Long Holding Times for Delve NMs

[Camate]

Greetings delvers!

It seems we have a new face on the forums today – the lead developer for Delve content, Ryota Iwagami. From what I hear, he will be showing his face every now and again and he has made a couple of lengthy comments about this new content, so please take a moment and check it out!

Since they are rather long, instead of posting both at the same time I am going to put this post up first, so you all can start reading.



Delve lead Ryota Iwagami here.

Thanks so much for playing the Delve content. By letting us know your thoughts on the good (and bad) aspects, and the points that we were almost able to nail, it will go a long way for future adjustments and content, so please keep the comments coming.

We would like to make adjustments to the Delve monsters that are spawned in the field areas, specifically in regards to long holding time, but we would like to hear everyone's thoughts on this first. At the current point in time I'd personally like to make adjustments if possible, but that is not to say that we will definitely force this through. It would really help out if you could let us know your opinions along with your feelings on the matter.

Now then, onto the matter at hand.

The proposed adjustment we would like to perform is to set the maximum battle time for fighting Delve NMs in the field to 45 minutes.

The premise of fighting these Delve monsters is that you have prepared your equipment sufficiently, and as such, they have been made so you can defeat them in 15 minutes. With that said, if you are unable to defeat the monster in 15 minutes that means that either you might not have been properly prepared or that your strategy might be a bit off, so the monster powers up as a means to counter congestion (Rage or hyper-mode, as they say.). If you are feeling a spike in the monster's evasion and attack power, more than likely this is the reason. I'd like to apologize for there being no way to determine if the higher evasion and defense is part of the monster's normal behavior or not due to the fact that there is no log message when the monsters rages. As for the enhancements related to their normal behavior, by employing the proper strategy you can mitigate this, lowering their evasion or lowering their defense, so if you feel they've become stronger before time runs out, please try out various strategies and I think you'll notice some changes.

Currently, we are aware that even after these monsters have become enraged, they are being defeated by battling with them for very long periods of time. This means that the feature for countering congestion is not working properly, and as such we would like to make adjustments to this aspect. I understand that players who were unable to defeat these monsters within the set time but were able to defeat them over the course of a long period of time will no longer be able to do this. Due to the fact that this adjustment could make conditions poor for players who challenge this content later, I would like to hear everyone's opinion and base the decision off of that.

Please let me know which of the following options you prefer:

There may be congestion, but keep it as it is now
It'll be hard to tell how long it will take until it's your turn to fight, but you'll be able to defeat the monster most likely even if it takes time.

Set a time limit to counter congestion
It'll be easier to know when it's your turn to fight, but you'll no longer be able to defeat the monster spending the amount of time that players are currently.

Set the time limit to 20 minutes and make it so the monsters do not go hyper
It will be extremely easy to know when it's your turn to fight, but the time limit is stricter than option 2. However, the monster's behavior will be easy to understand.

I would really like to hear the opinions from players who have yet to take on this content and from those who have tried it out but were unsuccessful. Once you start to understand the monster's special traits and have supplemental strategy information I believe the story will change; however, during battles that take a long time it's difficult to confirm strategic elements due to the fact that the monster’s basic parameters increase so much. With that said I would really appreciate it if you would allow us to put a time limit on these battles.

If we decide to make these adjustments, we are planning to perform them around 5/10, so while it's only a short amount of time for feedback we'd appreciate it if you could post your comments by 5/7. Whether we decide to make this adjustment or not, I will be sure to post our conclusion.

Thank you very much.

[Camate]

Below is the second post by Ryota Iwagami, as promised. This post consists of comments in regards to suggestions and feedback made by players on the Japanese forum.



Iwagami here. Thanks for all the feedback.

I've read all of your feedback up until now.
While it will be difficult to address every single point, I'd like to respond to a couple of them with my thoughts.

Increasing the amount of "???" points

I actually looked into this myself; however, there is a high possibility that large battle condition differences would arise between the areas where the same monster is spawned, so I thought this was difficult to accomplish. For example, the below are some differences in battle conditions that could arise:


Easier to access some ??? points over others
??? areas with no aggressive monsters in the vicinity
Closer to walls

With these differences it would cause players to utilize the most advantageous spawning location. For Voidwatch, your are under the confrontation status and we worked hard to find areas that were exactly the same for each spawn point, and set up three of them. While it might be possible to say that this isn't the case, there is a chance that we use these locations for other content as well, so we'd appreciate it if you could forgive us for not being able to add additional "???" points for now. We'd like everyone to enjoy this content turn by turn.

It's tough to know if our strategy is working. Please introduce clear messages.

First, as some additional information on this content, there are no random weaknesses where the WS or magic spells change like Voidwatch for Delve to show your strategy is accurate. To give a better idea, it's probably close to the way that defense is lowered while under the effect of Dia. Of course it's not limited to certain magic like Dia only, but for example, by doing XX the damage reduction will decrease by 1% or evasion will be reduced by 10. I'd really like to give a clear example, but it would be too obvious, so please try out a variety of things. I am personally interested in what strategies everyone is using, and have been concealing myself near areas where these battles are taking place as well as reading everyone's blogs. I'm happy to see that monster strategies are gradually being figured out. I'd really be glad if you could share you information and let people know your experience with this content.

Preparations (equipment)

The Delve monsters have been arranged in different tiers of content levels.



Upper tier: Boss monster
Balance has been set so that it can be fought without using the items that bosses drop.

Middle tier: Shard IV and V NMs
Balance has been set with the idea that enhanced items from shards I-III will be used.

Lower tier: Shard I-III NMs
Balance has been set so that they can be fought without Delve equipment.


If you skip obtaining equipment from the lower tier monsters and dash right into the middle tier, it will be a really big challenge because the difference in level is so large. By prepping your fire power gradually starting on the lower tier monsters, you'll be able to do better. If you feel that even the lower tier monsters are too difficult, it would be best to gather equipment from wildskeeper reives, skirmish, salvage II, and other content. While I understand that some of you may not want to struggle to gather equipment, please understand that the challenge will be extremely hard if you don't.

After reading all of the comments up until now, I've discussed with the rest of the development team and came up with a third option. Please let us know your opinions on this.


Option 3: Set the time limit to 20 minutes and make it so the monsters do not go hyper
It will be extremely easy to know when it's your turn to fight, but the time limit is stricter than option 2. However, the monster's behavior will be easy to understand.

(*Please note that this option was added to the OP after the fact.)

This will make it so the time is reduced by 25 minutes for those that can withstand the monster’s hyper mode, but what do you think? I believe it would be too much of a change to keep monsters from going hyper for 30 minutes, so I propose limiting it to 20 minutes. If you would like to fight for longer than 30 minutes, we would like you to fight in the fracture underground.

Thank you very much.

PS:
For those leaving feedback, it'd help out a lot if you write about the type of monster and other details when commenting on certain aspects. The situation will be a bit different depending on if you are saying you are unable to attack the Chapuli NM or if you are unable to attack the Twitherym NM, for example. The special traits for each of these NMs are very different, so I think this will make it easier for you all to discuss as well.

[Toioiz]

Fighting the Twitherym NM with sushi, on a 2handed job (Samurai), with gravity, light shot, dia2, geomancer accuracy+ (capped skill), Geomancer evasion down (Capped skill), with NNI Gear, and a skirmish weapon, and corsair buffs I was only at 50% accuracy. It seems a bit excessive.

[bigdave]

how about leave it the way it is since no one is complaining

[HimuraKenshyn]

I like it finally content that we can't destroy as soon as it's added to the game. Need to actually think again instead of zerg zerg done next. A time limit is needed other wise I see the crazy long kite fights will be back. The message is get stronger to do the higher content but peeps still just want to jump to the bosses skipping it all by any means necessary, I like the change. Gives a reason to keep playing and a bit of a challenge in the process...

[Zumi]

I would leave it as it is.

Because if you change it now and make it despawn, you would have to make the fight easier because many of the people who already cleared it fought it for a really long time during raged mode and now have access to the high damage weapons. It would put everyone else at a disadvantage who has yet to clear it when the change goes in.

[Siviard]

As someone who has participated in fighting Delve NMs out in the field, I can tell you that as it stands now, there will not be a whole lot of people who will be able to successfully defeat these NMs. The ones who say "leave it as it is now" such as Bigdave from Cerberus is probably one of those people.

I do enjoy the content, and the strategy that needs to be involved. It takes away from the "zerg zerg and zerg some more" mentality that had taken over recently. However, I do feel now that "strategy" is needed in order to defeat these NMs, 20 minutes is simply not enough. I would propose a 30 minute timer, with no "hyper mode". That way, if your group is unable to defeat the NM within the 30 minute time limit, the NM simply despawns and a revision of your strategy is needed.

That's my take, at least.

[Raksha]

Just get rid of the rage mode. Its not like people are lining up waiting to kill these monsters.

[Mizuharu]

So if we need the best players, that obviously means people with 99 R/M/E! Oh wait, they all unsub'd this update.

Also, I like this bit.

Currently, we are aware that even after these monsters have become enraged, they are being defeated by battling with them for very long periods of time. This means that the feature for countering congestion is not working properly, and as such we would like to make adjustments to this aspect. I understand that players who were unable to defeat these monsters within the set time but were able to defeat them over the course of a long period of time will no longer be able to do this. Due to the fact that this adjustment could make conditions poor for players who challenge this content later, I would like to hear everyone's opinion and base the decision off of that.

So because people spent an hour+ trying to beat a stupidly evasive raged monster and succeeding but taking so long you're going with, "Oh, they beat it after two hours? Let's set a time limit of 20mins! Because that is the most logical thing to do!"

... Just either lower the non-raged def/eva of monsters and still have them rage in 15mins, or give everyone Murasamemaru and Ochains and tell them to pldx2 corx2 brdx3 whmx3 sam/thfx8.

[Siviard]

Just get rid of the rage mode. Its not like people are lining up waiting to kill these monsters.

Agreed. When we did the Raptor yesterday evening, there were no other groups waiting for us to finish.

[SpankWustler]

Just leave it as it is now.

If people want to kite a giant enraged turtle around a lake for an hour after it enters hyper-mode, that should be a viable strategy. If people hate themselves enough to fight a matamata or uraganite for two hours and not kill it, that particularly cruel method of self-punishment should be available to them. Implementing a timer would just homogenize all the fights and possibly even force certain monsters to be adjusted to conform to the new timer.

[Mizuharu]

Since Ryota Iwagami asked for which monsters the players are talking about, I'm going to list the ones I've fought.

Perdurable Raptor - This one is considered the easiest. Which it is. Assuming you have all acc songs/rolls/food/JAs up. And assuming you don't get zombie PLDs while its enraged.

Mastop - this one is TERRIBLE. You cannot debuff it (except with GEO) and it's evasive as hell already from being a gnat; not even counting the fact it's a delve NM. My group did SMNx3 timed Odin each doing 10k Zantensuken at the start. Only took it down to 95%. Fought it raged well enough but then random back-to-back triple attacks were killing our PLDs.

If there is one thing I DO like about these NMs is the loot system for the armor/weapons. Beating them once, then being able to buy the gear from an NPC with points? That's the best loot system in this game so far. Keep that. Change NOTHING about it. Ever. >:[

[Hawklaser]

Well, if the NM's have been designed to be beaten in 15m with the top of the line gear before delve, I'd say leave them as is for now.

If you really feel they should have a timer to prevent congestion, maybe try a longer one like 1 hour at first? Which could be coupled with warning messages along the way, like at 30m or so something involved with it going into "rage" mode, and then say at 50m one about it beginning to loose interest, with a 2nd one at 55m. This gives people time to figure out how to beat the NM, but also keeps the fight from dragging out too long. So that way even those without the pre-delve very top of the line equipment can have a chance at beating the NM.

[Phafi]

Having done several NMs, I have only ran into another group once, which we ended up teaming up with as it was day 1 and we had no idea they were that strong. I do not believe counter congestion measures are in order.

However, if you want a countermeasure option, why not allow all five ???s to accept any of the five shards so if NM x is being killed at spot 1, group 2 can proceed to spot 2 to kill NM x, y, or z.

[Cahlum]

Leave it as it is now.

Time limits are annoying and force people to melee burn stuff which is no fun for other jobs such as BLM and SMN. If you want add more ???s even if they have easier spawn points it wouldnt matter too much.

[Doombringer]

honestly, i feel like delves reward structure (which is fantastic) kinda AUTOMATICALLY mitigates congestion. you only have to kill any SPECIFIC NM one time. after that, even if the thing you want IS congested, you're not left with no recourse. you could go after any other NM, farm stones, or just tear through mook tier mobs in the delve to build up plasm.


i vote no change, and kudos on a really solid loot system.

[Mizuharu]

Maybe if the DEV Team came out with a video showing how we're SUPPOSE to beat the NMs rather than "You did it different from how we envisioned, so we're going to 'adjust' it..." that'd be swell.

[Eyrhika]

You devs do realize there is no way that gear from the T1-T3 is gonna make such a large difference that these things will be anything NEAR do-able, especially if you make the fracture NMs rage and the non-fracture NMs depop.. I would recommend you get on your chars, and try these NMs and tell us this is balanaced.

[Toioiz]

With a almost full alliance of people with top-end gear, we got the gnat to 77% before he started taking 0 dmg from physical, elemental magic, and smn non-elemental blood pacts. At that point, I'm not sure how we are supposed to defeat it, when absolutely nothing was doing damage.

[Eyrhika]

Hint: None of them actually play the game.

Seeing as how they expect us to beat these monsters in 20 mins it would seem they don't. Kinda sad they expect other people to think these NM fights are enjoyable..

Also lolled pretty hard at the "make a video of you guys fighting it" comment, all we need is for them to zoom in on the game clock and it will be AV all over again.

[Oddwaffle]

To my understanding the content has been A > B > C > D every since the level cap moved pass lv75. You need to finish A before you start B and you need C done before you can do D. It's still possible to do C without B and A but it will be extremely hard to do so and you might not get the full benefits.

The 'ladder' type of content is ok but it has a problem of finding people to do it with you when you are lagging behind everyone else. If 95% of the population is playing on D content then the remaining 5% will have a difficult time finding people to do A, B and C content so they can get to D like everyone else.

This make returning players very very reluctant to return to the game where everyone has done the things you want to do. You want to make some friends and join them on adventures but you will be too weak to do anything. Compound with the fact that the majority of linkshells have only 3-4 active members, you can't get enough people to help you on contents that require 18 players.

The solution is problematic to this type of content but the best way would be to ease off the 'abandoned' content automatically. Make it so that people who have done C and D content can help people who need A and B content with ease. For example, you need 18 people to beat A content at the beginning but only need 3-4 people with C and D content done to beat A content. Abyssea was working in a sense as you needed 18 lv80~90 players in the beginning but only need 2-3 players at lv99. A returning player will only need 2-3 friends to help him getting some of the abyssea content.

[Toioiz]

So, it's obvious that the ones in ceizak are opposites. You should use dia on the gnat to prevent the TP move that gives him -DT%, and the wamora you use dia/debuffs to *MAKE* it use the TP move that *removes* -DT%. Even with that, it still takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to fight these monsters.

[Demonmaniac]

Our Linkshell (Reborn) has had the opportunity to attempt all of the delve zones (which I'm sure most have). However, we have had a difficult time with even getting to the boss. We have farmed the hardest of the five DNM's outside of the Veil. Even with this significant bonus to time (killing each NM in 10-15minutes), we still had to search for the boss, which took another 5minutes, leaving us with max 20minutes left. If you honestly think anyone can kill these ridiculous WK+1 NM's, you are sadly mistaken. We do have a couple pieces of gear, and augmented decently. We even have a couple augmented weapons. However, this content is absolutely ridiculous. I wouldn't be posting if I didn't think it was possible. The fact is, it's not. We dropped the shark down 3% on 15minutes. With the aura up, it near-spams Marine Mayhem, and it unstunnable. With the aura down, its attacks do upwards of 1k, forcing us into DT gear, flooring out ACC and ATK even more. Now, we do not have a problem with wildskeeper reive. We do not have a problem with Skirmish. We don't have problems with Legion. We don't even have problems with the T1-5 NM's (excluding the butterflies and chapuli). How can you say that the new gear will help? Our damage still sucks, acc parsed 30-40% with rank3-5 acc path when not in DT gear. Our WHM's are awesome, so that's not the problem. We have 8 BRD rolls, 4 COR rolls, boost dex, pizza+1/sushi+1...what else can you get? If there is some sort of weakness (doubt it on the bosses), we haven't found it, and it will be ages before we do since we die too quickly. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but given FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to kill these NM's, I say it is impossible at this point.

[Fynlar]

My opinion:

If you absolutely have to have a time limit on these fights, make the fights more like Voidwatch. 30 minutes, but no rage. Give people more of a chance to actually fight these things at their normal stats before forcing them to resort to PLD and SAM/THF and SMN abuse, or whatever it is that people are beating the raged NMs with.

Rage was originally intended and implemented as a mechanism for preventing people from holding mobs on purpose to grief other players or stall out ToDs, not as a means of artificially time-restricting a fight. Honestly, these mobs don't need to be capable of raging; I think they are powerful enough as is, and 15 minutes is way too strict for it anyway.

IMO, outside the fractures should be more of a "trial" version of the NM fights anyway, where you have more of a chance to figure out how they work. Inside the fractures you already are on a time limit, so in there you already have to know how to fight them "properly" if you want to win anyway. Either way, I view rage as unnecessary.

[Venat]

Its its a problem just add more spawn points. Didn't you learn this quick fix in Abyssea....

[hiko]

Since Ryota Iwagami asked for which monsters the players are talking about, I'm going to list the ones I've fought.

Perdurable Raptor - This one is considered the easiest. Which it is. Assuming you have all acc songs/rolls/food/JAs up. And assuming you don't get zombie PLDs while its enraged.

Mastop - this one is TERRIBLE. You cannot debuff it (except with GEO) and it's evasive as hell already from being a gnat; not even counting the fact it's a delve NM. My group did SMNx3 timed Odin each doing 10k Zantensuken at the start. Only took it down to 95%. Fought it raged well enough but then random back-to-back triple attacks were killing our PLDs.

If there is one thing I DO like about these NMs is the loot system for the armor/weapons. Beating them once, then being able to buy the gear from an NPC with points? That's the best loot system in this game so far. Keep that. Change NOTHING about it. Ever. >:

raptor can be killed, its a shardII NM:"
shard I-III can be killed without delve item=> working as intended

gnat is too hard, it' a shardIV NM
shard IV-V need item from delveI-III to be defeated=> again working as intended


Our Linkshell (Reborn) has had the opportunity to attempt all of the delve zones (which I'm sure most have). However, we have had a difficult time with even getting to the boss. We have farmed the hardest of the five DNM's outside of the Veil. Even with this significant bonus to time (killing each NM in 10-15minutes), we still had to search for the boss, which took another 5minutes, leaving us with max 20minutes left. If you honestly think anyone can kill these ridiculous WK+1 NM's, you are sadly mistaken. We do have a couple pieces of gear, and augmented decently. We even have a couple augmented weapons. However, this content is absolutely ridiculous. I wouldn't be posting if I didn't think it was possible. The fact is, it's not. We dropped the shark down 3% on 15minutes. With the aura up, it near-spams Marine Mayhem, and it unstunnable. With the aura down, its attacks do upwards of 1k, forcing us into DT gear, flooring out ACC and ATK even more. Now, we do not have a problem with wildskeeper reive. We do not have a problem with Skirmish. We don't have problems with Legion. We don't even have problems with the T1-5 NM's (excluding the butterflies and chapuli). How can you say that the new gear will help? Our damage still sucks, acc parsed 30-40% with rank3-5 acc path when not in DT gear. Our WHM's are awesome, so that's not the problem. We have 8 BRD rolls, 4 COR rolls, boost dex, pizza+1/sushi+1...what else can you get? If there is some sort of weakness (doubt it on the bosses), we haven't found it, and it will be ages before we do since we die too quickly. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but given FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to kill these NM's, I say it is impossible at this point.

has everyone in your LS got all relevent item from shard I-V NMs and augmented it? I bet no, then it's once again working as intended.

as for everything else being irrelevant, if you can't defeat tierI-III NMs you should do those "irrelevant" content to get better gear till you can defeat those monster (that's what I plan to do since i don't think my group is able to defeat them now)

[Demonmaniac]

has everyone in your LS got all relevent item from shard I-V NMs and augmented it? I bet no, then it's once again working as intended.


I suppose I should have been more clear. EACH OF US has a couple pieces of gear. So, yes, in essence, we all do. Still floored. How is this working as intended?

[Stan64]

I suppose I should have been more clear. EACH OF US has a couple pieces of gear. So, yes, in essence, we all do. Still floored. How is this working as intended?
It's hard to say. If they truly tested the bosses out in full ranked Delve gear and the tier IV-V weapons and finished it, then it's probably working as intended. We have no way of knowing that however, it seems like their focus groups are non existant for the most parts. But we can only hope.

[HimuraKenshyn]

Please just make it super easy so we can have the best gear in game at release of the expansion. Is what I mostly read kind of sad nobody wants to work to earn it anymore. The expansion hasn't been out long enough for any one to have geared up for this content yet. They have given us a challenge again without crazy temps, atmas or atamacites. Mobs that you actually have to put some work into learning how to kill I hate to see gaming in the future if this is to hard its how it used to be and I for one like it. Back in my day I recall how long it took for us to build up to take on the sky gods and don't even get me started on the COP horror stories but we did it and for the most part fond memories of the days. Now a days its zerg kill loot repeat without the fear of losing meh at best before this update.

[Stan64]

I'm just sayin. In certain other games. Top guilds spend 8 hours a day getting hundreds of tries on the hardest bosses just to get the experience down and to farm those extra gear pieces who can make all the difference between a 1% wipe and a win. And they don't complain.

The content was released four days ago. No one have the best gear available, maybe some pieces here and there. No one knows all the gimmicks and characteristics of the bosses. Don't expect to beat it in a couple of days.

You don't like to grind and train for hard content? Then don't do that. They will nerf this content when the top players have mastered it and new content is introduced.

[Raksha]

Please just make it super easy so we can have the best gear in game at release of the expansion. Is what I mostly read kind of sad nobody wants to work to earn it anymore.


Troll harder. This isnt the best gear from the expansion. Also no one is saying they dont want to work for it.

In fact people are fighting these things for hours and still not killing it.

[HimuraKenshyn]

Troll harder. This isnt the best gear from the expansion. Also no one is saying they dont want to work for it.

In fact people are fighting these things for hours and still not killing it.

Means gear up from the other content and come back progression is hard. Please make it easier to get the gear you just released cause working to get it is way to much trouble. Man if we completed all the dynamis zones in the first week of release this game would have died so quick it wouldn't be funny. Now a days if you can't do all the new content in a week /wrist unsub.

[SpankWustler]

For all the talk about the new monsters being walking gear-checks from the Development Bros, Delve monsters just seem quirky from the reports that people have given after figuring out a particular monster's unique trick with 100% certainty.

People on both sides of this argument should remember the cardinal rule of FFXI: Don't drink the Development Bros' Koolaid, there's LSD in there and it's that weird blue flavor that tastes like Dr. Scholl's insoles.

[Garenos]

Fought +5 hours against Transcendent Scorpion.

->Raged when it was 75%.
(Too soon)

->Full Alliance.
(well geared and still weak compared to NM)

->3 Paladins, well geared, beeing raped easily and can´t keep the hate.
(Monster's attk too overpowered and hate reset is the worse thing SE created. EVAR!)

->I was on Samurai, doing Dark Skillchain with another Samurai for Ice Magic Bursts (BLMs)
Became useless since it raged, we couldn´t land hits and our Weaponskills misses
*Only strategy to land Tachi: Shoha was to sub /thf and use Sneak Atk.

->Armageddon Monster´s AoE
Its jumps are too wild. It ranges is so big that our mages dies often, even when not fighting.

->Monsters weakeness
Seems like it had no weak spots. Only overpowered. Ice did not a big difference. Neither spells that debuff. Even with all buff, monster evasion is high enough.

-> Loot system
Please, make loot individual. After 5+ fighting, players had to CAST LOT and compete... People go RAGE and BERSERK against SE.

SE, if you wanted only top-players to play adoulin, you should have put an warning in the game´s box:
"Don´t buy this game if you don´t have all best previous gear and your Empyrean weapon at max"

I barely can kill a butterfly swarm with my Samurai. It´s not better geared, but can´t get better gear since jobs that really usefull for parties are: NIN,BLM,WHM,BLU. (abyssean fever)

[Asymptotic]

My main complaint with Delve is not that it's not enjoyable - it's just that two weeks ago I could log in and almost be overwhelmed by trying to determine which of the several available events relevant to improving some aspect of my character I wanted to dedicate my playtime to.

Now I log in and hope there are enough people in my Linkshell online to do Delve - or else there's no reason to play and I might as well log off.

[Eldelphia]

My feeling with Delve is that there is something we are missing honestly. If that's the case and the players make no progression in a while, then there needs to be something coming from the Devs to point us in the right direction. If we're supposed to be able to kill the NMs in 20 mins eventually then either a) something's wrong with them right now or b) the players are missing something important to change the dynamic of the fights.

[Asymptotic]

My feeling with Delve is that there is something we are missing honestly. If that's the case and the players make no progression in a while, then there needs to be something coming from the Devs to point us in the right direction. If we're supposed to be able to kill the NMs in 20 mins eventually then either a) something's wrong with them right now or b) the players are missing something important to change the dynamic of the fights.

Most (if not all) of the nms have a 'trick'

They're all very easy with the 'trick' if you have non-crappy DDs (and/or nukers where applicable) and you bring BRDs and CORs for buffing

[HimuraKenshyn]

Most (if not all) of the nms have a 'trick'

They're all very easy with the 'trick' if you have non-crappy DDs (and/or nukers where applicable) and you bring BRDs and CORs for buffing

They all do its a WOW design of a boss you learn the strategy and with the right gear the mobs get easier and easier to fight as your gear progress goes up. FFXI has never used the model in the past and just was zergfest with side grade rewards so having to really figure out fights has become a lost art peeps just say impossible and quit. I see peeps with the new gear sick stats GS 200+ base already augment with over +45 acc and att and +10 dex on top of already crazy stats so an alliance full of peeps geared like that with the trick down makes easy work of em lucky bg has been analyzing the fights and the tricks aren't crazy and some as simple as debuffing the mob at the right time. Peeps say I troll nope I just understand the model they are trying to implement and for me it's a better game mindless zerging and using temps and atmas was getting boring as hell...

[Asymptotic]

I don't know - "Zerg with temps!" and "someone spam Dia every 10 seconds to make its AoE attacks deal zero damage!" aren't really that divergent

The only difference is we have a reason to use PLD and we need additional accuracy

But I guess if you have really low standards having to use madrigals and sushi counts as "new and exciting territory"

[HimuraKenshyn]

Zerg with temps ie the entire void watch system. At least peeps actually had to figure something out most fights in this game is nothing more than a dps race that peeps parse and brag who is number 1.

[Asymptotic]

Yes and Delve is a DPS race where your backliners have to do one specific thing per NM and you have to eat Sushi instead of Curry

Perhaps the big-bosses will be different but seeing as they will be in a timed instance I doubt it

And people thought VW was "hard" at first too - until they figured it out

[HimuraKenshyn]

VW was never hard boring tedious stupiest drop system ever maybe, hard no, proc and the mob does jack. The vw proc system aka abyssea 2.0 was never hard. If that's hard I give I give maybe we should go back to chainspell stun rotation all the things..

[Asymptotic]

Judging by your gear you probably didn't do Voidwatch until people had already figured it out for you

Delve will be the same way - give it a month and PUG will be steamrolling the T1-V with minimal difficulty

The final bosses - I can't make any calls on that just yet

[HimuraKenshyn]

Wrong bro my mule of my five accounts been playing since 2003. Abyssea was hard at first fun as blank until we figured out the proc system VW was pretty easy after that.
Funny thing is we are saying the exact same thing expect for taking a shot the new gear will make these fights easy as blank as soon as peeps gets geared up ie progression then the boss fights hopefully more of a challenge than than just zergfest. Anything is better than that...

[Asymptotic]

Exactly it was easy after it was figured out - Delve is already proving to be the same way

So really it's just same old same old

Different buffs - different food

Even the mobs are just recycled old boss models!

[HimuraKenshyn]

Exactly it was easy after it was figured out - Delve is already proving to be the same way

So really it's just same old same old

Different buffs - different food

Even the mobs are just recycled old boss models!

Pretty much the same in any MMO really once you break it down. FFXI just decided to try the wow model, gear progression something they have never really done before. All raiders in wow understood next release out, ur gear was dick and basically had to grind the next tier to be king again. All boss fights had mechanics we had to figure out in order to win its a simple model not based on level but gear score.

[Richwood]

Okies...

A. I agree with the suck less model SE is going for with new NMs. I see one group reck T5 moth in 15 mins. while another groups runs around playing zombie for 2 hours before giving up. It is obvious what is going on here. If you want to have the nice little shines, there should be some effort required. The mentality you should get everything for nothing is crap, so is the elitist mentality. muster up your MMO skills and get some good alliances together (Non pugs) figure out weakness test and poke at things, find a balance, defeat your foe.

[Asymptotic]

Did the second group force it to use Exuviation 10+ (15 seems to be "safe") times before attempting to kill it

'Cause it's as simple as that (It starts with 99% DT reduction and seems to lose 5% every time it uses Exuviation - spam debuffs for a few minutes while it sheds them and then it drops dead)

[Zumi]

Did a lot of Delve pick up groups this last week. Every NM has a gimmick once you know that gimmick they aren't that hard. If you tell your group about it beforehand go in with a plan, honestly it isn't very hard the doing the NMs in fracture makes it so people without the top tier gear, like random people you shout for can kill them.

People were figuring out the most easy NMs to snipe for KI kills once you get that its only a matter of farming plasm for some weapons. I am already 1/3 of the way to the new 101 damage hand to hand which destroys Verethragna.

Anyway changes to the outside NMs really won't matter much due to the fact everyone found out they are way easier to kill inside, once you got the ki really not much reason to kill them since you can farm points faster by skipping nms.

[Cybermario]

Dont think counter congestion measures are needed, at elast not right now.

[Asymptotic]

Did a lot of Delve pick up groups this last week. Every NM has a gimmick once you know that gimmick they aren't that hard. If you tell your group about it beforehand go in with a plan, honestly it isn't very hard the doing the NMs in fracture makes it so people without the top tier gear, like random people you shout for can kill them.

People were figuring out the most easy NMs to snipe for KI kills once you get that its only a matter of farming plasm for some weapons. I am already 1/3 of the way to the new 101 damage hand to hand which destroys Verethragna.

Anyway changes to the outside NMs really won't matter much due to the fact everyone found out they are way easier to kill inside, once you got the ki really not much reason to kill them since you can farm points faster by skipping nms.

This isn't really true. The best groups can take out the NMs inside the fracture and still farm 5-6k points. Once people have their first "layer" of Delve gear this will be more attainable for "regular" groups and it will become much more efficient to farm points while killing NMs and getting 30k weapons for "free."

(NMs inside the fracture have a very high drop rate on items)

[Teakwood]

I think option 3 is the best one by far. Also, you might want to consider rewarding players with hints towards fighting certain NMs, possibly within Adoulin quests or as the result of the progress of various Coalitions.

The fights -don't work- as zerg fights; you're not going to be able to just zerg them down in 15 minutes if they update it just like you can't do that right now. If you can't beat the fight in 20 minutes you're not doing it the right way, and I think it's -really- insulting to the players to have monsters that go into rage mode in 15 minutes and become unkillable knowing players won't want to give up and will just leave the monsters up for a long time and wind up feeling miserable.

I'm definitely staying away from Delve content for a few months until updates sort themselves out (and I get my THF sub leveled, which is a thing I guess I have to do now) but this would be a good place to start.

[Asymptotic]

I think option 3 is the best one by far. Also, you might want to consider rewarding players with hints towards fighting certain NMs, possibly within Adoulin quests or as the result of the progress of various Coalitions.

The fights -don't work- as zerg fights; you're not going to be able to just zerg them down in 15 minutes if they update it just like you can't do that right now. If you can't beat the fight in 20 minutes you're not doing it the right way, and I think it's -really- insulting to the players to have monsters that go into rage mode in 15 minutes and become unkillable knowing players won't want to give up and will just leave the monsters up for a long time and wind up feeling miserable.

I'm definitely staying away from Delve content for a few months until updates sort themselves out (and I get my THF sub leveled, which is a thing I guess I have to do now) but this would be a good place to start.

To Bold: Soul Voice + Embrava zerg works for pretty much all of the NMs once you have figured out whatever "trick" is required to weaken the NM. I have our group use SV March + Scherzo + Madrigal + Madrigal + Minuet if we decide that a SV "zerg" is the way to go, although really Delve NMs have very average defense so Minuet is not necessary (I say "zerg" because it doesn't really feel like a zerg when the fight still takes 10 minutes, but things generally die shortly after the second application of songs + rolls and my rolls last 7 minutes - otherwise though it's basically treating the fight as a high zerg). 4 songs (two regular bards or one super bard) would be sufficient (March March Madrigal Madrigal) outside of Soul Voice, most likely, and you could toss in a GEO for Indi-Frailty in the mage party and be fine on just about everything. Some of the NMs require Magic damage so this strategy isn't going to necessarily work there - but largely, they are "zerg friendly." (It's just not a "Fast" zerg - but you're executing the same strategy). If you're having TOO much trouble with these NMs you need to look up the "tricks" and consider using Scherzo and/or Earthen Armor, because dead DDs don't do anything to kill NMs.

To underlined: Related to the above, the /THF craze will last another two weeks at best. The only reason to /THF these NMs is if you're trying to kill them raged or you are for some reason not running with DDs who have BRD + COR buffs. Just like Voidwatch, WHM BRD COR PLD DD DD + WHM BRD COR DD DD DD + 6 pack of mages, assorted flavors - should be able to handle pretty much any Delve content.

[sweetidealism]

Option 2 gets my vote. I like the idea of a 45 minute timer. Make it so that Skirmish and other progression is actually necessary, instead of having people be able to just throw themselves at these new NMs for 4 hours.

That said, if you do go that route, then you ALSO need to increase the drop rate on Skirmish items. They're nearly impossible to find, to the point where the event is largely inaccessible.

[Asymptotic]

Skirmish etc. will never be necessary because at least two of the Shard IV and V NMs (Wamoura V in Ceizak and Orobon IV in Foret) are doable with a Soul Voice strategy with pre-Adoulin equipment and familiar Voidwatch-style setups. Even if Morimar is not, the equipment obtainable from the aforementioned two encompasses a large portion of weapon types (Hand-to-Hand, Scythe, Great Katana, Great Sword etc.) which can then be applied to Morimar's Shard IV and V NMs. Since this is relatively easy and gears 18+ people while Skirmish gears at most 6 people (and depends on random augments), Skirmish will never be an efficient or effective progression strategy even if it's made easy to enter it.

It's a good thing they delayed Delve or Skirmish would have been dead on arrival. I don't know if there's any way for them to "save" it but as it stands Skirmish was ultimately wasted development time.

An interesting note on Skirmish entry items, it seems that there is a certain number of Simualcra pieces scattered throughout Adoulin at any given time and each is set to be obtainable by a specific method (e.g. Piexe X is available through Logging in Foret de Hennetiel, Y is available through Reives in Ceizak Hunting Grounds, etc.) (this isn't observation, it's information from a gaming magazine interview in Japan). So really the system is a bit deeper and more intertwined with the game environment than your average battle system, which really makes it a shame that the content is doomed. But that's the progression-ladder model for you. Matsui, stahp. You do not have the development resources to release stillborn events.

Also as an aside for people attempting Delve

Remember that Murasamemaru and Requiescat will hit through certain types of enemy damage reductions. An enemy that seems immune or highly resistant to Physical Damage can be made to crumble with enough Murasamemaru Samurai or buffed sword-proficient DDs using Requiescat.

Summoners and Corsairs, as well as Blue Mages (using /THF and high-ratio Physical Spells e.g. Benthic Typhoon) are effective options during a prolonged fight where direct melee might be discouraged or impossible. Summoner in general is a great option to bring in your assorted mage 6-pack due to its powerful debuffs (Diamond Storm in particular as Delve enemies have higher evasion than we are used to seeing), accurate stun, and reliable Blood Pact damage.

When presented with new content, if it seems hard - you often need to adjust your strategy. The Development Bros may be attempting to make Delve NMs into "walking gear checks" but if you consider all that we have available to us - invincible tanks - access to extreme enhancements through Bards and Corsairs - access to more buffs and debuffs than ever (remember that Delve was designed with the existence of Geomancer in mind) - multiple sources of non-elemental damage - the ability to reduce severe damage to feather-duster levels with Scherzo and Earthen Armor - and more powerful weapon skills than ever - it will be very difficult for SE to make anything "undefeatable" without either 1.) putting a time limit on the fight or 2.) making enemies that use unstunnable long-range instant area-of-effect KO unpredictably and at high frequency. Consider what you have available to you, try to limit the number of DD you have on the enemy to 5-6, and increase the power of your backline. While often the front line melees are the stars of the show (and thus the jobs everyone seems to want to cluster on), it's the backline that determines whether you get a standing ovation or fall flat on the audience.

[Mara]

Pretty much everyone in my LS either has a 99 relic or a 99 empyrean, and there's quite a bit of other great gear on pretty much all of us. The only way that we have been able to beat any of these mobs, especially the higher tier ones, is to kite/nuke/etc. When a DD decked out in a lot of the best gear there was pre-update, with one of the best weapons there were pre-update can't even break 70% acc while using sushi, the content might be just a tad bit too difficult. I get that everyone wants a challenge. I get that the developers want it to be challenging. However, there is a difference between a realistic and fun challenge, and something that is not realistically beatable within the time given. And a lot of these things are not realistically beatable within the time given. Cutting that time completely to 20 mins is NOT going to help, because no one will ever beat them, and those that did it the long and hard way before the change will be the only ones ever to get the spoils of victory. It's basically punishing people and discouraging anyone from participating ever again. It's making an unrealistic challenge even more unrealistic. That's not exactly what you're going for, I'd bet. If you cut the time limit to 20 mins This content is going to go the way of Evoliths pretty damned quickly, because no one will be capable of doing it, and no one will want to. People will try, fail, try, fail, and give up. If you are going to put a 20 min time limit you need to make the monsters killable within that time limit, which means lowering the level/HP/evasion/Defense to the point where an alliance can realistically kill the thing within the time available. Otherwise, congratulations, you've just made the new Absolute Virtue, many will try, ALL will fail.

If you really want to improve this content, Rage needs to go completely, or at least be delayed to a reasonable amount of time. As things stand, people with the best gear available before the update have a hard time beating even the lower tier mobs before rage sets in, and will be using the kite/nuke/whatever strategy on them once it does. You want to know what is making these battles take so long, it's the Rage. If you want them to be finished sooner, there's absolutely no way to do that and keep the rage feature. It has to go. Otherwise, leave it as it is, and let us take 3 hours to kill things like in the good old days. People can wait their turn on broken content that the developers obviously didn't think through or test at all before implementing. The fights are challenging enough without the rage. Some of them could take quite a bit of time and strategy even without having to worry about rage after 20 short minutes or so. It's something that doesn't need to be there, it's doing the exact opposite of what you intended, and making things needlessly difficult. Let the players work out amongst themselves who gets to fight what and when, and worry more about making the fights realisically beatable without taking four hours because the damn thing rages at 80% HP. All that's happening is that you're stretching a 1 hour fight into 4 hours. Honestly, the monsters are difficult enough without it, and removing the rage alltogether still leaves quite a challenge, especially for people who aren't decked out in the previous best there was to be had. I'm sorry to say that the whole system looks pretty quickly and shabbily tossed together and completely untested. These fights would be a fun challenge without the rage. With it they become a gruelling hours long experience that no one really wants to participate in, but does anyway because they want the gear, and will never even consider doing again once they've beaten the thing once. If you want lasting content that people enjoy, and can complete in a reasonable timeframe, the rage needs to go. It was a very poorly thought out mechanic that saps all of the fun out of the experience.

[Monchat]

wait for the JP bros to figure out the trick to weaken them and it will be yet another zerg fest event. Makes me laugh when people claimed "good, the return of old school PLD tanking and SAM/THF". People said that for legion too ..

Right now PLD are usefull because they can indefinately hold the NMs while in hyper mode (devs ssaid we are not supposed to do that, and should be able to kill them in 15 minutes with pre adoulin gear). DD/THF is usefull only once NMs have gone hyper.

So yeah I did a few of the fights. Scorpion. wamoora, raptor. All easilly zerged down once you figure out the trick. With only 3-4 DDs my pickups managed to do 70% of scorpion's HP and 50% of wamoora's (mainly cause we didnt figure out a relyable way to make it spam exhuviation). Then we slowly zerged them down with diabolos and SAM/THF. So they will be no problem with a zerging alliance.

Those NMs might seem to have insane amounts of HP, but when you consider a zerging PT of MNKx4 for example can do 200,000 damage in 1mn30 of perfect defense on ADLs (2 copies), 3 zerging PTs can do 6,000,000 HP in 15 minutes, assuming no damage penalty. The highest amount of HP recorded so far is 2,000,000.

Next consider that the new plasm weapons (worth only 30,000 plasm, ie 5~10 delve runs) are +25% damage boost minimum, unaugmented, compared to R/M/E, and even more with a rank 15 augment. And you'll see people will slowly get used to the event. Obv the hardcore will get their weapons much faster, but the casuals will get them too, since you get plasm from doing reves for example.

[HimuraKenshyn]

We do not ever have to wait for the JP to figure it out yessh that stuff again. BG has a great thread on it already and we are farming the delves with pugs. It's only been a week and peeps will soon within a month will have tons of the gear and weapons and the outside mobs will be an after thought and on to the big bosses. Pretty much going as intended except for all the /wrist sky falling crying no wait happens no matter what changes...

[Vivivivi]

I tried several Delve NMs over the weekend, and here is my constructive feedback:

Pros:
Reward system A+. Occasional, lottable, direct drops, and points that can later be spent so long as you have defeated the NM that drops them. Fantastic. I wish Voidwatch was more like this.

Creativity: I absolutely love the uniqueness of each of these NMs, whether it's figuring out which side to hit it from, watch for it's elemental absorbtion, or knock out it's lantern, this more organic approach to weakness targetting is much more fun than waiting for a log message and getting a "!!" icon.

Lack of ridiculous completely disabling moves: (So far) I haven't seen a delve NM that chainspelled death-ga, or had a 3 second doom aura coupled with terror or anything like the Voidwatch NMs (that were eventually preventable with temporary items). I much prefer having a balanced alliance with healers, DDs, mages and support jobs to counter the damage and enfeebles these monsters produce. Being prepared with old fashioned echo drops, antidotes and remedies goes a long way too.

Cons:
Tremendously large leap in difficulty from previous content. To be clear- I'm not saying it's too difficult, I now understand the need to progress through the T1-3s and obtain that equipment before being able to swiftly take on the upper tiers. But what I am saying is what many groups have resorted to (and the larger underlying issue) which is this:

Pop the NM, pull it to the closest waypoint, just out of AOE range. Have two Paladins hold it opposite each other, and have your DDs slowly chip away on the NM, homepointing whenever they KO, and immediately warp back.

I was in a group that tried the above strategy with the wamoura NM, and it worked, but it took over two hours. By the end of it, the morale of the group was very low, and left many feeling like the relics and empyrean weapons, voidwatch and nyzul isle 2 equipment that they had worked so long to obtain were now rendered useless.

Regarding the proposed solutions, I don't particularly think either of the 3 are very good options. While I do like the idea that with determination, your team can win the battle, I don't think it should be possible to endlessly hold these NMs, it feels like a broken battle strategy, and most of all, it's not fun.

I would suggest perhaps keeping things mostly as they are now, but introducing some simple battle messages, sort of like when you're fishing and are about to loose a catch. Something to the extent of "You have a feeling the fiend's dormant strength is about to be unleashed!" and/or "The fiend has become enraged with unwieldy power!".

As I conclude my thoughts, as the players learn more about Delve and battle strategies, the way the content is now will probably be just fine, but the above messages I think would have been helpful when it was released to give players a slight clue that there is in fact a point in which it may be time to let it go and start over (unless it is very very close to being defeated).

[Sapphires]

Im glad i've already done thse fights and gotten all the KIs already, from a time/reward perspective they arent really that great if you are doing them in the field since people are usually burning their 1hr abilities on them and once the strat is figured out its still a zergfest.

Most people have gotten the KIs and are just killing the trashmobs in a fracture for 4-6k a run, all this content gets incredibly boring already. Voidwatch staggers were at least more interesting.

[detlef]

Most people have gotten the KIs and are just killing the trashmobs in a fracture for 4-6k a run, all this content gets incredibly boring already. Voidwatch staggers were at least more interesting.As we get better at killing NMs hopefully we can incorporate that into each fracture run. But right now, it looks like holding/saccing NMs and farming fodder is the way to go, which is not enjoyable at all.

[Gwynplaine]

I had assumed that the rage time limit was a way for the Delve system to discipline your team into working fast in order to be efficient inside the Fractures, but seems it was to prevent holding.

If that's the case then I say remove the rage completely because it achieves the opposite by ensuring, not preventing, holding. A good party can still hold the raged NMs for hours with not that much trouble and they do. Parties have fought them for anywhere from 1~7(!) hours reportedly. On top of that it makes gaining the Beads to make a planchette just that much more awful because the outside NM has to be killed repeatedly for the rare bead to drop (unless some trick is discovered to ensure a drop).

[Raksha]

I had assumed that the rage time limit was a way for the Delve system to discipline your team into working fast in order to be efficient inside the Fractures, but seems it was to prevent holding.

If that's the case then I say remove the rage completely because it achieves the opposite by ensuring, not preventing, holding. A good party can still hold the raged NMs for hours with not that much trouble and they do. Parties have fought them for anywhere from 1~7(!) hours reportedly. On top of that it makes gaining the Beads to make a planchette just that much more awful because the outside NM has to be killed repeatedly for the rare bead to drop (unless some trick is discovered to ensure a drop).


Gwynplaine for president.

[Umichi]

So anyone unlock the absurd weapons yet?

[Demon6324236]

One thing about Delve I would like to see changed would be the time limit in fractures, I would like an area like in Legion where you have 5 minutes to lot or pass items with an automatic reraise effect. Right now I keep seeing items drop out of the pool because of one or two dead or afk members not lotting them, thankfully its been nothing important as of yet but I am sure later down the road I will lose some great drops because of this. I wish all events had this type of extra lobby because its always helpful.

[Byrth]

They elected the no-Hyper, 20 minute version of this and the change will be implemented tomorrow. They are also making it so you have to kill Fracture NMs to drop the walls and open up new parts of the Fracture. Basically, they took what was already moderately exclusive event and made it incredibly exclusive for anyone that didn't do it within the last week:
* The 20 minute fight limit will make it difficult for casuals to get wins
* The lack of wall-dropping in Fracture will hamper attempts to farm Plasm in shout groups by reducing the pool of available monsters
* Hardcores will not be affected by the changes as much, because they can get >5k Plasm per Fracture run just killing NMs

On the upside, there will be no more long, boring fights.

Here are the posts, if you are interested and can read JP:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33142-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E9%95%B7%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E5%8D%A0%E6%9C%89%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430415#post430415
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33331-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E7%A9%BA%E6%B4%9E%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%9C%E3%82%B9%E9%83%A8%E5%B1%8B%E3%81%AE%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E6%9D%A1%E4%BB%B6%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430414#post430414

[SpankWustler]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33142-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E9%95%B7%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E5%8D%A0%E6%9C%89%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430415#post430415
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33331-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E7%A9%BA%E6%B4%9E%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%9C%E3%82%B9%E9%83%A8%E5%B1%8B%E3%81%AE%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E6%9D%A1%E4%BB%B6%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430414#post430414

HI, THERE ARE ROCKS!

...

OKAY! HI THERE, ROCKS!

[HimuraKenshyn]

They elected the no-Hyper, 20 minute version of this and the change will be implemented tomorrow. They are also making it so you have to kill Fracture NMs to drop the walls and open up new parts of the Fracture. Basically, they took what was already moderately exclusive event and made it incredibly exclusive for anyone that didn't do it within the last week:
* The 20 minute fight limit will make it difficult for casuals to get wins
* The lack of wall-dropping in Fracture will hamper attempts to farm Plasm in shout groups by reducing the pool of available monsters
* Hardcores will not be affected by the changes as much, because they can get >5k Plasm per Fracture run just killing NMs

On the upside, there will be no more long, boring fights.

Here are the posts, if you are interested and can read JP:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33142-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E9%95%B7%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E5%8D%A0%E6%9C%89%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430415#post430415
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33331-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E7%A9%BA%E6%B4%9E%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%9C%E3%82%B9%E9%83%A8%E5%B1%8B%E3%81%AE%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E6%9D%A1%E4%BB%B6%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430414#post430414

Wow beating the moth last night I guess was the best thing I could have ever done. That fight is pure fing pain in the arse....

[saevel]

Wow so SE is really f*cking over it's players then.

Seriously you guys could at least have the decency to let the non Japanese player base know your about to cut them entirely out of the game rather then people wake up tomorrow wondering WTF just happened.

[Camiie]

Most people have gotten the KIs and are just killing the trashmobs in a fracture for 4-6k a run

I'm not sure if that's actually true or not. I know it isn't for me, and I know it's not true for new and returning players. I guess all we can do is hope for future nerfs once delve is no longer the hot new toy. Maybe they'll make Skirmish more accessible now that Delve is less so. I just wish I had enough faith in the devs to count on them going that way.

[RyujinSephy]

They elected the no-Hyper, 20 minute version of this and the change will be implemented tomorrow. They are also making it so you have to kill Fracture NMs to drop the walls and open up new parts of the Fracture. Basically, they took what was already moderately exclusive event and made it incredibly exclusive for anyone that didn't do it within the last week:
* The 20 minute fight limit will make it difficult for casuals to get wins
* The lack of wall-dropping in Fracture will hamper attempts to farm Plasm in shout groups by reducing the pool of available monsters
* Hardcores will not be affected by the changes as much, because they can get >5k Plasm per Fracture run just killing NMs

On the upside, there will be no more long, boring fights.

Here are the posts, if you are interested and can read JP:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33142-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E9%95%B7%E6%99%82%E9%96%93%E5%8D%A0%E6%9C%89%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430415#post430415
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33331-%E3%83%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%82%B9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E7%A9%BA%E6%B4%9E%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AE%E3%83%9C%E3%82%B9%E9%83%A8%E5%B1%8B%E3%81%AE%E9%96%8B%E6%94%BE%E6%9D%A1%E4%BB%B6%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6?p=430414#post430414

English forums are just a placebo... :'(

[Byrth]

It looks like my Google-Fu is weak. It seems that the wall between the T1-3 NMs and the T4-5 NMs may still drop as time continues on, so this won't have much impact on Plasm farming. No reason to Plasm farm if you can't kill the NM, though.

[Tannlore]

Hmm, not seeing where the whole you have to kill nm to make any and all walls fall apart is at in the JP post. All I see is that you have to kill NMs to make the delve boss appear. I think this might be a misreading honestly.

[Camate]

Greetings,

Thanks for all of the feedback regarding the new Delve field NMs. The development team has made a decision as to what direction they would like to take for adjusting this, and below is a comment from Delve lead Ryota Iwagami about their decision.



Hello, Iwagami here.

First off, thanks so much for all of the comments. I've read through them all.

In addition to the feedback from those who have participated in Delve and those that have not, hearing feedback before you tried it out and then once again after having tried it out has contributed a lot to our discussion. This decision was made after personally interpreting all of the comments received, so even if it is not fully in accordance with your wishes, I'd appreciate it if you could understand our reasoning.

Before the result of our discussion, I'd like to let you know about one bug.
We've determined a bug where Mastop's magic and abilities are affecting players outside of the fighting alliance, and we will be fixing this immediately. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Discussion result
Now then, I would like to inform you all of the result from our adjustment plan discussion.

After sharing what I wanted to do for the adjustment, there were a lot more comments agreeing with the feedback posted, and also considering that these battles would increase moving forward in order to procure Yggzi Beads, we will be making adjustments so that these monsters do not go into hyper-mode, but will disappear after 20 minutes.

The reason we predict an increase in battles for Yggzi Beads
The two reasons why we foresee an increase in battles for Yggzi Beads are:


Preparations have been made to take on the boss
The drop rate of Yggzi Beads is not that high

Due to the fact that the drop rate of Yggzi Beads are not that high, it will be necessary to fight these NMs multiple times in order to obtain them. Design-wise we thought this would also give new comers to the Delve content an opportunity to participate. While in actuality there may be some who say "don’t come do Delve unless you have Delve equipment," we’d appreciate if you would keep in mind that we designed this system to give these players an opportunity. With that said, making a 100% drop rate for Yggzi Beads or increasing the drop rate would make it difficult for newcomers, so currently we do not want to do this. We'd really be grateful if those of you who are experienced could invite these newcomers to take on this content when you have the ability to do so. Also, the triggers for Delve can be found in reives and as drops from monsters in the zone at a decent rate, so even if you are inexperienced, definitely try to give it a shot and gather members who aren’t worried about losing.

Regarding feedback to keep as it is now
There's also been comments mentioning to keep it as it is now and to wait until the monsters can be defeated in 15 minutes, but due to the below reasons I cannot agree with this.


The battles will become easier as more information is circulated
It's easy to re-challenge
It's easy to check whether you are lacking preparation
We would like to eliminate the congestion between now and when you can all defeat them in 15 minutes.
Regarding feedback to increase the "???" points
While I am repeating what I said previously, the below reasons are why we will not be increasing the number of "???" points at the current time.


We would like to avoid lag issues from having multiple points positioned nearby.
Considering future content, we don't want to use up too much in areas that are further away.
There will not be any cost effectiveness as pros and cons will arise from having them further away.

Also, while it's possible to spawn any NM from a single spot, we actually looked into doing this before implementation; however, problems arose with claiming trigger points and we also wanted players to adventure, so we cut this idea. We always have to consider the trade off even though we want to relieve congestion, and though it might sometimes be difficult for the development side and the player side to match up, we'd really appreciate your understand with this as we move forward.

It may appear that I've only extracted the portions of feedback that were suited to what I was thinking, but most of you are in agreement and I apologize that this system became something different than we had imagined initially. With that said, we have decided to adopt a time limit for Delve monsters fought in the field.

I've also made an announcement here (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/33350-Adjustments-to-the-conditions-for-unlocking-the-boss-room-in-Delve?p=430700&viewfull=1#post430700) about additional adjustments that will be made to delve.
Thank you very much.

[Cowardlybabooon]

Good, I was sick of two or three hour rage fights with pickup groups. I got my KIs though!

[Tannlore]

Well yup, see? kill nms to access the boss room. Nothing about walls being locked per nm completely or plasm being narfed or anything like that.

[Cahlum]

I honestly think these devs play a different game. That entire response did nothing but say "hey we want to drag this event out for as long as possible so we don't have to create any fun and interesting content!"

Try again SE, this time try to respond with something that we want.

[Asymptotic]

While in actuality there may be some who say "don’t come do Delve unless you have Delve equipment," we’d appreciate if you would keep in mind that we designed this system to give these players an opportunity

https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1942867215/image.jpg

Basically this boils down to "If you don't have Delve equipment yet - have fun leveling Bard or Corsair!"

[Raksha]

If doing nothing wasn't an option, why did he tell us it was? Is this another fake poll a la BSTgate?

[ShadedOnyx]

Just leave it alone. On Phoenix there isn't an congestion. Everyone just wants to do it at once. Leave it be. You gotta let us get used to the content before you change it.

[Losie]

Unfortunately this will just relegate Delve to only the most geared of the geared - first it was too easy to access, thus encouraging people to just skip out on Skirmish/Wildskeeper altogether if they've got NNI/etc. enough to do so and suffer through a couple rough fights, then farm some plasm for splendid upgrades.. and now I guess everyone who wasn't lucky enough to sneak in and get KIs before this change, which is dramatic as it blocks out a lot of folks from getting the KIs anytime soon, already benefits immensely from astounding gear. A poorly thought-out change, I feel, that only rewards the people who threw three hours at a fight and won only by merit of head-bashing against the wall.

It's always unpleasant to see only the first handful of people who tackle new stuff to be rewarded, this is a definite blow to anyone who was prepping to do it "right" or just hadn't got to it, yet. :\ Enjoy paying 5mil for those Skirmish sets and 10hr Bayld grinds for Wildskeepers, I guess.

[Demon6324236]

Unless you can not access the NMs inside without killing others, then it does not matter anyways, killing them outside is harder than inside and now it has a lower time limit, why would you bother with the ones outside anymore other than for beads?

[Karbuncle]

I feel this update is pretty dumb. For many reasons. 2 Specific ones:

1) You've just turned the one scarcely non-Zerg event into another f**king "ZERG ONRY" event. You finally succeeding in making PLDs, SKillchains, and MB useful for some groups, and you kill it. well done, your idea of challenge is finding enough Delve/RME DD to kill it in your absurd time limit. Thanks! Throw strategy out the window again just so we can go back to PD/Embrava/Whatever zerging cause your limits are stupid.

2) Not a single good solid LS is going to invite a bunch of leeches cause you asked nicely. You make us repeat the crap and slap a 20 minute time limit on it, and I'm assuring you shouts are only going to recruit the best... So as it was sad on the last page, Either level COR or BRD or Support (WHM/SCH) or have fun not doing the event without RME or Delve equipment.

They design these NMs to only be killable with the best of the best gear then ask us to invite people who suck? Sure, I'd of invited a subpar DD when i know I didn't have a 20 minute time limit on the fight, with a 20 minute limit? Not worth it. I'm sorry but this is just stupid.

[Phafi]

How about an option to trade more than just the one shard to pop the NM to have the fracture version of the NM outside without it depopping and removing the monsters ability to drop anything as a method for the "new comers"

but this update seems stupid, there's never anyone around, 9/10 people are going to get the clear once and just farm inside the fracture for points to buy the items. only groups that are strong enough to go after the boss are going to repeat these NMs.

[Zirael]

Greetings,

Thanks for all of the feedback regarding the new Delve field NMs. The development team has made a decision as to what direction they would like to take for adjusting this, and below is a comment from Delve lead Ryota Iwagami about their decision.
Glad I have my KIs already, but I feel sorry for everyone who missed out before nerf. Fights might take 2-3-6h, but if you're determined, you'll get your KI. I know these fights were giving trouble to even experienced and well seasoned players. For now 99% players trying Delve weren't interested in megaboss killing, but in obtaining Delve equipment, because, the reality is, you can't do Delve without Delve equipment (especially some T4 T5 fights).
NM depopping you you sucks. NM going hyper in 15min sucks too. You should've just let everyone fight those NMs at their own pace, without both hyper or depop.

[Alhanelem]

I feel this update is pretty dumb. For many reasons. 2 Specific ones:

1) You've just turned the one scarcely non-Zerg event into another f**king "ZERG ONRY" event. You finally succeeding in making PLDs, SKillchains, and MB useful for some groups, and you kill it. well done, your idea of challenge is finding enough Delve/RME DD to kill it in your absurd time limit. Thanks! Throw strategy out the window again just so we can go back to PD/Embrava/Whatever zerging cause your limits are stupid.

2) Not a single good solid LS is going to invite a bunch of leeches cause you asked nicely. You make us repeat the crap and slap a 20 minute time limit on it, and I'm assuring you shouts are only going to recruit the best... So as it was sad on the last page, Either level COR or BRD or Support (WHM/SCH) or have fun not doing the event without RME or Delve equipment.

They design these NMs to only be killable with the best of the best gear then ask us to invite people who suck? Sure, I'd of invited a subpar DD when i know I didn't have a 20 minute time limit on the fight, with a 20 minute limit? Not worth it. I'm sorry but this is just stupid.

Which means that everyone, even intelligent players who just don't happen to have the number 1 DD job AND the number 1 gear yet are locked into playing BRD, COR or WHM if they want to have a snowball's chance in hell of getting that number 1 gear.

[Economizer]

Either level COR or BRD or Support (WHM/SCH) or have fun not doing the event without RME or Delve equipment.

What's worse is that if you're a White Mage who actually plays the job more, nobody really looks at your gear or even what your Healing/Enhancing Magic are skilled at, so you get to compete with random people who powered leveled a White Mage and bought some cure potency gear and maybe (if the group is lucky) got their AF3+2 pants, and the friends of whomever is doing the shout. There is no regard to gear or skill when comparing White Mages, since gear is either crazy easy to get, doesn't make a big enough difference, or is Yagrush.

Compare this situation to a Bard or Corsair, you mention you have Relic/Empyrean Instrument or the Empyrean Gun and you basically get to boot anyone from the party who doesn't. As a White Mage? Nobody cares if you have your AF2+2 pants, or really even your AF3+2 pants, they just stick you in the party if you're lucky enough to see the shout before anyone else (assuming the shouter isn't giving preference to their friends for whatever reason).

Of course, this still doesn't change the situation we have with new players getting into the more elite content.

[Babekeke]

So glad I already have Daurdabla^^

[Unaisis]

Wow SE must have Really Screwed up when even the White Knights are upset about this Nerf.

[Fynlar]

We'd really be grateful if those of you who are experienced could invite these newcomers to take on this content when you have the ability to do so.

Hint: This won't happen, and it's even far less likely to happen now with a 20 minute time limit.

Well, it MIGHT happen, but only in the context of the elites charging newcomers millions of gil to leech the win.

[bigdave]

i think its total crap and i still need a t 4 and 5 win in ciezak now it wont happen with new rules thanks se for bending us over and shoving it up our buts again

[Camiie]

It still makes no sense that they are cockblocking Delve without opening up Skirmish and Naakuls, but not making sense seems to be what the devs do best lately.

[Calatilla]

And so we're back to zerging content and you people say SE don't intend for content to be zerg'd.

[SpankWustler]

"All these mentally challenged people sitting on the stairs and touching themselves really congests the stairway."

"Maybe we could install another staircase, or put in an elevator or escalator that goes part of the way? That seems like the obvious solution."

"We're just going to set the stairs on fire every twenty minutes."

"Really? I guess it's a little gross, but they're still human beings..."

\m/ (*.*) \m/ "THIS SOLUTION IS THE MOST METAL!" \m/ (*.*) \m/

[Arkista]

About time they did this having to wait on another group to beat a nm sucks did Tax'et yesterday had to wait about 45mins on something that should have taken 15mins and then 30mins+ on Tutewehiwehi when the party had it at 58% when we got there. If you cant beat it within the time limit then your doing it wrong, Probably not doing BRD/COR rotations.

For Newcomers and people who think they cant get win..
People can always buy up wins. I see a lot of pick up groups and they get wins and some don't even have REMs seen a few DRKs with str GS and doing 3k+ reso but idk what the average is. If all else fells bust out WHM SCH or COR and I am sure you can get a spot.

Why not have more than 1 pop for each NM....
If they gave NMs more than one ??? then you would have 15 total ??? in a zone so then you would have to find which is for which NM, Do we have to do a Reive to get to it, Are there people already at this one, And which ??? has a better advantage over the others? Any mobs going to be around the pop site if no then everyone would want that one so people can AoE without the need of outside Aggro. Oh and if you need outside mobs for TP your doing it wrong.

[Dreamin]

Greetings,

Thanks for all of the feedback regarding the new Delve field NMs. The development team has made a decision as to what direction they would like to take for adjusting this, and below is a comment from Delve lead Ryota Iwagami about their decision.

My question is pretty straight forward and simple. Was his 'reading of all your feedback' only in the JP forum because that is the ONLY forum he reads? So therefore, once again, all the non-JP feedbacks were ignored because it clearly seems that way to me atm.

[Aezelas]

I can't believe JP feedbacks were that much different from english ones.
You're hiding behind feedbacks and imaginary congestion to fix what was a huge mistake: delve's release.

You should have postpone it, and focus on improving existing empty content delve made totally irrelevant.
You're trying to block access to new weapons for adoulin's newcomers, hoping that e/r/m owners won't feel screwed anymore.
Or are you simply trying to get new people to be interested in wildkeepers and skirmish again, so you won't have to agree that it was a devs' time waste?

You failed, came up with a content related to adoulin's background in no way, and now you're coming up with ideas that will only kill the fun many of us had.
Long fights were fun, brought unexpected strategies. And even if it was not your proper way to kill nms, who cares?
There was NO congestion.

Everyone and every job were welcome participating in this new content. It looks to me like it won't be true anymore.

Thank you very much.

Maybe now you'll have time to work on something else. We still need new quests, missions, storyline, jobs fix, new jobs AF gear (too late maybe? hello delve's gear!), and why not the 4 other naakuals.

[Iakothm]

I honestly cannot believe they put a freaking 20 minute timer on the event I honestly think this will just cause yet even more people to rage quit since there were tons of people who unlocked the ki for the weapons already thus giving those players a huge advantage over the other players.

[Shirai]

I don't see the problem really, I've gotten all the key items and killed every single one of the mobs in less than 15 minutes on far less than optimal setups.
Not even using brd/cor rotations.
And only because the behaviour and weaknesses of the mobs were still mostly unknown.

20 minutes should be plenty of time to defeat nms.
If you need more time, going into fractures might be a sollution for you, there you should still get 45 minutes and the nms in there don't rage nor do they despawn.
They drop the same key items too.

If you find yourself troubling killing those as well then I think you have other problems.

[Aezelas]

I don't see the problem really, I've gotten all the key items and killed every single one of the mobs in less than 15 minutes on far less than optimal setups.
Not even using brd/cor rotations.
And only because the behaviour and weaknesses of the mobs were still mostly unknown.


You rock. Thanks for sharing your awesomeness.

[detlef]

Keep in mind that NMs are still available to fight inside the fracture.

[Caligamy]

..........

[fillerbunny9]

We'd really be grateful if those of you who are experienced could invite these newcomers to take on this content when you have the ability to do so.


this is honestly one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. why on earth are people farming for beads going to take anything that does not guarantee them a win now? if I had the choice of taking a primed group that knows exactly what to do to ensure efficient fights in hopes of getting Bead drops, knowing that it will almost assuredly take multiple rounds to do so, and some random people who are not nearly as well geared/possibly incapable of following instructions, which am I going to choose? oh, right, the group that is going to guarantee I am not going to be wasting pops.

I hope you got your KI already folks, because if not, it's that much more of an uphill battle to get them now. (though I would wager we'll see people merc-ing NMs soon.)

[Camiie]

I don't see the problem really, I've gotten all the key items and killed every single one of the mobs in less than 15 minutes on far less than optimal setups.

So, what were your setups? Jobs? Strategies? Level of gear? My LS is planning on putting some runs together so I'd love to be able to recreate your unprecedented level of success.



I hope you got your KI already folks, because if not, it's that much more of an uphill battle to get them now. (though I would wager we'll see people merc-ing NMs soon.)

Instead of being about skill, preparation, and strategy we have yet another event that's about how much gil you have. They may as well go ahead and make FFXI free to play. It's already pay to win.

[Splinters]

Since Ryota Iwagami asked for which monsters the players are talking about, I'm going to list the ones I've fought.

Perdurable Raptor - This one is considered the easiest. Which it is. Assuming you have all acc songs/rolls/food/JAs up. And assuming you don't get zombie PLDs while its enraged.

Mastop - this one is TERRIBLE. You cannot debuff it (except with GEO) and it's evasive as hell already from being a gnat; not even counting the fact it's a delve NM. My group did SMNx3 timed Odin each doing 10k Zantensuken at the start. Only took it down to 95%. Fought it raged well enough but then random back-to-back triple attacks were killing our PLDs.

If there is one thing I DO like about these NMs is the loot system for the armor/weapons. Beating them once, then being able to buy the gear from an NPC with points? That's the best loot system in this game so far. Keep that. Change NOTHING about it. Ever. >:[

Don't waste your breath, she is not reading or referring to English forums.

[Shirai]

So, what were your setups? Jobs? Strategies? Level of gear? My LS is planning on putting some runs together so I'd love to be able to recreate your unprecedented level of success.

The first tier 1 mobs were killed using a standard old school tank party with 2 paladins and support.
With a single DD party and a mage party with even one or two summoners and a thief we were able to kill those in ~10 minutes.

Basically an optimal setup needs a constant flow of damage and good support per party.
Support being a huge key in here.
If you don't have plenty R/E/M/Delve DD's available you may want to consider rotating bards and corsairs around in parties, but in my experience for most mobs it will not be needed.

I do admit that the linkshell I am in is quite well decked out with REM and gear to go with it, but as long as you are just well geared you should have no real issues at least murdering the T1,2 or 3 mobs.
And for the higher tiers, as I said before you might want to consider doing the Fracture versions of those because you have more time in there for those.

[Isilrhofal]

Good Job SE!!

You did the same thing you always do.

First introduce Really Heavy/Easy content then make an update to make it Easy/Heavy . If you're unable to do this right - STOP IT !!!

45min - as first mentioned - fair enough. 20min? after all the 'elite' already did the fights? Yeah, of course. this makes totally sense - right?

That was my tip on the Iceberg. Really. SE i pitty you....

[Damane]

I have no idea what people are rageing about. All Delve Nms can be defeated in a reasonable amount of 15 min if you use the gimmick the NM needs and if you have moderate skilled players with good gear (hint not exeptional gear!).
All you need is a competent backline and frontline and if you arent there yet go ungimp yourself by getting various other gear and learning how to play the game.

I mean this is what people asked for after abyssea was too easy for them no? Deal with it.

[hiko]

I have no idea what people are rageing about. All Delve Nms can be defeated in a reasonable amount of 15 min if you use the gimmick the NM needs and if you have moderate skilled players with good gear (hint not exeptional gear!).
All you need is a competent backline and frontline and if you arent there yet go ungimp yourself by getting various other gear and learning how to play the game.

I mean this is what people asked for after abyssea was too easy for them no? Deal with it.

define what you define as "good gear (hint not exeptional gear!)"

I bet you wouldn't consider 75% of players' gear as good

[Shirai]

Well, to start with no teal, Aurore or Perle.

The ability to think in situational gear sets, a TP set which at least caps Haste and a weapon skill set that actually benefits the weapon skill you are using.
As for weapons, if you don't have access to R/M/E you should at least get the highest possible AH option.

Although in my humble opinion, if you aren't even able to make at least a level 85 Empyrian weapon I genuinely wonder why you are looking at this level of content in the first place.

[Damane]

define what you define as "good gear (hint not exeptional gear!)"

I bet you wouldn't consider 75% of players' gear as good

good gear, is empy +2, some Voidwatch gear, and some Nyzul gear. Decent rings belts setups etc. You dont need to go balls to the walls with haveing all nyzul isle gear, and all salvage +1, gear Relic/empy/mythic etc. A good magian weapon at 99 or a good 99 AH weapon will do too. I think with the fact that nyzul isle got nerfed now like two or three times you can expect peopel to have at least 2-3 pieces from it. And a somewhat okeish hybrid haste/PDT/MDT set.
Exeptional gear would be haveing best sidgrades in salvage +1 gear, relic +2 augments, Relic/empy/mythic weapons etc etc. You dont need that

But sporting lvl 14 +2 STR rings, a STR necklace etc. in your TP set isnt gonna help people finish off delve.

For mages: haveing caped cure potency, somewhat decent enfeeb set (either by haveing m.acc magian trial staves or haveing m.acc gear for enfeeb casts), a decent enhancing set, a fast cast set. a decent refresh/PDT/idle set.

and mostly CAPPED SKILL! good lord

and for god sake work out a decent setup. SMNs or BLMs arent gonna help you push in fast dmg, when melees/rangers can do so much more.

Besides you have 2 options to deal with the NMs. outside with 20 min timer limit or inside with 45 min timer. If you cant kill them outside, try inside delve with 45 min. If you cant kill it inside (and they dont rage inside at all) in 45 min, you have definitly issues with either your setup or the players you are takeing in (skill or gear wise)

[Sly]

They introduced Delve saying it would be the top end of End Game, meaning after you have done the rest of the End Game and gotten most of that gear and had the skill and strategies to do the NMs. They stated that before it came out, it was never meant to be easy and doable by just anyone. You don't need to have the best of the best equip like Damane and Shirai had been saying.

If you are finding it too hard, just try different set ups, make sure to have the NMs weakness under control and find what damages it best for your group. Swap people out and in after a win/loss and keep trying, nothing makes perfect quite like practice. If your strat seems to work but you just can't get it down before it rages, you may just want to backtrack and get the gear you feel you're missing that will boost your damage and accuracy or magic accuracy etc.

Just keep in mind that this was made as the highest calibur of End Game for the moment, it was not meant to be easy, and was meant to be a challenge for those who had completed everything before it. People cried out for this kind of content before. It is doable, but if you come to it with Abyssea burned jobs etc. you aren't expected to do this. Shout groups have always been sketchy for End Game events, and this is no different so that direction will most likely not be beneficial for you.

[Mirage]

This update makes me glad that I actually enjoy playing WHM.

[raps1355]

Exeptional gear would be haveing best sidgrades in salvage +1 gear, relic +2 augments, Relic/empy/mythic weapons etc etc. You dont need that



I am not sure why you class relic+2 augments as exceptional seeing as anyone can solo these. Also empy are available to all and are soloable so every player should at the bare minimum have at least 1 85 empy. Any magian stat path weapon for 2 handers are simply unacceptable.

[Iakothm]

I am not sure why you class relic+2 augments as exceptional seeing as anyone can solo these. Also empy are available to all and are soloable so every player should at the bare minimum have at least 1 85 empy. Any magian stat path weapon for 2 handers are simply unacceptable.


please go solo chloris since he is so easy.

[raps1355]

please go solo chloris since he is so easy.

He is very easy, i assume you are refering to doom which is easily solved by holy waters.

[Vivik]

He is very easy, i assume you are refering to doom which is easily solved by holy waters.

Easily! Now go make a video of you soloing it.

[Siven]

This sucks. I was actually enjoying doing Delve, even when the fights dragged on a little bit. The rationale behind not doing multiple ??? locations has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Because some would be more convenient than others. Are you kidding me?! Half the groups weren't fighting the mobs anywhere near the ??? anyway. Thanks for turning an entertaining event into another heavy DD exclusive event like NNI. Revert this change 100%.

[Mirage]

I am not sure why you class relic+2 augments as exceptional seeing as anyone can solo these. Also empy are available to all and are soloable so every player should at the bare minimum have at least 1 85 empy. Any magian stat path weapon for 2 handers are simply unacceptable.

Too bad many lv85 empys are weaker than many other magians at lv99, but let's just ignore facts, right?

[Demon6324236]

Easily! Now go make a video of you soloing it.If I had a pop I would make a vid of me soloing Chloris, but I lack a pop, and the time to go make a pop for a weapon I do not intend to build at this time.

[Demon6324236]

Also empy are available to all and are soloable so every player should at the bare minimum have at least 1 85 empy. Any magian stat path weapon for 2 handers are simply unacceptable.Your out of line. Sure Emps are easy to make by compare to other weapons and are great for the effort you put in but to say everyone should have one it stupid. When you play a job like DRK or DRG your Emps are flat out trash, so far as 2 handed Emps go only 3 are good anyways, GA, GK, and H2H, the only other 3 are GS, Scythe, and Polearm, all 3 of which are bad. I know what I hope you meant, but what you actually said is completely untrue.

[Alpheus]

Besides you have 2 options to deal with the NMs. outside with 20 min timer limit or inside with 45 min timer. If you cant kill them outside, try inside delve with 45 min. If you cant kill it inside (and they dont rage inside at all) in 45 min, you have definitly issues with either your setup or the players you are takeing in (skill or gear wise)

For any IV/V NMs inside the fracture its effectively 30mins otherwise I agree with your post

[Babekeke]

I feel it's time to look back at an older quote:


we will continue to make adjustments as necessary, and we will be making it so strategy and play style variations can be developed instead of having to win with a huge amount of fire power in a short amount of time.

Apparently, he lied!

[Demon6324236]

Just did T4 Morimar outside, using a zerg strat, Delve Weapon only DDs and multiple 2hour abilities during it we made it to around 28% before it depopped due to the time limit. I think the timer needs to be extended to 30 minutes, which is standard for most events anyways. It is a good solid number, easier to keep track of, and it would have meant the difference between my victory and failure today. If you wanted to avoid simple zerging as you made it seem then you did just the opposite because even with simply zerging it we still failed, which means if a strong zerg can not win in enough time, a stronger zerg is needed, but thats all it is still, just a zerg. Unless something changes, we will be forced like many others events to once again simply go in swinging as fast and hard as we can without any regard for proper strategy or planing outside of 'kill it before it kills you' which is unbecoming of this content.

[Alpheus]

Did you blind the Peiste? I'm merely curious.

[Demon6324236]

I kept it Blinded, Gravity II'd, and Dia III'd the entire duration of the fight, we also had BRDs and CORs doing swaps the entire battle redoing buffs as needed. I was the RDM so I can personally vouch it was up at all times except for maybe at most 10 seconds between times it wore, but Blind itself was lasting roughly 5 minutes a cast so it was down at most about 30 seconds.

[Shirai]

Delve Weapon only DDs

I'm sorry, but I have a real hard time believing this.
Your DDs are either lacking buffs, are terribly undergeared on other aspects, using the wrong food or you're not telling the truth.

I've been spamming Delve the last few days farming NMs within fractures to figure out their gimmicks and if I made one observation, it was that the Delve weapons make a bloody huge difference.
3 unaugmented Delve weapons alone nearly halved the fight's duration on most of the NMs.

[Demon6324236]

I'm sorry, but I have a real hard time believing this.
Your DDs are either lacking buffs, are terribly undergeared on other aspects, using the wrong food or you're not telling the truth.

I've been spamming Delve the last few days farming NMs within fractures to figure out their gimmicks and if I made one observation, it was that the Delve weapons make a bloody huge difference.
3 unaugmented Delve weapons alone nearly halved the fight's duration on most of the NMs.2 SAMs, 3 DRKs, 1 MNK, and 2 other DDs who I honestly paid no attention to because I did not know them. All of them had Delve weapons for sure except maybe the 2 DDs, but I know the leader and I were shouting for Delve Weapon DDs only and the people I picked up all fit that description. As for the other parts, we did buffs, I cant say for sure about food and such but I was in charge of swapping in and out my COR and BRD for my party so I know that part was being done. I cant say that our people didn't simply suck, its possible, but the point was that if with these weapons we failed because of the time limit, the time seems to short. This is not my first attempt at this NM either, I have fought it 7 times now without a win, with different groups each time.

[Damane]

I kept it Blinded, Gravity II'd, and Dia III'd the entire duration of the fight, we also had BRDs and CORs doing swaps the entire battle redoing buffs as needed. I was the RDM so I can personally vouch it was up at all times except for maybe at most 10 seconds between times it wore, but Blind itself was lasting roughly 5 minutes a cast so it was down at most about 30 seconds.

I am sorry but you did BRD and COR roation and 2 houred and still couldnt down the peiste in 20 min? Your DDs must be either terrible or your backline support is shit. We have downed this in less then 20 min with no BRD COR rotation and without any delve weapon and without the usage of 2 hours(was only 2-3 days after delve was released).
We kill this one regularly on our delve farm run in morimar and now that our DDs have delve weapons it goes down in about 10 min without 2 hours or any form of brd/cor rotation.

The timelimit is reasonable and fine, your ally just had either terrible DDs or terrible healers that didnt remove plague/paralyze etc. or a combination of both.