The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Inanegrain]

As I stepped into savage late into the tier, with only experience of EX content, I got trashed, I did manage to clear, but I was bad, I only managed to clear 2/4 floors before the next tier came out, the final tier of the patch.

Then came the next tier, I painfully managed to do the first two floors and the third walled me off for a bit, till I barely cleared it on week 2, on a monday (?) before being walled off by the last tier for over 8 weeks that passed. During the walled off period, I kept looking up guides on how to maintain uptime as much as possible, I kept trying to be greedier, I wanted to cast as much a possible, how far I can push it without dying horribly to a mechanic.

It was hard, I definitely didn't do well on my first few clears, but that improved over time as I recleared them. The EX content... became a lot more easier when in BiS it's subjective, but I somewhat understood how these mechanics worked and slowly it started to feel like a normal thing.

EX content, isn't as hard as savage, but it's still ledge over the climb to savage. If it's your first tier that's late into the tier, you'll probably need to climb steadily for the next tier.

There is no curve, it's more of a 90 degree angle.

Everything in the game can be done by playing with your feet, and then you hit savage and it's not even the same game anymore

This is kind of accurate.

[Issaella]

Wack a dummy and move around while doing it. MCH is the best for being mobile and maintaining up time. Do your rotation enough you won't have to think about it at all itll just be muscle memory. Also practice not clicking skills and try to adjust your keybinds where you can actively press all your skills with one hand and little movement.

I've been trying for 15y and in that time managed to add only 4 more hotkey slots and even then I have a tendency to mis-tap hotkeys and/or not reset my fingers to movement keys properly regardless of practice. I am at my limit in terms of hotkeys, it's just not something I can improve in that dept. So it's click some of them or don't use them at all. FF14 has so many abilities (like old WoW) that there are are simply too many for me to hotkey everything I need so it's main abilities and short cooldowns, whereas longer cooldowns I click. If I get used to the timing on boss abilities I should be able to avoid that problem (I have in Unreal/Ex1&2). It also means I'm coming into this with a major impediment that most people don't have to deal with, that was one of my major reasons for not even trying.

I only have 1 job geared out at 590+ presently, SMN, I thought about MCH, but I can't play BRD or DNC with any kind of skill. Also, with how far MCH is behind every other DPS it felt like a huge handicap, if I could get SMN even close in terms of performance it would easily out-DPS MCH. SMN also leaves the door open to playing rezmage with the same gearset if I need/want to (I'm not as good at it, but I can play it ok). It would take me a couple weeks of grinding to get another job to 590+ and that is the bare minimum I'm willing to enter this in order to stack the deck in my favor as much as I possibly can.

[Inanegrain]

I've been trying for 15y and in that time managed to add only 4 more hotkey slots and even then I have a tendency to mis-tap hotkeys and/or not reset my fingers to movement keys properly regardless of practice. I am at my limit in terms of hotkeys, it's just not something I can improve in that dept. So it's click some of them or don't use them at all. FF14 has so many abilities (like old WoW) that there are are simply too many for me to hotkey everything I need so it's main abilities and short cooldowns, whereas longer cooldowns I click. If I get used to the timing on boss abilities I should be able to avoid that problem (I have in Unreal/Ex1&2). It also means I'm coming into this with a major impediment that most people don't have to deal with, that was one of my major reasons for not even trying.

I only have 1 job geared out at 590+ presently, SMN, I thought about MCH, but I can't play BRD or DNC with any kind of skill. Also, with how far MCH is behind every other DPS it felt like a huge handicap, if I could get SMN even close in terms of performance it would easily out-DPS MCH. SMN also leaves the door open to playing rezmage with the same gearset if I need/want to (I'm not as good at it, but I can play it ok). It would take me a couple weeks of grinding to get another job to 590+ and that is the bare minimum I'm willing to enter this in order to stack the deck in my favor as much as I possibly can.

The technical issue of "I'm fighting my controls", rebind them all to whatever you think is comfortable. Same issue people with other games on either KBM/Controller while people got used to it effectively such as MH, Apex Legends, etc.

Shift/CTRL/ALT modifiers, Q, E, R, 1-5/6, etc. Controllers? I have no suggestions, just that people are good on it.

[Issaella]

I've literally tried every possible solution, like I said, I've been playing MMOs for 20y. If I use both shift and control modifiers I will hit the wrong one a non-zero percentage of the time, regardless of how much I've practiced it. If I try to use anything beyond 7 or shift+6 I will hit the wrong key a relatively large percentage of the time. Again, despite endless practice. So about what I have is 1-6, shift+1-6, e/q and shift+e/q (the latter pairs generally I set for cooldowns and movement abilities). Even with shift+5 and shift+6 after half an hour or so it starts making my hand hurt, which is an entirely different issue. I can handle MCH, SMN, DRG, and RPR with only clicking my big cooldowns, but other jobs with more abilities means more clicking. I can almost do RDM, but mis-tapping the melee combo still give me issues, I was really hoping they would compress that into 1 key like they did with the GNB cartridge spender. Tanks and healers aren't as big an issue so I don't have as much issue there, either do to fewer primary abilities (WAR, GNB) or the simplified DPS rotation (WHM/SGE) allowing for more efficient clicking.

[IdowhatIwant]

I've literally tried every possible solution, like I said, I've been playing MMOs for 20y. If I use both shift and control modifiers I will hit the wrong one a non-zero percentage of the time, regardless of how much I've practiced it. If I try to use anything beyond 7 or shift+6 I will hit the wrong key a relatively large percentage of the time. Again, despite endless practice. So about what I have is 1-6, shift+1-6, e/q and shift+e/q (the latter pairs generally I set for cooldowns and movement abilities). Even with shift+5 and shift+6 after half an hour or so it starts making my hand hurt, which is an entirely different issue. I can handle MCH, SMN, DRG, and RPR with only clicking my big cooldowns, but other jobs with more abilities means more clicking. I can almost do RDM, but mis-tapping the melee combo still give me issues, I was really hoping they would compress that into 1 key like they did with the GNB cartridge spender. Tanks and healers aren't as big an issue so I don't have as much issue there, either do to fewer primary abilities (WAR, GNB) or the simplified DPS rotation (WHM/SGE) allowing for more efficient clicking.

Keybinds will make a huge difference. I can't stress enough how important getting keybinds set up in a way that you a comfortable with improves your performance. Best way is to make a system where certain skills are always going to be certain buttons so that all jobs you can use the same system. Once you get that all set up it's just getting muscle memory from that point on.

[kaynide]

Re: Keybinds

I play the game entirely open keyboard, no mouse (in combat).
This is what I do, if it’s useful to you:

Bind hot bars to BOTH the top #s and the actual numpad.
Use No additional press for bar 1
Use CTRL for bar 2
Use ALT for bar 3
(I also have ctrl+alt for bar 4, but not needed)
Bind every job’s core rotation to 4-5-6, ctrl 4-5-6 for secondary, alt 4-5-6 if there is a tertiary.
Bind every job’s AoE to 7-8-9 (with ctrl and alt needed)
Bind utility stuff/resource usage/DoTs to 1-2-3

Return selects nearest mob/player, T selects their target.
Arrow keys move the camera, shift+arrow keys move selection

This lets your right hand do all skills, with your left controlling movement and ctrl/alt.

Furthermore, consider using macros to combine niche abilities (like defensive cool downs can be on 1 macro that you can press once and it will just pop the next one available).

If it helps, here is my bard setup, from a while back: (Apologies any spelling errors/changes in EW not accounted for)

[Packetdancer]

I forced myself to join another prog at Harma with zero hope of getting any farther. Progged for about an hour before someone had to leave. I managed not to wipe us and get the mechanic right after like 5 tries on Harma. Actually cleared Overflow and the second Overflow easier than Harma. Saw enrage once near the end (~25%) before we disbanded. I died, like a lot, a lot more than everyone else it seemed like, and still am clearly the weakest link.

If you feel like you died more than others... I mean, that was fresh prog for you. Chances are that others had seen the other mechanics before, at least a few times. It's very, very easy to get obliterated when a mechanic is new to you and you're focused on matching what you see on-screen to the description you've seen elsewhere.

(I will also note that if you're feeling self-conscious, you may also have thought you died more times relative to others than you did; especially if you're not the healer, it's easy to not really register someone else dying if you're focused very specifically on making sure you pick up the mechanics.)

That's one reason I do prog ahead of my static within a fight, by spending time in PF. I know that even if I look at a video or a Toolbox or whatever, I personally don't have a mechanic really click for me until I've seen it a few times. But once it does click, I know I can call it (and answer questions about it) when my static gets there.

I will also note that there's almost no way one person alone is responsible for missing enrage by 25%, so you might be judging yourself a little harshly there. Sure, it's worth thinking about your DPS. But focus first on the mechanics; better to do some DPS and execute mechanics correctly than to do more DPS but die.

(Admittedly, the ideal is doing more DPS and not dying, but even the best raiders rarely focus on the two at the same time. You focus on the "not dying" so that the fight becomes smoother to perform, then you focus on the "more DPS" to beat the enrage check.)

But, it may be, minutely possible that I can eventually clear it. Enrage once at 25% is a long a** way from a clear, but it might not be impossible. It's still really f'ing hard though and the game does absolutely nothing to prepare you for it. And I'd be willing to put a large wager that I just lucked into a unicorn group that felt sorry enough not to kick me bringing paper bag tier DPS.

Honestly, it is likely you will clear it. You say that you think the fight is beyond you... but I'm going to point out that from what you've said, you've been in a grand total of... what, two parties for P2S? And you've already seen enrage. That is a great deal better than many people do.

Yes, granted, you probably have other people in there who had cleared the fight before, and who are very well-geared. And even those who haven't cleared the fight can be well-geared by now, given the Aglaia coins to upgrade Radiant gear. Still, to be able to get through to enrage -- even enrage at 25% -- ain't nothing, as far as progress goes. It means you've seen the whole fight! It's less "learning the fight" now, and more "getting practice at doing the mechanics more smoothly".

If you really find yourself stuck... the Discord server for the FFXIV subreddit has datacenter-specific recruiting channels, and there is likely a raid community Discord for Aether. For instance, Primal has the Primal Raid Community server (or PRC), where you can find a static or ask for a learning party to be put together or whatever, in a more active and collaborative way (including voice chat if needed) than just relying on party finder; I have little doubt that a similar server is out there for Aether.

(As I play predominantly on Primal -- and periodically on Crystal a little bit with friends over there -- Aether is not a datacenter I have any familiarity with the raid resources for, so I'm afraid I don't know where precisely to point you. The subreddit's Discord will have Aether-specific channels, though, and someone there may be able to help more directly.)

[Colt47]

In Shadowbringers I basically redid my hot bar layout completely because reaching for keys 7-0 with your left hand repeatedly was a recipe for carpel tunnel and I kind of want my wrists to not implode. I went with 4 rows of 6 plus two extra keybinds on F and V. Honestly, I probably should rebind T to another key than retargeting.

[histoireancienne]

I only have 1 job geared out at 590+ presently, SMN, I thought about MCH, but I can't play BRD or DNC with any kind of skill. Also, with how far MCH is behind every other DPS it felt like a huge handicap, if I could get SMN even close in terms of performance it would easily out-DPS MCH. SMN also leaves the door open to playing rezmage with the same gearset if I need/want to (I'm not as good at it, but I can play it ok). It would take me a couple weeks of grinding to get another job to 590+ and that is the bare minimum I'm willing to enter this in order to stack the deck in my favor as much as I possibly can.

If you like MCH, play MCH. As my static told me when I was feeling bad going MCH this tier vs. DNC, "You may be hitting like a wet noodle, but you're OUR wet noodle, and we're not going for a week one clear, so it really doesn't matter." I was also told by multiple experience raiders - when I was wringing my hands about MCH damage before the tier dropped - that it was much more important for me to be on a job I was comfy & experienced with. We had P4S down in ... 5 weeks? Which isn't amazing, but also isn't bad. Damage checks were never really the issue & I certainly wasn't holding the group back by not playing DNC or BRD, and I was also contributing my fair share (we also just needed a physical ranged, period - I don't know about Aether's PF scene, but it does seem on Crystal that physranged is in "high demand," relatively speaking). If you're comfortable with the job, it's NOT a "huge handicap" unless you're in a top group going for a clear week one. (Yes, I do wish MCH got a little more love than a smattering of potency buffs, but here we are)

Have you tried using a controller, vs. kb/m? This game is very well optimized for it, esp. for classes like MCH and current SMN that don't have lots of buttons. I switched from PS4 to PC & still play on controller. The only class I really have "issues" with is AST, but I know plenty of people who raid on AST on controller & do more than fine.

And, as Packetdancer notes, hitting enrage at 25% is a group problem, not a YOU specifically problem. Seeing enrage, period, does mean you've seen the whole fight.

[LeonKeyh]

I've literally tried every possible solution, like I said, I've been playing MMOs for 20y. If I use both shift and control modifiers I will hit the wrong one a non-zero percentage of the time, regardless of how much I've practiced it. If I try to use anything beyond 7 or shift+6 I will hit the wrong key a relatively large percentage of the time. Again, despite endless practice. So about what I have is 1-6, shift+1-6, e/q and shift+e/q (the latter pairs generally I set for cooldowns and movement abilities). Even with shift+5 and shift+6 after half an hour or so it starts making my hand hurt, which is an entirely different issue. I can handle MCH, SMN, DRG, and RPR with only clicking my big cooldowns, but other jobs with more abilities means more clicking. I can almost do RDM, but mis-tapping the melee combo still give me issues, I was really hoping they would compress that into 1 key like they did with the GNB cartridge spender. Tanks and healers aren't as big an issue so I don't have as much issue there, either do to fewer primary abilities (WAR, GNB) or the simplified DPS rotation (WHM/SGE) allowing for more efficient clicking.

Unironically; Play with a controller.

Pick a job that you haven't leveled that you've been meaning to check out (or start a new character) and level it using a controller. After playing FF14 with a controller, I can't go back to hotbar combat MMOs with keyboard.