Analogy for Playing as a Caster

[Freyar]

I find myself being the

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

[Ghunzyr]

((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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And remember kids, if you get tired of being 1-shot killed, find a gladiator that can hold aggro for you to stand behind. This is a public service message from Ghunzyr and your local tanks - Ghunzyr, helping keep groups in MMORPGs alive since 1999

 

[Freyar]

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

[Doktor_Ljubavi]

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]

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]

Fair enough, aggro generation is a touch broken.

[Ceadol]

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]

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]

#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]

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]

The trick is' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

 

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]

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]

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.

 

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]

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]

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!

[Siben]

I haven't done enough grouping to know how broken/unbroken Aggro management is so I can't comment on that,

 

Disciples of War can equip Cure, it's just not as effective as if it was used by a Disciple of Magic.

[Nira Muzyka]

We've got it mainly figured out for the most part now when grouping(That is, us lunatics in Coral Vanda), well for our typical group at least, generally we let the Glad get off a Phalanx then start hitting our buttons, if anyone pulls a quick Provoke takes care of it and from there generally no one pulls, aside from our lovely captain, who has a funny tendency to generate a ton of threat, luckily she's a Pugilist.

 

Which isn't to say agro isn't still broken, as pulling out your weapons generates a retarded amount of threat for no reason at all, so start a fight with your weapons out.

[Asytra]

Enmity can be a bit wacky at times but from what I've observed single mob enmity is not broken, but multiple mob enmity is, however there is a solution for that too.

 

I've seen Glads successfully hold aggro and I've gotten to a point to where I can hold aggro as a pugilist by DPS as well as my actual tank abilities.

 

Properly tanking in this game isn't facerolling your sunder key, it's a dance and is a very reactive game. Most tank abilities only work after you successfully evade, parry, block, etc... and if the tank is spamming an action they will likely miss that chance. For example my highest threat ability only works after a successful evade, if I'm not keeping Featherfoot and Light Strike up, my chances of that aren't great. It also adds a stun which is a nice damage mitigation. The way your gear is laid out also has a big effect on a tanks chance to parry/evade/etc...

 

For pulls where you get more than one mob it's helpful to have a tank on each mob, it's possible to hold aggro on two as a pug but you have to do LOTS of swapping back and forth and forget using your tank abilities. Marauders appear to be your best AoE tanks... The exception to all of this is of course when the mobs keep resetting, which I had happen repeatedly to me last night despite being the MT and group leader, with everyone bunched up on me. Mob resetting is what's causing your enmity reset.

 

What I've seemed to notice is that each tank type has their role...

-GLA are excellent tanks for really hard single mobs, but fairly rubbish trying to hold aggro on multiple. They also must rely on their shield abilities to properly tank and it may require the group to "slow their roll" so the GLA can establish aggro. Once they do though it is VERY difficult to break that aggro.

-MAR are great for pulls where you get a couple mobs, they seem fairly good solo target.

-PUG are great off-tanks, if played well they can stand toe to toe with a GLA but when you DO get hit you get wrecked.

 

Which isn't to say agro isn't still broken' date=' as pulling out your weapons generates a retarded amount of threat for no reason at all, so start a fight with your weapons out.[/quote']

 

I'll totally agree that some actions do generate stupid amounts of threat!

 

Another reason why being in active mode and getting buffed before combat is engaged is paramount for tanks being able to hold initial aggro.

 

Disciples of War can equip Cure' date=' it's just not as effective as if it was used by a Disciple of Magic.[/quote']

 

I leveled CON to 4 for this myself. Its very helpful when soloing but less so when fighting big things as a group. The reason is because with the damage nerf from being cross class you are either breaking even with the mobs DPS or getting a net loss. It can be helpful if you are SO close to Second Wind coming off of C/D or a Conjurer heal but I would argue it might be better to just keep up your evasion/parry/etc abilities as the cast time is a pain. One nice thing about it is that you can move a bit while casting, meaning it can be cast while moving out of the way of a mobs "chargin muh lazar" conal attacks if you time it properly.