I've enjoyed discussing character builds for as long as I have played MMOs. For evidence, see this old post from me on the EverQuest Online Adventures forums. The cleric interviewed for that guide was my lovely wife. Of course, that was just me being an excited member of the community, back in the dark days (6 whole years ago!) when wikis were not all the rage and the community mostly had to work together to figure out a game because major gaming networks as we know them were still in their infancy. But that was a large part of the fun of EQOA--the chance to re-specialize (respec) our characters and the variety of Class Masteries available made theorycrafting a delicious exercise in mathematics.

Lucky for me, theorycrafting is alive and well (mostly) in Final Fantasy XIV (ffxiv gils for sale)thanks to a button that allows gamers to reassign previously spent attribute points and a class system that makes it possible to combine most skills from one class with any other class. I'll share my planned build not as a guide (not even close) but as a way to start conversation about the fun of planning a character in FFXIV.


Blurry Archetypes
The first thing that I realized about the combat classes in FFXIV is that most of them defy cut and dry archetypal labels. We can try all we want to label the conjurer as a healer, but it's a ranged DPS class also. Aion kinah sale cheap .Likewise, the lancer brings the damage with his spear and the right skills, yet he controls the flow of combat through buffs and debuffs. The versatile pugilist can dish out some pain while having options like a traditional tank. You get the picture. This aspect of FFXIV appealed to me greatly.


MMOs lose a lot of their luster to me once the player base figures out the optimal build and it becomes cookie cutter for the whole community. In EQOA, every rogue had to go heavy on the STR, DEX, and AGI and pick the Wound line of skills during their class quests or risk ridicule by the community. The rogue's job was to do insane damage at the beginning of the fight and then brag about highest damage scores.

That didn't cut it for me. In a game that only permitted ten action bar slots (five at launch!), I wasn't cool with using up as many four of them on skills that had a 60 or maybe even 120 second recast. And I didn't buy into the theory of swapping out for other skills while using auto-attack. I found, though much experimentation and manual parsing, that I could do more total damage over time by using even a simple level 4 skill with a 30 second recast on my toolbar instead of a level 30 skill with a 120 second recast.

That refusal to have my doughy goals forced into the shape of the cookie cutter is at the heart of my build. It is the source of one of the first posts I ever made on FFXIVCore.com, a reply to hardcore gamer Evicerator that I never wanted to group with him. It wasn't that I thought he was a bad guy or that he did not deserve to enjoy the game he pays for (see my next post in the thread before you jump to conclusions).wow gold sale It was that my fun in the game rested in my ability to experiment and be different. I know from past trials and many errors that such nonconformity leads to mishaps in MMOs.

All of that to say...I knew I didn't want to be conventional.



What I Wanted to Do
I play better as classes that do things directly to the mob (DPS of all forms) than classes who have to be responsible for mobs and party members every second (tanks and main healers). I enjoy damage and often get a kick out of nuking. I also enjoy buffs and debuffs. So it was shaping up like I wanted to be a support class.

I thought LNC would be my pick at launch because of its Moonrise and Speed Surge. I played and enjoyed LNC all throughout beta. If it lacked anything, I felt it was some way to either kill quicker (LNC seem to be near the bottom of the DPS totem pole) or heal for solo play. Thaumaturge seemed like a natural complement, one many other players had focused in on, too. A THM brings some heals and many debuffs, so it felt like the perfect fit. Only it wasn't to me.

As much as I like to play with alternate builds, I found the mathematical reality of the loss of potency for spells being used by a Disciple of War to be too great to forgive. I found the inability to completely respec attribute points with one press of the button too limiting in how often I could switch between builds effectively as a casual player. I discovered that many of the cool LNC skills could be used only with polearms equipped and thus could not convert to secondary skills on a THM main. wow accountPlus, the ones that moved over with any weapon--even the cool ones like Moonrise--did such reduced damage that they became little more than debuffs.

So I tried to find another way to be unconventional.

What I Decided to Do
I decided to aim to be a ginger cookie in the middle of a sheet of sugar cookies. That is to say I decided to go THM for my main and embrace the support role with a twist. I have been combining my THM with a CON for the buffs. I am not after the nukes; instead it is skills like Protect and Shell that motivate me to level CON. My primary goal is to build a Disciple of Magic who can buff the party before a pull, drop damage over time spells (DoTs), do some debuffs, and mix in the rare nuke or patch heal as needed. I'll continue to do some manual parsing and evaluate my build, but that is my idea for now.

My build plan calls for a mostly conventional attribute distribution with a small twist. While most DoMs will favor INT, MND, and PIE in some form, my character will value PIE the most. I want those debuffs to succeed, and I am leaning on piety until I see evidence that piety does not increase the success rate on debuffs (that the % chance to succeed is static). INT and MND are of near equal importance to me because I want the small boost to DoT damage that I'd get from INT and the extra MP I get from MND. Finally, I plan to throw in enough VIT to prevent getting one-shotted with every pull of enmity.

My elemental attributes is my real chance to be as different as I want to be for both the merits and demerits of the notion. Most of my points go toward boosting the element of wind. This makes my occasional nukes expand from the Astral and Umbral lines of THM to include the Aero line from the CON. I also can mix in Choke for a nice DoT.

Parting Thoughts
So, you remember how this is not a guide, right? It's just me sharing my ideas. I recognize that I have little data to theorycraft with at this point. Ah, but the fun is back for me! Just as I built my rogue, a major DPS class in EQOA, with less burst damage than just about anybody else who played the game, I am building a FFXIV THM that has very different party roles from the conventional mentality. In EQOA, my rogue delivered steady damage that worked out to my advantage over a long fight but suffered in short battles (so I sucked in duels). In FFXIV, my THM will be very party-dependent for kills and will be vastly less effective against monsters with wind immunity. But it sure will be fun to stumble upon those with a weakness to wind. Have a Tornado!

What about you? Have you begun theorycrafting in FFXIV yet? Do you have any math that backs up your decisions to build the way you do? Do you dare to be unconventional, or does the inefficiency of alternate builds drive you crazy. Discuss!

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