This savage is getting really headache inducing...

I've never seen a raid tier where people are turning into adamant fanboys of a particular clear strat over understanding mechanics before and I have no idea what the heck is causing it.

Last tier people could pug through the savage eden tier roughly okay. This tier, there are groups of people that are basically trying to get through Fulmination savage and seem to just be adamant on either Circle Strat or Triangle strat, when the only thing that matters is that you have a minimum of 3 people alive on a particular side juggling a freaking lightning bolt.

The result of this has been group after group basically wiping to this mechanic, or wiping to something like Step leader, because they are rigid in how they want to do the mechanic to the point of blowing themselves up. What's more, this is happening to groups of people that have literally seen the enrage!

I don't know what to say to people, but everyone needs to stop adhering to rigid strategies before even mastering the survival aspect. No PF group that is running practice or duty completion can afford to be trying to be rigid on CL positioning. FYI, this isn't even getting into the later fights as it seems like this same kind of rigid behavior has been going on all the way to E8.

Triangle is the easiest, and almost in a way it seems how the developers designed it. The healer stays in the small "penalty box" lines drawn on each side of the arena, never has to move, can simply do damage/heal. The other two just come closer not losing any boss uptime.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by technole

Triangle is the easiest, and almost in a way it seems how the developers designed it. The healer stays in the small "penalty box" lines drawn on each side of the arena, never has to move, can simply do damage/heal. The other two just come closer not losing any boss uptime.

---

Most seem to do a different variation of that triangle. I've constantly been seeing melee told to stay on the boss for uptime, and healers and ranged compensate for it. If it's going from melee to ranged, the healer stands away so they don't take it, ranged gets it, runs back to healer to pass it, then healer runs up to the melee to pass it. Repeat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Most seem to do a different variation of that triangle. I've constantly been seeing melee told to stay on the boss for uptime, and healers and ranged compensate for it. If it's going from melee to ranged, the healer stands away so they don't take it, ranged gets it, runs back to healer to pass it, then healer runs up to the melee to pass it. Repeat.

---

It'll depend on party comp of course, but in this scenario just assuming two ranged and two melee. But the x3 triangle is actually rather simple, the lines on the map kind of guide the healer box, which I bet most don't even notice exists.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Most seem to do a different variation of that triangle. I've constantly been seeing melee told to stay on the boss for uptime, and healers and ranged compensate for it. If it's going from melee to ranged, the healer stands away so they don't take it, ranged gets it, runs back to healer to pass it, then healer runs up to the melee to pass it. Repeat.

---

Triangle is basically the half room strategy minus the tanks. I have no idea who came up with the circle strategy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Colt47

Triangle is basically the half room strategy minus the tanks. I have no idea who came up with the circle strategy.

---

I personally like the circle strat I do with my static because the way we do it, ranged and heals stay stationary just DPSing while tanks and melee move left-right to pick the chain lighting from whoever has it and deliver to the next person. Healers don't have to slide-cast, star/bubbles reach everybody and so does aoe heals. Healers and casters don't have to slidecast, and the mechanic basically plays itself for you since it's going on a circle around the boss.

But that's just me.
While I was pugging I saw a high failure ratio with triangle over circle.

You obviously didn’t do alphascape where you had people writing out step by step instructions for how they’re doing each mech in their PF descriptions for basically every fight, this is nothing new.

As for the strats, we prefer triangle as circle means getting the main tank involved so that they have to take CL and a tank buster at the same time, which is just asking for trouble.

It's nothing new but at the same time things are slightly worse because this is probably the first raid tier for a lot of players. It was easy to parse purple on fulmination even with a couple of deaths on healer which seems to indicate there are a lot of new players in there. The newer you are to raiding the less flexible you will naturally be. Hence some strat rigidity.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by technole

Triangle is the easiest, and almost in a way it seems how the developers designed it.

---

It depends. Circle is significantly easier to deal with as a Healer because you're putting everyone within healing range of both healers. All the healer bubbles (Asylum, Sacred Soil, and Earthly Star) work extremely well here because it can cover the entire area around the boss' hitbox and letting the Healers forgo using GCD healing.

While I agree with the OP's point that people need to be more flexible when joining PFs, most PFs nowadays list a strategy, so if you join one doing triangle strat and get mad that they don't want to adjust to circle or vice versa, that's on you... Otherwise I do agree that there are lots of inflexible people in PF. Had a Furor party fall apart because one person didn't like the MT's placement of markers, like really??

But just FYI, triangle is bad and ugly. (This post brought to you by the Circle Clan.)

Being flexible is more of a having chemistry with your static thing. PF usually sticks with a strategy/rule/script because everyone is constantly reminded in doing as much damage as possible. When one makes mistake in group mechanic, it is often hard to recover due to how the design is intended, so the whole ship sinks altogether. The problem is at least one member in the party not being on the same page as the rest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lilseph

It depends. Circle is significantly easier to deal with as a Healer because you're putting everyone within healing range of both healers. All the healer bubbles (Asylum, Sacred Soil, and Earthly Star) work extremely well here because it can cover the entire area around the boss' hitbox and letting the Healers forgo using GCD healing.

---

Everyone is in healing range in the separate triangles. You can still throw soils, fairy, star, etc and everything provided the healer is in the boxes drawn on the platform.

Nobody can even agree here, how about you just do the startegy which the party leader decides and if it's not good enough for you then make your own party.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by technole

Everyone is in healing range in the separate triangles. You can still throw soils, fairy, star, etc and everything provided the healer is in the boxes drawn on the platform.

---

Most pugs don't squish in that much in my experiences and with circle it's less healing needed because it's split 8-ways instead of 6-ways. I can't see any reason to favour triangle over circle unless you're a f-ing sadist towards your healers or just being lazy and don't wanna learn a new strat.

.. or you're a greedy BLM.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by relhsur

Most pugs don't squish in that much in my experiences and with circle it's less healing needed because it's split 8-ways instead of 6-ways. I can't see any reason to favour triangle over circle unless you're a f-ing sadist towards your healers or just being lazy and don't wanna learn a new strat.

.. or you're a greedy BLM.....

---

This, circle is insanely easy to heal and as a SCH I sacrifice barely any uptime at all on the boss due to my oGCD's covering most of the healing.

It's funny how making mechanics more flexible actually can make them harder in PF due to there being multiple viable strategies as opposed to only one that really works.

Reminds me of O9S where people couldn't agree on DPS in, DPS out or line strat.

Wait until you reach E8S OP. :P

ilya/forsaken/bowtie for LR.
T N/E H S/W or T N/W H S/E.
HRTM/HTRM for adds.
Uptime/normal for mirror 4.
N -> S -> 3/4 or Relative for double ark rhais.

So many different ways and as a pug gotta try learning them all to increase the number of groups you can join.

ive had people fuck up triangle more often that i've had people fuck up circle

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cabalabob

As for the strats, we prefer triangle as circle means getting the main tank involved so that they have to take CL and a tank buster at the same time, which is just asking for trouble.

---

Well it did average 9k on one of our tanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sarehptar

While I agree with the OP's point that people need to be more flexible when joining PFs, most PFs nowadays list a strategy, so if you join one doing triangle strat and get mad that they don't want to adjust to circle or vice versa, that's on you... Otherwise I do agree that there are lots of inflexible people in PF. Had a Furor party fall apart because one person didn't like the MT's placement of markers, like really??

But just FYI, triangle is bad and ugly. (This post brought to you by the Circle Clan.)

---

Yeah, this is more so just dealing with inflexible people who are adamant about one strategy they learned. Well, that and lack of discord in general because learning without callouts to help push it through is asking for trouble.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Crushnight

Wait until you reach E8S OP. :P

ilya/forsaken/bowtie for LR.
T N/E H S/W or T N/W H S/E.
HRTM/HTRM for adds.
Uptime/normal for mirror 4.
N -> S -> 3/4 or Relative for double ark rhais.

So many different ways and as a pug gotta try learning them all to increase the number of groups you can join.

---

(Runs away screaming as the army of lalafel berserkers come over the hills)

People are really adamant about they're macro's now too.
I miss talking with my group and doing a few pulls to get it all straight and right and pushing through.
You're expected to read a macro that is different everytime and just get it, and disband after someone messed something up that wasn't clear from the beginning, or got asked a clarification for but got told "read the macro sigh*

Having one universal PF strat is best IMO so whichever group you join later down the line will use the same one and you don't end up with your lines crossed and learning like 6 different strats and mixing all those is a recipe for disaster. But this has always been a thing in this game. (true north/boss relative, DPS in/out, rotate/no rotate, tsuku meteor placement, uptime, etc)

I notice that a lot of people don't actually read the PF description that says what strats are being used and just do what they learned.

So in triangle CL case, you can have a minimum of 2 people do all the passing, which means there will be up to 6 people that won't know what to do if asked to do circle or some variation of triangle where more than 2 people have to move.

Honestly when I first saw the circle strat it just kind of made sense. Everyone passes and it ends up at the people it started at when it resolves completely.

For circle, you can space 6 people at the vertices of the 2 dead center rectangles and N/S in the middle of the line going across. The pass aoe is half the length of the rectangle sides and each person just has to scoot one character length to the left to pass it. You can even correct it by having the previous passer move further away if you notice the next person in line isn't moving to force it to pass correctly or move closer if you are the recipient.

I think circle works better for prog. Even if up to two people are dead, you handle CL in EXACTLY the same way - it's just that one or two people travel a bit farther to pass CL over the gap(s). With Triangle, you have to send a tank in to replace a dead person, sometimes both, and the tanks need to figure out on the fly where to run to, and which tank goes where. Still not TOO bad with sufficient planning ahead of time - but with circle, you don't even need that level of planning.

Triangle is probably better for uptime - but E5S isn't exactly the strictest of DPS checks. People do love their FFLOG parses, though...

I like how people are going on about how circle or triangle is easier to heal when that entire mechanic requires little to no healing at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

I like how people are going on about how circle or triangle is easier to heal when that entire mechanic requires little to no healing at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

This. But to be fair healer DPS is also important, and at least with circle no healer or caster needs to slide cast just because melee DPS need a babysitter. Makes no sense to have two jobs required to be sationary to perform actions be the ones moving back and forth for the sake of the other job that can move freely. Because of that I feel like SE's intention with this mechanic is for healers to not have to move at all, but the early strategies beg to differ.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

I like how people are going on about how circle or triangle is easier to heal when that entire mechanic requires little to no healing at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

Only if you have orb stacks. Otherwise it does about ~33k unmitigated. That along with the raidwide AoE coming out at the same time makes it a lot riskier to split people up which is why the circle strat is significantly less stressful for healers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lilseph

Only if you have orb stacks. Otherwise it does about ~33k unmitigated. That along with the raidwide AoE coming out at the same time makes it a lot riskier to split people up which is why the circle strat is significantly less stressful for healers.

---

A couple of ogcds from both healers is enough to deal with the entire thing regardless of the orb situation. That's chain lightning, crippling blow TB and judgements volts.

Also you can have the melee do the moving in triangle strat. Actually, technically, you could have a single melee move and everyone else be stationary.

Now people are mentioning Shiva Savage in this thread, soon as you throw out words like forsaken and Llya Strat. They might run away. Both are similar in their own right, different 2nd tower/baits are between both. A lot of times it comes down to who solves a mechanic first and shares it to the community so that is what the names come form.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

A couple of ogcds from both healers is enough to deal with the entire thing regardless of the orb situation. That's chain lightning, crippling blow TB and judgements volts.

Also you can have the melee do the moving in triangle strat. Actually, technically, you could have a single melee move and everyone else be stationary.

---

Yep, that's the best reason to use triangle. Less player movement = less error. Only the melee have to move, and many times it'll work itself out with positionals.

Healing wise can just Lily, dawn or throw a star down and be done. Sure people won't always have an orb, but nothing lethal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

A couple of ogcds from both healers is enough to deal with the entire thing regardless of the orb situation. That's chain lightning, crippling blow TB and judgements volts.

---

Only if you have a Scholar in the group. If you managed to get into a PF party with a WHM AST pair, there just isn't enough ogcds to go around for the amount of damage going out. Triangle puts people in a riskier position because Chain Lightning damages the same person every ~9 seconds compared to Circle which bumps it to every ~12 seconds giving the Healers an extra GCD of leeway to heal people up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by technole

Less player movement = less error.

---

Circle is the exact same way too. There's practically no movement other than a light tap to rotate clockwise. And in a pug scenario where it's uncoordinated, it's much safer to do in the event of deaths going into the mechanic because yhe tanks aren't scrambung to float into position. Yes, Triangle is a valid strat, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best one in every situation. That's the purpose of this thread. People on PF being stubborn about what is the "best" strat and shoving it down people's throats because it's the one they cleared with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lilseph

Only if you have a Scholar in the group. If you managed to get into a PF party with a WHM AST pair, there just isn't enough ogcds to go around for the amount of damage going out. Triangle puts people in a riskier position because Chain Lightning damages the same person every ~9 seconds compared to Circle which bumps it to every ~12 seconds giving the Healers an extra GCD of leeway to heal people up.

---

I've had my AST co healer solo heal the chain lightning/judgement volt/crippling blow section with an earthly star, celestial intersection and essential dignity (and this was with half the group not having an orb because "mah dps"). So I somehow doubt whm/ast combo can't get past that with ogcds only even in less organized situations.

It's always been a thing though and will always remain this way.

Imo, logically people who PF should by default try to learn as many strats as possible and be flexible, as they're pretty much bound to stumble upon near every possible strat eventually. Sadly most times it's the opposite and PF-only people will stubbornly cling to a single strat/position/waymark placement they've learned, then throw a fit and leave as soon as that's challenged - even if they've just knowingly joined a "7/8 static" party and are asked to follow the method rest of the group is used to.
More often than not, the strats widely adapted by PFs are also directly opposite to what's not only most optimal, but also safest(clock-wise bibliotaph in o7s comes to mind lol) - at least in EU PF.

Another issue is that most people learn only the strats, rather than how the mechanics actually work - which makes it impossible to adjust if something goes differently than planned. The worst thing is mechanics which make everyone move in the same way together, as many will opt to simply rely on a single person to know what to do and follow them - which can obviously lead to a stupid wipe if said person makes a mistake. Then there's mechanics which are intended to be done by everyone, but through specific methods can be dumped on one person(usually a tank it seems) just to further avoid learning, even if said method is - again - more prone to failure.

Most "raiders" will get outraged at an accusation of wanting to get carried, but they will happily outsource any actual responsibility and thinking to anyone but themselves and blame anything other than their lack of ability to learn, should they mess up.

Just look at Cinder Drift. "No rotation" exists because people don't own clocks anymore in the smartphone era, and they don't get what clockwise means. So less room for error. The DPS check is yet a punching bag, and some people make a big fuss over it. People are free to make their own parties or create a static with their own strats they prefer.

Once you clear a fight in PF, static or wherever, no one wants to spend any time "re-learning" for weeklies, unless trapping parties is your thing. Grandpa Ramuh is already the hardest fight this tier, aside from Daughter Shiva. Soccer Dad, Ifrit is cake that you don't need anything around discussing which strat is better.

It just gets worst there are 12 LR strats for shiva, 10 different KB mirror strats, 5 icelit stats lol I would honestly just be flexible and communicate what you don’t know because while there are too many different variations of one thing people usually arnt against teaching you their way.

Also agreed I think people need to understand mechanics more then just following what someone said, although following someone else guide is useful for pugs because you’re not always raiding with a particular grp