I need help beating turn 4

[Naunet]

We use a slightly different strategy and generally kill it flawlessly. You should have two magic and two physical dps for best effect.

Wave 1 - as you do, AoE the bugs.
Wave 2 - again as you do, but we put our physical dps on the right-hand Knight first, so that they don't have to run across the room to get to the Dreadnought when it spawns, as they'll already be there from killing the second Knight. Magic dps kill Soldier on the left, then Soldier on the right. We have all of our ranged dps stand in the far north edge, between the Knight and Soldier pairs. This will help with the next wave, as they will not get aggro from the bugs and will thus be able to start dps immediately.
Wave 3 - Your healers should be standing in the middle of the room from Wave 2. The bugs will then aggro to them (or your OT), and they will immediately feed the bugs to the DN. From there, it's just a matter of burning the DN down before the next wave spawns.
Wave 4 - Rooks are marked and burst down. We then have enough time to single-target dps 1-2 bugs. AoEing the bugs doesn't really help, as they're not likely going to die before the DN spawns from the next wave. Have one of your dps mark a bug or two for everyone to focus.
Wave 5 - OT picks up the Soldier and Knight and everyone burns the DN. Soldier & Knight are up going into Wave 6.
Wave 6 - The first 20 or so seconds of this wave are absolutely critical. OT must pick up the new Knight. One of your magic dps (preferably a BLM) will grab the new Soldier and begin to kite it. Whoever the bug aggros to must remember to take it to the DN. All other dps will burst down the Rook; this shouldn't take long as it doesn't have much HP. After the Rook is dead, your physical DPS will switch to the new Knight. One of them will pop LB, and then finishing it off is easy. Meanwhile, your remaining magic dps is helping your kiting BLM to kill the new Soldier. Once each pair of dps has finished their respective Knight or Soldier, they can move on to the second mob. Once you kill the first Knight, things are going to get a lot easier, as the damage on your OT won't be nearly as high. Once the kited Soldier is dead, it's pretty much smooth sailing. To finish off, after you kill both Knight and Soldier pairs, you'll all just go stack on the DN's butt and burn it. The stacking helps with heals if you don't kill it before the pulsing AoE starts (though it's entirely possible to do so!).

The fight's very much execution-based but goes very smoothly with a bit of practice. If you're not killing DNs before the next wave, then your dps is not as high as it should be; that will be your main marker for success.

[SarcasmMisser]

Just as a second opinion, I used to do that strat where you kill the second dread in the 5th phase and kite stuff in the last phase in my old static for a while, we ditched it for the common strat for the following reasons.

1. The main argument we had was that you can't leave 2 dreads up in the final phase if spiders were fed in 4th. However there is no reason why you can't aoe down the spiders in 4th phase, it is entirely possible with 2 casters there is really no excuse except a lack of individual ability. Tell me your composition and I will tell you how to do it.

2. I cannot emphasize how messy that final phase is, especially for the tanks, calling the first 20 seconds critical is an understatement. What has actually happened in this strat is since you took an easy way out on the last 2 phases, you just deferred all the difficulty to the last one and make the job way harder than it has to be.

3. It is not optimal use of DPS, you are neglecting AoE dps in the 4th phase for no good reason then having a caster kite a mob, which kills their dps. I've done this method without hitting the soft enrage timer but if we used the common strat it would of been way faster.

If you cannot do the common method, please don't use this method as it is much harder and the execution required is much tighter. Also generally kill it flawlessly? Does that mean you still wipe sometimes? The common DPS order has a 100% success rate in all the groups I've been in since November. The biggest problem I had with your method was that it is inconsistent because of how flawless execution had to be.

[avecha]

Well according to some members of the boards, if you use the enrage method for Turn 2 then you don't have the experience for Turn 4. Did any of you use enrage method?

[Naunet]

Also generally kill it flawlessly? Does that mean you still wipe sometimes? The common DPS order has a 100% success rate in all the groups I've been in since November. The biggest problem I had with your method was that it is inconsistent because of how flawless execution had to be.

We've one shot it since we got our first kill about a week before Christmas (took us about four nights of working on it to get it down). We tried other methods over the course of learning the fight and just kept going back to this one as it was the most stable strat for our group. I just thought I'd offer a suggestion of what we do. >_> Sorry. I'm not up on the current hip-cool things to do, as I don't pug anything.

[SarcasmMisser]

And I thought id give a second opinion, since we are in the spirit of giving suggestions it's important to canvas views. Also I'm not trying to be nasty but it's just being honest: why can't you aoe down the spiders? Every other group does it, what is the difference here? If strata are chosen to make up for a deficiency in the group then maybe there's a problem just being avoided?

[Naunet]

You mean the spiders with the rooks? We never really tried, especially as it didn't seem like there'd be enough time to between when the second rook died and when the new DN spawned (not as long as you get in wave 1, that is). Tank damage was more than manageable with the following DN, so we just did what we do.

The reason for getting those bugs down is that, for the brief time the main tank has 2 dreadnaughts they take a lot of damage. And a lot more damage still if the one has been fed.

In the strat we use, there is no time where the tank has two dreadnaughts, so perhaps that's why not killing the bugs has never been an issue for us.

[Regis]

In phase 2 you should have phys dps finish off that knightbbefore switching to the first dreadnought. Do not let it stay alive. If your dreadnought dps is low then have your dps use hq mega pots for it until you have the gear.

[Onji_T]

We don't even take a blm into the turn and do fine. One thing is that we all 100% aoe phase 4, including the the whm using holy. We just aim at the rook but don't focus on them. They die before all the spiders just from auto-attack and aoe damage anyway. Brd ballad's up after this phase to get the whm some mp back.

The reason for getting those bugs down is that, for the brief time the main tank has 2 dreadnaughts they take a lot of damage. And a lot more damage still if the one has been fed.