High-end raid ideas from a first-timer in FFXIV
High-end raid ideas from a first-timer in FFXIV
This is probably better posted on a dedicated forum for the game, but I'm not a member of any...
I've been playing for somewhat over 2 years. Up to about 2 weeks ago, I was happy enough just doing normal/hard mode stuff. Then my game wife roped me in to help out with her fc and fill up the party. It started easy enough. The focus then was to farm HW EX mounts unsync. Then it escalated to more current content. Lakshmi EX and Susano EX melted pretty fast. I had done Susano EX once before, and it seemed a lot easier this time around. Gear has improved a lot since it came out which I think is a large contributor in itself. Byakko EX took a little learning but wasn't difficult. Tsukuyomi EX turned it up a notch again but we got through.
The challenge really started with Suzaku EX. This took several hours of an evening/night but we got a clear eventually. Even now, I can't guarantee I'll make it through the phoenix/rune phase without getting hit, but am managing to keep deaths to a minimum. Since I was hanging around with the fc so much, I switched and joined them at that point. My existing fc was IRL friends and they're more into RP which I'm not really interested in.
Last night, they asked if I wanted to do Suzaku EX again, no thanks. Once was enough. Fortunately it was a busy and laid back enough fc there wasn't a shortage of people to do it at the time. When they were done with that, I was asked to join O9S. As there was talk about doing this before, I had looked up a guide on youtube previously for a taste, but didn't go in depth. Looked like a lot of pain, and I wasn't sure I could be bothered to learn that. I joined anyway. My first Savage level encounter... I was almost going in blind. I don't know what level of experience others had, but I was certainly the noob on this run. They tried to describe mechanics to me, but it was more confusing than the video guide I saw before so we moved onto learning by doing. There were a lot of wipes, but over time I got used to the mechanics, and once they were down, it wasn't that bad. Of course, people are people and will make mistakes. It was late, people were tiered. I felt myself losing concentration and started to make more mistakes too... we hit enrage a couple of times but failed to kill in time. Felt like we were running out of time, we were getting worse not better at this point with little mistakes creeping in. Do or do not, there is no try. I made a mistake or two on the final run, but fortunately not enough to affect and got a clear! Hurrah! The buzz persisted and although late, I couldn't sleep. There's now a hole going down to infinity where the primary attack button was on my keyboard. Intense, but a challenge.
I'm still not sure that I want to do the high end stuff. I knew it wasn't a case of if I was able to do it, but more a matter if I can be bothered to do it. Do it once, move on. Farming current content is a bit of a stretch for my motivation. And that's the question I guess, how much of this is ability, how much is motivation, the drive to want to do it? I don't rate myself as a top tier player. I've always aimed for "good enough". Clear it once, move onto the next thing. I can learn things, but I'm not a natural. For example, I was watching Mr Happy do Tsukuyomi EX blind for first time, he picks up new mechanics quickly. I would be standing there, going WTF shortly before disappearing in a sea of light and numbers.
Where next? O10S is an obvious progression and I haven't even started to look at that yet. Shinryu EX was also talked about so may still be on the radar. My joke about trying uwu went down better than expected... but then there's patch 4.5 next week and more content! Busy times ahead.
From what raiding I have done, it's basically a choreographed fight. As long as you know where to stand at what times and know what to do, it's fairly easy. The problem is that it's a choreographed fight, so it requires
everyone
knowing where to stand and what to do. There's little room for deviation.
As far as "clear once and move on," that typically doesn't work with high-end raiding unless you can parse orange rankings in your sleep. High-end raids have a fairly tight DPS check overall and if you're not geared up, you have to be godlike with your class. I don't know what the "required" DPS is for this raid tier, but I know in the last one, maintaining almost 5,000 over the course of the fight was a must for DPS roles. So this raid tier it's probably at least 6,000 or higher,
starting
. So if you're not pulling those numbers, you either have to gear up or get better at playing your job.
Obviously it's much easier if you're geared up, but that means at the minimum you should be going in the current raid tier with the current tomestone gear. Which as of now is the Scaevan gear set and takes at least 12 weeks to get everything due to the 450 weekly cap.
When you've been running content like this for a while, you start to pick up on things more easily. Even for normal mode stuff. Like when I did The Burn for the first time, it wasn't really hard for me to pick up what I needed to do for the boss fights.
But going on, from what I heard from my FC's raid static, O10S is not a fun fight to run. I think it took them a few weeks to get a clear. And last week they cleared O12S, though this raid tier overall was rough for them since they had to replace half their members over time for various reasons.
If you want to do Shinryu EX, it's a bit of a joke at ilvl 360 or higher. I ran it for the first time last night, they literally told me to sit there and look pretty. Which I did more or less. There are a few things that will wipe the party, but they're basically DPS checks that are easy to pass when you're overleveled for gear.
I believe this captures the essence well. Errors occur, some are fixable, many aren't. I haven't operated a parser before, so I'm unsure about the output I'm generating. I've never played Stone Sky Sea either. Although I feel competent in my main role as BRD for regular content, I admit I struggle in Ex+. I don't maintain my buffs as effectively as I should or need; instead, I'm more concerned about avoiding death or causing harm to others. I haven't yet reached a point where the fc is more intimidating than the next boss...
That poses a challenge for me—I own the weapon but haven't been capping my tomestones each week. Plus, with the alphascape (standard gear), I'm at 390 weapons and 378 overall stats.
I still can't manage dodging line AOE in the mist on that one...
The FC I'm with doesn't handle statics well, so it depends on who's online and willing to play at that moment.
It's interesting to see this, but it seems somewhat expected. I don't remember if it was added at the same time as regular updates or later. There have been many item upgrades since SB launched, likely around 300 then? I can't be sure. It appears the experience I described for Susano EX significantly reduces phases or shortens them. Even mechanics that don't guarantee death can be healed to a large extent.