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So how is everyone doing with this Boss Fight?
Still struggling to beat the fight but mostly may lack of success is the constant players who drop after 1st attempt fail because they want to win on the first go in a DF group with a new content that recently been released.
Right it mostly getting past that DD check in Phase 1 then that Healer and DD check that kicks in once phase 2 hits since it mostly a race to kill all the moogles fast before they start putting too much pressure on the healers.
And... deciding which order to kill the moogles is important. Which I haven't figured out. Only 3 tries so far.
So far, a good kill order I've found working to be: BLM > WHM > WAR > PLD > BRD > THF > RNG > King
3 Kills so far with this.
I can only offer you my tank perspective. My first duty finder group blew the full 90 minutes without ever getting close. We went in blind, but it didn't take long to figure out. The heals just weren't there for us.
I explained it to my second duty finder group and we got it in one shot. I then went in a third time to make sure that the strategy really worked, and it wasn't just a fluke. This new group got it once more with ease after only one wipe, which only came due to an unfortunately timed Confusion on one of our heals. So here's what we did:
Phase One
I marked the targets during phase one, but only so they'd already be marked when phase two began because there was no way in hell that I was going to try to mark everything during phase 2. So with that said, in phase one everyone actually was encouraged to ignore the markers.
The only kill priority in phase one was to focus on the WHM as soon as it popped. The kill order for the rest of phase one isn't really important. As long as the DPS is firing everything they've got, things should die with minimal resistance. The WHM is the only real concern here, because its Cures can make the difference between a Moogle being alive or dead at the transition. As long as you only have two moogles still alive at the transition, the transition nuke should still be survivable. A good duty finder PUG should be able to get it down to only one though. If there are three or more alive, and there's no way for the group to improve their DPS enough to prevent that, then your group's DPS simply isn't going to cut it and you may as well jump ship to spare yourself 90 minutes of torture.
The marks that I placed were as follows, listed in order of the groups that they pop in:
PLD got a red 2
BLM got a yellow 1, and ARC got a yellow 3
WHM got a yellow 2, THF got a yellow 5, and MRD got a red 1
BRD got a yellow 4
Phase 2
I (PLD) stood under the king during the transition. If there was more than one moogle alive at the transition, then I popped Rampart just before the nuke. The moment that the markers reappeared, I fired off Flash two times, Provoked the King (he tends to aggro heals after they cure everyone from the big nuke), hit Flash a third time, then hit Sprint and started kiting everything in a circle along the edge of the arena. One by one, the off tank would provoke a moogle off of me and the group would burn it down. They started with the yellow markers, 1-5, and then moved on to the red markers. Once the little guys were all dead, I stopped kiting and held the king in place near the edge of the arena. I kept him facing away from the group so his frontal nukes weren't a threat. Based on the markers placed in Phase one, the resulting kill order was therefore:
BLM > WHM > ARC > BRD > THF > MRD > GLA > King
Noteworthy during Phase 2 is that one of the moogles can cause the Confusion and/or Charm status. Healers will want to watch for this. My first group's healers couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do about it, but the two healers in my second group figured something out. I don't remember the details of what they were saying during the fight as they figured it out -- I was too busy trying to keep threat on eight mobs -- but I think I saw that Esuna and one other spell proved to be effective in some fashion. I think they mentioned absorbing something for it? Idunno, I don't play a healer so it was all foreign language to me. If this status isn't taken care of though, it can quickly ruin Phase 2. Whichever moogle was causing it though, it wasn't a priority to kill it. The sheer damage from the BLM and ARC, and the heals from the WHM, actually proved harder to deal with even though they appear less threatening on paper.
I wasn't lucky enough to have a Bard throwing Ballad on me in my groups. If I was, then I would have used Flash whenever the moogles caught up to me. Instead, while kiting the group, I mostly tried to conserve my resources by waiting until I lost threat on a target. If I ever did, and it was one of the lesser moogles, then I'd spam Shield Lob without stopping my circular kiting. Once in range, a Lob would end up hitting it, and I'd continue spamming Lob while I kited until I had hate fully back on me -- then I'd hit it with one or two more Lobs for good measure. You don't need to worry about keeping threat up 100% of the time if it robs of you TP that you need for sprinting. It's not the end of the world if you lose a lesser moogle from time to time. Keep your kiting up above all else, and the party should be able to manage just fine until you happen upon a clear shot to pull threat back. The little guys really don't hit that hard, so losing threat on one is not worth changing your kite pattern over -- just spam Lob at lost targets until you have an opportunity to reach them with it, and they'll eventually end up back on you. If you've lost two or three... then maybe you'll want to consider curving in their direction and improvising, but be extremely careful if you try this. If you accidentally wander into a charm or something, it could spell an instant wipe for everyone. (More on what that would entail later.) It might be safer to just ask the off tank to grab one of the ones you lost in that case.
The king is another story. If you're ever at max TP and you feel like you have a sprint-free moment to burn some of it, then you'll want to throw out a Lob or two in his direction. If you ever find that you actually have MP for a Flash, or if you have a Bard helping you with MP, then feel free to fire off a Flash whenever he starts creeping up behind you. You still might lose him from time to time though. Whenever I lost hate on the king, I still wouldn't change up my kiting pattern. That's the situation that I would save Provoke for. I'd immediately hit it with a Provoke. Then I'd spam Shield Lob until I had him a few hits beyond top threat. So aside from the Provoke, I'd get him back on me in the same way that I said I would get one of the little guys back on me. As I said, throw what you can in his direction when you feel like you have resources to spare, but you don't need to overdo it with him. It doesn't take as much as you'd think to hold him for a good long while.
If I saw a green puddle that I had to run through, or if I ever found that my party was camped out on a moogle at the edge of the arena where I was about to be running, then that's when I'd pop Sprint in order to minimize damage on myself and the group. High amounts of TP are good to keep on hand for some lengthy, reliable Sprints, so again -- try to only fire off Shield Lobs if you lost somebody or if you're safely at max TP, and keep the majority of your TP for Sprinting in emergencies.
When it comes to Flash, as I said, without a Bard I tried to conserve resources as much as possible. Without Ballad, I'd only recommend using Flash if the king is creeping up behind you. Otherwise if you are lucky enough to have Ballad on you, feel free to also Flash whenever you have a few of the lesser moogles catching up to you. In any case though, carefully juggling Shield Lobs on the king with TP for Sprints will still be an important balancing act.
When it comes to Defensive cooldowns, they obviously are more helpful to fire off at the early stages of Phase 2 than they are in the later phases. The BLM will be up at the very start of it, and he'll have plenty of AoE that's difficult to dodge. It's safe enough to fire off a cooldown if you see some fire circles on your path, instead of attempting any complicated evasive maneuvers. Green puddles don't seem to show up until the later phases, and if you have to run through those, then using a defensive cooldown immediately beforehand can also make that less threatening. Hallowed Ground isn't especially needed anywhere, so feel free to save it for a worst case scenario: if you see a healer go down, use Hallowed Ground then, to buy yourself a little extra survivability while the remaining healer gets the fallen one back up.
Oh, and speaking of Hallowed Ground, if you ever get charmed or confused as a PLD, don't panic. While a charm/confuse on anyone else would likely spell that player's own death, and a dead kiter would surely wipe the group by unleashing a swarm of moogles onto the healers, chances that are your character will unwillingly pop Hallowed Ground once losing control. So if your character loses control and runs straight into a mass of AoE, dont' worry -- odds are that you're perfectly safe. The problem with you getting charmed is more in the fact that you can't control your movements, and you'll more than likely carry a swarm of AoEing moogles straight into your group. Still not a guaranteed wipe -- if everyone notices in time to disperse, then most of your team should survive the short burst of damage that you bring their way, and you can carry on kiting once the status wears off. If people don't notice in time though... enjoy the show. XD