Turn 2 "easy mode", disables every mechanic in the fight

[Vire]

So again, skipping mechanics. You condone it here because, oh, you do it, but in turn 2 it's sad and pathetic because, oh, you didn't do it.



Yeah, people tend to be butthurt when ezmode strats are discovered for content they had to do "the hard way".

I can keep hearing the opinion "ADS is so easy, it's kind of sad people have to skip them." Um, the trash mobs in WP are easy, but we still sleep and skip them. How sad and pathetic of us.

Everyone against this strategy is a hypocrite, assuming of course you haven't ever skipped a mob or locked something out or burnt Garuda down past her plume phase (hello, mechanic skipping!)

You would have a valid point if skipping ADS's mechanics let you kill the fight faster. But as it stands you actually have to go out of your way to do so. I don't really care either way just pointing out the inconsistency in your examples.

[newbie]

However, I would have to ask the forums. Would you consider this an exploit or not? What are your thoughts on this method and its utility?

Not an exploit but broken. The ADS enrage mechanic should function the same as the pulses on T4 and kill off the party shortly after. If you can heal through it then what's the point.

[Umero]

I don't think that is an exploit. it's just a strategy that fewer ppl has yet to discover. Destroying as many sector nodes as possible so the boss will be weakened to a point that the party can endure long enough to down it during enrage mode. It's a strategy and it's working as intended IMHO.

[Gardes]

A robot getting angry. Hmm.

[Colvin]

Thanks. Thanks for bringing this up. There is always someone who has to call the cops on the party.

[Marishi-Ten]

Out of curiosity, it's an exploit when people think for themselves and form their own strategies, but not an exploit when parties just run content like "yes men"? I don't get it. Do we really want to berate and stifle creativity and thinking outside of the box?

I neither condemn nor condone the rage timer, but it seems to me if Square wanted parties to wipe, they would have buffed it's damage long before now. The rage timer seems to be a queue to "hurry up and kill the mob lest you won't survive" mechanic and not so much a "Time's up! One shot time". It would take all of 5 minutes to change the AOE damage from around 1600 every 5 seconds to 9000 every 2 seconds. The way the AOE fundamentally works seems to lead it's working as it's intended:

The AOE waves come every 5 seconds
The AOE hits the party for 1600 damage (roughly)
You can lock abilities that ADS has access to by killing the nodes (Including Allagan Rot)
Killing the nodes grants ADS a significant defense or damage buff (kinda like a rage timer/DD Race/Healing Race right?)

Why not pulse the AOE every 2 seconds? 1 second? Why not buff the hits to an astronomical number if you're not supposed to live though at least some of it? Why fight lesser nodes at all and just have ADS have full access to all abilities with huge amounts of defense? Wouldn't that be the "dev intended" way?

ADS is a big check and balance. You can stop rot, but at the price of a massive buff it gets. You can rage ADS at the price of hard hitting AOE waves. What's the difference in letting it rage and killing all the nodes? What makes one an exploit but not the other? It's circular logic. If we want to look at the fight in a granular view, the fight is designed as risk/reward scenario and there is no difference between kill all nodes or letting it rage. It's a different path down the same road.

In the spirit of science and testing, My FC attempted to rage ADS. It's not as easy as people make it out to be. Gear, Skill, and most importantly, coordination are all in play. We only attempted it once more for fun than anything else but it seemed to me that it isn't any less viable than a standard rot pass. You are simply trading the rot pass for a healing race. No different than if you chose to go left, right, or kill all the nodes on the way to ADS.

On the rage run by the way, we did wipe (I wasn't really paying attention, it was late and I was one of the White Mage's).

On a final thought, parties can't keep the rage going for prolonged amounts of time. Healers can't keep it up forever and the longer the fight lasts, the higher the ratio that someone will make a mistake, a Medica or Cure 3 will be missed, or MP will run out causing a wipe. It's not viable for everyone just like WP and AK speed runs aren't viable for under geared parties. It's just an alternate way to complete an instance. How can that be construed as wrong?

[IzumiRaito]

I did t2 enrage mode today in a pug group. I was playing as whm with only relic +0 and full dl. No more than 2 players had twinania level gear. Most were just having a few ilvl90. We won at 2 try, without any voice chat.

[Astarica]

In modern MMORPG, 'hurry up' means you have about 5 seconds before you wipe. Due to poorly constructed resource systems, virtually every MMORPG has infinite healing resources which makes it impossible to consume healing resources to the point where they run out without the ability to do outrageous amount of damage. Often, outrageous means 'one hit kill' because anything less than that can often be healed through by good players. As long as players have practically infinite healing resources, enrage always needs to be instant kill to compensate. Devs generally way underestimate the ability of players to outlast any content that doesn't instanty kill you, but you'll never hear them admit they're too dumb to figure out how to kill players instantly (nuke for a billion damage does the trick) which is why instead we get all the politically correct PR spins about 'players come up with creative ways to win'.

[LiadansWhisper]

In modern MMORPG, 'hurry up' means you have about 5 seconds before you wipe. Due to poorly constructed resource systems, virtually every MMORPG has infinite healing resources which makes it impossible to consume healing resources to the point where they run out without the ability to do outrageous amount of damage. Often, outrageous means 'one hit kill' because anything less than that can often be healed through by good players. As long as players have practically infinite healing resources, enrage always needs to be instant kill to compensate. Devs generally way underestimate the ability of players to outlast any content that doesn't instanty kill you, but you'll never hear them admit they're too dumb to figure out how to kill players instantly (nuke for a billion damage does the trick) which is why instead we get all the politically correct PR spins about 'players come up with creative ways to win'.

This game does not have infinite healing resources. Not by a long shot.

[Marishi-Ten]

In modern MMORPG, 'hurry up' means you have about 5 seconds before you wipe. Due to poorly constructed resource systems, virtually every MMORPG has infinite healing resources which makes it impossible to consume healing resources to the point where they run out without the ability to do outrageous amount of damage. Often, outrageous means 'one hit kill' because anything less than that can often be healed through by good players. As long as players have practically infinite healing resources, enrage always needs to be instant kill to compensate. Devs generally way underestimate the ability of players to outlast any content that doesn't instanty kill you, but you'll never hear them admit they're too dumb to figure out how to kill players instantly (nuke for a billion damage does the trick) which is why instead we get all the politically correct PR spins about 'players come up with creative ways to win'.

Though the devs are human and make mistakes, It's hard to accept that they didn't know what they were doing when making the rage timer not one shot players. They are paid to come up with new ideas and anticipate strategies and work around people may find. They do this work for a living. That not just one, but multiple departments were that short sighted that they couldn't see people could rage it, survive for a relatively short amount of time, and win? If this is true, then some personnel need to be let go.

I was under the impression that the further you progressed in Turns, the more difficult it became (except Turn 3. I don't understand you Turn 3). If the rage timers were to operate the same in Turn 2 and Turn 4, wouldn't it be easier to use the same code? Copy/paste seems easier to do than writing the scripting for each differently. Why go through the extra work if it's supposed to be the same? Would most agree that Turn 1 is easier than Turns 4 and 5? Wouldn't that indicate that Turn 2's rage is working normally to have it weaker than 4's?

The argument that rage is an exploit can also be applied to any kind of speed run. I have enough gear/gear/<insert any 1337 noun you can come up with> that I can ignore some parts or mechanics of a fight, but I better not do that. Here, let me take off my my ilvl90 gear and put on all AK gear. Oh wait, that means I need multiple gear sets for events which is what I oh so hated about the despised Final Fantasy XI MMO. Please limit the gear that I have taken time to acquire to the point where I can only wear it for two Turns and around main cities. Isn't this the definition of "Double Standard"?

Isn't this what we don't want? Weren't people ready to burn down Square's HQ in the event they brought gear swapping or situational gear into play? Doesn't this defeat the purpose of a vertical gear system?

I don't understand why people care in the first place. It affects no one but the people doing it. They will eventually lower the difficulty of the first 5 turns anyway so who cares if people found a way to make it slightly easier (different would be a better term) than the norm. Exploit or no, do we really want to be the lemmings that just accept the way things are and start a war with anyone who thinks different than the status quo?

We don't need to sing their praises, but we should at least acknowledge that they formed their own original strategy and it worked. Something that none us thought to try.