Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Crone_sl said:

Learned that you can get a battle Chocobo's last night. This game keeps getting better and better.

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Yeah you can use it in combat, though it's annoying cause it considers you in a party with the chocobo, so it eats a party slot, you can't queue for dungeons and you can't get invited. Also need to resummon it every now and then, but that's not too much of an issue.

Chocobos gain levels, you can assign points to 3 skill trees(tank heal and DPS, recommended you get at least 1pt heal for the regen, preferably enough for the actual heal which iirc is 4, then damage, though as a healer the healing aspect isn't useful, but great for leveling other classes). You can eventually max everything but it takes a long ass time. You can also feed it expensive food to give him bonus stats, and you can train him in a stable to get xp(it's 1% xp per feed, once per hour, have to use food that costs some gold so it's more like for endgame leveling and shit, not for lowbie leveling). You can also feed it fruits that change its color. And you can get a lot of bardings and shit to customize its looks.

Kriptini_sl said:

Bards are the lowest of the DPS classes, but they have Foe Requiem, which is good for BLMs and SMNs. They also have better AoE than DRG/NIN/MNK.

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All the songs are good, though for different situations. MP song is great in final coil due to healers going through mana pretty badly on progression content, at least until 2.5 welfare epics, TP song is great if you have 3 TP based classes and especially if you don't have a Ninja(but even with a ninja, that's only one goad) and Foe Requiem is otherwise great for burn phase/aoe phase or just plain general DPS, especially if you run 2 casters. They're a really good class, though yeah you're not going to win DPS contests. It's not that bad if you don't play TP or MP song though, like it's within average values for ranged DPS.

You definitely don't want 4bards like you could run during 2.0 though. Monks are WAY ahead on damage(they are melee though obviously and have massive TP concerns on long fights so they need a bard or a ninja to sustain), Ninjas and Dragoons are also decently ahead, and you kinda want one caster to do caster stuff like killing mobs that are physical resistant, so variety is best, but Bard spot is almost guaranteed in most statics.

Kriptini_sl said:

Are people still running double MNK?

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Generally speaking, most people don't run double anything, it's bad for loots and it's not necessarily good. Double monks run into massive TP issues, and the bard then has to sing TP song most of the time, making it rough on healers and reducing magic damage if you have a caster due to no time for foes. If you don't have a bard, then you're way fucked.

The typical setup at this point is like Monk/Ninja/Bard+ 4th. You can replace the Monk with a Dragoon, or even the Ninja, though that's not preferred. The 4th is generally SMN or BLM as you want some magic damage and you don't really want 3melees. Can be a 2nd bard too.

Monk+Ninja has a ton of synergy so it's a great combo, the Ninja can feed the Monk TP, which lets the bard sing whatever other people need rather than what the monk needs, and Ninja has Trick Attack which increases damage by a fair amount if it's synced to cooldowns popped+DoT reapplication in the group, since the DoTs will snapshot the 10% dmg increase on cast. For long dots like the monk dot or SMN dots with Contagion, that's a huge deal.

Bard is almost a given in any static, because of how useful the songs are especially when shit goes wrong. If you don't have mana song and one of your healer dies, it becomes insanely hard for the healer to be able to regen mana while still keeping people alive. The mana regen tools healers have are more for extending the time until they run out than actively gaining mana. Scholar can kinda do it if you don't lustrate, but well, you don't lustrate.

SMN and BLM tend to be fairly close. SMN does have a rez, but they also have mana issues so using rez can actually be detrimental in the long run and will nerf their damage by forcing them to energy drain over fester. BLM has issues maintaining high DPS on certain high movement fights, though with careful planning and knowledge of the encounter, it's possible to minimize movement a lot and only move during GCD or by using aetherial manipulation(which btw is fucking awesome).

Dragoons are probably the least desired class, they're a ton better now and actually do very competitive DPS and burst like crazy, while also having good aoe and very good TP management, but the problem is they have virutally no utility. It's hard to replace a Ninja or a Monk by a Dragoon because of that. You won't lose DPS, but you'll lose utility. That said, when making an endgame static, player skill is more relevant than class really, if you have a really good dragoon in your static he'll do more for the group than a shitty ninja or monk.

Kriptini_sl said:

I feel like DRG is better to have than MNK because DRG has the piercing debuff for BRD and has better TP management. Their survivability isn't really an issue anymore, either.

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Piercing debuff for your DPS that does the least damage is poop. Monks gets Mantra(+20% healing on the whole raid for 15secs, insanely useful for the big aoe phase transitions which happen in basically EVERY fight since it increases both Succor shields and Medica II HoTs) as well as Dragon Kick debuff which reduces all magic damage done by bosses(which is most of the damage they do on other targets than tanks) by like 5-10% or whatever. It's not even comparable in terms of utility. Monks basically increase your group survivability against all forms of raid damage, while Dragoons give Bards like 20DPS more.

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