
Originally Posted by
Ixon
This all started back in Coil, when people who were casual with the game heard about how amazing the story in Coil was, but could only really experience it if you did the raids that were akin to a Savage difficulty. So, they added in the Normal modes, so those could still experience the story of the raids without needing to do the hardest raids. However, because the Normal raids are built for the most casual of player, they generally make them laughable even for mediocre players. AoE damage is pitiful, tank busters are shrugged off, and DPS checks are non-existent for a majority of the Normal fights, which is why I don't think we should really be taking any achievement done in Normal modes too seriously, as they are made for baby's first raid. The EX's and Savage modes that are done without any role should be looked at and given a balance adjustment to necessitate every role like all the fights should.
Tin foil hat on; I feel SE intentionally made the majority of normal content even easier this expansion than past ones to accommodate the flood of new players(not just refugees). You can see this clearly in the dungeons, where there isn't a single dungeon this expansion where you can pull more than two mobs, something that is always a point of contention between casual/new and hardcore/veteran players. I think the most you can do in any of the dungeons is the two mob packs plus one "roamer" on the two wall to walls before the third boss in the lvl81 dungeon, but that's it. Compare that to the beginning of Holminster Switch, or the pulls in between the first and second mini boss of Ravel's Keep, or the possible four pack pull in the beginning of Mt. Gulg. Not even the 90 dungeons are a challenge, where the hardest part is healers not knowing they can Esuna the debuff on the 2nd boss or heal up the Doom debuff on the 3rd boss of the lvl90 story dungeon. The blatant lack of actual difficulty in any of the dungeons, or any of the normal raids(P3N can catch you off guard if you aren't paying attention at least) to me seems like a design choice given the popularity of the game, which is causing the "Tanks are too strong", "Healers kits too bloated/unnecessary", etc discussions.