This will mostly be a rant.

LS friends and I did 3 UO runs last night. All three runs, that mother Sobber spammed Catharsis over and over and over and over and over and over and over. My LS mate said the same thing happened to him earlier in the day, and he went 0/5 for kills.

What's going on with this BCNM? Is this really how RNG it ends up being?

I've run this BCNM probably 20-25 times. Sometimes, he casts it once and then never casts it again. And then we a run or series of runs like this where he spams it endlessly. From a balance standpoint it just seems incorrect. This is not for lack of skill or effort. We always have the eyes down with 6-8 minutes remaining. Again, I've done this one many times and either he spams you until time runs out, or not.

What are we doing wrong? How can a skill-based encounter just come down to luck? Was it the recent full moon? Lightningsday/Lightsday? Can I go far enough as to ask: Is this a Nasomi-server only issue? Can we please get a cooldown on Catharsis?? We're already trying to live with a ~9% drop rate. We shouldn't have to deal with a completely RNG factor in a skill-based encounter.

Here I go again, spending another MINIMUM 2 hours farming seals just to essentially flip a coin and waste my time and others' time.

What are your experiences?

Is it something that happens towards its lower hp? I've seen it go from 10% to 50% and try to maintain its hit points many times. Also seen it not do many at all, like you say. Not sure if it is something that we are doing to trigger it, but it is annoying and random. As a RDM, I have had to participate a lot with nuking on many occasions and sometimes even chainspelled to beat the clock, and I'm proud to have never lost a single UO in so many runs I've lost count. How many total catharses did it use on average in your last run? Details.

I believe it's just random. I don't think I've ever lost from it, but there are definitely runs where it uses it a ton.

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Every time he got to about 20% HP he started using it. I understand this is one of the mechanisms. But 10-15 casts of Catharsis (330 HP each = an extra 3500 - 5000 damage we had to put out to no avail). Even with both Ninja's and RDM nuking. Even with Chainspell. He would either use it one right after the other, or every other ability. It just seems off to me. It's extremely disheartening to know that you have all of the skill there and proper communication and to see it just not matter... really makes a guy want to quit.

It uses Catharsis at low HP. Not sure the exact trigger (I think it's 33% though). This is why RNG and NIN are god for this BCNM (they don't have to rest). I'm not sure what your setup is but we did about 20 runs with NIN/BLM, BLM/NIN and RDM/NIN (also some runs with NIN, THF and RDM). Once you start on big boy, let the NIN solo it until about 50% and get full MP back on RDM and BLM. Once you have full MP bars you should easily be able to just go nuke crazy and outdamage Catharsis. Bring Yag Drinks for BLM if your gear isn't A+. If you are nuking it throughout and your BLM or RDM are out of MP at low % it becomes hard to kill as he tries to spam it while you're resting.

If you're going with two NINs then follow the same advice but have the RDM rest as well. RDM definitely should be nuking too.

If you're hitting it for 200-240 per nuke it should only take about 3 set of nukes to kill from 40%.

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Therin / Erith

Fairy (ThoseGuys/LostParadise)
Cerberus (Resurgence)
Phoenix (Beyond/DynamisBums)
Shiva (Apathy)
Nasomi (DraconicBallad)

Great information - I am planning on doing this soon. Thanks Therin!

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~Rubicund
WAR75, DRG75, BRD75, THF75, BST67, RNG64, PLD60, NIN49, RDM 47, DRK37, WHM32, SMN14, BLU10, COR5
Galka | Rank 6 Bastok | [x] Sky / [x] Sea

~Rubicmage
Leveling RDM, WHM, BLM, NIN
Taru | Rank 1 Bastok | [ ] Sky / [ ] Sea

I cannot answer these questions but I can acknowledge your feelings. It does suck when things appear to be random without a pattern, trigger, etc. and a luck based system is annoying when we expect a skill and strategy based system.

One thing I would recommend is perhaps taking a video of the fight so that we can examine it closely? I've done this in retail but not on Nasomi *yet*. My friends on Nas told me that it's easy with 2 x NIN spamming Elemental Wheel.

Cheers,

~Rubi

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~Rubicund
WAR75, DRG75, BRD75, THF75, BST67, RNG64, PLD60, NIN49, RDM 47, DRK37, WHM32, SMN14, BLU10, COR5
Galka | Rank 6 Bastok | [x] Sky / [x] Sea

~Rubicmage
Leveling RDM, WHM, BLM, NIN
Taru | Rank 1 Bastok | [ ] Sky / [ ] Sea

My best advice:

Don't take up crafting then.

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Yeah, I did a number of runs with 3x BLM with pretty great gear all-around + yag drinks, and it was still often a risky endeavor (we'd just stand together and -ga the big eye until the little ones died, then play it by ear a bit from there). Every once in a while you'd get a run where the opening breakga just ruins the run outright, or sometimes he'd get down to 30%-ish and just alternate between death ray and catharsis until we wiped and/or timed out. It goes muuuuch easier if you can bring someone to just kite the big eye away. Also, have the non-kiters stand a little ways back and off to the sides in case of an opening breakga, then tag the small eyes as they run by and nuke em dead. Since then, our 100% win strategy was to switch up to RNGx2 plus a kiter (SMN works amazing for this, RDM works well too, just about anything can if they're careful but it helps if they can heal and paralyna the DDs after the small eyes are dead). In case you didn't already know, paralyze does NOT prevent ranged attacks or apparently ranged weapon skills from firing (it WILL prevent utsu/magic/JAs/item consumption with like a 95% potency in this BC, so plan accordingly)


General strategy:

1) Rangers toss on utsu and stand off to the edges at the bottom of the ramp, as far apart as possible and use sharpshot + barrage right before pull (you'll be paralyzed 99% of the rest of the time, so just use it now.. it should be up right around the time the eye starts catharsis spam if you haven't won already).

2) Kiter pulls big eye and immediately runs straight back to start.

3) Pick an eye to burn down first (say, the right one in this case). Right-side Ranger immediately shoots the right eye while the left Ranger uses shadowbind on the left eye to get it off the kiter, then he shoots the right eye to barrage it as well. The right eye should be about dead already at this point, but finish off whatever HP remains. When you get paralyzed (you will) don't even worry about shadows, just burn the eye down.

Note: if your kiter is a SMN, they can just send Ifrit in right at the start to double-punch the big eye in the middle, and the Rangers can just double-barrage/kill the right eye and then pick off the left eye once its dead. Ifrit will resist all their fire spell spam so he should live plenty long enough. If Ifrit gets breakga'd, leave him out until the Rangers move on to the second small eye or you'll have both the big and a small eye chasing you down once you dismiss.

4) Switch up to the left eye once the right eye is dead. Keep your distance apart so that the eye is spending a bunch of time bouncing back and forth. Kiter, keep on doin yer thing. Don't die or you owe everyone a shiny new Tilt Belt.

5) Once both small eyes are dead, kiter can bring the eye up toward the Rangers if you're not there already. Spread out in a triangle formation (so breakga can only ever hit one person) and unload til you win. At this point, the kiter should be able to help with paralyna/regen/etc. so that the Rangers don't get new jobs as dirt inspectors.

I haven't done this BC since the recent ranged atk/acc changes, but I wouldn't expect it to be dramatically different.. just might take a bit longer. It only took about 5mins total before, so you should be fine.

Also, for the record, I went to just about 60 runs before I finally got my PCA (not all my orbs, just runs I participated in), and had only seen one other PCA drop in all of those runs (somewhere around run #50). Go figure, though, we got another PCA for Morrowindislong on the very next run (he was getting closer to run #70 by that point). Meanwhile, most of our friends went like 1/1, 1/3, etc. Make sure to pray extra hard to RNGesus before you go.

Edit: here's a video of one of our 3x BLM runs from way back when: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xP59qrC56Q Like I said, this is the 'stay, spray and pray' method, so it's risky. Having as much INT as possible seems to help resist Breakga. Barstonra might help, but that could just be superstition (Barpetra is lv43 WHM so that won't ever be an option here). Good thing is, it goes quick - you either win or you wipe in the first 60 seconds or so

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Armaddon: Mordion Gaol Decorator Lv75

If your kiter does not have Ifrit or you just want something else as well, Carbuncle works just as well if not better. w/ the mitts the cost is almost free and it can survive a good amount of time. Just sic it onto the eye and run backwards, giving yourself enough distance. /WHM for blink pretty much guarantees you will be fine. Bring drinks if you're worried / don't have mitts.