The general player base needs to improve

[KaivaC]

Either the healer uses esuna, and they go, or its the same thing we already have, uncleansable debuffs. The worst we have is paralysis.

Paralysis is one of the most effective things that the game does throw at us. I can't argue this...good point.

Those don't really do much. You give dps a damage down and have a dps check, its the same as just not giving them a dmg down and making it a harder dps check. You give them infirmary, you just end up balancing the attacks based on the lowered totals. It just goes back to whether or not what you do has a serious threat to wipe the player. If it doesn't, its the same as we already have.

Not quite. If you have a damage down with a tough DPS check, you're gonna have to bring out everything you've got. Say, you get it during a Behemoth's Meteor cast. If a DPS is down, you will not pass this check. Obviously, the min ilvl has to be balanced towards this, but we're talking about having expert level dungeons - given that nearly all EX and Savage battles have a smaller DPS check in battle, it will encourage players to push out damage. That's just one example.

Have another one where you're fighting a boss on a platform similar to Demon Wall, and a pushback mechanic that covers the entire platform is about to come up along with particularly nasty, untargetable adds (say aether swords or something like that) that will float across the platform. The adds themselves deal attack/magic damage down debuffs if you touch just one of them. One way of dealing with that would be to stack in a way that the pushback will knock you in a way that the entire party will not touch any of the adds. Have something like that, and boom, you are familiarized with one of the main mechanics of O5S.

no no, my point was that we already have things that are optional, hard, teach players skills, and offer rewards better than the casual content that precedes them. those are ex trials. However, the problem with ex trials is not enough people do it, especially the people who could benefit from having their skills challenged by them. The people though who already find most content in the game easy are the ones who tend to do them, and then they complain its too easy. You can have those dungeons, but they might end up as another form of ex primals in terms of impact.

Ex/Savage trials are a significant step up. Truthfully, all I'm suggesting is a middle ground between the dungeons we currently have now, and those hard battles. I'll even take it a step further, take the existing Hard Mode dungeons and call them (Dungeon Name) Unyielding. The people who find everything easy don't really matter, because their skill levels are just simply far above our own. I'd venture to say Wanderer's Palace Unyielding could be the first. Have a Master Tonberry capable of causing instant death, and being able to cast meteor. Allow it to even invade in the boss fight. That'll give a run a sense of urgency, for example.