The XIV encounter recipe in a nutshell

[Jeeqbit]

Wait wait, where did they say they wanted to go back to ARR/HW encounters? Because if that's the idea, they've utterly failed so far...

Sorry if I can't immediately say where they explained this, there's been lots of events, interviews, media tours, live letters and fanfests the past year. I think it was at one of the Pax events.

They explained that, starting with Stormblood, they fell into a pattern of "safe" mechanics that they knew would be received well. This was because they were afraid of the criticism of the type of mechanics they had done in ARR and Heavensward.

So they didn't say this, but observing what stopped happening in Stormblood, it's obvious they mean anything that interfered with uptime, or was annoying (like the enemies running at you thing in Stayborough), or involved stuns and status effects and things like that. And it's exactly these things they tried to do in Stayborough.

They also began explaining mechanics and making them too obvious - let's use Doma Castle as an example of this, and wanted to go back to a point where you have to wipe and "figure out" the mechanics. It's fair to say that most people who do Stayborough or Tender Valley don't "get" the mechanics on the first pull and to be quite honest, I've met plenty of people that don't get them after doing it for weeks and just eat the vulns. Had a few discussions about it recently with randoms in Stayborough. This is similar to how you can do ARR and HW dungeons and not get the mechanics for lots of runs (for example, not dragging tethers to statues in Amdapor Keep HM/The Aery, the birds in Pharos Sirius, ignoring trees in Hullbreaker, because they didn't put a gigantic arrow on them).

I'm not saying they have got it to where you or others would like it to be, but that's what they explained they wanted to do and they specifically said the new expert dungeons had their new philosophy and I can see where they have tried.

Another thing they said they wanted to do was send individual roles, such as the DPS, to fight other enemies in raids - you know like how they do in A12 or A7, so this is something to look for as well.

[Aravell]

So they didn't say this, but observing what stopped happening in Stormblood, it's obvious they mean anything that interfered with uptime, or was annoying (like the enemies running at you thing in Stayborough), or involved stuns and status effects and things like that. And it's exactly these things they tried to do in Stayborough.

I feel like fights being catered towards easy full uptime with nothing getting in the way of it just ends up making very stale fights for a melee, so it's good to hear that they're changing that if this is true.

I did notice a bit of it already in this tier though. Electrifying Witch Hunt baits may result in downtime. Elevate and Eviscerate in M1S also forces downtime (although some people got around it by finding out that if 1 person in the DPS/supports group is dead, it automatically targets the other group, so saccing 1 DPS allows the other 3 to always have full uptime during Mouser 1).