The Mog Log: Traits of war (and magic)

One of the areas in which Final Fantasy XIV really dropped the introduction ball is its handling of traits. They're an interesting way to put together the character you want; unfortunately, they're fenced behind a wall made out of Guild Marks and a moat of 20 ranks before you can purchase most of them. (I'm sure there's a boiling oil of misunderstood applications somewhere in there, but we can't spend the whole column on our trip to Metaphor Castle.) The fact is that you get a lot of points to equip traits long before you probably have any, to the point that other rewards probably look more appealing.

It's a shame, since the game's traits can often make a set of Guild Marks more valuable than another pile of gil. So today I'm going to look at the traits for the Disciples of War and Magic, along with a few ideas about how the traits can be used in a character setup and which ones have the broadest application.

Traits in a nutshell

Once you start accepting level 20-and-up guildleves, you'll occasionally start picking up leves whose rewards are measured in guild marks rather than gil. The number of marks can vary a bit, but it's exclusive to the classes you have over rank 10. Assuming you complete said guildleve as the appropriate class, you'll be rewarded with the marks, which can subsequently be spent at the appropriate guild to learn traits. (You can also learn a couple of basic attacks, but those aren't important to the discussion at the moment.)

For Disciples of War and Magic, the guild offerings are pretty straightforward. You have a basic attack and two stat-conversion traits costing 6000 marks, a third stat-conversion trait and a specific class trait at 8000, another attack and the next rank of stat conversion at 10000 marks, and the last conversion trait plus an affinity trait at 12000 marks. The stat conversions are given the same name for different ranks, but the higher-ranked trait costs 3 points to equip and has double the effect. For clarity's sake, I've linked the original version below.

General

Asceticism: Shared by the Disciples of War, this trait can actually be pretty useful, even for the fighting classes if you're splashing in some offensive magic. Vitality has better returns per point if you're a DoW, after all.

Complete Control: A Disciple of Magic trait that can be fairly useful for physical attackers. You'll take an MP hit, yes, but you'll also hit more often with your physical attacks, hopefully requiring you to cast fewer spells.

Driven by Faith: Shared by the DoMs, this is one of the point shifts that seems less useful. If you're high enough to pick this trait up, you probably will want to retain enough Piety to actually hit your target, and gutting that for health seems a touch odd. It's useful for builds that expect to mostly cast buffs and heals, which can't miss.

Mind over Matter: Dexterity to Mind? How can I lose? Well, if you planned to attack physically in any capacity, you sort of lose out -- and bear in mind that your MP-regaining weaponskills still count as physical attacks. Whether or not you want to frontload with a lot of MP in the bank is a matter of preference.

Will to Power: A straight conversion between magical damage and physical damage makes perfect sense when your character is meant to be hitting with attacks more than spells. Most of the spells which will be useful to non-caster classes are also not subject to scaling with Intelligence (heals scale with Mind and drains/debuffs scale with Piety), so the loss of raw damage won't be terribly missed.

Muscle Memory: Exactly the same as above, only going from physical damage to magical damage. All prior caveats apply.

The affinity traits are useful, but only in the event that you think you're going to be devoting a significant portion of your bar to a given class. Otherwise, the points could be better spent elsewhere. A Gladiator/Thaumaturge would benefit from Transcendence, but if you're just splashing Sacrifice and Stygian Spikes, it's better to pass.

Archer

Out of Sight: A flat enmity reduction is useful for any class that wants to avoid notice, which covers pretty much everything other than tanks. Unless you're intending to keep a monster's attention, it's worth the time spent as an Archer to pick this trait up and keep it around. It's completely useless while soloing, though.

Conjurer

Fastcast: If you plan on doing any sort of heavy casting, you want this. It's especially nice for splashing some spellcasting on a Disciple of War, since it means less time casting and more time building/using TP.

Gladiator

Self-Preservation: There are only three classes that can actually use a shield, and the odds are good that two of them won't be using one all that often. (Unlike the various caster-type shields available for White Mages in Final Fantasy XI, shields perform a more predictable defensive role here.) It's good if you're tanking as a Gladiator or playing one solo -- quite good, in fact -- but fairly well useless otherwise. (You might get something out of being a solo caster with a shield for added defense.)

Lancer

Fleet of Foot: Much, much better than it sounds. On paper, it reads like just enough to overcome the difference between your active and passive movement speeds. In practice, it makes closing the range to enemies much easier, positioning for flanking and the like much easier, and generally improves your movement enough to justify its cost. If you can't fit it into a build, you shouldn't weep, but if you can? Do so.

Marauder

Intimidation: Oh, hello there, nigh-mandatory tank trait. Like Out of Sight, it's a great bonus with a very specialized usage.

Pugilist

Prime Conditioning: Probably more of a pure tanking/soloing talent than even the Gladiator trait, this can prove especially useful with classes that already have some kind of healing trick. Lancers, for example, can easily double-dip this in conjunction with Speed Surge or Life Surge. If you're not tanking or soloing, however, it's the sort of thing that's nice to pick up with extra space and pretty irrelevant otherwise.

Thaumaturge

Firm Conviction: This goes together with a drain-heavy or cast-heavy tank quite nicely. Soloing with a bunch of casting? Also nearly mandatory. In a group with good tanking, however, you aren't going to need the bonus as much. It can still be well worth it, however, if you have the spare points.

That's all for this week's look at traits, at least for the more combat-oriented classes. As always, comments and opinions may be placed in the comment field or mailed to eliot@massively.com. Next week, I want to take a look at where to go once you've started playing Final Fantasy XIV, which given the game's structure (or lack thereof) can be something of a mystery.

From Eorzea to Vana'diel, there is a constant: the moogles. And for analysis and opinions about the online portions of the Final Fantasy series, there is also a constant: The Mog Log. Longtime series fan Eliot Lefebvre serves up a new installment of the log every Saturday, covering almost anything related to Square-Enix's vibrant online worlds.