Please fix scaling, fights are dying so fast now

[Rebeccubus]

I'm sure this complaint has been said a million times but I want to keep putting a voice out there in the hopes it manages to get through to the devs.

I just got out of a run of P4N (Asphodelos Fourth Circle) through DF that ended in under 5 minutes. The new player with us didnt even get to see half of the fight. Looking at old videos, the point we cleared with the amount of deaths we had, groups were normally at 50% health left. Content is getting skipped faster and faster and something needs to be done because there are a lot of incredibly good fights, mechanics, phase transitions, etc that are just irrelevant now. Yoship said he cares about us getting to see the hard work of the team but that isn't happening right now. The fact we're skipping stuff like the phase transition of Nald'Thal is insane. All that hard work for nothing.

I don't know if it requires better gear syncing, nerfing of potencies, or what, but its getting out of control. Honestly it doesn't even need to be "old" content nowadays. Our damage is scaling so fast that the only time you get the intended experience of content is on release. Either within a single patch or even in the same one after people get gear, all the content gets absolutely shredded. Clearing a fight a bit faster is fine, but its become too much. We are shaving 5 minutes off of a 10 minute fight without even trying.

I honestly think that if anything, a good compromise is to have just duty finder be where things are synced better. If people want to use pf to obliterate a fight for weekly clears or whatever? More power to them. I more care about the new player experience getting worse and worse than anything else.

[CVXIV]

Yeah it's a shame that you don't see the mechanics of a lot of fights anymore
I imagine for new players it'd be disappointing
Personally I wouldn't mind if they worked on how level syncing work, since I believe it's the ilvl that is the main issue
Could be wrong, I remember ilvl being talked about a lot and I don't know enough mechanically about the issue
bottom line is that it'd be fun to see old mechanics again

[Carin-Eri]

Yeah it's a shame that you don't see the mechanics of a lot of fights anymore
I imagine for new players it'd be disappointing
Personally I wouldn't mind if they worked on how level syncing work, since I believe it's the ilvl that is the main issue
Could be wrong, I remember ilvl being talked about a lot and I don't know enough mechanically about the issue
bottom line is that it'd be fun to see old mechanics again

Not really - because they'd never see them in the first place.

Which is, oddly, more disappointing for existing players. Entering, for example, Aglaia - Nald'thal almost always dies way before they get to use 'Tipped Scales', let alone 'Balance' (in fact I can't recall the last time I actually saw them use 'Balance').
Which means players who know about those mechanics know that the Sprouts in the team didn't get to see it. Whilst the Sprouts are oblivious to the fact that it even existed.

[Rebeccubus]

Not really - because they'd never see them in the first place.

Which is, oddly, more disappointing for existing players. Entering, for example, Aglaia - Nald'thal almost always dies way before they get to use 'Tipped Scales', let alone 'Balance' (in fact I can't recall the last time I actually saw them use 'Balance').
Which means players who know about those mechanics know that the Spouts in the team didn't get to see it. Whilst the Sprouts are oblivious to the fact that it even existed.

True, though if they ever hear of what they missed, they would then likely be disappointed

[VeyaAkemi]

The problem isn't quite scaling, it's max iLvl, Endsinger used to have a similar issue where as the post patch stuff started happening and the max available iLvl increased, she started to die very fast after the LB3 sequence and you wouldn't even get to hear the Scions's lines, much less witness the desperation sequence that is the final phase, but they have since added a stricter iLvl 570 limit(for reference, Hydaelyn syncs to 550), and now the fight flows like it should.

Those two aren't even the only two that have this problem, a very big one to me is Thordan, who will die *moments* after his own LB sequence, and a bit of the narrative, that Thordan threw everything he had at WoL and we were still standing, so by that point he is desperately swinging while completely exhausted and barely able to move, is lost in the process, Thordan in general may need a whole rework, it's known that he can be beaten solo while sync'd.

[Supersnow845]

The problem isn't quite scaling, it's max iLvl, Endsinger used to have a similar issue where as the post patch stuff started happening and the max available iLvl increased, she started to die very fast after the LB3 sequence and you wouldn't even get to hear the Scions's lines, much less witness the desperation sequence that is the final phase, but they have since added a stricter iLvl 570 limit(for reference, Hydaelyn syncs to 550), and now the fight flows like it should.

Those two aren't even the only two that have this problem, a very big one to me is Thordan, who will die *moments* after his own LB sequence, and a bit of the narrative, that Thordan threw everything he had at WoL and we were still standing, so by that point he is desperately swinging while completely exhausted and barely able to move, is lost in the process, Thordan in general may need a whole rework, it's known that he can be beaten solo while sync'd.

Thordan isn’t a good example (but the problem listed is true and should be fixed)

Thordan has been a joke since 3.0

[FuturePastNow]

Thordan isn’t a good example (but the problem listed is true and should be fixed)

Thordan has been a joke since 3.0

I recently did Thordan (normal) with someone for their first time. Since we had a full party we set it to MINE. None of the mechanics were even slightly threatening and we still had to hold dps to see his angry flailing at the end.

[Rebeccubus]

The problem isn't quite scaling, it's max iLvl, Endsinger used to have a similar issue where as the post patch stuff started happening and the max available iLvl increased, she started to die very fast after the LB3 sequence and you wouldn't even get to hear the Scions's lines, much less witness the desperation sequence that is the final phase, but they have since added a stricter iLvl 570 limit(for reference, Hydaelyn syncs to 550), and now the fight flows like it should.

Those two aren't even the only two that have this problem, a very big one to me is Thordan, who will die *moments* after his own LB sequence, and a bit of the narrative, that Thordan threw everything he had at WoL and we were still standing, so by that point he is desperately swinging while completely exhausted and barely able to move, is lost in the process, Thordan in general may need a whole rework, it's known that he can be beaten solo while sync'd.

Yeah I knew scaling didnt cover everything to say about it but I only had so much space so I chose the one that felt like it could be the most broadly applicable lol. Originally I tried "old content" or "gear sync" but those didnt work right either.

I do think the issue is more than just the iLvL sync cause I feel we are also ballooning in power way too fast even on current content. The difference between each ilvl upgrade is getting insane.

[St0rmy]

The problem isn't quite scaling, it's max iLvl, Endsinger used to have a similar issue where as the post patch stuff started happening and the max available iLvl increased, she started to die very fast after the LB3 sequence and you wouldn't even get to hear the Scions's lines, much less witness the desperation sequence that is the final phase, but they have since added a stricter iLvl 570 limit(for reference, Hydaelyn syncs to 550), and now the fight flows like it should.

Those two aren't even the only two that have this problem, a very big one to me is Thordan, who will die *moments* after his own LB sequence, and a bit of the narrative, that Thordan threw everything he had at WoL and we were still standing, so by that point he is desperately swinging while completely exhausted and barely able to move, is lost in the process, Thordan in general may need a whole rework, it's known that he can be beaten solo while sync'd.

I don't know why they didn't fix the Thordan fight when they revamped Heavensward. I think it's really cool afterall the whole fight and he does his ultimate attack, he's left completely helpless and just flails about, ignoring aggro and just swinging wildly at random players. Such a shame that pretty much no one gets to see that happen anymore.

[Jeeqbit]

This has been a problem for a long time, because 8-person and 24-person content is not item level synced. This means that by the end of the expansion, we have gained more than 100 item levels over the earliest content of that expansion. The result is that content from the first 2 tiers have raid-wide AoEs that feel like they do 2% damage, you can stand in everything or skip all the mechanics; almost nothing matters. The content is a striking dummy.

To get a sense of how powerful a difference item level can make, even just an increase of 5 item levels to each party member significantly warps how the content feels and can make a lot of mechanics not matter as much, ease up DPS checks, and reduce the need for mitigation.

Even within the same raid tier, if all the party members are max item level (just 20 item levels over the crafted gear item level), they can destroy the earliest savage floors in about half the time. Yes, I said they can kill savage bosses half way through the fight!

Now, you may wonder what happens when the content is old and we level sync. There is an invisible item level associated with that level, which is the max item level of the expansion. Here is a list, which I never forget:

• 90: 660
• 80: 530
• 70: 400
• 60: 270
• 50: 130

So to answer your question, the first Pandaemonium fight is scaled for item level 565, while players are synced down to 660. Think about that for a moment. All 8 players are probably 105 higher in item level.

Over time, this problem gets worse due to battle system changes. Older fights from, say, Heavensward, have gone through: Stat changes (Parry becoming a partial DPS stat, Accuracy becoming a proper DPS stat, multiple Determination buffs, a Tenacity buff), the removal of stat assignment, a rebalancing of gear stats and tank damage, regular potency increases for years to compete with how overpowered new jobs are because they are afraid of nerfs, a stat squish (which actually made Heavensward content last a little longer, this was a slight improvement), lower level rotations being made hard to mess up so you can do everything easier than you could back then.

Will they do anything about it?
Probably not. We've been asking this to them for years. It's been brought up to them in interviews and Q&As and they agree... yet they do nothing about it. But maybe someday they will randomly address it. Like they do with all Quality of Life - they address things that have been an issue for 10 years at complete random.