FFXIV: Breaking the Blahs, Making Progress With Machinist
Though I’ve been making progress on Tai’s Eso armor for the past few weeks, I’ve been in a state of blah with FFXIV. I think I have just been doing way too many end game dungeons – one a night is quite a bit for me, then sometimes getting pulled into other things by FC members. I’ve worked hard to try to balance it and not get burned out by it, but I still feel the want to log in, get my EX run done and log out lately.
I’ve also come to terms with the idea that Zuri is no longer my main. It’s something I struggled with since even before Heavensward launched, but now it’s even more apparent. Tai is the character that is level 60 and is working on Eso armor… and Zuri hasn’t even come close to finishing the HW main scenario yet (only level 55).
Part of this is because gearing one character at end game is enough for me. Part of it is because I just don’t know if I enjoy the Bard playstyle anymore, and I’m having a hard time pulling myself away from playing Dragoon!
Breaking the Blahs
Funny enough, the thing that broke my blahs was the free version of Triple Triad on the FF Portal app. I was having so much fun playing TT on the phone that I started to pick it up again in FFXIV, this time on Tai. Originally, I had earned Zuri her first 30 cards, but never did the same on Tai since… he wasn’t supposed to be my main character.
So, I had a lot to do to catch up with him, including earning my Bahamut card from King Elmer. Ugh. Took many hours for that one to drop, and wasn’t looking forward to doing it. Eventually, I did earn Tai the 30 cards he needed, and feel like I’m overall catching up on Zuri’s progress, and even moreso. I’m considering running some of the unsynced dungeons that drop cards eventually just to mess around with it and see if I can’t earn some cards I don’t have yet (since I don’t often run dungeons).
The second thing that got me excited was the anniversary broadcast and the Live Letter. A lot of great things were announced there, including the new 24 man raid. But what excited me most was the upcoming minion RTS game, Lord of Verminion. I knew that would mean that the cost of minions would start to skyrocket, obviously. Again, I had been collecting minions on Zuri and not on Tai, so I rushed to the marketboard to fill in some of my missing minions before the price of them shot up.
Fishing Frenzy
This was very much a domino effect. The cost of Fat Cat minions was still too high for my liking. I actually have a fishing retainer who is at the level to fish for Fat Cat, just didn’t have the gear for it yet. So I decided to finally suck it up and level Zuri’s fishing this weekend.
I already have her other two gathering classes at 55, with mostly level 53 gear. So the idea was to level fisher to 53 and pass off the old fishing armor to the retainer. I thought I could start with fishing leves, but strangely, the leves require you to fish for fish that you can’t catch unless you are using level 51 bait. Go figure.
So I grinded out to level 51, and went to town on leves and gathering boosters until I got to 53. That honestly felt really good, because it’s something I’ve had on my mind to do for a while, and now it’s accomplished!
I can now wear the same gathering gear on all classes and my fishing retainer now has upgraded gear and is fishing for that Fat Cat! Woot!
Free Company Fun
Things have been really good in our FC lately. We’ve increased the roster to 70 members over the summer (even after pruning some old members), and many of them are a very good fit with each other personality-wise. Everyone is super helpful and pretty positive, and I see friendships starting to form between our members, which is always an inspiring thing.
Officers are helping out with keeping buffs going and assisting folks who need runs. Artisans are working hard on launching and upgrading our FC airships. We’ve also seen a few members logging in whom we haven’t seen in a while, which is always a reason to celebrate. 🙂
We even have little memes starting among the members, including this one, wherein Syn was unknowingly dragged into a blind run of Alexander 4 as the healer. I wasn’t there, but apparently she shouted something like “Oh no, lazers!” and that became history.
This weekend was a good one because folks are starting to get interested in progressing lower level classes, which is something I enjoy far more than being nudged into a raid. I got to practice tanking for one group (so rusty) and was part of several FC groups who were in various stages of progression.
Picking Up Machinist
I also decided to spend some time finishing up some leveling on Zuri that I left incomplete. I hit the FATES this weekend and finally got her level 39 White Mage to level 40. I had only a few FATES worth of EX I needed for that, but I just haven’t had the motivation to tackle it. I’m in the same boat with Summoner, which I left in the middle of level 38. I’d like to press that on to 40 as well… but I found a new class that’s caught my interest: Machinist.
Originally, I leveled Machinist to 36 on Zuri the first day that Heavensward launched. Seeing so much negativity around the class (and around Bard), I lost the desire to push forward with it. I’m not sure what nudged me to pick up the class again this weekend. Maybe it’s because I’ve come to a realization about my playstyle:
I don’t like dots!!
That’s right. I don’t like playing a dot-based class. I don’t like having to worry about dot upkeep. I don’t really like that my damage is over time. I don’t like worrying about buffing myself so that dots have a bigger chance at critting (or whatever the deal is).
I just want something straightforward. Suddenly, Bard has become a class that is not only more rooted with WM, and much more slow to play with cast timers, but also feels more about dot upkeep than it was before.
I started reading about Machinist and saw… this class was different. It had a lot of similarities to Bard. It used the same gear, so my gear wouldn’t go to waste. But it’s not a dot class (though they have a dot and buff to keep up with). And to top it off, it doesn’t really have a hard-set rotation.
After playing Dragoon for so long, I’m very set with a rotation. The thought of having a more flexible class is really appealing.
Also, looking at the FFXVI census numbers, Machinist was one of the lesser-played classes. I hope that puts it on the radar for a little dev love in the future. I also don’t see a lot of FC folks playing machinist to 60, so it would be nice to pick a lesser played class to learn to master.
I hit up some of the festival fates in Costa Del Sol while cleaning up some lower level 30 quests in that area. Then, I headed to Dragonhead the next day, once the FATE train was up and running, till about halfway through 38. FC folks were running Quarn, which was right in my level range, so I popped in the group and got to 39. Finished up to 40 with FATES and a few extra quests on the side, then unlocked my first little rook turret.
I started riding the Blue Fog FATE train until Walking Dead came on last night, and managed to score another half level. What I’m more concerned about is leveling once I hit 50. That ride from 50 to 55 probably won’t be fun.
I don’t ever plan on raiding Alexander with Zuri or anything. It’s just a class out of pure curiosity. And maybe that’s what I need right now.
