Delubrum Reginae is the best raid you've designed... BUT...

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

God, so much snark.

I'm glad you love a thing. It is not above critique. Get over it.

.....Its Snark to point out you have to pick up on how mechanics work especially on 1st Time Blind Runs?
-Sigh- Man....I love where the world is heading...

Calm down, nobody is taking away your right or said you cant have an opinion or that its perfect and you can't Critique it.
All I said was I like to be surprised and to keep things interesting. Is that such a Hot Take? .

[Tulzscha]

True, it's very punishing but very fun once you get the hang of it. The combination of less-than-obvious mechanics with instant death upon failing a couple of them made it incredibly frustrating but after learning them the raid is super fun mechanically.

I've mostly been healing DR and with a good group there's almost no healing required outside of the ocassional raid-wide aoe, but if you get a new person you're just spamming rez. It's not very well designed for healers. I'm guessing this is due to the uneven raid groups, you may not get a healer so they designed the fights with that in mind but I've also had a group with 5 healers and it was so boring.

I also really don't like the lost action system at all (mostly obtaining them). I'd much rather just have a raid designed around having a balanced group and being able to use all my tools. If there are extra actions I'd rather they be more readily available, having to unlock them is fine but having to nolife Bozja to have a random chance at getting any particular action, not fun. Unless you like Bozja which I do not.

The arrow maze is arguably one of the most telegraphed mechanics in that entire instance compared to other mechanics you could have mentioned.

The path tracing happens extremely fast and if you're waiting for the last one you could miss it. What isn't explained well is that the arrows take every available turn.

A lot of the mechanics I think would benefit greatly from having a group talking things over and relating what they see. For a pug, meh.

[Rufalus]

I don't think this example is unfair but I've always felt that way about various other fights. This kind of mmo basically adds difficulty by purposefully making it unclear what you are supposed to do. If you always understand where you are supposed to stand, then it's braindead easy, just go there and keep mashing that attack rotation. Most raiders have at least some moments of dying mysteriously in new content and learning nothing from the wipe. This game has good world building and interfaces but I would never want them to repeat xiv style gameplay in future mmos.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Eventually Delubrum is going to need a nerf anyway, though. Maybe not to damage or mechanics but certainly to boss health. The Queen especially is balanced around the idea that the raid is using damage essences but people rarely use damage essences already and will do so less and less the more outdated the content is.

The queen? Not just her. Every raids in said content are basically balanced around the assumption of people utilizing their holster content to some degree (because full extent isn’t something that entire playerbase do & I’m pretty sure dev recognize this trait of us). Pages of informations are even slapped directly to us right before we start dwelving further into Bozjan Southern Front. It’s like ”Hey, use these to make your lives easier.”

Funnily enough no matter how much nerfs they’re going to implement, there will be always that funny individual who’s going to out-idiot the content—or should I say: outsmart by justifying lazy plays.

We already have 16m DRn runs. What, are we going to see a 10m DRn runs in future if they nerf more?

[Rinhi]

I think the issue is that you're right, it's not really for casual players. This seems like it had potential to be that strong midcore content that many were asking for, so it could be more punishing.

and that's the great part about DRN! I absolutely love how punishing it is

[StriderShinryu]

I also really like DR but it justfeels overly long, not necessarily in length but moreso in content. It feels that there's maybe one too many bosses and the chess piece fight feels like it's less a boss and more just a drawn out tutorial for when you see the pieces later. It could/should have been condensed. Toss the fire breath boss and maybe just incorporate the chess pieces somewhere else, either as a quick sub phase before queen or even as a CE/Skirmish in Bozja.

[TaleraRistain]

and that's the great part about DRN! I absolutely love how punishing it is

Honestly it sounds really fun and if it was just a random instance or at least I didn't have to go through all the rest of the Bozja stuff for it, I'd poke my head in. I would get frustrated as hell I'm sure and there would be much cursing at my monitor, but I enjoy the emotional payoff you get when you finally get that sort of thing down.

I can definitely see how that would be frustrating and very not fun for the casual playerbase, though, and think SE did something really stupid making it required for the relic and thus luring people into it who it's not designed for. If they hadn't done that, they could have, I dunno, "preserved" this content for the midcore mentality and tweaked things to fit. Some might see that as a waste of development time, but I think the midcore audience, while not being as large as the more casual playerbase, it still large enough to make it worth it.

[Fable_Frost]

just maybe keep in mind moving forward that this isn't what people are used to seeing in your product.

Sounds good to me.

[CKNovel]

I guess it's time to remove the extra wheels.

DR (normal) is one of the most telegraphed content.
You may not like it but it's a git gud situation. Have you ever took the time to be used to read the cast or read your debuff?
Most bosses casts obvious things like "Close attack" or "Side attack".

Pyretic is one iconic example.

It's a debuff that exists for years, clearly reads "If you move or attack you will be damage" yet many die to it.

[KageTokage]

I feel like the bulk of the mechanics in DR were fairly self-explanatory.

IE, at Trinity Seeker, the presence of barricades in the arena immediately suggested to me that they were going to be needed to block something, and "roomwide AoE with really long cast time" seemed like the most likely candidate.

The temperature mechanic at Trinity Avowed is also hinted at by Mikoto who says you should try to normalize your temperature, and obviously getting hit by ice/fire when you're already cold/hot isn't going to solve that issue.