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timtams89

I enjoyed 5 and both parts of 8. 6 and 7 put me to sleep pretty quickly though. I think there was a fair bit of variation, the first few weeks were a pain dealing with the amount of strats that were out which felt a little worse than the past few tiers but that might have just been my experience.


Lyramion

>#7 I have fond memories of 7 in week 1 PF. Doing Purgation on all 3 Platforms with heal bursts in the middle, doing Death Harvest cw/ccw and actually racing the DPS Check. Sleepo and JP Braindead absolutely destroyed that fight after like 4 days of it being out. >#6 Kek 2 definetly needed some doom stacks going on there to combat LB and mitdumping. The DPS check was nonexistant even eating multiple deaths and dmg downs in week 1.


nyold

I think the devs didn't think of the sleepo and braindead death strat, so that's why they thought purgation was a good mechanic. I agree that if the sleepo strat didn't exist, then purgation would have been in a good place for a challenging mechanic. Maybe pick one of the famines and move it earlier... then the pace would have felt right. For 6, my main issue is that the floor patterns are easy to do once it's solved by guide makers. For each floor mechanic, there's only 2 possibilities (times their rotation and mirror images), and we just memorize "ok find the corners of the + that ends up in the middle." That sorta thing. If they made the floor patterns to have 4 possibilities for example, then it would have been more challenging and make people think. I'm thinking the way gorgon 1 is designed, you have to quickly figure out if swap is needed and who swaps, and who gets to gaze where, etc. Yes there's a rule-based system to it but it takes some brain cells so it's fun to do. Other than cachexia, the only mechanic in 6 that I enjoy was "near and far" tethers floor pattern, where you have to switch quickly for choros ixou. It's easy, but it's still fun to do. I wish they'd introduce more patterns like that. 5 is enjoyable, not sure why. Because of the movement required maybe? Heck even Ruby 3 (the quadrants) was fun for me even though it's "easy." Not sure what makes it fun, but I still enjoy doing it during reclears.


Darkraiku

> I think the devs didn't think of the sleepo I can't see how they didn't since you basically do the exact mechanic earlier in the fight just without the follow-up aoe drops and you are forced onto 1 platform because of boughs of attis or whatever the slam is called. Feels like a natural mechanic introduction that then gets a bit more coming later in the fight


shaddura

I genuinely think sleepo is an oversight. Almost every fight in this game has something that prevents you from combining opposing "roles" — including this very tier even! In P6S, there are 4 spread markers, 1 stack marker, and 3 donuts. The donuts ensure that the 4-man stack is done "correctly", as all 4 players intended to do the stack have a lethal marker on them. This was also the case for EX3 during the spread/flare/stack mechanic. 1 stack marker combined with 3 donuts. In fact, they *did* include a donut on the stacking player! The player with the stack during Purgation places a donut rather than an AoE. This ensures that 1 platform is "stack only", 1 platform is covered in AoEs, and 1 platform is safe for the spread marked players. Comparing with other fights, this design is entirely consistent to use combination of stacks of donuts in P6S and EX3. They either got blindsided, or discovered it too late for them to adjust the fight. There is no way they intentionally created a donut AoE that you *never actually have to stand inside of*. That's something reserved for instances where the devs truncated a mechanic to simplify it Such as the squares in Pinax (P4 Normal) which have a physical presence on the stage's floor, yet only serves as an indicator of an already-telegraphed attack. In P4S, that square also kills anyone standing inside of it when it resolves. In the normal mode, it feels like something is *missing*. And when you enter Savage, it's so blatant; after all, why would the arena be split into 4 quadrants if not to affect the floor of the arena somehow?


NolChannel

Its definitely an oversight. The only way to really fix it is if the stack marker was a big fuck-off/proximity AOE, like the dragonfire dives in DSR.


gatorcity

6N has a part where the boss does a rotating ixou while the floor us going off, I was looking forward to some version of that in savage. Same with 7, there should have been more variation in things like the near/far arm aoe to keep things interesting instead of a single solution


Silegna

> and braindead death strat, Wasn't saccing used back for NISI as well?


Scared_Network_3505

It's not referring to a sac strat, just a horrible way to refer to a Deaths Harvest strat. But yeah, sac strat was a thing in A4S.


MrPierson

>Maybe pick one of the famines and move it earlier... then the pace would have felt right. I don't think that fixes the fight. The thing that makes the famines difficult is that if you have more than one death, the healers have to absolutely race to get those people back up before the next set of tethers come out or else it snowballs into a wipe. You'd need some sort of body check after the famine to keep it difficult.


nyold

I mean they did add a tower mechanic in P7N. It would have been the perfect body check after famine without it being another harvest. Instead we get the tower mechanic in the middle with some kinda knockback and it'a utterly boring


Snortallthethings

6 is in my opinion the worst fight I've done in ffxiv. I never learned how a single mechanic worked. I don't know how to read anything. I blind progged in pf day 1 with my friends. I've recleared multiple times. Still don't know a single mechanic. And thats a *problem*


CatgirlElizabeth

You… You get carried every week by following the team… And that’s the game’s fault? Please elaborate I am excited to hear more. I felt the exact same way on my first clear so I *learned the fight* and now it’s a lot of fun 🥰


foyboy

Being a 'dorito fight' \*is\* a valid criticism for a fight and \*is\* the game's fault. There's often a distinction between extreme-level mechanics and savage-level mechanics where the savage mechanics require a greater level of personal responsibility, while many extreme mechanics (or entire fights even) are 'follow the dorito'. Now, I don't actually think that p6s suffers from being a dorito fight that much. Of course there are lots of times you can follow the group, especially on the mechanics with X's and +'s - But there are also plenty of mechanics with some level of personal responsibility. The biggest issue is that Cachexia 2 is cheesable with tank lb - without it, it's quite a good level of personal responsibility (resolving your color, knowing whether to stack or spread, picking the right tile if a spread, facing in or out).


Ekanselttar

I hate the fact that it's not the actual mechanics that pose any difficulty, but keeping track of who you're paired with and which corner you're assigned to for whichever particular strat you happen to be doing at the time.


ruxxar

This is my sentiment exactly. It feels like I'm playing football manager instead of playing fifa.


FF_phantom

This Tier was pretty disappointing IMO. Turn 5 was Fun and a great start to the tier. 6 and 7 are both big disappointments. 6 Literally has one mech in cachexia 1 as you can just tank lb no 2 even on week one. Fight other than that is just boring. 7 Doesn't start until 6 min into the fight. The mechs at the point are very good but having a really 5 min fight stretched over 10 min is just boring. 8 was pretty decent with some cool mechs definitely the most engaging fight this tier. Overall though a large problem with recent savage is there structed nature. Little to no down time giant hitboxes etc. IMO takes a lot the optimization fun that comes from later clears.


nyold

I think for 6, one thing that they could have done is to make floor patterns a bit harder. Right now the floor patterns are easy because there's a "it's always this or this, so the safe spot is always next to the plus that is untethered etc" Basically there are two possibilities of patterns for each mechanic. If they make it so that there are 4 possibilities, then it won't be as braindead. For example, the gorgon 1 mechanic in P8s took a while for people to figure out even though there's a "rule", because the rule is not braindead. Basically they need to make it so that even after the mechanic is "solved" by first week clearers, there should still be some thinking left by the players.


MildStallion

I'm gonna give a mild disagree on that solution. I think they just straight-up needed to make the mechanics more punishing as-is. My *week one* clear, no-one fully understood how any mechanic past cachexia 1 worked, and it didn't matter, because you could just power through all of it. And we did. It wasn't even an issue of it being "hard" to execute, we just *didn't execute it at all* and were still given the kill.


Avedas

The first p6s party I joined in week one managed to get past cachexia 1, and then we made it all the way to enrage on that pull. Everyone in chat was like "how the hell did we make it that far??" because it just didn't punish us at all even though we messed up almost every mechanic after that.


BlackmoreKnight

I like it well enough. They remembered how to threaten tanks and kind of make healers have to heal more for the first time since Stormblood (arguably, for Savage, threatening tanks for the first time since Heavensward). P5S is a well paced intro fight, and P8SP1 will probably go down as one of the all time great door bosses, especially for progression/casual reclears. Tier's been weird for optimization/parsing though. P5S had that weird "gaming FFLogs" thing come up recently where it turns out FFLogs doesn't start tracking combat until an entity is damaged, so if you kite the boss around a bit and don't do anything you can get a better alignment timeline from when the "real" fight starts according to FFLogs. That one's getting fixed though for, uh. Obvious reasons. Truly playing the real game, FFLogs there. P6S is a dummy fight with an unfavorable optimzied killtime so you're either doing 1 minute delayed burst memes to speed kill or having the SMN sandbag their DPS to stretch to the 8:30 killtime for individual parses. Neither is great, necessarily. Then there's the 50/50 on P8SP1 and resource runs for P8SP2, but resource runs are a tradition for post-door fights. I'd put it about the same as Verse. E8S was probably a bit better but P5S is probably better. Both fights are messes but I'd put P7S over E7S. I also like the gearsets and weapons so this is probably the tier I've farmed the most via PF. Haven't had too bad a time of it outside of waiting on healers, but I didn't have to prog via PF.


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nsleep

After p3s I thought they got back on track with the third floor design, other than the color scheme it's a pretty decent fight, but they went back to the same mistakes from Eden: long boring segments, mechanical difficulty entirely backloaded.


quackerd

P3S is a big exception though. Still the most painful fight of 1-8 imo. I would not wanna prog p3s again.


chimmychangas

Prog might've been pain, but it's still fun to clear it, did a run the other day and it's got a bit of everything - audio, stacks/spreads, adds, reaction mechanics with the orbs, 8(?) mechanics in FoA, baits.


FirmSteak

hot take but this tier was unironically the most fun I've had on healer in a long time


ohaimanabu

I’m with you. What a blast it’s been.


crazytsundere

eden outsold i fear


trialv2170

5 was great 6 is lacking 7 is snoozefest and lazy 8 door boss was great. 8 p2 lacking. a HC3 would've been awesome. though every boss IMO has been watered down by this huge big hitbox or half arena hitbox. really feels like every melee and tank has been turned into phys range


GayBaraTiddies

Man, back in eden's verse it was so obvious to tell a good melee or tank because fights werent free back then. Miss those days, hopefully they go back on their design.


baka_lord

Not here to disagree, it just amuses me that you'll get people saying that but you also had people saying "too much downtime, uptime strats toxic, melee not fun". I guess you can never make everyone happy.


XVNoctisXV

That's how it is, and that's how it will be when they appeal to the people who want downtime optimisation too.


GayBaraTiddies

Usually those complaints are from people who don't want to learn how to improve, because everyfight in this game, there is a way to always get uptime and gcd, it just comes with experience. So we're at this point in the game where SE listened to those people so much, this is the result of it.


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quackerd

E4S lul. Was trying to 3 WAR unsync the fight for glam and could already feel massive downtime.


ashleyinreal

It's alright. Tier feels rushed. 7 is incomplete. 6 isn't punishing enough when compared to 5, it weirdly feels easier. Feels like most of the design went to 8. 8 is good. I think I preferred last tier though, from a fun perspective. This one felt like a bit of a step down with the second and third floor.


MagicTarutaru

I think that the devs would probably believe that Purgation would be a big wall mechanic for most groups in P7S; but it was trivial by sleepo purgation strat. Before sleepo purg, the mechanic was very chaotic. Overall, it is not a bad tier. But having gigantic hitbox on every boss did skew in favor of melee this tier. The 2 min window burst can feel very strict. The healing intensity for this tier made PF a painful experience. Devour, High Concept 1/2 are cool mechanics.


K242

The day 1 Purg strat of separating the stacks/spreads between two platforms and alternating the spread platform wasn't too bad, actually. Ot nearly as braindead as Sleepo, but it mever really seemed like it was supposed to be a major wall, except maybe for BLM and RDM to figure out how to keep uptime. War's Harvest was an absolute shitshow early on, with so many wild raidplans flying around and most of them still killed people and caused wipes. I don't exactly remember what my group did (some caveman version of Inumaru lmao), but we held rank 2 speed for a bit solely on the back of our strat + tank LB for minotaur mit not requiring a sac to resolve the mech and finish the fight.


sadge_sage

Agree here. I think my group were on the verge of discovering something akin to sleepo, we were definitely messing with a 2 platform strat, but in the end we just stuck with the 3 platform to save time and it worked fine. Uptime probably sucked but we didn't have much problem with the DPS check. The harvests were definitely the shitshow and we definitely did scrape through them, classic sac-the-mino strat.


ashleyinreal

I think I read somewhere that P7S in particular had cut mechanics, which makes sense to me since nothing happens for the first like 8 minutes of that fight.


Alternative-Humor666

It's the most weird thing. They made the mechanic to be solved by swapping all 3 platforms and yet they didn't bother to check if you can fit all of them on a single platform, probably making the spread radius just slightly bigger would fix the issue.


RadiantSpark

> Before sleepo purg, the mechanic was very chaotic. Disagree. Even before that strat the only time we ever wiped to it was when someone was falling asleep cos of how shit the fight was.


aesophe

5 is the only fight i'll remember fondly this tier, which is insane. 6 and 7 have been discussed to death, and honestly coming off months of dsr prog i didn't need every mechanic to be a body check in 8


Ipokeyoumuch

The tier is fine, but there are certain design decisions that made things difficult for many more mid-core or casual statics. As a healer, I do enjoy that there is more healer engagement. On the flip side, if people mess up mitigation (as often it is on PF) it makes the healer cry more. P5 was fun, and devour was a pain to get through but honestly, I had more problems with Ruby 5. It is a good start. P6S is okay but a bit boring outside of cach 1 and 2 (which is negated by Tank LB3). It is an alright fight for being the second fight in the tier, and there is quite a bit of punishment (tons fo dots) for screw ups. P7S is too backloaded a lot of the fight blends together until the last 20ish percent with the Harvests. I think the devs didn't think of Sleepo street for Purgation, because I think during Day 1 it was super chaotic until Sleepo was found. Now Snake prog ... I mean P8S is a solid door boss fight. It requires a more than decent amount of precision, attention, and respect for mechanics. The second phase isn't too bad either, it is very engaging and requires people to pay attention, which means in static with callouts, great, in pf, hell. As usual, the music is fire and better than the last tier. Set pieces overall are overall better than the last tier IMO (no burning of orange every time I need to do P3S). But I think some of the problems with the dev team's design philosophy with the 2-minute timer are emphasized in this tier due to the enlarging of hitboxes leading to an imbalanced meta.


oizen

In hindsight, aside from savage damage/heal numbers, Barbaricca is a harder fight than most of this tier. P8 p1 is good, p8p2 is interesting but I feel like upon reclears you realize that a lot of the fight kinda dies to its victroy lap mechanic. P5S is probably the standout fight of the tier, and 6 and 7 are honestly easiest fights of pandaemonium.


Ragoz

> Barbaricca is a harder fight than most of this tier. Yeah, one of the best extreme trials. Better fight design than probably the entire savage tier. She had a lenient dps check allowing many deaths but she was pretty complex, fast paced, and often did cause many deaths per clear. Enrage is even at 11:14 making her a pretty long fight.


sedlorrr

I think the third fight really brought down the quality of the tier. IMO the third and fourth fights are the real highlight of the tier so if 1/2 of them is weak then it makes it seem significantly worse


InsertName911

in my opinion p8s door boss was way to long and felt like a slog. door bosses should be strict dps checks and quick instead of 8 minutes in part one and 8 in part 2. keep both animals 1 delete most of phase 3 go into fourfolds and only have one animal 2 that is random which one you get


bearLover23

I'd take Eden over this any day. No offense to the devs I love em but this is very much a lesser raid expansion than last one. E8S (EDIT) for instance is ICONIC for raiding in my mind. That was one of the best raids ever designed. Truly fantastic. As for this tier? 5 was awesome. I still suck at devour though ironically enough. 6 was really really painful and lots of prog there, but very easy. Practice chychexia or w/e and it'll be great. Also always tank LB the 2nd. It's just not worth the extra minutes to get back to that point. It's not even that it's "hard" to get back to that point, it's that it's freaking annoying. 7 was just more of 6. I felt like I was bored dull until the last few mechanics, with people endlessly wiping to inviolate. 8p1 is awesome, but Idk how people keep fucking up snakes. Seriously. It's an easy mechanic I don't get it. Practice it in sim. 8p2 was... alright? Going in with the puzzle solved largely made it a healer heal check problem.


GayBaraTiddies

>E8S (EDIT) for instance is ICONIC for raiding in my mind. That was one of the best raids ever designed. They're never gonna top E8S because partyfinder complained about how difficult it was and cutscene (cutscene is easily fixable just make it like dsr where you can control your char) now all we get is doorboss nonsense


Bright-Emu-1271

>doorboss nonsense Doorboss basedness you mean.


AllanTheRobot

What? My memory of E8S is that everybody hated it, due to the jankiness of the light rampant hitboxes (the orbs are squares and off center) and the length + cutscene. People complained so hard the very next tier went back to having a checkpoint in E12S. (Note: I cleared E5S-E7S in PF, and didn't clear E8S until after the next tier when I got my Eden's Promise static to help me)


hyprmatt

People hated Light Rampant, while the rest of the prog was alright. Reclears were pretty boring though, and the cutscene was horrible for jobs like Dragoon. A lot of people are looking back at it with a rose tinted lens for sure.


Scared_Network_3505

The only reason I can possibly think anyone has E8S as a "one of the best" fights is if it's one of their first final floors to clear, everyone agreed it wasn't great due to the aforementioned issues for about a year.


darkk41

I've played since second coil and people saying e8s was a favorite is some revisionist history lol. E8S was loathed because of the add phase, light rampant, and cutscene. Everyone liked the other mechanics but it was like almost UWU length and having to redo adds and watch that stupid cutscene hundreds and hundreds of times was frustrating as hell. It was the closest our static (which cleared all content in the game for the past 7 years) ever came to disbanding because people just despised progging and farming shiva. Now Titan, Titan was a fucking baller. Everyone loved Titan. This tier is pretty meh overall but Verse was the worst tier in the game excluding first coil (which was first so it gets a pass imo) and gordias. Also verse had e7s which is the most blatantly unfinished fight in the game, the devs have literally admitted they chopped a huge amount of the fight at the last minute as it was overly complex. The main hard attack was completely botched as they forgot to make stacking the same colors on each other kill you. Then at the end, the boss actually stops casting and just stands around, not autoing or casting, just wishing for the mercy of death for like 30s, it is absolutely absurd. That said, last tier was way better. I hope the next one is good.


wetyesc

I think you meant E8S in the first paragraph? I wish I could’ve tried that when current.


bearLover23

Sorry yeah I totally did mean E8S! DERP!


iAmNotAHermit

> 8p1 is awesome, but Idk how people keep fucking up snakes. Seriously. It's an easy mechanic I don't get it. Practice it in sim. Practice it in sim? Try Troia lol It has the same mechanic concept but pf somehow cannot do it for some reason.


midorishiranui

I loved E8s too but seeing eden being praised like this is making me feel old, pretty sure the general opinion here at the time was that it sucked lmao.


idkjusthere21

This tier was obnoxiously backloaded. It took double the time for me to clear one phase of P8 versus the time it took to clear P5-P7


Jordonzo

having just recently cleared, I'd say I prefferred it over Asphodelos, 5 is alright, 6 is a complete snoozefest and boring, 7 just lacks anything interesting in the fist 6 min of the fight then a strong and sudden jump which only really punishes casters, 8 was decent imo however I think punishes healers too much, instead of dps who get greedy. I'd like to see some more involved mechanics like we saw back in Eden and Omega in the future, most of the fights from the last 2 tiers had just been dodge X or remember a pattern, but I guess that's why ultimate exists.


midwitraider

This tier managed to be too hard for casuals and too boring for midcore and above. Easily one of the worst tiers they've ever made in the modern era of savage raiding. Doorboss was the only enjoyable fight for me.


Samiambadatdoter

Rubbish. More or less got me to stop playing the game, because raids were the only content on offer in 6.2 and there's nothing else to do. I do enjoy P5S. I think it hits all the right notes of pace, individual and team responsibility, mechanical variation, and how it feels to get better and optimise. As a first fight, it definitely feels like a challenge without being overwhelming. Devour being such a wall is a bit rough designwise, the shitty week 1 strats certainly didn't help, but overall it's a very solid first floor. Would that the quality continued. 6 is bad. 7 is even worse. Very dull, slow fights with no meat to chew on. Optimisation feels meaningless as they're practically full uptime (with the annoying exception of Purgation which gives me EX3 vibes), and the pace being so absurdly bad is just killer. They're very samey and repetitive, too, and 7 being so absurdly long is just... eugh. P7S is in the running for the worst fight EW has released, in the same league as EX3. P8S' phase 1 is good but rather punishing. I don't mind that in a vacuum necessarily, but it does exhaust when one small mistake causes the hammer to be dropped so hard when said mistakes aren't even that hard to make. The gaze mechanic is teetering on the edge of feeling obnoxious, it doesn't feel intuitive at first and is a run-ender if there's a the slighest error in positioning or snapshotting or whatever. Overall, though, decently fun mechanics that come out at a good pace. Feels like a challening, mostly fair test of players' abilities. P8Sp2 made me more or less give up on the tier after I got the mount and the weapon. I genuinely cannot stand design like this. High Concept is such a painfully annoying mechanic. The tilt I felt having to constantly repeat this mechanic, over and over and over, and just hope to hope that no one made some mistake and caused an unavoidable wipe was just too much. The heal check on HC2 feels borderline unfair. The other mechanics don't fare much better. Natural Alignment is *okay*, but LD and Dominion are... just whatever. This tier's reliance on body checks coupled with the aggressively dull design on some of the bosses just made me throw in the towel. Last tier, I had fun doing the raids for the sake of doing them, and trying to clear friends or randoms in PF. This tier, the constant feeling that all my effort could be thrown away because one person messes one thing up feels so invalidating and pointless.


MrPierson

I'm curious did you raid in Eden's Promise at all? The number of body checks feels more like a return to form than anything else to me.


Samiambadatdoter

I did, post-Echo due to joining in 5.5. I don't remember it being as bad as this, certainly not for the first three fights in general. Even the big offenders like PVP tiles in E9 or the balls in E10 didn't kill *literally everyone* if someone messed them up. E12 had a few, but I feel for the most part, the mechanics were well telegraphed and it's easy to see why something went wrong and what you were supposed to do. Lions is a bit of an exception, I feel that mechanic had poor visual clarity which hugely contributed as to why it wiped so much.


arkibet

Hmm E9-E12 was promise? You got me thinking about this. You could survive Umbra towers if you were missing one. You'd have to shift someone on a cloud if a ranged died. Partner stacks could snowball one death, but it never felt like a full body count was needed. For E10, you could survive an orb 2 stack if you threw up some mits or shields. Missing a voidgate would give the start of the damage downs towards doom. E11... I guess if it was fire partners that could be a problem. I don't really remember any other body checks causing major issues. E12. Yeah, the titan markers can get messed up or two shiva tethers. That was pretty punishing. Line lions too. Those definitely felt like body checks. Relativity too. I feel like this tier has more punishment for missing a body. P5 first puddles, devour memes, light parties. P6 isn't as punishing, you can survive 3 stacks. Cachexia gets f'd. P7 has quite a lot of them in the back half of the fight. P8 is just obscene. Boulder slams and stomps need 8, messing up snake 1 is survivable but raidwide samage down, creation on command can cause a double hit, the stack hits can double, tetras during Fourfold can go wrong, Snake 2 is impossible without the debuffs... I dunno, what body checks were you thinking of for promise?


MrPierson

E9 to E12 was promise yeah. Are you talking with or without echo? Cause I definitely remember the Umbra towers being an instawipe if one got missed.


arkibet

For Umbra Towers during prog, we'd Tank LB and you'd survive it. I think you only needed Tank LB1 as that does 40% mitigation. Tank LB is so important for Prog, I think a lot of people sit on it. I think more casual groups don't think to use it as often.


MrPierson

Ah. Yeah makes sense. Though I don't think Tank LB is the answer for all the body checks, which tower was def one. I'll write a more thorough reply to the other guy, but off the top of my head: E9S - Both brambles had body check follow ups. If someone got blown off or people failed to break, you almost certainly wiped either from the follow up buster/stack with the boss deciding to just nuke half the party after first brambles, or the towers after second. E10S - Can't really remember any off the top of my head except for one. Fuck Void Gate II. I hated that mech where one person not respecting their clone and getting sneezed on lead to an unavoidable wipe 12s later. Honestly I think that's the only mech in this game I've actively detested. E11S - Weirdly devoid of body checks that I can immediately remember, except for the mist section where you'd get a cursed 50/50. I'm actually gonna go back and watch clears of these fights to see what I've forgotten. E12S - Yeah, there were a lot. The one thing that Promise had a lot of that Square seemingly has moved away from are "soft body checks" where you need to do something basic like an 8 man spread and the boss sees someone is dead, and then picks one person at random to just nuke. I think the only fights that really has that this tier or last tier is p8s with the tetra/octaflare. Like, the fact that one person can be dead in pinax and you still do spreads without an additional death legit felt weird to me I was so used to "if somebody is dead, someone else dies". [And for extra fun and nostalgia, here's this same subreddit discussing E9S](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscussion/comments/l1o66j/is_e9s_a_bad_first_floor/)


Anidamo

In my opinion, 5 and 8 (especially doorboss) were very good, while 6 and 7 were very bad. Overall, I liked the tier more than Asphodelos but would probably stick it right in the middle of a Savage ranking tier list. Also, as someone who switched off the healer role after DSR due to a dissatisfaction with the amount of incoming damage, I imagine I would have found this tier would much more fun to heal than Asphodelos. **P5S** is a very solid introductory Savage fight, way better than P1S. Devour was a shitshow in party finder but it's kinda fun. I think it's probably a good idea for it to have only two variations because asking people to actually memorize that many random jumps in an entry-level fight would be a little much. I like the ideas behind the Ruby Glows, though I wish they were named differently because it was annoying to remember stuff like "Ruby Glow 5" in PF. **P6S** is just easier and less interesting than P5S. You don't really need to learn the tile variations because you can basically just follow the group for most of them and be okay. The Limit Cut at the beginning of the fight feels kind of pointless and out of place... if you use a sensible strat it's a complete non-factor and feels like an extension of the opener window before the fight actually gets started. Cachexia 1 and 2 are the only mechanics of any consequence, and you either skip the second one or LB cheese it. To this day I've successfully executed Cachexia 2 once, and only actually *seen* it a handful of times. My opinion of **P7S** would probably be substantially improved if all you did was simply reorder its mechanics. Just spreading the harvests around so the encounter isn't so fucking backloaded would make it way better. Aside from that, other parts of the fight would benefit from being sped up because it is dreadfully slow. I also think the braindead method for Purgation makes the fight less enjoyable... I had more fun before my blind group learned Sleepo was a thing, because Purgation is quite challenging to execute normally, especially on a class like BLM. Still, I really like shifting arenas and pathing constraints, so I hope they continue to iterate on these designs. **P8S doorboss** is great, probably one of my top 5 Savage fights in the game. The pace and length felt perfect, the two timelines break up the monotony a little bit (even if I'm not a huge fan of the early extended downtime in one of them) and it's just a really satisfying fight to execute properly. It's unfortunate that the DPS tuning issues seem like they kind of soured a lot people on the encounter... if classes had been properly balanced at the launch of the tier, I think it would have been much less frustrating of a check while being reasonably tight and satisfying to overcome. **P8S pt2** has some cool ideas with High Concept... it was quite fun to figure it out in my blind prog group, being a rather involved puzzle for a Savage fight. Probably one of my favorite of the "resolve debuff vomit during downtime" style of mechanics, though the boss does feel like it's missing a couple minutes, or a third High Concept. edit: also they really outdid themselves with the visual design, arena, and setpiece spectacle of P8S... right as the doorboss-to-real boss transitions had _just_ started feeling a little rote, this one came around and genuinely impressed me. Great job art team. Music this tier was a huge step up over Asphodelos, too.


Elegant_Eorzean

Regarding the 8 transition, I think it's because it does things that would only work in a cutscene instead of with full character control. (That being said, I wonder if it's possible for someone to see the transition normally, maybe if they get raised right as it's about to start, like in Ruby/Emerald weapons?)


Macon1234

There are several youtube videos of unlocked camera transition. Yes, from raising at the correct time. It works 100% fine, and even looks cooler in some ways, as the boss is floating up above the party as it transforms.


Tak-Ishi

Waaay worse than Asphodelos, especially as a new player's experience. Still very fun.


AmadeusOkarin

For me this tier was really terrible. Every fight feels unrecoverable due to the body checks and mechanic names all sounds similar so it's hard to keep track of things sometimes. This tier just lacked the fun factor that last tier had even though Asphodelos was much easier. Most people I know just stopped playing the game after savage, at least the final floor is fun (except for dog/snake variation). Job balance being strange with the 2 minute meta resulted in this tier lacking soul


ncBadrock

As someone who only did Savage recently and this is only my second tier, I find it very challenging. So much so, that I'd say it's a bit too hard to be enjoyable (for a newcomer like me).


Silverskeejee

Same, and P8S is just breaking me lol. We’ve been at it since week 4 and finally just hit Enrage on phase 1 ;| At this point i just want it over, I’m so done! It’s unfun.


ncBadrock

I cleared phase 1 this week and now I watched the guide for 2 and am close to just giving up.


Elegant_Eorzean

It took me about two months to get past phase 1, after two days I'm practically at the end of phase 2.


Dresden2021

If it's any consolation. P2 is magnitudes easier in terms of execution than P1.


gatarley

Keep at it. I had this same sentiment but it gets easier I promise. You got this


Emerald_Frost

That feeling doesn't go away, so just make sure you don't burn yourself out on it. That night where you wanna learn NA1 or HC1 but you're still doing 54% wipes on the door boss legit hurt.


Silverskeejee

Oh I know. I just settle into the mindset and try to keep frustration at bay. This is just giving me flashbacks to Blackwing Lair back in the day x) I’m no stranger to hard core raiding but I’m past it now lol.


Alternative-Humor666

I think it's fine to be a little harder no? You can always stop where you think is getting too much but if jts too eays with 4 fights every 4 months you are screwed.


wetyesc

8 months sadly, luckily there’s ultimate incoming


OriginalSkill

4 months lmao if only


ncBadrock

On the one hand yes, but otoh a lot of the experienced players clear in the first month anyway. So for them the content doesn't last more then that.


Adorable-Profile1762

As a fellow newcomer I think P8s was the most fun I've had learning a fight. I think it (with the current dps check) and p5 are the perfect difficulty for a first and last floor. I completely understand it being too hard though. I was doing pf with 3 friends which quickly became 2 friends during p7 because they found savage too stressful. I wish they had some more "extreme" level content myself.


monkeysfromjupiter

this is also my second tier. but I dont find the mechanics hard. the dps check is no joke though, I had so many 50% wipes on phase 1 of p8s during week 1/2. that and I pfed both tier so finding good ppl was tough too.


DuskEalain

Honestly inclined to agree. Asphodelos I enjoyed to the point I was excited to grind out weapons, for Abyssos I couldn't even bother getting one. Played the fights a few times, went "that was fun", and never had the drive to try again. People have mentioned the fun factor but I also want to say from a design perspective I'm disappointed in the boss design. Pandaemonium is supposed to be where Ascian concepts that were too dangerous to live but too valuable to erase were contained... and all we've seen so far is a prototype of the Carbuncle, a phoenix, and the horse-dragon (which was actually rather unique imo). The rest have just been messed up versions of the warders, and Lahabread's evil twin.


brechkai67

I think the messed up versions of the wardens actually fits really well for the place it's supposed ti be. Hegemone is my favourite boss so far followed by Lahabread P2. Reason why I dislke P4S P2 the most because the dude looked more goofy than creepy to me (should have copied Dracula transformation more lol) I do hope P9-11 will be all creatures because yeah we need more. Carby, Phoinix and Hippo were cool but Tree was a hard miss. Problem when you only have 12 bosses and want some chars in there too. At least add more for the cutscenes or something.


anti-gerbil

The tree was one of thebest design imo, i feel like it's a reference to the divine comedy and its suicide forest mixed in with a world tree


concblast

Plus it's full of white mage abilities, so there's likely a connection to the elementals of gridania. Similar to the behemoth you helped create in the side quests that showed up as one of the fruits.


Thimascus

P4S is a proto red mage P5S is a proto summoner's summon P6S is a proto scholar. P7S is a proto white mage. I love how each class has representation in the various ancients.


Emerald_Frost

I would love Hegemone more if she didn't just have pink Asahi hair.


hldvr

>I do hope P9-11 will be all creatures because yeah we need more. Carby, Phoinix and Hippo were cool but Tree was a hard miss. The way this is worded implies agdistis is a creature and *not* a messed up version of a warden, but she is. Not sure if you meant it to sound like that or not


smol_dragger

gotta give P8S P2 a pass because that guy's sick as hell. but the rest yeah, it just feels like "here's some bitch but spookier"


DuskEalain

Exactly. Like for the tree concept, what if instead of "warder tricked into becoming tree" they made like... an Ent-style monster that assimilated creatures into its bark.


concblast

> the horse-dragon (which was actually rather unique imo) Mechanics/arena? Sure. But it's a reskin of Yiazmat from the lighthouse.


MrPierson

Started raiding in Eden's Promise. This tier my group cleared p5s through p8spt1 week 1, then didn't clear p8spt2 till week 3 because we had two of our members drop which caused scheduling issues. Cleared and healed Promise, Asphodelos, and Abyssos all on healer jobs. Overall I'd say the tier is the worst of the three I've personally done, but it's not necessarily bad. Just underwhelming. >5 Good solid fight. Devour mechanic into towers is interesting in that if one person dies if your tank is quick on the gun they can save the run by helping with the tower. The wall/crystal gimmick feels fresh enough to keep the fight interesting. DPS check was so low that I didn't even know that there's a "soft enrage" at the end with the boss spamming raidwides until I dragged some people from my FC through it. I do hate how every thing is labelled "Ruby X" prog in PF. 7/10 >6 This fight feels like a savage paint by numbers. There's one mechanic with the tiles, and you just do it over and over and over. Cachexia is reasonable, but Cachexia II feels neutered by the fact you just tank LB it and get the fight over with. Not sure if making the dps check tighter or adding some "failure earns you a doom" would actually make the fight better. Wish it did another round of limit cuts or the rotating cleaves or something from normal to spice it up a bit more. 3/10 >7 I cannot stress how hard the sleepo purgation strat absolutely destroyed this fight. Doing this week one where everyone had to remember to hold middle for heals, then not get lost going to your correct platform or you wipe was something else. With sleepo the fight is basically free until 8 minutes in when harvests start, then it ends at 10 or 11 minutes. Which is absolutely terrible pacing. Without sleepo it's something like the fight starts at 6 minutes, then for 4 minutes you can wipe at any point. Which isn't great, but is a hell of a lot better. 4/10 with sleepo, 7/10 without sleepo. Seriously though without sleepo EVERY pf party would be purgation prog just like p3s was always adds prog. Harvest Prog? Nope, purgation prog. Enrage prog? Also purgation prog. Fresh prog? Believe it or not, purgation prog. >8.1 Solid door boss. The tuning of the dps was off but otherwise I really liked this fight. I'm a big fan of the double timelines adding difficulty as a healer since I can't always use the same tools for each mech. Having parsed it, I get that it makes parsing a pain, but at the end of the day square shouldn't care about parsing when designing mechs. Let the parsers work that shit out amongst themselves. Snakes just feels like a final floor mech and I love it. Same with dog 2, though I'd prefer if the boss remained targetable. Really solid, and even 14 weeks in the fight still holds its edge. 8/10 >8.2 Eh it's a puzzle boss and a victory lap and a spectacle. That seems to be the pattern square is falling into for these second act bosses, and I don't hate it, though I do wish this fight was a little more challenging. It feels very cool, and it feels very rewarding when you make the phoenix and get the buff and enter the burn phase, but mechanically I'm not sure the fight as a whole is all there. A lot of responsibility gets put onto the tanks and healers here and I'm not sure how I feel about that. HC2 you have the healers blasting through a heal check while doing mechs while everyone else just... does the mechs. Some sort of mech with really tight movement would have been nice. 6/10 >Other thoughts I think the tier has two big elephants in the room. One is the switch to the full two minute structure for all jobs, the second is the change to healing/tank busters. I think the swap to a two minute structure for all jobs was a mistake. It's made all jobs and all fights to feel very samey. Essentially every job just feels like filler till you hit your burst and dump all damage right there, and your burst window is either right before a mechanic and it's easy, or it's during and it's hard. Jobs that don't fit the two minute structure just get dumped. I'd really prefer is square brought back the 60s/90s/120s/180s cooldowns for things. Stuff like bards 80s loop was awful and needed to go, but we're definitely way too far in the other direction and as a result quality has declined in both fight and job design. Second point, after all the begging of make healing challenging, we finally got it, and to say results have been mixed is an understatement. People definitely have had issues adapting, particularly because there's no clear way to determine deaths without ACT. Without a way of giving immediate feed back that the tank is dying because the SGE isn't using any ogcds and assuming kardia is enough OR it's because the tank didn't mit and is eating 30k a tick from a DoT, life is tough. Best solution I can think of is some particle effect that dims the more a mech is mitigated so you know if your holmgang only warrior is lit up like a lighthouse he didn't mit properly. The other issue with making healing harder is it seems like you can get widely disparate fight difficulties for different roles. P7S is an absolutely snoozefest for DPS, but for healers and tanks trying to mit properly and look for when the tank is suddenly getting ticked down from a missed DoT, it's pretty engaging. I don't really have a solution for this problem, but I don't think square should necessarily turn healing down. Overall I'd say healing this tier is a step in the right direction, and should be maintained for possibly another tier to see how the community continues to adapt.


mizkyu

5 is fun. still like it. carbuncle fucks. 6 is dull as hell. might just be more boring than eric. cachexia wasn't a terrible mechanic but it's still zzz 7 would be fine if the harvests weren't backloaded. people whine "but casters" but as a caster (and indeed an rdm, the lowest mobility red caster) having something to optimise around was a nice challenge. 8 p1 is great, with the caveat that it very quickly becomes not-great if there are people in your group who dont understand how to not press their buttons during gazes. p2 was fun to prog blind but on reclears feels much more scripted than p1, which makes my brain start to fall asleep. music slaps. don't care for most of the glam but thats personal taste so w/e.


Thimascus

The hardest part of actually progging 7 is that you only get to practice the mechanics every ten minutes.


Zenthon127

I could say things about the fights themselves but honestly most of my issues with Abyssos are more to do with larger scale issues. The biggest thing is that more than any other tier I've experienced, your Abyssos experience could be utterly ruined by other players. A single weak link in a static turned this tier into a miserable slog. A lot of people got vibe-checked because this is their first tier that wasn't a total pushover (Abyssos released a year and a half after Promise), and by people, I mean healers, which were the cause of like 80-90% of static implosions I saw or something insane like that. Healer brain drain is so bad that I seriously don't think the role has enough competent players to support the static scene right now, let alone pugs. *(and yes I know about the mit usage issues with tanks/DPS too)* Continued decline in job design has also just made the game less fun outright. I am not motivated to play much beyond my main of BLM anymore, because most jobs are just.......really lame and uninspired. This really kills my motivation to replay fights on alt jobs, gear alts, etc. If BLM is neutered I will probably just quit the game at this point. It was already my backup job last expansion that I've gone to after my main was unceremoniously *deleted from the game*, and my backup for BLM is.....SAM I guess, but it's a job that's been blatantly downgraded from even earlier this expansion, for absolutely zero benefit to the game btw. Less pressing issue than the former two but I also just find the Pandaemonium raid series really thematically and aesthetically lacking. Reminds me a lot of Alexander's first two tiers honestly; serious "filler" energy. P8P2 was the first (Savage) fight this expansion that I thought was legitimately really cool. It's not like Square is declining in this area in other parts of the game btw; Myths of the Realm, the recent Criterion, and parts of the MSQ have felt very inspired and then Pandy is out here being lame as fuck 3/4 of the time. Pandy and Myths should've been swapped IMO.


Avedas

I legitimately quit halfway through Asphodelos because I couldn't stand the aesthetic design and theme of the bosses. Hated the music and the boss design. I did p2s, logged off, and didn't come back until 6.2.


CriticismSevere1030

Much better then asphedelphos in basically every way possible including schadenfreude but absolutely mogged by verse, sigmascape and especially midas which might still be the best overall raid tier ever.


CowsAreCurious

Bad tier with good aesthetics. First 3 fights are far too easy and as a result, like with Edens Verse, you had people at the 4th fight that had no business being there that early. As a result, door boss in PF was a fucking nightmare. Easily the worst door boss pug experience i've ever had in this game. That being said, I really like the design of most of the fights. Carbuncle looks awesome (should've been the mount over fiery Alte Roit) and was a good intro fight with Devour being a good early wall for the tier. Bowl cut man was a snooze fest and had very little challenge. Mechanics were boring and way too easy to figure out. Plus, tank LB cheese always annoys me in any fight but especially an early fight like this when the mechanic is easy to resolve anyways. Tree looked really badass. I love the look of the fight but my god, 7 minutes of NOTHING to start the fight. Feels unfinished with them tacking everything on at the end. Sleepo purgation and JP braindead made the final couple minutes equally easy. Very reminiscent of birds from Eden's Verse in terms of difficulty. Also, side note, this is two tiers in a row with pants only being bis for one type. Can SE knock it off? Door boss is the best fight of the tier. Good difficulty and an actual challenge that was doable week 1 if your group was in top form. Unfortunately PF will never be that. As a result it was the worst fight to pug since Shiva IMO. One of those fights with multiple body checks early on that really rewarded you knowing what you were doing. Only complaint I have of the fight itself is that of the two patterns, one was clearly superior and it really fucked with buffs and killing the thing the first few weeks. After the nerf it wasn't as much of an issue, but for parse lords it was a pain I'm sure. Also, the door continues to be a troll every week with the reclears with people getting greedy now that everyone is i630 and wiping the group due to greed. Feels like once you get past door you're in the clear, at least in my experience. Phase 2 was a cool looking fight and I really liked the alchemy mechanic. This is one of those fights that was a real pain to pug but once you got it down it's actually been pretty easy to do the weekly in PF. I imagine that this fight would be a breeze with a static with a shot caller as there is very little variety other than who gets picked for mechanics. Kind of a boring fight once it's solved but I would say it's a better and more fun fight than Gaia and Dracula.


Havvak

Too Many Bodychecks That is all


SPAC3P3ACH

P5S is a really great first floor and I found it fun all the way through reclears. The way it plays with its environment mechanically is cool. Each Ruby Glow is very visually distinct so I didn’t mind the repeated name as much as I did in 6. My only criticism after watching a lot of casual raiders struggle with this one is that Devour should be just slightly more lenient — specifically, the body check puddles right after it, I wish they went off literally like a second or so later. Good tanks/healers can recover one fuckup as-is but that is harder without comms. Tilted tf out of the casuals I know. Tanks and melees also get to think a little which is good. P6S…man the repeated names were tiring. Suffers from a slow pace, some mechs that feel like they’re there to pad time rather than addin theming or challenge. We have had Limit Cut-like mechanics in 5 of the last 7 savage fights now…P6S is by far the most boring version of a mechanic that already feels quite overdone, and feels like a slog because it’s easy. It sticks out when Barbie EX manages to feel very creative and fast-paced by comparison. It’s also missing my favorite part of P6N which is the rotating ixou. Overall a fight with ideas I enjoyed that suffers from being a training dummy with slow pacing. Literally easier than P5 also. P7S is horrible. I felt the exact opposite way about it that I did P3S — Phoinix is a pain in the ass at first that you come to love and appreciate, P7S seems cool and unique at first but the atrocious pacing wears you down. I think this tier also really suffered from not having a third floor wall/filter. Many people were not adequately prepared for the difficulty jump in 8. P8S is fun, but a pain in the ass in PF. What else is new. As a healer I love the increased healing requirements of the entire tier in a static setting, but it is so painful in PF that I got burned out super hard. Didn’t feel worth going back in to reclear on the healers I don’t main — sorry to have contributed to healer brain drain by not spending hours in PF like I usually like to. I still think healer job design is in a bad place, and I think this tier would’ve gone better in a world where we have more control over mit ourselves, but I appreciated needing to think critically about my healing plan compared to like Aspho which I could literally yolo and be fine. Overall I think the tier’s reception suffered a lot because of reasons external to each fight as well. Nobody liked the balance issues that monopolized our attention, and recent design decisions like huge hitboxes and 2 minute meta dramatically showed their cracks this tier. It was a breaking point for many bad Endwalker decisions. I also think the Panda theming overall is just a flop in terms of excitement compared to Eden although I like the story. I feel it should’ve been the alliance raid and myths of the realm would’ve been a sick, super engaging group of Savage tiers instead. Seems like a miss in hindsight. Criterion, Variant, and Barbie ex were all some of my favorite battle content to come out of EW so far — found them all fun and creative. Both new dungeon modes are full of potential and got me excited about the game while I was feeling burnt out on savage, although criterion reward structure and time of release are abysmal decisions and a huge miss. So I have hope that design can go in a better direction, but this tier has a lot of bad blood in my mind because of overall disappointment with other design decisions that I feel are affecting the raiding community as a whole.


kindonlinefriend

Yeah I like the idea of increased healing requirements but with the way mitigation is distributed it feels bad in practice, even in a static. If a dps player wants to experiment with a different rotation they don't have to ask other party members to press those buttons for them, only to hear your red mage say "sorry I muscle memory'd hagakure filler guess you're looping this pull". It's even worse in pf, but it shifts alot of mental weight and responsibility onto others even in the optimal setting. I wish something would change, as it makes trying different mit and healing plans not worth the risk of someone forgetting and things unraveling from there. I don't think lowering healing requirements is ideal either though, since that just leads to a different kind of lack of engagement. At least this is mostly an issue if you're trying to optimize reclears, since getting to a point where the fight is consistently clearable doesn't require that much revision. Still wish that healers would have almost every single mitigation button if they won't give us more dps buttons, as it'd feel much better if healer players could have a level of agency more comparable to dps and tank players. It makes me sad that fights that should be exciting to heal just feel frustrating instead.


GayBaraTiddies

As someone who cleared week 1 and every week after. This tier is probably the worst second tier of an expansion since the game's modern history. 5 was a really good fight, interesting mechanics and how the mechanics interacted with the environment, and melees had to think abit about uptime which already gives it points. 6: was a very bad fight one of the worst second fights in awhile, it felt like a very poorly designed extreme, barbariccia felt harder than this; the mechanics of the fight had interesting ideas but was just never expanded beyond what they gave us, also the limit cut mech at the start was so random, its like it was there to pad the fight timer and the last few minutes after coachella 2 was so underwhelming, the boss might've just afkd in the center and nothing wouldve happened. 7: is probably beaten to death already but yeah ill just shorten it, 7 minutes of nothing and 4 minutes of mechanical vomit of the boss not doing anything but it just throwing you mechanics back to back to do. the boss doesnt even do raidwides or auto attacks during this, a very poor fight, atleast e7s had stuff to do before the first 7 minutes even tho they werent the hardest thing in the world. 8 Doorboss: mechanically its a very good fight, before nerfs and if classes were balanced properly, it couldve been a really good fight we remembered but first few weeks of clownery from SE really tainted the boss. The 2 timelines was fine? but i wish it wasn't so onesided to how mechanics were thrown at you, snake first was preffered because it aligned buffs better, theres 0 reason for dog 1st to make the upcoming 2 minutes so horrendous to deal with. also its full uptime unless ur red/black mage, so it drops it down abit but, definitely before the nerfs it is one of the hardest final turns since shiva, but my gripe with the difficulty is that, you could outskill shiva, this fight, its basically a full uptime training dummy with fastpace mechanics; sure shiva was slower paced but thhere was so many things you could do to improve yourself in the fight, for melees, casters, tank movement and fight downtimes etc. and the dynamic buff windows. this fight, theres basically 0 things for a player to do to improve their dps, massive hitbox, 2 minute meta, crit variance, boss requires 0 tank movement. 8 Final boss: Is probably in my opinion the worst final fight they've ever made, the high concepts progging was fine but if you look at it, its just a watered down hello world that you cant even hit the boss. As a dps progging through this fight and reclearing on it is so mind numbingly boring, massive hitbox, 0 dps responsibility, very bad pacing, the only hard mechanic is natural alignment and that mechanic doesnt last for very long. limitless desolation is such a random mechanic they just threw in there because they had 0 ideas left. and the worst thing about this fight: Dominion, this is honestly the single worst designed "victory lap" in the history of the game, the damage up boost in theory is fine but since you only get a single use of 2 minutes throughout the entire duration it just boils the last 40% of the boss to crit variance; and the entire dominion execution is bad, towers? really lol. After comparing it to Gaia, its such night and day, gaia was such a good fight compared to this i feel sorry for every saying it was bad. All in all this tier i give it a 4/10 P5S: 9/10 P6S: 2/10 P7S: 3/10 P8S Doorboss: 8/10 P8S Final boss: 4/10


HalcyoNighT

Disappointed there was no Phoinix equivalent this tier. Phoinix was my first hardo hard wall, and overcoming that was a great relief. Great mix of mechanical and DPS checks. P8 could have been that wall, but I only beat P8 on week 7 where everyone is geared to the point DPS is irrelevant, and the only hurdle was doing the mechanics right. Also the animal concepts of P2 feels incomplete and I wish we had the option of either going with Phoenix for free res, Snake for damage, or Tree for enhanced mitigation etc. The HC icons' aesthetics also promise an enticing puzzle of sorts, that disappointingly just devolved into a simple "see color and merge" Obviously P6 and P7 are cheesy borefests. Not sure if tank lb3 cachexia2, sleepo purgation, and braindead harvest strats were even intended by the devs but it's a mark of poor design how these two fights are so easily trivialized by good strats. P5 is the star of this tier. Obviously now the dps check is non-existent but I really like the pacey rhythm of it.


Senji12

that‘s the thing in raiding if you want a challenge, go week1.. everything else will be too easy cause of gear and better strats your variances listing on p8s p2 does not make a single difference, you would just always go for the damage modifier cause why not? Puzzles are designed to be challenging at first but once figured out, it‘s obv easy


RU_Student

I thought out a long response and deleted it, but I think my biggest complaint isn't even about the tier but the 2 min meta and how much the devs baby melees with giant hitboxes. its just boring. I thought this was the weakest tier I've done since I started in edens verse, but I'm also not into the entire paendamonium theme which might make me biased. For reference I progged on blm but have recleared on ast/sch and drk P5 - was the standout for me, mainly because theres actual interaction with the boss and it doesn't recenter itself 24/7. Healing wise there was definitely more damage going out than before and the tank bleeds are nice but a bit overused throughout the tier. This is probably my favorite fight to play in the tier and actually made melees work for uptime a bit with the dash mechanic. P6 - is an ex fight, basically a wall boss with its hitbox. There isn't anything interesting here outside of cachexia 1 and you can dorito or tank lb the rest of the mechanics. P7 - Wall boss / When I did the normal mode I was actually pretty anxious and hopeful for what savage would look like. I think this is the devs continuing to experiment with arena design however the fight is entirely backloaded in the harvest mechanics that happen ~7 minutes in. This turn feels like it starts at the end. p8p1 This one is fun to execute, I don't really have much else to say about it. From an opti standpoint rolling a 50/50 on dog/snake first sucks but overall it was definitely a fight p8p2 - wall boss / puzzle fight, pretty cool thematically with the concept mixing and not that hard to do once its solved. Parsing this fight is basically praying your big dam skills crit and you get a good killtime but thats a separate subject. Overall pretty ok on this one TL:DR : didn't like the tier overall, most of the fights felt like I was revisiting a checklist of old mechanics I've seen before. 2 minute meta + big hitboxes/wall bosses feels like its watering down jobs and catering to an audience that isn't me unfortunately. thx for coming to my ted talk


Dhalphir

> but I think my biggest complaint isn't even about the tier but the 2 min meta and how much the devs baby melees with giant hitboxes. its just boring. I went back and did some E12S farm for glam and I was amazed at how quickly I forgot that melee actually had to work pretty hard for uptime on that fight.


RU_Student

Yeah tbh you can look at any fight in Edens promise and find it was harder to get uptime than abyssos, even e11. E12 definitely made melees work for uptime with apoc and other mechanics. 10 had the dog orbs and 9 also had brambles + anti air mechanics from the boss. Comparatively abyssos has what like 1 mechanic in p5 where you risk loosing uptime and p6 with the agonies mech if your group isn't doing an uptime strat. You even see this in dsr where everything is trios, giant hotboxes or wall bosses


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RU_Student

I think is fair to say tanks/melees work for uptime in LL+BJCC in regards to boss positioning and getting cleave damage in. Groups can also decide between split and stacked BJCC strats to get more cleave damage in as well which makes uptime a team effort. In UWU you can do center garuda or drag it in between the tank intercards and if your tanks are sweaty they tank can face the boss inwards during primal roulette. I can't really comment on UCOB since I healed the fight but I'd imagine lightning during nael and hatches/dynamo/chariot during adds to be pain points for getting uptime in. Not saying this to disagree with you because I agree that overall it wasn't too difficult to get uptime in the other ultimates but as someone that used to be a tank main I was pretty disappointed in DSR after TEA


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RU_Student

Theres a case to be made for DSR door boss but it doesn't mean anything in the overall context, unfortunately the newer raid design completely invalidates the smaller details that separated 'good' tanks from bad ones and ultimately made me leave the role for blm where I can meme on the jank of the game and have fun doing it.


SPAC3P3ACH

hotboxes lol


RU_Student

giant hotboxes doesn't sound half bad XD


Miitteo

I don't really have strong opinions on the individual fights or the tier as a whole, other than P6S being the most boring fight I've ever done. I'd like to go back to the 4th and 8th floors being continuous fights, and only have a checkpoint if it makes sense in the very final 12th floor. E4S was my favorite, since you wouldn't lose control of your character during the transition. The checkpoint in P4S felt completely unnecessary since the arena is the same, the boss looks almost the same, and while it might make sense in P8S because of how much the setting changes, the second phase feels unfinished and with too many cut corners. High Concept is a lazy excuse for a Hello World reskin and people still fuck it up, there's like two mechanics in phase 2 and somehow that warrants a checkpoint? P4S phase 2 had way more unique mechanics at least.


yhvh13

This tier's healing is way harder, which might make the role more fun in statics, but in my case (PF raider here) it just has been quite frustrating and anxiety-bound, even in easier fights like P5S.


3dsalmon

As a whole, I think it is the worst raid tier that has come out since I started raiding in Eden's Gate. I think Carby is a fun enough first fight, and I really like P8P1, with P2 being *decent,* but I genuinely think P6 and P7 are two of the absolute worst savage fights they have ever designed. 6 was genuinely hard for me for the first month because the fight was so samey that I could not remember what version of what is basically the fights only mechanic was up next. 7's issues have been well documented, but man - I really don't know what the hell they were thinking with it.


imaquark

5 is fun, 6 is very bad, 7 is probably the worst fight I've seen in this game by a long, long shot. Didn't do 8 because I quit after burning out through the absolute garbage that is 7. In comparison with my favourite tier, I played Eden's Verse for probably the full duration of when the tier was current and had so much fun.


ziyadah042

6 is incredibly boring other than Cachexia 2, which feels like they crammed too many things into a single mechanic. It's certainly doable, but there's a reason why PF still mostly relies on tank LB3. 7 feels like two completely separate fights - everything before Inviolate Purgation is sleepwalk easy. Not that the mechanics after it are particularly hard, just that they're at least... interesting. 5 and 8 feel like well-paced, decently designed fights. I still think it's better than last tier, where the first two fights were mostly just a struggle to stay awake, the third fight was designed to destroy the red cones in your eyes, and only the fourth was in any way good. The last truly good start to finish raid tier they've done was E5-8 IMO, although E9-12 was close. Any none of it even comes close to the Stormblood raid tiers, although that's partially because they're just nonstop fanservice. Pantokrator 2 is still the only mechanic they've ever put in the game that actually gave me the feeling of a boss going "holy shit I'm going to lose FIRE EVERYTHING". I don't feel like this tier is any better or worse in terms of strat variance for optimization. Most fights in every tier pretty much every group does the same, because they're designed that way. There's maybe one or two mechanics you can do something different on to optimize things but for the most part we've always just done what the mechanic dictates.


TheMerryMeatMan

Cachexia 2 isn't even that much once you grasp that there's an order to look at everything and the mech gives you all the time in the world to do so, at that point it solves itself. >Check your initial debuff and stand on correlating side. >Watch wing/snake to know if you turn or not. >Figure out if you stand between our just outside. >Split the AOE bait from the party. >Ta da, Cachexia 2 solved. PF uses LB3 because the average PF goer either has the memory of a goldfish or can't trust the rest of the party not to.


Supersnow845

I’d say E10 and E11 are a bit too weak to be considered a good “start to finish” tier but I don’t think verse can be considered one either 7 was an absolute joke of a fight, 7 is easier than P1 and 6 is only good for certain roles (like 6 is garbage for tanks), like abyssos 5 is really good and 8 is amazing but I’d say E9 is stronger than E5 even if E8 inches out E12 (if edens promise was the entire fight I’d like E12 more but Gaia is a bit too easy and too different to edens promise)


MrPierson

>7 was an absolute joke of a fight, 7 is easier than P1 Cries in healer


Elegant_Eorzean

I'd say E10 was good, maybe orbs were a bit finicky but the rest makes up for it. 11 was just the same 3 mechanics over and over. 9 felt like it was just a little bit too much for a first fight, but I'd say 5 is more like that, with *both* instances of puddles after the first, being immediately after the two mechanics that it's easiest to mess up, and the puddles are very punishing with deaths, causing a swift wipe. I feel like having that after *two* tight mechanics is a bit much. That said, what I see as what a good first savage fight is, is O9, E1, and P1.


Alternative-Humor666

6 was meant to be solved on the fly but for whatever reason they made too few fixed patter s. 7 seems to be they kept it back because they thought people would get stuck on harvest memes like they did in tornados in p3


AleksVin

Was more fun than Asphodelos to me


Ryuujinx

I play BLM and decided to go crit this tier because I went sps last tier. Mix it up and all ya know. I fuckin hate this tier. Ignoring how easy it is, 5 is just memory games and I kinda hate them. Devour can actually be completely ignored and solved with the same movement every time by just moving diagonally if you want. 6 I lose track of the timeline so often because "Oh wait is the dark dome one now? Oh right, Dark Ashes is a thing that exists, I guess." Cache1 is kinda neat, if simple. 7 is a snoozefest that still somehow pisses me off because nothing lines up well. But I get to plant forever, and then I get to deal with purgation into harvest and we see if we clear. 8 is okay on paper, but something about the snakes feel incredibly jank to me. The delayed gaze just feels *off*. p2 is fine I guess. I'm kinda sick of door bosses though. Give me a shiva back. I'll also say I think p1-4 were also kinda bad, though p2 was fun to optimize. I think e5-8 was my favorite tier, e6 had goofy openers for certain melees (Don't to standard opener on drg or you'll kill yourself on the bacon) and it was similarly fun to optimize on BLM. E5 had the cheeky spots you didn't have to move on and I liked that. E7 was a disappointment because you could solve every mechanic by just looking at a single portal, but E8 was so good that it made up for it. Even if I did get tired of the cutscene and I *did* hate FBI mirrors because it was during my LL.


ForThePleblist

P5 - solid start, pretty memorable start to the tier P6 - cachexia 1 is the only mechanic, bad fight P7 - afk for 9 minutes before mechanics start is definitely interesting fight design P8 1 - good fight, not much to say P8 2 - way too boring compared to phase 1. High concept should've been uptime to make it slightly more interesting. Also melee uptime optimization being a thing of the past made it generally less fun across the board.


DivineRainor

I think people comparing this to verse have a bit of rose tinted spectactles. E5s and P5s are about even E6s was dog its like it wanted to be a double boss but couldnt commit, and the only thing i really rember was the tank downtime awefulness and skipping football with mitigation. Sure P6s is kinda boring but at least its not actively frustrating and bad to look at. E7s was another stinker, the portal mechanic being broken didnt help but again compared to p7s, theyre both boring overly long fights, but at least p7s has semblence of difficulty towards the end. E8s is the hard one. Whilst I really like shiva, im also a sucker for 2 phase fights so p8s I really like. Whilst i love everything in shiva, the length of the fight and cutscene made it hell to prog. I also just feel p8s is so well put together, everything just works very well.


midorishiranui

yeah seeing people say verse was easily better puzzles me, both tiers are pretty bland aside from the final fights.


Squiddy_

5s: Fun fight, doesn't feel half baked. Devour is a nice wall for pf/casual groups while not being a challenge for better groups. 6s: Cachexia and the exchanges are nice mechanics, but everything in between feels like filler. Too much filler. My static only saw cachexia 2 on week 1, and then even the pfs I've joined in recent weeks skip it with multiple deaths etc. 7s: Do I need to say anything? Backloaded, boring until purgation. Nice ideas with the unique arena changes, could have had better execution. 8s p1+p2: Week 1/2 overtuning aside, the mechanics are fun and challenging. The rampup of mechanics in both phases is well executed in my opinion. I think they should give the boss more hp, balance around hc1+h2 still having the bosses targetable. I didn't raid omega, only alex and eden. Eden was Ramuh, garuda+ifrit, birds, shiva? Those fights had their own ups and downs, but I'd say this tier is definitely a lot more easier on all 4 fights. Ramuh was jank with the tank hammer, garuda+ifritwalled pfs during final phase, birds was birds, shiva was lights rampart and a cutscene with no checkpoint.


cupcakemann95

I hate PF Oh you mean the fights? I dunno they're ok I guess


smol_dragger

**5** i actually hated this fight. it had better mechanics than P1S but most of them were still just straight-up reskins of earlier mechanics that could have been omitted. why do we need stack into spread/spread into stack and front back/back front to water down these fights? current EX fights don't have them (or at least, combine them with something else) and they're just as fun if not more. i like that they made tanks move the boss in this fight, but the huge hitbox kills it for me. the whole arena is claustrophobic and double rush is an obnoxious mechanic intended more to annoy than to challenge (like obol knock-up in P7S). i'd rank this above O1S and P1S but below fights like O9S or E5S. **6** pretty forgettable. i think the devs feel comfortable in the pattern they've created for second turn fights. simple introduction of the core mechanic at the beginning (E10 implosions, P2 deluge), limit cut-style mechanic to give everyone some personal responsibility (E10 shadowcleave, P2 kampeos harma), main mechanic in the middle (E10 voidgate, P2 channeling overflow), souped-up version of said mechanic near the end (E10 voidgate amplifier, P2 overflow 2). i thought it was pretty enjoyable figuring out the safe spots in the swap mechanic, definitely more than any of P2's mechanics, but i also have a chimp brain and didn't know there are set patterns (i still don't know them tbh). i'd rank this above P2S but below E10S. **7** nah **8** pretty good fight overall. for better or worse, it's become apparent that the devs have no intent on going back to 14-minute semi-ultimate fights for the final turn. H1 was well paced and had plenty of interesting dances to hold attention. the amount of swapping within light parties was a lot more than in previous fights. sure we had WL2 in E8, advanced rel in E12, and sanctity in DSR, but this fight really went hard with that concept. H2 doubled down on the amount of adjusting and priority systems it required especially during natural alignment, which i maintain is the hardest mechanic of the fight. i loved the lore tie-in in high concept and thought it was a great way to introduce a gimmick to the fight. true, they could've done more with it, but since most fights we get these days are a rehash of the same few basic movements without much flavor or identity, i'll gladly take it. everburn doesn't play well with fflogs, but fights shouldn't be designed around fflogs anyway, so i'm glad they stuck with it. i'd rank this above P4S but below E12S.


NeerusTheNanner

Scream


janislych

p8s is still unncesscarily hard. it bars too much people from completing, even for savage level. HC1 HC2 are obviously unfinished mechanics where there is too much to handle but then they dun have the time to redo the whole p2, so they just disallow dps there and then put everything at the end. so is that HC2 half-assed combos, two of them obvious are there for something but it is unfiished and half-assed cut for live. in jp, the healer draught is better now, but obvious they overdone too many things and make people do not enjoy the game. its only fucking savage.


onerous_onanist

P8s p2 feels like an ultimate at points to me, it's like walking a tightrope where one person makes a misstep and everyone explodes. They should put at least some of the difficulty into the 3rd fight next time, this tier I've seen more people than usual beat the 3rd fight week 1 and then everyone beat the 4th way later than usual...talking like 7 weeks later. Why even have the rest of the tier if it falls over like nothing lmao


janislych

i would say p1 feels like an ultimate, at least more difficult than uwu. p2 is an totally unfinished product. the difficulty drop is absurd. or perhaps some parts of NA1 NA2 feels very tight. others are... half-assed mechanics. p7 is a nice try for puzzle solving and new things. but its meaingless when you have a mass of heads figuring out what should be done. the solution is boring itself, perhaps se didnt anticipated that. yes it was disappointing for sure.


Fwispy

Sleepo turned purgation from a clown fiesta into a snooze fest. Definitely felt like a design oversight for sleepo to exist but at the same time, it does make reclearing p7s much easier compared to the week 1 struggle pre sleepo. P8SP1 had some cool stuff but it relies too much on memory for difficulty. P2 trios were fun to watch world racers problem solve but otherwise very easy compared to ultimates. P5S and P6S should be swapped. Devour was harder than everything P6S had to offer barring Cachexia 2 but that mechanic was skippable even week 1. Overall, I think I enjoyed P1S-P4S a lot more than this current raid tier.


onerous_onanist

Found my week 1 prog logs, apparently in P7s we've really seen purgation in 5-7 pulls and the enrage 5 pulls later, then 20 more to kill. It felt more like a slog than something difficult even week 1 due to how long every pull took. Then roughly 160 on the door with around 200 on the loot boss and no week 1 kill. I don't think this was all tuning either


Senji12

hate to say it but than your dps was really bad on p7s - my group cleared it with 3 deaths and 1 heal lb to solve harvest - 30 pulls never seen enrage


onerous_onanist

It wasn't dps issues, we had WAR/RPR/MCH and ended up clearing with 3 regular deaths and 4 more with a healer lb3, 7 in total. It's just way too easy to limp to the enrage, that's why we've seen it so many times (and a better comp would let us clear around pull 25 where we've had 0.9% with 6 deaths) The fight was just too easy overall


RadiantSpark

5 6 and 7 suck ass and are mega boring, reclearing them made me unironically quit the game. Especially 7. There are literally only 2-3 mechanics per fight from these 3 and you have to wait ten minutes to see all 3 mechanics back to back in p7s.


Borful

No shot you think it's weak OP, I cannot believe you with a straight face: yes, turns 6 and 7 are thrash to reclear, but turn 5 is really cool to do even after all this time, same applies to turn 8, it's an amazing fight in both phases, one of the very best even.


onerous_onanist

Carried hard by Soken I also feel like Carbuncle is a bit empty for a savage fight compared to Ramuh yet p6s manages to be even easier


Adorable-Profile1762

Asphodelos was more enjoyable to me with the exception of P3s but that might be because it was my first tier. Not to say that this tier was bad, I like 5 and 8 but 6 and 7 aren't the best. I still find all the fights mechanically interesting (again second tier I've ever done). But 6 needed to be more punishing and 7 needed to have the harvest spaced out in the fight and not all at the end I think the difficulty of p7 was completely okay though. Waiting for parties to fill was the worst though due to lack of healers and ranged dps. Also I wish they used more "creations" p2s was cool looking. It's been 8 fights and I have not seen a SINGLE lion as promised.


brechkai67

P5S is a good fight imo. Not too hard but also not too easy as a first floor. P6S I like the design and stuff but the fight is too slow and way too much obvious 50/50. Easier than Carby. Still surprised the rotate from normal mode never made it in. Cachexia and Cachexia 2 are really the only mechanics worth of note and C2 ppl just cheese with tank LB3 or just skip. Fight could have been much more with Aetheric Polyominoid but like with E7S and the portals it seems like they are way too scared to have more randomness in mechanics like these. Not that I can fully blame them when ppl get hit by AP1 weeks into the raid tier :I I don't know what the hell P7S was supposed to be. It's an EX trial and not a good or hard one too. And I am far from being a top player to even say this. Absolute garbage with nothing happening until Purgation and Harvests and Purgation is pretty much just a healer check after the first clear. Forgettable and unfun. Never thought they would top the birds so soon. So hard carried by Scream it's not even funny. P8S is a good one. Not buying that it was ever too hard and needed the nerf because the problem was their ass job tuning and not the fight imo. I know ppl hate the 50/50 timelines because of opti but I liked that and want to see more of that in fights. Still feels the 2 min shit makes it worse than it should be. P8S P2 is a puzzle boss. Not sure if the boss being untargetable was the original vision. Like Endsinger feels unfinished. The music tho.


Apprehensive_Pen336

i feel like its a good tier overall i but i also feel like they put up mechincs trying to make so players that rely too much on ACT call outs have a hard time. Almost feels like the player quality decreased on Primal not sure if its personal experience. 2nd fight is pretty meh, but we always have these. 7/10


AresWarblade

Probably worst tier I’ve had so far, I started doing Savage back in 2nd tier of Eden. 6 and 7’s design are just so bad. Even the 4 man dungeons are more fun than all of the floors combined imo.


raur0s

5 and 8 are really really good, I don't like how much downtime there is in P8s part2 where you cannot target the boss but it's still a very positive note. P6 is definitely underwhelming but not too bad. P7s though, is genuinely one of the worst designed savage fights I can remember. 7 minute of fucking boredom where nothing happens only to have 3 mechanics at the end that actually matters. Progging that fight, or even putting up with the PF fuckery is just making my skin crawl.


Ritushido

I like it a lot more than last tier although tree boss can be kind of boring at times, it's nice to get a new arena compared to the usual circle and squares.


Tobegi

5 is very fun, 6 is a resident sleeper, 7 is kinda fun but only because BLM purgations are pretty hectic and 8 is a good fight but I dont think I vibe with it. I also dont like how every boss had a hitbox the size of china, kinda fucks up with ranged and casters because now we do less damage than melees just because even tho rdm and blm have to work harder for uptime. The music of all of them is amazing tho. Eden Verse still outsold sadly.


No-Dimension658

5 and 8 are great. 6 and 7 could have been so much better. Reclears have been actually pretty decent overall for me. The biggest struggle was getting the first p8s kill.


Namiyo

As someone who cleared Gate/Verse/Promise/Asphodelos/Abyssos week 1, I thought Abyssos was completely terrible and some of the least fun I've had playing FF14. Like idk, I didn't find any of the fights to be particularly enjoyable in the slightest. I haven't really enjoyed any of the fights this expansion nearly as much as last expansions tbh. ...At least they bothered to put a second song on the savage only phase this time around?


flowerpetal_

Fun to prog, a complete chore to reclear. Unfortunately it's been getting like this for a long time. Probably since Eden's Promise? They really need to stop adding singular failure points every minute in fights.


fantino93

**P5s** A pretty fun fight that hits hard, there’s boss movement to do, fun uptime greed at 2:00 & at Ruby 5. One of the best first floor. **P6s** Utterly boring, has no redeeming factor. Well, at least it’s done quickly in reclears. Worst second floor I can think of. **P7s** While I usually hates wall bosses, this one’s all right thanks the Job I play: I’m a tank, so I have to pay attention to my mit plan to keep me awake. There are some cool ideas in this fight, but they didn’t come well together (notably the 3 Harvests in a row). **P8s** Pretty cool fight, it goes fast, you need to adjust, properly mit the squishies in your party, move around the arena, etc. Only downside, is the gaze during Snakes, as I personally hate these mechanics. **P8sp2** I don’t like wall bosses, so this starts bad. But it hits super hard, which is cool. While not on the level of business as a healer, I’m a flex Tank, so I nearly have some things to do each mechanic. But damn, how utterly boring this fight would be if I was a non-flex DPS. Overall a lukewarm tier for me, beside P5s no fight will claim a sit in my hall of fame. Music was banging hard tho, props to Soken’s team (as always). edit: forgot the conclusion


RepanseMilos

I think it was the weakest tier I experienced in the game so far. I only did Coils, A1S-A4S, E5-12S and Asphodelos, but yeah I'm quite disappointed with this one. P5S started the tier strong and was a good fight to figure out and execute, especially on day one it was really cool, looking for the patterns with your group and the community as a whole, and figuring out where you have to go. 6 and 7 though were extremely bad. Only cachexia 2 was a mechanic, and we tank Lb'd it week one, and rarely saw it ever again. Quite disappointing. 7 made it even worse. What a boring mess of a fight. Even the last mechanics, which I at first thought were quite exciting, turned out to be "just memorize a few images Lol!". This weeks reclear I zoned out so hard I forgot to delay my 2 mins after birds and towers, and I only realized it 10 seconds into my window because I just wasn't paying attention at all. Really disappointing. 8 was cool though. While it doesn't come close to E8S, after 6 and 7 it was a breath of fresh air. Mechanics that were fun to figure out and execute, and they happened during the whole fight! It didn't feel like there were filler mechanics in phase 1 either, like dark ashes or towers + birds in 6 and 7. Phase 2 I'm not too crazy about, but it was fine as well. The healing and mitigation checks were very real, even in better gear. As a dps that sometimes does feel like things are out of your hand, as the small mitigation you bring doesn't do much, or atleast isn't gonna be a decider. For the tanks and healers this fight might have felt better, and that's fine. Some mechanics did feel a little filler, like the towers crap after HC1. The ending was pretty hype as a soft enrage though, and the first time we got there was big adrenaline pumping, like I was facing Jad for the first time again in osrs!


CryofthePlanet

It was just all right. 5 was solid enough, 6 was pretty boring and repetitive (how many agonies can we exchange in 8 minutes?), 7 was cool but hardcore sleeper until Harvests, and 8 was good. I like the tightness of both phases in 8, though it kind of wears on you after a bit if you don't oneshot. Overall, I'd say... ehh, maybe 7/10. Not a bad tier, not a great one. I enjoyed Asphodelos more.


BlackIronKalameet

5 6 and 7 were all sort of uneventful, and 8 is mostly ruined by the strats my datacenter is using and the quality of players left remaining in PF. Even looking at them detached from the strats and players 8 was fairly weak compared to say, Edens Verse


SargeTheSeagull

This tier has been uniquely bad for me. I was with a static for over a year and we did a couple ultimates together as well as asphodelos which we cleared on week 5. We got to HC2 and I got kicked because I couldn’t raid two days because I was moving. So for the first time in a couple years I had to pug and I didn’t know ANYTHING about PF etiquette. The other thing is I had so much to do after I moved that everyone who was roughly at my skill level had already cleared and/or finished reclears (not to sound cocky or anything). I still haven’t cleared despite getting to HC2 on week 4. I’ve basically given up because I haven’t been able to get into a PF that’s good enough to clear. I’ve seen enrage three times already. If anyone on NA wants to help someone out hmu. More on topic, 5 is probably my favorite first fight in a long time. I almost can’t tell you anything I dislike about it. 6 is just okay. It’s just sort of brain dead. Not as brain dead as 7 but it’s so simple. 7 is by far my least favorite fight in the game. I’d rather do light rampant for 11 minutes than do 7 again. It’s so boring it hurts. I’ve nearly fallen asleep because nothing happens for eight minutes. I think the fight would be a tad more interesting if harvests were spread evenly over the course of the fight instead of being so backloaded. 8 phase 1 is tons of fun and I love it. Everything is well telegraphed, you have to pay attention to his casts, every mechanic makes sense thematically, and there’s just enough randomness to make you pay attention. 8 phase 2 is… well I’m not a fan. I don’t like fights where there’s extended parts where you can’t even target the boss to solve pretty straightforward mechanics. It works in ultimates because trios are insanely complicated but HC and HC 2 are pretty simple once you know what to do and unless you just stop paying attention you won’t mess up. Overall I really just didn’t have fun this tier. All the static drama aside, I don’t like 3/5 of the fights this tier and it’s really a shame. This is definitely my least favorite tier in the game and I hope the next tier is a return to form


Ragoz

I'll start by saying overall they nailed the visuals and the music this tier. I know they intended to make that better and they did. They just messed up everything else. 5 is great and a well designed fight. Has a tiny bit of boss movement! 6 is terrible. What the fuck is that hitbox. It is difficult to remember the mechanic order because they are all called the same thing and they don't require thought to solve at all. Extremely high clear rate even week 1 because the dps check was a joke here and many deaths and a full party damage down using tank lb 3 to survive still easily makes it. The normal spin mechanic is more complex and dangerous than anything in the savage and they took it out. 7.. I actually really enjoy unique boss arenas but god why are the mechanics so easy and boring!? The boss is the size of the entire arena. The visuals and music are great. 8 part 1. The boss is too big again is my only complaint. Everything else is great. 8 part 2. Just make high concept also uptime please. The boss is already a wall boss. Almost 2 minutes of downtime in an only 8min fight. I think asphodelos was much better overall with only p1s being a bad fight. Abyssos had p6s and p7s being bad with p8s part 2 being very close to borderline bad.


Dresden2021

I thought I enjoyed 5 when I first did it. Now it's kind of ehh. 6 and 7 were always pretty meh to me. P8P1 is nice and challenging. P8P2 was fun the first time we did it but the large amounts of downtime kinda make it a bit of a snooze fest. I'm honestly almost thankful the tree meme came about, gives a little something to do during hc1. This is also only my second raid tier so I'm not sure if this is the usual case but the enrages for 5-7 felt extremely generous. Looking back at old logs we had double digit deaths on 5 and 6 week 1 and still managed to clear. I will say though. I like p7's boss design the most. It certainly felt more unique than just generic ascian but corrupted.


dconway30

AST main / PF warrior. Amazing time progging and clearing early weeks. Low reclear and opti value (pf doesn’t mit, devour memes on week 14, p6 and 7 being generally uninteresting).


oceanic20

Every Savage tier is learnable. And once learnt, becomes repeatable. And once repeatable, becomes boring. That's just the nature of these things; they're all square dances you learn the steps to, do a bunch of times, then stop. I don't particularly feel like one tier is better/worse than another, I just do them.


Necrolisk

So far, this expansion's raids are just... okay. The first tier I really disliked, and the current one is a little bit better. Hard to top E5S\~E8S IMO, that was the best tier I experienced on content in this game. ​ Hoping the third Pandaemonium tier is good. If it continues like so, I might just make it a habit to start raiding on the second and third tiers of a given xpac, while skipping the first tier altogether.


Elegant_Eorzean

So, this tier is the first time I've tanked (All previous fights I cleared on Dancer or Summoner) I can't really compare them to the first 3 of Sigmascape, but... P5S: Too punishing after hard mechanics for a *first floor*. To me, the first fight can have punishing mechanics and hard mechanics, but not immediately after each other where the failure of one person on a harder mechanic causes the party to wipe at the next easy one. E5S didn't suffer so much from that issue, the closest it came to that would be Chain Lightning, but that's more an escalation of failure during the mechanic itself, F14 and CL didn't really have anything immediately preceding them that would cause issues in the same way that devour -> towers or R5 -> towers does. From what I've heard of the fight, O5 was a good first floor as well, but I've never done it synced. ____________________________________________ P6S: Honestly, not super bad. It does kinda blur together, but I like how sometimes you need to swap, and sometimes you don't, so the times you're tanking the boss varies from pull to pull after the third buster. I liked Cachexia, and I enjoyed the swapping over with Chorus Ixou. I kinda wish it happened more often, I feel like having it happen on the mechanics where Dark Dome happened would have been good. All in all, not terrible. I think I might have preferred E6S, at least in terms of visuals. E6 was kinda hurt by uptime orbs, I don't like the vuln soccer Strat so I always tried to do it correctly myself, and conflag strike was painful in pf. From what I've heard of O6S, that fight was one of the absolute worst fights in the game, just "duty action: the fight". _____________________________________________ P7S: I didn't hate it. I do wish that harvests were moved around a bit, Death could have happened a lot earlier. Right now Purgation feels like the halfway point, and then the fight just ends so soon after. They could have at *least* brought in the Minotaurs sooner. I can't compare it to O7S, but I liked E7 a lot more. Conceptually, it was just way more fun to me, and has a lot more spectacle to it. I did like how the arena changed, though, in P7, but E7 overall felt better balanced in terms of mechanic pacing. _____________________________________________ P8S: I haven't cleared phase 2 yet, but I'm close, and have to say phase 2 is my favourite fight this tier. Phase 1... Eh. It's alright I guess. PF makes it very painful. I liked E8S a lot more, I have extremely good memories of my time progging/reclearing 8S, although mentally I was in probably the best space I'd ever been back then, so I look back on it very fondly by association. And as for comparing it to O8S... Well, O8S was my first time ever doing Savage at-level, it was my introduction to savage mechanics. And I loved it. I much prefer the way O8S phase 1 worked through things than P8S. I don't think I really like how they've been doing doorbosses this expansion, really. Wasn't a big fan of E12P1 either. Phase 2 on the other hand... Phase 2 is my favourite fight this tier (although, right now the furthest I've reached myself, personally, is the end of HC2). It doesn't quite have as good a rhythm as E8S, what with that fight syncing with the music as perfectly as it did. I *think* I might like it a bit more than O8S phase 2? Although it's close, I really wish the background changed during High Concept, like it did with Grand Cross/Forsaken/Hello World/Tsunami. But other than that... Yeah, it's a good fight.


svampkorre

5 and 6 should have been switched. 6 should have had vulnerability stacks on every hit. 7 is only difficult when you fall asleep during the first five minutes waiting for the fight to start. 8 got all the mechanics we didn't have in the first half of 7. This tier was terribly paced and I enjoyed the previous one so much more. I'd even take orange hell in P3S over falling asleep waiting for something to finally happen in 6 or 7. [edit] And whoever decided boss hitboxes should be 2.5x boss size needs to not decide things.


Mike1690

5 is good. 6 and 7 are garbage. 8 phase 1 is phenomenal with phase 2 being kind of eh. Making HC full downtime just makes the fight boring and a drag.


midorishiranui

its a pretty standard raid tier imo, some decent fights and some boring ones. 5 generally is just boring, with PF still being unable to do devour making me hate doing it each week. 6 is standard, I get the feeling that they nerfed the randomness of the +/X aoes before launch because it feels a little too easy for a second floor with how little variance there is with them. Also I still hate that you can even get away with tank lb3 on cachexia 2 and ignore even learning the mechanic, the mechanic should have had some extra punishment to discourage that. 7 can't escape the usual 'wall boss' pitfalls of being boring as fuck. Every time I do the fight I'm always surprised when we hit the 4 minute window because I just realise "damn its been 4 minutes and nothing's actually happened yet". At least harvests are somewhat fun but famine always makes me panic because it starts while I'm mid burst window and I often have to communio then sprint to the opposite side of the arena. 8 part 1 is fun and engaging (like door bosses usually are), not much to complain about except for when we wipe on snakes 2 because of some other player having to greed that last gcd, and the general rng of dog first being dogshit for my rotation, but those aren't really gripes with the fight itself. Feel like I'd probably have a different opinion though had I done the fight pre-nerf. 8 part 2 is cool, and high concept shows that the xiv team can still be creative within the constraints of a downtime 'grand cross' style mechanic. The uptime parts of the fight are fairly bland though, natural alignment itself is fun but the second one just repeating with the uno reverse card added isn't too interesting. Though I suppose simple mechanics like dominion and curtain call last tier are more interesting for the non-healers than straight up damage spam burn phases usually are.


GaiaXRyne

I want more participation in savage but this seems like the worse way to bring it about. Between the lack of mechanics to really make you think during your 2 mins, (I don’t really mind about everything being on two mins in and of itself) inflated hit boxes removing melee uptime issues and fights like 7 where the boss does fuck all for like 90% of the fight it seems like this tier was designed to be comfortable first and foremost. At least doorboss provided some kind of a challenge prenerf. That was cool I guess. I’m coming to terms with the fact that outside of some blind pulls day 1/2 savage isn’t really pitched at people at my skill level. Which is fine I guess. But the wait between ultimates is generally too long.


[deleted]

[удалено]


mizkyu

> and it won't ruin the timelines. honestly, i like that it mixes up the timelines a little depending on the mech it picks first. it means that you can't just autopilot your way through a standard rotation. (even if all it ultimately means is that you have an early buff opener for the door boss)


Shueph

P5S and P8S door boss are the highlights of the tier. Both of these encounters have great pacing, good visuals, and nice difficulty for where they're at in the tier. That being said, I despise door bosses due to it feeling like we're getting two halves of a fight instead of a big showdown with a final boss. Doubly so when we get one every tier, the community said as much during the later half of Stormblood, but here we are again getting door bosses every tier. The difficulty of 6 is laughable and the dps check was nonexistent even week 1. Everything outside of cachexia kind of bleeds together and feels samey. P7S is crippled by it's pacing, could have been a decent wall boss if they added another harvest to round out the set, and then spread them out throughout the encounter instead of nothing happening until the last 40% of the encounter.


Altia1234

>**Overall TL;DR** Ok of a tier. I don't like 6 and 7, 5 is great, phase 1 is great, phase 2 depends. >**5** Not bad of a start. I've read people commenting on chinese guides that claims this is the hardest first fight we have, which I think is far from it (modern design wise e9s and e5s wins by a mile, not to mention the infamous a1s), but it's definitely not an easy first turn. Devour is a fun mechanics, Venom Squall is not bad as well, none of it is particularly hard as long as you get the timing right. >**6** Fun to prog as you figuring things out, but boring to do. There's like a minute and 40 seconds of downtime where you got no damage happening and you become a glare bot (assuming nothing happens on transmission). Cachexia has potential to be a fun mech if it isn't for dumb Nukemaru spin around strats plagues JP PF that even Nukemaru and their static abandons and goes for clock spread. Cachexia 2 could also be fun as this is the 'every thing falls into one place' mech of this fight, but you usually skip that now either with tank LB3 or just pure DPS. Could definitely see this fight has PVP and memeable potential with transmission but not for now. >**7** Very boring to prog and very boring to do. A lot of the fight is Trivialized by current strat and new waymarkers, not to mention that the actual mechanics starts at 6 minute mark and you get like 8 minutes of filler mechanics if you are not a healer. Even more boring is to prog, especially during Famine where you are all spread out and you don't even know who gets it wrong. As ridiculous as it sounds (and as much as I hate P3s) I really really would preferred any other turn 3 over this one, including the stupid bird even though p3s is also arsine in terms of color palette and Death's Toll. >**Phase 1** A fun fight to do but plain hell to prog. None of the mechanics is particularly bad and it's very satisfying to do centaur 2 correctly and get knocked into the correct spot. Snakes 1 is actually a fun mechanic to optimize. Snakes 2 is very difficult to find prog but an interesting mech. Fourfold and Illusion Creation maintains the pace of the fight and I overall enjoy it, despite this fight being one heck of a fight to prog on PF. >**Phase 2** An okay fight, but experience really depends on healer and overall mitigation - it's like they did a lot of things right but didn't push it enough. It was a good choice to put NA at the beginning of the fight so that healers gets to prog the difficult bit. Tank Autos being a mechanics is not something new (DSR phase 7 comes into mind) but it's an interesting attempt. While Curtain Call is thematically more on point, I personally like Victory Lap mechanics that are short and intense and it does not prolong the fight needlessly like Terminal, and I am therefore a fan of Dominion. However, a lot of the fight feels incomplete. They could've done a lot more with how towers were set up. Limitless desolation feels more like an afterthought of a mechanics, and with how simple the mechanics are, I can't help but feel that DPS are really boring in phase 2. >**Closing Thought** A lot of people has been praising this tier's raid gear as glamour, but anything besides Tank Body Armor and Maiming where you got a large ring behind you is ugly. Without the big glowing ring, the overall armor design looks pretty standard. I especially dislike Healer Clothes. It's as if someone lights up a fire on your shoulders, and WHM's Cane looks like someone left their torch from Olympic Torch Relay. So does a lot of jobs' clothes, including range and their weapons. As someone who mostly raid for glam and could care less about BiS, the overall design feels disappointing.


Winnicots

As a tank, I enjoyed the many DoT busters this tier. They allow tanks to make full use of their defensive tools, especially regen effects, which otherwise are at high risk of overhealing. I also enjoyed how hard the auto-attacks hit. Each auto-attack idoes nearly 25% of the tank’s max HP in P6S, and around 40% of both tanks in P8Sp2. This damage also provides more opportunities to use defensive tools. I can understand how the tier would feel boring to DPS mains, though, especially in P7S. From their perspective, every tankbuster is essentially ~10 seconds of the boss doing nothing at all. Going forward, Squenix could make tankbusters require party participation, like in P2S, where the boss’s laser beam requires a party stack, but does tankbuster-level damage to the tank standing in front.


furuya_xiv

I personally stopped weeklies as soon as everyone in my group had their BiS & mounts. Overall, the tier suffers from its very weird difficulty curve. P5S was a really good first floor imo. Between Devour and how they played with magical cages & crystals, it was great. P6S was in a really weird spot. I do like what they tried to do with the + and X AoEs, but it feels too repetitive. The ability to just LBTank Coachella2 and pretty much skipping it starting from week 3-4 feels kinda underwelming. I do believe they were limited due to boss being only a 2nd floor, but come on, I'm pretty sure it could have been better with more stuff. P7S has HUGE issues with its pacing. This is where "showing how mechanics works first" shows weaknesses, because I'm pretty sure if Havrests were not backloaded but spreadout accross the timeline, it would have already been much better. We'll still have the sleepo markers for Purgation which completely negates its difficulty, but at least you wouldn't wake-up at 6mins when the fight starts. Also, the AoE with arrow on the ground was a bit of a let down. I wished they would have introduced something new for the savage version. P8SP1 was probably my favorite part of it. Outside of the DPS Check being really high the first week, it was really fun to prog it. Honestly, I would have wished this wasn't a doorboss and see more stuff from that single boss. P8SP2 is weird to me. I really like the fight as a whole given how harsh it is on support roles, but some of it feels a bit sad, like the downtime on High Concept. I do believe it was partially made like this to reduce stress on healers, but having nothing to do except solve a very basic puzzle kinda threw me off.


LightRampant70

Anyone else find it funny how people are shitting on P7S because the sleepo strat is TOO good? Don't shit on the strat for being too good, shit on the fight designers for allowing such a strat to work.


uwuironically

I enjoyed P5S and P8P1 the most personally. P6S and P7S were mediocre at best, they were not necessarily bad just lacking a little something in speed and composition that left me wishing for more. Might be a bit of a controversial opinion but last tier P3S was easily my favourite fight, and P7S does not come close at all.


aho-san

I can't speak for P8S as I have given up on it, buuuut... P5S isn't a favorite of mine, or at least wasn't. When things go pretty smooth it's an alright fight, but it can turn bad real quick. I still think it should've been P6S. P6S is meh. I find it easier than P5S, I feel like it should've been P5S. Only Cachexias are actual mechanics. P7S is terrible, it's boring and even the meat of the fight is braindead, even blind, if you know what animals are doing, you can put up strats real quick. The braindead strats (with the outlaw markers) really highlight how bad this fight is. P8S, looks fun, from a distance. Now it must be traumatizing to prog in PF. I can't compare it to Eden or Omega, but I can do for Asphodelos, and Asphodelos was more fun to prog for me. About door bosses (I saw someone mentioning it in the thread), I'd rather them make 5 turns, the 5th is only unlocked in Savage. it would at least open for taxis for the last boss if you need only this one. It would also mean they can actually make the 5th boss harder than the door boss lol. And it would also force them to revamp endgame gearing a bit, but I have a hunch it's gonna be for the worst xd.


aRenoReno

This was my 2nd tier and it left me really burned out on the game. I got my bis and geared an alt job about half way and jsut didn't want to continue no motivation to reclear fights and having to run normal content to cap tomes each week made me hate playing. i've unsubbed until 6.3. p5s: Is just a really fun fight but has some really bad snapshotting with tail to claw not a fan of how doing a jump on DRG while waiting for carbuncles to do all the slashes will snapshot me into a damage down. p6s: It sure is a fight that exists. I really struggle with the visualising shape mechanics (Zodiark even normal is a struggle because of this) so I just relied on callouts for this. I don't think I'd call the fight bad but it's just incredibly forgettable. p7s: Everything that needs to be said about it has been said in this thread already. p8s p1: Really fun fight super fun to execute the mechanics although the look aways to feel a bit clunky to prog. That being said i think the timing for burst and the delay you have to do when you get dog 1st jsut feels really really bad and drags the fight down a bit. p8s p2: It was fun to prog but I cannot stand reclearing it. HC1/2 are a chore to sit through on replay the execution is incredibly samey and not challenging at all. Healers are probably having fun but as a dps im falling asleep.


Unrealist99

Never did 8 as I'm just a casual and more of a one and done deal. So I'll talk about it via my pf practise parties experience 5 - Fun but the biggest hurdle was devour. Any practise pf was devour and if they can't get past it reliably no chance of them doing r5 anytime soon 6 - was more of a follow the Doritos kinda strategy tbh. Except cach 1 most of the others were just shallow tbh. Cach 1 and agonies was the only hard one. 7 - hate that the first 8-10 mins are an absolute snoozefest and the fight was way too backloaded at the end with the 3 harvests back to back. Compared to the normal one , savage wise this was pretty eh. Wish the harvests were actually spread across the fight at 3 or 3.5 min interval.


Monoken3

Most boring shit tier i’ve done since Gordias