Less Memorization - More Reaction? (Trials/Raids/Bosses)

[Catwho]

One of the most difficult fights in FFXI 75 cap was "scripted" - Proto-Ultima in Limbus. You knew that Dissipation, a nasty ability was coming every 20% and you'd better have a BLM or RDM/DRK on point to stun it. You knew when someone was getting targeted by Citadel Buster and that you had about 30 seconds to GTFO (only element of randomnness was who got targeted. If they were a tank, they MIGHT live.)

And yet groups still struggled to clear this fight. We had an easier time with Omega, who was a lot more random, but whose abilities were a bit less totally-wipey.

[Kaisha]

One of the most difficult fights in FFXI 75 cap was "scripted" - Proto-Ultima in Limbus. You knew that Dissipation, a nasty ability was coming every 20% and you'd better have a BLM or RDM/DRK on point to stun it. You knew when someone was getting targeted by Citadel Buster and that you had about 30 seconds to GTFO (only element of randomnness was who got targeted. If they were a tank, they MIGHT live.)

It was an easy fight if people weren't being stupid.

The bigger problem were the stakes involved. You needed 6 items to go into that fight, and there was a 50k entry fee + 3 day wait between attempts, so you were looking at a minimum 18 days to get one Ultima pop set farmed unless you had a large LS which could split up and cover different Temenos areas on a given run and having the same person lot all the pop items since they weren't tradable back then.

Didn't help that Omega generally had the better drops and only needed 4 items (12 days) to proceed to fight.

Haven't read through the entire thread, but surely someone has mentioned the final boss of Stone Vigil HM. That fight is entirely reaction based. If you got hit by something, that was your own fault for not paying attention to the bosses movements.

It was also a clear indicator of how poor this game's handling of AoE hitboxes are, since you could be clearly out of the attack, but still get hit by the attack because your position was snapshotted before the animation for the attack went off.