Animated Tachi. The Pain is OVER! (Page 2!)

[Lhayla]

(Winning STRAT on page 2)

Hi everyone, 1st of all let i introduce myself. I am Lhayla of Caitsith server and i come to your forum seeking aknowledge something from the Animated Tachi fight, anything concrete about it. Sorry for some minor english errors, i'm from Brazil and English is not my language.

So, lets start: On my server only 1 person has the completed Amanomurakumo yet. His name is Boit, a jp guy. Sadly, he is one of those guys that simply does not talk to NA by even replying a "Hello!" or "I dont know any english". Patience, can't do anything about that, but i was sad bcoz he, obviously, was the only one with concrete info on the fight in our server, but he won't talk. So... i'm aiming to be no. #2 on my server. I have all the currency needed already gathered as well as items. Just missing the Animated Tachi.

And so our journey starts... General observations for the fight so far:
We stand on a 0/3 run (35%, 18%, 15%).
Tachi tend warp wayyyy faster then the other weapons, our last battle (15%) only lasted like 17-20 seconds max.
I didn't get *any* message that he was interested om my spamming Tachi: Kaiten.


The 1st attempt:

Our 1st attempt was a total disaster. Thats bcoz we had never farmed on Dynamis-Xarcy towards Ullegrand Range Zone, therefore, we were unfamiliar with the pulls from that area and how the sac pulls should be done on that region. So on our 1st attempt, we were totally off the bat. We had low numbers, and yet, only half percent of the people inside the zone made it to the Tachi. The others (incluing me, 4th stage GKT holder) died along the way with an unsucessfull sac pull.

Ragardless of the pull having failed and most of people were not at camp, they still tried the weapon bcoz there was like 15 mins left and nothing to do. Stats for the 1st fight were:

2 Hours were used. Most damaging WS were used.
No Stun WS were used. Relic 4th stage hold was not present.
Magic was highly resisted on the weapon. (Talking bout Thunder IV for 200~300)
The Bards was not able to sleep the Sattelites with Soul Voice + Lullaby.
No TP was saved nor I-wings used.
Weapon warped at 35%.


The 2nd attempt:

The 2nd attempt was something like 2 weeks ago. Things went a lot more easily as the sac pulls were finally mastered by the linkshell and we got to the place of the fight without having too much dificulty. This was a big thumbs up as everyone managed to get to the spot of the fight safely, including me this time. At this we had a lot more people present, like 40 i think, not only half the shell, hehe. Also i had the 1st glimpse of how the fight looked like by my point of view.

We mainly tried to zerg it...

2 Hours were used. Most damaging WS were used by all jobs.
4/5 Tachi: Kaitens were performed by me. 1 Missed. (Of course, a sam is not a true sam w/o missing a ws).
The Kaitens that landed were able to do a Light SC by stacking up with random WS throw by someone.
Even tho 4 Kaitens landed and and 1 Light was made, at *any* point we got the message that he was interested. A shame ;_;
We noticed angry /say by the weapon too early in the fight. At the second 9 or 10 the weapon was already stating the he was leaving.
He spammed phrases like: "Your reason lacks direction" (a lot), "Show me something of substance" (begin of fight), "Use your itelligence..." (Mid-fight), "This is the extent of your abilities?" (bout to warp).
We had more Bards on this 2nd attempt, 2 Sattelites were able to be sleeped with Soul Voice Lullaby. Others resisted.
Low number of Stun WS were used. Didn't seemed to work either by the low TP (only 100 - "chance of stun varies with TP") or by low number of people/jobs using it.
Weapon warped at 18%.
Video of the Fight: http://www.laugana.co.uk/downloads/Tachi_2.zip (Recorded by a Whm)


The 3rd attempt:

The 3rd attempt was... yesterday. Sadly we had only 36 people inside Dynamis-Xarcy. Thats bcoz it was scheduled a CoP Zone run for the day and we changed schedule too close to the date/time of the run since Xarc was free anyway. Some minor changes were made. We asked everyone that could come on Monk to do it so. Hundred Fists already proved to be godly damaging on the Animated Tachi.

We zerged max we could. Altough we had only 36 ppl. 6 Monks were present.
nin/pld/thf were asked to bring Sword to specifically Stun WS.
TP was saved, I-wings not used.
4/4 Tachi Kaiten landed. At any point i got message that he was interested.
This was our fastest fight. This goddamit bastard warps too FAST! The battle lasted less then 20 seconds.
WS Stuns were used, but were unable to keep him there.
Weapon Warped at 15%.

These are my log screenshot (very short as the battle lasts like a long breath):

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/8...0029nl7.th.png

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/5...0030tq5.th.png


General Directions:

So... what i'm basically looking here is for advice. As you can see, Kaiten spammage didnt work. I received many advice from people saying that we should perform a semi-zerg, with people using 2H but holding their WS, not spam them. At the start of the fight only the sam do Self-Renkei while everyone else hold ws. When it reaches 30% everyone lauches Stun WS or most damaging WS. Would that work?

I sincerely don't know, if we have 45+ people in zone next time if we try the usual zerg hoping to have more firepower or do as stated above (Hold people WS).

I'm sorry for making this huge and long, but its only a portion of how i stay dissapointed and heartbreak each time the weapon warps~ its just sad =(

Any help is appreciated.

[Slott]

While I never fought GKT some things do stand out:


you should really use icarus wings. As upgrader to your own weapon, it would be wise of you to purchase a stack or two of icarus wings and hand them out to melee, that way they don't have any reason not to use them. A stack on my server is only like 250k, compared to a relic that shouldnt be too bad, just buy 1-2 stacks and sell whats left over.

Have a thief land feint on it, thatll help your melee, use kraken drks if possible. Bring opo necks and sleep pots incase anyone DOESNT have enough tp at the start. Making your thf use a sword for stun (or wars, but wars are alot better with sword) isn't helping you anyway and gimping your dmg.

It's best to go all out on these fuckers asap. Start w/ ws, icarus wing, ws again... i'm sure if you had ALL of those melee there on your last attempt using an icarus wing you would have won.

To give you an idea of how we do animated weapons:
Form melee pt's with bards, healer etc

before pull, soul voice songs, poison pot if the mob needs it, right before call time everyone uses their 2hr (this way they get it off before being too lagged during the fight) mob is pulled either by blm's ES nuking or pld w/ invinc if the mob is immune to nukes (like aegis), then just spam the hell out of it w/ ws icarus ws and nukes. We use a rdm to chainspell stun (wont stop warp but stops it doing dmg) if the animated weapon can be stunned. We don't bother with stun ws's...

[Lhayla]

you should really use icarus wings. As upgrader to your own weapon, it would be wise of you to purchase a stack or two of icarus wings and hand them out to melee, that way they don't have any reason not to use them. A stack on my server is only like 250k, compared to a relic that shouldnt be too bad, just buy 1-2 stacks and sell whats left over.

The main problem bout i wings is that the weapon is warping so fast, that melee are having difficult to pop the wing, bcoz, of course, they have to open all the abilities they can to do damage (aka EES, Flashy, Hundred Fists, Meikyo and so goes...), and lets say we pop the i wings after these ablts are used, i wing take 1-2 seconds to pop, plus you get unable to act effect for like 2 seconds after? (if you press the ws button it wont go). Till there we are almost out of time already. The Tachi is warping 2x+ faster then the other weapons we've seen. Even Meditate is slow on the attempts we made, by the time it recharges, its gone.

We've been opening w/ ES BLM's and preparing melees like DL fight (Soul Voice Buffs). [3rd attempt]

[Sidanoir]

These things dont' seem to like magic, I would advise not opening with with such a heavy BLM pounding...IDK how to explain it but, it seems taking lots of magic damage makes them lose interest faster

[Slott]

Use abilities BEFORE the pull. Since the fights dont last long, pop hundred fists, mighty strikes, flashy shot w/e right before the pull. You waste alot of time doing it after mob already at you

[Navia]

These things dont' seem to like magic, I would advise not opening with with such a heavy BLM pounding...IDK how to explain it but, it seems taking lots of magic damage makes them lose interest faster

Animated Tachi appears to hate magic more than other animated weapons, manaburn had problems with the Tachi warping on them.
They killed it by starting off with a mnk and sam 2hr'ing at the start then ramping up with BLM nukes.

[RKenshin]

This gave us a lot of trouble as well.

Really, I'm pretty sure no matter how much damage you have the results will be just about the same. We've had as many as around 45 and as few as around 25, and in the end the results were pretty much the same... It loses patience extremely fast, and will begin warping almost right away in some cases. Several times it warped on us less than 15 seconds after engaging (at anywhere between 5 and 40% HP remaining), making it almost impossible. It was like no matter how much extra damage we had and how much faster we cut it, it'd just warp even sooner.

The two times we've beat it in the past we've interrupted it casting Warp, which buys another 10 seconds or so. The second time we beat it we decided to just put everything towards interrupting Warp the first time and then just zerging it down from there, and it worked perfectly.

The fight started off with Invincible and all the melees just engaged to melee it, no WS or nukes were used and one BLM used ES + Sleepga to cover the Satellites. Melees already had TP and buffs on, and we also had 2 Kraken DRKs helping with the DoT... Then, the second it started to cast Warp at around 50% HP, everyone used a WS cutting off like 30% of its HP almost instantly. It interrupted Warp, and from there everyone threw whatever they had at it including WS and nukes, and it was dead before it even could make the next move after its Warp was interrupted.

A weird glitch that Batosi messaged me about is that Mijin Gakure seems to interrupt its Warp (100% of the time?) when you use it on him as well. They've done this with success each time on several weapons, so it's worth looking into as well.

Good luck!

[Sidanoir]

Mijin interrupted warp on Animated Kunai for us once, as no other stunning or big damage things were done during the cast but it was interrupted.

[Kooldac]

A thread was made by Predaking of Valefor on the Ultima LS forums. You have to sign up to view it. So as to not rape their bandwidth i'll post the conversation here.

Predaking:
"Just wanted to share some info on some fun I had with the Animated Katana a couple weeks ago. Not sure if this is already known or if it will even be useful but I figure I would share it anyways for any future animated weapon fights.

A couple weeks ago Soap did a Dynamis Xarc run and in the last 10 mins we ended up wiping to the Great Kindred Wall leading to DL. As we were short on time we decided to end for the night and I decided to pay a visit to the Animated Katana. I made my way to the area, popped on some Powders Boots and made my way to it. Now before the Eyes and Kindreds were able to load and catch up to me, I made it to the Animated Katana, grabbed a few quick screenshots and did Mijin Gakure before it acknowledged my presence. So my 2hr goes off and I fall to the ground. The Animated Katana then summouns his Satelite Katanas and it starts talking to me. As I lay on the ground, at about intervals of approx 10 seconds or so, the Animanted Katana would do its emotes and speak to me. At first he identified himself, then he was interested in the battle, then as time goes on he becomes more and more bored until he said that he must withdraw from the battle. But the weird thing was at the end when he started casting warp he stopped and said "What plot are you hatching?" with an emote that he was intrigued and interupted his casting. This was all done as I lay face down in the snow (which I thought was really funny) and the katana received no further damage other than my initial 2hr attack. After that he said he had completely lost interest and warped away. (Also I am on PS2 so I wasn't able to screenshot the chat text).

So with that maybe the way the animated weapons work is that you have a set amount of time that you must defeat them before you reach a point of no return. If you reach this point, no matter what you do the weapon, it will warp. So think of it like you have a time limit of 45-60 seconds to defeat the weapon and you have 1 or 2 opportunities to earn a "time extension" (maybe 10 secs each?) by interupting its casting warp through stuns and weapon skill damage. To me that seems to be logical based on how the Animated Katana was acting. So the strat is the same in that the overall focus of the fight is to do maximum damage in the shortest amount of time possible but still applying the same strats for stunning it when it actually casts the warp spell and not trying to increase its interest when it says it's bored through emotes.

Of course I realize that this is kinda old news in some ways and that we all know that the animated weapons had to be fought zerg style or DL style. But this was the first time I've ever seen an animated weapon's behaviour without 40-64 players attacking it and I found it very interesting that it interupted it's own casting without anything happening to it. It almost looks like its actions are predetermined regardless of the amount of damage received once it's engaged. Perhaps what we should be doing is that as soon as a weapon is being pulled everyone (more specifically melees/tanks) should already be engaged and ready to swing as time is the overall factor for success.

So like I said I am not sure if this info will be useful or not but I figure I'd share my experience in case it does help us with taking down any future animated weapons more easily. See ya soon!

Pred"

Garret:
"Supposedly using Mijin Gakure on the Katana is also supposed to help stop it from warping."

Predaking:
"Well, my Mijin Gakure was done right away and its warp was interupted like 45-50 seconds after I did it with me already face down on the ground. So that seems kinda far off for that Mijin gakure to be effective to interupt its warp."

Garret:
"Just doing it in general may have provided a latent pique to its interest."

Kalia:
"I've always thought that animated weapons work in a way similar to the following:

They start with a set number of "points". Say 1,000 just for the sake of example.

- At certain time intervals the points are reduced by a fixed amount.
- At certain damage intervals the points are reduced by a fixed amount.
- Certain abilities and weaponskills increase the points.
- Relic weaponskills increase the points by more than other weaponskills.
- When the points reach a certain number, it tries to warp.
- Interrupting the warp resets the points to some value a little higher.

This would explain almost all of the behavior I've ever seen with Animated Weapons, the only exception being what you just mentioned with it interrupting itself. e.g. leave it alone eventually it will warp on its own because of point reduction over time, and do a huge amount of damage really fast and it will warp really fast because of point reduction over damage."


Kalia may be able to express more when he sees this.

[Lhayla]

I see. We will try Mijin Gaukure to stun on next tries. Not sure yet if we should unload evertyhing at start or pace out /w me self renkei and everyone only using 2H holding WS and unloading after 1st warp try...

[Narse]

One thing I can suggest, is if you're gonna use zerg tactics, remake your PTs to do this optimally; don't use PTs that are set up for endurance.

[senseless]

Heres how my ls does it, its pretty simple, and alot of ls's im sure will start using this tactic

We have a count up, kind of like a count down, but its a boost count.

Mnks will start their boost cycle, and will count to 11, at 11 we full atk.

Everyone should have tp

@boost 4 brds do their buffing along with whms doing theirs.

@boost 8 i get everyone to move to melee range and take out weapons

@boost 10 melees use their abilities, and blm start casting AM2

@boost 11 unleash hell, and if you have an rdm/drk he starts CS stun, but that same rdm would do better dmg with CS bliz3(if has decent elemental gear)

Having nins 2hr when hes trying to warp apparently stops his warp, but never have had to yet.

Having melees make a macro to use icarus wing, will optimise their speed in using it, because during the zerg/lag fest, it takes entirely to long to open menu and use it.

Also, having pt's setup for a zerg fight is very much recommended.

whm, brd, mnk/drk x4
brd, rng/war x5
brd, misc melee x5

I think you get the point.

I wish you luck, since we've started this strat we've been able to win with approximately 10 less ppl b4 we started this. We use the same strat for animateds and DL. And the CoP bosses(minus qufim) cuz were gonna try somethin new next time

[Lordwafik]

why would you have RDM CS+Stunning mobs that are 100% stun resist?

[Attila]

I think someone said it stops damage from the mob during the fight.


Ninja Edit:

While I never fought GKT some things do stand out:


you should really use icarus wings. As upgrader to your own weapon, it would be wise of you to purchase a stack or two of icarus wings and hand them out to melee, that way they don't have any reason not to use them. A stack on my server is only like 250k, compared to a relic that shouldnt be too bad, just buy 1-2 stacks and sell whats left over.

Have a thief land feint on it, thatll help your melee, use kraken drks if possible. Bring opo necks and sleep pots incase anyone DOESNT have enough tp at the start. Making your thf use a sword for stun (or wars, but wars are alot better with sword) isn't helping you anyway and gimping your dmg.

It's best to go all out on these fuckers asap. Start w/ ws, icarus wing, ws again... i'm sure if you had ALL of those melee there on your last attempt using an icarus wing you would have won.

To give you an idea of how we do animated weapons:
Form melee pt's with bards, healer etc

before pull, soul voice songs, poison pot if the mob needs it, right before call time everyone uses their 2hr (this way they get it off before being too lagged during the fight) mob is pulled either by blm's ES nuking or pld w/ invinc if the mob is immune to nukes (like aegis), then just spam the hell out of it w/ ws icarus ws and nukes. We use a rdm to chainspell stun (wont stop warp but stops it doing dmg) if the animated weapon can be stunned. We don't bother with stun ws's...

[Sidanoir]

CS stun stops damage how? if the mob resists stun 100%...confused, I haven't seen a Animated Weapon thats stunnable..

[Elondir]

Never seen an animated stunned by the spell, there's always a chance one can land with CS as CS spam seems to break the resistance rules sometimes.

Mijin will interupt warp if the damage caused is decent. Big spike damage (like 1.5k+) compared to your normal flow of damage will set timer back a little also.

Space your damage or it'll warp fast, omgwtf30%in5secs is not the way to go. I'd save those ES mass nukes for like 30%, you should be able to melee it down to that with BRDs and melees.

[loial]

I thought I've seen the "Animated Whatever just hangs out a while" when someone in my LS wandered near the Animated Horn. Didn't use Mijin Gakure. It killed him and talked smack for about 60s or more and then left.

[Slott]

yeah wasn't sure if they could or couldnt be stunned (heard diff shit from diff ppl), so i put an "if" in there. Typically just have rdms cs nuke or cure our drk / drk sj melee.

[Navia]

I thought I've seen the "Animated Whatever just hangs out a while" when someone in my LS wandered near the Animated Horn. Didn't use Mijin Gakure. It killed him and talked smack for about 60s or more and then left.

Yeah i've picked on the Animated Gun once solo, he was up and talking shit for a good minute while I was outrunning the satellite guns that were trying to firaga III my butt.
I'd really love to see what an animated weapon does if everyone disengages when it starts to get bored, given their intrigued responses when noone is attacking it.

[Garret]

Kooldac, how dare you quote me without my written authorization!