Wanderer's Palace Hard First Boss Question

Last night, I was in an LS group doing Wanderer's Palace Hard. Since we didn't have a tank available, we decided to go as two summoners (Titan tanks), a scholar and a white mage. Everything was going fine until we got to Frumious Koheel Ja (and his fire spears).

The issue we were having was that he wouldn't stop throwing his spears. We were killing them quickly, but as soon as we killed one, he'd immediately throw another one (sometimes two). I don't remember him going so crazy in a more traditional party set up, and I don't remember him throwing two spears until much later in the fight.

Is there some special mechanic that I'm missing that causes him to go all nutty with the spears, especially in the presence of so many mages? Having to deal with six to eight spears, in the beginning of the fight, seemed a bit unusual. Of course, there's always the possibility that I am missing something.

I had this situation once too and wondered what was happening.

Could it be it is based on boss HP and you where burning it too fast, especially considering 2 SMN are keeping their dots ticking on boss while destroying speers?

He does that when DPS is low if you take too long to kill a spear he throws another.

It could be that he doesn't throw spears at certain HP marks, but instead throws spears during his normal rotation (alternating between 1 and 2). In this scenario, the fight is a DPS check in that you have to have enough DPS to down the spears before getting overwhelmed while, at the same time, kill the boss.

I never formally tested this (rarely do experts in a pre-made and I doubt I can convince pugs to experiment for science) so this is just an assumption. A friend of mine had a similar problem once, but hasn't had it happen since that one time so he's not sure what was different about that run.

Putting 2 and 2 together: what MXMoondoggie said + WHM/SCH/SMN/SMN group

You've got 2 healers (low DPS). And SMN is known mostly for it's DoTs, also known as DPS that starts slow. Think of every spear as a mini fight that needs to be finished very quickly or you lose. Just a theory, but I think that explains it.

It simply means that DPS is low, as others have said. I've done that fight with a DRG (me) and three WHMs and we had no issues clearing the spears.

Wait, this boss spams spears if your DPS is too low? How does that make the fight fair at all? You wipe to the first boss because your DPS is too low and that's your sign to disband? That seems kind of harsh, considering the ilevel requirement is around i90.

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Originally Posted by Selli

Wait, this boss spams spears if your DPS is too low? How does that make the fight fair at all? You wipe to the first boss because your DPS is too low and that's your sign to disband? That seems kind of harsh, considering the ilevel requirement is around i90.

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Sounds better than getting to the last boss in AK HM and finding out your DPS isn't good/organized enough to down the adds before wipe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Selli

Wait, this boss spams spears if your DPS is too low? How does that make the fight fair at all? You wipe to the first boss because your DPS is too low and that's your sign to disband? That seems kind of harsh, considering the ilevel requirement is around i90.

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The spears don't have a huge amount of HP so if your group is focused they can down the spears before the boss starts being a jerk and spamming them. The main reason i see this actually happen isn't gear but people locking on to the boss to the point where they don't even notice the spears. I've had this a couple of times where I'm pretty much taking out 50% HP on a spear as a WHM before the DPS even notice to attack it. Slow DPS will wipe you before baseline gear does.

Same in AKHM last boss you need to know the adds and how to take them down. Priority should be anyone trapped and stunned then the add which stops the AoE growing because the other person trapped can get themselves out but i often see people just panic completely and start breaking the non stunned one out first then the stunned one by that time they struggle to take out the charge up add before the AoE covers the platform. Same with the three imp charge up adds everyone seems to attack one at a time when you can have one DPS on the first two and the Tank and Healer can handle the last. People just need to watch what others are doing instead of running around like headless chickens and not thinking about anything.

I ran it once with 2 SMN 1 that mains sch so it was only offclass geared (i105) and one that still new level 50 so still working on rotations and stuff.... it was a pain :( 4 wipes and then we made it with united tank and heal dps added barely past the spears. Imho not fair towards a "slow" dps class like smn that is dot based....

Just ran this last night as healer and had the same problem. Non stop spears. We had an undergeared DRG who was pulling very, very low damage (based on the time it took him to kill a spear) and a SMN with some FCoB gear who seemed to be half afk. Wiped 3 times to non stop spears before vote abandon came up.