this raid tier is the worst yet

whoever thought savage needs constant body checks needs to be put in a straightjacket and locked away for a very long time

people say this makes the raids more """difficult""", and i will concede that it does make them far more artificially difficult. artificial difficulty isn't fun, because you're only as good as your weakest link and you can play your best but one person's mistake punishes everybody with a wipe

Been saying that forever

I feel at this point only Ultimates should have that kind of punishment because Ultimate Raids literally pushes the limit on everything.

If the Savage Raids were not as cruel there would probably be more Ultimate PFs open.

Trying to get 8 people to be pitch perfect is like herding cats.

Tbh if they're gonna keep adding the body checks whats the point of red mage's damage handicap?
Their resses are pretty pointless when anytime people can die there's a bodycheck anyway to make sure you have no time to recover lol

I say Abyssos is the perfect spot for me (since I can cleared it :D ), good thing I didn't touch this tier because the glams are sucks

Too much body checks is not good with how PF's quality is lol...

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

I say Abyssos is the perfect spot for me (since I can cleared it :D ), good thing I didn't touch this tier because the glams are sucks

Too much body checks is not good with how PF's quality is lol...

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Off topic, but what is the story of that image in your sig? Been wondering for awhile lol.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

Off topic, but what is the story of that image in your sig? Been wondering for awhile lol.

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It's from this thread

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...mportant-to-me

and the cafe guy decided to mock OP so there's this image born :)

Endwalker has kinda be hyper-obsessed with these sort of perfect or wipe mechanics as a whole really.
You could even apply this complaint to Ex6, Criterion Savage, and even fucking Eureka Orthos.

It does get pretty monotonous because the fight is either frustrating or easy because you memorized it. I don't know if this game can fix that problem.

I agree, fight is extremely black and white in terms of difficulty. Either you know it and it's easy or its very hard.
It's very difficult to make medium level difficulty especially midcore content.
If fights are designed a little easier than veteren players will be bored coz similiar mechanics were found in o11s or tea or Eden. So they have to come up with new types of mechanics and if not innovative enuf they have to create body checks (8 players alive).
Savage is evolving to the point where many are getting discouraged from it. Ff14 doesn't do a good job to teach newer players how to savage.
Compared to wow, they have 4 levels of difficulty per raid tier. Raid finder/normal/heroic and mythic.
Since you gradually work your way up the muscle memory sets in and it's not too overwhelming for players.

It's kind of ironic. Jobs are getting more streamlined and simple in a way, while they boost the difficulty of new content. Is this the intention actually?
Savage in EW feels like borderline ultimate at times, I am not gonna lie. I do enjoy the ramp in difficulty, but it is too punishing for the wrong reasons. 1 tiny mistake and your run is done for.

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...c21ce13e3d.png

Entries are in order within ranking tier. I haven't finished P12 but phase 1 seems like it'll be mid to high A tier so far.

S Tier
Pretty much nothing goes here. There is not a single fight where I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be S tier.

A Tier
P10 - Very fun for tanks other than Harrowing Hell which was annoying on min ilv and with SCH/AST as the healers. This fight could have been in S tier if Harrowing was balanced better for comps without WHM/SGE. Yes it is possible with SCH/AST. It is also very very annoying with SCH/AST. This one might only be above P4 P1 due to recency bias but we'll see.

P4 P1 - Pinax is probably one of if not my favorite mechanics this expansion. Role call is also very good. This could have been S if the boss wasn't so annoying to position, especially during/after Pinax. The server tick would literally be the only factor in deciding how far he moved from the middle before casting Pinax.

P2 - Another very fun fight for tanks. The arena actually gets utilized very well in this one.

P5 - A pretty good fight all around, the various Ruby Glow mechanics were fun to figure out day 1.

B Tier
P4 P2 - The tethers are fun but this phase isn't as good as the first.

P9 - The mage phase is the best one, but the monk phase is good too. The behemoth phase was a little boring and LC2 is kinda lackluster. If the second half of the fight was as fun as the first, it'd be better than P5.

P8 P1 - Very fun all around but the possibility of Centaur/Dog being picked first 50% of the pulls sucked. This was before buffs got a range increase so it would screw up buff timings if Centaur/Dog was first and it felt awkward. If Snake 1 was first 100% of the time, this would be an A tier fight.

P8 P2 - HC is fun and interesting. The rest of the fight is not.

P6 - A little lackluster but alright. This could honestly be C tier if I wanted to go remake the picture.

P3 - This is only not in C tier because I had GOATed PFs when progging this one so it was actually pretty fun to prog. Orange on orange is annoying and spreads suck.

C Tier (Looking back, I'd swap P1 and P11 and maybe put P6 in between tbh)
P1 - A very good intro for someone getting into savage. However, if you are not a beginner, this fight is very boring. It's not annoying, just meh.

P11 - Fun, but also boring. The mechanics are sorta enjoyable but the entire fight just rehashes the same 3 mechanics in different ways. At least it's not as boring as P7.

D Tier
P7 - lol lmao xdd

imo obviously (cause I gotta say it :rolleyes:)

P3S was a mistake

Not overly fond of the body checks honestly.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...c21ce13e3d.png
A Tier
P10 - Very fun for tanks other than Harrowing Hell which was annoying on min ilv and with SCH/AST as the healers. This fight could have been in S tier if Harrowing was balanced better for comps without WHM/SGE. Yes it is possible with SCH/AST. It is also very very annoying with SCH/AST. This one might only be above P4 P1 due to recency bias but we'll see.

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Rarely play healer so curious why WHM > AST for HH? SGE > SCH makes sense because of panhaima, but maybe there is more to that as well?

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Rarely play healer so curious why WHM > AST for HH? SGE > SCH makes sense because of panhaima, but maybe there is more to that as well?

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I suspect Lilybell since it fills the same niche as Panhaima

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

I suspect Lilybell since it fills the same niche as Panhaima

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Ah of course! thanks it completely slipped my mind xD

They have shifted the difficulty from a mix of mechanics and DPS to just mechanics. All mechanics instantly kill you whereas previously you could get damage downs (technically they still do if you're a tank or have giga shield) which was punishment enough when the DPS checks were tuned properly. This makes things frustrating to prog.

Compare Shadowkeeper (sorry not sorry) who had a mix of instant kill/body check mechanics/damage downs to Pandaemonium which is almost exclusively instakills. Nothing in Pandaemonium is harder to understand or execute. I would even say Shadowkeeper was much harder mechanically. But Pandaemonium is harder to prog/clear because it's so punishing.

I personally feel like raid tiers are becoming harder and harder to clear, and yet more of them are boring as sin (hello P6/7/9) because they've stripped out DPS skills and removed avenues for skill expression (raise god/making up for damage downs on other DPS/sacrifice plays).

I don't know in what World you live in that all the mechanics instant kill you, P9 has tons of damage down, P10 has quite some and so does P11, heck even P12 has more than enough damage downs plus this tier was way easier than last tier. The only bad thing to say about this is that P9 and P10 play pretty slow.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...c21ce13e3d.png

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I would move proto carbuncle down one tier and move p8s p1 up one tier but otherwise I think the list is pretty accurate

The increasing tendency towards heavy so-called "body checks" definitely make PF'ing feel more headachey than usual, at least in my personal / anecdotal experience.

I don't personally mind having "uneven" performance amongst the 8 players in a PF, as long as everyone is "obviously trying", and the encounter still gets cleared. And so in the past, it felt possible to compensate a bit more for moderate errors. Maybe I'm just viewing the past through tinted glasses, though.

And I guess there's an argument to be made that allowing people to simply "brute force" through mechanic segments is "unhealthy design"... but I guess the other side of it would be that understanding when, how, and where to apply "alternative tactics" to still slide through a clear is also rewarding in its own way, since even "salvageable" checks aren't always saved if you make the wrong move at the wrong moment.

For the current tier the dps check is nothing. You can have 7 deaths and still clear p9s using week 2 gears plus Ex weapon, if you managed to get past levin and lc2. If you make those mechanics easier to recover from, on top of the fact that they are already recoverable with using heal LB if 1 healer is alive, then the fight becomes too easy. We are not even talking about later weeks when people can probably kill the boss during lc2.

P10s is the same. P11s is basically sleepwalking. I havent touched P12s but based on what Im seeing its not as crazy as P8s. Gears are already easier to obtain (less weeks required), we now have 900 tomes plus ex weapon before Savage starts. The dps check becomes easier than last tier, do we really need to make fights easier?

This game's raiding has always been like that. Its not very complicated when it comes into skill check. Its always been about wall mechanics that requires group effort and/or enrage timer that also requires combined group damage to beat. If they want to add fights thay require more personal skill than group skill, that is not about killing mobs like palace of the dead then they need to add a new game mode. Thats the solution, not by nerfing 8 man savage even further.

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Originally Posted by drtasteyummy

I don't know in what World you live in that all the mechanics instant kill you, P9 has tons of damage down, P10 has quite some and so does P11, heck even P12 has more than enough damage downs plus this tier was way easier than last tier. The only bad thing to say about this is that P9 and P10 play pretty slow.

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Kind of wondering this myself. The only outright body check in P9 is Levinstrike. Dual Elements will double up and kill someone but that's been standard for years now. They moved away from mechanics just omitting a dead player after Neo Exdeath because players were cheesing mechanics by intentionally saccing and using healer LB3. P10S is a bit more egregious with body checks, especially the enumeration stacks which are unnecessary for a second fight but even a tank yeeting themselves can be recovered if people are quick to adapt. Hallowing Hell is definitely a tank check though. If either one of them dies, it's game over. That being said, I actually don't mind it as this is supposed to be his "big" mechanic. You shouldn't be able to limp through it.

Moving on to P11 and almost nothing is a direct body check. You can survive Styx with dead players unless it's a healer. Which isn't new at the Savage level. Everything else will either only target alive players or kill someone who doesn't have a partner. Even the two main mechanics Dark and Light and Letter of the Law are be salvaged depending when someone messes up. The former doesn't kill you outright until the very end so long as you realize your mistake and separate before both of you take too much damage. You'll die to Emissary's Will but again, you can live the follow up Styx with enough mitigation/shields.

P12S has more partner checks than outright body checks except for Paradeigma 3. And that depends who dies. P12S is a bit more heavy on the body checks but it's also the last fight so I'm not all that bothered. Especially when the DPS check is extremely forgiving. In general, the DPS checks are nonexistent this tier. There needs to be difficulty coming from somewhere. If people don't want the few body checks we have, then be prepared for another P8S where your comp will actually matter. Savage shouldn't be zombie-able.

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Originally Posted by Ivtrix

I would move proto carbuncle down one tier and move p8s p1 up one tier but otherwise I think the list is pretty accurate

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I would have probably moved P8 P1 up to A tier if Centaur/Dog first wasn't possible. The buff timings just made it a bit awkward as Manifold forces the party apart when the 2m window starts if Centaur/Dog is first. Any pull that had Snake 1 first was 100% an A tier fight.

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Originally Posted by kidknee

I agree, fight is extremely black and white in terms of difficulty. Either you know it and it's easy or its very hard.
It's very difficult to make medium level difficulty especially midcore content.
If fights are designed a little easier than veteren players will be bored coz similiar mechanics were found in o11s or tea or Eden. So they have to come up with new types of mechanics and if not innovative enuf they have to create body checks (8 players alive).
Savage is evolving to the point where many are getting discouraged from it. Ff14 doesn't do a good job to teach newer players how to savage.
Compared to wow, they have 4 levels of difficulty per raid tier. Raid finder/normal/heroic and mythic.
Since you gradually work your way up the muscle memory sets in and it's not too overwhelming for players.

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Late to this thread but this poster makes a really good point of a symptomatic characteristic of XIV in general, that is not having consistent midcore content. In fact, for the 8 mans, I kind of think that the Extreme trials almost fill in those shoes consistently, but then... it's only 2 EXs for every 8 months between every 4 Savage fight tiers.

Criterion was a promising idea, but didn't turn very well with the reward situation, I hope to see if anything is going to change with the next release in about 1 month.

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

whoever thought savage needs constant body checks needs to be put in a straightjacket and locked away for a very long time

people say this makes the raids more """difficult""", and i will concede that it does make them far more artificially difficult. artificial difficulty isn't fun, because you're only as good as your weakest link and you can play your best but one person's mistake punishes everybody with a wipe

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Please make sure you are using the right term before using it.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...FakeDifficulty

Artificial Difficulty refers to fluffing up numbers without changing mechanics (I.e. simply giving a mob more health and damage).

Adding difficulty by turning various mechanics into pass-fail states isn't artificial. Especially in the case of savage where every fight has a slew of new mechanics (for that particular boss) to learn.

They need to increase the difficulty by much much more... and get away from scripted to AI based gameplay for savage and ultimates....

That way you can't really make any guides and each team or time you go, will be a new experience as the AI will remember how you did it the previous time as for completion.

Also Ultimates being heavy barred in, is fine as well.

I'm thinking this raid tier the best so far，better than Alexandra which story was so yawn！ It is very fun。 I like scary Athenia ；）

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

They need to increase the difficulty by much much more... and get away from scripted to AI based gameplay for savage and ultimates....

That way you can't really make any guides and each team or time you go, will be a new experience as the AI will remember how you did it the previous time as for completion.

Also Ultimates being heavy barred in, is fine as well.

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Why increasing the difficulty？ P12 is already hard and I had a great time with it。 :)

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

In general, the DPS checks are nonexistent this tier. There needs to be difficulty coming from somewhere. If people don't want the few body checks we have, then be prepared for another P8S where your comp will actually matter. Savage shouldn't be zombie-able.

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That... is actually a very good point.

If I actually think back to things like, for example, E11S with PF groups, there were certainly many opportunities throughout the encounter to salvage mechanics and power on, but realistically, that was basically just a form of slow torture once the fight was learned... because you'd just end up going through all the motions, only to hit hard Enrage.

I guess in a way, combining stricter mechanic checks with more forgiving Enrage timers just saves you time — rather than "surprising" you with failure after an entire encounter timeline, it just rips the bandage off immediately and tells you to try again.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

That... is actually a very good point.

If I actually think back to things like, for example, E11S with PF groups, there were certainly many opportunities throughout the encounter to salvage mechanics and power on, but realistically, that was basically just a form of slow torture once the fight was learned... because you'd just end up going through all the motions, only to hit hard Enrage.

I guess in a way, combining stricter mechanic checks with more forgiving Enrage timers just saves you time — rather than "surprising" you with failure after an entire encounter timeline, it just rips the bandage off immediately and tells you to try again.

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And thereby denying players any form of skill expression in relation to triage.

The game is already trending towards a place where even in prog the only valuable skill is optimizing damage and following raidplan.io, we don't need to remove other skill expressions even more.

i feel like this thread is just a rant on how bad p10s is. I find it easy but getting 7 other ppl who can do that in PF is the real challenge. I've been stuck on enrage since week 1 and its always because we use up an LB or ppl die here and there. I would be more tilted but the glamour this tier is garbage and looks like something you got from the last 24 man raid.

Regardless this shows how bad PF really is and its not helped by the fact that data center travel basically ruined savage raiding on some servers outright.

One thing is for certain, PF cant spread for the love of them.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

i feel like this thread is just a rant on how bad p10s is. I find it easy but getting 7 other ppl who can do that in PF is the real challenge. I've been stuck on enrage since week 1 and its always because we use up an LB or ppl die here and there. I would be more tilted but the glamour this tier is garbage and looks like something you got from the last 24 man raid.

Regardless this shows how bad PF really is and its not helped by the fact that data center travel basically ruined savage raiding on some servers outright.

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I'm just being honest: If you are still stuck on p10 enrage since week 1, it's not the fight or PF that's stopping you

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

whoever thought savage needs constant body checks needs to be put in a straightjacket and locked away for a very long time

people say this makes the raids more """difficult""", and i will concede that it does make them far more artificially difficult. artificial difficulty isn't fun, because you're only as good as your weakest link and you can play your best but one person's mistake punishes everybody with a wipe

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Skill Issue

P11s is boring though.

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Originally Posted by EderTheBro

And thereby denying players any form of skill expression in relation to triage.

The game is already trending towards a place where even in prog the only valuable skill is optimizing damage and following raidplan.io, we don't need to remove other skill expressions even more.

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I think it's just different visions for what the developers want the game to be.

Usual disclaimer that I know this is subjective / might be "looking back with tinted glasses" / etc, but...

I feel like older Savage designs were more about creating an experience with a lot of potential paths out of it, and a lot of interesting and unique ways of approaching that — like I think all four floors of Creator were very creative and memorable encounter designs, and eg, Sigmascape, felt like it had a lot of different ways to get from Point A to Point Z depending on strategies, comps, and how-and-what "went wrong" in a given pull.

And the modern Savage design is trying to create more of an "arcade" experience, where what you need to do is more clear, strict, and direct; you just reboot if you do it wrong; the overall experience is meant to be "quicker" and "more efficient"; and the fact that the boss has HP is mostly just to serve as a method of giving the encounter a timeframe to completion, and to provide the player a sense that the buttons they're pressing are "doing something".

...But then again, my selective memory may just be glossing over things like Chadarnook and the realities of Refurbisher, lol.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

P11s is boring though.

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Actually yeah, what happened to "floor 3s".

I know this is entirely-subjective, but it feels like "Floor 3" used to be more... memorable? Something that built linear momentum and complexity as you worked towards the final floor of a tier — stuff like CC, Halicarnassus, Guardian, Omega.

Then somehow "Floor 3" has become repositioned into a weirdly-rote, drawn-out snoozefest, while "Floor 2" has sometimes (but not consistently) taken over the old "Floor 3" role as the "ahhh, ahhh, ahhhhhhh" fight.

I'm not saying that everything has to be akin to (crosses body) Shadowkeeper's "Bill & Ted's Spatial Reasoning Adventure", but I am a little confused by why "Floor 3" has started to frequently become a prolonged "going through the motions because I want pants" experience.

savage and raid design has been stale for years. bosses do the same 50 mechanics in a row on a timeline for 10 min with the one or 2 wipe mechs if anyone is dead.

I am surprised they still call it a raid while it is just a glorified mini-trial while Alex was the last actual 8man raid.