SE, love the fight design but tone down the instant deaths a touch?

[Colt47]

I like savage in principle, having done it since the beginning of shadowbringers and watching it progress. But this last savage and a couple of the EX fights sort of got to the point that personal responsibility is ending up wiping the group rather than just punishing the individual and making the fight harder.

Shadowbringers fights were about as hard at the start but gearing up over the weeks made things easier even on e12s with points where the group could easily get killed off. With the way the difficulty progressed across the tiers this expansion, it was like devs decided that since they simplified the jobs they needed to push the difficulty on the fights themselves, so now there are way more cases where a screw up is a one shot on the tank, or a single person doesn't do a mech and the entire group dies off or struggles only to die a minute later.

This also increased the gap between normal and end game content even further than it was in shadowbringers, which already was showing some signs of the divide. Yes, mitigation matters MORE in this expansion than the last one, but this theme didn't do much to normal and did way too much to savage.

[Jeeqbit]

They don't have much in the way of instant party wipes in Extreme. The result? Everyone claims they are too easy; they can sacrifice themselves to solve a mechanic and get carried through it.

So who should they listen to. You? Or the people saying that doing that makes them too easy?

[KageTokage]

I honestly felt like I enjoyed the unreal versions of the ARR/HW trials more then most of the modern extremes specifically because the punishment for failure largely isn't as harsh barring situations involving fall deaths or death walls, though they tend to compensate for it by making the DPS checks less lenient.

[Sebazy]

They’ve really designed themselves into a corner with this one.

Healers are powerful enough and resources are plentiful that simply dealing more damage as a failure mode doesn’t work in the current meta.

Either you throw out damage downs to the point where it stops you beating enrage or you one shot people.

The only alternative I can see that actually punishes sufficiently would be bringing back the old petrify punishment. That was a good one and I’m sad to not see it in a while. It generally meant you were going to die to a following mechanic but it also gave healers room to try and pocket you through it which was surprisingly good fun

[Bonoki]

Body Checks suck, but it's been pretty much confirmed that fights are 'to easy' without them anymore.

[Absimiliard]

I think I'd rather see an increase in mechanic failure = instant death. Vuln stacks are worthless. All they really did was make things more forgiving.

[Jeeqbit]

Healers are powerful enough and resources are plentiful that simply dealing more damage as a failure mode doesn’t work in the current meta.

Or maybe you get an Abyssos situation where Yoshi-P directly upped the healing needed in response and people started saying healers were avoiding PF because it's too hard to heal in PUGs.

The only alternative I can see that actually punishes sufficiently would be bringing back the old petrify punishment. That was a good one and I’m sad to not see it in a while.

Doesn't feel that long ago.

[Deceptus]

Either you throw out damage downs to the point where it stops you beating enrage or you one shot people.

One of these negates an entire role (healers) and one doesn't.

Damage downs punish the player who didn't perform the mechanic properly, and if done enough the group doesn't beat enrage. Player then learns to do mechanics properly.

Instant death mechanics make healers pointless. It's the same thing in the Bozja raids. If you can't heal the damage, and it kills you anyway, why bring a healer and not a DPS who can just rez you with triple the DPS?

Or maybe you get an Abyssos situation where Yoshi-P directly upped the healing needed in response and people started saying healers were avoiding PF because it's too hard to heal in PUGs.

People ARE hard to heal in PUGs because most DPS players have developed the "healer adjust" toxic mentality over the past 10 years and don't actually do mechanics anymore. They just eat them, live, and have no recourse for doing so (which is the exact reason I advocate for more damage downs)

[Bonoki]

I think I'd rather see an increase in mechanic failure = instant death. Vuln stacks are worthless. All they really did was make things more forgiving.

Damage Downs is probably the better alternative to Vuln stacks.

[Jeeqbit]

The problem with damage downs is the P6S situation. That fight actually looked like it would be really hard if everything was a body check, but because all the tile mechanics just gave a damage down, they didn't have teeth. You could get carried through most of the mechanics, failing all of the tile mechanics because they went the damage down route. The DPS check wasn't punishing enough even with them, especially after average gear levels increased. There were parties that were barely seeing Cachexia 2 even in the first week from what I saw.

I don't have a problem with a P6S-like fight. But everyone kept saying "it's easy". That is the bigger problem with it not having teeth. People don't acknowledge any difficulty it has when they go the damage down route, because they see themselves getting to enrage regularly even if they can't beat it due to the damage downs.

So in order to make the fight "hard" in the minds of players, body checks seem to work better for that. Because then a lot of those players don't see enrage, or they don't see it for a large percentage of their progression and therefore don't feel it's as easy.

The other problem with damage downs is when they don't matter due to gear. For example, "damage down strat" was a popular strat for P1S, where the tank was asked to eat the damage down so that both themselves and a DPS didn't have to do the flex mechanic. And yes, flexing was easy to mess up, but I preferred that over knowing my damage was lower than it could be.

I even avoided damage down parties, but occasionally one of them would lie where we arranged to do the flex mechanic beforehand, but then they simply didn't do it so I was left with a choice: eat the damage down or wipe the party so I just did the first one, since I wanted to clear and not look like I wiped the party.