On this episode of FFXIV Mythbusters, we put to the test, whether Holmgang actually has a knockback immunity as many claim, what actually happens when multiple Paladins use Cover at the same time, and mathematically answer the discussion about whether Afflatus Misery is actually Damage Neutral!
Other episodes referenced in this video:
FFXIV Mythbusters 6: https://youtu.be/c5BnSzyIG_g
Watch the full FFXIV Mythbusters playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTuST9t3GXW84fY_7W86ByloxY9_L3m-u
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Music Used:
FFXIV Endwalker – Cradle of Hope
#ffxiv #endwalker
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:35 (1) “DoTs and HoTs cannot Crit or Direct Hit” (FALSE)
02:13 (2) “Afflatus Misery is ALWAYS Damage Neutral!” (FALSE)
05:33 (3) What if two Paladins Cover the same target?
06:34 (4) A chain of Paladin Covers, what happens?
07:54 (5) Two Paladins Cover each other, what happens?
08:57 (6) “Holmgang Grants Immunity to Knockback Effects!” (FALSE)
11:46 (7) “Vengeance nullifies Arm’s Length COMPLETELY!” (FALSE)
12:41 Outro
13:14 Fun Fact
source
In addition to downtime, if you're ever in a situation where there's forced movement for a boss fight, and the movement period is longer than a swiftcast glare (or more frequent than swiftcast cd) then using lilies for movement is a dps gain.
Ah, the Paladin Centipede manouever
As a long time veteran of FFXIV, I watch your vids and get my own insight into them. I often think it's silly the claims you test because "obviously that's how that works" but then remember that hey, I have friends that didn't realize asylum had a HoT in addition to healing pot boost. I believe there was one claim that I actually did learn something new from a past video (some hidden mechanic i think?) Keep it up, I love this game and having people like you teach this interactions is good for the health of the game.
Remember kids, read your tooltips and hope squeenix didn't hide more mechanics.
Idk if you covered this already and testing frustrated me, do healer dots snapshot buffs/debuffs kinda like bard’s or are they different?
ilevel sync myth, some things will sneak through the level sync without getting synced because of weird rules. a lot of people claim that old relic weapons, or old savage weapons, have no benefits, because if Dun Scaith syncs to 270, it will sync everything to 270, even a finished Anima Lux weapon. but when you find yourself in Paradigms Breach and equip a finished Resistance weapon… !!!
Another point in the "Holmgang gives knockback resist" party is that it isn't uncommon for a tank to block or dodge a knockback effect, which for reasons I don't fully understand prevents the knockback from happening on certain encounters. How many times a warrior Holmgang'd a knockback and just so happened to roll high on the hit/block chance and not moved, incorrectly validating them.
En til banger video!
I remember back when Holmgang needed a target that your immunity would end if the target died. Hallowed Ground will always be the best immunity ability!
Im not sure if it was discussed in the cover video but did we talk about the interaction of cover with arms length?
DoTs being unable to crit I've heard specifically coming from things like not using Dragoon's Life Surge on Chaotic Spring. The real reason being the guaranteed crit only applies to the initial hit, not all of the DoT ticks.
I for years had the misconception that dots couldn't crit because I was told to not life surge dragoon's dot, I now know its just that because its a separatr check for the crit, the guaranteed crit only applies to the initial hit. Which does feel weird with how dots otherwise DO snapshot buffs (as a genersl rule there's probably some other exception I'm not thinking of)
Also, this is very niche though. If you do the epic of Alexander, your glare has lower potency, so Lily will be a dps gain regardless.
Also, since the buff to Afflatus Misery was directly to its damage and not a trait increasing the damage, already at lv80 Afflatus Misery is refunding you four lv90 glares (instead of 4x the lv80 potency) so it is a straight up damage gain at 80
Re:the Cover tests, it might be interesting to experiment with interactions between Paladin Cover and Blue Mage's spell #61 Avail since thats approximately the opposite with the 'Meat Shield' and 'Meatily Shielded' buffs
Lilies are also a dps gain if they are used to heal someone who would have died, and didn't because of the heal. Maybe not a personal dps gain but dps gain none the less.
me starting a new character in ShB: You need a lvl 15 THM for SMN
what about passage of arms?
I was always told that it's better to use Lilly's to get a Misery cast regardless of that cast being an aoe hit or not. Is that not the case?
Honestly it never even occurred to me whether or not dots could crit.
Old holmgang can be observed and used for some tests (i.e. rescue) in sastasha hard. The last set of mobs before the kraken boss has the 1st mate who summons a ton of adds consistently holmgang a player to pull them into an AoE (this being old holmgang where you need a target and both the user and target are afflicted with holmgang)
I once encountered something weird years ago, and I'm not sure how widespread the info is: Inner Release can negate some knockback effects that Arms Length cannot!
I don't know how widespread this issue is, but I noticed it specifically on Wreath of Snakes EX with the big snake waves. Arms Length use gets you pushed, but Inner Release lets you completely ignore it
This is something I already know can be done, but for the sake of others learning about it, can you demo gap closing on a teammate or enemy rushing across the map and, therefore, pulling off a super gap closer?
The weird and unintuitive origins of Holmgang also serve as an explanation for why it's so janky. Because it has a target and a max range, if your currently selected target is out of range then it will fail, and you'll probably die. Also if the target dies before the duration ends, then Holmgang ends prematurely, and you'll probably die. This latter behavior in particular is extremely annoying and the reason why I hate doing big invuln pulls on Warrior even though they're the best tank at doing that on paper – too many times have I died to my invuln randomly failing or disappearing without me expecting it. This behavior makes sense for a targeted root, but it makes absolutely no sense for a tank invuln.
So it seems Cover works like an inverse version of Sage's Kardia. It's a giver/receiver setup, and works as a hard-set standard. Damage that has crossed the "link" once cannot do so again, and the buff cannot stack and you cannot hold duplicates of the same buff.
I became worried as Cae mentioned that perhaps you need a target for Holmgang to resist knockback, and shows that he tested it on Zenos. What worried me is that Zenos fully resisted Holmgang's binding effect, which in my mind means that Holmgang could still be behaving as though it doesn't have a target. As such I sought out The Fractal Continuum (Hard) and tested that A) The 16-Tonze Swipe (from the Minotaur add) does knockback B) The 16-Tonze Swipe can be resisted with Arm's Length, and C) Binding the Minotaur with Holmgang (successfully) does not cause you to resist the knockback of 16-Tonze Swipe.
This isn't a myth, but I'm also not sure if people are aware of this because I see people die to knockbacks in fights quite often. Gap closers are able to essentially negate knockbacks if timed correctly. This is helpful for when you've already used knockback prevention and it's on cooldown.
Something to test if you feel like some pain: There is this urban legend that pulling a boss from center before it starts casting will gain an extra half to a gcd. This is especially annoying on P2 and P5 of DSR and P5 of TOP but i think pf did it as well on P1S. Personally I think it is 100% variance and dependent on when you get your first gcd off in the phase/ fight and getting the last thing off is always just server tick/ lag/ random variance and has nothing at all to do with pulling the boss from mid and having him jump back before he starts casting.
afflatus misery can technically be a dps loss if you spend 3 lillies during a buff window and then use misery once the buff window ends
People: "DoTs can't crit!"
Me: angry Stormblood BRD main noises
ARR 2.0 just hated warriors. The entire game was really against them back then.
Okay, but what if two paladins are in Thornmarch Ex and cover eachother. Since the mogs give debuffs that amplify damage of the other type, is that transfered as well? It seems like a silly thing, but it'd be nice to know if it takes the damage number and just plops it on the covering paladin, or if it applies effects or works as a redirection of sorts. Would love to see this get an update!
I don't know if this has been answered, but when does MCH's Wildfire snapshot? As it applies, or as it explodes?
Another thing to emphasize about Afflatus Misery is that that it only costs 1 gcd to pump out 4 glares worth of damage. Meaning if you use lilies outside of buffs, then Afflatus Misery under buffs, in 4 gcds you get AM + 3x glare = 7x buffed glare damage instead of just 4x buffed glare.
Lol at the PLD centipede
Absolutely love this series!
This might not be related directly to the content, but i'd really appreciate it if you could stop putting footage of high-level zones, dungeons, etc. in your videos, especially guides. I feel like a lot of people watching these, including me, would not want to get spoilers with no warning by seeing endgame zones and stuff, like how I got spoiled of the last EW zone in this video and EW dungeons in others. Thanks for taking the time to read this 🙂