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+--- Thread: Alexander difficulty (and other things) (/showthread.php?tid=12427)
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RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Aris - 07-09-2015
The mechanics are all quite straight forward, so it's mostly just about a bit of coordination.
I think SE have got it right with difficulty/story-mode. It's doable at i170 minimum and in a few months time people's ilvl will be higher once again. It won't be as daunting for anyone who doesn't do any raiding at all but wants to catch up on the story. I'm super interested to hear from anyone who doesn't raid to know what they think about it.
Please give me a shout if anyone would like a friendly face going into it!Looking forward to Savage mode.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Kage - 07-09-2015
I haven't quite done Floor 4 but I got to do Floors 1-3 last night with a few people "I could count on."
Didn't feel like pugging half a group for what is the equivalent of like Ramuh Ex with randoms.
Anyway, this is from a person who has liked raiding, might feel burn out, just want competent players.
My Alexander NM experience was queue into DF alone for Floor 1 and immediately get bombarded with the fact I didn't use Selene :> The trash got to 8 stacks before dying even with my DPS and two people were ranting about actual DPS numbers under parse. I didn't feel like reporting two dumbasses. 15 minutes of my life wasted to bad dps.
Queue in with friends. GET ANOTHER BAD DPS GROUP. Numbers were used over VOIP. At min iLvl I don't think Alexander can be run like LotA/ST/WoD where most people pull very... well lackluster numbers. As HEALERS WITH NO FUCKING ACCURACY ON OUR GEAR RAWR we had to do damage in cleric stance where we miraculously did not wipe. Milliseconds before Self-Destruct went off!
Floor 2-3 went better. Beat them both on 2nd shot. :>
Floor 1 is that hurdle for people who ran things sub-OK until they over gear the content me thinks.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - allgivenover - 07-09-2015
Ramuh Extreme at its introduction was way harder than A4.
Though I still wouldn't want to try it with randoms.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Gegenji - 07-09-2015
Floor one and two I had no issues with - but I DF'd it and got the drops first go, so I didn't do them repeatedly. Still, I would definitely say Alex1 requires more attention and coordination that Alex2 given their bosses. We actually straight up ignored one of the mechanics in Alex2 because we had a MCH on hand (though I asked about it just so I knew).
I had to repeat 3 and 4, though, and that's where I started seeing the issues. Alex3 is very much a knowledge fight. If people don't know what to do, you will die, especially if the people in the dark are the tanks. However, once people know what to do and do it, the fight isn't that bad. It gets a little hectic at the very end with the damage going out, but it isn't insurmountable.
Alex4, on the other hand, I've come to find requires an understanding and coordination that - not to be rude or anything - most DF folks cannot or seemingly will not bring to the table. You're frequently having to change focus to higher priority targets, avoid/absorb/mitigate all different kinds of damage being thrown out, and the last phase is a really obnoxious cluster of a lot of damage going out all over the place with an extra added bonus to make things even more hectic for the healers.
I've managed to defeat Alex4 once and didn't get the drop. The past two days of trying to get another kill and another chance at a drop has basically killed my desire to try Alex4 anymore. At least Alex3 I had several successes where the rolls were just bad - almost every Alex4 I've been in other than the one victorious one has ended in a vote abandon. It's starting to feel like that bash against the wall I did for endgame raiding in WoW, but with a new group every time instead of a static. I understand it is still new, and that wipes are going to happen (and repeatedly), it's just that my desire to keep pushing right away over waiting a month or two until everyone's more familiar and geared up to handle it has basically waned to nil.
Tuesday I was eager to get through on Gogon so I could go through it again on Chachan. Wednesday I was asking if it was required for the MSQ so I can see if I could skip it entirely on Chachan.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - allgivenover - 07-09-2015
(07-09-2015, 09:44 AM)Gegenji Wrote: I understand it is still new, and that wipes are going to happen (and repeatedly), it's just that my desire to keep pushing right away over waiting a month or two until everyone's more familiar and geared up to handle it has basically waned to nil.
You might as well wait unless you set up a group to farm it weekly for the drops you need. We've got a six month gap before the next part and in a month everyone will be geared to the point that all these duty finder bads have forgotten how many times they failed and assert that it's "too easy".
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Cato - 07-09-2015
If people rush to do something over and over within a short period of time then it stands to reason that there's a risk of them burning out. It's a matter of weighing one's desires and the potential reward. Does one need the near gear immediately or can they, in fact, get by by tackling content at a pace that isn't liable to cause them frustration?
I prefer the latter approach myself.
I feel it's also prudent to point out that the raid has only been out for a couple of days. A lot of players will be going in blind to better experience the thrill of fresh content first hand. It's not impossible to rally a struggling group together and whilst there's certainly situations that cannot be salvaged I've found that if I take the time to explain stuff in a calm and detailed manner then people do tend to learn from their mistakes and the group succeeds.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Kage - 07-09-2015
Mechanics is easier to teach in DF though than telling people that their rotation or damage output is lacking.
A small 3% boost from Selene isn't going to cut it for some.
Which is why some will still need to outgear and Echo Alexander Story Mode.
Focus and/or choose when to AOE. Choose the best person to do bombs (I watched the one melee who was in the tank not get all the bombs and since one tank was just holding, they spun the guy around the whole time like a top.
Floor 3 was actually really simple once people had a good idea of what to do. Make sure you aren't near the tank. Spread whatever links. Tanks grab tether / pull this way / swap at whatever.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Cato - 07-09-2015
The thing is even if someone decides to do the raid with a group outside of the duty finder then they're still going to have to deal with the occasional silly mistakes (which even the most seasoned raiders succumb to from time to time) and if it's someone's debut into a raid then it'll usually take a handful of runs until they work out the most efficient means of performing their task(s).
I may simply be lucky but as someone who has completed a great many dungeons since the game's re-launch the majority of groups I have been in have been decent whereas only a tiny portion have been terrible.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - allgivenover - 07-09-2015
I attempted to duty finder A1 four times before giving up and going with friends, so I think those of you that went in and cleared in one or two shots were probably just lucky.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Gegenji - 07-09-2015
(07-09-2015, 10:06 AM)Kage Wrote: Mechanics is easier to teach in DF though than telling people that their rotation or damage output is lacking.
A small 3% boost from Selene isn't going to cut it for some.
Which is why some will still need to outgear and Echo Alexander Story Mode.
Focus and/or choose when to AOE. Choose the best person to do bombs (I watched the one melee who was in the tank not get all the bombs and since one tank was just holding, they spun the guy around the whole time like a top.
Floor 3 was actually really simple once people had a good idea of what to do. Make sure  you aren't near the tank. Spread whatever links. Tanks grab tether / pull this way / swap at whatever.
Right, it usually just took some explaining and I got plenty of Alex3 kills after a few hiccups here and there. I just got a few bad rolls in a row before finally getting my weekly item.
Alex4 is on a whole different level, though. You gotta eat these things - but not too many or you'll die! You gotta kill these adds - but keep them apart or there'll be explosions! You gotta keep people healed - but two of them get shunted away regularly to an area where, if they die, you can't get to them... and there's a bit at the end where you also have a very damaging, long-lasting dot on you that you have to deal with while dodging AoEs and keeping people up.
Oh, and if you run too close to the other healer when you have it, you both explode.
So basically there's a lot of ways things can go wrong. Someone eats too many things and takes more damage than you can heal. Lasers don't get blocked so someone takes too much damage. People who get shunted away die so you're basically down one or two people. Healers either letting someone die to keep themselves up... or trying to keep everyone else up and dying in the process.
It's not just a mechanics check, it's a skill check and a coordination check. And the last bit is a DPS race to kill the boss before the damage gets to be too much to manage. In all my runs, we usually manage to make it to the second phase or even the last phase... and then we stumble. Adds run free and people blow up in second phase, or the chaos in the last phase gets to be too much and people start dropping.
(Most annoying for me is when the other healer dies, because this is NOT a fight you can one-heal and I have to spend time getting them back up because I just used a Swiftcast Emergency Heal Succor on everyone to top off from the last big hit on a bunch of people and oh god the tank's HP is getting low and... yeah.)
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Sin - 07-09-2015
I went in the morning of release and my experience was relatively pleasant.
We one shot the first floor, two shot the second floor, three shot the third floor, and I lost counts on the last floor, but we managed the kill probably five or six attempts in.
All in all not too bad, I feel the quality of the last group was lacking a bit too, and most of the wipes were sort of just recognizing what something looks like. Little things that you get by doing rather than reading. It was also a four BRD group, which not to pile in the BRD Hate, but coulda contributed.
It helped that I had a reddit TLDR guide up on my other monitor and was able to copy paste it for people who were new.
All in all, I think the difficulty is in a good spot, not too soft, not too hard, but then again its all dependent on the difficulty of savage.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - Trigonxv - 07-09-2015
The only difficulty I had was casters running around when an add was attacking them, made the fights more difficult then they really were.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - V'aleera - 07-09-2015
As a player that downed all the ARR EX primals exclusively through DF I found the challenge levels of Alex normal to be almost perfect for the average DF player, with the earlier floors slightly easier and the latter floors slightly harder.
RE: Alexander difficulty (and other things) - ProvaDiServo - 07-10-2015
Alex is a cake walk,, no reason anyone should be failing floors after your first tour clear.
I do raise an eyebrow at full yashans with no weapon. And groan at people trying to sneak in with green pieces.