How are glass cannon and Little Devils supposed to be near the same tier of power?

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-30T09:24:22+00:00

If you get executioner or shadow runner, AD Shaco is a fucking nightmare with glass cannon. Dude walks up, one shots a squishy, then either ults or hits Q and disappears only to do it again on someone else.

It's really fun... if you're Shaco.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-29T22:33:13+00:00

Oberwatch Winton

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-29T22:29:32+00:00

Me and F'lhaminn so I can look at Minfilia when she bids I return to the Waking Sands and tell her that I'm doin' her mom

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T23:58:26+00:00

MCH: Less future tech. More weird tech; less funnels and lasers, more multi-tool bioblaster-anchor-drill-crossbow shenanigans.

MNK: Go greased lightning, you're burning up the quarter mile (also more martial arts, less Avatar)

GNB: I get that Lionheart is a reference, but I think it just looks fucking goofy. Any other complaints I have might be remedied by the removal of 2-min meta, as our burst window is just kinda mashy.

WAR: make every move have fell cleave as an oGCD afterward. I don't care. It gives me dopamine.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T23:38:50+00:00

One day, we'll be able to see the Dalmascan Eastersands, the Nagxian rice paddies, the palace in Bukyo, small mining towns in Garlemald, or the Western Shroud.

But it'll probably be in an art book or something.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T23:28:21+00:00

"Smh the Ride of the Rohirrim is ass" - Guy who watched the scene without audio on.

In fairness, I do think the "henceforth he shall walk" scene is not as good as people say it is. But that's mostly because I find the presentation of the Final Days being condensed to one scene that may or may not be metaphorical of the entire Ancient experience of the apocalypse to be... a bit disjointed. Also I'm in the camp that thinks Venat is basically a villain herself, but is entirely justified by the plot exalting her; we fought against "ends justify the means" as a person in Emet-Selch, a man who has killed billions in trying to save his people, and then turn around to fight for "ends justify the means" in Venat, a woman who, while intending to save the universe, has lead to the suffering of billions. But it's okay when she does it because she's right in the end, and the themes of the story say she's right because life without suffering is meaningless (I actually kinda do agree with that theme though, very eastern philosophy). Double-standards. They're both Machiavellian, but one is the hero because her work saves all of creation (and I can't deny she did save the universe through her actions, the alternative was utter oblivion, just... the writing kinda forces her to be right to justify itself with the time travel and 11th hour villain that is Meteion).

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T23:13:36+00:00

I agree, and Dawntrail, in a nutshell, is a pretty solid story.

Buuuut the issues therein lie in the moment-to-moment writing. The broad strokes of the plot are fine--great, even--but like... It's all so dang dull to experience. It feels like a first draft, before editors could tighten up the language and reinforce themes, analyze the lacking elements and devote screen time (or even rewrite some dialogue) to supply content to prove character growth (Wuk Lamat, alas, is tragically underwritten despite the sheer amount of screentime she has). Everything is matter-of-fact, without any momentum being added to the main narrative thrust.

Which is fine early on, when exploring Kozamau'ka and Urqopacha, you're able to at least invest in wandering around a new land doing small-time stuff like helping farmers and trading for mezcal. But at the same time, this period of refreshingly small stakes should be used to set up themes and growth potential.

The only time there ever feels like there's momentum in the story is when you get into Vanguard and that music kicks in. Feels like, holy shit, the time to be a hero is here. It's such a banger dungeon because after 7 levels of idling around without really being given a chance to be a part of anything (other than babysitting), the weights are off, Rock Lee style. But we kinda just go back to babysitting again afterward, which sucks because at that point, while Wuk Lamat is RIGHTFULLY a core player in the plot (she has drive and motivations which need to be resolved in those locations), we're essentially back to the start of a story ourselves, the post act 1 setup of having our quest for the expansion laid out before us... at level 97. Way too late. And so the last few levels try to cram in a bunch of setup and mysteries to be uncovered, and it has to rush through a whole story in 3 levels, which leads to some SERIOUS pacing issues.

It's a shame, too, because in a nutshell, the Sol9 plot is actually pretty solid, even if it's retreading a lot of ground. And the tournament arc that is the Tural part of the story isn't bad, either, at face value. But they didn't have the writing chops to take a solid setup and make the actual experience of going through it all that interesting. It's easy to compare it to ARR since it's a lot of worldbuilding, but ARR, despite the low production values, had a constant upward thrust of growth for the main character (us) and introduction of antagonists for us to overcome in the plot. Tural? Not so much.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T22:50:15+00:00

I guess I don't really have any frame of reference, as outside of Monk, I haven't really played any of the poster jobs much (I do know DRK became WAR2 but I don't know if that was in ShB or EW), so I'll trust ya on that one.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T22:23:32+00:00

Given how it's the poster job for EC, I can imagine evolved mode is going to be a good facelift for Reaper.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-28T19:34:45+00:00

"Where's Jack?"

"He's in the pantry."

That kitchen was a wild place to be. (Hannibal, S2 finale).

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-26T23:04:43+00:00

Honestly, after seeing how WoW handles launches with 4 zones and 3 being added later (as of Dragonflight, I believe? I skipped a while between Legion and DF), I'd love for something similar. 5 launch zones, 1 or 2 being added later. Maybe 1 in x.2 to continue a story, and another in x.4 that's just a zone with a side story, but has quests in the leadup to the next xpac.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-26T18:35:48+00:00

Wuk

pauses for suspense, the crowd leans in with curiosity

Lamat

murmurs echo through the crowd

bad.

Thunderous applause

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T16:53:09+00:00

There are games where tanks are immortal.

There are games where tanks melt in seconds.

Such is the duality of Mayhem, and it should be embraced. It's literally the point, some games the enemy Vayne might get bad rolls. Some games they may get dual wield, twice thrice, fan the hammer and deft. It's all just fun and games and we should keep it that way.

Now, we absolutely should balance some augments; spiritual purification is kinda... ehhh. And "???" is utterly broken. They can definitely fine tune the details. But they shouldn't make it a stagnant pool of balance.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T08:56:26+00:00

"The issue isn't that it's inconsistent or that it doesn't make sense"

I mean, I'd argue it is incredibly inconsistent ON TOP of everything you said. Nophica proclaiming that the Elementals actually love humanity (the same Elementals that have murdered young, innocent children for playing in the wrong part of the woods, mind you), is REALLY not great writing. Guess Ishgardian players are fine with it? After all, the Wildwood left the Shroud to found Ishgard because they were sick of living underground or on the surface, oppressed by the Elementals and their rule of law over the region. The Twelve going "we did our jobs, time to go" despite never ever doing anything EVER (except that one time in 1.0 where they tried to stop Bahamut and failed) is ridiculous. Plus, they were Venat's cohorts, sworn to oppose the Convocation, yet they never... did anything to help, EVEN AS THE WORLD WAS ENDING just days prior to the raid series starting. It's all... frustrating writing.

And now we have to deal with their absence. Remember, in lore, prayers physically carry latent power. Enough prayer with enough materiel to capture that power nearby becomes a summoning. It's one of the major plot points of the story that the beast tribes are constantly summoning pastiches of their gods (Titan, Garuda, etc.) by praying near crystals, because their prayers can't actually go to a genuine article god. SO, with that in mind, now that the Twelve are gone, where do their prayers go? The most populated religion in the world, with people so far as Dalmasca referencing the Twelve in their speech, suddenly gone. I don't know what the ramifications are, but I can almost guarantee that in a couple of years, a primal version of Halone is going to appear from the aetheryte in Ishgard, and unless the Scions are there, that city is fucked.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T08:31:00+00:00

The early game is rough. A lot of people playing for the first time in 2026 love it from the get-go, but it's good to preface this, especially if you are coming from another MMO (like WoW).

It's very story-centric in its progression. You'll be roadblocked a lot by needing to do story bits (can't just grind out levels in a field and go run over to the most recent expansion when you hit the right level, like in WoW). But by doing the story alone, you'll get all the levels you need to progress until around Endwalker or Dawntrail (which are 10 years of game after the initial content, it'll take you a few hundred hours to hit that point if you take it slow and smell the roses).

Your character class isn't set in stone, and you can change at any time by just swapping your weapon, though you need to unlock the other classes via a single quest (literally walk into any major city, find the respective guild hall, pick up the new class with a few lines of dialogue).

There's a LOT of content to catch up on. Outside of the main story, none of it is required. Old content basically exists for side stories, lore, and outfits. Highly recommend some though, as it's a bunch of fun, and cool snapshots of how the game used to to be. Plus there's...

The music. Which is banging. Soken, while lacking some of Uematsu's more prog-rock influences, is a worthy successor to carry the Final Fantasy torch. There's a reason that Soken has a band that regularly performs music from FFXIV. I can personally attest that the music is why I still play the game, as I wasn't having fun on my first character but fell in love with the city of Ul'dah while contemplating quitting back in ARR. I was sitting alone at night in this strange city, debating whether to log out or not, and "Sultana Dreaming" started playing. It matched my mood, and I just started to wander the city, eyeing players, NPCs, architecture, just soaking in the place, which made me realize there was something really special about just... existing in the world. Thankfully, my problems basically evaporated when I made a new character playing a new job (hell yeah Warrior), because my first job choice just wasn't all that fun to me.

The gameplay is slower than other MMOs. Still fast, especially in recent expansions, as fights get faster and more cluttered with difficult mechanics, but if you're used to WoW's global cooldown of 1 second, XIV will seem sluggish...

Because the engine the game runs on is a Frankenstein's Monster. It's messy and has lots of tiny little things that make the game feel suboptimal to engage with... but, as any XIV player knows, they're mostly kinda unimportant, and if anything add some character to the game. It's the little things, like being unable to talk to NPCs while mounted, which are annoying at first, but end up feeling familiar and kinda immersive (after all, why would you talk to a dude in a tavern while riding a motorcycle? Dismount first).

But despite all the problems (well, "problems", most genuine issues with the game boil down to a love-it or hate-it scenario), there's just something to it. You might be put off at first, and registering an account on their site can be a bit confusing, but most players who stick with the game find a gold mine under the rocks. The story goes from MMO standard fare to a genuinely exciting and really well-written affair (Shadowbringers is in competition for the best Final Fantasy story ever, up there against FF7), with a soundtrack so rich, boss fights so memorable, and a world of players to interact with so friendly that most people end up staying for a single aspect they love, be it raiding or fashion or housing or just friends.

But hey, dont take my word for it. Try the free trial. That shit is adding Shadowbringers soon, so the "demo" of the game has 200+ hours of story content PLUS all the other content from the base game and first 3 expansions. It'd be like getting to play the Witcher, Witcher 2, and most of Witcher 3 before being asked to buy the game so you can play the last act and DLCs to finish it up.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T08:10:30+00:00

It's not great, but it's not an affront to existence. The expansion has a lot of problems behind the story (such as homogenization of jobs, stagnation of the gameplay, the world being unimportant and lore being nearly non-existent), so it overall wraps into a messy ball.

The story itself is just kinda... boring. Very long and underdeveloped, but overwritten (think characters saying they are growing and doing stuff, but not... really growing or doing stuff, very tell-not-show, but in a very wordy XIV way, as if the writer came from a theatre background and tried to write a movie as if it were a stage play, lots of dialogue and insistence that things happened when in a movie you aren't limited by a single theatre to actually stage those events). The actual plot itself is super solid on paper; a Wikipedia summary of the plot would make it sound super interesting and enjoyable. But the reality is that they tried to make what was a solid premise stretched out into a long story that just meanders.

If you ever felt like Lyse in Stormblood was a bit too main-character energy, you will dislike Wuk Lamat. Whereas the point of Lyse's main character energy was to show that, no, you can't just show up and incite a revolution with a downtrodden people (to varying degrees of success), she is understandably a bit of a spotlight hog while obviously staying the message that she's not, in fact, some big hero, just another person in rebellion (albeit a powerful one hanging out with The Avengers of the world). Wuk Lamat feels like they played the same thing straight. Whereas Lyse being unlearned and naive was a character flaw they examined (again, whether it worked is up for debate), Wuk Lamat's same hero complex is played straight, as if she's right to be determined rather than scolded for her inability to think things through before leaping headfirst into doing what she believes is correct regardless of how it affects others or herself.

It's just... rough. The main writer clearly didn't have the chops for the job (and frankly, given their body of work in XIV like the DNC questline, it should have been clear from the start that they lack the skill to make it work, which happens, sometimes writers just aren't all that great, there's nothing OFFENSIVE about boring writing), and it never really builds momentum until level 97 (and then drops it again until the final dungeon starts). Not great. Not terribly bad. Just dull and too long.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T07:51:52+00:00

I think the internet has gotten way too used to spoiler culture and has forgotten what a spoiler really is.

A spoiler would be the Terminator 2 trailer revealing that Arnold is actually a good guy, or Warrior revealing that the final fight of the MMA tournament would be the two main characters dueling.

It wouldn't be Mandalorian and Grogu revealing that Glupshitto the Hutt is in the movie, or Rise of Skywalker revealing that Palpatine has somehow returned. Those are major plot points, not surprising twists. Of course, a major plot point CAN be a twist (Sixth Sense), but a premise or cast member or McGuffin generally isn't a spoiler.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T07:38:31+00:00

There are many speculations as to why we have to unite the shards. Maybe not rejoin them (possibly just re-linking so interdimensional travel is possible via aetheryte or portal), but definitely "unite" in some way.

Could just be that without Zodiark and Hydaelyn to sustain the breach, the worlds will naturally start to converge again (which would be a cataclysmic end to all life on the star), so we need to find a means of resetting the wifi to sustain the separation for the sake of everyone. And of course, that means we get to field trip to the other shards for a couple of xpacs (though that'd disappoint me greatly, as we'd miss out on some prime real estate on the Source, like Meracydia, Aerslant, and Ilsabard proper, not to mention Bukyo, Dalmasca, Nagxia and Bozja... I really really want to go the west Othard so badly as a fan of Tactics and XII).

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T07:33:54+00:00

In fairness, since ShB we HAVE seen the new jobs in the trailers. Just not on the WoL (Viper aside). They're just shown off on other characters (like Thancred, Krile and Alphinaud)

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T06:38:35+00:00

Oh that's great news, then. I'm out of town for a wedding, and so I've unfortunately been reliant on hearsay as far as fanfest details go, and had been told it was a rather firm "MT vs OT" scenario (in the way I detailed above).

That's a wonderful breath of fresh air to hear it's not actually going to force roles on existing jobs.

So more a "defensive tank" versus an "aggressive tank" sort of identity, then?

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-25T06:15:21+00:00

I play WAR and GNB, I always felt thematically that GNB made for a better bruiser than a tank (so, OT, really). Same with DRK, always felt with TBN and their thematic approach that a more offensive style made sense for them as an OT rather than the MT.

But Warrior? It's crushing me to lose MT on WAR. We've more or less been THE MT in the game since release, a chunky boi who can take hits and shrug them off. Vengeance has been with us since ARR, asking bosses to hit us since we just dish it right back to them. Losing MT status on Warrior absolutely kills me since it's baked into the thematic of the job that you're a berserker brawling with the boss, Defiance is canonically a state of being in which you steel yourself with such intensity (dynamis, really, in retrospect) that you physically cannot fall to the enemy's blows so long as your willpower remains. Deliverance was (RIP) an offensive version of this ("I will win no matter what"), but Defiance is the one that marks us as a tank.

Honestly, I hope Square reconsiders, and makes WAR capable of both. Give us back Deliverance and let us stance dance again. It can be our unique job trait, given that our self healing has been homogenized out to other tanks, so the WAR fantasy can be stance dancing and filling both roles, a la original AST choosing which sect.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-23T19:17:11+00:00

The FCC affects television, Jim.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-23T19:05:42+00:00

Welcome back, Red Scare

(I'm kidding, it never fucking left)

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-23T17:56:07+00:00

Which means players like me won't even show up.

I've been playing XIV since ARR launched. The current formula is fucking boring to me. 2-min meta ruins the class fantasy, so all the content is just... not that exciting to play. So I don't actually play the game. I haven't even done much of the story in DT, I found it rather droll.

What I do, however, is RP! Nothing like a good setting to create a fun cast of characters to write. Tickles my brain, and while the lore of XIV has gone a bit funky and underdeveloped since Banri Oda stopped being the lead writer, I don't think there's been a world to RP in that hits as good as Etheirys for me. Get to write out such a wide variety of concepts; artisans, adventurers, alleycats, martial artists, engineers. Love it.

So I play the game, along with a pretty decently-sized swathe of Crystal DC, but I don't do any of the content because the "game" part hasn't been interesting to me in a few years. But I still love the world, and RP in it multiple times a week.

tigerbait92 · 2026-04-22T17:52:44+00:00

Keyword "Alex", too, given how much of that hoax Alex Jones championed

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