Cloud Of Darkness HTBF

There is no need for a strategy or a SC. Just zerg and when Red eye comes out, have one person check whether she is absorbing melee or magic. If Melee just finish her off. If magic just wait a minute.

To quote a famous science channel I watch, "If brute force doesn't work, your not using enough of it".

Worst run so far, but managed to do it multiple times on WAR in N difficulty. Usually around 10-15 min.

I spent some time testing Mewing Lullaby and TP Drainkiss on Cloud of Darkness and can confirm that they don’t work at all. Even though they still display the expected results, CoD's TP simply cannot be removed.
If for example CoD has 800 TP then Mew will show the message "TP is reduced to 80" and again the exact same message every minute. A 3k TP Drainkiss will absorb 800 TP and Fatso will get them but CoD will still retain 800 TP.
It seems the devs have finally found a way to shut down TP denial methods after all these years.

Sigh. Back to enspell/multi hit tp denial.

So SE killed the exact game meaning of tp-drain? Are they stupid?

Not every fight needs to have the same mechanics nor the same method of cheese to beat it. SE havent killed anything since TP denial works on every other fight in the game apart from this one.

I don't think Zixxer was arguing in favor of using a TP denial strategy, but rather about how the message shows "TP is reduced to 80" but CoD still retains it's TP (meaning that the message may not be displaying properly).

Yeah i was 50/50 on which way they meant of killing and went with annoyed that you couldnt reduce its TP.

If you don't want to zerg its face in, then just use the other DD to pull adds away and murder them as they pop... they aren't hard to kill.

Been doing plenty of runs with MNK,DD,SCH,BRD,COR,GEO. DD pulls add away and the backline murders.

Tp denial isn't really worth it for this fight, its mechanics aren't hard enough to justify having to do it anyways. SB, Chi blast and the occasional shijin is plenty to just mitigate. Any other DD with SB65 is fine as well, just mnk does it better.

Interesting nonetheless though that it doesn't seem to work regardless. I imagine they will kill that method moving forward and perhaps this was a little test lol.

Look forward to future content having this same counter mechanic (HTBFs, Limbus bosses).

I already had the impression with Peach Power as I've seen them use animate just a few seconds after I cast reaving wind. Overall reaving wind didn't seem to have much of a effect on their TP or maybe they can use it independant of TP.

Animated is 100% not a TP move at all. It's some kind of mechanic triggered by hp, a timer, a mob death, or all of the above. It happens 5 times in a row sometimes. It has nothing to do with TP

Lakshmi.Buukki said: »
Whenever players circumvent their design or kill the boss in a way outside of what the devs intended, it forces them to implement a tougher design that can't be ignored the next time around. Each step harder than the last. [/quote]
But why make subtle blow and tp reduction abilities useless while at the same time keep RDM cheese as it is?

From looks/sounds of it mnk SB/chi/shijin works just fine

Probably mentioned before, but Scherzo blocks the damage dealt from Waning Vigor and Expunge. Took 0 every time after I accidentally healed it during Primordial Surge phase. Likely the same with Earthen Armor/Migawari. You'll still get weakened or full dispelled from either move respectively, but at least you'll survive

This is helpful but FYI, Scherzo can't reduce any attack to 0 damage. If you saw 0, you must've had Stoneskin up and/or another way to reduce this damage to 0 (Carol II, Barspell [depending on type of damage], Shadow Ring, etc.)

Because RDM "cheese", while low difficulty, is still high effort, with high gear requirements to begin with. It's 10-20 uninterrupted minutes of high focus (depending on the fight), bots can't reliably do it, and a tiny lapse in concentration means Odin lands Kaustra on you and you die and have to restart from scratch. Furthermore, you can't exp RDM to 99, buy some gear off AH, and go straight to win the fight - which is what SMN used to be able to do. BST is in a similar place, you can go from having BST locked to TP Drainkissing mobs away in a single day.

Them lvl 1 daggers require some serious dedication to acquire.

I know I didn't have any Carols, Barspells (idek if these moves are Magical) or Shadow Ring on, but I did have Cureskin up, so that probably made up the difference in whatever the damage was after Waning Vigor/Expunge landed.

Orpheus's Sash is ~100m, fast cast gear to cap Utsusemi, really good enfeebling gear to land debuffs...

O Sash is not obligatory to win is it? Emp+3 armor is free.

There's no way you believe capping FC on RDM is a challenge.

The enfeebling accessories/gear is quite pricy, I do agree with that. FWIW, you don't "need" O Sash (just like you dont need max effect gear), it just makes things faster/easier.

Takes far more than that to actually win successfully within the time frame provided.

Regardless though, RDM "cheese" is no different than SCH "cheese" the method has absolutely nothing to do with abilities that drain tp that have been traditionally used probably in a manner SE likely did not intend on hence why they removed the ability to actually "drain" tp in any shape or form. The methods done by both SCH and RDM is really more of an "Inhibit TP" approach. If not done attentively, they will gain tp and you have a solid chance of losing or making your life rather difficult.

There are several jobs that can invest into a osash yet it doesn't enable them to solo endgame content while beeing almost afk.

SCH is also undeniably in the absolutly OP camp right now but at least they have to do actions per minute to get something done while RDM enspell strat is 98% watching auto attacks.
I wouldn't know why anyone would think this would be hard to automate when the majority of it is already automated as is.

I did Odin the RDM way years ago and I did have to spend a few days gearing it before it was possible. Maybe it is easier with Empy+3, but it definitely wasn't an afk and win strategy.

If it is easier now... Good? That fight is like 10 years old or something.

I second that.
Odin D and VD completely solo on RDM wasn't maybe super hard but it was tedious and you really had to keep your attention high for debuffs wearing off (especially silence) and for shadows.
You could afford maybe one or two mistakes (i.e. getting hit) but no more than that and Odin would TP and you would fail there.

The more damage you can deal, the faster the fight gets, the less attention you have to keep, the less chances for bad things to happen and vice-versa.

Back then on VD completely solo it was taking me something like >20 mins. Even more than that because I remember being estremely close to timing out a few times when I spent too much time buffing myself before engaging.

Odin is a complete mess imho.
"Hey, let's make a HTBF where silence is pretty much mandatory but let's also design it so the only job with a lasting silence that lands can solo it on hardest difficulty."

At least it's not that way with cod.

on Cloud of Darkness, attempt on VE:
multiple times sheep song(light spell, gaze sleep):
multiple times blastbomb(fire spell, AoE bind):
bind didn't land at all on the adds, I think neither on mainboss.

1x Polar Roar(Unbridled Learning ice spell, AoE bind):
Did land on 1 of the 3 adds and lasted roughly 115 seconds.

Could still check ice break and regurgitation to see if those binds land, might be worth it even with BLUs miserable durations so you can pull cloud away and get a WS off without encumberance.

Guess there is still some room for improvement but it's probably worst of the HTBFs sofar for BLU. Once second or third add are out and encumberance aura is active it's pure misery. WS dmg drops to ~5-10k which makes killing the adds super slow, better to focus on just the cloud (adds seem to take reduced skillchain damage too) no MACC set so spells hardly land and they take forever to cast. Most of clouds attacks also have knockback, next stop - interrupt city. She out ranges BLU too, meaning after knockback she can still attack while I'm out of melee range, not sure if it's different for 2handed jobs.

Subtle blow doesn't seem to make a real difference on how fast/how many adds pop either, at least on BLU.

I assume they want you to forgo gear swapping entirely and just engage in the most alround set you can assemble. Thats one large stick in the spokes of anyone who doesn't have nyame at a reasonable augment yet.

Almost timed out on VE. Wouldn't be surprised if drop rates are also worse than the first impressions in this thread made it seem.

Subduction - walk away from the 4' aura?

Though I guess the cloud is also gravity'd so it might take some finesse...

FWIW BRD and RDM can both sleep (light and dark) the boss/adds, so they're not immune.