[UPDATE][Read description] FFXIV Dawntrail Benchmark Thoughts and Speculation 

UPDATE, READ!: They are releasing a second benchmark. Please try it once they have done so, especially if you do not like the rework. This may clear up some of the issues you felt with how your character looks now. na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/d893f46b1f506a64b485295d29cf949ef43bf580

Picto is right next to your player character. In front of PLD and behind SGE

The "character lighting" setting in game is cranked to the maximum in the benchmark. This is causing weird appearance issues. Also, the lighting in the character creation environments has always been terrible and the shadows on the faces are just as bad, it's probably not ideal to consider the character creator appearance as gospel. My character in the character creator, the initial closeup on the boat, and the appearance later in the benchmark are extremely different and might as well be three different people. I am going to use the free fantasia to darken my skin a few shades as I had the most pale possible and it doesn't look as good in direct light with the new system. Aside from that, there are some differences but I will get used to them over time. This is the third MMO I have been playing when a character graphics remodel took place and all of them required time to get used to and that is normal. Yes, the characters look different, because they are. They can't both be different and the same at the same time. Edit: Oh and Picto is two people to the left of you next to the paladin and behind the sage in the end scene.

So glad they're bringing in Moogle Element as a damage type. Long overdue.

Please, that ninja skill is not Hellfrog Medium. It's Hellfrog Large.

It's sooo strange to see your character without his shades... That tropical sun has to be brutal. x_x (But ty for the breakdown! The missing SMN pet makes me curious to know how much they have omitted/changed to save some surprises, a la Marvel trailers or if just a technical reason it wasn't displayed).

The pictomancer at the end is standing next to your character, to his right.

The SMN one looks more like Painflare 2 / Fester 2 to me, since those two OGCDs also have electrical visuals and a relatively similar animation, just more tame. It would also make sense, since we've had those 2 skills with no improvement for many years at this point. About RDM, knowing the thorns and roses effects are currently tied to Resolution (melee finisher), it must be tied to the melee part of RDM rather than the magic one, so I have two theories: 1 - They removed/changed Manafication and turned it into that skill, so you'd do Embolden > New Skill that does damange and gives you mana for the melee combo > melee combo. 2 - It's Contre Sixte 2.

cool observations! Really looking forward to learning more asap....dunno if i can stand the wait!

always great to hear your thoughts!! as someone who does not have the brainpower to see what all the jobs are doing and figure out whats going on, i very much enjoyed having someone else walk me through it and explain their thoughts lol personally, i was super tired when the benchmark first released, so i just went into it without bothering to look at my current wol. my only thoughts were "wow!!! thats just my wol but in better graphics!!! shes so pretty :)". i was completely happy with it and really couldnt notice any changes to her other than,,, just being in higher quality. it was only when i woke up the next day and bothered to take some comparison screenshots and look side by side did i notice any major difference - the biggest one for me being that her lips no longer have such a defined shape (seems to be a problem in general). the more i looked at the two comparisons, the more i could feel some measure of disappointment set in for me - but again, i didnt feel that way at all the first time, so i think (for me personally) its just a sorta.... whiplash that i need some time to get over. aspects of my wol's face that i never consciously considered are suddenly prominent to me bc theyre different in this new version. also, the character creator definitely looks worse in comparison to the benchmark itself.

Best breakdown of the skills I've seen so far. I was a little bummed to see my character in the new graphics and thought I might change some things, but once I ran the benchmark, they looked like themselves much more, so I think I'm good.

for reaper i believe the move that got shown is an ogcd follow up to communio just like we get an ogcd follow up after two gcds in enshroud

WESK: everyone is calling PLD’s new move AOE atonement. ME: wait what? That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Everyone I’ve heard talked about it has called it AOE Requiescat.

For dragoon, it’d be cool if on the final hit of the 5 part combo, instead of doing an empowered wheeling thrust or fang and claw, it did either the Nidhogg Uppercut like in the video or a Hresvelgar attack on the other combo

I guess it depends for me but that dragoon ability build up in some very quick frames after the smoke clears up from gnb's ability to give you your slight blue aura dragoons used to have before endwalker and than instantly fade into red and kind of invoke the glow that estinien has on his weapon to invoke nidhogg as we do that new attack and it seems like the red glow lingers on the spear afterwards so might be a new way to go into life windows maybe but it does look like we might lose our red aura around us and go more into the red aura weapons maybe idk

Oh hecc. I didn't even think of doing a recording with OBS. That's a great tip. I was just doing screenshots but it's not really enough.

Appreciate the breakdown. Doing it at gamespeed I couldn't keep track of all the chaos, so having it slowed down and repeated at me is nice.

Some good stuff here. But I'd like to attach some additional information that might change your theory You can tell the difference between GCD and oGCD by some slight fx around the character. If you see a yellow/golden fx puff, it's a GCD, and if you see blue, it's an oGCD. This is extremely noticeable on the lalafell GNB at the start of the sequence. 3:35 Dragoon - I believe this skill is an oGCD. It's really hard to see because the blue fx is mostly blocked by the GNB explosions, but there are freeze frames at 3:45 where you can see the dissipation of the oGCD fx. I also don't think it's our "enter burst" moment, since the character does not receive any aura type fx to suggest buffed/enhanced state. My initial thought, because DRG is receiving a rework, is that this could be a reworked Wrymwind Thrust. However, because of the use of the Stardiver effects, I think it's just a reworked Stardiver. 4:09 I think you can see the GCD fx on Monk, for the Dragon effect skill, so I believe the dragon and tiger attacks are both GCDs. However, your comparison of the animations with the chakra skill do make me question this. 5:25 RDM is using an oGCD (also note, that MCH in the background just used DRILL. So theories suggesting the later Chainsaw attack as a Drill upgrade seem incorrect. It was my thought too, since the effects surrounding it appear similar) 5:28 SAM is using an oGCD. So cannot be Ogi. Perhaps it's an oGCD between Ogi's or an oGCD used after Midare. 6:20 the sound effects for AST going off here sounds very similar to Divination? 7:03 To me, WHM appears to instant cast that skill - like it's a lilly skill. We could be missing the start of the animation though 7:20 regarding DRK. This is for sure, the most intriguing to me as well. Every skill we see is a GCD, after Bloodspiller. Maybe DRK gets a combo like GNB now? Absolutely badass looking though. 8:15 This doesn't look like the character is casting, so I don't believe it's a Communio II. Unless they remove the casting option from it in Dawntrail. The animation is similar to the animation your character makes when casting Gluttony to me. So I wonder if we're getting an Enshroud Gluttony type skill, maybe an extension to the combo we can do in enshroud? Either way, it looks good.

Great thoughts Wesk! Always love to hear em. 😃 Also I have to tell you this but We have the exact same CPU & GPU in our PC’s! I even scored about exactly the same as you too lol 😂

Who the fuck looked at Paladin and said "that's totally atonement!"

I remember reading somewhere that the seeming emphasis on upgrading aoe moves means raids and harder content will focus on more than just dealing with one boss, like ads or something else. Thoughts on that?

With the orange effect of bloodwhetting active when vengeance 2 goes off, i'm wondering if they're going to give all the 30% mit abilites for tanks activate their short cooldown as a bonus.

My theory on samurai: There are the three colors of the three iaijutsu mixed in. Therefore, this is the new shoha 2. It could be a straight upgrade without any new mechanics. However, another possibility: your shoha stacks work just like your sen gauge. Each shoha stack has a color based on what iaijutsu was used to create it. If you have all three shoha colors, you can do that super move. Now, that would be terrible rotation wise due to use tenka goken in boss or midare in pulls... unless you can contribute to it with, wait for it, hagakure. You also wouldn't even need to get rid of the old shoha 2, because that's what would happen if you didn't get all three colors of shoha stacks but instead spent any three shoha. Sounds complicated, but for level 100 currency melee, sounds about right.

1:59 IMO a very balanced take on the changes. Also Nidhogg uppercut. . . NIDHOGG UPPERCUT.

oooh, i didn't think about the possibility of that being a medica 3. i don't hate the idea

Alright, now what do you think about the Hrothgal? If you want, you can make a video about it, would love to see it.

There is something very interesting : most (if not all ?) suggested new attacks seem to be AoEs... Do they intend to show them because they aren't the "new" skills that we mostly use since instances are usually against 1 enemy ? Or do they intend to reduce actions' bloat by having more actions be used in both multitarget scenario and single target ?

Honestly, as a Hrothgar player? I am SUPER happy with the upgrades we're getting to our appearance. We actually have visible fur on our body now instead of it just looking like we've been shaving most of our body XD I'm very curious to see what Summoner is getting for new spells and abilities. Hopefully I'll be caught up for Dawntrail's release-currently in post-Stormblood at the moment. I remember seeing people mention we were meant to get Carbuncle glams of Shiva, Ramuh and I think Leviathan ages ago but that never happened so it would be interesting if we get another summon. I wonder how that would affect our rotations...

Curious if they bring back the skin-chain and Magic Burst system from Closed Beta and from FF11

i think the chainsaw ability from MCH is a Drill upgrade, the way the skill goes is very similar to drill with the slowdown at the end of the animation.

The word dragon comes from the Latin Draco which also meant Snake. Dragons in greek mythology are also very snakelike

Dead eyes, and removed; miqote fangs, moles, certain make up, au ra eye glow and scales neck texture gap etc. everything else, textures of clothes, armor, backgrounds, foliage as such looks excellent.

As a WAR main I am underwhelmed by having an upgrade to a mitigation that only shines in trash packs, but at the same time this means I probably got more interesting stuff to look forward to than other classes.

Am I going insane or did that viper aura attack break the posture of the boss like in ffxvi?

Unfortunately I can't get the benchmarks character creator to save character creation data, and I think I might be the only having this issues... But if this happened in previous benchmarks, which one? I've NEVER ran into this issue before with previous benchmark trailers, though I did skip out on the Endwalker one due to personal reasons and gripes with the game. And the Endwalker media tour leaks for Dark Knight basically killed any hope that Dark Knight would get a decent rework in Endwalker onward... but I digress...

Think they will release a new Benchmark with the Pictomancer as the main with any improvement tweaks done?

Ok I'm about to type too many words about why I think that might not be Toxikon III, let's go! Or at least why it might not be a direct upgrade to Toxikon II. The first reason is that we don't see any of the basic healer DPS buttons get upgrades; we see Phlegma III, Dosis III, Fall Malefic, Glare III, and I think Broil IV. This wouldn't be a problem in itself since Toxikon isn't a basic DPS button and could get an upgrade regardless, but SGE is currently balanced so that Toxikon II isn't a gain over Dosis III in single target. They could be changing the way it works so that it's a gain after a potency buff with Toxikon III, but this element is worth considering. I don't personally see them wanting to encourage more Addersting farming for the deeps. It's also possible that they simply didn't have the upgraded healer DPS effects ready for the benchmark and we'll see them in the job actions trailer. Another reason why it might not be an upgrade is just an aesthetic observation; Addersting stacks are cute pinkish diamonds which corresponds to the purple-pinkish hues going on in the Toxikon II vfx, while this new animation is all blue all day. They could be ditching the visual consistency, or they could be updating the job gauge after the upgrade (which I personally don't see happening), but yeah there's that. And the final reason is that the actual sage's animation isn't the same as that of Toxikon I or II. Sure, it could just be a new animation like the upgrade from Phlegma II to III, but it's worth considering. It honestly reminds me of the speedy startup animation to Krasis, which is an oGCD. My baseless speculation right now is that it could be a separate DPS button, maybe unrelated to Addersting, that you can weave. Or it could maybe be a separate Toxikon III button that uses Addersting stacks but more optimized for AOE damage? But of course the most likely thing, and the safe bet, is that we'll see upgraded healer buttons in the job action trailer, and this upgrade to Toxikon II will be equivalent single target potency to Dosis IV. But who knows!

my bun girl has a black nose and duck lips in the benchmark! Ok the duck lips I can "kind of" fix with fanta .. but the black nose seems there to stay and I hate it! Ya know how in ARR Wedge wipes his nose with grease all over his hands and it turns his nose black? Yeah that's my bun girl, ALL-THE-TIME. As for the actual Benchmark, I am really glad they did this because it gives us a chance to test out our pc and the new character refreshes. But I am gonna have to wait for someone to do a video on how to manipulate the new settings as my computer (despite exceeding the minimum as listed on the website), looks terrible and got a lousy score.

Anyone tried with dxvk 2.3.1 to see if they get a higher score and smoother fps? Especially if they are using a GPU like Arc.

Wished there was a XeSS option for those using an Intel Arc GPU instead having to use AMD FSR.

Finally... Forbidden Chakra update

My current settings rolled m around 18.5. Absolute Cockdiesel Max settings still landed me around 17.5k. Feels pretty okay.

I keep seeing people saying that Sage is using toxicon 3, which can't be true since toxicon is pink purple in colour. It looks more like an OGCD than anything else.

I love the graphics up date, hate that they've taken the hellsguard nose smudge with no recourse.

HELL YEA TIGER DROP!

I'm not really sure why you say it'll be hard for Yoshida to give everyone a free fantasia. The devs aready do that, giving you one for finishing 2.0. It's as simple as giving it as the reward for the first quest in DT, or failing that, setting up an NPC in a very obvious place with a quick quest to the same effect. That way they can remove that NPC once they deem it has served it's purpose

I already miss my WoL's cheekbones. It's not just that I'm used to it - I customized it that way deliberately. There is a forum thread about why faces are looking overexposed and too soft. It is now on the 2nd page and is titled "Skin Translucency is overtuned". It appears this might be something they could adjust if people ask? Anyway, if this bothers you go check it out there. I'd gladly trade ear translucency on my Elezen to get his original face back in Endwalker.

Hope one day reaper is as hard as ninja with multiple combo strings like SAM and 2 stacks on communio

I hope the upgraded Vengeance is called revengeance.

This is why ignored every benchmark speculation vid. I knew you'd come through clutch. Can't wait till it comes out, already got it preordered. Currently taking a break from Eorzea to dive into hell but your content keeps excited about ffxiv. Oh and i fixed the blm issue i had thanks to your advice lol.

Thanks for the balanced coverage, Wesk!

I’m a NIN main and I screamed when I saw Hellfrog Large. Haha. I can’t wait to learn more.

As an AuRa player, I’m SO excited for the graphical update 🥳

New Wesk is looking a little Jaundiced

Seeing your character without sunglasses feels so wrong

Maybe I just haven’t played the game long enough as a Scholar. But I don’t see the benefit of AOE chain stratagem. The only time I ever use it is during boss fights so unless we’re gonna be fighting more duo bosses, I don’t understand why they choose AOE chain.

I think my only issue with this is the contest tbh, ik the benchmark is only for PC testing mostly so its pointless to do so for console since their already optimized for it, but that also means console players arent able to enter and get the chance to win any rewards for the contest. Everyone doesnt own a stable or top-notched pc whether affordability or just preference, it just feels a bit unfair for console players to not be able to participate is all

I'm one of the people who think that the Summoner attack could be an upgraded Tri-Disaster without an elemental attunement.

I wrote this in several places but the character creator needs a rework. The new creator for DT has upgraded character models, but it doesn't have upgraded lighting and they were always bad environments, which are also identical to prior expacs. Since these things suddenly matter much more with the rework than they did before, a lot of players are panicking thinking they've been done dirty by the rework when it's just showcasing how bad the creator tools are. Yes, there are also some actual model changes too, with the lips and eyes and so on - and you either like them or you don't, but I think the majority of the complaints about "dead eyes" and "weird skin" are the creator's fault.

hi mr alber

hellfrog medium 2 no hellfrog large

maybe it's because i'm a lalafell and can't picture my character possibly looking "worse" in some people's opinions since people have always seemed to hate how they look except the people who actually play them, i understand people who play the "prettier" races care a lot about these changes but i have a feeling that anyone who hated lalafells before aren't going to suddenly change their opinion of them either.

no need obs. run in window mode. single target with aoe falloff pls.

Only person whose opinions are valid and worth entertaining.

Shadows on character are so soft now. Lighting makes all the difference in whether your character looks like a guy or a wax doll. And yeah, some features (especially the nose, in my case) are very noticeably different. Like how you put it, technologically it's an improvement but aesthetically it's kinda more of a sidegrade. I've been seeing just as many people in love with their character's glow up as I have the opposite. Personally I think my character came out just fine, thankfully. Probably won't even use the Fanta.

Personally I can't stand to look at my older character anymore. The difference in fidelity is so obvious, I can't unsee her current blocky lips, the jaggies on the jawline, the hair that falls over her face as one pixelly chunk...could go on, but yeah. It hasn't bothered me until the benchmark has given me a clear point of comparison lol. Almost makes me want to just stop playing until DT.

Bruh wait, if that replaces the animation for communio it’s a downgrade.

Lip shape is really bad on nearly every character you arnt alone.

So far I do not like how the graphic update makes the characters look, the original character used in the video (not his) looks like he got a bad nose job or something. SERIOUSLY WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? not looking forward to this.

They really really ruined fem Aura mouths

Personally, I was quite disappointed with the new character creator as it completely changed the appearance of a character that I have grown attached to, which is the whole point of having your own customizeable character. And I frankly don't like the new aesthetic, it gives me disney vibes. I believe it's possible to keep the original facial features while upgrading the graphics to the same level of quality of the benchmark. Taking the female aura face 3 lips and nose for example (not my WoL for clarification), there was absolutely no reason to make the lips flatter, rounded out cupids bow, and underline the lipstick, or change the nose from a "triangular" shape to a generic button nose. Also the pupils are a lot bigger and irises are smaller, robbing the female aura of their recognizable intense eyes. This is just one example, but I feel like the whole vibe just changed too much in general with most races, when we have had years to grow attached to the appearance of our characters. It's not something to get used to imo. But I still have hope that they'll take the feedback on forums into account for further development.

who the F plays an MMO for the graphics... im really starting to hate modern gaming

I’ve seen that Sam animation 2 years ago in mod video. That’s kinda interesting to see them take even attack animations from mods. Maybe they’ll fix that dumbass drk running animation