Highly Notorious Monsters

[Eekiki]

I don't want to see the old school version of FFXI's HNMs show up here. I've been liking how it works in XI now with the Voidwatch and Abyssea NMs. Triggered pops, and in many cases you need to farm the triggers through several tiers of lesser NM battles.

And I'd like to see these fights go in stages. Instead of slowly and blandly chipping away at an HP bar for 45 minutes, mix things up a bit. Y'know, like at 75% HP you get a new attack pattern to watch out for. At 50% HP it becomes immune to a certain kind of attack until you do something (debuff, deal a certain amount of damage, etc.) to trigger that immunity off. At 25% HP it goes crazy and you need to finish it off ASAP before it kills the universe.

Just a hypothetical description, but something like that. Know what I'm sayin'?

All that aside, there also needs to be a place for free roaming NMs. They simply need to be only one of many vehicles for satiating the lust for gear.