Up In Arms -Job Margination-

[Eltan]

Tsuko have you ever tried chainspell drain on it? I haven't tried it on rdm yet, but there are 2 things I'd like to know:
- is drain effective with rdm's dark skill? It works so well on blm (from my explerience) and on drk (from that video) that I would assume yes, but.. still need to test
- I was thinking CS thunder II like you said, but right after Convert switch to Drain, and use that to both recover hp and keep damaging it in the most efficient way. Think that would work?

[zard1977]

I've soloed this BC a few times and YES chainspell drain works wonders after the first convert.
No dark magic gear, only a pluto's staff. Can usually drain 100+ per cast.

Actually drain should as used as much as possible for this BC since its the most mp cost efficient damage dealing spell that a lv 60 rdm has.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Tsuko have you ever tried chainspell drain on it? I haven't tried it on rdm yet, but there are 2 things I'd like to know:
- is drain effective with rdm's dark skill? It works so well on blm (from my explerience) and on drk (from that video) that I would assume yes, but.. still need to test
- I was thinking CS thunder II like you said, but right after Convert switch to Drain, and use that to both recover hp and keep damaging it in the most efficient way. Think that would work?

Yeah, it works fine, but because of the time-trial nature of the fight, your goal is really to pump out as much damage during Chainspell as possible, rather than being MP-efficient. Or rather, I suppose it'd be more accurate to say that you're trying to dump your initial MP as fast as possible so you can Convert ASAP, and not so much trying to use Chainspell to its full potential. Reason being, every second you waste not using the initial Convert cuts into the very, very small(5-minute) window you have at the end to finish the thing off.

But I mean, yeah, there's nothing wrong with using Drain, I just wouldn't use it during CS.

[Ophannus]

Convert twice in a 15-minute BC.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

Also I think /SCH would be pretty good for RDM soloing since you'll have 2 charges with 2 min recast you can use for Parsimony which should cut your nuke MP cost by 50%, not to mention you'll have conserve mp,drain,Dark Arts too which will speed up casting reduce MP cost and give a large boost to ele skill(so fewer resists)

[Thorny]

I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

Also I think /SCH would be pretty good for RDM soloing since you'll have 2 charges with 2 min recast you can use for Parsimony which should cut your nuke MP cost by 50%, not to mention you'll have conserve mp,drain,Dark Arts too which will speed up casting reduce MP cost and give a large boost to ele skill(so fewer resists)

First convert: anywhere from 0:01 to 4:59 into bc
Second convert: anywhere from 10:01 to 14:59 into bc
What's so hard to understand?

[BaneTheBrawler]

if youre still having problems, get 3 people you trust and let them do the fight on your orb using whatever strategy they want.

[Naver]

I used to solo this BC often when I had seals, and duo when my partner had seals as well. This BC was ninja changed recently or a few months back because I can no longer reproduce the results. Either my debuffs wear quickly (gravity, burn, shock, poison, bind) or my nukes just don't cut it. Either way, it's still duo-able with 2 RDM/xxx. I'm like 1/20 on club though, and it was a YOYD (Your Orb Your Drop) deal.

[altwight]

1/20? meh 0/89

[Tsuko_Asura]

I used to solo this BC often when I had seals, and duo when my partner had seals as well. This BC was ninja changed recently or a few months back because I can no longer reproduce the results. Either my debuffs wear quickly (gravity, burn, shock, poison, bind) or my nukes just don't cut it. Either way, it's still duo-able with 2 RDM/xxx. I'm like 1/20 on club though, and it was a YOYD (Your Orb Your Drop) deal.

I did it a week ago, nothing's changed. Enfeebling spells are always going to be subject to partial resists, in addition to the fact that, being an NM, he's going to build gradual resistances, making things last significantly shorter.

Oh, and /SCH is definitely better than /BLM for soloing this, I just don't have it available.

[tonystigma]

I have a DRK I do this with fairly often. We do the fight in two stages.

Stage 1: RDM keeps Gravity up on Fe'e, focuses on nuking. PLD kites it around with an Earth Staff. DRK trails behind, whacking it when they can. When the DRK has 100% TP, the PLD can stop for a second so they can Guillotine, and resume kiting. Do this until all its tentacles have been destroyed, being sure to save Convert for the second part of the fight.
Interesting note: Fe'e will not cut across the middle of the battlefield, so you can kite around the "inside track" and keep him fairly still for the DRK to gain TP. Obvious risk is the DRK is going to amass hate pretty fast.

Stage 2: PLD changes to sword/shield and fights with the DRK. DRK 2hrs+Souleaters. General strategy is kill it as fast as you can, but the RDM will be spending more time curing (obviously). We've never had to, but you can Chainspell nuke him for an additional burst of damage if you're running low on time.

[Shuemue]

If you're a good DRK who's leveled his enfeebling skill so that he can land Bind and Sleep reliably with some elemental staffs, I don't see why you can't go with a BLM and RDM to do this BC.

This is assuming, of course, you're a good DRK who understands that there is black magic outside of Drain, Stun and Dread Spikes.

This. It's not a terribly hard BCNM, I bet you could even take 3 competent DRKs and sleep/nuke it np

[TheShadyMan]

Player 1: Rdm
Subs: Blm, whm, nin

Player 2: Rng, brd
Subs: Whm, nin

What would be the best job combination to duo this fight and what would the general strategy be?

[Tsuko_Asura]

Player 1: Rdm
Subs: Blm, whm, nin

Player 2: Rng, brd
Subs: Whm, nin

What would be the best job combination to duo this fight and what would the general strategy be?

RDM and RNG/NIN, without a doubt. The Red Mage's subjob honestly wouldn't matter, so I suppose just go with /NIN for for safety. Just keep Gravity on the NM, using Bind for Sidewinder/Barrage(so the Ranger can get appropriate distance). If you need a breather, just Sleep it, and resume.

Should be extremely easy.

[Solomons]

Player 1: Rdm
Subs: Blm, whm, nin

Player 2: Rng, brd
Subs: Whm, nin

What would be the best job combination to duo this fight and what would the general strategy be?

it's terribly easy with rdm/blm + rng/nin duo it that way alot takes around 6~10 mins depending on grav wearing early.

General strategy would be, just have the RDM grav nuke/kite it whilst RNG is shooting it.
we first of all pull it and kite it to the end of the tunnel which gets it to around 60% then bind it at the end, RDM converts then we continue you to lay into it running back up the tunnel.
From then on just kite it around the circle nuking/shooting it if worse comes to the worse just sleep it rest then get back to it and convert again if/when you need too.
No need for any meds or really any healing unless it gets close enough to let off a mealstrom.

[Maaglin]

I have a DRK I do this with fairly often. We do the fight in two stages.

Stage 1: RDM keeps Gravity up on Fe'e, focuses on nuking. PLD kites it around with an Earth Staff. DRK trails behind, whacking it when they can. When the DRK has 100% TP, the PLD can stop for a second so they can Guillotine, and resume kiting. Do this until all its tentacles have been destroyed, being sure to save Convert for the second part of the fight.
Interesting note: Fe'e will not cut across the middle of the battlefield, so you can kite around the "inside track" and keep him fairly still for the DRK to gain TP. Obvious risk is the DRK is going to amass hate pretty fast.

Stage 2: PLD changes to sword/shield and fights with the DRK. DRK 2hrs+Souleaters. General strategy is kill it as fast as you can, but the RDM will be spending more time curing (obviously). We've never had to, but you can Chainspell nuke him for an additional burst of damage if you're running low on time.

I've always done this bc with a blm blm rdm (or brd) setup, but did a little modification of the above strat last night with a PLD/WAR DRK/THF RDM/BLM(me) setup.

First time we tried as above. RDM gravity, nuke, PLD kite, DRK melee/ws. We got it to about 48% before we needed to sleep it to recover. Used convert after arms all knocked off. Then we straight tanked it, but it was becomming overwheleming with the aoe spam, so had to sleep again at 18% to recover, then drk and pld 2hr to finish it off as we we're nearnig time limit and RDM out of mp.

Next round, PLD kite while RDM gravity and dump mp in nukes as fast as possible, convert, then dump mp in nukes again, es sleep and rest mp. This got it to about 25-30% for us. After rest, continue kite strat, RDM nuke and throw a few cures, then around 15% drk SE SAWS, dead mob.

I like this way better since it allows for another convert if you need it towards the end of the fight. We could finish up this way in about 10 mins with convert recast @ 2mins, so we could sleep it and recover and convert for the second time if we needed to. However we were always able to finish it off with only 1 convert. This also doesn't require any 2 hours so you can do multiple runs.

I acutally had more fun doing it this way than the traditional mage onri setup.

[Darkyrm]

1. If you really want to have an easier time getting chances at doing Up in Arms why dont you level one of the usual jobs? Its not really that hard to get a job to 60 these days with emperor band, huge boost on easy and decent chanllenge mobs, pet soloing...

2. Get two friends and work an strat that work for you.

[Mimaru]

I have done this plenty of times on my drk with a few friends. They are usually BLM or RDM. Now I usually go /blm (reason being free lolwarp and you dont want to melee this.) Now DRK is actually really useful, can spam Bind, Stuns, and Drain. Also the use of absorb-INT never hurts. But another thing is you can Sleep the bastard when the blms need to rest at end of tunnel and this helps in restoring there MP faster. Just avoid DoTs and waking it up when slept and your golden. Also, if you bring a weapon along can absorb-TP a few times and at the end when its almost dead finsih it off for the lulz.

[Alistaire]

No need for any meds or really any healing unless it gets close enough to let off a mealstrom.

Om nom nom nom...?

To Mimaru, meleeing this isn't that bad, I used to spam this with PLD+RDM+SAM back when Philomath stole sold for 4m.

Really, just about any setup that has someone with Gravity and the skill to land it works fine. Even without grav sleep/nuke works fine. I've heard of people doing nin+brd+dd as well...the only challenges to this fight are enduring the # of times you'll need to do it to get KC and the challenge of duoing it.

[Byrthnoth]

Well, Kiter + RDM + Ranged DD is obviously a pretty popular formula for this BCNM.

Instead of a regular kiter, use DRK/NIN or DRK/WAR (depending on your confidence in your support) with Earth Staff and Defense food, geared towards Defense/Enmity rather than DDing. Stun -> Last Resort -> Provoke -> Soul Eater is a pretty strong way to start out the BCNM. Then you could do maintenance with Stun and Provoke if you wanted to.

I've done it, it works. Just make sure your DRK doesn't use Sleep so you can still use that if you need it. If you work well together and understand that DRK is fairly fragile, it isn't really an issue. Have the RDM keep Gravity on it and cast Bind between as many nukes as possible. The DRK just spams for hate. If the DRK loses hate or things are going downhill, the RDM can sleep Fe'e and let the DRK spam for hate while you recover.

If people don't believe you, offer to use your orb first. If your RDM sucks, don't offer to use your orb. The RDM makes or breaks this strategy.

[Maaglin]

This thing is so ridicuously easy to grav/bind/sleep any job can kite it really. PLD is nice just because they can cure themselves as well when the aoe fun begins and can hold decent hate. But even if he comes after someone else, grav is so easy to land that it won't be an issue for someone else to kite him for the short amount of time it takes the PLD to regain hate.

Only issue is being able to deal enough dmg in the alloted time. Obviously mages/ranged DD's work best for this as they can stay out of aoe range while dealing great dmg. However, DRK is also a decent choice for this since (as stated above) the mob just runs around the inside of the circle while kited so it's easy to melee him and souleater is an awesome tool to finish him quickly at the end. Stun is also a nice utility spell to have.