They are catering ultimates to casuals like they did with Elden Ring.

As someone healing the ultimate the idea of a checkpoint is a little bit boring since it means whatever cooldowns I use in the first phase do not impact the subsequent phases at all, and although I played dps on TEA I remember hearing my healers have to adjust their cooldown usage when we skipped protean 2 and I thought to myself "healing ultimate seems fun". That and I think phase 1 is fun to execute and I'd like to do it more than once a lockout even if it isn't the most difficult thing to do. I'm still happy with the fight overall, but I think my enjoyment would be greater (as a healer anyway...) without the checkpoint. However, it is worth keeping in mind that DSR phase 1 is nothing like TEA phase 1 in terms of outgoing damage and therefore the potential impact removing the checkpoint would have on subsequent phases is lowered.

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Originally Posted by dapperfaffer

Isn't there a time warp mechanic after the end of phase 4?

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Yep, that will infinitely loop the fight unless you figure out how it works and break it. And with each loop Thordon gets an HP increase.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Yep, that will infinitely loop the fight unless you figure out how it works and break it. And with each loop Thordon gets an HP increase.

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that could actually make for an interesting competition then ngl unless there is a hard cap (which there probably is but that'd require testing)

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Originally Posted by VirusOnline

Being able to consistently clear a phase because of cohesive understanding of the group is one thing, cheesing is another.
A good improvement to Ultimate may be to make the content even more difficult while cutting down the time of the encounter.

I'll take quality over quantity, especially concerning difficult content.

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There is no cheese. If you pass phase 1 by luck then that means that next time you go out you may well wall on it and will do so until you get lucky again or learn to really do it, to say nothing of reclears to gear up. People are still being forced to learn the fight through and through, but those who do won't add significant time to their runs. That imo is better.

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Originally Posted by dapperfaffer

Isn't there a time warp mechanic after the end of phase 4?

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The minstrel suggests you should change history by saving someone.

The solution is to use a tank LB3 on Haurchefant so he can actually block the spear long enough for you to deal with Thordan's knights, then beat it back so he lives, which causes things to go off the rails...and not for the better as it branches off into a "what if" scenario where Thordan actually achieves his full power and starts waging war on dragonkind.