Hooking a WoW veteran

[ZioSerpe]

Combat is slower but frankly I would argue the rotations are much more complex than WoW's. Most WoW classes use maybe 5-6 skills max in a standard rotation and even then in a lot of cases its repetition of the same skill with procs and buff/cd/utility skills woven in. I certainly don't remember any WoW job with anything like balancing positional with things like Blood of the Dragon.

They are not more complex they are just more cumbersome, the FFXIV rotations are mostly static while WoW's are more reactive (via procs and rotation altering cooldowns)

[Belhi]

They are not more complex they are just more cumbersome, the FFXIV rotations are mostly static while WoW's are more reactive (via procs and rotation altering cooldowns)

They are still pretty simple. I'm not saying WoW is bad necessarily, its just faster paced but simpler. FF14 goes for a slower more strategic playstyle. More stuff to juggle but more time to juggle it in.

I generally don't say either is better since both are going for a different feel. Beyond that its pretty much personal preference.

[HPDelron]

Er, no, they're not, by any measure! And the term 'molasses' applies perfectly to FFXIV's combat.

So I haven't played WoW since wrath, but I recall rotations being simpler than what's in FF14 currently. Those friends I have that do still play WoW seem to say rotations have become less complex, not more (trimming of abilities etc..)

Taking a cursory look here at the current rotations here for WoW classes:

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides

They seem to on average have fewer buttons to push that FF14 rotations. I'd say at least on a surface level FF14 does have an edge in complexity, if not a particularly large one. If you want to discount combos this edge probably mostly goes away.

What seems to be the bigger difference is the strictness of the rotations. there seem to be relatively few things as unforgiving as dropping Enochian, for example.

Combined with the fact mechanics seem harsher in FF14, I think it does leave room for a fair argument that if not strictly more "Complex" FF14 rotations are more demanding, particularly taken in context of a progression encounter.

[Isala]

Combined with the fact mechanics seem harsher in FF14, I think it does leave room for a fair argument that if not strictly more "Complex" FF14 rotations are more demanding, particularly taken in context of a progression encounter.

Mechanics here are reacting to things as they happen. WoW's mechanics are reacting to things after they've already happened, or pre-reacting to them because your DBM addon just screamed at you. They're rather fond of leaving puddles underneath you, that you need to get out of, over our markers before puddles. And then there's the whole DBM debacle, that gives you a timer before any sort of mechanic is happening, to warn you that you're actually going to have to do something in the next 5 seconds.

[RiisWolf]

Class complexity doesn't make things automatically better. And WoW's structure doesn't use a combo system that needs you to do three attacks to do a thing or three versions of the same spell (with the exception of the healers in WoW having a Quick, normal, and sometimes heavy version of the same basic healing spell) WoW at the time of Pandaria had over 26 buttons, several or dozen of passive upgrades, multiple unique abilities or perks bestowed to them by their special gear, useable trinkets, and if your an engineer many, many more gadgets, among other things and they all did something different. But it gets even more complicated. There are 12 classes with 3 specializations with a talent tree for each of them and now in Legion an extra talent tree in the form of their artifact weapon. Granted, naturally you will be finding some cookie cutter builds and top best builds. Yes most of them are DPS cause all 12 classes have at least one DPS spec. Some specs changes how the class works less than others, while like the monk or Druid who can be tank, DPS or healer have wild changed. And yes among specs within the classes they do share some of the most basic of abilities, but with Pandaria onward (as far as I know) they've been making an effort to make each spec more and more unique than the other. Yes sometimes some classes have completely useless moves or moves that are too similar, but I haven't came across that case as bad as it was pre-Pandaria. And the only complexity from FF14's jobs are come from their excessive weaknesses and bloated buttons such as combos when it's just: Do power up combo, then do powerful combo, rinse and repeat. I'm serious about the melee DPS, it's simple because it's a routine. Ranged are based on conditions such as if the DoTs are up or not. And Magic is a mixed bag of whatever melee or ranged as to deal with to damage : fire on; ice on; fire on; ice on. Then Heavensward gave job changes adding a whole bag full of problems all while making enemies use telegraphed and avoidable AoEs excessively more. Problems such as, not only is ranged less mobile than ever before, they have to move more than ever before while dealing with timers, procs, and anything that isn't the enemy.

FF14 has been playing super safe since 2.0 but doesn't really excel at much of anything except the story and forcing everyone to do it to progress through the game. Their classes follow a formula so much that despite what ever unique gimmick they have, it's too similar. Their range of abilities aren't as expansive as WoW is or was as far as I remember from Pandaria. You cannot do more than one action at the same time; there's a 0.5 sec CD on everything you do.

Healing is too easy in FF14. Incoming damage is slow and your spells are mega heals. There is rarely a mechanic that challenges them compared to the mountain of random things targeted to DPS (and sometimes anyone but the MT), or whatever the tank has to deal with. Resource starvation is a wide spread fear among players, even to the point of being actually irrational a lot of the time. Some because this IS the first MMO they've ever played, others cause they never needed to push it. Raids are a simple walk in the door and beat someone up, and are 100% scripted. What's simple in WoW is the most advanced thing in FF14. So advance you can't trust almost anyone here to tank Onyxia post-cataclysm. or know when is the time to use HoTs. Tanking in anything but extreme raids or trails is all about threat and less about staying alive, unless you choose to push the pulls. They'll like you if you reduce the damage. AoEs are hard pressed. Where as in WoW, the healer has to worry about resources the most, and DPS has to end the fight as fast as possible so that healers don't go OOM, and Tanks have to make the healer's and consequently everyone's lives easier by doing whatever they can to stay alive, reducing damage down to as far as 10% commonly with active mitigations. By the way, in FF14, active mitigation super sparse, with Inner beast and Shelltron being the only two. DRK gets none. Parry is the worst in FF14, where as in WoW we'd kill for some more parry/dodge.

Information such as stats are not communicated well at all. Nobody knows what the crit rates and parry rates actually are. Oddly more raiders I've ran into here are even more rigid and unwilling to do more than one strategy, where as in WoW we'd know 2 or maybe more cause we can deal with it, but maybe that's changed now cause I haven't been back in WoW since WoD and the garrisons and freaking social media patch. People fighting over when's a good time to use enochian in 7 minutes of trash, or worse about the direction devs want to take healing DPS when they wrote it and literally kneecapped all the healer's ability to hit anything ONLY to screw that up by lowering the accuracy requirement and giving more attacking spells to the healer to further perpetuate the issue, when there is clearly a direction the devs want to take with it. And frankly add that kind of screwed up mess with how they did the extreme raids and you'll be right on point. It's not to say WoW is perfect with how they've been doing things. They've been going on and off with the bad and the good, someone on the outside, and maybe the inside will question what in the world is going on there!? Yes I've meet loads of people in WoW who could NOT function without mods (freaking inept healers and their healbots), or fail constantly even while having the DBM tell them everything. And I've developed a strong hate for mods that I have never used DBM or (almost) any mod.

. . . . .Also FF14 releases 2 dungeons every major patch.

[Reinha]

Class complexity doesn't make things automatically better. And WoW's structure doesn't use a combo system that needs you to do three attacks to do a thing or three versions of the same spell (with the exception of the healers in WoW having a Quick, normal, and sometimes heavy version of the same basic healing spell) WoW at the time of Pandaria had ... Yes sometimes some classes have completely useless moves or moves that are too similar, but I haven't came across that case as bad as it was pre-Pandaria. And the only complexity from FF14's jobs are come from their excessive weaknesses and bloated buttons such as combos when it's just: Do power up combo, then do powerful combo, rinse and repeat. I'm serious about the melee DPS, it's simple because it's a routine. Ranged are based on conditions such as if the DoTs are up or not. And Magic is a mixed bag of whatever melee or ranged as to deal with to damage : fire on; ice on; fire on; ice on. Then Heavensward gave job changes adding a whole bag full of problems all while making enemies use telegraphed and avoidable AoEs excessively more. Problems such as, not only is ranged less mobile than ever before, they have to move more than ever before while dealing with timers, procs, and anything that isn't the enemy.
...
Healing is too easy in FF14. Incoming damage is slow and your spells are mega heals.
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I haven't been back in WoW since WoD and the garrisons and freaking social media patch.

I'll quote you in response to everyone's comments about complexity. When I mentioned the complexity of rotations, I meant the current iterations. Not the rotations of Pandaria (which was great!), not WoD and not any other expansion. The abilities have now been pruned twice since Pandaland and many classes are a mere shell of what they used to be.

I'm also going to specify that complexity of rotations doesn't directly relate to how many buttons there are in total, how much customization specs or classes have or how complex the encounters are mechanic-wise. What I meant by rotational complexity is the multi-layered thinking required to use the rotation. You can have a 20 button combo or you can have 20 buttons with different cooldowns, resource effects, durations, stat modifiers, situational or positional effects, random activation times and interdependent effects. The latter obviously requires more attention and better understanding of when to use each ability.

Healers play roughly the same: watch resources, heal, use cds and raise. What adds to complexity in FFXIV is having to predict damage to utilize some of the most powerful tools properly, extending or spreading previously casted heals, dealing non-negligible amounts of damage and directly supporting the party in the case of AST. Dps rotations in WoW involve some procs and primary/secondary resource management, but for many classes it ends there and AoE can be totally passive cleave (see Unholy DK). FFXIV dps jobs can have the additional aspects of changing their rotation to keep up a buff/debuff, supporting the party, rigid ability timing, difficult recovery and positional requirements (WoW classes more often have gap closers for melee and mobility options for casters than FFXIV jobs do, allowing the rotation to continue uninterrupted).

There are also the extreme cases. The simplest WoW spec, BM hunter, is currently played by building a resource, using a special move straight after and dumping the resource in 3 different ways (Big Attack, Small Attack, AoE). All FFXIV ranged/casters have something additional they have to keep in mind. On the other hand, WoW's allegedly most difficult dps spec, Feral Druid, keeps up 3 dots (attempting to snapshot them with buffs active), maintains a buff, uses possible procs before dots, uses a buildup-finisher filler and lines up cds. FFXIV Ninja: keep up 2 dots (attempting to snapshot them with buffs active) and a debuff, maintains a buff, manages party enmity and TP, uses a combo filler and lines up cds (including mudras and oGCDs). Mudras also have to be learned by heart (15 usable combinations -> 6 effects). The ninja opener seems, to me at least, much more difficult than Feral's because it has more things to memorize and WoW enables macroing some things together without causing delay.

Since WoW's easiest spec is easier than anything in FFXIV and even their hardest spec has an equal here, it makes me wonder why it's a question at all that FFXIV rotations are more complex. Now, you are right, it doesn't automatically make things better. But it can in some cases make the game more interesting to a player and that's the kind of thing we are trying to suggest in this thread. The difference in rotations was one of the first things I noticed when swapping my Hunter to Bard and throughout my time here I have continuously thought that WoW classes were both easier to understand and easier to play well without practice. You may disagree and that's fine. I think I've said all there is to say on my part.

[Khalithar]

Snip

The GCD is a common complaint and one that I had at the beginning. It gets a little better at higher levels when your action bars fill out but until then it's pretty dull. As far as soloing story missions, it's not that bad as a healer honestly. However, what may kill it for him is starting a game that he doesn't really like the combat system of as an Arcanist. Right now, leveling arcanist from 1-30 is pretty boring, it's not really a fun class to play and doesn't really get interesting until you unlock Smn/Sch. All the classes "get better later" but I think that's especially true of sch/smn that don't really shine until significantly later.

In addition to that, so many of the important instances are solo only content. It's definitely not the sort of game where you two can just go out and quest together like in WoW, the main thing you can do with a friend in 14 for hours is run dungeons for some exp which isn't the most efficient way to level but depending on queue times dungeons can give decent exp and really help you understand your class/job role in a party situation.

FFXIV definitely does get better later once you've gotten through the adjustment phase but this may not honestly be the game for him in it's current incarnation.

[Arkazon]

As I read more about it, this Deep Dungeon may be just the ticket. It sounds like the jobs inside level at an expedited rate, so it will show my friend what his class will feel like at higher levels. A couple things I wonder about though ...

1. You level your "job" independently in there. But when you leave, does any of that experience translate to your out-of-dungeon job? Meaning if we enter as level 20 Arcanists, and go the whole 40 floors, will we gain levels to Archanist once we exit?
2. The guide I'm reading talks about chests and upgrading your Aetherpool gear and all that. But is it shared among the party? Meaning if there's a silver chest and the Paladin runs up to open it first, does just his gear upgrade, or is it everyone's? I worry that in a matched dungeon, it will be a mad dash for the chests at the expense of the other group members.

[Dustytome]

You get a decent chunk of experience every 10 floors you complete (you also only get to keep aether upgrades & chest drops if you down the 10th floor boss). The chests are shared so you don't have to worry about mad dashes, but there are invisible traps you'll have to be mindful of. You could party up with your friend and go in as a fixed party and give it a try with just the two of you to get your feet wet.

[Succoris]

1. You get some EXP once you complete every set of floors (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.) so yes you can level up outside while doing the same in PoTD.

2.Yes, it's shared with everyone. No worries there.