When you Love the Story, but are Really Bad at the Gameplay

[Carin-Eri]

Thanks for the replies everyone! Have to admit I wasn't expecting much of a response!

One positive I will say is that I have generally found most players on the majority of teams to be pretty forgiving, particuarly since I'm still a 'Sprout'. I have to admit I appreciate that, as came from a game where the playerbase were pretty unforgiving of bad players/mistakes.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Definitely don't give up! Usually solo duties have some sort of pattern where you can eventually learn and prevail, and they are designed to be completed by all classes. I've had several solo duties that took me quite a few tries and I was very frustrated but was quite happy when I finally got past it. The story is outstanding and worth those hiccups! Also sometimes failing a couple times increases the feeling that what's going on in the story is an actual threat also.

(As opposed to low level quests where the NPCs throw praise at you for defeating the "unkillable monster" that you could sleepwalk through haha).

[Shougun]

What is wrong with the forums, opened it up to expect a bunch of git gud and the 'game is too easy'. Saw a bunch of people being supportive and understanding. PFFFT

NOT IN MY HOUSE!



Seriously though I think if you took all the advise above you'll be able to make it. It was all good for different issues.

Personally I would note that often if you're having issue with almost any content in FFXIV it's because you're missing a specific mechanic by the enemy. True even for the harder content, with the exception that then you're also expected to do your own mechanics. I don't recall much of the fight but what I would do, specially if you're not in the mood to read a bunch of guides on the content is to purposefully take a deep breath and do everything with no expectation of yourself in terms of quality except survive and watch what the opponent expects of you.

Maybe watch and make sure your DoTs are applied (with no pressure on if it falls off, like don't take a boss hit just so you can get that DoT back on) while you generally just doing some basic parts of your rotation (straight shot town! lol), which can give you some easy damage. If there is a DPS check that happens at a certain point in the fight you can save your big skills till that moment. Say like at 25% health a boss starts a countdown attack and normally you don't have the abilities / mean to take them down fast enough. Instead you can just peck away casually, dodging mechanics as best you can, and then once that starts you dig deep with your barrage, attack up buff, songs, oGCDs, everything.

Until you hit a DPS check usually you could drop all tasks on yourself except survive and some very basic low mental task damage (avoiding stress of feeling like you had to do the rest of your rotation or you're missing a skill or something), and you'd be okay (when trying to learn a content). Dead damage is often lower than low damage . This means you might notice a boss will after 3 attacks then jump to the opposite corner and deal a huge room wide aoe, in which case you just say 'meh' to your damage and start going over there more preemptively, or maybe position yourself more in the center so when they leap to the opposite side of the room you have half the distance to run, save your sprint and use it, etc.

Also it can help to make sure you've second wind on your bar and to use it occasionally, may help keep things calmer.

[Illmaeran]

What is wrong with the forums, opened it up to expect a bunch of git gud and the 'game is too easy'. Saw a bunch of people being supportive and understanding.

GCBTW.

/10char

[shao32]

While practice your job mechanics in a dummy to build muscle memory and do more content to get use to the mechanics i suggest to keep your gear on cheek, you have many grey pieces so remember to visit ralgh reach for lvl 70 gear to buy ilvl 400 gear and farm some rouletes to get the needed tomestomes or you can find powerfull sets on the market for that lvl too, it will the make the duty easier and make you survive better.

[ZephyrMenodora]

While practice your job mechanics in a dummy to build muscle memory and do more content to get use to the mechanics i suggest to keep your gear on cheek, you have many grey pieces so remember to visit ralgh reach for lvl 70 gear to buy ilvl 400 gear and farm some rouletes to get the needed tomestomes or you can find powerfull sets on the market for that lvl too, it will the make the duty easier and make you survive better.

This is really great advice, especially for a DPS class with limited self-healing options during solo duties. I know most of these are designed to be done with "bad" story gear, so sometimes overgearing with end-of-expansion Tomestone gear can make these a LOT more doable and less frustrating.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Wow, this thread is full of wholesome responses. Great community by the way? Yeah, it is actually.

But on topic, OP I can't offer any more advice than what others have already stated. I am very bad at the game too but getting better thanks to the support of the people I play regularly with.

My advice is to find a video guide. I would post one for you but not sure if thats okay on the forums or not.

[Rokke]

You started fairly recently so even if you've come far level-wise it will still take time to develop muscle memory, and that alone will make everything feel less chaotic.

In addition to the earlier suggestion of beating up training dummies, I would recommend tinkering with your HUD so that you rearrange/resize bits to shave off time trying to see what is where with how much time left. Bard has a lot of elements you have to track and imo the default HUD is pretty bad in that it forces your eyes to ping pong around your screen keep on top of things. Muscle memory + a more helpful HUD are game changers o7

[Jeeqbit]

You could try watching this video of it as well https://youtu.be/YocPE9T89uo?t=834

[Gemina]

That OP one-shot IS my biggest problem. Nothing I've been able to do avoids it. And to be honest, being 'rewound' back to having to do the 'fight as Hien' part of the Duty each time is tiresome.

Even though solo duties are designed so any job can complete them, I feel like some jobs have advantages over others. The one-shot mechs are there to also make sure all jobs can fail the duty as well, otherwise the self-sustain some jobs have would make the duty too easy. What this tells me about the OP and those who struggle with this duty is that their gameplay is well enough, there's just a mechanic present that they are not getting. Once they figure out the mech, they tend to clear the duty, or at least progress it further.

I don't just want to give it away, because I would like for those still trying to complete this duty to do it mostly on their own. The solo fights in this game remind me a bit of boss battles in console games, where you basically fail multiple times while figuring out how to beat the boss. Man, some of those fights were really frustrating too. But whenever I managed to figure it out on my own and beat the guy, the sense of accomplishment was always awesome and lasted a really long time. Days.