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Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward |OT| The Midas Touch

WolvenOne

Member
Titan punishes the party a bit more for mistakes, but is mechanically a LOT more simple. Honestly I feel a lot of the struggle with Titan Extreme was people dealing with crappy internet connections. (I was out of that AoE, I swear!)

Also, keep in mind that the overall skill level of the player base has gone up since Titan Extreme.
 
Titan punishes the party a bit more for mistakes, but is mechanically a LOT more simple. Honestly I feel a lot of the struggle with Titan Extreme was people dealing with crappy internet connections. (I was out of that AoE, I swear!)

Also, keep in mind that the overall skill level of the player base has gone up since Titan Extreme.

Not mine.
Makoto I need a new afro.
 
That's really only if you want to consider them as actual EX fights though. Their HM counterparts only get the designation due to the complete dropping of the non-HM category for first appearances. Their EX fights are glorified "HM" level difficulties. We have no real EX difficulty primal in HW currently.



They simply called HM an EX fight. I never got to experience the original trio in their glory days since I started playing with Ramuh EX but that fight wasn't really that bad. Shiva EX is a fight with no real failure state short of just complete mechanics failure all at the exact same time and even then it's most likely still salvageable. Leviathan is also more of the same with an absolutely pushover of an HM fight and a low difficulty EX.

We keep getting Primal EX fights but they're just HM fights with the EX naming.

Are you going on just difficulty alone to judge this? Ifrit and Shiva EX are below the threshold of the other ARR EX Primals. If it wasn't for the ability to fall off, Levi would probably be in the same company as those two fights, too. I would say the order of difficulty for them was Titan EX -> Garuda EX -> Ramuh EX -> Leviathan EX -> Ifrit EX - > Shiva EX. Also for its time Ultima HM was harder than Shiva EX was. Ravana EX is harder than Shiva EX and Ifrit EX. And you have to remember DPS weren't crushing Ifrit EX back in the day, so that whole triggering enrage wasn't a thing. Healing was much easier because damage came out in slow bursts rather than a Michael Bay extravaganza that the final nail phase became towards the end of ARR. The only difficulty of Ifrit EX was getting the healers/party on the same page for where to go with Searing Wind/Nail direction. I cleared it in Duty Finder after 3 lockouts with randoms back during the days when people were helpful in this game. Compared to Garuda and Titan which took...a lot of time in party finder groups...

Titan punishes the party a bit more for mistakes, but is mechanically a LOT more simple. Honestly I feel a lot of the struggle with Titan Extreme was people dealing with crappy internet connections. (I was out of that AoE, I swear!)

Also, keep in mind that the overall skill level of the player base has gone up since Titan Extreme.

Yea, latency was a killer in Titan EX, but as scripted as it was, it was the longest set of mechanics to memorize at the time (other than T5). And despite being scripted, there was enough RNG stuff that made it a nightmare. The HP check was real with the gear available, and despite it being a scripted fight, the bomb formations in the final phase + where you baited Landslide or Weights caused a lot of people trouble. Remember, this was at a point that anyone other than a tank getting clipped by Weight of the Land or a bomb going off meant you died. For some reason DPS check at the heart was an issue for a lot of groups I went in with, but the single hardest part for almost everyone was the adds + bombs + landslide. Trying to kill the adds in the right spot + dodging multiple aoes + trying to dps or heal ended many an attempt. And back then, you got to deal with that stuff twice. I remember actually seeing enrage in that fight a few times. Also you had to actually tank swap.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
YoshiP, is that you?

Why do you have terrible MMO design?

"As part of adjusting overall difficulty we're going to add a buff called Vacations. You just get things by idling in 'Shire. Look forward to it in patch 3.95 because implementing such a complex function requires lots of testing."
 

WolvenOne

Member
Are you going on just difficulty alone to judge this? Ifrit and Shiva EX are below the threshold of the other ARR EX Primals. If it wasn't for the ability to fall off, Levi would probably be in the same company as those two fights, too. I would say the order of difficulty for them was Titan EX -> Garuda EX -> Ramuh EX -> Leviathan EX -> Ifrit EX - > Shiva EX. Also for its time Ultima HM was harder than Shiva EX was. Ravana EX is harder than Shiva EX and Ifrit EX. And you have to remember DPS weren't crushing Ifrit EX back in the day, so that whole triggering enrage wasn't a thing. Healing was much easier because damage came out in slow bursts rather than a Michael Bay extravaganza that the final nail phase became towards the end of ARR. The only difficulty of Ifrit EX was getting the healers/party on the same page for where to go with Searing Wind/Nail direction. I cleared it in Duty Finder after 3 lockouts with randoms back during the days when people were helpful in this game. Compared to Garuda and Titan which took...a lot of time in party finder groups...



Yea, latency was a killer in Titan EX, but as scripted as it was, it was the longest set of mechanics to memorize at the time (other than T5). And despite being scripted, there was enough RNG stuff that made it a nightmare. The HP check was real with the gear available, and despite it being a scripted fight, the bomb formations in the final phase + where you baited Landslide or Weights caused a lot of people trouble. Remember, this was at a point that anyone other than a tank getting clipped by Weight of the Land or a bomb going off meant you died. For some reason DPS check at the heart was an issue for a lot of groups I went in with, but the single hardest part for almost everyone was the adds + bombs + landslide. Trying to kill the adds in the right spot + dodging multiple aoes + trying to dps or heal ended many an attempt. And back then, you got to deal with that stuff twice. I remember actually seeing enrage in that fight a few times. Also you had to actually tank swap.

Oh yea, the Adds/Bomb/Landslide was the part that destroyed groups. Generally though if you got past that with your party intact you were good tho. With Ravana, butterflies can destroy groups, knock backs can destroy groups, liberations can destroy groups, etc etc etc. None of those moments were AS real a check as the Add/Bombs/Landslide moment, but it feels like Ravana has a lot more opportunities to really kill the group through attrition, so to speak. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ravana feels more mechanically complex, which tends to be how I judge difficulty. It probably would've been much worse than Titan had the HP/DPS checks been as steep as Titan's were upon release.

To be fair, yeah if you go in with a full premade, and everyone is fully familiar with the mechanics and how to handle them, yeah the fight becomes pretty easy at that point. Thing is though, the same can really be said of most fights in this game, so I'm really not certain that's the right way to judge difficulty.
 

Stuart444

Member
As someone that hasn't done the two EX primals from HW yet, I worry that trying to learn it once it's DFable is going to result in a lot of rage being directed towards us.

Then I remembered that DF means we probably still won't be the worst in the group after the first few attempts. >.>
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
They toned down the Extreme primal fights after Titan because of how much people struggled with it. I remember people being walled at Titan for months so I can understand why they're going that route.
 

Sorian

Banned
They toned down the Extreme primal fights after Titan because of how much people struggled with it. I remember people being walled at Titan for months so I can understand why they're going that route.

I'd struggle with Titan too if I had to play it on PS3 like people did at the time.
 

Kenai

Member
They toned down the Extreme primal fights after Titan because of how much people struggled with it. I remember people being walled at Titan for months so I can understand why they're going that route.

Aye. For a while he was Lord of the Salt rather than crags.

They will probably do the same with Alexander as well. Not quite sure how I feel about it but it's probably better if they did rethink again how raid content is gonna go down til they find a better balance than now. I liked Coil balance more but it still wasn't quite there, Savage needed another bell or whistle.

I'd struggle with Titan too if I had to play it on PS3 like people did at the time.

Uh...well, I am sure that was a factor, but I'd hesitate to call it a primary one. I've been on PC since day 1 and I was "lucky" enough to clear it in a week.
 

WolvenOne

Member
I do recall that there was a graphical latency issue in Titan Extreme, that caused Plumes to appear a bit late for PS3 users. So I'm sure that didn't help any.
 

Sorian

Banned
I have a hard time finding Titan to be hard back then. It was tuned higher than they seemed to want out of primal battles but it isn't actually a hard fight. I'm not really missing it though, I'd rather a mechanical fight than a memorization or ground indicator reaction fight (depending on how you treated Titan).
 

Stuart444

Member
Titan in general became a lot easier after one of their fixes which made the server update quicker. Before then, even on PC, I would still get caught in the plumes sometimes.

After the update where they adjusted it, I only got caught when I'm being careless/brain dead lol.
 

Sorian

Banned
Titan in general became a lot easier after one of their fixes which made the server update quicker. Before then, even on PC, I would still get caught in the plumes sometimes.

After the update where they adjusted it, I only got caught when I'm being careless/brain dead lol.

I remember this patch but I don't remember a huge difference on my end. Other people said the same as you though so I know it did something or maybe it was just placebo :p
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
Aye. For a while he was Lord of the Salt rather than crags.

They will probably do the same with Alexander as well. Not quite sure how I feel about it but it's probably better if they did rethink again how raid content is gonna go down til they find a better balance than now. I liked Coil balance more but it still wasn't quite there, Savage needed another bell or whistle.



Uh...well, I am sure that was a factor, but I'd hesitate to call it a primary one. I've been on PC since day 1 and I was "lucky" enough to clear it in a week.

Coil balance was fine, really. People were actually clearing the last fight in each tier within a timely manner. With Alexander, only 16 people on Ultros have cleared A4 Savage with 8 of those only having cleared a couple days ago.
 

Kenai

Member
Coil balance was fine, really. People were actually clearing the last fight in each tier within a timely manner. With Alexander, only 16 people on Ultros have cleared A4 Savage with 8 of those only having cleared a couple days ago.

I just wanted Coil Savage to give more than a title, really. Not actually gear per se, but vanity stuff would have been nice.

But yea, I don't think they will ever have a tier like this with progression gear drops again. Not for a long, long time, anyway (end of expansion final boss to keep ppl busy type of deal, and only then a big maybe).
 

WolvenOne

Member
I just wanted Coil Savage to give more than a title, really. Not actually gear per se, but vanity stuff would have been nice.

But yea, I don't think they will ever have a tier like this with progression gear drops again. Not for a long, long time, anyway (end of expansion final boss to keep ppl busy type of deal, and only then a big maybe).

Yeah, AS3 and 4 difficulty might have been justifiable for the, "last," raid cycle of the expansion, but brick walls this early when the end-game content is a bit thin to begin with wasn't a terribly good idea.

Which isn't to say that A3S is HUGELY overtuned. It wouldn't have taken much easing to make the fight a lot more approachable.
 

iammeiam

Member
A3S should be the last floor, but doesn't need a nerf.

Should have gone:

A2S first, left more or less exactly as-is

A1S next, ramped up a little. Add another mechanic after the first jump, tighten the enrage timer a little. Slightly harder than its current version, but not significantly so.

A4S, but less bleh. Much more lenient DPS and gear checks. Tuned around Eso weapons and maybe one left-side piece. Only two legs because they really didn't have enough ideas to sustain four+Manipulator. Enrage a little more forgiving than what we have for A3S now. Introduce Pentacle and Nisi mechanic together so it feels less like the fight being arbitrarily cruel, and make it worth actually doing.

A3S as-is or very slightly tuned higher to account for the extra gear groups would have hitting it. It's basically a perfectly tuned final fight as is IMO, and does a good job of making every bit of progression feel like progress.

Savage needed a difficulty curve and a satisfying final fight; instead it was sort of all over the place difficulty-wise and is ending on maybe the weakest fight of the batch.
 
Why are they awful ideas?

  • New stats are pointless. What would they do? The game could easily use consolidation in stats as is. There's no reason STR and DEX need to be separate for instance.
  • Set bonuses are, again, pointless. Either the set bonus is so good there's no reason not to have the set and get the gearset, or the set bonus isn't good enough and it's scrapped the moment you get gear of a higher iLevel.
  • More procs? Why? What exactly would adding more procs on random skills add?
  • More class customization is a bad idea because as is the game is pretty balanced. Adding more fiddly bits would just mess with balance and ultimately be pointless because, again, once the community found the best option it would become the only option.
 
What do people think of things like making Shield Swipe offGCD (with damage/cooldown adjustments if necessary) and/or Shield/Sword Oath being offGCD as well?

I noticed how smooth it is go from tank stance to none with DRK because cancelling it doesn't cost you anything (use it when your GCD is about to become available then just attack as normal). I'd like to see that smooth transition brought to PLD as well. Of course since they have two stances (either/or) then it would be closer to how WARs transition with their stances (use stance to switch with a cooldown or maybe mana is already enough of a cost for PLD?).

I just find the way PLD's switch stances to be cumbersome and it doesn't feel smooth like WAR and DRK.
 

WolvenOne

Member
  • New stats are pointless. What would they do? The game could easily use consolidation in stats as is. There's no reason STR and DEX need to be separate for instance.
  • Set bonuses are, again, pointless. Either the set bonus is so good there's no reason not to have the set and get the gearset, or the set bonus isn't good enough and it's scrapped the moment you get gear of a higher iLevel.
  • More procs? Why? What exactly would adding more procs on random skills add?
  • More class customization is a bad idea because as is the game is pretty balanced. Adding more fiddly bits would just mess with balance and ultimately be pointless because, again, once the community found the best option it would become the only option.

New secondary stats would be fine, especially for Tanks. The only secondary tanks have is Parry and it's kinda underwhelming/useless.

I wouldn't really rule out gear set bonuses, but yeah I wouldn't want people passing on substantially higher ilvl gear to keep them.

STR/DEX/Etc, is mostly in there for flavor. That said they couldn't really consolidate them down without dramatically reworking large portions of the game.
 

Wilsongt

Member
What do people think of things like making Shield Swipe offGCD (with damage/cooldown adjustments if necessary) and/or Shield/Sword Oath being offGCD as well?

I noticed how smooth it is go from tank stance to none with DRK because cancelling it doesn't cost you anything (use it when your GCD is about to become available then just attack as normal). I'd like to see that smooth transition brought to PLD as well. Of course since they have two stances (either/or) then it would be closer to how WARs transition with their stances (use stance to switch with a cooldown or maybe mana is already enough of a cost for PLD?).

I just find the way PLD's switch stances to be cumbersome and it doesn't feel smooth like WAR and DRK.

Not that many things can be stunned anymore so I don't see a lot of people using Shield Swipe all that often. Putting it off GCD would be fine like with WAR's Brutal Swing. But, in terms of stunning things, no one needs it anymore like with Ifrit EX and plumes.
 

scy

Member
Yeah, AS3 and 4 difficulty might have been justifiable for the, "last," raid cycle of the expansion, but brick walls this early when the end-game content is a bit thin to begin with wasn't a terribly good idea.

Which isn't to say that A3S is HUGELY overtuned. It wouldn't have taken much easing to make the fight a lot more approachable.

It's weird to see this after the Titan EX discussion on the previous page. A3S is basically the new Titan EX in terms of script and even the majority of the mechanics.

I agree with the general idea that I think A3S would have been a lot better received if it had been the final fight of this raid tier. It's the best paced fight with interesting additions to it compared to A4S's "We designed a boss with four legs but then forgot to design a fight to use it" situation.

Not that many things can be stunned anymore so I don't see a lot of people using Shield Swipe all that often. Putting it off GCD would be fine like with WAR's Brutal Swing. But, in terms of stunning things, no one needs it anymore like with Ifrit EX and plumes.

Shield Swipe is the on-block GCD. Used to be decent for a minor increase in potency but primarily used for the TP break. Now it's a net damage loss that the TP doesn't make up.

Also worth noting that this is the raid tier with the most stunnable things, though Shield Bash is still the worst stun due to it being on the GCD and costing somewhere around all of the TP to ever exist.
 
What do people think of things like making Shield Swipe offGCD (with damage/cooldown adjustments if necessary) and/or Shield/Sword Oath being offGCD as well?

I noticed how smooth it is go from tank stance to none with DRK because cancelling it doesn't cost you anything (use it when your GCD is about to become available then just attack as normal). I'd like to see that smooth transition brought to PLD as well. Of course since they have two stances (either/or) then it would be closer to how WARs transition with their stances (use stance to switch with a cooldown or maybe mana is already enough of a cost for PLD?).

I just find the way PLD's switch stances to be cumbersome and it doesn't feel smooth like WAR and DRK.

Well, Shield Oath and Grit are powerful defensive abilities - 20% mitigation that persists until you turn it off, even if you die. I hate switching stances on PLD and DRK as much as the next person, but I can see why they've given it a few drawbacks. If Grit/Shield Oath were off-GCD, you could just pop it to take a hit and then switch out easily instead of using a cooldown, with a minimal loss of damage output. With Defiance, it's kind of different because even though you gain more max HP and get more healing by putting your tank stance on, it doesn't add to your current HP total when your max HP is increased. You'd have to be able to use Inner Beast to get a similar effect to oGCD Grit/Shield Oath (for a few seconds), and you aren't able to immediately switch back to Deliverance anyway.
 

IvorB

Member
  • New stats are pointless. What would they do? The game could easily use consolidation in stats as is. There's no reason STR and DEX need to be separate for instance.
  • Set bonuses are, again, pointless. Either the set bonus is so good there's no reason not to have the set and get the gearset, or the set bonus isn't good enough and it's scrapped the moment you get gear of a higher iLevel.
  • More procs? Why? What exactly would adding more procs on random skills add?
  • More class customization is a bad idea because as is the game is pretty balanced. Adding more fiddly bits would just mess with balance and ultimately be pointless because, again, once the community found the best option it would become the only option.

The idea is to broaden the scope of available gear to give more choices to players and the ability to customize gear to their liking. Right now the way gear is set up in this game is probably one of the most boring implementations of all the RPGs I've played. As it stands it's just higher number is better so you have a choice between maybe two gear choices at any one point and even that is questionable since typically there is a higher iLevel piece that you could well argue is always the best choice.

Saying it will break balance is not an excuse since obviously there would be an expectation that new additions would also be balanced in the same way. It's not impossible or unheard of for devs to balance gear options in this way. Again procs add to gear diversity. If you give players an option to buff one of three possible skills and balance all accordingly that would be really good for giving some people ownership of their character.

If they don't want to do away with iLevel type setup then these options could be added independently of gear by something that you can affix to different pieces of gear for example. I really don't know why anyone would argue against more gear customisation and variety.

Though I agree that adding new stats could be done away with in favour of actually providing some transparency about how the actual stats that are in the game operate.
 

Lonestar

I joined for Erin Brockovich discussion
Guess I should log on soon, see how close I am to be able to Void Ark.

Maybe even finally finish Alexander. Or was that start Alexander?
 

Wilsongt

Member
It's weird to see this after the Titan EX discussion on the previous page. A3S is basically the new Titan EX in terms of script and even the majority of the mechanics.

I agree with the general idea that I think A3S would have been a lot better received if it had been the final fight of this raid tier. It's the best paced fight with interesting additions to it compared to A4S's "We designed a boss with four legs but then forgot to design a fight to use it" situation.



Shield Swipe is the on-block GCD. Used to be decent for a minor increase in potency but primarily used for the TP break. Now it's a net damage loss that the TP doesn't make up.

Also worth noting that this is the raid tier with the most stunnable things, though Shield Bash is still the worst stun due to it being on the GCD and costing somewhere around all of the TP to ever exist.


Ah, I was getting Shield Bash and Shield Swipe mixed up. I don't use Shield Swipe because by the time I notice it has proc'd, it's too late.

Then again, I stopped playing PLD because WAR is just much more fun and more involved to play.
 
Well, Shield Oath and Grit are powerful defensive abilities - 20% mitigation that persists until you turn it off, even if you die. I hate switching stances on PLD and DRK as much as the next person, but I can see why they've given it a few drawbacks. If Grit/Shield Oath were off-GCD, you could just pop it to take a hit and then switch out easily instead of using a cooldown, with a minimal loss of damage output. With Defiance, it's kind of different because even though you gain more max HP and get more healing by putting your tank stance on, it doesn't add to your current HP total when your max HP is increased. You'd have to be able to use Inner Beast to get a similar effect to oGCD Grit/Shield Oath (for a few seconds), and you aren't able to immediately switch back to Deliverance anyway.

In that case they could make it like how DRK's stances work. You can keep the damage stance on with the tank stance but the tank stance naturally reduces the total damage you do.
 

scy

Member
In that case they could make it like how DRK's stances work. You can keep the damage stance on with the tank stance but the tank stance naturally reduces the total damage you do.

I dunno, making the classes the same is kind of boring. I'd rather PLD Oaths were like Empyreal Arrow's oGCD but still GCD aspect but didn't drop combo. Then you attach a special bonus to the next-Weapon Skill (or just on combo finishers to limit skill bloat) used after switching Oaths. This makes the job functional at swapping stances throughout a fight with the goal being to trigger their extra effects. Trying to make their combat more dynamic.
 
In that case they could make it like how DRK's stances work. You can keep the damage stance on with the tank stance but the tank stance naturally reduces the total damage you do.

Well, Darkside is DRK's identity. It has to be on to gain access to much of DRK's kit (including a couple of defensive buffs), and keeping it on and maintaining it with the constant MP degen is pretty much what the job is designed around.

I think giving Sword Oath the same treatment would have to come with a rethink of PLD's identity, similar to what scy was talking about.
 

BLCKATK

Member
I dunno, making the classes the same is kind of boring. I'd rather PLD Oaths were like Empyreal Arrow's oGCD but still GCD aspect but didn't drop combo. Then you attach a special bonus to the next-Weapon Skill (or just on combo finishers to limit skill bloat) used after switching Oaths. This makes the job functional at swapping stances throughout a fight with the goal being to trigger their extra effects. Trying to make their combat more dynamic.

I would love something like this. A more dynamic combo would be great and would really fit PLD.
 
I dunno, making the classes the same is kind of boring. I'd rather PLD Oaths were like Empyreal Arrow's oGCD but still GCD aspect but didn't drop combo. Then you attach a special bonus to the next-Weapon Skill (or just on combo finishers to limit skill bloat) used after switching Oaths. This makes the job functional at swapping stances throughout a fight with the goal being to trigger their extra effects. Trying to make their combat more dynamic.

That sounds great but my impression is that they're not going to be making any drastic changes. Is there a precedent for them making big changes like this (outside of expansion abilities)?

Well, Darkside is DRK's identity. It has to be on to gain access to much of DRK's kit (including a couple of defensive buffs), and keeping it on and maintaining it with the constant MP degen is pretty much what the job is designed around.

I think giving Sword Oath the same treatment would have to come with a rethink of PLD's identity, similar to what scy was talking about.

I guess that makes sense. I just want a solution to make things a bit smoother. I know that we're probably only going to see some TP adjustments or something but it's nice to dream.
 

BadRNG

Member
That sounds great but my impression is that they're not going to be making any drastic changes. Is there a precedent for them making big changes like this (outside of expansion abilities)?
2.1 WAR changes, which also led to some other large class changes (like BRD's Rain of Death getting a completely new debuff since WAR was getting the damage down)
 
2.1 WAR changes, which also led to some other large class changes (like BRD's Rain of Death getting a completely new debuff since WAR was getting the damage down)

The only note I can find is in reference to making adjustments to ninja/paladin TP so I guess it won't be anything like that.

If they do end up doing something like that it would probably be far down the road from now.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
If anybody's on Excalibur or thought of going there and wants to get back into that raiding game we're making a new raiding team that's planning to start at A3S and go from there, 8PM~ EST.

More details.

/desperation
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success

Deeps. All kinds of deeps. Healers and tanks come in droves.
Since it's a new team it might take some time to build it up so our Raid 1 will just provide alts to plug the holes in the group for the time being.
EDIT: Oh, SCH too I guess.
 
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