Alexander Discussion, Round 2: Wait is this the easy mode thread?

[haroldsaxon]

I think i've given up on getting an AS3 clear. There just aren't any bards around, anyone that has been around has flat out not been good enough or just not turned up (we attempted a trial for one guy 3 times - and he didn't turn up to any of them - the only reason he got retrials is because we've been looking for the better of since 3.0).

Did the playstyle change really put that many people off bard, or are just players of the required skill not playing the game anymore?

[Taint]

BRDs are rare because of the change yes. SE botched BRD IMO. It was vastly different then the other jobs and there was a wide gap between the good ones and the bad. The top 4 BRDs I know all hate it now, three quit and one is now a DRK main. It's one thing to tweak a job it's another to completely change how it is played.

[Kaslo]

Oh nice, we got past hand of pain last night (like 6th hour in the encounter over 3 nights). Still having issues with passing aids though... Monk likes to shoulder tackle in and fuck us passing shit.

[lilbubbles]

As long as he shoulder tackles instantly, like so fast he doesn't even get knocked back, it shouldn't cause problems and actually helps IMHO.

[Kaslo]

As long as he shoulder tackles instantly, like so fast he doesn't even get knocked back, it shouldn't cause problems and actually helps IMHO.

Well he seems to have horrible latency so...

[Kiarax]

Yeah, as a DRK I Plunge after Wash Away, assuming you get the leap off before you're like... semi-stunned by the knockback animation you won't have any issues even if you leap/shoulder tackle directly in to someone else, the game gives you a couple seconds to move before you can actually transfer the debuff. If he's too slow on it he should be looking to make sure it's safe to do so, if he's consistently fucking it up just tell him to stop using Shoulder Tackle entirely, because it's really dumb to keep it up if it's a source of problems. I'm guessing he's not the sole source of issues though, you should be trying some different approaches at it until you find something your group is comfortable with, really shouldn't be taking that long to start seeing past Hand of Pain, even if it's not consistent.

[Eanae]

Tethers are mostly fine and to be honest people complaining about them at this point are making excuses for other issues they obviously have. If your ping or connection to the servers is that bad get pingzapper or wtfast or something. I can still count the number of times tethers have killed someone due to not picking up on one hand after learning the mechanic. If you're having THAT much of a problem with it the problem is you, not the mechanic.

[holyshoot]

some pugs on chocobo cleared with PLD already like 5-7 days ago

kanan rumi for one name if you insist. he just clred yesterday i think and that dude is a fucking legend in chocobo community

he would hop around any PT in PF and help them, give them tips, full detailed timeline macros calling every single mechanics, and what healer/tank should be using to deflect damage etc etc

best ever PLD if you ask me, not just in playskill, but for everything hes done for the chocobo pug community

everyone will always go "fuck yesss kanan" whenever he joins your PT to help

living legend

paladins are still shit compared to drk/war. hth

[Kiarax]

Saying something is fine and advocating the use of a third party tunneling service in the same breath is pretty funny. My connection to the server as is good as it can hope to be, I never have packet loss and sit at around 100-110 ping generally, which is about as good as someone from Europe can hope to have it. The game is generous enough to give you just enough time to be able to play around the fact that the netcode is shitty and unresponsive, but that shouldn't even be a thing you have to do. People are literally forced to sit still during debuff and tether passing because if both people are moving it's a total crapshoot on whether it will happen or not. There's countless examples of debuffs passing in completely ridiculous manners like so:

If you understand even the basics of how netcode or latency works you know exactly why this is happening, it's not a mystery but it is fucking terrible fight design in a game as unresponsive as this. Go watch some JP clear videos from a tank POV and look how ridiculously easy tethers are, THAT'S how the fight is supposed to be, and if everyone could actually play the game like that it would be okay, but it's far from how it actually goes for a huge portion of the playerbase. With enough practice you learn to work with it, but people not fortunate enough to live close to the servers (in a game with literally only fucking servers located in Canada or Japan despite an international playerbase) are at a huge disadvantage comparatively, it requires much higher raid awareness, responsiveness and communication for some groups over others simply because latency is such a huge factor. It's rare tethers ever pose a problem for me now after putting enough time in to that phase of the fight, but there's still occasions where I'd rather pop Living Dead and run through the puddle than take a chance with actually sprinting round the room and hoping to God it actually wants to pass quickly in cases where tether RNG is working against you.

[Kaslo]

By the way, since we've not hit the phase. Any advice for SMN on the Cyclone Add Phase? It's the phase I always struggled with on Normal...

[Hitoshura]

Yeah, as a DRK I Plunge after Wash Away, assuming you get the leap off before you're like... semi-stunned by the knockback animation you won't have any issues even if you leap/shoulder tackle directly in to someone else, the game gives you a couple seconds to move before you can actually transfer the debuff. If he's too slow on it he should be looking to make sure it's safe to do so, if he's consistently fucking it up just tell him to stop using Shoulder Tackle entirely, because it's really dumb to keep it up if it's a source of problems. I'm guessing he's not the sole source of issues though, you should be trying some different approaches at it until you find something your group is comfortable with, really shouldn't be taking that long to start seeing past Hand of Pain, even if it's not consistent.

Plunge after wash or gtfo. It's the best and should be only way to avoid lol. Tuesday when I ran, somehow I didnt even move, I did it same exact time.

[lilbubbles]

By the way, since we've not hit the phase. Any advice for SMN on the Cyclone Add Phase? It's the phase I always struggled with on Normal...

People have different strats..

The group I ran with where I had to go smn.. I just did nothing but cast miasma, priority on full health targets. Using bane to spread just miasma or tri diaster. Obviously any festers/painlares/deathflares and damage I could get with ocds was good. But keeping miasma up on everything was enough for them to get past that reliably, and that was the only spell I hard cast.

The biggest problem I had was being i180 and dying to almost everything in the last phase lol with less than 12k health, since my main is sch and all.

[Niiro]

Bane-ing Miasma doesn't transfer Heavy and even if it did applying Heavy to multiple targets is what Miasma II is for.

[Seravi Edalborez]

One thing with Plunge after Wash Away; from the couple pulls I remember doing I didn't have it up for the 2nd if I did it on the first (by a few seconds). Do you use it on a particular one?

[lilbubbles]

Right, but if i never used bane I was having trouble getting death flares rolling with just painflares. Not sure if it would be better to fester that one dot or just spread the one for a tic or two I may have to overwrite anyway.

It's whatever really. Certainty isn't enough time to properly dot everything, it all happens so fast and the group I was filling in for just raped the adds like it was nothing. D:

[Kiarax]

One thing with Plunge after Wash Away; from the couple pulls I remember doing I didn't have it up for the 2nd if I did it on the first (by a few seconds). Do you use it on a particular one?

I always just do it on the first, trivializes passing the first Digititis and on the second Wash Away we pull the (newly split) hands apart a bit anyway, unless your group does it differently you're probably not gonna be keeping it in the center so it shifting a bit is no biggy.

As for SMN, in that situation it would probably just be better to hit Energy Drain if all you want is aethertrail stacks. It's 150 potency (vs 100 on a single DoT Fester) and gives you back some mana too, not much reason not to. Keeping stacks with just Painflare shouldn't be an issue either though but it's an option to keep in mind if you need to quickly burst down something close to the edge. I haven't played SMN in the fight so I can't give you any specific advice Kaslo but I think spreading Miasma is probably a good place to start and then figure out what specific things you need to do otherwise, something useful for any ranged class is to try and keep an eye on where your melee are and where your damage could be most useful, if your 2 melee are both on one side of the room don't start hitting adds over there unless absolutely necessary, hit the stuff farthest from them since it's the things they're least likely to be hitting any time soon. Seems like obvious advice but it's pretty easy to tunnel vision at times, especially during early progression.

[Kipling]

Tethers are mostly fine and to be honest people complaining about them at this point are making excuses for other issues they obviously have. If your ping or connection to the servers is that bad get pingzapper or wtfast or something. I can still count the number of times tethers have killed someone due to not picking up on one hand after learning the mechanic. If you're having THAT much of a problem with it the problem is you, not the mechanic.

Spoiler: show

[Eanae]

Like I said, mostly fine, and I can count the number of times that's happened to us on one hand. Lag happens. Sure it happens in XIV more than it should. But using it as an excuse for not having cleared is most likely scapegoating some other real issue. It's the landslide excuse all over again. Sure sometimes bullshit happened, but most of the time it was the person who got hit's fault.

[LinktheDeme]

Spoiler: show

This x100 shit happens way too often he should have adjusted the camera angle because im sure he was a slight millimeter off while stationary. It's a little stupid how long you have to stay stationary and how thin the actual tether part is to grab at times. It's not completely terrible but it causes for unnecessary stress and silly shit to happen. It makes the double1 80 tether sometimes impossible and also the 180 tether irritating and forces sprint to almost be a requirementon those because of the server.

[Madeline]

Spoiler: show

happens at least 2-3 times/raid.

most/all of our people are using a tunneler, so.. i don't know what else to say.