This was a long time coming. My first experience of savage raiding was in Endwalker and my experience taught me a lot about raiding and how to play a couple of jobs on an ‘okay I can clear savage’ level which really just made extremes and normal content a bit more straightforward for me. I was never able to finish a tier. Some of that was my own lack of skill, some of that was group dynamics and my complete rejection of raiding in party finder and some of it was just bad luck. However, at the launch of Dawntrail I was introduced to a new group who were currently farming the extremes and that lead me to joining them for learning and clearing an ultimate.
When the Cruiserweight tier was launched with FFXIV Patch 7.2 I was invited to join as a phys ranged player for the four savage fights and we cleared the first one really fast which gave me high hopes. M5S Dancing Green is a pretty nice start to savage. The fight is pretty fun, mechanics aren’t too challenging and clearing on, I think it was the second week, felt pretty nice.
I originally started the tier as a MCH because its my preferred phys ranged job but it was, as usual, neglected and had damage output reduced and it felt really rubbish to play as the raids went on. The damage check on M7S felt really tight and there were a few times when we had almost flawless runs with no deaths or damage downs. I switched to DNC which, was a steep learning curve, as I’d never played it other than levelling content before. The biggest adjustment was lining up buff windows as Dancer offers a lot more support than Machinist does (and should, Machinist SHOULD be a selfish DPS job but it doesn’t do enough to qualify as one, frustratingly) but I managed to learn it and we were able to clear.
M6S felt like its own entity with add phase and I struggled a lot with orientating myself to be thrown across the arena in the correct direction. We maybe needed a few Tank LB’s to survive. With that being said, despite my not great abilities people were pretty patient with me which I really appreciated.
Getting to clear M8S for the first time felt really good. The adrenaline was going hard and I was pretty focused and pretty stressed. Others had cleared it already and wanted the reclear and I was just so desperately wanting that first clear. To finally get it after many weeks of progression and practice felt really satisfying. I was feeling super burned out from raiding, my health has been pretty bad lately which has made it harder to stay focused for any period of time and I really felt like I was being a burden on the group and was so ready to say to clear with someone more competent than me as I just didn’t think I could. But I did. I’m never going to be the most optimal player, but I can clear content unrestricted, even if it takes me longer than others.
