getting to harder content/trying to imrpove

Greetings!
I have previously spoken about wanting to try harder content and I have decided the very first piece of hard content I will try is the binding coils of bahamut savage series and work in chronological order of release date. However, before I can run I need to learn to walk.
I have been thinking of doing most casual content that is normally a snoozefest at min ilvl if I have competently done it before. Would this be a good idea?
What else might I do it prepare for harder content?
For reference, I want to get better with astrologian and get to know the job intimately.
For reference this is my skill level: I have gotten to know much of AST's kit and learned to at least do it at an average level. Though, I may forget uptime with refreshing the dot or using earthly star consistently. I have some bad healer habits to trim.
One of my worst habits is freezing up whenever faced with mechanics I do not understand well/at all. I might entirely stop casting or I might act too slowly for what the mechanic is asking of me. This is why I am thinking of trying min ilvl normal content first. There are mechanics I may not have seen because of power creep. I also hurt my growth by becoming too comfortable with a piece of content because it does not solve my freezing up problem.
Honestly, I'm kind of frustrated because it feels like I'm not improving fast enough and running into a plateau of skill. I really want to get better- but for some reason I'm not.

edit: why is my title so janky in spelling

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

Greetings!
I have previously spoken about wanting to try harder content and I have decided the very first piece of hard content I will try is the binding coils of bahamut savage series and work in chronological order of release date. However, before I can run I need to learn to walk.
I have been thinking of doing most casual content that is normally a snoozefest at min ilvl if I have competently done it before. Would this be a good idea?
What else might I do it prepare for harder content?
For reference, I want to get better with astrologian and get to know the job intimately.
For reference this is my skill level: I have gotten to know much of AST's kit and learned to at least do it at an average level. Though, I may forget uptime with refreshing the dot or using earthly star consistently. I have some bad healer habits to trim.
One of my worst habits is freezing up whenever faced with mechanics I do not understand well/at all. I might entirely stop casting or I might act too slowly for what the mechanic is asking of me. This is why I am thinking of trying min ilvl normal content first. There are mechanics I may not have seen because of power creep. I also hurt my growth by becoming too comfortable with a piece of content because it does not solve my freezing up problem.
Honestly, I'm kind of frustrated because it feels like I'm not improving fast enough and running into a plateau of skill. I really want to get better- but for some reason I'm not.

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The binding coils savage uses systems and mecanics many players complained were simply to hard. If you use it as a stepping stone, yes you will improve.. but it's genuinely so difficult to clear you might aswell jump into shiva savage (which Ironically was what I did) it took over a year to clear it but now I'm a very solid raider. People were still joining it because it was current content. This is another issue you'll have in coils - people. And that your job is only level 50. So your kit will be a brutal sanitised and maybe even unviable mascot of itself. Its better to start with endwalker ex - savage if you want to improve

You can directly jump into coils, especially if you're not doing them minimum ilvl / no echo. The first tier is especially forgiving due to overgear and powercreep on top of easier fights overall. Coils are not harder than extreme trials but perhaps T9 at best which can be closer to savage stuff. This is the entry gate to challenging content (you can also do ARR ex trials or even later expansions as well).

If you think your mastery of a job toolkit isn't there yet, doing more casual content in order to train muscle memory and reactions is never a wrong thing to do. Freezing up when faced with new complex mechanic is normal, and probably healthier than someone tunneling on their rotation no matter what. When progging difficult content it's not necessarily bad to stop DPSing and focus on actually learning the mechanic first. Once you're past it, you can start doing your job things again during it the next times you get through.

But if you want to get better, the best way is just to jump into harder content. It's always going to be demanding enough that it will force you to improve, and you'll find the more casual content you're used to to become very trivial in comparison.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

The binding coils savage uses systems and mecanics many players complained were simply to hard. If you use it as a stepping stone, yes you will improve.. but it's genuinely so difficult to clear you might aswell jump into shiva savage (which Ironically was what I did) it took over a year to clear it but now I'm a very solid raider. People were still joining it because it was current content. This is another issue you'll have in coils - people. And that your job is only level 50. So your kit will be a brutal sanitised and maybe even unviable mascot of itself. Its better to start with endwalker ex - savage if you want to improve

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Yeah I've been thinking of that. I'm going to go up in hardness in increments (binding coils min ilvl will happen before I do binding coild savage but first I do other content at min ilvl bc I'm all curious what that would look like. Newer content will likely not look too different compared to crystal tower min ilvl). I'll be looking to recruit people in my fc to try this tho.

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Originally Posted by Valence

You can directly jump into coils, especially if you're not doing them minimum ilvl / no echo. The first tier is especially forgiving due to overgear and powercreep on top of easier fights overall. Coils are not harder than extreme trials but perhaps T9 at best which can be closer to savage stuff. This is the entry gate to challenging content (you can also do ARR ex trials or even later expansions as well).

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yeah I want to try them synced first for sure. Would help me get comfortable with the mechanics. Good to know this is a good stepping stone at least!

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If you think your mastery of a job toolkit isn't there yet, doing more casual content in order to train muscle memory and reactions is never a wrong thing to do. Freezing up when faced with new complex mechanic is normal, and probably healthier than someone tunneling on their rotation no matter what. When progging difficult content it's not necessarily bad to stop DPSing and focus on actually learning the mechanic first. Once you're past it, you can start doing your job things again during it the next times you get through.

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Ah. I have been told I won't be ready for savage content if I continue to freeze up... So I thought it was a bad habit of mine. I do tend to do that. On average it takes me 3 times to get comfortable with content I am unfamiliar with. Granted this number is for normal level of content. I cannot say how long it'll take me to learn savage or harder levels of content. Maybe double or triple that. Though, I have the benefit of having older hard (savage, extreme, ultimate) raids long figured out by other people so I can always look at those strategy guides.

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But if you want to get better, the best way is just to jump into harder content. It's always going to be demanding enough that it will force you to improve, and you'll find the more casual content you're used to to become very trivial in comparison.

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I can only hope that my trauma-induced perfectionist mindset will not prevent me from moving forward when I die more than 3 times (likely 12 if not dozens of times). Maybe Harder content will help me get comfortable with failing repeatedly. I tend to go defeatist very easily...

Also I'm not sure if you actually meant the Coils in general or the savage version of the second tier (only the second tier has one)? The savage version is probably a lot more demanding, but I haven't tried it. Probably way closer to serious savages of today.

Freezing up depends what you mean. If your brain goes blank and you can't do anything, it's a problem. But stopping everything to focus on understanding and executing a mechanic properly isn't bad practice.

Honestly, difficult content in this game when it's actually current or at least not from older expansions that have been made obsolete by too many changes, can require even top groups to bang their heads against a wall repeatedly, especially if you start going into ultimates or the current savage fights at any time. If you don't deal well with going against a piece of content again and again and again you'll probably have to find where your limit lies within said challenging content.

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I can only hope that my trauma-induced perfectionist mindset will not prevent me from moving forward when I die more than 3 times (likely 12 if not dozens of times). Maybe Harder content will help me get comfortable with failing repeatedly. I tend to go defeatist very easily

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You should discard the idea of perfection immediately. It doesnt exist. It's a tredmil that you'll be chasing forever as your goals continously change. Eventually it will get to a point where you dont even recognise what you were originally after

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Originally Posted by Valence

Also I'm not sure if you actually meant the Coils in general or the savage version of the second tier (only the second tier has one)? The savage version is probably a lot more demanding, but I haven't tried it. Probably way closer to serious savages of today.

Freezing up depends what you mean. If your brain goes blank and you can't do anything, it's a problem. But stopping everything to focus on understanding and executing a mechanic properly isn't bad practice.

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maybe I should clarify: I'll be doing normal coils synced first then min ilvl and then do the savage version... eventually. That last step will come someday in the future. I'll try to work towards soon but I first need to get better at AST.

It's a bit of a mixed bag tbh. I freeze up and try to understand what is going on. I will likely fail first and not understand why I failed unless someone explained it to me (as a small example, I wondered whyI died to a stack marker and soon found out there was another stack marker I did not see that happened to be just far enough away that everyone else lived but close enough that is clipped me)(an average example is a mechanic I have not seen often enough to remember and then dying to it from improperly responding). My brain is rarely blank- I'm cursed with needing it active 95% of the time otherwise I'll get bored and go crazy or do things in the background. Sometimes when a new mechanic happens I do the equivalent of a chicken running around in a panic. This often involves not casting at all and doing everything in my power to not get hit. Or... not moving in the right direction and taking an L. Or panicking internally but not reacting fast enough-

the final days is a big example of this with the planets colliding

The way you act the first time seeing a mechanic isn't that important, what matters is that you can analyze it after, try and see what went wrong, try to figure out how it's solved, and if you need to see it more, then you go at it again with those new questions in mind, and you try to figure out more and more of it every time. Going at it again blindly without any new information or idea isn't going to result into much progress. But spending your time talking about it in circles won't solve it either, so there is a balance to be found somewhere.

If you're following guides, it makes it easier to figure out how it's supposed to be solved since the guides solve it for you, so what's left is figuring out timings and finding your bearings with it, and then executing it properly.

Your example of colliding planets is literally abstract geometry tied to arena visual cues, and I do believe that kind of mechanic (seen more often those days) is its own can of worms because it relies on different mechanical skills than the rest of the game imo. They're found most often in extreme trials I find, like the star patterns in the first ex trial of Endwalker, or Gales in the Voidcast Dais ex. Also seen here and there in savage albeit more rare, like superchain theory in P12S. They can require you to solve a lot of geometry on the fly or in sequences.

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

What else might I do it prepare for harder content?

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Have you done any of the EW extremes? The current unreal?

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One of my worst habits is freezing up whenever faced with mechanics I do not understand well/at all. I might entirely stop casting…

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If that means dropping casts of Malefic, I say meh. Worry about that after you're comfortably clearing the mechanic and/or fight, or consistently seeing the enrage.

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…or I might act too slowly for what the mechanic is asking of me.

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I think the only way to truly get used to pacing and nature of harder content is to just step foot in it and give a whirl.

Consider the final trial of Endwalker: Running it at min ilvl doesn't change the pacing or nature of the mechanics. It just makes the fight take longer.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

You should discard the idea of perfection immediately. It doesnt exist. It's a tredmil that you'll be chasing forever as your goals continously change. Eventually it will get to a point where you dont even recognise what you were originally after

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while true my brain isn't exactly the most logical thing. I am working on it but it might take me my entire lifetime to truly make peace with the imperfections in my actions and being. (sorry didn't see your response earlier)

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Originally Posted by Valence

The way you act the first time seeing a mechanic isn't that important, what matters is that you can analyze it after, try and see what went wrong, try to figure out how it's solved, and if you need to see it more, then you go at it again with those new questions in mind, and you try to figure out more and more of it every time. Going at it again blindly without any new information or idea isn't going to result into much progress. But spending your time talking about it in circles won't solve it either, so there is a balance to be found somewhere.

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on the flip side I might pass a mechanic and still not understand what I'm doing then later ask myself why I was able to survive in the first place. I do try to analyze the mechanics I get wrong. Tbh, I'm very for talking to people and thinking on my own with a mechanic. Sometimes it takes failing it multiple times to see what I was doing. I think recording the failure would also benefit me. Just means I need to be recording in advanced.

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If you're following guides, it makes it easier to figure out how it's supposed to be solved since the guides solve it for you, so what's left is figuring out timings and finding your bearings with it, and then executing it properly.

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I'll likely be following guides most of the time unless I feel like going in blind. I won't be going to the newest content until I have caught up on the entire catalogue.

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Your example of colliding planets is literally abstract geometry tied to arena visual cues, and I do believe that kind of mechanic (seen more often those days) is its own can of worms because it relies on different mechanical skills than the rest of the game imo. They're found most often in extreme trials I find, like the star patterns in the first ex trial of Endwalker, or Gales in the Voidcast Dais ex. Also seen here and there in savage albeit more rare, like superchain theory in P12S. They can require you to solve a lot of geometry on the fly or in sequences.

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Yeah I'm not very good at abstract geometry. Took me asking a friend about it. I have a bad habit of looking down or developing tunnel vision and not seeing what is happening with the atmosphere around me until it is too late.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

Have you done any of the EW extremes? The current unreal?

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nope. I will eventually, though.

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If that means dropping casts of Malefic, I say meh. Worry about that after you're comfortably clearing the mechanic and/or fight, or consistently seeing the enrage.

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Yeah my brain is trying to parse would what is going on and my feet (metaphorical) are telling me to just run

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I think the only way to truly get used to pacing and nature of harder content is to just step foot in it and give a whirl.

Consider the final trial of Endwalker: Running it at min ilvl doesn't change the pacing or nature of the mechanics. It just makes the fight take longer.

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tis the natural step of the game! Yeah I anticipate older content may change a bit more at min ilvl compared to newer content

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

maybe I should clarify: I'll be doing normal coils synced first then min ilvl and then do the savage version... eventually.

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Synced savage coils are just pre-nerf versions of some coil raids; there are no "normal" coils, there were no separation back then so they are all savage.

They are very hard since the old job kits had more abilities while now all of them are barebone at 50. There is no reason to do it synced besides challenge.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

Synced savage coils are just pre-nerf versions of some coil raids; there are no "normal" coils, there were no separation back then so they are all savage.

They are very hard since the old job kits had more abilities while now all of them are barebone at 50. There is no reason to do it synced besides challenge.

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Oh- good to know. ...Why do we have less things on level 50 kits than we did in previous expansions?

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

Oh- good to know. ...Why do we have less things on level 50 kits than we did in previous expansions?

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As ff14 has console players, and in general supports controller - it has a limit of how many skill could fit there. Normally you can map 24 skills on the controller for a comfortable access. When the max is 50 you don’t have to worry about it yet. Then with every increase the skills need to spread out, so the upper limit won’t be reached, but new skills or smth will be still rewarded to the player as they level up.

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

Oh- good to know. ...Why do we have less things on level 50 kits than we did in previous expansions?

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Because over time, jobs get reworked, abilities get added and subtracted, and then all those abilities that remain/exist need to get spread out over 60 levels, 70 levels, etc.

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Originally Posted by Local_Custard

Ah. I have been told I won't be ready for savage content if I continue to freeze up... So I thought it was a bad habit of mine. I do tend to do that. On average it takes me 3 times to get comfortable with content I am unfamiliar with. Granted this number is for normal level of content. I cannot say how long it'll take me to learn savage or harder levels of content. Maybe double or triple that. Though, I have the benefit of having older hard (savage, extreme, ultimate) raids long figured out by other people so I can always look at those strategy guides.

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The trick for overcoming this is learning how scripted the encounters in this game actually are, so when you learn a raid it becomes just identical sequences of key presses and movement patterns.

For ARR and HW most mechanics are triggered based on boss HP %, but after SB its strict timeline.

You can get the feel for this by just doing enough content. Then you mind will learn how to map encounters in terms of "after this mech I can do 5 malefics then have to heal raidwide with these abilities then I have 3 malefics, dot refresh and 4 malefics until next mechanic" etc.

If you really want to start with old content, most datacenters should have discord communities that do old content synced or are beginner focused, don't know about NA ones specifically.