Monday, May 3, 2010

Tinnin downed DD tank style


...and an Enkidu Harness dropped for me! We did three pops total. I think the LS has at least one other pop waiting, but they weren't on at the time. The thing I enjoyed the most about this was the fact that we used a SAM and a MNK to tank it. We had a full alliance which means we could have easily afforded a pair of Paladins. So why try DD tanks anyway?

Tinnin is immune to non-elemental magic damage like Spirits Within and Atonement. That takes away a reasonable amount of their hate gaining ability. Not to mention Atonement adds up to a nice chunk of damage. DD's gain hate perfectly well when they're able to hit something consistently. They add more damage than PLD's would, especially in this situation. Survivability could be an issue for Trembling, which is a physical high damage TP ability that will hurt badly if you don't have any shadows on. Proof of this is that Skinwalker on SAM/THF (there to help hate management) died to it each fight.

In my opinion the keys to making this work were:
  • Immidiate Cursna and Poisona after Nerve Gas and Paralyna after Polar Blast.
  • Constant debuffed Tinnin.
  • DD tanks buffed with Haste, March, Madrigal and Minuet.

For the first part Rcake (WHM) and I (RDM) took care of one tank each. When Tinnin had 3 heads up and it used a Bulwark we could start casting before Nerve Gas actually went off. The amount of time that tanks were cursed and poisoned was very short which greatly reduces the chance of either going down. I wasn't always on the ball with Viruna though. Especially the first fight I wasn't multitasking very well. Rcake is a very active WHM. I know from past experiences he's really fast with status cures and knows what ability inflicts what status in the first place. It really helps if we can trust on healers and support to know the fight's details without having to explain it to them before we start. Rcake is a good example of a proactive WHM.

I dropped the ball on keeping Slow2 on Tinnin. Several times I missed the "wears off" message due to doing something else. I don't use any tools to assist and so even though the duration of Slow is predictable, I have to keep track of it while doing something else and it turns out that isn't my forte. We had two Bards in the main party. One subbed BLM because I wasn't sure how hard it would be to land Elegy. Slow2 landed no problems, even in a full MND set. I asked two BLM's to use ES Paralyze to help smooth things out. It wasn't necessary, but it certainly had an impact for the time it was on. I couldn't land it in my standard Para build. I didn't take time to change my macros and instead just asked the BLM's when I thought Para would be the most useful.

As I mentioned before, we had two Bards in the main party. Double March, Minuet and Madrigal on DD tanks. I asked Helly for Minuet/Madrigal purely on a guess. I don't know what the tanks' accuracy was actually like. It could well have been more efficient to do double Minuet. I took care of Hasting tanks and refreshing Rcake. Along with keeping Slow2 on and looking for Tinnin's abilities that gave me 3 (types of) things to do (not counting buffing myself). As the fights went along I got better at juggling these things, but I'm no Avesta.

We had a full alliance with a great deal of additional fire power. I told the 6 BLM's to hold back until all 3 heads were back. By the time this happened we had taken about 20% of its HP using the DD tanks, some dots and a single SMN doing BP's. After that the 6 BLM's took the Tinnins down in a very short time with hardly any Draw-ins. Only the last fight had some Draw-ins, but nothing serious.

All in all it was a successful raid (2 harnesses and 1 cap) with only a few deaths. Mostly Skinwalker biting the dust, but Kittan, one of the DD tanks, actually went down on the second pop. I told everyone to focus and assist Kingcem (MNK/NIN and second DD tank) and other than the TP spam from a head regenning he didn't take any serious damage. I think a single tank could work though it may be an unnecessary risk depending on circumstances. The damage from the BLM's helped keep the fights short and reduced the chances of something going wrong. The longer the fight, the more random unlucky things can happen after all. Still, I can totally see this same strategy working without as many or any BLM at all. As long as the core party has their game faces on. An additional healer in the ally doesn't hurt either.

I'm glad I it worked out so well and have potentially won some people over to the idea of DD tanks.

No comments:

Post a Comment