The Dragon's Neck Too Easy Now

I got The Dragon's Neck for my Trial Roulette today for the first time in a long while, and I noticed that the difficulty of the trial had been reduced to the point where one mechanic is now completely optional. I know people in the past were complaining that it was too hard, but the fault lied with the players not being able to follow mechanics properly, not in the mechanics themselves.

The distance Typhon knocks everyone back if you don't interrupt his Severe Snort has been reduced to the point where if you stand in the middle of the platform you don't get knocked off, making actually doing the mechanic pointless since it doesn't punish the group for not working together.

I was able to clear that run on my first attempt, despite myself and others being knocked off multiple times! (it was my first time tanking Typhon and I didn't know he did a knockback without warning) This may sound selfish, but I actually preferred it when Typhon's knockback was a guaranteed wipe if you didn't do the mechanic properly, so I'd like to suggest that the difficulty of the dungeon be restored to how it used to be.

I get that people just want to do it as fast as possible so they can continue on with the Hildibrand storyline, but that doesn't excuse them from having to follow mechanics like everyone else. I know it sucks when you keep wiping because one player keeps messing up, despite repeated attempts to teach them how to do things properly, but the content should not be dumbed down to cater to them because they're incapable of learning.

tl;dr: Please revert the knockback strength of Typhon's Severe Snort mechanic in The Dragon's Neck to how powerful it used to be.

It's a fun and unique battle but the problem with the original difficulty is the fight giving very little clues to what you're supposed to be doing. So you have to explain it to new people, but some people just aren't good at explaining mechanics, and some people aren't good at understanding and visualising things they are told. The penalty of wiping the group if just one person struggled to understand was too harsh. We had people never gain an understanding even with practice and wipe the group several times until the party disbanded.

then they could reduce the amount of stacks needed to interrupt the snooze? it was 8 stacks, right? so everyone has to gather 2. i think it was possible to get 3 stacks, wich means 3 people were enough to interrupt it, but only when they were getting enough stacks. getting more than 2 was not that easy....

i think when they change it back to a wipe if you fail to interrupt the snooze, but reduce the amount of stacks needed to interrupt it to 5, we would have a good compromise.

what they did with the nerf of the knockback is making the whole part with the whirlwind and stacks and metamorphosis of the DDs useless. it feels like a timewaste. just waiting until the part is over and you can attack again...

Exactly my point, and a good suggestion to fix the problem.

I welcome the change, only so that I don't keep getting people that wipe over and over again while I try to get that Terra card.

The nerf was done back when HW was released with all the other nerfs to the ARR dungeons...
I would like they wouldn't make mechanics useless instead they can just soften them with less stacks to gain, extended enrage timers, less power per stack or more stacks needed for instantkills...

I'm okay with the nerf. It just means 1 person who knows about the nerf can carry the run. It lets the new people enjoy the fight without fear of failing.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

It lets the new people enjoy the fight without fear of failing.

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While I'm fine with the nerf to this particular instance (it's only hildebrand), this is a dangerous mentality to have, that helps dumb down all aspects of the game.

I was saddened by this nerf as well. As it has been stated it essentially makes the entire imp phase a waste of time.
I think that cutting the number of required stacks down to 5 as suggested by Tint would have been a better change.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

While I'm fine with the nerf to this particular instance (it's only hildebrand), this is a dangerous mentality to have, that helps dumb down all aspects of the game.

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Its an old fight, thats required to unlock the trial roullette, and has a mechanic that doesn't show up ever again. I'm fine with it as it is. As it stands currently, why are we trying to make something more difficult? You all act like its game changing.

Trial roulette no longer requires completing all the trials to unlock it.
You just need 2 Trials unlocked and to be i90.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

Its an old fight, thats required to unlock the trial roullette, and has a mechanic that doesn't show up ever again. I'm fine with it as it is. As it stands currently, why are we trying to make something more difficult? You all act like its game changing.

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Oh, my warning wasn't about the dragons neck at all, I said I am fine with the nerf for the exact reasons that you described. My warning was to do with approving the fact of creating an environment where people don't have to fear failure. This happened with pre-50 story dungeons and it sets a precedent that people don't have to fear failure in any core content in the game, which is a saddening trend ("I wiped on Nidhogg NM, it's too hard and needs a nerf" etc.).

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

Its an old fight, thats required to unlock the trial roullette, and has a mechanic that doesn't show up ever again.

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Every duty has a mechanic that doesn't show up ever again. Sastasha has bubbling grates, The Steps of Faith has Dragon Killers (different from Bismarck's), Aurum Vale has Malboro Fruit, Neverreap has tornados, I could go on.
My point was, why have a mechanic designed to wipe the party if it doesn't wipe the party?

As much as I enjoyed this fight pre-nerf, I think it's been mentioned before that another issue (that could've been solved with ilvl sync or extending the imp debuff timer instead of nerf) that caused issues was awkward phase transitions caused by overgeared dps. More than occasionally you'd run into the issue of Ultros turning the dps into imps early (or Typhon charging up the snort late, one or the other) and the imp status falling off before Wet Plate stacks could even be used on Typhon. Battle in the Big Keep used to run into a similar issue with all party members becoming chickens at times, leaving tanks and healers helpless unless healers were well on top of things.

So I'm not entirely sure that difficulty of the fight alone was the reasoning behind the nerf, although I do agree the nerf shouldn't have been done.

Oh, so that's what happened. I feel silly for trying to explain the old way the other day...

It's a pity they nerfed it to the ground, because now it's kind of "empty", but at the same time, as it's been said, the mechanic didn't make much sense in the first place. It wasn't specific to this fight though : part of the "difficulty" in FFXIV comes from nonsensical and inconsistent mechanics (for example, in one of the latest interviews, they recognized the inconsistent use of icons and how they started to unify them, like the "share damage aoe" icon)

They need to update some older fights to keep them from becoming totally uninteresting, or ridiculous. The Praetorium is a farce.