Enrage timer raid design is causing all the problems

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Originally Posted by TaiyouSeishin

Hm my bad, i thought that meant you looked at raiding in wow and said not for you. But as for world first, that only applied to heroic end boss of a raid, and no, it wasnt always dps checks, bosses like Sinestra didnt live as long as they did just because of that. The groups had to get through the rest of the raid first. Sometimes it was the "soft enrage" sometimes the fight went too long, so healers ran out of mana. Sometimes it WAS a dps check. If a raid dropped tomorrow, the heroic world first would often take almost a month to be achieved, by hardcore prog raiding guilds.

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Method has cleared every raid on the mythic (heroic is no longer the hardest difficulty) in less than 2 weeks of release for like the past 2 xpacs. And saying FF has 1 fight style is like saying Arthas is the same as Lootship, both are just don't stand in bad and dps(same as FF), however mechanics that you praise in one game exist in FF, like pass diseases (Arthas, but it's an Eden savage mechanic as well), dance to avoid aoes as a group (frostmourne phase for arthas and eden orb phase) with the dps check on top (killing adds on arthas before they stack up in number). I get you think that FF is a one trick for raiding but the only way I can see that applying is if you don't do savage or are just oblivious to the mechanics. It's just in FF almost every mechanic is a oneshot, which makes it feel the homogeneous.

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Originally Posted by Nessiae

Method has cleared every raid on the mythic (heroic is no longer the hardest difficulty) in less than 2 weeks of release for like the past 2 xpacs. And saying FF has 1 fight style is like saying Arthas is the same as Lootship, both are just don't stand in bad and dps(same as FF), however mechanics that you praise in one game exist in FF, like pass diseases (Arthas, but it's an Eden savage mechanic as well), dance to avoid aoes as a group (frostmourne phase for arthas and eden orb phase) with the dps check on top (killing adds on arthas before they stack up in number). I get you think that FF is a one trick for raiding but the only way I can see that applying is if you don't do savage or are just oblivious to the mechanics. It's just in FF almost every mechanic is a oneshot, which makes it feel the homogeneous.

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Its the oneshot that is the issue. And the dps check itself that becomes more of the focus that is the issue. I remember Saurfang being a dps/gear check even in normal, i dont remember deathwhisper being one. I remember festergut being a dps check, but i dont remember rotface being on. Even in heroic.

The reason i feel they added mythic is mainly because they made heroic easier (certainly felt that way) and im not saying there ARENT mechanics in ff14, just seems to be something you either cheese, or not care as much as you do the dps check part.

Then again, only savage is considered endgame in this one, regular is just something anyone can do. Kinda like RF in WoW wherease regular, was more endgameish to those of the semi casuals. *shrug* either way its kinda what all games geared towards.

(Back in Cataclysm, Sinestra the heroic final boss in BoT took over a month before the first group downed it, if mythic is done in less than 2 weeks now, WoW disappoints me)

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Originally Posted by TaiyouSeishin

Its the oneshot that is the issue. And the dps check itself that becomes more of the focus that is the issue. I remember Saurfang being a dps/gear check even in normal, i dont remember deathwhisper being one. I remember festergut being a dps check, but i dont remember rotface being on. Even in heroic.

The reason i feel they added mythic is mainly because they made heroic easier (certainly felt that way) and im not saying there ARENT mechanics in ff14, just seems to be something you either cheese, or not care as much as you do the dps check part.

Then again, only savage is considered endgame in this one, regular is just something anyone can do. Kinda like RF in WoW wherease regular, was more endgameish to those of the semi casuals. *shrug* either way its kinda what all games geared towards.

(Back in Cataclysm, Sinestra the heroic final boss in BoT took over a month before the first group downed it, if mythic is done in less than 2 weeks now, WoW disappoints me)

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Specifically Deathwhisper was one, just the adds were the check, if they piled up you wiped. I feel like what you call cheese isn't actually cheese. Fights are designed with tanks being able to invuln a single mechanic or 2 over the course if a fight. Cheese would be stacking cleaver on E2S so that dodging the imps was easy. I also don't see any skill expression with healers just spamming heals out because raid dmg is high, if anything there is more skill expression in preemptive shielding that is prevalent in FF allowing healers to maximize their gcd usage for efficiency. You can clear a boss by being reactive (wow style healing) or proactive (sch style healing). Just one is more efficient.

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Originally Posted by Nessiae

Specifically Deathwhisper was one, just the adds were the check, if they piled up you wiped. I feel like what you call cheese isn't actually cheese. Fights are designed with tanks being able to invuln a single mechanic or 2 over the course if a fight. Cheese would be stacking cleaver on E2S so that dodging the imps was easy. I also don't see any skill expression with healers just spamming heals out because raid dmg is high, if anything there is more skill expression in preemptive shielding that is prevalent in FF allowing healers to maximize their gcd usage for efficiency. You can clear a boss by being reactive (wow style healing) or proactive (sch style healing). Just one is more efficient.

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Deathwhisper was hard to fail even as a pug tho, soft enrage of the adds not withstanding, the tanking add could have been done by a melee Shammy (and often was). Tho i find the healcheck boss of ICC to be very fun...

Supoose tho, that some people find that endgame only comprises of the last set of difficulty to suck. WoW used to have more layers, as even normal raids were "endgame".

Tho tbh, by the time i left WoW, saw raids in SWTOR, and what the endgame of GW2 looked like, im practically not stary eyed over raiding anymore anyway. Ill do savage/extreme (no real desire to do ultimate) if i got some friends wanting to go. But looking at the vids and trying some fights (not this tier yet). Heard es1 and 4 are fun, not sure if i want to do es3 if i start in the current tier...

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Originally Posted by TaiyouSeishin

Deathwhisper was hard to fail even as a pug tho, soft enrage of the adds not withstanding, the tanking add could have been done by a melee Shammy (and often was). Tho i find the healcheck boss of ICC to be very fun...

Supoose tho, that some people find that endgame only comprises of the last set of difficulty to suck. WoW used to have more layers, as even normal raids were "endgame".

Tho tbh, by the time i left WoW, saw raids in SWTOR, and what the endgame of GW2 looked like, im practically not stary eyed over raiding anymore anyway. Ill do savage/extreme (no real desire to do ultimate) if i got some friends wanting to go. But looking at the vids and trying some fights (not this tier yet). Heard es1 and 4 are fun, not sure if i want to do es3 if i start in the current tier...

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I mean all primals are generally a bit easier, and considered end game. Potato potaaaaaaato. Point being at least in one small regard we do have an alternative form of endgame that isnt quite standard savage difficulty. additionally dont forget 24 mans. none of those are dps checks directly and people still wipe all the time. there is potential for endgame, of that nature in FFXIV, just not a lot of 24 man teams that compete in it.

Thats not to say 24 mans are hard by any means, but they certainly could be made more competitive and more interesting if both the playerbase and devs decided it.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

The biggest DPS problem was Alexander 3. HW's raid design was so tight that it nearly destroyed the FFXIV raiding community. Halicarnassus wasn't nearly as bad as Gordian and Midan. That said, E2S' DPS check is legitimately overtuned right now and needs to be brought down. Not much, but a bit. The design is fine, the health is not..

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The DPS check is fine. Stop getting hit by the zubats. That damage down is 50% for every stack. It essentially gives you Brick of Death for thirty seconds.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'm curious as to how tight the ES4 DPS check is vs. ES3 because I'm having doubts that the rampant exclusion of "non-meta" classes like NIN and DNC in PF groups is really that necessary.

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Titan's DPS requirement is roughly 76,000. About 5,000 above Leviathan. People excluding Ninja or Dancer are, bluntly stated, morons. They're looking at their parse in-game and thinking that's the actual damage both jobs contribute in lieu of how FFlogs now prioritizes rDPS. Dancer, for example, is nearly dead even with Bard.

What I find ironic is if you were going to lock out jobs based on low DPS. You would be better off saving a spot for Monk and Black Mage. Monk utterly demolishes Samurai and Ninja. And Black Mage does the same against Red Mage and Summoner. As noted above, Dancer barely trails even Machinist. Meanwhile, Black Mage and Monk are upwards of 1,000 higher than their counterparts; Dragoon notwithstanding.

we're all effectively min ilvling things right now. things will change in a few weeks when people start getting their 460 weapons and even more so if they're clearing E3S and can get a wpn upgrade item to make it 470.

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Originally Posted by TaiyouSeishin

Its a shame you didnt raid in WoW, some fights werent dps checks at all, just mechanic intensive.

As for clears in this game... if we are talking mathmatics, It was never mathematically impossible, just mathmatically harder. Just some classes felt they were more a hinderance than a help.

There is nothing wrong with 2 games that design raids differently. But WoW had more than one design type (at least in its prime), where as ff14 has.... really 1 now.

Nothing wrong with you being happy that all raiding to you is dps checks, but there is nothing wrong with the opinion that enrage timers on everything holds back raid design either.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Some people like the dps crunch with an add-possible-wipe phase in the middle. Some dont.

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Thanks for very nicely summarising my point! For all the people saying that DPS enrage is a fine mechanic, i don't disagree! And I am not asking for things to be "easier", just "more variety".

Raid design as of now, no matter how "different" they are, still focus mostly on (1) avoid death, (2) predictable aoe heals and tank busters, (3) maximum uptime. While I think some fights can follow this theme, from a healer's perspective, I find the fights to become rather stale fast as you can see in the formula of 1,2 and 3, healers deal with (2) occasionally, and for (3), press 1 button now. If there were more variety of raid designs e.g. low levels of healing is constantly needed, healers would need to manage mana / healing (e.g. cure being the go-to spell rather than just cure 2 / solace during busters).

From a DPS perspective, having a variety of "things to kill" including multi-boss fights (which has not been implemented before afaik), would also go a long way for different classes to shine and strategise their optimum playstyle.

To be fair, enrage timer design wouldn't be a problem if the classes were actually balanced.

The melee classes and BLM should NOT be so far above anything else, it's ridiculous.

The only hard DPS "check" fight anyone might be hitting is E2S and that is more so of can you dodge heads during Quetas phase than just being good at DPSing. Leviathan? Its an entire party wide mechanic check, yes the DPS requirement is tight if you are near the minimum ilevel but most of the mechanics are full team wipes rather than single target screw ups.
Titan... Titan is a marathon fight, its clearly made to be a 'training mode' for Ultimate and that is something we honestly needed. Omega wasn't that hard besides just "Hello World" but once you got it down the fight was really straightforward.
If you are somewhat decent at keeping uptime and understanding your job then you shouldn't have any issues with DPS checks unless its week 1-3 and you are on the 3rd or 4th fight already.
If you are going to blame your healers for not doing enough dps... well that dpeends if they aren't doing a bare minimum of casting DPS spells when no one is taking damage, you don't need to be a 'pro' at managing your heals and DPS... you just need to be competant.
Tanks....
as a Tank main there is almost no reason why a tank shouldn't be dealing a good amount of damage. Besides GNB none of the tanks rotations are difficult or very intensive so you should be doing adequate damage during the fight. All you need to know is "what do I need to do for X mechanic" and "tankbuster/cooldown management". There is very little thought that you need to do about that once you experiment with cooldowns spaced out. No excuses for tanks not DPSing anymore, tank stance no longer hits your personal DPS and you shouldn't need to even worry about hate. This isn't SB anymore where tanks can hide behind "hate management" or "tank stance". In SB bad tanks sat in tank stance the whole fight, you are a blue DPS, focus on what you need to do, then once you know those requirements.... think like a DPS.

DPS checks are what make damage dealing jobs relevant. If you didn't have checks, you'd run an all tank/healer comp and hammer away at fights for hours just dodging mechanics until you cleared. That's also why there's been a push to differentiate tank/healer dps from pure damage dealer dps this expansion.

That's not to say that the design of fights from a tanking/healing perspective is without problems, however. Auto-positioning bosses are anathema to good tank design. A7S was probably the last well designed fight from a tank perspective. They really need to review how they design their fights. The formula is kind of stale.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

DPS checks are what make damage dealing jobs relevant. If you didn't have checks, you'd run an all tank/healer comp and hammer away at fights for hours just dodging mechanics until you cleared. That's also why there's been a push to differentiate tank/healer dps from pure damage dealer dps this expansion.

That's not to say that the design of fights from a tanking/healing perspective is without problems, however. Auto-positioning bosses are anathema to good tank design. A7S was probably the last well designed fight from a tank perspective. They really need to review how they design their fights. The formula is kind of stale.

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Its the hard dps checks that most complain about. Nothing wrong with having soft ones. Or even have enough damage going out healers need to constantly heal, so you want dps still, to kill the boss before they run out of mana (soft check).

For them, the dps check being there for every fight is stale.

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Originally Posted by TaiyouSeishin

Its the hard dps checks that most complain about. Nothing wrong with having soft ones. Or even have enough damage going out healers need to constantly heal, so you want dps still, to kill the boss before they run out of mana (soft check).

For them, the dps check being there for every fight is stale.

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Unfortunately it's here to stay, the enrage timer is there so that you have to do mechanics with minimal deaths to be able to clear, otherwise simply taking a red mage and a summoner to spam rezzes would be a viable progging option in savage raids minus the mechanics where you need everyone alive, like E3S' Tsunami phase.

They could design harder fights with less strict dps checks, but in that case people would just try to speedkill strat it so they see less mechanics before the boss dies, or as I said, red mage and summoner comps would be popular.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Unfortunately it's here to stay, the enrage timer is there so that you have to do mechanics with minimal deaths to be able to clear, otherwise simply taking a red mage and a summoner to spam rezzes would be a viable progging option in savage raids minus the mechanics where you need everyone alive, like E3S' Tsunami phase.

They could design harder fights with less strict dps checks, but in that case people would just try to speedkill strat it so they see less mechanics before the boss dies, or as I said, red mage and summoner comps would be popular.

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I have nothing against the enrage timer itself, most mmos have them, just not everything was necessarily a dps race.

Ofc you are speaking the big truth: there is always speedkill meta...

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Originally Posted by Lyth

DPS checks are what make damage dealing jobs relevant. If you didn't have checks, you'd run an all tank/healer comp\

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And why is it our business how they do it? If they want to take two hours to kill a boss isn't it their prerogative? You're making a non argument. People will still bring as many dps that they can simply to shorten the time between starting and collecting their loot.

The community feedback to Baldesion Arsenal was pretty good, people felt the first time like doing a real raid and not a trial. At the same time you can still see that they seem to scared to apply that feedback to new content and once again serve the old raid formula. I don't want wow Version of ff14 either, but the huge dps dependency with no way of recovering once you had too many deaths is demotivating and tiring. E.g.: I don't want to feel like that I have to wipe because my top dps player just died in the opener.

I played almost all savages when they were live and I think the time invest is still pretty big when you arent a midcore/hardcore raider because you still have to beat the dps checks, even if they are often easy. Especially when you try to pug it. The difficulty should be the ability to clear the mechanics, just like in ultimate, then nobody would look at the damage anymore, atleast you can kill it.

There are many ways to make a fight difficult outside of looking at the damage numbers. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes when they design the raids. Elements like in shinryu where you attack the tail to deal a fix amount HP to the Boss once you kill it, or golden bahamut where you get a huge dmg buff for staying alive and completing the mechanics correctly. Or boss fights that have restricted rezz ability like in BA, that's all ways to spice fights up and reward playing mechanics correctly. It would be something else then the standard HP sponge with enrage.

Reading the post. Something just telling me that either this is a troll post over something that's been happening since ARR or the person is new in endgame 8-man raid content. Having enrage timers is necessary in savage, extreme, or ultimate, period. If people want to play for 20-40mins on the same fight, that's where normal mode comes in for that purpose. This shouldn't be hard to understand. It's just something that games do in japan, where you face a opponent where it's hard at first, but the more you play it, the more you understand it's animation, the better you get kind of deal. Yet, this is a team effort so everyone have to get good in their job, dealing w/ mechanics properly, and don't get ko over simple things. Enrage timers should be considered as a challenge, to beat it before it goes off. A plus if you beat it in minimum ilvl cause that shows you are performing well as well the team you are in.

Reason why they do Enrage timer I believe is so they don't do another FFXI raid design where you could end up fighting the same boss for over 24hrs to kill it(One pull).

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Originally Posted by Atamis

And why is it our business how they do it? If they want to take two hours to kill a boss isn't it their prerogative? You're making a non argument. People will still bring as many dps that they can simply to shorten the time between starting and collecting their loot.

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Two reasons.

It makes the DPS role entirely irrelevant. While yes, people will still want faster kills. You don't actually need them anymore. Therefore, you have one role that actually serves zero necessity, which is bad design. The second is it reduces the accomplishment of each fight. There's a reason no one really cares about 24 mans, for example. They're a war of attrition. Savage would become the exact same, especially as worse players would be demanding all tank/healer parties to carry themselves to a clear they really have no business getting. Learn the mechanics.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It makes the DPS role entirely irrelevant. While yes, people will still want faster kills. You don't actually need them anymore. Therefore, you have one role that actually serves zero necessity, which is bad design.

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Even if the fight would have a low enrage timer, you can still force dps player to be in the team by introducing the right mechanics. A7s (rolespecific jails) or A13s (time gates) as examples. This problem of only tank/healer parties is not really big.

We also have a duty timer so 24h battles like in ff11 aren't possible.

Just dealing damage by doing your rotation correctly is somewhat of a skill but having a few deaths shouldn't make it impossible to clear it imo. Would be better if there is a way to recover the fight. We don't really have any use of cc either in savage, it's just focused so much on dmg. 24man and BA are like what savage should be....

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

The community feedback to Baldesion Arsenal was pretty good, people felt the first time like doing a real raid and not a trial. At the same time you can still see that they seem to scared to apply that feedback to new content and once again serve the old raid formula. I don't want wow Version of ff14 either, but the huge dps dependency with no way of recovering once you had too many deaths is demotivating and tiring. E.g.: I don't want to feel like that I have to wipe because my top dps player just died in the opener.

I played almost all savages when they were live and I think the time invest is still pretty big when you arent a midcore/hardcore raider because you still have to beat the dps checks, even if they are often easy. Especially when you try to pug it. The difficulty should be the ability to clear the mechanics, just like in ultimate, then nobody would look at the damage anymore, atleast you can kill it.

There are many ways to make a fight difficult outside of looking at the damage numbers. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes when they design the raids. Elements like in shinryu where you attack the tail to deal a fix amount HP to the Boss once you kill it, or golden bahamut where you get a huge dmg buff for staying alive and completing the mechanics correctly. Or boss fights that have restricted rezz ability like in BA, that's all ways to spice fights up and reward playing mechanics correctly. It would be something else then the standard HP sponge with enrage.

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The Baldesion Arsenal CONTENT was great. The entry to get in, however, was horrific.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Even if the fight would have a low enrage timer, you can still force dps player to be in the team by introducing the right mechanics. A7s (rolespecific jails) or A13s (time gates) as examples. This problem of only tank/healer parties is not really big.

We also have a duty timer so 24h battles like in ff11 aren't possible.

Just dealing damage by doing your rotation correctly is somewhat of a skill but having a few deaths shouldn't make it impossible to clear it imo. Would be better if there is a way to recover the fight. We don't really have any use of cc either in savage, it's just focused so much on dmg. 24man and BA are like what savage should be....

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Except a few deaths doesn't make any fight impossible unless you're doing it week 1. And the reason for that is you're tackling Savage at the lowest possible ilvl. You can have people die in Titan now and still make the enrage without much of an issue provided you're decent players. BA has enrages, you just don't often them because it's very generous or one mistakes wipes too much of the group. I loved BA, personally, but you weren't recovering much if someone stacked the meteor and wiped out two whole alliances. At that point, the run was usually over.

So it boils down to enrages, near constant insta-wipe mechanics or making every fight have very harsh DPS checks to ensure you actually need raw damage. Ultimately, they all lead down the same road.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Just dealing damage by doing your rotation correctly is somewhat of a skill but having a few deaths shouldn't make it impossible to clear it imo. Would be better if there is a way to recover the fight. We don't really have any use of cc either in savage, it's just focused so much on dmg. 24man and BA are like what savage should be....

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Well, I don't know about BA but there are also DPS-checks and Enrages in 24man. The first boss at Dun Scaith actually had a time limit/enrage as after some time all quarters are filled with no safe zone left, wiping the floor. And the Adds at Thundergod Cid in Orbonne were nearly impossible to kill in time if you had some dead people at this stage, especially in the first weeks after release. I can't remember how much times we wiped in Orbonne just because of the DPS-check at Cid alone.

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

Well, I don't know about BA but there are also DPS-checks and Enrages in 24man. The first boss at Dun Scaith actually had a time limit/enrage as after some time all quarters are filled with no safe zone left, wiping the floor. And the Adds at Thundergod Cid in Orbonne were nearly impossible to kill in time if you had some dead people at this stage, especially in the first weeks after release. I can't remember how much times we wiped in Orbonne just because of the DPS-check at Cid alone.

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Or the ice crystal phase, if by some miracle your pug party happened to pass all the other obstacles to get to the homestretch of the fight. Week 1: Thundergod Cid still gives me nightmares to this day.

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Originally Posted by Enla

Or the ice crystal phase, if by some miracle your pug party happened to pass all the other obstacles to get to the homestretch of the fight. Week 1: Thundergod Cid still gives me nightmares to this day.

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There was also a DPS (and healer)-check at Ultima on the elevator-plattform, now that I think about it. But they usually don't fail unless most of the party doesn't know that there actually is one to begin with.

I honestly dont consider enrage timers to be the cause of all problems.Plenty of raid groups have always gone for the highest dps to deal with mechanics for less amount of time.The problem lies within the lack of viable strategies with different jobs for end game content.