Dammit! Not another stupid AV Thread: Part XVLCIIIPLAID

[Max™]

What the fuck am I thinking huh, ANOTHER stupid AV theory thread?

Damn Max, hasn't this dead horse been beaten enough?

Well, almost. I'd post this in Advanced, but within 3 minutes it would turn into a bitchfest of "Wahhh, I want to kclub zerg av again" vs "Wahhh, I want to kill av and I don't have a kclub, so fuck you kclubbers in the butt" essentially.

So yeah, was talking to some people in one of my old sea LSes that were on the subject of AV changes, and I remembered an idea I saw in one of the many locked bitching threads in Advanced.

I think it may have been Arthars who suggested it at first, that perhaps you need to stay between a certain minimum and maximum amount of damage per minute.

Thinking about that, and the fact that JoL+AV is one fight with a 2 hour limit, I hit upon a ridiculously simple idea.

Square: You have to break his Regen.
Us: We can't make him stop raping us.
Square: Your fight speed is wrong.
Us: Wut? We want him to stop raping us, what the fucking hell does speed have to do with it?
Square: You have to break his Regen.

So: It takes roughly 40~50 minutes to milk all the pets from a JoL to fully break that part of the AV regen, right?

That leaves roughly 60~70 minutes for the fight.

AV has 66,000 Hp and a Regen.

In order to kill him in 60~70 minutes, you HAVE to do 1000 Dmg per minute, this is a given.

Why does SE rant about the Regen?

Well, if you've got say, 70 minutes to kill him, and let's say his Regen is 100/tic, he'd get back ~2000 Hp per minute.

So now you've gotta do over 3000 Dmg per minute to kill him, because you didn't break his Regen.

Why does that matter? Probably because that is what triggers the "omg rape your fucking face" mode.

Figure out what he will regen in a minute, add that to 1000, and do no more than that much damage per minute, or he buttfucks you.

If you don't have the regen broken, you cannot do enough damage to kill him in time now, without triggering the "rape brutally" AI.

Again, credit for the line of thought isn't mine, I just made the connection to why they bitch about the regen to us.

As for any other theories about 2 hours or whatever, it's possible that keeping him in that goldilocks damage range is what makes that mode available.

Patience is a virtue.

Not posting about the fucking nerf is a virtue too, if you know anything about his actual regen amount, or are one of the LSes that has had any rather inexplicable luck with bringing AV down at least part way with a metered damage output, cool. If not, since this is technically a stupid AV theory thread, feel free to post whatever ebon panels bullshit I guess, but again. It isn't about the fucking kclub nerf, or zerging AV in any way.

It's about trying to decipher this stupid fucking puzzle of a mob, I probably should know better than to try, but hell, here goes.

*click*

[Robert]

Just curious how long he normally takes to go into super raep mode if you don't do anything to him after he pops, he was up for like 5 minutes noming on us and didn't 2hr once, but after we noticed and sent someone in to ES Freeze2 it used Meikyo Shisui and Explosive Impulse on him. From my past experience he used to come right out of the gate raining down hell

[Tomiko]

Not posting about the fucking nerf is a virtue too

Best part of the post.


It's an interesting idea/theory, but it seems rather hard to keep track of the amount of damage done without the use of Windower (not sure how easy/hard it would be with it though)

This is also assuming SE didn't change the way it was supposed to be killed before the patch. If so, they sure knocked off alot of HP if it was supposed to be an 18hr fight before and ~1hr now.

Another possible idea: Maybe it's like the Friar's Lanterns where damage from a single source over a certain amount has an effect on it.

Not sure when I'll be doing JoL next, but I'll ask if we can try stuff out assuming people are interesting in trying.

[Hashmalum]

I've come to think that the damage theory might have something to it, although I don't think that it's the whole solution. Given that even a simple thing like breaking regen comes in two separate pieces, I'm expecting a number of different tricks to be necessary--perhaps as many as seven, of which we definitely know two (kill JoL's pets, same day nukes). I would point out that it might not necessarily be damage specifically, but possibly total hate (again, like the "patience is a virtue" idea, this ties in to a virtue--hate is the "opposite" of love, thus instilling too much hate would be a bad thing). Other stuff that I expect to be significant somehow:

-The fact that AV responds with "readied" 2 hours when someone outside the alliance gets hate. This has to be significant, since no other mob in the game "readies" job abilities. Cooperating with others is supposed to be virtuous, right? Presumably one of the tricks will require this.
-Some shit involving responding to AV's 2 hours with one of your own. This might have been removed though when SE shortened the fight to 2 hours total.
-The fact that AV can't be enfeebled, yet is (supposedly!) beatable anyway means that we should be able to do the entire fight using no spells not of the day's element. In fact, it's likely that it's something we should avoid at all costs, or we'll get punished somehow.

[Max™]

Well, I suspect that the goldilocks damage zone will just be a matter of time nuking type things, making sure you don't have a bunch of people meleeing to push the total damage per minute up too high, etc.

I do think it makes sense though, because of the way they kept telling us "regen, regen, regen", when all along they may have been saying "once you break his regen, you can do as much damage as he would have healed in a set period of time without him freaking out" basically.

The 2hr thing will probably come into play after the goldilocks zone is found, but it DOES make the video they showed us seem a lot more helpful if it's true.

[Chrius]

It would be easy to keep track of damage.
Give out assignments to people about how much damage to deal and then when they meet it just stop until the next round.

Not saying adding up all your damage would be easy, but it is doable and AV is not meant to be easy.

[Jaybar]

Didn't the latest AV zergs, post-update, mention how AV was "calmer" (seeing as they did very little damage in that small time-frame). I think this theory might hold some merit.

[Day]

Isn't this Belkin's exact strategy?

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showp...postcount=1040

[ninjafox]

In order to pull this off, wouldn't you relatively have to have a small amount of people on it? Considering if you wanted to stay within a 1k-3k damage range per minute, I can't see having more than 1-2 melee on it at a time

[Kaylia]

Why does that matter? Probably because that is what triggers the "omg rape your fucking face" mode.

I can remember a few fight pre patch where we got assraped before dealing any damage. How can you explain this?

Havent fought it recently tho

[Ramses]

If it can't be surmised from the video then it is going to be wrong. As difficult as it has turned out to figure out exactly what the video was supposed to tell us, I don't see any way you can infer a damage cap from it. One thing I've noticed and would like to see tested is he seems to benediction if he is allowed to regen a few percent. That could be the key to benediction or a coincidence, but it's worth looking into. Could be he will only benediction if his regen is not reduced and damage is not being done. The other thing is there have now been multiple reports of player two houring after AV increases the time between AV two hours. That still needs definite confirmation and then lots of testing on the exact mechanics of it if it is indeed true. Unfortunately, other than those two things, there doesn't seem much else to go on right now.

[Hanyoko]

I'd go so far as to say keep all damage either non-element or of the element of the current day.
Elemental obis : boost current day magic damage; aquired through killing sea stuff
Elemental gorget : boost weaponskills of specific elements; also aquired through killing sea stuff.

So if you must skillchain keep it at level 1s of the element of the current day.

I must agree though, one thing most of the fights on the CoP missions forced people into taking the fight slow and steady so they still have gas when the mob starts to go crazy at low HP. There are a few exceptions but majority of the BC fights were like that.

[Sady]

While I do like the OP's train of thought, I personally think broader "back to the drawing board" approach needs to be employed. As much as it pains me to say it, the infamous video remains our only evidence of an AV kill as SE intended.

The sequence of events shown in the NA video is very linear:
Step 1: Break JoL's regen (keel X adds) >>> Kill JoL
Step 2: Break AV's regen (day elemental nukes)
Step 3: When AV 2hours use player 2hours (what this achieves is unkown, but it is believed to be related to weakening/locking AV's 2hours)
Step 4: ???
Step 5: PROFIT!

Anyone that's done JoL a few times knows how to achieve step 1 so we'll just skip over that...

Step 2 I think is where we need to refocus our efforts. I've never seen any empirical relation between magnitude/freqency of nukes required to break the regen. Moreover, I don't think I've ever read of any group even claiming to have removed the regen (please correct me if I'm wrong here). If the approximations in the OP are correct 100hp/tick regen would ammount to approximately 3%/minute so this shouldn't be too difficult to physically observe.

Now I know what you're probably thinking, regen isn't the problem its AV's arsenal of 2hours/WS/magic. This leads into the 2hour conundrum. I think the major flaw with people's testing in this regard is that they were attempting to do step 3 without having properly completed step 2. It stands to reason that attempting to do one without the other might be ineffective. Think Ikea furniture, if you try to skip steps your dresser is going to litterally be made of fail.

Again, I know this is basically theorycraft and idle speculation but... I believe that you have to accomplish these goals before certain hp triggers. What do we know about AV's HP triggered behavior? At ~80% AV will unleash a volley of Comet/Meteor and generally rocks domes. The next thing we know is that at ~60% he equips the power bracers and puts the rape down. What accomplishing steps 2 and/or 3 prior to these hp triggers would do to change this behavior (if anytihng) is also unknown but in the video AV is only shown with bracers up in the last scene before they kill it so it's likely that both have to be done before that point.

[Ramses]

Quite a few ls stopped AV's regen shortly after the video was released. You just need to nuke AV with element of the day. Rotating tier I-IV seems to work and keeps hate off the blms. His actual behavior did not change, though. Stopping the regen is crucial, but there is one thing more that we are still missing.

[drwaffles]

Great theory, except for the fact that there's never been any strong indication that AV's face-raping disposition is in any way tied to the rate at which damage is dealt to him. When we killed him last week, he Manateor'd our faces whilst we were holding him at 100% and trying to take out the Wynavs. Personally, I think the only way to beat AV really does just involve fighting it with an alliance of pimp, skilled and highly pro-active people, being prepared for any eventuality, having coping strategies set up for dealing with all potential face-rapes (whilst similar, even Meteor isn't necessarily synonymous with Deathga) and hoping he doesn't decide to be a total bitch.

There's way too much fixation on theories and tricks and gimmicks, in my opinion. Perhaps people should just try to work out how to fight him in a controlled and achievable manner, to an extent anyway.

[Hashmalum]

If it can't be surmised from the video then it is going to be wrong. As difficult as it has turned out to figure out exactly what the video was supposed to tell us, I don't see any way you can infer a damage cap from it.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that at some points in the video there were players with weapons out, but turned away and deliberately not engaging the thing. That seems like a hint of "don't do maximum damage" to me.

I'd go so far as to say keep all damage either non-element or of the element of the current day.
Elemental obis : boost current day magic damage; aquired through killing sea stuff
Elemental gorget : boost weaponskills of specific elements; also aquired through killing sea stuff.

So if you must skillchain keep it at level 1s of the element of the current day.

Agreed with this.

[altwight]

should get dev team to make a new video due to the recent nerf. see how they respond to that

[Ramses]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that at some points in the video there were players with weapons out, but turned away and deliberately not engaging the thing. That seems like a hint of "don't do maximum damage" to me.

Agreed with this.

That's because they were running away from chainspell. As big of a joke as the zoom is, they didn't zoom in on players turning around or disengaging. They zoomed on baraero being cast, element they were nuking with corresponding to the day, and players using two hours when AV did.

[Maxxthepenguin]

I'm going to start a real AV thread later

It's going to be better organized, in advanced, well moderated, and will hopefully get to the bottom of some of the mysteries.

[Max™]

Isn't this Belkin's exact strategy?

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showp...postcount=1040

That's who it was.

I only saw it in passing as I was looking through one of the locked threads.

Yes, it was Belkin who suggested the "goldilocks" damage range.

All I did was say that the rate of the regen should tell you how to find that range, which explains why they kept saying to break the regen, and the video doesn't show them working to beat it down quickly.

I think there is a minimum and maximum damage range, like Belkin suggested.

Too little, he gets bored and it's Fuckga IV time.

Too much, he gets pissed and you eat meteors.

The only reason it seems to be so important is because the way they kept pushing to break the regen.

Then they added the depop timer, and set his HP at a point where we would have to do roughly 1k/minute, but could get by without doing more than 2~3k/minute in the time given.

If you don't break his regen, you will have do like 4k or more per minute to kill him in a decent time.

If you try to that, he buttfucks you.