retzerbil867: The best part of doing this tier in pf is the lack of instadeath body checks. Unlike pandaemonium the entire raid doesn't blow up instantly if one person messes up, which is fantastic for preventing pf toxicity and burnout.
Shizuma: I think at this point, square wanted to get new players into raiding, so it wasn't all about difficulty but making this raid tier approachable and fun as an introduction. A lot of the job changes attempt to do (making burst phase clearer) point to this. Raiders get more invested in the game overall. Personally I think this is a good thing, if it works for getting more people into raiding they can increase the difficulty.
NeFlorence: I think having a fast prog and relatively "easier" tier to welcome back people into Raiding was a good thing and ultimately a healthy thing for the game. Myself, as well as many other raiders I know was just burnt
WeskAlber: At first I was happy there was some weird randomness with the Honey B Fight.

I now despise Alarum 1 and 2
ARandomUser5: "I am no longer a Honey B. stan"

HOW DARE-
TheMrJustarandomname: Regarding the DPS checks being too easy, I think this is really just showcasing how incredibly good world first racers are compared to the masses in PF. This tier is really execution heavy, so for world first teams who excel in execution, they can see most of a fight in very few pulls, form a strat and then "just execute" it. Meanwhile in PF, you could hit enrage in M2S or M3S somewhat quickly but then stare at the boss's health bar sitting at 12% at enrage. The strats are there but the execution isn't.

Compare this to EW, especially Anabaseios, if someone dies it's a body check and you wipe. By the time you get to enrage you probably have practiced all the mechanics a whole lot more and have much better DPS, also simply by the fight demanding few deaths and cleaner runs. It's inherently due to how this time there's less body checks around, world first teams will stomp through the tier because they can immediately execute their strats with high dps, whilst PF will hit the DPS wall because they can "recover" after deaths in mechanics.

If the DPS checks where higher, PF would be struggeling much more. I think the DPS checks are actually pretty decent for the first three fights; yes, with a clean run and good players you will tear through the bosses, but if you don't have a clean run or your players make more mistakes in their dps, it can be surprisingly thight. Except probably the fourth fight, that one is clearly not high enough.
Thirtyleven: Big disagree that m1 has the only tank positioning check, Alarm 1 in m2 is imo an even bigger tank check--moving her around smoothly while helping your party dodge arrows while keeping uptime is hard!
guffels: I liked how I knew someone died by the announcer before I saw them die on the party list.
florac1995: My issue with the prevalance of physical damage in M1 and M3 is not that it makes certain classes shine more. While I'm not really a fan of having to change classes for fights, I can appreciate certain classes being better at certain fights. It's that the classes disadvantaged there never got the advantage elsewhere. If raidwide is magic damage, all tanks perform equally. If it's physical, 2 of them get disadvantaged. It's similar with how the more difficult melee uptime this tier disadvantaged all melee...except viper. "hero" moments for specific classes are fine. But only if all or most get them, not only selected few. Like when you are warrior, there's no situation where switching would be a noteabl gain. But for DRK and GNB, there would be. That doesn't feel fair.
musikmann95: "Just switch jobs" is such a bad take. People did that for p8s and it didnt get very well recieved. A benefit of job homogenization is that every job can be played if you like the job. Why should someone outside of world first raiders be forced to be completely subpar just because they want to play the job they like
val7885: The problem with the physical vs magical raidwide damage is like...WAR and PLD mits are still as good on magic damage as they are on physical, but DRK and GNB ones are non-existent on physical damage. If DM/HoL had a partial physical mit aspect, an additional effect that still worked against physical damage, were significantly better against magic damage, or if SiO/Veil only absorbed physical damage that would be fine, they would be worse but as is, DM/HoL are just entirely worthless vs physical and you have nothing else outside of the role-wide reprisal.
FatalFatalisFtFts: It feels weird finally having a good third fight after an entire expansion of "ok at best" third fights.
natebroadus8474: This is the best opening of a tier in the game's history. No joke. Banger music. Interesting mechanics. Awesome boss designs. Not ridiculously difficult (we have Cosmic Exploration, Criterion, the new Bozja/Eureka, and even more tiers ahead, we don't need this to be an artificial time dump).

I have a mixed opinion of the Dawntrail MSQ, but not with the dungeon and raid content. It was fantastic.
supekele: This is the first expac where I'm raiding seriously at content. As someone inexperienced, I can see characterizing the Extremes as very forgiving (I started clearing Vali and Everkeep with messy pulls by the 4th attempt), but my experience of the jump from Everkeep Ex to M1S is that it's a pretty steep learning curve! I get that the core raiders are long habituated, but this tier has felt EXACTLY like what you're describing with "earning" your wins from my perspective as a new raider. My static didn't clear M1S on the first week, and we're just now getting on Honey B's last couple mechanics. My M1S clear didn't feel cheap at all because it's still incredibly demanding in comparison to the Extreme from the inexperienced perspective.

Fully agree with you on the theming though. 10/10 songs, presentation, even the enrages are thematic and on point. It's not necessary but it is a nice touch.

Anyway off to ignore raid callouts to bop to Honey B.
thebrave9971: Likely M4S is being held back by being, well, the first raid tier, and since they are experimenting with mechanics right now, they didn't want to go too wild on the mechanics here, cause it definitely looks like some of those mechanics should have more going on, when they don't

Also, a small note, the dps checks being so lenient definitely aren't entirely because of the class buffs, there's no way that those buffs contributes to sometimes clearing a whole minute before the dps check for M4S for some of the first clears of these fights
tinewentv: I did the entire tier in pf and the biggest issue for me was people not being honest about their prog point and joining clear parties they shouldn't have.

Other than that I think it was a fun tier overall could have done with a bit higher checks but thats just a personal preference. I have higher hopes for FRU to have all the checks in place.
drarchon5267: having only cleared m1s so far, getting actual tank responsibility back by pulling the boss around for mechanics (namely in the copycat bit) was such a breath of fresh air after EW had every boss teleport to the middle for every mechanic, so I can forgive blackcat for having an underwhelming tankbuster and devour being lame
formy52: Problem I have with the tank homogenisation issue is that, if WAR and PLD encounters a magic heavy fight, they're still doing just fine as (as far as I know) 'regular' mits work on physical and magical damage, and WAR's Shake it Off and PLD's Divine Veil generates a shield that doesn't care about the type of damage anyway. If a DRK encounters a fight with very little or no magic damage, that's two cooldowns they basically cannot use, which is pretty significant.

Tank diversity is fine, and I agree with the overall point that it's okay for some jobs to be less good in certain fights, but it feels with the tanks that balance doesn't tip the other way. Not to mention of course the problem that magic mit faces where it comes to the fact the game doesn't tell you what type of damage is incoming on a castbar or some such, until the damage hits. If you're running content blind, or simply haven't done it for ages, good luck knowing which mit is for which attack.
wolfair: came out pretty PAW-sitive out of the first encounter, eh?

Aug 15 2024

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