For some reason, this is the most random ENM ever. The first two times, I did it without a hitch. The third try, my party was only 5 people and we didn't have a RDM for gravity, so we got owned. That loss I can pretty much understand. The fourth try (which I just got through doing) was completely messed up. My party was PLD/WAR, DRK/THF, RDM/BLM, BRD/WHM, and BLM/WHM. At first we were all doing really well. The BLM only nuked when Apid wasn't immune to it, and the DRK did the same with his weapon skills. For some reason though, at around the 7th minute mark, I'm guessing, this happened (sorry for bad edit, MSPaint ftw):
http://img335.imageshack.us/img335/6007/apislog9sb.png
I realize Apis goes through different stages where he's sometimes immune to magical, sometimes immune to physical, sometimes hits harder, or a combination, but this was just ridiculous. The other three times I've done the ENM, he's never hit for this hard. Once I fell, the other 5 party members died in about 10 seconds, literally. Not only was he hitting for harder, but the RDM said his Gravity was sticking for less time as the ENM progressed. My original thought was that he's like an HNM, and will eventually reach a point where he goes into SSJ mode. But thinking about it, my first two wins we won in about ten minutes, and we were about seven minutes into it this last time when he started hitting for that hard. Another thing I noticed was this:
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/5...spenhit4ca.png
That happened right before he went into crazy mode, and it's more damage than the DRK is usually able to pull on him. I have two different ideas for what happened. The first one is that maybe he has a Berserk type mode where he hits for more damage, but obviously takes less. This accounts for why the DRK did more. Another thought is that it's kinda like a Spike Flail thing. If you take hate from behind the mob with a strong SA, maybe he goes into a hard hitting mode? I think the first one is much more likely, but maybe not.
Anyways, anybody else have this happen to them? Am I just getting unlucky, or is there something that can be done about it?