Byakko... HM or EX ?

[BluexBird]

OK so first of all, I'm seeing a lot of posts in this thread talking about how ___________ isn't hard and whatnot, when they're judging by how easy it was for their highly coordinated static to clear. Like no, that's not how difficulty works.

Difficulty is measured by how hard it is to clear something with 7 other people you have never even met. So don't come here and talk about how "easy" Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan were, when you probably never even had the patience to join learning parties to see what that shit was actually like. Oh, "skip Soar or disband"? Yeah, should probably do that, since you most likely didn't even know how to do it without tank LBing through it. LMAO

ANYWAYS, when it comes to Byakko, I feel like he was relatively easy compared to Susano. But making him overly difficult is unnecessary. If you want hard content, there's already Savage for that. And if you think THAT'S easy, you can always take a trip back to Midas. c:

[Airget]

Byakko's diffiulty is based purely on how well SE's able to increase the skill of players overtime.

Byakko is easy because much like a majority of content aka dungeons, we are slowly taught mechanics over a large period of time and then those mechanics are integrated into tougher encounters with unique twist added to them.

The game only gets easier because that's the natural progression of things, you know to dodge telegraphs, to understand how certain AoE works, to run away when necessary, to avoid swipe damage, to share AoE dmg etc etc.

Now if you were to imagine Byakko without being aware of even 90% of the mechanics, it would be a lot harder but that's not the case. People go into the trial ready to understand each concept of the mechanic.

On top of that you have Byakko story mode that pretty much shows you all of Byakko's moves so you can be ready to react as long as you know the name of each skill used. It's all a learning process and the end results just go to show SE does a good job at teaching players to be ready for certain mechanics.

[Vhailor]

Byakko's diffiulty is based purely on how well SE's able to increase the skill of players overtime.

Byakko is easy because much like a majority of content aka dungeons, we are slowly taught mechanics over a large period of time and then those mechanics are integrated into tougher encounters with unique twist added to them.

The game only gets easier because that's the natural progression of things, you know to dodge telegraphs, to understand how certain AoE works, to run away when necessary, to avoid swipe damage, to share AoE dmg etc etc.

Now if you were to imagine Byakko without being aware of even 90% of the mechanics, it would be a lot harder but that's not the case. People go into the trial ready to understand each concept of the mechanic.

On top of that you have Byakko story mode that pretty much shows you all of Byakko's moves so you can be ready to react as long as you know the name of each skill used. It's all a learning process and the end results just go to show SE does a good job at teaching players to be ready for certain mechanics.

I wholeheartedly disagree here.

Outside of Savage or Ultimate content, or certain EX fights, difficulty boils down to following the glowing icons that hint at what to do. Step out of the AoE indicator. Gather together on the ginormous arrow flashing over a party member's head. Don't position your tracking AoE to murder your tank. You may applaud SE for teaching players how to react to these mechanics - and I'll admit, they do a good job - but it isn't remotely the same thing as increasing the skill of players over time. There are two primary ways, in fact, that SE has caused player skill to drop, rather than rise, over time:

1. Mechanics are more obvious, yet less punishing. I'll always recall Garuda EX for this purpose; I helped out a newer friend who was queueing for it about six months back. We got a good-natured PUG, experienced old-timers who were looking forward to revisiting the fight. And it proceeded to kick our asses, mechanically speaking, for roughly a half-dozen attempts before we cleared. Why? Because mechanics weren't so obviously indicated, and because they were absolutely devastating when failed. Screw up the Suparna / Chirada separation, and you're done, almost immediately. Screw up the Satin Plume, and you're done. Accidentally kill the Spiny Plume, you're done.
   
   Titan EX is another great example. While his Landslide is visually obvious, it's also devastating; when you go off, you STAY off. It turns the fight into a war of attrition. Sure, it's unforgiving, but such is how you improve player skill. And his mechanics are still challenging today - more so than most existing fights. It was never an issue of not dodging telegraphs, not understanding more common forms of AoE, not understanding when to run away, or not understanding how to avoid swipe damage - it was just a bloody difficult fight. Which is something we see less of these days.
   
   Moreover, making mechanics obvious has a downside. It means players are more likely to freeze and get frustrated when different mechanics are introduced. See my example at the end for more detail on this.
   
2. Mechanics are the sole form of difficulty. This is probably the largest issue with FFXIV's difficulty, and why I believe SE has arguably caused player skill to deteriorate.
   
   Outside of Savage / Ultimate / certain EX content, there's little difficulty besides mechanics. There aren't any meaningful DPS checks anymore in regular content, a la Demon Wall back in the day. It's almost impossible to lose Enmity as a tank, a sad reality that has been true since the earliest days of ARR. It's almost impossible to fail at healing unless someone is going out of their way to be hit by more or less every AoE they can.
   
   This holds true in the "Expert" Roulette, overworld content, non-EX Primals (some EX ones too, for that matter), non-Savage Raids - everywhere except the hardest content aimed at players who, for the most part, tackle it with Static Parties.
   
   The net result of this is that players simply don't have a way to organically learn how to become better at their jobs. Sure, some people self-motivate anyway; they'll use third-party parsers and they'll jump into the theory-crafting to maximize their damage, optimize their rotations. But the general content of FFXIV provides nary an incentive -
   let alone a requirement - for all players to engage in this type of self-improvement.

I think an ideal example to wrap this together is The Royal Menagerie at the end of Stormblood. People shattered themselves upon the fight because the mechanics were relatively new, not as clearly telegraphed as others had been, and because there was a bit of a DPS check.

That fight was objectively easier than Titan EX, a fight that had been available to all players since before Stormblood was even in the planning stages. And yet, despite years of additional playtime, years of additional opportunity for skill growth, countless more fights to practice on, and 20 levels worth of new abilities giving us more tools than ever before, players struggled immensely with the fight.

To me, that's a sign SE has failed utterly at improving average player skill. Rather, they've simply accommodated poor performance into their difficulty balancing. It's important we not confuse the two.

[Reinha]

The falling part should have something else going on to make it interesting. Red orb patterns, white/black pairs like in Sophia ex, chains, blowing winds, knockbacks, etc. Otherwise the difficulty seems fine for an extreme and it's nice that tank LB is useful for a change.

[Khalithar]

Byakko ex is perfectly tuned and balanced for what it rewards. If the rewards were 365 weapons you could justify a higher difficulty but for 355? No, absolutely not. As someone that’s beaten O4S on content, I consider shinryu ex to be an overtuned piece of garbage fight with rewards not worth the effort. Byakko on the other hand? Again, for what it rewards you, the difficulty is perfect.

Edit: To clarify a bit more, I believe difficulty should be balanced out by the quality of reward you get. By the time you have the ilevel to do byakko (what's the min req.? 340 I think?) the weapon is only a marginal upgrade over what you should have by that point. Whereas for a fight like shinryu, the difficulty was far too high for a weapon barely better than a 330 tomestone weapon that we all knew would have an upgrade token from the 24m sooner or later. As such, I consider Shinryu to be completely not worth the effort for what you can get out of it and no, the dog/orchestrion/crafting item do not justify a higher difficulty, ever. Compare and contrast to byakko on the other hand where the slightly better weapon is worth getting because of the more reasonable difficulty even though folks will get a 370 or a 375 (if you raid) later on.

[RiyahArp]

Titan EX hasn't been done at min ilvl for 3 years or more. A lot of people came and went during that time, using it as any form of example is dumb. Everyone had to do Royal Menagerie, just to get to endgame, as the first phase of a popular new expansion launched. If you wanted to try to do an ex primal synched you often looked at hours of waiting in queue.

I don't agree with being knocked off the platform as a good mechanic to teach skill. It more or less just made one person sit out the fight for one single mistake, completely out of proportion to any other mechanic. We had a very nasty example of this in the hildebrand fight with ultros and typhon. Original fight meant that if any dps didn't get 3 wet plate stacks and punch typhon, you all wiped. And that meant on the second circle aoe phase both the dps and tank on ulty had to be perfect because one mistake meant a guaranteed party wipe. They quitely nerfed that, and I have yet to see anyone complain at all for the loss.

You also kind of limit difficulty with it. If you notice on all the "knock off" fights like that, you have to make it beatable with one tank. Otherwise the tanks can't make a mistake or they force restarts, compared to other jobs; Bismarck is an example of this. If your tank falls off pre dps check, you might as well jump off to restart. You end up making start/stop encounters because they become unrecoverable early.

Idk about difficulty. If you add hard dps checks and many oneshots and raid wipe mechanics, you're just going to do a lot more sorting of the playerbase, and make endgame as small as feast. The big fallacy I see here is that people assume everyone is going to stick with things if they become much more of a pain in the butt to do, because the people who want it harder would do so. But a lot would just skip the content instead.

[TheAngelneer]

Byakko ex is perfectly tuned and balanced for what it rewards. If the rewards were 365 weapons you could justify a higher difficulty but for 355? No, absolutely not. As someone that’s beaten O4S on content, I consider shinryu ex to be an overtuned piece of garbage fight with rewards not worth the effort. Byakko on the other hand? Again, for what it rewards you, the difficulty is perfect.

This. Byakko gives you an entry level weapon to patch 4.2, it is roughly equivalent to a HQ ilvl350 crafted weapon: same weapon damage, slightly better stats, but can't be overmelded. If you don't have (or know) max level, decently geared crafters, you have the choice of tossing a few million gil into to MB or learn the fight and farm Byakko for the new standard of weapons in 4.2.

It is not a broken fight handing out overpowered weapons like they were candy.

Ding ding ding. I'm actually really hoping they patch this out so that parties where nobody breaks 4k DPS can't clear it

Wow, such pettiness. What is the problem, those "scrubs" running around with Byakko weapons and mount are hurting your pro-player feelings?

If you want to show to the world how much of a cool kid you are you should be considering that title from Ultimate, and not something from Byakko.

I guarantee you it wasn't. They simply don't adapt to our cheese strats. This same thing happened with Zurvan, thus creating the ever beloved "Skip Soar or disband" memes. The dev team has difficulty with the NA/EU mindset. JP does the mechanics almost as a show of respect. NA/EU only care about getting through the fight the fastest way possible. If we can break a fight, we're going to do it.

You make it sound like ingenuity is a bad thing. Tank LB is a tool handed out to the players long ago, if people can't see past using it only when it is mandatory like A12 that is a limitation of their own.

If the possibility of skipping the second tiger with a tank LB3 was intended or not we will only know if the devs ever outright state it. But as others have said, they could have easily just turned it into insta-death no matter what if they really wanted.

There is no disrespect or disregard for the developers by being creative on tackling the challenges they put in our way, unless someone is outright cheating or using exploits.

[Trunks]

Killed this 10 times with PUGs last night (best part: zero weapons dropped that anyone in the group could actually use for their main Job). Hadn't cleared it before then. The fight is very simple (by far the most similar to its NM version of any trial I can recall), compounded by the way shielding and healer power creep is trivializing any sort of damage that bosses can do. We were getting through the boss's ultimate without anyone taking damage. Tank buster? *Excog* What tank buster? Stop in and dine at the all-you-can-eat Vulnerability Buffet? Not a problem.

I've got case in point here. There is no way we should have killed this with how terribly we played (8 deaths!), but since you can outrun the raging incarnation of a tiger as a WHM in a dress, the tank can eat any Vuln stacks s/he likes because you can just employ Strategic Death® to drop them: https://youtu.be/5lOr3PtQxx4

My advice to those having difficulty: use voice comms. In my experience, PUGs that do so are far more effective. Why? Because when you screw up, you can let others know, and they can compensate; or when someone else is screwing up, you can tell them, "hey, you're screwing up"; or when someone is having trouble with a mechanic you can tell them, "hey, get behind the boss, he's casting Leg Sweep". And when you're talking to a real human being with a voice it makes people less inclined to just give up and ragequit. This is what kills most PUGs -- people get tired of sitting around, because every time you wipe, 1-2 people quit, so there's no consistency to the group. It's hard to kill anything that way.

[CrispyCrab]

Came from Tonberry, no harm mean
But I'm quite surprise that you guys Tank LB. I use Range LB most od the time :0

[Odstarva]

"Oh man, it's not hard enough! Agh!"

Well, did you have fun? I had fun!

Lots of fun, in fact! My favorite trial so far. I hope to see more of these, regardless of how "difficult" it is!