This Savage Raid Tier (Anabaseios) isn't Very Fun: My Experiences So Far

[KanchelleLoreux]

I spent 7 hours today in a dozen party finder groups for P9S and not a single one of them made it past the Levinstrike mechanic. They all silently disbanded after a few to a dozen wipes on said mechanic. In contrast, P5S took me about 4 hours in PF on the first week before I got a clear and P1S took 2 hours.

I don't think a mechanic like Levinstrike has a place in a first turn fight like P9S (even the infamous devour from P5S had a higher allowance of deaths before a wipe). I never had a problem doing the mechanic, but the odds are someone else in your party of 8 will and a single failure will result in a wipe. It's not a mechanic that people can really progress on or learn before it just explodes and goes to a black screen and the normal mode fight doesn't even have a version of the mechanic with training wheels to try and teach people. I think it's going to have an extremely negative effect on people newish to the game who want to try savage for the first time and have a detrimental impact on the amount of people playing the game and willing to do savage in the future.

Besides Levinstrike mechanically it's extremely simple and boring. Dodge a cleave, proteans, partners, healer light party stacks, the same Behemoth meteor mechanic all the way back from ARR, yada yada yada. I almost feel like said mechanic was added to make a rather boring and uncomplex fight "more interesting".

I'm going to have to think long and hard whether or not this raid tier will even be worth the energy and if my time will be better suited doing other things instead.

But please, I'd love to hear everyone else's experience so far and opinions on the topic.

[GaiusDrakon]

I did blind prog and am loving it so far. This is the most fun first floor in a long, long time.

In contrast, P5S took me about 4 hours in PF on the first week before I got a clear and P1S took 2 hours.

This is an aberration that I'm glad they're finally correcting. One can only hope they don't revert to P1S/E1S (or god forbid O1S which is by far the most ridiculous first floor in this game's history) difficulty in 7.05 again. Sorry but Savage should be hard. In an ideal world, the first floor should take 4~5 hours for the average pentalegend static, maybe 10 for average raiders. Otherwise wtf are you going to do for the rest of the patch

I don't think a mechanic like Levinstrike has a place in a first turn fight like P9S.

That's only because they've dumbed down first floors so much people expect it to be as trivial as Extreme fights now.

It's not a mechanic that people can really progress on or learn before it just explodes and goes to a black screen

Lol? It's incredibly obvious ?_? I know people rely on shit like Death recap or streams to know what killed them but literally use your eyes and see what's the last attack you suffered and how much it killed you by and what status effects you had at that time. Unless you have literally never seen limit cut or divebomb markers this is not hard at all. There's an AoE that goes off the person with the divebomb, and once the boss kicks the orb, he jumps onto the next person in the limit cut sequence. And these apply magic vuln. That's literally all the information you need to resolve the mechanic.

I think it's going to have an extremely negative effect on people newish to the game who want to try savage for the first time and have a detrimental impact on the amount of people playing the game and willing to do savage in the future.

"Git gud" is stupid. That's not the problem. The problem is that people need to withstand failure. If the new players are going to quit because they can't get a clear after 7 hours then they should quit. Savage isn't cleared with skill, it's cleared with focus and patience. Skill only makes it faster. FWIW I would 100% prefer if people get filtered. Savage raids shouldn't be a place to give participation trophies out even if that's what people expect from it these days.

Anyways P10S is much better and P12S, from what I've heard, is not bad.

[Jeeqbit]

I spent 7 hours today in a dozen party finder groups for P9S and not a single one of them made it past the Levinstrike mechanic.

Not surprising, it's the worst limit cut in any savage I've ever seen since A11S, and we'd probably do A11S differently today anyway than what the strat was then. The ones in P6S and Cloud Deck are braindead compared to it. I don't know about Rubicante since arguably you can just do damage and skip it.

I wouldn't normally expect a limit cut in a first floor so SE is really upping it here.

Personally I'm content with the difficulty we have had for years, but you know, people are always asking for raids to be harder so here they go I guess. Just means more practice required than for a fight like P1S.

[KageTokage]

9S was tedious because everything before numbers is just...slow and boring.

10S is much more consistent in terms of how much brainwork you're having to do in any given moment.

[Oizen]

I've only been as far as P10 so far, and my over all feelings are mixed.

P9S is incredibly easy, a little too much so save for LevinStrike which serves as Devour all over again. Not really a fan of fights paced this way. But I understand the pf fustration.

P10S is a fight I feel like I should enjoy, its very unique, but some of the added mechanics, mainly web cutting and the tank buster launch knockback feel clunky. Like I can do them, but its not satisfying, and I'm seeing a lot of people struggle to cut the webs for what I assume is server ping issues. I'm sure once people get used to these it'll be better, but I dont know something about its a little unpolished feeling. Still generally positive feelings, and I like it when arenas aren't just rectangles or circles.

Cannot comment on 11 or 12 yet.

[Ath192]

I’m liking it. Both p9 and 10 so far.

[RyuDragnier]

My group is nearing mastery of Levinstrikes after 2 nights (we only do 2 hours a night), and it's pretty easily doable with the Oppo strat. The fight is also pretty fun IMO, and doesn't feel boring since it changes up enough of the mechanics to make you pay attention. The damage here in Week 1 is pretty intense, an unmitigated raidwide took me down by around 90% of my max HP. That's a level of surprise and terror I haven't felt in a while.

[Jeeqbit]

I had to suffer a lot of hardcore PFing to clear P9S. It's either rockbreaker prog, LC1 prog, rockbreaker2 prog and occasionally everything else. Things I can do in my sleep at this point.

PF is all over the place this tier. Some parties are T/H rotate, some of them are DPS rotate, some of them rotate CW, some of them rotate CCW, some of them tankswap differently, I've switched between JP/Oppo/Krile strat repeatedly, and switched between MT and OT repeatedly, and I just ignored the few parties doing NE/NW LC2 or DPS meteor first. Oh and there's different marker setups going around.

At least I got a necklace so I'm happy. In a static I'd not get loot for ages.

Beside the trap parties, it's a fun fight.

[FlorineC]

My problem with 9S is the same problem I had with 5S and 6S, and 7S to an extent. The entire fight is one mechanic and the rest is completely free. Can you do Devour? Cool, you kill it. Can you do Cachexia? Nice job, move on to the next fight. In 7, you had a fight where nothing happened for the first 8.5 minutes of the fight, and then they put the whole thing into the last 3 minutes. 9S is more of that design, and it just makes for really boring encounters. Thankfully, 10S deviates from this and feels much more like a steady progression of mechanics building on one another with no major wall mechanic. Haven't stepped into 11 or 12 yet, but I'm hoping they're more similar to 10 than to 5-7 and 9.

[TomsYoungerBro]

What is the rush to clear? There isn't an ultimate coming in 6.5, so we only have these fights to enjoy for 2 patches.