JP Master And MLVL Are Useless Metrics For Skill

Ehhhh yes and no
My mages idle in all-the-refresh with DT where available because 99% of the time theyre not in any danger, even if they aggro every npc possible and they all cast ultimatedeathga

If Im doing stuff and I know theyre gonna be in danger area taking hits, I just swap to PDT idle set.

well you can probably help advise someone making a misguided idle set more than a ML50 in ambu +2, but ultimately the desire to dive deeper has to come from them.

I know I'm like a week late to this thread, but ML50 is exactly the same metric for determining whether someone is good as having a REMA is. Which is to say, it isn't a good metric at all.

I know great ML50s, and I know horrible ML50s. I know great REMA owners and I know horrible REMA owners.

What I think is really ridiculous in this thread that didn't get any pushback is people that are forming PUGs and then have the balls to tell people they have to try out for the PUG. *** that.

You're forming the PUG. People joining the PUG are taking the risk that you might be a Lemon yourself (I almost said specific names, one of which might be in this thread, which I shouldn't do).

PUGs are risk. If you want to always run with good players always, form a static.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the equivalent of the 75-era adage of Player Skill > Gear/Level.

The only real ML breakpoints are:
ML10 -> Grants access to most subjob extra utility.
ML45 -> only if you do a ton of Sortie and you want to get the most out of /drk, or you are a tank and want to /run for foil.

Edit: instead of pld I should have said anything that you may want to /run on, not just pld

Who genuinely asks for tryouts for a Pug.

Wanting to join a pug in the first place is a bad sign IMO.

I don't know about your server but on Asura they are a great way to meet new people and demonstrate your value for future invites or a Linkshell invite. Even on a highly populated server a group can get stymied at 5/6 and needs one random low skill member to fill, especially for low stakes content like Ambuscade or Sheol C. A rando can (not always) often be better than just summoning Ulmia and calling it a wash.

On non-Asura no one shouts for Pugs except people that no one will play with because they're often.. a lot.

Not necessarily bad players, just, a lot.

i've been seeing dudes make a bunch of fresh 6boxes recently, running around in Ambu+2 and NQ dyna necks but they're ML40 and leach everything but their v2 normal ambu clears from the server streamer... but since they can use external programs to "solo" a v2 on normal with their 6box, they're basically the best player on the server

Wait...what? ML10 is SJ level 51, what are the important unlocks at level 51?
ML45 for /DRK? For GEO and RDM maybe, but for anyone who doesn't natively have high cost spells, OA is totally useless. DRK's most expensive spell is like...25 MP?

I'd say:
5 for Super Jump, extra stratagems, DA
30 for WS Damage Boost II, Ebullience, Cure 4 (SCH)
35 for Raise 2/RR2 (WHM)
45 for Foil

The rest of them are pretty meh.


Oh look, another horribly inaccurate statement. More like:
5 to all stats vs HP+70, MP-122, STR+11, DEX-3, VIT+6, AGI-9, INT-13, MND+8.

So, ya know, not remotely close to the same thing. One is a net gain of 0 stats, the other is a net gain of 35 stats. Maybe you like STR and MND more than DEX and AGI, sure, but it's not at all the same thing.

And as I said earlier: How many people are actually truly chasing MR? Plus, half of them are just doing it for the checklist and not for the earring.

And...this argument only makes any *** sense if you're currently a Tarutaru. If you're playing a Galka, you won't gain 11 STR by changing to an Elvaan.
Galka gains 2, Hume gain 5, Mithra gain 8, and Elvaan gain 0. 3/5 of the races gain <= 1 MR of STR from changing.

LOLCAP

late af but I am at the point I would rather skip a night than shout for randos for sortie or just take sylvie and do a 8 boss with 5 people. sylvie is less effort for me that a lot of players would be(she doesn't get lost...)

Not picking on you, but this is the perfect description of the state of the game and community, and there isn't really any recovering from it unfortunately. If you have a functional network of enough people on your same level of experience/skill/goals etc. things are mostly fine, but if not...

You make your own network?

...How do people think these networks were made, magic? Did Discord suddenly disappear from existence in the last few years that I'm not aware of? Are linkshells banned now? Did they remove shouts, yells, tells, and parties from the game?

Side note but related: today my characters' pearls were unequipped, which I found strange. I re-equipped them but got an error because the linkshell was full. That didn't happen because SE blessed me with 63 people to play with by faerie magic.

I can't ever win with you man... geez. I should have also included Impact. I was very specific that it was for only sortie try hards, but I guess it was too much to expect people to know why it was potentially valuable for someone doing that one hyper specific piece of content.

I'll grant the ML10 comment was mostly vague. You are right that most of the benefits are from ML5 (JTs like extra DA), but ML10 gives /whm curaga III. There used to be a really nifty graphic showing what every ML tier granted in terms of value, after ML10, it's very sparse and imo the only really valuable one is ML45.

Edit: No, you're right, ML30 /drg WSD II is super powerful, I don't know why I thought that one was at ML10.

Edit: Nifty Chart of all 22 jobs benefits at each level of ML

ML30 is really when /drk comes into its own. Any job that hits ML30 that subs DRK will gain access to Damage Limit+ III, Smite III, and Attack Bonus III. All pretty big upgrades, especially for any job that doesn't come by them natively.

Also get access to Consume Mana, so you can spam it every WS even at 0 MP just for style points.

ML5 gets Store TP III from /sam on anything, kinda nice.

But yeah I agree. Most new things gained from sub come by ML5, and then the really good stuff is ML30 or higher.

Fencer II mighty shine some day if they ever nerf TP bonus offhands at ML45 from /war, but we all know that day's never coming.

Your experience is just not representative of the state of the game as a whole across most servers. I'm not questioning that any of it is untrue, but let's look at what is being said. The step down to 8 boss with 5 people is framed as a bad night, a failure.

If you run Sortie 3-4 times a week, how many of those nights are you willing to risk an imperfect run on a stranger who might be inexperienced or undergeared before giving up? Conversely, how often are you to respond to a shout if someone freaked out that you screwed something up?

Take the anecdote about camping those new NMs. A bunch of people of teamed up, socialized, got absolutely nothing done and left mostly demoralized. This pattern is reinforced over and over.

It is largely a culture problem, btw. JP groups are far more willing to adjust to safer strats to lessen individual accountability, and NA groups go meta or not at all.

A lot of the more experienced groups can take a trust and still do 8 boss.

Taking some one else, only for them to do less than a trust would even, assuming they don't get lost, is a negative on top of being down to 5.

Sucks, but it is what it is. Sortie is 1hr and you can enter only once a day. For a lot of people it's the only hour in which they play.

Flip side is a newer player needs to carry their own weight, not expect to be carried to an 8 boss run when actually they're only ready for 4.

I just wish mastery rank was displayed somewhere that way I can judge people based on important things like how much they chocobo dig or do monstrosity.

Yes, the risk of failure (perceived or real) is constantly reinforced by putting lockouts on everything. But we've also done this to ourselves to make it worse. Just look at the volume of shouts for content on any server in Japanese vs. English.

I'm arguing that mega-linkshells (which most if not all servers do have) isn't as indicative of health as you might think. Even if you have 60 people on call every time you log in, and assume that the remaining 400-500+ online are actual players who aren't afk bazaars, bots, 6boxes, or in their own smaller linkshells, we've voluntarily isolated away from PUG culture in favor of discord communities, etc. because we've decided the in game systems are inadequate at providing a healthy talent pool to draw from.

Sorry, but I think I missed the part where you explained the difference between when I "grew up" and now...? I said Discord, Linkshells, shouts, tells, and parties haven't been removed, have they? What is fundamentally different today than it was, say, 5 years ago? Why, in your opinion, is it impossible to form a community in 2026?

You said that people get frustrated when they lose...uh yeah it's always been that way. You said that people stay in their linkshell and don't form PUGs...uh yeah, I've basically never done a PUG in my life. Didn't stop me from maintaining this community for *however long it's been*

Not talking about you, specifically, but people, generally. Everyone wants to sit in the corner and wait for someone else to create a group, build a community, or organize an event for them. Well, enjoy your spot on the bench, complaining about how nobody's making any groups for you then. I promise you, I GUARANTEE you, you could be successful if you got off your ***.

This conversation, once again, devolves into "why won't existing 8-boss groups with 4-5 members invite me to their group?" instead of, ya know, making a new group of your own?

To re-state my question from earlier: do you think all of the groups I've participated in throughout the years were conjured by some SE faerie magic that no longer exists? I made friends, I formed relationships, I networked, and I did content with people. Gradually my group of connections grew from absolutely nobody to a linkshell so large that I got kicked out of it for lack of space.

You can too. Or if not, please explain to me why you can't.

I agree 100%, motivation has to come from within and it is the absolute number 1 reason people get stuck. But if you've actually never participated in PUG culture do you really think you can accurately judge how it has changed over the years?

Maybe it doesn't matter (and that's fine too) because it doesn't directly impact your experience, but to discount it as a nonissue seems naive to me.

OK, maybe PUG culture has gotten worse in the past 10 years, IDK, my point wasn't "you should make PUG culture better", my point was it's a social game. You shouldn't be relying on PUGs to make progress.

Here comes "I'm a single father of 17 kids, have 3 careers, and volunteer at the homeless shelter 4 times a day, I don't have time to run Limbus with other people."

If you're having trouble making progress in a heavily team-focused online RPG because you can't find 5 random strangers you know nothing about to do content with, you're doing it wrong, I'm sorry to be the one who has to tell you this.

My friends want to replace me in sortie for a trust T_T. I aggro too much and forget where i'm going lol.

Imho regen and refresh are made for idle, not sure why people would look down on someone idling in those pieces. I'd rather question someone idleing with -DT in town.

If you expect to get hit there is always the option for toggles to adjust the idle set towards the situation.

I'm not sure there are statics with 5 players that run 8 boss sortie where none of them has at least one alt to fill the 6th slot with. If someone does have a alt the question of whether to fill the slot with a trust or a random PUG doesn't come up cause the 6th slot will be filled with that alt.

People pay for alts because of the progress multiplier and the convenience of not having to deal with PUGs.

It's been mentioned before, player pool is small these days. You start a random pick up group and it goes south people will avoid your shouts in the future. In the worst case scenario they'll bad mouth you in their mega linkshell. You can screw up twice, maybe three times and at that point there are not enough players left to fill a shout party.
Then you can either pay for a server transfer or wait till the next cycle of players quitting and others returning has finished in hopes no one remembers your name.

I think People avoid discord because of the language barrier and privacy concerns.

We’re getting 10 more ATTRIBUTES next update. So, slightly closer to Trust replacing players.