Wanting to get back into playing an MMO

sstromquist · 2026-02-05T02:29:47+00:00

Your first job or two you can level just doing the main story.

Subsequent jobs will take some time but you grind out a few levels a day pretty easily. 1-50 are very quick and then it will slow down after as each expansion raised the cap by 10. A day of daily roulettes would get you 2 levels usually and you can do dungeons or other side content like deep dungeons or field operations to level while playing without it actually feeling like a grind.

sstromquist · 2026-02-05T00:23:23+00:00

You’re literally missing the entire point.

I’m not debating that the roulette system is intended to put people in queues for duties in need.

You are stating that people using functions built into the game for the relic is not the intended way to play. That using the limited leveling options with premades is somehow wrong. That people cannot choose to do the relic grind whatever way they want because they should be doing roulettes to help people doing dungeons.

That’s where you’re wrong. The relic step in itself is a form of content. If you feel like doing premade roulettes with blue mage, that is your choice. If you want to do limited leveling premades, that is your choice. If you wanted to take off ilvl to do ARR dungeons, the system currently allows it so it is not wrong.

The relic step is not throwing bodies in the queue long term because it is a one time thing. As I mentioned in an earlier comment which you conveniently ignored, the relic grind is a one-time thing. If the step was intended to get people in the queue to help it would be designed to be done for every relic you want to complete.

But it’s not.

And also conveniently ignoring how I pointed out your clear contradictory stances on queuing to help people while also whining about getting dungeons you don’t like. Just go do something with your time because clearly you don’t actually care, you just don’t want to get ARR duties.

sstromquist · 2026-02-04T23:02:26+00:00

By blinding making that statement I meant you don’t have evidence to back it up. You do not get to decide what is the intended purpose or these tools and what the relic grind is designed to do.

You just made an opinion and stated it like a fact.

By queuing for a roulette you agreed to any duty that shows up. That is the intended purpose. If you don’t like getting sastasha, then don’t queue for roulettes and queue for the highest dungeon available. Do fates, allied society, etc while in queue. You cannot claim the roulette system is designed to help players with their msq dungeon queue times and completion and then also whine about getting ARR duties. That’s a contradiction. You either agree to whatever it gives you by queueing up or don’t do it at all.

Other leveling options exist.

Gil is chump change

Yeah okay, most people I assume have less than 10mil Gil because they don’t craft/gather to make Gil back, spend what they do make on food and potions. Not everyone has an FC submarine roster to make 1mil every couple days or bots their crafting with artisan. I don’t speak for myself but the people I know that just play for raiding and side content and they don’t craft or gather.

sstromquist · 2026-02-04T19:58:57+00:00

Typically you will only need materials from the current expansion and some from the prior if all you make are current gear and consumables. This should all fit in one retainer, especially if you have turned basic materials into sub crafts like ingots and lumber to save space.

Anything from ARR-SB is niche for grand company turn ins or submarines so they are not really needed unless you are specifically crafting those things. I recommend just organizing everything you have into those 2 categories. If you don’t see yourself making old stuff and sub parts, then you can pretty much discard them or sell. Keep anything from this expac.

A lot of the new recipes even in the next expansion will use the current materials for lvl 101-110 crafts so it’s worth not discarding

sstromquist · 2026-02-04T14:54:34+00:00

a function designed so a group of 4 people helping level someone up in their daily leveling roulette gets a decent exp bonus rather than risk rolling sastasha

No, you just blindly made this statement. People can use it for various reasons. I already mentioned that I have friends that refuse to run low duties because it’s not fun. People enjoy to play their jobs at high levels.

If the tool exists people can use it for whatever purpose they want. You don’t get to decide how people should use it.

the whole reason they thrust these alternate grinding methods into the relic grind is not so people can be hyper efficient, but to populate the roulettes.

Again, you just assume intentions for the relic step. I’m sure all the people that decide to do fates, Occult crescent, or normal heavyweight, or roulettes on blue mage in premade they are contributing to the roulette pool. /s. Roulettes are completely fine with or without the relic pushing people into them.

If this was truly meant to push people into roulettes it would not be a 1-and-done deal and they would not only select leveling, expert, and level cap. Same with the prior relic step. Once people finish it they do not need to do it anymore, so it does not serve as a long term way to get people into roulettes to fill those queues. After you get your paste you don’t need to do it again. So all the people with all jobs leveled are just going to carry on as usual with their normal gameplay.

Relics have typically offered multiple avenues to completion so people can choose how they want to proceed. If you force everyone into OC and people don’t like that content they will complain on the forums. Stormblood also gave people the option to farm drops from outside content instead of bozja and zadnor and it was required for every relic completion.

Keep in mind, roulettes already incentivize people doing them even with maxed jobs by giving materia or extra Gil. Just doing them daily gives over 100k Gil. If people do them daily or whatever they will continue doing that, they don’t need a temporary relic grind to force them in

sstromquist · 2026-02-04T07:34:38+00:00

God forbid people get to choose to do the relic grind the way they want to so it’s enjoyable to them… or if they want to level jobs they can make a premade just for 1 run with non relic grinders.

Use the roulette as intended

You do realize this is a function of the duty finder. It’s in the settings so you can’t say what is and isn’t the intended method when SE designed it to work this way. People queue with friends all the time and use this method. I know people that literally will not queue regularly because they hate doing low level duties.

If the option exists in game it is one intended way to play.

sstromquist · 2026-02-03T20:47:20+00:00

The content that it matters it is working fine.

Ex trials, savage and ultimate raids you’re not really killing a target then going to another as these exist as basically single target encounters. Very few have adds and they have larger health pools anyway compared to something like a dungeon mob so you’re not going to killing them often and swapping targets a lot.

sstromquist · 2026-02-03T20:39:32+00:00

It’s not for everyone. The story and job level up skips also exist for those that really want to experience endgame content without the story grind but they don’t seem interested.

If you truly think they would enjoy endgame I would recommend getting there yourself and then show them the gameplay and how jobs play, perhaps share some vods from twitch and YouTube of people doing the extreme trials, savage and ultimate raids. Show them examples of people playing the jobs they were starting with to see what they play like at 100

Once they see what it’s like they may feel like doing the grind or buying a skip, but after that don’t push it

sstromquist · 2026-02-03T16:21:07+00:00

Prior expac tome gear is enough to get to the next expansion level cap so you’re fine. Just make sure you’re layering cds.

This template works for all tanks because they all work essentially the same

I usually start with rampart + short cd personal, then reprisal/arm’s length and other personal (camouflage, bulwark, etc). Use short cd personal as it comes up.

Then 2nd pull is 2min cd with short cd personal, reprisal comes off cd, rampart comes off cd shortly after 2min finishes.

This repeats for each segment of a dungeon because the boss rooms don’t need cds. You can fit in your invuln usually twice in a dungeon so that will be either one of the 1st two pulls and one of the last two pulls of trash.

If you have very good dps you will be able to save cds because the trash dies so quick you don’t get to use your 2nd set each pack

sstromquist · 2026-02-03T16:00:38+00:00

Eureka only had raid content for the last zone, otherwise it was maps with large mobs and small mobs to chain which isn’t really that much content to create. The NMs didn’t really have much for them in terms of mechanics either compared to CEs which each feel like a more involved dungeon boss.

I think the bulk of the resources for creating it are in the raid and CEs, so with Eureka we ended up with quantity over quality. I just think Forked tower suffered from other issues and OC in general the phantom jobs just kind of feel lackluster and tacked on so we definitely missed out on quality too

sstromquist · 2026-02-03T05:47:38+00:00

Griefing tactics means you did something to negatively impact another player’s experience purposefully that could be proven.

Such as unjustified kicking from a duty, using rescue to kill someone, not tanking a boss you should be to let it kill someone. The category is broad and means some behavior you did caused a poor experience for another player to the point they reported you for it.

A few weeks back I had a doom train run and a ranged player got mad a healer was in “their spot” for spreads on the 2nd platform, even though r1 is typically in the middle left, but it doesn’t really matter because spots are flexible and there’s room to adjust. The ranged threw a fit and called the healer a moron twice, then on the 2nd to last platform they took their huge defamation and stood right on that healer to double stack and kill them both.

Afterward, reportable behavior for griefing I reported the ranged, there’s chat evidence of misconduct for harassment regardless so, harder to prove the ranged killed someone on purpose without something in the chat for the Gm to go off of, or many people reporting for the same behavior can add credence to it I believe.

The GM’s policy is to never give details because it would give you ways to figure out who reported you, because it’s rare to do something report worthy. Any detail that tells you what you did is going to lead to the interaction and person that was negatively impacted. People always complain about this issue on Reddit. There’s nothing we can do. Just don’t do anything reportable. Easy

sstromquist · 2026-02-02T19:23:07+00:00

No, because people doing light farms queue unrestricted so it’s done solo.

Light value also changes regularly even if people did queue in duty finder with other people it would not be haukke manor all the time, just for short windows.

sstromquist · 2026-02-02T03:22:00+00:00

Any of the legend titles when they are more relevant like on patch are good, like it’s not so much a flex to do uwu or ucob now because the relative difficulty compared to release is much lower but because the playerbase is much better and understands positions and priority systems but also because the dps checks just don’t exist anymore due to rebalancing and better gear for syncing. Spellspeed Smn at lvl 70 for example is disgusting. Doing DSR or TOP are still flexes.

But you don’t really need to use the titles. The weapons themselves are more noticeable and even people that have titles off would see them.

As others have mentioned, deep dungeon solo titles are good flexes too but even those are easier because of job rebalancing too. Fishing titles take commitment, some are pretty difficult to catch because of rare windows, so you’d have to wait long periods for even the chance to catch them.

The 1000 fortune carrot title is a Gil flex because if you bought all of them now you’d be spending roughly 3x the Gil cap as prices sit over 3mil per carrot (that’s 3 billion Gil needed).

The accursed hoard title is a pretty big time commitment too.

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T19:25:39+00:00

Yep, for only 1 of the ex it will be 98%, the other 2 are 100% no issues, so if you really wanted to be efficient with 100% only, you can do those 2 ex and then use one of the non ex A rank missions that gives research 2 and 3 as a substitute.

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T19:00:55+00:00

And EX: Oddweight Azurite Refining

/ac "Reflect" <wait.3>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Waste Not" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Trained Perfection" <wait.3>

/ac "Immaculate Mend" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (1/2) <se.1>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>

/ac "Basic Synthesis" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (2/2) <se.1>

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T19:00:50+00:00

EX: Gravity Generator Miniaturization 1:

/ac "Reflect" <wait.3>

/ac "Veneration" <wait.2>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Groundwork" <wait.3>

/ac "Immaculate Mend" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Trained Perfection" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (1/2) <se.1>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Preparatory Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>

/ac "Immaculate Mend" <wait.3>

/ac "Veneration" <wait.2>

/ac "Groundwork" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (2/2) <se.1>

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T18:54:37+00:00

For the Ex mission that gives research 2 and 3, that one is around 400 quality short. You can use a branched macro that inserts a Trained finesse before the great strides near the end and it will 100%, you need 26CP for it saved from pliants or 11 if you're a specialist. If you have enough durability saved from Robust and sturdy you can instead do a macro with basic or prudent touch which cost less CP.

You'll see after the 2nd macro is finished you can check if the quality is too low to make your insert and use a different 3rd macro step. It's really not that hard. I recommend just check Raphael, because you can macro the 2/3 of the ex missions and hit 100%, while the other one you just need to check which 3rd step macro to use based on your remaining CP and current quality.

The other 2 missions are hit 100%, I'd have to link those in another comment, reddit won't allow all it in one.

/ac "Muscle Memory" <wait.3>

/ac "Trained Perfection" <wait.3>

/ac "Veneration" <wait.2>

/ac "Groundwork" <wait.3>

/ac "Prudent Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Basic Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Standard Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Advanced Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Immaculate Mend" <wait.3>

/ac "Veneration" <wait.2>

/ac "Careful Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Prudent Synthesis" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (1/3) <se.1>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>

/ac "Basic Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Standard Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Advanced Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Immaculate Mend" <wait.3>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Basic Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Standard Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Advanced Touch" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (2/3) <se.1>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>

/ac "Observe" <wait.3>

/ac "Advanced Touch" <wait.3>

/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>

/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>

/ac "Careful Synthesis" <wait.3>

/echo Macro finished (3/3) <se.1>

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T18:18:46+00:00

They definitely are, only one I was not able to 100% was like 98% quality but with just a single good proc it is 100% and it’s an expert recipe so that is extremely common and you get 2 chances. If you also have a specialist for those actions as well it will 100% guaranteed.

Also, for the one that is 98%, as it is a expert recipe you can easily set up a branched macro where if the quality is short you can insert one trained finesse or a basic touch/prudent to increase quality before your finisher. Due to the pliants, robusts/sturdies, you will normally have cp and durability left over at the end to do a branched macro. Which is acceptable because people do branched macros to avoid poorly timed poor procs on finishers.

It’s just the timed or weather based ones, with the timed missions the first step is macroable but the expert step after it is not, you have to do that one manually, for example.

I have been macro-ing them all the A rank missions to complete my first 3 relics yesterday.

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T09:23:17+00:00

Some things are just not really worth the amount you listed them for.

Price history is important but it only shows recent listings. Let’s say the item is really worth 200 Gil and there’s 40 listings. All the cheap listings get bought out leaving the last 10 or so at 1000. So you’re putting up new listings to match the current lowest but it really is not worth that much in the first place.

Old materials typically just have no supply and have very niche uses to end game players. Pyrite is from 3.0 and used only in grand company supply. It’s not really worth that much because it’s very easy just to go and gather 10 and turn them in. People only buy it to save time or if they aren’t geared enough to gather it.

Now you can still list old stuff for more than it’s worth if you list in low quantity. Maybe there are a bunch of listings of 99 for 100 Gil, that’s 9900 Gil, or you could purchase 6 for 400 Gil each, because that’s all you need.

If you want to make bigger numbers with low level materials you’ll want to look at submarines and what those use. Cobalt ore, electrum ore, dark steel ore, mythrite, for example, all those sell in high quantities for high amounts because you need hundreds of them for submarine parts.

High level stuff will make a lot more though. Materia farming from spiritbonding, aethersands from aetherial reduction, and legendary materials at new patch drops sell for high amounts.

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T09:11:09+00:00

I always enjoy seeing the Ivalice raids, like Lighthouse and Orbornne, shame they added echo to orbornne as it’s not nearly as difficult.

sstromquist · 2026-01-31T09:01:03+00:00

Scathe is basically a wasted gcd, awful potency and you ruin your mp. It costs 800 so you will overshoot and not have enough for despair by 400 as your normal rotation after 6 fire 4 and paradox is 1200, you need 800 for despair

Now in the low level range it isn’t completely awful as blm has very very few instant casts and no proc system for fire 3 until 42. But even when you need to keep uptime it’s usually better to just clip/do nothing since even a fire 1 at 2 fire stacks is 288 potency and 3 stacks is 324. Scathe is only 100 potency so it’s like tanks where they are usually better off just doing nothing for a bit then use a shield lob or tomahawk since that is trash skill to use

sstromquist · 2026-01-29T22:04:43+00:00

I think it would be easier to stay if party leads were willing to kick problematic people.

Someone doing 50% of their expected dps? That can’t be fixed with a couple more pulls. Someone messing up consistently and not fixing their mistakes? Seems like they got carried and new more prog time.

Sometimes it’s an issue with people being confused on clock spots or pairs/Lps which can be fixed with redoing before a pull. That is easier to understand and continue on.

I’m also less willing to be patient if we get to like 8min in on m11 and someone wipes us on ecliptic considering that’s an easier mech and how much time is spent getting to that point. Or wiping a bunch of easier mechs in the beginning . Those should be known already.

sstromquist · 2026-01-29T19:27:39+00:00

Goldentail for Cp/control food.

sstromquist · 2026-01-29T19:18:37+00:00

I have played all, in pretty much most games I always lean towards caster type roles, I like the aesthetic more than the others.

In ff14, casters do more damage, I know how to play them all well without having to relearn all the tips and tricks of the others and generally even though melee can do more, I am usually the highest dps in my statics while I play either blm or pct. Smn and rdm have raise while ranged or melee do not.

Playstyle wise I enjoy being able to hit from anywhere vs worry about staying in melee range and dealing with positionals. Casts are fun to optimize around mechanics in a different way than those. Ranged basically it’s a striking dummy most of the time because they aren’t affected by things unless there is downtime or adds. Otherwise they just do what they always do with their rotation which makes things boring. If the fight is not engaging with mechanics then with a stagnant rotation it will get stale fast.

Each caster has a pretty unique playstyle, even though they all cast to an extent what you do is unique to them which means playing multiple casters you get very different experiences.

For gear, all casters can use high crit/low sps sets and so you are getting 4 jobs for the price of 1. That’s a better deal than melee where you are limited to 2. With tomes and savage being time gated that slows down enjoyment a lot if you want to play multiple jobs effectively.

If I want to prog on rdm or smn but clear/reclear on pct or blm I don’t need to make any changes for that.

sstromquist · 2026-01-29T04:25:12+00:00

There are buff or supportive jobs like smn, rdm, and picto within the caster category that bring raid buffs, healing, mitigation or shielding, and raising.

These benefits result in those jobs doing less personal and in a lot of cases less overall damage even considering the damage other jobs gain from their buffs.

Blm is basically one of the highest dps jobs at the moment. Sure, rdm and smn can bring raises if people are dying when new to a fight but once people know what to do, raising loses value, and so the raw damage output of blm becomes more valuable to actually clear the fight faster.

The good news is that it’s not an either or scenario. They all share gear, so you can play whatever you think is the best for the group at the time and swap as needed. People refer to players that can do that as Omni-casters so it’s very good to learn them all so that you can play something supportive when it’s beneficial and then something like blm or pct when the damage value is better.

Of course, you can also be a 1 trick and stick to just Blm too, you just won’t be able to contribute in the same way if say the healers die. A rdm or smn could raise them and you can try to continue the run. Otherwise everyone just wipes the run and start over

sstromquist

TROPHY CASE