Turn 6 LOS Strategy (Quoted from French Moderator)

[Nero]

The whole point of the stun is to prevent you from being able to move while you're being devoured, I don't see how stunning you means it's intended... it's just part of the mechanic of the devour to prevent you from moving while the devour goes off and while you're trapped inside before being spit out. It's not some added effect from avoiding the mechanic, more like an unintended side effect of avoiding one piece of the mechanic.

If SE did not foresee that people would use this "way", then there would not be a "Stun". That certain way to avoid devour is the only time that 4sec Stun does appear. Which implies that SE was aware of this, or there would not be a stun/or anything else at all.

Healing in the briar isn't a big deal, and considering spit comes after the devour, your healers will be AOE healing anyways, so the player in the patch will be getting topped up anyways, or have an adloc or regen on anyways while in the patch.

Also, the divebombs aren't really related at all, the party just moves as a group to keep the divebombs 100% predictable, as the entire party is grouped together, while LOS method is all about completely avoiding a mechanic. You still get stunned, which means your DPS doesn't improve in any way, especially if you are ranged, because while waiting in the patch, you can be casting, this is the same for a healer.

If the patch is not near the AoE heal, he will not get healed with it. I have seen that a LOT of times, that people were simply out of range for being healed to max. The thing why i compare Divebombs to Devour is that you start running as soon as it disappears. It is the same thing, since using the hole to dodge it was not really the way SE thought of it. Yes, i was clearly talking about melee's and not ranged dps.

Here is Yoshi about Divebombs btw:

Y: We don't have the responsibility to edit any strategy guides or magazine feedback. Divebomb is a straight dive from Twintania towards her target. The solution we thought of was that everyone would move to realign themselves based on the timing and target. However, the pit is a position that's obvious for everyone and the different level changes the hit detection. As a result, it's become easier to dodge than we were thinking. However, we didn't want to suddenly have everyone struggle with the strategies they came up with, so instead of modifying it to boost our ego, we left it alone.
--So you leave it alone even if the development team expected a completely different strategy?
Y: That's the plan.

Dodging the second divebombs grouped up for the snakes is a cut on your DPS time for casters unless you have an instant cast or swiftcast and melee can't do any positional attacks, but that's minor DPS time that isn't really significant. And for the rest of T5...? Well, dodging twisters and dealing with the dread is another DPS loss, especially for melee who ideally need to get out of range to prevent being locked into place too close to the dread when it spawns to prevent a death if DPS is too slow and stuns aren't as reliable.

How is the second set a cut for DPS? This is a bit off-topic and i am not sure how you do T5, but as DRG i pull my full rotation at the second set. It is about timing and with Manawall up also a BLM can dodge the 1st and 2nd Divebomb, so don't have to worry it that much. I did not do it as BRD or SMN, but i would guess it is similiar there. Also for Dreads it is about positions. Pull Twin to the outer edge and a Melee never have to move out of range for Dreads.

This game is all about being able to handle mechanics while suffering DPS loss in the end game content, even things like EX primals have downtime, it's all about optimizing your time when you can't be attacking.

That being said, handling the mechanic the intended way easily outweighs the LOS method, as casters/bards/healers can perform while in the briar, and melee can snap back to Raf after the devour goes out keeping their DPS going as efficiently as possible, avoiding the 4 second stun all together.

This is what it comes down to and like we can see with my last comment about T5, people use clearly different ways to handle it. That is the question, if it is intended or not and since there actually a "stun lock" exists, i believe this way can be seen as "intended". Otherwise i don't see why a 4sec stun would exist at that point, since it is not in any other point in that fight.

The LOS method is favored by a lot of people because it ultimately requires less coordination with handling the mechanics with the briars, it cuts out one factor of the fight while trading it off for a loss in uptime by 4+ seconds for the marked player.

I would not say less coordination, since you can simply fuck it up by moving to early, too late, have thorns, trying to break, running into someone else and get them eaten etc. It simply allows to coordinate in an smaller area and i prefer it, because i hate any sort of "heavy" effect. Hence 4 Sec Stun, running into briars, getting back on boss can easy take double that time + dmg. But yeah, we don't have to agree which is easier and what everyone does prefer, since that would be beside that point.

So, while I don't really put the LOS method relates at all with T2 soft enrage and T5 divebomb, I will say that it's just another way to handle the fight, and isn't so much of an exploit as you still have negative side effects. Players will do what is most comfortable to them, and if the LOS is what a group is happy with doing, that's what they should do.

Yes, i agree. I've done both way and i do prefer LoS. And just as a sidenote; in T2 i prefer not doing enrage and love dealing with RoT. I do not think that it is hard at all, i just think it is way more fun and actually way faster than staying around until it does enrage. xD But nice to see, that someone can actually have a normal discussion. kudos to you.

[LeonBlade]

Yes, i agree. I've done both way and i do prefer LoS. And just as a sidenote; in T2 i prefer not doing enrage and love dealing with RoT. I do not think that it is hard at all, i just think it is way more fun and actually way faster than staying around until it does enrage. xD But nice to see, that someone can actually have a normal discussion. kudos to you.

Thank you for your response, I did read it all, but I don't think having a long discussion back and forth will be something other people will want to read, but I understand your points of what you are saying, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I would like to have done the rot mechanic, but never learned it, personally I would like to some time. Yes, it's very nice to have a normal discussion, that means having someone nice to talk to, so kudos back to you as well!

[ShinkuTachi]

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Seeing this kinda stuff makes me really happy to be part of this community.
(and just to be clear, I'm not being sarcastic)
Great discussion!