August Ambuscade Volume One

Single shield just about anything can still break it, it's just a matter of being ~1200 phalanx

Double shield though, no damn idea what to do.

just to add to the general knowlegde- Wildfire did bypass the shield on the ***run I mentioned earlier. COR and I (on RNG) were at least able to deal pittance dmg by chaining Wildfire>Wildfire for Darkness and whittle him down for a win the one time we had him proc his lv.2 Shield.

I'm not saying this is viable, but when stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, this was at least something.

it could just be a higher phalanx effect, idk though, ranger coro/ls/truefight for zero

I couldn't say how well their sets were though

There was no sch, and geo didnt change to appropriate buffs, so they could've just been not doing enough to exceed the barrier.

RNG COR BRD GEO WHM PLD
We were able to remove shield effect by using tactician's roll and SCing with coronach > last stand, or last stand > coronach, though this method was unreliable.

Most groups on Asura are going SMN RNG COR GEO WHM PLD/RUN for D/VD and it's definitely the best/most reliable way of clearing. The SMN doesn't have to be perfect geared either, and crystal blessing boosts last stand by a good amount.

Ergon RUN is best tank for this, but a good PLD does well too if whm is on top of removing paralyze and bio.

Will it be a better choice if RUN do crit attack instead so ranged DD isn't sacrificing their DPS to break shield?

Thinking a setup like this:
RUN, COR, COR, RNG or COR, GEO, BRD.

GEO and BRD main heal, RUN swap to crit-hit rate set if shield comes up so COR and RNG could focus on DPSing imp.

Yes, I was able to erase it just fine with whm. The new neck is a life saver for whms.

I only use the crit build when the shield is up, and its a huge DPS improvement over not having a crit build (non crits doing 0 and all.) You kill all of the imps in the beginning. I don't think you can even damage the master until they're dead.

What I meant was, there were reports saying master got double shield up before imps are dead.

So that means master will got single shield up when RNG and CORs are focusing on imp, is that correct?

Unless the reports are false and shields will only be up after imps are dead 100% of time, in that case then having the tank to remove it when ranged DDs are busy would not be necessary. I don't think SMN would be necessary in that case as well.


I don't know why I kept hearing opinions from people saying this month is ***too - -. Soulflayer Wasn't NEARLY as bad as moogle(2018 03) or sahagin (2017 08). But maybe my pov is screwed since I didn't SMN burn moogle back then.

Had it happen once where it either instantly got double shield when the imps died, or it had double shield before the imps died. Wasn't paying that much attention.

Either way it was at 100% and couldn't be damaged.

It's possible, but in my experience the only times it happened was when our group totally *** up the imps stage (people dying, taking a very long time, etc.) I think it's based on time from the beginning of the fight, and the time required to promote changes at a few points.

1. Killing all of the imps
2. 50% HP/25% HP

Something like that. Either way just be fast and have a crit build ready when the shield is up and it's never an issue.

Alright, thanks.

Also just FYI, did a bit of quick math for COR crit set before bed based on Snaps set:

ItemSet 360459

For COR, change mainhand to fettering for 1% more crit, and Lanun +3 hands of triple shot is up. Seems that the extra QS outweight 6% crit rate from mummu hands +2 even if crit rate isn't capped. more hit=more chance to crit etc.

If you have Fu body swap that in obviously.

I'm not getting extra TS from Oshosi head/legs and empy body beating mummu for head/legs/body slots atm. Aiming to post some calculations on COR forum tomorrow if I get time.

FWIW, although a full on crit rate build works fine for this use case, my usual preferred RNG COR crit sets swap out Crit Rate for Crit Dmg options in a few slots listed below (and I kinda lean toward that approach here). Especially if you're using Rogue's Roll for another roughly ~20%+ rate (a strong choice for this particular fight with one COR, and a no-brainer if you have 2 COR), and with all the AGI on current ranged gear, your crit rate is probably plenty sufficient without going 100% all out.

Head: Meghanada Visor +2 (RNG only cuz Dead Aim) or Adhemar Bonnet +1 (COR option)
Body: Meghanada +2 (Abnoba also plausible on lower difficulty, but it's a big hit to Racc/Ratk/AGI)
Legs: Darraigner's Brais

Though to be fair, I'm looking at that from an Empy AM3 up perspective (haven't truly lived till you proc a 3x damage crit on every shot of a Triple/Quad shot). I guess for non-Empy, CHD is slightly less mouth-wateringly delicious and just going gung ho on CRate is more palatable.


LOL I was a couple days late to this party but THANK YOU RANGED BROS THIS IS OUR TIME. Gonna have to pry my Armageddon from my cold, dead hands!

Eiryl, in general I totally get your "ugh bandwagon" sentiment, I really do... But not this month. [insert incoherent babbling about a government conspiracy tryin' to take our guns]

The tanks how do you carry it? I made 4 clears of Paladin and 2 of Runefencer....suffering a lot, the battles lasted 10 minutes at least.

But to control the hate is very difficult (last time I did it from /blu and it was a little better, but only a little), but between paralysis, amnesia, stuns....it is very difficult to control the hate, besides, although I have good equipment (pdt/mdt caped and following the AH guide) the whm has to cure a lot and the hate VERY difficult to control.

Some advice? Because I've heard that some tanks say it's easy and I feel very frustrated.

Ruau pretty much covered the most important bits in his vid: bring meds (Panacea, Echo Drops), try to maintain -DT thru spellcasting, and funnel everything in front of you for blocks/parry. Being completely unbuffed is dangerous, so take the time to get Phalanx, Shell V and Crusade (if you're not capped on -MDT w/ just gear) up asap. Save One For All and Rampart for after full dispel from Soulflayer.

Have your ranged attackers/summoners set up a SC, so they can dispatch the Imps quickly. They are so weak to Last Stand, that if people are just spamming, it's easy to cap hate and there won't be much you can do. Ask CORs to sub DRG for high jump, ask RNGs to use Anni and have them sub SAM for Demon Killer/Warding Circle. Sacrificing Fencer/Berzerk is totally worth not getting death/amnesia/full-dispel multiple times. SCH might be a good choice for main healer: Animus Minuo, Caper Emissarius if the tank dies, and can manifestation + bind the entire group to give you a breather.

Thanks for the advice, this morning I made 2 more runs in VD of pld/blu and it went much better, I suspect that the whm was good, even though it took more than 10+ min, there was a lot of damage, and I see that the harder the battle the mobs access to more skills / spells and becomes more difficult.

But Pld/blu is much better than Run, but in 2.5k HP Baylds I'll have my Ergon with the Run and see how it goes with it.

Thanks for the answer, Arislan.

Our LS runs 4 Pup, 1 Cor, 1 Bst
1 tank pup runs in and puts pet on soulflayer>>
the adds charge us grouped at start and and Bst using Slug pet uses AOE and holds imps. Everyone moves to next corner left and have 1 pup on dd tank pull an imp at a time while to DD pups take out imps one at a time. Rotating runs with 1 pup on Overdrive makes the imps go down super fast. When we got to soulflayer 2 shields are up and bst swaps to bertha(or nq if timers down) and using tegmina 1-2 times and will take the shield down. using AnimatorP-II and pets at a range WS were hitting from 15-23k very quickly (beast roll/companions roll throughout fight).

When shields go up bst just needs to use tegmina again to lower and automatons take it down fairly quickly.

Albiet this may not be as fast as most other setups can be, it is a very safe way to almost guarantee a win.

Setup was:
Cor (regal roll mule)
Bst (master, no rema) with good DT set to hold imps
Pup1 (master, soulsoother/valoredge frame holding flayer)
Pup2 (master, SS/VE frame on single imps, SS/SS swap on boss)
Pup3 (master, VE/SS frame on Imp, swap to SS/SS frame on boss)
Pup4 (Same as 3)

all pup sub whm and had pup 2 watch BST for erase if boss gets off a subduction to take weight off.

Had only 1-2 runs that a random imp would come off the bst pet to us and just put pup 2 on it to hold while 3/4 took down rest of imp that was already by us and switch over.

No wipes and about 20 mins a kill- like i said, pretty damn safe and if you were to wipe on a run on other strats the time difference to re-enter and do again would probably offset the time just to run it smoothly.

Just my 3 cents on this month - power to the puppetmaster!

Back to back shield, to double shield. There is literally nothing that will break it without smn.

All the same ***as last time, spirits within zero too, hot shot zero, crits do zero

How long are you taking to clear the imps? I've done it about 15 times now and only saw that once when we took over ten minutes to do the imps phase.

It literally did shield > last stand x3 (3 cors) > 10 seconds later shield.

was about 7 minutes in all imps dead.

If one shield is "1200 phalanx effect"

Second shield is like "20000 phalanx effect" that's the only thing I can think of why SMN can break it but none of these rangers/cors can.

The progression is faster in the last 25% of the fight. I've never had issues though even with just 1 RNG using a crit build during shield. Maybe your DPS isn't fast enough? It's also possible that it was up longer than you think. When it does casting or weaponskills, the animations cause the shield to disappear. The most reliable way to know if it's up is the log (look at your damage).

No. It literally did back to back shield.

15%

12:10:11 Immortal shield
12:10:13 last stand 17k~
12:10:13 last stand 15k~
12:10:14 last stand 16k~
12:10:20 Immortal shield

GG

"get better rangers" it's *** asuran shout. what do you expect. grateful they can even hit 5 digits.

Someone feel free to purposely put up double shield and find literally anything that breaks it. (except smn, already know it does)

If it's just a very high phalanx effect then any really well buffed ws should do damage.

Like, it's real simple.

Trueflight (full buffs) no shield > 50k
Trueflight (same buffs) single shield > should do 48800
Trueflight (same buffs) double shield > 30000?

-/+ Mighty guard
"you do it" I have -zero- augmented herc/relic+/af+ for ranger. (this is why i dont want it to be a ranger only month)

Not a big fan of /DRG for this, lol.

For 1) Watching another group doing ambu VD, hate doesn't seem like an issue at all. Not one single imp went to backline in entire run, which took 2 min to buff + 3.5 min to kill all.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/294809496?t=01h23m50s

From what I've seen, if there's an issue with hate, it's probably a different problem.

2) More importantly high jump has a cool down so it works best on single target but not multi targets, and I don't think in ambu you can remove hate on multiple targets at once? So if you high jump on one imp then pull hate on 2nd imp again, high jump won't be available and it's better to solve the problem mentioned in 1) instead of relying on high jumps.

Some people mentioned Armageddon etc for shooting, I wouldn't consider it at all. Imps took entirely way too much SC damage so it's kinda fomalhaut or bust.

Would also argue that BRD and GEO are the best healer for this, to an lesser extend RDM maybe. If they are fast with distract 3 all of the targets and keep it up full time. From the previous discussion about shields etc, seems like the best approach to do this month is to go all out and kill as fast as possible. The slower it gets the more painful it can be with shields, hate and such. So jobs like SCH or WHM that can't push DPS to max level with acc buffs will lower DPS as a whole, and make the fight more risky than it actually is.

We had no issue with Pld Brd Cor Rng Rng Whm rngs didnt pull hate at all on imps with 45-55k last stand to 80-90k radiance we use fomal for imps then switch to gandiva on boss run was 6 min 40ish secs

Have you tried fire nuke on GEO? If wildfire does some damage like reported, maybe it's weak against fire magical damage or something.

Otherwise I don't understand why wildfire could wittle it down but everything else 0.

-n.o.t.h.i.n.g.- (smn*)did damage on double shield.

Fire shot zero. Thunder shot zero. Wind shot zero. Ice shot zero. Earth shot zero. Water shot zero. Wildfire zero. Fire nukes zero. Hotshot zero. Spirits within zero. Requiescat zero. Savage blade zero. Detonator zero. Last stand zero.

I'm reasonably certain it's the amount of phalanx effect that makes them do zero.

If your "normal" wildfire does 21000 then with double shield it should do 1k damage. In theory. Very simple test. (20,000 is the arbitrary number I'm assuming)

This is conflicting to another testimonial that wildfire doing damage with double shield.


I don't get it, the only possibility is that Cele's WF set is a bit better so they bypassed phalanx reduction.

But why wildfire? Why not another magical WS or physical WS?

...

Go TEST it.


Since last stand is "2hits" it could be like 15k phalanx etc