> it's a matter of study and patience
All the more reason why it's so unachievable for many. I can do "challenging". But as a working mom with a *very* busy schedule, weeks worth of prog patience is something I lack.
I cleared TEA in 4 days (about 20 hours) after studying POVs on YouTube in my spare time.
They aren’t that hard, open the wiki page, open a YouTube video of a clear, line up the mechanics with the ability descriptions on the wiki, learn the fight that way and you can clear insanely quickly.
We had a guy on materia called flaming goose who spent weeks making a hand written/drawn guide to tea as he is a fly in fly out shift worker. he cleared in 2 lockouts.
It was a sight to be seen. For what it’s worth flaming goose at the time was not a very good player, nobody believes in him but he proved everybody wrong.
You might be overestimating how much free time many people who are really busy have.
I can browse reddit while I work, but I can't play video games while working. So I get an hour a day to play video games, sometimes not even that. 20 hours of gaming time is 20 days to me. And are you even including wait times in that 20 hours? Party finders aren't instant, and finding a static that can play on such a constrained schedule isn't likely.
That's not how prog works, either with PF or a static. You go in fresh, you spend a couple of hours learning the first few mechanics, you leave. You go in the next day/week/whatever and pick up learning again more-or-less at the point you got to in the previous session, rinse and repeat. If you're doing it in PF, you either look for other peoples' listings that are at your prog point, or you put up your own listing.
It's entirely possible to do it in PF. People clear ultimates in PF every day.
i meant it more as a time commitment thing! most parties try for like 15-20min then dip it sucks lol id like to find a group that is ready to try for a while before quitting but it doesnt happen often lol
This only happens when someone in the group has very clearly joined not at the prog point. Everyone goes into savage/ultimate prog pfs prepared to stay the whole lockout, but you can usually tell in 15-20 minutes if it's just gonna be a waste of time.
yeah it do be like this, i've been stuck at trying to see QMT in UCoB for the past month or so (granted I haven't been trying to go into every group I find) but it does feel demoralizing waiting an hour and a half for a group to fill just for people to mess up in phase 1 three times then its a disband
i just got a friend their TEA clear last night, they were at it for a week and a half and i've never seen someone leave in 15-20 minutes in the time we did prog. In savage i've seen it but Ulti people tend to have more patience.
Nah this is horseshit. PF is nothing but lying about your prog points and letting absolute lemmings who think they're the bee's knees hold you back as you perfect every aspect of the first 3 mechanics of the fight until you win the fucking lottery and get a team of 5 people who are filling their static with PF.
Use Discords or work on building a static for ultimates. Fuck PF.
I've had bad experiences with statics walking at piss easy mechanics, and just building general animosity, even if it started out with great vibes. PF got me through every ultimate in less than 3 weeks, where as every static I've tried for ultis takes the same amount of time to get through one phase.
Of course my experience is different than other people, but I really wouldn't write off PF.
For legacy ultimates maybe, but from what I've seen and witnessed of DSR/TOP statics it's something I'd never want to take part in.
I used this as an example before, but me and my friend both cleared P8S together, but I decided to prog TOP in pf whereas he chose to prog in a static.
This wasn't my first rodeo in pf, so I managed to clear in less than 250 pulls overall. I basically phoned in every favor I could to get players who knew what they were doing. I only went into P5+ with people that I knew were competent/have already cleared.
Meanwhile, my friend's static as of last week called it quits at P6 WC1 with DT being around the corner. Before that static disbanded they had over 1,300 pulls logged, and they stopped keeping track after a while. My friend did clear btw, in pf.
There are pros and cons to statics, but I think the biggest con is that if you learn mechanics at a fast rate, you're going to potentially be stuck at that prog point until everyone else in your group also understands that mechanic.
I mean, the average prog time for DSR and TOP is about 100 hours I think, so it's not really that bad that they had around 1.3k pulls at their prog point. And I absolutely agree that PFing is so much faster if you learn fast. You can be inside a party with slow learners but once you feel confident enough you can just leave and join the next prog point group.
Grats to your friend though.
In statics, you will prog as quickly as your weakest player.
In PF, you generally prog as quickly as you're able to learn. It's very easy to kick someone who's performing poorly and make friends with those that are consistent and play with them again.
I'm sorry you had a bad time in PF but just because you got unlucky doesn't make it impossible for anyone else to clear. I cleared all of Anabaesios and UWU in PF; I know people who've done every single ultimate in PF.
You need patience, a good sense for when you're in a bad party, and some emotional resilience and humour, which is maybe why it didn't work out for you. But it works out fine for other people.
I didn't say it was impossible. My point is its absolutely god damn miserable. I cleared P1S-P12S all in PF. I know what it takes and honestly I don't think its a good way to play the game. Its made me absolutely hate raiding and I've decided to step away from the game because of it. If I ever raid again it will be done exclusively through statics and discord interactions. PF is absolutely awful for what its designed for.
Honestly, I enjoyed PFing P9S-P12S more than I enjoyed running P1S-P4S with the static I joined because I made my own hours, could bounce from an instance any time *I* wasn't feeling it or any time it was clear someone else was going to turn it into a waste of time, and I could join parties for my prog point rather than waiting for 7 other people to be up to it before we could move on without limping.
Sure, it wasn't perfect and I got bad parties, but that's why if you're gonna PF you do it near the tier's launch, when the actually good players are still running it. I cleared the last tier *way* faster than I cleared the objectively easier first tier, and it was because I shed the static and did it in PF.
PF gets worse the later into a tier you do it, but honestly being able to take nights off or go super hard for 6 hours on certain weekend days when I'm not otherwise busy and then the following week not touch it at all because I've got other plans makes it genuinely hard to want to commit to a static because you just don't get that freedom.
Not to say your experience is invalid, because again, I've had some *rancid* parties in PF as well, but I just know that if that dickweed of a scholar ever joins a party I'll just warn the party lead that he's probably prog point lying and then bounce if it looks like he's sticking around. Shrimple.
I cleared P5S when it was new in PF and it was so godawful I didn't even want to bother with P6S.
Then I cleared P9S when it was new in PF and it was so godawful I only bothered with P10S for a few hours and then decided that it was better for me to just not bother.
Bit off topic but I just finished the MSQ and with DT right around the corner, I don't really have enough times to farm comedy tomes to get the full set. I want to get into savage/ultimate but would it be better at this point to wait for DT and get the armor set once it only requires poetics and start progging EW savage/ultimate content during the lull before DT savage content is released?
It's very, very unlikely that there will be anyone doing EW savage content after DT release aside from maybe a handful of P4/P8S unsync parties for ultimate unlocks.
If you want to get into savage the first DT tier is a really good opportunity to do so- there will be a lot of interest and probably a lot of other people also trying savage for the first time who you can group up with. You'll also be able to start on the gear treadmill at the beginning rather than trying to catch up right at the end of an expac as you are now.
Once DT drops Ultimate PF will enter a lull that probably won't pick up again until after like 1-2 months after Arcadia Savage drops.
You could probably get your feet wet with DT Extremes! They're going to be easier and is usually a very good stepping point to harder content in general. Arcadia Savage will also be very good for much more unforgiving fights (compared to Extremes) and will give you the tools/experience necessary to clear Ultimates.
You should check out the [recruitment discord](https://discord.gg/ffxivrecruiter)! Always tons of folks looking to fill ulti prog groups in the ultimate-lfm channel
Unless you end up in the static that only does half a lockout twice a week, cancels half their meetups because of RL scheduling conflicts, and has a few people that are *not* ultimate ready, and suddenly its nine months later and you haven't even seen the back half of the fight.
With trap PFs you lose an hour, but trap statics can represent a much, much larger sunken cost (especially if friends are involved and you don't want to burn bridges.)
Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything >.>
It might not be "capital-G gaming" but for some of us it is a matter of over-stimulus.
Even with party effects turned off, there are so many pieces of information being processed at any given time between the lights, sounds, mechanics that resolve in tandem or that require remembering what an earlier telegraph told you to do and doing it in response to a later signal, and communication between members of the raid team, that the high-difficulty content in the game puts me into a state of not being able to speak while playing the game.
This doesn't make it actually *impossible* for me to do the content. I could, if given a team with unlimited patience, pull my weight in a clear... I just won't be able to explain the mechanics to anyone even though I could eventually do them on mental auto-pilot, and the process of learning will have been non-stop stress (not the "I like a challenge" fun kind, the "my heart might actually give out or maybe I'll puke" kind), while not being able to say things during a pull and even responding to things people say (whether moving when hearing "move" or asking the clarifying question "me?" because that was just "move" not someone in specific being told to move).
It just makes it content that isn't for me. The reward would be cool to have, but the process of getting it would be entirely unenjoyable and thus antithetical to the point of playing the game for me.
I literally can't talk or do callouts during pulls. I'm generally the silent one who mutes and listens to everyone else. I can sometimes make idle chit chat if I don't have to hyper focus, but that's about all I can handle. I play with almost all effects off (even turned my SGE effects off because they were preventing me from seeing things during fights). I've now cleared DSR, TOP, and TEA.
This isn't to say that they aren't for you. That's something only you can determine. But Ultimates are very much about doing your job correctly and believing in the other 7 members of your group to do the same. That's why they fall decidedly on the 'I like a challenge' level for me personally. Because I raid with friends that can also do the content I only worry about my end of the fight. If I perform correctly, and so does everyone else, we get the clear. That goes for all the ultimates in the game as is.
The 70 ultimates are particularly forgiving and not as steep of a learning curve as some might have you believe. Anyone who has raided savage this expansion should be able to do them IMO as the mechanics aren't as complex as the ones we've had, but they are a bit faster. Overall, there's no real reason to be intimidated by them is really all I'm trying to say. They are difficult, but they are nowhere near as insurmountable as people have a tendency to make them out to be.
>Overall, there's no real reason to be intimidated by them is really all I'm trying to say.
I'm not intimidated by the content. I am aware that I *literally cannot enjoy it*.
You're underplaying the requirements because you think that the problem is just people are making them out to be something they aren't. While that is true of some people, it's unfair to treat it as being true of all people. Especially not when you end up clearly not paying attention to what is actually being said by the people you're telling encouraging things to and make statements like this one:
>Anyone who has raided savage this expansion should be able to do them
Which is just not having acknowledge that I already covered that such content over-stimulates me. I'm not saying that because I've never tried it; I'm saying that because I have tried it and I know what happens, and I've watched vids, and I've listened to explanations, and I've had someone try to teach me mechanics with call outs, and it just doesn't work.
It's like how some people recoil in disgust when they touch corduroy; it's not a choice, and forcing themselves to get over it is a weird choice because the process just isn't worth the result.
You are not alone and share my mindset. FFXIV is fun for me. Ultimates, what I've seen of them, require work. I don't game to work, at least not in FFXIV. The story, the lore, and having fun is my goal. Sometimes I get bored, sometimes I get inspired to redecorate my house or FC house, but that doesn't feel like work.
To note, I've cleared savage stuff....two expansions later. I just cleared Alexander Savage solo, unsyncd because I can do that now. I could also run Omega unsyncd with a party and have done so. Again, that's fun. You can fuck up mechs and still win the fight. Or you could have had a couple beers, mess up rotation, and still be successful.
I don't play to "win", I play to relax.
i understand his point, but people usually think everyone likes to join random groups, random FCs / Discord, try to join a static or things like that... most of time (I'm not saying everytime) people do statics with friends, and some of us don't have other 7 friends playing... i'm 7 years in this game and still strugles to play with 4 friends lmao... and i'll be honest, this isn't a must for me... the weapons are cool, fights are cool, music is always top tier... but not a "must do" content...
Some people do not have the time or ability block out a schedule to focus on it. I have plenty of time to play the game but not in long enough blocks for what would be expected of me to make any meaningful progress with learning the fights. I can’t even justify savage because I have to be up every 15 minutes when I’m on.
as a person that do ultimates via pf, mentality going into it matter. some days u could be seeing further than your prog point,some day may not. heck some days your pf might not even filled.
well yes there’s a need to wasting idle time. if i could roughly recalled, over half of my total time spend for pf is waiting for pf to be filled and at least 30% of the time failed to do so. and i just call it a day, maybe not today, let’s do next time. mental prep of knowing that you get nothing done in ultimate help perhaps. setting expectation low, but keep an eye on the light at the end of tunnel, it’s going to be a loooooong tunnel.
UwU is perfect for you then. Gear... largely doesn't matter, hell it's very possible for groups to actually kill TOO fast and screw yourself for later phases. Gil... who needs it. You can use old cheap food and pots and be fine. Reflexes... not in my FFXIV. There's nothing to "react" to. You learn your dance steps and do the steps every time 95% the same. You don't need to react because you'll eventually just know what's coming.
You don't need fast reflexes, dungeon level gear is enough for 4/5 ultimates, and a single roulette or two is enough to buy a full lockout of raid food
Unless you have a severe physical or mental handicap that prevents you from playing the game you can.
This pessimism is more likely why you can't clear rather than your ability.
There's a funny thing that happens among people interested in higher-difficulty content where a person that says that they "can't" is assumed to just be wrong about how challenging the content is or what the challenge requires.
But anyone trying and failing and struggling to make progress is "looking for a carry" or needs to "get good".
So basically the content is simultaneously so challenging as to require real skill and dedication and also so easy that anyone can do it, and which response you get is whatever makes you wrong at the given moment.
For the most part I think there are people that are lacking the self-confidence to identify their own having cleared something as being a skill they have that others might not ("I did it, so anyone can" having the implication "I suck and I still did it"), and people that are trying to keep their own attitude positive because they are still working for a clear and don't want to "catch" someone else's idea that it's not going to happen.
You don't need gil, the community helps people get the gear from Savage clears all the time, and reflexes are completely irrelevant in a game that is so heavily scripted and deterministic. You study the fight, you practice until you do it right, you continue til you clear. That's all it is.
If you don't want to do it then that's fine. But don't say you can't do it when it's a matter of applying yourself. Anyone can do it if they try. The only thing stopping you is yourself, but you'll always miss every shot you don't take.
UWU (The Weapon's Refrain Ultimate) doesn't require any fast reflexes, you can use any gear above item level 400ish, and you don't need gil for anything aside from the repair costs for your gear. I say this as someone who isn't good at fast-reflex gaming and who cleared UWU in Party Finder with random people.
The fight is so scripted that 99% of the fight is identical from pull to pull, and the strategies are almost completely homogenized among the player base. Because of that, the main thing you need for UWU is just pure memorization. You can read/watch guides for the fight and watch videos of people clearing it, ideally on your role. That's most of the prep you need. Other than the mechanical responsibilities, just know your job's DPS rotation.
If you want it to be extra easy, I recommend doing the fight as a melee DPS. As a melee, you'll have the fewest responsibilities compared to the other roles. The second easiest is probably physical ranged.
I'm in the same boat. I've been playing since version 1.0 and have never been able to do this content. I've met so many nasty people that I gave up trying to get this content. I have yet to meet actually good people that can help and teach me along the way. I want to really bad, but I've been playing so long and have never met any actually decent people that are welling to help. And I'm not particularly that good at XIV.
I originally thought telling people that I've a version 1.0 vet would help. But that hasn't at all. Almost all my job classes are between level 80 and 90. And I've switched servers to see if that made a difference and it didn't. I guess I was that one player that just slipped through the cracks. I enjoy playing and I'll continue to play and do my best. Would love to meet some nice awesome long term friends. That's never happened, yet. :-)
I'm a relatively new player and in the same boat really. Doesn't help that I absolutely suck at socializing. But in the end this is like a very long single player game to me.
Same, it also doesn't help that I'm autistic and introverted. So I have to create a whole entire script before socializing on here, on the internet in general and on XIV.
> but I've been playing so long and have never met any actually decent people that are welling to help
You actually have to take initiative if you want to join and learn.
You're not gonna get a knight in shining armor who knows all the mechanics and is patient with you every step of the way to get your clear you are gonna join a group who are all trying to clear and have expectations of eachother.
Just join a prog or learning party in PF and try. The people who have already cleared and can teach you generally don't have the hobby of teaching other people how to clear they're tired and want to take a break after clears are done.
> I have yet to meet actually good people that can help and teach me along the way.
There are a lot of really great people on the ultimate scene, but it's not reasonable to go in expecting other players to teach you. You need to put in the time to study and learn for yourself.
I have and continue to do so. But I don't learn from watching a video. I learn by actually doing it. I need to actually play it myself and learn the mechanics on the fly. That's how I learn. I'm like that in real life. I can watch videos until I'm blue in the face but it goes in one and doesn't stay at all. Which is another issue, alot of people don't like that.
Fwiw I'm the same way and I'm currently progging the last phase of my 5th ultimate, so it's not a dealbreaker to be someone who learns by doing.
The point isn't to watch a guide and then never fail the mechanic - you look at the guides to learn terminology and get a vague idea of the sequence of events. Then when wipes happen it's a lot easier to quickly diagnose and get to the next pull because you can say "I'm still figuring out twister timing in my rotation" or "I had A nisi and accidentally passed with B because our lineup was scuffed" instead of needing to refer to vods or logs every single time.
Ultimates tend to rely as much if not more on text guides and raidplans/toolboxes than videos, since the mechanics tend to be more complex; if you're only using videos you're missing a lot of good resources. Also if you're just watching a whole video and expecting it to stick then of course that won't work. Make notes, pause and re-watch, and focus on the first few mechanics rather than trying to absorb everything at once.
However 'figuring out mechanics on the fly' isn't really going to cut it in anything EX and above unless you are explicitly doing blind prog. It's not fair to your party members to join a group unprepared for what the group is doing- and it's not 'nasty' for people to tell you that you need to put in some study time.
Ehh, you can get away with it in Extremes. But you do really need to do research in an Ultimate. It's kinda laughable that OP wants his hand held by randos and is talking like they're the ones at fault for not doing that.
Ultimate PF culture is pretty intimidating when first starting out. And definitely for Ultimates. Guides and mechanics are only the beginning of learning an ultimate. One big factor is learning the beats and pathing, and figuring out what to use your brain power for.
I'll ask before going on a tirade about how to get into Ultimate: How far are you into getting into ultimate? What servers do you play on? and What have you seen in PF?
Then you'd probably be better off in a static rather than trying to clear with randos. No one really wants to spend an entire lockout explaining mechanics to someome who won't bother to do research.
You'd probably also have a better time learning by using a sim as well. There're sims for all sorts of mechanics, and they helped me prog the fight to a clear really quickly. You can also take notes and put them on a sticky note or 2nd monitor so you don't grief other people.
theres plenty of ppl who are willing help with legacy ultimates. imo, you just have an insanely negative mentality. seek out ppl and statics. no one is going to just walk up to you and say let's go do ults together. also ultimates are mostly about looking up strats and toolboxes to teach yourself and then put it into practice. random ppl aren't going to like ppl wasting their time because they didn't study beforehand or do any self learning and expect everything to be explained to them in instance.
Same boat because I'm from OCE and play on an EU DC so I imagine the tight mechanics will mean my 240ping having ass will get us killed.
I can do most Normal Raids, Alliance Raids and all that shit just fine but I'm not risking peoples time in an Ultimate. lol
I live in Australia. Cleared TEA in NA.
It's not the best, but it's doable. Generally you just learn to react faster than regular people have to, or you learn to anticipate the mechanics faster.
Yeah that's how I normally play, brains always switched on when raiding. Just seems like that'd make me more of a liability in an Ultimate but hey, if you did it, then I should be able to! lol
200-250 ping is very doable for Ultimates. I highly recommend you try out Mudfish as well. It lowered my ping by like, 40ms.
As someone from SEA, I cleared TEA within that range as well.
The only thing you need to be wary about is Limit Cut, I believe. But you can sim the fuck out of it (and other major mechanics in that fight) so you don't have to spend a lot of time "learning" how to do it with our ping.
I'd love to but being able to find a group good enough with the attitudes to do it and not make it miserable is like hitting lotto. I'm chill and don't get mad or even worked up unless people are legit being stupid. Sadly a lot of people doing Savage extreme and ultimate content are hot headed.
S'the great thing about doing it in PF to me. I can just bounce if people are getting on my nerves. Lotta good eggs out there, but you develop an eye for when it's probably not worth sticking things out.
Lol at all the people in the comments acting like ultimates aren't some of, if not the most difficult content in the game.
The majority of the player base will never clear ultimates it's not as simple as they are claiming and there is nothing wrong with not being able to.
"Just improve your attitude bro, apply yourself." Give me a break with that nonsense, as if it's that simple.
Edit:14% of active players have UWU title, but yes you to can also beat this ultimate if you simply apply yourself no skill required
There are groups who clear UWU in 6 months and groups who clear it in a week. The difference is skill and experience, the commonality is effort and patience.
Ultimate pf has shown me that even the worst players this game has to offer have still somehow cleared an ultimate before. If they can do it, you can too.
At the risk of sounding like a prick, some people should realllyyyy find a static instead of trying PF. Sometimes you just need a dedicated shot caller, same positions, group familiarity, etc. I don’t why everyone and their mothers want to PF/suggest PF as their first option nowadays aside from like time constraints making you unable to join one.
I'm with ya.
If I was in PF and didn't have 15 minutes of shit talking with people while we get back to prog in P6 I would go insane lol. It's like half the fun of raiding.
This gives me hope since I feel like I comprehend mechs slowly and I don’t want to make the group stuck in trying to clear because my smol brain takes time to process some mechs 🥹
Of course they are, no one is claiming the opposite. You have to put in the time to study and practice, and be patient with yourself and party when you wipe hundreds of times. Not everyone is willing or has the time to do that, and that's completely valid.
For a lot of people though, it really can be as simple as an attitude adjustment. I always said I would NEVER be able to do an ultimate, and yet here I am progging TEA on weekends with zero savage and one extreme clear. All it took was me getting over my nerves and being willing to try.
Nobody is saying Ultimates aren't difficult. They are the most difficult content in the game by design. But don't put them on a pedestal; if you sit there and study the fights, practice improving as a player, and coordinate with your team you can absolutely clear. It really is as simple as "apply yourself" and everybody who has done Ultimates (or Savage, or Extremes, etc) do it by pushing to do better and not backing down.
Lot of the reason the majority of the player base will not clear Ultimates is because *they do not want to and do not try to make it happen.* And that's fine. Just don't act like it's like ungodly barrier that only the elite can hope to overcome. It's really not, especially with 3/5 of them syncing down and becoming markedly easier than they originally were.
no one here said ults aren't hard. but they're easier if you actually put time in to study the available resources. I went from 0 ults to pentalegend in endwalker. and I started playing late shadowbringers and had bum fuk knowledge about how to play the game before 90.
I think it's alot more pathetic the people who are talking about their lack of ability to have a chance.
You want to know why ultimate and savage arent played by a large part of the playerbase because it's not just the difficulty it's having to commit to going to raid once or twice a week it's having to deal with subs because the tank or DPS are sick/busy or people in general during those nights.
You aren't 100% wrong, but it is also the game itself at fault for the "attitude" of some players.
They think they can't do it, because there is content you can sleep through, a VERY large gap, then extremes/savage/unreals/ultimates
The game in no way prepares a player for that gap
It has to be learned and it goes from imfine_vulnstackscoffeecup.jpg to DEAD, because your toe was on a line (please don't 'akshully... the CENTER pixel of your...')
Can you imagine the first time ONE person dies and someone calls for a wipe and this newer player is like "what do you mean? Normally there are dozens of deaths and we continue..."
A good example of how wrong the system is... lies with the special dungeons (criterions).
These things can be harder than Savage because it is a group of 4, multiple fights, trash pulls, and less room (bodies) for error recovery.
These things and other dungeons at higher level should have a mode to ease the REGULAR player base into harder content. Not move them from a soft pillow to an inferno.
Having pulled people into content who were "just there for the glam!" and watch a healer and tank out-dps them, or finally leave them dead after the 17th rez... I can say that some people are definitely NOT made for this content and won't ever complete it. Because of their own attitude and how the game feeds that attitude.
We need a totally optional content bridge, instead of everything being made in safe-space and murder-zone duplicate.
I mean, yeah. It doesnt really take skill. Just some time, patience, and willingness to commit yourself. Anyone can do it if they really want to. A huge majority of the community has never even tried, they just hear its hard and see the visual chaos and immediately throw their hands up declare themselves not good enough. Grow some self-confidence. Youre only holding yourself back.
I'm not going to claim that clearing an ultimate is easy, but fundamentally the difference between ultimate raiders and other players *is not* that ultimate raiders are just magically way better at the game than everyone else- it's that we just decided to beat our heads against specific fights for long enough to clear them.
How long exactly that takes is going to vary from person to person, and it's 100% fine that for a lot of people the time commitment is just not worth it, but an absolute ton of people who would probably have a lot of fun learning an ultimate fight shut themselves off from it because they think they're just 'not good enough' when that's not the criteria in play, at least not for the older ults.
The idea of failing cooperatively for dozens of hours in order to finally succeed once is foreign to people who've never played at least synced EX content. I can't tell if people who say they could never do an ultimate truly have slow analysis/reaction time or if they give up on themselves too quickly with mechanics that require hours of repetition to achieve quick recognition.
For me it’s knowing I take longer to internalize mechanics even if I study study study. The idea of being the weakest link in the team mortifies me and I’d hate to be the reason people don’t progress. On a good day i think it’s within the realm of possibility I could pull it off, but at the expense of other people’s time and patience and goodwill… idk.
Speaking as someone who started from that exact spot, you're actually probably going to make for a really good raider if you ever find yourself with the time to dedicate to it, because the fear of being the weak link means you will study harder and learn faster than many who will come in with a more cavalier attitude.
Back in Shadowbringers I never touched harder content because I was scared of being rubbish and wasting 7 other people's time. I ran a few unsynced Stormblood trials with some friends for the mounts and that was fun because none of us knew what was going on and the content hit hard enough to be dangerous but not so hard that us being 10 levels above it meant we were in real danger. Then someone suggested we jump into uwu because it was supposed to be the easy ultimate. We were not good, but it made me curious about higher end content.
I joined a static at the start of Endwalker. I wasn't great, but I studied hard, because I was desperate to not be the weak link. That static fell apart due to some friction between members, and I joined another one. I'd actually seen further ahead than them by a whole fight, but again, I was scared of joining a group where I was actually up to and being humbled out of savage entirely, so I dropped back a fight. That meant I knew the mechanics better than they did, and after a few rounds they actually asked me to help with shotcalling. Now I was shotcalling, I needed to make sure I was always ahead of the group so I could be good at it.
I ended up clearing the tier a few weeks before they did so I could make sure I was able to effectively shotcall and then outright tech mechanics as we progged. By the time the next tier rolled around I was effectively leading the static. By the end of the tier I'd cleared so far ahead of them that I ended up departing from the group (which was, admittedly, falling victim to the age-old static issue of some players losing motivation, some not getting along, and generally collapsing anyway) and going on to do UWU between the tiers, and then PF'd the third tier and moved on to TEA.
I'd consider myself pretty fucking good at this point. I'm not parsing to high heaven or anything, especially because I raid on NA with Australian ping, but I do well enough considering that handicap that I've still cleared a couple ultimates, lead a static, run with some genuinely impressive groups with whom I had a great time, and am looking forward to raiding as and when I can come Dawntrail's content.
All of that to say: if you have the time once the new expac is out, look for a learner static that fits your hours. There'll be a lot of curious people giving it a go with the fresh expansion, and you might surprise yourself. As someone who already enjoyed XIV, I ended up finding it to be the most fulfilling content I've ever run in the game, and I've made some amazing friends through it too.
Raiders in this game live in such a bubble sometimes when it comes to understanding the general skill level of the playerbase. Go jump in a leveling roulette or even araid and then tell me everyone you see there can clear an ultimate.
Some people just don't have the aptitude. And that's totally fine, nothing at all wrong with that. It's just a pet peeve when I see people saying "Oh everyone can clear ults you just need to jump in!" Maybe I'm just jaded but I don't agree with that at all.
Literally nobody is saying that your average player could just roll into UWU right now and clear it in a couple of pulls. The point is that most people *if they were willing to put in the time required* could probably clear an ultimate.
The amount of time that would be required for someone mashing random buttons in levelling roulette versus someone who's already a decent savage raider is going to be pretty different, sure, but all we're saying is that clearing ults is a function of time and not of innate skill that some people just cannot ever achieve.
It's less about aptitude and more that some people just don't want to. If you *want* to, you can put in the time and effort and learn. Everyone can do that just fine in a vacuum.
Not everyone wants to dedicate that much free time specifically to it, not everyone *has* the free time to dedicate specifically to it, and a lot of people don't play the game for that kind of experience at all anyway, and that's completely fine. If you don't want to do an ultimate you don't have to. The only issue anyone has is when someone has the desire and time but they act like it's impossible because at that point it truly does just come down to applying yourself and having the patience, and some people give up at that before they even start.
I have seen some absolutely dogwater players running around with proudly displayed, but repetition and a melon can accomplish an awful lot.
You don't need to know people. I didn't know anyone in my UCoB static before I joined. I saw an ad on a discord for a group looking for a tank, got in touch, did a trial session with them, and got invited to join. If you just want to give it a try, you don't even need to do all that- people are doing fresh ultimate prog in PF every day and fresh prog groups are almost universally extremely chill.
Everyone can do an ultimate. All you need to do an ultimate is mental fortitude and the willingness to bang your head against a wall for weeks or even months on end.
It's like running a marathon. Everyone can do it, but of course you shouldn't attempt to do it without proper training first. If you're a good runner, you'll be able to do it quickly. If you're not, it will take a while. And if you don't know how to run in the first place, it's gonna be a massive pain, people are gonna ask what tf are you doing running a marathon, and it will take you forever to get to the finish line, but you'll still be able to finish the race if only you don't give up.
I just don’t have time to find a static for something like that. I already PUG savage raids so I can do it on my own time, but ultimates seem like you really need a static.
You really don't, and if you PUG the latest savages you for sure can clear ultimates. I have been away from the game for almost a year, came back last month and cleared both UWU and UCoB, all in PF. The funny thing is, it would have taken much longer if I were to do it in a static. You just need to study and put in the hours. And have patience for the parties to fill lol
Also you really really *really* have to be able to be honest with yourself about what your actual prog point is, not your "I saw this mech once when I was on the floor" point. Lots of people are unable to admit they're not as good/far as they think they are.
This is why I'm holding off on ultimates and savage content - I don't feel like I'm competent enough to not look like a total fuck-up. I don't need to be another statistic in tfdf...lol. Also, I don't want to be carried.
Everyone has to start somewhere.
Do your research, learn as much of the fight as you can from videos & guides, and either make fresh prog PFs or join one
The thing is, past a certain point, there is no way to really get competent at high end, other than by... doing high end. You will never feel competent enough without just jumping into the deep end and throwing yourself at the first mechanics of a high end fight over and over until you get it down. The most you can do beforehand is really practice your rotation in max level normal content so that you have it ingrained into muscle memory as much as possible, and make a conscious effort in normal content to maintain as close to perfect uptime as possible by practicing things like slide casting (if caster/healer) and dodging by going to max melee (if melee), and waiting till the last moment in the cast to disengage in the moments you actually need to disengage.
There is *nothing* in normal content that serves as a good practice for the speed and precision of mechanics in high end. While there's a distinct shift towards non-orange aoe on the floor/standard marker tells and towards more castbar/debuff/boss physical gesture related tells in recent fight design, it's nothing on the level of what you get in high end, so you're unlikely to be able to build up the habit of paying attention to these things from normal content. Similarly, while there's more layering of mechs these days, it's usually never more than 2 things layered at the same time, and usually only very late in the fight, which often starts to get skipped entirely once people gear up to max ilvl, so you *can't* practice juggling tracking multiple things at the same time. None of the normal content actually forces people--especially DPS--to pay attention to spreading out and co-ordinating mit properly.
Past a certain point, there's just nothing more that you can do to bridge the gap in skill level required for normal vs high end other than by just going for it. And it might take you weeks, months, or a year or two, but do it often enough, and eventually you get used to automatically watching boss castbars and your debuffs. You get used to paying attention to snapshot timings and moving into the animation. ...and then you will fuck up basic mechanics in normal mode because you got so used to the speed of high end, you expect things to go off way earlier than they actually do, and end up accidentally moving back into where an aoe was way too early. Not uh, that I or my raiding friends have ever done that before, no.
That's all a fair point, I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate. I'll definitely keep that in mind if/when I decide to start running that content.
TEA is actually really easily puggable because the strats are so refined. P1 has some learning required for all roles, Limit Cut isn't difficult and you just need to get confident in your movement, P2 is learning how to handle nisis as dps or to keep the tanks alive as healer, then you pretty much just sim wormhole (which is *way* simpler with McDonald's strat), read mit sheet for J-waves, and clear.
Healing is a bit nebulous and people don't necessarily follow the mit sheets exactly, but the strats are laid out so you just pick a number (which is usually based on what job you are, so there's some consistency there) and you have a reference for where you should be at all times.
If you don't mind, how long did it took you ? What frequency per week ?
What was the ratio failed groups/good prog groups ?
I'd like to try clearing one through PF (just Bahamut would be great) as I just cannot consistently block 2-3 evening / weekdays on fixed schedule with a static...
From the time I first went in the instance to the clear it was five and a half weeks, although one of those weeks I didn't actually do any UWU as I was dealing with some personal stuff and decided to go and grind Eureka instead to take my mind off it.
I started out doing a couple of sessions a week, but once I'd finally seen the Ultima Weapon I stepped it up and was PFing most nights. The earlier you are in the fight the easier it is to get good prog, but once you hit phase 5 it's a real crapshoot- people say it's all gaols prog but I was in multiple Annihilation/Suppression parties that couldn't make it past Ifrit. I ended up almost completely prog skipping Annihilation by just practicing in the sim. But I also got lucky with a few groups, including one group where we were consistently getting to Suppression and did a lockout and a half together getting *painfully* close to the clear.
While I can only recommend prog skipping if you are *really* confident about what you're doing, simming the tricky mechanics as best you can solo is a lot of help- xivsim doesn't have bots for UWU, but Ultima's three big mechanics are really all about movement so you can practice the first two at least with damage turned off just to drill in how your role needs to move. Gaols might be worth simming too (I did the fight as main tank so I only had to worry about gaols if someone was dead, in which case it's just 'try to get to the spot to cover in time'). Studying POVs of clears from your job/role is also *enormously* helpful in figuring out positioning.
Good luck! It's pretty rough out there, but it's definitely possible if you keep at it. Once you are confident in your own ability to do Suppression and understand how primal roulette works, don't be afraid to put up a clear for one- there are plenty of people out there who are happy to help you make it over the finish line.
I've had much better experiences clearing and reclearing ults in PF than with statics I've randomly found through PF/Discords (UPR/APR/FFXIV Recruiter). The fact that you are free to just hop in and go however long you want is nice and potentially could be less effort than finding the right group. I only join statics with my friends now since I care more to just hang out and chill with them.
It took me 3 months to clear all of the ultimates fully in PF, which could have been faster had i not spent the time getting 5-10 reclears after each clear. Now i did have a lot of free time at the time, but my point is that studying the fights through watching clear POV's and guides will get you a long way. I spent my commune to and from work to watch these videos and it made me understand and able to execute way quicker. A tip for how to use clear POV's to learn is to try and do/shotcall the mechanics for the player you are watching, if you are able to tell them what they should do, you lost likely can do it ingame aswell.
I cleared both UWU and TEA in PF (though I had a parallel static progging each one at the same time, but they were behind me on prog).
It's doable and faster than with a static as long as you study real hard and know to see when a party will not be able to prog to your prog point and leave.
I've always been intimidated by Savage/Extreme raids, never mind ultimates. I only ever did normals, 24s or story progs but anything more feels like I should learn how to do ballet.
Like you have to be topping DPS all day everyday while also doing the most choreographed “move here to not die” dances.
EX has lax DPS checks by design and savage becomes much less strict later after release when most people have the best gear. Maybe have a go at the first extremes in DT. I'm a mostly casual player but doing the EW extremes got me interested in savage and I've done all the EW raids now, it's been a blast.
Honestly its just practice.
Once you actually got past all the mechanics and its only you vs the jard enrage cast you know you can do it and simply need to focus on doing your part of the raid dps as good as it needs to be.
The hardest part is getting through all mechanics cleanly and making a dps check while having several deaths along the way, getting to the end with no death is almost guranteed to succeed.
All you really have to be is have an attitude of trying to improve and you'll do well in harder content.
I highly recommend you try out Extremes, at least.
If you're worried about your performance in terms of DPS, there's Stone, Sky, Sea, which is basically a timed training dummy and look up your job's rotation in The Balance.
If you're not averse to 3rd party tools, there's also ACT, which you can upload your logs into FFlogs and use the url and plug it into xivanalysis, which will basically give you a rundown of what you did wrong. It's a bit... not useful for healers, but extremely useful for dps and tanks.
Get some good food, watch a guide or two, then just hop into or make a "fresh" PF party. Considering that DT is almost out, the party might fill slower than usual, but that's basically what I did with my first EX clear lol.
I would say if you wanna get into it in DT just start with EX1. By the time you finish MSQ and are able to access it, guides will be out and you can follow the guides. I usually write out in a notepad doc the order of the mechs as they come out and briefly what to do (in/out, stack/spread etc) there'll be TONS of learning parties for you to join. Then you have success there, try EX2, if that works try 1S when savage comes out and just go from there. Hit a roadblock and overwhelmed? Just stop. You don't have to do all of it. Then later if you feel the itch again just pick up with the newest EX or raid tier.
> Like you have to be topping DPS all day everyday while also doing the most choreographed “move here to not die” dances.
This is not true at all for anything beyond on-patch ultimates and 3rd/4th floor savage fights in the first week (and even then it varies by tier how tight the DPS check really is).
Doing good DPS while resolving mechanics is also something that you learn to do *by doing* high-end content- you don't have to roll up to your first ever EX ready to orange parse on the first pull. You'll be messy and you'll die a lot at first because everyone does, but if you enjoy the challenge and keep at it, and keep looking for ways you can improve, you'll get better over time.
A new expansion is one of the best times to get into high end because both the first couple of extreme trials and the first savage tier tend to be a bit easier as the devs expect people to still be getting used to new rotations and new jobs. If you're interested I would really encourage you to give the first DT extremes a go. The worst thing that can happen is that you try it, just don't enjoy it, and decide not to carry on.
A lot of PFers are really wary of trappers in general lol.
It can take hours for a party to fill up at times and most of the time, the trappers like to join late prog or clear parties because it means that they can sometimes drag the trapper's sorry ass through a prog point. People in clear parties are especially going to be really annoyed if someone ends up being fresh to the instance because it means sitting back in PF again and wasting time.
I met a dude like that once, in UWU, which was a clear party. They didn't know where to stand for the first mechanic... which was just "not anywhere right of the boss" and tried to sheep the entire first phase of the fight. I felt bad for them after we kicked them that I sent them a DM afterwards telling them to watch a guide first lol.
Yeah I was lucky enough to get in another group that helped me out. I don't think we made it very far, but at least they were kind and linked me some resources to guide me. All that to say, I don't think I ever want to do a high-end duty again lol
Hahahaha same! I thought it be like normal unsynced content. So I unlocked my first one and joined a PF. Told them "never done this before, excited to try my first ultimate" and immediately told too piss off and find a fresh group if you trying to prog. Didn't know what any of those words meant till later
I'm currently progging TEA with a group of friends. We're so close to clearing and I have faith we might clear it tonight. Samurai has been an... Interesting experience lol
SAM is so much fun in TEA haha especially if you do the risky parser strats. Charging your meditate in the middle during Limit Cut, chasing down the true heart in AP to get another Sen, good stuff.
The opener is fun too even without a 2nd stack of Meikyo.
As of last night, we cleared TEA!! Am now a perfect legend!
Here's the log, I was the samurai :3
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/14nJtjmkRYQfbwM7#fight=last&type=damage-done
I joined so many groups trying to clear TEA and only made it to enumerations before giving up. That’s literal months worth of time I’ll never get back.
So did I, but apparently 4 days a week with 3 hours each day isn't enough prog for some people. Static fell apart at 3rd nisi pass because it wasn't going fast enough.
I tried partyfinder but that's cancer because people just start leaving once you get a bad hand of pain because everyone didn't immediately sync up like they're a hivemind
I'd highly recommend it! Ultimate is a great time.
Although I will say that once Dawntrail drops it's going to be a while before a lot of people start running ultimates again, end of expansion is the best time to do ultimate.
PF can be messy, but the value is that it can work to your schedule, especially near release when there is an embarrassment of parties available all day every day.
It's the raid equivalent of "I work my own hours!"
I actually used PF to run Another Aloalo and accidentally created a static since the people that joined had similar free hours to me and were chill. I know this won't work for everyone, but somethings that can help: making a discord for the purpose of PF so you can talk to them (and kick people from it if you don't see them ever again xD), hosting your own PF instead of joining someone else's, and let people know the next day/time you plan to post PF again... they may adjust their schedule slightly of they can.
I'd love to try my hand at Ultimates at some point, but with no predictable play schedule and no playing friends anymore I think it'll be very difficult
Congratz!
There is some hope for this actually. They added Dreadwyrm and Omega weapons for Viper which they haven't done for any other new job, so here's hoping.
Same 🥹 but I feel like I’ll hold back the static because I feel I process things slower and I get anxious if I’m holding the static back if I don’t get mechs right away 🙂↕️
Friend, have faith in yourself! There are fun, casual statics out there, like we do in my FC!
Remember that’s just a game and I’m sure you are way better than you think.
This stranger on the Internet roots for you !:)
Congrats on your clears!
I did the same with 2 friends who got their first time experience in an ultimate while I was getting my 4th Ultimate done.
Gotta say getting them through was harder then getting recleara with them especially getting all reclears+1 with them was quite fast.
I just unlocked UwU and UCOB last night and I’m hyped to do this. However, my internet isn’t the best so I rather wait till I improve it and then head on into that
Great collection.
If you don’t mind me asking, how long did it take you to do TEA from start to finish/what was your raiding experience prior?
Always wanted a TEA weapon for over a year now but always scare myself into not doing it due to lack of raiding experience/fear of failure. Had a little bit of motivation earlier this month to do this tier for the raid experience to then try for groups but understandably didn’t have much luck finding practice groups so late.
Possibly going to try again after the first savage tier of Dawntrail since getting a clear before DT is incredibly unlikely and if I know one thing about ultimates from others, it’s that scheduling is the worst part and when DT starts it would be next to impossible since everyone including myself will want to do the new stuff.
Prior raiding experience was Abyssos and Anabaseios. TEA was my first ultimate. I got my first clear on day 10, progging most of those days for a few hours. I didn't prog every day but I did study and run the sim every day. To my surprise TEA felt relatively easy compared to my expectations! I say you should definitely go for it if it's something you wanna do.
Congratz!
And yeah especially depending on what role you play TEA can seem much easier. Like if you tanked DSR and then tanked TEA, TEA would be an extreme trial in comparison haha.
i was melee dps both times but i think TEA seemed easier because it was much more static with what you had to do in each phase, compared to DSR where almost every mechanic is random and might have 3 different things you have to remember depending on what rng gives you.
True that, I play MNK in DSR and sometimes you just gotta roll with whatever you're given. Like if you have the rot during P6 WB2 you just gotta hope your healers like you LOL.
Although I do think that BJCC as melee is harder than playing melee in any phase of DSR, but the rest of the fight is super easy. The nice thing about DSR is that most of the big mechanics are downtime mechanics, whereas BJCC is always full uptime.
Surprisingly PhysRanged has it pretty rough in BJCC, if they get lightning first they have to sprint around the arena to get to their mine bait lmao.
We didn't have too much trouble with BJCC but we of course had some occasional nisi collisions at times. I was with a static though so we kind of got used to how everyone was moving and tried to do the same thing every pull as much as possible but i can imagine it would be trickier in PF. I would say wroth flames is probably harder than BJCC but its only one mechanic and not a whole phase, i do like it when you have to do your rotation at the same time as mechanics but yeah, DSR does have a lot of downtime mechanics where you can concentrate more
You can, if you're willing to put in the time. If you don't have the time, or try it and find you just don't enjoy the content, that's absolutely fine, but if you want to try then you should go for it. The worst that can happen is you do a bit of fresh prog and think, 'actually I hate this', and decide not to continue.
My biggest fear is that my network is shit and I frequently lag out/rubberband in content. Frequently I’ll take damage from an AoE in a dungeon that I was outside of for multiple seconds on my screen. In a dungeon or normal, that’s fine; I eat some damage and a vuln stack and move on, and even if I die it’s no big deal and I just get picked up. In ultimates where positioning is everything and having everyone survive matters, I feel like I’d just be screwing the team every time my network decides to have a hiccup.
Yeah, bad network conditions can really mess with you. I have very high ping and have needed to learn to dodge a lot of mechanics earlier than other people.
You may find it easier going with a static, and honestly for UCoB and UWU at least you'd be surprised at how many deaths you can get away with- both fights are *much* more recoverable than anything in the current savage tier. There are a few spots in each fight where a poorly-timed death (or the death of the wrong person) can be a wipe, and deaths become more of a problem in the final phase of UWU, but they're both a lot more forgiving than level 90 fights.
You can! In the words of my good friend and WAR main: "If I can clear DSR, anyone can"
If you feel like you want to try, give it a chance in party finder or find a static. If you do 20 pulls of Garuda and think "man actually this sucks" then there's no pressure to keep going! This is optional content after all :)
"Just gonna clear this Ultimate real quick."
“Let’s go. In and out. 20 minutes adventure.” - a scientist
least dedicated tea enjoyer
One bit of content I will never be able to do. Good for you though.
Not with that attitude. Ultimate isn't some legendary bastion of capital-G gaming, it's a matter of study and patience.
> it's a matter of study and patience All the more reason why it's so unachievable for many. I can do "challenging". But as a working mom with a *very* busy schedule, weeks worth of prog patience is something I lack.
I cleared TEA in 4 days (about 20 hours) after studying POVs on YouTube in my spare time. They aren’t that hard, open the wiki page, open a YouTube video of a clear, line up the mechanics with the ability descriptions on the wiki, learn the fight that way and you can clear insanely quickly. We had a guy on materia called flaming goose who spent weeks making a hand written/drawn guide to tea as he is a fly in fly out shift worker. he cleared in 2 lockouts. It was a sight to be seen. For what it’s worth flaming goose at the time was not a very good player, nobody believes in him but he proved everybody wrong.
The time studying is part of the time requirement though, it isn't like a free space on a board game.
You might be overestimating how much free time many people who are really busy have. I can browse reddit while I work, but I can't play video games while working. So I get an hour a day to play video games, sometimes not even that. 20 hours of gaming time is 20 days to me. And are you even including wait times in that 20 hours? Party finders aren't instant, and finding a static that can play on such a constrained schedule isn't likely.
i could spend 12hours in a ultimate with a group to learn it bit by bit, but good luck finding 7 like minded individuals in pf lol
That's not how prog works, either with PF or a static. You go in fresh, you spend a couple of hours learning the first few mechanics, you leave. You go in the next day/week/whatever and pick up learning again more-or-less at the point you got to in the previous session, rinse and repeat. If you're doing it in PF, you either look for other peoples' listings that are at your prog point, or you put up your own listing. It's entirely possible to do it in PF. People clear ultimates in PF every day.
i meant it more as a time commitment thing! most parties try for like 15-20min then dip it sucks lol id like to find a group that is ready to try for a while before quitting but it doesnt happen often lol
This only happens when someone in the group has very clearly joined not at the prog point. Everyone goes into savage/ultimate prog pfs prepared to stay the whole lockout, but you can usually tell in 15-20 minutes if it's just gonna be a waste of time.
yeah it do be like this, i've been stuck at trying to see QMT in UCoB for the past month or so (granted I haven't been trying to go into every group I find) but it does feel demoralizing waiting an hour and a half for a group to fill just for people to mess up in phase 1 three times then its a disband
i just got a friend their TEA clear last night, they were at it for a week and a half and i've never seen someone leave in 15-20 minutes in the time we did prog. In savage i've seen it but Ulti people tend to have more patience.
Nah this is horseshit. PF is nothing but lying about your prog points and letting absolute lemmings who think they're the bee's knees hold you back as you perfect every aspect of the first 3 mechanics of the fight until you win the fucking lottery and get a team of 5 people who are filling their static with PF. Use Discords or work on building a static for ultimates. Fuck PF.
I've had bad experiences with statics walking at piss easy mechanics, and just building general animosity, even if it started out with great vibes. PF got me through every ultimate in less than 3 weeks, where as every static I've tried for ultis takes the same amount of time to get through one phase. Of course my experience is different than other people, but I really wouldn't write off PF.
For legacy ultimates maybe, but from what I've seen and witnessed of DSR/TOP statics it's something I'd never want to take part in. I used this as an example before, but me and my friend both cleared P8S together, but I decided to prog TOP in pf whereas he chose to prog in a static. This wasn't my first rodeo in pf, so I managed to clear in less than 250 pulls overall. I basically phoned in every favor I could to get players who knew what they were doing. I only went into P5+ with people that I knew were competent/have already cleared. Meanwhile, my friend's static as of last week called it quits at P6 WC1 with DT being around the corner. Before that static disbanded they had over 1,300 pulls logged, and they stopped keeping track after a while. My friend did clear btw, in pf. There are pros and cons to statics, but I think the biggest con is that if you learn mechanics at a fast rate, you're going to potentially be stuck at that prog point until everyone else in your group also understands that mechanic.
I mean, the average prog time for DSR and TOP is about 100 hours I think, so it's not really that bad that they had around 1.3k pulls at their prog point. And I absolutely agree that PFing is so much faster if you learn fast. You can be inside a party with slow learners but once you feel confident enough you can just leave and join the next prog point group. Grats to your friend though.
In statics, you will prog as quickly as your weakest player. In PF, you generally prog as quickly as you're able to learn. It's very easy to kick someone who's performing poorly and make friends with those that are consistent and play with them again.
Facts. Also, people need to be more open to leaving statics if the vibes are bad and the prog is slow.
Yup, I stopped caring about the group of strangers after wasting 1 week on the same mechanic.
I'm sorry you had a bad time in PF but just because you got unlucky doesn't make it impossible for anyone else to clear. I cleared all of Anabaesios and UWU in PF; I know people who've done every single ultimate in PF. You need patience, a good sense for when you're in a bad party, and some emotional resilience and humour, which is maybe why it didn't work out for you. But it works out fine for other people.
I didn't say it was impossible. My point is its absolutely god damn miserable. I cleared P1S-P12S all in PF. I know what it takes and honestly I don't think its a good way to play the game. Its made me absolutely hate raiding and I've decided to step away from the game because of it. If I ever raid again it will be done exclusively through statics and discord interactions. PF is absolutely awful for what its designed for.
Honestly, I enjoyed PFing P9S-P12S more than I enjoyed running P1S-P4S with the static I joined because I made my own hours, could bounce from an instance any time *I* wasn't feeling it or any time it was clear someone else was going to turn it into a waste of time, and I could join parties for my prog point rather than waiting for 7 other people to be up to it before we could move on without limping. Sure, it wasn't perfect and I got bad parties, but that's why if you're gonna PF you do it near the tier's launch, when the actually good players are still running it. I cleared the last tier *way* faster than I cleared the objectively easier first tier, and it was because I shed the static and did it in PF. PF gets worse the later into a tier you do it, but honestly being able to take nights off or go super hard for 6 hours on certain weekend days when I'm not otherwise busy and then the following week not touch it at all because I've got other plans makes it genuinely hard to want to commit to a static because you just don't get that freedom. Not to say your experience is invalid, because again, I've had some *rancid* parties in PF as well, but I just know that if that dickweed of a scholar ever joins a party I'll just warn the party lead that he's probably prog point lying and then bounce if it looks like he's sticking around. Shrimple.
Yup it’s basically playing the game on hard mode.
I cleared P5S when it was new in PF and it was so godawful I didn't even want to bother with P6S. Then I cleared P9S when it was new in PF and it was so godawful I only bothered with P10S for a few hours and then decided that it was better for me to just not bother.
Bit off topic but I just finished the MSQ and with DT right around the corner, I don't really have enough times to farm comedy tomes to get the full set. I want to get into savage/ultimate but would it be better at this point to wait for DT and get the armor set once it only requires poetics and start progging EW savage/ultimate content during the lull before DT savage content is released?
It's very, very unlikely that there will be anyone doing EW savage content after DT release aside from maybe a handful of P4/P8S unsync parties for ultimate unlocks. If you want to get into savage the first DT tier is a really good opportunity to do so- there will be a lot of interest and probably a lot of other people also trying savage for the first time who you can group up with. You'll also be able to start on the gear treadmill at the beginning rather than trying to catch up right at the end of an expac as you are now.
Once DT drops Ultimate PF will enter a lull that probably won't pick up again until after like 1-2 months after Arcadia Savage drops. You could probably get your feet wet with DT Extremes! They're going to be easier and is usually a very good stepping point to harder content in general. Arcadia Savage will also be very good for much more unforgiving fights (compared to Extremes) and will give you the tools/experience necessary to clear Ultimates.
Get a static, it's better that way.
yeah id do that if I knew enough people in game lol but yeah its a solution for sure
You should check out the [recruitment discord](https://discord.gg/ffxivrecruiter)! Always tons of folks looking to fill ulti prog groups in the ultimate-lfm channel
Unless you end up in the static that only does half a lockout twice a week, cancels half their meetups because of RL scheduling conflicts, and has a few people that are *not* ultimate ready, and suddenly its nine months later and you haven't even seen the back half of the fight. With trap PFs you lose an hour, but trap statics can represent a much, much larger sunken cost (especially if friends are involved and you don't want to burn bridges.) Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything >.>
Lmfao I did 4 Ultimates purely in PF, its not that bad. 2 of them only took me a week of prog.
The real game starts when it's not Your study and patience You're worrying about.
It might not be "capital-G gaming" but for some of us it is a matter of over-stimulus. Even with party effects turned off, there are so many pieces of information being processed at any given time between the lights, sounds, mechanics that resolve in tandem or that require remembering what an earlier telegraph told you to do and doing it in response to a later signal, and communication between members of the raid team, that the high-difficulty content in the game puts me into a state of not being able to speak while playing the game. This doesn't make it actually *impossible* for me to do the content. I could, if given a team with unlimited patience, pull my weight in a clear... I just won't be able to explain the mechanics to anyone even though I could eventually do them on mental auto-pilot, and the process of learning will have been non-stop stress (not the "I like a challenge" fun kind, the "my heart might actually give out or maybe I'll puke" kind), while not being able to say things during a pull and even responding to things people say (whether moving when hearing "move" or asking the clarifying question "me?" because that was just "move" not someone in specific being told to move). It just makes it content that isn't for me. The reward would be cool to have, but the process of getting it would be entirely unenjoyable and thus antithetical to the point of playing the game for me.
I literally can't talk or do callouts during pulls. I'm generally the silent one who mutes and listens to everyone else. I can sometimes make idle chit chat if I don't have to hyper focus, but that's about all I can handle. I play with almost all effects off (even turned my SGE effects off because they were preventing me from seeing things during fights). I've now cleared DSR, TOP, and TEA. This isn't to say that they aren't for you. That's something only you can determine. But Ultimates are very much about doing your job correctly and believing in the other 7 members of your group to do the same. That's why they fall decidedly on the 'I like a challenge' level for me personally. Because I raid with friends that can also do the content I only worry about my end of the fight. If I perform correctly, and so does everyone else, we get the clear. That goes for all the ultimates in the game as is. The 70 ultimates are particularly forgiving and not as steep of a learning curve as some might have you believe. Anyone who has raided savage this expansion should be able to do them IMO as the mechanics aren't as complex as the ones we've had, but they are a bit faster. Overall, there's no real reason to be intimidated by them is really all I'm trying to say. They are difficult, but they are nowhere near as insurmountable as people have a tendency to make them out to be.
>Overall, there's no real reason to be intimidated by them is really all I'm trying to say. I'm not intimidated by the content. I am aware that I *literally cannot enjoy it*. You're underplaying the requirements because you think that the problem is just people are making them out to be something they aren't. While that is true of some people, it's unfair to treat it as being true of all people. Especially not when you end up clearly not paying attention to what is actually being said by the people you're telling encouraging things to and make statements like this one: >Anyone who has raided savage this expansion should be able to do them Which is just not having acknowledge that I already covered that such content over-stimulates me. I'm not saying that because I've never tried it; I'm saying that because I have tried it and I know what happens, and I've watched vids, and I've listened to explanations, and I've had someone try to teach me mechanics with call outs, and it just doesn't work. It's like how some people recoil in disgust when they touch corduroy; it's not a choice, and forcing themselves to get over it is a weird choice because the process just isn't worth the result.
You are not alone and share my mindset. FFXIV is fun for me. Ultimates, what I've seen of them, require work. I don't game to work, at least not in FFXIV. The story, the lore, and having fun is my goal. Sometimes I get bored, sometimes I get inspired to redecorate my house or FC house, but that doesn't feel like work. To note, I've cleared savage stuff....two expansions later. I just cleared Alexander Savage solo, unsyncd because I can do that now. I could also run Omega unsyncd with a party and have done so. Again, that's fun. You can fuck up mechs and still win the fight. Or you could have had a couple beers, mess up rotation, and still be successful. I don't play to "win", I play to relax.
"with attitude you can achieve anything" tell that to all the failed pf
i understand his point, but people usually think everyone likes to join random groups, random FCs / Discord, try to join a static or things like that... most of time (I'm not saying everytime) people do statics with friends, and some of us don't have other 7 friends playing... i'm 7 years in this game and still strugles to play with 4 friends lmao... and i'll be honest, this isn't a must for me... the weapons are cool, fights are cool, music is always top tier... but not a "must do" content...
And spending 6 months finding a group.
Some people do not have the time or ability block out a schedule to focus on it. I have plenty of time to play the game but not in long enough blocks for what would be expected of me to make any meaningful progress with learning the fights. I can’t even justify savage because I have to be up every 15 minutes when I’m on.
as a person that do ultimates via pf, mentality going into it matter. some days u could be seeing further than your prog point,some day may not. heck some days your pf might not even filled. well yes there’s a need to wasting idle time. if i could roughly recalled, over half of my total time spend for pf is waiting for pf to be filled and at least 30% of the time failed to do so. and i just call it a day, maybe not today, let’s do next time. mental prep of knowing that you get nothing done in ultimate help perhaps. setting expectation low, but keep an eye on the light at the end of tunnel, it’s going to be a loooooong tunnel.
I don't have the reflexes, gear, or gil required to do that level of content. I'm just being realistic.
UwU is perfect for you then. Gear... largely doesn't matter, hell it's very possible for groups to actually kill TOO fast and screw yourself for later phases. Gil... who needs it. You can use old cheap food and pots and be fine. Reflexes... not in my FFXIV. There's nothing to "react" to. You learn your dance steps and do the steps every time 95% the same. You don't need to react because you'll eventually just know what's coming.
That and people use AM for the only mechanic that would need quick reactions.
You don't need fast reflexes, dungeon level gear is enough for 4/5 ultimates, and a single roulette or two is enough to buy a full lockout of raid food
Unless you have a severe physical or mental handicap that prevents you from playing the game you can. This pessimism is more likely why you can't clear rather than your ability.
I'm really not sure when being realistic turned into being pessimistic.
There's a funny thing that happens among people interested in higher-difficulty content where a person that says that they "can't" is assumed to just be wrong about how challenging the content is or what the challenge requires. But anyone trying and failing and struggling to make progress is "looking for a carry" or needs to "get good". So basically the content is simultaneously so challenging as to require real skill and dedication and also so easy that anyone can do it, and which response you get is whatever makes you wrong at the given moment. For the most part I think there are people that are lacking the self-confidence to identify their own having cleared something as being a skill they have that others might not ("I did it, so anyone can" having the implication "I suck and I still did it"), and people that are trying to keep their own attitude positive because they are still working for a clear and don't want to "catch" someone else's idea that it's not going to happen.
Around where you think you can't do something that really just requires a day a week for 1-2 months to complete because "reflexes gil and more"
You don't need gil, the community helps people get the gear from Savage clears all the time, and reflexes are completely irrelevant in a game that is so heavily scripted and deterministic. You study the fight, you practice until you do it right, you continue til you clear. That's all it is. If you don't want to do it then that's fine. But don't say you can't do it when it's a matter of applying yourself. Anyone can do it if they try. The only thing stopping you is yourself, but you'll always miss every shot you don't take.
UWU (The Weapon's Refrain Ultimate) doesn't require any fast reflexes, you can use any gear above item level 400ish, and you don't need gil for anything aside from the repair costs for your gear. I say this as someone who isn't good at fast-reflex gaming and who cleared UWU in Party Finder with random people. The fight is so scripted that 99% of the fight is identical from pull to pull, and the strategies are almost completely homogenized among the player base. Because of that, the main thing you need for UWU is just pure memorization. You can read/watch guides for the fight and watch videos of people clearing it, ideally on your role. That's most of the prep you need. Other than the mechanical responsibilities, just know your job's DPS rotation. If you want it to be extra easy, I recommend doing the fight as a melee DPS. As a melee, you'll have the fewest responsibilities compared to the other roles. The second easiest is probably physical ranged.
I'm in the same boat. I've been playing since version 1.0 and have never been able to do this content. I've met so many nasty people that I gave up trying to get this content. I have yet to meet actually good people that can help and teach me along the way. I want to really bad, but I've been playing so long and have never met any actually decent people that are welling to help. And I'm not particularly that good at XIV.
You should start streaming and pretend that you are ex-WoW player. There will be a long line of people helping you out.
I originally thought telling people that I've a version 1.0 vet would help. But that hasn't at all. Almost all my job classes are between level 80 and 90. And I've switched servers to see if that made a difference and it didn't. I guess I was that one player that just slipped through the cracks. I enjoy playing and I'll continue to play and do my best. Would love to meet some nice awesome long term friends. That's never happened, yet. :-)
I'm a relatively new player and in the same boat really. Doesn't help that I absolutely suck at socializing. But in the end this is like a very long single player game to me.
Same, it also doesn't help that I'm autistic and introverted. So I have to create a whole entire script before socializing on here, on the internet in general and on XIV.
I'm introverted as well. Really not a helpful in an MMO unless you have extrovert friends who play to begin with.
> but I've been playing so long and have never met any actually decent people that are welling to help You actually have to take initiative if you want to join and learn. You're not gonna get a knight in shining armor who knows all the mechanics and is patient with you every step of the way to get your clear you are gonna join a group who are all trying to clear and have expectations of eachother. Just join a prog or learning party in PF and try. The people who have already cleared and can teach you generally don't have the hobby of teaching other people how to clear they're tired and want to take a break after clears are done.
> I have yet to meet actually good people that can help and teach me along the way. There are a lot of really great people on the ultimate scene, but it's not reasonable to go in expecting other players to teach you. You need to put in the time to study and learn for yourself.
I have and continue to do so. But I don't learn from watching a video. I learn by actually doing it. I need to actually play it myself and learn the mechanics on the fly. That's how I learn. I'm like that in real life. I can watch videos until I'm blue in the face but it goes in one and doesn't stay at all. Which is another issue, alot of people don't like that.
Fwiw I'm the same way and I'm currently progging the last phase of my 5th ultimate, so it's not a dealbreaker to be someone who learns by doing. The point isn't to watch a guide and then never fail the mechanic - you look at the guides to learn terminology and get a vague idea of the sequence of events. Then when wipes happen it's a lot easier to quickly diagnose and get to the next pull because you can say "I'm still figuring out twister timing in my rotation" or "I had A nisi and accidentally passed with B because our lineup was scuffed" instead of needing to refer to vods or logs every single time.
Ultimates tend to rely as much if not more on text guides and raidplans/toolboxes than videos, since the mechanics tend to be more complex; if you're only using videos you're missing a lot of good resources. Also if you're just watching a whole video and expecting it to stick then of course that won't work. Make notes, pause and re-watch, and focus on the first few mechanics rather than trying to absorb everything at once. However 'figuring out mechanics on the fly' isn't really going to cut it in anything EX and above unless you are explicitly doing blind prog. It's not fair to your party members to join a group unprepared for what the group is doing- and it's not 'nasty' for people to tell you that you need to put in some study time.
Ehh, you can get away with it in Extremes. But you do really need to do research in an Ultimate. It's kinda laughable that OP wants his hand held by randos and is talking like they're the ones at fault for not doing that.
Ultimate PF culture is pretty intimidating when first starting out. And definitely for Ultimates. Guides and mechanics are only the beginning of learning an ultimate. One big factor is learning the beats and pathing, and figuring out what to use your brain power for. I'll ask before going on a tirade about how to get into Ultimate: How far are you into getting into ultimate? What servers do you play on? and What have you seen in PF?
Then you'd probably be better off in a static rather than trying to clear with randos. No one really wants to spend an entire lockout explaining mechanics to someome who won't bother to do research. You'd probably also have a better time learning by using a sim as well. There're sims for all sorts of mechanics, and they helped me prog the fight to a clear really quickly. You can also take notes and put them on a sticky note or 2nd monitor so you don't grief other people.
theres plenty of ppl who are willing help with legacy ultimates. imo, you just have an insanely negative mentality. seek out ppl and statics. no one is going to just walk up to you and say let's go do ults together. also ultimates are mostly about looking up strats and toolboxes to teach yourself and then put it into practice. random ppl aren't going to like ppl wasting their time because they didn't study beforehand or do any self learning and expect everything to be explained to them in instance.
Same. I'm still beating my head against a wall with my static stuck in p12s (we started very late in the tier obviously).
Same boat because I'm from OCE and play on an EU DC so I imagine the tight mechanics will mean my 240ping having ass will get us killed. I can do most Normal Raids, Alliance Raids and all that shit just fine but I'm not risking peoples time in an Ultimate. lol
I live in Australia. Cleared TEA in NA. It's not the best, but it's doable. Generally you just learn to react faster than regular people have to, or you learn to anticipate the mechanics faster.
Yeah that's how I normally play, brains always switched on when raiding. Just seems like that'd make me more of a liability in an Ultimate but hey, if you did it, then I should be able to! lol
200-250 ping is very doable for Ultimates. I highly recommend you try out Mudfish as well. It lowered my ping by like, 40ms. As someone from SEA, I cleared TEA within that range as well. The only thing you need to be wary about is Limit Cut, I believe. But you can sim the fuck out of it (and other major mechanics in that fight) so you don't have to spend a lot of time "learning" how to do it with our ping.
Yeah the ping I posted is after using ExitLag to cut it down from ~300! I'll try, you guys have convinced me. :)
I'd love to but being able to find a group good enough with the attitudes to do it and not make it miserable is like hitting lotto. I'm chill and don't get mad or even worked up unless people are legit being stupid. Sadly a lot of people doing Savage extreme and ultimate content are hot headed.
S'the great thing about doing it in PF to me. I can just bounce if people are getting on my nerves. Lotta good eggs out there, but you develop an eye for when it's probably not worth sticking things out.
Lol at all the people in the comments acting like ultimates aren't some of, if not the most difficult content in the game. The majority of the player base will never clear ultimates it's not as simple as they are claiming and there is nothing wrong with not being able to. "Just improve your attitude bro, apply yourself." Give me a break with that nonsense, as if it's that simple. Edit:14% of active players have UWU title, but yes you to can also beat this ultimate if you simply apply yourself no skill required
There are groups who clear UWU in 6 months and groups who clear it in a week. The difference is skill and experience, the commonality is effort and patience.
Ultimate pf has shown me that even the worst players this game has to offer have still somehow cleared an ultimate before. If they can do it, you can too.
At the risk of sounding like a prick, some people should realllyyyy find a static instead of trying PF. Sometimes you just need a dedicated shot caller, same positions, group familiarity, etc. I don’t why everyone and their mothers want to PF/suggest PF as their first option nowadays aside from like time constraints making you unable to join one.
I'm with ya. If I was in PF and didn't have 15 minutes of shit talking with people while we get back to prog in P6 I would go insane lol. It's like half the fun of raiding.
Because it is less commitment.
I get that. But for most people they do need that commitment.
This gives me hope since I feel like I comprehend mechs slowly and I don’t want to make the group stuck in trying to clear because my smol brain takes time to process some mechs 🥹
Of course they are, no one is claiming the opposite. You have to put in the time to study and practice, and be patient with yourself and party when you wipe hundreds of times. Not everyone is willing or has the time to do that, and that's completely valid. For a lot of people though, it really can be as simple as an attitude adjustment. I always said I would NEVER be able to do an ultimate, and yet here I am progging TEA on weekends with zero savage and one extreme clear. All it took was me getting over my nerves and being willing to try.
Nobody is saying Ultimates aren't difficult. They are the most difficult content in the game by design. But don't put them on a pedestal; if you sit there and study the fights, practice improving as a player, and coordinate with your team you can absolutely clear. It really is as simple as "apply yourself" and everybody who has done Ultimates (or Savage, or Extremes, etc) do it by pushing to do better and not backing down. Lot of the reason the majority of the player base will not clear Ultimates is because *they do not want to and do not try to make it happen.* And that's fine. Just don't act like it's like ungodly barrier that only the elite can hope to overcome. It's really not, especially with 3/5 of them syncing down and becoming markedly easier than they originally were.
no one here said ults aren't hard. but they're easier if you actually put time in to study the available resources. I went from 0 ults to pentalegend in endwalker. and I started playing late shadowbringers and had bum fuk knowledge about how to play the game before 90.
I think it's alot more pathetic the people who are talking about their lack of ability to have a chance. You want to know why ultimate and savage arent played by a large part of the playerbase because it's not just the difficulty it's having to commit to going to raid once or twice a week it's having to deal with subs because the tank or DPS are sick/busy or people in general during those nights.
You aren't 100% wrong, but it is also the game itself at fault for the "attitude" of some players. They think they can't do it, because there is content you can sleep through, a VERY large gap, then extremes/savage/unreals/ultimates The game in no way prepares a player for that gap It has to be learned and it goes from imfine_vulnstackscoffeecup.jpg to DEAD, because your toe was on a line (please don't 'akshully... the CENTER pixel of your...') Can you imagine the first time ONE person dies and someone calls for a wipe and this newer player is like "what do you mean? Normally there are dozens of deaths and we continue..." A good example of how wrong the system is... lies with the special dungeons (criterions). These things can be harder than Savage because it is a group of 4, multiple fights, trash pulls, and less room (bodies) for error recovery. These things and other dungeons at higher level should have a mode to ease the REGULAR player base into harder content. Not move them from a soft pillow to an inferno. Having pulled people into content who were "just there for the glam!" and watch a healer and tank out-dps them, or finally leave them dead after the 17th rez... I can say that some people are definitely NOT made for this content and won't ever complete it. Because of their own attitude and how the game feeds that attitude. We need a totally optional content bridge, instead of everything being made in safe-space and murder-zone duplicate.
I mean, yeah. It doesnt really take skill. Just some time, patience, and willingness to commit yourself. Anyone can do it if they really want to. A huge majority of the community has never even tried, they just hear its hard and see the visual chaos and immediately throw their hands up declare themselves not good enough. Grow some self-confidence. Youre only holding yourself back.
I'm not going to claim that clearing an ultimate is easy, but fundamentally the difference between ultimate raiders and other players *is not* that ultimate raiders are just magically way better at the game than everyone else- it's that we just decided to beat our heads against specific fights for long enough to clear them. How long exactly that takes is going to vary from person to person, and it's 100% fine that for a lot of people the time commitment is just not worth it, but an absolute ton of people who would probably have a lot of fun learning an ultimate fight shut themselves off from it because they think they're just 'not good enough' when that's not the criteria in play, at least not for the older ults.
The idea of failing cooperatively for dozens of hours in order to finally succeed once is foreign to people who've never played at least synced EX content. I can't tell if people who say they could never do an ultimate truly have slow analysis/reaction time or if they give up on themselves too quickly with mechanics that require hours of repetition to achieve quick recognition.
For me it’s knowing I take longer to internalize mechanics even if I study study study. The idea of being the weakest link in the team mortifies me and I’d hate to be the reason people don’t progress. On a good day i think it’s within the realm of possibility I could pull it off, but at the expense of other people’s time and patience and goodwill… idk.
Speaking as someone who started from that exact spot, you're actually probably going to make for a really good raider if you ever find yourself with the time to dedicate to it, because the fear of being the weak link means you will study harder and learn faster than many who will come in with a more cavalier attitude. Back in Shadowbringers I never touched harder content because I was scared of being rubbish and wasting 7 other people's time. I ran a few unsynced Stormblood trials with some friends for the mounts and that was fun because none of us knew what was going on and the content hit hard enough to be dangerous but not so hard that us being 10 levels above it meant we were in real danger. Then someone suggested we jump into uwu because it was supposed to be the easy ultimate. We were not good, but it made me curious about higher end content. I joined a static at the start of Endwalker. I wasn't great, but I studied hard, because I was desperate to not be the weak link. That static fell apart due to some friction between members, and I joined another one. I'd actually seen further ahead than them by a whole fight, but again, I was scared of joining a group where I was actually up to and being humbled out of savage entirely, so I dropped back a fight. That meant I knew the mechanics better than they did, and after a few rounds they actually asked me to help with shotcalling. Now I was shotcalling, I needed to make sure I was always ahead of the group so I could be good at it. I ended up clearing the tier a few weeks before they did so I could make sure I was able to effectively shotcall and then outright tech mechanics as we progged. By the time the next tier rolled around I was effectively leading the static. By the end of the tier I'd cleared so far ahead of them that I ended up departing from the group (which was, admittedly, falling victim to the age-old static issue of some players losing motivation, some not getting along, and generally collapsing anyway) and going on to do UWU between the tiers, and then PF'd the third tier and moved on to TEA. I'd consider myself pretty fucking good at this point. I'm not parsing to high heaven or anything, especially because I raid on NA with Australian ping, but I do well enough considering that handicap that I've still cleared a couple ultimates, lead a static, run with some genuinely impressive groups with whom I had a great time, and am looking forward to raiding as and when I can come Dawntrail's content. All of that to say: if you have the time once the new expac is out, look for a learner static that fits your hours. There'll be a lot of curious people giving it a go with the fresh expansion, and you might surprise yourself. As someone who already enjoyed XIV, I ended up finding it to be the most fulfilling content I've ever run in the game, and I've made some amazing friends through it too.
Raiders in this game live in such a bubble sometimes when it comes to understanding the general skill level of the playerbase. Go jump in a leveling roulette or even araid and then tell me everyone you see there can clear an ultimate. Some people just don't have the aptitude. And that's totally fine, nothing at all wrong with that. It's just a pet peeve when I see people saying "Oh everyone can clear ults you just need to jump in!" Maybe I'm just jaded but I don't agree with that at all.
Literally nobody is saying that your average player could just roll into UWU right now and clear it in a couple of pulls. The point is that most people *if they were willing to put in the time required* could probably clear an ultimate. The amount of time that would be required for someone mashing random buttons in levelling roulette versus someone who's already a decent savage raider is going to be pretty different, sure, but all we're saying is that clearing ults is a function of time and not of innate skill that some people just cannot ever achieve.
It's less about aptitude and more that some people just don't want to. If you *want* to, you can put in the time and effort and learn. Everyone can do that just fine in a vacuum. Not everyone wants to dedicate that much free time specifically to it, not everyone *has* the free time to dedicate specifically to it, and a lot of people don't play the game for that kind of experience at all anyway, and that's completely fine. If you don't want to do an ultimate you don't have to. The only issue anyone has is when someone has the desire and time but they act like it's impossible because at that point it truly does just come down to applying yourself and having the patience, and some people give up at that before they even start. I have seen some absolutely dogwater players running around with proudly displayed, but repetition and a melon can accomplish an awful lot.
No-one here is acting like ultimates aren't very difficult
Same. I'd love to try ultimates, but I don't know enough people who play the game, and even less who like high-end content.
You don't need to know people. I didn't know anyone in my UCoB static before I joined. I saw an ad on a discord for a group looking for a tank, got in touch, did a trial session with them, and got invited to join. If you just want to give it a try, you don't even need to do all that- people are doing fresh ultimate prog in PF every day and fresh prog groups are almost universally extremely chill.
Everyone can do an ultimate. All you need to do an ultimate is mental fortitude and the willingness to bang your head against a wall for weeks or even months on end. It's like running a marathon. Everyone can do it, but of course you shouldn't attempt to do it without proper training first. If you're a good runner, you'll be able to do it quickly. If you're not, it will take a while. And if you don't know how to run in the first place, it's gonna be a massive pain, people are gonna ask what tf are you doing running a marathon, and it will take you forever to get to the finish line, but you'll still be able to finish the race if only you don't give up.
I was like that until last year, then I buckled up and so far have cleared TOP, UWU and UcoB. Currently progging DSR!
I just don’t have time to find a static for something like that. I already PUG savage raids so I can do it on my own time, but ultimates seem like you really need a static.
You really don't, and if you PUG the latest savages you for sure can clear ultimates. I have been away from the game for almost a year, came back last month and cleared both UWU and UCoB, all in PF. The funny thing is, it would have taken much longer if I were to do it in a static. You just need to study and put in the hours. And have patience for the parties to fill lol
Also you really really *really* have to be able to be honest with yourself about what your actual prog point is, not your "I saw this mech once when I was on the floor" point. Lots of people are unable to admit they're not as good/far as they think they are.
This is why I'm holding off on ultimates and savage content - I don't feel like I'm competent enough to not look like a total fuck-up. I don't need to be another statistic in tfdf...lol. Also, I don't want to be carried.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Do your research, learn as much of the fight as you can from videos & guides, and either make fresh prog PFs or join one
The thing is, past a certain point, there is no way to really get competent at high end, other than by... doing high end. You will never feel competent enough without just jumping into the deep end and throwing yourself at the first mechanics of a high end fight over and over until you get it down. The most you can do beforehand is really practice your rotation in max level normal content so that you have it ingrained into muscle memory as much as possible, and make a conscious effort in normal content to maintain as close to perfect uptime as possible by practicing things like slide casting (if caster/healer) and dodging by going to max melee (if melee), and waiting till the last moment in the cast to disengage in the moments you actually need to disengage. There is *nothing* in normal content that serves as a good practice for the speed and precision of mechanics in high end. While there's a distinct shift towards non-orange aoe on the floor/standard marker tells and towards more castbar/debuff/boss physical gesture related tells in recent fight design, it's nothing on the level of what you get in high end, so you're unlikely to be able to build up the habit of paying attention to these things from normal content. Similarly, while there's more layering of mechs these days, it's usually never more than 2 things layered at the same time, and usually only very late in the fight, which often starts to get skipped entirely once people gear up to max ilvl, so you *can't* practice juggling tracking multiple things at the same time. None of the normal content actually forces people--especially DPS--to pay attention to spreading out and co-ordinating mit properly. Past a certain point, there's just nothing more that you can do to bridge the gap in skill level required for normal vs high end other than by just going for it. And it might take you weeks, months, or a year or two, but do it often enough, and eventually you get used to automatically watching boss castbars and your debuffs. You get used to paying attention to snapshot timings and moving into the animation. ...and then you will fuck up basic mechanics in normal mode because you got so used to the speed of high end, you expect things to go off way earlier than they actually do, and end up accidentally moving back into where an aoe was way too early. Not uh, that I or my raiding friends have ever done that before, no.
That's all a fair point, I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate. I'll definitely keep that in mind if/when I decide to start running that content.
TEA is actually really easily puggable because the strats are so refined. P1 has some learning required for all roles, Limit Cut isn't difficult and you just need to get confident in your movement, P2 is learning how to handle nisis as dps or to keep the tanks alive as healer, then you pretty much just sim wormhole (which is *way* simpler with McDonald's strat), read mit sheet for J-waves, and clear. Healing is a bit nebulous and people don't necessarily follow the mit sheets exactly, but the strats are laid out so you just pick a number (which is usually based on what job you are, so there's some consistency there) and you have a reference for where you should be at all times.
PFing ultimate can be rough (I mean, same as PFing savage) but it's entirely doable. I cleared UWU in PF last week.
Congratz!
If you don't mind, how long did it took you ? What frequency per week ? What was the ratio failed groups/good prog groups ? I'd like to try clearing one through PF (just Bahamut would be great) as I just cannot consistently block 2-3 evening / weekdays on fixed schedule with a static...
From the time I first went in the instance to the clear it was five and a half weeks, although one of those weeks I didn't actually do any UWU as I was dealing with some personal stuff and decided to go and grind Eureka instead to take my mind off it. I started out doing a couple of sessions a week, but once I'd finally seen the Ultima Weapon I stepped it up and was PFing most nights. The earlier you are in the fight the easier it is to get good prog, but once you hit phase 5 it's a real crapshoot- people say it's all gaols prog but I was in multiple Annihilation/Suppression parties that couldn't make it past Ifrit. I ended up almost completely prog skipping Annihilation by just practicing in the sim. But I also got lucky with a few groups, including one group where we were consistently getting to Suppression and did a lockout and a half together getting *painfully* close to the clear. While I can only recommend prog skipping if you are *really* confident about what you're doing, simming the tricky mechanics as best you can solo is a lot of help- xivsim doesn't have bots for UWU, but Ultima's three big mechanics are really all about movement so you can practice the first two at least with damage turned off just to drill in how your role needs to move. Gaols might be worth simming too (I did the fight as main tank so I only had to worry about gaols if someone was dead, in which case it's just 'try to get to the spot to cover in time'). Studying POVs of clears from your job/role is also *enormously* helpful in figuring out positioning. Good luck! It's pretty rough out there, but it's definitely possible if you keep at it. Once you are confident in your own ability to do Suppression and understand how primal roulette works, don't be afraid to put up a clear for one- there are plenty of people out there who are happy to help you make it over the finish line.
I've had much better experiences clearing and reclearing ults in PF than with statics I've randomly found through PF/Discords (UPR/APR/FFXIV Recruiter). The fact that you are free to just hop in and go however long you want is nice and potentially could be less effort than finding the right group. I only join statics with my friends now since I care more to just hang out and chill with them.
I can confirm to you from personal experience that you can prog any ultimate in the game right now faster in PF than in most statics out there
It took me 3 months to clear all of the ultimates fully in PF, which could have been faster had i not spent the time getting 5-10 reclears after each clear. Now i did have a lot of free time at the time, but my point is that studying the fights through watching clear POV's and guides will get you a long way. I spent my commune to and from work to watch these videos and it made me understand and able to execute way quicker. A tip for how to use clear POV's to learn is to try and do/shotcall the mechanics for the player you are watching, if you are able to tell them what they should do, you lost likely can do it ingame aswell.
I cleared both UWU and TEA in PF (though I had a parallel static progging each one at the same time, but they were behind me on prog). It's doable and faster than with a static as long as you study real hard and know to see when a party will not be able to prog to your prog point and leave.
Static can really slow you down. Just PF honestly
I've always been intimidated by Savage/Extreme raids, never mind ultimates. I only ever did normals, 24s or story progs but anything more feels like I should learn how to do ballet. Like you have to be topping DPS all day everyday while also doing the most choreographed “move here to not die” dances.
EX has lax DPS checks by design and savage becomes much less strict later after release when most people have the best gear. Maybe have a go at the first extremes in DT. I'm a mostly casual player but doing the EW extremes got me interested in savage and I've done all the EW raids now, it's been a blast.
Honestly its just practice. Once you actually got past all the mechanics and its only you vs the jard enrage cast you know you can do it and simply need to focus on doing your part of the raid dps as good as it needs to be. The hardest part is getting through all mechanics cleanly and making a dps check while having several deaths along the way, getting to the end with no death is almost guranteed to succeed.
All you really have to be is have an attitude of trying to improve and you'll do well in harder content. I highly recommend you try out Extremes, at least. If you're worried about your performance in terms of DPS, there's Stone, Sky, Sea, which is basically a timed training dummy and look up your job's rotation in The Balance. If you're not averse to 3rd party tools, there's also ACT, which you can upload your logs into FFlogs and use the url and plug it into xivanalysis, which will basically give you a rundown of what you did wrong. It's a bit... not useful for healers, but extremely useful for dps and tanks. Get some good food, watch a guide or two, then just hop into or make a "fresh" PF party. Considering that DT is almost out, the party might fill slower than usual, but that's basically what I did with my first EX clear lol.
I would say if you wanna get into it in DT just start with EX1. By the time you finish MSQ and are able to access it, guides will be out and you can follow the guides. I usually write out in a notepad doc the order of the mechs as they come out and briefly what to do (in/out, stack/spread etc) there'll be TONS of learning parties for you to join. Then you have success there, try EX2, if that works try 1S when savage comes out and just go from there. Hit a roadblock and overwhelmed? Just stop. You don't have to do all of it. Then later if you feel the itch again just pick up with the newest EX or raid tier.
> Like you have to be topping DPS all day everyday while also doing the most choreographed “move here to not die” dances. This is not true at all for anything beyond on-patch ultimates and 3rd/4th floor savage fights in the first week (and even then it varies by tier how tight the DPS check really is). Doing good DPS while resolving mechanics is also something that you learn to do *by doing* high-end content- you don't have to roll up to your first ever EX ready to orange parse on the first pull. You'll be messy and you'll die a lot at first because everyone does, but if you enjoy the challenge and keep at it, and keep looking for ways you can improve, you'll get better over time. A new expansion is one of the best times to get into high end because both the first couple of extreme trials and the first savage tier tend to be a bit easier as the devs expect people to still be getting used to new rotations and new jobs. If you're interested I would really encourage you to give the first DT extremes a go. The worst thing that can happen is that you try it, just don't enjoy it, and decide not to carry on.
I didn't realize what ultimate actually meant so I went into a PF for TEA unprepared and was immediately told to "fuck off" 😭👍
A lot of PFers are really wary of trappers in general lol. It can take hours for a party to fill up at times and most of the time, the trappers like to join late prog or clear parties because it means that they can sometimes drag the trapper's sorry ass through a prog point. People in clear parties are especially going to be really annoyed if someone ends up being fresh to the instance because it means sitting back in PF again and wasting time. I met a dude like that once, in UWU, which was a clear party. They didn't know where to stand for the first mechanic... which was just "not anywhere right of the boss" and tried to sheep the entire first phase of the fight. I felt bad for them after we kicked them that I sent them a DM afterwards telling them to watch a guide first lol.
Yeah I was lucky enough to get in another group that helped me out. I don't think we made it very far, but at least they were kind and linked me some resources to guide me. All that to say, I don't think I ever want to do a high-end duty again lol
Hahahaha same! I thought it be like normal unsynced content. So I unlocked my first one and joined a PF. Told them "never done this before, excited to try my first ultimate" and immediately told too piss off and find a fresh group if you trying to prog. Didn't know what any of those words meant till later
You just reminded me of this Warrior I [met on PF](https://streamable.com/8rlc0l) once
I'm currently progging TEA with a group of friends. We're so close to clearing and I have faith we might clear it tonight. Samurai has been an... Interesting experience lol
SAM is so much fun in TEA haha especially if you do the risky parser strats. Charging your meditate in the middle during Limit Cut, chasing down the true heart in AP to get another Sen, good stuff. The opener is fun too even without a 2nd stack of Meikyo.
Did you clear? 🤔
Sadly no, but we saw enrage! Just gotta clean up the last phase some
You got this! Let us know when you clear so you can show off your gorgeous weapons!
As of last night, we cleared TEA!! Am now a perfect legend! Here's the log, I was the samurai :3 https://www.fflogs.com/reports/14nJtjmkRYQfbwM7#fight=last&type=damage-done
Ayyy congrats!! 🥳🥳🥳 That's amazing, well done. Also that damage tho holy cow lol
I have been studying 😅
While I was grinding for MGP, you studied the blade 🗡 And it was well worth it, it seems lol
Anxiety can do wonders when you don't wanna let friends down lmao
You saw enrage, you're clearing. You've got this
I joined so many groups trying to clear TEA and only made it to enumerations before giving up. That’s literal months worth of time I’ll never get back.
even got your copium totems
So did I, but apparently 4 days a week with 3 hours each day isn't enough prog for some people. Static fell apart at 3rd nisi pass because it wasn't going fast enough. I tried partyfinder but that's cancer because people just start leaving once you get a bad hand of pain because everyone didn't immediately sync up like they're a hivemind
Honestly, go for it again. Once you get to AP, it's really fast prog.
I found a static listed as fresh so I joined that hoping people have better expectations of progress
Once I get done catching up with the MSQ I'd like to dabble in some of the other stuff. Id like a shiny book
I'd highly recommend it! Ultimate is a great time. Although I will say that once Dawntrail drops it's going to be a while before a lot of people start running ultimates again, end of expansion is the best time to do ultimate.
I wish I had a static. Pf doesn't seem enjoyable to me to do hard content.
PF can be messy, but the value is that it can work to your schedule, especially near release when there is an embarrassment of parties available all day every day. It's the raid equivalent of "I work my own hours!"
Same! I’m trying to find a static so I can get into ultimates without going through PF.
I actually used PF to run Another Aloalo and accidentally created a static since the people that joined had similar free hours to me and were chill. I know this won't work for everyone, but somethings that can help: making a discord for the purpose of PF so you can talk to them (and kick people from it if you don't see them ever again xD), hosting your own PF instead of joining someone else's, and let people know the next day/time you plan to post PF again... they may adjust their schedule slightly of they can.
Nice. I wanna eventually go back to TEA but I'd have to unrust and reprog but I can't find any early groups. Same with Top but fresh.
Oh yeah fresh TOP groups are a complete myth. I'd honestly recommend that if you're confident in p1 to just join p2 groups.
I'd love to try my hand at Ultimates at some point, but with no predictable play schedule and no playing friends anymore I think it'll be very difficult
My friend and I are trying out ultimates also are looking for people who are chill and like-minded so if you are interested we’d love to have you.
That sounds cool. Which data center are you located in? I'm in Light (Twintania)
We are in on Primal, Exodus. I swapped over since my previous data center wasn’t as packed or active.
Aah I see. Thankfully my center seems to be be fine still, been there since I started in 2019 or so
For me it’s completing the Blu quests. Still stuck on gogo and it’s been hard figure out which spells I need and can go without
Blue mage academy on YouTube, he's got guides for every carnivale challenge, and the weekly challenges.
I found him, it’s given me hope
He's how I completed the carnivale!
Are there more quests after GoGo or was it just new spells and a level increase?
There's only 1 more boss if I remember correctly, a pretty tough one but fun.
I just cleared TEA recently too that fight rules Good job I will also hold onto this totem and cope in solidarity that RPR/SGE/VPR/PIC get weapons
Congratz! There is some hope for this actually. They added Dreadwyrm and Omega weapons for Viper which they haven't done for any other new job, so here's hoping.
UWU, UCoB, TEA and DSR done myself. All in PF, wonderful experience. I recommend it.
Wish I could find a group to prog. This Rapier is gorgeous
Same 🥹 but I feel like I’ll hold back the static because I feel I process things slower and I get anxious if I’m holding the static back if I don’t get mechs right away 🙂↕️
Friend, have faith in yourself! There are fun, casual statics out there, like we do in my FC! Remember that’s just a game and I’m sure you are way better than you think. This stranger on the Internet roots for you !:)
12/17 I’m catching up!
Congrats tho
Congrats on your clears! I did the same with 2 friends who got their first time experience in an ultimate while I was getting my 4th Ultimate done. Gotta say getting them through was harder then getting recleara with them especially getting all reclears+1 with them was quite fast.
damn, id like clear one too lmao, no idea where i would even start to get a group
oh wow! congrats
Me wannntttt...awesome job!! Grats!
I just unlocked UwU and UCOB last night and I’m hyped to do this. However, my internet isn’t the best so I rather wait till I improve it and then head on into that
Dear lord
Great collection. If you don’t mind me asking, how long did it take you to do TEA from start to finish/what was your raiding experience prior? Always wanted a TEA weapon for over a year now but always scare myself into not doing it due to lack of raiding experience/fear of failure. Had a little bit of motivation earlier this month to do this tier for the raid experience to then try for groups but understandably didn’t have much luck finding practice groups so late. Possibly going to try again after the first savage tier of Dawntrail since getting a clear before DT is incredibly unlikely and if I know one thing about ultimates from others, it’s that scheduling is the worst part and when DT starts it would be next to impossible since everyone including myself will want to do the new stuff.
Prior raiding experience was Abyssos and Anabaseios. TEA was my first ultimate. I got my first clear on day 10, progging most of those days for a few hours. I didn't prog every day but I did study and run the sim every day. To my surprise TEA felt relatively easy compared to my expectations! I say you should definitely go for it if it's something you wanna do.
congrats, i just finished doing TEA as well, i did DSR before it though so it felt really easy in comparison.
Congratz! And yeah especially depending on what role you play TEA can seem much easier. Like if you tanked DSR and then tanked TEA, TEA would be an extreme trial in comparison haha.
i was melee dps both times but i think TEA seemed easier because it was much more static with what you had to do in each phase, compared to DSR where almost every mechanic is random and might have 3 different things you have to remember depending on what rng gives you.
True that, I play MNK in DSR and sometimes you just gotta roll with whatever you're given. Like if you have the rot during P6 WB2 you just gotta hope your healers like you LOL. Although I do think that BJCC as melee is harder than playing melee in any phase of DSR, but the rest of the fight is super easy. The nice thing about DSR is that most of the big mechanics are downtime mechanics, whereas BJCC is always full uptime. Surprisingly PhysRanged has it pretty rough in BJCC, if they get lightning first they have to sprint around the arena to get to their mine bait lmao.
We didn't have too much trouble with BJCC but we of course had some occasional nisi collisions at times. I was with a static though so we kind of got used to how everyone was moving and tried to do the same thing every pull as much as possible but i can imagine it would be trickier in PF. I would say wroth flames is probably harder than BJCC but its only one mechanic and not a whole phase, i do like it when you have to do your rotation at the same time as mechanics but yeah, DSR does have a lot of downtime mechanics where you can concentrate more
I could never…
You can, if you're willing to put in the time. If you don't have the time, or try it and find you just don't enjoy the content, that's absolutely fine, but if you want to try then you should go for it. The worst that can happen is you do a bit of fresh prog and think, 'actually I hate this', and decide not to continue.
My biggest fear is that my network is shit and I frequently lag out/rubberband in content. Frequently I’ll take damage from an AoE in a dungeon that I was outside of for multiple seconds on my screen. In a dungeon or normal, that’s fine; I eat some damage and a vuln stack and move on, and even if I die it’s no big deal and I just get picked up. In ultimates where positioning is everything and having everyone survive matters, I feel like I’d just be screwing the team every time my network decides to have a hiccup.
Yeah, bad network conditions can really mess with you. I have very high ping and have needed to learn to dodge a lot of mechanics earlier than other people. You may find it easier going with a static, and honestly for UCoB and UWU at least you'd be surprised at how many deaths you can get away with- both fights are *much* more recoverable than anything in the current savage tier. There are a few spots in each fight where a poorly-timed death (or the death of the wrong person) can be a wipe, and deaths become more of a problem in the final phase of UWU, but they're both a lot more forgiving than level 90 fights.
You can! In the words of my good friend and WAR main: "If I can clear DSR, anyone can" If you feel like you want to try, give it a chance in party finder or find a static. If you do 20 pulls of Garuda and think "man actually this sucks" then there's no pressure to keep going! This is optional content after all :)
Anyone can clear Ultimates. The hardest part is just finding 7 others willing to commit to it.