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Final Fantasy 14 has a plethora of challenging content for all types of players, demanding endurance, focus, and intellect. From Extreme trials for the midcore playerbase to the Savage and Ultimate raids for the hardcore veterans, it allows gamers to ease into the more difficult content by steadily conquering progressively harder fights. As the difficulty increases, so do the rewards, encouraging players into taking the next step.
However, despite having phenomenal rewards such as luminescent boss-themed weapons or rare mount drops, some boss encounters are so gruesome that they are worth doing just for the glory. These boss encounters have also garnered a loyal community in the game around "Race to World First," where the victors are commended by the game director Naoki Yoshida via Final Fantasy 14's official X account.
5 bosses that dominate in Final Fantasy 14, ranked
5) Eden's Verse: Refulgence (Savage)
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Refulgence Savage, popularly known as Shiva Savage, is the final boss of the Eden's Verse series released during the Shadowbringers expansion of Final Fantasy 14. Generally, Savage raid bosses fall short of the difficulty that Ultimate raids provide to the players, but Shiva is a force to be reckon with.
This 14-minute-long encounter is filled with challenging mechanics like "Light Rampant," the mention of which send shivers down the spine of the players that attempted to clear the raid on launch. However, it was not the complicated mechanics that posed a threat to the veteran players, but the DPS (damage per second) check of the boss.
The DPS check was so challenging in fact that majority of the groups struggled to clear the encounter even with fully optimized rotations. Henceforth, the developers changed the design of the final bosses of the Savage raid series by splitting them into two enemies of half the length, making it easier for the players to maintain a sustained damage output.
4) Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage)
The Eight Circle Savage or Hephaistos Savage is one of the recent additions to Final Fantasy 14 as the final bosses for the second raid series in the Endwalker expansion. It is a sequential two-boss encounter, where defeating the first is a prerequite for taking on the second after the duty timer resets.
Similar to the prior entry, the first part of Hephaistos Savage was an absolute nightmare in terms of the DPS check. Veteran players gunning for the Abyssos raid series' World First clear immediately swapped their jobs to the tanks and damage=dealers of the highest DPS output.
This created a controversy in the community as many were unhappy with the job balance. The game director later apologised in a community post nerfing the boss HP by 1%, a first of a kind in Final Fantasy 14's history.
3) Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate)
The first Ultimate introduced in Final Fantasy 14 with the Stormsblood expansion, these 18-20-minute boss gauntlets soon became a staple in the game. With phenomenally oschestrated music by the beloved Masayoshi Soken, and iconic bosses from the series like Bahamut, these are undoubtedly the most anticipated raids from all expansions.
The Unending Coil of Bahamut (UCOB) was the most formidable challenge that the players had to face till that point. The veteran raid groups participating in the World Race anticipated it to be cleared in a day. Unfortunately, they soon had to come to terms with the fact that it was not going to be that easy.
The UCOB's very first clear was 11 days after launch, with the World First team having spent 16 hours a day for the entire duration. This set a precedent regarding the expectations around the new pinnacle of difficulty in Final Fantasy 14.
2) Dragonsong's Reprise (Ultimate)
The Dragonsong's Reprise (DSR) is the most cherished Ultimate in Final Fantasy 14. Retelling an aternate what-if scenario to the sorrowful tale of the Heavensward expansion, it serves as a canon explanation into how deviations from the established story can lead to unfavorable outcomes.
Accompanied by seven phases and an intense tempo of the battle, it is also the first Ultimate in the game with a checkpoint after the first boss. Despite that, defeating the bosses after the checkpoint takes around 18 minutes, making it the longest Ultimate raid in the game. The DSR set a new standard in Final Fantasy 14, with a spectacular presentation and a remarkable difficulty jump from all the prior Ultimates.
1) The Omega Protocol (Ultimate)
The Omega Protocol (TOP) is the latest entry in the Ultimate saga, and the most controversial raid since the launch of Final Fantasy 14. It is widely regarded as the hardest Ultimate by the community, resulting in the highest number of disbanded raid groups due to the severe skill discrepancy. Even among the veteran players, some celebrate the victory over this challenging battle, while others are relieved that it is over.
However, the biggest controversy that surfaced around TOP was after the raid group "Unnamed_" claimed the World First. Shortly after their victory, videos of them using third-party tools like zoom hacks, which is against the Terms of Service, started surfacing on YouTube.
Game director Naoki Yoshida even expressed his disappointment in a related community post:
"If the illicit use of third-party tools is made clear through our investigations, I, at the very least, will not recognize that team as the true World First."
Despite the controversy and the conflicting feelings that players have around the sheer diffilculty of the fight, the TOP is indubitably the hardest boss battle in Final Fantasy 14. And being victorious in this Ultimate rewards the rarest title in the game, and a really cool weapon of choice.
