Creator Cleared, What next?

Howdy!

So, 3.4 Hit about a Month ago, We managed to get 2 new healers and a tank, after a bit of time lost to schedule issues we wasted no time getting stuck in to the new raid tier.

A9s went down in a matter of a couple of hours

And A10s went down a few hours after that,

As expected there was a difficulty spike for A11s but it wasn't too bad, went down in just under a couple of weeks for us.

Then A12s went down a couple of weeks later, a couple of hours before the time of me writing this.

Creator wasn't a bad tier, but nothing for me to write home about either. Alex was quite fun for me on DRG though but I despise A11. The decision to add an easy raid tier with such a long wait until Stormblood wasn't the best thought out decision in my opinion.

So the question is, What the fuck do we do now? The games continues to offer little worthwhile activity for those who are able to clear savage and we have until June until the expansion.

I will probably finish my outstanding jobs to 60 (PLD BRD DRK AST ARM and BSM) and maybe finish my MNK relic if it looks nice then just raid log until then, the only other thing I can think of is to try and Raid on NIN to learn the job so I can offer all 3 melee for my group next tier.

I'm just hoping they make some drastic changes to this game in 4.0, because if raiding is going to be this easy to clear then this scenario is only going to repeat itself. I'm honestly not looking forward to 4.0 but I have met so many great people in this game I'm determined to not give up on it just yet.

If you need me, I'll be going through my mountain of unplayed PC and PS4 games.

Later.

-Aud/Dom

A8s dead, A look back on Midas and the future of FFXIV.

So once again, It's been a while!

So I went casual for a few months while I settled into my new job. Everything is going great, I passed all of my training with no issues and all of my colleagues are really supportive and friendly.

I also moved into a new house share, although I am moving again in a couple of weeks to my brothers house as his flatmate has left and they wanted someone to take over the tenancy, I get faster internet, it's cheaper and I get my own living room so that's a result for me. I also get on really well with my brother so I would feel more comfortable than around a group of strangers.

So with my life back on track, I had one thing in my mind. To take down A8s. I left my group a few months ago and they had long replaced me so I looked into finding a new group.

During my time as a (filthy) casual, I got BLM to 60, I really enjoyed playing the job so looked at joining a group as DRG, MNK, or BLM.

After a couple of hours of PF, I group asked if I would be interested in joining them as BLM for A7 progression, I didn't mind as I love A7 plus I had 0 raid experience on BLM at 60 so It would give me a chance to adjust to the job.

Sadly the group wasn't for me, The leader left a raid halfway through because he claimed he wasn't enjoying himself. This didn't sit right with me as it wasn't fair on the 7 other people who wanted to raid, thought it was a very selfish decision on his part.

I also tried to apply to Curia Regis FC on the Midgard server, I speak to a few of their members on guildwork and due to my schedule I could play NA times if I made some adjustments, My schedule was too unpredictable for their liking though so my application wasn't accepted.

Determined not to give up, I continued searching, I spotted a party finder up one day with some old Dango members looking to rebuild their group, Dango got 3 server firsts last tier so I knew they were good players, I also planned on raiding as DRG so it took the learning curve of learning BLM away.

My schedule continued to be random and a Melee spot came up in my FC for the other group that we had friendly competition with during progression. I thought that it was make more sense to switch groups as my friends would be a lot more understanding of my schedule than people who I barely know. The Dango people were awesome though and I had a lot of fun messing around with them, I wish them best of luck for the next tier.

This group had already cleared A8s, so not wanting to disappoint, I started to research the fight. I would watch streams and melee PoV videos on Youtube to gain an understanding of the fight.

Before going in with them, I hadn't even gotten past legislation with my old group and we barely had any raid time in there to begin with, We got to Verdict on our first pull and everything clicked into place pretty fast for me.

And 3 and a half hours later, A8s died:

Tank body dropped (I got it a dyed it pink :3), it was only a one chest run as Alice, Rhela and Sycko are from the other group and kindly gave up their time to help us while we rebuild the group. Also a shout out to Collin Freeze for helped for the first 3 hours the previous raid.

So my run of clearing tiers before nerfs continues, Looking to continue this into 3.4 in a couple of weeks.

While I'm looking forward to 3.4, I'm growing increasingly concerned for 4.0, There are plans in the works to make rotations and raids easier and I feel this will take the challenge out of the game for me.

I feel the raid aspect of the game really needs to be looked at, while I appreciate the dev team are short staffed, the 'here's 4 fights with the same concept each tier, enjoy' formula is getting really really stale. The struggle to find a group also continues for some people and people are penalized loot wise for taking people who have already cleared into fights with them,

My personal thoughts on how to improve raiding:

1: Have 3 tiers of raiding, The Normal and Savage modes as normal and also add a hard mode with slightly inferior gear, this then keeps the savage mode fights a challenge for the people who want it but also offers a challenge for people new to raiding or who are not able to challenging savage.

2. Remove the impact that taking people who have already cleared a turn into a raid makes out of the game. I feel it's really pointless having this, WoW you can enter as many times as you want per lockout but can only see loot once per lockout. This is perfect in my opinion, It gives people chance to help friends in other statics while not impacting their loot. This would in turn get more people raiding which I'm sure is something that the dev team wants at this stage as they seem to say the clear rates are below expectations each tier.

3. Try something new. Taking the same people through the same 8 man fights each tier is getting stale, they need to mix it up a little bit, maybe lower man or alliance based raids, I'd love to raid with some other friends but the game seems to discourage it as it has an impact on loot. I don't really know what to suggest to be honest but this game needs change.

I do like however the book system that they added, gone are the days of never seeing a drop as you can just purchase it with books if you have enough. although the system isn't perfect I also like how they made it so you can re-enter turns after you have cleared, something which didn't exist in the coil days.

For now, I'm trying to finish off my Alt, Bob Ross, I miss having an alt to help others out and I do still enjoy playing MNK. I'm also making a fair bit of money via retainers and fishing in diadem.

So until next time. This is Aud, signing out.

Big changes.

Howdy. Been a few months since my last post. This is more of a personal post as I'd like to get some things off my chest.

There's no screenshots in this post as I'm on my laptop not my PC.

So 3.2 hit and with it came Midas Savage.

A5 was pretty straight forward, clearing it in a mere 3 hours. A6 was a bit more tricky. A couple of members in my group just couldn't get it and adding in the usual schedule conflicts that my group has, it took over about 5 weeks to clear. (We cleared it just before they nerfed it, so that made me happy.)

Then we came to A7, For me, this is my new favourite fight ever in FFXIV, with T13 being a close 2nd. I love challenging myself in melee friendly fights and so to date my record is 1650dps which I consider to be good considering I'm still missing a lot of gear and we're not skipping the 2nd jail set yet.

So we just hit A8, but sadly I've come to the difficult decision to take a break from the game.

This was far from an easy decision to make as I've been with my group for 15 months and love them to pieces. But with current real life events, I feel now is the right time to step away until things settle down again.

The main reason is that I got a new job. After 11 years of working in retail, I have moved on to something different and more challenging (I can't really say publicly what it is, but if you want to know send me a private message.).

With this job comes a big pay increase. 66%ish actually which is around £9000 (about $13000) and that is absolute minimum, I can work overtime which is paid at time and a half or double time depending on the circumstances.

The only drawback is that it is shift work. while they try to accommodate my preferred shifts there comes times where I have to work night shifts. Which I don't mind personally, but it's not good for my group and therefore I cannot commit to a set schedule. Our schedule is already pretty weak due to Andy's shift patterns also but since we like raiding with each other so much we've managed to make it work.

Lastly, From the first contact I made with this company to now, everyone has been nothing but helpful, friendly, supportive and professional. Therefore, I want to repay their kindness to me by giving this my 100% attention and effort, which sadly won't be possible if I'm having to try and move shifts to raid and since I have the opportunity to make a lot of money, I wish to take advantage of it.

For those of you who don't know, I used to work for a retail company called Argos where I worked for 6 and a half years. It started off pretty well. Hours were good and the money was ok. but over time it got worse even when I was promoted.

Firstly, the company took away a lot of benefits from you (annual bonus, time and half on sunday and other holidays etc) yet they expected you to do more and more in return.

Secondly, if you want to go anywhere in retail. you pretty much have to be your managers little bitch. The amount of people I saw get promoted because they were obviously sucking the managers dick was astounding, I couldn't lower myself to that level. If I disagreed with a decision made by anyone, I would challenge it, and that's one thing which retail management hate. They hate thinking they're not in control, everything has to go their way. How dare you challenge their authority. Progression was pretty much non existent to me. This behaviour in my new job is not acceptable and you're actually encouraged to challenge bad practices and behaviours.

And lastly. The additional workload and responsibilities I got with my promotion wasn't worth the financial reward. I found myself having to do my own job, plus half of my managers job and half of my teams work because they could get away with fucking around all day and the managers didn't have a backbone to sort it out.

I felt so unappreciated, stressed and unchallenged that I eventually just gave up. Next to nothing got done. I would rather just of sat on my phone all day then do anything that didn't require immediate action. I was extremely blunt and sarcastic with management and my team who were mostly fucking useless.

When I saw this job, I leapt at it. It was a long process. I have to pass a lot of assessment and security checks plus an interview, but I was eventually accepted and I am really enjoying myself.

So take it from a retail worked of 11 years. Don't try and progress in retail, there's so much better out there and even if you don't have too many qualifications like myself, there are avenues you can go down to get there. I pretty damn proud of myself for sticking at something for so long even though I fucking hated it. If you're stuck in retail at the moment, I salute you. Hang in there and eventually, something will come up which you can move onto.

All good things must come to an end. and It's easy to say this group has been one of the best things that's happened to me in this game. I'll be gone until at least 4.0 and may not be back if SE insists on churning out the same old recycled content. I am currently raiding still until they find a replacement but this might be it for me.

In other news. yet again, I have returned to FFXI! I have a lot to catch up on, but once again the community has been fantastic and I am slowly finding my feet again. Audacity was sadly taken on Asura, which is a very active server for all timezones so I am now know as Diluted (My PSN).

Thanks for reading and whatever you may be doing. I wish you the best of luck.

-Dom

Alexander Savage cleared! My final thoughts on Gordias.

Hello. It's me.

So, It's been a while since my last post. Where we were deep into A3 savage. We were trialing a new tank after kicking our Warrior and it was just what the doctor ordered:

A3 died 2 raids later! I've never felt a bigger level of accomplishment in this game than after clearing this fight. Easily the hardest fight in the game to date.

I also decided to take up Dragoon, since double MNK isn't as effective as what it used to be. I'm actually really enjoying it and surprisingly, I find it easier to play than MNK under pressure.

Sadly, our MNK's schedule changed, so we can only raid one a week every 2 weeks, but we were filled with confidence at this point so into A4 savage we went.

This is actually a really boring fight since you essentially fight a stationary object for 12 minutes and the main mechanic of what makes the fight difficult (Nisi) can be bypassed by sacrificing 3 members of your party.

So despite having less raid time, we cleared it in a mere 2 months!

And luckily for me, I bagged myself a DRG body and the upgraded esoterics weapon!

(Yes I went back to Miqote for a while, but I'm back to my Lalafell roots :3)

I couldn't be happier and more proud of my raid team. We've been missing a couple of pieces of the puzzle to make a solid team since we kicked 2 members during T9 savage and with the addition of Sycko and Amarant, I feel we have a really solid team who can handle anything that SE decides to throw at us. (Although Eirik was a good tank and person but had to leave us due to schedule changes =[)

So, what are my final thoughts on Savage Gordias?

Aside from some boring fights (A2 and A4). I felt it was just right for end game for me, it wasn't too easy that we cleared it in weeks and had nothing to do (And believe me, the game does get boring if you don't have raids) and yet it wasn't so hard that it was impossible to clear either.

The main difference between this tier and previous tier was that all 8 members of your party HAD TO pull their weight 100%, the DPS requirements were very strict so you were punished for poor performance.

But to me, that's what end game should be, A CHALLENGE! The game is no fun if you clear everything in weeks and have to spend months waiting for the next tier.

And you know what, I think it was just what the game needed. For us especially. It made us look at how we play our jobs and our rotations, were we doing it right? I know for a fact I've come out of this tier as a better player and I have these fights to thank for that. It's very satisfying coming out of this with your group intact after seeing A LOT of groups crumble and disband around you.

So 3.2 is just around the corner, Midas looks interesting so I'll stick around for another tier, but I'm hoping SE implements something a bit different in the not so distant future as the concept of 4 fights on a circular battlefield is getting quite stale now.

For now, I've been completing some unfinished business. Firstly I got Machinist to 60:

I actually planned to make this job my main and started leveling it the second it came out, but I made a U turn at level 54 and went back to Monk as I thought it wouldn't be the job for me. However since getting it to 60, I'm finding it very fun and I will put some time into learning the job once I get some free time in 3.2

My Warrior is currently at level 58 and will be 60 very soon, so after that happens I still need to blast though the 3.1 story then I think I'll finish off one of my new alts.

Mr Bob Ross!

Thanks for reading! See you in 3.2!

-Dom / Aud