Ambuscade Volume 1 Feb. 2019

This is true and it also emphasizes that people will be screwed when all their server's top-tier RDM are capped out on Ambuscade with two weeks to go. You'd need to hope on assistance from an LS RDM or pray for charity... or merc one. That's the only place I think they got this month wrong, in making a top-tier RDM practically mandatory for VD.

I guess it depends on your definition of top tier. My RDM is mostly together, but has quite a few things that aren't max, and I have zero difficulty landing things in VD. Only thing that gets resisted is the first Slow II, 2nd cast hits. Sleeps last for over 3min (with sabo), and it has:

Raetic+1 staff, Enki strap, Kalboron stone, Empy+1 head, +2 neck, Calamatious/lempo earrings, AF+2 body, Kayklaus+1 hands, kishar/stikini+1, ambu cape, luminary sash, chironic legs, relic feet+2 and he has 600ish JP.

It's mostly good stuff, but quite far from absolute max.

Dont need top tier rdm I dont think. Anyone with avg macc/enfeebling set can do it. Any other set doesnt matter.

Althouth having top tier rdm helps with dps and kill speed a bit since they can also melee. Had someone that just spam sangine with su5 when other DD do SC and switch to correct physical ws when 1 of them got fazed to keep the SC going, while keeping adds slept and debuffed.


My gear is far worse than this (Im an ambuscade +2 rdm) and we still did 7.5 min run anyways. So really rdm can sleep mob and afk in very average gears.

I was strictly talking about people who "have the job", but no JSE gear, and no JPs.

But yeah, your average-geared RDM should do. The less gear you have, the more skill you need to pull it off tho. Early waking and more frequent binding/re-sleeping can quickly get out of hand.


That's something you might be able to pull off w/ really strong DDs. Your average PUG won't be able to reliably kill bombs, or skillchain to maximize DPS. A RDM would need to be alert and on top of things in those situations.

Yeah, I was replying to ruaus "top tier" "cant find rdm" comment. Not top tier =/= undergeared.

Only less than 1% of community can be top tier of any job lol. We may as well dont play ffxi if people demand top tier players for simple VD.

As long as rdm can land sleep/distract they are good for it.


I got carried as always ;)

Few notes to share:

It seems that the adds behavior changes according to the amount of exploded mines, we tested this with the same setup, one without missing a single mine, one with missing one mine and finishing off the other, and lastly one where we missed all mines.

Setup: DRK DNC SAM DRK WHM RDM [on D with Ageha, Dia, Addle, Distract, Inundation, and Box Step 10/10]

Not missing any mine:
-Clear time was 8 minutes including buffs.
-Kibosh did abysmal DMG like 200ish with SS on.
-Adds died super fast, also didn't PD, kept spamming Faze, and Sand Spray.
-Skillchains were doing 50k-99k [99k coming from DNC closing].
-The Pilferer never used PD nor HF.
-No one died.

Missing half of the mines:
-Clear time was 16 minutes including buffs.
-Kibosh did okay DMG like 700ish with SS on.
-Adds died slowly, used PD multiple times, spammed TP Theft, gained some DT at lower HP [Needs confirmation], and started resisting sleep from RDM [waking up after 5 seconds or something].
-Skillchains were doing 20k-60k [60k coming from DNC closing].
-The Pilferer used PD and HF, and gained some DT at lower HP [Needs confirmation].
-2 out of the 4 DPS died once.


Missing all the mines [RDM hated us for it]:
-Clear time was 22 minutes including buffs.
-Kibosh did insane DMG like 2150-3600ish with SS on.
-Adds died very slowly, used PD multiple times, spammed TP/MP Theft, gained some DT at lower HP [Needs confirmation], gained insane resistance to sleep [waking up after one second], all their hits became critical, and several 8 hit proc were noticed.
-Skillchains were doing 15k-30k [30k coming from DNC closing].
-The Pilferer used PD and HF [HF many times], and gained a lot of DT at lower HP [Needs confirmation], all hits became critical, used HP theft constantly.
-Almost everyone died at least twice.

This whole phenomenon needs confirmation from other groups, we were just so puzzled before trying, why some runs were so smooth vs others that took longer when we missed some mines.

I'm afraid it's just a pure coincidence Katriina.
In the groups I've been with we hardly ever missed a mine, and I've still seen plenty of huge Kiboosh and PD spam. (and I mean Spam LITERALLY, sometimes they use PD while they still have PD active!)

The only thing I noticed that stops/reduces the PD spam is somehow related to magic damage / Skillchain.
Not sure HOW it works, but there obviously is a connection between SCs/Magic that somehow reduces or inhibits the PD spam from adds.

Thats meme worthy XD
We did Burst off SC too, not sure if it was correlated with PD.

That wont work because of mine, volt is not 100% kill on mine sadly so you would need at least 2 volt strikes to be sure.

SMN damage w/o GEO and COR support is meh, and the boss has a lot of HP. You're also bottle-necked by BP timers (no favor allowed), so the boss will start spamming PD if you don't keep SCD/magic damage up on it near-constantly.

My LS tested SMNs + COR (we risked rolling only on SMNs) + DNC and it was rough.

Maybe an invisible stacking debuff that detonates with Kibosh.

Case 1: Player A gets hit with Steal X, Steal Y and Steal Z followed by Kibosh. Player A has three "stacks" and suffers mortal damage.
Case 2: Player A gets hit with Steal X, Steal Y--hate switches to Player B. Player B gets hit with Steal Z followed by Kibosh. Player B has one "stack" and suffers minor damage.

Can anyone recall a time where you got kiboshed into an early grave without ever being the victim of a Steal - from your current target or any other?

That's a nice theory, even if in that case I'd be more leaning to think of a non-dispellable buff on the Qiqrin, receiving a stack each time they perform a steal move, and detonating with a Kibosh.
I dunno, kind of like Finishing Moves for DNC and then Flourishes?

Yeah, if you think of it like Rodent Step, we'd need to test an unambiguous case of someone getting gibbed by Kibosh without previously accruing any number of Steal effects. Following that thread would give us these possibilities:

1) Rodent Step (Steal X) accumulates Finishing Moves on the Qiqirn who uses them and Kibosh is a Flourish that scales with the number of Finishing Moves. In this case, a lethal Kibosh is unpredictable and inevitable - the varying damage suggests boss can use Kibosh at any time with any number of Finishing Moves. Direct correlation between intensity of anus clench and the time since last Kibosh. [insert chart]

2) Rodent Step (Steal X) is a Daze effect on a player and Kibosh scales with the number of Daze stacks. This is more predictable. You can anticipate high damage on a player hammered by Steals and counter with DMG-%, DMG absorption, hate swap, etc.

3) Steal X/Kibosh is one collective mechanic a la Kin's Target: simply interrupt a chain of Steals with a hate swap before Kibosh lands; alternatively, let tank suck it up with CDs.

I like this approach as well, it can definitely shed more light on the randomness of Kibosh.
Especially the daze effect, but if I had to pick, I would lean more towards [1] since SE proved overtime how "troll-y" they can get.

Avatar's Favor can be used if the SMNs are in a separate party from the tank/melees and there is no problem in getting buff rolls for this job. It's possible to reach 70~99k Flaming Crush with full buffs/debuffs on boss. SMN works better as main healer + MBer or SC partner for melees this month though.

JP's thoughts about PD.

That doesn't work either.

I mean obviously, if the mob is doing a tp move it cant use PD, but saying "just feed tp" is not a way to get them to stop doing it lul.

Shout parties are running 4 DD sleeper healer, you can't possibly "feed it tp" more than that.

They use moves regardless of tp (unless they have some monstrous regain)

Only if their target is out of range (they literally spam TP moves if we try to kite them) otherwise they need TP like normal if their target is close. The Steal moves are abilities, it's easy to notice with Cait Sith. I agree the "feed more tp" idea is a bit weird.

I have yet to do ambuscade this month but if FC can reach 99k wouldnt that make this month burnable?

No. One PD and it's instant game over for a burn. Not to mention it's 6 mobs. Just too much HP to burn through.

GEO does not work so, I don't really see how you can do 99k anything on it tbh. Skillchain, sure. They take massive damage from skillchain.

Maybe sab frazzle III is enough to make it do damage with G/R. Assume that's good enough to kill the boss, but then you have to deal with 5 adds and not enough G/R (RD+WC). Just not worth bothering if it's slower than melee already is.

wonder if gravity kite aproach from frogs could be a thing (altough hate reset from mine drop is still an issue, as well as might strikes/random killer kibosh)

Here's another experience where I think SC = no PD is a total lie:



I think the last few posts of theories could very well be true. Wonder if this month is supposed to emphasize the last couple months of job changes. RDM with sleeps/enfeebles, DNC with steps (and enemies potentially having "steps") and DRG allowing hate bouncing through their jumps. I'd bet the trick is to have 2 DD that can bounce hate and that may be the key to 7min clears, whereas only one top tier DD getting hit by everything eventually triggers PD's and the sort.

Looks like latency between PD condition already having been fulfilled and other actions queued in chat log. Not saying SC PD theory is unfalsifiable, but the chat log is not the most reliable way to interpret mob behavior - unless you zoom in real close.

It's more nuanced than that. Breaking up the DDs means every WS is either opening an SC or closing an SC instead of a TP burn mess. H2H and dagger, for example, complement each other well. You can set up 4- or 5-step SC and either player can cut it short when your partner gets TP stolen or fazed. The evidence couldn't be more obvious that calculated skillchaining is the way to go this month; hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Kibosh is punishing players for every WS that doesn't become part of an SC.

In any case, this is the most technically interesting Ambuscade since Qutrub. We need more inscrutible and aggravating content that you can't simply bulldoze with an Idris and Nirvana.

Aggravating content (like repeated spamming PD) can go *** itself with a cactus. You can make it technical if you want but stupid ***like PD and invincible serve literally no purpose other than to annoy. That's not good content.

Well... thats not totally true, pd/invincible/bene spam stop smn, but is totally useless for everything else. there are better ways to punish smn. ...or... and I'm just spitballin here, maybe *** fix smn...

We were setting up 4 DD 4 step in a way that if one person got fazed it would still end a light or dark.

For example, something like steel cyclone(distort) > shun (fusion) > leaden(gravitation) > Expiacion (distortion) ends 4 step in darkness on 4 different jobs.

Now if the person who do expiacion got fazed because they pull most hate with 99k dark, the 1st person who do steel cyclone will still close dark with steel cyclone so SC continues. And shun become 1st WS in next 3 step SC and it still ends with dark.

And then if the person who do steel cyclone got fazed too, it would also end with 3 step dark.

From my experience only 1st and last person in this setup will get fazed, 2nd and 3rd person won't. So the sc will never be interrupted and it can go on and on without ever need to change SC order if one person got fazed.

Another benefit of this setup is that more tp overflow from waiting for the other 3 person = stronger SCs.

Fastest clear time with 4 person 4 step that I've seen is 6 min 20 sec.

We did SC this way for an hour and I only see 1 PD in many runs I think. Adds die to fast that PD doesn't seem to happen.

Unless you're suggesting rats spam PD arbitrarily, I stand by my point. PD is a fail state. You either perform actions necessary to avoid the fail state or contrive a wise-*** workaround. For example, you can counter PD with ranged attacks. Intuition suggests that if you are just going to brute force this month's ambuscade, bring 4 CORs - 2 with dagger, 2 with sword - and skillchain remorselessly. When PD goes up, start busting caps. Congratulations! You just turned lemons into lemonade. Doesn't matter how many times the little rat *** PD now.

Or we can figure out how to neutralize PD altogether.

There is no decernable way to stop it, it's arbitrarily used. No one is going to figure it out and square is never going to tell us.

With battlemod, chat log is populated in the order packets are received, which is (almost certainly) the order server queues the actions. I would trust that the skillchain completed before PD was used, but might still be a close in time issue.

No doubt the damage connected before PD was used. I didn't mean the chat log incorrectly chronicled the order of events, rather there was a literal delay between the condition for PD having been met and the mob actually using PD. Faze or Kibosh would do it.

Another example of this would be last month's Ambuscade. Once you kill PLD+WAR adds you have 30s to reduce boss HP to 50% before boss summons a new PLD+WAR set. Let's say you get boss to 51% when 30s has elapsed and the boss incidentally begins casting a spell. Even if you reduce boss HP to <49% during the spellcasting period, you will nevertheless get another PLD+WAR set in addition to triggering Benediction and BLM add. The condition for new adds was satisfied at :30 but the effect didn't trigger until :35 due to queuing of mob's actions.