Absolute Virtue Information (OP Updated)

[Max™]

Anyone who is fighting this tried seeing if my oft pointed out "deal damage at a rate equal to or less than his regen rate when it is not broken" thing to see if that maybe gives the pre-2hr readies message a better activation rate?

I'm pretty sure that any fight which doesn't fully break his regen will either end up with a super rapemode AV, or not be able to kill fast enough to avoid timing out.

I'm even more sure that any fight involving anything resembling a zerg will trigger super rapedeath.

1. 30~40 minutes breaking JoL regen
2. Transition/kill/AV pop
3. Nuke with the day to break regen fully.
4. Lock 2hrs as you fight.
5. Steadily deal out damage, taking care not to breach the 8k dmg/minute rate given by his unbroken regen.
6. Possibly all 15 locked = no meteor, possibly not rushing the damage = no meteor, either way, must be done.
7. ???
8. Profit!

[Virtuous Saint]

Anyone who is fighting this tried seeing if my oft pointed out "deal damage at a rate equal to or less than his regen rate when it is not broken" thing to see if that maybe gives the pre-2hr readies message a better activation rate?

I'm pretty sure that any fight which doesn't fully break his regen will either end up with a super rapemode AV, or not be able to kill fast enough to avoid timing out.

I'm even more sure that any fight involving anything resembling a zerg will trigger super rapedeath.

1. 30~40 minutes breaking JoL regen
2. Transition/kill/AV pop
3. Nuke with the day to break regen fully.
4. Lock 2hrs as you fight.
5. Steadily deal out damage, taking care not to breach the 8k dmg/minute rate given by his unbroken regen.
6. Possibly all 15 locked = no meteor, possibly not rushing the damage = no meteor, either way, must be done.
7. ???
8. Profit!

You gotta understand there is no variation in its AI based on how you fight it. AV is AV, the only thing you can do is lock different abilities from it. The only possible things are locking regen fully and locking 2hrs, hopefully if you lock 15/15 it stops or weakens meteor.

[Virtuous Saint]

So your experiences show it taking less damage each 1% hp it goes down?
~30% taken at ~79% hp with ~50% taken at ~59% hp means ~90% taken at ~9% hp?

Or do you know if it stops at 50% like your bolded text suggests?

I have no idea if it will continue to take less damage, that is ridiculously hard to know really, but I do know that I have seen more than 3 different damage amounts from a specific person's Shield Bashes on it which means it must progressively take less instead of having set -30% at 79% and -50% at 59%.

[Bishop1]

At the end of the video in bracelets mode it looked like the melee used SATA before WS. Maybe that's the last hint.

[Lovex]

Kaeoko and AV, You guys are awesome.

I have been a frequent reader of BG and I enjoy reading your posts very much
and applaud your efforts and dedication towards AV.

Absolute Virtue has been in ffxi for a long., long time now.

We have finally discovered its secret but with that in mind it still seems so impossible.

So my question is, do you really believe this mob is defeatable?

I have given up on it. I have fought AV many times and after reading dozens and dozens of threads, strats about AV.


Everything there is to know about AV right down to this strat by Kaeoko
is now here for the public to consume and study.


It is my sincere opinion that Absolute Virtue was created to be indestructible.


I don't mean that lightly either. I believe Square Enix intended this mob to be undefeatable and then some and then some and then some.


I think they wanted to make a mob that would be absolutely indestructible
in every instance and no strategy would ever really change
the end outcome.

This mob has been out for.. 4-5 years? First it was regen, we figured out how to
deal with that.

Then its HP, pets were too strong, so they nerfed it BUT gave a
2 hour time limit. (Go fuck yourself SE..Let's see you kill it in 2hrs..)


Now its been confirmed shells have gotten it down as far as 39%(or lower? can someone fill me in if so plz). So We can damage it now.

Then comes to the 2 hours. It has been stated it is NOT HUMANLY possible
to react to AVs 2hr.

Now that sends alot of red flags(and pisses me off TBH..). However, we know we can lock it. Progress made again.


Yet even after all these years, all these fixes and nerfes, there is still more
and more mountains to be climbed in this fight. It seems to have no end tbh.
It seems to simply be a never ending chain of extremities.


It's as if this mob is literally designed to find ways to survive
or overcome everything and anything that can possible be thrown at it
in the most extreme, unreasonable, and random ways possible..


We make progress and there is just some other mechanic in AVs behaviour that
ultimately prevents us from overcoming him.


I sincerely think Apathy and Kaekos shells are amazing for getting it this far.
Any shell that can kill PW and get this far with AV is truly a great shell
and a strong group of skilled players.


Yet again, I really believe this mob is designed to just simply not die.
However we may try, whatever we may do, it was made to not
be overwhelmed.


SE either intend this mob to be much more than really strong challenge,
maybe represent something or draw attention to their company, idk.
Maybe they didn't intend on anything.

It's also very possible that this mob is a complete joke to them.
It wouldn't be hard for them to just make a mob that can simply
do anything and everything to survive and kill w/o any thought at all
to how it would compare to anything we as players have access too.


AV has been defeated many times over the course of ffxi, yes.
It has always been through tricks, hacks and zergs.


AV was zergable for 24-48hrs and then an emergency maintenance
just for the purpose of making it so you couldn't anymore.


They really don't want us to kill it.

As for that video, It was a slap in the face. It was a shady piece of shit...


SE is shady company and this mob has drawn more attention to this game
through widespread speculations than any other topic in FFXI.


It would be really nice if we could finally give this mob a swift kick
in the ass through skill and determination but I've given up on wishful thinkin'.


BTW, no seriously, can we get a vid of SE killing it in 2hrs w/o shady blackouts
and shit?


I hope someone kills it though. Square Enix needs to get over AV.

Its reasonable to want a mob to withstand some sort of resistance
to be being defeated to represent something for players as well
as the company itself.


This mob is long overdue, its totally unreasonable
we still cant kill it with all the new content added to the game since.


Sorry for wall-O-Text. Just my 2 cents ON av as a whole.


I really admire shells that an push themselves as far as some of them have
for this Mob.

[Seraphus]

Then comes to the 2 hours. It has been stated it is NOT HUMANLY possible
to react to AVs 2hr.

No, it's not humanly possible to react in a timely manner to AV's 2hrs.

Go re-watch the SE AV Vid with the volume on, you can hear that they were running third party programs to kill it as well >_> (the ding when AV uses 2hrs)

Not just that its been stated as impossible, it's an inevitable fact

[Lovex]

No, it's not humanly possible to react in a timely manner to AV's 2hrs.

Yes, that is what I meant. In regards to the time frame to which you can
match the 2hr with AV's its not humanly possible to react to your chat log.

Sorry for not making it clearer.

As for SE using third party tools in their own video demonstrations... As
I said before, Square Enix is very shady in regards to how they did
the video.

No real way to tell what they really did or didn't do or how long it took.

It's my understanding the players fighting in the video are the staff themselves correct?

Who actually believes they were even going by the same game mechanics the rest of us have too?

[Kaeko]

I still believe it can be killed. This is different from believing it was intended to be killed though.

The real difficulty is the 2HR limit. With this, you are limited to needing a very good accuracy rate on your 2 hr matches. I suspect SE didn't fully consider this when they made the time limit. There are some 2hrs which you can match basically 100% of the time - basically any 2hr which you aren't relying on the log to tell you what it is.

DRG - look for the appearance of wynavs
WHM - look for the sudden increase to 100% HP on HPbar (assuming HP is <98%)
RNG - look for the unique motion of an aern ranged attack by AV

Other than this, all 2hrs look the same except for the small differences in the color of the dust cloud.

Sometimes AV will "ready" the 2hr instead of straight using it. I believe this was mentioned many times before in other threads. If you do see AV "ready" a 2hr in log, then of course it is quite easy to match it because it gives you a warning. The problem is we either don't know how to force a "readies XXX" or it's random and very low %.

All this talk about 2hrs is somewhat moot right now though - we have a method to lock - it's not "legal" but it does work. The problem is it's still not beatable.

***********

Right now my best bet would be to lock with onevent, move it to the entrance with hopefully ~1HR left, then you get a whole slew of Corsairs of any level. You rotate the Corsairs 1 by 1 to rush in and wildcard the PLD tanks to continually rebuff Fealty and Sentinel. This would essentially make them unkillable. Then you do whatever DD would be best from a range?

It's a pretty ridiculous sounding strategy, but I guess if you had 20 lvl1 CORs that's 21 minutes of non-stop fealty and sentinel? Probably sounds better on paper than in practice.

[Hapernack]

tl;dr(both posts by Lovex) Re-stating everything we already know/knew about AV and its history.

The information comes from JPLSs, the kills come from the same JPLSs. Anything less than trying to figure out how they deal with bracelet-powered Meteor isn't helpful at this point. Not trying to be mean, just saying.

That being said, they don't move away from him in the video. They aren't using the terrain like we think it needs to be (moving to the bridge), granted they could be hacking but more likely there's yet another little "gimmick" needed to weaken/remove the super-meteor. Get around the super-meteor, AV becomes killable.

[Kaeko]

The last ~2 months worth of attempts on most servers I'd say were devoted to 'other gimmicks'. I suppose going down that path would make this thread like every other AV thread in the past though.

Also, I don't know anything about this "it's already been killed by X JP LS" stuff. I know their forms of BBS communication differ from ours, but it would be nice to see some actual hint of proof. Like first of all, what server are we talking about? What supposed LSs?

Also, maybe I was naive, but I was almost positive this was found by an NA.

[Hapernack]

I actually was contacted with this information some time ago. I'm thinking of making a mule there or attempting to get in contact with the two linkshells. If anyone is on Midgardsormr and can stalk the JP Linkshells "PhantomBrigade" and "Nirvana", you should definately do so. They may be the first legitimate mass-AV killers. They're doing something during bracelet mode that is yielding a high rate of success.

tl;dr disregard this until we can get some answers from them.

The message I received detailing me in that people were killing AV was sent almost a month ago. No disrespect or discredit to anyone who has put in their time (myself included) for AV, but we've been given plausible reason to think someone else already figured out the whole puzzle. Also from someone on Midgard:

We got some info out of them, 1 of their members is quite friendly w/ NAs. The majority are of the JP onry mindset. The guy who told us what they did apparently got in hot water w/ their leader about it. They've def been trying to keep it secret.

Its just a matter of us catching them doing it. I'd say 30-50 people showing up with brand new "Virtuous Saint" titles is a cause for interest though.

[Kaeko]

This may be a tough question to answer, but when you kill AV, does it "depop" or actually "die". I ask this because you may be able to distinguish with APRADAR "show all" mode if AV actually appears as dead instead of depopped.

Basically when it dies, does it appear as a red dot or a purple dot? I know JoL appears red (depop) when you kill it.

[Cairthenn]

This may be a tough question to answer, but when you kill AV, does it "depop" or actually "die". I ask this because you may be able to distinguish with APRADAR "show all" mode if AV actually appears as dead instead of depopped.

Basically when it dies, does it appear as a red dot or a purple dot? I know JoL appears red (depop) when you kill it.

It depops, and it appears red. I'm not sure why it'd make a difference though, am I missing something?

[Kaeko]

It depops, and it appears red. I'm not sure why it'd make a difference though, am I missing something?

If it had died "purple", you could just camp it out. If someone actually did kill it, you would know this by seeing a purple AV on radar. You'd just have to check before someone else popped.

Moot point though since it dies red.

[Cairthenn]

If it had died "purple", you could just camp it out. If someone actually did kill it, you would know this by seeing a purple AV on radar. You'd just have to check before someone else popped.

Moot point though since it dies red.

Well if it depops it remains at 100% (or whatever % it was at, I'd assume) and red. If someone were to kill it would appear purple and 0% so it would in fact work.

[Virtuous Saint]

The only thing I see as being a plausible way to lock/weaken bracelets meteor is locking all 15 2hrs, but ya.... What I do know is that there is no way in god damn HELL SE fought and killed an AV if it was casting bracelets meteors on them for full damage. Gear is irrelevant with this btw, it doesn't matter how well equipped you are for this, if you are hit you are almost guaranteed death, and they are 100% random so you can't be out of range and yet in range to cure the tanks unless you are at the ramp, but the devs were not of course. The simple fact is, if they didn't cheat other than no recast on 2hrs, there is no possible way they killed it unless they locked or weakened bracelets meteor.

If anyone intends on attempting AV I suggest trying to lock all 15 to see if it does anything to meteor, and if that doesn't work the only real option is either take it to the ramp or have massive zerg team.

[thetruepandagod]

locking all 15 did absolutely nothing to meteor on our attempt.

[deiopea]

locking all 15 did absolutely nothing to meteor on our attempt.

Same here.

[Tulun]

locking all 15 did absolutely nothing to meteor on our attempt.

Was it locked soley with call wyvern?

[thetruepandagod]

Was it locked soley with call wyvern?

no. it was locked in the way that we have been talking about

edit: also i don't know why people are saying its impossible to lock without onevent it really isnt its actually pretty doable as long as the person doesnt have to focus on other stuff