The tertiary-party program Deed (Active Combat Tracker) is a real-fourth dimension combat log generator, created by people who raid in MMOs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) to rail their DPS (damage per 2d)—it is an essential tool for players who want to take their raiding progress in MMOs to the next level. In this commodity, I'll be going over using the Deed Tool and Final Fantasy XIV's live uploader tool. In this article, I'll talk about what ACT is, why you should care, and how to gear up information technology upwardly.

#AD: For more than information on my static group, the schedule is listed hither, and I stream on Twitch every Friday and Sun. You can also check me out on Final Fantasy Xiv'southward Lodestone hither. If you lot're interested in my battle logs, but wait me up on FFLogs: Miss Moonie on Hyperion. 😉

Some Helpful Links To Become Started That Will Be Covered Throughout This Guide:

  • Deed
  • FF Logs Uploader
  • 14 Analysis
  • My stream >:) hehehe POG

DISCLAIMER: Practise not E'er under whatever circumstances apply this as a tool to harass others! Act is a tool just for improving your skills and bettering yourself in raid content to be the best y'all can be!

final fantasy xiv tips

What is ACT?

ACT (Agile Gainsay Tracker) helps calculate uptime, damage, and the skill level you're currently playing at on your class in comparison to others. Human activity is an essential learning tool for raiders who are looking to meliorate their skills, and is not meant for attacking others in-game! ACT is only available on PC—for raid players who want to rails their progress on console, you'll have to request assistance from a PC user who is in the aforementioned party as you. 😊

ACT is an astonishing tool to self-meliorate, but information technology can disheartening when y'all realize the people you're silently competing confronting aren't putting much try. It's exhilarating when there's someone running the aforementioned task as y'all and pulling slightly meliorate numbers—but being able to see another party member not giving it their all in college-tier raids can make you jaded. Just remember to take a interruption, and always use Human action for further cocky-improvement—never harass a party member!—in fact, it's all-time if yous avoid bringing the topic upward at all. I'll talk near this more throughout this article considering it's a very serious rule.

Tools similar Human activity are technically against the rules, but Foursquare Enix has made an exception to this rule so long as you do not utilize it as a ways to harass other players in the game. Square Enix will and has banned players in the by. ACT produces information that can be processed with the Final Fantasy Log uploader (explained more below). This tool will upload your ACT data to the FFlogs website, which can provide a number of different insights and analysis both for your own play and for the execution of your entire group.

Some basic terms to look for in Final Fantasy logs:

Parse %: Parse % rates DPS and Healing. Perhaps the quickest way to pair yourself up against other members in your party; only look and see what number you get. At that place are seven parse colors: gray, green, blue, imperial, pinkish, orangish, and gold. Parsing gold means parsing a perfect 100.

Casts: Active % and CPM (Casts Per Infinitesimal)

Harm Taken: Damage received from enemies. If yous discover yourself dying to a mechanic over and over, you lot tin see how much damage it'southward doing, and adjust with cooldowns (particularly useful for tanks!) Also useful for figuring out when to pop DPS mitigation such as Machinist's "Tactician" skill, etc.

For more information on FF Logs assist and ranks assay, you can cheque out their guide on the site here.

You can even use FFlogs to come across what abilities hurt the virtually (or who took the most damage! 😉), who had a debuff (debuffs volition sometimes subtract impairment and increase damage taken!), deaths, how long the fight lasted, the boss % y'all reached before the wipe, who used potions/foods; you can also compare log uploads. There'due south a lot of information to be gleaned from these logs, so make the most of it.

ACT General Rules Before Getting Started

When it comes to DPS meters (parsers) in Final Fantasy XIV, Yoshi-P stated that they volition never be added into the game. The Last Fantasy Xiv squad does not actively hunt down people using them, and the squad besides stated that they'll never be installing spyware to cheque what'due south on your estimator, because, you know, that's illegal (non that that stopped ArenaNet from doing it).

ACT Rules FF XIV

If you'd like to read more than about Last Fantasy's Rules & Regulations, check out the full post in the Support Center.

Notes from Yoshi-P During the Feb 6, 2020 LiveLetter:

Yoshi-P: "We've been turning a blind eye to ACT as long as the elitists don't harass, only nude mods is beyond what we can stand."

TLDR: Don't harass people with it!

The team will never add an official parser, and they stated that but having ACT installed volition non get you banned. Mods that add textures and add/remove clothing is frowned upwardly by Square Enix and tin event in a banned account, but using Human activity responsibly will not. What's the fun in using appearance mods that may result in a ban? In that location isn't. Information technology's not immune. Don't practice it. We're just focusing on how to read ACT in this article!

If you haven't done then, it's worth checking out the LiveLetter translation on the Terminal Fantasy XIV Discord channel to read Yoshi-P'southward stance on third-political party tools. Look in the "translations and liveletters" channel!

How to Install + Setup Deed

That most sums up what Human action is. If you're interested in trying it out on your ain, keep reading! Offset, you have to find and download the ACT installer. I've got information technology right hither, and so get ahead and download that to your PC (nether "Main Program Downloads" and "Advanced Combat Tracker – Setup").  Run the "Advanced Combat Tracker" file. Human action volition install, and and so you lot'll need to download the Final Fantasy Fourteen plugin.

ACT install stuff

Click "Options" at the top, and click "Evidence Startup Wizard". Act will walk you lot through setting upwardly the plugin. Be sure to download/enable the "FF Fourteen Parsing Plugin" as you come across it in the ACT installer (mentioned below). This plugin contains the Final Fantasy 14 extractor for Deed (there are other plugins which allow Human action to parse the data for other games). It captures the network packets sent/received by the game and additional data from retentiveness and writes that information to a log file. Act so reads that file and parses it with aid from the plugin.

act auto version check

You should also enable the "Car Version Check" to go on everything updated and running smoothly. Every time yous launch ACT (granted yous're connected to the Act), it will observe if you are using the latest software version, and prompt yous to update when possible.

act test game connection

As an extra precaution before you begin parsing in-game, any changes you make should be first tested. I would be sure to employ the "Test Game Connectedness" tool located in Plugins > FFXIV Settings > FFXIV Game Data.

Deed should always run as Administrator and excepted from Windows Firewall to make sure it works properly. This is because ACT uses memory reading and packet inspection to collect accurate information, which Windows doesn't let by default. One time that'southward completed, you'll probably want ACT to to be setup every bit an overlay in Final Fantasy XIV so yous tin encounter the numbers equally you go in and out of raid instances. To practice that, find your Deed folder. On a Windows PC, an easy mode to do this is to press the Windows cardinal on your keyboard, search for ACT > Right Click > Properties. If yous still tin can't discover the program, look in your C:\ drive for the "Active Combat Tracker" binder and right-click the Deed program here. Select the "Compatibility" tab, and then select "Run as Administrator".

When Human activity beginning launches, information technology will take you through a setup sorcerer.

ACT Installer Final Fantasy XIV
Terminal Fantasy XIV Parsing Plugin Human action

When prompted "Will Act be used for Last Fantasy Fourteen?" Choose "Yes" and click "Next", then close to have the default settings. At this pointFFXIV_ACT_Plugin.dll should be enabled inPlugins >Plugin Listing.

ACT plugin enabled

Next, enable the overlay.

ACT download and enable

In the Get Plugins window (to the right), select the [FFXIV+others]Overlay Plugin choice and click onDownload and Enable. This will add the latest OverlayPlugin to Act (the OverlayPlugin auto-updater may too run during this step).

The OverlayPlugin should now exist setup. Click on theX to close theGet Plugins window. Restart ACT, and go dorsum to the Plugins menu and "OverlayPlugin.dll" tab. Click "New" near the bottom of the window, and blazon in a name like "Overlay" then select the drib-downwardly arrow under the "Preset" dialog box, and select Kagerou. You can select any of these, but I really like Kagerou'due south overlays. Click "Ok" to shut the menu. Yous can click and drag this overlay where you lot desire on your screen. Keep in listen that this overlay will exist on tiptop of your Final Fantasy XIV game client while you're raiding, so make sure information technology is placed somewhere not in the way of annihilation important…similar your health bar.

ACT Overlay settings

Y'all can alter the settings of this overlay by clicking "settings" and filtering through the settings options in the menu box.

ACT click and drag

To change the size of the ACT overlay, click the lower-right corner of the overlay and drag to your preferred size. Personally, I leave everything else alone except for the colors. To change the colour of your overlay, click "Fashion", and here you tin change the color, transparency, give information technology a background image, etc.

At this bespeak information technology is recommended to restart ACT before continuing on.

The Final Fantasy Logs Uploader

If you lot're interested in sharing your logs (example) in a alive tracker with friends or your raid teammates, y'all'll demand to upload them to the Terminal Fantasy log uploader. Download the program here, and run the installer. The application will ask y'all whether to install for all users or just yourself. Click on theInstall button afterward selecting your choice and Finish one time the installation is washed.

Note: You will demand to register for an FFLogs account in society to upload logs.

Run the FFlogs Uploader application. Enter the account information you used to sign upward.

Final Fantasy XIV Log uploader

Once yous are authenticated, click on theUpload a Log button. If yous're interested in sharing logs with your friends and running a alive log in existent time, you tin can click that instead. Click onCull to select the log to upload.

In the File Explorer, navigate to the binder where the log is saved. The default location is at%APPDATA%\Advanced Gainsay Tracker\FFXIVLogs. You lot can copy and paste that path in the explorer bar to get directly to the default folder. In the log folder, selected the desired log to upload, and click onOpen. To ensure the latest log is on top, you can sort byDate modified.

Note: to find your log location in Human action, open up Human activity > Plugins > FFXIV Settings > Log File Location.

Cull the desired access level for the log:Public,Private, orUnlisted. Public volition be ranked and Private and Unlisted are united nations-ranked. Anyone will be able to view a Public log. Private logs can only be viewed by you. Unlisted logs tin exist viewed by anyone with the link to the log.

If you want to upload merely a specific meet, toggle theSelect Specific Raids To Upload option, then click on theGo! button. Select the specific encounter you want to upload from the list and click on theGo! push. Yous may select multiple encounters by belongings Ctrl or Shift on your keyboard.

Note: this view is only bachelor if y'all selected specific raids to upload.

Once the uploader is finished uploading the encounters to the FFLogs website, you tin can click on View Report to open the log folio in your default browser and view the log results.

Using ACT During Raid Progression

To see your numbers while yous're playing, merely launch Deed before you enter a raid case. That's information technology. That's all there is to it.

Using Human action For Dummy Parsing

If y'all're actually serious nigh joining a static group, you should consider parsing on dummies exterior of gainsay. This fashion you tin can show other players what your skill level is, and practise your class/rotation in a controlled environment. They can be crafted and they are sold on the market place board. In that location are several areas that have combat dummies, but the all-time solution is to visit a Free Company house (or personal housing) in the various housing districts (players have these all over their yards—merely meander effectually until yous find ane). Be sure to use a training dummy that is the aforementioned level as your character (training dummies are level lx, 80, and and so on).

If you lot exercise your rotation on a dummy that is below your level, you volition either see your skills missing (if the dummy is a higher level) or the dummy will die too speedily if the dummy is a lower level; it will besides repeatedly cleanse your "dots" (damage over fourth dimension)—similar White Mage's "Dia" skill.

Using ACT XIV Analysis

A tool that goes hand-in-hand with FFLogs is 14 Analysis. A agglomeration of actually smart people made this 3rd party tool to dissect your FFLogs and show you areas where y'all tin amend on. Only paste a link to a log and it will spit out a summary of your functioning. You can even take it to the Balance Discord server where they review it for you.

Paradigm Credits: Square Enix, Last Fantasy Xiv