Yoshi-P has a new live letter for Heavensward.
RIGHT F-ING NOW!
HERE!
IT'S OVER!
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((2.55 Spoilers Included))
So a metric ton of information was dropped on us during this unprecedented 3 hour live letter. There's a lot of information to cover so I'll be formatting this as best I can.
First of all, notable spoilery things from the new Dragonsblood trailer:
Garlean Emperor
Nidhogg
Court
Iceheart
MANY DRAGOONS IN THE AZURE ARMOR
Outside of that, Yoshi-P gave us a limited tour that dropped a few spoilery NPCs we won't mention here. Ishgard itself is gigantic, dwarfing Ul'dah in it's grand cityscape. Nearly all the buildings you could enter with dramatic vivid style. DX11 adds a lot with the reflections in marbled surfaces, it adds a whole new layer of fidelity and immersion in the game.
We move onto the Western Highlands, a zone that was originally part of 1.0. The landscape has changed to the wintern theme but the size of the zone has not. In fact, Yoshi-P estimates that the new zones are doubled in size from the biggest ARR zones. They are massive and even when flying feeling like they are endless expanses.
Flying was also shown as well as how to unlock flying. You will receive your first flying enabled mount soon after arriving in Ishgard. However, you will not have the ability to fly yet. To enable flying you must discover and master the unique "Wind Currents" in each zone. They can be unlocked through exploration, duties and story quests.
Damage is being dramatically increased by enemies in the expansion. One on one will be a moderately difficult battle but being jumped by two enemies will tax your abilities to the limit. It's very likely you will die. Yoshi-P recommends bringing groups into Beast Tribe villages.
This is explained as we are weakened without the Blessing of the Light.
After a short intermission we arrived to the meat of the Live Letter: Jobs. Each class was given time for an explanation on how each of the new abilities works for the Jobs as well as a guideline to how they will play at 60.
ALL JOBS ARE BEING SERIOUSLY CHANGED IN SOME WAY OR ANOTHER! NO ROTATION, PRIORITY OR STRATEGY WILL EXTEND INTO HEAVENSWARD!
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THERE WERE TRANSLATION ERRORS DURING THE ORIGINAL BROADCAST GO HERE FOR CORRECT INFO: Official Transcript
BLACK MAGE
Ley Lines:
Ley Lines is a stationary buff that you can place on the ground, and when the caster stands inside of it, they will gain a 15% haste bonus. Due to this, depending on how long you are able to stay inside of this circle, the damage capability will largely change. Though it’s still being adjusted, at the moment, when you step outside of it the circle will disappear. Because of this, it’s an ability where you will have to carefully consider the timing to use it and its placement.
Sharp Cast:
After using this ability, the next spell you cast will grant you a guaranteed proc. You’ll want to use this when you want to get a proc with Thunder or Fire. The timing of this ability will also be important.
Enochian:
Additionally, there is one more new ability known as Enochian. When using this ability you’ll gain a 30 second buff, and only while under the effect of this buff you will be able to cast Fire IV and Blizzard IV.
In order to use Fire IV and Blizzard IV, you’ll need to have Astral Fire and Umbral Ice, respectively, in addition to the buff granted by Enochian.
Also, Fire IV and Blizzard IV do not grant stacks of Astral Fire or Umbral Ice, so after learning Enochian your skill rotation will completely change.
Furthermore, you can also lengthen the effect duration of Enochian by casting Blizzard IV. Every time you lengthen it, the effect duration will become 5 seconds shorter, but as long you continue to cast Blizzard IV you will be able to maintain the effect of Enochian. There will be a lot ways to maintain this effect with existing abilities such as casting Blizzard IV with Swiftcast.
You’ll gradually learn all of these elements as you progress from level 50 through level 59, and then at level 60 when you learn Enochian the way the job is played will largely change.
Depending on the content, the optimal skill rotation will vary, so please try out various things to find the best rotation.
PALADIN
Divine Veil:
Sets a protective barrier around the target where if the target receive cures while under the effect, other nearby members will also receive a barrier effect.
Until now paladin has mainly used the Rage of Halone combo; however, we will introduce new combos which derive from Savage Blade and Riot Blade.
When main tanking, you’ll first use the Rage of Halone to gain enmity, and then use combos which includes DoT (damage over time) effects. Once you can maintain enmity, it’ll be better to utilize a different combo. When playing as an off tank, you will use the new combo route more, so how you fought until now will greatly change.
There are other skills which will block enemy attacks.
By using this, you’ll be able to utilize shield swipe more effectively.
As before, paladins are excellent from a defense standpoint, so we have made adjustment in a way where it makes it possible to increase the defense stats for all party members.
WARRIOR
Deilverance:
This is an attacking stance that can be used to increase your DPS when you are acting as an off-tank.
Similar to the Wrath you gain while using Defiance, you will gain up to a maximum of 5 stacks of Abadon when using Deliverance. When switching between these two stances, the stacks you have generated will be maintained, and you’ll be able to switch between Wrath and Abandon. The system was designed to allow for a more systematic approach to swapping between attacking and defending stances.
Additionally, there are weapon skills that consume Abandon, as well as self-healing abilities.
Raw Intuition:
This is an ability that will guarantee a parry when receiving an attack from the front. However, when you are attacked from other angles, the attacks will deal critical damage. While there is somewhat of a risk, it’s a powerful ability when used properly.
DARK KNIGHT
Darkside:
Similar to a paladin's Sword Oath, this stance is more of an attack-based stance.
You take on an aura-like effect known as Darkside, while this is in effect your MP will deplete gradually. While in this stance, you will not be able to receive MP healing support from party members. There are weapon skills which restores MP so it’ll be very important to make good use of those skills to manage MP.
Grit:
This stance will be used when in the tank role. With this stance, it'll be easier to gain enmity.
It will become important to switch between these modes when fighting and determining when you need to gain enmity and deal damage.
Also, there are a lot of dark knight actions that start with “Dark.”
Living Dead:
Similar to Holmgang, this is an all attack blocking action.
Unlike other tank jobs, dark knight has an action where you jump towards the enemy, so it’ll be possible to use this first then follow-up with an area attack to gain enmity.
Tank Job Recap:
Various changes have been made to the existing paladin and warrior actions up through level 50, but these adjustments were made with how they will fight at level 60 in mind. Additionally, accuracy has increased while under the effect of Shield Oath or Defiance, so the part where these jobs needed more accuracy compared to other jobs has been eased up on.
DRAGOON
Blood of the Dragon:
This is the main feature of the adjustments for dragoon. When using Blood of the Dragon, you’ll be able to use a fancy action after Full Thrust and Chaos Thrust making for a 4-stage combo.
Additionally, there is also a strong action that will consume Blood of the Dragon. With these adjustments, dragoons role as a DPS will really shine through. Furthermore, we’re also making adjustments to the animation locks for jumps.
BARD
The Wanderer's Minuet:
This is a song that is very unique as it can be used while the effects of other songs are up and it is also an action that kind of changes your stance. While under the effect of the Wanderer’s Minuet, you’ll be able to deal high amounts of damage by charging up you bow. However, if you move the effect will disappear, and you won’t be able to use auto-attacks while under the effect of Wanderer’s Minuet, meaning that you won’t be able to attack while moving anymore. Different from other songs, the Wanderer’s Minuet will not consume MP.
Sidewinder:
This is a special physical attack that will increase the effect of your DoTs already applied to enemies.
NINJA
We haven't made any drastic changes to ninja.
However, currently there are more times where you continuously use Huton which caused many situations where other ninjutsu wasn't being used as effectively. Therefore you'll be able to extend effect of Huton. By combining new weapon skills in the rotation you’ll be able to maintain the Huton effect, so you can now use ninjutsu other than Huton to output much higher DPS.
Furthermore, we have added positioning to several weapon skills. Current ninja doesn’t have much positioning and was able to attack from any direction freely, so we included positioning for some.
Other than this, we added an ability which adjust another party members enmity. Ninja’s specialty is to be able to deal large damage from the start of the battle, so this skill is in place to support the tank in a situation where the enmity becomes unstable.
MONK
The original concept for monk was to maintain Greased Lightning III, but instead of adding actions to aid in maintaining this effect, we added technical elements where you can utilize Greased Lightning and also made adjustments to eliminate the downtime during phases or mechanics of a boss where you can’t do anything.
We’ll be adding a system known as Chakra. You’ll be able to gain up to 5 stacks of Chakra, and once reaching the maximum amount you’ll be able to execute a high damage weapon skill. Additionally, you’ll be able to use Chakra to restore TP to yourself. Furthermore, there will be an ability that will allow you to change your form and a weapon skill that consumes Greased Lightning.
With all of these new elements, you’ll be able to spend your Greased Lightning right before a boss becomes invulnerable, progress through your forms while saving up Chakra until you can attack again, and then gain Greased Lightning again. With this, there will be no downtime.
MACHINIST
Machinist's role is similar to bard. However, the play style and the awareness for the job will greatly differ.
Their major speciality is to use buff called ammunition, and by using stacks of these it’ll add various additional effects to the weapon skills.
Reload:
By using this, you can reload five stacks of ammunition. Not only will you reload when you use up all the stacks of ammunition, but you can reload when not out of any ammunition to increase the damage efficiency. Additionally, there is an action called quick reload which will instantly load one ammunition for use in dire situations, so use these utilities to manage the amount of ammunition you have.
Weapon skills work a bit differently. There are weapon skill combination where you use shot 1, shot 2, and shot 3, but using shot 1 gives a 50% chance of boost to shot 2, and another 50% chance to boost shot 3. By using ammunitions you can make sure the boost procs. Furthermore, machinist has many unique actions, such as Wildfire which charges the damage and attacks at once, and turrets which will affect party members in range, so we would like for you to try it out.
SUMMONER
We’ll be making various adjustments to summoner which includes an action that simultaneously applies Bio, Bio II, and Miasma effects in exchange for Aetherflow, an attack that deals magic-based damage, and two other new actions at level 60 that will largely change your current rotations.
The ability Tri-Disaster has had its name changed to Tri-Bind since the effect didn’t make sense with the original name. In exchange, the aforementioned ability action that applies all three DoTs will be known as Tri-Disaster.
During development, we thought long and hard about this, but we will not be adding new egi at this time. Looking at the long-term, instead of adding more pets, we felt it better to give more use to the job by adding actions to summoner. However, I’m sure many are wondering if they will have to continue looking at the same egi forever, but we are planning to add a system in the future that will allow you to change the appearance of your egis, including Carbuncle, but their stats will remain the same.
Dreadwyrm Trance:
Considering rotations with an Aetherflow recast of 60 seconds, the first 30 seconds are spent casting DoTs, and the remaining 30 seconds is where this action comes into play.
Dreadwyrm Trance is an ability that summons the power of Bahamut. While under the effect of this ability, you’ll be able to gain stacks of Bahamut Ether, which you can then spend with an action.
WHITE MAGE
White mage is designed as a pure healer job, so we introduced additional healing abilities and other abilities which they are currently lacking.
There are abilities, such as Asylum, that creates a healing field, and a skill that can be used to attack and heal at the same time called Assize.
Additionally, Benediction was the only healing ability which can heal instantly, so we will introduce another single target instant healing ability with a lowered effect.
Furthermore, we will introduce Stone III and Aero III which will be the main attack spells, as well as new ranged DoT spells.
Aside from additional components, white mage was the only job that could increase magic defense by using Protect; however, with the addition of a third healer job, we made it so other jobs will also can use the fully buffed effect of Protect as part of a balance adjustment.
SCHOLAR
Instead of just simply increasing a scholar's abilities, we made adjustments by adding actions that require you to really think about their use and the best time to utilize them. There are many actions which are useful during boss battles, so you may feel that it hasn’t changed much while running through instance dungeons.
Indomitability:
A new AoE healing action will supplement scholar’s current AoE healing strength, which may have felt a bit weak up until now.
Deployment Tactics:
This action will extend the effect of Adloquium and Eye for an Eye that is on the target player to other party members in range.
Emergency Tactics:
Instead of adding a barrier effect to Adloquium, this action will give addition healing power for the amount of the effect of the barrier.
Dissipation:
With this action, you dismiss your fairy in exchange for magic power.
ASTROLOGIAN
There are two stances, Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect, which you can switch between. One of them is simply a healing stance much like white mage, while the other uses barriers much like scholar.
Depending on which stance you are in the effects of each ability and spell will largely vary, so first it would be best to get used to one stance and then try and master the next.
Additionally, you’ll be able to use actions such as the barrier created by Y’shtola in the main scenario and you can draw cards which will give various types of buffs.
Depending on the card that you randomly draw, you can gain effects such as enhanced attack power, haste, and also damage reduction. Furthermore, you can use the ability Royal Road to return the card you draw to your deck and enhance the next one you draw. There is also an ability to set aside a good card you drew and an ability known as Shuffle to redraw a card. It’s a really fun job where you will have to consider how to use your cards depending on the situation and the card you draw.
Yoshi continued to tease us with new artwork for armor and weapons. They also announced the next Live Letter being held at E3 and will include a live reading of the patch notes before 3.0 officially drops that Friday. The focus of the Live Letter will be on Free Company crafting and Airships.
We ended with a new trailer showing off the new dungeons!
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That's it for this Live Letter! See you next time!
