Boss Fight Mechanics

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

... FFXI Boss snip ...

I find it interesting when folks compare ARR to RotZ, when ARR is really more like Vanilla in XI's lifecycle. But I digress...

Most bosses in XI were a matter of invalidating their random mechanics. "Proto" Omega, as a for instance, was where Shadow-tanking got it's teeth cut. Omega would positively ruin a meat tank, and so they had to work out a way to not take the massive damage that Omega could dish out. Enter the NIN/WAR, who was so good at holding Enmity a good one was way more preferable than any PLD (the defacto tank class for a long while) could ever hope to be. And even to this day PLDs are only brought along to meet tank only if they have Aegis/Ochain because without those they take way too much damage to justify not bringing a NIN.

And bosses weren't immune to most status effects because for the most part they didn't need to be. Most of what the players could do to them were piddly effects or their resistances were so huge it took Elemental Seal + The Debuff to stick for any real length of time. Anything you could stick easy used to be so bad that for a while there RDM's were laughed out the door because besides En-spells and Refresh which anyone could now SJ, that's all they were there for. When your debuffs are so laughable that people would be like 'Chainstun? Hah, that's just cute, go level a real job' you've got to wonder.

That all being said, the point in FFXI wasn't really the fights per se, but the prep for the fights. Without prep a boss would positively destroy you, with prep however, content usually wasn't super hard, just very technical. The onus then became for players to put forth the time to be prepared, where the closest we get to that is 'eat your food' (which was mandatory in XI due to it basically being as good as another piece of gear)

[Alkimi]

Y
I think what OP and other people in this thread are looking for are fights where you don't mindlessly go through your rotation while occasionally avoiding some environmental hazard.

None of Final Coil is "mindless". What you're describing are most regular dungeon bosses, which are going to be easy anyway.

[StouterTaru]

So the whole fight boiled down to. Curaga when he uses wind, heal the tanks that are tanking Fafnir, everyone else does damage. This took way less skill then anything in FFXIV.

Fafnir is a bad example of a skilled fight in FFXI, but the majority of FFXIV isn't much more difficult.

Difficult FFXIV fights are just a choreographed dance. Once you learn the steps, there's very little improvisation. Skill is knowing what's about to happen, and reacting quickly to it. FFXIV just has more going on faster.

Many of the FFXI fights would be rough with FFXIV mechanics; no 2 hours and built up status resistances. Of course, the bosses using 2 hour abilities were what made them so hard most of the time.

A lot of FFXI hard bosses had a move that would slap down a tank but took a short wind up, so they were kited around. One of my favorite fights was kiting Kirin, pulling hate as BLM and running like hell. I would like to see one of those in FFXIV.

[Zumi]

A lot of FFXI hard bosses had a move that would slap down a tank but took a short wind up, so they were kited around. One of my favorite fights was kiting Kirin, pulling hate as BLM and running like hell. I would like to see one of those in FFXIV.

Kirin wasn't hard at all. Many LS took like 2 alliances sometimes even 3 if it was on of those huge LS to him them meaning you really couldn't ever run out of bodies. There was no consequence for death you just got a raise he could be kited forever. This was another fight that didn't take any skill skill compared to how advanced FFXIV fights are.

[StouterTaru]

Kirin wasn't hard at all. Many LS took like 2 alliances sometimes even 3 if it was on of those huge LS to him them meaning you really couldn't ever run out of bodies. There was no consequence for death you just got a raise he could be kited forever. This was another fight that didn't take any skill skill compared to how advanced FFXIV fights are.

Kirin fight was directed at the OP of boss mechanics I would like to see, not an example of a hard fight from FFXI. Although if you didn't throw 2-3 alliances at it, and took it on with 10 people or so there was little room for error.

Some of my favorite fights from FFXI were exp party spawns NM, and takes it on. Or the BC fights where you didn't have a full alliance plus alternates to swap out. The big HNMs were like the S rank hunts in FFXI, except with the claiming mechanic and swapping people into alliance.

[OMEGA_HACK]

I would like to see a more TP based bosses instead of Time Elapsed or HP% remaining bosses (ie: ALL of the coil bosses).

I would also like to see bosses that interact with the environment a bit more, I feel like the battlefield is really pretty and it occasionally changes (like when fighting Nael in Coil, or Gilgamesh in the Big Keep) but what I mean is that I want to see something along the lines of making the party split up and have to deal with different mechanics and not be able to rely on the other half of the party's spells/skills directly (like having to go into Cerberus's belly for example). Something a bit more interactive in those regards would be cool.

[Darra]

Some Line of sight mechanics wouldn't go amiss, though not the destructible kind you get in Garuda. Some kind of enmity reduction attacks by bosses so tanks actually have to fight for aggro, and boss skills on cooldown timers instead of set to trigger at very specific HP percentages.

[Heskett]

I was just discussing with a friend how I would like a raid boss that had platforming as part of its mechanics. If you fall, you die, but still able to be raised.

[SpookyGhost]

I was just discussing with a friend how I would like a raid boss that had platforming as part of its mechanics. If you fall, you die, but still able to be raised.

I would quit the game.

[Dhex]

I'd like bosses that made us think about our skill utilities; having bosses be immune to everything really ties your hands as a player and shows a lack of depth to the current encounter design.

Paladin: Silence, Stun, Pacify, Blind
Warrior: Stun
Bard: Silence, Bind
Black Mage: Slow, Gravity, Sleep, Bind
Summoner: Stun, Bind
White Mage: Stun, Gravity, Sleep, Knock-back
Scholar: Silence
Ninja: Silence, Stun
Dragoon: Stun (x2), Slow
Monk: Dispel, Stun (x2), Slow (Frontal)

Lots of skills listed here either don't get used or they're piled on as free extra damage (if they have a damage component) because the boss is "immune" to status effects and debuffs.