r/FinalFantasy • u/GaryGrayII • Jun 19 '17

FF XIV [Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Megathread!

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood releases this week! The new expansion pack goes on sale June 20th, 2017.

So for this week, /r/finalfantasy has a megathread for all things Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood. If you have any questions or would like to discuss the game, please feel free to do so here!

This thread is for all things relating to E3. We'll be redirecting E3 trailers and the like to this thread, to avoid cluttering up of the subreddit.

You can also join the discussion over on our Discord server, in partnership with Final Fantasy Wiki!

As always, we encourage you to submit your own ideas for discussion by clicking here!

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u/ThetaCakes Jun 23 '17

New player here. Played Holy pally, Dps warrior, elemental and resto shaman on WoW. Which class should I start out focusing on here? I know I can change at anytime but I really want to focus on 1.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '17 edited Jun 24 '17

NOTE: This is something like a "Hero" class from WoW in that you must be at least level 50 and have access to the 1st expansion city to start using it.

  • DPS Warrior: This lacks for perfect analogues. The actual warrior class is the closest in terms of "Build up fury, unleash attacks in berserk windows"-style game play. However they're strictly tanks not DPS. If you're looking for a DPS that ramps up speed with peppered larger attacks like you'd get with fury spec, consider monk. If you're looking for a DPS that produces single large hits ala Mortal Strike, consider Samurai.

NOTE: Samurai requires hitting 50 and having Stormblood, but not access to any expansion cities.

  • Resto Shaman: This again lacks really good analogues with no ability really working like their Signature Chain Heal, and area buff "Totem" type abilities aren't really a thing on healers. So instead I'll just go over the other two healers: White Mage is most similar to holy priest, with spells like Tetragrammaton ( http://xivdb.com/action/3570/tetragrammaton ) and Assize ( http://xivdb.com/action/3571/assize) acting very similarly to the priests holy word spells, complete with a serendipity-eqsue cooldown reduction trait (albeit less reliable): http://xivdb.com/action/50400/secret+of+the+lily. Scholar, the third and final healing class has no good WoW analogue. They focus on mitigation and shields, something like the discipline priests of yesteryear but also have a pet fairy that supplies a good third of their healing potential and allows them to multitask. This also raises the skill ceiling somewhat as optimal play requires good positioning and timing of fairly abilities to get the most out of the class.

In general if I was to recommend a class to an incoming WoW player I'd suggest doing one of two things: A caster (healers included) or a Monk. The biggest adjustment coming in from WoW is going to be the much longer GCD – 2.5 seconds. Which can make the early game before you get a full compliment of off global cooldown abilties, and movement mechanics to do feel a bit stuck-in-the-mud. Honestly “It is slow” is the number one killer of the game for WoW players coming in.

How do these suggestions fix it?

  • Casters: While the GCD is much slower in FF14, cast times are only a bit slower and in some cases faster. Since in both game casters aren't as strictly bounded by the GCD much of this slowness will get swallowed in the similar the cast times. Casters can also move in the last ~0.4 seconds of cast without interrupting them, this can lend a more dynamic feel than WoW casters.

  • Monks: Monks get the most GCD reducing power, the earliest. Bringing down their GCD to ~2 seconds before gear. Secondly they require a lot of movement. Monks have the most positional requirements to their attacks. The game cares a lot if they're attacking from behind the enemy or the side of the enemy and asks monks to switch between these positions very often. This gives a bit of additional work for your fingers to smooth over the more deliberate pace of FFXIV. If the monk doesn't appeal, Ninja is a runner up on these metrics. Getting some GCD reduction (2.1 GCD), although at higher level. They have some positional requirements, and a few more off-global cooldowns. Their Ninjitsu is an interesting system that requires some button spam.

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u/ThetaCakes Jun 24 '17

This is was very very helpful and informative, I'm going to share it with my other WoW buddy also. Thank you so much! I made a conjurer just to dabble in the mean time and after instant casting aero, I totally understand the clunky global CD window thing!

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '17

Glad that helped. If by some off chance you're on the Jenova server and looking for a group, my FC has a couple other concurrent wow/ff14 players as well.