Dawntrail normal content is NOT hard. Stop whining

[Banggugyangu]

The fact is that the way savage raids are I'll never be good enough for those.!

I wish people would stop with this mentality, honestly. Anyone CAN do savage raids. It's all about memorization. Savage raid mechanics are not really any harder than the normal counterparts. The only real differences are 1: They're less forgiving. Failing a mechanic means death or wipe most of the time. 2: The telegraphs are often not laid out on the floor, and you have to rely on other means to know where the attack is landing or what the attack pattern is. And 3: Mechanics will often times overlap one another so you have to execute multiple mechanics simultaneously. Time to execution of the mechanic is usually pretty much the same as normal. If you can do normal and you don't have any medical memory disabilities, you shouldn't have any issue doing Savage. It just takes more time to learn the fights.

[Xylira]

Meanwhile, I've had the Expert queue dump me into Strayborough where other players immediately leave after loading in. Quite frankly, I don't blame them. I don't find the dungeon too difficult, that's not the proper word for it. Tedious would be a far better way to explain how I feel about it, particularly the first boss and to a lesser extent the second.

Are the encounters more difficult? Sure. Are they too difficult? No. But there's a difference between Tender Valley which is difficult but fair once you know the mechanics, and Strayborough where even once you know the mechanics they just feel annoying and unfun to deal with. At least that's my opinion anyways.

I don't mind encounters that are more challenging than the norm, but I don't want to deal with encounter design that feels obnoxious.

[Banggugyangu]

I'll agree that I don't find Strayborough very fun as a dungeon, but the whole aesthetic doesn't really appeal to me, either. I don't have any issues with the 2nd boss at all, though.

[Kairus_Raveneye]

Your memoris are clouded by nostalgia, Classic WoW is and was a very easy game, when they first released classic WoW Servers, Molten Core was cleared withing 3-4 days of release (including leveling 1-60).

The difference is that back 20 years ago, people had no concept about this type of game, and no idea how the game works or what is good and bad (talent points), we were playing on potato computers that made the game almost unplayable because FPS dropped to single digits in raids paired with bad inernet connections made the game artificialy a lot mroe difficult than it actually was.
There was even build in "anti lag" so melee classes could actually hit enemies in PvP, or you would be out of range constantly due to bad internet.

FFXIV is not a difficult game by any means, and no , you are not too bad for savage raids, FFXIV does not require good reaction time, it is mostly about learning the fight and pushing your buttons in the correct order to manage the DPS check.

Wether I'm a better player or not or whether classic wow was 'easy' by modern standards makes absolutely no difference. What matters is relative challenge and for me the conent at the time was challenging. You should get out of the habit of projecting your subjective opinions onto others subjective opinions. It just makes you come off as arrogant. All you've basically said is 'my opinion is better than your opinion.' My experience is my experience and the relative difficulty of the content to my experience doesn't make a difference. Neither does it make a difference what bleeding edge players managed to achieve. Because people were still struggling to clear scholomance and ubrs and all that. And I was part of that morass for a long time before I found a good group of people to start raiding with. I felt as though rewards were earned. And victory was satisfying.

That isn't a feeling ff14 gave me till Endwalker and Dawntrail is more so. But neither does the difficulty stop me from completing the content so I'd say it's about right.

[Kairus_Raveneye]

I wish people would stop with this mentality, honestly. Anyone CAN do savage raids. It's all about memorization. Savage raid mechanics are not really any harder than the normal counterparts. The only real differences are 1: They're less forgiving. Failing a mechanic means death or wipe most of the time. 2: The telegraphs are often not laid out on the floor, and you have to rely on other means to know where the attack is landing or what the attack pattern is. And 3: Mechanics will often times overlap one another so you have to execute multiple mechanics simultaneously. Time to execution of the mechanic is usually pretty much the same as normal. If you can do normal and you don't have any medical memory disabilities, you shouldn't have any issue doing Savage. It just takes more time to learn the fights.

Yeahhh .. Honestly with my current reflexes I'd really struggle. And I don't want to struggle to that degree. Sorry but not everyone's interested in that kind of gameplay. I mean could I do savage raids if I really pushed myself? Sure .. Am I interested in such make or break gameplay when I'm already struggling not to get stacks on Dawntrail normal .. hell no. To be clear when I say I'll never be good enough for savage. It's not really a complaint. It's a choice.

I can still clear normals so it's all good. I don't care about having the best gear or having the bragging rights of clearing the best content. And I'm having fun where I am, Got nothing to prove to anyone so why should I do something I dislike when the normal conent is just fine for me?

[Jojoya]

Anyone CAN do savage raids.

I'm happy for you that you have no problems doing Savage raids but I can guarantee that your statement is not correct.

Not everyone can memorize things as easily as others.

Not everyone has quick reaction times.

Not everyone can stay calm and focused under what they consider to be stressful situations.

Not everyone is good at multitasking (ie keeping up their rotations at the same time they also need to focus on dodging mechanics).

And you know what? It's okay to accept that some content may be outside of one's personal abilities. I would have had no problems doing Savage a decade ago. There's no way I would get through current Savage today.

But I would encourage players to find a group of like-minded players to at least give it a try. Sometimes we're capable of more than we think if we really want it bad enough. There is nothing wrong with failure. It is how we learn. If you keep learning more as you fail, there's a good chance you'll eventually succeed. That's how world first teams get to where they are. They learn from their failures instead of giving up.

[Banggugyangu]

I'm happy for you that you have no problems doing Savage raids but I can guarantee that your statement is not correct.

....

le /sigh.... it's almost like you didn't actually read my comment and stopped at that sentence.... Savage raiding does not require faster reflexes than normal raids or really any other content. Yes, it DOES require an unfettered memory, but that's really it. The meat and potatoes of savage raiding for the typical savage raider is repetition. You beat your head against the wall until the fight is ingrained in your muscles. The misconception that people have about savage raiding requiring faster reactions than other raiding comes from two places: 1: Just a typical misconception about higher difficulty in this game altogether, and 2: Players relying on reactions to telegraphs rather than players learning fights. You cannot do savage raiding if you intend to react to telegraphs. You HAVE to learn the fights. The contrast with normal raiding is that you can skirt by with NOT knowing the fight most of the time and survive by reactions.

Also, You and the one I responded to initially seem to have completely misunderstood my point. It's absolutely fine if savage raiding is not someone's cup of tea. If you don't enjoy it, then by all means, skip it. There's no point in doing something you don't enjoy in a game. My point was: If you thought you MIGHT want to do savage, and you think you CAN'T.... you're wrong. You can. As long as you can remember the fight choreography, you can clear savage. The only situation where someone can legitimately say they CAN'T do it... is when there are memory deficiencies. Reflexes and reaction times have nothing to do with savage raiding at all. This also brings up why I like the paradigm shift we saw with normal level content in Dawntrail. Savage often times requires paying attention to the bosses and the surroundings to discern the mechanics. Normal content rarely ever did. Dawntrail shifted that paradigm and requires the player pay attention in normal content.

Quote truncated due to character limit.

[Venks]

Anyone CAN do savage raids.

I agree with this in principle. I firmly believe anyone can do anything in games provided they dedicate enough time to it and have no disabilities holding them back.

That said there are a lot of people in party finder gated at M2S that I don't believe will be overcoming it until they obtain better gear and are then able to do enough damage to clear while making mistakes that heal the boss. There are also a good number of people in M3S that are mechanically pretty sound, able to make it all the way to enrage somewhat consistently, but lack the knowledge or consistency to keep their rotation clean going throughout the fight.

Savage is quite difficult compared to normal content. You need a good amount of patience, a willingness to learn, and the ability to bounce back from failure. Even though Dawntrail has more people playing Savage than ever before, it is still an extreme minority of the people who play FFXIV.

Threads here on the forums have been pointing to a perceived increase in difficulty in normal content like the dungeons, if these people feel like the level 100 MSQ dungeon is too frustrating to do multiple times, I don't think they would want to do Savage.

[Banggugyangu]

I agree with this in principle. I firmly believe anyone can do anything in games provided they dedicate enough time to it and have no disabilities holding them back.

That said there are a lot of people in party finder gated at M2S that I don't believe will be overcoming it until they obtain better gear and are then able to do enough damage to clear while making mistakes that heal the boss. There are also a good number of people in M3S that are mechanically pretty sound, able to make it all the way to enrage somewhat consistently, but lack the knowledge or consistency to keep their rotation clean going throughout the fight.

Savage is quite difficult compared to normal content. You need a good amount of patience, a willingness to learn, and the ability to bounce back from failure. Even though Dawntrail has more people playing Savage than ever before, it is still an extreme minority of the people who play FFXIV.

Threads here on the forums have been pointing to a perceived increase in difficulty in normal content like the dungeons, if these people feel like the level 100 MSQ dungeon is too frustrating to do multiple times, I don't think they would want to do Savage.

I don't disagree with any part of this at all. Anyone CAN, but not everyone will do it successfully. As you said, it comes down to patience and willingness to learn. If you're not getting mechanics, keep doing reps and you're going to get it eventually. If you're hitting enrage, then practice your rotation. Eventually a combination of both will click.

*Edit* I do want to stress, though, that as I said before, while savage IS more difficult to clear, it's not because the execution of the mechanics is any more difficult. It's a combination of less obvious telegraphs and less forgiving punishment.

[Kairus_Raveneye]

Now you're being pedantic if all you mean by anyone can savage raid is that we can make it to the point we're standing in front of the boss then you're absolutely correct. This entire discussion is predicated on the idea that doing a savage raid means clearing it.