Ambuscade Volume 1 - March 2017

Yes it worked.
Nin absorbed excal np.
Nin whm geo cor 2 dps,
Geo es sleepga, cor pew a mob, nin get hate and eye in corner,
Picks off and clear.

Tried geo/blm sleepga ES on VD and resist. So I can confirm what was said is true about being able to sleep on N and D.

For what it's worth, the first elemental seal sleepga lands well on VD, doing further sleepga after that I wasn't able to get sleep to land again, except on one random apocalypse, which was with idris focus and languor. Even randomly on Normal, I did a regular sleepga, then when it wore off, tried elemental seal sleepga and it resisted, lol.

How have groups been dealing with the Eye using Curaga and waking the sleeping fomors?

After they are slept have tank take eye away. Also the brd/blm can stun it but gets resisty

I was thinking of using a pet job to hold the eye elsewhere. I don't think (most) DD would survive the other fomors, especially Exca and even Apoc, Yoichi/Anni. The damage loss from an absent tank also seems undesirable.

I'm basing this strategy on N and D difficulties.

Our GEO/BLM just stuns every single spell the Ahriman attempts. They all have long casting times, especially if he's afflicted with Nocturne or Addle.

Same here, don't think he chainspelled + death on the first attempt, every other attempt that's wiped me, not sure what's going on in this situation

Gotta kill the fomors first

did some shenanigans last night after the galka didnt want to whm it.

blu blu pld brd cor geo works great lol

*horde lullaby and sudden lunge all the things, worked great on excal too

I clear this every time on VD now with: PLD WHM SMN GEO BRD DRK. Smn is a must for EA for Excal. But Crystal blessing along is huge too. Whm isn't needed can do a RDM for Distract 3 Dia 3 or a SCH to main heal as welL. Good luck guys very easy. Save BST for last with Fealty. 6 min fight.

I took a pet party into this fight working up from 2 members on VE to 6 members on D.

Started with just pup and bst. adding smn made it pretty smooth on early stages. had cor, pup, bst x2, smn x2 after working up.

The most difficult part is the pull ofcourse, and going up in difficulty and adding more and more targets.

after reviewing this, I feel kinda silly, like we should have slept the adds with smn. We were stunning, and trying to gather in a group for Unleash Tegmina buffet and Blood Pacts.

Cait Sith has Mewling Lullaby and Shiva has Sleepga.

Has anyone used these effectively on D or VD of this fight?

Just tried this with very well geared SAM BRD BLU GEO PLD and an alright SCH, but it's not as easy as some of you are making it sound. VD was an awful exp. With sublime+1 double mad and honor march there were still issues with acc on thf and a few others. Geo stuck to F/F simply because of tri/dual boxing. Even D was found annoying. Sleep landed fine but after they woke it was hell. D is winnable, but i dont see how you're clearing VD with such "Ease"

Switch to torpor/frailty. Entrust Fury if you need it. With minimal BRD gear, Lullaby should be lasting close to 5 minutes with just Nitro Lullaby. That's enough time to kill a majority of them and super tank the rest when they wake up.

Use the Nomad Moogle in the zone to your advantage. While waiting on page, we reset Soul Voice for each fight using Wild Card rotations.

Also there's a VD clear video in this thread already if VD seems that unfeasible to you.

Dude you zone in and a goblin gives you the win then you zone out, when we do IT++ it's dead before we finish zoning in. LRN2PLY

How much ACC are the melee using? I was just doing VD using Honor March as only +acc buff (maybe one mad? I know he talked of replacing a mad with a minuet for later runs) and then DEX/Frailty on GEO. We had capped acc, but I was using my mid-acc set which is 1300 acc before food. Ate marinara slices but don't think I need any of the acc, it was just in my inventory.

Ambuscade is awesome content in that it has very useful rewards, and enough difficulty levels (2 different Ambuscades of differing difficulty, 5 levels each) that near anyone either solo or in any varying quality of group will have a sweetspot of the 10 difficulty options. Intense VD is 10/10 difficulty. You don't walk into a thai restaraunt and order a dish with a spice level of 10 unless you can handle the heat. And likewise, you don't expect to tear through Intense VD Ambuscade unless the group is powerful and well coordinated enough to do it. If it takes a well played 6 man team with master REMA'd jobs to handle Intense VD....that's okay, becuase there are still 9 other levels of difficulty anyone else can choose. You can elect D or N and still enjoy the content and be rewarded for it. And if those are too hard or your setup isn't right, D and VD Normal Ambuscade are there for your group too.

Good news!
It doesn't.

The only part that VD Intense requires is what I bolded.

I think as easy as frog is an exaggeration.

I think there's 4 main parts to this month's fight. Most of it has already been said.

1. A clean pull. Easiest way is to aggro everything and sentinel. Don't need to pull back just try and gather them together for easier Horde Lullaby II. You can use other JAs for hate but sentinel is nice because it will protect you from physical damage and can be used by any job subbing pld.
2. A good sleep. Basically Troubadour Horde Lullaby II. Should sleep everything but the mega boss for 5mins+. You may need to cast twice or more to sleep everything if they aren't pulled together or are using a horn.
3. Stunning the ahriman. This is crucial. The ahriman will try to curaga to wake the adds. Curaga can be the first thing it casts when aggroed so be prepared to stun it/delay your lullabies. The adds have a mechanic that makes them almost impossible to resleep after you've slept them once even with troubadour. If you let a curaga off early and it wakes the adds it's time to start over. If you've killed the majority of them you may be able to super tank the remaining ones. The ahriman has access to magic shield so luck favors those who kill the adds fast. Addle or Nocturne/Ltng. Threnody II recommened for mega boss.
4. Hay to you excalibur. The additional effect of excalibur does 25% of its current HP as an additional effect. There are a fews ways to deal with this. Shadows/Earthern armor+Scherzo/Sentinel/Battuta/Stun lock/Elegy/Lowering its HP quickly(it can invincible so this isn't a great option). Other less dangerous things to deal with are the kikoku's mijin gakure, the guttler's charm and the gugnir's shock spikes aftermath. The white mage will benediction which will wake the others so do that last.

The adds can parry and shield block so attacking from behind is recommended. They are able to skillchain you so a real tank, shadows or wilt are useful. The adds and the mega boss all like to buff each other before pull so dispel/finale are useful.

Welcome to FFXIAH.


Seriously.

Every time somebody will bring up a new strategy for any particular fight, they'll usually reference a RiotForceSix vid to show how 'easy' it is. Like those guys are your run of the mill players, or something. They make it look easy.

Just talk to the goblin it dispenses all that gear immediately. Anyone can walk in and beat it under 30s, if people are having problems then they just suck and should remove themselves from our game to improve it's quality.

(I'm being super sarcastic if anyone hasn't picked up on that yet)

I've found it better to have the PLD run in, gather mobs, get hate.

BRD sleeps the group.

PLD runs the ahriman to the corner so that curaga doesn't matter.

BRD pulls the adds one at a time for kill.

While it wasn't specified cmon man. Sparks gear? Anyone still in sparks gear has been gone so long and played so little since coming back they aren't going to be a well played group in todays game. At least set the bar to something reasonable that pretty much anyone trying for this stuff would easily have like actual soa content gear or ambuscade stuff.

"Regular gear" is extremely subjective especially now with random augments being so heavy. There are people here who actually believe multiple near perfect augments and HQ abjurations are standard gear. It's a problem of perception, someone surrounded by megagear players will naturally assume that's merely normal.

In that model came serious job exclusion (MNK or RNG onry to either have the HP to survive or distance to avoid mechanics) because there weren't acceptable means to make it work with other jobs. That's not "strategy". Now you can make things work with most jobs, just the required buffs/gear has to be there. I can do almost all content on THF and it requires me to know when to put on my DT sets instead of just "be MNK, punch things" like the 18-man Delve you claim was so strategic.

Just last night my group did Kin and for whatever reason all DD came as COR. We didn't do well removing Target which got tank terror'd and then the other two COR died (and kept dying to moves when trying to raise) and I had to tank and DD it the final 10%. In the old version of the game I would have simply died. This meta game allows me the options and ability to deal with this circumstance and I managed to pull it off. There's far more "skill" and "strategy" involved here than that earlier era, imo.