Titan ex with latency was the best thing ever! Lol. Was on a US server (no EU ones back then) and had to predict where the landslides and weight of the lands would appear... as a BLM. Fun times XD
Oooh so you are one of those survivors as well? Nice to know people like you. I also beat titan ex like in a month thanks to horrible internet connection. I remember my pt bieng almost dead and the two tanks died, then lv1 LB popped and everyone was "LB DRG LB" I did it and Titan died...it was an amazing feeling
Mr. Happy, this is honestly one of the best videos you’ve done in a while.. for me. I hope you do more “think pieces” and “retrospectives” of game features moving forward.
One big change between HW to SB raid as well is the cross world PF. I remember back then in Alex, if we had to get pugs, we had to stand in the middle of Idly or Hinterlands and shout, or pray that a class of the job you're looking for would respond. Having cross world PF made it so much faster in filling holes and getting a pug group together to prog. And as a WHM main back in Alex, holy crap I was so happy when they changed in Creator with the CD setting, bc that means my BENEDICTION IS BACK. and I'm that healer main who only meld accuracy in creator, my SCH cohealer is the one on 90% DPS uptime and I almost solo heal through all the tiers. It was fun, I liked it, and I still want my Stoneskin back.
22:14 Yeah tanks were still rolling overmelded accessories before that because 3.2 was also the patch that made it so tanks used vitality and strength for damage (reverted in 4.0, of course) and prevented overmelding main stats (still a thing) I still have my pentamelded i150 accessories in my retainer as a keepsake.
Once Endwalker has run it's course, I think happy should make a history of raiding and trials. It'll be interesting to see how far we've come as it seems like each expansion tries to improve upon the faults of the last while creating new problems.
Really useful to watch this as I quit around 2.4a and have been planning to come back now that life is more settled. Helped me get a good perspective on mindset and what's to come when I return.
Great vid! Very very nostalgic. One thing to add that contributed to community raid progression: Cross-server party building. This was huge for building statics and finding players of appropriate skill-level for whichever group they joined (hc, mc, cas, etc...). Even statics who stuck together for the long haul had a much easier time finding that temporary full-in for whenever real life pulled a player out for the week. You could probably argue that pf overall was a game changer, once that came out. But allowing players to traverse servers over a data center really brought recruiting for raid to the next level.
I get to do that on RDM on pretty much every fight still :p I remember first time doing O11N - backflipped as soon as the thing in the middle showed up and died xd
Alphascape is a MASSIVE improvement if you ask me, you can't just "avoid red AoE marker" or "just out DPS it" i LOVE Alpha 2, you need to see his movements to know how to not get smacked, then there is omega himself, such a good fight. also, i felt bad for bad Omega after we beat him... and finally, us Europeans, back in the days of ARR our servers were NOT IN FUCKING EUROPE AT THE TIME, they were in CANADA, the latency was evil, TITman EX was HELL, triple LAGslide spelled death, even if your were well out of its AoE.
I still think raiding should have voiced bosses. Not even for mechanics. But bosses feel so boring when they don't talk, but Warcraft will give random pirates some voice lines. 4 bosses isn't much, they could at least pay to have them voiced.
Coils will always be my favorite. Loved fighting bahamut and clearing it for the first time back in the day. The most epic fight in the game hands down, in my opinion. Never got that feeling in any of the stormblood/hw raids.
Coils are always gonna have a special place in raiders' hearts because it was so intimately related to the game's lore and it was our very first raid after the huge dumpster fire that 1.0 was. The thrill of the first dangerous battles that actually posed a challenge to the raiders is simply unforgettable. I wish they would make another lore based raid instead of bringing us easter eggs from other games. For example, the whole story with Nidhogg in HW could actually have been a great 8man raid instead of just a primal. He literally had a horde of dragons in his control and it would have made that raid tier a lot more special for the players.
Honestly T5 had no story at all..Bahamut had and thats why it felt rewarding. As for Nael it was just a throwbsck to 1.0. Story wise binding coil is the best, boss wise is Omega and probsbly will remain like that because it brought old FF final bosses such as kefka in all their glory. Difficult wise is Alexander, no question about it.
@@MRorizs2I’m the opposite of you lol… I love the “Easter egg” raids. For example, I didn’t really enjoy raiding at all until I did return to Ivalice, which made me really fall in love with the game as a whole.
One thing that you completely skipped over that I think is very important, the reason that the raid scene started to die during Gordias was largely due to the lack of Cross World Party Finder. I played on Sargatanas at the time, and a majority of the good raiders jumped ship to Gilgamesh. If you were not on Gilgamesh, you had a VERY limited pool of players to pick from, most of them already had groups, and very few of them were good enough to clear. It wasn't long after that we got cross world functions, removing the "penalty" of not being on Gilgamesh if you wanted a decent chance at a decent raid group. Also, on Healer DPS, you brought up accuracy later on, but ultimately accuracy was a big reason that healers did not typically DPS early on in the game. You had to sacrifice multiple gear slots to use crafted gear and pentameld it all with accuracy. For a long time it was actually expected of SCHs to DPS, because their Arcanist kit made them seem damage focused. It was extremely rare to see a WHM having accuracy melds unless they were an off-job SCH main. Additionally, melding for Gordias really sucked. Crafted accessories were 60 ilvls below the raid gear, so you either ran really shitty accessories or slightly shitty left-side pieces. While the left-side pieces were only 30 ilvls below the raid gear, they also were locked behind Favors which was one of the worst received gathering systems in the game. Not only that, but the recipes were not available until 3.05, the patch that Savage itself dropped. One thing that I REALLY wish they'd keep doing, is delaying the Savage fight for 2 weeks (or even just 1 week) after the normal mode is released. I really like the idea of completing normal mode, running it a few times, and theorycrafting what the potential Savage changes will be and preparing for it. It also sucks for people like me, because my group runs around the time the servers come up, so our first raid day consists of doing Normal mode then not having enough time to really do anything else.
This also killed Brynhildr's raid scene. Almost all groups left to Gilgamesh and only 2 or 3 groups remained. It was impossible to raid through PF until Creator Savage and even then it was hard to find groups.
Genius video Mrhappy! As someone who’s been playing since 2.1 you summed up everything well. Its also nice to look back and see ARR and HW and how its different than present day SB (4.4)
One thing that should be mentioned is that from heavensward on, every 4 fights guaranteed you a raid tier item. I still remember our BLM in second coil being bummed for a month not getting any drops but caster earrings. It was crazy.
Loved this video MrHappy. I played during the whole ARR era and was a midcore raider. I'm very pleased to see that I wasn't the only one who left when HW released seeing how frustrating the savage raids were. Then seeing the rest of the raiding experience helped me understand better what the devs did to raiding and how they did their best to learn from their mistakes. A very solid video. 😊thx!
I swear, back when ARR came out, trying to do Titan Hard was cancer, particularly as a healer, in New Zealand, seriously my MS was in the 300 level back then even without the innate latency, so, dodging plums was impossible. Love the Music, Hated the Fight.... and so what if nowdays I go bully Titan Ex with my Pld70 when I'm bored >.> /laugh
having raided in other MMO's, I saw ffxiv's raids they looked great but being new not many people want to do old raids and it felt like I'm months if not years away from current content.
Nah. You aren't. The only part that takes a lot of time is 2.x. from 3.0 on the story in each patch was extremely shortened. No go here, take that, bring back stuff anymore. Story, story, story. And it keeps getting more intense with every patch. Enjoy the story, have fun in all the dungeons and trial themes (maybe not tje bosses itself tho. it's all too easy since you get ilv synced far too high imo) and don't think about endgame stuff right now. You get there faster than you might expect, even with just a few hours of time to play per week.
Main issue Savage SCoB had for me wasn't so much the lack of new reward, but rather that it shared the same weekly lock-out as regular for months. Another change made to add QoL to raid prog was taking off VIT from Weakened status in 4.0. Anyone dying during 3.X raids had to be babysat hard with shielding due to their lowered HP, which just added extra stress to the healers when they were already trying to push DPS and keep OT stance tanks alive to make ends meet.
As a tank main, and have being such since ARR, I want to mention materia melding in a little more detail. You talked about VIT and ACC melds briefly, but lets talk about STR melds and how they've evolved along with tank DPS. During ARR, only the most hardcore and/or the richest tanks would meld STR/VIT depending on the crafted accessory, you would have some with a full slaying set on their right side (since accessories weren't class locked till Stormblood) pentamelded with VIT, or a full fending set on their right side pentamelded with STR, or a mix of the two depending on sub stats. This was also seen as exclusive to Warriors, since Pallys' had no chance of pumping out any kind of DPS (not even in sword oath) when all they had was Rage of Halone and nothing else. The idea was to give Warrior as much STR as possible to emulate the STR that a MNK or DRG had, and so long as we ddin't use defiance pump out similar numbers. This way of thinking became far more common at the start of Heavensward, or as I like to call it, the dawn of the Fell Cleave. Newer players may be a tad confused as to why I've been talking about optimizing STR on a tank, when are damage is calculated with a mix of STR and VIT? This is why that is now the case. Back then all melee (except NIN) had STR as their primary stat for damage calculation, MNK, DRG, WAR, PLD, and DRK. But it was us Warriors who made SE rethink how tank damage was calculated. Having trouble with that DPS check? Make the Dark Knight tank and send in a Warrior with full STR pentamelds, this became so common that it was early Heavensward that they took away the ability to overmeld primary stats. Despite that Warriors especially, but the other two tanks as well would still buy slaying accessories and meld VIT to it only if there was a VIT cap needed to take certain tank busters. After they changed how tank damage is calculated this became less prevalent outside of Warriors, though even today tanks will generally throw a SRT VI materia on accessories. which finally brings us to Stormblood and how tanks view melding now. At the very start of the expansion you would see some tanks continue to use their Alexandrian slaying accessories, seeing as they were not class locked like all new accessories were, that extra bit of DPS being worth it to most. Unfortunately the need for more VIT became apparent rather quickly and we see the death of the full STR build before Deltascape. Which honestly brings us to the current view on melding for tanks as it hasn't evolved much for Stormblood. Like you mentioned you see more than just tanks using crafted gear to get into savage content day 1, it just wasn't a new development for us. You see all three tanks replace left side gear pretty much as soon as they can for either raid or augmented tomestone gear, it is how each class views the left side that varies. As a Warrior main specifically, I'm fairly certain that most other warriors agrre that pentamelded accessories are generally are BiS gear, especially after the changes to Beserk/Inner Release. That and thanks to Defiance we're never truly short on VIT. Now for Pallys' and Dark Knights', while I have both leveled to 70 as well and play them semi regularly I can only give my personal view on how they are affected by pentamelded accessories. That said I believe Pallys' should upgrade to raid/augmented tome accessories as soon as possible. The oddities in damage calculation from both that stat split from shield and sword as well as the regular use of a spell for DPS (Holy Spirit) means that primary stats are going to be their main concern. As for Dark Knights', with how versatile their play style is, it's honestly a matter of personal preference. Having said all that, you should honestly turn this into a series, in this video you went over how raiding as a whole as evolved. Maybe how theorycrafting for the various roles and how the Meta has evolved could be next? What I just wrote is just the broad strokes of how theorycrafting for tanks (mainly WAR) has evolved, just a thought.
I don't think you emphasized enough how much the difference of refreshing skills on party wipe has changed the scene. Not that you didn't try, I'm just not sure that anyone could emphasize it enough. Speaking as a PLD... This was huge. So goddamn huge. So very, very, very big.
Great Video. As a raid leader from coil until now who is constantly saying “Back in my day.” Now I can just link this and keep my old mouth shut! Glad you’re doin well Hap and still pumping out great content
It's also nostalgic for people who have been in the raid scene since the game launched. No matter if you didn't clear a particular raid tier, the simple fact you participated in it, were part of the community buzz and so on, it's nostalgic and boy, time sure does fly.
Personally I'd like 5.0 raids to have a fifth separate, savage only stage, as opposed to the normal boss being a faust battle on the fourth stage. That opens up the possibility of adding new kinds of rewards, and can allow them to make the final battles more challenging without changing the formula for how they distribute loot in the first four stages. As for what those rewards could be... well. As much as people joke that glamour is the true end game, I doubt the raiding scene would be too pleased with a savage difficulty encounter that only gave glamour items or furniture for their houses. Hell, Happy doesn't use glamour at all (unless you count him running around in his underwear), or own a house. Maybe introduce something new, like a new tier of materia that can only be gotten as drops, or some other form of items that would enhance your character in a new way. Maybe add a new accessory slot and the only items that go in it are from the final raid, or cost a huge amount of tomestones and other currencies to buy from Rowena.
Excellent vidéo! I "just came back" and I left before HW's release. I have so many things to catch up, this has pretty much summed up the old content that I need to cover! Hopefully I can clear everything before the next expac (including the ultimates if I'm lucky enough to find mates for it!)
+Amy Guziak I miss Cleric Stance too and Stoneskin, Cleric Stance the most because it took more skill to use and made healers interesting. They took that from us because newbs couldn't figure it out right away. Bad decision :/ and @Juses Crus Amy is obviously talking about the original Cleric Stance.
tbh whats to miss about stone skin? Its not an ability, its "do you want more resistances in this fight or nah?" It was just asking the healers to press 1 button more at fight start Bring back old cleric stance tho
A worthy mention should go to when they introduced tanks being able to use strength jewels at the start of HW (also later on in SB as well) to prog as I think this was the beginning of tanks being expected to do more than just tank and to put out more DPS.
Another issue that existed between the first and second Savage tiers in Heavensward is how long they waited to add the next tier as time went on due to them constantly trying to adjust difficulty going forward. My group during this time litterally dissolved because the length of time leading to changing over all activity or quitting the game altogether.
Healers definitely contributed to DPS in Coil and Second Coil. I wiped a lot of times due to Cleric Stance haha. But healer DPS definitely wasn't as optimized, and often Scholar was the one DPSing while the White Mage tried to solo heal. Kind of a 1.5 healer strategy. And Scholar was definitely set up for it with like 12 damage abilities haha Also remember when dying removed your food buff? I have nightmares
Man, I remember when Pepsi man came out. It took till like the 3rd week just to beat him for the higher end hardcores. A4 wasn't even the big bad of that tier. It was A3. It had 7 phases and was 12:30 long if you took it up to enrage. My initial raid team for that tier was wonderful. We got past Gordias 1 and 2 in the first week. We felt hot. We got up to the Tornado phase in A3 the second week. The third week we saw the big hand taking the healer... The 4th week we didn't get any further. People weren't wanting to work together in the static. The WHM was flipping out about having to heal our DRK so much. Turns out the WHM was greedy to do DPS, and just wasn't casting enough healing. Our DPS thought that the tanks should clear away from 7 other people with the tethers, and not the other way around. That fight turned that group into a hot mess. I wound up not beating A3s for about 5 months lol When we were unable to beat A3 after the first month it was out, our WHM, BRD, and DRG quit. We replaced them, taught 3 new people the fight, and trudged onwards. About a month and a half later, we lost our MNK our DRK and the new BRD. So we replaced them eventually, taught more new people the fight. It kept on like this until February of 2016. When we did beat it, the only original members who had been in the original static at the time Gordias Savage launched were me(WAR) and the SMN. Also something I think you should add to the mention of Midas being easier is that tanks were made to wear VIT accessories by making their damage scaling come from 45% of their VIT + STR total, instead of just being 100% of their STR. This was effectively a DPS nerf to tanks, but it gave healers the intended leeway they were supposed to have. Before the STR/VIT change, tanks were always running full STR in order to help complete DPS checks, as well as to hold hate more easily while in DPS stance. WHile they could certainly survive all encounter tank busters in STR accessories, this made good healers crucial, because they had less wiggle room.
To this day Bahamut Prime is still my most loved raid boss period. Even over the Ultimates. That fight and its music was just a symphony of wonder and "holy shit" moments almost every time I pulled it.
Wow looking at your screen and seeing how the old UI looked even though it isn't that dramatic of an upgrade now its still nostalgic. Not to mention the old skills.
Some of my FC and I went through all of coils a couple of weeks ago (some of us for the first time) and I thought it was really neat to see how the game has evolved since then. Makes you wonder how the game might have changed in another 5 years.
The gear requirements are high for people who never did the previous raids and don't have money to buy gear. And if I get the gear after 3 weeks I wouldn't find any party that accept a first timer or find any practice parties.
I think you should have mentioned that the classes got a lot harder in the ARR > HW jump. There were all these buffs and dots that people had to keep good uptime on.
To me, raiding has changed to the point that raids no longer feel like raids to me. Oh, sure, the encounters can be complex, require a lot of communication and coordination... but they still feel like really hard trials to me. The only raids that feel like raids are the 24-man raids. They still suffer from extreme linearity the rest of the game has, but those 24-man raids evoke a sense of place and traversal through that place. By comparison, the Omega raids take you straight to the boss fight, because of course, the story is contrived to make it that way. It's a shame, because Coil kinda had that feeling of traversal to some degree. I still remember when people said "I have the Caduceus checkpoint."
FFXIV simply isn't a raid-oriented mmorpg. There's no legitimate way of calling 8-person encounters "raids", regardless of what the game decides to call them. And the actual 24-person encounters tend to be trivially challenging by comparison.
I can agree with you there. I went with a friend to go some of the older raids I've never gotten a chance to do proper, and it was jarring how you had to go THROUGH the place to get to a boss. Mind you, Jarring in a good way personally. as for the 24 mans I love that shit, am SO looking forward to the next 24 man raid. If they can reinject a little of that sense of actually moving to the boss would be nice for 8 mans. I doubt we'll ever get something like the Pratorium again for 8 mans, though I wouldn't mind them giving it another go.
The dev forbid the western definition of "raid", to them "raid" is a very loose term, something along the line of "Not 4 man dungeon". On the other hand trash on raid is a controversial idea also. Older players from WoW days held that hold to their heart but newer players don't like them so much.
Players didn't like having to fight trash everytime they got in there and having to go back to the boss all the way after each wipe, so raids became boss arenas only. Coil still holds a special place in my heart and the way TO the boss was often nearly as exciting as the actual boss, at least at first, but I can totally see where people are coming from. When I look at raiding in WoW, there is SO much pointless wasting of time with trash that makes me glad everytime that in FFXIV, we just go straight to the boss and that's it.
See, this is an instance in which I very selfishly have to say "I don't care." I would rather have that trash and that walk establish atmosphere and a sense of place than another yawn-inducing dude standing on a circular arena. This is an *inconvenience* I would gladly have. Hell, if it's such a big deal, they could always just port people straight to the boss in the "savage" version of the fight.
I lived next to Montreal so back then I had a perfect connection and never once 90k unless it was from a serious bug like the Mor Dhona bug where they had to lock the instance for that zone. Now I get 90k often and hit by aoes unless I run way before hand.
yea the latency is still trash with this game, and for a game that is based on timing to have a large latency time like that is what makes this game complete shit.
imo alexander tier 1 was the most damaging raid because it sparked changes in the playerbase the permiated the rest of the game. i'd love to play a tank but the dps that tank's are now expected to do intimidates me.
It shouldn't, their rotations are very easy to perform, and the amount of tools to hold aggro make it a joke. I liked the change because pressing 1 2 3 on a paladin forever in older raids was sooooooo boring.
As a new player who started raiding when sigma released, I loved this video of stuff I knew less to nothing about. My only suggestion for you Mr. Happy would be to add some background music to this kind of video. Adding a some loops quietly in the background would do wonders I think.
every time I see a player with one of the Ultima weapons, I always think they're pretty badass for beating it. It's great they can show off their completion to the rest of the server, maybe add armor items as well. I think having a title for beating it is kinda meh, just because there are sooooo many titles in the game to get its not very special.
I'd honestly love to see a video like this going over the overall changes that the game has taken over the years. From roulettes to glamour to certain qol updates, it's interesting to think how the game was back when it launched.
if cross world pf and things like discord were around at the start raiding wouldve took a faster push. earlier tiers just lacked a lot of accessablity.
Love the video. Definitely a must watch. I didnt get deep into raiding until heavensward and started doing savages in Stormblood. I figure I'd finally have a static by the end of this expansion for the next. Still learning. Keep playing that monk man. Its always interesting to see you punch your way to victory.
I had all lv99s in ff11 and been playing 14 since launch. There's so much dodging and mechanic crap going on I don't even do end game raids.... probably why I quit every other month😭
I played up to Gordias 3 savage, won it once with my group and next day everyone quit. I stopped playing around Midas release, it was to much work just trying to find people than to have fun and play the game. It was doing what I love or go full casual, I decided that doing what I love wins and I quit too. You can say I have been a bit traumatized by the experience I had to go throughout Gordias time (Excalibur server). I doubt I would ever come back to FF14 ever, even if it is more friendly than at that time.
I personally think people would have been more forgiving in their critique of the "trash turn" if there were an actual reward at the end. not only was it trash, there was no reward so people felt like it was simply a waste of time and effort.
I feel like if Turn 3 could have straight up been attached to Turn 4, it would have had a better reception since Turn 4 is just a trash elevator... but it has gear at the end. Idk what the fuck they were thinking with Turn 3.
Love the video, it game some pretty interesting points into how raiding has changed. Still wont change the fact that there are people who call the tiers easy, yet cant do their rotations.
I would say their 2 major reason I raid again in this expansion Tier and it wasn't mention. Fighting nostalgic boss (kefka) and making PF more easy to pug (complete status help keep the low skill people at bay)
in the meanwhile, the propper skilled players get kicked down because they can't find a party that can clear said raid (been there with O7S where me and my friends were doing everything correctly but then we have the 4 DPSers either not doing enough or dying to simple things) PF is a double edged blade, it's amazing it's possible with it but at the same time it also stops others from actualy completing using it. i got my initial O7S kill because my static disbanded (1 had exams 1 just didn't had fun and the other was bored) and i joined a weekly clear for o5 and 6s, after doing that the party leader asked if anyone wanted to do o7s weekly and i mentioned how i had multiple enrage experiences (a lot of 0.2% enrages) and i was allowed to stick around and clear it.
I agree that breaking the wall of clear is a bad progression on it's own. But I find it's the winning side of people like me who doesn't want or have the time to do static raid because of RL issue. When you have a static you can't try to progress or attempt to clear content when you want because you would lock the rest of your static on loot. And yes, you have to stand often on the other group member to know what they are doing . I remember even after getting my o7s clear that Complete party could still fail in doing mechanic right. But one trick I usually found was to find crazy people like you :P ( Joining PF 10 minute before weekly clear would always land me a party that one shoted all 3 turn in a row). People still have to know their limit tho, I've never tried my hand at the final turn in any of the stormblood raid expect because of the high level of communication needed. I still enjoy all of them none the less and hope to go in there Unsync in the future expansion to get my mount.
He did this video with Pesi Man in the thumb and now a year later Pepsi Man is back to destroy raid static groups once again! It's a prophecy come true!
I remembered I wanted to do Alexander savage so badly but literally no one ever wanted to do it because of how unreasonably difficult it was. So I never got to experience it until way later when it was dead and me and my fc did it unsynced.
My crew probably had the most difficulty from T7. Being the SMN they asked me to kite and that took me a few weeks to finally learn. Even after clearing T9, every weekly reset we might have had to repeat T7 a few times because of bad luck, bad placement, or pushing phases and wiping us. After learning that fight I was very upset they nerfed it into the ground.
Great video. One thing I would like to see them add is a progress based party match system. It's not surprising that people lean on fflogs, the game gives us no tools by which to trust anyone or tell how far they have gotten. This combined with the fact that you really have to have everyone pull their weight in ffxiv means the party finder as a tool of progression, really isn't optimal.
I like raiding, but the stress of finding a static, playing on a schedule, etc, can really suck, and honestly I may be done with that at this point. Improving matching so that pugging is more viable would be a welcome change for me.
Neat retrospective Mr. Happy. Sure this isn't WoW, but that's ok. I've really enjoyed raiding with the challenge in this game personally. Even if just boss rooms aren't quite as "epic" as other games, that's just not the style of how their raiding works and that's fine. I guess it just depends on what you want to call raiding as that varies at different games. I've really enjoyed Omega and hope to see what we're getting in 5.0! But all that being said, I'm still enjoying what we've had in XIV from tier to tier!
WoW may have 3x more boss encounters per raid tier, but they're not necessarily more fun. During Legion, hundreds of guilds died in Nighthold (Mythic) and Tomb of Sargeras (Mythic) because the mechanics were too frustrating and soul crushingly hard. I'm talking about things like 12 minute fights with instant wipe mechanics if a single person makes a mistake or lags. And for all that, it is rather unrewarding to do mythic raids because gear from easier tiers have a chance to "titanforge" and become just as good or even better than mythic gear. I don't do savage and even less ultimate in FFXIV, and I haven't done Alphascape because I decided to check Battle for Azeroth, but just looking at the guides for savage Sigmascape, I can say that each of these 4 fights look way more creative and fun than the majority of WoW's encounters. And on the casual scene, I find random group content IMMENSELY more enjoyable in FFXIV. I'd much rather try Savage Kefka than, say, Mythic Star Augur.
I think the NA server move should have been mentioned. The new location actually caused me a ton of frustration and I regularly had to stop raiding because the lag would kill me. A playable night was like waiting for a blue moon some weeks. The following may get off topic: Also, I've always liked cleric stance for switching between healing and DPS. I don't know about anyone else, but switching stances was one of my favorite parts about healing in raids: it gave it that extra kick needed to make it as fast paced as some of the DPS... though I played monk for the most part, so perhaps I just liked going fast? Well, unless it was arrow in Alexander
In my opinion the problem with FFXIV's end game, is that there lacks a point and it's a fairly common problem for most MMORPGs. Given that you spend weeks/monthes grinding out raids there is no point to it, sure you get gear, but for what? The only reason raid gear serves is to fight Ultimate fights when they drop months after the raid tier releases, sure you can clear dungeons faster but once you're raiding why would you even bother doing dungeons at max lvl? It would be faster and more efficient to just raid on your main and roll for gear for your alt. Which is what people do anyways. And so the only thing left to do with raid gear is to go for speedruns, and unfortunately this game doesn't support speedruns outright in the game and it doesn't need to necessarily, but this leads to the problem where you have a good portion of raiders who after raiding want a tangible goal to work towards now that they've farmed up their raid gear and beyond sparse ultimate fights the only other thing to achieve is speedruns on FFlogs. And that's another design philosophy I don't care for, is the fact that the only use for raid gear is to use it to gain achievements, which is what Ultimate fights are essentially, there is no practical purpose for the gear beyond that. With the weak exception of maybe using the gear to be able to farm trash mobs faster for mats but that's not really a thing in this game. Therefore, folks that want to raid do so for achievement, but at different levels of achievement, whether you're chasing those Orange logs and are HC or you just want to clear content, the end goal is the same you're doing it to clear the raid and get geared to the nines just so you can do what with it? PS: Love the community in this game, one of the nicest online communities anywhere, I just wish the content interested me enough to make me wanna come back to it or rather make me want to grind through raids once again, but really the effort and frustrations that I put in vs the end goal of me being bored out of my while decked to the nines and feeling empty isn't worth it.
My first ever raid in an mmo was deltascape in FFXIV. So doing the Alexander raids kinda confused me because I was like, "wtf is this shit? How is this a raid?" I personally like how the raids are now. I don't really like having to deal with trash pulls.
The fix to the huge jumps in difficulty that disparaged a lot of people from raiding in 3.0 wasn't to just nerf everything to the easy point it is today, it was to increase the number of bosses per raid tier and smooth out the difficulty curve. Alas even after more than doubling the subscribers from that lowest of points (2.0+ wise) they've more than proven that they aren't capable and/or (probably both) interested in increasing the amount of content per patch and so the stagnant state of the game will continue and the population will start to decline in 1-2 years from now. If only the SE board wasn't full of such greedy little pigs (it's not just FFXIV, just look at all the ports on steam that don't even get their problems ACKNOWLEDGED let alone fixed)
God I remember how I went into Gordias normal with a newly formed raid team. And they couldn't even beat faust normal in week 1. That and them having 2 paladin in the party made me leave asap. Idk how but after that I got into a group that managed to kill a2s in the first week. I call that healthy improvement :D
I know the list of 'no mention of ___' could go on endlessly but... no mention of the death debuff change in 4.0? That was also a really big deal in speeding up those first clear times. On another note, I hope they take another cue from UWU and realize that having one or two phase pushes isn't the devil if designed / timed correctly. The "six minute fight -> loop" design of 4.x's final fights has been pretty disappointing. In particular I miss the kinds of notorious, imposing final phases and/or nightmare mechanics that were a staple of pre-4.x raids. Hello World 2 is really the only thing to come close to the kind of notoriety that Winged Justice, Nael's elements, even Communion, etc. had.
Even after seeing this and seeing the evolution of raids again I still think they should change a lot to make raids feel more fresh. Give us more fights, please give us trash (and to not make the trash completely useless: give them a chance to drop stuff that would normally be a bit harder to get) make the raids overall more than just "Get ported to the arena, hit the boss until it's dead and leave" and if they're at it they should make the raids more visually appealing too. Let the next raid tier more like the 24-mans please. Let us use crowd control, it would be okay if the healers had to focus less on DPS again too and for the love of god PLEASE get away from the hard enrages for every fight. Also stop with the instakill mechanics, yes that makes them extra punishing but at the same time also ridiculous if almost everything just one shots you. (and get rid of riddle of earth while replacing it with a simple reset for the GL timer!) Also reduce the server lag. I lost count of the times me or my party got hit by mechanics even though we were clearly not standing in them which also makes knockback mechanics ridiculous sometimes if you still get knockback even though arm's length got used 2 seconds before said knockback. It would also be nice if skills like diversion or arm's length wouldn't be affected by animation lock because it just makes them frustrating to use sometimes. I still have more things that would be nice if they got changed but I think this should be enough for the time being. Would be nice to know if me and my party are the only ones thinking about changes for these things...^^'
I've been a warrior main since Second Coil. Gave DRK a try when it came out but wasn't really a fan. It's so weird now and its come such a long way from "using butcher's combo out of stance for dps" back in ARR to "you have a specific 10 second window where you need your CDs to look like this" that is now. I actually ended up dropping it in 4.0 until 4.2 because of the gods awful Inner Release rotation we had back then. I remember teaching new tanks about STR melding and them being utterly confused as to why you'd do that. I miss the Vit scaling we had back in HW, and I desperately wish they'd bring that back in some sort (not because Upheaval scales off of max HP or anything no no *cough*). I miss Brutal Swing, for no real reason other than it was cool. I DON'T miss having to use all you cooldowns in order to triple Cleave, but it makes me laugh to think about now... And having those 50 second pull countdowns to get your stacks right before a fight, oof... RIP Foresight Personally I think my favorite fights were T10 and A11. Creator as a whole was so cool and had some really unique fights that I miss a lot. It was so fun finally getting in to O12S and getting to Fundamental Synergy and being like "oh my god guys.... remember Cruise Chaser? /its that again/"
I'm still watching but I did Prog back in Coils and start of Gordias before dropping due to group issues/the invasion of "Real Life" Loved all of it (okay, plenty of frustration at Gordias...) Fun trip down memory lane at just how things worked back then, I do miss some of 2.Xs design philosophy directions that it abandoned in favor of the current changes, we get what we get and still love the game.
I think people didn't like the trash pull fight because it was pointless. It was like a "light" version of a waveclear, horde mode fight, but without any of the fun of those kinds of modes.
"...Ultima, the *Final Boss of 2.0"
poor, poor Lahabrea. Still no respect 5 years later. And never will have any respect
Holy Shit I didn't remember you had to fight Lahabrea after Ultima xD
Lahabrea is nothing more than a victory lap, Ultima was the actual fight.
Need a ex fight with him
@@ziegfeld4131 Welp, Hades EX happened. XD
@@Willnobilis Hades is Emet-Selch?.. Although I guess it's kind of a fight against ascians in general because he's fighting for his people
Till this day I'm still proud of clearing Titan extreme with 500ms. It took me a month, & it was totally worth.
Titan Ex made the WoL I am today.
What class did you do it as? I cleared it as my BRD xD and was the guy who called out shit to my friends and randoms
Titan ex with latency was the best thing ever! Lol. Was on a US server (no EU ones back then) and had to predict where the landslides and weight of the lands would appear... as a BLM. Fun times XD
Oooh so you are one of those survivors as well? Nice to know people like you. I also beat titan ex like in a month thanks to horrible internet connection. I remember my pt bieng almost dead and the two tanks died, then lv1 LB popped and everyone was "LB DRG LB" I did it and Titan died...it was an amazing feeling
@@balthefemroe Back in ARR EU servers were actually located in the US. That was pure lie from SE lol. " EU " servers btw
Mr. Happy, this is honestly one of the best videos you’ve done in a while.. for me. I hope you do more “think pieces” and “retrospectives” of game features moving forward.
Agreed
One big change between HW to SB raid as well is the cross world PF. I remember back then in Alex, if we had to get pugs, we had to stand in the middle of Idly or Hinterlands and shout, or pray that a class of the job you're looking for would respond. Having cross world PF made it so much faster in filling holes and getting a pug group together to prog.
And as a WHM main back in Alex, holy crap I was so happy when they changed in Creator with the CD setting, bc that means my BENEDICTION IS BACK. and I'm that healer main who only meld accuracy in creator, my SCH cohealer is the one on 90% DPS uptime and I almost solo heal through all the tiers. It was fun, I liked it, and I still want my Stoneskin back.
22:14 Yeah tanks were still rolling overmelded accessories before that because 3.2 was also the patch that made it so tanks used vitality and strength for damage (reverted in 4.0, of course) and prevented overmelding main stats (still a thing)
I still have my pentamelded i150 accessories in my retainer as a keepsake.
Was looking or this comment. Stupid design.
would love to see this updated for shadowbringers
Once Endwalker has run it's course, I think happy should make a history of raiding and trials. It'll be interesting to see how far we've come as it seems like each expansion tries to improve upon the faults of the last while creating new problems.
Really useful to watch this as I quit around 2.4a and have been planning to come back now that life is more settled. Helped me get a good perspective on mindset and what's to come when I return.
I would love a video like this for EX primals.
I´d like it too
I'm kinda sad about primals ex becoming as easy as old hard mode primal :(
Great vid! Very very nostalgic.
One thing to add that contributed to community raid progression: Cross-server party building. This was huge for building statics and finding players of appropriate skill-level for whichever group they joined (hc, mc, cas, etc...). Even statics who stuck together for the long haul had a much easier time finding that temporary full-in for whenever real life pulled a player out for the week.
You could probably argue that pf overall was a game changer, once that came out. But allowing players to traverse servers over a data center really brought recruiting for raid to the next level.
"The Legacy of Shield Oath"
2013-2015
remember literally every dps killing themselves with blood for blood? good times
I get to do that on RDM on pretty much every fight still :p I remember first time doing O11N - backflipped as soon as the thing in the middle showed up and died xd
Worth it every time! kek
As a healer that made my life interesting
lol I actually loved to hate that and complaining about them not clicking it off
Alphascape is a MASSIVE improvement if you ask me, you can't just "avoid red AoE marker" or "just out DPS it" i LOVE Alpha 2, you need to see his movements to know how to not get smacked, then there is omega himself, such a good fight.
also, i felt bad for bad Omega after we beat him...
and finally, us Europeans, back in the days of ARR our servers were NOT IN FUCKING EUROPE AT THE TIME, they were in CANADA, the latency was evil, TITman EX was HELL, triple LAGslide spelled death, even if your were well out of its AoE.
I still think raiding should have voiced bosses. Not even for mechanics. But bosses feel so boring when they don't talk, but Warcraft will give random pirates some voice lines. 4 bosses isn't much, they could at least pay to have them voiced.
Wat? All the raid bosses talk what are u saying
No, they aren't. None of the Omega / Alexander tier was voiced. Neither was Bahamut. You are referring to Ivalice and storyline related fights.
This isn't Warcraft though lol. But yea it would make it a little interesting.
@@SmugJay alexender is a fckin machine stormblood raid bosses talks go play it.
@@sylveon4755 I think you probably read half of what I said and then jumped ship
Coils will always be my favorite. Loved fighting bahamut and clearing it for the first time back in the day. The most epic fight in the game hands down, in my opinion. Never got that feeling in any of the stormblood/hw raids.
Coils are always gonna have a special place in raiders' hearts because it was so intimately related to the game's lore and it was our very first raid after the huge dumpster fire that 1.0 was. The thrill of the first dangerous battles that actually posed a challenge to the raiders is simply unforgettable. I wish they would make another lore based raid instead of bringing us easter eggs from other games. For example, the whole story with Nidhogg in HW could actually have been a great 8man raid instead of just a primal. He literally had a horde of dragons in his control and it would have made that raid tier a lot more special for the players.
Honestly T5 had no story at all..Bahamut had and thats why it felt rewarding. As for Nael it was just a throwbsck to 1.0.
Story wise binding coil is the best, boss wise is Omega and probsbly will remain like that because it brought old FF final bosses such as kefka in all their glory. Difficult wise is Alexander, no question about it.
Ultimates?
@@MRorizs2I’m the opposite of you lol… I love the “Easter egg” raids. For example, I didn’t really enjoy raiding at all until I did return to Ivalice, which made me really fall in love with the game as a whole.
One thing that you completely skipped over that I think is very important, the reason that the raid scene started to die during Gordias was largely due to the lack of Cross World Party Finder. I played on Sargatanas at the time, and a majority of the good raiders jumped ship to Gilgamesh. If you were not on Gilgamesh, you had a VERY limited pool of players to pick from, most of them already had groups, and very few of them were good enough to clear. It wasn't long after that we got cross world functions, removing the "penalty" of not being on Gilgamesh if you wanted a decent chance at a decent raid group.
Also, on Healer DPS, you brought up accuracy later on, but ultimately accuracy was a big reason that healers did not typically DPS early on in the game. You had to sacrifice multiple gear slots to use crafted gear and pentameld it all with accuracy. For a long time it was actually expected of SCHs to DPS, because their Arcanist kit made them seem damage focused. It was extremely rare to see a WHM having accuracy melds unless they were an off-job SCH main. Additionally, melding for Gordias really sucked. Crafted accessories were 60 ilvls below the raid gear, so you either ran really shitty accessories or slightly shitty left-side pieces. While the left-side pieces were only 30 ilvls below the raid gear, they also were locked behind Favors which was one of the worst received gathering systems in the game. Not only that, but the recipes were not available until 3.05, the patch that Savage itself dropped.
One thing that I REALLY wish they'd keep doing, is delaying the Savage fight for 2 weeks (or even just 1 week) after the normal mode is released. I really like the idea of completing normal mode, running it a few times, and theorycrafting what the potential Savage changes will be and preparing for it. It also sucks for people like me, because my group runs around the time the servers come up, so our first raid day consists of doing Normal mode then not having enough time to really do anything else.
This also killed Brynhildr's raid scene. Almost all groups left to Gilgamesh and only 2 or 3 groups remained. It was impossible to raid through PF until Creator Savage and even then it was hard to find groups.
Genius video Mrhappy! As someone who’s been playing since 2.1 you summed up everything well. Its also nice to look back and see ARR and HW and how its different than present day SB (4.4)
One thing that should be mentioned is that from heavensward on, every 4 fights guaranteed you a raid tier item. I still remember our BLM in second coil being bummed for a month not getting any drops but caster earrings. It was crazy.
it was a pretty brutal system, especially if you had most of your BiS in tome gear
Thank you for this video, Happy! It was a great trip down memory lane involving things I'd completely forgotten about
next how the relic weapon grind has evolved over 5 years ... wait never mind we're still doing the same shit.
You can never forget the Leroy nerdscreams, especially when they beat A4S and literally bent reality lol
This got recommended, it’s time for another!!
Loved this video MrHappy. I played during the whole ARR era and was a midcore raider. I'm very pleased to see that I wasn't the only one who left when HW released seeing how frustrating the savage raids were. Then seeing the rest of the raiding experience helped me understand better what the devs did to raiding and how they did their best to learn from their mistakes. A very solid video. 😊thx!
I love the nostalgic trip back Mr.Happy! Haven't touched the game or had a chance to see you in person for a while!
Awesome video man. Coming back after playing 2.0 and getting this rundown is super helpful
This is basically "legacy of" but for ff14. More pls ^^
Adras Adraki just wait another 5 years, hahaha
@@cokewithbells8212 He could maybe do one fir each class? and how it changed over the lifespan of ff14.
But ehh
I swear, back when ARR came out, trying to do Titan Hard was cancer, particularly as a healer, in New Zealand, seriously my MS was in the 300 level back then even without the innate latency, so, dodging plums was impossible. Love the Music, Hated the Fight.... and so what if nowdays I go bully Titan Ex with my Pld70 when I'm bored >.> /laugh
having raided in other MMO's, I saw ffxiv's raids they looked great but being new not many people want to do old raids and it felt like I'm months if not years away from current content.
Nah. You aren't. The only part that takes a lot of time is 2.x. from 3.0 on the story in each patch was extremely shortened. No go here, take that, bring back stuff anymore. Story, story, story. And it keeps getting more intense with every patch. Enjoy the story, have fun in all the dungeons and trial themes (maybe not tje bosses itself tho. it's all too easy since you get ilv synced far too high imo) and don't think about endgame stuff right now. You get there faster than you might expect, even with just a few hours of time to play per week.
Main issue Savage SCoB had for me wasn't so much the lack of new reward, but rather that it shared the same weekly lock-out as regular for months. Another change made to add QoL to raid prog was taking off VIT from Weakened status in 4.0. Anyone dying during 3.X raids had to be babysat hard with shielding due to their lowered HP, which just added extra stress to the healers when they were already trying to push DPS and keep OT stance tanks alive to make ends meet.
i still get hit after stepping out of the AOE
word
As a tank main, and have being such since ARR, I want to mention materia melding in a little more detail. You talked about VIT and ACC melds briefly, but lets talk about STR melds and how they've evolved along with tank DPS. During ARR, only the most hardcore and/or the richest tanks would meld STR/VIT depending on the crafted accessory, you would have some with a full slaying set on their right side (since accessories weren't class locked till Stormblood) pentamelded with VIT, or a full fending set on their right side pentamelded with STR, or a mix of the two depending on sub stats. This was also seen as exclusive to Warriors, since Pallys' had no chance of pumping out any kind of DPS (not even in sword oath) when all they had was Rage of Halone and nothing else. The idea was to give Warrior as much STR as possible to emulate the STR that a MNK or DRG had, and so long as we ddin't use defiance pump out similar numbers. This way of thinking became far more common at the start of Heavensward, or as I like to call it, the dawn of the Fell Cleave. Newer players may be a tad confused as to why I've been talking about optimizing STR on a tank, when are damage is calculated with a mix of STR and VIT? This is why that is now the case. Back then all melee (except NIN) had STR as their primary stat for damage calculation, MNK, DRG, WAR, PLD, and DRK. But it was us Warriors who made SE rethink how tank damage was calculated. Having trouble with that DPS check? Make the Dark Knight tank and send in a Warrior with full STR pentamelds, this became so common that it was early Heavensward that they took away the ability to overmeld primary stats. Despite that Warriors especially, but the other two tanks as well would still buy slaying accessories and meld VIT to it only if there was a VIT cap needed to take certain tank busters. After they changed how tank damage is calculated this became less prevalent outside of Warriors, though even today tanks will generally throw a SRT VI materia on accessories. which finally brings us to Stormblood and how tanks view melding now. At the very start of the expansion you would see some tanks continue to use their Alexandrian slaying accessories, seeing as they were not class locked like all new accessories were, that extra bit of DPS being worth it to most. Unfortunately the need for more VIT became apparent rather quickly and we see the death of the full STR build before Deltascape. Which honestly brings us to the current view on melding for tanks as it hasn't evolved much for Stormblood. Like you mentioned you see more than just tanks using crafted gear to get into savage content day 1, it just wasn't a new development for us. You see all three tanks replace left side gear pretty much as soon as they can for either raid or augmented tomestone gear, it is how each class views the left side that varies. As a Warrior main specifically, I'm fairly certain that most other warriors agrre that pentamelded accessories are generally are BiS gear, especially after the changes to Beserk/Inner Release. That and thanks to Defiance we're never truly short on VIT. Now for Pallys' and Dark Knights', while I have both leveled to 70 as well and play them semi regularly I can only give my personal view on how they are affected by pentamelded accessories. That said I believe Pallys' should upgrade to raid/augmented tome accessories as soon as possible. The oddities in damage calculation from both that stat split from shield and sword as well as the regular use of a spell for DPS (Holy Spirit) means that primary stats are going to be their main concern. As for Dark Knights', with how versatile their play style is, it's honestly a matter of personal preference. Having said all that, you should honestly turn this into a series, in this video you went over how raiding as a whole as evolved. Maybe how theorycrafting for the various roles and how the Meta has evolved could be next? What I just wrote is just the broad strokes of how theorycrafting for tanks (mainly WAR) has evolved, just a thought.
I don't think you emphasized enough how much the difference of refreshing skills on party wipe has changed the scene.
Not that you didn't try, I'm just not sure that anyone could emphasize it enough. Speaking as a PLD... This was huge. So goddamn huge. So very, very, very big.
That's what she said.
Great Video. As a raid leader from coil until now who is constantly saying “Back in my day.” Now I can just link this and keep my old mouth shut! Glad you’re doin well Hap and still pumping out great content
It's also nostalgic for people who have been in the raid scene since the game launched. No matter if you didn't clear a particular raid tier, the simple fact you participated in it, were part of the community buzz and so on, it's nostalgic and boy, time sure does fly.
Love too see an updated version of this next year when the final tier is cleared
Personally I'd like 5.0 raids to have a fifth separate, savage only stage, as opposed to the normal boss being a faust battle on the fourth stage. That opens up the possibility of adding new kinds of rewards, and can allow them to make the final battles more challenging without changing the formula for how they distribute loot in the first four stages.
As for what those rewards could be... well. As much as people joke that glamour is the true end game, I doubt the raiding scene would be too pleased with a savage difficulty encounter that only gave glamour items or furniture for their houses. Hell, Happy doesn't use glamour at all (unless you count him running around in his underwear), or own a house. Maybe introduce something new, like a new tier of materia that can only be gotten as drops, or some other form of items that would enhance your character in a new way. Maybe add a new accessory slot and the only items that go in it are from the final raid, or cost a huge amount of tomestones and other currencies to buy from Rowena.
Excellent vidéo! I "just came back" and I left before HW's release. I have so many things to catch up, this has pretty much summed up the old content that I need to cover! Hopefully I can clear everything before the next expac (including the ultimates if I'm lucky enough to find mates for it!)
Least I can say, Gordias made me the tank I am now.
Man, I remember the struggle with Twintania...the issue with Twisters being the biggest threat (such a small window >.
Some days I miss cleric stance and stoneskin.
Cleric stance exist
+Amy Guziak I miss Cleric Stance too and Stoneskin, Cleric Stance the most because it took more skill to use and made healers interesting. They took that from us because newbs couldn't figure it out right away. Bad decision :/ and @Juses Crus Amy is obviously talking about the original Cleric Stance.
.... stone skinnnnnnn
tbh whats to miss about stone skin? Its not an ability, its "do you want more resistances in this fight or nah?" It was just asking the healers to press 1 button more at fight start
Bring back old cleric stance tho
@@ich3730 With the Direction SE is taking with Healers in Shadowbringers I doubt it
@16:40 OMG I miss Faust, the bouncer for Heavensward raiding :P
Good vid. This and the one Klopps made are pretty good history lessons of raiding
A worthy mention should go to when they introduced tanks being able to use strength jewels at the start of HW (also later on in SB as well) to prog as I think this was the beginning of tanks being expected to do more than just tank and to put out more DPS.
Another issue that existed between the first and second Savage tiers in Heavensward is how long they waited to add the next tier as time went on due to them constantly trying to adjust difficulty going forward. My group during this time litterally dissolved because the length of time leading to changing over all activity or quitting the game altogether.
Healers definitely contributed to DPS in Coil and Second Coil. I wiped a lot of times due to Cleric Stance haha. But healer DPS definitely wasn't as optimized, and often Scholar was the one DPSing while the White Mage tried to solo heal. Kind of a 1.5 healer strategy. And Scholar was definitely set up for it with like 12 damage abilities haha
Also remember when dying removed your food buff? I have nightmares
Man, I remember when Pepsi man came out. It took till like the 3rd week just to beat him for the higher end hardcores. A4 wasn't even the big bad of that tier. It was A3. It had 7 phases and was 12:30 long if you took it up to enrage.
My initial raid team for that tier was wonderful. We got past Gordias 1 and 2 in the first week. We felt hot. We got up to the Tornado phase in A3 the second week. The third week we saw the big hand taking the healer... The 4th week we didn't get any further. People weren't wanting to work together in the static. The WHM was flipping out about having to heal our DRK so much. Turns out the WHM was greedy to do DPS, and just wasn't casting enough healing. Our DPS thought that the tanks should clear away from 7 other people with the tethers, and not the other way around. That fight turned that group into a hot mess. I wound up not beating A3s for about 5 months lol
When we were unable to beat A3 after the first month it was out, our WHM, BRD, and DRG quit. We replaced them, taught 3 new people the fight, and trudged onwards. About a month and a half later, we lost our MNK our DRK and the new BRD. So we replaced them eventually, taught more new people the fight. It kept on like this until February of 2016. When we did beat it, the only original members who had been in the original static at the time Gordias Savage launched were me(WAR) and the SMN.
Also something I think you should add to the mention of Midas being easier is that tanks were made to wear VIT accessories by making their damage scaling come from 45% of their VIT + STR total, instead of just being 100% of their STR. This was effectively a DPS nerf to tanks, but it gave healers the intended leeway they were supposed to have. Before the STR/VIT change, tanks were always running full STR in order to help complete DPS checks, as well as to hold hate more easily while in DPS stance. WHile they could certainly survive all encounter tank busters in STR accessories, this made good healers crucial, because they had less wiggle room.
clicking off blood for blood, those were the days...
"I'd rather die than click off blood for... oh, my wish was granted. \o/"
To this day Bahamut Prime is still my most loved raid boss period. Even over the Ultimates. That fight and its music was just a symphony of wonder and "holy shit" moments almost every time I pulled it.
Wow looking at your screen and seeing how the old UI looked even though it isn't that dramatic of an upgrade now its still nostalgic. Not to mention the old skills.
Some of my FC and I went through all of coils a couple of weeks ago (some of us for the first time) and I thought it was really neat to see how the game has evolved since then. Makes you wonder how the game might have changed in another 5 years.
Game will die ny then if they keep on doing like this
The gear requirements are high for people who never did the previous raids and don't have money to buy gear. And if I get the gear after 3 weeks I wouldn't find any party that accept a first timer or find any practice parties.
Healers were definitely dpsing on twintania on my server. Including myself.
I think you should have mentioned that the classes got a lot harder in the ARR > HW jump. There were all these buffs and dots that people had to keep good uptime on.
Well done. I would love more talkumenterys about various evolutions of ffxiv like extremes, arr v heavenward v stormblood, etc
Good to remember the good old times :D Nice sum up, Mr. Happy!
To me, raiding has changed to the point that raids no longer feel like raids to me. Oh, sure, the encounters can be complex, require a lot of communication and coordination... but they still feel like really hard trials to me. The only raids that feel like raids are the 24-man raids. They still suffer from extreme linearity the rest of the game has, but those 24-man raids evoke a sense of place and traversal through that place. By comparison, the Omega raids take you straight to the boss fight, because of course, the story is contrived to make it that way. It's a shame, because Coil kinda had that feeling of traversal to some degree. I still remember when people said "I have the Caduceus checkpoint."
FFXIV simply isn't a raid-oriented mmorpg.
There's no legitimate way of calling 8-person encounters "raids", regardless of what the game decides to call them.
And the actual 24-person encounters tend to be trivially challenging by comparison.
I can agree with you there. I went with a friend to go some of the older raids I've never gotten a chance to do proper, and it was jarring how you had to go THROUGH the place to get to a boss. Mind you, Jarring in a good way personally. as for the 24 mans I love that shit, am SO looking forward to the next 24 man raid. If they can reinject a little of that sense of actually moving to the boss would be nice for 8 mans.
I doubt we'll ever get something like the Pratorium again for 8 mans, though I wouldn't mind them giving it another go.
The dev forbid the western definition of "raid", to them "raid" is a very loose term, something along the line of "Not 4 man dungeon". On the other hand trash on raid is a controversial idea also. Older players from WoW days held that hold to their heart but newer players don't like them so much.
Players didn't like having to fight trash everytime they got in there and having to go back to the boss all the way after each wipe, so raids became boss arenas only.
Coil still holds a special place in my heart and the way TO the boss was often nearly as exciting as the actual boss, at least at first, but I can totally see where people are coming from. When I look at raiding in WoW, there is SO much pointless wasting of time with trash that makes me glad everytime that in FFXIV, we just go straight to the boss and that's it.
See, this is an instance in which I very selfishly have to say "I don't care."
I would rather have that trash and that walk establish atmosphere and a sense of place than another yawn-inducing dude standing on a circular arena. This is an *inconvenience* I would gladly have. Hell, if it's such a big deal, they could always just port people straight to the boss in the "savage" version of the fight.
2.0 raid will always be my favorite. Nothing can touch the epicness of T13 (for me personally).
300ms you say? That's what I have now after they moved the server.
Absolute Chaos the 300ms he’s talking about was on top of your own latency. So back then you would’ve had 600ms latency.
I lived next to Montreal so back then I had a perfect connection and never once 90k unless it was from a serious bug like the Mor Dhona bug where they had to lock the instance for that zone. Now I get 90k often and hit by aoes unless I run way before hand.
yea the latency is still trash with this game, and for a game that is based on timing to have a large latency time like that is what makes this game complete shit.
imo alexander tier 1 was the most damaging raid because it sparked changes in the playerbase the permiated the rest of the game. i'd love to play a tank but the dps that tank's are now expected to do intimidates me.
It shouldn't, their rotations are very easy to perform, and the amount of tools to hold aggro make it a joke. I liked the change because pressing 1 2 3 on a paladin forever in older raids was sooooooo boring.
Damn, it's been forever since I've played but you successfully got me to watch the entire video while reminiscing about the good ol days. Good work.
As a new player who started raiding when sigma released, I loved this video of stuff I knew less to nothing about. My only suggestion for you Mr. Happy would be to add some background music to this kind of video. Adding a some loops quietly in the background would do wonders I think.
every time I see a player with one of the Ultima weapons, I always think they're pretty badass for beating it. It's great they can show off their completion to the rest of the server, maybe add armor items as well. I think having a title for beating it is kinda meh, just because there are sooooo many titles in the game to get its not very special.
I'd honestly love to see a video like this going over the overall changes that the game has taken over the years. From roulettes to glamour to certain qol updates, it's interesting to think how the game was back when it launched.
if cross world pf and things like discord were around at the start raiding wouldve took a faster push. earlier tiers just lacked a lot of accessablity.
Love the video. Definitely a must watch. I didnt get deep into raiding until heavensward and started doing savages in Stormblood. I figure I'd finally have a static by the end of this expansion for the next. Still learning. Keep playing that monk man. Its always interesting to see you punch your way to victory.
Great video, this makes the road to some of this content more meaningful (given all the history and progression of the meta). Thanks for sharing.
I had all lv99s in ff11 and been playing 14 since launch. There's so much dodging and mechanic crap going on I don't even do end game raids.... probably why I quit every other month😭
I played up to Gordias 3 savage, won it once with my group and next day everyone quit. I stopped playing around Midas release, it was to much work just trying to find people than to have fun and play the game. It was doing what I love or go full casual, I decided that doing what I love wins and I quit too. You can say I have been a bit traumatized by the experience I had to go throughout Gordias time (Excalibur server). I doubt I would ever come back to FF14 ever, even if it is more friendly than at that time.
The changes to the bard LB 3, when you could raise the whole party like a healer xDDD
I personally think people would have been more forgiving in their critique of the "trash turn" if there were an actual reward at the end. not only was it trash, there was no reward so people felt like it was simply a waste of time and effort.
I feel like if Turn 3 could have straight up been attached to Turn 4, it would have had a better reception since Turn 4 is just a trash elevator... but it has gear at the end. Idk what the fuck they were thinking with Turn 3.
Love the video, it game some pretty interesting points into how raiding has changed. Still wont change the fact that there are people who call the tiers easy, yet cant do their rotations.
I kinda want to see this again for shadowbringers (Eden and ultimates)
We can't forget the good ol days of potent poison pots, I remember being shocked when we didn't get a higher level poison for the Alex raids.
I would say their 2 major reason I raid again in this expansion Tier and it wasn't mention. Fighting nostalgic boss (kefka) and making PF more easy to pug (complete status help keep the low skill people at bay)
in the meanwhile, the propper skilled players get kicked down because they can't find a party that can clear said raid (been there with O7S where me and my friends were doing everything correctly but then we have the 4 DPSers either not doing enough or dying to simple things)
PF is a double edged blade, it's amazing it's possible with it but at the same time it also stops others from actualy completing using it.
i got my initial O7S kill because my static disbanded (1 had exams 1 just didn't had fun and the other was bored) and i joined a weekly clear for o5 and 6s, after doing that the party leader asked if anyone wanted to do o7s weekly and i mentioned how i had multiple enrage experiences (a lot of 0.2% enrages) and i was allowed to stick around and clear it.
I agree that breaking the wall of clear is a bad progression on it's own. But I find it's the winning side of people like me who doesn't want or have the time to do static raid because of RL issue. When you have a static you can't try to progress or attempt to clear content when you want because you would lock the rest of your static on loot. And yes, you have to stand often on the other group member to know what they are doing . I remember even after getting my o7s clear that Complete party could still fail in doing mechanic right. But one trick I usually found was to find crazy people like you :P ( Joining PF 10 minute before weekly clear would always land me a party that one shoted all 3 turn in a row). People still have to know their limit tho, I've never tried my hand at the final turn in any of the stormblood raid expect because of the high level of communication needed. I still enjoy all of them none the less and hope to go in there Unsync in the future expansion to get my mount.
He did this video with Pesi Man in the thumb and now a year later Pepsi Man is back to destroy raid static groups once again! It's a prophecy come true!
I remembered I wanted to do Alexander savage so badly but literally no one ever wanted to do it because of how unreasonably difficult it was. So I never got to experience it until way later when it was dead and me and my fc did it unsynced.
My crew probably had the most difficulty from T7. Being the SMN they asked me to kite and that took me a few weeks to finally learn. Even after clearing T9, every weekly reset we might have had to repeat T7 a few times because of bad luck, bad placement, or pushing phases and wiping us. After learning that fight I was very upset they nerfed it into the ground.
I don't like not being able to dodge some of the attacks. The players limited to do what everyone else can do, nothing special.
Great video. One thing I would like to see them add is a progress based party match system. It's not surprising that people lean on fflogs, the game gives us no tools by which to trust anyone or tell how far they have gotten. This combined with the fact that you really have to have everyone pull their weight in ffxiv means the party finder as a tool of progression, really isn't optimal.
I like raiding, but the stress of finding a static, playing on a schedule, etc, can really suck, and honestly I may be done with that at this point. Improving matching so that pugging is more viable would be a welcome change for me.
Neat retrospective Mr. Happy. Sure this isn't WoW, but that's ok. I've really enjoyed raiding with the challenge in this game personally. Even if just boss rooms aren't quite as "epic" as other games, that's just not the style of how their raiding works and that's fine. I guess it just depends on what you want to call raiding as that varies at different games. I've really enjoyed Omega and hope to see what we're getting in 5.0!
But all that being said, I'm still enjoying what we've had in XIV from tier to tier!
WoW may have 3x more boss encounters per raid tier, but they're not necessarily more fun. During Legion, hundreds of guilds died in Nighthold (Mythic) and Tomb of Sargeras (Mythic) because the mechanics were too frustrating and soul crushingly hard. I'm talking about things like 12 minute fights with instant wipe mechanics if a single person makes a mistake or lags. And for all that, it is rather unrewarding to do mythic raids because gear from easier tiers have a chance to "titanforge" and become just as good or even better than mythic gear.
I don't do savage and even less ultimate in FFXIV, and I haven't done Alphascape because I decided to check Battle for Azeroth, but just looking at the guides for savage Sigmascape, I can say that each of these 4 fights look way more creative and fun than the majority of WoW's encounters. And on the casual scene, I find random group content IMMENSELY more enjoyable in FFXIV. I'd much rather try Savage Kefka than, say, Mythic Star Augur.
I think the NA server move should have been mentioned. The new location actually caused me a ton of frustration and I regularly had to stop raiding because the lag would kill me. A playable night was like waiting for a blue moon some weeks.
The following may get off topic:
Also, I've always liked cleric stance for switching between healing and DPS. I don't know about anyone else, but switching stances was one of my favorite parts about healing in raids: it gave it that extra kick needed to make it as fast paced as some of the DPS... though I played monk for the most part, so perhaps I just liked going fast? Well, unless it was arrow in Alexander
@32:00 Aaaaaand back to Twintania. :)
i disagree close to 80% of what you mention of 2.X raids .. they make all raids mean something to claim the ladder by clearing one before it.
I never did the final tier of alexander I kind of gave up after the first boss
In my opinion the problem with FFXIV's end game, is that there lacks a point and it's a fairly common problem for most MMORPGs. Given that you spend weeks/monthes grinding out raids there is no point to it, sure you get gear, but for what? The only reason raid gear serves is to fight Ultimate fights when they drop months after the raid tier releases, sure you can clear dungeons faster but once you're raiding why would you even bother doing dungeons at max lvl? It would be faster and more efficient to just raid on your main and roll for gear for your alt. Which is what people do anyways. And so the only thing left to do with raid gear is to go for speedruns, and unfortunately this game doesn't support speedruns outright in the game and it doesn't need to necessarily, but this leads to the problem where you have a good portion of raiders who after raiding want a tangible goal to work towards now that they've farmed up their raid gear and beyond sparse ultimate fights the only other thing to achieve is speedruns on FFlogs. And that's another design philosophy I don't care for, is the fact that the only use for raid gear is to use it to gain achievements, which is what Ultimate fights are essentially, there is no practical purpose for the gear beyond that. With the weak exception of maybe using the gear to be able to farm trash mobs faster for mats but that's not really a thing in this game. Therefore, folks that want to raid do so for achievement, but at different levels of achievement, whether you're chasing those Orange logs and are HC or you just want to clear content, the end goal is the same you're doing it to clear the raid and get geared to the nines just so you can do what with it?
PS: Love the community in this game, one of the nicest online communities anywhere, I just wish the content interested me enough to make me wanna come back to it or rather make me want to grind through raids once again, but really the effort and frustrations that I put in vs the end goal of me being bored out of my while decked to the nines and feeling empty isn't worth it.
I completely forgot about the orb add phase in a11s
My first ever raid in an mmo was deltascape in FFXIV. So doing the Alexander raids kinda confused me because I was like, "wtf is this shit? How is this a raid?" I personally like how the raids are now. I don't really like having to deal with trash pulls.
Gordias savage is by far my favorite raid. Even more so than the ultimate fights. So satisfying to kill it when it was relevant.
As a player since the begenning i can tell that was very interesting and it bring back some good memories 🤩
The fix to the huge jumps in difficulty that disparaged a lot of people from raiding in 3.0 wasn't to just nerf everything to the easy point it is today, it was to increase the number of bosses per raid tier and smooth out the difficulty curve.
Alas even after more than doubling the subscribers from that lowest of points (2.0+ wise) they've more than proven that they aren't capable and/or (probably both) interested in increasing the amount of content per patch and so the stagnant state of the game will continue and the population will start to decline in 1-2 years from now.
If only the SE board wasn't full of such greedy little pigs (it's not just FFXIV, just look at all the ports on steam that don't even get their problems ACKNOWLEDGED let alone fixed)
God I remember how I went into Gordias normal with a newly formed raid team. And they couldn't even beat faust normal in week 1. That and them having 2 paladin in the party made me leave asap. Idk how but after that I got into a group that managed to kill a2s in the first week. I call that healthy improvement :D
As a new player, this was a great insight in how everything began. Sounds like I missed a lot of fun lol
I know the list of 'no mention of ___' could go on endlessly but... no mention of the death debuff change in 4.0? That was also a really big deal in speeding up those first clear times.
On another note, I hope they take another cue from UWU and realize that having one or two phase pushes isn't the devil if designed / timed correctly. The "six minute fight -> loop" design of 4.x's final fights has been pretty disappointing. In particular I miss the kinds of notorious, imposing final phases and/or nightmare mechanics that were a staple of pre-4.x raids. Hello World 2 is really the only thing to come close to the kind of notoriety that Winged Justice, Nael's elements, even Communion, etc. had.
Even after seeing this and seeing the evolution of raids again I still think they should change a lot to make raids feel more fresh.
Give us more fights, please give us trash (and to not make the trash completely useless: give them a chance to drop stuff that would normally be a bit harder to get) make the raids overall more than just "Get ported to the arena, hit the boss until it's dead and leave" and if they're at it they should make the raids more visually appealing too. Let the next raid tier more like the 24-mans please. Let us use crowd control, it would be okay if the healers had to focus less on DPS again too and for the love of god PLEASE get away from the hard enrages for every fight. Also stop with the instakill mechanics, yes that makes them extra punishing but at the same time also ridiculous if almost everything just one shots you. (and get rid of riddle of earth while replacing it with a simple reset for the GL timer!) Also reduce the server lag. I lost count of the times me or my party got hit by mechanics even though we were clearly not standing in them which also makes knockback mechanics ridiculous sometimes if you still get knockback even though arm's length got used 2 seconds before said knockback. It would also be nice if skills like diversion or arm's length wouldn't be affected by animation lock because it just makes them frustrating to use sometimes.
I still have more things that would be nice if they got changed but I think this should be enough for the time being. Would be nice to know if me and my party are the only ones thinking about changes for these things...^^'
id love an updated version of this
This video was great, please make a 5.0 predictions video
I've been a warrior main since Second Coil. Gave DRK a try when it came out but wasn't really a fan. It's so weird now and its come such a long way from "using butcher's combo out of stance for dps" back in ARR to "you have a specific 10 second window where you need your CDs to look like this" that is now. I actually ended up dropping it in 4.0 until 4.2 because of the gods awful Inner Release rotation we had back then. I remember teaching new tanks about STR melding and them being utterly confused as to why you'd do that.
I miss the Vit scaling we had back in HW, and I desperately wish they'd bring that back in some sort (not because Upheaval scales off of max HP or anything no no *cough*).
I miss Brutal Swing, for no real reason other than it was cool.
I DON'T miss having to use all you cooldowns in order to triple Cleave, but it makes me laugh to think about now... And having those 50 second pull countdowns to get your stacks right before a fight, oof...
RIP Foresight
Personally I think my favorite fights were T10 and A11. Creator as a whole was so cool and had some really unique fights that I miss a lot. It was so fun finally getting in to O12S and getting to Fundamental Synergy and being like "oh my god guys.... remember Cruise Chaser? /its that again/"
Ok im new to this game... happy to hear there is still competition
no static from my FC cleared A4S before 3.2
I'm still watching but I did Prog back in Coils and start of Gordias before dropping due to group issues/the invasion of "Real Life" Loved all of it (okay, plenty of frustration at Gordias...) Fun trip down memory lane at just how things worked back then, I do miss some of 2.Xs design philosophy directions that it abandoned in favor of the current changes, we get what we get and still love the game.
I think people didn't like the trash pull fight because it was pointless. It was like a "light" version of a waveclear, horde mode fight, but without any of the fun of those kinds of modes.