Any SB 4.0-4.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[Hatfright]

Started during SB as well. By the time I catched up with MSQ it's been 4.4, I think.
A friend of mine dragged me along for Byakko Ex kill about a week after I finished with MSQ, and boy, was I not prepared.
By the time ShB got announced I already leveled DRK and was trying to learn it. Also asked for advice on SCH from a different friend, who said "Why do you need an advice, it'll be useless in few months". So I never learned SB SCH properly, but I still miss it. =(

[JamieRose]

Can be any, like something fun/weird/annoying/stressfull/boring/etc experience and transition from HW to SB.

Also something that you missed during those times, like systems/job skill/etc

(2.0-2.55 post) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-those-times
(3.0-3.55 post) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-those-times.

im guessing it's not a big different if u compare it to current state of the game

I came in at the tail end of 4.55 so I didn't get to experience much of anything beyond the MSQ. That being said, I kind of liked it better when the SCH faeries had different functions. Having two faeries that do the same thing just seems silly to me.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I miss:
- Warrior in 4.1, I liked the gauge balancing even if it was difficult depending on the fight
- Dark Knight in general. MP and Blood had great interplay, we had an extendable haste buff, Dark Arts was a bit much but felt more interesting than Edge if I may be blunt.
- Awareness, because playing Paladin in Stormblood ultimates or doing synced O3S / Shinryu's Domain haunts me to infinity and beyond (critical hit pierces block)
- Scholar actually having a damage rotation by not having every single dot be on the same durationn
- White Mage's Aero III, Holy is as monotonous as it gets
- enmity being something you could build well but not for free all the f-ing time*

* putting the job on DPS / Healers to manage their enmity wasn't that good, but removing any management of it from tanks was a bad move, literally should've just given every tank a unique version of Unchained and removed dps stances in general

[Zairava]

I started with Stormblood

• I miss the old style of tanking, stance dancing with enmity combos were excellent to have. Enmity Management added some actual depth to the role I wish would come back in a personal form.
• Dark Knight in general, I still main it because I'm dedicated to it but it's actually infuriating what they did to it in 5.0. Dark Arts just needed to be reduced in usage, it was functionally more interesting than what it got replaced with (edge/flood). Delirium had it's own unique effect instead of being washed Inner Release. The MP management in tandem with enmity management was satisfying. The enmity combo felt far better to use and we had some actual self-sustain.
• Job design. There was more to it. A higher skill ceiling with far less streamlined/homogenized kits.
• Battle/Combat content. It felt like it had a nice balance between casual and midcore even in the msq content (which was helped by the skill ceiling at the time), especially in the Ivalice raids when they were current content, which actually did feel more midcore at the time.
• I didn't actually do eureka when it was current content, but I did in Shadowbringers and wish I did do it when it was current content.

No expansion from any mmo comes remotely close to how much fun I had during Stormblood

[OdinelStarrei]

I started in Heavensward. But Stormblood, in retrospect, is my favorite expansion, and in my honest opinion, 4.5 is probably the best overall state the game has ever been in to-date, and will ever be.

In terms of story, the base expansion was a bit bland, but as a fan of war stories, I found it serviceable, and I loved particularly Azim Steppe, and the storming of both Doma Castle and Ala Mhigo itself. Fighting Shinryu on launch was honestly a REALLY, REALLY good capstone. Difficult enough where I had to stay awake, killed people often, great reprise of the main theme of the expansion. I'm also a fan of Zenos.

Post-expansion Stormblood is my favorite arc in XIV right next to launch Shadowbringers, dealing with the consequences of the main story, accepting, but not forgiving Yotsuyu's transgressions, another flashy dungeon in The Burn and Ghimlyt Dark, and finally, a point in the story where the Scions are actually threatened by an unknown entity. Seeing the Alliance actually do things instead of me hard carrying 24/7 was great. Cannot explain enough how excited I was to storm the Empire. We know how that went.

However, I only play the story ONE time, so I don't care after hour 30 or so in total across the whole expansion. What SB EXCELLED in, was honestly everything else. I put at least 1.5K hours in SB, and I was NEVER bored or burned out.

Jobs were not as ridiculously punishing as HW, but every job still had a respectable skill ceiling that gave players actual agency outside of their openers. The worst part about SB is that Piercing and Slashing debuffs still existed, which still constrained party compositions somewhat. Had those debuffs be removed, SB would be almost ideal. This is the last time a high personal skill ceiling would even exist in FFXIV. This is why the game isn't fun to play anymore.
Aggro mechanics, as nerfed as they were because of role actions, still existed, and proper aggro outside of stance was a great way to distinguish the wheat from the chaff of not only the tank role, but also for non-tanks who didn't know how to aggro dump/be a good NIN.
Supports were actually allowed to be supports. Is Refresh and Foes super interesting? No. But it's better than the literally nothing that they have now.
Tanks and Healers were actually fun to play, because they hadn't gutted them yet. The only exception was WHM, which absolutely NEEDED the QoL from future expansions. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did for them to get things like lillies and Bension working.
And of course, Dark Knight, my beloved, was still a real job back then I could style on people with.

But like, who cares, what about the CONTENT? This is the point where SE was at the MOST experimental.
New deep dungeon.
Fairly well-designed savage set, some of these bosses are my favorite savage fights, even over the stuff in HW. Actual shout out to O3S, and O11S for being some of the best encounters I have ever seen in an MMO of this style. Seriously I love these two fights.
The savage tier introducing Door bosses in the 4th Floor with cool transitions and what is essentially a 5th encounter! Really building off the cool things we saw in Midas, but making it a bit more accessible. Unfortunate that the 2nd half loops in the fights, but the idea was really cool, and it made prog not NEARLY as painful as it is right now.
Brand new Ultimate content. 2 of them, even, in the odd patches, giving a LEGITIMATE incentive for the savage tier progression, something that was completely unheard of before that point. Back in the day, this was really daunting, people couldn't even conceptualize how difficult something like UCOB was at launch, it was truly Unending. Seeing Twin+Nael as adds with almost all of their mechanics in like minute 15 of the fight is so insanely demoralizing and absurd, to this day I'm astonished they had the balls to do it.
Difficult, almost meme-worthy 24-mans, Orbonne pre-nerf is absolutely the most fun I have ever had on a launch 24-man, and every 24man that expansion outscales Dun Scaithe in difficulty and amount of things that would absolutely dunk on players who were not paying attention, something I thought was impossible. Vote abandons on HASHMAL? People being UNABLE to do basic math? People getting thrown off the ledges by Yiazmat? The absolute god-tier boss that is Thunder God? Nothing has come close. Not in the same way.
Eureka? This is my favorite content in the whole game. This is the last time I ever saw this game as a true unified community, and it was inside of THIS content. I love how dangerous it was, I love how early it was in comparison in the patch cycle, I love how if I didn't team up, or lead instances with the cool trackers, it would not only be inefficient, but actively detrimental to progression, I loved that I had systems to discover, and share with others, I loved the Pyros crazy actions you could do, I loved how I had a +800 SkS relic weapon, and I absolutely loved the amount of pure chaos from having 144 players in an instance, both in terms of the boss fights, and the shout chat. You made enemies, you made friends, it was glorious. Remember the first time your instance fought something like Pazuzu, or god forbid, CASSIE? HUNDREDS OF BODIES. Absolute SLAUGHTER, and it was AMAZING. Or how Provenance in Hyadatos had nerfed NIDHOGG EXTREME mechanics? You ever see 60 people get absolutely ANNIHILATED by Hot Tail on the bridge, with no where to run? I have. Fantastic.
And then you had BA in 4.5, what I consider to the absolute peak of my time in XIV. More than the ultimate kills, more than the expansion launches, it was BA/Eureka additions that was the craziest thing on the launch weeks. You had ultimate players, savage players, eureka specialists, casual players, randoms, didn't matter who you were, if you could contribute to your server's BA, you were asked, and accepted as long as you weren't a complete doorknob because we needed THAT many bodies. So many players, fighting in a true RAID, requiring support from the players outside, with a absolutely BRUTAL punishment for mistakes that hasn't really been matched in the same way since except for DRS, which I have problems with that I won't get into here. So much unity! So much community collaboration! So many inside jokes and heartbreak and victories you could share with dozens of people. So much passion! I have never seen the game's community pool together in the glory of combat like it did for Eureka and BA, and I never will again. Bozja just wasn't as good, and it wasn't the same.

And all this, on top of the standard XIV stuff we got every patch, like the pretty serviceable 8-man trials. Except Byakko.

This is like, only the tip of the iceberg for how much I LOVED Stormblood. Stormblood wasn't perfect, but it had SOMETHING for everyone, and very few people felt like they were being ignored, or left out, or specifically targeted. (Sorry WHMs) Casuals, midcore, and hardcore were all accommodated simultaneously. There was balance in that. The playerbase wasn't as big. The playerbase hadn't fractured into this tribalism nonsense yet. People didn't like, automatically hate each other as much. The period right before Shadowbringers and at Shadowbringers, right around Fanfest that year, I can't even think about that time in the game without smiling to myself, and I know most people who were doing all that content back then at launch would agree with me.

I cannot express just how much fun Stormblood was for the dedicated FFXIV player, or at least, me personally. I would give anything to go back to those times. I didn't realize it at the time, but Stormblood for the people who were there is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves. Probably because most good things that Stormblood did eventually got dumbed down, ripped away from us or thrown away like trash.

Rose tinted googles, whatever. The game hasn't been the same for me since.
What a rambling post.

[Sqwall]

Astrologian cards were actually good and fun to use.
"I need TP!" was something you heard.
"Look at how much MP that whitemage has!"
Bard used MP and had cast bars.
Machinist had ammo, RNG, and flamethrower was your capstone.
Tank agro was something they had to fight for. Warrior was the king, and rivaled DPS #'s.


Stormblood was a whole different world compared to shadowbringers and beyond.

I would like to see SOME things come back, and there are something I want as far away as possible. Tank agro from stormblood can stay far away....really far.

[Absurdity]

*snip*

I couldn't agree more with basically everything. Heavensward was great but Stormblood is what I fondly look back to whenever I'm bothered by the current state of the game.
It kept me engaged with the game for it's entire 2 year runtime, with so much varied content that I never felt burned out or like the game suffered from content drought.

The jobs all still had their individual naunces and proper skill ceilings that learning them properly felt incredibly rewarding, giving even the more basic content a lot of replay value.

It was also the last time that some jobs had variation within themselves that was actually viable, the difference in playstyle between normal SAM and the full skillspeed "build" was quite noticeable and even though things like speed SAM were rather simple to play it felt like you discovered something the devs never intended which made it interesting nonetheless.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I would like to see SOME things come back, and there are something I want as far away as possible. Tank agro from stormblood can stay far away....really far.

Tbh Tank aggro wasn't all that bad, a hybrid of 4.5 and 5.X+ stance along with a job-unique variant of Unchained would be the solution to make it a tank's job without having to hamper the damage numbers.

What I mean is basically having stances like today but with the extra mitigation again (as additional incentive to be in that stance) and having a version of Unchained entering the stances without damage penalty, leaving just the enmity and mitigation bonus for a set time.

The problem was DPS stances and how much was gated behind them. Deliverance was a particularly rough offender with the additional bonus damage tied to it, making Defiance even in case of not spending any gauge at all a temporary damage loss even with Unchained.

Enmity combos, Diversion and enmity-halving for DPS and Healers though, I wouldn't want that back for sure.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

there was that time the devs had the "bright" idea of making alliance raid loot greed only.

God, made me stop queueing as a tank until they fixed it. Part of the incentive to go as tank to the raids is the ability to be unchallenged for any fending loot you wanted for glamour. The whole 'greed only' thing completely wrecked that incentive. I would assume many others thought the same, since I remember there was quite a drought of tanks queueing for that time. Also applied to the healers to a lesser extent, knowing you were putting in far more effort than the other jobs in the raid only for mr DPS 'I died 10 times that fight" to swipe the healer piece you were looking for.

It was however, worth the popcorn level salt arguments in party chats from people greeding on loot for roles they hadn't even gotten one job leveled in at all taking it from someone looking after it for an actual upgrade to the job they were playing.

[Gemina]

Main thing I remember was talking about how busted of a job AST was, getting a ton of flack for it, and warning the healer community that big changes were a'comin.

I played a lot of DRK and NIN back in SB. It was the expansion where I started breaking free from the healer role to run content.

Orbonne alliance raid kill all man

I liked the main story. Particularly the complicated situation that surrounded Tsuyu's amnesia, and Emet's introduction to the MSQ. Good stuff.

It was also the expansion where I finally completed BCoB. Though I still need to run these synced.