I managed to do the crystal tower raids on min ilvl with a full alliance, and man it's actually a lot of fun. There is so much that we skip nowadays or we live past due to the high gear that it's sad not many know about what mechanics there are. We wiped to Scylla multiple times until we learned what mechanics needed to be done (Daybreak is basically a near party wipe Ancient Flare if you don't take care of the thunder orbs), and the platforms around Glasya Labolas finally came into play since we didn't DPS past that phase which was actually fun to see even though you are just launching out to the smaller ones and you have to clear the adds there while he can launch attacks to platforms that you may need to jump to the next ones to dodge them.

Looking forward to part 2! In my push for all 19 Mandervilles, I'd burnt myself out doing every roulette most day... even as the burn-out is fading, I'd been reluctant to re-queue into the Alliance Raid series. But seeing this reminded me about some of the fun mechanics I could encounter and has given me some motivation back. To your comments about Syrcus being just braindead and boring: one of my favorite experiences in the last year I've been playing was joining a MINE ARR Alliance Raid run via PF alongside some friends. I'd seen the mechanics in LotA and WoD, even if they were truncated due to high damage, but for ages I'd wondered what the point was to Syrcus Tower and if it had any mechanics at all -- and when MINE, oh boy it does. Learning how to actually fight Scylla and Glasya Labolos was super fun, and seeing their mechanics made me realize just how overpowered max ilvl makes a group. Even getting to do LotA and WoD MINE made them more fun, knowing that you couldn't just faceroll over things most alliance raids just suffer through (like having to heal the magic pots in LotA, or in WoD not interjecting the Chimeras or constantly getting knocked off the Atomos platforms) I'd recommend anyone try it if you're ever bored and see something similar in PF.

Crystal Tower just happens to be in the unique positions where it suffers the most from overgearing. The rest of the raids all seem to be more resilient to that. When this raid first came out, each party had the standard 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS. Every tank had responsibilities in pretty much every fight. Bone Dragon required the tanks to pull the skeletons away from each other so they wouldn't shitwreck the parties on the way back from the boss. Thanatos had tank swaps and add kills were much more important because if all 3 pots died you lost. Behemoth required offtanks to pick up adds and other tanks to hit a switch on each tower to keep the floor lightning from killing the party. They weren't bad raids when they first came out and all 3 of them offered challenges to make the fights much harder.

Void Ark deserves to be at the bottom. Void Ark may have a lvl 60 rotation to play with, but mechanics are just so braindead. Even Syrcus Tower has more instakill mechanics than VA

Love your videos man! Keep up the good work.

Back in the day, a bunch of mechanics didn't have obvious indicators like the eye icon. Same with stack markers and tank busters. They were added later because people thought it was too hard to remember but people still completely ignore the giant eye icon and stack markers today.

Fun fact with the adds during LotA Atomos phase. If no one hits the adds that spawn they will naturally walk towards the players at the plates so no one even has to drag them back to let the players standing on the plate feel like they are doing something. (also for the love of The Twelve do not get off the plate until the light goes out. Just because your add is dead does not mean the one your plate is connected to is.)

Another amazing video king❤❤❤

Nice video :) looking forward to part 2! Just a thought about the problem of people taking gear off to get CT raids. I think it's somewhat overblown in the community IMO. Getting CT raids in roulette constantly is more likely because they are the only mandatory ARs for MSQ and it's the lowest common denominator for people doing roulettes while levelling alt jobs. Of course it does happen, but I always check to see if there's a new player in the raid, and typically there is at least one each time, which makes me feel a little better when i get CT. Perhaps a separate CT roulette could solve this.

I had to run through all the stormblood alliance raids recently to unlock bozja. I was really worried about the last one in the questline and then i did it first try with random people AND it only took like 40 minutes when everything i had seen said it would take over an hour.

Old ARR player here. Can confirm that the second boss of Syrcus Tower used to be cool. It's honestly been so long that I can't remember the exact things you did in those outer jump circles, but I definitely remember the one bit mechanic where someone HAD to step into it so we could continue to kill the boss or something. I also remember Scylla being a much more organized fight with water puddle placement and orb dragging but now its degenerated into chaos. Amon and the last boss are mostly in tact today though (The frogs are chased by the snakes which insta-kill the frogged players if they reach them if I remember right). And in Labyrinth of the Ancients we used to HAVE to bring/kill the skellies to the edge of the arena so DPS had time to kill or else it was a wipe. Now it's just a vague suggestion of a healer check... The Alliance split, IMO, it's the tanks job to bring the adds to the members on the circle so they can kill adds while the melee DPS kill the boss or at least that's how I always did it. Pre-Behemoth trash, yeah you HAD to kill the spawning bombs before they reached the center, rest is the same. Yes the lightning on the floor was a mechanic that had to be dealt with at the time. Two or three people had to sit by the towers and keep them turned off. I think it's two towers for the two tanks not tanking Behemoth. Easiest shit ever, just sit there, press the button, pick up aggro on anything that spawns by you, and don't die. Finally, Phlegathon is more or less the same now as it was then.

Speaking personally, at the time Void Ark absolutely felt just as disappointing as it does now. Honestly aside from maybe seeing a couple bits less of what Echidna can do it hasn't been gear crept that much, mostly because there was just never that much to see. The fact that it came right after Gordias, where we started to get some slightly more challenging non-extreme/savage content, and was sandwiched between World of Darkness (which at the time was a lot more mechanically dense than it is now) and Wiping City, really didn't do anything to help its case either. Especially since it was the start of the Shadows of Mhach story, it really puts a damper on (and made it hard to get invested in) what otherwise was, by the standards of the time, a really great content set. The only upshot of running it is you get to turn your brain off for half an hour. To talk about raids that ABSOLUTELY got gear crept though, good lord Syrcus Tower. It was never hard, but you at least had to think a bit during Scylla, Glasya and Xande. I really got into the game during 2.3, and seeing it become such an absolute joke as it progressed into Heavenward was very bittersweet.

The Mega Death mechanic from Weeping City is the "Have you played FFX" mechanic, because if you have, you will have enough PTSD from fighting Yunalesca to know what you have to do.

It took me so long to figure out why I kept dying during the second boss playing World of Darkness lol. I main healer now and as I'm raising people after that mechanic I'm like 'It's ok honey, you'll figure it out'. Most people seem to figure it out a LOT faster than I did!

Void ark has only 2 things going for it: 1. The general look of the place. 2. The ass on the last boss. Everything else is just boring.

I agree with you on Void Ark. I played when it was the current alliance raid and part of what made that place feel so awful for me is that the alliance raid we had before that was World of Darkness. Having those 2 back to back was a drag. Those early raids don't hold up so well, prolly due to stat scaling and also job design being so different now than it was back then. But I can tell you, they still sucked in 2015 lol.

Something must have happened during the ilvl squish to mess up diabolo hollow tank damage, he always shredded through tanks but the other day he 3shot me with autos through rampart without the crit buff, that never happened in the past

Personally, my favorite raids are the ones that have bosses and mechanics which justify having three alliances above just "we'll give these bosses a crapton of HP so that the raid drags on much longer than it needs to".

You're absolutely right, I've played all the raids on release date (i've been playing since 1.0) so yeah, you're missing a lot of mechanics, especially in the raids you have put at the lowest ranks.

Funny... I was in alliance que while watching this video, and what do you know the raid I got was World of Darkness... I hate it, but I need the EXP

Void ark is pretty week but I do love the music

Fun facts the boss at 28:45 not the original boss there and yes was not add part there was a boss here the blood sword glam drop there you can get at gold S. now bir it was a succubus that was there my find old vid of it up yet but if people dont have the q you my still get her in there how true that is dont know but she a boss too do aoes bleed and a few others adds as well but like i say if she still there thats test for someone she was better then now was way more crazy then now

If I may walk in; The five-headed dragon does have a BUNCH of mechanic, even some were tweak with Endwalker expansion ^^' If playing Melee, you prob won't see anything, so fair to say you see nothing happening. While in the back however, the boss constantly shoot mechanic on people. Ether being; DPS check 2 orb adds, stand in poison puddle while killing that one puddle that spawn to gain a poison resistance buff, Ice aoi growing bigger deep freezing anyone touching it, fire adds that if not giving to others will kill you and the lightning marker, which was change to a stack marker in EW, well is a stack :) Those mechanic repeat trough the fight and get bigger and quicker longer it goes. The boss do die fast so nothing is "Wipe party" worth mechanic, but they all happen slowly at first and boss dies when it starts to ramp up ^^' -and smol detail for the Cloud of Darkness; she has extra mechanics, one that people call "Worms" and the amount of meteor falling increases a LOT, like a full party and a half needing to go soak them meteors. Due to itlv however, seeing the mechanic is impossible nowdays if everyone is trying to dps :( Good video! Looking forward to the second part :D

Taking off your gear gives you higher chances to get Crystal Tower raids? Why? Why does it not just purely take the level of the class you're playing into account? If this is genuinely the reason why Crystal Tower is there so often then screw anyone who does that, honestly.

You excited for alliance roulette ilvl restrictions

Heh i see what u did there with world of darkness at 13th spot.

The Crystal Tower Series is just so mind numbing boring to me. If I can as a melee or phys ranged run donuts around the room(or the boss for melee) for 90% of the fight, I think something's majorly wrong. Also, the sprouts greeding to hard on ancident flare/curtain call and causing an entire wipe is maybe amusing the first ten times. After that I think smashing my forehead into a brickwall would provide more amusement. I would put Void Ark in 13th just because it's a breath of fresh air even if it's another alliance I can run donuts in.

I need part 2 right MEOW lmao

Copied factory is overrated here imo. It’s actually my personal least favorite 24 man in the entire game cause the bosses drag on way too long, ESPECIALLY Engels and I hate that fight with a passion.

I dislike all of the HW alliance raids, but especially Dun scaith, an easy 14th place for me. It's the only instance I will just abandon and eat the 30 min penalty anytime I get it on roulettes.

I hate everything about crystal tower, especially Labirynth it's lvl 50, all the bosses are just damage sponges with no mechanics, the aesthetic is boring (for me), the bosses look boring (exept that dog lady), and IT SHOWS UP IN EVERY SINGLE ALLIANCE ROULLET i'd rather void ark show up on my roullet than doing another crystal tower raid, i've done it a bijillion times already

When the void ark first came out, a lot of people got puked on chuchulain

why isn't nier on the 3 worst spots? worst raids i've ever seen.