Endsinger is fixed, now fix the rest. Max ilvl is too high on old content.

[Astrahime]

Why would more tanks help with the behemoth fight? You still have three total in the instance; one takes the behemoth and one takes the giant, and one is still out of a job.

One tank takes Behemoth.
One tank takes the Giant.
The other four take the towers.
Try doing CT at minimum item level, you will repeatedly wipe to behemoth.

[Astrahime]

Specially Thordan. That one is the most in need for this fix.

The only "fix" he needs is changing the phase transition percent from a measly TEN PERCENT OF HIS HEALTH REMAINING to a more reasonable 50%. Or even 70% since that's what happens in EX.
No degree of item level syncing is going to fix that.

I had a MINE party of him. We skipped everything still.
I soloed it as BLU without echo. I saw a few more mechanics from phase 1. There's towers. They don't even paralyse you.
I soloed it as BLU, MINE. He gets a damage bonus in phase 1 if he somehow survives long enough. I had to diamondback the Holy Bladedances.
Adds phase was still a joke because the brothers don't have proximity-based damage resistance in normal mode.

Seriously, why don't they? In Bismarck's normal mode version, you need to drag the 2 big adds apart or they'll get damage resistance.

[Iscah]

One tank takes Behemoth.
One tank takes the Giant.
The other four take the towers.
Try doing CT at minimum item level, you will repeatedly wipe to behemoth.

When I've done it at min IL, we were just told to all keep watch on the towers and interact if they're starting to get charged. Do you really need a dedicated tank job for that?

[TaleraRistain]

I thought we wanted to kill meteion because it was eating every soul in the universe or something? Mercy there seems somewhat irresponsible.

It's like the Four Lords. We wanted to bring Meteion back to herself. And it was necessary to smack her and her sisters around a bit to do that.

[RokkuEkkusu]

It probably won't change the difficulty much on Thordan's current story trial unless it gets a total revamp to be a little harder than Charibert at the Vault. That being said, it is somewhat of a reasonable request nontheless.

Somebody needs to sit Yoshi-P down for a run of Thordan Normal and have him think about if this is how he wants new players experiencing the epic climactic battle of Heavensward.

I think the ultimate takeaway of this so-called epic climatic battle is that Thordan ultimately became the very Ascian, Dragon, and Primal he swore to destroy. He unknowingly killed himself before the battle even begun. His only saving graces are breaking the seals of the Warring Triad and indirectly contributed to Nidhogg getting BOTH eyes. [Why the Warring Triad is not a mandatory thing for story progressing is beyond me and my comprehension.]

[CrazyDude]

Splitting this into multiple posts to meet the character limit:



I completely agree with this. If it weren't for my friends in my FC I would have quit at Praetorium (the old version). Many people seem to think the problem with those was the fact that they were 8 player dungeons. While the rework was still great and important to maintain consistency with the rest of the game, the real reason it felt so awful to play was the disparity between min ilvl (42) and max ilvl (130/135 for weapon). In the 4 player rework they applied an ilvl sync of 60, which works wonders in keeping the content from being a complete joke. And while those MSQ Roullette instances are vastly improved now, there still is the rather jarring experience of Thornmarch being completely rolled over in the very next MSQ instance. That rework was dead on arrival basically with the devs stubbornly refusing to ilvl sync it. A min ilvl of 54 and a max of 130 means that people are usually able to skip the meteor mechanic, and the healers like me feel useless because the boss is pretty much a pillow fight. So it's not just the capstone trials that need help - the level 50 ARR ones at least need this too.


The main problem here is that even if you don't care about fights being engaging, inconsistent ilvl syncing creates inconsistent encounter balance. You have fights like The Dark Inside (feel it's too recent to spoil boss name) that make some people quit when it pops, and fights like A1N where people are wondering when the real boss is going to show up. Which is why the "I want my roullettes fast" argument falls flat to me - depending on the dice roll you may get a long one as it is now, so what's the point?



Regarding the capstone trials, yes Shinryu and Hades are being completely trivialized in their current states and it is sad to see. As others have pointed out, Thordan would need extra help though. Personally I believe you could change Thordan to an 4 player instance synced to ilvl 180 - without rebalancing the fight! - and it would be just fine. I have comfortably done it MINE in random PFs with fewer players than that, and I would not consider myself even close to an elite player. It really is that big of a joke.


I saw some people mention Ravana in this thread... he is a special case. It seems to me that the stat squish in 6.0 did some very odd things to the level 53 duties. Both Sohm Al and Ravana are a LOT easier than they have any business being. Healers have nothing to do on them, and the bosses die even faster than they did in 5.5. Problem is, Ravana in particular has no min ilvl. Meaning running him MINE isn't even going to give you a good experience, as it just syncs you to the maximum ilvl available at the minimum level of the duty - ilvl 130 at 53 - when the normal max is 133 at 54. The ilvl sync for him is fine in theory... it's just his stats got messed up and need to be looked at.

[CrazyDude]

I also do think Normal difficulty Raids and Alliance Raids need syncing too. Too many fights are missing the best parts of them the way they are now, especially in duties like A1N, Rabanstre, and Aglaia. So much of the fun there is being lost. Did you know that the first boss of Rabanstre has an "ultimate" ability that shatters the screen? I imagine most new people do not, as he is hardly ever allowed to get to that part of the script unless the group is extremely bad.

There probably is more support for this than we realize. I firmly believe that most players are aware of the symptoms of the problem, but not the cause itself. I semi-regularly organize groups for normal difficulty content at min ilvl in PF (like Endsinger). Thing is, unless it's an encounter that could be rough at min ilvl (like one of the pre-2.2 ARR endgame duties), I intentionally omit it from the description to avoid scaring people off with the prospect of "hard mode" (a stigma min ilvl has gained from being almost exclusively used for Extreme/Savage content). I do turn on the icon to indicate min ilvl, but since players don't always actually look at those I get some people joining that think it's a regular run, and are ready for the same experience they've had before. It's always interesting to see the reactions of these players, and they are almost always positive - how much more exciting the encounters are, how much easier it was than they thought min ilvl would have been, etc. My point is that I think there are a lot of players that are aware of the inconsistency in encounter balance, and believe it to be a problem, but don't realize can be as simple as a lack of an ilvl sync.


Normal difficulty content needs to be ilvl synced to the max ilvl available at the level when the encounter was current. It's as simple as that. Note that Savage Raid gear for x.0 patches are not available at the same time the normal content is released. I believe that should be taken into consideration as well (like syncing The Stigma Dreamscape and Smileton to ilvl 570 rather than 600). Balancing for x.0 content seems to be already designed that way anyways, those dungeons are having some mechanics skipped even now.

[Troxbark]

Specially Thordan. That one is the most in need for this fix.

But its really fun not having to move for any mechanic.

[TheGrimace]

I think Ravana's one of the biggest victims of game stat changes, like the switch to Direct Hit from +Accuracy, and the removal of TP. His health was never buffed to compensate and so his fight goes much faster than it would have back in 3.0. Bismarck is also victim of this, but it's not as apparent since you never directly exchange blows with the whale, only adds. It's easy to ignore for that fight for me because I'm always just happy to be done with it. It's not particularly engaging for me, something I don't say about many fights in this game.

[ForsakenRoe]

I would like to see Thordan get a solo instance for the first run through the story, I'm not sure it can be salvaged with just an ILVL sync. Shinryu getting synced to 270 (the ILVL of the AF3 gear) and Hades to 430 (AF4 gear) would probably fix most of their issues, as the only issue they face really is 'they die before the climax of their fight really kicks in', eg Hades doesn't get to start crushing the light safezone anymore, Shinryu doesn't get to break any platforms. Thordan on the other hand, his mechanics don't do much of anything even when you actually purposely fail them. Don't soak tower? Oh everyone's paralyzed, but it doesn't matter because the DPS check on Ser Whatsit is so lenient.

They took Lahabrea from being a snoozefest/victory lap/joke fight after Ultima Weapon, to being a good set piece, actual mechanics, big 'moment of power' hype mode, etc. They could do similar to Thordan, I think, given that while he has one of the eyes, we have the other at that point, allowing for a narrative explanation for 'how are we able to literally solo this guy'

Splitting this into multiple posts to meet the character limit:

Pretty sure there's no character limit on editing a post, or if there is, I've yet to hit it, and I've posted some 'over 10k' posts in my time (with [ hb ] tags to consolidate, I'm not that evil)