Looking for some turn 4 Coil advice

I'm trying help out my new static coil group as we're struggling on turn 4. There's a metric ton of video guides on youtube, several written ones across the net, and I'm mostly wondering (aside from adapting based on group composition) if there's a de facto or highly recommended guide. I've watched several, but I've noticed a few of the much earlier video guides have information that seems to be out of date.

Here's our group (mid 80s for iLVL is our rough average):
BLM
Two BRD
MNK
SCH
WHM
PLD
WAR

Two issues we're having I think is our 'DPS approach' and our tank getting taken out by the dreadnought in phase 3 after being fed the spiders. Is there anything specifically our healers/tank could be doing to overcome this? Any advice is appreciated on these two points.

Also, any quick tips on song use through the phases? Is it recommended for the BRDs to 'multidot' the knights in phase 2? Should all DPS reserve all/most cooldowns for phase 3? Thanks again.

Have your DPS save all cooldowns for Dreadnaughts, and if DPS is really slacking, make sure your OT is using Sword oath or Unchained and have all your DPS carry Mega Potions for your respective classes. And as for Multidotting, there's no reason not to do it. As for song use, At phase 4, 1 bard pops TP song and the other pops MP. My group considers this a "break" phase before Phase 5 so we don't go all out on the DPS. Again saving all cooldowns for Dreads. having the MP song also ensures I have enough MP to practically NEVER need to use Shroud to regen MP

Since the tank keeps dying, make sure they're rotating cooldowns and have the healers pre-curing (Cure 1/Aldoquim, then Cure 2/Physick for a heavy hit). It WILL lead to overcuring but PLEASE do not read the dread's animations for damage. the Roto-swipe animation is highly out of sync with actual damage. It's also good to know that when the dread hits about 15%, it's crit rate goes up.

For the fed dreadnought, healers need to aggressively heal the tank and keep them at around 80% or higher at all times. Your tank probably eats it when the dread auto attacks and cleaves very close together, which is a pretty hefty damage spike. Keeping the tank topped with aggressive use of adloquium is effective (sch). If the black mage has virus or eye for an eye, they can be rotated with the healers for extra mitigation. Our party uses mage's ballad on phase 4, which allows healers to regain mp after the dread and keep our paladins flashing through the aoe phase. Hope some of this helps!

Thanks Ninten and Seryl. Thats exactly the kind of specific advice I was hoping for, and should help us out. Any other thoughts or recommendations are certainly welcome and appreciated, too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darwyn_Ulondarr

Here's our group (mid 80s for iLVL is our rough average):
BLM
Two BRD
MNK
SCH
WHM
PLD
WAR

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This is just what I do but it works. You only have one magic DPS so on w2 you want to have ALL your DPS kill the MT's Solder. The BLM then moves onto the ST Solder and the others go to the MT Knight and then the ST Knight. The ST's Solder and Knight should die about the same time doing it this way. This does two things. 1) It frees up your MT from having anything on him when the w3 Dred pops. AND it frees up your ST (I am assuming the WAR) almost immediately when w3 starts, if not at before w3 begins. This will allow the WAR to get up Storm's Path up right away on the Dred and help out with Damage. You want this dred dead before the next wave so DPS should use CDs here.

For w4 my groups have one tank take one Spinerack(sp). This makes it much easier to stun and avoid Pox. Have all DPS take out the WARs one first. The WAR will have hate on all the other bugs because of Overpower just being so much better at AoE Enmity than anything the PLD has. Then move onto the PLDs and then take out as many bugs as you can. Your teams iLVL is pretty average so I would suggest single targeting them down, simply to get as many dead as possible. If you AoE them down they might all still be around and have a chance at getting eatn and that would wipe you for sure. My group AoEs them but our DPS are higher around i88ish. Try both ways though and see if you can do the AoE method.

w5= MT takes dred. Again before you only have one magic DPS I would suggest focusing EVERYONE on the Solder breaking the SS and killing it fast. Then the Melee DPS kill the Knight while your BLM switches to the Dred.

w6= MT takes second dred. MNK LBs the Spinerack and the ST takes everything else away from the MT. Your SCH should be ready to Lustrate the hell outa the MT here. The MT also must try their best to have some form of Defensive Ability active at all times while having both dreds on him. OK, the kill order for w6 the way my teams do it: Spinerack, w5 dred, Solder (everyone cause of only having one magic DPS), Melee kill the Knight and BLM starts on the bugs, after Knight is down kill what bugs you have left. My team feeds the final bug to the dred at this point. You want to avoid feeding anything to the dreds while both are up and kicking or they will kick your PLDs butt hard. Bash the hell outa the final Dred and have your WHM get Medica2 up right away when the rage timer kicks in and have them use their Divine Seal. Once the Divine Seal is down have the SCH use Fey Illumination, Rouse and Whispering dawn. This should be enough healing to finish off the fight.

For your BRDs: w1 have one of them sing Army's Peon and one Foe's Requiem. w2 sing nothing and get your MP back. w3 the Army Peon BRD from w1 should sing Foe's. w4 depends on how you do it but I would think with your party I would have the w1 FR BRD sing a Ballad cause your healers will probably need the MP. w5= sing nothing recover MP. w6= depending on how much time you have till the engrage, you will want one doing Foe's and one doing Ballad cause the healers will need that MP for the enrage.

for P3, right after Dreadnaughts eat spider. almost ALWAYs , he will do his ability swipe(w/e it call lol) and another atk or skill at the same time. Therefore Tank will take around 3.5-5K right off the bat. I usually pop some CD as soon as he eat spider. ( i pop rampart, convo, foresight, anything that has 120 sec or less) after that the damage become much more managable.

do you guy able to kill all 4 add b4 Dreadnaughts pop?

Thanks all for the excellent advice. This is a great community.

Remn, we usually had 1 clockwork soldier alive (nearly dead if memory serves on our later attempts) as phase/wave 3 starts, but I think Maku's suggestions should give us a new approach to play with. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated as well.

Your Bards should always multi dot, use TP songs for AOE phases, meaning phase 1 and 4. As for MP songs, check with your raid if they need it, mine doesn't so I change to using Foe instead and now I switch to Monk instead of going as Bard, so we only run with 1 Bard now.

For Bard and Monk they can use Internal Release and Blood for blood during 1st phase, it will be ready for use again during 3rd phase Dreadnaught, make sure your DPS are burning all CD for this phase. One of your Bard should put on Foe as well to burn the Dreadnaught faster.

If your MT have problem dealing with 1 dreadnaught he is going to have problem dealing with 2 in later phase, so make sure he is rotating his cd properly and also the healers are focus on healing the tank, the raid barely take much damage during phase 3.

Lastly, Turn 4 is when you need to start using food as it is a quite a DPS check especially if you just started on it.

Our Physical DPS go MT Soldier > MT Knight > OT Soldier > OT Knight. By having everyone dogpile the Soliders, their stoneskin drops fairly quickly and they get stunned from it, significantly reducing the damage the tanks are taking. What might be happening is your healers are trying to split their attention which leads to the first tank getting overwhelmed.

Turn 4 seems to be mostly about figuring out a strategy that works best for your group and practicing it. Ours is a bit different from all the ones that I have seen people do but it works out just fine. We are consistently beating the final dreadnought before the enrage even starts. My friend made a video for it if you want to take a look: http://youtu.be/GACCew6j2e4

I've seen some strategies too where people would kill the final dreadnought before the final Knight and Soldier so it really is open-ended.

I typically play BRD in Turn 4 and my song order is:

P1: Requiem, disable it when we are down to 2-3 enemies. I used to do Paeon at this point but YMMV.
P3: Reqiuem, switch to Ballad when the dreadnought is near death
P4: Ballad until the rooks are dead, not always necessary.
P5: Reqieum, disable when Dreadnought is almost dead
P6: Ballad after rook is dead and leave it on until MP runs out. Ballad if needed for the final Dreadnought if MP allows.

- When P2 mobs pop, I use sentinel. It will be back for mid P3
- When P2 mobs are dead on MT, healers should move to be already positionned for the insects feed
- PLD should make his harlone combo on the dread as soon as it drops (he will have time before the feed).
- As soon as the dread turns to eat the minions, I usually pop a CD (the warrior one, can't remind the english name), and run to SW as soon as the dread has 4 stacks. As soon as I'm positionned, I add convalescence (is that the right ensligh name?). Healers should have time to heal me : either I took damage before running, then they have plenty of time since dread is slow, or I take the damage after dread is in position, and they had plenty of time to precast the heal. In both case, everything can be smooth here. This positionning allows you to avoid being in a huge dps hurry on the dread, this will give you the few extra seconds needed when P4 mobs pop.
- For songs, since you have 2 BRD, I'd recommend having one dedicated to mage ballad for P1, P4, and enrage timer (so your WHM can holy during P1 and P4 without struggling with mana), and the second one use requiem during P4. Requiem in P4 + WHM holy will allow you to come back on timing if you were a few seconds late on P3.
-OT should have proper timing to position himself for P4 transition. He must flash instantly 2 insects, then run to the middle to get the remaining adds.
-WHM should have a pretty accurate timing on shroud of saints. It MUST be available as soon as P4 starts. With enough practice for your OT, it shouldn't be mandatory, but at first, this may help a lot. He can use shroud as soon as combat starts (even before first holy. Not optimal for mana regen, but optimal for CD), then as soon as it comes back (which means mid P2 exactly), then it will be available as soon as P4 starts, and he should use it again. Other solution is to use it at any moment before mid P2, so it will be available for P4 start.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darwyn_Ulondarr

Two issues we're having I think is our 'DPS approach' and our tank getting taken out by the dreadnought in phase 3 after being fed the spiders. Is there anything specifically our healers/tank could be doing to overcome this? Any advice is appreciated on these two points.

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Our FC runs with rotating membership for the Coil parties, and the past two weeks we've gotten a group with at least one person fresh to Coil through T1-4 in a single night.

For T4 we have two main tactics, depending on DPS and Tanks, and it all hinges on Phases 5 and 6.
Basically whether we kill the Soldier + Knight first or the Dreadnaught.

Phase 1: One Tank groups up Spiders (usually me). AoE them all. When nearly dead, have each tank use the first attack in their enmity combo on the nearest spider and run into position for their solider/knights.

Phase 2: Tanks FLASH ONCE as the soldier/knight drop down, then lead off with the second attack in their two-part enmity combo on the Soldier, and the final attack on the Knight (this is in order to lock down hate quickly). Now Tanks should rotate enmity combos on both mobs whilst mobs are DPSed down. Kill order isn't very important, as long as the Off Tank's mobs are killed before the dreadnought spawns. Main Tank should NOT use cooldowns here.

Phase 3: Healers and all DPS should have moved to far corner behind where dreadnaught spawns, so that spiders run past the back of the dreadnought and get fed straight away. If need be the Off Tank can "COVER" whichever healer gets aggroed by spiders in case they take a hit or two. Main Tank should face dreadnaught away from party and use Mitigation cooldowns (Rampart etc) SCH Galvanize and Eye for Eye/Sacred Soil/Virus help here too. Party gathers in center of arena and pops all DPS cooldowns to kill dread before the start of the next phase. Off Tank should swap to DPS stance and use this phase to recover MP via riot blade if possible, when dread hits approx 20%, Off tank should move to opposite side of arena ready to pick up the far spinner rook. *** DPS cooldowns and potions used ***

Phase 4: P3 Dreadnaught should be dead before it can eat any P4 spiders. Off tank should be standing between where far set of spiders and spinner rook spawn. Off Tank FLASHES immediately and marks both spinner rooks #1 and #2. Healer aggro will draw all mobs to middle, off tank should follow and get solid AoE aggro on all the spiders and spinner rook #1. Main Tank should get aggro on Spinner rook #2. Party should kill both spinner rooks whilst AoEing spiders as much as possible- the priority here is that each tank keeps one spinner rook targeted so that they can dodge Pox. Once the Main Tank's Spinner rook is dead, they should move NORTH EAST to get into position for the Phase 5 Dreadnought spawn. The OffTank should build up a little bit of MP towards the end of this phase, as often there is not quite enough AoE damage to kill all the spiders before the Phase 5 spawn happens (especially if the party used all their DPS cooldowns on the Dread in the previous phase). Ideally the Off Tank should keep AoE hate on the spiders throughout this phase, and drag them very slightly to the South if DPS is light.

Phase 5: Main Tank should immediately get hate on the Dreadnaught and face it away from the party. Off Tank should immediately use their highest enmity melee move (RoH or BB) on the Soldier that spawns in the middle next to where they are tanking the spiders, then move Southwards to grab the Knight (Provoke -> Shield Lob/Tomahawk) then build hate on both those mobs. P4 Spiders should ideally be dead before this phase starts, but you can cope with a short overlap as long as the Spiders are kept far enough away from the Dreadnought.

Kill order for Phase 5 depends heavily on Group composition and DPS. We've found that the safest method with a solid Paladin Off Tank and reasonable levels of DPS is to have the DPS focus on the Main Tank's Dreadnought in Phase 5... the Dreadnought should be dead or nearly dead by the time Phase 6 starts. If DPS is heavier or Tanks are not as well geared, then you can kill the Soldier and/or Knight first and then start on the Dreadnought.

Phase 6: Healers should be standing slightly west of the middle. DPS should immediately focus on the Spinner Rook. Kill it first, then start on whatever you have left from Phase 5. If you started Phase 6 with the P5 Dreadnaught dead, the healers can feed the spiders to the new dreadnaught. The Off Tank probably has the trickiest role in this phase, especially if they are still tanking a soldier and knight from P5 - they will need to get immediate hate on the new soldier and knight (one spawns in middle, the other slightly South East) whilst not dying to all the damage. DPS order is Spinner rook >> P5 Dreadnaught >> All Soldiers/Knights >> New Dreadnaught >> Spiders (if any left); and since it's the last phase you should obviously be using whatever cooldowns or Limit Breaks you have available here. You should be able to kill all the soldiers and knights and have the vast majority of the Dreadnaught dead before the enrage timer hits. The enrage timer can be AoE healed through for quite some time if healers are expecting it (Sacred soil and Tank LB work nicely here too!). *** DPS cooldowns and potions used ***

The usual method I use for P6 on my Paladin (assuming I'm taking 4 soldiers/knights and we're feeding the spiders) is to pop Tempered Will as soon as I see the new mobs spawn, grab aggro with a melee attack on the new soldier (RoH) and provoke/shield lob the knight, then pop Hallowed Ground and FLASH spam whilst dragging everything to the South East. If the healers know what you're doing, they shouldn't pull hate from you here and can focus on healing the Main Tank until your Hallowed Ground expires, at which point you should stop flashing and start staggering cooldowns Sentinel > Rampart > Bulwark/Conv/Foresight whilst rotating your melee combo on the mobs. If you have two Paladins, the Main Tank can use their Hallowed Ground once the Off Tank's wears off in order to prolong the time the healers only need to focus on one tank. It should be noted that you can kite the Soldiers/Knights to take less damage from their PBAoEs, and that Paladins should NOT be repeatedly flashing them because the Knight's Stoneskin will cause ~700-800 damage to the Paladin for each Flash (it's fine to do when your Hallowed Ground is up, but once it drops you should only be melee attacking). Whilst I'm doing this the DPS kill the Spinner rook, then (assuming the P5 Dread is dead) start on the old Soldier/Knight.

If you decide to take the Soldier/Knight first in P5, then the MT will be left with two Dreadnaughts to tank in P6. This means they'll basically be taking the same damage they were taking in Phase 3, which increases the pressure on your Healers quite a lot. You usually do NOT want to feed the spiders to the Dreadnaughts here until the old dread is dead (you don't want the old dread to get healed, and unless your healers are very well geared you don't want your Main Tank to be taking more damage). The main benefit is that it's a lot easier for the Off Tank to secure hate on the new Solder/Knight without dragging around an old Soldier/Knight; and you can get by without using Hallowed Grounds if you don't have Paladins since there will only be one source of major damage (the extra Dreadnaught - which can be virused etc.) There will still be a lot of incoming damage to deal with - but it'll be aimed at the Main Tank this time instead of the Off Tank.

Going in to phase 3 make sure the adds are all dead. You got some good dps tips so I'll just go over healing and damage mitigation on your MT. It's important all spiders are absorbed ASAP. Have both healers and the fairy stack together right behind where the Dreadnaught spawns. Your healers have a few seconds now to prep while spiders are up. The WHM should Stoneskin the MT while you're SCH throws out E4E. Virus the Dreadnaught after spiders are absorbed. Have your MT pop Sentinel followed by rampart then rotate smaller cooldowns. Sentinel will be up as hollowed falls off in p6. This should ease the healing a lot.

As MT for T4 here\\'s how I manage the phases after P2

P3 I Shield Lob the Dread from the center and run south a couple steps. Dread eats bugs and I pop Sentinel. Blow my damage CD\\'S and kill Dread. I don\\'t use any other defensive CDs.
P4 Rook falls beside me. I mark it and use my prepped RoH combo from Dread. Run north and grab mobs going for the healer. Flash a few and group mobs. War will Overpower to get the group while targeting their Rook.
P5 Just grab Dread and DPS. No Defensive CDs used.
P6 Ready RoH for 2nd Dread. Spiders will run to healer and be eaten by 2nd Dread. When DD kills Rook I pop HG. DPS kills first Dread. After HG I use Sentinel. Then Foresight Awareness and Bulwark. Then Conv and Rampart. After 1st Dread goes down it\\'s home free.

You might want to swap one of your Bards for a Summoner or BLM. It will help on Soldiers and Spider AOE.

For your specific group, I'd do the following.
P1: burn everything down normally. Bard 1 can pop Foe Requiem to helps with killing bugs. All bugs should be dead. Both tanks use the Fast Blade/ Heavy Swing before running into positions, pops Flash right as the target's name appear and proceed to rotate combo.
P2: BLM on MT's soldier, 3 physical dps kill everything else starting with OT's Knight, OT's soldier then MT's knight. PLD can use Tempered Will here.
P3: Have the healers and bards run behind the dread. Face dreadnaught to the center of the elevator. Feed the spiders. Right as spiders are fed, PLD MT pops Sentinel, then Rampart + Convalescence, then Bulwark + Foresight. Virus the dread when the MT use Bulwark + Foresight. DPS save all CD for this dreadnaught as it absolutely has to die before the next phase.
P4: PLD marks 1 rook that he and the MNK is gonna kill first. WAR picks up everything else and gather mobs around that first rook. PLD Cover on BLM so BLM can keep using Flare. Bard 1 uses Battle Voiced Mage's Ballad to restore BLM's MP. Bard 2 uses Battle Voiced Foe Requiem.
P5: PLD takes the dread immediately while WAR takes the soldier+knight. BLM kills soldier, 3 physical DPS kills knights then move to Dread. Do not waste time trying to break soldier's stoneskin, the BLM can kill it on his own. PLD repositions this dread along the wall so it would be facing North and PLD will be at NE corner. This makes the phase 5 dreadnaught not in the path between the spiders and phase 6 dread if you feed right away.
P6: Healers stay at North aggroing the spiders. Feed them right away to phase 6 dreadnaught. WAR picks up new knight + soldier. PLD uses Hallowed Ground followed by Sentinel followed by Rampart + Convalescence and Bulwark + Foresight. Virus both dreads on Bulwark phase. All DPS takes down rook. Monk LB it to make it faster. Kill old dread then soldier + knight then new dread.
I've beaten turn 4 with 2 bards, 1 dragoon, 1 black mage so it is doable.

Thanks again everyone for the continuing excellent advice and for your time. I'm grateful.