Made in Japan instead of America: Total Recall (?)

It's belated, but I wish worthy men a happy International Men's Day. Not those who beat their wives, force their girlfriends to get abortions, and break the law even if they're university students, mind you. Instead, it's to the men of responsibility and integrity. Those who slog to bring food to the table, ensure they're responsible for their children, and refuse to break the law even if they're failures in the education system. To such worthy men, I wish you all a happy International Men's Day. Before I continue, I will up a few songs from some series where the protagonists are clearly men worthy of International Men's Day.

Why Total Recall?

The reason behind this post title is simple: Arnold "not Weissenegger" Schwarzenegger and Gray "still a blue" Davis. Like how the state of California decided to do a Total Recall on Davis back then, I decided to do the same on specific rotations in FF14. The reason behind this was the Balance guide website for FF14 gamers. I went through the standard opener diagram for Dragoon. I told myself, "That's インポシブル". The reason is that trying to do that is like alternating between braking and accelerating. Already, I'm struggling with using the Dragon Sight-Battle Litany rotation. However, seeing how Dragon Sight and Lance Charge were utilised in a 120-second-60-second rotation gave me something to think about. At the same time, going through the guide for Machinist also told me I was doing certain things wrong.

Total Recall: Dragoon

In terms of the GCD rotation, there's no change. The same goes for the Geirskogul-Nastrond-Stardiver and High Jump-Mirage Dive rotations. Only two changes were made. Instead of continuing with Dragon Sight-Battle Litany and Lance Charge-Life Surge rotations (the former for the Chaos Spring GCD rotation and the latter for the Heavens' Thrust GCD rotation), I decided to go for Dragon Sight-Lance Charge for my Chaos Spring rotation and Battle Litany-Life Surge for my Heavens' Thrust rotation. In boss fights, the DPS clearly went better. In fact, the time taken to conclude a boss fight was considerably shortened. However, there's a catch: For this to be done, I chose to burn the 5% bonus from buffing a party member for Dragon Sight. It definitely works, though. It's like Oda Nobunaga leading a squad of 2500-3000 dudes instead of 5000 against Imagawa Yoshimoto's army of 25K men.

Maximising Dragon Sight in the middle of a fight was a nightmare when I looked back at it. It hampered my DPS momentum and disrupted my focus. In short, I wasn't using it frequently enough. I can't say I'm autistic, but I do have tunnel vision. This is why I dare not run as a tank or healer in any group content beyond MSQ roulette. Playing FF14 on a Japanese server has its challenges, the language barrier being the most significant one. While Japanese players are really good at doing group content (apparently, they're going to be very happy to see Dawntrail coming), the fact is that I can't communicate with them. 

Interestingly, as a DPS player, I already obtained 350+ player commendations. It doesn't seem like much. In fact, it's probably not much. But as a casual player who can only play well as DPS, I find it surprising. I actually expected less than that.

Back to the Dragon Sight dilemma. The only way for me to maximise Dragon Sight is as a preparation buff before entering combat. Against bosses, this is detrimental as the damage will not come out fast and furious enough. Against mobs, however, that's a different story since they last shorter than bosses in any fight. At the same time, being a melee DPS means the likelihood of the Dragoon being the last to enter the fray.

The Battle Litany-Life Surge rotation is effectively a 120-second-40-second buff rotation. At the same time, this buff rotation would have come out in the middle of the combat instead of at the beginning. By then, my party's DPS momentum would have stabilised. In short, the party benefit of Battle Litany is made better. In my last Fell Court of Troia run via level 90 dungeons roulette, the final boss fight was over surprisingly fast despite struggling with the mechanics. The tricky part is whether I should use Battle Litany before or after Vorpal Thrust. The good thing about running a 2.5-second GCD build is that you can calculate when the Battle Litany buff will expire. 15 seconds would mean 6 GCDs. It should end at Raiden Thrust if I use it before Vorpal Thrust. If it's after Vorpal Thrust, the duration should end at Disembowel. If the math looks weird, it's because your eyes aren't playing trick attacks on you since I have to consider around 0.1-0.3 second's worth of difference. When I activate Battle Litany, the GCD would have already hit zero.

Note 1: Using Dragon Sight with Lance Charge can also result in effective True North management due to Dragon Sight ignoring positional restrictions. It's either Dragon Sight-Lance Charge or Lance Charge-True North. The worst-case scenario is wasting one charge of True North due to occasional panic. That's all.

Note 2: Right now, I have to decide between using the second charge of Life Surge on Wheeling Thrust while Battle Litany is active or saving it for the next Heavens' Thrust after the duration expires.

Total Recall: Machinist

The only change made is lining up Wildfire with Barrel Stabiliser, as it would ensure more consistent usage. My main issue was that I needed to use both more often. Right now, Wildfire is executed first before Barrel Stabiliser. But it will probably change because I suspect my brain would trigger faster if it is to process Barrel Stabiliser before Wildfire instead of vice versa. As for Chainsaw, lining it up with Reassemble is possibly a better bet than doing so with Drill. The reason is that doing otherwise may mess up my Hypercharge rotation. At the same time, I use Reassemble sparingly. So, there's a theoretical chance of pulling off a Reassemble-Chainsaw-Air Anchor rotation more often.

Note: My Machinist has yet to hit level 90. So the Chainsaw part does have a chance of changing.

Total Recall: Black Mage

There are a few changes I need to think about. Namely, forcing myself to use Aetherial Manipulation more often and lining up Ley Lines (no pun intended) with Amplifier. In certain fights, there's a need to close the distance ASAP. Playing Samurai and the resultant ease in using Hissatsu: Gyoten taught me that. At the same time, mistakes were made before where I should have used Spineshatter Dive instead of moving forward while sprinting was on cooldown.

As for Ley Lines with Amplifier, that can be very useful in any fight, be it mob or boss. If I can make Dragon Sight-Lance Charge rotation work in both scenarios, I wouldn't be surprised if I can pull this off as well.

Made in Japan instead of America: I got a Xbox (controller)

It's been confirmed. Playing FF14 on a PC with a keyboard and mouse will result in a far lower camera zoom height. How did I know? Well, it started from the recent fanfest involving Sakaguchi "the Original Guchi" Hironobu trolling Yoshi-P. From the footage, the game was played on gaming monitors. At the same time, I read somewhere that the オリジナルぐち was using a combination of an Xbox controller and keyboard. Emboldened by this, I decided to purchase an older model of the Xbox controller (i.e. it was a 2020 model) since it should be good enough for the PC version. That was during Halloween although I don't celebrate it. Since I ordered it from the Singaporean Xbox online store, I got it on 2nd November.

As it turned out, my 80+SGD gamble paid off. After wiring the device and updating the controller software, I started the game. The increased camera zoom was only slightly higher in the major city zones (I tested it in the Empyreum, where my private housing is and my home destination of Gridania). However, the difference was clearly seen once I ran Thaleia and P12N. In fact, having a much larger visual field greatly helped my rotation efficiency as the stress on my focus was significantly eased. At the end of the day, FF14, unlike other games I've played, involves plenty of stuff happening at the far end of the arena.

That's a Viper, not a snake

It's official. Dawntrail will NOT feature its second 2nd Amendment job. Before the big reveal, many of us believed the new melee DPS job would be Corsair. After all, the original trailer did exude an explorer's vibe. While the extended version retained the same old feel, what we saw belted at the waist wasn't a gun but a sword.

Interestingly, despite the view that it's an original job, connections were made to Zidane.

Wait, that's the wrong Zidane.

Yep, that's the correct Zidane.

With that said, the Viper job actually reminds me of R.A. "not rated R" Salvatore and Drizzt Do'Urden. The former is a writer while the latter happens to be a POC protagonist (technically speaking) in high fantasy created by... well, the former. The reason is that like the Viper, Drizzt is a wielder of two long blades. In fact, fans of Dungeons And Dragons would know one of the ways to play a Ranger is dual-wielding. Aesthetics-wise, the hood gave off an Assassin's Creed feel. As for when the weapons were sheathed, that reminded me of the Witcher series where Geralt of Rivia also has two swords strapped on his back albeit in a different manner.

If you think the above music sounds as Iberian as Princess Leanor, you're not alone. Of course, there's no way anyone would play this during her oath-swearing ceremony. But still, it sounds as Iberian as the Spanish royalty, Portuguese armada, and the stereotypical Catalan genius.

For the rest of this post, I will speculate on how the Viper gameplay may turn out.

DISCLAIMER!

Whatever is stated here is purely the product of speculation based on the teaser trailer. I do not claim to be a genius, let alone the stereotypical Catalan type.

In the introduction, the Viper was said to be a job focusing on alternating rotations. Apparently, attacks are stance-based. What this possibly means is that we may end up seeing a stance switch ability similar to the Black Mage's Transpose. At the same time, how technically complex would the job rotation be?

First off, let's count roughly how many GCD abilities were on display in the teaser. By my guess, it'd be 4 where the dual-wielding aspect is involved. At the same time, stance-switching seemed to include an attack as well. Assuming the joint-swords rotation would also involve 4 GCDs, that'd be 5 abilities in a single rotation for either stance since the stance-switch would give an extra attack. Of course, is it a given that the joint-swords rotation will consist of 4 GCDs? It depends on whether each GCD ability has two versions. If the answer is yes, then the number of dual-wielding GCDs will mirror that of the joint-swords version. FF14 is no stranger to this due to examples like Dragoon's Nastrond and Samurai's Kaeshi abilities. At the same time, the rotation would involve numerous OGCDs as well. As a Dragoon main, this reminds me of the OGCD rotation involving Nastrond, Stardiver, and Wyrmwind Thrust where I can either use it after the first rotation or in the middle of it. In fact, a tactic I tend to use whenever possible is using the OGCD rotation after executing Disembowel as I can benefit from the Power Surge buff without breaking the GCD rotation. If you're using a controller, I can only say good luck. But if it's keyboard and mouse, I'd say it's 100% doable so long as you adopt a linear clicking approach.

Of course, this comes to the question of what the OGCD abilities would look like. This is impossible to predict although I doubt the developers would want to create a Dragoon 2.0. When it comes to the definition of numerous, however, my own guess is possibly 3-4 OGCDs.

For the GCD rotation(s), a vital question waiting to be answered is whether we will deal with DoT damage. In FF14, we have jobs that give DoT damage by the end of a GCD rotation. But we also have jobs which don't have that. At the same time, it's possible for the developers to utilise any DoT damage ability for the Viper in the same way they did for the Machinist and Dark Knight (i.e. Wildfire and Salted Earth). My greater concern is whether each GCD rotation would end with a specific buff similar to the Samurai's Shifu and Jinpu buffs.

On how rotation alternating may work, there are two possibilities: Linear and fluid. Linear would mean dual-wield rotation>joint-swords rotation>rinse and repeat. As for the fluid approach, it could involve a main stance rotation and a support stance rotation. Either the dual-wield rotation is supported by the joint-swords rotation or vice versa. One possible outcome is that joint-swords attacks may have a longer cooldown or an execution delay of 0.5 seconds when Dawntrail comes out. In short, it's not easy hitting the ground running when it comes to DPS momentum. You probably have to find a way to create a pace you're comfortable with before stepping on the proverbial accelerator. It's not like some other DPS jobs where you can fly off the traps (e.g. Dragoon and Machinist because I main one and alt the other). Try to think of it as going along with the flow before going fast.

Lastly, we come to the buffing. Or the blue aura, if you will. One question I have is whether this is related to the Viper's job gauge. Interestingly, the blue aura buff actually resulted in two changes:

1. The attacking speed was greatly increased.

2. The attack animations were changed (assuming we're dealing with GCD rotation).

If the blue aura is the result of the job gauge, the question would be what else is part of it. There are job gauges in FF14 that don't function singularly. An example of this would be the Dragoon where you have Life of the Dragon and Firstminds' Focus. Another example would be the Black Mage where the job gauge consists of multiple aspects. Then you have jobs with two separate gauges like Dark Knight and Samurai. At this point, anything goes.