Thank You! Yoshida-san for making R50 The Dzemael Darkhold Dungeon NOT EASY :)

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Originally Posted by Neptune

hahahahahaha

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i agree. i see this happening.

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Originally Posted by zoekwon

se version of really hard = normal mob for us.

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SE's version of really hard = Overly difficult and complex... I mean, have you played FFXI and tried to battle Absolute Virtue?... I'm pretty sure no one really figured out the way to kill him without glitches for like a good 6 months or so... Probably longer if I remember correctly

Everyone in this thread completely missed an important line and some important facts.

#1

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If you ever hope to defeat The Dzemael Darkhold dungeon boss, you will need to clearly assign roles amongst your specialized party of 8 rank 50 players.

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Specialized party? This sounds like a hint towards new job system to me. If 1.18 housed new job system + dungeons this would be a massive step forward.

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Rather than being advanced versions of classes, we would like players to think of jobs as specialized playing styles optimized for partying. While playing as a particular job will render you unable to equip certain actions of other classes, you will be compensated with access to exclusive actions, which can be acquired through quests.

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#2

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Are four players required to enter rank 25+ raids? And 8 for 45+?
Currently, yes. Rank 25+ raids will require four players to enter, and rank 45+ raids will require a full party of 8. This is a result of the balancing that is done inside of the actual raid, along with ensuring proper load on the servers are maintained. With the release of patch 1.18 we will monitor the comments and feedback from the community and re-evaluate as necessary and implement variations as needed.

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You cannot "solo" a dungeon. Unless you bring in 3 or 7 other people to AFK and let you do the work then it wont happen. Or if you multi-box multiple Characters. Either way I doubt we will be seeing it done for a very long time.



Hope this brightens people's outlook on 1.18 a little bit more.

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Originally Posted by Roaran

FFXI generally had much more difficult battles than any other MMO. Most MMOs are complete jokes though. I'll look foward to this dungeon, and hopefully everyone else gets mashed under the boss's hooves/feet/floaties/tentacles/brains.

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Difficult? Hardly.. Time consuming.. absolutely.

I am trying to not get to excited for 1.18 but it's hard not to with the info that is trickling out. This could be the one or at least the start of FFXIV's turn around, lets face it they have been working on this for a long time and we could finally be seeing the fruits of their labour here and everything slowly start to slot into place. I really hope they deliver and I can't wait to see the patch notes, hopefully the updater will be up to the challenge of getting this patch downloaded in a timely fashion ^^

What bothers me is that they are speaking of 'one boss' for that dungeon. Was I a fool to expect at least 3 or 4 bosses?

Why don't we see how "hard" the uncapped dungeons are to playerbase where most common level is 50 in multiple jobs.

The fanboyism is strong in this one.

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Originally Posted by Gath

SE version of really hard is Pandemonium Warden, Absolute Virtue

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Those two should never be mentioned, as they were designed around gimmicks that no one figured out for a long time. It'd be like trying to stroke your e-peen over pre-nerf C'thun.

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Originally Posted by DGMart

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Originally Posted by Roaran

FFXI generally had much more difficult battles than any other MMO. Most MMOs are complete jokes though. I'll look foward to this dungeon, and hopefully everyone else gets mashed under the boss's hooves/feet/floaties/tentacles/brains.

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Difficult? Hardly.. Time consuming.. absolutely.

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This. Go do Firefighter or Alone in the Darkness at the appropriate gear levels and then try to tell me XI's encounters are hard. >.>

WOW is not incredibly hard either but the one thing that it has is variety especially in Hard Mode. Most of the bosses are different and are not dumbed down tank and spank NM's with millions of HP that takes you 2+ hours to kill. Ah I still remember the good ole days when a linkshell fought AV for 18 hours and it ended up doing benediction lol. Good times!

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Originally Posted by Nipa

What bothers me is that they are speaking of 'one boss' for that dungeon. Was I a fool to expect at least 3 or 4 bosses?

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One true "boss" doesn't mean lack of other challenging content in a dungeon. Shadow Lord was the real "boss" in dyna-xarc yet you had multiple side NMs for many different ways of obtaining loot/time.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Those two should never be mentioned, as they were designed around gimmicks that no one figured out for a long time. It'd be like trying to stroke your e-peen over pre-nerf C'thun.
This. Go do Firefighter or Alone in the Darkness at the appropriate gear levels and then try to tell me XI's encounters are hard. >.>

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You can't even compare pre-abyssea XI difficulty to WoW. They are two completely different styles of endgame. If you have a full wipe on Kings, Wyrms, ToAU/WoTG HNM then another LS got your kill and you had to try again the next reset.
If you full wipe in a 25 man raid you resurrect and try again until you call it quits. WoW is MUCH more forgiving of mistakes than XI which when looking at it that way, XI was definitely more time consuming and difficult.

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Originally Posted by Richard

You can't even compare pre-abyssea XI difficulty to WoW. They are two completely different styles of endgame. If you have a full wipe on Kings, Wyrms, ToAU/WoTG HNM then another LS got your kill and you had to try again the next reset.
If you full wipe in a 25 man raid you resurrect and try again until you call it quits. WoW is MUCH more forgiving of mistakes than XI which when looking at it that way, XI was definitely more time consuming and difficult.

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You also got 10+ bosses compared to 1 with an insane amount of HP and defense. Only thing 11 had going for it is you have to learn to play your job well if you want to fight in a HNM group pre-aby. Which is great! I love playing with players who know what they are doing. Fights take longer and are more stressful especially when you have some other shell watching over you but that does not make it harder. What it should be doing is bring tension to the battlefield which in turn should make you more accurate in your decision making. That creates good players over mediocre ones

But then again I guess difficulty can vary depending on who is behind the monitor.

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Originally Posted by Richard

Everyone in this thread completely missed an important line and some important facts.

#1


Specialized party? This sounds like a hint towards new job system to me. If 1.18 housed new job system + dungeons this would be a massive step forward.

Hope this brightens people's outlook on 1.18 a little bit more.

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Hi Richard,

Good point. :)

I noticed that as well, but didn't know what to make of it.

There was one post (was it from a forum veteran who translated it for us from the JP side?) that I thought mentioned them pushing a few of the changes for the Job System *ahead of time* for 1.18, in anticipation of the R50 Dungeon, so maybe that's what they're talking about?

We'll see soon. :)

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Originally Posted by Rau

Watch it get solo'd by 8 THMs while they're watching anime.

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I knew this post would be Peregrine bait before i even scrolled up....

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Originally Posted by DGMart

WOW is not incredibly hard either but the one thing that it has is variety especially in Hard Mode. Most of the bosses are different and are not dumbed down tank and spank NM's with millions of HP that takes you 2+ hours to kill. Ah I still remember the good ole days when a linkshell fought AV for 18 hours and it ended up doing benediction lol. Good times!

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Hi DGMart,

Yikes! :) Absolute Virtue doing Benediction after 18 Hours of fighting it?! So did you all keep going, or give up? :)

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Am I the only one intending to do the r30 dungeon at r25 as intended? or is everyone just gonna steamroll it on their r50s first try?

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I think i'm just gonna steamroll it over and over again till I get what I want. Sorry everybody else :D

I'd rather thank for delicious cake after I've tried it.

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Originally Posted by Moth

I think i'm just gonna steamroll it over and over again till I get what I want. Sorry everybody else :D

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Lol. I've been keeping my lancer and conjorer below R30 in prep for these R30 dungeons. hells to the no do I plan to steamroll it at r50 :P.

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Originally Posted by Petori

I'd rather thank for delicious cake after I've tried it.

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The Cake Is A Lie

I know there is probably 48,093 threads on patch 1.18 but I don't care to dig them up. That said, are we pretty sure of what exactly is and isn't going to be in 1.18? Ok, 2 dungeons for sure. Auto-attack, got it. Is that it? Not being cynical just curious if it has been clearly establish what is going to be included.

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Originally Posted by Gidonoidon_Sur

I know there is probably 48,093 threads on patch 1.18 but I don't care to dig them up. That said, are we pretty sure of what exactly is and isn't going to be in 1.18? Ok, 2 dungeons for sure. Auto-attack, got it. Is that it? Not being cynical just curious if it has been clearly establish what is going to be included.

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Hi Gidonoidon,

No one knows everything that will be included with 1.18 (I'm hoping for a few surprises ;)), but here's what was mentioned by Yoshida-san in an earlier Letter:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...805-02-2011%29

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Originally Posted by Gidonoidon_Sur

I know there is probably 48,093 threads on patch 1.18 but I don't care to dig them up. That said, are we pretty sure of what exactly is and isn't going to be in 1.18? Ok, 2 dungeons for sure. Auto-attack, got it. Is that it? Not being cynical just curious if it has been clearly establish what is going to be included.

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Grand Companies Dawg! The dungeons are suspost to be tied to them anyways. at least I hope that is still the plan.

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Originally Posted by Richard

You can't even compare pre-abyssea XI difficulty to WoW. They are two completely different styles of endgame. If you have a full wipe on Kings, Wyrms, ToAU/WoTG HNM then another LS got your kill and you had to try again the next reset.
If you full wipe in a 25 man raid you resurrect and try again until you call it quits. WoW is MUCH more forgiving of mistakes than XI which when looking at it that way, XI was definitely more time consuming and difficult.

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Take a step back from the timesink aspect of it (which for some reason you're equating to difficulty) and instead look at encounter design. XI heavily favored stat stacking over everything else, whereas WoW has environmental hazards and encounter mechanics your entire raid has to react to. And those environmental hazards get more dangerous and are much more detrimental to your raid when you tune stuff to hard mode. Are there gear and DPS requirements? Sure. Is that the only thing that'll get you through an encounter. No way.

As for "wipe and wait until the next reset", Algalon the Observer says hi.

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Only thing 11 had going for it is you have to learn to play your job well if you want to fight in a HNM group pre-aby.

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Problem is "knowing how to play your job" mostly involved having the "right" gear in your inventory to macro in. There wasn't much to it, which was the underlying point of my comment.

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Originally Posted by LateReg

How can I do the 30s "as they are intended" if all my combats are 50 anyways? not a /brag

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Make a new char and grind a class to 25. You need ~ 2 days and the extra char slot is free for now

So the argument is that SE developing actual mid-level content is a bad thing since it helps keep new players in the game

...

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Originally Posted by Arcell

If the boss moves I'll be impressed. That's one of my biggest gripes out most MMOs and I suppose the aggro system as a whole. Once hate is established on one person the boss really doesn't move unless someone else pulls hate which in a good party ideally won't happen.

Going entire NM fights with the NM standing in the same place facing the same direction gets boring. If they at least moved around a little bit it would be a little more interesting.

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Hi Arcell,

Although, right now, doesn't Great Buffalo move around after its Hate Reset Weaponskill? And Elder Mosshorn moves around a lot, but that's because it's busy Ramming the tank all over the place. ;)

But I definitely know what you mean: Having an epic Boss that isn't just static would be a good thing. I hope we see that with The Dzemael Darkhold.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Take a step back from the timesink aspect of it (which for some reason you're equating to difficulty) and instead look at encounter design. XI heavily favored stat stacking over everything else, whereas WoW has environmental hazards and encounter mechanics your entire raid has to react to. And those environmental hazards get more dangerous and are much more detrimental to your raid when you tune stuff to hard mode. Are there gear and DPS requirements? Sure. Is that the only thing that'll get you through an encounter. No way.

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Hi Duelle,

Great points. :) What would be some things you'd want to see in an ideal Boss encounter? Environmental Hazards? Things to counter, like, say, Morbol using Bad Breath and having reversal spells ready? Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Take a step back from the timesink aspect of it (which for some reason you're equating to difficulty) and instead look at encounter design. XI heavily favored stat stacking over everything else, whereas WoW has environmental hazards and encounter mechanics your entire raid has to react to. And those environmental hazards get more dangerous and are much more detrimental to your raid when you tune stuff to hard mode. Are there gear and DPS requirements? Sure. Is that the only thing that'll get you through an encounter. No way.

As for "wipe and wait until the next reset", Algalon the Observer says hi.

Problem is "knowing how to play your job" mostly involved having the "right" gear in your inventory to macro in. There wasn't much to it, which was the underlying point of my comment.

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* The Pandemonium Warden despawns two hours after its initial appearance, automatically ending the battle.
* Uses one or two TP moves immediately after spawning, then disappears and comes back as one of the following mobs.

* Chariot x4
o Long-Armed Chariot - Brainjack
o Battleclad Chariot - Discoid (This particular version of Discoid works like 10,000 Needles.)
o Armored Chariot - Mortal Revolution
o Long-Bowed Chariot - Homing Missile
* Gulool Ja Ja
* Medusa
* Gurfurlur the Menacing
* Cerberus
* Hydra
* Khimaira
o These forms can use their mimicked host's unique low-health TP move at a higher health percentage than normal. That is to say, for example, Pandemonium Warden as Cerberus using Gates of Hades as early as 60% instead of the usual "under 25% only."
o After these 10 forms have been defeated, Pandemonium Warden will return to its Dvergr form. This is the final form.

* Whenever the Warden's new form is defeated, it returns to Dvergr form, uses one or two TP moves, and then respawns as the next form from the list.

* The list of monsters spawn in 3 different sets, the order of the sets is set, but inside those sets there is no order.
* The Sets are: 1.) Salvage Bosses 2.) Beastman Kings 3.) ToAU HNM's
* for example 2nd Set can be Troll > Lamia > Mamool or Lamia > Mamool > Troll or Mamool >Lamia > Troll. But they are always after the 4 Chariots

* Each time the Warden changes form, eight Pandemonium Lamps are summoned. Their form varies depending on what mob the Warden is currently mimicking:

* Chariots - Archaic Gears
* Gulool Ja Ja - Mamool Ja
* Medusa - Lamiae
* Gurfurlur the Menacing - Trolls
* Hydra - Dragons
* Khimaira - Puks
* Cerberus - Bombs
* Dvergr - Miniature Dvergr

* In his final form, Pandemonium Warden will use Astral Flow at 75%, 50%, and 25% HP and summons every avatar to use the Astral Flow blood pact. It will use Astral Flow immediately again in the same manner on anyone else with hate. [1]
* If all individuals who have developed enmity die, Pandemonium Warden will return to his spawn point, with his train of lamps, and will not be aggressive to any non-combat action. (someone tried to say this was wrong and even said he was sitting which will pull aggro from mobs that aggro to healing. But that far from makes it aggresive...)

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Infinitesimally more difficult that dodging fire. It's also not a gimmick fight its an endurance fight like 99% of all content pre-abyssea XI. Why is it that when I search through wowprogess I can find (to-date) 5000+ guilds who have Firefighter? On the XI side not even 1/10th of Linkshells have Pandemonium Queller (to-date). All games have outstanding gear checks even WoW. The content leading up to being able to gearwin everything is hard content.

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Originally Posted by Kiara

Hi DGMart,

Yikes! :) Absolute Virtue doing Benediction after 18 Hours of fighting it?! So did you all keep going, or give up? :)

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Not us lol... some other crazy LS. Gave up after 26 hours.. They were stilll fighting it the next day.

I never attempted to beat AV but, I hope this dungeon boss isn't like one.

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Originally Posted by Richard

Infinitesimally more difficult that dodging fire. It's also not a gimmick fight its an endurance fight like 99% of all content pre-abyssea XI. Why is it that when I search through wowprogess I can find (to-date) 5000+ guilds who have Firefighter? On the XI side not even 1/10th of Linkshells have Pandemonium Queller (to-date).

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Hate to quote myself, but:

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Those two should never be mentioned, as they were designed around gimmicks that no one figured out for a long time. It'd be like trying to stroke your e-peen over pre-nerf C'thun.

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Nice try, either way.

Also, you can cheese Firefighter now because of being lv85. There's a reason why I said "at appropriate gear levels".

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All games have outstanding gear checks even WoW.

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I never said anything to the contrary, so I don't know why you chose to bring that up.

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What would be some things you'd want to see in an ideal Boss encounter? Environmental Hazards?

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Flame walls, collapsing ceilings, one encounter being a "chase scene" of sorts. Boss level adds that are option to each fight to increase loot and encounter difficulty. Seeing technology and its role in this game, I also still want an encounter focused on magitek armor.

If you wanna lift stuff straight out of WoW, poison geisers, boss abilities that incapacitate random raid members (ice blocks for Sindragosa and Sapphiron, web wraps for Maexxna), one-shot capable abilities that can be avoided/mitigaged only through line of sight, untargetable adds, Loatheb.

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Things to counter, like, say, Morbol using Bad Breath and having reversal spells ready?

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Depends. Status removal spells would need to be a little more generalized to effectively use Bad Breath as an encounter mechanic. Could be used for phase transitions, though. Like maybe:

Bad Breath: Stuns all raid members and afflicts them with a DoT effect for 10 seconds while Ultimate Oscar shifts into phase 2. After the 10 seconds are up, the effect and DoT will wear off and be replaced with a random status effect for each raid member. Will also be used in transitions to phase 3 and 4.

Possible status effects: Poison, Bio, Dia, Paralyze, Sleep, Blind, Doom. The chance of doom being the status effect after Bad Breath is 1/50.

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Originally Posted by Xenor

I'm expecting the biggest challenge will be finding 7 people to enter with.

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You can laugh all you want but this is a genuine point of concern for me.

I'm often the only guy at the aerythe camps and to think that there would be 7 guys available right at the gate at the same time not tied to another party seems like too big of a coincidence to randomly just happen.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Seeing technology and its role in this game, I also still want an encounter focused on magitek armor.

If you wanna lift stuff straight out of WoW, poison geisers, boss abilities that incapacitate random raid members (ice blocks for Sindragosa and Sapphiron, web wraps for Maexxna), one-shot capable abilities that can be avoided/mitigaged only through line of sight, untargetable adds, Loatheb.
Depends. Status removal spells would need to be a little more generalized to effectively use Bad Breath as an encounter mechanic. Could be used for phase transitions, though. Like maybe:

Bad Breath: Stuns all raid members and afflicts them with a DoT effect for 10 seconds while Ultimate Oscar shifts into phase 2. After the 10 seconds are up, the effect and DoT will wear off and be replaced with a random status effect for each raid member. Will also be used in transitions to phase 3 and 4.

Possible status effects: Poison, Bio, Dia, Paralyze, Sleep, Blind, Doom. The chance of doom being the status effect after Bad Breath is 1/50.

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Hi Duelle,

Nice ideas. :) Magitek as in from Final Fantasy VI? That would be cool.

Ultimately, in a few weeks we'll see what sort of tactics we'll need against the first Boss designed from the new team. I'm hoping for something good.