Favorite FFXI NM,HNM,battlefield Or Boss Fight

Since the NPC one through in some of these monsters I seperated them.

Maat (75 cap)was my favorite because everyone was telling me he was super hard and I won on ninja 1/1. I've never felt so accomplished before.

Still love the music "Ragnarok", so that battle will always stick with me. In terms of the battle itself, original divine might. Was the first shell event I planned the strat for back in 2008ish lol.

It's cliche but fluffy. Seriously.

The drama. The chaos. The MPK. Yeah, if you actually WANTED fluffy and lost claim it totally blew, and was super boring. But for the people that enjoy "fun" causing spikeflails was some of the best ***ever. Right up there with CN trains. Selbina mpks. Stealing dynamis times.

You know it was the best, because they had to add entire new mechanics to the game to take away our fun.

Maat wasn't hard, he was cheap. Depending on the job you fought him on he could have an "I Win" button. Ninja would of been easier due to Utsusemi existing naturally. The real "hard / random" jobs were Red Mage, Thief, Monk, and possibly WHM. SAM gets honorary mention because it's a crazy random fight, once it starts one of you is dead in 30s and your entirely dependent on Third Eye / Blink bands eating his Asuran Fists to give you time to splat him.

Stuff like early VW when we didn't have periapts and our group was mostly made of complete noobs. It was actually very challenging like that and we would come up with strategies and roles for everyone, something that I often miss doing.

And B-Rex for dat cor epeen.

It would have to be Tenzen and other level capped promy BC - before the updates and everything.

I fought him with a static party. We did promy missions together because promy was so hard he had to be friends or fail.

We were clueless, hapless and pretty much noob on promy. We kept failing at him but we revise the strategies based on the jobs we have - rather than the cookie cutter way.

gonna be a rebel and say recent content(schah, albumen, tumult, master trials, some VD ambuscades)

it might not be the game it was in 2005, but beating a hard fight for the first time never stops being rewarding and the newest hard fights objectively require a much higher level of play than anything ever did at 75

First time I ever beat One to be Feared back in the old CoP days (after many losses with my CoP static), I literally starting jumping up and down and squealing. Can't say anything else in the game ever had quite that effect on me, so I guess I have to go with that :)

Just from an aesthetic sense, I really like the music and spectacle of the Provenance Watcher fight.

As far as mechanics wise, I enjoyed the Delve 1.0 bosses once we got to that sweet spot where players had the gear needed to get somewhat reliable wins, but it was still a challenge. I liked the changing weapon type weaknesses, the unique NM gimmicks (Marine Mayhem, Muyingwa's weird DT, maaaaybe not so much stunning Lahar but whatever), the fact that your backline actually had to be on their toes. Well developed fights.

I'm gonna go with Divine Might. I spent 3-4 hours getting a party together for that fight, and it was my first real leadership challenge in the game.

We lost the first fight, but came back with a clutch second attempt and I got my Bushinomimi ^^

Been around since the PS2 NA launch but got to say Delve 1.0 when it was first released has to have been my favorite over the years.

One to be Feared is definitely up there; that was an accomplishment way back when in and of itself. beating Promathia felt pretty damned heroic too... heck, most of CoP felt really good when you finally succeeded, even on things like Jailers in Sea or Limbus.

NM: Amemet because I dominated camping him for months at 70 cap and made a fortune selling his skins for 800k/ea
HNM: Serket for nostalgia reasons, Vrtra for sheer power at his release
Boss: Skeleton boss from one of the San missions
Battlefield: 40 cap mandragora BCNM because nostalgia

CoP had a myth quality about it for several reasons for I'd say 2 years or more after release (lackluster rewards compared to Sky kept endgame focus in Ru'Ann for a while, truly gated access, the level cap missions leading up to eventual access to Sea, etc). And then once there, it looked like nothing we had so far in game, in terms of landscape and monster families. Not to mention mechanics at times. No wonder it will always be high in any list like this.

The Celestial Nexus (Eald'narche)

It kinda sucked pre update in a way.

Like 2 members of my static had a falling out during the Xarcabard Promy.. Nothing like having to call a dudes girlfriend to calm her down.

Everyone else got stuck waiting for like an hour.


I don't miss that kinda drama lol.

Alex fight (75 cap), man I re-did that fights so much because of that. Really loved the OST.

The final RoV fight.

Geas Fete HELMs. Because of the challenge and level teamwork/coordination..

Very fun times.

I liked it too

Lord of Onzozo
Cactrot Rapido

Original Dynamis Lord was fun back in the day.

My first kill of that is still the most satisfying victory in any video game i've ever played. Took us months to finally win. I was always partial to zerg fights at 75 anyway... Bv2, DL, KV, etc.

All 3 pre-item level delve fights were pretty awesome.

Eco-Warrior of course!
Odin...Suzaku was quite fun
Ignamoth
Arch Angra Mainyu
in SoA prime I also thought Ironbeak Inguza was a really fun lowman

actually agree with this, early VW didn't have a lot of time to be appreciated on a level of challenge before the latter half of it came around. Think the same could be said of Abyssea, to a lesser extent. like, Turul, Cuelebre, I thought those were fun fights.

also the lvl 1 Bubbly Bernie zergs

as far as mission fights go...besides the ones mentioned already, it sure felt good after beating MKE.

Jailer of Temperance, because I was a Warrior main, and had all my WSNMs, so whenever he switched stances, I just switched weapons and continued to *** him up.

Also really loved old timey Dynamis. Despite having a god awful effort to reward ratio for the entire group of people doing it, I liked the mass battle aspect. Sure, you didn't want to have a ton of monsters on you, but pulls were commonly *** up, especially if the shell was new. Lead to situations demanding crowd control, stalling, and last ditch sort of stands sometimes heh. Also the whole, warping out and coming back in with super weakness lol.

I wish I could speak on this topic with a larger perspective though. After Abyssea, I never got into another LS/group, and I never got into things like legion or delve or skirmish or anything post-voidwatch really. I stopped playing seriously shortly after the Adoulin release, shortly after getting 99 Rune Fencer.

low man nidhogg is/was/always will be my favorite thing. that and kb. kb was never hard, but making sure it never went unclaimed could be. i liked a lot of the sea fights. a couple of znms were fun. maybe lamia #9 for a regular nm? trio'd it with 2 other summoners for those stupid leviathan gloves that i NEVER saw drop. just getting there was such an ordeal, and it was honestly never 100% you'd kill it the first try. oh, reraise hairpin. you were the real hero.

I enjoyed sea prior to the nerf of the airship battle. Use of the Wall of Jerhico trick to take down JOJ was just funny.

Fighting Xolotal at the feet of Tiamat or Alabastor Antlion at Tiamat :P

Leaping lizzy.

The Cloud of Darkness was pretty great, FFXI really hammered home the nostalgia with all the images that pop up during the fight itself and the battle music itself was very fitting.

Certainly one fight that always seemed exciting was 75 era Dynamis Lord, just because the hectic, kill it during CS + Stun or death will soon follow.