4.5 Patch notes are live

[purgatori]

As someone who often has trouble in raids and dungeons, i can sympathize with many of your remarks. However, i strongly suggest not putting off content for later. When content is new, no one can throw stones at one another over new mechanics.

That's not a bad point, and it's certainly not something I've tried before. Thanks!

[Vahlnir]

Not a stupid question at all. The only jobs I have used for raids, though, are DRK, DRG, and RDM.

Perhaps more experimentation is needed. You never know what you'll discover by giving other jobs an honest go.

As someone who often has trouble in raids and dungeons, i can sympathize with many of your remarks. However, i strongly suggest not putting off content for later. When content is new, no one can throw stones at one another over new mechanics.

That's not a bad point, and it's certainly not something I've tried before. Thanks!

This was certainly good advice.

[kikix12]

On the point of sticking at it: I generally put off doing raids for quite a long time, so by the time I get to them most participants have generally learned the mechanics... But there still ends up being wipes and drama.

That's not because that content is hard, but because Final Fantasy XIV have way too LITTLE challenge for the individual players. Quite literally...most players you will meet in party content are really, really bad.

Look at dungeons. They are simple. Simple mechanics that you can learn on your first run through most of the time. Heck, many mechanics are slowly introduced at the beginning of a fight or are taken straight from other fights earlier in the game.

But wipes still happen. Because people ignore these simple mechanics. Time and again, even when told. Qarn is a perfect example with the first boss and the third bosses stone heads in first phase.


If you can do the solo content no problem and you avoid unnecessary damage in dungeons consistently...the wipes in 24-man dungeons are not on you. It's not you that plays bad, it's several other people from across the three parties. 24-man dungeons have instant-wipe mechanics that dungeons do not. Mechanics that you can find in some trials in a simpler form...but people either don't run trials past their first run and a roulette here or there...or they do the extreme, so they are more 'hardcore' and are probably more after savage than the alliance raids. So you get tons of people that assume that they can ignore mechanics and the healers will pop them back up like it was nothing...only to cause an unavoidable wipe at some point.

The roulette doesn't help since the lvl50 alliance raids can be steamrolled by ignoring all the mechanics...well, Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower. World of Darkness...not exactly. Cerberus is going to wipe you still if you don't do it properly.


So yes. Read a guide, watch a guide video, learn the crucial mechanics. Then just pay attention to how many of them you do successfully. And often still wipe.


Granted...that doesn't make them any more enjoyable...even less so in fact...but that's what you get when the game does everything it can to wave personal responsibility.

[Iscah]

I think ilevel makes a lot of difference to raids though. Ridorana (the first raid released since I reached endgame) seems to have gotten easier since we went up to i380-90 gear, and it seemed like the Dun Scaith raid back in Heavensward started going smoother than it had been before that point. And then there's the Crystal Tower raids, where people are starting to out-DPS boss mechanics by miles. I've seen Phlegethon killed before he can cast his second Ancient Flare, and Amon before he completes his Curtain Call.

[InkstainedGwyn]

Wipes happen in the beginning because people are learning mechanics. It's pretty normal in my opinion so stick it out. To ask that story content not be locked behind more challenging content is simply not going to happen. Story is important but so is the fact that not all content has to be so easy to run that they eliminate it form the more challenging duties.

Yeah, like... I'm not hardcore, I don't do savage, I do EXes when I'm like, 20-40 ilvls higher than when it's released, and I find these 24-man raids to be snooze-worthy. Yeah, you can get some rude people (just turn off alliance chat), yeah you get dumb people messing up mechanics either deliberately or because they don't know, but... it's no harder than a 4-man dungeon, once you have 24 people in there working.

[Bonbori]

Gear definitely makes a massive difference. When a raid first comes out, a lot of the mechanics are designed to one- or nearly-one-shot you at the minimum ilvl required for entry (*traumatic Larboard/Starboard flashbacks from Day 1 of Alphascape*), but once you acquire a few pieces of gear from the same tier as the dungeon/raid/trial in question (or keep up with your tomestone grind), those one-shot mechanics become a lot more forgiving. As of right now, a full set of unaugmented Scaevan gear allows a DPS to take the full channel of Famfrit's jug attack (I forgot the name, the big flood that used to absolutely wipe entire alliances in days of yore) to the face and still have some hp to spare. And a quick heal in between Larboard and Starboard in o11n will allow you to survive even if you get hit by both (although taking anything else to the face with 2 stacks of vulnerability will splatter you so that's still not recommended).

Anyways, when it comes to normal raids and alliance raids, even if you cannot do all the mechanics (and believe me... I've SEEN some stuff. If you are capable of dodging one obvious telegraph and pressing more than 3 different buttons over the course of a 10 minute fight, you are already light years ahead of many future pro gamers I've run into), good enough gear will compensate for the odd mistake here and there and make the experience a lot less stressful for you n_n

[ksuyen]

Blue Mage is live? Really?

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get any more glamour plates with 4.5. Hopefully Shadowbringers will provide us with a few more.

[Fynlar]

Yeah I’ll run day one to start learning the fights when wiping is excepted and people are less likely to starting chewing people out.

Won't help much. I literally see PFs on day 1 of new content already expecting pros only.

Yes, it's ridiculous, but I do see it.

[purgatori]

That's not because that content is hard, but because Final Fantasy XIV have way too LITTLE challenge for the individual players. Quite literally...most players you will meet in party content are really, really bad.

Look at dungeons. They are simple. Simple mechanics that you can learn on your first run through most of the time. Heck, many mechanics are slowly introduced at the beginning of a fight or are taken straight from other fights earlier in the game.

But wipes still happen. Because people ignore these simple mechanics. Time and again, even when told. Qarn is a perfect example with the first boss and the third bosses stone heads in first phase.

If you can do the solo content no problem and you avoid unnecessary damage in dungeons consistently...the wipes in 24-man dungeons are not on you. It's not you that plays bad, it's several other people from across the three parties. 24-man dungeons have instant-wipe mechanics that dungeons do not. Mechanics that you can find in some trials in a simpler form...but people either don't run trials past their first run and a roulette here or there...or they do the extreme, so they are more 'hardcore' and are probably more after savage than the alliance raids. So you get tons of people that assume that they can ignore mechanics and the healers will pop them back up like it was nothing...only to cause an unavoidable wipe at some point.

So yes. Read a guide, watch a guide video, learn the crucial mechanics. Then just pay attention to how many of them you do successfully. And often still wipe.


Granted...that doesn't make them any more enjoyable...even less so in fact...but that's what you get when the game does everything it can to wave personal responsibility.

More good advice, thank you. And I think even under ideal conditions, raids would never be something I'd enjoy; the combination of combat that I'm not very good at (compared to action combat) and the social dimension ensure that I'm never going to be in my element. However, if I can get through the fights without making a complete fool of myself, and also recognise that I might not be part of the really, really bad contingent of players (i.e., those who completely ignore mechanics), then I'll consider that a win.