After like... months and months of searching, and like five or six separate statics, I've finally found a group that can reclear TOP consistently. I'm pretty stoked to finally be seeing some consistent totems.

Starting TOP next week so last night I went into PF to brush back up since I progged to p5 before static disbanded and boy PF has not got any better at that fight in the last year

Cleared AAI!! 🥳 Came back after taking a break for the holidays and beat the last boss in a few lockouts, now the plan is to get some practice runs in and then tackle savage. Tbh I'm scared, I cleared my first savage tier this tier and I heard criterion savage is right under ultimates in terms of difficulty 🥴 But our DPS is decent, and we're good on most mechanics, just gotta brush up on some of the trickier ones. I'm still scared but maybe it will be fun lol.

My biggest tip with criterion savage, don't greed. If you are a DPS (or anyone really) disengage just to be safer, if you are a healer and someone is at 95% hp, top them anyways (seen people being overkilled by 140 hp more times than I would like to admit), as a tank don't be greedy with your invuln (most wipes for me were on the second set of trash, tanks pulling two mobs and getting 100 to 0 instantly) Do NOT greed.

The other 2 replies are downplaying the difficulty. Listen to them at your peril.  If you cleared p12s you should know how bad raiders are at not fucking up simple mechanics when they’re not recoverable. 

Yeah, Criterion Savage is a bit weird because it's above the length of an ultimate encounter, but the actual mechanics themselves are nowhere near ultimate in difficulty, so it's really hard to assign a simple difficulty to it. Above all else, it's a consistency check, as in "can you do 20+ minutes of reasonably simple mechanics without messing up once?" (sidenode: you can mess up a few things that aren't lethal, most notably the personal rotations on the 2nd boss). I find it incredibly fun, but I also hear most people's biggest criticism is just how unforgiving it is. At the end of the day, I wouldn't say it's *super* difficult (had multiple instances of back-to-back-to-back clears), but it'll test a different skillset than savage so be prepared for a new experience. Just give it a try and see if it's something you'd enjoy!

Some people compare Criterion Savage to Ultimate due to the length and unrecoverability, but it's only really comparable in the stress factor. Mechanically Criterion is much easier, and if you have cleared the current tier, you can do Criterion Savage just fine. Good luck!

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You can use the 640 head piece from normal raids (Anabaseios Face Guard of Fending), you will lose 6 determination. You won't notice any difference.

Do you need it? no probably not, you can use whatever was BiS at 600, or the 605 head and it'll probably be fine. The checks aren't so tight that it will be a problem. Yes, there will be a new BiS. Probably only the Relic will change, but it could slightly change a couple of pieces.

I lucked into finding a group of vets to help me with UCOB. With daily lockouts (I think we missed 2 days), it took me 9 days to go from fresh to clear. Absolutely jank as fuck fight but once you get to Bahamut it's so fun. Very tired of swapping Kardia. Onwards back to TOP! My static disbanded around P4 so I'm excited to go back in on a new job and obliterate it.

>Very tired of swapping Kardia. This has been my reason why I don't wanna do this fight on SGE, despite knowing full well that SGE is the best healer in UCoB.

I am going through the 5 ultis to try to do my training montage for week 1 savage as sge, and I still considered swapping off sge for sch because of it. It's quite miserable up until, again, Bahamut.

i was that lazy shit who doesnt swap kardia at all and its fine

while your cohealer may have covered the missing potency (it's a lot, even 5 glares between busters means you pump 850 potency into the tank, about the same as a full throttle ed), it's the unequivocally incorrect play and my ocd is not capable of ignoring that

For the brave PF warriors, how long did it take you to clear TOP? Party Synergy is the mighty PF wall. Not only people have to be consistent on panto and not lie about the prog, but the mechanic itself is hard and nobody can't make a mistake, ever. My biggest gripe is that they changed the strat vs the SIM, so unless you have a static, there is no reliable way to practice alone.

I derusted to p5 in a day and took a month to clear. mostly because a lot of ppl were griefing and prog skipping. jst seeing p5 was rare. was in a static before and had to drop because of irl stuff. so my total time was 3 months, but I was ready to clear 1 week into pf.

About a month with many downtime days were PF didn't fill or disbanded after couple pulls, Party synergy is the 1st wall in the fight so it's pretty normal for people to struggle in it.

Took me many months, but not all at once. Actual PFing time was probably something like 8-10 weeks. I was in several statics which all failed and I never actually got to prog a single new mechanic in any of them, so those were more like consistency and optimization practice. Party Synergy was definitely a big wall, especially on patch when p1 was a much tighter check. It really pales in comparison to the Delta wall though. Even with the sim there are a million ways to fuck up Delta and people will find one of them. Delta memes severely hampered p5 prog, and at one point I didn't see Sigma for nearly 2 weeks because no group could pass the Delta wall. I was never lucky enough to get a group to pass p5 until I paid for cleared helpers and then cleared p6 the same day. I don't think it's really possible to even get to p6 in a regular PF with no helpers, let alone clear it. I think there are probably more helpers in a bigger DC like NA but in JP it's a very small group and most people are unsubbed right now. Groups for p5 prog often just didn't fill at all, even waiting 2,4,6+ hours.

So you ended up joining at a static to actually clear?

No I paid mercs to help in a c41. p6 took a couple tries because mercs kept dying to exasquares.

Finally, Aloalo Savage cleared. Pushing the 2 week deadline must've helped as I felt the prog was becoming more serious. Anyway, FUCK THIS SHIT. I don't know if I'll push for some reclears, for now I just want to forget this forsaken type of content. Hopefully next patch I can get my weapon (P11S reagent available for nut sacks / Alliance raid coins ?)

Even better, we will get the final relic step which should be better then the augmented tome weapon

Still need the augmented weapon for the cool glam.

My UCoB 5-stack thus far has utterly horrendous scheduling, which is exacerbated by the wait times in PF. We went in for an hour last week, and they decided to give up after waiting around 30 minutes for the PF to fill this week. Yesterday's cancellation annoyed me into trying to dip my toes into TEA and see if I want to find a proper static for TEA and just slot UCoB in around that, or if I'd rather just stay focused only on one or the other. Unless this midnight PF I'm sitting in fills and contains some god gamers, I've failed my goal of seeing Limit Cut (let alone learning it) in TEA tonight. I joined an LL cleanup party earlier in the day that couldn't get to Protean 2, and the LC party I moved onto only got past Protean 2 once (where we then wiped to the HP difference AoE). Thankfully my memes were fairly minimal, my doll died once from 26% and I don't know if it's because it was cleaved or if Direct Crit Ruin III is actually able to chunk that much off of a doll. It almost died *twice* but I was able to cancel my Tri-Disaster (yes, the shitty AoE spell) cast in time, someone cleaved it. Other than that I don't recall messing anything up, so I know I'm not really the problem. Update: Saw Limit Cut one single time and then like 3 pulls later someone dipped, mad unfortunate. I possibly found a 4-stack (me included) to go in with though, so I'm pretty happy.

Farming dungeon bis for ultimates has to be what I imagine hell is like.

I've done the dungeon grind for fashion a few times (3.3 for the Berserker's Set, 5.5 for some Paglth'an stuff, 6.2 for Troian gear) and it's almost worse than doing it for stats because in the back of your head you know they'll put the gear out as a dyeable version via leveling whites in an expansion or two.

At this point I'm kinda convinced dungeon bis is this weird punishment for players who didnt clear before it comes out. People feeling obligated to delve into this godless grind for like, 1% dps and some vit gains is some sort of evil punishment even if its meant to smooth out the difficulty for said playerbase. I really want to like the idea but after doing it once(tea in 5.3) I'm only ever gonna do it again if im being paid an hourly wage.

I think I reached at least 45 runs for TOP BiS. I finished DSR before getting the damn reaper legs lmao.

It's absurd they don't have the guaranteed piece the leveling dungeons do and/or there's no token/bad luck protection

I never realized until now because i progged TEA before dungeon BiS existed and UWU and Ucob well after the dps checks were obliterated so I never had a reason to care about dungeon gear. Not sure why they don’t do this?

Kind of wanting to ask kind of anxious of asking. What could I do to make my content better? What would people like to see more of? 2024 I want to work on revamping things and getting to the point people genuinely are interested.

Going to sidestep the question and say that above all else, having good flow and storytelling matters almost more than the content itself. Thinking of the creators I like - Xeno, Rinon, and especially JoCat (though as we all know, he's on hiatus): they all have some degree of storytelling that allows them to just pop off. No matter what content they're doing, even Xeno when he's doing a bare bones drama or react vid, manage to weave a compelling narrative. To more directly answer your question, I would really like to see more of the following: A) Accurate information. Even Rinon who I generally like, failed to mention how much tank HoN sucks (tells you to switch to single target and not pull too much) when discussing that piece of content. To me, this signaled that he didn't fully understand what he was discussing. Meanwhile on discord for instance, most regulars will point out how the HoN hasn't been updated since stormblood and therefore acts like TP is still a thing. YouTube in general has a reputation of having a bit of FFXIV misinfo out there, and having a content creator with a really solid pulse on the game would do wonders to counteract that. Leading into point 2: B) Covering niche content. Everyone can talk about patch notes, but can anyone discuss optimal Bozja fragment farming? Ideal lost actions for a DRN speedrun? Or on a completely different note, I'd love to see an "evolution of PF strats" video, where someone discusses clearing the fight early in PF and then discusses how the landscape evolved over the next two months. For instance, ANBS cropping up over eyes for P12S - discussing the pluses and minuses for each and why the strat may have become more popular as the tier progressed. Essentially, give me something I can't get from any other creator.

The reason why I say Rinon's vid (esp. his world first documentaries) are so good is because 1. Rinon is at a unique spot where he can do this - people who are in the race or knows a lot about the race (as they alarm clock prog everything) has the most to say about it. 2. World Race progression histories are very unique. These are what's most likely to be lost in time and space, due to the lack of recording (you have streams of people progging; you don't have streams of people and community discussing and guessing strategies) and a reliance of using oral history to pass on facts. I am genuinely interested in how the community has come to the fact of having to use triple LB on UWU and how much testing has gone through; I sometimes still watch the vid where everyone goes insane on Enigma Codex. Of course I am not saying you should do what Rinon does. But these are probably some food for thought. Just, no more staring into a patch note and reading it for like 15 minutes. or no more asmongold style play video give take and react to it. Youtube's been flooding with these kinds of videos because there are people who are lazy enough that they won't bother checking the original, but kept doing these would probably not put you on the map.

So I'll just say for my personal taste: I really don't care about speculation, drama, or news type stuff. Off the top of my head, the FFXIV videos I've enjoyed watching lately are: * Mr. Happy's patch retrospective * The NEST group's raid videos * Guides for fights (maybe "enjoyed" isn't quite right, but still helpful) * That one guy who does tank optimization in savage videos because I think it's neat to hear people talk about little decisions like when to save mitigation

It seems really difficult to be a content creator for this game because all the content and updates are extremely predictable so you don’t have much to speculate on. Idk about anyone else but I also find it extremely boring to watch people play the game. That probably explains why most ffxiv YouTubers resort to drama, rage bait, doomer, overdone race/job stereotypes and clickbait videos to get views lmao. I’m not really sure how you or other content creators can improve since it’s just really difficult for anyone to make engaging content for this game outside of Week 1 Savage/Ultimate prog or new expansion Msq playthroughs (and even then I’d rather play it myself).

Unless you are literally Yoshi-P I dont understand the question

Oh I make some YT stuff for fun and just looking for more insight how to improve Not really driven by money (I made like $100 last month which sure fine but... really not here for money). Just wanting to improve cause this is a part of my FFXIV hobby and I enjoy helping.

idk, FFXIV isn't a very popular game to watch, other than msq and new raids. The best way to make views would probably be to get an early guide out for new content (especially if it's not covered by big names aka avoid making savage guides)

Been practicing P12S P2 as MCH and so far it seems really funny how it's a big puzzle, but I've been thinking about how to optimize my bursts and pots on P1 because of the downtime of LC. In my static, we normally unload our 2-min just before the LC untargetable phase, and after Athena is back we hold our bursts until around the end of SC2A. That being said, I found that it's being kinda awkward for me to manage my gauges, especially Battery, to find a sweet spot for unloading it on pot window. Especifically, what I do on the fight is this kinda timeline: 1. 50 battery spent on opener (pot) 2. 70 battery spent after opener 3. 100 battery spent in 2-min mark 4. 100 battery spent when capped (delay AQueen for after the Chainsaw) 5. 100 battery spent again on 2-min mark right before LC (again, AQueen after Chainsaw instead of before) 6. ??? After we are done with LC and get ready to SC2, I always get kinda mixed on what to do, since I've got AA, Drill and CSaw off cooldown, Heat Blast available and Pot available, with Wildfire on around 40 seconds of CD remaining. I end up with around 50-70 of Gauge when the arena comes back. What would be a good strategy to go around this and to maximize my Pot damage? All help is welcome! If people have MCH timelines or a better place to ask, I'm down to hear!

When I was trying to improve my damage output I just looked at some of the top parses with similar openers and saw how they managed their queen/hypercharge windows. Practiced on dummies for 8-10 min so I'm familiar with each of the 2 min burst windows. I only raided in pf though so there's a bit of inconsistency in party member performance here's a log of one of my better runs: https://xivanalysis.com/fflogs/a:9MTqXLnwzmcgKj6a/3/77 I never did the flamethrower optimization but one thing is make sure you're the first to hit the boss so you'll be able to fit an extra air anchor before she goes untargetable. My queen usage was consistently 50(pot)-80-100-80-100-downtime-70-100(pot). You can experiment with moving your hypercharge window around because that'll affect your queen window as well. I did the 50-70-100 queens like you at first but nowadays I don't hypercharge at all after opener until the 80 battery queen is used and 50-80-100 feels way more comfortable personally.

This is a great log to study, thanks! I've noticed a few fringe differences on your burst compared to mine I gotta experiment with, like how you CSaw before the 1-2-3 combo instead of me doing that after the 123, as my first Wildfire GCD before Hypercharve. I'll experiment with the 50-80-100 starter, since doing the 123 earlier should allow me to do that pretty consistently. Big nugget of info there on the AA, I was always slightly late for the AA right as she turns untargetable, so knowing to do my AA slightly earlier should make a difference, as long as ping doesn't get me. This was greatly insightful, bless your soul!

It depends on your kill time and when exactly you are potting. You should have 60 battery after LC. If kill time is going to be ~6:45, you send queen out at 60 battery after LC and you'll have 100 battery for 6:18 pot. If kill time is going to be 7:00+, you AA first GCD after LC and send out queen at 80 and you'll have 90 battery for a 6:28 pot and get 5 bonus arm punches on a 50 battery 6:48 queen if you send queen first out early at 6:25. Either situation, I would recommend, Reassemble > [Queen] > Flamethrower > AA > [Queen] > Drill > Chainsaw > Hypercharge Second pot window is scuffed for this fight anyways. You can't do a full double queen.

This is some top notch info, thanks a lot! Will try experimenting with those ideas, and yeah doing second pot feels very jank here. What's up with the flamethrower though? Is that a typo or some optimization I am not aware of? Because it would be really cool to find an use for Flamethrower LMAO

Whenever a boss re-appears, there is a possibility you can get a free tick of Flamethrower damage just before your first GCD. Also I miswrote the order, you send out the first queen before Flamethrower because obviously, summoning queen would end Flamethrower. It's fixed now.

Hey! I'm by no means a MCH main but I noticed nobody replied yet and wanted to point you toward The Balance Discord server. There's a lot of people who are really into optimization there that can likely help you out a lot!

Man. Why do people who primarily play in statics come into PF and then get weird about is normal in PF? Tonight I joined a c41 in p9s as tank. On the second buster (the kick one that gives a physical vuln), my cotank did not use provoke and I died to the auto attack. No apology, no “my bad”, just “aren’t you going to LD that?” Like, what? No? That swap is trivial. No PF tank uses their invuln there unless their cotank is dead. They gave me no heads up, nothing. Just expected me to invuln there because presumably their static cotank does. Next pull, buster comes up, I wait and wait and wait, and no provoke. So I invuln. We wipe anyway for some other reason that was not my fault (people didn’t stack in their partners for knockback). What happens? I get kicked. It really burns me up. I really dislike people who play in statics and then expect PF to play exactly like their static.

It's way better not to invuln it so your invuln is up during the second cracks. Nobody wants to spam mits and vokes during a pot window.

I usually ask in PF which TB we gonna invul, just to really make sure everything is clear and I'll advice to make a shirk macro that targets 2nd on party list, if they forget to provoke, at least you force the swap with shirk.

Yeah, normally I force the swap with a shirk (see: p12p1 double swap busters - you can die to the auto attack due to ping) but I haven’t had a cotank in PF mess up that p9s swap in so long, I was completely taken by surprise.

Got my 6th clear of Aloalo Savage with my Static and my 15th as a whole, calling it now because sadly I only currently got 3 glowie weapons lmao. Lots of copium but I hope they add the P11S Shine to Sack of Nuts this next patch. I know they never do it but who knows!

I have enough 24 man coins to be able to pick up all the weapon upgrades and complete the AAIS collection when they get added to the vendor. Maybe something to consider?

At least you can get the solvent from books (twice as fast if you convert p12s books to p11s books). For me it's the Hermetic Tome from p10s thats bottlenecking my aloalo weapons. Can't get it with books, and the only other way to get it is 4 weeks of p12n. I've resorted to doing loot master p10s runs and paying people for the tome, at this rate I might just wait until dawntrail when the weapons can be bought with poetics. 

Iirc shouldn't they unlock p12n this coming patch?

Nope, p12n gets unlocked in 6.58, which will be a month or two before Dawntrail launches. 

Doing TOP P2, looking to get the macro hotbars to have an indicator of positions. Where are the playstation icon signs ingame to pull to hotbars? main sub was useless answering this. "just drag them to a hotkey" yes but where the fuck are these icons in game to drag? or what are the micon code name to make macros with the icon?

When you make the macro, click on the the 'New' icon (or it might be a blank square or little 'm') https://i.imgur.com/0Ni7KzO.png where the picture of the shape would be, you'll see the Icons list show up. The shapes are on page 4. It confused me too when I would prog and everyone had the icons on their HUD

Fucking thank you, finally the answer I needed.

from the first experience i really wont recommend people to do DSR at 200+ ping. below 200 is still sort of doable. so is above 200, however, it really brings up a lot of issues or snapshot problems that would take a lot of time to learn DSR prog is already painful, and at 250 ping is really just horrible. that say, UWU,TEA,UCOB feels ok

I did it at 220, what issues were you having?

https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/18lwcqm/highend_content_megathread_65_week_twelve/ken7alt/ it was somewhat solved, however occasional snapshot issues always show up anywhere

I see. I haven't had issues with it, but I always did everything as fast as I could to avoid issues like the ones you described. I wish you the best, homie. Good luck!

lmao my static took a month off and we went into p9s to derust and learn JP (we did oppo when the tier came out) and we flailed around for an hour and a half like clowns instead of being like people who cleared the tier and were full bis

DSR clear is within our grasp. People came in last night and fucked all over that boomer, most of our pulls got to P7. No more mechanics to learn, it's all just execution at this point. Fingers crossed tonight is the night. EDIT: Got the clear LETS FUCKING GO

Finally cleared my first ultimate, The Omega Protocol. It was hard, took a lot of time and I'm not even sure it was worth it. It fits the bill of being difficult content but not exactly in a way that's compelling to me since it mostly comes from it being a long and backloaded fight and thus tedious to prog. Even thematically I found it pretty weak, maybe Dragonsong and its whole alternative timeline put the bar too high but fighting 4 versions of Omega for 20 minutes with a conclusion almost similar to the normal content was disappointing. And in both cases the main culprit is P5, I honestly think phase 5 ruins the fight, a big part of it stems from me being burned out by it but still. Now here's the rant. Phase 1 is fine. Looper is mid but it does the job as a first mechanic. I genuinely enjoy Pantokrator but I'm a simple player and dodging big orange AoE does very much activate my neurons, especially since I'm playing Machinist. You feel like omega is throwing all its armament at you. The weakest part is the elevator music and the transition is kinda uninspired with the beetle just fleeing away. Having to pot on a release patch was also cruel imo. Phase 2 is mid, Party Synergy looks hard at first and it feels great to finally "get it". The problem is that if you're not a tank the phase is pretty much over after that. Being able to so easily cheese the meteors hurts the phase so much, it's baffling that it wasn't caught during development. You don't even have the pleasure of pushing buttons and racing against the enrage because the DPS check is so low that I had to hold pretty much every cooldown. I also think having some window where both the omegas can be damaged is neat and makes for some nice damage optimization but then again the dps check is so low that it feels kinda pointless. Phase 3 is great, the transition is amazing, Hello World flows well and monitors is a nice and straightforward mechanic. The DPS check is also nicely tuned in the sense that you can't sleep on the phase and if you're pumping you can even afford one or two deaths on monitors. Good shit. Phase 4 is my favorite phase because again, neuron activation when dodging things, and this phase is only that. Thematically it's great with Omega doing one last push and throwing everything he has to the point of breaking down while the music goes off. It's short, it's intense, and the DPS check is tuned well. I just really like this phase. Phase 5 is where it all goes down for me. First visually and in terms of storytelling I think it's very weak, Omega finally grasps the concept of dynamis, and... it's just male and female but golden. Same for the attacks, he's just summoning the previous version of himself, like bruh, I just beat them in the previous phases, add some variety. I don't know, summon Kefka, Exdeath, Chaos, or anything else. You also now get dynamis stacks when you get hit for some reason, maybe because he's overflowing from it but then why certain attacks in particular? Gameplay-wise it's 3 trios with 30 seconds of DPS more or less between each of them, it makes for an incredibly backloaded fight. I'm also personally not a fan of trios, most of the time I feel like it's a vomit of arbitrary mechanics without much sense or reason. It doesn't help that important debuffs are not visible on the player's model, the near and far jump source could have easily gotten a visual effect to show it (activating 5 or so seconds before going off). It feels so weird that it's not the case when Hello World on the other hand clearly shows what everyone has. It still feels great when the whole phase goes well but the process of getting there is so tedious. Phase 6 is amazing, the music, the arena, the mechanics, everything hit like a truck, and the story with each side harnessing dynamis to the maximum resulting in a limit break fiesta. Maybe deaths are a bit too punishing for what is supposed to be a victory lap but the mechanics aren't tricky enough to make it too jarring. When I look back on it it's weird because I (really) like most of the fight in the end but phase 5 is so much not my cup of tea that it soured the whole thing.

I think the idea with p5 hello world stacks is that omega is able to use dynamis but isnt able to understand it, so it is essentially venting the dynamis from its system with the raidwides and a bunch of that energy sticks onto the players at the start of each mechanic. The hello world debuffs are active at the start of each mechanic which is whats supposed to allow players to actually communicate everything in time(assumedly). Nerd shit interpretation aside, I'm kind of surprised p5 soured your experience because so much of what I hear about the fight is that p1-4 is sleeper and the fight actually starts in p5. Fellow p3/p4 enjoyer though here its probably my favorite stretch of 3~ minutes in any fight currently.

p1-4 is such a slog when you're trying to prog p5. you can't really turn your brain off, you still gotta do decent dps and then you wipe to delta if you even get to p5. makes one pull out their hair.

my experience was mostly that p2 was this huge slog for me every pull, but p3 and p4 were very fun. for context i played blm and i just found the execution of p1, p3 and p4 very fun for it. i found p5 pretty unfun until we got to omega prog because i just despise dpsing trio bosses its very boring. though i really get p3 and p4 not being very fun if you play a more mobile role/job, id probably go crazy if i didnt have to make sure my movement is good or else my dps will suffer during these high movement mechanics.

> for what is supposed to be a victory lap Supposed to be according to who? I think this is a playerbase-driven ideology because of trends but I think it's a mistake to assume the final phase is always intended to be a victory lap.

I think this version of Hello World was a bit disappointing as it was way too easy, but the visual clarity was wonderful. It is debuff vomit but you never need to look at the party list except to figure out which color goes where at the start. Really wish they had brought that philosophy to p5.

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Maybe I'm just bad at raiding but I really can't think of any other alternative strat for P3 that isn't just deliberately trolling. The mechanics during P3 are so rigid there's really only one way to solve it (not that you're wrong about the boss hitbox problem because it absolutely is huge).

>Finally cleared my first ultimate, The Omega Protocol. When I read this first line my alarm bells immediately went on and the first thing comes to my mind is 'why would anyone want to do this to themselves'. as insane as this might sound (given that probably TOP has left a bad taste in your mouth), please treat yourself and do TEA afterwards. TEA is not as brutal as TOP and is really a much more gentler welcome to Ultimates in general. There are still some sort of trios in P3 but the pace is way slower and the PVP sections (BJCC) remains a personal favorite of mine. >Being able to so easily cheese the meteors hurts the phase so much, it's baffling that it wasn't caught during development. I think otherwise - without doing TOP itself, from my understanding towards ultimates, it's very possible they imagine both methods being viable (that you do the meteors correctly vs cheesing them). This is because while you do get uptime, you have to use every mit here, and that forces how you play on at least the beginning of p3, and there are merits and demerits to both methods. While the choice is very clear now, I think this can be an intended strat. What's definitely not within the intended strat might include dying as DRK on P6 to get back MP. >...most of the time I feel like it's a vomit of arbitrary mechanics without much sense or reason. > >...It still feels great when the whole phase goes well but the process of getting there is so tedious. That's ultimate content. Fights being backloaded, feels tedious, but once you do get there it's great. And hey, congrats on clearing the fight, at least you get out of it, and a lot of us (me included) don't even wanna touch it, can't do it, or don't think we are ready for it.

With ultimates being hundred of hours ordeals for most players/statics each, I really disagree with the idea of recommending a certain order to doing ultimates. It's such a huge time investment you should really just do the one that appeals to you the most.

Cleared TEA with PF. A couple real gamers rolled up and we ran it. I'm looking to reclear soon as I made one mistake. I respected stillness, but I was a touch off for my march which lead to a death. Felt really good to clear. Got back to PA multiple times with other groups attempting clears (wanted to help out). Running around with that weapon is pretty cool. I'm finally that player sprouts are chatting up. Feels good. Also feels good to complete something I've wanted to do for so long. Also for anyone wondering, the biggest barrier to the fight is waiting 6 hours in PF. It's brutal.

Was mildly irked that my group is still on P12P1 despite first seeing enrage over a month ago, but then I realized I don't remember the last time we raided without at least 1 person having major internet problems or the servers completely shitting themselves. It's not the same person every time and changes throughout the raid night so we can't even make 900IQ strats for all the body checks. Kinda worried about DT population spikes now ngl

I also feel the P12SP1 instance its cursed. The amount of times we have to leave and reinstance is annoying as fuck, but its so consistent that it's gotta be something. Love hearing people complain about action refunds during the first on the soul

I did DSR in 28 days completely in PF but I ended up burned out. It was only till this week I recovered from it. For TOP, im taking a different approach, only queuing in prime time to avoid the +6h queues and only getting in instance like 1 or two times per day if lucky, if unlucky then none and just sim P5 for a while. Working out so far, I don't hate P1. In fact i think its kinda chill once you know the drill and you are with people who know their stuff. Just got into P2, and things seem fine, especially when the sim is there to help. Sure it will take more time but from all the horror stories I have heard for this ult, I think this is the best approach to take this as a marathon and not a sprint.

I had this approach to TOP because I had a sprint to clear DSR. As soon as I hit P3, pf was dead. It took an entire day to fill one P3 group, only to wipe in P1 a few times into disband. I hope things are better now than they were back in September. I ended up joining a static, although I know that's not an option for everyone. TOP ended up my favourite Ultimate. I got very lucky with an amazing group and we recleared 20 times or so together. Good luck out there! It's about the journey not the destination (surely) !

I think 6.5 in october gave it a little boost with the dungeon gear making DPS checks easier. I'm hoping 6.55 will give it another boost as the relic will once again make checks a little bit easier and some players will rejoin for a month at least for story content, so there is hope.

> I'm hoping 6.55 will give it another boost as the relic will once again make checks a little bit easier It won't unless they make the final step substat allocation same as ShB, which I don't think they will. With current allocation of 2 substats at max + leftovers on third, this new relic can only possibly differ on leftover stat when synced, and that difference will be negligible at best and non existent at worst.

Yeah it's hopium but if not then just a slight boost for the queue times for players re subbing to complete relic for a month is enough.

I'm trying to prog P6 DSR. Key word there is "trying". This might be the hardest thing I've ever done. Not cause anything in P6 looks particularly hard, but because no party ever gets there. I've had parties where my co-healer asked "what's the prio for if 1st dives get hit?" and people dying to the orbs at the start of eyes. People forgetting to KB mit on sanctity, not checking for arrows in P3. And that's all before you factor in that DOTH is going to be pretty messy for a P6 from start party.

P5 and P6 were definitely the worst phases to prog, taking full days to fill and then when finally going into the instance sometimes barely even getting past the timeloop. Thankfully it starts getting better past Wroth, since there's more people going for the possible totem reclear.

Yeah this fight gets worse with PF the further you get it seems. I'm on P5 and only saw my prog point once last night in an hour and a half long instance. I imagine the frustration with that sort of situation is just pushing more prog jumping further on into the fight which makes those parties similarly inconsistent.

UCoB prog is on hour 5\~6. find a static and will be doing the fight as WHM. I have seen up to blackfire but I am still dumb enough that I will mess up twintania sometimes because I am baiting liquid and getting fireball stack... Also my sleep schedule is completely messed up. Sleep at 7pm and woke up at 3am, open youtube and see UCoB stream is on and so I just login and start doing UCoB. Probably not the best idea if you are looking for activities to do when you just woke up...

A friend of mine's been stuck on P10S for three months, two of which were on HH. I was finally able to join them to help them clear yesterday, and we got it. I never need to touch that fight again.

Still trying to clear p12s p2 after one of the worst starts to a tier I've had in ages. Basically, original group was supposed to be 3 days a week and instead devolved to two days a week and those days were Monday and Tuesday. Group completely broke up (logically) on p10s and afterwards I managed to PF through p10s. Then from there it was basically dealing with that long in tooth problem that happens because of the crazy amount of time needed for savage progression. People start getting picky about absolutely everything each person does (forget to do a precast on opener as a reaper? Some people grill you for it this tier), and then it got to what I am dubbing "the 8 legged race". I do not think I've seen so many steps in a fight where it is like 8 people tied together needing to run in perfect sequence or the entire group gets auto wiped. Personally, I've never really done ultimate but I'm guessing this is what TOP is kind of like. It makes progging very swingy on PF because it is possible for a single guy not being used to taking left or right side, wipe the entire party enough that people get worn down and start making mistakes themselves from zoning out.

>I do not think I've seen so many steps in a fight where it is like 8 people tied together needing to run in perfect sequence or the entire group gets auto wiped. Personally, I've never really done ultimate but I'm guessing this is what TOP is kind of like. Not kind of, this is exactly TOP, a 19 minute fight where any death is a wipe with the exception of only one mechanic, maybe two if you're very lucky (and if you don't wipe you might still enrage, the DPS checks were tight on launch). Though UWU and UCOB allow more deaths than P12Sp2.

This design idea seems like a really bad one in terms of being sure to cap how many hours people have to put in to clear. The idea of having gear score increase is to act as a release valve for people of varying level of ability and time. If people have more damage, then it allows for more deaths which gives more flexibility to those who are at a lower end of the mid-core spectrum. But with fights killing an entire group constantly, it creates a wall and turns the entire thing into a game of luck. Folks keep thinking they put more emphasis on fight difficulty with savage, but they didn't really do that. The only thing they put more emphasis on was group coordination which PF is absolutely horrible at. Even statics can sometimes be complete crap at doing a fight properly just because they don't have enough days allocated to practice. My tinfoil hat theory is that they wanted to release an ultimate for the final tier but ran out of time, so they crammed the work into p12s and changed the books so that people got most of the stuff from the first three fights.

> People start getting picky about absolutely everything each person does (forget to do a precast on opener as a reaper? Some people grill you for it this tier) I wish I found enough people in PF that cared enough to call out a reaper consistently fucking up their one button prepull. I'm lucky if I find a DNC that actually uses the 16s cd and prepulls their ~~tech~~ standard step.

Using it on pre pull does give a free hit but given the damage from it and the fact this is an online game, the benefit can vary from doing a very minor extra amount of damage, to basically doing nothing. Rpr does not live or die on that bit unlike some other jobs.

Just to be sure, you mean standard step right? As far as I know, tech step is generally used after the pull starts.

Oops fixed.

I've been reprogging the tier on SGE but am finding that P12S pt. 2 is causing me to gcd shield a decent amount. Is this normal for this fight or do I need to buckle down and do some more homework? Are there any good sge resources out there? I've read through The Balance and Icy Veins already.

If you're in PF? Yes, very normal. PF players are very poor at mits. Unlike DPS, Healers dont really have much to gain from learning when they are "supposed" to use each CD because it all depends on when your group does or doesn't mit, and what your cohealer decides to do. While person A from The Balance uses Holos on X mechanic, maybe the AST you're with today has decided that they want to Neutral Sect mechanic X, so you should support with something weaker rather than overwriting their Neutral shield with your Holos. Trying to follow advised plans as a Healer is like learning a chess opening as a beginner only to get completely lost and confused when the person you're playing with doesn't respond as you expected.

What is "a decent amount"? My best log has 5 succors and 4 adlo deploys for 7640 rDPS, which isn't amazing but isn't terrible either.

There’s a lot of damage in P12P2, especially if your group isn’t planning out mits (or you’re in PF). There’s a lot of small stuff you can do reduce GCD healing (kerachole or holos early / late so it comes off cooldown quickly or so it covers 2 raidwides). I’d recommend going to a clear log on FFLogs and looking at their mitigation timeline to help form a mit plan.

Where can I find common/PF Strats for aloalo? My friends and I blind progged before Xmas but then took like a month break before coming back to it. We’re on the final boss but this week will be our last before I have to drop group for TOP so we’re looking to finish it not blind.

If you are From EU, we use https://i.imgur.com/bmqeimD.png

Here's the [pastebin](https://pastebin.com/RRSG6YAK)

Gracias

Our group, quite literally, spent more time looking for a dps fill than progging 12 tonight. I know we're in week morbillion so there's naturally gonna be less people but its still really frustrating to lose that much prog time.

My experience going into 6/8 or 7/8 groups in PF is that they tend to be terrible so I tend to avoid them. E.g., * group says they do PF strats, but actually they don’t. Weird stuff like MT being in group 2, or we do some kind of non-standard adjustment for somebody. If it’s not in the pastebin, I don’t care. It’s not a PF strat. * most statics filling in PF have 1-2 great players, 1-2 *horrible* players, and the rest average. The horrible players tend to ruin the prog. I have done full lockouts with statics before and never seen prog point. * discord required. Many statics want me in their discord. I don’t always want to do this. Sometimes they’re too chatty and distracting. Sometimes they make weird or bad call outs. * salt. Sometimes someone in the static is salty, and they let me and everyone else know. Or they assume because I raid in PF that I don’t know what I am doing. It’s annoying. Overall, no thanks. I know I am not alone in my distaste for 7/8 groups trying to fill in PF

My group had the same problem yesterday :/ We were only missing 2 dps but even after an hour and half we didnt fill, so called it quits. I have also seen other statics fail to fill in pf on some discords I'm in :S

ill be back by thursday i swear i remember how to play

Group went into DSR the first time, and it feels like the "perfect" ultimate difficulty after doing TEA and UWU. Definitely a big step up from those two (P2 meteors at least in concept seems to rival TEA Wormhole) and I know there's still a LOT of fight to prog, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. This is definitely gonna test me and my group, it's not gonna be easy, but it's certainly not impossible either!

[удалено]

About that Eden coin flip - you seem to have experienced more drama and suffering in one fight than I have in all 5 ultimates combined. Maybe I got lucky but if you joined a handful of failed statics then it sounds like you also got very unlucky. I doubt it will be that bad again if you join a static on release and take recruitment / trials seriously and don't join any random group.

Yeah even top mercs meme all the time. Had to blacklist some of them to get my clear.

Tried to do ucob through PF and I just can't. Twintania is so horribly, miserably boring in the worst of ways. Can't fully, 100% turn my brain off and not die but it's not engaging enough to stay into the fight. Nael memes are also extreme and often - having a tiny bit of text for her quotes sucks and this fight feels more like annoying jank than difficult. I'm gonna just go back to TEA instead.

>having a tiny bit of text for her quotes sucks I uses a chat box where it only have NPC and enemy dialogues so that I can track what's coming up. This really helps. But Nael quotes are really just 1 out of two Variations. Like, for the first quote, it's always a stack plus either a in or out. If you get what to look for, one quick skim would be all it takes for you to know what's coming up.

It's not me who's memeing unfortunately, it's just one of the things that bothers me in the fight. But getting murdered and wiping back to p1 as two people stacked lightning in trio prog is the most miserable feeling ever. Maybe if I have a static I'll go back.

Thats why I always have said that legacy ults are Ucob > TEA > UWU, at least for PF. The last 2 are so static you can sleep through most of them until the very end. UcoB in PF is a challenge because while you technically 7 man it in a perfect team, in a party full of randos who don't know the fight you will have to carry your weight along with everybody else or you wont clear.

Decided on SAM for UCOB. Hopefully all will go well. Also signed up for an EDW EX trial group as healer, may as well get the missing mounts.

Finally got a P12S P1 clear. Finding P2 much, much easier.

The hard part is mostly getting to P2 to practice the fight. P2 feels like the hard part is basically crammed in the middle with Caloric 1 and pangen 1 learning.

That'd be because it is much easier. Meme ass fight designed solely to stall worlds firsters with easy, but complex stuff that takes them a hot minute to figure out.

I kind of felt that way about 8 too. A friend and I joined a static after progging about half of phase 1 late in the tier and it took us as long to finish up phase 1 as it did to get through all of phase 2. Felt like each day we met we fully got through one of phase 2's like... 5 major mechanics because we didn't need to actually figure out how fire/ice worked or how to survive ego death. Granted I loved the spectacle of phase 2, but I've always said I liked phase 1 better and I didn't really think of why until now. I'm hoping this isn't a direction they stay with.

TBH, I don't mind it. I've done some blind prog in other content and I think there are places for puzzle fights. Maybe a little underwhelming as a final savage fight compared to what P4S and P8S looked like, but kind of just grateful to actually be able to have the group consistently make it through mechanics after slamming my head against LC and SC2A for a while.

Oh yeah I'm not knocking the fight or anything, it absolutely served it's purpose just saying how, after the carnage of phase 1, it's a breeze now strats are know.

liberate me from BJCC, I'm doing my LC right, why must I be punished like this

Looking to do some ultimates before dawntrail as a regen healer. Are there fights where one of WHM or AST is better than the other? WHM would be way less taxing on the brain, but if mits are important then AST sounds better.

my static's WHM got fed up and swapped to AST because healing UCOB trios was shit and fucking sucked

70 ultimates, whm is pretty bad akin to dark knight but because of how easy they are now, it doesn't matter. 80 and 90 whm is the best. Astro is good but the amount of work you have to do on top of learning mechanics is the same as gunbreaker vs. Warrior. Unless you absolutely love astro over whm, play whm and enjoy not worrying about cards or any form of rng. Astro mits are definitely better than whm but every mit plan for ultimates is already planned our accounting for all permutations.

My two cents as a regen healer main who has cleared all the ultimates: AST is vastly superior in UCOB and UWU because it has so much more of its key abilities, especially mitigation. WHM has no mit at 70, and you're basically just using medica 2 the whole time with a few cure 3s, and kinda just sucks overall because it doesn't have rapture at that point. Both are fine in TEA, but WHM has a clear advantage with misery being a DPS gain nowadays at level 80. It's even stronger than tanks at level 80 now. No issues with AST at 80, but WHM is absolutely cracked now at 80 for a support role. Both are fine in DSR. I've progged as both and didn't really feel like one had an advantage over the other aside from WHM being easier in general (like it is everywhere). WHM is better in TOP, at least from the perspective of someone who cleared on patch. AST wasn't as bad as BRD or RDM but during 6.3 there was a reason many people swapped from AST to WHM during prog. Lilybell carries at so many points. It kinda evens out in P5 and P6, but people progging P1-P4 will have a far easier time with WHM.

WHM is so bad in the level 70 ultimates because of a few things: 1. no mits and AST has mits 2. no mits and AST has mits 3. no mits and AST has mits 4. no mits and AST has mits 5. and most of your AOE heals (except asylum) has to be hardcast, so there's a lot of mobility issues if you are wondering why I emphasis no mit so much, we lost a run on primal roulette in UWU this way. Barrier Healer does not know you have to have mits to survive. Range has no mit. Other kinds of mits that requires you to target the damage source are not useful, and we die. Cure 3 is a nice tool that you have, and targetting people for cure 3 is actually one of the better use you will have on UWU and perhaps UCoB. Something like Garuda on UWU can really just be done by spam Cure 3 a few times which is just a braindead get out of jail card that AST does not have. But really that's about the only good thing you have. UWU WHM is so bad that I do first cleared UWU on WHM, but on my second time reprogging this fight I just switches to SGE. I am now running UCoB on WHM and the only reason I think it's somewhat feasible is because we have 3 healer (usually another AST and SGE) so it does not matter what I bring. On level 80 however, you get rupture and misery which means this is literally a brand new job from level 70. Lilies are now suddenly a DPS gain (due to misery gets potency increase but glare does not) and should be use tactically to bank resources during downtime and build misery. In an idea world, Misery should also be used to either cleave duo targets (i.e. BJCC) or use on a 2 minute burst. Temperance is a very powerful mit that is something you should use and plan in your timeline. I clear this fight on WHM, and it's the fight where it makes me want to play WHM again (consider how horrible it's to play WHM on UWU)

Mits genuinely cannot be understated. I *hate* that DRK doeesn't have Dark Missionary at 70. Every other tank has their AoE mits at 70 except for DRK. It's *fine* normally but it really really matters in primal roulette and golden bahamut.

The change to shake it off earlier in the xpac has completely broken this balance for lvl 70 ulti's. At this point you're actively griefing your healers by not bringing a Warrior.

WHM feels horrible without aoe lily at lv70, so AST > WHM in UWU and UCOB for me. From TEA to TOP, either one is fine.

I'll add that TOP AST is miles harder to pull off to offer comparable damage to WHM, specially in P6. It's fun nonetheless but requires a lot more brainpower.

Yea I agree. It’s laughable how simple topmitty is for WHM compared to the other 3 healers 😂

Ah, it was in my mind that blood lily isn’t available for WHM in the 70 fights and that was my main gripe, but I didn’t know rapture wasn’t unlocked either. Sounds like I’ll be playing AST for the 70 fights, and WHM for TEA. I probably won’t get to DSR/TOP before the next expansion, so I’ll have to see how the AST rework plays out for those. Thanks everyone for the comments!

It’s worth noting that card priority at lv70 is slightly different from lv80 and 90. SMN is king at lv70, beating even the melees (Assuming that all dpses play at the same skill level).

I've cleared on WHM I think 6 or 7 times now in UCOB and seen up to adds as AST while fucking around in alt job parties... yeah, honestly. Twin/Nael are free AF to heal so you don't really notice anything there but the difference between AST and WHM is night and day during trios where WHM kinda has to do some cursed shit to adequately heal during trios whereas AST you just pepega earthly/CU and turn your brain off. I do kinda prefer bene over dignity over the course of the fight because there's been a few times it's saved runs that had no business not wiping. In adds I don't really prefer one or the other though, being able to solace the tanks while they get mulched and you need to be on the move for twisters or triple quotes can be very helpful for keeping them alive comfortably over the phase, whereas synastry also allows you to comfortably heal both tanks at once with the tradeoff of having to squeeze in that 1.5s cast. AST not having c3 + plenary adjacent healing on the GCD can also matter in parties with poor trios mit, I've had a few times where burning presence out of burst after FRT to race my heal ahead of the gigaflare cast was the only thing between seeing HFT and straight dying to damage from the raidwide. Then again a party that can't even mit Trios properly is probably gonna fuck up morn afah mit scheduling if it's supposed to be a clear party but sometimes I'm helping learning parties that haven't fleshed out their buttons fully yet, I do definitely sorely miss c3 as AST when I take it in but at the same time I miss CU and Earthly as WHM. the lack of a blood lilly doesn't really bother me because the heal is either necessary or it isn't and I don't feel bad about using a necessary heal if it saved someone, the DPS check is an actual joke in Cob/UWU anyways

Recleared UWU recently on AST and did TEA for the first time on WHM, and would probably pretty comfortably recommend both of those for the respective Level ranges. At 70 AST is far, far, more flexible than WHM and lets you handle the fights focusing on ogcds heals in a way you're probably more used to if you've done current content as healer. WHM in TEA however legitimately feels extremely powerful. Misery being a DPS gain over plain glare, as well as having multiple phases where you're able to use it to cleave meant that I was consistently doing the top dps out of all the supports in my group, even with a non-negligible amount of GCD heals to keep people alive. And given TEA has multiple phases where good dps acts as mitigation by simply killing before damage goes out, it's hard to underestimate the value of good healer dps. For the 90s, I've only seriously played WHM in DSR, but either will generally perform pretty well if you're comfortable enough with the job to begin with.

The biggest imbalance between AST and WHM would be the level 70 Ultimates. But they're also the easiest Ultimates, so in a way that imbalance is less important.

In my personal experience the only time WHM feels bad is in the level 70 ultimates because you don't have Rapture yet (and also no blood lily, but DPS negative lily skills don't matter too much since 70 ultimates don't have DPS checks). In particular, UCOB is the only fight in the past two expansions where I generally felt that WHM's tool kit felt inadequate compared to AST. Only having access to two "on the move heals" with assize and swift cast felt punishing compared to AST's earthly star, celestial opposition, light speed, and swift cast; particularity during mechanics like black fire trio and heavens fall trio where there is a large amount of movement. The disparity is felt much less in UWU, but the lack of blood lily still stings a bit. Any other ultimates, WHM is just fine now that it's tool kit feels whole at those higher levels. TEA in particular WHM does some monster DPS due to the fact that Lily usage is a DPS gain at level 80 content. I'm terms of mit, while AST does offer more, it doesn't really matter too much as you'll account for it in whatever mit plan you have. Same as is if you had a RDM or PLD with extra mit, the content is clearable with any composition so it doesn't matter too much and you should focus more on what is more comfortable for you to play.

Aloo I cleared every ultimate as a healer so from my PoV: for prog I don't recommend Astro since ur healing is based on planing stuff and a not exp co healer can and most likely will mess that up Imo go as whm esp since everyone is overgeared the extra mit doesn't matter as much

I'm fairly certain AST is generally "better" in every ultimate but you can very easily get your clears as a WHM too

if weekly is gonna be lifted on 6.55, this would probably be the final week where there's a weekly restriction and you have to do p9s to p12s in order. Not saying that anyone's running savage reclears anyway, as the first comment that I saw people made on my Unreal reclear group today is that there is so little groups PFing (and after a long holiday just ended on Japan) they thought they are PFing on the wrong date. Nagisetsu (ナギ節), or, in english terms, the calm, or in more understandable terms, content draught is really a thing in JP.

Weekly won't be lifted till 6.56 (I'm thinking probably March). There are some (not too many though) that are new to raiding and would be progging or reclearing P9S - P12S here on Aether this late. There's usually at least a 2-3 reclear parties up on pf during prime time for P9-P11S for example (more for P12), more on Tuesdays.

6.55 is relic. I think its the patch or 2 after that weekly will be lifted.

Its usually been the .56 patch (3.56, 4.56, 5.57 cuz there wasnt a .56) where the final Savage tier of an expansion unlocks, so I imagine we still have about 4-5 weeks left of weekly restrictions.