Sanction: Really any good?

[Neptune]

Today let's look at the game mechanic called Sanction. It is a powerful effect that adds a significant stat boost to Grand Company gear, which can only be obtained through a long time investment. A long time investment. By the way, while putting in your long time investment to obtain GC seals, you are unlikely to die at all. Okay.

Now let's talk about GAME CONTENT. There is:

Content that you do once.
Content that you do over and over.

And:

Easy content. And:
Hard content.

As it turns out, a lot of the easy content is stuff you only do once, like NM achievements, quests, and story missions. And most of the hard content you do over and over, like raids and primal battles.

1-hit kills!
All of the hard content has 1 hit kills. Isn't that interesting? Primals have 1 hit kill moves, White Raven has several 1 hit kill moves, Coincounter has several 1 hit kill moves, and so does Chimera (raids).

SANCTION.

A powerful effect that wears off when you die! Now comes with 1 scroll that you can obtain after a 7 minute time investment in Chocobo Caravan. Can only take 1 scroll with you when you head out. So you can rebuff yourself once.

Conclusion:

No matter how SKY HIGH your sanction is, it still won't save you from being killed in 1 hit. You are GUARANTEED to die in 1 hit in new content you first try out. In fact, you are likely do die dozens of times until you and your group learn how to not die in 1 hit. Since you are going to die in 1 hit when you try out new hard content, it's bad to use Sanction gear. And it's bad to use the scroll because it will just go to waste. You could teleport to get a new Sanction buff every time you wipe outside of raids. So now you can spend your ANIMA to make you more powerful, even though it doesn't matter since you will still die in 1 hit anyway.

So what type of content does it make sense to use Sanction gear for? Easy content that you do once! Wooo! So is it there just to make easy content even easier? There's usually no challenge to this type of content, which makes your stat boost.. rather pointless.

Ah but the whole concept behind Sanction is it gives you such a high stat boost that it can only be used sparingly! To clear.. content that is not challenging! Wow.

The stated purpose of Sanction is very vague. It "powers you up".. well, for what? I don't think that has been given a lot of thought. It doesn't power you up for any of the content that is in the progression of this game. And by the time you can obtain it, you've already done some of the few things like job quests that it might have been nice for.

Suggestion: Figure out what exactly the cost is supposed to be for powering yourself up. Right now the cost is: time to obtain GC seals. And somehow that is not enough to make it worthwhile. The benefit for hard content is: effectively none, until you can beat the fight without it. In a few cases, possibly by exhausting 100 anima in one day, you could sustain the Sanction benefit for one event's worth of content. Is that the intentional cost?

So how much time investment would it take to be worthy of an uninterrupted 3 hour Sanction effect? 1 hour of player time? 2 hours? 10 hours? 100 hours? Is any amount of time enough?

What do you guys think?

[SirOleas]

Well...I use sanction gear.
All you have to do is not die, and if you do...you can use the sanction scroll.

*shrug*

[Kagato]

A big block of text that basically says "be careful when using Sanction, guys!"

[Jinrya-Geki]

Is there even any gear for a caster that has sanctions stuff on it, that can't be beat with a meld or 2?

Honest question. I am from Limsa, not sure if there is any. I never look.

[Chardrizard]

Carry other gear that doesnt require sanction if you plan on dying so often. I personally thinks their effect justifies it, considering some stuff are like triple meld worth effect.

[Meatdawg]

Is there even any gear for a caster that has sanctions stuff on it, that can't be beat with a meld or 2?

Honest question. I am from Limsa, not sure if there is any. I never look.

If your GC is from Uldah there is

[Tricksy]

Besides the main topic of Sanction is the interesting truth that all the story/lore ridden aspects of FF14 are far too easy and forgettable. Whereas, the content we will be doing over and over again is often laggy and tedious to the point of painfulness and something we will wish we could forget.

Im not saying make the epic gear easy to get. Im just hoping that in 2.0 we see less 1 hit kills, laggy stuff like eruptions and near-full-second delays when scrolling through abilities.

[KaplanHomahru]

Just because they have 1-hit kill moves doesn't mean you're guaranteed to die. The only point you have is that you probably shouldn't use sanction with new content, since you don't know anything about it and you will probably die a lot.

Sanction still has merit for content that you know the strategy for, but is still hard.

[Neptune]

Just because they have 1-hit kill moves doesn't mean you're guaranteed to die. The only point you have is that you probably shouldn't use sanction with new content, since you don't know anything about it and you will probably die a lot.

Sanction still has merit for content that you know the strategy for, but is still hard.

You're guaranteed to die the first time you try it. I don't think anyone would argue that point.

So you say, Sanction has merit if you know the strategy. I would add to that, if your party knows the strategy as well. Two big ifs. lol

[KaplanHomahru]

Yeah, as long as you all know pretty much what you're doing.