Endgame Post from a JP PlayerFollow

It took you half an hour? OMG, why didn't you just move out of the way when gigantic flashing circle appeared on the ground? Oh, that's right...

Exactly. Though I wouldn't call it poor so much as overused and antiquated in this case. I mean, a lot of people here might remember the pattern recognition designs required to beat some of the harder levels of Megaman games. And, a lot of people think that sort of thing is ok. For me, I feel as if it appeals to a certain audience and when you go as far as to announce that you're making content that gets easy over time, and hing the fight's mechanical execution off of instant-kill mechanics, you're being counterproductive to your goals.


On a side note on speculation:

I think one of the reasons people mess up on the basic is that they're constantly looking for the unique mechanics that are going to trip them up. Always worried about that thing they're not anticipating, then suddenly something simple comes up, they wind up tunnel-visioning and ******** up. It's human nature, but when it's not people you know and care about? It gets very frustrating. And even then, if it's the same person over and over again, it can frustrate you even further.

Edited, Jun 17th 2014 3:19pm by Hyrist

Don't be. Twintania is a tough fight to learn, and it requires people wanting to put in the effort. You get a group of people that you run with, and mesh fairly well together, and she'll go down in time. ADS was a fairly big step up mechanically from Cadecus, Elevator Trash Boss was a numberical crunch step up from ADS, and Twintania is mostly a step up on both fronts from the previous three.

The fight itself is 5 phases, but within each phase is a fairly small set of moves. If you approach it phase by phase, not try to worry about perfecting everything at once, and realize it's going to take time you'll kill her eventually. Mistakes can be recovered from. Ignore the enrage timer completely, just get comfortable with each phase, and worry about the enrage timer if/when you hit it.

If you go in and expect the Echo to solve all your problems, and not want to take any responsibility for poor performance and continually make excuses (like a lot of people do), you'll never get past her. If you go in with the approach of "We can do this, and we're not afraid to put in the time." then you've literally already won half the fight with your attitude alone. Hell, our first T5 kill back in November I walked into a wall during the Divebomb phase. Not was knocked into, walked, because I went too far into the dip, and we got her down. Winning fights in this game like Twintania, Titan EX, and Nael are all mostly about attitudes.

Too many people go for mediocrity/half-*** attempts and expect her to spit out loot due to echo buff like the previous turns, state things happen for no reason, that you can't recover from a single mistake, or don't want to try to get a semi-static force together you're virtually stuck on that fight. That defeatist attitude *never* works.



Happy's videos are a good starting point for anything looking to get their feet wet in the harder fights. They're not perfect, and usually any class recommendations/comments should be taken with a grain of salt, but for the majority of the videos they cover what you need to know.

Each fight's mechanics are different, and not every single one is actually pertinent to you depending on your class. Death Sentence means nothing to a non-tank/DPS, Swarm doesn't mean anything to anyone outside of the MT, Venomous Tail only really matters to the healers, if someone's not on tower rotations then Avatar is nothing but a giant pewpew fight for some of your group, so on and so forth.

Happy's videos are meant as an overview, not a majorly in-depth guide designed to hold your hands. You look, you get a glimpse to the mechanics, and then you go entire the fight so you can actually understand what's going on.





Happy's are KISS and get the point across. The many Japanese guides I've seen spew a bunch of pointless, random information that serves no purpose other than to inflate and muddy the waters.

Oh... if it helps for those who don't like Happy's videos or don't want to listen to the japaneese ones...

MTQCapture seems to make fairly comprehensive videos as well. Just to help broaden the scope of available materiel for people. They haven't cleared 9 yet though.

^^^ This.

I love those, well narrated and amusing as well as distilling the essential points.

How much of this game's content have you actually played? Because what you describe is exactly what XIV is like as well with the inclusion of random mechanics that more often than not will one shot anyone who isn't a tank (and occasionally can one shot a tank) or instant wipe of everyone.



Edited, Jun 18th 2014 11:59am by Theonehio

FFXI may have been "hardcore" in the sense that it took a good deal of time to reach the max level, but in terms of easing players into end game and giving players the tools to go off and experience some real end game content with their friends, FFXI was the far more casual and easy going game IMO. I can see how FFXIV's heavily structured and seemingly unforgiving fights to players who haven't memorized the script would have its appeal, but they can be fairly stressful for some players to get into, and extremely restrictive in terms of just getting people playing together and having fun. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a problem that this type of content exists, but it's really the only type of end game content they've put out so far, leaving players who don't want to deal with the current end game with, well, no end game whatsoever.

FFXI did have its share of events that a more casual player would never touch (HNMs, for one example), but it had some end game stuff that was fairly accessible as well, and something these events had in common is that you could actually add an extra player to an already established group and show them the ropes, and it wasn't an overly stressful experience. I was actually welcomed into events like sky and dynamis, and despite not knowing exactly what to do, downloading third party apps, watching videos, and reading guides, I actually helped out. I wasn't exactly a key member or an expert at first, but I was still able to help my group rather than hinder them, and the more I played, the better I got. Eventually, I ended up leading a few events like sky and limbus and would regularly recruit new players, some of which had no experience or knowledge of the events, and they would be of help to us too.

I don't think FFXIV needs to copy FFXI events feature or feature, but I'd still love for FFXIV to take one page out of FFXI's book and make some real end game content that I can invite all of my friends to and just have some fun.

Edited, Jun 19th 2014 5:04am by Susanoh

Because Allagan Rot is completely trivalized by the fact that you stack up 5 people and literally ignore it for the rest of the fight if the 5 point strategy is too much for a particular group.

Or just ignore it completely and deal with the Haste buff on the boss (especially now that High Voltage is a complete joke).

Yeah, this game really feels like it traded off long difficult party mechanics with quick-dodge RTS rapid fight strats.

I would love to see more fights like:
Ruby Weapon
Ultima Weapon
DoomGaze
WarMech
Dynamis Lord
Yojimbo
etc...

Where the fights were not won or lost by a single action, but by either obscenely overpowered characters, or a very well planed strategy.

Basically, I would like to see more fights where you know you are fighting something, and that your abilities ultimately matter (e.g. stun works, the resistance bit is fine, but if you have an ability you can use it). Where your party can influence the direction of the fight more-so then are they still attacking, is their DPS above this magic number?

Where healers actually feel like they are doing more than spamming cure every time it's up.

Where people don't feel like they constantly are learning a complex Old English Ballroom dance, requiring perfect positioning and timing at all times.

Basically I would like more RP and less RTS in my RPG. And I am not talking about RPing, I am just talking about the more classic feel of an RPG.

But, meh, I will stick with my crafting until I can start ninja-ing.

^^
This.

Not much strategy involved beyond "Chainspell Stun and pray he doesn't get much of anything out, because if he does, you die."

That's just as bad as "If 1-2 people miss an insta-kill attack the whole group dies".

Final Fantasy Boss Fights I -love-:

FFX had a few:

1). Zanarkand Guardian (the thing on the mountain). This guy has ridiculously awesome AI and if you didn't cheese the fight by being overpowered, the whole battle is a Reflect/Silence/Paralyze dance. He casts heals on himself so you better put a Reflect on him. Oh, but he will sometimes dispel that Reflect. Put it back up ASAP! Don't let Haste wear off Yuna. Then he starts with the Silence/Paralyze AoE, don't you dare let Yuna get silenced/paralyzed! Then after awhile he starts putting Reflect on YOU so he can bounce heals off of you to heal himself, so you better keep those dispelled! But you still have to watch the boss, don't let Reflect wear off the boss, and you still have to keep Yuna from getting Silenced or Paralyzed. Crazy, Crazy fight where you're doing whatever you can to stop the boss from healing itself while dealing with its attacks and trying to do damage. You can mess up, of course, but that drags the fight out, as he heals himself for 50% of his entire health pool. You'll eventually wear out of resources, or you'll mess up and get killed due to the silences/paralyzes.

2). Yunalesca. Oh, Yunalesca... lol. How many players have you bent over the first time they tried you? She zombifies your entire group which makes you immune to the AoE Instant Death she throws, BUT she also uses either Poison or Regen (both act the same on a zombie) so you can't just stay a Zombie. You end up having to do this Zombie/Alive dance; you have to keep your zombie healthy, but also keep at least 1 (preferrably 2) alive people in the group to keep them healed up and allow Yunalesca to turn them into zombies, and make sure that the zombie is never almost dead (otherwise you get hit with AoE Instant Death and then the zombie drops dead before you can resurrect the dead people). The only insta-fail here is if your entire group is alive (non-zombie) when she uses AoE Instant Death or if your zombies drop dead from Regen/Poison. Simply genius boss battle design.

3). Chocobo Eater (I forget the name of this boss). A boss that had several 'states' and the goal of the battle was to kill it, but DON'T let it push you off the cliff. If you get pushed off the cliff, it isn't game over but you lose the reward from killing it. It had certain times where you were supposed to attack it, and IIRC, you had to defend to prevent being pushed back towards the cliff edge, and there were certain times you could attack it to push it away from the cliff edge.

That's the kinda stuff I love in Final Fantasy games, and few other JRPGs did this kinda stuff with their boss battles.

Lol I haven't played 11 since 75 days (stopped half way through wotg)

Do my memories of dyna lord was a very boring fight were you either did it right and Cake walk to victory or somebody messed up and better luck next time

Truth be told I'm sure there was another strategy but I don't know anybody who ever used it or ever heard of another way to beat him besides chain spell stun lock 2 hours Zerg.

Edited, Jun 20th 2014 1:44pm by domice

The more and more you try to refute tactics and statements the more childish you look.

Gravity Well is a reticule spell aimed at the spot where the indicator person is at the beginning of the cast. Gravity Well is a two second cast. All you have to do is actually pay attention (novel concept, and if you're actually doing Allagan Rot and not enrage method anyway you'll be planning on paying attention) and move either left or right as it's casting. If someone gets hit guess what: you can Esuna/Leeches the Heavy component off of them!

Debuff removal! What a novel concept!

From there it's either left or right again when the laser is aimed. Even if someone got hit then it wasn't the end of the world as unless they were low to begin with (original Medica II ticked for more and kept people topped off) -- which is a healing issue that needs to be addressed -- they wouldn't die to the laser.

Situational. Awareness.

Novel concept, I know.

Again, it's laughable that you still believe a single death was a wipe on Rot. If they were next on the jump list, and Allagan Rot had less then 4 seconds perhaps. If they weren't you easily had time to raise and one of the other DPS (even if melee) could have covered. We ran with SCH, WHM, BRD, BLM, DRG, and MNK and the MNK covered the 5th spot when it time was called. If someone died the DRG covered until the rotation was fixed again.

You adjust. You adapt.

You don't make excuses, which is what you're trying to do.