I'm going to miss Pharos SiriusFollow

I'm a little sad that Pharos is being nerfed.

I write this post after having to abandon my duty, because our healer abandoned as soon as Pharos loaded. I won't miss the roulette placing me with healers who can't stand anything other than a faceroll... but I will miss playing through a dungeon that requires people to pay attention in order to be successful.

A few of my best parties in the past few weeks have been with random people in Pharos. I posted about this in another thread, but taking down the first boss with just three people is one of my highlights in this game so far. This dungeon was hard at first, but now it just requires patience and attention. I actually wish there were more dungeons in this game that shared Pharos' difficulty, and not fewer.

After Patch 2.2, Pharos will be nerfed to be easier for the masses. I'm not anti-nerf, but I'm against nerfing Pharos.

Siren is a fun fight with nothing more than a competence check. However, having been in groups that have failed since 2.1 launched I can't blame people for leaving. When running it as a healer it's just not a fun place in a duty finder environment.

The amount of times that I've seen the first boss encounter fail, repeatedly, due to people not bothering with adds, or dodging the pretty shapes on the ground.... or their inability to learn that how the adds on Zu work with her enrage.... or how to interrupt Banish III if they don't have the damage to push past it.... or the inability to target adds (or even the correct ones), interrupt Lunatic Voice, or even bother to dodge anything.... it jades you. And after two months I just gave up and started to take the timer hit when it popped up.

I love the place, and REALLY love the opening music and wished it played more. It's a really cool place. But having to deal with fights that require some intelligence isn't really applicable when dealing with randoms. Too many people just don't care and want to blame collective failure on someone else.

It's not a bad dungeon. They really should have implemented WoW's system a little bit further: you could check off 2-3 dungeons that you absolutely did not want to do (because they realized people were leaving certain dungeons the minute they entered) and be saved from ever having to step foot in them for your 'random' daily.

I like Pharos as well. Hoping the new dungeons are up to the challenge of taking its place. I know Diabolos fights are always fun. :D

I can actually kind of see why they'd want to nerf this dungeon. I don't particularly like the nerfs, because I thought it was a lot of fun, but I think I only ever got it once in Duty Roulette where people didn't immediately leave, d/c, or wait for vote kick to be usable to get out of the time restriction. I like the suggestion someone mentioned above, where people could click a few dungeons they don't want to do in roulette. That way, the players who were only able or willing to put up with the path of least resistance wouldn't be paired up with those who were actually willing to run the more difficult dungeons. (And really, without those people constantly getting in and leaving, there'd be no need for a nerf IMO)

What really leaves me perplexed is why they'd need to further nerf AK. I mean, I would think anyone who could handle some of the higher pre-50 dungeons like Aurum Vale would find the already nerfed AK to be a cake walk. Nerfing it even further seems like a bit of overkill to me.

Edited, Mar 23rd 2014 3:54am by Susanoh

Why do people play these games? The ultimate question. There are a variety of reasons, however the predominant one I see today is to dress up a barbie doll in the easiest way feasible. If a dress for barbie is hard to get, everyone drops party and hopes for the easy way out next time. Exciting challenging content? hell no. People wanna spam their predominant ability whether it be healing defense or offense for a quick win and quick tomes while everyone does the same.

What do I want to see? I want unpredictable challenging content that puts all individuals in a .... situation. Just once in a while, I want to see a Lancer actually use his defensive move "keen flurry" in a desperate tanking situation. A monk change from fists of fire to fists of earth. A whm dpsing stone like a boss when the focus is no longer healing but dps when the timer starts counting down while the PLD takes sword oath and the warrior turns off defiance.

It makes me cringe when I see people just refuse to take another role, sit back and wipe with no fight, when the main role dies. I'm impressed when a THM keeps me alive after the main healer dies in aoe.

A bit off topic sorry, but people too often abandon a challenge that may take them beyond their natural role.

That's a bit harsh.

There are reasons why some people might not want nail-biting encounters, and it has nothing to do with laziness. As I said earlier in the thread, some people are older and have slower reaction times, some people can't keep track of everything on the screen at once with all the flashy spell effects flying everywhere, some people want to enjoy the game, without having to be hardcore and uber.

That doesn't mean they are "lazy", they just might not be good enough to put out the quality performance some people expect in their *random* groups. Is that a crime, not being good enough due to things like age, slow reaction times, etc?



Don't forget, that Random groups are Random Groups, and things like this are impossible to predict ahead of time. Does every DPS job have a "Semi tank" move? If not, then we can't put content that requires you to do so, because if you get grouped with those DPS that don't have that, then you're screwed.



It sucks when this happens, sure, but you know... when you sign up for a role, you expect to be that role, to be honest. You're geared and trained for that role. If, for example, I'm playing a DPS mage, I'm probably not geared or trained to be a qualified healer. I could try throwing out some heals, but my performance is going to be subpar and while I'm doing that, my DPS tanks horribly because I'm spending too much time casting heals, which means the whole group's DPS takes a nosedive as well.



Maybe some people don't like that other role you'd like them to play. For example, in WoW, for the longest time I hated healing. It just wasn't fun (esp during Late Wrath, and all of Cata). If I played a DPS priest, the very last thing I ever wanted to hear was "Hey dude, go Holy, we need a healer". I'd be like "hahaha, NOPE!" *drop group* because seriously... I.....don't....like.....healing. (or at least I didn't at the time).

If I wanted to heal, I woulda signed up Holy in the first place.

Did it have to be nerfed? Probably not. It's trivial if you actually do it now and know what everything does...

Am i glad it has been? Definitely, because the last 5 times it came up in Roulette i havent been able to play it even once because people leave/disband before we can even start... and no one wants to bother trying it.

What's funny is if you go to the official forums (caution if you do), you'll find an endless number of people complaining that the game isn't hard enough... but how many of these people refuse to battle through Pharos with others who may possess less godly skills?

I enjoy the challenge of coaching up others, just as I enjoy the challenge of hard boss mechanics.

They're not avoiding it because it's difficult, they're avoiding it because other people are bad at it. After the first attempt I never had a problem with the 'safety dance' in WoW, but I hated going into Naxx because I knew a few people would fail and we'd take far longer than we needed to on an otherwise easy encounter.

No, it's just annoying. I personally don't care and will usually give people the 'quick 'n nasty', but it's why people don't want to go.

"I don't want to spend 10 minutes trying to explain an encounter if we're just going to wipe for another 30 mins anyway" is the general attitude in random queues. Can't say I really blame them. Especially when the level of communication these encounters require is minimal. It would be a different story if it required voice chat to call out instruction maybe.

It's true that while the ability to give advice is becoming a lost art, so is the ability of people to listen to feedback.

After a couple of wipes, sometimes I'll say, "Let's review our strategy really quick," and then go over what everyone's roles should be, my own included. This always keeps people from feeling singled out, and usually results in a win (or a much improved performance, followed by a win).

Like I said... I've never dropped party upon getting Pharos in the duty finder, and I've only ever lost twice (once before I knew the proper strategy, and once when I actually had a clueless DPS). So either I'm just amazingly lucky, or the problem of players being totally helpless has been blown a bit out of proportion on the official forums.

Pharos was one of the rare run-of-the-mill dungeons in this game where that kind of interaction was often required, and that's probably part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. I very much liked the teamwork element of old-school FFXI, and this kind of harkens back to that.

Edited, Mar 23rd 2014 5:55pm by Thayos

IMO Pharos doesn't need to be nerfed, it just needs more of an incentive to do it. If it offered better drops or more tomestones than the other level 50 dungeons people might be more inclined to stick it out. Higher reward for higher risk, that's how I would have liked to see it addressed.



I use Keen Flurry all the time when I get aggro, but maybe that's because I mostly play as a tank and I'm used to popping defensive cooldowns...

Too cumbersome. Also, I'm not on PC.