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Hey, back again to give an update on things since the recent changes.
I’ve been dragging classes through e8s, Seat Ex, Puppets Bunker, all the things, and noticed this thread was back up at the top again and figured I’d revisit it.Tanks: Up front, I need to point out that tank invulns need to be put in an iconless macro for you to push manually. Miqo manages other cooldowns well enough to keep you almost perpetually mitigating, but has no sense of timing for your invulns. Example being Seat Ex, after the white hole mechanic where everyone is brought to 1hp, miqo thinks you’re dying and invulns.
For the most part, tanking on autopilot is flawless. You’re in control of vokes, shirks, and often have either a mitigation CD ready to use or already mid-use for tank busters. For trials/raids, it’s often pretty straight-forward, and as long as you manage your enmity buttons (and your invulns as mentioned) it’ll be a smooth ride. For dungeons, I’d strongly recommend handling trash pulls yourself, it’s just more practical to wrangle mobs with aoe’s and manage cooldowns on your own, then turn her back on for the bosses. Suggested that you put stuns on a macro to avoid miqo trying to stun every single cast bar.
PLD: Massively improved, understands requiescat usage much better. The rotation is very near ideal, with two caveats. One is Confiteor, the ‘finisher’ of the magic phase, you’ll have to watch your mana and push Confiteor manually on your last cast. The other is an oddity dependant on skill speed, if it’s too high (ie you have ludicrous speed warriors melds) you can get ‘stuck’ in physical phase for an extra cycle, because requiescat wasn’t up before miqo began a new RA combo, at which point you have atonement stacks for her to burn, but Goring needs a refresh, so she’ll get on that, meaning you’re now 9 GCDs late and about to have FoF back up, fuck it lets just not do magic phase.
Luckily, both problems are very manageable. One button to keep track of, and don’t push your SkS above 1600.WAR: Near flawless, but with one notable hiccup, Upheaval won’t be saved for Inner Release. Not getting that 450 potency direct crit stinks. However, if you’re willing to learn the warrior opener, you can solve this problem and get a bit of extra optimized dps in that first raid buff window. By forcing Upheaval during IR, ideally a little late, say post-3rd inner chaos, it’ll stagger the cooldown enough that it’ll always be ready during IR, rather than blown just before it.
Aside from that, nothing to say. Warrior is my non-miqo main tank, and she does a damn fine job.DRK: One more problem solved, Living Shadow added, now just one problem remains. Blood Weapon. Every last part of DRK is flawless, except the timing of Blood Weapon. The way it normally gets used is for it to be a very late oGCD. Generally, weaving works in a way where you have a GCD, and enough time to weave two oGCDs before your next GCD, with Blood Weapon, you always want it to be the second oGCD. The difference is being able to only hit 4 attacks in the window, vs always hitting 5 attacks. This is somewhat manageable, with methods to force it being pressed late, such as face pulling with it (optimal opener, btw, run into melee -> Blood Weapon -> target boss, absolutely magnificent) or trying to force another oGCD to be used in the first slot, like Drain or Carve or Plunge, but miqo really, REALLY wants to push Blood Weapon the very moment it comes up. Putting it on a seperate macro button is an option, though you’re still fighting against miqo doing what she wants.
GNB: Easy. Push bloodfest when you pull, then push it every time you don’t have two cartridges and it’s up. Or save it for No Mercy. Or don’t use it at all, GNB is perfectly fine either way. Fantastic rotation. Don’t let her touch bolide, you must use an iconless macro for it.
Quick note before going on to healers, that’ll also apply to healers, these flaws are very insignificant for the vast majority of us, because they’re a matter of optimization for dps on classes that aren’t dps classes, amounting to a few hundred dps difference at worst. You can be a prickly asshole like me where you want your autopilot buddy to play as precise and optimal as you do, or you can just let it ride and enjoy the fantastic animations and pretty colours, miqo will get the job done well enough on her own. Except tank invulns. Don’t let her take control of bolide. People might not notice you Hallowed while still at 75% hp, but everyone sees you bolide.
Healers: I still really dont like leaving healers to their own devices for end-endgame raids, but I’m getting comfortable letting it happen. In dungeons, roulettes, or any ‘casual’ content, they’re perfectly fine, set it and forget it. This is the first time I’m going to recommend setting up a pause button hotkey, one that’s very easy for you to remember and push at a moments notice, and get very accustomed to pushing it. Healers are one of the most notable ‘somethings weird here’ jobs with miqo, as they all want to put their aoe heal effect on everyone all the time, ESPECIALLY when everyone is waiting to start, and if somebody is viewing a cutscene, she refuses to not let them get the HoT/shield. Not to mention, healer pre-pulls, especially astro, are the most convoluted and involved sequences of actions in game, and you probably want control over that until the timer goes off.
WHM: She does the lillies! Nothing more to say. But I’ll say it anyways, if you’re doing raid content, put Bene on an iconless macro. Otherwise, your DRK is going to think you’re a jackass because you used it on a dps who stood in a puddle. We both know miqo did it, of course, but they need to not know that.
SCH: I don’t know shit about scholar, I’ve never liked bubblehealers, but when I use it, people don’t die to avoidable deaths, so I think it does okay. Still doesn’t use the Fey Blessing aoe, or the Seraph skills, but personally I don’t mind that, as Seraph and
consolation are very predictive use shields, best popped before something huge comes out rather than reactive. Seems more prone to hold onto aetherflow stacks for emergency heals over using them to dps, but will dump them when a fresh set is close to coming up. Sacred Soil is on you, and like I’m about to bring up with astro, miqo has a tenancy to fight back against you using targeted aoes, though I only ever find myself using it during transitions anyways.AST: Backseat gaming, the class. A lot of skills don’t get used, and that’s fine, but holy shit she doesn’t want your goddamn help. Celestial Intersection, Earthly Star, Horoscope, Neutral Sect, she won’t use them, and doesn’t want you to either. Target soft lock is fantastic when you need to not target a thing. It’s fantastic for everything that isn’t a healer. But as a healer, miqo has no chill, and must keep healing. Try to place your star? Naw, I’mma heal. Target tank for CI? Naw, benefic time. Collective Unconscious on the group? Naw, cancel it immediately, no HoT, now on cooldown. Horoscope helios? Maybe, but I might find a way to keep busy and not ever let you helios, making it just a basic Horoscope. On that note, I’ll say that Horoscope patch change that made it go off even when the duration expires is very, very nice.
Cards, no problem. GCD heals, no problem. Damage, no problem. But with half of the oGCDs, the cat in miqo comes out. Still very functional with just the base tools, but as a class that gets most of its value from cooldowns, there’s a lot more to be gained.
(Side note, I assume Earthly Star could work similar to DRK’s Salted Earth with a target macro? I haven’t tried, as it’s a much more timing-based skill, but in theory I don’t see why not.)Damage Jobs!
It’s a great time to miqo, as every job is functional and usable. I’ll make note of a few skills that are worth setting up a macro for to add/remove, to avoid using them when youre between phases, or about to transition, or want to hold them for a specific moment.
The two macros will be these:
/hotbar action “Skill Name” Number1 Number2
/hotbar remove Number1 Number2
the two numbers will be 1) the bar its on, and 2) the button on the bar.Casters: It’s not mandatory by any means, but I’d strongly suggest getting familiar with your chosen caster’s opener, doing it manually, then pushing your unpause button and letting miqo go cruise control. It allows you to set up some future timings, and just feels really nice to see the big raid-buffed number on your meter and think ‘I did that’.
SMN: Same old. Does the job well enough to put you on top thanks to broken class, but has trouble with Ruin II / Further Ruin usage. Doesn’t optimize Bahamut Wyrmwaves, but you can force it by mashing Ruin II to get that last Wyrmwave out there. Has some funny timing issues with Tri-D and DWT, leading to strange choices of when to hardcast DoTs and wasted free Tri-D casts, but for the most part it’s not too impactful, as Tri-D is more about the instant DoTs than the damage at this point. The job still stomps post-nerf, and despite being sub-optimal, miqo will outperform the vast majority of players just by keeping both DoTs up and pushing cooldowns on time.
-Notable skills for macro: Aetherpact, both DoTs. There will be times that DoTs are a waste of time. During e8s, hardcasting Miasma isn’t going to help you on the add phase. Turn them off, and just keep blasting.RDM: Miqo does style mage with style, but I’d still suggest not letting her control dashes/backflips and handling that yourself. She won’t launch you to your doom (more often than you will yourself) but she doesn’t understand a lot of boss timings, and might launch into an aoe instead. Still doesn’t use Flare, so be ready when you go into The Combo to push the finisher yourself. Has a tendency to go to town on verraise if a bunch of people die.
-Notable skills for macro: Embolden, possibly manafication. Vercure, not as a toggle, but if you leave the plain vercure button on your bar, you’ll lose a LOT of cast time to miqo self-healing due to lack of faith in your groups healers.BLM: Obvious bot isn’t obvious anymore! Functions like a proper black mage and absolutely destroys the damage meters. I glanced at other posts, and saw somebody mention Ley Lines, and will reaffirm, miqo will use Lines in the worst possible spots, always. I’ve already recommended learning openers, and this is a case where I’ll repeat it, you really want to learn BLM opener, miqo just goes straight into its braindead mode rotation, which will lose you a lot of damage from the first half a minute of raid buffs and turret time. Xeno/T3/Sharpcast use seems… chaotic, but it’s used well enough that you don’t waste a xeno, drop T3, or waste a proc, so no real complaints. Try to use Manaward predictively before you take damage, otherwise miqo uses it after, which makes you look like a goof with your giant shield and low HP on the party window.
-Notable skills for macro: Ley Lines. BLM is so well done that you don’t need to push anything but your shift skills and (sometimes) Manaward, so you may as well just use Lines entirely manually.Ranged Phys: Openers shmopeners, these jobs are pure automated easy mode. Put peloton on an iconless macro. Miqo likes to spam it.
MCH: Win the game. Optimizing comes in the form of taking off your aoe skills so you dont aoe during Ifrit/Gardua when ones invulnerable, learning timings on when you use Queen to not waste half the gauge to transition, and using your goddamn raidwide mitigation. USE IT.
-Notable skills for macro: Wildfire, nothing hurts more than throwing wildfire on a boss just as it leaves.BRD: Win the game. Similar optimization, mind your aoes. Try to snapshot as many buffs as you can with Iron Jaws manually. Apex arrow on full charge, but careful to not miss a DoT refresh by casting it. Sometimes ideal to save it for particular timings, ie adds, burst phases. Can find benefit from using Nature’s Minne on a tank, or somebody about to stand in fire, and using your goddamn raidwide mitigation. USE IT.
-Notable skills for macro: Raging Strikes and Battle Voice.DNC: Make somebody else Win the game. There’s an easy mode macro somewhere earlier in the comments to add Saber Dance and Flourish to your Cascade button, which automates everything but moving, and using your goddamn raidwide mitigation. USE IT. Also your Waltz heal, great for the white hole in Seat Ex where everyone is stacked.
-Notable skills for macro: Tech step and Devilment, they have a tendency to come up just as a boss goes untargetable. Dance Partner, miqo likes to dance with the first person you select, which may not be the one with the 505 weapon that you’re inspecting people for. Don’t get peoples hopes up, macro your dance partner.Melee Phys: This is the melee phys section. Nothing really to add that applies to all of them. I don’t use Legacy movement, so this will be from a perspective of somebody who deals with positionals manually, or not at all. Will go into detail. Suggested that you put stuns on a macro to avoid miqo trying to stun every single cast bar.
SAM: The Melee. Get in range, stand there, hang out with BLM on top of the charts. Does everything but shoha. Practicing the art of slidecasting will pay off tremendously, helps avoid missing Higanbana casts that turn into Midare. Positionals aren’t directly related to your damage, but your kenki is, and the more often you can shinten, kaiten, and senei, the bigger your number gets. On that note, Senei is now only used if you have at least the Jinpu buff, meaning you can now leave it on your bar all the time. Watch what combo miqo is using, and try to land the positional. Learn what your seal icons correlate to for positionals, and you can predict where you need to be for the next during meikyo shisui. While we’re here and learning, Moon = rear, Flower = flank, Snowflake = non-positional. If you have the Moon and Snowflake seals, and shisui is making all your buttons light up, knowing miqo will use Kasha next lets you know to try and hit the flank for the bonus kenki.
There is some very extreme fine tuning and optimization you can get into by using hagakure to dump seals for lining up Tsubame-gaeshi timings, but you’re better off going to the Balance discord to learn the class proper if you’d like to fully min/max what Samurai can do.
-Notable skills for macro: Third Eye, Enpi. Miqo will cast third eye all the time, ALL THE TIME, and has a tendency to waste GCDs attempting to do so. Enpi is the same way. If you’re out of range, it gets spammed. Personally, I prefer to use both skills on demand.DRG: Two notable issues, aside from manual use Stardiver. One, miqo has a hard time pushing macro’d buttons. She tries so hard to push Dragon Sight with a target macro, but rarely pulls it off. You’ll probably have to help it along. Two, staggering Life of the Dragon is far more work than it’s worth with miqo. You can, however, do your opener manually and force it, but miqo has a slight drift with jump/mirage/geirs that’ll cause you to miss buff timings for Stardiver. Honestly, you’re better off letting her take over from the start, and waiting for any buffs to fall within your Life window, either yours, or trick attack, or a Lord card, and just bust the Stardiver.
Beyond that, dragoon is fairly flawless. Do keep dashes/backsteps on, miqo is very capable of properly using jumps safely, and while I have had moments where she high jumps me into the shit during the exact single worst fraction of a second possible, it’s far less than I do on my own.
-Notable skills for macro: Lance, Litany, Sight. They’re all decent options for a ‘save for later’ swap macro. If you’re a control freak, both Dive skills are good macro options, or just turn off dashes/backsteps.MNK: Sit on ass, win the game. Positionals are extremely overrated. That being said, learn fight timings and use riddle of earth often, especially when you’re forced away from a targets rear. Monk rotation and skills are extremely difficult to match to positions if you aren’t pushing the buttons yourself, and aren’t worth trying to anticipate if you miss a rear-buffed bootshine. Between True North and riddle, the amount of damage you lose is no more than 2%. Positionals are overrated. Except bootshine. Always bootshine the butt. It’s 20% of your total damage.
-Notable skills for macro: Brotherhood, Balance, Riddle of Fire. Even more so now that they’re all on a 90s recast, if you waste one, you probably wasted all of them, and if you didn’t, now your timings are busted. Stick them all in one add/remove macro.NIN: Best for last. Not in that ninja is the best, but that it’s my personal pick for most improved, just ahead of BLM. It uses proper ninjutsu during Kassatsu, it uses Shadow Fang during Trick Attack, the opener pushes Trick out a little early but otherwise it’s flawless, and dumps all the big damage during Trick windows. You’ll need to mash Bunshin yourself, be mindful of TCJ timing to not move and interrupt it, and careful to not push a button mid-mudra and get bunnied, but compared to what was a very messy 70 rotation, ninja miqo is leaps and bounds better. Did I mention positionals were overrated? If you’re sitting at 30 seconds left on Huiton and know miqo is going to Armor Crush, sure, go get that flank, but otherwise, stay at the rear.
-Notable skills for macro: Nothing that I’ve found personally. Everything is worth using as soon as you can use it. Maybe TCJ if you’re finding that it lines up with a movement-heavy phase during a particular fight.Blue for memes: Still kind of stinks. Fine for leveling. Toad oil + water jet + 1k needles, miqo no, pls.
I’ve found that all the classes played by miqo preform more or less to the expectations found from the rankings on fflogs, and frequently out-perform other players in far better gear that aren’t in pure try-hard mode. On the four classes I have 500/505 geared, miqo manages 90+ percentiles in all four edens verse fights, 95+ on trials, and even with off-jobs at i490 + relic, can manage blue parses.
A lot of it comes down to knowing the fights, knowing your timings, and wrangling miqo into doing specific things when you want her to, but for the rest of it, she does pretty damn good.
MCH is really good, but you need to use some handcrafted optimization later on. The way Miqo works, she keeps delaying drill and anchor by one GCD to instead use the first part of your combo instead, when drill/anchor comes off cooldown too close to the end of hypercharge. It’s easy to see by just going to a training dummy at 80.
She does (if you reassemble pre-pull) Drill > Anchor > 123 combo > hypercharge, and just as hypercharge runs out, drill comes off cooldown, but she uses the combo first instead. So you need to hammer the drill button manually when hypercharge runs out to avoid drill/anchor drift.
Since Miqo always wants to use drill with Reassemble when it’s up (that’s good!), she also sometimes delays drill in other situations just after it comes off cooldown. Miqo sees: oh Drill came off cooldown > i haven’t pressed reassemble yet > do combo button first then weave reassemble > do drill. So to avoid drift again, you need to manually hit Reassemble when it’s up any time drill is about to come off cooldown.
Aside from that and some hypercharge timings that are so close to drill that you can’t hit reassemble in time before hypercharge wears off & drill comes back down, and the obvious queen usage during downtimes, it’s pretty much flawless.
The way Miqo works, she keeps delaying drill and anchor by one GCD
I’d wondered if it was a skill speed problem similar to paladin, so I gave it a test run with 2.50 and 2.45 GCDs.
No difference. Every single anchor and drill gets drifted. More notably though, with slower skill speed, the drift is much, much worse, more than .05 skill speed should amount to.
Tried out 2.43 for kicks, same trend.
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This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by
shallowsteve.
So I’m never quite satisfied until I’ve pushed something to an unreasonable limit, and decided to try 2.34 GCD with 1930 skill speed.
To be clear, the problem of drift is still happening, however it’s less than two seconds per drift and hits that mysterious limbo deadzone where you’re either casting nothing for a second, or drifting by a second, so it confuses xivanalysis into thinking everything is probably okay. All things considered, at this speed, it more or less is okay enough.
However, I don’t really recommend trying to shake up the meta by doing a gear set that’s totally opposite to the standard BiS. It’s hard to justify intentionally building ‘wrong’ and not having a valid reason for it aside from ‘it makes my bot play better’
thanks for the detailed write-ups.
I’m finding WHM working very well but doing pretty poorly on damage dealing. Uses Cure and Medica 1 a lot more than I think it should. Uses Medica 2 on top of itself often when unnecessary. Burst heals like a god though. Trying to macro Assylum but hasn’t been working well. Need to focus on when to use Surecast manually for knockbacks.
BRD and PAL are leveling for me and are doing fantastic with 0 intervention. I’m assuming I’ll need to manually use hallowed ground with PAL once I get to 80 and raids.
Thats not surprising considering the average item level today is i520.
i also tried to use it with trust, i got lower dps than alisae. is this normal? it works fine with MCH tho
Thats not surprising considering the average item level today is i520.
I doubt that’s really the average unless you’re only counting the people who raid every week. It’s likely closer to 510 with people wearing Exarchic gear.
Thats not surprising considering the average item level today is i520.
I doubt that’s really the average unless you’re only counting the people who raid every week. It’s likely closer to 510 with people wearing Exarchic gear.
Raid Gear is 530.
You can comfortably get 520 by this point on more than one class. -
This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by
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