Letter from the Producer LIVE XXXVI Set for May 22!

[Obsidian]

They moved it to Maim.

They moved the Eye debuff to Maim (the slashing debuff). They got rid of the Path debuff (enemy damage reduction) and gave Reprisal to everybody instead.

[Silenka]

I thought the slashing debuff was the one most people cared about

[Obsidian]

The Path debuff is what locked WAR into every party for the entirety of 3.0. A flat, permanent -10% damage taken, party-wide.

[Prothescar]

Which, granted, was a stupid strong debuff. Would've liked to see some sort of party support in exchange for it though. Hopefully the damage and selfishness before all else tanking paradigm doesn't go the way of the Dino with encounter design in 4.0

[Fondue]

You don't get gold fflogs using path
laughinggirls.jpg

[Cantih]

They also took the STR debuff off of Rage of Halone. I'll kinda miss it, but it'll make balancing rotations easier now that you don't need to keep it up.
Royal Authority got moved to closing Riot Blade. Bit out of left field, but makes sense with the new MP focused abilities.

idk for other jobs though, but for PLD, ability pruning isn't a thing. I have at least 5, and up to 7 actions to add to my hotbars.

PLD Oath meter feels shoehorned in. It only interacts with Sheltron and Intervene, and in shield oath it only charges with blocks. Unless a single block fills a hell of a lot of meter, or they seriously up the block rate (which I doubt, because Sheltron and Bulwark are still things), it's not gonna be that useful.

[Jem]

Not sure what to make of those Bard changes. I like that we are being forced to sing and it doesn't adversely affect our damage. I don't like that they are on 80 second recast with 30 second duration effectively forcing you to switch between all 3. I'd have liked to see either slightly longer duration (40-45), slightly shorter recast (60 seconds) or for Troubador to increase duration of current stance by like 10-15 seconds.

Basically I don't like that you could be caught short on a stance for Troub purposes either by not having it available or having to switch stances shortly after already switching leaving you potentially stanceless due to recasts.

Also minor picking but I don't like that they are renaming shit. Like what is the point of renaming Venomous Bite and Windbite when they still function the same way? If you're going to rename shit, then rename stuff that fundamentally changed rather than stuff that remained the same. Like how is Mage's Ballad remotely mage related anymore? That's the sort of thing that should be renamed not Windbite/Venomous.

Overall it is sounds very positive though. Especially because fuck Bardmage, even for a damage drop I'd have taken a change away from that.

[solracht]

So if I'm reading everything right, WAR now has absolutely 0 party utility with the loss of Storm's Path debuff. Hopefully there's something hidden out of our sight still here because the DRK and PLD additions and changes are very strong both DPS and utility wise.

The thing is whether said utility (especially PLD's) matters or not will depend entirely on encounter design and boss tuning. DRK+PLD might be safest for progression but as long as WAR isn't last in damage the job will still have a place in some groups. It'll be hard to say until the raid comes out.

DRK definitely feels like the winner out of the 3 tanks, Blackest Night is crazy. Give up on one DA (140pot oGCD) and get a 20% HP shield and a 380pot GCD skill. Won't be surprised if they nerf the Blood gain to 15-25.

idk for other jobs though, but for PLD, ability pruning isn't a thing. I have at least 5, and up to 7 actions to add to my hotbars.

Due to the way I do my keybinds I'm probably still going to need 8-10 keybinds for the cross class skills, but only half of them will be used at a time. I'm not particularly feeling the pruning in that regard.

[Spider-Dan]

Caustic Bite and Stormbite are just Venomous Bite II and Windbite II, no different than the Bio III or Stone IV in-place upgrades. They are a trait that replaces the lower-level skills.

The part I'm not sure about is the songs. They say they have a 25y range / 0y radius, but you sing them on the enemy. So is the 20y song radius in the description measured from the enemy (i.e. you don't have to worry about staying in range of everyone) or from you (i.e. you don't have to reapply it when enemies die)? If it's measured from you, why is the song enemy-targeted in the first place... to keep you from using it outside of battle?

[Jem]

I would imagine from you. I didn't see a tooltip for Foe's but the tooltips specifically state people need to be within hearing range. I'd imagine enemy targeted might just be to show it only affects enemies or a display error?

[Spider-Dan]

idk for other jobs though, but for PLD, ability pruning isn't a thing. I have at least 5, and up to 7 actions to add to my hotbars.

MCH got a significant prune to the base rotation.

Not including consumables, LV60 MCH currently has a base rotation of 5 GCDs and 13 CDs (18 actions); off-rotation situationals are 3 GCDs + 6 CDs.
4.0 LV60 MCH will cut that down to base 4 GCDs and 7 CDs (11 actions), with 2 GCDs and 7 CDs as off-rotation.
LV70 adds 1 GCD and 1 CD to base rotation, with 2 more CDs added to situational (I think).

Going from tracking 13 CDs in your base rotation at 3.0 cap to tracking 8 CDs at 4.0 cap is a huge improvement.

I would imagine from you. I didn't see a tooltip for Foe's but the tooltips specifically state people need to be within hearing range.

Foe's tooltip says 0y range 20y radius, so that one is obviously centered on you (but it doesn't hit allies, so...).

[agrotc]

As they pointed out on Reddit, there's definitely some discrepancies between the English tooltips and the ones Famitsu posted in Japanese.

[Obsidian]

I kinda wonder how they could (by all appearances anyway) do so well with PLD but miss the mark by so much with WHM given they were both kind of in the same rough spot.

[Pooky]

I kinda wonder how they could (by all appearances anyway) do so well with PLD but miss the mark by so much with WHM given they were both kind of in the same rough spot.

I think PLD was in a state that made it a lot easier to fix, where WHM almost needs encounters to be designed differently for their kit to seem justified. Encounters just don't output enough damage to make use of the higher potency heals of WHM, and the design teams reluctance to make encounters "require" certain classes prevents that. It feels to me like the Lilies/Confessions are just shy of what could make them great. I really like the concept of Confessions/Indulgence interaction, but having them gated as Cure/Cure II procs is really counter intuitive to how healers are played atm.

[Obsidian]

Plenary Indulgence sounds like it could have been really good though if the distance thing wasn't so dumb and if it worked on people without the confession stacks. One of those things that was close to being really useful but one weird decision makes it basically useless.

[Prothescar]

And then there's the sad realization that even with max stacks on the entire party, Plenary Indulgence is significantly weaker than Astrologian's free 60s cooldown AoE heal nuke that costs nothing aside from putting it down and precooking it before a big AoE mechanic, and even has higher potency when it isn't fully charged. It doesn't even seem like it heals at all unless the target has at least 1 stack on them, which I guess means a free 400-600 heal on tanks every 15s, but... how necessary was that?

I really don't know what they were thinking and I have to expect that Earthly Star is going to get its numbers adjusted.

[Pooky]

Plenary Indulgence sounds like it could have been really good though if the distance thing wasn't so dumb and if it worked on people without the confession stacks. One of those things that was close to being really useful but one weird decision makes it basically useless.

The distance thing isn't a problem, it's a caster centered aoe with a larger radius than medica II. It isn't even a problem of healing those with Confession stacks honestly, the main problem is that it requires a 20% proc on Cure and Cure II, and the amount of GCD's spent to get stacks on anything besides the tank is extremely prohibitive to its use. It would be far more useful if Confessions could proc of Regen ticks along with Cures. I love the idea of the mechanic, the implementation is lacking though.

If they wanted to reinforce the "WHM big spells onry" concept, Lilies should have been a scaling potency increase on Cure/Medica instead of recast reduction like it is now. Really want to shoot the moon? Have those Lilies buff Stone at halved efficiency.

And then there's the sad realization that even with max stacks on the entire party, Plenary Indulgence is significantly weaker than Astrologian's free 60s cooldown AoE heal nuke that costs nothing aside from putting it down and precooking it before a big AoE mechanic, and even has higher potency when it isn't fully charged. It doesn't even seem like it heals at all unless the target has at least 1 stack on them, which I guess means a free 400-600 heal on tanks every 15s, but... how necessary was that?

I really don't know what they were thinking and I have to expect that Earthly Star is going to get its numbers adjusted.

Exactly. At the bare minimum it could have been a 200 potency heal on those without stacks. Still lackluster compared to Earthly Star, but as it stands Indulgence is just far too gated.

[Voyage1970]

So I went through the reddit thread on r/FFXIV about the JP tooltips on the Famitsu article and there seem to be some pretty big discrepancies. One that stood out to me was Overheating as a MCH actually increases damage by 20% for 10s and then locks you out of Gauss for 10s instead of decreasing damage by 20%. This lines up with Wildfire being reduced to 10s duration.

Edit: Kaiten is indeed only a 50% boost instead of 150%. Blackest Night for DRK also only absorbs a single hit up the HP barrier cap and if the hit is completely absorbed, as in no damage overflow, then the DRK gains 50 Blood Gauge.

[Spider-Dan]

At the bare minimum it could have been a 200 potency heal on those without stacks. Still lackluster compared to Earthly Star, but as it stands Indulgence is just far too gated.

Uhh, an instant zero-resource OGCD 200pot (more on tanks) heal that can be executed on the whole party every 15s?
A little over the top, don't you think?

[Pooky]

Uhh, an instant zero-resource OGCD 200pot (more on tanks) heal that can be executed on the whole party every 15s?
A little over the top, don't you think?

Indomitability.