Practice,Rotations, and DPS

[Zaene]

Recently, I've been working really hard on getting my samurai rotation down. I've spent a lot of time on dummies, getting the flow down, etc, etc. However, I still haven't gotten to any "hard content".

My biggest concern is keeping my dps up while doing complex mechanics. How have some of you who have completed savage, or even EX modes managed to do so? Is it just practice with the mechanics?

Is a static really necessary to move forward?

I do worry about being dead weight as I'm learning mechanics. I've watched videos of the newest EX trial and E5S, but I'm really hesitant to encumber any group I join with my broken rotation as I try to move around and not drop any GCDs.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

When you can do your rotation by memory, then you just adjust it to mechanics, rather than worrying about both.

Statics are not required, but are useful because you tend to know how the rest of the group plays, vs randoms.

EX fights are generally easy. Savage and Ultimate are the harder ones.

We had a clear of WoL EX with 13 deaths and we hadn't gotten close to enrage.

[HeulGDarian]

Recently, I've been working really hard on getting my samurai rotation down. I've spent a lot of time on dummies, getting the flow down, etc, etc. However, I still haven't gotten to any "hard content".

My biggest concern is keeping my dps up while doing complex mechanics. How have some of you who have completed savage, or even EX modes managed to do so? Is it just practice with the mechanics?

Is a static really necessary to move forward?

I do worry about being dead weight as I'm learning mechanics. I've watched videos of the newest EX trial and E5S, but I'm really hesitant to encumber any group I join with my broken rotation as I try to move around and not drop any GCDs.

a static isnt necessary but it helps deal with the headache of pf, it all depends on your tolerance of peoples buuuuuuuullllshiiiiiitt. Like for example people will come without having ever done the fight in clear parties , people will come without any food , people will come without knowing how their job works etc etc. It all adds up so people start leave or say their piece of mind, its not like everyone becomes a toxic drunkard day one, unlike the forums would have you think.

As for keeping up your dps rotation. yes it becomes easier with repetition. Think of the fights like a dance you simply go through the same notions every time and all you need to do is find your more optimal ones, The melee problems will mostly be relieved since almost every strat done is keeping melee uptime in mind . I suggest go to the balance theyll tell you openers and stuff , theyre all friendly peeps and they can help you polish every nook and cranny of your encounter rotation. Also dont be disheartened if you fck up not everyone became master day 1, now go and make musosai proud <3

[Xatsh]

The biggest problem with pugs is finding a group that will stay more then 3-5 wipes and finding one that does your strategy. It can be done though, just expect it to take a whole lot longer to learn and progress in one. You will get some groups who are incapable of learning mechanics, some groups where you will have a person parsing who complains non-stop everyone is not top parse in a learning party, some people who lie about their progression in a fight who know nothing about the mechanics, and you will find the rare groups that will work on learning the fight and actually get stuff done.

A static is 1000xs better as people usually stick together while learning, stick to 1 strategy, usually a whole lot less toxic, and are in coms which makes learning so much more effective. I would recommend getting a static for anything above EX primal fights, but it is doable without it.

When you start learning a fight your dmg will probably be really bad because you are learning mechanics and not focusing on dps at all time. That is sorta expected. As you learn the fight you learn how to weave your combo in and out, when to pop what buffs, and how to maximize your rotation in the fight. The fights in FFXIV are 100% the same everytime with maby a slight variance in order. So once you master the fight and rotation you can really fine tune it.

When you get into harder fights just find a party finder where you are in terms of progression into the fight. Usually fights are broken up into blind learning, Adds, phase 1, phase 2, ect progression. Just remember if you can kill the dummy for the fight your dps is technically high enough, just need to learn the fight and your rotation in it and you are good.

[KDSilver]

How have some of you who have completed savage, or even EX modes managed to do so? Is it just practice with the mechanics?

Is a static really necessary to move forward?

I do worry about being dead weight as I'm learning mechanics. I've watched videos of the newest EX trial and E5S, but I'm really hesitant to encumber any group I join with my broken rotation as I try to move around and not drop any GCDs.

I'm not a MMO player in the first place. So jumping in all that learning stuff was a long journey. I was really not good at all.
But I was patient and passionnate, so I made it a step by step.

Dungeons, dummies, a LOT of raid normal mode, and 24m-raid.

Dummies to ensure I understood the rotation correctly and could perform it flawlessly,
Dungeons because mechanics aren't really punishing and let you breath
Normal because that's a first step in content being harder. I won't lie, I did a LOT of these and it did helped me a lot.
24m-raid because of the "surprise" factor. It teaches you how to adapt because alliances are never the same.

Once I felt confident enough on my rotation and performing it with mechanic, I tried extreme. I was dead scared. I always was super scared for any content in the first place. But slowly, I got some confidence which led me to try savage.

I understand your feeling.
Having a static is not necessary. However, I won't lie, being accompagnied by friends helped me overpassing my fear.
What a static is good for is you know that at least, as Xatsh said, you won't have a disband every 2 wipes which is a time loss.
I think there must be some static that start end game for the first time around. Might try to check it out if you feel it's better for you.

And yes, practicing mechanic will naturally make your muscle memory do the work. Once you know a mechanic well, you know how to keep your uptime by doing it.
You just have to take the time to gradually do it and also just do it.
As always, time and practice.

It's not nice to say that for these people but... there are a lot of "dead weight" in this game and they sometime don't even care. So the fact that you care to be good is already a nice touch through your progression.

[StriderShinryu]

One thing you can do, assuming you have access to multiple classes, is to try the fight with a class that's less demanding. Rather than trying to learn the fight and learn your rotations at the same time, you might be able to learn the fight first as a class like a ranged DPS. Then it will be easier for you to slot your melee DPS skills into the fight once you already have a better idea of what to expect.

While I don't do the hardcore content in the game, I often find myself first running fights as a Red Mage or even Dancer to get used to them and then moving to my Samurai once I'm more comfortable with the fight as a whole.

[MPK]

Mostly memorization. You'll get to a point where you'll know which action to use at each mechanic. It'll come naturally with practice.

Just hop into an EX learning party once you've memorized your opener and rotation. Everyone starts from somewhere, don't worry too much about letting your team down, the dps check for the current EX isn't even that bad most groups skip the last few mechanics anyways.

[Raltar]

Remember that mechanics are scripted, so it will basically be the same every single time you do the fight, with very minor variations and strats.

[Gemina]

It indeed just comes down to practice. The more you do it, and the more fights you participate in, the better you get. Lose the expectation to perform like you're a seasoned pro, and you'll be fine.

[Alaray]

Honestly, it's all just practice and memorization -- I'm not what I consider top tier or close to it, but back when I was raiding as a brand new everything in Sigma, I did the Learn Rotation step, including practicing openers/reopeners (which lead to a *big* improvement on its own), then learned more about maintaining uptime through mechanics (which mostly requires learning those mechanics first, though I didn't do any greeding/perfect gap closers to not miss a gcd for an "off the boss" moment, but tried to minimize the time off the boss as I could while not causing a problem for the group).

When it comes to learning to cheese mechanics (be it using a group strat to ignore a mechanic with stacked CD's, or a particular unconventional formation/strat, or trying to see how many gcd's you *can* get before you get punished, or how *close* your gap closer has to be to not miss a gcd etc...) I'd say learn these sorts of things in parties designed for it (I never did parse parties, but I am making the assumption these would be the styles of party for these, not so much the weekly clear/farms since the mistakes could just wipe the group and that defeats the purpose of that group, vs. just doing an efficient safe strategy/safer movement -- like, on Leviathan back when, there were 2 strats where the tanks did not have to peel off the boss at all, but if you did this without being REALLY good at timing and REALLY understanding the mech/server function, you'd probably kill everyone -- in the second strat [okay the first would be closer to greed], if you did it without warning you would kill everyone as it required heavy mitigation from your team, just as examples of what I mean).

I did the latter more in my static, though as a tank my messups rarely outright killed me (but I also asked if I could try some things here and there, if I got the go ahead I would and summarily wipe everyone :B) though my group was a bit more on the casual side so we didn't do uptime strats/heavily optimize our burst windows/raid buffs/play what was meta (for ex. I was a DRK in sigmascape :^) ). (But, for instance, I didn't do things I understood I would screw up a lot, and I didn't push for optimization strats unless others were interested)

(and there's potions/potion timings etc.. which, for the second, I'm pretty terrible at doing and usually straight up forget -- kinda never forced myself too hard to learn since my group was killing everything quite fine at this point, and no one was particularly interested in doing runs in BiS to optimize more and see how well we could do)

It *really* just boils down to practicing to get better, reading up on things you feel uncertain about, and comparing logs (like amount of casts etc...) and trying to, as you can, emulate. There's probably a lot *more* one can do than I described, but what I am describing took me from being, back in Sigmascape, a "Grit only, because I'm a tank" DRK into getting into some orange numbers that tier, and close-ish in the tier after while really far behind and learning WAR (and *almost* more consistently on some fights in Eden's Gate, Verse I just subbed in for a friend's enrage group on furor after I told them a lot I never stepped foot in the tier and had non-penta melded crafted to my name lol)

That said, though -- grey/green is fine (esp late in a tier where your gear is probably terrible compared to the people farming, and you still need to learn the mechs + learn your timings with those mechanics + just being new in general) and shouldn't be as discouraging as it is for some people. Even then -- regularly speaking -- blue's also completely a-okay to be at in general (I say mostly as people tend to put *so much value* on parse percentiles, that sometimes, just doing the fight safely/efficiently/clearing consistently is more important).

Oh! And Statics aren't necessary, they can help if you're willing to find one on your level, but doing Learning parties for the parts of the fight you're on is plenty enough. And once you feel confident you have the fight down/been to enrage -- then Clear parties!

that said I rambled a lot to just kinda say:

tl;dr: Memorization and practice is what helps the most. Don't feel bad about your performance, and just try and do your best and work to do better the next go around!