Absolute Virtue Information (OP Updated)

[Ramses]

No, when I say it is random I mean it is random... not so sure how you would take me saying that it is random to mean that I think it is impossible to prevent, hmm. Random as in, Meteor will be casted on you at random times throughout the fight after 79%HP, and there is nothing that doing more or less damage does to this. Surviving Meteor is unthinkable now, even with those tools, you can survive 1 yes, but a barrage of Meteors will kill you and there is nothing that would stop it unless you had a constant stream of CORs wild carding Fealty back non-stop.

In fact there was a statement in an interview saying it couldn't be prevented, but you could avoid it if you were skilled (unknown what they meant by this, but they don't know shit if they think you can avoid Meteor). I personally think there is a way to either weaken it or lock it just due to the fact that it is 100 times harder than anything else in the game. We have fought AV dealing almost no damage and it will Meteor the same amount, there is seemingly no difference between what kind of damage/how much damage is dealt.

SE has never ever said anything about meteor in any interview. The one that said you can avoid it if you are skilled is a fake. That fact coupled with the fact you don't see meteor in the video leads me to believe that you can stop meteor from happening somehow. That is the only thing that makes sense at this point.

SE says everything you need is in the video which would make me think that whatever it is that stops meteor is a normal game mechanic and that is why they wouldn't need to show it in the video. It is the conclusion from the lack of attention to meteor in the video in this particular case. This brings me back to silence. Still nobody has tried to sc mb silence. It should be tried before and after bracelets, with and without es. It may not work, but it is all that is really left to try at this point.

[Hogie]

SE has never ever said anything about meteor in any interview. The one that said you can avoid it if you are skilled is a fake. That fact coupled with the fact you don't see meteor in the video leads me to believe that you can stop meteor from happening somehow. That is the only thing that makes sense at this point.

SE says everything you need is in the video which would make me think that whatever it is that stops meteor is a normal game mechanic and that is why they wouldn't need to show it in the video. It is the conclusion from the lack of attention to meteor in the video in this particular case. This brings me back to silence. Still nobody has tried to sc mb silence. It should be tried before and after bracelets, with and without es. It may not work, but it is all that is really left to try at this point.

Although i highly doubt silence will work, SE did fight it on Thunders day meaning they could of made Frag or Light and been able to MB Thunder spells from BLM and Silence from a RDM.... i dunno i guess its worth giving it a try just to see.

[Kaylia]

No, when I say it is random I mean it is random... not so sure how you would take me saying that it is random to mean that I think it is impossible to prevent, hmm. Random as in, Meteor will be casted on you at random times throughout the fight after 79%HP, and there is nothing that doing more or less damage does to this. Surviving Meteor is unthinkable now, even with those tools, you can survive 1 yes, but a barrage of Meteors will kill you and there is nothing that would stop it unless you had a constant stream of CORs wild carding Fealty back non-stop.

In fact there was a statement in an interview saying it couldn't be prevented, but you could avoid it if you were skilled (unknown what they meant by this, but they don't know shit if they think you can avoid Meteor). I personally think there is a way to either weaken it or lock it just due to the fact that it is 100 times harder than anything else in the game. We have fought AV dealing almost no damage and it will Meteor the same amount, there is seemingly no difference between what kind of damage/how much damage is dealt.

I mentioned "surviving meteor" because it was discussed over the last 3 pages. As interesting as it is, I never thought it was the way they intended us to fight it, because in the best case, it's very unpracticable. Like you said, the strength of the move is just ridiculous, and it has to be avoidable.

In my first post on this page, I simply mentioned "low/high" dot because it was late, and I wanted to know what kind of testing was done, but there is many variants. Also, for all we know, your action in the first part of the fight could have an effect on the spell selection later. I doubt so, but it can't be excluded.

Keep a balance between magic and physical damage (pudding and wamouracampa)
Spike damage (bomb)
Some gimmick involving weapon type (they only had a single drg and sam in the video though)
Particular use of JA (dyna xarc weapon, AV's 2h lock)

[Kaylia]

Worm randomly cast any spell (stone, stonaga, bind, rasp) no matter where you are. It wont try to bind you more when you run away, it's just going to land it more often since the casting is fast, and it's very unlikely you outrange it

Default mage AI position itself at 12'(?) and nuke you. At lower hp, it melee you no matter what, but keep the same timing between nuke.


Is time between cast really different if you're away? It won't be queued after a JA, but I never noticed a difference.

[Virtuous Saint]

I mentioned "surviving meteor" because it was discussed over the last 3 pages. As interesting as it is, I never thought it was the way they intended us to fight it, because in the best case, it's very unpracticable. Like you said, the strength of the move is just ridiculous, and it has to be avoidable.

In my first post on this page, I simply mentioned "low/high" dot because it was late, and I wanted to know what kind of testing was done, but there is many variants. Also, for all we know, your action in the first part of the fight could have an effect on the spell selection later. I doubt so, but it can't be excluded.

Keep a balance between magic and physical damage (pudding and wamouracampa)
Spike damage (bomb)
Some gimmick involving weapon type (they only had a single drg and sam in the video though)
Particular use of JA (dyna xarc weapon, AV's 2h lock)

Ya I understand what you guys are saying with the mobs that gain strength from doing certain things, but that is in the subsequent expansion, imo it is more likely to infer that, that wouldn't be a part of AV's AI when you consider this. Obviously idk, but imo thoughts should revolve around AI and mob behavior of CoP expansion, for example all CoP dynamis' bosses. CoP major battles mainly are about locking/weakening things (also set % AI mode changes) in order to kill them right? So imo AV is just a matter of locking/weakening in order to kill, but wtf do I know lol><.

[Virtuous Saint]

I wasn't the one who stated meteor is position based but every mob in the game that has magic will cast it more often when you try to run away from it. So in that case position does play a role in a sense, but it still doesn't play a role at the same time.

I'm very sure this is not true, AI in this game is not that good, all it does is randomly cast after a set amount of time has passed (unlike players spells which have 1 recast per spell, mobs cast a spell and they can't cast another of any spell until a certain amount of time has passed).

[Kaylia]

Ya I understand what you guys are saying with the mobs that gain strength from doing certain things, but that is in the subsequent expansion, imo it is more likely to infer that, that wouldn't be a part of AV's AI when you consider this. Obviously idk, but imo thoughts should revolve around AI and mob behavior of CoP expansion, for example all CoP dynamis' bosses. CoP major battles mainly are about locking/weakening things (also set % AI mode changes) in order to kill them right? So imo AV is just a matter of locking/weakening in order to kill, but wtf do I know lol><.

Three months ago, I would have agreed with you entirely . However, using a JA on yourself to change the monster behavior is groundbreaking. Aside aggro JA behavior that was added at a later time, I can't think of another monster that react in such a way.

From a programming perspective, I do agree that a specific action to lock AV is more likely than an adapting AI. However, it's likely they they designed ToA and AV around the same time. It's not too much of a stretch to think that AV could be scripted like a wamoura. Of course, I'm not saying it is, but it's one of the many possibilities.


If we look at "specific" action that could lock AV's meteor...I'm out of idea. Well, out of idea that wouldn't get me flammed
-sea weapon (sorry sorry)
-all 8 elements at the same time
-specific JA/action right when it use meteor?
-land every debuff with SC (did people ever figure how enfeebling were landed, I didnt see any clear result in this thread)
-change target aggro like Goldentongue when it cast (invincible+ffxiap?, or is it too fast for that).

They all sound stupid, but if the solution is a lock similar to the 2h one, I'm absolutely certain it's going to be fucking retarded and make us go "whyyyyy?".

I really wish i still had the man power and time to play with AV. Hunting NM in sea when it was unexplored was the most fun I had in this game, and AV being a huge cockblocker offended me. I really hate watching other fight from the backseat.

[Aemora]

AV is just gonna be one of those things people will never figure out.

:\

[HiPotion]

This thread will die before AV does.

[GuntarHolyFlame]

Three months ago, I would have agreed with you entirely . However, using a JA on yourself to change the monster behavior is groundbreaking. Aside aggro JA behavior that was added at a later time, I can't think of another monster that react in such a way.

The ZNM Ob will change behavior entirely based on the use of JAs. I realize Ob was added after AV, but it seems they laid the groundwork for that type of mob behavior with AV, so perhaps we can look to certain ZNM behavior and gimmicks as possible ideas for understanding AV's spellcasting strength and behavior.

[Hogie]

The ZNM Ob will change behavior entirely based on the use of JAs. I realize Ob was added after AV, but it seems they laid the groundwork for that type of mob behavior with AV, so perhaps we can look to certain ZNM behavior and gimmicks as possible ideas for understanding AV's spellcasting strength and behavior.

As i was reading one of the later posts on the other page i actually had though of something that is fairly easy to test (Some problems i can see with it, though they were added after AV i think) Since it takes our 2h to lock his 2h, maybe his Meteor is like a JA? Maybe we could try having all JA's always on timers. Only problem i can see for this obviously would be something like Hasso Seigan or the whm ones.

But what if you take the JA's before these were put in? They are all 5 or 10 min timers but maybe if we have all of them always on cooldown (used) he will not have access to any of his abilities?

[Narse]

SE has never ever said anything about meteor in any interview. The one that said you can avoid it if you are skilled is a fake. That fact coupled with the fact you don't see meteor in the video leads me to believe that you can stop meteor from happening somehow. That is the only thing that makes sense at this point.

I'd like to believe that, but you also said that SE never said anything about fight speed either, and that was said by Sundi to Bercus, so...

[Ramses]

I'd like to believe that, but you also said that SE never said anything about fight speed either, and that was said by Sundi to Bercus, so...

If you read it, Sundi was talking about speed of regen, not fight speed.

[Narse]

If you read it, Sundi was talking about speed of regen, not fight speed.

Bercus: The speed? How you fight it?
Sundi: Right.

[Mojo]

Honestly all of this theory crafting needs to stop. It was amusing to read for a little while but it's getting to the point where it's overcoming the discussion.

The fact is, there is likely another secret to find, and it likely will not be found without express knowledge given to us directly from SE.

This is something VS said earlier in the thread and it's still highly applicable. All of the hints that SE has given have been blatantly obvious in their correlation. I.E., they simply stated that Regen could be decreased by killing pets and nuking with the proper nukes. The videos showed this and also showed that there was some correlation to follow AVs two hour with your own. It's been determined that following AVs two hour with a matching player based two hour within a small unit of time will lock that two hour. Currently, there is no hint for Meteor. If anybody thinks that there is a hint for Meteor, they're looking waaaay too much into minor coincidental details.

All of this equates to what VS said, which is that it's very unlikely the playerbase will ever discover a method to weaken or lock Meteor without a hint or admission directly from Square Enix.

Now, if you want to be helpful, try and get your linkshell to team up with some other linkshell and WAR zerg it or fight it with some sort of Rampart rotation, or really any other sort of strategy that you think may work, but please stop posting random theories about jailer weapons or whatever. That's when people stop reading the thread and stop caring.

[Narse]

Though looking into interviews, the one where it was said that you can maybe 'avoid' it was the same one that stated locking 2hrs was related to aerns, so I guess that is good news after all.

[Narse]

It's been determined that following AVs two hour with a matching player based two hour within a small unit of time will lock that two hour.

I recall there was a post by someone stating that they locked a lot of AV's 2hrs with just Call Wyvern, but never really saw any follow up on that. If that were the case, it would perhaps make sense as to why there is such a short locking window (the attempt should follow AV's animation for a 2hr as opposed to waiting for the 2hr animation, waiting for it to pop in log, hope that the job that is supposed to be locking is not dead/doing another action, fire 2hr for that specific job). Can anyone confirm or deny this claim that was made?

[Mojo]

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that Sundi sometimes says weird stuff. He's not a well versed FFXI player so sometimes he gets confused about what players are asking or how stuff actually works, especially when he's asked haphazardly. Examine his response on AV kill time. I think the 18 hour estimate was probably from how he envisioned the fight being done when in reality, if we knew everything about AV, we could have devised a strategy that took less time. I'm pretty sure that the videos also came out before he made that statement, and it's very obvious that it only took them a few hours there. So yeah, I wouldn't hold him to the teeth on some of the things he said.

[Ramses]

Bercus: The speed? How you fight it?
Sundi: Right.

Read the whole thing. At the time of the two lines you chose to single out, it is obvious they aren't talking about the same thing. Bercus even says so. Then Sundi immediately starts talking about regen again, even specifically using the phrase "speed of regen". In the context of the whole interview, it is obvious that Sundi is talking about regen, not fight speed. How could you possibly dismiss everything else being said for one line that was never followed up or clarified? It's blatantly obvious Sundi didn't understand that Bercus was talking about something else. Sundi never, at any point, wavers from his point, which is regen.

[Narse]

Read the whole thing. At the time of the two lines you chose to single out, it is obvious they aren't talking about the same thing. Bercus even says so. Then Sundi immediately starts talking about regen again, even specifically using the phrase "speed of regen". In the context of the whole interview, it is obvious that Sundi is talking about regen, not fight speed. How could you possibly dismiss everything else being said for one line that was never followed up or clarified? It's blatantly obvious Sundi didn't understand that Bercus was talking about something else. Sundi never, at any point, wavers from his point, which is regen.

SE never said that our fight speed is wrong... ...those things were said by people who don't work for SE

So was it never said, or was it said by someone who didn't work for SE? You yourself seem to be implying it WAS stated, just not by someone that worked for SE. Now you are saying it wasn't stated at all.