Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

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Fennin

Fennin

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Kirun said:
Good info, thanks guys.

Now, is there a class that tends to be more "faceroll" than others? I know you listed average CPM, but like a lot of MMOs, I'm sure there are the classes that are on the higher end of that scale and those on the lower. Which classes in FFXIV tend to gravitate toward the lower end?
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For tanks: All of the tanks have a medium skill ceiling, Paladin probably has the lowest floor of the three. Paladin optimization in raids revolves around party support rather than rotational complexities.

Healers: Without question White mage is the easiest healer to play, fewest keybinds and just a pure throughput healer. Its really tough to do white mage wrong.

Melee: The melee vary quite a bit, all of them have some form of positional attack requirements. Samurai, Ninja, and Monk all have a very low gcd and high CPM requirement. Dragoon has a static long rotation with a slow rolling gcd. If you were really interested in this role, based off of your preferences I'd suggest dragoon or Samurai.

Casters: Most people consider Red Mage to be the easiest of the three casters. The rotation is proc based and fairly simple once you learn the gimmicks, Black Mage runs into a lot of issues with optimization with movement based mechanics from bosses. Summoner is one of the most complex jobs in the game, but the skill floor isn't so bad if you like dots and pets. I'd suggest Red Mage as easiest, but summoner is a good option if you aren't looking to optimize your rotation.

Ranged: Bard is a fairly straightforward job with a medium skill floor, but high skill ceiling. The ranged role tends to be the most "busy" overall. Machinist is considered one of the most complex rotations to optimize and is hardly played in the current meta. Important to note that the ranged jobs attack while moving as well, no significant cast times.

It is also important to keep in mind role responsibilities. Tanks and healers have more complex responsibilities than dps but easier rotations to compensate. Paladin, Warrior, White Mage, Red Mage, Dragoon or Samurai would be good places to start.
 
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Pyros

Pyros

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Lots of good advices. I'd say the "easiest" starting class by far is WHM. It's a very simple straightforward class. It does ok damage on its own for solo leveling or whatever, can aoe shit with holy and stone is ok for soloing until SB where it kinda slows a lot but still shouldn't be too bad, since it's a healer it gets into groups quickly and the class has only simple mechanics so you don't have to think too hard about what you're doing, just throw regen on fuckers, medica when aoe healing, cure when single target healing, stone monsters when nothing else to do, holy when aoeing, and use cooldowns in case of emergency.

All the DPS classes have some sort of complexity to their gameplay, from positionals to procs and rotations. Melees having positionals and often lower GCD(only melee without a lower GCD is Dragoon) can make them hard to learn. Red Mage is definitely the easiest but unlocks at 50 so not helpful for a new player(although you can level another class to 50 pretty quick then use Red Mage to continue since they also start at 50).

Tanks are mechanically simple, but it will put pressure on you if you don't know the dungeons since people expect the tank to lead as usual, and if you're not going fast enough some people will pull for you and shit which adds work for you and is a pain in the ass. Plus if there's some mechanic you have to avoid but you don't know, there's a good chance your group is wiping. I'd generally recommend playing something else first to learn the content, although depending on your tastes it's an option. Paladin is definitely the safest choice there, good defensive abilities and eventually you can heal yourself well enough that even with a shitty healer you can keep the party going. Tank solo damage is very good too, which makes questing great.
 
A

a_skeleton_02

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Got my black mage to 51 and my Red Mage to 54. And Red mage is so much easier to play. Balancing procs and Mana is easy and the melee attacks are fun. I did back flip off the stage on Titan once though.

Im finishing up the post work up to heavensward quests right now and I've done the extreme versions of the primal as well as a few legacy raids while synced.

So far the game has been super fun, I'm enjoying the downtime social aspects as well and every time I log in I find something to do easily.

Few friends are pretty hardcore raiders in a static so once I get 70 I'm going to try that as well. New patch is around the corner I heard.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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The next major content patch will be early Sept. In August they are adding the Monster Hunter crossover trial, but you have to be 70 and completed the MSQ to do that. However, the crossover event thing is going to be permanent, so no need to worry about a limited time deal.

They may also do the summer seasonal event in August potentially. This year they are going to have a Ninja Warrior gameshow style obstacle course.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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August also has the new Eureka area, Pogos or whatever, which means new weapon step too I assume.

4.4 is mid september, and should be when I resub to check out the story and avoid spoilers, since that's generally the patch that starts hinting heavily at the next expansion content and what not.
 
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Neuad

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I've been leveling my scholar/summoner recently. . . I didn't think it was possible for a class to be more boring then BLM pre 50, but holy shit Scholar. Keep Eos in range of group, spam ruin, sprinkle in bio and miasma as needed . .yuck.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Neuad said:
I've been leveling my scholar/summoner recently. . . I didn't think it was possible for a class to be more boring then BLM pre 50, but holy shit Scholar. Keep Eos in range of group, spam ruin, sprinkle in bio and miasma as needed . .yuck.
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It was a bit better when there were 3 dots but yeah. The good thing is it makes dungeons go faster since for the first like 50levels, scholar does 80% of the damage of a DPS class, and since the fairy alone can keep the tanks up in dungeons, you basically don't have to cast a single heal in the entire run(well sometimes you do, but most of the time you don't). All healers are fairly boring to play though until shit goes wrong/you do endgame content. Their DPS rotations are really bad and all 3 do pretty much the same thing, apply 1-2dots then spam nuke, and sometimes use a GCD.
 
Kirun

Kirun

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I really appreciate all the information guys, seriously.

Based on what I've read and thought about, it seems like Red Mage probably most fits my playstyle, with a possibility of Dragoon. Are both of those level 50 classes and if so, what is typically the fastest way to level to 50 to unlock them?
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Kirun said:
I really appreciate all the information guys, seriously.

Based on what I've read and thought about, it seems like Red Mage probably most fits my playstyle, with a possibility of Dragoon. Are both of those level 50 classes and if so, what is typically the fastest way to level to 50 to unlock them?
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Dragoon is unlocked by getting Lancer to level 30, and then once you do a quest to unlock it your Lancer levels will carry over into Dragoon. Lancer starts at level 1.

Red Mage is unlocked by getting any other Disciple of War or Magic class to level 50 first, then doing a quest that starts in Ul'dah. RDM starts at level 50. (You also must have purchased the Stormblood expansion, but you do not need to do any of the Stormblood content.)

If you want to try both, the best thing to do would be to start as a Lancer, play it to 30, unlock Dragoon, play DRG to 50, then unlock RDM. But if you want to turbo RDM as fast as possible, it would be a better idea to start off as a Gladiator - it's the easiest tank to play and will make your dungeon queue times almost negligible, whereas as a Lancer you may need to wait 10-15 minutes or longer in queue for dungeons.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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While lvling as a tank would be faster, people might get really annoying if you go too slow in low lvl dungeons when they're stuck with no skills trying to do their daily roulette. Mind you not every dungeon especially if you say you're new, but some people are assholes and they'll make the run more annoying just because they want to go faster. I mentionned that before, depends on people though, I'll often run dungeons blind on my PLD when I start playing again because I want fast queues, and I usually don't have issues.

I'd recommend WHM since it's more passive, just follow the tank and heal people, but it might be kinda crappy in terms of lvling solo until chocobo and stuff. That said assuming you make a char on one of the servers with bonus xp(these still exist I think?), you pretty much don't have to do any sidequests, so it wouldn't be much of a concern if you can't solo kill that fast since there's just not much stuff to kill anyway.

If you've played tanks in post wow mmos before though, Gladiator > Paladin or Marauder > Warrior are good options. I'd say MRD/WAR is better even, it's fairly simple early on too and it plays a lot better than PLD before 50+.

Alternatively, you could spend money to buy a level potion, get any class to 60(preferably Black Mage or Summoner, so the gear you get is the same as RDM), then unlock RDM and level with RDM instead. It'll make the early content pretty boring though, and you can't skip it.

Also of note, it might be worth playing healer/tank all the way to 70 first before playing RDM, if you don't dislike them. There's A LOT of dungeons and raids to run as part of the story, and the story can't be skipped(unless you spend real money to skip it). DPS queues are probably going to be 15-20 mins constantly for everything, so that'll add up quite a lot, although you can go do other stuff, there's a lot of side content to do too while you're waiting, especially once you reach the higher levels, all the stupid beastmen rep daillies for example or just lvling other classes and what not. But it'll be faster on a healer/tank if that matters to you, tanks generally have 0-20secs queues while healers are generally 0-2mins queues. Depending on the day and shit it might switch a bit, but you pretty much never get even 5mins queues on healer/tank.

At the very least, I'd strongly recommend considering staying on healer/tank until you're done with all the Heavensward story quests and are on Stormblood. Once you start Stormblood it isn't so bad since it's the most recent content and there's not as much stuff after the story and shit.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Ya, level sync dungeons can be annoying at the low end, especially when dipshits get salty about missing skills. When I was leveling my samurai, I was running that really low level dungeon where you kill the clams with the fireflies trash mobs? I forget the name. Anyways, guy starts bitching at me saying "what a shit samurai, no AOE attacks. You're fucking bad, delete the game". At the level I was synced at, Samurai had no AOE attack at all lol.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Cybsled said:
Ya, level sync dungeons can be annoying at the low end, especially when dipshits get salty about missing skills. When I was leveling my samurai, I was running that really low level dungeon where you kill the clams with the fireflies trash mobs? I forget the name. Anyways, guy starts bitching at me saying "what a shit samurai, no AOE attacks. You're fucking bad, delete the game". At the level I was synced at, Samurai had no AOE attack at all lol.
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Yeah most classes have shit for aoe in these 3 dungeons, I think BRD has theirs and maybe BLM is synced high enough for fire II(but 3/4 of the time you'll start casting and the firefly will die before you're done, cancelling the whole thing since it's a targetted aoe). Best class actually I think at this lvl is MRD/WAR, can just Overpower and kill all the garbage easy.

It's not just that though if you do all the leveling dungeons as a tank, there's gonna be a lot of "don't pull this, skip that, pull faster, where are you going this isn't the right way, why didn't you dodge the breath, why aren't you picking up the fruits" etc. It's a lot of pressure, some people don't mind it, I know I kinda don't give a shit, I say at the start of the run "I haven't done this, point out any mechanics that can lead to wipes" and just go. If some asshole is pulling shit because that's how it's done I'll just pick it up and won't mind, if they die I'll shrug, and if they forget to tell me about the boss mechanic I was supposed to know and we wipe then again don't care too much just go again and this time dodge it.

But I've seen many people complain, leave dungeons halfway or just reroll because they don't do well under pressure or don't like it and you don't really want to have to watch videos about 4man dungeons cause that shit's a waste of time.

Generally people on this board are more immune to this shit cause it's mostly old fucks who played old school mmos where the game itself fucked you in the ass for mistakes and everyone was an asshole but just worth saying, playing a tank while it's the fastest way to get queues also tends to be the one with the most pressure to not fuck up and know what you're doing. Healer is basically the opposite of the spectrum, where all you're expected is to sometimes press a button to heal your tank. Some people will expect you to DPS too, but at the end of the day you don't even have to do that, and the queues aren't bad at all.
 
Kriptini

Kriptini

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Marauder is one of the few low level classes to have good AoE but it's not nearly as easy to play as Gladiator.

I'm not trying to imply that there's anything difficult about Marauder (because there isn't) but Gladiator is turn-off-your-brain easy.
 
Fennin

Fennin

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Kirun said:
I really appreciate all the information guys, seriously.

Based on what I've read and thought about, it seems like Red Mage probably most fits my playstyle, with a possibility of Dragoon. Are both of those level 50 classes and if so, what is typically the fastest way to level to 50 to unlock them?
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As others have stated the fastest way to 60 is too buy a jump potion. I wouldn't really recommend this for your first character, but it doesn't really hurt you either. The fastest way 1-50 on your first character would be to follow the Main scenario quests. Do not bother with side quests early. If the caster role is your thing you could start with arcanist, at level 30 you can unlock both summoner and scholar. With an arcanist base you level both of these jobs at the same time, and you would have the option to play either a healer or a caster dps for queues. Another important aspect to leveling fast is choosing the right starting server. Square Enix has designated a handful of servers on each data center that are considered "preferred". Preferred servers give you a buff that increases experience from all sources by 100% up to level 60, the buff is active until the server loses preferred status.

I think the majority of the members on this board play on the Aether Data center. I would recommend Aether or Primal for a US player. The current preferred servers are; Diablos, Exodus, Goblin, Jenova, Lamia, Sargatanas, Ultros, and Zalera. The servers that are on the Aether Data Center are; Goblin, Jenova, Sargatanas, and Zalera. Sargantanas would be the server I recommend out of those 4 as it has the highest population currently. The benefits of creating a character on a preferred server are as follows:

-100% experience buff for all classes and job up to level 60.
-10 silver chocobo feathers.
-The first time on your account that you reach level 30 on a preferred server you are rewarded with 1million gil and 15 days free play time. Bonus can only be awarded 1 time.

The only stipulation is that you cannot transfer the character for 90 days after creation. Everything but trading can be done across servers so I wouldn't stress about server choice to much early. As far as leveling methods are concerned there are many various ways to level in this game, I will list the most time effective methods as that is what I always strive for.

-First time characters should focus solely on the Main scenario quest line, and job quests.
-Level 1-16 unlock the hunting log by completing your level 1 class quest. After level 16 the hunting log is no longer worth the time investment.
-If you are level 16 and have progressed far enough in the main scenario you can complete the first 2 dungeons to unlock the daily leveling roulette. Do this roulette once a day.
-At level 17 you can unlock palace of the dead, PoTD can be used if you get level locked on the main scenario, otherwise ignore for now.*
-At level 50 two more roulette queues become available, level 50/60 dungeons**, and the alliance roulette. Add these two to your daily rotation.
-Continue the main scenario until level 70.

*If you level as a tank or healer and get level locked, do the highest level dungeon you can queue instead of PoTD.
**Unlocking this roulette is a pretty large time investment, doing this unsynced with a high level friend is your best option.

The above list is the most effective way to level 1-70, as a first time player I would reccomend exploring and experimenting with other types of leveling unless your goal is to reach endgame as soon as possible. You can check the current preferred servers on the lodestone. Regarding Character Creation Restrictions and Statuses of Congested/Preferred Worlds | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone
 
N

Neuad

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Are you guys controller or keyboard players? How do you manage this insane amount of buttons required by some classes? I've been messing around with WAR and SCH and am having trouble finding more then 18 or 20 comfy buttons on my keyboard, and warrior seems to have 30 they need on a per-fight basis.
 
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Archeron

Archdruid Archeron

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Neuad said:
Are you guys controller or keyboard players? How do you manage this insane amount of buttons required by some classes? I've been messing around with WAR and SCH and am having trouble finding more then 18 or 20 comfy buttons on my keyboard, and warrior seems to have 30 they need on a per-fight basis.
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DISCLAIMER: I stopped playing during Savage Deltascape when I moved from the UK to US and haven't picked it up since.

I played with a controller. I configured the hotbars (crossbar, but whatever) to switch depending upon if my weapon was drawn and put things like mounts, ports, etc, on the the sheathed bars.

I played SAM, WAR, PLD, RDM, WHM, SCH, DRK, BRD at max level and found that I could always keep the necessary combat abilities in the 32 keys that come from the standard controller configuration when raiding.

I definitely raided Savages on WAR, although I might swap to PLD if the group formed ended up with two WAR or other random reasons like one of the static people wanted to play their WAR. I never had a problem with 32 hotkeys. My keyboard was always in reach anyway, but I don't recall ever touching it on any fights. Abilities were clustered around frequency of use ordered right bar (most frequent), left (somewhat frequent), right-left (infrequent), left-right (ghetto).

Most of the fights are sufficiently free of random that you don't need to watch for things coming off cool down so much as you need to learn (a|the) script of what cooldowns to use at a particular moment with the vague exception of threat transfer early on in some fights. Hell, there were times tanking that I turned away from the screen to answer the door and carried on hitting things on the controller that I knew needed doing without looking at the screen at all.

Lessons learned: muscle memory is key, so build a setup and then train the fuck out of it on target dummies. Every time you switch jobs, go back to the training dummies to load the correct rhythm into your brain. Don't use cute macros. They don't use the ability queue so they are a straight DPS loss based upon double your ping time per ability. Learn the fights and pay attention to what cooldowns occur when. This gets easier when you have a full or partial static and have a fight on farm. Let visual queues from the boss and timing info run your fingers. This doesn't work as much for BRD with damn dots dropping and songs switching on timings than can vary by a few seconds in ways that fuck up your mental script but it works beautifully for PLD, SAM, RDM, WAR
 
N

Neuad

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Thanks, I've been working on most of that, and I knew macros in general aren't good in this game. The only 2 exceptions I use are Aether Manipulation macros for each party member on BLM, and Shirk on the other tank.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Macros are good, as long as you use them for only one action. There's a few exceptions to this rule(for example as Monk I had a macro to switch fists, I forgot what the macro is but basically, press it once, it switches to fist of earth, press it again, it switches back to fist of fire. Lets me have access to all 3 fists buffs on only 2 keys).

And yeah 32 hotkeys is enough for most classes. I think the ones I had trouble reducing enough were like Scholar because of the pet actions.

After that it's just a matter of setting up your hotkey well enough. I think if you google a specific class you'll probably find a reddit thread with a few people showing/explaining their hotkey setups for each class using a pad, but you can just go with what's natural. It's definitely good enough to raid at the highest level. Main issue I find is buffs and heals and shit, I think it's way less efficient due to pad targetting limitations versus a mouse.
 
Fennin

Fennin

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Neuad said:
Are you guys controller or keyboard players? How do you manage this insane amount of buttons required by some classes? I've been messing around with WAR and SCH and am having trouble finding more then 18 or 20 comfy buttons on my keyboard, and warrior seems to have 30 they need on a per-fight basis.
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Honestly the easiest way to free up keyboard hotkeys is to get a mouse that has multiple buttons, I use a mouse that as 2 side buttons plus the middle mouse. I don't like the feeling of the bulky mmo mouses with 12+buttons, but I will admit having the majority of your abilities on the mouse makes movement easier and more fluid. I use the more classic method of wasd movement, a and d are bound to strafe not turning. As a tank main keeping s backpedal can help with positional adjustments. Here are my binds for FF14: `1234 QEFZXC M4 M5 M3, with modifier keys that is more then enough binds, excluding tilde cause I find that one awkward. If you needed to add another key, rebinding R would be good but I like the auto run in this game and leave it at default. I rebind any of the menu options that are overwritten to the numpad.

For black mage if you are going to macro movement abilities, look into using the two macro slots available for shift+mousewheel in the option menu. These are not in the keybinding window, but rather special options for mouse wheel specific binds.
 
N

Neuad

Trakanon Raider
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I use the Razer Naga Hex, because like you I find 12 buttons to be a bit clunky and fat finger stuff. I use those 6, 1-6, and RTFVB. Ive been trying to incorporate more Ctrl and alt numbers, but I'm really bad at those. For Black Mage it's been fine, they only have like 15 buttons I use on a per fight basis.

My trouble has come when trying to learn warrior, and as I level my scholar.
 
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