Rage over Sophia

[Maero]

This fight is not as bad as thordan was i would say.
But do not quit, it is a totally optional fight, just keep at it

[LineageRazor]

To the OP: If you're having trouble surviving the tank buster, here's a few tips that might help:
- Make sure your off-tank knows they're supposed to provoke during the green glow charge-up. If you survive the tank buster, but still have hate afterwards, the follow-up auto-attack will probably kill you. (Sophia's auto-attacks are thunder-elemental, and the tank buster puts a huge thunder weakness debuff on you.)
- When the green glow starts STOP ALL ACTIONS except for putting on a defensive cooldown. When your off-tank provokes, it is VERY easy for you to steal hate back by accident if you continue to attack. It may be wise to even stop auto-attacking until your off-tank has a firm lead on hate.
- Make sure your healers have you at full or near-full HP before each tank buster. If they don't, and you're using your cooldowns properly, your death is probably on them. Shields like Stoneskin or Galvanize are nice, too, but if your healers aren't expecting the tank buster (most likely because they're new to the fight and haven't gotten the pattern down yet), they may not have time to put one on you.

And yes, it's safe to say that Sophia is one of the easier Ex Primals. Most Extreme fights, mechanics will kill you outright if you mess them up - and in many cases, even a single death will result in a party wipe. Sophia is much more lenient; most screw-ups simply deal a bit of damage and apply a vulnerability debuff. Certainly if you screw up too many times and have several stacks of vulnerability on you then you'll become very likely to die to other attacks - but even then, a raise will have you back in action (and without all the vulnerability!).

Extreme trials are a significant step up in difficulty from the content in the game you may be used to. Party cooperation becomes so much more important; everyone needs to know what they are doing, and mistakes are punished FAR more severely. By the same token, Extreme trials are the point at which the game actually becomes CHALLENGING. Most previous content you could do while half asleep. You need to be wide awake for this stuff!

[SpookyGhost]

Just some quick things:

1. Don't need 2 CDs for 1 TB, just 1 (Shadowskin or Shadow Wall). Try and plan your Living Dead for a TB when your other CDs aren't up. DRK is unfortunately not the best for Sophia EX busters since they're physical and iirc her autos are magical (so no Reprisal). However this doesn't mean you need to stack CDs, 20% and 30% reduction are both more than enough to survive especially if you've got Grit on.

2. Sophia EX is easy for an EX primal, however it is a big jump in difficulty from dungeon bosses or the primal's own HM version. EX primals and raid bosses are all about memorizing the rotation of the boss (usually split into phases, sometimes not). There's only 2 true random things in Sophia EX, as an example, and that's whether she'll do T2 or T3 at certain points and the tilt (which side/short or long) - however these are easy to react to if you know how they work.

3. Plunge is pretty good for the knockbacks/tilts(?). Try and make sure it's up when those happen.

Bonus thing:

?. If you're willing to run Sophia 10 times then I'd recommend just going PLD as it makes the fight braindead. Tempered Will works on the tilts and the head knockback, you can also Cover someone to have them avoid it as well. Sheltron works on the TB so you can actually pair it with CDs for more mitigation at 0 cost. Divine Veil is strong for the AOEs and the ultimate ability for 2x WHM groups (or a lot of vuln up stacks/weakness). Hallowed is better than LD since you don't need to strain your healers or force them to save a Bene.

[bounddreamer]

The tank buster damage is physical, so it's easier for Paladin (sheltron) or Warrior (foresight, inner beast) to mitigate. I usually tank it on warrior and I only need one cooldown + Equilibrium to survive as long as my tank partner picks her up promptly.

It's actually the easiest primal we've gotten since Ravana. The tilts are pretty easy: always run toward the side with the most tethers. If tethers are an equal amount run away from the side with a blue meteor. If number of tethers is even, run to the edge. If tethers are odd, run to the way mark. And don't move for the overlapping circles, dps is always supposed to go to tank/healer unless otherwise stated.

[Radacci]

Hey, new player here. Why people play extreme primals, what to gain and how affects endgame play?.

Like Lunar said. you can get ilv255 weps, which is the best you can get at the moment, outside of doing Alexander savage. If you can get some farm parties, you can get ilv255 wep for all jobs, in a day or few; compared to it taking 7 weeks to get Alexandrian Gears, to buy micro-tome to buy ilv 260 shire weapon (or you can get micro-tomes from A10S. you can also get upgrade material from A10S to make Shire wep->ilv270. outside of Savage, you can't make 270 wep, yet)
But at the moment, sophia weapon is basically a requirement for starting savage content (at least for DPS jobs)

[Ash_]

Today I had a dragoon tank Sophia ... both tanks misread the number of tethers ('-');

And we still beat it.

[Pondera]

Okay, if you all are trying to help my state of mind while trying to get my Sophic Edge by telling me how pathetically easy all of this is, despite the fact that I've been DESTROYED over and over and over again...

YOU FAILED.

[Mwynn]

Okay, if you all are trying to help my state of mind while trying to get my Sophic Edge by telling me how pathetically easy all of this is, despite the fact that I've been DESTROYED over and over and over again...

YOU FAILED.

We all went through Practise for Sophia Extreme. Nobody of us did clear this on the first Try. Heck it took me an entire Week til I got 75% of all Mechanics.
The only Mechanic that still annoys me is the Single Thunder II Tether with Quasar Placement but I get the hang out of it.

Keep trying, the more you fail at Mechanics, the more you will understand them and this is a Way of Improving, hence how do you think People would progress through Alexander Savage these Days, not by snipping their Fingers ^^

Sophia is less "Punishing" then Sephirot is, in Sephirot you Instant Die if someone fails at Mechanic.
Sophia just punishes you for doing a lot of mistakes, the Tankbuster needs to be Mitigated and provoked directly, otherwise the Tank eats the Ground.

If you keep failing on the Tankbuster, than you need to adjust to that and use Defensive Cooldowns (Tankbuster is Physical).
Judging by your Gear, you're completely suited for Sophia Ex and the Failure comes from your Side not using Cooldowns, as harsh as it sounds.

Take that as an Advice, not as a Ranting Post about you.

[Kaurie]

Wow, this boss got me in a bad head space. I just need a space to rant and rave and carry on, keeping profanity and caps lock usage to a minimum, so...here we go.

What kind of sadist in Square Enix came up with this?! This is the most god awfully hard boss encounter I have ever seen! Tank busters DESTROY you instantly, though, a polite mentor instructed me that I have to pop TWO CDs just to survive it....insanity... I mean, I have no idea what was wrong with me tonight but I couldn't even acquire threat on the demiurges OR SOPHIA when said helpful mentor tried to get me to try my hand at main tanking. Somewhere along the line I forgot how to do this? I've been tanking since Burning Crusade! This should be second nature by now! WHAT HAS THIS BOSS DONE TO ME!?

I remember when I used to play this game for fun. Now it feels like a form of some kind of punishment that they inflict on people down in Guantanamo bay. "You'll tell us where your base is, or we'll stick you in another Sophia Ex group, worm!" I'd gladly swap over to do something, anything else, but that Sophic Blade for DRK looks REALLY cool, and I see people running around all the time with Sophic weapons, so I assume it must be SOMEHOW possible. And everytime I see this, it fills me with a jealous rage. Are there FCs that relax by punching out cthulu and looting his corpse, or am I just having seriously bad luck with the raid finder?

And no... I don't think I need assistance with understanding the overall fight. I know what I'm SUPPOSED to do with Thunders and Aeros, the clones, the add phase... the scale tipping part I'm a little fuzzy on... and the stacking light and dark circles is simple enough. I even understand the tank buster phase, but for some reason, it just won't click. I'm up to my 9th wipe and third group attempting this. So, if you must post on my live journal whining... please help my state of mind about this. Post something funny or ragey.

I am fairly certain Sophia EX is regarded as one of the easiest EX primals to date. My team has never downed one and had it on farm so fast.

That said, I am not a huge fan of the fight overall. It's middle of the pack for how interesting it is to me.

Also, what Mwynn said,

If you keep failing on the Tankbuster, than you need to adjust to that and use Defensive Cooldowns (Tankbuster is Physical).

Pondera, maybe watch a few more guides. I am not sure you understand the overall fight. No harm in not knowing everything, no one does. Just go take a look at a few different guides (not just from 1 person as sometimes they miss something), and see. I think Xeno's are often from the PoV of the Main Tank so that may be the most helpful.

[Ghastly]

Sophia is not the easiest. To me Sephirot is the easiest.

The problem is the other 7 people in your party. And also how much information you have on the fight.
Watch/read the guide for the fight like 10 times so that you know what's coming next.

Reason you might be dying to tank buster that no one here will tell you?

Vulnerability stacks (you get these by standing on any lightning aoes like thunder II or III, or getting hit by the faces she summons in phase 3).
There, I gave you the magic information that no one here will bother to give you. Instead they will condescend you.

Another tip about tank buster is that it will always hit the main tank even if off tank provokes her. After she hits MT with it she turns to OT. This was really confusing to me for like 10 tries.