Uptick in reg mode difficulty?

Maybe it's just some frustration on my part but does anyone else feel like the difficulty of the reg mode content got boosted a bit? The Burn obviously has its issues but even in Alphascape, I never remember the raids being difficult to clear with for some alt job loot in any other raid through Heavensward and Stormblood outside of some difficulty with Ozma from Weeping City.

It's absurd the number of groups I queue into where we wipe to the point of vote abandoning because the raid keeps dying to the edges/hole on A11, before even getting into issues with Starboard/Larboard. The number of vote abandons in A12 because people won't separate the stack and spread markers 7 times in a row is super high.

It's just a bit frustrating because it's really hard to carry underperformers. With the constant onslaught of mechanics and so many mechanics being pass/fails, stack ups, and DPS checks mid fight, it just feels really hard to carry new or terrible players while they get their heads caved in. Someone dies? Welp good luck on the DPS check and the stack mechanics that will now wipe everyone out.

We saw them start this with the 24 mans this expansion and now we have it in the 8 mans. So is this the new direction? Not necessarily a BAD thing but it'll be interesting to see how many actually rise to the occasion. As it stands, it's not fun feeling like reprogressing on reg mode content.

For me, aside from Mist Dragon being noticably but not seriously more difficult than an average end dungeon boss, I haven't noticed. But then I also didn't do raids in HW until 3.5 when the expansion was in its final months. So I can't really fairly compare Omega to Alex normal mode difficulties. Though I will say that the Starboard/Larboard wave cannons do seem to make O11 the hardest one to pug.

There's also a big difference in terms of when int he week you do it it seems.

I normally do the raids on Tuesday. Get my drops early and be done with the raids for the week. But the first week this patch on Sunday I was helping a friend get Omega clears, and it was rough. The groups were having trouble with the dps checks, often not clearing them until 98 or 99% of the way to us getting nuked. Granted it was a small sample size but I hear generally people say the quality of pugs is usually higher early in the raid week compared to the end, when a lot of higher end players are getting their stuff. So basically my advice is, if you can, do your weekly raid stuff on Tuesday/Wednesday rather than putting it off for the weekend.

One thing to consider is we easily become accustomed to doing content overgeared, that even if there are a few bad players it generally doesn't cause a big difference because everyone else can still carry them through it. Patch 4.4 is barely 3(?) weeks old, it's expected that players will be minimally geared for a lot of the new stuff, and we would also have players returning after a hiatus and are rusty as hell when it comes to mechs. Ok sure these don't give a full explanation on the performance of players recently, but for sure if you try this content again in a few more weeks, they will be more used to content and if not, at least more people will be overgeared to offset any weak links in the party.

There are other threads with this same sort of information. I would definitely do a bit of searching before making a new thread. My argument in those also apply here, the difficulty is great where it is especially for us people who have been subbing since 2.0. There. Always exists a ratio in this game and it's Gear vs Performance. Anytime you run in to a dungeon with a harder boss and t should be looked at as a means to rise to the occasion and form friendships and guidance for other players.

My experience is that the first few weeks are always some level of bad with new raids. When they were brand new i remember O3 and O4 giving people fits. The first few weeks of O7(and to a lesser extent O8) were rough. This tier ive seen groups struggle on 10-12(yet to see anyone have trouble with 9). But its also been getting cleaner at a fast rate. I saw a few groups in week 1 not survive long enough to see all the mechanics in some of the fights, sometimes giving up via vote abandon before they could really get the hang of it. Week two there were a couple groups that only succeeded by stubbornly refusing to quit, even though they clearly werent working well together. This week i got an O12 group with 2 new healers and 1 new DPS, and the first pull we made it halfway through the last phase before both healers accidentally died at the same time as the one DPS who could res. Someone asked for a clarification on one mechanic, quickie explanation later we pulled and the 2nd go was a success. The combination of better gear plus more fight familiarity is undefeated, and these too will seem easy in time.

There is no change. The Mist Dragon involves mechanics that aren't as easily telegraphed as "Hey, avoid these huge orange lines/circles". Any team aware of them will smash it just as easy as any other boss, and when overgearing becomes a factor it'll also be done quick enough to avoid a phase entirely.

The Alphascapes are the same deal. Neither A1 or A2 were much of a challenge blind for me as a Healer (and blind/inexperienced Healers can be far more detrimental than blind DPS) - A3 was only awkward due to blindly having to realize that his beams are the same Fore/Aft / Port/Star spiel from the old Relghar's Fist dungeon (2nd boss), except the beam cuts across 75% of the arena and hurts like hell, as well as the fact the boss will do it twice and try to confuse people by spinning before choosing left/right. I had to get through it blind with pure guess work until I realized which beam-description meant left/right, and simply positioning appropriately. The rest of the mechanics are easy to pick up with trial/error.

TLDR - It's not that they've become 'more difficult', it's the fact that people just haven't adapted to the mechanics, and said tier has arrived along with new gear. You will see that difficulty magically disappear when people learn the mechanics and up their gear. Even without said gear, the Burn has been smooth sailing due to everyone having had some time to learn what it's all about. Only my first visit incurred wipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ySbYwjH32k

Eg. I'm playing far from perfect and we had a DPS DC leaving it 3.5 v Dragon, yet at no point was there any major danger due to people (mostly) knowing what to do. It is most definitely my favourite dungeon-boss addition in quite some time... But difficult? Hell no. Same applies to the Alpha's -- and almost ANY new content where you have to tackle it blind during a new gear-tier.

I think when content is brand new, it feels harder. When you have more people rerunning content with newer players, it's feels easier since the players who ran it before already knows what to do under certain situations, even if they don't mention it. The Burn was easy except the last boss the first day it came out, and my party wiped 3 times before we understood what we had to do for each situation (ie. if someone got frozen, or the aoe markers and predicting where to stand to avoid getting hit). So I just think it's all about more people just getting used to them.

Though I do admit it does feel like there is more DPS check in all SB content other than just raids than compared to the past.

The (apparent felt) difficulty comes mostly from inexperience for the new fights. By now virtually every group smashes through Mist Dragon without too much problem. It was the same with the Lighthouse, the first weeks running that were horrible, this has gotten far better. Once you know the mechanics for O11 and O12 they are really not to hard (assuming competent healers and dps who don't stack what isn't supposed to stack ....)

Agreed here. It seemed more difficult in alphascape as compared to the previous set. I did 1 and 2 and will not complete it. I'll get my gear from tomes, crafted and alpha 1 and 2.