Skirmish Strat

[NintenPyjak64]

I keep hearing about people who complete Skirmish quickly but what I would like to know is what basic strats do people use (mainly talking about the island with the goats, eyes, trio, ogre and tree). What jobs should we prioritize looking for?

[Molly_Millions]

Massive DD. That Skirmish is all about burning those mobs down quickly. It helps if everyone is on the same page right from the get go what direction to go, clockwise or counter clockwise. What we did is to make sure everyone had all the buffs they need before each mob is down so there is literally no down-time.

*edit: also, we used two WAR tanks because of the tree's sleep/hate reset move.

[Arcell]

We just kind of ran in with whatever everyone was currently on and didn't have much trouble with that particular island. The Great Elm is really the worst of it.

[NintenPyjak64]

The team we used the 1st time around was 1 PLD, 1 WAR, 2 WHM, 2 DRG, 1 MNK 1 BLM. We did OK up untill Tree, one of the DRG and a WHM dc'd, though the WHM came back. We couldn't readd the WHM. The next time the PLD switched to WAR and the WAR to BRD, we wiped on the hog/cactus/fly. How could the Initial team presented be improved besides changing the MNK for another DRG/BLM?

[Molly_Millions]

I think the first setup you posted may be better. We used two tanks because of the tree's sleep move. Each time he uses it on your main tank, your tank is gonna lose hate.

[NintenPyjak64]

I think the first setup you posted may be better. We used two tanks because of the tree's sleep move. Each time he uses it on your main tank, your tank is gonna lose hate.

Yea, it was incredibly insane. It was running around everywhere Sleeping everybody until our eventual wipe.

When the tree does it's sleep skill, does it hit from all around? or in front/sides of it?

[cyborgmermaid]

It's right about at 50% he starts spamming it like crazy and we can't figure out what on earth is causing it. And getting hate is a lot harder than usual when he does. It took every ability I had and then some to take it back. :I

[Belial]

It's nice to burn down the Skirmish mobs quickly if your goal is to grab the weapons as fast as possible, but the real perk I find from this content is the ability to test on various boss-mob types seen throughout the game (mobs with adds, physical resistant mobs, magic resistant mobs, tank n spanks, etc.). It allows you to test different gear sets, perfect or create new rotations, all within one instance. It's kinda like test dummies, good practice and a little reward if you are missing out on primal weapons, GC weapons or relics.

[Kagato]

I found success with this set-up:

WAR/PLD tank (WAR is ideal)
2x WHM
3x BLM
BRD
Bonus (Another BLM is ideal, but can also include MNK/DRG/DD WAR/Another BRD)

For what you're talking about, we just had the tank hold hate on all mobs while killing off add-ons one by one. For the Gnat/Cactuar/Boar, we just killed in the order of Boar, Cactuar, Gnat. Pretty easy enemies. However, the Tree boss is what's hard. Main issue is his Sleep with the resetting hate, making him go crazy on the whole party and hard to really pin down. This is where a lot of BLMs come in. They don't have to chase him down to deal damage. So the fewer physical DDs, the better. The WHMs are really the ones who need real protecting here because the Tree can go after them at any time. But seeing as how his hate-reset is more obvious than the golem, he's a little easier to deal with. Just a little. A very little. Maybe try Molly's idea and dual-tank and bounce hate off each other.

As for Turtle Isle: As a WAR tank, I pull all the enemies back with my back facing the water, so there's nowhere to go from knockback skills. We merely straight tank the bosses until they die one after another. If by some off chance that another boss comes in before you finish killing the previous one, it's best for someone to bind the enemy and start kiting until the tank can grab it.

The hardest fights are the Mammoth (due to how overwhelming he can be at the start for the untrained player), the Chimera (who will really destroy you until you learn how his attacks work), and the stone Golem... simply for it's hate properties.

The problem with the Golem is that it will ignore any hate-generating skills and basically stalk one person until that person dies or gets sparta-kicked away from it. I believe there may be other factors in regards to how hate works in this fight, but I am unclear on them and hope someone else can elaborate. I know I've seen him change targets at random, which makes him even more unpredictable.

Main thing here is for the WHMs to stay alive. If they don't have SS up on themselves, they're in big trouble. The Golem doesn't actually hit very hard (A MNK in my party was tanking him straight up for a while). It's just how wild his hate properties work and he can destroy the mages if he locks on to them and they cant survive. After all, you can't pull the Golem off.

So really, once tyou learn how the other bosses work, the island is very easy up until the Golem. Until he's better understood, he's just a berserking golem with no rules other than he's out to kill anyone he feels like at the time and won't stop until he feels like changing targets.

[Molly_Millions]

Don't stand behind the tree. I'm not sure if there is a direct correlation as I haven't done the fight enough yet, but it seemed like when nobody was behind him he slept us less. But it also could have been that our mnk was getting more stuns the 2nd time.