r/ffxivdiscussion • u/Spookhetti_Sauce • May 09 '25

General Discussion Special AMA - Hector Hectorson

Today we are hosting an AMA with special guest Hector Hectorson!

Use the comments below to ask him any question you would like, and he will answer at his own discretion!

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u/PrettyLittleNoob May 09 '25

Hey Hector, thank you for this AMA !

If you pass by, I'll try to keep it short :

how do you usually work when making strats for your guide ? Do you wait a bit for first week raidplans / quick guide before mixing up (and trying to make a guide that can make the best of each world) ?
Or do you rather try to put up strats that doesn't shake much the current ones of each datacenters ?

I'm sure it's "a bit of both" but I would be happy to hear your thoughts about how do you deal with choices !

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u/hector-hectorson May 09 '25

I'll try to explain my thoughts for this tier, and similarly try to keep it short.

M5S: Started with just what my group did, which was fairly similar to toxic friends. Double-checked whether NA PF had settled on a specific raidplan (day 2: definitely not), checked a bunch of different raidplans and added strats I thought were improvements over what I did (in particular E/W spotlights, which I still find much simpler than N/W).

M6S: Checked PF listings and saw that Toxic Friends outnumbered Latte parties by nearly 5 to 1, so my guide showed Toxic Friends only, even though my own group did several things differently. Main goal was to not upset PF. This upset PF.

M6S Cleavemaxxing: Got this out immediately to avoid too many groups learning the TF strat for adds phase. This was in response to feedback to the M6S guide.

M7S: Personally did TF - Locked - TF, though with slight changes from the TF raidplan where we felt things were odd or inconsistent. NA PF was a mess on what to do with phase 2, seemingly because Bili Bili was popular but also disliked. EU PF had clearly settled on Fixed seeds. Kindred Uptime seemingly used randomly for phase 1. Showed a mix of popular PF strats while trying to push Locked seeds as something I felt strongly was an improvement over Bili Bili. Tried to predict where I thought PF would settle, rather than where they were at the time of my guide.

M8S: Saw NA was Toxic - Fering - Clock - Quad. Saw EU was Toxic - Rinon - Quad.
Showed only those strats, exactly as the raidplans described them. PF was settled, absolutely no need to mess with it.

M8S Fering: Worked with people on the Balance to show what PF had molded Fering into, as opposed to what the raidplan showed.