How would you compare the difficulty of Cinder Drift Extreme to other Extreme Trials?

[Jamein]

Easy fight, probably the same as Lakshmi and Innocence/titania.
I've had groups where all of the DPS died on the flexiclaw at the start and still just brute forced it through and cleared. Mechanically simple and DPS checks are non existant.

Not to mention the fact that you get a checkpoint which just makes it laughable really.

[Hanayumi]

Id say its on the difficult side to learn, dash+claw, adds, meteors, and tank meteors tend to be the major killers, but once you get it down its a breeze, even with a couple deaths its fairly recoverable. Also helps a ton if people are geared with the newest crafted gear, high dps can skip a decent amount of the mechanics.

[snipski]

Dps check is a big joke, usually there is 2-3 ppl dying in the start of the fight because they run directly to the safespot and dont bait the magitek bits.

Ive also had wipes in start of the second phase because ppl dont know how to dodge Lunar Dynamo and Chariot or tanks bringing the adds close to each other so they cant be killed.

It's harder then Byakko EX and Lakshmi EX for sure but it's not really a hard fight.

[Crushnight]

With the checkpoint I would say on the level of Lakshmi/Byakko EX.

If it didn't have the checkpoint I would put it with Hades EX which is below Shinyru EX and definitely nowhere near Thordan EX on their respective launches.

The checkpoint really allows so many mistakes in p1 on top of the more than generous enrage for an EX encounter that came with an even patch that the whole difficulty is brought down.

However I see this as a better bridge into savage content than Thordan/Shinyru were. Someone who can clear Ruby has the potential to clear Ramuh -> Shiva, whereas with Thordan a3s/a4s were still miles above him, just like Neo was with Shinyru.

[LineageRazor]

Kind of surprised no one's brought up Cut and Run. The mechanic is similar to Soar from Zurvan (untelegraphed attack, with the players needing to spread their player-targeted aoes into a restricted space with no obvious borders), and Soar was INFAMOUS. It's the mechanic that stymied several of the groups I was with, until I finally got my clear.

That said, while similar to Soar, it's not as bad. So while I'd rank this fight in the upper half of all Ex Trials, I wouldn't put it very far into the upper half.

[Crushnight]

Kind of surprised no one's brought up Cut and Run. The mechanic is similar to Soar from Zurvan (untelegraphed attack, with the players needing to spread their player-targeted aoes into a restricted space with no obvious borders), and Soar was INFAMOUS. It's the mechanic that stymied several of the groups I was with, until I finally got my clear.

That said, while similar to Soar, it's not as bad. So while I'd rank this fight in the upper half of all Ex Trials, I wouldn't put it very far into the upper half.

Difference is 1st Soar could be skipped with high enough dps that was nowhere near high which is why it became a meme. Can't tell you how fast I left a group when there was 6 dps and with 0 deaths failed to do it (I was the solo hlr) .

[Andevom]

Kind of surprised no one's brought up Cut and Run. The mechanic is similar to Soar from Zurvan (untelegraphed attack, with the players needing to spread their player-targeted aoes into a restricted space with no obvious borders), and Soar was INFAMOUS. It's the mechanic that stymied several of the groups I was with, until I finally got my clear.

That said, while similar to Soar, it's not as bad. So while I'd rank this fight in the upper half of all Ex Trials, I wouldn't put it very far into the upper half.

Cut and Run turns out to be relatively simple to avoid since it's a consistent attack pattern, and all you have to do is hug the walls and not overlap each other to avoid getting hit.

Soar didn't have the same pattern (and thus not the same safe spots) each time, and required you to break up your party based upon composition to successfully do it. They're quite different.

[Mavrias]

I'd put it at Hades level, so, not very hard at all. Just a striking dummy that does an actual mechanic maybe omce every 30 seconds in the first phase, and then an actual joke in the second half.

[Ryaz]

The fight is pretty easy, the only difficult things are the dodging the pinwheel AOEs at the start and balancing the vines using a controller, but that's a general problem using controller and not so much a Ex problem. The dps checks a very lax esp. compared to Hades Ex.

Even dodging the pinwheel is easy. There's three overlapping AoEs in the middle with small divets where they converge. Stand to the right of the divet to bait the magitek laser and then move to the left of the divet for the safe zone. I haven't been hit once by the spirals since I learned that (unless someone baits the laser into the safe spot anyway). And yeah, the DPS check is very forgiving. The only part that's a little tight is the two comets.

I found most of the clear parties I was in failed due to brand new players (why they were in a clear party I don't know) or players who just wouldn't listen to advice. I kept telling one group to sprint to the other side after he does his second Ravensclaw dash and go parallel to the arrow to avoid it. Another guy said it wasn't reliable to do that. I lived all 4 times we tried doing it my way, he died all 4 times. Then I got into a group where people actually listened and we finally all cleared it for the first time.

Overall the fight is easy once you know the mechanics and the safe spots. It requires paying attention to a couple aoes (iron chariot, dyanmo) and being careful not to get clipped and people basically not messing up basic things like the Scream knockback. I'd take it over Suzaku Ex and her knockback/pull in/EXPLOSIONS?! any day. So far, I've found Titania to be the hardest ex trial this expansion for some reason. Probably because it took a while to clear that due to so many people failing add phase.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Mechanically, a lot of the worst of it is front-loaded, so it's a lot easier once you get past that. And the enrage timer is, what, 15 minutes? Or, at least, it feels really long. Then add in the fact that there's a checkpoint.

All in all, it's pretty lenient for an EX fight, not that I mind too much. I hated when farm parties would wipe on the "true phase" and we'd have to start over from the beginning.