Pandemonium Warden LIVE

[_chuchu]

Ya and the final form apparently unlike the others, actually aggros and not only that the pets patrol the area to make sure no one can get up lol

That's just lovely.

[richardd]

Richardd. I miss us. You're still my favorite black person.

you still make me wet nui. dont tell chubbs i said that





and tell josh to post the explanation. i got like 4 POL messages asking me when he's going to do it, orz <_>;

[HadesChubbs]

you still make me wet nui. dont tell chubbs i said that
and tell josh to post the explanation. i got like 4 POL messages asking me when he's going to do it, orz <_>;

Wow cause I don't read BG right? Getting tested and an anal retread on Monday, its over. Though I would like one more skeeter honk on vent plz.

BANGING ON A TRASH CAN.... DRUMMIN ON A STREET LIGHT...
once little voice is BANG. one little voice is calling me calling me. one little voice is calling me calling me

[Aksannyi]

Chubbs write your fucking paper. GAWD. Stop procrastinating.

[HadesChubbs]

Chubbs write your fucking paper. GAWD. Stop procrastinating.

Talking on vent about it! Can hear you giggling when CK talks, shut it.

[Aksannyi]

I know lol I just like to give you shit and you take it so well. ^_^

[Fiye]

Brilliant fight I must say. Though, looking at the video, really, you only had big troubles with the gears during the starting phase and Hydra (And PW to that extent)

What makes me wonder is, why don't people bring their Dynamis shells to the fight? 25% chance of getting the title may be a horrible though, but in all honesty, I think that's what the devs are looking at.

Also, Mojo, are there any plans on telling us how we can live stream our own PW fights?

[Mojo]

Alright then, I'll do the best that I can explaining the strategies we used, what ended up happening, and any suggestions/improvements that can be made. Some of this information may be well known to many of you, but I'm posting it here regardless for the benefit of those who don't know.

General Information

Pandemonium Warden now only has 11 forms separated into 4 different groups. The forms within each group will pop in a random order while the groups themselves always be in the same order.

1.: Chariots (Battleclad Chariot|Long-Bowed Chariot|Armored Chariot|Long-Armed Chariot)
2.: ToAU Beastmen Kings (Medusa|Gurfurlur the Menacing|Gulool Ja Ja)
3.: ToAU HNM (Hydra|Khimaira|Cerberus)
4.: Dvergr (Pandemonium Warden)

The defensive and offensive capabilities of each form seems to either have remained the same or have been increased if compared to their counterparts, although the is HP is much lower. Every form is also accompanied by 8 Pandemonium Lamps. The forms the lamps assume is unique to the form Pandemonium Warden is currently assuming.

Battleclad Chariot	Archaic Gears
Long-Bowed Chariot	Archaic Gears
Armored Chariot		Archaic Gears
Long-Armed Chariot	Archaic Gears
Medusa			Lamia
Gurfurlur the Menacing	Trolls
Gulool Ja Ja		Mamool Ja
Hydra			Dahaks
Khimaira		Puks
Pandemonium Warden	Dvergr

When Pandemonium Warden is popped, it will appear as a dvergr(although not the same one as its final form) accompanied by all 8 Pandemonium Lamps and immediately use Hellsnap. Both Pandemonium Warden and the Pandemonium Lamps then disappear and reappears in their next chosen form. This process occurs every time you defeat a Pandemonium Warden form as well until you reach the final one. Pandemonium Warden will draw in whoever has hate, so you cannot kite it, but you can kite some of the lamps.

Chariots

The chariot forms are very similar to their Salvage counterparts, with a few exceptions. Discoid will now do 10,000 total damage and the hate reset on Homing Missile is single target only. Generic chariot AoEs(Intertia Stream/Discharge) do around twice their normal damage. From what I can tell, they always have access to their special moves, although they are uncommon.

The lamps can use all standard gear TP moves. Their AoEs are actually quite strong. The capacity to execute an 800 damage 20' Rail Cannon makes them some of the most potent lamps.

Beastmen Kings

Each one of these fights, although not immensely challenging, is unique. I recommend that you fight their original counterparts if you plan on attempting this to better prepare yourself. Gulool Ja Ja's Mijin Gakure is said to be weaker from the accounts of others.

Each wave of lamps has four jobs in it, with two lamps occupying one of those jobs. Some of the Mamool Ja lamps have access to Groundburst, although it's uncommon. They're otherwise unremarkable in offensive strength, and should go down easily.

ToAU HNM

They all have access to their special moves from 100% HP, and can be quite obnoxious with them. Cerberus and Khimaira are susceptible to Stun, although they are somewhat resistant. Hydra's heads cannot be removed and Khimaira is always in wings up mode.

The bombs slowly die by themselves, although they grow in strength as their HP decreases. They can explode when death is near, with potentially dire results. The dahaks are annoying but not terribly difficult because everything that's potentially dangerous can be stunned easily. The puks have access to the wing TP moves, which can cause trouble. High movement speed means you can't effectively kite these.

Pandemonium Warden

There is limited information on this form, although it doesn't appear to be as brutal as it was before the patch. At 75% it will use Astral Flow with the power of several avatars.

The lamps access to powerful spells and TP moves. They're definitely the most dangerous lamps to deal with throughout the entire fight. Their their behavior is very bizarre, I can't really explain it. They seem to aggro (while Pandemonium Warden does not), and might run around like crazy if you wipe. This could explain why avatars were hunting people down and and doing Astral Flow in other attempts as they may share the same behavior.

Strategy

We positioned ourselves in the following way in an attempt to minimize the number of people getting hit by AoEs.

The mages in the main alliance were stationed on the uppermost portion of this shelf.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/138/magesvh8.png

Melee and tanks in the main alliance were stationed on the ground, around here.

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/399/tankspn0.png

The black mage alliance, assisted by a paladin, was stationed around here.

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9924/delak5.png

The idea was that the vertical distance between the ledge and the tanks would be great enough so that AoEs like Fulmination wouldn't hit anybody but a few tanks and melee, although it didn't prove to be enough or so close that it was impractical. However, there was no aggro on the ledge and we could still take advantage of a difference in horizontal distance on forms like Cerberus. We resorted to a Stun order on Khimaira, although there was nothing else that merited going through the trouble to switching black mages and melee back and forth. Positioning would be changed for Battleclad Chariot so Discoid wouldn't wipe tanks.

The way we planned on dealing with lamps was by having a PLD/DRK in the Black Mage alliance open with Poisonga II to claim the lamps, then do Sentinel > Souleater > Last Resort while we did a timed ga3. This seemed like the ideal solution so we wouldn't have to waste time dealing with them. We also had a SCH/DRK to Stunga in case they started doing TP moves, which proved to be incredibly useful. The following elements seem to work best for each form's lamps. I'm not entirely sure for the Pandemonium Warden lamps, to be honest.

Armored Chariot - Blizzard
Battleclad Chariot - Blizzard
Long-Armed Chariot - Blizzard
Long-Bowed Chariot - Blizzard
Gulool Ja Ja - Blizzard
Gurfurlur the Menacing - Blizzard
Medusa - Thunder
Cerberus - Thunder
Hydra - Thunder
Khimaira - Thunder
Pandemonium Warden - Blizzard or Thunder

This works out well because the only time you won't be able to predict which element you will need to use is during the ToAU Beastmen Kings, although it's easy enough to watch and call it out.

We didn't have enough black mages to one shot them, so we resorted to doing an initial wave of six black mages doing ga III of another element (not enough to cause them to weaponskill) followed by a timed nuke of all of our black mages doing. This proved to be less effective because of resist rates and added confusion, so we changed to six ga II followed by a timed ga III, which worked well.

Damage to Pandemonium Warden was coming from 1 SAM 1 THF and 4 RNG. We originally planned on having an additional SAM, but he lost his connection in the beginning of the fight and never returned.

Fight Overview

Planning this event was somewhat rushed, mainly on my behalf because I planned on quitting and didn't want to leave with the pop set on my character. Overall it could have gone better, but I think we did fairly well considering it was our first encounter. Our set up was something like the following. We had a thief killing the leeches and slimes that were in the general area, although there weren't many that we needed to worry about in the spot we were at.

Chariots

A rough start due to some confusion with the way we were handling Pandemonium Lamps led to a wipe right from the get go. We failed to assume Discoid positioning and our tanks died as a result of this. We continued to struggle on lamps until we got our method down finally on the fourth set, and killed them all flawlessly. When we were going at full steam, the chariot forms were dieing in 5 minutes or less although we ended up taking much more time because of all of the trouble.

ToAU Beastmen Kings

These went fairly smooth with the exception of Gurfurlur. We didn't adequately prepare for Hundred Fists, so both of our tanks got reamed when it went off. Gulool Ja didn't even use Mijin Gakure. We had our rangers use Eagle Eye Shot in tandem with Shield Bash when its HP was at 5% to prevent it. The lamps didn't always group together, but to be honest they're not really enough of a threat to warrant concern as long as we killed most of them quickly.

Khimaira

We got off to a terrible start on this because our PLD/DRK was tanking the form before it. The black mage alliance ended up having claim on Khimaira and more or less went down in flames, although we somehow managed to kill the puks before we all went down. We quickly found out our plan to avoid Fulmination by utilizing vertical distance wasn't going to work, so we put some black mages into the main alliance to stun it. It went down moderately fast, taking around ten minutes or so, but we could have done it better if we didn't have a poor start.

Cerberus

Nothing worth mentioning about this other than it went down at a steady pace without much trouble. We didn't bother trying to stun Gates of Hades, just use good positioning so it doesn't hit anyone but tanks and a few melee. Two lamps blew the fuck up out of the black mage alliance, although honestly having us wipe to that and allowing the main alliance harm free is probably the best we could hope for.

Hydra

The dahaks went down fast and easily, but, due to the critical loss of one of our SAM and piercing resistance, this ended up taking much longer than it could have. We seriously were resorting to Excaliburs for damage at one point because our other SAM pulled too much hate and died. It started getting crazy at lower HP and two of our tanks went down. Again, our PLD/DRK ended up tanking until the end.

Pandemonium Warden

Having our puller tanking when it changed to its final form caused a wipe here. These gears are no joke and definitely not something you should consider half assing. After most of us died, the gears were still running around everywhere readying but not using weaponskills while Pandemonium Warden was unaggroed. I wish I recorded the stream, it was almost somewhat comical in a dark way. Regardless, we were almost out of time at this point due to difficulties before so we ended up calling it here.

Reflection

Once we got going and made a few adaptations, our strategy was working quite well. If we were to try again, I think the ideal set up(given the number of people we have available) would be something like the following.

Pandemonium Warden Alliance

PT 1: PLD PLD WHM WHM RDM BRD
PT 2: SAM SAM THF WHM RDM BRD
PT 3: RNG RNG RNG RNG BRD WHM

Pandemonium Lamp Alliance

PT 1: BLM BLM BLM BLM BLM SCH
PT 2: BLM BLM BLM BLM BLM SCH
PT 3: PLD RDM BLM BLM BLM BLM

Granted, that's ideal, although I think we could pull it off on a good day. I'm sure other linkshells could meet this number if they brought a few friends along or teamed up with someone else.

The mistakes we made were initial mishandling of lamps, which cost us dearly. I suppose if we had even more people we could have the RDM + PLD(Phalanx II + Sentinel) outside of PT to CFH the lamp he claims and just do a simple time ga3, but that's asking for even more people which we probably won't get. I think we had like 14 BLM total in our attempt, which was enough if we did 6xgaII > 14xgaIII. One thing that is key is to nuke these fast and make sure everyone knows what they're doing, or else the lamps can build TP on your puller and weaponskill you. SCH/DRK is fantastic to stun lamp TP moves, and PLD/DRK kept great hate from the black mages. If there's anything I left out, feel free to post it. I might remember something later.

Regardless, I see the event as a great success anyways. Myself and many others felt very privileged to bring some excitement into the lives of nearly 2000 people. Thanks to everyone involved and thanks to everyone watching. I'll make a thread later with instructions on how I streamed this. Right now though my legs hurts so I'm going to talk a walk.

[Aksannyi]

Two lamps blew the fuck up out of the black mage alliance,

Looking back, this was pretty funny. We got fucking owned.

[Elondir]

Serious request for the guide post above to be put somewhere and stickied by a mod, best write-up of a PW/AV attempt i've seen.

[Tomiko]

Serious request for the guide post above to be put somewhere and stickied by a mod, best write-up of a PW/AV attempt i've seen.

I agree. It would be nice to have quick access to the info in this post.

Thank you to Mojo and everyone else who participated in the fight. It was alot of fun to watch. Awesome job on the fight, wish the last form woulda went better for ya though.

I thought the comments were funny as well, especially the "good luck with Kirin" or whatever it was. lol

[donnie]

Thank you Mojo for your input, now looking at the stream yesterday and your findings ,
those are the main obstacles that I find in PW:

1- Seems LSs usually reach final form with 10-15min left.
2- Discoid range always seems to be messed up ( happened to us too but tanks didnt die).
3- Bombs from cerberus do Wipe everyone around with self destruct. ( wiped from them)
4- Khimaira fulmination do alot more damage then the normal khimaira ( we wiped from that too).
5- Astral Flow from PW lamps on 75%.

I might add also those are some facts that I saw:

- Melee dmg if not /thf is pretty weak in many forms. while SMN BP do constant fair enough damage.

- even with perfect plan, one or both main tanks will eventually die, so back up tanks needed.

- the vertical position has 2 layers, the first layer does NOT makes mages away from AoE. Second layer too but there IS a sweet spot 2' away from upper edge that mages dont get AoEs that are 30'+

- using 14 blms on lamps with AoE III spells got lamps to 6-8% , so Maybe having pure 18 blms would be more smooth since it will cut down the time for lamps to be up to half , no second round can make a big difference, and blms do not need brd or rdm refresh in this fight.




now my thoughts on those obstacles:

1-to overcome that , the main alliance should have SMN PT + a COR , and a Soul eater PT with DRKs taking rotation to get that form killed as fast as possible. ( BRD BRD RDM/WHM RNG RNG <SE DRK>) and to accompany that have 4-5 DRks waiting outside , and a full PT of whms or rdms to spam cure on each drk that going souleater KC.

This way it might be possible to get to last form with 40-50min left.

2- make sure on this form for both tanks to be in same exact position so if hate shift between them , the distance of alliance wont get effected.

3-the lamp claiming PT (PLD/BLU , BLU/WAR , SCH/DRK , SCH/DRK , SCH/DRK, RDM/BLM with phalanx II maxed) after they CFH, the SCH/DRKs do stun order with 5sec incrimints in between. and having 18 blms will wipe those bombs in 1 round saving everyone from a wipe.

4-since 1 fulmination can wipe the whole team , it might be better to have blms instead of RNGs in SE PT, with BRD march songs and haste , they can have faster rotation of stun order ( we got fulmination because the first blm was still on timer).

5- no clue here , but if you have 40-50min left , this might be resolved without having to rush it. the only solution that comes to mind is trying to sleepga II the lamps avatars as soon as they spawn? no one knows for sure if they can be slept or not. and then kite the lamps to further spot , then nuke the lamps while not touching the avatars. might need sheep song on avatars to make sure they are slept using both light and dark elements.

I am sure if someone take all this into consideration WILL win the fight, or will get closer to kill.

we are 2/3 again on PW set , we will try what i mentioned above next try but in the mean time good luck to whoever does.

[Stanislav]

Without any disrespect to Mojo, but I planned that event out just taking into consideration each NM and ignoring PW, could have probably beat all the forms in 40min-50min. The forms that we knew how to handle took 5-8min, the ones we didn't took 10-20min because tanks ended up dying and for reasons that could have 100% been avoided. An example, we never fought the troll and had no idea he uses hundred fists so neither PLD saved Sentinel, lost a lot of time there.

[Rocl]

Without any disrepect to Stanislav, but the way you talk its as if you had fought both Medusa and Gulool Ja Ja prior? If so, would it not make sense Gurfurlur would also 2HR as they do?

[Starr]

Nothing is logical to Stanislav

[Kyo]

Richardd is my baby mama.

[Stanislav]

Without any disrepect to Stanislav, but the way you talk its as if you had fought both Medusa and Gulool Ja Ja prior? If so, would it not make sense Gurfurlur would also 2HR as they do?

I knew he had a 2HR, just didn't know what it was and it was my fault personally for not looking it up, but as I stated in a post above I really had no interest in doing PW, which is why planning was left up to Mojo only.

[donnie]

So I found the strategy document and might as well add it here , and then if a mod can compile all above posts along with this together would be great. We want the next LS that will fight him to read the guide here before attempting so we dont get into the same mistakes again. also I dont care who get the first win , the way I see it its a collaperative effort and also I just want him dead.

anyways here you go:


• Between forms he will spawn for a second with a TP move such as hell snap or hell clap and despawning again

• In each form there will be 8 lamps assisting PW , there lamps WILL NOT share hate with PW anymore 100% , and will follow normal battle rules for a while. They also tend to have an AoE move that also will have more added effect or/and dmg. But somehow if you dont kill them quickly they can go back to main tanks.

• All forms including PW himself have no regen , except for hydra.

• The lamps are subjected to enfeebling magic , and can be stunned. PW on the other hand depending on which form there is slight chance to land enfeebling magic. So might need to test a /blm ES slow II or elegy.

• Mainly , we need to kill the lamps first , then PW , for doing that we need the lamp PT to AoE the lamps with PLD/BLU , followed by temperoal shaft from blu , then SCH/DRKx3 do stun order in 5sec incriments so the lamps remain stunned as much as possible.

• The RDM in lamp PT will have to phalanx II the PLD , and the BLU/WARs . the scholar should have stoneskinga up and for blues todo cocoon AOE just before each pull.

• The main objective here is to gather the lamps together , and to freeze them. But while doing that , its very crucial to CFH so the BLM alliance can ga III them.

• The blm alliance should all GA III at once , and afterwards ( if any lamp left), just quickly immediately followed by another GA II or III depending on how much HP left.

• While knowing all this in hand , we have to have mages position , melees position and weakened players position. In some cases the position will have to change as you will notice a bit further into the fight plan.

• AC = armored chariot , he does the same moves as AC in salvage , not much plan needed except to keep in correct positions , he does mortal revolution that can be absorbed by shadows. So the tanks should blink tank him.

• LAC form= Long armed chariot , he will use brainjack which is single target charm. if he change position , there will be a chance that he will use it , so for that we will use Shadowbind where everyone near him run away for 1min or so , then we continue dmging him.

• LBC form = Long bow chariot , he is the same also , but his homming missle does not give u the throat stab kinda dmg , so we should just eat it , might need to try to see if stun works on this form to save MP and time.

• BC= battleclad chariot , this is harder then the normal version , since it will be doing 10k needles instead of 4.4k. so that means we need to have the alliance standing in the EXACT position @ 1 dedicated person, u don’t go a bit further , u don’t go a bit back. Its so that we will be close to get hit by the 10k needle , and also be far from his usual AoEs.


• In general all salvage bosses forms tend to hit harder then the normal versions. And their lamps tend to spam TP moves with more added dmg. So stoneskin is very crucial for everyone.

for Forms:

• Medusa: RNG job , will only perform RNG attacks most of the time until 50-60%. Does eagle eye shot and for TP moves:
• Calcifying deluge : conal frontal AoE attack which is DMG + petrification.
• Gorgon dance: long duration , AoE petrification , normally starts from 25% , but since other forms can start their special moves from 100% lets assume this one does as well. but in any case mages need to be 20' away , since you wont get hit by it this way.
• Pinning shot : AoE range attack + Bind , dmg
• Shadow thrust : single target 1000+ dmg , strips blinks.
• Petrification : Gaze petrification attack , so tanking backward might be a solution.
also she doesnt AoE charm so that makes her way eaiser.

• Gulool Ja Ja : NIN job , will use mijan once at low HP, if that happens , we need to get everyone up and ready before killing him to get ready for next form , not to kill him while people are dead , weakened cause there will be another 8 lamps + PW coming up.

• For his TP moves:
• Vorpal wheel: single target dmg that ignores blinks. But that’s an only counter attack for anyone that uses magic on him.
• Tyrranic blare : AoE damage , wipes shadows.
• Miasma: slow + poison + plaque
• His special move: decussate: heavy AoE dmg , absorbed by shadows
• Basically this fight is a melee fight , no magic dmg should be casted on him ever not even dia or bio. Or not even slow or paralyse.

• And similar to medusa , face him to the side , where tanks closer to mages , mages 20’ range , and similar to Cerberus fight plan.

• Gurfurlur : MNK NM , spawns with trolls x8 with jobs drk , pld , mnk , rng , wars
• Does hundered fists maybe more then once not sure, now for his TP moves:
• Arcane stomb: convert any dmg taken to HP , so no magic dmg , but enfeebling magic are ok.
• Head snatch: similar to throat stab , ignores shadows , set the target HP to 10%.
• Haymaker: cone attack AOE dmg , added effect , amnesia
• Sledgehammber: conr attack also , added effect : petrify
• Incessant fists: sorta like asuran fist but made for him.
• SPECIAL MOVE Pleidaes Ray: AoE with 500-700 dmg , + paralyze+ blind + poison + plague + bind + silence + slow .
• This is by far one of the worst move to get hit by , so having medicine on tanks and melees will greatly help the alliance.
• Same plan as medua and mamool boss, just keep on 20’ range where he is facing sideways. But for hunder fist , use shadowbind and everyone runs away until its off. Tanks shouldn’t run more then 10-15’ range , so he doesn’t draw in.
• Hydra: I don’t want to go much into details here about TP moves but most importantly nerve gas can happen from 100%.
• Keep distance and position in place, and melee /nin DMG , TP burn method. He doesn’t drop his heads it will always remain as 3 and have high regen.
• This is also a melee fight, but also we need to add that he spawn 8x red dragons , so blms AoE III might be able to take them , or might not. So melees might need to kill it 1 by 1 with /assist 1 person , but anyways that’s a part of our back up plan that I will talk about later.
• Khimaira: same as normal khimaira except he have his wings up all the time, blm dmg is better here
• Cerberus: spawns with 8x bombs which decreases in HP 1% while they get bigger , the bigger they get the worse TP moves they do. Barfira is your friend here along with fire carol. they self destruct quit fast so they need to be killed in 1 round or face a wipe.

• all players must have reraise and poision potion , echo drops , food and antidiotes. holy water might help
• last thing to say this seems to me like einherjar but a longer one , 2hrs that you need to kill 80 lamps and 10 megabosses + PW , in which many are risky and can cause wipes.
• 1 blm need to raise at a time if blm alliance all die , so they don’t get other blms double weaked from 1 single nuke afterwards, so if all dead> 1 blm raise up > nuke > die > next blm raise up > nuke die .
• Tanks need to save sentinel so that they use it on next form + lamps.
• Upon he is on transformation, doing /assist on him will show who will be the target from the lamps on next form.
• Fulmination can be stunned and GoH
• Once he spawn between forms on normal form , he will give also defense and magic defense down , erase whomever the hate is on.

[donnie]

oh also I forgot to add PT set ups its slightly different from Mojo's set up:

PW TANK PT : PLD/NIN PLD/NIN BRD/BLM WHM RDM/WHM ( last spot here either brd if your tanks are not stacked enough , or another WHM if your tanks are good enough with 2 songs)

DD PT: (Soul eater DRK KC order) , RNG , RNG , BRD , BRD , RDM/WHM

SMN PT: SMN , SMN , SMN , SMN , SMN , COR

BLM ALLIANCE = 18 blms

Lamps PT : RDM , PLD/BLU or PLD/DRK , BLU/WAR , SCH/DRK x3

WHM PT = 4 WHM 1 COR 1 BRD

standing by: PLD/WAR PLD/NIN , and 3-4 DRKs.

[Ohaigaiz]

Talking on vent about it! Can hear you giggling when CK talks, shut it.

You were the best part of the stream.