Is it possible to enjoy FFXIV if I only like endgame content?

[NineSpine]

Savage tiers usually take competent guilds a week or two to clear, but Ultimates can take months of practice before most guilds have a chance to clear. If you can sit through FFXIV's MSQ, I think you'll enjoy savage and Ultimate raiding (I'd say savage is a bit easier than mythic, with ultimate being harder than mythic) if you can accept that FFXIV expansions offer less individual fights than your average WoW expansion will.

Savage can keep you entertained for a bit, but you can get some good mileage out of an Ultimate clear.

Another important distinction to make is that FF14 raids tend to have longer boss fights and way, way, way less downtime. There is no trash and no running back from your corpse.

[MsSideEye]

Oh yeah no I just like Mythic Raiding b/c i haven't really found something else in gaming that gives me the satisfaction of tackling an enormously challenging boss with 19 other people! I don't really care what anybody else does with their time so long as it doesn't interfere with my ability to have fun or my time.

14 doesn't have that, at least not with 19 other people, but even then the fights are actually quite enjoyable in fighting them together with your group of 8. What's more unique about 14 in this respect that the fact that you can increase the difficulty as needed. Unlike WoW, where there's no real system to go make old content harder, 14 has a system you can implement that allows you to fight any content in the game at the barest level of power possible. While it's not a complete one to one with the time old content was released, it's about as close as you can get.

I've actually seen some people do a lot of older content like that recently and it took them a few weeks to clear some of the older bosses when they're restricted to the lowest level of gear possible without any bonuses/buffs from dying that 14 normally gives you in more modern raid content.

[Yarathir]

oh yeah,these wow addons trivialize those encounters so much,its why everyone clears mythic week 1 so easy and fast /facepalm

this addons meme is so funny,yeah some of them are strong,but the worst addons were broken years ago,time to get up to date

also no addon is gonna beat the boss for you,the days of lines showing you where to stand like in wod are gone,and ironicaly EVEN THEN PEOPLE FAILED

Clear rate week 1 is a bit harder because WoW raid are absurdly gatekept by item level to the point that the world first guilds had to do triple digit splitruns to get enough ilvl to meet the DPS check. Lol. Lmao.

And there is unironically a bigger "addons take the wheel for me" culture. Blizzard literally balances their raid encounters around that.

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Yeah. Nine's entire shtick is proselytizing for FF14 while writing off WoW's equivalent or closest fascimile as bad. Good on you for calling him out on praising the LFR equivalent.

Val literally does the reverse of that. Lmao.


Also too bad Alliance raids are infinitely more complex than LFR. Sure, that might not mean much, but the LFR-comparison has always been silly. WoW's LFR is difficult only because you have to deal with half a raid that doesn't want to be there and another half that literally isn't even there. Alliance raids are less punishing because it's easier to recover, but they are inherently more complex.

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This is just false. The amount of content in FF14 is comparable if not superior. We get a major patch every 3-4 months, while wow struggles to hit a major patch every 8 months.

The thing here is, and this is important to mention: yes, FFXIV has more varied content by far. WoW has raids, mythic dungeons and farming 0.01% drop rate mount and pet recolors. But the OP isn't asking about all content. In fact, he's very specifically excluding all non-raid content. And yes, WoW caters far more to the RAID RAID RAID mentality. (Which is a massive detriment in my opinion, but it isn't my thread.)

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OP's question is basically "Can I enjoy myself raidlogging not bothering with anything else?" The answer is yes.

MMOC dweebs: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WoW vs. FFXIV! Let's challenge the fucking mods! REEEEEEE

Myeah it got dragged into a discussion about what constitutes "re3l contentz" and that's where the problem pops up. The OP just wants to know if there's a lot of relevant raid stuff compared to, I imagine, WoW, and the answer is no.

[NineSpine]

Myeah it got dragged into a discussion about what constitutes "re3l contentz" and that's where the problem pops up. The OP just wants to know if there's a lot of relevant raid stuff compared to, I imagine, WoW, and the answer is no.

There are just as many bosses as you get in WoW. It's just structured differently, and notably doesn't deprecate content the way WoW does.

[Miriamel105]

In a nine month period, FF14 can get 8 normal/savage bosses, 3 extreme trials, and a 4 boss alliance raid. That's 15 bosses.

You get item level increase with ever 4 boss savage raid, which will drop the max level gear. Meanwhile Alliance raid is for casuals and will drop drop gear 10 level below that limit.

You either do savage or you do alliance raid, there is no need to do both and overall you can simply upgrade crafted gear to the same level as alliance raid gear.

There is pretty much zero reason to do any ex trial beside going for the mount series of the expansion (what is the same, re-colored mount for each ex trial with a different bonus mount, when you collect all of the), but not really for the drops, especially not when you do savage raid, what will drop far superior equipment and you can again just use crafted gear and upgrade it, which will be on par or better than ex trial gear.

When you count FF14 bosses like this, you would have to count WoW for each difficulty.

For overview:

When for example new max level gear would be 530 then:

Savage would drop 530.
Normal version would drop 510, can't upgrade it.
Crafting gear would be 510 and could be upgraded with the alliance raid patch to 520.
Alliance raid gear would be 520, can't upgrade it and comes out ~4 months after Savage/normal.
Ex trial gear would likely be 500, 510 or 520 (with 500 being the former max level gear) and 520 soonest the time alliance raid comes out.
And then you get the tomestone gear (weekly limit, you need a few monthes to get a full set for one role thanks to that), which would be 520 and you could upgrade it with savage drops, hunting grind or later with alliance raid drops (one drop per week).

Obviously: when you do savage there is near to no reason to do anything else. It's the fastest and earliest way to get max level gear and everything else is at best on par or worse and you will get it much later.

As said: if you want to compare it like that, you would have to take the difficulties of WoW raids, becaue there too: if you do mythic, there is no need to heroic, normal, lfg. If you do heroic, no need to do normal and lfg. And so on.

Regarding difficulty:

Normal raid in FF14 (8ppl) = LFG.
Savage raid in FF14 (8ppl) = heroic
Ultimate (8ppl) = mythic (but in the around 9 years of the game there are only 4 ultimate boss fights)
Ex Trial (8ppl) = Normal.
Alliance raid (24ppl) = LFG (per se easier even easier than normal raid, but 24 ppl make it equally 'hard', because you got many people who are just terrible and love to ignore everything - but overall you can mostly just pull them through - if it's not the healers).

[deenman]

Clear rate week 1 is a bit harder because WoW raid are absurdly gatekept by item level to the point that the world first guilds had to do triple digit splitruns to get enough ilvl to meet the DPS check. Lol. Lmao.

And there is unironically a bigger "addons take the wheel for me" culture. Blizzard literally balances their raid encounters around that.

i dont disagree with that but my point is that people love to meme that addons trivialize stuff or they play for you,but that clearly isnt the case considering most people dont even clear half of a mythic raid months down the line

i seen people fail miserably in wod,when addons were REALLY op,1 buton iskar,archi lines,a line showing you where to stand on kormrok etc

[NineSpine]

You get item level increase with ever 4 boss savage raid, which will drop the max level gear. Meanwhile Alliance raid is for casuals and will drop drop gear 10 level below that limit.

You either do savage or you do alliance raid, there is no need to do both and overall you can simply upgrade crafted gear to the same level as alliance raid gear.

Everyone I play with runs both extensively.

There is pretty much zero reason to do any ex trial beside going for the mount series of the expansion (what is the same, re-colored mount for each ex trial with a different bonus mount, when you collect all of the), but not really for the drops, especially not when you do savage raid, what will drop far superior equipment and you can again just use crafted gear and upgrade it, which will be on par or better than ex trial gear.

Everyone I play with runs extreme trials extensively.

When you count FF14 bosses like this, you would have to count WoW for each difficulty.

No, you wouldn't.

For overview:

When for example new max level gear would be 530 then:

Savage would drop 530.
Normal version would drop 510, can't upgrade it.
Crafting gear would be 510 and could be upgraded with the alliance raid patch to 520.
Alliance raid gear would be 520, can't upgrade it and comes out ~4 months after Savage/normal.
Ex trial gear would likely be 500, 510 or 520 (with 500 being the former max level gear) and 520 soonest the time alliance raid comes out.
And then you get the tomestone gear (weekly limit, you need a few monthes to get a full set for one role thanks to that), which would be 520 and you could upgrade it with savage drops, hunting grind or later with alliance raid drops (one drop per week).

Obviously: when you do savage there is near to no reason to do anything else. It's the fastest and earliest way to get max level gear and everything else is at best on par or worse and you will get it much later.

As said: if you want to compare it like that, you would have to take the difficulties of WoW raids, becaue there too: if you do mythic, there is no need to heroic, normal, lfg. If you do heroic, no need to do normal and lfg. And so on.

The big problem with your "logic" here is it makes two completely bogus assumptions:

1. That Savage is infinitely farmable so there is no need to do other content to fill out slots or upgrade sets for alt jobs. This is obviously false.
2. That the only reason to do content is for upgrades. This is also false.

[Yarathir]

i dont disagree with that but my point is that people love to meme that addons trivialize stuff or they play for you,but that clearly isnt the case considering most people dont even clear half of a mythic raid months down the line

i seen people fail miserably in wod,when addons were REALLY op,1 buton iskar,archi lines,a line showing you where to stand on kormrok etc

Well, similarly, P2W doesn't literally instantly clear content for you either. It still plays a major part though, only remotely staved off by the fact that the raid encounter designers and devs are in a constant arms race with addon developers.

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There are just as many bosses as you get in WoW. It's just structured differently, and notably doesn't deprecate content the way WoW does.

Relevant ones? I don't know. I would count the 4 savage bosses, the extremes and the ultimates.

But if you want to strain it, you could always min-ilvl no echo sync old content. It might not be as difficult as it was when it was released, but it might still be a good challenge. I think that while FFXIV isn't nearly as much of a raiding focused game as WoW is, that is a pretty good strength to have. Especially when it's just one button away, and not tied to some special event.

[NineSpine]

i dont disagree with that but my point is that people love to meme that addons trivialize stuff or they play for you,but that clearly isnt the case considering most people dont even clear half of a mythic raid months down the line

i seen people fail miserably in wod,when addons were REALLY op,1 buton iskar,archi lines,a line showing you where to stand on kormrok etc

Mythic has a series of walls around it that have nothing to do with mechanical complexity. The groups are absurdly large. The need for everyone to have alts is a problem. The time investment to stay caught up is rough, especially with alts. The need to run M+ obsessively to keep caught up on ilvl early on is a problem. The huge arbitrary gear barriers Blizzard creates block people. There are more, but I think you get the point, which is that you can't appeal to how many people do an activity when you make the activity so absurdly difficult to even involve yourself in.

And it's just a fact that addons straight up negate entire mechanics and playing without addons at a high level is virtually impossible.

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Relevant ones? I don't know. I would count the 4 savage bosses, the extremes and the ultimates.

But if you want to strain it, you could always min-ilvl no echo sync old content. It might not be as difficult as it was when it was released, but it might still be a good challenge. I think that while FFXIV isn't nearly as much of a raiding focused game as WoW is, that is a pretty good strength to have. Especially when it's just one button away, and not tied to some special event.

This would be an expansion:
12 savage bosses
2 ultimates
8 extreme trials
12 alliance aid bosses

That's 34 bosses, absolutely comparable to wow.

[Yarathir]

Mythic has a series of walls around it that have nothing to do with mechanical complexity. The groups are absurdly large. The need for everyone to have alts is a problem. The time investment to stay caught up is rough, especially with alts. The need to run M+ obsessively to keep caught up on ilvl early on is a problem. The huge arbitrary gear barriers Blizzard creates block people. There are more, but I think you get the point, which is that you can't appeal to how many people do an activity when you make the activity so absurdly difficult to even involve yourself in.

And it's just a fact that addons straight up negate entire mechanics and playing without addons at a high level is virtually impossible.

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This would be an expansion:
12 savage bosses
2 ultimates
8 extreme trials
12 alliance aid bosses

That's 34 bosses, absolutely comparable to wow.

I get what you mean, but only 4 savage bosses and 1 or 2 extreme trials are relevant at a time. Ultimates I would consider as being almost always relevant, even UWU. Unless you consider Castle Nathria still relevant. (Well, I guess it is now with that new raid+ system lmao)

[NineSpine]

I get what you mean, but only 4 savage bosses and 1 or 2 extreme trials are relevant at a time. Ultimates I would consider as being almost always relevant, even UWU. Unless you consider Castle Nathria still relevant. (Well, I guess it is now with that new raid+ system lmao)

"Relevant" doesn't mean anything though. Even if we define it as "That which drops upgrades for CE players", anyone that plays multiple jobs is going to find upgrades in all of the content I listed (except ultimates obviously) because the savage isn't always farmable.

But the reality is that a lot of the time Im running the content to play with friends and have fun, not because there is an upgrade for me. So, what does that say about relevance?

[Yarathir]

"Relevant" doesn't mean anything though. Even if we define it as "That which drops upgrades for CE players", anyone that plays multiple jobs is going to find upgrades in all of the content I listed (except ultimates obviously) because the savage isn't always farmable.

But the reality is that a lot of the time Im running the content to play with friends and have fun, not because there is an upgrade for me. So, what does that say about relevance?

Relevant in this context would be "What is a player who is going to jump into endgame PvE content going to gravitate to?" In WoW, it's the most current raid. I would imagine it's the same in XIV.

[deenman]

Mythic has a series of walls around it that have nothing to do with mechanical complexity. The groups are absurdly large. The need for everyone to have alts is a problem. The time investment to stay caught up is rough, especially with alts. The need to run M+ obsessively to keep caught up on ilvl early on is a problem. The huge arbitrary gear barriers Blizzard creates block people. There are more, but I think you get the point, which is that you can't appeal to how many people do an activity when you make the activity so absurdly difficult to even involve yourself in.

And it's just a fact that addons straight up negate entire mechanics and playing without addons at a high level is virtually impossible.

Agree,its why i stoped playing in sl and just played classic for fun,but i really really disagree with the addons,all those op addons didnt help some people not fail,and btw,i raided with no combat addons until mop,i tanked lk 25hc with just reccount,i did all of cataclysm 25hc with no addons,everything was done with raid leader callouts or me just knowing mecanics from visual or sound ques

[NineSpine]

Relevant in this context would be "What is a player who is going to jump into endgame PvE content going to gravitate to?" In WoW, it's the most current raid. I would imagine it's the same in XIV.

And if they are going to do that they probably need to run all of the above to get geared up, and then if they want to gear up multiple jobs they will almost certainly need to keep doing that content, not just the savages.

[Swnem]

An expansion will have the following:

12 normal/savage raid bosses.
12-15 Alliance raid bosses.
7-9 Trial bosses.
1-2 Ultimate raids.

That's about 35 bosses per expansion, completely comparable with WoW.

This. People coming from WoW usually don't understand that the game is just structured differently. They don't have 6 month patches they have about 3 month patches which are divided into 90 day content drops. In the span of a 6 month WoW patch, FF will have added about the same number of bosses as WoW does, except FF does it gradually and across different content types. With the added bonus that FF also adds other types of content with their patches, not just raid bosses.

[PACOX]

If you go into the game with the mindset that endgame is a very small part of it and you'll likely exhaust content well before the next release then you'll be fine.

FF14 raids are. Know that WoW is the only modern MMORPG that puts out these big elaborate set pieces with the raids and design the game with raids as the main focus.

In ESO, FF14, GW2, whatever, raid like bosses are just part of the experience and not a main focus. The fights aew great. FF14 and GW2 fights aew more fun than WoW fights imo. Just know theres a lot less of them, far less emphasis, and far less 'meaningfulness' to get out of them. Some people are cool with that, like myself. Others need the carrots an prestige.

[Tojara]

It can be. Ultimate fights, extreme trials and savage raids are fun if you're talking about 'end game', which is what your post alludes to.

WoW just has more of that type of content, anybody telling you that alliance raids should be counted is being sort of disingenuous. Alliance raids for somebody concerned with end game probably won't tick any boxes for you, and aside from giving you cosmetic as a catch me up raid, aren't really used for much else. They're released between major raid content patches as just that, and are effectively an LFR version of the game. For me they're one of the worst experiences of raiding, and I just stay away from them. There's rampant AFKing or people dying on purpose and even though you alluded to not caring about story, a few of them have absolutely nothing to do with the story at all.

All of the first stuff is super good though and worth checking out. As an added bonus some of the giant group raids that take places in something like Bozja (an outdoor place to farm cosmetics or power level gear basically) are actually pretty good, but again, those are pretty hit or miss. I liked some of them in Bozja, while some sucked.

To that end a lot of the savage content isn't super hard, but it's still challenging enough. I don't have a guild/static in the game, but was able to do the first 3 bosses in a complete pug with no discord in this expansion (in the first three weeks). The third boss was a bit of a struggle, but still doable and I just decided it wasn't worth trying the fourth because it was a door boss, which I would find frustrating in a pure pug.

Still challenging, but it's a different kind of challenging. Most of the stumbling blocks in FF14 raiding come from the lengthy encounter times with preset movements, and not so much pushing the utmost efficiency of your job. Generally speaking, except in most ultimates you can get away with people being subpar at their job, as long as they do the mechanics correctly and don't die. If you take the raiding aspect seriously enough, you would have to like gearing multiple jobs because once you exhaust ultimate content, you would be sitting there waiting ~6 months for the next 4 boss raid tier (and likely clearing it in several weeks max, with a static anyway).

[eschatological]

From a Free Company standpoint (AKA the equivalent of a guild):

1) The current Savage tier will take 1-2 weeks to complete, about the equivalent of heroic raids in WoW. Of course, there's 4 bosses to 10-12, so the difficulty scaling ramps up drastically between those bosses, but if you're used to clearing heroic in week 1 in WoW, you'll probably be done with Savage in 2 weeks max. In the current savage tier, most people I know took more time on the 3rd boss than the other three combined. Once it's on farm, this'll take less than an hour a week with a competent group, as there's no trash, you just zone into an arena with a boss, and that's it.

2) The normal version of the tier is irrelevant once you do it once. Which is only necessary for the raid's story questline.

3) Ultimate is challenging. From people I trust, who I've raided with in WoW, I'd compare it to pre-nerf H-Ragnaros in Firelands which took some WoW guilds 500 pulls. There is only 1 to 2 of these an expansion, though, in theory, the older ones are relevent-ish in terms of a challenge. There's no real reason to "farm" the Ultimate though, so once you've done them - there's little reason to do them again, unless you want to hone your skill on a job you don't normally play, I guess.

4) Alliance raids are not serious. I zone in with 23 pugs and do them every week with 0 wipes in about 30 minutes. When you're doing the current one, you can only win one piece of loot a week, and only one upgrade item (which you get on completion) per week as well. You use the upgrade items to get your gear to Savage equivalent. So there's literally no reason to do it more than once a week.

5) No one in my FC does Extreme trials once they've got the mount from it. There's no real point to it as you quickly fill out the slots you need via currency or by spamming the trials as they have no lockout. Eventually all this gear is replaced by Savage gear. If you want to gear up alt jobs, you'll be doing a lot of these, but again, they're 1-boss arenas which you instantly zone into, do the fight, and leave.

6) Anyone who talks about doing outdated content while ilvl-synced is being disingenuous. This is the Ultimate model, but for past Savage tiers you're not even going to find Party Finder groups (aka pugs) let alone FCs running them ilvl-synced "for the challenge." At most you'll find groups running over them akimbo for some sort of farm content they need to do, like Light farming for relic weapons.

All in all, my FC spends about an hour a week reclearing Savage until everyone has the jobs they want geared up geared. The ones who prog Ultimate do so slowly as there's no point in killing yourself over it, as it'll last most of the expansion.

FWIW, it's much less time than WoW Mythic raiding. And IDK if this was because I was a mythic raid leader in a CE guild in WoW, responsible for everyone's fuck ups, but WoW mythic struck me as magnitudes harder than savage. Maybe if I was the type of raider in WoW who literally only tunneled the boss and relied on others to carry mechanics (which is something that happens a lot in a 20 man raid), Savage would feel equivalent to low-end mythic bosses, but IDK. The last Mythic end-raid boss I did was Kil'Jaeden back in Legion in the Tomb of Sargeras, and it's easily been way harder than anything I've tried in FFXIV (I've not attempted Ultimate).

This is purely subjective: but I miss the chaos of 20 man mythic raids compared to 8. FFXIV high end raids strike me as highly-choreographed, scripted dances. And like those kind of dances, they can be beautiful and elegant, like puzzle pieces falling into place. But it doesn't give me the rush mythic raiding did in WoW, and the exhiliration of 20 people coordinating together. If Blizzard wasn't such a shit company, and the maintanence of a 20 man mythic raid team, both in terms of organization and the sheer amount of work you have to do outside the raid, wasn't so onerous, I'd pick Mythic raiding over Savage any day of the week. Once you introduce the logistics of mythic raiding, though, FFXIV is much better for my 41-year-old ass with a fulltime job.

[cparle87]

I could say the exact same thing about Val's opinions on 14, since it seems mostly him on him hating a lot of 14, but instead of throwing love at WoW he seems to be hating on MMO's in general, sooo...

Yeah. He makes some good points, but when he keeps going on about "habituated into wasting your time" you have to wonder why he plays the genre.

[AntenoraDK]

The alliance raid bosses are basically like lfr so I wouldn't count them as end game challenge

I'd say LFR is easier than Alliance raids.

Why are you so butthurt by the fact that mindless afk bosses are not classified as raiding?

Least our raiding community doesn't need a third party addon telling us to move somewhere.

Imagine if Blizzard actually grew some balls and broke DBM, BW and Weakauras.

WoW raiders would be so lost XD

3) Ultimate is challenging. From people I trust, who I've raided with in WoW, I'd compare it to pre-nerf H-Ragnaros in Firelands which took some WoW guilds 500 pulls. There is only 1 to 2 of these an expansion, though, in theory, the older ones are relevent-ish in terms of a challenge. There's no real reason to "farm" the Ultimate though, so once you've done them - there's little reason to do them again, unless you want to hone your skill on a job you don't normally play, I guess.
.

I'd say Ultimate raids are on par with pre-nerf end mythic bosses.


Dragonsong's Reprise is definitely on par with Mythic Jailer in terms of difficulty and execution requirements.


There's groups that are over 1000 pulls into DSR.



The older ultimates like UWU and UCOB not so much, the stats formula was changed in Shadowbringers which significantly reduced the difficulty of these 2 ultimates.


TEA is still challenging.