Comments from the Devs

[Spider-Dan]

Heavy Swing > the +damage taken WS, I forget the name.

edit: Maim is LV18 so maybe you meant lower than that.

[Eanae]

How did PLD hold up vs WAR in 1.0 tanking?

[Datonare]

In the majority of situations, WAR was much better. Easier to have more HP and a range of superior skills more or less sealed the deal

Edit: And more damage didn't hurt either

[Eanae]

Even in endgame? Kind of disappointing to hear.

[Datonare]

Especially in endgame

[xopher]

Heavy Swing > the +damage taken WS, I forget the name.

edit: Maim is LV18 so maybe you meant lower than that.

pirates is 17 cap and maim is 18 so no

in pirates it's either 1111111111 or take hate. i took hate and demolished

[Carraway]

How did PLD hold up vs WAR in 1.0 tanking?

I can't speak for anyone but ourselves, and our strategies changed over time, but we used PLDs as MTs for anything that mattered towards the end of 1.0, i.e. Ifrit Extreme, Legatus Hard. We kind of transitioned into using PLDs for everything, actually, due to their burst enmity vs our DPS. Both jobs had their niches.

[Niiro]

Late in 1.0 PLD came into their own, they could generate more reliable amounts of hate faster than WAR but didn't do well on multiple targets (a big deal for dungeons).

For the majority of the game tho WAR was pretty much better all around.

[Enygma55]

They both had a time to shine. War was better before 1.23, but afterwards PLD tank became a very strong option. Any situation in 1.0 end game could of been handled by either tanks with proper party setups.

You can search Ifrit Extreme youtube vids and find winning videos with pld and war tanks.

I really liked 1.23 and wished they kept that battle system, but I'm fine with this GCD system.

[Churchill]

I think a lot of Warrior's problems was trying to turtle up in too much HDL or similarly bad gear decisions. It was a far better tank for anything that didn't require durability which happened to be all of the content released for relics--> on. Darnus Hard and Ifrit X could be beaten without a Paladin but there were many, many times in those fights where you'd hear "I can't cure you" or "I've got it, don't worry about curing me". Warrior doesn't have that option, combined with the lack of damage (IfritX) and accuracy (Darnus Hard) it just wasn't a great choice in those fights.

Similarly, Chimera was much easier with a Paladin for pushing 17m runs because of being able to heal, gaining hate through something besides damage (which no one did to Chimera). Everything else was easier with a Warrior.

I also think Warrior is an easier job to get into and tank with, Paladin is the easier tank job, and Warrior is the harder job to play well/at a high level.

Edit: Skull Sunder has always been the enmity combo for Warrior so. In 1.0 it had a -accuracy penalty, so that was awesome.

[Churchill]

Well, if I'm wrong, at least I can take solace in good company:


I'm sure "highest mechanical skill ceiling" and "higher demand on a player's ability to react" are synonyms for "easiest job" though.

Oh, I get it now.

You're dickriding. Makes more sense, lol.

[Carraway]

When I said what I said, I wasn't taking into account movement or positioning at all. I was referring to how, if I use my current gear and look at core repeatable skills, MNK has two different 6-step rotations, DRG has a 7-step rotation or 21-step rotation, WAR has a 6-step rotation or 9-step rotation, while BRD is purely proc-based. I personally think it's easier to effectively max out your DPS with a memorized rotation than to do the same by reacting to procs on a hotbar, especially with how late the procs seem to show up sometimes, but I won't try to convince anyone else otherwise. Of course, rotations could be a misnomer, as it's more of a repeatable prioritization using very specific timings based on my current base GCD.

Right now my biggest concern, looking ahead, is how badly huge-ass bosses' hitboxes are going to dick us over when we're trying to do positionals. It's going to feel even worse as we get more skill speed.

[Voyage1970]

Right now my biggest concern, looking ahead, is how badly huge-ass bosses' hitboxes are going to dick us over when we're trying to do positionals. It's going to feel even worse as we get more skill speed.

If the big dragon final boss in Brayfox's Longstop is a good indication it's not too big of a deal. There is no clipping on enemy models so you can just lock-off and walk through their bodies to get behind them or to their sides instead of circling around. The game is also pretty lenient in regards to being inside the monsters model for positioning.

[Carraway]

True, and the ground-target-circle indicates that you shouldn't have to move much for flank vs rear. Forgot to test how sensitive the requirements are.

[Churchill]

It was easier on Ifrit to do side combos than in previous iterations.

As far as maximizing DPS, I have no doubt that maximizing DPS on Bard will still be one of the hardest things to do. It was this way in 1.0 and should be the same in 2.0. The class has more things to do than DPS and as such DPSing is that much harder. That doesn't make the class difficult, for every good Bard in 1.0 there were 500 bad ones completing the same content.

Monk should be the hardest class to justify a party slot. Not as much AoE and high skill ceiling (for FF/players) will place it behind things like Bard, Black Mage, and Dragoon. If I am wrong, it will be because Monk shits out damage even if played extremely poorly. The large amount of positioning and perfect rotation management while dodging up close and personal attacks from bosses should make my predictions true though. Rotation memorization is easy (for some people) but it's only easy when you can stand there doing nothing but that rotation. (gg mistress) For guilds, Monk should be the most desired DPS unless we just have to use Black Mage/Bard to clear AoE trash throughout dungeons. (Have I mentioned how much I dislike not changing jobs in instances)

Regardless, I wasn't really disagreeing or anything, just making an observation that dan is seeking your favor. If he started calling you Dominus, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Carraway]

Points taken, haha. I'm pretty much with you on all counts. Part of my concerns with positioning have to do with how important autoattack DPS is, so if we can just hump the border between flank/rear on the back-left or back-right part of the targeting circle, all of my concerns are null and void. I've done a little bit of manual parsing by counting damage by hand from FRAPS (this, by the way, is probably the most grueling thing I've done for an MMORPG in a long time) and you can lose significant/observable DPS by not maintaining facing properly while sliding around.

I think for MNKs, you could tell the horribles to just do a straight up DK->TwS->SP rotation and never move; DRGs don't quite have that option because Disembowel and Heavy Thrust require different positions, but if you have a 2nd DRG doing Disembowel, yeah, similar thing, just stand at the side and do HT->T-V->F->T->V->F ad infinitum.

[Elcura]

If BRD DPS is hard to maximize then it's only because of a lack of procedure to follow and the freedom given, not because of proc combos. Players will have to make better judgement calls and decisions amd overall it is a LOT more fun than 1.0 to play. However, in terms of mechanical difficulty, BRD has it the best (along with BLM) since there is little to no commitment created by their combos and the hardest combo to watch for can be done freely.

Agree that MNK will probably have the highest skill ceiling to play right, since you gotta adapt quickly to anything new that pops up and MNK has quite a bit of versatility even though their AOE attacks cost an arm and a leg to use. The biggest problem I see for effective MNK play is keeping that TP going, though for the most part MNK WS are cheap to use.

[Sigmakan]

When I said what I said, I wasn't taking into account movement or positioning at all. I was referring to how, if I use my current gear and look at core repeatable skills, MNK has two different 6-step rotations, DRG has a 7-step rotation or 21-step rotation, WAR has a 6-step rotation or 9-step rotation, while BRD is purely proc-based. I personally think it's easier to effectively max out your DPS with a memorized rotation than to do the same by reacting to procs on a hotbar, especially with how late the procs seem to show up sometimes, but I won't try to convince anyone else otherwise. Of course, rotations could be a misnomer, as it's more of a repeatable prioritization using very specific timings based on my current base GCD.

Right now my biggest concern, looking ahead, is how badly huge-ass bosses' hitboxes are going to dick us over when we're trying to do positionals. It's going to feel even worse as we get more skill speed.

Cancer was fun. Felt like I was doing a non stop shuttle-run.

[Churchill]

Bard DPS was always like this. I had a very specific rotation for Garuda on Bard, I taught this rotation to everyone who asked me because it was pretty important to not suck on Bard for Garuda. The reason most people couldn't get to Phase3 (so they could wipe there) was because of Bard play.

The entire rotation was 6.5 minutes long and if one part was fucked up then the entire thing was fucked and would need communication to recover (plumes) and get back on track.

I didn't need to be so precise though, I could have just told people to use specific WS's at specific jumps and just shoot plumes and never DPS Garuda. This puts the pressure on everyone else to DPS her and you'd still win if you were going to win as long as plumes died.

My rotation would net ~19-25k per Bard (depending on who killed the most plumes between BRD/BRD/DRG and phase3 winds) and the DPS push prior to Phase3 would leave Garuda at 15-20% and we wouldn't really even need to kill the sisters but we'd do it anyway because we looked down on people who did BLM burns. It wasn't necessary to play like this in order to win, but it does have its tangible benefits.

All content was like this for Bard, you could derp around and still beat it doing everything you needed to do. You could also plan out your combos for the entire dungeon so that when it came time for Coincounter you had Rain of Death ready for combo/stun and Barrage ready for Collusion and 1000TP for Paeon at the start. You timed your abilities so you could Rain of Death every Guard that popped, Barrage the single Cactuar, then Rain of Death the big Peiste room pull to stun everything again. You didn't need to do any of this, but in order to do it and provide a benefit to your party you had to play at a higher level and plan dungeons out from start to finish.

[Raldo]

How the fuck did this subject come back to liiiiiiiife