Any HW 3.0-3.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[Jeeqbit]

We didn't have cross-world party finder until nearly the end of the expansion, so we had to be on an active "raid server" to find any parties in Party Finder.

We didn't have [Duty Complete], so we had to put "2 chests, no bonus" to scare away people who hadn't cleared. It looked toxic and put significant amounts of people off raiding. [Practice] parties just put "learning party".

Raid free companies that put statics together were more of a thing then, but now these aren't needed as much because we can form cross-world or cross-data center statics using discord servers and cross-world linkshells.

Paladins couldn't block magic, so many of their abilities were useless against the magic bosses we were facing. We had to face targets to block their attacks or auto-attack them. Parry was a stat that provided RNG mitigation, which means the mitigation would probably not be there when we needed it (against tank busters) and it didn't work against magic either. There were attacks on tanks that relied on parry to proc which made it even worse. We cried out for % damage reduction stat to replace it and we got it (Tenacity) in the next expansion, but people still don't care for the extra mitigation it provides.

Warriors' Raw Intuition would parry from the front and crit them from behind. To nullify crits, Awareness was always cross-classed and combined with Raw Intuition. But parry is parry which also only worked against physical attacks. A lot of the changes since have homogenized the mitigation because we would criticize it when they had significant differences like this.

We still had to reach an Accuracy cap so our attacks wouldn't miss. The developers were aware it added an extra annoying step to do raids, so it changed to Direct Hit in the next expansion.

We had to level other classes for basic abilities we wanted to cross-class, such as Provoke or Second Wind. We cried out for this to be changed somehow and we got Role Actions in the next expansion.

Everyone will tell you this, but Machinist and Bards had cast times causing a lot of Bards to quit the game. Nobody played them anymore, so the cast times were removed in the next expansion where the number of Bards exploded again.

The hardest Alliance Raid I ever remember was Weeping City, which everyone dubbed "Wiping City". The first boss had gazes, sticky web placement and DPS checks that became irrelevant the next time our item level increased. Although rare I did see wipes to it. The second boss was very difficult for people because they didn't kill adds or stood in their death aoes. They didn't prioritize the correct add in the transition phase (which is an easy dps check now) and they didn't understand the mechanics after it either. The healer check would wipe sometimes as well.

If they got through that, they had to fight Ozma. Ozma would frequently cause parties to abandon or people to leave in frustration (but their replacements allowed us to clear, so they were in fact the problem). Now, we skip to the transition phase too fast and if the second phase starts wiping, we kill it too quickly or survive easier because of item level.

I've seen people say that alliance raids after that were hard, but that hasn't been my experience. There were people who would abandon the first boss of Dun Scaith, but they were just impatient and the boss would usually be defeated. The last boss would wipe sometimes but it had a checkpoint. The last part with the orb mechanic would wipe parties but the boss began to kill itself as well, so we just had to survive. These mechanics are mostly intact today because we sync to the final tier item level.

The Steps of Faith and Chrysalis at the time were very hard instances and skill-gated a lot of people from doing further content. Typically at least one person would know what to do in the Steps of Faith and order people around to specific weapons but they often went off at the wrong time and there were a lot of abandons.

I did Steps of Faith shortly after Heavensward released and it was easy. While someone would try to order people to certain tasks, I (and most other people) saw this as irrelevant and just killed the boss. Killing the boss worked as long as the tank mitigated and picked up the adds and the DPS threw some aoes on them. Healers needed to be ontop of the healing, but if not, we could release and sprint back.

[Infindox]

The hardest Alliance Raid I ever remember was Weeping City, which everyone dubbed "Wiping City". The first boss had gazes, sticky web placement and DPS checks that became irrelevant the next time our item level increased. Although rare I did see wipes to it. The second boss was very difficult for people because they didn't kill adds or stood in their death aoes. They didn't prioritize the correct add in the transition phase (which is an easy dps check now) and they didn't understand the mechanics after it either. The healer check would wipe sometimes as well.

If they got through that, they had to fight Ozma. Ozma would frequently cause parties to abandon or people to leave in frustration (but their replacements allowed us to clear, so they were in fact the problem). Now, we skip to the transition phase too fast and if the second phase starts wiping, we kill it too quickly or survive easier because of item level.

I've seen people say that alliance raids after that were hard, but that hasn't been my experience. There were people who would abandon the first boss of Dun Scaith, but they were just impatient and the boss would usually be defeated. The last boss would wipe sometimes but it had a checkpoint. The last part with the orb mechanic would wipe parties but the boss began to kill itself as well, so we just had to survive. These mechanics are mostly intact today because we sync to the final tier item level.

Weeping City was so rough on content, and even when Dun Scaith was the "hot new thing" it was still frustrating. If you got to Calofisteri you already won, because she was way easier then the other stuff before.
(On that subject I remember thinking that Wind-Up Calofisteri was a myth because for awhile the minion was not a 100% drop every time and I never saw it even though I ran it quite a few times!)

[Rokke]

Bowmage sucked, Gunmage was fun. Stance dancing as a bard was miserable

Thordan (normal) and Void Ark were absurdly easy even at launch

Accuracy as a stat meant that you could miss attacks, different areas on boss had different accuracy caps

Idyllshire being built led to unintentional jump puzzles. Every update would have people scramble to find new weird places to craft. Upon completion I feel like of all the hubs we've gotten this was everyones favorite to afk at cause there would be LOADS of people who'd park along the front wall xD

Cross world stuff wasn't really a thing so communities felt more focused, I think part of the reason Greg and Bal ballooned was because they were touted as THE raid server and THE rp server respectively

[MikkoAkure]

I did Steps of Faith shortly after Heavensward released and it was easy. While someone would try to order people to certain tasks, I (and most other people) saw this as irrelevant and just killed the boss. Killing the boss worked as long as the tank mitigated and picked up the adds and the DPS threw some aoes on them. Healers needed to be ontop of the healing, but if not, we could release and sprint back.

Steps of Faith was actually nerfed in between it being released and Heavensward coming out.

They lowered the HP of everything in the whole instance so that DPS was much easier and you didn't have to pay as much attention to the mechanics. Before that, people would be at it for hours because the dragon would get to the end of the bridge if your DPS was bad and/or you didn't follow the mechanics.


Edit: I looked it up to make sure I wasn't making things up and it looked like they not only nerfed the HP of everything, but they lowered the damage dealt to players as well, all in patch 2.57. If you did it shortly after Heavensward, you got the defanged version so that the majority of players could actually play Heavensward. The players giving orders were probably grizzled veterans from patch 2.5 who did it when it was new.

[Enjuden]

Picking a job was miserable for me then. I went to Machinist because I wanted a gun job, then realized it didn't have dual pistols. Coped because I had the gadgets and liked those, but the job was terrible on launch and took two entire raid tiers for someone to figure it out and get buffed to where it was useable. I switched to monk because I enjoyed the job, then realized nobody ever wanted a monk, even in EX. So I went to nin and found something fun to play in that. Always had a pocket nin after if I wanted to change to something different and find something I like to play.

I still miss Heavensward Dark Arts Dark Knight unironically and hope they make a job for that niche of 'I must always have this button in mind to hit'. Which SAM filled until recently

[Jeeqbit]

Steps of Faith was actually nerfed in between it being released and Heavensward coming out.

I've been told that a lot, but this topic is about Heavensward onwards and they had a separate one for ARR. But it's true that there were a lot of grizzled veterans that continued to give orders as if they were needed.

My first time doing Steps of Faith, I waited 40 minutes in the queue. I was excited to do it and then progress to Heavensward. Once I got in, everyone abandoned immediately before I could say a word. I was in tears. I knew that if I queued again, they would abandon again. I didn't feel I could continue the MSQ, so the only alternative was to quit the game.

I felt there should be more of a penalty for abandoning like that because they chose the trial roulette and couldn't handle what they got. In all my time I've never done that. If I queue for a roulette, I commit, even if I don't like it.

I picked myself up and tried one more time. I waited another 40 minutes as a tank and everyone abandoned it again, but I had pre-written a message to ask them to stay because I needed it for the MSQ. The last 3 people admitted they were about to leave but decided to stay and help me and people slowly joined in progress. The people who joined in progress left immediately, so I had to keep asking them to stay as well until eventually we filled.

And then it was easy as I said previously. All those grizzled veterans were scared of an easy trial. It was stupid.

[Raoabolic]

Weeping City was so rough on content, and even when Dun Scaith was the "hot new thing" it was still frustrating. If you got to Calofisteri you already won, because she was way easier then the other stuff before.
(On that subject I remember thinking that Wind-Up Calofisteri was a myth because for awhile the minion was not a 100% drop every time and I never saw it even though I ran it quite a few times!)

*tank insists on spinning the final boss in wiping city for maximum uptime*
I mained a drg during HW so I just laughed. I did press the F key for all the ranged that was in the wrong side, doubly so when the boss is about to cleave 90% of the arena, lol.

[Jeeqbit]

*tank insists on spinning the final boss in wiping city for maximum uptime*
I mained a drg during HW so I just laughed. I did press the F key for all the ranged that was in the wrong side, doubly so when the boss is about to cleave 90% of the arena, lol.

The tanks turning the boss to prevent it cleaving the party made me sad, because I wanted to see all the people who didn't know the mechanic die. It was fun watching them die before tanks started doing that.

[MagiusNecros]

Classes had clear assigned roles and had Tank, DPS and Heal checks alongside actually having to do your job. Along with managing your enmity generation across all 3. Accuracy caps also needed to be met to hit the boss or risk a miss. Applying debuffs also mattered and classes had utilities that mattered whether it was damage buffs, debuffs on bosses, interrupts or mitigation/healing.

DPS were expected to do the most burst through their rotation, healers knowing when to heal when needed and then DPS and Tanks had to master enmity control, tank swaps and stance dancing to do the most damage while keeping hate.

For many HW players it was the time where the battle system hit it's peak before the beginning of the end that was Stormblood which really got bad in Shadowbringers to the point a caveman could do it in Endwalker.

We've entered the Dark Ages of Homogenization. Where we have Blue DPS, Green DPS, and Red DPS. Fun times ahead. And the best Healer isn't WHM/AST/SCH/SGE it's actually WAR followed by BLU who has a more engaging Healer kit then the actual healers.

Imma also edit in that be glad a lot of people never played Dark Knight in HW because it was amazing. If you hate how things are now you'd be more pissed if you were a HW veteran. Very fast and fluid teeter totter engaging reactive Tank playstyle.

Bring back Blood Price you sumbitches. I want to play HW DRK not discount Warrior.

[Jeeqbit]

We've entered the Dark Ages of Homogenization. Where we have Blue DPS, Green DPS, and Red DPS.

Imma also edit in that be glad a lot of people never played Dark Knight in HW because it was amazing.

This is really where people will be split, because everything was a mess in Heavensward and extremely buggy.

Cross-class skills that weren't useful, RNG mitigation, useless or unused or clunky abilities and even DRK had that nonsense built into it. A lot of the homogenization was born directly of people's criticism of how useless the differences made them. Foresight was based on your defense stats, Raw Intuition was always combined with Awareness to remove the consequences, its parries only worked against physical attacks, blocks didn't work against magic, and even now, there remain voices against Dark Mind as if they want that to be homogenized to be like Rampart too.

People miss those differences, yet when they are there, they criticize them endlessly which is what made them change.