Ok asking for advice

[Celine_Aurora]

Completely disagree with you here. Beating a dummy that represents the DPS check for the fight you are up against is an empowering feeling, and it brings a sense of peace and excitement knowing you just proved you can do it to yourself.

The worst thing my old static could have done to "empower" me for my first Savage experience was telling me to practice on the P5S dummy before our first raid. I killed it handily because of course, went to raid with them feeling like I had already surpassed their expectations and got brutally beat down for three hours that made me so miserable I swore off the game entirely for a dozen days.

If they asked me to spend that time to start practicing the fight in PF and try to catch with them up a little and get an idea of what raiding actually is in this game, I might not have felt like my only recourse was to leave them.

Personally thois convinced me that as a first timer, these guys in the OP should not worry about testing their dps before having some decent prog down for the first fight, or at least do it concurrently. After all, dps only matters if you are trying to get a kill, yeah? And your rotation is relatively easy to fix when needed, compared to learning dances.

Edited to add: Also how good you can keep your rotation up on a stationary target ends up being almost meaningless the first time you're trying that during a fight doing mechs.

[Jeeqbit]

The worst thing my old static could have done to "empower" me for my first Savage experience was telling me to practice on the P5S dummy before our first raid. I killed it handily because of course, went to raid with them feeling like I had already surpassed their expectations and got brutally beat down for three hours that made me so miserable I swore off the game entirely for a dozen days.

Personally, I test against the fourth floor dummy instead (such as P8S). By the time I'm that far my gear will probably be better anyway, but I do it anyway.

Also how good you can keep your rotation up on a stationary target ends up being almost meaningless the first time you're trying that during a fight doing mechs.

While true, how can you do your rotation correctly in a fight if you can't even do it while stationary? How can you beat the fight if you do the rotation so poorly that the dummy is at half health when the time runs out?

Rotations are not that hard but it's a simple check for a new player at least to see if they are doing something extremely wrong.

[Celine_Aurora]

While true, how can you do your rotation correctly in a fight if you can't even do it while stationary? How can you beat the fight if you do the rotation so poorly that the dummy is at half health when the time runs out?

That would tie in to what I said about dps only being important when killing. Sure everyone should constantly test their rotation while progging too - gotta learn how to keep it up with mechs after all - but rotational mistakes that would you cost the kill aren't actually relevant until you have progged enough to see the kill.

I'm not saying testing on the dummy is completely useless, i'm saying that it should be a secondary focus to learning what the fight specifically asks of a player.

[Ath192]

The worst thing my old static could have done to "empower" me for my first Savage experience was telling me to practice on the P5S dummy before our first raid. I killed it handily because of course, went to raid with them feeling like I had already surpassed their expectations and got brutally beat down for three hours that made me so miserable I swore off the game entirely for a dozen days.

If they asked me to spend that time to start practicing the fight in PF and try to catch with them up a little and get an idea of what raiding actually is in this game, I might not have felt like my only recourse was to leave them.

Personally thois convinced me that as a first timer, these guys in the OP should not worry about testing their dps before having some decent prog down for the first fight, or at least do it concurrently. After all, dps only matters if you are trying to get a kill, yeah? And your rotation is relatively easy to fix when needed, compared to learning dances.

Edited to add: Also how good you can keep your rotation up on a stationary target ends up being almost meaningless the first time you're trying that during a fight doing mechs.

It almost sounds like they knew what was coming and tried to prepare you for it. But instead of being thankful for the tips you chose to let your insecurities win and dropped off. If they were being mean to you than by all accounts you should have left, but that's not what I'm getting from your post. I don't see your experience having been better by not doing the dummy, if anything, its would've been the same 3 hours, but worse.

You don't learn and keep up your rotation in a dummy for the first time you try a fight. You do it so that when the fight is mastered people don't have to wait around for you to get good at it while hitting enrage every night. It's something you bring with you so that you can finish the fight without enraging after people went through the effort of doing the mechanics right.

Hell, I've been raiding for years and anytime I try a new job I learn my rotation on a dummy. This isn't even a noob tip. It's a pro tip too. You can see others do it as well by looking at Jeeqbit's post.

[Celine_Aurora]

It almost sounds like they knew what was coming and tried to prepare you for it. But instead of being thankful for the tips you chose to let your insecurities win and dropped off.

That's like... The opposite of what I wrote.

They gave me advice on keeping up my rotation that I did not need and they did not need (they were far from the kill too, progging Devour and trying to get consistently to Ruby 4 and 5) and did nothing to prepare me for what the fight actually demanded. They did not give me the advice that I would have given myself if I was in their shoes: before worrying about your dps, practice the fight and try to catch up to our progression point.

Eventually, both the practice and the dummy are important, for sure. But killing the dummy did not prepare me for a good raiding experience with them, and what would have gotten me better prepared was not demanded.

I'm not saying the dummy is useless or that I don't practice rotations, I am saying, it's not a priority for someone who is approaching Savage for the first time, like OP and their static.