Announcing the December Version Update!Follow

Not to be a kiss-*** or anything, but you have like 10,000+ posts, and I can only ever recall agreeing with you on, or appreciating the contributions of each of them.

Abyssea era was initially my most hated era, but grew to be my most beloved. Delve era wasn't terrible, "event" and "gear" wise, bringing back the concept of weakness exploiting from Abyssea and adding to it in pretty interesting ways, but... they failed in one pretty major area (an area FFXI has put way to much emphasis on since it's beginning) : Stun reliance.

I can still recall being a BLM in my mid-lvl-60s wearing AF in sky, brought there eagerly because there was a dire need for stunners in order to succeed against the main sky gods (or so was the mindset back then, keep in mind this was AGES ago). For years and years after, on every 'major' encounter I can recall, stun came into play at one point or another. I found it super annoying that the strategy our LS used in dynamis was RDM chainspell stunning DL (newcomers might not be familiar, but the fight used to be very different from today and that was one of the few viable ways to zerg your way to victory). When I first returned to the game in this recent "delve" era, I was ungodly annoyed that yet again; here we were like 10-12 years (I forget, something in that range) later at a boss who not only again required the extremely lame and rehashed 'well timed stun' mechanic, but required multiple, maximum re-cast-reduction spamming stuns to really ensure survival. To me this is just poor game design, any other modern MMO of our time requires actual thought, interaction, reaction, maneuvering and use of environments, but FFXI falls back on the crutch of "stun dat spellbility!", I'm just not a fan of a spell you get at level 40 driving endgame mechanics for 10+ years. Would have been fine with this, but then it came up again on multiple other Delve bosses, and yet again in incursion... Has any effort been put into this at all? Personally I feel that the 'mega-bosses' of this game should not be able to be slept, stunned, gravitied, or paralyzed (nor do I think paralyze should be so nearly-impossible to avoid for melee int he current state of the game... it needs a way out, it's one of the worst forms of loss of control of your character the game has to offer... the para 'aura' stuff is just stupid). Anyhow, I'm rambling a bit here, but my point is that Abyssea did a fantastic job of moving away from all that stun reliance.

Oh, and much like the new "job point superior gear" thing, they offered people Brews in abyssea era, this is what I see as it's equivalent. They both serve the purpose of giving people a shot at great gear that they otherwise might not be able to obtain, as a reward for simply "putting enough time into the game".

Once players starting using Chainspell -> Stun for everything, everything became too easy. It also required no coordination to pull off.

I don't know why they just didn't up the level of Stun so only BLM's and DRK's could use it.

Wait, PLD can go over the cap now? How about RUN? And by how much?