Strats for the 3 TAU Kings

[Ruin]

From what ive seen and read, looks like best setup would be: 8 people for the adds just to hold not kill, 4 PLD/NINorWAR/NIN and 4 RDM/WHMorWHM, then 2 tanks for NM and 2 WHMs for them. That puts it @12, leaving 6 spots for melee DD to dmg the boss itself. Seems useless to me to bring any BLM at all, as there dmg not good on these, and you cant bind/grav adds anyway, dont see their use on these fights.

Can anyone point out somewhere to get or from experience, good strats for killing Gulool Ja Ja, Gurfurlur the Menacing and Medusa?

Also if there is an order of easiest > hardest, what would it be? Want to try and start with easiest first of course.

[Jkun]

Medusa > Gulool > GurrFurrHurrDurr

In terms of easiest to hardest.

[Flarega]

Depending on the types of adds, a nin can also hold them.

Edit: Rdm too, but it is more flexible.

[Ayn]

From easiest to hardest, I'd have to say:

Medusa -> Gurfurlur -> Gulool Ja Ja.

Some general tips

-Anything /NIN that has support or self-sustainability can tank the adds. A well-geared PLD can take on two adds if necessary. NIN/DNC is also pretty good for this, from what I've been told. Plenty of ways to do it, and what I'm saying here is by no means the end-all.

-Rangers tend to be really good for these fights. Gulool has a shitty TP attack that he spams below 25% (Dessucate, I think) which pretty much massacres anything without shadows. Outside of that, SAM/THF works pretty well, if you want to keep hate on your tanks. Again, not the end-all, just saying what's been most efficient for us.

-Even though Gulool counters any magic (that actually sticks) with Vorpal Wheel, it still might be a good idea to have an ES Troub/Elegy and ES slow rotation. He attacks extremely fast, and our tanks trying to fight him without slow/elegy was a painful process, though we did win.

-BLMs are pretty awful against all of these except for Medusa, where stone works pretty well.

I kind of posted in a hurry. If you really want help and the info doesn't come out on this thread, shoot me a PM. I've organized or help organize most of the successful ToAU king fights in my LS, so I at least have a bit of credibility.

[stinkypoo]

8 people for the adds just to hold not kill, 4 PLD/NINorWAR/NIN and 4 RDM/WHMorWHM

Oh god no. We used RDM/NIN x4, 1 add each, and no one really had any problems. I was one of them and I remember holding BLM adds on Medusa, THF adds on Jarjar and RNG adds on Gurfurlur.

The BLM adds' -ga spells would break Stoneskin but weren't really scary; Sleepga however was really annoying (lose shadows + have to click SS off if you have poison). They ran out of MP pretty quick and from there it was ok.

I was a bit worried about THF adds because of triple attack, but they don't hit very hard...with Phalanx + a DMG down set, was maybe 45-70 dmg per swing. I just had to go through a lot of shihei and recasting Stoneskin and enfeebles.

At one point we used a NIN to hold a RNG add on Gurfurlur and he was kinda getting owned, reason being that Troll ranged attack goes through shadows. RDM on the other hand makes holding the RNGs a complete joke; you don't even need /NIN. Just stay far and let them shoot you with Stoneskin and Phalanx up; half the time Stoneskin would wear from *time* (5 minutes) rather than from damage. If you have a NIN you can always put them on a PLD add though.

[Neosutra]

Super tank the adds and you can cut it down to 1 pld and a couple healers for support.

The 3 kings are a joke. Pld/ninX2 or so and relax. I actually thought medusa was the hardest of the 3 (gurfurlur was pathetic, gulool died in 15 minutes). Medusa however we didnt bring ES elegy and after 50% she decided not to be content just RAing from a distance and with dagger attacks+RAs she was a pain in the ass to tank. Just super tank the adds and take the bosses like you would tank anything else, they are suprisingly easy as hell.

[Rocl]

Having only fought two, I found Gulool Ja Ja much easier than Medusa, however my role in the fights doesn't give me an accurate gauge.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Yea I actually found Medusa to be the hardest also. The adds are particularly annoying as COR (Ranged attacker) and BLM (-ga crap). The mob themselves aren't that hard overall, but Medusa shoots fast and can hit for a crapton of damage with her weapon skills. The saving grace is she shoots for the first 30% of her HP or so before trying to stab your eyes out, making it a bit easier to handle tank-wise early on (just stand at a distance like JoL).

Gulool Ja Ja can be solo-tanked by a PLD/NIN and good support. I wouldn't recommend that same with Gurfurlur. As I posted in another thread recently, you can off-tank Gurfurlur with PLD/NIN+PLD/RDM also. Gurfurlur can be TP burned, but you need to be prepared with Remedies since Ray can really suck hard. For Ja Ja, you can solve the Vorpal Wheel problem by having the tank PT red mage stand in DR gear with Stoneskin and cast Dia periodically, drawing the Vorpal Wheel out so it doesn't hit the tanks as often. For none of these fights should you bring a BLM unless you want some quick warps at the end!

My linkshell generally uses SMN and SAM (meditate, SA+Gekko) damage for all of them. Ramuh's Chaotic Strike seems to do the best damage on all of them. The more SMNs the better really, and it controls the TP nicely, but the Blood Pact damage will taper off slightly as the mob gets lower in HP. Feel free to move a little quicker though, just don't be really melee heavy on them, especially Ja Ja... Dessucate will slay your Bards and shit really fast if he spams it.

[Silka]

I really thought out of the actual bosses themselves, the troll was the easiest. We figured he would be hardest, but his ray move really was not near as bad as we had thought it would be, especially since we had our tanks/melee bring remedies. His only worrisome move after that would be his dumb headwhatever move that drops the tanks hp pretty low, but it wasn't too much of a concern and when it did take out one of our tanks the other had no problem tanking solo for a bit.

Now, adds wise, he was a bit harder due to his placement and surroundings. You don't have near as much room as the other two to hold the adds, plus he has several mobs in his room that can aggro. We didn't have too many people to hold when we went so adds were a bit messy, but it wasn't too bad. We use rdm/nins, nins, blus, and if we have to war/nins to hold adds and it works just fine. If things get messy with adds hate wise or whatever we just have them kill their add and let him summon a new one to grab.

It's been a long time since I've fought Medusa- I don't really remember her fight very well, but for sure I'd say troll was easier than Gulool- atleast for us.

Damage wise, we use sam/thfs like Merona was saying and then whatever else we have we work in somehow. I'd like to try smns next time- unfortunately I believe most of our smns have other jobs we'll probably need them on.

[Tomiko]

Yea I actually found Medusa to be the hardest also. The adds are particularly annoying as COR (Ranged attacker) and BLM (-ga crap). The mob themselves aren't that hard overall, but Medusa shoots fast and can hit for a crapton of damage with her weapon skills. The saving grace is she shoots for the first 30% of her HP or so before trying to stab your eyes out, making it a bit easier to handle tank-wise early on (just stand at a distance like JoL).

The adds didn't seem that hard to handle when we did it. Myself and another Pld/Nin held the Cors and a Nin & Drk/Nin (I think) held the Blms on the other side of the room from us.

I didn't pay much attention to the actual Medusa fight, but she went down pretty fast from what I remember. (Ayn organized the run as he mentioned.)

From my experiense I'd say Medusa > Gurfurlur > Gulool.

[Lordwafik]

I found taking a PLD/WAR much better for the adds than taking PLD/NIN and fighting the adds for your shadows. They don't hit particularly hard to a defense setup PLD, just pretend they're dynamis mobs. You can do either 1 PLD tanks them all if you have a lot of support, but the less support you have the more you have to split them up amongst people.

[mactabilis]

Having faught all 3 kinda recently...the adds are a total joke. As others have said, just use any /nin that can keep itself alive. If you are low on ppl as we were, a rdm/nin can tank 2 adds without much difficulty. For troll, i tanked the 2 rng adds as rdm/blu, hardest part is staying awake tbh. Or you can opt for the pld + 2 healers for adds, but you hardly need 8 ppl.

Just bring es elegy and slow and tanks can sub w/e they want, although ours preferred /rdm for troll. Sams and smn are good damage but again if you lack those (which we did for gulool), just hold 1 add for tp.

[6souls]

rdm/nin w/ dmg reduction gear works wonders for holding adds on Medusa. when we fought Gurfurlur, we had melee pull off adds and keep them in the lower part under the platform. Gulool is pretty easy with all the open space that is given to you. have a tank and a couple melee hold him and the rest of the melee pull the adds into the separate rooms. Only negative is the wide range of mijin, but at that point you could just have the melee come back and tear him apart for those last few hit points.

[Shinsei]

From my knowledge, Gulool Ja was a joke really, Gurfurlurdur w/e wasn't too bad, wasn't there when my prev. LS did Medusa, but they said it was a real pain in the ass

I'd have to say Gulool > Gurfurlur > Medusa

Gulool was very easy to tank, and the adds are so easy to hold. The only thing I remember ppl dying to was the NM's ws vorpal something or w/e, to some dd that was on it, got 1shotted lol.

[tyraravenlocke]

We found Gulol Ja Ja to be the hardest of ours to kill.

For some reason when we did it he crushed the crap outta us a couple times before we killed him.

Medusa we killed in our first try, and Gurfy took a couple times just to get our strategy down.

As someone mentioned supertanking is seriously the way to go for the adds, we used a pld/blu with a single rdm for support (With a bard rotating in to give songs) and we never ever had to help him out past that.

Worked pretty well.

[Thana]

For all of them we used 4 tanks and RDM to deal with the adds for the entire fight no problem. The only one that was difficult at first was that mamool. Here is how you beat him easily. have your DD 2-3 TP off of the adds and skillchain > magic burst. BLM might die here and there but makes the fight fast and easy. It's also nice to have a BRD or two sub BLM for ES elegy.

[Shinsei]

I never got why people struggled with mamool, all we had was DD/nin (think mostly just sam/nins), skillchaining MB with blms, think our two tanks on Gulool was a NIN/DRK and a PLD/NIN, and some extra plds for the adds. My current LS also did it, and I heard it went very smoothly too. for them

[Ayn]

I found taking a PLD/WAR much better for the adds than taking PLD/NIN and fighting the adds for your shadows. They don't hit particularly hard to a defense setup PLD, just pretend they're dynamis mobs. You can do either 1 PLD tanks them all if you have a lot of support, but the less support you have the more you have to split them up amongst people.

I concur. The only reason to have a PLD/NIN is in case one of your tanks goes down.

I certainly won't invalidate anyone's experiences (nor was I trying to with my statement). As Tomiko said, Medusa went down pretty fast for us, and I think part of the reason the fight seemed easier to me than the others (despite GETTING there being a giant pain in the ass compared to Gulool..) was that once you run her adds out of MP, they're an absolute joke. The Ranger army, combined with BLMs actually being useful, also made taking her down pretty easy.

Medusa however we didnt bring ES elegy and after 50% she decided not to be content just RAing from a distance and with dagger attacks+RAs she was a pain in the ass to tank.

Yeah, I noticed that she kind of did the stupid "I don't want to RA anymore" thing with us, either.

[Lexa]

My ls also had her move in to melee after about 65%. I found that once she stopped with the RA, going into old-school turtle mode helped greatly. I felt really stupid standing there in a HP build/martial body and earth staff, had some pretty harsh flashbacks to SE's AV video, but never had problems with near-death experiences again.

[Indalecia]

We actually smn burned them all down.

1 tank party, 1 add party with 4 pld/nins and a rdm, 1 smn party 5 smn and a cor.

Made gurfurlur take forever, but we never really ran into any problems on any of them.