Request for really difficult final Voidwatch boss

[Pebe]

Many of the current voidwatch NMs can be beaten without much stratedgy, except for a few. It is pretty much proc the mob >> zerg with fanatics >> rinse and repeat. Maybe toss a stun here or there on some damaging magic. For the final chapter and the final boss of voidwatch, I request for something more challenging. I want a fight that takes everything a player has to beat it. Let me give an example.

http://wilddragonchase.blogspot.com/2011/10/ffxi-test-server-dat-mine-28102011.html

Halfway done the page you see a very interesting blue dragon. Let us for a moment imagine that this was the final voidwatch boss. Now because it is the "Final boss", I believe it is to make it differ from the other fights a little and here is how.

1. Terrorization of Mob via !! proccing
- The final voidwatch boss should have a far shorter terrorization timer when procced. Being able to beat on the final boss for minutes at a time while it is able to do nothing seems underwhelming. I understand that proccing in and of itself takes stratedgy in the setup, however I believe this fight should be a little more involved than just your standard proc fanatics zerg. Which leads to my next point.

2. Nullification of Fanatics and Temp items
- The final voidwatch boss should have moves that either wipe or go through fools and fanatics drink. For instance, like leaden salute damage. He should have moves in that third category that cannot be blocked. There are so many other defensive tools and abilities that have become null and void in voidwatch because of fanatics and fools. This would force us to find other ways to negate the damage. Another idea is a move that destroys all temp items in everyone's inventory. Or a full dispelga would work as well.

3. Time Limit
-30 minutes, in my opinion, is far to short to have a really intricate battle. The 30 minute time limit limits the difficulty of the mobs in the shear fact that they are designed to be killed in 30 mins. For the final boss I request at least raising the time limit of the instance to 1 hr, if not 2hrs(Like AV and PW). This will allow for the creation of an intense fight, with multiple phases. Which leads into the next point.

4. Multiphase Notorious Monsters
-For most voidwatch NMs, all that happens when they get low on TP is they get access to a unique TP move or two. This is fine, but if you increase the time limit I believe you can give us more! Remember back in the day, when linkshells tried to kill AV. Most were fine until that 66% percent mark, but once it hit that mark, all hell broke loose! For this final boss I believe he should have multiple stages at least 3 possibly four that changes the dynamis of the fight drastically. I want the NMs to throw curveballs at us players that catch us off guard. I miss the feeling of fighting a mob multiple times and loosing to it at a certain percent, but then you finally push it down to almost victory, just when you thought you won, and then boom final phase hits! Well you can imagine what happens next. By giving us content like this, it feels that every phase is a whole different fight all together and requires much stratedgy on the players side, content like this to me is fun.

Ok I rambled on enough, sorry for all the spelling errors, didn't get a ahnce to spell check because I am in a rush.

Edit: Almost forgot

5. Drop Rate
- For this final fight. If you do make at the difficulty I requested, I ask that you give the rare item slot in the treasure chest 100% load rate for everyone in the alliance. They should all be rewarded if they manage to overcome such a daunting fight!

[saevel]

Umm you do realize that ~ALL~ VWNM's can be killed if you can keep it terrorized and spam fanatics right.

Then again, you have even done Rex? I'm doubting you've done any of the final tier VWNM's at all. They all basically just wipe your alliance if their not terrorized. We're talking aoe death, doom 2k+ damage and a variety of status ailments.

How much "harder" do you want? How about a NM that upon spawning immediately casts death on every single pt member until everyone is dead, then despawns.

That hard enough?

[Pebe]

On the contrary I have done and beaten all T6 VNMs, if you check my ffxi history under Bepe you should see my supernal knife as proof for botulus as well as ogiers surcoat as proof for ig-alima.

The point I was trying to make is that fanatics + fools + terror stun is the strat used for most VWNMs except Botolus who takes a little more stratedgy. (Even though I say that, my fastest kill on Botulus was 3 mins and 45 seconds.) However for the Final boss, I want a monster that requires something else other than that. I want to be force to have to use the entire arsenal of defensive and offensive at my disposal. If you read for my first post I mention ways the mob could circumvent(is this the correct word) fools and fanatics and force an alliance to find other means of survival.

All of the voidwatch NMs with perhaps the exception of botolus because of his chainspell and charm(at low hp) can be held quite easily and be taken down steadily if chosen to be (If you have an aegis pld for chainspell and shadowbind for charm even botulus can be held fine). They do not all "Wipe your alliance if their not terrorized" if you actually have a good tank and good support. Let us imagine for a moment that fools and fanatics were never given as temps and the voidwatch difficulty stayed the same. What would happen? Simple, all voidwatch NMs would be killed in a nice controlled manner using a good tank, good support, ranged damage with enmity-, DDs with scherzo and earthern armor etc. Everything would still be killable(Botolus being an extremely hard fight in this case) it would just take longer. Therefore, by the final boss having means to bypass fools and fanatics, that in itself would create a more lengthy stratedgic(spelling?) fight. However because of the droprate of alot of the gear off these mobs, having quick fights is ok I guess, because it would suck spamming 100 30 minute long fights trying to get a body piece with the current VW drop system. That is why when I asked for a more difficult longer VW fight, I also mentioned ensuring everyone gets a good drop from it.

I guess to end I'll quickly reiterate a point from my OP, it is not just about the length of the fight, it is about making the final boss intricate. As it hp dwindles it should change form and its behavoir in drastic ways, making each stage of the fight more and more interesting until you finally get to that last stage!

[saevel]

Umm yeah no.

We had both our LS tanks, one with O.Chain other with Aegis fighting these VWNMs before, and they can and will frequently just kill your tank or anyone else that happens to be fighting them. They tend to have various hate reset moves which renders the usual method of "holding" invalid. Not only that but most have a HP regen effect, you can't just hold it or you'll time out trying to do it slow.

The bottom line is SE shouldn't of created a bunch of monsters that you need temps on to win. Temps should be an occasional bonus from a proc, they should of never been staple items. I'm daring you to try to do a full set of Jueno T3 ~ 6 with an alliance and nobody use temps. Put your money where your mouth is.

[Pebe]

You are missing the point though. If you tank got one shotted he obviously didn't have scherzo or earthern armor, unless it was death obviously. All I want regarding temp items is for the final boss to force us to use other means of defense besides fanatics and fools. I didn't say anything about the other temps besides mentioning that maybe the final boss could have a move that erases your temps from inventory or something.

[Makenshii]

Both of you have valid points, but if I may...
Be gone with fights that yes, give you the chance to obtain and use temps, use and obtain atma/atmacites and the whole !! trigger system. I am not saying for one second the !! is rubbish, there are good points and bad points in and out of abyssea but I don't want to wonder off track.
AV and PW dont have temps/atmas etc etc.
Let's hope Legion offers what we (none abyssea babies) have been looking for since pre abyssea when we realise that the game was slowly dying and needed some new stuff.

[saevel]

Both of you have valid points, but if I may...
Be gone with fights that yes, give you the chance to obtain and use temps, use and obtain atma/atmacites and the whole !! trigger system. I am not saying for one second the !! is rubbish, there are good points and bad points in and out of abyssea but I don't want to wonder off track.
AV and PW dont have temps/atmas etc etc.
Let's hope Legion offers what we (none abyssea babies) have been looking for since pre abyssea when we realise that the game was slowly dying and needed some new stuff.

The proc !! system is fine, in introduced an element of strategy and a reason not to spam your biggest DD's with their biggest WS's.

The issue is SE creates NMs that if not terrorized or if you don't have fanatics up, then they'll just go around killing people. The lessor tiers are not so much an issue, but the mega boss's (City T4, Jeuno T3 5 6, Outlands T3) have these insane moves that make procing / fanatics tanking a requirement. SE has even come out and said they agree with the players that NM's should not aoe kill people with a single move and that they'll be looking into readjusting that aspect.

A "difficult" boss fight revolves around fight mechanics not stats. An example would be a boss fight that periodically through out the fight the boss would say something then become immune to damage. The fight area would have tiles on the ground that would start to flash for a few seconds. The tiles would then explode and deal 9,999 damage to anyone standing on them. After the explosions the boss would become vulnerable again and the fight would continue.

I know I ripped that off a popular MMO, but it goes to show how you can introduce difficulty without turning the boss into Captain Broken. There are numerous variations of this you could go with, as well as having the boss become immune and spawning minions that need to be killed before he goes vulnerable again.

[Makenshii]

I understand what you are saying but I have to ask, did you ever fight AV pre-group 2 merits?
Do you have the title of "Pandemonium Queller" ?
FFXI needs NMs like these bad boys that had no procs and a mass of temp items.
This game used to be a challenge, there isn't anything new added that come even as close to the difficulty those NMs was like. All these new VWNM that can aoe kill ppl etc are still being killed and farmed.
I NEVER once saw anyone shout for AV, I did see PW shout pre abyssea they took on relic/mythics only pretty much and had a week long screening session.

[saevel]

I understand what you are saying but I have to ask, did you ever fight AV pre-group 2 merits?
Do you have the title of "Pandemonium Queller" ?
FFXI needs NMs like these bad boys that had no procs and a mass of temp items.
This game used to be a challenge, there isn't anything new added that come even as close to the difficulty those NMs was like. All these new VWNM that can aoe kill ppl etc are still being killed and farmed.
I NEVER once saw anyone shout for AV, I did see PW shout pre abyssea they took on relic/mythics only pretty much and had a week long screening session.

Umm you DO realize that initially AV had no drops nor title right? It was designed to never be killed until some players found a really cheap tactic.

You do realize that PW had infinite HP and would cycle through his forms continuously. 18hr fights and he's still cycling.

Yeah MMO's do not "need these NMs" because those are CPT broken NMs designed to never be killed. The only way to kill them is to find a glitch and exploit it. Gogo 12+ KC DRK's on AV. Or how about "after" they made PW mortal, needing to use BLU's to zombie him and having your entire alliance /logoff to avoid the 2HR that keeps on giving.

None of those NM's were "hard" they were cheap. Tenzen Cosmic Eludiation cheap. In games this is known as fake difficulty, as it doesn't rely on skill to bypass by luck or glitch's.

Prior to group-2 merits, you were not able to kill AV without using a glitch, and PW had infinite HP. Shows what you know.

[Urat]

Sadly most NMs that are any level of difficulty can just be taken down via a alexander + zerg style of fighting. Perfect defense kind of beats everything :|

I think if mayhaps SE made VW wipe buffs on start, made the VW NM spawn after about 1 minute after start time, allowing the group to buff up, and also this final fight reset JA timers.

This would prevent the whole alexander perfect defense zerg style tactic. Personally though, here's what I think we would need for a much more difficult fight.

Make the NM smart. Way smarter than your average monster. Make it do shit like stun the blm casting an -Aga, make it shift enmitty around and cast stuff like sleepga on the mages, and dispelga on the DDs.

If we actually had to deal with a "smart" NM that didnt just mindlessly attack whatever, that'd be truly a hard fight. Imagine for a moment, black mages, an NM that'd stun you when you tried to cast your big nuke on it.

That'd be something else. However it's hard to change AI for monsters in ffxi as far as I can tell. I know SE tried messing around with monster AI on the fomor type NMs in dungeons in the past. And if I recall it did indeed throw the playerbase for a loop and even some of the best LSes struggled with them for the first week or two until we developed a strategy to deal with such a wonky fight.

That's really cool, anything that makes us have to completely re evaluate our play style and shift fighting strategies completely can change up the game a lot.