Ambuscade Volume 1 Discussion - January 2017

Beat Difficult Intense but it was a PD/Conduit zerg with Mewing Lullaby spam... certainly not the intended way to win. These mobs have low hp, one single Volt Strike can remove 25~65% of their life but they have a ton of awful attacks :
Raqs Baladi Dance : AoE Gaze Charm + Burn
Blight Dance : AoE Gaze Petrification + 200~300 HP/tick Poison
Petrifying Dance : AoE Gaze Terror
Chastening Disregard : AoE Gaze Amnesia
Imperiling Disregard : AoE Petrification + 5 seconds Doom
Divine Retribution : AoE that reduces HP to 1, cannot kill. PDT and EA/Scherzo work, it's pretty much the physical version of Zero Hour.

Frigg and Skhati will quickly repop after being killed if Freyja is still alive, Freyja doesn't repop.
They EES at the same time.
Geo debuffs work.

Also, for people that were trying to figure out if GEO can be used to Attunement/Vex through the gaze moves. Our PLD used Fealty, and all gaze status effects were _still_ applied on the PLD. Even tried charm resist gear. Nothing works that we have tried but let us know if you were able to find anything.

With better latency, we believe that any 3 DPS and 3 supports can win if they reacted to the gaze/countergaze moves. (Probably an easy BC for JP players).

I can consistently turn away from all TP moves. The issues occur when the "countergaze-disregard" moves where the server registered me to be still away even though I already turned back to its face. I've only been able to pull it off turning back to a disregard move <20% of the time. My teammates reported the same.

killing main nm caused both sub nms to spam charm so they will need to be killed close to each others time since main NM can resummon the sub nms.

It seems like charm can only be used either if aura is up, or if the MB is dead.

Charm seems to be around 16 range.

Here we go! Complete D (Melee Version). Thank you all (Going to enter list here when I'm not so sleepy) that contributed to this strategy. This is a culmination of all findings and nuances of the battle found on FFXIAH as well as our own findings.

We made a generic strategy so that everyone can win. I will comment on our job choices so it is more clear to understand what we wanted to strategically achieve.

The Setup:
1. Tank (We used NIN or PLD)
2. Melee Piercing DPS (We used DNC/WAR)
3. DPS (We used NIN/WAR)
4. Healing Job with Stona (We used SCH/RDM)
5. BRD/WHM
6. Attack buffing support of your choice (We used GEO/WHM but something like a COR/WHM would also work)


General Battle Strategy:
Buffs: Protect/Shell/Phalanx/RegenV/March/March/Madrigal/Scherzo/Ballads
(Comments: Phalanx and Regen V aren't necessarily required but they are used to counter the Skathi's Poison/Petrify Gaze. Scherzo is for sudden hate changes during EES and would proc on DPS if caught off guard. It is not necessary with melees with good DT sets. A 3 song brd would probably work but for reference, we had a 4 song, Gjaller/Carn/Daurb/HonorMarch BRD.

Battle Layout
A triangle so that all mobs are ~20 distance away. You want to separate the mobs. This is the reason why a GEO is not preferred in this fight (We say BRD is the best choice) but we did use one as our #6th slot because it still provided enough debuffs and most importantly poisonas and stonas. We had one mob on the left pillar, one mob on the right pillar, and one mob was pulled to the start corner. The mages will be in the middle of it all and be >16 distance from all mobs. The Freyja must be faced away from the center of the triangle.

Battle Plan:
Freyja: Will be tanked and damaged by your top Melee Piercing DPS. We used DNC because of a combination of Fan Dance, skill-chains and survavibility. I could imagine a well geared THF can take this role or even a DRG. This player will be responsible for killing Freyja in increments of 25%. At 75%, 50%, and 25%, it will cause all mobs to use EES simultaneously. Only push the percentages when you are sure the other players will survive.

Frigg: Will do nothing but attack... until Freyja is dead. Then it will _immediately_ have huge regain and will spam a "Disregard" and Belly dance move. One melee will attack this mob from the start. The job of this melee is to drop the HP% where it will die in one WS and tank it. The other job of this DPS is to hold hate on this mob and eat the incoming EES every 25% increment. We chose NIN for this role because of Migiwari and the lack of slashing resistance on Frigg. This NIN should take 0 damage throughout the battle. Any DPS can do this role. It is just more hectic because three EES will occur simultaneously and all melees are separated (Can't utilize curaga). Once it reaches a low %, ~4%, communication must be made with the Freyja DPSer. Frigg will die 2nd. The moment that Freyja mob is about to be killed, the Frigg DPS player is turn his/her back because it will _immediately_ do a gaze charm move. After dodging the charm move, turn around and WS it to finish the 2nd mob. Disclaimer: If you turn your back too early, lamia will gain aura and go on a rampage. Timing to turn away from the Frigg is _critical_ and is to be minimized.

Skathi: The most important mob. We found that the best way to deal with this mob is to do nothing to it and always face it with a tank. NA latency is not fast enough in which you can react to the gaze vs the disregard move(need to face it). The disregard move on this mob is 5 tick doom and petrify. The gaze is a 300/tick poison and 1 minute petrify. ] If hate is lost on this NM, you will likely wipe. Do this mob last. A PLD or a NIN is best for this slot and we've used both. Once again, they need to eat a EES every 25%.

Mages will be in the middle of the triangle. Main healer should be curing the Main Piercing DPS (Freyja). There will be lots of Terror and Petrify on this mob. The other support players is to Poisona/Stona the player on the Skathi and support the DPS of the Freyja. If hate is reset, mages must look at the Lamia during the aura to remove the aura so that hate can resume to normal.

Quick Guidelines:
1. Position all 3 mobs in a triangle so that they are far away from each other.
2. Start DPSing the Freyja and Frigg. Tank Skathi without hitting it. With all 3, always face the mob (Do not attempt to turn)
3. Communicate with players about the 25% increments of Freyja. Communicate about migiwari timers (or DT sets and HP top off).
4. If Frigg is ~5%, and Freyja is <25%, you may now coordinate the final push. Get Freyja ready for the final WS in which it will die and then have the player with Frigg turn their back to Frigg. Kill Freyja. Frigg will attempt to charm. Once the charm attempt has registered, turn around and WS kill Frigg. If it doesn't die, don't panic. Face this mob only when it is readying a move that is not belly dance. (1 round of TP hits only) It has high regain at this state and will spam moves. Use that fact to avoid Belly dance.
5. At this point Frigg and Freyja are dead. Skathi gains a large attack boost. All 3 melees may now attack this mob. Do not try to avoid the gaze moves, always look towards the mob. The only move that is fearful is the gaze move which does 300/tick poison and petrify. With 3 mages, this is a piece of cake. If melees have remedy/antidotes, a stona removes the petrify and the players can use an antidote/remedy. If your mages are fast, you won't even need that.

@engage to last death = <5 minutes.

I'm too tired right now to write the guide for the VD Melee strategy. We did win on VD as well without SP and I might write that one up tomorrow.

Spamming VD Intense with 5x PUP and COR. Cor mule rolls companions and Beast, then you ignore him. Two pups target each add and a single PUP OD burns the main. It will be dead long before OD is off, so the OD Pup helps finish off the adds. With a good group it takes about five minutes. Switching to COR after the battle to Cutting cards yourself means you don't ever need to reset SPs.

We killed it on Difficult last night a few more times last night and we think have a strategy using similar mechanism as the melee zerg strat that I had described. We are still refining this strategy since it has its kinks, when we make sure it works all the time, I'll post again with a detailed strategy.

Other findings:
1. We're 100% sure that EES is synced to the Freyja(Middle). Once the Freyja(Middle) is pushed to 75%, all 3 will do EES. It will do it again at 50% and 25%. This particular EES is strange as I'm pretty sure it bypasses Utsusemi/Third Eye. Migiwari works however. You need to top off the melees before you push the main one under these %'s. Scherzo works and can be considered. Unfortunately, only Frigg(Left) is weak to slashing so unless your NIN uses daggers, katana damage is sub-optimal.

2. NA latency sucks. While you need to turn _away_ for most of the TP moves, the "disregard" moves need to be done taken facing the mob. The Skathi(Right) seems to give us the most problems. If you had turned away in reaction to the red lines, realize it's s a "disregard move" and turn back towards the mob, it's already too late and you will be hit with 5 count doom/petrify. If you do not turn for the regular moves, you will be hate reset with a petrify and a 300/tick poison. (I personally think that the aura comes up if you do not successfully dodge a gaze-TP move, this needs to be confirmed)

3. In difficult, the Frigg(Left) doesn't do anything until the Freyja(Middle) dies. Then it will spam charm (which can only happen if you're facing the mob). On VE, none of the lamia do anything, not even the 25% increment EES. I suspect that the difficulty is based upon the types of moves that the lamia will do.

4. Confirming Papesse's previous post, Skathi(Right) is simply slashing resistant. All other damage types do full damage. Frigg(Left) has no slashing resistances. We still prefer piercing on the Freyja(Middle) and we run with piercing with the Freyja(Middle)/Skathi(Right) and slashing on Frigg(Left).

Edit: Changed the names.

Also, if you plan on trying this NM, bring antidotes and holy waters.
Also, if you get silenced, it's not silence, it's Mute.

Freyja and Skathi (Medusa type mobs) are both very resistant to slashing while Frigg (Merrow) doesn't appear to have any particuliar resistance. In Difficult Volt Strike does the same amount of dmg on all when pdif is capped. In VE Mountain Buster (blunt) does about 18k~ on all and Spinning Dive (slashing) does 9k~ on Freyja/Skathi (these 2 BPs have almost the same power at 0 TP), Crescant Fang (piercing) does 4k~ on all.
Something worth knowing is that Medusa, Gurfurlur and Gulool (the ones in the strongholds, nyzul and PW/TC forms) have all a high damage reduction to slashing, the Gulool and Gurfurlur versions in Ambuscade didn't have it though.

Divine Retribution is a Throat Stab type move.

The only issue I see here is that with the 3 together, it'll be pretty impossible to avoid/look at gazes when you need to/don't need too and you'll suffer from doom/petra/poison applications and nasty terrors.

It has been suggested that between Flabra, barstonra, barpetra and geo vex, that the application on the gaze moves are low.

If it is so, then a tank can ignore the disregards and just stay facing away for the entire fight.

Beat Difficult intense using
SAM
DRK
DNC
GEO
GEO
WHM

DNC: Middle
DRK: Left
SAM: Right
GEO1: Fury/Torpor/Wilt
GEO2: Attunement/Vex/Haste
WHM: Cures/Stona

No two hours used.

We theorized that as long as you keep hitting the mob, the aura stays down. We attacked all 3 individually until they were all around 20-30%. Once ready, the DNC killed the main lamina (Middle) and then within 30 seconds kill the other two links asap. Hate stayed on the 3 melees since they were constantly hitting them.

We also think we notice some sort of weapon type weakness. Right seems to take less slashing damage and we've tested with MNK and we think that blunt/piercing doesn't take such a penalty on the right one. The main one was taking 500 per hit from daggers and 40-60k Rudra's.

Skathi is weak to Blunt, was doing 20K Judgements on my WAR. Also this seems easily done on D/VD but everyone needs to work together, WHM's can't be chilling in the back watching Video's.

Also note, the middle is weak to piercing, our THF was doing 40K Rudra's and 16K Eviscerations on it. We died because the WHM was kinda dumb and very casual about curing people and stood the entire time with their back turned out of cure range of the THF. Also if your using melee don't go running in engaged, let someone aggro and position them first. They don't really do anything until their HP drops under 100%.

I had a rather messy party for D but it was working. 3 pups, 2 smn and a Cor. Each pup took a mob away, didn't ever see the aura being a problem.

Would like to see it being done with a run or pld super tanking instead but that is for another time.

Volt Strike absolutely flattens the Lamia.

Going to try optimize the setup for kill speed but it looks like SMN might be ruling the roost again this month. BLM might be do-able as well so will try that as well.

The Survival Guide near Nuhn might work. Don't remember how many Lamia are near the Experimental Lamia pop spot, though.

Lamia supply is to say the least, terrible. Taken to doing Deserter Assault from Ilrusi, there's 12 lamia on that map.