Raiding

Actually joined at the beginning of the year but have had a few months hiatus after finishing the main quest of HW and waiting on SB; but thought this would be the best place to ask a noobish question.

When raiding is concerned I always think of WoW styled raids; how does the raiding in this game compare on a difficultly level? I remember trying the normal (story?) mode for some wings of Alexander and finding it pretty easy-going. Is this basically your raid-finder difficulty?

Also I know its possible to solo old dungeons; is it yet possible to solo the oldest raids or isn't that even an option?

Sorry for stupid questions. ._.

I'm not sure about difficulty, but I'm aware that the structure is very different. Raids in XIV are simply glorified trial instances. Deltascape in particular seems to have been tuned fairly easy by the games own standards, though savage is far more challenging than normal mode and requires group co-ordination and a good understanding of the game mechanics.

As for soloing raids, coil is definately soloable these days but I'm not sure if Alexander is.

I never played wow, so i cant compare difficulty cross games. But from my experience here the 3 types of raids translate roughly into difficulty tiers. Normal(story) mode 8 man is the easiest. The instances are short, and the insta-kill mechanics are limited. Alliance raids(24 man) are the medium level. These have the longest instances and some have more then a few ways to 1-shot you, but with 23 other people there you have room for several people to make mistakes without wasting the effort. These also have an extra level of progression because once you kill a boss and move on to the next you dont have to worry about that first boss until you leave and re-enter(whereas failing a fight in one of the others basically means starting over). Then the hardest raids are the Savage tier. Many ways to die, more things to learn and look out for, harder hitting mechanics, and the entire group might fail because of one or two people screwing up.

And yes, you can undersize the old 8 man raids(not the 24 though). Some of them can be cleared solo, some cant because mechanics require more then one body(for instance, keeping 3 enemies from getting close to each other or you wipe is a mechanic that really isnt solo friendly), and others that you theoretically could still hit too hard for one person to manage. Nothing stops you from trying though.

Thank you both for the information. :) One more question however; when soloing things like trials that can drop mounts, is it possible to obtain the mount or can it only be obtained while in a group?

Hi. Former (kind of current actually), WoW player here.
"Normal" or "Story" mode are in fact this games version of "LFR", along with the 24-man casual raids. Though generally they ask a bit more of the populace than WoW LFR does, there are lots of instant-death or near instant-death mechs you can't just doze through.

The "Extreme" versions of primals are above that and somewhere between a Normal & Heroic difficulty in WoW terms. The current batch of level 70 extreme primals are closer to "Normal" difficulty in WoW terms, albeit one of the later bosses. I suspect the later ones will be tougher as patches release.


The "Savage" versions of 8-man raids (Alexander @ 60 and now Omega @ 70) are the high-end version of raids, and generally fall somewhere between high-heroic and mid-mythic on the WoW difficulty scale.

That said in some sense WoW & FF14 raiding are unlike. With FF14 fights more often being of the scripted dance type than in WoW, and the smaller team size making individual performance a bit more pronounced.

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Originally Posted by HappyHaunt

Thank you both for the information. :) One more question however; when soloing things like trials that can drop mounts, is it possible to obtain the mount or can it only be obtained while in a group?

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You can get mounts solo/unsynced. Unless it's been changed, I believe the only item drops that depend on doing it while level synced in a party are the music pieces, which have a higher drop rate when done under "intended" conditions.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

Unless it's been changed, I believe the only item drops that depend on doing it while level synced in a party are the music pieces, which have a higher drop rate when done under "intended" conditions.

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The only important item drops, maybe. Whether stuff can drop at all in an unsynced run comes down to whether it drops directly from killing a mob, or whether it comes from a treasure chest. Mob drops don't happen if you're unsynced, but chest drops do. Most of the big stuff that players actually care about (including mounts) comes in chests, so that's all available either way. But there's some rare-ish crafting mats that may be desirable to some which come from direct mob drops. You're giving up on those when you go unsynced.

There are also some orchestrion rolls that have a 100% drop rate if you run at minimum iLevel, though I don't think just being level synced (without that minimum ilvl setting) does anything to them.

Again, though, this is unless something has changed recently. The latest info I've heard about this is a bit old at this point.

Raiding in ffxiv is kind of like doing synchronized swimming in a circular pool, rather than a rectangular one, while having to recite the sequence of pi to the 300th digit all while dodging the salt hurled at you by your static members.

Again, thank you for all the information, much obliged all. :)