Pandemonium Warden Information

[Neosutra]

EDIT: New information from video: LAMPS DO NOT NEED TO BE KILLED IN ANY PHASE! Commence bricks shitting.

So we finally got a good fight in last night (after losing 2 and a half sets to accounts hacked/quiting, and another set due to some outside interference during the fight >.>), and I wanted to share our data with the community, as well as our lessons learned.

First, I wanted to say thank you to HomingMissiles LS for putting up with me and working towards these pop sets for so long, as well as donating so much exp to this fight. Also special thanx to Armada LS that lended some great support during the fight.

As for the fight itself: (With random pictures thrown in to pacify the easily bored)



Setup: 1 Meleeburn alliance of 3 meripo parties to kill lamps.
1 party of Pld/rdm Pld/rdm Pld/rdm Whm Rdm Sch to pull/hold lamps (spread out).
Note that you can only pull lamps about 40' away (need to confirm distance, but there is a "wall"), else they will go back to PW.

Main PW alliance:
Aegis Pld/nin, Aegis Pld/nin, Whm, Whm, Rdm, Gjalhorn Brd
Yochi Sam, Amano Sam, Apoc Drk, Brd, Rdm, Whm
BlmX5, Brd -> This party alternated between blms and rngs, based on phase.

As stated We used 1 alliance of 3 merit parties for the lamps. I am unsure if this is the best approach, but they were able to kill all 8 lamps in each form with minimal effort, however gear mode is especially painful on AoE and mages. Manaburning this may have made it easier on the tanks, as during each set, 1-2 gears would always come back to assist PW, making it a little painful for the main alliance. We chose to go with the melee burn of lamps however, due to wanted to melee burn the last phase of PW.

Lamps HP changes by phases. Gear lamps have about 6200 HP (estimates across parsed logs). In beastmen form, and eventually Puk/Dragon/Bomb form, the lamps have between 10000-12000 HP.

My parse of actual PW fight is a bit screwed up, so I am trying to find another, but I would guess each PW phase to have roughly 50k hp (more hp based on the boss types, Gurfurlur, and Cerb/Khim/Hydra). The chariots go down VERY quickly, and with melee burning them you have to watch out to make sure you don't kill before your lamps alliance is ready. I wanted to confirm the "all lamps need to be dead or it will repop same form" statement, but we didnt have time =/. - Edit: Comfirmed!

PW itself is immune to ALL enfeebles (save dia/bio, Ill check on elemental DoT). Slow/Para/Blind/elegy were unable to be landed in any form, with any amount of skill. (Note my Rdm states she didnt get to try to slow/para the chariot forms, as they died too quickly).

PW shares developed resistances and traits of the current NM PW will quickly build resistance to stun in chariots form and VERY quickly build resistance to stun in Khim form. This actually caused us a lot of trouble, as 2 resisted stunned Fulminations wiped the floor with us. - This goes with damage too. If a specific type of damage is good for the real NM, then it is good for PW's version of it.

PW has retarded TP regain in lower %s of each form

PW can use each of the mobs special attacks as early as 75% (maybe earlier) Discoid, Charm, GoH, Fulmination, all went off as early as 75%, but maybe possible to go off earlier. Charm wasn't really a problem with fealty and the ability to kite->Draw in during charm phase. Discoid however was a bit painful, as it can use it back to back to back. I suggest saving stun for Discoid.



PW can/will use 2 hours for each mob at any % As noted by the 2% Mijin from Gulool Ja Ja followed by Gurfurlur opening with Hundred fists.. Definitely a smart AI and made for alot of LULz.



PW has no native Regen, even when unclaimed, but will gain it if the mob type has it. (Hydra phase regens HP based on heads).

As for last phase strats, I'm sure a more refined approach than "2 alliances zerging it down in rotations while blues hold it" is better, but it would take some work and some trustworthy people. A good alliance on PW could take down his last form w/o zerg each time, while the lamps alliance took down the lamps via melee burn, but you start getting into ALOT of trouble if 1-2 final phase lamps comes to assist PW. I didn't get to test whether the 75%/50%/25% AF recall lamps purely assist PW, or wether their hate is similar to previous iterations, but this would determine if a wipe is needed. If they do not purely assist PW, then a person can diaga them when they pop and run the Astral Flows away from everyone, while the lamps alliance takes down the next set.

Tip on lamps puller: PW pops claimed in his Dvergr form between form shifts. The lamps alliance pld can either be in the PW alliance and flash this form and the lamps will repop and go for that lamps pld, instead of the main PW alliance plds, or the Lamps pld can just diaga the lamps when they repop for fresh hate.

Lessons learned:

1. Placement: We had mages on the hills/ledges and tanks/melee in the middle where the ??? was. This is definitely not the best approach. The traditional Support --> Tanks -> Boss approach should be used here to ensure your mages and support are not getting owned with AoE. Hate is sensitive in this fight anyways, so PW will walk up the ledges regardless and make life a little painful on the tanks with draw in.

2. Stuns: You really need some qualified dedicated stunners for this, and you need to save stun for specific forms and only when needed. Discoid, Fulm, GoH are all you really need to stun.

3. Subjobs: Melee would probably have been better subbing Nin.. As I had the Sams sub war and they were on the ground half the time. I'm not really certain about this, but I'll talk to the melees and see what they think. Tanks probably could have been better subbing /rdm or /war. /nin was great at times, but with multiple gears and PW on you at any given times, and the high attack rate of PW in most of the forms (no slow/elegy), /nin had limited use.

4. Have party leaders established orders of who to invite when a melee dies. We spent half our time on PW with at least 1-2 DDs in weakness. This could be remedied by having a few extra melee just waiting to be swapped in, instead of moving them between lamps alliance and PW alliance. However we didn't have that many to spare, so it cost us a considerable amount of time with DD being unable to contribute. Having primary/secondary/tersiary assists for the lamps alliance also helps.

(Note that we alliance assisted the Gears and bombs/puks/dragons, and party assisted the Trolls/Lamia/Mamools).

Things that hurt us: Mijin @ 2% followed by Gurfurlur opening with HF. 2 Resisted/Missed stuns on Fulmination, and 2 GoHs going off. Pleadies Ray (sp) from Gurfurlur BLOWS NUTS, and he can use it back to back. I suspect a LS with more experience (and us next time) can take down all 10 forms and get to last stage in about 50 minutes.

I have several videos from multiple aspects of the fights. I have compressed a couple of them, but need to combine them (fraps saves them in multiple files, and I am not sure how to get them into one video). If someone knows a good approach for this, I will post a link to videos from the fight.

Let me know if anyone has any other questions or observations. We had our next set holder quit the game recently >.>, so it will be a bit before we can complete another, unless we can get some people to sell us some tier4 pops from Khim/Hydra.

edit: By phase observations:

Chariots: Higher AoE damage than normal Salvage bosses (6-700+ damage discharges instead of 2-300 damage discharges). Attacks were between 10-350 damage on tanks (even hit me for 10ish damage w/o shield block sometimes, very weird attack on this guy). Crits were for 350ish. Discoid sux, stun it.

Gulool Ja Ja: Same as normal, weakest of the 3 Beastmen kings, nothing really to note. Nothing that can really hurt you besides 2-3% Mijin (more of a surprise than anything because we forgot about it lol).

Gurfurlur: Hardest of the 3 PW beastmen kings modes. Opened with HF (and he doesnt hit lightly). Pleadies Ray does alot more damage than the actual Gurfurlur's Ray does, making it very deadly, and that's not even considering the added silence/para/slow/etc from the move.

Medusa: Will not fight from a ranged for first half like normal Medusa. Will draw you in or come to you continually. EES hit me for 1724 with tacos and phalanx2. Pretty easy other than that.

Khim: Toughest of the 3 kings in PW form due to AoE being upped from the normal version of Khim. Really need to limit TP on this and maybe take it down in bursts while storeTPing on outside mobs. Save stun ONLY for Fulm, which can be used below 50% (maybe sooner).

Cerb: Not to bad, but again heavier AOE than normal. Tanks at feet, melee at front, or just use ranged damage. Make sure mages are out of AoE range for Ululation and stun GoH!

Hydra: Pretty weak form, but his dragon pets are a bit tougher. Work through it, may suggests store TPing on outside mobs and pushing it down like Khim.

Our order was: BCC -> LBC -> LAC -> ACC -> Gulool Ja Ja -> Gurfurlur -> Medusa -> Khim -> Cerb -> Hydra.

[Therin]

A few comments, as a spectator, that I noticed:

Firstly and most importantly, I would recommend having your main PW DDs playing more aggressively with subjobs oriented more toward downing the forms quickly. I noticed you guys made short work of the chariots (although Brainjack was somewhat of a setback, but I guess that's typical as it can be that way in Salvage too if people aren't on their A+ game with kiting), but the kings and HNM forms took ages to go down (particularly Troll, Cerb, Khim). To save time, it looked like you could do with more aggressive damage. I noticed your Apoc DRK was playing /NIN - that's absolutely unnecessary, I can't imagine why an Apoc DRK would be pulling hate on a fight like this where you aren't spamming Souleater or what have you but merely trying to put out consistent, safe damage. I'm sure /NIN is great and probably necessary for the lamp party (to cut down on some of the AoE from lamps) but I wouldn't even consider it for the PW alliance.

Also, I would recommend relying more on RNGs (except for Hydra form). I know you put a lot of work into the alliance but I was noticing that SAM (even with Amano) and Namas damage was very lackluster compared to what I've seen on streams and videos in the past. RNG/SAM (especially from the RNG with Yoichinoyumi) would probably put out a lot better damage while still maintaining the benefit of low hate accumulation from Namas Arrow and damage-at-a-distance to avoid AoEs. Also, SAM spamming Namas still has to worry about feeding extra TP (she was using Soboro I noticed) and being in range of AoE damage, which is very dangerous when PW has so many vicious TP moves.

As you noted (particularly on Khimaira), stun builds resists quickly and you're probably not going to be able to rely on stunning Khimaira unless a DRK is doing it with merited magic and a decent set. So, my approach to Khimaira would be to take it down as fast as possible. On pop, I would have the DDs lay off (as you would on a normal Khimaira) until the lamps alliance has cleared most of the lamps. Once you're safe to start risking TPing on it, I'd just throw everything you have at it to clear it as fast as possible. Like, after damage starts, try to kill it in 1-2 minutes. This will lower the chance of a Fulmination slipping through due to stun resists and probably save you from the wipes of 1500+ massive AoE assrape.

As for tanks, I did notice the Aegises cut down on damage a ton. This is one of two fights where I would say that Aegis PLD is almost necessary to tank PW (the other being AV). It's unfortunate, but thankfully you guys had 2 of them present to help solidify your tank party. I'm not too sure if I'd be comfortable throwing away the idea of /NIN for tanking PW, simply because /WAR or /RDM inevitably has much more hate decay (which will hurt your kill time significantly). But, if you don't think he hits hard enough to warrant shadows, I can definitely see why /WAR or /RDM turtle set would be a better choice.

Just a few suggestions. Overall you guys did an amazing job for your first real go at it, and as the fight is so much more complicated than any other fight short of AV, I'm sure you'll do even better next time. This really is an experience fight. I don't think anyone has downed it on their first try and the more seasoned your players are, the easier it will be.

Good luck on your next attempt, I'll be there to watch once again.

[ringthree]

Good information. Can you shrink the pics a little to prevent breaking the tables? I can reduce them and host them for you if you need.

(Or you could just reduce the size of your avatar.)

[Neosutra]

The Apoc Drk was the only job that didnt have a DD sub, and you severely underestimate how loose the hate in this fight is with the massive amount of damage being taken from TP spam and how much damage the melees are doing. The only times the melees were holding back was when they were weakened (i.e. not fighting).

Rangers are great, but I chose to limit their use for chariot form and Khim form to not have Khim/Chariots TPing every other second. Blms were used for these forms for added stun and less TP fed during damage. If you noticed, we were typically waiting on the lamps alliance to finish before we killed chariot forms. The only forms that took us longer than desired to kill was Gurfurlur and Khim/Cerb/Hydra.

Khim may be best to burn down quickly with 1-2 dedicated stunners, good suggestion. Store TP on outside area and just tear it apart once lamps are dead. Khim definitely caused us problems as you saw.

Thanx for the comments Therin, we will definitely change our approach for Khim.

As for the DDs, We may go to a more ranged damage approach as well, as our close range melees hit the floor ALOT with all of the AoE and lamps.

[Veyron]

Nice info Neo, keep it up.

[Therin]

I guess hate is probably a bit more wonky than I realize, since I haven't actually tanked PW. I'm sure it's a completely different animal when it's really staring at you in the face. Maybe an extra few seconds or so to solidify hate at the start of each form would allow a smoother overall fight with less hate-switches, I dunno. Or maybe even, gasp, SAM/THF for trick attacking (although this would probably be more counter-productive than anything, still something to consider).

As for the DDs, We may go to a more ranged damage approach as well, as our close range melees hit the floor ALOT with all of the AoE and lamps.

Yeah, PW is a bit more mean in person that I expected. I noticed huge damage numbers from everything, even Lava Spit was doing 800-1000, and that's very uncharacteristic of Cerberus family mobs, because it normally does like 300-500 from Cerberus/Sarameya/Freke. That's why I suggested RNGs (less AoE damage and less soaked up MP).

I do see your point about TP spam, as RNGs feed around 20% TP per shot to a mob. As we know, mobs don't always go at 100% until 25% health, so maybe it would be better to use RNGs but have them hold back a bit until 25%, and then drop WS -> Barrage -> WS to finish off each form?

As for finishing Khimaira off quickly, remember that a triple-BRD rotation will boost a DD's output exponentially. I don't know if you were already doing that (some of the particulars of the fight were hard to pickup on the sidelines), but it might be a good idea to take advantage of that strategy here.

[Neosutra]

Yep, rangers for last 6 forms. Store TPing on outside mobs and zerging last 25% per phase. And dedicated melees/DD waiting to be subbed in would make this fight A LOT easier.

And ya, I was surprised at the potency of all of his moves. I expected his AoE and moves to be on par with the mobs he was mimicking, but they were much more powerful in many cases (especially Pleadies Ray).

[Shenrien]

kick ass info, keep it up hope you get another pop set soon and hopefully take him down

[Suiram]

Tip on lamps puller: PW pops unclaimed in his Dvergr form between form shifts. The lamps alliance pld can Flash this form and the lamps will repop and go for that lamps pld, instead of the main PW alliance plds. This helps in keeping lamps from coming back.

So when he he repops as his real next form, what is the hate situation with the lamps and the PLD who flashed dvergr PW? Is it supertank/0-hate type hate? Or is it a small amount of regular hate?

Also, who does real next form PW target after form shift is fully complete? The person with the most hate at 0%, or the lamp PLD who flashed during form-shift/lamp-repop?

[Aurania]

A few comments, as a spectator, that I noticed:

I noticed your Apoc DRK was playing /NIN - that's absolutely unnecessary, I can't imagine why an Apoc DRK would be pulling hate on a fight like this where you aren't spamming Souleater or what have you but merely trying to put out consistent, safe damage.

As the aforementioned apoc drk, I resent that statement. Sub sam is great in meripos and short lived fights, but in any situation where I know I will pull hate, it's just not smart, ESPECIALLY when I know I can tank pretty much anything long enough for the tanks to regain hate.

Subbing nin was ABSOLUTELY necessary. We had three good tanks, but between deaths and the sheer amount of damage being taken, the DDs were quite frequently pulling hate. There were times that I, yes, I, was tanking PW. Had I not had shadows, I wouldn't have lasted three seconds, because the dude hits like a mack truck. No, I wasn't spamming souleater (I rarely use it), and I was being very conservative with last resort. The fact is, apocs pull hate sheerly due to DOT. I don't do enormous spike damage, but my dot adds up quickly and the parses show it - over time, I quickly catch up with the spike damage DDs. Add to that that one of the melees, the yoichi, could NOT pull hate had she wanted, and Shar and I were in trouble from the start. Finish your apoc and you'll understand.

I was pulling hate and tanking for several minutes at a time (it's part of why I died so much, in fact), and I was holding back. Don't even get me started on the fact that several AOE moves are absorbed by shadows, so it's just plain reckless, and an MP sink, where MP is scarce, not to have them. The chariots and other NM forms have aoes that DESTROY their normal form. Discharge was hitting for upwards of 700-800, which is way more than normal.

Look, Vandyr, I know you're a hard core /sam lover, as is half of BG, but quite frankly, I'd rather live and do more DOT. I don't play to win a parse - I play to win - winning means fast kills. Fast kills means healthy DDs, not dead ones. I was playing to win that fight, and going any other sub, I could not have lasted as long as I did. That's a two hour fight, and you're not going to survive in the long haul with what is effectively a meripo sub (and yes, I do know how to utilize my /sam).

Aside from that, yea, we did take down the later kings much slower. We were multiple times weakened, and the support for that party was not as good as it could have been, which we have already addressed as a group. Given that we basically had no DDs on the later forms for a while, it's no surprise that we didn't kill it faster.

People can disagree with me on this all they want, but pit two apocs in a long fight against each other, one sub sam, the other sub nin, and see which one lives longer.

[Yabby]

A few things to note note about the fight myself.

I think /nin is very important for any melee DD because unlike their normal mobs, PW's forums take a lot more damage then their counterpart. When the melees did have buffs on, they were pulling hate very easily. Having the right support (IE good brd/mages) that can keep buffs up (IE haste, most of the melee were bitching about never having haste) will make this fight much easier.I don't know if the support was just overwhelmed by the fight itself or what, but having an A team for your PW melees is very important.

Subbing things like /war and /sam will do nothing but get someone killed. Like i said above, PW takes much more damage then his counterparts. Having DD's that can tank for short periods of time is very important. A dead melee is useless. And most of the DD's (Besides the cheating ass namas spaming sam) pulled hate a lot.

The idea of setting up a zerg style 25% down is very important from what i seen. His TP regen was crazy. During one of the time the brd was sacking PW (In ToA mob form) half the time he didn't hit the brd, just killed him with a TP move. PW itself wasn't that hard (Excluding final form) wasn't that hard. Just need the basics: Good mages, Good support, Good DD.



Edit: Yea looking at the parse, most of the relic DD's were dead/weakened 60% of the fight. Maybe even having a rotation whm for the DD party should help (Swich out after each form). Keeping the DD alive is very important because when the fights slow down there is much more room for error.

[Aurania]

Oh, one last thought. Shar was on /war for his sam. He was WAY holding back, as he told us on vent, because he pulled hate easily. He's used to tanking chariots with me, so on /nin he probably would have felt a bit more comfortable. But yea, some of the problem was simply that our healers couldn't keep up with us and keep us alive long enough for the tanks to re-establish hate.

[Neosutra]

Ya, /nin for the melees in PW alliance and EXPERIENCED kick ass mages for support is required.

Due to just how many people was needed for this, we were stretched pretty thin, so I made the mistake of not giving the melee party the quality of mages they deserved (not to put down the mages in that fight, they did their best), but I should have put some "career" whm(s) in that party to take care of the melee.

I think I owe Carmisse/Sharingan/Aurania a long Meripo lol Q.Q.

And wanted to echo that his AOE in each form is much stronger than the normal NM of that type, and his TP regain (not sure if just after 25% or not) is insanely high.

Oh, and anyone have any tips on combining these compressed vids into one vid? Since fraps saves them as multiple files.

[Kagomie]

I noticed you guys made short work of the chariots (although Brainjack was somewhat of a setback, but I guess that's typical as it can be that way in Salvage too if people aren't on their A+ game with kiting)

The Brain Jack was definitely a hard aspect to pick up on. With the ensuing chaos going on all around PW himself, it was very hard to read orders in linkshell, call out debuffs in party, and watch TP moves while keeping shadows up. Sadly by the time I had realized that Neo had been hit by Brain Jack, I had already been hit. From watching the Salvage boss versus the PW imitation, the PW Brain Jack seemed near close to instant between the targets with hate.

As for tanks, I did notice the Aegises cut down on damage a ton. This is one of two fights where I would say that Aegis PLD is almost necessary to tank PW (the other being AV). It's unfortunate, but thankfully you guys had 2 of them present to help solidify your tank party. I'm not too sure if I'd be comfortable throwing away the idea of /NIN for tanking PW, simply because /WAR or /RDM inevitably has much more hate decay (which will hurt your kill time significantly). But, if you don't think he hits hard enough to warrant shadows, I can definitely see why /WAR or /RDM turtle set would be a better choice.

Aegis definitely shined during this fight, no doubt about it. By far the greatest test and the best performance I've gotten out of it since completing it.

I absolutely would not have thrown away /NIN for this fight. /RDM and /WAR would have just opened the door for that much more damage and loose hate during the long run. Each form was hitting for about 200 on average unblocked, 10-150 on a shield block, and 350+ on a crit. Buffs to help reduce this damage could not always be kept constant, therefor letting the shadows be the final hold on minimizing any spam heals and loss of hate. I would also say that Joyeuse was most likely a frowned upon choice of weapon for this particular fight. I got all of 4-5 atonements off across all forms as there were multiple TP reset moves that occurred. I would have gladly have taken +4 enmity now that I look back on it over adding to the TP feed of the hasted Apoc DRK, the Joyeuse Co-Tank PLD and the Soboro Yoichi SAM along with the other melee's/DD's/Mages attacking it.

[Mistress Stowastiq]

Thank you for a very informative and well-organized post Neo. Look forward to your next go at PW.

[Baha]

Nice writeup Neo, some great info in there. Hope you guys manage it on the next attempt.

[Zumi]

Want to buy my T4 hydra Neo? I'll never get to use it so might as well sell it.

Also could sell a T4 Cerb but it sounds like you don't need him.

[Neosutra]

Want to buy my T4 hydra Neo? I'll never get to use it so might as well sell it.

Also could sell a T4 Cerb but it sounds like you don't need him.

Ya, we are buying any T4s we can get our hands out. We currently have plenty of Sarameya hides, but we still kill those for people due to the gil value that comes with it.

And that being said, anyone that may have a Tyger or Tinnin they need killed, or one they can kill themselves but are willing to sell the pops, PLEASE let me know.

Oh, and to answer a question from above:

So when he he repops as his real next form, what is the hate situation with the lamps and the PLD who flashed dvergr PW? Is it supertank/0-hate type hate? Or is it a small amount of regular hate?

Also, who does real next form PW target after form shift is fully complete? The person with the most hate at 0%, or the lamp PLD who flashed during form-shift/lamp-repop?

Hate is reset between phases and PW will go for whomever has action on it during the few seconds it is in Dvergr form (and lamps will assist this form upon repop). As for what type of hate, I believe it is assist hate, so the lamps pld may be able to super tank it w/o worrying about losing them.

Im not sure if PW "called" a few gears back, or the tank party plds just developed more hate than the lamps plds when the gears came back. However, this can be remedied via having the lamps pld flash between phases (flash PW, not the lamps).

And it looks like me and Kagomie disagree on what subjob for the plds. Ill take a look at the videos and see just how much of an improvement turtle tanking would have been over /nin.

[Suiram]

Hate is reset between phases and PW will go for whomever has action on it during the few seconds it is in Dvergr form (and lamps will assist this form upon repop).

Yeah, what I meant for that part of the question was that I was pretty sure his target after form change (the person he'd look to attack first, even though no hate) was the person with the most hate when the previous form hit 0%, and was wondering if this lamp strategy would change that (which it apparently does, but shouldn't really be an issue I guess).

[Therin]

And it looks like me and Kagomie disagree on what subjob for the plds. Ill take a look at the videos and see just how much of an improvement turtle tanking would have been over /nin.

I feel like /WAR or /RDM probably would work fine for those PLDs with strong PDT sets (you have two pieces of Valhalla whereas most other PLDs on Phoenix don't). If you're into turtle tanking, Hauteclaire/Aegis, and 2x Valhalla will help a ton.

Look, Vandyr, I know you're a hard core /sam lover, as is half of BG, but quite frankly, I'd rather live and do more DOT. I don't play to win a parse - I play to win - winning means fast kills. Fast kills means healthy DDs, not dead ones. I was playing to win that fight, and going any other sub, I could not have lasted as long as I did. That's a two hour fight, and you're not going to survive in the long haul with what is effectively a meripo sub (and yes, I do know how to utilize my /sam).

There's no need to take offense here. I actually agree with you to some extent (in the case of PW, where /SAM is certainly draining more MP than /NIN).

Of course DRK/SAM is better for straight damage. Of course DRK/NIN is better for survivability. In some cases, you need /NIN and in some you don't. My point here is that rather than having a sub-optimal DAMAGE subjob on your melee, swap them for a RNG or something that can deal just as much damage from afar without draining MP. Either that, or have them play more aggressively - ultimately, if you're going to spend MP curing them because they're standing in AoE range, it's better to have them do as much damage as possible while they're sponging.

I wasn't in range of PW all that much because I didn't want to kill myself, so I didn't see how often you pulled hate on him. If you did find that hate was going nuts too easily, I'd suggest working on possible solutions for that. Having 2 SAM/THF in your melee party 2 more outside to swap in for trick attacks might help solidfy hate a lot better and make /NIN on your other melee less necessary. As for non-melee damage, however, the only PW TP move that shadows has any effect on is Khimaira (Tourbillion), and this can be easily avoided with ranged damage or positioning adjustments.

Honestly if I were organizing I wouldn't put melee DD on at all (except perhaps swapping SAMs in for WSing) simply because it's inefficient to have WHMs spamming cures on DDs (you can have them concentrate on tanks instead) when PW obviously doesn't take much damage (his defense is huge - I rarely saw a WS from any melee for significant damage). I'd stick entirely to RNG and BLM damage and extra DDs to swap in for more appropriate forms (i.e., WAR/SAMs and SAM/WARs on Hydra should work nicely).

My issue with DRK/NIN is that I see a lot of people use it in situations where it is entirely unnecessary. OF COURSE there are situations where not subbing NIN will get you killed, but on the other hand there are a lot more situations where you'll benefit even more from faster TP accumulation for more Catastrophe spam to keep your own HP up. PW isn't one of the latter cases, I agree, and this is why I was advocated ranged damage. As I said before, it seems to me that if you're going to leave melee in AoE range, why not have them do as much damage as possible while they're there? Personally, if I had brought my DRK to PW (once my Apoc is done) I'd feel more comfortable in the lamps parties and leaving the PW damage to the people who won't be taking AoE damage. But that's just me.

*EDIT* On review of the hate situation, if you feel that you are pulling a lot of hate, you might think about trying /DRG. Especially for Sharingan's Amano SAM. Overall, the extra Haste, accuracy, and enmity reduction would probably help him quite a bit. It may not be as worthwhile for DRK, and it is a bit unorthodox, but the 50% enmity reduction from High Jump is quite significant and might help you to stay alive a bit longer without sacrificing as much damage as you would on /NIN. The question would be whether or not it would be significant enough, since High Jump is on a 3-minute timer. I do think it would be a step up from /WAR though, for a SAM. It's what a lot of our melees use now on short fights like that 5-minute Jailer of Love where we want to put out as much damage as possible without ripping hate from the tanks. And, technically, each PW form is a "short fight", so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

[Neosutra]

Added by phase observations to end of OP.

And I'm really disappointed I didn't get to test whether the current form repops if you dont kill all the gears, that would drastically change this fight. I dont really follow the first LSs claim 100% that this is true, and haven't seen it tested again.

As for PW's defense, yes he has pretty high defense and people should plan for that.

Might be a good idea as suggested to have 2 spots dedicated in a party for Melee/thf to sub in and TA/WS and drop back out, storeTPing on outside mobs. With Rangers/Ranged damage (blms/smns) full time in the other spots. Limiting TP spam, helping with hate, and limiting the number of people in range of AoE.

[imagoon]

When we killed it last Sunday we basically followed pretty close to the strat you have. We found that blm tend to mow through lamps better than melee that we could tell. However this is still our weakest part in the attempts and win so far.

In the final form we told people to warp to whitegate and switch to zerg jobs. We finished all 10 forms in about 65 minutes.

[Zazel]

Neo, was your Atonement damage doing good enough dmg to allow Sams to briefly jump in tank PT and Shiki the tanks? I know some mobs, aka Khim type, only takes 50% dmg from a capped Atonement.

Also what were some estimate on the dmg from most melee ws?

[orson]

Adding some minor info from our experiences.

With our fights I can confirm that special/unique TP attacks seem to be able to go off at anytime, although it seems far more common to see them at lower HP levels.

Order for pops each time we've fought it has been:
4 Chariots (random order) > 3 ToAU Kings (random) > 3 ToAU HNMs (random)




Did your add Pld find that they were getting in trouble from flashing PW between forms from the AoEs or was that negligible? Also I found using flash or diaga before they switched sometimes did not aggro them in the next form. Only thing I can think of is either the main alliance was pulling hate on PW itself during switches or is it that I'd need to flash PW specifically before he goes after the main ally?

On a side note in the same area, one thing I am pretty sure of is that initial pull VE is granted each time the lamps pop in a new form because the Pld that pulled first tended to get keep hate a bit easier. Not really all that important but sometimes that can really leave them all stuck to one person if they don't ease up abit on hate.

[Rocl]

Pandemonium Warden was cooler when he transformed into the Serpent Generals

[Tharen]

The most crucial observation that I made during this fight was that I should be on DD instead of brd next time so I can have more fun

[Carmi]

Soboro Yoichi SAM reporting in.


Let me just say that going as that job combo was stupid as hell. During the whole fight, it felt as though all of the three DDs in the melee party in the PW alliance were holding back so much because of how much strain we were putting onto our WHM. It did not help that our RDM was /drk sub so only the WHM could deal with the -na spam. Afl-Misery is certainly not a good idea because a lot of the TP moves that pwned our faces were all AoE that did 1k dmg. I felt so bad with the stupid soboro that I turned around a few times or just ran out of range. Much lulz was had that's for sure... I feel that, and I definitely told Neo this afterwards (lol), that Yoichi RNG would be much better. The only thing I was actually worried about were the surprise triple proc/barrages.. but whatever.. the 10 forms shouldn't last long enough for it to matter, I would definitely take that over Soboro lol... Sorry shar/aurania =p I felt like none of us three did our best because I think all of us were worried about our WHM's MP pool .. each time I look over he has like 50 MP

I am not sure if /NIN would help that much seeing as how a lot of the shit that killed us were AoE shit that went through shadows, which would also do over 1k dmg. If we were lucky we would get a combo AoE 700 dmg.. leaving us with a few hundred HP, then WAMMY another 1k dmg. Anyway I was thinking maybe having a sch or blu for AoE Stoneskin/saline coat? might help? I'm not sure why we didn't use any BLUs last night Q_Q since they're apparently really good for dmg?

[stewie]

Oh, and anyone have any tips on combining these compressed vids into one vid? Since fraps saves them as multiple files.

Um, windows movie maker and publish movie(vista)/save file as(xp)?

[Aurania]

Soboro Yoichi SAM reporting in.
Sorry shar/aurania =p I felt like none of us three did our best because I think all of us were worried about our WHM's MP pool .. each time I look over he has like 50 MP

I am not sure if /NIN would help that much seeing as how a lot of the shit that killed us were AoE shit that went through shadows, which would also do over 1k dmg. If we were lucky we would get a combo AoE 700 dmg.. leaving us with a few hundred HP, then WAMMY another 1k dmg. Anyway I was thinking maybe having a sch or blu for AoE Stoneskin/saline coat? might help? I'm not sure why we didn't use any BLUs last night Q_Q since they're apparently really good for dmg?

I don't know why people keep apologizing to us. >.> That fight was fun as hell; I don't give a shit about the exp loss. I stay capped anyway, so it's really no big. I was just glad to be a part of it. I'm a little pissed Neo doesn't already have another pop set. -.- I want to fight it again. Like right now. Today.

In all seriousness, though, I think next time, with a tad more notice, we can rally up some of our support people, too. We will definitely bring our resident SCH next time (he will need a huge buffer for this), because he could both SS us and provide support. I saw a lot of AOE get eaten by shadows, but stoneskin would help SO much.

Also, as Neo already pointed out, we can probably reposition our support to make it easier on them. A couple of us died for retarded reasons - trying to get to our whm for buffs when you basically had to run past PW to get to that silly ramp (ramp pissed me off so bad). I know I died right after unweakening at one points just trying to run to him (poor timing on my part).

Seriously. Moar pops.

[Carmi]

I'm a little pissed Neo doesn't already have another pop set. -.- I want to fight it again. Like right now. Today.

Absolutely agree. What an ass huh?