Lessons I think I've learned from my mistakes

[Kawada]

Hello, I'm pretty much a new player (played a month of original original FFXIV, and played a bit at re-release stumbling around so my knowledge base is old and really a non-thing ^.^ ). I've learned to say "I'm new" or "My first time" and ask questions about what to expect with dungeon bosses but I don't always. The hurdle for me here is simply I learned to hate PUGS in other MMO's and there you learn to keep quiet so you don't get to be the next 'target'. I'm a work-in-progress ^.^

Anyway much to my pleasant surprise the PUGs here are a lot of fun, and a really good learning experience. I panicked the other evening on my first run through the mansion as we wiped on (!)trash. I couldn't keep my heals up to the damage spikes. I was completely dejected. I was waiting for the vote kick or some kind of raging.

But no, my party members just dusted themselves off and we carried on-- they were understanding, offered some really good suggestions and we finished successfully although I think I had gone into 'overhealing' mode wanting to do well for them. After I analyzed my terrible performance, taking into account the suggestions given me, I've begun to make better use of all my spells etc even when I'm just out questing-- I found with the current rapid progression, outlevelling questlines etc., can be detrimental as I had fallen into the trap of "Press 1, Press 2, Press 1 and done, next."

I've spent some time reorganizing my HUD, trying different bar configs and have gleaned a few ideas of what might work for me out of this helpful thread. One thing I haven't touched yet is macro's but thats now on the 'To Do' list. Anyway, that's been my experience up to now.

Arigato,

Kawada Kiku

[Frizze]

The way this game is designed, you want to be careful around macros. Text or target macros are typically fine(like "raising target" cast raise or mouseover targeting for a heal), but combat ones are dicey. The way the game calculates delay guarantees that macro'd commands will go off slower then the alternative(you can que your next action before the GCD from your current one is over), and ive seen them drop or fail to activate later steps in some circumstances.

[Kawada]

Thank you for the warning about the macros. I will likely use one or two macros for 'text' purposes. I probably won't look at trying them for spell set-ups until things start to get more complicated as I still only have a few skills/abilities that I want to get used to using first so I know when to use, what they do.

As I was fixing my HUD last evening I realized (duh!) I can set hot keys to change HUDs so I can have a clean one for dungeon runs saved and one for RP saved, one for me soloing etc.

arigato,
Kawada Kiku