Solo/low number Dea

[Sendra]

(This guy)

Is this guy RDM soloable? If so, what's the strategy I should use? I gather that I'm supposed to pull him to the tower at (J-9), as difficult as that seems.

If he can't be reasonably soloed, how could he be beaten with a low number? Five or less is probably a good number for me. I'll also take strategies on how to beat anything in that tier with a low number of people (Armed Gears, Gotoh Zha the Redolent are the other guys).

[AlexRuzhyo]

My group got/is nearing our second Tinnin set a person. Mind you, this is all from a pld/nin's perspective.



Dea:
To answer your first question, I imagine a RDM/NIN can solo it but it might not be possible without crimson pants. He moves considerably fast. Just DoT and Nuke when possible. Expect along fight.

BLM, SCH, PUP. Just nuke and kite. He moves fast, reccomend a PLD/NIN (preferably with Crimson cuisses) to kite. It is possible to kite him without getting hit if you move along the wall close enough and don't get hate when he's too close to you. We usually kill with a PLD, 3-4 BLM and a SCH. Have a RDM, THF, and WHM aswell, but I suppose you can do without them for a longer fight.

Gravity will build a resistance over time,s o use it sparingly. Bind is useful aswell. It's possible to lose hate otw from the pop area, so keep an eye out on the way to tower. Possible to enter tower to rest hate-free.



Gotoh:
Normal movement speed, BLMs CAN kite but again, 1 PLD is nice. He is a long fight. He starts off as BLM, halfway through loses his weapon and goes to WHM. He Bene's to full, so it can take awhile for 3~4 BLMs. It takes awhile but isn't too hard. When he uses Warm-Up, he will instantly follow with Groundburst when whoever has hate is in range.

When you notice Warm-Up, everyone clear away from Gotoh. Person with hate can stop and Gotoh will use GB but miss the person with hate (The range of GB activation > GB's Damage Range).

I do not advise melee on him. GB spam is horrible and he hits me for 200~ a hit from a hand-to-hand combo, so straight tanking is kind of meh.



Armed Gears:
You can kite it around the 4 pillars in the spawn area. Starts off with a straight damage resist that gets lighter as his HP lowers. It will be cured by spells of the same element that it recently casted, and take damage from its weakness. If Armed Gears uses Paralyze, use fire, avoid bliz. If it uses a Light or Dark, use Thunder or Bliz.

I wouldn't do this without a PLD or two. Crimson cuisses makes this dude easy for a solo kite, but is a little more difficult without them. Keep an Erase handy for Artificial Gravity. A PLD, eraser, and any number of mages can kill him. I'd say it can be trio'd, but again, time is a factor.

It will lose a gear around 50% hp and gains the ability to use Restoral to get back a nice chunk of HP. It will randomly lose gears from there on out. Railgun isn't too much of a problem if you don't feed it TP via melee. BLMs should avoid grabbing hate since it attacks fast. Make sure you keep all his buffs dispeled such as shell and pro so that he'll cast those above curing.

[Kimkytaru]

We did Gotoh yesterday wiht LS and honestly he's hard, dont underestimate him, I wouldn't recommend to solo it especially on blm.

Armed Gear : You dont need a pld/nin, a blu/nin can tank it really fine however having w-legs definitely help, heck even if you have rdm/nin you can tank it, will just make a very long fight (iv'e tested all those tank, pld/nin and blu/nin are the one that are working the best from my experience, nin/war isnt bad neither especially at night).
Armed gear is really easy tho, the more blm you have the faster it will go.

the less I did for armed gear was 1 blm 1 blu/nin and 1 rdm/nin, we eventually call some ls reinforcement because fight was taking too much time but we never really had trouble. Blu or war kite it, blm nuke, if blm got hate, you kite it a while waiting for the blu or rdm to get hate back. I would advise blm to come /nin too but not mandatory here. Watch out for rail cannon if you're a taru, can wipe you <.< I had no problem kititng it while the other gain hate back however rail canon kill me once. So yeah try to have RR up. Other than that it's not really hard, it will resist a lot at the beginning then it goes faster.

[Thorny]

RDM with w.legs can solo Dea easily, for a group something like RDM BRD NIN would work if the players are competent. Armed gears is also soloable by RDM with cuisses, but it's extremely lengthy and I would recommend bringing 10-12 people with a good SC + MB. Gotoh is an absolute bitch, while I'm sure given enough time RDM could solo it, it wouldn't be the least bit fun and you'd likely die a few times.

[Vaxx]

Gotoh is an absolute bitch, while I'm sure given enough time RDM could solo it, it wouldn't be the least bit fun and you'd likely die a few times.

This would take forever imo, he casts Curaga IV, Cure V a considerable amount. Not sure how long it would take him to run out of mp though.

[Mojo]

What people have posted in regards to soloing all of these is accurate enough. However, if you end up grouping, I can't stress enough that kiting is possibly the worst strategy you could choose unless you're absolutely forced to because of the jobs you have available.

Dea - This can easily be trio'd with a RDM/DRK, BRD, and a good THF/MNK/NIN in less time than it would take an entire party of Black Mages to pull it down to the tower and nuke it halfway down. The key to this is stunning it's physical AoEs, which always follow Demoralizing Roar or Boiling Blood. It's quite easy to stun when you know it's coming. If you end up with more than three people I'd recommend simply adding more melee, although you will need an additional stunner.

Armed Gears - The more BLM the merrier. It's not particularly hard to tank, so there is no reason you should be kiting this. Its Rail Gun is quite powerful, and when all three gears are up it has a range of 20' from the gear. All of you mages can avoid getting hit by this with good positioning. Once again, not kiting = better hate control, less AoE damage, and a faster kill. Also, if you can manage to Stun Restoral I highly recommend it. It seems to regain its damage resistance if gears are restored sometimes, which can lead to agonizingly long fights when it gets out of hand.

Gotah - Possibly the most overrated ZNM in existence. It doesn't hit harder than a mob of its level should, and Slow/Elegy(as well as any other debuff) proc quite easily. Its Firespits/Rushing Drubs can be quit powerful though, so keep your tank topped off(I'd recommend a PLD) and keep Barfira up.

It begins as a Black Mage. You'll want a stunner to interrupt ga III spells(as well as Sleepga spells if you think it's necessary). It will use Manafont once. When its HP gets below 50%, it will gain an ability called Stave Toss. It uses this once, and then turns into a White Mage mob. It can't cast any Black Mage spells anymore, but gains White Mage spells.

It can also use Groundburst beyond this point, which is quite powerful although it will only and will always follow Warm Up. Kiting will cause Groundburst to be used more frequently because you're forcing it to choose either Firespit or Warm Up(It can use Forceful Blow when at close range, which it does often.)

It's actually very infrequent if you don't kite, I've had several fights where it only used it once the entire time. Groundburst can also easily be stunned, so the person you had stunning ga III can watch for this when it changes into White Mage mode.

Melee do fantastic damage to considering it's just slightly higher than Nyzul Mamool Ja and it's a mage mob. PLD, RDM, BRD + 1x melee is the minimum I'd recommend for straight tanking.

Anyways... all of these NMs can be done with parties of 5-6 quite easily. I don't recommend going with less though, I'd much rather just ask a friend or two to help out so you can turn hours into minutes.

[Kortez]

Dea - can be solo by rdm/nin without CC without much difficulty as thats how I did it. The main issue is getting him to the tower, feel free to use bind/grav as much as you need on the way there as you wont really need it at all once your at the camp. You for sure need to bind him at G-7 and throw up sneak to move past the treant there. Then just use as needed to get past any other mobs that might be in the way, or while waiting on them to move. Make sure not to get too far ahead of him, because he can drop claim and start walking back to spawn (or possibly despawn im not sure). Once your at the tower just kite him around it hugging the walls, he will spend a little extra time turning corners giving you spare time to cast dots. You can also easily keep refresh on by going around 2 or 3 corners ahead of him before you start casting (it will land before he gets in range) so a refresh item isnt essentially needed. Using Bio3/Poison2 with a grav/chainspell nuke and then random bind/nukes toward the end it took about 2 hours solo with 0 problems.

Armed Gears - No experience with it solo, but a Nin/Drk friend and I duo'd it with him kiting around the 3 pillar room @ H9/10-I9/10. Total time using only Bio3/Poison2 about 3 hours and some change. Nin was able to kite with no problems, movement boots at night, using spells for enmity when armed gears would cast on him. After gears ran out of mp he more or less had to stay constantly moving during daytime unless gears was in a perfect distance to cast, or use JA's to gain enmity. A Thf friend did show up later on for TH4 and helped with some dmg on the NM (although he said it was like hitting a fort in campaign, or maybe it was Jailer of Fort i forget which) and accomplice occasionally on me. Used about 3 tp moves total (because of the Thf) bio3 always did 0 dmg on nuke so no tp feed that way. 0 cures 0 restorals so no gears readded.

Gotoh - on to do list =d

also just a fyi if u need a maroon seal to get started on the znm chain for hydra. Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon can be easily killed by rdm/nin w/o CC by kiting around the telepad at F8/9-G8/9. Just pop a Hermes Quencher, trade the pop item and book it for that room. All rat links will depop before they get to you. NM will never lose claim just keep dots on and run around in circles for about a hour or two. From experience solo'ing it he hardly ever runs away dropping bombs, but when duo'd he seems to run away dropping bombs all the time. Dunno why maybe something in his AI or just dumb luck, but he will never lose claim unless someone draws their weapons and resheaths them.

GL