Merchant's Tale is boss HP sponges and carboard trash

Mind you, I haven't tried yet running this in parties so your mileage may vary. I have only done this solo. I am not BiS, but decently geared.

- Trash just keels over and dies before I can even start my burst. Incredibly frustrating.

- Bosses are literal HP sponges. I takes the last boss over 3 minutes to just show you all the basic sets of mechanics, and you'll probably need 6 to 8 min to solo it down.

Feels very lopsided to me. Is it any better in parties?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Mind you, I haven't tried yet running this in parties so your mileage may vary. I have only done this solo. I am not BiS, but decently geared.

- Trash just keels over and dies before I can even start my burst. Incredibly frustrating.

- Bosses are literal HP sponges. I takes the last boss over 3 minutes to just show you all the basic sets of mechanics, and you'll probably need 6 to 8 min to solo it down.

Feels very lopsided to me. Is it any better in parties?

---

It is better in a full party, but you still very much feel the sponginess; it's taking about as long with a party, as previous variant bosses took when solo. Even with great dps and minimal mistakes I'm seeing the endbosses taking over 5 minutes and looping mechanics multiple times before they are down.

The sponginess is especially painful against the secret boss while solo as once it goes through all its mechanics it'll start combining two of it's earlier mechanics at once together with its instakill mechanic, and will loop back to that awful combo like ever 90 seconds until it's dead.

They're literal sponges. As in, not sponges.

It's only slightly better in a party. It's a very lazy job, I don't know why they did it, but it's boring and kills any desire to replay.

the bosses need time to show you their mechanics step by step. how else would the players of ff14 learn the fights? *sarcasm*

It only takes ~3 minutes longer than a regular dungeon on average unless people are doing horrible damage and is in-line with how long the rest of the variant dungeons took, I don't see the issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RajNish

It's only slightly better in a party. It's a very lazy job, I don't know why they did it, but it's boring and kills any desire to replay.

---

Agreed. I won't be be replaying it, personally.

I mean, mobs were balanced pretty sensibly but I found the fights against the floating carpet lady and the dog-lion thing beyond tedious. I was with three other players and the fact that I am mediocre aside, the other players on the team seemed more than capable. On both runs I found myself looking at the boss' HP bar after probably five minutes of plugging away at them... and was dismayed to see that their health was still at something like 60%.

This is my opinion, and mine alone - and it isn't based on ANY fact..... but to me it felt like they dumped Extreme-level HP bosses onto a Normal-level map.

Anyway, my desire to replay this has completely evaporated.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hydralus

It only takes ~3 minutes longer than a regular dungeon on average unless people are doing horrible damage and is in-line with how long the rest of the variant dungeons took, I don't see the issue.

---

you found the issue

Yeah I tried it on sage and it was just tedious. I was hoping they would adjust the actions to be more useful when at less than 4 or actually scale things for less than 4. I was actually interested in this Variant because I love the "going into a storybook" type of idea but I wanted to try to explore and learn things on my own since everyone will just be using guides (or already is from what I saw of PF descriptions) and they just didn't fix the damage sponge aspect from the previous ones at all. Plus you get hit and it takes half your health. So that lessens the enjoyment when you're soloing as anything that isn't a tank. If the bosses went down faster, I wouldn't mind as much. But the damage sponge nature just makes the whole experience unenjoyable.

I'll end up sticking to just doing it with friends or getting led around by the nose in matched groups that are just following a guide.

I had literally no issue with the older variant bosses in terms of HP durability. It seemed decently balanced to me, even though I could skip some late mechanics, which I assumed also came from me not playing a support job and being BiS back then.

It's on par with the other variant dungeons. A boss that takes 8 minutes to die is hardly a "sponge."

And it's way worse in parties, as I've yet to be in one where people had the proper actions for their jobs... I think the last boss in my last party last night took 15 minutes to kill, so I've decided to stick to solo after that (we had a tank and healer yet everyone but me had shield and heals as actions...).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pricia

It's on par with the other variant dungeons. A boss that takes 8 minutes to die is hardly a "sponge."

And it's way worse in parties, as I've yet to be in one where people had the proper actions for their jobs... I think the last boss in my last party last night took 15 minutes to kill, so I've decided to stick to solo after that (we had a tank and healer yet everyone but me had shield and heals as actions...).

---

Yep, I've been running solo too. Sometimes I queue with a team since I just like chatting with people but having done all the varient dungeons solo dozens of times, this new one is on par with the time is takes to finish those.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pricia

It's on par with the other variant dungeons. A boss that takes 8 minutes to die is hardly a "sponge."

And it's way worse in parties, as I've yet to be in one where people had the proper actions for their jobs... I think the last boss in my last party last night took 15 minutes to kill, so I've decided to stick to solo after that (we had a tank and healer yet everyone but me had shield and heals as actions...).

---

I checked it out, so far I seem to have a consistent +25-30% in kill time solo comparatively to older ones.

I usually ran Samurai in endwalker variants and it would work fine and be ahead of clearing. Have to test this one though.

I did the Variant on BLM and PLD, solo as well and I thought they were far less obnoxious and actually fun compared to some older Variant dungeon bosses.

The bosses might have a good amount of HP but the fights are actually fun to do so I don't.
Really, after how much we breeze through other content and bosses nowadays, even new ones, I actually welcome those bosses taking a normal amount of time for a change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Mind you, I haven't tried yet running this in parties so your mileage may vary. I have only done this solo. I am not BiS, but decently geared.

- Trash just keels over and dies before I can even start my burst. Incredibly frustrating.

- Bosses are literal HP sponges. I takes the last boss over 3 minutes to just show you all the basic sets of mechanics, and you'll probably need 6 to 8 min to solo it down.

Feels very lopsided to me. Is it any better in parties?

---

That's exactly what it felt like when I was soloing Sil'dih and Rokkon. This is the design. Get to enjoy the bosses fully and not be zerged by mobs if alone is the intention.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

I had literally no issue with the older variant bosses in terms of HP durability. It seemed decently balanced to me, even though I could skip some late mechanics, which I assumed also came from me not playing a support job and being BiS back then.

---

I remember on sage with BiS the older bosses still had sponginess but it was less than this current set. And trash didn't kill me solo but I was fighting it a bit more. In this one like you said, trash dies if i look at at it and bosses take forever. And I'm not quite BiS but I'm 789 so not that far away. This one really doesn't seem as balanced.

My main gripe with older Variants solo is the actions don't really seem to make an appreciable difference. I can use them or not use them and end up the same. Bozja Lost Actions seemed to make more of a difference so I think they could retain the sponginess if they wanted if they gave us better actions that mattered when they were applied.

First impressions definitely seem like the bosses HP are more balanced towards a 8 man group...

I’ve only done the normal version solo I don’t have any friends lol and as a Paladin, and once as a solo Scholar, so it was basically cheating lol (*Laughs in Hallowed Ground / Critical Adloquium*). It did feel like the bosses were a big HP sponge-y. The Lone Swordsman boss was the worst offender, the fight really felt like it dragged on a bit too long. Though maybe my dps just sucks lol

I can appreciate what they were trying to do by having the mechanics loop repeatedly so players have a chance to learn them, but at the same time it ended up feeling more like ‘god there’s still 40% left?!’ than ‘I am now super confident about these mechanics’. Like, I don’t think we need to learn them that much, we got it the first 140 loops lol. Maybe?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

And I'm not quite BiS but I'm 789 so not that far away.

---

FYI ilvl doesn't matter for the variant difficulty. I don't know if substats matter, but all gear is synced down or up to 765, so that 789 ilvl wouldn't have made a difference. You, in theory, should be able to go in with ilvl 690 and perform very similar to your gear.

The new Advanced mode is absolutely great, and it's an very good middle ground of difficulty... Easy enough to do with just the Duty Finder, no need to form a specific party for it, just need 4 people who can play the game.
But the fights are complex enough that it's not a free win or just straight up sleep inducing, you have to actually pay attention to the fight.

So I'm actually annoyed at how lazy the job skill system is, they made it so HP on all jobs are the same. Further more Bosses take ages to go down like the thread implies but the trash feels so bad half of the content is bassically waiting around for the "actual content" which is the boss fights that take ages.

They need to firstly let us have more then 2 Actions, 5 like Occult Add actual custom actions that will change up how a job plays add PASSIVES that can make a job more tanky sacrificing damage output, Add a passive that will allow healing added healing spells to benefit from your jobs MAIN STAT; so taking a healing skill isn't really great unless you wanted to be a dedicated healer (reguardless of role) add wacky dps buttons so you can be a funny DPS white mage with quick casts ect. ADD COOL STUFF not generic tacked on occult actions or really bland skills like variant dungeons; you'd think they'd go wild on what you can do because the main game has such a stale BORING snoozefest of a job system but no it seems they aren't even capable of that.

Further more, cutdown the boss time and add ACTUAL AOE Trash damage. Right now this content suffers because it feels safe, everyone brings a rez pretty much and that heal skill so everyone feels safe, I personally don't like that you can solo this content in a MMO (I can see why because some people wanna be able to choose their path) so perhaps a solo mode that's slow and way less effective where you have a self heal skill and are defensive enough to tank works.

I think for me I rather they actually had a baseline party system instead of making isolation solo content constantly funnily enough I want to play a MMO not a solo boring game.

I tried all three bosses on gunbreaker tonight and the difference from sage was significant. The additional health and mitigation really makes the difference. Getting hit only took off a fraction of health, so it allows the mechanics to be studied and learned easier.

I think if they adjust Rampart to have a higher defense and a HP boost, that would help non-tanks a lot when attempting to solo.

I haven't tried it on viper yet.

Bosses were still HP sponges. I looked at some points after many mechanics thinking "They're still at X%??" but the better survivability serves to mitigate that factor more.

However, not everyone has a tank option so there are improvements they can make to the non-tank experience.

I have only done Normal so far, because I could only get to it today, but I am at 7/13 paths, I will probably do the rest tomorrow, and have fought all 6 bosses, both mid-bosses, all three path bosses, and the secret boss, though obviously I haven't seen all mechanics due to the path-specific mechanics. I've done it all on Machinist, because why wouldn't I, MCH is still the king of solo scenarios. With all that in mind, my takes on it:

The bosses take me just under 6 minutes to kill, like 5:40 or 5:50, consistently so. The fights are fun in themselves, but they definitely overstay their welcome a little, not by a lot, but enough that I start to feel it. I find the primary issue is the way that bosses need to showcase their mechanics every single time, the Genie will always do left and right fireworks, Darya will always give me flashbacks to KH2's Atlantica the exact same way. I understand the need for bosses to showcase their mechanics in a slower pace, but I feel that if it were possible, cutting their HP bars in half, and make them come out swinging full force right away would make the fights much more enjoyable. The thing is, I understand why it is designed this way, and I don't have a proper solution for it, sure it is annoying, but I think I would've died a lot if I had never seen that wind-up phase, the problem is less so with it existing, and with the fact that I have to go through that wind up at least 4 times per path boss, more if farming the glams strikes my fancy.

The secret boss felt remarkably harder than the other three, I died a lot before finally beating it, I don't think playing a Tank would have helped either, as what was getting me were either an instakill mechanic, you probably know the one if you fought it, or a mechanic that stuns you in place and causes you to get hit several times in sequence. I will probably fight it again cuz I didn't get its TT card on the first run, hopefully it will be easier now that I am used to its bullshit.

I don't have any opinions on the trash, the fact is that they want these dungeons to be soloable, independent how you feel about the solo aspect, it is like this for a reason, so I can't imagine an easy fix without radically changing the design ethos of the content, as they need to be doable by non-Tanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

I don't have any opinions on the trash, the fact is that they want these dungeons to be soloable, independent how you feel about the solo aspect, it is like this for a reason, so I can't imagine an easy fix without radically changing the design ethos of the content, as they need to be doable by non-Tanks.

---

Trash wasn't more challenging in the Variants from EW, but at least it didn't keel over after using 2 GCDs within my burst. I'm not asking for much here really..

I've not yet done it solo,

but with grouped play I didn't really notice anything notably sponge-y about this versus ones in the past.

Bit slow mechanically it felt like, but that's about it.

They also hurt quite a bit when solo. I remember doing Sil'dih for one mogtome event and being able to get away with not using variant cure on the bosses if avoiding extra damage and using variant rampart properly but it isn't possible to do that in the Merchant's Tale bosses who auto you for a good chunk of damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valence

Trash wasn't more challenging in the Variants from EW, but at least it didn't keel over after using 2 GCDs within my burst. I'm not asking for much here really..

---

To touch on this, I was actually doing some Sil'dihn Subterrane cuz I never bothered to do all paths so I figured to chip at it slowly, and I noticed this is true, trash is much sturdier, they also hit like wet paper tower, dealing about 2k per hit when I have around 101k HP when sync'd, trash in Merchant's Tale are just glass cannons, they hit like a truck on steroids, but fold just as fast, and if you are on a DPS, some of the "elite" mobs, like the Stone Puppet that is relevant to paths 9 and 10, will actually just kill you if you don't stop attacking it to heal, I say as much because it happened to me, path 10 was my last path and I dozed off super hard, just hitting my rotation without paying attention, when I suddenly kneel over. Second time was simple enough, I just had to cast Variant Cure once before finishing it off, but still.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

to me it felt like they dumped Extreme-level HP bosses onto a Normal-level map.

---

Yanno I think you just hit the nail on the head: it feels like these bosses kept their HP tuning from Advanced and only got their mechanics toned down.

Tho that doesn't much explain the secret boss who also feels just as spongey.

Ran quite a bit of variants for couple of days now, so I can finally chime in better.

Trashes are... trashes, lol. Red carpets hits harder that you just can't stand still to eat everything from them and still live like in EW Variants. But nothing like a little bit of kiting and use what self preservation cooldowns on your hand wouldn't do the job. Plus, if you're soloing on fragile dpses, that's what Variant Cures/Rampart are for.

Bosses are where the HP spongey-feels more noticeable. Like others had mentioned, their AAs also hit quite a decent chunk of your non-tank HP per hit (which is good imho). Mechanics wise they are... alright for what they provide for the intended audience. Not too hard that you cannot figure it out in first few runs & never have to think about them in subsequent runs anymore. But the stale job gameplay we have nowadays simply cannot carry the intrinsic enjoyment past mechanical mastery so unfortunately they're only 'great' for first 3 runs, then diminish to nothingness.

Speaking of 'spongeyness', I felt like they're way more noticeable in group runs. The addition of new action EES that's always accessible for all role means the devs must have tuned the bosses to include this additional damage output the party can put out. But groups, typically casual oriented groups/pug runs (means majority) would almost always opt to bring either Cure, Rampart, and/or Raise. Sometimes the supports also forgo their spirit darts in favor of their own survivability, further gimping their party. When I'm soloing, the overall length for each run was only about 2-3 minutes longer than from what I could vaguely recall of soloing EW variants myself.

Also yes, playing any of these solo with support/rDPS jobs are mind-numbing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

To touch on this, I was actually doing some Sil'dihn Subterrane cuz I never bothered to do all paths so I figured to chip at it slowly, and I noticed this is true, trash is much sturdier, they also hit like wet paper tower, dealing about 2k per hit when I have around 101k HP when sync'd, trash in Merchant's Tale are just glass cannons, they hit like a truck on steroids, but fold just as fast, and if you are on a DPS, some of the "elite" mobs, like the Stone Puppet that is relevant to paths 9 and 10, will actually just kill you if you don't stop attacking it to heal, I say as much because it happened to me, path 10 was my last path and I dozed off super hard, just hitting my rotation without paying attention, when I suddenly kneel over. Second time was simple enough, I just had to cast Variant Cure once before finishing it off, but still.

---

There is also a huge lopsided gap between 2 min bursting trash and normally chipping at it with your filler. The latter actually takes a normal amount of time to get rid of one trash pack, give or take, but seeing the difference in damage between this and all the 2min nukes we got in that 2min meta design of theirs, yeah, you literally pack 20-30s of slow filler in 2 or 3 GCDs of burst.