Please stop with the "no duplicates" and pigeon-holing our DPS into tiny windows

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

My thoughts exactly. Being able to send one person with little preparation (just dual-cast and oGCDs) to do 8's work is...

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I think the worst part is just how much of a leg up that gives the rest of the party too. My group did IR WAR v Tank Ghost tonight for the lulz to try it out, and it shaved entire minutes from our kill because of how much more uptime we had and how much easier that made aligning everything.

You kind of need to run that strat for a decent parse in 5s. Kind of, I have decent runs in my primary group without it.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

I think the worst part is just how much of a leg up that gives the rest of the party too. My group did IR WAR v Tank Ghost tonight for the lulz to try it out, and it shaved entire minutes from our kill because of how much more uptime we had and how much easier that made aligning everything.

You kind of need to run that strat for a decent parse in 5s. Kind of, I have decent runs in my primary group without it.

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that's pretty hilarious actually. my group hasnt tried it, but I'd love to shave minutes off of that fight due to how frustrating it can be.

See, discovering these kinds of things is actually really cool and inventive on the part of the players (yes, some might call it lazy, but it's a game - we are ALWAYS looking for the path of least resistance!)

But in the past, the dev team has clamped down on that. I remember in, maybe 4.1, there was a fix in the patch notes for Ninja, something about the players doing more DPS than intended, and the dev team had to step in and nerf something (I don't recall exactly what, maybe someone who mains ninja can explain).

And I think that pigeon-holing DPS into tiny windows is the "gimmick" of machinist. I wish it weren't that way. Maybe ZKI can correct me because he's a diehard MCH, but it definitely seems like EVERYTHING revolves around wildfire, and that dps otherwise is pretty flat-line. Monk relies on an over-abundance of positionals. Does anyone who mains those classes feel like it's too much? Or is that part of the thrill of it?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Have you seen the Argus (Heroic or Mythic) fight from World of Warcraft: Legion? It plays with the concept of death a fair bit. If not, but curious, the "Fatboss" channel on Youtube covers it.

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Argus was a pretty neat fight. For those not familiar:

In the last leg of the fight, he does an attack that instantly kills the entire raid. One of the titans, gives life to a tree that allows everyone to resurrect.

The tree persists throughout the last phase. It takes damage from any and all attacks so boss shouldn't be facing it. In addition to that, anytime someone does and resses it damages the tree. Healers can heal the tree and are encouraged to do so, especially if the tree becomes withered (too many people ressing too quickly) in which case its HP rapidly drains. Once it's dead, it's dead. No more ressing. During progression it was very common to leave some people down so that if a tank dropped (and they did, it wasn't an if, but a when) the tree was healthy enough to get them back into the fight.

It wasn't my favorite fight, but it was a neat interaction.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Saying the tank LB strategy was unintended when it clearly lets you survive an ignored mechanic (and isn't being addressed/fixed) makes about as much sense as saying it was unintended for FFXI NINs to be able to tank after giving them an ability that lets them completely avoid attacks. What did they THINK was going to happen there? It isn't fooling anybody, certainly not me.

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1) It was definitely unintended. I don't know their internal QA testing process, but we've seen time and time again where they don't really think out of the box so occasionally a strategy slips through that works, that they didn't anticipate. They can't really nerf it or fix it because it would be unfair to others at that point.

2) The Byakko add is programmed to deal fixed damage based on remaining HP. They did not anticipate that Tank LB would allow them to skip it. I'd bet they didn't even try to test that scenario. What solution would you have had them implement? Have the damage it deal bypass tank LB entirely? Have it deal insta-kill damage if it's at full or near full HP? Any other solutions?

Each of these solutions has a drawback to it and it's likely they weren't even considered hence their statement of "unintended".

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Except it isn't a DPS check at all because the DPS can completely ignore it and you can very much still kill the boss.

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It's still a DPS check. It's just one that can be bypassed via other means.

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If that approach were unintended, they'd have made it such that running out of time in turn 2 would just instantly wipe you like it would in any other fight with an enrage. Yet as you say yourself, that isn't how it works (and as I've pointed out already, Coil was *no stranger whatsoever* to mechanics that would just flat out instantly kill individuals/parties for failing them, so the fact that they diverted from that here is notable). Same deal with the tank LB3 on Byakko.

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Regarding T2 - it's possible that they never even tested if it was healable by a completely fresh pair of healers. It was designed as a soft enrage that had escalating damage to tired (low MP) healers at the end of an exhausting fight. You don't need a PHD in game design to know that 2 drained healers in progression gear wouldn't be able to survive that long. Hell 2 fresh healers in progression gear likely couldn't do it (hence why 3 healers cheese until max geared).

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

A DPS check, last I heard, tests the DPS of the party. Please explain to me how it's still a DPS check when a defensive tank action can bypass it?

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A tank LB check? Please explain to me how a tank LB check can be bypassed by doing enough DPS to it?

Also, you don't seem the kind of person who would see a strange occurrence w/o jumping to conclusions as to what caused it, rather than admitting it's an unknown, until enough evidence is presented to suggest otherwise.

EDIT: They had a similar issue with phase skipping, due to high DPS in some cases, because they wanted a boss to change up its mechanics when it reaches different tiers of HP. (Titan HM being an example of it 1st being implemented, where phase skipping wasnt really a thought on their minds, they just assume the boss changes its rotation to throw off the players) Players took advantage of it, and now bosses are designed with it in mind.
They bypassed mechanics by having the DPS do something they werent really thinking about, that would otherwise have been a tank/healer/group mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

i think its just semantics at this point. it still a DPS check at the end of the day if people choose not to do the tank LB3, its just that the fail mechanic for not passing it is bypassed. you simply don't "need" to tank LB3 to pass the content, it just slightly faster. they admitted it was unintended, im willing to accept that more than saying "they're full of it".

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The tiger in Byakko is more a damage mitigation check, which can be eased by dps.

A real dps check requires you to do a set ammount of damage in a specific time or else you get a certain and always the same penalty for failing, e.g. death/a set ammount of damage/damage down/other debuffs.
Like the adds in Ramuh/Ifrit, the add in A7s, the meteors in O4s or the daemon walls in Feridads dungeon.

But this is absolutly not true here: You can survive the tiger with 10% HP left, with 20% or even with 40%+ HP left, depending on mitigation like adlo, ShakeItOff, Divine Veil, etc...
or well, 100% with tank lb3.
Is adlo deploy cheesy because you can do like 10% less damage than without spreaded shields?
Shouldn't the SCH dps instead of shielding to help beating a "dps check"????


The intended use of tank LB3 is exactly that: Do hefty mitigation by sacrificing your LB. The only way I see to delegitimize this is to make no mitigation (like shields) possible at all. Then its a proper dps check and noone would've even expected it to be survivable with tank lb.

Until then its also a mitigation check and why shouldnt you be allowed to use a mitigation lb for that when you're allowed to beat a real dps check with a dps LB????
Thats cheesy, too, right?

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Originally Posted by Neophyte

The tiger in Byakko is more a damage mitigation check, which can be eased by dps.

A real dps check requires you to do a set ammount of damage in a specific time or else you get a certain and always the same penalty for failing, e.g. death/a set ammount of damage/damage down/other debuffs.
Like the adds in Ramuh/Ifrit, the add in A7s, the meteors in O4s or the daemon walls in Feridads dungeon.

But this is absolutly not true here: You can survive the tiger with 10% HP left, with 20% or even with 40%+ HP left, depending on mitigation like adlo, ShakeItOff, Divine Veil, etc...
or well, 100% with tank lb3.

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You can survive it w/o any mitigation used, so how is that a mitigation check?
(BTW i know what you're trying to say, as the base concept is close to accurate, and closer than technically saying its a pure DPS check, but in the minds of the developers, it was a type of soft DPS check. a DPS check that was softened by mitigation, which allowed for the possibility of a tank LB3. Otherwise the group took 180%+ of their HP in damage. But being a soft lock, like the bees in Qarn, they werent a wipe if u failed to kill them before they final sting the tanks in 2.0. (Back when u couldnt survive final sting) but it sure as heck increased the likelyhood.
You could bypass the stings by planning out stuns, if your group had enough stuns to go around, such as a PLD MT, and dps with stuns. Of course u couldnt keep that up forever, if the bees didnt die, they spam final sting. but luckily their HP was lowered a lot, and peoples gear iLv was raised.)

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

And I think that pigeon-holing DPS into tiny windows is the "gimmick" of machinist. I wish it weren't that way. Maybe ZKI can correct me because he's a diehard MCH, but it definitely seems like EVERYTHING revolves around wildfire, and that dps otherwise is pretty flat-line. Monk relies on an over-abundance of positionals. Does anyone who mains those classes feel like it's too much? Or is that part of the thrill of it?

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Can confirm, MCH is Wildfire and Wildfire is MCH. You want all your cooldowns to line up to put you in prime position to get the strongest Wildfire you can every time. That said, even though the peak damage is wildfire, and MCH slows down besides, it's a bit welcome as it allows me to use utility oGCDs like Palisade, Dismantle, or Mana Song.

It's also nice how everything lines up on the minute-to-minute--15s cd on Rapid Reload and Gauss Round, 30s cd on Reload, 60s on Wildfire, 120s on Hypercharge and Overload.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Can confirm, MCH is Wildfire and Wildfire is MCH....It's also nice how everything lines up on the minute-to-minute--15s cd on Rapid Reload and Gauss Round, 30s cd on Reload, 60s on Wildfire, 120s on Hypercharge and Overload.

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See, I love this about the classes. Having a pattern for everything is just way more relaxing to me than figuring out if my character is 2-degrees-off-of-flank-for-a-punch. Your post reminds me that I want to try MCH again...

Huh, I didn't know that about LB. Does it only apply in certain content? You can't predict what you're going to get in a Duty Finder run. It seems horribly unfair if it applies there.

No, it's a good thing. Otherwise you would see people only wanting the strongest classes to play with them. You already see this to a small extent, lets not make it worse. For example, sometimes 1 of the 3 healers or tanks are "the worst" and no one wants those in their comp. So they will say "WHM and SCH only". I don't want the window of what's "acceptable" to get even smaller.

LB3 takes off 2, MAYBE 3% off of Byakko or any Savage fight. Hardly necessary unless you're getting <5% enrages. Also it's impossible to not get LB3 for Byakko EX with only 1 dupe for the section that you cheese through the tiger's AoE with Tank LB because the game gives you a bunch of free LB meter for handling various mechanics throughout the fight. Hell, you could get by with LB2, because the move barely takes off 10k HP with LB3, with LB2 it would hurt but be mostly survivable, especially with other mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

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So what you're saying is, Turn 2 enrage strat was exactly what the devs intended (which was an oversight). I feel they didn't fix it as it's a mistake they made and will own up to it by leaving it as it is (a reminder), but in the future making sure something like that will never happen again (which so far has not. I'm pretty sure every enrage after T5* does around 30k-999k). From what I can recall, there is no other hardcore raid that allows you to ignore every single mechanic like Turn 2.

*Turn 5's hard enrage (Twintania removes neurolinks and then does her explosion attack) does around 6000 damage (in the video I saw). Easily survivable in SB.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

While I understand this was designed to encourage greater class variety, it's also causing a lot of exclusion of popular classes.
Your thoughts?

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I found it extremely hard to read on after that. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There's a large difference between something being intended "intended" and "allowed for", or not strictly unintended.

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Are we really arguing minutiae now in a situation where using game mechanics is unintended, especially considering the original post SPECIFICALLY mentioned that it was not unintended (ie. anything but intended)? There's a difference but this situation is not it. If they were using hacks, yeah I can see your point, but your point is lost because LB3 of any kind is a normal thing this game has as a mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Hell, you could get by with LB2, because the move barely takes off 10k HP with LB3, with LB2 it would hurt but be mostly survivable, especially with other mitigation.

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Tried it. People still died heavily. Only the tanks barely made it through.

LB3 is waaaay more potent than LB2.

Plus my groups barely survive with LB3, only having like 5%-10% of their HP with Lb3.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

Are we really arguing minutiae now in a situation where using game mechanics is unintended, especially considering the original post SPECIFICALLY mentioned that it was not unintended (ie. anything but intended)? There's a difference but this situation is not it. If they were using hacks, yeah I can see your point, but your point is lost because LB3 of any kind is a normal thing this game has as a mechanic.

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That's all any of this has been -- semantics. No one has ever suggested that it was the strat that the devs specifically wanted players to use. But for the mechanic to have been given damage equal to some 475% of the average eHP of a ranged at the minimum ilvl for the encounter, where less than 10% more damage would make LB3 unusable as a mechanical circumvention, stretches the idea the likelihood of coincidence. It seems to have been tailored as to "allow for" that strategy, even if was not the "intended" strategy.

Which I happen to very much like, as it does allow for creative use of the game's general mechanics. But, again, just 10% more damage and it would not have been an option. Someone almost certainly tuned to that.

To put it another way, it was likely an intended strategy, just not to be the leading option among them. It's NA predominance was unintended, not the strat itself.