Endeavoring To Awaken --A Guide To Rune Fencer

Great, thanks!

The only time I'd ever use One for All when Valiance is active is if I lose hate and really need a quick enmity spike. One for All follows the same rules as other AoE enmity generation abilities like Rampart in that the enmity it generates increases proportional to the number of players hit with it.

You are right though, generally I only use One for All if Valiance is down or when I am dealing with non-elemental magic damage Valiance won't defend me or my party from.

Sadly, the best and most practical use for Liement is as a really good hate tool to open a battle with before I hit Valiance. Since the Epeolatry makes it AoE it then follows the same rules as One for All and Valiance as far as enmity generation goes. You really notice it in Ambuscade battles or fights where enmity is alliance-based.

Ambuscade is unique in that, once you have the mobs' attention, everything you do builds hate on all targets--even single target things affect them all.
It sounds to me like you are doing just fine, but to give you some relief so you aren't just praying, here is what I do:

Job: Run/Pld
Buffs: Crusade, Unda, Barfire, Unda, Stoneskin, Unda, Blink, Refresh, Phalanx
The Whm should overwrite your Barfire, but they don't always... By the time you have these buffs up, everyone else should have their buffs up as well. They should then move to the side, usually to the left.

Step #1) Run in deep, like to the big guy's feet.
Step #2) Immediately pop Sentinel.
Step #3) Immediately after, pop Foil (This is because, sometimes, the RNG gigas doesn't aggro/get the hate from Sentinel and has to move towards you a little first.
Step #4) Run back towards where you zoned into Legion...
Step #5) Pop Valiance as you pass by your party (So you benefit from the enmity and they still get the protection).
Step #6) Position yourself with your back to the corner and face the mobs. Engage the boss.
Step #7) Pop Battuta.
Step #8) Hit the boss with Gambit.
Step #9) I don't generally have to do this, but if your group lacks magic accuracy, quickly get one Unda up and hit the boss with Rayke.
Step #10) Boss should be dead... Keep Foil up. Get Undax3 back up. Vivacious Pulse as needed. Nothing bad will happen to you.
Step #11) Just as the skill chain closes on the Bst, Lunge for lulz! You might get charmed, but it won't matter. It'll be dead as soon as the nukes hit it, less than a second after your Lunge pops.

FYI, Barfira will never overwrite Barfire. If you cast Barfire, then the WHM's Barfira will have no effect on you even though it's like 3 times stronger.

God, this. As someone who mostly plays WHM these days it drives me up the wall when RUNs overwrite my buffs with crappier versions of their own. This also applies to Regen, where a WHM's Regen will be roughly 3x the duration and 2x the HP restored per tick. At least in that case I can overwrite your Regen with my own, but I'd really rather not spend another 70+ MP because you decided to overwrite the Regen I put on you 10 seconds ago.

You'll both be glad to know that a section on that exact mistake is in this guide.

Barspells and Regen should be handled by your healer if in a group, if you're solo then by all means use your own versions.

That's actually not true.

This.

All Ambuscade does to enmity is put everyone on every mobs hate list.

This means that you don't have to tag anything to get on the hate list, and actions taken on self or others will generate enmity on all mobs.

But flashing one mob isn't going to generate enmity on the rest.

As a RUN, once you are in Ambuscade you should be able to use Foil over and over as people are buffing to gain hate on all targets, correct?

I don't think that enmity is really calculated until things have been aggroed. it's why folks are told not to use JAs during a pull/until the tank has things under control, because then mobs will come after them for that tiny little ding of enmity gain.

I don't believe that's the case, but I've not actually tried that. My impression was that everyone is added to the hate list when the mobs are agro'd.

That said, I haven't actually tested it. Feel free top try it and let us know. But keep in mind that enmity generation is limited by distance. If you're farther then 25' from a mob, a self targeted action isn't going to generate any enmity.

I've noticed mixed results. Our tank was able to build hate without initial aggro on most of the Ambuscade fights, but for the Lamia fight this model didn't seem to apply. One of the Lamia would run towards a random person besides the tank at the beginning of every fight (and would then return after they flashed it.) This all occurred before they got any of their auras up.

Doesn't it seem like somebody on the backline is always the mobs' initial target? Maybe buffs don't generate enmity per se, but perhaps # of buffs or the last to buff before pull affects who gets targeted first? Since everybody is on the hate list on pull, somebody has to default to top-position on the table, right? I wonder if there's a way for us to ensure the RUN is there instead of a mage.

Seconding this. I open pretty much every fight in Ambuscade with Foil for this reason. Large enmity spike and since it's self-target it affects everything.

It always seemed a little off to me. Like I use autos without any hate attachments a lot. It's pretty noticeable the difference in hate post and pre agro buffs get me. Like my cor can cycle all it's jas and nothing every comes after it right away. Then I have it do nothing and first roll after pull always pulls hate unless I wait for a few weaponskills or get all people getting buffed >30' away. I do 30 because varying mob sizes, multiple enemis, multiple people getting buffed make riding the line not really feasible. It's particularly noticeable in this months volume 2 with multiple enemies that aggro separately and die quickly. Roll after pull and cor will have hate until the mob dies or the cor does lol. Roll literally less than a second before getting next mob just fine

Another example tried to low man lamia once. Was going to have a pld super tank/kite while I picked of boss then adds off him. Only the pld took any action and he built what should have been a metric crap ton of enmity if any was being built. Goes to start kiting and before any character takes any action some go after them

I would tend to agree with this- I do wonder if at some point they ninja-changed how the zone's enmity works. I was almost certain that enmity was accrued pre-agro for the vol 1 frog last October, but it hasn't really seemed that way for the last 3 or so.

I didn't know that Barfira didn't overwrite Barfire. That's my bad, hahahaha! Oh well, I'd still rather be sure I have it than not get it at all. No WHM has ever shared this with me, but plenty have neglected to cast their version.

And I guess I created more confusion than good... I meant single target, like Foil and Valiance vs Vallation. I should have said single-target self. If you notice in the steps, I never suggest to even bother with casting Flash at all.

No matter how many times I've casted Foil before aggroing mobs, they've always gone after the backline unless I Foil/Sentinel after aggroing them all.

I mean, there is a message in the log about their subsequent Barspell having no effect (On a few occasions, I've erroneously assumed that my WHM was too lazy to cast a Barspell).

I haven't ever had any issue getting initial hate and keeping it with Valliance/Foil then rotating my JA's. Our mages are usually BLU, RDM, & BRD.

I always end up being the initial target of at least one mob. On the lamia month it was always the same one too. It's weird.

I think maybe it has to do with the character's age. Like you know how if you do "/sea all linkshell" it's in alphabetical, but if you go to the Linkshell menu and look at the member list it's in order of the character's age on the server? I think maybe initial aggro is chosen in a similar way, people at the top of the list are picked on first. I say this because it's literally ALWAYS me. Doesn't matter what job I'm on or what I do before the pull.

The only way I've found to avoid this, which sounds totally crazy but I swear it works... I stand back in the starting corner. Directly behind where everyone enters, in a straight line between the entry point and the center of the arena. Basically hiding behind all the other players. It seems like if I do that until after the pull, they don't go after me.

As I go in on SMN often, it's always very obvious if I end up as their target, because my avatar will get ants in his pants and start chasing them around. So I've had a lot of exposure to this particular oddity.

However, no matter who they go for initially, I've never observed that person to have any actual enmity from before the pull. It never takes more than 1 action to pull hate off them unless they start using lots of buffs after the pull.

Pergatory some of Kaeko's enmity testing (years ago) indicated that there was a range on which your actions had affect on the enmity tables. This became a reliable strategy in some fights and was sometimes important to rest a good distance away

My own experiences in tanking frog-month seemed to see these factors as still present in Ambuscade but one of the more notable players around here argued they had no loss of enmity because of distance while kiting on BLU.

Anyway for all the alignment you talk about, it's simpler to say that you're standing further than the mob from anyone else, literally as far as you can get, while remaining in spawn corner.

I can't attest to character-age thoughts (maybe?) but I do know that for any prebuilt enmity, I never had an issue that rampart or warcry (even only hitting me) didn't correct, as I always hit it immediately after rushing in. I never used Foil for the initial gain in ambuscade (on months where the mobs were spawned prefight), but that's only because of the need to stop and cast.

While Rampart and Warcry generate enmity based on the number of people hit, it never mattered if it only hit me or hit all 6. It always solved any initial agro.

It was simple pass fail. If the target of the effect was withing 25' of the mob you gained enmity if not then you didn't so resting shouldn't really matter.

Resting was merely an example. I wasn't implying that it was limited to resting. It applied to every action. I only used resting as an example of something people might not think of.

If you were a DD or a BLM trying to shed hate, resting too-clone was diminishing the value of your idle-time.

It could also cause issues with someone holding multiple mobs if you rested too close.

The hate range thing definitely applies in Ambuscade. However, in my experience it's closer to 30 yalms than 25. Also, it's based on the target of the spell, so if you're casting buffs or something it doesn't matter where you're standing, only where the person you're buffing is standing.

This was also particularly evident in the lamia Ambuscade, when we had a PUP pull the charming one away. The beginning of that fight was very hard because if the PLD did Sentinel or anything before the third lamia got pulled outside enmity range, it would end up glued to the PLD and the PUP couldn't pull it off. If the PLD waited until the lamia was a good 35-40 yalms away, it never came back to bother us for the rest of the run.

I perhaps worded it poorly. I was saying only enmity actions in range count. Where you stand or sit while doing nothing means very little in terms of enmity regardless of range. Though limited testing I've done suggest it does really weird stuff.

Like at one point when both players were in melee range it was producing no permanent change in target as long as other player had 1 more CE more but it would randomly try to attack the resting player. But another time when rested just a tad outside of melee range it stayed on resting player even after getting up... meanwhile when the other player went to rest it went back to the randomly going back and forth thing. But greater than say 10'ish nothing happened

That said as long I kept the CE difference even just a 100 or so higher resting right next to mob did nothing. So I'd guess at worse you are gaining some amount of VE over time but slower than you are losing it naturally. Could test more but no one cares about obscure enmity anymore, testing anything enmity related let alone something that doing weirdly like this especially after they redid so much of the tables is madness inducing and no one is going to rest within 10' of a mob anyways

Speak for yourself. I test obscure enmity ***just to know more obscure enmity ***!

Me too occasionally but everyone just kind of nods and stares. I miss the days of enmity being a delicate balance throughout the fight and things like that mattered a bit

Took a while but it's finished. I'm considering making a second part to it, going into the DPS aspect of RUN.
Hope I did a decent job of the video.

Awesome video and work.

Rua you da real MVP. Great video :)