Please don't delay Savage Raid Releases

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Well, one downside is people who are willing to schedule a week off work to do both story quests and savage raiding now has to take two weeks off instead.

Whereas the only con I can see is related to a race that is not part of the game. Otherwise, the waiting game can apply to both sides.

Not really? You just take the week off for savage a week later, and just spend the evenings after your work doing the story & normal modes in the preceeding week at a relaxing pace; you don't need to take an entire week off just to do MSQ & normal modes. One of the main issues I highlighted in an earlier post, especially in midcore statics is when you have a divide in people wanting to take time watching cutscenes and enjoy the full story butting heads with people in the same static wanting to ultra zerg and have fun in savage in the first raid night; especially when that group may only raid 2-3 times a week and a couple may not be interested in spending 3/4 of their first raid night waiting for people to enjoy the story.

[linayar]

You are right that this competition isn't officially built into the game, but it is a tradition this community has adopted for a long time now and the devs have acknowledged it to the point where Naoki Yoshida even watches the livestreams himself to see how far everyone is coming along. You could consider it to be pretty much a fully established tradition at this point.

However, I agree that tomestones and by extension Crafted gear shouldn't be delayed - delaying Crafted gear + materials literally would defeat the point of the 1-week delay to begin with. Obtaining crafted gear shouldn't be part of the race, player skill, identifying mechanics and developing strategies should be.

But that affects the balance of the fight. I don't care as I don't do Savage, but the devs might. They could make the fights harder to account for the extra gears, which may or may not be a good thing for some people.

Ehhh...? I don't think so really, if you got a week of time you got good time in the evening to do MSQ, prep mats / gear, do a couple of EX runs even without having a week off.

Not really? You just take the week off for savage a week later, and just spend the evenings after your work doing the story & normal modes in the preceeding week at a relaxing pace; you don't need to take an entire week off just to do MSQ & normal modes. One of the main issues I highlighted in an earlier post, especially in midcore statics is when you have a divide in people wanting to take time watching cutscenes and enjoy the full story butting heads with people in the same static wanting to ultra zerg and have fun in savage in the first raid night; especially when that group may only raid 2-3 times a week and a couple may not be interested in spending 3/4 of their first raid night waiting for people to enjoy the story.

Nah, people tell me they don't want to be behind on story. Otherwise, it's again the same thing with having the Savage released at the same time. Do the raid story once without rushing and then prog for the rest of the week.

[RyuDragnier]

But that affects the balance of the fight. I don't care as I don't do Savage, but the devs might. They could make the fights harder to account for the extra gears, which may or may not be a good thing for some people.

There is no effecting the balance of the fight. If you fail a mechanic in Savage, one of four things happen.

1. You instantly die.
2. You wipe the entire raid.
3. You take heavy damage and get a heavy debuff that can guarantee your death
4. The entire raid takes heavy damage and gets a heavy debuff that can guarantee the raid's death.

You either do those mechanics right and can keep going, or you don't and are forced to start all over. Most maxed "at current ilevel" gear can do is shave off the final few minutes of a fight at most. The mechanics that will kill you often come at set intervals during the fight (anywhere from 1-2 minutes). You are not screwing up the balance of these fights, NOTHING you can do can screw up the balance of these fights until the next expansion when you vastly outgear them.

[Packetdancer]

If I understand the arguments, I think what some folks object to is the fact that if you waited one week, people would be able to get the 450 new tomestones the first week (no raid), then get another 450 after reset if you were quick to grind them, and have enough tomestones to get a chestpiece or something from the tomestone gear before stepping foot into the new savage tier, and still start on the first day. (Or you could have two accessories, instead of just one, etc.)

And I guess there's some fear that if people had access to that right out of the gate, it would 'cheapen' the world first wins because they would be done with potentially one piece of slightly better gear than would normally be available for a first-week clear? Since the tomestone gear will be ten ilevels higher than the crafted stuff.

But I honestly don't think that's a wholly reasonable concern; presumably, SquareEnix balances the fights to at least be hypothetically clearable with the minimum ilevel you can queue in with. So getting all that crafted gear on day one? That's already potentially unbalancing the fight, by that standard. Why would adding one more accessory, or replacing the accessory with one piece of left-side gear, be the final straw that broke the balance entirely?

But people don't seem to think that getting the top-tier crafted gear 'cheapens' the first week clears; I'm not sure that the potential for one piece of slightly better gear over the current hypothetical best-start gear (i.e., crafted with potentially one tomestone accessory) 'cheapens' the fights appreciably any more than using the that current best-start gear already does, by that standard.

And if it does make that much of a difference, presumably SquareEnix would balance the fights accordingly.

Meanwhile, if you feel a week one clear would be 'worth more' because it's done without benefit of better gear? Then prog and clear it with the minimum ilevel for bragging rights; that's an option right now! You don't have to get i510 crafted gear to go into the tier; you could do it with the i500 BiS of this current tier. And if they waited a week to release savage in 6.x content, that would still be an option a week later.

The only other objection I can see is if you consider the race to get an entire static outfitted with the crafted gear to also be part of that world-first race, i.e., the crafters are engaging in their own 'savage tier' to get the sets made as quickly as possible on day one. And then, yes, if you consider that part of the challenge, then delaying a week does make it easier. But no one seems to seriously consider the crafter 'first-day clears' (as it were) to be as much a race as the first-week clears are—it's not like people are eagerly tracking world-first to make a full HQ set of new fending gear, or lauding the fastest crafters on a data center ("Check out my WVR parse!")—so I think if you do consider the crafting part of the savage challenge, you may be in the minority.

[Absurdity]

If I understand the arguments, I think what some folks object to is the fact that if you waited one week, people would be able to get the 450 new tomestones the first week (no raid), then get another 450 after reset if you were quick to grind them, and have enough tomestones to get a chestpiece or something from the tomestone gear before stepping foot into the new savage tier, and still start on the first day. (Or you could have two accessories, instead of just one, etc.)

And I guess there's some fear that if people had access to that right out of the gate, it would 'cheapen' the world first wins because they would be done with potentially one piece of slightly better gear than would normally be available for a first-week clear? Since the tomestone gear will be ten ilevels higher than the crafted stuff.

But I honestly don't think that's a wholly reasonable concern; presumably, SquareEnix balances the fights to at least be hypothetically clearable with the minimum ilevel you can queue in with. So getting all that crafted gear on day one? That's already potentially unbalancing the fight, by that standard. Why would adding one more accessory, or replacing the accessory with one piece of left-side gear, be the final straw that broke the balance entirely?

But people don't seem to think that getting the top-tier crafted gear 'cheapens' the first week clears; I'm not sure that the potential for one piece of slightly better gear over the current hypothetical best-start gear (i.e., crafted with potentially one tomestone accessory) 'cheapens' the fights appreciably any more than using the that current best-start gear already does, by that standard.

The reason why full crafted gear doesn't cheapen the fight is because it is literally the minimum ilvl to beat the last fight in a raid tier, the only one that really matters in the end and on top of it everyone has access to crafted gear with the only restriction being your willingness to spend a lot of gil.


The issue with being able to get more tomestone gear isn't really that it cheapens the fight but that it basically goes against the idea of delaying it by a week in the first place, everyone being on an even playing field.
Since we're talking about the world first race then a team that managed to get 900 tomestones by the time they raid on savage release obviously has an advantage over a team that only managed to cap the first week and goes into savage with only 450 tomestones.
Not that this can really be fixed either way, you'll have to rush to cap your 450 or 900 tomestones before raid begins regardless of whether or not it gets delayed by week. The only difference being that certain jobs gain a lot more from having access to their chestpiece.

[Packetdancer]

The reason why full crafted gear doesn't cheapen the fight is because it is literally the minimum ilvl to beat the last fight in a raid tier, the only one that really matters in the end and on top of it everyone has access to crafted gear with the only restriction being your willingness to spend a lot of gil.

It is not; crafted is always better than previous BiS. Right now BiS is i500; 5.4 crafted stuff will be i510. Just like Edengrace and Augmented Deepshadow stuff was i470, and Neo-Ishgardian is i480. Minimum ilevel to queue into E5S was i470; presumably for E9S it will be i500.

So crafted is more than the minimum needed (the previous highest ilevel). If it were all the same as the previous BiS, sure, that wouldn’t change the fight balance. Yet people don’t consider skipping an entire gear grade (I.e. 10 ilevels) to be unbalancing the fight.

The issue with being able to get more tomestone gear isn't really that it cheapens the fight but that it basically goes against the idea of delaying it by a week in the first place, everyone being on an even playing field.

But you already have inequality; people who want to start on day one and don’t have a dedicated crafter (or crafter team) willing to get up at stupid o’clock and devote hours and hours to gathering materials as quickly as possible, who have all their scrip already maxed (sometimes on multiple characters) to buy the new scrip mats immediately, along with people potentially grinding the now-uncapped tomestone for the inevitable tomestone materials, etc.

World-first statics have dedicated teams of crafters and gatherers who have stockpiled everything they can think of ahead of time and who will rocket out the gate to obtain the new materials introduced with the patch as quickly as possible, all to make HQ versions of those new i510 crafted sets appear in the shortest possible time. Your average smaller hardcore static will have to either wait longer, spend a ton of money, or go in with i500 gear.

If your goal is that everyone starts on equal footing, we already broke that as things stand; the one-week delay would actually even the playing field by allowing more small statics to obtain the crafted gear and be on equal footing, as they could have a single crafter outfit them by spreading the gathering of new materials across a week. Sure, you’d be able to get a slightly better set via a second i520 tomestone accessory or replacing it with a bigger piece of left-side gear... but that would be more obtainable.

Grinding 450 tomestones in the hours post-reset is something basically any player can do, given time; a couple of roulettes, run a dungeon or two, have a journal ready to turn into Khloe and pick the tomestone option... it would be easy for any savage raider to get that out of the way on the first day post-reset. Obtaining a full HQ set of the crafted gear on day one is a much much higher bar to entry as things stand right now.

So if the concern is making sure everyone has a chance of equal footing when they start, then the week delay is a good thing so far as I can see; it puts the HQ crafted gear within reach of more statics than will readily have access to it without that delay, meaning more than just the most dedicated or well-funded groups can go in with the 10 ilevel advantage over the minimum requirement.

[SnowVix]

It is not; crafted is always better than previous BiS. Right now BiS is i500; 5.4 crafted stuff will be i510. Just like Edengrace and Augmented Deepshadow stuff was i470, and Neo-Ishgardian is i480. Minimum ilevel to queue into E5S was i470; presumably for E9S it will be i500.

So crafted is more than the minimum needed (the previous highest ilevel). If it were all the same as the previous BiS, sure, that wouldn’t change the fight balance. Yet people don’t consider skipping an entire gear grade (I.e. 10 ilevels) to be unbalancing the fight.

you're talking about the first fight. the person you quoted is talking about the last fight.

[tdb]

There is no effecting the balance of the fight. If you fail a mechanic in Savage, one of four things happen.

1. You instantly die.
2. You wipe the entire raid.
3. You take heavy damage and get a heavy debuff that can guarantee your death
4. The entire raid takes heavy damage and gets a heavy debuff that can guarantee the raid's death.

You either do those mechanics right and can keep going, or you don't and are forced to start all over. Most maxed "at current ilevel" gear can do is shave off the final few minutes of a fight at most. The mechanics that will kill you often come at set intervals during the fight (anywhere from 1-2 minutes). You are not screwing up the balance of these fights, NOTHING you can do can screw up the balance of these fights until the next expansion when you vastly outgear them.

Aren't you forgetting enrage timers here? Even if one player's death doesn't cause the entire raid to wipe, it still causes them to not do any damage while they're dead (and reduced damage after being raised) and also requires healers to spend some GCDs on raising and healing them instead of doing damage. There's only so much damage you can miss before wiping at the enrage. Better gear increases that margin and makes the raid easier to beat.

[Absurdity]

Aren't you forgetting enrage timers here? Even if one player's death doesn't cause the entire raid to wipe, it still causes them to not do any damage while they're dead (and reduced damage after being raised) and also requires healers to spend some GCDs on raising and healing them instead of doing damage. There's only so much damage you can miss before wiping at the enrage. Better gear increases that margin and makes the raid easier to beat.

Better gear also means that you can go for riskier strats in some cases. Take E6s for example, nowadays you just ignore the Ifrit and Raktapaksa fireball mechanic, stack north, take the vuln and keep full uptime which certainly helps with killtime, not sure you really want to try that in min ilvl gear.

[tdb]

Better gear also means that you can go for riskier strats in some cases. Take E6s for example, nowadays you just ignore the Ifrit and Raktapaksa fireball mechanic, stack north, take the vuln and keep full uptime which certainly helps with killtime, not sure you really want to try that in min ilvl gear.

Yeah that too. So it's far from "no effect on the balance" as was claimed.

Out of curiosity, since I haven't done savage on that level - how much difference does it make to go from i483-ish (available at release of Eden's Verse) to i500 (only available through the raids themselves at the time), particularly for survivability? And how much damage does that move do?

Edit: Corrected item levels - augmented neo-ishgardian was not available in 5.2 and crystarium has limited availability because of tomestones.