The state of AAC Light-Heavyweight Savage is unacceptable

[Shuuli]

???
it's literally the easiest it's ever been to get pentamelded gear these days lol

That was not the point. The point is that many in PF do not have and will not have penta melded gear. And if you forgot we have a lot of new people who dont even know what that is... the item level requirement to the fights is 700 and 705, if you dont do it on minimum item level and you complain its too easy then the problem is you.

[Xeliot]

I don’t think Savage is still aimed at the most hardcore raiders — that’s why Ultimate exists.

[Aword3213]

Maybe after 6 years of grooming, it's about time for the devs to jump from "normal content should be accessible to everyone" to "Savage content should be cleared by literally anyone."

You don't know half of your kits? It's okay. Savage content shouldn't gate keep you.

You don't meld your gear and prepare best food buffs and potions? It's okay. Those items are for pathetic elitist anyway.

Stop whinning. Go play Ultimate.

[Dante131]

???
it's literally the easiest it's ever been to get pentamelded gear these days lol

actually it never been level ur crafter or have money = pentameld craft gear

[Kohashi]

I do have to say so far, from what I have seen, the mechanics are nice but pretty intuitive and easy to understand. This doesn't necessarily mean it's bad but it did catch me off guard as I was expecting to warm the floor for most of the fight.

I did not raid back in Asphodelos but I have heard P1 was really easy to clear which is comparable with M1. Also, P9s felt really easy for me. I think I had cleared the fight after 3-4 hrs of prog( I'm trash and also started progging when braindead strats were already streamlined)

Overall, I think, it would be interesting if they keep this kind of difficulty as a mid-difficulty content to make it more accessible for new people and release additionally something like Savage+ .

[NightHour]

AAC Light-Heavyweight is objectively under-tuned, with the fastest completion time of any previous raid tier. Each fight can be easily cleared with multiple deaths and numerous damage-downs without even seeing enrage.

In my opinion, it's unacceptable to release a savage tier with this degree of negligent tuning. For veteran game devs releasing their sixth raid series (their 24th raid tier), there isn't a believable reason that I would be willing to get behind for this kind of outcome.

The only communication we've had from the devs about it has been an anecdotal recount of what Arthars, a content creator, may have heard from YoshiP at the Chinese Fan-Fest. Which was essentially: "We know we messed up the dps, it won't happen again."

Without any other insight into what happened, I can only assume that their decision to buff numerous jobs across the board was made without a reassessment of boss hp percentages and dps checks.

On top of the horrid tuning, the mechanics themselves are fairly uninspired. While it's an overall fun experience, the over abundance of "stack/spread, in/out, clockspots" is really tiresome and egregious this time around. M4S was the only fight that actually felt like a savage encounter, and even then, she can go down well before the enrage with sloppy play.

This savage tier caught me off guard. The DT dungeons, trials, and normal raids all felt fresh and innovative. So to be met with each floor of the entire raid tier sharing the same mechs from Shadowbringers was underwhelming. DT's content felt like it took a step forward, AAC Savage felt like it took two steps back.

I really love savage raiding, it's some of the most fun I have in the game. So to have 1/3rd of the savage content of this expansion be essentially an extreme trial series that will be utterly destroyed by gear is pretty disappointing.

Overall, I'm bummed and feel a bit robbed. I would greatly appreciate a more robust and illuminating explanation of how this came to happen and what they plan on doing to ensure that it never does again.

I haven't cleared the tier yet, I should be clearing the 3rd turn on Monday/Tuesday though.


I do agree that this raid tier does feel on the easy side but I also feel this is both a good and a bad thing.




It's good because an upcoming ultimate release is tied to this raid tier - If more people can clear and obtain the required gear for the ultimate then participation in said Ultimate may increase.




It's bad because Savage is meant to be the 2nd hardest difficulty in the progression ladder.

Maybe after 6 years of grooming, it's about time for the devs to jump from "normal content should be accessible to everyone" to "Savage content should be cleared by literally anyone."

You don't know half of your kits? It's okay. Savage content shouldn't gate keep you.

You don't meld your gear and prepare best food buffs and potions? It's okay. Those items are for pathetic elitist anyway.

Stop whinning. Go play Ultimate.

Savage absolutely should gatekeep people who can't even do the basics like

- Knowing how to play their jobs
- Melding gear
- Preparing Food and Potions

If a player is not prepared to put in the basic effort to get prepared for harder content they should just stick to Normals and Alliance raids because Savage and Ultimate are well above their knowledge/skill/dedication level.


You don't need to spend 5+ mill on Penta melding to do Savage, that helps if you're trying to push as much as you can week 1 and 2 but for the average PF joe it's really not needed.

[Basteala]

My headcanon is that they didn’t account for the fact that they buffed most of the jobs in the same patch. So it’s balanced for the old numbers which makes it now undertuned.

I don’t think it’s fixable either. If they buff damage requirements, it’d be crazy unfair to those who weren’t able to raid the first week.

I think it's exactly this, and honestly probably the best argument for nerfing picto instead of buffing everyone else. Especially with how grossly imbalanced caster representation is right now.

[mallleable]

Nah, they just buffed all the wrong dps too much instead of just shearing some potency off picto.

[Volgia]

I'm all for them tuning the DPS checks on the next tier, but I hope they don't do a thousand body checks on the second tier. The power creep has been incredibly real for a while now. I remember a time where skipping mechs was impressive whereas now it's almost expected, and I can't imagine the devs designing mechanics just so we skip them because of our overtuned DPS.

Maybe it's cuz I PF my way through clearing the tier, but I can see how veteran statics would breeze this, even if they weren't aiming for a week 1st.

[Menriq]

AAC Light-Heavyweight is objectively under-tuned, with the fastest completion time of any previous raid tier. Each fight can be easily cleared with multiple deaths and numerous damage-downs without even seeing enrage.

In my opinion, it's unacceptable to release a savage tier with this degree of negligent tuning. For veteran game devs releasing their sixth raid series (their 24th raid tier), there isn't a believable reason that I would be willing to get behind for this kind of outcome.

The only communication we've had from the devs about it has been an anecdotal recount of what Arthars, a content creator, may have heard from YoshiP at the Chinese Fan-Fest. Which was essentially: "We know we messed up the dps, it won't happen again."

Without any other insight into what happened, I can only assume that their decision to buff numerous jobs across the board was made without a reassessment of boss hp percentages and dps checks.

On top of the horrid tuning, the mechanics themselves are fairly uninspired. While it's an overall fun experience, the over abundance of "stack/spread, in/out, clockspots" is really tiresome and egregious this time around. M4S was the only fight that actually felt like a savage encounter, and even then, she can go down well before the enrage with sloppy play.

This savage tier caught me off guard. The DT dungeons, trials, and normal raids all felt fresh and innovative. So to be met with each floor of the entire raid tier sharing the same mechs from Shadowbringers was underwhelming. DT's content felt like it took a step forward, AAC Savage felt like it took two steps back.

I really love savage raiding, it's some of the most fun I have in the game. So to have 1/3rd of the savage content of this expansion be essentially an extreme trial series that will be utterly destroyed by gear is pretty disappointing.

Overall, I'm bummed and feel a bit robbed. I would greatly appreciate a more robust and illuminating explanation of how this came to happen and what they plan on doing to ensure that it never does again.

Just want to play devil's advocate here. Blizzard has been doing raid series for a lot longer, and they have major tuning issues to this day. This isn't to defend SE, but rather if the one of, if not the best, MMO's has these kind of issues, it's not an SE only problem. This is with Blizzard having a PTR as well.

I think one very important aspect that people tend to either forget, or gloss over, is that a company is only going to have a finite number of players. The playerbase, however, is magnitudes larger, and thus have a collective advantage on coming up with different strats, as well as skill level. It's the first tier, which is always undertuned by design (their own words), but in trying to add different fight design, they missed the mark on how much damage we would be doing.