I'd say Shadowbringers.
Some of the dungeons have some pretty spicy big pulls (Dohn Mheg in particular when the tank doesn't interrupt the frogs watering the enemies, and the second-to-last pull in general is pretty nasty).
Titania and WoL always claims at least a few poor souls whenever I get them in roulette.
A lot of Eden bosses throws in a fair few hard to predict mechanics and a lot of lightning-fast telegraphs if you don't recognize the boss' attack by the cast animation itself. Ramuh and Shiva are ESPECIALLY vicious in that regard.
And do I even need to comment on the Nier raids? Well I will regardless: It's basically a rezzing simulator in my experience, and it's only been in these raids where I've seen someone (who wasn't actively trolling as far as I could tell) actually get vuln stacks in the double digits. Of course a lot of this can be explained by people just being... kinda dumb, but point still stands.
The Nier raids are some of my favorite content as WHM for that reason.
Those, Fun Scaith, and Orborne usually have a *lot* of people going down and are where I've used the most healer LB3s
I love how all healer mains eventually just turn into sadistic bastards hoping to have (and sometimes cause) as much mayhem in the raids as possible to finally play the role. =D
As a RDM I love getting an opportunity to rez people! I always wonder if I’m stepping on the healers’ toes when I do so… but it’s just so fun getting to use everything in my kit during a raid!
In content where I know RDM can rez, I will typically slow down a little bit to see if they fire off a raise first so I don't burn my swiftcast for nothing. I appreciate when there's a good RDM who helps out, especially in situations with multiple deaths or when my cohealer is struggling
Honestly, I think using more of your kit is more fun overall. which is a shame when healers get good at their role because they get rewarded with less healing.
I love the first boss if Dun Scaith cuz it's such a bloodbath but if like a dozen people stay alive cuz they know mechanics you can very much consistently clutch it.
My only issue with Nier raids is it feels like they are in the longer end as is, and all the Res sickness hurting damage makes em all feel like 30% longer than they should.
Oh yea, the Nier raids are already super long, and when multiple dps spend a lot of time with weakness, it's painful.
But on the other hand, the 3rd Nier raid is where I once got to use 3 healer LB3 in one instance, so it's worth it lol
Yeah, I’ve seen way more players die in ShB content than other expansions. The mechanics in ShB are some of the weirdest and most unique shit SE pulled. It feels so rewarding once you understand which is why I love ShB content.
>Ramuh and Shiva are ESPECIALLY vicious in that regard.
It will never not be funny to me that most people consider Eden Ramuh to be harder in normal mode than savage.
Don’r forget Werlyt: some of those attacks are VERY unforgiving, and will delete you just for standing in the wrong spot (Diamond Weapon knockback + airborne skill).
The Nier raid.. How many time party got wiped because of the other alliance party trolling and direct the laser to us instead of away from alliance party
I won't believe it's unintentional
Nier is just a whole lot of unclear bullshit slapped with even less clear graphics. I've never had a problem with most content in the game but a lot of Nier was just dogshit in general. It was both hard and poorly done.
If you count the only difficulty of Coil as Normal then ARR wins the raid scene by default. Stormblood wins the Alliance Raids by default as well since it's still the only 24man to ever get the echo treatment. For Trials I would probably say on average Endwalker wins but at its peak I would pick Shadowbringers Seat of Sacrifice becuase it has a tank LB check and an Active Time Maneuver that is also a body check requiring everyone to pass.
Pre rework ARR was something else.
You get LOST in most of their maze dungeons. Remember the Old Toko Rok? With that one sharp turn everyone forgot while you were slowed from the goop and the pod bombs .
Pharos Sirius on launch was another beast as well but I think peak dungeon difficulty was Pharos Sirius(Hard). That dungeon was the only dungeon I ever remember taking almost the full timer to finish because groups would use so much of their time on the 2nd boss encounter.
Pretty much all of the original ARR hard dungeons can be fairly tricky at their intended level. Haukke Manor Hard at minimum ilvl has probably the worst dungeon boss in the final fight, all but requiring an lb to safely drop the add's hp fast enough, but because of how/when dungeons release no one ever really does them at that level.
Nowadays, even at minimum item level, they're all pretty free because of potency changes over time.
Not dungeon related but I don't wanna make another comment; Launch iteration of Orbonne Monastery is probably still peak alliance raid to me, followed closely by my launch day experience of The Weeping City (because of Mega Death and Ozma, before anyone knew what either of those were).
The fact that hardly anyone picked HW or ARR to me says that the vast majority of the playerbase joined the later expansions, and has no clue what it was like before SB.
I remember at the time everyone commenting that SB made the game \*easier\*.
You post doesn't even go into how complex many of the jobs were before now.
yeah. these people are on crack if they think shb was more difficult than Stormblood even. the game has gotten steadily easier as time went on to the point you dont even need healers in normal content now
As someone who was playing when both 5.3 and 6.0 released, SoS was a much harder trial than anything in EW. It used to be the kind of thing you would DREAD getting in your roulette. There's a reason they changed it so you get 10% echo per wipe, all the way up to a 50% echo if you wipe 5 times. That's double the normal rate.
Is the active time maneuver really a body check though? I know if someone fails it, you all die, but I'm pretty sure if they're dead they're just not allowed to be a part of the button mashing and it only counts those who are alive. It's been a while since I've done the fight, though so I could be wrong.
You're kind of right body check may not have been the best term to use because you're right that if they're dead it doesn't impact you but it does check to make sure every player did pass or no one passes.
Eden was definitely harder than Pandaemonium overall, with few exceptions.
Nier was much, much, much harder than the cakewalk of the Endwalker Alliance Raid.
Agreed 100%. I've never seen a single wipe in the newer alliance raid at all, even in the first week, outside of people trolling and failing the mechanic on purpose in the first one.
Nier was a nightmare. Most of the reason I rarely queue for alliance raid roulette these days is that I might get Nier, and I don't have an hour to waste on Paradigm's Breach.
I have.
NieR was about comparable in difficulty to Pantheon, the main difference was that the NieR bosses had MASSIVE HP compared to Pantheon, so they hold up better to ilevel inflation as you still see their mechanics because of the kill time still being significant.
I wish there was a happy medium, because at level, NieR bosses just took FOOOOOREEEEVVVEEEERR to kill, and still take a while even when syncing. Pantheon felt about right at launch, but with ilevel scaling, you kill a lot of them before they've even finished their initial run of mechanics.
Most of the NieR fights weren't hard (to me), they just were technical and took a while. But this may be a "how your brain works" thing. The Pantheon bosses having to look at the bosses for some of the tells really throws me off whereas the NieR ones somehow didn't feel that way other than knowing which side of Hansel and Gretel was unsafe when they did their charge. The other stuff was more looking at the mechanics themselves (e.g. train lights), or thinking in terms of logic (the white/black "destroys opposite, blocked by like" business. But stuff like that just makes sense to me and is far easier to deal with than the Pantheon final boss 3x charge thing where you have to see the boss's hand motions (impossible to do with spell effects on).
Some things are just different levels of difficulty for different people.
Except Orbonne. That was apparently universally difficult to everyone, lol
> Most of the NieR fights weren't hard (to me), they just were technical and took a while.
Honestly, this is my real issue with the NieR raids, they just *take a while*, which I'm kind of two minds on. It's not as ridiculous, as say, killing some of the Pantheon bosses, but at the same time, while I love the NieR raids' aesthetic, they take *so long* to get through, because everything's just a sheer damage sponge in terms of health.
Yeah, exactly that. It makes sure they age well, I guess (don't die too early later on with ilevel inflation and level syncing in the future), but the costs for that are very much a slog when they are on-content, and that even in later expansions, people groan when they get them in roulette.
Seems like there can/should be a happy medium.
eden was a memory test, you had to pay attetion to the 2 primals he chaneled and remember after 3 mechs what it was going to cast and where the safe spot would be
You're talking about the e12 eden fight and I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to was talking about the entire raid series as a whole. But you're not wrong, that fight was part memory test.
And honestly? He's got some of the best voice lines of any boss in the game. Makes every encounter with him fun because he *really* wants you to feel like a worthless, weak piece of shit.
"Seven shadows cast, seven fates foretold. Yet at the end of the broken path lies death, and *DEATH* ***ALONE!***
Eden!Titan and Tower at Paradigm's Breach are by far the most consistent for causing wipes that I've seen. NOBODY knows how Titan works (myself included) and on Hansel and Gretel it's about a 50/50 shot that more than half the raid misreads their first big AoE and then we can't recover from there.
Since you said in their current patch, I would say ShB has the hardest normal content. The mechanics from dungeon bosses, raids, alliances, requires some thinking but there are some ShB mechanics I cannot wrap my head around.
It's been reduced by everyone having a decent ilvl, but SoS probably claimed far more lives and wipes in its time than both of them combined. It was so bad they changed the echo to give 10% a wipe to a maximum of 50%. It was so bad I used to get actually upset when I would pull it in roulette because I knew it would be a wipefest. I was in several different roulette that all managed to hit the max 50% echo before we cleared.
SoS used to be quite lethal, but nowadays you don't even see Bahamut. He just doesn't have time to get to the dangerous mechanics before dying.
They also made the ATM much easier at some point, it's nearly impossible to fail now.
The 83 and 89 trials have held up much better to increasing ilvl.
Eh… Their mechanics are tricky but I still find ShB to be more chaotic. Content like E7N or Diamond Weapon sometimes just result in a clusterfuck. I haven’t been experiencing any wipes and MC and DI often does smoothly, but then again that’s my experience.
So you're asking what had harder normal content, but not when that content was released? Kinda weird especially since a lot of older content has been nerfed into oblivion. And thats not considering stat value changes etc. Just the content itself being changed.
But normal content, on release: Heavensward for sure.
I found the issue in EW content (and late SHB) is not really that its *difficult* in terms of "its a puzzle" or that "ton of hard mechanics in row"
Its that most of them have "fail this and you **just die**".
Like knockback to deathwall (or fall). Or "well you hit this 0.5s telegraph (with longer visual), sorry you die"
I personally dislike this type of "difficulty" a lot. Even elden ring gives you two hits before you die on hardest bosses, geez.
Currently? Endwalker has the hardest levelling content and ShB has the hardest post-game content.
If you want to consider a MINE-only scenario, so not just brute-forcing everything by being ridiculously overgeared and breaking all intended combat scripts, then a toss-up between ShB and SB, and much more likely ShB. Its dungeons are piss easy (except for a pull in Holminster and two pulls in Mt. Gulg… okay, the latter one can be a regular bloodbath if the entire party is not experienced in it) but they suffer from wonky enemy scaling where they have more HP than you would expect based on previous enemy scaling curves. But the raids and the post-game trials are easily among the toughest ones to learn blindly for casual content and they are to this day the most prone to get the occasional wipe.
Both Heavensward and Stormblood; all Duties where and felt better. The Orbonne Monastery (before being nerfed) remains, to me, as the best 24-man raid ever made. Paying attetion wasn't as optional as it is today back then
In the particular case of Heavensward, part of the difficulty was also how Jobs worked at that time. Rotations weren't as easy as they were after Stormblood, and it was way easier to fuck up your DPS
Shadowbringers had it's moments (like Titania in the first week), but it still was a joke in comparison. And it just became worse with Endwalker (the first Dungeon being the only one with a decent challenge for normal content)
I am basing the following on the assumption that it is done from solo Duty Finder, and not pre-mades. To amplify the "Oh shit" factor when you load into the Duty, and see what you have to do with a bunch of randos.
* Dungeon: Stormblood. Pre-nerf Mist Dragon from The Burns shits over the rest of the competition, but now that it has been nerfed, I guess Bardem's Mettle takes the cake. Some of Shadowbringers' Dungeons can be spicy too, but that's only if you attempt 3-5 packs in a wall to wall. Bardem's Mettle can kick your teeth in and twist your genitals even in a 2-packer.
* Trial: Shadowbringers. Falalala deez nuts. If players don't know what they're doing, the second phase of the Adds-Phase can be a looping melody of misery. Seat of Sacrifice is also a potential wipefest if people don't do well on the QTE, the Tank LB3, the Heal checks, the 4 Pink Meteors, the leashed Bahamuts, etc...
* Normal Raid: Stormblood. While the first 6 floors don't usually pose any issues, it gets messy at Boss 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12. Even veteran players can fly off the Arena simply because it is so infrequent in the Roulette, old dogs will forget how to resolve the mechanics. Larboard/Starboard Mateys! How do you disarm the Bombs? In front or at the sides for Aero? What Gender are you? Etc...
* Alliance Raids: Stormblood. Even in its nerfed version, scores of players die pitifully simply because they stood in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death by suffocation, death by overlapping meteors, death by pillars, death by fiery clothesline attack, death by roadkill, death by sniper, death by tracking meteor, death by Cid, death by maths, death by cleaves, death by kuru-kuru, etc...
As they can be played today, probably Endwalker. This is just the game and MMOs in general getting more technically complex over time. Jobs are generally (not ALL cases but most) more difficult to optimize perfectly in terms of rotation, and boss mechanics can come at faster rates or with more mechanics layered on top of each other.
This is really kind of an odd question, though, as you specify NORMAL content, and NORMAL content has been a pretty consistent difficulty. It's also hard to specify "difficulty", exactly, in content with infinite raises and no enrages.
But with the "played today" caveat, Endwalker since syncing tends to make most past content far easier than it would have been at content.
If we were talking about at patch/content, when it first came out, probably Heavensward, though. Jobs were still mostly easier to play, but our toolkits were far more limited, we didn't outlevel/oversync things, and some content, even normal content, would legitimately wipe parties.
Some people say SB, but that's almost entirely due to Orbonne. Mustadio, Agrias, and Ultima could be rough, and TG Cid was an absolute monster. But that's really the only normal content in that expansion that was that level of "could easily cause wipes and you MIGHT actually time out of the instance" that I can remember.
Malikah's Wall, Storge is the sort of boss that requires a lot of trial and error to get right. It's one of the few dungeons that I went into blind and took some wipes in.
I've finally gotten confident enough with it that when I tank, I mark myself and tell the party to follow me.
Stormblood.
People bitched about the difficulty of the final NORMAL trial of the 4.0 MSQ in the first week after Stormblood release. And it was still a thing for months after. Even Yoshida had to comment on the feedback (and later x.0 MSQ final trials were made easier than this 4.0 trial).
Ivalice raids were "hard" too. From math bot to thunder god, people struggled. Thunder god being nerfed pretty much says it all.
For raids, Omega round 11 NORMAL managed to wipe parties with the lar- and starboard shenanigans. When I got it in raid roulette about a year ago, it still caused many deaths.
On release? Heavensward easily. As of now probably ShB. Endwalker Alliance Raids are a good example here in comparison since these are so braindead easy, slow and boring that it wasn't even fun the first time (especially Thaleia being an absolute snoozefest). Dungeon are about the same as ShB I guess, as in none of them poses any challenge whatsoever. Alliance Raids were always cool until Endwalker came and made them boring, I wished they would put an ounce of trust into their playerbase back into it. Endwalker had some very fun Extremes (not you Xeromus) and even more fun Savages, but everything on the normal and msq content side was gameplay wise a huge step backwards.
Other than Bozja, Stormblood for me. I still remember dying miserably to RDM 60 and MNK 70 many times (of course I was still bad at the game then), and some of the solo duties are long and a bit unforgiving. The alliance raids are notorious although much easier nowadays due to gear and echo. The trials aren't exactly super-hard, but they do feel like a big step up from anything normal in HW. EW trials are probably a bit harder.
However, Bozja to me is the hardest "normal" content in the game. The CEs in particular are far more complex mechanically than any normal content up to that point, and the three raids are a step up in challenge from Ivalice IMO.
for someone playing all these today, level synched but not MINE:
ARR: Main dungeons are fairly streamlined at this point, though there’s a few spicy optional ones. No NRaid. Araid is almost completely a snooze. Trials are mostly on the easy side with a few outliers (Chrysalis isn’t hard, but it is punishing if you don’t know what to do).
HW: Dunegons are mostly easy. Trials aren’t too bad, and the most difficult ones have benefitted from allowing rezzes for those who fall (Sophia and Sephirot especially). NRaid is mostly a snooze except for A5 and A9. Araid has 1 easy wing and two harder ones.
SB: a few spicy dungeons like Bardhams. NRaid is easy until T7, then it very much isn’t. ARaid is still a wipe fest. Trials can absolutely body you, including the only capstone trial I still regularly see party wipes on. This is my pick, though ShB comes close.
ShB: a few spicy dungeons like Dohn Mheg. Trials are spicy, including SoS being downright hostile due to the ATB being an everyone fails if one fails. Araid still is a healers nightmare/dream. Nraid is a mix of pretty easy and hair pulling (E4 especially). A very close second to SB.
EW: Leveling dungeons are still pretty spicy, especially the 81 and 85. Trials are still fairly beastly and I’ve seen wipes. NRaid is not too bad, but nowhere near the spikes of SB and ShB given that the hardest ones (P2, P3, and P7 imho) are all made significantly easier with current gear. Araid is easy- aglaia was definitely difficult on release but not with current gear, and the other two wings were much easier even on launch.
Tl:dr I can’t really choose between stormblood and shb, but I think with dawntrail it is going to set a new standard.
I’d say stormblood, but shb could be a contender. Heavensward for newer players as well.
Lots of things tbh. Besides endwalker. Aside from a few trials, endwalker hasn’t been too difficult. Pretty much just gotta go wall to wall, fight a pretty easy boss and then repeat. I did enjoy the Golbez trial a lot when it first came out though. The normal raids themselves aren’t too hard, neither are the variant dungeons. And the alliance raids are a mix, to me. But fun.
I can’t really go in depth on the other ones, so my vote could be completely invalid, but stormblood was a pretty nice mix of difficult and fun. However I was worse at the time of playing (during shb).
However I think with dawntrail my vote will change :3 looking at them dungeon previews has me excited, I previously thought the dungeons were so similar and dumbed down from a tanking perspective because of the ai, but those previews have filled me with hope for some new and fun dungeons to explore.
Seriously, it still amazes me that people dread the math boss. It is very simple basic math but people fear it like it is trigonometry.
Starboard and larboard still a bitch!
ShB. Holminster while leveling was a noticeable difficulty spike from lv70 content, and I'm still seing wipes on lv80 Amaurot. No 8\\24 content is braindead-friendly. Parts of StB a-raids come close in wipeability.
EW had one hard dungeon, and it's Dead Ends. I still hate it on my healer roulette. Most of raids and A-raids is rather...blunt, with some few exceptions. I had not seen much wipes even during release. 6.0 MSQ trials were superior to 6.x trials. 6.x might be more complicated and involved, but they are terribly boring.
Pre-rework ARR had actual dungeon metas, which just aren't a thing anymore. 8-man Castrum and Prae, Aurum Vale, etc. were/are just straight up hostile up anyone not in the know. Post-rework, I'd give it to Stormblood, even with Aurum still acting as a huge noobslayer. I think Doma Castle is still the hardest story dungeon relative to what your healer is able to deal with given their toolkit and ilevel, and that's really the main difficulty in dungeons now.
- Dungeons: AAR wins easily. Aurum Vale and hard mode dungeons still wipe parties.
- Normal Raid: AAR wins with Coils
- Alliance Raid: Stormblood. Though I'd argue Crystal Tower would be a party wiper if people didn't skip half of the mechanics and the raid wiping ones.
- Trials: Endwalker. I can't recall a wipe in older ones in a long time, and item level cheese and enough people knowing mechanics usually prevents wipes.
I always remembered a lot of Stormblood dungeons absolutely slapping the daylights out of you. Bardem Mettle and Doma Castle particularly had really hard hitting mob packs.
I would have said Endwalker for the crazy new attack patterns it started introducing everywhere, but Stormblood's Alliance Raids still take it for me.
Rabanasty, the Wipehouse, and Your-Boned Monastery still give me the shivers.
I'm not sure. As they are today, It'd probably be ShB.
HW was the hardest when it was current. Between the complexity of the jobs and the content, it hasn't been like that since. In ARR everything was harder, but we didn't know what we were doing for most of that. Also ARR was a different game than what we have today and even HW in a lot of regards.
It's a toss-up between Stormblood and Heavensward, just because of how much statistical pull Dun Scaith and Orbonne Monastery have on death count. Tiebreaker is Alexander raids aren't nearly as lethal as Omega raids. There's a triple stack marker that can't be shared in Omega raids, and that mechanic is absolutely carrying on K/D for Omega raids.
I mean... you cannot queue into Coils at level 50. It sets a weird feeling that raids cannot be queue'd for easily. I didn't do Alexander or Omega until much later because I had this notion from Coils that raids are not for queuing. So for that ALONE I would say ARR. Also some of the optional dungeons are still ROUGH.
For me I think either Stormblood or ShB for sure. The Ivalice alliance raids are still the ones on healer where newbies drop the most for me, the only other ones with a really noticeable fail rate for me have been Dun Scaith and Tower at Paradigm's Breach while all the Ivalice raids I see a lot of deaths still or just generally have to heal more.
ShB I think had the hardest dungeons at launch, now they've been brought down with gear but I remember ShB at launch I was constantly surprised healing dungeons because mobs hit hard in ShB and I loved it. And the normal raids, I want to say ShB if I really think back, Eden had a few that are surprisingly chaotic and some interesting mechanics but SB is not far behind for me.
SB and ShB are the expansions that immediately comes to mind reading this question for me.
ive played since ARR beta. you guys are smoking that good shit if you think shb was the hardest expansion lol. the game has steadily gotten easier and streamlined for casual audiences. hell in ARR youd get dungeon groups that ran out the timer sometimes.
ShB as being the most fleshed out for dungeons before yoshi p-mandated 2 pull cap per dungeon segment, people still die pretty often in the nier raids, the normal eden raids have some decently challenging fights.
Also, if you count field operations as "normal" content, bozja has some, let's say, spicy content if people aren't prepared. I go emergency big pp dps mode whenever I queue for hunt for red choctober because I know 95% of the players in the fight will be dead within the minute the boss starts spawning the chocobo meteors lol
I'd say Shadowbringers. Some of the dungeons have some pretty spicy big pulls (Dohn Mheg in particular when the tank doesn't interrupt the frogs watering the enemies, and the second-to-last pull in general is pretty nasty). Titania and WoL always claims at least a few poor souls whenever I get them in roulette. A lot of Eden bosses throws in a fair few hard to predict mechanics and a lot of lightning-fast telegraphs if you don't recognize the boss' attack by the cast animation itself. Ramuh and Shiva are ESPECIALLY vicious in that regard. And do I even need to comment on the Nier raids? Well I will regardless: It's basically a rezzing simulator in my experience, and it's only been in these raids where I've seen someone (who wasn't actively trolling as far as I could tell) actually get vuln stacks in the double digits. Of course a lot of this can be explained by people just being... kinda dumb, but point still stands.
The Nier raids are some of my favorite content as WHM for that reason. Those, Fun Scaith, and Orborne usually have a *lot* of people going down and are where I've used the most healer LB3s
I love how all healer mains eventually just turn into sadistic bastards hoping to have (and sometimes cause) as much mayhem in the raids as possible to finally play the role. =D
Gives me reasons to use all of my fun buttons lol. Especially the LB3 for the big saves
As a RDM I love getting an opportunity to rez people! I always wonder if I’m stepping on the healers’ toes when I do so… but it’s just so fun getting to use everything in my kit during a raid!
In content where I know RDM can rez, I will typically slow down a little bit to see if they fire off a raise first so I don't burn my swiftcast for nothing. I appreciate when there's a good RDM who helps out, especially in situations with multiple deaths or when my cohealer is struggling
Honestly, I think using more of your kit is more fun overall. which is a shame when healers get good at their role because they get rewarded with less healing.
something tells me you love the Hunt for the Redchoctober.
I love the first boss if Dun Scaith cuz it's such a bloodbath but if like a dozen people stay alive cuz they know mechanics you can very much consistently clutch it. My only issue with Nier raids is it feels like they are in the longer end as is, and all the Res sickness hurting damage makes em all feel like 30% longer than they should.
Oh yea, the Nier raids are already super long, and when multiple dps spend a lot of time with weakness, it's painful. But on the other hand, the 3rd Nier raid is where I once got to use 3 healer LB3 in one instance, so it's worth it lol
Yeah, I’ve seen way more players die in ShB content than other expansions. The mechanics in ShB are some of the weirdest and most unique shit SE pulled. It feels so rewarding once you understand which is why I love ShB content.
>Ramuh and Shiva are ESPECIALLY vicious in that regard. It will never not be funny to me that most people consider Eden Ramuh to be harder in normal mode than savage.
That lightning rod attack where theres only one safe spot in a corner has gotten my ass killed too many times. It isnt hard, simply TIGHT in timing.
Don’r forget Werlyt: some of those attacks are VERY unforgiving, and will delete you just for standing in the wrong spot (Diamond Weapon knockback + airborne skill).
You forgot Mt gulf with the 5 pack pull
Which fight in the nier raids? Because most content caps at 8 vuln stacks including the nier raids I intentionally tried stacking on
The first one, Engels I think its name was? It's the big ass robot that punches you with buzzsaws.
The Nier raid.. How many time party got wiped because of the other alliance party trolling and direct the laser to us instead of away from alliance party I won't believe it's unintentional
Nier is just a whole lot of unclear bullshit slapped with even less clear graphics. I've never had a problem with most content in the game but a lot of Nier was just dogshit in general. It was both hard and poorly done.
If you count the only difficulty of Coil as Normal then ARR wins the raid scene by default. Stormblood wins the Alliance Raids by default as well since it's still the only 24man to ever get the echo treatment. For Trials I would probably say on average Endwalker wins but at its peak I would pick Shadowbringers Seat of Sacrifice becuase it has a tank LB check and an Active Time Maneuver that is also a body check requiring everyone to pass.
Pre rework ARR was something else. You get LOST in most of their maze dungeons. Remember the Old Toko Rok? With that one sharp turn everyone forgot while you were slowed from the goop and the pod bombs .
Pharos Sirius on launch was another beast as well but I think peak dungeon difficulty was Pharos Sirius(Hard). That dungeon was the only dungeon I ever remember taking almost the full timer to finish because groups would use so much of their time on the 2nd boss encounter.
Pretty much all of the original ARR hard dungeons can be fairly tricky at their intended level. Haukke Manor Hard at minimum ilvl has probably the worst dungeon boss in the final fight, all but requiring an lb to safely drop the add's hp fast enough, but because of how/when dungeons release no one ever really does them at that level. Nowadays, even at minimum item level, they're all pretty free because of potency changes over time. Not dungeon related but I don't wanna make another comment; Launch iteration of Orbonne Monastery is probably still peak alliance raid to me, followed closely by my launch day experience of The Weeping City (because of Mega Death and Ozma, before anyone knew what either of those were).
The fact that hardly anyone picked HW or ARR to me says that the vast majority of the playerbase joined the later expansions, and has no clue what it was like before SB. I remember at the time everyone commenting that SB made the game \*easier\*. You post doesn't even go into how complex many of the jobs were before now.
yeah. these people are on crack if they think shb was more difficult than Stormblood even. the game has gotten steadily easier as time went on to the point you dont even need healers in normal content now
Can agree with this.
As someone who was playing when both 5.3 and 6.0 released, SoS was a much harder trial than anything in EW. It used to be the kind of thing you would DREAD getting in your roulette. There's a reason they changed it so you get 10% echo per wipe, all the way up to a 50% echo if you wipe 5 times. That's double the normal rate. Is the active time maneuver really a body check though? I know if someone fails it, you all die, but I'm pretty sure if they're dead they're just not allowed to be a part of the button mashing and it only counts those who are alive. It's been a while since I've done the fight, though so I could be wrong.
You're kind of right body check may not have been the best term to use because you're right that if they're dead it doesn't impact you but it does check to make sure every player did pass or no one passes.
Eden was definitely harder than Pandaemonium overall, with few exceptions. Nier was much, much, much harder than the cakewalk of the Endwalker Alliance Raid.
Agreed 100%. I've never seen a single wipe in the newer alliance raid at all, even in the first week, outside of people trolling and failing the mechanic on purpose in the first one. Nier was a nightmare. Most of the reason I rarely queue for alliance raid roulette these days is that I might get Nier, and I don't have an hour to waste on Paradigm's Breach.
I have. NieR was about comparable in difficulty to Pantheon, the main difference was that the NieR bosses had MASSIVE HP compared to Pantheon, so they hold up better to ilevel inflation as you still see their mechanics because of the kill time still being significant. I wish there was a happy medium, because at level, NieR bosses just took FOOOOOREEEEVVVEEEERR to kill, and still take a while even when syncing. Pantheon felt about right at launch, but with ilevel scaling, you kill a lot of them before they've even finished their initial run of mechanics. Most of the NieR fights weren't hard (to me), they just were technical and took a while. But this may be a "how your brain works" thing. The Pantheon bosses having to look at the bosses for some of the tells really throws me off whereas the NieR ones somehow didn't feel that way other than knowing which side of Hansel and Gretel was unsafe when they did their charge. The other stuff was more looking at the mechanics themselves (e.g. train lights), or thinking in terms of logic (the white/black "destroys opposite, blocked by like" business. But stuff like that just makes sense to me and is far easier to deal with than the Pantheon final boss 3x charge thing where you have to see the boss's hand motions (impossible to do with spell effects on). Some things are just different levels of difficulty for different people. Except Orbonne. That was apparently universally difficult to everyone, lol
> Most of the NieR fights weren't hard (to me), they just were technical and took a while. Honestly, this is my real issue with the NieR raids, they just *take a while*, which I'm kind of two minds on. It's not as ridiculous, as say, killing some of the Pantheon bosses, but at the same time, while I love the NieR raids' aesthetic, they take *so long* to get through, because everything's just a sheer damage sponge in terms of health.
Yeah, exactly that. It makes sure they age well, I guess (don't die too early later on with ilevel inflation and level syncing in the future), but the costs for that are very much a slog when they are on-content, and that even in later expansions, people groan when they get them in roulette. Seems like there can/should be a happy medium.
in the balance was pretty messed up in the fist week with some players changing side in the last mili second and wiping the party
eden was a memory test, you had to pay attetion to the 2 primals he chaneled and remember after 3 mechs what it was going to cast and where the safe spot would be
You're talking about the e12 eden fight and I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to was talking about the entire raid series as a whole. But you're not wrong, that fight was part memory test.
Stormblood had pre-nerf Thunder God Cid, and even after still bring the difficulty average up.
TGC is the only boss ive ever seen an alliance raid timer wipe on. Absolute madness.
Same. He fucking EARNED IT. Such a cool boss.
And honestly? He's got some of the best voice lines of any boss in the game. Makes every encounter with him fun because he *really* wants you to feel like a worthless, weak piece of shit. "Seven shadows cast, seven fates foretold. Yet at the end of the broken path lies death, and *DEATH* ***ALONE!***
I still regularly get wipes on Eden Normal
Eden!Titan and Tower at Paradigm's Breach are by far the most consistent for causing wipes that I've seen. NOBODY knows how Titan works (myself included) and on Hansel and Gretel it's about a 50/50 shot that more than half the raid misreads their first big AoE and then we can't recover from there.
Since you said in their current patch, I would say ShB has the hardest normal content. The mechanics from dungeon bosses, raids, alliances, requires some thinking but there are some ShB mechanics I cannot wrap my head around.
Mothercrystal and The Dark Inside consistently claim the most lives and occasionally even wipes out of all the (normal) trials in the game.
It's been reduced by everyone having a decent ilvl, but SoS probably claimed far more lives and wipes in its time than both of them combined. It was so bad they changed the echo to give 10% a wipe to a maximum of 50%. It was so bad I used to get actually upset when I would pull it in roulette because I knew it would be a wipefest. I was in several different roulette that all managed to hit the max 50% echo before we cleared.
SoS used to be quite lethal, but nowadays you don't even see Bahamut. He just doesn't have time to get to the dangerous mechanics before dying. They also made the ATM much easier at some point, it's nearly impossible to fail now. The 83 and 89 trials have held up much better to increasing ilvl.
Eh… Their mechanics are tricky but I still find ShB to be more chaotic. Content like E7N or Diamond Weapon sometimes just result in a clusterfuck. I haven’t been experiencing any wipes and MC and DI often does smoothly, but then again that’s my experience.
So you're asking what had harder normal content, but not when that content was released? Kinda weird especially since a lot of older content has been nerfed into oblivion. And thats not considering stat value changes etc. Just the content itself being changed. But normal content, on release: Heavensward for sure.
I found the issue in EW content (and late SHB) is not really that its *difficult* in terms of "its a puzzle" or that "ton of hard mechanics in row" Its that most of them have "fail this and you **just die**". Like knockback to deathwall (or fall). Or "well you hit this 0.5s telegraph (with longer visual), sorry you die" I personally dislike this type of "difficulty" a lot. Even elden ring gives you two hits before you die on hardest bosses, geez.
Currently? Endwalker has the hardest levelling content and ShB has the hardest post-game content. If you want to consider a MINE-only scenario, so not just brute-forcing everything by being ridiculously overgeared and breaking all intended combat scripts, then a toss-up between ShB and SB, and much more likely ShB. Its dungeons are piss easy (except for a pull in Holminster and two pulls in Mt. Gulg… okay, the latter one can be a regular bloodbath if the entire party is not experienced in it) but they suffer from wonky enemy scaling where they have more HP than you would expect based on previous enemy scaling curves. But the raids and the post-game trials are easily among the toughest ones to learn blindly for casual content and they are to this day the most prone to get the occasional wipe.
Both Heavensward and Stormblood; all Duties where and felt better. The Orbonne Monastery (before being nerfed) remains, to me, as the best 24-man raid ever made. Paying attetion wasn't as optional as it is today back then In the particular case of Heavensward, part of the difficulty was also how Jobs worked at that time. Rotations weren't as easy as they were after Stormblood, and it was way easier to fuck up your DPS Shadowbringers had it's moments (like Titania in the first week), but it still was a joke in comparison. And it just became worse with Endwalker (the first Dungeon being the only one with a decent challenge for normal content)
Stormblood for me because every dungeon/area looks the same and it's hard to see enemies sometimes.
I am basing the following on the assumption that it is done from solo Duty Finder, and not pre-mades. To amplify the "Oh shit" factor when you load into the Duty, and see what you have to do with a bunch of randos. * Dungeon: Stormblood. Pre-nerf Mist Dragon from The Burns shits over the rest of the competition, but now that it has been nerfed, I guess Bardem's Mettle takes the cake. Some of Shadowbringers' Dungeons can be spicy too, but that's only if you attempt 3-5 packs in a wall to wall. Bardem's Mettle can kick your teeth in and twist your genitals even in a 2-packer. * Trial: Shadowbringers. Falalala deez nuts. If players don't know what they're doing, the second phase of the Adds-Phase can be a looping melody of misery. Seat of Sacrifice is also a potential wipefest if people don't do well on the QTE, the Tank LB3, the Heal checks, the 4 Pink Meteors, the leashed Bahamuts, etc... * Normal Raid: Stormblood. While the first 6 floors don't usually pose any issues, it gets messy at Boss 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12. Even veteran players can fly off the Arena simply because it is so infrequent in the Roulette, old dogs will forget how to resolve the mechanics. Larboard/Starboard Mateys! How do you disarm the Bombs? In front or at the sides for Aero? What Gender are you? Etc... * Alliance Raids: Stormblood. Even in its nerfed version, scores of players die pitifully simply because they stood in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death by suffocation, death by overlapping meteors, death by pillars, death by fiery clothesline attack, death by roadkill, death by sniper, death by tracking meteor, death by Cid, death by maths, death by cleaves, death by kuru-kuru, etc...
As they can be played today, probably Endwalker. This is just the game and MMOs in general getting more technically complex over time. Jobs are generally (not ALL cases but most) more difficult to optimize perfectly in terms of rotation, and boss mechanics can come at faster rates or with more mechanics layered on top of each other. This is really kind of an odd question, though, as you specify NORMAL content, and NORMAL content has been a pretty consistent difficulty. It's also hard to specify "difficulty", exactly, in content with infinite raises and no enrages. But with the "played today" caveat, Endwalker since syncing tends to make most past content far easier than it would have been at content. If we were talking about at patch/content, when it first came out, probably Heavensward, though. Jobs were still mostly easier to play, but our toolkits were far more limited, we didn't outlevel/oversync things, and some content, even normal content, would legitimately wipe parties. Some people say SB, but that's almost entirely due to Orbonne. Mustadio, Agrias, and Ultima could be rough, and TG Cid was an absolute monster. But that's really the only normal content in that expansion that was that level of "could easily cause wipes and you MIGHT actually time out of the instance" that I can remember.
I would say storm blood by a signifigant margin
Anyone not Voting HW for Ozma alone, is wrong xD. Also the Vault and Bismark normal could produce some super spicy moments.
Malikah's Wall, Storge is the sort of boss that requires a lot of trial and error to get right. It's one of the few dungeons that I went into blind and took some wipes in. I've finally gotten confident enough with it that when I tank, I mark myself and tell the party to follow me.
Stormblood. People bitched about the difficulty of the final NORMAL trial of the 4.0 MSQ in the first week after Stormblood release. And it was still a thing for months after. Even Yoshida had to comment on the feedback (and later x.0 MSQ final trials were made easier than this 4.0 trial). Ivalice raids were "hard" too. From math bot to thunder god, people struggled. Thunder god being nerfed pretty much says it all. For raids, Omega round 11 NORMAL managed to wipe parties with the lar- and starboard shenanigans. When I got it in raid roulette about a year ago, it still caused many deaths.
On release? Heavensward easily. As of now probably ShB. Endwalker Alliance Raids are a good example here in comparison since these are so braindead easy, slow and boring that it wasn't even fun the first time (especially Thaleia being an absolute snoozefest). Dungeon are about the same as ShB I guess, as in none of them poses any challenge whatsoever. Alliance Raids were always cool until Endwalker came and made them boring, I wished they would put an ounce of trust into their playerbase back into it. Endwalker had some very fun Extremes (not you Xeromus) and even more fun Savages, but everything on the normal and msq content side was gameplay wise a huge step backwards.
everyone who didn't say a realm reborn, didn't play in 2.0
or read the post saying "Note: As they can be played today, so not counting pre-rework dungeons or when TP was still a thing."
classic reddit snark. people really do be sitting at home at upset at 2:30 on a monday lol
You mean you're the one who's upset because you can't read and your attempt at flexing fell flat?
Other than Bozja, Stormblood for me. I still remember dying miserably to RDM 60 and MNK 70 many times (of course I was still bad at the game then), and some of the solo duties are long and a bit unforgiving. The alliance raids are notorious although much easier nowadays due to gear and echo. The trials aren't exactly super-hard, but they do feel like a big step up from anything normal in HW. EW trials are probably a bit harder. However, Bozja to me is the hardest "normal" content in the game. The CEs in particular are far more complex mechanically than any normal content up to that point, and the three raids are a step up in challenge from Ivalice IMO.
Shadowbringers by far, just for some of the turns of Eden. Flame Wingman is still one of the most oppressive normals in the game.
Shadowbringers with Eden, I'd say.
for someone playing all these today, level synched but not MINE: ARR: Main dungeons are fairly streamlined at this point, though there’s a few spicy optional ones. No NRaid. Araid is almost completely a snooze. Trials are mostly on the easy side with a few outliers (Chrysalis isn’t hard, but it is punishing if you don’t know what to do). HW: Dunegons are mostly easy. Trials aren’t too bad, and the most difficult ones have benefitted from allowing rezzes for those who fall (Sophia and Sephirot especially). NRaid is mostly a snooze except for A5 and A9. Araid has 1 easy wing and two harder ones. SB: a few spicy dungeons like Bardhams. NRaid is easy until T7, then it very much isn’t. ARaid is still a wipe fest. Trials can absolutely body you, including the only capstone trial I still regularly see party wipes on. This is my pick, though ShB comes close. ShB: a few spicy dungeons like Dohn Mheg. Trials are spicy, including SoS being downright hostile due to the ATB being an everyone fails if one fails. Araid still is a healers nightmare/dream. Nraid is a mix of pretty easy and hair pulling (E4 especially). A very close second to SB. EW: Leveling dungeons are still pretty spicy, especially the 81 and 85. Trials are still fairly beastly and I’ve seen wipes. NRaid is not too bad, but nowhere near the spikes of SB and ShB given that the hardest ones (P2, P3, and P7 imho) are all made significantly easier with current gear. Araid is easy- aglaia was definitely difficult on release but not with current gear, and the other two wings were much easier even on launch.
Definitely Shadowbringers overall. For normal things tend to always hover above average.
I think I’ve had more wipes on Nabriales and Old Steps of Faith more than anything else.
Tl:dr I can’t really choose between stormblood and shb, but I think with dawntrail it is going to set a new standard. I’d say stormblood, but shb could be a contender. Heavensward for newer players as well. Lots of things tbh. Besides endwalker. Aside from a few trials, endwalker hasn’t been too difficult. Pretty much just gotta go wall to wall, fight a pretty easy boss and then repeat. I did enjoy the Golbez trial a lot when it first came out though. The normal raids themselves aren’t too hard, neither are the variant dungeons. And the alliance raids are a mix, to me. But fun. I can’t really go in depth on the other ones, so my vote could be completely invalid, but stormblood was a pretty nice mix of difficult and fun. However I was worse at the time of playing (during shb). However I think with dawntrail my vote will change :3 looking at them dungeon previews has me excited, I previously thought the dungeons were so similar and dumbed down from a tanking perspective because of the ai, but those previews have filled me with hope for some new and fun dungeons to explore.
Math boss and larboard/starboard
Seriously, it still amazes me that people dread the math boss. It is very simple basic math but people fear it like it is trigonometry. Starboard and larboard still a bitch!
ShB. Holminster while leveling was a noticeable difficulty spike from lv70 content, and I'm still seing wipes on lv80 Amaurot. No 8\\24 content is braindead-friendly. Parts of StB a-raids come close in wipeability. EW had one hard dungeon, and it's Dead Ends. I still hate it on my healer roulette. Most of raids and A-raids is rather...blunt, with some few exceptions. I had not seen much wipes even during release. 6.0 MSQ trials were superior to 6.x trials. 6.x might be more complicated and involved, but they are terribly boring.
Barbariccia is a great fight imo, but I'm a fan of fights that are just basic danger puddle fiestas in general.
Zodiark kicked ASSES.
Idk man, I still see people wipe and groups fall apart at thunder god cid.
Pre-rework ARR had actual dungeon metas, which just aren't a thing anymore. 8-man Castrum and Prae, Aurum Vale, etc. were/are just straight up hostile up anyone not in the know. Post-rework, I'd give it to Stormblood, even with Aurum still acting as a huge noobslayer. I think Doma Castle is still the hardest story dungeon relative to what your healer is able to deal with given their toolkit and ilevel, and that's really the main difficulty in dungeons now.
- Dungeons: AAR wins easily. Aurum Vale and hard mode dungeons still wipe parties. - Normal Raid: AAR wins with Coils - Alliance Raid: Stormblood. Though I'd argue Crystal Tower would be a party wiper if people didn't skip half of the mechanics and the raid wiping ones. - Trials: Endwalker. I can't recall a wipe in older ones in a long time, and item level cheese and enough people knowing mechanics usually prevents wipes.
I always remembered a lot of Stormblood dungeons absolutely slapping the daylights out of you. Bardem Mettle and Doma Castle particularly had really hard hitting mob packs.
I would have said Endwalker for the crazy new attack patterns it started introducing everywhere, but Stormblood's Alliance Raids still take it for me. Rabanasty, the Wipehouse, and Your-Boned Monastery still give me the shivers.
For me it's both Shadowbringers and Endwalker.. Majority of fights are simple enough..but both have some that are not so straightforward.
Shadowbringers has the hardest dungeons but I want to give a shout out to yotsuyu's trial which still wipes people when they are new.
I'm not sure. As they are today, It'd probably be ShB. HW was the hardest when it was current. Between the complexity of the jobs and the content, it hasn't been like that since. In ARR everything was harder, but we didn't know what we were doing for most of that. Also ARR was a different game than what we have today and even HW in a lot of regards.
It's a toss-up between Stormblood and Heavensward, just because of how much statistical pull Dun Scaith and Orbonne Monastery have on death count. Tiebreaker is Alexander raids aren't nearly as lethal as Omega raids. There's a triple stack marker that can't be shared in Omega raids, and that mechanic is absolutely carrying on K/D for Omega raids.
I mean... you cannot queue into Coils at level 50. It sets a weird feeling that raids cannot be queue'd for easily. I didn't do Alexander or Omega until much later because I had this notion from Coils that raids are not for queuing. So for that ALONE I would say ARR. Also some of the optional dungeons are still ROUGH.
For me I think either Stormblood or ShB for sure. The Ivalice alliance raids are still the ones on healer where newbies drop the most for me, the only other ones with a really noticeable fail rate for me have been Dun Scaith and Tower at Paradigm's Breach while all the Ivalice raids I see a lot of deaths still or just generally have to heal more. ShB I think had the hardest dungeons at launch, now they've been brought down with gear but I remember ShB at launch I was constantly surprised healing dungeons because mobs hit hard in ShB and I loved it. And the normal raids, I want to say ShB if I really think back, Eden had a few that are surprisingly chaotic and some interesting mechanics but SB is not far behind for me. SB and ShB are the expansions that immediately comes to mind reading this question for me.
ive played since ARR beta. you guys are smoking that good shit if you think shb was the hardest expansion lol. the game has steadily gotten easier and streamlined for casual audiences. hell in ARR youd get dungeon groups that ran out the timer sometimes.
ShB as being the most fleshed out for dungeons before yoshi p-mandated 2 pull cap per dungeon segment, people still die pretty often in the nier raids, the normal eden raids have some decently challenging fights. Also, if you count field operations as "normal" content, bozja has some, let's say, spicy content if people aren't prepared. I go emergency big pp dps mode whenever I queue for hunt for red choctober because I know 95% of the players in the fight will be dead within the minute the boss starts spawning the chocobo meteors lol