Bahamut's Coil - Turn 1

So you want to start Bahamut's Coil?

After you've beat Titan and unlocked Bahamut's Coil from a shitty short quest in the Waking Sands, you can now participate! Every Monday progress resets but otherwise, what you do in the dungeon is "saved" at key points, for the entire week. No going back! If someone in your group is ahead–everyone has to jump ahead.

That being said, let's jump to the actual turn…





Preferred Party Setup: Tank, Tank, Healer, Healer, Bard, Bard, Ranged DPS, DPS.

Get used to this fight–a variation is going to happen again in Turn 2. This is technically a mini-boss and he drops no loot.

You will be in a corridor for ADS and, like the name, he spawns an add at set intervals. He is highly predictable and works on timed attacks, so once you learn it, its ez.

Boss Pattern: High Voltage, Repelling Cannons, Piercing Laser.

• High Voltage - Medium cast time, paralyzes everyone and it can't be Esuna'd. Happens every 30 seconds, starting IMMEDIATELY upon aggro. Bards must Silence this with Blunt Arrow.
• Repelling Cannons - Radial AOE with marker, extends out from ADS. Does damage, just avoid it.
• Piercing Laser - Line AOE with marker, he targets one person but anyone in the AOE will get hit with damage. Sometimes he will move to try and target someone. (Never targets the one with highest enmity)

Basic sequence: Tank aggros ADS, 1st Bard silences High Voltage immediately. DPS on the boss begins. After one rotation, second Bard silences High Voltage. At this point, Bards can know when it's almost their turn by watching the cooldown on Blunt Arrow, since High Voltage happens the same timing as their cooldown.

ADS will do about 2 rotations before he summons a smaller version of himself–-at the opposite end of the corridor, at the start. Off-tank should be waiting here already. Provoke the Node and begin the DPS–All DPS should focus on this new add (If you have one melee DPS, keep it on ADS). If you Provoke as soon as it spawns, by the time your Provoke is up again, the next add will spawn. You will have to avoid the add's own cannons and he has an invisible AOE Conal move, so between all that, it will be a bit hard to dodge. We put our PLD on the adds and WAR on ADS for this reason.

Bards continue silencing ADS in their rotation–but in between silences should be damaging the node add. Since High Voltage is always after the Piercing Laser, and you can use Blunt Arrow's cooldown to know whether this turn is yours or not, its fairly easy to not lose track. Just swap to ADS when you see the laser, silence High Voltage when it pops up and resume DPS on the add.

Limit break whenever. Its a straight forward fight, but timed. You should try not to have more than one melee (having none is the best, of course) as moving between mobs is pretty much impossible. This is stage one of gittin' gud!

After ADS is a bunch of trash mobs that won't give you an issue. Golems like to Obliterate and kill you, but just don't let it do it twice and you'll be fine.





Preferred Party Setup: Tank, Tank, Scholar, Healer, Ranged DPS, Ranged DPS, Ranged DPS, DPS.

The battle field is a bunch of hexagonal platforms at various heights, with two panels at the tallest height requiring you to walk on a yellow crystal platform to reach. One of these is at the start, the opposite side has the other. Remember this because it'll be important later.

Boss Pattern: Hood Swipe, Whip Back, Steel Scales, Dark Matter Slimes, Divide.

• Hood Swipe - Holy fuck this Front Conal is wide! Its nearly 180 degrees and hurts. Never be in front, or hell, even slightly near the front from the side.
• Whip Back - Tail AOE with marker. Triggers from being behind, like most tails. And, like most bosses, a DD should try to trigger this as often as possible to take heat off the tank. Getting hit means you could very well die, though, so be careful.
• Steel Scales - 30 seconds into the fight, he pops this buff onto himself. It has an audio and visual affect that is brief, but you can see the buff on him. Every 45 seconds he'll add another stack. This increases his damage.
• Dark Matter Slimes - After he receives Steel Scales, several seconds later the panels underneath your feet will light up. Its 3-4 panels, randomly, but the grouping is usually a consistent pattern but which one that happens is random. Sometimes there is only three on the east side, sometimes its four divided into the north and west areas. Sometimes, the worst, its only on the two top pillars. Either way, if you are on the panel when the light stops flashing, a Dark Matter Slime pops. Whoever pops the slime will not be able to lose hate from it until they die.
  They will attack while on you and occasionally spit poison spots that cause Heavy. If you move too far from them, they blow up dealing massive damage in a large radius.
  If you kite the Slime to Caduceus with full health, he will eat it and gain a lot of HP. However, if the Slime has ~20% or less HP left, Caduceus will eat the Slime without regaining HP. The point of the Slime however is that one Slime will remove one stack of Steel Scales.
• Divide - At ~65% HP (roughly after two Slimes have been fed, usually), Caduceus will split into two snakes. You'll notice a sudden drop in his HP when he does this. Both snakes have the same buffs/debuffs upon splitting. Once split, you must separate them, as they will join again if too close. Rejoining means Caduceus gains Steel Scales almost every 5 seconds–its essentially a wipe.

Basic sequence: See the pillar to the north of the start zone? You'll notice a metal panel thingie on the ground beneath it. That is roughly where you want to tank Caduceus (not on the panel, but with your back to the corner where those two hexagons meet.) You want to point Caduceus away from everyone and in such a way that the person leaving the pillar can reach his side without dying.

That's right, one ranged DD should be on the pillar at all times. Because sometimes panels light up ONLY on the top, someone has to be up there. However, pre-split, we usually have our dedicated slime deliveryman not on this pillar. The ranged DD up top is just to be there to grab the slime if those panels light up–-if they light up and you're not on them, you will never ever reach them in time.

Consistently feeding Slimes to Caduceus is one of the biggest make or break points of the fight. Healers will be cure bombing the tank. As stacks increase, damage increases. As damage increases, the chances of you winning plummet. Get good at feeding slimes, because messing up once means its harder to recover.

Off-tank should be watching the HP bar closely. I like to mark Caduceus with a 1 so that when the split happens and I TAB over to the next target, I don't get confused with which snake is which. If a Dark Matter Slime is out while they split, you're pretty guaranteed to TAB over to that, no matter where you are. Its frustrating but just try to work with it. Immediately Provoke, Flash, ranged attack while you get the fuck out of there. Nobody should be in the tank's way while he's moving Caduceus 2.0–– he's heading south, to just under the pillar by the start of the fight. Tank it with your back against the abyss, the pillar to your left, straddling the edge of two hexagons.

Three ranged DPS is critical for this because of the split. Two ranged DPS have to be on each pillar with the third sort of lingering roughly in the center. Because of the way panels light up, usually the two on pillars can grab one near them. However, many times, panels will light up on only one side. Your third DPS, the wingman, should be aware of these and be picking up a slime for the one who can't reach.

Since Caduceus splits, so does the party. One healer dedicated to each tank. One ranged DPS dedicated to damaging each snake/feeding their slime to it. The middle DPS picks one snake and the last DPS (in our case, we usually went melee for baiting Whip Back) on the other.

This is training for the harsh nature of Coils. Precasting is a big deal for healers, so get used to it now. Dealing with anus clenching amount of damage while also, oh, the rest of the party needs healing too! It's annoying but, that's how the endgame is. This is why we suggest at least one Scholar – Eos is pretty handy at healing the slime deliverymen while the poor healer is trying to keep tanks alive. In the end, we had two Scholars and that seemed to work great but there is no reason why it can't be done with White Mage.

About slimes: Don't DoT them and try to approach Caduceus from the side. Walk a little into him and as soon as he eats it–dip the fuck out.

If you miss your slime, try to just make up for it next time by pulling 3 instead of 2. Relaying with people and communication is important.

Now, there is one last gimmick to this fight… Both snakes have to die within 5-10 seconds of each other or Caduceus starts gathering stacks of Steel Scales quickly. Get both down low and when one is at roughly 5%, Limit break the other and then kill the lower one. That's how it should go but… if one tank dies and they rejoin but still have 20% or less HP… or if one dies too soon… its not the end of the world! Hopefully you have a Paladin to Hallowed Ground in these instances and just go balls to the wall with your DPS.

Healers hold on tight, DPS get good on slimes, and you should have this down in no time.