Antican Ambuscade V1

posting a 2nd thought related to the cactuar high evasion during "running mode".

***WARNING***
this is 100% a stoner thought that happened around 1130PM on a Friday night, three dabs and 2 glasses of Malbec deep. Take with a grain of salt, or kief, if you prefer.

I all of a sudden interpreted this ambuscade as SE developers taking inspiration from the Looney Tunes cartoon "Roadrunner". And we're Wile E. Coyote. That damn Roadrunner was impossible to hit with ANYTHING while he ran! Dude even fired a missile at him once, riding it, and the roadrunner outran the missile!

Then I realized....possibly they designed the cactuar to have maximum game available evasion that's not "perfect dodge" during its run phase, and when it stops to hit ya, that's the only time you're supposed to be able to hit it. Fighting against that mechanic "might" be possible, but it will never be fruitful. So I got out my ACME-Brand Pewpew Device version 2.0, and saved up the big boom for our Roadrunner. And all of a sudden, Wile E. Coyote got his bounty.

Mnk Mnk Run Whm Geo Brd

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/534222813

Maybe the inspiration is from the others FFs cactuars like FFVIII ones, that were very evasive too.

And maybe those cactuars also were inspired by DQ metal slimes.

And normally there are always good reward for hitting and beating those hard to hit foe.

Tried doing leaden salute on the cactuar, +8 wiz sam roll, igeo malaise, 3k tp r15 leaden did 70k w/ 2x weather buff. If SCH can time distortion just right, can prob do 99k darkness

Approximately how much HP does the Cactuar have on VD?

Any idea how to mitigate sand squall? been hitting like a truck even with wilt and scherzo.. been turning around when readying sand trap but still

Something I noticed, if you have a bard spamming dispel it wasn't using the crap tp move.
Maybe just luck, I don't know. But it always favored moves that put up buffs.

140k


I believe it’s also reliant on how many adds you kill as his damage goes up. Are you killing him first?

Much less than I was expecting to hear. My C path Fusenaikyo is still R0 since I'm working on B path first, but I'm interested if a Sekkanoki Konzen Fudo from a C path Fusenaikyo could 1-shot it or at least put it in range of being 1 MB from the GEO to kill it. Unless there's some reduced damage mechanics on the Cactuar I'm unaware of.

I tried Sekk/SCing it on SAM and because of its speed and SE I had a very hard time.

I'm able to consistently one shot cactuar so only 3 adds, and i kill them before the boss, as I'm tanking on sam so I'd prefer not to have many mobs on me..

it seems after spamming dispel him, his attacks are less deadly significantly

Climactic Flourish, Rudra, Reverse Flourish, Rudra kills the cactuar in one go too. Not easy to do but possible.

How are you one shoting it

One cycle, not one shot, same difference

Cactuar were always historically evasive and notorious "trickster" monsters in FF games, ones that would run away shortly after appearing in battle. You ALWAYS had to be quick against them. However, they've always been succeptible to magic, which makes nuke strategy a naturally easy clear. Realistically, you should never be able to hit anything THAT fast, even if you can see him moving. They probably didn't want to go as far as Cactrot Rapido speed for targetting reasons, but the lore behind how much his evasion skyrockets makes perfect sense with the monster they chose.

Sorry i meant one cycle by abusing LS

Did a few runs yesterday and I'd say I landed about 20% of my Konzen-ittai > Fudo on the first cycle with Honor March, 2 Mads, Sushi, Aggressor and my 2nd level WS acc set. First few runs went fine, but after that I couldn't land Konzen > Fudo at all. Anyone else experiencing WS Acc issues on first cycle?

Ah, got my hopes up haha

After some experimenting, I believe inflicting the Cactuar with a "Chainbound" status effect will briefly raise his evasion (not long enough for the window to wear, as I can do whiffed Fudo > landed Fudo and still make the Skillchain in time). Everytime I use Konzen to open, I whiff my first Fudo, but if I Fudo without Konzen, it will land normally.

I have been selling Ambu Vol1 VD this month as 3 pup 1 cor.
The regular setup have been 5 pup 1 cor.

Ideally fight is over before overdrive ends. So 3-4 minute run total.

1 tank (whm head, valor body)
2-4 dd (full ranger)

Ranger pups do heady, overdrive, fire wind light before engaging.
Tank also does overdrive but and saves heady for the add pop.

Tank deploys on boss. The rest on cactuar then boss.
Eagle eye shots from the puppets don’t miss so it will kill cactuar either before it summons adds or after it summons one group. Tank pup will heady artifice to pick up the adds.

So, does the Konzen > Fudo do enough damage for a GEO MB to kill?

Same SCH, who DUOed VD ambu with Kaggra, now soloed it.

What have you been using? Tank 4 smn geo, volt strike?

Can it be done with less than 6?

Zerg boss and eventual adds leaving cactuar alone?

Did it with two smn, geo, cor, tank. It dies in about six to ten seconds...but it spawned so many adds in that time.

Should only get 3 adds out (VD) and they won't even attack the tank more than once in ~10 seconds.

The picture got deleted (yay tinypic's death) but only the boss has to die so even a thousand adds don't matter

Are you sure about that, doing melee strat the Ambuscade has never ended if just the boss dies. Maybe keeping the cactuar up does something funky with just the boss needing to die?

Apparently not, lol

If anyone is interested, here is a video of pup style.
pup pup pup pup cor cor

If people using melee groups have access to a GEO, COR and SAM, Konzen-Ittai > Leaden Salute from a R0 Death Penalty with Ecliptic Attrition Malaise from an Idris GEO 1-shotted the Cactuar on D dealing 150k damage. I imagine it'd be enough to 1-shot the Cactuar on VD with Blaze of Glory instead of EA if EA isn't enough, but I can't survive 10k needles with my current tri-box setup to find out. The GEO should be capable of MBing to finish off whatever few HP it has if it survives, anyway.



Good way to bypass the Cactuar's annoying evasion spikes for melee groups.

Edit: Just checked, and yeah it will deal enough damage on VD with just Ecliptic Attrition as well.