LBC Strategy recap

[Seditedi]

Tightened up our time management, won easy tonight with BLMx2 WHMx2 RDMx2 WAR/NIN NIN/WAR THF/WAR BRD/WHM
Took about 15ish minutes for kill. 30 minutes on first floor, like 15 on second, had to overfarm on 3rd because we got screwed on MP cells, entered 4th floor with about 40 minutes, ported up to boss with slightly less than 20 after killing Archaic Gear.
2 Bodb's robes in 2 kills, going to be free lot if it keeps dropping like this

edit: Excuse me for being retarded, but what does the 4th floor chariot aggro? I thought sound/magic but when I went to sac it, I attempted to aggro all the gears near it and the chariot and ran a bit to the west. Chariot did not aggro me or link when I ran directly at it lol. Oddly enough, the rest of the pt did the same w/o sneak or anything and it did not aggro either, but it did aggro one BLM in the back.

http://home.comcast.net/~sdobron/img...803_232517.png

[Kaeko]

Guys wikipedia say it's a good idea to Manaburn/kite LBC But my question is ..... How can BLMs not die even with /NIN if LBC Hit a PLD for 240+ with normal attacks?

You really should take wiki's strat with a grain of salt.

Read this thread and you should have a comfortable strat for beating LBC with 8 or less. Imo, using blms requires too much variables, too much sacrifice on the way up, and gaiters. It's better to have a solid setup, and you can perhaps even take NM or so on the way up.

A lot of this BLM kiting manaburn LBC strategy originally came from my group, and I'm here to tell you I think it's a pretty "outdated" strategy. If I were willing to edit the Wiki I'd probably recommend removing this as one of the really useful, common strategies. It requires a ton more focus, faster movement speed (aka Gaiter abuse), and very good BLM gear + solo experience. Also, nowadays, you get that chest to start things out, which no longer restricts DD as heavily towards MNK only, which was the original reason some groups used this strategy (lack of MNKs). If you are sold on kiting, I would at least take a more diversified team with some/mostly RNGs to give you more melee power to do lvl35s.

Nowadays you can take your small 8ish man group and not only kill LBC, but farm some of the lvl35s as well. A BLM kiting strategy team cannot do this efficiently enough to pull off both in the same run and you would be limited to the boss. Pre-salvage nerf this wasn't so bad as it wasn't viable to do multiple things in the same run for the vast majority of groups, but it really isn't that hard nowadays. This is coming from someone who would find any excuse to use BLMs, but I really would recommend using the standard strategy laid out by Aurik / Lordwafik; it's honestly just a better, more reproducable, less item-dependent strategy. 2 Melee/NIN, heavy on support (RDM, BRD, COR, WHM) and you're good to go.

[Vhess]

So, my Salvage group is something like 0/10 or worse on LBC. We jumped right in to fighting LBC with our first run ever and have pretty much been bashing ourselves against it ever since; I believe at this point we've done maybe 3 runs in other zones. A typical setup for us is 2 MNK/nin, 2 BRD, 2 BLM, WHM, RDM, PLD, THF, SAM. We've gotten it down to 45% or so maybe three times. Every single fight we have tried, our loss has been due to HM, always the same way: HM erases all the hate from our MNKs, LBC runs over and destroys the WHM instantly, chaos ensues, floor is eaten. We haven't really had problems otherwise; last run, for instance, we didn't even have any MNKs and ended up successfully tanking it with a SAM/nin and a WAR/nin -- until HM went off at 50%.

We're working to correct what we can; we're having the PLD stay back to backup tank when HM goes off, we're trying to consistently get a 2nd WHM on each run, and we're working to kill the gears. Gears haven't been going great; our best so far was killing the first five and then having the next two each warp away at 1%.

With all of that as background, we're thinking of trying a new wrinkle for our strategy that I thought I would bounce off everyone. Now, if we end up successfully killing the gears to weaken LBC, this will be moot. But our strategy is to actually have everyone stand within range of HM so that hate is erased on everyone equally, thus saving our WHM and BLM from being pounded when it goes off. During our last fight we noticed that HM has a significantly larger range than the other AoE moves it does. Thus it should be possible to have people stand in an area where they are close enough to be hit by HM but far enough away to avoid the other AoE. Since HM never in itself kills anyone, just reducing them to 10% HP, as long as you stay within that radius you should be completely safe, even if it uses HM multiple times. Our plan is to have the tanks save some /ja like Warcry or whatever to quickly regain hate after HM so that the WHM can safely use Cure V to bring them back up to health. And, again, with proper positioning it should not be necessary to ever cure the rest of the ally; as BRD I was able to stand out of range of his other AoE and still land songs on the tanks. The positioning for this fight would be similiar in a way to Proto-Ultima, where mages can stand between 20' and 22' to avoid AoE while remaining in casting range.

I realize most of this thread is successful groups arguing about how non-dangerous HM is, but as a group that is struggling I was wondering what you big pile of winners think of this idea. Hopefully we'll kill the gears anyway, but in case we don't. Viable?

[Mojo]

You might have already realized some of this, but here are a few tips.

A second WHM will help beyond measure. It's somewhat difficult to survive the 25% > 0% stretch without a WHM for each tank if you're using DD tanks.

If you fail at your attempt to weaken HM, your PLD is the only person who shouldn't be getting hit by it. The hate reset is far worse than the HP damage from Homing Missile. If he stays out of range and avoids both of these, you can have him tank while your white mages restore order. Homing Missile is a targetted AoE on the person it hits(Like 14' or maybe 16'), while the other TP moves are 10' from LBC.

If you do plan on having the PLD on standby for Homing Missile, make sure he avoids kiting LBC at all costs. Most people panic when Homing Missile goes off, only to make the ally eat another Homing Missile and destroy your fallback plan. It's best to have him immediately stand on the sides while your MNKs get in position and get hate back. As soon as the MNKs have good hate again, he should return to his post because it is likely that multiple Homing Missiles will go off.

A partially weakened Homing Missile can kill you if your HP is low, so watch out for that.



You also seem to have the members to be able to zerg the last 25%. It's something I'd strongly recommend doing, it just makes it loads easier. Hell, one time we wiped at 35% because of a poorly handled Homing Missile, but I necro'd it with Bio II and Poison II while everybody else recovered. We were able to just melee burn the rest after unweakening, turning a loss in to a win.

Going about it is simple. Your RDM will need DRK sub, and he will also need an Assassin's Drink(Stun for RDM/DRK will get resisted badly without one). Assassin's Drink often drops from one of the crates at H-8 on floor 1, and always drops (at least in my experience) from the crate at J-10 on floor 3(You need to kill 1-4 flans to spawn it). When LBC reaches 26-28%ish, disengage and put both bards and all your melee in one party. Do the whole Soul Voice routine, then replace the bards with white mages. The RDM starts by using the assassin's drink, using chainspell, and then spam stun. It's important that the RDM is already stunning before the melee engage so LBC doesn't paralyze them all. A good RDM can keep it completely locked(It won't even get off a TP move), but the WHMs should be there just in case. It helps if the BRD puts Thunder Threnody on as well. Anyways, I spent too much time micro explaining that, but there it is.

[Simomchan]

Here is my 2 cents.

Usually my group have 1whm 1rdm and 1brd to support w/ 1 nin tank only, and me as mnk/nin only melee dd, 3 blm plus a thf/whm(yes, thf/whm,galka too. ~_~). Try to nerf HM at all cost, b/c thats the most reason why u fail(everyone knows, yeah yeah...)

And there is something not much ppl mentioned. **DONT give LBC too much TP, its TP move HURTS**, No matter u nerfed HM or not. Me, mnk/nin, i dont melee all the way, what i do is, go in, melee, get 30-40% TP then i run out of range from discharge/inertia stream, wait after LBC uses TP, go in, repeat. By doing this, dmg from LBC should be cut down to the least. and whm, rdm only need focus on healing the nin, way easier to handle than a bunch of melees. And, yes, our nin have no big problem on solo tanking LBC with double march + rdm merit2 debuffer. IF u have to bring more melee to LBC, like war/nin(esspecailly ridill war), thf(ask him sub whm to help on cure/paralyna, not every thf has relic ~_~), sam(meh, sub rng), or whatever, ask them stay out of AOE range, or sit at the corner and watch u fight... if u still cant get LBC to 40%- hp by doing this, u need a better tank. To me, the hardest part is 20%- non-nerfed LBC, thats where u really need to get lucky. other than that, LBC is just a piece of cake. 8)

If u cant get 2 or 3 blms, get more ppl to join. Do more practice on pulling/killing 4th floor gear,(even u can only kill 9/10 gear, HM would be easier to handle)

Hope this helps those who is still having a hard time on LBC.

[Meat]

So, my Salvage group is something like 0/10 or worse on LBC. We jumped right in to fighting LBC with our first run ever and have pretty much been bashing ourselves against it ever since; I believe at this point we've done maybe 3 runs in other zones. A typical setup for us is 2 MNK/nin, 2 BRD, 2 BLM, WHM, RDM, PLD, THF, SAM. We've gotten it down to 45% or so maybe three times. Every single fight we have tried, our loss has been due to HM, always the same way: HM erases all the hate from our MNKs, LBC runs over and destroys the WHM instantly, chaos ensues, floor is eaten. We haven't really had problems otherwise; last run, for instance, we didn't even have any MNKs and ended up successfully tanking it with a SAM/nin and a WAR/nin -- until HM went off at 50%.

We're working to correct what we can; we're having the PLD stay back to backup tank when HM goes off, we're trying to consistently get a 2nd WHM on each run, and we're working to kill the gears. Gears haven't been going great; our best so far was killing the first five and then having the next two each warp away at 1%.

With all of that as background, we're thinking of trying a new wrinkle for our strategy that I thought I would bounce off everyone. Now, if we end up successfully killing the gears to weaken LBC, this will be moot. But our strategy is to actually have everyone stand within range of HM so that hate is erased on everyone equally, thus saving our WHM and BLM from being pounded when it goes off. During our last fight we noticed that HM has a significantly larger range than the other AoE moves it does. Thus it should be possible to have people stand in an area where they are close enough to be hit by HM but far enough away to avoid the other AoE. Since HM never in itself kills anyone, just reducing them to 10% HP, as long as you stay within that radius you should be completely safe, even if it uses HM multiple times. Our plan is to have the tanks save some /ja like Warcry or whatever to quickly regain hate after HM so that the WHM can safely use Cure V to bring them back up to health. And, again, with proper positioning it should not be necessary to ever cure the rest of the ally; as BRD I was able to stand out of range of his other AoE and still land songs on the tanks. The positioning for this fight would be similiar in a way to Proto-Ultima, where mages can stand between 20' and 22' to avoid AoE while remaining in casting range.

I realize most of this thread is successful groups arguing about how non-dangerous HM is, but as a group that is struggling I was wondering what you big pile of winners think of this idea. Hopefully we'll kill the gears anyway, but in case we don't. Viable?

Have you tried the mnk and pld tank combo and leave the 2nd monk as backup melee\chi blaster?
Also how much time is left before your engage the lbc? Before we started to win consistently we gave ourselves enough time for a wipe or 2 with a rdm zombing.

[Minions]

Why don't you just tank it with the PLD? It is not hard to solo tank LBC. If HM gets off, flash it or shield bash it and then hit sentinel. You shouldn't need to use sentinel for anything else anyway. You always have a 2hr as backup hate if sentinels down after HM goes off. PLD + 2 whms + Brd + time = win lbc fight. You can freaking dot it to death given enough time.

[Simomchan]

Why don't you just tank it with the PLD? It is not hard to solo tank LBC. If HM gets off, flash it or shield bash it and then hit sentinel. You shouldn't need to use sentinel for anything else anyway. You always have a 2hr as backup hate if sentinels down after HM goes off. PLD + 2 whms + Brd + time = win lbc fight. You can freaking dot it to death given enough time.

No offense. Just a little bit discussion. ^^

Actually, I GUESS, pld have to be /nin to be effective on tanking LBC, But i think not every pld have enough haste gear to support /nin(I have tank Ohat NM --double attack alot like LBC-- as a GIMP pld/nin, which sucks every bad, almost cannot evade any hits, long recast time on shadows, etc...), flash is long on recast too, and shield bash(Aegis, idk. ^^) wont give u too much hate back. sentinels, may work.

In my opinion, mnk/nin would even be better than pld/nin. But, If u still have HM goes off at like 50%+ hp, ur tank need to learn on reposition, or ur whm have to be faster on erase and so on. And after all. if u have to get a pld tank, invincible should be saved for the last 20% for zerg, no matter u can nerf HM or not, because LBC would have a pretty high chance chasing ur dds and killing them by then, the more dds goes down, the longer LBC will stay on "Crazy" mod. One more bad thing for pld is he would give LBC too much TP to use.

Still, if u can nerf HM, pld/nin is probably the best tho. Cause u dont have to worry about recast time, reposition, pld can hold hate better, survive longer than nin, ur dds can do more dmg, etc.

Anyway, gather more info, pick members who suit ur situation, find out the best way for ur pt. People all have different equips, merits, playskill or whatever, what others do or not do may not fit on u, compare all the info u know and make the right choices, then u will see the victory. :D

[Simomchan]

So, my Salvage group is something like 0/10 or worse on LBC. We jumped right in to fighting LBC with our first run ever and have pretty much been bashing ourselves against it ever since; I believe at this point we've done maybe 3 runs in other zones. A typical setup for us is 2 MNK/nin, 2 BRD, 2 BLM, WHM, RDM, PLD, THF, SAM. We've gotten it down to 45% or so maybe three times. Every single fight we have tried, our loss has been due to HM, always the same way: HM erases all the hate from our MNKs, LBC runs over and destroys the WHM instantly, chaos ensues, floor is eaten. We haven't really had problems otherwise; last run, for instance, we didn't even have any MNKs and ended up successfully tanking it with a SAM/nin and a WAR/nin -- until HM went off at 50%.

We're working to correct what we can; we're having the PLD stay back to backup tank when HM goes off, we're trying to consistently get a 2nd WHM on each run, and we're working to kill the gears. Gears haven't been going great; our best so far was killing the first five and then having the next two each warp away at 1%.

With all of that as background, we're thinking of trying a new wrinkle for our strategy that I thought I would bounce off everyone. Now, if we end up successfully killing the gears to weaken LBC, this will be moot. But our strategy is to actually have everyone stand within range of HM so that hate is erased on everyone equally, thus saving our WHM and BLM from being pounded when it goes off. During our last fight we noticed that HM has a significantly larger range than the other AoE moves it does. Thus it should be possible to have people stand in an area where they are close enough to be hit by HM but far enough away to avoid the other AoE. Since HM never in itself kills anyone, just reducing them to 10% HP, as long as you stay within that radius you should be completely safe, even if it uses HM multiple times. Our plan is to have the tanks save some /ja like Warcry or whatever to quickly regain hate after HM so that the WHM can safely use Cure V to bring them back up to health. And, again, with proper positioning it should not be necessary to ever cure the rest of the ally; as BRD I was able to stand out of range of his other AoE and still land songs on the tanks. The positioning for this fight would be similiar in a way to Proto-Ultima, where mages can stand between 20' and 22' to avoid AoE while remaining in casting range.

I realize most of this thread is successful groups arguing about how non-dangerous HM is, but as a group that is struggling I was wondering what you big pile of winners think of this idea. Hopefully we'll kill the gears anyway, but in case we don't. Viable?

Have you tried the mnk and pld tank combo and leave the 2nd monk as backup melee\chi blaster?
Also how much time is left before your engage the lbc? Before we started to win consistently we gave ourselves enough time for a wipe or 2 with a rdm zombing.

i think what he should do is have 2 mnk/nin duo tank and let pld/nin back up. ^^

How long u take on LBC is really depends on ur pt setup, generally the more blm ur bring, the shorter u can get, the more melee u bring without enough healing power, the longer. Nerfed LBC, much shorter; partially nerfed LBC, only a little bit shorter; non-nerf LBC, um.. can u beat it?

[Berdysh]

Salvage is about striving for efficiency and kill speed. If you have no choice but to bring 14 to every Salvage because it is an LS thing, then I can see tanking LBC on PLD with a bunch of BLMs and RNG pointed at it. But, otherwise, why wouldn't you use a smaller group with DD tanks? Salvage isn't hard anymore, the entire challenge in it has boiled down to getting as much done in a run as you can due to crummy drop rates, and spreading the drops between people efficiently.

LBC isn't hard. He's the hardest chariot unnerfed, but he isn't hard. Stick with it, and keep it simple. Two DD tanks on it, Elegy, Slow II and Para, have a BLM or DRK along to stun him when he turns to a tank so the tank can adjust, etc. If LBC gets bitchy, have one tank get ahead in hate and take one of the tanks off for awhile, standing out of range, ready to grab him if he homing missiles. When you see Discharge or that AOE Bind move, start casting Ichi the second you see it ready...your shadows will go up right after the move hits, and you will not get hit at all, so long as your mage in charge of Paralyna is reacting to Discharge itself and not "(name of tank) is paralyzed".

I've also almost always noticed a Body Boost or two on the way up to LBC, especially if you are killing gears. Have your tanks grab them because it's really freaking hard to die with 2,200 HP.

[Minions]

We bring 12 every run, set static.
PLD PLD(backup but rarely is needed) BRD RDM WHM WHM *Tank PT*
BLM BLM RNG SAM/RNG BLU BLU *DD PT*

Have not lost a LBC fight since we started, excluding the first time we went up there with 10 people to see what the fight was all about. Didn't have enough time (20mins or less at start) and got it to 30ish% before timing out.

Our latest kill we killed in 20mins and had 15mins left after which we keep for lotting/incase we have a pain in the ass LBC.

You can fight LBC how you want, MNK, NIN, PLD tank. Each have their own benefits. Personally when we tried to MNK tank it, it was a pain in the ass and not worth the trouble when we kill it with alot less effort with pld/nin. I believe you need to have 2 mnks on LBC if you MNK tank. 1 NIN, or 1 PLD on LBC to tank it that way. If you have an extra pld (as we do) we keep them out of range flashing in case HM gets off. We never bother weakening LBC before fighting it because its a pain in the ass, and just gearing everyone up in the time it would take to weaken it has nearly the same effect. I can understand groups that kill the rampart that only bring 6-8 people, because you can spend alot less time by zerging LBC and not worring if someone pulls hate in fear of HM.

You can even PLD/WAR tank this from start to end, which I did once (on accident) and still win, but it really makes your whms mad :D 2whms can pretty much keep anyone up. Body boost helps a hell of alot and in the past few runs we got 2-5 of them.... Assasins drinks also drop commonly, but seem to drop less than our body boosts as of late. Chainspell (w/ assasin drink) also helps at the end when zerging it. Personally i've never died to LBC on pld/nin (I also have nin lvled and mnk) but I wouldn't even bother tanking them with this when this strat works so perfectly well for us.

[aurik]

mnk can solo-tank lbc fine. You use 2 mnks because its more damage and not that much more healing, because you can exploit hate bouncing.

[Seditedi]

Yes Minions, but I don't know if PLD/WAR will work in every perma, because not every perma has an Aegis =P

[Pasquale]

Oh Guys a question^^ is true that LBC won't use Homing Missile if the 1 with hate isnt in front of It? and if yes... i see that LBC sometimes turn his face to the 1 with hate...if that 1 than turn around and go on LBC right/left side , the LBC will turn again to face him or Just will stay in the previous position?

[Meat]

It'll stay, at lower hp it will start turning more frequently

[Pasquale]

Ok used Straight tank strategy... took LBC on 58% than idk how our PLD/NIN lost hate.. BLMs got hate and dies... question^^.. what about PLD/WAR with an earth staff tank?

[aurik]

pld/war with estaff is never a good tank. ever.

[Pasquale]

what about a Normal PLD/WAR or 2 PLD/WAR tank so?

[divisortheory]

A tank would be better.

[Minions]

If you have that many problems with hate, bring a sam/thf to trickattack hate between tp attacks. Really if people are pulling that much hate tell them to tone it down, or walk the opposite direction and let them die.