I play this game a lot. I have 8 chars and consider myself to be semi-hardcore. My main is at 1396 and most of my alts are in t3 (I enjoy playing all of them… except one). To be fully transparent, yes I have spent about $100 on this game (bronze + vanquisher + 2 char slots).
When doing my alts’ dailies, I find that guardian raids take up quite a big portion of time and are quite tedious especially in t1/t2. I’d like to suggest some possible improvements to the system.
Flares / Map size
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I feel like this flare system doesn’t work that well with the game. I understand some people like the Monster Hunter vibe it gives off and that in Korea, they have a set system for these things (party no 1 flares). However, in my opinion this item is not really needed. Just let us fight the boss immediately without spending 5 mins walking around (looking at you Foggy Ridge)
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Perhaps the maps could be made shorter or every raid would just show where the boss is forever. To be honest though, I would prefer the FF14 style of boss fights where you’re able to engage the boss immediately upon entering the instance. A good middle ground would probably be to just use the short map for every guardian.
HP Bar
- I’ve seen this discussed a lot especially at the beginning, please add a toggle to show HP when the player prefers it. This does not make the boss fight harder or easier imo, just a QoL.
Stagger Bar / Weakpoint Bar
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How many times have you seen people run away from Helgaia during the stagger check? Most pugs do, especially if it is their first time. Some of the guardians have really unintuitive stagger check animations. It would help to add a bar during said check so that people actually know what to do. This is really useful to have in T1 and T2 guardians
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As for the weakpoint bar, this is something I’d like to see. All I see is the word “Destruction” and I’m not really sure how much stronger weak point lvl 1,2,3 are compared to each other. Showing a bar while the boss is “weakpoint-able” would be great.
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For people who might say, “This makes the boss way easier stop the nerfs”. It doesn’t make it easier. Giving the player knowledge on what to do the first time they encounter a mechanic does not make it any easier. People can still fail the checks just as easily. The point of these guardian raids is to help people learn mechanics for harder fights.
Counter Window
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I’d like to see these change for T1 / T2 guardians specifically. Please increase the window where a boss is counterable and increase the time the boss is downed. Now after doing the T3 guardians a lot, I find that I’m way better at countering. But I rarely ever see people go for counters on the lower level guardians.
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This will help beginners feel the adrenaline that countering a boss gives. It will train people to go for more counters.
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Another thing is the “Crushing Fist” engraving. I know there are a lot of useless engravings out there but this one is relevant to counters. It gives 20% atk power on counter and the countered boss takes a measly 8% damage increase for 3s. Perhaps buffing this engraving will make people want to counter more as well =)
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This isn’t as important but while a boss is color red (like Vertus) the blue counter animation becomes purple and is quite inconsistent. It will definitely make new players question if they should go for a counter while purple.
1 Guardian Harvest
- Please allow us the option to 2x harvest on a single guardian. For all my alts, I only do 1 guardian raid anyway and its at 75% efficiency (which I don’t mind) but it would just make it easier if there was an option to consume your 2 souls for the day on one guardian.
I think this pretty much wraps it up. All I want is to help players become better at this by allowing them to train on weaker guardians. Better playerbase = faster bosses. I think these suggestions will help players clear the boss faster and make the guardian raids just a bit less tedious.
I had a blast doing the Event Guardians so far. Maybe the stagger / weakpoint reward mechanic (to a lesser extent ofc) can also be integrated into the normal guardians?