general

But I spent probably ~40 weeks a year for about 4.5 years straight mythic raiding in WoW after that, doing way more and way worse to be able to raid, so I think I can handle something nowhere near as much of a time investment for preparing, and from what I've seen on logs, most jobs within their role seem to be pretty well balanced, unlike WoW where you can be OP one patch, dogshit the next

Everything is mostly balanced yeah

They’re good at that

Quite literally any combination of jobs can go into any content and clear

And people are usually chill, the people who aren’t are in a minority for sure

When you have so little variation in secondary stats because of so few pieces of gear around the same ilvl per slot, no choices to make for jobs like you do for talents, covenants, soulbinds, etc in WoW, and don't try to reinvent the wheel entirely every single expansion, with tacking more shit onto the wheel every major patch, it's a lot fucking easier to balance, I'd imagine.

Yuh

How much of an investment is there to get into it & prepare? Like, on a weekly basis.

Don’t even get me started on itemization, I’ve malded enough about that already lmao

I wish we had more shit to choose from man

Not much, cap tomes and have food/pots ready is about it honestly

In the immortal words of J. Allen Brack, "You think you do, but you don't." Nah, not gonna be snobby and say you definitely don't, but I don't

Everything else is up to player skill

If you’re willing to put in time/effort you’ll get shit done, can be either by grinding in pf or finding a group

We’ll get a new tier in a couple weeks so this is a good time too right

What with the leveled playing field from a new expansion drop and all

It's fucking awful trying to run the same dungeon or two, over and over, wasting time, consumables, and gold because you need to get a weapon from a 10+, or killing a boss 12 weeks in a row and never seeing a piece of gear you need of it drop, because you need haste the most, mastery second, and crit and versatility are dogshit for you, and that's the only haste/mastery helm at that ilvl in the game currently

Yeah fair

I highly doubt I'll make it to savage this tier; I just started Stormblood tonight.

Ah I see

But the main thing I’m trying to say though is that it’s more approachable than ever

How expensive are food & pots for a week of raiding? Or at least how expensive were they in ShB? And is it super expensive to buy them from other players, compared to leveling crafting jobs and making them, or just a cost?

If you wanna mess with it just go for it once you hit max

Nah its not very expensive to buy

More-so at the start of the expansion/tier for sure, but it usually levels out after a couple weeks

I’m way too lazy to make actual money and I’m definitely not gonna craft my own shit, but I’ve gotten by without issues

Yeah, even in HW it was a lot more approachable than the 4.5 years I spent mythic raiding in WoW, I was just discouraged because everyone I asked said PLD was the best tank to play at endgame, then upon reaching the point I could do savage, everyone is like "no, it doesn't do enough damage," then after grinding 45 levels of WAR, I was told I needed to get a new necklace, bracelet, and rings, so I just was discouraged.

I’m just here to hit buttons and see the big number go boom

What do you main?

I play whatever the group I’m in needs tbh, but I’d like to think i main melee

Monk and dragoon are fun

Also yeah PLD was in an unfortunate situation in HW, long cds, low damage, bad utility, couldn’t even block magic damage

Weirdly designed job at the time

I was thinking of leveling monk or samurai when I check out melee. I'm currently playing warrior, about 800k xp from 71(hit 70 right before starting Stormblood ._. ), have PLD, WHM, and AST at 60, thinking of leveling BLM for caster & BRD for ranged

Like half their kit was based on the blocking mechanic, but that was useless against tons of shit just because it was considered magic damage

Real quick, I have to mention that it was so fucking stupid that WAR and DRK got tank stances at 30, but PLD got Sword Oath(a horrible offensive stance, imo) at 30, and Shield Oath at 40.

Monk and samurai are both great tbh, I’m biased to monk because it’s my favorite job

Yeah lmao

Also war is a great choice tbh, fun and satisfying job with great utility

You have your battle turtle sword-n-board class, focused on mitigating as much damage as possible, not have its threat & mitigation stance until 10 levels after the other two, that do more damage, therefore are able to hold aggro easier outside of tank stance.

Blm is my favorite caster, fun but high effort job to be good at

Brd is apparently busted atm so there’s that

Busted good or bad?

Good

It shits on both mch and dnc

In relative DPS? Or personal as well?

Not that it really matters since it’s the start of an expac and things will change and it’s not like the others are bad

Based on the damage it brings to the group

So relative I guess

Okay

Sorry, I was just using the terminology I've seen people use

I think fflogs has it as rDPS and aDPS

Yeah I’m just used to seeing rdps haha, brain forgot what the r stands for

I'm nowhere near a flavor of the month player, but I like what I'm playing to not be absolute shit when I'm playing well, so even if it was lower DPS than the other ranged, as long as an 85th percentile BRD is close to an 85th percentile MCH and DNC, I'd be fine

But yeah pretty much everything is a good choice rn so I’d just keep at it, DRK is kinda sad atm but that’s an outlier and will probably get changed soon enough

(I hope)

Yeah, what the hell is up there?

They just didn’t give them anything with the expansion

Is the bigger change to their potencies than PLD and WAR because they use both physical & magical damage?

It’s biggest selling point was utility in prog, blackest night was an insane ability and covered a ton of shit the others couldn’t

But the expansion gave all the other tanks insane and FREE mitigation tools while changing nothing about DRK

DRK is now the only tank that has to sack damage to mitigate

On top of not getting any new cool tools

Also physical/magic damage essentially doesn’t matter anymore so that’s something

They’ve slowly removed most of the specialized buffs for either type

Sorry, I was asking if they got a bigger reduction to their potencies because they made physical & magical potencies use the same formula

Oh, no clue

But that wouldn’t really matter since the potencies didn’t really change, they were just converted iirc

And with the stat squish we have no way of really knowing anyways

I have DRK at 45, and I already didn't really like playing it because of having to juggle restoring HP, restoring MP, and dealing damage. With PLD, it was just "mitigate damage while doing your rotation, lose a GCD to heal now and then," WAR was "do your rotation, 1-2-3 heals, 1-2-4 gives damage buff," but DRK is like, "getting low on health? 1-2-3. Need MP faster? 1-2-1-2. Need more damage? Use MP. Need more damage while low on MP? Well, guess you better regen MP. Oh no, you tried to regen MP too much, now you need to 1-2-3 again!"

It probably gets better later, but it just feels awful at lower levels, and I don't experience that with PLD or WAR when synced lower.

Well you always wanna finish your combo at least, 1-2 for mp sounds good but it’s a lower gain in the long run

You lose too much damage by doing it

Yeah DRK is weird, used to be a lot more about just managing your mp but they’ve move away from that with time

Now it’s just in a weird state of being a pseudo warrior clone with more button mashing

That was the case in shb too

It honestly feels like DRK had more buttons at level 50 in HW than it did at 80 in ShB.

Kinda

Though a lot of those buttons were redundant

And not just ones removed through turning some skills into traits, turning some into role abilities, etc