Clientside & Serverside Latency

The general latency between client-side and server-side is about roughly .5 seconds (this number is highly dependent on latency). That means anything casted or any marked damage zones will be considered resolved at the .5 second mark before you see its completion. This leads to two phenomena occurring, Snapshot and Slidecast, to be part of FFXIV.

All AoEs in the game use a “camera” like feature to take a picture of everyone’s positions when the AoE timer is completed or the Snapshot. Due to the discrepancy of client-side and server-side data, what you see on your screen isn’t entirely correct. The lag between both systems will not report the most up-to-date location of where you are relative to the AoE. Therefore, you must endeavor to move out of the zone, at a minimum, of .5 seconds before the AoE marker is resolved. The reverse is also true, which means that danger zones can be considered safe zones .5 seconds earlier as well. Although the animation is not showing the area as being resolved, players can move into a dangerous zone .5 seconds earlier as the area has already been considered resolved by the server-side computer.

Another side effect of the latency issue is Slidecasting. Using a casted ability, Players can move while casting if they are < .5 seconds from the completion of the cast. This is also a good measuring tool to see what your exact number is to account for your personal latency. Normally, it will only be the hundredth digit affected but, the tenth digit can vary as well. Example: The average latency is .5, using a casting ability try to move during the cast around the .5 mark to see where it interrupts to determine your client and server latency time.

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Full Party Composition

For On-Level Content, Party Composition is extremely important and there are several considerations when putting into plan on how to approach instances. A Typical Raid Group setup will need a party with two tanks, two healers, two melee, one physical ranged and one caster with no overlap in jobs. Speedkill groups will sometimes opt for a nonstandard composition to complete an instance well ahead of time for bragging rights/more time to prog later instances. The key difference is limit break generation, bonus modifiers and clearing mechanics efficiently. Limit Break generates a lot slower for nonstandard and parties with overlapping jobs (two DRKs for instance). A +5% bonus stat modifier is applied to groups that have at least a tank, healer, melee, physranged and caster and dropping one of those types results in a drop of 1% bonus stat. So, why do speedkill groups go for something that does not generate Limit Break? They don’t use it. Most speedkill groups will have enough DPS that using a LB3 is considered a DPS loss.

When in a full-party setup, it is important to understand who does the melee limit break or whether it should be saved for Healer LB3. For melee LB3, the typical order of who does it is: NIN> MNK> Fast SAM> RPR=DRG> Slow Sam.

• Ninjas are the ideal choice as they can limit break freely after every trick attack and still maintain their rotation with no troubles.
• Monks can get away with this if they end on a Six Sided Star, with a near full timer of Twin Snakes and at least 10s left on their Demolish DoT but will incur a small DPS penalty.
• Fast SAMs will be able to fit limit break into their filler portion of their one minute rotation with a decent DPS loss but not wrecking their rotation.
• DRGs are penalized pretty heavily as their rotation will become skewed.
• RPR will lose too much time on resource generation that they will be completely off on their rotation.
• Slow SAMs will just be screwed over and should be avoided.

Depending on who you have on your team, you will need to adjust your countdown timer to fit the composition. Always ask what kind of openers people will be using to adjust the countdown timer properly. If they are silent, assume they will be using the proper opener from the Balance. This is especially important to sync up party buffs for DPS throughout the fight.
Cheat sheet:

• AST: 30s
• DNC: 15s
• BLM: 12s
• SAM: 9s
• NIN: 8s
• MCH, RDM: 5s
• WHM, SCH, SGE: 3s
• PLD, DRK, RPR, SMN: 2s
• WAR, GNB, MNK, DRG, BRD: None

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Best in Slot (BiS)

For ideal gearing (especially below current max level cap): Players will want to upgrade their gear MH/OH>>>Chest>Legs>Head/Gloves/Feet>Accessories.
Aim for the highest gear and even if it isn’t ideal, a -10 item level from max will always be better than -20 and more.

Best in Slot typically refers to gear that enables your job to execute the highest levels of DPS/HPS. When you are arrive at the endgame, you’ll want to work on getting the highest item level gear possible. However, for certain jobs, late game gearing is heavily dependent on your playstyle, your latency, your job and skill.

Etro.gg is a useful tool to play around with your gear and materia to see the best benefits for your class.

There is a multitude of gear, but which one is the best one? Select the ones that are BiS for your job’s Skill Speed/Spell Speed first, then edit accordingly. Playing at your job’s proper GCD speed helps to solidify rotations.

No amount of gear will cover over a bad rotation/playstyle. A strong understanding of your job, mechanics and 1 & 2 minute windows is true BiS.

How important is it to play at your job’s BiS GCD speed for endgame content? Very. For example, the RDM with fully pentamelded crafted gear with a GCD speed of 2.37 has an expected damage output of 2723.39. Whereas with a couple pieces removed to allow for increased substats in different areas to realign the GCD speed to 2.48 will have an expected damage output of 2803.94. A difference of 80 potency. In endgame content where DPS is critical, even the 80 potency can be the difference between a clear and a wipe.

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Syncing Down

When an instance forces you to sync down by level / item level, the materia you affixed to your gear will become inert. Keep that in mind when you are going into an instance you have materia such as Spell Speed and Skill Speed as they will no longer be active and your GCD recast time will be affected.

However, tinctures (colloquially known as “pots”) will work as intended and will not be “synced”. Food will be affected by syncing, so don’t expect as much of a gain as you would expect from the appropriate level.

Item Bonuses that are locked at a certain level can become available if synced down to the item’s appropriate level. i.e “Brand New Ring”.

When it comes to Ultimates or Savages and syncing down, synced down gear may be better than at level BiS. At level BiS Weapons will always be better, but armor and accessories can be different, consult the Balance or Etro.gg for further details regarding your job.

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Difficulties Explained

All Regular content in FFXIV can be completed with a moderate knowledge of mechanics and job knowledge. Failed mechanics are gentler on players to not bar them from progression. However, there are other difficulties in FFXIV that pose a much greater challenge.

Extreme (to include Unreal)
• Extremes are the next difficult challenge and if regular content is “Normal”, This is considered, “Hard”. Mechanics are less forgiving as they are in regular content, thus requiring a bit of coordination with your party.
• The DPS checks (a.k.a Enrage) exists and therefore constant deaths will mean that clearing enrage is much more difficult.
• Unreals are the challenges given by the Faux Commander in Idyllshire, where players get to experience older Extremes at current level with minimum item level and no Echo (a.k.a MINE). Mechanics at this level of difficulty will not penalize you for players that are dead.

Savage
• A cut above Extremes. Savages will severely penalize players for failing mechanics. By failing a mechanic, it can spell doom for the entire party’s run as a mechanic will require all 8 players to be up and able to complete.
• Coordination is key to clearing Savages and it must be done with all 8 players. DPS checks are stricter at this level of difficulty.
• Job knowledge is essential to clearing this level of content. All 8 players must be up and able to receive tethers or debuffs to continue or another player will be chosen at random to receive the dead player’s debuffs, tethers, or number of attacks.
• Mechanics at this level require a very specific way to solve them and if done incorrectly will result in either a damage down, a vulnerability stack or becoming knocked out.

Ultimate
• If Savage content hasn’t dissuaded you at this point, then Ultimate is the true test of skill and knowledge. Everything culminates here to be the true test of a player’s ability to truly know their class and fight mechanics. 98% of the time, one player dying is considered a full party wipe as clearing the enrage is that much more difficult or they will be unable to complete the next mechanic that requires to be done.
• Fights are done in several phases, with each phase having a particular enrage point to clear before moving on. Coordination and fight knowledge is critical at this level of play.

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Preparing for High-End Content

First and foremost is studying your job, your opener and your rotation (I have put at least three websites to help with this in the ⁠combat-job-help channel. No amount of high-end gear is going to cover a bad rotation or playstyle.

Everyone does damage. Current endgame content demands a lot of damage dealt to bosses to prevent enrage. Best way to train is to hit a striking dummy for a maximum of 12 minutes to maintain your rotation without letting critical buffs drift. To check if your opener and 1 minute rotation is on par, you can hit a Stone, Sea and Sky training dummy and push to do as much damage as possible before the timer is up. This includes Healers. Everyone’s GCD should be constantly rolling throughout the instance, in other words, ALWAYS BE CASTING. Another thing for melee players, is to minimize uses of long range attacks. Use your long range when you have to do it, but be ready to get back and keep hitting them with your main melee attacks.

Run older content and study mechanics from them. Even if it is the ARR raids, a lot of mechanics are recycled, remixed and put into the new raids.

Gear up properly. Knowing which substats helps your job will make life easier for you as you can do more damage. It is critical to gear to your SkS/SpS as much as possible for proper play. If you cannot do that because you will sacrifice too much from your gear, you’ll have to learn to adapt to a suboptimal rotation until you can get it back on track.

Be mentally prepared for a long haul. Even the World 1sts have to deal with several setbacks in a row. Have a before and after care routine when you do high-end content as it is mentally taxing.

Be accepting of critiques, suggestions and help. Offer up suggestions to your group to get through the instance.

For those that are interested in High End Content, but can not commit a lot of time, the best thing to do is to focus on one job and stick with it. Learning Openers, timing the one minute and two minute windows are critical for success.

There are casual jobs that are great for high end content due to the way they are built. Warrior, White Mage, Reaper, Dancer and Summoner are solid choices, but always keep in mind that you do have to study the job.

No matter what instance it is, no matter what you are doing. ALWAYS do 100% of your best. Even if your goal isn’t to be a high-end content player, you should endeavor to always be doing your best in matter what you are doing. This is a collaborative game and if one person is not doing their best, it will be extremely difficult to clear.

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