A couple questions from a newish player.

1) When does combat not feel so insanely slow? I come from playing rogue in WoW and it is 10x faster. I hear there are many 'filler' abilities at high level, but damn I am lvl 30 or 31 now and it still feels like I'm wading through molasses.

2) Should I bother skilling up my leatherworking to do the materia quest at my current level? Will materia make me that much stronger? I do feel pretty weak, takes longer to kill monsters in this game it seems, but that could be my gear idk.

Thanks for input

Wow has a baseline 1 second GCD

This game has a 2.5 baseline GCD

oGCDs are also not truly instant, or more so they don't activate the same they do in WoW.

Simply put this game will never get to be as fast paced as WoW.

That being said, at level 60 you will have an interesting rotation and alongside the fight mechanics you will stay engaged, just don't expect to be a combat rogue spamming sinister strike insanely fast or a mut rogue spamming mut a bunch

There is no energy pooling for burst windows like a sub rogue

That being said again, ninja has the lowest GCD out of all the jobs thanks to Huton (and they love throwing skill speed on ninja gear)
And with ast and sch buff you can get down to 0.90 GCD or even lower for 20 seconds or so.


Don't bother leveling any crafters unless you're going to level them all.
"Professions" don't work like they do in WoW. You aren't going to get +500 crit for simply having leatherworking maxed out.

Without all crafts at level 60, you're effectively a useless crafter and won't be able to craft the highest tier stuff currently available.

Keep truckin ganksta, things get better. I personally find the game extremely boring at low level, but I immensely enjoy the game at 60 and a lot of the fights at 60 are very fun.

It doesn't really. You can shave off a few milisecond by stacking Skill Speed or Spell speed though.

1) The leveling process always feels slow, but when you have all your abilities and such you'll have plenty to do. Leveling just seems repetitive since you're in essence spamming like, 5-8 skills tops for 20 levels. Stick with it, the real fun starts at lv50.

2) When I 1st started out, I took Ltw to 50 along with my battle class so I could make some gear for myself without having to blow my money on the MB. Materia won't help you much now, especially since you'll be ditching gear almost every 5 levels. I'd say do it in your spare time to make some Gil or keep your other classes outfitted. As long as your gear is within 5 levels or so of your level, you'll be fine, just be sure to keep your weapon up to date.

Acquiring skills is very spread out in the game and you also are pretty much required to level other classes for essential cross skills as well. You won't really feel like a BA until level 50 (former level cap) when you have a full rotation to work with. (Not sure how much changes at 60 for ninja but in my experience with BLM my rotation got a huge overhaul, so be aware of that too.)

The combat in FF14 also is over all slower than wow. it is a different experience though. I would say try and stick it out until you can start doing some higher end stuff. Even with the slower combat speed, this game has a lot to offer in its dungeon/raid mechanics.

It will can seem slow and dull as you are leveling. It gets more dynamic in the end game, but the global cooldown stays the same. Note that WoW is a fast-paced game, and has all the enemy mechanics set up according to it. So while it takes longer for us to execute certain things, bosses and mobs take longer time too. If you were put into for example Blackhand fight as you are in FFXIV, you wouldn't be able to do anything.
And materia isn't that important while you are leveling as you will be changing out gear more often than not.
All in all, have fun! FFXIV is a very different experience than WoW :)

When you get your first ninja mechanics things start to pace up. Not maybe in he sense you're used to, but fitting four hit combo between GCD(with server lag) take some dexterity as well as keeping track of where you're going with the rotation, and seeing if your party is in need of some of your tricks.

Ok thx all, I'm gonna lvl my rogue/ninja to 60 then maybe try a caster, long casts might make me forget about gcd it just seems dreadful compared to what I am used to.

It's a shame cuz I like everything else.

Higher up you get the faster it feels.

I came from WoW too, 2 years ago, and I can say with how it's designed the GCD feels too short at times at max level, never long enough for me to weave in all my buffs and off-GCD abilities haha.

If you think combat in Ffxiv is slow be glad you never played ffxi :P

I would argue about the crafting however. Granted if you don't max out a few crafting classes you will be unable or suffer through endgame crafts, however there is still plenty to make before endgame.

For example I only have armorer to 50 from 1.0 and I still love the class. Making high quality gear below 50 for newer players is a reward within itself. The materia for leveling gear does seem like a waste, still put it in my gf gear though all the time. It's really what you make of it.

In short if you're only interested in rushing to endgame then I'd just level your battle class as soon as possible. However if you want to take the slow and relaxed approach (especially with friends) the crafting and materia is fairly viable. I personally would do the slow and relaxed approach, as me and many others rushed like crazy and are constantly bored/complaining about not enough content once you beat say savage :P

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Originally Posted by HotPixels

Ok thx all, I'm gonna lvl my rogue/ninja to 60 then maybe try a caster, long casts might make me forget about gcd it just seems dreadful compared to what I am used to.

It's a shame cuz I like everything else.

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Some skills later on do not go on GCD so it gets faster, don't worry. :)

I agree the global cooldown is awfully slow. You get somewhat used to it though and it's more tolerable as a caster/healer.

Don't worry about materia for now. Everything before max level is doable without it. I would however recommend leveling goldsmithing, weaving or leatherworking to 50 asap. At 50 you can learn how to make glamour prisms (transmog catalysts) and they will be your first real money maker on the market board. I make at least 100k per day with them. Other crafting professions can make them too but I find those 3 the best sellers.

If you start saving now you might have enough for a small personal house by next patch.

I don't know why i first read the thread name as "A couple questions from a jewish player"

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Originally Posted by HotPixels

2) Should I bother skilling up my leatherworking to do the materia quest at my current level? Will materia make me that much stronger?

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My advice regarding crafting is to pick up all the crafts, and keep an eye out on your daily Grand Company handins (you can find what items to hand in either by talking to one of the GC people, or through the "timers" window (default keyboard shortcut ctrl+U), click on "next mission allowance". Sometimes you can find those items really cheap on the marketboard, if you're not interested in actually crafting them yourself. The handins give a good amount of exp (double that if you hand in a high quality item, the ones with the shiny icon and the claw symbol after the name), and is how I levelled many of my crafting classes. ^^; Didn't even touch a tool until around level 15.

The reason why it's a good idea to have your crafters levelled even if you're not that interested in actually crafting is that you can do self-repairs on gear. You do require Dark Matter, but they're cheap from NPC vendors. The good thing is that you can repair wherever you are, even mid-dungeon, and that you always add a full 100% to gear durability. Meaning if the durability on an item is at 95% and you repair it, it'll be at 195% durability. NPC menders only repair them up to 100%, even if they're at 99%. When you get higher in level, you'll save a lot of time and money by self-repairing.
(To repair, your crafter needs to be max 10 levels below gear item level. So if your gear is item level 34, your relevant crafter needs to be level 24 or higher to repair that.)