Inquiry About Combat

Hello, I am a new player to Final Fantasy XIV. I grew up on Final Fantasy games ever since they were first released in the US and I have been playing MMOs for about 12 years now.

So far this game is leaving a mostly positive impression on me, however, the combat is... pretty much a cookie cutter copy of every other MMO. But am I not deep enough into the game to see a more active and engaging combat system? Or is the face value I see now all there is to it?

To provide a more accurate comparison, my main MMO is Mabinogi. If you are in the middle of a combo, and your enemy can successfully load a counterattack, you are countered, knocked back, and your combo canceled.

I do not like standing there, letting the system just autoattack my way to a victory. Maybe I should choose a different class?

Answers to any of my questions or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

Casting can be interrupted by enemies, or by moving to avoid attacks. You are still a pretty low level with no other classes going, you will get more abilities as you progress. Unlocking your "job" gives more for your role, also playing other classes will give you "cross class" abilities. You're playing conjurer, so you'll need to level arcanist to atleast 15 to unlock white mage, once you hit 30 on conjurer. By level 60 you'll have two full hot bars,(depending on what platform you play on and hotbar arrangement), if not more of abilities. It gets better, you still have a ways to go.

I had the same complaint at first. Honest sky once you hit 50+ the combat gets a lot more active. Specifically if you are melee. I would advise going melee if you are looking for more of an active combat role. It forces movement and positionals while maintaining a heavy emphasis on your priority or rotation. The most positionals being monk then dragoon and lastly ninja but all of them are very active. The mages also active later but for instance BLM strategy often involves maximizing non movement to allow for consecutive casts, but this is not to say that they don't move because they very much have to for mechanical or dodging purposes.

TL;DR
It get better at higher levels. Melee plays a very active role in movement so if that's what you are looking for go with one of those choices.

Monk and lancer are much more specific about having you pull off specific combos or weave combos together for the best effects. There are also bosses and mechanics who will knock back or kill you if you attack them from the wrong direction. Keep in mind early game FFXIV is assuming you have no mmo experience whatsoever and is holding your hand until level 50. It does let go a little bit at a time starting from levels 32, 44, and 47.

Also, Healers generally have the most boring damage rotations in this game. It is at most 3 DoTs and a situational damage spell. Also, be aware when playing this game that the devs designed a class at level 50 and then just took away abilities as they lowered the level.

It makes combat feel fundamentally different from other MMOs which give you all abilities starting from level 20 and then gives you the same ability only with more base damage. Every ability scales with your level and stats and is improved subtly with tweaks to the rotation or new combos later on.

This means you will use every skill you get on your hotbar. There are some that are more situational or very niche, but there are very few abilities that flat out replace an existing one (Conjurer's Stone 3 and Stone 2 is the only exception to this design that i know of).

So yes, if combat at level 20 is boring, it is literally because you are playing with less than half of your abilities (you don't even have a full 3 button combo yet) until level 50. After 50 to 60, there are a lot of gameplay changes to the classes/jobs that makes them more complex and complete.

Welcome to XIV \o/ FFXIV is great for all those who are new to MMO's since it quite literally teaches them how to play from the ground up and it has very simple combat which for new people is great but people who played MMO's before it can be a bit of a pain but as you gain levels encounters will gradually get tougher.
Around LV30 you will notice things stepping up abit.

What Role interests you the most? DPS, Heal or Tank?

I see, thank you all for the helpful information so far, and I still welcome more input.

As for what role I take intrest in, I main as a Healer and being a White Mage is definately one of my goals. However, my main goal is to be a Summoner. I know it is odd to start as a Conjurer but it is the role I am most familiar with.

And as a small update with my combat impressions, I have just fought Ifrit and it was like a baptism by fire! My party died once but I was not upset. No, I felt very much alive! That was the combat I am looking for! Please say there will be more like that...

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Originally Posted by Michou

I see, thank you all for the helpful information so far, and I still welcome more input.

As for what role I take intrest in, I main as a Healer and being a White Mage is definately one of my goals. However, my main goal is to be a Summoner. I know it is odd to start as a Conjurer but it is the role I am most familiar with.

And as a small update with my combat impressions, I have just fought Ifrit and it was like a baptism by fire! My party died once but I was not upset. No, I felt very much alive! That was the combat I am looking for! Please say there will be more like that...

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Honestly every primal battle in the story seems like a skill check.. so you'll see one when you hit the next two primals (especially the lvl 44 battle...people think they can rush it but not really...)

That's great to hear Michou. And yes, I will definitely say you can expect a lot more like the fight with Ifrit.

Since you're going the route of the caster, you will be getting archer, thaumaturge, conjurer, and arcanist to at least level 30 or so for cross-classes.

Conjurer is a class you're already familiar with. It's the most direct healing class, but it really picks up at level 30 when you start getting mp-mitigation tools. The playstyle is essentially about big heals and mp management, with a little bit of aoe damage and utility thrown in. A big portion of the class is managing spell procs to make the most use of your MP and keep enmity low.

Thaumaturge is a caster and has a toolset that makes it more powerful when stationary. The gameplay actually focuses on maintaining, building, and switching between a damage buff and a mp recovery buff. It has a very simple rotation but gets much more complicated after lv.50 when you start juggling two sets of buffs together. It is almost required that any caster picks up swiftcast from this class at level 26.

Summoner is all about maintaining DoTs and managing your pet. It's the most balanced class and has a great amount of utility. Gameplay-wise, it is more mobile than the black mage but requires precise control of your pet to get the most out. Also, it is slow to start up, but gets a lot more AoE and burst damage after 50. It is considered one of the strongest classes now.

Scholar is a mitigation healer. The class puts up barriers (temporary hp buffs) to help reduce overall damage to MP as well as flat-out damage reduction. It does the most single-target damage of any healers and is considered the best overall healer. Gameplay-wise, the SCH is essentially watching the boss, seeing its next attack, and then responding before that attack is pulled off. You have a very large and highly situational toolkit that you must ration out every minute (your most powerful abilities can be used in any combination up to 3 times every minute). Also, pet management is pretty key to this class.

Archer/Bard is a very mobile attacker at early levels and becomes more stationary after level 50. They have great utility, especially as Bard. They are the only class that can reliably recover the party's MP/TP, which makes them great in endgame raids and long fights. Gameplay-wise, it is very mobile before level 52 and much more caster-like after 52. The class focuses on ability procs to augment other attacks, so it is the closest you will get to twitch gaming. Also, most mages will get this class to lv.26 for Quelling strikes, which reduces enmity in the next 15 seconds. Blackmages and Summoners can build up a lot of enmity very quickly in the first 20 seconds of combat and this single ability allows them to use their full rotation without pulling from the tank.

Hope this was useful. Also, Summoner and Scholar will level together, so any xp you gain as a summoner, you will also gain as a scholar. While convenient, it also means that you have to choose which one to specialize in because you have to select whether to increase INT or MND when you level (some do divide the 35 points between both stats). This is really only important in endgame raids where both dps and healing need to be very good though.

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Originally Posted by Michou

And as a small update with my combat impressions, I have just fought Ifrit and it was like a baptism by fire! My party died once but I was not upset. No, I felt very much alive! That was the combat I am looking for! Please say there will be more like that...

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This is why I always recommend every new player to try the game at least up until the Ifrit fight. If you're not at least a little intrigued by that, then you won't like FFXIV's PvE.

More great input, thank you all ;-; Now I am stuck wondering if I should go Scholar or Summoner. I grew up being a healer, however I have always admire all of the summoners from the Final Fantasy series. Basically, I am great at being a healer yet I have little actual frontline experience. It is still exciting nonetheless!

I am almost sold for this MMO, still have a couple of inquiries left but I should save it for another post.

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Originally Posted by Michou

More great input, thank you all ;-; Now I am stuck wondering if I should go Scholar or Summoner. I grew up being a healer, however I have always admire all of the summoners from the Final Fantasy series. Basically, I am great at being a healer yet I have little actual frontline experience. It is still exciting nonetheless!

I am almost sold for this MMO, still have a couple of inquiries left but I should save it for another post.

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Well if you like SMN from all the Final Fantasys... this summoner is really nothing like it.
Good news is you can do both, you can switch between the two. If you're more comfortable with healing I'd say stick with that for now, and you can go back and do the summoner stuff after you've leveled Scholar (they share levels because they both share the same base class).

You can main as both if you want. You can reset the class' stats at the Grand Company vendors for 250 seals (easily 1 or 2 FATEs worth, or 1 i100 item's worth of expert turn-ins). This will let you reset it to change between INT and MND at a moment's notice. It's totally doable up to 3 times a day if you only get one Expert dungeon drop a day.

As Askaray said, Summoner is very different from previous Final Fantasies. It is more of a dot class and your summon really adds utility and some extra attacks equal to 30% of the total damage you can do. Give it a try, but enter it with the expectation of playing a WoW warlock than say... FFX's Yuna.

That is really good to know! I was afraid I would not be able to reset my stats if I ever changed my mind about classes. And good to know about the Summoner class as well.

So I think for my final question, if I were to buy this game for the PS3, what version do I buy? A Realm Reborn version or the Heavensward version? Also, could I choose the Collector's edition as my first? Or is it that I have to buy the regular first?

You might be able to buy them together as a set somewhere, but you need both ARR and Heavensward for the expansion. Also, you can choose to get the standard or collectors version of either. Both have their own bonuses. If you don't want the material items and just the in-game items of the collectors edition though, you can digitally upgrade to collectors for $20 any time after purchasing the standard.

You don't even touch Heavensward content until level 50 (and unlock the 3 new jobs then too), so there's no point in getting the expansion unless you want to start off as an Au'ra. Even then, you get a free fantasia after your first month and can change your character's race and gender. You will also retroactively change all your cutscenes that way too (which can be seen in the journal at your inn room). I'd try waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to get Heavensward unless you find yourself burning through ARR before November or can get a deal on it now.

Also, here's a friend code if you're open to one: 88TAQAKD
It gives some nice bonuses including a 20% xp boost and some items. Full details are here. Register it when you set up your subscription on the Mog Station. It's a type of extra bonus item code. Just be aware the code only kicks in when you pay your subscription and won't work if you plug it in after paying. That means you might have to wait a month for the automatic subscription to kick in and give you the items unless you use a time card, at which point you would want to plug the friend code in and then the time card code to get all the benefits.

Have fun! and I hope to see you on Leviathan.

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Originally Posted by Anova

You don't even touch Heavensward content until level 50 (and unlock the 3 new jobs then too)

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Just to expand on this. You have to finish the 2.0 MSQ line in order to access the real content of HW. Otherwise, its just access to the new race and level cap.

You'd need A Realm Reborn first before Heavensward (though if you're confident that you'll eventually want both, there's also a bundled deal where you get both together).

For the Collector's Edition, if you want the physical items that come with it you'd want to get the Collector's Edition box version when you buy the game, but if you only care about the in-game CE bonuses you have the option of either getting the Collector's Edition when you buy the game, or buying the regular edition of the game and doing a digital upgrade to Collector's Edition later.