Tactics/suggestions for doing class quests well?

How do you guys 'approach' a fight? I mean a solo fight, as in a class/job quest. Or maybe also main quest fights.

With an alt I just 'finished' the lvl 15 Rogue quest. After being defeated 3 times and not getting better, I started searching online for clues and discovered that I was supposed to use the knife-throwing skill I had received shortly before on the birds that slew me, who -as it turned out- were made really sensitive to that attack. After I 'found' the solution I also noticed that Jacke had been yelling -useful- clues while tanking all those mobs. I was too busy dodging AoE to notice. Knowing the trick to that fight made it a lot easier!

Sometimes what the game wants to 'teach' you during a class leveling fight is not clear to me at all. That happens often. I refuse to accept the Echo for these low level skirmishes. To me that is SE saying: "Hmm. It looks like you're one of our new players with special needs. Here are a couple of training wheels, so you won't abandon too soon". And I don't want to level up to the highest level & gear I can before getting sync'ed down for a fight, because that would probably mean I can win, ignoring the mechanics -or maybe not even then :(.

So should I embrace defeat then, and take it lightly? Expect to die at least once - even for early class quests? Use that first instance of the fight to collect information about the mobs and events and hold back, and not try to win until the mechanics are clear to me? And pay attention to what is shouted, but do not obey blindly.

Okay, yes, I _am_ frustrated. Because I just might be that player with special needs. ;_;

But I do want to get better. What possible tactics do you use/have you used?

For solo instance fights, there's two types: Story and Class.

The Class ones are all designed to teach you how to play your class. For instance, when you do MRD and GLD story quests, being tanks, their core objective is to teach you to keep adds off of your allies (especially whoever's healing you). Your healer quests by and large involve a lot of NPCs you'll be assisting and treating, because they'll keep enemy attention off of you and keep you alive. DPS class fights are mostly checks to see if you've actually learned to use your full arsenal and prioritize targets properly.

Story instance solos start off easier but will get pretty tough by the end. There's one near level 40 that's famous for it - but if you've actually learned to play your role as though it's part of a party, you'll be able to take advantage of it in each situation.

With the exception of acn I've been able to complete all class quests by "kiting" once available. The timers are long enough and outside of acn any npc needing kept alive is robust enough to just range attack anything to death with instant casts ranged abilities. They all have their mechanics that allow you to go toe to toe if done properly but you asked for general tactics.

READ EVERYTHING!! Read the notes on your abilities (only one or two abilities have outright wrong text *PROVOKE*). Read the Active Help that shows up. Read the little tooltips that show up when you mouse over your buffs/debuffs. Do the same with enemy buffs. Read what the NPCs tell you before the fight. Learn to read what the NPCs are shouting at you during the fight. Being able to read the chat log while dealing with a fight is a great skill that will help you immensely in fights with a lot of coordination when you don't have voice chat. FFXIV is not very good at teaching things through gameplay, as you can fail and fail and not know why you're failing. All the explanation you need is there, but it's in text. I know some people learn better by doing than by reading, but FFXIV is not designed to teach you that way.

Also, as far as the class/job quests go, they're usually designed to make you try out that cool new skill you just learned, as you've already experienced. The ROG class quest after you learn "Hide" has way too many enemies for you to take on by yourself, forcing you to Hide and sneak past them.

Late-game fights will be worse. It is pretty much expected for everyone to have watched a guide video prior to stepping into any fight related to Coil or Primals, just so people don't have to spend as much time losing to mechanics.

@Garlyle
Maybe it was my fault for expecting that particular class quest to teach me something useful. The knife-throwing was useful for picking out the mobs at the site one by one, so I could get to the quest location safely. I should not have expected more.

@Lollie
That's an interesting idea! I may try kiting in the future. Although I think for example Pugilists will also need to get pretty close.

@JoeDono
Thank you for this advice. It looks like you can try to do a class quests in several ways, but only 1 or 2 of those will work. Using 'Hide' in that earlier class quests was actually useful, and I didn't wipe on that ^^;
It's just that I'm worried that I'm already failing at the low-level stuff. It's only going to get more difficult.

I ran into this early on but as I've leveled other jobs I've found myself failing maybe 2-3 of the solo instances. The difficulty of these can vary widely depending on the class/job.

As you mentioned, the class quests (and later job quests) aim to make you use any recent skills you've obtained, so read the skill descriptions as you earn them to understand what they do, and practice on any nearby mobs to see how you can use them. Even then, sometimes the solo instances simply call for you to react to what your allies are telling you. If they say that they'll take on a group while you go do something else, then ignore those mobs and follow directions. There are a few (ACN and GLA that I can remember off-hand) that tell you to prioritize certain enemies (healers, mages), but I'll admit the enemy naming doesn't always make this clear as to what they are.

Don't worry about getting these on the first try but focus on figuring out what you're expected to do. If you clear, awesome. If not, then you can rework your approach to the instance.

General for class quest kill heal>thm>rest (tanks usually last) else often the stuff your buddies say during instances are VERY important and helpful
Also at some points check your gear as that might be also an issue (5 ilvls lower than quest usually works fine)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Opabinia

It's just that I'm worried that I'm already failing at the low-level stuff. It's only going to get more difficult.

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Probably you will get better at a higher speed than the difficulty increases. With the first class I leveled (Gladiator) I many times failed the first tries, and if it looked too difficult, I had to level a couple of levels more, get better gear and come back later. With the other classes it was easier, most times did them as soon as they were available without much trouble. Some of the class quests are difficult, though. You can search guides too if you think you need them.

Some of the other problems you might have in some of the later class / job quests is the NPC's don't know how to step outside of an AoE >.> so you have to babysit them sometimes ( I had to do the level 30 ACN class quest a few times because they kept dying)

@Ninster
Thank you Ninster. I guess SE doesn't want to be too obvious about how they want you to do a quest. If I got defeated at first, I normally won the second round, not because of the echo, but because I knew what was coming and when. Less panicked button-mashing. Maybe I should practice in busy FATEs. At times those seem as hectic as a dungeon battle.

@Werhusky
True. The proper order for tackling mob classes is one of the few things I did learn from other quests. It helps that in that order the mobs fall sooner.

@Jonbigwood
I'm hoping that that's the case. Getting access to more skills and abilities, combined with learning the ins and outs of fight should help. Those new skills and abilities come guaranteed, the learning not so much. Since we are expected to prepare for a fight in the highest levels, I might as well start preparing now.

@OlyverW
I noticed that too! And even after that lvl 30 fight, I'm still not sure how to properly manage Carbuncle on all occasions.

For the acn quest, since I see it mentioned a lot here, it is all about getting all the mobs on your radioactive rat, then moving it away from everything else. You will need to assist healing it occasionally but if you keep the mobs off the npcs they will heal the bajesus out of it while mowing the mob down, freeing you up to focus your attention on the heal/nuker threats. Cycling targets and using the attack command is enough to pull threat to your carby as npcs generate hate at a much reduced level than players.