M6s in PF is the most miserable and unfun high end fight in the game

[Valence]

To be honest I would like more fights that test your knowledge of a job and game sense like M6S. People complain about it being a wall on PF but really the wall is just the lack of skill of the players. I'm not an amazing raider by any means, I got through adds phase as a healer, caster and melee, and finally cleared.

Raiders were asking for stuff like this for years, now we got it, and a bunch of people conditioned by ShB and EW want them to nerf it when there's no need. Next week this part of the fight is gonna be so easy the challenge will be very diminished.

The tragedy is i'd go back to raiding in a heartbeat if all fights were like this, or the majority of them. But right now I can't be arsed to trudge through the usual slop that are the 3 other fights. So it feels like they're trying new things and bring back old ideas but the target audience has already fled the game anyway, and they'll cover their lack of job AoE balance and internal testing for the fight and just say that they tried new things, but players didn't like it and were walled by it.

[Taranok]

The tragedy is i'd go back to raiding in a heartbeat if all fights were like this, or the majority of them. But right now I can't be arsed to trudge through the usual slop that are the 3 other fights. So it feels like they're trying new things and bring back old ideas but the target audience has already fled the game anyway, and they'll cover their lack of job AoE balance and internal testing for the fight and just say that they tried new things, but players didn't like it and were walled by it.

M6S is hampered by 2 things really. 1, it's still a SHB/EW/DT fight. 2, it's way too fast paced and way too tightly tuned.

We got M6S as kind of a thing raiders wanted, but it's an overbaked cake that's half on fire and still breaks the game instead of a coherent, well designed fight. It has a lot of fun ideas. The knight from T5, baited aoe puddles akin to t13 earthshakers, but this time cast from adds. An epic game of keep away like A12S or T13 has. But it's all overbaked and too much. Meanwhile, the jumps are a bit too precise (both beginning and volcano,) desert as a sequence takes up an arena twice the size it should be (look at similar mechanics in TEA/UWU/UCOB) and the few sane mechanics like clock into random lite party stacks look laughably small and basic because of how silly the rest of the arena is despite being...oddly normal mechanics for the terrible encounter design EW/DT has thrown at players. Like I could see that mechanic in stormblood fights with maybe +1/2 seconds on it to help it fit stormblood's pace a tiny bit better.

The fight design has gotten so extra in FFXIV, it's just full of mechanics rot to the point where even if the devs do something truly interesting, they completely botch the execution and still make a miserable fight. Because they're focusing too much on the mechanics getting harder/more engaging and not enough on the jobs. So much so that they break jobs to fit the mechanics instead of fitting mechanics to the jobs. It's frustrating, because one enriches the game, and the other erodes it.

[Miohazuki]

True but good people in PF shouldn't be gated for weeks on end because a fight is designed seemingly only for statics or PF with week 7 gear. It makes good players who can't static and don't have 12 hours a day to PF week 1 want to unsubscribe. I kinda do right now. 2% for days now is killing me. I spent 10 hours progging TEA to clear and 15 hours doing this. TEA was fun even in PF. This blows.

You are not losing anything apart from your ego if you finish it a bit later then others

[Kandraxx]

M6S is hampered by 2 things really. 1, it's still a SHB/EW/DT fight. 2, it's way too fast paced and way too tightly tuned.

We got M6S as kind of a thing raiders wanted, but it's an overbaked cake that's half on fire and still breaks the game instead of a coherent, well designed fight. It has a lot of fun ideas. The knight from T5, baited aoe puddles akin to t13 earthshakers, but this time cast from adds. An epic game of keep away like A12S or T13 has. But it's all overbaked and too much. Meanwhile, the jumps are a bit too precise (both beginning and volcano,) desert as a sequence takes up an arena twice the size it should be (look at similar mechanics in TEA/UWU/UCOB) and the few sane mechanics like clock into random lite party stacks look laughably small and basic because of how silly the rest of the arena is despite being...oddly normal mechanics for the terrible encounter design EW/DT has thrown at players. Like I could see that mechanic in stormblood fights with maybe +1/2 seconds on it to help it fit stormblood's pace a tiny bit better.

The fight design has gotten so extra in FFXIV, it's just full of mechanics rot to the point where even if the devs do something truly interesting, they completely botch the execution and still make a miserable fight. Because they're focusing too much on the mechanics getting harder/more engaging and not enough on the jobs. So much so that they break jobs to fit the mechanics instead of fitting mechanics to the jobs. It's frustrating, because one enriches the game, and the other erodes it.

The problem is that this game doesn't even have classes, a class direction, class synergies, class mechanics or real class abilities. There's nothing they could focus on or improve. It doesn't matter if its called Job or class. The Jobs in this game are basically only a selection of which button sequence you want to hammer for hours on end with different accompanying effects.

Compare that to WoW, an actually good game, every class has a unique feel, every class has standalone skills that impact the game world in ways other than "deals damage", you make choices depending on the situation or assessment, not because something is the next logical step in your 123>4>resource1>56>resource2>8 fixed rotation that never changes and every class synergizes with each other class in unique ways.

And why would they change anything as long as theres still some people left who gladly eat up and pay. Look, they're already forming a line with their plates in hand to get the next Savtrash or Ultislop served out of Master P's soup pot.

[Arohk]

Compare that to WoW, an actually good game, every class has a unique feel, every class has standalone skills that impact the game world in ways other than "deals damage", you make choices depending on the situation or assessment, not because something is the next logical step in your 123>4>resource1>56>resource2>8 fixed rotation that never changes and every class synergizes with each other class in unique ways.

The illusion of choice, yes.
Even with talent trees there is one best talent tree that does the most damage and that is what everyone plays.

[angienessyo]

Really the only thing I didn't like in 6 was aiming myself for the wings is just a little finnicky on controller sometimes. I was initially having trouble with targeting the correct target on controller but swapping to cone and targeting the closest mob made it less awful.

[Taranok]

Compare that to WoW, an actually good game, every class has a unique feel, every class has standalone skills that impact the game world in ways other than "deals damage", you make choices depending on the situation or assessment, not because something is the next logical step in your 123>4>resource1>56>resource2>8 fixed rotation that never changes and every class synergizes with each other class in unique ways.

The only thing I disagree with is WoW's class design is almost exclusively procedural stuff. You press buttons on cooldown in an order, or proc in an order. Then default to '1, 1, 1, 1, 1' until the next cooldown/proc. Their tank and healer design at a meta level blows FFXIV out of the water, but some people like the consistency of a fixed rotation, myself included.

That said, I mostly agree otherwise. At the very least FFXIV could learn a lot from WoW's tank and healer design.

[Absurdity]

That said, I mostly agree otherwise. At the very least FFXIV could learn a lot from WoW's tank and healer design.

Certainly when it comes to how those classes achieve their primary purpose.

Every tank in XIV is just the same flat % mitigation cooldowns and then some slightly different flavour ability, which rarely ever change your mitigation plan.
Meanwhile the tanks in WoW achieve "mitigate damage to not die and smooth out damage spikes to make your healer's life easier" in very different ways.

[Taranok]

Certainly when it comes to how those classes achieve their primary purpose.

Every tank in XIV is just the same flat % mitigation cooldowns and then some slightly different flavour ability, which rarely ever change your mitigation plan.
Meanwhile the tanks in WoW achieve "mitigate damage to not die and smooth out damage spikes to make your healer's life easier" in very different ways.

It's all a binary pass-fail, and when every healer has 50,000 separate oGCDs as strong as a medica 1, it's no surprise healing and tank design from a role perspective is complete garbage.

[Voryn]

M6S is literally the anti raidplan fight from what I've seen. It goes against everything that the current raiding community does which is memorizing plans and executing a set of instructions to the letter. It requires people to think by themselves and talk with their party.

Is this a decent summary of it?

Not entirely. Everything before and after adds phase is still the usual “know the strategy, do it right, make sure the boss dies too” unless you count the random dodge’s during the cactuses and the lightning as exceptions.

Adds phase itself is still following a plan, mainly just needing adjustments based in how things are going. As either MT or OT I’m still grabbing specific adds and taking them to specific places. The things that end up varying are
-When to spend resources and when to use either single target or aoe attacks so things die. This needs to be adjusted a bit based on the team, and also potentially each pull based on where the cat is randomly jumping to.
-How to move around, if there are more manta puddles than there should be. Sometimes they can take longer to die
-How to mitigate and heal, because if things die either sooner or later then the tanks will have taken either less or more damage. We also finally have to care about the which tanks and which healers are in the party

So it’s not like it’s the complete opposite of the usual Savage raid. More so that the adds phase takes several steps in a different direction, which is fun but also hard when a lot of players haven’t done it as much before, and then more so when in PF and playing with completely different players every time