Ark Angels II / Divine Might II (Discussion)

Can your paladin solo survive Dominion Slash + Arrogance Incarnate spam on D/VD? I'm really curious to see what he uses for gear if he does. Our LS hasn't attempted VD yet, but we've been successful on D using a Geo in melee range.

An appropriately geared pld can easily solo survive VD arrogance with scherzo with just a brd and the pld curing.

This
It isn't a problem really at all, your pld has to pay attention to songs. The moment scherzo is wiped off or wears it needs to be called out. (I am assuming your talking about elvaan)

What can hurt is arrogance followed by a holy 2 but really again the whm should be on point. I'm talking about vd aswell, anything lower than vd is a joke from a pld point of view.

[13:35:55]EEV readies 
Arrogance

Incarnate
.
[13:35:56]takes 2398 points of damage.
[13:35:56]*blankedoutname*was defeated by EEV.

[08:37:16]EEV readies 
Arrogance

Incarnate
.
[08:37:16]takes 1911 points of damage.
[08:37:16]*blankedoutname* was defeated by EEV.

[10:42:25]EEV readies 
Arrogance

Incarnate
.
[10:42:25]takes 2517 points of damage.
[10:42:25]*blankedoutname* was defeated by EEV.

[16:17:51]EEV readies 
Arrogance

Incarnate
.
[16:17:51]takes 2771 points of damage.
[16:17:51]*blankedoutname* was defeated by EEV.


Yeah, I love how easy EV is, totally a joke for those 4 paladins.
And that's just this weeks attempts. *none of these paladins are me, but I'm not gonna put names out there, they know who they are*

All of which claimed to have scherzo on, *I was not the bard either*.

mnk / mnk / whm / whm / brd(sub thf)/PLD

Order is EV>anything else. That's for normal 4-5 NMs (might want to add a COR is you are gimp). SV ma min min min min for EV, galka can be a pain since you /war. 2 WHM strongly recommended.

Just to be clear, you don't have to clear the zone for gear drops. We usually get 1 to 2 DM specific items plus several AA specific ones. With luck on EV and quick pulls you kill all 5 but if you want to be safe, have a COR reset soulvoice prior to entering and/or use one or more cors to speed up elvaan (you can also have your mnks use 300 tp shell crusher at start).

PLD RNGx4 BRD WHM can 100% clear all 6 if you have the relic RNG and an ochain PLD though. The above option is good if you don't have access to those. PLD having repulse mantle is mandatory if not using 3rd party tools to block knockback.

Also unrelated, but if you have a PLD who actually knows what a cure set is, you can do all of the VDAAs without a WHM if you for some reason had another RNG to bring. BRD+PLD curing is plenty for a good PLD.

pld relic rngx4 brd whm can also kill 4/5 VD, which'll likely result in better loot than 5/5 normal

just have to be careful on elv to keep the pld capped at all times and never swap out of dt, once elvs dead the rest is easy

Sorry, meant RNG x3. Dunno why I typed 4. That's actually a really good idea though, never tried before. Full clear normal should be a lot easier for less than optimal players though at least. Normal is totally doable with only a 2song brd.

4/5 VD with 7 players :) ? Gogo vid !

not going to waste my merits on a 4/5 when i need no ra/ex and can bring a couple extras to get all the plutons

if you don't want to take my word for it, no skin off my ***

Don't take me wrong, i'm not saying you didn't do it.

I really want to know your strat though, if you want to share.

Having a pld holding 4 Very Difficult AA is impressive but I can see a REALLY REALLY good one doing so.

But 4 rangers killings 4 VD AA before time out is just wow :).

I'd like to see it.

Honestly, you have it backwards. The damage isn't an issue if you have nice RNGs. It's really only like 24-26 minutes of shooting, there is time to engage taru but I never killed it.

Living through the elvaan is much riskier, because even at 100% hp the galka will occasionally SC off other AAs and arrogance will take a big chunk of your HP. I'm galka, but no burtgang, and I'm pretty sure there is a possibility of you dying despite doing everything correctly. Burtgang would make it much more reliable. I save overkill for the mithra so that I don't have to risk getting charmed, 4 overkills has always forced charm before fealty wears for me.

Also helps to keep clarion up the whole fight, which I assume is common sense, but maybe not?

If I painted it as something that every group could do, that's my bad. The mechanics of the fight are not difficult, but the gear requirement is high. You can remove all the risk by adding an extra PLD(or having a burtgang) so you don't have to worry about arrogance matching something else, and if you have weak RNGs you're still probably looking at better loot from 3/5 VD than 5/5 normal.

Don't need tons of RNG's for Normal difficulty. Just typical melee setups work great. We recently did

MNK MNK WAR BRD COR WHM
MNK MNK MNK BRD COR WHM
PLD PLD WHM ??? THF RDM

Normally we don't have that many MNK's, but it's just what we had on for events. All DD's go /NIN and be sure to know how to switch to a PDT set when they have hate. One BRD was 4 song the other 3 song, can't remember what the last guy was. All of them just melt under that much buffed firepower. You don't even need that many songs, two 2 song BRD's could pull it off.

Anyone can win if they keep the DD's buffed and the DD's know how to quickly switch to PDT. On normal their attacks aren't nearly bad enough to cause a problem. It's only when you get to D / VD that no-hate decoy RNG's become your only option.

He doesn't do it no worry, he just likes to pull stuff out of his *** just like he pretended to clear VD gk with mnks/war. I can see such a setup clearing 2-3 VD but otherwise that's BS. EV will rape his face at one point.

I don't think the "defense down" effect lands on AA's. Unless there has been some update, the last I heard, these weaponskills with additional effects had floored magic accuracy.

They didn't have scherzo and those plds weren't using much/any DT gear, either way you're doing it wrong. VD Arrogance hits me for 1k~ using a DT set which even with a holy2 follow up I have 0 issues surviving without a whm healing. Dominion Slash doesn't dispel songs either so thats not an excuse for getting 1 shotted by arrogance.


Taking 18 people, even with lousy gear, in on Normal is a waste. You can easily do difficult with that setup. Difficult is 1 guaranteed DM specific drop from each AA which is a large boost in yield over ~Normal.

you kill EV first, nothing any of them do is threatening once elv is dead

if you read my post, i stated elv is the biggest threat and the best addition is a second pld if you don't have burtgang

then again, you still need cheat buffs to win single vds, so why don't you go back to the shallow end

It's good to see others share the same viewpoints as I on DM II. I now low-man difficult with 12 just for drops and not necessarily to clear. As stated before, the drops are better more often than not, and we can clear 3-4 AA's before timing out.

Our order is EV > GK > HM. Sometimes we'll swap out HM for MR if folks want a shot at Felistris Mask, etc. Once my group gets all the Kyu's and Seraphi's we need, we'll start focusing on AA-specific earrings and rotate the kill order.

My logic is this:

You spend 15 merits to fight 1 AA.
For 5 merits more, you get to fight 3-4 AA's for drops before timing out (low-man).

All my RNG's are 119 though, so that does help with the speed and efficiency of the battle, and both BRD's are 3-song.

In regards to Absolute Incarnate, as also stated before, your run is doomed if your PLD's are poorly geared. One problem groups face is not everyone understands that AI is breath damage. So you know all those -BDT Dark Rings you threw away in Aby Kon? Go back and get them.

4 AA with 4 rangers, means you can clear any single VD AA with 1 ranger ?

I mean, I understand that the rangers I played with may not be as good as yours, but they were good and well geared.

I rememeber a vd galka run with pld(one of the best), relic rangerx2, cor brd whm(could have afk without notice). And we cleared in like 28 mins with no death.

We clearly did something wrong and I like to learn.

you can't kill galka with 1 rng, and that's a really stupid comparison to make

galka has significantly more hp than the rest, of course it takes longer.. but if you're taking 28 min with a 4song brd then your RNGs are absolute garbage(vd galka with 2 rng should be ~15 min.. mithra right about 10, hume and elv 11-12)

Even if you have the gear, RNG is a job where attention is really noticable. Without auto-attack, waiting an extra 1 second between shots is costing you >20% of your damage..

sorry for being stupid then.

edit:
The bard (me) had only 3 songs, carying 4 through all the fight with clarion.

but you have a point on the delay between attacks. Should make a major difference.

Thanks for the answer.

yea, those numbers are for no clarion since i usually do multiple singles at once, sounds like your RNGs are slacking on reload time

With 12 people you should be full clearing difficult. 4rngs with 119s should see clear times around 22-25 mins pending on taru being taru.

Pulling stuff out of your *** too

Not all of the WS with additional effects have floored m.acc. For example, yukikaze blind lands reliably with decent duration on the eye NM in yorcia delve. Kasha para lands on a lot of things, gekko silence etc. Only some of the ws are still broken, others seem to be working as inteded.

No you can't. The NM's have too high aoe damage output, they'll kill all the DD's off very fast. There is no amount of buffs you can give the DD's that will make them last longer, they will be killed off faster then they can unweak, though you could probably take a few of the NM's down with you. The damage scaling between N and D is stupid, it goes from semi-survivable (fast at putting on DT gear and not using Berserk / LR) to simply non-survivable. Crap like Havoc Spiral, Dominion Slash, Shield Bash, Cloud Splitter, Rampage, CDC, Amon Drive, Guillitine, Cross Slash, Dragonfall (whatever GK's multhit aoe move is called), Fudo, Gekko, ect.. can all destroy you. I've seen Diaga -> Shield Bash -> Dominion Slash and two MNK's fall down and the rest of us are in red / orange HP, and that's on Normal. BR Circle Blade -> Cross Slash -> CDC x2. Attack -> Dragonfall -> Gekko all happening within a few seconds and killing someone off, again on normal.

All that crap is survivable on normal if you have a PDT set, you'll still take north of 1000 damage most of the time but it won't kill you unless the NM's using cheese. On D/VD the cheese factor gets turned up to 11 and suddenly anything that get through shadows can potentially one shot you even in PDT gear.

Or you can use no-emity RNG's and laugh at how easy the fight is.

For people wanting to know why the AA's do such ridiculous damage on D/VD, it's because LCF is still applied and they have a 4.0 cRatio cap. The iLevel system doesn't apply to LCF it seems, so even having 119 gear on everything your still treated as a level 99 character vs a level 119 opponent (N) or even higher (D/VD). Now imagine what a level 126 NM would do to a level 99 player.

I didn't even bother reading the rest of your post because this is just so wrong.

I have cleared D using a melee setup (0 nins involved) with 13 chars, that includes multiple people 2-3 boxing (this is in no way a brag, it could be done by far less). Other linkshells have also cleared all VD singles using non-nin melee setups also so your statement is clearly not made from a place of knowledge.

Believe you are jumping to your own conclusions on this one going off your own speculation.

Pulling stuff from reliable sources:

(Source)
Yes that is widely known. However, there are many that do. This is for both you and pchan.
Confirmation of magic accuracy problem associated with Shell Crusher (and other weaponskills/abilities):
(Source)

I provided my evidence. Do you have any pchan?

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