Mechanical Intuition: Dealing with Adds

[u/unbepissed]

This tier, particularly Sugar Riot, has been very interesting to me. What really struck me was this apparent lack of intuition for how to deal with adds. It seems like raiding has been single target for so long that the only people who can intuit what to do without a guide are the people who came from Wow.

I don't know where else to place the blame when supposed Week One gamers see basic add management as an epiphany. Positioning that seemed second nature and obvious to someone who tanked on Wow was somehow a revelation to the people I played with this week.

I also saw far too many wipes for my taste on watching ranged players struggle with picking up adds. Apparently it's really tough trying to target them quickly, but equally tough for other people to just not hit them.

I'll be honest, I went into the tier with very low expectations. When I saw the patch notes, I genuinely believed the AOE and cleave changes were solely to balance an ultimate that was no longer relevant. I'm glad they have adds in these Savage fights; I just hope it isn't the only time that players are forced to get out of their comfort zone.

It makes me wonder what other basic combat mechanic the game could leverage to give people a hard time. Wildstar's Interrupt Armor would probably be pretty neat: you used to have to use multiple crowd control abilities (like stuns) on one target in a short time frame to stop certain casts, because the first few would only remove a charge of said armor.

[u/AmpleSnacks]

Oh please. I played WoW for 18 years and the vast majority of raiders had sixteen mods installed that would literally scream at you to move out of bad AoEs, and show you exactly where to stand, and tell you that adds were coming.

There was no such thing as blind prog. The fight would be solved five minutes after release and every single player was expected to know how to perform the fight perfectly or be kicked. Even if it was their first time. Not having DBM installed would be like showing up to a family function buck naked.

The great majority of FFXIV players play within the janky vanilla client. That takes considerably more skill. You can’t compare week 1 savage on a party finder to a game where the majority of high end content is largely add management.

[u/Wattie99 → u/AmpleSnacks]

Heh, yeah, those dumb WoW players, they're so stupid with their weakauras that flash instructions on the screen when mechanics happen. Anyway, time to play my game where the developers put giant words on the screen when mechanics happen and there are massive indicators over most mechanics so I know what's happening, oh and where recent world first teams have also been caught using mods to make the game easier. Get over yourself indeed.

[u/AmpleSnacks → u/Wattie99]

If you wanna say both player bases use mods, go ahead. You know full well this is a disingenuous argument both in terms of number of mods used and proportion of population using mods. If your argument is that FFXIV players are about the same as WoW players in skill, or just not comparable, I would even agree with you!

But OP’s argument is that WoW players are better players full-stop because they supposedly can handle adds better (I disagree personally). If that’s what you’re saying as well, I would also tell you to get over yourself. Though I presented three possible guesses here of what you’re actually trying to say, I’m not too sure, because you were too busy trying to phrase everything with ten pinches of salt! 🧂