Why encounters with a difficulty slope are bad

[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.