BlackmoreKnight

I play Ashelle Viediere these days, an Ishgardian minor noble knight. Looking for any possible FC or LS community connections to be made in the realm of Ishgardian RP what with all the Ishy folk I see running about. The character is reasonably new so she's getting fleshed out a bit in practice as time goes on, but she'd fit in well enough with any lawful, good/neutralish group of knights or Ishys, as she's a generally good and noble person at heart.

RP to me is an amusing side-aspect to the game, not the main attraction. I am a PvE-er first and foremost, and if FF ever takes a nosedive in PvE content then I'm probably not long to last. I pay to play the game, and I love raiding and progression and getting shinier loot. There's a very good reason Sigrid tends to wear endgame gear for RP purposes, because I like showing off that I have it and that I put in the work for it, instead of hiding behind a plain shirt or whatever. That said, I also love RP and it's an -important- side-aspect of the game to me. But it can't sustain me indefinitely. There comes a point when I need something to do, and thankfully FF has an excellent balance of things to do and ways to facilitate RP that I can balance both aspects of the game out well.

http://www.greenmangaming.com/vip/ You'll need to make an account first before being able to access that section of the site, but both the base and CE of HW are 25% off. Take advantage of it while you can, I don't know how long the deal will last for.

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/03/13/final-fantasy-xiv-director-explains-heavenswards-new-jobs-planned-au-ra/ Another interview. The big thing of interest here is just a hint of what Astrologian will do. Card drawing will be a part of the class and you can then use the drawn card for buffs/healing or hold it to combine with another card later for greater effect. It sounds like NIN's mudras but maybe with more RNG. He didn't outright say there'd be RNG or not, but that kind of is the essence of drawing cards. I just hope the cards are a 'bonus', and not something to lean on. I don't want a healer to be a slave to RNG in progression content.

*Points at Sigrid's name* Guess.

For various reasons I'll be going to paladin as a main after 3.0 launches, and I enjoy my main job and RP job to coincide. So Sigrid's started to look into sword/shieldy/armor things and there's still a lot of RP that she needs to do to go down that road fully. Might not entirely happen but it's the direction I want to start steering her in. Elsewise, she's always to be found where violence and adventure await, and if the pot is being stirred in Ishgard, she'll be there with sword and shield. Or axe. Or both, really.

Convention generally is that you don't need to play your 2.0 character as a 'stranger' to Eorzea. You could have been a GC soldier at the time if you're not playing a warrior of light (And there are other threads throughout the forums that speak to WoLs and their role in things/RP). You'd just have retreated after the order was given by the city-state leaders when everything was going to hell. Fifteen is a 'bit' young to be a professional soldier, though. I assume Eorzea has standard ages of majority. That said, not like there are medieval birth certificates or something. It could be an interesting story beat. Your character wanting to fight the Garleans bad enough to lie about her age, and the GC being too hard-pressed for bodies to look too deep into it.

Sigrid will certainly attend. She's been practicing her wrestling skills at recent Grindstones, at any rate. Might as well flex her muscles here too. And might be a test subject for science. Just spike the stuff with alcohol first. Certainly won't do any harm, right?

True, but there just feels like there's something particularly soulless about Hunts to me. Not entirely sure why. But roulettes, beast tribe stuff, CT weeklies.. All of them just feel better to do. But that's a personal thing. And yes I'll readily agree that the Seal gear looks excellent, especially the Maelstrom and Flames tank gear. Shame it requires selling yourself to hunts for a week or two to get.

Just a note, the Alexandrite drop rate from fates was buffed a patch or two ago. I think it's around 10% now, same as the atma drop rates. Certainly, if it was at 1% then I wouldn't have gotten it in about a week of 4-6 hours of fate grinding a night in Middle La Noscea. Also I recommend not grinding fates for 6 hours a night for a week it makes your eyes bleed.

In gameplay, my 'elitism' varies, as it were, depending on the content I'm doing and how much I've been doing that content. For my expert and high-level queues, I generally expect everyone to put in at least 80%. I tank pretty much exclusively so a lot of the speed of the dungeon is on me, which I like. If a DPS is obviously fucking up rotations or eating things it shouldn't be eating, it definitely sours my mood, though I don't call it out. It does leave me irritated for the next queue though, which can lead to spirals. I also get irked when I see healers not pushing DPS when I'm perfeclty healthy and not in any danger of dying or getting to dangerous HP levels in the near future. At this point you're just making the dungeon take five minutes longer so yeah, I'll get angry at you. Healer DPSing is a core conceit of the game and I expect you to make use of it if it seems a viable option. In Extreme primals I generally expect everyone to know the fight. If you're DFing into Shiva EX, know what the hell you're doing at least on a base level. Otherwise you are wasting the time of seven other people if you've never read a guide or watched a video or anything. Again, Id on't call people out on this, I just vote abandon if it looks ot be a fail group, and outright leave if that fails and it seems hopeless. I'm good at internalizing my anger, at least. I can eat the half-hour penalty fine. Funnily enough, my true salt comes from Odin. I just cannot have a healthy experience DFing that bastard. I am a 123 WAR with strength accessories. I should not be out-DPSing all of the DPS. Why am I out-DPSing all of the DPS, damn it. That fight has a DPS check that's way too fucking tight for DF, and it fills me with salt whenever I try to run it. What makes it worse is that PFs for Odin very rarely fill. At least the Demon set looks great, or else I'd be lost on what plate glamour to use. Ugh. Fuck that fight, and fuck anyone that queues into it as DPS and does sub-200 damage. Odin is the one DF that you can tell within two minutes if it's goign to be mathematically feasible or not. Yes, I parse DFs. No I don't mention it in-game, I'm not an idiot. Finally, I lead a static that's currently at T9. Since I bill it as semi-casual, I'm more lenient on them for mistakes and learning/improvement than I am in DFs for easier content. My expectations for my static are consistent improvement in gear and rotation knowledge, continued development in fight knowledge and memorization, and above all consistent attendance. I can shove competency down your throat 90% of the time. I can't if you don't even show up. We'ev only been a static for a couple of weeks so I haven't had to have any competency-related talks with anyone yet, but if you fuck up for days on end on the same mechanic, ten times a night, we'll have issues and we'll talk. I have fast learners so far, at least. Just need to get a solidified group of consistent showers. Basically, it boils down to the fact that as tank, I have a surprisingly light load in 85% of fights. So I get to stare and watch everyone else do their thing, and judge them when they fail, and get salty when those failures cause wipes that had no business happening. It's a unique aspect of tanking when you get comfortable with it and the fight. We don't 'do' too much most of the time, which means our job is 'stand there and pray everyone else doesn't suck'.

Hunts are essentially people grinding their in-game time away at non-content for gear they don't actually need to do the content that they're capable of. As a more cynical view of hunts, heh. The 2.51 update to the weekly (You can get carbontwine now) made Hunts a lot less of a madly rushed thing than they were earlier when they were the only way to get 130 gear that wasn't Final Coil. Gear that you really, entirely didn't need if you weren't already doing Final Coil, as SCoB is completely doable in Soldiery/Poetics stuff and you get the upgrade materials and Dreadwyrm from FCoB to fill out your 130 anyways without hunts. I've never killed an A or S rank in the month-plus I've been at cap and don't plan on starting. I think hunts are community-destructive non-content. But if chasing rare mobs and staring at timers is your thing, more power to you.

That PLD AF armor combined with the disappointment of the WAR one to me (As well as needs of my static) mean Sigrid is going PLD main in Heavensward. So her RP will change and shift a little to accommodate this change as the expansion draws closer. The pirate-barbarian might become a bit less crude. But still very crude. Sigrid, the least-refined of free paladins.

I can try to recruit here, right?... Why not! So, I lead a static, have been for a week in fact. We're still in the half-formative phase of 'people come in and out as they learn if they're compatible with us or not. And if they can even make times.' We're a semi-casual group comprised of people that just haven't managed to clear T9 yet for some reason or another. My reason is that I've been playing the game for just two and a half months now stop judging me. I won't judge your reasons, whatever they might be. What I will say is that having a static to learn phases and meshing with is a hell of a lot better than trying to join random learning parties on PF or spamming DF until you win the jackpot of queuing into a 7-man that all have it on farm. But unfortunately at the moment all I need is a BRD. So if you're a BRD of at least 105-110 or so ilevel and a degree of competency in your class, along with a willingness to learn and improve, feel free to sign on. Now the relevant information. We raid T/Th/F from 8:30-10:30 PM US Eastern, and Teamspeak 3 is required. You'd be expected to attend all raids unless something significant comes up in real life, at which point I'd expect to be informed adequately beforehand that you'll miss. If you miss two unannounced nights in a month, you're out. I do judge performance but so long as you're not making the same mistakes night after night after night I'm pretty laid back. It's a learning process after all. This is a great time to get in my group. We just started T9 progression last night, so we're all on the first phase page of learning the fight as a group, so we won't even get mad when you need a pull or two to learn meteor placement! When (If[Really hopefully when]) we clear T9, it'll be to FCoB and a hopeful T13 clear. Ideally this group will stick together into Alexander for Heavensward too.

And if FF ever gets mechanical dueling we'll just see strength-accessory tanks win week after week and lose all the fun emotes that make the event worth doing. RNG's the only way to make it work and fair. But that said I'm in favor of taking out the 'loss' record. Because yeah people are just going to get a massively bad ratio over time, everyone, because of the RNG. Tracking just fights shows either consistently good RNG or consistent attendance.