Just a word of advice for new people on difficulty, it gets harder

I am pretty new myself, a little more than a month in. I always thought to myself this game is way to easy while leveling. I started to worry if I would ever enjoy it because of the difficulty level. Let me tell you lol, this game will kick you in the ass at 50+. The reason why I say 50+ because I think the real difficulty hit at I60 when I finally got a shot at geruda extreme (this is my only extreme I have tried yet) and ultima (not the story ultima). Your whole entire party has to be precise in movement throughout the whole entire fight and Ultima almost feels like BS becasue how much crap you have to look out for and when your a DPS/Tank your whole screen is engulfed by Ultima. Also, if your unsure what I60 means, when you hit 50 a lot of dungeons will be locked and you can only unlock them through your gear level which is your Ilvl. This game finally opens up at 50.

Just another tip guys about these fights, if you have lag try and solve your latency issues before you join in these fights. You will either get angry because you're dying a lot or your going to hear a lot of crap from people especially if your a tank or whm. You will actually hinder the fight if your a whm or tank and have really bad lag. The fights will consist of dodging massive AOEs and standing in specific the size of your character spots to not get hit.

^

Most of the EX primals are a moderate challenge for seasoned adventurers. They are not simply tank&spanks. The Coils offer the most challenging battles, with the most interesting mechanics. Patience. It's all doable, just not without training and gear.

Back near the time that the game came out, Yoshi-P even said that the leveling experience was designed to essentially be a tutorial into the actual game. This thing doesn't even really start until you hit 50.

Its true no more just standing in place killing something lots of moving. Titan extreme can still be challenging.

people still wipe at T5 with ilvl 115+ SMH

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Originally Posted by baopee

people still wipe at T5 with ilvl 115+ SMH

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Yes. But this mid-high level content (Titan EX, Turn 5 (Coil)) is nigh unclearable to some folks because of their connection, not because of their lack of skill.

To be completely honest, in my personal experience.
Difficulty didn't rise, simply the annoyance factor of mechanics did..


Instead of throwing 1 shinies at you, it throws 3. It's a cheap way to give a sense of difficulty.. Ends up feeling more like I'm playing a scrolling shooter game than an MMO tbh.. Also, memorization will make everything immensely trivial.
So,
first clear = challenging
second clear = faceroll

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Originally Posted by radioactive_lego

Yes. But this mid-high level content (Titan EX, Turn 5 (Coil)) is nigh unclearable to some folks because of their connection, not because of their lack of skill.

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Turn 5 isn't really a latency check. Extreme lagginess (the studder/rubberbanding kind) might kill you but you have far more time to respond to stuff than titan EX.

...the real difficulty is people that simply don't know mechanics or don't pay attention to marks over their head/the cast bar. When people do pay attention it's easy even playing on a distant server.

titan ex is more unforgiving with response times, but as another poster said, that can be worked around with memorization. All of his moves occur in a set order that never varies.

I hear people say memorization but it's easier to memorize when ur watching a vid. Playing it feels daughting with every thing going on. Maybe I say that b/c I'm me lee dps. So I did Titan ex with 10 different groups today with over 20 tries and haven't cleared it. :( one mistake and ur dead. Once you break his heart that's when Titan goes crazy! Great music though

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Originally Posted by GenJoe

To be completely honest, in my personal experience.
Difficulty didn't rise, simply the annoyance factor of mechanics did..


Instead of throwing 1 shinies at you, it throws 3. It's a cheap way to give a sense of difficulty.. Ends up feeling more like I'm playing a scrolling shooter game than an MMO tbh.. Also, memorization will make everything immensely trivial.
So,
first clear = challenging
second clear = faceroll

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This is with most MMO and that's how that make the fight bosses difficult. When I played WoW back in 05 or 06 my guild did the second raid dungeon and all I did on the first fight was have dragonlings chase me around and same with FXI there where was a lvl 20 party where all I did was have one of the bosses cahse me around. That's really the only make these fights harder or they will be called tank and spanks.

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Originally Posted by AzraelX

I hear people say memorization but it's easier to memorize when ur watching a vid. Playing it feels daughting with every thing going on. Maybe I say that b/c I'm me lee dps. So I did Titan ex with 10 different groups today with over 20 tries and haven't cleared it. :( one mistake and ur dead. Once you break his heart that's when Titan goes crazy! Great music though

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It is down to memorization. even if you don't consciously do it, eventually you begin to pick up on patterns. For Titan EX, for instance, eventually you get into a habit of "That was Tumults(stomps) that just finished, so I should be ready to dodge out because Weight of the Land is coming in a moment". Once you 'learn' the fights, they feel very natural, and even in more randomized fights (eg Thornmarch EX), you get a physical sense of "I should be expecting a mechanic right now"

The real challenge of DPS is getting used to doing your rotation and activating your skills without having to focus so hard on them that you miss out on what's going on around you.

That said, for a lot of players, Titan EX is generally considered either the hardest or second hardest primal, because screwups often remove you from the fight entirely or otherwise instant kill you, and if too many of you are out, then you're done. The other hardest is generally Ramuh EX, where your screwup may not kill you, but it can often kill others as a result.

There is definitely difficulty that isn't in the form of dodging. I can say that most of Second Coil and Final Coil (ilvl + echo + nerfs make First Coil a joke, ok maybe not T5) aren't really about dodging and are more about execution of the specific mechanics. T9 has little actual "dodging" mechanics and is more or less about how you deal with the mechanics like Elements in last phase. Or in T7 you have to pay attention to your debuffs to make sure you don't hit people with Voices or Shrieks. For Ex Primals...those are almost always dodge-fests as I call them. Ramuh is maybe the only one that isn't and just requires a lot of coordination.

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Originally Posted by baopee

people still wipe at T5 with ilvl 115+ SMH

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Gear =/= Skill, lol! Plus as someone else said latency can be an issue. I just got done having to go through a string of fixes to deal with my latency problem because over the week last week my computer decided to be anal retentive and start over heating thus nothing working right. Turns out it was a recent update for the pc itself that caused the problem. Fixed now though.

Chances are with nerfs of mechanics and echo and players still fail, the issue is them, lol
But fights are a team effort. I actually find Titan EX easy, only one with real issue is Shiva EX, and not because of mechanics and such but for me the fight is too darn bright and i have not yet found a setting i can use to remedy this, lol