The constant disbanding of Steps of Faith

The fight shouldn't take over two wipes. The mechanics are easy is just coordination. In my first time, we finish it after the first wipe. I went there 4 times after I was done with my main story.

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Originally Posted by Dragoon4life

I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that if you don't participate in new content the first week and weekend your screwed. I missed the Odin Fever and am now missing the Primal Mount Farm Fever. Everyone is now doing The Final Coils and nothing else. And it's very depressing because I'm stuck on T9 and no will help me. :'(

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Not to worry. I think this is just the middle phase, and things will become easier to clear again in the future with further adjustments, like new bonuses to lure people back to old content. In the case of Odin and T9 there may be roulettes for those things down the line, and new materials from desynth second/final coil armor. And echo; Odin doesn't have echo yet.

There's nothing to really have SE do for this. If you don't put it in roulette then no one will get it done..maybe in PF? but that is a very long process and this is an easy but fun fight. People quit because of the problems that are currently in this game. And it's not SE...it's the users. Nothing SE can do to fix those things.

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Originally Posted by Riepah

Missing one Dragonkiller is NOT a clear failure. Can still be done.

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I did a run of this where a bard died well before the first dragonkiller and just sat at the start, declaring it a wipe at that point. He was our assigned spearman.

Putting it in main scenario would require ilvl90 to do main scenario...

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

I did a run of this where a bard died well before the first dragonkiller and just sat at the start, declaring it a wipe at that point. He was our assigned spearman.

Putting it in main scenario would require ilvl90 to do main scenario...

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Wow. I would have been pulling my hair out if I was in that party.

I can also confirm that you do not need all the spears to beat the fight.

My first run we did with one spear left (Boss died at the crates) and the second time our spear person missed the first one, but we got it right at the ending gate.

The problem is that this trial actually requires some thought and just the slightest modicum of effort and coordination. Story mode Leviathan, Ramuh, Shiva, and even Snowcloak to a certain extent can just sorta be powered through. I wouldn't even all Keeper of the Lake hard per se, just a high ilvl requirement, nothing really ground breaking, dodge glowing circles on the ground kill the bad guys, collect the loot.

I sometimes wonder if SE does a disservice to the players by not making earlier parts of the story even slightly challenging, kids today aren't prepared for harder stuff down the line.

Considering I'm relatively new to the game still are you suggesting that the only way I will be able to finish the storyline is to hope I can make 7 friends that are willing to help me do this one trial? The fact that this is clearly something that the majority of the FF community absolutely hates, then why are people being trapped behind it just because they weren't caught up to do it 'just that once'?

I have tried this 6 times today alone and it is either people instantly leaving or 'not having enough time to wipe on this'.

So what are us new players suppose to do? I assume something will be done about this eventually otherwise any new players are just going to stop playing when they realise they can't progress to the end of the storyline and even into Heavensward..

Cleared it on first run on DF, even on chrysalis. I must be lucky or something I dunno

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Originally Posted by Sohrae

Considering I'm relatively new to the game still are you suggesting that the only way I will be able to finish the storyline is to hope I can make 7 friends that are willing to help me do this one trial?

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Yes. Well these people wont tell you that directly, but that is certainly evident. However it is not practical in a game where socialism is unbelievably weak. There's gonna be DF steps thats for sure - you'll have a shot at it, but you can forget about being grouped with more than one player experienced in it.

A good bit of the community seems to have a problem with inexperienced/new players, I've even read on another forum I wont mention that so and so didn't want new players in ishgard. This kind of divide is not necessary and will have some glaring negative effects on the community sooner or later.

Well whatever. . . in about 10 years people are gonna be begging for fresh players.

And Leigaon, new players aren't the "Current problem in the game".

It's really just people not giving the trial a chance. It's not that hard -- just one or two commands need to be given (what to do, etc). I've wasted more time waiting for replacements for that one or two people who auto-drop than wiping on the fight....

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Originally Posted by Sohrae

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Have you tried forming a party using party finder instead of duty finder? We have had many successful clears using pf. It sometimes takes a little time to fill, upwards of 30 mins but then it gets cleared in 1-2 attempts so the wait time is worth it if you consider the time you would spend bashing your head against it otherwise. Just plan the strat ahead of time, most likely their will be people who join just to help, there are almost always 2-3 of these in our groups. Then once the strat is explained and someone isn't trolling or just has no clue its a really quick and easy fight.

I am surprised, honestly, at how few people use or even think about party finder. It seems to be easily forgotten and wait times can be a drag, but you need to think of the big picture and total time spend when it comes to df vs. pf.

And honestly its an mmo, so making friends in-game is the way you get things done quickly. If you are unwilling to make friends I don't understand why you would play a game in which you have to rely on other people to complete content. Even the most casual of players can at least make a few friends.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

I am surprised, honestly, at how few people use or even think about party finder. It seems to be easily forgotten and wait times can be a drag, but you need to think of the big picture and total time spend when it comes to df vs. pf.

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Dunno about other servers, but I rarely check PF, since 90% of it tends to be either advertisements, veiled carries (no scrubs, 1 death = kick), or farm groups. Few times I've tried to make clear parties for storyline duties, I ended up timing out.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Dunno about other servers, but I rarely check PF, since 90% of it tends to be either advertisements, veiled carries (no scrubs, 1 death = kick), or farm groups. Few times I've tried to make clear parties for storyline duties, I ended up timing out.

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You can shout for it as well, and then go in via Duty Finder with a partially formed group. As long as your canoneers and tower person are designated in the pre formed group and know what they're doing, you can explain to the pickups their roles.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

You can shout for it as well, and then go in via Duty Finder with a partially formed group. As long as your canoneers and tower person are designated in the pre formed group and know what they're doing, you can explain to the pickups their roles.

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I do this anyway in DF, difference is I don't waste an hour waiting for PF to fill up. As I said before, never had a problem with SoF, I explain mechanics in detail while waiting for replacements for people who drop

The constant stupidity of players who can't follow instructions which are told to them every 5 seconds.

Fixed title for ya

Most times I go there I go cannons, and I have my girlfriend tagging along who knows Dragonspear.

My biggest peeve with this fight are tanks who CAN'T. BRING. ADDS. TO. THE. FRONT. EVEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU SCREAM AT THEM IMPLORING HEAVEN AND HELL FOR THEM TO DO IT

You want to clear steps of ragequit?
DerpFinder wont save you.
Need to hire people with a brain with PartyFinder instead. Only way right now to get past it. Eventually itll be nerfed anyways or given a nice reward because atm its far too headwrecking for people to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

You can shout for it as well, and then go in via Duty Finder with a partially formed group. As long as your canoneers and tower person are designated in the pre formed group and know what they're doing, you can explain to the pickups their roles.

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You could technically /sh for pts but in a game with things like party finder this gets you blisted often. I know if I am doing something in a zone and someone is /sh for pts, unless there are considerable gaps in the /sh (3+ mins usually) I will blist them, even if its only temporarily. I get enough spam in my text box from rmt, ppl trolling in /sh, emotes, and ppl who wanna chat in /s instead of /t that I often use blist as a filter since toggling between shutting off and turning on shouts or says and such isn't efficient. And frankly pf is there so you don't have to /sh for hours like we had to in xi. Refusing to use such a handy dandy tool is really just shooting yourself in the foot.

I check and use pf often and have never timed out.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

Most times I go there I go cannons, and I have my girlfriend tagging along who knows Dragonspear.

My biggest peeve with this fight are tanks who CAN'T. BRING. ADDS. TO. THE. FRONT. EVEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU SCREAM AT THEM IMPLORING HEAVEN AND HELL FOR THEM TO DO IT

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If you haven't tanked this yourself, I'd recommend you give it a try. Pulling adds to the front isn't as easy as folks seem to believe.

To start with, whenever odds pop, they pop far apart from one another. Snagging them all with Weapon Throw or Shield Lob takes far too long, so usually tanks will focus on grabbing the big add and wait for the little adds to gather together, usually on the healer. Of course, once they're gathered on the healer, it may take a while to pull them off with Flash or Overwhelm. If your healer is smart, your healer will be pulling all these adds to the front of Vishap. Very often, though, your healer is not smart, and will be lingering behind, spamming cures on themself, or worse running around in a panic trying not to be hit by all the little adds. All of this can add time to how long it takes to gather the adds at the front of Vishap.

A lot of folks have the DPS focus down the big adds, since it takes the cannons so long to kill them and the big adds can do so much harm while they're still alive. This isn't a bad strategy - but the big adds should STILL be pulled to the front of Vishap along with the little adds. If the DPS focus it down and don't move it, the tank may waste time trying to move it to the front of Vishap where it should be.

To sum up, getting the adds to the front of Vishap is a TEAM responsibility, not just the TANK'S responsibility. The tank's job is to hold them there - GETTING them there is on everyone, particularly on the healer since most of the adds will beeline for the healer.

If you, or anyone in your group, has an add beating on them and is wondering why the tank isn't pulling them off, it's because the tank is preoccupied at the center of a swarm of adds at the front of Vishap. Running back to get the one beating on you means pulling that cloud of adds out of cannon range. If you have an add on you, bring it to the tank. Don't wait for the tank to come get it off you.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

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All very good points, I like to inform healers that they should stand directly under Vishap, so adds will swarm to them, making it easier for me to grab them all with an overpower/flash/SC.

Only real issue I have with bringing adds to front, is when people on cannons insist on "helping" by using sticky shot in middle of bridge, making it take that much longer to bring adds through it, or trying to go around the sticky in a wide enough arc, which usually puts one cannon out of range.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

If you haven't tanked this yourself, I'd recommend you give it a try. Pulling adds to the front isn't as easy as folks seem to believe.

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It's easy to tank if everyone else knows what they are doing. Emphasize that nobody should ever be behind or underneath the dragon or in front of his feet, unless he is attacking a wall. Make sure the people on cannons know to stand far enough behind the cannons so the biasts miss them, and that they can ignore them. Make sure melee know not to stun the turtle unless he is doing the full area AoE.

Don't chase mobs behind him. If someone pulls hate back there, they can tank it and die. Just stay in front of him between his feet. Easy tanking.

I've found that in DF groups having the dps deal with the bigger adds leads to a more reliable outcome. The times I've seen the adds ignored or left solely to the cannons it has been a circus. Not saying it can't be done that way I just think that way takes generally more skill and team comprehension than what you are typically going to find in a DF queue.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Make it drop a rare minion or a pony. People will deliberately queue up to farm it. Problem solved.

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This. People will spam it for the chance to flaunt some vanity item, if given the chance.

Leaving a dungeon should result in a 120 minute penalty.

I mean, you decided you didn't feel like doing a dungeon after all, right? Well, problem solved!

Took me 3 tries, but I finally did it yesterday.

The 2nd try, we were resetting, and a tank and healer left right when it reset......They were fully aware of having to wait, and they did, right until it reset.....

The 3rd try I finally got a group who actually wanted to do it, a tank disconnected, we reset, and lucky me I got a tank from my FC who knew what to do.
We finally did it, with literally a couple seconds left or we would have failed.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

Only real issue I have with bringing adds to front, is when people on cannons insist on "helping" by using sticky shot in middle of bridge, making it take that much longer to bring adds through it, or trying to go around the sticky in a wide enough arc, which usually puts one cannon out of range.

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Yeah, learning to use sticky shot the right way took me a while. On the occasions when I was on cannon duty, I just couldn't figure out the benefit - weighted enemies are harder to pull to the front of Vishap! Why would you use this??? It was never explained to me (and took me a while to figure out) that it's GREAT as a preventative for biasts beelining for the cannons. I haven't landed in SoF since figureing that out, but it's a piece of advice I'm certainly going to pass on to cannoneers when I do. Nowadays, I'm kind of embarrassed about the mid-bridge stickies that I used to land, but in my defense I stopped as soon as I saw how problematic they were...

I have a feeling, like it or not that this trail will be in fact be nerfed either right before heavensward launches or shortly there after. The amount of people at 50, have not completed (for whatever reason) that have bought the xpac will be on this forum demanding that their "basic human right" to play new content that is blocked by this one fight is "unfair."

Sorry I am a pessimist.

Currently Steps of Faith with a 130 geared group can ignore the cannons and crossbow and just dps the dragon and kill him sometime before the he even gets to the 2nd crossbow. Now image if you had echo, this fight anyone at that point can probably ignore all the mechanics and dps the boss and win. They will for sure put echo in this fight sometime before HW or after it is out to make it so pretty much anyone can win their first try just like all the other trials.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

I think the biggest deterrent for repeat clears is the fight is on rails and doesn't reset until it's run its course even if it's a clear failure. "Missed a Dragonkiller shot for any reason? Whoops. Too bad for you. Now sit there and watch the fight slowly progress towards failure for another 10 minutes before you're allowed to try again."

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One of the reasons why I dislike this fight so much - I leave it right away after stupid DF put me in the. <-< There is no fast reset of the fight...

It's not just SoF it's Chrysalis too. Every time i land that in trial roulette people disband as soon as it loads. Sadly, there will be people locked out of 3.0 because of this.

The whole fight is a joke lol! So some random dragon walks on a bridge...like... come on yoshi try harder lol

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Originally Posted by Dalvy

This. People will spam it for the chance to flaunt some vanity item, if given the chance.

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Problem is people will just create PF that say "SoF farm, full exp and ilvl 200 only!" They won't be helping out people that haven't cleared.

Moving it to main scenario would be a good start since its a main scenario quest and a mechanics fight. That and upping the base reward to 100 seals + 100 seals for newbies would be enough to get people to do it since it would be slightly faster than a praetorium/castrum run.

All thats needed is to make the adds hit lets or die quicker so they dont keep chain wiping people and making the DK's do a large chunk of damage to Vishap and its fixed.

Till then its Steps of Ragequit with obligatory logoff/dropout. Just isnt worth the aggro.

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Originally Posted by dekal

The fight shouldn't take over two wipes. The mechanics are easy is just coordination. In my first time, we finish it after the first wipe. I went there 4 times after I was done with my main story.

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2 wipes = just queue for Syrcus Tower, since that's far more effecient than the Trial. Hell, one wipe is worse than a Syrcus run TBH.

What I would do for Steps is I would make it possible to complete if you did not utilize any of the mechanics of the fight. I would make it very hard and very likely to end in failure but still if overpowered and geared it should be possible to some extent. Then I would make it faster and easier with the more mechanics you did utilize during the fight. That way if you were near perfect it would be done much faster and increase the support and reliability of players to stick around and do the fight.

Even with new people if over half the group are veterans to the fight it may take a little longer but still be possible with some of the mechanics being missed. And eventually everyone would learn.

Well if the trial was easy to clear, then Steps of "Faith" no longer has meaning.

You can't move it to main scenario how would that work? Main scenario is ilvl50? This is 90.

I generally prefer to call this one 'Steps on your Face', since that's often what it feels like Vishap is doing (especially if you're the tank).

It's a part of the main scenario questline, so people expected it to be relatively easy content to clear. We weren't expecting it to be nearly Coil-level difficulty. Those of us that did clear it obviously don't want to do it again if we don't have to, especially since there's zero reward for clearing it a second time aside from the tomes you get everywhere else. I myself use the trial roulette for some quick tomes, because until SoF came out it usually dropped me in a light farm somewhere. I don't want to do SoF again unless I'm helping someone I know through it. Personally, looking back on it and thinking about it, I think the difficulty of it may have been a check of sorts to prep us for Heavensward content, but I digress.

As far as clearing it goes, the DF probably isn't the best option. To be frank it rarely is for anything even remotely difficult (I won't even use it for ANYTHING beyond Turn 4). Your best bet is asking your FC or a Linkshell, as previously stated, or you may want to opt to put a party finder together for it. There's quite a few people that love to help new people and look for soldiery bonuses for it.

Yes you can. Theres no enforcement of levels or need to complete all low level instances to use low level roulette no reason why it couldnt work for steps. Getting I90 wouldnt be hard either if they added the old i90 accs and armor to the main scenario quests as one time rewards along the way so theyre base i90 by the time they hit castrum.