#it’s missing a good chunk and also there’s a random dps there

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

incredibly baffled by this support unit tierlist I happened to see that seems to purport that…summer abby?? Is a support unit? Were they trying to put down van gogh and couldn’t find her and used Abby as a substitute??

I also flat out disagree with ranking either Merlin below both skadi’s and koyanskaya unless the only metric that you judge a support unit by is looping utility since the partywide invul is so useful, but even if just judging off looping it seems odd that nero bride wouldn’t show up, or himiko or even dark Koyanskaya who iirc is also a support

And also they’re wrong abt osakabehime and Constantine I know them better than you >_>

[crystalelemental]

“megazardx2: I can’t believe it; I totally forgot about Candice. And Gen IV was my childhood! Forgive me…😭

By the way, I don’t know how much you trust in what Poce says, but he put out a video with Roark, and…apparently he still faints easily.“

It’s okay, she forgives you.  It’s easy to forget when her only DPS is Ice Punch, but the sync nuke is just so much more consistent than his in CS that I do legitimately think she’s better.  To say nothing of speed buffs being better than his 1 gauge refresh, and the fact she can cap needed offense and guarantee crit on sync with like no support.  Candice just rules.

I haven’t put out the writeup yet, but yeah, Roark’s DPS is strong, but Standfast 7 and 5 is what Darach has, and it’s...still getting him killed sometimes.  The problem is that these skills, as percentage-based skills, only work so well when throwing around thousands of damage.  70% reduction sounds like a lot, but when you’re dealing 2000 damage, that’s still half your HP.  And 2k is not a lot.  The stacks also have diminishing returns, because the Standfast 5 is half of the remaining 30%, so it’s only 85% damage reduction, which is still worse off than Standfast 9.  Even adding in the Standfast 3, it’s 89-90% depending on how they round it out.  So all three skills and all that energy might equate to a single Standfast 9.  It’s really 9 or nothing, when you get down to it.  So I’m not surprised to hear Roark still KOs himself a lot, or needs to be cautious with his attacks.  It’s a huge reduction, but when you’re tossing around a lot of power, it’s still chunking him pretty noticeably.

That said, fun fact!  I actually started doing the teambuilding writeups I do because of Poce.  Because he shit-talked H!Caitlin.  So I do not trust a word out of his mouth.  Which is extra funny because I’ll still watch his first impressions and tier lists (well, click through at random, I don’t think I’ve watched a full video of his in ages), and the comedy is despite having wildly different opinions about the quality of sync pairs or what makes something useful, we tend to arrive at a lot of similar conclusions.  So I guess you’d call it like a begrudging respect?  I think he generally knows what he’s talking about, but also think he’s insane and misses a lot of what makes units good because he over-emphasizes damage and underplays unique utility.  Like, he is the original iteration of my complaints about people disrespecting good supports because they’re more defensive.  But I do think he’s gotten a bit better about it.

[haila-wetyios]

Raiding

Since it became a pretty long post, Imma just throw this under a Read More. It’s not about current tumblr drama fashion. So no popcorn scene for you peeps. Just my experience as a whole and to finally let go of a few feelings that kept weighting on me for a good while until my current team took me in.

The first time I ever advertised on a PF that I was seeking a raid team, was during the final months of ARR. I was a complete scaredy cat, anxious of whether I'd be good enough to work on a team that required more coordination than pugs to get things such as extreme primals or savage raids done. Off I go as a SMN main, panicked as my raid leader of that team joined my party for a brief interview. Afterwards though, during our first joint team efforts for HW content (Ravanna and Bismark extreme at that time) I discovered that I wasn't as bad as I thought. On the contrary, I was too perceptive of everything to the point I would rush to do mechanics assigned to our newbie healer who after several explanations would still not do the thing. Despite my huge insecurities of probably not doing the relevant rotations down to the last skill, my ego started to rise a bit when parsers started to take more and more of conversations between static members. And although I would never ask about my numbers directly, I would celebrate in silence when reading the overall party dps the moment I realized mine had been at the top even with a ninja and a dragoon in the party. That should have been a flag to me now that I look back for being a caster that was doing more damage than the melee. But I didn't know any better, and stayed with my group regardless throughout the entirety of gordias savage. Every week would be the same pummeling against the horrifying Faust dps check, then the first turn's boss, then the second turn until we finally hit the wall of jigglyman and disbanded. I didn't have much complains, despite how tiring it was, I had long since given up on those clears and instead turned each night into 'training to see how long I can last the moment shit hits the fan in any given fight'. And boy did I get a ton of experience down that lane.

The next times I started looking into content once more, I could only play the part of a sub for any group of people I trusted due to life and time issues. But I still took pride in being that one stable sub that could support any group on any extreme primal through HW. I still lament that I was never able to go through Midas and Alexander savage when they were relevant and merely watched from the sidelines.

Then SB came up, and I merely stood aside once more for the first Tier with Exdeath. Except this time, the frustrations of not having been there while I watched all my friends start doing EX's and savage content had finally gotten to me. And lo' and behold, suddenly I was back on square 1, trembling in fear while waiting on my PF announcement that I was looking for a group for Sigma (Kefka times). Nearly died the moment I had two people with interesting names join in my party and just grab me on the spot. I had no idea what I was getting into, they mentioned they just needed a caster slot for the new rag tag group they had built, but at least I had a team! Then the first day of raid came up, and right off the bat I was terrified at the fact that our raid leader was missing, being replaced just for that moment with the FC leader instead. Turns out my entire group save for the ninja, were a raiding FC with multiple groups going in through the week. And what was the first comment of the night pray tell? Well "No one should be here with X ilvl gear." Who was it aimed at? Well, to the only potato that for the first time was slightly outdated in 2 pieces of gear for not being active before the patch dropped. That was the moment that marked my spiraling down a rabbit hole that I wish I could let go of easily but still has a tight grip on me to this day.

I felt like crap, I fought my best and did research on how to be a better caster. Other than the FC leader's comment, no one berated me or spoke about me on a negative light. But it still left a mark in which I kept trying to prove myself and be useful. Suddenly I would find myself cursing at my skills. Hating how no matter how hard I tried with everything, I would never be able to even pass the goddamned Stone, Sky and Sea for savage raids. But we were still getting things done. Two new savage turns down in a single week of release? That felt incredible and also bittersweet. Because any time that my party members celebrated their purples and golds in fflogs, I would be in a corner, self destructing with greys. I kept trying and trying, until my coping mechanism ended up being "I'm just a fill in. But if I'm just this, I'm damn going to do a job stable enough to have a place here." Then things started turning out easier to deal with. I had noticed the goofiness of a lot of the members despite the numbers that dictated their runs, I gave up on my grey numbers and focused on getting their asses up if someone made a mistake. To support the healers as much as possible with mana shift and such. I started putting my experience of keeping the party alive to more use while I slowly tried to recover the confidence I had lost when starting the tier. Granted, they didn't care for the group as much as I did. No amount of hanging out after raid times or helping was enough for the few in charge to announce when we were done raiding after months of being together. They just stopped one day until their FC leader asked me if I was aware of the 'disbanding'.

Then it was time to switch gears, for the first time I thought my work had bore fruit when I was recruited into the FC leader's group instead, and all was well.... Until it wasn't, we kept having to replace members left and right, specially healers and tanks. Progress was slow, sometimes we’d clear Chaos and Midgarsormr, and others it would be a mess depending on the random team comp we had for the week. Things should have been better by the time we made it to Omega, half the party had cleared with their mains after all. Except that it was the point where everything went south in the background.

We had gained a good White Mage, who would complain about random jibber jabber every now and then, but that was fine, no biggie. Then they brought in their former co-healer from their previous static, a Scholar, and all was supposed to be fine. But then something happened that slowly started to wear us all out. For some reason, we suddenly were struggling some more with Midgarsormr, and then Omega.... Boy, even if we had previously cleared, suddenly the three days with 3 hours of raid time each went on on that goddamned turn, and then the final 15 min would go for Omega Male and Female and the reason was hard to tell at first, we were doing the same old after all. It wasn’t until nearly a month of wiping that probably the group had started to realize what was wrong. Our Scholar wasn’t exactly pulling his full weight.

This is what caused probably something that I should have seen coming and that stuck with me for a long while until now that I found this draft I worked on when the wound became fresh again from just thinking about it. It’s just frustrating, sad to a degree and I brought part of it on myself for trying so hard to be useful to no one. What happened? Well, the leader didn’t want to get involved into any drama by only kicking the Scholar because they were friends with the White Mage, so a disbanding was supposed to be the better way to end things. Except the leader decided to do it in a different and up to date still a very shitty fashion. 

Right after we’d finished the last raiding night for the week, he posted an announcement about how people, aka his FC members were tired of constantly bashing their heads against Omega with little success and so they were gonna reform. By kicking the only outsiders of the static team. The White Mage, the Scholar, and me. There was no further explanation, no messages to me, nothing. I was just tossed like that after +6 months of knowing this FC and having raided and hung out with a good chunk of their members. I’d sacrificed so much for them. My time, my confidence to a degree, I had been a slave to their parsers more than a few occasions each time I heard them celebrating or complaining about their numbers. All because I wanted to feel like I could stand on the same levels as them. And I did to a good degree. I reached a point where I knew that my abilities weren’t as bad as the greys on my numbers showed me. But it meant nothing to any of them in the end. No message from the leader that up to that point had kept communication with me for raid times and other stuff. No reaction from the peeps I’d raided the most with. 

The most ironic part that I still respect? The only person to apologize, the only one that actually took the time to send me a message after the whole group ‘disbanded’ was the dragoon that I had only ever heard speak about their golden parses and nothing else on discord. We hadn’t even talked up until then. But he still cared more than the people that had known me for longer in that group. Granted, I did get to throw at least a cent in the raid channel about what I thought before getting kicked, so he probably wanted to come out clean on that. 

I am glad to no avail that I will never have to see them again, because the server splits sent them to a different data center. But it still left a deep mark on me when it came to XIV. I stopped logging in to do any content for a while, focused more on screenshots, on shady flower lady times until I could learn to love the game again. It probably took longer than I would have liked because all of this happened at the exact time that my friends from my crew had dived into raiding at a deeper level. I got to see them celebrate clearing the final omega. Then server transferring to be with their static before the great split or quitting. And then with Shadowbringers hearing “We’re not looking for a dps caster slot.” Each time anyone needed a fill in for their group. 

All this left me at an odd spot, being the veteran that keeps up groups or dungeons on normal modes, but having a hard time trying to get back into my niches in the game. My way of getting through raid had been to think of myself as being replaceable or worthless, but still trying to keep my hope that I’m actually valuable. Getting through all of it alone is not the solution now that I can let go of that bitterness of not being appreciated even as a person. I just happened to get a random chance to try out filling in for a group for a friend. But it wasn’t that what helped me the most both to be back on raids and to have finally built back my confidence. They probably didn’t think that I would check, but I’m the curious kind. Specially when you join a discord that has brief mentions of you on the recent chat. And seeing them mention me, and then vouching over my skills as a player, and how I was their first friend in the server? Well, despite having trouble expressing any feelings myself most of the time, when I get to think of it, you have no idea how much it meant to me. 

I managed to get back on what I like and enjoy most of what I do after deciding to take another leap of faith and join this group despite my stigma. Granted, mentions of parses and all will always be there. But not letting them define you, and believing in what you can and can’t do in content, I think is the best choice you can make to have a healthy experience and enjoy yourself as much as possible. 

[murasaki-murasame]

The new years roulette in GBF is finally over, so here’s my final update on how that went for me.

I’m just gonna put this under a cut since it’s gonna get kinda long, lol

If I remember right about where I ended my last progress update, the next set of characters I got from the roulette on the zodiac banner were the Tsuchinoko summon, Fire Zeta, Agielba, and Grand Rackam. I’m really happy to get Rackam since he would have been like second or third place on my spark priority list for that gala roster, but at this point it’ll be hard to justify slotting him into my flame team, lol. Getting him like a day after Fire Zeta kinda hurt because of that, but oh well. I think I also got an Alexiel summon at some point around here.

Then the banner switched over to the random character weapon rate-up banner where everyone gets 200 free rolls plus Super Mukku, and oh god this was an emotional rollercoaster. Like everyone else probably did, I thought when they announced it that this would have Feather, Fiorito, and Mireille on rate-up, which was actually really tempting for me, since I feel kinda attached to Feather [his SR version was basically my main light dps for ages, and I felt bad about eventually replacing him], and when his SSR version came out I really wanted him but I only had enough for a few desperation pulls and I didn’t get him, so having another chance to get him was extremely tempting to me [even if it’s a bit awkward since I got Albert a while ago and he probably synergizes better with my current light team than Feather would].

Then we found out that nobody’s actually on rate-up on this banner and they just have the latest six non-limited SSRs from before the zodiac banner on the sparkable list, which meant that the only way I’d realistically get Feather would be by doing a discounted or entirely free spark between the 200 rolls, Super Mukku, and the crystals/tickets I had left over in my stash.

Then the banner comes around and I do my free 200 rolls, and then Super Mukku only gave me an extra 30 summons, so I needed an extra 70 regular summons to complete the spark, but I only had a little under 60 at that point.

I grinded some stuff for a while to get up to 60 summons worth of crystals and tickets, and then I spent a few hours agonizing over the choice between spending hours grinding out multiple whole side stories and a good chunk of the main story chapters I haven’t done yet, versus just buying the current surprise ticket to get the tenfold ticket from it along with the guaranteed character. And as you can maybe guess at this point, I ended up caving and getting the surprise ticket, lol.

Which I feel a little bad about, but I’ve been considering getting the anniversary ticket in a few months anyway, so I wanted to set things up to buy stuff in GBF anyway. I was also planning to spend some money on new years packs in Dragalia Lost, but literally none of them are available in my region, so I’m basically just reallocating money that I was already going to spend on gachas anyway, so it’s not a huge deal. And since it was the last ten summons I needed to finish my spark, I basically got two characters for the price of one with my surprise ticket.

So anyway here’s my list of what I got from the 200 summons and Super Mukku:

-Ayer

-Sutera

-Ghandaghoza

-Levin Sisters

-Shura

-Rosamia [I actually got her twice, lmao]

-Lancelot

-Korwa

-Dante and Freiheit

-Ladiva

-Setekh and Hector summons

-some gold moons I don’t remember

-some random new R/SRs

Then I got Fire Siegfried from my surprise ticket, Fiorito from my 70 regular summons to finish the spark, and then finally Feather himself, once and for all, with my sparks.

It kinda hurts that I didn’t actually get much from using my regular summons after the free rolls ended, but honestly I’m still happy to finally have SSR Feather for my light team. He might not be the best in the long run, but my light roster isn’t that great to begin with.

Anyway at least outside of my light roster, I feel like I’m in full on first-world-problems mode where now I have all these characters I like and not enough justification for actually investing in most of them and using them. I’m mostly feeling this really hard with my earth team right about now. I think before this whole roulette period it felt like one of my weaker rosters, but before this session I already got Yggy, Earth Sara, C-Magisa, G-Sandalphon, and Earth Eustace, and I unlocked Melleau’s 5-star uncap. So on top of all of them, I now also have Ayer, Dante, Ladiva, and Fiorito, lol. And at the moment some of my top spark targets are Mahira and Cain, and if I get the annitix it’d probably go to either C-Narmaya or Halloween VasZeta. I feel like without realizing it I’m becoming an earth main, lol.

I legit don’t even know what direction to take my earth team in, and I might have to just set up multiple ones so I can actually use all the characters I like.

At least in terms of the earth units, I’m particularly happy I got Ayer and Eustace, since they were in the category of characters who I wanted, but not enough to use a surprise ticket on. I’m not even a fan of enmity set-ups [which is why I sparked Orchid instead of Summer Zooey recently], but I kinda want to try out using Ayer, maybe along with Fiorito, especially since I have Yukata Jessica who feels specifically designed to make Ayer easier to use.

Dante’s also the sort of character who I’m glad to get for meta reasons since he seems to be really good. I dunno how I feel about him as a character yet, but he fights with his cat in battle so that automatically makes me like him, lol. I’ve also always loved Ladiva ever since I found out about her character so it’s also nice to get her.

I’m actually really happy to get Lancelot, since I’ve been wanting another water sword [or katana] unit to pair with S-Sandalphon and S-Lucio on my water team. I already have Izmir, who I could just use instead, but I like Lancelot, so now that I have him I want to use him. I know I’d be better off eventually going for the meta water staff team [I already have Lily and Pholia, and Summer Cagliostro is sitting there taunting me every month when the beginner draw ticket comes back around], but I like my water sword boi team more, lol.

I almost feel bad about getting Korwa at this point since I keep hearing that she used to be really good and has been slowly powercrept out of relevancy, and even though she’d fit onto my wind staff team I have going on, I just think the ones I’m using for it now are better than her. But that’s because I have the super meta set-up of Andira, Grimnir, and Yurius, so she was fighting a losing battle there. I do really like her design, though, and the whole concept of how her kit works.

Levin Sisters might actually be good for my light team, but I dunno if I want to use them over the likes of Feather, Sandalphon, Lucio, or Albert.

All in all I think this whole roulette period was extremely good for me. I didn’t get Catura, and I missed most of the SSR Christmas units too, but other than that I think my roster of characters is in a way better place now than what it was before.

Now I just have to try and figure out how to actually justify using most of them, and how to get the materials to upgrade them in the first place, lol.

Also, in other account progress news, the whole ongoing magnafest event has managed to get me up to around rank 110, and I recently unlocked Doctor as my first EX2 class, so now my short-term goal is to work my way toward Lumberjack. After that I might get Warlock and Chaos Ruler, but I do want Monk as well, and I want to get some EX1 classes like Mystic, but I’m still not sure how much I can progress through the co-op stages without giving in and actually doing them in co-op.

I still really want to eventually unlock Nekomancer since I think it’s really cute, but the fact that it seems like such a high-maintenance class that relies so much on it’s class champion weapon is kinda off-putting. I still want to get it for wind, though, since the male Nekomancer design has a green colour scheme, and I’m pretty much committed to the wind staff meta. Thankfully Warlock is also a staff class with a green colour scheme, which is like 90% of the reason why I want to unlock it relatively soon, lol.

Now that I’m down to basically zero summons, let’s just hope that if I can commit to saving now, I can have enough by the anniversary to do a discounted roulette there, if they do another roulette event there.