Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Remedi]

Problem is that expert dunegons are not really expert dungeons, they are just the newest dungeons avaible, they just used a fancy name, but since they end up in the normal dungeon que, they hardly fall off the normal difficulty curve.
Now if we had truly expert dungeons as a category that would be fine

Personally I wouldn't mind if they ever added Battle square boss rush extreme, where you face increasingly difficulty bosses with some random affixes but one can only dream I suppose

[KisaiTenshi]

Problem is that expert dunegons are not really expert dungeons, they are just the newest dungeons avaible, they just used a fancy name, but since they end up in the normal dungeon que, they hardly fall off the normal difficulty curve.

"Expert roulette" is simply the newest dungeons that players need the tomes gear or better for entry. When the content is new, and you don't have the lock-out tomes gear yet, yes, there is a fair bit of challenge to be had. But it's not like an Extreme Primal, where you're going to be one-hit-ko'd.

I'd like to see some kind of boss-rush/FF6-style colosseum. The actual location exists in the game (The Dragons Neck), that's the trial with Ultros and Typhon.

eg, "wager" a good item, get a certain boss. Defeat the boss, get a different item.

For most "trash" style bosses, wagering trash, just gets you HQ trash. Wagering blue gear from Alliance raids, gets you other blue gear from the set, etc.

Ignore all gear stats, level sync to the boss level, no items allowed. Create a leaderboard for time taken to defeat per job.

The obvious problem is that the difficulty scale is different depending on the job. Going by POTD standards, where all combat power is the same, would just turn it into something only the red mage can do.

[KaivaC]

Expert dungeons

I agree. Expert dungeons are really no different from what's in the level 70 roulettes - there's hardly any challenging 4-mans that earn the title of Expert, save for Aurum and Pharos from ARR. There's been no real actual challenge since then, in the content of actually having to pay attention (save for the typical wall-to-wall pulls). I actually miss enemies that you have to put a focus on, like every bee in the game.

The battle square idea sounds good..there are plenty of early bosses in the game that could be fun to fight as a boss rush mode with level 70-appropriate mechanics.

snip

True, currently, there is no middle ground. Is it possible to make a middle ground without nerfing heals and tanking? I don't know. Honestly, I don't have enough experience with other MMOs to really say for sure. That would have to come in the form of specific debuffs - maybe like a dungeon where, enemies are weaker than usual level 70 enemies, but tanks have a vuln stack or two for the entire time they are in the dungeon and everybody is suffering from infirmary. Just as a thought.

But yes, you have a good point - the game has been teaching folks how to play - but a lot of folks simply don't listen. If one makes it to Doma Castle still not knowing how stack markers work, that's just plain bad, considering how much Susano and Lakshmi both use it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

My mistake. I do apologize for reading it incorrectly.

I've never been caught up enough to do any expert roulette dungeons while they were in that roulette. I've only done them after getting tossed into 50/60 roulette. Are they around typical HM difficulty? If so, I have always found the leveling dungeons to be more difficult since players tend to be at, or below a decent iLv to run the dungeon. What I've noticed about HM dungeons is that they do indeed toss more at you, but it doesn't matter because everyone is so over-geared. If ran at a lower iLv, the same stuff people don't bother to move out of is going to hurt.

I understand where you are coming from though. If a telegraphed attack isn't threatening, or easily mitigated with a healer regen, then there is no reason to avoid it as it disrupts positioning. Even if not using a positional job, players usually have 'comfort zones' and only move if necessary. I really like what they did with some ARR dungeons. The ones that didn't carry a HM tag and also weren't part of the MSQ. Pharos Sirius and The Lost City of Amdapor come to mind. I know these got nerfed, and it never should have happened.

I wish SE would adopt a similar mentality to these older dungeons, and create dungeons that are simply known to be more difficult than the average dungeon. Not crazy punishing, but by the Gods your attention WILL be required to get through it. We already have them, but they are few. We need more. We shouldn't have to rely on random/bad/inebriated players to make things interesting.

No worries.

To an extent, yes. Some have actually been easier. Kugane Castle is quite possibly the easiest dungeon ever released. Yojimbo's coin mechanic deals so little damage, you can outright fail and take only a quarter of your health. While ilvl does play a factor, dungeons are typically tuned significantly lower than the majority of players will be less they deliberately ignore progression avenues. Take the two most recent dungeons: Hell's Lid and Fractal Hard. Their respective ilvls are i310 despite i330 Creation gear be readily available and i350 being the new standard. Adding insult to injury, even i330 will be more than enough to steamroll through them—with only the mega pulls proving difficult at lower ilvls.

Otherwise, we agree. I certainly do not want dungeons to be tuned to an absurd level, but Expert should challenge max level players to some degree. Right now... they simply don't.

"Expert roulette" is simply the newest dungeons that players need the tomes gear or better for entry. When the content is new, and you don't have the lock-out tomes gear yet, yes, there is a fair bit of challenge to be had. But it's not like an Extreme Primal, where you're going to be one-hit-ko'd.

As someone who tanks, heals and DPSes dungeons day one, they are absolute face rolls at release. I recall back in 3.4 when Xelphatol released and Yoshida warned tanks about pulling too much. It was laughable. And I didn't even have Savage gear back then.