"Taking a stand" quest

[reflettage]

TLDR: difficulty settings need to, but currently do not, affect certain critical aspects of fight difficulty like the speed/timing of mechanics, and there should be a toggleable "story only" option independent of difficulty setting that stuns you whenever you take lethal damage but ultimately does not kill you.

It's kinda wild that the MSQ is mostly point, click, watch cutscene, maybe fight an enemy or 3, yet it's got solo duties where the responsibility for success rests ENTIRELY on the solo player's shoulders, with mechanics meant to challenge average able-bodied players, but there's no way to make them more accessible to certain folks who can otherwise engage with every other part of the story just fine. At least in dungeons/trials, there is always the option of having other players help you. I guarantee if you put a PF up or shouted in Limsa that you're having extreme difficulty getting past one of the non-solo MSQ duties, there are a wealth of players who will actively want to help you and would happily carry you through the roughest bits if necessary so you can continue the story.

Upon reviewing a YouTube video of this particular battle, it seems deliberately designed to nuke your HP at certain intervals, then lay off the damage to give you time to heal up from your skills. For example, the first big damage is an unavoidable AOE that chunks a good 70% of your HP within a few seconds of the fight starting. After this, however, Bakool dashes to the edge of the arena and starts casting. He does 0 damage for around 12 seconds and by the time it goes off and he starts auto attacking again, Wuk has had time to heal and her HP is now at a slightly cozier 50%-60%. The fight more or less continues in this pattern of beating you down but letting you crawl your way back up, presumably to make us feel the same kind of pressure and stress that Wuk's feeling, and maintain that energy throughout the fight. Personally this duty was a thrill for me, I felt like I was barely scraping by the whole time (which I thoroughly enjoyed).

That being said, I'm an able-bodied Savage/Ultimate raider with a very high skill level, and I'm very much used to reading and resolving mechanics without stopping my rotation, hitting my oGCDs when they come off cooldown (offensive) or when they're needed (defensive), all while under continuous pressure not to f*** up. I personally enjoy that and derive satisfaction from that. But not everyone does, and that's okay! XIV's mandatory story content should be accessible to the vast, vast majority of players.

What's striking to me is people in this thread saying Easy and Very Easy don't seem to actually make the duty easier in the ways that matter most, and they note the timing of certain mechanics is still very tight regardless of difficulty. If this is true, imo it's unacceptable in modern XIV and absolutely needs reviewing by the developers. Most of modern FFXIV's difficulty comes NOT from "how fast can you kill the boss" or "how much damage can you tank before dying", but rather, "how fast can you figure out where to move/stand, and how quickly+precisely can you pull it off". If someone is disabled, and said disability affects their ability to process mechanics and/or react to them accordingly, they are going to have a horrible time regardless of how beefy their stats are. The easy difficulties should not only buff the player's max HP and HP recovered from heals by a significant margin (leaving more room for mistakes), but also slow down the timeline of the fight (or at least specific mechanics) to reduce the overall minimum execution requirement. And, of course, there should be a "story only" option that's independent of difficulty setting, wherein taking lethal damage will stun you for a few seconds, but ultimately let you continue the fight.

[jaxapollo]

Bump: this quest is impossible, broken game

[Jojoya]

Bump: this quest is impossible, broken game

Considering the number of players that are already participating in end game content, the quest is not impossible.

Please read through the tips already posted in this thread, including the one that suggests doing it on Easy instead of Very Easy. We believe that Very Easy may have been mistuned.

[LibitIncarne]

Bump: this quest is impossible, broken game

Try pressing your buttons, not standing in the bad, and taking the towers when they spawn.

[Thistles_Leaf]

Very easy should be so easy that even if you fail to do mechanics, this should never ever kill you. That is for normal or easy. Very easy should be an almost automatic pass.

I am stuck on The gift of eternity now and i am actually thinking of quitting the game over this crap. So far MSQ has been a click and read adventure with some pretty hard solo events thrown in that take huge chunks of time for a single quest. Failure in those events is extremely costly time wise. Especially the late reborn quests that can take up to an hour. For a sinlge quest.

I had some stupidly long quests in wow that made you want to send nasty emails to the developers as they were that frustrating. I was invested in wow though. So far i am not really that invested in the reborn story which was mostly meh for me so far. Far too much reading.

[PorxiesRCute]

Very easy should be so easy that even if you fail to do mechanics, this should never ever kill you. That is for normal or easy. Very easy should be an almost automatic pass.

I am stuck on The gift of eternity now and i am actually thinking of quitting the game over this crap. So far MSQ has been a click and read adventure with some pretty hard solo events thrown in that take huge chunks of time for a single quest. Failure in those events is extremely costly time wise. Especially the late reborn quests that can take up to an hour. For a sinlge quest.

I had some stupidly long quests in wow that made you want to send nasty emails to the developers as they were that frustrating. I was invested in wow though. So far i am not really that invested in the reborn story which was mostly meh for me so far. Far too much reading.

For anyone who hasn't seen this person's other post, they're a level 50 Archer (not Bard) wearing underleveled gear.

[bebop_bo]

Since the beginning of Stormblood, Square Enix has forced us to play as an NPC character in an MSQ event. In my case, it's always been a class/job that I never wanted to play, have no interest in playing, and have no experience playing.
This game is supposed to be fun, not an opportunity for some sadistic moron game designer to frustrate players needlessly.
Well, "Taking a stand" is the worst of all, IMHO. I'm sure that some players enjoy this sort of thing, and that's fine, keep it in the game. BUT DON'T MAKE IT PART OF THE MSQ!
I have tried multiple times to pass this, and failed each and every time. I am unable to discern ANY difference in difficulty between the normal mode and what is laughably called "very easy." It's not at all "very easy," as my repeated attempts and repeated failures evidence.
I find the mechanics difficult to understand and difficult to counter; I lose health for no apparent reason. In the end, I die, and I never know why. It's impossible to learn when I never know why.
This is the sort of idiotic game design that will chase casual players away. It should either be nerfed or removed.

Second this, SE should give there heads a wobble, playing a "tank" type class, is NOT for me, if i wanted to play a tank, then i would, forcing it upon players or you cant continue with game isn't a bright move, just another fk up from SE, ive only just renewed my subs after a break from game then this cr@p comes up! .. yeh my skills suck etc etc which is how i got to L96 :P ah well, not gonna continue trying, its boring, its dull when you are forced to play a class. Back to Embers Adrift & New World for me. Well done SE youve just lost another sub due to very poor game design.

btw when the orbs pop up i dont get any green orb, theyre all red, so guess its bugged as well :P

[Iscah]

Second this, SE should give there heads a wobble, playing a "tank" type class, is NOT for me, if i wanted to play a tank, then i would

Wuk Lamat doesn't play like a tank in the solo fight; she's a DPS with an axe.

[PorxiesRCute]

Wuk Lamat doesn't play like a tank in the solo fight; she's a DPS with an axe.

Is this why everyone has such a huge problem with this fight? They think "Wuk Lamat's a tank, I have to be tanking" and hunt around for nonexistent mitigation buttons instead of attacking?

[Mawlzy]

Considering the number of players that are already participating in end game content, the quest is not impossible.

Please read through the tips already posted in this thread, including the one that suggests doing it on Easy instead of Very Easy. We believe that Very Easy may have been mistuned.

Did we ever get verification that Easy is easier than Very Easy?