Absolute Virtue ~ 9/8/08

[Gunitsoldier]

GJ guys, grats on the drops.

Finally the mythical AV is no longer untouchable.

[Whaleporn]

Congratulations! Fantastic job taking the bastard down guys!

[Starr]

Great, now PW?

[Azalee]

I am really interested to see the strategies of the linkshells who just don't have the numbers/lolkclubs to take down AV. Obviously SE wasn't thinking, "Let's see which linkshell has the most kclub drks"...

This is the sort of shit that wracks your brain for days on end while you try and figure it out. It is probably just one stupid detail...

Until then, zerg away!

[Kang]

Wow awesome job on killing AV. I guess no matter how hard you rack your brain on coming up with strats for killing hnms, sometimes the best strat is the simplest one (Drk zerging).

[Belkin]

My theory still holds strong in the midst of all the zergs. My theory would also explain why it is possible to zerg this, even though it isn't the "right" way to do it. I'll be writing it soon.

[Azalee]

My theory still holds strong in the midst of all the zergs. My theory would also explain why it is possible to zerg this, even though it isn't the "right" way to do it. I'll be writing it soon.

Hurrrrryyyy upppp. =P

[dys0r]

To the people of SA and Apathy: What did you guys sub for DRK? NIN to absorb a few melee hits if necessary or /DRG for maximum Haste? In the Video I saw that Jackyl has Utsusemi up.

Is NIN sub even usefull for such a short fight?

I was part of the DRK zerg alliance for Apathy. Most of us subbed MNK. /NIN does nothing at all. We had one /DRG. On our first attempt at zerging AV, we got it down to 17%. AoE stuns fucked us all up (it used it 3 times). It also had like 6 Wynavs at that point, and also used Astral Flow - though I don't remember if it was 'readies' or 'uses.' On our second attempt, it went much more smoothly. AV couldn't do a thing.

[Starr]

Ex killed it yet?

[Aksannyi]

They haven't attempted since Monday.

[Epical]

My theory still holds strong in the midst of all the zergs. My theory would also explain why it is possible to zerg this, even though it isn't the "right" way to do it. I'll be writing it soon.

But does it explain 3 minute depop tiemrs?! <3

[richardd]

I was part of the DRK zerg alliance for Apathy. Most of us subbed MNK. /NIN does nothing at all. We had one /DRG. On our first attempt at zerging AV, we got it down to 17%. AoE stuns fucked us all up (it used it 3 times). It also had like 6 Wynavs at that point, and also used Astral Flow - though I don't remember if it was 'readies' or 'uses.' On our second attempt, it went much more smoothly. AV couldn't do a thing.

its all on preference. I asked to go /drg at 1st, but im glad i went /nin instead. It's really all about your luck on the TP moves, but having hate on AV and him casting areo V can be a bitch sometimes in the middle of a zerg. Especially if you're one of the drks with a KC and you NEED to put up a minimum amount of dmg. Sometimes he still gets away with those spells tho (like the end of jack's video where that sexy elf died, i was having my shadows stripped from the pets ;; )

and orz, work sucks. i wanna kill moar AV'z.

[Starr]

Um what about NiN? Didn't they save 30+ JoL til AV was killable? Or do they not have the DRK power?

[Epical]

Um what about NiN? Didn't they save 30+ JoL til AV was killable? Or do they not have the DRK power?

They have like 9 people in their entire LS. I think they pride themselves on lowman stuff, which AV is not. D:

[Suiram]

I was part of the DRK zerg alliance for Apathy. Most of us subbed MNK. /NIN does nothing at all. We had one /DRG. On our first attempt at zerging AV, we got it down to 17%. AoE stuns fucked us all up (it used it 3 times). It also had like 6 Wynavs at that point, and also used Astral Flow - though I don't remember if it was 'readies' or 'uses.' On our second attempt, it went much more smoothly. AV couldn't do a thing.

Explosive Impulse can be absorbed by shadows (2-4?). If everyone subbing NIN doesn't slow down the kill so much as to allow him time to use one more 2H than he otherwise would have, then it seems better just because that's one less 2H he could use (Meikyo Suishi) to ruin the attempt.

[Doombard]

Made me wonder with the benediction thing and all.... If you have 2 hours or so to kill before AV poofs then there has to be a way to stop bene... unless SE is just saying FU.

[Kaeko]

Um what about NiN? Didn't they save 30+ JoL til AV was killable? Or do they not have the DRK power?

Such an awesome phrase. 100% not being sarcastic.

The triple 'stun' or i'm guessing it's impact stream seems to be it's reaction after using the SAM 2hr? So which 2hrs are the 'show stoppers' that end the gank?

Invincible
Perfect Dodge
Manafont
Meikyo Shisui
Benediction

?

[Demonic]

I missed all the F5'ing fun last night ; ;

GRATS SA!!!

Who got what?

[Ophannus]

Prepatch was AV suceptible to Souleater damage? I recall watching a shell try to KCDRK zerg him but they were doing like 30-40 damage, so I assumed he was immune. Besides the HP what did they alter about AV to make DRK zerging him possible now that wasn't possible before, out of curiousity.

[Belkin]

Well, my strategy involves a simple tidbit of information that was released by Square Enix but often discarded as somewhat of a translation error.

"Your kill speed is all wrong" or something of the sort (Too lazy to find exact quote)

Now most nearly everybody has blown this off as "lol these japs dont know english" but I think the statement is the key we've missed the whole time.

We can note that Dendainesonne (The Behemoth in Einherjar) has a system where if you do too much damage in a certain time frame, he gets harder. Do it about 5 times and you are basically killing yourself. I believe Absolute Virtue shares this same trait, but on a bigger scale.

Many times you either have people trying to go EXTREME DAMAGE or just holding it and trying to survive. I believe that you have to hit a certain range of damage for it to stay tame. You can observe on the attempts that have been recorded, Absolute Virtue doesn't unleash the big guns until the 4-7th 2HR. Big guns could possibly be Manafont and Benediction and too a lesser extent Chainspell, Soul Voice and Mijin Gakure. These 2HR's basically mean you are doing it wrong and you need to start over.

You have to do a damage inbetween a certain range to keep it tame. Gress (LS member) and myself gave a rough estimate of about 1000-2000 damage a minute judging by his HP and the average amount of time allotted to kill it. Anything less than 1000 damage OR more than 2000 damage and that is strike one.

This would explain why you see various BLM's in the SE video nuking Tier 4 down to Tier 1. They would Tier 4 to hit the range, then stick to tier 1 to keep its regen dead. After it used a 2HR, they would start back at Tier 4.

This would explain why you never see more than 2 melee on it at a time except for the very end when a DRG comes in for a brief moment.

This would also explain why DRK zerg is successful. Like I said, you have around 5 attempts to mess up the damage range before he turns the lights out. Depending on what 2HR's he uses at the time, you will have roughly 130-225 seconds to zerg it before Meteor or Benediction.

There is a lot of rough draft stuff that is impossible to gather until somebody tries it, but we came up with the idea of spamming 2HR's if you mess up the damage range to "redeem yourself" so to speak. This would give you another chance before Manafont or Benediction.

The hierarchy of Absolute Virtue 2HR's is something similar to

Tame
WAR/SAM/DRG/RNG/PLD/THF/MNK/SMN/BST/DRK

Less Tame
RDM/BRD/NIN

PISSED
BLM/WHM

As said before, you can observe these changes in mob behavior due to damage done in a certain amount of time on the Behemoth mob in Einherjar. Although there is no way of knowing (other than you not getting Meteor'd to shit) that this is actually working because he doesn't have emotes like Dendainesonne.

The damage range and the time you have to do it are the big question marks in this situation, but I believe our hypothetical range is somewhat close, given his HP and the hour and a half you have to kill him (It takes close to 30 minutes to get all the adds out of Jailer of Love, which I believe kills 50% of Absolute Virtue's Regen).

This strategy involves massive communication, organization and most of all, skill at the game. You can't go in with some ragtag group of people no matter how smart you are. I think THIS is the way Square intended it to be and I think THIS is one of the only feasible strategies nobody has ever tried.

The in depths of it are very rough but the concept is what I believe to be the key. Not too slow but not too fast.

I mean after all, Patience is a Virtue.