Antican Ambuscade V1

Pet style still works quite well. Pup tanking at starting corner. Hybrid tank dd is great. It doesn't take much to keep hate from other pets. Only concern might be if Corsair throws some really big hits.

It's easier with 2x bst rather than 1. Because they elimate adds quite quickly. 2x tegmina buffet means any summons die with little opportunity to do anything. Also 2x bst can keep killer instinct up indefinitely. That's an additional 15% reduction of needles damage.

Have smn using ifrit hunt down the cactuar. Corsair can help with that as well. You can use dd pups to do this as well. Cluster together until the cactuar is dead. If timing is good, you might get a tegmina buffet > flaming crush for a very nice fusion.

I'm not sure if Geo is better or having an additional pup or smn might work better. 2x smn can keep earthen armor up quite well and kill cactuar reliably. But refresh from Geo and frailty and all the host of Geo soeells are a great help also.

Only item that was a bit challenging is sand trap. It resets hate, and ignores shadows, and petrifies you. It only appears to do sand trap after cactuar is dead. Bsts can engage if /nin and keeping shadows up. It helps make skillchains with pet and keep good damage rate.
It's not really a problem for bst and pup, but not all jobs have good hate tools.

It is not as quick as mages bursting death on cactuar, but is fairly reliable for D or Vd depending on skill and coordinaation of your team.

Katriina is generally wrong about (everything)

Queue is still over 20 minutes so #***

Tanked a bunch of N and D runs the other day and this is what it looked like. I was way too lazy to time it, but it felt like it popped adds faster on D.

Nothing particularly threatening, the blm adds are probably the most dangerous thing in the fight.

The adds are based on HP and time we believe, on VD when we would hulk smash the MB he would be virtually non-stop summoning adds.

Sand Rush does get negated by shadows, takes 3 (everytime?)

That's nice. Useful for pickups, make em sub nin make it more idiot proof. (if you kill cactus, because needles wipes shadows)

Sabo targeted THF GEO or SAM choosing to spend it's time in the cluster of bodies ignoring the BRD after stripping shadows and might strikes aoe from boss the GEO,THF,SAM,WHM died and it still ignored the BRD and bee lined for the RUN every single time. Incidentally physical reduction was a great help on needles still took 2k~ from boss AoE during mighty-strikes since no shadows :'(.

Yeah sabo target seemed to be totally random - whoever was closest to it when it ran in? I have no idea where Katrinaa got this brd target idea lol. We just grouped up and spread needles damage, didn't bother with /nin on D but probably not a bad idea for VD.

Tried melee strat yesterday and didn't like it as much as mage strat.
It just takes too long to kill the damn cactuar, and by the time you're done too many adds have popped, most of which you can't kill otherwise you gonna powerup sandstorm too much.
With this route it just takes way too long. Like waht, 12 mins to complete VD? Maybe more.

How do people deal with the cactuar during the first 10k needle so that he dies there instead of going back running randomly around?

Unless Japanese wiki is also *generally wrong* like some salty queens on this forum like to think. summoning time is every 30s.


“The boss' s Antica tribe is summoned by boss every 30 seconds“

Guess I found a better source to confirm observations next time..

I'm pretty sure it can't be done in one go. You're gonna get needled at least twice.

Maybe If you had perfect co-ordination and managed a 3 step skillchain. But you only get the exact amount of seconds to pull it off, unless you're speed hacking or land a stun. Or an INCREDIBLY well geared buffed two step + geo magic burst.

Maybe cor closes 3 step with last stand since it will be running away.

I wouldn't even consider doing VD melee with a pickup. It's just not worth the effort. D is only 4k needles.

After the sab. dies, what causes the Consul to take increased WS/SC damage? Keep seeing spikes in ws and capped light.

Summoning animations is the reason (she still “tries” to summon after sabotender is dead)
- it seems to cause her to lose all types of defense momentarily.

It usually took 2 times of the cactuar running in before it died on D, going to be at least 3-4 on VD. 7-8 minute fights melee style, adds are mostly harmless even if you get a ton of them unless your tank is silly and using aegis or something.

For VD though I would do mage setup, it's just going to be more consistent. If your fights are tipping 12+ minutes on VD with either setup D might be more efficient, just depends.

After about 20 fights with alternating mage job combinations, we noticed that it really depends on which mage jobs are present. (still needs confirmation) but here goes nothing:

we kept PLD DNC WHM NIN fixed and changed just support jobs.

When its COR BRD it always targeted BRD
When its COR GEO it always targeted GEO
When its BRD GEO it always targeted GEO

As for RUN SCH SCH GEO BLM BLM
It always targeted GEO

Again more testing is needed but so far thats what we noticed (Highest MP Pool amongst Support Roles)

P.S Needle Move and Summoning happen simultaneously.

Scherzo + any form of defense (we used Gallant 7/11)+ Miso Ramen

Also alternating (Harden Shell) if going with BLUs

Yeah but defense/survival wasn't really my main concern, I was more talking about letting too many adds pop because it takes you 3 or even 4 10k Needles to kill the cactuar (think for us it was 3 iir)


With Mage setup our fights were taking like, I dunno, max 8 mins of zone time.
It was very solid and reliable, granted it's a bit tricky for the mages to position so that the Cactuar doesn't go out of range midcasting, but eventually you learn how to do that.

And the adds might not be dangerous to the tank, but they're still annoying, they "lock" you and they make it hard for you to cast spells, consuming your aquaveil too fast and making positioning an annoying mess.
I dunno, maybe it's easier with PLD/BLU, we had an Epeolatry RUN in our few melee attempts.

If you ask me, I found melee strat much less efficient and more annoying than the mage one, on VD.



Haven't tried SMNburn on VD, how does it work? Do you even bother to kill the cactuar?
3x SMN, 1x tank, 1x WHM, 1x GEO, AC Flaming Crush and share the damage from needles?

Only Magisters (BLMs) are of concern to be honest, rest can be handled effectively by PLD/BLU.
As I mentioned before, we only kill Magisters because they are annoying (we dont need her to gain stronger attacks the more adds are dead).

(COR and DNC on Sabotender+NIN on Magisters > All on Consul > all on Adds) is the best we found for us.

I agree that killing Sabotender is a pain but here is the thing:
If you stand with your back to Consul 12' away and faced the furthest pillar, it will always Face you when it comes to Needle on COR and wont get behind you.
Use MAB roll at start to Leaden Salute with Tripple Shot and if you time QD effectively + Clim Rudra it would be dead in no time (under a minute or so)

There's 3 main reasons you'll see Sand Rush wipe everyone:

1) As already stated, if you kill adds, the NM's attack power goes up quite significantly.

2) Mighty Strikes. Even if you don't kill any adds on VD, Mighty Strikes + Sand Rush or Tackle will still have 1 shot potential.

3) Sand Trap. Sand Trap is always followed up by an immediate Sand Rush regardless of TP fed to it. I believe the damage you deal between the window of Sand Trap and Sand Rush affects the damage Sand Rush does. Every time we turned after Trap and waited for Rush, it always did low damage.

TL;DR: Turn during MS and after Sand Trap until it uses Sand Rush to lower the chances of everyone getting 1 shot.

We did 3x SMN, RUN, COR, GEO. Once the boss dies the only real risk to the tank is 3x EES which if you get caught in Enmity or Fast Cast gear can kill you, but it shouldn't matter anyways with the Thunderspark spam killing all the adds very quickly.

TOTES 30 SECONDS RITEGUIZ

Can summoning time (and by extension, the defense loss on the boss) be lengthened via Addle/Nocturne?

Doubtful. Mob summonings don't count as spells or casting

How did you deal with 10k Needles without a WHM or anybody /WHM?
And did you fight in the middle or did you pull to the corner?

I assume Flaming Crush spam so Indi Frailty Geo Malaise entrust Torpor, correct?

Apogee earthen armor/earthen ward (or ss), volt strike is perfectly fine. Idris geo means you'll cap 99k since he summons non stop during zerg.

10k needle split between 10 targets (6 character, 3 avatar, 1 bubble) means you should survive easily even if needle goes off. Malaise/languor the adds after and a round of thunderspark finishes them off.

With the quality of the posted image..Even my grandmother can photoshop that, nice try idiot.

Proof: if they are that close to one another (timer wise) I don't see any reason what so ever to crop them and stack them like that, [so pathetic].

You should send this to Japanese wiki, Im sure they need your unparalleled wisdom and your skills.

lol

It's cropped because you don't need to know who I'm doing ambuscade on, or with. and logger is broken.

And it's paint son, get on my level. photoshop is for tryhards. I'm FAR too lazy to give that much effort.

K

Don't be mad that you're (always) wrong. It's ok to be wrong.

20 seconds of beating on a mob can easily result in way more than entire page of logs depending on filters. What do you want a youtube video