When do the training wheels come off?

[HakaseNyan]

I know, I was there! It’s the reason when I returned that I had all these classes at various levels in addition to my main job because I levelled them for the cross talents. I had so many things greyed out when I return.

On the topic of gear, I'm sure anyone looking at me that day were amazed to see a white mage with a shield!

I also played Scholar and Brayflox was fine, seriously. What I remember more than anything is tanks having no idea where to go and pulling the entire swamp. We NEVER got Esuna, we had leeches, and the reason we could heal Brayflox is that the healing arsenal of Scholar was kinda OP. Maybe I was an amazing player in ARR, but it’s also possible some of your are being hyperbolic regarding the difficulty level of ARR.

Are we not even going to discuss that the primary way to level up was also fates rather than dungeons? So, how do dungeons serve as some great filter when most people are doing fates unless it’s roulette or a required dungeon? People didn’t dungeon spam from 1-50 like today.

I dunno, dude. I remember FATEs having real awful exp rewards, and Leves were the better alternative, and dungeons being the best exp. I leveled everything to 50 back then, and that started with Levequests + FATEs until 15 and then dungeons until 50.

I know SCH never had esuna specifically (leeches = esuna), and that's not really the point. Brayflox's final boss could stack poison on the tank, and toss out toxic vomit puddles that could hit multiple players grouped together. So, you have AoE damage + poison stack added to anyone hit, with addition to the tank having a possible stack of 4 poison going continuously. I think it's fair to say that you had to be a good SCH to get through that fight without someone ending up on the ground. It was stressful back then.

The point, if I am allowed to make one, is there was less room for error. Now? Tanks shouldn't have difficulty holding enmity ever, and the content is a breeze for healers. Heck, I remember tanks would number mobs to attack like 95% of the time. It was like everyone learned to do it, so they had less stress of keeping enmity on everything. I haven't seen that in years.

[Nixxe]

Heck, I remember tanks would number mobs to attack like 95% of the time. It was like everyone learned to do it, so they had less stress of keeping enmity on everything. I haven't seen that in years.

Because it was overkill even in ARR. It was an archaic gaming practice that somehow survived in FFXIV, but the only thing it actually did is make the game take longer while allowing, even encouraging, the entire group to contribute less. It was a casual practice for inexperienced casual players.

[HakaseNyan]

Because it was overkill even in ARR. It was an archaic gaming practice that somehow survived in FFXIV, but the only thing it actually did is make the game take longer while allowing, even encouraging, the entire group to contribute less. It was a casual practice for inexperienced casual players.

I can't tell where you're going with this. Was it really so wrong for "inexperienced casual players" pre-50 to be using a means of communication so they don't lose enmity and get others killed? Were tanks really expected to be able to pull multiple groups, survive, and keep enmity by the time everything was killed? I don't believe that was even possible without proper party composition. With the TP restrictions, bard, monk, and dragoon would be empty before everything died. Also, bard and monk wouldn't have invigorate if they didn't level lancer; meaning even less TP. By the time they could kill everything, the tank would either die or healer runs out of MP leading to the tank still dying.

When you say stuff like, "Be good and AOE them down" as if ARR leveling dungeons were a cake walk like they are today - I don't know what the heck you are talking about.

[Rivxkobe]

When you say stuff like, "Be good and AOE them down" as if ARR leveling dungeons were a cake walk like they are today - I don't know what the heck you are talking about.

/flashbacks to running Brayflox, Stone Vigil and AV during 2.0.

[Nixxe]

I can't tell where you're going with this. Was it really so wrong for "inexperienced casual players" pre-50 to be using a means of communication so they don't lose enmity and get others killed? Were tanks really expected to be able to pull multiple groups, survive, and keep enmity by the time everything was killed? I don't believe that was even possible without proper party composition. With the TP restrictions, bard, monk, and dragoon would be empty before everything died. Also, bard and monk wouldn't have invigorate if they didn't level lancer; meaning even less TP. By the time they could kill everything, the tank would either die or healer runs out of MP leading to the tank still dying.

When you say stuff like, "Be good and AOE them down" as if ARR leveling dungeons were a cake walk like they are today - I don't know what the heck you are talking about.

ARR dungeons were really easy, even in ARR. The mechanics were simplistic, relatively unvaried, and even told you when and where they were happening, to say nothing of how simple the classes and jobs were. Go back and look at them again. None of them are complicated in the slightest. The only thing that made them hard is that people absolutely sucked at them. Yeah, AOE wasn't as effective or widespread as it is now, but it was absolutely still a choice and the correct one to make whenever possible. Stop pretending ARR was hard. You were just worse than you are now.