Your Best and Worst Heavensward Extreme Battles

What are the Best and Worst Heavensward Extreme fights in your opinion?

Best - Sophia Extreme

A fierce battle to the death with fun mechanics, reasonable dps checks, and some recoverable spots. I earned so much weapons from this fight during 3.4 in Raid Finder. My confidence as a FFXIV grew from there. It also helped me as a Tank player as well. *wink

Honorable mention - Thordan Extreme

The myriad of overlapping mechanics made this fight real challenging, but fun. Though I farmed this fight during 3.3 (way after it's relevancy), I still had to work hard to learn the fight anyway to get the bird.

Worst fight - Zurvan Extreme

The design of this fight is dumb IMO, soar or no soar. It should have had at least a tank-swap mechanic like most of the other Extreme fights in HW and/or situations that require 2 tanks. It also didn't help that people made strange debates about this fight early on in 3.5.

Best- Thordan
It was challenging, but not too terrible. You see all of the mechanics in the first phase and then it gets mashed together after the ultimate. Feeling like you're fighting multiple primals was something that was pretty enjoyable to me. Most people messed up on the ice, but otherwise I thought the fight was a good mix of mechanics, DPS requirement, heal check and solid tank re-positioning. Basically, everyone had a solid role they needed to play. Plus, sweet revenge.

Worst- Sephirot & Bismarck
I really hated how a single death was really detrimental to the fight. Some mistakes during key points made it nearly downright impossible to recover from, even if the run had been flawless up to that point. It was a very punishing fight, but different than what you had in Thordan. Thordan was recoverable; Sephirot's fight probably meant you'd hit enrage or wipe well before that for a death.

For Bismarck, the fight was really easy and boring. However, it had a pretty tight DPS check that made it way more stressful than it needed to be. It's the only fight that makes me look at the minimum ilevel requirement and go "there's just no way."

>Speaking of when the fights were fresh and new.<

Ugh, Sephirot Extreme scared me from healing most Heavensward Extreme primals when it came out. It was too healing intensive with our gear and the mechanics of the fight.

The only HW EX primal fights I liked were Thordain and Niddhog. But even then I still haven't cleared Nidhog because... I dunno... the gear is just crappy. None of the EX primal weapons from HW really interested me. The stats were meh... they didn't look very cool... I dunno. I just wasn't really interested.

The only real thing I liked from those two fights was the music too. =/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

The only HW EX primal fights I liked were Thordain and Niddhog. But even then I still haven't cleared Nidhog because... I dunno... the gear is just crappy. None of the EX primal weapons from HW really interested me. The stats were meh... they didn't look very cool... I dunno. I just wasn't really interested.

The only real thing I liked from those two fights was the music too. =/

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At least there are the colorful birds, right?

I haven't enjoyed extreme trials - full stop. Lackluster rewards and a terrible community make these intricate games of 8-man jump rope incredibly distasteful to me.

Favourite - Thordan EX

It was challenging, fast paced and combined a multitude of fresh mechanics alongside old favourites. IMO it had something for everyone, Movement needed to be crisp and precise, tanks needed to be awake with cooldowns, healers needed to be ready to push the HPS particularly towards the end of the encounter and it's also worth noting that it did a great job of rewarding strong DPS without the current trend of skipping entire mechanics mid fight.

Least favourite - Ravana

It did plenty of things right, the mechanics were both precise and punishing, it had a good amount of unique things to learn and whilst I'd argue that it was undertuned, at least it wasn't a pushover to the extent that Bismark was. However! IMO too much of the damage was avoidable, it wasn't until the halfway mark that healers actually got much of anything to heal. I'll also note that the constant disappear/reappear whilst also dropping your target thing with the liberation animations was just shoddy and annoying.

Honorable mention - Zurvan

IMO a great primal ruined by being significantly undertuned and of course, soargate. A shame as it's otherwise a pretty decent primal, the music's good. It's visually appealing, it's decently paced and has a good balance of mechanics. Hopefully SE will use it as a lesson to avoid making significant mechanics so readily skippable, I don't remember it ever being such a broad reaching issue in coil so I don't really get why it's become a thing now.

Best - Sephirot Extreme

Mechanics: A
Mechanics in this fight were really fun for me. It required everyone to know what they were doing.

Music: B
Second phase OST. Lyrics actually mean something to those who are into lore and story.

Difficulty: A
Was not an easy fight, the designer of this one also was the mastermind behind Titan EX.

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Worst - Sophia Extreme

Mechanics: B
Fight mechanics were not hard to learn, downed it when there were no guides out yet.

Music: A
No comment here. OST is <3

Difficulty: C
This fight did not require people to know mechanics, just follow the party and you'll be safe. People downed it with many deaths. Would have been better to let those who fall unable to return back.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

At least there are the colorful birds, right?

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There's no way in Hell I'm doing those fights 99 times for a mount. And YES, my luck with the rolls IS THAT BAD.

Worst is Limitless Blue EX, I still can not do that, even unsync and using PF, after the first wipe because of the green/blue adds people usually rage quit. It is the only one for me that is cursed to say ...

Best has to be Thork EX because on my first try not only did we beat it, but also got the mount, I guess I was super lucky there ;) ?

Best Primal EX: Thok ast Thok - 1 of 2 I have had a chance to do so far. Plus I got my mount on the 2nd run.

Worst Primal EX: Limitless Blue - damn bird won't drop no matter how many farm runs I have done.

Best - Thordan.

Worst - the overhyped, hot pile of ass that is Zurvan. Look at him slice up the arena! That's going to be a fun mechanic! Nope. Phase 1 lasts 20 seconds. Soargate dividing the community, promoting mechanical laziness on an already simple dummy fight. I'm not saying more DPS to skip it isn't bad, but hinging your ENTIRE strategy around it and proceeding to not bother to learn it, and then cry when, shock horror, randoms fail to skip, get out. It's aesthetically boring, the music has nothing on any of the previous HW primals, even Bismarck. For the final, and canonically most powerful member of the Triad, Zurvan was a bigger disappointment than Diadem.

Best - Nidhogg EX. Many people seem to have a bad aftertaste from this fight, mainly due to how many groups end up failing at this fight. However, looking at the fight objectively from the perspective of a group that knows what it's doing, this fight is fantastic. It has enough mechanics to make it challenging and interesting, while not being as overly bloated as Thordan is. Additionally, it comes with some of the best music found in Heavensward. Despite the frustration when your group just cannot get the mechanics right, I love this fight to bits.

Worst - Bismarck EX. My god, this fight is so boring that it puts me to sleep. His entire fight is mostly just killing adds until you can use the Dragonkillers, and then destroy the same spot on his back twice. His music is also not memorable at all. I probably would've enjoyed it more even if it was just a straight copy of Leviathan, but in the air.

Best: Thordan Ex / Bishmark (the music is amazing)
Worst: Ravana (awful soundtrack)

Best: nidhogg, do you remember the first time you beat claw and fang and everything went south quickly. All the panic and adrenalin and music kicking in. Love it.

Worst: Bismarck, nothing against the fight itself, but if I'm in DF, I have to tank or we won't make it past the snakes.

My best extreme battle will be Sephirot because many claim that battle is one of the toughest to beat because of the mechanics; not for me, I thought it was really easy. Moreover, I finally cleared the EXfight on my character's birthday :)

Honorable mention: Nidhogg - I honestly thought that he would be the last EXprimal that I had to beat plus have the most issues with, but his fight wasn't as bad as I thought.

My worst extreme battle has to be Zurvan because "SKIP SOAR" rule XDDD I say it's bad because whether you're able to skip it or not, you STILL have to know the mech to avoid death. Some groups that I was in would immediately leave duty because they refuse to do the soar mech if not skipped. Plus ppl would play the blame game over who had bad DPS.

Honorable mention: Sophia - For her, it was pretty difficult for me to keep track on which side the arena was going to tilt; now that I think about it, the final phase was pretty insane.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Heliantheae

Best: nidhogg, do you remember the first time you beat claw and fang and everything went south quickly. All the panic and adrenalin and music kicking in. Love it.

Worst: Bismarck, nothing against the fight itself, but if I'm in DF, I have to tank or we won't make it past the snakes.

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I tank it too, but god danget, why can't other tanks learn to switch? Seriously? WHY? And besides, as soon as we wipe 2-3 DPS drops. WTH? Give it at least one more run, we tanks will get it. You are just there to DPS you don't have any responsibility except dodging the island knock off attack, so stick around for 1 more run, wouldn't kill you.

Apart from an ill-advised attempt at Bismarck EX a while back I haven't touched any Extreme trials. They all seem above my pay grade, so to speak.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Capriana

Worst is Limitless Blue EX, I still can not do that, even unsync and using PF, after the first wipe because of the green/blue adds people usually rage quit. It is the only one for me that is cursed to say ...

Best has to be Thork EX because on my first try not only did we beat it, but also got the mount, I guess I was super lucky there ;) ?

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Really i find it the easiest. Ravana ex gives me trouble.

That reminds me. Warriors are getting criticized in pugs for Zurvan EX for their Holmgang not being able to survive the Wave Cannon after Demon's Claw because of it's small duration. But this wasn't the first instance where it happened.

I remembered pugs not taking Warriors back in Ravana EX from 3.0 to 3.1 because the can't use Holmgang to survive Final Liberation when they have prey. Then again, most groups back then could not really succeed in the Final Liberation mechanic unless the Pld/Drk cheesed their prey markers (roles using HG and LD respectively.)