Skipping adds phase in 'Battle in the Big Keep'

[SuperZay]

Many Bartz TT card farmers still don't know it, but you can entirely skip both flying dragon heads adds phase in 2nd part of the fight.
The trick is do not attack/completely ignore the chain and just burn the boss, if you'll drop Greg's HP below 60% before the healer dies you'll not see the adds which makes the fight much easier and faster.
Both healers should have Medica2/Regens ticking right before being chained to prolonge the chain phase. Then the second healer or SMN just raises dead healer.
Too bad many DF people still attack the chain even after brief explanation.
Also, for the 1st part of the fight, it's a good idea to keep 1 tether chain, you'll not get chikened till its active.

[Sylve]

Now i want Greg to throw a second chain out at a random player if the first isnt killed within a reasonable time.
And then more if that one is ignored.

People probably ignore the strategy because intentionally killing healers to speed up a kill is a crappy strategy.

[synesthetic]

Most people in DF don't care about getting the fight over with quickly. They'd rather follow follow mechanics instead of skipping anything because it's smoother, even if it takes far longer. In DF, you get a lot of parties with low DPS and/or healers who have trouble solo-healing the second half. And tanks who don't ensure the chain is down to 1 stack, or try to avoid most of Sword Dance by stepping behind Greg.
Even in the first half, I keep hearing that when someone says that leaving a pair tethered is faster, they'll get spat on and called a troll by the majority of people.

Honestly, if you want people to ignore mechanics for faster fights, then it's less painful to put together a PF group for it.
You need to not really care about what other people do if you want to DF anything. At least that's how it is for my data center.

[SuperZay]

They'd rather follow follow mechanics instead of skipping anything because it's smoother, even if it takes far longer.

I've seen a lot of parties wipe to 3 remaining adds because they werent marked etc... Even raid wide AOE after 2 adds killed can kill some medium HP players. I doubt this phase makes the run smoother.

[Fawkes]

That was my favorite fight in the game back before people started doing this strategy.

[aerialrave]

Nice of you to give tips, but you can't force a speed run in a Duty Finder.
At most you can make a chat macro with instructions and give suggestions politely. I've seen it done before so I think it can work out pretty well.
It's VERY counter-intuitive to ignore a tether and let a healer die... but most people will be willing to go along with it if you tell them in advance and they see everyone else doing it.

I was lucky to get my card fairly quick, so I don't plan on going back there again anytime soon. Maybe for light farming in the distant future...

[Aldora]

You can only skip mechanics, when everyone in the group is facing the same direction and can manage to generate the output necessary to skip phases. The only way to make sure that everyone is facing the direction, is to talk about the strategy before actually jumping into the action. On top of that, if ignoring mechanics would become the standard in which we are handling content, people will lose sight of the battle and will not see when things are going sideways. Let alone prepare themselves for it.

In the recent days, i've wiped more on content because people were ignoring mechanics, rather then the early days when people were still getting their first clears on said content. The reason why is back then, we paid attention to the fight. Spotting mechanics and making sure that we handled them correctly. However, at that time, most people were still running around in Darklight gear, trying to scrounge together the Tomes needed to buy the Myth gear. Nowadays, most people grossly out-gear the same content, making it easier to skip phases.

Next to that, people have run the content so much that they get tired of it and want to get out as fast as the can, while reaping the rewards. Want to clear the content as fast as you can isn't the issue, but the way people go about doing it is. People don't really talk during dungeons/raids, next to a "Hello!" at the start of the duty and a "gg" at the end of it. They assume that everyone is on their level and act like it. If something goes sideways, fingers are being pointed to others and names are being called. But, for what? Handling mechanics in a fight doesn't really make a fight that much faster. But it does make it more manageable and smoother, which in the long run will make running these duties a more pleasant experience for everyone.

At the start of my comment, i did mention that you should talk to the group if you want to use a certain strategy. However, shouting "DPS Boss only. Let's kill him before Soldiers!" without checking if the raid can handle it, is not the way to go. I've been in 2 ST runs recently where people were ignoring both the AoE adds and the Soldiers in order to kill the boss before you would have to jump to the outer ring, but it completely backfired on us because no one was picking up the Soldiers. So they would systematically kill every one, eventually resulting in a wipe. I've been in Garuda Hard Mode trails while farming light, where a group of 120+ geared people managed to wipe, because they ignored the sisters and keeping them too close to Garuda, so that Garuda could not be killed in time before they wiped the raid.

If people would just stop ignoring mechanics, battles might take a few minutes long at the most, but increase the chance of success greatly while teaching people how the battle actually works, preparing them for whats to come.

[Cherie]

Meh... It's really cool you want to give out tips, but I think imposing "rules" on a duty finder group is just lame. I am down with party finder groups doing it and I would even set them myself if I made a party finder group.

I came from where you are coming from though. I used to love to explain things. Most of the time, even if what I say would help, people just don't care to listen. In fact, if I was trying to tell them something that is contrary to what they already believed was true, I just strengthened their belief in the false information. (See Confirmation bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

[synesthetic]

Even raid wide AOE after 2 adds killed can kill some medium HP players. I doubt this phase makes the run smoother.

If people are dying to the adds' AoE when there were only two left, then that that's indicative of healers not being able to keep up / not keeping people topped off, and/or people not dodging stuff they could've dodged. If everyone was dodging fine and people still died, then I doubt either healer would've been okay with solo-healing while waiting for the other healer to get MP back, and would've wiped instead, which is worse than just having a few people die to the AoE.

I've seen people try to ignore chains and then they leave the healer dead even after being told repeatedly to raise them, all the way up until another chain comes out.
More often though, I saw people try to ignore chains, healer would die quickly because there were no regens/mitigation on them, and DPS would be too slow to take advantage of the chain even if the healer were regened/mitigated. Adds come anyway, and then you have to deal with them with one healer who's dead/weakened and another healer who is probably not comfortable with solo-healing.

The normal way of doing things is slower, but less likely to wipe with a random group. For an average DF group, it's smoother that way.
If you want a fast group where everyone's comfortably on the same page with a different strategy, and who are all capable of following it, you'll get less resistance finding a PF group for it.
DF, you'll have people who can't do it, or don't want to do it, or are hostile that you even suggested it. You'll frequently find people who don't like being told how to play, even if you know it can be faster or more efficient or whatnot. Giving them instructions and expecting them to follow it, when they're not asking for it, can be taken as forcing your playstyle on them, even though their refusal may also be forcing their playstyle on you. You're probably capable of accommodating their playstyle though, whereas they may be genuinely unable to follow yours.

I spent weeks getting my card. I stopped asking if parties were willing to try the faster method, because most of them really just couldn't do it when they did try, and many parties that didn't want to would just openly insult me for even -asking-.

Even for Big Bridge, I got people literally calling me a moron and yelling at me because I'd explain why people try to not cure confusion (not even giving instructions, I'd just be explaining it); and a few times when I explained that confusion is cured by topping a player off, I was called a terrible healer for not knowing that you cure it with Esuna/Leeches (which is wrong).

Let people do what they want in DF. It's just less trouble that way.
For me, I just don't want to deal with the hostility anymore. And in many cases, people can't play at the level that you're looking for.

[gzuscry]

Also, for the 1st part of the fight, it's a good idea to keep 1 tether chain, you'll not get chikened till its active.

I had plenty of times when unchaind ones are still chickened after some time even if one chain is up. I think it also requires some dps output to skip chickens with one chain up