state of the dungeons in 4.0

so people what you think of the state the dungeons in 4.0 are in?

i think they hit rock bottom in terms of difficulty. if in 3.0 the aery, the vault and library was some what challenging then in 4.0 nothing is.
i was purposely failing on mechanics and was never killed as a tank.
this BS need to stop and the sooner the better.
we as a community must make this topic big so the developers start adding more challenging dungeons.

we as players have a voice let's make SE hear it.

I thought the dungeons were more challenging but shorter with harder hitting enemies. Also, the 69 dungeon (name omitted for spoilers) is pretty brutal compared to Gubal library and the 70 dungeon is significantly tougher than aethero even when it was first released.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I thought the dungeons were more challenging but shorter with harder hitting enemies. Also, the 69 dungeon (name omitted for spoilers) is pretty brutal compared to Gubal library and the 70 dungeon is significantly tougher than aethero even when it was first released.

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wjat was harder hitting? i was over geared from the msq gear alone. and they was shorter as well.so all in all not as good as 2.0/3.0. a new trend for SE?

Mobs are definitely hitting harder from Bardam's on....

I'm not sure why people think the dungeons are harder. 2 years of lazy facerolling techniques have come to bite players in the butt.

Are you going with premades? Because everything outside of raids is easy with premades. And also, you're a tank. Play a healer or DPS and I'd be surprised if you hold the same opinion.

I've found most of the new dungeons to be more mechanically complicated than ever before, though mostly for DPS and Healers. Especially the last dungeon and the final trial. Then again, I started playing in HW, and I always held the opinion that ARR dungeons were actually mechanically harder overall than HW dungeons whenever I went back and did 50 roulette.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Mobs are definitely hitting harder from Bardam's on....

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Agreed. So much so that I felt the need to meld as much Tenacity as I could to prepare for Doma Castle. At least tanking spiked up in difficulty with these new dungeons, which can be both a good and a bad thing.

I didn't do new dungeons yet, yes I am late to the party, but I am testing all jobs and with my work schedule, I am just a bit behind lol. However none of the 3.x dungeons mentioned above were already challenging, the only way to die in the vault, was running into the ponies at the end and the healer couldn't find their leech/esuna in time. Pretty sure, there are some mechanics like that in the new dungeons, and you would be surprised how many people can find these kind of mechanics, without even trying.

Making it harder could be the absolute downfall, specially if people couldn't beat the leveling dungeons, I would prefer more the take of old 2.x they took, but that would also mean that giving out gear, that out gears the dungeon right from the beginning, or entering after archiving already a much higher level, wouldn't work

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Originally Posted by The_Shang

Agreed. So much so that I felt the need to meld as much Tenacity as I could to prepare for Doma Castle. At least tanking spiked up in difficulty with these new dungeons, which can be both a good and a bad thing.

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Actually, right now, it seems that Tenacity isn't doing much. Unless the scaling on it suddenly spikes up at a certain point, it is kind of a lack luster stat.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...talk_tenacity/

Right now, I am just melding Crit and Det on my left side while melding Str on my right side to squeeze out more damage and in turn more aggro.

As for he state of 4.0 dungeons, I feel like the dev team was spot on in their design. The second boss of the level 65 dungeon in particular was a nice change of pace of our usual bosses. Even in other dungeons, I felt a nice tension as I played through them. Sure they aren't exactly the most difficult bosses around, but they are interesting and fun. It doesn't necessary have to be difficult to be fun, though there can be a correlation between difficulty and fun to a certain degree. It also helps that the feel and tone of the dungeons are rather exquisite.

Finally, I cannot give enough praise to the last trial. It may not be a dungeon but by the twelve does it deserve every praise from me. I never been as hyped mid fight than I was during the last phase.

The ex roulette dungeons are also fun and interesting with rather nice mechanics for their last bosses, especially KC (the abbreviation should prevent any spoilers right?).

Also just cleared PoT Ex earlier, and while the difficulty isn't that high, it was still an incredibly fun fight. I greatly enjoyed the feel of the ATM.

I may have my grievances on the state of tanks, but the state of the dungeons is just amazing imo.

ok, i hope i will not see any of you in a "why players so bad in this game" topics.

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Originally Posted by usalia

ok, i hope i will not see any of you in a "why players so bad in this game" topics.

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You don't necessary have to make it difficult to get players better at the game. Make it difficult when players are ignoring mechanics and fun when players are dong them. Besides, the last trial is a pretty nice mid term exam on mechanics.

Besides, I consider these current dungeons to be a baseline that should get tougher as we go on.

Dungeons are also getting less focus as the odd number patches will only have one dungeon and instead new content will use up the extra resources. They did say they were interested in more difficult 4-man content.

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Originally Posted by usalia

i was purposely failing on mechanics and was never killed as a tank.

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Thank your healer for putting up with you then, they were the reason you were never killed. I've lost count the many times i have had to spam Lustrate because the tank pulls too much thinking they're still playing 3.5 leveling dungeons.

Mobs are definitely hitting harder. I thought DPSing was going to be a cake walk without the Stance Dance. There were several dungeons where I really had to focus on keeping the tank up, and I could barely pull out cards let alone DPS.

And then you admit to purposely failing mechanics, wow. Gotta wonder if I ever ended up in a Duty Roulette with you.

Does difficult imply fun though? It really depends on your perspective, for instance, Ultima was often considered an easy but fun fight. However, as a tank I've seen both the good and the bad from parties when it comes to the dungeons. You'll see some groups destroy it, and others struggle on basic mechanics. Personally I like them, they're difficult enough, especially the very last instance you do in the story. Encounters need to be designed with fun in mind first before difficulty.

That being said, I think they should make a challenge mode that does not provide gear rewards, some other form (to make it not feel like it's necessary or to devalue experts) should be there like vanity weapons/mounts/minions etc. It would be interesting to see dungeons tuned for max gear, or even pull a PotD and have no gear at all.

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Originally Posted by usalia

i was purposely failing on mechanics and was never killed as a tank.

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You had a decently good healer then, that's why. And honestly, they're a saint for putting up with that crap because its stressful and annoying, especially if they're unfamiliar with the content or newer at healing and are trying not to panic because their tank wants to eat every mechanic under the sun.

Dungeons don't need to be difficult to be fun. I'm honestly tired of this mentality of wanting to go back to 2.0/2.1 versions of dungeons like Pharos Sirius and Amdapor Keep. They don't do challenging dungeons because people don't want to RUN THEM when they're too hard. If they want to make an "Extreme" version specifically for challenge or whatever, then that's one thing but I don't want to see the content we're supposed to farm for currency be made difficult and therefore watch Roulette queues all but dry up because no one wants to put up with a 45-55 minute Expert Dungeon. I don't know if you were around, but this happened with Pharos Sirius in 2.1 - back when it was hard. People either outright refused to unlock it and therefore never had to run it in their High Level dungeon roulette, or they just would queue and then instantly leave if they got Pharos Sirius. And since the penalty for withdrawing had yet to be implemented, it was rampant.

So no, I don't particularly want to go back to that.

I agree. Way too easy.

I’m one of those tanks who firmly believes that the team did redesign encounters within these dungeons and made them harder then the dungeons we had in f.e. Heavensward. The “trash” packs hit harder than they did before and it really is noticeable. Next to that, they changed the placements of several packs and have some even roam around a certain area.

There have been several occasions where an additional packs appears out of nowhere in the middle of a fight, which have caught me off guard.

Boss battles have more mechanics they perform at the same time or within immediate succession from each other, keeping the party on their toes and I think that’s a good thing. It makes the encounters feel more alive, but the party has to be prepared to handle them.

I can’t relax for a second during a dungeon, because i have to be on the lookout for additional enemies appearing out of nowhere, using my buffs at the right time, while keeping my hate in check on each individual target. While i’m doing fine on that during boss battles, i still haven’t figured out how to properly use my entire tanking kit while doing it.

Maintaining hate on trash packs however, is a very daunting task when trying to maximize your damage output. Most of the time, i end up resorting to just spamming Flash, Circle of Scorn and my hate combo, just to keep hate. On top of that, there are multiple occasions where the damage i take (with buffs active) is so high that the healer is having problems keeping me alive. During those time, i help the healer out by using Clemency to heal myself (or others).

It’s a very stressful process, but a good kind of stress.

The only thing i don’t like, is when adds pop on the opposite ends of the encounter and each of the DPS focus on a different add, making it extremely difficult to take over hate. Especially if you have a heavy hitter like a Samurai or a Red Mage. They can generate a lot of hate out of nowhere, which is tough to deal with.

Now, i guess that there are more than enough tanks who don’t have a problem with it and i’ll be the last person to boast my skills, saying that i’m a great tank. It could be that it’s a matter of not being geared well enough, or not fully grasping my new toolkit. We’ll have to see in the days to come, when i get more Verity gear and more experience with my new toolkit.

However, i do believe that the team made these changes to make the dungeons more challenging for most of the playerbase and make it harder for them to mass pull everything up to the next barrier. This will hold true for a large portion of the DF runs you do with random people. Once you run it with pre-made groups, who know each other’s skill level, the runs will become easier for sure. The difficulty is currently in the right place.

Just… Don’t look down on others who are trying to do their best at clearing content. Not everyone is sitting on the same skill level as the top 5%, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad or not trying.

I've been having a lot of fun with the new dungeons. They keep me on my toes and generally seem to go faster than HW dungeons. My favorite has been the boss at the end of the 69 dungeon and the healer check DoT. I've been having fun timing cool downs for that.