Crystal Tower has to go

[DiaDeem]

What it needs is a Praetorium-level rework.

[ICountFrom0]

The problem is NOT crystal tower.

The problem is that you are sick of it because every time you do the roulette, that's where you go.

The solution is... pretty horrific. Takes multiple steps.

1. When you complete an expansion automatically unlock everything that is in a roulette up to that level (do not remove the quests).
2. Roulettes need to automatically have an ilvl requirement equal to the highest ilvl that is unlocked.
3. Punishment for leaving has to be for everybody who leaves in the first 5 minutes, not just the first person who leaves.
4. Reward for Alliance roulette will have to double.


Remove any of those steps and you'll just be inviting new abuses.

(they COULD remove some of the nerfs they did to make the tower easier, so you'd actually have to do mechanics in the fights, but remember when the tower was first made required at level 50 and we had all the undergeared sprouts who made it hard to pass.... that just trades one problem for another)

[Renalt]

All I know is if I get the CT set...I just take the penalty. I'll just be a degenerate in Uldah as the penalty ticks down because that is a way better use of my time than doing CT yet again.

Not like my party will miss me. They could probably do it just fine if half the alliance left.

[Silvarer]

I mean, most of the bosses do have mechanics. They just melt so fast now that you'll never see them unless the group is sandbagging. Glasya Labolis is especially bad; I haven't seen a group actually have to face the platform mechanic since 3.1.

I always wondered why those platforms were there and what they were supposed to do, lol.

[Themarvin]

The Crystal tower is fine, what that need to be done is that people will be synched to the max ilevel they can be for the tier, no matter if they go in without clothes on.

That would solve most of the problems, it will still pop in more frequently than others, but less if so.

Reason, people exploit and put lower tier gear so they can force to get the Crystal Tower series, if you are level 80 you would then be synched to the max level 80 ilevel when you use Alliance roulette, meaning, you would of course queu for all, but you can't pick which one you want to get by removal of gear and the likes, highest tier not needed to do such, due to you would need gear from all the level 90 Alliance raids when at max anyway and to queu in manually as it is.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Crystal Tower is great. It shields me from the misfortune of queueing into an Ivalice raid every other time I do the roulette.

If I dont get a CT raid, I pray its not Ivalice, Weeping City, or the Copied Factory.
Cant stand those Raids. Everything else Im good to go.

[Jeeqbit]

With the exception of World of Darkness (though that does fall flat on its face with the final boss. Did you know she has snake adds?), every boss in the CT raids are just bigger trash mobs

They have lots of mechanics. They are just being ignored or skipped because of being a higher than the item level it was designed for. The only reason you see mechanics in World of Darkness is because it was released in the final raid tier and we get synced to a final raid tier item level.

LOTA part 1 mechanics
LOTA part 2 mechanics
Syrcus Tower part 1 mechanics
Syrcus Tower part 2 mechanics

Thanatos has different parties get a buff to attack different enemies. It sends adds to kill the magic pots and the right party has to kill them and protect the party from the other adds. Meanwhile, the healers need to heal the magic pots and protect them. Behemoth plants meteor drops on people and then does an attack that requires you to hide behind them to survive, but the adds try to destroy the meteors and attack people so they need to be tanked or killed. It's pretty obvious how many mechanics the last boss has and although a lot of them can be ignored, we still have to do Ancient Flare and fight off the Magitek Claws that stun us. Most of this gets ignored because of item level really.

In Syrcus Tower, the first boss has lightning orbs that you take to the beams otherwise they explode and kill people. Ice orbs freeze people up, leaving behind a puddle that you can stand in to survive Ancient Flare. The flame orbs should be dragged to the people who are in ice to free them. There are lots of adds that spawn that can get overwhelming. Then there is a Daybreak cast that works like Ancient Flare in LOTA if all the lightning pillars are charged (this is about where most of us usually died minimum item level).

The next boss in Syrcus spawns adds that you can stand in so others can kill them. It does a big aoe attack. It spawns 3 adds that you drag to intercept the tethers so that you can use the jump pads. Then you can jump to the surrounding platform to survive and kill all the adds by jumping from platform to platform like in A12 and then you can return.

The next boss, Amon, casts aoes on themselves and others and some of them give debuffs so you can avoid them. It cleaves in front in case someone is trying to spend time with the tank. The first set of adds need to be killed or they give us lots of debuffs. You get some purple orb tethers that can make things mini which can be used on the adds to make them easy to kill. There is a bomb debuff on someone that you can use Esuna on so it doesn't hit everyone. Eventually it freezes people and turns some people into frogs. The frogs can break the ice, but you need at least one of the iced people to remain so you can hide behind them for Curtain Call. Some snakes will spawn and they need to die quick.

All of these can be quite rough fights or even wipe without being overgeared. Then we have the final one, which you still see the mechanics for but the aoes don't hurt as much or need as much healing and there isn't even close to a serious DPS check. The mechanics mostly kill sprouts that don't have good gear.

[JRat]

If it is so mind-numbingly easy I think its probably a case of :
"Oh no! Crystal tower is too easy at level 90 wth my ilvl 500+ gear!"
Possible solution: mayhaps if they set a maximum ilvl and you need to be below a certain ilvl to participate could add to the challenge.

or you have run it so many times you know the mechanics by heart and never fail them.
Possible solution: have bosses switch between 3-4 mechanics randomly each run might make it a bit more challenging to run.

IDK I've died countless times in these alliance raids because I didn't know the mechanics.

"Oh, group B needs to get swallowed by Cerberus!"
.. oh ok.. *dies horribly*
"Oh, you need to stand in one puddle of vomit to get shrunk then stand in the other puddle of vomit.."
.. Oh. Ok..

[Cach]

Adjust it so that it lasts the same time as the others. This will reduce the amount of ilvl cheese. But I think it's statistically more probable that you get CT regardless.

Also slightly retool encounters (personal experience, but its more common to wipe to Ancient Flare or look-at-me-and-get-Doom than say, post-nerf Thunder God)

We will run into the "oh the poor newbs will think is too hard", but, in my opinion: Nah.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Don't the devs want the MSQ and all its dungeons and trials to be soloable eventually? Doing a 24 player raid completely goes against that ideology. Time to gut the Crystal Tower and give it the Praetorium treatment.