Enla

I'm going to third this as well. Not only is it common courtesy but it also can potentially resolve any potential sticky situations before they arise. You can tell a lot about how someone is going to take their characters being pushed in a certain direction simply by asking them for permission ahead of time. If they put caveats you aren't comfortable with or vice versa, best not to even engage at all.

Only with Diurnal and WHM. Being in Nocturnal with a SCH is like having two SCH's try to heal with the same faeries in a raid. Their abilities do not stack and in the case of Noct Sect it actively overwrites the SCH's shields. There is no net gain to be had there. It's just two healers fighting and having to watch the party even more closely so when they throw out a shield it doesn't coincide with their partner, resulting in wasted MP. Doable in premades but next to impossible in pug groups. At least with Diurnal your Regen STACKS with that of a WHM so there's no inherent conflict there. I don't know why so many AST's absolutely refuse to leave Noct while a SCH is in play but it's always annoying to me. Especially since you often come off as the 'bad' one if you try to ask them to switch stances. At least when you're paired with another SCH there's an unspoken understanding that either you trade off Succors/Adlos or you let one person handle it while you focus on other things. Every Noct Sect AST I've been paired against just fights me over who has the bigger shield peen.

While I do very much appreciate this guide and the time spent on it, I do kind of side eye the way you mentioned 'hiccups' in regards to the lore. Not everyone is going to be lore compliant. It's a simple fact of life and while this guide was probably made in good faith, not everyone is going to necessarily want to abide by it nor care. I personally will be roleplaying as much as I can within the bounds of lore, but some people are just going to want to go hog wild and that's equally valid.

Yeah I really don't get the people who are claiming that Lyse grew a lot through MSQ and accomplished so much on her own. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to like her a lot too, but I'm not going to fool myself into thinking the writing around her was good, or that anything about her character 'development' was handled well. She's static from start to finish. Sure, she feels different from Yda, but she's still goofy and selfish and childish... if anything I noticed these traits more in Stormblood than I did before (though that could be because we've simply spent more time with her/my memory is shit). She got two wardrobe changes and made the leader of the Resistance, despite not having any skills a leader might need. The writing around her was as bad if not worse than Minfilia's. Part of me wants to argue 'it's not the character that's bad, just the writing,' like I do with Minfilia... but constantly getting mad at oppressed non-combatants that are just trying to get by for not seeing things YOUR way is a pretty shitty character trait, lol. Ugh god, why. Like Ave alluded to, Lyse has a bad case of what I would call Bella Swan syndrome. We're told countless times throughout the story how competent she is, how good she is, how right she is for the position; how we're supposed to care about her and her struggles, and how she truly earned everything she was given. Yet the writing does not fall in line with these sentiments. The writers failed the most basic of writing tropes with Lyse in that we're TOLD about how worthy she is, but never actually SHOWN it. A fact which trips up many a person it seems and allows them to falsely believe the spiel without hard evidence to back it, which happened similarly with discussions about Bella's inflated status as a feminism symbol when she was anything but.* Don't get me wrong, I'm praying Lyse develops properly in the coming patches as I've always had a soft spot for characters who start as unlikable and end up being something so much more than even they could have dreamed of. Yet unlike the Youko Nakajima's of the world, Lyse has been placed so high upon a pedestal already and basically told that her naivete isn't an issue that I can't see how they're going to fix this convoluted mess they've created. Not without pulling the same stunt they did with Alphinaud and the Crystal Braves. Which to be blunt, is what Lyse's writing reminds me of. She's a bastardization of Minfillia, yes. Yet more than that she's following right in ARR Alphinaud's footsteps down to the inflated sense of importance the plot is trying to contrive upon her. Why they're making near the same mistake, down to the plot beats, is boggling my mind given the fact that we needed an entire expansion after the fact to redeem Alphinaud of his mistakes. *This is not to say you can't like Lyse or her arc, but the similarities between her and Twilight's titular character in terms of raw WRITING MISTAKES cannot go unstated.

Is that what it is? I had a feeling I was running dry on MP so much easier lately, but I had assumed it was just because I was spending more time spamming spells without having to Cleric Stance dance or something. It definitely feels weird having to hit Lucid Dreaming or detonating my Fairy just to keep my MP up. SMN Would like to have a word with you about Aetherflow. And we share your pain on how much BANE INFURIATINGLY MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH SQUARE ENIX. Anyway... Curious, is the MP issue because the shielding takes more MP now? I know I heard something about that being a case. I don't really play SCH so I don't really know. Succor is currently our biggest MP drain, and they also nerfed aetherflow whilst boosting Energy Drain. You need to incorporate it as part of your rotation now more than ever because it gives back over 1k in MP each time at present.

In the meta-view, SCH is the "weakest" healer. Also, with SB, SCH lost three DoTs (Bio, Miasma II, and Aero - though the last one couldn't be spread to other targets) and access to Stoneskin. So a lot of their "passive" damage potential was lost, and AST can bubble basically as good as they can and they have their cards to further bolster the party along with their heals. ... Something to that effect, anyway. Our mana regen also got nerfed to hell. I was in a Susano EX party and my fellow co-healer, a WHM, had more MP than I did in spite of spamming Lucid and Aetherflow when I could. We lost a LOT of our utility and frankly I'm not entirely sure the people at SE know what to do with SCH or how it even works. If they made our bubbles better and return our mana generation along with one dot, we'd be in a pretty good spot. As it stands we're legitimately the worst healer in the game right now as opposed to having our own niche. Hell, just make Aetherflow GOOD again. 10% mana regeneration is only /tolerable/ for dungeons, not at ilvl EX parties. SCH should not need to have Lucid Dreaming on their bar, yet without it we're hamstrung. I appreciate how proud they are of their new Role system, but we never received the balancing that both AST and WHM had in particular to their mana problems. We never HAD mana problems until this expansion.

I'm almost done, but I'm enjoying this expac as a whole far more than I ever did with Heavensward. The writing is tighter, the tone is more consistent, and aside from a few minor issues I've been pleasantly surprised with the direction they've taken the story. My only issue is oddly enough with the very character I should love, Lyse. The writing for her is just terribly sloppy in places and I hate how the MSQ warps away from it's realistic tone to place her on a pedestal she frankly didn't earn. There was one instance in particular where it felt as if the writers skipped an entire arc her character should have undergone to give her some fancy importance to the plot; when at that point literally anyone else would have been better suited. She smacks hard of how Minfillia was written in places, and I honestly pray that they fix that going forward and actually tap into the growth they're trying to show without making such unrealistic and jarring jumps. Yet we still have 4.1 onward to fix my issues, as I doubt they're going to be taken into account with the handful of MSQ quests I have left, and I'm hopeful that with the strength of the rest of the writing it will all be addressed. Edit: I just finished it, I was right. Not happy to be right honestly.

Gotta love it when you get the Chrysalis for your Trial and the OT legitimately stands still the entire time. Not picking up orbs, not tanking the meteors so we all wiped tried to make up for them, and then FINALLY doing something when we threatened to vote kick and immediately pulling before the vote could finish counting down. Icing on the cake was when their friend, though frankly given the vitriol they had to be dating, gets pissy at others for calling the tank out yet can only muster up a 'go fuck yourself' as a retort. At least the MT was good, great even! And the DPS was on point. Yet nothing was as satisfying as watching those two slink out of the party after trying to act 'cool' and make the people upset with them look like the idiots.

Honestly this whole year was a let down for me. Only thing I was looking forward to was some glimmer of news about TES VI and instead we found out that they're just trying to put Skyrim on even MORE life support than before. They seem to enjoy pissing away fan good will these days, to the extent that I'm not even sure the next title in the TES franchise is even going to be a day one buy for me when it does see the light of day.

I hate to break it to you but both are locked for the immediate future as preparation for Stormblood and have been for almost a month. Until they rescind the lock you can't even transfer to either server.

Honestly I really want SE to -finally designate- official RP servers to help people congregate after this whole mess. I have all eight of my slots on Balmung and have for a year, but giving people a clear place to go after being shafted with no warning would have helped this matter I feel.

Will definitely be there, as I need to get Odile back in touch with her more religious side.

AST is actually the only healing class that you don't need Conjurer levels to unlock. Yep, and honestly I'm not fond of that aspect of it. I've gotten my head bitten off a few times for pointing out a AST should probably go level CNJ for Protect, only to have the AST in question take it as a matter of grave insult against their amazing healing abilities. Mind, every time that happened said AST could hardly ever keep the party alive even post-buff but I digress.

Oh god, this is half the reason I only trust DRK from my friend group. The amount of people who have no desire to learn how to play their class is staggering with DRK and I cannot fathom why. I just automatically assume a DRK is bad these days and am pleasantly surprised when I'm proven wrong. It's the same for me when it comes to AST honestly. The number of terrible AST's I've come across has hurt my soul, even post-buff. Many don't even have CNJ leveled enough to get protect. MCH is usually a mixed bag since it's a high skill level class, but usually even a bad one can be useful with the Promotion buff.