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

[Azlith]

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)

uh what? do you raid...like at all? DPS don't just eat mechanics man. If you do a mechanic wrong you will die, cause a wipe or get a damage down, all of which is bad for a damage dealer (or anyone.) I don't understand where this "healers adjust" thing even comes from. I have PF all of this expansions savage and ex raids and have only ever seen an instance of someone taking unnecessary damage on purpose in zodiark EX and samurais in p12s (which they then heal back the damage themselves with bloodbath.)

Regarding the actual topic though, I don't have any problems with the body checks in this expansions fights. Requiring everybody to do the mechanics correctly in a savage fights is kinda the whole point of savage isn't it?

[Colt47]

uh what? do you raid...like at all? DPS don't just eat mechanics man. If you do a mechanic wrong you will die, cause a wipe or get a damage down, all of which is bad for a damage dealer (or anyone.) I don't understand where this "healers adjust" thing even comes from. I have PF all of this expansions savage and ex raids and have only ever seen an instance of someone taking unnecessary damage on purpose in zodiark EX and samurais in p12s (which they then heal back the damage themselves with bloodbath.)

Regarding the actual topic though, I don't have any problems with the body checks in this expansions fights. Requiring everybody to do the mechanics correctly in a savage fights is kinda the whole point of savage isn't it?

It is, but the idea with savage is that it should also get easier when people get geared up so that as time goes on people of differing skill levels can make it through the fight, as well as make PF more doable. People are not perfect and most of the time people aren't even learning on the same step when they party together. If the fights are built that one person can kill everyone by messing up and this is almost every step of the fight, eventually it leads to everyone getting blocked by the lowest common denominator.

Like on this tier that is the big line in the sand why there are people who say the entire tier is fine, while others are saying it isn't. The people who are saying it is fine are those in extremely coordinated groups and they completely underestimate how much of a difference that makes. It doesn't matter how easy the jobs are, it matters how coordinated the people are and how much time they all had to study up, as well as if they are taking vacation to do the savage on launch, thus having their best hours of the day dedicated to it, vs the average joe who has to be burned out from work running 3 hours in the evening.

What made old savage work is that it allowed people to screw up if they had the gear for it, making it more doable by the evening average joe, while still being challenging enough in the first few weeks for people who are running in the more coordinated groups. The way they engineered this they are making the fights way more difficult for the average guy while everything else remains the same for someone who would be in Xenos shoes, or anyone else that has the time to do the fights for 8+ hours in a day. Those folks can understand the issue I'm mentioning if someone laid it out, but they aren't going to do it on a youtube video or make it popular to hear. Probably because the implication they give is that if they feel the content is mid-core, those who can't even do those mechanics or learn them properly in a few short sessions are in the wrong boat.

[Azlith]

Like on this tier that is the big line in the sand why there are people who say the entire tier is fine, while others are saying it isn't. The people who are saying it is fine are those in extremely coordinated groups and they completely underestimate how much of a difference that makes. It doesn't matter how easy the jobs are, it matters how coordinated the people are and how much time they all had to study up, as well as if they are taking vacation to do the savage on launch, thus having their best hours of the day dedicated to it, vs the average joe who has to be burned out from work running 3 hours in the evening.

What made old savage work is that it allowed people to screw up if they had the gear for it, making it more doable by the evening average joe, while still being challenging enough in the first few weeks for people who are running in the more coordinated groups. The way they engineered this they are making the fights way more difficult for the average guy while everything else remains the same for someone who would be in Xenos shoes, or anyone else that has the time to do the fights for 8+ hours in a day. Those folks can understand the issue I'm mentioning if someone laid it out, but they aren't going to do it on a youtube video or make it popular to hear. Probably because the implication they give is that if they feel the content is mid-core, those who can't even do those mechanics or learn them properly in a few short sessions are in the wrong boat.

Can't agree with this assessment. As someone who progged every fight this tier in the PF learning all of the strats from random pastebins raidplans and what not, going into every fight practice party after practice party after practice party having to deal with prog liars in just about every group and then eventually joining clear parties and killing the bosses, I can say with confidence that you don't need an organized dedicated or highly coordinated group to kill any of the bosses in this tier. If the rest of us that progged in PF can learn the strats, practice the strats and eventually execute the strats all within in the randomness of the PF, so can anyone else. 3 hours is more than enough time to learn the bosses one mechanic at a time. Will you down the tier by week 3 or 4? probably not, but you will eventually kill it if you keep at it.

As for gear making things easier, you can literally skip superchain 2B in p12s nowadays. You can skip parted plumes in p10s (which is a very easy mech anyway.) You can skip limit cut 2 in p9s. Gear also makes the mitigation checks CONSIDERABLLY easier, so yes gear does still have a lot of value even for prog.

[Colt47]

Can't agree with this assessment. As someone who progged every fight this tier in the PF learning all of the strats from random pastebins raidplans and what not, going into every fight practice party after practice party after practice party having to deal with prog liars in just about every group and then eventually joining clear parties and killing the bosses, I can say with confidence that you don't need an organized dedicated or highly coordinated group to kill any of the bosses in this tier. If the rest of us that progged in PF can learn the strats, practice the strats and eventually execute the strats all within in the randomness of the PF, so can anyone else. 3 hours is more than enough time to learn the bosses one mechanic at a time. Will you down the tier by week 3 or 4? probably not, but you will eventually kill it if you keep at it.

As for gear making things easier, you can literally skip superchain 2B in p12s nowadays. You can skip parted plumes in p10s (which is a very easy mech anyway.) You can skip limit cut 2 in p9s. Gear also makes the mitigation checks CONSIDERABLLY easier, so yes gear does still have a lot of value even for prog.

Picking apart what you are saying...

1) Prog cheaters getting into the group cause the group to fail: There is no way to know if the person lied about their progression or is having a bad day. The only thing someone can observe is if they are failing at the mechanic or not.
2) You don't need a dedicated or highly organized group to clear the tier: The only way the PF is clearing the fight is by sticking to exactly one strategy that is popularized on youtube, agreeing to specific set positions, and going from there. By definition, that is being highly organized. A PF group is not inherently disorganized. Likewise, people who generally are dedicated and don't go into statics bullrush the hell out of the tier in the first four weeks. That's why the PF ends up getting worse progression as time goes on for people who fall behind, because players who have less time will naturally fall behind due to that katamari-damacy of players with lower time dropping the ability for those with more time to prog. A lot of people even give up on savage when they can't make it past certain fights by X week because of this. So dedication and pushing through rapidly is absolutely preferred and it makes a huge difference in the experience.
3) Gear lets you skip X mechanic in a fight at the later weeks: This is true ONLY if we are talking about for people who have already cleared and got the fights down. Pre-stat nerf I'd totally agree since the scaling on damage worked differently and was technically broken, but post stat nerf everything is significantly controlled.

The game was broken in shadowbringers due to the stats, but that also got a lot more people to do savage which is why the feedback from back then was more positive. Savage was easier and more accessible to everyone, and now it feels like it isn't since the fights are too tight and do not allow outlets.

[Azlith]

...

1. You can usually know if someone is lying about their prog point or not. This point was mostly irrelevant to my point anyway and was only thrown in there to exemplify how annoying PF groups can be. That said when someone is lying about their prog point you can usually tell simply by how they handle this or that mechanic. I say usually because every now and then you'll get someone who is actually really good and fast with learning mechanics but hasn't seen one of the mechanics on the way to the prog point and then does it right anyway (these people are usually quite rare.) As far as having a bad day goes, man if you're consistently screwing up the mechanics on the way to the prog point it doesn't matter if you are lying or having a bad day. At that point you probably should just apologize to the group and take a break (this is something I've had to do) or join another practice party thats on the mechanic you're screwing up.

2. I don't really understand. Are you trying to advocate for unorganized groups to be able to clear? You just go into a savage fight doing whatever strats you please irregardless of what everyone else is doing and still get the clear? Of course you need to be organized, this wouldn't be savage if everyone didn't need to be on the same page. Yes attempting to get the clears as early as possible will certainly give you a lot more parties to work with, I dunno about it being easier though since the strats you'll be working with will usually be the week 1 strats that usually aren't very good (not to mention that one party will be doing x strat and the next will be doing y.) This does not mean, however, that you can't continue to find groups all throughout the patch cycle, even now there are practice parties forming for all of the fights in this tier every day and nothing is stopping someone from trying to form their own. Blaming ones inability to clear the savage tier on the mechanics being too unforgiving is just so strange to me...its like exactly counter to what savage is.

3. You can get full ilvl 660 through just with the tome gear and shines/twines you get from alliance raids/hunts. This gear is good enough to start skipping mechanics but skipping mechanics isn't the only thing that the gear helps with. Gear also helps with mitigation checks and making up for mistakes (damage downs or deaths). You can absolutely kill savage fights even in this tier with several deaths. One of my recent p11s kills had 6 deaths I believe and we still killed the boss.

[Raven2014]

I think the reason, or at least one of the main reason why we see a lot of body check is because of the gear creep. Unlike most other MMO where the expectation is you gonna "need" some gears from the previous fights + a few weeks of welfare gears to beat the later fights of the tier, FF14 raid tier is too short (only 4 bosses) that are tuned to be defeated in week 1.


And yes, I know most people don't clear the tier in week 1. But the point is no matter how "harsh" the DPS check is, as long as it's tuned for week 1 clear, that check will simply become irrelevant within one month at top. The body check mechanics is to ensure the fights remain relevant regardless of how geared the group are.

[Raven2014]

That's what enrage are for. This bypasses the need for enrage.

No it doesn't. A pure enrage check will become irrelevant as people get more geared. The body check is there to make sure the mechanic always remain relevant regardless of how geared you are

[ForteNightshade]

The game was broken in shadowbringers due to the stats, but that also got a lot more people to do savage which is why the feedback from back then was more positive. Savage was easier and more accessible to everyone, and now it feels like it isn't since the fights are too tight and do not allow outlets.

Have you actually done a lot of Savage? Shadowbringers had just as many, if not more, body checks or near guaranteed fail states.

Cloud of Darkness had PvP tiles, Shadow Dog's void circles were a guaranteed wipe if someone was dead, never mind how easy it was for void orbs to kill several people. Fatebreaker is basically a harder Themis. Is someone dead for partners? Better hope he doesn't pick a tank or healer. You weren't recovering third phase cycles if the healers go down. Finally, we get to Eternity/Gaia which have Lion Rampant, time warps and a litany of "do this correctly or die."

None of these fights were any more or less accessible for the general playerbase. Same goes for previous tiers or even expansions. Jumping back to Stormblood, we had the infamous Hello, World and Limit Cut from O12S alone.

The only real shocker this expansion in terms of difficulty is Pandæmonium because we usually don't have such a highly tuned fight as the second encounter. Frankly, I love they didn't hold back for once and only wish Themis had been more interesting.

Now I do think they could scale the back checks back somewhat but like Seebazy mentioned prior, it's damn near the only option they have to actually challenge players. Healers, and to a lesser extent, tanks have far too many tools nowadays.

Nevertheless, Savage hasn't been "easier" in prior expansions.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Have you actually done a lot of Savage? Shadowbringers had just as many, if not more, body checks or near guaranteed fail states.

Cloud of Darkness had PvP tiles, Shadow Dog's void circles were a guaranteed wipe if someone was dead, never mind how easy it was for void orbs to kill several people. Fatebreaker is basically a harder Themis. Is someone dead for partners? Better hope he doesn't pick a tank or healer. You weren't recovering third phase cycles if the healers go down. Finally, we get to Eternity/Gaia which have Lion Rampant, time warps and a litany of "do this correctly or die."

None of these fights were any more or less accessible for the general playerbase. Same goes for previous tiers or even expansions. Jumping back to Stormblood, we had the infamous Hello, World and Limit Cut from O12S alone.

The only real shocker this expansion in terms of difficulty is Pandæmonium because we usually don't have such a highly tuned fight as the second encounter. Frankly, I love they didn't hold back for once and only wish Themis had been more interesting.

Now I do think they could scale the back checks back somewhat but like Seebazy mentioned prior, it's damn near the only option they have to actually challenge players. Healers, and to a lesser extent, tanks have far too many tools nowadays.

Nevertheless, Savage hasn't been "easier" in prior expansions.

I think it's more, there was only 1 real body check per fight. This tier, there are multiple per fight. P12s is almost every mechanic.


I found e8s far easier to prog than p12s, and everyone hated e8s because of light rampant.

[Colt47]

Have you actually done a lot of Savage? Shadowbringers had just as many, if not more, body checks or near guaranteed fail states.

Cloud of Darkness had PvP tiles, Shadow Dog's void circles were a guaranteed wipe if someone was dead, never mind how easy it was for void orbs to kill several people. Fatebreaker is basically a harder Themis. Is someone dead for partners? Better hope he doesn't pick a tank or healer. You weren't recovering third phase cycles if the healers go down. Finally, we get to Eternity/Gaia which have Lion Rampant, time warps and a litany of "do this correctly or die."

None of these fights were any more or less accessible for the general playerbase. Same goes for previous tiers or even expansions. Jumping back to Stormblood, we had the infamous Hello, World and Limit Cut from O12S alone.

The only real shocker this expansion in terms of difficulty is Pandæmonium because we usually don't have such a highly tuned fight as the second encounter. Frankly, I love they didn't hold back for once and only wish Themis had been more interesting.

Now I do think they could scale the back checks back somewhat but like Seebazy mentioned prior, it's damn near the only option they have to actually challenge players. Healers, and to a lesser extent, tanks have far too many tools nowadays.

Nevertheless, Savage hasn't been "easier" in prior expansions.

Yes I did all of shadowbringers (except first tier of shadowbringers) and all of the current tier. It absolutely was easier back then, with groups generally being able to do 6 hours in a week and still clearing near the end of the patch. It is physically impossible in the current savage tier to do only 6 hours and clear it reliably. There's too many points where one person can die and kill everyone compared to the original fights, and we don't have the broken stat system to keep these people alive. The devs went tighter on things and it shows a LOT. Multiple body checks per fight and a lot of hidden hard wipes involving mp management if too many rezzes are given out.