Progression as a Caster in FFXIV

In order to fully understand what you should be doing during prog, you must first understand what a Magical Ranged DPS job provides to a raid composition. Throughout multiple expansions, Magical Ranged DPS jobs have remained as a staple choice in raid compositions for their strong utility abilities and role-exclusive actions, as well as being the only DPS archetype that's capable of battle-raising party members.

While it's a common thought by many players that the Physical Ranged role are "support jobs", the reality is that Magical Ranged DPS jobs also play a strong support role during progression. In some situations, playing a Magical Ranged DPS can be the 2nd most important role during progression, as the ability to utilize its battle-raise utility proficiently can result in multiple hours of time saved with proper recovery.

However this battle-raise utility is only available to Summoner and Red Mage. Along with battle raise, the Magical Ranged role brings the role-exclusive action Addle. This action applies a debuff to its target, reducing the amount of magic damage dealt by the target (or related actors) by 10%, while also reducing the amount of physical damage dealt by 5%. Addle has remained a very important mitigation ability, as raid encounters commonly use raid-wide sources of damage.

Furthermore, each job also provides its own unique utility skill(s):

• Manaward
• Aetherial Manipulation

• Tempera Coat
• Tempera Grassa
• Smudge

• Vercure
• Verraise
• Magick Barrier

• Radiant Aegis
• Resurrection
• Lux Solaris
• Everlasting Flight

It's important that you understand the full kit of the job you are playing, and how those utility actions can be best used. One of the most common mistakes made by more inexperienced players is the assumption that their only responsibility as a player is their DPS contribution. In reality, your responsibility should incorporate being an active player in assisting your group with utility usage and wipe recovery.

The next key piece of advice is knowing when and where to use your utility abilities, and this primarily boils down to having good raid awareness. But raid awareness can be a pretty broad term, and encompasses a wide variety of factors. So to simplify things, we can breakdown common things that a Magical Ranged player should be aware of during progression:

Deaths of Party Members

    One of the most common and important situations that you should be aware of during progression pulls. You should ALWAYS be aware of a downed party member, as you can directly use your own battle raise to immediately recover their death. In many situations you will even be expected to be the first priority for using battle-raise in these scenarios.

Healer MP Values

    This may not appear as obvious right away, but being aware of your healer's MP value can also help aid you in your decision making regarding recovery situations. While healers should generally have awareness of their own MP bar and consumption, it's also very easy to lose track of this information during a prog pull. If you notice your healer's MP values are on the low side (for example, below 4000 total MP), then you should take the initiative to assist with raising downed party members if they occur, to better assist your healers with maintaining their MP economy.

Communicating your Battle-Raise

    On top of being aware of downed party members, you should also emphasize communicating your battle-raise usage. Even if a generalized raise priority is established within your raid group, communicating your raise is to help reduce the risk of multiple players attempting to raise the same person, which would result in healers unnecessarily losing MP and potentially consuming an extra Swiftcast cooldown.

This was briefly referenced earlier, but ideally, there should be an established priority within your raid group for using battle-raise during pulls. Generally speaking, it will usually be expected for the Magical Ranged DPS to take part in this priority system, and I would argue this player should be the FIRST PRIORITY for the majority of your progression pulls. We can explain the reasons for this below:

Healer MP >>>>> Your damage

    One of the primary reasons for prioritizing battle-raise responsibilities on the Summoner or Red Mage is to help healers maintain their MP economy. Resurrection abilities are still costly in MP consumption (2400 MP, nearly 1/4 of your maximum MP), and healer jobs will generally run MP negative (especially in progression environments where healing will not be optimized). The vast majority of your progression pulls will not be boss kill-attempts, or even enrage pulls, therefore the need to maintain your healer's MP is far more important than your damage output. Remember, your damage DOES NOT MATTER until you're attempting to kill the boss.

Healers needing to prioritize healing first

    Another reason are situations where a healer(s) need to immediately prioritize party healing, especially if their Swiftcast is not available. There are plenty of examples that could be used here, but the general idea is any situation where party members have taken significant damage and need to be healed/mitigated quickly as another source of incoming damage is about to occur.

DPS Efficiency

    During boss kill attempts, the priorities around battle-raise responsibility will change, as you will need to account for the cost of damage that is sacrificed for casting a battle-raise compared to a regular damage GCD. In a scenario where damage or meeting a DPS check does become a factor, then healers will generally be the most efficient priority for handling battle-raise, as they have the weakest damage GCDs compared to Summoner and Red Mage.

In practice however, DPS efficiency should always be the last priority with raise responsibility, while the other factors regarding healers should come first. If you are a Summoner or Red Mage, you should prioritize using your battle-raise utility whenever you can, regardless of your perceived losses. Only if you are strictly walled by a DPS check should your decision making change with this.

As you progress through an encounter, utilizing your Addle (and Magick Barrier if playing Red Mage, or Tempera Grassa if playing Pictomancer) will be important to assist healers with mitigating incoming damage to party members. It's also important that you communicate your mitigation usage, and maintain open dialogue with your party, so they can properly plan their healing and cooldowns with yours in mind.

In some situations, other players may be less inclined to give a direct answer on where they want your mitigation to be used (common with pugging for example). In this scenario, do your best to be aware of your party's mitigation for various raid wide damage sources, and try to place your mitigation where you feel would gain the most value.

Along with the other points made above, you should also be aware of your HP bar as much as you can. Since each Magical Ranged DPS job brings its own personal defensive utility, all 4 jobs are capable of mitigating a potential death from occurring due to a lack of healing or mitigation from the party. Regardless of whether it's the fault of healers for not healing enough, or situations where a healer(s) dies and you're unable to receive any healing, you should never just accept dying when your own defensive utility could potentially save your life. If you die to a source a damage and you neglected to use your Manaward, Radiant Aegis, Vercure, or Tempera Coat, then this death is at least partially on you.

As you're progressing, try your best to memorize the fight timeline on your own. Memorizing fight timelines will help you make proper decisions when needing to adjust or recover a pull. Remember that recovery is not just raising dead party members, but also preparing for the next upcoming mechanic, and doing what's required to keep the pull alive for as long as possible. Sometimes you may need to delay a battle-raise by a few seconds to give yourself time to focus on dodging a raid-wide mechanic, and this is okay if it ensures your survival.

A key piece of advice is learning to be more proactive with using your utility actions, as opposed to only being reactive. By being proactive, you're placing yourself in a better position to be prepared in the event a mistake(s) occur during a pull, and thus reducing the risk of those mistakes snowballing into a wipe. For example, Summoner's Radiant Aegis is a great ability to be used proactively, as you can pre-apply a personal shield onto yourself in preparation for taking any source of damage.

While being proactive will always be a good thing, don't forget to also be reactive when the time calls for it. Perhaps a party member dies and instantly raises shortly before another source of raid-wide damage occurs, so you react by casting a Rekindle or Vercure on them to heal them as soon as possible. Or perhaps a your partner for a pairs stack mechanics suddenly dies only a few seconds before this mechanic will resolve, therefore you need to cast a fast Radiant Aegis, Manaward, or Tempera Coat onto yourself to survive the additional damage.

For any player within the party, your priority should always be on learning mechanics and recovering pulls during progression. While you are a DPS job at the end of the day, until you are nearing enrage, your contribution doesn't really matter. What matters the most is avoiding unnecessary deaths, or losing potential progress due to mistakes or the lack of properly recovering from these mistakes.

While these may seem insignificant at first glance, HQ Super-Ether and Ultra-Potion are still additional resources that can be used to help replenish your MP or HP in times of need. Ethers are incredibly useful for Summoner's and Red Mage's if you've already consumed your MP pool to utilize your battle-raise often during pulls.

When you're preparing your gear for prog, you should be mindful of how rotations can be affected due to additional Skill Speed or Spell Speed stats, as well as balancing the differences in expected damage output when choosing which substats to prioritize. You should always try to prioritize builds that provide higher expected average damage output with general rotation execution.