Why encounters with a difficulty slope are bad

[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.

[SendohJin]

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.

Conflags, Titan Egis, and Bees in T6 are good ways to do DPS checks, you don't need a hard enrage to prevent turtling.

[kyuven]

Conflags, Titan Egis, and Bees in T6 are good ways to do DPS checks, you don't need a hard enrage to prevent turtling.

Of special note, though, is that most fights with DPS checks ALSO have hard enrages.
Hard enrages are sort of necessary to keep fights tight and encourage dps to do more than dodge and hit a few buttons on tougher fights. You need the gear, skills, or both to meet the enrage timer, which is in reality just a simple time limit on the fight itself to nip situations like Pandemonium Warden and Absolute Virtue in the bud in terms of length, and to mitigate the viability of carry groups. Of course it doesn't eliminate carry groups at all, but in order to do so you actually have to be damn good at the fight to be able to manage it while down a DPS
It also means you're guaranteed about 6-8 full attempts on a given boss at a minimum.

[lololink]

Conflags, Titan Egis, and Bees in T6 are good ways to do DPS checks, you don't need a hard enrage to prevent turtling.

Except that you can't really put only add DPS check all the time, it would feel the same too much, DPS check is not only to prevent turtling but to prevent too much raising that would ruin some mechanics( although FCoB have a lot of death punishment T10 with the stacks and failure punishment move, T12 where the boss get buffed when people are dead, etc... )

[SendohJin]

Except that you can't really put only add DPS check all the time, it would feel the same too much, DPS check is not only to prevent turtling but to prevent too much raising that would ruin some mechanics( although FCoB have a lot of death punishment T10 with the stacks and failure punishment move, T12 where the boss get buffed when people are dead, etc... )

you answered half your own question.

Conflag isn't an add, neither are Titan Gaols or am i reading your first sentence wrong? you can also have mechanics like the Captain in Sastasha HM, where he keeps shooting you until you do enough damage to make him stop. not every DPS check has to do with Adds. Heaven's Fall is kind of a DPS check, i've never cleared T9 without skipping the 3rd Heaven's Fall.

it's not super difficult to make things progressively harder for lower DPS groups without a hard enrage. increase the number of Tumults as the fight gets longer. add a 4th and 5th Ifrit to charge across the screen. Shiva already gets damage stacks over time, eventually staff mode will kill you, why do you need a hard enrage in that fight?

the longer the fight the more damage the group takes but it shouldn't be an instant amount of damage that really good healers can't makeup for at least for a short period.

---

you can't have PW/AV because the Trial itself has a timer, that should be the only hard enrage.

[Sapphic]

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.

Yep, so much this. Theres pressure on healers, theres pressure on tanks. The enrage timer is to put pressure on the DPS to hit a certain standard also. It also drives you to be better, for example getting to add phase on t12 with 4 Bennus for the first time gives you a sense of achievement that you are pudhing your role better.

My fave fights tho are Ultmima HM, Titan Ex, t7 pre nerf (serious love/hate relationship some weeks with that turn XD) t9 pre nerf (t8 just gave me RSI almost :P) FCOB while fun fights dont stand out as much as the previous ones I mentioned due to, pretty much, rehashed mechanics.

[Aurora-Pendragon]

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

[Kazumac]

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

I like REX a lot as well. I'm with you on that it is easy enough to understand but values a bit of on the fly coordination over individual handling mechanics without coordination. I like shiva EX but... Other than assigning way marks it is all about can you handle the mechanic and not as much, working as a team.

I'm just more satisfied by the team coordination mechanics, but admittedly these fights are harder to be successful with in DF.

[Melriss]

All fights should be a tank and spank without any mechanics. Putting anything that requires some planning, execution or reactions into an encounter too hard for me, I struggle to understand Hellsclaw's and Agrippha's counter move already (please nerf this SE because I should be able to dps non-stop!)