No Spoilers: Thoughts on the newest encounters?

[Renathras]

Name is the thread.

Trial (Normal):

Seemed pretty fun. One thing I DIDN'T like about Barb was that there was so much movement it made it difficult to do any healing that WASN'T oGCDs. As some of you know, I think GCD healing should at least be allowed (especially if the goal is to make it where non-high end Healers can participate and in normal content), and I like that this Trial was more set up for that. Despite that, there's still some pretty frequent damage, and the mechanics overall felt fun. Haven't tried the Extreme yet, but I can already see it being somewhat interesting. There were a few different takes on mechanics like the dual-tank buster being a variation of Knuckledrum with several hits that ramp up to the big one on the end.

Trial (Extreme):

Haven't done it yet, no comment at this time.

P9N:

Not bad, nothing super amazing, and when we got to the end of my clear it seemed to kinda just be standing around not doing much, but as an intro fight of the tier, this is probably not terrible. Various bits of unavoidable damage, AOE bleed, some stacks and spreads, and the mechanics were mostly not too difficult to resolve but saw people getting clipped needing healing to save.

P10N:

God, this fight in Savage is probably going to be terrifying. Lots going on, interesting arena shape that is played with a bit in Normal and probably more in Savage, and several periods of somewhat hefty damage. Day one and all that, but overall this fight was wild and chaotic and fun to work through and heal. (Aside: I wonder if BLU will someday learn the spell...well...)

P11N:

NO SPOILERS but I DID NOT see this one coming. Was neat to see some homage abilities returning, and there were A LOT of abilities going on. Figured out some of his patterns fairly quickly, but there was still a lot of damage and healing in this one, even when people were properly dodging mechanics. I could see them going all kinds of directions in the Savage version that might be interesting.

P12N:

Good god, this fight. And that health bar. Sure, lots of deaths, but at one point I looked up and was like "STILL this much health?!". This is a Normal and there's so much going on in this fight with lots of abilities overlapping and, even when mechanics are performed correctly, a lot of party healing needed. The Savage for this one is going to be interesting, and that's ignoring the inevitable P2.

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Anyway, I found all the fights fun and am looking forward to trying the Extreme out later this week. But I know other people have different tastes, so wondering what you all thought so far.

[ty_taurus]

I have nothing against this kind of topic, but this seems more like a general discussion thread, no?

In any case, I'm excited to jump into Savage next week. Based on the normals alone, I'd say the order I like them in is 10 > 12 > 11 > 9. 11 and 9 mechanically didn't feel that special to me, but Savage may throw a wrench into that.

[Renathras]

Well, I meant more from a Healer perspective, but...

I felt like there was a good bit of outgoing damage, and enough that it needs to be respected to prevent wipes. A Savage/Ultimate Static running it together using all their mits may be over it in a week, but I feel like doing these in DF for the next month or three is going to be entertaining.

I think 11's impact was more narrative, but agree with that general ordering. 10 is going to be the one people are going to have to be dragged through the most for the next few days/weeks. Well, and 12, but 12 is a bit different.

[ForsakenRoe]

Ask again when we're in BIS/have tome gear upgrades, things do damage now but that will likely change as we get higher item level

[WaxSw]

I think its important to note that this impressions can change, after all I cleared with PUGs and we were all blind which means that the damage intake was much higher than the usual while the mitigation was lower:

P9: It's an interesting fight for a first floor, not too complicated or hard to understand but not trivial like P1 was on release. Somehow it seems that spot healing will be more important than the usual if they keep the mechanics where only 3 people have to take damage but it makes me wonder then how much tank's heals will overlap with healer's then as they can spot heal too at no efficiency loss, only time will tell in the end. I hope in the savage version they don't abuse the bleed aoes because those quickly devolve into mitigation checks with little healer agency.

P10: I really like that they do interesting things with the arena so kudos to SE for not letting the P7s backlash stop them. As a fight is interesting how much wipe potential it has but its mostly due to people not understanding the mechanics so I feel that as time goes on this will become a pretty simple fight. The healing is not hard by any means as it gave more than enough time to recover from damage but the slam heal/mit check was a nice surprise. Once again I hope it doesn't devolve into another mit check only fight in savage.

P11: The easiest of the tier imo? It's weird but it felt like it lacked identity and it was just a mix between Fatebreaker and Zodiark. It's imo very easy to heal as most of the damage of the fight is completely avoidable by all the party members and I wonder what they'll add in Savage to increase its challenge because there is a lot of room to grow with stuff like the sigils.

P12: A bit harder than 11. Most of the damage of this fight is avoidable so there was barely any challenge there. I liked its mechanics and how the add phase can be optimized but it felt incomplete as a truly door boss and not the end of the tier. This is probably the fight that makes me wonder the most how they'll do the savage version because mechanics like the wing cleaves and superchain theory have a lot of potential.

Edit: Now that I've done a couple of runs of the EX imo is one of the good ones, its mechanics are varied and fast and are interesting to solve while not being something excessively complicated for an EX. I would put it behind barbariccia because its, once again, a mit focused fight, as the raidwides and attacks can hit hard but give way more than enough time to heal and the fight itself drags on a little bit past the 8 minute mark.

[Silver-Strider]

I still need to try the extreme but overall I'm indifferent to the encounters. There's more to heal but I don't really get much excitement out of it really because my issue with Healers is the lack of any interaction with my toolkit as a whole.
Hitting Regen/Cure2/etc doesn't proc any ability, build any resource/gauge or does anything that makes me want to interact with it more than any other skill on my Hotbar.

The thing about something like Cleric Stance was that it affected your toolkit. Having Cleric Stance on or off essentially makes you either DPS more effectively or Heal more effectively. A passive interaction for the most part but at least it impacts your character when utilized. As awful as SB Lilies/Confessions were, they at least tried to tie your toolkit together. Obviously it wasn't a perfect system but an attempt was at least made. Due to the 1st stun of Holy lasting 4s, Aero 3 being able to squeeze right after felt more impactful than just hitting Holy nonstop since I couldn't refresh the stun while they're currently stunned and throwing out Aero 2 on a single target wasn't worth doing over another Holy so Aero 3 filled that 4 second void with something that actually mattered. Then, there was just the fact you were juggling DoTs as a pseudo-rotation on top that was just the icing on the cake.

[Osmond]

Hmm, with the changes they made. I’m trying to remember if I even asked for a bigger bubble from sacred soil, but I love it. The yalm increase across the board, WHM…..geebus, that has to be great for mains. I expect savage to be very heal intensive and a lot more movement. Not going to be fun on the P12S, I can tell you that. Tried the extreme, ah the soil is so good, yet I see that they have to make the mechanics more difficult if making the jobs easier…

[AmiableApkallu]

P9N - P12N: I've gone in on AST. I've cleared P9N once, P10N once, P11N three times (one wipe), and P12N twice (one wipe).

Aside from one specific mechanic in P10N, I'd say the healing required was all garden-variety "do the healers have a pulse? do they have cooldowns and/or MP? then all is fine." AST's kit felt like overkill even for Day 1 shenanigans, and I can already see that better familiarity with mechanics and better gear will allow healers to focus on Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis spam.

The wipes are instructive:

- The P12N wipe was caused by the main tank aiming the boss poorly, forcing the entire party to take otherwise-avoidable back-to-back cleaves, and there simply wasn't enough shields and mits up to save people, even at full health. The second pull cleared with no memorable issues.

- The P11N wipe was caused by… well, that snowball that happens when DPS and a healer die just a bit too frequently, thus necessitating that the last standing healer – me, in this case – be on top of their triage game. I'm not sure I was, in no small part due to the fact that I go so long between needing to do that sort of triage that I basically never maintain the skill to do it. The second pull cleared with no memorable issues.

Embarrassingly, I mistook a cleansable doom for a heal-to-full doom. Won't happen again.

[Sebazy]

The only thing of note for me was that P11N felt like Poundland Fatebreaker.

[Semirhage]

The only thing of note for me was that P11N felt like Poundland Fatebreaker.

Yeah I narrowed my eyes on the middle strip with the wider explosion, then when the + pattern with the clones and different elements showed up I was like "Thanjit, is that you?"