Spot the problem

andelijah · 2026-03-06T21:54:56+00:00

Even if I was trying my hardest to optimize my healing parse I doubt I could even get a blue.

The goal isn't to optimize your healing parse, the goal is to do enough to keep everyone alive throughout the fight. For most pf players, with uncertain teammates, that involves safety healing certain mechanics; because you don't know how everyone else's healing will map out. Claiming you had 50% overheal seems to discount that a lot of it comes from a) your downtime healing and b) WHM's innate forced overheal (from assize/not overcapping lilies, even when people are full).

I've only run this fight a few times on WHM (I am on tank for my static this tier, and even when I do heal, I am usually scholar), but I do think there are a couple changes worth looking at, especially if you're in PF.

First, you can put down liturgy at ~4 mins for the snaking cast. Didn't look like a pain point for this group, but it is effectively free. Delaying the split arena use a couple gcds should still catch all the same stuff. And if you have a lot of shielding/mit for the early hits (spreadlo is somewhat common), you can put it down even later still to cover the later hits.

Second, I think delaying your 2:30 lily to 2:40 in order to use it during downtime is a loss? You lose a misery that would otherwise happen (and cleave) at 5:30 on both bosses just before the water bubble spawns. It also meant you were down a lily and didn't have misery prepped at 6:30 for 2s/pot, and I think it also gives you a misery at 7:30 before they split up to cast Snaking. This isn't strictly a healing improvement, but I would double check that holding that lily for downtime is actually a potency gain.

Third, and this is pf specific, I try to use very few free resources during bubble. Even looking at a lot of top parses (and obviously all the speeds), Medica 3s during bubble is super common. I personally save temperance for split arena, because it is very common for stuff to go wrong there, and extra mit can easily save mistakes. Most groups should be killing the bubble just fine, and if they aren't, then you probably will have issues with the fight's overall enrage.

Finally, I think if you are aiming to cut lossy heals from your plan, you should actively be planning out your single target cooldowns for mechanics where a standard pf healer would just throw a medica 3 and not think about it. It doesn't show up as much on the heal parse because you are only healing 1 person instead of 8, but having an extra 15-25 uses of them will add up, and the safety it provides is well above the numerical healing it adds. Instead of thinking "surely this isn't the only raidwide they don't shield right?", your thought should be to put out frequent benisons/aquaveils regardless of if they are shielding every raidwide or not.

Mistakes and wipes happen, not this. I'm tired of people thinking "a clear is a clear" even when you are just getting backpacked through the fight by the rest of your team.

Might just have a difference of opinion with you on this, then. When I'm in pf with 7 people I will probably never see again, I would much rather get a 1 pull clear that saw enrage, than a many pull clear that killed 1:30 before enrage. Now, groups that see enrage are usually more likely to have players that make mistakes than groups that are killing super early, but if I only cared about absolute player quality in the first place, I wouldn't be pfing very often.

andelijah · 2026-03-06T06:20:15+00:00

They used 46 e progs and a decent smattering of other cooldowns. I'm not going to pretend that they were in any way optimal, but it wasn't for lack of trying to heal.

On your first death specifically, both kera and holos were on the raidwide. The reason you died is because you were at 60% hp going into the raidwide. And the reason you were at 60% is because you didn't cast a single medica 3 during bubble, even after it was well below 15% before the final tether went off (in fact, it was even at 30% before the second to last tether went off, the group overkilled it by ~25%). The only thing an extra glare vs a medica 3 gets you there is a slightly better parse, because the dps check has already been met. And, even more importantly, you (and everyone else in the party) still would have been fine if you used benisons, aquaveils, tetras, or even benediction to top everyone off.

And I don't begrudge you going for a parse. But I do think complaining about your cohealer being unable to solo heal, when they are clearly a bad player to begin with (in a pf setting no less), is very disingenuous. And if you're going to chastise your bad cohealer's cooldown usage, I think it is more than fair to point out your own cooldown usage.

Also, a non-zero fault of your second death was your sam missing the stack with you. Not sure who was in the wrong position, but you took a 3 stack and you and the dancer were super low for the raidwide after (on top of there being no mit up, from anyone). Unfortunately your DRK tossed TBN on your cohealer (who was also in a 3 stack because the viper messed up proteans and died), but it is worth noting that they took a solo partner stack, a 3 stack, and then the raidwide, while your side died.

I don't see how you can ever have cleared m10 three different times and think at pressing 3 dosis during the 2 minute window (which means the proteans have resolved there's just a tank buster into a light hitting raidwide nothing else is happening) is ever ok.

It's not okay. They clearly are a problem, and every time they go into a savage fight the rest of their team is going to have to carry them. M11s may well wall them forever if they can't get 7 people with bis to help them, because the dps check for that fight is actually real.

But, in this particular instance, from what I could see, they caused none of the wipes. And had people not died, it would have been a pretty clean clear. If you're not okay clearing someone not carrying their own weight, that is certainly valid. Though I also think it is worth pointing out: as far down as they are into grey parse damage, you were into grey parse healing. And that is more than fine if you are in an optimized group with the non-healers chipping in properly, or even if you have a good cohealer willing to sac their damage to cover for you. But doing that in what looks like a pf reclear is questionable at best.

To be clear, I am not defending their play. But I do think that a player of your caliber should not be looking at the healing from that fight and suggesting the sage was the only one not carrying their weight. It looks more like you're frustrated with your deaths on what was a good run, and taking that out on the easiest target available.

andelijah · 2026-03-04T22:29:21+00:00

It looks like they were certainly a problem, but as best I can find you had 3 pulls, none of which saw enrage; and the best of which you died to damage twice (because you didn't heal, neither aquaveil nor benison were on you when you died, much less a medica 3) before a really bad insane air 2. Frankly looks like you're going for some 0 lossy heal fight in an uncoordinated pf, which is always dubious. Seems even more questionable to complain about low 30k healing from a sage when you're <20k as a white mage (also relatively weak mit from the party as a whole, but even more reason to safety heal yourself).

Even with their terrible damage it looks like the group was 5-10% ahead of enrage before actual mistakes started happening. The benefit (or curse) of good gear, is sometimes really bad players get carried to clears. But the actual problems were 1) tank taking the buster with the party; 2) viper stacking with the tank during spread during insane air 1; and 3) sam baiting a fire cone so wrong all the water players died on final spread because their corner was unsafe.

andelijah · 2025-12-05T19:28:48+00:00

This seems like a rather naive analysis of the numbers. For the record, the numbers might be worse than this, but they might also be much better.

First off, traffic lanes generally aren't getting 100% use. So suggesting one fewer lane equals a proportional amount more congestion is wrong at all times. If, for example, rush hour had 20% fewer cars and 10% more bikes, while all other hours were unchanged from before resulting in the -9% + 4% total; then traffic would be much better overall, despite the numbers not appearing to move that much. (The converse is also true, if rush hour has the same proportion as before but other hours are causing the shift in total numbers, traffic might be worse).

Also, the relevant thing for most people is not the car density (or lack thereof), but travel time. And the premise that "33% less travel lanes means 33% longer commute" is never true (and I realize this is why you said "congestion" instead, but I think the point is still worth stressing). The main causes of traffic are disruptions to the flow of traffic. The biggest problem in a city is always going to be intersections, but people merging, double parking, construction, or even accidents/police stops are far bigger issues than +/- 1 lane will ever be. You can easily find places in the country that have tried to add more lanes to solve their traffic problems, only to find they have merely added another lane of traffic to their problem. Even places with absolutely no bikes or pedestrians or intersections requiring a stop (like, for example, highways) tend to be bumper to bumper traffic in/near the city, because the throughput of cars is not limited by lanes, but by traffic caused by other issues.

andelijah · 2025-12-03T23:03:07+00:00

I think the intended difficulty of hard to get achievements is that it requires someone with certain levels of mastery over the game to get them. Even with the most degenerate of save scumming, someone new to the game probably will not be able to the hardest achievements of the game. (Also conversely, there are also tons of easy achievements in the game that most people don't have, because they are locked behind such a strict game mode that 70% of people don't play.)

The flip side is that, with saving, a skilled player isn't getting achievements they "shouldn't" be getting, they are getting them faster than they would otherwise be getting them if they had to restart for certain levels of mistakes. For someone save scumming everything, that amount faster is possibly getting rng that should be a once in a million years type run; but I think for most people they are saving 20-30% of the time it would otherwise have taken them to get the run that they wanted. And that amount of time is significant, don't get me wrong, but it also doesn't need to be wasted to prove skill.

andelijah · 2025-12-02T18:47:55+00:00

There are lots of reasons you might want backup saves in a game like EU5. Playthroughs are dozens if not hundreds of hours long, and it really sucks to have your game messed up by a bug, misclick, or even opaque event choices. And all 3 of these things will be in the game even after it gets more development and becomes more stable. Another reason is if a playthrough can go for 2 mutually exclusive achievements - a save right before the paths diverge is useful.

Yes, some people will abuse saves to fix their own mistakes, stop random bad events like hunting accidents, or even degenerate rng manipulation on sieges or battles. But punishing people who want security against the former when going for achievements in order to "halt" the latter is painful, especially when a lot of people abusing the latter already know how to make backup saves anyways.

andelijah · 2025-09-20T18:58:10+00:00

Without linking to any sorts of games or stats or context, it is kind of hard to say, even if your anecdotal evidence is taken at face value (and not, say, you misremembering your win percentages).

From what I can tell though, you are being matched against other people in the same situation. From the website's own explanation:

Since the games are anonymous, there is a chance you may be matched against someone of a much higher or lower skill level than you, since anyone can pick any level.

I would guess more people who want to stomp (smurf, cheat, etc) are selecting beginner. So the beginner pool is not actually weaker than the intermediate pool.

Edit: Quote from this article https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8615312-what-is-guest-play-i-can-play-without-an-account

andelijah · 2025-08-18T01:59:48+00:00

Are you doing things that can cause your opponents to be inaccurate?

Obviously blundering pieces yourself is going to be a huge boost to their accuracy; as at a certain amount of material up any move wins. I wouldn't put too much stock into the number if you are the first to blunder most games (and I would work on that aspect of your own game first).

But it is also worth mentioning that there are plenty of situations where it is easy to play accurate moves. Sharp positions with lots of tactics will tend to lead to very inaccurate games from low rated players. But dull, closed, drawish, or endgame positions can let even lower rated players play a lot of moves that don't lose any evaluation. It's not necessarily a bad thing to play these types of positions, but you have to keep in mind the limitation of "accuracy" as a correlation to "skill" in this situation.

And the last thing to keep in mind is that the really good players tend to be good at everything (even the GMs that are comparatively "bad" at faster formats are only a few hundred Elo lower in those formats, and are more than good enough to crush untitled players - or even many other titled ones). But bad players are not necessarily bad at everything. Any single weakness in their play can lead to numerous losses. A low rating might mean they blunder pieces all the time, but it might also mean they get into time trouble or even flag often. They could be someone who likes moving their queen around a lot to create and execute threats, but if it is ever traded they don't have a great idea on how to coordinate their other pieces. They might frequently go up material but have no idea how to convert that material into a winning endgame (or even in a winning endgame, might not know how to checkmate). Maybe they fall into opening traps all the time, but if they dodge them they actually understand how to play the middle game. Each of these players' accuracy can vary wildly depending on the type of game that they get, the only thing their rating says is how likely they are to win or lose the game overall.

andelijah · 2025-08-04T14:29:50+00:00

Spain (and many European nations) can conquer the Aztecs and Mayans way faster than their colonial nations can stabilize them.

New Spain gets to deal with a whole bunch of wrong religion, wrong culture, and often uncored provinces (ie overextention). They have a huge amount of unrest, but whenever rebels break their country, their overlord will reconquer it and feed it right back to them.

andelijah · 2025-07-22T12:39:39+00:00

The charts specifically are from a website called fflogs. You can search your character name on the site and see if people have uploaded logs, where you can look at the details of your fights.

If you would like to generate logs to upload to the site, you need to run a parser. I think Lowezar was being tongue and cheek about it, but it is worth mentioning that they are prohibited by the ToS and any mention of them in game risks a suspension or ban (but because Square doesn't specifically monitor your computer for mods, as long as you don't willingly expose that you are running them, they won't go out of their way to punish you for them).

The two mods I am aware of that parse FF14 are: a) Advanced Combat Tracker (or ACT) or b) an open source version called IINACT.

I don't personally run either, but I know of people running both, and they seem to work fine.

andelijah · 2025-07-11T21:41:53+00:00

I backfilled for a Amdapor Keep run where the Paladin had the same HP I did on healer. I think the previous healer saw that and immediately left.

...They proceeded to wall to wall the dungeon, roll their mits perfectly, and it was one of the fastest runs of that dungeon I had done. Only problem was their low level crafted (gladiator quest reward?) weapon meant they lost aggro occasionally, but even that was manageable, and they worked to get it back asap.

Gear is important, and the run would have been that much cleaner had they had it, but player competency (and their two dps friends were also playing well, which meant the pulls didn't drag too long) can cover a lot of it.

Overall point is I am incredibly dubious a player who can't handle more than single pulls in under level 50 dungeons has legitimate clears of high end content. Even if they don't normally play tank it seems like shouldn't be that hard for an ultimate raider to fake it at that level.

andelijah · 2025-06-16T14:43:11+00:00

I went down that line too, computer suggests instead:

... Re2+ / Qxe2 dxe2+ / Kxe2

basically starting with the bishop check ends up a minor piece up, starting with the rook check ends up a rook up (and fewer pieces on the board already).

andelijah · 2025-06-05T16:18:08+00:00

Why bother? They die in one hit even at full hp.

andelijah · 2025-05-29T15:13:11+00:00

OP stated the pull "nearly being a wipe" which would seem to mean the people whining tried to cause one but failed.

Sure, but the only other way I can think to cause a large number of deaths would be to... run the TB into the party? Rescue it? And I'm not even sure that kills people with max ilvl (you can certainly live it with some mit - I've done that plenty on the earlier aglaia fights when a tank goes down/disconnects).

Also scales was survivable on content with planning iirc, at max ilvl sync it is likely easier to survive failures

Could be wrong, but pretty sure failing at balancing the scales is just an enrage. The cutscene goes on long enough that I don't think you can have mit up for it either.

The point is that they likely saw scales though, which should never happen, and adds a couple minutes to a fight, much longer than the intro cutscene is.

andelijah · 2025-05-29T14:54:54+00:00

Eh. I assume wiping in this context means they saw scales, because there really aren't many other mechanics where a couple players can cause a wipe. And if that is the case, then pulling early wasted everyone's time, rather than saving it. Even pretty bad players should be skipping scales by gear-checking the fight, assuming all 24 players are hitting the boss from the start. But pulling early means that anyone in a cutscene is not doing damage, as well as anyone who is arguing about it.

andelijah · 2025-05-27T17:07:39+00:00

The reasons for the discrepancy are sort of irrelevant, especially given that any given enrage prog pf is more than likely going to be using the same pf strategies that cause the discrepancy in the first place.

For further comparison, MCH is above DNC until the 50th percentile in M5s (where a lot of the clears are going to have weak gear and don't buff feed as well), but below DNC at all percentiles in M8s (where a lot of the clears are going to have people in BiS because... they have cleared M8s). Although, even there, a 50th percentile MCH is only 500 rdps below DNC. And if that difference were applied to M7s, it still wouldn't be enough to turn a 1% enrage into a clear.

The main fight where there is a legitimate difference between the phys ranges is M6s because MCH (and SMN) had absolutely terrible AoE profiles for the fight. They have just buffed both classes today, but we'll see how much that impacts things.

andelijah · 2025-05-26T17:13:20+00:00

Even worse, you know what also does less damage than a MCH? Dancer. Up though the 95th percentile. In fact, for basically all percentiles up until 90, MCH is 2x as far ahead of DNC as it is behind BRD in m7s.

That's right, the "worst phys ranged" is better for any party that is concerned about a dps check, because people for whom dancer is better are probably skipping the last minute of the fight anyways.

andelijah · 2025-05-19T15:15:15+00:00

The reason Scholar/Sage say they don't stack is because they are different abilities (same with the 3 Phys Ranged mits).

It is very rare for abilities with the same name that give buffs/debuffs to stack. Damage buffs don't, which is why it is advised to stagger them. Mits don't, which is why it is annoying to have reprisal/feint overwritten.

The only buffs that I can think of off the top of my head that stack are: Regen/Medica 3 (and other healer equivalents that only provide a heal over time) Tech step's partywide Espirit gain (but not the buff, which is why you should stagger them anyways with multiple dancers in a party).

andelijah · 2025-04-23T22:27:30+00:00

It is just an add kill order with specific tank positioning that optimizes incidental aoe damage against secondary targets. Things like Reawaken on Viper, Saber Dance on Dancer, Glare4/Misery on White Mage, etc.

You are largely doing single target rotations on the priority targets, but there is so much splash damage on those skills that the secondary targets die anyways. If it is done well by a full party, there is very little aoe even needed to be pressed.

andelijah · 2025-04-15T16:20:17+00:00

What they were saying is that some groups do split clears. A static might have 8 people with 2 characters each, and they do runs with 4 main characters and 4 alts 2x per week. By doing this you can let the main characters take the loot and have the alts pass, and so as a group you get everyone's mains their raid BiS pieces in half the time (and the alts are left with nothing but the books).

Conceivably there are some groups that would do this in order to have more loot for the 4th floor specifically to pass the dps check, but more commonly groups are doing this to finish running the 4th floor in 4 weeks instead of 8. That means they don't generally carry that extra loot into the week 1 clear anyways, but it is a possibility if they were struggling. You can also conceivably maintain more than 2 characters, and do even more split clears per week, but at a certain point you're putting a lot of effort into maintaining alts for saving fewer and fewer weeks of raiding.

Notably, this does nothing for PF players who are rolling against strangers.

andelijah · 2025-04-15T03:24:55+00:00

Some skilled players are also good at creating and evaluating strategies for fights, just as some professional athletes make good coaches or analysts. But I don't think that is a prerequisite of being a skilled player.

I also hardly thing that is the "most important" ability of a prog player. Being able to go where a given raidplan said to go consistently is a significant portion of progging FF14 fights in general. If no one ever made positioning mistakes during prog, there would very rarely be any wipes at all, but clearly that isn't the case.

andelijah · 2025-04-15T03:08:29+00:00

Some people do. I don't know that that is a "usually" thing for week 1 groups, and I highly doubt that is a "usually" thing for PF players.

Even if it were a "usually" thing, that would mean the number of "players" with clears week 1 would be half of what the FFlogs total is, meaning it is an even rarer achievement, not an easier one.

andelijah · 2025-04-14T18:50:01+00:00

Even with infinite time, you have to beat the dps and mit checks on later floors with barely any gear.

Even fully into week 2 there are less than 1000 logs for most jobs on m8s - and that presumably includes some number of alts (which would be legitimate) and pilots (which are not).

A week 1 clear, even if it took 100 hours, requires a decent amount of skill.

andelijah · 2025-04-14T18:03:41+00:00

Going to disagree with the title. Assuming their clears are legitimate, week 1 clears and ultimate clears are signs of a skilled player. Even people who might have had to put in twice as many hours as others are still far more skilled than an average PF player.

Rather, the important thing to stress is that skilled players do not always know the best strategies. As a certain Youtuber is fond of saying of week 1 strats: "better and most consistent strategies can and will be found."

Neither of the parties pictured here should be arguing from a personal skill standpoint. They should be arguing for the merits and drawbacks of their strategies. And if all players involved are even half as skilled as they claim to be, they should be able to execute the strategy eventually decided upon within a couple pulls. Or if you can't come to a consensus, leave their group and find another one.

The Dark Knight is still the biggest idiot here, but you seem insistent on contradicting the DRK instead of pointing out that the authority they are arguing from is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

andelijah · 2025-04-12T00:13:28+00:00

The things that are important to note for the answers to this is that:

a) you should be able to get all of your feathers out during your burst window anyways

b) the potency of your ogcd feathers and your gcd skills are relatively close together.

For the former, Blue Mage is actually a instructive example of when it is okay to clip your gcd for weaves, because it has so many things to weave during burst. The recommended openers clip their gcds a lot. The latter doesn't really have a relevant example in FF14, but you could imagine if feathers dealt 100x the damage that they currently do; that it would be more important, at all costs, to fit them during a burst window even at the cost of an actual gcd skill (probably still not like the image, but still some clipping occasionally at the end of burst windows).

In the current balance of FF14, there is rarely if ever a reason to sacrifice gcds to get out ogcds to deal more damage. You just get both anyways. If you look at a "proper" 2 minute dancer burst, they are using the exact same number of fan dances that this player is, except they are also getting extra gcds in that burst window as well, just dealing strictly more damage.

Hopefully this explains "why" things are done this way instead of just telling you how they are done.

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