Board 8 > FFXIV Topic 3 - I Believe ARR Can Fly

(+) Yeah! (+)

I beat it all now, yeah. And it's fair in some ways, especially since Elidibus hadn't really outright worked against them in the past.

5.2 wasn't really my favorite because of that plotline, though it did still have enjoyable stuff and fun Ascian revelations. 5.1 was nice epilogue-y content though, and 5.3 was fantastic as a sort of 'true ending' for Shadowbringers. Warrior of Light was real good stuff story-wise. Glad I decided to keep going and play up to that. Before I started on Shadowbringers I was feeling a bit burned out on the game and unsure if I wanted to continue. Even after I started it, I was thinking I might quite once I was done 5.0, but it was so good overall that I was happy to continue. Excellent experience overall! Game timer has me around 287 hours, though probably at least 10 of those are idling, if not more. Mostly very enjoyable hours, thankfully. Much less grindy than I expected it to be.

For the new boss content:

Weapons: cool battles and great fanservice. This is the best of the three ongoing side plots if you ask me. The bad guy seems a bit too evil, but eh, it works. The kids are a little lame sometimes though.

Eden: Re-using bosses, even if they are changed, doesn't make me feel particularly hyped, and I'm not that into the story either. Rejuvenating the Empty is a great goal; it's just they don't tell a particularly interesting story around it. Gaia is... okay. They could've done a better job with her, but her development by the end was still solid The only one of the eight bosses that was really cool was Shiva. Wonder if we'll get to fight Edea or Ultimecia in the final set...

Nier Raids: I feel like these should be better? In a few aspects they're great: the area design is totally Nier, the music is all there, the pods are fun, and some of the bosses are quite good. Most of the bosses aren't that exciting though, and the framing story is just okay. I did enjoy them, just wish they had a little more punch.

It's funny, before this patch I was thinking about how 14 had major references to basically all the older FFs other than 7/8/10/13, and the 5.X stuff adds quests for both 7 and 8. Good timing there.
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You only run the nier raids to ilsten to the music.

Got some bangers in there.

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Fun fact about the 5.2/5.3 story that you may have missed: When we see Elidibus's past through the Echo he's looking upwards at all the other ancients. Combined with how small he is when he shows up after beating Seat of Sacrifice, the heavy implication is that Elidibus was a child when the Convocation used him to summon Zodiark. Aside from being incredibly fucked up, this explains a lot - why Azem straight-up left the Convocation over the Zodiark plan (he wanted no part of child abuse), why Emet-Selch made contingencies to help defeat Elidibus (he didn't want the kid to be the last unsundered ancient, going through eternity all on his own), and why he takes the form of the Warrior of Light in the first place (he was a child, with a child's idea of what a hero looks like and does; he's basically turning into his idea of Superman to fight you).

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Neat, I didn't quite get that part! I thought that the Elidibus there was like the "reborn" version or something, but that makes more sense. Very cool detail. Wasn't Azem a she though? That's the ancient whose soul MC and Ardbert have, right? And Emet-Selch always refers to that soul as "her" or "she"... Or does Azem's gender change depending on what gender you pick?
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Beat Stormblood main story. Wonder how long the post story is now that all this extra stuff opened up.

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The gender does change, yes.

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I'm a bit surprised by that. You'd think a soul wouldn't customize itself to a particular set of "equipment."

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trdl23 posted...

I'm a bit surprised by that. You'd think a soul wouldn't customize itself to a particular set of "equipment."

They weren't always disembodied souls! I believe the amorphous giants we see are just abstract interpretations, although they did wear cloaks and masks to obscure individuality.

I think Eden is very good as FF14 fanservice - although it probably doesn't hit if you aren't as entrenched. But I honestly love seeing the boss redesigns and the music remixes slap. The framing mechanism isn't too great but I honestly prefer it to the Omega raids, and I'm hoping Gaia has a satisfying story.

The Savage fights have also been pretty great so that's likely also coloring my opinion. But thinking about it, they really did not give the individual fights too much flavor in normal mode, compared to Alphascape (or even the last two Alex tiers) where most bosses had some major gimmick.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I think Eden is very good as FF14 fanservice - although it probably doesn't hit if you aren't as entrenched. But I honestly love seeing the boss redesigns and the music remixes slap. The framing mechanism isn't too great but I honestly prefer it to the Omega raids, and I'm hoping Gaia has a satisfying story.

The Savage fights have also been pretty great so that's likely also coloring my opinion.

E8S is the best savage fight since, oh, God Kefka I think? It's phenomenal.

E6S is the worst savage fight since A2S.

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Not_an_Owl posted...

E6S is the worst savage fight since A2S.

What's wrong with E6S?

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

What's wrong with E6S?

It is completely miserable to play as melee or tank. Many mechanics force you to disconnect from the boss at awkward times, and unlike most other fights that are designed to force melees off the boss there aren't many great ways to work around it or design strats to regain the uptime. As tank specifically the tankbuster is very likely to just kill you if your co-tank isn't consistent on swaps or if you accidentally get hit on another mechanic. The fight in general is very chaotic and if your group isn't disciplined it's very easy to get hit by something you're not supposed to and die as a result.

Maybe "worst" is too strong, but it's certainly the fight I dislike the most.

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I dont like E6S as caster either (at least as BLM), although its not as bad as melee. All the times the bosses jump away or go immune for no reason are really really annoying for maintaining Enochian and they tend to be at pretty inopportune times in the rotation

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Well first of all I play ranged so whoops. I can't really comment on the tankbuster stuff other than acknowledging it was often an issue, though a recoverable one.

And it is kind of an awkward fight to learn, DEFINITELY in a pug group, but once I got into a static there were so many uptime strats for that fight. Ultimately, I don't think our melee lost much uptime at all. I'm actually trying to wrack my brain thinking of where they would have lost uptime and I can only think of post-conflag stuff that you skip with damage and maybe that bit after second fireballs when moving to the safe zone?

Though, again, now that I think about it, tanks have to eat some uptime loss for positioning and tornados regardless so that is another thing you'd still be dealing with.

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Not_an_Owl posted...

It is completely miserable to play as melee or tank. Many mechanics force you to disconnect from the boss at awkward times, and unlike most other fights that are designed to force melees off the boss there aren't many great ways to work around it or design strats to regain the uptime. As tank specifically the tankbuster is very likely to just kill you if your co-tank isn't consistent on swaps or if you accidentally get hit on another mechanic. The fight in general is very chaotic and if your group isn't disciplined it's very easy to get hit by something you're not supposed to and die as a result.

Maybe "worst" is too strong, but it's certainly the fight I dislike the most.

Hard disagree on this

Speaking as a tank, e6s is by far my favorite fight of the tier precisely because there are ways to force uptime on it. Nothing feels as good as just brute-forcing the Storms of Fury with cds, using bolide to gain uptime, and just generally no-selling everything Rakta tries to do. It's so optimizable it's very fun to do! E8S is the shitshow. I detest everything about optimizing it except the swag strat with dashes on Akh Rhai after Icelit Dragonsong.

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Wew Stormblood beaten. Time to see if Shadowbringers lives up to the hype.

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So did anyone emerge victorious out of the latest housing bloodbath?

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Yep! Scored myself a medium in Mist on Hyperion!

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Digging the spooky atmosphere in the Shadowbringer zones. Just finished the pixie zone. Them going ham on the guards was crazy

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Yeah, I'm impressed just how well Squeenix demonstrated that you not, under ANY circumstance, fuck with the fae.

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trdl23 posted...

Yeah, I'm impressed just how well Squeenix demonstrated that you not, under ANY circumstance, fuck with the fae.

"First rule of dealing with the Fuath. You DO NOT deal with the Fuath"

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Man Emet is just such a likable douchebag

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Bozja is pretty neat. Amusing to watch whoever engages in the 1v1 duel get absolutely smoked.

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Having awful luck finding a group for Castrum in Bozja

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Finally found a group. That was really fun.

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The cutscene in Bozja post-Castrum might be one of the worst written non-ARR cutscenes in the game.

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Eulmore arc done. That was...some transformation

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Oh no! Vauthry's hot!

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Thank you, game, for letting me move around as Ryne.

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So yeah that Shadowbringers quest huh? Holy fucking shit people weren't wrong. That was hype as fuck

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Did the Nier raids. That was a trip. Now where's my boy Emil!?

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