Zurvan EX; closer to A12 Savage...

Are you kidding?

He is barely above Sophia. The only struggle is people needing to coordinate mechanics properly, which will come in time. For a fight hyped up as supposedly meant to appeal to raiders for longevity's sake, he's an absolute pushover. Seems like Normal is a better comparison after all. Granted, I didn't actually expect me to be super hard, but I did think he would be around Thordan. Yeah... he's not even close.

When did they say A12S? I remember reading "they looked into savage" which could mean A9-10.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

When did they say A12S? I remember reading "they looked into savage" which could mean A9-10.

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Trolling: That's not savage but Sephirot's tier

I was really disappointed ... when it comes to real fights this game has less to offer patch after patch.
I know that there are dungeons (which require 0 brain activity), daily quest, beast tribes, grinds for just everything ... but there are no real challenges.
I do hope they'll do something to change this trend with 4.X ...

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Are you kidding?

He is barely above Sophia. The only struggle is people needing to coordinate mechanics properly, which will come in time. For a fight hyped up as supposedly meant to appeal to raiders for longevity's sake, he's an absolute pushover. Seems like Normal is a better comparison after all. Granted, I didn't actually expect me to be super hard, but I did think he would be around Thordan. Yeah... he's not even close.

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I am wondering where all this information comes from. Not that I agree with it, but for a long time Yoshida says that the new primals will not be in the "difficulty" range of thordan & sephirot. Too many people complained about these fights. Reminded me of Titan X back in the day, which wasn't difficult but people made it very difficult lol. Anyways to me it isn't a surprise that the new primals will be pretty much a cake walk, hopefully in 4.0 that's gonna change but I doubt that.

Maybe they meant the party wiping tether positioning mechanic like Stasis/Inception2 in A12s. That's all I can think of as far as similarities, other than Cicicle/Radiant Sacrament which isn't even unique to either fights.

The actual quote appears to have been:

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Yoshida:
There are many players who have finished with Alexander: The Creator Turn 4 (Savage), so we made the difficulty a bit higher this time. You could beat Sophia if you followed someone who knew what they were doing. This time, you will need to put a bit more effort in. The other content of the patch is quite on the casual side, so…

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Source.

I can see why someone would take that as an implication that Zurvan Extreme would be designed as content for people who've beaten A12S, but he also didn't technically say that that's the level of difficulty they were going for, just that they "made the difficulty a bit higher this time."

Well if the clear rates are high enough overall, I'm sure they'll make the next fight a bit tougher.

I think we struggle with low clear rates + complaining when they try to make things a bit challenging ( and so they have to go back and nerf things.)

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Originally Posted by Cherzy

I believe there are many players now that have conquered Alexander: The Creator (Savage), so this will be a slightly more difficult battle than Sophia for players to tackle. This will be the hardest content implemented in Patch 3.5, and we’re hoping we can deliver a challenge.

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So you're saying he's exactly where intended? Damn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRZYaKcBdN0 Its already two guides out haha, I just think that no matter what that some players are just gona be to good at the game for the content and never will find any of it challenging

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Originally Posted by Ibi

The actual quote appears to have been:

Source.

I can see why someone would take that as an implication that Zurvan Extreme would be designed as content for people who've beaten A12S, but he also didn't technically say that that's the level of difficulty they were going for, just that they "made the difficulty a bit higher this time."

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Yoshi specifically mentioned Alex 12 hence why a lot of people expected at least Thordan. Regardless, it's an extremely underwhelming fight. When people ask what exactly they want for endgame content. I, personally, want fights where I'm not pushing virtually half the mechanics because the boss has so little HP. Fortunately, Dun Scaith is much better.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Are you kidding?

He is barely above Sophia.

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Good. I'd rather see farmable, accessible content than another wipefest for weeks.

Edit: @above we have WC, Sophia and everything before this patch for "I want my cake NOW" people.

OP, people have complained about "a lack of endgame" so we were given... this.

Maybe I just suck at this game, but having tried going up against Zurvan with a PUG, we were barely able to get him past like, 3/4ths of his total health. Could not co-ordinate his Ravana-esqe mechanic at all. Maybe it's better with an actually coordinated group like a Static, but without one he's plenty tough.

Getting real sick of the elitist attitude some people seem to have.

Basically it's a steamroll for groups in raiding gear (also mind you're skipping mechanics as well), but then get some people in low 250s, with relatively little raid experience, who can't follow the strat well enough (loosely stacking and all those things about positioning raiders pay more attention to) and voila, fun PF times. Skipping soars makes the fight more of a joke given it's probably the nastiest mechanic there with a few tight spots to fit in.

What *IS* bad about Zurvex, however, is that:
1) 1st phase adds nothing to the fight really, it's mostly a dummyparse unlike sephi where you can legit wipe a lot on day 1;
2) Adds phase is sophia adds, reskinned. Bit better than that, is a time to recover and all but there's absolutely nothing to learn during it unless they hit tank(-s) hard;
3) From the whole fight, only the 3rd phase matters - and you only see 'pillar' meteors a couple of times, which makes 'lucky' kills bit too easy.



In short, making phases a little bit longer and soars unskippable (make halberd/cicicle/tail/demon's claw happening more often, but skippable instead) would make it way better.
Difficulty is a bit lower than it'd be good but reasonable for a primal which is not intended to be on par with a current raiding tier (past a10, anyway). Advertising it as something for raiders to be busy with for a while was completely wrong, however.

Maybe it's the idea of gear progression that keeps them from making primals harder, but for God's love, SE, pretty please make EITHER current savage raid or primals at least somewhat challenging. I understand that people are frustrated when the raid difficulty is way above what they could reach so they do 1-2 bosses and quit raiding but that at least sets some goal for them. If there's no goal for a large part of the community, they'll discourage the rest by saying "good thing you finally killed a11s, not that it matters tho given how easy this tier is" - and people quit raiding not after hitting a brickwall but after realizing all the effort they can put in it is heavily, um, denominated. People would set some personal goals but it's a community thing, after someone gets bored and has nothing to achieve it starts spreading, and the sooner people hit the content cap the faster it spreads.
TL;DR: making easy bosses kills raiding faster than making over-the-head hard ones.

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Originally Posted by ZhaneX

Maybe I just suck at this game, but having tried going up against Zurvan with a PUG, we were barely able to get him past like, 3/4ths of his total health. Could not co-ordinate his Ravana-esqe mechanic at all. Maybe it's better with an actually coordinated group like a Static, but without one he's plenty tough.

Getting real sick of the elitist attitude some people seem to have.

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That mechanic you can actually skip if you get him down to 75%. With my group, we were getting him to 76% even before all the pads were gone, so we were skipping the dashes/circles every time.

If the fights are not as difficult as you say, could it be because you have a higher iLvl?

I'd say the difficulty level of Sophia was just right. Took my FC static about five hours of solid learning to get our first win. Considering most people don't have statics and would thus likely need significantly more time (unless they get really lucky), then this is a great learning curve for midcore content.

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Originally Posted by ZhaneX

Maybe I just suck at this game, but having tried going up against Zurvan with a PUG, we were barely able to get him past like, 3/4ths of his total health. Could not co-ordinate his Ravana-esqe mechanic at all. Maybe it's better with an actually coordinated group like a Static, but without one he's plenty tough.

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It's not, more and more people successfully pug it now.
Looks like you gotrekt by Soar. Don't worry, it's the hardest part.
Only thing I've came up with for Soar is that there're only 2 patterns we saw in all that time, dashes coming from 12 4 5 o'clock and 12 4 8 o'clock. One way to handle this (assuming standard grp comp - with 5 dps you should skip soar at 74% all the time; we consistently skipped it with 4 dps) is having healers south of 5 and 8 (makes them super safe, if both healers survive, you can recover from A LOT). On 12 4 5 have tanks at 11 and 10, dps at 9 and 1 2 3 (bit tight on that part). On 12 4 8 have dps at 1 3 9 11 and tanks at 2 and 10. Worst case tanks will get hit by dashes but survive anyway.
That's for start, in time you'll be able to have people closer to adds at ~5 and ~8, maybe even between 4 and 5, and figure out some safe spots for the rest. Make sure healers burn some instaheals right after.
Hope that helps.

Probably there'll be a better way to handle it with time.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

{SNIP} Took my FC static about five hours of solid learning to get our first win. Considering most people don't have statics and would thus likely need significantly more time (unless they get really lucky), then this is a great learning curve for midcore content.

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5 hours only if you go in blind. Otherwise it *mostly* has some basic raid mechanics like watching the boss' castbar and such.
Having static would be not so relevant if not for impossibility to pug most content. I struggle with finding a11&12 weeklies every now and then. I agree, however, that Sophia is a great midcore content and serves as a stepping stone before savage for players who start raiding.
Point is it was advertised as a primal fit for savage raiders and it's not.

Very sad, that the game become more casual and less challenging. Im disappointed. Again

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Originally Posted by Xyno

Very sad, that the game become more casual and less challenging. Im disappointed. Again

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Because its more causal players in the game and if these things cost alot of money to make and you have 500 k subscribers and only 50 k to 60 k of those players like hardcore content then if I was a business Id make stuff for that other 450 k subscribers.

Like I mention earlier I don't believe it will ever be a time when the top elite players in this game will feel satisfied with how hard the content is in the game if you are a math genisus by some chance you cant expect a teacher to make test based on your knowledge alone they have a whole class room to worry about. So the same can be said about this game, this primal will give many people a challenge Im sure , SE cant help that some people have mastered their game to the point that nothing is going to be good enough.

People killed Zurvan Ex around 1 hour after the patch went live. We got our kill very quickly after a few wipes (not even one lockout). We even skipped something at 75% and that happened with only 2 raiders in the group. This is one of the easiest bosses to clear. I'm fairly disappointed with the patch. Thought the last one was too casual already but...this one is even more.

People without having the kill are already on the solo tank strat.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

snip.

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That was really well said.

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

{SNIP}I don't believe it will ever be a time when the top elite players in this game will feel satisfied with how hard the content is in the game{SNIP}

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We're not talking top elite here. Top elite clears the raid tier on week 1 and sells runs/quits the game.
Good estimate is when 10% of server population clears the tier, people start complaining about no new content (need a new tier). If that happens half an year in right before the next patch it's a nicely tuned tier (people help friends etc so the number of clears grow even besides 'natural' prog with all 8 players getting their first kills). Look what happened now. ~10% of EU downed a12s 2 months in approx and that's when raiders got unhappy. Make like 50% of people clearing the tier - and it takes away the sense of accomplishment from the rest, elitist or not. The only measure of how hard the boss actually is is the amount of people clearing it.

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Originally Posted by oLLiCS

People killed Zurvan Ex around 1 hour after the patch went live. We got our kill very quickly after a few wipes (not even one lockout). We even skipped something at 75% and that happened with only 2 raiders in the group. This is one of the easiest bosses to clear. I'm fairly disappointed with the patch. Thought the last one was too casual already but...this one is even more.

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It seems that the 95% to 75% phase is actually one of the hardest parts of the fight. Skipping Soars makes the fight much easier.

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5 hours only if you go in blind.

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Actually, most of us had watched the videos, and a couple in the group already had clears. But battles in FFXIV are designed so that your team is only as strong as its weakest link. It took us about 3.5 hours to have a run that we finally performed without mistakes, but then we hit the enrage timer at 2 percent. Took us another 90 minutes to get in another flawless run, and this time we won. Our next goal is to win with enough consistency to farm.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

It seems that the 95% to 75% phase is actually one of the hardest parts of the fight. Skipping Soars makes the fight much easier.

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It does, and the amount of people skipping it on day 1 is alarming at best. Like I said, Soar being (relatively) easy skippable - and skippable at all - is basically a design flaw. Raiders already have it easier due to gear so it creates an artificial gap between those who can skip and those who can not. People ragequitting after no skip will be a thing really really soon.
More so, it should be not skippable cause in the 1st phase it's forgiving (recoverable) so people are supposed to learn that mechanic before it gets actually punishing by failing it, recovering and learning from mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Thayos

But battles in FFXIV are designed so that your team is only as strong as its weakest link.

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Most, not all. Sophia is an exception from that general rule. Like 10 ressurrects per fight/heal lb3 each run was a thing back then, and the fact it *allowed* that much is what's making the fight so easy. Make each fail a oneshot rather than vuln stack and it'll get much, much harder. Alas, it was not.

I haven't had time to do the fight yet so. If I already beat A12S a lot of times then it should be really easy?

How quickly people forget the blow alex savage dealt because of "difficulty"

How quickly people forget the success a9s-a12s/sophia had in general based on "difficulty".

but yes, let us consider the recovery we had a negative and return to our deathbed, because it was so glorious.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I haven't had time to do the fight yet so. If I already beat A12S a lot of times then it should be really easy?

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He will absolutely roll over. With a decent group who pay attention, I'd even say Sophia and Ravana might be harder. The only challenge with Zurvan is PF groups not doing mechanics properly. People are already doing one tank, one healer, six DPS parties.

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Originally Posted by Fluffernuff

How quickly people forget the blow alex savage dealt because of "difficulty"

How quickly people forget the success a9s-a12s/sophia had in general based on "difficulty".

but yes, let us consider the recovery we had a negative and return to our deathbed, because it was so glorious.

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And he's easier than everything else. That is my issue. He was supposedly intended to be slightly challenging because people are clearing Savage. He's an absolute joke. You can have a challenging fight and not make it Gordias. I would have been okay with Nidhogg or Sephirot levels, but both laugh at Zurvan.

He's a joke. I loved the difficulty of Thordan and Sephirot and thought they were just about right for extreme primals.

challenge is not the same as "hard".
If you seek for a challenge then you dont need hard content, you can even have a challenge against lvl 1 rats.
That said, i do not get what you aim for?

He is much easier to make a challenge out of it than A12S where you are forced to follow the script.

It took my group an hour to kill it. It's a total dissapointment considering we were planning on spending most part of the day due to what Yoshi said in the interview. Most people argue that due to gear it's easy. But we did it with i255 tanks(who doesn't tank usually) while the rest was i270. After clearing it once we decided to 7-man it to practice selling it. It took us about another hour until we could kill it continously with i255 tanks and one DPS less. So in the end for any skilled group of players, this fight is a joke and what Yoshi said was a joke.