Savage Raiding in FFXIV: I’ve played WoW for over 15 years, but never at a competitive level and never even stepped foot into a …
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Savage Raiding in FFXIV: I’ve played WoW for over 15 years, but never at a competitive level and never even stepped foot into a …
source
Would love to know how you're all enjoying savage raiding in Endwalker, or even why you don't play savage/ultimate content!
Will be streaming savage raiding every Tuesday over on twitch.tv/medievalmarty if you ever want to come hang out!
i played ffxiv for quite a while, but i never did current savage/extrials. this expansion i did it for the first time and its so much fun 😀 i found a nice fun static and we work our way slowly up the raid and in my "offtime" i farm the current extrials for the stuff from them 😀 its real fun and with a nice group really rewarding and an experience
Welcome to the joys of savage raiding, there’s nothing better than coming together as a group and kicking a bosses ass.
I like how it feels like progression. It's like you are learning, u are getting better, and it feels good when u nail it.
p1s-p4s gear definitely gets you ready for p5s. for those who don't want to, you can grind out ivl 600 gear from tomestones – however, it won't be "best in slot"
Watching Marty clip every single GCD as an AST main is making me cringe. Some tips: Use Lightspeed in your opener so you can double weave. Fall malefic only allows for a single weave window so your draw and play will be on different GCDs without Lightspeed or DOT. Slidecast more often so your GCD is constantly rolling. Try to plan with your co-healer to cut down on usage of GCD heals and if you really have to, try to use neutral sect with your GCD heal so your Co-Healer can push just that extra bit of damage. I really like healing and would love to talk more about it
P2S is a punishing boss o.o I'm pretty casual myself but still got a static of like minded people and we're having lots of fun. Killing P1S blind in the first week was awesome ^.^ 2nd boss took us two weeks but still… Feels good 🙂
before next savage tier comes out, they will release the new alliance raids. Those will be the catchup raids that drop gear with similar ilvl as savage, so people can gear up and ready up for the new tier 😀 Ofc the alliance raid gear wont be as good as your savage bis, but still good enough for people who didnt do the 1st tier
ffxiv analysis is good to figure out the mistakes that can be fixed. in general time your heals with your co healer and try to never cast a heal gcd and spamming malefic on gcd
Savage raiding is really fun, if you find the right group for you 🙂 You kinda want the same goals within your party so everyone has the same expectations for it. I'm happy with my static. We are good group of people ^^
This is only from doing the current extremes, but hitting enrage and wiping at 1% is a hell of a way to teach personal responsibility and importance of uptime.
I'm having an okay time with PF. On the one hand, the fights are designed with pugging in mind and on the other, people lie just to get in a more progressed group without being on that stage themselves. Groups disband because enrage parties draw baits who wipe on phase one mechanics and have never seen enrage. This is why I've been stuck on P2S since savage was released. 🙁
If you have BiS this tier, you don't need to grind more gear to do the next tier after it release, you can jump into the next tier savage and get upgrades there. Also they would release new tomestone/crafted gear for people to catch up. You don't need to do the previous tier to go into the next, some people still do that for the mount or glam gear nevertheless.
There will a new crafted gear set for the next tier, I’m guessing ilvl 610, there will also be an Extreme trial that gives i615 weapon. Basically you don’t HAVE to do the previous savages to be geared up. Does this mean savage fights become obsolete? The first 3 fights, yes it does. The 4th fight, never – because of the mount and weapon/chest glams
Bis is just for Ultimate when next savage teir comes out the gearing cycle starts all over again. So stack that materia:)
The augment system comes from the item drops in the Savage fights.
You buy the gear with tomes then use your savage items to buy the augment item.
Mix the 2 together and boom… Augmented tome gear.
Theres 3 levels of gear to get but due to the gaps between each tier, plenty of time to stack yourself
I forgot which it is but there is 2 or 3 capped tomestones each expansion. For sure theres a crafting tier for each savage(3 per expansion) so there is a catch up mechanics but the savage gear usually looks better than the crafted gear.
6.2 will feature a similar gear jump and release cycle, just without the 2 week delay for Savage. If you have 6.0 BIS gear it's going to remain so until 6.2 and be sufficient to queue into P5S, but progression minded groups will probably replace some or all of their pieces with i610 crafted gear the first week while they start aiming for new savage drops and new capped tomestone gear.
As an AST main, I have 2 pieces of advice:
The change to Earthly Star means you can cover most of the room/arena with it, and it also does some damage to the enemies when it goes off. So I spam that thing *hard*, especially in boss fights.
Second, I combine Horoscope with Aspected Helios for a big time-delayed heal with a longer window before it goes off automatically.
Both of these can go off on their own when the timer winds down or you can manually set them off. I've found both useful in raids and trials.
Short summary regarding gearing:
To augment your gear you need materials you get from raids:
Right side gear needs 1 coating from P2S (6 / 10 later) which you can get 1 per week as a group or for 4 books so after 8 weeks the static can have up to 3 coatings per player.
Left side gear needs 1 twine from P3S (7 / 11 later) which you can get 1 per week as group or for 4 books so after 8 weeks the static can have up to 3 twines per player.
When the 24 man releases it drop 1 token per week. This token can be used to upgrade (augment) any piece of your.
Savage Patch releases:
(Semi-) Hardcore players get full crafted, pentameld it and go into the raid with it (thats enough gear to clear the whole raid)
Midcore/Casual players go in with the last raid tier gear (extreme gear in case its the first tier of the expansion), that gear is enough to clear the first 2 fights usually.
Close to the next odd patch (1/3/5)
(s)HC players get their BIS while raiding the current tier
MC/C players get as much loot as they can get and prepare the tomegear. MC players get usually close to BIS at this point whle C players might be mostly tome gear with only a few raid pieces.
Odd patch releases (s)HC players go into the ultimate => last savage tier BIS is (kinda) required to clear the ultimate
MC/C players get the new extreme primal which gives you a weapon upgrade which is below the savage weapon but still an upgrade and the 24 man raid to get more catch up gear for alt jobs and upgrade items for your tome gear.
End of the Odd patch:
(s)HC players are Savage BIS and if they cleared ultimate they have the ultimate weapon (same stats as savage but with 3 instead of 2 meld slots)
MC players are here usually Savage BIS and if they wanted to they experimented with the first phase(s) of the ultimate
C players are not BIS but have the Extreme weapon and max iLVL gear even if they don't have BIS its at least max iLVL at this point.
Savage Patch releases:
…
Gear does get "obsoleted" by the next round of crafted gear in 6.2, which should be i610.
It will still be good for alarm clocking the first couple savage fights though, before crafting gear is affordable (or can even physically be made, it does take time to actually craft the things)
But more importantly to many raiders, in 6.1 there will be a new Ultimate encounter. That encounter will expect and be tuned for the i600 Best In Slot, and will be sync'd to i600 so getting better gear later won't help. So current Savage gear is very, very relevant for that reason.
So about how long the gear you earn stays relevant: this ilvl 600 BiS will be the BiS for the next Ultimate in 6.1 so that is the goal for hardcore raiders. The next raidtier will drop in patch 6.2. For that tier the crafted gear will be ilvl 610, so it will be better than your last BiS, but you can queue in and clear the first fight with your old BiS and equip the crafted later. That is the way usually world first racers do, they prog the first fight while their crafters do the magic. So eventually it will be phased out but it is not completely devaluated next raidtier. There will be a catchup mechanic in 6.1(in the form of Alliance raid) but that will only drop ilvl 590 gear.
And about the AST: as an astro main my advice would be: try to keep up your casts, try to always cast something. I really recommend the xivanalysis tool (can be only used with logs), it can show you how much casts you missed because you paused. For me that was the biggest thing I needed to learn and practice. Or you can just hit a dummy for a few minutes every day, to practice always casting, while drawing cards and slidecasting. AST is a really fun but high skill-ceiling job, it needs practice to be comfy with it. 😊
The third fight tends to be where the real skill hike happens. Look forward to it.
BIS for this tier will be used for the next Ultimate.
Without Ultimates you csn use this BiS for the first 2 bosses of the next tier. But for the lsst bosses dps checkd you will wsnt either Crafted Gear or wait a reset or two of new raid gear
There will always be catch up gear. The 24-man raid is all catch up gear. However, you do retain an edge from other players. For example a full BiS static usually has a lot easier time with the extremes (next one being Meteion Extreme) and those pesky enrages for the first two floors of the next raid will be easier to navigate for a full bis party. That being said the difference isn’t such that you will breeze through it while others struggle but maybe you can carry a few more deaths or for the extremes skip a mechanic or so.
Long time AST raider here with some feedback. I took a look at your team's logs and the biggest three things that jumped out at me were low Malefic uptime (15 casts per minute whereas some ASTs have 22-23 CPM in P1S), immense overhealing, and drifting Divination.
I see that someone else touched on the Malefic uptime thing so I won't go into detail. Slidecasting, prepositioning, avoiding GCD clipping, all that jazz. Nothing you haven't already been told.
In the log I looked at you had 51% overhealing. A full half of all your healing was wasted. It looked like a lot of it was trying to top people off as fast as possible after taking damage instead of letting your regens work their magic. You had 45% overhealing on your 10 Helios casts and 80% overhealing on your Aspected Helios regens. Outside of a couple mechanics with high, repeated damage it's generally safe to wait for your next oGCD to come up. Earthly Star is available every 60 secs and there's nothing wrong with leaving people low if they won't be taking any damage.
I noticed that you only used Collective Unconscious once in a 9 min clear. You can tap it for the free regen even if you don't need the 10% mitigation at the time. It's a free 500 potency over 15 secs. Don't be afraid to shout at your party to stack up if they're not all in range. If they die, they die. Not your fault if they chose not to be in range. Unless people are moving for a mechanic they should all be stacked up at the back of the boss. Be vocal on comms about your healing and resources. Letting your cohealer know that something will be off CD soon lets them know that you've got that healing and that they don't need to drop a GCD to cover it.
Something else I noticed is that your team is abysmal at mitigating. Your melee should be using Feint. A single Feint from two melee in a 9 min fight is unacceptable. Your SMN should be using more Addle. The BRD was good with Troubador. The WAR needs to Shake it Off more. The GNB is good on Heart of Light, but both need to improve their Reprisals. They need to use Heart of Corundum and Bloodwhetting/Nascant significantly more. Single digit uses on both of those are unacceptable given their 25 sec CD. With how overtuned tanks are this tier shouldn't need any healing beyond the SCH's faerie and the occasional oGCD after a tankbuster until you reach P3S. I know that you probably aren't familiar with all those abilities, but they will understand if you let them know. You're having to do a lot more healing because your party can't be bothered to use all their tools.
Lastly, your Divination casts were drifting over the fight. Ideally you'll use it as soon as it's off CD (outside of your opener). Something that helped me was to bind my major CDs to a larger toolbar near the middle of the screen so I could see when things are nearly back. I keep a copy of Draw, Minor Arcana, Divination, Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, and my potion on there. You might also benefit from moving your party list nearer to your main hotbars to minimize how far you need to move your eyes to check their health.
If you haven't already I would recommending going through Zyrk's Guide to the Principles of Healing. It's a long read but will cover everything you need to know. If you have any questions or want me to clarify anything don't hesitate to ask. I can't promise I'll notice here but feel free to contact me on Discord (Qina#4625).
If you get your BiS from the first tier you'll be able to walk strait into t2 when it comes with 6.2. There will be new stuff that might be slightly better, but it'll be optional for most groups.
I love this PoV from doing this in a medium core static, we have people who are very passionate parsers (top 10 pld, top 50 war ect). You learn how different learning this game in a new prospective.
One thing about p4s that I will warn about, p2s dps check is very lax compared to p4s. You basically need everyone playing very very well if they have only crafted gear or a few pieces here and there. Even 1 death can result in a wipe, you can afford 1 if everyone is playing extremely well.
As a friend of a Ast main, you should look at other classes rotations. Some classes work on a 30 second window, 60 second window or a main 2 minute burst window. You need to plan who gets what cards as you get them. This takes a while to learn but ask your raid members "when is your buff coming up" and note this down when your cards come up, this will drastically increase everyone's dps and your RDps. This just comes with practice, I believe balance can answer these questions as well.
If you never got the explanation on "why" ast is addicted to spell speed it is because you want to get 7 mal's (your gcd damage spell) under lightspeed which is a big potency increase under raid buffs, also as a slight tip every healer can only single weave after their gcd besides if you have a instant cast you can use (dot, or ast gcds under lightspeed) then you can double weave.
So on the 6.1 patch, savage will unlock meaning you can re-clear each fight as many times as you want which allows you to gear alts jobs easier for if you want to hop to another job you can, as well the alliance raid (it was nier raid) which drops a mat which can be used to buy the savage upgrade material for the astronomy. (This is for casuals or for people who struggle progging to better their gear without clearing the relevant tier.)
Every "even" .2, .4 is when the new tier comes out with new capped tome stones and astronomy will become the uncapped tome stones with new tomes tome gear, new crafted gear. Which will be better then your old BiS raid gear however if you have BiS gear you can clear the first 2 fights "generally" so you can hop right in with a advantage, but everyone can get fully augmented gear even casuals however they wont have effective BiS.
What I like to do is in the unlock season which lasts 3 months is prep my gathers or level alts or teach new players to the game harder content and its really fun once the lockout is done and pf is more forgiving/casual friendly.
Been plucking away at p1s with my fc, feels good to whittle the boss down run after run. Extremely satisfying progression
P1S: Killed it week 1 (we didn't even see enrage cast actually, that one's pretty lenient).
P2S: Took us to the second week to kill.
P3S: (Prog hindered a bit by a node one of my static members has to get his connection through acting up.) Currently getting consistent on add phase and progging later stuff. Fun fight, but it hurts. @_@
God, remember when t5 was terrifying? I do! makes you proud of your own improvement. Build on your own ashes and see yourself grow.
The Augmenting thing is quite simple: Initially, fights 2 and 3 drop specific upgrade materials (2 for accessories, 3 for armor and weapons). One of those goes into enhancing an item of the relevant type that was bought with the limited tomestones by 10 item levels, to be equal to Savage drops. In the current case, that means enhancing Radiant gear from 590 to 600. Proper BiS sets are formed as a mix of Augmented tomestone gear and Savage drops, based on what has the appropriate substats.
So in short "get tomes, buy item, clear raid floor, get augment drop, enhance item".
Later on, you get a different way of getting those augmenting items (not the weapon one initially though). For one, you'll be able to buy an augmenting item for 2000 or 3000 hunt nuts. And as the other option, by clearing the then released Alliance raid weekly, you get a token that can be exchanged for the augmenting items. As a secondary option.
Oh yeah the "not accepting this one job" thing. It does indeed show up in Party Finder, but the thing is, it's usually a pretty handy "don't join this party" red flag. It's primarily used by bad players looking to get carried by "meta" comps. Actual world first racers have on multiple occasions won with "off-meta" jobs, so the actual cutting edge raiders can even go against it.
I love the progression in FFXIV, also coming from WOW it's so frustrating that when you class is the nerf and you are the cause of the group failing you need to pay to boost an alt and go into the fight not knowing your class well and etc etc. but in FF it's just so good, I really have faith in the team especially looking at the buffs given in 6.08
The only thing of 'elitism' present in ff is that you can setup a partyfinder that excludes players that dont have that certain content cleared, which is perfectly understandbale since those can just open up practice parties.
Jobwise there was never any exclusion towards anything, even tho some jobs mightve been objectively garbage for some patches. You can make every comp sorta work, just double jobs are generally not seen because they fuck with the limit burst charge.
Also with the instant disband you touched on, it doesnt happen often but right now I tend to leave mount farm groups when people die a LOT and we dont clear, just cause I have 75 hyda totems right now and I wanna get that shit just over with, lol.
Judging by the PF titles I'm sure there's a lot of toxicity in certain groups (x mistakes and you're out) but so far every prog group I've been in has been extremely supportive and helpful and willing to teach. The most satisfying part about FFXIV raiding is that even if you wipe over and over again; everyone in party will congratulate each other after passing a certain phase of the boss. It never feels like "we kill it or nothing"; it feels like you're progressing through each mechanic phase and getting rewarded for completing a certain mechanic.
I even like joining prog groups for stuff I've already completed to pay it forward and help people progress in certain fights. It's a very rewarding feeling to help other people; because honestly the gear doesn't really matter because it becomes obsolete pretty quickly.
I way underestimated the difficulty of p1s. With it being the first boss in the first tier of an expansion where there are more people than ever looking to get into savage raiding, I expected it to be pretty welcoming. I was dead wrong. The fight's not _hard_, and maybe it was the fact that we were doing it blind, but SE shoved a lot of stuff in there that I didn't expect. Fourfold was one where I couldn't believe the strat we came up with (same as timers) was the best we could do because it's still harder in execution than the equivalent thing you have to do in e12s. The fight's pretty chill and fun enough after a bit of practice, but I really wonder what SE was aiming for there because it seems a little counterproductive in terms of new raiders.
Compare this to e1s or e5s or even e9s (which was arguably harder than e10s) and to me, the difference in first-time difficulty is telling.
You don't need gear from this tier of savage to do the next tier of savage. Tomestone gear when upgraded with items that drop from either savage or the alliance raid coming in 6.1 is equivalent to savage gear. You can be at ilvl 600 by the start of 6.2, which will release the next tier, whether you do the savage now or not. You can optimize for your substats, but that isn't particularly revelant. More importantly, when 6.2 hits so does the new crafted gear which will be at 610 and present a significant upgrade over both the previous tomestone AND savage gear, rendering pretty much everything obsolete if you have the crafters or the gil to pay them. The normal version of the raids also drops 610, and the new tomestone currency for 6.2 will be tradeable for 620 gear.
When it comes to bad attitude, there is plenty to be had in party finder. If you don't have a static or other group to do savage with, you go with randoms in party finder, and the results go from terrible to incredibly smooth, the whole spectrum. And especially if runs are going worse than expected, things can sometimes get hostile, but usually it ends up with someone leaving and the party disbanding. Big deal, move on. There isn't a lot of vocal / written out toxicity since that is reportable and will get you banned. There are people with unreasonable expectations, underperforming clear parties, people with no idea how to resolve the first mechanic joining groups aiming at a kill, all that stuff, so finding the right group to get your clear can take a lot of time. You essentially have to start over with every new party. P3s in particular is an absolute killer in pf this tier.
This gear will be bis for the ultimate coming out soon for a looooong time. But crafted gear will come out with next pandemonium tier that will be better than what we are getting now for said tier.
Edit: you also have to kill P4 to even enter the next Ultimate.
Remember when you started out as a dps and said you didn't really see yourself going into other roles, look at you now healing away! how much you've grown Marty 🙂 also I'm on light servers now, on phoenix but I'm just a short hop away from saying hello 🙂
Regarding nerfs to classes: this pretty much never happens. In FF14 they usually only buff classes to bring them up to the stronger ones, but very, very rarely nerf anyone. As far as I know their reasoning is the exact same thing you said in the video – it just sucks when your class gets nerfed. So rather than making some players feel bad they try to make everyone else feel better.
5:48 Look at the cute widdle Titan.
The max item level you can get right now is juuuuuust enough to enter P5S, but you can bolster yourself with the crafted gear from that patch.