DPS Race bosses really need to stop.

[CrimsonThunder]

Let me clarify, I don't think the enrage timer should disappear, of course not. Enrage should be there to punish slacking players but a number of hard content bosses right now have timers that simply cause an enrage wipe because one DPS went down/DC'd/lagged/not an overgeared MCH. That is what I consider poor design.

Going by memory, Coil never had these problems. This style of battle basically shuts out anyone with bad internet or even something like physical disabilities. What you have arthritis and you want to raid? Pipe dream buddy.


Is this a genuine concept that's been brought over by WoW mentality? I've never played WoW so I can't speak for so I'm asking. For those of you who prefer this, why do you feel this is better when it caters only to a specific demographic? Or is this just a case of me me me?

Oh and for the record, I have cleared Bismarck, I have his damn sword glamoured if you check my character, I was just using examples off the top of my head.

[Risvertasashi]

LOL what? A3S with 210 when overgeared is a piece of cake.

Well, yeah. And Bis EX's DPS check was only a challenge at i170~180. Overgearing obsoletes DPS checks, yes.

[Jamein]

That said, I wouldn't say SE has really done away with mechanic heavy fights. Rav Ex had... what, 9 phases? Thordan EX has 10.

Compared to the mechanics and instawipe moves in SCOB the current raids are laughable mechanically.

And then there's A3S. Very mechanic heavy fight... .

Only after tornado phase, up until that, its pretty simple mechanically imo.

SCOB was the perfect balance of DPS/Mechanics, or at least that's my opinion. However people whined and got it nerfed and since then the mechanics have been less intensive and it's been more about DPS (Compare T13 to T9 mechanics). Then you have Alex Savage which, mechanically is a snoozefest up till A3S last phase and A4S.

[rappa]

Well, yeah. And Bis EX's DPS check was only a challenge at i170~180. Overgearing obsoletes DPS checks, yes.

And then there's A3S. Very mechanic heavy fight... Most groups never see the enrage. But you have to DPS like hell, because... Even with 4 top tier DPS going full out, even with both tanks (with as much STR as possible) and healers squeezing out every last bit of damage, you can hit enrage if even one person goes down briefly, or drops their output for a little bit.

Going 190 as we did, yup. One debuff wrongly passed or a dead, it's wipe. For that reason, this kind of combats are dpscheck/gearcheck. You have to push your limits to reach the goal. And with that, you are unable to kill it.

If a party with 190 killed a3s, why players with 210 are unable? Maybe they are not enough good to clear it, or maybe weak links are dead weights.

DPS check and gear check are Devs tools to block players to clear encounters so fast.
Encounters have scales. During one encounter, you have to reach 1k dps, but with your gear and party composition, you only reach 900. What happen? you should wait one week to get one item or drops and reach 1k dps.
A few weeks later, you have 5 items more and you are unable to reach 1k dps. Something is wrong with your playstyle, position, you disengange from boss and don't attack him, then you lose dps.

[Whiteroom]

I don't think they need to stop, but I do think the devs should stop relying on them so heavily.

[Miscreant]

High dps comes from mastering mechanics

The better you are at mechanics the more uptime you get on a boss

[WinterLuna]

SE could/should look back at Second Coil bosses, particularly Melusine. Overall a simple fight (if players didn't "yell" at their party members or Melusine), but gradually got trickier as you progressed because new abilities/mechanics were introduced. I really liked that fight. She did have an enrage set at 11 minutes, but I think most players never saw it (Hysteric Smash, single target hit for 16-17k damage. Possibly ranged).

Completely agree with this. (Pre-nerf obviously) it was a tricky enough fight, fun mechanics, and still had a reasonable enrage timer meaning you couldn't slouch on DPS.

Besides, executing difficult mechanics correctly show a players skill way more than executing a (usually) set rotation over and over again.

[Risvertasashi]

Only after tornado phase, up until that, its pretty simple mechanically imo.

SCOB was the perfect balance of DPS/Mechanics, or at least that's my opinion. However people whined and got it nerfed and since then the mechanics have been less intensive and it's been more about DPS (Compare T13 to T9 mechanics). Then you have Alex Savage which, mechanically is a snoozefest up till A3S last phase and A4S.

I would actually consider tiered introductions of mechanics to be a step forward in encounter design. T9 was a 'bad' fight (IMO) because it's essentially 3 bosses rolled into one. Even though some of the individual mechanics were pretty interesting. T13, A3S, etc etc--there's new stuff in the last phase and it challenges the group's competency, but there's at least a relationship between stuff you see in the early phases versus later (T13 probably a bit more than A3S)

[Ashkendor]

Well. My only lvl60 is the unwanted machinist, lol. Bismarck not cleared, nor haven't done any savage. I like to believe I'm good at my job, but some other people ruined it for the other's, lol. Heck, it's pretty rare for me to even see brds or mch in parties these days. In 18 voidark runs last week I saw two. So, yeah, I don't know if I like it or not, but I like the fact that you actually have to know what you have to do, instead of being able to blindly do something.

BRD/MCH are a staple in Savage statics. For awhile there all I saw was parties in PF seeking MCH/BRD for Savage.

I also think that one might argue how tight the enrage timers should be, but we should never ask for their removal. Without a hard limit on how long the fight can last you start to trivialize the difficulty when you can revive people an infinite number of times and just whittle the boss down.

Right, enrage timers definitely have their place and we shouldn't get rid of them entirely. I mean without an enrage timer you basically could just take five tanks and three healers and call it a day, completely trivializing the bulk of the raid mechanics. The issue is how tight the DPS checks are. Not only do you have to have all four DD's performing optimally, but your tanks and healers are also forced to put out some pretty beefy DPS on top of that. Repeatedly bashing your face against a one-shot mechanic linked to an insanely high DPS check just... isn't fun at all. It feels like the very definition of insanity to repeat the first three minutes of a fight over and over and run into the same wall for hours at a time. For me personally, it makes my contribution to the raid feel trivial and unwanted (lol switch to warrior, noob), and that in and of itself is just not a good way to feel about your place on the team.

I understand and appreciate what SE was trying to do by giving the raids a little longer of a shelf life for the top 1%, but ultimately I think it was a failed experiment. The top teams still managed to clear way earlier than anticipated, and those of us that aren't quite as hardcore are left with content that falls into one of two categories: so easy that we could quite possibly clear by letting the cat walk on our keyboard, and the face-bashingly difficult wall that is Savage. "Git gud," is some peoples' response to this complaint. You know what? I don't have a problem admitting that I'm not on the same level as the world-firsters. 99% of us aren't. Most of it has to do with the fact that I don't find bashing my head against content like that to be fun in any way. I enjoy a challenge, but there comes a point at which I feel like I'm wasting my time and it makes me lose interest. When I lose interest, my performance suffers.

"Maybe Savage isn't for you," is the next argument that gets made, and actually I'd tend to agree. It's very likely that it just isn't for me. The thing is, there really isn't anything for me or people like me right now so at this point it's either Savage or just completely avoid raiding at all. I've always considered myself firmly in the "midcore" camp for raiding. I enjoy challenging content, but not face-meltingly difficult content. Since I enjoy raiding with the people in my static, I'm sticking with them. We're just kinda sucking it up and taking a shot at A3S, but honestly we're already feeling it. It's so painfully obvious. When we go in there we're more irritable, less tolerant of mistakes, and it takes real effort just to keep from getting nasty over minor things. We actually have completely thrown A3S on the back burner for the time being until everyone in the raid has their weapons from Thordan EX, in hopes that it gives us some wiggle room. I think some of us are mostly just mucking through till 3.2 to see what the next floor of Alexander brings.

*sigh* So yeah, this turned into a novel. But there you have it.

[Yukiko]

First time beating Omega Weapon in Final Fantasy VIII cost me about 12 Hours... i was unprepared
It was fun and each time beating him made more fun... challangeing myself without using items or undergearing or speedrunning and so on...

Other MMOGs can do it too, why SE cant?
Edit: The Key is to allow Recovery, that must not mean it becomes an easy fight...