Is there a guide for Final Fantasy XIV players trying WoW?

Guides New/Returning Player Questions & Guides
1

Hello everyone,

although I’ve already /played WoW for a bit more than 7 days, I’m still kind of lost.

First of all a bit about myself though.
I’ve played a couple of MMOs before, but the only MMO I’ve seriously played (and still play) is Final Fantasy XIV. There I play at the top level of content, beating Savage raids around their release and progging on Ultimate raids and I also min-max in almost every aspect of the game, like for example crafting, gathering and doing large-scale side content like Eureka or Relic-weapon questlines. With that in mind: I’m not unfamiliar with grind at all and these things do not turn me off even a bit.

Now a friend of mine who likes to shiettalk FF14 all the time finally managed to get me to try out WoW and after a few failed attempts to get into the game, I’ve finally managed to stick to it for a bit and I’m currently very satisfied with my max level bossted Shadow Priest, which I can play very comfortably.

The problem now is, that I’m kind of overwhelmed with the game. I feel like there is an infinite amount of things that I can do and a general lack of guidelines within the game, on what to do next (or in other words: WoW’s “freedom” is kind of a problem for me as for now).

So with that said, is there a guide around for FF XIV players coming over to WoW, trying it out?

Also, since I’m not sure, if this is already clear: I’m trying out retail. Classic doesn’t interest me at all.

2

(Changed my forum character to my current main)

Oh and since I don’t know how to edit my previous post and in case there is no guide for FFXIV players (like there is one for WoW players on the FFXIV reddit), you could also help me according to a couple of pointers, of things that I absolutely did not understand:

  • I have absolutely zero clue about the auction house. I have no idea, where to access it, nor how to put items into it, nor how the trading system there works at all
  • the portal system always gives me a major headache and it’s extremely difficult for me to get to a certain area, when I for example read about something in a guide and it mentions some place, where to find certain things. I’m used to have a simple menu that lists every zone of the game, that I have unlocked teleport to and since something like this doesn’t exist in WoW, but instead it has this portal room method, I get really confused. It would be helpful, if there was some kind of picture or list with every portal that exists in the game and where it leads, sorted by cities
  • how many Dalarans are there actually? If I port to Dalaran from Orgrimmar it’s not the same Dalaran than the one I teleport to with the Dalaran Hearthstone
  • I can’t wrap my head around, which quests are quests for the war campaign, which quests are simple zone quests, which quests are quests of my class hall, etc. There is no distinction, because every quest I see is just the same ! mark, unlike FFXIV where main quests have a specific icon, side quests have their own specific icon, sidequests that unlock something have another icon, repeatable quests have their own icon, etc.
  • I also have no clue about socketing or whatever things there are to improve gear (the only thing I’ve kinda understood was azerite traits) and when it’s actually relevant to do that
  • The whole dungeons, raids, etc. system confuses me a lot. In FFXIV I have a duty finder for EVERY instanced content in the game and everything is sorted between dungeons, trials (one-shot bossfights), 8-man raids, 24-man raids, ultimate raids, etc.

I might come up with more, but those are the first things that came to my mind right now.

3

Well, however you got here, welcome to Azeroth!

I don’t know of any specific guide to WoW for FF players.

There’s a lot to go through, but it depends on what you’re aiming for.

If you want to play competitively, as you do in FF, your first priority will be to get yourself into a Mythic Raiding guild. Even if you can’t manage Mythic for now, you will want it later.

One problem is that if you’re playing on Frostwolf, even Horde (which is better in this case than Alliance), you have a fairly limited set of guilds to work with;

You will also want to get going with a regular group, at least to get through Normal raiding difficulty so you can learn the fights, and to run Mythic-Plus dungeons to get you some basic gear.

If you don’t want to raid hard, you can forget everything I said so far. :slight_smile:

So, whatever your plans, to progress your character, you need to work on:

  1. Your gear. The fastest way for you to gear up is to spam run Mythic-Plus dungeons - if you have a friendly group willing to carry you until you have some gear and learn the ropes. Do you?
    https://ptr.wowhead.com/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons-guide

  2. Your neck piece, the Heart of Azeroth. You need to a) level it and b) earn Essences to unlock extra abilities.
    https://ptr.wowhead.com/guides/heart-of-azeroth-overview

OK I was writing this when you posted again. I’ll answer those, and then we can come back to this.

4

And I just want to point out for future reference to other people that this is part of why new players should not boost. You are the equivalent of a Mythic raider, in a very similar game, but you are lost because you skipped all the simple things people learn while levelling.

You will fill in the missing understanding, but it will take time.

  1. The best basic guide to auctions and general trade in WoW I have ever seen. It is old now, and the specific markets covered are out of date - gems and low-level herbs are not so valuable now - but the basic mechanisms are dead sound.

Here’s part 1 of 3

(You can start watching that while I edit in the rest of the answers!)

  1. Here’s a travel guide:
    https://ptr.wowhead.com/warcraft-transportation-guide

and here is a table of available portals:

  1. Technically, there is one Dalaran. It’s just in different places in different years. :stuck_out_tongue:

The timelines in WoW would give Doctor Who a migraine. Here is one guide to a timeline:

Dalaran actually started on the ground in Eastern Kingdoms, but was moved to Northrend by its mages to be a base against the Lich King during Wrath, in the year 26 of that timeline. (level 60-80)

With the invasion of the Burning Legion 6 years later, Khadgar and the other mages moved it to the new hotspot, in the Broken Isles. That was a cool sequence, but since you boosted, you didn’t see it. (level 100-110)

So Dalaran (Crystalsong Forest) is in Northrend and Dalaran (Azsuna) is in the Broken Isles - but 6 years apart in story time.

The one your Legion Hearthstone ports you to is Dalaran (Azsuna) is in the Broken Isles, but there is also a portal to Azsuna in the teleport room in Orgrimmar, just not directly to Dala.

  1. Quests

Repeatable quests are Blue.

Quests below your level are Green or Grey.

Quests you have not completed are Silver.

Key quests to start major chains like the War Campaign are Orange-ish.

Everything else is Yellow.

There is no distinction between “main” and “side” quests. However, the next step in your War Campaign will always be shown at the top of your Quest Log.

  1. Gear Enhancements

This is your Basic guide to your class, including advice on what Gems to Socket, and what Enchants to apply, and what Consumables to use for competitive play:

When you are raiding, this will not be complete for you, but it is more than enough to get you started. Later, when it gets more complicated, to progress from there, you will join the Priest Discords
Priest: Warcraft Priests & Focused Will

  1. Dungeons and Raids

Dungeons have difficulties:
Normal - for levelling. You join a queue and are matched with a group and ported
Heroic - for starter characters at 120. You join a queue and are matched with a group and ported
Mythic - you need to make or join a group of people yourself, and travel to the entrance. Higher than Heroic.
Mythic-Plus - you need to make or join a group of people yourself, and travel to the entrance. Potentially endless difficulty, depening on the level. Mythic raid difficulty is about equivalent to M+15 level dungeon. (People will argue about that! - ok, somewhere in +14 to +18 …)

I linked a guide to it in my previous post.

All BfA dungeons are equally relevant, give equal rewards, all through BfA. Every dungeon has all of those difficulties.

Raids have difficulties:
LFR aka Looking for Raid aka Raid Finder.You join a queue and are matched with a group and ported. Very easy, very little responsibility.
Normal
Heroic
Mythic
These three are in increasing order of difficulty. You need to make or join a group to enter. There are tactics you really need to know before you start, unless you are experienced. You can find many videos of every boss in every raid on YouTube. I suggest channel FatBoss for reliable info to start.

Unlike dungeons, Raids are not equally relevant at a given time. At any moment, one Raid is current, and the others have been completed and give lower rewards. So far in BfA, Uldir, Battle of Dazar’alor and Crucible of Storms are complete, and we have moved past them, The current raid is The Eternal Palace.

There is a VAST amount of information on the net about everything in WoW. Vast. The only problem is that people don’t update their info with time, so you can end up reading or watching stuff that is out of date.

Here are some reliable sites that stay up to date:

wowhead.com for info about quests, items, guides

icy-veins.com for info about your class

www.curseforge.com/wow/addons for downloading addons

theunderminejournal.com for current AH prices

wow-professions.com for skilling up professions

.

Now ask for more detail :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
5

Alright, I’ll go over a couple of your suggestions for now:

  • For now I’m planning to just play WoW casually, but eventually I want to clear Mythic raids. However, I’m not going to aim to prog on mythic raids competitively, since I already have too much competitive prog going on in FF14 (Ultimate raids are so unbelievably hard, it takes hundreds of hours of practice to clear even one and only 0.03-0.05% of the active playerbase has cleared them yet, so there is no time to play WoW competitively). With that in mind I guess I’ll just pug mythic raids with a couple of friends (even if that makes it considerably harder)

  • spamming mythic plus dungeons is something I’ll do. I’ve already cleared a mythic +9 dungeon with 2 friends and a guildmate while my GS was around 390 easy peasy. Mechanics-wise it wasn’t really a problem at all and in terms of my class I was told, that I already did pretty decent dps

  • My Heart of Azeroth is already lvl 61. I don’t really get, why people complain about it so much. You basically level it by doing any kind of content tbh and from my experience, it’s by far not as grindy as leveling in Eureka in FF14

  • Side note: I actually started playing the game on my Shadow Priest from level 1 on, quested through every zone of the north section of the Eastern Kingdoms until I was level 65 and then I boosted my character, since I already learned a couple of basics

  • That gold making guide is neat. Thanks a lot :slight_smile: I’m sure it’s gonna clear up a lot of things

  • I already saw that travel guide, but it was kinda confusing to me. That article about portals on the wowpedia however is exactly what I needed. Thanks a lot! It makes everything so much easier now :slight_smile:

  • Aaah, then the two Dalarans make sense. Guess I’m gonna rewatch the cutscene on youtube :>

  • Alright, thanks for clearing up the quest stuff

6

Excellent!

Come back when you have more questions.

BTW, if you want to see what it takes to prog Mythic, here are some boss kills

Sadly I can’t find the original streams

Also
https://www.youtube.com/user/MethodNetwork

7

Continuing to comment on your explanations, because I’ve seen that you added some stuff:

  • Yup, I’ve already found and I’m using that Icy Veins Shadow Priest guide. I just didn’t really wrap my head around the gear enhancements system in general, because that guide skips that and goes directly to what enhancements to put in

  • Yeah, I already wrapped my head around the difficulties (though I wasn’t aware, that there is also mythic for dungeons. thought that was exclusive for raids, while mythic plus is exclusive for dungeons)

  • Was also familiar with the difficulties of raids. What confuses me though, was that just recently my friend pushed me to unlock Nazjatar and the moment I entered it and did 2-3 quests, he instantly flew me into the Azshara raid, which I cleared on NHC/Normal difficulty without dying once (except for the general party wipes where the tanks didn’t pull away mobs that were tethered to the boss and stuff). What confuses me is… is there no introductary questline, that slowly leads me to the raid or something? It felt kinda off, that I just unlocked the zone and instantly killed queen azshara after a handful of quests.

Gonna look at a few Mythic raid kills as well, since I’m pretty interested in these (My first long-term goal is to beat the Ny’alotha raid on Mythic, when it’s released, since I want that set for my Shadow Priest).
From what I’ve heard from WoW players on the FFXIV reddit, Mythic ranks in difficulty somewhere between the first two fights of a FFXIV Savage raid and the last 2 fights of a FFXIV savage raid, so it’s gonna be interesting :slight_smile:
(in FFXIV there are 3 raid tiers of the same raid storyline released per expansion, each which consists of 4 separate 8-player instances you queue in, that get increasingly harder with each instance, and all of them exist in normal difficulty for casual players and savage difficulty for very experienced players)
Thanks for the recommendations :slight_smile:

8

Gear enhancements are just a shadow of what they once were. All the good stuff has been removed so that raiders can get into their raids without doing much else first.

There aren’t many enhancements left, just Weapon and Ring Enchants, and Gems in sockets that appear randomly.

Mythic for dungeons is often called Mythic-0. It is the base of the Mythic-Plus system.

There is a story that leads up to Eternal Place raid. It happens in Nazjatar, though a series of quests you haven’t done yet, that starts when you arrive in Newhome. Did I mention that Blizzard can’t have such Very Important People as Raiders held up by having to work through piddling little quest stories?

Mythic raid difficulty isn’t actually set as one thing, and is a bit of a cheat in WoW. Blizzard release the real Mythic difficulty at the start of a patch. As top guilds clear it, they nerf the difficulty, leaving it significantly easier for those who follow. And of course, those who follow have much more time to grind gear, so all raids, including on Mythic difficulty, start hard and get easier as time goes on.

9

Ongoing:

  • Ah, that sounds good for me. I really do not want to bother myself with even more stuff like sockets on every gear piece and stuff

  • Alright then. Then I’ve basically already cleared more than a Mythic dungeon so far. Nice :smiley:

  • Oh, good. It would’ve been kinda disappointing, if it was just like “Yeah, by the way, the big baddie of the new zone sits in a raid and you can just walk in and kill her at any time, so we didn’t bother making a quest that leads to him”.
    Side-jab: Well, then these raiders should never try Final Fantasy 14, because there the savage raids are gated behind clearing the normal raids first, which are gated behind a short questline, which is gated behind the complete Main Story Questline, which consists of 658 quests, which each take a couple of minutes to do, even if you skip the multi-minute cutscenes on each quest. (though you can buy a story skip to skip the first 552 quests up to the most recent expansion, which you have to complete nevertheless). Oh, and did I already mention, that you also have to clear every tier of the current raid on normal difficulty before you can even start the most recent raid tier xD ?

  • Oh damn, then I’ll definitely have to clear Ny’alotha on release. I don’t want some nerfed content as my achievement. I’m used to raids only getting easier shortly before the next raid tier releases around 6-7 months after the release of the former tier and it only becomes easier, by giving every player a buff called “The Echo” which increases all stats by 10%, if they wipe during half of the fight, which you can still click off.

And something else that just came to my mind, while I was watching a guide for Azshara on M difficulty:
Are there any raid guides that do not rely on DBM or Weakauras? Because just a few seconds into the first guide I found on youtube the guy instantly says “we use a weakaura for this”, which from my point of view is absolutely cheap.
I do not clear fights with training wheels. I can handle myself, even without a plugin telling me every mechanic. This might sound ridiculous to some WoW players, but trust me:
In FF14 I have cleared Phase 2 of The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate) without any callout tools, where the boss calls out a pattern of multiple insta-party-wipe AoEs without AoE indicators, by yelling out one of 8 possible obfuscated and similar sounding quotes in a tiny chat bubble over his head, which you have to assign to a certain pattern in 5 seconds, while at the same time 8 dragons flying outside of the fight’s arena keep shooting random bs at the party that has to be dealt with in a very specific manner or else it’s a wipe as well.

10

The tactics, instructions, and actions are the same whether you use addons or not. If you want to go old-skool, you can simply read the boss guide in the Dungeon Journal (on your right-hand action bar at the bottom) and react when the mechanic happens, without a prompt.

11

Ah alright.
And oh, that’s great, that the dungeon journal covers the mechanics. Didn’t know that it also does that for Mythic :slight_smile:

12

It gives you the mechanics in full.

What it doesn’t give you are the timings and triggers. If you want to go manual, you will have to learn those and watch out for them yourself.

Tooltips and dungeon journal reflect ability values for one encounter version. Please refer to “Effect” section on spell pages to see values for all raid sizes and difficulties.

[ Stage 1: Hardened Carapace ]

!16
On Mythic difficulty, the Coral Growth furthest from Lady Ashvane creates an Empowered Rippling Wave.

  • Waterlogged – Inflicts 12 Frost damage every 3 sec for 20 min. This effect stacks.

  • Empowered Rippling Wave – Lady Ashvane creates a larger Rippling Wave that travels back towards her that will restore up to 30% of her Hardened Carapace and inflict up to 60 Frost damage to all players.
    Each player that touches the Empowered Rippling Wave causes it to shrink, reducing the amount of Hardened Carapace that is restored by 10% and inflicting 20 Frost damage to all players. Additionally, the triggering player becomes Waterlogged.
    When the wave has been touched 3 times, it bursts.

  • Briny Bubble – A blast of water is unleashed at the target’s location, encasing all players within 12 yards within a Briny Bubble, incapacitating them until the bubble is destroyed. While encased, the bubble inflicts 15 Nature damage every 1.5 sec.

  • Briny Bubble – Unleashes a blast of water at the target, encasing them within a Briny Bubble, incapacitating them until the bubble is destroyed. While encased, the bubble inflicts 15 Nature damage every 1.5 sec.

  • Upsurge – Lady Ashvane unleashes a blast of water at the feet of several players, inflicting 40 Frost damage to all players within 6 yards of the impact, knocking them into the air.

  • TankBarnacle Bash – Lady Ashvane slams her current target, inflicting 60 Physical damage and increasing the damage taken from Barnacle Bash by 150% for 35 sec.
    In addition, a patch of Cutting Coral is formed.

    • Cutting Coral – An area of sharp coral erupts from the ground, inflicting 20 Nature damage every 1.5 sec to players standing in the area.

[ Stage 2: Exposed Azerite ]

  • Exposed Azerite – Lady Ashvane’s Exposed Azerite periodically erupts sending bolts of energy at several targets, inflicting 10 Arcane damage.

  • Arcing Azerite – Lady Ashvane creates up to 3 pairs of azerite infused players that unleash a blast after 10 sec.
    The blast inflicts 40 Arcane damage to all players in a line between the two marked targets. Additionally, all Coral Growths in the path are destroyed.

    • Regenerative Coral – When a Coral Growth is shattered by Arcing Azerite several pieces of coral fly into the air and impact after 5 sec, inflicting 20 Nature damage to anyone within 4 yards of the impact.
      If any of the shattered pieces are not intercepted by players, a new Coral Growth appears at that location.

  • Briny Bubble – A blast of water is unleashed at the target’s location, encasing all players within 12 yards within a Briny Bubble, incapacitating them until the bubble is destroyed. While encased, the bubble inflicts 15 Nature damage every 1.5 sec.

  • Upsurge – Lady Ashvane unleashes a blast of water at the feet of several players, inflicting 40 Frost damage to all players within 6 yards of the impact, knocking them into the air.

  • TankBarnacle Bash – Lady Ashvane slams her current target, inflicting 60 Physical damage and increasing the damage taken from Barnacle Bash by 150% for 35 sec.
    In addition, a patch of Cutting Coral is formed.

    • Cutting Coral – An area of sharp coral erupts from the ground, inflicting 20 Nature damage every 1.5 sec to players standing in the area.
1 Like
13

This is absolutely fine. In FF14 you don’t have anything like that, so when I look at a guide I simply take away 2 things:

  • explanations of the mechanics (which the dungeon guide has)
  • a timeline, when the mechanics come (which I can look up in both FF and WoW, even though the timeline of mechanics isn’t as scripted in WoW as it is in FF)

There is an external program for triggers in FF14, but I don’t use these anymore, because it got kinda annoying for me, it feels cheap and I can handle myself without these. I rarely use them for the learning phase of a very difficult mechanic, but after a few runs, when I understood the mechanic, I quickly turn them off again.

Wow, this is absolutely perfect and absolutely more than enough. It contains all I need for a fight, no matter the difficulty :slight_smile:
Thanks a lot for clearing this up!

14

While Gráinne has gone over just about everything. I would like to add, as someone who has played wow for 11ish years, and recently tried out FFXIV.

They are similar in many ways, but one major way they differ, is that FFXIV is extremely storydriven, and all the story is inside the game, whereas in wow maybe 80-90% of the lore is found outside of the game.

Its not really relevant to gameplay, but if you want to understand the game/lore, you will probably have to go outside of the game to find said lore.
To that end I can highly recommend looking up Nobbel87 on youtube, he is the goto person for all things lore.

I hope you enjoy the game :slight_smile:

1 Like
15

Remember it’s not quite like ffxiv. Where indicators are considered over kill in FFXIV as a lot of its down to memory. Wow raids are built around the use of addons, so a lot more hectic all over the place with lots of simultaneous things going on rather then a actual pattern of sorts or as much indication to mechanics going

Blizzard have embraced the use of these addons and build that into the raids, so u will find DBM is alittle more needed comparing to FFXIV.

The journel will tell you what he does. But it won’t give u times or anything or any indicators to when it happens. I did at one point try to raid without DBM. And u can get fried without even knowing a triggers gone off.

Other then this welcome to the game. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m guessing your friends on frost wolf which is why you picked it? As it isn’t the most recommendable server.

Cross server should help you there though

1 Like
16

Well in FFXIV savage raids you don’t get times or many indicators either. Without a guide you’re pretty much screwed, if you don’t want to invest 20ish hours of practice to just learn the mechanics of a fight.
With a guide it’s basically paying attention, memorizing each of the 100+ish attacks/mechanics of each raid boss and reacting to what to do with each debuff, visual cue (e.g. boss model animation) or cast name.

So far I didn’t have problems in HC Eternal palace with an iLvl of 420 and I’m gonna try out mythic soon. M+ I could clear up to +9 and didn’t try +10 either.

And yeah, I’m on Frostwolf because my friends play there.

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