Ambuscade Volume 1 - December 2018

So fight seems to be:

100-80% - 1 Qutrub Bigwig (mega boss), nothing special.
80% - 5 adds spawn, 2 BLM, 3 THF?
60% - Bigwig brings out dagger, gains Endeath if adds are still up
50% - Perfect Dodge
30% - New set of adds spawn. Gains access to move Triple Reversal, as well as does an AOE drain spell that cannot kill you. Heals mega for a huge amount.

So far all of my runs fail at 30% as we haven't managed to figure out a way around Triple Reversal.

There are messages when you kill the first set of adds that sounds as though the endeath move won't be active if adds are dead.

My last run I was on RUN, barely touched mega boss (did a Blank Gaze and removed his haste lol) and tanked adds. We killed the adds. I stood around until respawn of adds at 30%, used one for all, then valiance. Ran around the perimeter of the map. Apparently an Astrologer hadn't been pulled by me. I went to go flash the astrologer and before I could the mega boss ran after me and used triple reversal for 8333 damage. I couldn't have had capped enmity, as I had done literally nothing between valiance and running across the map, so this move has to have something to do with the adds and proximity to the boss.

How are people beating VD *this month*? I don't care what you say about this fight over a year ago unless it was some manner of avoiding Triple Reversal for sure.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Ambuscade_Archive

I can't remember how we got them to not do it last time... here's the old thread, it's mis- categorized. https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/51511/ambuscade-volume-1-october-2017

it might have been by ignoring the adds so they couldn't get tp to use it, but that's tough with triple hp

it does/did 8333 on Normal too btw

Nah the adds atleast have high regain, im also curious about reversal as aside from simply never being in range, theres no real counter to it, maybe scherzo can eat it?

They're just going to use Mewing and Kite, just like last time.

Scherzo does not work

OH RIGHT I REMEMBER! If you have hate on more than one mob you get triple reversed! (if the boss is in range of them*)

If each person had a mob (like goblins) you don't get triple reversed, (at least i think that was the condition, its been a year) you have to be the top of the hate list on 2 or more qutrubs. If you never are you won't get bopped.

Is it... 8,333 damage per mob you're the top of the hate list on after the first? 8,333 x4 = 33332 (pretty close to what you got hit for) minus your phalanx (do you have 76 phalanx)

This sounds like a solid theory. My people went AFK so maybe if they pop back on we'll try that. Should have just told them to kill the stray astrologer, seemed me being in range of mega with multiple adds on me is what *** it up.

Then I wonder what to do about strategy. If people want to pull 1-2 adds each (which would be rather difficult healing-wise) they probably won't be on MNK/NIN and such. Kiting seems the safer choice if that is the mechanic so we know to avoid kiting tank being anywhere close to mega, though.

You would have 3/4 options;

Strategically position so a whm can be close enough to cure RUN pinning them on a wall while party kills boss

Kite em / mew em

Hold boss while party kills minis

Or split em up (for lower difficulties)

That should work for stopping triple reversal, never let boss + 1 add be on the same player.

Last time we did this fight we had a PLD tank kite around the furthest away pillar.
This was important because whenever people were kiting through all 3 pillars, we would get triple reversal. Whereas if they kited only around the furthest away pillar we normally would not, aside from rare exceptions (most runs with kiter kiting only around the furthest away pillar, were a success even on VD).
I seem to recall if you bring adds too close to NM then triple reversal is procced.
Can see that with the Megaboss himself, he normally never uses triple reversal but if you let him join the other adds in the kiting thing the will start using Triple Reversal as well.
I can't explain the full details about this mechanics but there's something about megaboss and adds being close to each other.


This time though something has changed because every bloody time tank was getting raped by Triple reversal for one reason or another.
We tried silencing the BLMs, we tried so many things, it's always the same.
Even with the same players we had last time.


I can't understand what we're doing differently.
Also I can't believe that "going out of range through kiting" or "resetting adds TP with Mewing Lullaby" is the right strategy to avoid Triple Reversal.
Sounds more like a hole in SE's approach.
I'm sure there has to be another strategy SE had in mind when they developed this fight.
Probably it was about killing adds after 30% or something like that? I dunno.
How long do adds take to kill? Do they have endeath as well?


Yeah I remember on our first kills last time we used to kill adds to avoid endeath.
Then the NIN / utsusemi strat was developed, through which you can just normally laugh at the endeath.


Also I seem to recall there was a difference between D and VD.
Like the AoE drain move used on VD under 30% is different and much stronger on VD, to the point that you absolutely need to avoid healing DDs or the fight will go on forever.

RUN or PLD/brd/geo/nin/nin/cor

Tank tanks adds 20ish+ yalms away. Engage boss for parries and position adds in front for you.

Geo stands on tank with indi wilt and geo frailty on boss with entrust whatever you need (in our instance we just did fury). Geo silences astrologers and cures tank.

BRD does double March double acc or some atk if you don’t need the acc

NINs fight boss where you enter and stay at 4+ shadows

COR does chaos Sam and pew pews boss also

Tank or BRD sub SMN and mewing lullaby adds. Better for the tank to do it.

Only issue we have is sometimes the hate reset on target is faster than we can build hate back up and boss goes after tank. Doesn’t always happens, but sometimes does.

Also position DDs at different sides so conals only hit one person

I know for sure last year If I was tanking boss everything was fine, but if one add came over to me and both attacked me i'd get tripled every time.

Seems to work the same. No issues in a few wins so far. N/D

There may be more to it than just that but that's working.

I can understand Yurin, granted that it's not easy to stick it without frazzle or other buffs (my Macc build for Ninjutsu is pretty close to BiS and I was getting several resists before landing the spell), but Aisha?
I mean, you're not supposed to get physical damage on you, if you get hit by melee hits you tipically die because of Endeath, and AoEs are pretty laughable.
Why do you think Aisha is so "necessary"?
I could understand landing other debuffs without a RDM (Kurayami, Hojo, Jubaku) but Aisha?


Monk's roll to benefit who? The ddCOR hismelf? Because NIN will likely be at capped Subtle Blow without the COR roll.
If you ask me, it sounds like a waste of a roll, and imo you're giving too much credit to the TP gain of the boss himself, it's really not THAT dangerous.
It's Triple Reversal that makes the fight annoying. If you avoid that and the Tank survives while kiting, the fight itself is a joke on D and VD alike (granted on VD you of course have a higher acc check and need more buffs for that)

Attack not necessary to cap WS damage (if you use multihit WS), it will boost your white damage but that's kinda irrelevant unless you're using an Empy AM or similar stuff.
Talking about D.
On VD I'm not sure if you gonna cap 99k on multihit WS without some sort of attack boost, but then again on VD no way you're gonna reach acc cap without Madrigals.
From this I assume you were fighting on D or less? Because no way you were capping acc on VD with the buffs you posted.
Especially considering how hard it is to reliably stick Distract3 on the megaboss.


BRD should be using a multihit WS over a single hit.
Unless his set is so good he can 99k Rudra every time.
You need to consider the SC damage though.
With 2x NINs perma spamming Shun with Heishi Shorinken, they're gonna do a lot of Light SCs, that really adds A LOT of damage over time.
If the BRD spams Rudra, he's gonna break most of those SCs.
Will the damage he adds compensate for the loss of SCs?
Maybe yes, maybe not, I can't say, but you need to be aware of this.
Either have him use a different WS or have the NINs use different WSs. If you can find something that will create constant SCs, the kill speed will be so much faster.
As long as it's multihit you don't really need a stellar WS to reach 99k on the Qutrub eh, especially on D and lower.

Putting Slow2 on the boss doesn't prevent him (I think?) from using Animating Wail. I think you need to dispel it and reapply slow.


Really?
Maybe with DDs that are not NIN main... because with NIN main that part is a joke.
The whole fight is so easy, people normally start wiping under 30% because Triple Reversal start happening, the rest is tipically so easy most of the times :x
I guess... uhm, I guess it's different with Jobs who are /NIN though, compared to NIN main.


I seem to recall that move also resets or partial resets hate. So right after stripping your shadows he will face someone other than you.
There are times when you get shadows stripped at the wrong time (like the EXACT SECOND you press a WS macro) and that will get you killed by Endeath... bad luck, ***happens. But most of the time it's really not an issue if you're paying attention to your shadows.
Talking from a NIN main pov, of course it's different (and much harder) for other jobs /NIN

Just read your post about enmity and damage multiplication according to enmity list etc.
Sounds perfect, I think you completely nailed the mechanic.

It's not about distance, but about enmity.
If the someone is on top of hate on the adds AND the boss, then the Boss too will get access to triple reversal.
This explains all the different strange situations and use of triple reversal that I've seen.
Boss running towards adds, adds running towards DDs etc etc.
It's nothing about distance, it's about enmity.


From this point of view the "kite around last pillar instead than all 3 pillars" part that I talked about in my previous post, makes no sense.
That doesn't explain why when I had tanks kite around all 3 pillars they would die and when they kited only around the furthest away pillar, it would normally succeed, most of the times at least. /shrugs

Really wonder what my group was doing wrong yesterday then, Tanks were getting killed by Triple Reversal from adds eventually, after avoiding a certain amount just fine.
Maybe it was about Astrologers not being silenced? Tank getting bound/sleep? I dunno, damn it :(

Cor/nin doesn't need mnk roll to cap SB. This set has 50 sb1 25 sb2 for melee things, while losing little to no dps. Just use last stand for ws which should do 99999+99999 light anyways.

ItemSet 360411

Sounds good, altough I don't really like the relying on mewing lullaby part, but ok, if it makes the fight safer, sure.
In case of a RUN I guess Turms hands would furtherly reduce the need of heals, which is good.

Just a small note about all the ATT (Frailty, entrusted Fury, Chaos roll, possible minuet)
Are you sure it's helping your party's DPS that much?
WSs should be at 99k without that.
You're surely boosting your white damage, undoubtely so, but white damage should represent such a minimal part of DPS on a fight like this.
Wouldn't increase the frequency of WSs be better?
Maybe have a third NIN would produce faster kills.
Or if you really want to use a COR then have a roll other than Chaos? Dunno what. Fighter's? Miser's?
Also make sure your NINs were using Yonin and Gekka.
Yes that increases their need for Acc, but it also makes it much less likely for them to lose hate.

Granted that if you fight adds close to the NM and have your RUN spam stuff like Foil, he's gonna keep building CE and at that point it might become hard for the DDs to keep hate on the boss regardless of what they do or don't.

You might be correct. Worth checking out different rolls and buffs. The BRD can sub nin and DD also which should be easy enough to perform well here.

As a sch with good macc and enfeeb sets, was slowII crucial or can a sch fill this role too with slow1 and silence?

:O
You guys must have a lot of acc in your default set!
With the buffs you posted I think I probably wouldn't be at capped acc, without sushi and using my non-acc set.
But hey, maybe it's my acc that sucks lol xD

I'm sure about that! Was trying to point out a few things that could make your runs even faster! I wasn't tryin to play mr. know-it-all or excessively criticize your approach!


Not like BRD has that many WS gear choices. The same gear you use for Rudra you can probably use for Evisceration, which is multihit.
This only matters if your BRD can't hit 99k with Rudra. If he can (but I'm skeptic on this) then there's no issue, other than the SC-chaining thing.
Don't underestimate it! It's A LOT of additional damage over time.
Granted I can acknowledge with some setups you can't do anything but ignore that part because of job/WS setup.
But when you can, it's always good to try to optimize for it.
You'd be surprised how often WSs that you'd consider weak, normally, can still hit 99k on the Qutrub because they are multihit.


Last time I did this fight over one year ago I can say this was exactely the key factor as well.
But then again I had the same LSmates kiting yesterday, and we failed most runs, so I really can't tell what they were doing differently from over 1 year ago =/

Can't say for this time, but last time (over one year ago) I've succesfully did this fight with SCH, WHM and RDM.
I like RDM the best for several reasons, but SCH and WHM work just as fine. The good part about SCH is that Regen5 was really helping the kiting tank. Adloquium was a small bonus as well etc.
Granted some may say this is a moot point, since you can Perp/Acc Regen5 before entering, then swap SCH to another job and the Regen5 will stay, sooooo... yeah. (SCH can also help non-NIN main jobs by giving them Animus: Augeo)

Make sure the BRD lands Elegy. If you pull shortly after he's done with buffs, he can land a long-lasting Elegy by having NiTro still up.


But really, unless your NIN sucks or you're using different DDs going /NIN, the melee speed of the boss is not really THAT dangerous.
When you die for endeath melee hits touching you (happened to me!) it's usually because you did a mistake, didn't pay attention or for bad luck against which you can't really do much.
Reducing the attack speed of the boss through Slow and Elegy DOES undoubtely help, but I wouldn't say it's the "key" aspect for winning this fight.
More like a secondary thing, really.

Rudra might not hit 99k (and breaks Shun > Shun > Shun > ... perma Light SCs from NINs) but Evisceration sure does hit 99 pretty easily, Mordant Rime is probably somewhere in the middle, but breaks less SCs (it should do Light with Shun, since Frag > Fusion = Light).

Most BRDs probably don't have a Mordant Rime WS set though, unless they're hardcore about BRD and have a Carnwenhan melee set.


The problem I had on BRD DDing last time was that once you reach the cap on hate it's annoying to handle it with "just" the 3 shadows granted by Utsusemi: Ni.
Guess NINs being more hardcore with tanking with Provoke, Yonin and Gekka would've helped, but once you reach the cap you're at the cap, period, very little you can do at that point.

I apologize if this is an obvious question, but I haven't seen a reason why it wouldn't work or anyone discuss it. But is this month SMN-burnable? Seems like the adds are cleanup after boss is dead right?

The boss has twenty million health. Not really something you can burn.

200 bloodpacts. Plus Perfect dodge. oh and Utsusemi:San spam.

My empy brd parsed equal with non empy nins, everyone ws for 99k.
With att buffs my am3 hits were 11k, 15k crits.

Killing the first wave of adds makes this a joke as going from 80% to 0% without endeath or triple reversal is more random then going from 30% to 0%. Triple reversal is random and will straight up kill someone if it hits them and is synched with the MB's TP somehow. The vast vast majority of wipes I've seen have been to a badly timed triple reversal dealing 8K damage to either the kiter or one of the DD's. If you instead kill the first wave and kite the second, even if someone gets killed to bad luck you can still pull a win off.

Does the endeath gimmick occur in difficult and below as well?

Normal at least.