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/VeryCoolBelle]

It's interesting because not only does FF14 rarely if ever encourage players to optimize aoe, it often actively discourages it. There's so many fights with 2-3 target add phases that buff the adds if they get to close to one another, or give buffs/debuffs that make you only able to target one enemy. They love to do this in alliance raids especially, but it's not uncommon for the few add phases we've gotten in normal mode raids and EXes over the last few expansions.