Well, we had our last big event of the year this last weekend. 2-3 had a very small turn-out, but we were still able to get at least 3 people through the mission. 2-5 was cancelled due to how small the 2-3 turn-out was (I even got cranky at people about it). However, I think we have learned a lot about these missions now, and would like to comment on some general strategies and information on them I picked up from doing them... Read on for more...

CoP 2-3 : Aqueducts

Movement and Retweaking of the Mobs

Tamara was the first to notice this (because, as usual, she was the only person on time for the event :-) but the last patch has moved around a lot of the Fomors in the Aqueducts. This means that the Fomor Party Map I pointed to recently is no longer entirely accurate. For example, the MNK-SMN party on the first map is no more (damn! no easy way to farm MNK subs any more). Once you get in deeper, the Fomor parties seem to be the same, but now it does take a very long time before you get to any Fomors.



The other thing we found out was that the Mob difficulty levels in the Aqueducts are much lower than they were before. Previously, the first Stego's you saw on the first map were VT to IT and you wanted an Alliance to beat them. Similarily, once you got in near the library, the Stego's required nearly a full Alliance to comfortably fight.



Now, the Stego's on the first map are only DC to T, and they get more difficult as you go in, but we never needed more than a 7 person Alliance (one more than a normal party) to beat them. Also, we never had a tank, and we were fine.



In addition to this, a small group of 6 people without a tank were able to kill Fomors pretty deep inside the Aqueducts. This means that 6 people were able to take on two T Fomors in a party successfully and without death.



All of this really means two things, one good, one bad:

• The Good: Doing the Minotaur fight now is much easier. We were able to successfully go into the Aqueducts and beat the boss having no tank and only an Alliance of 7 people. In fact, I'd wager if we had a dedicated tank, we could easily do it with a party of 6.
• The Bad: Because the Fomors are now so much deeper inside the Aqueducts, Fomor parties will be harder. You will really have to travel a lot deeper to be able to fight them for the subligars, and you will likely need an Alliance to do so (deeper inside, they travel in parties of 3 or more). Of course, their difficulty has been toned down, and they seem to drop subs more often than before (as we were farming for keys, we actually had two subligars drop).

All told, I'd bet that now we could easily do the Minotaur fight and finish the mission in approximately an hour (provided we have a key, or a THF) from when the party/alliance enters the Aqueducts to when they get the final cutscene in the library. So, I guess from a mission standpoint, it is a marked improvement.

CoP 2-5 : Riverne Site #A01

Arb and I took a pick-up CoP 2-5 party on Sunday evening. I primarily went into it because I wanted to glean some strategy that I could later on use to get more people through it. Also, I was a bit peeved about the low turn-out for 2-3 the previous day, so I'll admit I selfishly wanted to just finish the mission for myself :-)



Because of several stupid things (WHM dc'ing or logging at the final island, not having enough scales, etc) we wound up spending a buttload of time in there and we really did learn a lot. I think now we can successfully, even easily, take others through the mission.

The Ascent

Honestly, the ascent in Riverne Site #A01 is really trivial. Compared to the Promies, this is a walk in the park. The hardest part is farming the two (2) dragon scales needed for the Unstable Displacements. This is hard because a) these are not common drops and b) the Firedrakes that drop them are not-soloable (maybe to BST and SMN, I don't know).



There are only three aggro mobs (Firedrakes, Hippogryphs and Bombs). The Firedrakes and Bombs are sight (Bombs also magic) so a stack of Prism Powders is sufficient to move about. The Hippogryphs are true sight, but are easily avoidable on all islands but the second to last before the ENM.



Thus, once you have the two dragon scales, a party with sufficient powders and who knows how to avoid true sight mobs (by this point in CoP, you should know :-) can easily make it to the end in 30-40 minutes. Seriously, ascending Riverne Site #A01 is that easy.

The Boss Battle

The boss battle, on the other hand, is much more complex than anything you've seen in the game thus far. And it really requires a lot of strategy, excellent timing, and maybe even some luck.



The battle itself is 3 "Mammets" which are tall humanoid creatures (not necessarily Humes) that can switch between three jobs (BLM, WAR, and DRG). Of these three jobs, DRG is arguably the weakest (because he doesn't call a wyvern, has low defense, and doesn't have very powerful AoE attacks like the other two). When they change they can have special moves that turn all physical or magical attacks into cures for them. Thus, you have to watch and stop attacking when these moves occur.



For the battle, there are a variety of strategies available online. Most of them involve having a lot of nuking (1 PLD, 5 SMNs... 1 NIN, 5 BLMs... etc) which makes it very difficult to get other jobs through these (for example, I am a life-long melee, I only have MNK and WAR that I could take through this mission right now, it makes it hard for me to get through them if you limit the parties to almost all nukers).



However, we managed to get with a group this weekend that had an excellent strategy for getting through the Mammets that any well balanced party should be able to do... provided everyone knows their roles and everyone operates efficiently.

The Everyman Mammet Strategy

The strategy we used was, first we entered in the arena. We buffed up, and everyone in the group took a hit from a Reraise Earring (this means that we probably want to divide up the cost for this earring amongst the people doing the boss battle).



Two kiters then took the side mobs, while the tank takes the center mob. The tank pulls the center mob back down the tunnel of the arena while the kiters take theirs around the far end of the arena. A third support job (RDM or WHM would be ideal) then follows the kiters to keep them alive.



This leaves three people fighting the center mob (including the tank).The three fighting the center mob in the tunnel do their best to destroy this mob (this usually involves at least one melee 2 houring, MNK's Hundred Fists works very very very well here :-) Meanwhile, the kiters just stay alive, and try not to damage their mobs too much.



After the first one is dead, everyone takes stock of the situation. If people are not hurting, then the kiter who is the weakest bring their mob to the tunnel and we fight it. Usually someone else has to two hour here to help kill this mob.



If, however, after the first one everyone is hurting, then the kiters bring back their two to the tunnel, and everyone dies in the tunnel.



Yes... you read correctly... everyone dies.



Why do this? Well, after we die in the tunnel, the two remaining ones will wander back to the arena, and we can safely reraise and heal to full. This means that we can be fresh as a daisy when we attack the next two baddies.



Once everyone is healed to full, one more kiter takes one of the mobs out (preferably a DRG) while the rest kill off the other. Once that one is dead, the final mob is brought in, and any remaining two hours are used to kill this one off.



If all goes well, then you will have won the battle quite easily using any combination of balanced jobs.



(Of course, there's a lot of throwing of Yellow Liquids to lock jobs and block their special moves during all this... I pretty much glossed over that because I assume everyone should know about that by now).

What are the risks?

Obviously, you will lose EXP here. However, it really wont be very much (capped at 40) if you are a sufficiently high job (at 69, I barely lost 500 the whole journey, and I died twice).



However, the bigger risk is running out of time. In fact, this is why Arb and I lost our Mammet battle. We had the fight won, the final boss was down to a sliver of life. However, we ran out of time.



See, this battle has a 30 minute time limit. This means that everyone needs to perform their duty at the appropriate time, no sooner, no later. In our battle, Arb accidentally 2 houred too soon, and it cost us our victory. Basically, in the future, I'd recommend having someone be a dedicated timer (run like an egg timer during the battle) so you can see how much time remains.

Conclusion

Long story short, I think we have some excellent winning strategies for both CoP 2-3 and CoP 2-5 now. I think that when we next start up our events (probably in the new year) we will be more than prepared to get people through 2-5.