Ambuscade Volume 1 Feb. 2019

Has anyone tried ceasing all attacks entirely when perfect Dodge is used, and see if the NM uses it again after it wears off? Perhaps there's some unusual trigger that allows him to continue using it based on how many weapon skills he "Dodges" (kind of like powered up Yaegesumi from Tenzen II). Most of the time our groups have been just SC or spamming but there has been no noticeable way to prevent it's repeated back to back use. Perhaps ignoring it entirely and sleeping/changing to another monster resets some internal timer or whatever. Just throwing out ideas

I'd appreciate if another ranged job could try to corroborate my results below. COR, RNG or any job with decent ranged attack can do it.

Hypothesis: Qiqirns track weapon skills. Each weapon skill used against Qiqirn that doesn't open or close a skillchain adds to an invisible counter (time based or stacking effect). When the counter reaches a certain threshold, Qiqirn uses SP.

Methodology: Ambuscade v1 E. COR/DNC with main sword, offhand dagger, and gun. PLD/WAR to hold Pilferer (boss). Qiqirn Mine ignored and allowed to detonate. 2 RDM and 2 WHM Trusts fill the remaining slots.

COR stores TP on Scoundrel (add) with melee attacks. Use simple, low-damage melee WS spaced apart and guaranteed not to chain (Burning Blade, Shining Blade, Flat Blade). If Perfect Dodge occurs, switch to ranged attacks for TP gain and then deliberately miss with melee WS against target while PD is active. Repeat until you die from a Steal HP-Kibosh one-two punch.

Results: Scoundrel reliably uses Perfect Dodge within 5 WS that do not chain. Furthermore, by gaining TP with ranged attacks during Perfect Dodge, you can reliably induce Scoundrel to use Perfect Dodge several times in a row.

Conclusion: The secret to this month's Ambuscade was never a question of how many skillchains you do, but how many you fail to do. This appears consistent with all of the findings in the thread so far: coordinated SCs thwart PD, high-damage SCs still face PD, back-to-back PDs when people whiff weapon skills that are guaranteed not to chain.

I assume boss follows the same logic, but he pulls from one of four SPs (PD, MS, HF, BW).

Has anyone figured out why kibosh goes from 300 damage to 3k seemingly at random?

I just had one PD as his first move. Before it even swung one time. Sleep > PD. (the boss)

Finally get to break out Red Mage. Setup was DNC/RDM/COR/BST/SAM/WAR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmmEvNdJFUU&feature=youtu.be

When we do ambu I just tell all five of the dps to weaponskill right when they get tp. Skillchains do go off, but we do a massive amount of spamming. In the video I posted the dps were just zerging it down with little emphasis on skillchaining at all.

This premise is really interesting, if only it could explain the PD used while PD is active by Scoundrels, when you don't have ranged DPS..
Maybe they track JAs or Enmity List? instead of skillchains/ws's?

Worst case scenario to your hypothesis, that you don't need 5, you only need one missed skillchain.
I could think of similar mechanics, like reverse Maju and/or reverse Onychophora for PD trigger.

Furthermore, if we can test how PD operates, like if the "same weaponskill" should not be repeated within the last 2-3 weaponskills performed? just throwing some ideas.

Someone I do ambu with came up with the idea that maybe the act of weapon skilling itself resets the timer and the reason huge multi-steps work is because the weaponskills are spread out enough to keep resetting it before perfect dodge goes off. In many of the VD runs we do with five dps, perfect dodge rarely occurs. We switched to just going weaponskill crazy and it seems to work out well.

We had almost no pd with 3 dd SC, plenty of pd with 2 dd doing a 3 way but 1 person opening and closing.

Edit: @alamihgo that's some *** you wrote over there man.

Oh ***, it's Steal TP.

Using seigan seemed to trigger perfect dodge in my runs. Consistently happened every single time one of our dps used seigan, so we stopped using seigan and pd stopped.

The Bump, for whoever wants to make the new QQ V1 thread

Just make sure in gigantic bold letters, It. Is. Immune. To. Geomancy. and Bringing buffers makes it impossible.

Yeah, GEO/COR/BRD/SMN do not work here.

You have to use your head to work around the lack of those support jobs.

DNC is absolutely badass in this fight as is DRG.
BLU should be part of any setup to reach Magic Haste cap.
WAR's Warcry is useful but since there's no COR it cannot be reset.
Can also see a proper geared BST (for master DD) being very good with the Slug's -33% DEF/ATK down.