As someone who never played during an expansion launch, how hard are the latest Savage raids? I’ve been afraid to try them, I don’t have an active FC so I’d be queuing and I don’t want to be a burden. I can run the normal raids and not die or even get hit by the mechanics the whole run, but not sure how big of a jump up in difficulty they are mechanics wise.
Savage is definitely a lot harder than normal raids, but it’s a lot of fun to work together to learn the mechanics, and slowly learn how to play your job well throughout the fight!
If you’re interested in doing savage raids by finding groups in party finder, there’s a few things you probably will want to do before you jump in.
First, you’ll want to look up a guide to the first fight (search “m1s guide” on youtube and take your pick), and watch the video a few times through (or several different videos for more perspectives and strategies) to get an idea of the difficulty of the raid, and try to memorize how to resolve at least the first few mechanics of the fight.
Second, savage raids have enrage, which is a DPS check; if you don’t clear by the time the last mechanic is over, then you wipe. This means DPS is important (though, in this tier, it’s relatively forgiving). As such, make sure you know how to play your job fairly well! You aren’t expected to play perfectly by any means, and can definitely clear even if you stumble often, but doing more DPS (even as healer and tank) makes a big difference on how likely your party is to clear the fight. The Balance is a great resource for learning optimized strategies!
And finally, when you’re ready to jump into a party finder group, look for one with the [Practice] tag, and read the description to find out how far into the fight the group expects you to be (usually, they mention a specific boss attack). As long as you stick to groups that are roughly at the same point in the fight that you are, just jump in, and try to relax ^^
You’re all there to have fun and learn together, and if someone gives you a hard time for messing up (which is unlikely), then you are free to leave at any time and find a nicer group. Most groups, especially ones that are at an early prog point, are super easygoing in my experience, and they’ll be happy to have you fill up their party and learn with them!
If you want to give it a try and want more info, I’d be happy to give more specific tips/lingo/strategies to help you gain some confidence and jump into it! It’s a super fun and rewarding aspect of the game, and nothing is quite as satisfying as clearing a fight for the first time!
If you haven’t done any high-end content before, you should start with extremes. Normal raids are made with the intention that you can clear them first pull, maybe in two or three if your group is full of newbies. No savage is like this. You will die, a lot. Specially if you are new.
Try watching a guide for m1s so you can get an idea of what you are trying to do (Like this one)
EX1 was my first ever current “high end” content clear and it was a lot of fun. Absolutely recommend it for anyone unsure about hopping into harder content, it’s such a great escalation of the normal trial and I credit it as the jumping off point for me to dabble in savage, which I never would have otherwise.
Still no wings from either one though…
It is a big jump in difficulty. You got mostly no visual yellow markers and need to pay attention to the area, boss position / stance and so one in Savage levels. Instead of queuing, you should use Party Finder for that. It doesnt hurt to lookup guides, if you do it without a static. Also some statics also do that, instead of learning by trying.
To follow on from this, after the first week or so, parties running the fights blind are typically in the minority. Most of the time there’s been established strategies to handle fights (these can vary from DC to DC) and people will follow those strategies.
With that in mind, watching a guide to the fight is very much normal so don’t be afraid to do it unless you plan to go in blind! (And if you’re just starting out in savage you’re probably not in that group unless you’ve got a couple of friends you want to try it with).
Basically though think of savage as a dance. You need to learn the choreography. Once you’ve done that, then it’s a case of optimising your damage output while performing that choreography. The randomness in the fight is typically just whether you get sequence A or B first, so if you’re comfortable with the memorisation of mechanics, and then repeating them over and over until you can do them on auto pilot, you’ll do fine 😊
(If you’re a healer or tank obviously you also need to be doing healing or tanking as well, so factor that in to what you need to learn!)
I really appreciate the info and perspective you and the person above you provided! I kind of want to go in blind, but probably will chicken out lol. Do either of you have recommendations for videos or guides in case I end up studying first? I plan on using Red Mage or Dancer if that factors in.
Hector Hectorson is a good place to start, he uses a top down graphic style to explain the fights. You also don’t see the actual game footage as a result so you can still sort of go blind in the fight itself but still have knowledge of mechanics.
https://youtube.com/@hectorhectorson
I quite like Mizzteq’s video guides as well, she also uses footage from the fights which can be helpful to understand what to actually look for in game. Plus her pun game is on point 😂
https://youtube.com/@mtqcapture
There’s others out there as well who also do guide content, this is by no means an exhaustive list but they’re my two personal favorites.
Thank you for taking the time and providing some recommendations, I’ll check them both out! First one sounds perfect for me wanting to go in kind of blind, but some good puns are really tempting lol.
@pontiffkitchen0 I’d recommend you to do the first few fights guided - that will help you understand some more mechanics when you eventually try a fight without a guide.
Hector provides decent guides, but usually super early before better strategies have been concieved - so watch out if a party in PF calls for something else; though if you read the descriptions, it’s fairly obvious. And if anything is unclear, we’re happy to help or figure it out together.
That’s probably what I’ll do, atleast watch and study the first one before hand and see what I’m getting myself into. And I appreciate the call out, I’ll keep that in mind that I should be open to following what someone in the party says to do instead of blindly following possibly outdated strats from early videos. I really do appreciate this community, and the FF14 community as a whole. It’s not universal, but overall it’s the most welcoming and friendly gaming community I’ve ever experienced.
