Paladin relic, more about the coil

It seemed like it was just last week when I got my Artemis bow! Just picked up my Curtana yesterday...

Comes with free shield!

For those *not* on Hyperion, or having just recently joined the server, Paladin was my first job to 50 and the one I quested on. After I hit PLD50, I realized that most of the problems in the dungeons I ran into were due to DPS races where the skill of a DD has a larger influence on if you can win the fight or not. (Just for example, look at this Titan HM Tanking Guide which I followed pretty much to the letter and compare it to this one which healers/DDs need to learn. SWW actually has an extra step in phase 5 which is quickly becoming a tradition for all tanks!) For the most part, tanking in FFXIV is relatively simple and mainly consists of hitting your 3-button combo, learning where to position the mob, and ocassionally using defensive cooldowns. I decided to level Bard for a DD and focus on that job, but went back and did my Paladin relic quest to have PLD ready for use!

Endgame in FFXIV consists of two main things at this time: Farming Mythology tomes and the Binding Coil of Bahamut

This past week is the 2nd week I'm doing the coil with SWW. Progress in the coil is reset every Monday at 8am Pacific, and after the reset, you can go back and re-do parts that you cleared before for more loot. Turns 1 and 2 of the coil have two loot chests each after you defeat the final boss of each turn which drop ilevel 90 gear. Keep in mind that there is a missing tier of equipment (the ilevel 80 stuff that is supposed to be from Crystal Tower), so even if you are geared with full darklight gear and your relic, you're still "undergeared" for the coil and things will be harder than normal.

Turn 1
Compared to other dungeons in the game, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is actually pretty short. Turn 1 consists of an initial miniboss called ADS, followed by some minor exploring and easy to kill trash mobs before you take on the final boss.

You can find a fairly good video guide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HtpA8NV6O4

The main thing about the ADS miniboss is that it has an ability called "High Voltage" that does massive AOE damage and more importantly, AOE paralyze. The key to this fight is really just to silence this ability and prevent it from going off. This is where a Bard or Paladin silence rotation comes in. All you really need is two people to focus on silencing it since the recast timers are just about perfect for how frequently the mob does the move.

Otherwise, the usual stuff applies... avoid red zones, kill adds. IMO, this is really a DPS race mini-boss as the longer it goes on, the more pops come up and the more damage you are taking. It looks like the boss also rages and kills everyone at the 4 minute mark, which is fairly consistent with all the other parts of the coil. Mechanics wise, I think it's easier compared to Titan as you don't have to "dance" as much, but the DPS requirements are much higher. You definitely can't carry any members along, and even with the SWW group, we still take a few tries before we pass this boss.

After defeating ADS, you get to wander around and kill a few mobs!

Onward!

Silly mobs in our way!

At the end of the zone, the final boss is a snake called Caduceus. There are two fun mechanics to this boss. 

The first is that he gains stacks of damage bonus over time that will eventually one-shot your tank. Also, the hexagon ground plates that make up the battlefield will glow at specific intervals and if you are standing on a glowing plate at the time, a slime add will pop and be fixated on you. If you kite a slime over to the boss, he will "eat" the slime which reduces the damage he does, but he will also gain the HP that the slime has left before he was eaten. Another fun mechanic is that if the person who popped the slime gets too far away from it, the slime explodes and does a ton of damage to everyone around.

For the initial phase of the fight, you're watching where you're standing, making sure the off-tank is the one who pops slimes to feed to the boss, being careful to reduce the health of any slimes you feed to the boss, but not kill it outright to keep the boss's damage low. Lots of situational awareness is necessary here.

The second fun mechanic of the boss is that after some time, it will split into two identical twins at the same HP level. You have to kill both of them within a few seconds of each other or else you lose the battle. At the same time, they are still gaining stacks of damage, and at some point, they can merge back together, doubling the stacks of damage and will pretty much one-shot everyone. This is where the party of 8 splits into 2 parties of 4, taking each boss's HP down at the same rate until they are ready to get killed at the same time. I think some groups have the DDs switch between targets and brings the HP down one at a time, but in our case, our damage rate is fairly even between all 4 DDs so we can simply take down both bosses at nearly the same time. 

We split our team into "shapes" vs. "skins". Hey! Why am I the square?!

I personally found the final boss of turn 1 simpler compared to the initial miniboss, so new groups to the coil should not get too discouraged if they run into problems with ADS! This past week I got my Allagan Bracelets of Aiming, so that's my first ilevel 90 gear!

That's a lot of snake for dinner!

After sorting out your loot, you can exit to a weird holding area. This actually isn't on the instance server and seems to serve as a lobby between turn 1 & 2. You can meet other players here, and you can probably send/receive tells. And... it's bugged since the location shows up in the moon language on the linkshell list!

Squigglies!

Turn 2

I found turn 2 to be the most fun fight, and most challenging mechanics in the game so far. The dungeon is timed from the moment you step over the initial line from the entrance, and the path that you take determines what your final boss fight will be. During all this time, you have the tanks alternating taking duties, a constant silence rotation, lots of different AOEs to avoid, and for even more fun, you can't even regen MP as the entire zone is considered a battlefield! The boss even throws in a "disease" type mechanic that you have to pass around between your team members or else it's an automatic lose.

To summarize:

- Constant tank rotation

- Constant silence rotation

- Lots of different AOEs!

- Passing stuff around everyone

- Yay confusion!

If people are interested, I can do a writeup about tackling turn 2. Meanwhile, here's a video guide someone else posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoJe-SOh6s

Hello again ADS!

Fill it with arrows!

Turn 3

This is officially the "no-loot" zone with lots of trash mobs but no boss. There were some theories about how there might be a secret way to trigger a boss, or some special conditions that had to be met to get some chests, but SE put up on the official forums that the zone is working as intended. I personally think this is just a relaxation zone after the tense battle of turn 2 which required a lot more concentration.

Turn 3 is kind of a mini-maze with bouncing platforms, kinda like Sonic the Hedgehog. There are little platforms you can stand on which will launch you up into the air to get to different levels. You can also change the direction which the panels launch you, which can lead to some funny results if people aren't careful about where they walk, launching your friends over to completely different areas and getting everyone split up!

Deeper we go!

Wonder what kind of engine this is anyway...

First of many platforms!

Lots of jumping through glowing hoops!

And sometimes you drop in on a mob!

Overall, it's a fun turn and lots of laughs to be had!

Turn 4

From what I've seen so far, turn 4 is a simple DPS check. Wave after wave of mobs that you have to kill before the next timed wave shows up. Oh, there's the usual red circles to avoid and places you want to position the mobs and stuff, but the main thing that i stopping us from passing it at this time is being able to do enough damage to take out certain waves.

This is where we stopped last Sunday, and I hope this is what we can pass this coming weekend! Meanwhile, here are some pics from turn 4!

Engine, drive cylinder... so, this is really just a giant car?

Posing and staring seriously with one eye!

And before you take too many steps... surprise bugs!

Clockwork Soldiers from FFXIII! And yes, they do that "pop-up" thing where they take extra damage too!

Ok, that's enough of coil right now!

Mmm... what else... so, people have been doing AK, Prae & CM runs for tomes of course. CTR is still in the process of gearing up, and at this point, we have a few people with relics while others are almost to the point where they can take on Titan. As Rooks said, there won't be any carrying of people through Titan. You need to gear up properly, know how to play your job well and learn the Titan fight to earn your relic.

Personally, I don't see the point of getting carried through Titan anyway. If you don't have the gear for it, or if you can't execute your job properly, you won't be taking on the content after Titan anyway! The Coil is the only content opened up after Titan and to take that on, you pretty much need full darklight gear, and be able to play your job fully.

In any case, after finishing my PLD relic stuff, I've been toying around on CNJ with the intention of making White Mage my 3rd job to round up the roles I can take on!

WHY IS THE QUEST NPC ON A STUPID PLATFORM YOU HAVE TO JUMP TO!?!!

Bard Relic, FFXIV Pokemon!

As Vanh pointed out in the comments of my previous post, I finally got to beat Titan on Monday and got my Artemis bow for Bard!

Whee, new bow-harp! Or is it harbow?

Big thanks for all the people from SWW who came to help not just on Monday, but Tuesday as well. Also, a big congrats to everyone else who got their relics (or in some cases, additional relics) this week, including Vanh, Val, Kurai, Zurar, Lillian, A'sanya, A'eril, Blu, Kowru and more.

I'm a little sad that my Garuda's Spine bow only got about a day's worth of full use before it was replaced, but it served its purpose well in getting through the fights. Also, since this was the beginning of week 3 of me being level 50, it only took a bunch of AK runs (well, half AK runs, half mass Garuda farming. Garuda farming works out better on Mondays due to AK queues, though you end up with the side effect of collecting a full set of weapons ~.~ ) to get to 900 mythology tomes and unlocking the relic +1.

Silly glowy weapons! Only proven to cause cancer in lab qiqirn and Lalafells!

So, what's next after finishing the "relic reborn" quest? Well, defeating Titan HM unlocks what is currently the final FFXIV dungeon as of version 2.0, the Binding Coil of Bahamut. This is really a 5-part dungeon where your progress is saved between each "turn". You can only do each part of the dungeon once a week, and every Monday at 8am US Pacific time, your progress is reset and you have to start from the beginning again.

This is essentially a highly annoying lockout mechanic. You basically only get one chance to get loot from each turn once a week. You also can't re-do the dungeon once you have completed it for that week, even if you don't want loot from the dungeon. This essentially locks people into doing the dungeon in static groups. If I complete one part of the dungeon with one group, I can't go back and help a different group through the same dungeon. I suppose that it might be possible to do some tricks like leaving the duty just before defeating the bosses, but that seems like a way to get SE-banned, not to mention that the fights are fairly hard so it's unlikely that you'd even want to do this and risk wiping the group.

In any case, here are some pics from turn 1 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut that I did this week with SWW! (Warning: Minor spoilers... though I left out any screenshot that had quest dialog)

Feels very... sci-tech-fantasy!

While the quest is called "The Binding Coil of Bahamut - Turn 1", this is the intro text... This is also the only quest to show up under the "Instanced Raid" category. 237 Yalms is how far we are under the surface I believe xD 

Very straightforward area. Walk in, get a few CSs, and almost immediately you meet...

It's a giant Pokeball! Of death! (First miniboss)

It's REALLY bright in here... bring your sunglasses!

But there are some friendly people to guide you along...

... and a creepy elezen stalker ;;

There is a little exploration you can do... but really, not much at all. It's just a couple of trash mobs between boss fights.

The final boss of turn 1 is a silly looking giant snake xD

Interestingly, when you complete it, you get a simple solo "Duty Complete" animation where you simply nod as though this was just a walk in the park. I guess this is the animation for 8-person dungeons.

Like most of the earlier dungeons and fights, it felt like the Coil was mostly a mechanics game, learning the mechanics and executing on perfectly, or at least well, is what is necessary to pass the dungeon. Having good gear is necessary to survive long enough to be able to execute, and having good weapons and players is what is needed to actually win the fights in the time that you are given... and yes, there are timers on each fight.

One thing to note is that the Coil of Bahamut rewards ilevel 90 gear, while darklight gear is only ilevel 70. There appears to be a gap in gear progression where ilevel 80 is completely missing. I think this is supposed to be addressed in the 2.1 patch with the release of the Crystal Tower (8-man? 24-man? Who knows?), but right now, doing the Coil in only darklight gear is kinda like taking on Garuda HM with only AF. Doable, but rough.

Learning the mechanics and figuring out how to counter them with the group you have is half the fun of the coil in my opinion. Some of the mechanics you've seen earlier in the game, others you might recognize from FFXI, but there are a few new tricks as well. Turn 1 of the coil is fairly straightforward and we cleared it after getting a little experience (and essentially one-shot the final boss after a false start!)

After you complete turn 1, you are placed into a lobby area...

We're in the middle of nowhere!

It's a nice area for a break. There is no timer here, and you simply have an exit, or an entrance to the next part. Good place to get a drink, hit up the restroom or move your car :P

Turn 2 is where things get more interesting!

Deeper underground!

Weird environment, weirder floating balls

Turn 2 is where you start to think more strategically. Before you even start the dungeon, you need to make a few decisions on what path to take to the boss, and how your party composition can pull off a win. There are pros & cons for what you do, and the decisions you make here determine what you have to do to take on the final boss... oh, and the whole thing is timed as soon as you engage the first mini-boss!

More Pokeballs of death! This is the boss of turn 2

Turn 2 is where we stopped after exploring and trying out a few different tactics. You have a 90 minute timer  for each turn, but the fights are pretty intense so I'd recommend that groups doing this take periodic breaks instead of hammering through everything back to back! You can always resume progress later in the week!

Ok, so what else is there left to do in FFXIV 2.0 other than the coil & AK? Obviously you need to go on the Pokemon side of FFXIV and collect all the pets! Right now I have 21 minions and I still haven't picked up some of the low-hanging fruit like the pets for sale for gil, or buyable with GC seals. I guess at some point I should switch companies and build up ranking on the other GCs to get those pet maybe? Or I wonder if they are buyable...

The "Wide-eyed fawn" is much too cute!

Also, <3 Ark & Teven for giving me a couple of pets that I have no way of getting on my own!