Today, on November 26, 2024, Patch 7.11 in Final Fantasy XIV opens the gates of the new fatal raid “A Second Future (fatal).” A change to the group requirements is now causing discussions, as common strategies often relied on double job representation.
What is the situation in FF14? Fatal raids (or “Ultimate Raids”) are among the most challenging content in Final Fantasy XIV. Therefore, they attract many players looking for a special challenge or wanting to maximize their performance from their tactics.
With Patch 7.11, a restriction is introduced that affects the Limit Break: When groups enter a fatal raid where a job is represented multiple times, the Limit Break bar no longer fills automatically over time. This results in a significant loss of an advantage that played a major role in previous strategies and complicates such tactics now.
Here you can see the trailer for the current Patch 7.1:
No more “no healer” runs for Ultimates?
What is the problem with that? So far, group compositions without healers and with multiple representation of defenders, such as two Warriors or Paladins to absorb heavy damage and heal themselves, have been among the common tactics for tackling fatal raids.
Already during the Endwalker expansion, there were many complaints that healers in Final Fantasy XIV hardly had anything right to do and were more like a slimmed-down attacking variant. Many players wanted to prove that even the hardest content could be tackled without a healer and that so well that these group configurations established themselves as common strategies.
With the new restriction, utilizing such group setups becomes more difficult, as the Limit Break is among the important game mechanics. When you bring the bar to the third level, you can deal or absorb a large amount of damage in bursts, as well as revive and heal the entire group at once – depending on which role the Limit Break ability is used for.
Why was this change introduced? The community suspects in a thread on Reddit that groups without healers are being put on hold. Although the restriction does not explicitly state “groups without healers do not get Limit Break,” it indirectly disadvantages the common tactics with double roles significantly.
Thus, it is more likely that with the new raid, classic group setups of 2 healers, 2 defenders, and 4 attackers will become more frequent again. This could thus be the chance for healer mains to finally become part of the fatal raids again more often.
It is suggested by the community that the decision for this change is based on the criticism of the “pointlessness of healers.” Others also suspect that this is intended so that players who play different jobs than those commonly used in previous strategies are not excluded.
If you missed the discussion about healers in Final Fantasy XIV, you can read here what the community’s problem is: In the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, healers are so angry about a new development that they threaten to strike
