Help me understand CoilFollow

The best way to get a group for this is to find 7 other people you can meet at specific times and make a static.

The first turn isnt that hard but 2 gets hard and 3+ gets insane. Your not beating the whole coil in a PuG thats for sure. The first floor can be but the rest i wouldnt. (Im at turn 3)

Ideally you want 8 people with relics and at least full darklight. The first turn is made for a party with that level of gear with the higher the turn, the higher the gear and skill requirement. Better skilled players can make up for some lack of gear, but the higher turns are really unforgiving.

In case anyone is wondering how runs work, you start on turn 1. You cant go back to a previous turn until the monday reset. This means you can only go forward. You can however take people on lower turns to higher turns.

Good luck.

Edited, Oct 7th 2013 9:38pm by Keysofgaruda

No one has beat turn 5 yet. It is extremely difficult.

Coil can be done anytime. You can find many pickup groups for turn 1 in Rev. Toll or Mor.

My static was set up by people who I ran Castrum and Praetorium speed runs with. They're mostly from no-name guilds on the server (not the elite you could say) but we get by just fine.

As callous as this sounds, if you want to progress through coil, it is currently rigged in such a way that BRDs and BLMs are the name of the game. You want a WHM and SCH (both: not two of the same healing class), you want ideally 4 BRDs or 2 BRDs and 2 BLMs (SMN can work), and 2 PLDs. Everyone should have an 'alt' job that they can switch to depending on what turn you are on.

I'm not saying you can't do it with any other class. My static uses a dragoon, monk (who we swap for a bard sometimes), a bard, a scholar, a white mage, and two paladins. We're currently on turn 4. My FC has (had) 3 groups. One is currently on turn 5. I'll let you know how that goes Thursday.

It really involves a lot of min/maxing of classes and gear after turn 2. Even on turn 2, it will require some gear (maybe outside DL) to accomplish.



Here's the rundown:

Turn 1

Objectives: Deactivate the automated defense system (ADS version 1), Defeat Caduceus

ADS version 1

ADS is the first thing you will encounter in this turn. It is the first 'check' for your group to see if you are coordinated enough to handle stunning high voltage (mass AoE damage plus irremovable paralysis for 30 seconds) every ~15-20 seconds. It also tests your ability to dodge long range rectangular attacks, piercing laser (much like Titan's landslide), a DPS check on the adds that spawn, and a raid awareness check for the tanks because adds do spawn in the back of the room. Can they hold aggro off the DPS (because they need to die very quickly)? Can the tank avoid having the DPS get cleaved while avoiding piercing laser? All good checks on player competency.

Also, ADS is a slight DPS check. You are given 'clicks' until he automatically goes berserk and kills everyone.




If you can manage all this, you're good to go for coil turn 1.

You will kill some trash that is pretty easy on the way. Nothing of real concern here except obliterate from the golems (two of them).

Caduceus

Caduceus is a really fun fight. It tests just about everything. Are your tanks geared enough/knowledgeable about when to pop cooldowns? Can your healers raid heal and focus on the tank for the first 25% of the fight? Can your DPS get Caduceus down to 75% HP with only using two slimes?

As I said, Caduceus hits very hard. Your healers may have a hard time keeping a tank up because 3/4ths of his HP could be gone within a couple seconds.

The slime mechanic is quite interesting. Caduceus has a stackign buff he gains every so often. The way to get rid of this buff is to make him eat one of the slimes.

Platforms will light up randomly throughout the fight. If you are standing on one of these platforms, a slime spawns. These slimes hit for a truckload and whoever spawned the slime has permanent aggro on them. If you get too far away from the slime, it blows up and kills people. You need to ideally weaken the slime to around 10% HP before you bring it to Caduceus to eat. You see, Caduceus gains HP every time he eats a slime. If you feed him a slime with 100% HP, you're in for some trouble.

Now if you didn't think that was fun, you're going to have an interesting time at 75% when he splits up into two mobs. One of your tanks will take him to the other side of the arena. The two do significantly less damage now but they still have the stacking damage buff. You can either choose to burn down both if your DPS is good or use the slime mechanic ON BOTH.

So now you have to relegate the task to two DPS who are in charge of looking out for the lit up platforms to spawn a slime to remove the buff on one of the bosses.

One thing I forgot to mention: Caduceus has some very nasty cleave and conal attacks. If you get behind him, he'll use tail swipe. As a clothie, you'll probably die below 3.6k HP. Why would a clothie be in melee range for Caduceus you ask? Well, sometimes BLMs and SMNs are requested to kite the slimes to Caduceus. Getting cleaved and/or tail swiped will most likely result in a death.

So if you cleared this fight, it's telling you that you have the gear down, everyone knows how to play their job, and the ability to work well with your teammates.

Turn 2

Objective: Deactivate the automated defense system (ADS version 2)

You have on objective here: kill ADS. But this isn't the 'friendly' version you fought in turn 1.

You must kill defensive nodes to get to ADS. Each node has an ability that ADS can use. If you kill that node, the ability is disabled. It is not possible to kill all of the nodes before engaging ADS. On top of that, each node uses high voltage and repelling canon. On top of all that, the nodes have a stacking debuff they place on the tank. This means the tanks need to be swapping every 4 stacks or so or you'll end up with a dead tank.

Each path (left or right) has its advantages where the left favors melee DPS and the right favors magic DPS. Also, depending on what path you choose, ADS will have different abilities. For instance, if you go left, he will have Allagan rot, gravity field, and ballast. On top of all this, high voltage, piercing laser, and repelling cannon make their return.

Since I only go left with my group (gimps my damage), I'll explain it from that perspective. After you've killed all the nodes on the left side, you'll engage ADS. From 100% to 75%, it's all about dodging piercing laser, tank swapping, and silencing the high voltage. At 75%, a random raid member gets a debuff called Allagan rot. This MUST be passed to another person within 15 seconds or your raid dies instantly. Once the debuff is passed, it cannot be passed to the same person for 30-40 seconds (they gain an immunity). So, you need to be careful who you are swapping and you need to set up an order for people who will take the rot when it is expiring. Usually, this duty is for the backrow (healers included). You ideally want 4 people doing the swapping.

If things weren't interesting enough, at around 50% he gains another ability called gravity field. This isn't too bad on its own but if you get stuck in it, you gain the heavy debuff which makes movement slow. If you are targeted by a piercing laser while in gravity field's slow, you're not in good shape. The gravity field is randomly placed on a person's location in the raid. This means you might have to shuffle the raid around while NOT passing the rot on to someone accidentally.

Still not having enough fun? He gains another ability at 25% called ballast. This is a huge conal/AoE attack that covers most of his arena. The only safe spot is behind him when he uses this. Ranged should be ok because...well...ballast won't cover the entire arena.

If you've managed to get 7 other people to follow these tasks, it's not a bad fight.

Oh yeah did I mention? If you die, you have to start all over: including killing the 3 nodes again.


Turn 3

A joke of a turn (and rewards no loot). You're basically killing trash as you descend into the coil.


Turn 4

This is extremely painful and is a huge DPS, tank, and healer check. As you begin, you'll be assaulted by the first wave of enemies that are presently on the elevator. It's not too bad at first...they're pretty weak and susceptible to AoE.

Soon, though, you'll get even more surprises. Knights and Soldiers spawn. Each has its own special mechanics. The Soldiers have a stoneskin buff up which makes them impervious to melee until the stoneskin is brought down and the Knights reflect all ranged attacks. The Knights have a huge AoE radius attack that draws you in. If you're a clothie, expect pain (if not death).

Dreadnoughts spawn and must be fed adds that spawn. They also cleave and it WILL one shot you. So most people stack behind the dreadnought when he spawns and go from there. The DPS and healers have to conserve their TP/mana (less you're a BLM bwahaha) because this is a lengthy fight.

So eventually you kill the first dreadnought and do another wave of AoE > knights, etc and then two dreadnoughts spawn. They have an 'enrage' mechanic based strictly on time. Usually groups get down to the very last dreadnought and wipe due to the hard DPS check there.

BLM seems to perform well here. AoE is the name of the game and we do it quite well. BRDs have a longer range but they consume much TP to spam their AoE. BLMs don't have an issue with resources when it comes to AoE.




I'd give you info about turn 5 if I could...but no one is able to enter it due to some people exploiting the encounter to win. >_>

Edited, Oct 11th 2013 1:33pm by HitomeOfBismarck