Quote Originally Posted by Gemina View Post
I agree, that would be arguing in bad faith; if any of this was my argument. You might want to reread this. You quite literally just told me that addons make things easier, how they do so, and then proceed to state that I'm claiming players are clearing savage and ultimate without practice. Not much else to say about that.
ok then, i apologize. yes those things make things easier. but then we're talking about a different kind of difficulty here. what differentiates QoL from gameplay difficulty?

if you analyze the sliding scale of difficulty in ffxiv encounters, youll find out what entails the intended difficulty vs just fighting bad design choices. you start having to memorize boss attack patterns, pay attention to cast bars, needing to execute rotations properly to meet dps checks, failing mechanics becomes more punishing (vuln up -> oneshot -> insta wipe), etc. there are many things that become harder as a design choice. however none of those are even remotely related to the woes that people who use these addons want to address (except i guess maybe the CD tracking one?? which again, people still can do using vanilla xiv with an excel spreadsheet. is it hypocritical to use excel to plan mitigation too?)

the game doesnt really ask you to pay attention to other people's buff timers. the game is already giving you a battle log that tells you pretty much why you die. the game already has a countdown and someone can make a macro that sends every second in chat. someone who wants a bigger challenge from the game, and thus doing ultimate content, can still without any contradiction on their part want to just not fight the game's ui, because the difficulty of encounters in ffxiv revolves around pattern recognition and execution of mechanics + rotations, not around looking at buffs or counting seconds mentally during a pre-pull countdown. theres nothing ironic in the slightest.