It's past time, Yoshi-P...

[Sebazy]

My 2 cents:

Tanking roulettes is an exercise in frustration, you have arguably the most responsibility but you get the least reward for playing above par. An incredible tank will enable a good group to do great things in dungeons, but if the group is awful, there's not a huge amount you can do about it beyond adjusting the pace accordingly.

Healing can also be rather frustrating, but IMHO the gameplay is far more rewarding across a much broader range of groups. You can carry a bad run or you can shave an extra couple of minutes off that top notch quick clear.

SE have to shoulder a good portion of the blame though IMHO. Frankly I think the model they design their dungeons around is fundamentally flawed and has been since since they backed down over Pharos Sirius.

The term 'expert' is massively misleading when you consider the difficulty of the dungeons it involves. Thus it's all too easy for casual Joe to do their dailies thinking they are performing just fine because hey, they cleared the 'expert' content right? Rabanastre is a fantastic demonstration of what happens when average casual players let their standard of play rot away due to the daily content simply not requiring anything more. And then of course, once they hit content that actually punishes them for all those mistakes they've previously been getting away with, the results are pretty much akin to a train wreck.

Hashmal isn't difficult or complex, it just kills you when you mess up enough. Amdapor Keep in 2.0 demonstrates that SE could get dungeon bosses right and I'd argue that Pharos Sirius was a few telegraphs away from being perfection as well. I really don't understand why Expert is consistently so far removed from anything else resembling challenging content.

[Mimilu]

Rabanastre is a fantastic demonstration of what happens when average casual players let their standard of play rot away due to the daily content simply not requiring anything more. And then of course, once they hit content that actually punishes them for all those mistakes they've previously been getting away with, the results are pretty much akin to a train wreck.

I'm getting flashbacks of waterballs, sandballs, and archdaemons not being killed... ;A;

[Kacho_Nacho]

My 2 cents:

Tanking roulettes is an exercise in frustration, you have arguably the most responsibility but you get the least reward for playing above par. An incredible tank will enable a good group to do great things in dungeons, but if the group is awful, there's not a huge amount you can do about it beyond adjusting the pace accordingly.

Healing can also be rather frustrating, but IMHO the gameplay is far more rewarding across a much broader range of groups. *snip*

Sebazy! /joy

Wait. We're talking about tanking now? Cool!

I agree with your assessment. Healing is much more rewarding due to its ability to adapt to the proficiency of the rest of the players in a group. Tanking cannot carry a group quite the same way.

[RiyahArp]

My 2 cents:

Tanking roulettes is an exercise in frustration, you have arguably the most responsibility but you get the least reward for playing above par. An incredible tank will enable a good group to do great things in dungeons, but if the group is awful, there's not a huge amount you can do about it beyond adjusting the pace accordingly.

Tanking in this game is braindead. Being a good tank just means being overgeared for the content, staying in DPS stance as much as possible, and popping the correct cooldown for the single big hits that come infrequently. Tanks don't have to stun, they rarely tank swap, they have very little positioning duties, and tank enmity management is the cotank hitting shirk and the main tank adding their enmity combo in as little as possible. Many times your co-tank is just there as a fifth DPS.

Tanking in dungeons is just knowing the proper times to stop running, and managing your resource bars to use your aoe attacks proper, while hoping the healer can keep up with you. The "amazing" things is at best a minute shaved off the total time of a run, and that's only if the healer can handle you pulling wall to wall. Tanks are probably the easiest job to play in this game in most content.

[Xerek]

Rabanastre is a raid, and nothing new. When first released, every stage of each 24-man raid destroyed non-raiders. World of Darkness, Wiping City ("Do not /taunt Happy Fun Ball.")...no, you can't use Rabanastre as an example of casuals going soft, sorry.

[akaneakki]

Rabanastre is a raid, and nothing new. When first released, every stage of each 24-man raid destroyed non-raiders. World of Darkness, Wiping City ("Do not /taunt Happy Fun Ball.")...no, you can't use Rabanastre as an example of casuals going soft, sorry.

There is no enrage, no big penality of bosses there, so no it makes people go soft.

[Sebazy]

Rabanastre is a raid, and nothing new. When first released, every stage of each 24-man raid destroyed non-raiders. World of Darkness, Wiping City ("Do not /taunt Happy Fun Ball.")...no, you can't use Rabanastre as an example of casuals going soft, sorry.

Rabanastre is casual catchup content irrespective of whether it is a raid or not. The mechanics it throws out there are far more simplistic and sedately paced than what we see in Savage/EX etc.

I'd also argue that Rabanastre is one of the easiest 24 mans so far, yet huge chunks of the populace still struggle with it. Simply standing in the correct half of the arena for a clearly telegraphed dive is too much for many on Hashmal.

[Deceptus]

Simply standing in the correct half of the arena for a clearly telegraphed dive is too much for many on Hashmal.

To be fair, if you're unlucky enough to be on the extreme opposite side of wherever he is about to dive through, you're kinda boned. Even if you sprint, you're getting hit.

[Derio]

No, we need to concentrate on what really matters, and that is fixing DRK

[RiyahArp]

As for DPS, I don't see a lot of rage at tanks or healers. It's not an epidemic. I don't however like the constant cries to make things harder for the noobs because reasons. It doesn't make it much more fun if casual content becomes the "run a single fight all the way up to the timer until you learn how to beat it" model EX content uses; i tried that, and once I cleared the last thing I wanted to do is farm it for tokens.

The game's difficulty is all right for most people, no need to change much.