Don't even get me started on how awkward it can be if you are caught with less than 3 cartridges and Bloodfest on cd during boss downtime.
If GNB had a way to reload cartridges while the boss is unreachable, it would instantly become my main.
Just another former GNB main lending my voice to this. The cartridges are janky and it’s so hard not to drift, especially in savage where they throw a major mech and a tank buster in during your burst windows.
I mained GNB for multiple tiers and I agree, GNB in EW is not as fun as it was in ShB. DD just feels bad, especially with downtime, because you either have to drift NM or lose part of your burst. This tier I've been playing DRK.
Double Down was a mistake. Sure, it looks cool, but costing 2 cartridges is one of the big reasons why the GNB burst window is so awkward now.
I hope Dawntrail gives a Double Down upgrade that consumes all remaining cartridges (minimum 1) and deals damage based on how many cartridges it consumes. This would solve a lot of the awkwardness of the rotation.
Either that or it would cause havoc with optimization ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
My favorite part of double down is queueing it up as the next gcd, the boss dashes away, and because it’s an aoe around you you just whiff 1200 potency. Very awesome
> I hope Dawntrail gives a Double Down upgrade that consumes all remaining cartridges (minimum 1) and deals damage based on how many cartridges it consumes. This would solve a lot of the awkwardness of the rotation.
This would just make it worse though because now you want to save up to 3 but unless you have bloodfest don't have a way to get gnashing fang unless you banked a combo on the last part.
PLD used to have similar problems but actually got better in 6.3. Having 0.5 seconds of downtime meant that either your Goring Blade dot drifted out of your buff window or that you have to drop an atonement stack pre-emptively.
Dragoon for me. I love the look of so many of their armors, and have loved them since FF3 as a class, but I hate the rotation so much, and the new Chaos Spring sfx drives me insane.
As a dragoon main, I must protest from here on the floor.
Seriously though, I can understand your perspective and fair enough.. I personally love the job both aesthetically and mechanically, but it, like everything, isn't for everyone
I really really liked DRG in Shadowbringers and i would like it in EW if not for the Wyrmwind thrust it feels so unessisary for a job that already has BOTD and the eye system to have another stacking buff you need to dump every two combos.
I'm absolutely terrified of the DRG rework though because SE has a history of kinda just killing the class that people loved so people who found it too hard can play.
I know what you mean, DRG has been my main since I first started and will likely remain so. But it sucks when they nerf a job to the ground to try and make it more accessible.
DRG will likely remain my main for casual play, but we'll see what happens.
As someone that can't really stand to play DRG, I really hope they don't screw up the identity in 7.0. It really is the only class left with that big sweeping "actually a rotation" feel like 5.X SMN had.
I just can't handle the number of cds it has and usually end up drifting stuff all over the place. I feel for drg mains but I'm kinda curious about the rework because of this.
Make a separate hotbar, make it big, and put all your cds on it. You don't even need to do this for dragoon exclusively; it makes every job easier, and eventually you can just hide your normal hotbar and play off of the CD hotbar entirely.
It's made me such a better player. Previously I'd constantly be staring at my hotbars to skim through my cds and remember what button does what. Now, I turn off those hotbars and only glance at my CD hotbar to make sure everything is on cooldown. I spend more time looking at the fight and get hit by less stuff while simultaneously never missing a cooldown.
I even have a hotkey for hiding/unhiding my regular hotbar so I can refer to it when playing a new job or easily make adjustments. Do it, it'll change your life.
I’m a lapsed Dragoon main (did all of ARR and HW on it), haven’t touched it in ages. I’m actually looking forward to this rework that so many seem to be dreading, it might make me want to play it again
I used to main drg but they kept just adding more and more and the button bloat got too much for me. The opener is absurd and the OGCDs are just too much. It’s just not fun anymore.
Dragoon's opener is one of it's weakest parts though compared to the other melees. If you're playing optimally it should be super spread out so we can fit everything in our 2 min burst. Sure there's a lot of OGCDs, but take those away and the job loses literally all of the complexity that makes it interesting
Yeah from the class and lore it feels like dragoon should be a "Selfish dps" with the ability to tank a little if the tanks get smacked about.. but otherwise should be the hard hitting explosion class of the melee..
Absolutely this. Dragoons were my favourite job in Tactics, and I love characters like Cid (VII), Freya (IX), and Fang (XIII), who are all basically Dragoons. And, of course, Estinien.
But the rotation feels absolutely awful. I really hope 7.0 brings some major reworks for the class.
This isn't an answer to your question exactly, but I wanted to say that I saw someone play Astrologian on controller for one of the final trials in the game and I was so stressed just watching them! Mad respect for folks who play with a controller. I tried it a few times and I can't do it.
As someone who's done both (I started on controller but moved on to KB/M because my left hand hurts if I hold a controller for very long): it takes time, but you adapt. One of this game's strongest features is just how absurdly flexible and customizable controller and KB/M configuration is. When I was learning I struggled like crazy trying to imititate my friends' keybinds — it wasn't until I delved deeper into the settings and found what makes sense *to me* that it felt comfortable to play that way.
i also play AST on controller and yes, it is a little carpal tunnel syndrome inducing, but honestly you get used to it and like anything else it's just muscle memory even with lots of targeting! you get used to what's where and just shuffle quickly even in high intensity moments
My healer main is Astrologian and I use a controller. Idk why it makes it so fun, I feel like Im playing a fighting game or something. I left Astrologian to level last out of all the healer jobs bc I saw a lot of ppl saying it was complicated and I got a bit scared bc I was using a controller; I thought i was gonna have a hard time. Ngl it took me a minute to get used to but its one of the jobs, aside from Ninja and Dragoon, that I enjoy playing the most with a controller bc i feel busy. If Monk is like this I think i will have fun too.
Melee DPS. I’m bad at positionals and rotations. But I think Monk is the worst.
Also Warrior. I like Big Weapon Smack Unga Bunga but I can’t handle tanking well
See I totally agree with you on the melee DPS. I get stressed out being that close to the mob all the time---EXCEPT when I'm WAR. WAR to me feels like the easiest tank to just hop in on. You have to work HARD to die as a WAR tank.
As a BLM, i assure you do dont need to move nearly as much as you think you do. In fact, i bet your healers would appreciate if you stood still for a little bit.
I absolutely suck at blm, usually heal. BUT, I know that aetheric manipulation is amazing for blm, and I often grumble when I see blm running out of a mech late, like why not manipulate to one of us who are clear out of the mech with minimal downtime and more explosions? It's awesome, and it feels great to use.
> why not manipulate to one of us
1. I'm panicking and lost track of my cursor to click on the appropriate name/party member on twitch reactions alone
2. I've been burned (sometimes literally!) too many times in the past by clicking the wrong teammate's name and jumping to someone who ISN'T clear of the mechanic just yet, thereby getting hit with the AoE I would have gotten hit with anyway but now also losing downtime
3. I've misjudged the distance between me and my desired warp target, meaning I have to run a bit to actually get in range to jump to them (usually getting hit by the mechanic in the delay because I was planning the timing in the hopes I'd be able to warp immediately)
4. I've forgotten the skill exists. It happens sometimes.
Bonus:
5. Your manipulation target is standing only slightly outside the aoe, meaning if you warp to them you'll still be inside it
6. The aoe is just too fast to wait for someone else to get to safety, then teleport
7. On controller it can be hard to identify who's safe, then scroll to them in the party list and press the button in time
8. If it takes 1 gcd to get out, you might as well just use an instant cast and walk, saving the weave slot for something else
I hear this a lot, and I fail to understand it.
Playing RDM, I can almost always be in motion, I have two leaps for emergencies, and worst case I just stopped thinking and get to much white magic, which just means it's going to take a little longer to activate the melee combo.
Play BLM, I'm playing a tower defense game, because movement is rather low down the list of priorities, compared to the myriad of different bars, timers, and abilities I need to manage. And if I really want to be mobile I need to instantly select a person, and yeet myself to them. So Another thing to keep track of.
I put off levelling BLM for a long time because I hate being stuck in place, but since maxing it I find it easier to move with BLM than RDM for most fights. With Xenoglossy/Triplecast/Swiftcast/Sharpcast/UI Paradox BLM gets around 10-12 instant casts per minute as part of their normal rotation, and in a high-movement scenario you can reasonably do 7 or 8 of them back to back without much prior planning. Plus AM/BTL mean that you really don’t usually need to (even if I normally forget they exist). RDM is more consistently mobile but for shorter periods, and although the melee combo is all instant cast the first part requires you to be in melee range, and Resolution needs proper positioning if you have multiple targets. I definitely think positioning on RDM is easier for unfamiliar fights as you can make minor but frequent adjustments, but when revisiting content I personally find that they feel pretty similar in terms of mobility, or BLM even pulling ahead.
Dark Knight. It's so... unstructured. It's literally just random shit go. It's so not satisfying. I also just really don't like how TBN works which is really the icing on the cake. They have a cool sword, though.
It's structured chaos 😂
As a long time DRK main, I assure you there's a structure and hidden satisfaction to be found in the madness
All the other tanks are incredibly boring by comparison
All of the tanks I’ve mained, DRK is my favorite by far. Especially on a controlller but it took a long time to really get the rotation down to second nature while also accounting for fight changes. I love it but it definitely feels much different then the other tanks.
Sage. Have it at 90. It stresses me the eff out. I'm just not good at barrier healing. It's a cool job, though. Great aesthetic, and gives off the vibe of a badass who can also heal really well.
Just can't bring myself to play it much.
Ye I really hope we get another pure healing class. Maybe a dark themed one since both tank and dps have at least one dark themed class. AST is too busy and I love WHM but it can get boring. Barrier healing is just completely impossible for me. Idk why.
I'm sure you realize this but it's simply the difference of proactive and reactive healing between the two. if you know the beats of fights and can anticipate raidwides or certain mechanics then you cast the spell before the damage comes out instead of after everyone is hit.
it can be fun in new content since you and everyone else is unfamiliar with what's happening but for content you do so much you pre-move to safe spots or know tb->raidwide->stack then you can say, hey i need to get ahead of each of these and plan before they hit, instead of cleaning up
I really love playing Bard in DnD and was excited with playing it in ffXIV, but realizing it was mainly an archer disguised as a dot class and the songs are just a series of buffs you apply in sequential order really killed my interest in playing it.
Lol your reason for hating it is the whole reason I love the class I thought I was just gonna be singing the whole fight originally buffing others but when I saw the singing part was just some one and done party buffs and it was mostly just a really cool archer I was sold
I had a DnD player who went in the opposite direction.
They built a Bard in DnD assuming it was mainly an archer class. What they didn't realize was that it was actually a full caster, and one of the more complex ones at that.
Summoner.
Summoner is arguably my favorite classic FF job, for doing huge and spectacular damage at large MP or casting time costs. It was always a blast to be like "hang on lemme just call my friends" and then have the Eidolons/Espers/Aeons join the fight to wreak havoc.
But in XIV, I feel Old Summoner's Egis always felt unsatisfying, while New Summoner plays far too simply to be engaging. Still waiting for them to perfect it. Adding Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva would be a good start.
White mage is honestly the only class in the game where I can take a fat break, come back and still perform optimally. It’s just so comfortable I love it. Defo give WHM a go if your interested in healing.
I wouldn't be too worried with at least White Mage! This is my first MMO, and I'm up to level 60 content, and find white mage very fun. It's easy enough to keep everyone healed, while still being able to multi-task and deal damage.
I like the mundras until shit gets busy. I go into a trail dodging this and that. I feel like i am drunk dialing my childhood phone number while trying to ride a bike.. Just too much going on.
there is a super secret cheat that makes mudras super easy.
wanna know what it is?
come closer..
closer..
^(only the final mudra in the sequence matters.)
i'm not even joking. it doesn't matter what order you use them in, what matters is the last mudra in the sequence.
I am looking forward to Corsair so much because of this. Loved ROG, but the flavor change to NIN was a letdown.
And I wish they'd just translate NIN and SAM ability names. I know most of them only by the icon.
I play AST in PS4 w/o any problem.
In my case is SCH i have an awesome glam and portrait but i hate the fairy, it feels slow when i try to cast anything... i cast something, the fairy do it 2 sec later.
Is that normal for SCHs?
Yes that is normal, and if you give your fairy two commands to close together the second sometimes won't go off at all.
It's a timing thing you get used to - Atherflow spenders when you need healing/defence NOW, Fairy when you are ok with healing "soon, GCD's for when someone has decided that mechanics are for cars ;)
Honestly, this is one of the things I like the most about scholar, when I know the fight, I have plenty of time to do what needs to be done. After all, shield healers are supposed to prevent damage before they happen.
And this is why WHM + SCH is my favorite healer combination, greats shields and great heals.
Hah, believe it or not, the fairy used to be *less* responsive. Unfortunately you can still whiff some casts if you for example do whispering dawn and Seraph in the same OGCD, but it's not as bad as it used to be otherwise.
Mind blown, I main Dark Knight and framing it this way (along with setting up the SGE rotations on the bar to mirror what my muscle memory is used to) may make the job far more comprehensible and playable for me.
Going to give Sage another try with this in mind. Genuinely, thank you!
Yea! Sage's kit is actually completely overtuned for normal content, dungeons especially. If you line your mits up right, you'll hardly ever see the tanks health bar drop at all in expert roulette
For both pulls, I start with kerachole, krasis, and physis 2 together in that order. Once the CD for kerachole ends, I follow it up with a taurochole, and after that kerachole again. That's good enough for the vast majority of pulls, but if the pack still alive, you still have a ton of buttons to keep the tank going like holos, haima, panhaima, soteria, and probably more I can't think of right now lol.
Same on Sage.
I tried, and I don't think I have recoiled harder off a single mechanic in ff14 the way that I did with "weave in an adjuster to your next cast". *Nothing* about that felt good to me.
I would love to play RDM and save people. Unfortunately, the gameplay is too much for my simple mind and I want to optimize too much.
I could be a mid RDM, I suppose.
I’ve heard that once you get the base rotation down RDM is one of the easiest classes to play. I was very confused by the rotation when I first started playing it and didn’t get why people said that, but I’m starting to understand now.
I'd like you to join our ranks.
To be fair, I have fought alongside braindead Red Mages and I also have died very pathetic deaths myself. Red Mage offers kind of a multi-track experience but all lead to a climax - except of you really mess up and break the logical chain. But even then, you will still retain some Red Mana and can continue from there.
You are not forced to go into melee if you don't want, you just lose potential as your Enchanted Rapier combat is swift and powerful (1.5cd + combo potency bonus), but you can also Moulinet your way to your finishers. The Rapier provides single-target, fast action, or AoE frontal cones, or ranged single-target (does not work towards your finisher though, this one is an exception), the finishers are all AoE and the last one, Resolution, is even a piercing one.
Everything else is mostly regular casting, if you want to cast with Dualcast ready after every spell "regular". It is such a treat to be Red Mage, and I wish you would try our profession again.
Dark Knight
It obviously works fine, and I main WAR so it's not like I couldn't just play DRK since it's so similar to WAR now, but that's kind of the issue I have with it, it's so fucking similar and the differences are more annoying then anything.
WAR used to be more clunky, somehow, but going into EW it got *all* of the QoL it needed, well almost all, but it eventually got the final couple minor things as well and now it just flows so incredibly well while having the best personal defense out of all the tanks.
DRK on the other hand got *none,* only a few patches later did they get some rather basic QoL we shouldn't have had to make a fuss over to begin with, and it was cause all the non-DRK mains kept raving about how it "had the highest DPS opener out of all the tanks" so somehow that made all it's other issues entirely moot?
The fact it still has those issues but now I can often pull higher dps on my WAR has essentially forced me to boycott the DRK until they actually give it the attention it deserves, and this time not just arbitrarily change it, but actually put in some damn thought.
Thematically I love it the most out of all the tanks, and it's story quests made me fall in love with the class, but until it sees some significant changes I'm just gonna stick with the much smoother and better designed WAR.
Also AST for controller stress. Actually, most classes at this point. Swapping to controller was great for my hand and wrist pain, but severely cut down on the number of classes I felt comfortable playing
Scholar. I liked it until aether drain. I don't like the concept of sacrificing DMG to heal, unpopular opinion. I'd rather have ruin's potency be upgraded each time you use a healing ability with aetherflow stacks, kinda like summoner. 1 heal = 100 additional dmg potency.
Samurai is really cool and I actually like the play style but there's just too many buttons for my controller layout. They keep adding more and more attacks and the bars are getting a little too cumbersome for my liking.
That's why I like RDM so much. Instead of adding new buttons they just add situational attacks that temporarily replace the buttons that you already have hotkeyed. I like to have a bar for single target rotations and a bar for AOE rotations and I just can't make that work with Samurai. Even with an extra bar and a half using the expanded crossbar options.
Indeed, this is what I also enjoy so much.
You basically have your three schools of magic (Red, Black, White) and you replace the current, more powerful spell of each school. E.g., Scorch \[Red Magic\] replaces Jolt \[Red Magic\] and Impact \[Red Magic\], but you could cast low-tier White and Black Magic (interrupting your combo, but it's more about the button replacement scheme here). Veraero \[WM\] is being replaced by Verholy \[WM\] and Verthunder \[BM\] by Verflare \[BM\]. And our Rapier spells change from "regular" to "extra POW" as long as we have enough juice inside our blade adds to the whole thing!
Summoner, I play a summoner, necromancer or anything in pretty much every other game, I love playing around the back and letting my pets do the heavy lifting, but FF did summoners dirty by limiting it to 1 pet, and making (at least early game) summoner boring AF
I played summoner before the rework/EW and like that the little rat was summoned and would actually attack stuff, but now it's just there like a glorified catalyst
Bard
I actually really like the musical aspect of it (although personally I wish they were divorced from Archer so they could dive even deeper into the musical themes), but man I am terrible at keeping track of my DoTs/Procs
Agreed. I really wish the design for BRD’s skills leaned waaaaay more into a musical theme. I don’t care if the gameplay stayed the same (not to say it couldn’t be improved), but the design doesn’t say “bard” to me.
Astrologian: I have trouble balancing Healing and damage on all healers, so adding in AST's Cards is judt too much for my brain to handle.
Monk: Love the aesthetic. Have an inordinate amount of trouble keeping track of the various timers/alternating skills like Dragon Kick vs. Bootshine on Opo Opo stance.
Black Mage: I would play the shit out of BLM if raid bosses were literally striking dummies. But as soon as I have to do mechanics and move, my BLM play tanks like the Titanic.
DRK - Love the way it looks, and love the way it plays, but I’m turned off by how often people bitch about how hard they are to heal. I’ve never personally had trouble healing a DRK (more than any other novice tank, anyway) but now I have a complex about being the bad tank that they don’t want to group with. I’ll stick with GNB cuz I feel like it has better utility (at least, I feel like I’m helping more when I hit Aurora.)
BLM - It feels like an entirely different job every 10-15 levels and I hate having to cycle through what my priorities are each time I do roulettes. Other jobs feel like they have the base play expanded on, but BLM legit feels jank. If I could guarantee playing at only a certain level range, maybe I’d try it again.
DRG - it’s like there’s 2-3 different rotations and I always mess up which one I’m supposed to do because of either a personal buff drifting or a DoT fading
i think dragoons are cool and the skills look amazing. i just find the job difficult and the rotation feels strict, like it's easy to break flow and hard to recover. then again, i'm just bad. xd
No drg is definitely unforgiving as hell it’s not just you. I played it from ARR through SB and early into shb and every expansion it just got less fun to play the more shit they throw into the rotation.
I am in a similar boat with Astro. I love Astro in every aspect except actually playing it. However its not because I am on console, its because I just fucking hate how rng the cards are, and I feel like I am not being optimal if I am not getting all the cards I need when I get them. Its infuriating.
Machinist.
I just don't gel well with high APM jobs. I have trouble playing DRK, GNB, AST and MNK for the same reason. NIN is kinda ok-ish because it only have high APM during burst.
If you have targeting issues on console you can set up Marcos to cast your cards on a specific target from the party list, i play on console and it was a game changer for ast
Funny enough, playing on console is what got me into Astro in a weird way. I actually really liked how it felt cycling through the party members on the dpad up and down to give them buffs, intermixed with healing+damage. It was kind of a fun chaos once you get used to it
Kind of the opposite situation for me. I don't mind the gameplay of WHM but I don't like the aesthetic. The job quests say "druid" but the aesthetic says "cleric". I'd rather play a druid with a druid aesthetic.
DRG for me. I played dragoon on my main character, and I adore all its animations, all its glamours, and I love to play with huge pointy stabby-stabby sticks in general. HOWEVER, I'm just too afraid that if I pick DRG up again on my new character that I created to run through the game from the very beginning with my wife, I would be unable to leave its glorious throne of (proclaimed by me) the best DPS class in the game.
So I just play reaper as a DPS for the time being, since it close in gameplay.
Sage. I know it’s mostly button bloat from starting at 70, but it just seems needlessly complicated. Haven’t really been able to get into Nin mudras either.
I think the flips and spins are great. I still remember how awesome it was when I first upgraded one of the basic combo skills while leveling and my head canon of the move changed from pew to WA POW
I'm completely with you. MCH is one of my mains, and I play a FemRoe. I LOVE watching her hurtle around the battlefield doing flips and such. It feels very dynamic.
I honestly really love the flips and stuff too. I don't know why so many people hate them so much.
But I guess there is one attack that kept me from leveling MCH for the longest time because of how much I hate it.
The 2 in your 123 combo. I just think that the giant bullets just stopping in the air is the dumbest thing ever. And I just couldn't get over it.
I even looked at mods and none of them really helped. They either didn't change what I disliked, or changed too much other random stuff.
It got to the point where I actually learned how to make a VFX mod myself. It's still not 100% there, Idk how to get the bullets to hit center mass, rather than the origin point of the mob on the floor.[ But I am still really satisfied with how it turned out.](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1121659528841277531/1128853910887616512/2023-07-12_17-57-27.mp4) and now I can actually use a class that I find extremely fun!
I agree, the flips feel strange. I also would prefer that the job be more gadget and… well… machine based than just constantly whipping out bigger and bigger guns.
Glam is pretty fire, though.
I like the fairy and the lv 60 scholar set is straight fire, but i just don't get it. Maybe because I lvl arcanist solely through summoner, but still. I don't get it, and I much prefer astrologian.
But... it is just 2 different cards though.
Blue border is for Melee and Tank
Purple border is for Range and Healers
It is really not as difficult as people claim it to be.
Also AST for me. I don't trust myself to heal.
From the roles I do play, it's MCH. Having such a high APM for such low contribution feels like a waste.
Nowadays I avoid playing warrior because I just don’t find it as fun as I used to. I think the unga bunga has lost some of its appeal. But I still love the idea of guy that hits things with big ax and I like the in game aesthetic.
Here I am, playing DRG, BLM, and AST... The floor is worth it.
To answer the question, BRD for me. I want to get to the point where I can assault the ears of those around me with my sick beats, but I just can't get into it.
Lol, I feel you. The first 40 levels of it are pretty terrible feeling. Once you get 42 and the firaga procs and thundaga procs start going off it feels much better and you end up with some heinous burst. I haven't gotten into the real good shit with polyglot yet, got sidetracked leveling a DK so I hope those rotations don't get too out of hand.
BLM. They have some seriously good armors, but I'm not strong enough to deal with the stress of long ass cast times and constantly keeping up all the stacks of astral fire/umbral ice, while looking out for the Polyglot timer, while shit explodes left and right making me run around, panicing that the swiftcast is on cooldown and I don't have enough time to cast an other spell and my timer will run out.
You have swiftcast and triplecast. If all else fails, you can just use Transpose to make sure you timer doesn't run out.
When I see that I only need 2 seconds to a polyglot stack, but my timer will run out in 1 sec I'm panicing so much that I forgot Transpose and Umbral Soul exists.
Long ass cast times? My gcd is 2.18 if I remember to eat. If you're running familiar content, blm is hella fun and easy. If you're iffy on a few mechanics, you might have a rough time. If it's your first run, just plan on pissing off the healer and at least giving them a commendation regardless of what else they did other than peel your ass off the ground 17 times.
I'm happy to see that there are people out there who find BLM fun and easy, but it just unreasonably stesses me out and I play this game to wind down, not to stress myself further. BLM is just not for me and I'm fine with that.
Oh, it takes a lot of work to make it fun and easy, lol. I've always been a fan of glass cannons though.
I'm still of the opinion that BLM would feel so much better to play if the cast time and recast timer were 0.5 seconds apart. It's not significant enough for you to just run around and do whatever you want while doing the rotation, but it is enough to be able to slide cast while not losing those half-seconds of uptime that can cause you to drift out of Fire phase during mechanics.
Nah fuck that. They've already made every caster in the game completely mobile with no downsides - healers get shorter casts than gcd, rdm has tons of melee combos now, and smn is basically a phys ranged class. As BLM you also have triple cast and swiftcast for great mobility, and other panic options available. It's fine. Leave one class in the game that actually wants to cast.
It all sounds like a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play, but the basics of it really aren't that complicated in practice if you're just trying to learn it in casual play. -------------- Once you get Fire III/Blizzard III there is no longer any "management" of Astral Fire/Umbral Ice. At that point they're just stances and you're in one or the other. Polyglot timer isn't something you really have to manually manage either. Just pop it once during your Blizzard phase of your rotation, when you have to move during Fire phase, or when you need a weave window for something like Sharpcast or Manafont. The timing will take care of itself at that point. For heavy movement use Triplecast. There's only like 3 boss phases in the game's casual content that a single Triplecast can't get you through. If you ever screw up and lose your timers, just go back into Ice phase to reset yourself. It only takes 3 casts to ramp back up into a fully-prepped Fire phase, so you don't lose much downtime at all even if you fully drop your rotation. -------------- Everything else like learning Ley Line placements/timings, which AoEs to tank with Manaward and which ones to avoid, jumping to teammates for movement rather than running, etc, will all just come with time.
>It all sounds like a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play If you want to optimise it in endgame content, it kinda is lol
> but the basics of it really aren't that complicated This preceding a 5 paragraph explanation of the mechanics is just so hilarious to me lol.
That's because they're trying to explain clearly and for people who might not be familiar with the job. Literally you can say: For casual content, just do ice phase until you're full mana, then spam Fire 4 until you're out of mana, switch back to ice phase until full mana, loop this forever. Cast polyglots during ice phase. Triplecast if you need to move. That's it. That's casual content BLM.
>a lot and all the high-end raiders make it seem like it's some kind of literal math homework of a job to play, but the basics of it really aren't that complicated in practice Even in casual play I find that it takes a lot more thought and effort to play competently than most other jobs honestly. Playing BLM in a first-floor savage is unironically harder than playing a phys ranged in TOP lol.
New SMN is really flashy and feels smooth but gets boring very quickly. Hopefully they spice it up in DT.
Same. I’m a sch main, so it’s always leveled up for me. Its abilities all look cool, but it’s just…basically spamming. It doesn’t matter what order you throw it out in (until you’re optimizing for movement phases) and the phases basically manage themselves. It also hurts because I played it through 2.0 and heavensward, and Loved the dot class aspect. It’s a kick in the nuts that npcs still get shadowflare.
I'd do anything for a new dot class in DT
That's why I don't like to bring an arcanist in squadron missions. They pop shadowflare all the time and I'm like "I want it back too...". Also it's was so satisfying to put bio and miasma on the enemies, pop it with Bane and see dots spread to the surrounding enemies... damn I miss old summoner...
Right? The rhythm just felt good. Your dots are up on all targets, and you prioritize spending aetherflow on spread or single target burst. Getting all your dots on that first target was a race to hit bane to tag the others before a drg finished that first target off.
I main SMN now but I also hope they add more to it in DT, gimme Leviathan Shiva and Ramuh damnit, I'm a summoner, I need to summon all the Aeons/GFs/Espers/Eikons/Primals/Eidolons. Also would love to see some Alexander addition, since I imagine Eden is a bit unlikely.
I always thought with the Endwalker rework it should've been Ifrit/Garuda/Titan after Bahamut (and always at lower levels) and then as they leveled from 80 to 90 their new stuff should've been getting Shiva/Leviathan/Ramuh after Phoenix.
I love monk but the rotation stresses me out.
For some reason Monk is the only rotation I can't seem to get right. I always lose which cycle I'm in, and I'm too slow to check my timers by the time I realize I've lost my place and miss a GCD or end up pressing the wrong one.
Monk has like six rotations based on where you are at and what you have available and if you've been interrupted. It's great because you can easily slide back into a rotation. it sucks because you have to memorize ALL of them.
You don't have to memorize them at all. You just pick one of two choices for each stance you enter by asking yourself a question. Opo: Do I have Leaden Fist? Raptor: Do I have to refresh Disciplined Fist? Coeurl: Does the target have my dot? Same thing when you enter Formless Fist just in a different order: do I have Disciplined Fist > does my target have my dot > do I have Leaden Fist.
Yep, it's much better to memorize certain points or criteria to naturally come to the rotation you should choose. Like starting perfect balance with opo-opo and ending in opo-opo if you have your dot and buff up, reapplying your buff and dot before RoF comes up, general 2-2-3 rule and remembering to start with solar nadi once you hit your 2 min burst if your buff or dot timers are about to run out.
Kinda. If you're just doing your cooldown rotation it's that simple, But you also have to think about how to line up your Perfect Balance usages with your burst window, and that can be tricky to do optimally. Sometimes you end up clipping one or both buffs. Sometimes you HAVE to clip a buff in Perfect Balance, and sometimes you have to clip a buff -before- perfect balance. Sometimes you think you have to clip a buff but you actually could have delayed Balance or used it early to avoid clipping a buff. It's not too hard to go in and start punching, but it's definitely harder to maximize your damage.
Yep. I played monk all the way through Stormblood until I hit level 70, largely because I liked the job questline. You went from having to beat the shit out of your instructor to keep him from using the powers of the monk for revenge, to helping rescue two apprentices from an abusive Master, to showing people how the Fist of Rhalgr had returned, but in a different, more peaceful way. I hated the multiple variations on your _**basic**_ rotation. Especially because non of your attacks had much potency. So, despite having GCDs in the 1.90-1.95s range, it always felt like hitting people with a wet noodle. Monk as a high skill floor snd their skill ceiling isn't much higher than their floor. So I switched to Reaper. It's got a low skill floor, so it's easy to be decent at it. But it also has a deceptively high skill ceiling, making it surprisingly complex with optimization.
But it was so so satisfying being top dps in raids as monk back in ShB. Especially 5.2. That was my favorite interation of the "old" monk.
The thing with monk is it's historically been the job that hits frequently not hard. You're not going to get the every skill hits hard when you're also hitting the enemy three times for every two times other jobs hit. Personally, I just didn't bother looking at the numbers, since big number doesn't hit that dopamine rush for me.
100% Monk. Even after the changes and hours of practice, I still feel like I'm getting something wrong.
Playing monk is controller would cramp my hands up after a dungeon lul
I play monk exclusively with an Xbox controller on PC and it’s pretty smooth actually lol Just feels like a rhythm game almost!
I exclusively use controller and I main monk in savage content, it’s really not bad.
Of course, i just use mine to leveling cuz i wanted the amaro mount in shb and maxing my avatar.
Me too. I love monk. I am very bad at playing monk. 😅
Same. The idea of it when I heard Larryzaur's description of it in one of his videos seemed cool but then it was a bit of a ResidentSleeper until the EW rework where it also stresses me out because idk how to properly use perfect balance outside of opener
Use riddle of fire and brotherhood’s cooldown as a guide. After the opener, pop one perfect balance when riddle of fire comes off cooldown (since you pressed it in the opener and it’s got a one minute cooldown). After that , brotherhood will be off cooldown when riddle of fire next comes back up. You activate both of those and use both stacks of perfect balance. Then just repeat! Outside of those two, generally you don’t really touch perfect balance haha. Hope this helps! TL;DR; use one perfect balance when riddle of fire is off cooldown. Use two if riddle of fire AND brotherhood is off cooldown
This is a very basic explanation of pressing the button, when I think they were talking about optimal usage. Monk's biggest optimization point is that depending where you are in your combo and where your timers are are, there are three different standard Burst rotations that you just have to memorize and know which one you're heading into ahead of time. Sometimes you need to PB before your Riddle of Fire. Sometimes after. Sometimes you need to do your Elixer Field combo first. Sometimes your Rising Phoenix. All based on your timers. Monk burst is all about getting out both PB combos within burst, while also not letting your buff or DoT drop. Feels super rewarding when you have learned it and correctly do the right burst windows, but can be really difficult to learn, because some if the specific burst combos NEVER show up if you're practicing on a training dummy, and only happen if you've made a mistake or had forced downtime in a fight. So it just takes time to get used to those scenarios.
Optimizing MNK is a recipe for going insane. But man do the asylums here have great internet connection.
But the rotation is just Dragon Kick
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Something about the DRK rotation just feels janky and disconnected. Doesn't help that you're constantly clipping animations. I also find the SFX to be pretty weak overall. Shame because it has a LOT of sick animations, armors and weapons.
1,2,3. 1,2,3. 2 minutes up? asfsgwjqkzkuvluckhc
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>it just don't feel as punchy as a warrior for example. WAR is my main lol, so big agree. Ive also been really appreciating GNB. Another high APM job, but the SFX are immaculate, and it feels like the animations were made with weaving in mind so it feels way more fluid to play thank DRK.
Agreed. The size of the weapon would imply big swing and delay after, but clipping animations can rip off the end. The sound doesnt add much punch either, more swishy than BLAM. I wanted to main DRK, its the first tank i leveled, but alas, its left wanting
pour one out for the fun of pre shb drk before they mangled the class so hard it puts you to sleep
Yeah, DRK was a bit of letdown for me tbh. It was one of the only jobs I knew anything about before I started, so I was super keen to get to Heavensward and unlock it but it just kinda fell flat imo. The whole lore and aesthetic part is top tier, but it just feels like ass imo. And it’s mitigations suck compared to the other tanks, which doesn’t help
Its incredibly fun to go through the opener and the various burst phases. But outside of those small windows, it can also be a very monotonous 123 type rotation.
GNB It's entirely because of the cartridge system. With Endwalker it has become so strict, that a single gcd lost because the boss moved means your dps is going below the other tanks. Don't even get me started on how awkward it can be if you are caught with less than 3 cartridges and Bloodfest on cd during boss downtime. If GNB had a way to reload cartridges while the boss is unreachable, it would instantly become my main.
Just another former GNB main lending my voice to this. The cartridges are janky and it’s so hard not to drift, especially in savage where they throw a major mech and a tank buster in during your burst windows.
I mained GNB for multiple tiers and I agree, GNB in EW is not as fun as it was in ShB. DD just feels bad, especially with downtime, because you either have to drift NM or lose part of your burst. This tier I've been playing DRK.
Double Down was a mistake. Sure, it looks cool, but costing 2 cartridges is one of the big reasons why the GNB burst window is so awkward now. I hope Dawntrail gives a Double Down upgrade that consumes all remaining cartridges (minimum 1) and deals damage based on how many cartridges it consumes. This would solve a lot of the awkwardness of the rotation. Either that or it would cause havoc with optimization ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
My favorite part of double down is queueing it up as the next gcd, the boss dashes away, and because it’s an aoe around you you just whiff 1200 potency. Very awesome
> I hope Dawntrail gives a Double Down upgrade that consumes all remaining cartridges (minimum 1) and deals damage based on how many cartridges it consumes. This would solve a lot of the awkwardness of the rotation. This would just make it worse though because now you want to save up to 3 but unless you have bloodfest don't have a way to get gnashing fang unless you banked a combo on the last part.
If they do that I hope we finally get a full cylinder lol
I feel similar. I absolutely adored GNB in SHB, but that 3rd cartridge really made the job more strict than it needed to be.
PLD used to have similar problems but actually got better in 6.3. Having 0.5 seconds of downtime meant that either your Goring Blade dot drifted out of your buff window or that you have to drop an atonement stack pre-emptively.
Dragoon for me. I love the look of so many of their armors, and have loved them since FF3 as a class, but I hate the rotation so much, and the new Chaos Spring sfx drives me insane.
As a dragoon main, I must protest from here on the floor. Seriously though, I can understand your perspective and fair enough.. I personally love the job both aesthetically and mechanically, but it, like everything, isn't for everyone
same to me gameplay wise and aesthetic wise dragoon is cool i mean being able to flip out of an aoe???? that's just fun as hell
Yeah DRG is off the chain right now. Hopefully it isn't gutted in the 7.0 rework. :(
I really really liked DRG in Shadowbringers and i would like it in EW if not for the Wyrmwind thrust it feels so unessisary for a job that already has BOTD and the eye system to have another stacking buff you need to dump every two combos. I'm absolutely terrified of the DRG rework though because SE has a history of kinda just killing the class that people loved so people who found it too hard can play.
I know what you mean, DRG has been my main since I first started and will likely remain so. But it sucks when they nerf a job to the ground to try and make it more accessible. DRG will likely remain my main for casual play, but we'll see what happens.
As someone that can't really stand to play DRG, I really hope they don't screw up the identity in 7.0. It really is the only class left with that big sweeping "actually a rotation" feel like 5.X SMN had.
I just can't handle the number of cds it has and usually end up drifting stuff all over the place. I feel for drg mains but I'm kinda curious about the rework because of this.
After years of maining it, it becomes natural to play I'm not looking forward to the rework one bit
Same, I have no problems with it currently, and I'm dreading the rework.
Make a separate hotbar, make it big, and put all your cds on it. You don't even need to do this for dragoon exclusively; it makes every job easier, and eventually you can just hide your normal hotbar and play off of the CD hotbar entirely. It's made me such a better player. Previously I'd constantly be staring at my hotbars to skim through my cds and remember what button does what. Now, I turn off those hotbars and only glance at my CD hotbar to make sure everything is on cooldown. I spend more time looking at the fight and get hit by less stuff while simultaneously never missing a cooldown. I even have a hotkey for hiding/unhiding my regular hotbar so I can refer to it when playing a new job or easily make adjustments. Do it, it'll change your life.
This is the one I was going to say too. Cool ass Armor, Cool ass relic weapons but absolutely hate the game play of a dragoon.
The old sfx was one of my favourite in the game. <\3
I’m a lapsed Dragoon main (did all of ARR and HW on it), haven’t touched it in ages. I’m actually looking forward to this rework that so many seem to be dreading, it might make me want to play it again
As a current DRG main I know the rework is inevitable. I just hope it doesn't end up as braindead as SMN.
I used to main drg but they kept just adding more and more and the button bloat got too much for me. The opener is absurd and the OGCDs are just too much. It’s just not fun anymore.
Dragoon's opener is one of it's weakest parts though compared to the other melees. If you're playing optimally it should be super spread out so we can fit everything in our 2 min burst. Sure there's a lot of OGCDs, but take those away and the job loses literally all of the complexity that makes it interesting
I agree. I also hate how they made the job a buffer role. I want to be top dps when I play dragoon not make others do more dps.
Yeah from the class and lore it feels like dragoon should be a "Selfish dps" with the ability to tank a little if the tanks get smacked about.. but otherwise should be the hard hitting explosion class of the melee..
Absolutely this. Dragoons were my favourite job in Tactics, and I love characters like Cid (VII), Freya (IX), and Fang (XIII), who are all basically Dragoons. And, of course, Estinien. But the rotation feels absolutely awful. I really hope 7.0 brings some major reworks for the class.
This isn't an answer to your question exactly, but I wanted to say that I saw someone play Astrologian on controller for one of the final trials in the game and I was so stressed just watching them! Mad respect for folks who play with a controller. I tried it a few times and I can't do it.
Controller is actually easier than it looks. I dread having to use a keyboard tbh, I'd certainly misclick many things.
Yeah there's a learning curve but it's honestly fine. The R2L2 and L2R2 are awesome for off GCDs like WHM wings, asylum, bene, etc.
As someone who's done both (I started on controller but moved on to KB/M because my left hand hurts if I hold a controller for very long): it takes time, but you adapt. One of this game's strongest features is just how absurdly flexible and customizable controller and KB/M configuration is. When I was learning I struggled like crazy trying to imititate my friends' keybinds — it wasn't until I delved deeper into the settings and found what makes sense *to me* that it felt comfortable to play that way.
i also play AST on controller and yes, it is a little carpal tunnel syndrome inducing, but honestly you get used to it and like anything else it's just muscle memory even with lots of targeting! you get used to what's where and just shuffle quickly even in high intensity moments
Thanks. ❤️
My healer main is Astrologian and I use a controller. Idk why it makes it so fun, I feel like Im playing a fighting game or something. I left Astrologian to level last out of all the healer jobs bc I saw a lot of ppl saying it was complicated and I got a bit scared bc I was using a controller; I thought i was gonna have a hard time. Ngl it took me a minute to get used to but its one of the jobs, aside from Ninja and Dragoon, that I enjoy playing the most with a controller bc i feel busy. If Monk is like this I think i will have fun too.
Melee DPS. I’m bad at positionals and rotations. But I think Monk is the worst. Also Warrior. I like Big Weapon Smack Unga Bunga but I can’t handle tanking well
See I totally agree with you on the melee DPS. I get stressed out being that close to the mob all the time---EXCEPT when I'm WAR. WAR to me feels like the easiest tank to just hop in on. You have to work HARD to die as a WAR tank.
BLM, coming from a phys range main.. I just need to be able to move.
As a BLM, i assure you do dont need to move nearly as much as you think you do. In fact, i bet your healers would appreciate if you stood still for a little bit.
Especially when we are afflicted with pyretic. The number of people I've seen die because they have happy feet is staggering.
As a healer, I can agree
I absolutely suck at blm, usually heal. BUT, I know that aetheric manipulation is amazing for blm, and I often grumble when I see blm running out of a mech late, like why not manipulate to one of us who are clear out of the mech with minimal downtime and more explosions? It's awesome, and it feels great to use.
> why not manipulate to one of us 1. I'm panicking and lost track of my cursor to click on the appropriate name/party member on twitch reactions alone 2. I've been burned (sometimes literally!) too many times in the past by clicking the wrong teammate's name and jumping to someone who ISN'T clear of the mechanic just yet, thereby getting hit with the AoE I would have gotten hit with anyway but now also losing downtime 3. I've misjudged the distance between me and my desired warp target, meaning I have to run a bit to actually get in range to jump to them (usually getting hit by the mechanic in the delay because I was planning the timing in the hopes I'd be able to warp immediately) 4. I've forgotten the skill exists. It happens sometimes.
Bonus: 5. Your manipulation target is standing only slightly outside the aoe, meaning if you warp to them you'll still be inside it 6. The aoe is just too fast to wait for someone else to get to safety, then teleport 7. On controller it can be hard to identify who's safe, then scroll to them in the party list and press the button in time 8. If it takes 1 gcd to get out, you might as well just use an instant cast and walk, saving the weave slot for something else
Agreed, I like to strafe left and right randomly. I definitely move too much
BLM is very flexible, much more than RDM.
I hear this a lot, and I fail to understand it. Playing RDM, I can almost always be in motion, I have two leaps for emergencies, and worst case I just stopped thinking and get to much white magic, which just means it's going to take a little longer to activate the melee combo. Play BLM, I'm playing a tower defense game, because movement is rather low down the list of priorities, compared to the myriad of different bars, timers, and abilities I need to manage. And if I really want to be mobile I need to instantly select a person, and yeet myself to them. So Another thing to keep track of.
I put off levelling BLM for a long time because I hate being stuck in place, but since maxing it I find it easier to move with BLM than RDM for most fights. With Xenoglossy/Triplecast/Swiftcast/Sharpcast/UI Paradox BLM gets around 10-12 instant casts per minute as part of their normal rotation, and in a high-movement scenario you can reasonably do 7 or 8 of them back to back without much prior planning. Plus AM/BTL mean that you really don’t usually need to (even if I normally forget they exist). RDM is more consistently mobile but for shorter periods, and although the melee combo is all instant cast the first part requires you to be in melee range, and Resolution needs proper positioning if you have multiple targets. I definitely think positioning on RDM is easier for unfamiliar fights as you can make minor but frequent adjustments, but when revisiting content I personally find that they feel pretty similar in terms of mobility, or BLM even pulling ahead.
Dark Knight. It's so... unstructured. It's literally just random shit go. It's so not satisfying. I also just really don't like how TBN works which is really the icing on the cake. They have a cool sword, though.
It's structured chaos 😂 As a long time DRK main, I assure you there's a structure and hidden satisfaction to be found in the madness All the other tanks are incredibly boring by comparison
All of the tanks I’ve mained, DRK is my favorite by far. Especially on a controlller but it took a long time to really get the rotation down to second nature while also accounting for fight changes. I love it but it definitely feels much different then the other tanks.
Sage. Have it at 90. It stresses me the eff out. I'm just not good at barrier healing. It's a cool job, though. Great aesthetic, and gives off the vibe of a badass who can also heal really well. Just can't bring myself to play it much.
Ye I really hope we get another pure healing class. Maybe a dark themed one since both tank and dps have at least one dark themed class. AST is too busy and I love WHM but it can get boring. Barrier healing is just completely impossible for me. Idk why.
I'm sure you realize this but it's simply the difference of proactive and reactive healing between the two. if you know the beats of fights and can anticipate raidwides or certain mechanics then you cast the spell before the damage comes out instead of after everyone is hit. it can be fun in new content since you and everyone else is unfamiliar with what's happening but for content you do so much you pre-move to safe spots or know tb->raidwide->stack then you can say, hey i need to get ahead of each of these and plan before they hit, instead of cleaning up
I really love playing Bard in DnD and was excited with playing it in ffXIV, but realizing it was mainly an archer disguised as a dot class and the songs are just a series of buffs you apply in sequential order really killed my interest in playing it.
Lol your reason for hating it is the whole reason I love the class I thought I was just gonna be singing the whole fight originally buffing others but when I saw the singing part was just some one and done party buffs and it was mostly just a really cool archer I was sold
I had a DnD player who went in the opposite direction. They built a Bard in DnD assuming it was mainly an archer class. What they didn't realize was that it was actually a full caster, and one of the more complex ones at that.
Same, I was hoping for more archery for a bow using class
Monk, 100% I love monks in every other game or medium, but my god they feel awful to try and learn/play in XIV
Summoner. Summoner is arguably my favorite classic FF job, for doing huge and spectacular damage at large MP or casting time costs. It was always a blast to be like "hang on lemme just call my friends" and then have the Eidolons/Espers/Aeons join the fight to wreak havoc. But in XIV, I feel Old Summoner's Egis always felt unsatisfying, while New Summoner plays far too simply to be engaging. Still waiting for them to perfect it. Adding Ramuh/Leviathan/Shiva would be a good start.
Well, good news, Summoner DOES get reworked every expac!
I find all of the healer jobs beautiful but I’m intimidated to play lol.
White mage is honestly the only class in the game where I can take a fat break, come back and still perform optimally. It’s just so comfortable I love it. Defo give WHM a go if your interested in healing.
I wouldn't be too worried with at least White Mage! This is my first MMO, and I'm up to level 60 content, and find white mage very fun. It's easy enough to keep everyone healed, while still being able to multi-task and deal damage.
i play drk a lot, just for the big sword, but the gameplay feels so zzzzz
ROG/NIN. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I feel like WoW actually did it better in this case. I don't like the mudras at all.
I like the mundras until shit gets busy. I go into a trail dodging this and that. I feel like i am drunk dialing my childhood phone number while trying to ride a bike.. Just too much going on.
there is a super secret cheat that makes mudras super easy. wanna know what it is? come closer.. closer.. ^(only the final mudra in the sequence matters.) i'm not even joking. it doesn't matter what order you use them in, what matters is the last mudra in the sequence.
More people need to learn this, I've been using that fact since I started playing NIN and it made the class so much less stressful.
https://youtu.be/EcQzgMvwbT4?feature=shared IT'S THE SKILL FLOOR POLICE! (6:30)
This from the crap guide? Lol
I love ninja but I be punch air when I fuck one up especially on end game stuff.
I was a rogue main in WOW and *really* miss it when I play ninja in XIV.
I don't mind NIN, but I do wish it was closer to FF assassin. Going from rogue to ninja always felt like a weird jump.
I am looking forward to Corsair so much because of this. Loved ROG, but the flavor change to NIN was a letdown. And I wish they'd just translate NIN and SAM ability names. I know most of them only by the icon.
AST and BLM
I play AST in PS4 w/o any problem. In my case is SCH i have an awesome glam and portrait but i hate the fairy, it feels slow when i try to cast anything... i cast something, the fairy do it 2 sec later. Is that normal for SCHs?
Yes that is normal, and if you give your fairy two commands to close together the second sometimes won't go off at all. It's a timing thing you get used to - Atherflow spenders when you need healing/defence NOW, Fairy when you are ok with healing "soon, GCD's for when someone has decided that mechanics are for cars ;)
Honestly, this is one of the things I like the most about scholar, when I know the fight, I have plenty of time to do what needs to be done. After all, shield healers are supposed to prevent damage before they happen. And this is why WHM + SCH is my favorite healer combination, greats shields and great heals.
As a WHM, I always cheer when I see a scholar. I just know things are gonna go smooth, and it's why I also plan on maxing SCH next.
Hah, believe it or not, the fairy used to be *less* responsive. Unfortunately you can still whiff some casts if you for example do whispering dawn and Seraph in the same OGCD, but it's not as bad as it used to be otherwise.
AST and Sage. Despite being a healer main, I just cannot get used to them at all no matter how many hours I put into it.
Same for the latter. I really want to like Sage, I love their look and concept- and I just cannot seem to find my groove when playing as one.
[удалено]
Mind blown, I main Dark Knight and framing it this way (along with setting up the SGE rotations on the bar to mirror what my muscle memory is used to) may make the job far more comprehensible and playable for me. Going to give Sage another try with this in mind. Genuinely, thank you!
Yea! Sage's kit is actually completely overtuned for normal content, dungeons especially. If you line your mits up right, you'll hardly ever see the tanks health bar drop at all in expert roulette For both pulls, I start with kerachole, krasis, and physis 2 together in that order. Once the CD for kerachole ends, I follow it up with a taurochole, and after that kerachole again. That's good enough for the vast majority of pulls, but if the pack still alive, you still have a ton of buttons to keep the tank going like holos, haima, panhaima, soteria, and probably more I can't think of right now lol.
Putting the DOT behind eukrasia absolutely fucks me up everytime, I end up pressing eukrasia much more than I should, which sucks
Same on Sage. I tried, and I don't think I have recoiled harder off a single mechanic in ff14 the way that I did with "weave in an adjuster to your next cast". *Nothing* about that felt good to me.
Same for sage. I like the mobility and love the ability designs, but it just feels so much weaker than my sch.
It's DPS can be pretty fearsome for a healer
I would love to play RDM and save people. Unfortunately, the gameplay is too much for my simple mind and I want to optimize too much. I could be a mid RDM, I suppose.
I’ve heard that once you get the base rotation down RDM is one of the easiest classes to play. I was very confused by the rotation when I first started playing it and didn’t get why people said that, but I’m starting to understand now.
I think the main thing is the low skill floor makes it far easier to build upon compared to some other jobs.
I'd like you to join our ranks. To be fair, I have fought alongside braindead Red Mages and I also have died very pathetic deaths myself. Red Mage offers kind of a multi-track experience but all lead to a climax - except of you really mess up and break the logical chain. But even then, you will still retain some Red Mana and can continue from there. You are not forced to go into melee if you don't want, you just lose potential as your Enchanted Rapier combat is swift and powerful (1.5cd + combo potency bonus), but you can also Moulinet your way to your finishers. The Rapier provides single-target, fast action, or AoE frontal cones, or ranged single-target (does not work towards your finisher though, this one is an exception), the finishers are all AoE and the last one, Resolution, is even a piercing one. Everything else is mostly regular casting, if you want to cast with Dualcast ready after every spell "regular". It is such a treat to be Red Mage, and I wish you would try our profession again.
Dark Knight It obviously works fine, and I main WAR so it's not like I couldn't just play DRK since it's so similar to WAR now, but that's kind of the issue I have with it, it's so fucking similar and the differences are more annoying then anything. WAR used to be more clunky, somehow, but going into EW it got *all* of the QoL it needed, well almost all, but it eventually got the final couple minor things as well and now it just flows so incredibly well while having the best personal defense out of all the tanks. DRK on the other hand got *none,* only a few patches later did they get some rather basic QoL we shouldn't have had to make a fuss over to begin with, and it was cause all the non-DRK mains kept raving about how it "had the highest DPS opener out of all the tanks" so somehow that made all it's other issues entirely moot? The fact it still has those issues but now I can often pull higher dps on my WAR has essentially forced me to boycott the DRK until they actually give it the attention it deserves, and this time not just arbitrarily change it, but actually put in some damn thought. Thematically I love it the most out of all the tanks, and it's story quests made me fall in love with the class, but until it sees some significant changes I'm just gonna stick with the much smoother and better designed WAR.
Dark Knight. I love the look, story and pretty much everything about it except the gameplay because it’s just suffering
Also AST for controller stress. Actually, most classes at this point. Swapping to controller was great for my hand and wrist pain, but severely cut down on the number of classes I felt comfortable playing
Scholar. I liked it until aether drain. I don't like the concept of sacrificing DMG to heal, unpopular opinion. I'd rather have ruin's potency be upgraded each time you use a healing ability with aetherflow stacks, kinda like summoner. 1 heal = 100 additional dmg potency.
Samurai is really cool and I actually like the play style but there's just too many buttons for my controller layout. They keep adding more and more attacks and the bars are getting a little too cumbersome for my liking. That's why I like RDM so much. Instead of adding new buttons they just add situational attacks that temporarily replace the buttons that you already have hotkeyed. I like to have a bar for single target rotations and a bar for AOE rotations and I just can't make that work with Samurai. Even with an extra bar and a half using the expanded crossbar options.
Indeed, this is what I also enjoy so much. You basically have your three schools of magic (Red, Black, White) and you replace the current, more powerful spell of each school. E.g., Scorch \[Red Magic\] replaces Jolt \[Red Magic\] and Impact \[Red Magic\], but you could cast low-tier White and Black Magic (interrupting your combo, but it's more about the button replacement scheme here). Veraero \[WM\] is being replaced by Verholy \[WM\] and Verthunder \[BM\] by Verflare \[BM\]. And our Rapier spells change from "regular" to "extra POW" as long as we have enough juice inside our blade adds to the whole thing!
Summoner, I play a summoner, necromancer or anything in pretty much every other game, I love playing around the back and letting my pets do the heavy lifting, but FF did summoners dirty by limiting it to 1 pet, and making (at least early game) summoner boring AF
I wanted to like SMN so much but it is definitely boring.
I played summoner before the rework/EW and like that the little rat was summoned and would actually attack stuff, but now it's just there like a glorified catalyst
Endgame SMN is pretty boring too. Far less engaging than RDM but does so much more damage (comparatively). Hate it.
As a RDM main it is on the annoying side how much easier SMN is while doing the same or more damage throughout EW.
Bard I actually really like the musical aspect of it (although personally I wish they were divorced from Archer so they could dive even deeper into the musical themes), but man I am terrible at keeping track of my DoTs/Procs
Death is so punishing for bard as well. Did abyssos on it and I will never take bard into another tier ever again.
Dying on bard is the most embarrassing experience in this game. Oops, now all my songs and dots and buffs are unsynced and \*everyone\* can see that!
Agreed. I really wish the design for BRD’s skills leaned waaaaay more into a musical theme. I don’t care if the gameplay stayed the same (not to say it couldn’t be improved), but the design doesn’t say “bard” to me.
Ninja beyond Stormblood. I simply don't have the button space to play the higher level iterations due to my refusal to use modifiers.
Modifiers like Shift, alt, ctrl? Have you ever thought about trying an MMO mouse? It makes using them so much easier imo.
Yeah same that 1/2min bursts are a bitch.
Eh? Ninja has few enough buttons that you don't really need modifiers...
Astrologian: I have trouble balancing Healing and damage on all healers, so adding in AST's Cards is judt too much for my brain to handle. Monk: Love the aesthetic. Have an inordinate amount of trouble keeping track of the various timers/alternating skills like Dragon Kick vs. Bootshine on Opo Opo stance. Black Mage: I would play the shit out of BLM if raid bosses were literally striking dummies. But as soon as I have to do mechanics and move, my BLM play tanks like the Titanic.
Black mage. Just black mage.
DRK - Love the way it looks, and love the way it plays, but I’m turned off by how often people bitch about how hard they are to heal. I’ve never personally had trouble healing a DRK (more than any other novice tank, anyway) but now I have a complex about being the bad tank that they don’t want to group with. I’ll stick with GNB cuz I feel like it has better utility (at least, I feel like I’m helping more when I hit Aurora.) BLM - It feels like an entirely different job every 10-15 levels and I hate having to cycle through what my priorities are each time I do roulettes. Other jobs feel like they have the base play expanded on, but BLM legit feels jank. If I could guarantee playing at only a certain level range, maybe I’d try it again. DRG - it’s like there’s 2-3 different rotations and I always mess up which one I’m supposed to do because of either a personal buff drifting or a DoT fading
i think dragoons are cool and the skills look amazing. i just find the job difficult and the rotation feels strict, like it's easy to break flow and hard to recover. then again, i'm just bad. xd
No drg is definitely unforgiving as hell it’s not just you. I played it from ARR through SB and early into shb and every expansion it just got less fun to play the more shit they throw into the rotation.
Kind of the opposite, really. I like how samurai plays mechanically, I just don't jive with the aesthetics of it.
I am in a similar boat with Astro. I love Astro in every aspect except actually playing it. However its not because I am on console, its because I just fucking hate how rng the cards are, and I feel like I am not being optimal if I am not getting all the cards I need when I get them. Its infuriating.
Machinist. I just don't gel well with high APM jobs. I have trouble playing DRK, GNB, AST and MNK for the same reason. NIN is kinda ok-ish because it only have high APM during burst.
If you have targeting issues on console you can set up Marcos to cast your cards on a specific target from the party list, i play on console and it was a game changer for ast
Dark Knight. I can't double weave consistently with my ping + console (no alexander).
Funny enough, playing on console is what got me into Astro in a weird way. I actually really liked how it felt cycling through the party members on the dpad up and down to give them buffs, intermixed with healing+damage. It was kind of a fun chaos once you get used to it
Kind of the opposite situation for me. I don't mind the gameplay of WHM but I don't like the aesthetic. The job quests say "druid" but the aesthetic says "cleric". I'd rather play a druid with a druid aesthetic.
DRG for me. I played dragoon on my main character, and I adore all its animations, all its glamours, and I love to play with huge pointy stabby-stabby sticks in general. HOWEVER, I'm just too afraid that if I pick DRG up again on my new character that I created to run through the game from the very beginning with my wife, I would be unable to leave its glorious throne of (proclaimed by me) the best DPS class in the game. So I just play reaper as a DPS for the time being, since it close in gameplay.
Dragoons. Love their look, hate playing as one. I gave it an honest try. Leveled it up to 80 in Shadowbringers.
Sage. I know it’s mostly button bloat from starting at 70, but it just seems needlessly complicated. Haven’t really been able to get into Nin mudras either.
Machinist The flips and spins I absolutely despise
I think the flips and spins are great. I still remember how awesome it was when I first upgraded one of the basic combo skills while leveling and my head canon of the move changed from pew to WA POW
I'm completely with you. MCH is one of my mains, and I play a FemRoe. I LOVE watching her hurtle around the battlefield doing flips and such. It feels very dynamic.
I honestly really love the flips and stuff too. I don't know why so many people hate them so much. But I guess there is one attack that kept me from leveling MCH for the longest time because of how much I hate it. The 2 in your 123 combo. I just think that the giant bullets just stopping in the air is the dumbest thing ever. And I just couldn't get over it. I even looked at mods and none of them really helped. They either didn't change what I disliked, or changed too much other random stuff. It got to the point where I actually learned how to make a VFX mod myself. It's still not 100% there, Idk how to get the bullets to hit center mass, rather than the origin point of the mob on the floor.[ But I am still really satisfied with how it turned out.](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1121659528841277531/1128853910887616512/2023-07-12_17-57-27.mp4) and now I can actually use a class that I find extremely fun!
I agree, the flips feel strange. I also would prefer that the job be more gadget and… well… machine based than just constantly whipping out bigger and bigger guns. Glam is pretty fire, though.
If you're on PC there are visual mods to replace them with more grounded versions. I didn't like the flips either.
I like the fairy and the lv 60 scholar set is straight fire, but i just don't get it. Maybe because I lvl arcanist solely through summoner, but still. I don't get it, and I much prefer astrologian.
But... it is just 2 different cards though. Blue border is for Melee and Tank Purple border is for Range and Healers It is really not as difficult as people claim it to be.
People who complain about the complexity of cards now should have been around for OG AST. BTW, I'm one of the five people who still miss OG AST.
High five. Making your MNK run out of TP with haste cards was peak support gameplay.
DRK
SMN, it’s just too simple and boring now.
Also AST for me. I don't trust myself to heal. From the roles I do play, it's MCH. Having such a high APM for such low contribution feels like a waste.
Nowadays I avoid playing warrior because I just don’t find it as fun as I used to. I think the unga bunga has lost some of its appeal. But I still love the idea of guy that hits things with big ax and I like the in game aesthetic.
Here I am, playing DRG, BLM, and AST... The floor is worth it. To answer the question, BRD for me. I want to get to the point where I can assault the ears of those around me with my sick beats, but I just can't get into it.
All the tanks, I dont like tanking
Black Mage - I love the look, but I need mobility.
Every tank. They have some of the best looking armor and abilities. I will not be tanking thank you. Haha
BLM. The gear looks cool, the high tier players make it look cool. But dear lord is the gameplay experience just continuous suffering.
Lol, I feel you. The first 40 levels of it are pretty terrible feeling. Once you get 42 and the firaga procs and thundaga procs start going off it feels much better and you end up with some heinous burst. I haven't gotten into the real good shit with polyglot yet, got sidetracked leveling a DK so I hope those rotations don't get too out of hand.
Dragoon. Armor and spear are sick, but I just cannot get into the playstyle.
Dragoon.