Strategies to Defeat AV (All Theories/Ideas Here)

[Zalius]

would be sweet if animas did anything to him honestly, but if stoneskin saves you from meteor then get a blu or smn rotation lawls

[Spira]

It seems plausible if SE revised AV over abit..

firstly, I'd think making him be poppable from an item from JoL is a better idea. Its quite a simple fix and if they could do Ulli i don't see why they can't do this guy. And its not just because people are monopolizing pops but also because not everyone has the time to be involved in a 3+ hour extension after a fight that is so easy but takes so long to do anyway. If people could organize when they wanted to fight AV, they wouldn't have to do all the scrambling/panic/zombie-holding thing whilst PT members changed jobs and what not - and efforts to fight him might actually be more coherent from the very start.

perhaps as SE has said, there really is a trick to AV that no one has figured out. There must be a way to calm him down. Maybe they'll reveal this at the Fanfest.. Meanwhile, what we need are people constantly doing /clap /praise /dance and /kneel emotes to AV. After all the Absolute Virtue of the real world is the symbol of God himself. worship him! That way he'll stop using 2hrs completely, stop casting spells and only use TP moves.

Also, you need a party of people to simultaneously check the Ebon Panels to open the door to get out of the Mako Reactor.

[mrinv]

I'm sure I'll get an lolnoob get more posts for this but has anyone tried a Fire Resist setup to survive Meteor/Mijin on AV? If the rest of the plan works where mages can stay out of range and only tanks get hit maybe they could survive all the rest of the 2hrs? Of course benediction would still reset all the work you did but just throwing out an idea.

[Lordender]

Even when this mob is finally figure out it should still be named "Absolute Failure". I mean i don't even know where to begin to start complaining about this mob other than saying it doesn't pop nearly enough for anyone to do any real tests on theories. My linkshell got 1 pop out of like 15 JoL kills.

[Plow]

I'm sure I'll get an lolnoob get more posts for this but has anyone tried a Fire Resist setup to survive Meteor/Mijin on AV? If the rest of the plan works where mages can stay out of range and only tanks get hit maybe they could survive all the rest of the 2hrs? Of course benediction would still reset all the work you did but just throwing out an idea.

Look at it this way, if it's not a reeeeally good and crazy deep thought idea, it's probably been thought of.


If it's really simple (like use resist or terrain...) it was tried within days of him popping for the first time and tried again immediately after the wall of justice was fixed.

[divisortheory]

2. Train AV to front gate, take him under the bridge leading to the main gate and hold him there.

First problem I see. As far as I know, he draws in constantly and has constant flee speed so getting it that far would be quite a task.

And I don't think the AoEs are really the problem even though they are annoying. Its more about the benediction.

If they only thing people can ever say anymore is "lolbenediction" then kindly STFU. We all know Benediction fucking blows, we've been knowing that for.... oh, # of days since AV was in the game minus about 20. Instead of just saying "zomg benediction" every time someone posts about AV, how about a) trying to figure out how to hold him indefinitely, and then b) using a try to figure out how to prevent him from using benediction. b is not possible without a, so shut the FUCK up about b.

No offense to you personally, it's just getting stupid seeing every AV thread being littered with shit about benediction. We get it, really we do.

[Plow]

2. Train AV to front gate, take him under the bridge leading to the main gate and hold him there.

First problem I see. As far as I know, he draws in constantly and has constant flee speed so getting it that far would be quite a task.

And I don't think the AoEs are really the problem even though they are annoying. Its more about the benediction.

If they only thing people can ever say anymore is "lolbenediction" then kindly STFU. We all know Benediction fucking blows, we've been knowing that for.... oh, # of days since AV was in the game minus about 20. Instead of just saying "zomg benediction" every time someone posts about AV, how about a) trying to figure out how to hold him indefinitely, and then b) using a try to figure out how to prevent him from using benediction. b is not possible without a, so shut the FUCK up about b.

No offense to you personally, it's just getting stupid seeing every AV thread being littered with shit about benediction. We get it, really we do.

Do you not remember the first AV thread where they held him for like 30 straight hours?

What's so hard to understand about the fact that the only thing left to be figured out is how to stop benediction and people *WILL* kill it from there?

[divisortheory]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there something in the TOS about using the terrain to evade magical spells/attacks? Does a bridge count? :O I think SE could stop this one before it is even tested.

I actually recall them saying that using terrain to your advantage is wise.

[Lordender]

would be so much easier to test shit if SE wasent a bunch of fucking cheap fucks and up the pop rate of AV by 50%.

[divisortheory]

Do you not remember the first AV thread where they held him for like 30 straight hours?

I remember people holding him with level 1 jobs for 30 straight hours. I don't remember anyone actually straight tanking him for like 30 hours, no.

protip: AV's mechanics have been changed since then.

[Plow]

The fact is it can be kept alive and tested on indefinately.



Without benediction it is an absolutely ridiculously hard fight that's damn near unwinnable.


With benediction it is impossible.



Without benediction there are people that would kill it, period, no matter how insanely ridiculous it is.

[Darkhearted]

Manafont and Meteor/Comet (and Mijin) are what make AV impossible. Benediction just makes it frustrating; salt in the wounds.

[RKenshin]

2. Train AV to front gate, take him under the bridge leading to the main gate and hold him there.

First problem I see. As far as I know, he draws in constantly and has constant flee speed so getting it that far would be quite a task.

And I don't think the AoEs are really the problem even though they are annoying. Its more about the benediction.

If they only thing people can ever say anymore is "lolbenediction" then kindly STFU. We all know Benediction fucking blows, we've been knowing that for.... oh, # of days since AV was in the game minus about 20. Instead of just saying "zomg benediction" every time someone posts about AV, how about a) trying to figure out how to hold him indefinitely, and then b) using a try to figure out how to prevent him from using benediction. b is not possible without a, so shut the FUCK up about b.

No offense to you personally, it's just getting stupid seeing every AV thread being littered with shit about benediction. We get it, really we do.

But you see that's the simple fact everyone seems to forget. These strategies everyone comes up with are great and all but the fact remains as long as it can still use Benediction there is really little to no hope. Not that there's anything wrong with theorizing outside of covering a counter to Benediction but it's definitely one aspect a lot of people tend to forget.

Honestly the OP's strategy is perfectly workable, and you can in fact manage AV with a few good tanks and a decent amount of support on the bridge. Something like 3-5 well equiped and skilled tanks bouncing hate around with about 3-4 WHMs with RDM and/or BRDs support could do it indefinitely, and it has been done. Meteor can be reduced to <900 damage just like Aeroga IV and the like, and even Hundred Fists can be cured through with everyone working together properly. So it really wouldn't take an LS just throwing tanks at it blindly as they fall one by one as some people are suggesting.

But regardless the limiting factor will be Benediction, and until we figure out ways around that there's really no reason not to bring these conversations down to reality on the real problem that needs to be figured out. Although last I heard there may be a way around it based on the Aerns' jobs that spawn nere AV? Unsure.

EDIT:

Manafont and Meteor/Comet (and Mijin) are what make AV impossible. Benediction just makes it frustrating; salt in the wounds.

Disagreed, I'm certain you could counter it rather easily as my LS (and I believe others as well) has basically achieved this before. Meteor/Comet and Manafont can all be lived through if you have 1) Tanks with capped -magic damage (which is possible to achieve on NIN, PLD, and RDM without too much difficulty) 2) Enough support to throw out Cure Vs/IVs when needed after this happens.

As long as it doesn't one hit you and leaves you with over 500 HP, you can deal with it with enough support. As I said Meteor damage can be brought done to <900, just like Aeroga/etc.

[Suiram]

Meteor/Comet and Manafont can all be lived through if you have 1) Tanks with capped -magic damage (which is possible to achieve on NIN, PLD, and RDM without too much difficulty) 2) Enough support to throw out Cure Vs/IVs when needed after this happens.

As long as it doesn't one hit you and leaves you with over 500 HP, you can deal with it with enough support. As I said Meteor damage can be brought done to <900, just like Aeroga/etc.

The one thing I don't quite see being so easy with what you say here, which was discussed for a short period of time in the other recent AV thread, is that while a tank with capped -magic may be able to take sub-900 meteors, that presupposes they are taking 50% of the damage already reduced to 40% by hitting 10 or more targets. A tank who would take 900 damage under those circumstances would, eating a meteor alone, take 2250 damage (with capped -magic), or 3 tanks would 1687 (again capped). So as I see it, you'd need 10 tanks and support for them (lol) or a self-sustaining 10-man contingent of tanks and support all with capped -magic (is that even possible for some support jobs? Let's assume it is.) capable of keeping not only the tanks but themselves alive after a meteor or two without having hate or MP issues, unless you were to have a separate support-support unit to watch the tanks' support, and you can see where I'm going with this.

While you can argue in the hypothetical that you should be able to beat AV but for his benediction, I haven't seen a report since the days of the wall that said, "Yeah we almost had him but he benedictioned over and over." It's always "we got our ass tore up by Meteor and gave up" or even your LS's "We got him down to 80% and he glitched into a second form and spammed meteor." Either way, Benediction hasn't ever been the problem, in practice. I personally wouldn't be surprised if Benediction wasn't easily accounted for once people get to that point, whether due to the lowered-max-HP thing people noticed in the days of the wall, or by some way of preventing him from using it altogether.

[Pergo]

could I petition everyone to shift their focus from AV > Ravin Raven.... idk about anyone else, but this bastard irks me to no end.

[DrObvious]

Manafont and Meteor/Comet (and Mijin) are what make AV impossible. Benediction just makes it frustrating; salt in the wounds.

Disagreed, I'm certain you could counter it rather easily as my LS (and I believe others as well) has basically achieved this before. Meteor/Comet and Manafont can all be lived through if you have 1) Tanks with capped -magic damage (which is possible to achieve on NIN, PLD, and RDM without too much difficulty) 2) Enough support to throw out Cure Vs/IVs when needed after this happens.

As long as it doesn't one hit you and leaves you with over 500 HP, you can deal with it with enough support. As I said Meteor damage can be brought done to <900, just like Aeroga/etc.

How far down past the 79% comet/meteor mode have you gotten av then? Has it actually used benediction after this point?

[RKenshin]

Except I'm pretty certain Meteor doesn't follow the AoE spell damage reduction thing.

Meteor hitting one person does the same damage as Meteor hitting 40 people, as you find out easily at KS99s and the like. And the 9xx damage Meteors/Aerogas I posted on my LJ forever ago were single targets IIRC. Definitely don't need like 10 tanks/bodies or anything of the like to absorb AoE either way though, I'm just about certain about that.

How far down past the 79% comet/meteor mode have you gotten av then? Has it actually used benediction after this point?

I don't recall it using Benediction after the 79% Comet/Meteor mode but I think we got it to 78% before just tossing the idea aside, because we heard of this happening to another LS and had no hope for it changing for us. We held it for quite a while around that % before the wipe but had to focus most of our efforts on staying alive, and didn't end up doing much damage to it. But the 79% Comet/Meteor mode is much worse than normal AV IMO since instead of Aero spells it spams those spells regularly along with the TP attacks.

[Zalius]

Curse of the goblin drink 2: The virtue of absolute

[Suiram]

Except I'm pretty certain Meteor doesn't follow the AoE spell damage reduction thing.

Meteor hitting one person does the same damage as Meteor hitting 40 people, as you find out easily at KS99s and the like. And the 9xx damage Meteors/Aerogas I posted on my LJ forever ago were single targets IIRC. Definitely don't need like 10 tanks/bodies or anything of the like to absorb AoE either way though, I'm just about certain about that.

Yeah I didn't used to think so either but like I said it was brought up in the other AV thread in Newbie.
viewtopic.php?p=642458#p642458

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...F/img_0243.png

Must have forgotten to equip my Fortitude Axe and Temperance Torque.

Now the numbers I posted above were assuming you had some further damage reduction like Magic Defense Bonus to bring it to 900, since it would be 4500 base rather than the 6k in this image, if that's even possible, but I was trying to be charitable with the details.

Edit: To continue, I don't know that you would need 10 either, but you'd need more than 3-4, probably more than 5 people to eat Meteor, and it's more of a balance of how low you get the damage to each individual against the the total amount of HP needed to recover from it afterward. To be honest we tried a similar strat to the OP's suggestion last November, but rather with tanks both above and below, close enough to cure each other and act on AV when he was at the other tank, but with AV needing the to path around every time the other pulled hate. The problems we encountered was neither Benediction (never used) nor Manafont (used only Comet only the one time he fonted, so we got lucky in that regard, unlucky now since it would be nice to have personal verification that it does indeed follow the standard AoE damage rules), but the hate degradation from pathing out of visual range of the PLDs every time he ran around (which could possibly be fixed by tightening their positions relative to one another, but you'd want to do so without bringing them within the vertical radius of the AoE cylinder), and poorly conceived plan for dealing with the wynavs (which could easily be remedied).

[The Blackrose]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there something in the TOS about using the terrain to evade magical spells/attacks? Does a bridge count? :O I think SE could stop this one before it is even tested.

Are you confusing Sony Online Entertainment with Square Enix?

I shit you not, it reminds me of the Conquest/Sleeper's Tomb incident in EverQuest:

Rumor: The only time anyone came close to killing the Sleeper was when "random popular to bash guild" on "sometimes correct, sometimes wrong" server used an exploit to kill him. (There are many different versions of this floating around various message boards).

Fact: Not true. Whether or not anyone has even put a dent in his health will only be known for sure by the people who did so, and any developer's who looked at the log. The guild websites I looked at for some of the guilds who woke him only showed him with full (or maybe 99% of his) health standing amongst a pile or two of corpses. The exploit referenced in this rumor refers not to the Sleeper, but to the third Warder.

The guild Conquest (not Fires of Heaven, Afterlife, Triton, or any other extremely powerful guild) was accused of using an exploit when fighting the third Warder. They were accused of having their raid under the bridge where the warder could not reach them while their main tank built aggro on the dragon without doing damage, so it couldn't start summoning. Only bits and pieces of this were ever released to the public so I'm giving only the confirmed "facts" as released by Sony.

Conquest claimed no such exploit was being used (but defended it by saying people do the same thing to Vox) and that their Main Tank had no way of building sufficient aggro. They lost the fight because their clerics built too much aggro and got summoned and roasted. The fight was not stopped, but they lost. Some time later, when GMs were present and discussing their exploit (read: scolding them) they "accidentally" spawned the Sleeper (for the first time anywhere) and he loaded with the wrong model (a giant human male, there were screenshots of this that were at first called fake by Sony, then later they admitted that the wrong model loaded, they apologized for their false accusation in a Press Release.)

The guild was disbanded and all it's members suspended and two memebers were banned as they had previously been warned from similar exploitation.

Update: I have since been contacted by a former member of Conquest who has corrected me that they did wake the Sleeper through an exploit. I have not been able to confirm this claim as either true or false.

The precedent is there, just haven't ever heard of it being done to the Third Warder, not Kerafyrm.