Labyrinth Raid Required for 5.3 MSQ?

[Shibi]

This is exactly right. At this point, due to gear power creep, the Crystal Tower 24p raids are not any harder than the average dungeon, so think of them as 24p dungeons rather than "raids" when you queue for them in DF.

Being that HW and Ishgard looks like it is now gated behind this raid (is that correct because we did get a red MSQ marker with "you must do crystal tower"), does that also count for an average level 50 player in level 90 gear?

I don't mind following along it, I fear my friend, who I introduced to MMOs with this game, and who is barely aware of a rotation, might be overwhelmed.

At this point, I'd just like to get into Ishgard.

[Mhaeric]

Being that HW and Ishgard looks like it is now gated behind this raid (is that correct because we did get a red MSQ marker with "you must do crystal tower"), does that also count for an average level 50 player in level 90 gear?

I don't mind following along it, I fear my friend, who I introduced to MMOs with this game, and who is barely aware of a rotation, might be overwhelmed.

At this point, I'd just like to get into Ishgard.

It's required for the last set of quests in the 2.55 MSQ right before reaching Ishgard. At this point you've been at least level 50 for a long time and you have access to much higher ilevel than 90. Even if you're still only level 50, Augmented Ironworks is easily obtained using tomestones as soon as you complete the 2.0 story and is purchased from the merchant in Mor Dhona or near main city aetherytes. It is a complete set of i130 gear that will carry you through most of HW and more than meets the ilevel sync for all 3 of the crystal tower raids. Even if you don't have this gear for whatever reason, it will still be easy. The raid itself was nerfed as all raids are several patches after their release, and there will be multiple people of higher ilevel in there via roulette anyway.

It will take you around 90 minutes including all the fetch quests to complete the entire raid series assuming you're not doing in off-peak hours when queue times might be a little slower.

[MistakeNot]

Being that HW and Ishgard looks like it is now gated behind this raid (is that correct because we did get a red MSQ marker with "you must do crystal tower"), does that also count for an average level 50 player in level 90 gear?

I don't mind following along it, I fear my friend, who I introduced to MMOs with this game, and who is barely aware of a rotation, might be overwhelmed.

At this point, I'd just like to get into Ishgard.

An average item level of 90 is enough to get into all three Crystal Tower raids - running them can get you some better gear along the way.

Why overwhelmed? These raids are easier than most of the mandatory dungeons and trials you must already have done to get that far in the MSQ - and there will be a lot more people around to carry anyone who doesn't know what to do.
If you managed to get through "The Keeper of the Lake" and "The Chrysalis" (both of which are required for the MSQ), the Crystal Tower will seem like childs play in comparison.

[Shibi]

At this point you've been at least level 50 for a long time and you have access to much higher ilevel than 90.

I'd say he's 9 days since level 50. As we are not grinding dungeons, but just following the MSQ... is it worth wasting our few poetics on iLevel130? Crafted gear exceeds it, will the starter quest gear in HW exceed it too? Would they be better saved for a point in HW when the gear requirement grows?

An average item level of 90 is enough to get into all three Crystal Tower raids - running them can get you some better gear along the way.

ok, that's heartening at least. No need to gear for months to get past this new gate and into Ishgard.

While I raided in WoW and Rift and EQ2 and clearly recall the months of gearing up and failing multiple times (and angry people), he is brand new to MMOs and although coming along well, not at a point to do raiding That's end game stuff, not for leveling.

[Frizze]

I'd say he's 9 days since level 50. As we are not grinding dungeons, but just following the MSQ... is it worth wasting our few poetics on iLevel130? Crafted gear exceeds it, will the starter quest gear in HW exceed it too? Would they be better saved for a point in HW when the gear requirement grows?



ok, that's heartening at least. No need to gear for months to get past this new gate and into Ishgard.

While I raided in WoW and Rift and EQ2 and clearly recall the months of gearing up and failing multiple times (and angry people), he is brand new to MMOs and although coming along well, not at a point to do raiding That's end game stuff, not for leveling.

You could always snag 1 or 2 pieces of the higher level gear for a boost if you felt behind. Weapon alone would make a noticable impact. But it isnt needed. If one of the 15 DPS is behind, the raid wont notice in any way. Hell, half the DPS can be afk and you should still win the fights. Some people see the word "raid" and freak out, and in this case it isnt at all justified. The Alliance Raids in this game are designed to be beaten blind with a random group in the minimum level gear from the moment they are released. The tells are mostly very obvious, and the ones that arent are easily solvable and the devs assumed we would share that knowledge as we learned it. A fully blind low ilvl group might wipe a few times, but none of these fights should take more then 2 or 3 pulls to solve. And you dont even have to worry about that, because we(the players) solved the CT series 6 years ago. Im gonna put the basics to all 4 boss fights from the first raid(LotA) in a spoiler box. Im just gonna do it from memory, so theres a chance ill forget something or get some detail wrong. You dont have to look if you dont want to. Im only doing it to emphasize that while these are bigger then dungeon bosses, its only by a little bit and your friend will probly be fine.

First boss, Bone Dragon: Hes a dragon, dont stand in front of him unless you want dragon breath on you. He has a few easy to dodge/low damage so it barely matters aoes. The lower parts of the ground will fill with acid(something) periodically during the fight. Try not to stand in it, but running through it isnt a death sentance if you need to. His big mechanic is that he has 3 life bars. You kill him, he falls down, then after a little bit he gets back up and the fight continues. He spawns adds continually during the fight, and when hes down they try to run over and repair him. Any that do explode for a 1000 point room wide attack. You can kill adds, or just heal through these little bursts.

One trash fight on the way to the next boss bears mentioning. The Atomos fight. Each of the 3 parties is supposed to go down a different path and fight their own enemy. Theres a pad to stand on, and if 4 people do then the shield on the next groups boss goes down. So the idea is that each group leaves a few people in back so that each other group can attack their guy(a helps b, b helps c, c helps a). The problem is that if this guy is pulled before everyone is there the people who get teleported into the fight all end up in the same lane, so the other 2 might be short handed. So just dont pull early, and if youre a ranged character consider standing on the pad.

Second boss, Thanatos: His trick is you can only hurt him if you have a special buff. At the start of the fight, group a gets this buff. Shortly before it runs out, group b gets it(and eventually the same for c if the fight isnt over). So while only one group can hurt the boss, the other two groups kill the adds. If the DPS is high, this guy is pretty much dead when group b starts to attack. Seriously, thats the whole fight.

Even smaller note on trash fight. The fight with the 3 demons and the big bomb? The tanks from each group should grab those demons and keep them separated(they get a buff if they stand near each other). DPS kills the demons, and the small bombs that spawn. Once the demons are dead, the big bomb can be killed.

Third boss, King Behemoth(its possible that isnt the right name and im not bothering to look it up to be sure): His normal attacks arent all that important. The entire arena is electrified to put extra pressure on the healers. It barely matters. The important stuff. He casts comet, and 3 players(random) get marked. After a few seconds, a comet will strike where theyre standing and leave a rock on the ground. Then he casts Ecliptic Meteor. This is a death move. The way to live is to stand with a comet-rock in between you and the behemoth. Two notes. If the comet is inside the bosses hit box then it doesnt provide protection so find one further away. And secondly, his adds periodically try to destroy those rocks. Usually the fight ends before they cause too much trouble, but you can kill them or distract them(off tank) if it gets dicey. The longer the fight goes, the quicker he casts meteor after the comets crash giving you less time to hide.

Final boss, Phlegethon: Dodge aoes, kill adds - do i even need to say these? Only move that matters is Ancient Flare. He retreats to the center of the room before casting(if he isnt already standing there). This is a death move. On the outside of the platform are 3 pads - 1 per group. Each one needs 4 people standing on it to put up a shield and block the flare. So fight him in the middle until he starts casting(if you pull him too far to a side then the group on the far side might not get to the pad and the shield wont go up - killing everyone), then retreat to your pad to survive the flare, move back in to fight some more when its safe. Congrats, youre 1/3 of the way done with this raid series.

And honestly, a couple of those fights took longer to type then they would have to just kill.

[Canadane]

And honestly, a couple of those fights took longer to type then they would have to just kill.

Yeah people see the word "raid" and get terrified that they need to go into some difficult over-mechaniced insta-death festival of an instance that takes 6 hours to complete.
Instead of something undertuned and a cakewalk that is the Crystal Tower series.

I can understand being concerned if you're not a ...well, skilled player. "Raids" by name are exactly what I described in other games. But the terminology in FFXIV is a bit different folks. Get your feet wet and go try it. Fear Ultimate content, heck fear Savage content if you really want to. Don't fear raid content.

[Shibi]

Some people see the word "raid" and freak out, and in this case it isnt at all justified. The Alliance Raids in this game are designed to be beaten blind with a random group in the minimum level gear from the moment they are released. The tells are mostly very obvious, and the ones that arent are easily solvable and the devs assumed we would share that knowledge as we learned it.

This was, of course, my concern. After raiding in other games... it's not something for an noob. So I did see this gate freshly appear with 5.3 and though it to be blocking his and our access to Ishgard.

I do appreciate and thank people mentioning that an alliance (is that the word) isn't a raid. That can hopefully be made clearer as more people ask the same question.

[Grimr]

snip

They may be designed to be beaten blindly , but tell that to thundergod cid when he first came out. He is nerfed to hell now. But he was a wiper of raids back in the day.

[Frizze]

They may be designed to be beaten blindly , but tell that to thundergod cid when he first came out. He is nerfed to hell now. But he was a wiper of raids back in the day.

Cid was absolutely a wipe machine back in the day. And because people suck, abandon votes would pop up. I still stand 100% behind the statement that he could be done blind by an average group with communication and patience. He sticks to his pattern hard, so each mechanic you solve and get past moves you deeper into the fight. Each of his moves has a 5+ second windup. After the initial doom, he shows you the difference between the 3 sword swings(the order is random, but they have a visual and audio tell). And while he has a relatively large number of moves(cleansable debuff followed by tankbuster, chasing aoe puddles, passable tether with vuln debuff attack, etc), i only remember 3 of them being raid wipes. If Duskblade(3 people stand in the circle on either side of the group positions) was failed, it tended to end in a wipe. If Shadowblade(growing orbs) was failed, the bleed tended to be a fight ender. And Icewolf(kill the add in your area before it bursts) could be survived if one group failed, but 2 or 3 explosions at once would be fatal damage. Solving the attacks wasnt even the biggest problem at launch, it was that you needed at least half of each party to play at an acceptable level for the approx 10 minutes that the fight took. A full group incapable of doing duskblade meant you couldnt get past. A wiped group when he does the 6 orb shadowblade means that the surviving groups will have 2 extra puddles to safely drop, and might not be able to run fast enough to get to the safe zone. And yeah, he was nerfed to hell. I saw a group in the last mogtome event get 4 bleeds out of one shadowblade(the guy from one group dropped his puddle between the puddles of two people from another group that did it right) and the DoT was managable for the healers. The damage on a failed duskblade is much smaller now, and the burst adds dont pose much of a threat(on top of the fight usually being over by the time they spawn).

I cleared Cid blind on day one in a group of 20+ new players from the duty finder. It took a few pulls, but we managed just fine. Fight, fail, communicate, win. And the hardest CT boss is still miles easier then even nerfed Cid, so again - for the scared new people - this talk of a tough boss doesnt apply to what youre being asked to do. Nothing in the CT raids requires even half the team to play well or know what theyre doing. A single tank who knows where to stand the boss is honestly enough for like 7 of the 12 bosses between the 3 raids, and its astronomically rare(like almost statistically impossible) to get a group where no one knows and no one can solve the mechs for the other fights.

[Jalin]

Cid was absolutely a wipe machine back in the day. And because people suck, abandon votes would pop up. I still stand 100% behind the statement that he could be done blind by an average group with communication and patience. He sticks to his pattern hard, so each mechanic you solve and get past moves you deeper into the fight. Each of his moves has a 5+ second windup. After the initial doom, he shows you the difference between the 3 sword swings(the order is random, but they have a visual and audio tell). And while he has a relatively large number of moves(cleansable debuff followed by tankbuster, chasing aoe puddles, passable tether with vuln debuff attack, etc), i only remember 3 of them being raid wipes. If Duskblade(3 people stand in the circle on either side of the group positions) was failed, it tended to end in a wipe. If Shadowblade(growing orbs) was failed, the bleed tended to be a fight ender. And Icewolf(kill the add in your area before it bursts) could be survived if one group failed, but 2 or 3 explosions at once would be fatal damage. Solving the attacks wasnt even the biggest problem at launch, it was that you needed at least half of each party to play at an acceptable level for the approx 10 minutes that the fight took. A full group incapable of doing duskblade meant you couldnt get past. A wiped group when he does the 6 orb shadowblade means that the surviving groups will have 2 extra puddles to safely drop, and might not be able to run fast enough to get to the safe zone. And yeah, he was nerfed to hell. I saw a group in the last mogtome event get 4 bleeds out of one shadowblade(the guy from one group dropped his puddle between the puddles of two people from another group that did it right) and the DoT was managable for the healers. The damage on a failed duskblade is much smaller now, and the burst adds dont pose much of a threat(on top of the fight usually being over by the time they spawn).

I cleared Cid blind on day one in a group of 20+ new players from the duty finder. It took a few pulls, but we managed just fine. Fight, fail, communicate, win. And the hardest CT boss is still miles easier then even nerfed Cid, so again - for the scared new people - this talk of a tough boss doesnt apply to what youre being asked to do. Nothing in the CT raids requires even half the team to play well or know what theyre doing. A single tank who knows where to stand the boss is honestly enough for like 7 of the 12 bosses between the 3 raids, and its astronomically rare(like almost statistically impossible) to get a group where no one knows and no one can solve the mechs for the other fights.

....what?? it was nothing like that