Thank You! Yoshida-san for making R50 The Dzemael Darkhold Dungeon NOT EASY :)

[Duelle]

Infinitesimally more difficult that dodging fire. It's also not a gimmick fight its an endurance fight like 99% of all content pre-abyssea XI. Why is it that when I search through wowprogess I can find (to-date) 5000+ guilds who have Firefighter? On the XI side not even 1/10th of Linkshells have Pandemonium Queller (to-date).

Hate to quote myself, but:

Those two should never be mentioned, as they were designed around gimmicks that no one figured out for a long time. It'd be like trying to stroke your e-peen over pre-nerf C'thun.

Nice try, either way.

Also, you can cheese Firefighter now because of being lv85. There's a reason why I said "at appropriate gear levels".

All games have outstanding gear checks even WoW.

I never said anything to the contrary, so I don't know why you chose to bring that up.

What would be some things you'd want to see in an ideal Boss encounter? Environmental Hazards?

Flame walls, collapsing ceilings, one encounter being a "chase scene" of sorts. Boss level adds that are option to each fight to increase loot and encounter difficulty. Seeing technology and its role in this game, I also still want an encounter focused on magitek armor.

If you wanna lift stuff straight out of WoW, poison geisers, boss abilities that incapacitate random raid members (ice blocks for Sindragosa and Sapphiron, web wraps for Maexxna), one-shot capable abilities that can be avoided/mitigaged only through line of sight, untargetable adds, Loatheb.

Things to counter, like, say, Morbol using Bad Breath and having reversal spells ready?

Depends. Status removal spells would need to be a little more generalized to effectively use Bad Breath as an encounter mechanic. Could be used for phase transitions, though. Like maybe:

Bad Breath: Stuns all raid members and afflicts them with a DoT effect for 10 seconds while Ultimate Oscar shifts into phase 2. After the 10 seconds are up, the effect and DoT will wear off and be replaced with a random status effect for each raid member. Will also be used in transitions to phase 3 and 4.

Possible status effects: Poison, Bio, Dia, Paralyze, Sleep, Blind, Doom. The chance of doom being the status effect after Bad Breath is 1/50.

[Seif]

I'm expecting the biggest challenge will be finding 7 people to enter with.

You can laugh all you want but this is a genuine point of concern for me.

I'm often the only guy at the aerythe camps and to think that there would be 7 guys available right at the gate at the same time not tied to another party seems like too big of a coincidence to randomly just happen.

[Kiara]

Seeing technology and its role in this game, I also still want an encounter focused on magitek armor.

If you wanna lift stuff straight out of WoW, poison geisers, boss abilities that incapacitate random raid members (ice blocks for Sindragosa and Sapphiron, web wraps for Maexxna), one-shot capable abilities that can be avoided/mitigaged only through line of sight, untargetable adds, Loatheb.
Depends. Status removal spells would need to be a little more generalized to effectively use Bad Breath as an encounter mechanic. Could be used for phase transitions, though. Like maybe:

Bad Breath: Stuns all raid members and afflicts them with a DoT effect for 10 seconds while Ultimate Oscar shifts into phase 2. After the 10 seconds are up, the effect and DoT will wear off and be replaced with a random status effect for each raid member. Will also be used in transitions to phase 3 and 4.

Possible status effects: Poison, Bio, Dia, Paralyze, Sleep, Blind, Doom. The chance of doom being the status effect after Bad Breath is 1/50.

Hi Duelle,

Nice ideas. Magitek as in from Final Fantasy VI? That would be cool.

Ultimately, in a few weeks we'll see what sort of tactics we'll need against the first Boss designed from the new team. I'm hoping for something good.