Tiamat Fill in the blanks

[Razz]

PLD/WHM has flash. You don't need voke to tank Tiamat ^^

[Faranim]

In The Air:
The only TP attacks it will use is Inferno Blast (big AOE fire damage) and Tebbid Wing (Damage + Plague)
On the ground it can do Tebid Wing, Spike Flail, and all the other usual Wyrm attacks (Roar, Terror, Breath)

A single RDM/DRK can solo-stun Firaga the entire fight as long as he gets a small break to logout and reset hate.

[Jawas]

Ok before I continue to lol at the valkurm war/whm setup, I'll just say that relying on ONE tank throughout is somewhat stupid. As he said, the PLD d/ced and they all wiped. With all the crap thats been going on with the servers, it wouldnt be wise to put all your hopes on one man to ensure your victory. What would you do if your PLD was killed by an act of god? Wipe then lol at your WAR/WHMs?

Not only that, but I'm curious as to how a WAR/WHM can do more with his MP than say, a PLD/WHM or PLD/NIN would. I must be missing something, or WAR really needs to be nerfed lol. I'll just assume you guys lack the PLD tanks therefore you've resorted to valk tactics, but of course if it works for you then all the power to you, I just know if I ever suggested this or even showed this to any HNM LS I know of they would laugh in my face, which is what I'm doing to you right now :3

Just pray that Paladin doesn't disconnect!

We have 3 full time active plds in full koenig, one of the plds me has war to 75 as well and one of our warriors is currently leveling pld, and we have 3 other warriors than go war/nin or war/whm if needed. We do not have a short supply of plds, on the jimmy I was refering too was one time were we fought him short handed, our pld was on the way and we decieded to have some fun and engage with 2 war/whms and find out what happens, we went from 100-3% with only 2 war/whms, we found out that we didnt have the hate to control it at the end, hence where the pld comes into play. Even if we are short on a back up pld, the war/whms can hold hate until pld is out of raise sickness. You say you laugh at it, well I refuse to laugh at something that allows to kill Tiamat in under an hour. Again it works for our style, not saying it is the best thing since air.


Not saying pld/whm wouldnt work but we are trying to even out the hate management, by putting the main hate on ONE PLD/WAR, the 2 WAR/WHMs can minic the hate generated by the BRD or WHM doing a curaga or curaga 2 with the added hate of Provoke and other JAs warcry, defender, this way they keep an even hate with each other just below the PLD, and just above the whm and brd and red mage, once a DS Curaga 2 goes off the war/whm is the tank until the pld takes back the hate which is normally very fast. I have tanked as pld and war/whm on both jimmy and tiamat so this coming from 1st hand experience.

[Amandar]

In The Air:
The only TP attacks it will use is Inferno Blast (big AOE fire damage) and Tebbid Wing (Damage + Plague)
On the ground it can do Tebid Wing, Spike Flail, and all the other usual Wyrm attacks (Roar, Terror, Breath)

A single RDM/DRK can solo-stun Firaga the entire fight as long as he gets a small break to logout and reset hate.

There is some good info... updating original post. What exactly happens w/ Roar, Terror, & what kind of breath?

Are there any other status effects that whm will have to mess with? So far looking pretty easy if just plague to get rid of, but I highly doubt thats the only thing.

Thank you,

Pete

[Aribeth]

I just know if I ever suggested this or even showed this to any HNM LS I know of they would laugh in my face, which is what I'm doing to you right now :3

And you should ask these "HNM LS" why they aren't above us on the big-kills list.

It isn't a hard concept if you ever played WHM. Divine Seal + Curaga 2 is great hate method. The WARs focus on Curagas to counter the AoE Dmg of the dragons while the PLD Cure IVs the tank that has hate at the moment.

[Jawas]

There is some good info... updating original post. What exactly happens w/ Roar, Terror, & what kind of breath?

Are there any other status effects that whm will have to mess with? So far looking pretty easy if just plague to get rid of, but I highly doubt thats the only thing.

Thank you,

Pete

Horrid Roar takes off Buffs,
Terror - Freezes the target, like Fafnir and Nidhogg.
Breath- if it hits you straight on you die.

And its pretty much just casting viruna.

[Rotsu]

WAR/WHM is the best support tank in my opinion. spaming curgaI and II ftw!

[NynJa]

A single RDM/DRK can solo-stun Firaga the entire fight as long as he gets a small break to logout and reset hate.

BLM/RDM with haste does it just fine.

I cant help but lol at the other NA LS on my server that does wyrms who stick 3 stunners in the main alliance, and I see tanks glow red every 4th firaga or so.

[Kirakalash]

Jawas just wondering, have you compared rdm/war to war/whm also? phalanx, stoneskin and blink seems nice if the maintank get hate back quick as you said.

[Siatdiat]

Its pretty funny how 2 members of IRON explained the reason for the set up, and noone seems to actually understand it. Its also funny that Razz said something about people would laugh at a tactic like that, which is what he was doing, even though every time it was explained in more and more detail his brain couldnt handle it, and shutdown, and he'd ask again.

[tiberion02]

I understand there reasoning on war/whm and I think its brilliant. I'm a 75 Bard with huge -enmity and a single DS Curaga 2 will 99% of the time pull hate off of any tank.

War/Whm has 1 critical spell type pld doesnt. Curaga.

Laugh if you want but theres a reason IRON is one of the most successful LSs out there.

[Magicker]

But the point some others have made and I myself am wondering, why then not pld/whm? Pld/whm has access to the same "critical spell type" of curaga, a much larger mp pool to use to cast it, and flash, not to mention 3x 5-minute JA's to war's 1.

Add on the non-halved enhancing/healing skills, and it would seem like there are many reasons to use pld/whm, and the only thing war has going for it at all is provoke. Am I missing something or is provoke THAT much stronger than flash at keeping hate over time that you'd sacrifice all those benefits for the one JA?

[tiberion02]

provoke + Flash (pld/war) > Provoke + curaga (war/whm) > flash + curaga (pld/whm)


I will say though a pld/whm would be able to build up good hate over an entire fight. Its one of these 'the whole is greater then the sum of its parts' things.

[kearnsy]

I've very content with our nin/wars

[Jackietreehorn]

A single RDM/DRK can solo-stun Firaga the entire fight as long as he gets a small break to logout and reset hate.

If you're killing quick enough and your RDM has some decent -enmity gear, you can solo stun the entire fight with no problem, and not have to log out. With around -20 enmity, I've solo stunned the entire fight without ever getting drawn in or anything of that nature.

[Lockecole]

Top LS on our server main tanks Nidhogg with WAR/WHM... you guys seriously have to realize the support and setup of your ally is the deciding factor of how well a Wyrm fight goes... not what your main tank is. Any of the combinations of main/subjobs wether it be NIN,PLD or WAR will suffice assuming you have the correct support jobs to make up for their weaknesses, and emphasize their strengths.

Razz... think outside the box. NIN wasn't a tank at one time. :D

[Keleios]

To answer an earlier question about rdm/war, there are two major downsides to this combination. Poor tanking equipment(defense, vitality, and +emnity) and the abscence of Curaga I and II. Tiamat on a bad day can hit konieg tanks for upwards of 700 damage in a hit. RDMs likely couldn't surivive a direct hit.

To add a few comments about Iron's tanking party for the wyrms so people better understand exactly what we are aiming for:

First we don't stun most AoE's unless there are melee's running up for skillchains or smns running forward with blood pacts. Any damage the tank party takes is cured with curagas backed up with a end game warrior's impressive +emnity. This builds hate up faster then merely avoiding the damage through stuns. When the pld turns around and casts Cure IV on one of these tanks that just did a Curaga II to take back hate the hate transfer is suprising.

We've found that PLDs can hold more hate then WAR/WHMs through experience. Our original strategy when we first devised it used three WAR/WHMs, RDM/SMN, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM. A few times we lacked a WAR/WHM and had a PLD handy and we found that in these fights we attained a higher level of hate control then without a pld. We have also tried it with two PLD/WAR's and one WAR/WHM and found it didn't work quite as well as one PLD/WAR and 2 WAR/WHMs. I think this later phenomena is due to having two fulcrums for hate as opposed to one and a dilution of that hate but I digress.

This stragety has functioned well for us as well with one PLD/WAR and one WAR/WHM.

We also believe there are two types of hate, a baseline hate that is related to Charisma most directly and a spiky higher level of hate. PLDs seem to accrue more of this baseline hate. This is less fact and more conjecture. The recent aquisition of a Gajallarhorn in the LS has created some interesting hate issues that have tought us a bit about how hate works.

We rank tanking strategies by how quickly they allow you to kill an HNM. The other rank one might wish to go with the smallest number of players required to kill an HNM. The lowest we have gone with Tiamat is 22 though we have engaged and started to kill with as few as 17 or so.

[Razz]

Yeah my brain couldn't handle it but like I said earlier, if it works for you then all the more power to you. Remember there are people who still laugh at PLD/NIN and go wtf? So when I saw WAR/WHM I was pretty baffled.

Nerf WAR.

edit: I will forever be baffled at the war/whm setup

[Talus]

Most of the nails have been hit on the head. There's a bunch of different approaches to this fight. A big part of it is positioning, which I don't think anyone has really mentioned. I've heard there's a place to fight Tiamat where you get 0 aggro, but I've never fought Tiamat without the aggro.

What Will Aggro during the Fight:

Bifrons (bombs)
Air Elementals & Earth Elementals
Arch Corses (night time)
Cave Antlion (the blue antlion type that does Pit Ambush out of cracks if you aren't careful where you're walking.. or someone could be annoying and farming HQ antlion jaws on top of your Tiamat fight)

Tiamat's Attacks:

Ground:
Absolute Terror - terrorizes target.
Horrid Roar - hate reset on target, removes effects such as food, etc.
Fiery Breath - breath damage, cone aoe, fire-based obviously
Tebbad Wing - wing attack, disease effect (lose tp, like other people said viruna or ds+viruna tanks/melees that got hit)
Blaze Spikes - he casts this a lot, don't get it confused with Firaga III
Firaga III - he casts this a lot too
Touchdown - gives damage when he lands on the ground after flying
Mighty Strikes - his special, uses it almost immediately after Touchdown

Air:
Inferno Blast - aoe fire damage blast move
Blaze Spikes/Firaga III - see above

There's also the ever present Spike Flail. Additionally he can & will draw in people, so if the tanks get roared, terrorized a lot, and Tiamat starts turning, especially on the ground, /assist Tiamat and see who has hate if he doesn't draw them in. You should figure out what to do with that scenario.

Lastly, like others have said it is possible to have 1 stunner for the fight in the alliance and they should be able to catch most of the things. He can be stunned, and he can be slept. Just remember he typically goes straight into Mighty Strikes right after he lands. Whether you use PLD/WAR to tank, PLD/NIN, NIN/WAR or a combination of the two just keep that behavior in mind.

[Razz]

Blaze Spikes - he casts this a lot, don't get it confused with Firaga III

Doesn't matter if you confuse it with firaga3 and try to stun it anyway since tiamat only casts one spell every 40+ seconds so even if you got confused your stun would still be up for the next tiamat cast.