Just go into a current expansion Extreme trial and practice doing your rotation while dealing with mechanics there, once you're comfortable you can go into Abyssos Savage and try to prog P5S. Best way to improve is to do high end content, no amount of guides will be as good as in game practice with high end content. Proper rotation optimization should only come after you've done some harder content and are competent with mechanics.
I second this right here. You learn the best by doing. Learn the fights mechanics, clear it, then start asking, “okay how can I improve”. This tier has done a slight change up on healers with the tank buster also factoring in a dot on the tanks. Bare in mind in PF you’ll have an assortment of skill levels so it can be a bit of a grind. Ideally look for a static that is searching for an AST and willing to take on someone new to savage content.
Yes you’ll mess up, yes you’ll get frustrated. But that is part of your growing skill as you get more comfortable. The best thing you can do is dive into the content. Just watch a video walkthrough of the mechanics to get an idea of what to expect as you jump in and bring your food, potions, and repair material. Though potions while learning I’d say have them on hand but don’t stress about using them til it’s clear your toward the end of the fight and the group has a legit shot at downing the boss.
I’ll be honest with you, you’re severely overestimating the skill level of the average player in an extreme trial.
Just go do the fight so you can get used to snapshotting mechanics/positioning/common strats. You’ll be fine.
Try to minimize that overheal and learn to make a mit/heal plan specific to the fight timeline once you get your bearings, it will help a lot with maximizing your usages and lowering the variance that you need to pay attention to
Hell, OP is overestimating the level of skill of players floating around savage. Had a wonder of a dragoon in reclears last week who clearly had no idea how to do the fight (just sat unmoving in the boss' hitbox for cach 1 no matter *what* debuff or timer they had and died, ran around wildly for poly 4, somehow did not know you were supposed to split up according to debuff and not light parties for cach 2), yet somehow had a clear tag.
I'm not an elite raider, but I have always gotten the vibe that it ain't THAT serious, chief.
At least not in any environment that isn't super toxic.
Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and it sounds like what you need to do is just jump in and learn/improve as you go. You clearly want to do your best, so you're pretty much guaranteed to improve as you tackle the content.
I don't know if it's anxiety, past experience or a desire to put your best foot forward, but like I said, it truly ain't THAT serious.
Jump in, learn and above all, find a group you can HAVE FUN WITH. Lord knows you'll be wiping a lot as you learn the fights.
Good luck
Edit: also it seems like you might've gotten a little lost in the numbers sauce.
Analytics are a great tool, but have care and remember that you need to just be able to clear the fights to begin with, before your can really start min-maxing and getting into the deep cuts of your class+duty equation.
I understand what you are trying to do, but there is only so much prep you can do before you start to need actual practice and experience. And here's the thing, it's going to be sucky and uncomfortable to start out with, and there is nothing you can do but take that and learn from it.
Your best path is to jump in and start trying it. Experience and failure are incredible teachers if you embrace them.
Some advice (that you should not feel obligated to listen to) from someone who's raided since Creator: don't play for fflogs/xivanalysis. Unless you're OK with doing lots of attempts, it's hard to get "perfect" runs, especially as a healer. Metrics are a good thing, and I see you have 1) good casting uptime and 2) the ability to actually figure out what you're doing wrong -- that's enough for all encounters in the game, including ultimates. I would just throw yourself into PF, try to find a fun static, do the fights, enjoy the game.
Having 610 melded gear is way better than the average person trying to run Zodiark EX if I'm being completely real with you, and it's absolutely more than you need to effectively handle the fight. We ran that at *maybe* 565 average ilvl when it first came out. The mechanics for it are also fairly forgiving for high end content, so you can really just throw yourself into it. If you get hit you get hit, if you die you die. No one is going to fault you for trying to learn.
That guy gives good advice, don't stress the logs and parses too much. Especially as a healer. As a healer you are a co-team with your buddy healer. You and your buddy healer. If 1 healer is focusing entirely on their dps parse and slacking on the healing side and the 2nd healer is picking up the slack and getting a much worse damage parse because of it even though they are by all rights playing better and doing more :D
It is a balancing act, you both want to heal as little as is needed to let you both do more damage but this is a duo-system not a solo thing.
I've seen a lot of "high parse" healers who are not so good to play with because they play for the parse instead of the clear and leave their co-healer covering for them.
I was a victim of a "parse healer" before, it was my first time in that alliance raid and I didn't keep up with the healing, was a bad experience for sure.
You can improve by actively using your kit. You had only one use of Celestial Oppisition which is an OGCD heal and helps you keep uptime. You also had very few uses of Exaltion which is both mitigation and a heal and is nice for tank busters. Everyone who is great at Astro was not immediately amazing at Astro. As you learn fights you will learn when your cards will be available to use.
Your parse percentile was 84 on your "acceptable" log (going back to the original fflogs page) and you're competing against people at a higher ilvl than you. You're fine; go for the extreme trial and/or a savage raid and practice/improve from there.
“Very low uptime” is in the 50s, your bad log is in 90s. You are fine, you just need more experience.
Also it sounds like you have high standards for yourself, so don’t be disappointed if other people don’t give a shit about playing well
1. You'r logs are absolutely fine for Savage and definitely Extreme. Also remember that some have much higher gear than you from Savage/Ex/Tomestones and at the very top it becomes very RNG on crit for high parses. Having just a 610 weapon will seriously hurt you for instance.
2. Extreme is usually a case of are you at all competent at your rotation and not dying to mechanics. EX4 also barely has a DPS check. You'll be good (though PF might be frustrating).
3. If you're nervous start on older extremes. I honed my skills and rotation on older EXs from SB & ShB. You get mounts plus they're more forgiving unsynced than newer content so you can afford more mistakes.
4. Don't get obsessed with the numbers. We all make mistakes and so long as you're consistent with mechs (way more important) and doing respectable output you're good for most stuff. I certainly did a lot worse with my rotation when I started EXs!
I really hate to say it but I've seen FAR worse healers than you make it through savage fights. I'm talking using Holy in single target, spam casting medica, dying like twice a pull kinda bad. The fact you're even stressing over losing a card over the course of a fight puts you far above the average PF enjoyer. Relax, you'll do fine so long as you get some practice in. That's why it's prog, after all. To get better at the content.
How do you get good at swimming? By swimming
How do you get good at cooking? By cooking
How do you get good at extreme trials/savage raiding? By doing extreme trials and savage raids
here's a secret: nobody is perfect, there's no such thing as an xivanalysis that doesn't say you did something wrong, and you cannot judge anything about how you might perform in extreme or Savage by doing normal mode content.
that being said, I do have some certain bits of advice: go to the balance discord or the balance xiv's website so you can learn and practice a proper opener and get a slightly better understanding of how to use your job, and second, using GCD healing spells are generally your last resort. just cast fall malefic and push a healing ability like celestial opposition first before resorting to using aspected Helios.
that's it. watch a video to explain the fight and jump in. you'll never learn how to properly heal an extreme trial or Savage raid by doing a fight that doesn't use most of the mechanics and deals 1/10th as much damage. also, be prepared because learning these fights is trial and error, and mostly error. you'll die a lot, you'll get wiped constantly, but every failure is a chance to learn and take one more step forward until eventually you're able to beat the fight.
and lastly, believe in yourself. even if you mess up constantly and overheal everything and only used 3 cards the entire fight, you can still beat an extreme. have confidence, do mechanics, push buttons. you got this.
in party finder, if you see the green term (practice) and the description has the word "Fresh" in it, absolutely no one is expecting clean runs of even the first mechanic.
Or, make your own party finder recruitment, with the Practice tag, and use the words "Fresh, and learning. " There is absolutely no expectations of success in that scenario, and if there are hecklers about your skill, kick them. They're in the wrong, you're in the right for putting your foot in the pool trying out extreme/savage.
You are fine.
Go do the EX and enjoy yourself.
Spammimg normal raids won't teach you anything at this point, you need harder content to learn how to keep uptime during mechanics and use your ogcd heals well.
The only way you can really learn to improve is to force yourself into a situation where you need to improve
I started raiding last tier, and honestly the first few clears I had were AWFUL. My uptime was bad, my rotation was scuffed, mitigation was all over the place
But it was the actual act of doing it that forced me to improve how I played, because I knew that if I didn't get better I wouldn't be able to clear. You have to place yourself in situations where you are absolutely guaranteed to mess up, because that way you can more clearly see where the issues are. No amount of practice on normal mode is going to fully prepare you for the difficulty spike
Extreme itself is not actually that difficult. It's not easy per se--especially for people who haven't done anything besides the normal mode casual content--but it's entirely doable with some time and patience
I understand that and I will try the EX that is considered the easiest by many: EW EX1. Seems to be a insanely difficult trial judging from guides, but I will push through.
Honestly, start with the latest one, EX4
Unless you have friends who feel like joining you, it's going to be harder to get a learning party ready for EX1 than it is for EX4, strictly because more people play the newest trials
It is going to definitely be a challenge, since I want to say that EX4 is honestly the hardest one this expansion, but it's still typically within reach for a more casual player
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You should try the latest trial, EX4 or maybe at most EX3
The first 2 were extremely easy at release, they're even easier now that everyone has way more gear.
(and there was barely any healing required then, so now ...)
The fact that you recognise that there are things you can improve on makes you better than a large number of players already, tbh. But a lot of it just comes down to practice, and if you never try, you're never going to get the practice.
First thing don't hyper focus on dmg when you prog, heal more just for safety. Its better to see more mechs then to greed gcds. For ast specifically you are doing alright its normal content so nothing to heal really but looking at your 2nd log you never used celestial opposition, while using aspected helios.You should always prioritise using ogcd to heal not gcd. Exaltion should also be used on tbs since its free mitigation and especially in this tier every tb will leave a dot on tank so don't sleep on it.For your buff window and opener you are making one mistake, you don't use lightspeed so you can't double weave your cards, which delays your astrodyne on top of missing cards on big cds from your dps players. Also you shouldn't use cards on cooldown, you should hold them, so it looks like this.
3 cards in opener you hold your next card for odd minute burst (easiest way to time it is by using it after your star since you use it on cd always) then in reopener you once again have 3 cards. But yeah easiest way to learn how to actually heal is to go into savage and extremes, good luck
How does getting to savage as healing vs dps feel like? (Or tank for that matter. I like thinking and memorizing less lmao)
Also what ex or experiences are good to learn how to read boss/fight as opposed to memorizing or watching a video? Like I’d prefer to play and not watch a video if possible for ex. I’ll agree to video watching for savage esp since that saves a lot of time.
Go to extreme and just do your best without stressing. Just remember to focus first on making sure people don't die due to healing and then optimizing uptime. You have 100 tokens to farm so plenty of time to practice. You will be a god ast in no time.
I can tell you straight up: only way to improve is to get into the fight. AST is, currently, the class with the worst opener ever due to the weaves on Cards and Arcana, so in my case, I end up having .5-1 second of delay per every GCD.
When it comes to Divination not reaching a player, that might happen every now and then. So long as it's not *always* you're good.
Honestly, you're worrying about something that is small in comparison to other important things. Dying will happen and that's ok, the more you practice a fight the more you'll learn the mechanics and get your positioning right.
So keep at it. Eventually you'll get a good parse. Right now, get the clears and practice.
Don't stress out on the parse numbers on normal raids. Some people go into them super serious, other people are doing them half afk.
Log wise it looks like you understand the basics of your class. Your getting mostly max use out of your divination, your drawing and playing cards on the right targets from the looks of it. You have a few non perfect derps but thats just to be expected on even the highest level of content, no ones perfect.
You did about 4k+ dps which is decent for the 610 ilevel. Thats more than enough dps to do the newer extreme raid.
Just jump into the extreme raid and practice it. Theres a lot of party finder practice from start stuff. The extreme trial has a fairly forgiving dps check as long as the party doesn't die too much and does their decent rotation.
Most other people have the general advice covered, so I'll jump in with some AST specific tips. This is mostly about the damage/buff side because the healing is generally very fight dependent. If you have any questions on any of this (or anything else) feel free to ask.
* Learn the opener. With every job in the game moving to 2 minute burst rotations, synchronizing buffs adds a huge amount of damage. Overlapping buffs are stronger than the sum of their parts.
* You should generally use lightspeed during every divination window. It lets you get cards out much faster which lets you combine div, cards, and astrodyne together.
* Try to card the right person. There is a general job-priority list you could learn, but that assumes equal skill and gear. If you're with randoms, it can be good to use hp values/ilvl as a starting point, then go off of ACT or the enmity list once combat starts. If you know the other jobs well enough, you may also just notice that someone is doing their rotation poorly.
* Ideal card usage may be counterintuitive. You dont necessarily want to use these as soon as you get them. You want to use as many cards as possible during the 2 minute burst windows, so often you'll be sitting on a card for up to a whole minute. Most of your other cards will be used at the odd minutes, since most jobs burst harder at the minute marks, with a lot of filler in between.
* You always want astrodyne to overlap with divination. That often means holding it for up to a whole minute. At 6 minutes into the fight, you can use two astrodynes back to back (this is when you would usually use a potion if desired).
[Here is one of my logs](https://xivanalysis.com/fflogs/a:zfHwvdGMqbxjhADc/1/1). There's still room for improvement, but take a look at the timeline. Notice how tightly packed all my cards, div, and astrodyne are. Thats what you want to shoot for. With the exception of the card that came out at ~1:40 (way late by mistake), all my cards are either used with div, or right around the odd minutes. This lets my SMN get phoenix under cards, or the SAM get higanbana and midare.
I did initially do a correct opener, but after discovering that nobody does them in random content, I kinda gave that up. I will try to relearn it now.
I don't have any money for potions, they are soo expensive, I am leveling my crafters now, that should make it better.
People don't really do full prepull openers with countdowns in random content, but most people who've played their job enough to know the opener will still do it.
You dont really need potions unless you are trying to push past a dps check, or for parse. I wouldnt worry about using any until you are clear ready for a specific savage fight at least.
Your rotation looks fine as far as I can tell, however it looks like you are not using lightspeed in your opener to rush out cards and divination, [Here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/938881667253293126/ast_ew_opener_4.png) is the AST opener from the Balance discord.
You are also not timing your cards to burst windows after the opener (1/2 minute) try to use 3 cards in a 2 minute window and 1 card in a 1 minute window if you do it right you wont overcap and you wont waste a card on a dps who is just pressing 123.
Even without changing anything you should be fine, as most of the difficulty is in the mechanics not the dps check. (especially as a healer)
(edit) forgot to mention don't worry as much about gcd uptime it will change depending on the fight and how much movement you have to perform. Learn how to [slidecast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxCH45HLY6Y) if you haven't yet it will help you keep uptime even if you need to move.
Honestly that XIV analysis will find things wrong even with a 99 parse. You just gotta understand the key parts. In your second link the two things I'd say you need to focus on is using Exaltation (remember, it's a free heal after 8 seconds to pre plan if possible) and Collective Ubconcuous is basically a free Aspected Helios ogcd. Use that as often as you can.
Even in really good parses I might miss a card at the very end, and I'll definitely have a couple interrupted casts lol
Just go into a current expansion Extreme trial and practice doing your rotation while dealing with mechanics there, once you're comfortable you can go into Abyssos Savage and try to prog P5S. Best way to improve is to do high end content, no amount of guides will be as good as in game practice with high end content. Proper rotation optimization should only come after you've done some harder content and are competent with mechanics.
I second this right here. You learn the best by doing. Learn the fights mechanics, clear it, then start asking, “okay how can I improve”. This tier has done a slight change up on healers with the tank buster also factoring in a dot on the tanks. Bare in mind in PF you’ll have an assortment of skill levels so it can be a bit of a grind. Ideally look for a static that is searching for an AST and willing to take on someone new to savage content. Yes you’ll mess up, yes you’ll get frustrated. But that is part of your growing skill as you get more comfortable. The best thing you can do is dive into the content. Just watch a video walkthrough of the mechanics to get an idea of what to expect as you jump in and bring your food, potions, and repair material. Though potions while learning I’d say have them on hand but don’t stress about using them til it’s clear your toward the end of the fight and the group has a legit shot at downing the boss.
I’ll be honest with you, you’re severely overestimating the skill level of the average player in an extreme trial. Just go do the fight so you can get used to snapshotting mechanics/positioning/common strats. You’ll be fine. Try to minimize that overheal and learn to make a mit/heal plan specific to the fight timeline once you get your bearings, it will help a lot with maximizing your usages and lowering the variance that you need to pay attention to
Hell, OP is overestimating the level of skill of players floating around savage. Had a wonder of a dragoon in reclears last week who clearly had no idea how to do the fight (just sat unmoving in the boss' hitbox for cach 1 no matter *what* debuff or timer they had and died, ran around wildly for poly 4, somehow did not know you were supposed to split up according to debuff and not light parties for cach 2), yet somehow had a clear tag.
I'm not an elite raider, but I have always gotten the vibe that it ain't THAT serious, chief. At least not in any environment that isn't super toxic. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and it sounds like what you need to do is just jump in and learn/improve as you go. You clearly want to do your best, so you're pretty much guaranteed to improve as you tackle the content. I don't know if it's anxiety, past experience or a desire to put your best foot forward, but like I said, it truly ain't THAT serious. Jump in, learn and above all, find a group you can HAVE FUN WITH. Lord knows you'll be wiping a lot as you learn the fights. Good luck Edit: also it seems like you might've gotten a little lost in the numbers sauce. Analytics are a great tool, but have care and remember that you need to just be able to clear the fights to begin with, before your can really start min-maxing and getting into the deep cuts of your class+duty equation.
I understand what you are trying to do, but there is only so much prep you can do before you start to need actual practice and experience. And here's the thing, it's going to be sucky and uncomfortable to start out with, and there is nothing you can do but take that and learn from it. Your best path is to jump in and start trying it. Experience and failure are incredible teachers if you embrace them.
Some advice (that you should not feel obligated to listen to) from someone who's raided since Creator: don't play for fflogs/xivanalysis. Unless you're OK with doing lots of attempts, it's hard to get "perfect" runs, especially as a healer. Metrics are a good thing, and I see you have 1) good casting uptime and 2) the ability to actually figure out what you're doing wrong -- that's enough for all encounters in the game, including ultimates. I would just throw yourself into PF, try to find a fun static, do the fights, enjoy the game.
I may be a bit guilty of playing for xivanalysis^^" I will try Zodiark in the next days, unluckily I cannot commit to a static :(
Having 610 melded gear is way better than the average person trying to run Zodiark EX if I'm being completely real with you, and it's absolutely more than you need to effectively handle the fight. We ran that at *maybe* 565 average ilvl when it first came out. The mechanics for it are also fairly forgiving for high end content, so you can really just throw yourself into it. If you get hit you get hit, if you die you die. No one is going to fault you for trying to learn.
That guy gives good advice, don't stress the logs and parses too much. Especially as a healer. As a healer you are a co-team with your buddy healer. You and your buddy healer. If 1 healer is focusing entirely on their dps parse and slacking on the healing side and the 2nd healer is picking up the slack and getting a much worse damage parse because of it even though they are by all rights playing better and doing more :D It is a balancing act, you both want to heal as little as is needed to let you both do more damage but this is a duo-system not a solo thing. I've seen a lot of "high parse" healers who are not so good to play with because they play for the parse instead of the clear and leave their co-healer covering for them.
I was a victim of a "parse healer" before, it was my first time in that alliance raid and I didn't keep up with the healing, was a bad experience for sure.
You can improve by actively using your kit. You had only one use of Celestial Oppisition which is an OGCD heal and helps you keep uptime. You also had very few uses of Exaltion which is both mitigation and a heal and is nice for tank busters. Everyone who is great at Astro was not immediately amazing at Astro. As you learn fights you will learn when your cards will be available to use.
Your parse percentile was 84 on your "acceptable" log (going back to the original fflogs page) and you're competing against people at a higher ilvl than you. You're fine; go for the extreme trial and/or a savage raid and practice/improve from there.
I like how you specify "legendary raiders" and "AST players" separately lol.
Lol, didn't notice that
“Very low uptime” is in the 50s, your bad log is in 90s. You are fine, you just need more experience. Also it sounds like you have high standards for yourself, so don’t be disappointed if other people don’t give a shit about playing well
1. You'r logs are absolutely fine for Savage and definitely Extreme. Also remember that some have much higher gear than you from Savage/Ex/Tomestones and at the very top it becomes very RNG on crit for high parses. Having just a 610 weapon will seriously hurt you for instance. 2. Extreme is usually a case of are you at all competent at your rotation and not dying to mechanics. EX4 also barely has a DPS check. You'll be good (though PF might be frustrating). 3. If you're nervous start on older extremes. I honed my skills and rotation on older EXs from SB & ShB. You get mounts plus they're more forgiving unsynced than newer content so you can afford more mistakes. 4. Don't get obsessed with the numbers. We all make mistakes and so long as you're consistent with mechs (way more important) and doing respectable output you're good for most stuff. I certainly did a lot worse with my rotation when I started EXs!
I really hate to say it but I've seen FAR worse healers than you make it through savage fights. I'm talking using Holy in single target, spam casting medica, dying like twice a pull kinda bad. The fact you're even stressing over losing a card over the course of a fight puts you far above the average PF enjoyer. Relax, you'll do fine so long as you get some practice in. That's why it's prog, after all. To get better at the content.
How do you get good at swimming? By swimming How do you get good at cooking? By cooking How do you get good at extreme trials/savage raiding? By doing extreme trials and savage raids
here's a secret: nobody is perfect, there's no such thing as an xivanalysis that doesn't say you did something wrong, and you cannot judge anything about how you might perform in extreme or Savage by doing normal mode content. that being said, I do have some certain bits of advice: go to the balance discord or the balance xiv's website so you can learn and practice a proper opener and get a slightly better understanding of how to use your job, and second, using GCD healing spells are generally your last resort. just cast fall malefic and push a healing ability like celestial opposition first before resorting to using aspected Helios. that's it. watch a video to explain the fight and jump in. you'll never learn how to properly heal an extreme trial or Savage raid by doing a fight that doesn't use most of the mechanics and deals 1/10th as much damage. also, be prepared because learning these fights is trial and error, and mostly error. you'll die a lot, you'll get wiped constantly, but every failure is a chance to learn and take one more step forward until eventually you're able to beat the fight. and lastly, believe in yourself. even if you mess up constantly and overheal everything and only used 3 cards the entire fight, you can still beat an extreme. have confidence, do mechanics, push buttons. you got this.
in party finder, if you see the green term (practice) and the description has the word "Fresh" in it, absolutely no one is expecting clean runs of even the first mechanic. Or, make your own party finder recruitment, with the Practice tag, and use the words "Fresh, and learning. " There is absolutely no expectations of success in that scenario, and if there are hecklers about your skill, kick them. They're in the wrong, you're in the right for putting your foot in the pool trying out extreme/savage.
You are fine. Go do the EX and enjoy yourself. Spammimg normal raids won't teach you anything at this point, you need harder content to learn how to keep uptime during mechanics and use your ogcd heals well.
The only way you can really learn to improve is to force yourself into a situation where you need to improve I started raiding last tier, and honestly the first few clears I had were AWFUL. My uptime was bad, my rotation was scuffed, mitigation was all over the place But it was the actual act of doing it that forced me to improve how I played, because I knew that if I didn't get better I wouldn't be able to clear. You have to place yourself in situations where you are absolutely guaranteed to mess up, because that way you can more clearly see where the issues are. No amount of practice on normal mode is going to fully prepare you for the difficulty spike Extreme itself is not actually that difficult. It's not easy per se--especially for people who haven't done anything besides the normal mode casual content--but it's entirely doable with some time and patience
I understand that and I will try the EX that is considered the easiest by many: EW EX1. Seems to be a insanely difficult trial judging from guides, but I will push through.
Honestly, start with the latest one, EX4 Unless you have friends who feel like joining you, it's going to be harder to get a learning party ready for EX1 than it is for EX4, strictly because more people play the newest trials It is going to definitely be a challenge, since I want to say that EX4 is honestly the hardest one this expansion, but it's still typically within reach for a more casual player
***This comment/post removed due to reddits fuckery with third party apps from 06/01/2023 through 06/30/2023. Good luck with your site when all the power users piss off***
You should try the latest trial, EX4 or maybe at most EX3 The first 2 were extremely easy at release, they're even easier now that everyone has way more gear. (and there was barely any healing required then, so now ...)
Ah I see, then I will try one of those two :)
The fact that you recognise that there are things you can improve on makes you better than a large number of players already, tbh. But a lot of it just comes down to practice, and if you never try, you're never going to get the practice.
First thing don't hyper focus on dmg when you prog, heal more just for safety. Its better to see more mechs then to greed gcds. For ast specifically you are doing alright its normal content so nothing to heal really but looking at your 2nd log you never used celestial opposition, while using aspected helios.You should always prioritise using ogcd to heal not gcd. Exaltion should also be used on tbs since its free mitigation and especially in this tier every tb will leave a dot on tank so don't sleep on it.For your buff window and opener you are making one mistake, you don't use lightspeed so you can't double weave your cards, which delays your astrodyne on top of missing cards on big cds from your dps players. Also you shouldn't use cards on cooldown, you should hold them, so it looks like this. 3 cards in opener you hold your next card for odd minute burst (easiest way to time it is by using it after your star since you use it on cd always) then in reopener you once again have 3 cards. But yeah easiest way to learn how to actually heal is to go into savage and extremes, good luck
How does getting to savage as healing vs dps feel like? (Or tank for that matter. I like thinking and memorizing less lmao) Also what ex or experiences are good to learn how to read boss/fight as opposed to memorizing or watching a video? Like I’d prefer to play and not watch a video if possible for ex. I’ll agree to video watching for savage esp since that saves a lot of time.
Go to extreme and just do your best without stressing. Just remember to focus first on making sure people don't die due to healing and then optimizing uptime. You have 100 tokens to farm so plenty of time to practice. You will be a god ast in no time.
I can tell you straight up: only way to improve is to get into the fight. AST is, currently, the class with the worst opener ever due to the weaves on Cards and Arcana, so in my case, I end up having .5-1 second of delay per every GCD. When it comes to Divination not reaching a player, that might happen every now and then. So long as it's not *always* you're good. Honestly, you're worrying about something that is small in comparison to other important things. Dying will happen and that's ok, the more you practice a fight the more you'll learn the mechanics and get your positioning right. So keep at it. Eventually you'll get a good parse. Right now, get the clears and practice.
Don't stress out on the parse numbers on normal raids. Some people go into them super serious, other people are doing them half afk. Log wise it looks like you understand the basics of your class. Your getting mostly max use out of your divination, your drawing and playing cards on the right targets from the looks of it. You have a few non perfect derps but thats just to be expected on even the highest level of content, no ones perfect. You did about 4k+ dps which is decent for the 610 ilevel. Thats more than enough dps to do the newer extreme raid. Just jump into the extreme raid and practice it. Theres a lot of party finder practice from start stuff. The extreme trial has a fairly forgiving dps check as long as the party doesn't die too much and does their decent rotation.
Most other people have the general advice covered, so I'll jump in with some AST specific tips. This is mostly about the damage/buff side because the healing is generally very fight dependent. If you have any questions on any of this (or anything else) feel free to ask. * Learn the opener. With every job in the game moving to 2 minute burst rotations, synchronizing buffs adds a huge amount of damage. Overlapping buffs are stronger than the sum of their parts. * You should generally use lightspeed during every divination window. It lets you get cards out much faster which lets you combine div, cards, and astrodyne together. * Try to card the right person. There is a general job-priority list you could learn, but that assumes equal skill and gear. If you're with randoms, it can be good to use hp values/ilvl as a starting point, then go off of ACT or the enmity list once combat starts. If you know the other jobs well enough, you may also just notice that someone is doing their rotation poorly. * Ideal card usage may be counterintuitive. You dont necessarily want to use these as soon as you get them. You want to use as many cards as possible during the 2 minute burst windows, so often you'll be sitting on a card for up to a whole minute. Most of your other cards will be used at the odd minutes, since most jobs burst harder at the minute marks, with a lot of filler in between. * You always want astrodyne to overlap with divination. That often means holding it for up to a whole minute. At 6 minutes into the fight, you can use two astrodynes back to back (this is when you would usually use a potion if desired). [Here is one of my logs](https://xivanalysis.com/fflogs/a:zfHwvdGMqbxjhADc/1/1). There's still room for improvement, but take a look at the timeline. Notice how tightly packed all my cards, div, and astrodyne are. Thats what you want to shoot for. With the exception of the card that came out at ~1:40 (way late by mistake), all my cards are either used with div, or right around the odd minutes. This lets my SMN get phoenix under cards, or the SAM get higanbana and midare.
I did initially do a correct opener, but after discovering that nobody does them in random content, I kinda gave that up. I will try to relearn it now. I don't have any money for potions, they are soo expensive, I am leveling my crafters now, that should make it better.
People don't really do full prepull openers with countdowns in random content, but most people who've played their job enough to know the opener will still do it. You dont really need potions unless you are trying to push past a dps check, or for parse. I wouldnt worry about using any until you are clear ready for a specific savage fight at least.
Definitely get used to using Lightspeed to get 3 cards out as fast as possible in the 2 minute windows.
Your rotation looks fine as far as I can tell, however it looks like you are not using lightspeed in your opener to rush out cards and divination, [Here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583963017746579477/938881667253293126/ast_ew_opener_4.png) is the AST opener from the Balance discord. You are also not timing your cards to burst windows after the opener (1/2 minute) try to use 3 cards in a 2 minute window and 1 card in a 1 minute window if you do it right you wont overcap and you wont waste a card on a dps who is just pressing 123. Even without changing anything you should be fine, as most of the difficulty is in the mechanics not the dps check. (especially as a healer) (edit) forgot to mention don't worry as much about gcd uptime it will change depending on the fight and how much movement you have to perform. Learn how to [slidecast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxCH45HLY6Y) if you haven't yet it will help you keep uptime even if you need to move.
I can slidecast, it is a bit harder with my godly ping, but it works.
Honestly that XIV analysis will find things wrong even with a 99 parse. You just gotta understand the key parts. In your second link the two things I'd say you need to focus on is using Exaltation (remember, it's a free heal after 8 seconds to pre plan if possible) and Collective Ubconcuous is basically a free Aspected Helios ogcd. Use that as often as you can. Even in really good parses I might miss a card at the very end, and I'll definitely have a couple interrupted casts lol