Enrage timer raid design is causing all the problems

[TaiyouSeishin]

I'm curious as to how tight the ES4 DPS check is vs. ES3 because I'm having doubts that the rampant exclusion of "non-meta" classes like NIN and DNC in PF groups is really that necessary.

Its not, all classes should be able to pull the numbers required to get through, but a ninja has to WEAVE through all the traffic in Clip city, so if they make a wrong turn and/or die.... they already are weak in terms of usefullness rn, will be even worse if they die or fudge the rotation.

DNC honestly seems to do well (tho i often think they need a small buff somehow, make procs happen a little more often for instance)

[tikiwiki]

Well if I remember correctly, when design raids SE doesn't even consider Healer DPS as a factor and Tank DPS is a minimum.

They have said that but it clearly isnt the case anymore at min ilvl titan you would never clear without healer dps

[Shurrikhan]

All the problems, like

1. People not being allowed to run about like headless chickens during mechanics.
2. Not being able to stack all tanks and healers to cheese the fights, albeit at twice the kill time or slower.
3. Actually caring about playing their job well, instead of just... not wiping.
4. There being momentum and excitement in a fight through optimization, rather than just variance between complete allowance of blunders and less blundering permitted.
5. Not being permitted to afk through a fight or duo what should be 8-man content.

Just look at them! The horror!

[Suniva]

Back in my days of raiding it was normal to be fighting the first boss over and over until you had the gear instead of expecting all 4 fights to be cleared in the first week in 450 gear.

True. But we were also not NEARLY as popular back then as we are now. The player base was far more casual back in the day, and by all accounts, we still have a very large casual player base. I only started doing savage this tier, so I am frankly not all too familiar with it, but if all that is ever required to get past the content is just not dying to mechanics and dps checks, with no other elements added to the fights, I can see that getting pretty boring over the years.

[Endariel]

Back in my days of raiding it was normal to be fighting the first boss over and over until you had the gear instead of expecting all 4 fights to be cleared in the first week in 450 gear.

Yes and no.
Accessories have insignificant impact on dps, and it won't help you to clear e2s if you hit the enrage in e1s.
And yet, if you managed to clear e2s.m, with slightly more effort e3s is doable.

All I'm saying is that the gap is either too small or too big to justify the need of farming the same boss over and over to clear the next one

[Zerathor]

I find every job fits into these fights if they follow the simple method bellow:

[Vendalwind]

I find every job fits into these fights if they follow the simple method bellow:

Although I like the sentiment as a response to the overall theme of this thread, its not true when associated with the phrase
"I find every job fits"
My Raid group for example that I lead. I am about a 60th percentile NIN right now. Sometimes better, but never worse than 50. My raid comp with BLM, SAM, BRD, NIN is hitting the enrage wall hard on e2. Our tanks are performing well, our healers are performing sub 50 but i definitely think its in part because of mistakes made by others. Theoretically if everyone in our group performed a 50th percentile run we would clear with 1.9k dps to spare. Despite me and the tanks being the best percentiles in our group I have now had 5 members (i first labeled the roles but trying to be more discreet) private message me telling me I need to switch to monk. Why? Because even at my 60th percentile I'm doing less than our BRD at its 40th, or SAM at its 20th, or BLM at their 15th in terms of overall rDPS contribution. That freaking sucks.
And I'm told also that me switching is our only option if I want to keep the group together because they, and I quote: "know you have the potential and skill to grow where some of our other members don't, and you as lead hold the responsibility to carry the team" I also advertised the team when forming it as casual with an emphasis on fun instead of clears, but behold 3 of the people in the static have now threatened to leave if people don't improve by the end of the week or I dont switch to MNK. And its also funny cause they often complain about each other to me and each of course generally thinks they are the fully capable ones.

I want to play NIN, I like NIN, I like the playstyle, I like the skill, but I'm being asked to play MNK.


My point in sharing this story even at the expense of people figuring out who is in my group (please dont look any of us up, despite my rant everyone in my group is generally a very good and nice person, there is no reason to ostracize anyone here) is that some classes absolutely have the shaft right now.

And without a doubt do not "fit" into the fights for anyone except the overgeared or the expert teams.

As conclusion. I love the enrage mechanic, It makes us DPS have to learn to do our jobs. But I feel it is a bit steep to meet the demands right now IF class balance continues to be this terrible.

[Vendalwind]

Also on a screw up I by very nature am most likely to have the whole group call me out. My death ratio, in the last few weeks due to mistakes has been less than any of the other dps or healers, so in short I KNOW its not me Fing up mechanics even close to most of the time. but a healers die and no one says a word but the healer who says My B. I die and literally at least 3 people (because they know i can take a beating and criticism well, and I've kinda become the group scapegoat for people to let frustrations out) always call me out "Oh the freaking ninja dies again, Where's my trick?!"

At first it was a funny joke cause I and everyone else knew SE had Fed me over, but now. Im getting real tired of it. to the point where I'm considering splitting the group and just sticking with the fun calmer people.

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of our reasonable members who finally convinced me to switch to monk, and insisted on Buying me a lvl skip to 70 for MNK. I am exceedingly grateful to this individual, and he listened with reason after i finally blew up and let what I was holding back as the other 4 PMed flow out. But its weird cause I now feel slightly indebted to him after trying to argue him out of it, but he insisted. Again I am super greatful, but if and when NIN comes back I will want to return to it, and TBH I dont really have a ton of free time right now to lvl MNK to 80 when I was hoping to finish lvling SMN to cap out my 5 role quests.

[KageTokage]

I decided to just switch to MNK after seeing that almost all of the crafted pieces are their pre-savageBIS right now.

I'll go back to NIN if 5.08 succeeds in making it not suck.

[geekgirl101]

Its because right now everyone is basically at 'minimum' item level for most of the savage encounters. Once we have weeks pass for people to buy tome gear you get alot more wiggle room and can afford deaths here and there.
FFXIV raid design has worked after they figured it out back in HW for the last tier of Alexander. We aren't WoW, I understand you want to use WoW to inspire FFXIV raid design but that's not how the devs have decided to design the raids. This DPS problem happens when Stormblood came out for Halicarnassus (Delta 3) with a good chunk of jobs being under tuned and people getting to that fight much faster than even this tier. The third fight is a brick wall for 90% of the raid community, its called the "static breaker" for a reason.

Not really. I'm in some pretty shiny 450/460 gear. Ok it's missing some materia, but my damage is being slaughtered by people in 440 gear. It's nothing to do with minimum item level, it's because RDM damage got ignored whilst everyone else got buffed so our damage is the weakest of the lot. It's horribly lazy because I am pushing all I got and doing the very best I can whilst people who are insanely overpowered can out-DPS me without even trying.

Let's not forget this important bullet point of the Shadowbringers live letter:

Which isn't entirely true. You can cheese mechanics as BLM and remain on top. You can push hard like a pregnant hippo and still fail to match the rest of the DPS as any of the other weaker jobs. It's basically this - you come as RDM, SMN, DNC or NIN and it doesn't matter how good you play your role and how skilled you are you will still get benched once progress is done and everyone else has stopped dying to mistakes and relying on you as their res-bot. This expansion has introduced meta classes, something FFXIV was originally trying to avoid.