Savage is too easy

[Cetonis]

E1S and E2S are in a good place difficulty-wise I think, a solid first step up from EX trials. Not every mechanic is beyond the EX trial level, but many definitely are, and for an early fight that sort of mix is fine.

By the third and fourth fights though, we should have mostly left the EX stuff behind. Yet there's been a pattern of lengthy filler, most noticeably in the fourth fights. Sequences of a minute or two or even more, where nothing that happens is any harder than a bread-and-butter EX trial mechanic.

Leviathan does really nothing of note until Stormy Horizon. I was baffled that there was no even-moderately-difficult Maelstrom. Titan has a long second phase full of largely rudimentary stuff, save for the Evil Earth combo and maybe one or two raidwide damage spikes. Final Omega had big dead periods between each Hello World and the next Patch. Omega did a bunch of nothing stuff in phase 3 before Pantokrators. And so on.

The difficulty of later fights has been very isolated into two or three sequences or one or two phases, while the remaining majority of the fight is just going through the motions. Even TEA is like this, although the difficulty of those harder parts is of course higher.

This is silly; while obviously it would extend prog and clear time to have more hard-stuff time in fights, that seems better to me than purposely making fights lame for large sections. You're already asking players to be able to execute at a certain level, asking them to do so for 70-80% of a fight instead of 30-40% shouldn't be too big of a reach.

[Khalithar]

The difficulty is all relative when it comes to savage. I did all of savage in stormblood (on content) and cleared this tier as well. If I had to rate it in difficulty I'd put it around the same difficulty as the second tier in Stormblood.

E1S is pretty easy (seriously, I feel like the boss spends more time casting than anything else).

E2S is a giant targeting dummy where the DPS check was the hardest part (Keyword: "was" as in past tense). The quietus phase is the only part I find engaging, but if your dps is good you skip almost all of it.

As a result it reminds me a lot of the first two bosses in the second tier of Stormblood (Train/Phantom).

E3S is when the tier actually got interesting for me. So far I'd have to say that this is my favorite fight in the tier, I like the movement, aoe, mechanic combinations, along with the music (especially the 3:00-3:30 part of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhSN3QaxSAg&t=3m0s ) and the visuals.

E4S is when the tier actually got challenging for me but I say it got challenging for the wrong reasons. I don't think any of the mechanics in Titan are difficult (outside of maybe a really bad evil earth + punch combo), but they are delicate and by "delicate" I mean one mistake = death. I'm not personally a fan of that for fights even in savage mode as I've always held that a mistake can be punishing without instantly killing someone, but I digress.

TLDR version: I think the difficulty is fine for the opening savage tier but only 2/4 fights are actually interesting.

[Vyrerus]

snip

1. Casts are factored into the fight design/time beforehand. They likely didn't put in timestamp cleaves in the first SHB raid tier due to wanting to dumb down tanking, because the majority of players perceive it to be hard. AOE raidwides have a cast bar to tip off healers, and to also allow pre-cast heals when the cast is slower. Some casts are faster than others.

Due to the nature and duration of tank cooldowns, you wouldn't want too many phases like the giant hand or two hands from A3S, because the tank cooldowns would dry up and they'd have to put in a whole segment where nothing happens to the tanks from 90 seconds prior to when the hand-like phase began. Most fight limitations are designed around player limitations. This is why Gordias turned a lot of players off and made many unsub, because at that time with that meta, with both Ranged borked and accuracy still being a factor for (Healer)DPS, the DPS checks weren't meetable with entry level gear in the late fights.

2. If Leviathan isn't killing you when a tank dies on DPS, that means your healers or tanks were supporting you, and not dead for long. His autos don't stop during the raidwides, and they will kill any DPS at that point, unless they are supported. Very few timestamp cleaves have ever dealt 80% of a tank's HP, unless there was a stacking mech(either vulns or group) involved. DPS pretty much never have fight responsibility, outside of specific mechs, which still go on in every fight, so not sure what you're getting at here. Maybe just a more active fight for everyone? Well, prepare for the fight to last longer, because that means time for the mechanics to go out and be reacted to and then resolved. In this they are limited by designing for players to react to latency. If they make it too "unfair," like reading Nael's RP words for the combos in that phase of UCoB, then players will use illegal tools to circumvent the difficulty.

3. E1s had the 2 Fausts, each with timed cleaves dealing magic damage as well as the buff tanks or ranged had to silence. O3s had White Flame, Dragon, and Minotaur, no chimera. Then it also had Ninjas and Iron Giant. Add phases are wildly different fight to fight, and that's simply a matter of fight design based on what the theme needs to be. No add phase has ever added out of this world difficulty. Usually a gimmick or two, and then a mild to severe DPS check. With the way Tank DPS is now about half of what a DPS's should be, your request is already taken care of, they just need to bring back phases with adds, which I'm sure they will.

4. They can't implement something like this til they change role actions with the vision they have for any comp being viable. THey would need to give role actions to jobs that don't have certain ones. I'd welcome it, but they really would have to rework it. They just haven't ever formatted the game to really make this stuff vital, except in POTD or HoH when you're solo.

[KageTokage]

The difficulty of Eden's Verse savage feels really inconsistent as opposed to being a fairly steady curve like it was in Eden's Gate.

E7S in particular feels like a major outlier because its DPS check is insanely lenient compared to E6S, to the point where you can comfortably use a healer LB3 after a near wipe (The dark/light portals being the usual culprit) and still kill it before it even starts its enrage cast.

[millktea]

snip.

You want it to be harder? Stop playing dps. YOU DON'T DO ANYTHING. Often when a dps messed up a mechanic in Gate, the tank/healers were punished. DPS essentially has no responsibility. That's the REAL PROBLEM. Yes, the dps checks are lenient, but not for most players. I'm often the highest percentile in my pf groups, and I'm a warrior! Its usually the dps that feel they dont need to try to clear anything. Many don't even know their minimal mitigation or support toolkit much less their dps one.

Savage also needs to be clearable in pf/rf and it's made for midcore. I'd love savage to be harder, but SE doesn't teach players to play the game. Savage has been made harder recently, which is nice, but also bad as its hitting ultimate territory. What's the point of ultimate then? Also, why are the fights so long? 13m? 14!?

You're complaining about return of mechanics so things don't get stale, but SE consistently always repeats mechanics, and this is why savage is so easy for you if you've been raiding since HW. Experience (and being a selfish dps that does nothing). A lot of the things you're asking for, guess who will get all that responsibility: not you.

"Theres no difficulty ladder", yet players couldn't even do temporary current. They couldn't even do uplift. I'd do uptime high risk- high reward strats, and who flipped out the most? Dps. 1 and 2 of the tier is meant to be for lower midcore. I admit, leviathan is too easy, but I'm also experienced.

As far as your cast times complaint, no. They need to be there simply due to ping/internet reasons. Also, with the way tanks are made now, they dont have the toolkit to take as much damage anymore. Warrior can barely self-heal (and no, nascent needs a target, and its duration isn't long enough, don't bother). Tanks cant adjust in any way as tank stance is gone and the dps lost a lot of their mitigation tools (oh snap, even less things for dps to do now. Lacking even MORE responsibility). The tanks dont even do the damage they should be doing. Imagine if they did and hoe much easier it would be then, hah.

Ultimate should take longer to progress than savage, but a year? No. Not even 6 months. I think it's a bigger issue that Verse savage is getting too close to ultimate. Why are we getting long fights that are only 1 to 2m shorter than ultimate? With too many easy damage downs and 1 hit party kills? Problematic.

TLDR, it's more that dps don't do anything/have responsibility, your years of experience that make it "too easy", and that savage is meant to be more midcore with ultimate for more hardcore.

[xenowind]

I'm glad they answer your call. Since no PUG can consistantly clear light rampant, I can finally give up e8s, and waiting for 7 remake.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Since no PUG can consistantly clear light rampant, I can finally give up e8s

It's not even been three weeks yet. Give it some time.

[KageTokage]

Trying to clear E8S with randoms is probably one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with this game in general; not so much because of people failing the mechanics, but because of the toxicity it's generating.

People are quick to start pointing fingers, trash-talking, and blacklisting others just because they messed up Light Rampant a couple times; irregardless of how consistently said players can perform the later mechanics in the fight or how good their DPS is.