Coil was by far a better raid experience than all of Alexander so far.

1) The storyline was epic and made you feel like you were saving a world. Alexander storyline is boring and because it's only locked behind a few easy "normal mode" fights it feels underwhelming and pointless and I don't feel like anyone is ever in danger at all. It has throwaway characters that we probably will never see again (and good riddance) and literally nothing memorable about it.

2) The fights were difficult, but you could muscle your way through them with a half-weakened party to see some progress and practice new mechanics. You were NOT likely to beat the hard enrage timer, but there were very, very few instances of "oh 1 person died? BOOM! Cleanse the arena!" I don't mind the occasional Faust-style DPS check, but having a DPS check for every third mechanic is absurd, especially while trying to dodge 10 new mechanics you've never seen before (looking at you, A3S).

I'm not asking for super easy content, but some middle ground would sure be nice - or a way to practice new mechanics without risk of instantaneously wiping the entire raid because your [Ninja] didn't kill his add quickly enough. I was really excited that the Raid Finder would add some kind of "practice" mode - like practicing Vortexer in A6S would have been so handy instead of wasting 10 minutes of your life just to see him kill your team in the first two mechanics - about 50 times. And that said, A6 is one of my favorite turns of Alexander, but still the design was frustrating as hell.