February 2017 Version Update

So they decided to completely flip it and make it so melee strats are a lot better than mage strats?

After all this time?

Really?

I was able to land paralyze and slow on WoC without frazzle, focus, languor, or pear crepes. My Macc set is missing approximately 160 MND and/or Macc from optimal on WHM. Reisenjima stones are a ***.

can you show gear used, and are vorseals capped and gifts?

Did a 17 man Albumen (5 BLUs, 1 SMN DDs), pretty much all its debuffs including Doom landed through Idris Bolster Vex and BoG/EA Attunement but everyone had Remedies/Holy Waters. Acc was capped with Indi-Dex, Entrust Precision, BoG/EA Torpor, SV songs. The fight wasn't perfect but lasted only 4 min~. Savior/Mirror/Moneta/Steadfast tonics are very useful.

Need more of this!

Anyone else noticing increased magic damage from mobs since the update? Taelmoth has been wrecking me with >2k dark orbs when I used to solo him on DNC no problem for an hour straight. Similarly fighting Selkit with 3 (BLU BLU GEO) with BoG Dunna Vex was still doing like 1800 with earth breaker, through Mg as well.

I usually wear -20% DT in my DNC solo set and Taelmoth has never even gotten me to orange before with or without GEO.

10/10 Macc 10/10 INT/MND Vorseals, capped Gifts.

ItemSet 349484

Yagrush AG, missing Omen gear(Anyone on Odin need a WHM/SCH/BLM/SMN?), and need to work on silt farming.

59MND/Macc missing from Chironic Doublet, Hose, Slippers. 99 MND/Macc Perfect Augmented Chironic Hat - 69 MND/Macc/Skill Befouled Crown = 30 MND/Macc to gain on Head slot. Erra Pendant gains 7 Macc over Sanctity. Ammurapi Shield gains 51 MND/Macc. 147 in gear to gain still plus vorseals and food.

To be more clear, I was able to land, but the hit rate wasn't capped. I didn't need immunobreak to land. I was able to land the spells every fight within 1-4 attempts.

From that, it seems we can assume that enfeebling may now have much higher magic accuracy than elemental. Granted that's a particularly good enfeebling set compared to most, without focus/languor/frazzle/crepe it's quite a bit below the m.acc people are resisting death with.

Be interesting to see some more testing and if the difference can be verified or quantified.

Nice job! Any chance anyone record this? Would love to watch.

Did melee Erin, Teles, and Ony tonight. All went like before.

Ranger Albumen Win:



Setup
P1: RNG RNG RNG GEO COR GEO
P2: RUN SMN WHM BRD COR BLU
P3: RNG COR RNG COR GEO GEO

Equates to:
Tank
Healer
5xRNG
4xCOR
4xGEO
BRD
BLU

This was attempt 3.

Buff Breakdown
2x Idris GEO: Swap Blazed + EA Frailty with Torpor. Indi-Precision
2x Non-Idris GEO: Geo-Fury in p3, Geo-Languor in p1(for dispels/debuffs), indi-agi in both parties
GEO: Enfeeble NM and Flurry rangers
BRD: AGI, AGI, Honor March, Prelude
COR: SAM + Hunters, Chaos + Tact or Misers, lightshot diax2 for Dia IV
SMN: Earthen Armor, Shining Ruby, Hastega II, Impact. Pred claws or other bps when able.


Main reason we used SMN is unresitable dispels. Albumen levels up when using regens, so they have to be dispelled asap. Which is harder with non mage setups. This wasn't ended up needed but might've if the fight went longer as it was getting dark (and that's when he uses Phaeosynthesis). Apogee Pavor Nocturnus then Atomos can guaranteed dispel 3 buffs in a hurry.

DPS
RNG all used last stand, most used aeonic gun, some relic. COR used last stand as well.
Accuracy requirement is over 1850+Torpor from idris. We ended up overcapping accuracy once bard songs were on, but non relic ranger and cor had trouble without them.

Last Stands hit for about 8k to 13k, Albumen seems to not take full damage even with pDIF capped.

Sleeping Adds
Our sleep strat is the one Llewelyn posted using in the melee video using BLU. Basically, you only need one BLU with sub BLM for elemental seal and reset it the same time you do the BRD. Elemental Seal Entomb will damage the adds and wake them but also immediately apply break. This lets the bard immediately lullaby without needing 2 BLM or needing informed when sleep wears from the sleepga II BLM. The BLU has the easiest job in the alliance but it's a very important one. The COR in the tank party is responsible for ensuring both the BLU and BRD have the JA necessary to resleep.

Tanking
Alex said this was a lot harder to tank than a mage setup due to the high amount of TP feeding equating to a lot more TP moves. Other attempts we had Albumen living in the back line a lot. Having a tank that can resist a lot of status effects and stay on top of hate resets helps a ton. Without this level of control on albumen you can't win.

Hate resets with GEO
Have geo keep putting debuffs on Albumen the entire fight. It will help the fight but also keep them on the hate list after hate resets, so frailty and torpor don't just stop working which can easily throw the fight.

Musical Chairs
Hyph gets a ton of credit for this fight along with alex's tanking, she was managing timers as well as buffing 2 ranger parties. You need responsive party leaders and the people dropping and being added back in have to know their part and be on top of it too or songs wear and then your damage sucks.

What can go wrong
Attempt 1
Without BRD songs, attempt 1 was pretty hard as many weren't able to hit. Timed out. We wanted to avoid musical chairs but ended up having to do it.

Attempt 2
Without ability to resist many enfeebles and keep on top of hate resets, a tank can't keep Albumen under control. This hurts DPS and results in time out (we timed out at 12%). Switching to RUN tank that usually tanks this now solved this. I won't say RUN is required but certainly made it easier in this case.

Thoughts on other setups
I'm not sure how a mage setup will work out, my guess is it still can work, I know Lex's group will try it soon. We decided to try something we had in the making for a long time though and it worked out really well. (Not during this fight but another one, a LS member commented we have more guns than texas >.>)

Two reasons we decided to do this was reports of only 10k deaths with all the support you can throw at it in this thread, and our experience with Teles Vex/Attune making the fight harder we thought melee would be very hard.

Anyway I hope this is enjoyable to some people or helps them it was certainly a lot of fun to do :D To my knowledge this is the first RNG setup clear of Albumen, and perhaps any T4.

The floor must be littered with bullet shells.

And drenched with my sweat...

Verda do you think a 12man setup with 2rng+cor shooting can work?

Honestly depends on your 2 RNG and COR. You have 3/12 people being only source of dps compared to our 9/18

I agree with Bao. We had a lot of time left in the fight so seems doable but your ratio of DD to non DD is pretty heavy imo.

Earthbreaker is physical, so Vex would be ineffective. Consider using a source of shadows to mitigate the damage from it. I remember this from the days of the Transcended Scorpion in Delve I.

Good days those were.

Yeah we're doing 'make up' Helm run next weekend (we did Schah/Vini/Albumen/Erinys the weekend before the update).. going to try and nuke them again (xcept erinys ofc) as that's how we have been doing them since last february/march when we started Aeonic attempts. Albumen is the only one that really scares me due to his already high as heck Magic evasion pre-update but we shall see :D

Of course once the new found challenge of nuking them is gone, we'll melee or range attack them for efficiency lol.

Also, thanks for the video/updates of your attempts Verda, XD

And here we have Tyche, making Vengaboys relevant again in the late '10s.

Talking from the tank viewpoint, this fight was A HELL! More than all TP feed to mandy, the greatest problem was the higher enmity generation from RNGs and CORs. When she hate resets, I usually get her back with just a Flash. This time, I had to use every trick in the book, including Sforzo, at some point. And don't /WAR because hate reset move also does amnesia. Provoke is for certain mostly useless.

Resisting debuffs was a winner, yes. With Vex/Attunement crushed, I'm very skeptical about the viability of a non-RUN tank.

Ok, I know, GEO "nerf" was a bug fix. But as is, it raised by a HUGE ammount the difficulty of higher-end content. I feel bad for groups that are still struggling with their first Aeonics. Let's hope StupidEnix admit they broke something on last update and fix it asap.

I feel offended

Albumen melee-style doesn't sound that bad still. The worst parts of him before were:
1) Enmity resets
2) Accuracy

Well, they probably nerfed his Evasion by 60 and gave us another 200+ acc from Honor March/Mad/Mad. We'll have to use a Fire/Dark carol now, but one major problem with him (Acc) should be pretty much gone.

Fixed. Happy now?

It's doable but very messy. The other major problem is the sheer amount of status ailments he spams, which thanks to the recent nerfs we're going to have to deal with. Terror / Amnesia / Paralyze / Doom / Slow / ect.

Yeah earthbreaker has always done high damage, especially if he used Mighty Strikes before hand. I have been seeing a helluva lot more damage from magic attacks though, so I'm beginning to think SE broke something gear magic evasion, MDB or something isn't being added.

Yeah, I am getting one-shot by magic on T1's that I used to survive. No GEO either just trusts.

I know not really the point, but you can use Arciela and Teodor to mostly lock the scorpion in wasting tp on throat stabs to help avoid that. Along with burning Braver's/Monarch's/Barbarian's drinks at lower hp for a quick finish should help win rate.

Albumen, 18manned nuke style, post update. Win 1/1 will post strat. One thing i'll mention, a few weren't sleeping for normal duration. was a slight mess at some point. maybe random half resists, but we're not sure. It's usually the same brd on sleeps. Doing Vini now, nuke style will update this thread later.

Ok soooooo Albumen (Nuke style) post update:

Our Job Setup

1)SCH, GEO(Idris), RDM, BLM, BLM, COR

-SCH: Did normal things, Voidstorms, Compression Skillchains, kept other applicable buffs on.
-GEO: BOG/EA Focus to start, Indi INT, Entrust Haste.
-BLMS: Death MBs, Scholar Subjobs, Free stuns when not in the middle/next in Death Skillchain rotations. One of these BLMS dropped Pixie Hairpin from their set to add some magic accuracy, the other Nuked in their Pre-update set. Deaths ranged from 60-95k, with maybe 15% of their casts being resisted and crappy dmg.
-COR: Subbed RDM, Crooked Warlock's Roll, Caster's Roll, Haste 1 on the BLMs
-RDM: All available Debbuffs, Addle2, Paralyze, Slow, Poison2, Bio3, and most importantly, Saboteur Frazzle3. Our RDM had these base stats in total, (488 Magic Acc, 410 MND, 611 Enfeebling Skill) and had absolutely no problem landing his debuffs.

2)SCH (AG Tupsimati), GEO(Dunna), BRD (all REMA), BLM, BLM (AG Leavatein), COR

-SCH: Same as the SCH stated above, also was the Helixer/and did most of the Impacts.
-GEO: BOG/EA Focus to start, Indi INT, Entrust Haste.
-BLMs: Same as the BLMs in party one, The Mythic BLM was also the "manawall tank" until all Albumen adds popped, so he entered BLM death rotation later on in the fight. AG BLM had no problem landing deaths (80-99k?) and was the only one capping them (afaik). Other BLM had to remove Pixie Hairpin from their set, and was hitting for in the range of 55k-75k on their deaths.
-BRD: Did the sleeps on Albumen Adds (once all were out), Kept Elegy, Dark Threnody on Albumen, (reported taking a few tries/minimal resists on landing Dark Threnody without N/T up) and also kept INT etudes up on her BLMS)
-COR: Started by buffing the Manawall tank first (Gallant's, Evoker's) then did Crooked Warlock's, Caster's Rolls, kept Haste 1 up on the BLMs.

3)PLD/BLU (Mythic), RUN/BLU, WHM (Yagrush), GEO (idris), GEO (idris), COR

-PLD: main tank, used a fairly high tier SIR/M-eva set while maintaining PDT and MDT cap.
-RUN: Sub Tank, Coordinated Gambit/Rayke on as many Skillchains as he could, did other normal RUN things~
-GEO: BoG/EA Geo Languor, Indi Malaise, entrusted Haste. Melee'd Albumen to avoid hate reset on their bubbles as much as possible.
-GEO: BoG/EA Geo Vex, Indi Attunement, entrusted next haste. Melee'd Albumen to avoid hate reset on their bubbles as much as possible.
-COR: Crooked Runeist Roll, Caster's roll
-WHM: Prioritized Blocking Silence from Petalback spin. Did normal WHM stuff Incredibly well :P

Major Notes on the Fight Itself/Things done differently post update

1)I want to say 90% of the time, with these Debuffs/Buffs, Deaths were landing for 60k-99k dmg.

2)Petalback Spin was easily stunned (when caught by random stuns) and I want to say 80% of the time or higher, none of the enfeebles were landing on any of the tanks (i think silence landed once, para few times, amnesia a few times, poison/virus seemed to land the most on us), or on GEO's standing in with the tanks.

3)WHM positioned outside of Albumen's range and did not need to stand in with us. Was incredibly fast in removing anything that actually landed on the tanks, most notable being HP down/MP down effects

4)We added a separate Skillchain for Helixes, Impacts, and Bio3 (for extra DOT) as often as we could/when they wore. Helix was doing about 7800 on the high end.

5) Our initial plan was to have a BRD instead of a COR in the tank party for carols/hastes/ and completely focused on Debuffs. Furthermore, we planned on having a Mastered SMN in place of one of the BLMS, rotating Fusion Skillchain in between the Compressions, and MB with Conflag Strike for the INT Down effect on Albumen, thereby dropping it's magic acc/evasion event more. Luckily, we did not need these two jobs this time and the math worked out, but it's something to be considered if planning to kill Albumen nuke style.

6) Change your death sets to add more magic acc unles su have incredible augments/Mythic. two of our BLMs needed to at least take off Pixie Hairpin, however it is not necessary to do so provided your gear is heavy in M-acc in other slots. Use a Magic Bursted Kaustra at some point to add more DoT. (we didn't this time as far as I know)

7)Total Hate reset on tanks was minimal, i think he moved maybe 2 times the whole fight. Vex/Atune is STILL USEFULL thankfully long as it is combined with other buffs/debuffs.

8)We usually have all GEOs bolster, and a SCH Tabula after the first BRD re-sleep and try to reset everyone with WilD Cards. This didn't happen in an organized manner today as.............explained below

Stuff that was wierd/problem
1)Our BRD's sleeps were not lasting her full normal duration. We really are not sure why.
We are thinking she randomly lagged, or got half resists under N/T. Things woke up about a minute early, and at times things were randomly waking up whenever they felt like it.
Coordinating ES sleeps/Breaks became the hardest part of the fight, while maintaining DPS.
Needless to say timers were all all over the place, and took some heroics to keep things under control from multiple people.
The adds were pretty much all congregated by the tank party at this point, and it was night time.
Wish we videotaped it, but don't think anyone did, but kinda don't want to relive that Cluster F.
Things mijined a few times, and chainspells went off, but luckily, I do not believe any benedictions happened.

MIGHT be wise if able to spare it, to either give the 'Sleep' BRD some extra magic acc of some kind, gear, or buffs, even if you sacrifice total duration (yeah idk N/T was up on multiple resleeps so we're confused ). We will test this aspect of the fight again at some point, to see if it was an anomaly, or something that linkshells need to account for.

Overall, we were worried about this fight in terms of reaching the Magic Acc/Eva thresholds of mob and players without BRD in tank party, and a SMN MBing Conflag Strike every minute or so. Doing dmg on Albumen was not as difficult as we thought it would be, so that's a good thing for LS attempting to kill this with Death Setup.

Pre-update, it would usually take us ~15 minutes to kill this using Nuke strat, Post-Update (with mandy add shenanigans) took us about 25 minutes as far as I remember, with quite a bit of time lost trying to control the little shits.

Sorry for all the Mt's, my typing skills are terrible, and the huge wall of text. Vinipata post will not be this long.