Why are you looking forward to FF14?

[Souljacker]

PS3 support for XIV could have been a big mistake, in the same way that continued PS2 support is for XI.

Ps2 holds it back because it's a 6th gen console competing with a 7th gen console and nearly unlimited PC resources. It was never meant to compete with the xbox 360, that's what the ps3 is for. Sony was a little behind in the console wars, but I think in the end they delivered a very useful and stylish box.

Truthfully, the 360 and the ps3 will hold back the next game nearly equally if we do end up at a point where console limitations are an issue. Consoles in general are the limiting factor - it's just more apparent in XI because of the game's advanced age.

[Itchy]

In the last 2 years I played FFXI(2007 and 2008, Jan 09 my last month) I believe SE made quite a lot of additions a liked so much. Other then taking pictures I loved going around popping all kinds of monsters with different strats to kill in ZNM, and working your way up the NM list with 100% pop items dropping if you could kill them. MMM was another event added that I had a lot of fun with and could do it daily with a small group of close friends.

I forget what year assaults were introduced but I definitely enjoyed them as well. In my last few months of play I finally started to get into Salvage that I did with a small group of friend as well and I loved it. I didn't quite like the drop rates and relying on luck a lot, but I feel like it's something that can be tweaked and put into FFXIV and could truly be amazing.

All of this plus other things I think SE have learned from FFXI makes me believe that FFXIV could be a really great game experience right from the start. I loved FFXI's art style and it's something that kept me interested in the game I think, although I don't think graphics should matter too much in games, I don't like cartoony/colorful graphics at all. I don't know why it just takes the sense of immersion out for me.

Heres to hoping FFXIV is that epic MMO that we all know it can be if SE does it right!

[Kaylia]

This first, other post after:

First off, we were fucking broke. Having a haubergeon while you were leveling (which is when we did zilart, the best places to get 75 were in sky) was an accomplishment. Having haub + sniper's? Pimp shit.

Having Ebody + sniper's+1 + ohat + speed belt + ridill + jugg + peacock + suppa + haidate + dusk + n set for ws... maybe if you were one of the like 1 ls per server that got kings before anybody had even the slightest clue how good that shit was.

Being high enough to use all that shit was an accomplishment in itself.


And yes, Kirin was easy all along. We had retardedly broken rangers and blms with like +50 magic acc between their staff and hands alone. What's sad is it was still really hard for them to land shit. What's hilarious is they'd ES Tornado and pull hate with that 1 spell and get owned in the face lol.


If you want to question CoP, that's another story... and the answer is level capped gear.

The solution, of course, was mages.

Zilart really wasn't that hard if you weren't doing it with parties of 4-5 lv 60-65's for the missions and masses of 65-70 for the bosses.

Your linkshell would still have the same issue if they had a warrior with :

Hauberk + nq sniper + o. hat + life belt + byakko axe + thick pant. Excluding weapon, you had around the same accuracy, and was missing 10% haste (which is around 15-20% dmg). For the weapon, g.axe might have done something similar to ridill simply due to the huge gap in accuracy.

Again, new food, new dmg formula, new strats, more merits and new ja, more jobs to play with ( having a single brd for 18 people was a luxury) and better gears from every expansion count for a lot more than your byakko haidate, speed belt and e.body.


Mage isn't the solution for CoP. The only time they shine is blm in ouryu BC. For the rest, you will want as many melee as you can.
Blm = shitty in promy, shitty against mammet, shitty against diablos, shitty against omega/ultima and tenzen.

The problem is that none of these things are upgrades... or even as good as, for the most challenging fights (outside slaveage).

The problem is that none of these things are upgrades... or even as good as, for the most challenging fights (outside slaveage).

Just... the best way I can put it is this:

Odin drops fucking E.Body. Not a body with improved stats 7 years later. He just fucking drops E.Body. How pathetic is that, seriously?

I never argued that the lack of upgrade wasn't an issue, and it's exactly the point I was arguing earlier in this thread against Hyan.

A= old gears
B= zilart gears
C= gears after

You guys are saying that
A < C < B, and that B should have been lower than C
I'm saying
A < C < B and that C could be changed to something higher OR B could be lowered, because the stats we are looking at have little impact.

What we want is gear progression. The game "balance" has nothing to do with it, but apparently, it does for you and Hyan.



Krakken club+ soul eater is one of the only combo that I could agree was game breaking, but seriously, it's not krakken club on its own that is broken, it's an issue that could have been solved long time ago if they wanted (ie: only the first hit proc for soul eater).

That still leaves you with dusk hands, some random ghetto ass pants, a level 40 belt from cop, level 40 rings you'd wear anyway, level 60 neck that's not as good as the level 30 one that's been in game since day 1, and good ole haub.

Which, honestly, is ok. The problem is, if you're an AH war running, say, nyzul... you should really be getting upgrades, not town gear and rarely used situational crap.

Same with dynamis, if you want to rule dynamis stuff out of zilart considerations.

Barone glove augmented with 4 dex and 3% haste in ANNM.
Barbarosa pants with 3% haste 4 str Swift belt/av sash
Sea torque aren't particularly hard to get either (most jailers are easier than byakko+ ulli) if you like shitty drop rate. I wouldn't consider byakko haidate hard to get in the first anyway if you're semi competant. Not to mention you could also buy them from people for a few millions.

I took it literally to make a point: we'd be seriously weaksauce without zilart gear, 7 years later.

What would you even wear for a body when you need acc? Jaridah? I guess that sh+1+1 thing.

I know you play WoW, so let me put it this way: how would you like to run molten core every week because all your melee need t1 helms and t2 legs?

Wtf.

G.axe > ridill
strap > nothing
bomblet > bomb core
w.turban > o.hat
ancient torque/sea torque > p.charm
brutal earring > any 2nd earrings
p.body = e.body nearly all the the time,
augmented barone a tiny bit inferior to dusk glove
ENM ring + rajas > sniper +1 with g.axe
forager > amemit
ninurta sash > speed belt > swift (game breaking -3% dmg increase for an easy to get alternative)
byakko haidate > usu pants > barbarossa pant ( byakko are the easiest to get here ironically, but you're looking at at another wooping 2% haste)
dusk+1 = usu feet > aurum feet (if you like running slow).


That's not a lot of zilart stuff, and they are barely stronger when they are the first.

For WS, you have n.cap, n.feet, alk bracelet for certain ws, but they all have alternative that are nearly equivalent, and it's not 5 str that will make a noticeable dps drop.

I don't understand how that matters. A top end Zilart geared warrior being utterly dominant during Zilart is quite fine. A top end Zilart geared warrior being utterly dominant in 2010, not so much.

I'm saying that 2-h relic used to be much much weaker without these change. They made these relic stronger during ToA when they changed 2h formula.

Except the part where a full ares/cop belt war loses 19% haste to maintain similar att and lower acc numbers, while not having a decent ring, earring, or belt to use that's not at least 6 years old. Also double damage procs.

Of course, heaven forbid I suggest they actually use the full set for its bonus...

And why would you equip a full ares? Are we talking about retarded player or good player?

The accuracy/dmg on an ele staff is not "a few seconds," nor is it responsible for "preventing a fluke death occasionally."

That must be why they are replaced by sam whenever it's possible.

It's the difference between winning before you run out of steam and constant regular deaths due to missed enfeebles becoming "occasional fluke deaths."

Yet, they can all be killed without brd if you approach them with the right party, so it's not like you can't play with debuff.

Also, it's a gross exageration to say that a rdm wouldnt be able to land debuff without his staff. The debuff uptime would be nearly the same.

For the most part, the only thing where, in terms of loot availability per person, black mage doesn't utterly dominate with its low man capability are things which have specific defenses intended to stop it.

You don't bring blm to salvage because monster resist spell? Nyzul? dynamis lord? Einherjar? Bahamut?

No, you bring BLM when there is rape AoE you can't avoid, and they can do decent dmg (otherwise you bring rng and smn).

To some extent, sure. But it's not the same, at all, as what black mages and red mages bring to the table.

No, SCH and COR geared for manaburn will parse just as high. COR can solo everything a blm can solo if they have room to kite.

People also didn't have sushi back then.

Melee dps dmg "sucked" until everyone and their dog's 5 hand-me-down/ebayed alts had zilart gear everywhere, rangers got nerfed, black mages got nerfed, people figured out how good haste is, and mobs with low enough evasion to melee fast appeared in large numbers.

I was outdoing ranger in sky merit party with my warrior before they got nerfed. I was pulling close to the same amount of damage on HNM.

Sushi made us reach even higher level, but sushi is stronger than any zilart gears in a situation where you need acc.

[Lucavi]

SE never could have achieved game balance simply through introducing new gear anyway. You still had FUBARed ranged damage resistance calculations, FUBARed two-handed damage calculations, FUBARed shield mitigation calculations, a FUBARed damage system in comparison to utsusemi.... the list goes on and on.

Even throwing the equivalents of sky gear at drgs wouldn't have boosted them up to the pure damage potential and outright utility of the broken juggy/maneater war. Damage wasn't always the problem - I raped plenty of face - but the inability to take any sort of damage, coupled with the insanely high recast on a move that was designed to keep hate away from you, piled on top of SE's love of pigeon-holing any 2-hander job into a /thf sub to pile damage on someone else.... it was just a mess. It was a fun mess at times, and certainly a team-oriented mess, but it was still ultimately a hot ghetto mess from a design standpoint.

They did what they could with some of the strangest spagetti code choices on the market, and I'll credit them for fixing many of their mistakes in the future (nerfing the pants off of rng, then buff/balancing them later, boosting 2-handers and introducing /sam as a defensive/offensive sub), but I don't want SE to fall into the trap that most every company falls into at launch, which is tossing out a buggy product and then relying on fixes to get it back up to speed.

SE and Blizzard will undoubtedly receive free passes from many if they do this again because, by and large, they are successful, but it'd be nice to have a smooth launch, given everything SE has learned over the years.

[Plow]

Your linkshell would still have the same issue if they had a warrior with :

Hauberk + nq sniper + o. hat + life belt + byakko axe + thick pant. Excluding weapon, you had around the same accuracy, and was missing 10% haste (which is around 15-20% dmg). For the weapon, g.axe might have done something similar to ridill simply due to the huge gap in accuracy.

Wait, what?

I'm not talking about "issues" within an ls, I'm talking about the fact that there's no avoiding the fact that the shit just clowns everything else available.

Also, hauberk was made from haubergeon, and there weren't a hundred people per server spamming them for +1 making them cheap then. The shit was still rare.

But just wait, it gets better:

Again, new food, new dmg formula, new strats, more merits and new ja, more jobs to play with ( having a single brd for 18 people was a luxury) and better gears from every expansion count for a lot more than your byakko haidate, speed belt and e.body.

And yet, melee right now, with the best gear from every expansion, are not as good as an auction house Zilart melee was *DURING* Zilart.

Somehow, the TP nerf seems to have slipped your mind.

Even today's full usu + relic etc. SAM pale in comparison to even a level 60 pre-nerf DRG, SAM, WAR, DRK, whatever.

5 hit? Try 2 hit.

And while on the one hand you're right that these things have upgraded dd's somewhat, in other ways, they haven't.

The best pt setup possible, for near everything ranging from bosses to missions to merits, still involves zilart jobs rocking mostly zilart gear and using mostly zilart abilities. BLU providing the one major exception. SCH/COR are still getting a big fat chunk of their strength from ele staves. Hell, up until the 2hand buff, well into ToAU it was still almost entirely zilart abilities (nin sub) using zilart gears (all the acc/dual wield/haste shit, ridill), with more zilart jobs stacking zilart abilities (double brd + rdm).

Plus, these new abilities and stuff don't give us new things to do to earn them. We all had SAM leveled from pre-tp nerf. Merit parties are not new, creative, or challenging.

And please, don't try to tell me the tp nerf was a good thing. Taking melee from having to be extremely aware to make the most of their abilities, and pull the most dmg out of the crazy tp gain, and using abilities every few seconds, to today's 10-15 out of every 20 seconds being doing nothing was *NOT* a good thing.

Mage isn't the solution for CoP. The only time they shine is blm in ouryu BC. For the rest, you will want as many melee as you can.
Blm = shitty in promy, shitty against mammet, shitty against diablos, shitty against omega/ultima and tenzen.

You're crazy. Maybe against those fights post-nerf melee became functional, but pre-nerf the only thing melee was good for in any of those fights outside promies/tenzen was getting the living shit kicked out of them before they could do anything.


Have you seen what multiple astral flows will do to mammets? Promies? Do you realize how much easier U/O are with 1 person in range of the dangerous aoe's?


Melee running through the sea missions without mages? Yeah right lol, enjoy your 8 hour crawl. That group next to you of 5 mages and a tank (or 6 mages, not like they really need the tank if they have an rdm and a whm) will be out meriting for 7 of those hours while you catch up.

How many melee are 2 manning jailers/ix's? A few of the most decked out nins in the world (with the most inventory space in the world, lol), by turning themselves into pseudo-mages?

I never argued that the lack of upgrade wasn't an issue, and it's exactly the point I was arguing earlier in this thread against Hyan.

A= old gears
B= zilart gears
C= gears after

You guys are saying that
A < C < B, and that B should have been lower than C
I'm saying
A < C < B and that C could be changed to something higher OR B could be lowered, because the stats we are looking at have little impact.

I'm pointing out here, look at where I split this particular set of quotes, because I think you're making connections that are actually asides and that it's not the connections that matter, but the items themselves.

I don't care if they went back and nerfed zilart gear when they realized the issue. That would have been fine. That's why I was stating earlier that I can appreciate their blind dogma of "FAFNIR MUST ALWAYS MATTER!" and giving minimal upgrades moving forward. If it makes faf easier, that's obviously ok. If it makes him trivial, apparently that's not. So, whatever it takes to keep them happy in that respect, but keep us feeling like we're actually moving forward.

What we want is gear progression. The game "balance" has nothing to do with it, but apparently, it does for you and Hyan.

Again, different impressions of balance.

If a mage gets more from their level 50 weapon than a melee gets by going from your AH list which includes dusk and whatnot to the absolute best gear in the game, that's broken game balance.

Progression or not, there is 1 piece of gear, readily available in mass quantity, that gives mages more than years of work gives a melee.

That's broken game balance, defined.

It just so happens that it's also a major progression issue.

Krakken club+ soul eater is one of the only combo that I could agree was game breaking, but seriously, it's not krakken club on its own that is broken, it's an issue that could have been solved long time ago if they wanted (ie: only the first hit proc for soul eater).

I'm fine with kraken. I've never in my entire game experience done any single fight involving a kraken drk, and I've played with TONS of people, and done damn near everything you'd ever want to use them for. It's that rare, it's that special... I'm ok with some things being like that.

If it was crafted by level 60 woodworkers and sold on the ah for 10k, it would be a pretty big problem.

Barone glove augmented with 4 dex and 3% haste in ANNM.
Barbarosa pants with 3% haste 4 str

Just want to say, good fucking luck with that. I dunno too many AH war that have put in the months to obtain those things, though I do know of a few retardedly lucky that put in the 20 minutes.

But you'd be better off, and invest similarly varied times based on luck, to just get dusk+1 and haidate.

And not like... a little better off. A big fat chunk better off.

Swift belt/av sash
Sea torque aren't particularly hard to get either (most jailers are easier than byakko+ ulli) if you like shitty drop rate. I wouldn't consider byakko haidate hard to get in the first anyway if you're semi competant. Not to mention you could also buy them from people for a few millions.


Wtf.

G.axe > ridill
strap > nothing
bomblet > bomb core
w.turban > o.hat
ancient torque/sea torque > p.charm
brutal earring > any 2nd earrings
p.body = e.body nearly all the the time,
augmented barone a tiny bit inferior to dusk glove
ENM ring + rajas > sniper +1 with g.axe
forager > amemit
ninurta sash > speed belt > swift (game breaking -3% dmg increase for an easy to get alternative)
byakko haidate > usu pants > barbarossa pant ( byakko are the easiest to get here ironically, but you're looking at at another wooping 2% haste)
dusk+1 = usu feet > aurum feet (if you like running slow).


That's not a lot of zilart stuff, and they are barely stronger when they are the first.


For WS, you have n.cap, n.feet, alk bracelet for certain ws, but they all have alternative that are nearly equivalent, and it's not 5 str that will make a noticeable dps drop.

1

Think about that number.

One.

That's how many of the items you listed that are clearly better and full timed over items from 2004.

Of everything you listed that came after 2004, the torque is the only thing that's not at least swapped out for 2004 or earlier items for WS, and it very well may be for some.

However I'll give you a 2nd, toau cape/cerb+1. But that's it.

To clarify:

Strap swapped out for dual wielding.
Bomblet is no better than bomb core in any situation where you'd consider using something other than e.body.
Walmart - Nhead
P.Body- LOL... brb Byrnie+1ing, since it's almost as good as e.body almost all the time, apparently.
Usu can't be used by the classes that would regularly use dusk. The dusk wearers that would wear usu can wear zilart "far eastern" haste boots.
Aurum are pretty damn sexy, if you can't get dusk+1 and aren't already giving up haste for ace's.

Everything else listed is from 2004 or before. Not Zilart, sure, but still 6 years ago.

CoP had the right idea... build on/fill in the gaps from Zilart gear.

Why is Speed Belt becoming Map's ok, but no other haste belt since, ever?

I'm saying that 2-h relic used to be much much weaker without these change. They made these relic stronger during ToA when they changed 2h formula.

When 2h relic were introduced they were the epitome of badassness they deserved to be if they were to remain the best weapons ever obtainable in the game. (except, hilariously enough, samurai's)

Apoc drk getting 60 tp back from guillo with sam sub and no stp gear? Good luck with a 5 hit/hasso competing with that... and just imagine abs-tp with that kind of results... it would probably even be worth casting!

Consider this for one moment:

Gungnir would be, bar none, no question, inarguably, the most powerful item in the game by miles, outside kraken drk... and it would not be far behind kraken drk, if at all.

Gungnir. The most powerful shit in the game. Gungnir.

And why would you equip a full ares? Are we talking about retarded player or good player?

You don't see the problem with that statement?

If you don't I'll spell it out for you, but seriously, just think about that for a second.

That must be why they are replaced by sam whenever it's possible.

How are ele staves replaced by samurai?

Sams make sleeps land better in dynamis? Sams make air nuke>ground sleep wyrms an efficient and effective low man strategy? Sams make elegy land? Sams make blm soloing limbus possible without running out of time due to dramatically lower damage and more difficulties kiting if they didn't exist?

Yet, they can all be killed without brd if you approach them with the right party, so it's not like you can't play with debuff.

"Approaching with the right party" with no bard would pretty much mean approaching with a bunch of other people that use ele staff to land debuffs and increase the effectiveness of their dmg/healing/hmp.

Take ele staves out of the equation and everyone's efficiency goes down considerably. Melee require more healing (except in the case of whm's, who would switch to another zilart staff), tanks will have more issues due to gaps between slows, mages will just plain do less dmg, etc.

Also, it's a gross exageration to say that a rdm wouldnt be able to land debuff without his staff. The debuff uptime would be nearly the same.

Not only does the staff open up more slots for potency gear, the advantages over the "next best" things are fairly considerable. There just plain will be misses that ele staves would have prevented.

If you're considered just plain stupid/lazy/cheap/new if you don't have the proper hq staff, I think it's probably because it's no exaggeration at all.

You don't bring blm to salvage because monster resist spell? Nyzul? dynamis lord? Einherjar? Bahamut?

Hence the "for the most part." I'm aware, and fully admitting that there are things that are just plain better to melee burn, given the proper situations/numbers.

No, you bring BLM when there is rape AoE you can't avoid, and they can do decent dmg (otherwise you bring rng and smn).

Or you want to low man, or you need timed insta-gibs, or utility damage that can also sleep, debuff, etc.

Also, you say "when there is rape AoE you can't avoid" as if that's not half the major mobs in the game.

A heavily melee LS will have a very tough time with some things, and will make a mage group look silly on others (given, of course, enough mage support).

A blm-dominated LS will have a fairly easy time doing damn near anything they want. Especially considering all the gear the few melee they need will get as they tear through content with dramatically lower learning curves and far less pressurized situations.

No, SCH and COR geared for manaburn will parse just as high. COR can solo everything a blm can solo if they have room to kite.

COR can clear limbus in time?

And "if they have room to kite" is a pretty big if. There's a lot of things a SMN can do that other classes can't, but we can't sleep nuke hard shit in enclosed areas. We also can't do most things at anywhere near the same rate of speed others can.

I was outdoing ranger in sky merit party with my warrior before they got nerfed. I was pulling close to the same amount of damage on HNM.

I was talking about bosses, but with top end gear anyone could clear any camp in the game before respawns anyway. RNG that couldn't outparse a war post-tp nerf on most things, though, were probably doing something wrong. Perhaps you were outdamaging them because they were casting shadows. Or maybe you had ridill, ebody, dusk, haidate, etc., in which case on t-vt mobs yeah, you could probably outdo anyone.

Sushi made us reach even higher level, but sushi is stronger than any zilart gears in a situation where you need acc.

What's funny is, sushi is what made us go "you know, if I had ebody, pcharm, snips+1, etc. on, I could probably hit fafnir pretty reliably," convinced someone to let a war tank him, and started the whole melee craze... which made zilart gear all the more powerful/meaningful.

This post is way too long, so I'm just going to end by saying this:

I think melee were originally intended to function entirely differently, ws'ing on demand at various tp's at will much like mages, and the tp nerf changed it in an entirely different direction which resulted in having to gear the living shit out of yourself a certain way just to be able to do anything other than stand there swinging at stuff.

[Siatdiat]

Something that people may have forgotten, people used to tank with PLD/WAR. Obviously, when PLD/NIN and other better tanking combinations were accepted, the melee who before would pull hate with a ws and die alot could suddenly get into HNM fights and unleash shit. I remember fighting Fafnir in early 2005 with 2 PLD/WAR most times, and only having 2-4 melee to ws for blms. People used to relog hate back then too, PLD/WAR couldnt keep up with shit.

Also, the point about a zilart geared bravura warrior, I knew someone who got one of the first bravuras on any server. Within a month they went to play wow because of the sheer disappointment of having no real use for it. Alot of money for a slight damage buff, because rest assured he had no purpose to ever use Metatron Torment unless it was just because he felt like doing it for fun, it didn't improve his performance over RR or SC. And on merits, he obviously was using his ridill and joytoy.

Basically, they made some mistakes that they let sit so long they act like they couldnt take them back, not all at once. If you look back on it, most things have been pretty well fixed to give people enjoyable endgame content that they can actually participate in, instead of waiting and spamming for claims. The only thing that matters from Zilart kings at this point is hecatomb cap. Luckily its a pretty common item and most average size ls now can probably cap out easily on any Fafnir drop outside Ridill (which as has been pointed out is not really that valuable anymore beyond rarity.)

From looking across servers I'm seeing alot have only 1-2 shell that camp hnms typically,
Alot different from times I remember at the least always seeing 4 ls at any camp even day 1-3 Fafnir. I'll let you all be the judge of why less people are camping that shit now.

[Kaylia]

And please, don't try to tell me the tp nerf was a good thing. Taking melee from having to be extremely aware to make the most of their abilities, and pull the most dmg out of the crazy tp gain, and using abilities every few seconds, to today's 10-15 out of every 20 seconds being doing nothing was *NOT* a good thing.

I never tried to make a point that nerf/boost were good or bad. If penta spam would have been left untouched, the game would have been very different (one hit ws would be much stronger, monster would have more hp...etc).

The only reason reason why I brought this up is to explain why we are much stronger versus old monsters now than we were before. You only give Zilart gears credit for "breaking the balance", when there is many other explanation

You're crazy. Maybe against those fights post-nerf melee became functional, but pre-nerf the only thing melee was good for in any of those fights outside promies/tenzen was getting the living shit kicked out of them before they could do anything.


Have you seen what multiple astral flows will do to mammets? Promies? Do you realize how much easier U/O are with 1 person in range of the dangerous aoe's?

I've done CoP fight before everyone, when there was only 1 jp blog that had vague info about the fight up to 3 path, and I finished every mission more than 20 times since then (if you think it's an exageration, ask Rem or HowardRoark from my old linkshell).

I've seen astral burn, I've done ultima/omega with manaburn, and I will tell you, they are harder to setup, and screw up just as much, if not more than normal party with proper preparation. Just take mammet. Is it so hard to have a thf, war, paladin or nin kite two mammets while he is cure bombed? The answer is no, and I havent seen a party (and I got some retarded one) suck enough to not manage to win in one try like this. It's like this for every fight....

Earlier in the argument, I told your naked SAM to go SMN and you told me it's not a valid alternative. So why are you saying that an astral burn party is the solution here? Just saying...

Melee running through the sea missions without mages?

I soloed Huzhoi palace on warrior, so yeah.
BLM is great for zdei for sleepga
Mage do pretty bad against promathia

I'm pointing out here, look at where I split this particular set of quotes, because I think you're making connections that are actually asides and that it's not the connections that matter, but the items themselves.

I don't care if they went back and nerfed zilart gear when they realized the issue. That would have been fine. That's why I was stating earlier that I can appreciate their blind dogma of "FAFNIR MUST ALWAYS MATTER!" and giving minimal upgrades moving forward. If it makes faf easier, that's obviously ok. If it makes him trivial, apparently that's not. So, whatever it takes to keep them happy in that respect, but keep us feeling like we're actually moving forward.

On this, we both agree. I simply don't understand why you defend Hyan's statement that zilart shit should be weaker to avoid "game breaking issue". Did you ever felt that the game was "broken" and would be better without byakko haidate?

Ignore everything else in my post if you want, I don't care, but can you answer this question. Why are you only considering other gears when you talk about "game breaking" equipment, instead of comparing every pieces of gears versus their impact on the actual game.

Progression or not, there is 1 piece of gear, readily available in mass quantity, that gives mages more than years of work gives a melee.

Have you ever fought something without weapon? If you think, that staves are "needed" for everything, how is it different than any melee weapon?

Why they never gave you better staves is beyond me, but I don't see what's wrong with a weapon that give mage a decent boost in damage and allow them to do their job reliably.

I'm fine with kraken. I've never in my entire game experience done any single fight involving a kraken drk, and I've played with TONS of people, and done damn near everything you'd ever want to use them for. It's that rare, it's that special... I'm ok with some things being like that.

If it was crafted by level 60 woodworkers and sold on the ah for 10k, it would be a pretty big problem.

I'm fine as well. It only works for a few fights, and another drk can do more than half the damage with decent gears. Basically, it cut down dps needed by 2, which is op, but it's not common enough for me to care.

If you don't I'll spell it out for you, but seriously, just think about that for a second.

Then spell it because I see better gears alternative that arent involving zilart and are better than ares.

"Approaching with the right party" with no bard would pretty much mean approaching with a bunch of other people that use ele staff to land debuffs and increase the effectiveness of their dmg/healing/hmp.

If you use my argument like this, your post implies dps were better in the first place when there is a brd around.

My argument here is that there is a good balance between dps and mage content, your argument is that mage are OP, and only because of the staves.


Anyway, I'm done arguing about class balance. You left long time ago, you havent done much on melee apparently,

And not like... a little better off. A big fat chunk better off.

If 4 pieces of gears grant you a whole 10% more dmg, it's not a "big fat chunk better". Especially in this game where 95% of the fight are endurance fight.



Considering your acc is capped most of the time, the only difference between p.body and e.body is 13dex vs 10atk + regen. If you think the impact on your damage is large, think again.


Also, we aren't arguing if there is gear progression or not, we are arguing if the gears is game breaking compared to the alternative.
If you're trying to demonstrate that there was no progression, than your post is valid, but I always agreed in the first place.

[Plow]

I never tried to make a point that nerf/boost were good or bad. If penta spam would have been left untouched, the game would have been very different (one hit ws would be much stronger, monster would have more hp...etc).

The only reason reason why I brought this up is to explain why we are much stronger versus old monsters now than we were before. You only give Zilart gears credit for "breaking the balance", when there is many other explanation

Because my problem is not with us being stronger than before, my problem is with the best gear coming from 7 years ago, and really not being that much stronger at all than we would be with all of the very best gear from then, and only then.

I've done CoP fight before everyone, when there was only 1 jp blog that had vague info about the fight up to 3 path, and I finished every mission more than 20 times since then (if you think it's an exageration, ask Rem or HowardRoark from my old linkshell).

I've seen astral burn, I've done ultima/omega with manaburn, and I will tell you, they are harder to setup, and screw up just as much, if not more than normal party with proper preparation. Just take mammet. Is it so hard to have a thf, war, paladin or nin kite two mammets while he is cure bombed? The answer is no, and I havent seen a party (and I got some retarded one) suck enough to not manage to win in one try like this. It's like this for every fight....

I'm not saying it's not possible to do it other ways, it's quite simply, well, simpler.

Earlier in the argument, I told your naked SAM to go SMN and you told me it's not a valid alternative. So why are you saying that an astral burn party is the solution here? Just saying...

I'm saying it's overpowered as a solution here. The "easiest" way to do almost anything that's not strongly mana resistant or based on zerging low level mobs is to have people tank or kite it while you stand at range and nuke.

Even if you decide to melee burn it hard stuff, you need very heavy mage support... it's not like you go in with a bunch of melee and a tank.

I soloed Huzhoi palace on warrior, so yeah.

Soloing is a very different ordeal than dragging a party through to do the fights.

BLM is great for zdei for sleepga
Mage do pretty bad against promathia

Mage do fine on prom, I usually go on smn, and we generally bring a rng and a blm because melee chasing her around is a pita.

Easier, simplier, to just run around in circles staying out of danger.

On this, we both agree. I simply don't understand why you defend Hyan's statement that zilart shit should be weaker to avoid "game breaking issue". Did you ever felt that the game was "broken" and would be better without byakko haidate?

Ignore everything else in my post if you want, I don't care, but can you answer this question. Why are you only considering other gears when you talk about "game breaking" equipment, instead of comparing every pieces of gears versus their impact on the actual game.

Abso-fucking-lutely. I went back and leveled WAR and NIN long after I was done with sky on drk and smn. You're damn straight I felt the game would have been better off if there wasn't 1 option, and only 1 option, that required beating out rmt with absurd botting systems, else just giving them your gil.

All to kill some easy ass mobs that would give pants that literally made every other item for that slot, EVER, look like complete trash.

Yes. Absolutely we'd have been better without them, in hindsight.

Without knowing how they'd handle it, I would say no, it's fine, as long as there's competitive or better shit coming out from harder mobs eventually.

Knowing how it went, fuck yes the entire game would have been a better place without haidate, ebody, ridill, dring. Not an inkling of question in my mind.

Have you ever fought something without weapon? If you think, that staves are "needed" for everything, how is it different than any melee weapon?

ok now you're reaching, imagine if you couldn't fight anything worth a shit unless you had darksteel axes...

or sniper's, haub etc. lol

Why they never gave you better staves is beyond me, but I don't see what's wrong with a weapon that give mage a decent boost in damage and allow them to do their job reliably.

The problem is that they decided they could not possibly give better ones, because it would be way too strong.

These are level 51, cheap, plentiful items.

And they're so damn strong that nothing even *competitive* could ever be implemented.

I'm fine as well. It only works for a few fights, and another drk can do more than half the damage with decent gears. Basically, it cut down dps needed by 2, which is op, but it's not common enough for me to care.

yeap, agree completely

Then spell it because I see better gears alternative that arent involving zilart and are better than ares.

The problem is that a full set of ares is very hard to obtain, requiring relatively high skill levels, immense direct time investments, and fairly large monetary expenditures.

And yet, the idea of actually *wearing* said full set, and gaining the set bonus it provides... is just plain silly because the shit that came before it is SO FAR ahead.

That's pathetic, and broken.

If you use my argument like this, your post implies dps were better in the first place when there is a brd around.

My argument here is that there is a good balance between dps and mage content, your argument is that mage are OP, and only because of the staves.


Anyway, I'm done arguing about class balance. You left long time ago, you havent done much on melee apparently,

My argument is not that it's only because of the staves. I'm not sure where I implied it, but that's not what I meant to say at all.

FFXI mages are op for a multitude of reasons, the primary one being the extent of AOE damage and the ease of simply staying alive, along with the fact that no non-mage has any meaningful cc whatsoever. And yes, I'm considering bards/cors mages, and rdm and drk as hybrid mages.

As far as how I played, I played mostly as smn, but spent tons of time on melee as well. SMN was my only mage job. Hence the fact I got stuck on it for the vast majority of the first few years, after leveling drk and not particularly enjoying spirits within rotations. Also, I still play, and even get semi-hardcore, for a couple months at a time when WoW gets boring. I just rarely accept any loot for the last 4 years or so.

If 4 pieces of gears grant you a whole 10% more dmg, it's not a "big fat chunk better". Especially in this game where 95% of the fight are endurance fight.

We're talking about 2 pieces.

The combined difference being 3% haste, 11 dex, 5att, vs 4str.

That's like... an entire slot of pretty fucking amazing armor... in the difference between zilart and the closest competitive shit in the entire game, in 2 slots.

If a pair of gloves came out right now with 3% haste, 11 dex, 5att, -4str... they'd be competitive with dusk+1 for bis. It would be a tossup depending on what else you were wearing.

In reality, the difference between dusk+1 gloves + haidate vs the next best shit in the entire game is like going from that to wearing nothing in your hand slot.

Considering your acc is capped most of the time, the only difference between p.body and e.body is 13dex vs 10atk + regen. If you think the impact on your damage is large, think again.

Your accuracy is no longer "capped most of the time" when you drop 10 accuracy and 13 dex for 15 att.

E.Body allows full haste gear without a ton off acc in every other slot and/or sushi. P.Body does not.

If you wanted to drop acc, why would you not instead do things like bomblet > bomb core where you get basically a point for point 1acc for 1att exchange instead of an almost point for point 1acc +1dex for 1att exchange?

Also, we aren't arguing if there is gear progression or not, we are arguing if the gears is game breaking compared to the alternative.
If you're trying to demonstrate that there was no progression, than your post is valid, but I always agreed in the first place.

It sure seemed to me like you were trying to argue that there was sufficient progression by spending the last page arguing that zilart gear wasn't really the best, and that where it was, it wasn't that meaningful.

So at this point I'm really not sure what exactly you are arguing. If you don't think massive haste, acc, and considerable base stats/att to go along with it, unmatched through the life of the game, is not game breaking, I'm not sure what to tell you.

SE apparently thought it was, considering they would never again make anything *as good* as a ton of shit that came out in 2004 or before.

If a 12% haste belt, a 10% dmg reduction ring, 15dex/5haste pants, etc. aren't downright overpowered, why could nothing even *as good* ever come along?

[Kaylia]

Because my problem is not with us being stronger than before, my problem is with the best gear coming from 7 years ago, and really not being that much stronger at all than we would be with all of the very best gear from then, and only then.

Again, we agree on this. That was my point against with Hyan in the first place, and that's why I find this argument very confusing.

I'm not saying it's not possible to do it other ways, it's quite simply, well, simpler.

On one side, you have a strategy that can pretty much use any party member with any job combo. On the other, you have a very specific setup that require many of a specific jobs. If you consider how hard it is to get help for these fights, I would rather go with people who want to go.

Secondly, the kiting strategy is pretty much retard proof since you can't really screw it up, don't need two hours, and can wipe up to twice in the BC. It takes longer inside the bc, but you will probably save that time farming wyvern scales before.



Every strats work, and with good people, it's a joke fight no matter what, I just don't think that mage here are "overpowered" or really facilitate the whole thing.

ok now you're reaching, imagine if you couldn't fight anything worth a shit unless you had darksteel axes...

or sniper's, haub etc. lol

I'm only reaching because there is no other mage weapon in game (for dd mage), but it does make some sense that weapon are more powerful than any other piece of gears.


FFXIV will probably work this way (since weapon design your "job" or w/e)

The problem is that a full set of ares is very hard to obtain, requiring relatively high skill levels, immense direct time investments, and fairly large monetary expenditures.

And yet, the idea of actually *wearing* said full set, and gaining the set bonus it provides... is just plain silly because the shit that came before it is SO FAR ahead.

That's pathetic, and broken.

I thought we were on the topic of finding gears that could be compared to zilart gears.

I read the rest of your post, but won't answer it since keep sending forth and back the same argument, and we need to cut it short somewhere.


The only point I tried to make on the recent page was that:
1) Square suck for not giving us better gears progression, and their itemization make no sense (awesome gears are often easy to get, hard gears suck...)
2) Gears is rarely the first factor that determine if you can beat content or not, having the proper party with decent players usually help a lot more.

[Kaylia]

One last thing. Don't forget haste is capped at 25%. Even if you had more haste gears, you will reach a point where people won't get more of it, and they will be forced to change to atk/acc/str/dex that stack up much slower.

Stack haste to 25%> cap acc at 95% > stack str/atk to increase dmg

We're talking about 2 pieces.

The combined difference being 3% haste, 11 dex, 5att, vs 4str.

It's 3% haste, 11dex, 1atk, run slow vs 4 str.

The hands are pretty much on par with each others (4 dex make up for the lost of 1% haste and you run faster). The "broken" item here would be byakko haidate, but really, is 2% haste really that broken? Ive been living with swift belt for years, and there is nothing I wasnt able to do because I didn't have speed belt, not even close.

It's a good upgrade compared to what you usually get on gears, but it's not significant on your dps.

[arus2001]

Am I the only one who's just skipped past the giant text/quote war?

[Corrderio]

Am I the only one who's just skipped past the giant text/quote war?

Nah, I'm with you to.

[Neoscrilla]

I am hoping that gear will be "slotted" or can be augmented how you like, and you can increase the number of "slots" or augments by completing certain tasks. They could put a limit on the number of max slots or whatever or caps on the extent of augments, but if they did do something like this I hope they TELL YOU what the caps are this time around, instead of making us all test shit and still never know the true answer.

SE wont do this cuz its too sensible.

[Cooleko]

Originally Posted by arus2001
Am I the only one who's just skipped past the giant text/quote war?

Nah, I'm with you to.

I'm with you as well, If i see Kay as last post I dont even bother opening it up (not picking on kay alone but I cant remember who they are arguing with).

[Lucavi]

Am I the only one who's just skipped past the giant text/quote war?

Guilty. I'm sure its all interesting, but breaking down the metaphysics of balance vs. upgrades isn't my cup of tea.

Carry on, though.

[Kawfee]

I'm all for theorycrafting random numbers, but it should be done in the advanced mechanics forum.

[Warudo Ecksu]

I'm all for theorycrafting random numbers, but it should be done in the advanced mechanics forum.

^ agree. I thought this was a, "What are you looking forward to in FFXIV?" thread, not "Lets go over some FFXI mechanics." People are having a hard time staying on topic around here.

I hope that FFXIV is so mind-blowingly good, no one ever talks about FFXI again.

[Cooleko]

I hope that FFXIV is so mind-blowingly good, no one ever talks about FFXI again.

^ this is a statement I want to believe

[Kaylia]

Am I the only one who's just skipped past the giant text/quote war?

No one ever read big post that arent directed at you. It's not like plow and I are writting it for you.

Is it possible that Jacob wants flash-sideways Jack (or someone else flash-sideways) to go to the island?

onsidering many of us wish for FFXIV be similar to FFXI, without the shitty aspect, an argument about what suck in FFXI isnt completely unrelated.

[arus2001]

No one ever read big post that arent directed at you. It's not like plow and I are writting it for you.

Was just implying it crossed a point of XIV relation to XI-knowledge dickwaving. Succinctly, we know XI's itemization sucked. RotZ, CoP, ToAU, WotG, or whatever else came about like enchantments or synergy should really hold no weight in XIV outside of passing resemblances with graphical throwbacks. Same with jobs, really.