Better Than One: FL Assault help

[Priphea]

My Assault group has been steadily advancing, and we're down to just the FL tier remaining. We did reasonably comfortably on Orochi and Count Dracula, but Cerberus (Better than One) has some inherent problems with our set up.

We go as:
BLU/NIN (DNC soon to be possible)
BLU/NIN (SAM possible)
THF/NIN (no other jobs)
BRD/WHM (RDM, BLM, SMN also ok)
RDM/BLM (WHM, SMN, BLM also ok)
WHM/BLM (RDM also ok)

Our backline, as you can see, is very diverse. Our frontline is, well, not. Most strategies I have seen for this fight involve frontlines that do not have magic casting in order to avoid Elemental Aggro when Black Shuck roars.

That is not an option for us, so my idea was to wait until the Elementals pop, (have the BLUs stop casting), and immediately have either the BRD or RDM run to the center and aggro all of the Elementals with something fast casting like Barfira, and sac pull them all to the south.

Here's my questions:

1. Will this work? I imagine all elementals would start casting so are kitable.
2. Do the elementals return to their spawn points after killing their aggro? If I were to aggro all of the Elementals and run all of them very far S away from Cerberus, would that spare us the trouble of dealing with them?

I don't want to switch to a SAM DNC THF frontline if at all possible, but that is another option we have.

[siknoz]

Since no one else has posted, I can't speak from 1st hand experience since we only killed the 3 ele's near mages. We were also told that aggro'ing them all and running away will make them despawn, not return to their normal spawn points. If nothing else I'd have the brd sac' pull them and die far away. Worst case scenario, they'll slowly walk back to the spawn points but should give a pretty good window for blu's to put some damage on. If it does come to that the brd might need to sac pull a few times though.

[Rai]

To my knowledge they don't despawn until you get past Cerb's elemental mode (mode change every 25% HP). We usually have one person (RDM) kiting them away, however we usually push to the next mode rather fast (WARx2, SAM frontline) so the elementals tend to disappear before they can become any real harm for the kiter.

On the rare occasion that the kiter died, the elementals would return to the main group quite fast so I don't think sac pulling them would buy you much time.

[Lexa]

They will not despawn, until Cerberus is out of elemental mode. If someone pulls them to the beginning and dies, they will wander back. And the area is not horribly big. If you have someone sac pull, they will without a doubt have to do it at least a couple of times, depending on how long Cerb has them out.

You could have a RDM pull them, and then kite (if they have w legs available, that helps) or sac, but beware of the magic aggro trick. My static did this as PLD MNK WAR RDM WHM BRD. We had the MNK tank Cerb, once the eles popped I (PLD) magic aggroed, and ran. However, I didn't get all of them - they pop quite far apart, and one of them didn't chase me, but rather aggroed the RDM.

Eventually, we found what worked, was to have me PLD/RDM, Diaga them all, then kite/hold them. This was also partially dependant on luck, because if I get caught by 3+ Firaga IIIs, I will get one-shotted no matter what. This particularely happens if they stop to cast almost all the way at the start, but not completely, so that I can only outrun them by doubling back past them. More often than not, I will not get far enough away in time for that. And regardless, I could never stay alive indefinitely - on one of our attempts, Cerb opened with eles before we were even engaged, and then kept them out until we wiped.

[Valyana]

You don't want to collect them with something fast casting like Barfira, or you'll miss some. Better is to cast something long like Stoneskin while you run around and collect them. You don't need to cast successfully to get magic aggro...

And the kiter ought to be able to kite indefinitely through the back tunnels. Elementals are among the easier mobs to kite.

[Aemora]

We probably got tremendous lucky, but when our static did it, we effectively 5-manned it.

Ran in with Nin tank, Mnk and War DDs, with Rdm Whm Blm back-up. I decided to come Blm instead of Brd due to Stun, and little to my knowledge GoH mode is full-time, and I missed every single GoH (lol). Our Mnk pulled hate early (85%) and died, and we left her dead whilst slowly plotting away at Cerb. At 18% Elementals popped, and with 0 MP, we -somehow- managed to win by me killing off one, aggro'in one, and kiting it back around the area where the Mages were. With Chainspell, Benediction and Mighty Strikes, 18% flew by in a matter of seconds. Same Mnk died early on to Hydra too... Dare I say if I went Brd, we could have zerged Cerberus King Vinegaroon-style.

BUT DRACULA OMFG.... Had the MOST trouble with Dracula jesus... First attempt was going great, until the Mnk died early again, then the second DD died, then our Thf got charmed, Tank for slept, and mages got owned by Doppleganger. Second time around, it was basically a kite fight...

Got Chaircow and Khimaria left

[Dammerung]

Should be a no-brainer, but make sure everyone has reraise. Nothing quite like having everyone dead, then having it die to DoT and noone able to hit the runic for the clear

[Vedder]

I found TP limitation to be the way to go on this one.

Our setup:
WAR/NIN
NIN/WAR
WHM/BLM
RDM/WHM
BRD/WHM
RDM/DRK (W.Legs)

All the mages stayed out of range of AoE Paralyze while the WAR and NIN slowly chipped away at Black Shuck's HP. Once the ele's popped, the RDM with W.Legs aggroed them all with Diaga and kited them around until either she died or they despawned. I forget which actually happened... but I know once they went away it was just a battle of attrition as we had plenty of MP to keep the DDs alive and we were limiting it's TP by just having two people melee and it eventually died easily.

Took us a couple tries to figure out this was the best way for us, but once we did it went super smooth. I also did it before with basically the same setup except for 2 NIN/WARs instead of one NIN / one WAR.