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

[Shougun]

If you are a slow learner like myself sometimes you've got to take a step back and discern what you're doing wrong. Most of the mechanics in this game are not beaten by quick reactions, but experience. I've been stuck in certain duty scenarios like Naadam for like 10+ attempts until I finally stopped to analyze what was killing me instantly

On the topic of instant kills it would be nice if there was a notation in the game either visual or audio to let you know.. We've all these markers for stacking, anti-stacking, etc, I think something to let you know a skill either is or was at least balanced to be a character delete-r skill. Similarly I think there should be one for tank busters. Perhaps even set up a system where the age of the content will give you more info (or amount of attempts?). Almost a sort of bestiary system I guess you could say...

Comes to mind similarly to how many fighting games will give you a sound, a visual marker, or rumble, to let you know something bad is coming- God of War and Sekiro coming to mind first, but if I spent a second the list would get a lot longer. The yellow for attacks you can block but will cause you to drop guard, red for unblockable, etc.

[IttyBitty]

If you're dying to the sword phase, put your DoTs (Stormbite & Venomous Bite) onto each sword, then focus on breaking each sword one by one until they're dead. You should have plenty of time. As a bard, you can be moving around while attacking, so just remember to keep on attacking and using your procs (if you have any)/oGCDs while you dodge. Having Mage's Ballad or Wanderer's Minuet available for that phase for the bloodletter reset/pitch perfect procs could help.

Similarly I think there should be one for tank busters.

There is one (red circles around targeted player and a huge arrow marking them) but it only appears in later/harder content (because they do not usually backport them to older content, and if they do, it takes a while).

[Shougun]

There is one (red circles around targeted player and a huge arrow marking them) but it only appears in later/harder content (because they do not usually backport them to older content, and if they do, it takes a while).

AH yeah I've seen that one, but only in a few pieces of content - so I didn't really clock it as mission accomplished since it's like 10% of the content of the game xD (vast majority of my memory is "there is no marker").

But it's good to mention certainly.

[Shibi]

Point in fact - I hit a proverbial brick wall a few days ago. Try as I may (and I've tried repeatedly) I cannot complete the 'A Requiem for Heroes' duty - I can just about scrape past he first stage (playing as Hien) but when it swaps to my character Ascian Zenos just keeps wiping me out no matter what I do or try. To my utter humiliation I can't even defeat him when have tried setting the difficulty level to 'Very Easy'.

I absolutely loathe those "double, play as another person" duties, where if you fail you go back to the very start and have to do part one all over again. It's not so much playing as someone else with different hotbars, it's the "why the seven hells are you making me do part one of this all over again"

Hopefully as the devs work on making the game more accessible to solo players they can split them all up into 2 solo duties. That would help make them bearable rather than torture.

[Roflcopter]

I absolutely loathe those "double, play as another person" duties, where if you fail you go back to the very start and have to do part one all over again. It's not so much playing as someone else with different hotbars, it's the "why the seven hells are you making me do part one of this all over again"

Hopefully as the devs work on making the game more accessible to solo players they can split them all up into 2 solo duties. That would help make them bearable rather than torture.

What, you didn’t enjoy playing as Thancred for 40 minutes whittling away an absurd number of hit points?

[Carin-Eri]

I absolutely loathe those "double, play as another person" duties, where if you fail you go back to the very start and have to do part one all over again. It's not so much playing as someone else with different hotbars, it's the "why the seven hells are you making me do part one of this all over again"

Hopefully as the devs work on making the game more accessible to solo players they can split them all up into 2 solo duties. That would help make them bearable rather than torture.

I agree. That has been one of the offputting aspects of this. Again, I can scrape through the "double play as another person" part of the Duty but having to replay that portion of the Duty every time I fail to DPS Zenos damn swords before he one-shots me is another reason I'm losing faith. It makes the whole thing so much more tiresome.

I'll be honest - this element of the game has been one of the very few negatives I've encountered playing FFXIV. I, personally, don't enjoy being forced to play an NPC who has none of the skills, abilities, or anything that I've spent the entire game (to the point I am at) building and trying to learn (albeit badly). The other MMO I used to play did the same thing. It seems to be a gameplay trope that players either love or hate. I'm in the latter camp.

I appreciate what they're probably trying for wit this - giving players a taste of a job line that they may not have explored - but to me, playing as another character (with a limited set of skills/abiliites) is immersion-breaking and I don't enjoy it.

[LyraMaru]

You could improve your UI to make things easier for you. Maybe make a separate hotbar with your various CDs like Battlevoice, Barrage, Sidewinder, Empyreal Arrow and for your proccs Bloodletter and Rain of Death. Scale that hotbar a little down, make it nearly transparent.

Then put it somewhere on your screen you can easily check without missing something during an encounter. Do the same with your job gauge. Next step move the enemy HP-bar down in your field of view, so you can better track your dots. If you like you could separate the dots from the HP bar. You can split your buffs if you want to. There is an option in charactersetting where you can disable others debuffs. Thats not optimal but you'll then get only the information you need for yourself. Play a little bit with the size scaling of your UI's components. You could upscale the dots size for example.

If you're trying different jobs, place role actions on the same buttons.

Maybe get a nice FC so you could ask for help there. Another way is searching for guides on YT or balance discord. Nobody wants you to play perfect but there's help if you want it.

Last but not least: Everybody makes mistakes. And no one played that game perfect the moment they first logged in.

[Carin-Eri]

Finally! Granted, had to do it on Easy, which is a little humiliating, but finally finished that tiresome Duty! As was advised, focused on the Swords when they were cast, particularly throwing DoT attacks at them, and managed to finish them, and the obnoxious Zenos, off.

I have to confess, I was hesitant to submit this thread considering that I'd initally looked on Reddit for threads about this particular duty and found anyone who submitted threads pertaining to struggling with it received discouraging replies, with comments such as (quote) "your gear is bad and you are bad at your job".

Anyway, am glad I posted here - such a friendly community, and the advice everyone offerred was invaluable; whilst I may have had to resort to completeting it on 'Easy', I can at least progress to the next step!

Thank you

[Shibi]

Finally! Granted, had to do it on Easy, which is a little humiliating, but finally finished that tiresome Duty!

Congratulations! And well done too.

[Alacran]

A win is a win, grats & well done hanging in there.