The Binding Coil of Bahamut (T1 - T9) - Thoughts?

[LunarEmerald]

people keep thinking the burn method is a quick way to a t6 win

they could not be more wrong

It takes pretty insane dps to burn. You have to be able to easily skip the second hornet or you don't have the dps for burn. And skipping the second hornet isn't exactly easy.

[Yumi_umi]

But tbh i honestly am not looking forward to the next end game raid content segment.
It's already made ppl so toxic so i wonder what the next part will do.
It's becoming less casual now imo. With all the atma grind and super omg hardcore static coil only content no wonder ppl are complaining as much as me.

[SarcasmMisser]

You asked for insight but put up the bat signal for every player that has a problem with progression raid content ever.

It is what it is, progression raid content, and for 4 bosses it's incredibly meaty and satisfies anyone who loves grueling progression. It's there for people who love this stuff and so far it is living up to expectations, hopefully for future raids they at least keep this standard of encounter design (after all, next raid is looking to have unfortunate timing with next wow expansion).

[jars]

It takes pretty insane dps to burn. You have to be able to easily skip the second hornet or you don't have the dps for burn. And skipping the second hornet isn't exactly easy.

I cleared it with both methods and the burn method was pretty much a crap shot on repeatability(we just barely had dps to skip the second wasp)

now if a group in pf wants to do it I politely excuse myself because most of them are going for their first kill and they will not get it with the burn method

[Woona]

Figured i'd post it up in here. All in all I've very much enjoyed coil. I felt like 1-4 were decently paced and hard in their own ways then when my static got to t5 we just hit a wall. Our FC actually almost broke up over a decision to use a different strat. We went out on a limb and picked up some newish players and caught them up and ended up killing it server 4th with our new strat. It was so exhilarating when she finally died. I hadn't had that much fun since i was back in WOTLK.
Que turns 6-9
My new FC static came into this content ready to kill everything, but wow were we a bit surprised. Like many guilds, we hit a wall on t7, and lost 2 of our members to it. This was prolly the saddest point of me playing FFxiv. I thought, this is it, we're done. But another guild had had a static break down and luckily 2 of their top notch members wanted to continue raiding, so we created a LS (both groups had officers and ties + guild housing). Our new static hit the ground running. We blew through 6-8 and finally came up against the White Raven.
Turn 9...just WOW. Killing it was way more satisfying than Twintania was.
All in all, i had a lot of fun and great memories in all the coils. We had a mishap of my scholar healer blowing healer lb 3 right as we went into Heavensfall phase in t9. The laughs we all had. And though we run it on farm now till new content it doesn't make it any less fun than the first time.

[WiseWolfHolo]

Overall square wanted more people to do coil by putting high item level rewards in it, ok sounds good, but to increase the difficulty to a level of well 1 person messed up at any given point and wipes the party was a terrible design feature. It is like the whole second coil update is more about 1 shots than anything, example is blight in 6, the petrification rotations in 7, the missile and shield mechanic in 8 and haven't seen 9. This along with the already toxic community of know it or gtfo gives players no reason to even attempt it, whether or not it gives the highest ilvl which I highly disagree with because some of us are not blessed by RNJesus.If only 10% of the community did 1-5 I bet maybe 5% or lower do any second coil because I rarely see any PF groups, but again just because I don't see those do not mean that there are not less people doing coil, it is just a wake up to SE to acknowledge that putting similar ilvl gear for tomes or in coil will not make more players to do coil. You can lead the horse to water SE but you cannot make it drink.

[Ryuko]

I like to think of Coil 1-4 as SE priming us for raid mechanics... With Turn 5 being the first real test, and 6-9 starting to get into the reaaaaal difficult stuff.

Coil Turn One introduced us to the idea of needing to both silence and dodge things (Mini ADS). It taught us the mechanic of feeding slimes, although people who had good gear didn't even have to bother with feeding slimes. There was a slight DPS check on Turn 1, because the snakes would slowly deal more and more damage until it was impossible for tanks/healers to keep up -- without being fed more slimes, of course. So, DPS really needed to give it their all and know what they were doing. Fortunately, besides melee baiting tailswipe and ranged stepping out of pools, there wasn't much movement required. Just step off a platform when it lights up. Coordinating two snakes dying at the same time was also a fun new way to make fights a bit more thought provoking for DPS.

Turn Two, sans 'enrage' method, introduced the first mechanic in raid that required us to actually watch our debuff timers (due to how rot/immunity works). Many groups would make a specific formation to 'pass' rot, even going as far as to add numbers to people. Latency was somewhat important due to the laser beam, and I feel this is the first coil fight where people REALLY benefited from memorizing the boss's ability rotation. Don't forget -- before echo buff was added (and the fight was adjusted), the paralyze from High Voltage was very, very unforgiving and COULD wipe the raid. A lot of pressure was put on paladins and bards to interrupt that with silence.

Turn Three was a fun romp through the underground, simulating our 'descent'. It introduced platforms which didn't come into play again until Turn 8, but they do not play a huge role on that turn either.

Turn Four did not have any mechanics like ADS did, but it was a very strong DPS and Healing check before the introduction of echo. The first dreadnought absolutely must be killed before phase 4, or it's basically a wipe. I remember when my static first did this fight, before many people had gear... It was hard. We had to use pots to pass this point. Besides that, this fight is all about positioning and kill order. This is the first coil turn where I really saw a divide in strategy, because you REALLY had a choice about which priority you wanted to kill mobs in. For instance, in phase 5... there is a dreadnought and a soldier+knight. Which do you kill first? Most groups I've been in will kill the soldier+knight first, while other groups prefer burning the dreadnought. It's all about preference. Healers, too, must learn how to prioritize their healing, because phase 6 is incredibly healing intensive. Tanks must know when to pop cooldowns. It's all very tight timing, but no sort of real mechanics to outright avoid (except Pox, which you can avoid like slipstream).

Turn 5 was probably so hard, at the start, for two reasons. SE made this fight so that people would really have to push their jobs to the limit, even with the best gear. It wasn't uncommon for groups to easily deal with the mechanics, but be unable to win because they hit the enrage timer. It basically took all the lessons taught in 1-4 and forced players to use them. Character placement was very important for the fireball/conflag phase (call back to turn 1+4). Dodging things is very important for divebombs/twisters (call back to turn 2). Using stuns (rather than silences) was important on the dreadknights, although miasma/stone/lethargy does help (call back to turn 1+2). Placement, again, comes into play with hatches and making sure you're not dragging liquid hell to the wrong places. Turns 1-4 helps prepare players for Turn 5, but the dps/healing check on it was so tight that it took many groups several weeks to conquer. I am very, very glad SE decided to stop providing the echo buff beyond 15% because now the fight is doable for the majority of players if they learn the mechanics. It is unlikely a group will hit enrage without a lot of people nearly dying. The snake phase is much easier to deal with, as well.

I believe Coil 6-9 is considerably more difficult, mechanic-wise. These fights are SO MECHANIC-HEAVY. By that I mean, there are mechanics you absolutely must obey because one mess-up can and often does wipe the raid. The only similar mechanic before that was in T5 -- twisters (mpking others), and divebombs. Stand in the wrong place and all your teammates could get hit. Rot from T2 would also be an insta-wipe, but with the introduction of the enrage method, people were able to bypass that. The enrage in T6 happens if you choose to use the burn method, but you could also use a superslug method if your group is incapable of doing the burn method. You CAN hit the enrage in T7 if multiple people die throughout the fight, but that's only happened to my group once (because we had a LOT OF DEATHS in the beginning). It also prevents groups from 'holding' the boss in phase 1 to get all renauds down while it is easiest to do. Again, T6 and T7 are all about mechanics. I personally love the premise of T8 because you have SO MANY CHOICES about which towers to pop first (although of course a lot of people will prefer one way). I love that all the turns have given us so many choices about how we want to do the fight... it's easy for groups to adapt, and I personally feel these fights are more melee heavy than 1-5. For example, melee won't even become a possible target for fireball in T7 if they are within the boss's range. They do, however, need to avoid the boss's own AoE... that's not hard, though. "On-the-fly" communication starts becoming super important in T8 and T9, due to the randomness factor of certain things.

[razzgrizz3]

i think they need reevaluate their design of endgame content. put in less one shot mechanics that rely heavily upon split second reaction and most of all PERFECT PING. major bosses should have some of their moves on global timers instead of phase pushes that completely break some encounters, why are we being penalized for playing our classes perfectly and puting out good dps/ for wanting to put that awesome gear to good use?

[Xatsh]

I have nothing against the mechanics honestly it is challenging content. I like the fights design.

My issue is the same as it was in turns 1-5... which is the lockouts. It horribly annoying to log in day in and day out and have to make a decision do I get a pug for the person missing a day due to rl and screw them over for the week or do we run circles around the housing area for 3 hours because we are bored. Gets old and is not fun in the least.

It is forcing segregation in guilds and honestly just creating a horribly toxic atmosphere inside guilds.

SE needs to get away from content that promotes/Requires use of statics and get more into content that promotes guild unity and growth. That is my opinion. Or at least allow it so guild members can help each other in the content, I am sick of seeing 27 ppl online... and none of them being able to do coil because each group is missing 1 or 2 ppl.

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I think the coil lockouts have created a mentality within the community which believes that you must be in a static group in order to progress in the game. This idea is incredibly toxic to the community as it forces players into small exclusive cliques of people who only play together and at times even look down upon others. Even those who would normally be very friendly and helpful have no choice but to exclude even their friends and free company members because helping them could infringe upon the weekly progress of their static group.

In other words, lockouts cause otherwise kind people to act like assholes.

It is my opinion that this aspect of the game (lockouts) is the single greatest threat to the long term success of FFXIV.

We understand the need for content gates, but do it in a way that lets me play with more than 7 other people.