Morning Folks! I legitimately did not expect to grow to like Roegabel… but I gotta say I am digging it. Tanking random dungeons feels specifically fun because I am ginormous and can play fully zoomed out while also knowing exactly where my character is in relation to effects. I also really dig this outfit I have assembled… which admitted was a bit of a challenge given how few cool armor sets I have access to right now. Yesterday I dinged level 65 and will probably hit 70 before I finish up the ARR post-patch content. Ace remembered the existence of silver chocobo feathers which allowed me and them to purchase two pieces of level 60 gear significantly upping our performance. I also picked up a level 70 weapon for when I finally ding that eventually.
Last night we wrapped up the Crystal Tower series and had what was quite possibly the smoothest Syrcus Tower run I have ever experienced. It is all made up by the fact that we had maybe the worst World of Darkness run that I have seen in a while. I was essentially main-tanking everything… and off-tanking whatever I could at the same time because none of the other tanks appeared to be willing to do anything. We had a moment on Cerberus where I died… because no one was tanking the Wolfsbane and I came back up assuming that one of the other tanks picked it up… only to find out that it was running amok and I had to taunt it back on me. We got through it and I maybe feel more positive about my tanking prowess when it comes to larger content. I mean I raid tanked for years but I am rusty as fuck. We also cleared Leviathan which is SO MUCH easier than I remember it being.
I also got far enough in the Manderville quest line for me to unlock the Battle at Big Bridge. I’ve gotta say… while I low-key find Hildebrand annoying… I LOVE the trial fights associated with the series. Fighting Greg was probably the highlight of the evening for me, and I look forward to unlocking the next trial. On my Cactuar main I am nowhere near caught up on the Manderville quests and did not even realize that there was a Shadowbringers Trial and an Endwalker Trial… so I guess I need to get through those so I can see if they are anywhere near as good as the ARR trials.
In other notes I have been in this morning after the patch and unlocked the first wing of the Arcadion. I expect tonight Ace and I are going to challenge this, and I might ping Masto to see if anyone is interested in joining in the nonsense. I have no clue when we will be doing this, but I am figuring fairly early in the evening. I need to figure out what items I want to focus on trying to get. I REALLY need a new ring, so I will probably run things until I end up winning one of those. So I guess I am specifically trying to snag “Light-heavy Holoearring” which is the token used for accessories. I noticed that at least as of this morning there was not a new bookrock type, so I am wondering if they are waiting until Savage goes in for that to happen.
In other news, the sign-ups keep rolling in for Blaugust 2024. At this point, we have a little over thirty folks signed up with still half a month to go until the event starts. You can as always find all of the links in a condensed form on the Media Kit page, but if you are interested in reading my yearly post you can find that here. I’ve seen so much traction in the Fediverse that it is charming to behold. I am hoping that converts to folks actually signing up and participating in the coming weeks. Once again huge thanks to folks like Massively OP for covering the event and lending some additional visibility. More importantly massive thanks to all of the participants who keep returning year after year and are the real reason why I keep this going.
The post Roegabel is Pretty Fun appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are back in fighting form with the entire crew. We start off discussing SGDQ or Summer Games Done Quick a massive speedrunning community event. From there we talk a bit about the Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalgur spoilers and some of the changes that are being made. Then we roll into Last Epoch Cycle 2 which has so many amazing gameplay and polish improvements. Lastly Bel and Grace talk about their nonsense mission to replay all of the FFXIV content and some of the experiences from running old content with perfect understanding of where the game story is going. Bel has traditionally played a Lalafell and Grace a pretty dedicated Roegadamme… and they have dared each other to swap races. Last night after the show that happened and the show card shows the end results. Lastly Bel talks a bit about Blaugust which is coming up in a few weeks.
Topics Discussed:
SGDQ
Path of Exile 3.25 Spoilers
Last Epoch Cycle 2
So many improvements
Amazingly polished experience
Revisiting FFXIV A Realm Reborn
Redoing Old Content with Full Understanding of the 10-Year Story Arc
Good Morning Friends! I’m now starting to feel like I am actually rolling on Summoner. Yesterday I pushed it through to level 93 after running beast tribe dailies and then PVP, Main Story, Trial, and Alliance Raid roulettes. I got one of the Nier raids which was pretty awful and takes for freaking ever to clear… but I stuck with it. I do not love having cast times folks. Everything else about being a Summoner I am pretty on board with, but cast times are butts. Like the positive is that Titan and Garuda are all instant cast abilities, so it is really only Ifrit that becomes a problem. Like I said yesterday I can sort of vary my rotation a bit to make up for this fact but still having to stand still at any point feels awful.
I’ve also invoked some dumbassery to simplify my rotation. Summoner is a class that could benefit from having more modal buttons that shift what they do as you use them. So I decided to make my own in the form of a couple of macros. I am sure this is not efficient but I also do not care about being the best summoner on the planet. I only care enough about being decent enough to not get visibly called out for my halfassery. So as such, I made an AOE button and a Single Target button. Granted you will have to turn off error messages to keep from this being an awful experience. The above screenshot shows the three boxes you need to untick first in Character Configuration > Log Settings > General tab… and then by clicking through to the log filters section at the bottom of that same screen and unchecking error messages.
If you want to join me in my degeneracy there are the macros I am using. I threw Ruin IV in there just to have a place to put it since I would be spamming that button anyway. The idea is that single-target defaults to Ruin and multi-target defaults to Outburst but will use the elemental flavored version of those attacks if it is available. Since Bahamut and Phoenix already override Ruin/Outburst this still works in those phases as well. I’ve contemplated throwing in painflare as well into the stack to be super lazy, and it would absolutely work similarly to Ruin IV. I am sure I will have someone comment about how I am doing a disservice to the class but honestly… fuck that noise. You can blame this on me playing Guild Wars 2 a lot… but Final Fantasy XIV has way too damned many buttons to push on a regular basis and anything I can do to simplify that seems like a win to me. Side note… you could use any flavor of ruin in the macro and the game is smart enough to know what you mean and will downgrade Ruin III for example for earlier versions when you are running lower-level content.
I’ve gone back to tracking my job progress on my spreadsheet, though I do not give a shit about the trending I used to do where I kept track of where I was with every job every day. That was something I was doing in the lead-up to Endwalker, mostly to try and see if I could in theory realistically get everything to level 80 before the expansion. Now that I have all of the time in the world… I can just focus on where I am with each job. At this point I have Warrior and Machinist at 100 and am rapidly catching Summoner/Scholar up which gives me the double whammy of a caster and a healer. After that, I will probably level Samurai next because out of the melee jobs, it is probably my favorite. Then I will probably focus down family groups of classes that all use the same gear. So with Samurai I will also level up Monk. Then I will probably level Dancer and Bard to finish out my physical ranged. No clue when I will tackle the other things, but probably the easiest to level will be my other tank classes.
I think after today my Summoner should be at least level 95, which is ideal level for hanging out in the zone I keep referring to as Texaco. There is a rare FATE in that zone which gives you currency to get the Capybara mount which I really want. As a result of this mount being there, there tends to be a crowd always rolling around through the FATE trains. In theory if I get a decent chunk of time I can probably easily push through additional levels each day hanging out in the zone. Adding this into my rotation I will easily hit 100 on Summoner and Scholar probably sometime around Friday. That gives me the weekend to push through the role quests and by next week you will probably have me as a newly minted Mentor. May heaven have mercy on your souls.
Anyways! Still having a blast in Dawntrail and very much looking forward to the opening of the raid next week. My raid main is ready, and I am going to throw out a broader net to see if anyone wants to do some nonsense on Tuesday. I would love to go in with a full group, but even if I don’t have those folks I will probably PUG it with Ace.
The post Simplifying Summoner appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! I had a pretty early night last night and turned in around 8:30, so did not make a ton of progress. I did however get my Summoner to level 90 like I thought I would, and made it up to Titan on my Kraken Warrior which we will run first thing this evening. I like Summoner quite a bit, way more than I thought I would at this time. The only annoyance is the casting times, and needing to interrupt them in order to move out of things. I do wonder how the game would feel if they removed all casting times or allowed you to cast while moving. Most of the summoner rotation does not require a casting time and it is only really the Ifrit abilities that chain me into place, so in theory, if I know movement is going to happen I can just start my rotation at the other end with Titan or Garuda. After being used to dpsing while on the go with the Machinist, this has probably been the biggest adjustment.
One of the more notable aspects of the Kraken project is that mounts look so much cooler when they are not super tiny. I’ve been running around on my Fenrir bike as I am used to doing and it looks so much cooler when I can actually see the detail in it. This is especially notable as the mounts now bank as you turn lending a bit more realistic movement than they previously had. I am not saying I will give my the Lala life on my Cactuar main, but I appreciate seeing a bit more detail in all of the mounts and even the gear pieces. Catboy life is pretty great and I am happy I decided to roll with that racial choice. I’ve always dug the dark-skinned Miqo’te appearances. I wish they had more proper beard action going on but I will life with the tufts around my chin.
I also now understand why folks talk about the ARR MSQ being so rough around the edges. I know they have streamlined a lot of the content, but there are still chunks that seem to drag on forever. For example in the lead-up to Titan, there is this 20-step or so sequence where you have to learn about wine and recover a famous vintage. This is extremely tedious and while the payoff for all of your busy work is somewhat fun… it definitely feels like something that could have been trimmed back a bit. I think the Japanese appetite may be more into the mundane “day in the life” sort of content than the Western audience. I’m looking at you Persona series and all of your tedious running about to do social nonsense. Thankfully I just kept my head down and pushed through it and now can finally fight Titan.
Grousing aside… I have had a heck of a lot of fun exploring the ARR MSQ again with fresh eyes after ten years of playing this game. I have so many fond memories of this era for the game and the group of friends we played it with. Ace and I have lamented how far removed from that era we are. We were joking about our friend Mor yelling “Medica Twooooooo” each time he cast the spell… and that is sadly just a bygone era. It was after the late ARR/early HW era that folks migrated westward and time zones became a problem… and it just became impossible to agree upon a time that was early enough for the Eastern folks but late enough to not collide with work responsibilities for the Western folks. So really if we want to recapture some of that joy we are going to have to start from scratch and rebuild what we had.
It is on that note that I am starting to try and rebuild that friend group. I am not sure what the restrictions are these days but I know for certain that I can group with anyone on the Aether Data Center on my main, and Dynamis Data Center on my alt. What I am looking for is folks who can play in an Eastern timezone compatible range of hours on weekday evenings (not sure which yet), and play a wide variety of roles. What we have currently is a Tank (myself) and a Healer (Ace) and potentially a few others who might be interested in our FC/Friendgroup. So I am throwing out the request to my longterm readers out there… do you want to do some of the harder content in the game? At a minimum I want to do all of the Extremes and Normal raids… and would love to maybe work up to Savage content at some point. I am way more focused on having a fun group than a highly skilled well-oiled machine.
If this sounds like something you would be interested in, drop me a line on one of the MANY platforms you can contact me in, or just throw out a note in the comments below. We will be organizing over on the Super Dungeon Friends discord when things begin to pull together. So feel free to join.
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