I wish battles wouldn't punish us for doing too much damage

I think the title says it all but gear and echo, things that are supposed to ease content over time actually often make it harder. Phases get pushed and unpredictable things start to happen. Sure if you know that a boss goes to such and such a phase at such and such a percent of hp you can hold back but that seems really dumb. A hero of Eorzea has to pull their punches? C'mon.

One solution is to have more fights based on x-amount of time passing or such and such an event happening (killing an add for example).

While on the subject I think that item level sync is silly too. But I guess I'm used to single-player RPGs where if you're having trouble you can get better gear or if you get really good gear you can go back and really wreck enemies that might've once been difficult. It's a great measure of how much a hero has grown over time.

And on THAT subject, FFXIV doesn't do enough to make us feel like heroes. The quests should be epic and the npcs should throw us a feast or parade and the citizens of Eorzea should cheer us. Of course this can be overdone but you get the idea.

The difficulty is knowing when and how to hold back.

It's too bad the way the battle system was designed that you can't help but go balls-to-wall on the damage all the time.

Go to Haukke Manor HM... super speed the last boss... watch her gobble up the third mobs right as it spawns, wiping you. Fights like these exist already, they trigger based on % of boss HP. Go too fast, and you just might trigger an event too early which can cause a wipe.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SekhmetM

The difficulty is knowing when and how to hold back.

---

This. OP what battle in particular are you thinking about? Are you talking about boss fights with Echo?

I've only found one fight where it's absolutely necessary to hold back: Thornmarch EX.

Because that's a very special thing.

Everything else that I've found so far has ways to deal with the sudden phase change - but they require people to be able to actually adapt and understand the fight and be paying attention to what's going on around them (phase skipping in Levi EX for instance just requires you to be on the lookout for mobs - which really should not be a challenge for anyone who's taking on an EX primal).

Haukke manor is kind of an interesting exception in that if you DPS too hard you have very little time to go after the add - but if you can DPS that fast you should be able to massively reduce the HP of the mob in almost no time at all anyway.

Guess button mash > coordination for some people

We're having this discussion again? Really?

Yep, it's one game design error in FFXIV.
(well, it's not the only one)

It's just another inconsistent gimmick thrown randomly in some fights to extend the time sink. The whole difficulty of FFXIV comes from its inconsistency.

Enmity is the system supposed to "handle" powerful dps. But it's no longer enough because 1) when it's hard to keep hate in a MMO, the players say it's broken 2) it's a consistent (= good) mechanic, so players can actually learn and understand it (= good ; but bad for the time sink).

I've actually tanked Haukke Manor HM wherein the melee used the Limit Break on the boss instead of the last add. Boss was not killed, she ate the add and we wiped.

Another is Ramuh EX. If you push past 65%, the phases are reset. Thunderstorm does not fall and anyone with Chaos will be drawn to the middle. In most cases, the party is able to un-Chaos them while they are in the middle since Thunderspark won't fall yet, but it is easy to miss.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ceodore

Go to Haukke Manor HM... super speed the last boss... watch her gobble up the third mobs right as it spawns, wiping you. Fights like these exist already, they trigger based on % of boss HP. Go too fast, and you just might trigger an event too early which can cause a wipe.

---

The first boss of Pharos Sirius is a fun one to. Nothing better than trying to deal with 50+ adds putting the exploding debuff on you.