A Few Newbie Questions

[Niluriel]

Thank you everyone for the very warm welcome and helpful replies!

It's not truly necessary, but you can look up a guide or two if you want an idea of what's coming, like:
eorzeareborn.com/sastasha-dungeon-guide
finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Sastasha

I don't know personally, but saw this in a recent Letter from the Producer thread:

Thank you for the links (and advice too!)

Everyone nailed all the questions just missed one detail about that NPC talking about level 50 and all that jazz. It's just in reference to the "armoury bonus". This bonus is active for all dow/dom jobs that are lower level than your highest class and it grants those lower level jobs a xp bonus of 50%.

Oh I see... thanks for clearing that up! Also, good to know for leveling other classes.

As far as Sastasha homework, all that's really needed is to learn your role. For lancer, this means understanding your skills and working out a rotation to use. Not 100% certain on this, but this will likely involve starting off with Heavy Thrust for the buff (preferably do it from the monster's side for bonus damage), then spam Impulse Drive from behind (This will actually do more damage than your True Thrust + Vorpal Thrust, which is 150 + 200 potency over two turns, or average 175 potency per turn, while Impulse Drive is straight up 180 potency per attack). Put Heavy Thrust back up whenever your buff falls off, use Leg Sweep periodically for damage (On some mobs you may wish to avoid using stunning moves so they can be stunned to interrupt certain moves. No monsters really require this in Sastasha), and you should be golden. I wouldn't really worry about Feint, it can reduce damage dealt to the tank, but the healer should be more than capable of keeping the tank up and DPSing without the enfeeble.

Naturally, your rotation will change as you level up and learn new skills. Of particular note, damage over time abilities like Phlebotomize at level 30 should be kept up whenever possible (Unless the mob is close to death), as they basically function as your most powerful attacks once all the damage has been dealt from it.

Thanks for this! I did actually notice Impulse drive (twice consecutively) did marginally more damage than my combo would... wasn't sure if that would change at higher levels but was a bit worried people would accuse me of button mashing if they saw me spamming one skill.

Regarding making gil in this game;

Crafting and gathering. any and all HQ precursors that you can sell will always sell at a premium and sell reasonably well. By pre-cursor, I mean raw materials and/or basic crafted items used as ingredients in other recipes...

A lot of great material here! Thanks you!

If you have your visual effects on their default (showing "All" effects for everyone), the screen can sometimes get obscured by so many flashing flaming effects that it becomes hard to see those markers on the ground, so I recommend going into Character Settings and lowing the visual effects at least for other members of your party to "Limited" or "None" rather than "All".

A very good tip, thanks I will do that! Also, don't worry... I did read my positional bonuses (like using heavy thrust on flank) and try to step out of the orange aoe or "bad" as quickly as possible.

By not spending it, ideally. Nearly everything you do in this game makes you money in various degrees, so you'll never have a problem in that department. It's just a matter of not blowing a hole in your pocket, especially if it would only save you a few minutes of time (again, voice of experience on that one :\ ).

Lol... hopefully my self control is better this time around.

2- about the gil if you save up abit from just the main story and the side quests reward you might end up with more that 1mil by reaching 50 as for minions and glamour gear youll find minions a cross the game and glamour gear youll get the ability to do it after lvl 50

Can't wait! And thanks again so much for the warm welcome!

[Niwashi]

I did actually notice Impulse drive (twice consecutively) did marginally more damage than my combo would... wasn't sure if that would change at higher levels but was a bit worried people would accuse me of button mashing if they saw me spamming one skill.

Once you get Full Thrust (level 26 I believe), then the True Thrust > Vorpal Thrust > Full Thrust combo is more effective. It's just while you only have 2/3 of the final combo that Impulse drive outweighs it.

[Urthdigger]

Thanks for this! I did actually notice Impulse drive (twice consecutively) did marginally more damage than my combo would... wasn't sure if that would change at higher levels but was a bit worried people would accuse me of button mashing if they saw me spamming one skill.

And this is why it's important to do the math rather than just go with what "feels" right. I think every new lancer goes through that phase of "Wait... no, that can't be right... can it?" Other easy traps are using AoE attacks when there's not enough enemies to push it above single target, and using DoT attacks when the mob won't live long enough to receive enough ticks.

Thankfully, figuring out what's effective is fairly easy in this game. Potency can basically be treated as exact damage numbers. I don't think it's QUITE right, but it's close enough. For DoT attacks, take the duration, divide by 3 to get the number of ticks, multiply by the potency per tick, and add to the initial damage from the weaponskill itself to find out how much total potency it will do when it runs its course.

Oh, one last tip while I'm spouting off DPS tricks: Once you get temporary buffs that increase your damage, use these before applying DoTs. The damage from a DoT is based on your stats at the time you use it, which means if the buff falls off while the DoT is still up, it still does increased damage. Do note that this means for things like Heavy Thrust, or Blood for Blood from lancer for extra damage, or Internal Release from pugilist so each tick has a higher chance to crit. Skills that directly modify the next attack such as Life Surge typically do not aid the DoT damage, merely the initial damage from the DoT that inflicts them.