At the end of ARR mike of course did the Crystal Tower, but after heading into Mhach for the Sky Pirates Alliance Raid, it got him thinking, what is this raid for? and as it turns out, it may be the best catch up system he’s seen.
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Just wanna take the time to clarify some things, as they seemed a lil misinformed(nothing significant, just technicalities).
Each XIV expansion follows the same patch cycle and content it drops.
X.0: new expansion story, 3 story trials. 2 ex Trials and the first tier of normal/savage raids(usually unlocks a couple weeks after release).
X.05: system adjustments and minor content things
X.1: 1 ex trial + first tier of alliance raids
X.15: system adjustments and usually content related to grindy stuff, like Relics etc
X.2: 1 Ex trial + second tier of normal/savage raids
X.25: system adjustments and continuation of grindy content, like Relics
X.3: 1 ex trial + second tier of alliance raid.
X.35: system adjustments and further continuation of grind content.
X.4: 1 ex trial + third tier of normal/savage raid
X.45: system adjustment and grind content
X.5: 1 ex trial and final tier of alliance raid
X.55: system adjustments and final step of grind content.
This basically holds true for every expansion.
Alliance raids serve as a catch up mechanic on two levels. First the gear drops themselves being 10 itemlevel below savage, but alliance raids also reward a token upon completion that can be used to upgrade tomestone gear from the previous normal/savage tier, which makes it the same itemlevel as savage gear. Up until the alliance raid these upgrade tokens are limited to savage content, but now accessible to all.
Hey Preach! On the later videos of these types, you might want to consider looking at the ilevels of the gear (including weapons) they drop! you'll notice a very clear progression based on the ilevel. You'll also notice how certain pieces aren't as "powerful" as those you get in other places. i.e. Alliance armor is weighted less than Savage armor, but is equivalent to augmented crafted armor. This is very important because min/max players use similar ilvl gear to craft their ideal BiS gear per patch release! This means there are various ways to build same ilvl sets depending on the job you're using! Case in point, a BLM's BiS looks completely different from a SMN due to SMN not needing Spell Speed.
I might be missing some, but I believe the gear you should pay attention to are:
Crafted Green Gear from 50/60/70/80 and Augmented versions (Armor, Accessories, AND Weapons)
Normal Raid and Savage Raid (Armor, Accessories, AND Weapons)
Normal Alliance Raid (Armor ONLY)
Tomestone exchanged and Augmented Tomestone exchanged (e.g. Poetics)(Armor, Accessories, AND Weapons)
Hard(lvl 50) and Extreme Trials (Normal difficulty trials do not drop any gear) (depending on the Trial, it may drop either Accessories OR Weapons)
Relic WEAPONS
That's parly incorrect, as a healer I can freely interact with the groups of the alliance raid. A single target heal or a combat ress will interact with anothe group compossition, A,B or C wether or not I am assigned to that group or not. However it seems as if my buffs (as an astro) is limited to the group I belong too.,
very much looking forward to your thoughts on the stormblood and shadowbringers alliance raids, they just keep on getting better
those stacks collection at calofisteri though…. truly wiping city of mhach.
Ceteris paribus, you have new raid content every 4 months. 8-man (and savage) in patches x.0, x.2 and x.4 and the 24-man in x.1, x.3 and x.5
Since there is no savage 24-man, they release the EXtreme trials in the same patches as the Alliance Raids to satisfy the more hardcore playerbase
This man over here gushing about LFR: FFXIV edition. Good for you mike. Im so happy youre finding the game interesting and engaging.
One of the things you have to keep in mind is that the balancing on alliance raids is mostly all over the place when they first come out.
The HW and SB raids starts somewhat overtuned and has time went on they nerfed them.
A famous example is Ozma, who road blocked a lot of alliance progression and led to many a duty abandon during the first few weeks it was out. Same thing with Harshmal and Thunder God.
The difference is you go through them now as a new player and they seem pretty simple, as they had actually nerfed a good chunk of it, and also gear progression makes things somewhat easier.
To put the nerfs into perspective, I'm pretty certain Ozma and Thunder god got nerfed three times each.
When the Nier Raids came out, they had pretty much nailed their difficulty curve with alliance raids. though I do quite miss the experience of what older players refer to as "The Wiping City".
I feel it made for stronger players.
Preach, I hope that you play Ascension WoW someday and see the great things that they are doing with the game over there. It's actually remarkable. The season 7 server is absolutely wild. I know that you might not be able to make a video on it, however, I would sleep with peace at night knowing that you gave it a shot. It's 1000% better than WoW and would allow you to give more insight on what they should do with the game. A true gem of a private server. This is not a sponsor, just a dude who really likes it and has played WoW for a long, long time.
Yeah, SE never buffs a boss, if its very obviously too hard they will nerf it but if its very obviously too easy then it is too easy forever. And as far as nerfing fights, they havent had to do that for years. The last raid tier that needed to be nerfed or bug fixed was Midas in Heavensward so they really make sure to test these fights ad nauseum to make sure theres nothing game breaking they missed. But they do leave in fun ways to cheese mechs if they missed it and we found it as long as it doesnt break the fight/game
In addition, those alliance raids drop special currency at the end, usually some manner of token that allows you to buy the upgrade items to your tomestone gear. When the content is current you can’t buy those with tomes, you have to get it from the savage raid drop or the savage raid pity book (every time you kill a savage boss they drop a book and gear/upgrade items have a set price in those). But that’s during the very first patch the raid tier comes out. Once the alliance raid comes out in the next major patch, you can buy those upgrades with the alliance raid currency.
So even people who are still proging savages will be doing those, because it’s such a great catch up mechanic. If you are just unlucky with rolls or you have lots of tomestone gear this time around in your BiS (which happens sometimes), you can get those armor and accessory upgrades. But note they do not give out weapon upgrades with those. Those still must come from the 3rd savage boss in the tier.
There are three types of groups in an alliance raid.
1. The group that just keeps falling apart and dying to everything.
2. The group that tries to keep it together but is struggling slightly.
3. The group that carries the whole thing on their back.
I'm usually in group 1… 🤣
I'm quite interested to see how/if your view on "it's in some ways less content but that's okay" when you are not consuming years of worth of content at the pace you feel like. The content looks great aqnd I have to admit to not having given ff14 a try since the bitter dissapointment of it's orginal launch. I'm looking for my old security key (I know it's around somewhere) and am going to give it a try in the new year.
You are looking happier and healthier and that all to the good. I'm glad Preach Gaming seems to be doing well as a group.
This "basic" pattern mainly started in ARR but how they dealt with extreme trials was slightly different, the pattern with those started in Heavenward (also spoilers if you see names of content/bosses as spoilers):
x.0, NM and Savage Raid (8man) Part 1, 2x Extreme Trials (based of Expansion MSQ first 2 trials), 3x Hard Trials
x.1, Alliance Raid (24man) Part 1, 1x Extreme Trial (based off Expansion MSQ last Boss)
x.2, NM and Savage Raid (8man) Part 2, 1x Hard and Extreme of new Trial Series Part 1
x.3, Alliance Raid (24man) Part 2, 1x Hard and Extreme Trial (based of x.3 MSQ, think King Mog/Nidhogg/Tsyuko/WoL)
x.4, NM and Savage Raid (8man) Part 3, 1x Hard and Extreme of new Trial Series Part 2
x.5, Alliance Raid (24man) Part 3, 1x Hard and Extreme of new Trial Series Part 3
2.x: ARR: Coils (8-man), Crystal Tower (24man), the Trials wasn't really it's own series since it was part of MSQ Quests
3.x: HW: Alexander (8-man), Void Ark (24man), The Warring Triad (Trial Series)
4.x: StB: Omega (8-man), Ivalice (24man), The Four Lords (Trial Series)
5.x: ShB: Eden (8-man), YorHa (Nier 24man), Sorrows of Werlyt (Trial Series)
That's not to mention all the Dungeons, Ultimates, Relic Weapon Grind, Treasure Hunt and every other feature added in each patch. You can break it down more specifically too but that's way too much for a YouTube comment. It's not like they won't ever break the chain but it has held pretty strong for 8 years now so you can pretty much figure out what to expect each patch and everything else are pretty much bonuses!
you can actually target members of other parties (especially for res) via the alliance hp bars. there's other content in eureka/bozja with double/triple the players of alliance raid where those alliance bars aren't present and you really notice the absence when trying to save runs lol
There are current wow players? My subscription ended 3 weeks ago and for the first time since the blizzard launcher was released it no longer loads on computer start up. The fact they put a wow dev in charge of diablo4 to ruin that game before it even goes into beta im just over the company. They have proven they dont care about the customers, are incapable of putting out good content that makes you enjoy playing
When you have to research to figure out why they didnt copy paste boss mechanics…because 17 years of wow has programmed us to expect the devs to do the laziest possible thing
As someone who mained heals for like 10 years in wow whenever im on a DPS that has a heal spell I always feel like the healers arent watching the health of the group as much as i am since i find myself constantly having to assist healing when i can. I imagine alliance raids would annoy the hell out of me being helpless to assist the other groups. Though knowing nothing about FF classes im not even sure if the dps specs have heals as part of their kit. I would imagine maybe some have self heals
Starting with Stormblood's Tiered Raids, they got rid of trash mobs. That makes the two raid types distinctly different, now. Honestly, I think Stormblood's and Shadowbringers' should be called Tiered Trials because that's what they are, a series of boss fights without the trash in-between. Alliance Raids still have trash, but not nearly as much as they used to have. In fact, ShB's has exactly two trash fights per raid.
quits wow. keeps talking about wow
if he dies…. he dies
I like how Pyromancer looks at this analysis stuff from a lore standpoint while Preach does basically the same amount of work but from a technical/mechanical standpoint.
You're a fucking legend. Thanks for getting it.
Correction: Not x.05 patches. Alliance Raids are released every ODD numbered patch: 3.1, 3.3, 3.5, etc. Also, while they do function as a "catch up" system, they also allow players to acquire tokens and pieces of gear, which are restricted at first, which allow said players to raise their ilevel without over-taking or outperforming Savage Content. As the next tier of Raids approaches, the restrictions are lifted to allow players to continuously grind the content to collect as many tokens and gear as they possibly can. This helps to keep the content relevant, even when the gear provided will shortly be overshadowed by something better.
Alliance raids are nice but I think it would be cool if they had savage versions of some of the bosses. It feels like a waste for some of the bosses and mechanics there to only exist on lfr/normal version speaking in WoW terms.
Mans got a full head of hair, Luscious locks and all.
Honestly – I perfer raids at 1.0 and alliance raids at 1.5 it's consistent content released on a cosistent baises…And that's only raiding we are talking about!
there is 3 gear catch up systems, sometimes 4… 24 man, story mode 8, crafted gear, previous currency tier when a new one comes out. (.2 .4) you can take gear from any of these sources and be able to start any content! Story Dungeons, almost forgot those. This game is the epitome of saving your time and not wasting it, far as MMOs go. Also, the 24 mans get more challenging each tier, good stuff 👏
Alliance Raids are more a tune to WoW lfr. However much more optional (other then Crystal tower). Though to WoW lfr, you can wipe quite easy in Alliance raids. More one shots and all that. Yes abilities buff can't be gain to other groups. You can however rez and heal the other group. So if Group C died, B healers can rez C healers.
SB and ShB alliance have harder bosses and you can sometimes see whole groups die or wipe.
Damn, hair is looking good, chief 👍
The only thing that I don't like about alliance raid roulette is that you feel too powerful due to the improved gear being synced down but still being more powerful than the raid requirements I wish they would lower the max ilvl a bit more so it doesn't feel like you're burning everything to the ground
Its a shame he wont be able to experienc what the third rabanstre raid was like on release
Please continue to ignore anyone who says you have to do older content min ilvl/no echo. The content is there to be enjoyed, so enjoy it however you want to.
They are hard to miss do all quests with the plus symbol and you won't miss any dungeon raid or main story
Since you wanted to see initial reactions of raids when they were released, maybe check out DrakGamesteinXIV, he has a reactions of content with friends since HW.
Orborne Monastery still inspires fear in me whenever it pops in Alliance Raid DF. My litmus test is that if the group wipes on Mustadio then we are in for an absolute world of pain when we get to Thunder God
3:35 this is wrong. when im using a healer i can ressurect people of other teams, so you can interact with them
I wouldn't really call the alliance raids 'catch up mechanics'. That is generally the tomestone and/or crafter gear. Alliance raids are just an additional piece of content. They exist to add story, cool glams, fun new mechanics, etc, the same as normal raids, trial content, duties, etc.
Always though that "LFR" in WoW have been a huge disservice for the group finder. The issue with the raids in WoW is often not the difficulty of the fights themselves, but rather the duration players are stuck in the same instance. Now enter LFR where the fights are boringly long, lacks mechanics leaving players to expect nothing and have 25 players added in a disorganized manner. And as a result at the slightest hint of mandatory tactics such as N'zoth results in repeated failure.
LFR have pretty much been set-up for failure because of this. To make LFR work Blizzard should
add better standards/choreography who what abilities will do,
make it so that the bosses have all the same avoidable damage skills as higher difficulty with the same damage so that players aren't conditioned into doing the fights wrong,
either reduce the health of the bosses by a bit 20-30% or the quantity of bosses per wing/queue,
a party size is evenly split so either 10 or 20 players a make it so that everyone are locked into their party
and force players in x party towards the mechanic they should be working on. For N'zoth this would have been to drag forcefully drag every player that should be doing the portal into the portal
and lastly make the rewards worthwhile so that it isn't dead on arrival.
Refreshing hearing Preach sounding excited and happy to play a game. He was missing that for awhile.
I've found that raids are like a laboratory to try out new mechanics. The Ivalice raids for example, has the most creative mechanics I've seen so far (check for prime numbers??) but you don't see them often in normal dungeons. So with every new raid you can expect a major change on how to approach each boss
Targeted healing is cross-party in alliance raids.