AlmightySock: The rhyming during the shantotto section was a nice touch

RealNinjaBrain: Kneel before Zilartian wisdom and die. This is the power of crystals.

Kam'lanaut is my favorite boss from the alliance

usamimi-no-majo: The voicework for these characters is probably my favourite thing about this raid series, especially Shadow Lord and Alexander.

BeauxPhades: Just opened the video and haven't watched anything yet, but I'm 100% expecting Kirin to be dead last F-- tier, deservedly so

Craytonex: The ark angels are my favorite fight in XIV period. Its so fun and just brilliant. So much aura

Kirbstering: Shinryu/Hollow King I don't dislike, but it definitely needed to be more difficult to give a sense of this boss's supposed power. This far into the game, and the last boss of the entire raid series, I suspect many players would be capable of handling a boss with a little more complexity. The actual expansion itself had zero problems making its regular content more difficult.

Xorua: Shinryu Paradox and Hollow King are so insanely different that I think it's kinda unfair to treat them as one boss for the ranking. Especially since Shinryu Paradox is pretty good and Hollow King FUCKING SUCKS

Esponn: One thing I wish they would stop doing is having bosses open with this tutorial phase to show you what each of their attacks do before combining them together. Not only does this make the first part of the fight very uninteresting, but as players increase in power you begin to not even reach the more interesting parts of the fight before killing the boss. I get that it makes sense for learning the fight the first time you do it, but you do not need to be shown a tutorial phase every single week. I know some people hate wiping in normal mode but I feel wiping a couple times on a boss during week 1 to learn the fight for subsequent weeks should be perfectly acceptable. I think this is the first alliance raid series where I didn't see a single wipe doing it on the first day of release.

Nova-_-: I really wanna see Square just let us chuck on Min IL on current expansion Alliance Raids, it really sucks that you need to organise a 24 person group thats gonna hold damage to see mechanics

GanonAutumn777: Its hard for me to hate any of the bosses but my lowest rank would go to Kirin from sandoria because even on the day it dropped u can still skip the second summoning and the issue is even worse now as u can skip the entire add phase with no issues as the mechanics in the fight go soooooo slowly.

simusar: After getting back into XI the lines from the Shadow Lord fight hit a bit different.

sylviap155: Hey happs, you have something happen with your pop guard on your mic. The plosives are hitting really hard.

otopugpug: I really wish they fixed the problem FFXIV has overall with every single piece of content that is one expansion old being completely bulldozed over. New players never get to experience what like 90% of the fights in the game are actually like because everything is just trampled over by gear.

BiT.d-K: Prishe: "Open your EYES!"

IMQ2006: I never played FF XI so I don't know who Shadow Lord is or any back story. But I love his script and the VA delivery. Definitely one of my favorite fights from this series, and I've convinced myself that Shadow Lord was a just a kid with mommy issues.

dalthorn: I’m hoping we have more council fights in 14.

SliminBlue: Glad to see some love for Ultima and Omega, I'm not huge on the rest of San d'oria but that fight is so much fun in my opinion. It's not perfect, I wish it were a bit more of a split alliance fight as weird as that would be with only two bosses, but it has a similar feeling of chaos to Ark Angels, even though I agree that Ark Angels are the better fight by a good margin. I also just really like the spectacle of Ultima and Omega, flying from airship to airship and pulling off the intermission flawlessly just feels super cool.

scullzomben: Not an 11 player, so it was interesting to compare your rankings to mine. The only main difference for me was that Prishe was much lower at #10 (funnily enough mostly because of the "way fo ee" annoying voiceline), as well as Shantotto and Eald'narche slotting in at #4 and #5, pushing the others down.

I will say, it is funny to see how universally disliked Kirin is. What a stinker of a fight.

DudeGuyPersonSalamiMan: One thing I don't see get brought up much is how a lot of fights feel like things they've done before. Happy brought up alexander doing an attack that emerald weapon does, but stuff like that is really abundant throughout the series. Promathia feels like I'm fighting ultima from the tactics raids all over again but worse (though I do really like the arena.)

I like three things out of the series as a whole as someone who didn't play 11. I like how much each boss yaps constantly, how mobile omega/ultima feels despite both bosses not moving at all, and ark angels. They need to do more fights like ark angels in the future please.

CableFeed: For my top five:

5. Ultima & Omega

4. Zilart

3. Prish

2. Shadow Lord

1. Shantotto

kuronaialtani: Ark Angels takes #1 without a doubt for me. All the bosses across the three raids have good quotes but nothing compared to day 1 total chaos room-wide mechanics while you hear: RAGE CLEAVES COWARDICE DISMEMBERS ENVY ENGULFS ARROGANCE DEFILES APATHY STRIKES. Yeah they melt now thanks to ilvl but it's one of the best multi-boss alliance fights we've had since what, bunker? Void ark?

endosay: I enjoyed Ark Angels battles in the Jeuno raid, and I liked the Promathia battle in Windurst where you could see the planet right beneath your feet (But fixed). The music and cutscenes Shinryu the very last boss in Windurst is good. Since I hadn’t played FF11, I didn’t really care for the story as a whole. The storytelling in FF14’s 24-player raids is mostly terrible—there’s practically no plot in the first and second raids, and they only put effort into the third and final raid. They use this same approach in MSQ as well, which makes for a truly awful experience for both streamers and viewers. If there was no Phantom Weapon, I probably would have played this content just once or twice and then quit, but I think Phantom Weapon played a major role in keeping the content active. Looking for more positives, the outfits rewarded in San d’Oria and Windurst were pretty nice. The outfits introduced in the DT expansion have different textures from those in previous expansions, so even with simple designs, they look great. However, a side effect of this is that older gear has been significantly nerfed (including at the Mog Station), making me not want to wear them.

To be honest, Prishe, Shadow Lord, Shantotto, Kam'lanaut, Ultima, and Omega were, from my perspective, just a means to obtain tomes. I didn't play them because they were fun.

papersage69: My most important metric for these fights is how well they take advantage of the Alliance raid format.

Splitting up roles for the alliances is a great shorthand for making memorable fights that you can’t replicate in other formats outside of Exploratory Zone raids.

There’s also taking advantage of the scale with 24 people. Targeted AoEs and such make for fun chaotic fights.

The Ark Angels really take the cake for best fight in this alliance raid based on this metric.

anjoumaaka: Kam'lanaut also dealt unexpectedly high damage for an AR boss with a lot of his attacks. Even being fully geared it felt like mitigation was necessary for that one.

The voice acting bringing the characters to life will place this set as my favorite of the alliance raids by far

sylviap155: I was a little sad they did not have Cadi Milo reprise her role as Shantoto, but the lines were still so well done. I did get some autographs from Cadi at an event, and she talked fondly of her Shantoto lines, especially the laugh.

sylvie_lynn: Yay more content for me to watch! I love these videos from you, I OFTEN find myself listening to your old retrospectives and rankings and all that. Ty!

maruhto3508: Nothing to do with the fights directly, but my gf and I always enjoy the NPCs calling out other people during the fights. "A comrade is in trouble!" so funny, adds a lot to the enjoyment each reclear.

Aug 27 2026

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