How do you remember mechanics?

[Aylis]

Its really just repetition for me. Like....I'll watch a video before my first time to get a rough idea whats happening, The first, second and sometimes third time I do the dungeon is tweeking and correcting my rotation. By the fourth time its all pretty much auto pilot routine for me.

[Kazrah]

So every fight has some sort of pattern to it. Dungeon bosses are pretty easy since when you do them enough times, you eventually figure out the pattern that those bosses follow for their major attacks.

Raid fights have an additional element for helping remember those mechanic patterns: music. Because nearly every raid mechanic follows a timer, you can use the music to help determine when certain mechanics will happen.

[AxlStream]

I mean... every mechanic is almost faxed to us... Hard to not be able to execute anything outside of Savage mechanics.

[AlphaFox]

Pretty much just practice over and over. Eventually you learn and remember what is to come up. If its something obscure or small like "Chimera eyes turn blue" and such, I think of simple sayings that help me remember like "Blew(Blue) away" and same for Extremes if I can find an appropriate set for it if needed. Like for Susano EX and the "Tower of Light" for lightning, Towers (Thinking Buildings) cant move....yeah corny but it all works and keeps me alive. xD

[Mirch]

Once you have done a duty countless times you might memorized it entirely and be able to predict what will come after each action made by you or the environment.

I personally get distracted a lot but I do find more familiar the duties i do most and these are those from oir regular daily roulettes

[Penthea]

How are you guys able to watch videos and remember everything? Any tips? D:

I write down notes and I only write down things that are relevant to me. For example as a sch knowing when something should be stunned isn't very useful to me because I can't stun anything. However any details on mechanics that cause damage or debuffs are important to me.

Obviously it's better to know everything about the fight but honestly that isn't needed unless you're raid leading and/or doing top end content on a competitive scale. Knowing what your role needs to fulfill is usually enough and you will pick up anything extra from just doing the fight regularly. If you end up trying to take in every single detail about the fight before experiencing it for yourself you may find you won't remember a lot of it. So it's better to reduce it down to what -you- need to know.

Right now I keep my notes in a text file on my secondary monitor. Before I had two monitors I had a notebook specifically for boss tactics.

[FelixDaCat]

Hi, this is my first forum post, but I thought I'd add how I have learnt in this game,

I only started this game at the start of SB and by the time I hit 70 by following the main story mode, I found an old WoW term worked well for me, "Don't Stand In The Fire".

From working my way through the various content I found as a DRG, it was pretty simple to grasp things. I would watch MSQcapture's (I think I have here name correct) YouTube videos that were linked in the FFXIV Wiki guide.

I found as long as I would stay out of AOE's , stayed behind the boss and watched how other interacted in the fights, I could pick them up and avoid making myself too much a burden on other gamers in the PUG (is it right to use this term here?) parties I did all of the main story content in.

I need to repeat things a few times to get them learnt by heart and I loved the quirky fights such as "Delta" V2.0 where you have to press R3 to levitate for sections of the fight.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

It's okay to wipe. Helps me remember and sometimes go clueless, wtf just happen then scroll back through the battle log.
Watching the guide videos isn't very intuitive. Most of them covered in big white font saying nonsense boss skills
instead of showing the visuals and what happen before/after.

The visuals helps more than videos. Green swirly thingy go near but not inside unless we did it. Red stuff on your head
stay away from party. Arrows pointing at you, don't panic run to tank.

[Maeka]

Most attacks are telegraphed via a system of specific markers that SE has pretty much standardized over Heavensward continuing on into Stormblood.

There's the "Stack on this player!" marker that everybody learns in Final Steps (or we hope you learn lol). There's the "Get away from me now!" marker with little circle around you to denote how far away they should go, the standard AoEs...

Most bosses are pretty straightforward, and those that aren't... you are usually going to be doing these dungeons with Sync'd players, and Sync'd players make it a steamroll unless you get some abnormally derpy groups (I had a group wipe on Leviathan twice in the same duty because the first run, nobody used the Aether Shield and the second, they used it far too early). Most players will be aware of special mechanics (like people having to click the harpoon guns at Bismarck) that they will have it covered.

Unless you're the MT, it's doubtful that your lack of knowing the mechanics will make or break the entire group effort. I'm not saying to go in expecting to leech, I'm merely saying don't be afraid to run content blind. The major exception to this is Thok ast Thok.... please don't go in THERE without at least watching a video to familiarize yourself with Ravana and his cheap attacks.

Most other Trials and Dungeons can be run blind. I ran most of them blind myself, because wiki does not updated when I did my SB MSQ.

EDIT: And also, when you enter, tell people you're new to the instance. In fact, that can sometimes earn you commendations even if you make a few mistakes, if you show yourself to be reasonably competent, sometimes you'll get comms JUST because people enjoy bonuses and WT second chances but most importantly, if there IS something that it is crucial/out of the ordinary that you need to know, usually at least 1 person will mention it.