Better Than One

Objective: Defeat Black Shuck.

Recruitment: Lv.70, 3-6 mercenaries

Time Limit: 30:00

Come Prepared With: HP/MP regen items, Reraise

Assault Points: 1500

Notes (Kanah):

We went as: MNK/NIN, SAM/DNC, BRD/WHM, WHM/SMN, BLM/WHM, BLM/WHM.

A pretty straight-forward fight where luck again seems to play a strong role. Black Shuck uses Ululate (Paralyze-ga) as well as some hi-damage TP moves and will occasionally howl which triggers a seemingly random special move such as Blaze Spikes, fire elemental summoning (and dismissal?) and Gates of Hell.

The elementals will give you the most trouble due to magic aggro. In some battles, the elementals would come out around 75% HP, others 50%, others closer to 35-40%. We tried gathering the elementals together and nuking them, but had more success with the BRD kiting them away from the mages (who camped in the northern tunnel of the main room). In some of our runs, the elementals despawned after ~5 minutes, in others they did not despawn. GoH can be stunned.

The two DD's bounced hate around and kept up slow, consistent damage and Light skillchains while the BLMs nuked and stunned. Everyone should help out the WHM with healing if they can as BS hits hard (200-300 per hit, 400-500 for criticals). Utsusemi and Third Eye are critical. DOT was applied by everyone who could do so as BS has a high regen rate. Our WHM Benedictioned shortly before the MNK and SAM 2-houred (at around 25% HP) for some insurance that we could go all out and Black Shuck went down quickly at this point. We finished with plenty of time to spare.

The key again seems to be slow and steady application of damage to the mob, keeping the mob's TP gain in check. Using this strategy and having the luck of a relatively short life duration for the elementals (either by nuking or despawning) should bring you a fairly "easy" victory.