Primary cause of T5 Divebomb failures

I had found that people, subconsciously I think, believe that they don't want to invade another person's space and their own personal space not to be encroached on, which leads to people not stacking properly for mechanics such as this. Every time I did T5, I told people there is no such thing as personal space - you stand on top of each other, no exceptions. Just like a pack of cards.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkDedede

I'm going to assume that the pit tactic isn't the original method of avoiding dive bombs. How were dive bombs avoided initially?

---

Some progression groups tried to avoid divebombs by simply spreading out and staying aware. However, this is very inefficient and dangerous. After going over videos, we noticed that divebombs came from predetermined locations, and that by baiting it into a location that was advantageous for dodging, the mechanic became trivial. After we released our kill video, I imagine most people looked at it and said "Oh, that's way easier" and it became the norm.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zaft

Some progression groups tried to avoid divebombs by simply spreading out and staying aware. However, this is very inefficient and dangerous. After going over videos, we noticed that divebombs came from predetermined locations, and that by baiting it into a location that was advantageous for dodging, the mechanic became trivial. After we released our kill video, I imagine most people looked at it and said "Oh, that's way easier" and it became the norm.

---

Pretty much. I've never seen any group do it any other way (though I was far from trailblazing in BCOB). Plus, SE pretty much highlights the pit by having the snakes spawn facing into it.

The answer is... #getgood

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Itseotle

The way this strategy works the way it does is because of the pre-determined locations that twin can appear for the dive bombs, as well as the boss's facing angle. If everyone is stacked correctly, twin appears just slightly in front of the group, targets a player for Divebombs, but since everyone is between Twintania and the wall, Twin faces the wall and dives out of bounds.

---

Neat. I've never been able to see her dive to even guess at this. I take it that the pit's just been a nice coincidental landmark then. And I feel bad that I know how to Rot, but not the history behind this then. lol
But why did they flatten the arena then? I can't think of any other AoEs that could've been affected.

And for discussion's sake, wouldn't it be the same difference then if everyone started outside of the pit, and then ran into the pit at the sound? (i.e. still run to her backside, but now she's baited to dive inwards) I would figure there'd be less room for positional error, and maybe higher risk of people running into the wall itself. And it's been a long time since I've been in T5, but I recall misbaited dives knocking me backwards and sideways, into the wall.. Would a failed attempt in this scenario tend to move me away from the wall then?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Itseotle

This is not accurate. The way this strategy works the way it does is because of the pre-determined locations
http://i.imgur.com/JEU8mAx.jpg

---

Winner!

Want to reiterate, Twin's Divebombs are predetermined, she executes from one of possibly hundreds of different predetermined paths depending on where her target is standing when she targets them. You stack in the pit to bait the outward divebomb which is the easiest one to dodge.

There's probably other decent spots, but it'd take hundreds of wipes and analyzing to find them.

As for hitboxes, sheathing your weapon can help if you need to use your character model as reference. (since your legs aren't as spread when sheathed),

So, I got super curious about some of you guys mentioning the original method and found this since I've never actually seen the original strategy being played out. This probably isn't actually it, but if it is, it seems rather inefficient due to the camera. Link is there if anyone wants to see. o_o

What I don't understand is why, contrary to every other battle up to T5, they didn't just add telegraphed AoE markers to the attack. That way we'd know exactly which direction it's coming from and have a far easier time dodging the thing. Nope, we'll just have Twintania fly in from an arbitrary direction so you never really know which way you're supposed to be running unless you take advantage of an exploit.

Don't even get me started on Twister mechanics either. The whole idea of 'keep running and don't cross the streams' is one of the dumbest fight mechanics I've ever encountered in a video game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

What I don't understand is why, contrary to every other battle up to T5, they didn't just add telegraphed AoE markers to the attack.

---

It's so that you actually pay attention to the field and those around you; since you seem to hate the ditch method. None of the other divebombs in the coils have AoE markers either. :u

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

Don't even get me started on Twister mechanics either. The whole idea of 'keep running and don't cross the streams' is one of the dumbest fight mechanics I've ever encountered in a video game.

---

Yet, it is also one of the most effective mechanics in the game. Instead of running around like headless chickens, you actually have to watch where you're going.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

What I don't understand is why, contrary to every other battle up to T5, they didn't just add telegraphed AoE markers to the attack. That way we'd know exactly which direction it's coming from and have a far easier time dodging the thing.

---

Because having everything handed to you is kind of boring. It's fun to figure out mechanics as a team.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

Don't even get me started on Twister mechanics either. The whole idea of 'keep running and don't cross the streams' is one of the dumbest fight mechanics I've ever encountered in a video game.

---

It was far worse prior to the nerf. Simply put, imagine a large donut has been placed around you. If you stay inside the donut hole, or if you leave the safety of the donut, you die. If you stop moving, you die. If you accidentally step back onto somewhere you previously have, you die. Instead you have to make sure you continue to move, but stay within the donut, without stopping or doubling back. Generally done by moving in a spiral shape (almost like a twister...hey wait!).

Video of what you used to have to do here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEeiyboAydI

We had a couple of people in our FC who did this, didn't quite get far enough in the ditch or were too slow when the db happens. In the end, we had another member show them another ditch they could stand in away from the rest of us. That way if they were targeted, they could still attempt to dodge but if they did get hit, it didn't wipe us all. We got them both through T5 this way. Just have anyone who struggles stand elsewhere near the edge for that portion of the fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by synesthetic

But why did they flatten the arena then? I can't think of any other AoEs that could've been affected.

---

It was because of player attacks. From the Patch 2.2 notes:

Quote:

---

The following issues have been addressed: An issue in “The Binding Coil of Bahamut – Turn 5” wherein, if the battle with Twintania takes place in an area where there is a steep difference in elevation, close range attacks may not be able to reach the enemy, in which case players must move in closer than normal for their attacks to hit.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by synesthetic

And for discussion's sake, wouldn't it be the same difference then if everyone started outside of the pit, and then ran into the pit at the sound? (i.e. still run to her backside, but now she's baited to dive inwards) I would figure there'd be less room for positional error, and maybe higher risk of people running into the wall itself.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by synesthetic

And it's been a long time since I've been in T5, but I recall misbaited dives knocking me backwards and sideways, into the wall.. Would a failed attempt in this scenario tend to move me away from the wall then?

---

This is because the AOE of Divebombs is actually larger than Twintania's hitbox. When a player gets hit by Divebomb, they are repelled in the opposite direction they are in relation to Twintania. So if Twin is Divebombing North, and your standing on her right (East) then you will get launched to the East, away from Twin. This is why you get repelled backwards on failed placement. If you are behind Twin, and since the Divebomb is bigger than Twin, you get hit and flung backwards. This is also why the strategy doesn't work in reverse, because players will move out of the Divebomb AoE when they run up the hill. Notice how those people who are slow to move get blasted out of the pit towards the center?

EDIT: For those people saying that spotting Twin during Divebombs is tricky, there is something here that you should play with to make it easier...
http://i.imgur.com/fLvlwnl.jpg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

What I don't understand is why, contrary to every other battle up to T5, they didn't just add telegraphed AoE markers to the attack. That way we'd know exactly which direction it's coming from and have a far easier time dodging the thing.

---

I want to comment on this as well. If you look at the entirety of all the coils, you will notice that the "Gate Keepers", T5, 9, and 13, are the most demanding turns. They are done so to be more challenging because they are essentially the "Final Boss". If it were too easy, it would cheapen the experience of killing the "Final Boss". They are also there to not only test the things you have learned previously as a player, but to prepare you for the next series of coils/content.

Allow the camera to pan out twice as far as it does now and many mechanics become a joke.

I'm really not a hardcore gamer (I cleared all the Extreme Primals, some in cheap way, but I never tried T6-13), and it took me maybe a mouth to clear T5 (in PF), and I die once on this clear run, during the Twisters phase. In all my tries, the Divebombs phase was not the real problem, but the Twisters phase. So I don't know why people doesn't get the Divebombs phase after some try. Yes, I die during the Divebombs phase, but after few try, you get it. If I can get it, a lot of people can get it... Maybe try the trick of the tank (or off-tank) running with the snakes during the last three divebombs, if that's the problem...

If you are teaching people how to do T5, dive bombs in particular, having two stacks of Disseminate is definitely not the way to go leading into the divebombs. You are looking at a 50% damage increase from getting hit when someone messes up. Without the disseminate stacks it's very possible to survive and recover from a misplaced dive bomb marker so long as you aren't thrown into the wall. If the people you are playing with don't know dive bombs you shouldn't be killing the snakes in the pit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdamFyi

It's so that you actually pay attention to the field and those around you; since you seem to hate the ditch method. None of the other divebombs in the coils have AoE markers either.

---

Except, no one bothers to do that. Instead we're using an exploit where you hide in a ditch so that you can FORCE divebombs to come from a specific direction. You can't even "pay attention" to everything around you, because the camera is terrible for it. If you took the time to focus on Twintania, you'd lose the focus on the rest of the enemies you need to fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdamFyi

Yet, it is also one of the most effective mechanics in the game. Instead of running around like headless chickens, you actually have to watch where you're going.

---

Define 'effective'. Effective at killing players? So are dozens of other attacks. You can't watch where you're going if you don't actually know where you've been. It's not like it gives you any visual indication that you've been there, so a lot of it is guesswork. I can scarcely even figure out how anyone worked out the mechanics of it to begin with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zaft

Because having everything handed to you is kind of boring. It's fun to figure out mechanics as a team.

---

Except, only a handful of people actually worked this out, the rest of us just follow guides and do as we're told. I'll say it again, the ditch method is an exploit and is almost certainly not the way to beat the fight as intended by the developers.

The fact that no one has a workable alternative shows it's a poorly designed mechanic.

"poorly designed" is subjective, and I'd like to see proof to back the statement that this isn't want the "developers intended". That's you opinion.

We can say for a fact that the developers intended to kill people with dive bombs. That's the goal of the dive bomb. They intended to make a fight hard enough where people would have to develop team work strategies to defeat the mechanics. I'd say it's working as intended unless you can prove that the developers specifically do not want people to dodge dive bombs in the pit your post is nothing more than your opinion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

I'll say it again, the ditch method is an exploit and is almost certainly not the way to beat the fight as intended by the developers.

---

You would think that the developers would've patched it by now if it was an exploit and not intended. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

The fact that no one has a workable alternative shows it's a poorly designed mechanic.

---

There is an alternative method. The difference is that the other method requires the party to be more aware of where Twintania would dive from. The ditch method is just more efficient.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CGMidlander

I've been in many, many T5 runs, and the primary cause of Divebomb failure seems to be this scenario:

http://i.imgur.com/BMYfdn7.jpg

Problem is, many people don't seem to get it when they are told to go deeper.

How do you teach people who repeatedly fail this, despite repeated instruction?

---

Sometimes, it's tough on melee. As a NIN, I sometimes need to step forward to hit the adds because the tank has not pulled into the pit all the way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

It could be easier if you weren't trying to cheese it with the pit way.

---

Yeah I wonder.. Because it's not like it hurts that badly, it's just the knock back that kills you when it knocks you into the wall.

So if people stand in line with enough spacing between to not all get hit, then healer just heals whoever gets hit, it could work just as easy I think.

Also, lot of the issue may be with console players, they don't have the means to easily manipulate the camera to see exactly how far they need to go, and moving with analog stick has the residual motion as opposed to a keyboard.

I've always thought the primary cause of divebomb failures in ANY part of Coil was just people needing to get good... in general.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

It should also be noted that T5 is the only instance so far where the divebomb mechanic works backward: Divebombs come from where the marker APPEARS, not where it disappears.

---

I'm pretty sure this is why Divebombs are so hard to get people to deal with correctly -- nobody really knows how they work. Everything about the attack is pretty unintuitive.

The marker is extremely misleading, the attack itself doesn't give much information on how it works other than the fact it just wrecked your team. At least in Turn 9, it gives you warning before it happens and you can see the directions where the dragons are coming from. But that's about it.


Most attacks in this game give you SOME kind of intuitive way to identify the mechanic. A debuff marker, a tether, an AoE marker...divebombs just puts a green circle over your head, and then people get blown away in random ass directions by something, from some direction, they dont know, they just know they died from it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dice137

I've always thought the primary cause of divebomb failures in ANY part of Coil was just people needing to get good... in general.

---

While that is true, that's a hard problem to propose a solution for..
Some people will just be bad no matter what.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaelah

In the end, we had another member show them another ditch they could stand in away from the rest of us. That way if they were targeted, they could still attempt to dodge but if they did get hit, it didn't wipe us all. We got them both through T5 this way.

---

People like this are the true victors in my book, taking noobs and figuring out ways to make it work.. It's easy to raid when you have 8 people who can invest their undivided attention for 3-4 hours straight.. Only challenge in this model is finding 7 like minded people as yourself.. Now, doing it with people who are subpar, that's a real accomplishment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

Sometimes, it's tough on melee. As a NIN, I sometimes need to step forward to hit the adds because the tank has not pulled into the pit all the way.

---

DPS Loss > Entire party wiping because you wanted more DPS.

This unfortunately is a problem people have with T9. They don't focus on the mechanics - they focus on "MUH ROTATION" and so the people I try to help I have to stress thsi to: I would rather you do 0 damage and perform the mechanics perfectly, than for you to be doing your "Top DPS." Once people get over themselves long enough to practice what they need to, they often exceed my expectations and the damage comes naturally after that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eidolon

DPS Loss > Entire party wiping because you wanted more DPS.

This unfortunately is a problem people have with T9. They don't focus on the mechanics - they focus on "MUH ROTATION" and so the people I try to help I have to stress thsi to: I would rather you do 0 damage and perform the mechanics perfectly, than for you to be doing your "Top DPS." Once people get over themselves long enough to practice what they need to, they often exceed my expectations and the damage comes naturally after that.

---

A Reminder I Always Give: "If your HP hits 0, so does your DPS. Mechanics are your top priority."

Bad players. I knew the answer before I even came inside.

I honestly think the mechanic and encounter needs redone to have circles that appear before dive bombs drop. One of the problems I have with the encounter is how hard everything is to see. If I had a circle or something indicating where they would land before they did I would have a much better and funner time at the encounter, no need to even nerf it.

But if you know they divebomb circle is coming, why do you let your eyes wander around? You have like a whole 40 seconds give or take to do whatever you want, then zone in on either the characters or the focus target window. Sounds like people just have a severe case of tunnel vision.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

What I don't understand is why, contrary to every other battle up to T5, they didn't just add telegraphed AoE markers to the attack.

---

Because that's not true of every battle up to T5. Of note, the two cyclops enemies available at launch have no AOE markers at all.

Quote:

---

If you are teaching people how to do T5, dive bombs in particular, having two stacks of Disseminate is definitely not the way to go leading into the divebombs. You are looking at a 50% damage increase from getting hit when someone messes up. Without the disseminate stacks it's very possible to survive and recover from a misplaced dive bomb marker so long as you aren't thrown into the wall. If the people you are playing with don't know dive bombs you shouldn't be killing the snakes in the pit.

---

Disseminate is really not the problem. Majority of the time you get divebombed, you are going into the wall and dying anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

It should also be noted that T5 is the only instance so far where the divebomb mechanic works backward: Divebombs come from where the marker APPEARS, not where it disappears.

---

T13 Divebomb works the same way, the difference is T5 DB has a cast time of 1s, the ones in T13 have have 5.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Viridiana

Because that's not true of every battle up to T5. Of note, the two cyclops enemies available at launch have no AOE markers at all.

---

True, but that doesn't mean the attack isn't telegraphed. You can see exactly when they're powering up, and you instinctively know to back off. You don't need the AoE marker because you know the AoE is centered on the cyclops.

With the divebombs, the marker above a player tells you nothing, merely who it's targeting. You don't know which direction it's coming from, nor the resulting size of the attack. For all the player knows, it's as wide as a house and swoops in from all angles.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdamFyi

You would think that the developers would've patched it by now if it was an exploit and not intended. :p

---

Not really. Ninja tanking using Utsusemi was considered an 'exploit' in the early days of Final Fantasy XI. It was never 'patched' because everyone was so used to doing it. If they actually patched this exploit so that people couldn't abuse the pit they would have literally every single coil player screaming at them. SE aren't stupid, they know when not to 'fix' something just as much as when to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

With the divebombs, the marker above a player tells you nothing, merely who it's targeting. You don't know which direction it's coming from, nor the resulting size of the attack. For all the player knows, it's as wide as a house and swoops in from all angles.

---

You can actually see where the dive is coming from, and Twintania will always dive from the same location on that particular spot. So if you stand in center of the arena and get targeted, Twintania will dive from a predetermined location at you, and that's where she always dives from if a party member in the middle is targeted. There isn't really anything strange about the mechanic. If it was as random as you are claiming, the ditch method wouldn't work. The ditch is popular because it causes about 75% of the dive's width to go outside the arena, that way you need to move less, giving you enough time to get back in the original position.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemuria

True, but that doesn't mean the attack isn't telegraphed. You can see exactly when they're powering up, and you instinctively know to back off. You don't need the AoE marker because you know the AoE is centered on the cyclops.

---

But you have no idea how far to back off. I pretty much never get hit by it and even I don't know how far you actually need to be to avoid it. Partially because the easiest way to do the fight is to never leave melee range. >_>

Edit: As a second example, there's no AOE indicator on any of the Chimera voices, either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

You can actually see where the dive is coming from, and Twintania will always dive from the same location on that particular spot. So if you stand in center of the arena and get targeted, Twintania will dive from a predetermined location at you, and that's where she always dives from if a party member in the middle is targeted. There isn't really anything strange about the mechanic. If it was as random as you are claiming, the ditch method wouldn't work. The ditch is popular because it causes about 75% of the dive's width to go outside the arena, that way you need to move less, giving you enough time to get back in the original position.

---

I would add that the ditch is also the go to area because the DPS check on the snakes used to be very tightly tuned before echo and overgear to the point of simply killing the snakes in time was almost as difficult as dodging the divebombs themselves. The Pit is where the first snakes pop so that you're already standing there and can jump on them as quickly as possible.

The Pit isn't an exploit, it's just the most efficient way of doing it. Otherwise, everyone stacking in the center for T13 divebombs so that Bahamut and Twin always pass through the center is just as much of an exploit.