Hood swing frequency - Caduceus Coil Turn 1

[MieyCyruuuus]

How dare you "insult" the OP even more Req?

[dragonflyseksparade]

I love the internet. And I love reading the OPs amazing responses.

[Req]

How dare you "insult" the OP even more Req?

What can I say, I am a huge jerk and I love to insult people instead of help. Ask anyone I know and they will tell you this.

[YuriRamona]

I am replying here to feed the trolls further.

Let me edit my previous comments to make sure I include the words "insult" and "jerk" so that you all don't seem like you're exaggerating anything. I mean, once someone calls someone out for mindless personal attacks that contribute absolutely nothing other than vitriol to a thread, that means they definitely don't like you and think you're a bad person, right? It's not like we're trying to establish a modicum sense of civility and a minimum for reasoned discussion, or anything, the lack of which makes these OF the laughing stock of other community groups.

[MieyCyruuuus]

I'm pretty sure and sense of civility went out of the window when you leashed out on the first person that replied, who tried to help you the best way he can. Your reading comprehensive skills and emotional sensitivity does not change what the the fact that Req was trying to help you and answered the way any sane person would have. And I don't know if English is your first language but you might want to look up "Personal attack" so you know what it actually means.

[carraway]

If you're concerned about the timing for hood swing, I recommend referring to the many videos available of this encounter and counting the seconds between the hood swings, accruing a sample size large enough to establish a degree of confidence, then applying it to your own attempts and seeing how it lines up. It is a very straightforward mechanic, so Req's application of Occam's Razor to your difficulties makes perfect sense.

[TirionCrey]

People are giving you constructive questions/assumptions. If you're not manually using Embrace of your Fairy, you're doing it wrong. Sorry to say that but thats a fact. Eos/Selene use Embrace with a delay by themselves not to mention they don't use it all before a party member dropped below 80%. Since they patched it so your GCD doesn't affect the Fairies abilities there is no reason whatsoever in any content in the game not to heal manually with her...

If you are dependant on feeding slimes after the split, adjust your strategy or "get better". Any type of healer should be able to keep any type of tank alive after the split w/o feeding any more slimes. It doesn't get anywhere "hard to heal" before 5 stacks and if you're reaching 5 stacks, your DPS needs to look at what they are doing wrong.

PS: To answer the initial question, no there is no way of telling when hoodswing is coming. The animation for it looks kinda like a sideways slash with its body, but the CD on it isn't any higher than 10seconds. So yeah...you have to spam heal the tank in that phase...that's how it works. If he is at full health maybe throw in a Sacred Soil, but even that can sometmies mean life and death for the tank if he eats Hoodswing and a crit hit after. Also your tanks should have some sort of feeling for when to use what cooldown to help out the healer responsible for them. I know how long the fight usually takes with my group so I time my cooldowns to get the most out of them over the course of the fight. There is no point in saving a CD for "later" in the fight when "later in the fight" it will be back up again anyway.

PPS: The SCH healer in my group has Relic and Full DL...thats it. Not one Allagan or AF2 piece and she has no trouble healing Turn 1-4...

[kayuwoody]

Apparently this isn't common knowledge based on the responses here heh.. Cad does actually indicate when he's about to do Hood Swing. You simply have to watch out for it. He emits a flash, Hood Swing follows shortly after; go watch some videos of the kill to see what I'm talking about.

You ask for help but do not provide sufficient information, so people need to ask questions. I think sufficient questions have been asked on this thread so I only addressed the above.

Now my 2 cents on the drama:
You reacted with extreme butthurt after posting a thread asking for help.
When you ask for help just discard the bad or what won't work for you, and take what might possibly work. Have enough confidence in your own abilities that if (or when) someone says you're bad and you know you're not it's just silly to allow it to hurt you.

[YuriRamona]

Apparently this isn't common knowledge based on the responses here heh.. Cad does actually indicate when he's about to do Hood Swing. You simply have to watch out for it. He emits a flash, Hood Swing follows shortly after; go watch some videos of the kill to see what I'm talking about.

You ask for help but do not provide sufficient information, so people need to ask questions. I think sufficient questions have been asked on this thread so I only addressed the above.

Now my 2 cents on the drama:
You reacted with extreme butthurt after posting a thread asking for help.
When you ask for help just discard the bad or what won't work for you, and take what might possibly work. Have enough confidence in your own abilities that if (or when) someone says you're bad and you know you're not it's just silly to allow it to hurt you.

Thank you for your response. I have already watched videos of the fight and it was difficult to pinpoint the timing of Hood Swings because of a multitude of factors (often in combination): low resolution, not battle log viewable, and distant camera angles. Your suggestion is appreciated.

The reason why I responded aggressively to the first few responses is because they failed to answer the specific question that I posed in the title and the original post.

It's fairly obvious at this point that there are fundamentals and basics to my play that can be improved. There is no question about that. Healers/tanks can pull through 4-5 stack Caduceus no problem without any special tactics, especially from the very first few weeks of launch when players were underprepared and undergeared, and still clearing this encounter. Dying to 3-4 stacks means that something is clearly wrong with our strategy/tactics that can be easily improved.

There is no denying that our gameplay can be improved greatly (after all, can anyone say they've perfected their play, unless they are a robot?) and that focus on these core components is the highest yield on our success rate per unit of time that we spend mastering.

however...

There are already answers to how to handle these basics elsewhere on the internet and forum that I have tracked, studied, and practiced, and clearly failed to fully grasp.

If I needed these things repeated, I would have asked that in the original post. Something to the effect of, "What am I doing wrong?" or "I don't get why we're failing, we shouldn't be" or "I'm at a loss for why we are failing". Anything that suggests that what we are doing is right and fine and the only thing blocking our way is my timing of Lustrate following Hood Swings. I apologize that I did suggest that this encounter required special tactics to complete, and opened up all this drama by even posting about my personal experience.

---

In any case, it should be obvious that my role is a Scholar, a healer. Advice on the tank's role, abilities, and tactics are, at best, tangentially related to this discussion. Even if I were to know what's best for them to do, and facilitate communication between us, there will always be instances where another player (such as the tank) fails or makes a mistake. My goal is to improve my own play to the point where I maximize our chances to beat this encounter even if we PUG a derpy tank. Many of the suggestions provided depend upon the skill and preparation of the tank. For a vast majority of healers, they don't have the option of leaving a group or finding a new team if their tank is failing. Indeed, the FC system locks us in with players who have varying degrees of willingness to improve. We also have little control over what the tank does and when. And so, why not flesh out one particular mechanic that might give healers that little bit of edge in a fight?

Let me draw an (albeit extreme) example. How many times have we met PLD that spam Rage of Halone back-to-back and refuse to take advice? DPS that insist on not dodging red zones? Sometimes they listen and change, and sometimes they don't. And even if they try, they will have lacked the practice that brings them to mastery. And so, why not, as healers, master our own gameplay and understanding of mechanics, so that we can minimize the effect of the weakest link?

---

I did not, at any point, ask for general assistance with this encounter. And so, I made it clear that this not what was wanted, and in very unpleasant terms, as I will freely admit. I apologize for feeding trolls, but it seemed that at least a few people were amused by our banter so it's not all bad.

It's our responsibility to stand up when respondents side-track the discussion and espouse their analysis of the post, however in error it may be. This happens not infrequently on these forums. Sometimes, it is certainly welcome, when struggling players are on the wrong train of thought and should be focusing on other things, such as basics and controls. In this case, it was not welcome.

If my original question was irrelevant, then readers can simply ignore this thread. Given the tepid response to this thread, as I expected, predicting Hood Swing is neither necessary nor sufficient to beating this encounter. I apologize if I suggested that this mechanic was important or critical to this fight. I also apologize if my information was insufficient. In retrospect, I should have not posted additional information regarding my particular case and just asked the direct question. I had hoped that this would personalize my post a little bit more, but instead, it was distracting and too tempting to a few respondents.

---

People are giving you constructive questions/assumptions. If you're not manually using Embrace of your Fairy, you're doing it wrong. Sorry to say that but thats a fact. Eos/Selene use Embrace with a delay by themselves not to mention they don't use it all before a party member dropped below 80%. Since they patched it so your GCD doesn't affect the Fairies abilities there is no reason whatsoever in any content in the game not to heal manually with her...

If you are dependant on feeding slimes after the split, adjust your strategy or "get better". Any type of healer should be able to keep any type of tank alive after the split w/o feeding any more slimes. It doesn't get anywhere "hard to heal" before 5 stacks and if you're reaching 5 stacks, your DPS needs to look at what they are doing wrong.

PS: To answer the initial question, no there is no way of telling when hoodswing is coming. The animation for it looks kinda like a sideways slash with its body, but the CD on it isn't any higher than 10seconds. So yeah...you have to spam heal the tank in that phase...that's how it works. If he is at full health maybe throw in a Sacred Soil, but even that can sometmies mean life and death for the tank if he eats Hoodswing and a crit hit after. Also your tanks should have some sort of feeling for when to use what cooldown to help out the healer responsible for them. I know how long the fight usually takes with my group so I time my cooldowns to get the most out of them over the course of the fight. There is no point in saving a CD for "later" in the fight when "later in the fight" it will be back up again anyway.

PPS: The SCH healer in my group has Relic and Full DL...thats it. Not one Allagan or AF2 piece and she has no trouble healing Turn 1-4...

Thank you for your response. Hood Swing can come within 10 seconds of each other, but I have a feeling that there is some minimum cooldown or an average time. The reason I asked the question is partly because I knew there isn't a set time, but if the average was around 20 sec, that means it would be possible to save and time Lustrate charges for Hood Swing.

As you said, bad luck can mean the difference between life and death. I was just hoping that predicting Hood Swing can shave just a little bit of the luck factor away and make the encounter more predictable and straightforward. Chain-healing (i.e. face-rolling) Adloquium/Physick and Lustrate/SS every 30 sec is not my idea of minimizing the luck factor when Caduceus may decide to Hood Swing and double crit while I am jumping platforms and I have to interrupt an Adloquium. And if anyone else would suggest that that scenario results in failure, I would disagree and say that there could be a way to minimize that luck factor, including Hood Swing prediction.

One of the respondents actually contradicts your statement about fairy micro. And so, I'm not sure how constructive all this criticism is, if this is considering basics by you, but as irrelevant to another. It is certainly constructive dialogue and discussion, but not really advice I could then take and use in my play. Can we really say that anyone is missing the basics, if there isn't a consensus about what the basics are?

[Zaft]

One of the respondents actually contradicts your statement about fairy micro. And so, I'm not sure how constructive all this criticism is, if this is considering basics by you, but as irrelevant to another. It is certainly constructive dialogue and discussion, but not really advice I could then take and use in my play. Can we really say that anyone is missing the basics, if there isn't a consensus about what the basics are?

That person is mistaken. You definitely want to keybind and spam Embrace like a madman. It helps healing quite a lot, and allows you to save on a good deal of MP.