Useless opinions about the Umbrae Relic step.

I finished my Aetherwell Array today, have gotten my first Umbrae relic, so I thought I'd share some thoughts and opinions about the process.

First, the method itself, roulettes are a perfectly fine secondary method for a relic step, they've done that before with Bozja relics so why not, but a perfectly fine secondary step does not a relic method make, overall I think this method sucks, but it's not broken, simply incomplete. Now please put on your coats because I think the mere presence of this take lowered the temperature of the room for how cold it is.

Second, by the love of the Twelve, Hydaelyn, Zodiark, Nhaama and Azim, and every Kami, Primal and whatever else passes for a god in this accursed mudball we call a setting, let us buy the tokens for the relic before completing the associated step, simply make it available as soon as the step starts, the primary reason I rushed ahead to finish it, instead of just letting my dailies take the wheel which would've been the smart thing to do was because every time I had to go spend Heliometry on something so they wouldn't overcap, I felt I was wasting them, it takes 31.5k Helios for all relics and regardless how you feel about the tomestone step, that's a lot, this may be a "me" thing, but it creates undue pressure to "get it done", instead of doing it at the pace I was most comfortable with. This isn't an issue exclusive to this step, the Penumbrae step also had this issue, and frankly I do not expect it to be touched upon, at least not this expansion.

Third, the roulettes themselves, my opinions of them are very unexciting, I think they are all fine, and I will be reiterating mostly what everyone has been saying day 1, but as follows:

High-Level is the most consistent, this is the only one I did as a Healer, Scholar specifically, very little variance in point gain between dungeons, had no issues other than a singular person complaining about me "pulling ahead", I was simply moving along the dungeon, if a little ahead of him as a Tank most of the time, and they never attempted to communicate until after the last boss, nothing to see here other than the FFXIV community being the FFXIV community, but serves to highlight that if you try to grind out this you expose yourself to r/TalesFromDF-tier material.

Trials has few things of note, for this and all others I did it as Viper, I actually learned a few mechanics of trials I never bothered to learn before, got to be the unsung hero a few times which felt great, the point variance is extremely high, from as little as 40 from Zodiac Relic trials to over 200 from Ageless Necropolis, but you will hardly feel the difference if you are relying on the daily bonus, most of the time you are getting 70-120 so a DT trial just feels like a bonus.

Normal Raids similarly has few notes, you will be getting Alex most of the time but that's just the nature of Normal Raid Roulette, but I also experienced P6 coming up an insane amount of times, enough so to feel odd how much it kept coming up, I beat up that woman far too much my god, either way being motive-driven paid off and I didn't much care what I was getting, payout is pretty consistent, 100-ish for most, and 200-ish for DT raids.

Alliance Raids... alright this is the elephant in the room, CT is incredibly lob-sided and you go from 700+ from basically anything else to 300-ish for CT, with WoD reaching 400-ish, this creates the largest variance of any of the four after accounting for the daily bonus, which can also make the Aetherwell imbalanced, with only a couple days of CT making it lag behind by quite a lot, which is a problem when CT is so common... but at the same time, I don't hate the current state, because it gives so much value to the other raids, I saw people cheer for Nier and that warmed my heart, I feel there is something in here by making CT unattractive to players, now there IS a downside to CT, other than the raid itself being boring, a very tangible, if ephemeral, downside, and that's not a bad thing at all, it will push some people who refused to unlock other Alliance Raids out of their comfort zone, not all of them, definitely not even most of them, but some, and I sincerely feel this should stay for that reason alone.

Fourth and last, the weapons themselves... my god these are sexy, a simple VFX, but elegant in its simplicity, communicates power very well and just looks good, easily my favorite Relic series since the Recollection series, it's also a very nice power bumb for casual players, since they are iLvl 760, though that's also nothing new for relics.

This is it, just some thoughts I felt like dumping on the wild, I am satisfied with having finished it, and I will be getting my remaining relics in the coming weeks.