Havoc Snow

Chachan gets odd looks enough for walking around with what may or may not be a baby behemoth! And getting odd looks is an amusing way to start RPs and possibly relationships. Chachan and Koporo's kinda-sorta grump-rivalry started over the latter's shock and alarm at Gran puttering around. I'm sure the same could be done with exotic mounts if you have the proper story behind it. Something beyond "Take a look at my horse, my horse is amazing" of course. ... Though that song is obnoxiously catchy. Dangit, Weebl. If it isn't "Rocked," I'm going to be very disappointed. "You've been Rocked by Titan!" Titan actually doesn't enthrall at all -- he just protects his 'children' as best as he can . According to the lore Q&A though he does enthrall, they stated that was how the Company of Heroes defeated him.

You're still agreeing though that the best course of action is going 30 STR? Not 15 VIT 15 STR? Because the argument isn't necessarily that a Tank has to go 30 points into VIT, it's just that whatever they do decide to dump their stats into, whether VIT or STR, the best option is to go 30 into it.

I can't believe I actually forgot about this, but yeah you make a very valid point. It's likely that most if not all the members of the Path were killed off leaving you and Minfilia as the only people left that we know about who have the Echo.

I agree, but I don't think the answer is "Take out stat bonuses" because I like them. I think there could be more cool ways to spread stats around in the future. I for one never suggested they should take stat allocation out of the game, I just stated that stat allocation should be job dependent, meaning that SMN and SCH would have to sets of 30 points to spend how they want instead of 30 points to share between the two.

I don't recall them EVER explaining what the tattoo meant in 2.4, so maybe it got pushed to 2.5? I always just assumed it meant they were an Archon and nothing more, I mean it was already established that the Circle of Knowing were all Archons in 1.0. Also yes, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are the combined forces of the Circle of Knowing and the Path of the Twelve. The big difference though was that in the past (1.0) the Circle of Knowing had an agenda to defeat the Primals, and the Path of the Twelve had an agenda to protect and cultivate adventurers with the Echo. Now that they have become the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, the Circle of Knowing's agenda has pretty much taken over completely, and you no longer get the feeling that there are others like you in their ranks but that you are the Chosen One. Back on topic however, the fact of the matter with special mounts is that RPers live in individual little bubbles where all of their story goes on for them, and only occasionally do their bubbles collide with other peoples bubbles. Just because one guy is riding around on a Behemoth doesn't necessarily mean he is aware there are 50 other people riding around on Behemoth's as well, and just because you've met all 50 other people doing it doesn't mean you should treat him any worse than the first one you met. Just on Balmung alone there are HUNDREDS of RPers, we are not a small tight knit community where everyone knows what everyone else is doing, there is bound to be overlap on things that are supposed to be rare, making them not nearly as rare as they should be, but that's simply the nature of the beast.

As someone who plays a Seeker of the Sun I can actually say this isn't true, though I suppose maybe it depends on your gear? All I can say is that I can do the super flare rotation without any issues and I'm full 30 into Int.

I'll have to go back and look but I can't really remember anyone in 2.0 who is demonstrated has having the Echo besides the PC and Minfilia, though I may just be drawing a blank since it's 1:30pm here and I've been up since 6pm yesterday. In either case, in 1.0 the Path of the Twelve was shown in a way that made it seem like there were quite a few, and you were just one of many, especially with the inclusion of the Path Companion. In 2.0 the focus is primarily on the Archons, Minfilia, and you with little acknowledgement that there are supposed to be others out there who have your gifts, and the fact that the Scions are now primarily focused on fighting Primals and Ascians, and no longer concerned with the protection and nurturing of people with the Echo it makes it feel even more like they are trying to make the PC into a special snowflake for having it. There's also the fact that Warrior of Light originally meant "Survivor of Carteneau" essentially, and then somehow got turned into a catchall term used for the PC specifically in the storyline, whether they fought in Carteneau or not, which sort of confuses the situation if you call yourself that, or claim to be one because you were one of the people the term was originally coined for.

They're also unfairly impacted by a slew of other stuff (spell speed on most of their gear when they need crit, etc.) And yeah, it is one hell of a slippery slope. I'd say the Paladin not wearing a shield has a lot more problems to figure out than where he needs to figure out his stat allocation. I think you might be totally missing the point here, essentially by saying stat allocation is inconsequential, it's the same thing as saying a Paladin with a Shield is also inconsequential. Stat points are stat points and if you were to look at for example the difference between i110 on MNK and i120, you only get 42 points more in your primary stat. In other words in implying that the 30 points allocated into your primary stat is inconsequential, you're implying that the upgrade from i110 to i120 is inconsequential (at least as far as primary stats go), or to put that another way; a Summoner who has 30 points in Mind but is in full i120 gear may as well still be in i110 gear when compared to a Summoner with all i120 gear and 30 points into Intelligence.

I'm not necessarily targeting this response at either of you, this is more of a general statement about MMO communities as a whole (not just FFXIV), but I never understood this mentality. Why is it that most view the nail that sticks out deserves the hammer? I've seen this sort of mindset again and again and again over the years playing in games like WoW or TERA or even my brief stay in ArcheAge. The community (or individuals in said community) tend to make these little "edicts" about what is acceptable, and whether it's intentional or not it always creates this sort of air of judgement around those communities as if to say "if you do this/don't do this then you're not worth my RP." For example, in 1.0 the lore was that having the Echo was relatively common amongst Adventurers to some degree, at least common enough that an entire organization was formed around it (The Path of the Twelve), however in 2.0 the Path is gone and now we have the Scions, and other than Minfilia you are the only other person that seems to have the Echo anymore. Because of this anyone who RPs having the Echo is usually met with that askance look Aya mentioned, because of some edict that was created on the RPC that said having the Echo was somewhat mary sue. Likewise, having in your history that you have bested a Primal despite the fact that the quests and lore imply they are summoned with enough frequency to require sending out Adventurer's weekly to dispatch them is also viewed with that same level of snubbing by many. In short what I'm getting at I guess is who cares what someone is running around on in the world (ICly or OOCly) so long as they don't completely break lore by doing it (such as claiming they are riding THE Sleipnir) and come up with a reasonable explanation for it (such as having a normal horse with Sleipnir-like barding)?

If you're willing the shell out a few extra bucks, you can always make a character on any open server, wait three days, then pay for a character transfer. It lets you bypass the character creation restrictions.

I could not have said this better myself.

This, though I view it less as losing your second ring and more as having three rings. Would you rather have a healer or damage dealer who is at their max potential, or one who is 30 points shy of one who is? I'm not saying a SCH with 30 INT isn't capable of healing, but if the system wasn't what it is that wouldn't even be a problem, and that is the issue with Dual Job classes.

Unless of course they do something like make all the new jobs require a level 30 of any class to unlock and all classless Jobs just start at lvl 30. Dual Job classes in my opinion suck horribly unless they both use the same primary stat. Take Arcanist for a example, the rule of thumb is you are supposed to dump all 30 Attribute points into your primary (of course some deviate, but that's why I call it the rule of thumb). For Arcanist you have two choices really, you can do a 50/50 split and put half in Mind and half in Int, but you're essentially gimping yourself in both SMN and SCH at this point, or you can completely cripple one Job by putting all 30 points into the primary stat for the other Job. This is simply horrible Job design, especially for a game that boasts about the ability to play and switch to any class you want. If they do more Dual Job classes in the future, they need to revamp the way attribute allocation works and make it Job specific.

Mhmm I definitely do not remember anything like this in the major events unless this was done in an off interview. Though I don't remember him saying that they were getting rid of classes all together, just that Darknight would not have one. I don't think they said there would be no new classes in general, but in the past Yoshida has stated he does not like classes and would prefer to only have Jobs. The fact that all of the new Jobs are classless seemed to suggest they were moving away from making new classes in the future and we would only see new jobs get added. There is absolutely no reason for them to add new classes if they have a way to add in new Jobs without a class attached to it.

There isn't a single mention of them saying they were going to add double jobs to current classes that I can find, and considering that all of the new Jobs being added are all classless, I'd say it's incredibly unlikely. Yoshida wants to make the game a tribute to old FF games, he never liked the Class > Job transition (as I mentioned), and they don't want to limit themselves to what they can do based on a class when it's easier to just come out with a full Job that does its own thing from the start.

"Immediately following the Calamity, an adventurer returning to Gridania from the Falcon's Nest in Coerthas happened upon a den of baby behemoths who had lost their mother to Bahamut's flames. Despite objections from friends and family alike, she kept the beasts, eventually training them to serve as mounts." This little blurb in the Mount Guide is more than enough for me to excuse anyone riding a Behemoth ICly, this is more than just flavor text, this is a lore friendly explanation that says "this isn't just a behemoth mount for funsies, this is your own personal behemoth." As for Ahriman, it's as simple as saying it's a bound Voidsent, though you had better be prepared to accept all of the IC consequences that come with riding around in public on a bound Voidsent. In regards to the Coeurl, it essentially says in their info on the Mount Guide that they can be tamed and trained to act as pets, which not only canonizes the mount but also the minion if you were so inclined as to use it.

Not to split hairs, but the theoretical Mitochondrial Eve was not the only human woman alive at the time. Environmental pressures were just exerting a particularly harsh bottleneck effect, and it's entirely possible that children of her direct lineage mated with children of a different mother - in fact, it I'd hazard to say that would be necessary to avoid extinction-levels of gene pool loss. It just so happens that hers was the only female lineage preserved, as far as we know so far. I'm not sure what hair you are splitting in my comment. Mitochondrial Eve is frequently misinterpreted so the clarification probably helps those encountering the theory for the first time from my link, but my point was simply that the notion of 'one woman siring an entire race' is not as fantastic as it first seems. Add to that the fantasy genre convention of mythologizing race and it should not be a surprise if they went that way for Au Ra. You also failed to acknowledge the point I made about it happening under the nose of the sworn enemy of the Dravanians. Let us assume for one moment that Shiva banged a Dragon, and from that coupling an entire species was born from it. Then let us assume that Ishgard never found out about it, why then are all of the Au Ra now living on another continent? I have seen the reasoning that Ishgard did know about them and forced them into exile, but let me then pose this question. If Ishgard has been locked in a near losing war with the Dragons for a thousand years, what power do you think they actually have to exile an entire race of Dragonkin from Dravania? Do you think the Elezen Pope just walked up to the Dragons and said "Hey your kids need to gtfo or else?" I highly doubt that. Considering how eager the Dragons are to defeat Ishgard, and the fact that they are willing to recruit heretics from within the ranks of Ishgard means it was also equally unlikely that the Dragons were the ones to exile the Au Ra, they would have been Dravania's greatest asset considering their human-like appearance. Clearly Yugiri has shown no knowledge of Ishgard or their politics, which means that if they were exiled the stories of their lost homeland and their war with Ishgard was lost to them over the years, however long ago it was. In short, the theory that the Au Ra might be tied to Shiva in some way is interesting, but flawed. There are a ton of holes in the idea people are conveniently overlooking simply because of hype, and I highly doubt we're going to get any indepth origin story for the Au Ra, just like we never got any origin stories for any of the other races. My bet is on the fact that the Au Ra are just another race that live in the world, who just happen to have scales and horns, and there is no rhyme or reason for it other than because SE wanted a race that resembled dragons for their dragon themed expansion.

Me and a friend are actually playing our Au Ra characters on the side already, essentially saying they were refugees from where ever their homeland is (leaving in vague on the off chance they don't end up coming from Doma) and have been living incognito in Eorzea hidden as a Hyur and a Miqo'te, using the IC fantasia method but in reverse, essentially saying they used a potion to temporarily change their appearance to something and that becoming Au Ra would be them returning to their original race/appearance.

My own character made a Faustian deal with an Ahriman for power, hoping that it would help him gain the knowledge he needed to master the three primary forms of magic. He created a replica of the Necrologos under the guidance of the Ahriman (which he actually uses as his Grimoire), and while he believes he has the Voidsent bound to his will it's more or less the other way around. Hence the Faustian deal.

They actually stated that the current classes were not going away, but that there would be no future classes. Yoshida said back during the development of 2.0 that he didn't like the Class to Job transition and if he could he would have removed classes entirely. The reason we have ROG/NIN is probably because they started development on it pretty early on (considering how long ago Yugiri was revealed initially), and the decision to switch to their original idea for classless jobs probably came too late in its development to change it. I can't find a citation for this, but I also recall him stating at one point that ACN was a special case and no other class would get the dual job thing. Personally I would much rather they eliminate classes entirely, because after 30 they are no longer really viable to use except under very rare circumstances.

Everyone but Yugiri that we have seen so far from Doma are Midlanders. That includes all of the NPCs related to the Ninja story. From what we can tell so far the Doman population is like 99% Hyur based on the fact that Yugiri is the only Au Ra to show up, or even be mentioned. While I dislike the theory that the Au Ra are half dragon children of Shiva because it just seems extremely stupid to me (How does one woman sire an entire race? Also how does she do it without anyone finding out about it?) it is still possible that the Au Ra are Dravanian in some way and Yugiri is the only Au Ra that lived in Doma.

While it would be interesting (but also very disappointing for me, because I prefer dragons over demons) if the Au Ra turned out to be some sort of Voidsent related race, it's highly unlikely. While there are some minor similarities between the horn styles you offer, there are also a lot of other Voidsent in the game that don't have horns at all, it should also be noted that the only ones that have horns that come to mind, also don't have tails, and the ones that have tails do not resemble the tails that the Au Ra have in the least. I also recall at a few points in the story (I believe the story leading up to Haukke Manor, as well as during the Black Mage quest) that it is said that Voidsent cannot materialize outside of the Void without a host or an anchor, one could assume that the Voidsent aren't even capable of procreation as they are merely an extension of the Void. My theory is this, the Au Ra are a race of people who have a similar appearance to reptiles or dragons. They are not born from Dragons anymore than Miqo'te are born from cats, they are merely another race. They have no ties to Eorzea, because most races didn't come from Eorzea to begin with and it's not that hard to believe that there are races we haven't seen yet that live on the other continents. In short, my theory is that we will get entirely new lore related to the Au Ra, they are not the children of demons or shiva or dragons, they are just a new race that fits the dragon/ishgard theme.

Looks like Au Ra fanart already coming in

I know I said I wasn't going to post in this thread anymore, but I just wanted to come in and point out how for as much as you want to try to make it seem like everyone on the internet hates the Au Ra based on your own cursory scan of posts and comments online (which you probably only went about looking for the negative ones anyways because they share your views), your own poll proves otherwise as the top two choices are "I like them" and "they're perfect."