So when should i do this??

[Jeeqbit]

You don't generally find a FC (guild) here to raid. What you find instead is a static. A static is frequently composed of 8 people from a mixture of different world servers, who join a discord server together or a CWLS (cross-world linkshell).

The most common place to recruit for members of a static is the "ffxiv recruitment reddit" which you can google. They have a discord server as well which is worth joining.

You can recruit for a static to do old raids with the "Minimum IL" and "Silence Echo" settings (which syncs them so that they are challenging again), but this is not very common. Most people just do the newest raids at max level (currently level 90).

All of the challenging raids are optional (unlocked through blue sidequests). They wouldn't require them to be done for the story quests, but of course they give rewards such as mounts and better gear. The raid difficulty level is in order of

• (Extreme) / (Unreal) / Minstrel's Ballad (1 released every major patch, every 4 months)
• (Savage) / Coil
• (Ultimate)

There are 4 savage raids per raid tier, and 3 raid tiers per expansion with 8 months between (making around 2 years between expansions), for a total of 12 savage raids per expansion.

Recently, they have been trying out a new type of content designed for 4 people which is also of savage difficulty. Only 1 exists so far and they are called Criterion dungeons. If you count this, it makes the savage raid content more frequent.

Ultimates are very hard for them to make and designed to be streamed on twitch, so there are only 1 or 2 per expansion. It's not expected that most players will attempt, or even clear these. But if they do they get a glowing weapon and title that everyone can recognize.

Ultimates actually require the completion of a certain savage tier, although once that savage tier is "old", you can "unsync" it with higher level gear. Ultimates themselves force you to be synced so that you can't unsync them.

It's possible to pug this content as well. If you check the Trials, Raids or High-End categories in Party Finder, you will see tags including

• [Practice] - means they just want to go in and wipe and hopefully learn from those wipes, they are usually friendly and chill
• [Duty Completion] - it might not be a one-shot, but it usually means they are comfortable with most mechanics and expect to clear within several pulls.
• [Duty Complete] - doesn't let you join if you haven't cleared

The description includes important information, such as which phase they want you to be up to, which strategies they are using or which guide they want you to watch. If you don't know what the description means, you can search for it on youtube to see a video on the strategy. Strategies are often named after the content creator who is regarded to have "come up" with it.

If you are optimizing for raids after you complete the MSQ, I recommend searching for The Balance. It's a discord server but they have a website as well and they will explain how to optimize rotations, use food, pots and materia and what the BiS is and things like that.