EX difficulty: which fights are closer to MSQ? Which fights are closer to savage?

The primary assumption is regular sync (max ilvl, echo active). With EX being an intermediate difficulty between MSQ/normal and savage, I found synced EX fights to be all over the place, with some being closer to normal difficulty and others being closer to savage.

Without further ado, here's my preliminary list:

Closer to MSQ:
Bismarck
Ruby Weapon
Lakshmi
Susano
Ravana
Thornmarch
Ultima Weapon
Garuda
Titania?
Innocence?

Closer to savage:
Thordan
Nidhogg
Sephirot
Suzaku
Ramuh?
Zurvan?
Seiryu?
Memoria?
Shiva unreal?

I haven't don't all of these, and also don't prog savage. I do have quite a few savage clears, but none of them were done while the fight was relevant. Still hard as eff tho in comparison to anything else I've done. Doing fights on release will also prove to be much tighter and difficult opposed to when you are above it by 20 ilvs or so. What I will do is indicate which ones I feel are of lesser difficulty with a (-), and those I find of greater difficulty with a (+). No marker means I have not cleared the fight, or only did so unsynced.



Bismarck (-)
Ruby Weapon (+)
Lakshmi
Susano (-)
Ravana
Thornmarch (+).. I've attempted this fight synced a few times, and it has never gone well at all.
Ultima Weapon
Garuda
Titania? (-)
Innocence? (-) This fight is the closest to NM of all relevant EX fights I've completed. I would like to see more NM encounters around this level.
Thordan
Nidhogg (+)
Sephirot
Suzaku (+)
Ramuh?
Zurvan?
Seiryu? (-)
Memoria?
Shiva unreal? (-) despite the low clear rate. This fight honestly should not be as difficult to clear as it has been. Definitely a good fight to let players new to EX that the encounters don't mess around.

I am also going to add Tsukuyomi's Pain to this, which is definitely a (+).

Ok are we ranking them at the time of release(ToR) or as they are now synced? because they are vastly different.

ToR difficulty Hardest to Easiest:

-Thordan(it was designed to be between a2s and a3s)
-Titan
-Shinyru
-Sephirot
-Nidhogg
-Tsukiyomi
-5.3 trial (Quintuple cast is probably closest mechanic to a savage mechanic all expansion in Exs)
-Mog
-Ramuh
-Ifrit
-Suzaku(I did her day 1 and she was a broken mess of a fight only reason higher than Hades)
-Hades(he is long not that hard, comparatively to when we were new with extremes with ARR primals)
-Ravana
-Shiva EX
-Ruby Weapon (checkpoint really hurts its difficulty)
-Leviathan
-Garuda
-Sophia
-Susano
-Byakko
-Seiryu
-Titania
-Innocence
-Zurvan
-Shiva Unreal
-Lakshmi
-Bismarck

We got massive QoL as time went on such as standardizing markers for attacks this drastically altered later Ex's to be easier as attacks can be figured out faster.


Synced(max gear allowed with echo) hardest to easiest

-Sephirot
-Mog
-Titan
-Shinyru
-5.3 trial
-Tsukiyomi
-Hades
-Thordan(the gear difference is so wide it really trivializes mechanics)
-Nidhogg
-Sophia
-Seiryu
-Suzaku
-Ruby Weapon
-Shiva Unreal
-Titan
-Ifrit
-Ramuh
-Shiva EX
-Ravana
-Susano
-Byakko
-Zurvan
-Garuda
-Titania
-Innocence
-Lakshmi
-Bismarck (go figure the dps check primal gets stupid easy once max expansion gear :p)

This was harder to do and will fluctuate more due to still having 1 tier of gear yet to be released (530 stuff being new max which will effect all ShB EXs).

This is obviously my own interpretation as when they came out to me and how I tackled them(some with a static some random pug etc).

But the best trials for ShB to ease way into savage would be the 5.3 trial and Hades Ex and I suggest focusing on using those ones for people looking to step into savage because if you can clear these two you can handle what E5s-E7s can do, E8s is only an issue due to Light Rampant a mess of a mechanic with no 1 solid pf strat and is something no EX can prepare you to handle.

I've noticed every EX fight since Hades has been labeled "the easiest EX we've ever had" so I tend to take players claiming a fight is easy with a grain of salt. Difficulty is subjective for some people, for example my FC won't go near Memoria but many have e5-7s down and some people hate Suzaku while some found it easy. Shiva Unreal is labeled easy but has quite a tight enrage which allows less mistakes and requires players to know their rotation. Titania has a bit of personal responsibility. For me I'd say Innocence and Ruby have been the easiest, Ruby having a very lenient enrage and a checkpoint.

Hades could have been a bit stricter on enrage. It was long but not quite Shinryu level.

Thornmarch to this day still gives me nightmares. Give me day of release Shinryu or Thordan any day of the week.

On the flip side I really don't think Titan EX was actually all that hard so much as it had ungodly amounts of lag that would kill you if you weren't practically anticipating every attack. Now that the server lag has calmed down a bit it's much more manageable, but on release that fight was almost impossible with high ping. These days I'd consider it middle of the road and only due to the knock off mechanic.

Ramuh?

Naa. Ramuh is one of the easist fights there is. The only things you have to do is collect Orbs, kill the adds quickly and handle Fear/Tether.

None?


EX is easier as is unreal.


Comparing 2.0 and 3.0 extremes well they where still just 'extreme'.

Everything has just been made much easier to do now, Alex was a ton harder then Omega and now Eden, not even talking about Bahamut that almost nobody could clear, reason why they made normal and savage.
And well it's something that almost any MMO suffers from, start enjoyable and hard and then just make it so easy you can do it blindfold.


Thordan EX is probably the one true hard one, it's a shame it's been nerfed to the ground. I'm hoping that once he comes in the Unreal (in a few years maybe) they'll take the version of him pre nerf.

I'm only in EXT since 4.0, but I'm quite comfy saying nothing in 5.X compares to Shinryu Ext. It was long and punishing (I loved it). Perhaps Tsukuyomi was on the higher difficulty because there was a lot of "snowballing into hell" but everything else has been quite close in terms of difficulty. Higher than MSQ, and lower than savage. I heard Thordan and Sephirot were quite hard in their time though.

All EXT usually have one hard mechanic or phase and the rest is quite simple. The most recent one (5.3) has the 5-cast thing, but it's not a guaranteed wipe if someone fails, and its DPS check is VERY low (actually the add phase is harder in my opinion).
Until now in 5.X I'd say Hades was the hardest but only because it was very long and had a lot to remember, but nothing difficult to perform.

I haven't done the new Ex just yet, but it does appear that the shb trials are much easier than previous ones given how many deaths and mechanical failures can be healed through. In addition, a lot of the shb fights, tanks can sponge several mechanic failures.
The addition of rez mage in sb made many runs recoverable thanks to fast revives.

While each Extreme's difficulty will be down to the individual, some have been nerfed severely as well.

Generally the top 5 hardest are as follows

Sephirot: This fight was a dance, where one wrong step ended with a vuln stack or death. Lots of accidental splash damage and one hit kills, surprisingly difficult dps check at launch and higher than average chance of accidentally killing other party members
Thordan: 10 phases! While he is nerfed now, the sheer volume of mechanics meant he was troublesome for many. Notable for being the first fight where pre planning was neccessary with clock positions and chains.
Titan: A very small arena by the final phase, huge health bar and many one shot kills with no revive because titan. Lagslide splitting into 5 lines meant that it was quite easy to accidentally get clipped, or failing that, getting clipped by weight of the land. Adds made things worse with puddles and their own lagslides
Tsuky: A poorly designed fight with a lot of running about and not very obvious tells in the final phase
Nidhogg: Has a lot of untelegraphed attacks, forced tankswap and two towers that confuses a lot of people

Honourable mentions are hades, shinryu and mog. Mog required sharing dps correctly and it required a lot fo coordination as a result but otherwise had low challenge. Hades had less difficulty and more jump rope with his final phase outright having a safe spot where only the tanks need to move. Shinryu quickly became team jump rope with more time spent looking at the enemy list than the map despite its heavy volume and variety of mechanics

Easiest are as follows

Innocence: Can be summed up as, tether to north, dont stand in the bad, laser the opposite ball. Pretty much nothing dangerous here. Joke dps requirement (11 deaths in one group and we still cleared when it was new)
Varis: It seemed to be designed as babies first ex as it too has low dps requirements (7 deaths and we still cleared my second clear) and most of the difficulty comes from reaction speed to In/out and avoiding being clipped by the Xs
Bismarck: Its just a big fat dps check with a surprise don't overlap the lightning and tank swap on the colours and remember to move off the whale when he shudders
Shiva/unreal: Shiva was the easiest ARR ex with most of the danger being the 18000 shared tb and the bow and a very wobbly enrage timer. The unreal version's difficulty has an even wobblier enrage, but healers have so many tools a lot of previous danger is recoverable
Ruby: Checkpoint, extremely low hp, low damage in the first phase and almost constant uptime in the second phase

Currently EXs have almost twice as many mechanics as previous fights (except for Thordan) but they are much less punishing than previous fights where the bosses had few mechanics but were very punishing and many of the problems generated were by the servers(I remember dying many times in Sepiroth, all because of the servers)

With Hades it suffered a lot for being a long fight, many mechanics that many people could not memorize and resulted in wipes at the end of the fight. SoS seems to me a very savage-level combat but not because of the DPS check but because of the fact that the second phase consists of 4 totally random mechanics with different patterns to learn.

Also as much of the difficulty is subjective, battles like Suzaku were impossible for me to do because my head together with a very high ping did not give me to think fast enough.

Thordan
Shinryu
SoS
Hades
Sephirot
King mog
Suzaku
Varis

As an added bonus I would put Zurvan for the PF memes, or Ruby for the kills early in the fight.

SoS EX isn't quite savage difficulty, it would need to be a bit more dense and more lethal.

The first fight that comes to mind is Chaos Savage. Both are similar to an extent that the order of mechanics is random. While SoS is more randomized than Chaos, Chaos is muuuch more lethal, you gotta handle the mechanics exactly as intended or someone/everyone will die. With SoS, you can mess up mechanics multiple times and still not die (depending on the mechanic). And the actual resolution for mechanics tends to be pretty straight forward.

But otherwise I do agree, it seems like earlier EXs were more lethal but less mechanically dense. Titan extreme for instance is a pretty simple fight mechanically, it's just everything hurts a lot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I've noticed every EX fight since Hades has been labeled "the easiest EX we've ever had" so I tend to take players claiming a fight is easy with a grain of salt. Difficulty is subjective for some people, for example my FC won't go near Memoria but many have e5-7s down and some people hate Suzaku while some found it easy. Shiva Unreal is labeled easy but has quite a tight enrage which allows less mistakes and requires players to know their rotation. Titania has a bit of personal responsibility. For me I'd say Innocence and Ruby have been the easiest, Ruby having a very lenient enrage and a checkpoint.

Hades could have been a bit stricter on enrage. It was long but not quite Shinryu level.

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People forget how easy fights can be once everyone has 10 or 20 more ILvL points than the minimum required. Also, is important to note that everything is way easier when you don't have to discover how to deal with any mechanic and just follow a guide.

It's always interesting seeing where people place Titan in these rankings. From a mechanics standpoint the fight is pretty simple, it's just incredibly unforgiving and requires absolute perfection in a way that most other fights do not.

Everything released after Sephirot in 3.2 is closer to MSQ dont @ me

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I've noticed every EX fight since Hades has been labeled "the easiest EX we've ever had" so I tend to take players claiming a fight is easy with a grain of salt. Difficulty is subjective for some people, for example my FC won't go near Memoria but many have e5-7s down and some people hate Suzaku while some found it easy. Shiva Unreal is labeled easy but has quite a tight enrage which allows less mistakes and requires players to know their rotation. Titania has a bit of personal responsibility. For me I'd say Innocence and Ruby have been the easiest, Ruby having a very lenient enrage and a checkpoint.

Hades could have been a bit stricter on enrage. It was long but not quite Shinryu level.

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To be fair, those people have likely fought Thordan or Sephirot who are leagues above any of the current Extremes except Hades and WoL—who are still noticeably easier. Ruby, at least in my opinion, is close to the easiest EX we've ever had. He can only really threaten you due to his mechanics being a bit janky but otherwise facerolls. Innocence falls short too, if only because his enrage is laughably generous. I recall my 5.0 static having like 12-14 deaths and we still beat him.

I feel like we tend to have EX trials that either have high lethality but simple mechanics (i.e., any mistake is likely to wipe you, but mistakes themselves are less likely), or high complexity but failure is survivable (i.e., mistakes may not cause a wipe, but it's a lot easier to make those mistakes). And different people will find different things subjectively easy or hard. Some folks find they prefer content where any mistake can wipe you, but where the mechanics don't feel as frenetic or complicated to them. Others prefer content with complicated mechanics to dive into, but where any mistake isn't necessarily an end to the run so failure is less punishing.

Some masochists like both: potentially lethal mechanics with some complicated bits. (Apparently, and somewhat to my surprise, this includes me.)

I think the reason Hades had a reputation for being harder than some trials for people was that it kind of swapped those around at one point; one part has what I'd say are simple-but-more-likely-lethal mechanics, and then another part has complicated-but-potentially-survivable mechanics, and people who are comfortable with one but find the other not to their taste would trip up. I've seen Hades EX parties where people struggle to get past the first phase because the failure penalties are not super forgiving, but they can breeze through after the phase transition... and I've seen the reverse, where people coast through the first part and then slam into a wall after phase transition.

(And for people who don't mind either, it's just really... really... really long, potentially adding player stamina/endurance as a failure point after a few pulls that wipe late in the process. 😫)

I mean, it's not universal, obviously; the only thing that's absolute is the fact that nothing is absolute. And it's not like each EX can be boiled down into solely the platonic ideal of either end of that spectrum. But watching a bunch of the sprouts in my FC gleefully start tackling Extreme content (through arranged parties, I promise), and looking back on my own experience in the past year, that's the observation I come away with.

With current stuff? Honestly, the tank changes pushed a lot of the older EX's into jokes since scaling doesn't even work properly until 71, especially with Gunbreaker/Warrior hitting as hard as a dps, or even harder in some cases. After Seat of Sacrifice, the difficulty significantly lowers. The invuln changes made it impossible to wipe on ARR Primals by doing too well, so I am keeping this in mind too. This is also assuming people can do the fight and not be on the floor 24/7 as per usual when running any content harder than normal/dungeons. This is with no Echo since Echo isn't part of a first run. With Echo you might as well just put everything not current into 'Closer to MSQ'

Closer to Savage
Emperor Varis
King Thordan
Nidhogg
Sephirot
Hades
Tsukoyomi
Seat of Sacrifice

Closer to MSQ
Odin
Shiva (Unreal)
Shinryu
Zurvan (Skip Soar or Disband)
Seiryu
Good King Moggle Mog XII
Byakko
Titania
Suzaku
Ruby Weapon
Rathalos
Susano
Sophia
Titan
Ramuh
Ifrit
Garuda
Bismarck
Ultima Weapon
Ravana
Lakshmi
Shiva (EX)

Last three fights were farmed within a half hour tops when it was current. They were a complete joke then and even more so now. I'd even argue they are easier than some normal/story fights. With the exception of Varis/Thordan/Nidhogg, don't waste your time on EX Trials thinking it will prepare you for Savage. It will not. Older Savage content will prepare you for current Savage content. You're not getting Echo, and the fights have not been nerfed into the dirt like some of these EX trials have been (with the exception of all of Coil). Seriously, take off Echo if you want to prepare for it. You're wasting your time otherwise.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

SoS EX isn't quite savage difficulty, it would need to be a bit more dense and more lethal.

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Interestingly, I've cleared this Savage tier comfortably enough, yet I've had to leave 5 SoS groups so far due to bad performance on my part. I would say I'd be fine hopping into a farm PF for any of the current Savage fights but I'm simply not good enough for SoS farm yet even with multiple kills.

I would say SoS is about as lethal as e5-7. There are a number of mechanics in those that you can be hit by and just about live with a little gear and a number you can't just ignore in SoS. We even have strats like uptime football on e6 because that mechanic is almost no threat. The main difference between EX and the first 3 Savage fights is just the dps check really.

That said, older EX fights are much better used to prepare for later MSQ than for current EX or savage, because it's clear to me now that a given xpac's MSQ does not provide adequate preparation for later xpacs'. Even though I cleared Garuda and Lakshmi EX synced on consecutive days rather comfortably when I was in 4.4, sometimes I regret not pushing Suzaku or Tsukuyomi EX synced before starting ShB. However, knowing the risks of PF, I knew it would have set me back weeks or even months.

The DPS check on SOS Ex is so light that risking mechanics for uptime is universally a bad call. It might barely be worth it if everyone is wearing Neo-Ishgardian/Edencall/Idealized mixes, i.e. is at minimum item level, but even then, my first clear was done when he didn't even get all 4 mini-phases out in post-adds.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Townowi

That said, older EX fights are much better used to prepare for later MSQ than for current EX or savage, because it's clear to me now that a given xpac's MSQ does not provide adequate preparation for later xpacs'.

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Part of that is due to the older EXs and Savage being where a mechanic is first introduced, a toned down version popping up in the next xpac's dungeons/normal mode raids and enhanced remixes of the mechanic popping up in later EX and Savage fights.

You solo tank this and it's 100 times easier

Let's see... I'll go with my memories for at release, because to me, once a fight is no longer current, then it becomes exponentially easier due to gear or Echo. I'll start with closer to MSQ/Hard modes, and then the second list will be closer to 8-man Raid/Savage. I'm going to pair raid fights I find them comparable to in difficult after a tack mark.

MSQ Tier:

Garuda Ex
Ultima Weapon Ex
Leviathan Ex
Shiva Ex
Bismarck Ex
Sophia Ex
Zurvan Ex
Lakshmi Ex
Byakko Ex
Tsukuyomi Ex
Suzaku Ex
Seiryu Ex
Titania Ex
Innocence Ex
Hades Ex
Ruby Weapon Ex
SoS Ex

Raid Tier:
Titan Ex - Second Corn Turn 1(T6) - Both focus on positional control of the whole party, have cleaves etc. There's no permadeath in T6, but there are more TPK scenarios.

Ifrit Ex - Binding Coil Turn 2 - Vuln stacks necessitate tank swaps, Ifrit's are more punishing. No rot to pass in Ifrit, but party positioning is still controlled by a less severe debuff called Searing Wind.

Ramuh Ex - Second Coil Turn 3(T8) - Both could be solo tanked, Both had center rooted bosses, and both prevented party clumping with damaging AOEs. T8 obviously had way more specificity to what separated the party and when, but improper positioning led to similar deadly situations in both. Ramuh a lot less severe, obviously.

Thornmarch Ex - There is no raid analogue for this. It's a completely unique fight, where you control your DPS such that you get all Moogles as low as possible before killing any, and then kill a few each phase to lower his HP since he is untouchable until the third killing of the moogles.

Ravana Ex - Arm of the Creator Savage(A11) - Both involve the dash to mechanic. It was introduced in Ravana, but then refined in A11s(and added to). Both have destructible arena portions, though obviously A11s is far more demanding. Both have cleaves, Ravana's is deadlier for comparable at release gear levels. Ravana's is also unavoidable, but it may be shared. Both have skippable adds phase, where the adds phase charges the ultimate.

Thordan Ex - Arm of the Father Savage(A3S) - It was literally their intent to make a very hard extreme fight to improve player skill, and they added in as many phases as possible to it, in order to emulate the sheer density of A3S. Other than the sheer density of mechanics that happen one after the other, they're really nothing alike.

Nidhogg Ex - Alphascape 2.0 (A10s) - Hey hey people, looks like A10s was pretty much a copy paste from what was hard about Nidhogg Ex, except obviously, terrible Midgardsormr fight had higher DPS requirements and more mechanics.

Sephirot Ex - Deltascape 4.0 Savage (O4s) - Both start with a standard boss with its own unique 3~4 minute fight rotation. Both end with a giant omnidirectional boss that has color coordinated side mechanics, with fight specific requirements to solve the color mechanics. Neither boss in its omni-giant form does auto attacks. Neo Exdeath is obviously much more involved, but they're together in my brain pan.

Susano Ex - Second Coil of Bahamut Turn 2 (T7) - Uhh, Not really a lot in common, but the final phase with the sinking border and the lightning stun... kinda like Shriek, where everybody on the wrong side/angle of the renaud got petrified. Obviously that's just one thing, but there aren't going to be good analogues for every Extreme - Savage comparison. That's not really how they design fights heh.

Shinryu Ex - Deltascape 3.0 Savage(O3s) - Somewhat akin to the THordan/A3S comparison. Both are mechanically dense and have similar arena composition, but beyond that have few commonalities mechanically.

Memoria Misera Ex - Sigmascape 3.0 (O7s) - The stacking for the Atlius or whatever is comparable to Ultros phase tentacle stacking. The fire one = Ink mixed with the proximity stun aoe. Similar death walls, though the Savage one is less punishing. More adds and mechanics in O7s obviously, with a much more stringest DPS check. The branching mechanics thing is also similar between the two.

I'd rank pretty much any outlier fight, that's either a unique Ex, like Great Hunt, or a unique normal mode, Battle in the Big Keep, as closer to MSQ by default. Also, keep in mind that the list are just my opinion, that I don't think they == a normal mode or raid fight, just that they're on that side of the aisle in terms of difficulty.

Titan EX
Shinryu EX
Hades EX
Warrior of Light EX

These are the only fights on release that I thought were Raid Tier fights. I was gone during Heavensward but I hear Thordan was also Raid tier.