March 2022 Version Update

Same thing here.
Unless it's something really stupid (spoiler: most of the times it isn't) I don't even bother if I know it's one of Mote's files.
So many includes, stuff is spread across 2000 different, separate files, hidden behind aliases and blah blah.
What a headache lol

I find it amusing how often I see "sorry I died, my lua messed up" these days.

Every publicly available lua I've found was unnecessarily complicated IMO. I don't touch the Motes luas in particular, for the same exact reasons, it's too annoying to track down everything.

I ended up writing my own for my jobs. They don't have as many features, but I can at least look at a single file and figure out what is going on. If I have to make changes quickly, I can do it without trudging through 15 files. The fact a lot of these luas are doing things in the background I know nothing about terrifies me, especially with the frequency of certain events being triggered (e.g. prerender).

I don't play mage jobs, but for my main jobs (PLD MNK NIN DNC), I really only want:

• hotkeys for panacea/holy water/echo drops

• swapping/sets based on haste level

• JA state tracking and equipping relevant sets (e.g. impetus, footwork, climactic, am3, etc)

• loading JA/fc/macc/ws/etc basic sets

• hotkey for swapping to hybrid/dt sets

• weapon rotation hotkeys/macro sets

• some basic job specific stuff (e.g. cancelling shadows on NIN, mb modes for NIN)
  

• monitor buff/debuff gain/loss and print to the console monitored buffs/debuffs
  

The main thing I'm trying to fix with mine are limitations in the macro sets available and the slow speed of equipsets.

NIN in particular was a bit difficult and is what got me looking into writing my own. All the publicly available luas were either too complicated or didn't match the way the job is currently played. I'm admittedly terrible at lua, but I feel a lot safer using code I know what it's doing and that doesn't have 55 hotkey options (yes 55 is arbitrary, but it's way too many IMO and I venture the majority of players have no clue what half of them are in the larger libs). Many of them push too far into automation territory for me, when I just want something a lot more basic that I can see what is happening.

You've fallen into the trap of not understanding how a piece of code works and concluding that rolling your implementation of that code will be inherently better. All of your goals are achievable with motes with minimal code.

Motes isn't perfect, but it can achieve what people want 99% of the time. It's useful because it reduces the amount of code you need to write to achieve your goals and has prescribed ways of implementing behavior that make it easier to support.

I can go through all the libraries and try to make it work or write it in a single, monolithic file that I can edit on the fly if need be.

I have 0 doubt Motes can achieve everything I want, but with excessive bloat, unneeded features, and more effort to make edits/changes. If I felt it was worth the effort to go through and gather an understanding of how all the Motes libs work, then I would, but I just don't see the point in building something simple on top of unnecessarily complex code. It's less about achieving what I want, more about keeping it simple.

pretty sure his point was that there are too many files to dig through to totally understand how the code works, and he'd rather write something simple that he understands start to finish

don't think there was a claim that it was better either(by any global or larger measure), just that he preferred something more basic

edit: derp, beaten, sorry

Let me restate my point of view - You don't need to understand how motes works, only how it should be used.

https://github.com/Kinematics/GearSwap-Jobs/wiki

All of the features lamaman wants can be implemented with basic usage of motes sets and rules.

My point of view might be different than many, but for me those 3 points aren't simple and go more into automation, than autows for example. Autows is simple automation, that drops your performance and is basically only used to let your hand rests a little, when you don't care about playing optimally or using different WSs in right time (best example would be WS trials). Points above are automation that almost always improve your performance vs doing those things manually, because lua will almost always be faster and more precise in controlling that. So things you want to be automated in your lua are imo things that boosts your performance the most out of every automation that exists (the only thing that I can think of that can compete here would be React turning around from gaze attacks or casting erase/na based on attack/spell name).

For tracking JA states, using Impetus or Climactic as an example, the main thing I'm doing is swapping gear pieces relevant to those JAs when they are active and I'm going to WS. I could accomplish this using macro books and equipsets, but it's a little easier and cleaner to do it this way than having multiple macro books. It's not really giving me something the interface doesn't currently allow, just making it cleaner rather than require I change macro books. It's a performance improvement, sure, but one that comes from less user error from selecting the wrong macro book than it does adding something the game doesn't currently support.

The issue with cancelling shadows is the speed you cast Ni spells with FC sets on. It'd be really difficult to swap to FC gear, cast Ni, switch to midcast, then cancel shadows in time. I actually did this manually for a long time when I started playing NIN again, because it's still basic muscle memory from when I tanked in 75 cap era, but it simply got too dicey as my FC gear improved. Less of an issue with Ichi given the longer cast time, but I rarely, if ever, end up casting Ichi. I kindof struggled with doing this in a lua, for reasons you mention, but it ultimately was the difference between it working or not given the way the game is structured and the casting speed.

I don't use react, I know many do, but that pushes into altering game mechanics for me, I draw the line there. I similarly don't add any automatic uses of Holy Water/Panacea/Remedy/etc or automatic JAs (e.g. Presto/Majesty), for the same reason, I feel that's something I should have to manage myself.

better to have your bots separate from your gearswap anyways

Too much FC is problem you can fix by simply dropping some FC.

I thought Ni overwrites ichi and ni. So you don't have to cancel shadows for Ni.

You need to cancel for ichi if you have Ni shadows on, but itchi is much slower.

the real question here is why do we have to cancel shadows in the first place? just make them overwrite each other and stop annoying the playerbase for no reason.

I was assuming that he was saying canceling San for Ni, but I'm not a NIN and don't actually know if San prevents Ni or not.

Balance! If you could infinitely overwrite your shadows you would be invincible!

I can't be confident random poster will understand the sarcasm.

Putting this ridiculous derail back on track with a tip about next months TVR missions, but there could be storyline spoilers so spoiler tags:

still waiting for one of these missions to use a cactuar needle

Or need a regain feather

so definitely go out and get your spectral crimsons now, this ***sucks and it will suck even more when more people become aware of it assuming the quest description isnt a red herring and they dont add any additional sources.

the other two arent as bad but depending on how many people (or bots) end up going out to farm them to try to make a quick buck or something you could get cockblocked. for the luminicloth there's 3 ghosts in the whole room, and most of the kuftal ghosts are still on pretty long respawn timers.

Lufaise is way better for farming Spectral Crimson than Misareaux, btw. More pops, higher level fomor, seems to be a significantly higher drop rate. I killed several sets of pops in Misareaux with no drops, maybe 0/4 total from the applicable jobs. Then went over to Lufaise (Blueblade Fell area) and went 4/4. This was with TH8~9. (EDIT: 4/5 now, so I guess it's not 100%... was wondering for a minute there)

Thanks for the heads up everyone, I'm happy to have the stuff now and not have to deal with it post-update if it turns out to be required.

I'm 0/3, and ffxidb lists it at ~10%, so /shrug.

yeah you got lucky, it took me over a dozen kills at blueblade fell to get 1.

I managed to get a few to drop in Lufaise w/o TH near the falls. The timing is what sucks, you only have a time window of maybe 3-4 spawns to kill before you have to wait for night again.

It's gonna be a mess getting these when the patch goes live and especially when everyone ignoring TVR decides to do it. I'd hope or imagine that they add more ways to obtain these when it goes live.

Oof. Sounds like I did get a little lucky, and perhaps you were unusually unlucky. FFXIDB stats look a little suspect, but they list the Lufaise Fomor Bard as 10.7% with zero TH, 16.7% with TH2. FFXIDB also shows Fomor PLD and RDM at above 30% drop rate with TH3+, which most people should have access to these days on any job (DM augs, ammo, belt, /THF if necessary, etc). And those FFXIDB stats include the entire zone, meaning both the pops near Blueblade Fell (the higher level ones with presumably higher drop rate), and the ones that can pop down by G-9/G-10. So real rate on the high level mobs is prob realistically no worse than 1/3 average with TH3+. Not THAT bad of a drop rate, but if you're gonna farm this it's definitely worth bringing some TH.

Spawns being so limited at night is the more annoying part, and the Fomor mobs (PLD RDM BRD) that drop the Spectral Crimson don't always pop, might be other jobs taking up one of those valuable 3-4 pops per night... So yeah, maybe worth farming now in anticipation, especially if you're on a higher population server.

Keep in mind that the lower level fomors in Lufaise can't be any of the jobs that drop the Spectral Goldenrod, so that wouldn't affect it.

Given the drop rates and sample sizes given in ffxidb, the Lufaise Fomor drop rate is most likely in the Uncommon drop bracket, which is 10% with TH0, 18% with TH4, and 22.5% with TH8.

The lower level Misareaux ones have even smaller sample rates on ffxidb, but they're probably either also in the Uncommon bracket, or in the Rare bracket, one step down.

Oh, didn't know that and maybe that means FFXIDB is wrong. Cause the maps there show Fomor PLD and BRD at both locations (and only shows RDM at the SW point, but I definitely killed some RDM near Blueblade Fell). I'd take FFXIDB with a grain of salt anyway, but point remains that it doesn't seem to be an awful drop rate with TH3+... but very limited mobs is a pain in the ***.

That's Spectral Crimson... what about the Spectral Goldenrod? Haunts (lv 63-66) in Kuftal drop that at not a great rate, but it apparently also drops from Srei Ap (lv 71-76) in Uleguerand at around K-7, BGwiki says there are 3 spawns. I couldn't find those though - are they only in the underground tunnel network (near HP#3 for this one)? Or only pop at night?

You have to go south east from HP#3 to exit the tunnels. They're over HP#3, on the outside.
I killed about 15 of them and got 0 drops.
I haven't try Kuftal yet.

Kuftal has like 7 Haunts ID possible pops.
Got Spectral Goldenrod on first kill, killed 15 more but zero drops.
All kills were with TH8, some with TH9

FFXIDB reports Luminicloth dropping from old area zones, like Abyssea etc, alas with a low drop rate of 1-2%.

Can anybody confirm this? The Horrific Boots in Outer Ra'kaznar are annoying to get to (it takes a while to walk there!) and they spam Perdition which is insta-death.