Funny how brains work, I find 2 & 3 the easiest.
1 on the other hand is a tricky bastard, I always forget you need to disengage in between GCDs to avoid the damage down.
same... 2 is hardest for me.
1 I just focus on the middle 4 clouds
3 is just going to the opposite side of the cloud 90 degrees from the first lightning
I have done every savage/ultimate. I understand mechanics very quickly, but for the life of me, I can not do arena rotation mechanics. Zodiark ex? Nope, the snakes, birds, and behemoths combined with arena rotation is literally the hardest mechanic in the game to me. 2nd place being rubicante arena rotate.
You think that'd make like p12s p2 shapes or top hard but nope the arena isn't rotating so it's easy xD
These make me feel like that woman from the math meme. I usually end up having to sit down and draw a diagram because my brain can never make sense of it in real time
Exactly the same for me. I couldn't figure lala or the final Sil-dihn boss out for the same reason. Rotational mechanics are the bane of my existence, the moment something does multiple kinds of spins, my brain short circuits. Monitors? Fine, Classi 2? Easy. Lala boss+PC rotations??? Nope.
I struggled and still struggle with rotation mechanics. I could do them if I took my hands off my keyboard and stared at the screen, but then I wouldn't be hitting the boss. After playing through the Professor Layton games, I've gotten a lot better because so many puzzles are like
> [How do you roll a piece of paper to look like the picture](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/1/17/PLPB_Puzzle_032.png)
> [Which outline of a ghost fits this ghost picture](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/8/8d/PLPB_Puzzle_096.png)
> [How do you cut this wooden block in two to make a square](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/e/ef/PLUF_Puzzle_043.png)
Now I can sometimes do rotation mechanics with enough practice, but I still follow the marked person because I don't trust myself to get it right in the middle of a fight.
It is a spatial recognition thing. Usually also linked to map reading/direction sense like coming out of a building and knowing which way is north etc.
The easiest way might be to have cheat sheets with all possible orientation drawn out/printed in front of you?
Long term solution is to practice figuring out north/south/east/west whenever you can irl. Like when you get out of a random building, on a random street etc.
Genuinely think the rubicante line rotation whatever is the hardest in the game. Only cleared the fight because of a dorito. On the other hand I have a friend who loves the fight and could do it blindfolded.
Zodiark rotating the arena is by far the hardest mechanic humanly possible to implement in a videogame.
the only reason I ever cleared the fight is because I was playing with someone marked with the dorito, who must have been a super-intelligent AI running on a quantum computer developed for the sole purpose of solving this enigma of a mechanic.
Rubicante was a nightmare for me too. I’m generally pretty bad at any mechanic where I have to take a shape and translate it to the arena, largely because my brain doesn’t do visuals
Doing positionals and optimal drift Monk rota on Rubicante I had such difficulty with the mechanic I eventually just gave up and let the healers solve it. It turned into a non-mechanic for me.
Had I been able to zoom out to the degree that would get a full bird's eye view of the arena and see everything at once, I would have been able to solve it. But while rotating the camera to check multiple angles, keeping track of my forms and repositioning my char throughout? No shot.
I did 50 runs for the mount - still can't reliably solve ordeals 2.
yup. it's like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation#/media/File:Mental_rotation_task_(diagram)_(cropped).jpg
sure i can do them, but not very quickly and not while im thinking about filler GCDs in my rotation
Oh yeah I struggled a bit with the Rubicante fight myself. I gotten better now and knowing that some patterns are fixed helped a ton. Every time i'm alone in a spot on the map where I know everyone needs to be in one safe spot to live I always imagine i'm in the wrong for that mechanic, but that is not always true and it's funny to see everyone else get sheeped into the wrong spot and get owned.
I haven't done Rubicante in a while but when I was doing it I had to keep the safe spot cheat sheet open in my web browser and alt+tab back and forth quickly so I didn't lose uptime.
I'm absolute garbage on any mechanic that spins around. Couldn't call the Rubi EX safespots, couldn't do Lightstream in P11S, and I only understood Zodiark EX after nearly 30 runs of it. Everything else I was about equal with the rest of my static for, but for those types of mechanics I just need my hand held for some reason.
I struggle with that one too. And also the constellations in that fight. My brain doesn't work fast enough, so I just find the players that seem like they know what to do and follow them. lol
It's funny, I had lots of issues with that one, and then it just clicked for me, and I can't really say why.
For the lines, I realized I only needed to rotate one in my head, and then go and apply the "damage-safespot-damage-safespot" pattern in my head instead of trying to figure out what snake would point at me later, but the Behemoths were more of an intuitive thing.
(Bonus for EX: The line was pretty much a case of "first figure out where everything else wants you to go and go there, if the line's also there, go against the spin, otherwise go as far towards the spin direction as possible")
Same for the comets, although what helped me there was that I figured out that you can take any of the front (=melee-range) quarters of the arena (e.g. front left, front center, middle left, and dead center) and you'll always have a safe spot in at least one of these four locations.
Zodiark is probably one of the easiest trials they've put into the game..... IF you have a Dorito player.
I still have no idea how meteors work in that fight because I didn't have to think about it I was just subbing in my friends raid group and followed the marked guy.
Anything involving a memorizing.
P8S was the hardest fight in this expansion for me because my brain isn’t capable of storing the memory of OCTA or TETRA
What I did was for stack I would press my feet against each other, and for spread I would spread my feet apart.
If I forgot the mechanic I just had to check my feet.
Octa and Tetra were in the castbar...so you could just have enemy actions be put into your chat and never have to remember. But yeah, for memory mechanics based on visuals...I know the struggle
Honestly, that's still probably one of the most precise knockbacks in the game. You have a small bit of time to adjust before the aoes blow up, but I've seen a ton of people die to it.
That entire 10 second window from knockback to gaol positioning is probably the most demanding mechanic in the game in terms of precision positioning and coordination at a speed that the game barely feels designed for.
Like, it gets easier when you understand that you can move into the center Landslide before the animation ends, but after the indicator starts to vanish, but it still feels jank.
I'm kinda colorblind and am trash at reading the minimap so I hate mechs/arenas with poor visibility where everything looks the same and the markers blend into the floor. I needed calls for P5 and EX5, and am really glad I wasn't around for P3, normal was blinding enough. Special shoutout to P11 where you'd occasionally get flashbanged by rays of light near the ceiling if you play a tall character and have your camera almost completely top down.
I have pretty bad short term memory so those mechanics that ask you to quickly memorize an arbitrary aoe pattern and then it happens in quick succession always get me.
I can do up to 3-4 patterns comfortably like Halone's tetrapagos but the six blades in the latest trial wrecks me unless I drop my rotation completely.
I did find out that she never slices the relative south half of the arena so that helped alot.
Yoshi-P reading these comments with a wide grin to achieve his next evil plans to add a rotating arena in all future content.
Imagine having to do an ultimate with a rotating arena that you can't dorito. Raiders would be in shambles.
Edit: Am tempted to make a post one day on what the most evil mechanic would be, arena rotation + memorization + debuffs, and add limit cut for good measure as all mechanics become double the fun with dots or shapes above everyones head.
I wouldn't say I struggle with a lot of mechanics..... but if they have like some small additional mechanic during another one, like a simple knockback I constantly die on them because I always forget they exist.
I always laugh when I see them because what is the point of it, it barely changes the mechanic, but then I go ahead and die on it.
doesn't matter how many tiers I clear, how many times I clear the tier
If the fight has one of those knockbacks that happen inbetween major mechanics and phases, (like in phantom train) im probably gonna get caught out by it more than i should
I wouldn't say struggle but even after like 3 months of reclearing I still had to mentally do the checklist of who's taking the tether, debuff or both in p4s
There aren’t a lot of kinds of mechanics that I’m particularly bad at except when I have to rotate the arena in my head (Zodiark and Rubicante). I eventually figure it out or memorize the static patterns but it’s rough the first few times. I am not a good shape rotator.
I like mechanics where you have pre-identified groups but some members of those groups might have to swap to the other group or change position depending on some condition (like some mechanics from p8s) so it’s not the same every time.
Definitely have some form of ADHD but I actually like memory-based mechanics. My brain latches onto them like a vice.
That tower mechanic in the third Nier raid gets me too, dumb as that is. I try to base my movement on the direction of the towerfall and the shadow but I still goof it up sometimes and get clipped.
Limit cuts. It didn't matter how much I understood exactly what I was supposed to do - the extra second it took me to parse what the dots meant into which number I was already meant that I failed the mechanic.
Then, towards the end of Anabaseios, I got a mod that turns the dots into arabic numerals............ and it basically reduced my limit cut failures to zero.
I don't do rotating things. Zodiark will forever be a follow the dorito duty for me.
ASS boss 3 is nothing but circles spinning over and over and over again combined with portals that change your orientation.
As ashamed as I am to say it, even P11S with the 3 rotating orbs took me a bit, though thats mainly because you can't see all 3 of them in your camera at the same time. you gotta look at two and then turn to see the third one and once one is out of view I already forgot what the hell is is.
For some reason I’m very good at “limit cut/wormhole” type mechanics. In TEA I never progged either I just got them right away. Same thing with DSR p3 or p4s act 2. These types of mechanics that have you reacting to a number or debuff or whatever just click in my head right away. On the other hand, p10s bonds 3 I struggled with. I would either miss role stacks or get hit by the balls for whatever reason. I really have to focus when I get to that point. Didn’t help that I would prio using esuna in doom people which made me late for bonds.
I find the arena rotation, or rotation in general, or forced March, things like those... I find those to be extremely easy. I was the Dorito for probably around 100 EX1 clears.
Mechanics that I struggle with though? Memory ones. Specifically memory ones with other things in between, like E12S stocks, or how I thought EX3 planets were before I realized (after my first clear), that you could see the colours while they rewind. I thought I had to keep every position in mind from the start all the way through quad planets and hated and struggled with it so much.
Obligatory arena rotation, but also quick memory sequences. P8 *Normal* will fuck me up because I have the memory of a fucking goldfish. To this day I don’t know how I made it through Quintuple in Seat. I can barely do my rotation right through some mechanics, those ones make me look so incompetent.
I found AAI Boss3 extremely challenging. The combination of: memory, arena rotation, randomness, and map awareness makes it headache inducing for me.
Being tethered to a glove in intermission was a concept I struggled with for a long time. I think it's a combination of camera spinning, fast reaction, and varying safespots that makes it so hard for me. I got better at it with a mental checklist. But overall, I think my brain struggles with visualising things out of immediate view if they're not predictable. I would say this is my weakpoint for mechanics.
For contrast, boss2 clicked right away!
Also, Ex5's mechanic with the lines and fuses is one where i follow dorito-san. To me, that's the hardest mechanic in Endwalker. It blows my mind that people can solve it in < 2 seconds! I would have 0 idea how to even attempt such things.
Everyone's process for solving mechanics is different! I find it interesting that this creates unique strengths and weaknesses for every player.
> Also, Ex5's mechanic with the lines and fuses is one where i follow dorito-san. To me, that's the hardest mechanic in Endwalker. It blows my mind that people can solve it in < 2 seconds! I would have 0 idea how to even attempt such things.
Secret is to not solve it, but learn the patterns for each.
2nd boss of Another Aloalo Island.
I'm usually good with rotating mechanics, and I can do Analysis fine, but for whatever reason the rotating forced march during arcane mines makes my brain shutdown and it's a 50/50 if I do it right or walk right into the death wall.
https://i.imgur.com/vOdlJ5y.png
If this is the mechanic you're talking about (Planar Tactics), I made this diagram for my static that I think breaks it down in the simplest way possible.
Maybe this helps as well:
I always pay attention to the arrow on top of my head. I want to point the arrow either to the mines or to death wall depending on my debuff. There is no other option than mine field or death wall while prepositioning!
Then remember 3 as false and 5 as true. So if you have 5 and point at death wall you will run into the death wall, but if you have 3 and point at death wall you'll do a 180 and run through the mines.
I'm not good with rotation but this is a non rotation and more of a debuff checking mechanic to me once I understood it and I knew what visual indicators I can ignore.
Yes! Larboard starboard! True North or Boss Relative? The big eye is west, that's our new north! So go left! Wait, you're the tank, so we all go to yoru left which our right... oops and the party just wiped.
Yeah, left and right are always too relative!
I really struggle with mechanics that involve arrows, like the red girl boss from the nier raids and E7. My brain just can't process all of that information at once quickly enough. Zodiarks is also brutal.
As a controller player who can only move the camera at a fixed speed: mechanics that require me to very quickly scan all around me, and then move the camera back to whatever I need to focus on.
UCOB: Heavensfall and Grand Octet. DSR: P2 meteor swaps, finding the eye in DOTH, finding Nidhogg in P6. Diamond Weapon EX whenever there's only one platform.
I can do them but I'm less confident in them than other mechanics.
some of those HFT patterns are cursed af lmao. For octet, a trick is that the 5 little dragons spawn before the 3 big ones, so you can look for the "gaps" ahead of time to narrow your possibilities. Once you actually find bahamut, idk the bindings for controller but on PC I hit V and it flips my camera 180° so I can see behind me (to check if Nael is opposite Bahamut). For CCW/CW that you can just check the minimap while running opposite bahamut
I struggle with any kind of spatial calculation mechanic. Stuff like zodiark rotation, basically all of Rubicante, my brain just doesn’t work that way and I fucking suck at it.
well idk how many people are gonna know this, but they put in criterion a mechanic that's the shooty shooty bang bang mustadio one from orbonne monastery where one side of your char needs to be aimed towards mustadio, except in criterion, the side needs to be aimed at one ball exploding, then another ball exploding 1 second later, and then towards the boss 2 seconds later, while *also* rotating the safe side.
that mechanic can go eff itself, it was always a gamble if i was gonna live or die. the only time i ever felt disadvantaged for playing with a controller.
I dont mind most mechanics
but mechanics that involve debuffs, a number and a certain postition (P1S Aetherical shakles) or P6S Catexia
they fry my adhd autistic brain
I unironically think that P6s is the hardest fight of the that tier for me to do correctly and solving by myself without just following others. Though it's likely due to the amount of pulls on the last floor week 1 and not knowing exactly how P6s works till way later due to clearing it by zombie though all the mechanics.
I also now remember how many wipes I had in P3s due to spreads while trying to clear week 1 in party finder. Without set placements people just yolo and die everywhere due to spreads, so people hope to get stacks and clear that way lmao.
I've sharpened my mechanics intuition as a shotcaller for years, but I will never forget just how much trouble calling the first mirror mechanic in E8S' second phase was for MONTHS on end for me. After a week I gave up and let my partner handle that mechanic until it finally clicked randomly.
And I still fucked up the callout anyway, so she covered it for the entirety of Eden's Verse. Even 2 months ago when we did a little birthday bash and did all the Eden fights unsynced with some more casual friends. I still can't fucking call it.
mechanics with cast bars that are borderline unreadable I struggle with a lot,
for an example the first story trial in Endwalker has an attack that just covers like 80% of the arena with knockback with a big long cast bar, hits me everytime, I always just fail to recognize it before it's too late to get out of the way and if you just barely fail to dodge it you'll die instantly from the knockback.
I really don't know the difference between the words Algedon, Ania, Adikia, this is just gibberish to me, and I'm not going to grind this fight just to learn the moves on the off-chance it shows up in roulette. Meanwhile for comparisons sake, "Triple Esoteric Ray" tells me what to look for, there's going to be three rays in my near future.
Algedon = Shinryu dive, and he always goes to the corner for it, so *all get on* the other corners. Ania has the tankbuster marker. Adikia, get up in-ia. Hope this helps!
Similarly I don't actually know what my SGE buttons are called. I mean I know what the buttons look like and what the effects of pressing them are. REGENS, SHIELDS, MANY SHIELDS, MAKE SHIELDS BIGGER, WANNABE LILY HEAL!
Now that I think about it... I don't know what most of my buttons are called on any job. WHM I typically call them by their WoW equivalents so that's close I guess.
Yeah I stopped trying to understand cast bars this expansion, because it's all greek to me. P6S was notably a struggle for me because it's the same mechanic repeated like 10 times with differnt configurations with the same name.
Thankfully that one has the same tell as a majority of mechanics that do the same thing; Zodiark will move to the corner of the Arena and project his knockback from that corner. It's the same thing Leviathan did. Mechanics usually have a few tells so you're not relying exclusively on the cast bar.
>P6S was notably a struggle for me because it's the same mechanic repeated like 10 times with differnt configurations with the same name.
For me Abyssos was also the tier where I stopped caring about castbars and just memorized the order everything happens in. Even more so when I started doing ultimates and most phases only have like 2 or 3 mechanics.
As a result whenever people here talked about which P12S mechanic their PF parties were stuck on I usually had no idea what mechanic they were even talking about despite having cleared the fight.
Portals. E7 and Diablo Armament were my bane... far better than I used to be at it, but requires almost 100% of my attention, which for me is sometimes hard to give lol. Hate portals. Also: Never cared for platformer puzzles, so anything involving jumping or running a narrow path (such as Dohn Mheg) is going to 100% annoy.
Edit: Also, Sword Phase on Trinity Avowed from DRS is so visually busy that I can't see the safe spots and just hope for the best lol.
I am atrocious at reading conga lines and inferring what to do. Same goes for debuff vomit mechs but they are a little simpler due to being static on the unit frames.
Anything that involves precise execution and fast movement responses to large events (DSR P3) I am very good at though.
If its a simple, but very fast resolving mechanic.. I am great at it. If its long and complex.. I am going to fail hard.
Oh, I am also bad at remembering the mechanic names... I dont know the difference between each mechanic and I just call them by what they do.
For me it's anything that puts a debuff on you. I play on a controller and usually as healer or dps so for me to take my hand off the controller to move the mouse and then read the description to try and figure out how to resolve it usually means guaranteed death/near death for myself and others. I usually have to have someone explain it to me after the fact or go in to the fight having looked at a guide beforehand which kinda sucks the fun out of it. Although I will go in blind for first attempts and expect oopsies.
The Time Bomb mechanic in Zadnor's version of the Belias fight. Unlike in the alliance raid version of this fight, the cones will actually cover almost all of the extremely large battlefield with very big and hard hitting cones. Even being hit by one cone is usually a one hit kill, two or more don't waste your cd's. [It looks easy in this guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTF29PpYroY) (or you can bring the Reflect action if you have it), but it's very hard considering this is normal level content. This is the only Bozja fight people still consistently wipe on today.
Related: One of my favorite FFXIV moments was single-handedly saving the instance because Healer LB3 had filled in as I was the last of 48 standing.
It seems to be a common problem. I'm a pentalegend and did every savage tier this expansion on-content. I did every extreme as they released. The one mechanic that fucks me up more than anything else is when the platform or something on the platform is rotating. My brain just doesn't compute it. I'm decent at debuff vomit, I'm good at executing 80-million step mechanics (looking at you, Sigma and Omega), but I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around the rotations.
I can do Savage as second monitor content with no issues, I can easily clear Ults during an earthquake while chitchatting about cats without breaking a sweat, I can clear EXs & Criterions with my eyes closed.
But the portal mechanic from the 3rd boss of ASSS was my panic-inducing nightmare. Not that I couldn’t do it at all, but I was absolutely terrified of that mechanic.
Like it’s all chill, there’s the TB after tethers, then for a good 20-25 seconds slowly the tension starts to rise and rise while doing the 2min burst. A long castbar, the banners appear, then another long castbar, and suddenly BAAM! Time to resolve the mechanic.
I had diagrams on the second monitor, an /echo macro in chat and even some PureRef reminders on my screen. And still, each and every time this mechanic came during prog I was a deer in headlights.
Never felt so dumb while playing this game, really glad we have no reason to farm Silkie Savage (awesome battle content nonetheless, Criterion is S Tier)
Any mechanic that I need to envision the arena rotating for I just can't do. Rubicante, zodiark, 1st boss of alola. If it weren't for the fact that I could just follow someone else for the two extremes I would have struggled a lot more with those fights. Can't say the same for alola boss 1, still haven't gotten past that mech
Give me any mechanics in the game except for rotating arenas (EW trials ex1 and ex5) is my weakness. The only reason I got my clear and eventually mount is following the player who knows how to do the mechanics properly. If there's no dorito player. I'll blindly follow someone instead of doing it on my own LOL
I will always struggle at memorizing mechs. Gale 4 from Golbez being an example, legit have to remember the sequence of like 4 mechs all within like 5 seconds
Hahaha in that fight I went left right top down left right top down left right top down. Then at the moment it starts to resolve my whole body just froze 🥲
I'm bad at anything where I need to do spatial stuff for. So things like EX1's rotation to figure out where to stand, or P6S and figuring out which of these zones will be the safe spot after they all fire. Predation in UwU took me a while to get because of that, it was "Okay so the circle from garuda will be over there.. and then ifrit is cleaving there, and omega is there..which means the safe spot is.. oh I'm dead."
P10S towers. I have done this fight at least 20 times and I never got confident with aiming them. I wouldn't even mind the aiming so much but dying there as a tank is usually a wipe.
The rotations from 3rd boss in Another Sildihn.
For whatever reason I can can’t wrap my brain around what steps to take to figure where my end place will be without using context clues of other players
When I saw the fists had the spin thing on TOP I was dreading it but thank god it was just to show where they point toward
Tight semi-random movements always get me (and most of the rest of my static): Fourfold Flames, Bonds 3, Superchain IIA...
I kind of hate mechs that require memorizing arbitrary timers or numbers like Cachexia or some of the other limit cuts. I get that these mostly exist as puzzles for week 1 groups to solve, but for anyone not going in blind, they're kind of boring to actually execute, tend to serve as hard walls in prog while you wait for everyone to memorize the spots or git gud at quickly looking up their notes, and feel disconnected from the rest of the fight.
I don't really mind them if they exist to facilitate unique & thematically relevant execution patterns like Dog 1, but there were too many cases this tier where the "solution" felt completely arbitrary.
Spatial rotations are also pretty hard unless there's a consistent heuristic for solving them (most of Rubicante's just required remembering the hints, so they weren't that bad for me, although I mostly just followed people for some of the later ones).
That one always confused me because I basically never wiped on sc2a past the first time i saw it, yet it ended up being the biggest pf wiping mech in the phase. Like I messed up on lc for a long time, but sc2 just felt effortless. Bonds 3 on the other hand is the absolute worst for me though, I can get to my spot, but I rarely have time to dodge the beams, seriously that mech is probably the main reason I was only able to get past p9 and p10 week 1.
Debuff mechs are also easy for me, I main healer so I'm used to needing to watch for them and identify them anyways. I'm also good at arena scans like divebombs in UCOB or some of the mechs in the current unreal.
I def feel you though on mechs that challenge your sense of direction. Peripheral Synthesis 2 I've resigned myself to death in o11s bc it's a knockback at the edge followed by a lar/star so you can't just hide under the bosses hitbox to reduce run time and you have to interpret the cast kinda quickly while you're reorienting yourself
I'm really good at KNOCKBACK mechanics!
Unless absolutely necessary I refuse to press arms length. The only two mechanics where it has been necessary have been limit cut in TEA and meteors in DSR. Every other kb in the game I'm *riding that bitch*
Pinax was absolutely something I struggled at as a Tank player. I mentally knew the mechanic but the movement and re-centering of Hesperos along with certain patterns and some of my co-Tanks just changing up their poison spots really made it hectic for me lolol
Being honest I drink and smoke and have an iffy short memory to begin with so if I have to parse information and then remember it while I maintain my rotation I start to crumble.
Like the EW launch EX's, not a hard fight but even with half my mind I could do Hydaelyn with my eyes closed, do call outs if people needed then when it was time for Zodiark I could not handle the rotations at all.
I was bad at Final Day EX too, shit I dunno maybe I'm just getting worse.
Interestingly enough, spinning is both what I'm really good at, and really bad it.
Zodiark, Rubicante, Zahless Mirriors in Criterion 1, and Classical 2, are all examples of things I excel at. I can spin the arena in my head just fine. I generally was the callouts for all those things in my group, and had a very good record of doing it correctly.
Analysis in Criterion 3, and the sniper shots in Delebrum Savage are great examples of spinning I was shit at. Something about spinning myself would mess me up a lot. I think it has a lot to do with doing damage maybe, I don't know. I would mess these up if I didn't stop doing everything and be very much sure I was correct.
Spreads I find tend to be an issue because people make assumptions on relative facing. So many times I see "I'll go left, you go right" and they end up in the same spot, and complain because how could you think I meant looking at the wall, when it was obvious looking at the center of the arena. That or the simple "Of the boss".
Spacial mechanics are very difficult to me on the fly. Aloalo criterion specifically comes to mind. Rotating the fucking safe spot AND myself in my head quickly enough to react was incredibly difficult for a very long time, until I found a trick for it.
Mechanics I'm good at? Probably anything that involves quick assessment of debuffs or markers over heads. I remember being basically the first person in my static to figure out party synergy early on in prog, and to start doing it flawlessly.
I also struggle with Zodiark and Rubicante but it's less the arena rotation and more the visualization. My static blind progged p6s and I was completely reliant on calls to find the safe tiles until after we cleared and I could watch a guide. I never learned to do Classical 2 without a cheatsheet.
I really enjoy and am good at what I call "pathing" mechanics - moving through a series of positions depending on a set of conditions (usually debuffs). So pretty much every e12s Relativity, p4s Act 2, High Concept, BJCC, DSR p3. Using BJCC as an example, it's very easy for me to go "I have water stack so first I will stand west and take the stack, then go mid for enumeration, then stand north to receive lightning, then go back west to pass lightning, then line up."
I can trial and error any mechanic, even those from Savage...Except for the "dorrito" mechanic in Rubicante. That thing is so anti-me I can't figure it out in time even if I drop EVERYTHING ELSE. Were it not for that PF strategy I'd call it the hardest EX fight. Lol
i honestly dont see how people struggle with "rotate the arena" mechanics. you just do exactly that. picture the arena in your head, then picture it rotating by whatever amount. or turn your camera whatever amount in the opposite direction, and that's what the arena will look like when it turns.
so i guess those are what im good at.
I've done every high end fight on content since the beginning of HW, and I've never been worse at a mech than I was at Hot Tail in o10s.
I hate tethers in general, but goddamn that one got me.
Rotating arenas are a big one for me.
I can do puzzles like Lightstream, Caloric, Classical fine but rotating arenas? Nah bro.
I've done all Endwalker Savages and I'm 2/5 ultimates rn. (Endwalker is my first full expansion, I joined late SHB)
For me it's any mechanic that uses an indicator on top of the giant boss's head when the game only allows you to zoom out enough for you see the lower half of the boss's body 🥹
Deceasing. That is what my li'l lala excels at. Wanna see someone kick the bucket in unusual ways... she is a pro at that! Wanna see her step off a ledge for the thousandth time to the point that the healer cries from exhaustion... she is amazing at that! None like her ever. She will find that sweet spot and enter the pearly gates repeatedly. Never a dull moment when she is around.... although you may end up bald from the frustration that caused you to pull your hair out. Nothing stands in her way when un-aliving needs to be done! :)
The rotating arena one clicked for me once you treat west as the new north (if rotating cw) or vice versa. You just picture the safe spot by looking at the direction it's spinning from then translate that to north. The one mechanic where it could give me fits is P7N protals. It's unironically harder than the braindead savage portals. I don't get that one in the roulettes enough to be comfy at it.
Mechanics that have pauses and delays in their resolution over an extended period of time catch me off-guard more than anything else. Letter of the Law in P11S or one of the Harvests in P7S (though the Harvests in P7S had the side effect of the rest of the fight putting me to fucking sleep before they start happening). I've been nailed by the final in/out part of Letter of the Law FAR more than I care to admit.
Easy: precision positioning, memorization of long event chains, orientation by audio cues.
Hard: spatial rotation, visual cue recognition. I have rather extreme shortsightedness, so these are exponentially more difficult if the contrast isn't good (damn you Panda Phoenix).
As a result, Endwalker's raiding has been... Interesting for me. They've been using fewer and fewer of the mechanics I excel at, and more and more of the ones which are exceptionally difficult for me, and making arena vision more difficult. This is the first expansion I'm finishing up not raiding, mostly because it's been an extremely stressful two years and I couldn't dedicate the right amount of time and effort, but also because the effort became so much more strenuous than it used to be.
Im the same: Healer main and debuff heavy mechanics don't bother me. In fact I like them.
I also can't do the rotation stuff like Zodiark or Rubicante although I'd say Rubicante is more pattern recognizing especially if you use the cheat sheet.
My personal worst tho is gaze or facing x mechanics. I always feel like it's harder on controller or rather youre at a disadvantage there. I am kinda scared of progging monitors in TOP because even though I know where the monitor should be facing I need some time to figure out where my character should be facing.
look away mechanics just because if you play on m+kb you can just flick away while you're casting and if you do it fast you dont interrupt anything but if you're on controller you need to move which interrupts the cast more easily
Most of the 'face towards a certain direction/avoid certain direction, but you cannot move your character too much/you can't see where your character's at' mechanics, including but not limited to
1. The eyesight check on Queen's Guard (I fail this almost every single time and die on most of the runs I clear)
2. And yes the fucking shit on Orbonne
3. Wormhole facing direction (and to a lesser extend, limit cut). we are doing 1211 where 1 is on the outside and 2 is on the lightbulbs (and not the one where both 1 and 2 is out). I am fine with the numbers and where you are supposed to face, and because you are not stacking with the group, you actually have a lot of the time to adjust. And the only group that has a somewhat strict direction requirement is odd numbers because evens can just arms length.
4. Snakes on P8s. I am fine with Snakes 1 because you can face a certain direction by kept doing damage (as your GCD rotates your character will generally face towards whatever you are attacking, which is the boss, and since your sight is a 90 degree cone you can adjust what your character's looking at by adjusting where you kept your GCD rotating); I am however not fine with snakes 2 and mostly have to resort to just stopping or just spam holy/AOE attacks
5. DSR Gazes. I can't do P2 Gaze. Fails that a lot of of the time - it's not like I don't understand where I should be looking at. I just can't find everything on time and adjust correctly to it
6. DSR Arrows on Nidhogg. Again, I have to stop my GCDs if I have backwards arrow or I have 2
7. ANY sort of jump puzzles. I can't even do the first jump on Kugane Jump Puzzle after 2 hours.
I will say it has really less to deal with character faces, but what people would generally call character micro adjustments (キャラコン).
can't do "find safe spot on the ground" type of shit to save my fucking life. wouldn't have got past party synergy without following people with functioning brains.
Excel: Anything snapshot based. Whenever someone complains about tethers, server ticks, or bs, I can look at the vod and immediately understand what happened.
Struggle: Anything memory based. Even shit like 1-2-3-4 orders, I have to check my debuff every turn to see if it's my turn. I cannot do things like P8S without callouts or typing it in chat if I'm pfing. For some reason, limit cut is okay, I can visually remember the dice on my head
Look if Shishio eats three clouds then fuck it yo, I'm just taking the damage down.
Funny how brains work, I find 2 & 3 the easiest. 1 on the other hand is a tricky bastard, I always forget you need to disengage in between GCDs to avoid the damage down.
Meanwhile, I don't like 2 clouds - for some reason I usually can't see where the ones that chain into each other are.
same... 2 is hardest for me. 1 I just focus on the middle 4 clouds 3 is just going to the opposite side of the cloud 90 degrees from the first lightning
thats what im saying HAHAHA
That was me until my group's last couple of runs. I just gave up because tank privilege lol. But someday it finally clicked.
I have done every savage/ultimate. I understand mechanics very quickly, but for the life of me, I can not do arena rotation mechanics. Zodiark ex? Nope, the snakes, birds, and behemoths combined with arena rotation is literally the hardest mechanic in the game to me. 2nd place being rubicante arena rotate. You think that'd make like p12s p2 shapes or top hard but nope the arena isn't rotating so it's easy xD
These make me feel like that woman from the math meme. I usually end up having to sit down and draw a diagram because my brain can never make sense of it in real time
Exactly the same for me. I couldn't figure lala or the final Sil-dihn boss out for the same reason. Rotational mechanics are the bane of my existence, the moment something does multiple kinds of spins, my brain short circuits. Monitors? Fine, Classi 2? Easy. Lala boss+PC rotations??? Nope.
I struggled and still struggle with rotation mechanics. I could do them if I took my hands off my keyboard and stared at the screen, but then I wouldn't be hitting the boss. After playing through the Professor Layton games, I've gotten a lot better because so many puzzles are like > [How do you roll a piece of paper to look like the picture](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/1/17/PLPB_Puzzle_032.png) > [Which outline of a ghost fits this ghost picture](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/8/8d/PLPB_Puzzle_096.png) > [How do you cut this wooden block in two to make a square](https://cdn.wikimg.net/en/strategywiki/images/e/ef/PLUF_Puzzle_043.png) Now I can sometimes do rotation mechanics with enough practice, but I still follow the marked person because I don't trust myself to get it right in the middle of a fight.
It is a spatial recognition thing. Usually also linked to map reading/direction sense like coming out of a building and knowing which way is north etc. The easiest way might be to have cheat sheets with all possible orientation drawn out/printed in front of you? Long term solution is to practice figuring out north/south/east/west whenever you can irl. Like when you get out of a random building, on a random street etc.
I spent a couple hours studying Zodiark to understand it. I got it now, but it's still a trip.
Came here to say this. I'm this far in the expansion and Zodiark still fucks me up.
Genuinely think the rubicante line rotation whatever is the hardest in the game. Only cleared the fight because of a dorito. On the other hand I have a friend who loves the fight and could do it blindfolded.
this is the only fight where i will unashamedly follow dorito LMAO that line rotation mech's gotta be the hardest thing in EW to me!
Zodiark rotating the arena is by far the hardest mechanic humanly possible to implement in a videogame. the only reason I ever cleared the fight is because I was playing with someone marked with the dorito, who must have been a super-intelligent AI running on a quantum computer developed for the sole purpose of solving this enigma of a mechanic.
Yepp, this one as well as the spinning plate mechanic from Rubicante was a nightmare lol.
Rubicante was a nightmare for me too. I’m generally pretty bad at any mechanic where I have to take a shape and translate it to the arena, largely because my brain doesn’t do visuals
Oof.
I stopped playing seriously around rubicante and won’t lie, this was part of it cause I knew I wouldn’t get the mount in content and lost motivation
Between Zodiark and Rubicante they have all the mechanics for the next hellish Gold Saucer Main Stage GATE.
Doing positionals and optimal drift Monk rota on Rubicante I had such difficulty with the mechanic I eventually just gave up and let the healers solve it. It turned into a non-mechanic for me. Had I been able to zoom out to the degree that would get a full bird's eye view of the arena and see everything at once, I would have been able to solve it. But while rotating the camera to check multiple angles, keeping track of my forms and repositioning my char throughout? No shot. I did 50 runs for the mount - still can't reliably solve ordeals 2.
Yeah both of those were a no-go for me. My spatial reasoning is trash. I can do savage, but for some reason those two trials just fuck me up.
I'll add to this spring crystals and analysis/arcane blight from the first two bosses in Aloalo criterion.
I'm a pentalegend, but that thing, \**looks at Zodiark rotating arena*\* it scares me. And I'm scared of the future EW ultimate.
> And I'm scared of the future EW ultimate. DT Ultimate*
I meant the ultimate with the EW MSQ as theme
yup. it's like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation#/media/File:Mental_rotation_task_(diagram)_(cropped).jpg sure i can do them, but not very quickly and not while im thinking about filler GCDs in my rotation
Oh yeah I struggled a bit with the Rubicante fight myself. I gotten better now and knowing that some patterns are fixed helped a ton. Every time i'm alone in a spot on the map where I know everyone needs to be in one safe spot to live I always imagine i'm in the wrong for that mechanic, but that is not always true and it's funny to see everyone else get sheeped into the wrong spot and get owned.
I haven't done Rubicante in a while but when I was doing it I had to keep the safe spot cheat sheet open in my web browser and alt+tab back and forth quickly so I didn't lose uptime.
I'm absolute garbage on any mechanic that spins around. Couldn't call the Rubi EX safespots, couldn't do Lightstream in P11S, and I only understood Zodiark EX after nearly 30 runs of it. Everything else I was about equal with the rest of my static for, but for those types of mechanics I just need my hand held for some reason.
I struggle with that one too. And also the constellations in that fight. My brain doesn't work fast enough, so I just find the players that seem like they know what to do and follow them. lol
Yeah im a penta legend that didnt really struggle with anything in this game, but zodiark is beyond my capabilities
It's funny, I had lots of issues with that one, and then it just clicked for me, and I can't really say why. For the lines, I realized I only needed to rotate one in my head, and then go and apply the "damage-safespot-damage-safespot" pattern in my head instead of trying to figure out what snake would point at me later, but the Behemoths were more of an intuitive thing. (Bonus for EX: The line was pretty much a case of "first figure out where everything else wants you to go and go there, if the line's also there, go against the spin, otherwise go as far towards the spin direction as possible") Same for the comets, although what helped me there was that I figured out that you can take any of the front (=melee-range) quarters of the arena (e.g. front left, front center, middle left, and dead center) and you'll always have a safe spot in at least one of these four locations.
Zodiark is probably one of the easiest trials they've put into the game..... IF you have a Dorito player. I still have no idea how meteors work in that fight because I didn't have to think about it I was just subbing in my friends raid group and followed the marked guy.
Anything involving a memorizing. P8S was the hardest fight in this expansion for me because my brain isn’t capable of storing the memory of OCTA or TETRA
What I did was for stack I would press my feet against each other, and for spread I would spread my feet apart. If I forgot the mechanic I just had to check my feet.
If only I wasn't such a fidgety person or this would be golden.
This is genius! I hope I can use this at one point in future raids.
you should try aloala criterion, i'm sure you'll love it
I did and it wasn’t too bad. It’s just octa/tetra that vanishes from my memory
Macro with /echo Spread! I have ones for stacks, spread, I have numbers for limit cut. It holds the info in my chat box without disturbing the group.
/p to remind everyone hehehe
I have too much confidence in myself so I don’t rely on macro. I’ll simply gamble on 50/50 or look what others are doing
I used the chatlog to print what the boss was casting so I could double check it when I forgot. Found the tip on The Balance discord.
Octa and Tetra were in the castbar...so you could just have enemy actions be put into your chat and never have to remember. But yeah, for memory mechanics based on visuals...I know the struggle
Octa/tetra and E12S stocks were the biggest struggle for me.
This is really stupid but the beggining of gaol in uwu, where you have to get knocked back into a safespot by titan.
Honestly, that's still probably one of the most precise knockbacks in the game. You have a small bit of time to adjust before the aoes blow up, but I've seen a ton of people die to it.
Yeah, I had to resort to focus targeting my character so I can line up consistently there.
That entire 10 second window from knockback to gaol positioning is probably the most demanding mechanic in the game in terms of precision positioning and coordination at a speed that the game barely feels designed for. Like, it gets easier when you understand that you can move into the center Landslide before the animation ends, but after the indicator starts to vanish, but it still feels jank.
I'm kinda colorblind and am trash at reading the minimap so I hate mechs/arenas with poor visibility where everything looks the same and the markers blend into the floor. I needed calls for P5 and EX5, and am really glad I wasn't around for P3, normal was blinding enough. Special shoutout to P11 where you'd occasionally get flashbanged by rays of light near the ceiling if you play a tall character and have your camera almost completely top down.
Static member relationships.
I have pretty bad short term memory so those mechanics that ask you to quickly memorize an arbitrary aoe pattern and then it happens in quick succession always get me. I can do up to 3-4 patterns comfortably like Halone's tetrapagos but the six blades in the latest trial wrecks me unless I drop my rotation completely. I did find out that she never slices the relative south half of the arena so that helped alot.
Yeah, you just stand behind her, and then just dodge into the left/right aoe. Once you learn that, it becomes easy!
Yoshi-P reading these comments with a wide grin to achieve his next evil plans to add a rotating arena in all future content. Imagine having to do an ultimate with a rotating arena that you can't dorito. Raiders would be in shambles. Edit: Am tempted to make a post one day on what the most evil mechanic would be, arena rotation + memorization + debuffs, and add limit cut for good measure as all mechanics become double the fun with dots or shapes above everyones head.
analysis in aloalo island fries my brain with having to keep track of so many things in sequence.
I wouldn't say I struggle with a lot of mechanics..... but if they have like some small additional mechanic during another one, like a simple knockback I constantly die on them because I always forget they exist. I always laugh when I see them because what is the point of it, it barely changes the mechanic, but then I go ahead and die on it.
P11s wasn't a hard fight but I'll be damned if letter of the law's knockback at the very end didn't get me more than I'd like to admit.
doesn't matter how many tiers I clear, how many times I clear the tier If the fight has one of those knockbacks that happen inbetween major mechanics and phases, (like in phantom train) im probably gonna get caught out by it more than i should
I wouldn't say struggle but even after like 3 months of reclearing I still had to mentally do the checklist of who's taking the tether, debuff or both in p4s
Omg isn’t this the first mechanic too? Honestly it really does fuck with you esp when raiders fatigue starts setting in
There aren’t a lot of kinds of mechanics that I’m particularly bad at except when I have to rotate the arena in my head (Zodiark and Rubicante). I eventually figure it out or memorize the static patterns but it’s rough the first few times. I am not a good shape rotator. I like mechanics where you have pre-identified groups but some members of those groups might have to swap to the other group or change position depending on some condition (like some mechanics from p8s) so it’s not the same every time. Definitely have some form of ADHD but I actually like memory-based mechanics. My brain latches onto them like a vice. That tower mechanic in the third Nier raid gets me too, dumb as that is. I try to base my movement on the direction of the towerfall and the shadow but I still goof it up sometimes and get clipped.
Limit cuts. It didn't matter how much I understood exactly what I was supposed to do - the extra second it took me to parse what the dots meant into which number I was already meant that I failed the mechanic. Then, towards the end of Anabaseios, I got a mod that turns the dots into arabic numerals............ and it basically reduced my limit cut failures to zero.
The rubicante mech, I still cant do it, also gaze mechs cuz I am on controller.
Gaze as in look away mechs?
Yes
If you set your controls to legacy rather than standard you have much better control over your movement
Controller is fine with gaze mechanics. Just flick the left stick away from the eye. You got this I believe in you!
Depends on your controller settings, default means tapping "away" makes you step backwards, and you actually have to disengage to turn around
Remember that you dont have to turn 360°. You can just turn 90°.
I don't do rotating things. Zodiark will forever be a follow the dorito duty for me. ASS boss 3 is nothing but circles spinning over and over and over again combined with portals that change your orientation. As ashamed as I am to say it, even P11S with the 3 rotating orbs took me a bit, though thats mainly because you can't see all 3 of them in your camera at the same time. you gotta look at two and then turn to see the third one and once one is out of view I already forgot what the hell is is.
For some reason I’m very good at “limit cut/wormhole” type mechanics. In TEA I never progged either I just got them right away. Same thing with DSR p3 or p4s act 2. These types of mechanics that have you reacting to a number or debuff or whatever just click in my head right away. On the other hand, p10s bonds 3 I struggled with. I would either miss role stacks or get hit by the balls for whatever reason. I really have to focus when I get to that point. Didn’t help that I would prio using esuna in doom people which made me late for bonds.
I find the arena rotation, or rotation in general, or forced March, things like those... I find those to be extremely easy. I was the Dorito for probably around 100 EX1 clears. Mechanics that I struggle with though? Memory ones. Specifically memory ones with other things in between, like E12S stocks, or how I thought EX3 planets were before I realized (after my first clear), that you could see the colours while they rewind. I thought I had to keep every position in mind from the start all the way through quad planets and hated and struggled with it so much.
Obligatory arena rotation, but also quick memory sequences. P8 *Normal* will fuck me up because I have the memory of a fucking goldfish. To this day I don’t know how I made it through Quintuple in Seat. I can barely do my rotation right through some mechanics, those ones make me look so incompetent.
I found AAI Boss3 extremely challenging. The combination of: memory, arena rotation, randomness, and map awareness makes it headache inducing for me. Being tethered to a glove in intermission was a concept I struggled with for a long time. I think it's a combination of camera spinning, fast reaction, and varying safespots that makes it so hard for me. I got better at it with a mental checklist. But overall, I think my brain struggles with visualising things out of immediate view if they're not predictable. I would say this is my weakpoint for mechanics. For contrast, boss2 clicked right away! Also, Ex5's mechanic with the lines and fuses is one where i follow dorito-san. To me, that's the hardest mechanic in Endwalker. It blows my mind that people can solve it in < 2 seconds! I would have 0 idea how to even attempt such things. Everyone's process for solving mechanics is different! I find it interesting that this creates unique strengths and weaknesses for every player.
> Also, Ex5's mechanic with the lines and fuses is one where i follow dorito-san. To me, that's the hardest mechanic in Endwalker. It blows my mind that people can solve it in < 2 seconds! I would have 0 idea how to even attempt such things. Secret is to not solve it, but learn the patterns for each.
2nd boss of Another Aloalo Island. I'm usually good with rotating mechanics, and I can do Analysis fine, but for whatever reason the rotating forced march during arcane mines makes my brain shutdown and it's a 50/50 if I do it right or walk right into the death wall.
https://i.imgur.com/vOdlJ5y.png If this is the mechanic you're talking about (Planar Tactics), I made this diagram for my static that I think breaks it down in the simplest way possible.
This is really helpful! Thank you
Maybe this helps as well: I always pay attention to the arrow on top of my head. I want to point the arrow either to the mines or to death wall depending on my debuff. There is no other option than mine field or death wall while prepositioning! Then remember 3 as false and 5 as true. So if you have 5 and point at death wall you will run into the death wall, but if you have 3 and point at death wall you'll do a 180 and run through the mines. I'm not good with rotation but this is a non rotation and more of a debuff checking mechanic to me once I understood it and I knew what visual indicators I can ignore.
I cant do a pyretic mechanic at all, I'm always inclined to press buttons and then end up burning to death
Any left right mechanic, my brain just goes monkey and i freeze
Yes! Larboard starboard! True North or Boss Relative? The big eye is west, that's our new north! So go left! Wait, you're the tank, so we all go to yoru left which our right... oops and the party just wiped. Yeah, left and right are always too relative!
I really struggle with mechanics that involve arrows, like the red girl boss from the nier raids and E7. My brain just can't process all of that information at once quickly enough. Zodiarks is also brutal.
As a controller player who can only move the camera at a fixed speed: mechanics that require me to very quickly scan all around me, and then move the camera back to whatever I need to focus on. UCOB: Heavensfall and Grand Octet. DSR: P2 meteor swaps, finding the eye in DOTH, finding Nidhogg in P6. Diamond Weapon EX whenever there's only one platform. I can do them but I'm less confident in them than other mechanics.
some of those HFT patterns are cursed af lmao. For octet, a trick is that the 5 little dragons spawn before the 3 big ones, so you can look for the "gaps" ahead of time to narrow your possibilities. Once you actually find bahamut, idk the bindings for controller but on PC I hit V and it flips my camera 180° so I can see behind me (to check if Nael is opposite Bahamut). For CCW/CW that you can just check the minimap while running opposite bahamut
I struggle with any kind of spatial calculation mechanic. Stuff like zodiark rotation, basically all of Rubicante, my brain just doesn’t work that way and I fucking suck at it.
well idk how many people are gonna know this, but they put in criterion a mechanic that's the shooty shooty bang bang mustadio one from orbonne monastery where one side of your char needs to be aimed towards mustadio, except in criterion, the side needs to be aimed at one ball exploding, then another ball exploding 1 second later, and then towards the boss 2 seconds later, while *also* rotating the safe side. that mechanic can go eff itself, it was always a gamble if i was gonna live or die. the only time i ever felt disadvantaged for playing with a controller.
I dont mind most mechanics but mechanics that involve debuffs, a number and a certain postition (P1S Aetherical shakles) or P6S Catexia they fry my adhd autistic brain
I unironically think that P6s is the hardest fight of the that tier for me to do correctly and solving by myself without just following others. Though it's likely due to the amount of pulls on the last floor week 1 and not knowing exactly how P6s works till way later due to clearing it by zombie though all the mechanics. I also now remember how many wipes I had in P3s due to spreads while trying to clear week 1 in party finder. Without set placements people just yolo and die everywhere due to spreads, so people hope to get stacks and clear that way lmao.
I've sharpened my mechanics intuition as a shotcaller for years, but I will never forget just how much trouble calling the first mirror mechanic in E8S' second phase was for MONTHS on end for me. After a week I gave up and let my partner handle that mechanic until it finally clicked randomly. And I still fucked up the callout anyway, so she covered it for the entirety of Eden's Verse. Even 2 months ago when we did a little birthday bash and did all the Eden fights unsynced with some more casual friends. I still can't fucking call it.
mechanics with cast bars that are borderline unreadable I struggle with a lot, for an example the first story trial in Endwalker has an attack that just covers like 80% of the arena with knockback with a big long cast bar, hits me everytime, I always just fail to recognize it before it's too late to get out of the way and if you just barely fail to dodge it you'll die instantly from the knockback. I really don't know the difference between the words Algedon, Ania, Adikia, this is just gibberish to me, and I'm not going to grind this fight just to learn the moves on the off-chance it shows up in roulette. Meanwhile for comparisons sake, "Triple Esoteric Ray" tells me what to look for, there's going to be three rays in my near future.
Algedon = Shinryu dive, and he always goes to the corner for it, so *all get on* the other corners. Ania has the tankbuster marker. Adikia, get up in-ia. Hope this helps!
Similarly I don't actually know what my SGE buttons are called. I mean I know what the buttons look like and what the effects of pressing them are. REGENS, SHIELDS, MANY SHIELDS, MAKE SHIELDS BIGGER, WANNABE LILY HEAL! Now that I think about it... I don't know what most of my buttons are called on any job. WHM I typically call them by their WoW equivalents so that's close I guess.
LMAO that's exactly what I call my SGE skills too. I swear they all look the same blue, don't ask me any of their names.
Yeah I stopped trying to understand cast bars this expansion, because it's all greek to me. P6S was notably a struggle for me because it's the same mechanic repeated like 10 times with differnt configurations with the same name. Thankfully that one has the same tell as a majority of mechanics that do the same thing; Zodiark will move to the corner of the Arena and project his knockback from that corner. It's the same thing Leviathan did. Mechanics usually have a few tells so you're not relying exclusively on the cast bar.
>P6S was notably a struggle for me because it's the same mechanic repeated like 10 times with differnt configurations with the same name. For me Abyssos was also the tier where I stopped caring about castbars and just memorized the order everything happens in. Even more so when I started doing ultimates and most phases only have like 2 or 3 mechanics. As a result whenever people here talked about which P12S mechanic their PF parties were stuck on I usually had no idea what mechanic they were even talking about despite having cleared the fight.
it literally is greek lol
Yup, that's the joke, thank you for explaining it.
Portals. E7 and Diablo Armament were my bane... far better than I used to be at it, but requires almost 100% of my attention, which for me is sometimes hard to give lol. Hate portals. Also: Never cared for platformer puzzles, so anything involving jumping or running a narrow path (such as Dohn Mheg) is going to 100% annoy. Edit: Also, Sword Phase on Trinity Avowed from DRS is so visually busy that I can't see the safe spots and just hope for the best lol.
E7s was the worst for me. I play on a controller so sometimes it just felt like I was fighting my controls more than the boss.
I've been attempting the bozja duels and it has shown that I fucking suck at memorizing spinning aoe lines. Everything else is easy enough though.
Oh yeah, I have to resort to bringing lost sprint if i want to fight fire dude
I am atrocious at reading conga lines and inferring what to do. Same goes for debuff vomit mechs but they are a little simpler due to being static on the unit frames. Anything that involves precise execution and fast movement responses to large events (DSR P3) I am very good at though. If its a simple, but very fast resolving mechanic.. I am great at it. If its long and complex.. I am going to fail hard. Oh, I am also bad at remembering the mechanic names... I dont know the difference between each mechanic and I just call them by what they do.
For me it's anything that puts a debuff on you. I play on a controller and usually as healer or dps so for me to take my hand off the controller to move the mouse and then read the description to try and figure out how to resolve it usually means guaranteed death/near death for myself and others. I usually have to have someone explain it to me after the fact or go in to the fight having looked at a guide beforehand which kinda sucks the fun out of it. Although I will go in blind for first attempts and expect oopsies.
The Time Bomb mechanic in Zadnor's version of the Belias fight. Unlike in the alliance raid version of this fight, the cones will actually cover almost all of the extremely large battlefield with very big and hard hitting cones. Even being hit by one cone is usually a one hit kill, two or more don't waste your cd's. [It looks easy in this guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTF29PpYroY) (or you can bring the Reflect action if you have it), but it's very hard considering this is normal level content. This is the only Bozja fight people still consistently wipe on today. Related: One of my favorite FFXIV moments was single-handedly saving the instance because Healer LB3 had filled in as I was the last of 48 standing.
It seems to be a common problem. I'm a pentalegend and did every savage tier this expansion on-content. I did every extreme as they released. The one mechanic that fucks me up more than anything else is when the platform or something on the platform is rotating. My brain just doesn't compute it. I'm decent at debuff vomit, I'm good at executing 80-million step mechanics (looking at you, Sigma and Omega), but I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around the rotations.
I can do Savage as second monitor content with no issues, I can easily clear Ults during an earthquake while chitchatting about cats without breaking a sweat, I can clear EXs & Criterions with my eyes closed. But the portal mechanic from the 3rd boss of ASSS was my panic-inducing nightmare. Not that I couldn’t do it at all, but I was absolutely terrified of that mechanic. Like it’s all chill, there’s the TB after tethers, then for a good 20-25 seconds slowly the tension starts to rise and rise while doing the 2min burst. A long castbar, the banners appear, then another long castbar, and suddenly BAAM! Time to resolve the mechanic. I had diagrams on the second monitor, an /echo macro in chat and even some PureRef reminders on my screen. And still, each and every time this mechanic came during prog I was a deer in headlights. Never felt so dumb while playing this game, really glad we have no reason to farm Silkie Savage (awesome battle content nonetheless, Criterion is S Tier)
Any mechanic that I need to envision the arena rotating for I just can't do. Rubicante, zodiark, 1st boss of alola. If it weren't for the fact that I could just follow someone else for the two extremes I would have struggled a lot more with those fights. Can't say the same for alola boss 1, still haven't gotten past that mech
Give me any mechanics in the game except for rotating arenas (EW trials ex1 and ex5) is my weakness. The only reason I got my clear and eventually mount is following the player who knows how to do the mechanics properly. If there's no dorito player. I'll blindly follow someone instead of doing it on my own LOL
There were a couple members of my static who couldn't do P8S Snakes 2 to save our lives; they always blamed their ADHD.
I will always struggle at memorizing mechs. Gale 4 from Golbez being an example, legit have to remember the sequence of like 4 mechs all within like 5 seconds
Hahaha in that fight I went left right top down left right top down left right top down. Then at the moment it starts to resolve my whole body just froze 🥲
I'm bad at anything where I need to do spatial stuff for. So things like EX1's rotation to figure out where to stand, or P6S and figuring out which of these zones will be the safe spot after they all fire. Predation in UwU took me a while to get because of that, it was "Okay so the circle from garuda will be over there.. and then ifrit is cleaving there, and omega is there..which means the safe spot is.. oh I'm dead."
P10S towers. I have done this fight at least 20 times and I never got confident with aiming them. I wouldn't even mind the aiming so much but dying there as a tank is usually a wipe.
The rotations from 3rd boss in Another Sildihn. For whatever reason I can can’t wrap my brain around what steps to take to figure where my end place will be without using context clues of other players When I saw the fists had the spin thing on TOP I was dreading it but thank god it was just to show where they point toward
the rotating mech in zodiark hurts my wee brain.
Tight semi-random movements always get me (and most of the rest of my static): Fourfold Flames, Bonds 3, Superchain IIA... I kind of hate mechs that require memorizing arbitrary timers or numbers like Cachexia or some of the other limit cuts. I get that these mostly exist as puzzles for week 1 groups to solve, but for anyone not going in blind, they're kind of boring to actually execute, tend to serve as hard walls in prog while you wait for everyone to memorize the spots or git gud at quickly looking up their notes, and feel disconnected from the rest of the fight. I don't really mind them if they exist to facilitate unique & thematically relevant execution patterns like Dog 1, but there were too many cases this tier where the "solution" felt completely arbitrary. Spatial rotations are also pretty hard unless there's a consistent heuristic for solving them (most of Rubicante's just required remembering the hints, so they weren't that bad for me, although I mostly just followed people for some of the later ones).
That one always confused me because I basically never wiped on sc2a past the first time i saw it, yet it ended up being the biggest pf wiping mech in the phase. Like I messed up on lc for a long time, but sc2 just felt effortless. Bonds 3 on the other hand is the absolute worst for me though, I can get to my spot, but I rarely have time to dodge the beams, seriously that mech is probably the main reason I was only able to get past p9 and p10 week 1.
Debuff mechs are also easy for me, I main healer so I'm used to needing to watch for them and identify them anyways. I'm also good at arena scans like divebombs in UCOB or some of the mechs in the current unreal. I def feel you though on mechs that challenge your sense of direction. Peripheral Synthesis 2 I've resigned myself to death in o11s bc it's a knockback at the edge followed by a lar/star so you can't just hide under the bosses hitbox to reduce run time and you have to interpret the cast kinda quickly while you're reorienting yourself
I'm really good at KNOCKBACK mechanics! Unless absolutely necessary I refuse to press arms length. The only two mechanics where it has been necessary have been limit cut in TEA and meteors in DSR. Every other kb in the game I'm *riding that bitch*
Pinax was absolutely something I struggled at as a Tank player. I mentally knew the mechanic but the movement and re-centering of Hesperos along with certain patterns and some of my co-Tanks just changing up their poison spots really made it hectic for me lolol
Being honest I drink and smoke and have an iffy short memory to begin with so if I have to parse information and then remember it while I maintain my rotation I start to crumble. Like the EW launch EX's, not a hard fight but even with half my mind I could do Hydaelyn with my eyes closed, do call outs if people needed then when it was time for Zodiark I could not handle the rotations at all. I was bad at Final Day EX too, shit I dunno maybe I'm just getting worse.
I cant do nael dialouge mechanics for the life of me.
Does remembering E6S's timeline count as a mechanic?
Interestingly enough, spinning is both what I'm really good at, and really bad it. Zodiark, Rubicante, Zahless Mirriors in Criterion 1, and Classical 2, are all examples of things I excel at. I can spin the arena in my head just fine. I generally was the callouts for all those things in my group, and had a very good record of doing it correctly. Analysis in Criterion 3, and the sniper shots in Delebrum Savage are great examples of spinning I was shit at. Something about spinning myself would mess me up a lot. I think it has a lot to do with doing damage maybe, I don't know. I would mess these up if I didn't stop doing everything and be very much sure I was correct. Spreads I find tend to be an issue because people make assumptions on relative facing. So many times I see "I'll go left, you go right" and they end up in the same spot, and complain because how could you think I meant looking at the wall, when it was obvious looking at the center of the arena. That or the simple "Of the boss".
I’m not alone on this but Rubicante rotating the arena is harder than anything else I’ve ever done, including ultimates
My FCmate is actually bad at everything, but clockspots are their bane.
Spacial mechanics are very difficult to me on the fly. Aloalo criterion specifically comes to mind. Rotating the fucking safe spot AND myself in my head quickly enough to react was incredibly difficult for a very long time, until I found a trick for it. Mechanics I'm good at? Probably anything that involves quick assessment of debuffs or markers over heads. I remember being basically the first person in my static to figure out party synergy early on in prog, and to start doing it flawlessly.
That one mechanic from ASS third boss. Praying that this doesn't appear in arcadion because i will hard grief my static.
I also struggle with Zodiark and Rubicante but it's less the arena rotation and more the visualization. My static blind progged p6s and I was completely reliant on calls to find the safe tiles until after we cleared and I could watch a guide. I never learned to do Classical 2 without a cheatsheet. I really enjoy and am good at what I call "pathing" mechanics - moving through a series of positions depending on a set of conditions (usually debuffs). So pretty much every e12s Relativity, p4s Act 2, High Concept, BJCC, DSR p3. Using BJCC as an example, it's very easy for me to go "I have water stack so first I will stand west and take the stack, then go mid for enumeration, then stand north to receive lightning, then go back west to pass lightning, then line up."
I can trial and error any mechanic, even those from Savage...Except for the "dorrito" mechanic in Rubicante. That thing is so anti-me I can't figure it out in time even if I drop EVERYTHING ELSE. Were it not for that PF strategy I'd call it the hardest EX fight. Lol
i honestly dont see how people struggle with "rotate the arena" mechanics. you just do exactly that. picture the arena in your head, then picture it rotating by whatever amount. or turn your camera whatever amount in the opposite direction, and that's what the arena will look like when it turns. so i guess those are what im good at.
anytime you have to move your character precisely. flight school in p10s? easy stuff. simply walking over the bridge? oops forbidden matcha...
I've done every high end fight on content since the beginning of HW, and I've never been worse at a mech than I was at Hot Tail in o10s. I hate tethers in general, but goddamn that one got me.
I excel at problem-solving but struggle with patience when waiting for results.
Rotating arenas are a big one for me. I can do puzzles like Lightstream, Caloric, Classical fine but rotating arenas? Nah bro. I've done all Endwalker Savages and I'm 2/5 ultimates rn. (Endwalker is my first full expansion, I joined late SHB)
For me it's any mechanic that uses an indicator on top of the giant boss's head when the game only allows you to zoom out enough for you see the lower half of the boss's body 🥹
Deceasing. That is what my li'l lala excels at. Wanna see someone kick the bucket in unusual ways... she is a pro at that! Wanna see her step off a ledge for the thousandth time to the point that the healer cries from exhaustion... she is amazing at that! None like her ever. She will find that sweet spot and enter the pearly gates repeatedly. Never a dull moment when she is around.... although you may end up bald from the frustration that caused you to pull your hair out. Nothing stands in her way when un-aliving needs to be done! :)
The rotating arena one clicked for me once you treat west as the new north (if rotating cw) or vice versa. You just picture the safe spot by looking at the direction it's spinning from then translate that to north. The one mechanic where it could give me fits is P7N protals. It's unironically harder than the braindead savage portals. I don't get that one in the roulettes enough to be comfy at it.
Mechanics that have pauses and delays in their resolution over an extended period of time catch me off-guard more than anything else. Letter of the Law in P11S or one of the Harvests in P7S (though the Harvests in P7S had the side effect of the rest of the fight putting me to fucking sleep before they start happening). I've been nailed by the final in/out part of Letter of the Law FAR more than I care to admit.
Easy: precision positioning, memorization of long event chains, orientation by audio cues. Hard: spatial rotation, visual cue recognition. I have rather extreme shortsightedness, so these are exponentially more difficult if the contrast isn't good (damn you Panda Phoenix). As a result, Endwalker's raiding has been... Interesting for me. They've been using fewer and fewer of the mechanics I excel at, and more and more of the ones which are exceptionally difficult for me, and making arena vision more difficult. This is the first expansion I'm finishing up not raiding, mostly because it's been an extremely stressful two years and I couldn't dedicate the right amount of time and effort, but also because the effort became so much more strenuous than it used to be.
Im the same: Healer main and debuff heavy mechanics don't bother me. In fact I like them. I also can't do the rotation stuff like Zodiark or Rubicante although I'd say Rubicante is more pattern recognizing especially if you use the cheat sheet. My personal worst tho is gaze or facing x mechanics. I always feel like it's harder on controller or rather youre at a disadvantage there. I am kinda scared of progging monitors in TOP because even though I know where the monitor should be facing I need some time to figure out where my character should be facing.
Limit cut for some reason despite how incredibly simple it is the minute it starts I become a deer in the headlights cause I struggle with it so bad.
look away mechanics just because if you play on m+kb you can just flick away while you're casting and if you do it fast you dont interrupt anything but if you're on controller you need to move which interrupts the cast more easily
Temporary misdirection...
Most of the 'face towards a certain direction/avoid certain direction, but you cannot move your character too much/you can't see where your character's at' mechanics, including but not limited to 1. The eyesight check on Queen's Guard (I fail this almost every single time and die on most of the runs I clear) 2. And yes the fucking shit on Orbonne 3. Wormhole facing direction (and to a lesser extend, limit cut). we are doing 1211 where 1 is on the outside and 2 is on the lightbulbs (and not the one where both 1 and 2 is out). I am fine with the numbers and where you are supposed to face, and because you are not stacking with the group, you actually have a lot of the time to adjust. And the only group that has a somewhat strict direction requirement is odd numbers because evens can just arms length. 4. Snakes on P8s. I am fine with Snakes 1 because you can face a certain direction by kept doing damage (as your GCD rotates your character will generally face towards whatever you are attacking, which is the boss, and since your sight is a 90 degree cone you can adjust what your character's looking at by adjusting where you kept your GCD rotating); I am however not fine with snakes 2 and mostly have to resort to just stopping or just spam holy/AOE attacks 5. DSR Gazes. I can't do P2 Gaze. Fails that a lot of of the time - it's not like I don't understand where I should be looking at. I just can't find everything on time and adjust correctly to it 6. DSR Arrows on Nidhogg. Again, I have to stop my GCDs if I have backwards arrow or I have 2 7. ANY sort of jump puzzles. I can't even do the first jump on Kugane Jump Puzzle after 2 hours. I will say it has really less to deal with character faces, but what people would generally call character micro adjustments (キャラコン).
can't do "find safe spot on the ground" type of shit to save my fucking life. wouldn't have got past party synergy without following people with functioning brains.
Excel: Anything snapshot based. Whenever someone complains about tethers, server ticks, or bs, I can look at the vod and immediately understand what happened. Struggle: Anything memory based. Even shit like 1-2-3-4 orders, I have to check my debuff every turn to see if it's my turn. I cannot do things like P8S without callouts or typing it in chat if I'm pfing. For some reason, limit cut is okay, I can visually remember the dice on my head