Worthy of His Back solo duty cannot be completed on default difficulty

[LalaLuna]

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Date & Time: 1 April 2024 (the date is a coincidence, the concern is serious)
Frequency: persistent
World name: Cerberus
Character name: Lena Silverdust (alt)
Retainer name: N/A
NPC name: Venat
Monster name: N/A
Class/Level: Monk 88 (in duty)
Party or solo: solo duty
In-game time: N/A
Area and coordinates: Solo duty for the MSQ quest 'Worthy of His Back'
Housing: N/A
Steps:
1. Start the solo duty for the MSQ quest 'Worthy of his back'
2. Progress the duty until the orbs start to spawn
3. Take down the orbs, prioritizing the red (faster moving) ones
4. Starting from the third and fourth wave of orbs, there are too many

5. No matter how fast I take out out the orbs, even if I prioritize the red ones, I cannot take them out fast enough. At least 3-4 blue ones will always make it through.
- AoE attacks are nowhere near powerful enough to take out 3-4 when they are close to Venat
- The orbs add so much to her power bar that it's impossible to survive the fourth wave

I am no sprout. I have over 12.5 thousand hours in the game. I know Monk well enough, my average ilvl on Monk is 534 with an ilvl 539 weapon (MSQ gear with added crafted and melded gear). I've had zero issues with all other MSQ duties in the game, including In From the Cold.
Either there are too many orbs, they move too fast, or they add way too much to Venat's power bar. I strongly encourage adjusting this fight if a veteran like me can only call this duty impossible to clear.

Since the jobs should be balanced enough across the board, just stating to 'try a different job' is irresponsible; not every sprout coming across this duty might have other jobs to attempt it with. Being forced to fail it and try it on an easier difficulty will also leave a bitter taste after an otherwise excellent part of the MSQ. I know my mood's been thoroughly soured by this. Also, I attempted this duty as a DPS job. If it's a DPS race and a DPS job cannot make it, then I doubt a healer or tank could.

Another possibility is that Monk is somehow improperly balanced at this level / for this duty.
I do not recall this duty giving me trouble on my main character when I first progressed through the MSQ as Sage. Something might've changed to this duty since patch 6.0?

[LilimoLimomo]

I have no absolutely no idea whether you are experiencing a bug or not. But I'll add an anecdote as food for thought.

In Shadowbringers, I had been playing the game for around 5 years. Black Mage has always been my DPS class, one that I felt very confident with. We were burning down trials from the previous expansion to get mounts, and it was going smoothly. There was no reason to dodge anything, so I just got to stand there and do pure DPS as a Black Mage. But after many runs, I decided I wanted to switch things up, and so I changed to Summoner (the old one with DoT's) which I didn't have much experience with but more or less knew what the moves did.

And to my surprise, upon switching from my main job to a job that I had hardly played, we consistently shaved 10 seconds off our clear times. And that's how I learned that I wasn't as skilled as I thought I was at Black Mage.

I have no idea whether this does or doesn't relate to your story.

I have also definitely seen solo instances from earlier expansions that are incredibly difficult to beat nowadays due to job reworks (if I recall properly, there's one in the SMN class quests), so it's not like that's unheard of.

[LalaLuna]

After completing it on 'Very Easy', I was able to clear ALL orbs with ease, and the duty by proxy. Discussing the encounter with others revealed that leaving the red orbs to reach Venat and focus on the blue ones instead could be a viable tactic, but that goes against the intuitive approach to handle the orbs. The 'natural' action would be to take the red ones out first, since they move faster. If that is the intended approach, then the encounter is designed in a misleading way, further confirming that it's not properly designed as an encounter and definitely requires adjustments accordingly.

[LalaLuna]

I have no absolutely no idea whether you are experiencing a bug or not. But I'll add an anecdote as food for thought.

In Shadowbringers, I had been playing the game for around 5 years. Black Mage has always been my DPS class, one that I felt very confident with. We were burning down trials from the previous expansion to get mounts, and it was going smoothly. There was no reason to dodge anything, so I just got to stand there and do pure DPS as a Black Mage. But after many runs, I decided I wanted to switch things up, and so I changed to Summoner (the old one with DoT's) which I didn't have much experience with but more or less knew what the moves did.

And to my surprise, upon switching from my main job to a job that I had hardly played, we consistently shaved 10 seconds off our clear times. And that's how I learned that I wasn't as skilled as I thought I was at Black Mage.

I have no idea whether this does or doesn't relate to your story.

I have also definitely seen solo instances from earlier expansions that are incredibly difficult to beat nowadays due to job reworks (if I recall properly, there's one in the SMN class quests), so it's not like that's unheard of.

I appreciate your perspective on the matter. After timing the duty out and attempting it again on 'very easy', I had Venat on 0.1% HP before she even reached the mechanic BEFORE the orbs spawn. I like to think that means my gear / job proficiency is at least sufficient in that regard. The only way I could improve Monk is if I were to read up on 'meta guides'. This encounter is strictly a tactical / imbalanced numbers matter, in that the orbs add too much power to Venat / spawn in too great a number / move too fast despite them being relatively slow. This is for the default / "intended" difficulty.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Congratulations to beating the fight eventually.

I'm going to base my thoughts on this footage of Normal Mode MNK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbQTUj8mcqA
I also have checked a Normal Mode RPR version, very similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAU6jI2CCDc&t=0s

If the fight still operates as advertised in those videos with the blue orbs having a large heavy (movement slow) and red orbs with a medium heavy, then going from orb to orb prioritizing red orbs followed by blue orbs should not be an issue. In the MNK example they primarily cycled their base rotation without going heavy on using Perfect Balance & Blitz, occasionally using Forbidden Chakra.

Both of these players are FAR from optimized and were done when the expansion released - meaning they had LESS potency on their attacks than we do now, yet they both make easy work of the orbs, even with a large loss of uptime in between them.

If you are at minimum in full Augmented Cryptlurker gear (bonus but not needed: Materia melds) or better (i530+) then you'd have sufficient damage and HP to deal with the duty. So without trying to sound rude, this leaves me to three possible conclusions:

1.) There is a genuine bug and the Heavy effects of the orbs don't work as intended
2.) You are actually joking despite saying that you don't for the sake of April 1st
3.) Despite your 12k hours of game time and veteran status, you are actually not that good at Monk - which for the purpose of this duty, you could do it by spamming Dragon Kick and occasionally refreshing Twin Snakes (this was and possibly still is an actual thing, I'm not kidding). It isn't a bad thing if you are, it simply indicates you may have improperly learned the job or are actually struggling at switching targets fast enough.

My apologies if anything of this offends you, it is truly not meant that way.

[Jeeqbit]

I did this as a PLD and had no issue.

The only solo duties I have ever had trouble with as a veteran player were the Stormblood patch one in Azim Steppe pre-nerf, and the one in Ghimlyt due to tank dps being lower, not being ranged and spreading dps instead of killing one at a time.

[LalaLuna]

Congratulations to beating the fight eventually.

I'm going to base my thoughts on this footage of Normal Mode MNK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbQTUj8mcqA

I actually did things very similarly to the Monk. My damage was even a bit higher, since they needed 3 hits in some cases, whereas I could 2-hit it all. I also used Thunderclap more often to close the distance. What immediately strikes me is that the blue orbs seem to move noticeably slower compared to what I've seen today. The Monk even gets hit by Damage Down, and can _still_ take out those two orbs in the final wave. By no means could I take out ALL the orbs on the regular difficulty using the same approach as this Monk and doing even better.