Savage raiding with a learning disability?

Last night I attempted to do an unsynced P8S, not really understanding the abbreviations or guide (mistakenly joined a HC), had a really helpful healer, but alas, it didn't all land because of my learning disability.

Managed phase 1 alright, confused why we died on the double bird part. Phase 2 was hellish, and took so long to learn. Even with both the guide and the healer's advice, it was overwhelming. If I struggle with this, it probably means I can't ever hope to do savage raiding at all, not even for older content.

We wiped on Phase 2 for 45 minutes, with fire/ice and high concept being the things I struggled to grasp at the end. Just the order of things and not knowing where to stand makes it hard too, I always struggle on those positional reads (like the Cruise M4 towers and Voidcast Dais direction attacks)

I'm not sure how into detail I can go into about my learning disability, and other issues. It has impacted a majority of my life, including gaming and FFXIV here in this case. I can pick up new roles easy enough with experience and some dungeon/raid/trial mechanics. I excel in pattern recognition. Learning something new is a different story entirely.

It leaves me wondering if anyone has any advice here or if there's just a reason for me to not ever attempt savage raiding. I wanted to get into the recent tiers of raiding and extreme trials (And chaotics). But I'm having second thoughts. Especially with how down that P8S made me. I'm easily the worst player there.

It's a little unclear to me what the issue specifically is. I guess you struggle understanding how mechanics work? Many players often learn the solution to a mechanic without actually knowing how it works, which makes them bad at explaining it. I feel Hector explains battle mechanics the best. Once you know why something is happening you just need to memorize it.

Learning delays is what I was diagnosed with, which I've took to mean learning something at a delayed rate. Which is why pattern recognition is so strong. I had a lot of comments growing up saying "Did you even listen to what I said?" found this info out way too late sadly. It does really impact understanding and creates a steep learning curve. Endsinger's Aria was an extreme trial I did that took over 15 attempts to figure out the strategy for the planets.
Repeating the same part in a guide might help, I'll try that next time, thanks.

Create a Practice party for whatever you want to clear and state first half, but in your mind set yourself smaller goals like get past the first quarter.

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Originally Posted by Mr_Vain_

Last night I attempted to do an unsynced P8S, not really understanding the abbreviations or guide (mistakenly joined a HC), had a really helpful healer, but alas, it didn't all land because of my learning disability.

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Very few can be good at everything, and while you excel at recognizing patterns, your weakness is positional reads. What I can say is, the more you practice and gain experience with this type of content, the easier it becomes.

As for P8s, make no mistake, it is a difficult, complex fight, and it's to be expected to struggle with it, especially with a lack of experience tackling this type of content.

My advice for you would be to focus exclusively on what you need to do. Movement, position, and timing.

Regarding the Fire and Ice mechanic, it's what is known as a proximity-based baited mechanic. In other words, people who stand closest and farthest will be targeted with the mechanic.

Anyway, I believe you will greatly benefit from a visual guide such as this: https://www.icy-veins.com/ffxiv/the-...age-raid-guide. They explain the mechanics and why it happens, along with pictures of where each role should be standing to resolve correctly.

The abbreviations are confusing for most new raiders. That confusion is not much to do with your learning disability. There is a website that attempts to explain some of these abbreviations:

• https://www.thepfstrat.com/p8s
• https://www.thepfstrat.com/jargon

P8S is one of the most difficult savage raids. You definitely should not take it as an example of what raiding is like. There are much easier Savage and Extreme fights.

This game is not as intuitive as you hope it is. Attacks affect you based on where you were standing when the cast bar completed, when an overhead marker disappears or when an orange circle disappears. This is typically before the animation goes off. Which means if you move based on the animations you see on screen, it will usually cause you to die.

These raids can be difficult to make sense of, because it's hard to see which order the attacks go off and what all the status effects (little icons) mean without recording it and playing it back in slow-motion. In order to understand what's going on, most people watch guides on YouTube.

So this just isn't the best, most intuitive game for a learning disability. However, I think you will have no trouble with Extreme and Unreal, especially if you play a tank.

Each Savage tier is a set of 4 raids. Usually the first 2 are not too difficult to get through, but it can vary, because Savage is regarded as more difficult than Extreme.

What helps a lot about the first 2 Savage raids is they tend to have less possible patterns, which may be easier to get used to.

You have mentioned a lot how it took you 15 attempts or 45 minutes to learn things. That's really good because a lot of players can do it for 16 hours and not get anywhere. You are meant to learn the fights by repeating them lots until you get used to them.

I describe Savage raiding as "beating your head against a brick wall until you finally burst through to the other side." Raiders who do a fight when it's a current tier will often go through these same struggles, trying to get through a difficult phase and wiping to it for hours. The average raider is not like the World First team, who know the language of the mechanics and have experienced enough of the game to identity the patterns immediately. The average raider is much more likely to wipe to something for 45 minutes straight every once in a while, too. (Much to the chagrin of PF.)

Savage fights really are like learning a dance routine, and that means you have to keep on practicing the parts that are hard and confusing to get through them. Sometimes, once you finally get a mechanic to click, it becomes easy and you nail it every time after that. Other mechanics have multiple patterns you have to memorize, and it'll take a lot of practice to get through all the various options and get good at every single one.

Just keep on practicing. And if it stops being fun, then don't force yourself to do it.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

I describe Savage raiding as "beating your head against a brick wall until you finally burst through to the other side." Raiders who do a fight when it's a current tier will often go through these same struggles, trying to get through a difficult phase and wiping to it for hours. The average raider is not like the World First team, who know the language of the mechanics and have experienced enough of the game to identity the patterns immediately. The average raider is much more likely to wipe to something for 45 minutes straight every once in a while, too. (Much to the chagrin of PF.)

Savage fights really are like learning a dance routine, and that means you have to keep on practicing the parts that are hard and confusing to get through them. Sometimes, once you finally get a mechanic to click, it becomes easy and you nail it every time after that. Other mechanics have multiple patterns you have to memorize, and it'll take a lot of practice to get through all the various options and get good at every single one.

Just keep on practicing. And if it stops being fun, then don't force yourself to do it.

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This has made me wonder, are the current savage raids designed to foreshadow the others? Makes me wonder if as a new player, the learning curve and pattern recognizing is possible by going from the start

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Originally Posted by Mr_Vain_

This has made me wonder, are the current savage raids designed to foreshadow the others? Makes me wonder if as a new player, the learning curve and pattern recognizing is possible by going from the start

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If you mean going from level 50 raids up to level 100 raids, in that order, they slowly came up with new patterns over 12 years.

But each individual raid has completely different gimmicks so you can't rely on that to be a smooth progression.

They release raids in packs of 4. So the first one is usually the easiest and the last one is usually the hardest. The last one usually has more possible patterns and gives you more to juggle.

For example, P8S is part of a set that includes P5S, P6S, P7S and P8S. So the intended difficulty progression is obviously P5S > P6S > P7S > P8S.

They don't always get the balance right from player's perspective though (for example, a lot of people would regard P6S as being more trivial than P5S).

Update: I did it! Cleared P8S. 6 hours in (Over 4 days) and finally managed a clear, albeit messy and just winged the tower mechanic. I figured out the mechanics somehow and a party member was helpful enough to post the long timer High Concept stacks for P8S. It's easier now I know, and there are patterns in that. Facing north/south during high concept stacks to determine the tower positions. I still die on Fire/Ice for some reason, It seems to be when I move slightly to get into position when it happens. I made note of all of it.

Not quite the same, but we had a static member who had a stroke, and pretty much everything happening around her registered in her brain with a delay after that. Physical "high ping", if I can describe it as such. She raided with us quite successfuly, even if it took longer for her to adjust to some things.

Since you excel with pattern recognition, maybe you could tie positioning into that by creating patterns in your mind, such as "when A happens, I'm supposed to stand in position B". FF14 fights aren't always intuitive, but majority of them are pattern-based, so if you know what strategy you're using and what your role position is, you typically create the mapping of how you're going to move throughout the fight. Other than that, having a group of players who're accomodating to your pacing and having a lot of patience for repeating the same thing for hours (which, honestly, happens to most raiders, I think) would to the trick.

Good work brother

I had some sprouts come into P8S after farming E4S and got hard reality checked that they couldn't just steamroll through it. Fight still has hands even now so good work on getting past NA and HC.