Savage is too easy

[Zzzlol94]

This post will be filled with constructive critizism of the current state of Savage.

I have raided in this game since the start of Heavensward, first as a WHM, now as a BLM. I'm in a midcore group which has the ability to clear everything, only limited by work and time constraints. The current raid tier is honestly depressingly easy. Even in comparison to any Omega tier. My raid group has raided on average once per week, we're supposed to raid 3 times per week, but we've had the worst luck. If we were to have the same consistent raid nights as we had in Omega, we would've cleared E4S in just half the time we needed to clear God Kefka. My group also does every fight blind, we figure out everything ourselves (and tbh, there's not much figuring out needed for this savage tier). There are very specific aspect of the raid designs which I'll talk about, which has made this raid tier just boring (Titan being the only one with consistently good mechanics).

Now with Ultimate releasing, which seems to be more difficult than the previous iterations, it means that there is once again NOTHING between Ultimate and Savage. The same complaint people had in Gordias between Normal and Savage. Ultimate is too time consuming to attempt and Savage is just easy and mostly a breeze, and really doesn't deserve the title of Savage.

1. Stop wasting time casting

This is one of the biggest issues I have with the game recently. Everything is a cast bar or a very specific marker. EVERYTHING. Tankbusters, raid-wide AoE and just pointless things like "Refreshing Shower" in E3S (THIS ONE DOESN'T NEED A CAST BAR... JUST DO THE ANIMATION AND WE'LL GET WHAT'S HAPPENING) being the biggest offenders. Do you seriously need to put a 3-5 second castbar on every AoE or tankbuster? It's such a waste of time. A3S, as infamous as it was, if every hard hitting tank damage and AoE in that had a 5 second cast bar, the fight would've been minutes longer. The hand swipes and Splash being two examples.

Now I have to exaggerate this to make sure the point actually makes you think. But to put an even more ridiculous example. A1S. The first Savage fight people encountered. Oppressor had continuous hard hitting tank abilities and AoEs. And those VERY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER. I can't specify how insane A1S was in terms of damage output when you had 190-200 gear (remember you couldn't even meld tomestone/raid gear back then). Healers could easily get MP issues. You had to heal the tanks for getting hit hard, but also people with the prey, which was just a long barrage of damage needing constant healing. There are so many elements of A1S which still makes it a more healing intensive fight than most Savage fights made the past 2 years.

I'm not saying that cast times should be eliminated. But, heavily consider to shorten the time between generic AoE abilities and phase transition abilities. E2S for example. One of the most boring fights I have ever encountered. The last phase before Cycle of Chaos/Retribution. You do nothing. Nothing really happens. Then 10 seconds of stuff, then nothing for another 30-45 seconds. E3S suffers not as much, but there's still a lot of time where you just do nothing. Tidal Rage/Wave could just become instant. Rage happening and the Wave spawning at the same time, and then hitting after destroying the platforms as it currently does.

My point. Get on with it. 8-10 second time gap between two AoEs is too much. It makes having two in a row, completely pointless. Reduce it to less than 5, so the healers need to use their cooldowns and utility to get the party back up.

2. Speaking of tanks getting hit

Sure, we have auto-attacks in the game, and they do a little bit. Clearly not enough for me to care as a BLM when tanking Leviathan when a tank dies. Back to A1S-A4S. Tanks not only got auto-attacks, they got hit by instant damage abilities which pretty much did around 60-80% of their HP. Where else did this happen... hmm. Oh yeah, nearly every ARR Trial and Dungeon. Something was lost, and SE didn't find it. This is the one thing Savage has been missing to make tanking/healing a little more tricky. Sure no one likes it when they die from those, but letting them deal 50% of the tanks HP and let them happen 2-3 times within 10-12 seconds seems quite a good way of getting it a bit more sweaty. Also put one or two of those instant raid-wide AoEs there so the healers need to figure out how to prioritize and optimize. Also let the DPS have something to do during that so we're not sitting ducks.

tl;dr there needs to be more sudden and repeated burst damage without getting delayed by castbars

3. Mid-fight DPS checks/tankbusting adds

For some reason this is completely gone. The meteors in E1S are barely anything of note. O3S had both the Chimera and the White Flame. Not entirely DPS checks, but you really didn't want them to stay alive and roast the tanks either. Nearly every single fight in Alexander had a mid-fight DPS check or add. Hand of Pain and the hand grabbing a healer in A3S (twice mind you), the, Steamroller in A10S and EDD in A11S being the most notable.

I want these back because they demand DPS or a tank/healing check before the end. Usually more difficult than the soft/hard enrage. Also so that my raid group need to learn to optimize their jobs (and all the other raid groups that are more on the casual side). Also I want to see these DPS checks being DPS ONLY. Make so they have a buff making them only take damage from DPS and maybe 1/2 damage from tanks and none from healers. And make sure LB is not a viable cheese option by putting in two of them in the same fight within a minute or two of each other.

4. Hey SE, remember when heavy/slow/bind/sleep was a thing?

You know what happened with the release of Stormblood. We got role actions! SE were finally going to make use of them in raids! Now you had your separate ability to put slow/heavy/bind/sleep on targets! Maybe we get to use them more in Omega than we did on A3S and A6S!

...nope. This was probably my biggest disappointment with that change. Not that it was very important for Omega, but it gave crowd control roles to the healers/DPS to do these tasks in Alexander. I want to see these return, simply because they can introduce interesting new mechanics. For example, needing to sleep a mob, but having to keep it close to the boss, making any AoE ability not usable. It could hurt some jobs, like DNC, but it only needs to be a thing for just 10-20 seconds, maybe 2-3 times in a fight. Or longer, but only once during one of the more difficult streaks of mechanics.

Seriously, a return of these mechanics would make sure mechanics don't end up being stale by E12S.


I just want to see savage being more difficult. I don't want savage to be something most people can clear within a month. I think the midcore raiders, having 7-8 hours per week on average, shouldn't be able to clear Savage before the 24-man patch releases, or a few weeks before that.

The current tier is also really bad in another way. There's no significant difficulty ladder. Savage should be designed in a way which lets the more casual players be able to clear the first 3 fights before the next raid tier, maybe the 4th if they're actually taking the step to improve at the game. The goal of Savage should not be to let everyone breeze through every fight. It should let everyone be able to clear the hardest fight that is within their skill. And that might very well be the 2nd fight, and not clear the 3rd or 4th. That is fine. I want to the difficulty of the 4th fight be between A3S and A12S. Not to be a breeze to get through, but to feel within reach of those able to get there. Ultimate then does the job of being even more difficult than those, by being a bit more intense and much longer. And SE, please make the first fight of Savage more difficult than the Extreme Trials... It's actually ridiculous.

But right now, like I said earlier, the difficulty difference between E4S and Ultimate is so large, that E4S is too easy and Ultimate feels unreachable for a static trying to raid 9 hours per week. And my interest in the game is falling because of this, and many other poor decisions SE are making into streamlining and simplifying with the apparent goal to remove the small amounts of depth the game had in its gameplay.

[Baxcel]

- snip.-

As someone who wants to get into Savage and Ultimate but doesn\\'t have the time to keep spamming the runs until it clicks with a team.. the savages need to be able to be done by the duty finder or party finder teams within at least 1 or 2 time outs... the Ultimate on the other hand no.. they should be that hard and keep people trying for months if not years..

If you want the challenge of savage to be greater then they currently are.. I\\'m going to suggest you try it with minimum item level turned on.. maybe remove your materias as well lol

[HyoMinPark]

the savages need to be able to be done by the duty finder or party finder teams within at least 1 or 2 time outs... the Ultimate on the other hand no.. they should be that hard and keep people trying for months if not years..

While I would like for Savage to feel more “savage”, I disagree with the proposition of OP’s post that a tier should take a midcore raid group a little over 3 months to complete (there’s usually ~15 weeks between main patches). Seeing the fights last longer is all well and good, but there is a point where it becomes a bit silly when a fight isn’t being consistently cleared even by an average group. I wouldn’t want a repeat of Gordias, where things like A4S were actually gear-locked (this was especially a problem with Manipulator—it was nigh impossible to clear without people having Tomestone weapons because of his HP), because that’s just artificial gating at that point and not making the content harder mechanically.

However, with the introduction of Ultimate “for the hardcore raiders”, Yoshida has already expressed the sentiment that Savage will remain steadily midcore as a result.

I disagree, however, with your notion that they should all be clearable within a group going in for a lockout or two (speaking on progression—not weekly clears; those should always be relatively quick). That’s too far on the other extreme, and it’s actually a bit laughable for a good group to go in and clear a fight for the first time that quickly (watch the World First clear video of O1S [Alte Roite]—they literally cleared with ~10 or so deaths on the first pull; someone in the video actually went “What the ——!?” at the end... it was laughable how easy he was).

On the topic of Ultimate: it is an excellent challenge, but taking a year to progress and clear it? Again, too extreme, in my opinion. UCoB and UwU can take 1~2 months for even an average group with average progression hours—and longer for groups that have to raid less, deal with roster changes messing with prog, or perhaps need to up their skill levels to pass certain checks or mechanics faster (it took my group almost 4 months to clear UwU, and I thought that was way too long considering they were advertising as a “semi-hardcore group”). I think 1~2 months on average is an adequate amount of time to put into the content.

[QooEr]

i do agree savage should be a bit harder, especially on the topic of incoming damage. auto attacks are negligible, and aoe damage is far too spread out. i think i cast aspected helios twice in the entirety of e3s, i dont even gcd heal in e2s unless someone messed up mechanics either. i kinda miss the heavy hitting autos from a9s

[Niyuka]

The problem isnt so much that the raids are too easy (they have been for a while, but that is largely due to the playerbase regressing in skill and no content aside from Savage actually putting up any resistance, leading to this), its that so many mechanics exist in the game - and are not used. Slow, Interrupt, Stun, Blind, various debuffs and buffs, none of these truly matter (aside from knockback, which I must point out is used to solid effect).

Also, the constant group-heal spam could really need some changing - make healers focus on different number of targets and sorts of heals. Make tanks actually need cooldowns for more than just the super-telegraphed tankbuster. Make DPS have mini checks that dont just require cycling their rotations - make them save up their burst window for a special moment.

I like a lot of the mechanics from hte 24 raids better than much of the Savage stuff. There is genuinely cool stuff in there! Use it, dont just alternate pattern AOEs and debuff puzzles.

[Adeacia]

If anything, Alex ultimate is too easy. Alex can mess with time, so really, he should just go back in time and prevent any character who unlocks his fight from ever being created in the first place. You can't beat him if you don't exist. Or at the very least, your character instantly dies the moment you enter the fight since Alex kills you before the fight begins. When will an enemy actually use their full power for once?

[Wyti]

I also tend to the slightly too easy crowd.
I have the unique perspective of having 2 rosters, one semi-hc roster (Titan cleared in 8 days, currently after transition on alex ultimate) and a very very casual one with Real Life friends (so no real discrimination on skill level) that raid only ONCE per week.

The difficulty of the raids tiers of Kefka / Omega felt right to me.
We were usually able to clear the raiding content in a span of 5 month (usually just not enough to have 8 weapons for the next tier), now we cleared Titan week 9 with this schedule and are left with basically no content to do, while we will try ultimate once for fun, its obviously not something our casual group can handle (we know we will never meet enrage of the liquid even if we got there).

My guess would be that we miss a 5th boss, because in essence during all of Stormblood it was like having 5 boss with the final one being 2 bosses in the same tier. Now that they stopped doing that (and its good to get some change don't get me wrong) I was kinda hoping for a 5th boss harder than titan, with maybe only limited rewards like the Mount to give us a bridge to the next content, or prepare more ambitious groups to Ultimates.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Slow, Interrupt, Stun, Blind, various debuffs and buffs, none of these truly matter (aside from knockback, which I must point out is used to solid effect)

Knockback is acutally the other extreme. While many role actions don't get any use, knockback is an overused mechanic. You have it constantly in E2, E3 and E4. At least Interrupt is needed in E1 instead.

If anything, Alex ultimate is too easy. Alex can mess with time, so really, he should just go back in time and prevent any character who unlocks his fight from ever being created in the first place. You can't beat him if you don't exist. Or at the very least, your character instantly dies the moment you enter the fight since Alex kills you before the fight begins. When will an enemy actually use their full power for once?

Can't do. Alexander Ultimate (and Savage) is an exaggerated song, told/sung by a Minstrel and it wouldn't make a very good story this way.

[snipski]

this Savage tier was a joke, there are always a million party finders up early on the weekend with 1-4 clear grps.

i guess it's nice for ppl without statics being able to PF the fights so easy but savage should be a bit harder imo.

[Thoosa]

Isn’t the first tier of savage in a set usually the easiest and they get harder in later tiers? When this tier came out it was a mess due to item level and people being new, but now it is easy because of item level and people knowing the fights.

How hard to people want them? Make them too hard and raiding will die, wasn’t that the gordias problem? IMO this tier is easier than o9s-o12s but I’m sure when the last tier is out there will be loads of threads complaining it’s too hard. :P