Tonberry King strategies?

[Maelwys]

This is quite interesting as i always wondered how do pugs do this boss. Seems like many people are against kiting, our tank just kites all the way and we just ignore adds and dps the boss down with the healer in cleric stance. Did this since AF level as we usually ran with non bursty dps classes.

The problem with PUG kiting is that the Tonberries spawn aggroed onto whoever has the attention of the king (usually the tank) and you end up with an absolute ton of them if nobody is killing them. In a DF group, seeing that many mobs makes people panic. And panicked DF players can do very stupid things indeed.

The King moves slightly more quickly than the standard Tonberries, but he can get stuck in the middle of the big horde of them quite easily and it's tricky for a Tank to reliably keep hate on him at range when he's in a crowd of 20+ mobs. Also, once the Slashers spawn, you either have to have the Tank tag each of them and kite *EVERYTHING*, or kite the King + adds in gradually decreasing circles until the Slashers close in on you.
The Slashers, when aggroed, move slightly faster than the standard Tonberry adds but slightly slower than the King. This means that everything will potentially get stuck in the horde of standard Tonberries, and there's no guarantee if the King or a Slasher will work their way out first.

You're basically left with a Tank trying to kite about 40 mobs that move at three different speeds. It's doable, but with a PUG it's a lot easier to just stand in the middle and kill the standard Tonberry adds 3-at-a-time. I've never failed a Duty Finder group using this method. Just have the Tank hold the boss in the middle and kite him a little bit if the Tonberries start getting a little too close - if your first DPS's add kill speed is too slow, you can have the second DPS help. It's actually quite easy for a Tank to kite all the Slashers and the King in a circle if you run out of time, as long as there aren't a huge number of standard Tonberries on the field.

The FASTEST method I've found is just to ignore the adds (or have a Bard kite them whilst still focussing on the boss) and burn the King down in the middle. And as previously mentioned, "AOE everything + Hallowed Ground" will work too if properly timed. Neither tend to work particularly well in DF groups though...

[Luthvian]

The problem with PUG kiting is that the Tonberries spawn aggroed onto whoever has the attention of the king (usually the tank) and you end up with an absolute ton of them if nobody is killing them. In a DF group, seeing that many mobs makes people panic. And panicked DF players can do very stupid things indeed...

Thanks for taking the time to explain. Yeah I figured that pug tanks wont be able to use our strat, though both my tanks use our kiting method. Thats the reason why I have never dared to df WP till now on my own because I am not sure what to expect. The slashers are not a problem at all, the boss is usually dead or almost dead by the time they reach the tank. I should think that this is the fastest way of doing this boss though since all dpsers are focused on the boss and standing still, the only one working hard is our tank.