Mamool Ambuscade V1

With gear creep, mega boss should be easy if there's no changes. Migawari works on this thing's Mijin Gakure, making Ninja invaluable for the second straight month. If that weren't enough, I was able to tank all adds for initial sleep and one by one thereafter for removing aura as Ninja on the last iteration, pre Yagyu Darkblade. So it should be even easier now.

Has there always been a chance of charm right upon pulling? Did this today, after I think 2 years, ran in and got charmed.

Charm is a retaliation to magic, it has always existed

By the way, if you fail to break any auras, you can still clear the fight, it just gains a massive -DT and takes significantly longer to kill.

I mean, in theory yeah. Depending how many auras you broke.

If you broke zero feels like you'd time out but power creep exists.

First party we broke zero because pugs didn't know strat. Took like fifteen minutes to clear. It's a crawl but you can do it

How do you tell if the boss has light or dark aura? it looks the same, anyone know?
Otherwise doing it the "proper way" becomes a guessing game.

I kept boss lullabied until all adds aura down and killed, redo rolls, pop 1hr SV Bolster etc, and zerged him.

You can't. You just need to alternate light and dark repeatedly until one of the SCs removes the aura. If you have fast DD like SAM or NIN, just make a simple 2-step and go between both of them. We did like: Blade: Hi > Blade: Hi (Darkness), Blade: Kamu > Blade: Shun (light) on repeat.


This is exactly what you can do. He only uses his elemental wheel rotation (and Mijin Gakure+) 2-3 times a run starting at like ~80%(?), but if you removed all auras, he will take full damage. With gear creep, just zerg him down, and he should probably die before he ever finishes his cycle.

Using Geo-Frailty on the (not sleeping) boss didn't trigger a counter for me, so I suspect the wiki/OP isn't correct here. He definitely did counter me once when I cast Dia II on him but bubbles don't seem to elicit a response on their own

I seem to recall from the previous time this was around, that GEO debuff bubbles do NOT proc the boss, but I could be wrong.

Also keep in mind that if the boss is sleeping from lullaby, you can cast all the magic debuffs you want, as long as they don't deal damage waking him up (like Dia, Bio etc).
For instance I think that landing Nocturne while he's sleeping is quite beneficial, gives you a few more seconds of zerging when he starts casting his wheel.

If it were immune to geomancy, it would be in the thread, that's the point of continuing the thread from the previous round.

People opt not to use geo because magic will be countered with charm, but it's not immune to it.

Never thought it'd be immune to Geomancy, but the posts in this thread made it sound like Geomancy would potentially trigger a charm cast if the boss wasn't asleep

OP/wiki says "Includes Geomancy" under Hemotoxin Wheel
Plenty of posts like "You can actually debuff the boss (using stuff like frailty etc) while he's asleep with no counter." implying he would counter while awake (he doesn't)
"Do not use ANY targeted magic on ANY Mamool" (Debuff geomancy is targeted...)
"Special caution has to be taken for things that you might not normally consider, such as casting offensive Geo bubbles"
etc. etc.


All of that is bogus. Just wanted to clear up the confusion for other GEO players


EDIT: Well, take this with a grain of salt. On another round of Ambuscade today it seemed like he countered a Geo-Frailty (first time in like 10 runs). Still totally fine for him to be sitting in a debuff bubble. Safest to assume, like other people have mentioned, that it's specifically the initial cast that can trigger the counter. However I can confirm that 90% of the time he didn't counter even when casted upon while fully awake, so I'm going to chalk it up to FFXI jank.

Typing this up before I forget a lot of this is already known but
lullaby didn't trigger anything I wanted to use elegy but there was so much reports of debuff stigma I didn't want to chance it

I will say it's really hard to tell on the boss what the aura is they look so similar to me.
I also don't think umbra or radiance count

So if this is true keep this in mind if you are using the ninja katana. I'd still use it because the radiance or umbra dmg is worth it otherwise.

The crit part seems to be very apparent on the mammools because the weapon break mechanic but the shagin makes me wonder.

It's also listed on the website but
Protector (PLD) Gravitation
Lancer (DRG) Distortion
Moraingist (MNK/BRD) Fragmentation
Erudite (WHM/BLM) Fusion

Shun > Ten/Ei = Gravitation
Rin > Retsu/Yu = Distortion
To > Teki/Yu = Fragmentation
Hi/Ten/Ku > Kamu = Fragmentation
I couldn't find a good one for fusion in the moment
Hotshot/ sniper shot > chi did way more than I wanted it to

For darkness the easiest I found was just
Hi > Hi

Light was shun shun or savage shun or Kamu shun

Make it easy on yourself, the answer to all of this is Kikoku(/Yagyu):
Metsu > Metsu = Darkness
Metsu > Shun = Light
Yagyu for hate and to keep everyone alive

For crits:
Tauret/Gleti's Knife in the below set puts you over 100% crit rate without Rogue's Roll (I use JSE+2 neck instead, also swap your offhand to reset TP to maintain 100% crit rate).

ItemSet 400587

But if you're getting Rogue's Roll and want to be lazy, just keep Kikoku on. Seriously, it's busted in this fight and puts out faster and more consistent damage than Heishi spamming 5-step, especially on mega boss. Boss can never get Mijin Gakure+ off if the NIN is alternating light and dark skillchains, and his Utsusemi San is not enough to interrupt SCs.

Migawari for Mijin Gakure+ (boss will never get it off if nobody interrupts your SC and viruna/slow is removed, but a failsafe just in case)

Ninja can solo this entire fight by himself, no exaggeration (if everyone else just hangs back or dies and the WHM casts Viruna on you). I have done over a dozen VD runs as NIN (whether tanking the entire set of mobs or just a crit DD/self SCer), and I have never lost. Don't bother doing SC method for the adds, just crit set and then kill when aura wears off. For MNK Sahagin, if you are NIN tanking, save Issekigan for Hundred Fists.

Second straight NIN month, and Kikoku is absolute KING in this Ambu.

Tried it after seeing this post - very fun fight for Kikoku Nin. Got M.Kris earlier in the week so used that to quickly get crits

Tried it after seeing this post - very fun fight for Kikoku Nin. Got M.Kris earlier in the week so used that to quickly get crits

BST can break every aura in the encounter solo skillchaining w/ only axe.

Mistral Axe > Primal Rend = Gravitation
Primal Rend > Cloudsplitter = Fragmentation
Cloudsplitter > Ruinator = Distortion
Ruinator > Mistral Axe = Fusion

This is also the skillchain I weave into a 20 step skillchain w/ Diamond Aspis outside of Ambu.

Also:
Ruinator > Primal Rend = Darkness
Mistral Axe > Cloudsplitter = Light

This allows BST to be helpful in Mage parties w/ bird or acuex -MDT/DEF debuff and being able to target specific slements needed for mages to burst off of you. BST pets can also burst if you need help landing a debuff or wanna pet nuke.

For breaking the aura on adds there are two methods: crits and scs.
For the latter, is a single sc enough? Or do you have to repeat the sc until the aura breaks?

Tried a bunch of sc
Reports say most effective during non action like abyssea

Because crits are going off constantly I am not sure what's actually sticking the landing

To that end I wonder if any testing was done with magic

Kikoku's good, but NAGI is what I've been using and loving! Get that Mythic AM3 rolling, use some of NIN's plentiful crit gear (and Innin), get those auras off.

For the small fries, I just TP on first one in a heavy crit set. Aura will go down, once it does I fire off a 3000tp Blade: Kamu for Mythic AM3 and then the following mobs go even faster with the same auto-attack crit approach. For mega boss, Mythic AM means I can rapid-fire self-SC light (Kamu-Shun) or darkness (Hi-Hi). Or with a partner DD, you've got options on katana.

I've been offhanding Yagyu Darkblade and giving my party members shadows. Another helpful use of NIN here.

I was able to duo VD with NIN + BRD not particularly hard but it was slow. I used tauret for crits then went aeonic for easy light or dark on boss, aoe shadows makes it easy to keep all trusts up.

No kikou required?
Could you 2box like this or BRD needs to DD or heal?

I 2boxed it, brd just engages during crit phase with a tauret and stands back and virunas during boss. Also sleep and buff as necessary

With aeonic shun shun is light and you can always hi hi for darkness. Kikoku is a nice option as well.

I did have to adjust my gear and buffs slightly to find right balance between tanking everything and getting fast tp for self sc.

When you say tanking everything, isn't it just the boss plus one add at a time? Some sleep but the sahagin doesn't right?

Wiver and dragon pets didn’t sleep last night (3 of them)

Oh yeah the big wivre riding guy doesn't.

Just thought I would share what my LS has been doing for VD if it may provide any help making it easier for anyone else. Tonight we did it with PLD NIN DNC COR BRD WHM. We decided to do all 4 aura at the same time so since everything besides the boss was staying awake I was on PLD to keep everything on me. All adds were proc'd with crits at around the same time (About 1.5/2mins of melee) give or take 10 seconds. DNC was hitting the Lancer, BRD was hitting the Erudite, COR was hitting the Praetor, and the NIN was hitting the Sahagin. Everyone had 1DMG or low damage weapons. I was savage blading the Lancer with my TP from blocking cause I wasn't doing a ton of damage so it just helped get it killed a little faster after the aura came off. Probably could have engaged honestly. Erudite was the last one killed cause of Bene.

I was PLD/SCH and the WHM was also /SCH so for the boss if we saw Miasma I would AoE Erase and the WHM would AoE Viruna. Nobody was weaponskilling on the boss aside form the NIN and the DNC. For the aura/ele wheel the Nin would self light and the DNC would then self darkness and they would take turns. The damage was good enough that he would pass the threshold for the next aura before we got the visual of his aura disappearing so he would just restart the wheel after each HP threshold.

It wasn't too bad. Tackling all 4 auras at once seemed to be more efficient so the time was decent. We got a little faster each time and our last run was 8 minutes.

Isn't it annoying to handle the Erudite at the same time as the other ones? You can't silence him and he spams sleepga, paralyga and whatever else.

Ok so a strat that works is take a BLU which can tank everything - they can also sleep everything so keep the main boss slept so it doesn't start the ninjitsu wheel.

Others are BRD COR WHM and RDM+DD or 2 DDs is fine.

Just break auras with crits and kill each mob, PLD>Sahagin>DRG>BLM

On the boss just zerg it in a few seconds np.

Rogues+SAM on adds, roll Chaos over Rogues for boss

No need to break aura on boss, no need for d1 weapons or any bs junk strats that take ages.

You could even take a PLD and the COR BRD BLU RDM DD (or 2DDs) can kill the boss np. Just keep it slept on BLU.

Sometimes yea, but never seemed to slow us down that much. Did some more with the same strat tonight with a SAM instead of a DNC and our fastest time was 6:20.