Questions about raids and hardmodes

I'm fairly new to FF14, I generally can only play one or two days a week (or less) because of work and other obligations so I'm progressing extremely slow and tend to sit afk in town a lot because I have a lot to get done irl. I curious about the dungeon hard modes and hard raid bosses like Odin and such. I've seen some posts whining about newbs not knowing all the mechanics to quickly clear stuff and that people should use "trust" groups and party finder to learn mechanics but I'm not seeing anything about practice runs, everything just says locked in party finder.

I've only gotten to the end of ARR as far as MSQ and the ending dungeons or raids or whatever you'd call I barely knew what was happening because people blow them up so fast. I try to watch some mechanics guides and videos before I queue up for new instances and raids so I'm not completely lost but seeing a video about mechanics and actually dealing with them are not always the same thing and having gotten tired of WoW's constant "you must have mythic gear to do this normal raid" bs I don't want to waste my time or other people's time by queuing up for things I'm not suppose to do.

So I guess my question is, can (or even, should) I do these hard dungeons and hard mode bosses now or should I just proceed with the MSQ and skip them?

The 'Hard' tag on dungeons and trials is a somewhat misleading holdover from an earlier time in the game's life. Really they're just higher level remixed versions of lower level dungeons (and trials eventually dropped the Hard tag entirely.) That said, as a new player who's still progressing the story you can ignore all of those dungeons for now. They're not required and will still be there later if you want to go back for them.

People blazing through and blowing up everything in seconds is an unfortunate side effect of gear progression at the old level caps (50/60/70/80.) Story dungeons like Praetorium or Crystal Tower need to be doable by newly 50 players in low level gear so of course they get instantly crushed by veterans wearing i130, even with the level sync in play. You'll stop seeing that quite so much once you get into the expansion content though. The devs learned a lot from ARR and started designing dungeons and syncing gear down differently afterwards.

Trusts are only available starting at level 70. The Trust system lets you do dungeons solo with NPCs filling out the other party slots. The system wasn't added until Shadowbringers so it doesn't apply to you as a new player still in ARR.

You will never need, or have anyone expect crazy gear and a video watched before doing normal difficulty content. If you're trying to do a current tier Extreme trial or Savage raid, sure, but while leveling or even when doing normal mode endgame content, as long as you meet the game's built in ilevel requirements (which are usually very lenient) you'll be fine even if you go in blind.

By all means do them and don't believe everything you read in the Lodestone forums. The Trust system you can't use until you reach Shadowbringers expansion. You just need to expect that most players have done the earlier ARR stuff so much that they can and will blow through them. Heavensward will be a bit better as you begin to see the dungeon fights/raids evolve. Most new players always announce "My first time" in party chat at the beginning, so that more experienced players can adjust and help guide you. Each boss fight I find it better to ask "Is there anything I should know about this boss"? Usually a person will announce what to look out for if there is any special mechanic or if the boss is a straight burn. I say "most" players because it doesn't mean you'll never run into a jackass or two.

I do think you'll find in the earlier fights, the lesson to learn is how to dance around aoe's and dealing with adds as a dps. For tanks and healers it's a different lesson. As you get more and more of your skills learn your rotation for the job you choose. If you're unsure what to do, follow the crowd and try understand why you position yourself where you do for each mechanic. The best way to learn is hands on and practice. Never doing them is not knowing and not beneficial to you.

(Hard) is not hard, it's casual content. You can queue for it without knowing anything about it.

(Extreme) and Minstrel's Ballad is considered high-end content. It typically removes the orange telegraphs, has faster cast times, increased damage and new mechanics. It can take hours or days of progression even when you've watched a guide. If you queue for them, it only finds people from Mentor Roulette (a minority of veteran players queue for this chasing a mount) as well as those who queue directly for the duty. It syncs to a higher item level than when it released and you get a buff called the Echo when you die to make it easier, but some of them can still be challenging with this.

Most people clear them by recruiting in Party Finder for a level 90 to kill it in a few hits using the Unrestricted setting, which prevents them from being synced down from level 90 to level 50. The consequence of that is you don't experience the challenge of it, but there are not very many people who are interested in old challenging content. They mostly just do the newest challenging content. To do old challenging content it can help to find 7 people who also want to do this regularly at the times you are available.

(Savage) and Coil Turns are high-end content, regarded as harder and more punishing than extremes but that's not completely strict (some extremes can be harder than some savage bosses). Extremes are partly easier because they are meant to be farmed hundreds of times for a mount whereas Savage is only meant to be cleared once a week so it's alright if you aren't as consistent at it.

(Ultimate) is what you can do once you clear savage. It's not expected that very many people will do ultimates and the only rewards are a shiny weapon, a title and an extra materia slot so that nobody feels pressured to do them for gear. They are designed to be streamed and watched instead of you doing them yourself.

I appreciate the responses, thank you. I knew not to try the extreme and savage modes until later but I'd like to clear some of these hard dungeon blue quests out of my log. The rate I get to play and the amount of side tracks I'm getting absorbed into, it could be months before I get to the end of the story, but I don't want to waste people's time by queueing for things I'm not suppose to be. I get people who have been playing for possibly years at this point just trying to blitz through things quickly to get whatever rewards they need and don't really want to spend a lot of time on this old content.

Asking questions about fights is a thing that's a little hard to do since I have to deprogram the part of my brain that just assumes there is nothing but a pile of racial slurs if I ask a question. I'm guessing it still happens here but seems everyone says it happens a lot less.

If someone was rude to you in that way, you could actually report them as well, then they won't do it to others.

Stop watching video guides for normal and hard dungeons/trials. They will contain spoilers and besides, part of the fun is running content blind and learning the mechanics from experiencing it. Who cares if you make mistakes and die? You'll get better as you practice. Most people you meet in the duty finder will be friendly enough to accommodate new players on their first runs.

It's just a game, no need to take it seriously. If you ever encounter someone who gets upset for mistakes that you make, then that's their failing for taking the game seriously. Thankfully, most people aren't like that.

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Originally Posted by Sacred-Oblivion

and besides, part of the fun is running content blind and learning the mechanics from experiencing it.

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Part of the fun for you, maybe. Not everyone finds the same things fun. Some people hate going in blind and love knowing everything in advance, and that's an equally valid play style.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Part of the fun for you, maybe. Not everyone finds the same things fun. Some people hate going in blind and love knowing everything in advance, and that's an equally valid play style.

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Most people I've known who like to look up everything in advance do so out of fear rather than enjoyment. They're afraid of making mistakes and making a bad impression. It's an irrational fear -- It shouldn't matter what other players think about your performance. Though if you genuinely enjoy spoilers then more power to you.

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Originally Posted by Sacred-Oblivion

Most people I've known who like to look up everything in advance do so out of fear rather than enjoyment. They're afraid of making mistakes and making a bad impression. It's an irrational fear -- It shouldn't matter what other players think about your performance. Though if you genuinely enjoy spoilers then more power to you.

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And for some people, the content in the guides doesn't qualify as a spoiler for them. I watched guides for a number of the SHB dungeons/trials and I wasn't spoiled by any of them. Dungeon/trial mechanics aren't something I consider a spoiler. Sometimes its fun going in blind, but it can be nice to go in with familiarity with the mechanics so you can pay more attention to other things such as party banter if you're going in with a trust or your rotation if you're still learning that.

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Originally Posted by Sacred-Oblivion

Most people I've known who like to look up everything in advance do so out of fear rather than enjoyment. They're afraid of making mistakes and making a bad impression. It's an irrational fear -- It shouldn't matter what other players think about your performance. Though if you genuinely enjoy spoilers then more power to you.

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It's not always about fear of messing up. Some people just like more preparation. Some don't care about spoilers. It's easy to say things like "it doesn't matter if...", but while that may be true for you, it's not true for everyone. People liking things you don't doesn't inherently make them wrong.

Personally I feel the same way you do and like going into fights blind, but that's hardly the only way to play.