Savage raiding still needs work

[Khalithar]

I think I just got used to dodge the castbars, but I kind of agree that the disconnect between the cast bar and the actual attack animation going off is quite jarring.

The way the current savage design is you don't necessarily need to watch the cast bars, there are visual indicators in both boss stance and animation that you're able to pre-position and then wait for the spells to go off and the various visuals to know when to move. Plus at least for most raids there's a designated caller and you can usually listen to that. OP was having trouble in 12s phase 2 for two specific mechanics where you have to dynamically adjust to your debuffs and know where to move and then wait for certain timers to run out. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it but it can be rough when you're still learning, goodness knows I struggled with the same mechanics the OP mentioned.

[Colt47]

It's actually kind of funny when you first step into savage, because the way they design savage fights vs... the entire rest of the game is so different it is jarring. A lot of the standard fights are easy to overcome, but have random elements to them due to the general chaos of the player group. That and they tend to be more focused on how well you perform vs how well the group performs. Savage is incredibly specific on what must be done to pass each mechanic, so it is all about figuring out that exact dance step, then conducting a very specific set of actions to maximize the damage being dealt to the boss (because that is how they work now).

Also, as a side note: Black Mage does really well in savage just because of how methodical it is. In casual content it feels horrible to play. I always felt that black mage should be more like a bard in how there is no combo, but you got a bunch of cooldowns that you manage so you just throw all this fire and lightning on casts. As it is, the class reminds me a bit more of a balance druid from World of Warcraft, actually...

[Khalithar]

It's actually kind of funny when you first step into savage, because the way they design savage fights vs... the entire rest of the game is so different it is jarring. A lot of the standard fights are easy to overcome, but have random elements to them due to the general chaos of the player group. That and they tend to be more focused on how well you perform vs how well the group performs. Savage is incredibly specific on what must be done to pass each mechanic, so it is all about figuring out that exact dance step, then conducting a very specific set of actions to maximize the damage being dealt to the boss (because that is how they work now).

Also you die, a lot, a metric f*** ton.

You die a bunch of times learning how to resolve a mechanic. Then you die a lot mastering the next one. Repeat until you've mastered every step of the dance and then get the satisfaction of the boss kill.

Then after a few weeks of farming you kill the boss you spent weeks on in the first pull and you're like "that's it?" It's an odd feeling once you reach the top of that mountain.

[Colt47]

Also you die, a lot, a metric f*** ton.

You die a bunch of times learning how to resolve a mechanic. Then you die a lot mastering the next one. Repeat until you've mastered every step of the dance and then get the satisfaction of the boss kill.

Then after a few weeks of farming you kill the boss you spent weeks on in the first pull and you're like "that's it?" It's an odd feeling once you reach the top of that mountain.

I used to avoid savage all the time because I never felt it was worth it. Finally stepped into doing it this expansion and honestly it feels like some of the best designed and fun content they got in the game. They tried bringing in Eureka and Bazja that are massive time sinks and it really feels like there is a disconnect between content. I also think that it is frustrating that people who choose savage can't progress on the relics using that route given how much time it takes to organize and run it.

Savage itself just needs better tools to work with in-game in terms of learning the fight.

[Alaray]

No one is advocating for one button jobs. Just from the standpoint of designing a fight, in order to have so many controls like they do now, they have to create massive pauses between attacks just so people can look away from the action to manage their own job actions. Every single person does it and even on warrior, which is one of the simpler ones, people still have to do it. That's why DPS are the ones that die the most: because they have to juggle so much on their plate during those pauses that it goes over the time limit before the next attack pattern. If someone practices a lot they can mitigate it a bit, but even after months of using the same job it still happens.

FYI what we are talking about isn't the job actions or even the number of actions, but developing patterns that can be learned and followed without removing ones sight from the action on the screen. Some jobs like Machinist are pretty decent, but compare Paladin to Gunbreaker and you can easily see some problems.

That's on the player, to be frank.

- The fight is scripted, it can be committed to memory, so it's best to be proactive about the fight and its mechanics instead of reacting to them (esp. with the baseline 200ms delay even if you have 0 ping).
- If you're staring at your hotbars while you play, it's a habit to try and find a way to ease out of. Which isn't easy, but it is part of improvement -- if you understand your job, how it lines up in the fight, what you're doing when and aware of what buttons you're pressing while watching the arena/team/boss it helps extensively with faster reaction times/awareness. Just being able to do that, back in StB, massively improved my consistency and further helped me to commit the fight timeline to memory so I wouldn't even really need to look at the boss or my bars, and could instead look at my team to see if everyone was in the right spot or if I'd need to do something weird so someone wouldn't die. It's a skill you learn, is my point (and might need to re-learn if you pick up a new job/role).
- Not everyone stares at their hotbars/not everyone dies because they were. Like, it happens yes, but I've seen WAY more DPS deaths due to DPS trying to squeeze out an extra GCD/dashing back into an AoE improperly/mistiming something/backflipping off the arena.
- Can you clear a fight staring at hotbars? Yes. Will you probably die? Yeah probs, maybe not if you otherwise got a grasp on the timings in the fight.

That said, I do have some memory issues (and I sometimes just blank out of my thoughts and have a momentary lapse of "where am I and what am I doing here, what is that") that are a hindrance to a degree, but I'm luckier in that they haven't been a massive hindrance and might just cost me 4 seconds of no gcd's or breaking and restarting my combo suddenly since my entire head did a "delete the last ten seconds". But I can see for like, people who *really* struggle with remembering and memory (though there are things like, Cactbot can help call out mechanics and, so long as you know what the mechanic does, you can stare at your bars and otherwise not have a firm grasp on the fight timeline and still maneuver).

And while I do have problems with memory, I'm also a bit doubly lucky in that there are some things that work for me to help remember how some stuff works (albeit my personal callouts to myself, I have been told, are "Weirdly convoluted and make no sense" which is why I do not do callouts for everyone else ). Which is more of a "if standard callouts aren't working for you to help remember the fight, or where your rotation currently is during a fight, try to make your own since that /can/ help"

If you can't keep up with the mechanics because you're not paying attention to them, due to tunneling on your hotbars, that's a player issue. That's not a fight design issue. Which, I want to say: isn't me trying to be a dick about it. I really like the pace of the savage fights (in fact I do wish they were faster -- P1 Titan Savage was FUN, P2 not really), and I just feel like... it's maybe not obvious that tunneling hotbars is a point of improvement (like, not doing a proper opener, or not mitigating incoming damage correctly, etc...) and should be treated as a point of improvement, vs. something that's purely on the game itself and not on the player at all.

Like I can get the frustration since I picked up healing this tier (as of like, a few weeks ago), and E11S is a lot faster paced compared to... a lot of turns, really, this expac. And I do a lot of "is draw up, do I need to redraw, is this a melee or ranged card, do I have CU up? CI up? CO? ED? ED2? Star timing good or bad? etc...) but while it can be a little frustrating here and there (Like, first time seeing... Holy Explosion > Burnished Glory > Protean > Light Parties I think my brain melted a little, but doing it more and getting used to that pace feels extremely satisfying once it's down and you're going from the "We're overhealing/Over mitigating x we can start to slowly chip stuff away from it now to spread tools out more + I can do more Malefic IV c:" and it's more of a "I need to play better and plan better" vs. "The fight is bad" )

[Colt47]

The thing is the tunneling issue happens a lot more in this game than others. Even on normal content people just flop over on certain jobs because they require way too much time to get to the point where the control patterns are normal. The reason I swapped to war is because I can focus on dealing with boss mechanics and not die to the hot bar wars

[Penthea]

Secondly, I dont think E12s is raiding anymore.. it feels more like putting together a puzzle then actually gaming... and by gaming I mean something like NInja Gaiden Master Ninja diffuclty where your reaction time is actually tested (and not your puzzle memory skills)

Sorry to burst your bubble but savage is hugely about solving puzzles. Yes there are videos out there telling you what the boss does and how to tackle it, but those videos have been put up by players who figured out how to do the fights on their own without help. SE didn't tell them how the bosses are supposed to be done.

Even if you do watch videos rarely do they explain in detail how to play your class as effectively as possible without it hampering your ability to deal with boss mechanics. Figuring that out is a puzzle in itself, especially for melee dps who need to figure out how to maintain as much uptime as possible without dying, and figuring that out can mean a lot of dying until they find the sweet spot. Teams with blms often do a lot of puzzle solving to figure out how to come up with a tactic that means the blm has to move as little as possible so they can turret.

If you want to do absolutely no reading in combat then raiding in this game isn't for you. Many teams have raid leaders who call out boss abilities in voice chat but there are times when so much happens at once that it is impossible to call out everything. Sometimes the rest of the team needs to do the reading that the raid leader cannot attend to due to time constraints. Often this happens in situations like when the team gets a variety of different debuffs so they need to figure out on their own which one they have, or when the design of the fight forces the team to split up and work independently.

If you are adamant about continuing to raid in this game the best advice I can give you is find a static with a raid leader who calls out all major boss mechanics. At least you would have a lot less reading to do than in a team in which no one is taking responsibility to call out anything in voice chat.

[Alaray]

The thing is the tunneling issue happens a lot more in this game than others. Even on normal content people just flop over on certain jobs because they require way too much time to get to the point where the control patterns are normal. The reason I swapped to war is because I can focus on dealing with boss mechanics and not die to the hot bar wars

Then, like I said, they have something to work on to do better. Doesn't change that it's very much a player skill to learn, and not an issue with fight design.

[ItMe]

Honestly... same. Tunneling is why I'm a tank main.
If I could I'd still be rocking DPS, but tanks having less to keep me busy let's me focus on the boss more. If anything I've noticed I'm now tunneling on the enemies if anything, which I guess I prefer.

[TroySoFab]

No it doesn't.