Batraal Fight All Screwed Up.

[Adam]

The Dzemael Darkhold one of the new “Dungeons” in FFXIV. I’ll admit I was excited about this and I still am, personally I love it. But at the same time I can’t figure out if SE made this dungeon as a joke or not. Most of my linkshell’s problems have been on the final encounter in this dungeon, Batraal. Now I’ve raided in a lot of mmorpgs, and this fight in particular is a very old-school type. Tank picks up boss, rest of the party deals with additional enemies then engages boss. Adds will spawn 3 different times based on Batraal’s hp. After the second wave of adds though ghosts will appear around Batraal, similar to the Voidslave fight before Batraal.
Now I have to admit these ghosts are very cleaver, it’s like a new way to say “Don’t stand in the fire.” That’s a reference to bad players that stand in the wrong place. What I don’t understand is, how do you expect melee characters to get to Batraal and engage it if there is no open areas to stand in? O you want our tank to move Batraal out of the ghosts, right that’s not a problem, except for the fact the AI in this game would rather stand still and hit you with a ranged cleave ability that does more damage than his melee abilities, and it’s not a small amount it does an incredible amount of damage to the tank and anyone else that stands in the way. You want me to level Archer? I don’t remember that being in the requirements of entering the dungeon (I think that’s the joke). Didn’t this game sell based on the fact that you can do/play whatever you want on your one character? Obviously I’m not saying take in 8 mages but give us some flexibility on the dps jobs at least. I can understand needing 1-3 INCLUDING the mage jobs at ranged but I’m not having fun with 4 archers in my party. This was a problem in FFXI aswell, RDM, BLM, BRD, don’t have it? Get out. Please fix this, and think about player diversity before making encounters like this. Making it impossible to melee isn’t cleaver or cute.

[Archadius]

Didn't several groups beat this without ARC overkill (2 ARC tops) already? I believe this fight just requires strategy and practice. The whole "why do we need 6238482 ARC" thing doesn't work anymore. It's just a difficult dungeon and we're used to easymodexiv. I welcome this new challenge and am happy that the people I run with don't conform to the "all ARC or gtfo" so-called strategy. Patience, cooperation, determination. You'll get there.

[Adam]

That's not the point, we also beat it without 4 archers. We had 2 archers on it constantly, so yea... The fact the boss has such little HP anyways one ranged dps mage or archer can solo it eventually. Do the fight with zero ranged dps, meaning no archers, and no mages dpsing it. Then i'll retract my statement.

[Archadius]

Well doing it without mages is probably impossible since you would need heals. But without ARCs I can see happening in the near future if it hasn't already.

The only reason you're running into people saying "be ARC or gtfo" like FFXI is because someone found an easy mode and since players are used to easy mode, they default to that method and are completely ignorant to other methods. Don't blame SE, this fight isn't broken, blame the players who have lost their sense of adventure.

[Adam]

I can agree with that, but like I said there is no opening. Yes take the mages for healing of course, that's not what I ment. If you so strongly believe that you CAN melee this enemy without taking excessive near death damage please share it, because I see no evidence yet. I personally melee dps'd this boss, no I didn't die. But everytime I entered his little bubble those ghosts nearly killed me and I'm full VIT build which is probably DPS overkill on HP.

[Belial]

The only reason you're running into people saying "be ARC or gtfo" like FFXI is because someone found an easy mode and since players are used to easy mode, they default to that method and are completely ignorant to other methods. Don't blame SE, this fight isn't broken, blame the players who have lost their sense of adventure.

I agree and disagree at the same time.

Players are at fault for choosing simple methods to accomplish tasks presented in-game quickly and efficiently (however, this is understandable, this is how games are played, do it faster, stronger, etc.)

SE is at fault for having terrible foresight. They need to develop involving ranged mechanics for boss fights to allow for melee to be a viable class. Make it so ARCs get toasted frequently by something causing them to have to get within range of the boss, and you'll find the exact opposite of what is happening at the moment.

There are lots of ways this could be fixed. I'd like to see some real utilization of ranged mechanics as far as causing a lot of movement, this would dip ARCs DPS, allowing for the sit-and-wait melee to catch-up and again, making them a viable class. I would like to see bosses contain mechanics that can hinder -any- class. For example, a boss that could hinder a certain ability, or situation. A full room AoE that causes the loss of ranged attacks, or the loss of melee attacks, or the loss of defense causing all mages to hit the tank, a 50% cut in health gained from healing spells, again causing mutliple people to focus on one task, or maybe nullifying all DoTs. Something that can encourage all class involvement would be very beneficial here, and it's completely within the realm of reason... the real question is, is SE creative enough to give us something interersting like that?

[Adam]

Thank you for that post Belial, that's precisly what I was trying to say. I agree 150% with you, as a supporter of this game I want to see it do well with examples that you've given.

[Belial]

Thank you for that post Belial, that's precisly what I was trying to say. I agree 150% with you, as a supporter of this game I want to see it do well with examples that you've given.

And I'm an ARC main! I want more challenge for myself, and I'd like to be able to switch back-and-forth between ARC & LNC and still be viable in both roles (especially since as of late I've taken a heavier shine to LNC). I really hope they learn from this instance. I mean, I would even have been fine with the Ogre fight had Batraal been a more melee-centric endeavor. But we shall see what the future brings, I do consider that this is truly their first attempt at harder content and as such, it's a learning curve for them as well as us. Hopefully they'll be a bit more engaging in the next one. And although I think the whole "run away from everything" was a neat little mechanic, I hope this instance is the only one with that for a little bit, anyway.

But glad I could help, sir!

[Archadius]

Players are at fault for choosing simple methods to accomplish tasks presented in-game quickly and efficiently (however, this is understandable, this is how games are played, do it faster, stronger, etc.)

SE is at fault for having terrible foresight. They need to develop involving ranged mechanics for boss fights to allow for melee to be a viable class. Make it so ARCs get toasted frequently by something causing them to have to get within range of the boss, and you'll find the exact opposite of what is happening at the moment.

In theory this makes perfect sense. In reality it's not so simple. The laws of nature dictate that anything will take the path of least resistance, granted, SE should know this, but consider the following:

We (the playerbase) expect everything to be done right, done quickly, and provide long-lasting enjoyment. There needs to be some give. If SE was to deliver on 2/3 of those, then it would take forever to go through all the testing stages before it finally gets to players, at which point we'd be whining and complaining "it's done, just give it to us, let us test it!!". Unfortunately that's what's happened here. SE did some testing I'm sure, but it will never be enough to work out every possible kink. They have to leave some of it up to player discretion. SE can only have so much foresight. Sure, they could toss more manpower at testing, but it means we'll suffer in another department.

I still feel this is more about the players than SE "delivering a broken mechanic".

[Belial]

In theory this makes perfect sense. In reality it's not so simple. The laws of nature dictate that anything will take the path of least resistance, granted, SE should know this, but consider the following:

We (the playerbase) expect everything to be done right, done quickly, and provide long-lasting enjoyment. There needs to be some give. If SE was to deliver on 2/3 of those, then it would take forever to go through all the testing stages before it finally gets to players, at which point we'd be whining and complaining "it's done, just give it to us, let us test it!!". Unfortunately that's what's happened here. SE did some testing I'm sure, but it will never be enough to work out every possible kink. They have to leave some of it up to player discretion. SE can only have so much foresight. Sure, they could toss more manpower at testing, but it means we'll suffer in another department.

I still feel this is more about the players than SE "delivering a broken mechanic".

I understand what you're saying and don't get my wrong, I'm not saying there are any broken mechanics, the instance functions pretty well on it's own accord. The problem is, nothing in the instance whatsoever is really geared towards giving ranged classes a hard time. It's not really a question of testing things, or whether or not something is broken, or whether or not there is a kink. The community knew from day one: "Ranged or GTFO."

The problem is the lack of ranged mechanics, not anything broken. For example, both the Ogre fight & Batraal fight have a group of AoE ghosts that spawn around the mini-boss/boss. This mechanic in and of itself shows that SE has the brain power to make a mechanic geared at ranged classes, whereas most of the mechanics (if not, ALL) in this instance hinder strictly melee. This is an issue that I feel, could easily have been foreseen.

Like I said before though, this instance is clearly a testing ground. This is the first solid bit of content we've had from the new team, and although I think it's a great step in the right direction, they need to see, and see it now, that ranged mechanics must be a prominent aspect as well, otherwise we will have what we currently do. Ranged, or GTFO.

Just to reiterate, I do not feel that anything is broken, or that things were not tested properly. I think they had a lot on their plate and that over-shadowed certain things that should be considered prior to the design being implemented. It's a simple matter of adding another mechanic, not changing the system.