Hooking a WoW veteran

[RiisWolf]

Class complexity doesn't make things automatically better. And WoW's structure doesn't use a combo system that needs you to do three attacks to do a thing or three versions of the same spell (with the exception of the healers in WoW having a Quick, normal, and sometimes heavy version of the same basic healing spell) WoW at the time of Pandaria had over 26 buttons, several or dozen of passive upgrades, multiple unique abilities or perks bestowed to them by their special gear, useable trinkets, and if your an engineer many, many more gadgets, among other things and they all did something different. But it gets even more complicated. There are 12 classes with 3 specializations with a talent tree for each of them and now in Legion an extra talent tree in the form of their artifact weapon. Granted, naturally you will be finding some cookie cutter builds and top best builds. Yes most of them are DPS cause all 12 classes have at least one DPS spec. Some specs changes how the class works less than others, while like the monk or Druid who can be tank, DPS or healer have wild changed. And yes among specs within the classes they do share some of the most basic of abilities, but with Pandaria onward (as far as I know) they've been making an effort to make each spec more and more unique than the other. Yes sometimes some classes have completely useless moves or moves that are too similar, but I haven't came across that case as bad as it was pre-Pandaria. And the only complexity from FF14's jobs are come from their excessive weaknesses and bloated buttons such as combos when it's just: Do power up combo, then do powerful combo, rinse and repeat. I'm serious about the melee DPS, it's simple because it's a routine. Ranged are based on conditions such as if the DoTs are up or not. And Magic is a mixed bag of whatever melee or ranged as to deal with to damage : fire on; ice on; fire on; ice on. Then Heavensward gave job changes adding a whole bag full of problems all while making enemies use telegraphed and avoidable AoEs excessively more. Problems such as, not only is ranged less mobile than ever before, they have to move more than ever before while dealing with timers, procs, and anything that isn't the enemy.

FF14 has been playing super safe since 2.0 but doesn't really excel at much of anything except the story and forcing everyone to do it to progress through the game. Their classes follow a formula so much that despite what ever unique gimmick they have, it's too similar. Their range of abilities aren't as expansive as WoW is or was as far as I remember from Pandaria. You cannot do more than one action at the same time; there's a 0.5 sec CD on everything you do.

Healing is too easy in FF14. Incoming damage is slow and your spells are mega heals. There is rarely a mechanic that challenges them compared to the mountain of random things targeted to DPS (and sometimes anyone but the MT), or whatever the tank has to deal with. Resource starvation is a wide spread fear among players, even to the point of being actually irrational a lot of the time. Some because this IS the first MMO they've ever played, others cause they never needed to push it. Raids are a simple walk in the door and beat someone up, and are 100% scripted. What's simple in WoW is the most advanced thing in FF14. So advance you can't trust almost anyone here to tank Onyxia post-cataclysm. or know when is the time to use HoTs. Tanking in anything but extreme raids or trails is all about threat and less about staying alive, unless you choose to push the pulls. They'll like you if you reduce the damage. AoEs are hard pressed. Where as in WoW, the healer has to worry about resources the most, and DPS has to end the fight as fast as possible so that healers don't go OOM, and Tanks have to make the healer's and consequently everyone's lives easier by doing whatever they can to stay alive, reducing damage down to as far as 10% commonly with active mitigations. By the way, in FF14, active mitigation super sparse, with Inner beast and Shelltron being the only two. DRK gets none. Parry is the worst in FF14, where as in WoW we'd kill for some more parry/dodge.

Information such as stats are not communicated well at all. Nobody knows what the crit rates and parry rates actually are. Oddly more raiders I've ran into here are even more rigid and unwilling to do more than one strategy, where as in WoW we'd know 2 or maybe more cause we can deal with it, but maybe that's changed now cause I haven't been back in WoW since WoD and the garrisons and freaking social media patch. People fighting over when's a good time to use enochian in 7 minutes of trash, or worse about the direction devs want to take healing DPS when they wrote it and literally kneecapped all the healer's ability to hit anything ONLY to screw that up by lowering the accuracy requirement and giving more attacking spells to the healer to further perpetuate the issue, when there is clearly a direction the devs want to take with it. And frankly add that kind of screwed up mess with how they did the extreme raids and you'll be right on point. It's not to say WoW is perfect with how they've been doing things. They've been going on and off with the bad and the good, someone on the outside, and maybe the inside will question what in the world is going on there!? Yes I've meet loads of people in WoW who could NOT function without mods (freaking inept healers and their healbots), or fail constantly even while having the DBM tell them everything. And I've developed a strong hate for mods that I have never used DBM or (almost) any mod.

. . . . .Also FF14 releases 2 dungeons every major patch.