Did the game get too complicated, or am I just an idiot?

[RapBreon]

The only real fight where I've actually had an issue so far is A4. A1, I can pop my buffs first thing and I'll sit on Wildfires until after the bots land again. A2... Well, not really as much use for it there as most mobs die before it goes off. A3 is fairly simple to manage it as there's plenty of time each phase. It's mostly A4 phase 2 that gets me. After the first leg is shattered, I save my Wildfire for the beginning of the second, which usually goes off fine. It's when I'm dealing with dolls, lasers and Quarantine at the same time that it gets messy. Which I'm sure it does for other classes.

I usually am near top dps on Alex fights, so I've gotten down pretty well, imo. It just sucks getting punished so hard for unavoidable mechanics. I'm not sure how hard it is for other classes to reapply their big buffs like BotD or Enochian, but having to rely on multiple 90+ second cooldowns and a 15 second window just to be competitive is really annoying and can be hard to recover from if something does screw up. Especially when several of the cooldowns don't even line up well, like Reload and Hypercharge, and you're left relying on RNG procs to just not lose your dps too much. That's not about skill, it's about luck, which always a bad design choice, in my mind.

I can't speak for BLM. But if I get sucked up after a Geirskogul, I lose BoTD and become a 2.0 DRG. There is no 'luck' in this situation, I took the chance to Geirskogul before a Quarantine and paid for it. Whilst the mechanic itself is not avoidable, you can certainly mitigate its effect on your total DPS. If you were to play around this mechanic (as Square presumably intends) you would not be 'punished so hard', no more than most other classes.

Another approach would be to queue a DF A4 and just not do your rotation optimally. Sit there counting the globals (or use a stop-watch or some such) between each Quarantine phase then multiply the total amount of globals by your recast timer. Repeating for each leg (1 is less of an issue than 2 though). This way you won't need to track when someone else gets sucked up (which can be challenging depending on the situation); you'll have timers and - with practice - a rhythm and feel for when each Quarantine. Failing that you could employ a stop-watch (or an ACT plugin) so you know exactly when each Quarantine comes. Regardless, the outcome will be Quarantine never screwing with your DPS cooldowns ever again for 20 odd minutes of work.

People would argue that this is ridiculous and shouldn't be required. To that I agree for the most part and it isn't. If you as a player are OK with not performing 100% then sure. I personally don't do it, not worth the effort for a DF level encounter when I can just press my buttons and win easily anyway. But blaming the class/team/players/game/RNG/insertscapegoat is typically misplaced (though not always), not when you can do something about it.

I'm bored and just felt like sharing my philosophy.

Edit: Spelling.