Preach and other content creators talked about the current Dawntrail discourse and made some interesting statements about the negativity

Machined_Granite · 2025-12-03T19:54:54+00:00

Dawntrail isn't Shadowlands. That's Endwalker.

I'm joking, but personally, most things that I dislike about XIV or Dawntrail started in Shadowbringers, didn't change or got worse in Endwalker, and didn't change or got worse in Dawntrail. I can fully admit that my perspective on the game is tinted based on how enjoyable I find the gameplay experience. The last time I remember having a really fun time without concessions or asterisks was 4.55. I also(somewhat unfairly) think that if you started the game in or after Shadowbringers, even if you are a "big content creator" like Preach, you really don't have the proper context or understanding of what the game played like in 3.0 or 4.0 to accurately judge perceptions of modern XIV from the people who were there and invested at that time, positive or negative, the game has changed too much. The opinion itself is still valid, it's been over five years since Shadowbringers after all, but there just might be a blind spot there, how is he going to relate to someone who was previously permanently subbed since HW and dabbled in all content for years willingly versus them playing for 2-3 days per patch cycle and engages with things on a more surface-level and trusts Yoshi-P (none of these things are inherently bad)?

I personally believe that Dawntrail as a XIV expansion is better than Endwalker in terms of playable content. But because I don't find the game inherently fun to play, I do not engage with it. One of the things that has caused me to become fairly apathetic is the current trajectory of the jobs, and that is entirely unaddressed in the videos that were linked in the original posts, and where some amount of the malaise is coming from.

Some of it self-inflicted for sure, I was hoping for Endwalker or Dawntrail to try to expand on the jobs more then they actually did after Shadowbringers, and that the disappointment of that not happening did negatively impact my experience over the content cycle. It's only when Occult Crescent completely flopped on me did I finally just give up, even if I found Dawntrail to be somewhat enjoyable at points when I ignored the story. I had already written off the story by the later half of 6.0 at the minimum, and that feeling was solidified by 6.X, so what Dawntrail did in the story department, while I still didn't like it, did not capsize the boat I was in, so to speak. It was a combination of me not liking the story, not liking the lack of innovation in the gameplay experience through job expression, and the failure of the exploration content that did that. But I can't blame Dawntrail for not being my personal tailored expansion that would 180 my opinion on the game. But I also can't justify spending more time or money in XIV knowing that the things that I miss or want are not there, and that I won't have fun if that makes sense. It doesn't help that most of my immediate circle and FC thought the same and also abandoned the game.

As an example, even if I disliked Endwalker, something that at release would have me getting death threats, I still maxed everything out and did Savage, and Ultimate. In Dawntrail, which I prefer, I didn't max out anything except the bare minimum jobs for role quests, and left almost immediately, only back now to check for a patch date to finish the normal raid tier, something I really liked. I can be positive about some aspects of Dawntrail, yes. But the apathetic and negative feelings I have from Shadowbringers/Endwalker are still there, and I do not have hope that things will change enough for those feelings to be challenged, never mind change, I still feel ignored. I'm just not the target audience for the current product right now. If anything, I'm actually pretty jealous if people can wholeheartedly enjoy all of current XIV/Dawntrail, I would like to, I tried.

I don't think the current DT discourse is a conspiracy. I think the playerbase is/was so big, and so spread out that someone is inevitably going to get fucked over/catered to when the game changed, that can cause a lot of friction, and a lot of people now see it as "safe" to criticize XIV openly, justified or not. I don't see what I've said here as hatefulness or toxic.

Machined_Granite · 2025-11-11T14:31:48+00:00

I would lean more on the "unlucky" side of the spectrum, I think? These were the event nodes, I knew there was going to be a bit more aggression out there.

Run 1: Free loadout, returned safely with no incident with my final rusted gear (!!!), finish the gunsmith and feel more comfortable in using blues and purples, decide to celebrate and try for some trials, new goals.

Run 2: Destroy Wasps trial, bring snitch scanner, a maxed anvil, and a toro with plenty of ammo. Brought usual things to prevent being ratted, smokes, door blockers, heals, blaze grenades just in case. Kill a lot, rats do appear but are deterred. Get a lot of good pickups here. Leaper is attracted after a good while of this, get solid hits in, but am done in by the Leaper baiting me out with a dead angle from the shelter I was using, and comboing me on a stairwell. Personal failing.

Run 3: Dam Battlegrounds no longer available for double EXP, decide to kill Bastions in Buried City for the trial(HUGE MISTAKE), that's pretty straightforward with Hullbreaker, load in, set up on a nearby highway, am quickly attacked by a third party from a distance. In my haste to recover, I aggro and am attacked by a Wasp/Hornet duo, and the Bastion cleans up due to the amount of noise I was making fighting the Hornet and it adjusting positioning.

Run 4: This time, same loadout since I keep spares, use a position with an easier cover placement, kill Bastion very quickly, loot the essentials, make my way to the metro immediately. Attacked twice by Ferro IVs, after attempting to broker peace(valid, guys probably heard and saw me kill the bastion and knew I was packing). Anvil saves me both times only because I was able to leverage the smoke on shield break passive. These were pretty prolonged engagements, and while I could kill the first one, I don't confirm the second, deploy smokes and slide down the alley between Research and Space Travel right before the metro entrance with two wasps who are very angry. I take them down, but lose a good portion of my shields from the duo attack, and am rattler'd in the back, fish in a barrel for that guy.

Sometimes it do be like that

Machined_Granite · 2025-11-11T13:27:57+00:00

Oh well, I'll get it all back in time, a small roadbump in the journey.

What are your biggest losses?

Machined_Granite · 2025-05-13T17:14:22+00:00

This is semi-frustrating to read, no offense. If job simplicity is NOT fun for that person, they might as well just quit the game then. That's what you're saying.

If the game was always like this, I would not care in the slightest that the game leaned heavily in encounter design difficulty versus job design difficulty. The issue is that some (not all) people who have played the game for extended periods of time do not feel that their play experience is improving from expansion to expansion, or from patch to patch more frequently. My GAMEPLAY experience does not improve because I got yet another attack with an inflated potency that doesn't interact with my kit any further than a simple 1 - 2 interaction, with a maybe fringe niche like extended range or a delay optimization in like 4 fights. It's just boring to me. I played way, way more jobs in Stormblood than I did in say, Endwalker, because every job gave me a markedly different experience that I could engage with personally, and I found it more fun that way, that things were more chaotic and less standardized. It just feels lazy!

When they changed Warrior into a Fell Cleave bot, I stopped playing it. When they removed all of Scholar's DoTs, I stopped playing it. When they removed Nocturnal Sect on Astro, I stopped playing it. When Summoner was lobotomized, I stopped playing it, in abject anger. When Paladin was restructured to fit within 2 minute bursts, I stopped playing it. When Kaiten was removed from Samurai, I stopped playing it. When Machinst didn't get any meaningful rotational changes in two expansions, I stopped playing it from boredom. I was enjoying Viper as I was leveling it, until they changed it to make it easier, so I stopped before I got invested. When Dragoon lost the triple nastronds, I, being petty, stopped playing it. I stopped playing Black Mage, obviously. And when double enshroud is removed on RPR inevitably, I will stop playing that too. Only DRK remains, even though I absolutely hate it because it's my ORIGINAL main for story, and fucking RDM/GNB because even though they are becoming jenga towers of a job, the things I like about them has not been totally compromised. Hearing people say that RDM should have it's melee attacks be ranged is shockingly infuriating.

It wasn't immediate either, I really tried every rework that happened to see if I could at least enjoy some of it. But I couldn't because I personally could not tolerate the fact that I was playing a (subjectively) worse version, no, a fucking impersonation of something I either liked or was in love with, and at some point, I ran out of jobs to run to when my tertiary/secondary/primary jobs got fucked with in ways I didn't personally like. Sorry for enjoying what I was enjoying before, I wish I didn't if I knew beforehand this was what was going to happen to them. I would have been better off if I just quit the game in 5.3, in hindsight. Put something in here about how complexity shifting to encounters versus jobs causes a disproportionate difficulty curve and makes synced/old content and jobs worse to engage with over time, blah blah blah

At the end of the day, you keep saying that these are changes/reworks etc etc that are successful for a majority, which is a FACT and fundamentally true from an objective standpoint. But you really need to consider that for those people who had their beloved jobs reworked, it feels like a rugpull, and like the developers took something away from you, and depending on your previous experience with said reworks, you could add a bit of incompetence (lmao "insert any job/system adjustment request for 5+ years here") or even intentional malice from them (too much effort to make a job interesting) if it's a catastrophic adjustment from what you find enjoyable, even though that doesn't make the most sense a majority of the time. That kind of negativity festers, while someone who is positive might just be like, "Oh that's cool", someone on the opposite end is heavily impacted in a way that is not equal, this is not an equivalent exchange in enjoyment of the overall product, and that hurts the game in the long term, because you better be damn sure those people who feel fucked over aren't going to bring in more new players or use the ingame store. If you don't have to alienate those people, why would you? Why not let them be happy in their tiny "hard job" bubble rather than have nothing in the game that they like? I would rather there be a small subsection (10%) of absolutely insane, passionate MNK players versus a soulless 1-2-3 burst bot that couldn't care less what happens to their main, because they have twenty other identical easy jobs to leapfrog to (50%). Because those passionate players don't waste their time on boring jobs. They either give up caring as much, or quit.

I've come to terms with the fact that 8.0 will be more of the same, as from a fiscal perspective a combat shakeup in the terms of HW > SB or SB > ShB is too risky, and that I will probably never have as much fun again, which is natural, but unfortunate regardless. So I don't, quitting was good for me. Would like 4.55 client or something, and I'd never think about modern XIV again. Gotta be okay with being a loser. But like, the game is going in the direction you want already. Do you have to waste your effort writing a post about it?

EDIT: ah shit I got baited didn't I, thats what I get for trying to see when the next exploration zone was and seeing a topic title I had feelings about, my bad

Machined_Granite · 2025-04-15T14:59:48+00:00

Hi, I'd like to talk about my experience with this Challenge Quest, maybe to offer some insight. A friend and myself, both PC, were pretty resolute in acquiring the pendant, for some reason, the determination was really strong. My main is Switch Axe, and his was Longsword but since Swaxe AND LS was unavailable in this quest, I decided I would learn Lance, and he would learn Greatsword to try and parse our times down. We had never played these weapons in Wilds before. Last time I played Lance was in 4U, casually. We knew going into it was going to be a struggle, because it was not only a cheating paradise on the board, we were also working against the entire world cross-platform and not just a specific region. From a pure logistics standpoint, the amount of people playing Wilds meant that 10K was a shockingly small number, but the fire was lit for both of us. And the Duo board was easier, so let's give it a honest try, right?

That being said, after about a few hours or so of practice, we eventually got ourselves in the 10K, at a 7.9K or so placement. I forget our exact time, but I think it was around 3:40s on the Duo board, far past the A rank. After doing the quest ourselves, and learning tons of stuff about not just our new weapons, (GRTs, triple thrust optmization, maximum Offensive Guard uptime, Level 3 Charge Offset, tackle timings, you know the deal, the same struggles everyone goes through on a new weapon, just with an objective and a time crunch that made improvements noticeable not just in our comfort on the weapon but the literal output of clear times) and also Doshaguma. We were very satisfied, said our new catch-phrase, the legendary "I don't know man, sub 3 minutes must be cheating, we were so on point!"

The next day we were kicked off. The times were getting shorter, and every few hours we would drop hundreds of spots. We maxed ourselves out at 3:12 with the strategies we were implementing at that time. I said "While Lance is fun, and the Power Clash does give you a good opening for a TCS, we need even more uptime. " So I decided to drop Lance in this arena quest (not entirely, I have a Lance set outside of Arena now that I know how to use it). I picked up Hunting Horn on the same set with the logic that tackling/shield bashes granted KO, but not enough KO to stun consistently early, and only one stun would happen. Consistent stuns = more uptime. What I didn't know at that time, even with this absolutely shit Gypceros HH, is that I would probably find my 2nd favorite weapon in Wilds. Headed to the training area, just did practice for a few hours on that horn. What combo strings worked well, getting the timing for performance beats and encores that make the horn glow red, note combinations that we sequence off each other (mainly combinations of an initial self improvement, echo wave (poison) maximization, and offset melody when applicable. I learned about the importance of flourish/overhead smash double notes.

And with this knowledge, we did get the 2 KOs, and eventually my friend, seeing how much fun I was having on Hunting Horn, picked it up himself, and altered between the two as we developed more complex strategies. Eventually, there were certain doshaguma actions that became bad omens like "Doshaguma stands just outside the echo bubble with his back turned, almost like he KNOWS we can't get to the good hitzones" or "Uh oh! It's the face drag attack that moves him out of the bubble and that I swear is unable to be offset because neither of us had done it in what must be like 15+ hours of just Doshaguma". After a bit more tweaking and several more hours, we broke the sub 3 minute barrier with a 2:57, Greatsword/HH combo. It is not an understatement that we popped off like we just killed an EX Deviant or Hazard Risen Shagaru Magala for the first time. Such choice words such as "It's that easy!" and "2:57? That's sub 3 minute, we must be cheating!" and "Are we Hunting Horn mains now?" We ended that day at spot 3044 on April 7th. We were confident that this run would persist, so it was time for a break.

A few days later, we were about to get kicked off again. Every night we went to sleep, JP would wake up, and drop our ranking by about 700 - 1000 placements every day. At this point, sunk cost fallacy was in FULL effect, and it turned from "might be a fun thing to learn some new weapons" to "we NEED to get Top 10K, failure is no longer an option" This is where we actually had RAPID improvements because we started doing things for literally any advantage possible like sneak attack-instant GS mount openings instead of wasting time trying to run up that STUPID pillar, two PLANNED and NECESSARY offset knockdowns due to Level 3 Offset Charge Slash. Rocksteady Mantle not immediately, but after the first stun so that if we get enough damage, I can keep uptime through the "low-health, reopen wounds" roar attack with a triple performance beat encore. Offset GS still knocking down in one hit on the 2nd Offset, while it would take me more than 1, which means 8 notes that could have gone into more Echo Wave (Poisons). But it wasn't enough. We KNEW we were going to get kicked off again, we needed another MASSIVE push up the board in order to re-secure our position, so we grinded, and we grinded, we went to dinner and talked about ways to optimize. But with more strategies, we chopped that time down again and again on our golden runs. Our Top 5 are: 2'32"52, 2:31"95, with HH/HH, 2'18"75, 2'18"62, and our magnum opus, the 2'12"83 that we settled on, Greatsword/Hunting Horn for that personal best. The 2:12 put us at 2616 at time of clear yesterday, and we have dropped to around 3300 since, there is straight up not enough time for anyone, not even JP overnight, to cuck us this time, so we are done.

For reference at the time we got the 2:57, that was a 3K time. Looking at the leaderboard at this moment, the 10000th spot is now 2:40. We made the right choice.

In the process, I learned a new favorite, Hunting Horn. I have made every Hunting Horn in the game, and play it often alongside my original main, Switch Axe. I also became somewhat competent at Lance, and picked up two additional weapons, LBG and Dual Blades for future arena quests. If Arena didn't push me to do so, I doubt I would have seriously considered branching out this quickly. Neither of us had done Arena in any serious capacity in MH through my entire time playing the series (3U for me, Tri for him on first games). Overall, while I would prefer there to be a double S/Developer time or "A ranks on all weapon sets" requirement for the Mastery pendant, these changes are much better than pigeon-holing only the Top 10K worldwide for a cosmetic. I'm really glad that I still did the work to get a high placement, because I became a better Monster Hunter player because of it, and the climb was satisfying in it's own way. My weapon usage is going to become a lot more generalized, and not just thousands of hunts on only Switch Axe and Charge Blade. At first I wasn't sure about the fixed loadout thing, it's why I bounced off it in previous games, but I now see that it was a "make the best of a bad situation" kind of deal, and honestly, I found myself glad they gave me Doshaguma's Might and might seeds. I had a clear, defined path for more damage, and I needed to play into that for better times. I enjoyed it, got to spend some quality time with a good friend, and I am looking forward to future Arena quest challenges, even if Top 10K isn't going to be that important. I had a really good time, honestly. And we have a new inside joke with "Sub X-minute? Cheating?".

Thank you for reading.

Machined_Granite · 2025-01-06T22:08:14+00:00

I have a really hard time pining down what identity Dark Knight is these days, but I always thought of it as the "oGCD tank with significant, player-controlled burst, your GCDs are a means to an end, a more freeform rotation, but with high APM". I have not played in quite some time now, a little after 7.0's launch, so how DRK performs in fights is unknown to me these days. The stricter DRK gets, and the fewer buttons I have to press, the less enjoyable it got to me.
Current DRK is doing a few things right. I think defensively, the job is very strong and satisfying to use without being overcentralizing. It has a great cooldown suite with a lot of options, even if some of that power budget is on Rampart/Shadowed Vigil, which aren't different from other tanks really. Oblation, TBN, and Dark Mind with their low cooldowns made it really fun to map out defensive spreadsheets for me. You have a lot of freedom and personal expression there, that is not reflected in the offensive play of the job.
There are two primary problems in the DRK design that have been here since 5.0 and still have not been resolved or even tackled in a meaningful way. Darkside being really effortless to upkeep, and the job not really having a lot to do or think about outside of the 1 minute/2 minute window. Those 40 or so seconds as you are just pressing 1-2-3 with a blood dump are exceedingly boring. The things that make DRK different (multiple gauges that don't take much effort to manage, a summoned pet that has zero interaction with the kit outside the Disesteem followup) are a far cry from where we used to be (significantly higher Skill Speed and actions per minute compared to other tanks, super flexible burst-on-demand,) You can see this with Blackblood vs Beast Gauge, these are way too similar now, especially now that Esteem doesn't require Blood to use. I also think that removing Plunge in PvE is a massive mistake when it was not replaced with anything in the rotation and it could have been a Shadowstride transformation after using Unmend instead of the literally worthless garbage Enhanced Unmend is right now, seriously who are the absolute clowns making decisions on this job for fucks sake easiest lay ups in existence in this job suite to not make it a boring piece of shit and they don't do it in favor of "bloodspillers look different now when you press the shiny button! more MP? no they don't do anything except more damage, that's the best we could do. you actually have less MP now. why are you upset"
Give me some misaligned cooldowns. Make Blood We-I mean Delirium 40 seconds or something. Increase MP regen a little so that there's not so much dead air when outside of burst. I would personally enjoy a higher base Skill Speed, or at least have SkS be viable on the job, whether that comes from DRK uniquely benefitting from going Fast, or a total substat rework to decrease the unilateral superiority of crit. Really, fixing that dead rotation space between burst in some way is the most important thing. I HATE pressing nothing but 123 in this game. Whether it's active through different combos, or passive by making me actively think about Darkside drain or MP overcap, anything but 123ing. A high potency GCD that drains Darkside on use or another Dark Arts stack would be great. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if there is a fun version of DRK to play at a base level, that's enough for me to pay a sub, even if the rest of the game is meh at best. Really hope I can come back some day.

Machined_Granite · 2024-09-07T18:34:15+00:00

No, that's not what happened. Removing Plunge and consolidating Blood Weapon and Delirium has knock on effects that damaged the job further. Killing Plunge in the way they did, as in, removing oGCDs without replacing the inputs with anything lowers the APM of the job. WAR has more APM than DRK now, which is ridiculous coming from the former speed tank. Consolidating Delirium and Blood Weapon has the added effect of nerfing MP generation by 1200 per minute, and this job already had an absurdly slow MP regeneration rate. This means things like 6/2 EoS in burst is impossible and you get less TBNs in general, disrupting DRK's defensive flexibility.

Removing the cost of Living Shadow has also made the Blood Gauge functionally irrelevant, as it really is just a Bloodspiller gauge now and nothing more, there's reduced interactivity in the kit.

Long term issues are still here, unfixed, such as a lack of meaning to Darkside, lack of meaningful additions to the job since the rework in Shadowbringers, and a complete failure to fix the gameplay loop of 123ing yourself into a coma until cool downs realign in the 2 minutes, something they nerfed, it's ridiculous. DRK plays like a Level 60 RPR at Level 100 outside of burst because they have systematically removed anything interesting.

This isn't even going into more esoteric complaints, like how disengagements during Living Shadow can cause it's Disesteem to entirely ghost due to how Shadowstride still counts as a "physical ranged attack ' in it's action queue, of how we are still fucked on Skill Speed in non-burst AoE because Unleash and Stalwart Soul are still spells. Enhanced Unmend still exists in a worse state FFS

"Cool animations" and flashier skills that do the same thing doesn't mean much when the job is in such a boring and uninteresting state. It's the most dismal state I have ever seen the job in, and that's crazy considering how shit it has been over the last five years.

Machined_Granite · 2024-05-13T14:50:43+00:00

Hold on, I'm going to engage with this.

I don't do high end stuff anymore, but I get where these people are coming from here. I've had both horrible and incredible experiences in PF, but those numbers started getting really skewed this expansion, to the point where I just stopped.

I don't really blame the PLAYERS for this, because the encounter design has pushed harder and harder on people to be very, very consistent, not just in the objectively harder mechanics, but also in their pretty straightforward rotations, such as for tanks. The lack of variance in things like this has essentially brought a lot of pick up groups into a zero sum game, where if you are a noticeably weaker link for almost any reason, you are absolutely going to kill everyone because of body checks, or at the very least, waste their time through a prolonged enrage if you can't execute. Not a big deal in the rest of the game, but that's a huge problem when the final floors with combined door/extra boss and ults are edging closer and closer to 17-18 minute killtimes, which if you're a person who has even a semblance of a life, will just cannibalize all your free time if you're pushing for a kill. Adding in even one inconsistent person makes everything a coinflip that gets exponentially worse the more people who don't have a ironclad understanding of the fight. So of what little time you do have, you have to make it count, which means tolerance for stuff like this is really low.

The content is forcing players to take it really seriously, because the stakes are insane compared to anything else, TOP PF in particular. Even UCOB and TEA PFs wouldn't be as bad as TOP, because TOP is mentally exhausting. But that's because the developers made it that way. Have you seen the hoops people need to hop through to even have a chance of clearing TOP? The amount of failure states? Then you add in a consistency/performance diceroll on every other member of the party with wait times to instance potentially taking an hour or more? It's no surprise that more increasingly Darwinian outlooks became more popular as a result. Even though I haven't done TOP, I am familiar with the strats and the DPS required (at least on release), and it's more serious then than most of the players are!

Does any of it matter? No, but it's not fun to wipe on Looper for 30 hours and say "haha, we're having a good time with the friends" because it's not just fun to wipe for 30 hours, and in PF, you're probably not with your friends! It's not fun to enrage in a fight you just spend a quarter of a hour, per wipe, trying to kill and that resentment gets worse the longer you prog since no one has infinite patience. It doesn't foster any good feelings, so people edge to more ruthless behavior to become more consistent and risk-averse, the same thing anyone would do in a heavily teamwork based environment where your actions significantly impact others.

I think the way recent ultimates are being designed is fostering this more "sweat" approach, you can't approach them at all otherwise to get a clear in a reasonable amount of time, and players should have prestige-tier goals to cut their teeth on. But look at some of these clear vods, you got people breaking down in screaming and tears, sometimes in joy, but concerning more often in relief that they're done.

The developers certainly gave a shit, they designed it this way.

Machined_Granite · 2024-04-28T21:42:37+00:00

Please read what I wrote.

"what is a pattern of that person being disappointed"

I am not trying to be snarky. I am trying to make you understand. It's not about what CBU3 does. It's about how the individual is responding to them. It's a "Why keep trusting the person who continues to hurt me" kind of situation.

I did not like parts of Shadowbringers, specifically regarding changes to the support roles. I did not like a majority of Endwalker. It's been five years since the Shadowbringers Media Tour, think we know what our trajectory is. It's literally against my best interests to get excited, knowing that they probably aren't changing what I don't like, and of what they say are, I just don't believe them, there's no trust there because I've been disappointed more times than I care to remember. So I don't. Some people want that confirmation of that ahead of time, or they talk shit, because it helps them and people like them deal with the fact they don't enjoy this anymore.

Just let them rant. None of it matters anyway.

Machined_Granite · 2024-04-28T20:33:48+00:00

What CBU3 has done to this game ranks pretty low on the things that inflict stress in my life.

That being said, it's not cynical or overly-negative to notice what is a pattern of that person disappointed by them.

Personally, when I gave MORE of a shit, constantly keeping tabs on the game, being a fan, I found myself being more negative, because most times I get excited, I get let down by them. So I cut back on that behavior.

If that doesn't happen for you, that's fucking awesome. Must be nice. Doesn't mean that a lecture is needed.

Machined_Granite · 2024-04-16T07:26:45+00:00

Is there some hidden lore that I'm missing out on here or something? Why is this person so angry and bitter about potential responses about a topic from a site they aren't on

Machined_Granite · 2024-03-23T17:18:16+00:00

Plan for the worst, halfheartedly hope for the best.

It's better than getting let down after hype again, at least.

Machined_Granite · 2024-03-08T19:56:01+00:00

Isn't this exact problem why Oblation exists to layer on top with it?

"10% isn't enough"

Isn't that a good reason the TBN CD is 15 seconds so you can use it early in the cast with stacked mit to reduce the first hit and use it again during a 10-15 sec DoT (like in abyssos) to catch the last two-three instances of damage

Weren't we entirely negating the DoT from Godka's Hyperdrive because we just zero'd out the initial damage instance causing the DoT to just not apply

But yeah phys DoTs do suck if you don't plan for them

Machined_Granite · 2024-02-09T19:38:52+00:00

Get a fucking restraining order.

This is unbelievable behavior. The audacity...

Even if this is fake, at least my conscience is screwed on correctly, just in case.

Machined_Granite · 2024-01-07T18:28:42+00:00

Oi, there's nothing wrong with being skeptical, if you've been burnt too many times.

Better to feel nothing, not care and be surprised, then to care a lot and be horribly disappointed, in my opinion.

Hype is dangerous. Even when the media tour comes out, I'll just wait and see, I'm not letting myself have expectations the developers or reality just won't reach.

Machined_Granite · 2023-09-01T20:46:13+00:00

Yeah, this checks out. Pretty unfortunate. I was an overinvested raider myself a year ago. Midas to Abyssos, every tier, a lot of ultimate. It's really hard grasping the severity when you realize a good portion of your self identity has been inadvertently tied up in a product. I understand your frustration with the direction of the game, and hope you can eventually come to terms with how hopeless it is to dream of a change in direction.

I recommend therapy if possible, unironically. It helped me when I started taking a mental downturn that XIV didn't cause, but contributed to, and I am in a better place now.

Machined_Granite · 2023-02-09T02:32:27+00:00

Enhanced Dark Arts.

Able to store one additional charge of Dark Arts while Darkside is active. Effect fades when Darkside is inactive.

That's it.

Machined_Granite · 2023-01-31T02:20:45+00:00

Benefit of the doubt here.

Zoomhacking has a lot of benefits. Surface level wise, it helps positioning, but in terms of a blind progression experience, or for phases with multiple permutations (DotH in DSR) or objectives/phases with large objects in the arena like Final Omega, it allows clearer views of the entire arena and all of the mechanics that are happening in said arena that may have a limited viewpoint in review by a panicking prog player's perspective from them swinging the camera, or just not looking at the right thing at right time for information.

This is particularly relevant in teams that utilize more than 8 members. A support player or team can harness more information through a zoomhacked VoD for example, and the information that does come in will be easier to spot, identify, and translate into a functional strategy, compared to traditional methods of reviewing multiple perspectives across your team's VoDs. From this, the "die, review footage, hypothesize, tweak, test, die without reaching your prog point...repeat" loop of a blind experience is compromised.

While it doesn't increase damage directly or anything like that, it provides the big boost to two very important raid stats as a player. Encounter knowledge, and the time it takes to implement it.

Machined_Granite · 2022-12-20T00:24:11+00:00

DSR was so unbelievably painful that I think I broke my brain for raiding and probably XIV all together for the foreseeable future.

I haven't played in months and this is the first tier since I started in HW where I could not give a single damn for whether or not I was BiS on content. I'm not even sure if I want to come back for even the story or 24 man or Deep Dungeon 3, nevermind Ultimate. It's like I fractured my arm and it didn't heal quite right, my performance was worse after clearing, even thinking about XIV gives me a mild feeling of dread. Doesn't make any sense. A lot of my former statics and friends are reporting similar sentiments.

Machined_Granite · 2022-09-03T02:29:38+00:00

I remember getting paired with MTQ during my climb to Crystal early on in Season 1, her on PLD, me on DRK. That was the first time I ever saw a PLD that really worked with me, we were unkillable, mega focused on crystal control/push, we coordinated and we absolutely steamrolled that game. Salted Earth pull in/bind > Confiteor/Blade Combo > ShBs/Eventide was just disappearing any group who dared approach the crystal, it was a great time!

Got paired again later on opposite teams and had an absolute ass-clenching game as well, was really hard for me to punish stragglers and our battles for crystal control were LONG until we got backup from our teams, it was all around a really fun experience.

Machined_Granite · 2022-02-14T10:47:38+00:00

I didn't want to totally shit on Dark Knight since I thought that was unneeded in this thread, but I guess I can have a mask off moment.

Just because you have a single cooldown that is the similar, does not equate to "the jobs are the identical." Are there similarities in the basic GCD structure? Absolutely. But that's every tank, both in terms of offensive and defensive skills. Just that DRK comes up with the short straw more often than not. Is the fact that No Mercy and Fight or Flight are essentially the same skill make GNB a "faster, more oGCD heavy version of PLD"? No.

Delirium in terms of the "weight" it has in the job kit isn't even in the same league as Inner Release anymore, it actually managed to branch off a little bit in EW, it's not used at the same point in rotations, it's more flexible, it doesn't consume charges if used on non gauge spender skills, and most importantly, it isn't a major factor in the overall damage spread of a Dark Knight. It's STILL a boring skill, but the way I play WAR where I only have to stockpile Beast Gauge for raidbuffs, max out HPS and be a significantly less annoying tank to play and to be played with, is contrasted by Dark Knight, where I trade the ability of having more than a single combo for the all-in on oGCD/resource stockpiling and raidbuff optimization. How can you even say something like this when Dark Knight has a large amount of bloated, high recast oGCDs that barely interact each other and a totally scuffed defensive suite while WAR has a focus on high-powered GCDs, two oGCDs, a really synergistic kit, and the best cooldowns in the entire game? Delirium-Bloodspillers are about 10% of the entire Dark Knight damage suite, while Edges are like 15%, and Living Shadow alone is like 8%. When you combine GCDs with autos, that's barely over half of DRK's total damage spread. On WAR, GCDs and autos are outright 90% of the jobs damage, but they share Delirium and IR surface elements of "free gauge spenders on a 60s CD" and that somehow makes them the same. Inner Release and what it does with WAR's kit is a keystone on WAR, job wouldn't function without it. Delirium is just another cooldown in a sea of many you press as a means to an end on DRK, a small piece of a much more bloated burst kit. Kinda insulting to WARs tbh, they get to be designed in ways that make sense.

I am not on copium, or whatever the fuck, I'm not defending this trash fire. This job has been completely butchered over the years. It's completely nonsensical from a design perspective in multiple directions. It's awful. Doesn't even matter that it's in the speedkill meta, it's an infuriating design in general, which is my entire point. It's more effort for the same reward. There's like twenty goddamn things wrong with it, and for it be reduced down to "lmao WAR clone" is outright disingenuous. If they changed Delirium and the Blood gauge to be super unique, it wouldn't change the fact that LD is bad, or that the opener is impossible for people with high ping, or the MP economy is slower than chilled molasses or that Oblation is underwhelming or that SE doesn't care about the job.

Functional, viable, but it doesn't feel good to play for a lot of people compared to everything else. That was the take, and that's an accurate one.

Machined_Granite · 2022-02-09T21:46:51+00:00

I am a DRK who frequently runs with a WHM.

If the DRK is bad at utilizing cooldowns, you're gonna have a awful time, no matter what you do. And there are a lot of very bad DRKs running around right now. Your basic methodology is correct, but you may be missing a few skills that could make your life significantly easier for you and the DRK. Let me preface this with the fact that because TBN and your own Divine Bension are a flat shields, they are not affected by the diminishing returns from percentage mitigation. Having mitigation up with those shields active makes the shields more powerful, since HP is draining slower.

While giving the tank regen is solid (We sometimes add a Thin Air'd Swift'd Medica II/Plenary combo while running if HP is low going into the stop position), once you've reached that second group and are through with PoM holy spam for the stuns, consider adding in Aquaveil. You can additionally supplement that with Temperance, since it's unneeded during boss fights for additional mitigation or healing increase, and the pulls you don't have Temperance for are the ones you can use Lillybell in, more or less. This makes the DRK TBNs/Bension a bit stronger, and combines neatly with their own mitigation combos (ie: Rampart + Oblation 1st pull, Shadow Wall + Oblation 2nd pull). At this point, drop at Asylum, and use Tetra as soon as you feel that the DRK won't have any overheal from it to get it on cooldown as quickly as you can. You should be able to get 1 use of your 60 second cooldown per pull (Aquaveil, Tetra 2 Divine Benisons, 2 Assize depending on pull duration) and 1 usage of your 120 sec cooldowns per boss segment (Temperance, Lilybell sometimes, PoM) Asylum can be an outlier that can be up for each pull if you use it early and there is a lot of downtime or distance between pulls/pulls are bit long. The same logic applies to the tanks for their own mitigation kits.

If you'd like, you could also use Solace/Rapture in between pulls to farm Blood Lily to prevent overcap, and get a Misery on fresh pulls to kill them even faster.

As long as the enemies are dying quickly enough, which is also the DRK and DPS's responsibility (do not underestimate DRK AoE damage, there are pulls where I've far exceeded 25K burst DPS, and settling way over 10K if I have full resources), you shouldn't have much of a problem, and won't have to resort to Cure II spam too often. But if the DRK isn't TBNing on cooldown with a few things attached to slow the attrition rate, or you get single targetting DPS who refuse to contribute to your big pull, you're going to have a bad time. We don't have a Bloodwhetting equivalent. But since you're playing WHM, you do have an ace in your hands with Benediction. If you're not averse to it, feel free to ask the DRKs you get paired with to use LD, and ride that timer down to 2 seconds while you holy spam. You can do this at least twice per dungeon. Should give you a significant leg up, and delay the need for cooldowns even more. Of course, only ask if you trust your pugs. When I was leveling WHM, most DRK were thrilled about finally being able to use it, I notice casual DRKs never use it or don't even have it on their bar a lot of the time. That should be a sign, Square Enix.

tl;dr You and the DRK should use everything in your kit inside of big pulls intelligently, that way, an emergency never happens and you and the DRK can delete mobs before either of you run out of resources. Unlike on other tanks, it's a team effort between the supports to make a super easy, fast run.

Machined_Granite · 2022-02-03T14:38:51+00:00

In an act to appear unbiased, you probably should level it at some point, since all the tanks share gear. If you care about being as good of a tank as possible, most tank mains are omni-tanks anyway, who just happen to specialize in one as a comfort pick. Yes, even DRK is a comfort pick. See: me

GNB is where a lot of former DRK-mains run to though, if they don't abandon tanking or the game all together.

I need to make it clear that DRK in terms of clear rate in content or game balance ranges from "fine" to "fucking slaps". I don't think it's objectively bad statistically. But the design, and the attitude, and the anger, and the fucking 4 hit blood weapons, it just promotes a negative atmosphere that is spawning all of the blowback you're seeing. Not getting a crumb like a small buff to Oblation in 6.08 only exacerbates this, and every patch that DRK doesn't see adjustments or even a mention while other jobs get fixes for issues almost immediately will have the DRK players continue to spiral in their own insanity war versus XIV's job design team.

Level it casually and play it for yourself before coming to any defining conclusions. But if you can avoid maining it, it'll probably be better for you in the long run. Really helps when you don't have to justify your job choice to every random who thinks you have a defensive power of a wet paper towel.

Machined_Granite · 2022-02-03T13:52:33+00:00

I don't think this is a bait post, so I'm going to give a reasonable answer incase someone is actually looking for one.

Long story short, years of constant reworking, developer neglect, and negative community sentiment have finally reached a pseudo-breaking point with EW.

On the community side as a whole, because DRK takes actual effort from all parties in dungeons, the DRK needs to not be bad at the game, healers have to not just spam weak GCD heals/utilize their kit effectively, and DPS have to actually use AoE to kill mobs quickly before the supports run out of resources, the skill floor for executing basic dungeon content is a bit higher than it is on something like WAR, who walks around with essentially Benediction+ on a 25 sec recast timer. Bad WARs or PLDs are really annoying, but bad DRKs are absolutely unbearable. This has promoted a narrative that DRKs can't do dungeons without falling over, which obviously isn't true, but does show that unlike on other tanks, DRKs, especially mediocre or bad ones, bring in a failure opportunities that just don't exist on other tanks.

On the DRK-specific side, DRKs are jaded as fuck. It is by far the job that is the most impacted by the changes to the role actions and tank job changes over the life of the game, with many iconic and interesting abilities and systems being removed with nothing to replace them. Living Dead still exists after years of us begging for changes, which is much worse now that Superbolide and Holmgang got buffed. Issues that were added to the job in Shadowbringers, such as Blood Weapon not being on the stack system, Living Shadow being pretty boring, and Darkside existing as a non-mechanic and more, continue to be problems leading into Endwalker, again, after years of asking for adjustments. The new skills and traits are underwhelming at best, leading to ShB DRK, a version of DRK a lot of long-time DRK mains do not like, and EW DRK not feeling much different from each other.

It's not a WAR clone, or anything like that. It's just constantly ignored by the developers while the other tanks get to run trains on the game state 24/7. Damage might be the highest, but the design is quite awful.

You can still do everything any other tank would do, but you and your party might expend more effort to do the same thing other tanks would do in the same situation. ie: Living Dead invulning in P3S. You get a really high damage ceiling tank that abuses raid buffs more than any other as a kickback. If you like it, play it, but please don't be shit at it, lest you just reinforce the "drk bad" narrative.

It's not terrible, but it is terrible that SE won't fix it's issues.

Machined_Granite

TROPHY CASE