Controller Vs. Keyboard, LFG...

Just an example about capping haste:
The only March+ instruments were Gjallarhorn, Iron Ram Horn or Faerie Piccolo, all +2. Bard singing skills are all C, so 225 (450 combo). AMar skill cap is unknown, but lets presume a 75 bard can hit it with ease. The skill cap for VMar is suspected to be over 600; no ones ever tested it probably because when it mattered they were unable to hit it, and with higher skillcaps, everyone can hit it without effort.

Heres the absolute singing and wind skill available at before 2008, listed in standard slot order (left to right, top to bottom)
Chanter's Staff Sing+4
Gjallarhorn Sing+10 Wind+10
Marduk's Tiara Sing+7
Wind Torque Wind+7
Musical Earring Wind+5
Singing Earring Sing+3
Minstrel's Coat Wind+3
Chl. Cuffs +1 Sing+10
Nereid Ring Wind+3
Nereid Ring Wind+3
Astute Cape Sing+5
Marching Belt Wind+3
Chl. Cannions +1 Wind+8
Aoide's Pumps Sing+3 (2008 added Oracle's Pigaches Wind+5)
Merits Sing+16 Wind+16 (I think this is accurate for the end of 2007)
Max combined skill should be 450+118 = 568 if I have this right.


AMar with +2 instrument grants 12.6% haste
VMar with +2 instrument grants 19.04% haste at cap, but we know even BIS is not hitting the > 600 cap, so its something under 19.04.

In my digging for the numbers, I found the JP wiki has them, and I also discovered that in Feb 2017 patch, SE boosted march's numbers. So that 12.6 and 19.04 are invalid.

Back in 2007, with 568 skill and March+2, you were looking at
AMar 9.375% (JP wiki doesnt have tier numbers, presumed to hit cap at 75)
VMar 12.012% Haste
Haste spell 15%

Thats a total of 36.387% Haste. Outside of Soul Voice, you were not capping haste.

Setting aside /equip hands "carmine Fin. Gauntlets +1" etc, because that's not practical for full sets of gear...

You cannot equip two equipsets without a 1 second gap between them, period. It doesn't matter how many packets the game can or cannot receive, your lag, or how many buttons you press/macros you have.

If you have a macro /equipset 24, and another macro /ws "Savage Blade" -> /equipset 25, and you press the first one then immediately press the second one, you will get an error and stay in equipset 24.

If you have a macro /equipset 24, a macro with /ws "savage blade" <t>, and a third macro /equipset 25, and you press the three of them in a row, without a second between the first and third macros, you will get an error and stay in equipset 24.

You cannot, in any way that I'm aware of, equip 2 equipsets without waiting a second between them.

This affects all the things I said above.
-When making macros, all actions that involve an equipset must be at least 1 second apart from each other
-When hitting macros, if you just finished a previous macro, you must (in your head) wait 1 second after the last /equipset in THAT macro finished to hit another macro (if the new one opens with an /equipset)
-If there are actions which take place in < 1 second, you can't do an equip BEFORE and AFTER that action. This is snapshot/rapid shot, like my example, but also FC sets for things like Dia, Flash, and loads of other quick casting spells like BLU spells and certain BRD songs
-You will ALWAYS be sitting in any equipset you use in combat for at least 1 second. There's literally no way to equip another equipset faster than that. You can put on individual pieces if you want, like /equipset 25 -> /equip body "Mousai Manteel +1", but you cannot change your entire set of 16 pieces of gear more than once/second

I'd love for someone to tell me I'm wrong here but I'm extremely confident that all of the above is true.

I don't know how long it takes for GS to change gear, but I've watched plenty of people's streams and videos with equipviewer on so I'm confident in saying it's < 1 second per set. In addition to that, even if it is > 1 second, because of lag or packets or whatever, you aren't punished (being in the wrong set) if you hit the macro too fast or too slow. You don't have to WAIT for your equipset to finish equipping before you can do anything else. If you hit the wrong macro, say you're trying to hit Cure IV but you hit SB (and don't have enough TP) then your character will be doing /equipset 25 /ws "Savage Blade" <wait 1> /equipset 33. You can't just slam your cure macro because if you do, your FC/cure potency equipsets will error out. You can time it between the two but it's pretty tricky and TBH you're most likely to *** up the timing so it's probably best to wait. If you hit a WS but don't have enough TP, same thing...you have to wait the 2 seconds for your macro to finish failing before you can try again, otherwise when you hit it again, you'll get an error and WS in your TP set. This is not true for GS users.

If you have short spells you can make macros like:
/equipset FC <wait 1>
/ma "Carnage Elegy" <t>
/equipset macc <wait 2>
/equipset engaged

But then you introduce a second delay before the action begins, meaning you're slower than a GS user.

You can also use a half-FC set or only equip a few pieces of FC gear...there are some workarounds but none of them are as good as GS, all have at least one sacrifice, some have many, and again...after that elegy is finished, you have to wait a second before doing any macro that has /equipset as the first action, or you will error out and not equip your set.

This is also true for things like DRG jumps and DNC steps. If you want to do one before you do a WS, which is fairly common, you either have to wait a second, use a set that involves 5(6 if you do multiple macros) or fewer pieces, or you can't use a specific set for that action. In all cases, you need to personally time the actions so that they take place with 1s between them (unless you make Box step -> wait 1 -> WS macros for every WS you could conceivably want to do this for).

I was not aware that you can equip sets from the menu so I would soften my criticism of controller play, though it's still extremely clunky, I guess it is technically possible? Still seems like a disadvantage to me though, especially considering the "space, up, enter" advantage KB has. I'll admit it's not as big of an advantage as I originally thought, though still think it's an easy point for KB.

Just because the meta shifts to the path of least resistance doesn't mean all other paths are invalid. The foundation is still the same and nothing has changed but the mindset.

Invalid? No, but I think it's a reasonable assertion. The overall approach has changed pretty drastically in terms of pace and the difference in stats between gear has gotten much larger.

In 2005, there was absolutely nothing wrong with taking 5 seconds to react to something or swap your gear around, because you were literally only doing like 1-2 things per minute. The opportunity cost of being in the wrong gear at a given point in time was also much lower, because the difference between gear was like +5 attack here, +3 defense there, etc. Not like today where attacking something in your WS set gives you like half as much TP as your TP set.

As an example, I remember playing WHM, I would often rest in the middle of endgame fights to recover some MP! Like literally people fighting HNMs and stuff, and I just take a knee for 20-30 seconds as the only healer. Can you imagine doing that in modern endgame? People would die!

The game is much faster now, and thus I think you stand to lose a lot more by swapping gear inefficiently.

So yes, even using the EXACT same strategies as before, it's still different now just because of the speed. And speed is very central to this keyboard vs controller debate and gearswapping debate.

So it's funny that you brought this up because in GS i still frequently need to wait a portion of a second if I want to use building flourish or box step before WSs or else it's not in the correct gear. I usually do things like box step > dia 3 or box step > building flourish > a spell if there is one that can be cast that will be useful because it will get the potency correct even if it messes up the precast. But on DRG it doesn't seem to matter unless im just not waiting for the jump animations to go off at all. By the time you see your tp return, you are good to go. Since you can't WS until the tp comes in if that's what you're using it for, it has a small built in wait. In reality I'm probably just not waiting at all for the DNC JAs.

You can technically side step the building flourish by making it's set your WS set. Chances are about 99% I'm using it on Savage Blade or a WS that wouldn't hurt to be in my Savage Blade WS set. I don't know that I would want to reduce my box step to not have max accuracy since the things I use it against might actually evade it.

If you want to understand the differences, I would suggest you try actually playing with equipset and no GS for a couple hours on something like EP mobs or something. If you play at your normal GS pace I could all but guarantee that you'll get errors on a regular basis.

Same is probably true for things like WHM and their ilk. You really have to get a feel for the timing of your spells and not get too ahead of yourself or you'll *** yourself over. Same thing with BLM, SCH when nuking. You have to wait a second after idle set goes back on before doing your next nuke. If FC doesn't swap in because you clicked too fast, you're nuking in your idle set (or you have to cancel it)

My point was about the gameplay. I don't consider gear a factor because nothing about gear is allowing you to macro/menu accurately or efficiently, it's not reminding you to refresh your buffs/debuffs, position your character, ect.



I agree that KB is a far better choice for input speed than controller, but this is my stop. It's my opinion that XI still has quite a bit of headroom before it slides into the 'keyboard mandatory' column.

Don't forget fatigue as well. I find I am much more "tired" playing on kb and mouse than on controller. Sit back in a chair, and for longer fights, I am pretty relaxed. Really great for doing things like spamming token points in NI for example.

I have also had no problem tanking Dynamis on RUN (back when we did it).

Dear god, the mouse controls. KB players can probably get by just fine if they have a numpad, but damn.. that ***is tragic.

Gear is part of the reason why the game is faster. Modern gear that is chock full of haste, store tp, multiattack is part of the reason why melee can ws every 5 seconds, which contributes to the game being faster.

I still have over 100 equipsets from when I used to play that way. It's all from dyna d era and still uses ambu gear. One of the reasons I don't use equipsets anymore is that i have 11 ambu capes for RDM, and more than 8 RUN and RNG capes. I could minimize the RUN and RNG capes to 8 or less to fit in wardrobes but there is only 1 RDM cape that I would be willing to part with now that Primes exist since they are both DEX+WSD capes. And I made that DEX+WSD cape by converting my DEX+Crit cape that I used for CDC and evisceration because I don't think it's worth the inventory slot and they can just use the DEX+WSD cape.

I definitely see your argument for cheating or at least performance enhancing. Just for the extra fatigue of playing with the restrictions you're reminding about is enough. Obviously I'm not going back because it's a game and I'm trying to have fun, and that definitely gets in the way of fun for me.

Oversimplification but man is defined by being able to use tools, making tasks easier. Equipsets and gearswap are both tools that make playing FFXI easier.

Most people are going to use the better tool given the choice, and gearswap is better in every way. Given an abacus or a calculator, you pick the latter. But when the calculator also microwaves your dinner while it does math for you, it has become something else entirely.

The problem with gearswap is that it has potential to do so much more than just change gear, which is why people can rightfully label it cheating. However, I think of it more like a rotary phone versus a smart phone, an evolution of functions combined into something new.

I can get really proficient at dialing a number with the old phone, or I can press one button and have the new one speed dial for me. I may never use the camera or the web browser or anything else, but I'm not going to stop using the smart phone because it has those things available, and in the case of both gearswap and the phone, extra functions are not required to get the basic capabilities.

For controller and keyboard, I don't think the same distinction exists. Both can be enhanced beyond their basic functions, and it is ultimately a matter of preference for one over the other.

I think someone misinformed you about how equipsets work or something happened when you changed augments.

I have all of my capes for both of my characters in the exact same wardrobe and they all swap in properly using /equipset. If you pick the cape you want from the UI, it will work regardless of the wardrobe it's in or the amount of the same-name cape you have in that wardrobe.

There are issues sometimes if you move, say, all your capes from wardrobe 4 to 8, and I think there are issues when you change the augments on a cape. Fixing these issues just involves re-clicking the cape in all the sets it's in.

Not that I'm here to convince you or anyone else to swap back to equipsets, I'm just clearing the air that they do work with multiple capes, including multiple capes in the same wardrobe. You could have 15 RDM capes and it would not be a problem for equipsets.

It is an oversimplification. First because equipsets require very little additional learning to use versus gearswap if you're writing your own. Over time, i think the cost is absolutely worth it, but that's a personal decision and even though i see this as acceptable QoL, it really is changing how we play the game and setting a bar that is much higher for some than others.

For example, with Building Flourish I figured out how I wanted to set it up this morning so that it would hold the set I defined for generic WSing in the JA aftercast and update my melee group with it. That way it doesn't change at all between JA activation and WS and so I don't use a JA that is supposed to increase damage and manages to decrease it by being in the wrong set. To do the same thing in equipset you just tell it to equip equipset in your building flourish macro and then you can jam your WS button back to back. It isn't going to read the equipset you have in your WS set unless you take too long because of the 1 second delay that has been discussed. I wouldn't have been able to figure all of this out a year ago because learning programming languages is a constant process that accelerates when faced with new problems, which I personally enjoy. I could have done the same thing in equipsets 5+ years ago if I had this conversation with Male to prompt me to 'fix' the issue I had with building flourish that other people observed as well.

And just to add to the extra level of complexity that GS requires, the fix i put it is perfect for how I use building flourish /DNC, but it would be a hinderance if I was playing DNC main because sometimes you want to float a flourish ahead of a fight so you can do them back to back. That would require a different work around and significantly more specificity and knowledge than doing it in equipsets.

And even further, I'll probably go back and make a switch or conditional based on what gain-stat i have active to determine what the WS set I'm defining for building flourish once I have Imperator everywhere.


Well that's good because I definitely moved things around and was changing augments and assumed that it was being in the same wardrobe that was breaking it. My fix was to put them all in different wardrobes and thus reupdate them in the equipsets through the UI so again placebo fun. A lot of people in my LS basically said that ambu capes were the wardrobe tax that SE put out to get you to buy all 4 wardrobes and that was their justification for why people needed GS.

FWIW, I completely disagree with the notion that keyboard is inherently faster than controller.

For someone with not much experience, and the associated muscle memory, of using a controller of course it will be slower.

For someone with that muscle memory, a controller is always going to be faster.

No one using controller actually looks at the menu to see what they're doing, they go by muscle memory. That is why order of spells/abilities and placement of items in the menu matters so much, any change will throw you off.

Pressing a 3-5 button combination on a controller to do what you want is no different than typing 3-10 letters to accomplish the same goal, and that is generous and assumes at least some proficiency in typing.