Shout out to the raid design team - great job this tier

It was decently fun, I just don't like jobs being ruined for the sake of it.

Though I personally get my enjoyment out of both class design and raid design, if one isn't as strong as the other I tend to only do that sort of content once.

They ever so slightly upped the difficulty and speed of the mechanics. That's all.

If you squint your eyes, you will see that 80% of the mechanics are just glorified IN/OUT or LEFT/RIGHT cleaves.
Given how bosses have strict script of mechanics with almost no randomization, all 4 fights will be "one week wonder" like all casual content nowadays. Starting from next week people will be back knowing all mechanics (because, again, no different patterns or surprises) and bosses will simply melt. Also consider that release week bosses have a much longer life span due to players biting the dust and getting weakness debuff.

Outside of the notable "gimmick mechanic" I'll list below, there was no "new encounter design", just faster DDR. Sigh

M5:

Spotlight mechanic. That was fun. The "Perfect groove" could've been much better if it wasn't simply a barrage of left/right.

M6:

The river and bridges part. They remembered about elemental interactions. And how river becomes danger for next mechanic. Overall, I like arena changing mechanics.

M7:

I absolutely love when boss forces the fight through different arenas. Makes the fight feel more large scale than tackling a target dummy in yet-another-square.
Oh, and the petrifying gaze without gaze marker, requiring standing behind add's dead body. Unfortunately, it falls into "week one wonder" category, such shame.

M8:

Gold Saucer "The slice is right" mechanic. Good practice for that, I guess.

I enjoyed them. Going to be interesting since I'm moving from tanking to healing this Savage tier. M7S seems like it could be spicy.

I personally enjoyed them and had fun at the time, but I imagine they won't hold up well due to not taking enough inspiration. It's been stated a lil' in here, but if I were to be critical of the fights I'd say the only new thing that happened was more speed. Some sparknotes of my "I did all the fights and gave them some thought before and after getting some sleep".

M5: I really wish this fight wasn't just pure speed, but was more thematic and timed the pace of attacks to be in sync with music. That way you'd have times where an flurry of attacks start slow then pick up speed, are slow across the board, are fast across the board, or start fast then lose speed. Bit of a random comparison, but the indie game One Step From Eden has a cool boss fight where it's literally this. There's a particular attack where you need to step on specific spaces in rhythm to the music in order to get shields that will protect you from an extremely high damage board wipe (if you perform very well here you get a little treat of having a slight excess amount of shield). For the curious souls out there, look up Violette (one step from eden).

M6: I wish the painted environs were just the whole fight and had more interactivity (puzzle + solution) + unique adds (or just add phases) for each locale. If it were me designing the fights, I would've just thrown out the in-between phases that had the usual standard left then right then forward then back oh hey it's a stack marker and a raid wide and a tank buster.

M7: naw, I've got nothing. Sure, it IS more recycled mechanics. ...But some of those were recycled mechanics they just don't use as often as the others sprinkled between some nice transitions (specifically square to a comfy rectangle lol). If I had my way of changing 5 and 6 then I'd actually probably leave 7 entirely unchanged. I just don't think it's a/the problem.

M8: you got me, I don't know how to make this fight interesting. I love his music and design, and having a small arena for most of the fight... but man that was really just nothing. I can't even say it was DDR speed, because I unironically felt like the earlier three fights were faster and he was the slowest. Maybe this fight should've been a lot more playful with forcing you between multiple different platforms and being a much more air focused fight? Idk... when I was playing this with a friend we were actively (during the fight) being like "wow, this is kinda nothing isn't it?".

Thanks for this tier.
For me personally it is really challenging and putting me on edge. But themes and music, boss themes and all are really great.

Thank you!

I think this tier is indeed great. And this is a paladin-specific thing but thanks to the higher difficulty I could live out my class fantasy a bit by covering healers (and it actually had an impact) but I know once everyone's settled and there's a routine this will happen less often.

But all in all I think they did step it up. At the same time you could see how fast-paced the DDR had become and in the back of my head the thought of job homogenisation that comes with it (at the devs' insistence, not because it's an inevitable necessity) stings a little.

Another point is the story. I really enjoy it, much more than the MSQ. Even though we spend much less time with the characters I actually care about them and about the themes around souls. The events wrt the third fight in particular felt a lot more meaningful than most things in the MSQ for me.
So shoutout to the writers here too!