FFXIV: Revisiting the Weeping City Raid – Unpleasant But Not Impossible

This post is a part of Blaugust 2016!

I’m officially done with the Weeping City of Mhach. Not “done” as in having earned everything I need from the raid (far, far from it). Done as in “this just isn’t fun and I don’t want to run it anymore.”

This is coming from someone who has championed 24 man raids in FFXIV. It was the Crystal Tower that gave me confidence that I could actually take part in something called a “raid.” I have run Weeping City at least once a week (sometimes more) for the past two months. I’ve come to the conclusion that, unlike the other 24 man raids, there’s not a single fight in the raid that I enjoy (maybe the Headstone, but that’s a trash mob).

The Issue

Syn and I were discussing the level of difficulty of certain 3.3 content yesterday. She upholds the feeling that Weeping City and especially Final Steps (story mode) need to see some nerfs. Final Steps might one day… depends on how many people it gates from finishing story. I doubt Weeping City ever will. And here’s why:

Now, I’m not meaning to point fingers at raiders, but I did hear my share of “Thank goodness this raid is finally a challenge!” from enough people on the forums and on Reddit. In fact, there was a thread the other week saying how Weeping City did what it was designed to do — finally teach players how to git gud.

It is safe to say that a lot of players got down and actually “got good” at least when it came to mechanics.

Content like this is a good start, though SE still has a long way to go in getting its playerbase into shape.

Or maybe it just discourages more casual folks who don’t think mechanically punishing content like this is any fun. Especially when the point of the 24 man raids has typically been to allow people to catch up in gearing if they didn’t burn themselves out capping Tomes every week. At least, that’s what I’ve traditionally used it for.

I never had a problem running Crystal Tower or Void Ark multiple times a week for a drop. In fact, I find those raids pretty fun as long as we have a semi-decent group.

Now, I get the folks who want content that asks players to step up and pay attention to mechanics. I’m on board with that.

But the issue I have with Weeping City is that I can perform everything I know and understand to the best of my ability, and we can still wipe… because someone doesn’t know where to take a meteor, or they stand in the middle of the melee DPS with a red warning fire marker over their head, or they don’t realize that the fairly hard to see debuff means “bomb about to blow you and everyone around you sky high if you don’t stop what you’re doing instantly!”

It is very possible that one person not knowing what to do in this raid can cause a chain effect that can wipe everyone. I think that’s ridiculous and way too punishing.

Last night, our Weeping City raid didn’t wipe, but on the last two bosses, the fights were hanging by a thread. I walked out of that raid with no drops, a paltry 20 Lore Tomes, and a stress headache. When I mentioned physically feeling bad after the raid, Xaa, who was hanging with us at the time, asked why I did it if it stressed me out so much and I got no real reward.

I didn’t have an answer other than Tuesday nights were dubbed “Weeping City Night” in the FC. It’s not a popular thought, but I concluded that maybe it’s not worth it to me. I’d already given up running multiple times a week for a weekly drop a long time ago.

I’ve decided I should just suck it up, cap my Lore this week, and buy the Bard pants to finish gearing up (more or less) the left side. Then all I need is the second Lore ring and I’m done for Bard.

I don’t care about Grade V materia at this point. I don’t even have motivation to keep trying for Dragoon drops. I’ll just wait until Lore becomes the new Eso and gear up then.

Does this mean I’m never going to run Weeping City again? Probably not. But I am going to bow out of weekly Weeping Night because there’s just no point to do something that is so unfun. And that’s a bummer, because I liked running things with my FC, and this was the one thing we could do in a larger group.

Shifting Focus

I think I’m going to start focusing on leveling jobs that are in that between 50-60 limbo. My Machinist is getting there at level 57, and it will be super nice to be able to consolidate gear with Bard once that hits 60.

I also have a Monk at 53, and a Summoner/Scholar at 52. I’ve kinda decided that Monk isn’t really my thing, but I’m curious about Summoner, perhaps.

And maybe somewhere down the line, I’ll get the motivation to work on crafting gear too. There’s still a lot of content for me to do that has nothing to do with raiding. 😀

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