Primal Slaying

[HamiltonCalder]

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the Trust system so much is that it might help solve a lot of this.

[LineageRazor]

Doesn't really explain the text about having friends in the fight after said fight, though.

When I read Lium's post, I was racking my brain trying to remember where I'd read exactly this. Thanks for digging it up for me!

Bottom line: Canon is INCONSISTENT as to whether the WoL operates alone, or in a group, or sometimes one sometimes the other. To post otherwise on this, or any forum, is misleading. It is up to each individual to decide whether their character is a solo champion or a capable leader - BOTH angles perfectly suit the Warrior of Light.

[Delily]

Thanks everyone for the answers. It was just weird to me because one spot mentioned about Thordan how history will never know how we beat him by ourselves yet then lyse says we need help with Lakshmi

It's stated that strength of a primal is related to the strength of the summoner's belief as well as the available aether. Thordan was like Shiva, in that he turned himself into a primal using mainly the aether stored in Niddhogg's eyes. I don't know if he was tempered (as it's never stated he had the Echo), but I'd say he didn't really have the level of faith in his idea of Thordan as tempered people do. The second time we fight Lakshmi, it's not that we really need her, it's that we're busy trying to protect everyone else.

[Bright-Flower]

It's stated that strength of a primal is related to the strength of the summoner's belief as well as the available aether. Thordan was like Shiva, in that he turned himself into a primal using mainly the aether stored in Niddhogg's eyes. I don't know if he was tempered (as it's never stated he had the Echo), but I'd say he didn't really have the level of faith in his idea of Thordan as tempered people do. The second time we fight Lakshmi, it's not that we really need her, it's that we're busy trying to protect everyone else.

We're busy doing that in the first phase but then AFTER everyone gets rescued she and Raubahn stay behind to fight because 'it takes more than three to beat a primal.' And for what it's worth, you need her attack at the end to finish off Lakshmi before Fordola's barrier breaks. Or at least I did maybe I just had crap dps on the three characters I did the fight on.

[Jonnycbad]

I think it's assumed we aren't one man armies. Like, even in instances during MSQ we have to have an ally throw cures at us.

[Iscah]

Thordan was like Shiva, in that he turned himself into a primal using mainly the aether stored in Niddhogg's eyes. I don't know if he was tempered (as it's never stated he had the Echo), but I'd say he didn't really have the level of faith in his idea of Thordan as tempered people do.

I think he was tempered - or "blessed" as the specific term for that primal puts it.

I'm not certain but I think the very first time we talk to him, and he reveals the Ascians are trying to tempt him with power and he's "playing along" for now, he's still himself. But sometime after that, the Ascians must show him how to work the summoning for the first time, and that's when he becomes truly villainous.

[Iscah]

It is up to each individual to decide whether their character is a solo champion or a capable leader - BOTH angles perfectly suit the Warrior of Light.

Or an overpowered mage who still needs her tank and healer friends to support her and make sure she can actually cast those spells safely!

[Anonymoose]

Thordan has a number of seeming unresolved inconsistencies that could use some retro-polish, anyway.

Nabriales delivers a monologue about how he was tasked with finding a way to "merge man with the divine". He declares Ysayle the first successful test subject - that success blamed on the Echo.

I suffered the overweening presence of Lahabrea that men might host the power of gods, only for you to undo my hard work.

「超える力」を持つ者への「神」の憑依。
Those with "the Echo" can host "gods".

Then on NicoNico Toukaigi, the FFXIV team hosted a trivia game which declared that only Thordan was a primal, and that he used this primal power to bestow upon the Heavens' Ward the blessing of the divine forms of the Knights of the Round. (Not to be confused with the blessing he holds over their heads to ensure obedience; his primal-specific word for tempering.)

This of course appears to be in direct conflict with Lore Book 1.

The ritual used to imbue the archbishop's mortal vessel with the divine essence of his ancestor followed the same principle as that employed by Ysayle and her summoning of Saint Shiva—a rite previously perfected with the Heavens' Ward and their primal incarnations of the legendary knights twelve.

These two seeming inconsistencies appear to back them into a corner. Either interpretation leaves wonkiness in its wake because Zephirin already has a primal form early in the story, and shapeshifts in and out of it.

Assuming Elidibus gave Thordan the Echo might clean up a lot of this - granting him the presumed ability to repeatedly summon his primal form without destroying his mortal frame or tempering himself - but there aren't any good reasons to believe that's true and the devs seem hesitant to confirm or deny. Still, it fits with the Heavens' Ward vanishing upon his death that he blessed them ... which implies this wasn't the first time he became King Thordan.

And Tsukuyomi would then be an interesting mix of Thordan and Susano solving one another's respective primal wokiness (while making a grand example by temporarily tempering and eventually killing the Echo-less Yotsuyu).

I don't even try to solve this one, anymore.