Dungeons without the usual composition are just better.

[Edellis]

So with the recent NIN influx, I broke down while leveling mine and just got some randoms together in order to 4-DPS attack the Lv1-20 DF dungeons. 4 Rogue DPS only.



And it was probably the most fun i've had on this game since it was fresh to me:



1) First off, cross-class abilities are more impactful than they'll ever be otherwise. Skills like Cure, Protect and Stoneskin were immediately useful. Defensive CDs like Keen Flurry and Featherfoot are great, as well as the DPS ones for burning down mobs. We found ourselves changing and reorganizing them a bit.

2) There is no designated tank (because you'll probably just die), so managing Enmity is a party-wide endeavor. Meaning, you probably wont fall asleep during the dungeon like usual.

3) There is no designated Healer, so again, this is a party-wide job. Everyone keeps everyone else alive. It's the most amazing thing to come a few HP from death, only to be saved by your alert teammates. It's literally like playing one of the older Final Fantasy RPGs on ATB.

4) Items actually become useful, and for more than DPS checks. Totorak's poison ticks were a huge issue, until we realized that, oh yeah, there are unused Antidotes in my inventory which will likely be the difference between life or death. (It was, on more than one instance. 15 damage ticks are a huge deal with your hp is low and everyone's cure amount sucks.)

5) There is no feeling quite like fighting a boss you just know is impossible to defeat, until you and your teammates try that last-ditch, 7th-wipe strategy that just so happened to work. (kiting and enmity switching on the nine-tails)



So it's really a shame that after a certain level, this just becomes completely impossible because the enemies hit harder than a non-tank can manage to survive and a non-healer can manage to heal. It's such a pity, because queuing as a DPS is just terrible, and this was a really great pasttime while it was possible.

[Kurin]

Low levels in MMOs are usually more interesting for the reasons you stated: You're not necessarily required to fit a certain role or play style because the enemies aren't scaled up dramatically to account for new skills and tuned gear.

I always enjoy the leveling process for similar reasons, especially since end game is usually just gear grind, fight boss, replace old gear with new, repeat. However, just got to FFXIV endgame, so let's see if it breaks any molds... I doubt it.

[Yumi_umi]

The easy way of doing it is
1 person dives in and smacks the 1st enemy in the mob, do a full combo on it to build decent emnity. The other dps then dive bombs the other 2 targets to grab remaining emnity. After emnity is grabbed everyone will switch to the lowest hp enemy and zerg it down.
Its better this way because you'll bresk up the damage distributed from the mob. Instead of 3 baddies curb stomping u, u'll have 1 or 2 poking u while the other is attacking ur bud.
Also it helps to be on different levels of dps as the highest will generate more emnity etc lol

Also second wind is a must if u wanna survive after ur dodge.

[Edellis]

Low levels in MMOs are usually more interesting for the reasons you stated: You're not necessarily required to fit a certain role or play style because the enemies aren't scaled up dramatically to account for new skills and tuned gear.

I always enjoy the leveling process for similar reasons, especially since end game is usually just gear grind, fight boss, replace old gear with new, repeat. However, just got to FFXIV endgame, so let's see if it breaks any molds... I doubt it.

FFXIV's endgame doesn't really suffer from the same issues because the trails are heavily tuned to the fact the player roles are pre-determined. There isn't much room for breaking this order because of that. But at the same time, it gives the developers room to make more elaborate gimmicks because they don't have to guess which strategy 8 players are going to choose.


But the only reason this is an issue in the first place is because Tanks/Healers are DRASTICALLY outnumbered by DPS, and you literally need the minority to even survive.

I've had better luck gearing my bard on greed rolls from PLD than by actually playing Bard, because the frequency of me actually getting into an instance is so goddamn low.

[ruskie]

You can do a lot of funruns in this game. We even did copperbell hm with titan egi tanking.

[NozomiKei]

Our FC had an awesome event where we got into groups of four with whoever we wanted on any jobs, put on max lvl 12 gear and ran dungeons starting with Sastasha and going down the list only adding gear upgrades that dropped in the dungeons. My "leftovers" group made it to the final boss of Haukke Manor. I believe we could have cleared it with a different tank (two people in the party had only leveled their chosen job to Haukke so there still would have been an artificial wall). It was amazingly fun.