Ramuh
Arena:
The fight takes place in a pentagon shaped room with four pylons located in four of the corners. The party spawns in the south corner.
Ramuh stands atop a tall pillar in the center of the arena. The pillar features several lodestones that spike outwardly.
Mechanics:
In phase one the pylons visibly provide power to a barrier protecting Ramuh from all incoming damage.
In phase one Ramuh is untankable / untauntable. Once engaged he will attack players with area of effect spells and debuffs but he will not leave his perch. Most of his abilities can be avoided.
Phase 1: breaking the barrier
Ramuh
Static Circle:
creates a 6 yalm diameter circle on the ground that deals ~760 lightning damage to the first person to step inside it. Damage dealt by static circle jumps from player to player so long as they are within 20 yalms of the source. For every jump the damage increases by ~330. Damage can move from player to player up to three times in this manner and can potentially hit a single player multiple times.
The circle becomes active 10 seconds after it appears and only dissipates after being triggered. In phase 1 Ramuh will use this ability every 40 seconds on average.
Lightning rod:
Ramuh transforms a single player into a lightning rod, calling down a bolt of lightning upon the target 7 seconds after the debuff becomes active. The bolt of lightning deals ~1240 damage to all players within 7 yalms of the target. For the duration of the debuff the target of this spell is also immune to all lightning based damage.
[Tank alert] Summon Thunder Golem
Ramuh summons a slow moving golem to attack a random player. This golem may be taunted and controlled. When a thunder golem is hit by a pylon pulse they begin to take 500% extra damage. When all pylons are overcharged all thunder golems immediately crumble. In hard mode two golems will spawn.
Thunder Golem
Bash
The thunder golem will frequently attempt to bash its target, inflicting ~560 damage and interrupting any spells or removing any combo bonuses if this ability hits from either the side or from behind.
Short Circuit
The thunder golem becomes immobile and rooted to the ground for 7 seconds. After this time it will erupt, dealing 2400 thunder damage to any player within 5 yalms.
Paralyze
Ramuh may target a random player with paralyze, inflicting the paralyze effect. This ability shares a cooldown with bind and can be dispelled.
Bind
Ramuh may target a random player with bind, inflicting the Bind effect. This ability shares a cooldown with Paralyze and can be dispelled.
Pylons
In phase one there are four pylons that must be 'overloaded' in order to proceed into phase 2 and actually hurt Ramuh. Pylons will start with 50% HP and will be considered 'overloaded' upon reaching 100% HP. A pylon's HP can only be restored by dealing lightning damage to it.
Enthunder
All players standing within a 10 yalm radius of the pylon will receive the benefit of enthuder, granting the enthunder effect on all spells, abilities, and basic weapon strikes. This effect stacks additively with any other enthunder bonuses that may be active including those from other pylons.
Pulse
Throughout the fight each pylon will initiate a pulse with40 seconds. No two pylons will ever pulse at the same time. This effect moves clockwise around the arena in 15 second intervals with the NE pylon pulsing first.
Each pulse effects a radius centered around the pylon of ~ 10 yalms and initially deals ~540 damage to all enemies caught inside of its burst radius. The damage dealt by pulse increases by 25% for every additional 10% of health a pylon recovers beyond 50%.
Pulse radius for normal pylons
Overcharge
Once a pylon reaches 100% HP it is considered overcharged and will cease contributing to Ramuh's barrier. An overcharged pylon also has the radius of its enthunder effect quadrupled and the radius of its pulse ability doubled. In hard mode the overcharge state is only maintained for 20 seconds.
pulse radius for overcharge pylons
Deterioration (Hard mode only)
A pylon's health goes down by 5% every for 15 seconds it does not take thunder damage. It's health will never fall below 50%.
Phase Transition: My power knows no bounds
Judgement Bolt
Ramuh unleashes his aetheric power, summoning a massive lightning bolt upon the pillar in the center of the arena and inflicting 5000 damage to all players in the battlefield. This damage is reduced by half for every player up to four standing within an 8 yalm radius. If two players are close together the damage is 2500. If three are together the damage is only 1250. Four: 625. Any player outside of the group in this manner will take full damage.
After the first "Judgement Bolt" all pylons are reduced to 0% hp and are removed from the fight. They will no longer pulse or provide "Enthunder".
Polarity (Hard mode only):
When judgment bolt occurs four random players receive a "positive polarity" debuff effect and four random players will receive a "negative polarity" effect debuff effect. These cannot be dispelled. This effect persists until either another "Judgment Bolt" is cast, upon which a new polarity will be assigned to each player or Ramuh dies. If multiple tanking classes are present they will always find themselves on opposite polarities.
Polaric Conduction (Hard mode only)
If a player affected by one polarity comes within 5 yalms of another player with the opposite polarity and remains there for more than four seconds the two players will cause an area of effect eruption centered between them. The effect will travel to a radius of 25 yalms and deal 2000 damage to anyone caught inside.
Phase 2: You Insolent Fools
In phase two Ramuh will leave his platform in the center of the battlefiel, becoming tankable and targetable. Players will be able to attack him and influence his targeting priorty.
Second Self (Hard Mode Only):
Ramuh splits his image into two separate entities that can be fought away from one another. The two images share a health pool and all cooldowns.
Shared Power: (Hard mode only)
If Ramuh and his second self are within 8 yalms of one another they will begin to each deal an additional 20% more damage with all attacks and abilities.
[Tank Alert] Rising Power (Hard Mode Only):
The target of Ramuh's Physical attacks receives a stacking debuff causing them to take an additional 2% damage for each hit sustained. This effect takes 25 seconds to wear off.
Judgement Bolt
Ramuh will cast Judgement Bolt again at 66%, 33% HP and every two minutes thereafter.
Sumon Sparklings
Ramuh summons 9 "Sparklings" that will all fixate on (chase) a single player. "Sparklings"will spawn randomly at one of the indicated spawning points on the map. Sparklings cannot be tanked. On hard mode twelve "Sparklings" will appear with two at each spawn point.
Sparklings
"Sparklings" move very slowly. "Sparklings" have low hp and are highly susceptible to magical damage. They will very frequently cast spark.
Sparkling spawn points
Spark
A short range area of effect pulse that covers a radius of 5 yalms around the "Sparkling". Deals ~220 to any players caught inside and inflicts bind.
Static Circle
Ramuh will continue to cast static circle throughout phase two. It's cooldown is increased to every 55 seconds.
Lightning rod
Ramuh will continue to cast Lightning rod throughout phase two.
Paralyze
Ramuh will continue to cast paralyze throughout phase two. This now shares a cooldown with heavy.
Heavy
Ramuh may cast heavy upon a random target inflicting that player with the effects of heavy. This ability shares a cooldown with paralyze.
[Healer alert] Thunder Blast (Normal Mode only)
2:00 after phase 2 begins and every 1:30 thereafter Ramuh will use Thunder Blast, hitting all party members in the battlefield with ~1100 thunder damage and applying a stacking debuff to all players that increases thunder damage taken by 5%. This effect cannot be dispelled.
Strategy:
Phase 1:
In phase one it may seem that there are an overwhelming number of things to deal with however each mechanic is fairly isolated and easy to manage.
Every 15 seconds a new pylon will begin to pulse, however on normal mode players will only ever be focused on one single pylon at a time. This means that for 45 seconds there will be no dangerous abilities surrounding the pylon and players must only move out when the time draws near. Because it is on a timer and you can see the other pylons go off in a clockwise sequence it is relatively simple to gauge how much time there is to avoid it.
The two abilities that would likely give players the most difficulties in phase one are "Lightning Rod" and "Static Circle". Because "Static Circle" never dissipates without activation, players will need to trigger them in order to ensure there is enough room to move around and fight the boss. Otherwise a new circle will appear every 40 seconds and quickly eat up space, allowing more and more chances for mistakes to occur. Players need to plan this ahead of time so that the damage from static circle does not jump around. If "Static Circle" occurs and everyone is in the chain lightning radius when it goes off you are looking at a full, instant wipe. Fortunately players have plenty of time to move out before it becomes active (10 seconds, much more time then eruptions on 1.0's Ifrit) so dodging it will be fairly simple.
Lightning rod will also be an ongoing concern. The person that gets this debuff needs to be paying attention so he or she can run outside of the group (as most people will be stacked up at this point to receive "Enthunder"). The player who has become the "Lightning Rod" will also become temporarily immune to thunder damage, making him a great candidate to activate any static circles that may need to be removed.
The "Thunder Golems" are the tank's main job in phase one. They will be soloing them by tanking them inside of the pulse radius of a pylon which makes the golem ultra susceptible to all damage. Tanks will take them away from the rest of the group and will need to run out of "Short Circut's" range when it occurs. Tanking them will be similar to tanking Coincounter properly but they will not take nearly as much damage.
As phase one continues pylons will overcharge faster and faster as the range of Enthunder from overcharged pylons quadruples, allowing it to cover the entire battlefield. By the time players are on the last pylon they will have four stacks of enthunder and will be able to overcharge it very quickly.
Phase Transition:
When the phase transitions from phase one to two Ramuh will come off of his perch and become targetable. He will cast Judgment Bolt shortly thereafter. Judgment Bolt does not have a long cast time but only happens at very scripted and predictable times. Players will need to clump together in order to negate the damage from it. A single player hit by it alone will always die. This may sound tricky but a group that puts the time in should be able to complete this maneuver relatively easily.
The strategy for dealing with Judgement Bolt is very different in hard mode.
Phase 2
Once the first Judgement Bolt has passed Ramuh will continue to use "Lightning Rod" and "Static Circle" as before. Players should take special advantage of lightning rod's damage immunity whenever they can. Make sure no circles get left lying around because they WILL be in the way. Ramuh does not have a huge amount of HP so the fight after this point should not take more then 7 - 8 minutes.
Because their main single target nuke is a thunder spell, and thunder will heal Ramuh, Black Mages will want to attack and kill any "Sparklings" that appear on the battlefield. These "Sparklings" can cause bind which will be very inconvenient if someone becomes a "Lightning Rod" or has to move out of a static circle. As such they must be killed with AoE attacks as soon as possible. Usually two to three well placed fires should deal with all of them.
Ramuh's other new ability in phase two is "Thunder Blast". Ramuh will begin using this 2:00 after phase 2 begins and every 1:30 thereafter. The real danger here is the stacking debuff as it causes players to take more and more thunder damage as the fight goes on. This eventually serves as a soft enrage timer. If players cannot kill Ramuh before the damage gets too high then White Mages will not be able to out-heal "Thunder Blast". Healers may need to conserve cooldowns and save benediction if they know there will be trouble getting the boss down. This ability is not a part of the hard mode fight.
Finally, players will need to deal with Judgment Bolt between 2 - 3 more times on a successful kill. So long as players are able to stack and spread out and then stack again learning how to negate its damage should not be all that difficult.
Hard mode:
In hard mode the fight is much more complicated for the tanks, who in normal mode only really had to deal with the golems in phase 1. Ramuh has more or less the same amount of HP but mechanics will require you to bring a second tank, leaving that extra dps class at the door. In phase one there are two major changes: "Summon Golem" now creates two golems (to give both tanks something to do) and the pylon's hp values will begin to "Deteriorate" over time. The extra golem is not that much more difficult to deal with so long as both tanks can avoid its abilities. "Deterioration" however requires some extra finesse. Because "Deterioration" only occurs on individual pylons after a certain amount of time passes with no thunder damage, groups will need to set aside a single ranged attacker that can hit each with thunder and ensure no DPS time is lost. A single hit of thunder damage is enough to keep the overcharge state going. This role will take practice and will likely see many groups fail on the first few attempts but will not be to terribly hard to master.
The real changes occur with regards to Judgement Bolt. Because of the polarity debuffs, players will need to form into two groups of four instead of one big group when trying to negate its damage. This will ensure that nobody causes an eruption. Players will need to pay attention to which polarity they have and position themselves accordingly so as to not wipe the group. Ramuh's "Second Image" ability actually aids this rather than hinders it as players will be able to separate themselves into two groups of four and still deal damage to the boss due to the shared HP pool.
There is a catch however, possibly the hardest thing about hard mode will be managing the effects of "Rising Power". If one tank stays on Ramuh for too long he will begin to take too much damage. To avoid this tanks will need to switch. The tank on the "Second Image" will need to take over for the one on Ramuh while the tank that was previously fighting Ramuh must move to the "Second Image" until the debuff wears off. In a game that does not have simple taunting abilities and where agro management can be an issue when swapping tanks this might be difficult enough, however because of polarities the both groups need to switch between targets at the same time to avoid "Eruptions" and must communicate to move along clearly established paths so as to not get to close to one another. This is a very complex and challenging maneuver that will likely take many attempts to perfect. Polarities will change after every "Judgement Bolt" as well so players will need to be constantly on their toes.
Finally, hard mode sees more "Sparklings" which spawn in all spawn points at the same time. Ranged attackers will need to prioritize and kill these ASAP and groups will want to fight their individual bosses (Ramuh and the Second Image) in positions where "Sparklings" will not appear on top of them. So long as players watch for "Lightning Rod", break "Static Circles", and pay attention to their proximity to others a win should certainly be achievable but not easy. Fortunately he does not use "Thunder Blast" in hard mode so there is no soft enrage. Maintaining this pattern and dealing with the additional Judgement Bolts will be much more difficult than dealing with blast ever was however.
pulse radius for overcharge pylons
Originally Posted by DoctorMog
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