Soo... apparently Diadem has i280 weapons with higher WD than alexandrian/anima lux

[Lambdafish]

Well, it should not. What should be is that, to have the strongest full set, raiding is necessary. Making raids drops every type of item was a bad move from the start, and only cornered the dev team to either make mostly irelevant content or to piss off raiders.

I don't mind if this changes in SB from the get go, you are right that raid rewards and philosophy could be improved. Changing the entire reward structure of a raid, and how it fundamentally works is fine in an expansion (adding the third difficulty may do this), but changing it mid way through a raid tier, and at the end of an expansion long relic grind is an awful move.

[Reynhart]

but changing it mid way through a raid tier, and at the end of an expansion long relic grind is an awful move.

Big changes can be a big move, right. But, for me, the timelapse between the last big patch and the next expansion is where most people will get bored and could unsub. So, giving them an additionnal goal is...kinda smart.

As I said, in the next few months, every player still have the opportunity to improve their main gear, instead of running old content over and over for nothing for alts.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Doesn't matter what way we look at it Diadem is the new endgame. Which is crazy.

[Ririta]

As a WoWrefugee, raids here never managed to impress me outside of three bosses. Melusine, ADS (as a tank) and Kaliya are the only ones that I really enjoyed. Raiding in this game just plain sucks. Trash has no interesting mechanics, drops nothing, boss drops are static, raid is divided in sections instead of one big ambient, bosses have between little and zero lore and personality. While WoW makes even a bunch of burning pebbles funny by adding lore and a slow manchild voice to it, here we have a boss that it's a silent, loreless pile of scrap metal and trash. A literal pile of trash is a boss.

And the fight design... oh god, the mechanics. FFXIV crams a bunch of nonsense in bosses that have no business having such nonsense, while WoW generally tries to add stuff that makes sense. On one hand we have Alysrazor that flies (a bird that actually flies! Wow!) around the arena, poops eggs (because she's a birb, duh) and randomly cleaves the arena (because she hates you) until she falls down fatigued and we beat her up while stopping her druid friends from ressurrecting her. Makes sense. On another hand we have... whatever the fuck Phoenix was. Blue Fire? White Fire? Why would you use a spell that invalidates your previous/next spell? It's like they just added the first things they could think of.

I don't understand how people look at FFXIV's raids and think "yeah, this should be the only top tier content" when even hard mode primals and dungeon bosses are often more interesting.

[Aquaslash]

As a WoWrefugee, raids here never managed to impress me outside of three bosses. Melusine, ADS (as a tank) and Kaliya are the only ones that I really enjoyed. Raiding in this game just plain sucks. Trash has no interesting mechanics, drops nothing, boss drops are static, raid is divided in sections instead of one big ambient, bosses have between little and zero lore and personality. While WoW makes even a bunch of burning pebbles funny by adding lore and a slow manchild voice to it, here we have a boss that it's a silent, loreless pile of scrap metal and trash. A literal pile of trash is a boss.

And the fight design... oh god, the mechanics. FFXIV crams a bunch of nonsense in bosses that have no business having such nonsense, while WoW generally tries to add stuff that makes sense. On one hand we have Alysrazor that flies (a bird that actually flies! Wow!) around the arena, poops eggs (because she's a birb, duh) and randomly cleaves the arena (because she hates you) until she falls down fatigued and we beat her up while stopping her druid friends from ressurrecting her. Makes sense. On another hand we have... whatever the fuck Phoenix was. Blue Fire? White Fire? Why would you use a spell that invalidates your previous/next spell? It's like they just added the first things they could think of.

I don't understand how people look at FFXIV's raids and think "yeah, this should be the only top tier content" when even hard mode primals and dungeon bosses are often more interesting.

I'm of the opinion that not only are Alexdander's normal raids are much more interesting encounters than it's Savage ones, but also that NONE of the raids in the game can touch Destiny's Vault of Glass with a ten foot pole. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that they should freely go changing up the system in such a brazen way while it's still active. The start of Stormblood is objectively the best time to make grand sweeping changes to the endgame because not only does that make the expansion more attractive, but it helps to set it apart from ARR and HW

[Doki]

In 2.5 months a vendor will give you better gear.

[Reynhart]

I don't understand how people look at FFXIV's raids and think "yeah, this should be the only top tier content" when even hard mode primals and dungeon bosses are often more interesting.

The official reason is because it's designed to be the hardest content.

On one hand we have Alysrazor that flies (a bird that actually flies! Wow!) around the arena, poops eggs (because she's a birb, duh) and randomly cleaves the arena (because she hates you) until she falls down fatigued

Funny part, you just mostly described Pharos Sirius' second boss back in 2.1

[Ririta]

Funny part, you just mostly described Pharos Sirius' second boss back in 2.1

I really liked that boss and the muskeeter one. Everything that happened in those bosses just fits well both for gameplay and immersion.

The only sad thing was that ranged jobs can't hit the birb while he(?) was flying.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'm of the opinion that not only are Alexdander's normal raids are much more interesting encounters than it's Savage ones, but also that NONE of the raids in the game can touch Destiny's Vault of Glass with a ten foot pole. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that they should freely go changing up the system in such a brazen way while it's still active. The start of Stormblood is objectively the best time to make grand sweeping changes to the endgame because not only does that make the expansion more attractive, but it helps to set it apart from ARR and HW

How are they more interesting? Normal mode is literally the exact same fight except significantly easier and with less mechanics.

[Aquaslash]

How are they more interesting? Normal mode is literally the exact same fight except significantly easier and with less mechanics.

When I hear the term "raid", I envision invading enemy fortresses, navigating through enviromental puzzles and such and defeating mobs on the way to a grand encounter. The normal modes at least attempt this by not just immediately dumping you into a boss cage. Savage is frankly just glorified primal battles with twice the mechanics vomit.

Coil was a far more of a "raid" than Alexander ever was, which is a real shame because Alexander is an AMAZING summon, and he's more or less gone to waste.