Difficulty of normal content.

[AmiableApkallu]

The problem with the difficulty on normal fights as I see it is:
-Use and abuse of non standard telegraphs.
-Nasty mechanic overlaps, stuff you would see on extreme and harder fights.
-Mechs resolving too quickly for the mental capacity they demand to process.
-One too many "catch this!" mech (mechs that have you running around like headless chicken evading seemingly random patterns).

I haven't yet done the new raids, but…

• The telegraphs in Dawntrail are actually quite good. The last time I saw a non-standard telegraph would have been... some optional ARR dungeon?
• Overlapping mechanics in normal fights has been a thing since at least Stormblood.

I'm reminded of a philosophy from the training of surgeons: "See one, do one, teach one." See a mechanic played out once. Do the mechanic yourself once. Teach the mechanic to someone else once (or, be prepared to, anyway). This approach has carried me through Dawntrail just fine.

Not getting a mechanic correct on the first try is fine. Party wipes are fine. But instead of just trying to power through and do, actually take a moment first to see. The hallmarks of a normal mode fight — that is, to say, "casual" content — are that (1) it's obvious how you failed to recognize a telegraph and thus failed the mechanic, and (2) as Supersnow said, you don't need to strategize with the rest of the party to do it correctly.

[Kitkat]

I'm reminded of a philosophy from the training of surgeons: "See one, do one, teach one." See a mechanic played out once. Do the mechanic yourself once. Teach the mechanic to someone else once (or, be prepared to, anyway). This approach has carried me through Dawntrail just fine.

I had to quote this, as this is one of the most important points made in the entire topic so far. In 1.0 and 2.0 this was very important for various fights. I'm reminded of the first boss in the lvl 50 dungeon Amdapor Keep. The demon wall that, believe it or not, many people had trouble getting past simply because they weren't geared well enough, or they weren't paying attention to mechanics and dying too much (which as we all know means weakness or straight out lost due to going in the pit). It was very rare at first to see many get this boss down before it was halfway across the bridge, people struggled with it until better gear was acquired and now it is trivial.


TCoB was also very punishing due to context specific mechanics at times, something many people couldn't do. This was before they came out with Savage fights. The Hard Primal fights, not to be confused with EX, just hard were daunting to some until they learned there was a pattern and could move accordingly. By the time Stormblood was ending, you were starting to see many harder fights in 'normal content' being phased out. Shadowbringers brought in the numerous high raid damage mechanics, which as far as I'm concerned is a cheap difficulty hurdle on the developments end. Seeing them bring in actual mechanics where getting hit too much, or taking too many of a type of mechanic does now affect you causing you to want to learn how to avoid it. If anything, dungeons should be a stepping stone to learning mechanics that will show up in harder fights and make it very clear if you don't learn them, you will die or will adversely affect the rest of the team. This helps people learn if they are fine with just being casual on the game, or if they should desire to really see how punishing mechanics can be and strive to go into EX/Savage without having a crippling difference in difficulty.