The Striking Tree (Extreme) is flawed

[Rongway]

While I won't go into detail on the mechanics here, I hope I am not alone when I say that the fight has way too much RNG parts to it.

There isn't that much RNG to it. One of the people targeted for Chaotic Strike is always the person farthest away from center, and it can be baited by a ranged DD so that you never lose both healers.

For one example, you can have the trance status effect (or whatever it is actually called I always forget) affect two players, and then before the lightning aoes can appear to save the players, a new phase can begin - thereby stopping the aoes appearing and causing the players to begin to approach Ramuh. This could, if enough time is given, be fixed by the next lightning aoes appearing, but even then players may not expect it, especially when new players may be doing the tactic of "go to the waymarker" to save tranced players.

I'm confused as to why this is an issue. If two people were hit by Chaotic Strike before the phase change, why aren't people already prepared to break them out at the next opportunity? Was the party not already preparing for a break out before the phase changed?

There are other examples of course, which add to the issues I have, but in general I hope it's clear I don't find this fight fun. If you guys think it's also flawed, or perhaps disagree and have reasons for me to think otherwise, please let me know.

I don't entirely disagree generally with this point per se. But to be more precise, I think (1) the fight is fine when running with a prepared and coordinated group but (2) the only times I ever get into this fight are in DR:Mentor and the best mentor tip for the situation is invariably, "You should use /partyfinder for EX primals even if you want to do them syncked. Extreme trials expect a certain amount of preparedness and coordination, and this fight in particular requires far more coordination than any other ARR primal except maybe GKMMXII EX," because a few unprepared people queued for an extreme primal without knowing what they were signing up for.

It's not "a bad fight full stop". It's a bad fight for people who don't understand what extreme trials are who think that they can DF them because they're seven year old content. That kind of thinking works for Garuda and Shiva, but that's more because they're spoiled by how easy Garuda and Shiva are due to gear scaling, not punished by how difficult Ramuh is.