FFXIV Initial Impressions

Spent a couple of hours with the game, got my THM (Thaumaturge) to around Lv. 8 with the help of a friend.

First few levels were pretty hilariously tedious, but necessary. It's a TON of fetch quests, which makes you literally feel like you took on some sort of courier MMO, than anything combat oriented.. but that's necessary to teach you the base mechanics of the game, and the multitude of systems.

Once you actually get into combat scenarios, and you start getting abilities thrown at you left and right, it feels like you graduated from basic addition/subtraction to calculus. This game has DEPTH, and even at the earliest levels, I'm having to think about my skill choices more carefully than I've ever had to do in any other MMO.

Most MMO's I play are "spam this ability until you run out of MP, chug potions, keep spamming this ability". Obviously in raids and high level play, you'll use more than just the one ability, but the depth for general PVE has been pretty shallow. You typically stuck with one or two skills that "work", you had your buffs, and that was it.

So far, I have 5 abilities at Lv. 8; I have an ice attack, that grants me a buff that greatly increases my MP regeneration. I have a fire attack that grants me a buff that increases my fire damage, but also greatly increases the cost of my fire skills. Now here's the kicker; these buffs cancel eachother out -- you can only have one active at a time; so you can have powerful spells that you burn through your MP quickly, or you can allow yourself to be weaker, but regenerate your MP.

Then we introduce my third ability; it allows me to SWAP THE BUFFS. So if I'm using fire, running low on MP? I use my ability (Transpose) and it's suddenly the ice buff. I start firing off ice spells as to not cancel my ice buff, and let my MP regenerate until it's full. I swap back to fire, and continue my barrage.

My fourth ability is a lightning attack, that also does DOTs (Damage Over Time, a debuff that continually hurts enemies as long as it's applied to them) and it does not cancel, nor does it apply a buff.. so I could, theoretically swap from my fire buff to ice buff to regenerate my MP, and then use my lightning ability to apply DOTs while I wait for my MP to fill. Of course, I'd eventually lose the ice buff from not constantly re-applying it, but that's the kind of concessions you're constantly thinking about during this game.

Is it worth it to use lightning and deal more damage at the cost of needing to re-apply that buff? Or should I stick with ice to regen quicker, and then swap back to fire as soon as I can?

My fifth ability is an ability that makes it so my next cast spell can't be interrupted, which will be incredibly useful when I begin dodging enemies AoE (Area of Effect, attacks that deal damage in a large area, not to a single person) so I can keep the pressure up.. which will lead to more critical thinking, as I will likely have my damage buffs up constantly at this rate.

I'm level 8, on my first classs. Out of 50 levels. The game is already this complex. I'm very excited for what awaits me ahead.