I got my feet wet in E9S. But yeah. P1S is a really good place right now to try savage. A lot of parties progging it and it‘s rather easier compared to fights like P3S. Meanwhiel the dps check is just a little higher then the 3rd extreme fight.
True. My first Savage was E9S and maybe it’s because I got much better since then, but imo it was much harder than P1S. That boss was a lesson in humility, I thought I knew how to play the game, and then E9S absolutely destroyed me and made me understand how trash I was and how little I understood the game. And yeah, I eventually cleared Eden’s Promise, and was 10 times better as a player by the end of it. P1S seems to be more gentle towards new raiders, so maybe this wrecking is not too savage xD
I think you missed one core design philosophy - The fight will introduce you to a single mechanic one at a time. The further you move on into the fight they start asking you to do it multiple mechanics at once or a more intricate variant of them. Of course the hardest part of the raid tier is the one or two fights that do not follow that.
agree they layer mechanics on top of each other especially for p1s and p2s which i love as a design philosophy, less so for p3s and p4s where they just mostly introduce just new mechanics to solve
@@Sammysapphira Never said it was unique, just said it was core to how they design a lot of the fights. Sorry I'm not aware of everything happening in every MMO ever. I bailed on WoW back in WotLK, never went back. I went on a mostly action MMO oriented fix for awhile which tend to be mostly "If you dont have twitch reflexes and low ping, you die"
“No one seems to mind what job you bring” The only MMO I’ve ever played was FFXIV and I have to say I was confused when people came from other games and found this weird. This is how game design/balancing is supposed to be, it’s sad to see it as an advantage of XIV over other games, when all games should have been like this in the first place.
The reason it's like this in the first place is primarily due to the jobs being very rigid. In general, there's only one correct way to play each job, with no room for specs outside of something minor like crit SMN vs. sps SMN. The devs not wasting all their time trying to balance a huge mess of customization is a blessing, but it definitely has enough disadvantages for me to say not every game should be like that.
@@trinkeslato9598 theres a difference between having preferred jobs and just writing off half the available jobs as "non-viable". Most games have classes that people just wont bother taking, while XIV seems to be more of the "take any job, NIN preferred" as the mindset.
@@Shiirow "Most games have classes that people just wont bother taking, while XIV seems to be more of the "take any job, NIN preferred" as the mindset." I mean, Party finder has been like that a lot of times. Even now before MCH was buffed ever so slightly, because they brought nothing that BRD and DNC didn't do better (DNC was just as shit before savage tuning) and the only correct play was to play BRD in P1-4S. People in statics felt they were inting their teammates if they played MCH or DNC because of how spread the damage disparity was in output to the raid. Which in itself is kinda baffling, the gear set on the jobs never changes, it's a set in stone scenario with no moving parts and even then you have games like WoW with infinite more possibilities actually having an overall better damage profile across the board. Even stuff like that echoes through the higher end guilds, just look at amount of kills in DSR and compare the amount of clears between DNC, MCH and BRD.
@@Qazqi it's a double edged sword. The idea of WoW having effectively 30-odd classes is great in theory... but in practice half of them might as well not be there if you wanna do high-end content because of poor game balancing. If you can pull off the level of customization WoW has in theory, great... but you damn well better be prepared to put in the work that comes with it otherwise stick to rigid class design with a lot of variation in gameplay per class/
One of my favorite things mid prog is the tiny tailoring you're doing to your own play mid pull. "Ah I'll use this ogcd here instead as healer" or "I'll gap close this here instead of this later thing", everyone is playing their own minigame within a dance. Fun stuff.
"I'll stay here for uptime, I can just Shukuchi to safety before the cast finishes." - me, before I misclick Shukuchi and blink into the kill wall. Uptime strats are only uptime strats if you don't die trying them, it turns out.
My actual favorite thing is being able to time mechanics by where you are in your rotation. "Okay, this is Brotherhood 3, which means it's time to hug a tank for stacks."
The best feeling i had in a while was progging p3s as AST and realizing i could line up Stellar Detonation with Darkened fire and hit all ads at once basically finishing the mechanic if i got a good crit
I've actually never been a big fan of the macro thing. I think half the fun of doing content like this is hopping in Discord (even with strangers) and just shooting the shit while you get it done. That's the most memorable part of an MMO for me. Then once you've got a few kills down you can join a farm group for that super efficient, no-talk kill-spree.
@@Xbob42 that’s fine on the first week but if you’re trying to farm for weeks on end, having 1 macro means everyone is consistent and you don’t have to adjust every time
@@danielnoh1520 Everyone's already consistent anyway because the strat is in the PF description. I mean I'm sure there's weird cases, but this has been the norm for me for years.
They always makes savage like this, the first and second tier is made so everyone can make it. 1- Boss: Just to check if your brain works, and if you can follow your rotation while standing still. The fight tempo is REALLY slow and you have 4+ seconds to resolve mechanics. DPS check is non existent unless you have too much deaths. 2- Boss : Fight is not individualized, you start having more heavy AoE that need mitigation. Making wrong turns starts killing your whole party, not only you. Fighting tempo is slow as P1, but time to resolve some mechanics are reduced. 3-Boss: Is when the fighting tempo starts not being so slow and sluggish. You have tighter everything, DPS checks, healing checks, but mechanics are boss focused. 4-Boss: Is when the fun starts, because the fighting tempo finally gets fast enough so you have do "dance" while doing it. Tighter everything, but mechanics are not only boss focused but boss starts using the arena to do mechanics.
1:01 Gear might be "less important" compared to other loot-oriented games like WoW. But the reason for that is that any content released in FFXIV is meant to be technically clearable week 1. This means Savage has to be tuned for penta-melded crafted gear (which is the best gear you can acquire in week 1). Though clearing the tier week 1 is no joke tbh, and that's not meant to be a goal for the average player, but that's beside the point. That being said, there is a significant difference in output between someone who's BiS and someone who's still gearing up (even if they're max iLvl but with tomestone gear instead of a proper BiS set). That difference adds up when we're talking about 8 players. And Ultimate, at release, is tuned around players having the Savage tier's BiS (the best gear they could have at release). So, in short, if you're a player who just casually does Savage at their own pace, are in no rush, and care little for competitiveness, then gear is "not important" for you (besides glamour - the _true_ endgame). But if you're a competitive player who enjoys optimization and speed running, then gear is _absolutely_ important, and getting major pieces upgraded (e.g. weapon and chest) can be quite exciting when you see the significant increase in performance. This is the same as any other vertical progression MMO. The only difference is that better gear is never truly "mandatory" in FFXIV, except when you're doing Ultimate where BiS is needed.
Yes but you can GET the gear you need. In WoW it’s down to RNG if you have bis gear so you run the same dungeon 100 times to get it if you want to stay competitive. Now imagine one of your bis came from beast tribes, another from treasure maps, anther from gemstones, anther from a rare fate, another from hunts- and you have to have all that done to start savage. That’s what wow gearing is like, it’s a huge difference.
They tried the RNG thing in FFXIV back with Diadem's first iteration. Everyone hated it so much they killed the content and recycled Diadem to become the gatherer's paradise we know it as today.
Yes there is a difference between week 1 gear and BiS and this can add up if all 8 players have BiS gear, but not to the same degrees it does in WoW. In WoW there are some mechanic that are supposed to kill you if you fail week 1, but will not kill you if you have good enough gear. You can litteraly ignore some mechanics that way. Also, while you will clear faster with BiS gear in FF14, I don't think you will be able to skip a significant portion of the fight either. I mean sure maybe you will skip the third set of arrows in P2S but not a lot more than that. While I feel like BiS gear in WoW can allow you to skip half the fight or more.
Well, better gear leads to more lenient fights. That sort of ease may not be mandatory... but it's nice to have when you're just farming so that you don't struggle against enrage.
My favourite savage fight I’ve done, e12s p2, has some of the best mechanics for the “everyone has a specific role that comes together” fight design that feels so satisfying to pull off correctly. You have to set up rewind points you will get teleported to in reverse order based on what debuffs you get. Once the last spot is set everyone freezes and you see everyone zipping all around the arena as various spells are going off, and it feels so elegant when it all lines up it feels amazing.
The difficulty progression of Normal → EX → Savage 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → Ultimate is incredibly smooth IMO. I can totally understand the anxiety that people feel when starting harder content, especially for the very first time! But the graduating difficulty is lovely. It's like, by the time you're totally comfortable with one step, you're ready to try the next, if you so choose. Climbing higher and higher at your own pace is hard sometimes, and especially in PF, but it's doable and (at least to me) it feels rewarding. The first time I downed a savage tier and finished farming it, it was in PF, and I felt so proud and accomplished when I was done. The magic never fully goes away IMO either. I've only downed one Ultimate and don't have much time to try more Ultimate groups, so every Savage tier is a treat for me to finish. Such a relief. And lowkey, it feels even MORE rewarding to help friends through it, just to see how happy and accomplished they feel!
One thing I love about PF even though PFing content makes me anxious is that people are usually willing to teach. There are some absolute god-tier raiders in this game who just hang out in PF hopping around practice parties because they understand that playing in less-skilled groups not only improves the raid scene but also improves them personally as a raider. Very different attitude all around than you see in a lot of games.
Eventually you kinda get into the groove for a lot of fights even if there are some mechanics variations in between pulls. My favorite part of prog is getting to a point where I can just vibe as mechanics are happening around me.
Agreed, I love that feeling where you're relaxed and just kind of living in the fight. Jamming out to the music and working collaboratively with your friends can be pretty relaxing
The first week of Savage, 3 of us decided to pug wing one, since several of the regulars weren't free. We spent 9 hours in one group, with 3 people who had never done a savage kill before. It was a fun time teaching them how to handle the fight and the common courtesies of prog groups (have materia in your gear, eat food, use potions if you're hitting enrage, etc...) Our black mage pulled the absolute banger parse of bottom 1%, but that just goes to show that ANYONE can clear this stuff if they have patience and do their best lol
Yeah I’ve PF’d through P1S, P2S, P3S, and working through P4S. P3S difficulty changes a lot (math is hard). And then you have the P4S party finder groups that are supposed to be phase 2 prog, but turn out that everyone dies to Phase 1 mechanics and can’t get to the checkpoint. It gets frustrating, but still very possible and fun!
@@benkask96 completely agree, I can get through phase 2 very easily and it feels like a victory lap. Whereas static or pugs pinax feels like a toss up if it will go smoothly. Imo too much to manage at once that inevitably someone will mess it up.
@@benkask96 once you learn Pinax, and I mean really LEARN it, not just memorize where to go based on each pattern, but learn what each little detail in it means, it clicks hard and you never mess it up again, unless someone kills you on it. I think the main problem is that people tend to follow callouts or memorize toolboxes more than they tend to actually learn the intricacies of the mechanics, and that causes a lot of accidents.
The math in p3s gets a lot easier once you realize that you don't actually have to do math at all. All the numbers are divided up into two clusters of up to 4 dots. If you get a number greater than 4 then you know the cluster on the right is always going to be 4 dots, so you just look at the cluster on the left, so seven for example, will look like a cluster of 3 dots on the left, and 4 dots on the right. That means you go stand at 3. 5 meanwhile, is a cluster of 4 on the right, and 1 on the left, so stand at 1. The only exception to this is 6, which will be 2 clusters of 3, but it's pretty easy to remember that 3 will always mean stand at 2.
Its also in savage when you learn to tweek your rotations: Maybe not use that dmg buff there, maybe use your knockback invul there but not there, when he does that thats the moment my buff runs out (if I dont mess up) ... It comes with time, practice, and some more time. And even if you know every move... you'll mess up regardless XD Also, should you ever find yourself in a static helping out... expect them to handel things waaaaay diffrent than anything PF considers "normal": I know thay my static has been a culture shock for many unsuspecting temporary acquantances XD
The static I'm in is usually so friendly that we adjust to PF strat when we have PF randos filling. But for us it's also mostly smaller details that we do differently since PF strats basically work in a static too
@@emiach We blind procc most of the time and rarely bother with what PF declares as standard - and why would we? If someone cant joind for the day, we look for a random player and explain our strats :) Sometimes our strats are easier, sometimes theyre not - but it works for us.
On that last point, my static handles intemperance way different from most parties, and it tends to mess a lot of people up. One common thing I've seen as a more minor version of that is just how many times the PF strat is just a reversed version of something my static ends up doing, which is always a laugh and easy to get sorted, in most cases.
BTW, macro's aren't a very common thing in NA. I've pretty much nearly never seen them. Instead, we put down waymarkers and stand around it to claim a clock position. If anything else needs to be mentioned, then the specific parties will talk it out. For example, the tanks may discuss which of the Pitiless Flails of Grace/Purgation to invuln, when to tankswap or take back aggro, ect.
Yeah i have an NA alt and i think its a waste of time the way you do it with waymarks. Macros are way better and more efficient, everyone uses them in EU, it is THE standard and i wish NA used them too. MrHappy has been trying to push macros in NA but with no success.
I'm the same mind as Aldra. Macros are cleaner and give all thr info you need at a glance instead of fucking with way marks for.minutes. but of course us NA players refuse to read :/
@@skylarsimes8 Too true, I wish we used macros too... My friend tries to throw them in some pfs at times to see what happens, and it is mostly chaos until someone puts down a marker XP.
Glad you're enjoying Savage so far. Please also make videos on your P2-4 experiences when you get through them if you can. P3S especially since it's a massive difficulty spike, I'd be really interested to see what you think of that.
P1S is only marginally more challenging than extremes. P2S is only marginally more challenging than P1S. P3S and P4S are bigger steps up. That being said, it is a choreography so when you do get all of it, everything feels pretty smooth. I could do P4S as a DPS with my eyes more or less closed now. Gear also helps a lot - for example P2S on launch was a nightmare for a lot of PF groups because even the people who memorized the choreography weren’t performing well enough DPS-wise to beat enrage. Currently, given how overgeared people are with tome gear + upgrades, upgraded crafted gear and aglia the only challenge left is the choreography. The best and really only fair way to gauge difficulty of savage content is on launch because the learning curve is designed to near disappear the closer you get to the .1/.3/.5 patches so that more people can jump in.
@@rektl2036 its no comparison because the Later fights are ment to be harder even when there the first Fights of the Tier. E1-3 was a Cakewalk back then. I think p3 is way harder than e3. And if i compare e4 with p4 i think e4s was way harder in terms of dmg and mitigation Checks because of the Lack of a Doorboss. Once you pleared p4s 1 your nearly done with the Fight. It isnt that hard. p5-8 are gonna je way harder than 1-4.
10:37 "the community naturally attaches itself to the most effective strategy" If only that were the case. Sometimes it is, but that's mostly coincidence. Realistically, what the community attaches itself to is generally the first passable strategy that shows up. There have been plenty of cases where the strats that pf adopts in the first couple weeks are far worse than strats that are figured out further into the tier, and when that happens it takes a herculean effort to get pf to change their ways. The strats will work, don't get me wrong. And there's pros and cons to this behavior. When "everyone" in pf uses the same strat then it helps ensure that everyone is familiar with the strat being used ahead of time, and not needing to worry about needing to learn (or teach) the strat because someone has never done it that way before. On the other hand, sometimes the difference in easy or simplicity between a pf strat and a strat realized later can be night and day.
This tier as a whole was so well made.... P1S is a nice introduction, P2S requires a bit more attention because of some difficulty spikes during the fight (looking at you, Flow 3), P3S ramps up the overrall difficulty by a lot and requires really good prep, and P4S is this beautifully made longer fight. I can't wait for the next tier.
Flow 3 definitely took us a while to get the hang of, mostly because we kept confusing the "stand in a line to soak Confluence" with the "stack in the corner to avoid getting hit by the arrow people." Was so proud of the team the first time we one and done'd P2S for the weekly clear.
Yeah P3S is a bit problematic in my opinion. I feel like P2S is barely harder than P1S while P3S is a lot harder than P2S. So I think P2S could have been a little harder to ease the curve. Looking back, P2S had 2 complicated mechanics: the arrow mechanics (especially the last 2) and the triangle/square limit cutter mechanic. If you removed those 2 mechanics, it is on the same level than extreme trials. And even among those 2 mechanics, I feel like the third set of arrows is the real challenge here.
Some people criticize FFXIV for having so many abilities tied to this 2-minute window, but this is something that allows the devs to make these beautifully designed (and balanced!) fights. And, on the topic of job design, some people also say that jobs/classes in FFXIV are too similar to each other (if we are comparing jobs of the same role). I don't agree with that, I think that every job has its own unique flavor, but I can see why people would think otherwise. If you look at two tanks, you will see that they share a template. My point here is that the fact that they share this template allows the devs to make these intricate fights without requiring strats to be tailor-made to whatever composition you are running. Sure, there are ideal compositions, but they are not mandatory. Raid design and job design in this game are really special. While I obviously see the value of having wildly different builds, abiliites, compositions, etc... FFXIV makes a strong case for trading some of that freedom for a more acessible and polished experience.
I feel like P1S was purposely made more accessible in anticipation of the influx of newer players especially from other MMORPG's. It's definitely the easiest 1st fight-of-tier out of all the tiers, especially compared to Oppressor, Ramuh, etc.
I'd say together the first couple omega fights were easier. Alte Roite was in the same weight class as P1S, but Catastrophe was way easier than P2S. The point still stands that the first fight or two tends to be pretty straightforward, especially in the first tier. Heck, the only reason A1S was as bad as it was was wonky scaling and also the massive jump in job difficulty so no one knew how to play for a while
@@wrenmarshall2101 I kinda gave them a pass on Catastrophe because the shiny, hey look guys, ALL NEW duty action button, but you're right it is much easier than P2S. At least Exdad made up for it being one of the better final tier fights. Better than P4S in my opinion.
So glad to hear that you had so much fund and such a good experience in your first savage :D I hope you're gonna continue to have fun with them. Thank you so much for sharing this!
Did you clear with it? Does it allow more deadheads to clear? If so it is technically effective. Even if it is painful and hurts your soul to see braindead temp.
That's what I love with FF Savage / Extremes. Hit the nail on the head regarding the whole "tricky mechanics happen during buff alignment / burst windows". I originally thought it just lined up (early days of ARR into HW) but have to believe now they intentionally and absolutely make your mental focus split for mechanics and personal rotation. I also get that explaining to new raiders where yes there might be less "dynamic" aspects compared to random AoEs or other debuffs ala WoW, but there are also, I think, a lot more micro adjustments you work out during your own rotation, buffs, and raid utility. At least for Bard I feel that way, other jobs vary. I agree on the strategize pre or post pull though; while you can adjust on the fly, I've certainly found myself far more focused on a Savage fight in FF than Normal or Heroic in WoW but again, two different fight styles and design philosophies presented here. All that aside, loved raiding in FF so far and plan to continue for a long time!
Congratulations Matt. I've also started to do harder raid content lately and I must say it's really fun. I didn't think I'd enjoy the raiding at first, but when you learn the fight and nail it properly you feel really good about it. And very soon I'm also going to attempt UCOB, and if you and/or Michael ever goes in to Ultimates I'd love to see your takes on it too.
i started ucob recently too, and ive cleared uwu a few times now. and i will say, if it's your first ultimate. good luck. and the fights at least mechanically go a looooooot faster compared to savage or extreme.
My static started progging P4S yesterday and in the first phase there's this tether/virus thing. When we understood what we had to do and the DPS had to grab the tethers, we grabbed them and moved in synchrony. We literally went "wow that looks so pretty, feels like we should have some classical music playing".
Trying to clear this savage tier finally got me comfortable with pooling resources for a burst later, or holding off on starting a big burst window for a bit to wait for the boss to be more vulnerable. In the end, just like PVP, staying alive is the most important factor
I cleared p1s yesterday for the first time and got very fast into it. We had some callouts but the fight is so well indicated that it's easy to tell for yourself what has to be done. Pugstrategies take away the solving a problem together, but when I did diamond weapon and others min ilvl no echo completely blind, we worked out everything as a group, which was the most fun. And the beaty about this hard fights that I saw in extremes over duty finder with randoms, they start off completely spread and uncoordinated and end up being a big unit where everyone holds their weight. And for some fights, it is necessary that everyone knows what they are doing to clear the fight, because one mistake can easily kill others in the process. The entry level of savage also has shown me the major flaws I saw in WoW. I was able to fully prep my tank in a night crafting session and gear him up with my tomestones to make him savage ready. The people I played with were people that had their first ever savage clear a few weeks ago, no one is exceptional good or tryhard. Some play only with mouse and click, some have even disabilities that make it harder. But at the end, everyone can learn this fights if they work hard enough and that is something that I don't see in endgame content in WoW. Gating so many people out of content takes away the diversity of character you meet. And it gets boring to only raid with sweaty neckbeards that go back to grinding right after the raid.
Managing your mental stack is a huge part of what makes games actually difficult. CoreAGaming has a great video on how this relates to fighting games (missing the jump in because you're watching for a fireball). Its why you get hit by extremely choreographed moves in Devil May Cry while you're trying to do a sick combo, its why Starcraft players lose bases to invisible men while microing a fight and its a huge part of why FFXIV raid design is so satisfying. And its why the argument for "accessibility" through mods fall apart. The game is designed to require a certain amount of concentration from you and sometimes you miss things because there isn't an airhhorn blaring at you to remember the mechanic but that's where the difficulty lies. If you can't remember mechanics and you have a robot do it for you, that reduces the load on your mental stack greatly and makes everything easier. Yeah, its hard to do the dance and press the right combination of 8 buttons while weaving True North at the right time so you don't miss out on positional damage as a Dragoon, but using a mod that gives you a 1 button PVP combo is absolutely going to trivialize that mental strain and muscle memory that you have to learn. And managing your mental stack is why seemingly simple mechanics are so satisfying to pull off in FFXIV. When you perfectly dodge the mechanics during your burst window, squeeze out one extra dual cast and backflip to the safespot right before you need to so you can maximize uptime, that's what makes the game fun.
As someone who's been savage raiding since HW, it never even occurred to me that buff windows align with mechanics. Like I've noticed that on some fights you have to shift pot windows or adjust your rotation to account for forced downtime, but its never clicked to me that even mechanics with full uptime like Intemperance are aligned with buff windows as well.
It's probably way easier to notice now that every job has its burst window changed to 2 minutes instead of doing their own thing. Most of the 2 minute mark this tier is tied with a mechanic designed with a forced downtime, or when everyone will be spread apart.
One thing about the early Savage fights in a tier is that the experience is very different from when they're first released to the state they're in now. For the most part, the difficulty of executing the mechanics stays the same - a slight step up from Extreme - but gear does actually make a massive difference to the difficulty of a fight. For example, in week one P2S it was a *requirement* to use mitigation on certain raid-wide attacks or it would wipe the whole raid - now you can get away with not really bothering. Similarly, any mistakes (deaths, damage downs, etc.) could make it near impossible to clear enrage. For PF P3S can be somewhat of a notorious wall because not only is it a significant step up in mechanics, it also becomes much, much harder to clear if there are any significant mistakes, even if they don't cause a wipe. P1S and P2S can afford some dead weight as long as said dead weight doesn't wipe the group, but P3S really demands everyone to be on the ball for the whole fight, which is a lot more of a similar experience to how P1S and P2S were in week one prog groups. (BTW I didn't mean this to come off as a "it was harder when it was first released" comment undermining any achievement. I mainly wanted to comment on the difference gear does make, because it's especially potent with the earlier fights in the tier, and you made a comment about it being a bit underwhelming - but I can assure you at release every little upgrade makes a big difference.)
I think you described it very well. FF makes the content smartly so that it slowly nerfs itself over time. As you get better gear and higher item levels the fights get easier. In 6.1 they allow anyone to instantly get ilevel 590 gear as well as allow non savage raiders access to the upgrade materials for 600 gear. And then a little later they'll make it so that non raiders can get a 600 weapon. Then before the next patch they'll open the tier up for free farming meaning that all the people that cleared early can come back and help people prog/farm the content without penalty.
You will stand on the corner or side of your marker and you will like it and if you don't I will shame you when you inevitably assume that we should have read your mind.
It's funny because I'll see NA players share macros in discord and use them personally for their own understanding. But then when we load in they're nowhere to be found lol
I have only seen a macro once and have it actually been used and it was in E9S. I was completely confused and had no idea where to go. I'm also sometimes directionally challenged so when I think NW I sometimes go NE instead...
Over the course of a weekend, I've gone from not joining any practice party fearing I was gonna ruin everything, to be the guy who comes in, sits people down and tells them "stand here, and here, move here when this is cast". Even though I've yet to get a kill yet, jumping into a practice party that struggles with the very first mechanic and see everyone slowly having that "oh, I get it" moment is infecting. Honestly it makes me hate getting synced down even more during the daily roulettes.
And that brain space is why I dont do savage. I usually play after work? So I'm already exhausted and just want to relax. And then going into hard content that requires me to concentrate? I cant do that....
Gotta say P4S is the peak of the individual decisions looking like a hive mind.When it all comes together and it looks beautiful and planned, especially on Akanthai 4 and Curtain Call. And I've done all savage fights in Shb and EW on time.
I'm so glad for you that macro culture is alive in EU. We don't have macros for fights in NA; we throw down a (couple) marker(s) and place ourselves in them for visual representations. And half the time players don't move anyway amd we have to hope to high heaven they know what they're doing. I've been waiting patiently for when you'd start trying Savage, excited at seeing you guys give our high-end raiding a try. I've found a lot of fun raiding, and as of the time of this post I've been in a raid-hungry mood. I think the last week, I've spent about 20 hours just helping learning parties, letting people get prog or clears that they've been working so hard to get. PF has issues with consistency at times, and I like to take that away.
I just started savage this week after years of giving myself excuses not to do it, my situation was different though, a spot opened in my fc static so I got my clears much easier than PF because I was the only one that had to learn and everyone else knew them already. I was expecting savage to be much harder than it was tbh but I had the benefit of discord fallouts and a team that already knew what they were doing, I'm looking forward to next tier though
Quick FYI as someone who plays on Aether (And more specifically Gilgamesh), I don't see a lot of Party Finder Macros. The EU servers and JP servers certainly do, though with slight differences in the labeling system. Keep in mind this is a simplification of things but the observations tend to be pretty spot on... The JP servers adopt whatever the most consistent strategy is. regardless of if it is the optimal way to do the fight, if it has the best chance of success, that is what people will learn and do. The EU servers and JP servers both use Macros to communicate particular mechanics. NA will Type things out in chat and argue/discuss things for 5-15 minutes before diving in. ^-- I have personally observed this. Maybe we just like to talk (I know I do). Though, learning parties are great, and as long as people know you're new or unfamiliar with a mechanic (preferably have seen a guide if the content is more than a couple weeks old), things tend to be pretty chill. :) I didn't really get into Extremes or Savages (current content, at least) until Shadowbringers was near its end... I had a Triple Triad goal to fulfill and met a couple of high end raiders (one was PUGing all of Eden Savage) who helped get me over my fears of high end content. I tend to have a very "Let's go again" attitude, so that definitely helps. As long as the timer allows, I will continue throwing myself at a boss.
After 2 years of playing I finally jumped into savage for the first time this tier as well! I had so much anxiety over it previously and I just had to force myself to try. Within 2 weeks I cleared all the way through P3S in party finder! Working on P4S now with so much more confidence in myself than I ever had before. You hit the nail on the head regarding fight design. In FFXIV it really is about everyone nailing personal responsibility, resulting in overall group success. I’m addicted lol
well done on your first savage! on the note of macros one of the commonly memed about things was how EU/JP used such macros but they dont really use them in NA. Coming from the Materia server we had a blend of people from all over the data centres and a lot of previous NA players were saying how macros are honestly such a game changer for their pugging experience. its so good and I just love how it allows for the most efficient, safest, consistent strategy to get the clear. maybe stream your raid prog sometime and drag Mike along :P
P1S and P2S are fantastic introductory fights. P3S is the reality check that says, ok now try harder. P4S is tough, but very rhythmic. Once you get a feel for everything, it really feels like a dance imo.
With the normal raids no longer loot locked too, you can basically get a whole set of item level 580 gear without spending gil. More than adequate to start savage raiding.
Savage content design around 1 and 2 minute burst window is fantastic when your own gameplay and rotation mastery lines up with boss mechanics, it's such a good feeling to see it flow so smoothly, and especially when 8 people have individual responsibilities on top of it. A beautiful dance.
P1s, and in the same extent Eden's Gate: Resurrection (Savage), back when it released were amazing intro to raiding savages. It was like; you know the fight in their normal, story driven gameplay, but can you use that knowledge, and take it a step further in solving the steps to the dance, and can you have the DPS required, as a team, to finish the fight before enrage in x minutes. Two fights I enjoyed back in Eden tiers were Furor (Garuda, Ifrit, Raktapaksa) and Anamorphosis. The fights were showing mechanics individually and gradually built on top of itself, and at a turning point, the fights then started to pair mechanics and throw them at you, or, can you complete them in quick succession, while maintaining your rotation, and having to modify with where you can greed, or where you can play safe.
P1S is 100% the best savage content to jump in. It’s so forgiving and once you get it, he turns into a loot piñata. However, the difficulty spike of the later fights will catch you off guard. P3S is normally referred to as “p3sd” in my FC lol. It actually killed our static and I’m trying to form another
great to see you trying out savage content and providing your commentary on it, i only started savage for the first time this tier and was very nervous going in. However, once in it's a blast
welcome to the savage raiding content! ^^ glade you enjoy it ... (just the 2nd / new tier is harder / more intense than any tier since HW / ARR.., it might be a bit scary, if your new to it, when playing it the 1st time.., don't give up!)
A really satisfying place to reach with my static was being able to do some of these savages without any comms at all. The dance eventually becomes so synchronized that you don't need to call stuff out anymore.
the thing about ffxiv's meta is that it's that every playable job is so ridiculously well balanced that your skill with the job you're playing and your knowledge of the fight matter significantly more than literally any other variable
Thanks a ton for the video! My static so far has gotten up to the fourfold shackles part and can't clear yet. I really want to clear it but due to my schedule I can't always be with them on static nights. I've been debating party finder and have been super scared to try it, but I think I'll give it a go from what you've said
Vulnerability used to the be typical savage debuff you get from failing a mech in savage (a mainstay since ARR), but they changed that in the final tier of Eden. This is cause they realized that people would sometimes just eat a aoe, just to get a higher uptime dmg, and force others to adjust to them. So the devs answer to that was to switch it to a dmg down, so that those players would be forced to do the mech correctly, or suffer a worse loss in dmg. Also, macros are DC depending, if you tried to use a macro on Aether, people would go 'wtf!?' and start to argue lol. We use markers here. P2S is fairly easy, so you shouldn't encounter too much issue when you'll do it, but P3S is a huge pug wall, with a definite hike in difficulty from the prior 2.
Glad to see that you enjoyed it. This tier has a pretty smooth difficulty curve, though P2s to P3s is a bit of a jump. Find people you trust in PF, see if they're down to raid, and go get em.
Also, the way this game increases difficult is by increasing the number of mechanics that require all 8 people to do something and be alive. P1s only has a few of them, while P4s has much more of them. This means that everyone must be very familiar with all mechanics, and think about variations and potential movements that they have to do. This can all still be done with discord, but tests everyone's knowledge more and more heavily. Discord's purpose here is to allow healers to communicate what they're doing, and let shotcallers remind people about what mechanic is next, and any adjustments that need to be made.
I would love to see Blizzard do a raid tier of 4-5 fights instead of feeling forced to have a few good fights and 8+ fights no one remembers at the end of the tier. They have fantastic raid design but they try too hard to shove in as many bosses as possible. It would allow them more creativity with encounter design and QA testing. If they cut down on they amount of fights, they could do them through internal testing rather than spoiling the fights through PTR. Its a dream, but I doubt they would ever do it.
Blizzard needs to commit to designing raids you can just do in under an hour for the people who don't have times to make an all-night thing of it. That's honestly wanna of the best things about ffxiv raiding, no matter what the difficulty ranking of it, once you actually learn the fight you can do in an hour or less with a competent team. that's not catering to casuals, that's just waking up to the fact that most gamers also have a day job.
The first fight is always usually pretty nice to new players however the 2nd fight usually throws that out the window and teaches you that you need to know your rotations and to focus on mechanics (e6s prog was hell)
tbf E9 was the absolute opposite of nice as well. Not super hard or anything, but one person dying to basically *any* mechanic would often cause someone else to die which would easily cascade into a wipe. P1 is literally just fourfold now, intemperance fuck-ups are survivable with a damage down.
Do NOT use the tome gear from the start of the expansion for savage when this late in the tier*. Moonward gear is so bad. You want the newer radiant tome gear (ilvl 590). Crafted gear is hands down the best way to get into a new tier, though. 580 is more than respectable for the first few fights, and is enough to clear the entire tier with solid play.
You both guys, old wow players have become one of my favourite FFXIV channels (even tho I know you're not only covering ffxiv) :D thanks for the videos! I love your content!
You know, WoW was built like FFXIV at one point where all you really needed was dungeon blues before rolling into raids. And later, instead of dungeon blues it was dungeon epics or epics from the badge vendor. But for whatever reason, it was pushed away.
This is why I love progging as a Black Mage. I love figuring out which opener is the best, finding the best place to cast spell for this phase of mechanic, and look for optimal ways to use movement cooldowns.
you are griefing your group by playing BLM in prog xD Just play RDM, it helps with learning the fight, makes longer scout pulls possible. Play BLM after first clear and prog is over, there is no reason not to.
@@ich3730 Dunno about that one chief, progging on BLM is fine if they are competent enough, especially faster clears. Battle raise is a meme in week 1/2 clears cause of the dps check haha
Since Heavenwsward, the first 2 bosses are pugable (EX difficulty), the 3rd is EX++ difficulty (can be done with a loooot of tries but GOOD LUCK to find a good pug...also with so many tries will make no difference to being with a static) and the 4th one is destroyer of pugs, must have an static. At least during the patch release window.
You know I remember a time (before endwalker) where Matt was talking about how great the raiding scene is in this game, for literal hours on end during the bellular podcast. turns out, as expected, he hadn't done a single piece of raiding content, since this is his first time. I'm not even trying to gatekeep at this point but how could you claim to know what the raiding scene is like if you hadn't even gotten near it?
PF macros is really made me learn savage easier I just clip it and put it on 2nd monitor and look at it when there a new mech or i die a mech i go like ah "i was wrong position on that mech" Making a character on elemental were macros are prevalent was pretty good decision for me also pretty rare but some macros has some mitigation plans which is really useful for tank overwriting reprisal and such(though pf can kinda just wing mitigation after 4 weeks maybe) from what exp week 1 savage P1S-Learning where to stand P2S-Do you're party know how to press their mitigation? P3S-Do you know how to spread? P4S-Apply everything what you learned so far and GLHF
The raidsize of 8 is really magical. 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps. A lot of mechanics revolve around it and it takes out the RNG of who gets what. You as an individual actually learn the fight. For example WoL EX's Braver targets 1 tank, 1 dps, 1 healer for a massive frontal cone depending on where they stand. So the solution to it is quite simple, both tanks in the front, healers on the side and all dps on the back. If it were 3 random players it could be where you as an individual don't have to do anything for that mechanic for multiple pulls in a row, and suddenly you have to do something. This is why I really wish that WoW would reduce the mythic raidsize. Also a big upside is that because of 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps you can design a fight with it in mind. Tanks have for example a cast interrupt, since every savage fight will have a tank you can include a mechanic that needs to be interrupted and it will always be covered no matter the composition. Healers have debuff clensing. etc. This all works together extremely well on why pugging in XIV is just such a good experience.
I wonder if the fights being "dances" is the result of them being designed to be cleared in party finder. I never thought about this when I criticized savage. (versus heroic or mythic.) Being able to clear without committing to a static and without using voice coms is a massive plus for a lot of people.
Have you thought about going back and checking out Final Fantasy 11, which is celebrating it's 20th anniversary right now? Today was my first time playing, and man, it's nostalgic playing such and old school MMO.
As I've learned through Zepla, those macros aren't part of the NA DC experience -- we type things out like plebians, which probably results in more confusion, in all fairness!
It really clicked for me on P4S during Act 2. I was trying to understand everyone's job and kept messing it up until I realized I only needed to know my part.
congratz on your Kill Matt. Tbh i often have a Big Problem when it comes to "PF Strats". Usually these Strats are invented during Week 1 Prog. There working but there far from Optimal. But once a Strat is established most ppl refuse to even try a differend, maybe even way easier or optimal Strat. As a Raider once you know how a Mechanic works you should be able to Adjust regardless of the Strategy. Since we cleared P4s we played "Uptime Act 2" and back then our SAM wasnt able to Raid for a Week so we searched in PF. But once the DPS heared of this Strat they immediatly leaved the Group even it is way easier to execute as a Melee. The perfect example is E8s "Ilya Light Rampant" once this Strategy was prominent EVERYONE in PF played this Strategy. Even it was unsafe, unsecure, unoptimal and a Hell to execute in PF. Even Ilya himself often said in his Livestreams that this Strategy is Bullshit. But it worked for them Week 1 and after that his Group played a differend Strategy while the PF used this for nearly a Year.
Good luck on the tier my guy! It’s the first one I’ve ever cleared while current with a static I put together in February with friends and friends of friends. We are starting UWU prog next week.
Oh, sweet summer child xD To be fair later floors are still puggable, but they definitely benefit from having comms. The thing about PF adopting the best strats tho... xD We had Mr. Happy brambles not that long ago as the standard PF strat for E9s...
I helped some friends go into PF to try P1S, and had to scramble to learn an actual strat for Intemperance - my static cleared it day 2 before there even was a strat to learn, we just fixed spots and shouted if we needed to swap!
as someone who has cleared everything since 1st tier of shadowbringer on savage this game is way more accessible to endgame. you'll hear horror stories about some bosses (halicarnasses, p3s and a couple others) but all in all they are enjoyable. to say nothing of the ultimates. at the time of this comment I have cleared UwU (5 or 6 times?) and TEA 17 times and progressing dragon reprise. I love this game for far more than than savage but I always love clearing a tier with my static.
this tier is one of the best times to start, because it gives you a fairly good difficult curve. P3S is a monster but other than that its a fantastic tier
P3S pugging has damn near turned me into a Blasphemy. Haven’t tried it since WHM got reworked, and maybe with the gear boost people have now I won’t have to just stare impotently while that bird enrages. Again. It’s fun though!! Weirdly. In a masochistic way. Good luck!!
I'm done with the tier (had a static) and I've started lending myself out to other statics when they need a sub, so they don't have to take their chances in PF!
And by the way, for anyone here curious about trying savage, P1S is legitimately THE BEST place to get your feet wet.
This entire tier feels really well rounded, a bit of everything as you go
I got my feet wet in E9S. But yeah. P1S is a really good place right now to try savage. A lot of parties progging it and it‘s rather easier compared to fights like P3S.
Meanwhiel the dps check is just a little higher then the 3rd extreme fight.
@@NBSgamesAT there’s a dps check in p1s? Legitimately never seen it. I can’t imagine how bad dps has to be to see it lmao.
However, best not get your feet wet in P2S
True. My first Savage was E9S and maybe it’s because I got much better since then, but imo it was much harder than P1S. That boss was a lesson in humility, I thought I knew how to play the game, and then E9S absolutely destroyed me and made me understand how trash I was and how little I understood the game. And yeah, I eventually cleared Eden’s Promise, and was 10 times better as a player by the end of it. P1S seems to be more gentle towards new raiders, so maybe this wrecking is not too savage xD
I think you missed one core design philosophy - The fight will introduce you to a single mechanic one at a time. The further you move on into the fight they start asking you to do it multiple mechanics at once or a more intricate variant of them.
Of course the hardest part of the raid tier is the one or two fights that do not follow that.
agree they layer mechanics on top of each other especially for p1s and p2s which i love as a design philosophy, less so for p3s and p4s where they just mostly introduce just new mechanics to solve
Wow raids literally do this lol they'll show mechanics then do overlaps then add more mechanics
It's not unique
@@Sammysapphira Never said it was unique, just said it was core to how they design a lot of the fights. Sorry I'm not aware of everything happening in every MMO ever. I bailed on WoW back in WotLK, never went back.
I went on a mostly action MMO oriented fix for awhile which tend to be mostly "If you dont have twitch reflexes and low ping, you die"
“No one seems to mind what job you bring”
The only MMO I’ve ever played was FFXIV and I have to say I was confused when people came from other games and found this weird. This is how game design/balancing is supposed to be, it’s sad to see it as an advantage of XIV over other games, when all games should have been like this in the first place.
"“No one seems to mind what job you bring”
Which isn't entirely true anyway. FFXIV players are just as much meta slaves as players in other MMO's.
The reason it's like this in the first place is primarily due to the jobs being very rigid. In general, there's only one correct way to play each job, with no room for specs outside of something minor like crit SMN vs. sps SMN. The devs not wasting all their time trying to balance a huge mess of customization is a blessing, but it definitely has enough disadvantages for me to say not every game should be like that.
@@trinkeslato9598 theres a difference between having preferred jobs and just writing off half the available jobs as "non-viable". Most games have classes that people just wont bother taking, while XIV seems to be more of the "take any job, NIN preferred" as the mindset.
@@Shiirow "Most games have classes that people just wont bother taking, while XIV seems to be more of the "take any job, NIN preferred" as the mindset."
I mean, Party finder has been like that a lot of times. Even now before MCH was buffed ever so slightly, because they brought nothing that BRD and DNC didn't do better (DNC was just as shit before savage tuning) and the only correct play was to play BRD in P1-4S.
People in statics felt they were inting their teammates if they played MCH or DNC because of how spread the damage disparity was in output to the raid.
Which in itself is kinda baffling, the gear set on the jobs never changes, it's a set in stone scenario with no moving parts and even then you have games like WoW with infinite more possibilities actually having an overall better damage profile across the board.
Even stuff like that echoes through the higher end guilds, just look at amount of kills in DSR and compare the amount of clears between DNC, MCH and BRD.
@@Qazqi it's a double edged sword. The idea of WoW having effectively 30-odd classes is great in theory... but in practice half of them might as well not be there if you wanna do high-end content because of poor game balancing. If you can pull off the level of customization WoW has in theory, great... but you damn well better be prepared to put in the work that comes with it
otherwise stick to rigid class design with a lot of variation in gameplay per class/
One of my favorite things mid prog is the tiny tailoring you're doing to your own play mid pull. "Ah I'll use this ogcd here instead as healer" or "I'll gap close this here instead of this later thing", everyone is playing their own minigame within a dance. Fun stuff.
"I'll stay here for uptime, I can just Shukuchi to safety before the cast finishes." - me, before I misclick Shukuchi and blink into the kill wall.
Uptime strats are only uptime strats if you don't die trying them, it turns out.
My actual favorite thing is being able to time mechanics by where you are in your rotation.
"Okay, this is Brotherhood 3, which means it's time to hug a tank for stacks."
@@proy3 Also known as "2 min burst window coming up soon, time for fight designers to troll me by making this the hectic part"
The best feeling i had in a while was progging p3s as AST and realizing i could line up Stellar Detonation with Darkened fire and hit all ads at once basically finishing the mechanic if i got a good crit
@@proy3 yea lol as drk for first ew savage I know that intemperances is coming when I get salted earth back 😂
"Macros ... the community attached itself to the most effective strategy"
laughs in NA
I've actually never been a big fan of the macro thing. I think half the fun of doing content like this is hopping in Discord (even with strangers) and just shooting the shit while you get it done. That's the most memorable part of an MMO for me. Then once you've got a few kills down you can join a farm group for that super efficient, no-talk kill-spree.
*Cries in LR memes*
Lol so true. Someone tried to macro us the JP strat for EX3 and I was even more confused than the NA strat of assigning position visually.
@@Xbob42 that’s fine on the first week but if you’re trying to farm for weeks on end, having 1 macro means everyone is consistent and you don’t have to adjust every time
@@danielnoh1520 Everyone's already consistent anyway because the strat is in the PF description. I mean I'm sure there's weird cases, but this has been the norm for me for years.
They always makes savage like this, the first and second tier is made so everyone can make it.
1- Boss: Just to check if your brain works, and if you can follow your rotation while standing still. The fight tempo is REALLY slow and you have 4+ seconds to resolve mechanics. DPS check is non existent unless you have too much deaths.
2- Boss : Fight is not individualized, you start having more heavy AoE that need mitigation. Making wrong turns starts killing your whole party, not only you. Fighting tempo is slow as P1, but time to resolve some mechanics are reduced.
3-Boss: Is when the fighting tempo starts not being so slow and sluggish. You have tighter everything, DPS checks, healing checks, but mechanics are boss focused.
4-Boss: Is when the fun starts, because the fighting tempo finally gets fast enough so you have do "dance" while doing it. Tighter everything, but mechanics are not only boss focused but boss starts using the arena to do mechanics.
1:01 Gear might be "less important" compared to other loot-oriented games like WoW. But the reason for that is that any content released in FFXIV is meant to be technically clearable week 1. This means Savage has to be tuned for penta-melded crafted gear (which is the best gear you can acquire in week 1). Though clearing the tier week 1 is no joke tbh, and that's not meant to be a goal for the average player, but that's beside the point.
That being said, there is a significant difference in output between someone who's BiS and someone who's still gearing up (even if they're max iLvl but with tomestone gear instead of a proper BiS set). That difference adds up when we're talking about 8 players. And Ultimate, at release, is tuned around players having the Savage tier's BiS (the best gear they could have at release).
So, in short, if you're a player who just casually does Savage at their own pace, are in no rush, and care little for competitiveness, then gear is "not important" for you (besides glamour - the _true_ endgame). But if you're a competitive player who enjoys optimization and speed running, then gear is _absolutely_ important, and getting major pieces upgraded (e.g. weapon and chest) can be quite exciting when you see the significant increase in performance. This is the same as any other vertical progression MMO. The only difference is that better gear is never truly "mandatory" in FFXIV, except when you're doing Ultimate where BiS is needed.
Yes but you can GET the gear you need. In WoW it’s down to RNG if you have bis gear so you run the same dungeon 100 times to get it if you want to stay competitive. Now imagine one of your bis came from beast tribes, another from treasure maps, anther from gemstones, anther from a rare fate, another from hunts- and you have to have all that done to start savage. That’s what wow gearing is like, it’s a huge difference.
They tried the RNG thing in FFXIV back with Diadem's first iteration. Everyone hated it so much they killed the content and recycled Diadem to become the gatherer's paradise we know it as today.
Yes there is a difference between week 1 gear and BiS and this can add up if all 8 players have BiS gear, but not to the same degrees it does in WoW. In WoW there are some mechanic that are supposed to kill you if you fail week 1, but will not kill you if you have good enough gear. You can litteraly ignore some mechanics that way.
Also, while you will clear faster with BiS gear in FF14, I don't think you will be able to skip a significant portion of the fight either. I mean sure maybe you will skip the third set of arrows in P2S but not a lot more than that. While I feel like BiS gear in WoW can allow you to skip half the fight or more.
Well, better gear leads to more lenient fights. That sort of ease may not be mandatory... but it's nice to have when you're just farming so that you don't struggle against enrage.
My favourite savage fight I’ve done, e12s p2, has some of the best mechanics for the “everyone has a specific role that comes together” fight design that feels so satisfying to pull off correctly. You have to set up rewind points you will get teleported to in reverse order based on what debuffs you get. Once the last spot is set everyone freezes and you see everyone zipping all around the arena as various spells are going off, and it feels so elegant when it all lines up it feels amazing.
The difficulty progression of Normal → EX → Savage 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → Ultimate is incredibly smooth IMO.
I can totally understand the anxiety that people feel when starting harder content, especially for the very first time! But the graduating difficulty is lovely.
It's like, by the time you're totally comfortable with one step, you're ready to try the next, if you so choose. Climbing higher and higher at your own pace is hard sometimes, and especially in PF, but it's doable and (at least to me) it feels rewarding. The first time I downed a savage tier and finished farming it, it was in PF, and I felt so proud and accomplished when I was done.
The magic never fully goes away IMO either. I've only downed one Ultimate and don't have much time to try more Ultimate groups, so every Savage tier is a treat for me to finish. Such a relief.
And lowkey, it feels even MORE rewarding to help friends through it, just to see how happy and accomplished they feel!
One thing I love about PF even though PFing content makes me anxious is that people are usually willing to teach. There are some absolute god-tier raiders in this game who just hang out in PF hopping around practice parties because they understand that playing in less-skilled groups not only improves the raid scene but also improves them personally as a raider.
Very different attitude all around than you see in a lot of games.
It makes me pretty happy when FF14 players go out of their comfort zone to try high end content and end up liking it
I want a follow-up on this video once Matt completes the whole raid tier!
Eventually you kinda get into the groove for a lot of fights even if there are some mechanics variations in between pulls. My favorite part of prog is getting to a point where I can just vibe as mechanics are happening around me.
Agreed, I love that feeling where you're relaxed and just kind of living in the fight. Jamming out to the music and working collaboratively with your friends can be pretty relaxing
The first week of Savage, 3 of us decided to pug wing one, since several of the regulars weren't free. We spent 9 hours in one group, with 3 people who had never done a savage kill before. It was a fun time teaching them how to handle the fight and the common courtesies of prog groups (have materia in your gear, eat food, use potions if you're hitting enrage, etc...)
Our black mage pulled the absolute banger parse of bottom 1%, but that just goes to show that ANYONE can clear this stuff if they have patience and do their best lol
Yeah I’ve PF’d through P1S, P2S, P3S, and working through P4S. P3S difficulty changes a lot (math is hard). And then you have the P4S party finder groups that are supposed to be phase 2 prog, but turn out that everyone dies to Phase 1 mechanics and can’t get to the checkpoint. It gets frustrating, but still very possible and fun!
Pinax is the hardest mechanic and its in phase 1
@@benkask96 completely agree, I can get through phase 2 very easily and it feels like a victory lap. Whereas static or pugs pinax feels like a toss up if it will go smoothly. Imo too much to manage at once that inevitably someone will mess it up.
@@benkask96 once you learn Pinax, and I mean really LEARN it, not just memorize where to go based on each pattern, but learn what each little detail in it means, it clicks hard and you never mess it up again, unless someone kills you on it. I think the main problem is that people tend to follow callouts or memorize toolboxes more than they tend to actually learn the intricacies of the mechanics, and that causes a lot of accidents.
The math in p3s gets a lot easier once you realize that you don't actually have to do math at all. All the numbers are divided up into two clusters of up to 4 dots. If you get a number greater than 4 then you know the cluster on the right is always going to be 4 dots, so you just look at the cluster on the left, so seven for example, will look like a cluster of 3 dots on the left, and 4 dots on the right. That means you go stand at 3. 5 meanwhile, is a cluster of 4 on the right, and 1 on the left, so stand at 1. The only exception to this is 6, which will be 2 clusters of 3, but it's pretty easy to remember that 3 will always mean stand at 2.
I feel Diamond Weapon EX was a practice ground for P3S math
Its also in savage when you learn to tweek your rotations: Maybe not use that dmg buff there, maybe use your knockback invul there but not there, when he does that thats the moment my buff runs out (if I dont mess up) ... It comes with time, practice, and some more time. And even if you know every move... you'll mess up regardless XD
Also, should you ever find yourself in a static helping out... expect them to handel things waaaaay diffrent than anything PF considers "normal": I know thay my static has been a culture shock for many unsuspecting temporary acquantances XD
The static I'm in is usually so friendly that we adjust to PF strat when we have PF randos filling. But for us it's also mostly smaller details that we do differently since PF strats basically work in a static too
Sounds like you have a bad static if it’s a “culture shock” when one or two people sub in
@@emiach We blind procc most of the time and rarely bother with what PF declares as standard - and why would we? If someone cant joind for the day, we look for a random player and explain our strats :) Sometimes our strats are easier, sometimes theyre not - but it works for us.
On that last point, my static handles intemperance way different from most parties, and it tends to mess a lot of people up. One common thing I've seen as a more minor version of that is just how many times the PF strat is just a reversed version of something my static ends up doing, which is always a laugh and easy to get sorted, in most cases.
@@TheAvengineer Sounds familiar :D
BTW, macro's aren't a very common thing in NA. I've pretty much nearly never seen them. Instead, we put down waymarkers and stand around it to claim a clock position. If anything else needs to be mentioned, then the specific parties will talk it out. For example, the tanks may discuss which of the Pitiless Flails of Grace/Purgation to invuln, when to tankswap or take back aggro, ect.
Yeah i have an NA alt and i think its a waste of time the way you do it with waymarks. Macros are way better and more efficient, everyone uses them in EU, it is THE standard and i wish NA used them too. MrHappy has been trying to push macros in NA but with no success.
I'm the same mind as Aldra. Macros are cleaner and give all thr info you need at a glance instead of fucking with way marks for.minutes. but of course us NA players refuse to read :/
@@skylarsimes8 Too true, I wish we used macros too... My friend tries to throw them in some pfs at times to see what happens, and it is mostly chaos until someone puts down a marker XP.
Glad you're enjoying Savage so far. Please also make videos on your P2-4 experiences when you get through them if you can. P3S especially since it's a massive difficulty spike, I'd be really interested to see what you think of that.
P1S is a great party finder fight. 100%. My wife and I did it in PF while looking for a static... and it was a great time.
P1S is only marginally more challenging than extremes. P2S is only marginally more challenging than P1S. P3S and P4S are bigger steps up. That being said, it is a choreography so when you do get all of it, everything feels pretty smooth. I could do P4S as a DPS with my eyes more or less closed now.
Gear also helps a lot - for example P2S on launch was a nightmare for a lot of PF groups because even the people who memorized the choreography weren’t performing well enough DPS-wise to beat enrage. Currently, given how overgeared people are with tome gear + upgrades, upgraded crafted gear and aglia the only challenge left is the choreography.
The best and really only fair way to gauge difficulty of savage content is on launch because the learning curve is designed to near disappear the closer you get to the .1/.3/.5 patches so that more people can jump in.
How does E5S n E9s stack up against p1 to p4 relative speaking
@@rektl2036 its no comparison because the Later fights are ment to be harder even when there the first Fights of the Tier. E1-3 was a Cakewalk back then. I think p3 is way harder than e3. And if i compare e4 with p4 i think e4s was way harder in terms of dmg and mitigation Checks because of the Lack of a Doorboss. Once you pleared p4s 1 your nearly done with the Fight. It isnt that hard.
p5-8 are gonna je way harder than 1-4.
10:37 "the community naturally attaches itself to the most effective strategy"
If only that were the case. Sometimes it is, but that's mostly coincidence. Realistically, what the community attaches itself to is generally the first passable strategy that shows up. There have been plenty of cases where the strats that pf adopts in the first couple weeks are far worse than strats that are figured out further into the tier, and when that happens it takes a herculean effort to get pf to change their ways.
The strats will work, don't get me wrong. And there's pros and cons to this behavior. When "everyone" in pf uses the same strat then it helps ensure that everyone is familiar with the strat being used ahead of time, and not needing to worry about needing to learn (or teach) the strat because someone has never done it that way before. On the other hand, sometimes the difference in easy or simplicity between a pf strat and a strat realized later can be night and day.
Light Rampant: Ilya Strat vs Ayatori Strat vs Uptime Strat vs.....
This tier as a whole was so well made.... P1S is a nice introduction, P2S requires a bit more attention because of some difficulty spikes during the fight (looking at you, Flow 3), P3S ramps up the overrall difficulty by a lot and requires really good prep, and P4S is this beautifully made longer fight. I can't wait for the next tier.
Flow 3 definitely took us a while to get the hang of, mostly because we kept confusing the "stand in a line to soak Confluence" with the "stack in the corner to avoid getting hit by the arrow people." Was so proud of the team the first time we one and done'd P2S for the weekly clear.
Yeah P3S is a bit problematic in my opinion. I feel like P2S is barely harder than P1S while P3S is a lot harder than P2S. So I think P2S could have been a little harder to ease the curve.
Looking back, P2S had 2 complicated mechanics: the arrow mechanics (especially the last 2) and the triangle/square limit cutter mechanic. If you removed those 2 mechanics, it is on the same level than extreme trials. And even among those 2 mechanics, I feel like the third set of arrows is the real challenge here.
Some people criticize FFXIV for having so many abilities tied to this 2-minute window, but this is something that allows the devs to make these beautifully designed (and balanced!) fights.
And, on the topic of job design, some people also say that jobs/classes in FFXIV are too similar to each other (if we are comparing jobs of the same role). I don't agree with that, I think that every job has its own unique flavor, but I can see why people would think otherwise. If you look at two tanks, you will see that they share a template. My point here is that the fact that they share this template allows the devs to make these intricate fights without requiring strats to be tailor-made to whatever composition you are running. Sure, there are ideal compositions, but they are not mandatory.
Raid design and job design in this game are really special. While I obviously see the value of having wildly different builds, abiliites, compositions, etc... FFXIV makes a strong case for trading some of that freedom for a more acessible and polished experience.
I feel like P1S was purposely made more accessible in anticipation of the influx of newer players especially from other MMORPG's.
It's definitely the easiest 1st fight-of-tier out of all the tiers, especially compared to Oppressor, Ramuh, etc.
I'd say together the first couple omega fights were easier. Alte Roite was in the same weight class as P1S, but Catastrophe was way easier than P2S. The point still stands that the first fight or two tends to be pretty straightforward, especially in the first tier. Heck, the only reason A1S was as bad as it was was wonky scaling and also the massive jump in job difficulty so no one knew how to play for a while
@@wrenmarshall2101 I kinda gave them a pass on Catastrophe because the shiny, hey look guys, ALL NEW duty action button, but you're right it is much easier than P2S. At least Exdad made up for it being one of the better final tier fights. Better than P4S in my opinion.
So glad to hear that you had so much fund and such a good experience in your first savage :D I hope you're gonna continue to have fun with them. Thank you so much for sharing this!
"Party finder settles on the most effective strats"
and here's me looking at "braindead Intemp" all over PF still.
'Effective' means 'gets clears' not 'maximize parse'.
P3S Elmo even if the tanks are the least experienced players in the group ugh
Did you clear with it? Does it allow more deadheads to clear? If so it is technically effective. Even if it is painful and hurts your soul to see braindead temp.
sure, *remembers cross lions in E12*, sure
@@Exaltable But did they clear or not? Because that's all that matters.
bro it’s so hype hitting enrage and killing. it feels like a damn cutscene every time!
That's what I love with FF Savage / Extremes. Hit the nail on the head regarding the whole "tricky mechanics happen during buff alignment / burst windows". I originally thought it just lined up (early days of ARR into HW) but have to believe now they intentionally and absolutely make your mental focus split for mechanics and personal rotation.
I also get that explaining to new raiders where yes there might be less "dynamic" aspects compared to random AoEs or other debuffs ala WoW, but there are also, I think, a lot more micro adjustments you work out during your own rotation, buffs, and raid utility. At least for Bard I feel that way, other jobs vary. I agree on the strategize pre or post pull though; while you can adjust on the fly, I've certainly found myself far more focused on a Savage fight in FF than Normal or Heroic in WoW but again, two different fight styles and design philosophies presented here.
All that aside, loved raiding in FF so far and plan to continue for a long time!
Congratulations Matt.
I've also started to do harder raid content lately and I must say it's really fun. I didn't think I'd enjoy the raiding at first, but when you learn the fight and nail it properly you feel really good about it.
And very soon I'm also going to attempt UCOB, and if you and/or Michael ever goes in to Ultimates I'd love to see your takes on it too.
i started ucob recently too, and ive cleared uwu a few times now. and i will say, if it's your first ultimate. good luck. and the fights at least mechanically go a looooooot faster compared to savage or extreme.
My static started progging P4S yesterday and in the first phase there's this tether/virus thing. When we understood what we had to do and the DPS had to grab the tethers, we grabbed them and moved in synchrony. We literally went "wow that looks so pretty, feels like we should have some classical music playing".
I mean, you get some nice jazzy stuff, you can vibe to that x)
Trying to clear this savage tier finally got me comfortable with pooling resources for a burst later, or holding off on starting a big burst window for a bit to wait for the boss to be more vulnerable. In the end, just like PVP, staying alive is the most important factor
I cleared p1s yesterday for the first time and got very fast into it. We had some callouts but the fight is so well indicated that it's easy to tell for yourself what has to be done.
Pugstrategies take away the solving a problem together, but when I did diamond weapon and others min ilvl no echo completely blind, we worked out everything as a group, which was the most fun. And the beaty about this hard fights that I saw in extremes over duty finder with randoms, they start off completely spread and uncoordinated and end up being a big unit where everyone holds their weight. And for some fights, it is necessary that everyone knows what they are doing to clear the fight, because one mistake can easily kill others in the process.
The entry level of savage also has shown me the major flaws I saw in WoW. I was able to fully prep my tank in a night crafting session and gear him up with my tomestones to make him savage ready. The people I played with were people that had their first ever savage clear a few weeks ago, no one is exceptional good or tryhard. Some play only with mouse and click, some have even disabilities that make it harder. But at the end, everyone can learn this fights if they work hard enough and that is something that I don't see in endgame content in WoW.
Gating so many people out of content takes away the diversity of character you meet. And it gets boring to only raid with sweaty neckbeards that go back to grinding right after the raid.
Managing your mental stack is a huge part of what makes games actually difficult. CoreAGaming has a great video on how this relates to fighting games (missing the jump in because you're watching for a fireball). Its why you get hit by extremely choreographed moves in Devil May Cry while you're trying to do a sick combo, its why Starcraft players lose bases to invisible men while microing a fight and its a huge part of why FFXIV raid design is so satisfying.
And its why the argument for "accessibility" through mods fall apart. The game is designed to require a certain amount of concentration from you and sometimes you miss things because there isn't an airhhorn blaring at you to remember the mechanic but that's where the difficulty lies. If you can't remember mechanics and you have a robot do it for you, that reduces the load on your mental stack greatly and makes everything easier. Yeah, its hard to do the dance and press the right combination of 8 buttons while weaving True North at the right time so you don't miss out on positional damage as a Dragoon, but using a mod that gives you a 1 button PVP combo is absolutely going to trivialize that mental strain and muscle memory that you have to learn. And managing your mental stack is why seemingly simple mechanics are so satisfying to pull off in FFXIV. When you perfectly dodge the mechanics during your burst window, squeeze out one extra dual cast and backflip to the safespot right before you need to so you can maximize uptime, that's what makes the game fun.
As someone who's been savage raiding since HW, it never even occurred to me that buff windows align with mechanics. Like I've noticed that on some fights you have to shift pot windows or adjust your rotation to account for forced downtime, but its never clicked to me that even mechanics with full uptime like Intemperance are aligned with buff windows as well.
It's probably way easier to notice now that every job has its burst window changed to 2 minutes instead of doing their own thing. Most of the 2 minute mark this tier is tied with a mechanic designed with a forced downtime, or when everyone will be spread apart.
One thing about the early Savage fights in a tier is that the experience is very different from when they're first released to the state they're in now. For the most part, the difficulty of executing the mechanics stays the same - a slight step up from Extreme - but gear does actually make a massive difference to the difficulty of a fight. For example, in week one P2S it was a *requirement* to use mitigation on certain raid-wide attacks or it would wipe the whole raid - now you can get away with not really bothering. Similarly, any mistakes (deaths, damage downs, etc.) could make it near impossible to clear enrage.
For PF P3S can be somewhat of a notorious wall because not only is it a significant step up in mechanics, it also becomes much, much harder to clear if there are any significant mistakes, even if they don't cause a wipe. P1S and P2S can afford some dead weight as long as said dead weight doesn't wipe the group, but P3S really demands everyone to be on the ball for the whole fight, which is a lot more of a similar experience to how P1S and P2S were in week one prog groups.
(BTW I didn't mean this to come off as a "it was harder when it was first released" comment undermining any achievement. I mainly wanted to comment on the difference gear does make, because it's especially potent with the earlier fights in the tier, and you made a comment about it being a bit underwhelming - but I can assure you at release every little upgrade makes a big difference.)
I think you described it very well. FF makes the content smartly so that it slowly nerfs itself over time. As you get better gear and higher item levels the fights get easier. In 6.1 they allow anyone to instantly get ilevel 590 gear as well as allow non savage raiders access to the upgrade materials for 600 gear. And then a little later they'll make it so that non raiders can get a 600 weapon. Then before the next patch they'll open the tier up for free farming meaning that all the people that cleared early can come back and help people prog/farm the content without penalty.
It's really funny because NA has largely avoided the macros lol
You will stand on the corner or side of your marker and you will like it and if you don't I will shame you when you inevitably assume that we should have read your mind.
It's funny because I'll see NA players share macros in discord and use them personally for their own understanding. But then when we load in they're nowhere to be found lol
I have only seen a macro once and have it actually been used and it was in E9S. I was completely confused and had no idea where to go. I'm also sometimes directionally challenged so when I think NW I sometimes go NE instead...
Over the course of a weekend, I've gone from not joining any practice party fearing I was gonna ruin everything, to be the guy who comes in, sits people down and tells them "stand here, and here, move here when this is cast". Even though I've yet to get a kill yet, jumping into a practice party that struggles with the very first mechanic and see everyone slowly having that "oh, I get it" moment is infecting.
Honestly it makes me hate getting synced down even more during the daily roulettes.
And that brain space is why I dont do savage. I usually play after work? So I'm already exhausted and just want to relax. And then going into hard content that requires me to concentrate? I cant do that....
Gotta say P4S is the peak of the individual decisions looking like a hive mind.When it all comes together and it looks beautiful and planned, especially on Akanthai 4 and Curtain Call. And I've done all savage fights in Shb and EW on time.
I'm so glad for you that macro culture is alive in EU. We don't have macros for fights in NA; we throw down a (couple) marker(s) and place ourselves in them for visual representations. And half the time players don't move anyway amd we have to hope to high heaven they know what they're doing.
I've been waiting patiently for when you'd start trying Savage, excited at seeing you guys give our high-end raiding a try. I've found a lot of fun raiding, and as of the time of this post I've been in a raid-hungry mood. I think the last week, I've spent about 20 hours just helping learning parties, letting people get prog or clears that they've been working so hard to get. PF has issues with consistency at times, and I like to take that away.
I just started savage this week after years of giving myself excuses not to do it, my situation was different though, a spot opened in my fc static so I got my clears much easier than PF because I was the only one that had to learn and everyone else knew them already. I was expecting savage to be much harder than it was tbh but I had the benefit of discord fallouts and a team that already knew what they were doing, I'm looking forward to next tier though
Good luck on P3S mate.. you're going to need it!
I don't know why, i love the phrase "Danger Dorito" for the triangle marker
Quick FYI as someone who plays on Aether (And more specifically Gilgamesh), I don't see a lot of Party Finder Macros. The EU servers and JP servers certainly do, though with slight differences in the labeling system.
Keep in mind this is a simplification of things but the observations tend to be pretty spot on...
The JP servers adopt whatever the most consistent strategy is. regardless of if it is the optimal way to do the fight, if it has the best chance of success, that is what people will learn and do.
The EU servers and JP servers both use Macros to communicate particular mechanics.
NA will Type things out in chat and argue/discuss things for 5-15 minutes before diving in.
^-- I have personally observed this. Maybe we just like to talk (I know I do). Though, learning parties are great, and as long as people know you're new or unfamiliar with a mechanic (preferably have seen a guide if the content is more than a couple weeks old), things tend to be pretty chill. :)
I didn't really get into Extremes or Savages (current content, at least) until Shadowbringers was near its end... I had a Triple Triad goal to fulfill and met a couple of high end raiders (one was PUGing all of Eden Savage) who helped get me over my fears of high end content. I tend to have a very "Let's go again" attitude, so that definitely helps. As long as the timer allows, I will continue throwing myself at a boss.
After 2 years of playing I finally jumped into savage for the first time this tier as well! I had so much anxiety over it previously and I just had to force myself to try. Within 2 weeks I cleared all the way through P3S in party finder! Working on P4S now with so much more confidence in myself than I ever had before. You hit the nail on the head regarding fight design. In FFXIV it really is about everyone nailing personal responsibility, resulting in overall group success. I’m addicted lol
well done on your first savage! on the note of macros one of the commonly memed about things was how EU/JP used such macros but they dont really use them in NA. Coming from the Materia server we had a blend of people from all over the data centres and a lot of previous NA players were saying how macros are honestly such a game changer for their pugging experience. its so good and I just love how it allows for the most efficient, safest, consistent strategy to get the clear. maybe stream your raid prog sometime and drag Mike along :P
I'm currently progging ultimate and I'm having so much fun. Matt I hope you get to experience it.
P1S and P2S are fantastic introductory fights. P3S is the reality check that says, ok now try harder. P4S is tough, but very rhythmic. Once you get a feel for everything, it really feels like a dance imo.
With the normal raids no longer loot locked too, you can basically get a whole set of item level 580 gear without spending gil. More than adequate to start savage raiding.
I have been waiting on my FC to get its butt in gear but honestly I think it's time I just PF it!
Just exchange a set of 590 Augmented crafted gear from Radz-at-han and go for it.
Savage content design around 1 and 2 minute burst window is fantastic when your own gameplay and rotation mastery lines up with boss mechanics, it's such a good feeling to see it flow so smoothly, and especially when 8 people have individual responsibilities on top of it. A beautiful dance.
P1s, and in the same extent Eden's Gate: Resurrection (Savage), back when it released were amazing intro to raiding savages. It was like; you know the fight in their normal, story driven gameplay, but can you use that knowledge, and take it a step further in solving the steps to the dance, and can you have the DPS required, as a team, to finish the fight before enrage in x minutes. Two fights I enjoyed back in Eden tiers were Furor (Garuda, Ifrit, Raktapaksa) and Anamorphosis. The fights were showing mechanics individually and gradually built on top of itself, and at a turning point, the fights then started to pair mechanics and throw them at you, or, can you complete them in quick succession, while maintaining your rotation, and having to modify with where you can greed, or where you can play safe.
P1S is 100% the best savage content to jump in. It’s so forgiving and once you get it, he turns into a loot piñata. However, the difficulty spike of the later fights will catch you off guard. P3S is normally referred to as “p3sd” in my FC lol. It actually killed our static and I’m trying to form another
P3S is a big filter, yeah. I did it solely through party finder and probably lost two years of my lifespan in the process.
great to see you trying out savage content and providing your commentary on it, i only started savage for the first time this tier and was very nervous going in. However, once in it's a blast
welcome to the savage raiding content! ^^ glade you enjoy it
...
(just the 2nd / new tier is harder / more intense than any tier since HW / ARR.., it might be a bit scary, if your new to it, when playing it the 1st time.., don't give up!)
@9:24 this goes doubly so for ultimates. Like watching Heavensfall trio and Tenstrike trio resolve is a work of art
A really satisfying place to reach with my static was being able to do some of these savages without any comms at all. The dance eventually becomes so synchronized that you don't need to call stuff out anymore.
the thing about ffxiv's meta is that it's that every playable job is so ridiculously well balanced that your skill with the job you're playing and your knowledge of the fight matter significantly more than literally any other variable
Thanks a ton for the video! My static so far has gotten up to the fourfold shackles part and can't clear yet. I really want to clear it but due to my schedule I can't always be with them on static nights. I've been debating party finder and have been super scared to try it, but I think I'll give it a go from what you've said
Vulnerability used to the be typical savage debuff you get from failing a mech in savage (a mainstay since ARR), but they changed that in the final tier of Eden. This is cause they realized that people would sometimes just eat a aoe, just to get a higher uptime dmg, and force others to adjust to them. So the devs answer to that was to switch it to a dmg down, so that those players would be forced to do the mech correctly, or suffer a worse loss in dmg.
Also, macros are DC depending, if you tried to use a macro on Aether, people would go 'wtf!?' and start to argue lol. We use markers here.
P2S is fairly easy, so you shouldn't encounter too much issue when you'll do it, but P3S is a huge pug wall, with a definite hike in difficulty from the prior 2.
Glad to see that you enjoyed it. This tier has a pretty smooth difficulty curve, though P2s to P3s is a bit of a jump. Find people you trust in PF, see if they're down to raid, and go get em.
Also, the way this game increases difficult is by increasing the number of mechanics that require all 8 people to do something and be alive. P1s only has a few of them, while P4s has much more of them. This means that everyone must be very familiar with all mechanics, and think about variations and potential movements that they have to do. This can all still be done with discord, but tests everyone's knowledge more and more heavily. Discord's purpose here is to allow healers to communicate what they're doing, and let shotcallers remind people about what mechanic is next, and any adjustments that need to be made.
I would love to see Blizzard do a raid tier of 4-5 fights instead of feeling forced to have a few good fights and 8+ fights no one remembers at the end of the tier. They have fantastic raid design but they try too hard to shove in as many bosses as possible. It would allow them more creativity with encounter design and QA testing. If they cut down on they amount of fights, they could do them through internal testing rather than spoiling the fights through PTR. Its a dream, but I doubt they would ever do it.
Eh everything would get datamined im sure unless they got rid of the ptr completely and fully comitted to their own internal testing.
@@minuette1752 Cant data mine that which is not in the data. Absense is the best encryption.
Blizzard needs to commit to designing raids you can just do in under an hour for the people who don't have times to make an all-night thing of it. That's honestly wanna of the best things about ffxiv raiding, no matter what the difficulty ranking of it, once you actually learn the fight you can do in an hour or less with a competent team.
that's not catering to casuals, that's just waking up to the fact that most gamers also have a day job.
The first fight is always usually pretty nice to new players
however the 2nd fight usually throws that out the window and teaches you that you need to know your rotations and to focus on mechanics (e6s prog was hell)
E6S is probably my favourite one. It was so much fun. My whole static absolutely hates it tho.
tbf E9 was the absolute opposite of nice as well. Not super hard or anything, but one person dying to basically *any* mechanic would often cause someone else to die which would easily cascade into a wipe. P1 is literally just fourfold now, intemperance fuck-ups are survivable with a damage down.
Ngl Matthew, that jacket is hot fucking fire.
Do NOT use the tome gear from the start of the expansion for savage when this late in the tier*. Moonward gear is so bad. You want the newer radiant tome gear (ilvl 590).
Crafted gear is hands down the best way to get into a new tier, though. 580 is more than respectable for the first few fights, and is enough to clear the entire tier with solid play.
You both guys, old wow players have become one of my favourite FFXIV channels (even tho I know you're not only covering ffxiv) :D thanks for the videos! I love your content!
You know, WoW was built like FFXIV at one point where all you really needed was dungeon blues before rolling into raids. And later, instead of dungeon blues it was dungeon epics or epics from the badge vendor. But for whatever reason, it was pushed away.
This is why I love progging as a Black Mage. I love figuring out which opener is the best, finding the best place to cast spell for this phase of mechanic, and look for optimal ways to use movement cooldowns.
you are griefing your group by playing BLM in prog xD Just play RDM, it helps with learning the fight, makes longer scout pulls possible. Play BLM after first clear and prog is over, there is no reason not to.
@@ich3730 Dunno about that one chief, progging on BLM is fine if they are competent enough, especially faster clears. Battle raise is a meme in week 1/2 clears cause of the dps check haha
Since Heavenwsward, the first 2 bosses are pugable (EX difficulty), the 3rd is EX++ difficulty (can be done with a loooot of tries but GOOD LUCK to find a good pug...also with so many tries will make no difference to being with a static) and the 4th one is destroyer of pugs, must have an static. At least during the patch release window.
You know I remember a time (before endwalker) where Matt was talking about how great the raiding scene is in this game, for literal hours on end during the bellular podcast.
turns out, as expected, he hadn't done a single piece of raiding content, since this is his first time.
I'm not even trying to gatekeep at this point but how could you claim to know what the raiding scene is like if you hadn't even gotten near it?
PF macros is really made me learn savage easier
I just clip it and put it on 2nd monitor and look at it when there a new mech or i die a mech
i go like ah "i was wrong position on that mech"
Making a character on elemental were macros are prevalent was pretty good decision for me
also pretty rare but some macros has some mitigation plans which is really useful for tank overwriting reprisal and such(though pf can kinda just wing mitigation after 4 weeks maybe)
from what exp week 1 savage
P1S-Learning where to stand
P2S-Do you're party know how to press their mitigation?
P3S-Do you know how to spread?
P4S-Apply everything what you learned so far and GLHF
i like listening to matt talk about things he likes a lot more than what he doesnt like. more of this please.
The raidsize of 8 is really magical. 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps. A lot of mechanics revolve around it and it takes out the RNG of who gets what. You as an individual actually learn the fight.
For example WoL EX's Braver targets 1 tank, 1 dps, 1 healer for a massive frontal cone depending on where they stand. So the solution to it is quite simple, both tanks in the front, healers on the side and all dps on the back.
If it were 3 random players it could be where you as an individual don't have to do anything for that mechanic for multiple pulls in a row, and suddenly you have to do something. This is why I really wish that WoW would reduce the mythic raidsize.
Also a big upside is that because of 2 tanks 2 healers 4 dps you can design a fight with it in mind. Tanks have for example a cast interrupt, since every savage fight will have a tank you can include a mechanic that needs to be interrupted and it will always be covered no matter the composition.
Healers have debuff clensing. etc. This all works together extremely well on why pugging in XIV is just such a good experience.
I wonder if the fights being "dances" is the result of them being designed to be cleared in party finder. I never thought about this when I criticized savage. (versus heroic or mythic.) Being able to clear without committing to a static and without using voice coms is a massive plus for a lot of people.
Have you thought about going back and checking out Final Fantasy 11, which is celebrating it's 20th anniversary right now? Today was my first time playing, and man, it's nostalgic playing such and old school MMO.
Well people sometimes care what job you bring at least week one. APL was such ass at launch that you were not joining and week one savages
As I've learned through Zepla, those macros aren't part of the NA DC experience -- we type things out like plebians, which probably results in more confusion, in all fairness!
Please let us know what you think of P3S.
The first commandment of designing a savage fight: thou shalt ALWAYS put the most brain-intensive mechanics during the dancer's tech finish steps.
P1S is easier than Endsinger EX. P3S is the true challenge for this tier. It’s brutal.
It really clicked for me on P4S during Act 2.
I was trying to understand everyone's job and kept messing it up until I realized I only needed to know my part.
congratz on your Kill Matt. Tbh i often have a Big Problem when it comes to "PF Strats". Usually these Strats are invented during Week 1 Prog. There working but there far from Optimal. But once a Strat is established most ppl refuse to even try a differend, maybe even way easier or optimal Strat. As a Raider once you know how a Mechanic works you should be able to Adjust regardless of the Strategy. Since we cleared P4s we played "Uptime Act 2" and back then our SAM wasnt able to Raid for a Week so we searched in PF. But once the DPS heared of this Strat they immediatly leaved the Group even it is way easier to execute as a Melee.
The perfect example is E8s "Ilya Light Rampant" once this Strategy was prominent EVERYONE in PF played this Strategy. Even it was unsafe, unsecure, unoptimal and a Hell to execute in PF. Even Ilya himself often said in his Livestreams that this Strategy is Bullshit. But it worked for them Week 1 and after that his Group played a differend Strategy while the PF used this for nearly a Year.
Good luck on the rest of the tier. It’s a lot of fun o/
Can’t wait to hear about the pinax memes 😂
Good luck on the tier my guy! It’s the first one I’ve ever cleared while current with a static I put together in February with friends and friends of friends.
We are starting UWU prog next week.
jumpscare for NA players at 5:49
Doing P3S will either make you or break you. It broke me. My eyes had to get checked up, Dr actually told me don't play as much now.
God damn Matt, respect the drip you got going on.
Amazing! Love seeing people enjoying Savage for the first time! Good luck going foreward!
Oh, sweet summer child xD
To be fair later floors are still puggable, but they definitely benefit from having comms.
The thing about PF adopting the best strats tho... xD We had Mr. Happy brambles not that long ago as the standard PF strat for E9s...
I helped some friends go into PF to try P1S, and had to scramble to learn an actual strat for Intemperance - my static cleared it day 2 before there even was a strat to learn, we just fixed spots and shouted if we needed to swap!
as someone who has cleared everything since 1st tier of shadowbringer on savage this game is way more accessible to endgame. you'll hear horror stories about some bosses (halicarnasses, p3s and a couple others) but all in all they are enjoyable. to say nothing of the ultimates. at the time of this comment I have cleared UwU (5 or 6 times?) and TEA 17 times and progressing dragon reprise. I love this game for far more than than savage but I always love clearing a tier with my static.
p1s is like baby food compared to the 5 course meals some of these fights offer
Looking forward to that Savage progress report, Matt! ❤
I like that explanation 9:03 alot for all fights.
Would love follow-up videos for how your savage journey goes :)
this tier is one of the best times to start, because it gives you a fairly good difficult curve. P3S is a monster but other than that its a fantastic tier
NA doesn't use macros.. we do 3 minute stand on marker prog before the pull
You should go back and do Alexander Savage. Still my favorite.
P3S pugging has damn near turned me into a Blasphemy. Haven’t tried it since WHM got reworked, and maybe with the gear boost people have now I won’t have to just stare impotently while that bird enrages. Again.
It’s fun though!! Weirdly. In a masochistic way. Good luck!!
You're lucky to see enrage. I gave up after a month of joining FoA prog groups only to die to adds.
I'm done with the tier (had a static) and I've started lending myself out to other statics when they need a sub, so they don't have to take their chances in PF!
Glad you had a good time!
Can't wait to see your review return after you get through p4s or even p3s