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PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
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Question: Why use MM2 instead of WN2?

I generally go:

CZ -> IQ -> SH2 -> WN2 -> 4x HT, SH2 -> 5x HT as a starter, though this does leave me with 12 moves where I can't use ToTT. I then use manip which gives me another 30 DUR, which leaves me with about 75 dur (50 of which will be taken up by PBP and 3 CS2s). Granted if we use WN again we can have 4 free synths to play with (-25 total, 3x5 from WN and 10 from normal dur decrease).

Is it more CP efficient to use MM2 on top of WN or WN2 and WN? I'm also confused since our rotations/stats are fairly similar and I can't HQ if I have less than 8 HTs.

Also didn't realize spring dresses were 3 star... I want one for myself, might practice using those pieces.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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So, I was reading the latest live letter Q/A, and they specifically stated they're going to adjust the dungeon gear drop rates.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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So, I was reading the latest live letter Q/A, and they specifically stated they're going to adjust the dungeon gear drop rates.

thank god. Just ran another expert yesterday and got 3/4 reagents, one of the chests from the 2nd boss being an i80 bracer (which I won and slapped on my melee classes, so there's that I guess).

Novus is stupid, btw. Decided to just grind out the alexandrites and see what happens to prices. I'm positive the iteration of weapon will be worse than the next coil drop, so there's not much incentive for me to spend millions on materia.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
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There wasn't too much interesting in the Live Letter this time 'round - I'm curious to see how they change the Magicked Broom recipe, it's hard to believe all the complaints about it because entire FCs can't put their heads together and either garden a Broombush and a Glazenut or just buy the mats, find a carpenter and have enough brooms for like two months.

Or just deal with a dirty chocobo stall lol. It's a 40% reduction in XP earned per Krakka Root (I still don't know if the different food grants different levels of XP) admittedly but nothing to lose sleep over.

So far I think SE has done a pretty decent job of catering to player complaints (there's no gil fountains! FATEs are boring! theres no reason to do dungeons!) without really going overboard with fixes/nerfs/etc. I'm curious to see how they continue to respond to such matters in the future - particularly economic ones.

I wouldn't mind more i80 gear to Desynth though lol. I just wish any of it was ALC - I don't think I'll be able to get a whole lot further on just 2star crafts.

=========================

RE: MM2 and WN2

IMO it ultimately comes down to how many [Steady Handed] HTs can you get in. Looking at Manip + WN2, I'm thinking you get 9? Correct me if I miscounted or did something differently. MM2 + WN gets you to 10 HTs plus gives you the flexibility to Tricks at almost anytime which gives you more reliable access to INNO and additional SHs so hopefully not stuck using any 50% HTs. Technically MAN+WN2 has a better CP to HT ratio (slightly), but the nature of the abilities don't allow us to use them on any given scale.

If you were somehow able to to WN a second time [most likely] after Manipulation, I think you'd end up with 11 HTs but your CP cost would end up right around 500 (470 after accounting for 2x full CZ returns) which would require about 4 Tricks (starting with ~390 CP) in a craft that loses it's 'edge' (+1 HT) if you use a Tricks during a WN - and you'd need to fit in a couple of them somewhere to be able to use your full complement of abilities.

IQ8 is a pretty reliable HQ, probably not 100% though without sufficient HQ mats or a BB on a Good though. I typically start with 1000-2000 quality on 3stars depending on the ingredients and what I have around - there's no reason to use any NQ materials that are 1* or below however because they're so trivial to do at this point. But it's not uncommon for me to mix HQ and NQ myth mats or Terminus Putty (eg: I'd rather use 1HQ 1NQ putty in two crafts than 2 HQ in one and 2 NQ in another).

One other little thing which can help a lot - after you Great Strides and Ingenuity 2, if you don't have the CP for Innovation but aren't on a Good, use a CS2 and then hit BB. You want to make sure you're maximizing your odds of getting a Good or Excellent for BB.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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Good idea. I actually don't have room for innovation (using reclaim) on my weaver but I'll most likely take that off after I figure out a more reliable rotation, plus the NQ 3 star gear still sells for a profit.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
81
Whoo 99 LW, 94 GSM, 92 ALC desynth :D

I think I'll max LW and GSM just for the hell of it and slowly let ALC creep up with Titan weapons. I don't mind the 300 point cap really (I think it ultimately makes the system more interesting having to pick and choose what you want to 'target') but I do wish the default values for the level 30+ DoH classes was 0 instead of 1. It really isn't much of a practical difference frankly but I think it'd make more sense than the constant back and forth you'll encounter with 3 near max skills.

Also for anyone doing high level desynth, depending on prices/mats I'd stick with 1star crafts until the wheels fall off pretty much, around 75-78 depending on how patient you are. After that I would strongly consider jumping straight to 3star desynths - just overmeld them and hope for the best. On my server myth mats have plummeted to sub 10k each while philo mats have jumped up to 5-10k each. Even if your success rate on the 3stars sucks I still think there's a very real chance of you getting further both faster and cheaper on 3stars. I wish I'd jumped in on them a bit earlier for LW and not burnt so much animal fat.

Also today is my last day for Sylph dailies, thank effing god.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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I stupidly crafted all the mats (and bought some terminus putty) for a pond without realizing its a 3 star craft. I haven't started on my goldsmithing mastery yet so now I have 8 rocks sitting around taking up space.

/sigh

also fuck sylph dailies. I'm working on the sahagin one right now and it's 100000x better. all the courier and stealthing around sucks ass.

Haven't done much desynthing yet, weaver desynth at around 25~ ish. I almost want to do culinarian desynths for the swimsuits but it's really not worth it.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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Also today is my last day for Sylph dailies, thank effing god.

grats (and on desynth too) =)

Those are definitely the worst dailies.

My group finally downed t8 last night! We even got new and useful drops from coil this week for the first time in a month -- the only drop that wasn't new was the weekly healer boots.

On another note, they made a poor decision designing the Ramuh rewards. I guess more accurately they designed the hunt rewards poorly...but since they've let hunts continue as they are, and even made it slightly easier to get credit with that hotfix, no on cares about Ramuh. Ramuh should be dropping 105 or 110 rings, and the same for weapons considering the lousy drop rate. They might as well lift the coil lockout in a few weeks too.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
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I'm just hoping that the eventual continuation of the beast tribe quests (I think there's been hints that completing them all will eventually unlock some sort of final/master questline of sorts) isn't necessarily contingent on filling up the (currently) final rank for the tribes. I'd kind of like to actually be "done" with them in the semi-near future - I just hit rank 2 Kobold a couple days ago and once I complete Sylph today I'm starting from zero on Sahagin.

Basically just trying to have them all finished by the time the Ixali ones roll around, I think it takes 45 days to go from zero to completion but I'd be able to double up on Sahagin at some point once Kobold completes... so probably another month and a halfish to go.
 

KaOTiK

Lifer
Feb 5, 2001
10,877
8
81
IMO hunts are the worst thing they have added to game thus far. The idea for hunts, is simply amazing, the way they implemented them is horrible. People are going to get bored real quick and have no content to do real soon because of it. Why bother doing ST when you can buy weathered geared and grind hunts for oils/sands and upgrade it. Same goes for coil, most can't do t8 and I bet even fewer will bother now.

They made among the best gear in the game very easy to get now and people will be burned out with nothing to do very soon.

Ramuh Ex is an awesome fight, but the rewards are a joke, you don't see anyone giving a crap about farming him, whoopee i100 rings and a rare drop i100 weapon. He's going to one of those primals people do once to get their clear and to be able to do future primals. Most people haven't even touched EX mode from what I can tell either.

Funny enough, the best thing that was added with the patch was Frontlines. Sadly most don't give a crap about pvp in this game (and rightfully so if all you tried was wolves den).

I was really looking forward to a few things in this patch and in the end, this is the worst content patch so far because hunts makes so much irrelevant now.

Even the people in my static are like, lets just do hunts tonight to get sands/oils instead of doing some T9 progression.......
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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Mostly agree except for the extremity of the argument. Hunts are kinda bad because of the sharp change in (lack of) difficulty for obtaining high level gear compared to 2.2, but this patch is basically the same as 2.1 was to 2.0.

As easy as hunts are now to let you upgrade your tome-purchased stuff to max level, in 2.0 and 2.1 it was even easier...no upgrades required for the tome-bought gear. Currently, you're still limited on the number of soldiery tomes per week, and you have to put in extra effort to take it to lv110. Sands/oils are worthless once you've upgraded your weathered items...it's not like you can just keep hunting 110 items forever. It's the "let the casual crowd catch before we turn up the heat" patch in SE's tic-toc master plan.

I'm not a fan of their patch master plan though...it's nice to ease up every other patch, but the new more "challenging" content needs to give people incentive to actually participate. Ramuh Ex is a huge bust in that department, obviously. All the previous primals at least dropped sought-after gear when they came out. Levi would have lasted a lot longer if mirrors were more reasonable, but even the 95 weapons were good. And the new titles from savage coil are a joke...the hard core ppl are doing it cause its there, and challenging, and they can brag, but they really should have the opportunity at something more than a title IMO.
 
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tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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So...I hope they're not nerfing the hunt rewards with the Tuesday morning patch. I mean, it would probably be a good thing for the game, but my wife is going on a girls trip next weekend and is taking our daughter as well. I'm hoping to just knock out the rest of the sands/oils I need while I have a little break from responsibility lol.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
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I have a bigger problem with the fact that Hunts are little more than non-FATE "boss FATE" zergfests - which is disappointing to me but I guess there's not much you can do about that when it comes to 'open world'. The spawn condition riddles/hints are pretty neat though and well thought out from what I've seen at least.

I don't mind the rewards, it's pretty much in-line with the progress/catchup/progress/catchup cadence they've implemented, I don't get why people are so sore about it unless they really thought they'd be the only ones with upgraded weathered gear for more than three months. Every "onze" of time you put into a MMO with vertical progression will eventually be largely (if not completely) marginalized, it's the nature of the beast.

Speaking of, I started my Atmas for my Omnilex over the weekend. It wasn't the Atmas so much as the myth grind (and the fact I'd rather use my myth for crafting) that put me off it before but the latter is much less demanding now. So I was able to get 4 over the weekend - not particularly fun (especially as a scholar) but I've done worse and can just queue for Titan or Moogle HM if there's downtime to try for weapons to desynth. It's certainly not as bad as (and much more relaxing than) camping Argus or Mee Deggi lol.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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hunts are boring. I only have like 60 seals from randomly running into the mobs or seeing people shout them. 250 for a book (need 3 for a sand) or 1000 for the flame mage glamour piece I want seems astronomical for someone like me who can't hunt during off-peak times (and really have no desire to).

They need to make daily marks a lot more profitable to slim down the zerg fests. 1 seal means fuck all when you can zerg down 3-4 elites for 3-5 seals each, or an A/S rank for much more.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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Excalibur has an awesome system going that few if any other servers duplicate. There's a group with a huge TeamSpeak server, and they have 7-8 full LSs to announce stuff in and they invite literally everyone who wants to hunt on the server to join them on TS (just can't manage more LSs, but they're unnecessary with TS which is the primary method of relaying info fast). It's administered well and they have excellent data collection. It's pretty fun working together like that.

The hunt system needs massive improvement though. Obviously that's not how SE thought people would handle it and most servers aren't going to cooperate to that extent.

Honestly though, I'd be surprised if they ever get it right, based on the fact that fates and their evaluation system have sucked since AAR launch and SE doesn't seem to realize it or recognize it.
 
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darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
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Massive improvement to what? To give incentive for people to not work together?

Aside from fate/hunt rewards working unfavorably for solo players compared to parties I haven't had a problem with it in a long time. Damage dealing is obviously the simplest way to contribute and contributing with healing is somewhat contingent on having a party to heal, but on the whole it's rarely an issue imo.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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they just need to introduce sands from elsewhere, like maybe a weekly quest similar to old primal tokens or make it drop from ST. Right now running hunts is the only way for most people to get sands, and consequently i110 gear. They don't clear turn 8-9 weekly, and even people who DO clear it weekly grumble about the 4 week wait for sands. For those who can't clear turn 9, it's 2 months to rotate back to sands. People are zerging this because it is not the best way, but the ONLY way for many people to get "better" gear.

Don't know about you, but even if I casually hunted i'd have enough seals for 3-4 sands over the course of 2 months. I don't hunt at all and I have 60 seals from basically doing my daily routine. Drops in coil are also so rng based this is a better way for most people to get gear.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
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Massive improvement to what? To give incentive for people to not work together?

Aside from fate/hunt rewards working unfavorably for solo players compared to parties I haven't had a problem with it in a long time. Damage dealing is obviously the simplest way to contribute and contributing with healing is somewhat contingent on having a party to heal, but on the whole it's rarely an issue imo.

Massive improvements needed
1) if SE wants so many people working together, they need:
- to make changes that allow people to see the mob right in front of their face, for one. When massive groups of people gather together, the game currently prioritizes drawing player characters over anything else, no matter what SE has said to the contrary. This has always been a problem for fates that draw a lot of people (read Odin/Behemoth). If you can't see the target, you often can't contribute, plain and simple.
- to make changes to the way your individual/group participation is evaluated. Ever since AAR release, fate evaluations (and now hunts, which use the same system) have been based on how much enmity you (or your party if in a party) generate. Just to be clear, you have to generate enmity--how close you are to the top of the enmity list doesn't matter. Hit the mob once to get the low evaluation, generate > X enmity to get mid evaluation, generate > Y enmity to get the full evaluation. Hunts may have more than 3 eval levels, or there is some slightly more complicated calculations invovled, but that's the basic idea. On smaller fates, X and Y are smaller values and easier to hit. On bosses designed for larger groups, like Odin/Behemoth/A's/S's, they are higher and require a party of 2 at minimum. But for things like Odin/etc, the enemies usually die so quickly it can be difficult to reach Y or even X...because of the number of people and how long the fight lasts (and how long you participated in the fight. Also, due to how jobs generate enmity, tanks (and in some aoe cases, healers) have the easiest time contributing to the evaluation. 8 tanks (or maybe swap in a couple healers) = piece of cake. Normal party setup = screwed over. You might as well not even come with DD jobs if you desire the best shot at the full evaluation.

2) if SE wants more competition, they need
- to rework the claim and/or reward system so that not everyone and their mothers are fighting and getting credit for every mob 24/7.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
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So it needs improved by... giving out even more seals? I mean I agree with the technical aspect, it would be nice if everyone saw everything rendered equally but at the end of the day all easing the evaluation is going to do is give more people more seals - while 'too many seals' / 'too easy rewards' seems to be one of the principal complaints that I hear.

If they made the evaluation harder/steeper actually it could help induce that competitive nature instead of the farm culture surrounding it. But I doubt they'd go that route, it would be even more negatively received I wager. I believe some of the hunt LSes on my server are already a bit elitist lol and if, say, only the top 20% of contributors got 'gold' it'd be far worse.

To me it seems ok, I think the execution is somewhat lacking (again, openworld zergfest) but the net effect is positive. It's something almost anyone can do successfully, it gives you steady rewards over time, and it's a very social activity with the way the community has adopted it. I don't think a seal cap per day or per week would have been a bad idea really... but at the same time they already catch a ton of flak for "time gated' activities as it is so that might have done more harm than good. I think the seal price for some rewards is a bit misaligned as well, like the glamour gear (and ventures! I need cheap/easy ventures from somewhere goddamnit lol) are a bit expensive and myth gear/sands/oils are a bit cheap. That's mostly an outsider looking in perspective however.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
1
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Heh, yeah that's a good write up in answer to the complaint of "the RNG broken." Does nothing for the complaint of "the RNG royally screws people over" though XD.

About evals though: I don't care if it's eased or not, but that's not what I said. I said it needs to be fixed. The ability of any given class to contribute to the evaluation needs to be roughly the same. It's nowhere close to that currently.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
81
Heh, yeah that's a good write up in answer to the complaint of "the RNG broken." Does nothing for the complaint of "the RNG royally screws people over" though XD.

Holy god the comments in that thread are funny as hell, I know the official forums for a game are generally the absolute worst place to actually discuss the game but man I can't help reading it, some of the comments are like watching a mental trainwreck.

I wish I'd thought of this ahead of time, but it seems like the XM primal crafting drops might be the real bottleneck to primal weapon crafting. I was able to pick up the few cheap Crag Hearts off the AH (and there are at least some Kingly Whiskers up still) but Inferno Horns and Vortex Feathers up to 500k-1M and in short supply.
 

PowerYoga

Diamond Member
Nov 6, 2001
4,603
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keep in mind you're also on a technical forum (anandtech!!) and our understanding of computers is likely higher than joe schmo who's just playing ff14. They don't understand random number generators. :)

speaking of which, I didn't realize prices of those things shot up. I have a few of those things leftover from 2.1 and I was wondering what to do with them. They never sold on the AH (<5k at the time) and I just tossed them on the retainer.

I kind of want to make some room stuff but might just sell the things.
 

tedrodai

Golden Member
Jan 18, 2006
1,014
1
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Wow. That is a massive jump in price. It's probably not quite so expensive on my server but I'll be sure to check anyways when I get home. I have 1 or 2 at least on retainers.