New Player Questions (PS4)

[Mattelot]

Good morning, everyone. I decided to take the plunge into FFXIV on PS4 recently after being hesitant of investing so many years into FFXI and I had a few questions.

1) Should I not be using Teleport much? I understand it costs gil but it seems so convenient...

2) Maim and Mend. Is this trait as cut/dry as it sounds? A flat out 10 or 30% increase in spell damage/cure potency? Sounds too good to be true...

3) What's up with the random level 50 monsters I see appearing around low level areas, namely the areas right outside the city-states?

4) I've been saving my seals and using to upgrade my rank rather than buy gear, is there anything else recommended I use them for?

5) How casual friendly is the new AF3 to obtain?

6) Do some abilities become "obsolete" after a while? I ask because some classes seem like they have LOTS of abilities and being on PS4, we have standard 16 keybinds without having to shuffle through others with R1.

Thank you.

[Anova]

1. Teleport is generally not a large expense, especially if you have a quest waiting at the end of your journey.

2. That trait is cut and dry. Keep in mind that this trait is only found in the conjurer and arcanist classes, two classes that traditionally do not output a lot of burst damage anyway. The healing is more important in that it is timed with the damage and healing spikes of the lv.41 dungeon, Stone Vigil.

3. Those are hunts. Think of them as something similar to world bosses. They are not generally aggressive, but you should avoid being in melee range regardless. At level 50, you can kill them for hunt tokens to exchange for gear and vanity items.

4. If you haven't gotten your chocobo yet, save seals to get one. Otherwise, you would buy an i55 weapon upgrade when you first reached level 50 and got to the highest rank. Now, it's used mostly for crafting materials and to access pvp content. The seals are more or less worthless unless you're a crafter.

5. AF3 is not out. You have AF1 at level 45 and 50, and then an i90 version with the same design called AF1.5 or also called AF1. AF2 can be bought with endgame tokens at lv60 and is i200. It has a much different design than AF1.

You can get these tokens by completing dungeons and rouletttes that give 'Tome of Esoterics'. Generally, AF2 is extremely easy to get. The biggest factor is that they are time-gated. You can only earn 450 tokens every week, so each piece will cost you about 2 weeks of running dungeons (3 weeks for the weapons). The dungeons are generally easy and most people do speedrun them, so I would compare the actual process as a grind or getting a daily (you can just do 1 dungeon roulette a day, 20 to 40 minutes, and cap in 6 days).

6. Generally, no. There are some niche abilities you will never use outside of a few situations at endgame. However, almost all abilities are useful and needed. The exception is perhaps with the 3 healing classes, who have 1 damage ability that becomes obsolete at level 54.

If you need more hotbars, unlock a 2nd set here using R2 and L2:
Character Configuration > Hotbar Settings > Cross > Set Selection

Hope that answers everything.

[SpiritMuse]

On PS4 I can recommend you activate the extra crossbars that can be reached by pressing L2+R2 together. If you activate both you'll have 32 ability slots at the tips of your fingers which should be plenty of room to put everything in.

[TemetNosce]

To start, every new player should know this website, its super useful source of information: http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki

1. You can set preferred destinations that costs reduced prices, as well as a home point, and a free destination if you use the security token (phone software). It's cheap and Gil is plentiful in the game even just via dungeon runs and quest rewards.

2. Never paid attention to this TBH, lol.

3. Most zones have a variety of mob levels. There are also Hunt monsters, classified by A/B/S. See the console wiki link and type in Hunt for more info.

4. There's crafting items, Ventures used for your retainers, as well as items used for your chocobo (point reset) and to reset your own bonus attributes (allowing you to tinker, very useful for smn/sch people). I'd suggest usng them to upgrade rank first. I have used seals to get gear in the past, but you'll get pink and green drops quickly.

5. Gear is easy to get in this game for the most part. Its mostly just a time sink to save up tomes to trade in, or running Void Ark (the latest 24 man) for drops (its an easy instance, as long as you're willing to learn mechanics).

6. Some abilities are less used than others. I have played every class/job on the ps4, it takes time to find a good hotbar setup you like. You can also use L2+R2, L2+R2 to get cross hot bars (it will pop up one side of a hot bar you designate, changable in the Hotbar settings). Personally, I use R1 to flip between 2 hotbar sets, plus the R2+L2, L2+R2 to access a third, gives me 12x3 slots (and I usually fill them all). I also use an extra horizontal bar over the normal hot bars, and a horizontal bar beside the normal hot bars, to keep track of important cool downs (not to activate them, activation is done on the gamepad).

I also use macros to reduce the number of hotbar slots used; on SMN for my pets I've combined abilties so it uses 3 slots for 9 abilties. Each pet has 3, so 1 macro has each Egi's AoE, 1 macro for their Stun/Knockback and 1 for their "unique" ability. Save space and brain power

The PS4 hotbars are *very* customizable once you find all the settings. Target dummies are very useful when seeing how well your setup works, and tinkering around with it.

[Mattelot]

Very good information. Thank you all very much.

[Niwashi]

(1) Early on, when you're still low enough level that gil is coming in slowly, Teleporting around a lot can be expensive, and it's better to travel overland (or take the ferry when going between La Noscea and the mainland). But this is also the time you'll want to be familiarizing yourself with the territory, so that works out well enough. As you go up in levels, gil starts coming in a lot faster, whereas the teleport costs remain fixed, so they start looking more and more affordable, and most players start teleporting around pretty routinely.

(Personally, by the time I could easily afford to teleport around all the time, I'd gotten in the habit of traveling overland and found I liked the chance that gave me to see the game world, so I continued doing it that way most of the time. I only teleport occasionally, and only if I'm in a hurry. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on that.)


(6) Besides the Expanded Hold Controls (simultaneous L2 and R2) that's already been mentioned, you can also set certain bars to be used when your weapon is drawn and others when it's sheathed. That allows out of combat actions (like teleporting or summoning your mount, and so on) to be separated out from combat actions. Using those settings together, I have mine set up to give me 32 combat actions and another 16 out of combat actions for each job before needing to R1 toggle. For most jobs, that's all I need. (The only hard ones in this regard are Summoner and Scholar, because of the additional pet actions.)

[Mattelot]

Anova,
I guess they were "stock" photos of people wearing the Orison set.

Niwashi,
Thank you for the exapnded hold controls. That's exactly what I was looking for. My White Mage doesn't have a whole lot of keybinds but my Ninja did not have enough. This will give me what I need!

[Rhode]

Here's how I play on PS4 as WHM.

Hotbar #1:


Hotbar #2:


I've set it up so my hotbar will automatically change when using "Cleric Stance". If I'm on Hotbar #1 and use Cleric Stance, it will swap to #2, and if I use it on #2 it'll swap to #1

Hotbar #1 is healing while Hotbar #2 is DPS. I put some support skills that I use all the time on both hotbars.

Here are the macros I use:

For Cleric Stance:
Hotbar #1 gets this one

/macroicon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance"
/chotbar change "2"

Hotbar #2 gets this

/macroicon "Cleric Stance"
/ac "Cleric Stance"
/chotbar change "1"

Swiftcast + Raise:

/macroicon "Raise"
/p Raising <t>! <se.7> <se.7>
/ac "Swiftcast"
/wait
/ac "Raise" <t>

Protect + Stoneskin 2:

/ac "Swiftcast"
/wait
/ac "Stoneskin II"
/wait 2
/ac "Protect"