Rathalos EX

[phuba]

I like the fight, its unpredictable enough to keep it interesting even after many many kills. Keeps it challenging. Doing it as a melee dps didn't make it any easier, but I've gotten real good at dodging even at close range. I'm just glad I got the mount from a drop, but even so I almost have enough kills to get it from the scales anyway from just helping farm it.

[Ekimmak]

I doubt they'll ever add an ever-present ability for all jobs to evade an attack via diving, roll dodging or w/e type of dodge that fits the Job. But who knows, this fight like I said twice before, highlights XIVs unsatisfying combat in terms of evading attacks.

The moment they do add some sort of dynamic dodge skill or block or something along those lines, I officially leave. When ping gets bad, MMOs get cancerous enough as is. I've dropped enough Superhero MMOs to know how unpleasant it would be if they brought that into here.

That sort of high-action quick-reflexes gameplay has its place... and it's not in any genre that has "Online" in the title.

[DracotheDragon]

finally got it DPSing only, no tank only parties didn't switch to tank or healer, and i finally got him

[Doki]

It only took me 3 evenings of PF to get 50 kills. Never saw the mount drop once, but saw several poogie minion and music scroll drops from chest. The realy RNG is the people you end up with. When you get a group of people that can clear, do as many runs as possible. If you wipe twice, just go ahead and move on to a different group.

[Stormfur]

I love that it plays the Monster hunter music when you ride it -- but I'm sad that I cannot breathe fiery puddles on the ground. That would've been so cool!

[RiyahArp]

IDK, I played it more just to double check my impressions, and it's still bad. Like, the min ilvl is 350, but to be able to survive a mistake as a dps or healer, you need an effective hp of 45k in both phases; rushes do often oneshot you if less than 40k full health. Like as WHM, I am at 362, meld vit, and use food, and that puts me at 43k HP. The second phase you can die at that HP level from rush + stun + poison tics.

The difference between trad parties and multiple tank parties is still night and day. Two tanks means the stack fireball mechanic has a 50% chance of hitting them, and they both can stack together reducing the amount of burn stacks you need to esuna, while trivializing the overall damage. A DPS that stacks the full hits will always be at very low health, and a healer will need to esuna everyone if all four stack.

It's weird because it varies so much by job and composition. And that leads to really random experiences; a good group that consistently reaches the end phase disbands just because of random mistakes, while you can geenrally just throw tanks at it, watch them eat attacks, and still power through as long as the healer and sole dps are ok.

[SkyEdge1]

This fight is perfectly manageable if you have are able to remember at most 5 different tells. There have been plenty of fights with RNG mechanics more punishing, 'he turns to face a direction, get out of the way of that direction' also the people saying they havent had enough DPS to clear, if parties with 3 tanks can dps it down before enrage, why wouldn't a regular composition be able to clear it? Imo this has been a really enjoyable fight, it's about quick reaction and coordination. Just hard enough to be challenging but easy enough to PUG with some patience.

[RiyahArp]

This fight is perfectly manageable if you have are able to remember at most 5 different tells.

He has a tell where he whips around and fireballs a random person very quickly. It catches a lot of people off guard, especially in melee range, and if its the healer or squishy dps, it can be nasty. It's also a thing that it's random. Like if you aren't good at reflexes, the normal fights have a scripted pattern where you can just anticipate rather than react. You prepare for that. Here, you need to watch the boss constantly and be in motion as soon as the tell starts; if you aren't moving to the side as he roars, you're going to get hit.

Also the tank thing is about HP, not dps. They just don't get punished harshly if they screw up. That's really why it's so hard, most of the time dps and healers die when they screw up but tanks can absorb many mistakes. I've had tanks eat every attack from rath on the first run, and they never were in danger at all. Even stun + tail swipe just brought them to 30% ish HP.

I did it enough to where the fight really isn't fun any more. Then again, I think a lot of the complaints are from healers. The random nature of the fight means everyone has to be at full health, where good healers tend to use HoT instead for scripted fights so they can dps in between attacks. If it's roar, i cant just slap on a medica 2; i'm medica + assize + the add on heal because if the dps is at 30k hp and they mess up a rush attack, its a death. I can't use c3 because people are all over the place. A lot of times if a dps eats a charge, they can be at 7k HP with a 2k poison tic on them and stunned.

[SkyEdge1]

That frontal fire cone is really punishing, however that falls on the people in melee range as that particular one still starts with him turning to a player, so if someone is being silly and standing at his nose it will seem as there is no tell for it. The fight IS NOT healer friendly I agree, but the people that are not using the mega potions to ease the burden on the healer in first phase because they think they need all 10 for phase 2 are partly to blame for that as well. That's why I think coordination > RNG for this fight. It's a team effort just like any other fight, only problem is now everyone is responsible for their HP not just the healer and it's taking some people a longer time to get that.

[Ekimmak]

My problem as a scholar (it's an alt, don't judge by my forum character) is that I can't heal and watch the boss at the same time.

I can survive Onrush with a scrap of HP, but normally, getting hit with it means I was trying to heal up after the fireball or roar.