Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think they are especially easier, I think we just got better. Like, Thordan was "hard", but not mechanically. It was more to do with gear and us still being terrible with HW jobs. Zurvan was regarded as one of the easiest EX fights ever. Sephirot wasn't even that difficult mechanically.

Most of the difficulty came from us, to be quite frank, sucking.

Really just this. Back in Heavensward, Sophia was harder because you couldn't just use Shake it Off as a Warrior and heal the party. If the healers sucked, then the party was dead. And healers had less heals, so there was a higher chance of needing to use the GCD and manage MP.

There wasn't even Reprisal then except on DRK if they got a proc. You also couldn't use Knockback Immunity except on certain jobs like Paladin. Tanks didn't have a trait giving 20% damage reduction, so if they did use their DPS stance, all the worse for them. And now Warriors can get a free Knockback Immunity every 60 seconds as well. Oh, we also didn't have Shirk.

As an added difficulty, we didn't have cross-world party finder, so I would direct queue and constantly meet tanks that didn't know what a tank swap was and left me to die.

[Ath192]

Really just this. Back in Heavensward, Sophia was harder because you couldn't just use Shake it Off as a Warrior and heal the party. If the healers sucked, then the party was dead. And healers had less heals, so there was a higher chance of needing to use the GCD and manage MP.

There wasn't even Reprisal then except on DRK if they got a proc. You also couldn't use Knockback Immunity except on certain jobs like Paladin. Tanks didn't have a trait giving 20% damage reduction, so if they did use their DPS stance, all the worse for them. And now Warriors can get a free Knockback Immunity every 60 seconds as well. Oh, we also didn't have Shirk.

As an added difficulty, we didn't have cross-world party finder, so I would direct queue and constantly meet tanks that didn't know what a tank swap was and left me to die.

Actually I forgot about this. Maybe the reason the fights are easier now is because there were a lot more technicalities and depth to job management, so players did in fact suck more, but I don't think that its because we've gotten better at clicking the same hotbar we've had (maybe some, but someone who takes raiding seriously can master their job rather quickly so it wouldn't take years). It's just that the jobs being easier and homogenized raised the skill floor so everyone is slight better performing than they would've been with the OG stance dancing, TP + MP management.