People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Sacae]

My hot take here is that the dungeons feel dumbed down because they require the trust AI to be able to do them, so you will never get interesting mechanics with trash before bosses. Even bosses have a hard time surprising you because it needs to be doable by the AI itself.

You cannot have an adventure without stakes, and gameplay wise the stakes are always to lose or wipe, but nothing Endwalker from the 2 years I've been playing has been threatening, maybe I saw a couple of wipes at the beginning of Smileton but after 6.1 it never happened again.

Some of the design decisions this expansion feel like a response to what the devs think the players find fun. People figured weird openers to have a 6 min buff aligment? Well let's make a 2 min buff aligment so everyone can do that easily. People liked wall to wall enemies and had to do some work not everyone could do to kill big amounts of mobs? Well let's do without aggro and make AoE as simple as possible so everyone can do it, cuz that's what players find fun right?

Nah, you have prey mechanics and healing down tethers in Amaurot, and that can be done with trusts. Amaraurot actually had pretty interesting trash for dungeons.

Sohr Kai has those fans that give you haste after you kill them. Exploding enemies like the ones at the beginning of Thalalia or the adds in Sephirot EX could easily be done with trusts; they don't aoe anyway. Trap enemies, like in Shisui, mimics like in Lost City of Amdapor, more debuffs, like Misery from the Gremlins in Holminster Switch, environmental hazards, like in Lost City of Amdapor, the first part of Dead Ends or the last part of Tower of Babil, enemies that spawn adds, like those gate things in Alzadaal's Legacy, miniboss enemies like that ghost thing in Sirensong Sea that you used to have to interrupt, or endlessly spawning enemies until an objective is fufilled, like the balloons in Xelphatol. Every expansion has had at least one dungeon with something to make trash interesting. They just won't do it consistently for some reason.

As far as boss attacks that can one-shot, the one I see most often is the final boss of Grand Cosmos. That one hits hard, mortal flame can easily put parties in a bad place if they're not coordinated or paying attention to wear the fires are hitting. That's a great fight.

Also, not a mechanic that'll kill you, but the debuffs you get from island hopping in Hullbreaker Isle's Kracken fight are a great idea. Give resources to the player that they must use, but give them downsides that the players will have to manage at the same time. Zombie/Mega Death is another good example of that.

[Volgia]

Nah, you have prey mechanics and healing down tethers in Amaurot, and that can be done with trusts. Amaraurot actually had pretty interesting trash for dungeons.

Sohr Kai has those fans that give you haste after you kill them. Exploding enemies like the ones at the beginning of Thalalia or the adds in Sephirot EX could easily be done with trusts; they don't aoe anyway. Trap enemies, like in Shisui, mimics like in Lost City of Amdapor, more debuffs, like Misery from the Gremlins in Holminster Switch, environmental hazards, like in Lost City of Amdapor, the first part of Dead Ends or the last part of Tower of Babil, enemies that spawn adds, like those gate things in Alzadaal's Legacy, miniboss enemies like that ghost thing in Sirensong Sea that you used to have to interrupt, or endlessly spawning enemies until an objective is fufilled, like the balloons in Xelphatol. Every expansion has had at least one dungeon with something to make trash interesting. They just won't do it consistently for some reason.

As far as boss attacks that can one-shot, the one I see most often is the final boss of Grand Cosmos. That one hits hard, mortal flame can easily put parties in a bad place if they're not coordinated or paying attention to wear the fires are hitting. That's a great fight.

Also, not a mechanic that'll kill you, but the debuffs you get from island hopping in Hullbreaker Isle's Kracken fight are a great idea. Give resources to the player that they must use, but give them downsides that the players will have to manage at the same time. Zombie/Mega Death is another good example of that.

I agree those mobs are fun (I think to mention two others, the fairy dungeon in ShB with the trunks that tankbuster) but they have been absent for the past 4 patches. It would have made the last stretch to Zeromus so much more epic if the last dungeon felt more difficult than the everything that came before it. I feel like it's just lazy design at this point? I don't know. I'm so unsatisfied with the state of dungeons at the moment.