Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, a Thread Reborn

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

In other news, while we may be a bit behind the curve, Solaris cleared Bahamut's Coil Turn 1. Caduceus hits like a truck, but that fight is all about clearing the stacks before the split. ADS Mark II seems much easier, just need more attempts. Honestly I'm kind of disappointed in this uber dungeon. Aside from the blatant gear checks it doesn't hold a candle to how raiding used to be in WoW:TBC before the nerf bats. I'm looking at you Vashj! Of course my opinion may change by the time we get to the Gauntlet or Twintania. Enjoying it so far outside of the bullshit one hit kills :p

[Agent D.]

I've been playing since release, as a tank and therefore have to deal with the majority of AoE and forseeable and thus avoidable attacks and with the occasional "me not paying enough attention to move out of the way" laziness, I have never experienced bad lag in game, though I've eaten a lag spike a couple times during dungeon runs which is more my issue than others. I've also played at all times of the day, so idk, but I'm thinking it's less SE's fault than most of the fingers pointing at them would have you believe. I can't always blame stupidity for getting hit by landslides (I'll try though, last time I ate one was 2 weeks ago on ultros and I didn't fly out), but when you eat bombs, it's entirely your own fault. I also may be bitter in regards to titan, since I haven't killed him again in over a week because I get stuck as OT and end up outdpsing the useless drg and mnk that inevitably join, and watch as the pld either loses hate due to sucking, eats a gamma wave/table flip/mountain buster anx doesn't have a cooldown prepped,or doesn't actually evade the bombs or even worse, runs titan around bombs while getting everyone killed. When I offer (respecced for str btw) with 6870ish hp, I get denied because it's too hard to heal me. People suck, they should go play fucking super mario or something and learn to play video games again.

[Agent D.]

In other news, while we may be a bit behind the curve, Solaris cleared Bahamut's Coil Turn 1. Caduceus hits like a truck, but that fight is all about clearing the stacks before the split. ADS Mark II seems much easier, just need more attempts. Honestly I'm kind of disappointed in this uber dungeon. Aside from the blatant gear checks it doesn't hold a candle to how raiding used to be in WoW:TBC before the nerf bats. I'm looking at you Vashj! Of course my opinion may change by the time we get to the Gauntlet or Twintania. Enjoying it so far outside of the bullshit one hit kills :p

How'd you do the fight, if I may ask? I've been in a few successful turn 1s and 2s, and people seem to have lameass strategies which drive me nuts til I make obvious comments and suggestions and we win a round or 2 later.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

In other news, while we may be a bit behind the curve, Solaris cleared Bahamut's Coil Turn 1. Caduceus hits like a truck, but that fight is all about clearing the stacks before the split. ADS Mark II seems much easier, just need more attempts. Honestly I'm kind of disappointed in this uber dungeon. Aside from the blatant gear checks it doesn't hold a candle to how raiding used to be in WoW:TBC before the nerf bats. I'm looking at you Vashj! Of course my opinion may change by the time we get to the Gauntlet or Twintania. Enjoying it so far outside of the bullshit one hit kills :p

How'd you do the fight, if I may ask? I've been in a few successful turn 1s and 2s, and people seem to have lameass strategies which drive me nuts til I make obvious comments and suggestions and we win a round or 2 later.

Nothing special. We feed him one slime from the first spawn, 2 from the next and split him before the third. We ignore them from that point on. The original tank pulls his clone to the other side - all DPS moves with him and begin tearing down that snake to 20%. This gives the OT time to build threat on his clone in the original tank position. All DPS with the exception of the DRG move back onto the OT's clone and kill it. At this time the MT's snake is about 5-10%. The MT then uses Hallowed Ground, DRG Limit Breaks and everyone else moves back to the final snake if it's still alive. We were able to kill him by 4 stacks after the split. We did learn that after 2 stacks, triggering Tail Swipe to reduce the frequency of Hood Swing cut down the healing need tremendously as at 3 stacks 2 back to back Hood Swings can gib your tank if they're still on cool downs.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Forgot to clarify - we only feed him a slime if he has an active stack. We do two in the second turn because he generally gets two stacks before third spawn. Sometimes this means kiting a slime for a bit till the next stack appears.

[Agent D.]

Yeah.....don't like your strategy lol.

My most successful strategy is similar in approach to yours. I offtank as a war, pld main. I actually stay off the boss almost entirely and instead do slime gathering. Due to the nature of getting the unlucky extreme far side slimes, I usually hang out on top of the furthest hexagon til slimes spawn. Then I alone grab a single slime and feed it to cadeuceus as a range dps whittles it down alongside me. With any luck the snake splits generally after the second slime, in which case I grab the second snake due to it having zero hate (provoke's incredibly handy here if healers get spam happy). At this point, no more slimes, just whittle the snakes down as hard as possible, usually with the dps split and trying to maintain even health til I normally bite the bullet and pld preps hallowed ground for the remerge. At this point lb3 from a melee dps and he usually dies seconds after, otherwise heal spam and hope for the best. We try to keep 2 melee in for triggering his rear AoE attack, which is a great breather for a sec (I used to use that suggestion on the final boss of AK too when people still sucked gear wise). Honestly, if the dps is there and the plds or pld and war are competent, and the healers don't leave slack, Cadeuceus is just a pretty easy zerg fight. Turn 2 is in my opinion WAAAAYYYYYY HARDER. Unless you're going in with 2 plds make sure your second tank has provoke, it's almost a requirement. Also, don't let other people fool you, you can't have an allegan rot rotation of less than 5 people, you should have at least 5, preferably 6 for the easiest (and most convoluted) strategy. 2 plds probably make a silence rotation easiest for high voltage, but bards work too, as does a monk if they dedicate to it. To be honest, I don't really like the left path too much because ballista on the ADS is such a pain in the ass, but that fire star patterned move is easier to deal with albeit more deadly. Whatever you do, don't let that allegan rot node fool you, totally not worth dealing with the haste boost he gets.

Just a few suggestions you've probably heard already is all.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

I've been playing since release, as a tank and therefore have to deal with the majority of AoE and forseeable and thus avoidable attacks and with the occasional "me not paying enough attention to move out of the way" laziness, I have never experienced bad lag in game, though I've eaten a lag spike a couple times during dungeon runs which is more my issue than others. I've also played at all times of the day, so idk, but I'm thinking it's less SE's fault than most of the fingers pointing at them would have you believe. I can't always blame stupidity for getting hit by landslides (I'll try though, last time I ate one was 2 weeks ago on ultros and I didn't fly out), but when you eat bombs, it's entirely your own fault. I also may be bitter in regards to titan, since I haven't killed him again in over a week because I get stuck as OT and end up outdpsing the useless drg and mnk that inevitably join, and watch as the pld either loses hate due to sucking, eats a gamma wave/table flip/mountain buster anx doesn't have a cooldown prepped,or doesn't actually evade the bombs or even worse, runs titan around bombs while getting everyone killed. When I offer (respecced for str btw) with 6870ish hp, I get denied because it's too hard to heal me. People suck, they should go play fucking super mario or something and learn to play video games again.

I very rarely find that the bombs are the problem. It's usually lag combined with Weight of the Land that causes the most deaths. I've had times where the client will freeze for 2-3 seconds at a time in that fight. Everyone's mileage varies. Of all the fights we've done Titan seems to have the worst connectivity problems.

In regards to WAR tanking, until you've been in the healers role, you can't really argue the point. Having a huge HP pool is great for those big hits but in my experience it's a nightmare trying to top WARs back up and keep them up. You guys take SO much damage. It's extremely mana intensive in prolonged fights and I can vouch for the aggravation. PLDs are much easier to heal by virtue of their mitigation and cooldowns. WAR self heals and mitigation need love and I'm glad SE is finally addressing it. No disrespect to WARs out there, I think it's a great class, but the tanking toolset doesn't scale well with harder content at all.

[Chronix112]

Had a Warrior tank on my last successful Titan pug. Dude was pro dodging and avoiding everything that could be avoided, and did not eat any bombs.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Yeah.....don't like your strategy lol.

My most successful strategy is similar in approach to yours. I offtank as a war, pld main. I actually stay off the boss almost entirely and instead do slime gathering. Due to the nature of getting the unlucky extreme far side slimes, I usually hang out on top of the furthest hexagon til slimes spawn. Then I alone grab a single slime and feed it to cadeuceus as a range dps whittles it down alongside me. With any luck the snake splits generally after the second slime, in which case I grab the second snake due to it having zero hate (provoke's incredibly handy here if healers get spam happy). At this point, no more slimes, just whittle the snakes down as hard as possible, usually with the dps split and trying to maintain even health til I normally bite the bullet and pld preps hallowed ground for the remerge. At this point lb3 from a melee dps and he usually dies seconds after, otherwise heal spam and hope for the best. We try to keep 2 melee in for triggering his rear AoE attack, which is a great breather for a sec (I used to use that suggestion on the final boss of AK too when people still sucked gear wise). Honestly, if the dps is there and the plds or pld and war are competent, and the healers don't leave slack, Cadeuceus is just a pretty easy zerg fight. Turn 2 is in my opinion WAAAAYYYYYY HARDER. Unless you're going in with 2 plds make sure your second tank has provoke, it's almost a requirement. Also, don't let other people fool you, you can't have an allegan rot rotation of less than 5 people, you should have at least 5, preferably 6 for the easiest (and most convoluted) strategy. 2 plds probably make a silence rotation easiest for high voltage, but bards work too, as does a monk if they dedicate to it. To be honest, I don't really like the left path too much because ballista on the ADS is such a pain in the ass, but that fire star patterned move is easier to deal with albeit more deadly. Whatever you do, don't let that allegan rot node fool you, totally not worth dealing with the haste boost he gets.

Just a few suggestions you've probably heard already is all.

Eh, different strats work for different people. We usually just have one of the ranged on the slimes since they can solo it down and kite it efficiently with the least amount of damage to take. We tried with a melee and they were either taking too much damage or not whittling the slime down enough. I usually just use a single dot rotation and then get back on the boss while kiting it to him.  We tried splitting the DPS and it just wasn't efficient for our composition. By whittling down the MT and DRG target first our 2 BRDs take advantage of the piercing debuff which takes him down pretty nicely. Being able to keep Foe Requiem and Ballad going at the same time after the split also helped tons.

We've only done West path for Turn 2, and only then about 4 attempts. Our biggest issues have been losing the DRG by the time the second node is absorbed. The piercing resistance buff from Sanitary Node (?) doesn't help either. I'm sure if we did West Path and brought 3 BLMs it'd be a snap but I'm pretty sure we can do it with our current setup. We usually have 7 clicks by the time we get to ADS, so our challenge is just figuring out what movements work best for the group.

[kyuusei]

I talked to Mike and were going to try to finish Main Story for him and Stephen on Sunday and anyone else who needs Praetorium. We did Chimera/AK/Hydra yesterday for another Relic pass but I don't mind doing another. Have you finished AV yet? I understand you need that now for the GC rank up to even get AK now. Depending on when we start and how much time people have to play we could finish your entire Relic cycle in about 3 hours if there's enough manpower available.

Just did Aurum Vale tonight actually (failed it twice a couple weeks ago.. ugh) and got the GC promotion. I can do my relic whenever, or I can wait until some others in my FC catch up and need to do it too so we can do a few in one run. Or I can fight Ifrit and hope he drops that damn harpoon - a friend got it tonight on the first try. Dangit. :)

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

I talked to Mike and were going to try to finish Main Story for him and Stephen on Sunday and anyone else who needs Praetorium. We did Chimera/AK/Hydra yesterday for another Relic pass but I don't mind doing another. Have you finished AV yet? I understand you need that now for the GC rank up to even get AK now. Depending on when we start and how much time people have to play we could finish your entire Relic cycle in about 3 hours if there's enough manpower available.

Just did Aurum Vale tonight actually (failed it twice a couple weeks ago.. ugh) and got the GC promotion. I can do my relic whenever, or I can wait until some others in my FC catch up and need to do it too so we can do a few in one run. Or I can fight Ifrit and hope he drops that damn harpoon - a friend got it tonight on the first try. Dangit. :)

Primals are par for course for Relics, you just need Chimera, AK and Hydra first. Your GC Harpoon will last you till Primals for sure. What time are you going to be online today? If any of TES would like to start their Relics I can make the precursor weapons and meld them if they can provide the Materia. Depending on the weapon I may already have a supply of weapon pieces. There's nothing planned outside of Spirit Bond party today so we can probably get a lot done for folks if they're available.

[Agent D.]

Level 50 dragoon get tonight. Took almost 8 hours to do it from 45. Went from level 43-45 gear to darklight armo, AK accessories, and Garuda's Beak for a weapon. My hp almost doubled when that happened, was fucking awesome (though granted I put on a tanking wrist and myth tank ring as it's all I have available atm).

Sad part so far though is my war has hit harder with the relic +1.

[Datastorm]

In case you hadn't seen BG downed Twintania:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/112491-Order-of-the-Blue-Garter-Twintania-Down-%28No-Exploits%29

[kyuusei]

Primals are par for course for Relics, you just need Chimera, AK and Hydra first. Your GC Harpoon will last you till Primals for sure. What time are you going to be online today? If any of TES would like to start their Relics I can make the precursor weapons and meld them if they can provide the Materia. Depending on the weapon I may already have a supply of weapon pieces. There's nothing planned outside of Spirit Bond party today so we can probably get a lot done for folks if they're available.

From what I hear you guys are helping Mike and Stephen with Praetorium today? I may or may not be around for that - usually evenings Pacific rather than during the day for me. For Chimera/Hydra/etc, maybe once a few more of us need those for our relic quests we can do that together? Less runs for you guys to repeat, lol.

I was actually going to ask you for help with the Champions Lance part of my relic quest, but that was before I found one on the market with the materia melded for essentially the same price as the two savage aim materia by themselves. If someone else in my FC needs that part of the quest we'll let you know.

I've also unlocked Amdapor Keep. DPS check? Oh boy.

EDIT: Oh hey general question. Isn't there an item that lets you redistribute all your attribute points? I thought I had one but can't find it. I feel like my DRG could have used more STR points and less dexterity and vitality ones.

EDIT1: Also, it shouldn't be all that surprising that relic+1 does more damage than anything before it? I mean, for all that work, I would hope it does.

[Klutz64]

I forget the name but you can buy it from GC with seals in the Tools section.

I happened to have one on me from 1.0, If it's tradeable and you're on Hyperion you can keep an eye out for me and I'll give you the one I have.