Cataclysm weapons: SEVEN WEEKS!?

[Ultimatecalibur]

Not a seven weeks time investment. In many of these such games it can take seven minutes to get one if you know what you're doing. Obviously it shouldn't be that simple in a game like this, but seven weeks is excessive. There is absolutely no reason for stuff in a game that gets discarded after 3/6 months like yesterday's trash to take that long to obtain.

Tomestone weapons have some of the longest staying power of all end game gear. While initially it take 7 weeks if you do not raid and as low as 2 or 3 weeks (Paladins can get theirs in 2 weeks) even if you do raid, Tomestone weapons stay an important part of the upgrade path for nearly a year from their release. Deepshadow/Augement Deepshadow weapons are going to be the primary way casual and midcore players will gear up alt jobs until 5.4 when Crystarium/Augmented Crystarium gear becomes the primary alt gear. When 6.0 drops, 5.4's new Tomestone/Augmented Tomestone gear becomes the standard leveling gear for 80 to 90 until FFXIV. Each teir of tomestome weapons is a key part of the upgrade path for at least a year or more.

It's funny that you don't even seem to realize that the bold makes the whole 7 week thing even more egregious.

Like, is it not already enough that you have to spend 3 weeks worth of weekly tomes for the weapon (which is a far more reasonable time frame for obtaining anything of value in this game), but you need to further gate it behind 7 weeks of normal-raid tokens? The weapons still aren't even as powerful as what raiders can get from the highest tier raid, so what is the need for this excessive gating? It's clear this is only done to allow (a few) raiders to get things sooner than everyone else can, which is fine... to an extent. Again, when the incredibly short shelf life of equipment in this game is taken into account, I don't think tacking on a whole extra month onto tome weapon acquisition for (all) the non-raiders is the right solution.

I guess you were not paying attention during 2.0, 2.3 and 3.0. During 2.0, easily gained i90 Relic weapons and gear deincentivized raiding as equivalent gear was readily available to everyone. During 2.3, once the weapon token and upgrade token were made to always drop in Srycus Tower, Ramuh participation decreased rapidly as it was a far easier way to get an equal or superior weapon. During 3.0, easy access to i200 weapons made doing Ravana (Bismark suffered from Ravana invalidating its drops as upgrades at release) mostly meaningless once they were added and participation in A1-4N dropped hard after the first 5 weeks.

The token lockout is to prevent them from deincentivizing raiding, the multi-week delay for non-raiders is to make EX trial weapons a viable upgrade for them for a longer period and requiring 7 normal mode raid tokens (and later 4) to get the tomestone weapon token is to keep normal mode raid participation up throughout the patch cycle.

[KDSilver]

You must be new.
It's been like this for a while now.

[Mavrias]

That's exactly it. I'm used to trials not being so demanding. The fact that farm party after farm party only barely managed to kill it before enrage, makes me think the fight was poorly-tuned. Allow me to explain:

First there's phase 1, which is alright. If you have good damage, you're allowed to skip the last tank buster. This is the only easy phase.

Then phase 2 comes. You mess up tethers, you wipe the party. Fail to do enough damage? Wipe.

Then comes the Ascian phase. Tethers, tank swaps, DPS checks, a bunch of healing. Either tank dies? It's over.

THEN there's Mr. Big Ascian. Fairly easy compared to what came before, but you can still fuck this up if you aren't careful.

THEEEN there's fight against final form Ascian. A bunch of simple mechanics, but still there's a possibility of fucking up and going back to the start.

AND FINALLY, AFTER YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT, you get the final phase of the fight. And you still can't kill him fast enough before the last enrage spell starts casting? Like really, I had to do it all 4 times to get my axe, with different parties, and not a single one was able to kill him before that. That's not exactly what I call lenient. Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

This isn't an ordinary trial. But the game treats Ruby Weapon (Extreme) as if it's on a similar level. It's not. Ruby Weapon is a joke compared to Hades, even if you DID have to redo phase 1 upon death.

If you were seeing any of hades phases enrage after maybe week one your group's dps was just hilariously bad. None of his checks were particularly tight, and once you got his mechanics down, they were also a joke. None of his mechanics were even particularly new either. Attacking the right aspected adds, getting hit with the appropriate elemental attacks, doom, reverse-doom, knockbacks, stacks, and exaflares? All seen in previous fights, whether they were extremes, savages, or even normal modes.

[BluexBird]

If you were seeing any of hades phases enrage after maybe week one your group's dps was just hilariously bad. None of his checks were particularly tight, and once you got his mechanics down, they were also a joke. None of his mechanics were even particularly new either. Attacking the right aspected adds, getting hit with the appropriate elemental attacks, doom, reverse-doom, knockbacks, stacks, and exaflares? All seen in previous fights, whether they were extremes, savages, or even normal modes.

Haha it was even worse! I started playing again 3 weeks before the last patch came out. And it was still a huge struggle to get my weapon. I think I had an easier time farming Titan than I did Hades, even though I had to do it 8 times because the game hates me. If you say the DPS check wasn't so bad, then I'm honestly confused with how none of the farm parties I joined couldn't kill it until just before the enrage cast ended.

Also, it doesn't matter if the mechanics become easy once you practice. When you're up joining parties in PF, you never know the type of players you're gonna get. Mistakes happen, and they're extra frustrating considering you have to redo the whole fight.

[Seraphor]

They could always just not release the weapon in shops at all until the next part of the patch, 6-7 weeks later, and do away with the whole 7 tokens thing.
But then make the weapon a random drop just from the last savage fight.
Would that make you happier?

[LaylaTsarra]

Personally I have more of a problem with the 1000 tomes needed when trying to gear as well as get a weapon. The 7 tokens take time but I would at least like to see a nerf to the cost of the weapon. Hard to gear multiple roles having to give up more that two weeks of tomes for it in addition to the tokens.

[Vidu]

Haha it was even worse! I started playing again 3 weeks before the last patch came out. And it was still a huge struggle to get my weapon. I think I had an easier time farming Titan than I did Hades, even though I had to do it 8 times because the game hates me. If you say the DPS check wasn't so bad, then I'm honestly confused with how none of the farm parties I joined couldn't kill it until just before the enrage cast ended.

Also, it doesn't matter if the mechanics become easy once you practice. When you're up joining parties in PF, you never know the type of players you're gonna get. Mistakes happen, and they're extra frustrating considering you have to redo the whole fight.

My guess here would be that part of your struggle is because you came back so "late": Most of the skilled and well geared people were already done with Hades when you returned and started farming him - this is why its important that they keep content relevant through artificial means like time-gates and the like. Because if they dont everyone who doesnt get their clears done within the first 3-4 weeks after release struggles with finding parties that are able to clear/farm the content or finding parties at all (til waaaay later when everyone outgears the fight by miles).

When I first started farming Hades after release the dps-checks were something you didnt really notice - wipes only happend when tanks missed their meteors. During the last weeks before the new patch I was very glad that I had farmed my 99 tokens already, because the party-quality went down quite a bit - and thats no surprise: E4 was farmable at this point and everyone able to beat that went there for extra weapons. Which left the less... skilled and geared people in Hades parties - I had the pleasure of seeing dps with Titania weapons who must have missed the whole crafted and deepshadow options or thought that Hades would offer them an easy upgrade.
And thats not the first time I've experienced something like this - I've basically made a rule for myself to either farm a primal straight away OR wait 1-2 years til its so easy that it doesnt even matter anymore that your party memembers dont know how to press more than two buttons.
Right now - or right before the patch - we were in an unfortunate spot for Hades.

[Rilifane]

People keep saying it's seven weeks work when all you have to do is beat E8 normal each week. Which is really not asking for much. The tomes are capped by doing expert roulette with bonus a couple of times per week. Your choice wether to log in several days a week or farm it in one go by spamming experts, though the latter is less time efficient.

Crafted 480 exists and even has BiS stats for some classes.
Ruby Ex weapon exists and has BiS stats for almost every class, which makes it almost on-par with non-augmented Crystarium. The enrage timer is lenient as heck and it's really easy to recover from deaths. I think on my first clears we had 6 or 7 deaths in P1 alone and still didn't see the enrage cast. You can wipe your way through and can comfortably continue at P2.
Relic weapon will also come.

Augmented Crystarium weapons aside, there are enough ways to progress outside savage. Augmented Crystarium takes a bit of patience but crafted and Ruby weapon can be acquired within a day.

Right now is still a pretty good time for hitting PF since many more skilled players continue to farm Ruby Ex for 2nd classes. Either because they want flexibility for their static/ PF or because they want to get it out of the way asap. I've been regularily joining farm parties the past week and they were generally fine. A few wipes, yes, but nothing too bad and definitely not parties where it's clear that they probably won't even get ONE kill.
But wait too long and it will be the same when Savage unlocked last tier and you had the most ridiculous "farm parties" full of people who got carried during one clear and thought they're up for quick farm, escpecially for E4.

I'm good with dragging progression out for a bit. It's not like you're getting nothing for seven weeks. You have plenty of other slots you can upgrade.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I don't see any problem with it taking 7 weeks (which eventually gets reduced to 4). It's something to work towards if you aren't doing savage and I like having long term goals that don't require me to log in every day for hours on end to grind away at one thing or another that never ends. That's what WoW is for. :P

Me personally though, I decided to craft myself a 480 HQ weapon for WHM (I might do so for other jobs as well if I feel the need), and will sit on my weekly blades until the weapon cost gets reduced to 4, that way I will have enough for more than one weapon. And at that point the option to upgrade them with coins should be available as well. A 480 HQ Weapon can hold me over until then, and I'll jump to a 500 when the cost drops to 4 and I can do the upgrade. I'll also likely be able to upgrade that 480 crafted cane to a 490 at that time and hand it off to my WHM combat retainer.

[linay]

Not a seven weeks time investment.

It's not a seven-week time investment. It's 7 weekly normal raid clear plus however long it takes you to earn 1000 of the capped tomestone. You don't spend the whole time working on the weapon. There are other slots you can upgrade in the meantime if you're not running savage or extreme, so you still have character progression in terms of gear during that seven weeks.

Also, you can still make good use of the previous tier's weapon. So in 5.4, you can make good use of the seven weeks before you upgrade using this tier's weapon. That's around 7 months of use out of the weapon.