June 2019 V1 VD Ambu

for whatever its worth, in a span of 20 VD's, the sam would blade bash the Boss around 80%~ then zerg down. out of the 20 runs there was only one run where blade bash wasnt used, and the Rune tank got 99k'd. coincidence or luck idk but it seems to be a reliable method.

Did about 20 runs over the past 3 days. Only seen 99k happen at start when brd or cor used 1hrs before the pull.

We did about 10 runs last night, started with SV a few times and the geo bolstered and throw in a few mighty strikes also. Not 1 99k. Set up was run war cor brd geo whm

Did a bunch of VE/E runs with trust and mules to kill time and waiting for shouts. MNK + DNC

first 4 runs I had a relic-ag mnk that consisted did 5k+ light dmg with the trust while dnc holds the boss. The boss would start smacking me with 99ks.

Every after I swapped to jolt counters, did less than 5k light, actually I think it barely broke 2k...never had it break more than 500-600 dmg.

Just got 99,999'd a few minutes into the fight when the boss was at 22%. Trigger is still a mystery I'm assuming.

Sharing this theory that might explain Mercurial Strike:

Enceladus (beautiful name) is a SAM, best guess is that Mercurial Strike DMG will depend on the total DMG on his target in the sequence of attacks during his "secret" Meikyo Shisui activation.

Meaning, if Skillchains and Attacks reach a certain number it will trigger an additional magical DMG related to that number.

Lets say the resulting total DMG of Meikyo Shisui's Detonation > Gravitation > Darkness including the moves was 100 then the bonus Magical DMG will be 99k.

So basically in a nutshell, its luck based and can be avoided if you stun his sequence of total DMG.

Everytime he killed me on run right after pulling my Stoneskin was still on, so every sc hit for 0, but MS still 99k me

As much as I'd like to see the total DMG of moves plus skillchains netting zero with capped DT and SS, you should consider the possibility that (Zero) and (100) are the "Lucky" numbers for 99k.

Think of it as striking lucky roll or 11.

That could be another option, I'll take a few screenshots next time i'm tanking to check.

Just to share my experience, I made a group the other day. We had RUN WAR COR and BRD on DD. We did it on Difficult mostly, just because there was less chance of deaths and quicker kills. Did beat it once on VD later, although we had some deaths and it took way longer.

We never saw the 99k Mercurial Strike. Why? I'm not sure. But I did take Saevel's advice of discouraging the use of light/darkness sc, so the WAR & myself used Reso, COR used Savage, and BRD used Evisceration. While some may still be experiencing this, my group never saw it.

PS: We always used our 1 hours. GEO and BRD used theirs before pulls, while the Warrior & I used ours during. Unda runes, Fire Carol etc.

He can pop 99k before any player made SC happens, so it's clearly not the SC itself that triggers it, maybe a specific WS. I never ran with a SAM so I don't think I ever had a DD with 100TP at start of fight, anyway.

I've seen it trigger a lot during a fusion skillchain. So the warrior stopped making skillchains, and it did it around his ws that didn't trigger a skillchain. The last time I saw it, I was in the middle of doing a skillchain with my scholar. I think that 99k merc strike move has something to do with skillchains and weapon skills because it always occurs about that time.

Was it before or after the Rune Fencer with Lux or Tenebre runes started hitting him?

It's not "skillchains", it's total amount of light / dark magic damage done, seemingly during any animations. This is why you can have a RUN siting with him in a corner suddenly get slammed with a 99K attack, the Rune had Tenebre runes up (for the MP restoral) and that damage incremented upwards. The cutoff seems to get lower the higher the difficulty with VD having a very low cutoff.




Because Fusion does Fight + Light magic damage and is enough to accumulate past the cut off point.

Last night had a ton of fights with BLU + COR doing only Savage Blade and the RUN not using Lux/Tenebre, and *zero* 99k's all night. Basically we don't see 99K's anymore since we've just stopped dealing any form of light / dark elemental damage.


Were you using the Light or Dark helix's to make that SC, or was that SC Compression, Transfixion, Gravitation or Fusion?

If the SCH is doing Disto instead of Reverb for water MB then they open the chain with luminohelix so yeah. boom boom.

I was PLD and didn't use Enlight, so the elemental damage from the tank was 0.

I highly doubt our DDs even had 100TP by the time I got 99'd, I don't remember the HP being lowered enough for a WS to have done that, let alone two and a SC.

I'm not even sure they SC'd at all (Victory Smite/Cross Reaper, they didn't to try to SC at all).

VS does have light Property if we wanna go that deep.

It seems like any ws or sc during bosses meikyo/self scs gets retaliated with 99k merc. Been bugging the ***out of me so I've been keeping every run in a spreadsheet, anytime we ws or sc during Ence's SC = 99k, everytime we hold tp til his sc finishes then take him down = no 99k. Since we started holding tp during his SC's a significant run of no 99ks started, I'm about 90% confident right now this is what the deal is. If we get another 20 runs tonight with no 99k, I'll be 100%.

If that were the case my auto would die 100% of the time. But it's only happened maybe 3 out of 20 runs

Yes master's and other dd are wsing too

You guys wsing during his sc or after it's passed? That seems to be the only window wherein 99k gets triggered.

Next thing to look at is whether its a threshold of ws/sc damage, so we'll try doing >10k ws and see if the same behavior is observed.

You can't really stop the auto it definitely goes during his sc, as well as 4 other autos making sc during his sc.

I originally had suspicions of shield block sense he disables shields but you can't take away a pups shield and I've seen zero damage merc strikes. Auto may be getting 99k every single run but shields are negating them.

Did a bunch of runs yesterday. Fought every fight the same way. Also start off with a 4-step Umbra(multiple 99,999 umbras as well), then spam double dark until it died. First 3 fights, we got 99,999'ed. The rest of the fight, minus one, we didn't get 99,999'd.

The 99,999s were sometimes near the start of the battle and sometimes in the middle. There were times when he did it outside of his MS, and there were times when 3-stepping inside of his MS didn't trigger it.

There is no damage threshold, no skillchain damage threshold, skillchain element doesn't matter, his MS doesn't matter, there is no hp trigger, and none of our runs have a cor. It's unlikely that the trigger is something that we're doing to it. It's more likely that the trigger is something it's doing to us.

I did post a few days ago saying I tested the whole skillchain BS and I proved it wrong instantly... I solo queued Ambu, never engaged, never attacked anything, got 99k'd twice out of 3 runs I solo queued.

I've went 0/15 runs with no 99k spamming skillchains (Reso -> Upheaval), went 0/10 or more with no 99k'd spamming no skillchains (Reso and Savage).

There literally is nothing we know of and people think they got the mechanic nailed when they go 0/10 once or something. No one knows mechanic, 12 days into ambu so far and no one will find it.

I've tried 1 hour buffs, still get 99k'd. I've tried no 1 hour buffs, I've tried no geo/brd/cor, still get 99k'd on the odd attempt. It's all RNG.

Your best bet is just suck up the 99k and recover if queue is long. Zerg boss as quick as possible. Everyone saying they know the mechanic cos they went 0 runs out of however many does not help when almost every strat I've read on here has been proven wrong.

It's pretty much that. Everyones got some crazy idea of "oh this is it for sure!" No it's not. It just isn't. I did 6 with blms and no one got 99k thats the answer! Just use blms.

Hell, the condition could rotate. It really could be just random. That is not out of the realm of possible. I really wish they would just *** tell us what the gimmick was after it's over. But I understand why they can't/won't.

There can also be more than one condition. There could be 10. 100.

Well, they could actually tell us the gimmick before hand, it's not really important enough to keep it hidden.

Frustrating the playerbase (when you get 10+ runs ruined in a row from something you don't understand despite REALLY trying to, it's a new level of stupid) isn't really a good idea and being good about communication for a change wouldn't hurt.

You can WS all you want, we do and never does 99K, provided we don't hit it with any light / dark damage. Of course we also kill it in under 30s, so it's SP is up almost it's entire life.


Riiiight...

Will go with the piles of evidence saying otherwise.

*hint* if your gonna stretch stuff, don't use something like 2/3, instead do like 2/10 or 2/12, that way it appears pseudo random. We already know there are multiple ways to trigger 99K and I have an entire LS of people confirming the whole "don't do light / dark damage" thing. In fact one of them found a bullet proof though slow method involving a robot holding the boss while the party kills the adds, then kills the boss. Boss never does 99K during the holding and is piss easy to kill once it's alone.


Yes the boss's should be telegraphing to us via /s messages the changes on their AI script. Something similar to how the Dullahan did it, would make learning this stuff infinitely easier.

They aren't going to reveal it at all. That IS part of the gimmick. That adds depth (annoyance) to the fight itself. Unpredictability. I would not be surprised if they start doing something like this with every new remake fight. Make a very vague mechanic that hinders your success.

Mechanic wise on the one hand, it could be something reasonable like having x buff on. It could be something stupid like having the adds close together multiplies the effect of the move. It could be something that needs to be mewed (think qutrubs). We haven't done every single possible combination of trial and error scenarios to truly test what is causing the ability. But the only thing the gimmick is doing is throwing a wrench in the 100% win rate spam. It's not stopping people from winning completely, just interrupting your success on occasion. This looks like something the developers would do because they aren't changing the battles for V1. So just add a fk yoo mechanic in the mix with random conditions and watch the players fume in response.

Last event added was Aman trove - a truly random event. Nothing triggers the mimic besides just picking the wrong one. No way to guarantee not picking a mimic, it just happens. The event is designed for you to lose sometimes. It's also similarly possible this is just a random mechanic that happens for any number of reasons you do or didn't do.

I mean, there's a way around the mimic in AMAN, too; you kill it.

That's exactly my point. Of course the end result is just beating the boss, but you also can't prevent him from appearing in the first place. You just deal with it if/when it happens. Why can't the 99k just be an intended mechanic that the monster just has at his disposal and may or may not use it in any given fight? In the end, just deal with it.

I understand saying it's random is the easy and lazy route. I'm not trying to disregard claims of a trigger. Just saying people bashing their heads against the wall trying to figure it out might even be fruitless in the end.

Well one component has already been figured out, still haven't seen a single 99K anywhere among a couple dozen runs. Of course we're using a melee zerg method so it may not work for those using SC MB or Ranged / Puppet strats.

And.... the personal insults have begun, that didn't take long.