I'm feeling really scared to do Extreme content, And i don't know if im ready.

[Leifei]

You'll have to get over that fear. Taking action will kill the fear. I suggest checking out balance discord for information on optimizing your job. After that, you can hit up the timed striking dummies in Palaka Stand. Once you feel confident in your job skills, join or create a fresh learning party for the Extreme you want to eventually beat. As long you don't lie about your progress/knowledge in a fight, then people will be cool! You might run into that one asshole, but that person will get kicked and/or reported.

It's a process. Just like learning a skill in real life. There's no failure. Only feedback. Enjoy!!

[Packetdancer]

So, I only decided to start tackling endgame content seriously in FFXIV with Shadowbringers. Specifically, I decided to venture into it when Hades EX was current.

I will be blunt: I was not good. I had never really bothered to optimize my play in the game because there was no need to do so in casual content. I certainly had not bothered to optimize my gameplay while also trying to do mechanics.

But I became determined, and I improved bit by bit. After Hades EX was done, I started tackling savage in the first incarnation of my FC's 'newbie static'. And then I wanted to know the mechanics better, so I started raid-calling instead of listening to someone else do the callouts.

And there were two things I realized along the way which really helped me.

First, no matter how complicated a mechanic looks, a lot of that is smoke and mirrors. As I've put it before, it's like a stage magician's misdirection; "Look over here," says the fight design team, waving something shiny in one hand while hiding the tankbuster up the other sleeve. This means that even the most daunting mechanics usually have a simple solution -- and one you can learn to spot quickly.

As an example, take P5S this raid tier. I know people who have issues with the 'memory game' portion (Ruby Glow 3), where the quadrants will explode four times and you need to shift to the safe square each time. People try to read and remember first hit, second hit, third hit, and fourth hit... but you don't need to, because there's always a set pattern.

Two squares directly opposite each other will be safe for the first hit. The second hit will be whichever were safe for the first hit, so you'll need to move. The third hit will have only one safe spot, while the fourth's safe spot will be directly opposite the third.

As a result, you just need to watch the first crystals that fall and immediately move into a square that doesn't have one; that will be safe for the first hit. Then watch the third crystals that fall; one square will have only one topaz crystal in it, which will be the safe spot to remember. Wait for the first explosion, rotate one square clockwise or counter-clockwise (doesn't matter which), wait for the second explosion, move to the safe spot we saw earlier, wait for the third, and move directly across the arena. Et voila, done.

If you immediately position in one of the first safe squares, you don't even have to think about anything other than the third hit's safe spot; the mechanic immediately becomes much simpler (and far less intimidating).

And almost every mechanic in this game has some simple solution like that.

The second thing to remember is that perfection is not required. Yes, there are a lot of endgame mechanics where if one person screws up, you can wipe the party, and some folks don't like the pressure there. That's understandable! But when you're learning a mechanic -- getting into practice with spotting the solution and running with it -- you generally do not need to worry about doing your rotation perfectly. Dropping a GCD here or there is not the end of the world, especially in prog.

At this point, I'm not some orange-parsing god-tier raid healer, but -- as I've said in many a thread here -- I define myself as "more an asset than a liability": I will execute mechanics correctly, keep the party healed up, and do callouts (if necessary) while doing tolerable damage. And that's completely sufficient to clear content.

Now, if higher-end content doesn't interest you, obviously, there's no reason to throw yourself into it. But if it does interest you, don't be intimidated by it. This isn't me going "it's easy, just git gud", but rather "fights are designed to make you think they're more complex than they are"; if you find yourself stumbling, just ask others for tips because -- as I noted -- almost every mechanic has a simple solution you can easily spot. And people are usually more than willing to reveal how the magician does their trick.

That doesn't mean you'll nail it right out of the gate; getting used to reacting quickly to environmental cues can take time, even when you know how to see past the tricks. After so long reacting to ground AoE telegraphs, watching things at the side of the arena or what part of a boss is glowing or what debuff you have received or whatever else indicates a pattern is not necessarily reflexive for folks. Much less trying to watch those things and react while also doing damage/healing/whatever.

If PF feels too intimidating, go hit up reddit's /r/FFXIVRECRUITMENT or one of the raiding Discords for your data center to look for a group of folks interested in learning, or ask around your FC, or look for parties specifically labeled as teaching parties in PF, etc. Doing current extremes has a non-zero overlap with the raiding community, and you'll find some statics of first-timers want to start there.

But if you want to do that content, you're most likely more capable of doing so than you might give yourself credit for.

[MintnHoney]

As someone who no longer does extreme fights or above (unless otherwise requested by friends), I think what most of everyone said here holds true: you need to try it to find out if you're actually capable, if you really aren't sure. If you're nervous about "failure," it might help to run it with friends, especially friends who are willing to teach or friends who are willing to learn with you.

Honestly, the hardest part of any of the higher ended fights is coordination; once you have a plan, and you put it into practice, it's a matter of repetition and practice until your success and/or raiders' fatigue sets in.
If you plan on pugging it, just go in there with the mindset that you'll do everything you can to help everyone succeed after you've settled yourself, and be patient with both the fight and the other players.

[Kansene]

I was pretty nervous about EX, but a good friend got me into a nice friendly static and I came along for a few attempts. It was a damn disaster. I was terrible, and I've never tried an EX again.

But I'm glad I did it! I found out it's simply not something I can manage at all, and there's no shame in that.

[Rilifane]

Extreme sounds intimidating and I was once in the same place as many other posters here. I still remember having to work up some courage to even do normal raids because I thought they're actual endgame raids.
And then I got thrown into Savage. Someone from the FC asked me if I have loot lockout on e1s. When I said I haven't even unlocked Savage they crafted me a full 450 set, sent me a link to a videoguide and said they'll need a healer sub for tonight, I'm going with them.
I was bad. I had a whooping 26 weaving issues because I didn't know the difference between weaving and clipping until then, I happily ate all the unnecessary dps losses by using far more GCD heals than necessary, I nuked the entire party several times on Delta, I nuked myself several times by running into the tankbusters like a professional (I'm still good at doing that, killed myself like that on my first p5s clear), I baited the spinny orbs all over the place and nuked everyone.
We eventually got the kill but it sure wasn't thanks to me.

And it's normal to start like that: clueless, nuking others, nuking yourself, feeling overwhelmed by the tells and things happening you've never seen before, botching your rotation to the point of getting out-dpsed by the healer etc.
It will get easier fairly soon though, so you need to give yourself more than an evening or two to see if it's for you and be okay with being bad at it at first.

One advantage of Ex is that you have more different types of fights to choose from.
As Packetdancer said, there's a lot of "smoke and mirror" mechanics in this game that aim to confuse you, clutter your screen with unnecessary information just so it's more difficult to see the one important thing. But there are some fights that rely far less on it and they're generally found in Ex.
A good example is the latest Ex, Barbariccia.
It's overall a somewhat hectic fight because lots of things are happening back-to-back but the mechanics itself are generally pretty basic and don't rely on all the smoke and mirrors, effects cluttering your screen, massive boss being in the way etc.; you can play several mechanics fairly reactively. And the ones you can't also have a decently easy to see tell. You a see green spinny thing coming towards you, you probably don't want to be in its way. You see a massive aoe marker on another player, you probably don't want to stand in it etc.

Try to grab some friends or if you hop into PF, go into a [Practice] party that has "from start" in the description and tell them it's your first time doing Ex. Many people in practice parties are very understanding of it and will happily guide you through it. There's no guarantee they are and you may encounter bad eggs but as I said: give it more than an evening to see if it's for you and find the right people to do it with.

[Xuled]

Don’t be. EX are barely a step above alliance. Hop in and see.

[Tetsujin]

Believe in yourself.

[Carin-Eri]

As someone who no longer does extreme fights or above (unless otherwise requested by friends), I think what most of everyone said here holds true: you need to try it to find out if you're actually capable, if you really aren't sure. If you're nervous about "failure," it might help to run it with friends, especially friends who are willing to teach or friends who are willing to learn with you.

Honestly, the hardest part of any of the higher ended fights is coordination; once you have a plan, and you put it into practice, it's a matter of repetition and practice until your success and/or raiders' fatigue sets in.
If you plan on pugging it, just go in there with the mindset that you'll do everything you can to help everyone succeed after you've settled yourself, and be patient with both the fight and the other players.

Not so sure - I mean, surely if you are (as I am) useless at Normal level content it'd go without saying that you'd be even worse at anything more difficult.

[Rilifane]

Not so sure - I mean, surely if you are (as I am) useless at Normal level content it'd go without saying that you'd be even worse at anything more difficult.

Keep in mind that any normal content is inherently uncoordinated nand it doesn't have the same amount of resources available to help learning either.
Many people joked about e1s being easier than e1n because in normal, people kept baiting things all over the place, blocked the safe zone with meteors and nuked each other on delta spread while in savage, you had fixed assigned positions, baiting was taken care of by a couple of people in their own corner without it affecting others and you have markers for easier orientation.
E5n and e6n are more exampled of normal making it look like a complete clusterfuck while it was much more coordinated and easier to deal with in savage. Don't underestimate the impact a bunch of headless chicken have in normal.

Not saying extreme and above is easier than normal but I wouldn't say that someone struggling in normal is automatically incapable of doing extreme and above either. And same with people that are just really good at reacting to the chaos that is normal but that doesn't automatically make them suited for extreme and above. I've seen both.
Difficulty very much depends on the person. I know several people that struggle hard with the unpredictability and chaos that are normal raids but nail savage and even ultimate fights. I'm probably the opposite, the chaos and unpredictability doesn't faze me much but I'm slow at learning savage mechanics.

[Liam_Harper]

Not so sure - I mean, surely if you are (as I am) useless at Normal level content it'd go without saying that you'd be even worse at anything more difficult.

Not necessarily.

Normal is chaotic. Mechanics are not all balanced because you just get a vuln stack or die and get Raised and there's no dps check so the devs don't care. EX and especially Savage is more structured and streamlined with a set pattern to almost everything, right down to the aoes you dodge. It's also an environment where you're expected to die and figure it out as a group while learning which means a more relaxed pace, while Normal you're almost expected to figure the mess out on the first try or two.

Almost everyone can do endgame if they want to. It's not a test of reflexes and fast reactions as much as a test of memory, patience and willingness to learn. You just keep trying it and learning a little more from each attempt until it becomes muscle memory.