So how hard is this fight for melee now?
So how hard is this fight for melee now?
Slightly more difficult than before, but your LNC just need to not be dumb with their combos. THM burn is pretty awesome for it, tho
So after trying this with mostly people from my ls and a few pugs I think I'm 10 fights deep. I enjoy a challenge but this fight just seems more luck based. If a plume pops under you, it seems you're basically screwed. If you time a spell wrong and an eruption pops under you, you're screwed. If his regen wasn't so high it might not be so bad but it drives me crazy to be running around avoiding damage trying to toss a cure here and there to the DD all the while watching his hp tic back up. Finally the horrid drop rate that I've been told about kinda ruins motivation to do this consistently. Also it seems, at least as thm, that the fight really depends on your tank. The first few times I could nuke to almost no mp and not pull hate. My last fight I was constantly in red and borderline pulling him to me, but had to continue to do so as I'm not sure what the other DD's were doing but his health was ticing back up.
I don't really even want the weapons. Just something fun to do.
If Ifrit is in certain positions, Plumes and jumps are always in certain places where you can stand in a safe zone as a mage.
After he starts doing WS (or at least when he goes flamebody, phase 3) his pattern is: Claw, Claw, WS, repeat. Your only guaranteed safe spot to cast is during Claw. If the tank can't survive while healers are running away from Eruption, you need to solidify your strategy.
If he jumps, he'll do Claw, WS when he lands (except if he does Vulcan Burst, which skips Claw here), and this WS can never be jump.
Eruption can just outright kill you if your ISP decides they hate you, so no luck there. This is the only part of the fight that is frustrating, combined with your character's actual position being a second behind wherever you really are. Just be ready to move if it's WS time, all there is to it.
Finally, between Stoneskin and Necrogenesis (Second Wind if you have it) you shouldn't need to self-heal much as THM unless you get unlucky. DD have it rougher which is why THM burn is popular now.
Edit: 2 CONs is comfortable healing for GLA tank, less is more stressful/risky unless you want a THM on cure duty. And if the tank isn't holding hate, that depends on how nuts THMs are going on nukes as well.
Really should not be dying to eruption at all. Time your spells, don't spam, time your TP moves, don't spam. If you get caught up in an eruption, pop sent and run (providing it's not close to hellfire time). This fight is far from luck, it's being smart and timing everything. Not hard at all.
It isn't difficult when you come to accept that you need to act according to his schedule, not what you want to do. Avoiding his TP attacks is more important than any damage you are trying to do, eventually you get the hang of it. The big thing is that your log shows his move faster than the animation appears, so if you don't have your log filtered so you can quickly see what he is readying this can be a large stumbling block. You'll want to buff/heal while he is jumping and then wait for his TP move to cast/perform other moves with anim lock.
So I was looking to do an Ifrit run yesterday, but because the only LV50 job I have is PGL, the group passed on having me join.
They said that PGLs need to be on their toes, constantly avoiding Ifrit's AoE abilities and whatnot. I gathered that it's very difficult to do this (especially for a first-timer), and so would only cause them problems.
I was a little disappointed, thinking that PGL is now useless end-game, when before I was watching videos of them actually TANKING Ifrit.
However, now that I think about it, wouldn't this be the case for ANY melee DD going up against Ifrit? Aren't Dragoons squishy? And even MRDs, I imagine, would have to be on their toes in order to reduce how much their CNJs would need to heal.
Can someone explain, please. I'd really like to understand the situation, and want to start getting in my Ifrit runs so I can get my Claws!!
The reason people prefer LNC to PGL or MRD DD is because LNC is able to stand farther back and swing, keeping them out of seer AoE. I have a couple friends who do it just fine on mrd though just running in to swing then running back to the lnc, but this is obviously more difficult to do than just standing still and swinging on lnc.
Honestly the new strategy that most people are sticking with is actually just using a bunch of thm to burn him down, its quick and easy.
Hmm, it seems you missed the large discussion back when Ifrit was brand-new.
Ifrit frequently does an AOE around itself. Different classes have different maximum distances they can stand away from monsters and still be able to hit them. Lancer, with their rather long lances/spears, have the longest melee range and can easily hit Ifrit without being bothered by his AOE. Marauders and Pugilists can also do this, but to a much lesser extent since they must be at the very tip of their melee range to not get hit; some of their skills may even cause them to step forward just enough to fall into the AOE as well. While Marauders and Pugilists are perfectly capable at participating in this fight, they are often shunned because they require the most skill to perform safely.
Note: I've only ever done the Ifrit fight as a mage and have no personal experience with the AOE mentioned above. I'm merely regurgitating what I've heard from others.
Edit: Daw, beaten to the punch.
With as much HP and MP as jobs have now, PGL could probably do fine without caring about Sear. The problem I would think is with PGL so close and LNC so far back, if eruptions happens on both, the PGL is going to have to book it towards one of the mages to avoid getting hit by the LNCs eruptions; which obviously is a no-no. Also unless it's changed, MRD can avoid Sear too (again, not that it matters too much because of HP/MP).
Honestly, most people just don't see the benefit in taking a job that's the weakest of all DDs and to boot, can't avoid his TP moves that well. I don't know if you're ever going to have much luck going on PUG because of this. Maybe you can find some people that are willing to take you on charity since you only have PGL, but you'll need to learn the fine quickly so you're not bringing people down or those will dry up quick as well.
Doh: Triple beat.
Also my post sounds a little mean spirited which truly isn't my intent, so I hope you didn't read it as such. You're just in a bit of a predicament since you need practice to dodge well so people will want you on PGL, but it's probably going to be hard for you to get practice because of how people view the fight. If you were on my server I'd offer what help I could, but we aren't unfortunately.
The reason why LNC are supreme is they can hit Ifrit without getting hit by his AOE sear once he goes into red mode. Other DDs (well, besides ARC now) could not auto-attack from a safe range without getting hit by sear, so those DDs were more of a liability.
Edit: Whoops, should have refreshed my window. And yeah, if you have LNCs standing far back and you're running straight back on triple/double eruptions, the only way you can avoid them is running to a mage, which can fuck things up.
That's not true. MRD can auto attack outside of Sear range easily and safely. You couldn't use the command attacks though since those were out of range, but Storm's Path and Maim still hit. PGL was the same to a lesser degree.
The only difference is that LNC has a wider margin of error. Before Doomspike was the WS to beat, but now there's no clear choice winner for melee.
I wasn't aware PGL could avoid Sear. Not that it matters for most of us, but regardless!
themoreyouknow.jpg
Well the previous issues with ARC were animation lock which are certainly still there. They certainly have the easier time comboing in the fight compared to LNC, but I'm not sure what else they couldn't have done before that has changed.
Well, that definitely helped shed some light on my predicament. Thank you to everyone for your responses.
Also, I didn't bother going back to read any of the older posts, because I just assumed that 'so much' had changed about the fight as of 1.20 that any older info would be moot.
And it's OK, I'm rather used to being considered useless end-game: I was a MNK in FF11, as well ;-P
Sigh... I guess I'll just have to do what I didn't want to do and actually level a mage class. . .!
PGL has such a tiny margin for error on Sear that chances are, someone has LNC or MRD and can come as that instead. Next time we do Ifrit, I'm going to give Pugilist a chance since I'm mostly curious about what kind of damage their combos can do. Too bad Fists of Fire is worthless and Fists of Wind aren't here yet.
As for Archer, they are much more do-able since their damage output came up a bit and players in general are smarter with the fight. One of the problems, however, is that to execute their combos (which is incredibly easy for them), they need to be standing much further than the melees and when eruptions appear under the Archer, it can create a pretty situation for the melee running backwards and ultimately through it.