Videos is mandatory to beat savage

[BabyYoda]

It is the unspoken rule that is very toxic to people to actually start savage..

Why designing the game around this kind of idea that is very toxic and not fun if it is not first week prog?

Not all mechanic like that but most of fights specially savage require at least watch guide or read it 2 to 3 times

Design mechanic around that people can figure out mechanic instead of videos and guides online is a way better move that devs didn't take it yet with savage.

When fun fights require to watch guide it is not fun at all

[Jeeqbit]

Nonsense. Many people, including myself, have gone into a savage fight and someone's just put down markers and explained the fight or we've figured it out from wiping. In some cases, it's too hard to explain a mechanic so they link a raidplanner (a website) that demonstrates it, but this is not a video.

SE is planning to implement their own raid planner into the game very soon to be shared around like waymarks are, so that external websites will not be needed.

Now, if you do a savage raid completely blind, this is what you discover:

• You need to record it and watch the footage back slowly to see what is even happening (this is literally what the guide makers do via twitch).
• You need to hover over the status effects on the boss and your party and read what they say. You can also read them in the battle log after the battle is over, and link them in chat.

Guides aren't required, but most people watch them to respect the time of their party and due to anxiety, or because the party description says to watch a guide. In some cases, a guide isn't needed if you understand the strategy already from doing it blind, the request in PF descriptions is just there for people that don't know the fight and the strats being used.

Frankly, most people aren't savvy enough to read status effects which is why they need guide makers to do it for them. It's why SE moved away from that in story content and started over-telegraphing everything.

[Zakuyia]

I get what op saying but its to help smooth out the fight. Ppl being toxic it happens ur always going to have idiots sadly even idiots in higher content.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

It is the unspoken rule that is very toxic to people to actually start savage..

Why designing the game around this kind of idea that is very toxic and not fun if it is not first week prog?

Not all mechanic like that but most of fights specially savage require at least watch guide or read it 2 to 3 times

Design mechanic around that people can figure out mechanic instead of videos and guides online is a way better move that devs didn't take it yet with savage.

When fun fights require to watch guide it is not fun at all

What a load of crap plenty of people have completed savage without ever touching a video.

[Carin-Eri]

It is the unspoken rule that is very toxic to people to actually start savage..

Why designing the game around this kind of idea that is very toxic and not fun if it is not first week prog?

Not all mechanic like that but most of fights specially savage require at least watch guide or read it 2 to 3 times

Design mechanic around that people can figure out mechanic instead of videos and guides online is a way better move that devs didn't take it yet with savage.

When fun fights require to watch guide it is not fun at all

Whilst I'd argue that it's more 'expected' rather than "mandatory", this is the one of the reasons I don't run higher-difficulty content.

I occasionally open the PF out of curiosity, and then I see comments like "HECTOR", "watch a guide" or words to the affect of "know what you are doing" even on so-called 'Practice' parties.
On a personal level, there isn't much point in my reading Hector guides or watching a video of whatever content it is being run by other players. I won't remember it and wouldn't be able to translate the guide to my gameplay anyway. I still struggle with Normal-level content most of the time.
I therefore immediately remind myself that I'd be a burden to any team and close the PF menu.

[dwodmots]

If you want to do blind prog then you need to find or make a blind prog party. PF always defaults to the path of least resistance, which includes guides, raid plans and all that good stuff.

[Jeeqbit]

I won't remember it and wouldn't be able to translate the guide to my gameplay

A lot of people think this but in my experience, you of course don't remember a video.

But once you do the content and aren't sure what to do, the brain searches for information that might inform the situation and retrieves information from the video you watched, and it suddenly clicks.

However, there is another way to do it and that's to watch the video and note down any information that you'll actually need. In most cases, you probably only need what pertains specifically to your role or to the most difficult mechanics.

For example, if the boss does an "out" AoE and then an "in" AoE, there's obviously no point in noting that down. It's kinda basic stuff in this game. But if there is a sequence of events or debuffs maybe you'll find yourself needing to note it down.

How I would store said notes is in a /echo macro that I can press to see my notes in the chatlog. I don't use this anymore, but I used to when I was very new to this content in Heavensward.

As for struggling with normal content, if it's on a DPS role their busy rotations can sometimes be quite distracting, especially during burst windows. Although I would say that ranged physical DPS are less so. If it's on a tank/healer, often it's that the snapshotting isn't understood or a mechanic was remembered, observed or realized too late. If you play a tank, you get to survive most mechanics anyway which can be nice.

However I can understand if you meant you actually have problems with memory or visualizing generally. In that case it's just gonna be harder.

[AmiableApkallu]

Videos is mandatory to beat savage

The first parties to clear a mechanic or to clear a fight don't have access to videos or guides because no one's made them yet.

Design mechanic around that people can figure out mechanic

That's literally what people did in order to make those videos and guides.

If you want to go in blind, maybe learn a thing or two about how to blind prog, and then put up your own Party Finder listing.

[Sylvain]

Well people can figure out mechanics by themselves, it's called blind. How do you think guide are first made?
Especially this tier it was so simplistic. What took the longuest was the first big canon mech on M4S. And by that I mean 5min of people talking on discord and placing markers in game...

Guide are useful in order to have a uniform strategy among people who don't know each others (so pf), but if you have a static I mean... once you understand a few rules on how most mechs are designed you can quite easily go for blind prog on about 95% of mechs. Savage doesn't have really complicated or pixel perfect mechs.

I mean, most attack have two pattern, out/in and/or spread/share.
So if the boss does "Thingy of largeness" and then your two healers die you're like "okay so that's most like a 4x2 share. So the next try you're like "if the boss does thingy of largeness, we do healers stack, if not we do duo stack on cardinal".
Then what do you know, 1-2 try later the boss does "Thingy of smallness" and huzza it was the expected 4x2... or a spread and everyone's dead. But now you know.

And you just go on... Oh there are a bjaillions debuffs. 90% of the time you can expect
- Debuffs are spread among roles supp / dps
- debuffs are split in 2, 3 or 4 durations and always have the same order of mechanics. like on TOP when we saw tether + towers you immediately understand the order of things. (Doing it is a whole other story)
- if people seems to be randomly targeted, does it includes a "bait". Yes ? : most likely a proximity check, No? probably just random.

I mean, once you get used to the same light party or duo groups it's 90% of the time the same...
The only difference between a blind run and a guide run is that you get the join of being "WTF IS THIS" the first time you see the mech. and everyone dies... I wuv it

[Jojoya]

It's not the game design at fault when it comes to "mandatory to watch videos". It's the player base that wants to clear as fast as possible and has little tolerance for those who don't prepare in advance that's at fault.

Find other players that want to blind prog or are willing to accept players that want to.

Your best bet is to find a group on the day of release because everyone is blind when Savage comes out. There are no video guides yet. The longer you wait, the more players that will have experience with the content and will be less interested in partying with those who want to blind prog.