New Alliance Raid is severely undertuned.

[Tehmon]

There are quite a few mechanics that are new and look amazing, but aren't exactly hard.

Rhalgr punching a meteor? Super awesome. Difficult to dodge? Not at all.
Nald'thal weighing your souls? That's new and dope. Difficult to manage? Only if you have trolls.

The presentation is so amazing in this raid though that I really don't mind the MSQ-level difficulty. I feel as though since this raid deals with the subject of the Twelve, the developers made a very deliberate decision to have the difficulty be on par with MSQ trials, to encourage people to do the raids since the lore will be very important to the world of XIV.

I can see why people would be a bit annoyed, but I'm still having fun and am super excited for the rest of the raid.

[PangTong]

First raid is always the easiest, same difficulty as Copied Factory and Royal City if you ask me.

I went as i600 Summoner this week, and I'm sure there is a larger chunk of people who have more savage or upgraded gear this go around than previous expansions considering the delay of 6.1.

I can say with confidence that Copied Factory and Rabanastre were harder than this on release. Hashmal alone is responsible for more wipes than every boss in Aglaia put together. Copied Factory is closer in difficulty but is tuned a bit harder and has more mechanics with group requirements.

[Ath192]

I think its mostly fine. Too many people who have run this 30+ times already in full BIS gear and running it it for glam at the moment make it seem easier than it is. I see people mention Dun Scaith and Orbonne but they went through a similar period, when it was new people ran them over and over and the raids were smooth sailing. With time people moved on and you had a bunch of new players/super casuals catching up and vet players had forgotten the mechanics so they became increasingly hard.

HP bags arent fun, but maybe a 10% HP boost wouldn't be terrible. (Delubrum Reginae normal...). If anything they should invest in bringing up all previous alliance raids above joke status with the amount of dmg their AOE's do.

Quite honestly I think its an Ilvl issue. and you know what? The min ilvl for this raid is 565.... and it drops 590 gear.... If anything they should make the min ILVL at least 580, which is the crafted set and tune it around that gear being fully melded.

I don't know anyone who is ilvl 565 or close to it by the time they would get to this raid. So it's built with a non existent playerbase in mind. I still believe DF should sync to min ilvl, not 30+ ilvls up.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I can say with confidence that Copied Factory and Rabanastre were harder than this on release. Hashmal alone is responsible for more wipes than every boss in Aglaia put together. Copied Factory is closer in difficulty but is tuned a bit harder and has more mechanics with group requirements.

As someone who woke up at hour 0 for every Nier raid patch and did the raids repeatedly for 5 hours straight, yeah, Copied Factory was more challenging past week 1. Not particularly hard, but it was tuned just enough to present a reasonable challenge even after people learned the mechanics and had better gear.

[technole]

I can say with confidence that Copied Factory and Rabanastre were harder than this on release. Hashmal alone is responsible for more wipes than every boss in Aglaia put together. Copied Factory is closer in difficulty but is tuned a bit harder and has more mechanics with group requirements.

Nah, Copied Factory you took a damage stack for every oopsie, except the room cleaves. It's a common thing that the 3rd fight tends to add some group wrinkles.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

The problem I find in Normal mode raids is that they only put the difficulty into figuring out the mechanics. It's very easy to die to mechanics on your first time. Some even try and bait you into dying. Some are just aoe bombardment. There are plenty of Normal mechanics I find harder to dodge than in Savage, which follow nice set patterns. But they never put any sort of challenge into the dps checks or heal checks and unlimited Raises means it doesn't even matter if you figure out the mechanics or not.

The result is week one you go in blind and wonder if you have brain damage because you die so much. Then you figure out the trick to the mechanics ...and you're done. You don't need to push your rotation, know your heal toolkit or really contribute much or bother trying to play well at all. Literally the only requirement is that all 6 healers, RDM and SMN's cannot be simultaneously dead unless the boss is low enough for the tanks to solo. That's it. While that condition is maintained, you'll win.



No one said Savage, they just want it to be interesting past week 1. It's a valid criticism considering the developers probably poured a ton of resources into something many players will only run 2-3 times for the coin, then ignore. Alliance raids very quickly become your 30 minute weekly chore.

Plenty people in the raid wont bother to try to rise to the more challenging dps check and god forbid they stress the baby healers for a moment, you'd just end up with a lot of wipes and people ditching runs. The raid is enjoyable and I can't say I go to an alliance raid looking for much challenge.

[Ronduwil]

Week 1 the raid was fun and difficult

Then the raid is not undertuned. The alliance raids in the roulette are meant for new and casual players to get a feel for the fight before moving on to Savage and Ultimate modes. You're complaining that a bunch of players who are now ready to move on to Savage and Ultimate modes are still queueing for this content. That's not the same as the raid being undertuned. The roulette rewards are in exchange for helping out new and casual players, not for your Herculean efforts. Every time you queue into the raid, keep in mind that there are still players in your group who still find the raid fun and difficult. You're effectively asking SE to ruin their experience. Some of us don't immediately rush through the MSQ on day one to unlock the raids.

[Kuritzkale]

Then the raid is not undertuned. The alliance raids are meant for new and casual players to get a feel for the fight before moving on to Savage and Ultimate modes. You're complaining that a bunch of players who are now ready to move on to Savage and Ultimate modes are still queueing for this content. That's not the same as the raid being undertuned. The roulette rewards are in exchange for helping out new and casual players, not for your Herculean efforts. Every time you queue into the raid, keep in mind that there are still players in your group who still find the raid fun and difficult. You're effectively asking SE to ruin their experience. Some of us don't immediately rush through the MSQ on day one to unlock the raids.

Not all content in the game that isn't savage/ultimate is for new players, bro, and it certainly shouldn't be designed for them. But regardless, anybody doing the new raid isn't really a "new" player. They will have played through all of ARR, HW, StB, ShB, and EW before getting to this content. They should have a grasp on the mechanics of the game by that point and shouldn't need to be catered to like children. And again you people are completely unable to engage with what anybody is saying, nobody is asking for the alliance raids to be insanely hard, just for the content to be engaging past 1 or 2 runs, which seems to be a good idea in a game where a lot of the endgame revolves around repeatedly completing content.

[Ronduwil]

Why is it when anyone says they'd like content to be even remotely challenging past week 1, you types always come crying and telling people to go play Souls games?

Because it's not a reasonable expectation. You acknowledge that the content was challenging on week 1. It wasn't until after all these Savage raiders and hardcores outgeared the content and practiced the mechanics that it became easy for them. We're not all sporting 600 ilevel gear right now, and we haven't all been running the raid every day for the entire first week. So for many of us, this is still a challenge and will be for some time to come. If you want to be challenged, then raid the next step up instead of complaining that the bike with the training wheels to too slow to race with. It feels undertuned to you after the first week because it's supposed to feel that way.

[Ronduwil]

Not all content in the game that isn't savage/ultimate is for new players, bro, and it certainly shouldn't be designed for them.

I was specifically talking about stuff in the alliance raid roulette. The roulette is designed to reward experienced players for assisting random players who are queueing into that stuff for the first time ever. I'm surprised that, as experienced as you claim to be, you haven't understood that yet.

But regardless, anybody doing the new raid isn't really a "new" player. They will have played through all of ARR, HW, StB, ShB, and EW before getting to this content.

That doesn't change the fact that it's going to be their first time running this raid. As many of you flexers have said, the raid was challenging and difficult for you on week 1. That was how it was intended. It was never meant to keep challenging you forever.