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Hello! Recently, one struggle I've had tanking is identifying friendly ground effects. My old "Don't stand in the bad" instincts are proving detrimental when I don't know which puddle of fire is actually bad.
Does anybody know a good resource for friendly effects in this game and what they look like?
It's pretty much just Sacred Soil, the WHM regen bubble, Astro thing, Doton, Shadowflare, Salted Earth, Leylines, and Flaming Arrow. Oh also Titan Egi puddle. You can stand in those (and should in the case of a few). Also a few boss-specific effects (Garuda EX comes to mind).
The healer bubbles are all big obvious bubbles. There's like maybe one unfriendly bubble I can think of in the game (Alexander Prime).
Doton is a brown puddle that looks like sand. It comes from a Ninja who is AOEing or screwed up their ninjutstu.
Shadowflare and Salted Earth are dark puddles that put up a big bubble that disappears during the startup animation. Summoner and Dark knight, respectively. Part of their rotations.
Flaming arrow is fiery ground. Bardz. Part of their rotation.
Leylines is a magic circle that appears where the black mage was standing. Part of their rotation.
Titan Egi is yellow barf on the ground that looks like what happens when you kill a Titan EX add. Used for trolling almost exclusively.
Everything else is a pwn zone.
Another thought OP, if you know anyone with those jobs leveled you could always just ask them to cast it for you and see it for yourself.
Only missing a few lol
Shadowflare [SMN/SCH]
Sacred Soil [SCH]
Asylum [WHM]
Astro Bubble
Assylum, Sacred Soil and Collective Unconscious (the WHM, SCH and AST bubbles mentioned in the previous post) are almost always meant for you to stand within them, so if you see them, try to do so unless they're poorly placed and you would move the boss too much.
As for Shadow Flare, Flaming Arrow, Salted Earth and Doton, you don't necessarily have to stand within them yourself, but you should always try to keep the enemies' hitboxes within them, specially in an AoE situation. So if you see those spells, get all the enemies you can inside of that circle AoE! Most of them represent big damage, and in the case of DRK and BRD, also a cooldown that won't repeat for some time.
As for what an enemy hitbox is... whenever you click or select an enemy, the circle beneath them defines the size of its hitbox. If that circle is touching the ground AoE, you're golden.
In re: Collective Unconscious, the AST bubble, it's not just a damage reduction bubble; it also gives you a potent regen effect. If an AST uses it and misses you, he's hoping you'll take a moment to step into it for the regen buff because it'll allow him to spam Gravity for days while you sit near full health.
In re: ground abilities in general, the only hostile ones I can think of that are used by trash mobs are ice puddles in Sohm Al and poison puddles in Amdapor Keep (Hard), which are easy to distinguish. So if you're tanking trash and you see a puddle that isn't poison or ice, just stand in it and note what it looks like, so that when you see it later on a boss you know to keep the boss in it.
I've run into this problem before too, as you can see from the other replies there are a lot of ground effects to memorize.
What I've done is just turn off all the friendly effects. I am aware of the disadvantages of this like not being able to see if you're standing in the healer bubble or the boss is in friendly AOE but as long as you're not moving about the map you should be fine.
The advantages are being able to actually see whats going on and it helps my game run smoother. When your in a 24m raid and whm are spamming holy I can barley see through the other effects as to whats good/bad. Since only bad will show then you know without a doubt to move out of the way. I can even see the boss more clearly and its easier to tell visual cue like the cyclops in Aurum Vale for moves that don't have the giant telegraph on the ground. This option should be in your settings and there are also option to show *some* friendly effects (I'm not sure which ones) or none at all.
Just as an FYI, you can test out the nature of a ground effect by simply standing in it and looking to see if you gain a positive or negative status effect or if nothing at all happens. Sometimes it's fun to figure stuff out through experiencing it.
Be adventurous! Test things out! We believe in you adventurer!