Part of 2014 vs 2015 for me was just that there exist people who cleared T13 in 2014, before Zeta gave everyone access to i135 weapons, who went all of 2015 without clearing a raid tier. I'm willing to give Alex a few extra months to account for everyone essentially having to learn how their jobs work post-60 and account for the extra difficulty.
Ideally we could get clear numbers for both tiers prior to their catch-up patches, and then again prior to relic, and then a final pre-echo/lockout removal number. I'd also like to see comparable A3S data because my impression is that a lot of the casual/midcore groups who used Zeta to defeat Bahamut either walled or imploded on Waterman. I think there's a ton of interesting data to be gathered here and it sucks that there's no good way to do it--the server census that went off mount count was wildly inaccurate.
I also think the knock-on effect of delaying relic so long is that they can't substantially change A4S for a while yet. The fight is garbage no matter what, but it bends to weapons pretty quickly. I haven't been shy about pointing out how much we benefitted from Thordan weapons--that bump was a huge difference and relic is another one; it' have been a disservice to groups smashing their face into the fight to not give them a chance to clear it as close to legit as sac strat allows after they grind out relics.
"Helping" in A4S is also a thorny issue--I've filled in the all of once somebody in GAF asked, but my limited social circles being what they are there's not a ton of need at this point. It's a fight with some very disparate strategies, most of which seem to center around how much you want your healers to suffer, which also makes cross group stuff weird. It's a bullshit fight but most of the stress for me is honestly gone; but by that same token I don't contribute to the most critical and difficult parts of the fight (healing and tanking) so there's not a ton I can do. Plus we do everything weird/safety over damage which is not super helpful.
That will get better after overgear and echo, but the key thing is that it's not about loot as motivator for me. Getting more stuff to dye metallic purple isn't a big deal to me. It's more about opportunity and practicality of assistance (if your group doesn't do charity damage for ranged, I will probably be useless as I time all my stuff out based on having it. If you only have healers grab orbs I'll still blow myself up out of habit. Etc.)
The quest text said I couldn't progress this quest if I was on a different job or class... that doesn't count the crystal drops? If that's the case then maybe I will try it, because I have every job except the 3 expansion jobs at 50 or higher and don't relish the thought of sitting in DF queues for my other DPS jobs for ~10 levels..
You can get crystals on any job provided you've got the quest active (at the turn in astral/umbra nodules step.) You can't progress the quest in that you can't turn in the nodules on another job, but I've gotten all my FATE crystals on sub60 jobs no problem.
