Solo duty: Taking a Stand

[Celliera]

I just posted this in another thread but I think it's particularily relevant to this one as well so I'm sending it again.

I did NG+ just to reattempt this on all 3 difficulties.

Easy is NOT easier than Very Easy. Easy gives you 20% Echo while Very Easy gives you 40% Echo. Here is the data for anyone who wants it:
The Echo buff is called "Indomitable Spirit"

Normal (No Echo)
- Your HP: 122.732
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~3.5-3.8k
Easy (Gives 20% Echo)
- Your HP: 147,278
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~4.2-4.5k
Very Easy (Gives 40% Echo)
- Your HP: 171,824
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~5.0-5.3k

There is no difference in mechanics or damage taken between any of the 3 difficulty tiers. It may seem like you take more damage in Very Easy but that is because the cast "Roar" seems to be percent based taking out around ~50-55% of your HP. Outside of Roar all damage is the same.

So how do you clear this duty easily? You really just need to do 3 things:

1. Hit Luwatena Pulse on cooldown. You can use it as a proper heal as well but I found keeping it rolling on cooldown is enough for this duty.
2. Hit Dawnlit Conviction the moment it is available. The fight stops for a moment giving you enough time to use it whenever it is up.
3. Keep your Tail of the Br'aax Combo GCD rolling. This is really important since the 3rd hit of your combo heals you. Seriously, just spam the combo button the entire time.

As long as you don't make too many mistakes this is all you need to do to clear even on Normal difficulty.

[LuSnow]

@Shistar, thank you! Just to know that I would have a solution (story skip) for a potential next expansion is a true relief. However, if I can already not manage the current chapter, I'm not sure it would make sense buying the next one since it would be equally harder or even worse? LOL

@Frizze, each fight is around 10 minutes until I die. After that, I can't go for an immediate round as I need to wait that the motion sickness calms down. That's why I haven't tried easy mode up to now. Next time I will suicide immediately to bypass normal mode and go straight into easy mode.
Regarding fight duration, today with cold mind, I can't tell for sure how long I last exactly because it feels very long but maybe it's only because the - for me - nightmare seems never ending. At my next try, I will check how long I'm in there really.

There are 2 facts I don't understand:
- I can't damage the boss enough. His health doesn't decrease, or very little only.
- My health is low, always. It very rarely goes up again, although spamming 3 and 1. It's a mystery to me, because I have by now well understood the mechanics of the boss and avoid them properly.

Today, I will relax and not retry. But tomorrow, I will as said suicide straight at beginning to bypass normal mode and retry into easy mode. Let's see.

*** A few hours later, edited to answer to Celliera ***

@Celliera, sorry, I had to edit my post to reply to you because I posted before I had seen your reply.

Thanks for the confirmation re easy vs. very easy.

As for the method you describe, that's what I try all the time but it didn't help me. I'm the problem. I'm an average player. I'm slow. I play only ranged class and do hate melee (at which I get motion sickness as a bonus). All that combined, that duty is the worst possible case for me.

I don't think I can beat that duty. It makes me sad because I will never see the rest of the msq, will not reach the splendor vendor level 100, will not complete fisher, botanist and miner, and so on... That's quite frustrating.

I will keep trying once in a while, but I have no big hope.

Generally, it's OK to me that they put solo duties in the msq, but I find the concept as is unbalanced. Close to end of a chapter, at highest level of difficulty, to force non-melee players to play melee (and vice versa) is the wrong timing. Exchange of classes should happen before and once at higher difficulty, we should be on similar classes than own. It's - for me - not normal that I'm forced to do something at which I don't get the slightest fun.

Personally, I prefer the concept in GW and GW2. The activities of highest difficulties are aside of the story so that they don't block it. Those activities are optional and players have free choice to do those or not. If they chose not to, there are negative consequences: the best gears and weapons (legendary) can't be obtained. I find that a well balanced concept: People are free to chose but those who decline don't get the legendary rewards. Fair enough. At least, everybody can complete the story.

[Shistar]

@Shistar, thank you! Just to know that I would have a solution (story skip) for a potential next expansion is a true relief. However, if I can already not manage the current chapter, I'm not sure it would make sense buying the next one since it would be equally harder or even worse? LOL

Difficulty is not necessarily correlated to if it goes before or after in the story. As an example, ARR and HW were much harsher with the player back when they were current, yet they came before EW—which was generally considered easy by the playerbase (personal opinions notwithstanding) so we really can't know if it'll be more difficult or not until we can play it.

Although, if you can't do the duty yourself, I'd suggest "casually" allowing a friend to check out FFXIV at your PC... it'd be a terrible shame if they just so happened to go ahead and do the duty while you were not looking.... wink wink. Anyways. The next expansion is a long while away still, so it's not worth remaining stuck waiting for a story skip to become available in the store. Remember to change all your passwords after and stuff.

There are 2 facts I don't understand:
- I can't damage the boss enough. His health doesn't decrease, or very little only.
- My health is low, always. It very rarely goes up again, although spamming 3 and 1. It's a mystery to me, because I have by now well understood the mechanics of the boss and avoid them properly.

Today, I will relax and not retry. But tomorrow, I will as said suicide straight at beginning to bypass normal mode and retry into easy mode. Let's see.

Would you be willing to record your attempt? It would be incredibly useful information so we can tell you more exact tips and tricks for your case. There's nothing necessarily wrong with hanging out with half or low HP so long as you don't die. It seems that Celliera's information about Roar might be correct, although I haven't tested it myself yet. Since the HP goes down faster, Roar happens more often and thus you have less time to recuperate between attacks.

You can use OBS (it's free and there's easy tutorials to quickly set it up) to record your screen if you're on PC, or even pointing your phone at the screen will give us some clues. Then just upload it somewhere you can link it back to us.

[Frizze]

Regarding a future story skip. Obviously it isnt ideal. But this is what some people do. Around the time you buy the skip, find a way to watch the story or a recap to read. You could find a streamer who played it and look at their VoDs, you could find a list of the important things that happened, you could find a youtube video that walks you through it. There will 100% be YT creators who make videos reminding people of the dawntrail story and where we're going next, if only because so much time will have gone by that many people will have forgotten some of the important bits. As i type this, its been 18ish months since i did the base DT story and we dont even know yet how many months away the next expansion is. Even the final bits of story will be several months old when its finally time to download 8.0. We'll have the trailers, we'll have the hype, we'll have what info gets shared at the fan fests(for those who decide to keep up with all of said info) - but none of that assures that we'll remember everything that came before. So there will for sure be videos looking to fill in the gaps. The next step of course is to buy the actual skip, which will go onsale at around the same time the expansion goes live. Once the skip is applied to your character, you have the option to go back into the inn and watch some of the important scenes with your character in place. Then you continue the story with whereever we go next.

Alternatively, buying a skip would also unlock the NG+ mode for dawntrail. As i mentioned previously, the first NG+ point for the expansion is the very start. The 2nd starting point is somewhere in the approximately level 95 range of quests, shortly after the next dungeon. So you could theoretically buy the skip, activate NG+ to the 2nd DT spot, read the quest descriptions for what happened after the current fight, replay the dungeon via trust or que, look at what happened after, then just play the story going forward to experience it yourself. At that point youre buying a skip to get past more or less one fight(you would also be able to stop NG+ and jump ahead if you decided you want to at any time), which... i dont know if that makes it more or less worth the money.

But for now, with a fresh set of eyes give the fight a try again like you planned to. If you fail, the more details you can remember the better for us to maybe find you a path. If you succeed, then congrats! Let us know tho!

[LuSnow]

Thanks Frizze.

For info, I have edited my previous post to reply to Celliera, as I failed to see her post before to post my.

Today, I will not retry. I need a break from it. I will enjoy lazy easy stuff with my alts... LOL

Thanks Shistar too!

You guys are so nice to help me the way you do. At times, I failed to see all the replies and my reply doesn't cover for all. Sorry for that.

[Shistar]

We were all sprouts once or struggled with one thing or the other. Return the favor by helping someone else when you can!
Breaks are important. This is a game, it's meant to be fun.


Something's fishy for sure, surely there's a detail we're missing here... but I'm sure we can solve it somehow. If you're dodging the mechanics well and pressing your buttons, I'm not quite sure where we're going wrong. If there's any other details you happen to remember please share them!

[Frizze]

I only read and post on a few of the forums here, New Player Help being the main one. I qualify to be a mentor in game, but i choose not to claim the burger king crown. Helping people who ask for it, on the other hand, im happy to volunteer for. All of which is to say, if it wasnt already obvious, we're glad to help in whatever ways we can.

Obviously none of us have had a chance to watch your progress, so we cant say for certain what mechanically is stopping you. My thinking is that it is probly one of three things, but it is impossible to say. Potential problem #1, as Shistar guesses, is Roar timing. Doing damage too quickly against an enemy that does percentage damage at regular intervals can result in an imbalance of health versus healing. It feels like this could be the root of the very versus easy problem people have reported. Potential problem #2, combo interuption. Ive watched enough people play to know that in some of these duties with automatic combos(as in, press 1 repeatedly and it updates to do all the steps in the combo) people will interupt the combo before it finishes without realizing. If you only get the first 2 hits, then do something that causes the combo to reset you never get the healing from the third hit. Not sure if that is an issue here, but it stands as a possibility. Potential problem #3, low activity. This instance is trying to tell the story of a fighter taking on a foe seemingly stronger then herself, barely hanging on, finding her confidence along the way, and winning in the end. To achieve those ends, your health yoyos a good deal, your healing is enough though it never feels like it, and your damage isnt overwhelming. How does that relate to activity? You really do want to be hammering the 1 combo more or less constantly during the fight. You try not to disengage while dodging whenever you can, and the more hits you get in the more often you get those small bits of healing. I have seen people who attack 10 times per minute(or less), whereas if youre constantly hitting 1 you get a small heal roughly every 7.5 seconds. For a fight that was designed to feel close, that would make a difference.

Again, no idea if any of those actually apply to you LuSnow(and they certainly arent the only possibilities) but any of them could potentially be causing issues.

[Shistar]

Frizze, you should absolutely grab the crown if only to unlock the most glorious roulette, Mentor roulette, where you get to run Shiva, Ramuh and Rathalos EX synced and wipe forever (totally not traumatized at all!)
I lost my crown when DT came out, but I still have mentor roulette unlocked lol

[LuSnow]

One thing for sure if that generally I'm slow at reacting. But strangely, in that case, compared to the videos I watched, am rather pretty OK on that side at least.

@Frizze, there is one point not clear to me and I believe it relates to your point #3: In one video, the guy is spamming 1 madly. In another video, the guy does different. He seems to take his time, using 1 but not spamming it, then alternates with 2, then re-use 1. So I'm confused about it. What is correct? To click non stop and madly on 1, or to click 1, wait a bit, re-click it, use 2 once in a while...

[GraceHorizon]

Clicking the combo action button madly isn’t going to do anything, it a GCD action, so the guy doing that is just his style not a necessary thing. You just need to keep the GCD spinning, so that’s once every 2.5 seconds (technical note, most action inputs are buffered, so it counts if you do the input a little before time). And very definitely keep spamming that combo (from melee range! don’t break contact unless you have to!) in addition to using your Luwatena Pulse and limit break whenever available.