Gamespot interview with Mr. Ozma... Very disappointing

[Renathras]

I can see the attraction in wanting to give healers some 'carry potential' as far as wipe recovery goes, but you risk creating fights that people end up clearing without actually understanding the mechanics for themselves,

I'm not sure "you didn't deserve the clear" is REALLY a good excuse for lazy encounter designs. Healers and tanks are brought to parties instead of just more DPS because they're supposed to be able to do those things. One reason there's so much discontent among healers (and the "1 button spam" caricature so prevalent) is that healing doesn't work well. Either the person screwed up and died or it's unavoidable raidwides which are taken care of by the oGCD healing plan. You never have that one person you need to adjust to Cure 2 on because if they take a hit, they're dead anyway. And then the party wipes because you fail the body check that comes right afterwards. EVERY NOW AND THEN you can save a person if you blow...a bunch of oGCDs (Aquaveil, Benison, Tetra), but that's still weaving between your one-button spam because there's no point in reverting to Cure 2 or Regen since the person will either die outright (regardless of what you do; and wipe the party) or the oGCDs will handle it and it's back to the 1 button spam.

EDIT:

But they need to walk away from insta wipe/multi damage downs mechanics when 1 player messed up in Savage. Fights that are recoverable (as long as the other players perform well) are far more interesting and raidwide damage down/insta wipe is just a lazy way to add artificial difficulty.

One of the tedious thing about Savage (and yet they have always encouraged players to try it) is that you can do your utmost best but the moment one player screw up you get screwed up too.

Keep those type of mechs for ultimates. Increase savage difficulty, increase individual responsibility without it screwing up another player that do them well.

I think what's even more egregious to me is how this plague has spread TO EXTREMES.

In the past, Extremes were generally midcore and PF friendly content a step down from Savages since one person screwing up didn't often mean you couldn't clear the fight, it just meant other people would have to work harder. But in EW, Extremes have also taken on this Savage [VOICE=Buzz Lightyear]"Bodychecks. Bodychecks everywhere."[/VOICE] thing. It means if you have one person in your PF group that sucks or can't do one key mechanic, you may as well disband the PF since you aren't going to clear the fight. "Oh, someone in your group isn't good at Gales 2? Yeah, disband. That party can no longer clear the fight." While that could be true rarely in past expansion Extremes, it's EVERY SINGLE FIGHT in EW. Where in the past, Extremes were generally about personal responsibility and Savages about group, now Extremes also depend on the entire group to be on point as any one failing is often unrecoverable, even with healers and tanks using CDs and creative strategies (e.g. Tank invuln to eat two Limit Cut cleaves) just not cutting it.

Not only that, it's often more than one, and often back to back. If a person died to Limit Cut in Diamond WEAPON, the towers right after adjusted down to the number of living players. If someone dies to Gales, the two person circles/light party stacks do not adjust. And you have THAT mechanic twice towards the end of the fight and parts of it (Gales by itself early, LP and 2 man stacks during the meteor things) in other parts of the fight) as well. Golbez is parallel with Emerald WEAPON, which did have some mechanics early on (the balls in stage 1) that need people alive, but not as rampant, and later in the fight, if individuals dropped (e.g. the sword + attacks) you could generally revive people and push through to recovery. You can't do that with Golbez between the meteor drops, the knockback/flare/stacks, and the Gales 2/3 2 man/LP stack in line mechanics. Emerald, despite being hard at the time, was FAR more forgiving.

It's gutted the midcore and PF/PUG scene. I'm not sure if Savage shouldn't have them (since it always has been more group oriented) or not, and will leave that up to others to discuss, but Extremes definitely shouldn't, or not to this level of prevalence.