OHKOs is Lazy Boss Design

[ReynTime]

Avoidable OHKOs is not bad design. Completely rng OHKOs is.
That said it did get kind of dull that every fight resorts to such binary effects and how anti bad status ailment/performance debuff XIV became for a jrpg.

[Cheremia]

I'm probably in the minority here but I don't like how SE slapped a Damage Down on everything to make sure everyone plays the mechanic the exact way they want them to and they will like it.
Mechanics in Savage still hit hard enough to pose a serious threat if not coordinated with the healers beforehand or if selfmit/ shield isn't on point. I've never saw anyone just eating the stack willy-nilly on balls on e6s, it was always "Are we playing uptime balls?" because there was an aoe right afterwards and unless you were near BiS, you absolutely needed mit to even survive the hit.
It took away some options for coordinated settings. In uncoordinated settings, people usually still just died if they just ate it so no real difference.

Eating several stacks and getting away with it while only punishing the healer is something that's true for casual content and I don't always agree with it there but I wish they would've left Savage alone and left the playerbase some freedom to come up with creative strats that reward coordination instead of enforcing the single solution to a mechanic they want players to use.

Yeah, you‘re right that they shouldn‘t be used if you do a mechanic correct, but maybe not the 100% intended way.

I brought up hades ex, i did that one on content and there, eating the vuln up wasn‘t the worst to happen. A tank with a big shield straight up didn‘t get it so they could easy survive the tb after and that one pizza mechanic, too. Was more chill to not have people run around and eat even more vuln ups.

Vuln ups are healer punishment more than dps, but replacing all of them with damage down DOES suck, too, i can see why.

My wish was rather that some normal content could do with damage downs for the one that messes up.
Won‘t make SOME people play better, but most would avoid just straight up ignoring mechanics if they got punished and not the healer.

And i meant when i said that all party damage down for ONE person is messed up and shouldn‘t be a thing.

It depends on how and why, sometimes the „healer punishment“ is the better way and i‘m also gulity to eating vuln ups in some fights as whm.

[Voltyblast]

I think the issue isn't that they are lazy, is that they're a response for the lack of constant flow of damage that it's supposed to keep the players up and reacting, but instead they use OHKO so that it's either you die or you don't, no in betweens...because there's no inbetweens most of the times (random aoe damage barely matters since you can top up with 2-3 buttons)

I think the only way to make it work would be to have more constant damage going that doesn't kill the group, but consistently puts the healers and the DPS on their toes (invuln and other stacks aren't what I mean), so that OHKO should be used ONLY if they screw up royally.

Same thing with tankbusters really, they're kind of a OHKO because they're meant to "kill you" if you're not ready with your shields (although when I raided they didn't exist: paladins had rampart, and warriors had foresight), but all you got to do is push a button and boom, 10-20-30% less damage + shields. Bosses should do more damage to begin with, and not just make me wait for pressing a button, and tanks should be...well, tanks, with better defensive skills other than a few passive defensive CDs...

But i'm sure everyone is fine with OHKO and how the raiding scene works since it has been like this for a decade now, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I haven't raided past coil and only did some extreme trials so my knowledge is indeed limited and who knows maybe I'm so wrong that I should be banished, but in other games OHKO wasn't always used in most fights. It was definitely an exception and sometimes only done when you literally screwed up the boss.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

What an amazing response from the people who brought you "GIT GUD" and "JUST UNINSTALL".

Git Good.
Yes

Just Uninstall
No, nobody said that, nobody wants that. This isnt a Call of Duty lobby or a Moba. We actually like and want people to play our game

[SillyCrow]

Do you remember OHKO and that you couldn't even get back in the fight? Because I remember.

[Deceptus]

Ohko isn't bad. It punishes you for messing up.

The problem with many of the games mechanics is they don't punish you for messing up they punish the healer instead..

This is 100% the problem. OHKO does nothing but punish the healer for someone else's mess up. It's what has perpetuated the toxic "Healer, adjust" mentality.

Vulnerable stacks are a prime example here. I often think what they should do is replace those with a debuff that slashes your damage instead. (Apparently they do in some cases) 1 stack. 10% less dps. 2 stacks 20% less dps. 3 stacks 30% less dps...

And this is the solution. Didn't make enrage due to too many Damage downs? DPS need to play better.

[Liam_Harper]

It's a shame OP trolls so much because in part it actually is lazy design.

One-shots create a false illusion of difficulty, but in reality in most content you just throw infinite rezzes at it and keep scraping bodies off the floor until you win. Some mechanics are even designed to bait you into getting killed until you figure out the trick so it felt hard. But you still usually muddle through first try. The problem with this design is once everyone knows the trick, the fights become a snoozefest and the healers are put to sleep.

I'd like to see more mechanics that just deal a ton of damage and test the healers rather than either being 0 damage or swift-raise and go on your way. I don't see it as "healer punishment", I see it as a chance to actually play my role and be rewarded if I excel at it. I'm also in the minority that doesn't mind vuln at all too. I can still keep that player alive right up until they do get one-shot and I like that it allows for some risk-reward uptime strats instead of following the same formula. If vuln is supposed to be a healer punishment, damage down is an everyone punishment because one players dps is a part of the group dps.

[ty_taurus]

This is 100% the problem. OHKO does nothing but punish the healer for someone else's mess up. It's what has perpetuated the toxic "Healer, adjust" mentality.




And this is the solution. Didn't make enrage due to too many Damage downs? DPS need to play better.

I mean taking damage at all technically also punishes healers, but taking nonlethal damage does allow healers to have more to heal which is something we generally want, and also allows them to potentially undo mistakes which can feel really satisfying. Even if you have to lose a GCD over it, you preventing someone from otherwise being KOed feels really satisfying. If failing certain mechanics would not outright kill you but deal some damage and apply a nasty DoT that healers can heal through, negate, or remove in some fashion, you give them more power to control the fight. Or like you take a lot of damage and get a doom that a healer can remove by bringing you up to full. OHKOs can still exist in some fashion, but when most mechanics in harder fights just kill you, there's no real room for healers to do anything other than address unavoidable damage, which is ultimately limited and predictable.

On a side note, preventing or undoing mistakes is also what makes Rescue feel really satisfying when done correctly, but the main issue with it in Savage is Rescue almost never applies to situations where players mess up. I think once during P2S we had a DPS who wouldn't leave the party during Predatory Avarice when marked with the AoE debuff, and I caught on quickly enough to run out, rescue them away, and Icarus back into the party. Felt amazing, but really difficult to pull off.

[Lunalepsy]

I will never understand Squeenix and their obsession with throwing an endless barrage of OHKOs at people during boss fights. It's inelegant, exasperating and frankly quite lazy. Can you hire someone to make a boss fight that isn't just endlessly dodging a parade of attacks that throw you off the arena?

I don't recall buying this game so I could play Soul Calibur.

My thoughts exactly. It measures reflexes, but it doesn't measure your skill or ability to play your class properly. Mashing 3-4 buttons is NOT class mastery. Then again, people love mechanics.

[Rilifane]

I think some OHKO mechanics are fine if used sparringly but I'm not a fan of them in general either.
They are binary, they leave no options, no room for reaction, nothing. If you're supposed to spread but two markers stack, them getting blown up is fine for me. Same as aiming a knockback you can't immune poorly and getting punted into something lethal or mistiming your immunity and sail over the edge.

But healers desperately need some form of skill expression and following a cooking recipe of "counter raidwide with skill x every 2min" because the rest can't be healed isn't it. I want something that rewards fast reaction and good thinking not being treated like I'm incapable of fulfilling my role outside of perfectly scripted, SE-approved unavoidable damage that occurs every 1min/ 2min to make it even easier for me to handle.
Thinking of everything that can make someone else do something differently than they planned to as "punishing, should be eliminated" seriously hurts encounter and class design. Vuln stacks limit the amount of mechanics you can eat, be it by accident or calculation for uptime/ mechanic cheese, but they also give the party more freedom on how to solve mechanics and healers an opportunity to show their skill. Any form of dots are also a good option. Or even a heavy and it's up to the healer to rescue the person into the safe zone for the next mechanic if they don't have some form of teleport/ dash.
Healers are already wrapped in enough cotton wool as it is, no need to remove even more things that may give them something to do.

I often encourage a party in Sigma to just ignore the adds, I'll heal through the stacks or a BLM to just stay in their Ley Lines instead of cancelling a Flare for a noodle aoe. I can heal through it easily and without loss, give me the option to do that. But the moment you add damage downs, especially in endgame content, or OHKOs you take that option away and instead leave me to only heal perfectly predictable, scripted and limited unavoidable damage or Swift Raise.