this raid tier is the worst yet

[ForteNightshade]

I don't know in what World you live in that all the mechanics instant kill you, P9 has tons of damage down, P10 has quite some and so does P11, heck even P12 has more than enough damage downs plus this tier was way easier than last tier. The only bad thing to say about this is that P9 and P10 play pretty slow.

Kind of wondering this myself. The only outright body check in P9 is Levinstrike. Dual Elements will double up and kill someone but that's been standard for years now. They moved away from mechanics just omitting a dead player after Neo Exdeath because players were cheesing mechanics by intentionally saccing and using healer LB3. P10S is a bit more egregious with body checks, especially the enumeration stacks which are unnecessary for a second fight but even a tank yeeting themselves can be recovered if people are quick to adapt. Hallowing Hell is definitely a tank check though. If either one of them dies, it's game over. That being said, I actually don't mind it as this is supposed to be his "big" mechanic. You shouldn't be able to limp through it.

Moving on to P11 and almost nothing is a direct body check. You can survive Styx with dead players unless it's a healer. Which isn't new at the Savage level. Everything else will either only target alive players or kill someone who doesn't have a partner. Even the two main mechanics Dark and Light and Letter of the Law are be salvaged depending when someone messes up. The former doesn't kill you outright until the very end so long as you realize your mistake and separate before both of you take too much damage. You'll die to Emissary's Will but again, you can live the follow up Styx with enough mitigation/shields.

P12S has more partner checks than outright body checks except for Paradeigma 3. And that depends who dies. P12S is a bit more heavy on the body checks but it's also the last fight so I'm not all that bothered. Especially when the DPS check is extremely forgiving. In general, the DPS checks are nonexistent this tier. There needs to be difficulty coming from somewhere. If people don't want the few body checks we have, then be prepared for another P8S where your comp will actually matter. Savage shouldn't be zombie-able.

[AwesomeJr44]

I would move proto carbuncle down one tier and move p8s p1 up one tier but otherwise I think the list is pretty accurate

I would have probably moved P8 P1 up to A tier if Centaur/Dog first wasn't possible. The buff timings just made it a bit awkward as Manifold forces the party apart when the 2m window starts if Centaur/Dog is first. Any pull that had Snake 1 first was 100% an A tier fight.

[Raikai]

I agree, fight is extremely black and white in terms of difficulty. Either you know it and it's easy or its very hard.
It's very difficult to make medium level difficulty especially midcore content.
If fights are designed a little easier than veteren players will be bored coz similiar mechanics were found in o11s or tea or Eden. So they have to come up with new types of mechanics and if not innovative enuf they have to create body checks (8 players alive).
Savage is evolving to the point where many are getting discouraged from it. Ff14 doesn't do a good job to teach newer players how to savage.
Compared to wow, they have 4 levels of difficulty per raid tier. Raid finder/normal/heroic and mythic.
Since you gradually work your way up the muscle memory sets in and it's not too overwhelming for players.

Late to this thread but this poster makes a really good point of a symptomatic characteristic of XIV in general, that is not having consistent midcore content. In fact, for the 8 mans, I kind of think that the Extreme trials almost fill in those shoes consistently, but then... it's only 2 EXs for every 8 months between every 4 Savage fight tiers.

Criterion was a promising idea, but didn't turn very well with the reward situation, I hope to see if anything is going to change with the next release in about 1 month.

[Jamini]

whoever thought savage needs constant body checks needs to be put in a straightjacket and locked away for a very long time

people say this makes the raids more """difficult""", and i will concede that it does make them far more artificially difficult. artificial difficulty isn't fun, because you're only as good as your weakest link and you can play your best but one person's mistake punishes everybody with a wipe

Please make sure you are using the right term before using it.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...FakeDifficulty

Artificial Difficulty refers to fluffing up numbers without changing mechanics (I.e. simply giving a mob more health and damage).

Adding difficulty by turning various mechanics into pass-fail states isn't artificial. Especially in the case of savage where every fight has a slew of new mechanics (for that particular boss) to learn.

[Themarvin]

They need to increase the difficulty by much much more... and get away from scripted to AI based gameplay for savage and ultimates....

That way you can't really make any guides and each team or time you go, will be a new experience as the AI will remember how you did it the previous time as for completion.

Also Ultimates being heavy barred in, is fine as well.

[BeautyWhitemage]

I'm thinking this raid tier the best so far，better than Alexandra which story was so yawn！ It is very fun。 I like scary Athenia ；）

They need to increase the difficulty by much much more... and get away from scripted to AI based gameplay for savage and ultimates....

That way you can't really make any guides and each team or time you go, will be a new experience as the AI will remember how you did it the previous time as for completion.

Also Ultimates being heavy barred in, is fine as well.

Why increasing the difficulty？ P12 is already hard and I had a great time with it。

[Eorzean_username]

In general, the DPS checks are nonexistent this tier. There needs to be difficulty coming from somewhere. If people don't want the few body checks we have, then be prepared for another P8S where your comp will actually matter. Savage shouldn't be zombie-able.

That... is actually a very good point.

If I actually think back to things like, for example, E11S with PF groups, there were certainly many opportunities throughout the encounter to salvage mechanics and power on, but realistically, that was basically just a form of slow torture once the fight was learned... because you'd just end up going through all the motions, only to hit hard Enrage.

I guess in a way, combining stricter mechanic checks with more forgiving Enrage timers just saves you time — rather than "surprising" you with failure after an entire encounter timeline, it just rips the bandage off immediately and tells you to try again.

[EderTheBro]

That... is actually a very good point.

If I actually think back to things like, for example, E11S with PF groups, there were certainly many opportunities throughout the encounter to salvage mechanics and power on, but realistically, that was basically just a form of slow torture once the fight was learned... because you'd just end up going through all the motions, only to hit hard Enrage.

I guess in a way, combining stricter mechanic checks with more forgiving Enrage timers just saves you time — rather than "surprising" you with failure after an entire encounter timeline, it just rips the bandage off immediately and tells you to try again.

And thereby denying players any form of skill expression in relation to triage.

The game is already trending towards a place where even in prog the only valuable skill is optimizing damage and following raidplan.io, we don't need to remove other skill expressions even more.

[Marxam]

i feel like this thread is just a rant on how bad p10s is. I find it easy but getting 7 other ppl who can do that in PF is the real challenge. I've been stuck on enrage since week 1 and its always because we use up an LB or ppl die here and there. I would be more tilted but the glamour this tier is garbage and looks like something you got from the last 24 man raid.

Regardless this shows how bad PF really is and its not helped by the fact that data center travel basically ruined savage raiding on some servers outright.

[SilversLyu]

One thing is for certain, PF cant spread for the love of them.