Assault Questions (SL/FL+Tough Ones)

[Octavious]

Well, my assault static is reaching the FL stage with 5/6 being FL already. A few of us are 5~6 assaults from Captain, and I'm in need of some input ona few of them. I'll include the links to the assaults as well as my current setup/strategy. Any help is appreciated, I can feel my free Runic Portals. :D

Basic Setup of People/Jobs:
Person1(Me!) - 75 BLM RDM WHM DRG
Person2 - 75 NIN BLM
Person3 - 75 DRK BLM WHM RDM SMN
Person4 - 75 BRD PLD
Person5 - 75 DRK THF MNK BLM
Person6 - 75 THF RNG RDM

|| Escort Prof. Chanoix ||

Current Strategy:
I went as WHM/SMN with a max MP setup to repose/curebomb any additional aggro, as the other 5 members of my static kept everything else occupied utilizing flee&powder boots. This didn't work "too" well and we failed as one death lead us to some free mobs, that ganged up on the Professor.

Setup Main/Sub:
Person1(Me!) - WHM/SMN
Person2 - NIN/THF (Powders+Flee+Ninja Kyahan)
Person3 - RDM/NIN (Crimson+Flee+Powders)
Person4 - BRD/WHM (Cure Bomb/Horde Mobs w/Me)
Person5 - THF/NIN (Flee+Powder Boots)
Person6 - THF/NIN (Flee+Powder Boots+Trotter Boots)

Issues:
The NIN/THF died using his powder boots post-flee, a problem I see being solved by simply using boots first, however I heard from some members that they lost aggro as they got further away from their mobs. I'm wondering if this is a failed idea, or if modding this idea is possible.

Other Failed Strategies:
Only using 2 SMN to kite the adds, we got consumed too quickly and our SMN's died to the insane fast cast of the ghosts.

|| Azure Ailments ||

Current Strategy:
I had everyone who could possibly feed TP to the mobs come and wield Joys etc, and we couldn't get clean pulls to save our lives. I'm curious if it's possible to SMN pull these at all, or just use a THF to sac pull possibly? Doing it the current way we only obtained 3/5 and the others were too tough as we accidently grabbed some mamool. I also had the melee bring big damage weapons to kill the mamool fast but to no avail.

Setup Main/Sub:
Person1(Me!) - DRG/BLU (Joyeuse+Lance)
Person2 - NIN (Daggers+Speed Setup+Katanas)
Person3 - DRK/NIN (Axes+Scythe+Great Sword)
Person4 - BRD/NIN (Joyeuse+Dagger)
Person5 - THF/NIN (Daggers+...Daggers?)
Person6 - RDM/BLM (Joyeuse/Hornetneedle)

Issues:
Currently, I'm wondering if this is like BLU magic and we'll just have to get lucky on it since it's not up to us whether it uses the right move or not, so I'm blank at the moment.

Other Failed Strategies:
None At the Moment...


Assaults We've Not Done That Seem Tough:
|| Seagull Grounded ||
|| Lebros Supplies ||
|| Sagelord Elimination ||
|| Egg Conservation ||

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I appreciate any/all help with these, if you can offer any help for any 'single' one thats appreciated as well, answers for them all is something I do not expect (being it time consuming). I'm grateful for any/all help I could get on these last few assaults before Captain. Thanks!

[Wolfknight]

|| Sagelord Elimination ||
this one is easy if u have someone kite all the mamool ja(pld, thf or rng)
killing him is easy he'll run ever 20% or so; widescan finds him easily

|| Egg Conservation ||
have someone(preferable with movement up) kite the quqirin but one fighting; have your DD and birds focus on killing one at a time should be easy.
bring a healer to keep DD/birds alive.

[Octavious]

|| Egg Conservation ||
have someone(preferable with movement up) kite the quqirin but one fighting; have your DD and birds focus on killing one at a time should be easy.
bring a healer to keep DD/birds alive.

I should have added I did try this once with a THF kiting one side and a RDM kiting the other, however they overwhelmed us quickly for some reason, they wouldn't link onto the kiters. =/

Oh, and ty for the help on Sagelord, I want to try that one the next time my group goes (4x) this sunday. We do 4x on Sunday 3x on Wednesday. Heh, thanks again!

[Wolfknight]

hmm. maybe kiter needs starting hate we had pld kiting for us with 2x sam and blm for DD.

[Vigilia]

To set your mind to ease, neither Seagull grounded or Sagelord Elimination are hard.
I'd list Seagull grounded as one of the easiest ones to do especially since you have a 6-person group. Just have one person mind the NPC and everyone else run ahead killing stuff, you can kill everything in the zone if you like, there's plenty of time. There are more complicated strategies that involve sleeping and training and such but as you have six just rip your way through the zone like you would in a Crawler's Nest/Eldieme/Garlaige escort quest.
Controlling the NPC is the only tricky bit about this, you must always be behind him so that he moves. To stop him you need to be well ahead of him (but not too far or he runs back to the start), helps if the person controlling him has some sort of speed movement +% bonus.

Sagelord Elimination is slightly annoying but the other mamools in the zone are weak and die fast even when they link to the sagelord. Again, for a group of six this should be a joke to rip through even if you want to kill all in the zone. You can do what Wolfknight suggested above and kite links or just sleepga/lullaby and kill them. DoTs stay on the sagelord btw even when he runs so if you have a BLM or RDM it's worth it sticking them on.

My group beat Escort Professor Chanoix by simply going all out on healing. Looking at the jobs your members have available the same concept could probably work too: Just have everyone who has WHM or any healing-capable job to come as that. We had 2xWHM, BRD, BLM, SMN when we did this. We won simply by letting Prof aggro on his way and curebombed him. I ran ahead on SMN and used Carbuncle to distract as many undead as I could, rest simply trained on the prof. BRD did die halfway through after going a little too lullaby-happy on a large bunch of mobs, but no big deal.

Egg conservation we didn't have any problems with, went with a normal setup of iirc BRD, WHM, THF, MNK, NIN and uh... I forget what job our 6th was on.. BLM probably. Just made sure to pull Qiqirns well to the middle of the area so we'd get all the male apkallus to attack them. They die pretty fast with a dozen angry green penguins beating up on them. When we got two the MNK would grab one and NIN would grab other and bring them to the males to kill. Never felt even slightly overwhelmed.

Hope this helps. Haven't tried Lebros Supplies or Azure Ailments myself yet.

[Byrd]

My group beat Escort Professor Chanoix by simply going all out on healing. Looking at the jobs your members have available the same concept could probably work too: Just have everyone who has WHM or any healing-capable job to come as that. We had 2xWHM, BRD, BLM, SMN when we did this. We won simply by letting Prof aggro on his way and curebombed him. I ran ahead on SMN and used Carbuncle to distract as many undead as I could, rest simply trained on the prof. BRD did die halfway through after going a little too lullaby-happy on a large bunch of mobs, but no big deal.

That's what we did. We went with PLD RDM RDM WHM BLM/WHM and a random DD. RDM's can Gravity and Bind mobs; if you get far enough away from them, they will lose aggro. We killed a few mobs as we went, and Gravity/Bound the rest. When things got really hairy near the end, the WHM did a Banishga and ran the complete opposite direction. He got the aggro from each and every mob, leaving only the Professor and the RDM standing alive, who went on their merry way. Once you get into the last couple of rooms in the northeast corner, the only mobs left are Bhoots, which a RDM can Sleep & Silence without a problem. The RDM soloed the last five minutes of the Assault while everyone else lay dead.
I think the key is to pull aggro off the professor and run far away from him to die/kill/kite/whatever. They won't reaggro the professor if they are far enough away from him.

Azure Ailments

Did this twice with no real problems. Have a tank, a designated puller (who knows what they are doing), and have people capable of sleeping links. The second time we did this we went with BLM NIN DRG RDM/BLM. We had the RDM pull, NIN, BLM and DRG feed the mob as much TP as possible. In case of an ugly link, we sleepga'd. The links weren't too bad, and the RDM didn't Carby pull, he was just patient and pulled with Slow II. Make sure the second that you finish one mob, the puller has the next one there waiting. The puller tried to pick different types of mobs to pull after each other so that we wouldn't have a mob asleep, waiting to be killed, while we already had their status effect. We cleared with 7-8 minutes to spare, if I remember right.

[aurik]

For Azure Ailments, I had success by splitting the party into 2 self-sufficient groups and dividing and conquering. For example, one group fight spiders while the other fights raptors, etc.

I suggest ignoring the qiqirn, they suck.

Also, bst is awesome because most of the debuffs are conal, and you can charm stuff. So bst/whm is a self-sufficient group all by itself.

[Bakthi]

It is possible to pet pull mobs in Azure Ailments, which is what we ended up doing.

[Aihree]

In Egg Conservation, my group beat it by using a preemptive strategy. As the qiqirn in this assault do not link, and won't aggro anything but apkallu, it's easy to send a puller out to find qiqirn, drag one in, and pounce them with everyone else (and lots of males) to kill one by one and fast. Doing this will result in only one or two times where you will have 2 qiqirns at once, and the males (with cure support) can easily tank a qiqirn for a while. As the puller I went out to the east, as far as needed to bring a qiqirn back, brought it back, and then scouted the west to make sure none were coming. Our biggest mistake was in our first time loss, was trying to treat it like blitzkrieg. It don't work that way. Use the males, they are your mainstay of damage, but try to keep it one at a time by pulling preemptively.

[Geli]

For Azure Ailments anyone with /SMN sub can pull w/o any problems.
Did it with 4 members, I was pulling on RDM/SMN.

Sagelord Elimination - just kill most of mamools before pulling boss one.

[Amok]

I had trouble doing Sagelord Elimination for a while because the hate of the linking Mamool when the NM runs isn't as precise as I htought it would be. Even though the avatar had hate when he ran off at some point everyone else that hit the NM got attacked by Mamool. I then tried a kiting strategy but the person kiting didn't know where all the mamool were and was taking a really bad route. So about the 4th time I decided to do the kiting even though I had no movement speed enhancing gear (I was THF). Conclusion this can easily be done with 3 people if you know how to kite and the kiter has support. I started in the westmost part of the map. Theres are 3-4 BST Mamool there. Run past the first, use Flee, get the other ones in the room go back up and run north, gather each one since missing a single one can be fatal. Run back to the upper side on the east past the wooden platform and head back to the starting area with the water and run laps. The kiter support should probably start by waiting at the middle area because you're likely to take some damage there from running back and forth gathering them up. Once at the starting area have the healer run on the lower area or in the opposite direction to get in range to heal. Use flee when it's up but dont' run too far ahead so the Mamool at the end of the train don't turn around and start running the other way. Use it to build up a lead so they stay at about max Ninja radar range. I'm pretty sure almost any melee job can solo the NM. Sagelord doesn't aggro or link with the other mamool so he won't become part of the train.

Chanoix escort crap took us 3 tries iirc. In the end the strategy was to have ppl run ahead of the professor once he picked a direction (he stops several times and can choose any direction to run off to) and aggro stuff then train stuff for as long as they could. Flee was helpfull for getting out of range before some big spell went off. There are several ways to run a circular path in the zone. I was THF again and you can Hide from ghosts and skellies so I was never in any danger. The last part was a bit tricky because no one's flee timer was up again. We also had a PLD stay close to cure him.

Seagull Grounded can be triod easily without a sleeper. All mobs in the zone deaggro (dont' chase by scent) you can flee away and about 20 seconds later they'll give up. First three rooms are easy. Throw some darts, flee south then go west or east after the door/opening and you'll be fine. Making a train of pugils and the doomed is a little trickier and THF AF feet are helpful. Second Doomed is near a tunnel, have someone take it into the tunnel and hold it while the rest run past. Make them flee north to safety. Last room also has a tunnel like construction where you can drag and hold the Toad while the third person finishes the assault. THF/NIN seems to be ideal because of the long flee time and evasion for holding Toads, but I did it with a WHM/THF and that worked out fine as well. Third person can be any job as they won't have to do anything but control the NPC.

[Okuza]

|| Escort Prof. Chanoix ||
|| Azure Ailments ||
|| Seagull Grounded ||
|| Lebros Supplies ||
|| Sagelord Elimination ||
|| Egg Conservation ||

In general, the FL-assaults are a quantum leap more difficult than any of the previous lower assaults. Our static went 1/1 for almost all the lower ones. We were 1/2 for all the FLs except Cerberus ~ about 2/12 there (we had some people miss our first win ><).

Chanoix: we had 2xWHM curing him, a COR using sleep shot sleeping things, and two NINs kiting things. You do loose agro if you run too far, but it's pretty easy as nin/whm to just run back and diaga things to pull them away again. IMHO, I think the COR helped more than the kiters. It was a bit messy and chaotic, but it worked.

Azure: fight at the NPC. We had two pullers out at all times, the rest were just doing normal fighting. We didn't try to preserve the critter with low damage high feeding, but we did have a "don't ws until we get the debuff" strategy. After a bit, we sent another puller out, too -- so 3 pullers. The key to pulling is patience, which is hard in timed event. Hence, the extra pullers -- one will get a link-free config and pull sooner than the rest and bring it in. We never had to wait on pulls. A couple times we had pulls stacked up and slept. IIRC, we had nin,blm,whm,whm,cor,rng.

Seagull: incredibly easy. Have one person manage the prisoner, the rest slay crabs. Make sure the prisoner escorter has runspeed. NIN at night is best.

Lebros Supplies: kiting is THE key to an easy win here. Bring NINs. Do it at night. Have a NIN link-agro (no red-letters!) all the crawlers and run then around the middle. A healer can heal the NIN without agro if it's link-agro. Once the kiter gets 'em clumped up nicely, kiting is trivial. NIN should only need one healer for support and only for initial agro before he's got them clumped. The rest of the party teamworks the feeding. Call out what food you have and who you're feeding. Keep track of how much food each one needs and optimize. A long as your kiter lives, it's a very easy win.

BTW, the crawlers hit for 300+. Make sure your WHM doesn't do something dumb like cast regen on a running NIN when he really needs CureV's. When you have 8 or 9 things chasing you that hit for 300, it's important to have maximum HP. It is possible to do it without support, but teamwork with a healer makes it a sure thing.

Edit: oops, forgot sagelord. We have 2xnin in our static, both are good kiters. So, we sent the nin with weaker DD to kite the zone -- all of it. He was giggling like mad the entire time -- such an amazingly huge train on him. Nightspeed makes kiting v.easy there. Then we just killed the NM. We've done it with SMN where we could chase carby and with stun a few times. Stun never really mattered. Carby helped a little, but not required there, too. IIRC, we got adds one run (one or two?) and just killed them. Kiting makes this one very easy.

Egg conservation: another easy one. Pre-pull works nice. Try to clump the birds all on one rat. If you spread out the birds on multiple rats, it takes longer for them to die and you end up loosing more birds.

[Judai]

|| Escort Prof. Chanoix ||

This one sucked. I had 2BRD, BLU, BLM and WAR and we wiped but somehow about 30s after the wipe, before anyone HP, the Prof got to the end and we won and RR'd, lol...

I would suggest put everyone on a Mage job and just try to sleep,bind,grav,kite the mobs or something and hope for the best.

|| Azure Ailments ||

This is was really easy. Beat it a bunch of times with 3-4 ppl. Only had issues once where I linked a bunch of mobs, didn't realize they linked since the first time I had no problems pulling. I would suggest splitting up the group like Aurik said and go at it like that. Yes, you want to feed them TP but you don't want 4-5 ppl beating on them and killing them too fast. We did Raptors>Spiders>QQ>Leechs>Bugards. (QQ are not hard.. just pull them to the NPC)

Assaults We've Not Done That Seem Tough:
|| Seagull Grounded ||

Don't remember it well, did it so long ago. Think we just had 2 people running ahead and killing mobs in the way while the third stayed with the NPC and slept anything that aggro'd.

|| Lebros Supplies ||

Not as hard as people said. (supposedly ninja nerfed but the guy who went with us said it was the same)
Just bring everyone with enhanced movement.(wlegs, striders, /thf, THF, NIN AF Boots, Powder Boots, Sprinter's Shoes!) Have one person direct everyone and keep track of how much each NPC has been fed. We finished with like 10m left on the clock. It's actually very easy to ninja by all the crawlers.. I never aggro'd any of them. The 2 people who did, one died and the other just kept them asleep as he continued. We didn't have anyone train them.

|| Sagelord Elimination ||

Not very hard. Balanced group of 2-3 DD, Healer and 2 Sleepers is great. Fight, try to stun him if you can as he runs, sometimes it stops him. Sleep links. Just need to do damage to him fast, keep dot on him to keep his HP dropping as he runs. Using a SMN and having it BP right before he runs off works well as well. The Avatar gets hate and all the links run to it.

|| Egg Conservation ||

First time we got owned but while lying on the ground we saw the Penguins rape the QQs. Just fight them 1 at a time and drag them through the group. If you get all the males on each QQ they just rape them. BLU Destroys the QQs as well btw. Balanced party of Melee DD and 2 Healers I would say. Make sure the healers are careful because curing gets alot of hate. As long as you gather up and use the male apkallus the fight is easy. Did this with RDM, BLU, WAR, THF and it was pretty easy.

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Did 80% of the Assaults with 3-4 people.

[Ryda]

Personally I think the way to go with Sagelord is to just kill nearly all the mamool before you aggro him. If you can make a good merit PT you can kill all the mamool in the first area, all the mamool in the second area, and then have time to chase down the NM a few times. Bringing someone with widescan would be prudent. All of the kiting/sleeping strats are fine if people know what they are doing. But since the only people who care to do this assault are people who have never beat it, I think sticking to the straight forward TP burn is the way to go for your first clear. It premptive strike+1.

[Octavious]

My Group Successfully did Sagelord last set. I plan on making another go at Escort Prof, and Egg Conservation the next run. Last time we did Hydra x2 and Sagelord. Failed both Hydra since we only did it w/4ppl and no BRD... >.<