Tier 1-4 ZNMs Discussion

[Myrrial]

How many non-Groundburst TP attacks were used on you? It uses randomly selected TP moves between that, Warm Up, the sucky version of Fire Spit that goes straight through shadows, and its "I throw my staff" move when he changes jobs. Anything else?

I've personally seen him Groundburst the shit out of people. Considering the fact that he used it -once- for you seems more of a coincidence than anything. Of course it didn't take an alliance of melee to kill him if he never did anything scary. Its like fighting Reacton when all he decides to do is waste all his time casting Flare II on a tank that can simply Utsusemi out of it.

For every group that goes and fights him a handful of times and doesn't see Groundburst, another group will go and fight him once and have it spammed at them. Mileage is just going to vary when random number generation is the deciding factor on so many things. I personally wouldn't suggest putting my people in range of that attack if they don't have to be; even if it does increase the duration of the fight.

[Gunitsoldier]

I wanted to do this aswell but you beat me to it, nice job. In the pandy thread if people ask a question about T1-T4 ZNMs its overlooked cause an hour later there are two more pages already so this is a good idea.

[Mojo]

We had quite a few people during our first encounter, although most of the people weren't not fully utilized. Our second fight was 10 people and involved something like PLD DRK NIN(meleeing) WHM BRD RDM + THF, 2 BLM and a SCH. It's more than seven people but to be completely honest you could easily reduce the second party to a single BLM and have nearly identical results.

It can't recall exactly how many TP moves it used throughout the fights, but I can say that during 2/3 of the fights Groundburst was only used once and only after it had changed to WHM mode.

[Petitssk]

Concerning Reacton:
He increases in size several times during the fight, though I don't know if it is triggered by damage, high damage abilities/spells or just time.
The strength/level of his spells increase with his size. At first he seemed to use none at all, after the first growth he switched to Fire III and after the second one he was using Fire IV. Never attempted to use -ga III when we killed him, was able to cast Flare II though but I don't know if it had increased in size again at that point.
Other things:
-Extremely fast attack speed
-Can double attack (maybe even triple-attack, couldn't tell due to the massive storm of attacks)
-Can be Slowed and Elegied
-Resists BLM spells a lot
-Uses Heat wave (37 HP/tick burn)
-Can use Self-destruct (1.5k dmg at 20%) and will just die and drop his items if he does.

Can't remember anything else right now. He's not really the worth the trip through Halvung.

[Kaylia]

Concerning Reacton:
He increases in size several times during the fight, though I don't know if it is triggered by damage, high damage abilities/spells or just time.
The strength/level of his spells increase with his size. At first he seemed to use none at all, after the first growth he switched to Fire III and after the second one he was using Fire IV. Never attempted to use -ga III when we killed him, was able to cast Flare II though but I don't know if it had increased in size again at that point.
Other things:
-Extremely fast attack speed
-Can double attack (maybe even triple-attack, couldn't tell due to the massive storm of attacks)
-Can be Slowed and Elegied
-Resists BLM spells a lot
-Uses Heat wave (37 HP/tick burn)
-Can use Self-destruct (1.5k dmg at 20%) and will just die and drop his items if he does.

Can't remember anything else right now. He's not really the worth the trip through Halvung.

You know if spike damage make it grow faster like other bomb? No WS/strong nuke might be the way to go

[Myrrial]

Reacton made it onto my group's "Never again" list due to the sheer pain in the ass required to reach him. This is mostly just an echo of the above post; but he's a total jerk. He attacks super fast and as he advances in size he hits harder and harder. For us he spammed Heat Wave as his TP attack of choice, and we had to continually disband and re-invite a /WHM member between the primary and secondary party to keep everyone Erased. At the start of combat, Reacton's spell of choice was Firaga. Later on, it became Firaga III which was obviously a great deal worse.

We fought him twice; the first time we didn't really know what we were getting into and we only survived due to the use of a crapton of two-hours. The second time the fight went much more smoothly (he decided to cast Flare II a lot; which is a total joke for a PLD/NIN).

Both times he blew himself up for massive damage at low HP and claimed victims. I survived both; once because I happened to be out of range, and the second time the explosion took me from 100% health and Stoneskin on RDM/WHM down to 26HP; leaving me only standing because I happened to be wearing that silly +30 HP, +30 MP cape. Seriously, don't even bother with this guy.

Edit: In response to the above post: I completely forgot one thing. Our first fight we thought we'd be cool and stun his TP moves and -ga spells so we held our TP for Stun WS. They didn't work. And what ended up screwing us was that he advanced in size without us having damaged him enough; so we got wrecked having to deal with him in his "Big Badass Mode" for such a long time. Round two we used damaging WS and the fight ended faster. I honestly think his "growth" is either on a timer or simply occurs randomly. Because we certainly didn't spike damage it in round one but he didn't care. Even if, for some reason, spike damage -does- cause him to inflate, this is one of those fights that you simply need to end as quickly as possible. I say go ahead and unload on him; prolonging it is suicidal.

[Petitssk]

That is true, almost forgot that he either resists Stun a lot or is just immune.
Can't say much about what triggers his growth, didn't really notice any spells/WS when he grew, but I wasn't really paying attention anyway, so you'd better take that with a grain of salt.

[Myrrial]

I'd wager Immune. If I remember correctly we tried Shield Bash, Stun (BLM), Tachi: Hobaku, and Shoulder Tackle. I wouldn't really get my hopes up on Head Butt or Temporal Shift going any better.

[Nalyr]

Fought Iriri Samariri the other day and just want to add that it can do Frog Chorus, the group charm move. If you attempt to fight it at it's ??? area, there is a normal poroggo on that bridge and occasionally a wind elemental pops up there too.

[rath]

Once again, Groundburst spam is highly exaggerated. If you cared to at least read what I posted thoroughly or had chosen not to ignore it, you could have taken in to account that in two of our three fights, Groundburst was only used once. None of its other TP moves are very dangerous, especially with a good Paladin tanking. It didn't require anywhere close to an alliance of mages to keep our limited melee alive. I'm sorry you had the experience of having to kite it around the tower and take for fucking ever, but it's not remotely necessary and it's not going to obliterate you if you don't as long as you play intelligently. It does have a fair amount of HP but it doesn't have super high defense. It really won't take that long with a few well geared melee and a Bard.
.

Would still like to know your setup for a 5min fight. I also didn't think groundburst was that bad, but I do not understand how you killed him in 5 minutes. I have killed him with kiting and without, and even without took a good 10-15 minutes.

[benny]

Thought I'd add a little of my experience on Verdelet. We were able to kill him with 3 BST using the T-VT flies around where he spawns. We actually had 3 other non-BST in PT as well who provided some support (or got a lot of aggro, or both, I don't remember exactly). It was a difficult fight but we won without anyone dying. It helps if you watch when your pet is having ga3 cast on him (ga2 will land too fast) and release/re-charm to kill the spell. If there's no PT around killing imps this plan will probably be impossible though.

[VZX]

Dea
...
- If you straigth tank it, you will want a 2 blm stun order for crippling slam. The random one can be hard to anticipate, but the one following another tp move are easy to predict)

The inital TP move is only Boiling Blood as far as I know.

Are you certain? I thought it was Boiling Blood and Demoralizing Roar.

Tried 3 Dea again last night... no, I don't see back to back Demoralizing Roar -> Crippling Slam.
But again, kited fight. We may just ran out of range so it didn't do it back to back

Anyway... we had a BST assisting the popper dragging Dea to the tower. It's good since BST can charm the tigers blocking the way and let it hold Dea for a while. Charm also works fine for very quick period bind.

[Zilong]

Our RDM managed to land Paralyze on a Darkness MB on Reacton.

Also, none of the BLM reported much of resistance on nuking during MB, even our 73 BLM got ~1k+ MB, so I'm guessing it might have past KA's type of super low MB defense.

Reacton actually become a lot easier on bigger form, as he'd cease to do his fast attack round in favor of random single target tier 1 to AM with occassional ga that can be interrupted with melee attacks, and WS that either doesn't touch shadow, or only take out 1, maybe we were lucky but the 3 time we did reacton, the melee never get ga'd, and his WS usage consist mostly just heat wave and hellstorm with occassional sling bombs.

Our experience with it isn't too bad, in fact of all the 3 tier 2 of cerb path, I think Reacton's difficulty level is equivalent to Dextrose if not just a wee bit harder, it's just that his spawn is a little bitch to get to.

Also, I'm 99% sure that wulgaru's dire straight is physical damage, because I've pulled my -23% damage setup on my SAM and took a lot less than without.

I'm pretty sure given a decent damage red set and earth staff, a PLD could straight tank it, the only problem being that with earth staff and the DD actually destroying wulgaru from an angle...he's not gonna be able to keep up with hate.

Our DDs when we do it were SAM, and it's just a matter of kite the first 25%, and just destroy him afterward since its 75% > 0 move is absorbed by TE, we'd just have whoever had hate kite when TE go down.

Did 3 Lividroot Amooshah yesterday. It basically start off with just Vampiric Root/Impale, his second form adds Sweet Breath, 3rd add Bad Breath, and 4th add Extremely Bad Breath. Fortunately, EBB is fairly stunnable, but Bad Breath can really ruin your day if you're the solo tank, thought the Para from BB seem pretty weak, since I've used ~4 echo drops without getting paralyzed out of it. Also, don't know if it's something weird on our SMN, but Spring Water seem to not take out the bulk of the BB status effect, so might wanna take that into consideration. But beyond that, it takes slow II and elegy fairly easily, along with paralyze, so solo tanking wouldn't be too bad, though I had to resort to double march on the last form since it does occassionally resist elegy, and get a decent amount of double attack.

[Sagacious Sundi]

To correct the OP, it's 2 Troll Artillerymen (RNG) and 2 Troll Hammersmiths (WAR/destroyers).

[ronin sparthos]

Anyone have a solid strategy on Iriri Samariri?

Kite Wartkins, but should a group fight him on the bridge he spawns on?

[Drunkenmonk]

Dea's crippling slam takes 2-3 shadows, i would suggest everyone /nin to make things that much easier.

[Judai]

We had quite a few people during our first encounter, although most of the people weren't not fully utilized. Our second fight was 10 people and involved something like PLD DRK NIN(meleeing) WHM BRD RDM + THF, 2 BLM and a SCH. It's more than seven people but to be completely honest you could easily reduce the second party to a single BLM and have nearly identical results.

It can't recall exactly how many TP moves it used throughout the fights, but I can say that during 2/3 of the fights Groundburst was only used once and only after it had changed to WHM mode.

You know, I fought Cerb and Khim and a couple times they never used GoH/Fulm even once. I guess I should toss a bunch of melee at them and not worry about needing Stun. You got lucky, I've seen it Groundburst more in one trip around the tower with a SAM and THF TPing on it while I kited(3 times in one trip, had to stop dmging and recover). There is also no way you killed it in 5m with that group unless you somehow stunned him long enough that he didn't Bene.

Vulpagne: NIN works best as tank, definitely not PLD/NIN

The NM is a joke period if you don't throw melee at it. I barely even get hit on PLD/NIN other then TP moves. No reason to say "definately no PLD/NIN". PLD probably has a better chance of surviving his TP moves at low health as well.

[Redness]

I've done Vulpangue enough times to know that I don't like him. I'd rather have a PLD/NIN for safety. PLD/NIN BRD RDM/WHM should have no problem with it. The chance that a nin will get one-shotted is very high, and I've seen it use multiple TP attacks in a row (ala Despot) which literally floors a nin.

Things like 6 SMN burning it works well. Me and a friend trio it RDM/NINx2 and BRD as well. Not so difficult.

[Xajii]

Just posting to say you definitely didn't kill Redolent in five minutes, if nothing else because he uses fucking Benediction. I can see it being straight tanked, but five minutes is just plain wrong

[solsovly]

Just posting to say you definitely didn't kill Redolent in five minutes, if nothing else because he uses fucking Benediction. I can see it being straight tanked, but five minutes is just plain wrong

Not the same group and I doubt this happened but... we had one fight where he glitched out. We were kiting him around the tower, I threw a nuke and ran around to the other side waiting for him to catch up. He eventually just glitched out stood there letting us all beat on him. It would have been funny if it was a trap to get us all into groundburst range. No benediction that fight.