The Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane - Discussion

[ArkAurelius]

So after a while of playing Ultima HM, fighting for the accesories (currently ilv76, seeking the Fending Accesories), i have noticed a large number of issues when I do the instance with PuGs /DF / some PF parties.

One is that in most of the fight, the healers are running around, out of the range of the tanks, leaving us to fend for ourselves and by the time they're done dodging the plumes, one of the tanks is down, and after the first Aetherial Boom, the probability of survival is already in the mud. Isnt there some position at least one of the healers can take to provide the healing to a tank? As I can see Ultima has no cones or "direct" AoEs, outside of the Tank Purge and Magitek Beams.

Secondly, how many players have gotten/seek the Ultima Accesories? Outside of the usual BiS the iLv90 accesories are, are there any that stand out for certain jobs?

[Yenn]

I've been running this for a total of ~14 hours this week.
I've managed to kill it five times.
I regularly go for 10-12 seconds without a single heal.

The problem is that the healers are tunnel visioning and forget to heal the tank. Especially during Boom.
They also don't pay attention and top the tank off before laser. I can sit there thinking 'Yeah, I'm about to die' five seconds before I die, while both healers AoE heal over tank purge and don't bother topping me off.

[ZeroHigh]

I don't really know the fight from a healers perspective, but during the first set of plumes range (bard/casters/heals) can stand directly in the middle of the arena. When I'm on my summoner, I stand in the middle between the four plumes, wait for tank purge, get healed, then I run off to the east or west and repeat until the Ifrit dashes. Might help your healers a bit.

[Bixby]

I've only healed this a handful of times over the weekend, and only had one success. All DF parties, so no real organization or anything. But the only times I really had problems reaching the tanks were aetheric booms and sometimes eruptions.

For plumes, there are a couple safe spots, at least for one of the two patterns, so you don't have to run that much. For the first two booms, you really shouldn't need both healers going full blast AOE. They can stagger. I keep an eye on the tank, and since every DF healer does go full AOE on booms, I'd just cure the tank if that seemed better. Lasers and Ifrit are about the same for movement and casting. You have to run around, but you can stay close enough and get a cast off in between moves. As long as the DPS aren't biting it, it's not that big a deal. Tank purge is such a non-problem I almost forgot to write this sentence. Airship crashes can kind of suck; I always ran to the far side of the arena, which was a problem, so I need to stop doing that.

Eruptions are only problematic if they're on me, or if the two people with them go all Benny Hill and cover the arena with them. Even when they're on me, I'll end up close enough to the tanks when I'm done running, so the down time is minimal. The last boom, there's just too much AOE required for me to stagger heals like I do on the first two.

It's like Titan HM for a healer. The first several tries are very chaotic and panic-prone, but once you learn the patterns, you can (largely) plan where to be. Also like Titan, it largely comes down to how much avoidable damage the rest of the party is taking. If your healers seem fairly experienced, I'd say save your CDs for aetheric booms and airship crashes. Those are the parts where even experienced healers are, IMO, most likely going to be focused on the group a bit more than the tanks. Inexperienced healers, it's a crap shoot anyway.

[Lemon8or]

For this fight, I usually have 1 healer (usually WHM for Cure III) stay behind Ultima with the group of DPS during Aetheric Boom so they'd be pushed back to the same spot, eat the same bomb, hit Cure III, move on to eat another bomb. The other healer will be on the side, thus, getting less pushed back in a separate spot (be careful of the bomb) and heal the tanks.
During plumes, there are always safe spot you can sit in to heal and not having to move at all. For example, the ifrit plume outside, titan inside, healer can stand directly in the center of the arena and avoid both. For the Ifrit plume inside, titan outside, healer can stand on the edge of the arena where titan's plume don't intersect. For lasers, you wait till the lasers are locked on, move a bit, heal and keep moving.
For the last Aetheric boom, if you have LB3, make sure the tank uses it as soon as Ultima casts it and have a monk or dragoon do Shoulder Tackle/Spineshatter Dive back to Ultima and eat both bombs. It doesn't do much damage to them. If you only had LB2, prepare to swiftcast raise that person. I don't consider i80 ultima stuffs BiS due to the lower primary stats but it's good for alt that you can't spend Myth on.