ZM17 - anyone know a REAL strat that works? all online ones are BS

[JadeNightshade]

Ok, the information listed on the site is incredibly outdated and the patches since have changed this battle completely..
first off, melee using 2 hrs on the plates now gives the plates an incredible amount of TP which then lets it do it's AoE 600+ damage attack many many times..

Also in order to keep hate the tank must focus only on Eald'narche, not the plates..

basically.. i guess I'm asking for anyone with a REAL strat..
should the mages only cast on the plates, while the melee take the orbs til the plates are down?
I would agree sleeping the orbs is the way to go, but melee would then be useless cause anything else would give the plates TP and they do the AoE which would kill everyone
any clue what to do?
ANYONE KNOW?!?!

[PaladinsArc]

Hmmm... when I did this back then, I had all people who could use a sword (yes even the bard) open up with 300% Spirits Within on the plates in the very beginning, then BRD and BLM took care of the Detector things. My PT was PLD DRK RNG BRD BLM WHM. I "kited" him when he started casting ancient magics. It would say "Arcknight is out of range." Then takes him like 10 seconds to get back to me. This is where the BLM and RNG focused on raw damage, and the DRK would run infront of him (to balance the lag) and hit him and do spinning slash and such.

On the second form, after seeing that the bastard only hit me for 120~, RNG went crazy and just blink tanked him while doing as much dmg as possible within a minute.

I'm not sure what the patch did, but the fight is determined by how fast you kill the Exoplates.

[Grizzlebeard]

I'm a long way off this event yet but your comment about melee giving mobs large amounts of tp made me think would it be viable to use DD geared ninjas and monks to take these down as subtle blow may give a slight edge on the mobs tp gain?

[sekaran]

I did it before the Utsusemi nerf patch.. war/nin, blm/whm, rdm/blm, smn/whm, whm/blm, and drg/nin was the setup.. and we all thought it was pretty easy because we got the exoplates down really quickly. =\

[JadeNightshade]

ya, everyone I talked to always says the same thing..
"when I did this before the patch"...
makes me wonder if anyone has even tried since!

*dies*

[tazirai]

A sorry cant help yet.. but i have to move to correct forum

[Vilurum]

I too have tried this since the patch ... and if those AOEs all used to be 100% blinkable then I can see why everyone went "oh that was so easy". Those AOEs are NASTY. Several hundred damage (Phase Shift hits everyone, Uranos Cascade etc. only hits near Exoplates), and they generally either stun or bind or both.

It always seems to do exactly three Phase Shifts, and the last one is sort of a "final attack" where the Exoplates promptly vanishes after using it. My suspicion is that it's based on the damage taken by Exoplates. (The other AOEs used by the Exoplates are presumably TP attacks though, although it spams them pretty fast.)

Since Phase Shift is the nastiest (primarily because you can't avoid it at all, and it can thus kill off the mages who are out of range of the other AOEs and thus necessitating a separate curaga 2/3 for them), make sure to tone down damage output after one hits, so the mages can cure everyone (including themselves, since they'll be hit too) back up to full. And hope you don't get killed with another AOE in the meantime.

Once everyone's healed up, lay on the damage again until the next Phase Shift. Again, tone down the damage, heal up after that, and be prepared for the final Phase Shift before it dies. Toning down melee damage will also hopefully avoid quite so many TP-based AOE attacks in the "recover from Phase Shift" time period.

Whatever you do, don't use some majorly damaging attack right after Phase Shift. *cough*Souleater Guillotine /poke Kis*cough* Unless, of course, you like being hit with two Phase Shifts in a row.

If you can get the Exoplates dead without losing any party members (and with the mages still having a reasonably moderate amount of MP), the rest of the fight should be a joke, especially if you have someone who can blink tank the second form. That is, however, quite a big if. You'll want major Curaga spammage, and don't forget that at least one of the mages is gonna have Orbitals bothering them as well.

Second form will teleport around a lot and it's harder to hold hate. Most of his attacks are ancient magic (with Fast Cast 10 or something), but he also has a few other attacks, most notably one which is AOE and "terrorizes", which is basically the same as stun.

Only times we got to the second form were with 1-3 people alive, and we just couldn't survive. If you can make it past the Exoplates and still have everyone alive and well, however, you're in great shape. I think the most important part is that you shouldn't concentrate on killing the Exoplates as fast as possible, but instead concentrate on recovering from each Phase Shift before you resume damage output.

I also suggest finding a friendly 70+ WHM and parking them in Celestial Nexus to be on Raise III duty. Reraise III works too, but you have to sit out the battle time limit to get out of the BC, rather than just alt-tab and come back in 5 minutes once everyone's disconnected. (Disconnecting removes reraise.)

Oh yeah, random nitpick: this is actually ZM16, not ZM17. ZM17 is apparently some sort of open-ended "mission", which you're on once you finish this battle. ZM14 is beating up the ark angels, ZM15 is having a chat with Gilgamesh in Norg, and then seeing a scene with Lion in Ru'Avitau, and ZM16 is the fight in the Celestial Nexus.