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Theory 3: Focus on compositions/logs.
It's been said many times that any (standard) composition can clear any fight in the game. Despite this, many Party Finder parties will insist on a composition that somewhat resembles the meta, even if they're not doing log runs. Duplicate jobs are often excluded, which I partially understand due to the reduced Limit Break generation, but not even allowing two casters in a practice party is #####. On the other side of the coin, Bards and Machinists often won't join a party unless it has a Dragoon in it.
As for logs, I can't tell people not to care about them. If someone enjoys optimising a fight to the nth degree with their static, that's their right. I would like logs to have less influence on the game, however. As a healer main, I get tired of having to adjust to people failing mechanics due to being greedy with DPS. I also think it's a shame that nobody ever wants to use the limit break because it hurts their numbers. As someone who picked up XIV after playing other Final Fantasy games extensively, I feel like people should be fighting over who gets to use it, but instead, someone usually ends up being assigned the "LB #####” which tells you everything you need to know about players' attitudes towards it.
For me, logs are a tool I can use to improve and gauge my progress, but getting to a certain colour or percentile is not an end-goal in itself for me. I've heard that a lot more people care about them in EU/NA than in JP, but I have no evidence of that. At the very least, it's worth remembering that there are a million variables that go into any given pull of any given boss, and boiling them all down to one number is not a reliable way to gauge someone's ability. Every time someone's DPS gets criticised publicly, I wonder how many people are put off even trying to raid for fear of getting judged.
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I raid on Gaia, exclusively in PUGs. Am Japanese person, as well.
For PUGs in JP, the number one priority is clearing the fight, as consistently as possible. No one cares about parses or personal DPS or clear time as long as mechanics are done correctly and enrage is met, no matter how far into a raid tier we are, no matter how good everyone's gear is. No one locks certain jobs out of PF, no one says anything about meta comp. A safe, consistent strat gradually becomes mainstream and everyone follows it, a strat that is as braindead as possible. No one does out-of-the-box strats to increase uptime or get faster clears. No one pulls a "I want to try this, so I'm half-forcing you to do this to adjust" kind of thing. I can expect to go into a random weekly clear party and do the exact same thing that I did the previous week, or any other week. If you want to optimize your play or go for logs, you join a static.
Now, there are demerits to this as well. Because for many (not all) people who PUG exclusively, clearing the fight is the end-goal, so once they have the mechanics of the fight down and can consistently do them, they cut back on putting effort into actively improving their numbers. I've had runs where half the party parsed Grey. Just this week, my O7S weekly was killed during enrage cast. Do I call people out? Does anyone call anyone out? Not at all, as long as the fight is cleared with no major hiccups.
In NA/EU, if you couldn't skip Soar you were kicked (or so I've heard). In JP, everyone knew how to do Soar correctly, and skipping it was a bonus if you were lucky.
I've heard the NA community laugh about people trying to pug certain fights, where in Japan, pugging, even using raid finder (the duty finder version of raids the NA community never uses) is used quite regularly, happens all the time.
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Originally Posted by
Liam_Harper
Uptime on the boss is massively important.
It's a shame a lot of players don't understand this. Nothing in the games shows you how much it helps. You've beaten everything on Normal, you've beaten SSS, you assume you're good.
Even on EX Primals it's so important. I see melee players running miles to the edge with aoe markers or just standing and waiting at the side when the tank gets targeted for something. Technically they're doing mechanics right and being safe, but over the fight they've lost 30% of their damage and they just don't realize it. On higher content where the whole fight is literally on a timer, this is so important. That lost damage hurts the group.
FFlogs isn't about waving numbers around and competing. No one joins a pug group to aim for top parses. You do that in a static with an optimal set up when you're bored. It exists for self improvement, to analyze every detail of your run and see where you can improve and become a better player to contribute to your groups. Players simply enjoy that playstyle of aiming to improve.
Actually any dps more than the amount needed to clear is unnecessary.
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Originally Posted by
Nora_of_Mira
out of all the things, I'm just going to comment on this one. This is only true in a perfect vacuum of a fight with 0 deaths, 0 fat fingers, and 0 goofs. in my experience with my uptime -focused static, the extra DPS gave us a buffer to save us from failing if say, a DPS goofed and died. Well, the combined tank/healing dps made up for it and we didnt hit enrage. This in turn gave us more consistent clears overall because enrage was never an issue and we could clear with multiple deaths. But I knot this is just 1 static's experience and not farm parties/PUGs, I dont go into PF with the same mindset as I do my static.