Quote Originally Posted by VanilleFang View Post
I don't understand the argument that "Shinryu NM was harder than everything before so [random excuse]". People use it as a justification for numerous wipes or bad performance. If this was the case than how did people like myself, who had never done Extremes or Savages before Shinryu, clear him with no issue? Most of the mechanics he has are either a repeat of an old mechanic, or straightfoward. The only mechanic I ever had issue with was (and still is) Earth Breath, and only because I forget how large the cone AoE is.

Shinryu is an easy fight. All you have to do is play with some competence.
Some players are better than other players. That's how someone can go in and clear him with no issues while others struggle. For story level content, Shinryu was damn hard at launch. He hit hard, he had lots of things to keep track of, was not forgiving of mistakes, and most of the playerbase didn't know the fight. These days people largely do know the fight and there's no item level sync, so successful clear rates have gone up massively. That doesn't take away from the challenge at the time.

This is the problem with forum discussions on this stuff. The average forum goer is not the average player. Lots of players who have a significantly lower skill level and find this stuff difficult are barely represented here at all, while the high end skill level is vastly over represented. That skews things towards "everything is easy and everyone's bad!" when maybe the real answer is "it's not as easy as you think, and you're better than you think you are."

I mean, I went through two disbands before clearing Shinryu the first time, and *five* before clearing Susano Ex (which everyone around here also said was really easy), before the fights clicked and everything went swimmingly. While group quality is a factor, how fast I can learn the fight was also a factor, and that's slower than lots of other posters here. I don't tend to think I'm bad, but I do recognize lots of people I play with are better than me. But, having the perspective of repeated failure helps a lot, and if you go in and easily clear everything except Ultimate, it's easy to lose sight of all the people who aren't capable of that.

Comparatively, I was always good at Hashmal, which to this day is still wrecking lots of people. For me, it's a far easier fight than Susano is, but the collective playerbase death rate seems to suggest that isn't the case overall.