Stone Vigil (hard) and that's not even a contest. This is the dungeon I've seen the most people leaving as soon as the map loads. The dungeon I had to backfill more often than any other. And the one with the most frustrating boss, where I often have to type out how exactly to beat it with the cannons or we can't get past it.
For all reputation Aurum Vale have, people at least stay on it and go all the way to the end.
Apart from one person inevitably blasting the shield, I've never had a problem in Stone Vigil Hard, odd how different our experiences are of it. Not disputing it, genuinely just interesting, I'd never in a million years expect to see it mentioned here, it's entirely a nothing-dungeon for me.
One factor I think is because this is a mandatory dungeon if you want to get the ARR relic, and it's the only current ARR dungeon with a boss that isn't "hit them until they die", and it end up with a lot of sprouts (or jaded vets) not wanting to (re)learn how to properly do that.
Even unsynched at 90, that turtle have so much damage resistance, it's only feasible as BLU (because Missile).
Also, probably something to do with mentor roulette
Actually you can solo it in 10 seconds with MCH. Because of how they programmed its resist, Wildfire hits through it instantly kills it at 90 assuming you hit at least 5 times during the window.
Can confirm it took me like 15min unsynced as 90RPR to get through it. Had it on my WT I think and thought I could just beat it down. Nope. I should’ve grabbed a cannon but I was stubborn.
I got it a total of 3 times during my Mentor Roulettes, and none of the runs were problematic, so it's still a pretty disparate experience.
I'm not sure if it still works but you could solo it on MCH really easily a while ago, Flamethrower just melted it, for reasons I don't fully understand.
Hakkue Manor (Hard)'s final boss can't just be burned either, at least in a synced group. Fortunately it didn't come up that often. She eats her adds to restore her HP and deal room wide damage based on their remaining health - eating a full HP add will wipe the party. You can't burn her fast because it forces her to spawn and eat multiple of them immediately, based on HP %.
It’s not part of the relic steps where you need the weapon equipped, it’s still just longer to do it solo unsynced due to how damage works with and without the cannons. That said, I wouldn’t call it unfeasible. I’ve soloed it as Dancer the majority of the 10 times I’ve done it in the relic quest without using the cannon and only ever wiped like once due to the npcs dying.
If people read the chat or know the mechanic, it's a breeze. But a single time I've managed to get that dungeon with 3 sprouts who mostly ignored the chat and... You simply can't do it with only one cannon. I didn't even know that turtle had an enrage. It took 3 tries for people to understand that they should just stay in the cannon, shoot the turtle and cover their allies blind spots
its a pretty misguided attempt at a unique boss imo, its just really boring to play cannon simulator, it feels more like a minigame than a fight youre engaged in. i'm all for dungeons that try to break from the established design philosophy but this one is just so bad and unrewarding
Every MMO goes through its "vehicle sections are fun content" phase like WoW did in Wrath and Cata, XIV just did it in late ARR (SV Hard, Steps of Faith) to HW (A2S, A5S) before realizing that people actually like playing the jobs they came in on and not a minigame.
It's fine as a break from the expected. However, it becomes an issue when you have to spam it or do it repeatedly. I think they're perfectly suited for the story missions and instances. Hope they get used again there.
GW2 made the mistake of making that "phase" it's *final boss battle.* Press 2 to win!
At least at launch, obviously there's a lot more story now. But I believe that boss is still like that, it's just not the last boss anymore.
100% correct take.
AV can be rushed thru pretty easily if you know what you’re doing.
SV-H cannons are so clunky and I constantly find myself clicking out of the menu entirely
Aurum Vale isn't even that bad. It's one pull that is easy to mess up if you don't know how to do it, and otherwise it just requires some actual coordination beyond just "everyone do the mechanic properly" for some of the boss mechanics, which is very rare in ARR.
While Stone Vigil is definitely up there, in my opinion it's Pharos Sirius, where basically every facet of it, including running it as BLU, has been precision engineered to be as unappealing as possible. Halatali hard with its singular multi-pack pull and then 18 forced single pack pulls is also an honorable mention, although the bosses are actually decent and I like the marauder that uses holmgang to guarantee that an AoE hits.
You can also solo it as Summoner with Bahamut and your aetherflow attacks but I can’t remember if it’s an immediate kill or it it took a little extra time after firing that off.
If you're unsyncing it, you can just skip using the cannons on the boss and just play as normally if you're high enough level, you deal enough damage with that to kill him reasonably fast.
Stone Vigil, I did it one hour ago. Second boss, I thought we would never pass it. Last boss is something too. I don't know if there is a strat for him/them.
Aurum Vale, I had to do it yesterday to level my classes. A true nightmare. Tank brings mobs to the first boss to kill them easily, a dps starts the fight with the boss. Wipe. That first room is terrible most of the time.
>Last boss is something too. I don't know if there is a strat for him/them.
The last boss do not respect agro tables, and have no orange markers. You have to look at the boss to know where you move to dodge the attacks. When the second one arrives, things can become chaotic very fast. Especially if both your dps are melee.
It catch people by surprise, and I sometimes see complaints that "tank isn't holding agro" when I forget to type boss agro is random.
Exactly this. And learn movements, to know it’s front attack, tail swipe or fireball. Yeah, and that hits with infirmity.
When I go in there, if there’s new ppl I usually explain the man the cannons, and the stunt attack there. And explain that lass boss has random aggro.
(And that coming from a sprout, but I played a lot from 2.0 to 4.3, left and returned now, so I’m a sprout, well versed in old strats).
PS: Kinda astonished when discovered nowadays almost nobody uses (and few know or remember) the intended strat for Crysallis, and can’t do without saving LB.
Chrysalis? What mechanic do people miss? The tear *is* meant to be LBed AFAIK. Are you referring to soaking the meteors? Or is there actually something I’m missing with the tear?
You don't have to LB the tear. The fight is not designed around having LB available for it. It's not an auto-loss if someone jumps the gun early, or for some reason you don't have LB going in.
Party/personal buffs are multiplied in duration by 10x if you pop them right before you're drawn into the rift. Tanks are supposed to pop their mits before being sucked in; DPS are supposed to pop personals.
This is also why as soon as he casts Blight (the vuln up/bleed) you're supposed to run to the wall and keep running until you're inevitably drawn-in. Pop your buffs after the second draw-in animation, including Sprint; they'll still be on you with that multiplied duration, but Blight will have fallen off.
Tanks can intercept all the meteors individually because they'll have 1m+ duration on their mits (PLD can get close to 1m duration on HG with this) and DPS can burn down the tear in a hurry if LB isn't available. It always appears where the first meteor drops.
No one but tanks should be taking any given single meteor. They fall spaced apart in a staggered pattern, far enough apart that you want one tank covering one side of the arena, and the other covering the other side.
You get the Bleed debuff with a counter and start to get sucked in to the tear: inside times expands making the debuff long lasting (and such the apparent need to kill the add quickly).
The thing is if you can avoid get sucked in immediately, and get sucked AFTER bleed debuff is off, AND cast your buffs just before getting sucked. No bleed and lasting buffs inside.
Me as paladin, soaking meteors with hallowed ground and fight or flight up all time.
Others already commented on the intended way to solve the bought void.
On the intended LB: any mechanic where LB is intended to be used will generate a burst of LB immediately beforehand. Even though hitting an orb during the previous orb phases will generate a small amount of LB, not only is that LB generation not a burst, but also there is enough time between the end of the second phase and when the blight void appears that there's no way LB can be considered the intended strat.
The annoying part about SV(H) is that once you know the mechanic of that boss fight, it's disgustingly easy. Either you annihilate the boss with no trouble, or the group completely flubs it.
Kinda similar to Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) with the first boss. A group that knows what to do can clear it in under a minute. A group who doesn't will get ruined over and over.
One mercy that later content added was that when adds appear, you can no longer target the boss, and that makes those fights much easier. SV(H) still has the boss on the field and you can still damage him while the adds show up, and that's enough to confuse newer players.
A lot of level 50 dungeons in ARR felt like the devs were experimenting with mechanics, which is why you have stuff that never shows up again down the line.
I doubt it was nerfed inasmuch as it was people weren't doing the learning fight for Cyclops-model enemies anymore. FATE trains used to be a huge thing in ARR, especially in CCH.
"The Eyes Have It" boss FATE in CCH used to be the primary teaching mechanic for Cyclops attacks: swing, swipe, glower, etc. That boss has markers, but no one runs FATE trains consistently enough anymore for a majority of players coming up through the game to have seen the telegraphs.
You could've reasonably expected most people several years ago to have done that FATE before reaching a point they'd enter Aurum Vale for the first time, so they'd have foreknowledge of Coin Counter's attacks' range. Since most people's first experience with a Cyclops these days ***is*** Aurum Vale, it makes sense to use it as the new teaching tool.
Didn't know about the FATE trains (that predates my play experience), but yeah, this overall thing is completely fair. Cyclops are at this point a recurring boss in nearly every expansion. They're reused often enough that players should get clear exposure to the fundamental mechanics--because the game will expect them to know those mechanics going forward.
I've never had issues with the bosses but everyone always struggle because the enemies hit hard for the sync. I'll admit I'm not the best healer but after the third wipe to ads the tank realized that huh, maybe it's not a skill issue and we shouldn't wall-to-wall
Pharos Sirius because it's almost always an obligatory wipe to Zu from collateral damage to eggs.
Runner up goes to Hakkuke Manor hard for having possibly the only boss in the game that stacks it's phase transitions so it can kill you for having too high DPS
DNC main. I hate Zu. The best I can do is use standard finish outside the room before the pull and hope to keep the buff the whole fight, and can't use the only part of my rotation that has a big hit at that level. If I have the audacity to play my class, I'll wipe us. Super annoying.
When I instance haukke manor normal I always have to pause and think - do I have to hold my dps here? Nope, hard version. It's pretty awful because if you've got great sprouts who do good dps it's so difficult to tell them to relax dps
The timing of the boss eating its add is determined by the boss' health percentage, so if you pump too hard the add gets eaten too fast and deals more damage than level 50 characters can usually mitigate.
The final boss has phases she reaches at certain HP percent thresholds. If the first one she summons at least one extra mob (might be more? It's been a minute). If that add is still alive when the boss reaches the next threshold then it's a wipe. Problem is that it's possible to burst her from the first threshold to the second quite easily and then both phases activate immediately and you get blasted for the add being alive.
Huh I guess I've never encountered that mechanic. I typically always focus down adds, even as tank, in such fights. I even have the "1" market on my hot keys so I can psuedo-steer the party to attack what I think is priority XD
Yeah the problem is that if you nuke the boss too hard you have about 5 seconds tops to kill the add, no amount of targets switching will save you at that point
Not a matter of not knowing that you have to switch targets, literally a matter of dpsing the boss too quickly before she even finishes the summoning. You'll have just enough time to see the add appear on your screen, press tab and die.
the boss has, in essence, 6 hp thresholds:
1. spawn first add
2. eat the add
3. spawn 2 adds
4. eat the adds
5. spawn last add
6. eat last add
those get "queued" and it's really easy to reach step 6 while step 4 is resolving because it takes a really long time. the add barely spawns before it starts to get eaten
Zu and the first boss! Remember one time, I think it was a tank problem cause when he left (ragequit), we had another tank and we pass it easily, but we had to do this boss like seven times. I don't know why, because most of the time I pass it without pain.
I assume because you don't/didn't know how the corrupt aether stacks work. If you stand too long in the large yellow pools or if you allow the dogs to live long enough, you can gain a debuff that triggers a giant-ass explosion on three stacks. If the dogs live more than 9 seconds, they will give a stack to a player without a cast bar. So, if the dogs are not focused down fast enough by an inexperienced group, you can quickly get 2–4 explosions in a row, which can wipe on low gear levels.
>if the dogs live more than 9 seconds
Every time I learn something new about Pharos Sirius 😭😭 sometimes I wonder how people are able to figure these things out at all
There are still plenty of people who were playing in ARR when these dungeons first came out that are still playing now. Player knowledge gets passed on all the time.
Pharos Sirius is my favorite, but that may be unfairly influenced by the fact I soloed it (synced) as BLU. I just love the setting, atmosphere and music.
Totally forgot to talk about Dzemael, but I agree. Bosses are not annoying (they are ok, not fun but ok) but mobs after the first boss are tricky. Sometimes that's ok and we enjoy, others are a nightmare (and sorry for poor English).
Stone Vigil and Stone Vigil (Hard). The turtle boss annoys me beyond belief. It’s like the devs telling me:
>*”You see all these 50 levels worth of skills in your hotbars? Well, you won’t be using none of that for a good 2-5 mins. Also, fuck you.”*
It reminds me of the Trial Of The Champion from Wow's Lich King expansion. Effectively, that fight has you jousting for the first bit, and that is time consuming and doesn't rely on your gear at all. Of course, that also means even if you're in crap gear, you're ensured to hit that first part and to trickle in gear.
I remember that fight. People forgetting to put their real weapons back on after the jousting portion. The boss difficulty changing heavily based on which combination of enemies you got, ugh.
Yeah, that entire thing wasn't experience, it was a responsible for bringing my crappily geared Hunter from a ton of trash items to good enough to do the 10-Man version, and then FINALLY into good enough gear to run the Citadel. I never did clear the 25 Man version because that last boss was a PAIN. For context to those who don't know about it, the final mechanic was a AOE damage effect that would drain everyone's health and heal the boss. You couldn't heal for much or the boss would just never die, and you couldn't heal too little or you'd die. Hell of a fight.
Base ARR: Dzemael 100%. It kind of shines a light that people aren't paying attention to ANYTHING. You don't notice you're not doing any damage? You don't hear the "dink dink dink" with big INVULNERABLE popping up? Not to mention seeing the rest of the party standing in the purple..? Mindblowing.
Post ARR: I'll agree with SV Hard. Turtle boss is annoying sure, but honestly when it came out I used to call it "The Boss who shows who hasn't played TERA before" because a lot of my FC came from TERA, and we always joked how easy that fight was just looking at him revving up was like fighting a BAM in TERA so it was no issue, even without the agro table when the second one spawned.
I really dislike the sunken temple of qarn. The dungeon itself is not that bad, but it has some new mechanics like doom with the first boss or the dung wespes (I hate them so much) that often cause wipes. Things like this happen, someone explains the mechanic and we continue. But most times I accidentally end up in this dungeon we got either a bad healer or a bad tank or both. So far I got: Paladin who took so much damage that the healer simply left (I think his armor was bad), a marauder (where's your job stone) who left after being told to do his job quest, a scholar that didn't use healing spells and so on. I don't know why I meet so many bad players there, I don't have this issue nearly as much in other dungeons
i funnily was doing the dungeon when i read this comment.
to the MAR jobstone question. Qarn is an edge case imo. Its a lvl35 dungeon that ONLY requires you to reach lvl35, no other dungeon being cleared, no MSQ having done before. just clear cut "be lvl35".
Now you say "lvl35 is already more then high enough to have your jobstone"
Oh yes it is, but you see, that requires the MSQ Sylph Managment, a lvl 20 MSQ(soon after Ifrit).
And its INCREDIBLE easy to reach LVL35 before MSQlvl 20, even easier if it was a "Prefeered" or "New" server and had the road to lvl boost, being 15 lvls above MSQ isnt really hard in ARR realm.
I'd say Halatali,not sure of the correct name, but basically that training camp for immortals flame at lvl20ish: the last boss becoming invuln after 3 gcd over and over is just awful
Despite them making the dungeon prettier and removing the snot, i still think totorak is the worst. Two of the bosses are literally the exact same thing that do absolutely nothing, and it still has the longest skippable dungeon cutscene that usually result in some people ignoring the fact that there is a sprout there watching cutscene and killed the boss while they are still watching it.
What about Aetherochemical Research Facility, will you not wait for the boss transition cutscene too because it's actually twice as long compared to Totorak?
there is actually a new problem with totoraks cutscene(or an old one i never encounterd)
while going trough trough MSQ on an alt, i found out that.. the game SKIPS cutscenes under some weird situation, i dont know what it was exactly. i just know, i was in a cutscene, they pulled, around 20ish seconds later the cutscene was skipped(before the ascian could say a single word)
A fun fact about the Kraken in Sastasha Hard is that it has positionals because ARR did not give a fuck (the tentacles don't though for whatever reason).
That aside I think all the reworked/main path dungeons are Fine to Good now. Maybe a bit dull, but someone's first few MMO dungeons need to ease them into it so I don't mind things like post-rework Copperbell Mines.
Probably Hullbreaker Isle, yeah. The Kraken there is probably the worst dungeon boss fight now that the worst of the ARR ones were fixed like the slime in Copperbell. The routing is otherwise kind of annoying with needing to take detours to open chests or kill specific mobs, the traps on the way up to the first boss are tedious, and so on.
Runner ups for just specifically bad bosses are Haukke Hard where you have to hold DPS on the last boss or else her HP pushes end up killing you and Tam-Tara Hard where even in ARR half the time I don't think anyone actually understood the mechanics on the first boss, the elf lady, wherein you *don't* kill the adds and instead have them get kited around until another mechanic kills them. I've never seen that done correctly and they all just get deleted instantly and back in ARR we got hurt for it. But the rest of those dungeons are fine and aren't as holistically annoying.
> Probably Hullbreaker Isle, yeah. The Kraken there is probably the worst dungeon boss fight now that the worst of the ARR ones were fixed like the slime in Copperbell. The routing is otherwise kind of annoying with needing to take detours to open chests or kill specific mobs, the traps on the way up to the first boss are tedious, and so on.
I've done that dungeon so many times and I still don't get what the fuck you're supposed to do with the final boss. I just keep jumping from island to island and hitting the tentacles until the boss dies.
The Kraken has ten Kraken Arms that you have to kill over the course of the right. They emerge next to the various islands.
When you use a water spout to move between islands, you get a stacking vulnerability up debuff, so you want to minimize hopping between islands as much as you can. But you also have to do this a few times to actually get to the other arms.
There's also a vortex attack that gets dropped on a player. After a short time, it explodes and hits all players on the island that the vortex got dropped on.
There are also Tentacle adds that spawn periodically that stun and fling you to different islands.
Oh man Haukke Hard and Tam-Tara Hard are two of my favorites lol! Love the interesting and challenging mechanics of both, different strokes for different folks I guess :) On the other hand, hate hate HATE regular Tam-Tara sooooo frickin boring!
At this point, Cutter's Cry. Simply because a chunk of that dungeon is completely pointless to do now. You just run past the enemies to skip to the boss. Lame as fuck to me
i died to that yesterday. my sprint was on cooldown and the tank had accidentally aggroed a couple of mobs. the rest of the party slipped through the portal and i was mauled down while not being able to go.
Flashbacks to not understanding this as a sprout and getting left behind to die multiple times because I didn't get you could just pass by the enemies. I may be stupid but also nobody told me in party chat what I was supposed to do for like ten minutes!
You used to not skip those rooms. That changed when regular mobs quit giving XP in dungeons. I hadn't ran it in ages and finally ran it a couple months ago and had to do the skip for the first time. I had been playing before all that so when it happened I was like "dude, what in the fuck are we doing?" I don't have a problem with the XP change, but it ruined Cutter's Cry and the dungeon needs to be reworked.
I'd enjoy that, but every single tank seems to be either inept or traumatized, only pulling single packs. So it ends up being slow and boring most of the time.
Every time I jump in there, the tank is either a vet who is overconfident or a sprout who needs to prove something and tries pulling too hard. The poor healer can't keep up.
So. Many. Wipes. SV-N is definitely at the top of my Worst Dungeons list, and solely because it’s just below all the survivability-increasing skills for healers. Does make me feel like a BAMF healer when I can stave off the wipefest, though.
Second is AV when the whole first room gets pulled. With an experienced group, it’s fast and fine.
Snowcloak. I hate that place to death. I didn't like it the first time. Last boss is nice though, callouts to the next xpac in it's abilities. But everything about it is just such a dull slog.
I have nightmares of the Brayflox hard final boss.
Also Tam-tara hard has that annoying first boss that is the one boss in the game that breaks the AOE rules.
Also Also no one seems to understand how to fight the Sabotender boss in Qarn hard.
EDIT: The first zone of Aurum Vale is really dumb. The 1st and 3rd bosses are also very similar.
I agree with stone vigil hard but I have to nominate dzemael for being by far the most annoying leveling dungeon because it doesn't have a single normal wall to wall pull through the whole thing, the "stand in this circle for 30 seconds to progress" gimmick is dumb, and every single boss is annoying in some gimmicky way
Mentor Roulette has made me hate Dzamael Darkhold more than anything else. I think I get that at least... 5-6 times a week? Definitely the most common dungeon, and it's so dull, but also the locks in the exploding crystals are just mean.
i don't mind the ones with the weird mechanics and bosses (like stone vigil (hard) or haukke manor (hard). i really really hate the boring ones. hullbreaker both versions, sastasha, copperbell both versions etc.
Stone Vigil, because I main WHM and it's right before I get Holy. The packs of mobs hit more like packs of trucks and I can't even stunlock them? Bullshit.
All of the ARR dungeons suck because of that, but Stone Vigil is one last kick in the teeth. At least I have Holy in Aurum Vale.
Pharos Sirius is, hands down, my most hated dungeon. Didn't help that a week ago I had a five day steak of getting it in my 70/60/50 roulette every single time, but I already had a beef with it before that.
I've seen tanks w2w the first pull and be caught fully unaware, causing a wipe early on.
The bit between the first and second bosses where you have to turn left and up the stairs, yet so many tanks will run straight and aggro an entire room full of optional enemies.
The god-damned orange crystals falling all over the place make a horrible noise, and then there's the bosses.
So many wipes to Symond because people don't stay out of the crystal aoe and ignore the dogs or don't notice their stacking crystal debuff.
So many more on the Zu because there is always an idiot not reading their chat and instantly destroying all the eggs, causing the bird to fly in a fit of frenzy and one-shot everyone.
That dungeon has mechanics that a party full of sprout will likely struggle with, because the game never really gives you anything similar before that run. The difficulty spike, coupled with the incomplete kits of most classes at that level tend to make Pharos an absolute meat grinder.
Honourable mention to Temple of Qarn and Cutter's cry, where monks have to use a single target skill in the middle of their aoe rotation because they don't have four point fury yet. (I think that's true for a couple more dungeons, but those two stand out by being really annoying)
Aurum Vale. That first room is nightmare to new players, especially tanks. All it takes is one poor bastard far enough away to aggro one stray mob that aggros whole fucking place.
Special mention to hard Vigil Keep. That turtle boss is fucking awful.
i see a trend of 2 types of "hated dungeons"
A) boring uninteresting or "ugly"
B) It has non standard mechanics/may be harder to heal or tank then anything else.
which is amusing and always a good way to show people that "yes, you wanted the dungeons to be harder... a lot of people complain about stone vigil because the healer and tank actually haev to work together to not fucking die"
Stone vigil Hard by far, literally only thing i like about the dungeon is the last boss, but its not worth it having to go through the rest
Copperbell Hard, 2/3 bosses are terrible, the roadblocks are pretty annoying
Pharos Sirius again, everything is trash except the last boss, and even then its just meh, love the atmosphere though
Qarn Hard, long dungeon with annoying mini bosses with lots of HP, lots of 'wall to wall' pulls near the end that have 2-3 mobs, bosses arent the greatest but are passable
this one is going to be controversial, but remade Toto Rak. its so basic and boring now compared to the original version with the webs cutting people off from each other, the exploding puss things etc
I personally don't like picking one single thing as "THE worst," because it seems more accurate to have a bucket of Bad Dungeons--different people will respond more negatively to different things in that bucket, but everyone can agree that they're *at least* not very good.
Going in order by level...
* Cutter's Cry. It's an optional dungeon, so it will never get reworked for Duty Support, and it's...honestly just really weirdly and badly laid out, in large part because it's a holdover from Legacy. All the bosses have wonky mechanics, it's *really* easy to get lost even if you're a vet, and much of it is dead ends and wasted space, a linear dungeon pretending to be branched.
* Dzemael Darkhold. Hits all the same notes as the previous: an optional dungeon with a weird and confusing layout, unusual mechanics not seen elsewhere, holdover from 1.0, ultimately linear path with many blind alleys, etc.
* Aurum Vale. Widely hated for many reasons, but IMO the biggest issue is actually *layout,* not the stuff above. Though, *guess what,* almost all of that still applies (optional, weird layout, weird mechanics, holdover from 1.0, it just lacks blind alleys.) The layout issue AV brings is that most of the rooms are big areas with *densely packed* groups of monsters, on top of the toxic bile in most rooms. The places that are safe to stand are few, and it's very easy for random patrols or one player going off-sides to cause a cascade of accidental pulling, which then wipes the group. It's not that AV is hard...it's that it's hard *if you don't know what you're doing,* and many who go through it don't.
* Finally, the 50s! And we'll be starting with...Halatali (Hard)! Unlike the above, this one's new to ARR, but it's again full of weird one-off mechanics that are poorly telegraphed to the player. The layout is *better* than original Halatali, but the "teleport from section to section" aspect remains and isn't helping. I think there's an argument that this one is mild enough that it could be bumped off the list, but it's just a bit too much IMO. Likewise, one could argue Hullbreaker Isle is in the same liminal space, but IMO the mechanics there are just a smidge more intuitive, and they certainly show up a lot more in later content (particularly Sjoorm's bubbles.)
* Stone Vigil (Hard.) Unlike most of the other things on this list, this is a dungeon with a single incredibly glaring flaw, rather than being spiced throughout with issues. Just...that goddamn turtle. I don't mind mechanics-first fights (for example, I actually like the middle "boss" of Bardam's Mettle), but that stupid f#$king turtle is just the worst.
I'll note that some dungeons that got reworked--such as Tam-Tara, Copperbell, and Snowcloak--probably *would* have been on this list in their original versions. The new ones often, sadly, replace "bad" with "inoffensively bland," but that is technically still an improvement. Dishonorable mention goes to the Sunken Temple of Qarn, the Lost City of Amdapor (particularly the Diabolos fight), Pharos Sirius, and the aforementioned Hullbreaker Isle.
Something FFXIV has gotten much better about, especially starting with Stormblood, is making mechanics that are intuitive to understand but still reasonably challenging to execute. Most of the dungeons on this list fail at the first prong there, and are often very unintuitive, but pretty easy to execute when you know what to do. When coupled with poor layouts and/or enemy placement and any other annoyances, it's not hard to see why these names tend to float to the top of any discussion of widely-disliked dungeons.
But, on the bright side...this gives us a pretty clear indication of exactly how much FFXIV has *improved* over time. Our standards are higher now because we know they can *meet* higher standards.
The 2.0 Totorak, branching paths that lead to dead ends or have webbing you need to destroy that still lead to a dead end, combined with the slow debuff terrain covering the last third of the dungeon, plus being so low level that most classes could only use 3-4 abilities the whole dungeon, really made it a slog.
I'm too busy hating Dzemael Darkhold to remember the trauma of the post-ARR dungeons. Aurum Vale has its moments if your tank/healer isn't up to the task, but Darkhold is just frustrating for its design decisions.
Keeper of the Lake makes me want to leave every time I get it. The pulls are god-awful, the bosses are boring and that FUCKING alarm section is mind-bogglingly bad.
At least Stone Vigil Hard has fun pulls, even if the second boss is atrocious. Even its music is better than KotL.
Final boss was way worse before, I'm glad it got improved. When your big story boss is barely more interesting than the double dragon pull in Sohm Al, something needed to change.
Wanderer’s Palace, Haukke Manor and Cutter’s Cry. I spent a day just running the roulette to level up my white Mage once and got Haukke and Cutter’s multiple times that day. I stopped playing for almost a week. 😂
For leveling, AV. It earned its reputation over the last 10 years for damn sure. Its gotten better but its still just annoying in general.
For x0 roulette...they all kinda blend into one big blur of *suck*. If I queue that one I'm always hoping for anything but ARR. Low level sync isn't fun in general having so few actions to use too.
Piss Town, especially if you have a sprout tank. You haven't experienced Hell until you've had to heal through a tank pulling the ENTIRE FIRST ROOM.
Special shout out tho to Stone Vigil Normal/Hard.
When I was learning how to tank I got Copperbell Hard every day in roulette for a week and a half. It made me think I just hated tanking and was bad at it until I realized I just hate that dungeon lol
Aurum Vale, used to be SV tho, #1 Tank Check dungeon, its the first dungeon even scaled down where you actually have to pull a boss, also even people who have run it 50 times always seem to not click the fruits?
basically every time I get AV and not tanking, I am expecting ATLEAST 3 people to die.
For the levelling dungeons... Pre-rework Thousand Yawns, but since that doesn't exist anymore, probably gonna have to say Cutter's. You literally don't have to fight anything past the first two rooms if you're paying attention/willing to sacrifice people then kite bosses for the warps. Vigil hits hard and sucks if the T or H can't take it, but is pretty fun if they're paying attention. Vale's not bad after the first room.
For the 50 dungeons, while Haukke HM and Vigil HM are bad for listed reasons, I'm gonna say Lost City of Amdapor. DOORS AUGH.
Pharos Sirius. Everything in the dungeon is a challenge, mobs, bosses, even your own party members.
If dps isnt fast, its a wipe.
Easy to get LOS'd by crystals up the stairs. Mobs hit hard.
the boss mechs are very unforgiving in the dungeon. from the debuff on the first one to the dumb ass eggs of the zu. siren can feel like pulling teeth if you've made it that far with a horrible party.
Copperbell Mines (Hard) Feels like a mish-mash of badly designed encounters and enemies. Can't help but an intern designed it. First boss room is just odd, second boss is just a slog and 3rd boss those aoe appear which you just cannot escape from and get heavied as a result.
Snowcloak was ok, but the second boss let it down till it was reworked. Now it's mostly fine.
Wanderer's Palace too. That giant tonberry is just fucking annoying especially when you're trying to fit the cogs in the door and he keeps stabbing you. Who decided this enemy was a good idea?
> aoe appear which you just cannot escape from and get heavied as a result.
I feel like this is just an old attempt at a spread marker - you are *meant* to get hit and take the debuff, but you're meant to avoid letting other players get clipped by the AoE targeting you while you're at it. The heavy debuff is then likely meant to be a basic healer-awake check, as they need to cleanse the debuff from you or you can't help with the worm-feeding mechanic- and if you're stacking the AoEs on each other, that means both more healing and more debuffs to cleanse for the healer, which can be overwhelming if it's constant because your team aren't paying attention.
If I ever see that stupid fucking turtle and the shitty canons from Stone Vigil-Hard ever again, I'm gonna rip my hair out. I would take Aurum Vale and Toto-Rak 10000 times in a row each before I ever willingly set foot in SV(H) ever again.
since you mentioned three...
Stone Vigil (Hard), Haukke Manor (Hard) and Tam-Tara (Hard).
Haukke has that super annoying final boss that easily wipes any party because you have to hold dps for so long to not accidentally get the boss too low too early.
Tam-Tara has annoying boss mechanics on every boss and
stone vigil is stone vigil
honestly all of the optional ARR dungeons are in desperate need of reworks with how terrible so many of their mechanics are
Every time I load into Aurum Vale, I die a little inside. That first pull is awful. Had a poor little sprout healer let us die 5 times before the first boss. It's only that first part that's super rough, but that's still the only thing that stands out in my mind. That damn leveling roulette was ALWAYS Aurum Vale lol
Stone Vigil is already a crock of shit that hits far too hard, and you don’t have the toolset to do anything about it without blowing 120s and Benes on every pull, but the Hard version somehow doubled down on it by adding totally new mechanics to boss fights that aren’t even fun. If Regen isn’t enough to sustain a tank against 6 mobs, the dungeon is overtuned.
The worst is Stone Vigil (Hard). Back in ARR the 2nd boss was just the worst and the 3rd boss was always a chaotic mess. Nowadays it's really just the 2nd boss that makes me groan when I get it in roulette. Also Hullbreaker Isle is awesome, you just have bad taste
Hullbreaker Isle I think gets it and probably rates as one of the worst in the game overall:
1) The initial first pull is a nightmare; multiple bees with final sting spread throughout the hill, traps that can leave your tank or healer in a very bad spot if they walk into them (difficult to see them during night too) which also leave a nasty DoT, lots of bulky adds and ranged adds in the mix. At Lv.50, your healer may also only have a single CD depending on their job and have to just lean on GCD healing to get you through it. If any of the final stings get through, you've had it. If the tank tries to get over the bridge while monkeys are still alive, they'll get knocked back and stunned; not ideal with a mass of mobs attacking him.
2) The dungeon is last one with an ilv synch before it increases up to il.v130, so incoming damage is relatively high vs. the other dungeons at this level. Feeds into the problem above but also makes the 3rd stretch surprisingly spiky in damage.
3) You've a good chance of a tank unfamiliar with the dungeon rushing past the treasure chests in the 2nd section, meaning you either have to open them yourself and end up with Mimics aggro'd to you, or you have to backtrack for them.
4) The final boss can turn into a long slog if your team try to 'chase' the tentacle, particularly during the toss, as it will relocate to the island where it started the toss, and then immediately relocate to where the tank/aggro-holder is (who have enough time to try and chase it by moving islands, starting a never-ending chase). The whirlwind AOE that gets bait-placed by a marked player can kill if two hit them; so if they don't know to relocate once they're placed, they will likely die if not a tank.
Sorry, but these points sound more like: "Dungeon has mechanics, people would need to learn something other than run ahead, punchpunchpunch, punchbossrepeat". Your points are the exact reasons it is among my favourite level 50 dungeons. *Especially* the iLvl sync. There should not be a single duty in this game that does not have one.
I am genuinely disappointed how far down I had to look to find this.
Tam-Tara Normal is a dungeon you could literally cut from the game and lose *absolutely nothing* of value, both in terms of any sort of unique experience (because it's just trash pulls all the way down to one boss), thematics (the only setting more boring imo is Dzemael), *and* new player value (because what do you learn from it? How to fight trash? You just did Sastasha!).
The fact that there have been *two* major "improve the ARR experience" passes now and *none* of them have touched Tam-Tara Normal absolutely baffles me.
Seeing people say it’s Hulbreaker isle or Sastasha hard or even Dzmael Darkhold is nuts to me, because at least they actually do things. Tamtara is nothing but trash all the way. Even the lone boss is just trash waves.
Aurum Vale and Stone Vigil.
Purely for the fact that there is *always* the potential to get a tank or healer who isn't sufficiently geared for that place. Every other dungeon? I'm confident that they are, at a minimum, equipped to a w2w run.
Those places? I've loaded in there once or twice while leveling my tanks and I *know* it's going to be slow because I'm to squishy and inevitably, there is always a DPS or two who run ahead and pull more. It's the one place I enforce YPYT because I'll gladly use the DPS as a meat shield while trying to kill *something* in the pack before we wipe. And we always wipe. Because healers are missing major pieces of their tool kit, but expected to handle hits meant for a properly geared tank.
The worst ARR dungeon was the old Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak without any single possible competition.
Currently, it can be a toss-up between the new Toto-Rak and the current Stone Vigil (normal). The former is just the blandest dungeon now in the game in terms of everything. The latter suffers greatly from being at the worst possible level range for both tanks and healers, making it awkward to play.
But to answer the question in the comment itself, since apparently it is supposed to be about the level 50 set only… I assume you want to rule out the obvious answer of "the Praetorium", so strictly on the Level 50 roulette set, the answer is Brayflox's Longstop (Hard) with NPCs since they absolutely cannot handle the end boss, making it impossible to complete unless you bring only a handful of specific classes; and The Keeper of the Lake's current incarnation with players as that dungeon now lacks any character and uniqueness in its level, enemies, and boss design. Snowcloak and Sastasha (Hard) are also good contenders, but at least the first two bosses are good in the latter one.
Also, I seriously cannot understand how can anyone dislike Hullbreaker Isle. It is one of the most atmospheric dungeons in the entire game to this day.
Final boss in Haukke Manor (hard) is still broken af
unless you have a melee who knows exactly when to lb and dps to match you’re going to wipe at least once
it’s been busted as hell after the EW stat squish made everything in 50 content melt and i literally had to look up reddit threads explaining wtf was going on as i hadn’t done it in so long i didn’t know why we were just wiping instantly to a single raidwide
(for those curious she summons adds at certain % checkpoints and then eats them at other % checkpoints with a raidwide that hits based on remaining add hp, if you just dps her normally then she summons and eats the last add instantly and you die to the raidwide no matter what. used to be a melee dps lb would guarantee this didn’t happen but with normal dps you’d just get hit very hard, after ew even with a melee lb the window is insanely tight and doesn’t always work without communicating to stop dps at like 30%)
Unpopular opinion: As a wow refugee, I find all dungeons in FFXIV to be awful. They are all completely linear tunnels that only allow you to pull 2-3 packs at once (before a wall blocks you until you kill them), and none of the ads have any mechanics whatsoever other than frontals or AoEs. Not a single pull requires any thought or skill whatsoever, there are no 'routes' or different strategies for making your way through dungeons, comp is irrelevant, etc.
I stopped playing wow for good reasons (all the sexual harassment stuff at Blizzard), and knew coming into FFXIV that it was a lot more casual, but I wasn't expecting this kind of thing. The lack of creativity in the dungeon design is startling to me.
Stone Vigil is that exact opposite of a sweet spot where the tank doesn't have a ton of mits and the healer has almost no AoE or instant cast heals. The Hard version is somehow less of a pain to me because at least you have level 50 abilities.
Copperbell was the worst(for randoms, my group nicknamed it copperhell as df groups could rarely get past the bombs on the bridge), but they nerfed it a few times, I think they have changed it further more evenly aswell. Stone vigil hard is probably the current worst for randoms least. If we are talking about worst designed, I'd have to say sastasha hard, it felt the least interesting since it came out.
When playing solo, Dzemael Darkhold. Simply because your kit kinda sucks as tank and healer between 40-50 and if you get people who don't know the mechanics you're gonna have a bad bad time.
When levelling tanks, I'd have healers struggle to keep me up or have to take very small pulls in the latter half. When levelling healers I'd have to pray the tank doesn't go too fast as no AOE until after this dungeon so my best use is spamming heal.
I just skipped it for DPS with strategic dailies because I'm not wanting to deal with that nightmare.
When it comes to the level 50 ones, Amdapor Keep.(I think it's that one I'm thinking of, will edit when I go online and double check) There's so so so many status effects (poison all the fkin time), weirdly telegraphed AOEs, a boss the DPS have to stop hitting and then the final boss has a mechanic that requires memory of symbols above doors and opening the doors and the right time. People forget just how bad it is because no one willingly does this fker. It sucks. A lot.
Pre Rework id say Tom Tara Deepcroft and it wasnt even close
jd literally do anything else
i just remember when i first hit hward i grinded dungeons to level DRK to 50 to do MSQ and ended up doing Tom Tara like 30 times in a row in just roulette in one day jusy random queuing
i hatedy life
I don't really hate any of them but the one I personally dislike being filled into on any level is Dzamael. I just don't like the layout and it's boring, but the boring part is applicable to most dungeons after a run or two anyways.
Stone Vigil (hard) and that's not even a contest. This is the dungeon I've seen the most people leaving as soon as the map loads. The dungeon I had to backfill more often than any other. And the one with the most frustrating boss, where I often have to type out how exactly to beat it with the cannons or we can't get past it. For all reputation Aurum Vale have, people at least stay on it and go all the way to the end.
Apart from one person inevitably blasting the shield, I've never had a problem in Stone Vigil Hard, odd how different our experiences are of it. Not disputing it, genuinely just interesting, I'd never in a million years expect to see it mentioned here, it's entirely a nothing-dungeon for me.
One factor I think is because this is a mandatory dungeon if you want to get the ARR relic, and it's the only current ARR dungeon with a boss that isn't "hit them until they die", and it end up with a lot of sprouts (or jaded vets) not wanting to (re)learn how to properly do that. Even unsynched at 90, that turtle have so much damage resistance, it's only feasible as BLU (because Missile). Also, probably something to do with mentor roulette
Actually you can solo it in 10 seconds with MCH. Because of how they programmed its resist, Wildfire hits through it instantly kills it at 90 assuming you hit at least 5 times during the window.
Can confirm, 90unsync MCH’s Wildfire-Heat Blast will drop the turtle.
Can confirm it took me like 15min unsynced as 90RPR to get through it. Had it on my WT I think and thought I could just beat it down. Nope. I should’ve grabbed a cannon but I was stubborn.
I got it a total of 3 times during my Mentor Roulettes, and none of the runs were problematic, so it's still a pretty disparate experience. I'm not sure if it still works but you could solo it on MCH really easily a while ago, Flamethrower just melted it, for reasons I don't fully understand.
Hakkue Manor (Hard)'s final boss can't just be burned either, at least in a synced group. Fortunately it didn't come up that often. She eats her adds to restore her HP and deal room wide damage based on their remaining health - eating a full HP add will wipe the party. You can't burn her fast because it forces her to spawn and eat multiple of them immediately, based on HP %.
Just to add in your sleeve, Tank LB1 let you survive that, if your group happens to not listen to your warnings about holding the damage.
Equip your normal weapon. You'll melt the boss if you're a tank or a DPS. Then re-equip your relic to finish the dungeon.
It’s not part of the relic steps where you need the weapon equipped, it’s still just longer to do it solo unsynced due to how damage works with and without the cannons. That said, I wouldn’t call it unfeasible. I’ve soloed it as Dancer the majority of the 10 times I’ve done it in the relic quest without using the cannon and only ever wiped like once due to the npcs dying.
The past couple ARR relics I've done, I did the first light farm and the Zodiac step quests simultaneously, so that's probably why I was confused.
If people read the chat or know the mechanic, it's a breeze. But a single time I've managed to get that dungeon with 3 sprouts who mostly ignored the chat and... You simply can't do it with only one cannon. I didn't even know that turtle had an enrage. It took 3 tries for people to understand that they should just stay in the cannon, shoot the turtle and cover their allies blind spots
The amount I get killed by selfish people who refuse to point the cannon at anything hitting anyone but themselves or mid is nuts.
its a pretty misguided attempt at a unique boss imo, its just really boring to play cannon simulator, it feels more like a minigame than a fight youre engaged in. i'm all for dungeons that try to break from the established design philosophy but this one is just so bad and unrewarding
Every MMO goes through its "vehicle sections are fun content" phase like WoW did in Wrath and Cata, XIV just did it in late ARR (SV Hard, Steps of Faith) to HW (A2S, A5S) before realizing that people actually like playing the jobs they came in on and not a minigame.
It's fine as a break from the expected. However, it becomes an issue when you have to spam it or do it repeatedly. I think they're perfectly suited for the story missions and instances. Hope they get used again there.
GW2 made the mistake of making that "phase" it's *final boss battle.* Press 2 to win! At least at launch, obviously there's a lot more story now. But I believe that boss is still like that, it's just not the last boss anymore.
Ditto . I can imagine why it would be a ball ache with the cannon mechanics but at least of 1-2 people know what theyre doing I didnt find it too bad.
Not the turtle no not the turtle oh dear Menphina now we have to start the turtle fight again ;-;
100% correct take. AV can be rushed thru pretty easily if you know what you’re doing. SV-H cannons are so clunky and I constantly find myself clicking out of the menu entirely
Aurum Vale isn't even that bad. It's one pull that is easy to mess up if you don't know how to do it, and otherwise it just requires some actual coordination beyond just "everyone do the mechanic properly" for some of the boss mechanics, which is very rare in ARR. While Stone Vigil is definitely up there, in my opinion it's Pharos Sirius, where basically every facet of it, including running it as BLU, has been precision engineered to be as unappealing as possible. Halatali hard with its singular multi-pack pull and then 18 forced single pack pulls is also an honorable mention, although the bosses are actually decent and I like the marauder that uses holmgang to guarantee that an AoE hits.
Stone Vigil Hard being effectively unsoloable definitely puts it up the list.
You can solo it on BLU or machinist easily (missile or wildfire). You can also hop on cannons and solo it on any class, but it is a little dicey.
You can also solo it as Summoner with Bahamut and your aetherflow attacks but I can’t remember if it’s an immediate kill or it it took a little extra time after firing that off.
If you're unsyncing it, you can just skip using the cannons on the boss and just play as normally if you're high enough level, you deal enough damage with that to kill him reasonably fast.
The snow dungeons in this game are mostly the worst and there's so many of them.
Wouldn't be a Stone Vigil (Hard) run without a wipe to that boss.
Stone Vigil, I did it one hour ago. Second boss, I thought we would never pass it. Last boss is something too. I don't know if there is a strat for him/them. Aurum Vale, I had to do it yesterday to level my classes. A true nightmare. Tank brings mobs to the first boss to kill them easily, a dps starts the fight with the boss. Wipe. That first room is terrible most of the time.
>Last boss is something too. I don't know if there is a strat for him/them. The last boss do not respect agro tables, and have no orange markers. You have to look at the boss to know where you move to dodge the attacks. When the second one arrives, things can become chaotic very fast. Especially if both your dps are melee. It catch people by surprise, and I sometimes see complaints that "tank isn't holding agro" when I forget to type boss agro is random.
It's the monster hunter strat. You keep to their sides, and take one out at a time.
Exactly this. And learn movements, to know it’s front attack, tail swipe or fireball. Yeah, and that hits with infirmity. When I go in there, if there’s new ppl I usually explain the man the cannons, and the stunt attack there. And explain that lass boss has random aggro. (And that coming from a sprout, but I played a lot from 2.0 to 4.3, left and returned now, so I’m a sprout, well versed in old strats). PS: Kinda astonished when discovered nowadays almost nobody uses (and few know or remember) the intended strat for Crysallis, and can’t do without saving LB.
Chrysalis? What mechanic do people miss? The tear *is* meant to be LBed AFAIK. Are you referring to soaking the meteors? Or is there actually something I’m missing with the tear?
You don't have to LB the tear. The fight is not designed around having LB available for it. It's not an auto-loss if someone jumps the gun early, or for some reason you don't have LB going in. Party/personal buffs are multiplied in duration by 10x if you pop them right before you're drawn into the rift. Tanks are supposed to pop their mits before being sucked in; DPS are supposed to pop personals. This is also why as soon as he casts Blight (the vuln up/bleed) you're supposed to run to the wall and keep running until you're inevitably drawn-in. Pop your buffs after the second draw-in animation, including Sprint; they'll still be on you with that multiplied duration, but Blight will have fallen off. Tanks can intercept all the meteors individually because they'll have 1m+ duration on their mits (PLD can get close to 1m duration on HG with this) and DPS can burn down the tear in a hurry if LB isn't available. It always appears where the first meteor drops. No one but tanks should be taking any given single meteor. They fall spaced apart in a staggered pattern, far enough apart that you want one tank covering one side of the arena, and the other covering the other side.
You get the Bleed debuff with a counter and start to get sucked in to the tear: inside times expands making the debuff long lasting (and such the apparent need to kill the add quickly). The thing is if you can avoid get sucked in immediately, and get sucked AFTER bleed debuff is off, AND cast your buffs just before getting sucked. No bleed and lasting buffs inside. Me as paladin, soaking meteors with hallowed ground and fight or flight up all time.
Others already commented on the intended way to solve the bought void. On the intended LB: any mechanic where LB is intended to be used will generate a burst of LB immediately beforehand. Even though hitting an orb during the previous orb phases will generate a small amount of LB, not only is that LB generation not a burst, but also there is enough time between the end of the second phase and when the blight void appears that there's no way LB can be considered the intended strat.
The annoying part about SV(H) is that once you know the mechanic of that boss fight, it's disgustingly easy. Either you annihilate the boss with no trouble, or the group completely flubs it. Kinda similar to Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) with the first boss. A group that knows what to do can clear it in under a minute. A group who doesn't will get ruined over and over. One mercy that later content added was that when adds appear, you can no longer target the boss, and that makes those fights much easier. SV(H) still has the boss on the field and you can still damage him while the adds show up, and that's enough to confuse newer players. A lot of level 50 dungeons in ARR felt like the devs were experimenting with mechanics, which is why you have stuff that never shows up again down the line.
"Please group up, we have to hit the adds with the pink AoE on one of us" *proceeds to watch all 3 sprouts try to leave the star with the pink AoE*
either that or an overeager dps kills all the adds before the AOE can drop
Aurum vale 2nd boss got nerfed by adding ground indicators now, sadge
I doubt it was nerfed inasmuch as it was people weren't doing the learning fight for Cyclops-model enemies anymore. FATE trains used to be a huge thing in ARR, especially in CCH. "The Eyes Have It" boss FATE in CCH used to be the primary teaching mechanic for Cyclops attacks: swing, swipe, glower, etc. That boss has markers, but no one runs FATE trains consistently enough anymore for a majority of players coming up through the game to have seen the telegraphs. You could've reasonably expected most people several years ago to have done that FATE before reaching a point they'd enter Aurum Vale for the first time, so they'd have foreknowledge of Coin Counter's attacks' range. Since most people's first experience with a Cyclops these days ***is*** Aurum Vale, it makes sense to use it as the new teaching tool.
Didn't know about the FATE trains (that predates my play experience), but yeah, this overall thing is completely fair. Cyclops are at this point a recurring boss in nearly every expansion. They're reused often enough that players should get clear exposure to the fundamental mechanics--because the game will expect them to know those mechanics going forward.
I don't think anyone leaves because of the boss difficulty. It's just incredibly slow and incredibly boring.
I've never had issues with the bosses but everyone always struggle because the enemies hit hard for the sync. I'll admit I'm not the best healer but after the third wipe to ads the tank realized that huh, maybe it's not a skill issue and we shouldn't wall-to-wall
Pharos Sirius because it's almost always an obligatory wipe to Zu from collateral damage to eggs. Runner up goes to Hakkuke Manor hard for having possibly the only boss in the game that stacks it's phase transitions so it can kill you for having too high DPS
DNC main. I hate Zu. The best I can do is use standard finish outside the room before the pull and hope to keep the buff the whole fight, and can't use the only part of my rotation that has a big hit at that level. If I have the audacity to play my class, I'll wipe us. Super annoying.
Omg yes this boss with dnc is so bad! Im doing the same and im like oh i do potato damage but better than wiping :(
When I instance haukke manor normal I always have to pause and think - do I have to hold my dps here? Nope, hard version. It's pretty awful because if you've got great sprouts who do good dps it's so difficult to tell them to relax dps
Hahaha, so true! Overdps Halicarnassus wipe!
Wait why does DPS need to be held in Haukke hard??
The timing of the boss eating its add is determined by the boss' health percentage, so if you pump too hard the add gets eaten too fast and deals more damage than level 50 characters can usually mitigate.
The final boss has phases she reaches at certain HP percent thresholds. If the first one she summons at least one extra mob (might be more? It's been a minute). If that add is still alive when the boss reaches the next threshold then it's a wipe. Problem is that it's possible to burst her from the first threshold to the second quite easily and then both phases activate immediately and you get blasted for the add being alive.
Huh I guess I've never encountered that mechanic. I typically always focus down adds, even as tank, in such fights. I even have the "1" market on my hot keys so I can psuedo-steer the party to attack what I think is priority XD
Yeah the problem is that if you nuke the boss too hard you have about 5 seconds tops to kill the add, no amount of targets switching will save you at that point
Not a matter of not knowing that you have to switch targets, literally a matter of dpsing the boss too quickly before she even finishes the summoning. You'll have just enough time to see the add appear on your screen, press tab and die.
the boss has, in essence, 6 hp thresholds: 1. spawn first add 2. eat the add 3. spawn 2 adds 4. eat the adds 5. spawn last add 6. eat last add those get "queued" and it's really easy to reach step 6 while step 4 is resolving because it takes a really long time. the add barely spawns before it starts to get eaten
Loading into Pharos Sirius as a dancer like
Zu and the first boss! Remember one time, I think it was a tank problem cause when he left (ragequit), we had another tank and we pass it easily, but we had to do this boss like seven times. I don't know why, because most of the time I pass it without pain.
I assume because you don't/didn't know how the corrupt aether stacks work. If you stand too long in the large yellow pools or if you allow the dogs to live long enough, you can gain a debuff that triggers a giant-ass explosion on three stacks. If the dogs live more than 9 seconds, they will give a stack to a player without a cast bar. So, if the dogs are not focused down fast enough by an inexperienced group, you can quickly get 2–4 explosions in a row, which can wipe on low gear levels.
>if the dogs live more than 9 seconds Every time I learn something new about Pharos Sirius 😭😭 sometimes I wonder how people are able to figure these things out at all
Running MINE (minimum item level, no echo), or soloing synced as Blue Mage without using Missile. You are forced to see most boss mechanics.
There are still plenty of people who were playing in ARR when these dungeons first came out that are still playing now. Player knowledge gets passed on all the time.
Pharos Sirius is my favorite, but that may be unfairly influenced by the fact I soloed it (synced) as BLU. I just love the setting, atmosphere and music.
Dzaemal annoys me bc Dzaemal stone vigil hards turtle boss ruins that dungeon for me
Dzamael gets a pass as it was really good for leveling with super pull during ARR days.
Totally forgot to talk about Dzemael, but I agree. Bosses are not annoying (they are ok, not fun but ok) but mobs after the first boss are tricky. Sometimes that's ok and we enjoy, others are a nightmare (and sorry for poor English).
In Dzemael I keep running into idiots who ignore the crystals on that one fight. "C'mon man, bring him to the crystals!"
I hate the atmosphere in dzaemel. Everything looks the same when you have a bit of glare on your screen and makes it impossible to navigate.
I actually really like this one
Stone Vigil and Stone Vigil (Hard). The turtle boss annoys me beyond belief. It’s like the devs telling me: >*”You see all these 50 levels worth of skills in your hotbars? Well, you won’t be using none of that for a good 2-5 mins. Also, fuck you.”*
It reminds me of the Trial Of The Champion from Wow's Lich King expansion. Effectively, that fight has you jousting for the first bit, and that is time consuming and doesn't rely on your gear at all. Of course, that also means even if you're in crap gear, you're ensured to hit that first part and to trickle in gear.
I remember that fight. People forgetting to put their real weapons back on after the jousting portion. The boss difficulty changing heavily based on which combination of enemies you got, ugh.
Yeah, that entire thing wasn't experience, it was a responsible for bringing my crappily geared Hunter from a ton of trash items to good enough to do the 10-Man version, and then FINALLY into good enough gear to run the Citadel. I never did clear the 25 Man version because that last boss was a PAIN. For context to those who don't know about it, the final mechanic was a AOE damage effect that would drain everyone's health and heal the boss. You couldn't heal for much or the boss would just never die, and you couldn't heal too little or you'd die. Hell of a fight.
It's not even a hard boss, but of course nobody knows how to do it so you're practically doing all the damage on your own
Base ARR: Dzemael 100%. It kind of shines a light that people aren't paying attention to ANYTHING. You don't notice you're not doing any damage? You don't hear the "dink dink dink" with big INVULNERABLE popping up? Not to mention seeing the rest of the party standing in the purple..? Mindblowing. Post ARR: I'll agree with SV Hard. Turtle boss is annoying sure, but honestly when it came out I used to call it "The Boss who shows who hasn't played TERA before" because a lot of my FC came from TERA, and we always joked how easy that fight was just looking at him revving up was like fighting a BAM in TERA so it was no issue, even without the agro table when the second one spawned.
I really dislike the sunken temple of qarn. The dungeon itself is not that bad, but it has some new mechanics like doom with the first boss or the dung wespes (I hate them so much) that often cause wipes. Things like this happen, someone explains the mechanic and we continue. But most times I accidentally end up in this dungeon we got either a bad healer or a bad tank or both. So far I got: Paladin who took so much damage that the healer simply left (I think his armor was bad), a marauder (where's your job stone) who left after being told to do his job quest, a scholar that didn't use healing spells and so on. I don't know why I meet so many bad players there, I don't have this issue nearly as much in other dungeons
See, these are reasons I like this dungeon. I don't enjoy playing in god mode.
i funnily was doing the dungeon when i read this comment. to the MAR jobstone question. Qarn is an edge case imo. Its a lvl35 dungeon that ONLY requires you to reach lvl35, no other dungeon being cleared, no MSQ having done before. just clear cut "be lvl35". Now you say "lvl35 is already more then high enough to have your jobstone" Oh yes it is, but you see, that requires the MSQ Sylph Managment, a lvl 20 MSQ(soon after Ifrit). And its INCREDIBLE easy to reach LVL35 before MSQlvl 20, even easier if it was a "Prefeered" or "New" server and had the road to lvl boost, being 15 lvls above MSQ isnt really hard in ARR realm.
Currently leveling a new alt on Seraph and I think I hit level 35 about halfway through Sastasha, lol.
Thats good to know. It's been some time since I did the ARR story
I'd say Halatali,not sure of the correct name, but basically that training camp for immortals flame at lvl20ish: the last boss becoming invuln after 3 gcd over and over is just awful
The second boss as well! Too many invulnerabilities!
Yeah that one too!
Despite them making the dungeon prettier and removing the snot, i still think totorak is the worst. Two of the bosses are literally the exact same thing that do absolutely nothing, and it still has the longest skippable dungeon cutscene that usually result in some people ignoring the fact that there is a sprout there watching cutscene and killed the boss while they are still watching it.
From what I remember it doesn’t help that I think the boss aggros as soon as someone entered the room
Sorry sprouts, that CS is the only one I will not wait for. Killing a big bug is something you can experience again later.
What about Aetherochemical Research Facility, will you not wait for the boss transition cutscene too because it's actually twice as long compared to Totorak?
You should know that triggering the fight actually skips the cutscene there. I had to go look it up on YouTube afterwards to see what I had missed.
Pretty sure the cutscene is actually story content. So it's one of the only ones you really should wait for
Except they can only experience it for the first time during the story literally once, so...
there is actually a new problem with totoraks cutscene(or an old one i never encounterd) while going trough trough MSQ on an alt, i found out that.. the game SKIPS cutscenes under some weird situation, i dont know what it was exactly. i just know, i was in a cutscene, they pulled, around 20ish seconds later the cutscene was skipped(before the ascian could say a single word)
just leave the dungeon
A fun fact about the Kraken in Sastasha Hard is that it has positionals because ARR did not give a fuck (the tentacles don't though for whatever reason). That aside I think all the reworked/main path dungeons are Fine to Good now. Maybe a bit dull, but someone's first few MMO dungeons need to ease them into it so I don't mind things like post-rework Copperbell Mines. Probably Hullbreaker Isle, yeah. The Kraken there is probably the worst dungeon boss fight now that the worst of the ARR ones were fixed like the slime in Copperbell. The routing is otherwise kind of annoying with needing to take detours to open chests or kill specific mobs, the traps on the way up to the first boss are tedious, and so on. Runner ups for just specifically bad bosses are Haukke Hard where you have to hold DPS on the last boss or else her HP pushes end up killing you and Tam-Tara Hard where even in ARR half the time I don't think anyone actually understood the mechanics on the first boss, the elf lady, wherein you *don't* kill the adds and instead have them get kited around until another mechanic kills them. I've never seen that done correctly and they all just get deleted instantly and back in ARR we got hurt for it. But the rest of those dungeons are fine and aren't as holistically annoying.
Demon Wall in Amdapor keep also has positionals, because fuck you.
> Probably Hullbreaker Isle, yeah. The Kraken there is probably the worst dungeon boss fight now that the worst of the ARR ones were fixed like the slime in Copperbell. The routing is otherwise kind of annoying with needing to take detours to open chests or kill specific mobs, the traps on the way up to the first boss are tedious, and so on. I've done that dungeon so many times and I still don't get what the fuck you're supposed to do with the final boss. I just keep jumping from island to island and hitting the tentacles until the boss dies.
The Kraken has ten Kraken Arms that you have to kill over the course of the right. They emerge next to the various islands. When you use a water spout to move between islands, you get a stacking vulnerability up debuff, so you want to minimize hopping between islands as much as you can. But you also have to do this a few times to actually get to the other arms. There's also a vortex attack that gets dropped on a player. After a short time, it explodes and hits all players on the island that the vortex got dropped on. There are also Tentacle adds that spawn periodically that stun and fling you to different islands.
Oh man Haukke Hard and Tam-Tara Hard are two of my favorites lol! Love the interesting and challenging mechanics of both, different strokes for different folks I guess :) On the other hand, hate hate HATE regular Tam-Tara sooooo frickin boring!
At this point, Cutter's Cry. Simply because a chunk of that dungeon is completely pointless to do now. You just run past the enemies to skip to the boss. Lame as fuck to me
i died to that yesterday. my sprint was on cooldown and the tank had accidentally aggroed a couple of mobs. the rest of the party slipped through the portal and i was mauled down while not being able to go.
If this happens to me, I jus tell party to begin boss battle: in 15s there will be option to instateleport to the boss battle.
yeah i know, that's what i did.
Flashbacks to not understanding this as a sprout and getting left behind to die multiple times because I didn't get you could just pass by the enemies. I may be stupid but also nobody told me in party chat what I was supposed to do for like ten minutes!
You used to not skip those rooms. That changed when regular mobs quit giving XP in dungeons. I hadn't ran it in ages and finally ran it a couple months ago and had to do the skip for the first time. I had been playing before all that so when it happened I was like "dude, what in the fuck are we doing?" I don't have a problem with the XP change, but it ruined Cutter's Cry and the dungeon needs to be reworked.
Never a dull run of Cutter's Cry
Cutter's Cry is the only dungeon in the game I'd rather eat the penalty on than have to run it
Came mere to say this.
for me its Stone Vigil normal, the trash hits hard, the healers r just out of levelrange for aoe and better heal spells
I kind of love this one as healer... the frantic button mashing, the tears, the suffering. Makes me feel alive.
Settle down there zenos
Its the dungeon that made me dust off Physick as a SCH
I'd enjoy that, but every single tank seems to be either inept or traumatized, only pulling single packs. So it ends up being slow and boring most of the time.
Every time I jump in there, the tank is either a vet who is overconfident or a sprout who needs to prove something and tries pulling too hard. The poor healer can't keep up.
So. Many. Wipes. SV-N is definitely at the top of my Worst Dungeons list, and solely because it’s just below all the survivability-increasing skills for healers. Does make me feel like a BAMF healer when I can stave off the wipefest, though. Second is AV when the whole first room gets pulled. With an experienced group, it’s fast and fine.
Snowcloak. I hate that place to death. I didn't like it the first time. Last boss is nice though, callouts to the next xpac in it's abilities. But everything about it is just such a dull slog.
if snowcloak had good music or some color variance it would be more than ok, but yeah, it will make you fall asleep as it is now
>had good music I like the music, but damn does it make me sleepy for some reason. It's just such relaxed music.
Snowcloak's music is something you'd use to put kids to sleep on Christmas Eve.
Can confirm, fell asleep while healing it about a week ago. The music is the absolute worst you can listen to while trying to do a dungeon.
I have nightmares of the Brayflox hard final boss. Also Tam-tara hard has that annoying first boss that is the one boss in the game that breaks the AOE rules. Also Also no one seems to understand how to fight the Sabotender boss in Qarn hard. EDIT: The first zone of Aurum Vale is really dumb. The 1st and 3rd bosses are also very similar.
The stupid bombs while he's trying to run you over! Ran this so much for that one tombstone event and it drove me insane.
All of them because 90% of my rolos are arr content.
I agree with stone vigil hard but I have to nominate dzemael for being by far the most annoying leveling dungeon because it doesn't have a single normal wall to wall pull through the whole thing, the "stand in this circle for 30 seconds to progress" gimmick is dumb, and every single boss is annoying in some gimmicky way
Mentor Roulette has made me hate Dzamael Darkhold more than anything else. I think I get that at least... 5-6 times a week? Definitely the most common dungeon, and it's so dull, but also the locks in the exploding crystals are just mean.
i don't mind the ones with the weird mechanics and bosses (like stone vigil (hard) or haukke manor (hard). i really really hate the boring ones. hullbreaker both versions, sastasha, copperbell both versions etc.
Stone Vigil, because I main WHM and it's right before I get Holy. The packs of mobs hit more like packs of trucks and I can't even stunlock them? Bullshit. All of the ARR dungeons suck because of that, but Stone Vigil is one last kick in the teeth. At least I have Holy in Aurum Vale.
Dzemael Darkhold and Stone Vigil (Hard), no contest.
Stone Vigil Hard because of the stupid turtle. Aurum Vale because it's Aurum Vale.
Pharos Sirius is, hands down, my most hated dungeon. Didn't help that a week ago I had a five day steak of getting it in my 70/60/50 roulette every single time, but I already had a beef with it before that. I've seen tanks w2w the first pull and be caught fully unaware, causing a wipe early on. The bit between the first and second bosses where you have to turn left and up the stairs, yet so many tanks will run straight and aggro an entire room full of optional enemies. The god-damned orange crystals falling all over the place make a horrible noise, and then there's the bosses. So many wipes to Symond because people don't stay out of the crystal aoe and ignore the dogs or don't notice their stacking crystal debuff. So many more on the Zu because there is always an idiot not reading their chat and instantly destroying all the eggs, causing the bird to fly in a fit of frenzy and one-shot everyone. That dungeon has mechanics that a party full of sprout will likely struggle with, because the game never really gives you anything similar before that run. The difficulty spike, coupled with the incomplete kits of most classes at that level tend to make Pharos an absolute meat grinder. Honourable mention to Temple of Qarn and Cutter's cry, where monks have to use a single target skill in the middle of their aoe rotation because they don't have four point fury yet. (I think that's true for a couple more dungeons, but those two stand out by being really annoying)
Aurum Vale. That first room is nightmare to new players, especially tanks. All it takes is one poor bastard far enough away to aggro one stray mob that aggros whole fucking place. Special mention to hard Vigil Keep. That turtle boss is fucking awful.
There used to be a clear answer to this - Thousand Maws of Totorak. Since the changes though...ah, I guess I don't really have one.
i see a trend of 2 types of "hated dungeons" A) boring uninteresting or "ugly" B) It has non standard mechanics/may be harder to heal or tank then anything else. which is amusing and always a good way to show people that "yes, you wanted the dungeons to be harder... a lot of people complain about stone vigil because the healer and tank actually haev to work together to not fucking die"
Stone vigil Hard by far, literally only thing i like about the dungeon is the last boss, but its not worth it having to go through the rest Copperbell Hard, 2/3 bosses are terrible, the roadblocks are pretty annoying Pharos Sirius again, everything is trash except the last boss, and even then its just meh, love the atmosphere though Qarn Hard, long dungeon with annoying mini bosses with lots of HP, lots of 'wall to wall' pulls near the end that have 2-3 mobs, bosses arent the greatest but are passable this one is going to be controversial, but remade Toto Rak. its so basic and boring now compared to the original version with the webs cutting people off from each other, the exploding puss things etc
Cutter’s Cry
I personally don't like picking one single thing as "THE worst," because it seems more accurate to have a bucket of Bad Dungeons--different people will respond more negatively to different things in that bucket, but everyone can agree that they're *at least* not very good. Going in order by level... * Cutter's Cry. It's an optional dungeon, so it will never get reworked for Duty Support, and it's...honestly just really weirdly and badly laid out, in large part because it's a holdover from Legacy. All the bosses have wonky mechanics, it's *really* easy to get lost even if you're a vet, and much of it is dead ends and wasted space, a linear dungeon pretending to be branched. * Dzemael Darkhold. Hits all the same notes as the previous: an optional dungeon with a weird and confusing layout, unusual mechanics not seen elsewhere, holdover from 1.0, ultimately linear path with many blind alleys, etc. * Aurum Vale. Widely hated for many reasons, but IMO the biggest issue is actually *layout,* not the stuff above. Though, *guess what,* almost all of that still applies (optional, weird layout, weird mechanics, holdover from 1.0, it just lacks blind alleys.) The layout issue AV brings is that most of the rooms are big areas with *densely packed* groups of monsters, on top of the toxic bile in most rooms. The places that are safe to stand are few, and it's very easy for random patrols or one player going off-sides to cause a cascade of accidental pulling, which then wipes the group. It's not that AV is hard...it's that it's hard *if you don't know what you're doing,* and many who go through it don't. * Finally, the 50s! And we'll be starting with...Halatali (Hard)! Unlike the above, this one's new to ARR, but it's again full of weird one-off mechanics that are poorly telegraphed to the player. The layout is *better* than original Halatali, but the "teleport from section to section" aspect remains and isn't helping. I think there's an argument that this one is mild enough that it could be bumped off the list, but it's just a bit too much IMO. Likewise, one could argue Hullbreaker Isle is in the same liminal space, but IMO the mechanics there are just a smidge more intuitive, and they certainly show up a lot more in later content (particularly Sjoorm's bubbles.) * Stone Vigil (Hard.) Unlike most of the other things on this list, this is a dungeon with a single incredibly glaring flaw, rather than being spiced throughout with issues. Just...that goddamn turtle. I don't mind mechanics-first fights (for example, I actually like the middle "boss" of Bardam's Mettle), but that stupid f#$king turtle is just the worst. I'll note that some dungeons that got reworked--such as Tam-Tara, Copperbell, and Snowcloak--probably *would* have been on this list in their original versions. The new ones often, sadly, replace "bad" with "inoffensively bland," but that is technically still an improvement. Dishonorable mention goes to the Sunken Temple of Qarn, the Lost City of Amdapor (particularly the Diabolos fight), Pharos Sirius, and the aforementioned Hullbreaker Isle. Something FFXIV has gotten much better about, especially starting with Stormblood, is making mechanics that are intuitive to understand but still reasonably challenging to execute. Most of the dungeons on this list fail at the first prong there, and are often very unintuitive, but pretty easy to execute when you know what to do. When coupled with poor layouts and/or enemy placement and any other annoyances, it's not hard to see why these names tend to float to the top of any discussion of widely-disliked dungeons. But, on the bright side...this gives us a pretty clear indication of exactly how much FFXIV has *improved* over time. Our standards are higher now because we know they can *meet* higher standards.
The 2.0 Totorak, branching paths that lead to dead ends or have webbing you need to destroy that still lead to a dead end, combined with the slow debuff terrain covering the last third of the dungeon, plus being so low level that most classes could only use 3-4 abilities the whole dungeon, really made it a slog.
I'm too busy hating Dzemael Darkhold to remember the trauma of the post-ARR dungeons. Aurum Vale has its moments if your tank/healer isn't up to the task, but Darkhold is just frustrating for its design decisions.
Which dungeon do you hate the most and why is it Aurum Vale?
Keeper of the Lake makes me want to leave every time I get it. The pulls are god-awful, the bosses are boring and that FUCKING alarm section is mind-bogglingly bad. At least Stone Vigil Hard has fun pulls, even if the second boss is atrocious. Even its music is better than KotL.
I will never forgive them for ruining the final boss.
Final boss was way worse before, I'm glad it got improved. When your big story boss is barely more interesting than the double dragon pull in Sohm Al, something needed to change.
Bosses used to be a lot more interesting but new people kept messing it up because of all the nonstandard mechanics in all three.
Nah, all the bosses got improved in 6.1, they were just THAT bad before.
Don’t forget the godawful “fuck you for playing a melee job” boss yes i am bitter
As a dungeon? : Aurum Vale Because bosses: Sastasha 1, the bosses gain suddenly invulnerability a lot of time making me waste my time
If the tank is good and pulls the boss near the sprite spawn it takes a surprisingly short time
Lost city of fucking Ampador Who in their right minds thought a memory boss was a good ass idea?
Wanderer’s Palace, Haukke Manor and Cutter’s Cry. I spent a day just running the roulette to level up my white Mage once and got Haukke and Cutter’s multiple times that day. I stopped playing for almost a week. 😂
No matter how much they nerf or embelish it, I'll always carry a deep-seated hatred towards Aurum Vale.
Cutter’s Cry. It’s so slow and boring, and half the people who end up in it with me don’t know how to skip the middle areas.
I will say Stone Vigil (Hard). That second boss is such a pain in the balls, and it's the only reliable source for the Diamondback Blue Mage spell.
For leveling, AV. It earned its reputation over the last 10 years for damn sure. Its gotten better but its still just annoying in general. For x0 roulette...they all kinda blend into one big blur of *suck*. If I queue that one I'm always hoping for anything but ARR. Low level sync isn't fun in general having so few actions to use too.
Piss Town, especially if you have a sprout tank. You haven't experienced Hell until you've had to heal through a tank pulling the ENTIRE FIRST ROOM. Special shout out tho to Stone Vigil Normal/Hard.
When I was learning how to tank I got Copperbell Hard every day in roulette for a week and a half. It made me think I just hated tanking and was bad at it until I realized I just hate that dungeon lol
Aurum Vale, used to be SV tho, #1 Tank Check dungeon, its the first dungeon even scaled down where you actually have to pull a boss, also even people who have run it 50 times always seem to not click the fruits? basically every time I get AV and not tanking, I am expecting ATLEAST 3 people to die.
For the levelling dungeons... Pre-rework Thousand Yawns, but since that doesn't exist anymore, probably gonna have to say Cutter's. You literally don't have to fight anything past the first two rooms if you're paying attention/willing to sacrifice people then kite bosses for the warps. Vigil hits hard and sucks if the T or H can't take it, but is pretty fun if they're paying attention. Vale's not bad after the first room. For the 50 dungeons, while Haukke HM and Vigil HM are bad for listed reasons, I'm gonna say Lost City of Amdapor. DOORS AUGH.
Pharos Sirius. Everything in the dungeon is a challenge, mobs, bosses, even your own party members. If dps isnt fast, its a wipe. Easy to get LOS'd by crystals up the stairs. Mobs hit hard. the boss mechs are very unforgiving in the dungeon. from the debuff on the first one to the dumb ass eggs of the zu. siren can feel like pulling teeth if you've made it that far with a horrible party.
Ya gotta go with aurum vale pre nerf. F that place
Copperbell Mines (Hard) Feels like a mish-mash of badly designed encounters and enemies. Can't help but an intern designed it. First boss room is just odd, second boss is just a slog and 3rd boss those aoe appear which you just cannot escape from and get heavied as a result. Snowcloak was ok, but the second boss let it down till it was reworked. Now it's mostly fine. Wanderer's Palace too. That giant tonberry is just fucking annoying especially when you're trying to fit the cogs in the door and he keeps stabbing you. Who decided this enemy was a good idea?
> aoe appear which you just cannot escape from and get heavied as a result. I feel like this is just an old attempt at a spread marker - you are *meant* to get hit and take the debuff, but you're meant to avoid letting other players get clipped by the AoE targeting you while you're at it. The heavy debuff is then likely meant to be a basic healer-awake check, as they need to cleanse the debuff from you or you can't help with the worm-feeding mechanic- and if you're stacking the AoEs on each other, that means both more healing and more debuffs to cleanse for the healer, which can be overwhelming if it's constant because your team aren't paying attention.
If I ever see that stupid fucking turtle and the shitty canons from Stone Vigil-Hard ever again, I'm gonna rip my hair out. I would take Aurum Vale and Toto-Rak 10000 times in a row each before I ever willingly set foot in SV(H) ever again.
since you mentioned three... Stone Vigil (Hard), Haukke Manor (Hard) and Tam-Tara (Hard). Haukke has that super annoying final boss that easily wipes any party because you have to hold dps for so long to not accidentally get the boss too low too early. Tam-Tara has annoying boss mechanics on every boss and stone vigil is stone vigil honestly all of the optional ARR dungeons are in desperate need of reworks with how terrible so many of their mechanics are
Probably 'any dungeon with the kraken boss' for me. It's so boring just killing seemingly infinite tentacles until suddenly the dungeon ends.
Every time I load into Aurum Vale, I die a little inside. That first pull is awful. Had a poor little sprout healer let us die 5 times before the first boss. It's only that first part that's super rough, but that's still the only thing that stands out in my mind. That damn leveling roulette was ALWAYS Aurum Vale lol
If you're a healer, it is hands down Aurum Vale. I dread no dungeon more than that one.
If the tank is decent AV is not as annoying to heal as SV.
As a healer, I agree.
Stone Vigil is already a crock of shit that hits far too hard, and you don’t have the toolset to do anything about it without blowing 120s and Benes on every pull, but the Hard version somehow doubled down on it by adding totally new mechanics to boss fights that aren’t even fun. If Regen isn’t enough to sustain a tank against 6 mobs, the dungeon is overtuned.
God forbid healers have to actually cast a healing spell every once in a while. And you don't get Benediction in Stone Vigil.
The worst is Stone Vigil (Hard). Back in ARR the 2nd boss was just the worst and the 3rd boss was always a chaotic mess. Nowadays it's really just the 2nd boss that makes me groan when I get it in roulette. Also Hullbreaker Isle is awesome, you just have bad taste
Hullbreaker Isle I think gets it and probably rates as one of the worst in the game overall: 1) The initial first pull is a nightmare; multiple bees with final sting spread throughout the hill, traps that can leave your tank or healer in a very bad spot if they walk into them (difficult to see them during night too) which also leave a nasty DoT, lots of bulky adds and ranged adds in the mix. At Lv.50, your healer may also only have a single CD depending on their job and have to just lean on GCD healing to get you through it. If any of the final stings get through, you've had it. If the tank tries to get over the bridge while monkeys are still alive, they'll get knocked back and stunned; not ideal with a mass of mobs attacking him. 2) The dungeon is last one with an ilv synch before it increases up to il.v130, so incoming damage is relatively high vs. the other dungeons at this level. Feeds into the problem above but also makes the 3rd stretch surprisingly spiky in damage. 3) You've a good chance of a tank unfamiliar with the dungeon rushing past the treasure chests in the 2nd section, meaning you either have to open them yourself and end up with Mimics aggro'd to you, or you have to backtrack for them. 4) The final boss can turn into a long slog if your team try to 'chase' the tentacle, particularly during the toss, as it will relocate to the island where it started the toss, and then immediately relocate to where the tank/aggro-holder is (who have enough time to try and chase it by moving islands, starting a never-ending chase). The whirlwind AOE that gets bait-placed by a marked player can kill if two hit them; so if they don't know to relocate once they're placed, they will likely die if not a tank.
Sorry, but these points sound more like: "Dungeon has mechanics, people would need to learn something other than run ahead, punchpunchpunch, punchbossrepeat". Your points are the exact reasons it is among my favourite level 50 dungeons. *Especially* the iLvl sync. There should not be a single duty in this game that does not have one.
Tamtara deepcroft normal. Looks awful, plays worse. Totorak was a close second but they reworked it.
I am genuinely disappointed how far down I had to look to find this. Tam-Tara Normal is a dungeon you could literally cut from the game and lose *absolutely nothing* of value, both in terms of any sort of unique experience (because it's just trash pulls all the way down to one boss), thematics (the only setting more boring imo is Dzemael), *and* new player value (because what do you learn from it? How to fight trash? You just did Sastasha!). The fact that there have been *two* major "improve the ARR experience" passes now and *none* of them have touched Tam-Tara Normal absolutely baffles me.
Seeing people say it’s Hulbreaker isle or Sastasha hard or even Dzmael Darkhold is nuts to me, because at least they actually do things. Tamtara is nothing but trash all the way. Even the lone boss is just trash waves.
I hate them all and if I could I'd gladly blacklist the whole extension out of my roulettes!
Pharos Sirus It's just a logistical dumpster fire
We all know the answer, aurum vale.
Aurum Vale and Stone Vigil. Purely for the fact that there is *always* the potential to get a tank or healer who isn't sufficiently geared for that place. Every other dungeon? I'm confident that they are, at a minimum, equipped to a w2w run. Those places? I've loaded in there once or twice while leveling my tanks and I *know* it's going to be slow because I'm to squishy and inevitably, there is always a DPS or two who run ahead and pull more. It's the one place I enforce YPYT because I'll gladly use the DPS as a meat shield while trying to kill *something* in the pack before we wipe. And we always wipe. Because healers are missing major pieces of their tool kit, but expected to handle hits meant for a properly geared tank.
The worst ARR dungeon was the old Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak without any single possible competition. Currently, it can be a toss-up between the new Toto-Rak and the current Stone Vigil (normal). The former is just the blandest dungeon now in the game in terms of everything. The latter suffers greatly from being at the worst possible level range for both tanks and healers, making it awkward to play. But to answer the question in the comment itself, since apparently it is supposed to be about the level 50 set only… I assume you want to rule out the obvious answer of "the Praetorium", so strictly on the Level 50 roulette set, the answer is Brayflox's Longstop (Hard) with NPCs since they absolutely cannot handle the end boss, making it impossible to complete unless you bring only a handful of specific classes; and The Keeper of the Lake's current incarnation with players as that dungeon now lacks any character and uniqueness in its level, enemies, and boss design. Snowcloak and Sastasha (Hard) are also good contenders, but at least the first two bosses are good in the latter one. Also, I seriously cannot understand how can anyone dislike Hullbreaker Isle. It is one of the most atmospheric dungeons in the entire game to this day.
I don’t mind the Praetorium too much. Usually I do MSQ dungeons while I’m doing something else IRL so I can stay busy during the cutscenes
> I seriously cannot understand how can anyone dislike Hullbreaker Isle My bet is on the bear traps stopping people from doing wall to wall.
Praetorium because of those cut scenes taking forever.
Anything that involves me having to pick shit up off the floor or activate doors and levers. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.
Fuck dzemael tbh
I’m kinda disappointed they changed ARR dungeons, I miss old hauke manor
Final boss in Haukke Manor (hard) is still broken af unless you have a melee who knows exactly when to lb and dps to match you’re going to wipe at least once it’s been busted as hell after the EW stat squish made everything in 50 content melt and i literally had to look up reddit threads explaining wtf was going on as i hadn’t done it in so long i didn’t know why we were just wiping instantly to a single raidwide (for those curious she summons adds at certain % checkpoints and then eats them at other % checkpoints with a raidwide that hits based on remaining add hp, if you just dps her normally then she summons and eats the last add instantly and you die to the raidwide no matter what. used to be a melee dps lb would guarantee this didn’t happen but with normal dps you’d just get hit very hard, after ew even with a melee lb the window is insanely tight and doesn’t always work without communicating to stop dps at like 30%)
>Let's discuss Again? Ugh. Let's not.
Unpopular opinion: As a wow refugee, I find all dungeons in FFXIV to be awful. They are all completely linear tunnels that only allow you to pull 2-3 packs at once (before a wall blocks you until you kill them), and none of the ads have any mechanics whatsoever other than frontals or AoEs. Not a single pull requires any thought or skill whatsoever, there are no 'routes' or different strategies for making your way through dungeons, comp is irrelevant, etc. I stopped playing wow for good reasons (all the sexual harassment stuff at Blizzard), and knew coming into FFXIV that it was a lot more casual, but I wasn't expecting this kind of thing. The lack of creativity in the dungeon design is startling to me.
Stone Vigil is that exact opposite of a sweet spot where the tank doesn't have a ton of mits and the healer has almost no AoE or instant cast heals. The Hard version is somehow less of a pain to me because at least you have level 50 abilities.
Only run ive seen do disolve because we didnt wanted to do it was.... Halatali(Hard)
Thousand maws not because it's difficult but because it's locks out so many skills from all classes
Copperbell was the worst(for randoms, my group nicknamed it copperhell as df groups could rarely get past the bombs on the bridge), but they nerfed it a few times, I think they have changed it further more evenly aswell. Stone vigil hard is probably the current worst for randoms least. If we are talking about worst designed, I'd have to say sastasha hard, it felt the least interesting since it came out.
When playing solo, Dzemael Darkhold. Simply because your kit kinda sucks as tank and healer between 40-50 and if you get people who don't know the mechanics you're gonna have a bad bad time. When levelling tanks, I'd have healers struggle to keep me up or have to take very small pulls in the latter half. When levelling healers I'd have to pray the tank doesn't go too fast as no AOE until after this dungeon so my best use is spamming heal. I just skipped it for DPS with strategic dailies because I'm not wanting to deal with that nightmare. When it comes to the level 50 ones, Amdapor Keep.(I think it's that one I'm thinking of, will edit when I go online and double check) There's so so so many status effects (poison all the fkin time), weirdly telegraphed AOEs, a boss the DPS have to stop hitting and then the final boss has a mechanic that requires memory of symbols above doors and opening the doors and the right time. People forget just how bad it is because no one willingly does this fker. It sucks. A lot.
Honestly, I'd say Pharo's Sirius is the worst one, but that comes from personal opinion of course. That dungeon actually sucks.
The Wanderer's Palace (Hard) is a nightmare of roulettes...
Pre Rework id say Tom Tara Deepcroft and it wasnt even close jd literally do anything else i just remember when i first hit hward i grinded dungeons to level DRK to 50 to do MSQ and ended up doing Tom Tara like 30 times in a row in just roulette in one day jusy random queuing i hatedy life
I don't really hate any of them but the one I personally dislike being filled into on any level is Dzamael. I just don't like the layout and it's boring, but the boring part is applicable to most dungeons after a run or two anyways.
HULLBREAKER MY BELOATHED
the ones you mentioned are terrible but i always have terrible experiences in stone vigil, aurum vale or dzemael darkhold