Difficulty Playing DPS

[Renato]

I know this may come as odd but I have a very hard time playing as a DPS. I've been FFXIV for almost 4 years now and have been tanking my whole career. I've gotten RDM to 70 and I really enjoy it but man, am I finding it tough. Not so much in the mechanics but in just finding that balance between cranking out DPS, reacting and watching fight mechanics. It gets overwhelming for me having to monitor the White/Black Gauge, watch my positioning and watch which attacks the boss may be getting ready to unleash.

Same thing goes with MCH and DRG (which I leveled to 67 and 70 respectively) who has a crap-ton of cooldowns to monitor all while watching out for battle mechanics and enemy AoEs. Sometimes I find myself running around dodging moreseo than actually doing anything...

Any tips on how to get better? RDM will probably be my main DPS, btw.

[AppleJinx]

Study this guide and practice the rotation on a dummy until you have them committed to muscle memory. That's it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...hkri6a4IU/edit

[Sunako]

Just repeat your rotation until it become muscle of memory. Smash dummy at first, then try some casual content like dungeons then try normal raids. Dps also have pretty long queue times, so you can beat dummy until queue pop.

[Camiie]

I know this may come as odd but I have a very hard time playing as a DPS. I've been FFXIV for almost 4 years now and have been tanking my whole career. I've gotten RDM to 70 and I really enjoy it but man, am I finding it tough. Not so much in the mechanics but in just finding that balance between cranking out DPS, reacting and watching fight mechanics. It gets overwhelming for me having to monitor the White/Black Gauge, watch my positioning and watch which attacks the boss may be getting ready to unleash.

Same thing goes with MCH and DRG (which I leveled to 67 and 70 respectively) who has a crap-ton of cooldowns to monitor all while watching out for battle mechanics and enemy AoEs. Sometimes I find myself running around dodging moreseo than actually doing anything...

Any tips on how to get better? RDM will probably be my main DPS, btw.

I can't help you on RDM as I pretty much gave up on it right out of the gate, but have you thought about playing SAM? I don't want to project onto you, but when I found myself struggling with aspects of certain jobs I gave SAM a try and it just clicked with me. If that's because it's a faceroll job or not, I don't know. I'm sure someone will be along very shortly to condescendingly inform us of such.

[Elamys]

I have a similar problem to you. Playing DPS in this game sometimes leads to me just being overwhelmed, whereas with healer if I start to feel overloaded I can step back and focus on just watching health bars and breathe for a second. It was especially overwhelming when I went from the fairly basic level 50 rotations to Heavensward piling on a lot of stuff. A very strange feeling coming from WoW where for the longest time I was exclusively a DPS.

The two jobs I have found simplest to play are BRD and RDM. Both feel fairly cyclical to play. I'm far from a pro on either of these, but outside of the opener BRD feels less overwhelming and I'm just occasionally looking for procs. And RDM doesn't change rotation too much while being simple.

I'll echo the others above that muscle memory plays a big role so that you're not staring at your buttons trying to remember. Also I have found that my UI is important. Making sure things like my gauge, important buttons, and health bars were in a location that I could easily see without having to glance away from AoEs all the time really helped with my ability to manage both DPS and dodging. It's all down to practice, though, I think.

[Adrestia]

Echoing what was said above, practice. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed when taking on a new role. The “expectation” the game places on you to do good DPS at a high level is essentially that your rotation is a given, your resource (in your case, mana bars) management is pretty natural, and then your focus goes into fight mechanics.

I’m sure that sounds impossible right now, but it’s something that only gets better incrementally as you commit your DPS rotation/mechanics to memory and muscle memory. “Always be casting” is critically important and even subtle pauses between skills while you remember what to press add up to the biggest DPS losses.

Your post focused on the overwhelmingness of it all, so that’s the best answer I can give to that specifically. Of course, you should also take advantage of guides so that the rotations you’re committing to memory are the correct ones. After all this, when your damage is already solid, you can think about fight-specific optimizations. Places where your rotation might deviate from the norm due to add spawns, bosses jumping, etc. That stuff will push you into the upper echelons of damage, but the fundamentals come first.

Regarding parses, log comparison, “what is the definition of good damage,” and similar questions, use this information to your advantage but use it judiciously.

If you just got RDM to 70 and threw some middling gear on it, don’t be upset when you’re parsing “grey” on fights mostly being cleared by fully geared people. Look at the absolute number differences and, when you can, look at timelines and spells cast to make sure you’re executing properly. Someone with full gear landing Verholy for twice as much damage as your Verholy isn’t you making a mistake. It’s the nature of gear. But if the good players are casting their spells in a completely different order or at a much faster rate, those are things you can do something about.

[Lunalepsy]

Huh? Is it?

[LalaRu]

... cranking out DPS, reacting and watching fight mechanics. It gets overwhelming ...

Think to the jobs that have to cranking out DPS, reacting, watching fight mechanics and keep people alive.

[Gemina]

I think the OPs issue goes beyond just getting things down smashing a dummy. I mean, I know it's important to get rotations down to the point that you don't even think about them, but I think it's actually feeling competent doing the DPS dance during an instance. It can be tough to feel confident playing the role of DPS when it's out of your element. I can definitely relate playing NIN when I usually heal or tank instances.

As a healer or tank, any DPS you dish out is a contribution. You can optimize here too, but as DPS it's your job to put out as much as possible, and when there's downtime due to mechanics, derps, learning the fight, etc. it can be a little discouraging knowing that your DPS is plummeting. It's a similar feeling when I tank and lose aggro, or someone dies that I could have saved as a healer. I can't speak necessarily for the OP, but I just don't have enough experience as the DPS role to identify the DPS loss that just can't be helped, and feel like there is always something I could be doing better.

What I tell myself and advise the OP is practice, practice, practice. It's how we good at anything, and the experience will come with it. Well... hopefully! OP has already expressed a desire to learn and play correctly just coming here, and that's a good thing.

[Edax]

Perhaps you should give Samurai a try? Since they only build up resources, they have almost have nothing they need to monitor so you can remain completely focused on dodging all of the bosses attacks while remaining efficient.