Difficulty of ARR trials

Hi guys. Been playing this game with my gf and we've recently just done the cape Westwind trial. The thing is, the poor guy went down in like one minute because we had a bunch of veteran players helping us. So we've been looking forward to fighting all the cool post ARR summons like Shiva and Ramuh but were wondering, are all the ARR trials gonna be that easy, with a bunch of veteran players stomping through the bosses for us like a minute?
We don't mind easy bosses but we do want some level of challenge. Would it be insane for us to try to duo the ARR trials, with me as a tank and her as a healer (We can probably overlevel a little and can probably snag a couple of pieces of the ironworks armor.)

Thanks in advance for the advice :)

The story versions of the trials are typically fairly easy to ensure everyone can make progress. If you want a challenge, you should try the Extreme versions of the trials while level synched. Those are designed for difficulty.

You won't be able to duo the trials at your current level and gear, and thats including Ironworks. ARR Primals are the weakest of the bunch simply from being the earliest and thats before accounting for the various changes made this expansion seemingly having made us stronger at lower levels even when synced.

Your best bet if you want them to be somewhat challenging is to do a Party Finder Min ilvl for it. You could also do a Party Finder for regular or Min ilvl syned Extreme versions of each Primal fight as well.

Pretty sure Westwind is a somewhat special case that doesn't sync very well (or at all?), so everyone is way overpowered for it. The "Hard" versions of the primals, going in synced, probably still require some measure of attention to mechanics.

Old content is a mess because the devs don't care about new players' experience.
But, if it's reassuring, it won't get any worse. The next 2 dungeons are still stupid, and then it will get better, little by little, slowly, but better.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Pretty sure Westwind is a somewhat special case that doesn't sync very well (or at all?), so everyone is way overpowered for it. The "Hard" versions of the primals, going in synced, probably still require some measure of attention to mechanics.

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Yeah. Cape Westwind is tuned to be doable by level 49 players, but seems to sync players at level 50 i130.
Other ARR trials are not as difficult as they once were but won't be burned quite as fast as Cape Westwind.

I had the exact same experience. I queued for Westwind and the boss died in literally twenty seconds. I thought it must be a trash mob or something... nope, that was it. Don't worry... the trials get a little more challenging as you go on. There's one in particular in Heavensward that was a lot of fun and took my party a few tries.

Cape Westwind is extremely easy by any measure. Easily the easiest trial in the game.

While several other trials and dungeons are fairly easy nowadays when run by high-level characters due to how level sync works, none of them are remotely close to Cape Westwind in terms of "Blink, and you will miss the fight."
(The level 50 A- and S-rank hunt targets are even worse in that regard, but that is because of the lack of level sync for them.)

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

Yeah. Cape Westwind is tuned to be doable by level 49 players, but seems to sync players at level 50 i130.
Other ARR trials are not as difficult as they once were but won't be burned quite as fast as Cape Westwind.

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Yeah. Looked into it, and that's the real kicker. Effectively has to allow for level 49 players, which will largely only have access to i49-ish gear. But also allows level 50 players in i130-ish gear. There's probably not a single duty in the game that will allow for such an incredibly wide range of stats, comparably speaking.

Might be exaggeration. But given the results, idunno.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Yeah. Looked into it, and that's the real kicker. Effectively has to allow for level 49 players, which will largely only have access to i49-ish gear. But also allows level 50 players in i130-ish gear. There's probably not a single duty in the game that will allow for such an incredibly wide range of stats, comparably speaking.

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There is - Castrum Meridanium and Praetorium. Minimum ilvl of 45.
They are designed for level 50 players, but fresh level 50s who have not yet had a chance to get any of the tomestone gear, and who are unlikely to wear anything better than the ilvl50 gear from their level 45/50 class quests. (No, not the ilvl 90 gear - when ARR was released, you did not get that from your level 50 class quest, only from later level 50 dungeons.)

I can't remember Cape Westwind ever being a challenge, even four to five years ago to be honest.

When I started and got there, I was surprised that he went down so quickly. I just remember it being a tad longer, since the OT actually needed to take the adds off of the group, but still, it was a quick trial.

Thanks for your replies guys :) Good to hear the others won't be as much of a pushover. Like I said, we don't mind easy bosses, as long as they don't go down as fast as the Westwind guy. We'll do the rest of them normally and go back for the EX primals when we can later. Thanks for the input!