Destiny of Poppy
Apparently this week some craziness happened in League of Legends with the team Unicorns of Love. It seems as though they broke one of the taboos of the game and played Poppy in competitive play More so than that they seemed to dominate a match with her. We talk about the ramifications of this and get into an offshoot discussion about what happens when something is toxic for a game. When a game changes the class or mechanic that you love, what do you as the player do? I know a good part of why I wont be playing Warlords of Draenor, at least not at launch is the fact that Blood Deathknights “feel wrong” in ways I cannot quite quantify.
Of Tidal Bardings
Since the last three days have been spent working on my Easing Into Eorzea guide series, I have not really posted much that was actually about me or my endeavors. In fact this morning it feels more than a little weird to not be working on the next segment of that guide. I guess in part I wanted to get some of the most basic information out there especially since I have a good number of friends either just starting the game or considering starting it. One of the problems with Final Fantasy and just how content dense it is, is that it has so many different systems that it just expects you to know how to use. I remember when we first started playing, it took me weeks to figure out what everything did and even to this day I am still finding systems that I knew nothing about. So my goal was to try and flatten this learning curve by discussing things from the perspective of a player who is used to playing traditional western MMOs.
However this does not mean that I stopped doing things while writing these guides. One of the most exciting things from the past week is that I managed to get Tidal Barding. The entire reason why I was going for Turquoise color with my chocobo, was that it would match the Leviathan bardings perfectly as seen in the picture above. Leviathan has been my favorite summon since Final Fantasy IV and as a result I knew when I saw this that I would have to get it for my chocobo. The problem is that it involves getting a rare drop from Extreme Mode Leviathan, when I have not done any of the Extreme primals leading up to that. The other issue is that it is a three star armorcrafting pattern, meaning it takes an extremely well geared crafter.
This is the point at which my good friend and awesome cosplayer Spiral Sun rides in to the rescue. It turns out her Free Company leader could make the barding, so I shopped around on the market and managed to piece together all the bits needed. All told I think I spent around 150,000 gil to gather up the bits, which is a significant discount over what the completed barding had been going for on the market boards. Last night I checked it was still floating around the 500,000 mark. So thanks to Spiral I am now sporting my spiffy barding, and with the Turquoise color it works almost perfectly. The barding and bird kinda meld together perfectly and it feels like I am in fact riding around on a tiny Leviathan.
Of Animus Books
The other thing I have been working on in Final Fantasy XIV is my Animus Weapon. Late last Sunday I managed to wrap up my Atma grind and I was able to convert my Bravura Zenith into a Bravura Atma. The problem is the Atma step is basically a “half step”. While the weapon is in fact ilevel 100 instead of ilevel 90… the stats of it remain the same. You power up the Atma weapon by completing a series of books, each one giving your weapon a stat boost. To complete the weapon you have to do this 9 times. Each book costs 1500 tomestones of mythology and requires you to kill 100 mobs (10 each of 10 types), run 3 specific dungeons, complete 3 specific fates, and complete 3 specific guild and company leves. Throughout the day yesterday I knocked out all of the steps for my current book other than the three dungeons.
So today at some point I plan on running the three dungeons which are… Tam-Tara Deepcroft Normal, Stone Vigil Normal and Lost City of Amdapor. I figure I will ask in guild to see if anyone needs these dungeons before running them, because I would far rather complete them with a guild group. After turning in the book I will get +2 strength to my current Atma weapon and it will put me one step closer to the finished Animus. Then it begins the process all over again of grinding up 1500 tomestones of mythology for the next book. My guild thinks I am mostly insane for this, but at least Cylladora and Warenwolf are doing it with me as well. I believe Cav is maybe on the same step also. Essentially the fastest way to get the mythstones is to grind hunts, and as of yesterday Waren is now in the most popular of the hunt groups, so hopefully that will help things out a bit.
The Gladiator is your traditional sword and shield tank. They focus on mitigating large amounts of damage, but tend to have significantly lower hit points to compensate. They can be one of the more challenging classes to level in that they get most of their really class defining abilities significantly late in the game. While most classes have a complete combo chain by the time they begin dungeoning around level 16, the Gladiator does not complete theirs until 26. However for those who master it, it becomes an extremely formidable class.
The Marauder is the two handed wielding tank. They focus on having a massive hitpoint pool coupled with some ability to regenerate that health to tank. They however have significantly fewer ways of stopping incoming damage to compensate. They are one of the easier classes to level due to the fact that at low levels they have both extremely solid damage dealing ability and high survival. Additionally when they evolve into a Warrior the get a threat generation and health increasing buff that as well as a rage generation mechanic allowing them access to special abilities at the cost of 5 rage. From 30 until the Paladin gets their tank buff at 40 they become the strongest tank, and then that evens out during the 40-50 level climb.
The puglist is your traditional hand to hand combat fighter. While they technical use a weapon, these are an assortment of often wicked looking fist weapons. They are likely one of the more difficult classes to play in the game, in that they use a complex combo system that takes some ramp up time to reach its crescendo. Additionally several steps in the combo have a positional requirement of either being to the side of the encounter or behind it. As a result it takes serious dedication to be able to play the puglist and later the monk with proficiency. However to those devoted to the class they can do amazing things with it.
The dragoon is relatively heavy armored spear wielding combatant, that has been represented in many Final Fantasy games through the Dragoon. They are known for intense single target burst and sustained damage through a combination of dots and combo attacks. Similar to the monk however they have a number of these attacks that require either a side or back facing component. However unlike the monk they are not as tied to this mechanic and can alter their rotation to fit moments when they simply cannot be behind or to the side of a target. The weakness of the class is they get relatively little AOE damage until very late in the game, and even then they come with some constraints. Most players take the Lancer class in order to evolve into the Dragoon, with their iconic jump attacks.
The archer is your traditional bow wielding hunter or ranger type class. They have a series of dots and bow strikes that whittle down the target. The true strength of the class is they have the ability to move and cast at the same time. This means that even though a large number of the archer attacks have a cast time they can do so while moving, making them the ideal class for kiting or the ability to move while dpsing. The weakness however is that they are relatively light geared and the Achilles Heel of the class is that they lack a DPS limit break like the Puglist and Monk have. Once they become a Bard however they more than make up for this issue with the ability to play songs that regenerate Mana or TP depending on which your party make up needs worse.
The Arcanist is an odd bag of tricks at the beginning of the game, and I easily consider it the most difficult of the classes I have personally tried to start. That said they become immensely powerful and have the benefit of being the only class with two natrual exit jobs currently in the game. The slow start comes from the fact that this is a pet class, and the pet that you receive early on is not your tank pet. This is a similar dilemma to starting a Warlock in World of Warcraft, and much the same you end up “tanking” for your pet early on. However once the Arcanist does get a tank pet they have the ability to fight multiple targets at the same time with ease. At its core this is primarily a damage over time class with a large bag of tricks that allow them to wear both the hats of a healer and a dps for a good amount of their playtime. It is personally not a class for me, but those who love it do so immensely.
The Conjurer is your traditional full time healer class. At low levels it is the only class that can actually queue as a healer, and it offers the strongest brute force healing throughput of all of the classes. This comes at a few costs however. Firstly the class has very limited offensive capabilities until late in the game when they get one of the better AOE attacks in the form of Holy. Secondly they will suffer with issues regarding mana efficiency and while they can brute force heal through most anything, they can only keep it up for a short period of time. This means to heal as a Conjurer means you need to heal strategically without actually spamming needless heals. Being the “full time” healer class means they have a pretty broad palette of abilities to help them mitigate incoming damage.
The Thaumaturge is your traditional MMO glass cannon. They have amazing damage throughput at the cost of having little to no defense. One of the issues with playing most offensive spellcasters is the problem with mana. This class gets around it with a unique fire/frost system allowing them to switch elements to frost to regenerate their mana quickly before going back to fire for quick damage output. They offer some of the best and most reliable AOE damage in the game, and early on they were the kings of FATE grinding with the early access to Blizzard II. If you like to live on the edge in a “burn the target before it hits you” style, then this is the class for you. Additionally they get a lot of nice abilities like Quick cast that let them turn a lengthy cast time into an instant.