Rotation Wish

[Post]

There are in game help guides that show up when you level THM, they explain Astral Fire, Umbral Hearts, managing MP etc.

Wasn't there an official guide (book?) with rotations at some point, and what SE had published was worse than what the community came up with for some jobs (I remember MNK was like that in Stormblood)?

I don't know about an official guidebook, but they definitely try to correct for 'unintended' rotations like early StB MNK. They generally seem to want all the rotations to be decipherable if you just read the tooltips, but due to the unexpected interactions between old Tornado Kick with the new Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, that particular oversight happened.

It happens still today; EW SMN launched with resetting your Carbuncle to avoid Phoenix phase instead of Bahamut was stronger initially.

I like to joke that you'd think with all the reading the MSQ makes you do players would be more than prepared to figure out their tooltips.

But, the MSQ doesn't really give you much chance to practice your rotations anymore. When you're fighting, it's spamming your few AoE buttons on dungeon trash or dropping your rotation while trying to dodge a boss you've maybe never seen before (or even a solo duty boss with tons of AoEs and often no real DPS requirement), or more likely you're spending a couple hours talking a bit too long with rabbits while extremely tonally contrasted music is blasting just so they can claim that you didn't have to do any grinding in the story (while ruining their pacing). It's not all the players' fault.

I don't think making the barrier of entry lower for normal content helps, though. Not every fight needs an enrage timer, but, for example, literally every normal trial until StB had a mid-fight DPS check that at least required players to notice enemies other than the boss, change target, and kill it fast enough before the boss got angry. This, and the more common battle content to level up your battle jobs at least subtlely nudged more players to do more damage. The bosses because otherwise you couldn't pass, the FATEs just because you'd level faster the more damage you did.

And if players decide and devs agree that the only time that floor of job familiarity must be met is current expansion Extremes, then it's just that much harder for any interested new players to make the jump to that part of the game because they suddenly have all this work to do at once that they could have been doing little by little all along their journey.

[TaleraRistain]

But if the 8 people in the raid press buttons randomly you won't beat the boss before enrage timer.
Square Enix THEMSELVES implanted an enrage system that you will wipe if you don't do enough DPS in a certain timeframe.

Yes, they do. There are dps requirements to the fights.

But where in the entire game do they have it posted the same rotation you see somewhere like the Balance? It's not. They want us to figure it out and they want to give us flexibility instead of the rigid rotations put out by the community. So they give us the tools to do the math and figure it out ourselves but that's why you don't see any sort of outlined full rotation and I very much doubt we are going to. And if there isn't anywhere in the game giving these rotations the community has outlined on their 3rd party sites, then what do they have to base a rhythm game on?

[LianaThorne]

I don't know about an official guidebook, but they definitely try to correct for 'unintended' rotations like early StB MNK. They generally seem to want all the rotations to be decipherable if you just read the tooltips, but due to the unexpected interactions between old Tornado Kick with the new Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, that particular oversight happened.

It happens still today; EW SMN launched with resetting your Carbuncle to avoid Phoenix phase instead of Bahamut was stronger initially.

I like to joke that you'd think with all the reading the MSQ makes you do players would be more than prepared to figure out their tooltips.

But, the MSQ doesn't really give you much chance to practice your rotations anymore. When you're fighting, it's spamming your few AoE buttons on dungeon trash or dropping your rotation while trying to dodge a boss you've maybe never seen before (or even a solo duty boss with tons of AoEs and often no real DPS requirement), or more likely you're spending a couple hours talking a bit too long with rabbits while extremely tonally contrasted music is blasting just so they can claim that you didn't have to do any grinding in the story (while ruining their pacing). It's not all the players' fault.

I don't think making the barrier of entry lower for normal content helps, though. Not every fight needs an enrage timer, but, for example, literally every normal trial until StB had a mid-fight DPS check that at least required players to notice enemies other than the boss, change target, and kill it fast enough before the boss got angry. This, and the more common battle content to level up your battle jobs at least subtlely nudged more players to do more damage. The bosses because otherwise you couldn't pass, the FATEs just because you'd level faster the more damage you did.

And if players decide and devs agree that the only time that floor of job familiarity must be met is current expansion Extremes, then it's just that much harder for any interested new players to make the jump to that part of the game because they suddenly have all this work to do at once that they could have been doing little by little all along their journey.

You can practice a rotation on a dummy easily imo, no boss or dungeon needed (unless you wanna use a dummy in explo mode which is a cool time).
As far as dropping stuff due to dodging, that's gonna happen until you learn the fight...doesn't mean you still can't get a janked version out rather than not at all and get some experience/comfortability with it.

[strawberrycake]

Rotations are a community driven thing. There's nothing in the game itself outlining the rotations found on 3rd party sites. That's why you can see variations. If someone in the community wanted to make that then more power to them, but I doubt SE is going to put something into the game that doesn't originate from it.

Mf wat, if you dont press the buttons that light up you aren't even playing the job?

[Valence]

Reminds me of a friend that had been working on an out of game little program called rotation hero. I think it was an excellent idea on the community side, to be honest.

[Gemina]

That is definitely not true.

Healer's rotation: 1 button, 1 DoT... no communication necessary. Duh lol.

PLD rotation: 1-2-3 spam (literally lit up with yellow). Lots of buffs and attacks conveniently on a 60s cooldown, obviously meant to be used together as a burst. Not "community driven", just duh. Same for other tanks really. Same even for Ninja.

BLM rotation looks "made up" if you look it up, but if you just play it without looking it up, you will come to exactly the same rotation. Because you run out of MP and have to go into your ice phase with Blizzard 3 (obviously not Blizzard 1 because it grants less stacks). A proper read of your skills shows that the umbral hearts help with the MP management, so you follow with Blizzard 4. This is such an obviously good opportunity to use Thunder 3 or Xenoglossy. When you return to Fire mode, you'll notice that needs to be done with Fire 3 to get 3 stacks. You obviously want to spam your most powerful one, Fire 4. But you discover that the timer runs out before you finish, so you have to use Fire 1 to refresh it and that is the only way to do it with a reasonable cast time. Despair takes a bit to figure out, but you notice it's a higher potency than Fire, can only be used in Fire mode, yet it eats all the MP, so you quickly figure out you use it at the tail end of the fire spam.

I haven't played BLM for years. I didn't even look all that up anywhere. I just followed the process through logically in my mind and the entire rotation came out of it. Because if you read properly that's the only way it can really work. You could be an ice mage, but it is painfully obvious in that situation that you are missing half your rotation (all your fire spells) and that you are obviously missing something major in your understanding.

Additionally, I figure out the optimal openers in most cases without even looking them up, purely by comparing potencies and potency-per-seconds in the Windows Calculator, upon release, or even prior to release from the media tour.

So, no, you don't even need guides to figure this out. You just need to be able to read and do some simple maths. The guides exist because we, as a community, want to help people who find reading their tooltips + using windows calculator too confusing, which can be understandable, some people have only played games as simple as pong and coming into an MMORPG can be comparatively overwhelming.

Very well put. The only thing I will add is that many players will make rotations sound so simple that a monkey with down syndrome can do them, and this is simply not true. I find it really odd that people will downplay their own level of intellect and skill just to make a point.

[LianaThorne]

I will take "How to make this game more braindead for 500 Alex"

To be fair. People couldn't even do that phase of suzaku right or other stuff that takes pressing a button to do. If people are unwilling to learn then cool. Stay out of high end content where ya need to know your rotation (that there's a discord dedicated to this very thing) to even pass it. Even some normal content needs you to have two braincells rubbed together or you die or even the whole raid dies (midphase warrior of light or midphase Alexander 12)

Untrue. You can clear some of the ultimates without knowing any mechanics or your rotation if you pay for it. (afk carries where the purchaser does nothing except wiggle their screen exists).
Casual statics who also don't put as much time into perfecting rotations or parsing can also clear savage.
Hell, I joined a complete group of new raiders for a blind homebrew P9S run when the tier came out and we cleared it in 12-15 hours (spread out over a few days) and trust me, that was some paaaiiiiinnnn lol. Still did it though.

You don't need to be unga bunga raider to get clears in anything end-game imo. If you want to clear week 1, yeah (since that's the hardcore static territory where rotations and high parses are mandatory). If you just want to clear in general, no.

[strawberrycake]

Untrue. You can clear some of the ultimates without knowing any mechanics or your rotation if you pay for it. (afk carries where the purchaser does nothing except wiggle their screen exists).
Casual statics who also don't put as much time into perfecting rotations or parsing can also clear savage.
Hell, I joined a complete group of new raiders for a blind homebrew P9S run when the tier came out and we cleared it in 12-15 hours (spread out over a few days) and trust me, that was some paaaiiiiinnnn lol. Still did it though.

You don't need to be unga bunga raider to get clears in anything end-game imo. If you want to clear week 1, yeah (since that's the hardcore static territory where rotations and high parses are mandatory). If you just want to clear in general, no.

I hope this post is sarcastic. Because raiding with braindead raiders is not tolerable lmao

[LianaThorne]

I hope this post is sarcastic. Because raiding with braindead raiders is not tolerable lmao

It's not, people literally clear things (from basic dungeons to ultimates) without being perfect at their jobs: by the content being easy enough that rotations don't matter, by being carried, by paying for it, etc.
You absolutely don't need perfect rotations for dungeons or extremes clears.
Casual players clear savages without having high parses or airtight rotations with where gear is at now.
Ultimates can be paid for and have no skill at all needed outside of dying or wiggling your screen to not get kicked.
You can get plugins to light up your skills in rotation sequence and ones to point you to the safe spots so you can fully auto-brain things too.

I never said it was something that was tolerable or had to be tolerable for everyone, just saying that people needing to be perfect at their jobs to get things done in end game is false because there are ways (both game-created and community-created) to get through all the content in the game without needing to be the best raider alive lol. You're more than welcome to be selective about who you run with, doesn't break my bones at the end of the day because that wasn't the point of my post.