New Alliance Raid is severely undertuned.

[Tsukino]

Boss HP is low, they seem to be tuned on the assumption that some portion of the raid will be dead at all times (like on day 1) but as soon as you get a group that's done this before, they fall over super fast. This is not premades either, this is just with the average DF group.

Definitely agree with this. If I had to guess, I would suspect this has something to do with people always complaining about running things over and over again, so it was made faster. But I would like to at least see all the mechanics while it's relatively new - in particular Azeyma loses pretty much all of her potential difficulty by not reaching the more complicated wind patterns.

Mechanics come out extremely slowly and one at a time. This not only gives you ages to react but reduces the total number of mechanics you see in the fight. For example Rhalgr's punch mechanic takes like 30 seconds to resolve start to finish including the cast times and various animations.

I think this is fine, because I don't hold much value in things being difficult to react in time contributing to difficulty. FFXIV isn't an action game, and there's a massive amount of latency for a lot of people that make this unevenly difficult. Basically, if things are too easy to dodge in time, rather than reducing the time available to perform the dodge, I'd take a complexity increase in figuring out where is safe.

I do think this is an interesting point though, because I think the perception of them being slow and one at a time is related to your first point about the bosses dying too quickly. In a lot of cases we're only seeing the "demonstration" version of patterns, and then the boss is dead before they get to do the overlapping versions. Rhalgr's punch, to continue the example, eventually requires you to examine most of the fingers, check which side is safe from a fist portal, and check the fingers a second time for the little orbs. It's not too slow for those overlapping mechanisms, but I only even saw them all at once the first day.

With the exception of certain one-shot mechanics like stuff that knocks you off the platform, almost all mechanics in the raid are very survivable if you fail them. Many can be ignored if you don't know how to resolve them as they don't do threatening damage.

I don't see this at all. I still see most non-tanks taking huge damage from everything that's avoidable, and this has been consistent since 6.0 and the stat "squish" changes. I wonder if you're just seeing more healers up than usual to undo it or something.

There are almost no mechanics which require group coordination/performance, almost all are individual responsibility, meaning it's extremely hard to have a full wipe as long as at least one tank and one rezzer knows what they're doing, as there are no mechanics which they need the other people alive for. They can just keep fighting and rezzing indefinitely. Even on day 1, I had a pull where about 20 people were dead on Azeyma, two of the alliances released assuming it would be a wipe, and the remaining alliance just took the boss down by themselves.

I'm mixed on this one, probably because I think it can be broken down further into different categories of things that this raid is lacking compared to previous ones.

On one hand, you have the fights people historically failed the most in the duty finder - Scylla, Ozma, Cid, etc. The main reason these seemed so much more difficult is that they had patterns that called out a certain number of players and told them "do this or everyone dies." In that moment, those randomly selected players weren't 1/24 of the contribution easily made up by more experienced or skilled players, they were 1/6 or more and if they didn't know what to do they could cause a wipe. I don't really care for these because I feel they undermine the purpose alliance raids serve in the available content in FFXIV. If you want something where everyone has to pull their weight and know what to do and it's immediately obvious when one person gets everyone else killed, there's Extreme and Savage with only eight people. Alliance raids have their own niche where individual contribution is not as important, and I'm glad to not see any of these types of things so far on this set.

But on the other, you have the situations you've described where the entire alliance just isn't needed to continue, and I feel that also undermines the difference in having content for 24 people. Both in cases where there just aren't enough damage splits or mechanics that target a minimum number of players, and where there really aren't any that force the individual full parties to do something separately. I definitely miss the things older alliance raids used to do where they'd force each party to fight their own target, or split them up into separate areas, especially if they had different tasks to perform in each. Nald'thal is the only one who does anything like it and it just completely pales in comparison to prior forms this has taken. I don't even think this has much to do with difficulty or challenge so much as just "fun that can be had with alliance raids and not really anywhere else" because of the three-party makeup.



Definitely disagree with the other replies about further hindering gear though. FFXIV is barely an RPG as it is, and we don't need our stats even further homogenized than they already are in most things across the board. Buffing the content itself is much more preferable.

[Kolsykol]

I don't get this forum obsession with turning every content into savage.
Just go play Elden Ring if you want to stress your hair out over pixels.
If you don't find FFXIV engaging enough go do Ultimate like Yoshi-P says.

Uh, increasing their HP wouldn't turn it into Savage lol.

I do think it's a problem tho, there's a lot of story fights where people don't even get to see all of the mechanics and the best and most hype parts of the songs don't even get to start because the boss dies too fast.
You have a much better experience with it on day 1, it kinda sucks that people who aren't playing everything on day 1 end up having a subpar and less hype experience in comparison.

Elden ring isn't that hard. Its mostly preparation and patience

I've beaten Elden Ring twice, both times without any bullshit cheese tactics.
And beaten all of the others so many times I've lost count I've probably spent thousands of hours in the Souls series.

And no Elden Ring is way too hard, not in the way people say that the Souls games are hard but because they're complete bullshit.
Early game there's some of it but nothing you haven't seen before in Souls games ( delayed attacks and super aggressive bosses that belongs more in Sekiro + double bosses and tons of rly aggressive adds with the boss etc ).
But late mid to late game the game kinda just derails into absurdity, Joseph Anderson uploaded his review of the game about two weeks ago and I think he went into quite well.
The quality of the boss design in Elden Ring is pretty awful and it has nothing to do with '' git gud '', and just because overpowered and completely imbalanced weapons and builds exist doesn't change that they're poorly designed.

What made past Souls games great was that the game was fair but punishing, Elden Ring is just unfair and even more punishing the bosses blatantly cheat and have infinite stamina.
I am not saying Elden Ring is a bad game I personally loved it, but I also hated the boss design and thought it was the worst in the series which is quite unfortunate for a Souls game.
I guess one could make the argument that it's easy if you use completely broken and overpowered weapons ( which kinda just speaks for the poor balance not exactly something to praise the devs for, it's even worse in PvP too ).
But I think at least that it's better to judge the game on how it plays without abusing some of the series most broken weapons, and yeah in that regard the game is absurdly unfair and poorly designed.

[Missbone]

Honestly why do you want the raid to be more difficult/longer than it has to be. You will maybe enjoy the slightly higher difficulty in the beginning a few times but in the long run all of you will be greatfull if they can just grab their weekly loot and will be out there as soon as possible. Every Dungeon will become boring if you do it a over and over again and than even the hardcore players will be thankfull if they dont have to deal with it longer than necessary.

[Kolsykol]

Honestly why do you want the raid to be more difficult/longer than it has to be. You will maybe enjoy the slightly higher difficulty in the beginning a few times but in the long run all of you will be greatfull if they can just grab their weekly loot and will be out there as soon as possible. Every Dungeon will become boring if you do it a over and over again and than even the hardcore players will be thankfull if they dont have to deal with it longer than necessary.

There needs to be some kind of balance imo, and I think it's too low currently.
I mean I do stuff for fun too not just to get my weekly I think that's a bit of a strange reason to do something in a sense, at that point I almost question whether someone even enjoys the game they're playing.
Imo I don't rly find things enjoyable when they're over too quickly, and it's also not fun for people who are there for the first time either especially not in older content.

Especially in dungeons like at the end of SHB, my brain wasn't even engaged anymore and then I am not having fun.
I enjoy the gameplay but it often feels like it's over too quickly and barely gets going.

[BaconBits]

Uh, increasing their HP wouldn't turn it into Savage lol.

I do think it's a problem tho, there's a lot of story fights where people don't even get to see all of the mechanics and the best and most hype parts of the songs don't even get to start because the boss dies too fast.
You have a much better experience with it on day 1, it kinda sucks that people who aren't playing everything on day 1 end up having a subpar and less hype experience in comparison.





I've beaten Elden Ring twice, both times without any bullshit cheese tactics.
And beaten all of the others so many times I've lost count I've probably spent thousands of hours in the Souls series.

And no Elden Ring is way too hard, not in the way people say that the Souls games are hard but because they're complete bullshit.
Early game there's some of it but nothing you haven't seen before in Souls games ( delayed attacks and super aggressive bosses that belongs more in Sekiro + double bosses and tons of rly aggressive adds with the boss etc ).
But late mid to late game the game kinda just derails into absurdity, Joseph Anderson uploaded his review of the game about two weeks ago and I think he went into quite well.
The quality of the boss design in Elden Ring is pretty awful and it has nothing to do with '' git gud '', and just because overpowered and completely imbalanced weapons and builds exist doesn't change that they're poorly designed.

What made past Souls games great was that the game was fair but punishing, Elden Ring is just unfair and even more punishing the bosses blatantly cheat and have infinite stamina.
I am not saying Elden Ring is a bad game I personally loved it, but I also hated the boss design and thought it was the worst in the series which is quite unfortunate for a Souls game.
I guess one could make the argument that it's easy if you use completely broken and overpowered weapons ( which kinda just speaks for the poor balance not exactly something to praise the devs for, it's even worse in PvP too ).
But I think at least that it's better to judge the game on how it plays without abusing some of the series most broken weapons, and yeah in that regard the game is absurdly unfair and poorly designed.

Eh, the only things I'd consider blatantly unfair would be the dual/triple bosses. Triple Scarlet Rot Crystalians with no poise obliterating hammer had me feeling some type of way. And double Crucible Knight? Don't even get me started. Definitely a far cry from Ornstein and Smough or the Twin Princes.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Honestly why do you want the raid to be more difficult/longer than it has to be. You will maybe enjoy the slightly higher difficulty in the beginning a few times but in the long run all of you will be greatfull if they can just grab their weekly loot and will be out there as soon as possible. Every Dungeon will become boring if you do it a over and over again and than even the hardcore players will be thankfull if they dont have to deal with it longer than necessary.

we want a raid not a sleeping run

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

ye people play for fun. when content is so boring the most hard thing is to no fall asleep then its not so fun.

Not falling asleep for 70 minutes is more boring that not falling asleep for 50 minutes, don't you think ?

now i need to run it as the glams are really good and for the upgrades. but at this point it more of i forced to run it over i want to run it. i want it to be as hard as older ones not more . as it stands now its so easy we don't even hit LB3.

Imagine asking for harder content when you're so far behind that you haven't killed P3S after 3 months, and thus, need an alliance raid to upgrade your left pieces.

Not killing P3S in 3 months is alright... but complaining about the game being too easy yet failing or not willing to play actually harder content... yikes.

I would expect them to have some sort of challenge as they are post game content. How many games have you played where the post game content is as easy or easier than the main story content?

Except that's just not true. Mechanics for this are harder than for main story content, since there are a lots of mechanics that have no visible AoEs until 0.5s before it actually deals damage. The only reason it seems simple and boss seem to last a short time is because there are people that are ilvl 600 and they burst bosses. But yes : mechanics in alliance raids are harder than in main story content, and the fact you can ignore them by being overgeared (which you can't be in main story content, due to the sync hitting harder) is unrelated.

Also HW raids were pretty hard when they were released. Diablos did not recently get hard, groups wiped on him all the time as well as the boss before him. Heavensward had the highest stat jump of any expansion so they became a walk in the park over time due to this stat jump. So IMO making these raids easier is a diminished QoL. I would probably go as far to say that Lab was harder on release than this was.

You're either delusional or have bad memory. Back then, I was actually an advocate for harder alliance raids, because I did find everything to be way too simple. It's pretty hard to say that lab is harder than anything, when you know back then, four tanks had to be afk and click on a tower for the whole behemoth fight, one had to stay behind on phlegethon fight for tanking the claws, and so on.

And no, I farmed Diabolos for days to get some glamour, I almost never wiped in 3.5, but nowadays in alliance raid roulette, it's rare that there isn't at least two wipes in this raid, because people don't know the strat or don't bother acting accordingly.

Alliance raids have always been easy. I don't blame you for not remembering, nostalgia is powerful, but please don't be delusional, alliance raids, as well as normal raids, are ever harder than last expansion.

[Vrankyl]

I don't understand the assumption that the moment someone asks things to be tuned a bit better that they are immediately a Savage/Ultimate raider and want to gatekeep. Or that they want everything to be at Savage difficulty, which not even savage is anymore which is its own separate issue. I personally don't bother with Savage or Ultimate, I don't want to fight the same boss for hours wiping constantly but at the same time I don't want to be able to beat said boss with half the alliance having died at some point with death debuffs and vuln debuffs galore and still not even generate a single LB3 on week 2. Hells, I'm not even in full i590 yet. I just want to be able to have a nice time where I can see all of the boss's mechanics and use LB3s while the content is still current, and not be able to pull up Netflix on my second monitor and watch that while just numbly following to victory.

[LittleImp]

I just want the bosses to have more HP so that they get to showcase all of their mechanics.

The way some of the 24 mans melt just isn't respectful to the original design intentions of the content, and can be very underwhelming for new players and old players alike.

[Vahlnir]

I don't understand the assumption that the moment someone asks things to be tuned a bit better that they are immediately a Savage/Ultimate raider and want to gatekeep. Or that they want everything to be at Savage difficulty, which not even savage is anymore which is its own separate issue. I personally don't bother with Savage or Ultimate, I don't want to fight the same boss for hours wiping constantly but at the same time I don't want to be able to beat said boss with half the alliance having died at some point with death debuffs and vuln debuffs galore and still not even generate a single LB3 on week 2. Hells, I'm not even in full i590 yet. I just want to be able to have a nice time where I can see all of the boss's mechanics and use LB3s while the content is still current, and not be able to pull up Netflix on my second monitor and watch that while just numbly following to victory.

Yeah. I think the difficulty (the actual difficulty level) for the latest raid is fine. The bosses just need a bit more HP. I don't think that is an unreasonable request. lol All it does it let the bosses do the mechanics they are already doing a bit longer.