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Freyar · **10-19-2010, 07:37 AM**

I find myself being the mouse of FFXIV now that I'm pushing up on leves. Anyone feel the same?

Ghunzyr · **10-19-2010, 01:14 PM**

((no way I can say this in character, so breaking it for now))

Bottom line, if a caster does not die in one hit at levels 20-30+, then the designers failed to an epic degree. Now to balance that, you should also be able to turn an enemy into a smoking crater in about 5-10ish large nukes. Not sure if you can in FFXIV or not, just saying you should be able to.

So go repair your tissue paper armour and get back out there. You got cats to kill Tongue

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Freyar · **10-19-2010, 06:41 PM**

Emnity doesn't work properly. Despite a Gladiator's provoke, it breaks with only one single-target spell.

Doktor_Ljubavi · **10-19-2010, 11:00 PM**

What Freyar says is true. Even with a good gladiator, provoking, and keeping high hate. A caster throws 1 spell out, and now they have highest threat.

Nira Muzyka · **10-19-2010, 11:06 PM**

Problem with the agro tables is that, until you do an action, your first action puts you as highest on the threat table, so the tank has to go up over you again, it's dumb and annoying.

Ghunzyr · **10-20-2010, 02:10 AM**

Fair enough, aggro generation is a touch broken.

Ceadol · **10-20-2010, 02:22 AM**

I don't know if this changes the further you go, but last night, myself and a Pugilist from my LS were doing rank 20 leves. I'm a Conjurer and we were 14/15 respectively. With Soughspeak active and allowing him to grab aggro first, I never had an issue. He kept the aggro from 3 - 4 mobs at a time (for the most part) while I held back and healed/nuked.

Only one time did I draw too much and get myself killed. That was actually my own fault for targeting the wrong Yarzon. Nothing to do with enmity.

I've grouped up a few times in large and small groups and have so far never had enmity issues, even without Soughspeak. Maybe it's just play style?

Freyar · **10-20-2010, 02:28 AM**

THM, R16. One Sacrifice (Single Target) or one Debuff seems to reset GLAD emnity. It's impossible to play like this. Tonight, I actually ended up playing the "suicide bomber" with punishing barbs.

Siben · **10-20-2010, 03:11 AM**

#1) That video is 1:20 seconds too long

#2) Defenses and heals, get you some.

My rank 14 Conjurer has Second Wind from Pugilist rank 6 (250 tp for a self heal every 1m15s or so), Rampart from Gladiator rank...6? and Stoneskin from CON, the only thing I don't have yet is Sacrifice from THM. Shock spikes from Conjurer are really nice as a free chance to stun mobs as well, which shuts down their DPS for a few seconds.

When I run solo I also use a wand/shield for added defense and make sure to keep my shield arm raised.

Where are you putting your stat points?

Ceadol · **10-20-2010, 03:21 AM**

Siben is right. Even without ever having used a shield, I almost never die. I always throw up Stoneskin/Shock Spikes before I begin which negates a ton of damage. Even in the cases where I'm being ganged up on 3 to 1, between Cure and Sacrifice, I can always keep myself in HP (even if I can only attack every 6 heals). If you expect you're going to end up in this situation on a leve where a mob calls for backup, hit them with an AOE DoT spell such as Frost. This + Shock Spikes will keep draining their HP while you work on defense. Use things like Radiance to hit for decent damage without any cast time. Then when you have significant HP from your heals, Nuke them.

The trick is, always have a second heal for when your first is on cooldown. You can keep hitting Cure/Sacrifice back to back until you're out of the danger zone and can work on offense again.

Freyar · **10-20-2010, 03:44 AM**

Ceadol Wrote:The trick is, always have a second heal for when your first is on cooldown. You can keep hitting Cure/Sacrifice back to back until you're out of the danger zone and can work on offense again.

Because casters, not gladiators are tanks, right? There's the problem, spending (in a group scenario) six turns casting Sac/Heal on yourself and yourself only, you kinda end up doing nothing but. What you're telling me is A) All casters are healers/tanks, and only heal/tank, while all other melee disciplines are DPS? That's very off.

So far my experience as a caster just hasn't been working. Cures are definately a great help to physical combat classes, but when taking 1066 points of damage from a random "weapon skill" and you're sitting on 700 max it becomes a gambling game more than a game of tactics. Casting for THM is proving to be useless outside of Sacrifice, and Conjury is only good for the start of the fight for buffs like Protect and Shell as well as the cure spell as well. They've mixed the "healing" in with both casting classes, and unfortunately they are so central to the class that you can't do decent damage as a caster simply because there's no way for Gladiators to hold enmity.

Ghunzyr · **10-20-2010, 05:33 AM**

I've read that grouping becomes better 20+. Seen a number of people saying its best to solo to 20 as a melee as holding the monster can be tough.

Also, I'm not sure, but I think shock spikes would be very good. Seems to me that if you got em on, when the critter is hurt by them, it generates more hate on whoever cast the spikes. Least that seemed to be the case from a bit of testing I did with a conjuror buddy a week or so ago. Got me thinking I should be working on conjuror very soon.

Maybe arrgo isn't busted persay, just seems like it early on til you start working on other classes. I haven't actually grouped with a thurmaturge so not sure if I would hold aggro off one at all or not.

Siben · **10-20-2010, 12:51 PM**

I'm pretty sure Ceadol was postulating in a solo grinding scenario.

I notice on the skill listing I'm looking at online THM doesn't get a hate reducing ability like CON gets.

Freyar Wrote:Because casters, not gladiators are tanks, right? There's the problem, spending (in a group scenario) six turns casting Sac/Heal on yourself and yourself only, you kinda end up doing nothing but. What you're telling me is A) All casters are healers/tanks, and only heal/tank, while all other melee disciplines are DPS? That's very off.

Apparently you've never heard of a Mage-Tank before? It used to be a pretty cool thing to do in Ultima. Not to mention, at a glance of the THM skill listing http://ffxiv.yg.com/skills?c=2.22 Thamaturge does seem very Tank oriented compared to Conjurer's DPS and healing. I'd considering a THM-based tank to be viable given the right skill mix, situation and party.

Edit: And as a follow up, if you look at THM equipment compared to CON, THM is listed as "Favored" on some War Garb, while CON from what I've seen is regulated to wearing "Apparel". Said gear gives significantly more Defense compared to what the CON of equal optimal rank could equip.

Edit 2: Job skill and Action Point Calculator: http://www.ffxivstrawhats.com/calc/

Ceadol · **10-20-2010, 01:16 PM**

Yeah, I was talking about Solo play in my last post, I should have made it more clear. What I'm saying is, so far, playing a caster hasn't been that hard for me. Maybe it's because I haven't picked up any ranks in a Melee class so I don't know how hard I have it. Casters just require patience.

Kirena_The_Black · **10-20-2010, 02:25 PM**

You could find team up with another healer or maybe a gladiator whose got points to do...cure? Can you even do that?

I'm not really sure how it works, leveling two war/magic classes and having them work together. But I imagine if you're going to be pulling agg anyway another healer could go back and forth healing you and pausing their dps.

Even someone with just a semi-heal that keeps on top of things. It can't possibly be so bad as always getting trampled even in a group and having everyone around you be undependable, otherwise this many people wouldn't still be playing this game.

I can't argue that maybe the threat table for Gladiators is off-kilter, but how long has this game been out? I work as a video-game tester so I can't stress enough that if it's a -definite- -visible- issue, that you should consider reporting the issue ('dropping a bug') to SE. At my job I have a method of taking pictures of the incidents but there's Frapps and stuff if you have that.

Don't give up! If you can't fix it in-game, show the Devs so they can!

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Analogy for Playing as a Caster

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