Absolute Virtue & You: A Learning Experience

[Auspice]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...mic/AVZoom.gif

Over 9000 hours in MS Paint.

[Tricen]

The other one is better :<

[Vandole]

b for effort though.

[senseless]

Well, one reason they could of been using staffs, is if soul voice went off and they got charmed...they wouldn't hit/hit hard...ya thats all igot, not to mention the -20% physical is semi handy i guess...

I think its not an issue of stopping 2hr's, but an issue of, how to stop certain ones. I have noticed something though, which i can't really test, but what are the 3 aerns that pops around him. Don't they share job classes? I remember reading someones group had nin/rdm/thf?? but clearly in stans pic, it shows an aern using flare. Could his manafont be linked to the blm class aern that pops at him? Could having that aern be rdm, and then hold that rdm be the trick to not having AV using manafont??

Even still, if he didn't rape with manafont, second hard point would be surviving soul voice maiden virelai(don't know if goes through shadows)

It would still be an incredibly hard fight if he couldn't insta wipe you with meteor wouldn't it?

[Msnl]

From my LS's poking at AV.

Bard uses Troubadour, AV "Readies" EES
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2...7171259qp3.png

We played with it for awhile, couldn't really confirm or deny any of the theories I noticed people posting here. Towards the end of our attempt, Mojo showed up, and said he logged everything he saw. Maybe he got some SS's of stuff I missed, or things I didn't notice. Our AV was a little meteor happy.

Edit: In response to the post above me, we tried killing the BLM aern, and holding the RDM. AV still used Manafont, whenever he felt like it.

[Rautha]

From my LS's poking at AV.

Bard uses Troubadour, AV "Readies" EES
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2...7171259qp3.png

i just noticed the same after watchhing the english and german video again. whenever a specific ability or spell is used he uses 2 hr.
Blind Spell seems to be one of the main 2 hr triggerer of him. like you said troubadur seems to trigger ees.
and: it seems the Dev team always KNOWS when he will use his 2 hr. When looking at the video you see a blind spell and a PLD (emaulle [sp]) using invincible just BEFORE AV uses his 2 hr. in addition each 2 hr when used by a player normally has a 1-2 second respond time (with macro button or using directly from menu). they can't react that fast during this fight. so..the dev team IS prepared and kind of use thir 2 hrs after that ability/spell just before AV uses his 2 hr.

so... the main point here now is: it is possible to let AV trigger his 2 hr by specific actions (blind, overcuring one person, 5+ people casting utsusemi at the very same time,... seem to be part of this model)
watch the video again and read the chat logs from various language vids. you will notice that just before AV 2 hr something is "done" by the players that is not done during normal fight (again: blind, extrem cureing..)

any other theory...hm, no... a thesis... about this?


edit: ok read the old closed thread. my status was page 35 or so. was closed at 63
so this seems nothing new lol -__- sry


edit2: in the DemoLS AV3 Vid:
Darkstaruk gets cure 4/5 bombed, followed be EES just like in the SE video
etc

[Elipse]

Well if this is the case, its not all that hard to test. Next group to pop an AV, can take solo players /nin so you can survive for a few seconds to test this out solo on AV.

Take a Brd/Nin and give him Raise 3's
Cast something like elegy > see if AV reacts > Did AV just melee you down?
Do that a couple times if he melee's you down each time then you know its a "safe" spell for the current day

Then use elegy or whatever you find he just melee's you with, stand at max distance and hit Troub soon as you have claim on AV. If he 2hr's/TP's etc then repeat this process a few times. If he 2hr's or Tp's you every time you use Troub, then you know he reacts to it. If he doesn't there is a good chance its just coincidence.

You can repeat the same thing with Rdm/Nin casting blind/dispel/slow/para/etc to determine if any of these spells create reactions. You can have pld/nin do this with flash/JA's, a Brd/nin do it with elegy/troub/some other song, rdm/nin etc etc and just rotate around we could probably build a solid list of "Does AV react to these things with 2hr's/TP or is it all just one big coincidence cause he's spaming the shit out of his TP moves already... "

Well hopefully that made sense, but that method would probably be better than claiming as an alliance to test reactions. Too many variables with an alliance. This may not be the absolute best way, perhaps someone else has a better way?

The way I read things is, if AV won't react instantly to your JA/Spell/whatever then its just a coincidence and we're reading into things.

I did have one last thought to share. What if SE was play testing an AV patch for March? They might have been playing with a different AV than we are. What they taught us in the video might be completely valid today, removing regen/2hrs doing something, but for all we know, they were playing with a nerfed AV that they were testing for march.

[Hanyoko]

Really hate to bring this suggestion back up as the Sea weapons are NOT related to the kill. But in those that have used their 2hrs with no real effect to AV were Virtue stones equipped at the time?

At this point dont want to rule out anything that might have been in non-visible equipment slots.

I really want to belive that they didnt cheat to demonstrate their kill. But something isnt meshing well.

[Derufin]

Last night, Captain Caveman of Cerberus popped AV, and tried a few things. First, the things we can confirm:

1)You can land elemental DoTs (shock, burn, etc) on AV.
2)With less than 3 wynavs, AV can "Call Wyvern"; he will simply resummon the ones that are currently dead.

Now the things that seemed to have no effect on AV:

-Engaging immediately without letting him deagro seemed to have no effect.
-Killing the aerns around him seemed to have no impact on him. He could 2hr as he pleased when they were down just as easily as he could when they were up.
-Nuking with the element according to the day seemed to impact his HP regen, but nuking with off elements did not cause an immediate reaction.
-Using Shield Bash did not cause an immediate reaction.

Now for specifics. We popped him on iceday, immediately engaged using PLD/NINs and RDM/NINs to tank. This worked well and we could effectively tank AV for 15 minutes or more. We initially used BLMs only as dmg, nuking with tiers1-4 corresponding to the elemental day. When he summoned wynavs we used 2 RDM/THFs to kite them away. We had a 2hr order setup so that whenever AV 2hr'd, 3 people in the main ally would as well. We always used at least 1 manfont after he 2hrd. The kiters did the best they could, but eventually died without reraise and the wynavs returned and killed us.

On subsequent attempts, things were similar; we eventually gave up on kiting wynavs and used BLMs to nuke them down. We could tank AV longer this way, but problems arose when he Chainspell'd Aeroga>Aeroga>AM2>AeroV. Overall AV was up for 3.5 hours, we gave it 6 or so good attempts, all lasting longer than 3 minutes but less than 20. We used BLMs in main ally over DDs for dmg. He manafonted only once all night, on our first attempt when we were in the process of wiping and it also happened to be the 2hr following one that we did not counter with our own. However, I should point out that later on (when we ran out of 2hrs), we could not counter all of his every time and he still did not mnafont.

One member of the LS did fraps the first fight, so if people wish I might be able to get him to post it somewhere. These are my observations as the leader of the LS that was fighting him. Going in I truly believed the reactionary theory had merit, now, I'm not so sure.

[Rautha]

One member of the LS did fraps the first fight, so if people wish I might be able to get him to post it somewhere. These are my observations as the leader of the LS that was fighting him. Going in I truly believed the reactionary theory had merit, now, I'm not so sure.

yes please! That would be very helpful i think. hopefully in that vid you can see a "trigger-cause" of the 2 hr just as we mentioned before.

[Velocy]

That thing with the poping Aerns concernces me somehow. Idk, but I don't think there is direct relation to them, but an indirect one. If I think of other Mobs of the same type (Orcs and Quadavs for example), if they use Warcry, Curaga or Protectra, other (similar) mobs get buffed, too. So is the same with Aerns, they can influence each other (like if they are in party). I had a WHM Aern curing a RNG Aern for example.

That would eventually mean, that everything an Aern around AV does can influence AV's behavior (if he really reacts on wrong elements and/or JAs). So if that really applies, the best would be to keep the Aern far (not "only" 50') away. Aerns have an incredible range which can be seen on Aern RNGs. Just keep them somewhere far in a corner by a party of 2 RDMs/BRDs/BLMs or BLUs.

From everything said and tested, the possibility that there is really a (legit) way to make AV stop 2HRs is almost non existant. From the SE Videos (the timeline) there is one thing concerning me... there is one 2HR that is always used when AV 2HRs: Manafont... there is also one 2HR that is never shown by AV: Manafont.

So this COULD really mean: Using an 2HR after AV 2 HRs can influence AV that the next 2HR is 100% not the 2HR which is countered (maybe it has a cap at max. of 3 or 5, our you could make AV unable to use 2 HR using all 15 at once, which I do not believe). On the other hand the 2HR must be done everytime AV uses an 2 HR, cause next 2HR will reset the list.1

I checked the consolidated timelines from the Videos and the onliest thing I saw which could dump this theorie is the Astral Flow. AV did use Astral Flow even if the last 2HR was countered with a SMN. Either, the "non usable 2HR list" was already capped, or there was another 2HR in between that was not shown in the window.

(btw.... wtf has latent discussion lost in here? Why that kind of choleric board rule if evey 2nd idiot post dumb spam into a serious meant thread?)

[Suiram]

It's starting to bother me that there isn't really anyone advancing the argument that, over the course of a fight with all of the JAs and spells and WSs and whatnot that constantly occur, even if TP moves are normal, spells on regular intervals, and random 2Hs on slightly longer intervals, the chance that one wasn't immediately or nearly immediately preceded by a spell or WS or JA of some sort is really very small. Not only that, but the arguments in favor of this brand of theorizing keep evolving to fit the evidence. "The 2Hs that are readied are responses to JAs" becomes "The 2Hs that are used without being readied are responses to JAs" when faced with evidence of the latter, and without any acknowledgment of that previously-held belief. Later on both evolve to entirely disregard the "readying" distinction that was previously thought to be essential to the whole idea. Constant conjunction of two similar events doesn't necessarily imply causation as the philosophers say, and I believe we maybe have to reconcile ourselves to the possibility that this could be an ideal example of just what they are talking about.

[Nagamaki]

There may be something to the reaction theory still, but people are trying way too hard to justify it, as suiram suggested. You can't kill something without using abilities/spells, at this point about the only thing that wasn't suggested as causing 2hours is curing people, and I'm sure some crazy genius will come up with that soon.

People also need to keep in mind that other mobs are also reactionary to an extent, hold most NMs without melee/utsu eating their attacks (aside from Tu'lia trigger style spammers) and they will hardly using any WS. Hold a NM that has a 2hour without doing any damage and it won't use it either, taking damage within certain ranges is the typical trigger for them. Obviously AV follows somewhat different rules, but the fact that he does more stuff when people are attacking him isn't an amazing discovery, that is how mobs work.

Testing theories means looking at existing evidence and trying to reproduce circumstances to reproduce results, if the theory morphs every time to fit the new circumstances/results it becomes completely meaningless, it doesn't reflect previous attempts.

[Auspice]

The other one is better :<

There's already another one? Damn, I need to lurk more.

[Maytag]

Right now I think we need to face the fact that the reactionary theory isn't working. The fact is, we already know he will use 2-hours at regular intervals even if everyone in the alliance does NOTHING. I suspect that everyone's observations so far can simply be boiled down to coincidence.

Regarding the Aern theory, I'm not convinced there is anything to that either... just because AV 2-houred a couple of times when Aern's were popping, doesn't necessarily mean anything. But lets say they are connected. In that case, it would seem that dragging Aern's away doesn't matter... and we also know that he can use Manafont regardless of whether the BLM Aern is up. Certainly, at this point in time, this theory doesn't seem useful at all.

The only thing that makes sense is matching AV's 2-hours, specifically with Manafont. If this effects him somehow, there are several possiblities:

1. It "locks" him from using Manafont for a certain amount of time, or until he next 2-hours.
2. It reduces the chance of AV using Manafont, either for a certain amount of time, or for the entire fight. If this is the case, then we can interpret from the video that counting AV multiple times probably stacks reduction, possibly until it becomes 0% of Manafont.
3. Another possibility is that counting AV's 2-hours somehow weakens the ones you use to counter with. At the moment this seems unlikely, but it's something to watch out for.

If you think about the dev video, it seems very likely that one of these is correct. It doesn't seem likely that they nerfed AV, it seems like having unlimited 2-hours is what helped them avoid Manafont...

[Senoska]

The other one is better :<

There's already another one? Damn, I need to lurk more.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...rat/avzoom.jpg

[Babekeke]

Is there any significance to the RDM (Ronana) spamming dark-based spells (sleep, sleep II, dispel and blind)?

[Acturus]

Is there any significance to the RDM (Ronana) spamming dark-based spells (sleep, sleep II, dispel and blind)?

There sure is!


He's tanking.

[Bagel]

AV: Repercussions of Virtue

Rocl waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were noobs in the forum. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Sonomaa were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Rocl was in BG for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to post on the forums daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY NOOBS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the forum base of the BG he knew there were noobs.
"This is Sono" the radio crackered. "You must fight the noobs!"
So Rocl gotted his keyboard and made a summary post.
"HE GOING TO B& US" said the noobs
"Is there any significance to the RDM (Ronana) spamming dark-based spells (sleep, sleep II, dispel and blind)?" said the cyberetard and he fired the terrible idea. John bansticked at him and tried to make him GTFO. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to ban.
"No! I must ban the noobs" he shouted
The radio said "No, Rocl. You are the noobs"
And then Rocl was a KI admin.

[Charismatic]

AV: Repercussions of Virtue

Rocl waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were noobs in the forum. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Sonomaa were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Rocl was in BG for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to post on the forums daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY NOOBS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the forum base of the BG he knew there were noobs.
"This is Sono" the radio crackered. "You must fight the noobs!"
So Rocl gotted his keyboard and made a summary post.
"HE GOING TO B& US" said the noobs
"Is there any significance to the RDM (Ronana) spamming dark-based spells (sleep, sleep II, dispel and blind)?" said the cyberetard and he fired the terrible idea. John bansticked at him and tried to make him GTFO. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to ban.
"No! I must ban the noobs" he shouted
The radio said "No, Rocl. You are the noobs"
And then Rocl was a KI admin.

Thumbs up.