Good job on the Second Binding Coil of Bahamut

Not a troll post, I actually think SE did a good job on introducing new difficult content that is as fun as much as it is frustrating.

A lot of my FC members and friends feared that something like crystal tower would happen-- that they would make it difficult in development but then crack and make it much easier on release-- and thankfully they didn't.

I like seeing the kinds of potential there is for this game and I've been impressed so far on Turns 6-8. I know with more weathered gear and i110 drops from the earlier second coil turns that the Second Coil will essentially become easier, but I think the mechanics are actually challenging to master (at first) and it definitely feels rewarding as you beat each turn.

I just wanted to show some support for the new [subjectively] difficult content, and share my opinion that the developers should not be afraid to make future raids even harder.

I think they could focus a bit more on dongeons, becaus 2.2 ones are on par with 2.1 ones difficulty wise, while T6 seems nowhere near T1 in terms of mastering :(
Challenging content should not be exclusive to coil

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

I think they could focus a bit more on dongeons, becaus 2.2 ones are on par with 2.1 ones difficulty wise, while T6 seems nowhere near T1 in terms of mastering :(
Challenging content should not be exclusive to coil

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Didn't they try this with Pharos and people complained?

I agree! I've only seen T6 and T7, but I'm really enjoying the new mechanics. Everyone has to be paying attention and work as a group, and it feels very satisfying. :D :D

IMO, of all 4 people team, Sirius Pharos is the hardest one, by far... Each boss have a gimmick and are challenging. It's hard, yes (for its ilevel requirement and reward) but fun and every win still feel like a true win, not just a simple "farm" step.

Halatali HM, Brayflox HM and Amdapor City feels way to easy in their mechanics compared to Sirius. But they did try to put some new mechanics and that's OK for me.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Didn't they try this with Pharos and people complained?

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Yes, there were a lot of complaints regarding Pharos.
I think a lot of the complaints stemmed from the iLvl requirements being too low for the difficulty of the dungeon and Pharos being grouped with much easier content in the Duty Roulette.

I personally would be all for more challenging dungeons as long as their iLvl requirements were of appropriate level and they were grouped with content of similar difficulty in the Roulette.

Coil is great, challenging fight, good drops. 1 thing that make me feel bad about coil is the entry system. I understand SE want to lock ppl out so they keep ppl on subscription to play this game, but wouldn't the old CT system work better? where you can get maximum 1 drop per week, but can enter as many times as you wish, so people can help each other out, or enjoy the fight more then once a week >.>. To me, the lockout just causes troubles in FC with 1 group that can clear it, and another that can't

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

I think they could focus a bit more on dongeons, becaus 2.2 ones are on par with 2.1 ones difficulty wise.

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I like the 2.2 4 man dungeons, they weren't made difficult because they are farming dungeons used to gets tomes. If they were made difficult then they wouldn't serve the purpose of a farming dungeon, where people can do repeatedly over and over with any random team.


Even though they aren't hard, I still like the little gimmicks, scenery and music in them and have no problem doing them over and over for tomes.

My fc was really busy grinding out the other new content, atma, levi-ex, hildibrand, crafting, etc but our static finally stepped into t6 last night. It's a super fun fight. We were about 40% was our best but for only 2-3 hours I think we can get it this weekend, can't wait to see 7-9

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Didn't they try this with Pharos and people complained?

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Because people (not all) are idiots who can't do anything else than tank and spank mostly. PS is easy, really, even at minimum iL (most challenging thing at that iL being killing Siren before the healer is OOM). I even found Amdapor ruins more difficult because you have little time to mark the doors if you have bad memory, and in DF it can become hectic.

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Originally Posted by Dreey

I like the 2.2 4 man dungeons, they weren't made difficult because they are farming dungeons used to gets tomes. If they were made difficult then they wouldn't serve the purpose of a farming dungeon, where people can do repeatedly over and over with any random team.


Even though they aren't hard, I still like the little gimmicks, scenery and music in them and have no problem doing them over and over for tomes.

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The mechanics are really good and fun to discover, but really, we can't even talk about farming dungeons here. Brayflox is the new wandering palace, the place you can clear in 15 minutes while doing something else and just watching for AoEs... I have yet to wipe on it (except my very first run, the time to discover that the bombs had a very large radius).

Having farm dungeons is fine, but why can't we have one difficult dungeon each patch. A dungeon which would require more than 40 mins to clear on a first run...

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Originally Posted by Kret

My fc was really busy grinding out the other new content, atma, levi-ex, hildibrand, crafting, etc but our static finally stepped into t6 last night. It's a super fun fight. We were about 40% was our best but for only 2-3 hours I think we can get it this weekend, can't wait to see 7-9

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Yeah, just stepped into T6 for the first time last night myself. It's pretty hectic keeping up with everything. It requires a lot of individual awareness. Made it to the beginning of the 3rd phase a couple times but the more time we put into it people started getting less focused and it got more sloppy.

We know how to handle Phases 1 and 2 fairly well, just need to clean things up and progress.

I'd like to pop in and say I agree with the OP.

T6 is a really fun, although it could be a somewhat frustrating fight as well. I'm still only up to 75% of T7, but I will say that focus, concentration, and communication are even more so important in The Second Coil of Bahamut, compared to the first one. A lot of my group's wipes were largely because of tunnel vision, or lack of communication.

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Originally Posted by Sarlazzar

Coil is great, challenging fight, good drops. 1 thing that make me feel bad about coil is the entry system. I understand SE want to lock ppl out so they keep ppl on subscription to play this game, but wouldn't the old CT system work better? where you can get maximum 1 drop per week, but can enter as many times as you wish, so people can help each other out, or enjoy the fight more then once a week >.>. To me, the lockout just causes troubles in FC with 1 group that can clear it, and another that can't

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I had a discussion with a friend once about this issue. Just to counter argue, I don't think it will help with the longevity of Coil.

Coil has always been about its RNG drops and lock outs. If everyone was allowed to run it multiple times for a guaranteed piece of gear every week, everyone would have their main class geared out in 12 - 13 weeks. The first Coil lasted for 6 months before the introduction of 2.2, so having such a system invalidates Coil for the 3 months after people have geared their main classes, outside of people who actually want to run it because they find it fun. I'd argue the reason why they don't want to allow Coil to be ran multiple times, is to keep the challenge fresh. My group just downed T6 for the second time last night, and it was still as challenging and tough as it was on the first clear - I'll assume that on the next reset, it will still be messy and challenging, even if we do kill it in the end.

If we consider that everyone were able to get a piece of loot every week, and you had 8 members, that's up to 32 guaranteed pieces of loot every week. In the current system, you will only get 8 a week, and there will be some redundant pieces of gear nobody will be able to use (I'm looking at you melee DPS gear - just had a 2nd Monk headset drop last night in T6, despite us only having one Monk and he already has it).

Ultimately I don't think SE wants people to gear too fast. The only reason CT worked like it does is because it drops i80 gear when it was introduced, in order to ease people into attempting the first Coil, which drops i90. While they didn't want people gearing up in a week, so they had to implement a lockout on CT gear as such.

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Originally Posted by Orophin

Yeah, just stepped into T6 for the first time last night myself. It's pretty hectic keeping up with everything. It requires a lot of individual awareness. Made it to the beginning of the 3rd phase a couple times but the more time we put into it people started getting less focused and it got more sloppy.

We know how to handle Phases 1 and 2 fairly well, just need to clean things up and progress.

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If anything, I'd like to advice your group to pace yourself, and take it one step at a time. My group was trying to force progression at one point, and instead of actually performing better, we'd all end up playing worse and getting frustrated at each other. I'm not making that same mistake again, so if I see signs of people struggling to perform, I'm quite ready to call it quits for the day, and come back again the next day with a clear and fresh mind.

I also appreciate what SE has done with Coil 6+ as well as the iLvl availability. I like that the new Coils rely more on skill than on pure gear checks. Even with full 110 you can easily fck up Rafflesia and Melusine if you don't handle mechanics right.

I agree, I've enjoyed the first two fights so far from what I've seen. They're challenging and quite punishing but the mechanics themselves are pretty fun.

One thing that amuses me is the idea of the same people used to farming T2 enrage every week for the past few months trying to complete anything in the Second Coil. Somehow I don't think it's gonna go over too well.

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Originally Posted by Ninix

I agree, I've enjoyed the first two fights so far from what I've seen. They're challenging and quite punishing but the mechanics themselves are pretty fun.

One thing that amuses me is the idea of the same people used to farming T2 enrage every week for the past few months trying to complete anything in the Second Coil. Somehow I don't think it's gonna go over too well.

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Such ppl will still struggle with T4 and T5 even with echo buff. Bad players stay bad players if they don't learn regardless how much buff they get.

2nd coil is all about situational awareness nothing more

i find t6 to be boring boring fight. im not sure how you guys find it fun :/. its like they took the most boring concept of t5 (conflag/fireball) and made it into a whole new turn (turn6). nothing interesting happens till the last phase (other than blight). which by now people just skip the mechanics and burn through it.

t7 will start as fun. but till you get the coordination going in the team. its pretty much 1mistake = wipe. and it becomes something like Titan EX. very unforgiving. very frustrating. a single team member mistake could cause a raid wipe.

however, its still better than t6 borefist

At this point, looking back on the new coil turns (at least 6 through 8) my feelings are mixed. T7 feels like the only well designed encounter between 6-8, especially when you look at longevity (this crap has to last us 6 months).


Turn6, even in all i90 we were able to ignore any mechanic past 40% and just burn the boss down. I still don't even know how those mechanics are supposed to work between the slimes and the slugs. This turn will be even more of a complete joke once people are geared up even more. It already is on loot piñata status. The sub 40% mechanics should have been more pronounced for i90 so that ignoring the mechanics and just burning the boss should not have been viable.

Turn7, I like it. Too much dps and you push phases in weird directions or cause chaos by having too many things going on at once. It becomes wise to manage the timing of mechanics (with more and more dps will require constant group tuning of when to push). That combined with a large section of mistakes being autowipes gives this turn fun-longevity in my opinion.

Turn8 currently is the worst designed turn in my opinion. Allagan field and timing towers is a good mechanic, but there are three major problems with this turn that make this turn already easier than t7 for progression groups (and should be in the top10 of a "Do not do" list in raid design).
It is a veritable striking dummy (so if you have the means to do so, going 3 monks and a bard is ideal). Combined with the fact that in essentially i90 gear if you push dps enough you can skip tower phases, god knows what will happen when you are fully geared.
At the top of the list of poor design choices, though, is brainjack. It is trivial to bypass the mechanic by just placing a person near the center of the boss. It should have been designed to obligate a tank swap: It is embarrassing that this turn can be single tanked, let alone have the ability to never need to tank swap if you do bring in 2 tanks.
Ballistic missile is also too easily countered. Stacking trivialized any of the challenge involved and it devolves into a very simple algorithm to solve it. Simply altering the mechanics so that if the yellow markers overlap causes instant death would make ballistic missile a lot more fun by requiring more than 3 people to be accountable for passing the mechanic check.

I sorta agree with turn 8 but want to add a few things.

I think it was intended to be either 1 or 2 tanked from launch, I don't think it was a mistake SE would know that the DPS check would be insane with 2.1 level gear. The tradeoff is that mechanics become more difficult to execute and the DPS have to do some things they wouldn't normally do. The thing that will trivialize it is not 5 dps but when it is easily done with 4 DPS, as mechanically it's an incredibly flat fight with proper composition. Having a tradeoff for uncommon compositions is fine, people were doing it with Twintania and it is still a well designed fight.

I think it is intended to be a job check fight and this game did really need one. Regardless of your composition DPS need to know their job to do it, and not do garbage DPS and I hope this filters out a lot of the DPS out there that don't take their role seriously enough. I see DPS with full i90 do barely half of their output potential in turn 1, they really need this to slap them across the face for that sort of performance. I don't particularly enjoy the fight, t7 is still my favourite and t9 so far is fun too.

Also boss mechanics being undermined is something that always happens with gear, it's why the early progression is so fun because you are doing the fight with what it is tuned to. I think it shouldn't be a concern that people will gear stomp this down the road, what matters is what's possible with launch-level gear. My only complaint therefore is phase 3 of turn 6, because it is possible to ignore mechanics even with i90 and I think they clearly dropped the ball in tuning that phase.

I freaking hate Rafflesia, some time the chain will just REFUSE TO BREAK even when 2 people run in opposite direction fort a few seconds.

I think mechanics are okay, but server responsiveness and some random stupid elements we could do without. Why does it seem that everything is based on HP % triggers? Parsers and such are not legal, but you have to make sure not to go over certain percentages or you're going into the next phase. Then if you go into the next phase and haven't completed some mechanics from the phase prior, it can mess up the timing of pretty much everything and screw the run. People can know the fight back and forth and stupid randomly generated things can still kill the run. Why should players be punished for good dps? Why should players be punished because status timers are not equivalent to what is actually happening on the field? There are a lot of little factors that I believe can make the turns a lot more stable without destroying difficulty. It's almost like a certain percentage of luck is required to win some of the fights, instead of just pure skill. =/

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Originally Posted by Eldaena

I think mechanics are okay, but server responsiveness and some random stupid elements we could do without. Why does it seem that everything is based on HP % triggers? Parsers and such are not legal, but you have to make sure not to go over certain percentages or you're going into the next phase. Then if you go into the next phase and haven't completed some mechanics from the phase prior, it can mess up the timing of pretty much everything and screw the run. Why should players be punished for good dps? Why should players be punished because status timers are not equivalent to what is actually happening on the field? It's almost like a certain percentage of luck is required to win some of the fights, instead of just pure skill. =/

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While it seems like you may get punished for too much DPS, I think it is a factor of skill to "control" your group's damage output at certain points, rather than just go all out the entire time.

As far as the hp% of a boss and timers for mechanics-- recording videos is allowed and if anything you can take a snapshot of the boss's hp bar when a phase changes and just have the group remember what it looks like. You could also make macros for timers (a member of my group has done so since dive bombs in turn 5).

Nothing in Turns 6-8 and as far as my group has seen from Turn 9 is completely random. Sure, targets chosen for certain skills and the location of some mechanics can be random, but the way to handle those things remains the same regardless.

There is no luck required to beat any of the turns (as far as I can tell).

We're making it to about 25% on turn 8 and the fight is awesome, especially as a healer. It's probably my favorite encounter in the game so far. The mechanics are very cool and it's challenging without being as quite as punishing as turn 7 was. And hell, even though Melucine seems to be frustrating the crap out of a lot of groups I still think it's a really well designed fight and a lot of fun too.

All in all I'm really happy with the job the encounter design team has done with the first three turns and I'm looking forward to seeing what turn 9 is like. I just wish the raids had a few more bosses!

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

I think it is intended to be a job check fight and this game did really need one.

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I think so too. The mechanics are not super difficult to pull off but DPS, healers, and tanks (or the tank, I guess) all need to be very good at their job to succeed in this fight. Just going by my observations of the other healers I see while doing party finder EX runs and such, I think many of them are going to struggle to manage their MP properly on this fight when they can't rely on the bard to constantly be playing Ballad.

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Originally Posted by Xellos2099

I freaking hate Rafflesia, some time the chain will just REFUSE TO BREAK even when 2 people run in opposite direction fort a few seconds.

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depending on when the chains occur, if the two people chained begin very far apart, you can't break them. for example, you have to always break a 10 yalm chain, no matter what. if you and the other person are 10 yams from each other when the chains pop up, then you will have to go 20 yalms to break them. thats why everyone needs to stack. sometimes the OT will get a chain when he's moving from the boss when the new tank provokes, causing extra distance to run.

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Originally Posted by Aura_Shurifon

IMO, of all 4 people team, Sirius Pharos is the hardest one, by far... Each boss have a gimmick and are challenging. It's hard, yes (for its ilevel requirement and reward) but fun and every win still feel like a true win, not just a simple "farm" step.

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Think the only real difficulty in Pharos Sirius was that it was not a dps race (minus second last boss) unlike every other dungeon. It was more about endurance. Players are so used to "burn this asap in overgeared parties and winwinwin".

But I agree, it really felt like a win when you got it down. It didn't bother me that the rewards were crap, the fun was what mattered to me. Now that I do Pharos, I just feel "meh". It's not challenging or engaging anymore. :/

I think they need to add more of mid-difficult content.
For now, dungeon is too easy, while second coil is little bit too hard. There is no content that stay around the middle of both. Old coil has not rly much point to do tho.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Didn't they try this with Pharos and people complained?

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Actually the problem there was that haukke hm ( one example of the many faceroll dungeons ) was as rewarding as pharos, so people didn't bother with pharos.

"But difficulty vs reward shouldn't be an issue in this argument? The person wants challenge, not tomes!" Well that's just human nature.. Pharos Sirius is still the hardest dungeon in the game, and still isn't as rewarding as much easier, more rewarding new HMs.

TL DR: People didn't bother learning pharos, because they could get a similar reward doing something much simpler. I honestly don't think people found it too hard, they just wasn't bothered due to lack of reward.

There seem to be quite a bit of one shot mechanics that would be challenging for even an epic geared group of newbies weeks down the line. T7 anyone? While having the fights also doable at i90 gear. And them being rather fun. I would indeed say its a great new coil! I hope it keeps us occupied throughout the inevitably boring trolly sickening new CT.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

TL DR: People didn't bother learning pharos, because they could get a similar reward doing something much simpler. I honestly don't think people found it too hard, they just wasn't bothered due to lack of reward.

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The reward is the roulette bonus... People queued for roulette, got PS, they know they or others cant handle it due to previous experience (who doesnt want to try out a new dungeon at release?) and they just instaleft. Not because the chest on siren didnt have darklight in it, but because people couldnt kill siren.