Greater Amphiptere Soloable by Sch'sFollow

These flying NM's are found in the Xarcarbard [S] region, and aggro from the sky much like a UFO does. I actually kinda had a hard time aggroing one though for some reason. These NM's hit pretty hard; his non-crit hits landed for ~ 235ish to 315 while in -dmg gear and double attack certainly doesn't help things.

I preferred attempting my pulls either near the campaign npc, or near the actual campaign location, as its semi free of aggroing mobs, and relatively close to an ideal kiting location (G-9/G-10). The fight is easier than I expected, so long as you don't get careless and greedy with spells. Here's a quick list of things i made note of:

#1. kite around the circle @ G-9/10

#2. moves at 12% mvmt speed, however, once in the circle, terrain obstacles make it more like normal speed

#3. Cryohelices were doing ~102-133

#4. immune to grav and heavily resistant to sleep; Bind lands, but I had ~ 25% resist rate (1 out of 4-5 binds get resisted). Was able to land one sleep which had voidstorm, klima, focalization, and a 310 enfeebling skill but usually resisted.

#5. I stuck to helices and occassionally drain if i needed it, and occasionaly did bind > blizz IV if helix and bio were already on it.

#6. I also noticed that the only times i was able to pull off a helix with out getting hit by him was with ice weather up, and utilizing alacrity + wearing relic boots. without the boot bonus, I seemingly always got hit, but perhaps there is a notable place to stand where terrain might provide you the extra second.

#7. The only TP move I ever saw it use, was Reaving Wing, which puts up a "wind wall" looking buff, and causes repeated knock backs if in a 10 foot vacinity to the NM, however the knockback does NOT deal any dmg. I ended up getting cornered into a wall because of it, and my camera got hung up, causing me to lose track of where I was, yet the NM didn't deal any dmg to me even when he caught up to me. I was able to eventually get away before his Reaving Wing buff wore off.

#8 This is unconfirmed as Im not 100% sure, but I believe that the mob has party or alliance shared hate regardless if a player has not performed any actions on the NM or cooperating party members. I had a lowbie war in party with me that was spectating, and when I died, the NM blined for him even though he was at least 50 or more feet away from the NM and never performed an action other than cheerleading.

#9 I have not yet tested whether or not this can be done without heralds gaiters, though I believe it is possible, just would need to be extremely careful with your courses of action, and probably would not be able to use helix spells as your source of dmg. Would probably have to stick to bio's poisons, and alacrity drains.

Edit addition: #10. This is a rough estimation but i believe the NM has somewhere in the vacinity of ~ 15k hp. I would estimate that i casted ~ 20-25ish or so helix spells. I think the fight took ~ 45ish mins including 1 death, and time to unweaken, recure and rebuff up while in mid kite. Im guessing the fight could be reduced to ~20-30ish mins once experienced with the nature of the fight.

I think that about covers everything. Its quite a fun fight, and I love the look of the NM. In fact, that's why i died midfight, because i kept trying to turn my camera behind me to watch him lol. Also his Reaving Wind animation looks pretty sweet too ^,^

GL everyone! Definitely a blast to solo.


Edited, Jul 22nd 2009 2:59am by xXxNaobixXx

Edited, Jul 22nd 2009 5:30pm by xXxNaobixXx

Thanx for your input; I immediately went to retry the fight upon seeing your post. I was resisted 3 times in a row @ 312 enfeebling on binds, so thought it was immune, but I guess he jus got lucky. The 2nd solo went much smoother, bind had about a 75% landing rate.

Thanx also for the info on bio.... quite the humbling noobish moment for me o,o; I've played this game for 5 years, started on blm, and have honestly never known that till now. I thought it DoT'd similarly to helix in how much initial dmg is done. So I owe ya one for that tip, thanks again. (quite embarrassing >< lol)

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Here are some more tidbits about the fight that i picked up from the 2nd solo.


#1, Bind does in fact land ~ 75% of the time. I got resisted about 1 out of every 4 to 5 spells with a 312 enfeebling skill.

#2, As far as whether or not this fight can be done solo without gaiters..... I'm hard pressed to think it can. I put my gaiters in bazaar so that my macros couldn't use them, here are the following results of the "nongaiter solo test"

2a. Upon binding the mob, standing at 22.4 feet, casting bio, then immediately running away, the NM was able to catch up to me, and hit me before i made it ~75% around the full circle.

2b. Even WITH Alacrity, and casting bind from max distance, IF the nm resists, a player without mvmt speed will surely not make it out alive; this is why I believe that it "may" be possible to solo w/o speed, but there is nearly 0 room for error, and with as many bind resists as you will get, there will be errors

2c. I do believe that a player with desert boots and sandstorm could do the fight, however they would need to make sure that they have sandstorm up before unbinding the mob, and hopefully already have it up when attempting to bind the mob (in case of resist).

#3 When doing bind > blizz IV, nukes did in the vacinity of 600-700ish dmg.




Edited, Jul 23rd 2009 9:31am by xXxNaobixXx

Just want to add that Bio damage DoT is based on your dark magic skill. I'm not sure how much you need to break a tier or whatever but I do remember that for RDM you needed 211 skill for more damage (200 was base skill). Of course that number doesn't apply to SCH so much.