Aglaia: Lion or Lioness first, Am I wrong?

[Sol_Seppy]

So I had a very interesting Aglaia run today where I recommended we focus the Lioness first and was met with, well, basically a dogpiling telling me I'm wrong, taking the piss, etc.

I've run Aglaia more times than I want to admit in my effort to max all my jobs, and am growing tired of reaching scales or having slow runs, so maybe it's not for me to ask for that, but I am curious if I'm just understanding it wrong since they seemed flabbergasted that I even implied it was better to kill Lioness first.

So, this is my understanding of the mechanics:

Lion does AoE puddle and Lioness does a donut.

People usually mark 1 the Lion and it never made sense to me because as a melee you're forced to disengage every time they do the limit cut ability puddle/donut. (Because you are always pushed to the side where the lioness is to dodge the mechanics)

If you focus Lioness down you can always have uptime, kill her quicker and then kill the Lion before he does a singular puddle if the dps is good enough, but even if it's not good enough you only have to disengage once as apposed to twice with focusing Lion.

Sure it's only a little bit of damage but everyone wants faster runs, right?

Am I misunderstanding the mechanics? Because everyone seemed to think I was and was making fun of me lol. I'll concede if I'm wrong.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

You want to kill the lion first so they stop doing the big AoE that kills melee uptime, if only the lion is alive the melees have to disengage and use ranged attacks so we kill them first.

They can hit the lioness while the lion is untargetable and get back to smacking the lion afterwards, you're not married to one target.

[Sol_Seppy]

You want to kill the lion first so they stop doing the big AoE that kills melee uptime, if only the lion is alive the melees have to disengage and use ranged attacks so we kill them first.

They can hit the lioness while the lion is untargetable and get back to smacking the lion afterwards, you're not married to one target.

Right but in my experience we have never killed the lion first before it does two limit cuts. So having to disengage twice over once doesn't make much sense to me.

Especially since if you kill the lioness first and leave the lion up there's a chance he won't even get off a puddle on his own.

It is true that I'm not married to a target, I get that.

[SnowVix]

Right but in my experience we have never killed the lion first before it does two limit cuts. So having to disengage twice over once doesn't make much sense to me.

Especially since if you kill the lioness first and leave the lion up there's a chance he won't even get off a puddle on his own.

It is true that I'm not married to a target, I get that.

so you'd rather have to disengage from more AoEs than just deal with it for a short time then not have to worry about it at all?

[Raraka]

If you try to kill the lioness first, the Lion sacrifices their HP to equal out with the Lioness. Although you will only see it if the dps is slow, it used to be more frequent when Aglaia was current

Other than that, the melee uptime is the main reason nowdays

[yoshinoharu]

Right but in my experience we have never killed the lion first before it does two limit cuts. So having to disengage twice over once doesn't make much sense to me.

Especially since if you kill the lioness first and leave the lion up there's a chance he won't even get off a puddle on his own.

It is true that I'm not married to a target, I get that.

That's the thing: 'there's a chance.' DF is inconsistent at best. It is better to kill the lion first because you can then remain in the hitbox for the remainder for the fight even IF DPS is low and you actually have to do limit cut. This benefits not only melee, but casters because they can just hang out in the hitbox towards the center to easily 1-step dodge the limit cut. Ultimately these days it doesn't really matter so much, but generally speaking common logic dictates that you kill the thing that forces you away from it first as it's unilaterally the more annoying thing to deal with in the event that you don't have the damage to fully ignore the mechanic. Generally speaking, you never want to base any strategy on a variable as big as DF's raid damage output.

[Yoshihara]

Answer is simple:
As melee you turn brain off and focus the Lioness, ignore the <1> marker people put on Lion.
As ranged you turn brain off and hit Lion.
If for whatever reason the Lioness is still alive and you're a melee and it manages to cast an AoE, just stand in fire, dps higher.

A vuln stack isn't going to kill you (unless you are bad at the game and already ate 3 vuln stacks somehow earlier) and immediately disappears after the Lioness dies.
If you somehow ate 3 vuln stacks before this point why do you even care which add you hit at this point you're probably on the floor all the time for the actual bosses I'm sure you're having PLENTY of fun.

Also this is casual content just do whatever to be honest.

[LunaCelestiaXIV]

They're so easy to kill and deal little to no damage that it doesn't matter who you kill first. Go wild and kill them at the same time.

[Sacae]

They die in 30 seconds anyway just do whatever who cares.