A bit disappointed with Stone Vigil

After doing the Tam Tara HM and Hullbreaker, I had high hopes for SV. IT started well, with people wishing you "Good death"... but then it's kinda disappointing. Very short, bossess are not really memorable - had more fun doing it on normal mode, at least the last dragon boss was really fun to fight.

The cannons were more fun at normal mode too, here it's just random guys spawn, you aggro them, don't avoid anything and use cannons, or just keep aggro, if you are a tank.

I was really expecting cultist last stand, some revelations, maybe one more epic dragon battle. I guess I was expecting too much after Tam Tara final cutscenes :)

I agree, the first boss was basically an easier version of the original with some weak adds, and I did not enjoy the super gimmicky second boss at all. The last boss, on the other hand, was fantastic and I really enjoyed it. I like the fights without AoE indicators, like Coincounter/Steropes, and the way this fight used telegraphed animations instead of castbars was pretty neat. It was a unique encounter for this game without having annoying vehicle mechanics like the second one or the CM final boss. It helped to redeem the rest of the instance for me.

Unfortunately aside from the last boss the rest of it was slightly disappointing. I guess it's because Stone Vigil was hands down my favorite pre-50 dungeon and I was expecting something really spectacular to top it.

Not a bad dungeon, but not as good as SV normal.

As a tank I hated it. I was basically there to just tank the trash, and sort of tank the first boss. Second and final boss I was just a crappy DPS for. Makes me just want to quit tanking even more knowing there's dungeons where I'm essentially worthless.

I think that you gain a whole new appreciation for the last boss when you play a melee job. I thought nothing special of it the first time I went in as BLM, but actively dodging everything and figuring out his pose that signaled the tail attack was a lot funner when I went in today as MNK.

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Originally Posted by Kaonis

As a tank I hated it. I was basically there to just tank the trash, and sort of tank the first boss. Second and final boss I was just a crappy DPS for. Makes me just want to quit tanking even more knowing there's dungeons where I'm essentially worthless.

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In the age of I want it my way now. Bad Tanks, No Tanks, Tanks dropping Dungeons the design team does what it needs to do to keeps people paying. Not enough Tanks fine, we make a dungeon that does not need one.

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Originally Posted by Jarvix

In the age of I want it my way now. Bad Tanks, No Tanks, Tanks dropping Dungeons the design team does what it needs to do to keeps people paying. Not enough Tanks fine, we make a dungeon that does not need one.

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I would definitely not say that this dungeon doesn't need one. Have you stolen agro on trash pulls? Those things hit like trucks and you'll be dead before you know it. I'm honestly surprised that someone dislikes a dungeon based on the fact that the last 2 fights are not tankable because tanking bosses is usually the most boring experience of a dungeon considering most bosses leave tanks out of their mechanics. If anything, the challenge and subjective fun of 4 person dungeons for tanks lies in tanking trash, maintaining agro on all of them, and mitigating properly.

I don't think this is a statement at all by the design team, it's just them varying up fights and keeping things different.

My party didn't know what was going on with the Final Boss of Vigil. So we all died, except for our Bard, after killing one of the two twins. The bard then proceeded to run around and solo the boss (#2) from 100% because it spent 15 seconds at a time spinning around in place like a blind rodent. It was the dumbest thing I ever watched while dead (It took 10 minutes). I thought the monster just had faulty AI, but no, that's exactly how it's supposed to act. GG Square. I hope I never roulette this garbage again.

I was incredibly mad at how off-putting Stone Vigil was in terms of difficulty. The Second boss was unique, but a really boring fight as well.

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Originally Posted by ZanzhizExaverion

My party didn't know what was going on with the Final Boss of Vigil. So we all died, except for our Bard, after killing one of the two twins. The bard then proceeded to run around and solo the boss (#2) from 100% because it spent 15 seconds at a time spinning around in place like a blind rodent. It was the dumbest thing I ever watched while dead (It took 10 minutes). I thought the monster just had faulty AI, but no, that's exactly how it's supposed to act. GG Square. I hope I never roulette this garbage again.

I was incredibly mad at how off-putting Stone Vigil was in terms of difficulty. The Second boss was unique, but a really boring fight as well.

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Yeah, so difficult. Cleaves are a brand new concept.

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Originally Posted by Kaonis

As a tank I hated it. I was basically there to just tank the trash, and sort of tank the first boss. Second and final boss I was just a crappy DPS for. Makes me just want to quit tanking even more knowing there's dungeons where I'm essentially worthless.

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http://media.tumblr.com/00e55ed7dbe8...yvm1r7scov.png

As someone that usual praises the hard modes, I must admit doing Vigil I had such high hopes, got in, one shot all bosses on an under geared character with an under geared group and thought "wait is that it?"

I already did this dungeon almost 20 times and I read several different opinions in each party. Some favorable, as "I love this fight" (about last boss) or "Square should do more fights as this" (about second boss).

Stone Vigil HM may be the worst dungeon i have ever seen in my life, in any game, in any genre.

SE, please remember every single decision that went into approving this place, and make sure you never, ever do it again.

First and foremost, the dungeon layout is LITERALLY a hallway with random encounters. It's actually worse than Final Fantasy 1. Not that I'm dissing FF1 because it's a classic, but are we really going to accept game designs that are worse than games that came out 30 years ago from the same company? That's the big big thing. RPG Maker games have designed better dungeons. I've designed better dungeons MYSELF. I could pull a complete revamp out of my ass right here right now that would actually be fun to play. As it is, I will never do expert roulette again, for fear of having to go through this again.


The second boss is also absolutely terrible. Standing behind cannons for 10 minutes while nothing attacks you and you basically don't get to play your actual class is not fun by any stretch of the imagination. Did any of the devs actually play this and think "yes, this is fun"? Same problem with the final boss, tanks and healers just become worse dps because everything is dodgeable and there's no hate table. In a different game that didn't adhere so strictly to the tank/healer/dps trinity, it would work. Not in this one.

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Originally Posted by Algin

The cannons were more fun at normal mode too, here it's just random guys spawn, you aggro them, don't avoid anything and use cannons, or just keep aggro, if you are a tank.

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Nah, as a tank you also man a cannon. The only one who might need to do something else than shooting a cannon is the healer.

About the last boss: it reminds me a lot of Monster Hunter, in that regard it was fun. But since i mostly play tank nowadays, especially in dungeons, i felt pretty useless in there.

I don't think it's a bad dungeon, but i think the trash mobs (especially those dragons on 2 legs) are more dangerous than the bosses in there... And after SV normal mode i expected it to be stellar, which it isn't.


@Immut: You don't need to look at FF 1, look at FF13 if you are looking for a hallway-with-random-battle RPG.

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Originally Posted by Naryoril

@Immut: You don't need to look at FF 1, look at FF13 if you are looking for a hallway-with-random-battle RPG.

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Haven't played it, but I've heard more good things than bad about it. And the grassy area in the second half hardly looked like a hallway to me.

I agree that Stone Vigil Hard was the least impressive of the three and I agree that the disappointment was partially because the original was so good...but it's not nearly as bad as everyone is claiming. Every new set of dungeons has an easiest and this is it and we can hardly blame SE for trying new mechanics out, keeps things fresh.

Besides, as a tank, its nice to have less responsibility every now and again.

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Originally Posted by WellFooled

I agree that Stone Vigil Hard was the least impressive of the three and I agree that the disappointment was partially because the original was so good...but it's not nearly as bad as everyone is claiming. Every new set of dungeons has an easiest and this is it and we can hardly blame SE for trying new mechanics out, keeps things fresh.

Besides, as a tank, its nice to have less responsibility every now and again.

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Nothing is new, and difficulty isn't the issue. The issue is it's a long boring slog. The first boss is just the first boss from story mode. Second boss is a less interesting Livia Sas Junius that takes five times as long. Third boss is just some guy with no hate table but we've had lots of those.

Once again I want to point out that Brayflox Longstop (story mode) is far and away the best and most fun dungeon in the game. The bosses all build up mechanically to the final boss. The final boss makes an appearance at several points in the dungeon, foreshadowing the eventual encounter. There's just a ton of optional stuff to do. You get a bonus gear chest for saving all the goblins, there are two huge areas with a bunch of trash you could choose to ignore if you really want to, but you don't want to because you GET STUFF FOR IT (exp and the aforementioned chest). It is the polar opposite of a hallway dungeon, and it's the model that every other dungeon in the game should be imitating.

And as much crap as I give AK and WP, they're ALSO fairly well designed. Lots of open areas, branching paths, optional treasure. The problem is the dungeon SYSTEM is poorly designed in that speedruns are the only thing anyone wants to do once EXP is out of the way. There are a few ways to fix this. One, obviously, is to give us bonus chests for killing the monsters. Especially with the desynth system. I've already bought and broke all the coke and peacock ore on the market. To that end, please add another source of i70 weapons that is actually practical to farm. You could also start putting bonus myth in chests. You could even combine the two, and have groups of monsters you kill for a bonus chest containing myth.

The point is, once you make trash both OPTIONAL and DESIRABLE, you open the way to non-hallway designs.

There's no way to make Stone Vigil fun lol. I don't hate it but it's just boring. I had high hopes as well because I hate Haltali and Tam Tara, yet their HM versions are my favourite dungeons, so I thought it'd be the same with Stone Vigil, but alas...

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Originally Posted by Immut

Haven't played it, but I've heard more good things than bad about it. And the grassy area in the second half hardly looked like a hallway to me.

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Not "second half", chapter 11 of 13.

It's the same as saying the second boss in SV HM isn't a hallway either, you have to branch off to get there. But honestly, almost all dungeons are linear, and not just in this game. SV normal mode for example is as linear as hard mode except it has about 3 rooms with monsters you can skip (where one of them only contains a single one).

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Originally Posted by Naryoril

Not "second half", chapter 11 of 13.

It's the same as saying the second boss in SV HM isn't a hallway either, you have to branch off to get there. But honestly, almost all dungeons are linear, and not just in this game. SV normal mode for example is as linear as hard mode except it has about 3 rooms with monsters you can skip (where one of them only contains a single one).

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Yes, SVHM is actually a worse dungeon than SVSM, which is quite an accomplishment! They took out all the optional rooms, and optional trash. Now all the chests are just on the way and you have to fight every single thing in the dungeon every single time.

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Originally Posted by Gerolan

As someone that usual praises the hard modes, I must admit doing Vigil I had such high hopes, got in, one shot all bosses on an under geared character with an under geared group and thought "wait is that it?"

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Yeah, as much as I enjoyed these new dungeons, they were waay too easy for their ilv requirement. These definitely did not feel ilv 70 to me.

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Originally Posted by Immut

Yes, SVHM is actually a worse dungeon than SVSM, which is quite an accomplishment! They took out all the optional rooms, and optional trash. Now all the chests are just on the way and you have to fight every single thing in the dungeon every single time.

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Oh no, they made us fight all the trash for once. Many MMO's have had these "experimental" dungeons (remember The Oculus in WoW?). I think that SVHM was definitely the least stellar of the three new dungeons. I've realized that every dungeon that re-uses the Haukke HM music is my least fav of the 3 (Copperbell, Bray, and now SV). I still enjoy the last boss when I go in as melee, like someone above me said, it definitely reminds me of Monster Hunter. This game may also have a trinity, but it's not like healers are devoid of attacks. The devs wanted to make something different with this dungeon, and while 2nd boss was definitely too gimmicky, I liked the third a lot.

While I thought that all three were well-done, they didn't feel like iLv 70. To put things into perspective, Titan EX is a lower iLv, which goes to show how mechanics can affect a fight. I'm not saying "make every fight with as little room for error as Titan EX", but make more mechanics that will punish you if you do not adhere to them. Tamtara is a good example with the stacking Desolations. Why did they not make that a 1-shot mechanics, when it IS a 1 shot mechanic in a pre-50 dungeon? The last boss of Dzmael, the Cyclops in AV, and the Zu in Pharos are three examples where you HAVE to adhere to mechanics and not shrug them off. We need more bosses that do that.

You don't even need the tank to hold anything on the second boss fight. Just have everyone on cannons, make sure people stun the boss when he charges his aoe, and save a stun shot for the surprise aoe one he does. Fight goes by faster with everyone on cannons and stunning when needed.

seeing how was the difficulty of Stone Vigil during the story mode, I was kind of expecting a huge challenge in the HM...
It's just so...
I dunno.
Fast?
Easy?
I mean, I oneshot every boss on my first try, without strategies or someone explaining to me...
Aside from the first boss, with all that "hide behind his butt or die", It's just a huge DPS burn :/
It may probably be because in the storymode SV you have a restricted movepool, but still...
I have no words to espress my fellings, other that DISAPPONTTTTTTT.

Though it was a relatively easy dungeon, too, but I guess I'm in the minority that thought it was cool that the tank didn't have to be in shield oath/defiance in the final fight. The few tanks I ran with actually liked that, too, having to dodge with us instead of being stationary like usual.

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Originally Posted by Bushido_Brown

Though it was a relatively easy dungeon, too, but I guess I'm in the minority that thought it was cool that the tank didn't have to be in shield oath/defiance in the final fight. The few tanks I ran with actually liked that, too, having to dodge with us instead of being stationary like usual.

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Yes, it's like Lost city of Amdapor second Boss; It's nice to kill the babies on Sword Oath to 'accelerate things a bit' While the 'mama' is being downed and that you don't even have to make sure the aggro's on you cause.. the aggro's on you ;)

Stone Vigil normal was one of my favorite dungeons leveling as all three roles. Hard mode was boring. I honestly thought square would add more aevis type mobs other than the ones we got. It should have been Tam Tara caliber.

i had no idea what the last boss was doing and everyone except for the tank who had already completed it survived, besides that boss though, the dungeon was fairly uninteresting

I, for one, enjoyed Stone Vigil Hard quite a bit. :D

I thought it was quite refreshing to have bosses that don't need a tank.
Also, my group and I really enjoyed the canon fight, it's just so fun to blast everything out of the way!! xD

For the last boss, I was able to solo them all by myself (1 full and 60% of the other), it was long but so nice! It was nice to be able to just fight and no worry about aggro.
(we had two players with heavy lag issue and a new guy, so they ended up dying)

I would personally really love to more dungeons that make use of canons and other props. Also, more bosses and monsters that ignore aggro and we have to move around to avoid damage. xD

Thank devs, I truly enjoyed this dungeon too. :)

N.B.: Unlike others, I enjoy dungeons that are forgiving with insteresting mechanics. The Coils of Bahamut and extreme primals are already unforgiving enough, if the whole game turns out like that, it's a no no. So, Stone vigil Hard might not be everyone's cup of tea, but is definitely a type of dungeon we need in the game as lots of us enjoy them.

I was disappointed with all of the new Crafting Material Pinatas, I mean, dungeons.

Loved the boss and I've been tanking all my dungeon runs. heh

I didn't enjoy the first Stone Vigil, so I didn't enjoy the harder version. I didn't DISLIKE like it. I just didn't enjoy it. I can see the appeal or the vision. I just figured I'd be the only one to not enjoy SV, because of my previous opinion of the first dungeon.

Guess not!

I thought SV is lame and boring for the first days I did it but now I start to like it more and more. It is awesome to look who actually does realise that on last boss you can avoid almost every single attack due to his/their long charge for everything. And I lol'd yesterday when got paladin tank that started dungeon with text like "You know the dungeon? Good, tired of PS3/PS4 users that can't do cannons". No idea what he meant because I am PS4 user and see no problem using cannons. Anyway the master paladin got babysit by healer who had to pull trash mobs and bring to him because the guy simply couldn't notice what's going on around him and the run was completed due to the fact that healer actually was smarter tank. Was just another experience of players that use verbal abuse to turn attention away from their own lack of experience.

I enjoy just watching my teammates doing this dungeon, especially those that react fast and make the run super easy by adapting to the party actions.

Some party has 0 of communication and do the second boss be hard. Now I entered a party in progress where tank and healer rage quit there, lacking 30 minutes to finish dungeon. I talked for both dps alternate stun in boss and was easy to finish.

As a tank I actually LOVED SV. I didn't mind the easiness of it. And the second fight was interesting to do something other than tank mobs or the boss. The best part in my opinion was the final boss. It was the first boss that you could get away with out having to need a healer. On our first run, our healer and one dps died in 30 seconds. After that, myself (I90 Pal) and another dps, managed to beat both bosses without incident. It is all about changing the way you approach the game: from an rpg, to an action game. And I welcomed that change :).

I am a tank also on the PS system (was on 3 and now on 4). I think some people don't know whats going on with cannons because they aren't paying attention. But besides that I agree, I see no problem with it. Plus I found there is no tanking agro for the mobs in the second fight. I had full agro on several and they never even looked twice at me. So we all four went on cannons and blasted them before they were a threat. I never left the cannon seat as the tank.

Is there some strat to first boss? Used the roulette today and drew SVHM (would rather hull breaker) this only being my third run on it...first two we crushed the boss and it was over before it even starts. Today however the tank is running around killing adds and starts bitching me out. Thx for the help killing the adds hes says then they voted me out....what am I missing?

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Originally Posted by Serwrathim

Is there some strat to first boss? Used the roulette today and drew SVHM (would rather hull breaker) this only being my third run on it...first two we crushed the boss and it was over before it even starts. Today however the tank is running around killing adds and starts bitching me out. Thx for the help killing the adds hes says then they voted me out....what am I missing?

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adds do an aoe when they die thats harmless to players but buffs the boss if its caught in it. in groups that know what theyre doing id generally (as a healer) move away from the tank when they spawn, and then facetank them while dps burn them down. thats p much it.

The only real problems with Stone Vigil Hard are the second boss (which has an awesome introduction but then it's just a lame vehicle fight) and that there's not four of the last boss rather than two. Vehicle fights are really just always a bad idea.