Quote Originally Posted by synaesthetic View Post
I don't consider this strategy to be an exploit simply because Square could not possibly have let this get past QA unintentionally. The boss stops using all of its abilities when it "enrages," and only casts a pulsing AE that does not instantly kill anyone.

Think about that for a second. They had to intentionally turn off those abilities during the enrage. If they just added "have the boss start dropping massive AE damage after 12 minutes," don't you think it'd still be doing Allagan Rot, Gravity Field and Ballast, not to mention High Voltage and Piercing Laser?

It's not an exploit, since you are not actually taking advantage of a programming or logic error. I'd say it was intended as an alternate strategy, and so does Square-Enix.
No, they merely didn't expect people to bring 3 healers and only 1 tank. It's not an exploit,because SE has already said they don't see it as an exploit, but pls stop talking yourself into this being an intended strategy. Simple common sense will tell you that is non-intended gameplay. This whole thing reminds me of the discussion about that infamous tree that was placed in the room of the first boss in AK, where one could jump up to avoid most damage, while still being able to range DPS the boss or heal others. Of course people were on the fence saying that this had to be an intended strategy, because in no way SE would have placed that tree there if it wasn't meant to be used for jumping up on it, and as SE never said it was an exploit, the whole bunch of grey zone surfers felt that they were right in doing so. A patch later that tree was gone, plain and simple. How much of intended gameplay has this been, what do you think?