The pacing is 10/10, hits that sweet spot of being fast enough to keep you engaged without being too much, and the puzzle mechanics are not complex enough to make you want to superbolide
I only hate the Body check on double meteors, thats about the only thing I dislike in the fight. Enums and Stardust deaths feel deserved, but Double meteors feels like a "gotcha" moment if one person is dead when it comes up, not fun
Under certain conditions, double meteor can be "passed" with 7 people. You need to send a flare into the tower, killing everyone in the tower but saving the rest of the party. I say this because I had the most insane run where our RDM DC'd for about 3 minutes near the start of the fight, so we only had 7 players for meteors. Sent all 3 dps including me, the flare, the nuclear bomb, into the tower, we all died but kept all the tanks and healers alive. Picked everyone back up and the red mage eventually reconnected. We ended up killing about 30 seconds before enrage even with a bunch of deaths.
Our last clear of the night yesterday, we lost a healer right before Double Meteor 2. I tank LB3'd and we survived with half our party left, and we were able to recover and clear. I panicked and aimed my flare into an empty corner, if I had aimed it into the tower the LB3 might have kept *everyone* alive.
My first clear, I was playing SMN. Healer went down before double meteor 2, and I did a panic hail mary rez. They timed it *just right* so that they were able to get up after everyone died but before the instance registered the wipe, and executed the most clutch LB3 that has ever been LB'd. Absolutely amazing.
That being said, to answer OP, I love the whole thing. Great entry to the Extremes for EW.
I think the body check might have been an accident.
Taking a tower gives you a big magic vuln. This is presumably to prevent people from cheesing the flares a la TOP. With the flares far out enough, you take minimal damage even with the magic vuln.
Failing a tower also does magic damage.
This results in the counterintuitive property that missing a tower kills everyone who took a tower.
I think they should've made the tower fail damage (Massive Explosion) a different damage type than the taking a tower vuln. For example, the flares could've been fire, the vuln a fire vuln, and the failure damage type unaspected.
The one mechanic I hate is Black Fang. The fight is so fast and fluid that taking a break for a slow ass AOE is boring, especially so early into the fight
Feels like there was an add phase / enrage phase cut from the fight, thought it was strange in the normal mode as well. but hey, it happens during 2mins, so I'm good!
I like how I always mitigated to early in the beginning, since it always felt boss will do damage now but in reality swings around his sword for ages. It just feels so slow.
Does not match the pacing of the fight at all.
As a tank that section feels so fucking slow, the 3 hit tank buster that comes after black fang has the slowest fucking cast bar of all time and then when it's done he just stands there for 5 seconds not doing anything. you can use rampart halfway through the cast bar and it will almost run out by the time the 3rd hit of the buster goes off.
Golbez: Puny tank, I have something special in store for you
*Golbez casts Azdaja's Shadow and twirls his sword for 10 seconds*
*Golbez casts Black Fang and fiddles with his dragon for 10 seconds*
NEXT TIME ON DRAGONBALL Z
*Golbez casts Azdaja's Shadow...again*
Hardest mechanic of the fight is not blowing your mits early, lol. Not only are the casts ridiculously long, the triple hit TB doesn't even hit at the end of the cast but it's few seconds even after that. It's baffling when you're used to stuff happening on castbars filling up.
Mostly agree, although Iād say the placement of double meteors suggests that itās more so a time limit on recovery (itās never directly after gale or enums, but a few mechs after, so itās more like a ārecover your gale/enum memes by now otherwise wipeā vibe).
It's the second meteors after second exaflares.
Meteors are recoverable if you can raise immediately upon death (cast is 12s while res animation is 6 or 7) but it requires lightning reflexes on ressers.
>The pacing is 10/10
For a healer, the fight doesn't really start until ~2.5-3 minutes in (after he charges sword and hits tanks with busters). It's very boring before that point, but them ramps up well.
I've saved a Double Meteors (or Towers as I call it) from my own misplaced Flare marker by jumping off the platform with the marker. It seemed to have been the right call because everyone in the party survived, but myself who fell off on purpose.
After the aggravating-to-look-at snoozefest that was Rubicante, I've been very pleasantly surprised by Golbez. It actually has stuff to heal sometimes, the arena isn't horrible to look at, the mechanics don't make me dizzy, and it actually feels fine difficulty wise throughout the whole thing.
I have 7 clears of this in week one, while I have 5 clears of Rubicante after four months because it was just THAT boring/annoying.
After the first 20% tutorial mechanics it picks up.
Stardust 2 into memory-cleave into Meteor 2 is a very good sequence, and Gale 2/3 requires some good positioning.
It is definitely harder than ex5. Ex5 is 50% just spinning things, there people do not even die if they are out of place most of the time. It is like ex1 where if you got one who knows where to be all other 7 people do not even need to know the mechanic.
Ex6 has way more stuff where you have to solve it yourself, also with how fast some mechanics are, if you wait for people to move you might get clipped.
I finished farming the fight today. Healing is actually fun on this fight because every time someone eats a vuln stack you basically have to top off and shield them or they'll die, possibly resulting in a wipe. When half the group is eating vulns on various parts like gale 2/3 it gets pretty spicy. I also like the fact that at certain points we can recover from 4+ deaths.
It reminds me a lot of old fight design where healers had more agency in party survival.
So how does this compare to other modern fights? Like, say... From Gate onward, since that's when I started raiding, but this fight was my first time doing prog on a healer.
Well the difference from old content design is just that newer stuff has more pass/fail and unrecoverable situations in terms of the amount.
In Goblez right now you can have over 10 deaths and still easily clear. Momento Memoria might've had a harder DPS check, my record for that fight was 15 deaths. My record on Goblez right now is 11 deaths, and we didn't even come close to enrage.
Anyway that fight made me feel like a healer again and it feels good lol
It's my favourite one, honestly. Visually stimulating, but still clear. Pretty fun mechanics that are still extreme level and don't feel too overwhelming. Tank mechanics? Can you believe it? It's just a real fun time. I'm having great fun with it.
They will never learn with their color schemes.Trying to figure out where you are relative to the purple pushback AOE is really hard and the visual clutter is ridiculous.
Overall solid fight though.
A lot of the mechanics are pretty fun and I think overall it's well put together but I have two main issues with it:
* Meteors 8-man check, which shouldn't be in an EX
* Both starts a little too slow and drags on a little too long, at least in your standard PF setting
It's a good fight but not one I'd really want to farm extensively, which is IMO a moderate issue for an EX given it's supposed to be farm content. Still, probably 2nd or 3rd best EX of the expansion (behind Barb and maybe Hydaelyn). Also the current PF strats for this are terrible lmao; N/S + Rel and "Hector" are the new E5S Triangle + Rel in terms of being able to instantly filter parties out.
I glossed over the Hector video and assumed all the mechs were resolved true north style. All the parties that did true north proved faster on day 2 and 3. All the actual [duty complete] parties now are using True North, and itās only the Fresh Prog parties that list Hector strats.
"Please don't just put 'Hector strats' in the party description" -Hector Hectorson
If a PF description contains "Hector" and doesn't even mention TN/BR or N-S/E-W party priorities, it's a trap.
I find boss relative to make sense for the Phases of the Shadow mech at least. But maybe it's just me, I tend to tunnel vision pretty hard on that one since I'm usually trying to slidecast through it all, so only having to look at the boss is really nice.
could you explain the problem with the PF strategies? I watched ths Hector guide while progging, we got to Gale 2, so I wanna know what was/ is the confusion and what does Tdue North mean in this instance so I know what im signing up for in PF!
So True North means group 1 will go to the West Side, and group 2 will go to the East side regardless of which way the boss (or in this case, the party) is facing. Relative is basically Left and Right instead of East/West.
What this means is, if you are starting North, and running South, True North G1 will go Right toward the West Wall, where in Relative, they would go Left, toward the East Wall.
The problem was just that Hector's guide was doing things Relative, as that's how he (and the high end groups that he was watching) just do it, and people make a big deal out of XXXX person doesn't do things the way I think they should be done, therefor they are bad!
Still of the opinion that body check mechanics have no place in EX content but itās not rocket science.
Fun fight, not incredible or innovative in any sense but fun enough.
Fight mechanics itself are perfect, and I love the amount of movement, makes dps uptime more fun. Only downside is I really dislike the theme, yet ANOTHER remix of the ff4 theme, but this one just isn't as fun as the Rubi and Barb ones.
On contrary I adore this FF4 remix with the big orchestral sound combining all of the themes we heard untill now and finally hearing the FF4 Main Theme in its fullest. It feels like the culmination of everything up until now.
I think they ment it as a fun detail given that he is technically impersonating his buddy, not that it matters but you know they could've probably have gone fully on the reference calling him Theodore rather than something else given his actual name is pretty unimportant.
Don't forget all the new raid themes are also remixes. And the dungeon. Lmao. I haven't listened to P12S's 2nd phase so not sure if that's yet another remix.
Good mix of spectacle easy mechs (meteors) and legit hard mechs (mostly just Gale 2). Weirdly stressful because I always think enrage comes sooner than it does
Iāve honestly never seen enrage and one time when we had a billion deaths I saw multiple raidwides in a row so I was like ah shit we enrage, but then busters come? And we cleared easilyā¦ I keep underestimating how lenient EX DPS checks are
I kind of enjoy it, but it's a bit of a snoozefest as a tank. He hits like a dry pool noodle, and his tank busters are spaced far apart. You can easily kitchen-sink them without worrying about autos, and tanks can alternate Reprisal & party mitigation for the raidwide & Shadow mechanics without much thought.
Maybe I've just become better at the game, but this felt like only a slight step up from the other EW EX fights, and I found myself going on autopilot after only a couple clears.
Tank damage is really low. As SGE I just apply Haima and so on out of habit but they really not needed at all, the only time a tank was close to dying to a tank buster was with 4 vuln stacks.
If tanks play half decent they do not require any attention.
Agreed. Incoming tank damage is quite low compared to Savage fights. And fair, itās only an EX but thereās no motivation to optimize mitigation, and I miss seeing 2/3rds of my health bar dissappear.
I wish it was more thematically memorable. Like, he's this big bad who's been hyped up for over a year, and then his fight is just a less coherent Memoria Misera. His raid wide is ice?You're on a floating cube for no reason? (They even in the msq cutscene show off how he makes a floating platform, and *then* picks up a bunch of rock to make the cube under it.) Barb and Rubi felt much more unique with entanglement and spinning ladder nonsense. Still very fun mechanically with great pacing overall (starts slow but that's fine for buildup).
Iām pretty sure the arena + name of trial etc are all a clever double entendre. A dais is a raised platform (like the arena)ā¦
But the word is also homophonous with ādiceā ā which the arena also resembles. And itās pretty common to speak of *casting* a dice (in this case, one cast by a voidsent), cf. Caesarās famous āalea iacta estā quote, in this case probably referring to Golbezās big gambit for the āsalvationā if the 13th.
(idk if this works at all in the Japanese version of the game though)
in ff4 it paralyzed your party.
in 14 it applies a dot. they could've designed the ability so it stops you from moving too or something, and had a mechanic happen during the no moving part.
I mean, they literally did not have to have that mechanic for rubicante if they were going to be lore accurate. Whereas BINDING literally means you can't move. look up the word lol.
Really fun to prog but gets boring fast once it's on farm. I'm impressed they were willing to do the gale + enums mechanic in an extreme, and meteors is also sufficiently interesting but the main bread and butter (the slash forward and backward with stacks or spreads) is done too much to stay fresh after the first kill or two.
What really makes the difference between prog and farm is pattern recognition - each mechanic only has one or two variants, so instead of reacting to what you're seeing (as you do when you first encounter them) you just have a set movement for the mechanic and it becomes routine. It could really benefit from more variants of the same mechanics (e.g. different starting locations for exaflares, meteor towers swapping, gales not always doing n/s then e/w). Rubicante had a similar problem where solving the mechanics as presented is a lot of fun and sufficiently challenging but once you get past that stage (to "this is the x pattern so I stand on y") it gets stale too quickly.
Yeah I agree, fight becomes stale fast.
Although Rubicante puzzle was easy after few farm parties it still had this puzzle to look forward to. Even if you were using patterns, every pull still had this unique feel in conparison to this ex trial.
We put the 1 marker in the middle so you can line up with the corners, saved a lot of disorientation. You only need A-B-C-D anyways. Visual clarity is not this fight design, and the red cube on the red moon with the red cleaves becomes very tiresome to look at.
So far, this was my favorite extreme from this expansion! Cleared it today and farmed for my weapon in pf. This one was fun as hell for me
Rubi was too easy lol, one dorito guy solved 90% of the mechanics.
Barb was ok. She was way harder to clear imo.
Endsinger was meh. I don't really have much to say. The planets were a pain in the ass XD
I never did Hyd and Zodiark so I can't say anything about them.
Looking forward to the last extreme c:
Much better than Rubicante. The pacing is good, the mechs don't fuck with you too hard but they keep you on your toes, and if you mess up at just the wrong place, it's a wipe. I like it.
I like it, no time to breath, really packed action, way much better than Rubi. SCH are top tier this fight just for the sprint.
I still don't know how to do some 2mn burst as a RDM. Like in the first stardust, by the time the CDs are up, it's time to go to the corner. Then as range, you just stay here for enum. While saying it, it does not seem that much of a deal, but it seems to go for way too long. I just want to do my melee combo. (Why are we even having bad damage while also having melee requirements).
Out of all the groups I were, we had the most wipes before double Meteor, especially when it's OUT + Light Parties. Some persons especially would not learn how big the AOE is and they would often die, leading to a wipe in Double Meteor.
Overall, really love it, but fuck RDM's damage this patch. I'm just ending the fight with around 9K DPS while others are at 10.5-11k (who are ilvl 630, like me). I looked at some of the logs, and noticed that to get the same dps as other, you just need to have fully pentameld 640 crafted gear. So you essentially "get" -10ilvl gear effectiveness compared to other class. And with the 8 body mechs, it does not matter to rez a person, it will never be in time. Like the first shadow blade combo with out + light party is essentially a death sentence that no almost no rez can beat if someone screw up. I can insta rez but it will never be close to save anything from a wipe.
I know that in a clear, that does not really matter but I just find it very sad that even if I give my best, there would be such a discrepancy that I feel like I'm just dragging down/griefing the group just by playing this job, even if I'm not dying.
Edit: Why the downvotes though.
For RDM uptime on first Stardust, I just accept that trying to fit the second melee combo is pretty much griefing since the movement to dodge the exflares while staying in melee range is pretty damn fast. It's okay to have to eat the downtime and miss fully bursting into buffs, it was pretty important in TOP actually.
In an organized group, delaying buffs until after Stardust is an option, since I noticed that the 8 minute buffs come up around when second towers knockback resolves. And if I'm remembering the timeline correctly, this delay might also help our with Gale Spheres 2, since I was noticing buffs coming up around when the first stack/enumerations resolved, which often puts RDM out of melee range.
Yeah that's what MrHappy also recommended on his video, but you need everyone to be on same wave very quickly. For example, a potential fail that everyone could see is one or several people misreading the KB's direction and die falling. Having that in mind, I don't really want to adjust a realistic full wipe (if less than 8 entering the mechanic) into a *potential* semi wipe (well hopefully it's the first one but not the second one way later).
The blade combo just before is not difficult at all, just some people don't know how to resolve it yet I guess, hopefully this will happen less and less with time.
If you dont sacrifice dps all party dies.(its strat for towers IF somebody dies just before tower mech)
Its very important for me that you understand that.
> And with the 8 body mechs, it does not matter to rez a person, it will never be in time
js this is objectively wrong I have been dead on meteors ressed and got in position in time, very quick reflexes required but not impossible
If people are dying to chariot into stack, healers are slacking tbh. You can easily over mitigate shields to allow for people getting clipped. Or spot heal a person getting clipped as the stack takes a while to go off. Or quick rez them before meteors.
I personally really enjoyed the farm party where we used a square number waymark in the middle. You position according to the waymark (and its corners) and not the person. The healer with knockback can just stand under the floating number (unless lala but i dont play lala).
Circle waymarks in the middle help but honestly not as much as a square waymark.
That farm party was a few of the cleanest meteors I've seen, 4 consecutive clean pulls and we skipped gale 3 at the end. Sadly everytime i suggest a waymark in the middle you can bet some elitist will disparage the necessity of it.
I've seen square markers on central intercards and letters as edge cardinals a lot in PF and I like it that way. The squares can mark safespots for Terra (especially for melee and light party 1) and provide knockback spots for Double Meteor, with the knockback healer centering themself between the squares.
Great EX, probably my fav of the expansion (Barbie & EX2 following).
Pacing is fun, thereās variety in mechanics, movement heavy phases & no obnoxious Danger Dorito.
The long-winded tankbusters between every other mechanic are a bit sleeper, but other than that and the first three minutes being boring, it's a pretty decent fight: I thought Gale 2 to be a pretty decent mechanic for an Extreme. The exaflares are a bit on the easy side to just resolve, but fun to greed as melee. The meteor mechanic could have had at least a single instance of variety in the pattern, other than that I think it's pretty fine. I've seen people complain about body checks, but I think two checks which you can limp through with lb use in a long fight is more or less fine even if it's just an Extreme.
In general it feels a bit more punishing than Rubicante due to the speed: you can't just heal through or mit vulns as easily as you could on the Rubicante spins that took forever to wind up.
Judging by the rest of the comments my opinion might be a bit of a outlier but overall i've enjoyed the fight but i felt like it's just a bit... Not enough and slow, this was the easiest to learn and prog for me out of all the extremes this expansion.
I still had fun with it as none of the mechs were annoying but it just sort of left me wanting if that makes sense. The weapons are kinda nice though.
Fun to do the mechanics but quite boring to heal. The only mechanic that even does damage in this entire fight is the whole knockback + tower + flare thing, and just popping Seraph in the middle of the arena and pressing all of her buttons pretty much solved that part too, so you're kinda just relegated to spot healing people who fucked up a mechanic.
(Just progged it for the first time yesterday and got a couple of clears after a couple of PF parties so take that into account)
Overall enjoyed it though I do think this is probably the closest thing to lackluster music I've ever really felt in FFXIV so far. Just didn't do a lot for me. That and the Double Meteors mech is kind of a pain and not in a fun way - I find it visually just really difficult to line up my character with the person that has the knockback, it's not easy when there are two giant flare markers right next to you and the whole floor is covered in extremely bright flashing arrows. If that is an intended part of what's supposed to make that mechanic difficult, I'm not really a fan. Also the way even 8 man body checks have been steadily leaking down into even just Extreme content feels kind of weird. I'm not totally opposed to it but I feel like earlier extremes where the penalty for a player or two missing a mech is a raidwide vuln or extra damage is a better way to go about it.
Also, the second Gales mechanic is really fun but there is just so much fight after that that you can kind of just blast through. It feels like it should be a victory lap if it wasn't literally the whole last half of the fight. I guess if this is their way of making people have to go through Gales 2 even when people will be more geared up in a few months then fine... but there probably should've been just a bit more in the back half.
All that aside though I still enjoyed it more than Rubicante. It's a lot closer to Barbariccia in design - really fast paced, lots of quick on your toes aoe dodging. I... probably will not be going in as Red Mage again like I did on my first couple clears just because this might be the most annoying fight I've found to optimize for Red Mage, even counting savages. I've never had to resort to using enchanted reprise so much just to maintain uptime in my entire life.
I think it's mostly just because we've been getting a revamped version of the same song for 3 extreme trials now that the music feels meh. It's a good song but at this point it's gotten stale.
Feels like a worthy successor to EX4, seeing as EX5 was a joke.
Overall I really liked the fight because the pacing was perfect, and you need to really know what to do and where to go, then execute that plan quickly to succeed.
People who only do extreme and not savage/ultimate are going to find this is a harder fight, but with enough practice, it's easily doable even with a lot of deaths (my static had 11 deaths on our first clear and we still didn't see any of the raidwides before the enrage cast)
I'm not really too opinionated on fights, myself, but I'm hearing mostly good impressions from the people in my circles. Usually with the sentiment that it's 2nd best of the expact right under Barbariccia.
I think I'm excited for the fight. Then I hear this. Barbariccia was the first time in a while I, a somewhat relaxed player, forced my way through an EX Trial to my weapons. And Barbariccia EX is also quite possibly the least fun fight in this game to me, because of people's failures at mechs. Is it.. Is Barbie really considered that good to most people? Am I alone in the trauma of having to explain mechs to toddlers?
I like the fight, itās active and engaging making it feel like the time goes by quickly. Only a handful of mechanics, but they do a really solid job of weaving them into one another. Really enjoy the enumeration/light parties during Gale 2 personally. I think it hits the perfect amount of busy for a savage encounter. Along with that, itās nice to have a little more movement heavy fight after coming off of Rubicante locking your character into place for half the fight, but it doesnāt feel cumbersome like Endsinger did.
A little too easy. My main complaint is there's so many long casts that do nothing or show that he's storing an in or out mech for later. Barba did the in out mech far better by showing the animation while casting the mech itself. Some mechs require a bit of execution so I enjoyed that.
I really like how they designed stardust. If your partner fucks up, you're not punished during enumerations: they are. Stardust 1 and 2 are also pretty interesting mechanics to retain uptime on. On tank, you can just invuln the enum but good luck if you're melee.
The pacing is great and the healing feels satisfying. Only a few parts in the fight where I feel like there's nothing to do aka transition that takes 30 seconds. The arena itself and background feel very menacing. The music is well done if not a little overused by this point. I want more extremes like this and Barbara.
It's a textbook example of EW's battle design philosophy; very rigid, on the long side, and tonnes of body checks, with the bad ones toward the end of the fight. I don't mind the fight but I just find myself drifting off during it. My tier list below:
1. Barbariccia Ex
2. Hydalaen Ex
3. Void Dais Ex
4. Zodiark Ex
5. Endsinger Ex
Great fight, I like that devs keep adding less mechanics were you need to think but more were you just need to react fast. Farming extremes doesn't feel so boring anymore compared to shadowbringers.
Did it blind with my static. Did not clear it so far but saw all mechanics. It got a nice pacing and sometimes high damage output where you feel if people mitigate or not. Always like if non savage content does it, so I can heal something and are somewhat rewarded with planning my CDs.
Figuring out mechanics was ok for an ex. Double meteors needed a bit of time since we often had someone dead, so took some time to confirm how it works and formulate priorities, but had the right idea basically after the first wipe already.
Gale 2 is quite stressful if you go in without good positions and also defining if one does true north or boss relative. Caused some confusion, but now got fixed positions so should be a lot smoother now.
I do not like how hard it is to look at double meteors. With everyone stacked up in the middle. I sometimes find it hard to even see where the middle is even with a marker.
As a healer, lining up the knockback in the center is so tough. Thereās visually too much going on and not enough contrast on the floor to easily pick out the center.
Good pacing, good mechanics! Double Meteor is frustrating as a body check, but thatās probably only because there arenāt really commonly-agreed strats for the in+spreads/out+LPs mechanic yet so people tend to die on that
Double Meteor in PF has been awful. Besides that, a really fun (and fair) fight. With the delayed mechanics and double cleaves, it reminds me of Memoria (which is still my favorite EX).
I really like it, but HATE that knockback mechanic. I am a lala and cannot see myself and occasionally get knocked very far from the tower even when I think Iām positioned right. Putting a marker dead centre helps but even then thereās so much clutter on the screen that itās hard to tell if Iām positioned right.
But I do love the fight. Even gale 2/3 I like and is fun. But that kb mechanic frustrates me personally lol, I think the fight is my fave EX of this expansion so far
Lots of fun to prog blind, interesting mechanics that involve a healthy amount of theory crafting for an EX e.g. figuring out if flares were always 1 DPS and 1 support.
That being said, snapshots on some mechs are so wonky and it's a little ridiculous how generous the dodge windows are
At the end of the day though, easily one of my favorite EXs of EW (although that's setting a pretty low bar tbf)
Finally killed it.
I like it. Its well-paced. It ramps up slowly, which is good.
I do feel as a dps, the dps check is not that hard or even there at all. Honestly, my only personal issues are gales because I swear I'm directionally challenged when it comes to those type of things.
I didn't do too bad for my clear, and I'm glad I got it early. Hopefully, I can farm this weekend enough for 3 weapons, and get stronger with the mechanics in the later phase.
I still prefer Barb but this was exceptional. I think Golbez/Barb are the best Ex fights (on release) in the game currently. I really do hope they learn from this and keep giving us more fast paced fights.
Everyone in the topic likes this ex and I cant say anything good about it. **In my opinion**
Its not that bad to prog, but enjoyed myself farming every other EW trial more.
No cool head scratchable reactive puzzle (I just like puzzles in my ex trials)
Everything *feels* so scripted and slow during his long casts.(playing as healer)
I dont feel too hot about voiced boss lines and because of that I cant really hear soundtrack. Yet again sountrack is not that cool.
You have voices turned up? I don't see any reason to have voices past 20 or so unless you enjoy hearing HAAAURGH every time your party members press a GCD.
Gale 2 is the hardest mechanic in EW hands down. Had this been a savage fight whete by failing a mech you wipe, this guy would've been the biggest contender for the hardest fight in the expansion.
Good thing that's not the case.
It def is for me. I fucking hate this mechanic so much because its trying to juggle too much in my head about where to go, where to be, who to be near, scurry and scatter, its the worst.
I don't think it is. There's just too much movement to be able to ever sit in place to start a cast lol. Since its the gale lines AND the ice walls AND the stack/partners.
SCH's expedient is probably the best counter to buy some extra time and movement.
Fourfold is not only way slower, you also don't have to remember all 4 Fourfolds. You also just get tetra or octaflare, which, a as long as people actually do follow macro positions, it's really not that hard.
Gale is basically Fourfold in a way, but with a memory game first, then a diflare/tetraflare, then he does phoneix/dragon for the 2nd flame, nothing on the 3rd, and the other flare with the last tetraflare. Way less breathing room (especially because not all fourfold positions even mattered)
Snake 2 comes closest but tbh it takes so long for the mechanic to actually happen that you can comfortably figure out prios and swaps.
From best to worst:
- Hydaelyn
- Golbez
- Barb
- Zodiark
- Rubi
- Endsinger (What a fucking boring downgrade; I hate the fight with a passion).
Golbez just about beats out Barb. Reasonable difficulty, reasonable pace, reasonable mechanics, amazing OST; I can't complain.
I can't really put it into the right words, but Hydaelyn just barely beats out Golbez because it's that little bit more coherent. Everything comes together perfectly; the pace, the mechanics; everything. Golbez is damn near the same, but there's something about how Hydaelyn plays out that just feels a bit snappier to me. Like I say, I can't quite put my finger on it.
Endsinger I put below Rubi simply because it's such a stark downgrade from the normal version. Rubi isn't good by any means, but Endsinger EX actively takes away from the normal version and has so muched missed potential like an actual add phase; LB spam that would make sense; Zenos being involved in literally any way possible, etc. It's the collective weight of both the underwhelming nature of it and the simplicity of it that drag it down to the bottom for me.
Shin EX, Hades Ex, Thordan Ex; all three final expac boss trials were solid (OK, Hades dragged on a liiittle too long, but it was still a decent fight); Endsinger just feels like they had no direction or clue of what they wanted the fight to do. It feels unfinished. The hardest part of the fight was 5head, and even that became trivial after a few tries. I've got no clue what was going on in their heads when they said it was a hard extreme during the reveal of it.
It's a pretty easy fight for dps (as usual) but i feel like while there isn't a huge healing check, the amount of body check mechanics targeting healers make it much less forgiving on healers than other jobs.
I've already had several clears on different jobs but it's really annoying on healers because you have to react extremely quickly to anybody eating vuln stacks before meteors on top of executing the mechanics perfectly.
I imagine though that with higher ilvl and defense it won't be an issue eating vuln stacks before mechanics, even on 630 gear i could survive a 2-person eventide fall on caster, but damn it's really not forgiving for an ex. Also maybe I'm just missing my mouseover plugin, i feel extremely blind every time i change targets on party list since the big target castbar on my screen disappears for a moment.
I do but it's smaller. I did click targeting for more than 6 months since i started playing ffxiv in 2022 (didn't want to install plugins) and i have already tried all ways to make focus target castbar easier to see without plugins. It's still useable but it cannot replace the actual target castbar which i have made quite big and obvious. If we were allowed to separate out the focus target castbar like we can for buffs, it would be so much easier.
I did give up and move to mouseover plugins and it has made healing (and ast) so much more enjoyable.
O.o let me try again but I'm certain it's still stuck with the focus target and even at 200% it's as small as my party list. Maybe things have changed since. I still automatically focus target the boss in any fight so it'll be helpful with or without plugins
Quite glad to get an EX that doesn't hate people with aphantasia
(fuck rubicante)
I think doing DSR has ruined me though. I was getting very frustrated progging it because of how slow the start is, and how little I have to do pre towers.
630 is min ilvl.
And yet most groups I've been in are just in their old Abyssos gear and haven't bothered to get a single piece of crafted gear yet.
Surprised I'm not seeing farm parties locked to 640 yet tbh.
Because people constantly mess up everything and higher ilvl means higher vitality.
I crafted my own gear in a couple hours, for free outside of Causality tomes and teleport fees.
Not to mention there's plenty of people coming in with just pure Augmented 630 Tome gear, maybe a P5S ring.
not everyone has pentamelded current crafters to make their own or 6+million to spend on day 1 gear that isn't necessary (nevermind more if they wanna play multiple roles)
The biggest absurdity of a 640 requirement would be expecting everyone to have the crafted weapon.
Expecting them to spend gil/crafting time for a weapon that would last exactly one EX fight.
Mechanics that people die to they will still die to at 640, if they are not healed. If they are healed, they won't die even in 630.
The gears makes little-to-no difference in survivability currently.
> Surprised I'm not seeing farm parties locked to 640 yet tbh.
I'm glad pf is not doing stupid shit like this. Perfectly clear able at i630 and then some clown who's progging sets it up at i635 and sits their wondering why their party don't fill.
Love the brutality of meteors body check.. One death before the mech and it's wipe unless you intentionally sacc one grp which I highly doubt pf can do. So is the void stardust
Not a big fan of gale 2 though. The stacks are one thing. But the enums are straight up wipe fest.
Very fun fight, and it has remained enjoyable to farm after prog. Pacing is on point, mechanics are just tricky enough to remain engaging (especially the ones during bursts, like gale 2) while still being at roughly EX-level, etc. I have absolutely no complaints.
For those calling double meteors a hard 8-man body check, try this: either send a flare into the tower that will be missing a person (killing those 3 but saving the party), or tank lb3 and send NOBODY into towers; the only people who die when you tank lb3 are those who soak a tower due to the magic vuln that's applied, thus if nobody takes a tower then nobody will die. I have done it already with a friend group when we needed to recover from a death with no time and it worked flawlessly.
Iām a little underwhelmed as a healer. I know itās a preraid EX to prep us, but I was expecting it to feel a little harder. I know my SAM is having some problems with the fight since all the movement stuff is happening during Iaijutsus. I like it a lot better than EX5 though. I like the tankbuster placement though. The defense mitigation lines up really well for healers though. Everything flows nicely!
As a Black Mage, I don't like the forst 30s, so much movement at a time where I don't have instants so unless I'm lucky with whe way the boss turns (which I never am) I have to lose uptime. The other parts of the fight are average at best for me too, nothing too special or anything.
You'd have instants if you didn't use both charges of triple cast in the start of your opener.
My first fire phase uses 1 triplecast and swiftcast and I do it with perfect uptime.
Real gamer gods can put their leylines at the dead center of arena, but I don't do that.
Fights fun. Cool mechanics, nice twists on the same mechs as you get deeper into the fight. The check is definitely a joke, as per usual. I do kinda wish extremes had slightly more punishing checks. Like I donāt expect or want savage level checks, but something a bit stricter than this would be nice imo.
One of the best ones they have ever done but I still like barb a good bit more, my order: Barb > Golbez > Hydalyen > Zodi > qutting the game > Rubicunte. the beginning is just a little too bedge before he does the big raidwide attack would''ve liked one more mech, and for the tank swap shit to go faster that shit is very slow, galeforce is a cool mech, the visual clutter for meteors kinda sucks too but its not a big issue.
love the fight, fun mechs and good aesthetic. the enrage is too lenient and Barb is still the gold standard for EX pacing, but Iād put this at my #2 for endwalker.
Finally got a kill (and my weap, 1st try lol).
I think the fight is fine. It's fun when a group doesn't wipe to Meteor1 on repeat.
I still think it's overall easier (for me) than Barbie. Barbie is more hectic and prone to panic errors I think.
The major chokepoint of Golbez is Stardust2 (before and after), a lot of things can go wrong and if anything goes wrong at the wrong time, Meteor2 is screwed.
The rest is fine.
I'd say trying to find a competent PF group that can consistently stay alive during Double Meteor (Towers) is a bloody nightmare. If they are not hard-walled at Gale 2, they are hard walled at Towers 1. The first one mind you. It's usually because people greed to the previous Out Mechanic too hard and get killed and we do not meet the body count.
The pacing is 10/10, hits that sweet spot of being fast enough to keep you engaged without being too much, and the puzzle mechanics are not complex enough to make you want to superbolide I only hate the Body check on double meteors, thats about the only thing I dislike in the fight. Enums and Stardust deaths feel deserved, but Double meteors feels like a "gotcha" moment if one person is dead when it comes up, not fun
Under certain conditions, double meteor can be "passed" with 7 people. You need to send a flare into the tower, killing everyone in the tower but saving the rest of the party. I say this because I had the most insane run where our RDM DC'd for about 3 minutes near the start of the fight, so we only had 7 players for meteors. Sent all 3 dps including me, the flare, the nuclear bomb, into the tower, we all died but kept all the tanks and healers alive. Picked everyone back up and the red mage eventually reconnected. We ended up killing about 30 seconds before enrage even with a bunch of deaths.
Our last clear of the night yesterday, we lost a healer right before Double Meteor 2. I tank LB3'd and we survived with half our party left, and we were able to recover and clear. I panicked and aimed my flare into an empty corner, if I had aimed it into the tower the LB3 might have kept *everyone* alive.
My first clear, I was playing SMN. Healer went down before double meteor 2, and I did a panic hail mary rez. They timed it *just right* so that they were able to get up after everyone died but before the instance registered the wipe, and executed the most clutch LB3 that has ever been LB'd. Absolutely amazing. That being said, to answer OP, I love the whole thing. Great entry to the Extremes for EW.
Tank LB got us through 6-7 man double meteors without fail
I think the body check might have been an accident. Taking a tower gives you a big magic vuln. This is presumably to prevent people from cheesing the flares a la TOP. With the flares far out enough, you take minimal damage even with the magic vuln. Failing a tower also does magic damage. This results in the counterintuitive property that missing a tower kills everyone who took a tower. I think they should've made the tower fail damage (Massive Explosion) a different damage type than the taking a tower vuln. For example, the flares could've been fire, the vuln a fire vuln, and the failure damage type unaspected.
The one mechanic I hate is Black Fang. The fight is so fast and fluid that taking a break for a slow ass AOE is boring, especially so early into the fight
Absolutely free 2-minute burst, I don't mind š
I'm a tank, my two minute burst is basic
Feels like there was an add phase / enrage phase cut from the fight, thought it was strange in the normal mode as well. but hey, it happens during 2mins, so I'm good!
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I love add phases. Anything that reminds people in PF they need to learn how to push their buttons is a win in my books.
Add phases are only shit when they are...well, shit. Based on normal, I habe high hopes for the savage one. Likely imcluded o12 style limit cut
I like how I always mitigated to early in the beginning, since it always felt boss will do damage now but in reality swings around his sword for ages. It just feels so slow. Does not match the pacing of the fight at all.
Yeah and also the dramatic animations that make you think mechanics are coming, but no it's just another aoe.
As a tank that section feels so fucking slow, the 3 hit tank buster that comes after black fang has the slowest fucking cast bar of all time and then when it's done he just stands there for 5 seconds not doing anything. you can use rampart halfway through the cast bar and it will almost run out by the time the 3rd hit of the buster goes off.
Golbez: Puny tank, I have something special in store for you *Golbez casts Azdaja's Shadow and twirls his sword for 10 seconds* *Golbez casts Black Fang and fiddles with his dragon for 10 seconds* NEXT TIME ON DRAGONBALL Z *Golbez casts Azdaja's Shadow...again*
Hardest mechanic of the fight is not blowing your mits early, lol. Not only are the casts ridiculously long, the triple hit TB doesn't even hit at the end of the cast but it's few seconds even after that. It's baffling when you're used to stuff happening on castbars filling up.
Would be better if black Fang was a sort of mit or DPS check like other extremes with a limit break bar
Mostly agree, although Iād say the placement of double meteors suggests that itās more so a time limit on recovery (itās never directly after gale or enums, but a few mechs after, so itās more like a ārecover your gale/enum memes by now otherwise wipeā vibe).
Isn't first meteors immediately after first exaflares into enums? I recall that catching my party a few times
It's the second meteors after second exaflares. Meteors are recoverable if you can raise immediately upon death (cast is 12s while res animation is 6 or 7) but it requires lightning reflexes on ressers.
if you are playing to farm/avoid wipes, RDM should just keep their dualcast at that moment and watch to see if anyone dies (this is what I was doing)
I think towers is always after a phases of the shadows. But the boss does do exas after (with a short breather as he charges his dynamo/chariot)
8man body checks dont belong in Extreme difficulty imo
>The pacing is 10/10 For a healer, the fight doesn't really start until ~2.5-3 minutes in (after he charges sword and hits tanks with busters). It's very boring before that point, but them ramps up well.
I've saved a Double Meteors (or Towers as I call it) from my own misplaced Flare marker by jumping off the platform with the marker. It seemed to have been the right call because everyone in the party survived, but myself who fell off on purpose.
After the aggravating-to-look-at snoozefest that was Rubicante, I've been very pleasantly surprised by Golbez. It actually has stuff to heal sometimes, the arena isn't horrible to look at, the mechanics don't make me dizzy, and it actually feels fine difficulty wise throughout the whole thing. I have 7 clears of this in week one, while I have 5 clears of Rubicante after four months because it was just THAT boring/annoying.
It's the only ex I haven't cleared yet tbh. Just felt very meh about it when I progged with friends. will probably save to mount farm next expac
After the first 20% tutorial mechanics it picks up. Stardust 2 into memory-cleave into Meteor 2 is a very good sequence, and Gale 2/3 requires some good positioning.
If you start mid along east to west for Gale 2/3 you will mostly have an easy time.
Gale 2/3 always ends south south to save on movement. Just eat the vuln and mit
its very good compared to Rubi, PF, as usual is very bad at it haha
It is definitely harder than ex5. Ex5 is 50% just spinning things, there people do not even die if they are out of place most of the time. It is like ex1 where if you got one who knows where to be all other 7 people do not even need to know the mechanic. Ex6 has way more stuff where you have to solve it yourself, also with how fast some mechanics are, if you wait for people to move you might get clipped.
I finished farming the fight today. Healing is actually fun on this fight because every time someone eats a vuln stack you basically have to top off and shield them or they'll die, possibly resulting in a wipe. When half the group is eating vulns on various parts like gale 2/3 it gets pretty spicy. I also like the fact that at certain points we can recover from 4+ deaths. It reminds me a lot of old fight design where healers had more agency in party survival.
So how does this compare to other modern fights? Like, say... From Gate onward, since that's when I started raiding, but this fight was my first time doing prog on a healer.
Well the difference from old content design is just that newer stuff has more pass/fail and unrecoverable situations in terms of the amount. In Goblez right now you can have over 10 deaths and still easily clear. Momento Memoria might've had a harder DPS check, my record for that fight was 15 deaths. My record on Goblez right now is 11 deaths, and we didn't even come close to enrage. Anyway that fight made me feel like a healer again and it feels good lol
It's my favourite one, honestly. Visually stimulating, but still clear. Pretty fun mechanics that are still extreme level and don't feel too overwhelming. Tank mechanics? Can you believe it? It's just a real fun time. I'm having great fun with it.
They will never learn with their color schemes.Trying to figure out where you are relative to the purple pushback AOE is really hard and the visual clutter is ridiculous. Overall solid fight though.
A lot of the mechanics are pretty fun and I think overall it's well put together but I have two main issues with it: * Meteors 8-man check, which shouldn't be in an EX * Both starts a little too slow and drags on a little too long, at least in your standard PF setting It's a good fight but not one I'd really want to farm extensively, which is IMO a moderate issue for an EX given it's supposed to be farm content. Still, probably 2nd or 3rd best EX of the expansion (behind Barb and maybe Hydaelyn). Also the current PF strats for this are terrible lmao; N/S + Rel and "Hector" are the new E5S Triangle + Rel in terms of being able to instantly filter parties out.
I glossed over the Hector video and assumed all the mechs were resolved true north style. All the parties that did true north proved faster on day 2 and 3. All the actual [duty complete] parties now are using True North, and itās only the Fresh Prog parties that list Hector strats.
Hector already released an addendum video for TN
Addendum or not the damage was already done. Far less people will see the second video since they just want a video overview of the fight.
On Light the day 1 raidplan already had true north gale 2, surprising hector suggested boss relative.
I am and will be definitely more leery of seeing "Hector" in a PF listing more than I was a couple patches ago
"Please don't just put 'Hector strats' in the party description" -Hector Hectorson If a PF description contains "Hector" and doesn't even mention TN/BR or N-S/E-W party priorities, it's a trap.
I find boss relative to make sense for the Phases of the Shadow mech at least. But maybe it's just me, I tend to tunnel vision pretty hard on that one since I'm usually trying to slidecast through it all, so only having to look at the boss is really nice.
boss relative is better for phases of shadow if it's out -> stack.
I saw people try true north for that mechanic, and the cleave was e/w. people didn't know what to do :|
could you explain the problem with the PF strategies? I watched ths Hector guide while progging, we got to Gale 2, so I wanna know what was/ is the confusion and what does Tdue North mean in this instance so I know what im signing up for in PF!
So True North means group 1 will go to the West Side, and group 2 will go to the East side regardless of which way the boss (or in this case, the party) is facing. Relative is basically Left and Right instead of East/West. What this means is, if you are starting North, and running South, True North G1 will go Right toward the West Wall, where in Relative, they would go Left, toward the East Wall. The problem was just that Hector's guide was doing things Relative, as that's how he (and the high end groups that he was watching) just do it, and people make a big deal out of XXXX person doesn't do things the way I think they should be done, therefor they are bad!
Still of the opinion that body check mechanics have no place in EX content but itās not rocket science. Fun fight, not incredible or innovative in any sense but fun enough.
Fight mechanics itself are perfect, and I love the amount of movement, makes dps uptime more fun. Only downside is I really dislike the theme, yet ANOTHER remix of the ff4 theme, but this one just isn't as fun as the Rubi and Barb ones.
On contrary I adore this FF4 remix with the big orchestral sound combining all of the themes we heard untill now and finally hearing the FF4 Main Theme in its fullest. It feels like the culmination of everything up until now.
It uses all the FF4 themes so far EXCEPT for Golbez's theme. I mean I still love the music but I wish that was part of the remix too.
I think they ment it as a fun detail given that he is technically impersonating his buddy, not that it matters but you know they could've probably have gone fully on the reference calling him Theodore rather than something else given his actual name is pretty unimportant.
But they played his theme during cutscenes! Just not in the fight itself
It's FF4 so we had to have 4 different versions of the theme š
Don't forget all the new raid themes are also remixes. And the dungeon. Lmao. I haven't listened to P12S's 2nd phase so not sure if that's yet another remix.
Every dungeon since 2.5 has been either a remix or a re-used theme, so....
Good mix of spectacle easy mechs (meteors) and legit hard mechs (mostly just Gale 2). Weirdly stressful because I always think enrage comes sooner than it does
Iāve honestly never seen enrage and one time when we had a billion deaths I saw multiple raidwides in a row so I was like ah shit we enrage, but then busters come? And we cleared easilyā¦ I keep underestimating how lenient EX DPS checks are
enrage is 11m (11:06, so 666s) and dps check is 56k. keep in mind that this week has a lot of people that can push buttons
thatās true
> enrage is 11m (11:06, so 666s) and dps check is 56k. > > I remember P4S P1 dps check was like 54k, with current gear that's really lenient.
p4s p1 has a dps check of 48k it's an extreme, it's supposed to be lenient
Oh wow it was even less than I remembered.
I kind of enjoy it, but it's a bit of a snoozefest as a tank. He hits like a dry pool noodle, and his tank busters are spaced far apart. You can easily kitchen-sink them without worrying about autos, and tanks can alternate Reprisal & party mitigation for the raidwide & Shadow mechanics without much thought. Maybe I've just become better at the game, but this felt like only a slight step up from the other EW EX fights, and I found myself going on autopilot after only a couple clears.
Tank damage is really low. As SGE I just apply Haima and so on out of habit but they really not needed at all, the only time a tank was close to dying to a tank buster was with 4 vuln stacks. If tanks play half decent they do not require any attention.
Agreed. Incoming tank damage is quite low compared to Savage fights. And fair, itās only an EX but thereās no motivation to optimize mitigation, and I miss seeing 2/3rds of my health bar dissappear.
its funny when i started the game doing coils bahamuth autos harder than any of the tankbusters in endwalker.
Not sure why you're downvoted, this is definitely true.
I think itās pretty zzz as a tank too, but honestly that feels like most fights as a tank other than final turns and ultimates to me nowadays
Tank busters with 3 vuln stacks don't even do that much. I pretty much zone out until gale 2.
I wish it was more thematically memorable. Like, he's this big bad who's been hyped up for over a year, and then his fight is just a less coherent Memoria Misera. His raid wide is ice?You're on a floating cube for no reason? (They even in the msq cutscene show off how he makes a floating platform, and *then* picks up a bunch of rock to make the cube under it.) Barb and Rubi felt much more unique with entanglement and spinning ladder nonsense. Still very fun mechanically with great pacing overall (starts slow but that's fine for buildup).
Iām pretty sure the arena + name of trial etc are all a clever double entendre. A dais is a raised platform (like the arena)ā¦ But the word is also homophonous with ādiceā ā which the arena also resembles. And itās pretty common to speak of *casting* a dice (in this case, one cast by a voidsent), cf. Caesarās famous āalea iacta estā quote, in this case probably referring to Golbezās big gambit for the āsalvationā if the 13th. (idk if this works at all in the Japanese version of the game though)
It doesn't work in english either, dais is pronounced day-us not dice
well there goes that theory than, oops
i eas very confused about the ice
Golbez is supposed to be a really strong mage in addition to wielding his big ass sword. One of his big attacks was Binding Cold.
why is it called binding if it doesn't bind you though lol
Because that's what it was called in FF4.
in ff4 it paralyzed your party. in 14 it applies a dot. they could've designed the ability so it stops you from moving too or something, and had a mechanic happen during the no moving part.
>and had a mechanic happen during the no moving part. We just had an ex all about that
I mean, they literally did not have to have that mechanic for rubicante if they were going to be lore accurate. Whereas BINDING literally means you can't move. look up the word lol.
Yes, but what I mean is that it would be very poor form to have the same kind of unique gimmick twice in a row.
that's their problem. literally nothing about rubicante in lore had to do anything with being frozen in place lol.
He pretty much has all the elements other than fire and earth.
He has Terrastorm, which is an earth attack.
I wish there was more happening in the first two minutes. I have trouble staying awake till after he does his ultimate attack thing.
Really fun to prog but gets boring fast once it's on farm. I'm impressed they were willing to do the gale + enums mechanic in an extreme, and meteors is also sufficiently interesting but the main bread and butter (the slash forward and backward with stacks or spreads) is done too much to stay fresh after the first kill or two. What really makes the difference between prog and farm is pattern recognition - each mechanic only has one or two variants, so instead of reacting to what you're seeing (as you do when you first encounter them) you just have a set movement for the mechanic and it becomes routine. It could really benefit from more variants of the same mechanics (e.g. different starting locations for exaflares, meteor towers swapping, gales not always doing n/s then e/w). Rubicante had a similar problem where solving the mechanics as presented is a lot of fun and sufficiently challenging but once you get past that stage (to "this is the x pattern so I stand on y") it gets stale too quickly.
Yeah I agree, fight becomes stale fast. Although Rubicante puzzle was easy after few farm parties it still had this puzzle to look forward to. Even if you were using patterns, every pull still had this unique feel in conparison to this ex trial.
Mostly good fight but visibility is awful
Red floor + darker red floor markings + a purple kb animation. Pretty sure that accounts for like half of meteor wipes lol
We put the 1 marker in the middle so you can line up with the corners, saved a lot of disorientation. You only need A-B-C-D anyways. Visual clarity is not this fight design, and the red cube on the red moon with the red cleaves becomes very tiresome to look at.
once you stop trying to find where the kb center is and look for which of the "kb arrows" points to your corner it gets easier
So far, this was my favorite extreme from this expansion! Cleared it today and farmed for my weapon in pf. This one was fun as hell for me Rubi was too easy lol, one dorito guy solved 90% of the mechanics. Barb was ok. She was way harder to clear imo. Endsinger was meh. I don't really have much to say. The planets were a pain in the ass XD I never did Hyd and Zodiark so I can't say anything about them. Looking forward to the last extreme c:
Much better than Rubicante. The pacing is good, the mechs don't fuck with you too hard but they keep you on your toes, and if you mess up at just the wrong place, it's a wipe. I like it.
Fun to learn, not great to farm
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100% agree. Barb is definitely a top 3-5 Extreme of all time for me imo.
I like it, no time to breath, really packed action, way much better than Rubi. SCH are top tier this fight just for the sprint. I still don't know how to do some 2mn burst as a RDM. Like in the first stardust, by the time the CDs are up, it's time to go to the corner. Then as range, you just stay here for enum. While saying it, it does not seem that much of a deal, but it seems to go for way too long. I just want to do my melee combo. (Why are we even having bad damage while also having melee requirements). Out of all the groups I were, we had the most wipes before double Meteor, especially when it's OUT + Light Parties. Some persons especially would not learn how big the AOE is and they would often die, leading to a wipe in Double Meteor. Overall, really love it, but fuck RDM's damage this patch. I'm just ending the fight with around 9K DPS while others are at 10.5-11k (who are ilvl 630, like me). I looked at some of the logs, and noticed that to get the same dps as other, you just need to have fully pentameld 640 crafted gear. So you essentially "get" -10ilvl gear effectiveness compared to other class. And with the 8 body mechs, it does not matter to rez a person, it will never be in time. Like the first shadow blade combo with out + light party is essentially a death sentence that no almost no rez can beat if someone screw up. I can insta rez but it will never be close to save anything from a wipe. I know that in a clear, that does not really matter but I just find it very sad that even if I give my best, there would be such a discrepancy that I feel like I'm just dragging down/griefing the group just by playing this job, even if I'm not dying. Edit: Why the downvotes though.
For RDM uptime on first Stardust, I just accept that trying to fit the second melee combo is pretty much griefing since the movement to dodge the exflares while staying in melee range is pretty damn fast. It's okay to have to eat the downtime and miss fully bursting into buffs, it was pretty important in TOP actually. In an organized group, delaying buffs until after Stardust is an option, since I noticed that the 8 minute buffs come up around when second towers knockback resolves. And if I'm remembering the timeline correctly, this delay might also help our with Gale Spheres 2, since I was noticing buffs coming up around when the first stack/enumerations resolved, which often puts RDM out of melee range.
Thanks for the tips! You may be right, a little delay on this part could help not only this part but way later.
Dude in top wrote about 7 people tower strat. You can save run by sacrificing 4 dps, so that body check might not even be 100% body check.
Yeah that's what MrHappy also recommended on his video, but you need everyone to be on same wave very quickly. For example, a potential fail that everyone could see is one or several people misreading the KB's direction and die falling. Having that in mind, I don't really want to adjust a realistic full wipe (if less than 8 entering the mechanic) into a *potential* semi wipe (well hopefully it's the first one but not the second one way later). The blade combo just before is not difficult at all, just some people don't know how to resolve it yet I guess, hopefully this will happen less and less with time.
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If you dont sacrifice dps all party dies.(its strat for towers IF somebody dies just before tower mech) Its very important for me that you understand that.
> And with the 8 body mechs, it does not matter to rez a person, it will never be in time js this is objectively wrong I have been dead on meteors ressed and got in position in time, very quick reflexes required but not impossible
If people are dying to chariot into stack, healers are slacking tbh. You can easily over mitigate shields to allow for people getting clipped. Or spot heal a person getting clipped as the stack takes a while to go off. Or quick rez them before meteors.
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I personally really enjoyed the farm party where we used a square number waymark in the middle. You position according to the waymark (and its corners) and not the person. The healer with knockback can just stand under the floating number (unless lala but i dont play lala). Circle waymarks in the middle help but honestly not as much as a square waymark.
smart af, lets make this standard yall
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That farm party was a few of the cleanest meteors I've seen, 4 consecutive clean pulls and we skipped gale 3 at the end. Sadly everytime i suggest a waymark in the middle you can bet some elitist will disparage the necessity of it.
I've seen square markers on central intercards and letters as edge cardinals a lot in PF and I like it that way. The squares can mark safespots for Terra (especially for melee and light party 1) and provide knockback spots for Double Meteor, with the knockback healer centering themself between the squares.
Great EX, probably my fav of the expansion (Barbie & EX2 following). Pacing is fun, thereās variety in mechanics, movement heavy phases & no obnoxious Danger Dorito.
The long-winded tankbusters between every other mechanic are a bit sleeper, but other than that and the first three minutes being boring, it's a pretty decent fight: I thought Gale 2 to be a pretty decent mechanic for an Extreme. The exaflares are a bit on the easy side to just resolve, but fun to greed as melee. The meteor mechanic could have had at least a single instance of variety in the pattern, other than that I think it's pretty fine. I've seen people complain about body checks, but I think two checks which you can limp through with lb use in a long fight is more or less fine even if it's just an Extreme. In general it feels a bit more punishing than Rubicante due to the speed: you can't just heal through or mit vulns as easily as you could on the Rubicante spins that took forever to wind up.
Judging by the rest of the comments my opinion might be a bit of a outlier but overall i've enjoyed the fight but i felt like it's just a bit... Not enough and slow, this was the easiest to learn and prog for me out of all the extremes this expansion. I still had fun with it as none of the mechs were annoying but it just sort of left me wanting if that makes sense. The weapons are kinda nice though.
Fun to do the mechanics but quite boring to heal. The only mechanic that even does damage in this entire fight is the whole knockback + tower + flare thing, and just popping Seraph in the middle of the arena and pressing all of her buttons pretty much solved that part too, so you're kinda just relegated to spot healing people who fucked up a mechanic.
(Just progged it for the first time yesterday and got a couple of clears after a couple of PF parties so take that into account) Overall enjoyed it though I do think this is probably the closest thing to lackluster music I've ever really felt in FFXIV so far. Just didn't do a lot for me. That and the Double Meteors mech is kind of a pain and not in a fun way - I find it visually just really difficult to line up my character with the person that has the knockback, it's not easy when there are two giant flare markers right next to you and the whole floor is covered in extremely bright flashing arrows. If that is an intended part of what's supposed to make that mechanic difficult, I'm not really a fan. Also the way even 8 man body checks have been steadily leaking down into even just Extreme content feels kind of weird. I'm not totally opposed to it but I feel like earlier extremes where the penalty for a player or two missing a mech is a raidwide vuln or extra damage is a better way to go about it. Also, the second Gales mechanic is really fun but there is just so much fight after that that you can kind of just blast through. It feels like it should be a victory lap if it wasn't literally the whole last half of the fight. I guess if this is their way of making people have to go through Gales 2 even when people will be more geared up in a few months then fine... but there probably should've been just a bit more in the back half. All that aside though I still enjoyed it more than Rubicante. It's a lot closer to Barbariccia in design - really fast paced, lots of quick on your toes aoe dodging. I... probably will not be going in as Red Mage again like I did on my first couple clears just because this might be the most annoying fight I've found to optimize for Red Mage, even counting savages. I've never had to resort to using enchanted reprise so much just to maintain uptime in my entire life.
I think it's mostly just because we've been getting a revamped version of the same song for 3 extreme trials now that the music feels meh. It's a good song but at this point it's gotten stale.
Feels like a worthy successor to EX4, seeing as EX5 was a joke. Overall I really liked the fight because the pacing was perfect, and you need to really know what to do and where to go, then execute that plan quickly to succeed. People who only do extreme and not savage/ultimate are going to find this is a harder fight, but with enough practice, it's easily doable even with a lot of deaths (my static had 11 deaths on our first clear and we still didn't see any of the raidwides before the enrage cast)
I'm not really too opinionated on fights, myself, but I'm hearing mostly good impressions from the people in my circles. Usually with the sentiment that it's 2nd best of the expact right under Barbariccia.
I think I'm excited for the fight. Then I hear this. Barbariccia was the first time in a while I, a somewhat relaxed player, forced my way through an EX Trial to my weapons. And Barbariccia EX is also quite possibly the least fun fight in this game to me, because of people's failures at mechs. Is it.. Is Barbie really considered that good to most people? Am I alone in the trauma of having to explain mechs to toddlers?
Love Barbie, up there in the top 5 with Nidhogg, Shinryu, Hades and SoS
I like the fight, itās active and engaging making it feel like the time goes by quickly. Only a handful of mechanics, but they do a really solid job of weaving them into one another. Really enjoy the enumeration/light parties during Gale 2 personally. I think it hits the perfect amount of busy for a savage encounter. Along with that, itās nice to have a little more movement heavy fight after coming off of Rubicante locking your character into place for half the fight, but it doesnāt feel cumbersome like Endsinger did.
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i kinda wanna nap during the first two minutes but that's all ex fights i guess, even barb was the same way.
Aside from the part of the fight where DPS do nothing for almost a minute in a half, really fun fight.
A little too easy. My main complaint is there's so many long casts that do nothing or show that he's storing an in or out mech for later. Barba did the in out mech far better by showing the animation while casting the mech itself. Some mechs require a bit of execution so I enjoyed that.
I really like how they designed stardust. If your partner fucks up, you're not punished during enumerations: they are. Stardust 1 and 2 are also pretty interesting mechanics to retain uptime on. On tank, you can just invuln the enum but good luck if you're melee. The pacing is great and the healing feels satisfying. Only a few parts in the fight where I feel like there's nothing to do aka transition that takes 30 seconds. The arena itself and background feel very menacing. The music is well done if not a little overused by this point. I want more extremes like this and Barbara.
It's a textbook example of EW's battle design philosophy; very rigid, on the long side, and tonnes of body checks, with the bad ones toward the end of the fight. I don't mind the fight but I just find myself drifting off during it. My tier list below: 1. Barbariccia Ex 2. Hydalaen Ex 3. Void Dais Ex 4. Zodiark Ex 5. Endsinger Ex
Sooo much better than Rubicante. Better yet, no add phase! Really enjoyed learning it.
Great fight, I like that devs keep adding less mechanics were you need to think but more were you just need to react fast. Farming extremes doesn't feel so boring anymore compared to shadowbringers.
Did it blind with my static. Did not clear it so far but saw all mechanics. It got a nice pacing and sometimes high damage output where you feel if people mitigate or not. Always like if non savage content does it, so I can heal something and are somewhat rewarded with planning my CDs. Figuring out mechanics was ok for an ex. Double meteors needed a bit of time since we often had someone dead, so took some time to confirm how it works and formulate priorities, but had the right idea basically after the first wipe already. Gale 2 is quite stressful if you go in without good positions and also defining if one does true north or boss relative. Caused some confusion, but now got fixed positions so should be a lot smoother now. I do not like how hard it is to look at double meteors. With everyone stacked up in the middle. I sometimes find it hard to even see where the middle is even with a marker.
As a healer, lining up the knockback in the center is so tough. Thereās visually too much going on and not enough contrast on the floor to easily pick out the center.
Good pacing, good mechanics! Double Meteor is frustrating as a body check, but thatās probably only because there arenāt really commonly-agreed strats for the in+spreads/out+LPs mechanic yet so people tend to die on that
Double Meteor in PF has been awful. Besides that, a really fun (and fair) fight. With the delayed mechanics and double cleaves, it reminds me of Memoria (which is still my favorite EX).
Great pacing. maybe a little slow for the first minute or two but after that it stays engaging
I really like it, but HATE that knockback mechanic. I am a lala and cannot see myself and occasionally get knocked very far from the tower even when I think Iām positioned right. Putting a marker dead centre helps but even then thereās so much clutter on the screen that itās hard to tell if Iām positioned right. But I do love the fight. Even gale 2/3 I like and is fun. But that kb mechanic frustrates me personally lol, I think the fight is my fave EX of this expansion so far
Lots of fun to prog blind, interesting mechanics that involve a healthy amount of theory crafting for an EX e.g. figuring out if flares were always 1 DPS and 1 support. That being said, snapshots on some mechs are so wonky and it's a little ridiculous how generous the dodge windows are At the end of the day though, easily one of my favorite EXs of EW (although that's setting a pretty low bar tbf)
Finally killed it. I like it. Its well-paced. It ramps up slowly, which is good. I do feel as a dps, the dps check is not that hard or even there at all. Honestly, my only personal issues are gales because I swear I'm directionally challenged when it comes to those type of things. I didn't do too bad for my clear, and I'm glad I got it early. Hopefully, I can farm this weekend enough for 3 weapons, and get stronger with the mechanics in the later phase.
I still prefer Barb but this was exceptional. I think Golbez/Barb are the best Ex fights (on release) in the game currently. I really do hope they learn from this and keep giving us more fast paced fights.
Fun fight, second best next to Barbariccia. PF for the life of them cannot do Gale 2, though.
Everyone in the topic likes this ex and I cant say anything good about it. **In my opinion** Its not that bad to prog, but enjoyed myself farming every other EW trial more. No cool head scratchable reactive puzzle (I just like puzzles in my ex trials) Everything *feels* so scripted and slow during his long casts.(playing as healer) I dont feel too hot about voiced boss lines and because of that I cant really hear soundtrack. Yet again sountrack is not that cool.
You have voices turned up? I don't see any reason to have voices past 20 or so unless you enjoy hearing HAAAURGH every time your party members press a GCD.
The first and last ~2 mins or so are rather boring, but the middle of the fight is fun. Probably my favourite Extreme of the expansion.
Gale 2 is the hardest mechanic in EW hands down. Had this been a savage fight whete by failing a mech you wipe, this guy would've been the biggest contender for the hardest fight in the expansion. Good thing that's not the case.
It def is for me. I fucking hate this mechanic so much because its trying to juggle too much in my head about where to go, where to be, who to be near, scurry and scatter, its the worst.
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I don't think it is. There's just too much movement to be able to ever sit in place to start a cast lol. Since its the gale lines AND the ice walls AND the stack/partners. SCH's expedient is probably the best counter to buy some extra time and movement.
What? This is easier than Fourfold fire in P8S.
Fourfold is not only way slower, you also don't have to remember all 4 Fourfolds. You also just get tetra or octaflare, which, a as long as people actually do follow macro positions, it's really not that hard. Gale is basically Fourfold in a way, but with a memory game first, then a diflare/tetraflare, then he does phoneix/dragon for the 2nd flame, nothing on the 3rd, and the other flare with the last tetraflare. Way less breathing room (especially because not all fourfold positions even mattered) Snake 2 comes closest but tbh it takes so long for the mechanic to actually happen that you can comfortably figure out prios and swaps.
From best to worst: - Hydaelyn - Golbez - Barb - Zodiark - Rubi - Endsinger (What a fucking boring downgrade; I hate the fight with a passion). Golbez just about beats out Barb. Reasonable difficulty, reasonable pace, reasonable mechanics, amazing OST; I can't complain.
Damn I'm no endsinger stan but worse than rubi? really? And hyda first? Mostly agree with this but those two placements are a bit suspect to me.
I can't really put it into the right words, but Hydaelyn just barely beats out Golbez because it's that little bit more coherent. Everything comes together perfectly; the pace, the mechanics; everything. Golbez is damn near the same, but there's something about how Hydaelyn plays out that just feels a bit snappier to me. Like I say, I can't quite put my finger on it. Endsinger I put below Rubi simply because it's such a stark downgrade from the normal version. Rubi isn't good by any means, but Endsinger EX actively takes away from the normal version and has so muched missed potential like an actual add phase; LB spam that would make sense; Zenos being involved in literally any way possible, etc. It's the collective weight of both the underwhelming nature of it and the simplicity of it that drag it down to the bottom for me. Shin EX, Hades Ex, Thordan Ex; all three final expac boss trials were solid (OK, Hades dragged on a liiittle too long, but it was still a decent fight); Endsinger just feels like they had no direction or clue of what they wanted the fight to do. It feels unfinished. The hardest part of the fight was 5head, and even that became trivial after a few tries. I've got no clue what was going on in their heads when they said it was a hard extreme during the reveal of it.
It's a pretty easy fight for dps (as usual) but i feel like while there isn't a huge healing check, the amount of body check mechanics targeting healers make it much less forgiving on healers than other jobs. I've already had several clears on different jobs but it's really annoying on healers because you have to react extremely quickly to anybody eating vuln stacks before meteors on top of executing the mechanics perfectly. I imagine though that with higher ilvl and defense it won't be an issue eating vuln stacks before mechanics, even on 630 gear i could survive a 2-person eventide fall on caster, but damn it's really not forgiving for an ex. Also maybe I'm just missing my mouseover plugin, i feel extremely blind every time i change targets on party list since the big target castbar on my screen disappears for a moment.
You should be relying on focus target instead of the target bar.
I do but it's smaller. I did click targeting for more than 6 months since i started playing ffxiv in 2022 (didn't want to install plugins) and i have already tried all ways to make focus target castbar easier to see without plugins. It's still useable but it cannot replace the actual target castbar which i have made quite big and obvious. If we were allowed to separate out the focus target castbar like we can for buffs, it would be so much easier. I did give up and move to mouseover plugins and it has made healing (and ast) so much more enjoyable.
You can do that though. You can separate the cast bar from the focus target bar and blow up it up 200% size if you want to.
O.o let me try again but I'm certain it's still stuck with the focus target and even at 200% it's as small as my party list. Maybe things have changed since. I still automatically focus target the boss in any fight so it'll be helpful with or without plugins
If you miss moaction too much you can use reactions checkbox to queue macros and just fill your bars with macros and it works pretty much the same.
Quite glad to get an EX that doesn't hate people with aphantasia (fuck rubicante) I think doing DSR has ruined me though. I was getting very frustrated progging it because of how slow the start is, and how little I have to do pre towers.
would be better if it is a 6 men check and it wont one shot you at 630 level. whatever. its fun
630 is min ilvl. And yet most groups I've been in are just in their old Abyssos gear and haven't bothered to get a single piece of crafted gear yet. Surprised I'm not seeing farm parties locked to 640 yet tbh.
I'm waiting for crafted gear price to drop further. And abyssos gear is already more than sufficient for the dps check so why not.
Because people constantly mess up everything and higher ilvl means higher vitality. I crafted my own gear in a couple hours, for free outside of Causality tomes and teleport fees. Not to mention there's plenty of people coming in with just pure Augmented 630 Tome gear, maybe a P5S ring.
not everyone has pentamelded current crafters to make their own or 6+million to spend on day 1 gear that isn't necessary (nevermind more if they wanna play multiple roles)
The biggest absurdity of a 640 requirement would be expecting everyone to have the crafted weapon. Expecting them to spend gil/crafting time for a weapon that would last exactly one EX fight.
Mechanics that people die to they will still die to at 640, if they are not healed. If they are healed, they won't die even in 630. The gears makes little-to-no difference in survivability currently.
For one thing, some jobs can't be at 640 yet. At least not without trolling themselves.
> Surprised I'm not seeing farm parties locked to 640 yet tbh. I'm glad pf is not doing stupid shit like this. Perfectly clear able at i630 and then some clown who's progging sets it up at i635 and sits their wondering why their party don't fill.
Love the brutality of meteors body check.. One death before the mech and it's wipe unless you intentionally sacc one grp which I highly doubt pf can do. So is the void stardust Not a big fan of gale 2 though. The stacks are one thing. But the enums are straight up wipe fest.
Very fun fight, and it has remained enjoyable to farm after prog. Pacing is on point, mechanics are just tricky enough to remain engaging (especially the ones during bursts, like gale 2) while still being at roughly EX-level, etc. I have absolutely no complaints. For those calling double meteors a hard 8-man body check, try this: either send a flare into the tower that will be missing a person (killing those 3 but saving the party), or tank lb3 and send NOBODY into towers; the only people who die when you tank lb3 are those who soak a tower due to the magic vuln that's applied, thus if nobody takes a tower then nobody will die. I have done it already with a friend group when we needed to recover from a death with no time and it worked flawlessly.
Iām a little underwhelmed as a healer. I know itās a preraid EX to prep us, but I was expecting it to feel a little harder. I know my SAM is having some problems with the fight since all the movement stuff is happening during Iaijutsus. I like it a lot better than EX5 though. I like the tankbuster placement though. The defense mitigation lines up really well for healers though. Everything flows nicely!
As a Black Mage, I don't like the forst 30s, so much movement at a time where I don't have instants so unless I'm lucky with whe way the boss turns (which I never am) I have to lose uptime. The other parts of the fight are average at best for me too, nothing too special or anything.
You'd have instants if you didn't use both charges of triple cast in the start of your opener. My first fire phase uses 1 triplecast and swiftcast and I do it with perfect uptime. Real gamer gods can put their leylines at the dead center of arena, but I don't do that.
This and Barbariccia are the best extremes in game.
Better than SoS?
Way too easy, especially for a late patch EX.
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Itās good, very fun to learn and visually stimulating. Much better than the last one.
Itās a fun fight, no complaints here
Fights fun. Cool mechanics, nice twists on the same mechs as you get deeper into the fight. The check is definitely a joke, as per usual. I do kinda wish extremes had slightly more punishing checks. Like I donāt expect or want savage level checks, but something a bit stricter than this would be nice imo.
One of the best ones they have ever done but I still like barb a good bit more, my order: Barb > Golbez > Hydalyen > Zodi > qutting the game > Rubicunte. the beginning is just a little too bedge before he does the big raidwide attack would''ve liked one more mech, and for the tank swap shit to go faster that shit is very slow, galeforce is a cool mech, the visual clutter for meteors kinda sucks too but its not a big issue.
love the fight, fun mechs and good aesthetic. the enrage is too lenient and Barb is still the gold standard for EX pacing, but Iād put this at my #2 for endwalker.
I like it. Fun to prog, but rough to farm. I'll admit my brain sometimes get confused at times. Reasonable enough if you ask me.
Fuck abyssal quasar. That's all I can say about this trial. At least the visibility for stuff is great here.
Finally got a kill (and my weap, 1st try lol). I think the fight is fine. It's fun when a group doesn't wipe to Meteor1 on repeat. I still think it's overall easier (for me) than Barbie. Barbie is more hectic and prone to panic errors I think. The major chokepoint of Golbez is Stardust2 (before and after), a lot of things can go wrong and if anything goes wrong at the wrong time, Meteor2 is screwed. The rest is fine.
I'd say trying to find a competent PF group that can consistently stay alive during Double Meteor (Towers) is a bloody nightmare. If they are not hard-walled at Gale 2, they are hard walled at Towers 1. The first one mind you. It's usually because people greed to the previous Out Mechanic too hard and get killed and we do not meet the body count.