Turn 6 LOS Strategy (Quoted from French Moderator)

[LunarEmerald]

Meh, it's a silly strategy anyway. Using the briars is safer.

Both methods have their pros and cons

LOS:
+ easier to coordinate. Everybody always knows where to go.
+ less unavoidable damage
+ gives you more time to avoid devour

- middle bulbs are more threatening
- can be harder to break vines
- one screw up and the entire group gets eaten. instant wipe

Brair

+ easier to break vines since one person is running back to the briar
+ middle bulbs aren't as dangerous
+ harder to get the entire group eaten due to screwing up

- stepping in briar damages you. More work on the healers.
- without voip, people won't always know which briar you're gonna use
- if a briar is too far from you when devour begins, you're in trouble

[Nero]

The whole point of the stun is to prevent you from being able to move while you're being devoured, I don't see how stunning you means it's intended... it's just part of the mechanic of the devour to prevent you from moving while the devour goes off and while you're trapped inside before being spit out. It's not some added effect from avoiding the mechanic, more like an unintended side effect of avoiding one piece of the mechanic.

If SE did not foresee that people would use this "way", then there would not be a "Stun". That certain way to avoid devour is the only time that 4sec Stun does appear. Which implies that SE was aware of this, or there would not be a stun/or anything else at all.

Healing in the briar isn't a big deal, and considering spit comes after the devour, your healers will be AOE healing anyways, so the player in the patch will be getting topped up anyways, or have an adloc or regen on anyways while in the patch.

Also, the divebombs aren't really related at all, the party just moves as a group to keep the divebombs 100% predictable, as the entire party is grouped together, while LOS method is all about completely avoiding a mechanic. You still get stunned, which means your DPS doesn't improve in any way, especially if you are ranged, because while waiting in the patch, you can be casting, this is the same for a healer.

If the patch is not near the AoE heal, he will not get healed with it. I have seen that a LOT of times, that people were simply out of range for being healed to max. The thing why i compare Divebombs to Devour is that you start running as soon as it disappears. It is the same thing, since using the hole to dodge it was not really the way SE thought of it. Yes, i was clearly talking about melee's and not ranged dps.

Here is Yoshi about Divebombs btw:

Y: We don't have the responsibility to edit any strategy guides or magazine feedback. Divebomb is a straight dive from Twintania towards her target. The solution we thought of was that everyone would move to realign themselves based on the timing and target. However, the pit is a position that's obvious for everyone and the different level changes the hit detection. As a result, it's become easier to dodge than we were thinking. However, we didn't want to suddenly have everyone struggle with the strategies they came up with, so instead of modifying it to boost our ego, we left it alone.
--So you leave it alone even if the development team expected a completely different strategy?
Y: That's the plan.

Dodging the second divebombs grouped up for the snakes is a cut on your DPS time for casters unless you have an instant cast or swiftcast and melee can't do any positional attacks, but that's minor DPS time that isn't really significant. And for the rest of T5...? Well, dodging twisters and dealing with the dread is another DPS loss, especially for melee who ideally need to get out of range to prevent being locked into place too close to the dread when it spawns to prevent a death if DPS is too slow and stuns aren't as reliable.

How is the second set a cut for DPS? This is a bit off-topic and i am not sure how you do T5, but as DRG i pull my full rotation at the second set. It is about timing and with Manawall up also a BLM can dodge the 1st and 2nd Divebomb, so don't have to worry it that much. I did not do it as BRD or SMN, but i would guess it is similiar there. Also for Dreads it is about positions. Pull Twin to the outer edge and a Melee never have to move out of range for Dreads.

This game is all about being able to handle mechanics while suffering DPS loss in the end game content, even things like EX primals have downtime, it's all about optimizing your time when you can't be attacking.

That being said, handling the mechanic the intended way easily outweighs the LOS method, as casters/bards/healers can perform while in the briar, and melee can snap back to Raf after the devour goes out keeping their DPS going as efficiently as possible, avoiding the 4 second stun all together.

This is what it comes down to and like we can see with my last comment about T5, people use clearly different ways to handle it. That is the question, if it is intended or not and since there actually a "stun lock" exists, i believe this way can be seen as "intended". Otherwise i don't see why a 4sec stun would exist at that point, since it is not in any other point in that fight.

The LOS method is favored by a lot of people because it ultimately requires less coordination with handling the mechanics with the briars, it cuts out one factor of the fight while trading it off for a loss in uptime by 4+ seconds for the marked player.

I would not say less coordination, since you can simply fuck it up by moving to early, too late, have thorns, trying to break, running into someone else and get them eaten etc. It simply allows to coordinate in an smaller area and i prefer it, because i hate any sort of "heavy" effect. Hence 4 Sec Stun, running into briars, getting back on boss can easy take double that time + dmg. But yeah, we don't have to agree which is easier and what everyone does prefer, since that would be beside that point.

So, while I don't really put the LOS method relates at all with T2 soft enrage and T5 divebomb, I will say that it's just another way to handle the fight, and isn't so much of an exploit as you still have negative side effects. Players will do what is most comfortable to them, and if the LOS is what a group is happy with doing, that's what they should do.

Yes, i agree. I've done both way and i do prefer LoS. And just as a sidenote; in T2 i prefer not doing enrage and love dealing with RoT. I do not think that it is hard at all, i just think it is way more fun and actually way faster than staying around until it does enrage. xD But nice to see, that someone can actually have a normal discussion. kudos to you.

[LeonBlade]

Yes, i agree. I've done both way and i do prefer LoS. And just as a sidenote; in T2 i prefer not doing enrage and love dealing with RoT. I do not think that it is hard at all, i just think it is way more fun and actually way faster than staying around until it does enrage. xD But nice to see, that someone can actually have a normal discussion. kudos to you.

Thank you for your response, I did read it all, but I don't think having a long discussion back and forth will be something other people will want to read, but I understand your points of what you are saying, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I would like to have done the rot mechanic, but never learned it, personally I would like to some time. Yes, it's very nice to have a normal discussion, that means having someone nice to talk to, so kudos back to you as well!

[Slatervonjager]

The Line of Sight method shouldn't be considered an exploit. If the dev's consider it an exploit, then I'll just eat every single one of Garuda's Slipstream's from now on.

There's this magical tactic called walking to the side. Works every time.

[Ooshima]

Do you really need a response from them though? It's been weeks now I am certain they're fine with it. Those players in that FR topic are just made people are playing different from how they play. Both methods still require good execution. I think you know the answer here OP you're a bright poster (not sarcasm.) Keep doing LOS if you do it, or do it how they intended.

Not really needing it thou, personally I never thought it was any form of exploit but just something clever that people came up with. I'm doing the feed method

Probably just seeing that since the FR mod took up the case, maybe it's just nice that our EN mods keep us updated, that's all. I find it a little sad that the JP mods and sometimes the FR mods are more active and responsive compared to our own.

Just look at the pile of in-game bugs reported. 7 or more pages there left unacknowledged? I remembered the first bug reported I made got acknowledged within 24hrs and moved to accepted bugs. There's a lot of other bugs there which are legitimate such as T9's floor targeting issue with Shadow Flare/Flaming Arrow but there wasn't any response too.

Anyways that's another story

[Lothar808]

Interestingly enough, the briars don't actually stop you from getting devoured. It just prevents you from getting sucked in before the boss tries to devour. Try being in a briar that is really close to the jump animation of devour and you will still be eaten. Also, the stun happens when you are caught in the "suck in" attack, people mentioning the stun as a side effect of doing the LoS method are mistaken as it is there no mater what method you use. I.E if you get sucked in, you get stunned. the LoS method is simply used to avoid the "suck in" mechanic, which is exactly what the briars are used for. Sooo both methods are used to do the exact same thing. The only claim someone can make is that LoS requires less heals since no one should be standing in a briar, but there are mechanical trade offs and ill timed movements that probably make the LoS method technically harder to do.

[Awrini]

Actually yes. The briars just protect you from the draw in/stun. Not the actual devour. Little known fact as pparantly. If you're doing the los method and there is a briar under the boss. You can bait the devour away from the group and be in the briar in time to not get stunned by the suck.

[ShinkuTachi]

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Seeing this kinda stuff makes me really happy to be part of this community.
(and just to be clear, I'm not being sarcastic)
Great discussion!