The Odyssey - || Strategy And Discussion ||

Just cleared Mboze, counter set worked well. Cornelias Belt has counter+5 on it from VR missions too.

Want to state that V25 Bumba is confirmed to put fetters up 1 minute after aggroing him in any way. Have fun with Zerg strats.

My v15 clear on Mboze was as a Solo DDer on BLU with 5 supports, and my v20 clear was tanking the 1 add TP batterying. That being said, I'm still curious on specifics of the set, especially incorporating counter.

What was your method of maintaining hate? On v20, I'd rotate Fantod's in enmity gear inbetween tickle/reaving, debuffs (silentstorm, cesspool on pull, tenebral, tourbillion at last 25%) / plenilune and diamondhide on the DD. If you Are indeed casting spells for hate, I'd love to see what your set looked like. I'd presume it'd be mostly accessories to not compromise defensive stats.

I totally understand it being "SUPER FUN" tanking and juggling all these actions. It's probably very difficult to maintain aggro, even throwing a few white winds out amongst all other things, but atleast with this cookie cutter we're developing you'r not doing it for the 2nd phone, and theres only 1 add to manage.
Are you holding the add in a specific angle to avoid conal damage on others, or is it too chaotic to worry about and just let the WHM manage?

Are you saving Diffusion for Exuviation when the add pops? or are you saving Diffusion for MG for survivability? or for Nat. Med for the DD (Drk or War) to 'zerg' the last few minutes via SoulEnslave or whatnot?
Is plantoid killer value'd here as a set trait?

I'm presuming with the 'breakthrough' strat of stacking counter to ease the tanking situation, you kept Orcish Counterstance up as much as possible. Was curious what the #'s looked like on it;
O.Counter adds a flat 10% chance to counter, and paired with the cheap 2 points Asuran Claws you get the base trait of 14%. After that, it's mentioned you can use Cornelia's belt for +5, otherwise it's slim pickings. Genmei ear +1, Cryptic ear +3, Amar Cluster +2. Then theres Gleti's Mask AUG'd for up to +10 @r30 (but more reasonably, lets say yours is r20/25 for +7/9, and i'll ad at the cost of alot of DT).
Everything else seems bad, like Talab trousers or Arasy Sword, and you're definitely not eatting Rol. Turkey for +10 there.
So you'd have 32~34% without O.Stance up, then 42~44% with it up. That's certainly significant enough to consider incorporating into alot of 'tank' style Blu sets.

Cape augment, bathy choker+1, next highest thing would be shield and its all scraps from there

Gletis mask r25 is 9 (10 r30)
Cape is 10
Cornelia’s belt is 5
Cryptic earring is 3
Genmei earring is 1
Bathy choker is 10
Amar cluster is 2

Genmei shield has 4 but you’re giving up offhand of like sakpatas sword

Blu spells up to 16 plus Orcish Counterstance is 10

Maximum of 70-71.

Not counting genmei shield you’re looking at a relatively easy to accomplish 66-67. There is more gear but then your treading on thin ice making those particular swaps.

Very glad you filled in these holes I had in my assessment, it makes it seem even more viable... even if its only 60 that's significant as hell

Can confirm this. If you break it, it comes back up 1 minute later, too. Denounce STILL isn't fixed, by the way.

TP reduction works to stop him TPing while fetter mode is active, but there's some weird damage reduction mechanic (maybe SDT increase?) associated with WSes and either Skillchains or Magic Bursts while in fetter mode. Death MBs will do 99999 to start, then decrease sharply to 30k and then <10k. Impact lands fine to start, then wears off nearly instantly by the end (Burn, meanwhile, landed for full duration the whole way through). Leaden Salute (even when doing other WSes to mitigate the consecutive damage reduction) starts at 40-50k, then decreases to <5k after several uses. Seraph Blade and Omniscience were similarly reduced. For spells, this only affects one element at a time (Water MB did 20k after Death was reduced to <10k), and free nukes do not increase the resistance. The resistance does NOT go away after breaking fetter mode.

I'm inclined to believe this resistance mechanic has always been here - in V20 runs, I have noticed damage go down immediately after breaking fetter mode in a way that couldn't be explained by buffs dropping. It's just far more relevant now that there's no way to avoid it...

What makes you think it's broken in the first place? When we first saw denounce deal 4k damage we thought it was a bug, but now after seeing the sortie basement G and H bosses and Aminon all get a similar ultimate death attack I'm not so sure. It's also been reported to s-e multiple times and they haven't moved on those reports. How is denounce doing 4k damage that much different from Triboulex doing setting the stage every 3 minutes, Aita doing Vivisection, or Amionon's bane of tartarus? The only difference is this one is tied to the fetter window rather than running on a set timer. It's clear that s-e intends for us to proc bumba to avoid dying to denounce. Whether or not you agree with it is your prerogative, but that really feels like the intended mechanic here.

And yes I know how asinine the bumba proc mechanics are, and how stupid that makes the fight. That's not my argument here. I'm just saying I don't think it's broken. I think this is what s-e intended us to have to deal with from the start. We just circumvented V15 and 20 with zergs. Now they're telling us we can't do that anymore.

Everything you're describing about elemental damage can be explained by the fact that bumba switches which element he's currently aligned to. The changing elements is the reason we resorted to savage blading him in the first place on previous vengences, because by just not skillchaining at all it removes the possibility that we screw it up. Hit him with the wrong elemental damage and he just absorbs it and heals for 99k. So it makes sense that elements do better or worse based on his current form.

Also just a thought, bumba changes his resistance every minute which now coincides with his denounce/proc window. The symmetry!

Bumba does not change elements, or absorb any elements, while in fetter mode. He never has, and V25 does not change this.



There's a couple reasons why I'm fairly certain Denounce's insta-kill is unintended behavior:

1) Those other insta-kill moves you mentioned are all on set timers. You KNOW going in that Setting the Stage is every 3 minutes, and Vivisection is a little over 3 minutes. You can plan around that. Bane of Tartarus is a little weirder, as procs mess with the timer, but it IS still on a timer. Not only is Denounce completely random while Bumba is in fetter mode, it can be the very first TP move it does after fetter mode engages, which is an unavoidable death unless you have Perfect Defense up. He can also just refuse to do it at all. If it's intended to be an instant wipe punishment for not breaking fetter mode, why can he use it two seconds after entering it?

2) While in fetter mode, Bumba always uses TP moves in pairs. If Denounce is the first TP move in a pair, it kills everyone in range instantly. If it's the second, it functions exactly like Sajj'aka's version and brings everyone to critical HP without killing them. Why would this be intended behavior?

Honestly, I think the only reason Denounce hasn't been fixed yet is because people were still winning anyway - whereas with pre-nerf Mboze, nobody was beating it through Tiiimbeeer without TP suppression strats until it was hotfixed. We'll see what happens when more people get to V25 Bumba, I guess.

Hi Mischief, to add to what you wrote, didn't SE admit that it was a bug and broken? I tend to be forgetful but I remember some friends saying so.

There's also this: Accepted Bug

SE accepted this as a bug, though that terminology is confusing in that it simply means that they've determined that the report contains sufficient information, so you can't read too much into the 'accepted bug' label. However, SE is generally very fast (by SE standards) in confirming an accepted bug as 'working as intended' in cases where things are in-fact working as intended. This one though as been sitting there as an 'accepted bug' for nearly 2 years now, which is a way longer travel time than other recent examples of 'accepted bugs' being confirmed as 'working as intended'. Of course, that could very well be overanalyzing it and perhaps it just fell off their radar and forgotten forever in the abyss.

This was discussed a few weeks prior to v25 coming out, I had asked how people were dealing with procing / Denounce consistently rather than just dealing with the RNG of it and pushing through at 20. I'd say on our runs, at least 75% of the time he was using Denounce right after the proc window opened, probably more, and the time to proc was so minimal there was no way to do it before he used Denounce. We tried using some TP control (like a DRK using Soul Enslavement right before), which seemed to help on a few runs, but obviously with a 1min window that is only going to buy you help that one time without a reset. I also assume you are going to need at least, what, 5 or 6 procs?

Someone had said when I asked then that the damage dealt by Denounce was relative to the number of players in range, so they had the rest of the party run out of range while a single player (MNK IIRC) stayed in range to proc it. I had a hard time finding people willing to verify or try this rather than just roll the dice, so I never verified, but if this is the case then I would expect this time we just have to deal with the mechanic rather than keep rolling the dice on the prng.

I also did a bunch of farming at v15 on NIN and vaguely remember Migawari keeping me alive when everyone else got rekt by Denounce. If that's the case and the previous strat doesn't reduce Denounce damage, NIN can do most of the procs solo and possibly survive while everyone else is out of range of the damage. The challenge is they would have to have hate, but DRG could maybe jump to dump enmity before running out. I know on v15 there were several runs where I was the last one standing on NIN along with the WHM during the proc window, so that may be worth a try also. Similar to the previous strat, I never could get a group to try it on v20, so I'm not 100% confident it works that way, I just remember keeping Migawari up and being left standing while the rest were KOd.

So it seems like we need to be approaching Bumba differently from how we have been up until now. Straight up zerging it does not appear to be a reliably successful strategyfor V25. It's quite likely this fight will require, at the very least, a two-phone strategy. Kaggra has already done something like this, and their winning strat may be a good template to follow.

KI 1 is TP control with BST, similar to how many people are doing Arebati and Mboze V25s. Get it as low as you can while ensuring that TP moves are either infrequent or don't happen at all.

KI 2 is the kill team. They end up killing it from ~65% or so in about 1:30. Their strat and setup are laid out very well and could be easily replicated. Obviously, more HP, Regen from two pets, the two pets themselves, and this apparent damage resistance people are reporting may throw a wrench into all of this. But it's an idea that is outside of the box compared to what we are used to.



Disclaimer: I have not yet fought V25 Bumba so I am talking out of my ***.

Thanks for sharing this Hya I like this idea as most of our kills we tried to create some wiggle room with a 2 KI strat. They were able to bring it down quite a bit with MB’s and it will be nice to see how low a V25 can be brought down this way. I’m not JP so I didn’t understand everything but he did highlight the RUN, PLD, and BLM, BST. Looks like the support is SCH and GEO. Just need someone to be able to call out what element he is in for the proper MB’s.

A few notes on Mboze using the 2 moglo strat, since it's basically identical to the one we used (just swapping DRK in first run for a SAM, they both work equally well).
I found it's best to wait 30 seconds between Mewing. Any faster and you start getting resisted quite badly, any longer and Mboze can get too much TP. I actually added a custom timer to my Lua to track how long since I last did it, that way I never go before 30 seconds.

This also gives plenty of time to change to Garuda for a Predator Claws between each Mewing. Easy 6-10k damage each time, it adds up.

Also, Siren's Bitter Elegy was HUGE. I used Apogee to apply this, skipping a Pred Claws for it. I would hit a Mewing, then pop Apogee and swap to Siren, wait for BP timer, do Elegy, swap back to Cait, and do Mewing. If the RDM lands Para + Slow and the SMN lands Elegy, Mboze swings comically slow. If you use Apogee on entry to apply buffs faster, it should be up again pretty fast once the fight starts.

Also, if you need to re-apply buffs in the middle of the fight, Conduit is a good way to do it.

I actually ended up changing to Barblizzara after pull. Barstonra is nice on pull, but after that Mboze should be well-silenced. At that point, Stink Bomb's paralyze is a bigger danger/annoyance than the earth damage IMHO. The adds really like to use Stink Bomb.

If you get MEva down aura, WHM should back away from AOE range and only move in to re-apply Auspice. Otherwise they're going to be paralyzed constantly like everyone else. I suspect it's still pretty tough to beat that aura, but it might be possible if everyone adapts and changes the strat around the aura.

KI 1 was: PLD RUN BLM GEO SCH BST. SPs used in that fight were Tabula Rasa and Unleash.

KI 2 was: COR WHM RDM BRD WAR DRG. SPs used in that fight were Wild Card, Stymie, Mighty Strikes, Soul Voice, Clarion Call, and Asylum. My Japanese is not good enough to translate the whole video, but there's still valuable information to be learned just by watching.

As far as Bumba's element dust cloud, as I recall it was hard to tell the difference between some of them. Awhile back there was an addon going around called Bumba Announce which would call out the element in Party chat. Not sure if it is still functional these days or not.


This is all good info. Our SMN was less familiar with the job, so their timing on BPs were not perfect. We didn't think of Elegy from Siren at all, that should decrease Mboze's TP gain from auto-attacks and give more time for the BLU and SMN to do other things than suck TP.

Barblizzara is a smart choice to handle Paralyze that I didn't consider at all. For me, removing the debuffs wasn't a major issue, and I still feel like I'd prefer to stick to Barstonra to be safe. Mboze loves to nuke the second his Silence wears off, and Stink Bomb should still be Earth-based so it will help reduce damage.

And yeah, during MEVA down I stayed out of range as much as possible. If the Paralyze wasn't so potent I would say that this could be an Afflatus Misery/Esuna fight, but I wouldn't *** around with that Paralyze. Like I said, we had this aura during phase two of the fight (between 75% and 40%) and, while it sucked, it was something that can be worked through.

That will be clutch as I also remember having a hard time differentiating between them. Thanks for the breakdown of the information.

Yeah that's a fair point. It may also depend a bit on the WHM's enfeebling set. I literally had exactly 1 Silence resist during all of our attempts, and it was during an MAcc down aura. Second cast landed, and didn't get resisted again after that even with the aura. That was with tropical crepe and R15 Yag.

That said, he does indeed like to cast immediately after Silence wears. He did land a few spells that way during our runs. I didn't have much luck (or time to try) landing Addle as a WHM. Which is dumb. It's a tree, they should be weak to fire! I was able to land Paralyze sometimes, but rarely had time to keep it up.

So maybe Barstonra is indeed better. The paralyze really wasn't a big problem until we hit the MEva down aura, and that's when I started changing to Barblizzara.

Can you give an example of one?

They highlighted all the gear on this same page if you looked up a little :)

Genmei and Amar would be questionable swaps but the rest is probably worth it

My bad - I didn't refresh the thread in a few days and didn't realize that until I posted. I saw the set you quoted now and it does seem pretty comprehensive.

Yeah, I feel like the general process for these fights is figure out how much defense you have to play to keep everyone consistently alive, verify you still have the offense to kill it, then get good enough at the strat that you can consistently put yourself in position to take advantage of the runs when the stars align for you. I dont love it either... when I was initially told you "needed" WC reset to beat Ongo I thought that was ridiculous. Like that bar is too high lol. But we got him to 7% once without WC so I figured it could be done. Our win had a WC reset.

Want to state that when v25 Bumba 1 hours, he goes into instant fetter mode no matter if he has TP or not, irrelevant of fetter timers upon aggro :)

Still trying different things, probably used only about 30k segs on it so far

a few of us were discussing bumba theory craft were not quite there yet but very close (why discussions have started)

I was toying with the idea of approaching it similar to mboze by lightening the dps with first ki and then take a tp drain kill team for 2nd ki. (its complete speculation at this stage of course)

Ki1 - Run Blm Sch Geo Smn Rng - MB with smn mews to limit tp partially
@fetter time run e.sforzo to cover fetter dmg and opens for rng to close>barrage>close for 3 step (trying for quick multi-step proc) and the mages cover the sc in MB's to try cover 2 proc mechanics (rng stay out far to not die during fetters)
(still a large amount of luck going of to proc and remove fetters for 2nd entry and before the run dies to deno or something lol)

Ki2 - bst blu DD cor brd whm - slower kill team over full 15min

But if the 2nd 40% 1hr/fetter is unavoidable it ruins the 2nd ki tp drain theory so back to the drawing board for that part for sure lol, but this is where our discussions has led us to.

Has anyone managed to work out a way to know what "Proc" is required for bumba ahead of the fetters or is it still unknown and just random which proc he wants?

Does the element he is in have a direct relation to the what proc will be needed does anyone know? due to v15/20 zerg strats i know myself and people i talk to never bothered to sit and work it out but now this feels like it could be vital if fetters are unavoidable

I think you are missing the fact that bumba will go into fetter mode several times, not just once after 1 min and 2 times during SP.


So basically you need to proc it again after 1 min and probably again and again. Maybe there is limit to that, maybe there is not. None know this beside devs probably. So basically if you plan long fight, you would need to have a way to deal with fetters. Also if that damage reduction that Mischief mentioned adds up after each new fetter mode, then longer fight won't be possible. Tbh i think even with one damage reduction it's probably impossible to outdamage Regen from 2 adds with any slower DPS composition. I think there must be some mechanic to break fetters more completely and reset damage reduction. Maybe you need to proc it like 4 times? Maybe it can't have same proc condition twice, so you need to proc all 4 of them.

The only way I can see Bumba going down for now is massive Zerg with getting super lucky with proc being crit condition first, then same WS condition second and finish the fight before third fetters and on top of all of that have luck for adds to not be terrible and and Bumba to never use Denounce. Good luck :)

i havent missed anything,

the 1 minute fetter pop will be tp based/should be, the 1hr fetter popping regardless of tp isnt. So effectively if you manage tp feed you wont see procs outside of the 1hr fetters.

With a single blm doing MB's id like to think a smn could keep the tp low enough that you only see the 1hr fetters.

and why i also said ki2 for sure is back to the drawing board