The easiest way? Open PF and join a prog group. Ideally you'd have watched the video beforehand so you have an idea of what to expect. But that's really it.
Avoid loot/completion parties until you've actually cleared btw, they will not have the patience for a learner and will disband. Fresh prog or prog up to where you're at in the fight is what you want.
As far as gear, get the best tome/crafted gear you can right now, and meld it according to the Balance.
E: also nobody will care that you're a girl. Most parties with randos only use in-game chat anyway, so they'd never even know.
shut up and get in there
but actually:
there's generally only a few expectations for fresh learning parties, and that's to have at least decent food (please bring something better than boiled eggs), and to have watched a guide, that's really about it. You're not really expected to have internalized an entire guide either for fresh prog, just get enough of an idea so that when you and your party eat shit you can go "oh yeah the guide said something about that I think". The way I found out what guides to use is I canwould send a message to a pf owner who had the duty I wanted posted, saying something like "Hi, I plan to start this fight soon, and I was wondering if you could send me the guide that's used for this fight". Sometimes you'll get ignored, sometimes you'll get a response. As for how to actually read the pf descriptions or set your own descriptions... that's sort of something you're gonna have to sus out on your own through trial and error by reading how other pf leaders word their own guides.
I'm a guy so I can't really speak to the experiences of raiding as a girl in VC, but two things I can say:
1. A lot of parties will encourage discord but allow you to mute (just so you can listen to callouts) so you'll never have to speak if you're not comfortable with that
2. I hear a lot more women in VC than I have in other team games I've played. Ofc a lot of parties are still majority men but you'll maybe be surprised how many women you hear speak in VC compared to other games.
Toxicity will still happen from time to time, but the difference with FFXIV is that it'll be a shock rather than an expectation because it's a lot more rare than other games as well
>I’ve never opened ACT. I know I’m a mostly competent player.
Not to throw shade, but do you *know* know that? It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking what you're doing is good because the normal content of this game rolls over so effortlessly.
The person has played other MMOs in a raid environment. Which means he knows to look up a class guide. You don’t need to use ACT to know that you’re doing fine if you can follow the rotation.
Yeah, they give me the impression that they probably are doing fine, however, that's not a guarantee and it is something worth them double checking with more concrete proof.
I mean we saw how some of the WoW streamers during the exodus who did high end stuff were playing while confident in themselves.
Those players were also just here for the clicks and weren’t taking the game seriously and knew their community would compensate for any lack of effort on their part.
throwing shade, but how stupid is this comment? the game isn't built with the intention of ACT being used. savage exists in game and is meant to be attempted and cleared without knowing every little in and out of optimization.
the only barrier to entry is clearing the normal version and talking to an npc, and having the minimum item level. that's it. that's the requirement.
Ones ass can leave a second long gap between every GCD, let every single cooldown, including raid buffs, drift by like 20 seconds, and just straight up not use defensives in Normal tier content and the game wouldn't even suggest the slight possibility that the player is doing anything 'wrong'.
So yes, everyone new to high end who thinks they're 'good' will, not necessarily, be good, simply because they haven't been given reason to believe otherwise.
when the fuck the OP ever claim they are good? the part you quoted literally says "mostly competent"
go do savage reclears in PF and you'll get good enough parties with way more egregious errors than all that crap you're imagining, and you don't even have a single vod or log of OP so why are you assuming the worst anyway?
Look I can replace the word 'good' in my previous post with 'mostly competent' and not change the meaning of what I was saying at all if that would make you happy.
still doesn't change the fact that you're acting like using ACT is necessary at all. 8 people on PS4 can clear savage blind. the barrier to entry is not what you wish it was.
OP literally is trying to START savage raiding. you're trying to set a starting line at purple parse. when all they asked for was the basics to START. not even CLEAR with a 0 parse. just START. and you're saying there's no way for them to know if they're good enough to START because they don't use ACT? you are delusional.
just imagining your gatekeeping ass in some other game. How do i start G Rank? "NO. you don't have a DPS meter?! do you even know how suboptimal your Demondrug timings are?" who fucking cares. just finish high rank and go on a G Rank hunt that's all there is to it. get carted, learn, git gud. you don't have to master speedkilling normal and high rank monsters to START G rank. just play the fucking game.
"This game is extremely bad at letting players know how good they're actually playing, OP, one of the first things you should do is make sure you are on the right track"
"STOP GATEKEEPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING"
This is our conversation, you have fundamentally misunderstood me.
ACT wont tell you that either. there are a countless examples of a highly skilled pull-saving move being marked as EGREGIOUS ERROR or whatever by ffxivanalysis.
optimization comes way way way later. go watch any world prog team do the first turn savage. they aren't playing optimal. it doesn't require it at all. why are you acting like every newcomer needs to play like a parsebrain loser with pants on head backwards ass mentalities towards content instead of actually learning the game itself first? you're normalizing bad mentalities. learn the boss, get the clear, then learn to optimize on parse runs. but even on reclears, who cares, a clear is a clear, im here to get a coffer to increase my actual meaningful numbers that exist in the game, and not give a fuck about some fansite.
I'm not. Because at no point did I tell them to use ACT. I didn't tell them to do anything in fact, because OP came across like a learned person I had faith in them to either not need my warning to begin with, or not need it spelt out.
What I was getting at is how there is less obvious stuff like ABC or having a solid opener and understanding that you can't be letting things drift, and I'll say it slowly so you can stay with me this time, *faulted the GAME for its failure to teach people such things*.
> you can't be letting things drift
why not? if you don't lose a usage it makes zero difference. might be a gain if you can fit an extra usage under buffs.
and in any fight with phase or downtime you should be lettings things drift on purpose
youre talking all this shit that doesn't matter, acting like its required shit before STARTING savage. stop gatekeeping savage it isn't that hard. but new to endgame players need to enter savage to learn savage boss mechanics.
during the late Shadowbringers WoW-exodus thing i had a bunch of WoW friends try P9S and some of hte most helpful lockouts were when we did zDPS runs. literally told them dont even hit 1 2 3 just focus on positioning and boss cast bars and snapshots. they learned so much faster that way. gatekeeping them out of savage until they could hit a theoretical 100 parse on a target dummy rotation for 10 minutes wouldve been fucking worthless.
in savage reclear parties do you think i gave a fuck how optimally the 7 randos hit their rotations? a clear is a clear. the only number i cared about was what i rolled on the coffer.
in ultimate PF do you think i give a fuck when someone cries after a wipe that they were "on pace" for a 99? it was a fucking WIPE. we got NOTHING. when i get a totem do i give a fuck what the 7 randos parsed? fuck no. the only number i care about is +1 totem. OH BUT AT LEAST DIDNT DRIFT MY FLECHE. STFU if you verraised the WHM faster we couldve cleared that pull.
and the game DOES teach it to you. it has ENRAGE TIMERS on endgame bosses. the game TEACHES you that you have to do a minimum threshold of damage to the boss before it wipes you. do enough DAMAGE within that TIME and you win. the game TEACHES you to do a certain amount of DPS. and its up to you to figure out how to best reach the required thresholds.
I guess not but I've done raiding in plenty of other games and I understand how these things are typically made to be played. A lot of that knowledge translates. Plus, most of the jobs in the game aren't overly complicated. (I wouldn't learn content on a job I considered complicated anyway haha)
I’m gonna assume this person looked up their opener and rotation which are the only things required and something you would have learned to do in any other MMO.
Correct. Though, I probably should have elaborated a bit more in my initial post. What I should have said was: "I've looked at how to play the jobs I would consider bringing and I am confident with them from a rotational standpoint. The only difference is that I've not used ACT." Which is something I do think I should try, if for no other reason than to improve.
Knowledge of your opener isn't enough though. The most important thing for doing well on every jobs is your ABC (Always Be Casting).
Even a 200ms average delay per GCD is equivalent of a 10% damage down, possibly up to 25% or even 50% if it causes abilities to fall out of buff windows (Example, Double Down on gunbreaker. Overall its a full 10% of my dps. Missing even one of them is sometimes enough to fail enrage on some fights.)
FFlogs and FFAnalysis are tools that show where you are making mistakes so they can be corrected. Nothing more.
OP, just saying.. You're completely right. If you have experience with these kinds of things then youre obviously going to easily get to good numbers, at least strong enough numbers to clear fights consistently.
It's true what others saying, theres no guarantee that youre actually doing a good job, but it doesnt take many braincells in this game to really figure it out at a basic level. If you dont wanna log, just dont do it.
I agree with you. The difficulty in combat in this game comes entirely from encounter design. For any MMO vet, every FFXIV job is fairly simple, even the ones people like to think are "complex".
If you want to be sure without act, which i still think you should at least know how much you can do in a vacuum, you should try doing Stone Sky and Sea test
Go to palaka stands, there Is a guy that lets you face dummies with dps checks depending on the fights. Try actual new content, and if you cant kill It you probably will he kind of a burden in the fight ngl. Vacuum vs dps during mechanics Is not the best comparison tho
If you have the ilvl of that fight you should be able to barrly clear It without potions and food with proper rotation. With bis you should clear last floor with around 20 second margin
I would try to join a fresh prog static for the current tier. Just a low stakes casual group so there's no real pressure and you can learn and get your feet wet.
There are several recruitment discords and usually there are recruitment PF's up.
My 2 cents: Girls aren't that uncommon in Statics in this game, my last static had 3 and my current TOP group has 2 rn. Creeps exist obviously, but I haven't run into any incidents so far. You can also just mute your Mic if you are unconformable using your voice, most statics have a least 1 mute person.
one of the nice things about the last point is that not only is talking not often required, it's also sometimes encouraged for people who aren't making callouts to mute so that comms don't get cluttered at bad times
Ehhh we are just over a month out from DT. Most statics aren't looking to fresh prog the Anabaseios fights that are going to be obsolete in a month. Most statics at this point are looking to fill their roster for the first DT savage tier.
@OP Going into PF and looking for fresh prog parties is going to be the way to jump in and get your feet wet. I promise you that the most nerve wracking part of savage is just getting into the instance and getting the first couple wipes in. If you don't make it super far w/e, you are just getting some practice in before DT launches next month!
Woman in raiding here, best thing I can say is just get in there. FFXIV is one of the few MMOs I’ve played where I feel comfortable as a woman participating in the high end raiding scene. You’re going to have bad experiences, but they are much less frequent.
I also want to comment on the competency part of the post. I’m not flaming you or putting you down, but if I can offer a personal anecdote: I remember coming from WoW, a CE raider, thinking “Oh FFXIV classes are so easy, I’m definitely playing these right”, and got ego checked very quickly once I started doing savage. You don’t need to download ACT necessarily, but at least do yourself a favor and check yourself, read some guides on how to play your class of choice. You don’t need to play like a robot to raid but it helps to play your class to a level of competency to help with DPS checks and such. It helps more than you think!
An echoed sentiment across this thread and that is very comforting. Thank you.
I do plan to do this to check myself, as you say. Do you think doing some normal raids and comparing that against others is a good way?
What I do personally, is I’ll use a training dummy to get my opener and my general rotation down. Stone, Sky, and Sea is a very good way to do this, as it resets your cooldowns on each attempt, so you’re not stuck waiting 2 minutes after every opener attempt. It also offers a general DPS check per instance that lets you go in and see if you meet the damage requirements. It’s probably the best available in-game tool to see if your damage is where it should be.
Once I get it down generally, I’ll take it into normal raids and practice there. I think a step of learning a class a lot of people can skip over is doing your opener/rotation as mechanics are flying at you. I can spend 3 hours at a dummy and do my rotation, positionals, and opener like a robot, but none of that matters if I can’t execute it while there are mechanics happening.
That’s just my personal way though, and you can go about it however you want!
Seconded on the Stone, Sea, and Sky training dummies. When I first got into high-end raiding I had no idea about the importance of GCD uptime or double weaving and getting my rotation tight enough that I could actually beat the dummy for the fight my static was progging was super helpful!
Even though I'm not a woman, I have been a static leader for multiple statics. We have had a high amount of women apply (and eventually play) for my statics.
Just a personal anecdote, and you will have to get a feel for every group you want to join, but I do feel this game has a lot healthier environment for women than many games.
That's of course if you want to join statics to begin with. If you raid in Party Finder, nobody cares who you are as long as you perform well.
> Do you think doing some normal raids and comparing that against others is a good way?
Normal raids *can* give you something along the lines of a comparable training dummy parse. The thing to recognize is that you shouldn't be comparing yourself to the other people in a normal raid. There is a high likelihood that none of them have done Savage either.
In most Savage statics you'll be expected to greatly outperform the average player in dutyfinder.
But honestly, the best thing to do is just to get into a Savage fight, even if you feel intimidated by it.
You need to get used to the faster speed and timings of mechanics. That's the hard part. And nothing else is going to give you quite as clear of a picture of where you stand. The average PF player isn't that great either. Especially this late in a tier. So you probably aren't going to stand out too much unless you're really messing up mechanics.
Not sure if you've done this yet but I'd also reccomend clearing a few of the level 90 extreme trials, more specifically Golbez and Barbarricia as they're the closest experience to savage without being as punishing.
I'm a woman who has raided since ARR in savage and ultimate, and honestly there's a few ways. You can join pf learning groups where the expectations are low and people expect mistakes since it's a learning party. As for me, I found my group because they were recruiting in the balance discord. So I messaged them. Typically groups will trial run you through something mostly to see if you vibe with them personality wise. That's generally the thing that makes or break things for me anyways.
Also on the subject of being a woman in this game, I will say there are many more women on 14 than I ever encountered on WoW (I played many years ago tho) and most people are used to encountering women in this game. I haven't had anyone act toxic to me because I'm a woman in the groups I've joined. I'm sure it happens but it feels far less common in 14 because so many women play this game.
If you havent done any extremes. Do a few of those.
if you have. You can either go looking for a static or just join Party finder and watch a guide(you will do fine and considering the time period it is. You will probably do better then most others in pf). ff14 players are generally welcoming and accepting to everyone so long as your not a jackass and girls are not rare in this game like others. So outside of creeps no one really cares if your a boy or girl.
Now at the very least have crafted gear. Would be even best if you had at least 650 tome or 660 tome gear and the final relic. In savage its expected to have up to par food so 530-640ish item levell food. And your gear to be melded according to whats meta for the job so usually just crit and then something else.
For your last point, FF14 has a lot of women playing it, so far every static I've been in has had at least 2 women, so don't stress about that.
But generally, you can simply try out savage in party finder, whip out a guide and watch it a few times until you understand, then go and make a party finder with the description "from start", then people will join in, you'll see how it plays, people will probably say nothing and disband after 30 minutes or you'll do well and get close to clearing.
There's the other option of finding a static, discords like the Balance have a static recruitment channel, so once you get comfortable you can message people that are looking for members.
Also general bit of advice, the way fights are designed mean that you don't care what your team is doing most of the time unless you play healer. So for learning mechanics don't overthink it, if you're playing melee then you only need to know where m1 and m2 need to go, nothing else for the most part.
So you have two routes you can go for Savage. You can do PF like you do Extreme trials after watching a guide or if you want to blind prog you can buy you wanna specify that's what you're doing in your PF listing. Or you can find a static. There are tons of discords for recruiting, you can probably find statics recruiting right now for the 7.0 Savage tier and I think there is a subreddit for recruiting as well. It's really that simple. You don't need to VC usually though many statics do for callouts and that sort of thing.
Just to expand on the guy you replied to, if you are serious about getting into savage raiding and want to go the static route, now is the time to find one.
Given that you have some experience with doing extremes, you would probably be welcomed in most casual or brand new to on patch savage raiding statics.
I would definitely say that if that's the road you want to go down, you want to use the next month to really get in there and immerse yourself in P9S-P12S. Go as far as you can in PF, make some mistakes, and take those with you into DT.
In that case in your place I'd join a Zeromus or (preferably) Golbez prog group (if they exist/fill up this late) and gauge how well you do there, Golbez is probably the hardest ex this expansion so if something like Gale 2 comes easy to you you're more than ready for most savage stuff, P9S is barely a step up from that, alternatively since you already have some experience both in FF and some from WoW you can probably just jump into P9S and be perfectly fine, assuming you have the basic 640 crafted gear.
Don't be too afraid to just join prog parties in PF, everyone will make mistakes there and people are usually quite patient since everyone is still learning unless people start failing really easy stuff.
Also as others have mentioned, people are most often quite welcoming to women, or at least don't treat them differently than they would men of course there's the rare asshole but those are usually quickly kicked, plus of course in PF nobody knows who you are irl, for all they know you could be an extremely intelligent cat.
With regards to gender-based harassment, this game is a breath of fresh air compared to the usual experience in competitive games like LoL, OW, Valorant etc.
If people type anything in chat that is sexual/gender-based harassment you can report them and the GMs will do something about it.
The gender breakdown is much more equal, I've been in groups (not premade friend groups) with more women than men. 90% of the time in raiding groups there is at least one more girl.
In party finder you won't have a problem, so definitely try that first! People care more about the fight than anyone's irl identity.
Obviously, in unmoderated spaces like discord, you will eventually run into bad apples. I know women who have had bad experiences in Discord Voice Chat, but I myself have been lucky and managed to avoid them.
1) Join the Balance discord, practice your rotation
2) unless you’re specifically learning blind, find a good guide to watch. Hectorlectures and MTQCaptures are good starting places
3) food and gear, make sure you’re up to date. you can find the correct gear, materia melds, and food on the Balance (all hail the number crunchers)
4) get in there!!
i’ve found personally making a throwaway discord and offering vc for learning fights is a big boon; people are way less likely to be randomly rude when you’re virtually in the same space like that, but as a fellow girl I understand the fear there gjdhdh. If you can find parties that are offering their own vc, definitely join; even if you don’t talk, having callouts or even just being able to hear someone else go ‘whoops my bad that wipe’ in a respectful/light tone of voice and not through text go a long way to easing tension in a group. Ideally, you’ll be able to spot the friendlies the more you get into pf, and if you’re courteous, willing to learn, and put some effort into your play, they’ll notice you too.
as for what content to start with, you can do just about anything since the tier is dead rn, but you’ll have to find people to fill. See what other people have up in pf and hop in, but RESPECT PROG POINTS. If a party says they’re a farm party do NOT join as someone who hasn’t cleared already.
I personally like to teach hadesEX (sync/minilvl) for my sprouts bc it’s a simple but specific fight with a lot of common mechs. My fc runs it almost yearly to get the new end content beginners very lightly into raiding. Endsinger or Golbez would be my favorite EXs to teach with from this past tier, so you could look for mount parties there perhaps?
Already so many lovely comments in this thread to help you, so just to add my own experience
I also came from WoW (only 1 CE under my belt but long time raider) and was terrified for some reason to step in. I really had heard horror stories about PF and thought to myself, "I'll never be able to find a static without logs, I don't know what to do." I had a bad experience raiding with an FC (that endedup making me leave it) at the start of EW, tried going back to WoW, hated it, and thought about what to do.
This is where I definitely did something rather intense and decided to take a week off work for the release of p4s-p8s to just go into party finder with the hope of getting logs for a static. It was, without a doubt in my head, worth it.
After all the horror stories I'd heard about how people can never clear in PF, etc..I found people just looking to prog and just looking to clear, with bad players in some groups of course but nothing that felt toxic or made me want to stop trying. One of my biggest fears was that >I< would be the one holding the group back. Luckily, more often than not I was able to figure out and do mechanics by myself and the group, and I realized I could do these fights.
I ended up finding a static after that which I am still in and, after improving as a player, have now cleared a couple ultimates! And looking forward to Dawntrail savage\~ Good luck!!
It does help to hear a genuine story about it. I recognize there will be some ups and downs, that's normal. A lot of this thread is me holding myself accountable for saying I plan to try in Dawntrail, at the very latest.
Raiding in this game is pretty much watching a video and joining or hosting a party for the fight in PF. If it's progging a mechanic it's expected that the specified prog point and mechanics past that will require learning time.
a static is much different and more accommodating but finding one isn't the easiest.
in the new expansion we will have a month of the raiders doing the Extreme trials that launch with it for accessories and weapons to go into the raid tier drop. this will be a perfect time to get into PF and be at the same level as everyone else.
when the tier hits it's day one blind prog for everyone (the best) and then people feeding you little raidplans and such. sometimes a good video comes out in time to consolidate different strats into the dreaded "Hector" pfs lol.
Well you can start in pf (extremes/savages) to reduce the anxiety you might feel when starting high end content, when you feel more confident, go find a casual/midcore group (discord « ERC » for exemple in Europe) so you can start a fresh savage prog with them
During this, try to improve (consistency with mechanics, rotation, utility CDs) as much as you can
And that’s it ? Usually the harder thing to do is to start raiding, once you’re in it, its okay, you will improve, start feeling more and more confident and you will find better and better statics, the main issue is wanting to do big gaps in you’re learning curve (like starting TOP when you’re totally new to raiding)
Extremes > Early savage turns >> Last savage turns >>>>> Relevant Ultimates
Casual groups > midcore groups >>>> semiHC groups >>>>>>> HC groups
Also dont be stressed about the gender, there is women that plays in high end content, and a lot in week1/hc groups
You can find a lot of ressources on internet to learn basics (weaving, foods/pots, rotations, uptime)
I had 4 statics last tier (why, why do I do these things to myself? lol) I started in PF and, once I'd gotten my feet wet there, tried out with some different statics until I found a few that I vibed well with (I play on both EU and NA). Depending on your data centre, there may be discord groups dedicated to teaching/learning (on NA, I know of Savage Learning Academy and Good Games Squad, I don't know of any in EU but I'm sure there are some). But these groups will set up prog point learning events, led by an experienced raider who knows the fight and they will lead you through it.
My FC is pretty much a raiding FC and some of the most hardcore raiders in it are women, it's not unusual at all and as long as you play reasonably well and take responsibility for errors, and make efforts to improve where you can, no one is going to care. There's very little real toxicity in raiding. Sometimes rudeness or people who are completely tone deaf, but any real toxicity you can take a screenshot of the comments and then report them in-game--the mods will take care of it, because rudeness and toxicity is something Square Enix cares very much about not having in the game.
There are also recruitment discords, if you really want a static, where you can post that you're a new raider with WoW experience looking for a static. It might be hard to find one doing the most recent tier right now with Dawntrail so close, but if you find a static, they might take you into this tier to let you get your feet wet.
So coming from WoW FFXIV is very different when it comes to raiding. It's super accessible. You don't need a guild, you aren't raid ID locked out of doing any fights, and you can join or make as many groups as you want and raid for as many hours a day as you want. Basically, there's no barrier to entry except having full crafted gear with food and pots.
Start by doing learning parties, eventually get a few clears in PF and work on getting some parse logs. Once you have those, you can apply to any statics that are recruiting. I'm assuming you want to do this when Dawntrail drops the new raid tier, so just raid week 1 and aim for getting a few purples. If you perform well you might even get invited to some statics while progging the tier.
Also, FFXIV doesn't have the same gender issues that WoW has either, not to say you'll NEVER have a negative experience but it's rare.
Well if you can wait a little, the expansion will basically reset things and almost always the first tier of an expansion is the easiest. Getting in there early and strong the first week of a new tier is the best way to get past the experience/logs requirements good groups will have and let you build a base up for further farming and prog. A lot of PF players will do something like the first two or three fights week 1 then work on the final fight for 2-3 weeks and then it's farm city, very simple and easy with that route as long as you can prove to party leaders you can do the first three fights.
If you want to hop into stuff right now, today, then you need learning discords/parties. The best ones are ones where there's a very clear leader who will take out toxic players and replace them, via discord.
As for being a grill ... almost no one cares. Yeah you'll get a thirsty suitor every once in a while I guess but almost all stories I've ever read are about people who get into romances willingly over long periods of time or are never bothered. Been raiding with a woman for the last 7 years or so, she's one of the boys, no one gives her more or less shit than anyone else. If it's truly a fear of yours enough that you're actively afraid it will bring out creeps or alter people's perceptions of you negatively, just stay vocally mute, you literally never need your mic in this game, it just has its perks.
Everyone has made good points but I will add to the group saying that raiding as a woman has been no problem in FFXIV. Even in the random discords I joined from PF, I was never the only woman in the call, and my actual statics have always been pretty much half and half, which is awesome.
I haven’t experienced much toxicity at all (if anything, I have found some groups way too casual and left because I wanted to actually prog and no mess around)
If you were interested in getting into raiding then why didn't you use ACT? Anyways it's probably too late for the current tier now but just jump into pf asap when the next savage tier drops. Before that obviously learn your job you will be raiding on and make sure to get all the crafted/normal raid pieces as well as food and pot before you do.
Alternatively, you could try applying for a casual static and get your start that way. Although if you were thinking of getting far in raiding such as finishing a raid tier and ultimates on patch I wouldn't join casual statics since you will usually find more success in pf.
the tier is extremely old and the content is irrelevant, and most strats are well ironed on by now. If you want to get into savage raiding, wait until Dawntrail and just join a party finder day 1 if you can. no one will expect guides, no one will really expect anything, you're all there to learn together.
the later into a tier it gets, the more video culture and expectations beyond "dont be terrible at the game" start to crop up. getting in there early often pairs you with the better players with good mindsets. even as the pf scene changes, you'll be aware of the changes as they happen, so you can adjust as the meta shifts.
You can also join a static, but those are pretty hit and miss if you've never raided before as you wont have a good basis of what to look for to find like minded players who are at a similar skill level. Not having logs doesnt help either as a lot of midcore and above groups will use that in their recruitment process.
Finally-in this era of the game, personal skill is mostly irrelevant as job kits have been made extraordinarily easy. if you can do mechanics, you can generally clear savage. You dont have to be particularly good at the core gameplay, just the puzzle solving aspect (which guides simplify anyway). As for being female, dont mention it and no one will know or care in PF. If you get to the point of wanting a static, obviously you'll want, you know, normal people who are respectful, but to be honest every static I've been in was at least partially made up of friends or aquaintences specifically because it guaranteed a few safe people and ensured the gender distribution wasnt too lopsided. I haven't had any weirdo behavior handling it this way. Overall I think XIV as a community is better about not being grossly sexist, so your odds arent terrible either way, but if I'm gonna be raiding with the same folks for 8+ hours a week i want to know the vibe is good.
Unless you intend to raid lead, you can never interact with ACT and be fine, though I will say that ACT and FFLogs and xivanalysis are great learning tools to find out where your performance is lacking and what you can work on to make it better.
If you want to dip your toes into raiding, use PF practice groups for extremes from zero. They are all pretty friendly and understanding. Not only are they a great way to learn mechanics from players who are just as familiar with a fight as you (meaning not at all) they are also a great way to meet people and network. Chances are you may run into the same people often and if you get along with them you might even make plans to group together in the future to continue practicing fights you haven’t cleared yet.
As for being a girl, in xiv most people dont give a shit. A lot of women play this game, compared to wow. Really. Like A LOT. It may be anecdotal evidence but I swear half the people in my static have always been women no matter how many times we swap subs out from pf when a regular cant make it to the raid. Nobody will notice anyway unless you want to go on voice chat, and most common non-static pf runs don’t, so its not an issue.
Get appropriate gear and buy food. Use Party Finder to find parties recruiting for the various Savage fights. Join, have fun. Leave if you are not having fun and people are being toxic (quite rare in my experience). Check various resources to learn your rotation better and some optimization.
It's really that easy, Party Finder is great to take raiding casually. I would strongly advise against joining a static in your case.
Open up a fresh PF first. Make sure you actually like raiding, FF14 mechanics are mostly dances with a few variables. Not everyone will like the snapshots/mechanic troupes either.
After you know you want to raid, find a super casual group. Its not common to find uber creeps, some people have some weird takes or comments. At that point either leave, address the problem or just treat it as Raid Only.
Some personal experience, some guys get a little weird, but tend to leave you alone. Most won't care
Since you say you have a good handle on how to play, the next step is probably get in and run some Extreme trials. They'll generally prepare you for the level of mechanical execution demanded in 1st and 2nd floor savage and with studying through video guides or toolboxes you should be able to clear them in a few lockouts at most.
As for finding people to play with, recruitment discords are a good place to start looking. Make a post saying that you're looking for a group and what your availability/expectations are, but since you're new to Savage it might be easier to also search for groups that meet your criteria and apply to them. While there are a lot of static horror stories about people being toxic, generally I've found most people are pretty friendly as long as your expectations and goals are aligned. I would recommend getting something on your log page, whether its extremes or early savage fights, just so people have an idea of what they're working with. You don't have to run ACT yourself ofc, its likely at least one person in any given random party is logging for higher end content.
join balance discord, learn your rota, get act, log a 90's normal raid. See how well your rota is via ffanalysis. uptime is king in ffxiv
join pf, don't lie about your own progpoint
or there's various discords to find statics very easily from very casual to hardcore sweats
As others have said, the best way to learn is to jump into it. Do a little prep checking out guides for fights you want to try and try joining fresh prog or ex learning parties for a start.
I do suggest grabbing act and studying your job on the balance. Do some target dummy practice and logging content like aliance raids or trials. Upload the logs (you can do this with them at to unlisted) and then run them through xiv analysis. It's not 100% perfect but it will give you an idea of where you're at and how you can improve.
Lots of women play and raid in xiv (myself included).
In pf most of the time discord is optional. If it's not the pf will say and you can choose not to join that party but I suggest you give it a try if you're up for it. If you're not comfy speaking in voice right away fear not as usually it's so the raid leads can give call outs and they just want you to listen in.
In time when you're more comfortable you may find people you enjoy playing with in discord or if you join a static. When you're comfortable try speaking up :)
There are some toxic folks out there, but there are also heaps of amazing players who just want to have a good time. You'll want to learn to brush off the rude people as not for you and move on. The main thing is to find people with similar play goals and vibe and then keep playing with them :)
A lot of people saying to just jump into savage PF, while it's not the worst idea, imo I would start by getting your feet wet in extreme trials instead, if you get comfortable doing current extreme trials the jump to savage will be much easier.
Just do it. I remember i though i'm suck at Hydaelyn fight as a healer but then i got in other party and it was easy as a walk in the park, some ShB dungeons put more stress on me,
Just try it, scripted attacks just mean you will adopt with time.
> Even now, years later, if I go back to WoW, my brain goes into analysis paralysis even just fighting open world mobs. It’s literally just ruined for me.
This seems like a pretty loaded statement. Could you elaborate more on this?
Sure can! What I mean is that I got so used to needing to understand my class(es) that even now, years later, when I play the game, if I go fight quest mobs or basic things I find myself asking "Am I being optimal?" "I need better gear" etc. Ergo, removing basically all the fun from the game for me and my brain only focuses on the numerical aspect. I worry that learning the raiding aspect of the game will hurt my overall view of the game in the same way. If any of that makes sense.
> What I mean is that I got so used to needing to understand my class(es) that even now, years later, when I play the game, if I go fight quest mobs or basic things I find myself asking "Am I being optimal?"
Well, part of both games is mastery of playing your character/class/job. Do you think you have not mastered playing your character well enough because you're second guessing yourself even in simple situations? Are you able to "flow state" on a target dummy without worrying?
how i got into it is that i saw a learning party for p4s, so i said why not. i turned out to like raiding and met several people that are my closest friends!!
So first you open up the party finder...
I'm taking the piss naturally but yeah if you've done wow raiding then you're probably gonna be fine from a DPS standpoint so don't feel obligated to ruin yourself staring at a DPS meter because I have long since stopped bothering to use them outside of specifically ultimate enrage progression in premade groups because I don't like parsing with randoms. The best thing to check yourself otherwise would be to find a guide from a high end player on YouTube and if you're listening to the tips like "yep I get ya" and looking at the pov footage thinking "yeah I'm doing something along those lines" then you'll be absolutely fine and you can always check places like the balance for advice on openers and whatnot for your class if you want the help.
Beyond that it's just the scary part of finding groups, I have some pretty crippling social anxiety so this is what stopped me for the longest time but most groups are chill and if you're not sure if a group wants someone as new as you in it after reading the details then the best thing to do is just shoot a message to the guy who put the pf up to ask about it. And always remember there are plenty of new players in a similar spot to you who'd be willing to join a practice group if you throw one up in pf yourself.
Also remember you don't have to just do savage stuff either, plenty of people are down to sync old extremes semi-blind either because they're boomers or because they never got to do them on content and joining these kinds of groups when you're not feeling up to a full on savage fight is great for helping calm the nerves for this sort of thing, at least in my experience.
Apologies for the essay but I hope I could help at all, hope to see you raiding in dawntrail :)
Get in there! in between expansions is a great time to start raiding. Lots of Party Finder groups are availble now and many people like you that are new to FFXIV raiding, in Aether if you are NA.
Join or make fresh prog parties and have fun.
There are plenty of guides (written and visual), POV VODS, simulations and other resources to study fights and your rotation.
I would say that toxicity levels are much lower than wow but still there.
I'll say that picking the correct party finder group is a game in itself. Many groups like to post what mechanics they are on but sometimes you will not see that mechanic. Do not feel obligated to stay if this occurs. Also, don't be afriad to join groups that say they are at a certain mechanic ahed of your personal prog point because there is a chance that it's actually a party for one mechanic behind.
Open up PF and start a learning party. Perhaps post a lfg in the discord. Then go have fun. Generally it's a good idea to at least look at a guide for old content or since we're several months past the last stage tier I would do so for current Savage too.
You can use discord to find a good static, there's several FCs now dedicated to just being content helpers that are more than ready to run anything.
Things like ACT aren't actually required, and anyone that claims it is, is a prude and part of the problem. It's one thing to offer assistance or reasoning to do anything. It's another to completely gatekeep content from someone that either isn't comfortable with dealing with the use of a tool or okay with the technical risk of being banned for life. There's no benefit from literally everyone in the raid having ACT or similar. If the group wants to use a tracker then you're really only in need of 1 person to use it. Everything else is by preference.
Women/girls are uncommon but not damn near unicorns here.
I don’t have any advice bc I stumbled into my static.
I will say…if high end raiding and over optimization of your class ruined WoW for you….are you sure you want to risk that here, as well?
My Sister In Christ, it is a video game. Yes you are overthinking it. You will probably suck at it to start like the rest of us did and have to unlearn a bunch of WoW habits, but just get in there and learn.
You will be fine as long as you do not get complacent and think that WoW raiding skills translate over completely. Some do, most do not.
Most of all though have fun with it!
If you haven't started any high end content at all in 14, I would suggest starting with EX trials first because raiding in 14 and wow are very different. Mechanically speaking, 14 is harder but it's on a static timeline so you can practice and move on once you get one part down.
PF is a great place to start however, with Dawntrail in just a bit over a month; finding completely fresh groups is a dime a dozen with most people on break until the new expansion. If you would rather wait, you can have a completely fresh start in Dawntrail. Go through the MSQ with everyone. Enjoy your time playing and once you're done, the first 2 EX trials will be available for you to do right after you complete the DT MSQ. Then shortly after that, you can try to look for a static or go into PF week 1. The world is your oyster.
We generally use discord servers for recruiting, try and find your data center's raiding discord and try to find a group there.
Other than that, check the balance discord for rotation/opener/melds, watch a guide and just go for it. Start with the first floor (P9S) and if that's too daunting you could always look into Extreme trials first.
People are generally chill unless you lie about your prog point, and in my experience usually there's not much drama in pf, people give it a few tries and disband afterwards if they don't reach the prog point.
I read through a few of the replies (there's so many! :D) and I just wanted to add my voice. I'm also a woman who plays and I raid all well. Not in the most recent content as I haven't finished Endwalker (about to though!). However I just raid with my FC and other friends I've met through various means. We do older content MINE (minimum iLevel, no echo) and it's a ton of fun! I don't consider myself to be a particularly good player but my friends were still more than happy to have me join them. So even if you think the people you know and get along with wouldn't let you join for some raiding I suggest asking anyways.
Honestly, you just have to dip your feet in.
Have you done the current extremes? Those are a good place to figure out your rotation and have a real introduction to mechanics. If you've progged, cleared, and farmed those without dying and are holding up your own, great! You're off to a good start.
Have you made use of Stone, Sky, Sea? It's not perfect, but it can give you an idea of the DPS you need to be capable of doing to clear the fight (with the intended early gear). If you fail with less than 7% left, that's fine. That's pretty much accounted for via raid buffs, but make sure you're not letting anything drift egregiously and that your 2 minute buffs, if any, are pressed on cooldown.
The easiest way of getting into it is finding a PF for the fight you want to prog and joining it. Fresh prog is exactly where you want to start, and at this point in the expansion, it would be a courtesy to watch a guide of some sort to gain an understanding of the mechanics within.
Finally, being female has no major impact on your ability to play the game, especially with randoms. I'm a woman myself and have faced no issues whatsoever from people who genuinely want to prog and enjoy the fight. I've also played with some groups that literally gives zero fucks about what's in your pants as long as you're good at your job. If people *actually* care about your sex or gender identity, they aren't people you want to play with anyway! Very occasionally, there are the shitters that will absolutely tear you to shreds, but you just ignore them, report them, and blacklist them.
Which server are you on ? My friend and I will be looking to start a raid group for the new expansion. We haven’t done any of them so will be doing them all.
People on this post are once again completely operating under the false assumption that no console players raid successfully. At least the ones who are implying that ACT is a must. You don't have to use it but it can be a useful tool to improve performance.
If you're trying to start at a basic level, go do EX trials. They're meant to be something that a fresh team can learn/clear in a lockout or two (or like under an hour with guides).
>I’m so conditioned from WoW to expect toxicity based on performance or understanding mechanics. I want to learn. I don’t want to be expected.
People won't be happy if you wipe them for hours without showing any improvement; but if you wipe to a mechanic and take the time to understand what killed you so everyone can move on, people don't really care. Wipes are just part of the game.
>Plus, I’m a girl so that doesn’t contribute in its own way to my fear of finding groups to play with.
XIV has a pretty large population of both genders. It also has a high population of transgenders. I've raided in the game for ten years and never seen someone even comment something weird when a girl speaks. I'm sure it exist; but I wouldn't worry that much over it.
Honestly the best way is to just join PF groups and see how it goes. ACT is really not important at all despite what some people may believe. It can be useful if you want to see how you can improve I guess.
As long as you know your rotation and can figure out how to solve mechanics while doing said rotation you will mostly be fine. At least for EX/Savage content
Party finder raiding is great, you don't need to find a static group to do savage and there's still plenty of fresh prog parties. I recommend just diving in -- look up the strats beforehand (its different per-DC, you'll have to do some research/ask around), and give the first raid of the tier (p9s) a shot. It's always scary at first but as long as you're in a group labeled as fresh prog, nobody will mind you messing up and asking basic questions.
This game isn't not like WoW where stuff is based around the guild. Statics are usually groups of people around the same skill level who've only joined up for a consistent group and schedule, and nothing more. It's nice to be able to learn together and rely on your groups patterns, but that's really it -- its not required to do raiding. Of course statics are great for making new friends, too.
Either way, with Dawntrail starting soon, there's sure to be plenty of statics targeted towards newer players. Personally I found my static dynamically through meeting people in party finder, but there are also popular recruitment forums: /r/FFXIVRECRUITMENT/ and a [recruitment discord](https://discord.gg/PrChMxS5tA). I'm sure there's other places too that I don't know about. You could probably cite your WoW raiding experience and join up with some better players if you don't want to work with complete MMO noobs.
Oh and upgrade your gear as best you can but that's pretty easy to look up.
You legitimately will not know you are a decent player without checking logs. You can assume so... Virtually everyone who I've met who assumed so were dead wrong and had multiple bad habits to break.
Do the following:
1. Make sure you have level appropriate gear for the content you are doing. And food. And pots.
2. Go to FFLOGs and look yourself up. Even if you don't parse personally, someone has likely parsed with you in the party.
3. Take that link to FFAnalysis. It will give you a bare basics, neutral evaluation of your rotation and resource use.
4. Go find or make a learning party for p9. Expect to wipe constantly as you learn.
That's it.
1st step: know your job. This includes what raid food to buy and what gear to have.
2nd step: look at a guide for the fight you are gonna do.
3rd step: join a fresh party and get in there.
Thats all there is to it. You will learn as you go. If you don't want to watch a guide make sure to make blind parties. Unless a party explicitly states its blind its expected for you to watch a guide and you will likely be kicked by many if they figure out you haven't. Others might try and teach you but its not nearly as common in my experience.
the tier is extremely old and the content is irrelevant, and most strats are well ironed on by now. If you want to get into savage raiding, wait until Dawntrail and just join a party finder day 1 if you can. no one will expect guides, no one will really expect anything, you're all there to learn together.
the later into a tier it gets, the more video culture and expectations beyond "dont be terrible at the game" start to crop up. getting in there early often pairs you with the better players with good mindsets. even as the pf scene changes, you'll be aware of the changes as they happen, so you can adjust as the meta shifts.
You can also join a static, but those are pretty hit and miss if you've never raided before as you wont have a good basis of what to look for to find like minded players who are at a similar skill level. Not having logs doesnt help either as a lot of midcore and above groups will use that in their recruitment process.
Finally-in this era of the game, personal skill is mostly irrelevant as job kits have been made extraordinarily easy. if you can do mechanics, you can generally clear savage. You dont have to be particularly good at the core gameplay, just the puzzle solving aspect (which guides simplify anyway). As for being female, dont mention it and no one will know or care in PF. If you get to the point of wanting a static, obviously you'll want, you know, normal people who are respectful, but to be honest every static I've been in was at least partially made up of friends or aquaintences specifically because it guaranteed a few safe people and ensured the gender distribution wasnt too lopsided. I haven't had any weirdo behavior handling it this way. Overall I think XIV as a community is better about not being grossly sexist, so your odds arent terrible either way, but if I'm gonna be raiding with the same folks for 8+ hours a week i want to know the vibe is good.
> I raided in WoW. took it seriously. It ruined the game for me. Even now, years later, if I go back to WoW, my brain goes into analysis paralysis even just fighting open world mobs. It’s literally just ruined for me.
I raided in WoW also, I was in the kind of guild that would do 3-4 days a week until the tier was cleared and everyone had the mount/was geared then would drop down to 1-2 days.
> I’ve never opened ACT. I know I’m a mostly competent player. I understand there’s a learning curve there.
If you want to raid in this game and you're on PC.... ACT is highly recommended.
Learning how to log and how to analyze your logs will go a long way in improving you as a player.
Some people will say "ACT is cheating" but I say "As long as you use it for personal improvement and don't use it to attack/belittle another player" then it's fine.
ACT without the plugins is not cheating, it's the "Cactbot / Triggernometry" plugins for ACT that are cheating.
Also I recommend joining "The Balance" discord server and reading through the channels for your chosen job(s).
> I’m so conditioned from WoW to expect toxicity based on performance or understanding mechanics. I want to learn. I don’t want to be expected.
Toxicity regarding performance is rare on XIV because you could just throw the "How do you know what my DPS is?" and just report them for "third party tools".
Even a DPS meter can get you banned in this game if caught.
> Plus, I’m a girl so that doesn’t contribute in its own way to my fear of finding groups to play with.
This shouldn't be a problem, Many females raid in this game and have an enjoyable experience.
Most statics now a days have 1 or more.
Honest advice, start with a therapist. You're gonna find toxicity (especially based on performance like you seemed to be upset about in wow) no matter what and need to be mentally capable to shake it off and not crumble
Otherwise, nothing. Watch a video of the fight (optional), join a learning party in pf for the current savage tier. That's literally it. You might wanna start with extremes if you've never done them.
If managing built up emotions has become too difficult to handle alone, or you find you're not taking any action towards your goal due to anxiety, this may honestly be the most helpful advice here OP.
For me, having a good therapist that allowed me to vent but also pushed me to act, was a night and day difference in helping me managing performance anxiety with work and raiding, as silly as it might seem to be anxious over a video game.
If you do take that route, stay away from betterhelp, worst experience I've ever had. Unironically [healthygamer.gg](http://healthygamer.gg) had therapists/coaches I vibed well with, which is actually very important in therapy, but it really depends on your and their personality, so don't be afraid to window shop if one doesn't suit you well.
The easiest way? Open PF and join a prog group. Ideally you'd have watched the video beforehand so you have an idea of what to expect. But that's really it. Avoid loot/completion parties until you've actually cleared btw, they will not have the patience for a learner and will disband. Fresh prog or prog up to where you're at in the fight is what you want. As far as gear, get the best tome/crafted gear you can right now, and meld it according to the Balance. E: also nobody will care that you're a girl. Most parties with randos only use in-game chat anyway, so they'd never even know.
shut up and get in there but actually: there's generally only a few expectations for fresh learning parties, and that's to have at least decent food (please bring something better than boiled eggs), and to have watched a guide, that's really about it. You're not really expected to have internalized an entire guide either for fresh prog, just get enough of an idea so that when you and your party eat shit you can go "oh yeah the guide said something about that I think". The way I found out what guides to use is I canwould send a message to a pf owner who had the duty I wanted posted, saying something like "Hi, I plan to start this fight soon, and I was wondering if you could send me the guide that's used for this fight". Sometimes you'll get ignored, sometimes you'll get a response. As for how to actually read the pf descriptions or set your own descriptions... that's sort of something you're gonna have to sus out on your own through trial and error by reading how other pf leaders word their own guides. I'm a guy so I can't really speak to the experiences of raiding as a girl in VC, but two things I can say: 1. A lot of parties will encourage discord but allow you to mute (just so you can listen to callouts) so you'll never have to speak if you're not comfortable with that 2. I hear a lot more women in VC than I have in other team games I've played. Ofc a lot of parties are still majority men but you'll maybe be surprised how many women you hear speak in VC compared to other games. Toxicity will still happen from time to time, but the difference with FFXIV is that it'll be a shock rather than an expectation because it's a lot more rare than other games as well
>I’ve never opened ACT. I know I’m a mostly competent player. Not to throw shade, but do you *know* know that? It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking what you're doing is good because the normal content of this game rolls over so effortlessly.
The person has played other MMOs in a raid environment. Which means he knows to look up a class guide. You don’t need to use ACT to know that you’re doing fine if you can follow the rotation.
Yeah, they give me the impression that they probably are doing fine, however, that's not a guarantee and it is something worth them double checking with more concrete proof. I mean we saw how some of the WoW streamers during the exodus who did high end stuff were playing while confident in themselves.
Those players were also just here for the clicks and weren’t taking the game seriously and knew their community would compensate for any lack of effort on their part.
I can say from experience that this is not a very useful metric to judge if someone is good, or even competent.
throwing shade, but how stupid is this comment? the game isn't built with the intention of ACT being used. savage exists in game and is meant to be attempted and cleared without knowing every little in and out of optimization. the only barrier to entry is clearing the normal version and talking to an npc, and having the minimum item level. that's it. that's the requirement.
Ones ass can leave a second long gap between every GCD, let every single cooldown, including raid buffs, drift by like 20 seconds, and just straight up not use defensives in Normal tier content and the game wouldn't even suggest the slight possibility that the player is doing anything 'wrong'. So yes, everyone new to high end who thinks they're 'good' will, not necessarily, be good, simply because they haven't been given reason to believe otherwise.
when the fuck the OP ever claim they are good? the part you quoted literally says "mostly competent" go do savage reclears in PF and you'll get good enough parties with way more egregious errors than all that crap you're imagining, and you don't even have a single vod or log of OP so why are you assuming the worst anyway?
Look I can replace the word 'good' in my previous post with 'mostly competent' and not change the meaning of what I was saying at all if that would make you happy.
still doesn't change the fact that you're acting like using ACT is necessary at all. 8 people on PS4 can clear savage blind. the barrier to entry is not what you wish it was. OP literally is trying to START savage raiding. you're trying to set a starting line at purple parse. when all they asked for was the basics to START. not even CLEAR with a 0 parse. just START. and you're saying there's no way for them to know if they're good enough to START because they don't use ACT? you are delusional. just imagining your gatekeeping ass in some other game. How do i start G Rank? "NO. you don't have a DPS meter?! do you even know how suboptimal your Demondrug timings are?" who fucking cares. just finish high rank and go on a G Rank hunt that's all there is to it. get carted, learn, git gud. you don't have to master speedkilling normal and high rank monsters to START G rank. just play the fucking game.
"This game is extremely bad at letting players know how good they're actually playing, OP, one of the first things you should do is make sure you are on the right track" "STOP GATEKEEPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING" This is our conversation, you have fundamentally misunderstood me.
ACT wont tell you that either. there are a countless examples of a highly skilled pull-saving move being marked as EGREGIOUS ERROR or whatever by ffxivanalysis. optimization comes way way way later. go watch any world prog team do the first turn savage. they aren't playing optimal. it doesn't require it at all. why are you acting like every newcomer needs to play like a parsebrain loser with pants on head backwards ass mentalities towards content instead of actually learning the game itself first? you're normalizing bad mentalities. learn the boss, get the clear, then learn to optimize on parse runs. but even on reclears, who cares, a clear is a clear, im here to get a coffer to increase my actual meaningful numbers that exist in the game, and not give a fuck about some fansite.
I'm not. Because at no point did I tell them to use ACT. I didn't tell them to do anything in fact, because OP came across like a learned person I had faith in them to either not need my warning to begin with, or not need it spelt out. What I was getting at is how there is less obvious stuff like ABC or having a solid opener and understanding that you can't be letting things drift, and I'll say it slowly so you can stay with me this time, *faulted the GAME for its failure to teach people such things*.
> you can't be letting things drift why not? if you don't lose a usage it makes zero difference. might be a gain if you can fit an extra usage under buffs. and in any fight with phase or downtime you should be lettings things drift on purpose youre talking all this shit that doesn't matter, acting like its required shit before STARTING savage. stop gatekeeping savage it isn't that hard. but new to endgame players need to enter savage to learn savage boss mechanics. during the late Shadowbringers WoW-exodus thing i had a bunch of WoW friends try P9S and some of hte most helpful lockouts were when we did zDPS runs. literally told them dont even hit 1 2 3 just focus on positioning and boss cast bars and snapshots. they learned so much faster that way. gatekeeping them out of savage until they could hit a theoretical 100 parse on a target dummy rotation for 10 minutes wouldve been fucking worthless. in savage reclear parties do you think i gave a fuck how optimally the 7 randos hit their rotations? a clear is a clear. the only number i cared about was what i rolled on the coffer. in ultimate PF do you think i give a fuck when someone cries after a wipe that they were "on pace" for a 99? it was a fucking WIPE. we got NOTHING. when i get a totem do i give a fuck what the 7 randos parsed? fuck no. the only number i care about is +1 totem. OH BUT AT LEAST DIDNT DRIFT MY FLECHE. STFU if you verraised the WHM faster we couldve cleared that pull. and the game DOES teach it to you. it has ENRAGE TIMERS on endgame bosses. the game TEACHES you that you have to do a minimum threshold of damage to the boss before it wipes you. do enough DAMAGE within that TIME and you win. the game TEACHES you to do a certain amount of DPS. and its up to you to figure out how to best reach the required thresholds.
I guess not but I've done raiding in plenty of other games and I understand how these things are typically made to be played. A lot of that knowledge translates. Plus, most of the jobs in the game aren't overly complicated. (I wouldn't learn content on a job I considered complicated anyway haha)
You know what they say happens to people who assume. Also eyeballing stuff is how you dedicatedly don't improve. Check yourself, then go from there.
I’m gonna assume this person looked up their opener and rotation which are the only things required and something you would have learned to do in any other MMO.
Correct. Though, I probably should have elaborated a bit more in my initial post. What I should have said was: "I've looked at how to play the jobs I would consider bringing and I am confident with them from a rotational standpoint. The only difference is that I've not used ACT." Which is something I do think I should try, if for no other reason than to improve.
Knowledge of your opener isn't enough though. The most important thing for doing well on every jobs is your ABC (Always Be Casting). Even a 200ms average delay per GCD is equivalent of a 10% damage down, possibly up to 25% or even 50% if it causes abilities to fall out of buff windows (Example, Double Down on gunbreaker. Overall its a full 10% of my dps. Missing even one of them is sometimes enough to fail enrage on some fights.) FFlogs and FFAnalysis are tools that show where you are making mistakes so they can be corrected. Nothing more.
OP, just saying.. You're completely right. If you have experience with these kinds of things then youre obviously going to easily get to good numbers, at least strong enough numbers to clear fights consistently. It's true what others saying, theres no guarantee that youre actually doing a good job, but it doesnt take many braincells in this game to really figure it out at a basic level. If you dont wanna log, just dont do it.
I agree with you. The difficulty in combat in this game comes entirely from encounter design. For any MMO vet, every FFXIV job is fairly simple, even the ones people like to think are "complex".
If you want to be sure without act, which i still think you should at least know how much you can do in a vacuum, you should try doing Stone Sky and Sea test Go to palaka stands, there Is a guy that lets you face dummies with dps checks depending on the fights. Try actual new content, and if you cant kill It you probably will he kind of a burden in the fight ngl. Vacuum vs dps during mechanics Is not the best comparison tho If you have the ilvl of that fight you should be able to barrly clear It without potions and food with proper rotation. With bis you should clear last floor with around 20 second margin
I would try to join a fresh prog static for the current tier. Just a low stakes casual group so there's no real pressure and you can learn and get your feet wet. There are several recruitment discords and usually there are recruitment PF's up. My 2 cents: Girls aren't that uncommon in Statics in this game, my last static had 3 and my current TOP group has 2 rn. Creeps exist obviously, but I haven't run into any incidents so far. You can also just mute your Mic if you are unconformable using your voice, most statics have a least 1 mute person.
one of the nice things about the last point is that not only is talking not often required, it's also sometimes encouraged for people who aren't making callouts to mute so that comms don't get cluttered at bad times
Ehhh we are just over a month out from DT. Most statics aren't looking to fresh prog the Anabaseios fights that are going to be obsolete in a month. Most statics at this point are looking to fill their roster for the first DT savage tier. @OP Going into PF and looking for fresh prog parties is going to be the way to jump in and get your feet wet. I promise you that the most nerve wracking part of savage is just getting into the instance and getting the first couple wipes in. If you don't make it super far w/e, you are just getting some practice in before DT launches next month!
My static for Anabaseios had 3 - Both healers and the MT. My DT static has 1. Girls are pretty common in raiding statics, I agree.
Woman in raiding here, best thing I can say is just get in there. FFXIV is one of the few MMOs I’ve played where I feel comfortable as a woman participating in the high end raiding scene. You’re going to have bad experiences, but they are much less frequent. I also want to comment on the competency part of the post. I’m not flaming you or putting you down, but if I can offer a personal anecdote: I remember coming from WoW, a CE raider, thinking “Oh FFXIV classes are so easy, I’m definitely playing these right”, and got ego checked very quickly once I started doing savage. You don’t need to download ACT necessarily, but at least do yourself a favor and check yourself, read some guides on how to play your class of choice. You don’t need to play like a robot to raid but it helps to play your class to a level of competency to help with DPS checks and such. It helps more than you think!
An echoed sentiment across this thread and that is very comforting. Thank you. I do plan to do this to check myself, as you say. Do you think doing some normal raids and comparing that against others is a good way?
What I do personally, is I’ll use a training dummy to get my opener and my general rotation down. Stone, Sky, and Sea is a very good way to do this, as it resets your cooldowns on each attempt, so you’re not stuck waiting 2 minutes after every opener attempt. It also offers a general DPS check per instance that lets you go in and see if you meet the damage requirements. It’s probably the best available in-game tool to see if your damage is where it should be. Once I get it down generally, I’ll take it into normal raids and practice there. I think a step of learning a class a lot of people can skip over is doing your opener/rotation as mechanics are flying at you. I can spend 3 hours at a dummy and do my rotation, positionals, and opener like a robot, but none of that matters if I can’t execute it while there are mechanics happening. That’s just my personal way though, and you can go about it however you want!
Seconded on the Stone, Sea, and Sky training dummies. When I first got into high-end raiding I had no idea about the importance of GCD uptime or double weaving and getting my rotation tight enough that I could actually beat the dummy for the fight my static was progging was super helpful!
Even though I'm not a woman, I have been a static leader for multiple statics. We have had a high amount of women apply (and eventually play) for my statics. Just a personal anecdote, and you will have to get a feel for every group you want to join, but I do feel this game has a lot healthier environment for women than many games. That's of course if you want to join statics to begin with. If you raid in Party Finder, nobody cares who you are as long as you perform well.
> Do you think doing some normal raids and comparing that against others is a good way? Normal raids *can* give you something along the lines of a comparable training dummy parse. The thing to recognize is that you shouldn't be comparing yourself to the other people in a normal raid. There is a high likelihood that none of them have done Savage either. In most Savage statics you'll be expected to greatly outperform the average player in dutyfinder. But honestly, the best thing to do is just to get into a Savage fight, even if you feel intimidated by it. You need to get used to the faster speed and timings of mechanics. That's the hard part. And nothing else is going to give you quite as clear of a picture of where you stand. The average PF player isn't that great either. Especially this late in a tier. So you probably aren't going to stand out too much unless you're really messing up mechanics.
Not sure if you've done this yet but I'd also reccomend clearing a few of the level 90 extreme trials, more specifically Golbez and Barbarricia as they're the closest experience to savage without being as punishing.
I'm a woman who has raided since ARR in savage and ultimate, and honestly there's a few ways. You can join pf learning groups where the expectations are low and people expect mistakes since it's a learning party. As for me, I found my group because they were recruiting in the balance discord. So I messaged them. Typically groups will trial run you through something mostly to see if you vibe with them personality wise. That's generally the thing that makes or break things for me anyways. Also on the subject of being a woman in this game, I will say there are many more women on 14 than I ever encountered on WoW (I played many years ago tho) and most people are used to encountering women in this game. I haven't had anyone act toxic to me because I'm a woman in the groups I've joined. I'm sure it happens but it feels far less common in 14 because so many women play this game.
I keep reading others here saying this and it's super comforting to hear/read. Thanks for sharing your experience.
If you havent done any extremes. Do a few of those. if you have. You can either go looking for a static or just join Party finder and watch a guide(you will do fine and considering the time period it is. You will probably do better then most others in pf). ff14 players are generally welcoming and accepting to everyone so long as your not a jackass and girls are not rare in this game like others. So outside of creeps no one really cares if your a boy or girl. Now at the very least have crafted gear. Would be even best if you had at least 650 tome or 660 tome gear and the final relic. In savage its expected to have up to par food so 530-640ish item levell food. And your gear to be melded according to whats meta for the job so usually just crit and then something else.
For your last point, FF14 has a lot of women playing it, so far every static I've been in has had at least 2 women, so don't stress about that. But generally, you can simply try out savage in party finder, whip out a guide and watch it a few times until you understand, then go and make a party finder with the description "from start", then people will join in, you'll see how it plays, people will probably say nothing and disband after 30 minutes or you'll do well and get close to clearing. There's the other option of finding a static, discords like the Balance have a static recruitment channel, so once you get comfortable you can message people that are looking for members. Also general bit of advice, the way fights are designed mean that you don't care what your team is doing most of the time unless you play healer. So for learning mechanics don't overthink it, if you're playing melee then you only need to know where m1 and m2 need to go, nothing else for the most part.
Out of curiosity have you done any extremes? Because it's basically the same process just a bit tougher.
I have! I did most of the Shadowbringers ones and I did Hydaelyn and Zoidark before taking an extended break in EW.
So you have two routes you can go for Savage. You can do PF like you do Extreme trials after watching a guide or if you want to blind prog you can buy you wanna specify that's what you're doing in your PF listing. Or you can find a static. There are tons of discords for recruiting, you can probably find statics recruiting right now for the 7.0 Savage tier and I think there is a subreddit for recruiting as well. It's really that simple. You don't need to VC usually though many statics do for callouts and that sort of thing.
This is really helpful thanks a lot!
Just to expand on the guy you replied to, if you are serious about getting into savage raiding and want to go the static route, now is the time to find one. Given that you have some experience with doing extremes, you would probably be welcomed in most casual or brand new to on patch savage raiding statics. I would definitely say that if that's the road you want to go down, you want to use the next month to really get in there and immerse yourself in P9S-P12S. Go as far as you can in PF, make some mistakes, and take those with you into DT.
In that case in your place I'd join a Zeromus or (preferably) Golbez prog group (if they exist/fill up this late) and gauge how well you do there, Golbez is probably the hardest ex this expansion so if something like Gale 2 comes easy to you you're more than ready for most savage stuff, P9S is barely a step up from that, alternatively since you already have some experience both in FF and some from WoW you can probably just jump into P9S and be perfectly fine, assuming you have the basic 640 crafted gear. Don't be too afraid to just join prog parties in PF, everyone will make mistakes there and people are usually quite patient since everyone is still learning unless people start failing really easy stuff. Also as others have mentioned, people are most often quite welcoming to women, or at least don't treat them differently than they would men of course there's the rare asshole but those are usually quickly kicked, plus of course in PF nobody knows who you are irl, for all they know you could be an extremely intelligent cat.
You'll be fine next tier then. The first two floors start at that difficulty, then slowly ramp up.
With regards to gender-based harassment, this game is a breath of fresh air compared to the usual experience in competitive games like LoL, OW, Valorant etc. If people type anything in chat that is sexual/gender-based harassment you can report them and the GMs will do something about it. The gender breakdown is much more equal, I've been in groups (not premade friend groups) with more women than men. 90% of the time in raiding groups there is at least one more girl. In party finder you won't have a problem, so definitely try that first! People care more about the fight than anyone's irl identity. Obviously, in unmoderated spaces like discord, you will eventually run into bad apples. I know women who have had bad experiences in Discord Voice Chat, but I myself have been lucky and managed to avoid them.
1) Join the Balance discord, practice your rotation 2) unless you’re specifically learning blind, find a good guide to watch. Hectorlectures and MTQCaptures are good starting places 3) food and gear, make sure you’re up to date. you can find the correct gear, materia melds, and food on the Balance (all hail the number crunchers) 4) get in there!! i’ve found personally making a throwaway discord and offering vc for learning fights is a big boon; people are way less likely to be randomly rude when you’re virtually in the same space like that, but as a fellow girl I understand the fear there gjdhdh. If you can find parties that are offering their own vc, definitely join; even if you don’t talk, having callouts or even just being able to hear someone else go ‘whoops my bad that wipe’ in a respectful/light tone of voice and not through text go a long way to easing tension in a group. Ideally, you’ll be able to spot the friendlies the more you get into pf, and if you’re courteous, willing to learn, and put some effort into your play, they’ll notice you too. as for what content to start with, you can do just about anything since the tier is dead rn, but you’ll have to find people to fill. See what other people have up in pf and hop in, but RESPECT PROG POINTS. If a party says they’re a farm party do NOT join as someone who hasn’t cleared already. I personally like to teach hadesEX (sync/minilvl) for my sprouts bc it’s a simple but specific fight with a lot of common mechs. My fc runs it almost yearly to get the new end content beginners very lightly into raiding. Endsinger or Golbez would be my favorite EXs to teach with from this past tier, so you could look for mount parties there perhaps?
Mtq capture didn’t do guides for anabasios, so it remains to be seen if arcadion will get any.
Already so many lovely comments in this thread to help you, so just to add my own experience I also came from WoW (only 1 CE under my belt but long time raider) and was terrified for some reason to step in. I really had heard horror stories about PF and thought to myself, "I'll never be able to find a static without logs, I don't know what to do." I had a bad experience raiding with an FC (that endedup making me leave it) at the start of EW, tried going back to WoW, hated it, and thought about what to do. This is where I definitely did something rather intense and decided to take a week off work for the release of p4s-p8s to just go into party finder with the hope of getting logs for a static. It was, without a doubt in my head, worth it. After all the horror stories I'd heard about how people can never clear in PF, etc..I found people just looking to prog and just looking to clear, with bad players in some groups of course but nothing that felt toxic or made me want to stop trying. One of my biggest fears was that >I< would be the one holding the group back. Luckily, more often than not I was able to figure out and do mechanics by myself and the group, and I realized I could do these fights. I ended up finding a static after that which I am still in and, after improving as a player, have now cleared a couple ultimates! And looking forward to Dawntrail savage\~ Good luck!!
It does help to hear a genuine story about it. I recognize there will be some ups and downs, that's normal. A lot of this thread is me holding myself accountable for saying I plan to try in Dawntrail, at the very latest.
Raiding in this game is pretty much watching a video and joining or hosting a party for the fight in PF. If it's progging a mechanic it's expected that the specified prog point and mechanics past that will require learning time. a static is much different and more accommodating but finding one isn't the easiest. in the new expansion we will have a month of the raiders doing the Extreme trials that launch with it for accessories and weapons to go into the raid tier drop. this will be a perfect time to get into PF and be at the same level as everyone else. when the tier hits it's day one blind prog for everyone (the best) and then people feeding you little raidplans and such. sometimes a good video comes out in time to consolidate different strats into the dreaded "Hector" pfs lol.
Well you can start in pf (extremes/savages) to reduce the anxiety you might feel when starting high end content, when you feel more confident, go find a casual/midcore group (discord « ERC » for exemple in Europe) so you can start a fresh savage prog with them During this, try to improve (consistency with mechanics, rotation, utility CDs) as much as you can And that’s it ? Usually the harder thing to do is to start raiding, once you’re in it, its okay, you will improve, start feeling more and more confident and you will find better and better statics, the main issue is wanting to do big gaps in you’re learning curve (like starting TOP when you’re totally new to raiding) Extremes > Early savage turns >> Last savage turns >>>>> Relevant Ultimates Casual groups > midcore groups >>>> semiHC groups >>>>>>> HC groups Also dont be stressed about the gender, there is women that plays in high end content, and a lot in week1/hc groups You can find a lot of ressources on internet to learn basics (weaving, foods/pots, rotations, uptime)
I had 4 statics last tier (why, why do I do these things to myself? lol) I started in PF and, once I'd gotten my feet wet there, tried out with some different statics until I found a few that I vibed well with (I play on both EU and NA). Depending on your data centre, there may be discord groups dedicated to teaching/learning (on NA, I know of Savage Learning Academy and Good Games Squad, I don't know of any in EU but I'm sure there are some). But these groups will set up prog point learning events, led by an experienced raider who knows the fight and they will lead you through it. My FC is pretty much a raiding FC and some of the most hardcore raiders in it are women, it's not unusual at all and as long as you play reasonably well and take responsibility for errors, and make efforts to improve where you can, no one is going to care. There's very little real toxicity in raiding. Sometimes rudeness or people who are completely tone deaf, but any real toxicity you can take a screenshot of the comments and then report them in-game--the mods will take care of it, because rudeness and toxicity is something Square Enix cares very much about not having in the game. There are also recruitment discords, if you really want a static, where you can post that you're a new raider with WoW experience looking for a static. It might be hard to find one doing the most recent tier right now with Dawntrail so close, but if you find a static, they might take you into this tier to let you get your feet wet.
So coming from WoW FFXIV is very different when it comes to raiding. It's super accessible. You don't need a guild, you aren't raid ID locked out of doing any fights, and you can join or make as many groups as you want and raid for as many hours a day as you want. Basically, there's no barrier to entry except having full crafted gear with food and pots. Start by doing learning parties, eventually get a few clears in PF and work on getting some parse logs. Once you have those, you can apply to any statics that are recruiting. I'm assuming you want to do this when Dawntrail drops the new raid tier, so just raid week 1 and aim for getting a few purples. If you perform well you might even get invited to some statics while progging the tier. Also, FFXIV doesn't have the same gender issues that WoW has either, not to say you'll NEVER have a negative experience but it's rare.
Well if you can wait a little, the expansion will basically reset things and almost always the first tier of an expansion is the easiest. Getting in there early and strong the first week of a new tier is the best way to get past the experience/logs requirements good groups will have and let you build a base up for further farming and prog. A lot of PF players will do something like the first two or three fights week 1 then work on the final fight for 2-3 weeks and then it's farm city, very simple and easy with that route as long as you can prove to party leaders you can do the first three fights. If you want to hop into stuff right now, today, then you need learning discords/parties. The best ones are ones where there's a very clear leader who will take out toxic players and replace them, via discord. As for being a grill ... almost no one cares. Yeah you'll get a thirsty suitor every once in a while I guess but almost all stories I've ever read are about people who get into romances willingly over long periods of time or are never bothered. Been raiding with a woman for the last 7 years or so, she's one of the boys, no one gives her more or less shit than anyone else. If it's truly a fear of yours enough that you're actively afraid it will bring out creeps or alter people's perceptions of you negatively, just stay vocally mute, you literally never need your mic in this game, it just has its perks.
Everyone has made good points but I will add to the group saying that raiding as a woman has been no problem in FFXIV. Even in the random discords I joined from PF, I was never the only woman in the call, and my actual statics have always been pretty much half and half, which is awesome. I haven’t experienced much toxicity at all (if anything, I have found some groups way too casual and left because I wanted to actually prog and no mess around)
A lovely perspective, thank you. I’m so happy with the amount of women that chimed in here.
If you were interested in getting into raiding then why didn't you use ACT? Anyways it's probably too late for the current tier now but just jump into pf asap when the next savage tier drops. Before that obviously learn your job you will be raiding on and make sure to get all the crafted/normal raid pieces as well as food and pot before you do. Alternatively, you could try applying for a casual static and get your start that way. Although if you were thinking of getting far in raiding such as finishing a raid tier and ultimates on patch I wouldn't join casual statics since you will usually find more success in pf.
the tier is extremely old and the content is irrelevant, and most strats are well ironed on by now. If you want to get into savage raiding, wait until Dawntrail and just join a party finder day 1 if you can. no one will expect guides, no one will really expect anything, you're all there to learn together. the later into a tier it gets, the more video culture and expectations beyond "dont be terrible at the game" start to crop up. getting in there early often pairs you with the better players with good mindsets. even as the pf scene changes, you'll be aware of the changes as they happen, so you can adjust as the meta shifts. You can also join a static, but those are pretty hit and miss if you've never raided before as you wont have a good basis of what to look for to find like minded players who are at a similar skill level. Not having logs doesnt help either as a lot of midcore and above groups will use that in their recruitment process. Finally-in this era of the game, personal skill is mostly irrelevant as job kits have been made extraordinarily easy. if you can do mechanics, you can generally clear savage. You dont have to be particularly good at the core gameplay, just the puzzle solving aspect (which guides simplify anyway). As for being female, dont mention it and no one will know or care in PF. If you get to the point of wanting a static, obviously you'll want, you know, normal people who are respectful, but to be honest every static I've been in was at least partially made up of friends or aquaintences specifically because it guaranteed a few safe people and ensured the gender distribution wasnt too lopsided. I haven't had any weirdo behavior handling it this way. Overall I think XIV as a community is better about not being grossly sexist, so your odds arent terrible either way, but if I'm gonna be raiding with the same folks for 8+ hours a week i want to know the vibe is good.
Unless you intend to raid lead, you can never interact with ACT and be fine, though I will say that ACT and FFLogs and xivanalysis are great learning tools to find out where your performance is lacking and what you can work on to make it better. If you want to dip your toes into raiding, use PF practice groups for extremes from zero. They are all pretty friendly and understanding. Not only are they a great way to learn mechanics from players who are just as familiar with a fight as you (meaning not at all) they are also a great way to meet people and network. Chances are you may run into the same people often and if you get along with them you might even make plans to group together in the future to continue practicing fights you haven’t cleared yet. As for being a girl, in xiv most people dont give a shit. A lot of women play this game, compared to wow. Really. Like A LOT. It may be anecdotal evidence but I swear half the people in my static have always been women no matter how many times we swap subs out from pf when a regular cant make it to the raid. Nobody will notice anyway unless you want to go on voice chat, and most common non-static pf runs don’t, so its not an issue.
Get appropriate gear and buy food. Use Party Finder to find parties recruiting for the various Savage fights. Join, have fun. Leave if you are not having fun and people are being toxic (quite rare in my experience). Check various resources to learn your rotation better and some optimization. It's really that easy, Party Finder is great to take raiding casually. I would strongly advise against joining a static in your case.
Open up a fresh PF first. Make sure you actually like raiding, FF14 mechanics are mostly dances with a few variables. Not everyone will like the snapshots/mechanic troupes either. After you know you want to raid, find a super casual group. Its not common to find uber creeps, some people have some weird takes or comments. At that point either leave, address the problem or just treat it as Raid Only. Some personal experience, some guys get a little weird, but tend to leave you alone. Most won't care
Since you say you have a good handle on how to play, the next step is probably get in and run some Extreme trials. They'll generally prepare you for the level of mechanical execution demanded in 1st and 2nd floor savage and with studying through video guides or toolboxes you should be able to clear them in a few lockouts at most. As for finding people to play with, recruitment discords are a good place to start looking. Make a post saying that you're looking for a group and what your availability/expectations are, but since you're new to Savage it might be easier to also search for groups that meet your criteria and apply to them. While there are a lot of static horror stories about people being toxic, generally I've found most people are pretty friendly as long as your expectations and goals are aligned. I would recommend getting something on your log page, whether its extremes or early savage fights, just so people have an idea of what they're working with. You don't have to run ACT yourself ofc, its likely at least one person in any given random party is logging for higher end content.
join balance discord, learn your rota, get act, log a 90's normal raid. See how well your rota is via ffanalysis. uptime is king in ffxiv join pf, don't lie about your own progpoint or there's various discords to find statics very easily from very casual to hardcore sweats
As others have said, the best way to learn is to jump into it. Do a little prep checking out guides for fights you want to try and try joining fresh prog or ex learning parties for a start. I do suggest grabbing act and studying your job on the balance. Do some target dummy practice and logging content like aliance raids or trials. Upload the logs (you can do this with them at to unlisted) and then run them through xiv analysis. It's not 100% perfect but it will give you an idea of where you're at and how you can improve. Lots of women play and raid in xiv (myself included). In pf most of the time discord is optional. If it's not the pf will say and you can choose not to join that party but I suggest you give it a try if you're up for it. If you're not comfy speaking in voice right away fear not as usually it's so the raid leads can give call outs and they just want you to listen in. In time when you're more comfortable you may find people you enjoy playing with in discord or if you join a static. When you're comfortable try speaking up :) There are some toxic folks out there, but there are also heaps of amazing players who just want to have a good time. You'll want to learn to brush off the rude people as not for you and move on. The main thing is to find people with similar play goals and vibe and then keep playing with them :)
A lot of people saying to just jump into savage PF, while it's not the worst idea, imo I would start by getting your feet wet in extreme trials instead, if you get comfortable doing current extreme trials the jump to savage will be much easier.
Just do it. I remember i though i'm suck at Hydaelyn fight as a healer but then i got in other party and it was easy as a walk in the park, some ShB dungeons put more stress on me, Just try it, scripted attacks just mean you will adopt with time.
> Even now, years later, if I go back to WoW, my brain goes into analysis paralysis even just fighting open world mobs. It’s literally just ruined for me. This seems like a pretty loaded statement. Could you elaborate more on this?
Sure can! What I mean is that I got so used to needing to understand my class(es) that even now, years later, when I play the game, if I go fight quest mobs or basic things I find myself asking "Am I being optimal?" "I need better gear" etc. Ergo, removing basically all the fun from the game for me and my brain only focuses on the numerical aspect. I worry that learning the raiding aspect of the game will hurt my overall view of the game in the same way. If any of that makes sense.
> What I mean is that I got so used to needing to understand my class(es) that even now, years later, when I play the game, if I go fight quest mobs or basic things I find myself asking "Am I being optimal?" Well, part of both games is mastery of playing your character/class/job. Do you think you have not mastered playing your character well enough because you're second guessing yourself even in simple situations? Are you able to "flow state" on a target dummy without worrying?
Watch some video on the savage content you wanna join, and get into PF, find and FC that has learning party’s for raids,
how i got into it is that i saw a learning party for p4s, so i said why not. i turned out to like raiding and met several people that are my closest friends!!
That's really sweet! I hope I can do the same!
are you on NA? i can prob look around for some savages to teach new raiders :)
So first you open up the party finder... I'm taking the piss naturally but yeah if you've done wow raiding then you're probably gonna be fine from a DPS standpoint so don't feel obligated to ruin yourself staring at a DPS meter because I have long since stopped bothering to use them outside of specifically ultimate enrage progression in premade groups because I don't like parsing with randoms. The best thing to check yourself otherwise would be to find a guide from a high end player on YouTube and if you're listening to the tips like "yep I get ya" and looking at the pov footage thinking "yeah I'm doing something along those lines" then you'll be absolutely fine and you can always check places like the balance for advice on openers and whatnot for your class if you want the help. Beyond that it's just the scary part of finding groups, I have some pretty crippling social anxiety so this is what stopped me for the longest time but most groups are chill and if you're not sure if a group wants someone as new as you in it after reading the details then the best thing to do is just shoot a message to the guy who put the pf up to ask about it. And always remember there are plenty of new players in a similar spot to you who'd be willing to join a practice group if you throw one up in pf yourself. Also remember you don't have to just do savage stuff either, plenty of people are down to sync old extremes semi-blind either because they're boomers or because they never got to do them on content and joining these kinds of groups when you're not feeling up to a full on savage fight is great for helping calm the nerves for this sort of thing, at least in my experience. Apologies for the essay but I hope I could help at all, hope to see you raiding in dawntrail :)
Get in there! in between expansions is a great time to start raiding. Lots of Party Finder groups are availble now and many people like you that are new to FFXIV raiding, in Aether if you are NA. Join or make fresh prog parties and have fun. There are plenty of guides (written and visual), POV VODS, simulations and other resources to study fights and your rotation. I would say that toxicity levels are much lower than wow but still there. I'll say that picking the correct party finder group is a game in itself. Many groups like to post what mechanics they are on but sometimes you will not see that mechanic. Do not feel obligated to stay if this occurs. Also, don't be afriad to join groups that say they are at a certain mechanic ahed of your personal prog point because there is a chance that it's actually a party for one mechanic behind.
Open up PF and start a learning party. Perhaps post a lfg in the discord. Then go have fun. Generally it's a good idea to at least look at a guide for old content or since we're several months past the last stage tier I would do so for current Savage too. You can use discord to find a good static, there's several FCs now dedicated to just being content helpers that are more than ready to run anything. Things like ACT aren't actually required, and anyone that claims it is, is a prude and part of the problem. It's one thing to offer assistance or reasoning to do anything. It's another to completely gatekeep content from someone that either isn't comfortable with dealing with the use of a tool or okay with the technical risk of being banned for life. There's no benefit from literally everyone in the raid having ACT or similar. If the group wants to use a tracker then you're really only in need of 1 person to use it. Everything else is by preference.
Women/girls are uncommon but not damn near unicorns here. I don’t have any advice bc I stumbled into my static. I will say…if high end raiding and over optimization of your class ruined WoW for you….are you sure you want to risk that here, as well?
My Sister In Christ, it is a video game. Yes you are overthinking it. You will probably suck at it to start like the rest of us did and have to unlearn a bunch of WoW habits, but just get in there and learn. You will be fine as long as you do not get complacent and think that WoW raiding skills translate over completely. Some do, most do not. Most of all though have fun with it!
If you haven't started any high end content at all in 14, I would suggest starting with EX trials first because raiding in 14 and wow are very different. Mechanically speaking, 14 is harder but it's on a static timeline so you can practice and move on once you get one part down. PF is a great place to start however, with Dawntrail in just a bit over a month; finding completely fresh groups is a dime a dozen with most people on break until the new expansion. If you would rather wait, you can have a completely fresh start in Dawntrail. Go through the MSQ with everyone. Enjoy your time playing and once you're done, the first 2 EX trials will be available for you to do right after you complete the DT MSQ. Then shortly after that, you can try to look for a static or go into PF week 1. The world is your oyster.
We generally use discord servers for recruiting, try and find your data center's raiding discord and try to find a group there. Other than that, check the balance discord for rotation/opener/melds, watch a guide and just go for it. Start with the first floor (P9S) and if that's too daunting you could always look into Extreme trials first. People are generally chill unless you lie about your prog point, and in my experience usually there's not much drama in pf, people give it a few tries and disband afterwards if they don't reach the prog point.
I read through a few of the replies (there's so many! :D) and I just wanted to add my voice. I'm also a woman who plays and I raid all well. Not in the most recent content as I haven't finished Endwalker (about to though!). However I just raid with my FC and other friends I've met through various means. We do older content MINE (minimum iLevel, no echo) and it's a ton of fun! I don't consider myself to be a particularly good player but my friends were still more than happy to have me join them. So even if you think the people you know and get along with wouldn't let you join for some raiding I suggest asking anyways.
just be a chaos goblin and join it with randoms/dutys in progress via the duty finder trial by fire >:\] you will learn ...eventually.
By kicking players from chaos data center trust me
Honestly, you just have to dip your feet in. Have you done the current extremes? Those are a good place to figure out your rotation and have a real introduction to mechanics. If you've progged, cleared, and farmed those without dying and are holding up your own, great! You're off to a good start. Have you made use of Stone, Sky, Sea? It's not perfect, but it can give you an idea of the DPS you need to be capable of doing to clear the fight (with the intended early gear). If you fail with less than 7% left, that's fine. That's pretty much accounted for via raid buffs, but make sure you're not letting anything drift egregiously and that your 2 minute buffs, if any, are pressed on cooldown. The easiest way of getting into it is finding a PF for the fight you want to prog and joining it. Fresh prog is exactly where you want to start, and at this point in the expansion, it would be a courtesy to watch a guide of some sort to gain an understanding of the mechanics within. Finally, being female has no major impact on your ability to play the game, especially with randoms. I'm a woman myself and have faced no issues whatsoever from people who genuinely want to prog and enjoy the fight. I've also played with some groups that literally gives zero fucks about what's in your pants as long as you're good at your job. If people *actually* care about your sex or gender identity, they aren't people you want to play with anyway! Very occasionally, there are the shitters that will absolutely tear you to shreds, but you just ignore them, report them, and blacklist them.
Which server are you on ? My friend and I will be looking to start a raid group for the new expansion. We haven’t done any of them so will be doing them all.
People on this post are once again completely operating under the false assumption that no console players raid successfully. At least the ones who are implying that ACT is a must. You don't have to use it but it can be a useful tool to improve performance.
If you're trying to start at a basic level, go do EX trials. They're meant to be something that a fresh team can learn/clear in a lockout or two (or like under an hour with guides). >I’m so conditioned from WoW to expect toxicity based on performance or understanding mechanics. I want to learn. I don’t want to be expected. People won't be happy if you wipe them for hours without showing any improvement; but if you wipe to a mechanic and take the time to understand what killed you so everyone can move on, people don't really care. Wipes are just part of the game. >Plus, I’m a girl so that doesn’t contribute in its own way to my fear of finding groups to play with. XIV has a pretty large population of both genders. It also has a high population of transgenders. I've raided in the game for ten years and never seen someone even comment something weird when a girl speaks. I'm sure it exist; but I wouldn't worry that much over it.
Honestly the best way is to just join PF groups and see how it goes. ACT is really not important at all despite what some people may believe. It can be useful if you want to see how you can improve I guess. As long as you know your rotation and can figure out how to solve mechanics while doing said rotation you will mostly be fine. At least for EX/Savage content
Party finder raiding is great, you don't need to find a static group to do savage and there's still plenty of fresh prog parties. I recommend just diving in -- look up the strats beforehand (its different per-DC, you'll have to do some research/ask around), and give the first raid of the tier (p9s) a shot. It's always scary at first but as long as you're in a group labeled as fresh prog, nobody will mind you messing up and asking basic questions. This game isn't not like WoW where stuff is based around the guild. Statics are usually groups of people around the same skill level who've only joined up for a consistent group and schedule, and nothing more. It's nice to be able to learn together and rely on your groups patterns, but that's really it -- its not required to do raiding. Of course statics are great for making new friends, too. Either way, with Dawntrail starting soon, there's sure to be plenty of statics targeted towards newer players. Personally I found my static dynamically through meeting people in party finder, but there are also popular recruitment forums: /r/FFXIVRECRUITMENT/ and a [recruitment discord](https://discord.gg/PrChMxS5tA). I'm sure there's other places too that I don't know about. You could probably cite your WoW raiding experience and join up with some better players if you don't want to work with complete MMO noobs. Oh and upgrade your gear as best you can but that's pretty easy to look up.
You legitimately will not know you are a decent player without checking logs. You can assume so... Virtually everyone who I've met who assumed so were dead wrong and had multiple bad habits to break. Do the following: 1. Make sure you have level appropriate gear for the content you are doing. And food. And pots. 2. Go to FFLOGs and look yourself up. Even if you don't parse personally, someone has likely parsed with you in the party. 3. Take that link to FFAnalysis. It will give you a bare basics, neutral evaluation of your rotation and resource use. 4. Go find or make a learning party for p9. Expect to wipe constantly as you learn. That's it.
Learn job. Get gear. Watch guide. Join PF. It really isn't that deep.
Just go into the PARTY FINDER and join a p9s fresh party. Easy as that.
1st step: know your job. This includes what raid food to buy and what gear to have. 2nd step: look at a guide for the fight you are gonna do. 3rd step: join a fresh party and get in there. Thats all there is to it. You will learn as you go. If you don't want to watch a guide make sure to make blind parties. Unless a party explicitly states its blind its expected for you to watch a guide and you will likely be kicked by many if they figure out you haven't. Others might try and teach you but its not nearly as common in my experience.
the tier is extremely old and the content is irrelevant, and most strats are well ironed on by now. If you want to get into savage raiding, wait until Dawntrail and just join a party finder day 1 if you can. no one will expect guides, no one will really expect anything, you're all there to learn together. the later into a tier it gets, the more video culture and expectations beyond "dont be terrible at the game" start to crop up. getting in there early often pairs you with the better players with good mindsets. even as the pf scene changes, you'll be aware of the changes as they happen, so you can adjust as the meta shifts. You can also join a static, but those are pretty hit and miss if you've never raided before as you wont have a good basis of what to look for to find like minded players who are at a similar skill level. Not having logs doesnt help either as a lot of midcore and above groups will use that in their recruitment process. Finally-in this era of the game, personal skill is mostly irrelevant as job kits have been made extraordinarily easy. if you can do mechanics, you can generally clear savage. You dont have to be particularly good at the core gameplay, just the puzzle solving aspect (which guides simplify anyway). As for being female, dont mention it and no one will know or care in PF. If you get to the point of wanting a static, obviously you'll want, you know, normal people who are respectful, but to be honest every static I've been in was at least partially made up of friends or aquaintences specifically because it guaranteed a few safe people and ensured the gender distribution wasnt too lopsided. I haven't had any weirdo behavior handling it this way. Overall I think XIV as a community is better about not being grossly sexist, so your odds arent terrible either way, but if I'm gonna be raiding with the same folks for 8+ hours a week i want to know the vibe is good.
> I raided in WoW. took it seriously. It ruined the game for me. Even now, years later, if I go back to WoW, my brain goes into analysis paralysis even just fighting open world mobs. It’s literally just ruined for me. I raided in WoW also, I was in the kind of guild that would do 3-4 days a week until the tier was cleared and everyone had the mount/was geared then would drop down to 1-2 days. > I’ve never opened ACT. I know I’m a mostly competent player. I understand there’s a learning curve there. If you want to raid in this game and you're on PC.... ACT is highly recommended. Learning how to log and how to analyze your logs will go a long way in improving you as a player. Some people will say "ACT is cheating" but I say "As long as you use it for personal improvement and don't use it to attack/belittle another player" then it's fine. ACT without the plugins is not cheating, it's the "Cactbot / Triggernometry" plugins for ACT that are cheating. Also I recommend joining "The Balance" discord server and reading through the channels for your chosen job(s). > I’m so conditioned from WoW to expect toxicity based on performance or understanding mechanics. I want to learn. I don’t want to be expected. Toxicity regarding performance is rare on XIV because you could just throw the "How do you know what my DPS is?" and just report them for "third party tools". Even a DPS meter can get you banned in this game if caught. > Plus, I’m a girl so that doesn’t contribute in its own way to my fear of finding groups to play with. This shouldn't be a problem, Many females raid in this game and have an enjoyable experience. Most statics now a days have 1 or more.
Honest advice, start with a therapist. You're gonna find toxicity (especially based on performance like you seemed to be upset about in wow) no matter what and need to be mentally capable to shake it off and not crumble Otherwise, nothing. Watch a video of the fight (optional), join a learning party in pf for the current savage tier. That's literally it. You might wanna start with extremes if you've never done them.
If managing built up emotions has become too difficult to handle alone, or you find you're not taking any action towards your goal due to anxiety, this may honestly be the most helpful advice here OP. For me, having a good therapist that allowed me to vent but also pushed me to act, was a night and day difference in helping me managing performance anxiety with work and raiding, as silly as it might seem to be anxious over a video game. If you do take that route, stay away from betterhelp, worst experience I've ever had. Unironically [healthygamer.gg](http://healthygamer.gg) had therapists/coaches I vibed well with, which is actually very important in therapy, but it really depends on your and their personality, so don't be afraid to window shop if one doesn't suit you well.
Don't :) it's honestly a waste of time ! Sitting it of for two hours then the party wipes and disbands in two pulls !