Why FFXIV's Jobs Are More Fun Than They've ANY Right To Be!
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Rhythm and physicality: the hidden magic that makes FFXIV jobs feel incredible to play, despite a slow GCD and initially confusing oGCD rules. Also, jobs have so, so much SOUL!
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The music analogy is one I’ve never really considered before but when looking at the simplicity of your main rotations it does make sense especially in how the way they’re set up kinda trains you to manage those GCDs/OGCDs in between said rotations
THE CONTROLLER INTERFACE IS ACTUAL CHORDS
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH
My favorite is Black Mage. Playing the job feels like you're the drummer boy in an orchestra. There aren't many of you. In many cases you are the only one. And yet, you are the most noticeable when you strike that drum. Each Fire IV is like the basic tempo. Then going into faster paced beat while layline is out. Then you finish with a Despair which has this low pitch which shakes the floor.
It's crazy how much the sound matters once you're really comfortable with your class. You can know if you've made a mistake without looking at anything your character is doing because you notice a missing sound or hear something extra that you shouldn't have, it's amazingly fun and definitely worth praising.
Also, fun fact. There is a different sound when you hit an attack in combo vs out, it's subtle but once you hear it you can't un-hear it. It's also really disconcerting when you're playing SAM because meikyo shisui attacks have the out-of-combo sound x.x
Yeah that little loss of sound is so disconcerting when you play combo heavy jobs monk, Samurai or red mage. It’s so subtle that you don’t notice the difference at first
Yeah, the sound effects are actually really helpful. Without the audio feedback from my skills, I tend to really start messing up my combos since I can't tell if they completed without looking. Found that out the hard way when my audio messed up in the middle of trial.
I noticed you get a similar sound difference when you, for example, overcap gauge for Reaper. It feels baaad.
every tme i get that weak hit that meant i messed up a combo I curse under my breath hah.
this is why i hate Torso Bosses, So many Audio queues for melee skills are from the impact point rather than the origin point of the ability and on Torso fights the impact point is 40 feet in the air and half a mile away
10:35 DRG is my jam. Slow, infinite loop of predictable GCD pattern, interspersed CONSTANTLY with oGCDs, your buffs and jumps and line AoEs. The GCD is among the slowest in the game, but the huge number of off-globals with restricted weaving makes it so you're constantly pressing at least one extra button every couple GCD's even outside the opener.
I've described it like a DPS designed for tank players, whereas Gunbreaker is a tank designed for DPS players. You get the slow, big hits but aren't moving at a frantic pace - if you try to over-weave, you will chew heavily into your GCD because of it. And I love it. Slow without being braindead - heck, people trying to braindead play DRG is the whole reason the "LOL DRG" meme exists - if you greed jump at the wrong time or just jump without thinking, you die.
Also spears are criminally under-represented in video games for how important they were in real life warfare so even if there's no semblance of realism whatsoever I love using spears in games that let me.
This, so much. The weight and feel of DRG has kept me maining it since 2.0. The animations are also expertly designed and play with each other super well. The delayed impact on the animations for Heaven's Thrust and Chaotic Spring actually line up perfectly with the impact from the (non-Stardiver) jumps. It doesn't look or feel like you interrupted an attack animation. The wind-up on Stardiver feels so different from the rest of the snappy, fast oGCDs that it would honestly be a travesty if they shortened the animation (lock) on it.
My god. "DPS designed for tank players" I do believe that hits too perfectly. I started with DRG but i main tanks in all other MMOs.
as a fellow DRG main i agree
The way Reaper has audible/visual delay on avatar animations and the wind up of communio feed into the impending aggression cadence. I also love Dragoon's plethora of ogcds with crazy animations to make you feel like you're constantly bursting
"Impending aggression cadence" is an amazing way to describe it. And you are completely right. There is the feelign to casting Communio, especially when you feel done with the fight and you greed a little bit before dodging
bro i’m tranna tell everyone communio is probably the best skill in the game it’s just so cool especially after a full enshroud window it’s soooo satisfying
As someone who’s always looking onto my skills midfight in hope stuff is ready again, I agree.
Reaper feels like something I don’t have to look at, same for Sage. I hear the SWISH SWISH SWISH and the KREEEE and everything feels so simple just with sounds
Another reason for me is how thematically strong the actions are in rotation. As a black mage you really feel like you're unloading some complex arcane formula of spells, dragoon's rotation which has you run through it twice, attacking both sides once through positionals and then unloading your giant bomb feels like a little story etc. Truly the best classes in any MMO ive ever played.
I can confirm the aural (and visual) thing: I can tell most of what's going on in a fight and everyone in that fight based on sound effects in FFXIV. I'm not even visually impaired; I just can tell things better in the game just because there are so many unique or distinctive sound effects for every job, fight, and situation that mean something. Dragoon's my favorite example. After levelling and paying attention to it, if you don't hear Raiden Thrust out of a Dragoon every 30-ish seconds, you know they're doing something wrong, either on purpose or by accident. You can also confirm it without spell effects: Raiden Thrust has a particular weapon arc that you can tell happens or doesn't happen.
It's actually to the point that, if you know a rotation and how people can and should break it to deal with problems, you can tell when someone's doing less damage. You don't even need a parser or anything; It's just obvious that, if a Dragoon doesn't do "Raiden Thrust"," Geirskogul", and "Mirage Dive" every 30s, you know they might also not be getting things like "Wheeling Thrust" or "Fang and Claw"'s positional bonuses. (Similar things apply to every other job. "Raiton" and "X Raiju" for NIN, not doing melee combos for extended periods of time on RDM, healers not using all of their toolkit for tough situations, tanks not using cooldowns, etc, for example.) Naturally, you do need to be paying attention to things even more than normal to determine that, and it's easier to just use an automated analysis tool, but I've done it before and it's usually enough to guide conversations in PF savage parties.
The game in general has Jobs with high amounts of texture in visual, aural, story, timing, and movement. That's kind of why I understand just how long XIV jobs take to make. They may not be perfect all the time, but it's more than the sum of its parts. Might have issues sometimes with netcode, but it still feels pretty dang good to Ninja or Summoner away at anything.
100%. Me and my friend will run through dungeons chatting, and just from the sounds can tell the level of skill of the party. Super parsers sound like music.
SCH main here. I love the sound effects of my skills and the fact that a hardened military battle strategist uses a little fae companion to keep people safe.
I love the sound effects of fairies doing their thing and the little "calculating beeps" of the crit up skill. And there is something *so* satisfying about playing SCH and having a moment where boss attacks absolutely no sell my team bc I had the big juicy yellow crit shield on them.
Edit: OH YEAH. And the absolute SLAP to the ground that is Art of War. Something about that is inordinately satisfying.
Love from another SCH main!
And slap the ground? Nah bruh, when we get AoW2, THIS is us:
"This hand of mine glows with an awesome POWER! Its burning grip tells me to defeat you! Take this! My love, my anger, and all of my sorrow!
aow is a filler animation, doesnt really fit scholar at all.
I can only assume you didn't play SCH before ShB, if you did you wouldn't be saying any of this lmao. The toolkit for healing has remained much the same but the DPS has been gutted and is 0 fun to me.
Before u had 5 dots, all of which were AOE and all which were satisfying, art of war as a replacement feels like a fucking insult cause it doesn't fit scholar, why would a fucking bookworm punch the ground? I honestly wish they kept Miasma 2 or just repurposed it to be the AOE animation. Couldn't they have AT LEAST kept shadowflame??
Man I can rant hours about the absolute dirt they did scholar in 5.0.
I never realized how much I play by sound until my sound went out mid game once. Holy moly it was miserable. I can hear other rotations (and sometimes see the effects) and know if someone messed up a rotation on the classes that I main. This was a fun video to watch. thanks for it!
Oh man, even if I have BGM off when the game audio crashes it throws me off SO BADLY.
My favorite is hearing an out of sync raid buff and going wtf in my head
As a Red Mage main, its the flamboyance of the job that I love. The animations of the attacks and of the spell effects, the outlandishly noticeable gear, the smoothness of the collar lift in the /vpose. The RDM knows he is the best looking dude on this battlefield! Also, there is a part which is the usefulness of picking up half the raid and stopping a wipe. And it all comes together in the melee combo. All the spell casting, all the cool animations, to then lunge toward the enemy, 3 massive sword hits, then jump back and fire several nukes into the enemies face!
rdm in xi was cooler
Sage is the class that clicked for me as an old disc priest from WoW. A basic core of spells with lots of on-call instants available. It's very satisfying to have options in response to damage. No stress watching cast timers on heals or in groups worrying about over heals wasting your cast. The ability to instantly react is what appeals to me. Also never worrying about mana is a nice perk.
and the mobility. I was a WHM main before SGE came out and now I can't go back. The DPS you can put out at higher levels is great as well.
I only want more damage abilities to ad some spice to the SGE rot. Either that or sacrificial abilities, but I guess that wouldn't follow the magitech doctor class fantasy.
It's a good start, but could always be polished imo. It'd be nice if kardia was % based rather than flat amount, and had an aoe variant.
It would be interesting to see how many fighting game players play FFXIV on a controller… be it on a PlayStation or PC. I never thought that playing FFXIV via PlayStation could provide an easy transition to players who actually use controllers from other game genres.
Honestly, going back and forth between FFXIV and Elden Ring on controller isn't that big of a jump.
I play on controller and am an old FGC person used to go to evo and everything, never won anythint but i loved it. FFXIV feels way better on controller than on KB/M to me so yeah can confirm.
Tbh the only people who are truly baffled by being able to play FF14 on controller are people who have never played a console before. 😅 The game was built to be used easily on controller. There's some basic adjustments needed like, Don't put buttons you will need while running on the same side as your movement joystick. Also swapping R3 and L3 to special targeting options instead of the standard... idk I think it's something useless like First Person view and target lock? (I changed mine to Assist Target and Sprint lol).
Those who are more used to the HITBOX-style controllers (one where there's no joystick and only buttons, good for execution of certain actions or for ergonomic reasons) are probably better off on KB/M, but Controller is also very good too, after all FFXIV is the only tab-targeting MMORPG with Controller gameplay in mind.
...Wait hold on. The one player in my static who uses a controller also plays a lot of fighting games. Coincidence?
I've always said that RDM's rotation is like a song. With Dualcasting, you're weaving the melody back and forth, back and forth, working up a steady tempo until you can unleash the stinger with your melee combo. Whether it's single target or AoE, the rhythm stays the same, but the 'notes' are different, which means that the 'song' stays the same, but it's in a different 'key' depending on whether you're going full-bore on one or a group of enemies.
Except songs aren't usually subject to randomness, they tend to have structure. The slow cast times and reliance on RNG procs is what kills the rhythm because it's not consistent. You're forced to rely on a factor that is always out of your direct control, which is antithetical to how the rhythm and flow of songs works.
@@davekaye5483 I don't see that it's that disturbing. Instead of Jolt, you use Verstone/Verfire. It's the exact same rhythm. Or vice versa with the AoEs and Impact. My key presses literally just change from 2,3/2,4 to Shift+3, 3/Shift+4,4. If something that simple can throw you off, maybe RDM isn't the job for you.
@@Maria_Erias I've enjoyed rdm a great deal the way I have it setup on my controller feels like I'm just weaving an ♾️ symbol going back and forth between black and white magic until I can finally rush in and spam the hell out of my melee rotation honestly the pattern is so comforting I often just tunnel into it and forget to burn off my mana gauge
Some of the best moments in FF14 is when the opener or even just the rotation syncs up with the boss fight music. It's happened a few times during raid when I play Dancer
For me, Gunbreaker totally clicked when I started using continuation and was able to get that buttery smooth combo going, to the point that I would look forward to longer fights so I could build up charges to have more stuff to lead into and use out of that combo it was great.
Also, when you were talking about the musical aspect of FFXIV and talked a bit about FGC players moving over to it, I thought you were going to combine those points by talking about how extended FG combos require a certain rhythm to maintain. There are some youtubers that play Marvel vs Capcom with a piano to demonstrate what a combo sounds like, and in Tekken 7's training mode, when it demos the attack, it plays audible clicks to help you understand the timing of your inputs. Which I wish someone would do that with FFXIV. Show a combo, but only play the notes during like a Dragoon or a Gunbreaker combo and how it compares with what you would hear from a Sage or Black Mage.
My favorite thing about playing monk is the cool instant transmission dashes, that rush of uppercuts when you use brotherhood and how the combos all flow so seamlessly and how even if you flub a button press, you can get right back into your flow almost instantly. Ugh, God I love monk so much.
As a massive fan of fighting games and MMO's, FFXIV is my second home. Playing my job optimally is just like executing on a complex combo in Guilty Gear.
Not at all. Seems like a lot of people here don't actually play fighting games... I can go down the laundry list of all the things that make the general gameplay loop completely antithetical to what fighting games do.
Everything lights up and tells you exactly what to press and where to stand lmao. If you love your hand held 100% of the time this is the game for you though! Enjoy those midgets and 15 yr olds!
@@dallasscandling6329 You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Only combos, procs, and resource spenders light up and none of those are telling you what’s optimal/best to do.
Combos lighting up just lets you know where you are in the combo. Just because a combo button is lit up doesn’t mean that it’s the correct button to press in that moment for the best dps.
Procs and resource spenders light up to let you know they’re available. once again, not because they’re the “correct” button to use in that moment.
Anyone who’s just hitting whatever is lit up is playing sub-optimally.
But clearly based on your random “midgets and 15 year olds” comment, this is likely a bad faith argument based on no actual knowledge of the game and you just want to shit talk FF because you play some other mmo and view FF as “the enemy”.
@@davekaye5483 Well obviously it’s not exactly like a fighting game, but things like properly timed weaving and cooldowns does share similarities with fighting game mechanics.
Its funny, when Im raiding with my static in ffxiv (I was on NIN), we all play with open mic just for ease of communication, and I had someone call me out on hitting my keys really hard. I was wondering how they couldve heard it cause I have a relatively low mic sensitivity due to mashing my skills in order to compensate for input delay and latency. Then I realized that I was hitting my mudras like how I would hit buttons on my stick, since you can't mash mudras like I do with every other key.
Not all classes really have a rhythm to them... Mostly the healers don't... There are valid reasons why White Mage gets called the Glare Mage, and much of the same works for Scholar to be the Broil Mage...
That typically is the rhythm. Broil being the beat and the ogcds speeding things up when shit hits the fan, like a piece of music at its panicked climax.
@@jafd239 I wouldn't really call it a rhythm... The closest a healer gets having a "rhythm" is AST, but there you feel like you're playing the whole orchestra with your cards, Earthly Star, Astrodyne, Divination and keeping up your dots and regens...
I love the rhythm metaphor for this. You pointed out that the rhythm repeats over time, but that’s what makes the metaphor work for me. And interesting rhythm just once is an interesting rhythm, a repeating rhythm is a groove.
I'm glad someone's saying this out loud. All the proponents of adding in PVP combos to PVE for the sake of button bloat completely ignore the physical feeling and rhythm of pressing combos and ogcds together. I remember really feeling it for the first time in E9S as an RDM when your melee combo would charge up right before the first brambles came out and you could backflip drop them, then run to the next spot during your Verholy/flare/Scorch insta-casts but only if you play the rhythm game perfectly up to that point. And if we want to talk about FF SOUL and identity, well, the entire reason I play Lalafell is because of the FFIII DS remake's art style. To me, a lalafell is classic chibi/pixel art FF and I love how dressing in AF gear makes it look like I'm playing an FF III character.
Compressing the combos to fewer buttons doesn't really harm the rhythm. You just need the GCDs and oGCDs to stay on separate buttons
@@xSuperMetroidx It harms the physicality of it. Its not just pressing them on time, its pressing them in order and rolling your fingers across the keyboard.
@@GetterRay "Physicality" sounds like a weirdly made-up term to allow overcomplicating a definite, repeating pattern. It's evident when you make a case for the "physical feeling" of pressing combos, and then describe a scenario that [has nothing to do with having the combos on three separate buttons].
The argument for condensing button combos to fewer combos is that, given a combo where I have no reason to go back to an earlier step, why would I want them on 3 separate buttons? The argument against it falls flat because the "physicality" of pressing three different GCDs as you weave in the exact same 1,2,3 pattern every time has no more "physicality" than returning to the rhythm of pressing 1 after every weave, and it has the bonus of reducing button bloat
@@TranscientFelix Its not a made up term if I can define it and Matt uses the same definition in the video. It feels good to press different buttons in an order. It activates your muscles and pressing things with different fingers makes it feel more like playing an instrument and less like just mashing a key. If you've ever played a musical instrument you'd understand the difference between macroing notes to a beat and actually playing and pressing on keys.
It feels good to press combos and not mess up the timings and keep your fingers busy by darting around the keyboard and pressing all your ogcds as they might be all over the place. For example, my combos on DRG are set to 1-5, and shift 2-5, but my ogcds are set to ctrl and alt, so my thumb is dancing between positions and my fingers have to go 1 to 5, then back to 2, all in one GCD. That's what the physicality is.
I wasn't saying that physicality is timing your combos with boss mechanics. I don't know if you actually watched the video you're commenting on, but I was responding to the question that Matt was posing at the end. Maybe think about the subject and the context a little more next time. My point is, that executing that is difficult and you're rewarded for the learning curve by being able to squeeze your rotation into tight windows that you wouldn't be able to if you mess up your rotation in anyway. You won't hit the right amount of mana balance in E9S on time if you don't have the muscle memory down. And learning that muscle memory is part of the challenge and the reward is compensation. If you just press 1 button to do everything then it wouldn't give you that sense of "flow".
If anything you just prove my point. People who advocate for PVP buttons literally don't think beyond the simple practical mechanics and don't consider the fun factor, the muscle movements or the physicality of playing the game. You completely miss it, then when someone points it out, you just pretend its not real rather than engage with the concept.
@@GetterRay I'm more trying to understand what exactly you find engaging about a 1,2,3 combo; it's impossible to lose track of something so basic except if you're weaving your oGCDs in your rotation, but if your oGCDs are what give complexity to maintaining your combos, remembering to do 2 after your a,b oGCDs is not any more mentally or physically taxing/involved than remembering to go back to 1 after your a,b oGCDs.
As a musician and as a XIV player I loved this video and its comparisons so so much! :D
I'm a main DRG and the most satisfying part of my rotation is every minute when you can combine "double" geirskoul with stardiver and whatever else you're doing in your usual 2.5 rotation, it just feels so powerful
I started with BRD and still main it, and the rhythm game feel is pretty apparent there, not just because of GCDs and oGCDs but because of Repertoire procs also happening on a set rhythm. I noticed it had me paying even more attention to the music in fights, which just feels right for a Bard.
As a fighting game player, I feel this is a pretty good evaluation. Weaving the skills together just feels so satisfying, especially when you can pull it off in higher level content. It's the same reason why a lot of us play fighting games: that satisfaction of being able to pull off cool moves in cool ways.
People like to equate both FF14 raids and fighting games to dancing with your opponent, so I can see where the similarities might arise.
No... just... no. You don't ever "pull off cool moves in cool ways" like in a fighting game. Fighting games can be played however you like. There's reactive gameplay and emergent gameplay, and most feature multiple different combo routes for different situations. FFXIV's combat can ONLY be played generally one or two ways per job and that's it. You have a high-ping rotation and a low-ping rotation, but the base rotation is pretty much just very 1 > 2 > 3. There's barely any oGCD weaving anymore (Monk used to have it, and it was all taken away). By saying this, you're practically admitting you've neither played FFXIV nor played a fighting game before, or at the least, had no idea what you are doing in either.
@@davekaye5483 So you're telling me that as you level up your classes, you don't have fun or find it cool to add whatever new skills you get into your rotations? I get that in endgame, there's only one or two, just like how in a fighting game you only stick to stuff that works, but as you progress there's no enlightening moment as things get pieced together?
These skills look cool, and being able to squeeze every little bit of damage out of every new skill you learn is a cool way of going about it.
Exactly this
@@Fgtr4Life Again, you show you don't understand how the game works. This game is NOT DESIGNED to be a "learn as you level" kind of game. In fact, most of the jobs will give you skills completely out of order from how they're used. The way the game's combat is designed - which isn't something FFXIV players like, but it's just the way it is - is that you have to hit max level and do your job/role quests to unlock all of your skills, and THEN reorganize your hotbar to make sense out of them. It promotes power leveling. But again, this has NOTHING to do with fighting games or the way combat works there. If anything, it still sounds even more now that you have either never played either of these games, or just have absolutely no idea what you're doing in either of them.
In and even well before endgame, starting with last expansion but even moreso this expansion, there's no situational variety. The game literally greys out skills and forcibly prevents them from using them if you do not use them in the right order. Monk used to be the most flexible in this regard but it has less than a third of what it used to. If you are talking about the leveling experience, that gives you EVEN LESS to work with. There are no "cool ways to go about" anything in this game. You are forced into a rigid sequence and how limited you are depends on how few of the skills you've unlocked up to that point.
Black Mage is a great example of how absolutely convoluted the idea of "learning as you level" is for this game. Once you hit level 43, you might as well just throw away everything on your hotbar that you've used up to that point except for Fire 3, Blizzard 3, Fire 1 and your Thunder DoT. And all you pretty much do is loop your fire and blizzard moves over and over and over again until you get a proc for an instant cast. That's not exactly riveting or exciting gameplay, nor does it present any variety. And that's not an end-game rotation, that's not even halfway leveled to max. From level 60 onward it barely changes.
Red Mage's entire gameplay is Jolt > one of two moves and then waiting on RNG for a proc to do your next move. Two buttons. That's not exciting, variety-inducing gameplay. That's BORING. Dancer is an even worse offender.
Monk has been neutered to have all of its oGCD weaving removed, and it gets no new skills now after around the halfway point. It just gets what are pretty much tantamount to updated animations. There's nothing new or exciting to look forward to after you level past then. It's just the same. Nothing changes. That's boring. There's no rhythm or flow to it anymore. It's less than a third of what it used to be.
What you are describing seems more of a self-justification for ooh-ing and ahh-ing at pretty visual animations which have nothing to do with the ACTUAL gamepaly experience. It's like you're saying something to sound profound on the internet that couldn't be more divorced from reality. Mashing two buttons with abysmally slow cast times while waiting on a proc isn't exactly what most people would call "fun" unless they're EXTREMELY easily amused. And absolutely none of this is reflective of the kind of gameplay in fighting games, at all.
You aren't pulling off sweet combos which require execution. There's no whiff-punishing, you're not pulling off wall-to-wall TOD combos, you're not doing any mix-ups, 50/50s and you have no aerial combat. There's no attacking while jumping, no meaties, no okizeme, no OTGs, no high/lows, no special-to-special canceling, no comboing into a super, etc. It's just A>B>C and looping that over and over and over again. If anything, Guild Wars 2 at least has reactive combat, knocking opponents to the ground and hitting them on the ground. But this game? Absolutely not.
So there's no "satisfaction" from pulling off sweet moves or comboing into anything impressive. You push the button and the sparkly animation happens. THAT'S IT. That's absolutely not at all like a fighting game. If you are deriving satisfaction from pushing two buttons in a sequence and marveling at a sparkly animation, that means you're easily amused. Don't besmirch the FGC or the fighting game genre with such an awful and ill-fitting comparison that makes literally no sense.
@@davekaye5483 You seem irrationally bitter over this, and that's fine. I'm not here to argue, just to state how I feel about the games that I love to play and the similarities that I see.
I hope that the game adds back in that complexity you seem to miss in the future so that you can be happy about playing the game too. 😊
As an Astro main, I always found the busyness of burst windows fun. Not only do you have many double weaves but you are adding in 2 extra inputs for targetting a party member and retargetting the boss. 4 inputs in each card weave slot makes it feel like a "trill" going to the music example. Really fun to execute properly and takes some practice
Sage just clicks, the way you go from a gentle 1-2 1-2 tempo when DPSing then coming in with the offbeats as you go Eukrasia, into Eukrasian Prognosis and then Kerachole during an AoE cast.
I just love the way sounds mesh together with its musical gundam sounds
Scholar doesn't really have a single thing that makes it satisfying for me, it's more when a fight forces me to actually use my entire toolkit efficiently, like E12S or the first phase of DSR Ultimate. Lots of back-to-back raid damage and if only one thing is missing, people will just die. Haven't done the current raid tier on it though.
I love switching between jobs for the different "flavour" of their rotations and rhythms! I think I've mained almost every job for some part of raid content now and there's some I enjoy more than others but to borrow your analogy, they feel like different dances or different pieces of music being done or played with the same instrument.
Summoner Main, and 6.0 scaled the class fantasy to 11.
Being able to actually summon the big three and watch them do their ultimates.
Also, Akh Morn. Dropping that right at the start of battle is deeply satisfying. (Now if only my weapon wasn't a book....)
I wish I had a talent for art because as a SMN main myself, I can see way more potential for our books. The idea is that we need to see the complex symbols and formulas to pull off our spells. There's a bunch of different ways that can be done. We could use scrolls (think Sai from Naruto). We could have projections like those that appear when using Allagan tech or in Scholar and Machinist skills. They could be tattoos on our skin! There's so many more options than just different covers and attachments to our book.
Technically your weapon is a primal god construct, a book is just the focus. Could be worse, they could have given you wands or staves
The audio and visual components are def amazing. I really like how each summon has it's own button feel. Getting through all your ogcds with the demis, how titan feels very methodical, ifrit feels slow and lumbering, and garuda feels very zippy. I understand now why they designed the primal abilities like they did, it really feels like you're controlling different entities.
I don't know what it is about Akh Morn, but it's satisfying to press literally every time.
@@nobodyspecial690 I would prefer a wand or staff. There are some really amazing designs for both of them. There are a few really good book designs but dev team is so stuck on just dressing up covers. When was the last time we saw a really innovative grimoire or codex design?
I noticed with Dancer, the rotation literally sounds like callouts from a dance instructor
1, 2, 1, 2, 1 2 3 4, 1, 2, 1, 2 ...
(at least there's usually a round or two of 1, 2 before you can do 3 and 4, due to 50% proc rate)
Dancer is really fun if you are not simply stand in one location and press those 1,2… I just used to dance around the entire battle field just to show off how elegant I am 😅
Warning: Healer curses you !
@@woosh4653 I do the same! I started dying a lot more, so now I just do my wiggling next to the healer. XD
@@woosh4653 As long as you stay *relatively* around the healer, most won't find it a problem. Especially with a lot of the more recent changes to the ranges of some of the AoE heals.
Plus, quite honestly... having a dancer (or any physical ranged) run around the entire battlefield would probably put them in better ranges for heals than like 95% of BLMs. Typical BLM will get half an inch into the boss arena, pop leylines, and almost never move, it seems.
@@AeriFyrein BLM exist to shout HEALER ADJUST
Bard main here! For me, it is a combination of being an old dancer and feeling like I am holding a rythm and actually playing my harp in combat that feels really nice. Also, it is so mobile with a nice amount of min maxing to do an it can be the easiest job in the world or pretty advanced depending on how you push it. Really fun and it just feels comfy and nice.
You mentioning MH made me realize I’m a Gunlance main and in FF I’m a tank main so when we got GBN I was really hyped and it is currently my favorite tank to play.
I started with switch axe but when I reached endgame I switched to the bow because it just felt so nice and especially COOL. And I've been an on-off bard main in FFXIV...
I relate to the concept of class identity. For me, MNK has been my go to since beta and I never dropped it.
Everything about MNK speaks to me, from the animations and the gear to the story and concept. I can't see my main character as anything other than a monk.
Sure I play other jobs and having a blast, but if I was forced to only ever play a job going forward, it would be and instant and easy choice.
Literally the same story for me verbatim
Monk for me feels like the only job that isn't bound to the gcd I can press a single weapon skill and I don't feel like I'm waiting to make an input instead I'm trying to hurry to put in the next so I don't have down time and when forbidden chakra is ready for use I'm racing to weave it in before my next weapon skill is ready. I feel bad for my controller though its taken such a beating from monk
Could not agree more, they totally nailed the feel and class fantasy of Monk. Playing savage raids now is awesome too as you are constantly pressing stuff, Brotherhood is such a good overdrive move
Hmm, I never thought about it like that to be honest. Red Mage just clicked with me to the point where I was jumping for joy when the rework that came with Endwalker happened. You spend a bit more time building up the mana gauges, but in exchange, you get to do the: gap closer -> Melee Combo -> Displacement -> VerHoly/VerFlare -> VerScorch -> Redoubtment. Twice. And maybe even three times if you remembered to use Manafication after the first burst combo.
And did I mention that the combo spells do AoE damage now, and whenever Alisaie steals the LB, she uses Redoubtment?
It just felt so good making my way thru Endwalker as a Red Mage.
I absolutely love playing my summoner. Using bahamut or titan is so much fun. Ifrit is amazing as well with the gap closer.
the DRG rotation feels like a freight train of GCDs and oGCDs that pretty much never stray and it is an absolute joy to get into the groove of it while solving mechanics, exactly like a rhythm game
I finally understand exactly what you're saying now that I've started RDM. I fell in love with it hard, bro. I've never had so much fun playing a job in any other MMO. Hearing my big spells go off after I do my 3-step melee combo, then FLIPPING away from melee range to start tearing shit up from a distance.... It brings a Goddamn tear to my eye.😢
For me it's finding the tiniest windows to actually get Ten Chi Jin off in Extremes and Savage fights, knowing I need to sidestep once to dodge a Phoinix AoE if i want to get it in the buff window and having to focus on about 8 things at once, cause as soon as that's done I need to move in a way to not mess up the tethers etc
It's the right amount of stress, if I mess it up then in reality it's a minor thing, but if I succeed it feels so clutch. Just learning the personal dance, along with the group dance, along with the bosses dance and weaving them together.
I’m part of the fgc myself but I’ve always played ff. And your right learning jobs in ff is just like learning combos etc. The more familiar you are with your character the better off your going to be. I’m a dragoon main also but pocket Blm it’s like the easiest job then the hardest job lmao
As a WHM Main who often plays while listening to outside stuff / music / etc, I didn't know just HOW amazing the sound design for basically everything is until I heard In The Balance without having first done the raid, I immediately said to myself, I will play this raid and I will listen to that music ingame, and wow, just how everything has a specific sound or auditory tell, like my lilies charging up, getting a big lily, hitting a massive god damn Afflatus Misery, I know now why the meme is that WHMs just stand there greeding Glares, it sounds so fucking chonky to hit, I wanna be pumping out DPS forever! Loved the video.
You really nailed it with the music analogy I think. Lots of good points made all around.
Side note, really wasn't expecting to get spoiled for a new Sunbreak monster in an FF14 video, so that was a bummer. :p
My two:
I adore the subtle, underspoken animations on White Mage, and there's nothing quite as satisfying as getting a Blood Lily direct crit.
For Red Mage, it's just... the flow. The dynamic of alternative casts, then diving in for a quick little elegant slash combo and flipping back to watch the carnage as I drop my finishers.
Matt if you read this- You sir are delight to have in FF community have a nice day❤❤
That hard to nail down feel of a class, that combo of rhythm and animation and sound, really IS what makes or breaks it for me. I love the feeling of Samurai, the loop of stickers and the big smash-smash-smash of spending them. (And yes Kaiten is a terrible thematic loss and I'm going to be sad about it for a long time.) Dragoon is just another melee DPS so I should like it too, right? No, I can't stand it, I find its rotation feels heavy and awkward. It's a perfectly fine rotation and a perfectly fine class... but it doesn't FEEL right to ME. It's an incredible personal, unobjective kind of assessment, and I think it says something about FFXIV's systems that liking and disliking classes run along the same lines.
You probably would have liked Monk back in Stormblood. It blows SAM's rhythm out of the water. Monk now? It's a fucking joke, man. They completely kneecapped it. It has less than a third of the kit it used to, and completely lost its waltz-like rhythm and flow.
@@davekaye5483 I didn't like Monk in Stormblood, actually, and you're being kind of weird about Monk in the comments, here?
It's worth mentioning that in proper RDM rotation you're double weaving your melee OGCDs during your regular melee combo so it's much much more frantic than you thought
Straight up. The RDM opener is cursed as hell but it's so fun.
Which RDM opener has you double-weaving Corps-a-Corps and Engagement between the melee combo hits? The one I'm looking at on the RDM channel on The Balance right now has them first double-weaved after the melee combo.
E. Riposte > Fleche > E. Zwerchhau > Contre Sixte > E. Redoublement > Corps-a-Corps > Engagement > Verholy > Corps-a-Corps > Engagement >Scorch
For me I main Dragoon and Summoner, and heavily play machinist, sage and gunbreaker.
For Dragoon I love the feel of the jumps and my combo rotation of dot and non dot.
For Summoner I love the summons and how they feel, brining out Garuda and doing some fast gcd attacks in mobility, then getting the payout in Bahamut/Phoenix for a massive potency attack and the beefy spells.
For machinist I love the sound of the spells and the fast pace. I love Drill, Air Anchor, and Chain Saw and how they feel to use. And the Autonoma Queen.
For sage ive always enjoyed shield healing as a scholar but I just love the aesthetic of the job. Its like old school and new school Discipline Priests from WoW with shields and Atonement.
For Gunbreaker I love continuation, I love the cartridge users and the sounds. The aesthetics of the job and just unloading abilities during a fight.
I also find this shocking. You would think the Venn diagram of these two communities would be a very small intersection.
Learning TCJ during hard mechanics like intemp2, pinax 1 and 2 that does it for me. Getting 100% uptime using a combo of ranged muudras, nailing a tcj with a very precise setup and having shukuchi or raiju to gapclose lets you find the dumbest little optimizations and greeds. Feels like solving a very complex puzzle that also requires good execution.
P4S Phase 2 is so fun on Ninja as well, there's always a suiton and a phantom ready for when I need to disengage during act 2, then suiton sort of lines up again with the start of act 4, most of that mechanic happens during the 4 minute trick attack window which means lots of free ranged skills, and during curtain call there's usually a raiton ready to go. Only recently started doing reclears on it (SMN got a bit stale) but it's just so satisfying to play.
@@cute2dfrog YES I love getting full act 2 uptime, extremely satisfying, the other melee lose a hit
I never paid any mind to the sound effect of Battle Voice. Then I played Bard for half a minute. Now no matter what job I play, once I hear that sound, I know it's go time (or the bard is misaligned).
Samurai is my second job only, but even today Kaiten feels like a phantom limb. The button is there, you NEED to press it before Iaijutsu because that's just how it works, it's the anticipation before the big release, the timing feels right. I assigned the first Hissatsu you get whose name I don't remember (the front thrust) to the same keybind and use it where I used to use Kaiten because it just doesn't click without it.
This may sound stupid but I without thinking assigned kaiten to left on controller and iajutsu to right and it felt SO good to almost do the motion of hit left then right as if your Samurai is pulling back to then unleash the sword. Very sad to lose it and just happy to play MNK instead
@@olicon3463 yeah samurai definitely feels like "the worse version of dragoon" for me now
For the question of what clics for me as a dragoon? The jumps of course are fun, but man, Stardiver NEVER gets old (the visual and sound design of this skill is incredible) !
SNEAKY PETE
Akh Morn, Akh Morn, Akh Morn. No button feels better to me than to have my own pet dragon god blast the everliving hell out of something.
I started as PLD, tried NIN and BLM and WHM and they were all cool and all when I was new and bad, but nothing truly resonated until the 4.4(?) duty where you play as Alphinaud, and tried book casting for the first time. It made me pull Arcanist out, give it a try, and Summoner after. Something about Summoner, which at the time was considered one of the most complicated jobs to play, clicked with me. I liked how it was a cooldown-based priority system, a flowchart or a bunch of if-thens. It was neat having a little pet, especially back in Stormblood where they even were targettable and had health bars (that were ignored for most AoE attacks.) It was the job that I got my first ever on-content clear with, on the 4.5 Extreme trial. It flowed into Shadowbringers very similarly, swapping out the pet as a literal party member for more control on its actions through the Egi Assault abilities, and was the job that I got into Savage raiding with for the first time. And Endwalker came, and they redid the job, and while I certainly miss my old, super complicated job that made peoples' heads spin, this new one is sooooo good. Simple, but it plays into the class fantasy.
I've been a fan of the Final Fantasy series, and coming in to 14 was such a treasure trove of nostalgia rerealized. Summoner was always one of my favorite jobs; powerful attacks that were also AoE with no loss in strength compared to more basic Black Magic attack spells. Fantastic creatures to burn and freeze and blow away my enemies for me. Always having that dragon king Bahamut as the apex of summon magic, unleashing a Megaflare that few enemies would survive. New SMN plays into that class fantasy so well.
It's funny you bring that up now. But I always explain to my friends about FFXIV GCD by using music. Now, of course, I'm a ballroom instructor. So are some of my friends. And so, I say it's like a Waltz tempo. You go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. etc. Now, every '1', you hit a GCD. And you would hit an oGCD on the '2', and on '3'. That's the easiest way I've found to explain double-weaving to my friends.
For me its DoT management and proc whack a mole, which is Bard in a nutshell kinda. Share your songs, spend the resources for damage, buff the party. But also having the one free status cure ( Warden's Paean) and the boost healing (Nature's Minne) abilities allow me to "treat booboos" while the healers are busy keeping us from tactical naptime. Beyond BRD I also enjoy WHM and seeing the APM chart really brings home why I found the class so relaxing to play. At the same time its also why I've found that SCH is the healer I want to learn for high end content. So there we have it, job design and MMOs doing what they do best: providing a variety of experiences not just for those looking to specialize but for those that like to explore.
Been enjoying the journey through xiv youve all been on and have learned alot about WoW. Thank you for making such thoughtful content!~
Every job has a lot of things going for them : the legacy behind them from other titles, the mindset you have to get into when playing that job, the visual and sound feedback that each action accomplishes and the actual impact they have. I'm at the point where I use a macro that rolls between 1 and 19 to decide which job to play because I enjoy playing them all.
Best comparison I can come up with is cars : all cars will get you from point A to point B... but a sedan will feel comfy and safe, a pick-up truck will feel heavy and have a lot of road presence, a sports car will feel low, nimble and responsive, a SUV will feel stable and lean. All of them will drive that same 100 mile of road differently but each of them will give you a different driving experience. That's pretty much how I feel playing the jobs in FFXIV : they all can accomplish the task but give you a different flavor in doing so.
My favorite has been the MNK since, from a design standpoint, it is the only job which progressively gets faster with the 2.5 sec GCD turning into 2.0 sec GCD or less at 90 through the Greased Lightning trait. It's also one of the jobs which moves have multiple strikes by design : Bootshine is a flurry of 4 strikes that is a reference to Zell from FFVIII, Demolish has its telltale 2 last kicks feels like you're hammering your target, Dragon Kick has you flying through the air. Then Forbidden Chakra has a hard hitting edge that just seems right to use JUST before a Masterful Blitz (which are in themselves references to Sabin from FFIV).
Whenever you go back to another job after running MNK for a while, everything feels a bit sluggish. It's the kind of feel that, with the NIN, you can tell that your Huton buff is no longer up.
And really, if there is ONE job that screams Final Fantasy, it is the Dragoon. After all, what better way to fight a flying opponent? Shoot it with arrows and throwing daggers? Rain thunder and fire on it? Of course not! It's to turn your whole body and weapon into a singular projectile, soar into the air and come crashing down like thunder on whatever poor thing happens to be your target.
Crazy? Yes! Awesome? You bet!
We have a couple of FG players in our raid static but I had never really considered the overlap before! By far my favourite button in the game is Dancer's Fan Dance IV/Laser Bird - a big purple cone explodes onto your screen with a screeching hawk sound effect and it's just very bloody cool. Feels incredible every time.
idk i never notice it xD Its just a throwaway button every 60 sec, waste of space xD
Love the SMN tempo fluctuations. Going from Ifrit's 3sec GCD/Cast time, through Titan's standard GCD/ instant cast , and Garuda's 1,5sec GCD/instant cast gives a nice pace to the job. Not to mention the Bahamut nuke, and Phoenix healz.
This perfectly explains why Samurai feels so much less fun without Kaiten. It just FELT really good to use. Still bummed about losing it.
Right? Such a chore to play SAM without it. Still don't understand what convinced the devs to think this was a good idea?
Yeah Samurai never felt the same after the change. Its was my main, but after the change, it felt so off, i had to change.
Totally get it, fun is not only big numbers, sometimes we just want to feel cool doing those numbers
The music analogies about weaving or even double-weaving are so accurate. Watching players who don't weave or think that 3/4 of their buttons are leftover gimmicks to be ignored is like watching a drummer with a full set who only uses the snare.
As a main SMN, the hit of dopamine that every summon and akh morn/revelation/deathflare gives me is something that i havent found in any other jobs.
Also the rithm change that every summon gives you, the super fast garuda into slow ifrit into normal + ogcd rith in titan.
I can relate to that dopamine hit. My only complaint is that now we start with bahamut directly so I don't have that feeling of "earning it" that it gave before after the 2 trances. Still Summoning Ifrit, hardcast, leap to the boss, book bitchslap him and follow with a hardcast+weave of ruin IV to summon Garuda and swifcast the hardcast just when she screams.....mfffffffffffffffffffff
A lot of people calls it a "braindead" and "easy job". Not gonna lie, is not hard, but it's a job where a bad choice of primal in battle kills your dps. Ifrit in a phase you have to move a lot? Bye bye dps and bye bye all your GCD sync. Garuda or Titan in a phase where you don't have to move? Pretty sure you will have to cast Ifrit when you need to move. Fast reaction, easy to learn but punishes very hard every mistake.
The echoing sound of Ogi namikiri.
The roar of Enshroud and Communio.
The metallic ringing on Double Down.
The heavy sound of swinging steel on Bloodspiller.
Just a few, but if anyone could hear those sounds while reading this - then you know, you just know.
The most fun part for me is playing astrologian and setting up stars, macrocosmos and horoscope perfectly in time so it immediately heals the dmg of a raidwide or where the group has to split and you are able to overcome challenges a lot easier because you don’t need to position yourself perfectly to heal but just plan and execute those tools every pull at the same frame to express myself in healing timings
As a 2.0 forward Bard player, 100% agree with others that sounds are cues I can rely on for skills absolutely and help so much with ability timing and flow. It's a busier job and while it can be challenging, I really love the choreography it brings when it all flows together.
While I didn't mind the simple rotation of Fury back in WoW, it'd often be 3-4 buttons cycling and more of what you'd see as a combo in FFXIV than an actual rotation.
For me one of the little details i love the most about Gunbreaker is when im doing all of my No Mercy stuff suddendly having to weave in Nebula and my character doing that little gunblade spin, feels like a natural extension of whatever combo im doing, like im in control
Bang on. Add on the need to move around boss attacks on top of the rythm effect of the GCD/oGCD interplay, and it's like adding a dance on top of the beat. Very satisfying.
Going Ninja and unleashing cooldowns, hitting all mudras in perfect sequence - fast paced action and damage, knowing that each execution must be done perfectly and consistently.
Also DRK is fun, front-loading all the CD's and weaving a ton of OGCDs.
The feel and identity of the classes is what kept me coming back between lulls before I came back fully at the end of 2020. Whenever I wanted to get on and play amd FEEL like a Monk or a White Mage I would get on during a Welcome Back weekend.
For me, even tho it's a new addition, it'd have to be Reaper. For one I absolutely adore scythes as a weapon, secondly I love the absolute edge (pretty obvious DRK was my main previously yea), but also thirdly I love when classes have this mobility optimization potential, where you can get the timing down just right and greed stuff but then instantly move out and back in, almost without clipping your rotation. And then I just love when a class has a clear burst window where it definitely slaps.
Also, there's something just so very satisfying in the sound design for Gibbet and Gallows, it sounds clean and has a lot of impact.
My favorite part of RPR is popping avatar form. The animation and the sound effect is just *chef's kiss*
Great video and thank you for the hard work you guys put into these. When you mentioned the sounds of jobs and knowing their rotation pattern it made me sweat, playing a DNC its so obvious messing up Technical Finish. So embarrassing, yet I have so much fun playing DNC. Try a little backward Fandance (have character face camera whilst executing FD on targeted foe), its a little smug yet so beautiful to watch. I think the animation has arms crossed whilst each fan waves over the shoulders as opposed to the usual Fandance facing forward.
This pretty much describes why DRK and NIN are my fave jobs by far. They have this wonderful tempo of a slow phase where you're building resources and momentum, and then a WTFBBQ ALL THE BUTTONS phase where you blow everything in your arsenal, and then start building again. It's true of most jobs but the most pronounced on those two. Every time you pull it off perfectly each 2 minutes in to the fight, you feel like an absolute monster.
For me one thing that really makes the jobs personel are the job quests. So many of them have a lot of heart.
Take Samurai, to even start being a samurai, you have to face the travelling samurai master in a tournament match, then you travel the land with your new teacher, righting wrongs and helping him track down the person who betrayed him. Only to find out the "betrayer" is a major twist. Then you visit the master's homeland to find the disgraced former pupil that started this all, only to find even more twists and turn. By the time you finish the job quest, you have walked the path of the Samurai for some time, and its a very different path than the other jobs.
Picking and becoming a job in FF14 isn't just selecting the job role and collecting some new spells and abilities as you go along. In FF14 you are expected to experience the history and story of that role. It just makes it very personal.
The MCH burst window feels soooo satisfying just doing that 1-2-1-3 rhythm. I play on controller and have those on down-left-right d-pad buttons. It really does feel like a bit of a rhythm game.
My first job was arcanist in HW bc I wanted to have a pet, I ended up bouncing off of it and switching whm as my main through SB and ShB. When Summoner got reworked and I tried it out in EW it really stuck. I stopped taking whm into hard content and started using smn instead. The class fantasy was finally realized and the whole dot thing that wasn't really my style was gone. New Smn is so fun because each primal has its own speed which all works together to make the job feel pretty diverse.
I was good at old SMN, I loved it. I'll never not miss it. But god DAMN did we get something good in exchange. I love new SMN just as much, even if it's for completely different reasons. And I'm always happy to hear that other people have been able to fall in love with the job I love thanks to the rework.
I think you hit the nail on the head about what factors go into making any given class appealing: rhythm, aesthetics, and their special resource minigame. These are probably the core aspects of gamefeel. Changing any one of these is very significant for the player, even if potency adjustments keep it dealing roughly the same amount of damage. It's why Kaiten's removal feels bad, and why a lot of older players bemoan current DRK--even if it functions fine, its minigame and rhythm (and consequently many aesthetics touches) have changed drastically from the fast, more technical class we enjoyed back in HW or even StB.
As a DRK main, the job clicked for me the moment I unlocked The Blackest Night.
I will take any excuse to pop that skill and wreathe by Warrior of Light in a barrier of unholy energy born from my own self-respect.
For me it was Red Mage. I had mained BLM up to that point, but then I opened Red Mage and absolutely fell in love with it - the movement, the patterns, the Corp-a-corp and Displacement combo, even the break in DPS rhythm to heal myself or raise a party member. It all clicks together in a flow that makes me forget controllers and buttons and just become my character. So I think you're right, it's as much the flow and rhythm of the job that transcends merely pushing buttons.
I really enjoyed this video and as someone who doesn't really have a main job I thought I'd list out some of my favourite skills from some of my favourite jobs.
Gunbreaker: No mercy, it's hard to pick one skill for gunbreaker because everything synergises so well together in it's flow but it's all built around no mercy and once you know what you're doing you spend most of your time watching that minute timer tick down, waiting for your next chance to unload everything again, sat on the edge of your seat.
Sage: Kerachole, this massive bubble shield you summon by jumping up then slamming the ground, that is also incredibly powerful as both a strong heal over time and a mitigation you can literally have up 50% of the time is so satisfying.
Red mage: Engagement/displacement, I love the rapier duelist aesthetic a lot and both of these feel so flashy and as ways to continuously strike your opponent you can do whenever you see a good weaving window for them is really fun.
Dragoon: Wyrmwind thrust, it fits into the rotation so smoothly and feels like such an impactful hit that has you just keeping an eye (pun not intended) out for it without making you warp your entire gameplay around a single attack.
Dancer: Standard/technical step: the sudden change in tempo to something faster as you flow through each step of your dance leading into a flashy finishing step and a big hit (as well as a raid buff and begining your burst for tech) feels so satisfying. (this would have gone to flourish if this was shadowbringers dancer because I loved and still miss having to dive into melee range to use the aoe procs, and flowing through 4 different gcd skills was a lot of fun, and you had to think carefully about how you managed your procs leading up to flourish so you had as little as possible because you couldn't afford to drift flourish without risking it screwing up your rotation later, both of those aspects have been removed from the skill which is very sad to me personally and is part of why I don't play the job much anymore despite it once being my main but I will always have a soft spot for it.)
I am a Mentor who has most jobs at 80 or higher - 6 at 90. I would say that my favorite jobs to play all have utility and support as a main feature, but you are not wrong about the button presses being like a rhythm game. Until I started Savage, "drift" in rotation would not have meant much, if anything to me, but it is a matter of timing. Especially as gear improves and fights are cleared more quickly. My brain is going "Two rounds of Requiescat - there's the Confetior combo complete, boss' health is at 76%, should hold the next one for the ad phase..." It is a dance, it is a rhythm game. You can stumble across the finish line, but being able to keep a tight rotation and knowing "3 rounds of this" and an enemy is dead, or counting OGCDs and going "Ah, this is right on schedule" is immensely satisfying.
For Bard, it is lining up all my buffs - Battle Cry, the new Radiant Finale and personal buff of Raging Strikes, comboed with a well timed Barrage of Refulgent Arrow and Apex Arrow-Blast Arrow.
For Red Mage it is their melee combo into the Verholy/Flare and Scorch/Resolution finisher that feels really satisfying. Dual Cast makes their button presses swift and satisfying in and of itself, without sliping Fletche into things.
Paladin - My current Main - when doing a dungeon pull and I grab mobs with Total Eclipse - Circle of Scorn - Prominence. Not only making sure I have all the enemy's attention, but ticking their life away with DoTs.They don't have a lot of OGCDs, so that one is one of the few that remains effective throughout. And even in boss battles, they are wonderful to apply while doing combos.
WHM - While this is my primary healer, it is not as fun button wise as other jobs. Still, there is something very satisfying about applying Divine Benison (my one real shield ability) or Aquaveil just before a tank buster. Having to move for a mechanic and resolving it with an assize to heal everyone and damage the enemies is also a good time.
Ninja - This is the only non- 90 job I am going to list here. I only have it to around level 70. I have Dragoon at 90, but it is not as satisfying as I hoped it would be (I started the game as a lancer because Kain from FFIV). It is the Jutsus. They are fun to pull off, versatile, full of utility. They also scratch an itch I've had because Monk combos - like the way "Blitz" techniques were used by Sabin in FFVI are something I've always enjoyed. So, while not the exact same in execution, they keep my fingers happy. Unless Reaper or high level Monk and Samurai do something drastic, I think I'm just going to ride the Ninja vibes and release my inner weeb.
As a side note, I have a hard time picking my favorite ranged physical. While I noted Bard, Dancer is absolutely fun to play, for reasons similar to ninja. They literally are a dance of the fingers and I felt guilty for loving the job so much after spending so much time with Bard. Machinist is the simplest of the three ( Don't @ me bro, they are the Samurai of range.) in terms of how many buttons they have to press, but that makes drift in their rotation much more noticable.
Finally! A video talking about the reason why FFXIV's combat is appealing. Maybe there are others out there but I haven't seen any. This is such a big reason why I love the combat in this game and why I spend hours hitting the dummy trying to perfect and figure out the best way to approach problems within the rotation itself, as someone who kinda sees job guides as spoilers of a sort. I just love the puzzle-solving and on-the-fly planning during fights where I'm just trying to figure out how best to manage my CDs and when I should do certain things knowing upcoming mechanics may cause issues. And of course the flow and rhythm, as discussed in this video!
Man, I just love the positivity in this video. I enjoy most of the jobs, but that click moment came for me with dancer. Elegance, grace, and let's be honest- 3 dashes for when my smooth brain betrays me during a fight "Go left!...I MEAN RIGHT 👍"
Gunbreaker main here, and the most satisfying thing to me is the feeling of using hypervelocity right now, aside from just the raw speed of burst phases. The visual and audio feedback of it is just really top notch at the moment. I also like how many tools I have to just tear through packs of enemies, go up against bosses as a proper tank, or coordinate with teammates. I feel both dangerous and helpful to every member of the party in some way provided I can keep up my focus on controlling the flow of the fight.
If playing DPS is like playing an instrument, tanking (and I imagine for some, healing) is like being the conductor of the music being played.
I like how seamlessly summoner feels like it flows at 90 between the 5 phases and the oomph of each summon bursting into the field, it’s just really fun
I play a bunch of fighting games and FFXIV. FFXIV is my PvE game and fighting games are my PvP games. Fairly simple.
On the subject of things I love because of the feel: Paladin's Passage of Arms, the big shield, the wings of get thee the fuck behind me. It's effectively just a 15% mitigation bubble, but the simple fact that it's a bubble only BEHIND the Paladin is just... so. fucking. amazing. I HAPPILY tradeoff the animation lock on that ability for the extra 5% on most other similar party mitigations, but most importantly, just the incredible fantasy of actually SHIELDING your party.
There's a bunch of other quirks of PLD that contribute to this, like having a ranged magic phase that lets you be exactly where you need to be to help the group without losing uptime, and that you can also use that phase for instant-cast massive spot heals. There's rarely a conflict of "do I make this mechanic easy for the party by positioning well, or do I greed," it's instead "how do I line up my phases so I'm in magic phase for this mechanic so I can do both."
Or how Divine Veil requires the cooperation of a healer to set off perfectly without wasting a GCD, and you eventually get to the point where it feels like you and your healer are doing the silent over the shoulder bro nod to each other every time Divine Veil goes off flawlessly.
And while other tanks have their gap closers as well, PLD's being just a shield rush just feels good. It's not about doing damage, it's about putting yourself between the boss and the party.
And of course the mechanic all tanks share, with how tank swapping is another two part combo where one party has to provoke then the other shirks. That simple act of making it a handshake, having the second person involved and finishing the action...
The flow and fantasy of it just feels so incredible. You genuinely feel like a team when you're doing a fight blind, suddenly realize that stacking counter is a tank swap at the same time the OT does, and without a word, you do that little two part dance to hand it off.
Edit: Honorable mention to the myth, the meme, the sprout save, Cover. I hope it gets a bit of a rework to make it a regular part of the kit, because I absolutely love it, even if there's barely ever a reason to use it.
Playing dancer is when the game place clicked for me and hence why it's still my fav to play
My main is scholar, and I love the lore and the job feel (summoning fairy, getting ready, focus target...), but my favorite part has to be the opener. For my keybinds its 1-5-2-1-3-1-6-1-6-1-6-1-7-1-6-1-6-1-6, and i love the little double-tap with energy drain and aetherflow, but especially in the opener with dot/chain stratagem setup mixed in.
Kaiten was the calm before the storm, a moment of solace before unleashing a big attack. It was a nice pause to have.
I'm playing with limited or no VFX but always with the sound, and I can tell who is using which skill just based on their sound. It's so great to see how much works they put in the sound design to be so recognizable. 😀
Warrior is my favorite for the raw animations when you go full unga bunga with Inner Release and FELL CLEAAAAAAAAVE. Plus the self healing that really makes you feel like you're going through the fight by pure anger and grit.
I was in a PF and a healer rescued me and caused deaths. We all heard the sound effect. They tried to deny it, but seven people all heard it and saw the effect. It’s crazy how our brains can distinguish all the different noises!
Hadn't thought about the music thing, but... yeah, that makes sense. Interesting idea.
For me, it's Paladin, Warrior and Red Mage all together for the "feels right" type. Paladin especially. Can't even tell you why, it just feels like the job for me.
Also yes, I'm familiar with the "being able to tell something's going wrong by sound" thing. Not even needing the more obvious "oh no why am I hearing Bioblaster and Flamethrower in a boss fight?" or "why am I hearing Snap Punch after a pile of 18 things has been pulled?" scenarios, I just sometimes get a sense of "something doesn't sound right" during a dungeon run. Press instant replay, look at it after the run, and sure enough that Samurai was doing combos in a totally random mishmash, or the Ninja was sitting on Ninjutsu way too much, or there's too much Heavens' Thrust and not enough Chaotic Spring, or something like that. I can't always immediately pinpoint _what_ is wrong in the moment just by the sound (some things yes, if they're obvious enough), but can decently often tell that _something_ is up without even really thinking about it.
9:54 this is absolutely a real thing, sound effects and if you have party effects on for some reason can actually make it really easy to tell what others are doing
While playing Black Mage, sometimes I just have to let out a little bit of an evil laugh. My wife and I call it the "Black Mage giggle." Sometimes things just line up so nicely and you pump out such consistently huge numbers and everything works out so well. It's the satisfaction of a plan that pans out perfectly. I get the Black Mage giggle on other jobs sometimes too, like Warrior and Scholar (when I get that critical Adloquium at just the right moment.) It's just super rewarding sometimes.
5:25 Ayy not anymore! We Australians can now finally taste what low ping is like for FFXIV.
Fighting game and rhythm game are two of my favourite genres in gaming, you definitely nailed what exactly makes FFXIV job feels good to play. The rhythmicality of doing rotations in raids is satisfying to pull off. There's a reason why a lot of people describes XIV raids as doing simon says while playing DDR or Guitar Hero.
I main DNC, and stopping in the middle of combat to do Standard Step or Technical Step just feels so cool and meaningful.
Like I’m enjoying the fights so much, I’m expressing that joy through dancing, which in turn excites my party as well!
With Dancer, it is the fact that while I DPS I can help another player, heal another player, and still be doing things right, especially with anxiety, even if my DPS is not the best that run, I helped keep a healer more relaxed and made my team better too.
I love playing white mage. While not really having much if a rotation, getting off huge heals or seeing lily bell outpacing damage is so fulfilling.
The 20 sec change to lilies FEELS amazing. Also knowing that it’s no longer a DPS loss.
It makes it feel better pairing Afflatus Rapture with your ogcds (PI, wings, asylum) to get a big heal then follow it up with a Misery. Cohealing with WHM is amazing as I focus on utility and mitigations knowing they can recover us quickly.
Summoning Bahamut and then just DESTROY the enemy with your "Ion Canon from Space" and see a huge chunk of their HP drop.
For me right now its Reaper. Theres just something about the visual and sound design , it speaks to me. The way it builds up to the Lemure Shroud phase and then unleash hell almost in a Devil May Cry fashion is awesome.
I’ve been playing FF for a while now, and while I definitely have preferred jobs, I haven’t really found one that I absolutely love and cherish and obsess over.
I don’t like DPS or healing so I’m kinda limited between 4 tanks, and while i main DRK for story, I don’t actively LOVE any of them.
Maybe I’m just weird though lol
If you haven’t given DNC a fair shake, it’s weirdly fun to play, despite not really having a rotation. It’s all luck and procs, but the feeling you get when everything procs is unbeatable.
Also, GNB when you get Continuation hits the middle ground between Tank and DPS in feel. My favorite tank, even though DRK will always have a place in my heart due to their quests.
@@OkamiG15 aye I’ve tried GNB since I wrote this comment, definitely agree, it’s a nice middleground, it’s faster paced than the other thanks.
Think i’ll main DRK for clearing content but use GNB for MSQ etc