O' Ye of little Faith (The Steps of Faith Discussion and Answer board)

[The_Last_Dragoon]

So much like the rest of Eorzea, I've been running around trying to get through the new trial. While it's not "impossible," it certainly has been designed where you won't be able to just Duty Finder it in order to complete it. So I have 3 main things I want to try and mull over in the brains of my peers to see what their thoughts are on the matter.


1) Theory: Why is this so hard? Not only is there no precedent for this kind of required story trial/dungeon where all members of the group need to be fully educated and experienced in order for the group to succeed. Therefore most normal players who don't seek out guides or strategies before attempting are doomed to fail repetitively. But isn't this what the developers actually intend to do and want? When there's struggle in the game, it promotes people to work together and play through it, logging in more hours in order to progress themselves or help others. If I'm correct (I'm not sure if I am), this is the last major content patch before the expansion meaning that this and the remaining content are supposed to last players until mid June. Since this game is heavily story based, one can assume that you cannot progress to said expansion until after the pre-requisite story has been completed. So if players spend the next two weeks just simply getting the trials and the story done, then the patch will feel more wholesome for more players. Keep in mind that despite the new trial, there's nothing to stop you from doing Expert Roulette, Coil, or the Crystal Tower, meaning that it's ok to let a week or two go by without completing the new trial and finishing the story until the expansion because there's nothing stopping you from completing your dailies or continuing to enhance your gear.

2) Community: If anything this trial requires community more than anything else in order to complete smoothly. It's something that's been lacking in most online games lately, and it's jarring for anyone not used to it. I suggest that if you don't have a Free Company then get one, and if you're partial to your Free Company but they aren't active enough to do it, then you need to Party Finder for it. Using the Duty Finder may eventually be possible for this trial, but until then you need to stick with the Party Finder and Free Company groups. In addition, make sure everyone is AT LEAST ilevel 110, the actual duty finder allows for ilevel 90 players, but it's not difficult to have an ilevel 110, and it will allow more room for error. Make sure your group at least looks up the strategy for the fight. If anyone is going into the fight blind it will spell a guaranteed wipe for the party.

3) Strategy (This is just from my own limited experience):

Tanking: One major misconception that I've been hearing all day is that the adds need to be tanked ahead of the boss. The problem with this is that the boss' hit box is strictly in the belly area between the legs, and any cannon shots aimed ahead of his claws are sure to miss him. By tanking them at his belly though, this opens up a whole new problem with the fact that most dps and heals like to get trampled by the boss. Don't worry about facing, since as long as you dodge the aoes you shouldn't need to be healed too often, and any positional dps should be the big hitters who are solely going for the boss. Since there's two tanks, one tank should be the one making sure they all stay in the center while the other picks up any stragglers and focuses on the 2 main "moving" enemies. It's imperative that the smaller enemies be killed by the cannons before you reach one of the towers since it frees up the additional tank to man the dragon slayer. Even if you don't, the additional tank should STILL go up and do the Dragonslayer, dragging whatever enemies he has with him. Since there's no cast time on the Dragonslayer, there's no fear of being interrupted. While the first Dragonslayer strike can be executed unaided, you will need the help of the Snares during the 2nd and 3rd Dragonslayer opportunity. During the final quarter of the bridge there will be a bunch of barrels, this can potentially do a large chunk to the boss as long as tanks pick up the adds that are heading for the barrels and keep them away from them. Once the boss walks into the barrels, they will explode and deal anything within the radius of them tremendous damage, so make sure you're not included in that range.

DPS: The most imperative thing the dps can do is figure out which two dps man the cannons and which two beast down the boss. Dragoons, Monks, Ninjas, and Black Mages are perfect to beast down the boss while Bards & Scholars are much better suited for the cannons. This is assuming of course that these players have relatively the same ilevel and skill with that class. The two cannon dps will also be using the Snares, so it's important that you know when and where you need to snare. No Dps should be main targeting the adds, but instead the cannons should be focused on the adds with the boss as the second target. It's also important to only slow the drake adds that charge forward to either the barrels or the cannons as slow doesn't actually affect the boss and instead makes it very hard to keep the adds in place. Cannons also have to stun the Turtle once he tries to do the large aoe. After you've fired the 3rd and final Dragonslayer, you need to completely switch all the way onto the boss and burn him with LB3 and pop everything you can to try and take him out. Even if everything goes perfectly the fight is extremely tight, and if you slack on dps or miss a dragonslayer missile then it could easily ruin the attempt. Above all else it's important that you don't get hit, especially by the dragon's feet since it does roughly 3k damage and takes the attention of the healers away from the tanks.

Healers: I haven't personally tried this Trial on a healer, but from what I can gather the biggest problem that arises is that people are constantly finding themselves out of your range. If everyone is clear on where they need to go, then hopefully you find yourselves on the left or right side of the dragon. Each of you should keep your focus on your respective tanks and only heal dps if they are within range and the tank isn't struggling. For this reason it's important that the healers and tanks are marked for this reason so that you both know where your tank is to follow them and so that dps knows where the heals are. The off-tank's healer should NOT follow him up the tower unless he's trailing an uncanny amount of enemies.

There are three major flaws I've already noticed with my strategy and I invite you to help brainstorm to try and fix them.

A) The Horde Shield Dragon likes to veer off in order to execute a Swinge. This can do a moderate amount of damage to the whole party, but more importantly takes him off the stack on the boss and excludes him from damage, meaning that he constantly becomes a further annoyance.

B) The Horde Armored Dragon is extremely slow and constantly likes to make himself invulnerable to initiate very short range aoes with long cast times. This makes him somewhat difficult to keep under the belly of the dragon.

C) The Horde Transcendent seems to lack an aggro table, similar to Stone Vigil HM where he's originally found from. This means that he will not stand still for the cannons and will indiscriminately attack with avoidable unprojected aoe attacks. As long as all other major Horde dragons have been slain you can ignore him, but he becomes a serious problem if players do not recognize what he does.

You may benefit from variants of this strategy if your group is suitably geared since if one tank can handle all of the adds, then the other tank can man a cannon, allowing for the extra heals to do the Dragonslayer missiles and free up pure dps to go Beast on the boss.

[Lyrinn]

Healer stacks with tank under boss --> healer automatically draws aggro on adds --> solo tank picks up adds easily --> much easier.

[BubblyBoar]

I find the whole run is better and faster if a tank and healer are on cannons while DPS....well DPS. Only need 1 tank to gather up adds.

[Caoihmin]

Healer stacks with tank under boss --> healer automatically draws aggro on adds --> solo tank picks up adds easily --> much easier.

Few words - much wisdom. Me likey and can attest to this being the simplest, quickest method. If your DPS can't dodge slow moving feet; get DPS with the required hand-eye coordination to do so.

[Aurelinaus]

Our Strategy

We split into two teams

Team Adds

TankA - Holds all the add agro, pulls adds into cannon range as soon as possible
HealerA - heals Add team, operates snares with OT
DpsA & B - Dps Vishap and help burst down 'big' adds

Team Cannon

TankB - Corrals loose adds and brings them to MT, operate a snare
HealerB - heals cannon team, dps whenever possible, operates dragonslayer(can freely use sprint tanks and melee dps cannot)
DpsC & D - Man cannons, when cannons are unavailable dps in the following priority any surviving add -> Vishap

Gate 1

TankA Grabs first wave off adds pulls them ahead of Vishap into cannon range so they can be blasted away mostly, before Vishap gets there. Predetermined dps get on cannons and start blasting away. TankB picks up following waves and bring to TankA. When adds are significantly reduced start focusing dps on Vishap.

Gate 2

More less the same as Gate 1 with Big Adds. Cannon Healer runs up activates dragonslayer as Vishap crosses the "big red dot".

Gate 3

Same as before except Bigger Adds and snares are thrown into the mix. When Vishap starts channeling massive line AoE, snare him. Healer at the top of tower activates dragonslayer and runs back down to patch up any numnum who ate AoE. Melee lb3 if you.

Barrels

Protect barrels from the adds that will run up and try to detonate them with an AoE. Stun them to interrupt their AoE then drag them away. Detonate the barrels with cannon's fire attack when Vishap gets close

Gate 4

Same as Gate 3. Ideally Vishap should've died at the barrels if he still clings to life (<10%hp), don't fret the last dragonslayer will do him in, as long as you don't forget to snare him

[seekified]

I completed this in three tries in DF with my lame i113 WAR (DRG queue was ridiculous ). It's funky new content, and while it does indeed take a run to get used to it there's no reason whatsoever a DF party with decent players can't do it if you communicate.

Also, don't put DPSers on cannons - it's a waste. You need one tank to tank and one healer to heal him, so naturally the second tank and healer should be on cannon duty. I put a melee on the boss fulltime to help damage quite a bit and the bard was given Dragonkiller duty while our two BLMs AoEd the living shit out of everything that was nibbling on me under the boss. Wasn't that bad but a really fun learning experience. I may have been lucky with the people I got in DF though, dunno.

[LYagami]

Ive accepted i wont be completing this anytime soon as an nonjap speaker on a jap server due to being an oceanic player. I get shut out and go as far as not being healed when i type in english (when ive specifically only ticked the english group only box)
Ill just have to wait till everyone else can do it without me and i just get carried....lol

[cgbspender]

As a healer, I tried 3 times (down at 3rd) . The first attempt was a bit random, just to get the feeling of the fight. From this, I could easily understantd, If you're on a side and have to heal someone on the other side, it will be hard (not enough range). 2nd attempt, I tried healing from the middle (between feets), and got stomped many times and received some aoe hurting aoe (poison and adds). Third attempt, I saw the other healer go one side, I took the other. This worked wonderful. There will be some you can't heal because of range, but leave that to the other healer, cure the ones in range, from your side. You'll have to run front a bit too, to heal the cannoners-dps and sometimes the tank when they're hurt, but no big deal.

I read somewhere that it's recommended not to reswpan and let the healer raise you when you die. I would say this is a terrible idea. It takes only a few seconds to respawn and to recast a protect/stoneskin, and we have TIME for that. It's definitely not as healing-intensive as some other trials. That will avoid the "weakness debuff" on you and reduce the damage in case you get stomped by his feet (over 6k damage). With a weakness debuff, one feet on you and you'll likely be dead. With an healthy player (ie, no weakness debuff), you can probably take a stomp without dying. With a debuff, you can't.

Everything went really smooth at 3rd try, I was even surprised it was already down when it died ("oh already ?"). Make sure your dps do not get stomped by feet too often... This might not be the best placing for healers, but I liked it. In all cases, you need (you, or another player) to coordonate everyone's actions. Everyone gets a job to do, and they should do it. With this constantly in everyone's mind, it should be a piece of cake. Walk a mile (litterally) in everybody's feet shoes.
If you're not receiving cures, then maybe you're not dodging enough, or you went too far away from where you should be. Positions is all that matters in this fight.

Done in DF.

[Causality]

Having run multiple times the method used is solo tank solo healer.

One tank and healer man the cannons (weakest geared)
3 DPS pref melee stay on the boss the whole time
1 DPS pref caster sprints up the towers to do dragonkiller.

The solo tank grabs all large adds and small adds as they can and runs in front of the cannons with them ahead of the boss as does anyone else (healer usually) and the cannons take them down also cannons use #3 the slowing goo on the big dragon path. The adds die quick and cannons switch to boss. The turtle will take multiple cannons.

Shackle at towers 2 and 3 before dragonkiller.

Make sure the transcendent is by the powder kegs before exploding.


Last duty finder boss was dead before third dragonkiller.

Also release and run back, battle rezzes have no place here!

[Pterois]

What it requires is something this game needs desperately and im glad someone at SE saw this... either read up on the fight, actually communicate or pay attention! it only takes one person to know the fight, just as long as people communicate and not play with their heads up their ass.

I love running into a dungeon blind sometimes, to keep me on my toes, but as long as your are paying attention (and have a decent connection) you can dodge mostly anything. And as for the mechanics of gunning and dragon killers... it should only take one run thru to figure them out (since you can respawn in the fight, which is also a break from the normal.)

and i'll throw in that the number #1 priority is keeping the mobs up front... which means everyone up front!