Was messing around on N with some returning players and mules, far from ideal setups, but learned a few things for relatively painless wins (except for the WHM taking some for the team) even with a thrown together un-optimized group.
Tips/setup for NORMAL difficulty:
1)
On N, Dirty Bomb is 4500 damage (Needles/split between party), so it's feasible to stack up to survive it. Potentially easier depending on how many pets/luopons you have. At the very least, most groups should be able to cluster up after the first mob is taken out, assuming the Don is tanked away from the group/other mobs and saved for last.
2)
Our setup/strategy was:
- PLD tanking Boss near start
- PUP's automaton easily tanked the DRK off to one side (while the master fought with DDs).
- WHM curing (and some sacrifice)
- DD/support kill WAR > DRK > Boss. We had SAM WAR PUP, and the last slot at first was a GEO who eventually dropped for a SCH mule (obviously not ideal for DD buffs that run, but SCH at least helped by tossing some Accession Regen V/Stoneskins to help the DDs).
- Only need for a WHM sac was during the killing of the WAR mob, but once that died we just bunched up together and soaked up the needles while fighting the DRK and Don. Even a weakened WHM should be OK to eat the bomb damage with a decent idle set that has some HP+ gear (enough to enable the WHM to take their share of the bomb even if weakned) - e.g., Inyanga gear, Moonbeam cape, etc.)
- After a couple runs I realized you really should be able to go with a PUP tank, and have the automaton just tank the Don with no support (and in theory, no bomber? please confirm if this isn't accurate). Party then just kills the WAR > DRK > boss. Once you're on the Don, automaton may eventually lose hate to strong DDs, but you can all bunch up then anyway and survive Dirty Bomb.
Some points that might apply on all difficulty levels:
3)
Mobs all seemed to WS together, calling a bomber at the same time. Some sort of shared TP?
4)
Some job possibilities:
* SCH might be a good choice for solo healer/sacrifice, since they can throw out a long and potent Accession/Perpetuance Regen V to assist in the DDs' survival even when the SCH healer is occupied by getting killed and reraising. Should be just fine to handle the healing load too.
* Don't laugh now, this might be a good fight for MNK. High HP pool and Mantra are certainly helpful on the bombs, and low TP feed might be beneficial if there is indeed some sort of shared TP to trigger the bombers.
* PUP is nice as an off-tank particularly because you don't necessarily lose a whole DD body. Puppet can be deployed by itself while the master goes off to punch the currently targeted mob.