Patch 5.5: Death Unto Dawn (April 13th 2021)

[AoE]

Asmon's eyebrows are out of control

[The Stig]

What I am enjoying most now is that as the story is now getting better and better, as well as the characters being more badass (i.e. Einstein, Ravana), it sits highly on Asmon's approval list so he always reacts better towards them.

[Kaslo]

Krojak beat the last Lightwarden yesterday:

https://twitter.com/KroIRL/status/14...754790918?s=20

[Kaslo]

Just to 34:00 and it seems Asmon's about to fall down a PVP hole lol

[Kaslo]

Asmon learning the truth of Nidhogg's eyes

https://clips.twitch.tv/DeliciousFla...fZfhnjlPLfDd5W

[Kaslo]

[The Stig]

It's a shame he didn't do Thordan on min ilvl; yes it's just story content, but for the purposes of the stream and putting on a show, it was truly anti-climatic in how it ended. Naturally the chaos which is twitch chat cannot be truly controlled, but it boggles my mind that the "no min ilvl" crowd won the little tug of war. The build up to it was epic/hype. The fight, less so. Even on min ilvl it would pose no challenge.

Like how Ifrit, Titan and Garuda are synced to provide some element of difficulty, as well as Ravana and Bismark, Susanoo and Busoms girl, Titania and Crown of the Immaculate, and the relevant final MSQ dungeons (I think the 2 ARR 8-man dungeons ilvl should be a bit more lower), I think the trials should also be synced, much to the chagrin of people who are doing subsequently (i.e. roulette people)

At the moment, even Hades is somewhat of a long fight even at ilvl 530, though the team is comprised of usually a mix of newbs and roulette goers. At the very least, Thordan and Shinryu, as well as the relevant in between trials (Steps of Faith, The Chrysalis, Final Steps of Faith, etc) should have their HPs adjusted to preserve some of the difficulty.

I would've love to see Asmon pop off verbally on Thordan when he's just running around swinging his sword, but he melted after the phase transition lol

Ah well. He went to do A1 after which got burned down your standard way, so he opted to do min ilvl for the subsequent ones, which is nice I though because it prevented it from being a pure stomp.

The principle here I am trying to make is that he should at least feel some of the difficulty despite playing with veterans, just for the purposes putting on a show for the stream. I think Dom in his party knows this, he switched to tank for Thordan; I was chatting to my friend on the phone at the time and I said "i hope Dom switches to tank before they queue, so it would allow Asmon to tank to put on a show" and was very glad that he did.

Not sure if anyone noticed previously, but in trials where the second tank doesn't know (or care) who asmon his, he fights for pole position for tanking because without that his act/show doesn't go well with the stream. If you watch asmon on his second stream when he does trials, he doesn't even want to tank at all lol

edit: i wondered why thordan had moves like dragon's eye and dragon's gaze; watching his stream made me realise I forgot about the dragoon corpse/eye that was in the coffin!

[Anoat]

Eh story mode stuff on min ilvl doesn’t seem too terribly entertaining either way, when he does Thordan Ex on min ilvl though that is gonna be wild.

[Lokus]

Watching Asmon here and there since he started playing FFXIV and only knowing of him as "some WoW streamer" beforehand, I have to say that everyone throwing a shitfit over him playing and bringing his "toxicity" over are some serious clowns. I honestly don't see anything remotely controversial unless you find issue with him shitting on Blizzard devs all the time and even then, his complaints are always measured and with reasoning.

That said, I didn't realize how in the feels I was still over Haurchefant and Ysayle and def felt the sad when he got to those points.

[silverdragontyr]

I'd agree. He has a very loud personality but has been very genuine and respectful of FFXIV and his fellow players. When he first started or when he saw sprouts he would be very respectful "They're new players. It's not their fault if they make mistakes."

Also yes I am loving rewatching this stuff. It has been years since I have played Heavenward so I forgot a lot. Holy hell does it foreshadow a lot. Shadowbringers will hit so much harder if you have that stuff fresh in your mind. Just further cements how good writing this game has.

[Lokus]

I still don't understand the scene after you kill Thordan and your character is briefly shown all shadowed while Thordan asks, "Who... what are you?" Was that suppose to foreshadow our character becoming the WoD or is that just something still unexplained?

[The Stig]

Eh story mode stuff on min ilvl doesn’t seem too terribly entertaining either way, when he does Thordan Ex on min ilvl though that is gonna be wild.

Yeah I agree, but for the purposes of reaction and the "stream plot", all the build up to it (running through the dungeon, the cutscene leading to it) makes it all extremely anti climatic, part of the charm to his streams is not only to see him do hard content but to provide his reactions to normal story content as well; if we had even 20 seconds of Thordan flailing around some laughs could've been generated out of it "yeah you lil bitch, suck my dick" - as generic as it is, Thordan/his minions did off a likeable character, so his reaction to this display would be cathartic. I considered this fight "important" because of the spectacle provided by the encounter itself.

I suppose for example, remember in FF8 you run into a 1v1 duel with Seifer? Seifer is level capped, topping at I think 1000 HP and if you improved Squall in any way or fashion he goes down in one stroke lol

Or the final Seymour fight in FF10, even if you didn't do any particular grinding (as the game becomes open world there), is no where near as dangerous as his previous boss fights.

Anyway, he went min ilvl for A2-A4 so it wouldn't be a complete stomp so he could show his viewers the content, even if normal mode.

[Kaslo]

I still don't understand the scene after you kill Thordan and your character is briefly shown all shadowed while Thordan asks, "Who... what are you?" Was that suppose to foreshadow our character becoming the WoD or is that just something still unexplained?

It's not been directly addressed, but its theorized he saw the MC's "Ancient Form" (ie robes and mask), the same form Emet Selch saw.

[Athas]

Thought it was just a dying old dude shocked and unbelieving that he was overpowered.

[Gokulo]

Thought it was just a dying old dude shocked and unbelieving that he was overpowered.

Nah, the visual effects and the sound point to him noticing something ominous about us

[Lucavi]

If you look, you can see that Thordan was still partially in his primal form, just overtaxed and having his aether scattered from overuse. Its been theorized that he had a heightened sense of aetheric sensitivity similar to primals like Ifrit who could sense Hydelyn's influence in the PC. Thordan was able to sense a bit of our "true" form, which was that of Azem, one of the Convocation, due to this sensitivity.

A pompous holy-man literally saw his better (essentially a god) as his aether was dispersing.

Now the real question is whether or not the writing staff had fully fleshed out the 5.0 story beats by that point. We know they originally didn't have the same plot for the acsians, as easily seen by their generic mustache-twirling bad guy anctics, but there was a noticeable shift starting to occur during the back end of heavensward. It was pretty clear by that point that there was something "special" about the WoL outside of just being a goddess (super primal)'s chosen workhorse.

[Anoat]

Thought it was just a dying old dude shocked and unbelieving that he was overpowered.

If the story of Shadowbringers didn’t happen this would be the logical conclusion but with the extra info we have now it’s easy to go back and see the foreshadowing. Elidibus says almost the exact same thing about us in the 5.3 trial.

[Kaslo]

[Anoat]

*definitive thru Heavensward

He’s gonna simp for Yotsuyu I just know it

[Hellfury]

Well as far as pixelated nutcases go, she should go high on that list!