Dynamis-Qufim win with 20-24?

[cdgreg]

First off, I've done my research and read up

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/ffxi-...revisited.html

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/ffxi-...estion-xd.html

and the original 9 page Qufim thread where Nyjan (sp) correctly called Suttung dropping Antaeus' magic damage.

Our LS rarely has more than 20 and this is the only win holding us back from Dynamis-Tav. The most we can muster up in general is about 24 since that's our total active member base. We have won all the other zones including zerg killing DL a couple times.

So now that the background is done, we have only given this one shot so far in which we tried a full out melee zerg since I read one reply where an LS doesn't even kill Suttung just bats @ pond > SJ > Water Element > Kraken > Ice element > Antaeus.

Before the attempt I had not discovered Suiram's picture of where people should stand and we had the "tanks" (a war) right next to the zerging melee and only 1 CSS stun. We had about 23 members in attendance, swapped brds and corsairs and had at Antaeus without feint (thf was sac) and no angon. We only managed to get him to about 56% when CS stun ran out and the melee wiped due to AOE. Here are the parse results from the 1 minute and 10ish second fight:

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...ta/qufim01.png

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...ta/qufim02.png

I was utterly shocked and disappointed at overall melee damage. That was my first zerg as a 75 rng. I was using a marksmanship merited culverin cannon build and wtf at 80 dmg slugshots doing the same damage as regular RA's? Overall melee WS's were only doing a couple hundred dmg, and the drks who were kicking ass died quite quickly.

After our first attempt we see a couple ways to improve and try:

1.) A longer, but controlled zerg. It was obvious to me because of his defense and our numbers we won't be able to down him in a minute. We need multiple overlapping CS stuns and melee need to keep shadows up to absorb anything possible.

2.) Attempt to kill the golem, bring more BLMs, and use an extended zerg involving magic damage and an early darkness SC or 2 to burst on. The only issue here is if we're mage heavy how do we kill the golem lol.

3.) Try dealing with Antaeus like JoL keeping focused hate on a PLD or 2 out of melee range while other ranged damage slowly chips away while the pld's maintain hate. Only issue here may be if Antaeus charges at 50% this is when the slow chip away may need to turn into a CS Stun zerg. By slow chip away I mean a 5 minuteish fight.


If anyone has won this zone with 20-25 and has some advice it's greatly appreciated. We'd love to get this win for members who don't have it and spam the hell out of Tav.

If tldr then any tips for a smaller group to win this zone?

[Kitha]

Bring lots and lots of MNKs. For whatever reason you can get around the damage cap that's present when you don't kill the statue if you have plenty of MNKs. We do that pattern (bats > sj > water > kraken > ice > boss) usually 5-6+ well geared MNKs, 3-4 RDM/DRK and it's cake with around 24. Clearing the goblins before hitting up the ice elemental is quick and easy too so the THF just has to make a big looping pull around the melee and come back to slap TH4 and feint on Antaeus.

[cdgreg]

Bring lots and lots of MNKs. For whatever reason you can get around the damage cap that's present when you don't kill the statue if you have plenty of MNKs. We do that pattern (bats > sj > water > kraken > ice > boss) usually 5-6+ well geared MNKs, 3-4 RDM/DRK and it's cake with around 24. Clearing the goblins before hitting up the ice elemental is quick and easy too so the THF just has to make a big looping pull around the melee and come back to slap TH4 and feint on Antaeus.

I was under the impression that the statue boss only removed the MAGIC damage cap. Am I incorrect and it will make WS's do regular damage?

P.S. Figures we all just leveled RNG for Odins and now we need mnk, guh!

[Aesctaa]

Just want to add, Ridill WAR and other 1 hand melee jobs with low delay and multi hit weaponskills work well if you don't have access to enough MNKs. SAM and other relatively high delay 2 handed weapon jobs that rely on single hit WSs are very weak unless you can remove the melee dmg cap. Having the all the melees sub NIN is also a good idea if you are having trouble.

[cdgreg]

You both referenced removing the melee dmg cap? How is this done? I was under the impression Suttung was only magic dmg cap.

[Lordwafik]

It could make sense that Suttung removes both.

Scolopendra - Regen
Sutting - Defense Boost
Stirges - Attack boost

am I missing any other key NM? Suttung could very well be Magic/Melee defense, Stirges could be Magic/Melee attack.

[cdgreg]

It could make sense that Suttung removes both.

Scolopendra - Regen
Sutting - Defense Boost
Stirges - Attack boost

am I missing any other key NM? Suttung could very well be Magic/Melee defense, Stirges could be Magic/Melee attack.

Good thought wafik. I was looking the chart on otherwiki before I posted tonight and thought it odd there was no specific NM that removed melee cap since it seemed like there was something for regen, offense, and defense magic but not defense melee.

I assume information is sparse or incomplete on this zone because its annoying to farm and people don't necessary enjoy experimenting with the nms. I posted the parse in hopes another LS had parsed a fight and said wtf look how different the WS damage is, we killed Suttung. I guess we'll try to take another run at it where we down Suttung and then re-parse it.

[Aesctaa]

I have never killed the Golem, so i cannot comment on what affect it has.

We killed the red bat once, which was a while ago as an experiment but i don't remember it changing the boss fight a great deal, although it was so long back i could be mistaken. The bat is a pain to get to also, you would have to move fairly fast to hit it with a lowish number if you clear the route, or hope people are good at avoiding aggro.

You should definitely be able to down the mega boss with 24 even with the damage cap, just as long as you have sufficient chainstuns and the DDs come as either MNK, dual wield WAR, kraken, Mkris, or ridill DRK(still hit 100ish dmg cap, but fast attacks), even NIN can work ok as a last resort.

[Diomer]

We've cleared Qufim twice with 18 and 17 as our lowest numbers. Not very hard if you focus. We did Bats > 2 Stats + Water Ele + Sclop > 3 Stats North of there > Snolls that aggroed near Ice Ele > Rocs + 2 Goblin Pulls + Suttung > Ice Ele (Store TP) > Antaeus. Had ~5 minutes remaining with 18 since it took awhile to find the SJ (It was missed.) and over 10-20 minutes remaining with 17 with a fast SJ find. Nothing special gear wise. Keep a good stun order on Suttung and the Rocs. Only 1 RDM/DRK for the boss, didn't even have THF Feint it but we did have a SV rotation of 2 BRDs with Marchx2 and Minx2.

[cdgreg]

Thanks for the replies. I can't remember if our next Qufim is this sunday or the next, but we plan on killing Sutting, so I'll post parse results here from Antaeus so we have a definitive answer on if he lowers melee dmg cap also.

[Fridell]

The Golem is easy to take down with few melee aswell if you wanna try to take it down, it have low HP.
Let group kill Goblins etc and send puller + a BLM (and a SCH if you have) and pull it when group is nearly done with their mobs, add dots on the golem when puller claims it, when it gets back to group a decent amount of its HP will be gone. Saves much time.

[Suiram]

For pulling the Golem, what I used to do in my old Dynamis LS was go with another person to pull it while everyone else fought goblins. We'd make sure not to be in the same alliance because of Snoll hate (actually we'd drop to be solo just as an extra precaution), usually he'd pull, I'd follow to make sure no Snolls link.

If you hug the wall and let Suttung catch up a bit it's less likely to path wide outside and link a snoll, but occasionally the snolls will wander over at the wrong time and link anyway. If it linked, I'd grab Suttung and bring it to the group while he died to get rid of the snolls. If it was clean, I'd grab the two stones that spawn behind Suttung and follow behind him (again, hugging the wall and letting them catch up so they don't path wide). Stones move slowly so I'd usually get to camp just as Suttung died or a bit after, kill the stones for instant HP/MP for the alliance and save us the downtime of resting up before boss.

[Lordwafik]

For pulling the Golem, what I used to do in my old Dynamis LS was go with another person to pull it while everyone else fought goblins. We'd make sure not to be in the same alliance because of Snoll hate (actually we'd drop to be solo just as an extra precaution), usually he'd pull, I'd follow to make sure no Snolls link.

If you hug the wall and let Suttung catch up a bit it's less likely to path wide outside and link a snoll, but occasionally the snolls will wander over at the wrong time and link anyway. If it linked, I'd grab Suttung and bring it to the group while he died to get rid of the snolls. If it was clean, I'd grab the two stones that spawn behind Suttung and follow behind him (again, hugging the wall and letting them catch up so they don't path wide). Stones move slowly so I'd usually get to camp just as Suttung died or a bit after, kill the stones for instant HP/MP for the alliance and save us the downtime of resting up before boss.

I had no idea there were 2 stones behind him, thanks for this, in the future i'll bring someone with me to tag the 2 stones while I tag suttung.

[Dammerung]

You can pull the boss without linking the goblins around it. Gather your ally north of it, and have your puller hug the wall of the tower. It can aggro you through the wall, if not you can just hug around so it sees you then it will aggro. Just hug the wall back and drag it along so it doesn't path close to the stone.

[cdgreg]

My LS did a follow up Qufim tonight with about 19 players, 2 of which were dual boxed and did bats > water element > kraken > birds > suttung > ice element > mega boss. I don't have the parse for it yet since I wasn't there, but from chatting with members slugwinders were doing 1200+ dmg compared to the previous non-suttung killed run of 80 dmg. They ended up winning with only 1 CSS. So once someone posts a parse I'll link it here for further confirmation but I think it's safe to say Suttung removes the magic and melee dmg cap.

[cdgreg]

As promised here is the post Suttung kill parse. It's a bit messy since it was parsed by a brd who missed some things. Also our CS stunner actually died almost right away lol, so nearly the entire zerg went down without a CS stunner which is why most RNG's didnt get a full rng zerg cycle in. Anyways we pulled off the win.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2...imparsecv3.png

As theorized by someone here, and someone on our personal forums not killing Suttung seems to cap individual melee swing hits to less than 100 dmg. That is why fast swinging melee are beneficial if you do not kill Suttung, and multi hit WS's are preferred. However, as you can see once you kill Suttung melee dmg, including single hit WS's, are not limited to less than 100 damage. While some may say duhhh I knew this, wikis and dyna-bums have Suttung only listed as removing the magic dmg cap, so yahoo for providing some solid information to the ffxi community.

Now Ringthree, if we can get a post archaic chariot LBC parse, we can put that argument to rest too =p

[Teorem]

Thank you for spending the time and resources to test this in Dynamis-Qufim.

Our strategy only had the magic damage reduction aspect because the one time we tried to clear Antaeus without going through Suttung, the BLMs were the only ones complaining with proof of their reduced spell damage. We chalked up the low melee offensive to a quick wipe from AoE and Trebuchet, but since we've cleared Suttung every time since then, never picked up on the fact that it affected all damage types.

[Chojja]

Just curious, why kill the ice elemental? Resistance to thunder doesnt hurt the CSS? I've never done Qufim myself, just looking over what everything does I'd have thought you'd kill the Thunder ele.

[Reznap]

Ice ele is on the normal path you'd take. Pretty sure thunder ele is farther away, melee > blm in zerg fight anyways

[Suiram]

Killing an elemental will also depop an the one of ascendant element. In this case, killing Water Elemental by Kraken will despawn Thunder Elemental. Now, I'm not sure if doing that weakens it to both Water and Thunder, or just Water making Thunder weakening impossible. But in either case, Stun doesn't resist on the boss after killing Water and not Thunder (unsure if it would resist without killing either, but doesn't matter because I think everyone kills water). And even if you did weaken him further to Thunder, you wouldn't want any BLMs you have nuking with Thunder because he still resists it, due to that family of Gigas's innate resistances (someone, I think on these forums, killed Thunder Ele once and tested it).