Shiva 1 shotting people....Follow

So I asked a friend who has soloed shiva several times on his THF to help me unlock it for my SMN. At the time of this my RDM was 62 and I came on it for support, haste, pro, shell, ect.

Well I forgot to sub /whm for BarBlizzardra but its a prime with a decked out THF and I didn't think it would be that hard since I have done the others with a party of 5 and barely cast 3 cures during the entire fight with AF not even breaking stoneskin.

So there we are on EARTHS day, she uses heavenly strike 3 times doing 800, 300, 250 each but I was able to heal through it, then out of no where, BAM Astral Flow for 1671, to my THF friend and 1457 to me through stoneskin and barblizzard on myself, we both had Shell III on.

Now I thought this was a fluke since he has soloed this on his THF before and had no problems but I did this again the other night same setup different THF but he was still decked out but this time I was 75 RDM. We run down to shiva, buff up, Shell IV on both of us, he goes in and tanks I keep him buffed, and she uses Rush a few times, completely missing him, then uses AF for 1500+ damage to him, and it doesn't even break my stoneskin.

I ended up warping out because I couldn't kill her.

So does someone have some explanation as to why she likes to randomly do a @#%^ton of damage and other times she cant even dent a stoneskin? I could see if maybe we were wearing -ice resist gear but when both AF went off neither THF was using a SH or any other gear that might have it, and they both had shell on yet still took that much damage.

I just don't get it... Maybe someone could explain it.



Oh and if your wondering why I didn't just solo them myself its because my ninja sub is 31 and my sword skill is only 100 and I didn't want to wait to go level those to unlock stuff for SMN.

I have a question. Although I have participated in the Prime fights, I was always the lower-level person hiding in the background, so I don't really know first-hand what the combat experience is like. Anyway, I'm wondering - the AF bloodpacts are magical damage - will Stoneskin even absorb any damage? Or will they completely bypass Stoneskin? I know some NM's can use magical attacks that completely bypass shadows and stoneskin, even a PLD's "Invincible" 2HR. I'm just curious.

Yes. Stoneskin can reduce damage taken by AF from the Primes.

Depending though, you can have even capped SS and high barspells, and can still fall fatal to AF. All depends on luck and hate... Never happened to me, but I've seen it happen.

I wouldn't suggest casting SS and standing by the Prime below level 70, however. As it seems below 70, more often than not, you blink as AF goes off and next you know you're kissing the ground.

Edited, Mar 13th 2009 10:29am by AaralynTrying

Edited, Mar 13th 2009 10:31am by AaralynTrying

Avatars are no higher than level 68 in the Trial by- fights.

Players are level 75 nowadays when fighting the Prime fights.

The odds of a mob's attack dealing full, unresisted damage on a player 8 levels higher are not favorable.

It's no different than a naked, unmeritted BLM casting Ancient magic on a level 82 mob and trying to get it in unresisted.

Since resists happen in eighths (0, 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, 7/8), then the odds of you seeing a form of reduced damage is pretty good. In fact, it's very good. And, given the ratio of partial resist to unresisted, the unresisted effects will seem "abnormal".

In effect, it's possible for a Trial by- Avatar to peform an Astral Flow attack, have it augmented by the double weather effect from the zone, and see it land unresisted on the player. It just doesn't happen often because of the level (and stat) differences between the mob and the player.

No. We fought Ramuh on Firesday. Was 75 WAR, WHMx2, and a BRD. I had just reached 75 WHM; to my recollection I didn't have any barspell merits, but the second WHM did. He had full barspell merits and relic pants. And was bragging the whole way there about how his SS was finally capped. He insisted that since he was full on merits, ect, that he be main heal. So I brought a few things to be lolDDWHM.

Around 54% he had to do a cure IV to our WAR. Ramuh took a swing at the other WHM but missed. WAR got shadows back up and voked before Ramuh got another chance to hit the other WHM again. Good thing cause the WHM's SS had wore from the beginning of the fight. Maybe just 3 seconds after the SS animation finished from the WHM reapplying it, Ramuh used AF and the other WHM's hp was 0 right away. WAR had maybe 176 hp. ~irrelevant~ I got a cure IV in on the WAR which allowed the WAR to get Ramuh down to about ~13%, but Ramuh crit hit the war and then used thunderstorm, then hit the WAR again. At that time I was playing on a bad connection, so whenever we fought avatars and they used the merit BP, I would lag like crazy.

I tried to flash Ramuh so WAR could get his shadows back up, but because of lag, was too late, and the WAR died. So with refresh from the BRD, I tanked Ramuh with only SS and Blink the rest of the way. Which I thought was funny, what with my SS not being probably even close to cap, it did pretty well tanking the last 13% of Ramuh. ~/end irrelevant~

I remember glancing for future reference at my Thunder resistance from the other WHMs barspells. Was 120 at least. Not sure if his SS was capped as he claimed. Didn't really pay attention to that. He sure did brag enough for me to believe him, though.

PS - I had my SS up and the other WHM's barspell at the time AF went off, and my SS didn't even break. So~ I don't know what was up with that WHM's supposedly capped SS. Even if it wasn't capped, it couldn't have been any worse than mine, and mine still did good.

Edited, Mar 14th 2009 2:17am by AaralynTrying

The problem with barspells, they are more like comparing them to additional effect weapons. Only...revers the activation. You resist about as much as the weapon doesn't proc. That is why MDB is more important than bars. Sure bars are nice to have, however I would rather rely on a guaranteed 5-10% then an unstable 20-30% reduction. Shell4 or 5 really are your best friends in these fights. In the past, on whm, I have only taken about 500-600 damage from AF with no bar or SS up relying just on shell. Even taru mages have 700+ hp (if they arent retarded)

Edited, Mar 14th 2009 10:46am by lightningcount

I don't think any damage in this game bypasses stoneskin. Even moves that are based on your HP% (like throat stab) are mitigated by stoneskin.

In preperation to get my evokers ring I went around and Solo'd all the Avatars over the weekend.

Went 1/1 on all of them but Shiva was the closest after Heavenly Strike for 1110 took me to about 50hp. Astral Flow did about 300

I was Nin/dnc for all fights

My opinion on AF is that although It wipes shadows the more shadows you have up the less damage you take

Wrong.

This as it states is my opinion based on doing the primes more times than I can remember.

If you can direct me to something that prooves this to be wrong it would be appreciated

Many thanks

Thanks for the info, I agree that aga's in general did this but always seemed to get much higher damage taken when shadows not completely up for Astral Flow. According to the guide I would imagine it states a "Blizzard IV" would absorb one shadow but for Avatars for it ignores shadows completely.

That actually explains why they couldn't be MBed back in the days.

No type of damage bypasses Stoneskin. In fact, when it comes to attacks that do damage + dispel (such as a Dahak's Nullsong), I am pretty sure that the damage is calculated before the dispel is, so Stoneskin will still kick in and absorb damage from it before it gets dispelled. Not 100% certain on that though...