Please give us "harder" 4-man's

[Alukah]

Also I'm asking for OPTIONAL harder 4-man's with an ilvl sync. If people cry about it, they can stick to hard-modes.

What kind of rewards would they have compared to the regular dungeons? Nowadays people seem to worry more about the shinies than the challenge.

I think 2.5 is the perfect setup for this, as of 2.4 all ARR dungeons will have a "hard mode", the only four dungeons missing a hard mode are the 1.0 dungeons (Toto-rak, Cutter's, DD and AV) if they follow the usual 1 new dungeon 2 hard mode dungeons it would leave two extra dungeons that could serve as "extreme", perhaps AV and DD.

[Parz3val]

What kind of rewards would they have compared to the regular dungeons? Nowadays people seem to worry more about the shinies than the challenge.

I think 2.5 is the perfect setup for this, as of 2.4 all ARR dungeons will have a "hard mode", the only four dungeons missing a hard mode are the 1.0 dungeons (Toto-rak, Cutter's, DD and AV) if they follow the usual 1 new dungeon 2 hard mode dungeons it would leave two extra dungeons that could serve as "extreme", perhaps AV and DD.

Higher ilvl, dyeable variants of the same dungeon gear is one possibility. Titles. Perhaps an Allied Seal bonus for completion. Purchasable, dyeable Allagan gear or Augmented AF or rare Housing Materials utilizing a new Savage Currency. Mirrors, even Mirror-equivalents for things like Ramuh weapons, etc.

Plenty of good options.

Some of these may be poor examples but this' just to demonstrate the possibilities in small.

[Amused]

I miss old Pharos difficulty.

[Nestama]

I miss the old Pharos difficulty as well... heck, I don't even know why they removed trash mobs leading to bosses.

Anyway, harder dungeons and a Savage LotA/ST would be welcome. As I can't do Coil with the people I want to play with and EX Primal farming gets incredibly boring over time, an actually difficult 4-man dungeon or 24-man raid would be welcome. I want to enjoy this game, but the current 4-man dungeons are far too easy (snooze-fest) and ST is just... well, insultingly easy (easier than LotA).

[myahele]

Nice suggestion. As it stands HM is relatively easy now. Thogh when they 1st arrived (haukke, pharos sirius and copperbell) we somewhat challenging before they nerf it. People still die in pharos sirius.

But I agree, atleast on "savage" dungeon will be nice. Somewhere between HM and coil level in difficulty.

[Ultimatecalibur]

At release, Pharos Sirius had three cases of "That <adjective> Boss..." and several trash groups that could wipe a party out. Add in that it had no worthwhile drops and you have a recipe for a dungeon few want to run.

Simon the Unsinkable had a deceptively large arena (because of the damage areas that would be added in a random pattern), fairly tough adds, and every AoE inflicting a stacking debuff that did crazy damage if you got to many stacks.

The Corrupted Sprite trash mobs had Banish III, a spell that could take off most of an i70 tank's hp off if it wasn't interrupted.

Zu's adds were annoyingly powerful and it was possible for Zu to enrage even if you had only broken the eggs about to hatch.

Siren was basically a 4 man hardmode trail at the end of the dungeon. She would randomly choose between doing a variation of Ifrit's charge or the Hydra's Fear Itself. She had the ability to charm targets unless they were at max hp and an ability that lowered healing potency to make things worse. Adds would spawn through out the fight and were capable of stun locking the healer or tank if they were not killed.

These things would not have been so bad if the rewards were nearly unuseable i60 gear in a dungeon that could give i90s trouble.

This is not saying that I don't want Harder dungeons just that I would prefer adequate rewards for doing it. I hope the Sastasha (HM), Sunken Temple (HM) and Snowcloak are designed to handle and reward characters in i110 gear.

[Amused]

At release, Pharos Sirius had three cases of "That <adjective> Boss..." and several trash groups that could wipe a party out. Add in that it had no worthwhile drops and you have a recipe for a dungeon few want to run.

I never cared about the rewards. I ran Pharos Sirius because I enjoyed the dungeon itself.

[Mugiawara]

This game nerfs every single something when you turn around.
This is why 4man PT's suck now...Zero challenge.
I sadly never had gotten to chance to play PS pre-nerf...I did however play pre-nerf AK.
I was stressed to hell and beyond with that dungeon and got irritated like no one's bussiness, I felt
so accomplished when I FINALLY finished it. I miss those feelings in 4man.

[Kyros]

The Corrupted Sprite trash mobs had Banish III, a spell that could take off most of an i70 tank's hp off if it wasn't interrupted.

You know, I actually liked this. It was the first time since forever that I had felt the need to stun/interrupt/silence something in a dungeon in ages.

Regardless, I do think the reward/difficulty ratio was off. Kind of the same argument was made by Ramuh: A fight that challenges i110 players but gives i100 rewards is not good design. I'm pretty sure Ramuh is impossible to beat at i85, which is the minimum required to enter.

[RyuDragnier]

They didn't even need to do that. Players (tank included) just had to not attack the main boss whenever adds were up. That fight was incredibly manageable, but it required people to hold their horses and not mindlessly zerg.

This is part of why people had problems on this dungeon. The rule of the first boss was "stop DPSing the boss when the adds come out, until they're dead." It was the opposite of a DPS race, it was a "tortoise vs hare" scenario. The 2nd boss you needed the DPS to know how to do their job great (not good, GREAT) to get rid of the adds fast, and the healer needed to know how to heal well and anticipate things to avoid the party wiping. 3rd boss as far as I could remember was always trash. Siren however, dear god those adds used to have quite a bit of HP and could hit hard. It was hard to take them out if the DPS weren't concentrating on the same target, and if the tank didn't grab them it was possible for somebody to get that annoying song on them while getting attacked by the mob, and for the healer to be unable to take it off just due to the damage being taken.

The dungeon was the pinnacle of hard mode 4-mans, but the complaining from people who were unable to get through it simply because they didn't know how to play their class right and cooperate with each other made it pretty hard for the dungeon to keep up its hard-mode style, which pretty much helped lead to the nerf.