FFXIV’s Patch 6.21 makes Hephaistos a little more manageable for players

Square Enix released Patch 6.21 for Final Fantasy XIV on September 13. While it doesn’t include new content, there are a host of balance changes and bug fixes to go along with an adjustment that makes the boss of Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) a little easier for players. Despite the raid only just releasing on August 30, they have already gone back and lowered the boss’s HP. In addition, the development team has put out a statement regarding illegitimate waymarks that were put in place by third-party tools.

Hephaistos, the boss of Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage), is unusually tough with strict DPS checks that players feel were even more difficult than the other Savage raid bosses. On top of that, with tank jobs not being in the best spot as far as balance goes in Patch 6.2, there are many cases of the unlucky players using these jobs getting overwhelmed. Xenosys Vex, a Warrior player and streamer who is popular among the Japanese FFXIV community, could be seen jumping out of his chair in frustration after changing classes from Warrior to Gunbreaker and clearing the DPS check when streaming a run of the raid.

Perhaps due to feedback from fans, Patch 6.21 not only brought damage buffs to Warriors and Paladins, but lowered Hephaistos’s HP for both of its phases. The patch notes explain that extra time was put into testing the battle, with the team performing better than usual leading to the base values being too high. This apparently led to the final values being 1% higher than intended. It sounds like the team got a little carried away with testing and adjustments and made Hephaistos even more ferocious than they expected.

Final Fantasy XIV has what are called Raid Tokens that can be exchanged for gear, with players only able to acquire a limited amount per week. The restriction resets every Tuesday, meaning, players power up their gear little by little.While defeating Savage raid bosses is how players get the best gear a patch has to offer, because of the reason above, players can’t immediately acquire and equip all the best stuff. The content is designed for players to farm raids they’ve completed to get gear while aiming to reach the next stratum of content. However, it is possible to clear raids in the first week through skill and tactics, even without being fully geared with the newest loot. We were already seeing teams clear Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage) the day after it released, so it is possible.

But players on the official forums seem mixed about the adjustment to Hephaistos’s HP. Among them are teams who found themselves just narrowly wiping with the boss having 1% HP left and trying to figure out how to close the gap and finish the job. Despite being encouraged by the fact that some teams have cleared it, the hurdle suddenly being lowered means they can’t take on the challenge under the same conditions. Some also bring up how players themselves get stronger through updated gear each week and think changing the boss’s HP is a step too far.

The development team has also released a statement regarding the use of illegitimate waymarks spreading among players (related article). The team has identified the player that initially made the waymark and issued them an account penalty. However, they will not be issuing penalties to players who copied and used the illicit waymark. Despite there being no penalties, the statement does ask that players not save or load any illegitimate waymarks and delete any such waymarks they may have saved. Check here for the full statement.

It’s rare to see Final Fantasy XIV’s high-difficulty Savage raids be made easier and it hasn’t happened since Alexander: Midas (Savage). Looking back on the history of difficult FFXIV content, Midas was quite tough. The development team could be changing their stance regarding these kinds of adjustments, but as it stands, the change to Hephaistos seems more like an exception and not the rule.

With the change to Hephaistos’s HP, the development team says it’s more in line with what they had in mind, though players have mixed feelings. Check here to see more about the unusual change in the full patch notes.

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Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-09-13 17:32 JST)