Dynamis - Valkurm: "Moar Stuns!"

Cirrate Christelle, or whatever its name is, downed the good old fashioned zerg way. After 2 losses due to TP abilities getting through CS Stun, I can say this boss handed our asses to us twice since WoA was revived. This being our third attempt and the first one I lead, I can say "third time's the charm".

It was obvious from what I was told and what I've seen that our kill speed was high enough. The issue was people dying. Having gone to many an event as RDM/DRK I know from experience that CS stunning is not perfect. There are two ways you can approach it:

1. balls to the wall
2. measured dosage

If you spam stuns you are guaranteed to overlap with the previous one most of the time. However, you'll be covered those times that Stun wears off early or gets resisted. If you slow down your casting you're estimating the Stun duration and trying to get as few overlaps while keeping the Stun holes small. The second method takes some experience. You can't rely on the chat log AT ALL. It's way too slow and delayed to use as a cue for casting the next Stun. That being said, when Stun wears off early you're screwed since you don't have time to react.

In the case of a single TP ability being able to KO the vast majority of your alliance (like Valkurm megaboss), you have got to maximize the Stun "coverage". Add a second CS Stunner and you're half way there. Now all you need to do is make sure the Stunners are casting in the gap of the other Stunner's casts. Now you're all the way there. The delay between casts is about 2 seconds if you're spamming. On average, once the rhythm is set, there's a stun landing every 1 second. You won't delay perfectly, but almost all TP charge times will be too long to get through if you're even remotely good at alternating your Stuns.

We did this on Qufim megaboss too, only I wasn't a RDM/DRK for that run, but Argonar and Darkflare did very well. When we did Bahamut recently I wasn't leading the raid and Ewenn was told to start CS Stun when Bahamut was at 50%. Once he popped his CS I adjusted my timing to cast in the gaps of his. Last night in Valkurm I told Darkflare to start at the same time as me and just spam the spell. I also told him that I'd be the one to adjust to his rhythm. I noticed that it took 2 or 3 stuns before we were alternating properly. Now, add that to the fact that I didn't call a start time and just started stunning arbitrarily. You may see that there was still the potential for a loss there. So yes, we improved our odds greatly, but there is still room for improvement. The next time I want to call a time on the game-clock to start the zerg and give one Stunner the instruction to go first. That way we can pop CS at the exact same time as the melee's engage and in so doing optimize the overlap of 2hr's, damage and stun-lock phase.

In addition to the win, which some needed for Tavnazia access, we got quite a few drops. Including, but not limited to: BLU cape, WHM belt x2, WHM hat -1 x2, SAM belt, SCH hat -1. Grats all on drops and win.