[Richie-asura]

A few people and I are interested in Gondo-Shizunori, so we were wondering if anybody had a strategy for this bcnm, thank you for input

[Myrrial]

http://lolpup.livejournal.com/9301.html (shameless self-promotion)

But I'll pull the relivant information from the entry and post it here for easier access. Pictures have been removed.

The final event for the day would be a KS30 fight I had never done before: Royal Ramble. Our objective was to get either Destroyers for Ceri's MNK or a Coffinmaker for Oust's COR.

I'm still not sure I entirely understand how this fight works---even after reading the FFXIclopedia entry. You go in and there are four King cardians present. You pick one and the others all depop and are replaced by two Queens.

The end result is that you fight the following:

*King of _____ (whichever you pick; we picked Swords which was a PLD)
*Queen of Cups (WHM)
*Queen of Batons (BLM)

We went with a set-up of three BLUs (Kyro, Oust, and myself), PLD (Ceri), and RDM (Kalua).

FFXIclopedia has the following to say about the queens:

"Killing the Queen of Batons using physical attacks seemed to make the Queen of Cups physical defense skyrocket. Disseverment was doing 1/20th the normal damage and melee hits were usually 0's. Ranged attacks seemed to be unaffected.
All three cardians can use uncapped Bludgeon which takes 3 shadows, and also "Deal Out" which is a hate reset move.
Queens can and will cast Cure IV on the King if they are in range.
Queens will usually not close within melee range, but they will close to casting range. If you are within melee range you will get attacked (hard)."

Our awesome plan was to BLU-burn the Queen of Cups and then the Queen of Batons while our PLD kited the King around. Aside from the WHM queen using Benediction this wasn't difficult.

Then we fought the King.

The king was invincible. I don't mean he -used- Invincible because he was a Paladin I mean we literally could not touch him and I have no earthly idea why. He also began hitting for about 400-damage a pop. The odd thing was that he didn't go into "Super God Mode" until after his queens had been killed. We wiped because we couldn't hurt him and, well, he could still hurt us.

Attempt number two we decided to kite the two Queens and gank the King first. Sure enough; the King was nice and squishy when engaged first. BLU magic spam killed him; and then we rested up for MP and took each queen apart seperately.

The mobs still hit hard; and having the BLM queen running around casting spells while we focused on the King was kind of scary--but aside from that it wasn't so bad.

Among the spoils of our victory was a Coffinmaker for Oust's Corsair which he was thrilled to get. At one loss and one victory (and, more importantly, one drop out of the way) we decided to call it a night since only two people had actually brought orbs.

Two fights isn't a massive sample size; but the second tactic worked well enough that I'd rely on it in the future. Take what you will of this.

~Myrrial