Are you familiar with terms like 2-minute meta, homogenization, or even transpose lines? If you are, then this article might be up your alley. New expansions are always a fun time, especially for high-end raiders who will be getting shiny new buttons to press, and with that comes new rotations. After approximately 8,000 hours of playing Final Fantasy XIV and clearing The Omega Protocol on release, I think I'm able to provide some insight about the new weaponskills, spells, and abilities (and their implications for rotations, openers, and general play) I saw at a recent preview event for its upcoming Dawntrail expansion. I am not an expert at every job, and I could not test each job to its limit, so feel free to point out mistakes on my part.
Unless it is pertinent to the rotation flow, potencies from damaging abilities are purposefully left off since many balance changes could come before the game launches. And just a heads up: don’t use this overview to find your job’s perfect rotation at launch – I will leave that to the mentors in The Balance.
Before we hop in, here is a critical reminder: Everything here was seen on an in-development build and is subject to change. Not just potencies but abilities may be changed or removed, and new ones we didn’t even see might be in the game at launch. As a little black birdie once said: We just don't know.
Overview
Some high-level things:- Multiple jobs get additional mitigation or upgrades to existing mitigation. This makes me wonder how much damage the combat developers plan for us to take. In some instances, like in The Omega Protocol, tanks must have a healer mitigation to live through the damage. Are the mitigation changes to enable every tank to handle a buster by itself, or will they still need external mitigation in high-end content? We will have to wait and see.
- Creative Studio III has standardized raid buffs to 20 seconds in Dawntrail. Even Searing Light is 20 seconds and now increases damage by 5%. I don't have screenshots to confirm CSIII has changed every 15-second raid buff, but it would be strange if several did get changed and some did not.
- As mentioned in the 81st Live Letter, some actions will now have the ability to be consolidated into one button if it's part of a combo. 1-2-3 combos for every job released before Dawntrail have remained untouched and cannot be combined into one button. Viper and Pictomancer do have this implemented into what I view as their 1-2-3, though it is not optional. I was surprised at how little this new feature is utilized; every instance of it felt warranted.
- Jobs play very similar to their Endwalker versions. From what FFXIV director and producer Naoki Yoshida, lovingly referred to as Yoshi-P in the community, has said and what we see now with the new information, Dawntrail will not be the expansion where we see extensive job changes. Yoshi-P has mentioned that the changes some players would like to see could happen in 8.0, but we have no specific information on that now, and plans could change by the time the next expansion comes around.
Tanks
All tanks receive the following:- Lv. 94: Enhanced Rampart - Adds an additional effect to Rampart that increases HP recovery via healing action on self by 15%.
- Lv. 96: Melee Mastery II - Potency upgrades to various weaponskills.
- Lv. 98: Enhanced Reprisal - Extends the duration of Reprisal to 15 seconds.
Paladin
- Lv. 76: Supplication, Sepulcher - New Atonement combo actions.
- Lv. 92: Guardian - Reduces damage taken by 40%. Gives a shield equivalent to a heal of 1,000 potency.
- Lv. 96: Imperator - Upgraded AoE Requiescat.
- Lv. 100: Blade of Honor - oGCD combo action off Blade of Valor.