Why encounters with a difficulty slope are bad

[Mishini_Dracoto]

T1, T4
Garuda Ex, Shiva Ex, Levi Ex, Mog Ex, Odin
T7, T8

Bad Design:

T2, T6,
Ifrit Ex
Pretty much every fight in FcoB

Horrible Design:

T5, T9

Garuda Ex, as the fight goes on, the mechanics DRASTICALLY change and how you deal with it (last 40%?) is completely different from the beginning.
Levi Ex, and Shiva Ex, are really easy fights. Levi - don't fall off the edge, make sure you charge the thinger enough and set it off at the right time. Shiva - don't slide into he wall, and if your a tank, you have a bit of mechanics to watch oiut for to either force cleaves or avoid cleaving the party. Otherwise, very BORING fights. Also Garuda Ex makes me facepalm the most, as I can't believe how many times I've been in DFs/PUGs with people who jus can't get the mechanics and we wipe.

T2 - I don't feel like anything you said bears any relevance to T2? are you saing fighting the nodes, VS fighting ADS should be the same? ADS hands out it's worst mechanic almost right away. It only gets more difficul because you get more Allagan Rot to deal with. . . but then . . . most people don't even do Rot anymore.

T6, ehhh, you can beat that fight in like 3 and a half minutes or something, so i don't see how it's a good example of fighting something for 10 minutes to then learn an example at the end of a fight. If it's taking you a long time to get there, it's because you still don't know the first mechanics. IMO, it actually gets easier at the end.

horrible Design: OK, I disagree with you, but I understand what you're saying about T9. The dance you need to do with the elements I always thought was really wierd. I have no idea how SE thought of it, or originally planned for it to be beaten. but let's face it, that's almost your only mechanic to deal with at that point. and topping your tank off/using CD's for bahamut's Favour. For DPS it's easy street.

but T5?! T5 is actually an amazing fight, and very well done. I think it slowly ramps up in difficulty, the hardest part is probably actually dive bombs + snakes, which really isn't that hard. Then it slopes to gradually getting easier.

After Aetheric profusion, what kills people, is Twisters and Dreadknights. People who aren't paying attention to when Twisers is being cast, and it kills them, or people who don't know what to do for dreadknighs. But the knights really aren't hard to kill anymore. You just have to say away fom the center, until you know who is getting jailed, then all the DPS need to switch to the new target right away, kill it, go back to Twintannia, but it's not DIFFICULT. If you employ a decent stratefy, i gets significantly easier. and then the last phase, is serious fluffcakes.

I think I've only ever wiped on it once, and that's because we had no idea what we were doing when we got there.

[Kazumac]

Honestly OP, I saw your breakdown and I think you just interjected your bias on the classifications of fights. All of the fights you listed have ramping difficulty throughout them. And the ones you call horrible, are just long epic fights. Phase 5 in turn 5 is one of the easiest phases of that fight and I had less wipes in phase 4 than phases 2 and 3.

I feel like your opinion is that longer fights with multiple phases are things that you don't like, rather than ramping difficulty. Since T1,T4, T7, T8, shiva ex, Levi ex, garuda ex, Mog ex all end with more difficult phases or abilities than they started the encounter with. First coil is hard to judge now due to gear inflation but those fights had ramping difficulty throughout the encounter.

T2 is hard to judge now because most have never experienced the non enrage mode, which is a significantly better encounter design than it is now. Though still not one of my favorites but it had nothing to do with ramping difficulty of the fight. (It is more that you had to clear trash again after every wipe...)

[Sepix]

Let me elaborate on this a little bit. I don't particularly find all the mechanics in the fights bad at all i just hate that we get it fed spoon full all the time. Why is the 2nd add phase always harder than the first? What for? Can't they make the first one as hard as the second one and just keep the second one the same so people actually have a chance to train harder parts of the fight without having to play the majority of the time to get there first? Take Ifrit Ex as an example. Why can't all Nail Phases be like the last one? Why make people go through 2 easy iterations before giving them the one that actually matters? The first Nail Phases do not prepare you for the third at all. It is basically wasted time every single time. What is worse is that this tactic is used to lengthen content because of missing difficulty. Increasing damage and quantity of mechanics isn't the same as creating an interesting fight. Neither is putting 4 different fights into one just because you can. While we are at it, lets be honest ... Adds are starting to get boring by now as well because they are used for EVERYTHING!. I personally think they wasted some of the best mechanics in the Crystal Tower raids and put whats left over into coil.

I just wish there were more encounters with things to do beside having to focus on your main party role. Healers heal and nothing else, DPS do DPS and nothing else and tanks are useless 50% of the time because most fights don't even need 2 beside the odd provoke in between to share some damage.

Here is an example fight of what it COULD be instead of adds, more adds, oh look i am different now! What you beat that? Take more adds and i now do more damage too!

Main Boss
- Cannot be moved
- Deals slight damage to the tank.
- Is tanked in a magic field that nullifies all healing under normal circumstances.
- People inside the field are trapped and cannot leave after the fight has been started
- The magic field deals damage over time to anyone inside of it.

A small pet
- Deals moderate damage
- Cannot be killed and just needs to be held throughout the fight.
- Will place 2 debuffs on the off-tank
* One of them is permanent and gives a healer a non-curable 10 second silence if Esuna is cast on Offtank and has no Effect.
* The second one is removeable by Esuna and gives a healer a buff that enables him to heal the main tank and the melee through the magic field at the main boss.

Small Bomb Clusters
- Spawn throughout the fight
- Cannot be killed and doesn't move
- Will cast an explosion that Wipes the party after 15 seconds
- Needs to be slept, stunned or silenced to despawn.

Add some fancy spell names that deal damage to party members and some AoE circles to run out of + a tight enrage timer and you are golden. Now everyone actually has something to do beside their main role and you don't need to just throw more at the party to make it interesting. If I can come up with this in less than 10 minutes in a forum post they shouldn't have any trouble with their endless meetings and multiple people.

[Ashkendor]

I just wish there were more encounters with things to do beside having to focus on your main party role. Healers heal and nothing else, DPS do DPS and nothing else and tanks are useless 50% of the time because most fights don't even need 2 beside the odd provoke in between to share some damage.

Uh. What? My static's healers DPS whenever they can. So do the tanks. In T10, depending on the tank swaps (or lack thereof, sometimes he never even touches the OT with heat lightning) one of our tanks may spend as much as 80% of the fight out of their tanking stance. Hell, that's half the reason I swapped to melded accessories, is to help push more damage when I'm not the target of the boss' affections. Our DPS are tasked with things like debuffing the mobs or buffing the tanks (our black mage throws Apocatastasis on me during T11 adds and helps Virus bennus in T12, for example). If everyone just puts in the minimum effort by sticking to their assigned role and nothing more, you're going to have an awfully hard time raiding. :|

T5 and T9 are pretty good fights with a good group. T5 in particular gets easier as the fight goes on. I see far fewer wipes in the last phase than I do to divebombs and snakes. If you make it past twisters/DK, you've got it unless someone really screws things up. I'd farm T9 all damn day because it feels like an epic fight to me. I actually enjoy the meteor/golem mechanics because they require a lot of situational awareness, something that a lot of players seem to lack. After Heavensfall, though... Nael is one vicious bitch. She looks freakin scary when she's hammering my face in with Bahamut's Claw, seriously. xD

[Magis]

I like the T9 fight tbh. Still have to clear it (on last phase... maybe today is the day we win!) but damn is it a fun fight! The mechanics are pretty simple up to Heaven's Fall but it does indeed spike in difficulty during elemental phase. It seems to be a final test of everything you know.

I dislike enrage timers though, putting a hard limit on a boss is stupid.

[Ashkendor]

I dislike enrage timers though, putting a hard limit on a boss is stupid.

I prefer soft enrages, myself. With a soft enrage, you can sometimes juuuuuust squeak in a victory, the healers struggling to keep people standing and everyone pouring everything they can onto the boss in a last desperate burst. It feels so good when you win like that! With a hard enrage though, the boss just says: lol no and wipes your entire party with one fell swoop. It's boring. :|

[KitanaiKoneko]

I prefer soft enrages, myself. With a soft enrage, you can sometimes juuuuuust squeak in a victory, the healers struggling to keep people standing and everyone pouring everything they can onto the boss in a last desperate burst. It feels so good when you win like that! With a hard enrage though, the boss just says: lol no and wipes your entire party with one fell swoop. It's boring. :|

But see I prefer hard enrages for the same reason-finally killing Nael with <1s left on megaflare is an amazing feeling.

Or more recently look at Lucretia's T13 kill and how close they cut it.

[Magis]

I prefer soft enrages, myself. With a soft enrage, you can sometimes juuuuuust squeak in a victory, the healers struggling to keep people standing and everyone pouring everything they can onto the boss in a last desperate burst. It feels so good when you win like that! With a hard enrage though, the boss just says: lol no and wipes your entire party with one fell swoop. It's boring. :|

That is better indeed. TBH I dislike FFXIV's over use on no-win scenarios. If I die I'd rather it be because we screwed up and couldn't recover rather than the boss' script going "kill everyone". Even as a practical idea, it's like... why does a boss all of a sudden start one shotting everyone when it could have done it before? Makes no sense. If a limit has to be put, I'd rather it be an endurance one. All resources have been drained (casters out of mp, tanks can't get healed, etc) and the boss just wins by attrition. I don't think that is possible though in FFXIV since everyone can regen their mp pretty easily. Again, at least there was a failure on the players rather than some script.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

I dislike enrage timers though, putting a hard limit on a boss is stupid.

Enrage timer is there as the accountability check for DPS. Otherwise you'd go in there with 5 tanks and 3 healers and turtle all day.

[Aurora-Pendragon]

For me, Ramuh ex is the perfect example of an easy mechanics fight than can be a hell to beat in DF.