Sovereign Behemoth Strategy

As far as I know the fact that Mob meteor was dark based was one of the many "legends" alive among players for quite a long time, but not true.
If I recall it was tested as soon as RUN was released. Neither Dark or Light runes + Vallation/Valiance reduced damage, and Liement didn't produce absorb. Which kinda hints that it's not elemental based.
I think it falls under the same "legends" that made a lot of player believe Mijin Gakure was fire based etc.

"Ecliptic Meteor" is probably dark based instead.

Yeah Hoshi I killed it too without procs...
...when I was in a group with some of the best players on the server around and we were using SP abilities etc etc.

Now try that with more "average" players, without procs, and we'll talk about how lovely this NM is.


I only have 1 hide and no Loricate Collar NQ yet, FML >.>

I was reading through some very old posts about AV. One thing many linkshells claimed was that dark carol helped against meteor chainspell, but did conclude that fealty is, for technical reasons, a damage blocker against meteor. Some people think that meteor has a enfeeble magic definition, which fits fealty purpose. If it is dark based, and an enfeeble, then rune has other (enfeeble defense) options to negate the dmg, on top of dark carol II.

On fights where we did not proc white it only took another minute or so more to kill. One hours with people geared for current end game content shouldn't be needed, just abuse 10 minute abilities.

I think it's in the RUN thread on FFXIAH or in the one on BG, but someone already tested KB's Meteor on RUN with Vallation and Liement.
They do not reduce or absorb (rspectively) the damage from Meteor, which kinda shows it's not dark based.

Tried to look for the post but I can't find it. If I recall it's old, was tested not many months after RUN release.



@Loire
No when we whiteprocced it was melting in like 1 minute, 2 minutes max? So fast that with the same SP abilities we managed to do TWO fights.
When we didn't proc it took... I dunno, around 7 minutes? 8 maybe?
It was really annoying and we had some incredible players like that.
It's not efficient to farm over 50 skins and the NQ item you want (i.e. a *** of pops) when it's such a demanding fight that it requires me to get players THAT good to be able to kill it.
It wouldn't be so demanding if we could reliably proc White but the thing is exactly that, we don't know a reliable way to do it, it's been random so far. Somewhat related to Light SC damage maybe but still too random to rely on it.

That sounds pretty reassuring to me then but I never seen this testing must of missed it. I may go mess around with RUN later and try it myself and post it.

I tried googling fast but I couldn't find it. I'm on mobile now, maybe will check more thoroughfully later.

I seem to remember it was in a RUN specific thread, so either here on FFXIAH or the BG one, and if you want an approximate time window, I think this test was performed not long after SoA/RUN release. Within a few months from release I'd dare to say.
Maybe a bit more, but around that.

It's non-elemental damage and was proved back when Fealty was trying to be used for AV strats with Random Deal spam on the PLD tanks. Fealty also blocks Mijin damage, because again, non-elemental.

Screenshot from a 3 years old post I had written on BG.


http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/124843-Fealty-Testing
I did spend some time checking Avatars/Spirits resistances vs Meteor in the past and as far I can tell, Diabolos and Dark Spirit have always taken low damage from this spell. Meteor can also get the 10% damage boost on Darksday sometimes.
RUN did not exist at that time. I'll be very surprised if Liement with Lux runes doesn't absorb Meteor damage.

Sovereign Behemoth : For those who haven't figured already, Howl reduces its physical defense/PDT for a while.

Got a bit more time, found one reference about the Liement test.

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/38476/rune-fencer-solos/4/#2614705

I think there was a more extensive test on BlueGartr involving Vallation/Valiance (showing no reduced damage with either Light or Shadow runes), implying Meteor is not Light nor Dark based.
Can't find it atm using the search function, but pretty confident this test I'm talking about was on BG somewhere.

I thought people figured out meteor was non elemental a long time ago when us the player got the spell

player spell is a poor indicator since it may as well not even be called meteor, but you can cast the true mob version of it as a behemoth in monstrosity and iirc it is referred to as nonelemental

I agree with Prothescar, Player Spell Indicator is not good enough, there are often differences between monster spells and players spells.
But Jeanpaul tested it with Liement, and someone else tested it with Vallation/Valiance on BG, so I think it's a pretty conclusive test.

The only doubt that can remain is in the hypothesys that monsters have accesso to two different versions of the meteor spell.
One identical to the player one (i.e. non elemental) and one unique to monsters and Dark (light?) based.

I haven't seen specific tests on this, could be? I'm a bit skeptic about it but who knows. If someone feels like they want to test it further more be my guest! I would love to read more tests about it :D

Bit of an update on alternative set ups for this guy/low manning it, but was winning earlier within 10-11 minutes as PLD COR WHM GEO SCH BST.

Strategy is, SCH opens with solo sc/helix burst, then BST begins damage. I was doing DRG roll, then BLM then RDM roll for the SCH pre fight, and when the helix is finished, popping PLD roll to help with Kick Out damage (it can be extremely brutal, especially if caught out of a -dt set while nuking or what I assume is double/triple attack proc).

PLD/BST fight from behind. When damage becomes low, BST or PLD moves to front (whoever has hate) and waits for a Howl, then moves to the back immediately after. SCH reapplies Helix. Usually around 65% then 30%, so 3 Howls max, can push 4 but it's a bit rough, due to Meteor.

Keep in mind you want a very well geared BST and SCH, the other jobs JP doesn't matter too much. For pet, I used Randy, he seemed to work the best.

We tried with an all mage setup and got it down to 60%. Death MB seems to work the best if you try this. Regular nukes are shoddy and good luck getting over 1k dmg from stuff even with languor and focus.

Are you resetting the MDT barrier that cuts magic dmg by 90%? I've solo'd this many times on SCH and never had an MACC issue. The MDT barrier activates after you do about 6k of dmg of a certain element. It's best to cycle through each element and then reset the barrier by forcing the behemoth to howl which is done by having the tank stand in the front. Be careful not to let it howl too much, as each howl boosts meteor's dmg.

Oh? I didn't know that it used Howl if you stood in front. We tried a melee strategy as well but the Monks and Rangers didn't do enough damage. Mages seemed to do more damage...

Are there any point to do mage setup since this NM doesn't take magic damage very well? As stated on the first page, 2x melee DD 1xWHM 2xGEO is the way to go, it dies in 2~5 min depending on how good DDs are if you zerg in front to trigger howl.

If your DD didn't do enough damage, it's probably because:

1. Your DD needs to stand in front to trigger howl, or else NM seems to gain more def/pdt- w/e and takes less damage, therefore harder to kill.

2. MNK and RNG are consider "mid/low tier" DD nowadays. Unless they're amazing they tend to do less damage(and harder to use) than jobs like BLU. To make things easier, I'd recommend BLUx2 for this fight due to their natural high acc, ability to self haste and free up 1 GEO buff slot for more dmg, and high survivability.

Yes I know there's enough people promoting BLU as DD everywhere, but it's really one of the most failproof DD job for zerg strategy atm.