Cinder drift critique: top heavy mechanics are the wrong way to go *minor spoliers*

Huh? After running Ruby Weapon once I thought the fight was tuned to be quite easy. Even my duty finder PUG group on day one took it down with no wipes and less than a handful of deaths throughout the entire fight. We didn't even come anywhere remotely close to a wipe, and there were only 2 mechanics that I can recall never seeing before but were easy to figure out from their telegraphs. (The spiral arms one and the cross-hatch arena-wide AoE) Did I just get lucky?

My only critique is a point of preference: I didn't like the inclusion of Nael as part of the fight.

Yes, I get it. End of an Era was a dope-ass cutscene. T9 was hard as hell and a pretty sweet fight overall, I get it. Story-wise, the reasoning for the inclusion of Nael in the Ruby Weapon fight was sound... but I'm just tired of this particular reference. The sight of Dalamud crashing down on us does nothing for me, neither does having to hide behind a rock to survive a meteor strike. These, to me, feel tired, and I have to italicize that part cause I know that Nael hasn't actually been referenced all that much. Last we got of her was in Bahamut's ultimate trial.

I actually think the side content in this game should have gotten harder, sooner. Unless I am mistaken, this is the tightest DPS check outside of ex+ difficulty content, right? But it's honestly rather generous; first time I did it, we cleared the trial our first time even though we had a lot of people screwing up. The second time, we kept failing, and you could see why: PLD not using magic, healers not doing damage, DPS not using party damage buffs, etc. I think FFXIV needs some wake-up calls outside of ex/savage to get players to look into themselves and see if they can improve somewhere.

I am OK with main scenario content being pretty gentle but I like the idea of the optional stuff posing a little more challenge; looking back at Stormblood, think Suzaku and Seiryu also did a good job of saying "This isn't going to cut it anymore. You need to pay attention." Phase 2 is almost target dummy levels of simplicity, being the perfect testing grounds for basic fundamentals of your job.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

SQ you really REALLY need to tell your fight designers that multi wipe mechanics with stupid short enrage timer windows on top like this are not fun. Forcing your players into perfect execution of mechanics instead of perfect execution of their job role and knowing your class (not that there is much to know after tanks and heals got dumbed down) is the wrong direction to go.

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I prefer fights with diverse mechanics and steep penalties for failing to do them correctly (but not so steep that failing just once will kill you outright, unless the tell for the mechanic is very obvious). 5.2 brought a lot of very interesting bosses. Also class rotations need better tells - I'd rather keep my eyes on the fight than glued to my hotbars watching when abilities are coming off cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

There is no skill in rote memorization of a wipe mechanic.

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So instead you want lame, easily avoidable mechanics during which you can press your DPS buttons in a memorized sequence? God forbid having to dodge a mechanic and getting out of phase with the rotation.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

This got compounded when one of the tanks in our fight had never done the Ivalice chain and therefore had never seen the arrow mechanic. Not a good thing when that part can again easily result in a wipe if your tanks and healers don't know it

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It literally shows you how to do it

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Originally Posted by tdb

I prefer fights with diverse mechanics and steep penalties for failing to do them correctly (but not so steep that failing just once will kill you outright, unless the tell for the mechanic is very obvious). 5.2 brought a lot of very interesting bosses. Also class rotations need better tells - I'd rather keep my eyes on the fight than glued to my hotbars watching when abilities are coming off cooldown.

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For job cooldowns that are longer (like WHM’s Temperance), I have them set up on a separate hotbar directly beneath my character model so I can see then in my periphery. Otherwise, learning your rotation throughout a fight eventually builds the muscle memory you need to just know when they’ll be up again. I don’t think tracking cooldowns is a huge issue unless you’re new to things/inexperienced with a job or fight.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

Forcing your players into perfect execution of mechanics instead of perfect execution of their job role and knowing your class

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Change the "instead of" to and, this is exactly what SE should have been doing all along. This game has plenty of faceroll content that a lot of players afk their way through, I don't think it's too much to ask to have at least a few fights that require you to execute mechanics on top of knowing your job/role. We honestly need more content like this.

The fight just takes memory and practice. I've literally went in with a practice group and beat it in two lock outs on Extreme. I personally think it's fine, it requires you to do the mechanic correctly and it's heavily forgiving in phase 1.

This is why SE will never have a PTR for FFXIV lol. No one can agree on anything.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

This is why SE will never have a PTR for FFXIV lol. No one can agree on anything.

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Why would they even need a PTR when they stick to the same formula and design concepts forever? Maybe it's a case of "why change what isn't broken" to some but PTR is highly experimental and experimenting is not really ever a thing in FFXIV and when it is (rarely) we end up with broken classes and bugs for an entire patch (three months or more, 5.0 SMN one example).

When WoW has similarly bugged and badly designed classes PTR has usually warned Blizzard beforehand but Blizzard don't care/don't have the resources and go live with the trainwreck anyway. SE don't even let people test it and warn them so I don't know what's worse in this case.