Rate the difficulty of your first-time encounters with whatever in here
Sastasha: 1/10 All runs here and below as tank. I did not have much of a problem with enmity. Used Flash liberally.
Tam-Tara: 1/10
Copperbell: 1/10
Halatali: 1/10
Thousand Maws: 3/10? Some spread out adds sometimes. Lot of poison.
Haukke: 6.5/10 haha. The maidservants did me a number. Wasn't used to an AoE that huge and it feared me a lot. Some inopportune places for them to link with adds as well, causing chaos.
Brayflox: 7/10. Things hit me HARD here as a tank. The first boss actually wiped me more than Aiatar (which I did first-time easily, oddly), due to constant multiple add management and conal breath attacks.
Sunken Temple: 3/10? Sadly, only did way later. Was used to far harder content.
Cutter's Cry: 6/10. I don't think the kite method for the ant queen was known at this point, at least not for my groups. We straight tanked it. Chimera wasn't hard for me really.
Stone Vigil: 6.5/10. Again, things were hitting really hard here, and Aevises were giving us problems. Wiped to second boss a lot. Ran out of time due to that.
Dzemael Darkhold: 4/10. The boss with lots of AoE markers was kinda hard to dodge.
Aurum Vale: 7/10. Coincounter gave us lots of problems due to us really not being used to watching for unmarked moves (he's a good training fight for that). We were fine on the first and last boss, one-shot both.
Wanderer's Palace: 4/10?
Castrum: 8/10. This was where I first had to deal with INTENSE add management, coupled with them hitting hard back then, so cooldown usage. Not only that, but the sneaking and the tank duties later on of knowing where to go to pull certain enemies to cannons and activate certain switches, while dodging aggro. Lots of adds during bosses spawned spread out, which I was not used to dealing with.
Praetorium: 5/10? Haha. Great dungeon though.
Ampador Keep: 7.5/10. Did not position first boss right at all; was well within the giant Golem smash ability. Demon Wall thrashed us many times, used to be considered a literal WALL of a DPS check and was a big deal. The dragon I positioned right, but his breath hit other members more than I would have liked (due to transitioning from Imminent Catastrophe to back to my little corner, has to be virtually instant). Some add pulls were kinda hard, when dealing with succubi and the iron giants.
Ifrit: 4/10? Wasn't a dumb tank at all. Didn't have to worry about the nail.
Navel: 9/10. This was a huge jump in difficulty for everyone involved when I was playing. Everyone was panicking, and me and another person were actually shaking. "I have to survive that WHILE doing my job??" Thoughts of optimal positioning and battle awareness were starting to form in our heads and later be fine-tuned.
Ifrit Hard: 6/10. Wasn't bad. I was good at stunning Eruptions (though it was tight), some new mechanics caught me off guard though, like racecars.
Garuda Hard: 7/10. I remember several wipes on her. Don't remember much else really. I remember that Mistral Shriek thing later on when the arena's just a small haven in a vortex giving us a lot of trouble though back then.
Titan Hard: 9.2/10. This guy used to be TOUGH. Back when everyone mostly had 3k-3.3k HP. The amount of adrenaline I felt when actually killing the heart was high. I had finally farmed a Darklight set, considered the bare minimum by many to attempt to tank Titan Hard. The guitar synced up perfectly with your concentrated excitement once that heart was dead. Oh, Weight deaths were QUITE plentiful here, and bomb patterns screwed a lot of people up. Took me 50ish tries to finally clear it.
--- Sharp difficulty increase ---
Garuda Extreme: 9.7/10. Of course, as tank. The amount of dread I felt before entering was high, while I sat at her crystal in the biting Coerthas trying to muster up the courage to enter. My fears were quite justified. Position Chirada over there, then there, you say, while getting Spiny Plume, while dealing damage to it without killing it, while keeping hate on both, while watching stacks?? It was brain overload at the time, and I mean that. My brain felt fried after each run until I got the hang of it. Critical positioning, critical add maintenance (Provoke, damaging but not killing Spiny until correct time, watching stacks), critical enmity, critical cooldown usage. This popped my hard content cherry, without a doubt. I improved immensely afterwards.
Titan Extreme: 9.5/10. When I first saw Mr. Happy's video of this, I thought it was nearly impossible. I thought I would never be at that level of play. Tight player stacking while dodging deadly moves, 5-way landslides with bombs, Upheaval, and now you're telling me there's adds I gotta handle with their own Landslides too?? A lot got me, but I got it down rather quickly and got to that point of being really skilled at it, just need the other 7 to be really skilled at it as well. To my surprise, I never had a problem with the adds on this one. Though their Landslide DID get me. Took me 175 tries and several devoted weeks to clear this.
Ifrit Extreme: Uhhh I'll be nice and give this 6.5/10, but remember I'm not rating the overall difficulty, but my subjective first-time experience with it. Positioning this guy used to be a huge problem for me, and it felt quite a bit faster-paced than Titan to me. The Radiant Plumes ****** me a lot at first. That tiny safe spot. Oh, and I ran into healers that had Wind. Battle awareness was not quite as high as it is now at that point.
Turn 1 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut: 8.5/10. THIS I had problems with. It was my first Coil turn of course. ADS I actually had trouble on the adds my very first time. Had to have good snap aggro there, and there was anticipation for them to spawn. This was back when people ****** all the monsters in there... Gloriously cool. Then I get to Caduceus. A friend had picked me up for her Linkshell (then FC later) because she thought I was skilled at Garuda Extreme and liked my attitude (after I got down both tank roles of that fight). There was pressure for me to perform, and I for the life of me could not yank that Caduceus clone off the off-tank and quickly bring it where it needed to be. I also ****** a slime as the off-tank, lol. After 3 or so tries though (and lots of heart-pounding, waiting for that snake to split), I got the hang of the split.
Turn 2: This was post-enrage strat. This was like a 4/10 for me.
Turn 3: 10/10. Insanely hard.
Turn 4: 9.8/10. ... ... ... I wiped so much to this. Pre-Echo, those dreadnaughts just absolutely wrecked tanks, and during the several add pickups it was CRUCIAL that you got them immediately and kept them. Phase 6 was just utter insanity to me at the time. I couldn't even process it while it was going on.
Turn 5: 10/10. Full rating. I was the add tank, and if I remember correctly had a bit of a hard time keeping them all the first time. I never had a single problem with Conflags or fireballs, lol, even when I wasn't second on the enmity list (didn't know about that back then for a bit). I also never had a problem with the initial divebombs. It was easy to me. What DID get me were the snakes. I had no idea you stayed in the pit, and like 99% of everyone progressing through Turn 5, that second set of Divebombs just completely annihilated us. A month later, at least, I finally got past the snakes. Twintania didn't even budge 1% and everyone immediately died to Twisters. I tell ya, phase transitions are the main wipe mechanic of this game. Though Titan Extreme was incredibly difficult at first, it never gave me the feeling of hopelessness this did. After a lot of trying, I finally got a group that didn't panic at Twisters, and we did it. Stunning Dreadknights was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be! Most satisfying clear I've received, with Titan Extreme being quite close.
Turn 6: 8/10. Compared to my former self, I was a hell of a lot more skilled and aware of everything than before. Other than wonky boss positioning and Devour sometimes getting me, this wasn't that bad for me. Why 8/10? It was still very fast-paced, and stressful. Just about to clear Turn 6 with my static and we're very excited. All that's really getting us is Acid stacking, but we've been to 20% or below a lot.
We've come so far.
[link] [14 comments]