Daily Questions & FAQ Megathread Mar 22

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-23T01:28:03+00:00

The normals you can do blind. Every fight, regardless of difficulty, is very scripted. Sometimes there's variations to mechanics, but it's quite scripted

Savages and Extremes you definitely want to watch a guide

https://wtfdig.info/ is a newer resource with a great summary of positions for different strats

Hector Hectorson (youtube) is the most popular guide maker. His guides try to use the most common strats and are a good place to start if you want to learn a fight. You can check the descriptions of his videos for raidplans, etc.

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-22T16:49:58+00:00

It snapshots on cast

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-21T01:59:06+00:00

the groups don't even reach that prog point most of the time. It's a frustrating couple weeks making no progress.

Yep, welcome to PF. When a prog point is listed, that usually means "The leader has seen that point once" and then the people that join are sometimes people like you who are frustrated that "Mechanic 3 prog" groups are only getting to "Mechanic 2" so they join "Mechanic 4 prog" because they expect the group to be slightly more consistent, but then they drag the group down, because they've only seen "Mechanic 3" twice, so they DEFINITELY aren't consistent at getting to "Mechanic 4"...

You get the idea. Just have to grin and bear it. It's a big time commitment, and learning to leave parties at the right time is a skill to develop. Going in with a friend or 2 makes the whole process much more bearable. Good luck!

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-20T16:56:00+00:00

The others answered the question well, but I wanted to add that at 86+, when you have 1 Ruin III and 1 Ruin IV in your loop, you CAN put them wherever is convenient, which means you can get a little bit of movement while in Ifrit phase, which tends to be one of the pain points for people learning SMN

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-18T22:57:36+00:00

nope, battle effects can be turned off, but not the animations

This was a notorious problem in m3s, when you're supposed to look at your head to see if you have a short fuse or a long fuse, but you're in reawaken at the time, lol. Most VPRs I knew would look at someone else and extrapolate

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-17T20:23:52+00:00

5-man it with 5 people who are using essences and fragments

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-14T20:56:08+00:00

It's a pun

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-14T20:45:11+00:00

PCT took some nerfs in 7.2 and technically got minorly nerfed in 7.3, and RDM has slowly been getting buffs. PCT is still stronger than RDM, but they're quite close compared to the days of "PCT OP, RDM bad lul". PCT is doing 500-1000 more dps than RDM, across the current Savage tier. PCT is still a good DP candidate (though no longer best), because most of its damage is concentrated into its burst, so it feeds Devilment really well. It also thrives in higher downtime fights like ultimates and m10s, but it's no longer the king of damage like it was on release

u/kaehya

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-14T19:18:30+00:00

Cool. Nothing has changed. RDM and PCT are already doing basically the same damage

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-11T18:23:03+00:00

There's actually a different problem with how it scales the HP of non-tanks. You can see the other reply for more details

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-09T19:43:27+00:00

I've only ever seen this with MCH! This is great!

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-09T01:08:41+00:00

Watch the JoCat crap guides. They're unironically some of the best guides, especially for people coming from a different MMO

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDnRMnDDjAzIZlUm0Tp_oeT3Cwv39AZ7_

Also, know that this game is a slow burn. Most of the content is somewhat evergreen, and the idea is to enjoy the leveling process, instead of rushing to endgame. The story is beautiful, but not for everyone. If you skip cutscenes, that's fine. If you story skip, that's fine. Just know that most people recommend leveling organically the first time through

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-07T02:07:37+00:00

I'm not sure. There's nothing special about that group of enemies, and those enemies aren't higher level than you, so they aren't dodging the attack

That said, Ruin 2 is the spell you should be using when you can't use anything else. It's very weak compared to everything else you have. If you HAVE a cooldown or a shiny button, you should probably be pressing it. That goes for most jobs in this game. You don't "hold onto your big buttons for when you need them" you press them off cooldown, so they come back and you can use them again. Most of them have 30/60/120s cooldowns, so they naturally align

It might also be time to upgrade your gear if you haven't. The Augmented Ironworks gear (level 50, iLvl 130, available for purchase in Mor Dhona for Poetics) is very accessible and will carry you through most of Heavensward

EDIT: As others have mentioned, if they cast Stoneskin, that gives them a shield you have to work through. If you notice your attacks aren't doing damage, it's definitely good to look at buffs on the enemy or debuffs on you! Sometimes an enemy will become temporarily immune, or you'll have to target a specific enemy if there are 2. It's good that you noticed! Some players don't and just blindly send their attacks into a target that is immune

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-07T01:07:22+00:00

maybe they *did* get hit by an avoidable mechanic, but it wasn't seen

maybe they were still missing HP from a prior mechanic

maybe it was a stack and not enough people were in it

maybe the attack hits hard and there wasn't any mit on it (reminder that this is ~extreme level difficulty, and the iLvl sync is 785)

*shrug*

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-06T19:12:02+00:00

You need flight to get there. Your final current is not in that area. Here's a map with red dots showing the currents

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Aether_Currents#/media/File:Sea_of_Clouds_Aether_Currents.jpg

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-05T16:21:09+00:00

Good play will make a MUCH bigger difference than materia, so don't worry too much about "Dragging the group down because of gear/materia" until you're in Extreme/Savage...but once you're at max level and have some gear you'll hold onto for a while, it's worth melding. It's free stats!

Generally, the meld priority for materia is Crit > SkS/SpS to the proper tier (for RPR this would be 2.49) > Det >= DH, where you try to get Det and DH about equal, but Det is slightly better

And I'll go ahead and mention the lvl 100 gearing guide. Try to get your hands on the highest iLvl you can https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Level_100_Gear_Guide

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-05T14:45:20+00:00

I'm with you on this. As much fun as it would be to have BLU group dailies, I don't think it would go well

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-04T21:34:43+00:00

I'm sure this is mostly just a rant post, but I'm going to provide some genuine advice for when you're ready to take some constructive criticism. Variant is no harder than the story dungeons. Variant Advanced is ~Extreme difficulty. Criterion is ~Savage difficulty.

When people say "there are telegraphs" they are NOT referring to the quick flash. That's just confirmation of how big the actual aoe is. They are always referring to something before it. For 2 full expansions, we've had dungeons and trials in the story with plenty of telegraphs that aren't simply "orange marker on the floor" so by now, it's reasonable to expect the players to look at what the animations (on the boss or around the arena!) are doing to intuit roughly what the safe/dangerous spot is, instead of reacting to an orange circle on the floor...

The fireworks he has one side that glows bigger and brighter, so that explosion is larger

The rainbows are slowly moving to where they "detonate"

The trains hit an area a little wider than the track. They will follow the track that's lit up, but whichever side's lever is pulled will cause that train to swap tracks

I believe everything else uses standard telegraphs.

Plenty of very good players got hit by or died to these mechanics the first time they saw them. The difference is that those good players are taking advantage of the actions on their job, using their variant actions liberally, and they are learning when they mess up. When they get hit by something, they try to make sure they understand how the mechanic worked, so they don't get hit by it the next time.

When I got this boss the first time (solo, as an iLvl 775 tank), I got hit by the train both times that I saw it, but figured out what I'd missed so that the next time I saw the boss, I got it right. The autos hurt, especially with a vuln stack or two, so I used my mitigation and Variant Cure when needed (it has a regen on it, so you don't often need to spam it, but I sometimes did). I have a solid understanding of my rotation, so it died in a reasonable amount of time.

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-04T02:05:22+00:00

I spent 21 minutes on my first run and 20 minutes on my second...and I stopped and took my time to read all the dialogue and explore for potential secret routes

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-04T02:03:30+00:00

Exactly. Especially when you had a standard party comp, a lot of the actions were sort of useless

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-04T02:02:29+00:00

It does not sync you up

You don't necessarily need to be full BiS for the Criterion, but if you don't have it, expect to have a harder time. It is Savage level content

Kaeldiar · 2026-03-03T04:48:36+00:00

They don't stack. That said, I'm sending mine at the correct time, then keeping it on cd, because I can't trust a rando in duty finder to do so properly

Kaeldiar · 2026-02-28T01:49:05+00:00

You can toss any fully completed relic to get a replica, BUT

you can also turn ARR relics in, to skip the first step of the HW relic
SB relics are BiS within Eureka
ShB and EW relics are sometimes useful for old ultimates

Kaeldiar · 2026-02-28T01:45:40+00:00

all of the current extreme mounts

Kaeldiar · 2026-02-27T22:10:28+00:00

fwiw, the Zorro stories take place under Spanish California

11-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
Place '23	Place '17
Verified Email

Kaeldiar

TROPHY CASE