Mythic WoW raider learns how much better FFXIV raids are

[@JustRuss]

I hope some of you will consider joining me on my adventure! Streaming daily on Twitch! www.twitch.tv/justruss VODs here: www.youtube.com/@justrussvods

[@xbree_]

In current ultimates one death could often cause the whole party to instantly wipe depending on the mechanic they die on. Older ones are way more forgiving though. Ultimate are definitely my favorite thing in FFXIV. Cleared DSR 2 weeks ago and working on TOP now. It felt so damn good to get it done. Been working on it since February.

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

Yes, I hate that they are focusing on kill mechanics instead of maim mechanics. They are making healers useless.

[@Rexcalibro]

omg it's ciri

[@JustRuss]

Grats and good luck on the others!

[@Excaliwolf2]

Ucob fails are not that forgiving. Hit a twister, party wipe is likely. I get it but it's forgiving in that it's getting hit with a bat and not a bullet.

[@SC-cx9ti]

Ultimates are like that?i find that a lot od older content tends to have more strict team count requirements. I recall T9, sephirot, zurvan, thordan, and a few of the alexander savages I've done will either harshly affect the chances of making it through by offsetting mechanics or just cause the whole team to die. With newer ones, I've felt they are more forgiving with deaths. Then again I havent done savages past heavensward and I havent beaten the third EW trial yet. The older ones feel so archaic where the solution is to punish you with death.

[@mrLabdory]

Twitch chat needs to chill! You aren’t stalling you’re just discussing the video. If you were to just watch the video without stopping what’s the point of a react? Keep doing your thing bro

[@mrcool9090]

Shouting about stalling is a pretty common bit when the big rush of wow people went over to ff so like… at least 90% of those people are memeing around

[@BaithNa]

I think it's just a joke because his character is named "Russ JustStalling"

[@the0s0ph1st]

LOL it's a meme joke, chill brah

[@christopherbailey3547]

While it is true that those people need to chill out, this guy has a habit of stopping after every 5 seconds of video and talking for 7 minutes and not even saying anything much. Then he seems to be reacting to every Ffxiv video ever made lol. He’s probably seen every boss by now .

[@LotofNothing]

​@@christopherbailey3547I'm glad someone put my thoughts into words. It's a touch exhausting

[@toki-rin]

the nier raids were the most stressful raids i had ever experienced in my time playing ff14 and that was by design because yoko taro is insane

[@RandoPassingBy]

So real… I qued roulette as a very new tank (GNB), and I ended up getting the third Nier Raid in Alliance B… I never even understand the mechanics to begin with when I was playing DRG, not to mention MT it… Needless to say that my gears are almost broken at the end of the day when I got hit by that god damn building 3 times in a row.

[@draochvar9646]

​@@RandoPassingBydon't remind me of those BLOODY BUILDINGS!

[@psymar]

I felt a lot better after the second one where I apologized for dying 5 times, mentioned by way of explanation it was my first time and I'd gone in blind, and everyone was like "only 5 times on a blind run? that's really good"

[@randonologic4684]

I love the final Nier raid so much.

[@nerothos]

regarding 26:40: It's not so much "alright, wipe it" as it is almost every mechanic being an 8-person body check, resulting in an infinity damage raidwide hitting everyone. This only applies to end-of-tier Savage bosses and almost everything in an Ultimate. Sometimes you can res people just in time for the next body check if they die, but it's far from reliable unless your ressers are anticipating it and super trigger happy with their res.

[@JustRuss]

got you! that makes a lot of sense! thanks

[@shakeweller]

Comment from a fellow ex-WoW player who was also a mythic raider from mid WOD to 9.0 with 10 Cutting Edges and 1 World 100 Clear. I came over from WoW to FFXIV in 5.4 a which was roughly a few weeks after ShadowlandsWoW launch. Lynx video is very good, but he missed a few things or explained them very awkwardly, so I try to clear them up for you. "Main" Raid releases in FFXIV are always on a X.0, X.2 and X.4 Patch. These include normal mode and savage mode raids which is 4 bosses every 8 months. The savage tier will take you from 1 week up to 8 weeks to progress depending how good your raid is and how experienced you are at the game. To get week 1 it's definitly not just "being good" but also being experienced because there are no guides or PTR, which means your group has to come up with your own strats. Just playing well won't get you a week 1 clear. Usual Semi-Hardcore players like us (I've raided on your level for a long time) usually take up from 3-4 weeks to clear a tier, sometimes we can get early week 2 if we happen to get a good group and play a lot. on every singe X.0, X.1,X.2... alongside the new story MSQ there comes a new Extreme Trial which is around as difficult as an early-mid heroic raid boss. You can usually clear those in 1-2 lockouts then farm all the gear/mounts you want from them. Ultimate raids are a bit weird and Lynx explained them very badly so here is a rough summary: There are currently 5 ultimate raids in the game. 2 of them came in the Stormblood expansion (level 70), one in Shadowbringers (Level 80) and 2 came in Endwalker (current content level 90). Shadowbringer was missing one because of Covid. To get access to these, you have to beat the last boss in savage in the raid tier that came just BEFORE the ultimate. These ultimate raids also require you to have a certain BIS item list to have to beat the mitigation and DPS checks when they're current, but even for old ones, it's nice to have. They are very difficult and are considered the true endgame raiding experience in FFXIV. They reward you with a unique title and insanely beautiful and prestige weapons to flex in Limsa with. Clearing an ultimate takes roughly between 1000 and 1500 pulls and mind, it's a 16-18min fight. In "older" ultimates the scaling makes them a bit easier (+jobchanges), but you can still take a few hundred pulls at least to get a clear. Gearing in FFXIV is a hot debate. There is a big split in the comunity about if the gearing is great or count even be removed entirely. Let me explain where this discussion comes from: The savage raids are designed and tested by the developers to be clearable week 1 with crafted gear (basicly gear you can buy off the marketboard or have a friend make for you). Because of that gearupgrades don't feel like they're actually something to strive for because you know you don't need it to beat the raid. Gear is usually something that mostly helps more casual groups to beat DPS checks with suboptimal rotations and minmaxing. Or if you want to get a good parse. Gear is also used if after a savage tier, they release a corresponding ultimate raid that requires that BIS gear. In raidtiers where there is no ultimate, there is basicly zero incentive to farm your BIS because you will replace it with crafted gear next raidtier anyway. Getting Best in Slot in FFXIV can take you 16 weeks depending on your luck if you roll well on items dropping. But even if you never get loot, after 16 weeks, you are best in slot. If you're lucky even 8 weeks might be enough, but lately they have been screwing with a few jobs to require a lot of upgrade materials which are a bit harder to come by. But after 16 weeks, you are BIS and done. Something that is almost unheard of in WoW. So that's nice. If you ever decide to raid in a static, 8 weeks and you're BIS for sure because you can distrubute the loot in a such a way that you can give people the items they need instead of having people in Party Finder roll on alt job gear while you're still missing loot for your main job. So I definitly recommend that.

[@Shiirow]

I much prefer skill checks over gear checks. A skill check requires you to play well and have good coordination with your group and when you clear a piece of content you know its because you were good not just lucky. A gear check just requires you to get lucky with boss gear drops even the first boss. You dont need to be good to clear most content in WoW ever, just need to overgear it and strong arm your way through which leads to many people having ridiculous gear requirements for things. I like the gearing and gameplay in XIV over WoW. I feel more engaged in the content when playing XIV. Also there isnt just a split on whether gear is great or should be removed but also people who want to emulate wows lottery slot machine system with gearing which i think ruined what little balance wow had. pushes more into luck over skill because you could do any bit of content and get OP gear, if youre lucky enough and end up trivializing most content.

[@shakeweller]

Absolutly! That's why I'm still in FFXIV. WoW gearing gives me massive FOMO@@Shiirow

[@JustRuss]

damn. Good write up. Thanks!

[@ianlindstrom2019]

Also worth noting that, as of the most recent raid tier, there is almost 0 RNG in what drops. You can lose the roll on it to someone else, but ofc an organized team can lootmaster. Basically, a full clear (all four savage floors) is always exactly 1 coffer for each item slot, with the coffer becoming that item slot of gear for whichever job they want, as well as one upgrade token of each type. The only RNG element is that there is a second weapon that does not come as a coffer, and instead drops as a specific weapon. So you could get e.g. a SAM weapon and a weapon coffer on week 1, then a SGE weapon and a weapon coffer week 2.

[@joerybka]

omg, I was Disc during Tomb of Sargeras, and until I finally got that damn legendary neck to drop that splashed my overhealing with Light's Wrath, I felt like half a class. Disc was still OP in that expansion if you knew how to play it, but it felt so much smoother with that low chance drop that you had to spam un-fun content to get. So many runs in Maw... You're right about us being somewhat damaged... Definitely looking forward to trying the raids in FF

[@JustRuss]

Haha god I had the same thing with fire mage bracers. Literally the last legendary I had drop for me

[@Altasetraa]

I'm an ex-mythic raider doing savage now and its so, so refreshing to be able to log off and not fall behind. Some weeks i'll only log on for static because Elden Ring came out or whatever and it's totally fine. Also the loot system is so much better, there's nothing more painful than reclearing stuff in wow and watching gear literally be thrown away because its a shit trinket or its for a class you aren't bringing or is already geared.

[@markup6394]

19:30 --- In all honesty, its just as frustrating and you'll always have to deal with that, in WoW, in GW2, in FF14, in any game where you play with a group. FF14 is maybe a little more manageble since its only 8 instead of 10 or 25 people to keep track of, but in essence you'll have the same problems here. The difference might be that its easier to fill your ranks again via Party Finder, but some groups dont want to recruit outside their roster (and its uncommon to have ersatz players waiting on a bench) since that would mean potentially losing out on gear in the current raid tier. Its actually funny: a lot of FF14 raiders complain about the gear system :D Its hands-down better than WoWs and you will appreciate it, but people will keep complaining regardless - some with better arguments than others :)

[@SongOfTheCrane]

One of the really nice things imo regarding FFXIV raids is that since strats are fairly standard, or at least simple/predictable enough that they can be quickly learned, if one or two of your static members can't make tonight's raid then you can put up a recruitment ad for subs and you can typically find them. That's actually how I got some of my clears in Shadowbringers, by regularly subbing into several different statics. It really makes it a lot less painful when someone has to bail last minute on raid night.

[@ridleyroid9060]

Holy shit there is no way there has been 2 years since this video bro feels like yesterday it dropped,

[@JustRuss]

time flies!

[@AliguraAethernum]

About 19:40-ish A friend's group was looking for a short-notice replacement since someone had an emergency, and knowing me (hardcore raider) they asked me to jump. I have all jobs at max lvl, but the job they needed was phys ranged, and that's LITERALLY the only job/role I didnt have gear for. So within the next 30 minutes, 4 people from the group and me together started gathering and crafting a set of savage-ready gear. On a side-note, this gear at best is only min-ilvl for the current fight, but that's totally fine for the group and me since we're gamers, but it was just nice to have so many people work together just to not skip raid.

[@Kairax]

One thing i might add: Some "end of tier" savage raids (4-8-12) have 2nd phase. And sometimes it's so good, you really sorry for people, who only played normal difficulty raids and never even saw 2nd phase.

[@Hype_Incarnate]

but sometimes like in the case of p8s part 1, you don't wish that on anyone

[@raphaelhuwyler6640]

I mean P8s P2 is fun when people don't suck, it's kinda nice to execute but if the idiots can't do NA...

[@papyrus9761]

Not some, all of them do. But some are checkpoints and some aren't.

[@bellamango6708]

man I loved p8

[@21warmasters]

O4S transition is still my favorite

[@BazzFreeman]

The main thing I definitely DO NOT MISS from WoW was having to completely level another character AND gear it up just in case I need to fill a raid slot. INFFXIV, except for weapons, ROLES share gear. SO AIMING gear is of use to all the ranged physical roles for example. Some of the melee do differ though (Scouting, Maiming, Striking are the gear types)

[@karlrassmann4604]

The only downside to the role gear stuff is the cosmetics IMO. In WoW you get a gear set crafted for each class. Meanwhile, you only get a job set once per xpac in FFXIV. And often, a role set will feel applicable for some jobs over others. For example, a lot of aiming sets feel very "high fantasy bard", and don't vibe with Dancer or Machinist. Or if a fending (tanking) set looks great for a paladin with sacred boyscout vibes, it may not vibe with a Dark Knight or Warrior. Luckily, we have glamours!

[@BaithNa]

​@@karlrassmann4604I think they've done a better job since ShadowBringers. Now the tome gear may apply to the aesthetic of two of the jobs in a set and the raid gear will apply to the other two.

[@TorManiak]

​@@BaithNaIt is still a bit eh, tbh. Many Caster and Healer gear are robes and usually fit their look nicely(sometimes with a bit of tweaking in colors using dyes though), but Sage and Red Mage get the short end of the stick because their aesthetic clash a lot more with them than with the rest(granted we kinda have tooo much robes when it comes to glamour anyways). Same for all 3 Tanks, since GNB is so much more modern in aesthetics compared to the other tanks that most people playing it either stick with the AF gear or the Nier Alliance Raid Trench Coat to keep the look they want(At least latest crafted gear gives a _bit_ of variety but it's not enough -_-).

[@furen4962]

Most people don't swap in the same roles though. Most people want to swap to melee, caster, tank or healer from rphys. While yes the same roles share gear, if you want to play a different role you are in the worst situation possible. Held back due to tomestone cap and horrible gearing system in savage makes it impossible to swap roles halfway through the tier without a massive waiting period. Gearing in FF genuinely sucks, it is a horrible experience.

[@Lagzlot]

For a what-if comparison for the kind of insanity and difficulty spike that Ultimate battles have over the rest of FF14, here's how Icecrown Citadel Ultimate would go: Phase 1. Gunship battle, but both Saurfang and Muradin hate you. Marrowgar is BONESTORMing around the battlefield nonstop. Phase 2: The gunships crash into the plagueworks. Raid has to fight Saurfang Jr in the slime room. Putricide is absent because they couldn't get Billy West back but some Festergut and Rotface mechanics are mixed into the fight. Phase 3: Heal the green dragon, but instead of skeleton adds you get to fight the Blood Council. Phase 4: Lich King riding Sindragosa as a mount. Phase 5: The Lich King is dead, as Bolvar takes on his grave dut- WHAT IS THE JAILER DOING HERE!?

[@CyanPhoenix_]

"imagine you're like 12 minutes into a fight, one guy dies and it's like well rip" me remembering that one time i died to the meteors, 17 minutes into a TOP fight >.< (or you know, the multiple times we didn't beat the enrage after 19 minutes lol)

[@yagikataiser434]

That happened to me once during reclears... because I hadn't realized that my food fell off. It would've kept me alive. I was crying on the inside, I tell ya hwat

[@karlrassmann4604]

Some points I think the video didn't touch on... -A "tier cycle" lasts TWO patches (6-7 months). When an expansion releases, it comes with some extreme trials and a savage wing. When the X.1 patch drops, it has another extreme trial and the first alliance tier wing. X.2 will be the next extreme trial and savage wing, so on and so forth. Ultimates are released with no regular cadence and come whenever the devs make them as a treat, but the trend seems to be 1-2 per xpac. -Alongside savage raids are "normal" raids. These are your LFR, and bosses drop tokens exchanged for gear on any job. This gear is a lower ilvl, undyable version of the savage raid gear. -The final boss of a normal raid wing drops a weapon token. Combine enough of these with weekly tomestones to receive that tier's tomestone weapon (tomestone ilvl, which is higher than extreme trial and normal raid) -Completing an alliance raid once per week gives you a token that can "augment" your tomestone gear, raising the ilvl. You must have a token for each alliance wing that has come out that expansion (in 6.5, you'll have to do all 3 wings of this xpac's alliance raid to upgrade one piece of gear). -A recent addition to the game are Criterion Dungeons, which are FFXIV's closest equivalent to M+. They do not drop gear, only cosmetics. Each Criterion Dungeon has a "Variant" mode which is a more relaxed story mode, "Criterion", and "Criterion Savage". The savage is the difficulty of Mythic Raiding, reportedly.

[@armanightrealm4217]

To be fair, changing your class in FFXIV to maximizing your experience is like the most fun thing to do. I was a Bard, then turned Dancer (because Improvisation is OP *chefkiss*) and I always do savage with Dancer and prioritize that. But then when I’m bored with it, I go to Tanks and Healers and the experience and learning time is really fun and for me, Savage and Extreme are a good place to learn your sub jobs easily. But that’s me, don’t know about other people. But hopefully you can clear many Ultimates! The weapons are real cool! XD

[@shiryushini7321]

Hey man ! Just discovered your channel thanks to Psybear, whose videos got recommended to me for a few days and decided to give it a watch, glad to see you both enjoying the game, I won't be able to catch your streams really tho, because of my work schedule, but I'll be keeping an eye on your youtube channels for sure :D welcome to XIV !

[@JustRuss]

thanks! hope you enjoy! and there's always my VOD channel too if you can't make the streams! :D

[@shiryushini7321]

@@JustRuss right, thanks for pointing it out, I'll definitely go check it out :D

[@alyssaphillips1744]

I like the extreme glamour items(transmogs). I actually use a couple of ARR weapons from extremes cause I love the way they look.

[@NaspalmHymnautic]

One thing I truly enjoy about FFXIV raiding is, if your available/have time you can pretty much raid nearly everything. Doesn't have to be the newest or hardest, as many in the community will enjoy your personal progression as much as you do even if you are not super grindy or into hardcore game play. Not to mention, many groups pop up at all hours in the party finder just to run certain aspects so new and returning players can get a grasp of content and mechanics on all different difficulties. There is a DRK, PLD and SCH and SAGE on Malboro (forget their names atm) who run "Teaching Courses of X raid being: extreme, savage and certain ultimates" for hours on end. Not every group will be a perfect run, and not every group will be hair pulling WoW PuG levels of bad. Majority of the time you will have fun... speaking of fun, you should really need to just do a full sit through JoCat's: JoCrap's guide to Final Fantasy series. As humorous as they are, there is plenty of things to learn, and some sic rhymes.

[@SomeOne-vh1rm]

One of the best things about raids in FFXIV is you can ilvl sync them down to when they first came out and even go in min ilvl gear to make it harder to get the full experience, not like WoW where once a raid is done and a new expac comes out that raid becomes useless, the only thing that keeps people doing that raid is to farm glamour/mounts or achievements but a lot of people who have just come to WoW will never get that experience from the ilvl it was at the time, cause they can just speedrun it nuking the bosses in seconds which ruins the exp of it. Another thing to add is when you wipe you start right in front of the boss in FFXIV and in WoW it can take you 5-10mins to get back to some of them

[@wraithipavtoua]

Theres also a group that has worked out the exact gear to equip to pretend to sync old trials. You have lvl 90 cooldowns but are at the right strength for the raid whether its lvl 50, 60 w/e . kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKjRlIOse6h5j5Y MrHappy did a video on it.

[@barvin9271]

it's worth noting that raid fights tend to have music that also keeps tempo with the fights and is stylized for each fight with other visual and audible queues that help to keep you on track. You'll often hear savage raiders memeing on certain boss phrases such as "in darkness blooms the spider lily" amidst tsukuyomi's EX fight, so while they can be long, you brain adapts once you've seen a mechanic. I won't say easy but memorization of order tends to be easier without addons than WoW.

[@Felnoodle1]

When I played Classic, our guild got its first Rejuvenating Gem from BWL the first week after AQ launched. That trinket is best in slot for all healers and it drops from 3 different bosses, but I think it was 26 weeks before we got the first one

[@Gwydion_Wolf]

4:20 "What ive learned about FF Content, with Min I-level and level syncing, is you can go back and do old content and its still decently challenging." me: cries in a corner with non-min-i-level Twister memes forever burned into my mind. (anyone who has ever done UCOB knows...)

[@SonicSwifter]

Honestly,. the best part about min ilvl content. Is the older content such as 50 extremes are still overall easier so they're a great way to introduce sprouts and new people in your FC or friend group into some of the harder content. And if they don't enjoy it, just unsynch the content and get them a mount so they at least come away with something.

[@tjl9458]

You wanted to know what people do for their static for fills? For Savage and Extremes, we ask friends and if necessary party finder. For Ultimates, that's a bit tricky. What my Ultimate static is doing is we're running with 9 people two nights a week. On one night, we have one person sit out and on the next, we have that person come in and a different person sits out. The two people who are doing this are pretty flexible in what roles they can do (e.g., our Bard is actually my co-healer in my Savage static). Then, if someone can't make it, we ask the person who normally sits out if they can make that day. If they can't? Then, we don't raid that day. It's caused us some definite delays, but it's good enough for most weeks. The strategies for bosses tend to be pretty common by a few weeks into the tier so PF works fairly well if you just need one or two fills for Savage fights. Ultimates do have pretty common strategies, but because of things like when to use party-wide mitigation tools it's more difficult to have a random person fill. Heal checks and required mitigation to be able to survive certain mechanics mean that planning the use is far more important in Ultimates. On the first boss of UWU, we've had some of our players survive hits with less than 5% of their health remaining (which you need to heal to close to full in a few GCDs for one heal check).

[@a_yanki]

I just love crafting and gathering for the most part, but videos like this get me so jazzed to get to endgame and start learning raiding. It may not be for me in the long run but it seems like it could be really cool. Been loving watching the journey!

[@KenWob]

The absolute limitations in WoW are infuriating but its also the effects of decisions made originally way back when. Having the equivalent of 38 unique jobs is a headache itself for tuning and raid size with all the unique things they can do. They scratch different itches in terms of gameplay for me but FF is far easier in an organisational perspective. Also the party finder tool in FF is so freaking amazing from memory. Being able to zone in and get going on specific fights, setting the objective as just practice and go! No faffing around.

[@karlrassmann4604]

For real, the only hope of WoW ever truly ridding itself of the toxicity in it's gearing system is if they ever do a full WoW2 (but we all saw how that worked out for Overwatch...)

[@JustRuss]

I definitely think you should respawn in front of the boss when you wipe in WoW. Forgetting to soulstone before you pull can waste 5+ min in some cases on top of the time you lost to wiping itself. And then there’s the roster boss itself too

[@darkdevil399]

I loved the commentary. It really gave me some perspective as someone who never played WoW. I guess I took the gearing and raising in ffxiv for granted!

[@JustRuss]

Haha for sure!

[@mikoto7693]

I learned about WoW’s gearing system when learning about the game in response to the WoW refugee flood awhile ago… and have been grateful for FF14’s way ever since.

[@kakashiroks]

Can’t wait for russ to upload the rave stream with royalty-free music edited in :3

[@JustRuss]

LOL maybe i should

[@Gathoderiz]

You should check Jocat's videos on FFXIV jobs, he explains a lot of stuff on how they work in general, it's good videos for a new comer and for react :p

[@RagnarokiaNG]

About the difficulty of enjoying old stuff in WoW, when I played WoW I set up a group for the Ulduar level 80 itemlevel locked feat of strength in a future expansion. It required me getting 10 people to agree to make a level 80 locked alt of specific roles and help gear them all up and make sure no one used an illegal item, the whole thing taking weeks of preperation and was more stressful and taxing than my usual raid leading just to do something that wasn't even hard due to class changes and stat crunches, it was just the stress of setting the whole thing up. if I could level / itemsync back in WoW that whole ordeal could have been done within an hour with random people, yes doing it the hard way was more impactful, but not worth the weeks of stress.

[@Artema9x]

You have unreal too, that is old trials upgraded to the actual level, and these give different rewards.

[@bmo1878]

Nah skipping is a badge of shame not honor

[@Ammy-q4w]

The people that skip are the ones complaining about there being nothing left to do once they reach endgame. They finish everything, but don't understand the meaning behind any of the encounters and what makes them special. They turn a heartfelt game into a soulless experience.

[@sto0g3sz]

It's refreshing to see someone enjoy FF14 as a great game. Alot of influencers has been calling the game out recently and honestly, it gets tiring.

[@JustRuss]

Yep, mentally draining negativity for sure

[@Nyanti_Games]

As a savage raider in a static, replacing people is pretty easy in ff14, we've been dealing with it since half our party has covid, so sometimes theres no point in finding subs for a party of 2 people. Also, boss length feels just right, ebough to get cool mechanics out and challenge the players, but not so long you sit and stare for decades, with current 2 minute burst rotation meta the game has going 4 minutes feels like you have done nothing, 10 minutes in a boss fight flies by, especially once the party optimizes and the pull goes from 11 min kill to 8-9:30min kill.

[@LumiereInfinity]

Dont know if it was mentioned, in FF14 there is no Test server, so everyone starts raids at the same time which is on release.

[@papyrus9761]

Worth noting that in a savage tier there's usually a very (intentionally) exponential difficulty curve between 1st and 4th boss. In WF races usually about 3/4 of that race is spent just on the 4th boss alone, whereas the 1st boss usually falls over within 2 hours, sometimes within 1 with difficulty comparable to extremes. They tune it so that casual players have a very steady progression path from 0. You do normals raids/alliance raids then extreme raids, then savage 1-4 and finally ultimates. You can crank the difficulty to the max by going in blind on top of it.

[@thepeasant6]

Ugh i hate short notices so much. Literally had someone drop out an hour before because they decided they were going to work on someone else's stream?

[@hoodiesticks]

Are ... are WoW raiders okay? Like, in general? Because holy crap, the stuff you put up with is crazy...

[@tamarak.8800]

Bit of "stalling" is a good thing, build community not just power through msq.

[@JustRuss]

that's the plan! i think it's going great

[@LyviannaXIV]

FF14 has several stages of difficulty. Extreme trials are usually about the same difficulty, if a bit easier, than the first two fights of a savage tier, and about as long too. Third fight savage fights usually are consistency checks, but have fallen short on this of late. The difficulty spike to the 4th fight of a tier, having 2 phases traditionally, is quite noticable to most. The fourth fight of a savage is also what will be required to unlock any new ultimate, so older Ultimates are locked behind the 4th fight of their respective Savage raid tiers. Ultimates are brutal battles of conviction and consistency. Most people can clear them, but it will be weeks over months and a thousand plus pulls. The most dreadful wipes are those 16, 17 minutes into the encounter, once focus wanes, making silly mistakes on easier mechanics. Ultimates aren't always necessarily mechanically harder than 4th turn savages, they just have a lot of difficult mechanics and take ~15-20 minutes as long as they are still current. Super fun though!

[@ninponighthawk]

The best way i can explain Ultimates to people who never have done them is play perfectly for 18 min and trust everyone does the same.

[@cyphi474]

Trust me. Being black mage in endgame isnt anything like sitting back and bashing the boss. Its harder than any other job in terms of managing your stuff and doing everything that others have to do at the same time. Its like playing chess while crossing high density highway.

[@JustRuss]

yeah! haha it doesn't appeal much to me since i saw the lay lines and it reminds me of rune of power in WoW for mages. and i hated that. i bet it's hard to execute well!

[@flamerollerx01]

One of the best things about the combat in ffxiv is that since you level up while unlocking your combo one ability at a time, when you go back and sync down, you are so used to doing the full rotation that you can do less than the full rotation with literally no problem at all! An example would be as dragoon (my main job) you use thrust, vorpal thrust and then full thrust after level 26, but if you scale down below level 26, you still are used to using thrust-vorpal thrust combo without any issues. It definitely makes the combat less fun to scale down, but you don't suddenly lose the ability to comprehend your rotation. Basically they don't take away key abilities that make you have an actual combo, because the lower level abilities are still part of the full combo. (Disclaimer, I haven't played in over a year so I've forgotten the full combos at level 78)

[@oldmanjenkinsgaming3555]

Only 1 ultimate had a checkpoint but it is after phase 1 of that. For a very valid reason. No spoilers for you and very heartfelt😉

[@saulmadrid9950]

It's probably already been mentioned, but on the topic of raiding differences, I feel 14 doesn't impact a player as harshly as in WoW if s/ he dies early on. In 14, yes your group dps is diminished, but the newly revived player can still perform, with a status debuff applied. From the devs perspective, it's meant to teach us about the mechanics. I'm looking at you, black mages.

[@JustRuss]

yep! i think i said that later on - that you can at least continue to practice the mechanical side of the fight

[@finnianheart]

As a savage raider I'm super pumped to see you get into it. It's difficult, it's blood sweat and yes, tears at times, but that feeling when you "get" it... Nothing like it >:D

[@sophiastorm8616]

If you really want a WOW raiders perspective maybe try Echo. They've been doing XIV ultimates, savage and tried one criterion dungeon

[@Sammysnows]

your watching Shiva also known as SHB shiva also known E8S ALSO KNOWN as THE MOST BULLSH*T RAID that EVER EXISTED in the game, there is literally no relaxing time in that raid you have to focus for 8 min straight, and if you messed up well time to redo it again from the beginning, the Light rampant.......everyone know this even the devs decided to meme on it this is the hardcore raider nightmare and that this on savage level not Ultimate Echo team took 5 months to clear latest ultimate

[@anubisftn]

Over 1k pulls i think right?

[@Tyrano739]

Honestly looking back, besided Light Rampant being ass to figure out what went wrong, and knockback mirrors being wonky on uptime, this fight was really well designed. i really miss it, and even if I was frustrated with how long it took us to clear it. I wish more fights were like this today, with less full party checks and more windows of recovery. And at least Light Rampant was early enough in the fight, imagine if it had been at the end... Some of endwalker's raids are so backloaded, it's exhausting.

[@DantoriusD]

Echo take 5 months for the Ultimate because they had other Stuff to do. In the Meantime a new WoW Raid came out, ppl took breaks after that.....etc. 1k Pulls arent that much. Even the World first Groups had 800+ Pulls during prog.

[@DantoriusD]

@@Tyrano739 the biggest downer in E8s was the 1 minute long Cutscene after the Add Phase which was complete BS. But i have to agree aside of the Curscene the Fight was actually really good Designed.

[@Tyrano739]

​@@DantoriusD You're right, I completely forgot about that cutscene, hahaha. Rose tinted glasses and what not. How I used to wish for a checkpoint there x)

[@andrasfischer3778]

and one more caveat for FF14 NO Add-ons and mean Its against the TOS to use add-ons

[@akudoikoray5119]

Is it true that some people in WOW also put prio on gear onto people playing certain races over others?

[@JustRuss]

Not really. While some races can do more throughput than others, it’s fairly negligible and in the top end you usually play the race with the better utility over damage or healing capabilities. But what you said is true for classes(jobs). You put gear onto the highest scaling classes first usually

[@kuniohung8914]

wait till you see Fate Calibration in TEA

[@patyos2]

The Alliance Raids in a way are kinda like WoW 24 man raids just without all the hassle and more streamlined simple to learn for new players. The real difficult raids are all the 8 player raids Extreme, Savage, Ultimate Its far easier finding 7 other people for hard content and all classes being on the same character makes switching easier.

[@EJ48]

as someone who actually does have over 105 ultimate kills (80 TOP, 36 UWU, 19 TEA, 16 UCOB, and 15 DSR), I can tell you that ultimates are literally just the most fun raiding content I've ever experienced. and once you start doing them, you'll probably just become a partyfinder gremlin like me

[@JustRuss]

GIGACHAD

[@SwolTako]

"Go back and do MinIlvl ARR and still be decently challenging" *Decently* Good sir, the jankfest of Bahamut at Minilvl is worse than some savages. I'm still traumatized by tanking Nael. "THE HELL DID MY HP GO!?" "Crit." "WHAT? NO I MEAN WHICH MECHANIC DID I FAIL. Did she do a tankbuster?" "Nope she just crit you for 75% of your health."

[@mikoto7693]

I quite frequently use old content dungeons/bosses to level up different jobs. For example I’m trying out Gunbreaker after being a Dragoon and Red Mage around lvl 60-65. But because I’m uncertain about tanking I’ve gone back to lvl 30-40 dungeons to train myself on basic tanking. Then I’ll move to lvl 50 dungeons ect, gradually increasing until I catch myself up.

[@ReaverPrime]

While he was spot on with the factual information about the differences between the two games, Lynx isn't necessarily a person to latch onto with regard to FFXIV. He was actually chased out of the community because he was a pretty toxic gatekeeper type that loads of people left WoW to get away from. I don't think he's even uploaded in like a year or two.

[@TehMuuli]

Light Rampant poggers?

[@scottwagner2566]

You shut your mouth right now.

[@psymar]

First attack wipes are definitely a thing in XIV, even in extremes. I haven't tried on-level savages yet, I'm dealing with some personal issues that'll make it harder to show up consistently, but I did help a streamer get though one of the Bahamut raids min I level on my second try and I'm told those are savage level.

[@lovelydumpling]

weirdly enough a week ago he came back to youtube to release a video talking about how FFXIV is awful now and the raids are bad now and he deleted his character It's really wild the complete 180 he did Deleting his character seems ridiculously silly though. Like I can understand unsubscribing and uninstalling but for someone who supposedly loved the game this much to just give up on it EVER getting better seems overdramatic

[@JustRuss]

Yep very strange! I heard about that and wondered if it was the same guy. Seems a bit dramatic as you said, along with all the FFXIV is dying stuff

[@katiekaliber]

Old content is certainly really fun but to do it synced i recommend finding a group because it's not easy to just go into any old raid and get a group. Personally i have a group that plays every monday and we're doing all harder content blind (extremes and savages) in order from ARR to the end. We've been going for a almost a year now and it's legitimately fun. One of the fights we did in heavensward (a8s) legit gave us a challenge and it was amazing to figure it out together. The expansion i recommend the most to go back to synced is shadowbringers, it's the best expansion with the most fun raids and extremes and your kit feels very complete already.

[@msguysmiley]

The conversation about people backing out of raids brings back ptsd. Obviously real life > raid. But when you commit to being a member of a raid you have to treat it like a Team sport, or even a job. If that's too much commitment then raiding isn't for you. The consequence of a single person being flakey is far reaching because it plays a huge toll on burning out other people and stagnating progression. I have seen many groups collapse due to a couple people not respecting others time.

[@Vanishou]

To think that Lynx has now deleted his character and is shitting on the game and other people's way of playing... Having your thoughts as a 2 nights CE raider (as I was myself) was interesting !

[@JustRuss]

Yeah I heard about that and it kinda blew my mind after how much he praised FF in this video!

[@HezrouDhiaga]

another thing nobody talks about; I heard a LOT of raiders in WoW NEED Addons to fight the bosses because they're literally just that jank. In FFXIV, you don't need addons at all to fight a boss. They're not legal to do so anyways but some ppl still do it anyways. But overall, the fights are so internally tested time and time again that all classes in any combo can clear the fight as well as do it without any third party assistance. WoW doesn't have this.

[@BaithNa]

Most MMOs don't need addons to do their Raids. Its really just a WoW problem.

[@captaintweet4221]

Yep, wow raiders do need addons bc mechs' design is fucked up. They are telegraphed abysmally awful Another reason: you'll be simply kicked if you perform bad and with addons it's much easier

[@Tython82]

The main reason for this is because Blizzard, instead of enforcing a no add-on policy, just designed their raid fights to assume everyone has add-ons.

[@JustRuss]

Myself included. But it has become an arms race between addon developers and the actual WoW game devs. Bad time for everyone but I might make an entire video on that issue

[@jtowensbyiii6018]

I didn't use any game play add-ons other than dps meters because I liked the info, wow players who do that just suck at wow

[@HankJ666]

Someone in the chat said that "It's kinda the same in FF" when talking about how the new raid turns the previous one irrelevant, that's not really true tho, cuz here's the thing, sure, if a new Savage tier releases, you got no reason to do the previous one except for glam and the mount, but the normal version of the raid is still in the roulettes, as well as the wondrous tales journals, so you still got reasons to do it, wether on purpose or randomly, in WoW once a new raid releases the previous one is just forever gone, cuz nobody ain't gonna LFR for it and nobody ain't gonna do the normal version, only reason you ever return to a previous raid is because of the mount in Mythic and you just wait til next expansion to solo it anyway

[@patyos2]

Yeah Ultimate Raids in a way is like having to do 4+ Savage Raids at the same time in 1 Single Encounter but it is also much harder.

[@sageata_verde]

why would someone commit to a schedule for a game...dont get it...i mean i play for fun but i dont know what ill do tomorrow...how would i know what ill be doing next week?

[@arielcerecer142]

It makes sense. Think of it like going to play a game of basketball with your friends. You need to have a schedule to play so that everyone can make sure they are available. Simple as that

[@dangerousshoes]

So, I've played 14 off and on since about patch 3.2, and raiding has always kinda intimidated me. Don't know what it is, but coming back about a month ago has made me seriously consider doing ultimates. Problem is that I have a difficult time reaching out to new people, but I'd really like to do the content.

[@dogwithsunglasses4051]

FFXIV bosses are way more spectacle then substance tho. If you look for challenge, you dont even have these 11-14 bosses per tier, you have 4-5 Alliance Raids are Causal Content as are Normal Raids. Trials on normal have no reason to be done more then once, so they basically become Roulette filler and with barely any challenge or new Mechanic, Spectacles at best. For a more hardcore player there is little to no reason to do alliance exept maybe getting better stat distribution in sacrifice for 10 Item Levels. Savage and Ultimates are kinda hard, but its the Kiljeaden Mythic kind of difficulty.

[@cherrydragon3120]

Despite some of the endwalker early trials being "easy" i'm no raider and was able to learn the first two current expansion extreme trials for the mount farm pretty easily. 😅 Progressive difficulty is good. I even dipped in savage raids a few times and despite some i find not achievable i did finish one. Sure to say, i'm absolutely no raider. So that even a non raider like me can actualy get into it and have a chance of clearing is great.

[@JustRuss]

Yep that’s real nice :D

[@TheWolfDude91]

Nier automata raids were one of the most unique and fun raids I ever did in an mmo, good gear too, at least for mogs

[@JustRuss]

Will defo try them!

[@206Zelda]

I've heard more people laugh and enjoy themselves when wiping in FFXIV raids, than I ever have in WoW. Even today's WoW we're still dealing with players who don't do mechanics and try to kick people who did less damage than "x" amount, but MORE damage than they did. I hate Damage Police.

[@jtowensbyiii6018]

I remember being the person EXPLAINING THE FIGHT for sylvanas and them booting me because of "low dps" lmfao bunch of assholes

[@justalfric8719]

NEW VIDEO NEW VIDEO NEW VIDEO

[@JustRuss]

Neeeew vidya!

[@melaniebiberger2191]

Lynx kameli is a very good player!

[@likwidsage]

I hope as you go through it, you're doing it with free perspective. From what I've seen WoW players, it seems like they complained most about things that are different from it instead of accepting the differences just because that's how WoW did it.

[@JustRuss]

oh yeah i left all my expectations at the door and im taking it for what it is. it's nice to draw upon WoW experiences but I'm well aware they are different games and I'm really enjoying FFXIV so far!

[@donsaul]

confirm if BS or not, omega weapon kills are ending before the music gets good nowadays

[@vericityv2682]

If there anything that you should be aware of, if you aren't already. Sometimes the community loves this game TOO much. The more eyes you get on you, the more the very pushy, vocal minority of the community are gonna crop up that are gonna push what they want you to do to the detriment of your enjoyment. Please play and consume content (both game and video) at a pace that comfortable for you. The community can be way too overzealous.

[@vampyrusblack494]

btw the baliur person in chat said something about elvui and Weakauras for this game Do not use them cause you can get banned for using them.

[@karasutsuki1733]

The video is a bit too silent D:

[@bellamango6708]

isn't DSR like 20 min haha yeah they take a TON of pulls to clear cause sure it's scripted somewhat like a dance but out of 8 people not a single one can make a major mistake in that whole time for a clear😂

[@immersion9880]

Stall all you want Russ. As a community we tell people to play FF14 at their own pace, that should go for streamers too. Some people lose themselves.

[@SirthOsiris]

15:25 The whole spiel here is why savage raiding isn't for me anymore. It stops sounding like a fun activity with friends and starts feeling like a job with full on attendance policies. And it comes with the stress of having to perform for a bunch of people or you piss them off. Like a job. And if you want to quit, get ready to prepare a two week notice or more, or you piss people off again. You're an unreliable friend just like you're an unreliable worker. I'd rather erase my brain and start Elden Ring and Bloodborne over so I have to deal with Orphan of Kos and Malenia, Blade of Miquella again with no knowledge of what they do, than continue savage raiding. I don't even touch ultimates.

[@thedarkfox9851]

Now that Lynx Video hasn't aged well lmao

[@yuukizaki3163]

This is probably just me but I think it would be better if you’ll just play the game on your own pace without watching too much videos about the end game. ‘Coz one, to avoid spoilers, two, you will not get too excited about the end game. If you’ll be playing ffxiv for the end game and not the story you can skip the story by spam clicking or esc, just don’t buy story skip. In that way you can still learn the basics, progress the game and reach the end game so so so much faster. But of course, in return, you will have lesser attachment to your character, lesser contents to make, lesser viewer counts, and hate from the community. Just my opinion though, just concern that you’ll skip the best part of the game, which is the journey, coz you’re too excited for the end game. Goodluck mate!

[@blazesona12]

don't get cocky bout the ultimates my guy I've been playing it for yrs and im honestly still scared of even attempting ultimates cides..... if ya want the best gear to go into the fights your gonna wanna level crafters and gathers.... and i mean LEVEL THEM cause oh boy does the most recent stuff cost alot if your not constantly running maps or keeping a hold of ALL your gill throught the msq

[@kenallsop7502]

The fact that WoW hasn't made the effort to keep its past raids viable content is bizarre to me. While FF raiding is more my speed, I can totally see why some players prefer WoW raiding, especially with how much of an endgame focus it has. Seems wild, then, that they just let all but the most recent content fall into obscurity.

[@TheFizzster]

I will say that this video is very "rose colored glasses" toward FFXIV. Sure, older content gets run but it's NOT the same. Maybe as a streamer you can get a group to do min ilevel stuff, but most of the players aren't doing that.

[@ubium6184]

There are definitely communities out there for running MINE (Min Ilv No Echo) content, even if you're not a streamer. In my limited experience, there's a decent amount of overlap with BLU discords, especially ones going for the BLU-savage mounts, since they're all about running old content with handicaps. There are also just dedicated MINE discords that are publically joinable if you Google them. I won't pretend like it's as fast as finding a group for current Savage, but it's absolutely possible.

[@arielcerecer142]

Well yeah, but it's not thaat dificult to find discord servers dedicated to running old content, I've done that personally and I've heard of plenty of ppl doing it

[@KingCrimeTime]

​​@@arielcerecer142most of those discords die within like a month. And they're almost always coils only

[@EddatheWicca]

min ilvl is not the same as it was on content, you still outscale it by quite an ammount and also alot of the ARR and HW bosses has been nerfed post launch, nerfs became less frequent later as they released more balanced. some expierienced hardcore player in order to adjust for the outscaling went into min ilvl raids with 1 or 2 accessories missing entirely, but that makes it pretty difficult. with the right adjusting they did it so it was just barely survivable/beatable content. all of that being said, min ilvl is still a great way to expiereince raids for the first time as you still get to see most of the mechanics but also you dont have a too rough time.

[@MiniatureMorpheus]

You should spare 30-40hrs and play FFX. IMHO it probably encompasses best what the feel of Final Fantasy is and will make you really want more FF.

[@lathyrusloon]

Skippers...ew.

[@blushingralseiuwu2222]

The thing with people not respecting people time is probably because you play in US lol. I play WoW and FF XIV in asia server and I never saw someone not participate on the raid on the day of the raid. US is so famous for being shitty

[@JustRuss]

I’m UK but maybe it’s a western thing

[@RicardoSantos-oz3uj]

FF14 fights are dances. Not battles. Meaning that the bosses have a scripted fights. If it were a battle, you would have no idea when a skill will be used. It penalizes you for not knowing the dance. But once you know the dance. Is BORING. And that's why people don't usually do old Extremes unless unsync. They are entertaining the first time. Not so later. With very few exceptions.

[@scottolson8838]

The gearing in FFXIV has certainly something left to be desired. It's almost an afterthought. Its not like WoW where where your game is primarily focused around the gear you get. Coming from WoW it might be refreshing, but long term, the gearing is really stale and the developers really do nothing to spice it up. Its been the same gearing system since 2.0 and I think its really boring compared to WoW gearing having played both games.

[@Saintjo11]

40 Minute Video

[@JustRuss]

facts

[@nicolaskowalski9589]

Hey JustRuss, love your content! A small piece of feedback though: you should really stop talking over the video you are watching, it’s extremely annoying whenever you do. Just pause the video before starting to comment. Firstly it makes it hard to understand both your comments and the video. Secondly it makes it seem like you don’t care about what the video is saying, so why should we care if you don’t? Other than that, really enjoying your perspective, keep up the good work! :)

[@RyuSaarva]

The worst part of doing old fights with minimum item level is that you will have less abilities than when the fight was current content. During shadowbringers square started to do unreal fights which are old fights but you can do them with all abilities with max level and are still challenging, but we only get 1 of those every patch and they are all extremes, hopefully raiders will get unreal savages or ultimates some day.

[@lionwhyte___2634]

First off FF raids are boring snooze fests of "dont stand here, ok now stand here or you die!" Compared to wow raids, at least with wow raids you get more than 1 boss

[@Pijiiotto]

Isn't "don't stand here, ok now stand here or you die" how you can boil down every raid in every MMO ever lol

[@lionwhyte___2634]

@@Pijiiotto Kind of but in FF the raids are just. Show and the boss goes "Here I am! Kill me!" Then everyone walks out either happy or sad

[@scullzomben]

Holy crap there is so much misinformation in your chat. For your sake I hope you have mods or friends around you that actually tell you how things work.

[@PhoenixReturns]

Yo dude, stop bouncing, making me seasick hahah