2229: The Fist of the Son and The Cuff of the Son

0229_001

Been taking my time getting through the new Alexander raid (just the normal version) in Final Fantasy XIV over the last couple of evenings, and thought I’d write down a walkthrough for the first two floors, largely to refresh my own memory and perhaps to provide a convenient service to anyone passing by who wants to know such things.

As with Alexander: Gordias, Alexander: Midas is split into four areas, each of which allows you to get one piece of loot per week. These pieces of loot are tokens that can be exchanged for gear in Idyllshire in the same place you turn in Allagan Tomestones of Esoterics and Lore; like the gear from Gordias, you need varying numbers of tokens for different pieces of gear. Accessories require one bolt, so are the easiest to get, but are also often the smallest upgrade.

The Fist of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), chain (1 needed for belt), pedal (2 needed for boots)

Run through the first area, and use the steam vents to jump up to the top of the room. Pass through the doorway and you’ll be confronted with not one but two Fausts. They’re much easier to handle than the one in The Fist of the Father, though; one tank take each, keep them together, focus down one at a time.

It’s not over, though! After the second Faust drops, a pulsing AoE marker will appear on the floor. Get away from it, as Hummelfaust is going to drop down, dealing more damage the closer you are to its drop spot.

One tank should take Hummelfaust, the other should switch to DPSing and simply batter him down as quickly as possible. Much like OG Faust, this is designed as a DPS check to ensure that your group is going to be up to the job of toppling the subsequent bosses.

Once Hummelfaust is down, hop onto the conveyor belt to reach the boss room.

BOSS: Ratfinx Twinkledinks

This fight initially seems utterly bewildering, but it’s actually fairly straightforward. You need to pay close attention to what is happening at all times, though; you might find it helpful to Focus Target Ratfinx to help keep an eye on what he’s up to in case you need to target something else.

Before you start, mark the back-left corner of the room as A and the front-right corner as B. You’ll be tanking Ratfinx at A, while B is set aside as a no-go area for a later mechanic.

Start the fight. Ratfinx will be reluctant to move as the battle begins, so take the opportunity to establish solid aggro if you’re a tank. Once he transforms into his giant form, then you can move him over to A.

Ratfinx will proceed to pummel the main tank about the head, inflicting stacks of Headache, which increases damage taken. When Headache reaches 4 stacks, it becomes Concussion, which stuns you completely. When this happens, you’ll see Ratfinx wind up for a big punch much like the one Sephirot does; at this point, the off-tank should immediately use Provoke and hit Ratfinx to take aggro from the original tank, and take the imminent big hit, which is slightly less big if you don’t have Headache or Concussion.

Throughout the fight, Ratfinx will cast Bomb’s Away, which brings one or more large bombs into the arena. When this happens, someone near the centre of the room should stand in the purple circle to activate the machinery, then at least one person should run to the red pool that forms to the side of the arena. Stepping in this turns you into a gorilla with just two abilities, the first of which allows you to punch bombs away with ease, and the second of which allows you to transform back into your normal form. Punch the bombs to B to keep them safely away from everyone, then change back and return to your normal role.

At various points throughout the battle, Ratfinx will mark a player and cast Glubgloop (or something similar). The marked player should get well out of the way of A, B and where the pools form under the syringes; after the AoE marker appears, a persistent puddle of goop will drop on the floor and stick around for a little while, so keep it out of the way, probably in one of the unmarked corners.

From his second giant transformation onwards, Ratfinx will start casting Boost. When he does this, a player needs to activate the machine in the middle and all players (including the tank) need to rush to the purple puddle to turn into a bird. By flying, you avoid his devastating ground-pound attack; once he’s finished doing this, you can use Apothecary to change back into your normal form once again.

Repeat the process, with tanks keeping a careful eye out for Concussion and everyone else watching for Bomb’s Away and Boost, and it won’t be long before he’s down. There are a few additional beasties that show up throughout the fight, but the off-tank can pick these up easily and they don’t present much of a threat.

The Cuff of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), pedal (2 needed for boots), lens (2 needed for headpiece)

Run forwards and engage the initial group of enemies. To take a bit of pressure off the main tank, the off-tank may want to take one of the two Gobwalkers. Burn down the enemies as quickly as possible and proceed down the corridor, where you’ll be accosted by a number of Goblin Gliders. Tank and spank these, then jump down the passageway on the right of the corridor to be flung into the boss room, where you’ll fight four bosses in succession. Don’t worry; if you take one down, it stays down.

BOSS: Blaster

Blaster has two main attacks. The first is to drop mines in the arena. These will show AoE markers where they drop, and will continue to pulse afterwards. Do not stand on them, as they deal heavy damage and inflict various status effects in an area.

Blaster’s second attack is to mark players; after a moment, he’ll drop a Mirage version of himself on them, and after another moment or so, these will charge across the arena in the direction they’re facing. Don’t be in their way.

DPS down Blaster while avoiding these two mechanics and he’ll fall easily.

BOSS: Brawler

Brawler has three attacks that don’t have cast bars: you have to rely entirely on visual cues. These cues are related to the fists he holds up when he charges himself with energy; after the blue flash of light around both hands you’ll see him have either a red fist, a blue fist or both fists, and you’ll have a couple of seconds to handle the mechanic appropriately.

If he raises the red fist, a random player is going to get targeted and damaged. Everyone move away from the boss to minimise this damage; it declines with distance.

If he raises the blue fist, the off-tank should use Provoke to take aggro from the main tank, while the main tank gets behind the boss. Shortly after, the new main tank will take a big hit, but not as massive as the one the original tank would have taken with the Vulnerability debuff Brawler applies!

If he raises both fists, the current tank should turn Brawler around to face the rest of the party; he’ll fire a massive dual laser whose damage is split between everyone it hits.

Best way to handle this is to have everyone stacked or lined up directly behind Brawler as the main tank tanks him, then move according to the mechanics. After a mechanic is finished, get back into position and continue.

BOSS: Swindler

This is a weird one that requires you to be observant, but it’s not that complicated.

The main mechanic here is Swindlers High and Low Mathematicks debuffs that he applies to various players. High Mathematicks is a purple-coloured debuff icon, while Low Mathematicks is a red-coloured debuff icon. When you receive one of these, stand on a floor tile according to your debuff: if you have Low Mathematicks (red), stand on a red, elevated tile; if you have High Mathematicks, stand on a grey, normal tile. Note that the arrangement of the tiles will shift several times during the battle.

The only other mechanic for this fight sees a player marked with a circle around themselves and a number of orbs above their head. A number of people matching the number of orbs need to be in the circle to prevent horrible messy death.

Dance around according to the debuffs and you’ll be good for the final battle.

BOSS: Vortexer

Vortexer will inflict a stacking Vulnerability debuff on whoever is tanking it; the off-tank should use Provoke and take aggro when this reaches two stacks.

Circle AoEs indicate that pools of fiery sludge (similar to Bahamut’s attack in Turn 13) will be dropping in these places. Stay out of them, and don’t run through them, as they debuff you while you’re in them. Also make sure you don’t have your back to one.

Super Cyclone is a massive knockback on everyone, centred on the boss. Position yourself so you won’t get knocked back into a pool of sludge.

When a player gets marked, they’ll drop a waterspout after a few moments. Position this somewhere near-ish and behind the boss.

Several players will get Shiva-style blizzard markers on and around them. At least one person needs to drop this with its circle over the waterspout to freeze it into a block of ice. These will leave a patch of Frostbite-inflicting ice on the ground for a short period, but these will dissipate after a few moments.

When Vortexer starts casting Ultra Flash, everyone (including the tank) needs to hide behind the frozen waterspout and break line-of-sight with Vortexer to avoid being instakilled. After this, the ice block will shatter and the process repeats. Once Vortexer is down, you’re done!

2158: Farewell, Eorzea… For Now

0158_001

I made a difficult decision today: to quit Final Fantasy XIV. Temporarily, at least.

This is a decision I’ve been mulling over for quite some time, I must admit, since following the initial excitement over the expansion pack Heavensward, the new content that’s shown up since was 1) very, very late indeed and 2) not great. The one thing that had kept me clinging on was the good friends I’ve made while playing it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that with the state of endgame as it is now, it’s just not fun enough to warrant the endless grind.

Before we go any further, I would like to point out that Final Fantasy XIV is still an excellent game, and its storyline through A Realm Reborn and Heavensward is one of the best Final Fantasies I’ve had the pleasure of playing over the years. Its battle system is great, its graphics are wonderful, its music is without peer and it has numerous memorable setpieces and boss fights that will doubtless stay with me for years afterwards.

The issue comes with endgame — what you do when you get to level 60, have no more experience points to gain, and hit the ceiling of available content. At this point most people do one of two things: level another class, or get on the gear treadmill to equip their “main” class as well as possible, either simply for the satisfaction of doing it, or with a mind to taking on the game’s most challenging content such as raids.

The main trouble with Heavensward endgame as it exists today is that it’s not all that different from A Realm Reborn’s endgame, only with a fraction of the level cap content that A Realm Reborn had by the end of its cycle of patches. This may be an unfair comparison, but given that most people who played through Heavensward spent months or more at level 50 in A Realm Reborn, the shift back to having a very limited selection of meaningful content to play was somewhat jarring — particularly as people raced through Heavensward’s main scenario and initial levelling process to 60 way quicker than they beat A Realm Reborn, despite them being comparable in length.

So what do you do in endgame? As previously mentioned, you gear up. This is primarily accomplished by collecting “tomestones” from running dungeons, daily roulettes and a couple of other sources. There’s a weekly cap on one of the types of tomestones — the one that gets you some of the best equipment in the game currently — which means that it unavoidably takes several weeks, even months, to put together a complete armour and weaponry set for just one class, let alone multiple.

There are other means of acquiring gear, of course; the newly added Void Ark raid is designed to get people into better gear without grinding for tomestones by allowing them one piece of gear per week of comparable level to an unupgraded Tomestone piece. And The Diadem, the home to the exploration missions, can drop some seriously good equipment, though in that case it’s very much left up to random chance.

Part of the problem with Heavensward’s endgame right now is that the high-level raid — the most difficult thing in the game, and source of some of the best equipment — just isn’t very interesting. A Realm Reborn’s The Binding Coil of Bahamut was spectacular: it told its own story, had unique bosses and music, and was extremely rewarding to play through, particularly once its entire saga was completed and gave you an opportunity to fight A Realm Reborn’s “true” final boss.

Alexander, the current level 60 raid, meanwhile, suffers for a number of reasons: firstly, its Normal mode incarnation, designed so those who aren’t up to the challenges of raiding could enjoy its story, is far too easy and quite dull. And secondly, said story is not interesting at all, building on one of the more ridiculous side stories from A Realm Reborn rather than the world-shaking drama that Coil offered. For many people, clearing Coil wasn’t about gear; it was about seeing a cool story through to its conclusion. And while Alexander has a story, it’s not a patch on Coil’s.

There’s also the fact that Normal mode removes that incentive to progress that Coil had. The only way to see Coil’s story was to beat Coil, whether you did that when it was fresh, new and extremely difficult, or when it got considerably nerfed (but was still a stiff challenge) months down the line. With Alexander, you can beat its Normal mode rather easily, even if you have no experience with raiding, and by then you’ve seen its whole story, meaning its Savage incarnation becomes little more than a more difficult version of exactly the same thing.

This is my main problem, but there’s a number of other issues that have been bugging me for a little while too. I was really looking forward to the exploration missions, since they sounded like something new and interesting, but they turned out to be glorified Hunts, and Hunts are rubbish, since all they are is 300 people dogpiling a monster designed to be fought by 8 people, closely followed by at least 150 more people whining in /shout about someone “pulling early”. Diadem at least limits the chaos to 72 players at once, but there’s no “exploration” going on; within hours of it appearing for the first time, people had already figured out the most “efficient” way of getting the best rewards, which involves standing in one place and fighting the same damage sponge enemies over and over again until some slightly stronger damage sponge enemies show up and hopefully drop some slightly better loot. There was a “loot whore” angle to Diadem that showed promise, but in practice, with the way Final Fantasy XIV is designed in terms of stats, it’s not really a concept that works within the game’s overall framework.

Perhaps the thing I’ve found most offputting, though, is the changing attitudes of a lot of the playerbase. I recall complimenting Final Fantasy XIV’s community when it first launched for being incredibly friendly and helpful to one another, sharing information and tips with newcomers and cooperating to make the virtual world of Eorzea a better place for everyone. Over time, this appears to have dissipated somewhat, to be replaced with a bevy of whiny players who insult you if you don’t speedrun a dungeon, and people who constantly run damage parsers in the background just so they can post screenshots on Twitter and bitch about how awful the Bard they just ran Brayflox with was. The unfortunate elitist attitude of a lot of these players drives off newcomers and makes them afraid to make mistakes, which in turn puts people off trying more difficult content, which ultimately only hurts the high-level players, who can often be found in Party Finder bitching about not having anyone to clear Alexander Savage with.

I’m not sure why this shift in attitude happened, or if it’s always been there and I just hadn’t been aware of it. I know that a lot of Final Fantasy XIV players that I follow on Twitter seem to have changed for the worse, though, preferring to post screenshots of bad parses and arguments in party chat rather than celebrating their victories.

There’s part of the trouble, though, I think; there’s not that many victories to celebrate for veteran players any more. Even victory over a floor of Alexander Savage feels somewhat hollow, because everyone doing Savage will have already beaten all those bosses in Normal mode. “I beat The Manipulator” doesn’t have the same gravitas to it as “I killed Bahamut!”, after all.

With the lack of new victories to celebrate, it’s understandable that people might get jaded and want to complain about things. It’s understandable that those who want to be challenged with new content would get frustrated and start to take it out on people who haven’t been running Savage for several months, or who don’t know how to beat Ravana Extreme. It’s not particularly okay that these people do this, but it is at least understandable.

And I don’t want to be one of those people, continuing to play a game that feels like work and complaining about it endlessly when I could, instead, be doing something more fun — exploring new worlds in other RPGs, or catching up on my backlog, or enjoying some retro classics for the nth time.

Final Fantasy XIV will always be special to me. It’s a virtual world that I’ve spent a good proportion of the last few years in. I made some great friends while playing, all of whom I sincerely hope will continue to be friends outside the game — something I’m confident about, since we all hung out together at PAX and didn’t kill each other. And it was the setting for my proposal to my wife. So although my criticisms above may sound harsh, they’re entirely personal, and I certainly do not and never will hate the game at all. It’s simply time to take a break from it — perhaps indefinitely, or perhaps just temporarily.

Either way, thanks, Eorzea, Square Enix and Yoshi-P; it’s been a wild and magical ride for the last few years, and I’m never going to forget it.

2125: Walk a Mile in the Tank’s Shoes

One of the things I really like about Final Fantasy XIV is how easy it is to switch jobs to one of the other classes. Swap out your weapon (and, more than likely, armour) and bam: you’re another class, with no need to create a new character.

This system encourages people to try out more than the class they start with, and provides a great opportunity for players to learn about not just the role they choose to “main”, but also other types of character they might run into in cooperative content.

It’s actually really interesting to run the same thing as each of the three main types of character — tank, healer, DPS — because the experience is often significantly different for each. And it’s not always just a case of “tank stands in front of monsters, DPS stand behind, healer makes sure no-one dies” — one of Final Fantasy XIV’s biggest strengths is that its encounters are often designed to keep things interesting for everyone in the party, with tanks, healers and DPS alike being expected to deal with mechanics and take care of themselves as much as possible.

Take something like the fourth floor of the Alexander raid, for example. As a tank, your job is relatively straightforward: stand at the front repeatedly hacking away at The Manipulator’s legs until it falls over; try and mitigate as much of the incoming damage as possible. Straightforward, that is, unless you’re the off-tank, in which case you’ll be frequently sucked into a side “Quarantine” room with a DPS and expected to defeat a not-particularly-tough add before being returned to your party. DPS, meanwhile, are expected to pop exploding orbs that appear around the room, try and position themselves so tanks can intercept damage from laser attacks, defeat additional enemies as quickly as possible and, above all, try not to die. And the healers, aside from keeping everyone standing, have to deal with a unique mechanic in the last phase where they need to keep apart from each other and the rest of the party, lest everyone keel over dead.

It’s not always this complex, of course, but even so, walking a few miles in each of the three roles’ shoes gives you a better overall understanding of how the game as a whole works, and that’s really important when playing cooperatively — if only to know exactly what all those buffs the healers are throwing on you mean, and that you shouldn’t Stun enemies when the Dark Knight has Blood Price up!

That and it’s just kind of fun to see how the different classes play, because even in ostensibly similar classes (Paladin, Dark Knight, Warrior, for example — all are tanks) there’s plenty of variation in play style and overall “feel”. You might even find yourself liking a new class more than what you originally considered to be your “main” — it’s happened to me twice to date!

2119: Squishing a Bug

Finally cleared Ravana Extreme in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, bringing me up to date on absolutely everything in the game so far with the exception of Alexander Savage, which I’m not in a particular hurry to rush through at the moment.

Ravana, though, was a lot of fun. I’d held off even trying that fight for a while for some reason — I’d got it into my head that it would be “scary”, and I didn’t want to be a burden on any group who took me along with them. In some ways, this was quite a nostalgic feeling; when I first started playing Final Fantasy XIV, the prospect of pretty much any group content was absolutely terrifying, and playing a role with responsibilities more than “dodge shit, do damage” (both important, to be fair) was simply out of the question. Now, of course, my best-levelled, best-geared classes are both tanks, and I have a healer on the way to the higher levels, too, while I haven’t really touched my Black Mage — the class I started with — for quite some time.

Anyway. Ravana EX is a challenging fight, to be sure, even with decent gear. There’s a lot of damage, and a lot of reliance on party members knowing and understanding mechanics together. But, for me, this sort of fight is the most satisfying kind of battle in Final Fantasy XIV; it’s a really fun experience to see eight people working together, moving as a team and doing their best to overcome a stiff challenge. A couple of years ago when I first decided to check out Final Fantasy XIV more out of curiosity — and some fond memories of the 20 levels of Final Fantasy XI I played a few years back — I couldn’t have imagined I’d be challenging difficult battles like this, but now I’m happy to be not exactly at the top tier of players in our Free Company, but certainly someone who can be relied on to jump in and try their best at whatever the game has to offer.

I like Ravana EX because there’s a nice combination of learnable mechanics with a little bit of randomness thrown in to make things interesting. Ravana does the same moves in the same order for the most part, and the way in which you deal with them is the same. However, things like positioning and who is initially targeted for his most powerful attacks vary with each attempt, so you have to be on your toes. As a tank, there’s also some fun mechanics, most notably dodging his frontal cone “Tapasya” (sp?) attack and sharing the damage from his devastating Blinding Blade tankbuster with the offtank; it’s certainly a lot more than “stand there and get hit while doing as much damage as you can”. Which is nice.

Now that I’m up to date on everything, I’m very keen to see what patch 3.1, which is out in a couple of days, has to offer. A few days ago I commented on the things I’m particularly looking forward to; mostly, I’m excited about the fact that the new content is likely to bring a bunch of people who maybe haven’t played for a little while back to the game; they’re tricking in already, but there will doubtless be a big surge once the patch is actually available, the main scenario storyline continues and the more impressive new content is ready to be challenged.

In the meantime, since my Dark Knight sword failed to drop in three successful clears of Ravana, it looks like I have a bit of farming in my immediate future if I want to have a decent weapon ahead of the new Relic’s arrival in 3.15…

2117: Preparing for the Coming Darkness

The preliminary patch notes for the long-awaited Version 3.1 of Final Fantasy XIV were released earlier today, and there’s a lot to take in!

Main Scenario

Heavensward’s main scenario was satisfyingly complete, with a wonderful final boss fight. But, in the best tradition of Final Fantasy XIV to date, it teased a coming storm, specifically involving a “Warrior of Darkness”, who is presumably intended to be some sort of dark counterpart to our own player characters, the Warrior of Light.

Yoshi-P spoke in a Japanese language interview recently in a bit more detail about 3.1 and what to expect from the main scenario. It seems like the game will be moving away from the completely linear main scenario quest it’s had to date, and will instead have a number of concurrent storylines. The reason for this is partly practical — parallel storylines afford the opportunity for the devs to unlock group content a bit more quickly rather than relying on linear main story progress — and partly to allow the story to develop in a few different directions simultaneously. It should also — hopefully, anyway — discourage people from skipping the (actually really good, well-written) main scenario quests just so they can get at the new dungeons/trials/whatevers.

Anyway. I’m not yet sure where the main scenario will be taking us, but it’s clear we’ll be seeing more of the shadowy Ascians, who are the Recurring Bad Guys You Never Actually Defeat that you always need in an MMO. We’ll also be seeing the Warrior of Darkness, presumably, and perhaps visiting some strange and wonderful locales. Given that Heavensward appears to be heavily inspired by Final Fantasy IV, it’s entirely possible we’ll be taking a trip to the moon at some point, though exactly how that will be implemented remains to be seen, particularly as there’s still a whole lot of Hydaelyn left to explore.

Dungeons

As I’ve previously noted, the fact that there are only two new dungeons in 3.1 was initially disappointing to me, but hopefully they should be good fun. The Arboretum dungeon in particular sounds like it has the potential to be interesting and challenging, and Pharos Sirius (Hard) apparently has a bunch of surprises in store; it’s not just a run from the top of the lighthouse down to the bottom, as its appearance in the recent trailer seemed to indicate.

On the raid front, the Void Ark 24-man raid dungeon will doubtless be a highlight. It looks like it will have a suitably menacing atmosphere that’s a bit different from other dungeons we’ve seen to date. It also sounds as if there will be some sort of diverging path mechanic, where the three 8-man parties will split off in different directions to do different things at the same time. Whether this is similar to the Atomos fight in Labyrinth of the Ancients, which simply involved three groups doing the same thing in different places at the same time, or something more ambitious remains to be seen. Either way, I’m looking forward to it a great deal — particularly as we’re making a big effort to try and get a full 24-person Free Company run going the weekend after the patch.

Trials

Thordan Extreme, or rather The Minstrel’s Ballad: Thordan’s Reign is the big highlight here. A reprise of the formula from The Minstrel’s Ballad: Ultima’s Bane, Thordan’s Reign is a more difficult version of Heavensward’s spectacular but disappointingly easy final boss fight. Supposedly its difficulty is tuned somewhere between the current Extreme primals Bismarck and Ravana, and the current “Savage” raid dungeon Alexander, though it was also compared to the notorious Turn 9, still regarded as one of the most difficult fights in the game, even when playing with unsynced item and character levels.

Thordan’s Reign will apparently be a ten-phase fight, making it sound as if it will be one of the most complicated fights in the game to learn, depending on how complex each individual phase is. To put this in context, the previous most difficult fights in the game had considerably fewer phases: Turn 5 had five, Turn 9 had four, Turn 13 had four, though each of these phases had a number of different mechanics that had to be dealt with appropriately. It’s entirely possible that each “phase” of Thordan’s Reign will have just one or two different mechanics at a time, but we shall see!

The Diadem

This is the bit I’m most interested in: the Exploration Missions, in which you fly off in an airship (either borrowed from Ishgard or belonging to your Free Company) to explore floating islands in the sky. Once there, you have 90 minutes to piss about with up to 71 other people, killing monsters, finding treasure, gathering goodies and completing objectives. The rewards are worthwhile, too; Tomestones of Esoterics will be awarded for completing objectives, and treasure chests dropped by monsters will contain item level 210 equipment, which is theoretically among some of the best in the game, though their randomised secondary stats will make them either amazing or useless for anything other than spiritbonding.

The reason I’m most excited about The Diadem is that it’s probably the most significant shakeup to Final Fantasy XIV’s structure since the launch of A Realm Reborn. Up until now, the game has followed a fairly standard formula: solo content in the open world, group content in linear instances, occasional group open world activities such as FATEs and Hunts. The Diadem occupies a curious space somewhere between an instanced dungeon and open world content; the area you’re in is instanced and time-limited like a dungeon or trial, but there may be other players in there at the same time as you and your friends, and the structure is inherently more open-ended than the extremely linearly designed dungeons and trials. In other words, a trip to The Diadem will not be something you can “learn” and then perform by rote like the current dungeons and trials — not that there’s anything wrong with that format! — but rather, hopefully anyway, will provide a degree of randomness that will make things interesting to revisit time and time again.

Relic

The new Relic — known as an Anima weapon — isn’t launching with 3.1, but is instead coming a month later in 3.15. The previous Relic quest was one of the most notoriously time-consuming activities in the game, intended to be an alternative route to getting one of the best weapons in the game for those who didn’t want to — or weren’t able to — raid. We know next to nothing about what the new Relic questline will involve as yet, but you can probably count on it involving grinding, revisiting old content, completing objectives and a shared sense of camaraderie with your companions as you’re gradually driven mad by what initially appears to be a completely unreasonable, unmanageable set of expectations.

Despite being at times irritating and demoralising, the original Relic quest was ultimately extremely satisfying, as it’s the most convincing “build your own lightsaber” moment I’ve experienced in any game. This was a single weapon that you kept hold of for a long time, gradually improving bit by bit until it was a force to be reckoned with… and eventually transformed into something even more impressive. Doubtless the new weapon will be a similar situation — and those who made the effort to get a Relic weapon all the way to its final “Zeta” form will be rewarded with being able to skip about 10 hours’ worth of grinding, apparently, so that’s nice. (Of course, it took quite a bit more than 10 hours to make said Zeta, but any bonus is better than no bonus in this instance!)

Gold Saucer

The new addition to the Manderville Gold Saucer is the interesting-looking real-time strategy game Lord of Verminion. This appears to be a surprisingly well fleshed out game in which there’s finally a use for all the collectable minions everyone has been racking up over time. Each minion has its own element, stats and abilities, and they’re thrown into virtual combat against either the CPU or another player as you attempt to smash up your opponent’s structures before they do the same to you. It will be really interesting to see if the player base takes to this, or if it ultimately becomes little more than an idle distraction.

Gold Saucer is also finally being added to the Challenge Log, allowing a much easier means of acquiring MGP for the Gold Saucer’s exclusive rewards, most of which are primarily intended for vanity purposes. Simply adding things like the minigames to the Challenge Log will hopefully encourage people to party in the Gold Saucer once again, as when it launched, it was a whole lot of fun, but these days it seems a little bit dead, since people have mostly moved on.

—

Patch 3.1 is out next Tuesday. I’m looking forward to it a lot, and I’m also looking forward to the inevitable surge of people coming back to the game to check it out, too; hopefully I’ll see some people I haven’t had the chance to play with for a while. Doubtless I shall be gushing further thoughts on 3.1 over these pages once I’ve had the chance to play around with it a bit, so Please Look Forward To It.

2113: The Dark Knight Rises

Level 58 on Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV now… almost there! I’m still really enjoying the class, and I’m looking forward to having my full suite of abilities to play with. I feel like I have a good handle on how it all works, now; Dark Knight seems to be a pretty flexible sort of tank, able to mitigate a decent amount of damage Paladin-style as well as heal themselves to a certain degree through abilities like Souleater and a cross-classed Bloodbath.

And the damage. Oh the damage. I haven’t played Warrior enough to know what sort of numbers they put out on the road to 60, but Dark Knight is miles ahead of Paladin in terms of killing efficiency. Paladin isn’t built for killing, of course, being a mitigation tank, but Dark Knight seems to strike a nice balance between being able to take some hits and put out some impressive damage numbers. It helps, of course, that I’m wearing almost entirely Strength-boosting accessories rather than the HP-boosting Vitality accessories, but I haven’t had a problem with having too few HP at any point yet, so I intend to stick with that particular course of action for the immediate future until something comes along that twats me for more than I can take in a single hit.

Mostly I’m keen to get Dark Knight safely to level 60 — and preferably item level 190 — in time for the 3.1 patch on Tuesday the 10th. There’s a bunch of interesting new stuff coming to the game that I’d like to be able to explore with my new class, most notably the two new dungeons (for which gear shouldn’t be a problem for, since I already have tank gear up to about item level 189 or so) and the Extreme version of The Singularity Reactor fight.

The latter is one of the main attractions of the new patch for many people. Taking a similar approach to the “Minstrel’s Ballad: Ultima’s Bane” fight from A Realm Reborn, it’s a remix of the final boss fight from Heavensward with (presumably) considerably more complex mechanics and a higher challenge factor. This is good, since although Heavensward’s final boss fight is undoubtedly spectacular, at current average gear levels you can trounce it pretty quickly. It doesn’t make the fight any less impressive, of course, but I know I certainly wish it would last a bit longer. Yoshi-P and the team say that the new fight will have a mighty ten phases to learn, so I’m looking forward to seeing how complex it can really be. It has the potential to be one of the most interesting, complex battles in the whole game at this rate.

Other than the more conventional content, the other appealing aspect of 3.1 is the Island Exploration mechanics that are being added. Heavensward added the ability for Free Companies to build their own airships and send them out on exploratory voyages into The Sea of Clouds, after which they’d come back bearing goodies, sometimes having discovered islands in the sky. I haven’t looked into this much at all — our Free Company has one particularly dedicated member who has been taking care of our fleet of airships so far, so I haven’t really needed to. The Island Exploration system, however, actually allows groups of players — up to 24 at once — to party up and explore some of the strange places the airships have been discovering. Once there, it’s a much more freeform experience than the rather linear dungeons in the game. You have 90 minutes to explore, fight things and find stuff. Exactly what you’ll find remains to be seen, but we know there is Aetherial gear to be found as well as gathering nodes for miners, botanists and perhaps fishers too. There will also be objectives to complete, which will reward players with the all-important Tomestones of Esoterics, which hopefully will be dished out with sufficient generosity to make Island Exploration a viable alternative to endless Dungeon Roulette grinding.

Then, of course, there’s the continuation of the main story. Heavensward’s main story was great, in my book even better than that of A Realm Reborn, so I’m interested and intrigued to see where it goes next. The “vanilla” Heavensward experience ended with an intriguing cliffhanger concerning the “Warrior of Darkness”, presumably some sort of counterpart to the player character’s “Warrior of Light”, but it remains to be seen exactly what this means. There’s also a number of unresolved teasers from A Realm Reborn’s finale that need wrapping up, so I’m hoping we’ll see some more information concerning what was going on here, too.

It’s an exciting time to be a Final Fantasy XIV player, for sure, and I’m very glad that deciding to make the switch to Dark Knight has got me out of the “rut” I was feeling like I was in with only Paladin at the level cap. I’m really looking forward to putting a level 60 Dark Knight through its paces and seeing what the future holds for the land of Eorzea — more than that, though, I’m looking forward to lots of friends coming back to play the game once there’s some new content in place that they haven’t run a thousand times already… yet, anyway.

2108: Heavensward Dungeon Boss Guides (For My Own Reference)

I ran The Aery for the first time in months earlier tonight, and I realised that, having not run it for months owing to being at the level cap, I had forgotten almost everything about it. So in an attempt to brush up on my Heavensward dungeons as I continue to level Dark Knight — and also to provide an excuse to write a guide, which is something I enjoy doing — I present to you some information on how to beat the dungeon bosses in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. Largely for my own reference.

The Dusk Vigil

Level: 51-52

Boss 1: Towering Oliphaunt

Towering Oliphaunt has a few abilities to watch out for. Firstly, there’s Rear, which is an easily dodged area-effect attack around himself, and Prehistoric Trumpet, which hits the whole room.

You should also be aware of his other abilities: Rock of Ages will stun a non-tank player, Wooly Inspiration is a conal pull attack, and Rout is a charge attack. Similar to Wild Charge in The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1, Rout’s damage can be split between a party member and the targeted player. It’s a good idea for the tank to get in between Oliphaunt and the targeted player when this happens.

Tank tank, healer heal, DPS DPS and this shouldn’t present too much difficulty.

Boss 2: Ser Yuhelmeric

Tons of adds appear in this fight. There are two main types: melee adds have a few area-effect attacks, while caster adds have the ability to buff everyone around themselves, including the boss. The tank should try to keep the boss away from the adds.

The only real ability Yuhelmeric has that you need to be aware of is Death Spiral, an attack somewhat similar to Nael’s Lunar Dynamo in The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4. In other words, it’s a doughnut-shaped attack that you can avoid completely by ensuring you’re in melee range when it goes off.

Boss 3: Opinicus

This is the most complex fight in Dusk Vigil. Opinicus has several different abilities, some of which are easier to deal with than others.

Alpine Draft is a simple line attack that can be avoided without too much difficulty.

Freefall is an attack where Opinicus jumps at a player, destroying any piles of rubble they’re standing near. These piles of rubble are important, so try and stay clear of them when you don’t need them.

Whirling Gaol is a room-wide ability that causes you to be repeatedly “pushed” towards the middle. If you reach the middle, you’ll be stunned and hit. To prevent being dragged in, hide behind one of the piles of rubble.

Winds of Winter is an ability that covers a reasonable area and stacks Wind Vulnerability Up on anyone hit, making Opinicus’ other abilities more dangerous. This attack also destroys all current piles of rubble and causes new ones to drop from the ceiling.

Sohm Al

Level: 53-54

Boss 1: Raskovnik

This is a considerably more forgiving version of the Rafflesia fight from The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1. If you’ve completed that, you’ll know what to do here.

Acid Rain is a circular area-effect ability that takes aim for all players.

Sweet Scent causes Dravanian Hornets to spawn and slowly move towards the boss. These deal no damage, but should be killed if your party has low DPS, since they buff the boss if they’re in range of Devour.

Devour is an ability that goes off after a player is marked and stunned for two seconds. It’s a circular AoE attack, and any hornets in range will give Raskovnik a stacking damage increase.

Finally, Spit is a room-wide attack to simply be healed through.

Boss 2: Myath

Myath will periodically spawn jelly adds around the room, and use attacks based on which ones he consumes. When he consumes a blue add, move away from the party member with a blue marker. When he consumes a red add, stack up on the party member with the red arrow. Remember, blue is poo, red gives head. Or something.

The only other thing to be aware of here is the big green snot add. Kill this as a priority when it appears.

Boss 3: Tioman

Sohm Al’s final boss has a number of different mechanics.

To minimise damage from the frontal cone attack Abyssic Buster, tanks should ensure that Tioman is facing away from the party.

Chaos Blast places AoE markers on each player, so avoid these.

Comet is the main ability to be aware of here. Two players will be marked and AoE circles will appear on the ground. When the marks fade, comets will fall where the players were standing, dealing room-wide damage to everyone based on how close they were to where the comets fall. To minimise damage from this, marked players should move away from the party — ideally to an edge — while the rest of the party keeps their distance too.

At around 45%, Tioman will become invincible and you must destroy her wings to continue damaging her. During this time, she will use Heavensfall, which marks a player and then spawns a cluster of circular AoEs on top of them. The marked player should move away from the rest of the party to minimise damage.

Finally, Dark Star is a room-wide AoE that you need to heal through.

After the wings are destroyed, the fight continues as before.

The Aery

Level: 55-56

Boss 1: Rangda

Rangda only has two main abilities to concern yourself with. To avoid being hit with Electric Cachexis, move into melee range with Rangda, similar to avoiding Nael’s Lunar Dynamo or Chimera’s The Dragon’s Voice.

If you get marked with Prey, move to one of the tall pillars at the outside of the room to transfer it and stay safe.

You should also kill adds as they spawn; none of them are particularly tough. Rangda also has a few other AoE attacks, but none of them hit particularly hard, so just heal through them.

Boss 2: Gyascutus

Gyascutus will gain a damage-up buff for every cloud of poison it farts out around the room. To get rid of these, use the Mustard Gas bombs that spawn occasionally to eat one or two of the clouds, then kill them. If the bombs eat four clouds, they will self-destruct, deal damage to the whole room and poison everyone four times. Don’t do this.

Boss 3: Nidhogg

Nidhogg’s go-to attack is The Crimson Price, which shits out fiery orbs at you. These burn for a few seconds, then blast a line AoE. If Nidhogg faces you and you’re not the tank, he’s going to cast one of these at you. Step aside to avoid damage.

The Sable Price is Nidhogg’s jailing ability. One player will get trapped, and the remaining party members must destroy it before Sable Weave casts, otherwise the trapped player will die.

At about 30% HP, Nidhogg will retreat to prepare his ultimate attack. During this time, you must defeat all the adds and ensure that Estinien remains standing. Tanks should grab the adds as quickly as possible, and healers should divide their attention between the party and Estinien to ensure he stays healthy. When the final add falls, Estinien will put up a shield, which you should dive inside to protect yourself from Nidhogg’s ultimate.

After this, the earlier mechanics simply repeat.

The Vault

Level: 57-58

Boss 1: Ser Adelphel Brightblade

The first phase of this fight is a simple tank-and-spank — kill Adelphel’s companions first, then knock him down. He’ll change form and the fight proper will begin.

When Adelphel casts Holy Shield Bash, he’ll jump to a player, stun and hit them. Paladins can Cover this.

Holiest of Holy deals damage to the whole room. Heal through this.

Finally, Adelphel will occasionally charge around the room and leave big explodey balls behind. Do not be near his balls when they explode, otherwise you’ll be very sorry indeed. (Huehuehue.)

Boss 2: Ser Grinnaux the Bull

Like Adelphel, Grinnaux has a trash phase first. Batter him down to start the fight proper.

Most of this fight is about dodging the various ground AoEs that Grinnaux applies around the room, but there are a couple of specific abilities to watch out for.

Hyperdimensional Slash lays a red AoE in front of Grinnaux in the direction of a random player. When this goes off, anyone in the way will take damage, and an Aetherial Tear will appear where the attack hits the wall. These Tears will tether to anyone near them and damage them, so ideally bait them all to the same part of the room.

After two Hyperdimension Slash attacks, Grinnaux will cast Faith Unmoving, which will knock everyone directly backwards when it finishes casting. Make sure your back is to part of the wall that is free from Aetherial Tears to stay safe.

Boss 3: Ser Charibert

Filthy rats! Charibert has a bunch of nasty abilities that you need to watch out for. It’s a good idea to tank him near the entrance to his arena rather than in the middle.

Altar Pyre is a simple room-wide damage attack. Heal through it.

Holy Chain tethers two players together — run apart to break it, otherwise you’ll both take damage.

Heavensflame causes flame rings to appear on the ground. Avoid them.

Charibert’s most annoying ability is to summon a row of knights, who will march across the arena and Slow anyone they trample over. Each row will always have a gap in it, so position yourself so they’ll pass you by safely or run through the gap to avoid this.

At about 50% HP, Charibert will disappear, then reappear with a bunch of Holy Flames around the room. Kill as many of these as possible, because Charibert’s next attack deals more damage the more Holy Flames are left. You can leave one or two Flames up and still be safe when this happens.

After this attack, the cycle repeats, though both Heavensflame and Charibert’s knight-summoning become more dangerous: Heavensflame has two sets of flame rings, and two rows of knights appear instead of one.

The Great Gubal Library

Level: 59-60

Boss 1: Demon Tome

This is very similar to Demon Wall in Amdapor Keep, albeit without the time limit. Instead, there are some new abilities to watch out for, including an instant-kill.

The first thing to do is avoid Demon Tome’s line AoEs, since these apply a Slow effect. The lines will come down the middle of the room first, then the sides. Position yourself ahead of time to avoid these.

Dark Blizzard III is a circle AoE that targets a random player during the line attacks. Avoid this.

Disclosure is Demon Tome’s instakill ability. When it starts to glow, run around the side until you’re behind Demon Tome to stay safe. If you’re in front of Demon Tome when Disclosure finishes casting, you’ll die.

Finally, Words of Winter is a ground freeze attack that causes you to slide while it is in effect. Plan your moves carefully, particularly when Disclosure is casting, and only move when necessary.

Boss 2: Byblos

When Byblos runs to the centre of the room, two books will spawn, with the ability to cast Death Ray at you, a line AoE that, despite the name, doesn’t do all that much damage.

When they die, orbs will tether to players. Tethered players need to position themselves so the orb hits Byblos to break his invulnerability period.

In subsequent phases, Byblos will spawn clouds of fumes. Party members should take it in turns to disperse these by running through them, since this causes damage. It’s important to manage them, though, as they can interfere with the orbs.

When Byblos isn’t invincible, he’ll perform Gale Cut on the tank. When this is being cast, the tank should run through Byblos or to the side to avoid it. He also has a Tail Swipe attack on anyone behind him.

Finally, Head Down is a charge attack similar to the one seen in Amdapor Keep (Hard). The targeted player should ensure the line AoE doesn’t intersect with any other players to minimise damage. The easiest way to deal with this is simply to run straight at Byblos.

Boss 3: The Everliving Bibliotaph

Three times during the fight, The Everliving Bibliotaph will use Void Summon as a supernatural “Help Wanted” advertisement. In order to prevent his questionable hiring practices, you need to stand on the glowing platforms on the ground. The number of players who need to stand on a platform is indicated by how many lights are lit up on the platform in question. Multiple platforms will highlight at once, so be ready to spread out.

If you get targeted by Bibliotaph, run away from the party to bait the AoE he’s preparing for you. Everyone should keep away from this, as it pulses several times, applying damage and Vulnerability Up in the process.

At around 55% HP, Bibliotaph will cast some combination of Deep Darkness and Magic Burst. Deep Darkness covers the outside of the arena and causes a Heavy debuff for about 30 seconds. Magic Burst, meanwhile, deals damage and knockback. Neither are pleasant.

If you’re new to Final Fantasy XIV and want some more help, I wrote a bunch of guides during my time at USgamer; some of this information is a little out of date now, but the basic boss strategies and suchlike are still valid.

Dungeon guides
Level 50 dungeon guides (up to The Lost City of Amdapor)
Trial guides (up to Leviathan Hard)
Labyrinth of the Ancients guide

2107: Dark Knight Chronicles

Continuing to level Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much more powerful it feels than Paladin, but I’m really enjoying the overall feel of it a whole lot — much more than Warrior, which seemed enjoyable enough, but didn’t quite “click” with me for some reason.

I think the reason I like Dark Knight so much is that it appears to be a little less dependent on strict rotations to perform its job most effectively — or, rather, there’s more than one rotation to play around with. I particularly enjoy the fact that when playing Dark Knight it’s absolutely okay — even encouraged — to drop out of Grit, the main “tank stance”, in order to do some additional damage. This appears to be of particular benefit when fighting single-target bosses, since taking fewer overall hits means that Blood Weapon (increase attack speed, drain MP from enemy with every hit, only available when not in Grit) becomes a more efficient means of restoring MP than Blood Price (gain MP when taking damage).

Even though many of the abilities are somewhat similar in function to those found in Paladin, they somehow feel more satisfying to use. Dark Knight has an area-of-effect damage over time skill called Salted Earth, for example, that bathes an area in black and red lightning, whereas Paladin’s nearest equivalent is Circle of Scorn, which has its own little pyrotechnics display but somehow doesn’t feel quite as enjoyable to use. Dark Knight also has Scourge, which is a damage over time that can be immediately applied rather than only used at the end of a three-hit combo like Paladin’s Goring Blade. When everything lines up nicely and you can apply Scourge and Salted Earth to an enemy before letting rip with a non-Grit Dark Arts Souleater combo for a significant amount of damage, it’s a great deal of fun.

Learning my way around Dark Knight has been enjoyable, and it’s helping me rediscover my respect for Final Fantasy XIV’s combat system. People who come to FFXIV from more traditional, customisable role-playing games are sometimes a bit put out at the relative lack of personalisation FFXIV offers in terms of abilities — everyone gets the same abilities at the same levels, and the only real flexibility is in any cross-class skills you choose to use, but even here there are only certain ones that are particularly useful — but in practice it works enormously well, behaving, of all things, more like a fighting game than anything else. A slow-paced fighting game, admittedly, but a fighting game nonetheless.

Allow me to clarify. Modern fighting games demand that players learn specific button and directional inputs to perform various special moves. In order to get good at a fighting game, you need to develop a certain degree of muscle memory to be able to pull these moves off automatically. Once you’ve done that, you need to master the timing of these moves to chain them together into effective combos, and then you need to understand what the most appropriate situations to use these individual combos are.

Final Fantasy XIV is exactly the same, just at a fraction of the pace of your average fighting game. Positioning is important; responding to your enemy’s moves is important; using the right ability at the right time is important. Even muscle memory is important, particularly if you’re playing on controller — while you’re not doing Hadoken button inputs to throw a fireball at someone, you do need to be able to remember where you put all your most important abilities and be able to practically automatically perform combos with no gaps for the most efficient possible damage output. For example, on Dark Knight, my average combo runs something along the lines of LT+Y, RT+Y, LT+A, LT+RT+X, A, LT+RT+B, LT+X, RT+B, RT+X, RT+A, RT+LT+B, RT+LT+X, RT+LT+up, RT+LT+A. This pulls an enemy with Unmend, cements aggro with Unleash, kicks them in the bollocks to stun them for a few seconds, drops a Salted Earth on the ground, applies Scourge, blasts them and anything near them with Dark Passenger, does my three-hit aggro combo then my three-hit, Dark Arts-buffed Souleater combo for a nice chunk of damage. And this isn’t even getting into the situational weaving in of various defensive cooldowns to ensure that I don’t take too much damage, or other skills to support the battle.

That may all sound exceedingly complicated, but I’ve done it so many times now that it feels “automatic” to be able to perform these abilities in the order that seems to work most effectively at my level. I’m sure I’ll have to shake things up a bit as I get closer to 60 and challenging more difficult content, but for now it’s extremely satisfying to nimbly pull off these combos without breaking a sweat.

Onwards to 60 then… I should hit 54 tonight, all being well.

2105: Into Darkness

The official trailer for Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.1 came out recently, and it’s looking simply marvellous. I am happy about this, because although I feel like I’ve got over my “rut” with the game, I’d still love to see something new at last. It’s been a long time coming, after all.

My initial reaction to the announcement of 3.1 was slight disappointment, but in retrospect this was rather silly. I’ll tell you my thinking, though: previous content patches for the game tended to include three new dungeons, a new raid (either a 24-player casual raid of the Crystal Tower ilk, or an 8-player hardcore raid of the Coil ilk) and maybe some new quests and minor mechanics here and there. And gear, of course. 3.1, meanwhile, only includes two new dungeons, one of which is a “Hard Mode” version of an existing dungeon — Pharos Sirius — which immediately made me feel a bit let down that we weren’t getting as much new stuff as we had in the past.

But then I considered things a bit more, and there are plenty of interesting things happening outside the dungeons, because dungeons aren’t the only interesting thing you can do in the game. They’re cool, sure, but I get the impression that Yoshi-P and the FFXIV team very much want to try and shake up the basic formula of the game a little bit having got it where they want to be over the course of A Realm Reborn and vanilla Heavensward. In other words, that means getting people out of the “grind the same thing over and over” mentality and into doing more varied things.

Perhaps the thing I’m most intrigued by — and most mystified by — is the new Exploratory Missions system, whereby individual players, parties, alliances and Free Companies can fly off into the Sea of Clouds with their airship(s), explore a region for 90 minutes, kick the shit out of some monsters, find treasure, complete objectives and gather stuff. This has the most potential to shake up the basic structure of the game, and I really hope it turns out well.

Details are still a bit thin on the ground as yet, but it seems like there will be three difficulty levels for these exploratory missions, with the hardest level being pitched towards Free Companies with their own airships. Monsters will have difficulty ranks between 1 and 6 instead of conventional levels, and there are apparently Hunt-esque “marks” to defeat as well as regular monsters. There will be objectives to complete that will allow players to earn the all-important Tomestones to upgrade their equipment, and treasure chests that contain new Aetherial equipment with randomised stats.

The randomised element of the Exploratory missions is the thing I’m looking forward to the most, to be honest. Exactly how random it is I’m not entirely sure as yet, but I know at the very least there will be several different areas that you can fly to when you start one of these missions — it seems you won’t be able to explicitly pick where you want to go and will instead be assigned a random landing point in a random region. The equipment you can find will be scattered in bronze, silver and gold chests, and presumably tracking these chests down will involve actual exploration of the area rather than the current situation in dungeons, where equipment can be found in boss chests and stuff in all the other chests is fairly underwhelming in its awesomeness, usually consisting of either potions or crafting materials.

Aside from the Exploratory Missions, the thing I’m looking forward to the most is the new Minstrel’s Ballad trial, which is a considerably expanded version of the final boss fight from the Heavensward story quests. This was an absolutely spectacular fight, albeit not particularly difficult, so it will be exciting to have the opportunity to see this realised as something closer to what the creators apparently originally intended. It will be a ten-phase fight — they stopped short of going for thirteen phases to match the thirteen Knights of the Round — and will apparently be on par difficulty-wise with Extreme-level primal fights and the first area of Alexander (Savage). Hopefully this doesn’t mean it will be a glorified DPS check like Alexander is, but from the little I’ve seen of it so far, it looks like there’s going to be some interesting mechanics at play.

Anyway. Patch 3.1 is coming in early November, which isn’t far away now. I’m really looking forward to seeing what it has to offer, and actually a little bit thankful that the new Relic weapons — which are apparently known as “Anima Weapons” — aren’t coming immediately, instead inviting us to grind ourselves into oblivion from patch 3.15 onwards.

In the meantime, I’ve got Dark Knight to level 50 today, so only ten levels to go before I can officially retire Paladin for the most part and start playing a tank class with a bit more damage output at high level! Darksiiiiiiide!

2092: I Can Have a Darkside If You Want Me To

I decided that I was going to get over my “rut” with Final Fantasy XIV today and get my mojo back, so I booted it up and decided to try something I hadn’t done before: give Dark Knight a go.

Dark Knight is the new tanking class that was added in the Heavensward expansion. So far, I’ve levelled Paladin (the main “defense tank”) to 60 as my main, and I have Warrior (the main “wallopy tank”) at 50, so I have a reasonable understanding of it. Dark Knight was a bit of a mystery, though; although I’d read a bit about it, I didn’t really have a bead on how it might actually feel to play it.

Turns out it feels like a hell of a lot of fun — far more so than the rather weedy-but-graceful-feeling Paladin, and, for my money, also more so than the cumbersome swings and heavy hits of Warrior.

I’ve only levelled fro 30-34 so far (you start Dark Knight at 30, unlike pre-expansion classes, which start at 1) so I don’t have a huge amount of experience as yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done. The class feels like a good balance between the relatively straightforward, set combos and defense of Paladin and the more intricate combos and damage-buffing of Warrior. There also seems to be a bit more in the way of “stance-dancing”, since there are a number of abilities that only work when you have a specific status effect active — or in some cases, if you don’t have it active. The skill “Blood Weapon”, for example, which increases your attack speed and allows you to drain MP from enemies, will not work if you’re in the defensive “Grit” stance, but that’s fine, since Blood Weapon is an offensive skill and Grit carries a hefty damage penalty, so the two aren’t really compatible.

I like this way of playing; rather than Paladin’s approach of sticking with Shield Oath most of the time and giving it a bit of Sword Oath only when you have a hefty aggro lead on the rest of your party, Dark Knight allows you to switch back and forth a lot more freely, giving combat a much more dynamic feel. The rhythm I was getting into by the end of tonight’s session saw me doing my basic aggro combo, weaving in the “Low Blow” stunning kick (which is off the global cooldown) and also dropping in the off-GCD “Reprisal” proc to reduce enemy damage after a successful parry. Then, when Blood Weapon was up — it actually has a pretty short cooldown — I’d drop Grit, hit Blood Weapon, unleash as many attacks as I could manage — including DRK’s DoT, which, unlike PLD’s, isn’t part of a combo, so can be applied immediately — before switching back into Grit again once Blood Weapon dropped. The timing of Blood Weapon’s cooldown usually meant that I could rotate defensive cooldowns at the same time as throwing up Blood Weapon, too, so I could mitigate at least some of the increased damage I’d be taking by dropping Grit’s considerable (20%) reduction in incoming damage.

DRK’s AoE aggro move is also a bit more intuitive than PLD’s Flash, whose radius I’m still not entirely 100% sure of. Unleash, meanwhile, displays a very clear area of effect when you use it, making it extremely apparent whether your positioning is right or not. It’s not quite as satisfying as WAR’s cone-area Overpower, being a weird-looking spell with an annoying sound effect rather than a distinctly HULK SMASH-style swing of your axe, but I’ve also found so far that DRK appears to be able to hold aggro pretty well even with only a couple of Unleashes at the start of the fight — perhaps a side-effect of its increased damage when compared to something like PLD.

I’m digging DRK so far, then, and although it’s another tank class like my main, it feels different enough from PLD already that I feel like it’s going to be enjoyable to level. And who knows? I might even end up maining it if and when I get it to 60.