Best EX Ever

What was your favorite EX of all time?

Include why it rocked your world.

Mine is a tie between SHIVA EX and BYAKKO EX.

Both had fantastic mechanics, adds, mini game for Byakko and a legendary emote from Shiva.

What's yours?

Thordan,Ravana, Sophia or Sephirot.

Suzuaku was the most fun but it was too easy even for an Extreme. Thordan was the most difficult but really good to progress through.

Memoria Miseria, just something about it tickled the happy juice producing centers of my brain, ended up with over 300 totems on it helping random folks get their glams they wanted.

Barbariccia. This is how you do a fast paced fight without overloading the player's senses.

Shinryu with his new phases was pretty neat too. Hoping this shows up as an Unreal this expansion.

That's hard to say, since I like most of them. The ARR ones were good but you don't notice it now and it wasn't as flashy back then, so they are less memorable from a visual perspective.

I think Thordan was really good, because we had less mit at level 60 with a longer time between the CDs and less party heals/mit, so managing it was a particular challenge for tanks. Meanwhile the other checks were challenging for the other roles as well, since I had DPS in Heavensward that couldn't beat the check even after the tier it released in.

I think Shinryu was really good. It got attacks from all the ARR primals we'd fought and made sure we understood them. I remember trying to clear it MINE before the stat squish and it was harder than a lot of Savage floors, where every heal and every movement had to be flawless or it was a wipe, and at some point a player will make a slight mistake. Even Savage usually isn't that tight. It seemed obviously intended to be cleared at a higher item level than that. At the end, we run across the back of Shinryu to another island. I would say that happening made it feel epic like a real fight, unlike the square arena fights where a boss just sits there the whole time.

I think Rathalos is good just because it shows what SE can do if they abandon the concepts this game usually abides by. I agree about Byakko Ex and how that line of trials tried to show a different way of the game functioning, by having us fall while dodging AoE or watching musical notes. Byakko was always very easy, but I like it when they are easy enough that I can just teach it to a fresh player and actually get through it in the timer, while it also properly asks for basic mitigation and mechanic doing unlike the normal content. It's really for that reason I'm more likely to jump into a Byakko MINE party than most others, because I know they'll actually clear it.

Shadowbringers has a lot of good ones, but I like them for different reasons. Dancing Plague has mechanics that are pretty standard these days, but I thought it was well put together. Innocence I like just for the music. Hades I felt was really good, because it wasn't really hard it just looked as if it was, but it looked and felt like the fight we should have got in the normal version. To feel like we really fought an Ascian of that caliber, the Ex version was the one that made me feel satisfied.

WoL was really good. It had all the roles doing things, including tight interrupts and the mechanics were randomized so it was always different. It had some fun ideas like an LB bar and using Hallowed Ground. And of course the music was great, so it ticked a lot of boxes there.

Cloud Deck was particularly interesting to me because it had half the party on one side, and half the party on the other side. I thought this was actually a game-changing idea, because in the older FF games, it was quite normal to have half the party on one side and half the party on the other side, cornering the boss sort of, and finding a way to make it work in FFXIV was good.

As for Endwalker, I liked all of its Extremes but my favorites were really EX1 and Golbez. Everyone dismisses the first one as easy but I felt it was nevertheless fun doing it as the dorito and still stands out to me because of who it was we were fighting. The problem with putting Golbez as a "greatest extreme" is that a lot of people got walled on Double Meteor or Gales, so that would probably count against it.

For Dawntrail, it's hard to say because we have had some different things such as conga and swapping islands in EX2 and the arena swap mech in EX3, but the ones that I'm most fond of in Dawntrail are really Valigarmanda and Zalenia. Just the combination of music, aesthetic, fun mechanics that I can also teach to a fresh party.

I think when I read back through my post though, the one that clearly stands out the most is Shinryu because of the epic factor of using Passage of Arms as it fires its breath at you, and running across it to the other side. And maybe WoL as a runner up because of how it tries to make us feel like we are fighting something as threatening as another "Warrior of Light" would be. Perhaps a runner up to that would be Thordan seeing as how they originally tried to use "tank stance" and "damage stance" as mechanics.

Barbariccia. Sophia is cool too. The tipping platform is kinda unique. As a tank main, I really like Valigarmanda. Best tankbuster design ever.

My personal favorite EX was Rathalos, for the same reasons Jeeqbit has written above: it shows that SE can do engaging encounters that do not follow their formula, and it also shows what a fight can be when not limited by a timeline. Sure, the fight is not without issues, but I wish CS3 would have experimented more with these concepts.

Garuda, Sophia, Sephirot, Susano and Tsukuyomi were the ones I had more fun doing as far as I can remember. Can't really choose who I think is the best here.

Shinryu EX hands down, followed by Sophia, Tsukuyomi and Nidhogg

I really enjoy Valigarmanda.