Pharos Sirius - Too difficult for randoms

[Aureliami]

wah wah WP is too easy

wah wah PS is too hard

I hope Squarenix never listens to forum whiners.

[Appleh4x]

wah wah WP is too easy

wah wah PS is too hard

I hope Squarenix never listens to forum whiners.

Umm the problem isn't difficulty per se, it's the ilvl. If I run this with my friends we can blow through it in no time with no risk at all, roulette is the issue. If you have an ilvl48 healer lacking plenty of experience this is literally impossible to clear.

I simply stopped doing roulette after seeing I always ended there. Sure I miss on a nice number of myth, but I'd feel like a jerk for leaving after entering.

Really? I always feel like the nice guy taking the 30 min hit, because 9/10 times all the people there are roulette and none of them want to do it.

[Ixis]

Really? I always feel like the nice guy taking the 30 min hit, because 9/10 times all the people there are roulette and none of them want to do it.

You aren't taking the hit for them because they don't leave. At least not always or right away. Every time I land on Pharos it is already in progress; 5-10 minutes in and not a single thing killed yet. I clear them with minimal trouble, but I can only clean up after 1 tank a day.

[Ehayte]

Yeah... As someone who has done enough accidental empirical research for this duty (8 DR runs, 8/9 of the first days of DR, 2 wins total) here are some fun facts:

AVG Players left of mysteriously DC'ed : 1.25 players per instance
Completion % of Boss1: 87.5%
Completion % of Boss2: 75%
Completion % of Siren: 37.5%
iLVL Req: 48


Let's look at a comparison for my last 8 completely DF (solo queue) Haukke Manors:

AVG Players left or mysteriously DC'ed : .125 players per instance
Completion % of Boss1: 100%
Completion % of Boss2: 100%
Completion % of Boss3: 87.5%
iLVL Req: 48

Pharos is maybe not TOO difficult, but it is very obviously more difficult than other dungeons with the same iLVL requirement for duty finder. If they want people to be able to gear up with those instances with lower iLVLs, make it so you cannot enter DF with less than say i60, but you can go in a pre-made party with any iLVL.

[Githiun]

Is there anyway to avoid the debuff? That's what makes healing it hard is getting the debuf. You're so busy trying to heal everything, and move that esuna'ing the debuf off everything is a pain especially when you're trying to top them off to avoid charm.

[ZoroRoro]

Tank should interrupt Lunatic Voice to prevent debuff.

[Appleh4x]

You aren't taking the hit for them because they don't leave. At least not always or right away. Every time I land on Pharos it is already in progress; 5-10 minutes in and not a single thing killed yet. I clear them with minimal trouble, but I can only clean up after 1 tank a day.

Well aren't you pretentious? I ask first, TY rude person.

[Maelwys]

The problem is that the rest of the dungeon is quite simple and can largely be carried by any halfway-decent Tank, but you really need the whole party to work together for the Siren Boss fight.

The fight can PARTIALLY be carried by a competent Tank and/or Healer. But you really need at least one of the DPS to be on their game in order to get the crawler adds killed quickly and limit break in the right place.

I've managed to beat it most of the time even in Duty Finder Roulette groups, but it does take a bit of organisation.

Some observations from a PLD tank's perspective follows:

Everything she does can be stunned and silenced. But most of her moves have short cast times, and due to DR you need to choose carefully what to stun/silence. PLD's "Shield Swipe" (pacify) is your friend here moreso than in any other endgame fight I've encountered. Use "Bulwark" when needed to increase the chance of a Block and get it to trigger. Seriously, I can't emphasise how useful it is to be able to force her not to use any abilities for several seconds here, rotate your Shield Swipes and Stuns so as to help get around Diminishing returns, and save the silences for whenever you ABSOLUTELY need to stop her from using an ability.

The Crawling Adds (Sergeants) like to stunlock you if they get into melee range - they almost always spawn aggroed to either the Tank or the Healer. They do NOT respond to enmity, but they can be both kited (useful if on you) and stunned (useful if on the healer). Mark them for priority attack ASAP. All other adds can be rounded up by Flash spam and largely ignored until they're killed.

When Siren flies up into the air, she randomly decides either to do an ifrit-style dash from the side (get AWAY from the middle) or to do an AoE Confuse song from the very middle (run to the middle directly under her). It's helpful to have a "DANGER!!!" alert /partychat macro to use at this point and to move a little bit away from the middle when she flies up into the air so you don't have as far to run when you see where she lands. If you have sergeants chasing you, you can still safely kite them around her if she's in the middle. If she does the dash from the side, it hurts non-tanks a lot, but won't kill anyone if they've got full HP and doesn't inflict the soon-to-be-confused debuff.

At 50% HP, she starts doing AoEs to catch the whole party with that pesky confuse-them-soon-if-they're-not-healed-to-full debuff. This can be silenced and stunned if you're quick, so always keep her focus targetted.

At very low HP (~5%?), she seems to enrage and summon about 20-30 adds. Limit Break her (ST) or them (AoE).

It's one of the few fights where my heart goes out to WAR tanks though... they get more self-healing to help mitigate the Confuse Debuff on themselves, but they can't prevent her annoying ability casts to anywhere the same degree as PLDs.

[Ixis]

Well aren't you pretentious? I ask first, TY rude person.

Well, that is nice of you. You, however, are not the only tank abandoning there. I wouldn't be surprised if you are the only one asking though.

[Maelwys]

You, however, are not the only tank abandoning there. I wouldn't be surprised if you are the only one asking though.

One occasion last week pops to mind: Duty Finder Roulette, Siren.

The Healer was a SCH with a little over 3k HP who hadn't done the dungeon before, and we had a BLM and a BRD for our DPS classes (each with a little over 3500HP) who were a little untalkative, except at the very start when they were reacting to the SCH admitting that they'd never done it before.

Our DPS was quite low, we took quite some time clearing trash mobs and we wiped once on the first boss, but then had a clear (if slowish) run and got to Siren with plenty of time left on the clock.
I spent 2 mins explaining what to do in partychat, and Stoneskinned and Protected everyone up (the SCH didn't have SS and wasn't using Protect).
We wiped once (she was at ~30% HP) due to everyone including the SCH getting confused whilst I was kiting multiple adds.
We celebrated getting her so low on the first attempt, tried again, and killed her.

The other party members got hit by the "ifrit-style dash" a few times, and we had a few hairy moments when the SCH got confused again... but we managed, and on exiting the dungeon I found myself with 90 Myth tomes and 3 commendations.

Those are the kind of DF runs I love, not because it was a perfect party, but because someone was new and learnt how to handle the dungeon properly, everyone gave it a brave attempt and nobody got too discouraged about the first wipe

That said, the first week after the patch was a nightmare.
My first two attempts at the dungeon saw us spending an hour on Siren until we ran out of time... even with a good FC-member healer with me on the second attempt.
On the third attempt (a full FC group) I beat it and since then I've run it solely in Duty Finder groups - I think I've run out of time again on it once since then.