Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Shurrikhan]

@Kaldea
Here is the Alte Roite fight adjusted for 4-man.

Summary:

Generally identical to the 8-man version, with the exception of Twin Bolt being modified to both allow and force rotary participation by non-tanks by reducing Twin Bolt's damage dealt (initial and total) to the secondary target enough to no longer quite one-shot DPS, but also afflicting the secondary target with a debuff which will detonate every 3 seconds for 9 seconds after being received and, separately, causing it to take increased damage (some 15 or 20%) from Twin Bolt, lasting for roughly 2.5 Twin Bolt rotations. With enough mitigation, this is not enough to necessarily one-shot an upper eHP DPS (such as a BLM with TBN, MW, and Benefic), but a second stack will. Note that stacks will not refresh duration, offering a bit of added flexibility if a composition is capable.

Elements with downward tuning (generally numeric):

• Tankbuster damage has been reduced and/or siphoned into a DoT (in the case of Twin Bolt secondary damage; see below) as not to depend upon healer-provided shielding for tank-busters, as this could be compositionally absent.
  
  
• Boss auto-attack and raid damage slightly decreased.
  
  
• Twin Bolt will now deal much-reduced damage to the second target, dealing the damage instead as a DoT that does not work off the global tick but instead comes at a consistent 3, 6, and 9 seconds of application. The initial damage will still nearly oneshot any topped-off ranged DPS at minimum ilvl. However, in place of the, admittedly mild, complexity of CD management by the OT, the party will now deal with a 15% vuln debuff applied to the secondary Twin Bolt target, forcing all three to cycle through unless one is appropriately shielded enough to take the added damage (such would require Reprisal, TBN, Benefic, etc.). This vulnerability will stack, but will not refresh.
  
  
• Ranged used as basis of comparison due to least eHP vs. spells.
  
  
• Damage of raid AoE following Charybdis has been decreased to what is managable with a single healer. At minimum ilvl, this will still require some form of prior mitigation or self-healing to survive, as spam AoE healing after Charybdis will no longer necessarily be sufficient. Charybdis will no longer reduce allies to 1 HP even through shields, but simply by <1+absorption> damage short of their maximum HP in true damage.

Elements with upward tuning (increased positional spread required):

• Blaze now requires even the tank to move in for a full 100% participation, as opposed to requiring only 6 or 7 of the 8 members to survive. With sufficient mitigation, players might barely, barely survive a 3 out of 4 stack.

Those are really the only things required. There's so much time after Roar that a single healer really can deal with it even if the numbers were left the same. Auto-attacks are similarly solo-healable. The only real cases by which the original fight wasn't already solo-healable by anyone but a WHM were the few mistakes that DPS might make that weren't immediately fatal near to other major damage taken events. While intensity could be increased even while allowing for greater mechanical mistakes, such is beyond the complexity of the original fight. (Which... probably shouldn't even be called Savage, honestly.)

I actually expected that I would have to enlarge AoE sizes or create a linking mechanic to force greater spread, but the central or outer ring of fireballs, especially in combination with fighting near he edge during certain mechanics, already does a sufficient job of limiting who can have melee uptime on the boss that little if any difficulty tightening is required. A double-melee composition could potentially, just barely and only with perfect positioning, keep up uptime on the boss along with the tank while the healer moves out, or the tank and a single melee could be spaced more loosely while a ranged and healer stand apart, with no significant loss to complexity.

For instance, an ideal return from the T-formation Fireball dodge into Levinbolt with double-melee would be something like the melee being slightly left or right, opposite each other, before Windburst, and then crossing to just slightly into the boss's hitbox and stay, while the tank and healer each separately follows one melee and then slide to the opposite side of the boss's hitbox to form a square without having to lose moving into the previous flame orb zone and then back into melee range.

So, what will be harder now:

If anyone slides away from Blaze without being Rescue-d back, you all die (unless you'd already popped all the things).

What will be easier now:

Levinbolt spread more intuitive, so you're less likely to be murdered by directionally-challenged party members.

Easy means for further tuning:

UPWARD. Have the out-flung (secondary) Fireballs following Windburst explode multiple times in quick succession, limiting the area in which players can move after returning from a safe zone lasting nearly into the Levinbolt explosions.

UPWARD. Have fireballs surround the entirity of the inner ring, to be flung out by Windburst. Rather than fireballs being absent from the safe zones, they will be of a visible different type, which will detonate later and only once, while all others will detonate the multiple times.

DOWNWARD. In turn, create a second window or "safe zone", at least 90 degrees away from the first, to allow room enough for a ranged or healer to hide without perfect to-the-yard square placement around the centered boss.

UPWARD. Anyone recently struck by Twin Bolt gets a proportionately (or at double the vulnerability proportion) increased Levinbolt AoE ring size.

UPWARD. Levinbolt AoE ring seems to grow and shrink, making you essentially think it will be bigger than it is until you're used to it.

FURTHER. It actually does get progressively bigger the more people you're nearby.

ALTERNATIVELY. It gets smaller the more people you're nearby, so that you may even want to stack up until nearly the last moment, and you really don't want to get anywhere near that healer or ranged after its had a chance to grow over the course of pre-positioning.

:: In truth, I wish I could have done far more to give more flexibility, urgency, and strategy to the fight, but it was Savage in category only from the start, so, there's not that much I can do with it without making it far harder (and far, far more interesting) than the 8-man version.