EX difficulty: which fights are closer to MSQ? Which fights are closer to savage?

[Townowi]

The primary assumption is regular sync (max ilvl, echo active). With EX being an intermediate difficulty between MSQ/normal and savage, I found synced EX fights to be all over the place, with some being closer to normal difficulty and others being closer to savage.

Without further ado, here's my preliminary list:

Closer to MSQ:
Bismarck
Ruby Weapon
Lakshmi
Susano
Ravana
Thornmarch
Ultima Weapon
Garuda
Titania?
Innocence?

Closer to savage:
Thordan
Nidhogg
Sephirot
Suzaku
Ramuh?
Zurvan?
Seiryu?
Memoria?
Shiva unreal?

[Gemina]

I haven't don't all of these, and also don't prog savage. I do have quite a few savage clears, but none of them were done while the fight was relevant. Still hard as eff tho in comparison to anything else I've done. Doing fights on release will also prove to be much tighter and difficult opposed to when you are above it by 20 ilvs or so. What I will do is indicate which ones I feel are of lesser difficulty with a (-), and those I find of greater difficulty with a (+). No marker means I have not cleared the fight, or only did so unsynced.



Bismarck (-)
Ruby Weapon (+)
Lakshmi
Susano (-)
Ravana
Thornmarch (+).. I've attempted this fight synced a few times, and it has never gone well at all.
Ultima Weapon
Garuda
Titania? (-)
Innocence? (-) This fight is the closest to NM of all relevant EX fights I've completed. I would like to see more NM encounters around this level.
Thordan
Nidhogg (+)
Sephirot
Suzaku (+)
Ramuh?
Zurvan?
Seiryu? (-)
Memoria?
Shiva unreal? (-) despite the low clear rate. This fight honestly should not be as difficult to clear as it has been. Definitely a good fight to let players new to EX that the encounters don't mess around.

I am also going to add Tsukuyomi's Pain to this, which is definitely a (+).

[Crushnight]

Ok are we ranking them at the time of release(ToR) or as they are now synced? because they are vastly different.

ToR difficulty Hardest to Easiest:

-Thordan(it was designed to be between a2s and a3s)
-Titan
-Shinyru
-Sephirot
-Nidhogg
-Tsukiyomi
-5.3 trial (Quintuple cast is probably closest mechanic to a savage mechanic all expansion in Exs)
-Mog
-Ramuh
-Ifrit
-Suzaku(I did her day 1 and she was a broken mess of a fight only reason higher than Hades)
-Hades(he is long not that hard, comparatively to when we were new with extremes with ARR primals)
-Ravana
-Shiva EX
-Ruby Weapon (checkpoint really hurts its difficulty)
-Leviathan
-Garuda
-Sophia
-Susano
-Byakko
-Seiryu
-Titania
-Innocence
-Zurvan
-Shiva Unreal
-Lakshmi
-Bismarck

We got massive QoL as time went on such as standardizing markers for attacks this drastically altered later Ex's to be easier as attacks can be figured out faster.


Synced(max gear allowed with echo) hardest to easiest

-Sephirot
-Mog
-Titan
-Shinyru
-5.3 trial
-Tsukiyomi
-Hades
-Thordan(the gear difference is so wide it really trivializes mechanics)
-Nidhogg
-Sophia
-Seiryu
-Suzaku
-Ruby Weapon
-Shiva Unreal
-Titan
-Ifrit
-Ramuh
-Shiva EX
-Ravana
-Susano
-Byakko
-Zurvan
-Garuda
-Titania
-Innocence
-Lakshmi
-Bismarck (go figure the dps check primal gets stupid easy once max expansion gear )

This was harder to do and will fluctuate more due to still having 1 tier of gear yet to be released (530 stuff being new max which will effect all ShB EXs).

This is obviously my own interpretation as when they came out to me and how I tackled them(some with a static some random pug etc).

But the best trials for ShB to ease way into savage would be the 5.3 trial and Hades Ex and I suggest focusing on using those ones for people looking to step into savage because if you can clear these two you can handle what E5s-E7s can do, E8s is only an issue due to Light Rampant a mess of a mechanic with no 1 solid pf strat and is something no EX can prepare you to handle.

[Liam_Harper]

I've noticed every EX fight since Hades has been labeled "the easiest EX we've ever had" so I tend to take players claiming a fight is easy with a grain of salt. Difficulty is subjective for some people, for example my FC won't go near Memoria but many have e5-7s down and some people hate Suzaku while some found it easy. Shiva Unreal is labeled easy but has quite a tight enrage which allows less mistakes and requires players to know their rotation. Titania has a bit of personal responsibility. For me I'd say Innocence and Ruby have been the easiest, Ruby having a very lenient enrage and a checkpoint.

Hades could have been a bit stricter on enrage. It was long but not quite Shinryu level.

[Enla]

Thornmarch to this day still gives me nightmares. Give me day of release Shinryu or Thordan any day of the week.

On the flip side I really don't think Titan EX was actually all that hard so much as it had ungodly amounts of lag that would kill you if you weren't practically anticipating every attack. Now that the server lag has calmed down a bit it's much more manageable, but on release that fight was almost impossible with high ping. These days I'd consider it middle of the road and only due to the knock off mechanic.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Ramuh?

Naa. Ramuh is one of the easist fights there is. The only things you have to do is collect Orbs, kill the adds quickly and handle Fear/Tether.

[Fhaerron]

None?


EX is easier as is unreal.


Comparing 2.0 and 3.0 extremes well they where still just 'extreme'.

Everything has just been made much easier to do now, Alex was a ton harder then Omega and now Eden, not even talking about Bahamut that almost nobody could clear, reason why they made normal and savage.
And well it's something that almost any MMO suffers from, start enjoyable and hard and then just make it so easy you can do it blindfold.


Thordan EX is probably the one true hard one, it's a shame it's been nerfed to the ground. I'm hoping that once he comes in the Unreal (in a few years maybe) they'll take the version of him pre nerf.

[Mansion]

I'm only in EXT since 4.0, but I'm quite comfy saying nothing in 5.X compares to Shinryu Ext. It was long and punishing (I loved it). Perhaps Tsukuyomi was on the higher difficulty because there was a lot of "snowballing into hell" but everything else has been quite close in terms of difficulty. Higher than MSQ, and lower than savage. I heard Thordan and Sephirot were quite hard in their time though.

All EXT usually have one hard mechanic or phase and the rest is quite simple. The most recent one (5.3) has the 5-cast thing, but it's not a guaranteed wipe if someone fails, and its DPS check is VERY low (actually the add phase is harder in my opinion).
Until now in 5.X I'd say Hades was the hardest but only because it was very long and had a lot to remember, but nothing difficult to perform.

[Recon1o6]

I haven't done the new Ex just yet, but it does appear that the shb trials are much easier than previous ones given how many deaths and mechanical failures can be healed through. In addition, a lot of the shb fights, tanks can sponge several mechanic failures.
The addition of rez mage in sb made many runs recoverable thanks to fast revives.

While each Extreme's difficulty will be down to the individual, some have been nerfed severely as well.

Generally the top 5 hardest are as follows

Sephirot: This fight was a dance, where one wrong step ended with a vuln stack or death. Lots of accidental splash damage and one hit kills, surprisingly difficult dps check at launch and higher than average chance of accidentally killing other party members
Thordan: 10 phases! While he is nerfed now, the sheer volume of mechanics meant he was troublesome for many. Notable for being the first fight where pre planning was neccessary with clock positions and chains.
Titan: A very small arena by the final phase, huge health bar and many one shot kills with no revive because titan. Lagslide splitting into 5 lines meant that it was quite easy to accidentally get clipped, or failing that, getting clipped by weight of the land. Adds made things worse with puddles and their own lagslides
Tsuky: A poorly designed fight with a lot of running about and not very obvious tells in the final phase
Nidhogg: Has a lot of untelegraphed attacks, forced tankswap and two towers that confuses a lot of people

Honourable mentions are hades, shinryu and mog. Mog required sharing dps correctly and it required a lot fo coordination as a result but otherwise had low challenge. Hades had less difficulty and more jump rope with his final phase outright having a safe spot where only the tanks need to move. Shinryu quickly became team jump rope with more time spent looking at the enemy list than the map despite its heavy volume and variety of mechanics

Easiest are as follows

Innocence: Can be summed up as, tether to north, dont stand in the bad, laser the opposite ball. Pretty much nothing dangerous here. Joke dps requirement (11 deaths in one group and we still cleared when it was new)
Varis: It seemed to be designed as babies first ex as it too has low dps requirements (7 deaths and we still cleared my second clear) and most of the difficulty comes from reaction speed to In/out and avoiding being clipped by the Xs
Bismarck: Its just a big fat dps check with a surprise don't overlap the lightning and tank swap on the colours and remember to move off the whale when he shudders
Shiva/unreal: Shiva was the easiest ARR ex with most of the danger being the 18000 shared tb and the bow and a very wobbly enrage timer. The unreal version's difficulty has an even wobblier enrage, but healers have so many tools a lot of previous danger is recoverable
Ruby: Checkpoint, extremely low hp, low damage in the first phase and almost constant uptime in the second phase

[Nayout]

Currently EXs have almost twice as many mechanics as previous fights (except for Thordan) but they are much less punishing than previous fights where the bosses had few mechanics but were very punishing and many of the problems generated were by the servers(I remember dying many times in Sepiroth, all because of the servers)

With Hades it suffered a lot for being a long fight, many mechanics that many people could not memorize and resulted in wipes at the end of the fight. SoS seems to me a very savage-level combat but not because of the DPS check but because of the fact that the second phase consists of 4 totally random mechanics with different patterns to learn.

Also as much of the difficulty is subjective, battles like Suzaku were impossible for me to do because my head together with a very high ping did not give me to think fast enough.

Thordan
Shinryu
SoS
Hades
Sephirot
King mog
Suzaku
Varis

As an added bonus I would put Zurvan for the PF memes, or Ruby for the kills early in the fight.