Reasons why you might feel normal content is "difficult".

[DivineP]

I don't have problems with normal difficulty, but I'm curious about this point. Because while I know my rotation just fine, there is unfortunately no convenient UI element to let you know the status of the GCD aside from hotbars. Because of this, I do spend a significant portion of any fight glancing down at my hotbar so that I know when my GCD has progressed to the point where I can queue my next GCD action. For that reason I put my BLM-specific UI elements down with my hotbar so that all of the "me stuff" can be seen at a glance in roughly the same spot.

But I'm curious how other people handle this GCD issue. I'm guessing some people mash buttons instead of doing a single press within the appropriate window? But I'm interested in hearing all manner of ways folks navigate this issue.

On high APM jobs my faves MCH - oh I mash mine all day on PS5. Infact I just hold how L2 and mash X until my dots expired or someone needs a heal on WHM too.

People need to realise that these fights are just dances - go here go there. Wipe? Get back up and memorise. It's really simple.

What people don't understand is the iLVL sync. If you look in your DF (if you have 100 unlocked) there's none, therefore power creep. Is incoming with each week, nerving content even more.

[HemlockEvergreen]

I don't have problems with normal difficulty, but I'm curious about this point. Because while I know my rotation just fine, there is unfortunately no convenient UI element to let you know the status of the GCD aside from hotbars. Because of this, I do spend a significant portion of any fight glancing down at my hotbar so that I know when my GCD has progressed to the point where I can queue my next GCD action. For that reason I put my BLM-specific UI elements down with my hotbar so that all of the "me stuff" can be seen at a glance in roughly the same spot.

But I'm curious how other people handle this GCD issue. I'm guessing some people mash buttons instead of doing a single press within the appropriate window? But I'm interested in hearing all manner of ways folks navigate this issue.

For CD timers I use a larger, semi-transparent hotbar with only the abilities I need to track. Looks like this:



It stays to the left of my character, close to the center of the screen to I can get that peripheral vision glance on it.

For the GCD spin time itself, I kinda go by feeling, but I also play a job with no casting and I can spam. I also spam because FFXIV's netcode is shit and sometimes it simply does not register input if I tap "too lightly". I've fucked up burst windows because of that.

[Jinglypockets]

I don't have problems with normal difficulty, but I'm curious about this point. Because while I know my rotation just fine, there is unfortunately no convenient UI element to let you know the status of the GCD aside from hotbars. Because of this, I do spend a significant portion of any fight glancing down at my hotbar so that I know when my GCD has progressed to the point where I can queue my next GCD action. For that reason I put my BLM-specific UI elements down with my hotbar so that all of the "me stuff" can be seen at a glance in roughly the same spot.

But I'm curious how other people handle this GCD issue. I'm guessing some people mash buttons instead of doing a single press within the appropriate window? But I'm interested in hearing all manner of ways folks navigate this issue.

I have a couple hotbars near the middle of my screen under my character's feet, and I put anything I need to track rotationally there. For paladin, that's steps 2 and 3 of my combo, my oGCDs, defensive cooldowns, etc. GCDs get tracked on those icons alongside everything else, although I don't really think about the GCD because I just mash my keys anyway. Job gauges (in simple mode, obviously) sit above or alongside this bar.

If it doesn't have a cooldown or procs and I can just hit it without thinking about it (ie: fire IV), it's down at the very bottom of my screen shrunk down to minimum size and I literally never look at it.

[Merrigan]

This is the same person who in other threads said that they want a 'very easy mode' for the entire MSQ and said that current form of content is "the worst its been" and "too expert oriented."
They are not being ironic, they are, somehow, actually serious.

They do not believe they need to learn the basics of how the game's combat system works and want a free ride through the MSQ and side content.

Yeah... I realized this later. Oh, well.

[SerenMarliot]

For CD timers I use a larger, semi-transparent hotbar with only the abilities I need to track. Looks like this:



It stays to the left of my character, close to the center of the screen to I can get that peripheral vision glance on it.

For the GCD spin time itself, I kinda go by feeling, but I also play a job with no casting and I can spam. I also spam because FFXIV's netcode is shit and sometimes it simply does not register input if I tap "too lightly". I've fucked up burst windows because of that.

THIS.

If people are struggling with keeping their dots and buffs up all the time, use a free hotbar and place it somewhere in the center of your screen. Mine is right next to my job gauge (which is also centred int the middle of my screen). This hotbar contains all my buff and dot skills and makes it far easier to keep track of them instead of looking at my cross-hotbar / hotbar.

One can also use their unused hotbars to create cheat-sheets for their rotations. In the beginning I had two hotbars in the lower right corner containing all the skills of my rotation in their proper order. Helped a lot while learning. And I do believe one has to learn a bit in this game. Even in normal content people should now a little bit about how their job works. Not as important for dps jobs but a tank should know what their mitigation kit does, same goes for healers (yes, fellow whm players, there are more skills in our kit than just Medica II xD). And no, this is no "hardcore elitist stuff" to learn, this is the core gameplay of XIV and everybody should be able to do this much in DT. No one expects anyone to be able to play something like the old blm advanced rotation etc. xD

[Arohk]

THIS.

If people are struggling with keeping their dots and buffs up all the time, use a free hotbar and place it somewhere in the center of your screen.

One of the main reasons imo why people are bad at the game is, that their UI is terrible and they can't see what the boss is casting or their buffs/debuffs.

[Laerune]

An easy solution for boss attacks is to make them the same as red prompts that we get when boss is going to do something.

[zarahleo]

This sounds like hardcore elitist stuff to learn. I shouldnt have to deep dive into the game to be able to play it.

You need to re-read the OP second post especially this bit:

You have no patience.

[EiraWoqiso]

An easy solution for boss attacks is to make them the same as red prompts that we get when boss is going to do something.

I think the solution is to just look at the boss, they're already telling you what type of AOE you'll be dodging/baiting once you've seen it the first couple times. The only time the bar is particularly useful is in the cases where that *is* the tell (Strayborough final boss), or cases where it's a cinematic attack and that kind of alert is cool (basically stuff like Valigarmanda). I'd really rather they don't use that for every mechanic that doesn't have ground AOEs.

[elshogoso]

This sounds like hardcore elitist stuff to learn. I shouldnt have to deep dive into the game to be able to play it.

What about this stuff is deep diving? It's just the basic game mechanics. These tips are just the bare minimum to not have a super frustrating experience with this game and aren't nearly scratching the surface of the game's complexity.