Lurker > KamikazePotato

Here's my RDM controller setup. Was able to fit all the relevant non-AoE skills on one and a half hotbars. Not entirely comfortable with it but it gets the job done.

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It's Reyn Time.

Also, here's a quick and dirty RDM guide. Doesn't go beyond Level 50 mechanics. This will probably read as complicated but the class is super simple once you understand it.

Essentially, Red Mage has four core attributes:

-You're a melee mage that needs to be in close range to maximize damage (although you can fight from a range when necessary, will just be less effective)
-Your core abilities will randomly proc, and following up on those procs is extremely important
-You have a White and Black bar that fill up as you use certain moves, and you want to keep them about equal
-Dualcast, baby

Essentially, Red Mage's goal against single enemies is to fill up their White and Black bars to 80 each and then unleash a three-move melee combo that does a fuckton of damage.

Your primary moves that increase White and Black bars are Veraero and Verthunder. However, they have a super lengthy cast time of 5 seconds. So what do you do?

Quickcast, baby. Red Mage has the unique ranged DPS trait that, after casting a spell, the next spell will be cast instantly. RDM also has an ability called Jolt, which does low damage and doesn't fill up the White/Black bars much, but also only takes 2 seconds to cast. The idea is that you cast Jolt to get Quickcast, then use Veraero or Verthunder right after, as they will be cast instantly and skip the 5 second cast time. So the very basic Red Mage rotation is:

Jolt (activates Dualcast) -> Veraero (consumes Dualcast)
Jolt (activates Dualcast) -> Verthunder (consumes Dualcast)
Jolt (activates Dualcast) -> Veraero (consumes Dualcast)
Jolt (activates Dualcast) -> Verthunder (consumes Dualcast)

You get the idea. This fills up the White and Black bars equally, which is what you want.

However! There's another very important thing to consider. Whenever Veraero or Verthunder are cast, they have a 50% chance of proccing. You can then follow up those abilities with either Verstone (increases White meter) or Verfire (increaes Black meter), both which are similar in strength but only have a 2 second cast time. So, based on how the RNG plays out, one example of what your rotation can be is:

Jolt -> Veraero (fails 50% chance, doesn't proc)
Jolt -> Verthunder (succeeds in 50% chance, procs) -> Verfire (activates Dualcast)
-Using Verfire makes Dualcast ready again, so continue with:
Veraero (succeeds in 50% chance, procs, consumes Dualcast) -> Verstone (activates Dualcast)
Verthunder (50% chance fails, consumes Dualcast))
-There's no proc and Dualcast was used, so the rotation is restarted.
Jolt -> Veraero

This is WAY less complicated than it sounds. The class plays very smoothly once you get a feel for how it works.

Abilities proccing will naturally make the White/Black magic bars go out of sync, so your job is to adjust your ability usage to make sure they stay about equal. Again, doesn't take a lot of effort.

Once your White/Black bars both reach 80, you use this three-hit melee combo:

Riposte -> Zwerchhau -> Redoublement

This does a lot of damage but consumes your White/Black bars. Then you start up the process of building them up again.

There's other off-GCD moves to include as well, but understanding the core concepts of RDM is the most important thing.

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Strongly recommend that the newbies, after hitting Level 50, youtube the cutscenes from the Binding Coil of Bahamut. It's a quest series with meaningful story content that unfortunately doesn't get played anymore due to the same problems as Castrum - long cutscenes in the middle of the level - but it's definitely worth seeing. Might be able to experience it personally if a couple B8ers help run it synced to blow through it, though, which I wouldn't mind doing.

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Can you get RDM before Stormblood?

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Reactions to what they did with Blue Mage are very mixed, trending towards negative. I can see why they did it but I think people still would have been happier with just making it a normal class.

Some random tips:

-If you haven't been keeping up on your class quests, remember to do them. They're very important!
-Have you unlocked flying mounts yet? Cause when you do, hoo boy.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

The questlog isn't telling me exactly what I have to do to get this Sanguine Septer for A Relic Reborn and I'm terrified.

Hold my hand game plz ;_;

I wouldn't do the Relic quests. They're essentially intentional timesinks created to tide over players in-between big content updates. If the Relic quest is current, you at least get a strong weapon out of it. The weapon you'll be getting from doing an ARR relic quest will be far outclassed and not at all worth the time investment you could be using to do literally anything else.

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Here's a visual representation of the ARR rework that they did. Censored the names of the 2.1+ patches in case of spoilers. They also made some in-quest changes to make things go faster - an example I saw online was that one quest to collect eggs had the number of eggs reduced from 8 to 3. Also, lol 2.1.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Did you end up having to do Aurum Vale for the exp? The true ARR experience isn't complete without it!

Why would you do this to him

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Not calling witnesses because it would be a 'waste of time' is a bad argument. Everyone knows that Trump was always going to be acquitted - by that logic you could call the entire proceedings a waste of time, if you look at it through the narrow-minded scope of the only purpose of the proceedings being to convict Trump. It's about getting everything on the record, holding people accountable (as much as our broken system can), and, of course, optics. If there are witnesses to be called, you call them, because doing anything else looks weak to your base and sets a horrible precedent.

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DR2 has some characters that exceed the best DR1 has to offer, but it also has some of the worst characters in the series

Hiyoko is one of them

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Not_an_Owl posted...

To add on to this, while the ARR story is fairly mediocre it also lays a lot of important groundwork for everything that is to come. Narrative threads established during 2.0 are still paying off in the newest content today.

FF14 is very, very good about paying off plot threads. Or even just plot details. Everything from start to finish matters.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Wait time for Rock the Castrum, 26 minutes.

...yeah that's gonna have to be tomorrow.

The last two dungeons in FF14 are okay for first-timers and awful for people who've already done them. They're super long, everyone is overgeared so the fights are a joke, and Square hadn't figured out that including very lengthy plot cutscenes in the middle of a dungeon was a bad idea, so back in the day all the veterans would advise people to skip the cutscenes and watch them in the cutscene viewer later. Square's solution to this was to make the cutscenes unskippable, which benefited the first-timers but made it worse for everyone else.

There's a daily roulette that only puts you in those two dungeons, just to maximize the number of people going through them so newbies can progress the story. The roulettes give out a ton of EXP and can really help level up a class, and people still barely do it because of how much of a slog it is.

Solid narrative conclusion to the ARR main story, though!

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You're blazing through this. DR1 isn't super long but it's only been a day!

MrSmartGuy posted...

Celeste's voice breaking down into a generic American-sounding voice is the best voice acting you're going to get out of the first game, sadly. Both future games are much, MUCH better in this regard. Like, I'd give DR1's voice acting crew a 3/10, but DR2 and DRV3 are both easy 9/10's.

3/10 is kinda harsh but the VA is definitely not as good as 2 & 3

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I can't make changes to that .doc unfortunately

I'll just list myself here as Rodian Greyashe - Ultros - Primal - Main Ninja but can play any role

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Also to the new guys - it's possible to add people to your friends group outside of your server, so if you ever want to queue up with a B8er feel free to post in the topic and one of us might be around

I wouldn't mind running a Tank or Healer to help out with those pesky DPS queue times

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

We gonna make a new regular ffxiv topic? Looks like this one was a one off but I feel like everyone is talking soooooo...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79292163

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Other one is about to fill.

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Shame that those in a cult can never see it from the outside

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to spending hours leveling a combat class I don't particularly enjoy to see minutes of story content that I could watch on youtube

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I view those willing to go 100% into the gathering/crafting classes with a mixture of suspicion and pity

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Leonhart4 posted...

If you want to argue it's better, that's one thing.

To say it's more iconic is flatly incorrect.

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Would Trials of Mana or the original be worth it if I have no nostalgic connection to the series?

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Bright side is that being able to beat the enemy anyway means you're doing good on your rotation!

Since you seem to be looking forward to picking up Red Mage later down the line, here's my guy in his RDM getup:

https://i.imgur.com/WvLDFpP.png

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Here's another random tip: heavily recommend that you zoom out the camera all the way during boss fights. You won't be able to keep up with some mechanics without a bird's-eye view.

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Also it's a shame you're not playing a physical damage class, as it won't mean much to you when I say that physical skills used to run off of a stamina bar, and it was possible to run out of stamina if you optimized your rotation too efficiently a.k.a. did a good job at playing. It was also tied to Sprinting - using Sprint completely depleted your stamina bar, which meant that physical jobs basically weren't allowed to Sprint in combat.

Early FF14 had a lot of jank that's been improved on since then, which at the very least shows the devs care and are listening.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Wait did they not used to shower you in these teleport tickets??

What a nightmare!

We made that trek manually every single time

Just wait until you get a flying mount and then learn that you couldn't actually fly in ARR areas either until the rework

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Yes and I'm jealous of those experiencing ARR for the first time because of it

Did they streamline the pre-Titan questlines? I think that was probably the lowest point of FF14 in general (after 1.0).

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Titan beated. Great music!

FF14's music is fantastic and, like everything else about the game, only gets better after ARR. Titan's Theme is a classic and it's not even in my Top 20 FF14 songs at this point.

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Dig into other classes whenever you feel like. I don't think there's a wrong way to do that unless you spread yourself thin trying to level 4+ classes at once or something like that.

Titan is halfwayish through ARR? Is also when ARR picks up and you start getting actual boss fights.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

It just seems complicated as all heck. Dancer, too. I like bows but I just want a sniper!

When you say Sniper, you mean someone who hits from a safe distance? Cause while the ranged DPS are generally safer, there's no such thing as a perfectly safe class. Everyone has to move and do mechanics.

I honestly wouldn't worry too much about which classes look complicated or not. The biggest learning curve for you right now is just getting used to how an MMO works in general. While some classes are tougher to learn than others, they're all made to be approachable, and you'll have more success if you just pick a flavor/playstyle that looks pleasing to you and rolling with it than you will worrying yourself over whether or not you'll be able to make it work. And if for whatever reason it doesn't end up fitting your playstyle...try something else! Just that simple. FF14 is meant to be a very casual-friendly MMO.

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I think Machinist objectively hits more buttons than Bard, although it has less unique buttons to hit

Found this APM chart that's a yearish old so it's not perfectly current but should still be relevant:

https://i.imgur.com/jtau1fQ.png

Surprised Monk is that low. Also that chart is not perfectly indicative of class difficulty as Dancer is by far the easiest class in the game to play.

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Also what server did you join?

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If you like the idea of hitting buttons while playing a video game:

-Play Ninja if you want to be a melee DPS
-Play Machinist if you want to be a ranged DPS
-Play Monk if you hate yourself

Off the top of my head, those are the high APM classes. Then there's everything else in the middle...then Black Mage.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Bard looks like a nightmare, though.

In what way? I have a friend who loves Bard. Half of that is because of song spam, but still.

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Machinist, like Bard, is easy to pick up and do fairly well with because being mobile ranged DPS without long casting times is borderline cheating. You basically never stop pressing buttons though, so it might be a culture shock if you go to it straight from Black Mage, which presses the least buttons out of any class in the game.

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You'll be using different systems but no class can get away with only one hotbar, so it's better to get used to the idea now.

When I get home I'll check my setup and see how I made it so that when you sheathe/unsheathe it autoswitches hotbars for you. That should help with the transition.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1359969215550115840

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Not yet, but I'm already feeling the burn. I haven't even gotten myself into the mental habit of using L2 yet. It doesn't help that all those secondary black mage abilities are very similarly colored silhouettes of front facing dudes <_<

Yeah I strongly recommend getting yourself used to the idea of multiple hotbars and using L2. The sooner you start training your muscle memory, the better.

The basic way I do it as a controller player is two hotbars for combat abilities, and a separate hotbar for non-combat commands like Teleport. You can set it up so that you automatically switch between the combat hotbar and the non-combat hotbar by drawing/sheathing your weapon.

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Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well

Have you set up multiple hotbars? As a fair warning, after learning all your abilities you're not going to come close to being able to fit everything you want onto just that one

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If you want to pick up a tank, play Dark Knight. In fact, if you don't want to play tank, level up Dark Knight anyway, as its class storyline is in the top 1% of writing in the game. It's a crime that it isn't mandatory.

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Danganronpa has awful fanservice, which comes part and parcel with the series' desire to put every anime trope (good and bad) into a blender

Miranda butt shots being out-of-place aint got nothing on Mikan

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It's Reyn Time.

Yeah thinking of Trump's popularity as linear isn't the way to interpret things. Trump is extremely popular among Republicans and extremely unpopular among Democrats, which leads to an increase in votes among both party lines. He also helps out the rest of the GOP by being on the ticket - Republicans who show up to vote are slightly more likely to vote against Trump than Democrats are to vote for him, but those same Republicans will still vote down ticket GOP for everything else.

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The item-bound subsystem is one of those you can ignore entirely and get through the game fine, honestly. There's some minor benefits but don't stress over it.

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I think it's way worse if you're a Viera or Hrothgar. They take a WHILE to appear, at all.

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I'm way happier with Biden as President than I was with the idea at the start of the year. Biden isn't the same Biden he was then now. He's way more pissed off and willing to do his own thing. Going through a pandemic the GOP worsened and an insurrection they started will do that.

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Are you guys STILL talking about this

Must be a slow news day

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Oh god, it's a slow news day

Typing that sentence is legitimately heartwarming

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My take is that ACAB isn't a great slogan but it doesn't really matter much in the end. 95% of the people that were going to oppose it would have opposed it regardless of branding.

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GameStonk posted...

Really? I've only heard that TWD was worthwhile, but that might have just been backlash from their Batman series.

Tales From the Borderlands is super good. Definitely my favorite Telltale game I played. And I don't even like Borderlands.

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/05/congressional-report-reveals-manufacturers-knowingly-sold-toxin-tainted-baby-food

Everyone read this.

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Last page of this topic really makes the US sound like a third-world country

Cause it is haha woo

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Amazing to me how raising minimum wage / giving UBI is a bad idea because 'prices will just raise with it!'

Certainly hasn't stopped prices from raising despite no real increase in wages in the last 40 years

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That's honestly one of the better 'GOP weirdo' headshots I've seen. Half of them have a serious case of 'dead on the inside eyes' going on.

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FFDragon posted...

Shouldn't it theoretically be at least the ten that voted for trump's second impeachment?

That should be the floor.

Should it? Trump tried to kill them already. MTG just wants to at a point in the future.

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Anyone who doesn't support UBI should be forced to work a $9/hour retail job (which also doesn't offer a full 40 hours per week) until their opinion changes

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