Final Fantasy XIV takes me back, I played Final Fantasy XI back when it first came out it was my first real MMO game of any kind. I have some great memories of the game but I also have moved on as well and can recognize some of the more troublesome elements that I hoped Final Fantasy XIV would address. I am going to go down and cover my first impressions.
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I should be studying for a Java programming exam but I have some time to kill to talk about my experiences in Ulduar. I will break the overview up into three parts, each section pertaining to a subzone of the raid instance. This only covers the content I have cleared or experienced and should not be taken as gospel but just a collection of my experiences. Breakdown of Part 1 after the break.
The Toy Race Track and the Lego Blocks.
After reading this post by Keen I decided to make a response to the issue he has raised which I think is fairly interesting. I am going to tackle each subject on its own terms and then wrap them up at the end with any additional thoughts on either subject matter. The basic exercise is that you visualize a toy race track and lego blocks and then apply that imagery to the varying facets of an MMO game. Although I will try to refrain from mentioning any specific MMO and more so focus on the ideas.
Protection — We want more tanks in the game. Main tanks. We think it’s fun to have a diversity of players and see how different spells, abilities and class mechanics get used to solve problems. A Protadin with the right skill and gear should be able to tank any fight in the game. Previously, we tried to push Prot into the offtank and AE tank roles. While your abilities are still really well suited for AE in particular, overall our philosophy has changed and we want you to be able to do anything the other tanks do. Note that this means other tanks will get better at AE tanking though. Prot represents a special challenge when not tanking because you can both heal and do dps and some players want to do either. Or both. One final comment, that you have already seen, is we want you to gear like a warrior: collect Strength and Stamina and use tanking weapons instead of caster weapons.
Emphasis is mine, something I have been professing for some time now ever since I got my hands on Hammer of the Righteous which got a change in the last patch before the current one. The tooltip caught up to the change which tied the damage of the ability with the DPS of the weapon and not the speed making it desirable for fast tank weapons. That are plentiful in Wrath of the Lich King and current content come 3.0.2 when it launches.
Change is coming, and for many in this community it seems to be a point of understandable frustration and paranoia as to what we will be after 3.0 goes live. This class, not our spec but the class is changing on several fundamental levels, our seals will scale with attack power, many of our damage spells will scale with attack power, Blessing of Salvation is going away, and many of our spells are changing in reaction to core class mechanic changes.
For protection specifically the class is facing a gear change as our gear shifts to Strength and Stamina with no spell damage, except for the odd piece, in sight. This understandably has many people upset and I am sure when the change goes live we will have even more paladins who do not visit message boards or follow news sights even more alarmed. But these changes are coming and I think a healthy amount of skepticism is good irrational fear that we are either being dumbed down or will be “warriors” are unfounded.
But some basic tenets of what we hold true today will be changing:
Anticipation no longer grants 20 Defense: This is will be a huge change for gearing concerns but we must understand that this affects warriors as much as it affects paladins after the patch. Health levels may drop as we have to regem gear for Defense rating to meet the requirement to be uncrittable. I think this is a good thing overall exceeding the critical cap is not hard once you accumulate the gear and yes I know for some that isn’t easy but this is the truth in the long run. 5% to dodge will always be good, 20 Defense not so much if you have gear that compensates for the loss. I think it will diversify gemming and enchanting of gear; but if I am wrong then healthy debate is always warranted.
Warriors Lite: This means that we will look and play like warriors; I beg to differ but again this is more opinion then hard facts. The crux of this argument is usually the gear homogenization and the fact that we won’t have spell damage on our gear but we still do in the form of stamina and since we benefit from both spell power and attack power we still play differently and have different concerns then warriors. Thematically I don’t see a difference in Beta, I still use all the same spells and abilities just the mechanics and theory behind them have changed. But again this is all personal taste anyway.
Change is Inevitable: This class is changing and we can either rail against it or look at the changes understand why they are changing and then play it to our advantage. I don’t think life will be terrible for us, if anything after we tuned the way we should be, this class will be stronger than ever and we won’t face the uphill battle e had before. I know some enjoyed the underdog role, but it is old for me; I gain no sense of satisfaction any more from playing that game and I quite enjoy being on hopefully equal footing everywhere else.
P.S: Warriors, Death Knights, and Druids are not our enemies.
Well first off, I am not even sure this will be a regular feature but it sounds cool and since it sounds cool I might as well try to make it a regular feature even if I fail at doing so. But maybe it can be at least a weekly feature… maybe.