Darkhold really "easy" or merely what we were warned about by Matsui?

I had posted this in this the "tough content" thread but it was buried by a cavalcade of casual whining. I think though maybe this deserves its own thread. I want to ask whether Darkhold's "easy" problem is the result of poor design, or merely a player created problem resulting from them implementing such high end encounters prior to the battle changes being finalized.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Most of the "difficulty" of the batraal 5th chest run is just getting through the dungeon. The fight itself is easy and does not pose a challenge in itself. Tank it in the corner, drop the circles, kill the skeletons.

I know many people will say that getting the speed run accomplished is "hard" but I can say that compared to even most normal HNM in FFXI, speed run is nowhere near the same difficulty. Thats like saying getting to ROC was tough because you had to run through Garlaige Citadel...... Hardly....

---

I played XI endgame to the bone, and I take exception and some offense to this post.

Now I haven't watched Mog's videos, but if I had to guess they are using the pretty standard pick up group method of stationary tanking/soaking. For those who are unaware what this means I'll break it down for you:

• Ogre is tanked against the upper wall the entire fight, and when the ghosts are up the tank simply takes the hits.
• Batraal is tanked in the corner (or other spots) and the tank either avoids the ghosts (by standing between Batraal's legs), or soaks their damage.

Doing it this way I can see how it could be said that darkhold is easy, but is that how the encounter was designed? Let's look at the situation, both encounters center around ghosts which disappear and reappear at a static (Ogre) or dynamic (batraal) location. These ghosts are capable of all types of drains, and heavy AOE damage if they use their dmg ability in unison. Darkhold was intended to be completed in under 30 minutes in order to get the 5th chest, and it was balanced to allow a setup of all classes in the same group (which means 4 melee).

• The stationary tactic is not melee friendly, melee either have to back off and throw weapon during a large portion of the fight, or they like the tank have to soak (or in the case of batraal I suppose they could mimic/stand on top of the tank).
• Was the tank meant to soak this damage/debuff? How well does a pure r50 gla or any tank soak this damage/debuff and can said tank hold enmity enough with those to beat the instance in <30 minutes?

I'm not saying it is wrong or exploitative to employ different strategies and workarounds for mob mechanics, heck that is what endgame is all about (half the fun). Matsui said he was worried about implementing these high end encounters before battle changes were finalized. What I believe he meant by that was that currently players, especially those with multiple (or all) classes to 50, are overpowered. This allows them to employ such soaking strategies and is why the fight appears to be so easy to execute. These same strategies might not have been possible/preferable if the changes had come first.

At the same time I'm not going to sit here and pretend like jousting is this end-all-be-all raid tactic or that Darkhold is the most difficult raid encounter design ever. It's a beginner dungeon no matter how you look at it, I'd be wholly disappointed if things never got more interesting, but are the fight really that dumbed down, or do we simply overpower them due to our being overpowered.

Nerf players, nerf the armory, bring class specialization and uniqueness and suddenly I think darkhold's encounters are not that bad at all. If people would do them more as they were designed (and I'd love to get some confirmation on how that was) and they've got a pretty decent finesse check factored in.

• Tanks manually dodging Batraal's laser frontal of death while jousting so that melee are unhindered, and keeping everyone out of range.

I think that takes a certain finesse, is it impossible or "elite" maybe not, but it's a far cry from how simple the standard pick up strategy is.

I want to know is anyone doing the fight this way and still thinks it is overly easy for a beginning dungeon? Is anyone claiming it is overly easy that doesn't have at least a core selection of players running with them with all or most currently useful cross-class abilities for their class? Does anyone doing so not feel the problem might reasonably be tied to them being a tad overpowered under the current system?

You know a major balance change is coming, and if you believe that doesn't mean a nerf I seriously hope you are expecting a giant boost in mob strength as well because one day of any activity killing mobs @ or above the maximum level (10+) in XIV should show you that we have outgrown our britches. Since they have stated due to "balance concerns" they are not raising that limit the logical development step to address this problem is to Honey, I shrunk the kids! us.

>.> (fear for the children of video game developers)

tl;dr learn to read better, it's good for you.

Everything is easy once you figure out how to do it consistently. The difficulty is figuring out how to do it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Murugan

• Ogre is tanked against the upper wall the entire fight, and when the ghosts are up the tank simply takes the hits.
• Batraal is tanked in the corner (or other spots) and the tank either avoids the ghosts (by standing between Batraal's legs), or soaks their damage.

• The stationary tactic is not melee friendly, melee either have to back off and throw weapon during a large portion of the fight, or they like the tank have to soak (or in the case of batraal I suppose they could mimic/stand on top of the tank).
• Was the tank meant to soak this damage/debuff? How well does a pure r50 gla or any tank soak this damage/debuff and can said tank hold enmity enough with those to beat the instance in <30 minutes?

• Tanks manually dodging Batraal's laser frontal of death while jousting so that melee are unhindered, and keeping everyone out of range.

I think that takes a certain finesse, is it impossible or "elite" maybe not, but it's a far cry from how simple the standard pick up strategy is.

---

First the point of a tank is to soak damage, while keeping hate off the DDs and healers it always has been the job of a tank and always will be.

Second melee never have to back off and throw, its called stun currently we only have leg sweep and shock spikes, but any DoW can use it.

Perhaps a tank with no other classes leveled can take the damage and keep hate, but one with con r20 has access to cure 2 which allows them to self heal and neuter the hate generated to the mages, any tank worth going with knows this.

The next one implies that you dont think a tank should take any damage and should dodge all attacks to ensure melee arent hit by AOEs, when you melees should know where to stand to avoid frontal AOE or rear AOE or side AOE, and for any full AOE theres always this magical thing called stun.

Also if tanks had to dodge attacks, why not just have DDs dodge attacks and make tanks completly obsolete.

Finally if you had this in another post then you should link to it so we can see what was said, rather than having to search for it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xenor

Everything is easy once you figure out how to do it consistently. The difficulty is figuring out how to do it.

---

Yes, and no. The difficulty of executing a strategy differs. This is why you have a disagreements between people who want to claim that WoW's raids are the hardest endgame ever, and you have lots of old school MMO players who beg to differ. WoW has all sorts of little environmental obstacles, and once you learn these yes it is easy, but old school MMO raid encounters were more punishing in their finesse requirements which meant that players had to maintain a high level of focus/attention throughout the fight. This changed though later on as expansions in both old school (PvE) MMO's FFXI and EQ made players overpowered in my opinion.

the problem is some say it's too easy and some say it's too hard and se is trying to cater to both crowds. you have a post about the same darkhold complaining that they cannot get the completion in the time limit because it is hard. to me this is the main problem we have. there should be areas that are r50 for the people with only one class capped, but there should also be areas that are made that are so difficult that even fully equipped parties with multiple r50's struggle to defeat.

it's no different than the crafting changes. we have people that actually really enjoy the system, but it is getting dropped to a lower quality because people don't want to put the effort into it. i feel that same type of thing is happening in the dungeons now. everything is being catered to the people that put in the very minimum effort into each class which removes the difficulty of the people that have put in more work.

before i make this statement i want everyone to realize i mean casuals as people that want to only put in minimal effort into one class not casual as in restricted by time. to me hardcores i am not talking about the rude elitest people, but the people that try to make their character the best that they can be.

if you make content suit the casuals taste you make the hardcore players upset. if you make all the content for the hardcore players you upset the casual base. if you try to please them both with the same event you upset both.

I think the dungeon was designed and QA'd with the old MP costs and AoE cure in mind. That's really the only way they could justify the heavy toll of melee sponging AoE damage for large portions of the fight. With speed/efficiency in mind, there's no way they could intend for a number of melee DD to sit out parts of the fight for fear of taking AoE/ghost damage, or expect melee to avoid taking the damage in the first place.

As for the part about Matsui being worried about releasing content before Jobs, I think its actually the opposite of what you were thinking about making the encounter harder by taking away Armoury flexibility. I think he knew that the dungeon would be very difficult for players who did not have multiple classes leveled or were limited in main class role flexibility. Perhaps Jobs would've made certain parts of the dungeon easier by basically negating or trivializing the more difficult portions of the dungeon.

For example:

• Batraal Laser Show spam ----> PLD pops Invincible (magic invul. too) for 30s
• Melee all at 20% Health on Batraal or Ogre and no MP ----> WHM pops Benediction
• Last 20% on Batraal or Wave of Skeletons ----> BLM pops Manafont and nukes for duration.
• Last wave of Skeletons or Batraal last 50% (depending on how u handle them) -----> MNK pops Hundred Fists, Each RNG hits Eagle Eye Shot, WAR goes Mighty Strikes and everything dies in seconds (a few seconds faster than current AoE/mana burn strat I guess).

We haven't had much to do in the last 11 months other than level, so the gamble paid off I guess, as the main complaints about the dungeon's diffuculty now are from people who do not have multiple classes leveled for whatever reason(s).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Delsus

First the point of a tank is to soak damage, while keeping hate off the DDs and healers it always has been the job of a tank and always will be.

Second melee never have to back off and throw, its called stun currently we only have leg sweep and shock spikes, but any DoW can use it.

Perhaps a tank with no other classes leveled can take the damage and keep hate, but one with con r20 has access to cure 2 which allows them to self heal and neuter the hate generated to the mages, any tank worth going with knows this.

The next one implies that you dont think a tank should take any damage and should dodge all attacks to ensure melee arent hit by AOEs, when you melees should know where to stand to avoid frontal AOE or rear AOE or side AOE, and for any full AOE theres always this magical thing called stun.

Also if tanks had to dodge attacks, why not just have DDs dodge attacks and make tanks completly obsolete.

Finally if you had this in another post then you should link to it so we can see what was said, rather than having to search for it.

---

This thread is not about the ogre's AOE, it is about ghosts and the currently popular strategy employed which puts melee in ghost range for much of the fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xenor

Everything is easy once you figure out how to do it consistently. The difficulty is figuring out how to do it.

---

I disagree.

The purpose of my previous thread was to illustrate that a good encounter in a video game should be one that challenges players even after doing it a thousand times.

Learning a fight takes very little time and provides very little content if the fight itself proposes no challenge.

Batraal is a good example. It took us a few tries to learn the fight, and now we kill it regularly with no degree of difficulty.

Batraal however could have been a very challenging fight had he been reworked to provide a bit of randomness to the fight. Maybe he should have run into the eyes on a whim, that would have made it interesting. Or something, ANYTHING that would give the fight something to make a player who had done it fifty times go "oh crap"

Another one of these posts ;=; Uh ohs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chiz

I think the dungeon was designed and QA'd with the old MP costs and AoE cure in mind. That's really the only way they could justify the heavy toll of melee sponging AoE damage for large portions of the fight. With speed/efficiency in mind, there's no way they could intend for a number of melee DD to sit out parts of the fight for fear of taking AoE/ghost damage, or expect melee to avoid taking the damage in the first place.

As for the part about Matsui being worried about releasing content before Jobs, I think its actually the opposite of what you were thinking about making the encounter harder by taking away Armoury flexibility. I think he knew that the dungeon would be very difficult for players who did not have multiple classes leveled or were limited in main class role flexibility. Perhaps Jobs would've made certain parts of the dungeon easier by basically negating or trivializing the more difficult portions of the dungeon.

For example:

• Batraal Laser Show spam ----> PLD pops Invincible (magic invul. too) for 30s
• Melee all at 20% Health on Batraal or Ogre and no MP ----> WHM pops Benediction
• Last 20% on Batraal or Wave of Skeletons ----> BLM pops Manafont and nukes for duration.
• Last wave of Skeletons or Batraal last 50% (depending on how u handle them) -----> MNK pops Hundred Fists, Each RNG hits Eagle Eye Shot, WAR goes Mighty Strikes and everything dies in seconds (a few seconds faster than current AoE/mana burn strat I guess).

We haven't had much to do in the last 11 months other than level, so the gamble paid off I guess, as the main complaints about the dungeon's diffuculty now are from people who do not have multiple classes leveled for whatever reason(s).

---

First of all 2 hours? What?! Where did you hear we were getting 2 hours????

Second that is not really the opposite of what I was saying, because it was acknowledged (I'm sure) that the dungeon would be more difficult for people without all r40+ abilities, it was balanced I'm sure for them. Most likely the test groups which ran the raid did so with a GLA, PUG, LNC, MRD, ARC, CON, CON, THM setup (wasn't that in the video they leaked?). I just think it was balanced around a much more difficult strategy than the one made popular and employed by people with multiple r40+ cross class abilities (and with setups more like 3x Archers, 4x mages etc.).

What I'm saying is the balance changes had come first, I don't think we would have been as apt to negate so many important (mainly ghost related) encounter mechanics and use stacking. I can't know this for sure, but I like to think that at least this wasn't intentional/will be addressed by the battle changes.