Is EX/Savage content a battle or a dance number?

[Xerek]

Hmm, let me be clear. I'm not saying things have to change, and noted multiple times that there are people happy with things as they are. Don't misread my posts here.

I just find the reliance on heavy mechanics and predictible patterns changes the feel outright. That I could be the best healer on the planet but it wouldn't matter if I couldn't memorize the mechanics. That it feels like more like a choreographed dance then it does a battle, and I just wanted to open discussion on that.

It's just not my jam, and that's alright. It's no reflection on my healing skills, it a reflection on my terrible memorization skills. I've cleared O1S nine times and O2S five. And...I have no motivation for more. It's simply not fun to me. I feel like I'm spending more time playing DDR then I am playing healer. It's like I'm in an Eorzean version of Crypt of the Necrodancer. And I was simply curious if I was the only one that felt that way.

[Velthice]

People don't actually like rng, no matter what they tell you. That's why strategies used mitigate it and eliminate it as much as possible. This isn't a new concept, just look at crafting rotations. It's way more palatable to die and know it's your fault, because you can look at that and be like, okay here's what I can do for next time. Feeling you lost because of a dice roll isn't fun, satisfying, vindicating whatever. It feels like BS. Likewise there's little sense of accomplishment winning in a situation because you feel like you just got lucky, there wasn't any skill involved. The world first races, which believe it or not a lot of people do care about, would be a lot less meaningful if fights were heavily rng reliant.

To their credit, the devs do a good job of keeping it interesting. Adding randomness to the mechanic itself adds a deep layer of personal responsibility without tipping the scale into unfair. Stuff like the random queen's waltzes, the library phase, exdeath's black holes and emptiness patterns are just a few examples of this.

Anyway, if the fights weren't hard, then anybody could do them, but people still struggle with halicarnassus much less exdeath, and ultimate coil has still only been cleared by a couple tens of people, and it's not for lack of people trying.

[JohnnyDevo]

The skill in this game is successfully executing those "arbitrary" mechanics while still completing your role and rotations to the best of your ability. Sure you can trivialize it by calling it a "dance", but it doesn't change that there's a measure of skill required to compete at the higher levels of this game. o1s and o2s specifically can be described as "less difficult than your average extreme primal". a8n is extremely easy, and the only measure of difficulty I ever experienced in that fight was dealing with teammates who walk into every instance of damage possible.

Case and point: According to FFlogs, only 179 players have completed the newest super savage encounter.

[PomPomFlare]

I just find the reliance on heavy mechanics and predictible patterns changes the feel outright. That I could be the best healer on the planet but it wouldn't matter if I couldn't memorize the mechanics. That it feels like more like a choreographed dance then it does a battle, and I just wanted to open discussion on that.

It is test of your healing skills. You need to do both healing/dpsing while doing mechanics. Healing without mechanics doesn't require any skill whatsoever so if you can't do mechanic, you can't even call yourself a good healer.

[Hruodig]

It's no reflection on my healing skills, it a reflection on my terrible memorization skills.

It's fine that you don't like it, but make no mistake here: it is. The ability to memorize fights and plan for them accordingly is a huge part of what makes any player good in this game. Saying that you're good at healing in xiv but bad at memorization is a completely contradictory statement.

[Velthice]

.

Honest question: If someone has trouble memorizing mechanics, then aren't they already kinda experiencing an rng fight that you seem to covet? If you can't react to the stuff on the fly, what makes you think you would fare better if it were truly designed that way?

I'm also curious as to what a fight would be without mechanics to fail. IMO that's called a target dummy, and they're not very fun to beat up on.

[KaivaC]

snip

I get what you're saying. And I understand what you were trying to say with your post. It is doable as a healer, though. I main an AST, and actually find healing to be much easier as opposed to how I was playing before hand. You get to really learn your true limitations through O3S. With that being said, isn't every boss fight like that with memorization? You learn the steps and then dance to it. This dates all the way back to Satasha, before everybody started ignoring adds to burn the boss. The steps have just been more refined.

[Xerek]

*sigh*

...and this is what I was afraid of. No matter how many different ways I try to be clear, some people are still seeing it as an attack, that I am trying to trivialize current content and the like. I'm not. I think I explained my position well enough prior, I'm not going to repeat it again.

I will say that the idea that having difficulty memorizing large numbers of patterns reflects in any way on one's skill as a healer is ludicrous, though. Learning dance steps has nothing to do with healing.

As I've noted before, I'm not saying it should change. Enough people are happy with the status quo. And interestingly enough, people have suggested that it's impossible to make Savage-tier content challenging enough without a thousand mechanics where missteps equal death.

I was curious if anyone felt the same as I did. I had no intent or desire to ruffle feathers, yet despite my best efforts seem to have done so.

[Xerek]

I get what you're saying. And I understand what you were trying to say with your post. It is doable as a healer, though. I main an AST, and actually find healing to be much easier as opposed to how I was playing before hand. You get to really learn your true limitations through O3S. With that being said, isn't every boss fight like that with memorization? You learn the steps and then dance to it. This dates all the way back to Satasha, before everybody started ignoring adds to burn the boss. The steps have just been more refined.

The difference being the sheer volume of mechanics in Savage content compared to, say, Sastasha. It's the equivalent of putting two tablespoons of dressing on my salad for flavoring, as opposed to dumping the whole bottle in and all I can taste is dressing.

[KaivaC]

The difference being the sheer volume of mechanics in Savage content compared to, say, Sastasha. It's the equivalent of putting two tablespoons of dressing on my salad for flavoring, as opposed to dumping the whole bottle in and all I can taste is dressing.

If you were to spend an entire day going from Satasha to Omega Savage, you'll notice that the number and types of mechanics evolve with each successive level. All I was saying is that the dance evolved over time. Obviously, there's no comparison between the two, but given that Satasha is our starting point...yeah, you can see how mechanics grew from there.