Request for general advice for being good at playing

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Well, the new patch is going to make Role Actions more accessible, so you'll have more options to use in battle. It's probably a good idea to start building the muscle memory of using Diversion with DPS, because it's a good skill for ensuring the Tanks can do their jobs efficiently.

In my mind, as I was still re-familiarizing myself with everything, I delayed my Trick Attack until after Head-On. The main shirked me for the Doom Strike for it, and the healer eventually Rescued me into a Ghost. The raid group said as much.

This is just someone being an asshole.

[KaivaC]

Oh...so many responses. I'll try to answer everyone at once. First off, thanks for the comments, really helps when I have been frustrated by things that have happened in-game. Yes, I recently came back to playing on my normal schedule, though my main isn't linked to this profile. I haven't stepped foot in a savage raid because that isn't my focus at the moment, just trying to build up my own skill as a player before going down that road again. I primarily main NIN, with BLM as my secondary job when my fingers start to hurt from all the mudras, trick attacks, and button presses that I do (seriously, I do not joke around when I say I practice a lot). I am aware that I was being trolled, but my thoughts had been 'what areas can I improve' where I don't get hit with this blame. But, as mentioned before, it seems like there's nothing I need to improve at in those specific scenarios.

I'll be the first to admit that any screw-up on my end, I will zero in on it and do what I can to eliminate future mistakes - maybe that's obsession over perfection, but that's had been how I felt was the way to get better. Am probably wrong about how much I zero in on things like this. I don't mean to cause anybody worry, though, haha. Given past posts, yes, I can understand why some may be worried, but no, this is me expressing pure frustration over things that I did feel like I was messing up on. I've seen advice throughout all your comments, so I'll work to keep those in mind (particularly the confidence part...yeah, I can admit that I struggle with confidence). The scenarios posted are tldr'ed for the sake of word count, but a few got the full stories in the DF thread. I will try to learn not to stress about stuff like this when the patch does come back up. Again, thanks for the advice provided.

[Aramina]

My only advice is "know and accept when it is your fault, but also know and accept when it isn't". Making a mistake is not necessarily the same as being at fault. We all make mistakes, but that doesn't make us solely responsible for anything and everything. Even being at fault isn't a terrible thing as long as you don't do the same fault repeatedly. As for being kicked, I would say look at it not as a bad thing but as a good thing: Why would you want to be in a group with people wanting to troll and/or blame people. You wouldn't, right? They did you favor removing you from an unfavorable group without you needing to leave on your own and earning a penalty as a result. Now that doesn't mean do whatever you want and if you get kicked so be it (and I am sure you didn't take it that way, just pointing out), but it does mean at the end of the day if you are playing to the best of your ability and owning up when you didn't do something you should have... if someone in the group has a problem with it... it is just that... their problem.

[Vidu]

...so, this has stuck with me for a bit and I hope everyone will forgive me for posting and giving advice here again - this is more of an adition to my original post, which was mostly intended to convey a message of "Not everything is your fault (even if jerks say so)" and "Dont beat yourself up over things that arent your fault".
Again, I believe that both those points are important to really get into your head if you want to become a good player!

To actually improve however you need to know where you need to improve!
For that I'd recommend making a (mental) list:
1) What am I good at?
2) What am I struggeling with?
3) Which one of my struggles is the first one I want to take on and how/where do I do that best?

The first one, I'll admit, is a bit to keep ones spirits high while thinking of the second one.

Sadly it seems that from your DF-stories one of your main struggles are the bad parties you end up in... a fix for that could be friends, linkshells and/or a proper FC to play content together with!
Those - one would hope - friendly people could also help you with really thinking about the seond point.
You cant improve everywhere and everything that once - that will lead to you being all over the place, never really "mastering" anything. Jack of all trades and so on.

So pick one thing that you're feeling you're having trouble with and try to combat that with either a special "training" or by thinking of a way to make it easier for you.
Maybe you're not great at dodging AoEs - so go and pick a fight/dungeon that has a lot of them and really focus on dodging while keeping up your attacks.
Maybe you're forgetting to use certain helpful skills. Depending on the skill: Make a macro with /echo that will send you a little message+sound each time you can/have to use that skill - "Refresh Huton!" every 60 seconds or so, if thats something you tend to forget (...and I have no idea if 60 seconds would be a good number, I dont know a thing about ninja, its just an example).

Only you know where your weak points lie, so find that out and think of a way to combat them.
...and then its back to practise, practise, practise. At best in a relaxed envoriment, like a group of friends who will give good and helpful advice.

Reflect about the runs you're doing, take a step back to see what went bab, but also what went well, so you know what to improve upon and what you're already close to mastering!

Take a look at your hotbars - are they set up in a way that works and "flows" for you? I know that my main struggle with monk is that my hotbars are messed up, but I dont want to play that class to begin with, so I dont bother fixing them.
For my main-jobs I made very sure however that my hotbars are set up in a way that benefits how I play that class. So take a look at that - does anything feel clunky? Skills you want to or should use a lot more often out of reach?

Either way... try to tackle one thing at a time, look for people who are patient enough to let you work on it (as long as it isnt your most basic rotation, but I'll assume you have that down), let your party know that you're practising and dont take s*it from people who actually might not know better. (Still take friendly and polite advice though - personally I would encourage you to ask for that!)

[Deathgiver]

Op is posting on an alt or plays on an alt. Anyway the poster is not the 'real character' so you don't really need to stalk his lodestone character.

'How can I improve' is really hard to answer without more info. Explaining rotation for example won't help because he knows all that.

In what the OP said there is nothing to improve on. He did nothing wrong. Sure he could have used diversion (and DPS need to use their enmity reduction tools so tanks can DPS stance longer if DPS players are catching up on the tanks shirk/vote enmity), but then the boss would have just killed the other player next in the enmity lists.

Op has knowledge and can play, but in this post the only conclusion is that he ran with bad toxic players that should be put on blacklist and forget about.

Perhaps you should look at the title of the thread? Not giving any advice certainly doesn't qualify as fulfilling the general request. I mean it's totally possible the OP just wants people to comfort them after a run in with mean players, but I choose to think they are genuinely seeking advice, not attention whoring.

[Melichoir]

You have to be able to distinguish between "Git Gud cause im a Baddie" and "People are Trolling me so I must be a baddy"

Frankly, as some of the other posts have mentioned, sounds like you got the short end of the stick. It happens. The best thing you can do with unreasonable stuff is just be the best player you can be. If people troll you, youll know it. So to start heres some basic stuff:

1) Go join the Balance Discord. Go there. Ask questions, get real good with your class, and with your type (dps/tanks/healers/etc). Youll go a long way in getting better as a player by studying up a bit
2) Familiarize yourself with all the other classes to a decent extent. You dont have to be pro or be able to play them well, just have a good overview of how the other classes operates, their primary skills, things of that sort.
3) Practice, practice, and practice the harder stuff. Get yourself geared and start doing EX and Savage content. Push yourself to clear stuff. Through experience of harder content, youll be a better player so long as you are very aware of the last bit here
4) Be honest with yourself. I dont think this will be to huge an issue, but its a very common thing where people wont relaly look at things theyve done and own up to them. You messed up a mechanic, dont blame it on other players, or say "Well a tank couldve done this, or a healer done that". Really scrutinize your play, look for the weak spots, and practice on those parts.

As I said, if you git gud and practice and learn the game to its fullest, youll know when people are trolling you. And when they do, its no skin off your back. Theyre just jerks, and youll find other groups thatll be a-ok and youll get things done.

Just be the best you, and things will work out pretty regularly.

[SaitoHikari]

Problem is, I have runs, which I will mention in a second that make me wonder what more am I able to do. Posted these in the DF vent thread, but just to add some context, I’ll just tldr it here. Had a run as a NIN on Ravana HM in which I didn’t think about Diversion – that was definitely on me, because eventually when the main tank died, I was next on the aggro list and got hit with the cleave. The rest of the raid wiped shortly after that, and I got hit with the blame on that one for even having aggro in the first place. I apologized and told the raid that I would pop diversion, since it was honestly my mistake for not doing that. Got kicked before the next pull.

Other situation – Sigmascape 1 Normal. In my mind, as I was still re-familiarizing myself with everything, I delayed my Trick Attack until after Head-On. The main shirked me for the Doom Strike for it, and the healer eventually Rescued me into a Ghost. The raid group said as much.

Scenario 1: That's not actually on you, that's on the off-tank for not grabbing immediately with Provoke if the rest of the raid somehow died after you fell. It sounds like you ended up with a group that had a few premades using you to absolve themselves of their own role in that wipe. It is very common to have a DPS between both tanks on the enmity list, even with aggro reduction skills being used.

Scenario 2: That's just pretty douchey. You normally trick attack during the opener at all times, but it's not something to expect in -normal- mode and definitely not worth shirking and rescuing someone into deaths/overall DPS loss scenarios. That said, I'd hope you start using Trick Attack whenever possible now, as 60 seconds is rather frequent.

I think the main roadblock to becoming 'good' is to respect other players' time and to play as well as you can in all situations. Take things seriously in all situations in terms of your own performance, and do whatever you can to make things easier for everyone else - even if the other players aren't quite taking it that seriously either. As a Bard, this is pretty easy to do and other party members will notice very quickly as they watch the resource regeneration going off at crucial moments and defensive cooldowns going up on the tank during the most dangerous mass pulls. Having seen your posts and threads over the past few months, I think you are just overthinking things and taking things too personally. Just do things from a logical standpoint. Tons of mobs? AoE. See someone dipping below 40% TP and the mob of enemies still have 25+% HP? Goad them. Everyone using their opener? Trick Attack.

My thought process as a Bard goes like this in particular:

- Groups of 3+ enemies: After tank pulls, throw Windbite on as many mobs as possible as tank continues pulling until the tank reaches the end destination. Usually, it's not feasible to throw it on ALL of the mobs, so if you manage to tag at least 3 of them as the tank is moving, that should be enough. Once the tank reaches the end destination, identify the most dangerous mob in the group and throw both DoTs on it, then keep focus on that mob as you AoE spam. (In the latest dungeon, I throw both DoTs on the snake, manta ray, and the giant priests. There's one situation where all three are present, so doing it on all of them may not be feasible depending on the situation.)

Ideally, you use Army's Paeon as tank begins pulling for the most critical mass pulls in a dungeon, then as the tank reaches the end destination, use Army's Troubadour (10% party-wide physical damage reduction for 30 seconds) and Palisade on the tank (20% physical damage reduction for 10 seconds). After that, swap to Mage's Ballad and AoE down the mobs, remembering to Iron Jaws to refresh DoTs on the most dangerous mobs as needed. Since you threw DoTs on the mobs on the way there, you should be getting mass Rain of Death resets. Also remember to use Nature's Minne as needed, it is basically a Convalescence that can work on any party member on a shorter cooldown.

Pay attention if the tank is a PLD and is using Hallowed Ground. Make sure Palisade does not overlap with that. To make targeting Palisade easier, use a macro for Palisade as follows: /ac "Palisade" <tt>

The above allows you to throw Palisade on whoever the enemy is targeting, usually the tank. This won't cover all situations where Palisade will be useful, but most of the practical ones. I also macro Nature's Minne in a similar way. Also use your resource regens as needed.

- Group of 1-2 enemies: Throw Windbite and Venomous Bite on both of them, and go into Wanderer's Minuet if available, Mage's Ballad otherwise. Refresh DoTs as needed.

I have a somewhat old video showing this thought process in action, though being as old as it is, it was before I found a much better opener for boss fights. And... I either forgot to Palisade or the server decided it wouldn't let the Palisade macro go off properly at a few points in the dungeon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UugMqVcjZ8

[Paladinleeds]

The third: You should first work on your self-confidence. You're very, very good at spotting mistakes you're making, but not so great at actually seeing that others are at fault too, maybe even a lot more than you.
I used to be extremly insecure aswell, but I was lucky enough to have some amazing friends who always informed me immdiatly when it wasnt me who messed up the whole thing.

I'm going to echo this sentiment. I have a friend whom if ever anything goes wrong she tries to blame herself because some nasty people have pulled similar stunts on her blaming her. Nowadays she queues with me and just listens to what I have to say, because if she is at fault, I will tell her, but if she isn't, I will make sure she knows and understands that too. So if someone is giving good constructive advice, I'll tell her to listen, and she will. I'm kinda like a security blanket for her. She knows if anyone starts trying to blame her for stuff or get nasty, I'll back her up. Actually kicked someone from a duty over it because they were being nasty and literally causing her to become paralysed with fear. As soon as he got kicked, she loosened up. Turns out he was on our realm too, so straight onto both our blacklists he went after duty.

[Nyvara]

Not sure how to reply about the "Giting gud" I play to the best of my ability but pretty much stick to normal mode and 24 mans. This is where I have fun and they challenge me plenty. I suppose I just accept my limitations and stay in a venue I won't be exposed to excessive asshatery. Another thing I'm not sure of is if servers have anything to do with who you are matched with or if again it has to do with the level of play I do I just don't get as many terrible groups

As to the trolling read up on the Koike incident you'll find that SE has a pretty low tolerance for the kind of behavior you had to endure.

[Vidu]

Another thing I'm not sure of is if servers have anything to do with who you are matched with or if again it has to do with the level of play I do I just don't get as many terrible groups

Servers are organised in datacenters - Elemental, Gaia and Mana for japan; Aether and Primal for NA and Chaos for the EU. Each datacenter is made up off several servers - Siren and Cactuar (the OPs server, according to the forum at least) both belong to Aether, so the two of you could get paired with each other! My server, Odin, is part of Chaos - since we dont share a datacenter, we'll never be able to play with each other (unless someone transfers, makes an alt etc.)

Other than that there is nothing that determines with whom you get paired in normal DF - not even your blacklist matters.
Its a bit different for the savage and ex-primal stuff, since you can set certain filters such as "duty complete" that will only pair you with people who cleared the content in question before.

But in general you can be matched with anyone from your datacenter, there are no filters beside healer/tank/dd.