Encounters aren't everything

[Vyrerus]

Yes, worse than Gordias.

That's simply because of its final fight. Midas's first three fights were comparable and easier than Gordias, for the most part. You see a lot more clears in Gordias because it became easier to overpower it unsync'd sooner, as it has nothing as cockblocky as Gavel (Nisi kinda close though). That, combined with the fact that they've never nerfed Midas's bosses afaik, while they at least nerfed Living Liquid at some point = more Gordias clears.


Also I wouldn't say that Creator was a severe nerf to Savage difficulty. It was Savage difficulty without any stone wall mechanics. i.e. Late phase mechanics intended to wipe you for the slightest mistake on anyone's part. Whereas Gordias and Midas had fights with many phases, each phase ramping up as harder, and more intricate, Creator ramped up and then leveled off. It largely mirrored Binding Coil of Bahamut, blow for blow.

Binding Coil had: Two mechnically oriented bosses. A "trash" fight. Then Twintania, as a far and above leg up in all aspects over its previous encounters.

Gordias had: A mechanically oriented first boss. A "trash" fight with a unique crowd control machine. Living Liquid as an extreme leg up in all aspects over those encounters, and then The Manipulator. Manipulator had some obtuse mechanics, but was chiefly gatekept by insane damage check and Nisi (which was largely cheesed with Healer LB3 strat, though some groups did beat it by executing the mechanic). Most groups never made it past Living Liquid, and of those that did, most of them stopped being able to clear Living Liquid after the tank nerf in 2.2.

Second Coil had: Four mechanically oriented bosses, all with many rough phases, and all with some form of stonewall mechanic. These being:

T6: Blighted Bouquet (pre-nerf), Hypercharged Slug enrage, and Slimes enrage if not eaten by slugs.
T7: Cursed Shriek, Petrifaction, really the whole original fight. OG fight saw Petrified players instantly die to next instance of damage, meaning anyone clipped by any Voice, Shriek, or Petrifaction = Dead.
T8: Allagan Field - Literally impossible to live through without a shield healer cutting the damage from towers
T9: Pretty much the whole fight, even more so than OG T7. This had everything.

And this doesn't even touch on the salty dev response where they created Savage because people actually did beat Second Coil by like week 2 or some shit.

Midas had: Four mechanically oriented bosses. The moblin with his alchemy potion mechanics. The Combaticons reference gauntlet fight. Illuminati Leader and his jails. Brute Justice (Bruticus reference).

A5: Moblin didn't slow many groups down. Biggest thing was making sure your OT didn't self-heal and draw the pig rats to the minotaur. Some simultaneous mechanics thrown out at the end to cause a hiccup, rather than to stonewall.

A6: This is where the fun begins. Gauntlet against the 4 Combaticon reference robots. Blaster (Blast-off), Swindler(Swindle), Brawler(Brawl), and Vortexer(Vortex). You fight each robot, each taking a few minutes, each with a sort of enrage of their own. Each with something comparable to a stonewall mechanic. Fail any one robot, you start over from the beginning. Hard enrage timer that kills you outright if you fail to kill all robots in the time limit that starts on engaging first robot. Biggest stonewall mechanic was the juggling of the lightning and water debuffs against Vortexer as far as I remember. Instant wipe upon mechanical failure by people juggling. Remember these mechanics, because they all come back in A8

A7: A rough fight, but not comparable to Living Liquid. Phases were segmented and notable by which role was the initial target for imprisonment. It put out a lot of damage, while also requiring a lot of movement around its modular arena. This arena would condense from a large square into a tight circle surrounded by spikes. Stand in spikes = die to raid wides. GIANT BALLS. When spikes go away.

A8: Harder than Living Liquid and perhaps harder than Manipulator as well. An incredible amount of phases, all mechanically able to stonewall. All A6 mechanics make a return. The final Combaticon, Onslaught appears here as the first boss. Includes a gauntlet of the A6 bosses where their mechanics are now mixed. After all that they fuse, of course, and then you get several phases against Brute Justice. The hardest bit and the stonewall mechanic is Gavel. It's an obtuse Team Jump Rope style mechanic where everyone has different mechanical checks they have to meet that have a Rue Goldberg machine style interaction with one another.

Final Coil had: Four mechanically inclined fights, however, the mechanics mainly rely on outgoing damage vs. mechanical pass/fail. Lots of wiggle room.

Creator had: Four mechanically inclined fights, but sort of the same deal as FCoB.

All in all, I may have forgotten some things, but I hope you get what I mean. Midas wasn't worse than Gordias until its final fight. And the middle turns/tiers for raids in XIV tend to be where they shove the most mechanically inclined pass/fail mechanics anyway, historically. I think they put these spikes, even if they're just one fight or one half of a fight, mainly to make raiders feel accomplished when the next tier feels easier to them. It's not a nerf, it's a design. And I know they said something like, they eased off the gas for Creator or something like that, back then... but I think, of course, they'd say that. After all, their battle design team essentially, "Won" the rat race vs. the week 1 clearers they'd been salty with since Second Coil.