RDM In Xevioso

It just occurred to me that I don't think I ever really posted about this tweak to the V25 Xevioso strategy that I'm a huge fan of, so here I am.

If anyone is trying to clear this fight, and knows a RDM with a good dagger, I highly recommend replacing the DNC in the standard setup with a RDM.

What you lose:
- DNC DPS is obviously higher
- Losing steps (but Distract makes up for Quickstep so it's really just Box Step)
- Backup AOE Healing
- Edit: Also Haste Samba, thanks Shadow, somehow it totally skipped my mind

What you gain:
- Haste/Silence/Para/Slow can be handled by the RDM, letting the WHM focus on healing
- Slow/Para/Gravity and Bio III on the adds
- Phalanx2
- Can Cure the WHM from afar when the adds hit them

In terms of DPS, I find that it's not really a concern with Xevioso. If you can survive, you can kill it. Many of my clears have had 5+ minutes remaining on the clock. Also, RDM DPS isn't terrible.

In terms of healing, I find this to actually be a massive improvement. The problem I ran into with the DNC doing backup healing is that quite often what happens is they just end up healing the party at the same time as the WHM, hitting first because theirs is a JA, then the WHM heal ends up being too low for Ebers pants to recover the cost and the WHM ends up bleeding MP throughout the fight. In the end, it just created friction. The RDM, on the other hand, can work together with the WHM. They can leave AOE healing to the WHM and do spot heals with Cure4, most often on the WHM when the adds hit them, so the WHM doesn't have to stop healing the party to heal themselves. WHM keeps the party alive, RDM keeps the WHM alive.

Speaking of keeping the party alive, it's a lot easier with Xevioso and the adds debuffed to hell and back without the WHM having to stop Curagas in order to apply them. Which again, surviving is the hardest part of this fight in my experience. Also, Phalanx2 on everybody is a nice little perk in that regard.

What's required of the RDM:
They'll need a good dagger obviously. Since RDM doesn't have native access to good dagger weaponskills, this means a dagger that gives them one. I think that's basically prime dagger or R15 Mandau. There may be other options but I can personally attest to those two working well. I was doing 20-30k with Ruthless Stroke using this set which probably isn't even optimal (no TP bonus earring):

ItemSet 403352

The other thing the RDM needs is an Evisceration set with good crit rate to help with procs. Damage doesn't matter, just pump up the crit rate. Here's the one I threw together in a couple hours, most of which was spent getting Blistering+1 and Thereoid:

ItemSet 403353

Now go forth mighty Red Mages, and contribute to the disappearance of bees!

Does Addle land on Xevi? My only tweak would be addle and NOT silencing him gives the WHM a bit of breathing room in my experience. Aero/Aeroga is not too terrifying, so I’d often sneak a spell in before I have to curaga. Other wise the RDM benefits sound really good.

I forgot that subjects you to silencega spam. So maybe that’s out

Would tauret be terrybad in that scenario?
Never tried tauret on xevi v25

I didn't actually try it because I figured that Evis, Shark Bite, and Exent would all be pretty bad. Could be worth a shot though.

I didn't record specific numbers but when I used Evis to help proc, I vaguely recall numbers in the 8k range. I bet Tauret and a better set could get that up to 12k or maybe even 15k, but that's still only half the damage Ruthless was doing.

I like this, I would only add to what you lose from dropping the DNC from the party is Haste Samba.

Edit: there would be a good argument for swapping to Tauret when Aura is up just because of the special effect of Tauret when below 1000 TP.

Been contemplating something similar to this, bringing RDM to Kalunga in place of BLU