Finally cleared Ravana Extreme in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, bringing me up to date on absolutely everything in the game so far with the exception of Alexander Savage, which I’m not in a particular hurry to rush through at the moment.
Ravana, though, was a lot of fun. I’d held off even trying that fight for a while for some reason — I’d got it into my head that it would be “scary”, and I didn’t want to be a burden on any group who took me along with them. In some ways, this was quite a nostalgic feeling; when I first started playing Final Fantasy XIV, the prospect of pretty much any group content was absolutely terrifying, and playing a role with responsibilities more than “dodge shit, do damage” (both important, to be fair) was simply out of the question. Now, of course, my best-levelled, best-geared classes are both tanks, and I have a healer on the way to the higher levels, too, while I haven’t really touched my Black Mage — the class I started with — for quite some time.
Anyway. Ravana EX is a challenging fight, to be sure, even with decent gear. There’s a lot of damage, and a lot of reliance on party members knowing and understanding mechanics together. But, for me, this sort of fight is the most satisfying kind of battle in Final Fantasy XIV; it’s a really fun experience to see eight people working together, moving as a team and doing their best to overcome a stiff challenge. A couple of years ago when I first decided to check out Final Fantasy XIV more out of curiosity — and some fond memories of the 20 levels of Final Fantasy XI I played a few years back — I couldn’t have imagined I’d be challenging difficult battles like this, but now I’m happy to be not exactly at the top tier of players in our Free Company, but certainly someone who can be relied on to jump in and try their best at whatever the game has to offer.
I like Ravana EX because there’s a nice combination of learnable mechanics with a little bit of randomness thrown in to make things interesting. Ravana does the same moves in the same order for the most part, and the way in which you deal with them is the same. However, things like positioning and who is initially targeted for his most powerful attacks vary with each attempt, so you have to be on your toes. As a tank, there’s also some fun mechanics, most notably dodging his frontal cone “Tapasya” (sp?) attack and sharing the damage from his devastating Blinding Blade tankbuster with the offtank; it’s certainly a lot more than “stand there and get hit while doing as much damage as you can”. Which is nice.
Now that I’m up to date on everything, I’m very keen to see what patch 3.1, which is out in a couple of days, has to offer. A few days ago I commented on the things I’m particularly looking forward to; mostly, I’m excited about the fact that the new content is likely to bring a bunch of people who maybe haven’t played for a little while back to the game; they’re tricking in already, but there will doubtless be a big surge once the patch is actually available, the main scenario storyline continues and the more impressive new content is ready to be challenged.
In the meantime, since my Dark Knight sword failed to drop in three successful clears of Ravana, it looks like I have a bit of farming in my immediate future if I want to have a decent weapon ahead of the new Relic’s arrival in 3.15…