Tanking Pandemonium Warden

So a buddy of mine said he wants to kill this guy and sell the drops for gil and also use em for upgrading our own mythics eventually.

Now I have never fought him just read the 500+ page thread about him and AV on BG years ago. From what I read somewhere on here is that you can 3 man him with a PLD/WHM/BRD setup. You will need a 99 Aegis to survive the astralflowga but they also said time is an issue if your paladin is your only source of damage.

Anyone actually tanked him and killed him? I'm working on my aegis and should have it by the end of the month but I have no idea what to expect or things I should look out for. I don't even know what subjob I should use even. My gear is mostly 109 AF/relic mix with some PDT pieces and delve gear.

Anyone fought him and could give some insight? I rather not waste a pop or 2 figuring stuff out and wasting days of farming if I can avoid it.

I won it once in a ally pre adoulin. Dont know if aegis is life saver, but Twilight set is. In the worst case, have the PLD zombie, hp and come back. That was what the ally i went with, totally random with no job selection, managed to win (in barely 2 hours, no elegance at all, but a win is a win).

Pandemonium warden is a pretty easy fight now. All of the forms he has die so fast with delve gear and other 110+ gear it is actually a joke. The only other form you have to worry about it one of the chariots that has a 10k needles move. But the other three chariots, medusa, gurfurlur, and gulool and whatever else there is can be zerged easily they all have 30k or less health. As for the dvergr form he uses astral flow every 25% yes an aegis pld can survive but it's still tricky or better to just perfect defense Zerg the final form with no problems for best results you could pld whm brd ddx2 and a smn just make sure one if your DD's has twilight gear to zombie if things go south if you have any questions you pm me and I will help you the best I can

Duoable PLD + WHM or SCH, add another twilight job or another PLD to make it fail safe. Bash - Discoid, Fealty - Brainjack, Erase/Sacrifice - Def/Magic Def Down, Ochain all forms except last you'll want to Aegis although Lamia wave could see good use from Aegis also. If taking a second PLD try have them take over on the Lamia wave unless your own Fealty is up again.

Need is a strong word. Does it help? Yes, very much so. As long as you have a good MDT/Turtle build you should be fine w/ shell V/IV.

if PLD, sub DNC.

Worth mention /run is pretty popular nowaday against this kind of stuff.

Only issue with /RUN is that it'll only reduce one element, when versus PW you will run into every element simultaneously, as well as status ailments that Healing Waltz will come in handy with.

The charm barely ever gets off with brainjack, wouldn't worry about that. Last form make sure you have aegis on before he pops.

PLD/BLU is imo best subjob for this fight. Other than that fight is straight forward, checking my logs CDC was doing well over 3k except on Gurfurlur

Everything PW is a joke now... cept for the last form, his Astral Flows still hurt, ALOT.

Aegis PLD can tank it like a pro, probably could do it without Aegis, but you'd be taking a gamble.

Also you don't need to kill the "Lamps" just the main thing. Also if you have a good SMN, might want to consider bringing it. I could 1 shot all the Chariots and 2 Shot everything else using Flaming Crush, cept for Final Form mind you

Every time I've done this, I've had the pld go /rdm or /whm. They usually diaga the adds and pull them away, otherwise the adds tend to rape people and end up all over the place (especially the final form.. I've had 2-3 lamps casting a ga while astral flow goes off, not fun). Depends how many people you're gonna bring. If you're just going solo/duo (which is totally feasible if you don't fail at pld) I wouldn't bother. If you're gonna bring a lot extra people, it helps to have the lamps out of the way.

If the pld is the first to take action on PW every time a new form starts, all the lamps will link to him. There's no reason to take any action on them or drag them anywhere if no one touches them.

We duoed him with PLD + BRD pretty easily.

All you have to do is shield bash Discoid from the Battleclad Chariot, the only move that can kill you.

As for the Astral flow-ga, I had 3 summons poping on me (as bard) everytime. And I had enough time to take them out of pld range. (Taking ~500 Damage from the 3 Astral flows)

The fight took 25 minutes.

I'm sure PLD/WHM could solo this fight. /WHM to remove the annoying para etc... maybe with 20 more minutes.

I have 3boxed it a bunch of times as DD WHM BRD. Fight takes 10-15mins depending on whether or not Astral Flow roulette kills off DD or WHM.

The first 4 chariot forms don't even get a WS off if you have Auspice, which negates the only 2 annoying moves that any form except the last can do.

For last form have all 3 chars 20+ from each other to split AF damage, its random and may still be enough to kill though. Even if you die brd can Hymnus sack it outside of party until unweak.

If you plan on doing it for gil, its pretty terrible source unless you have like 6 chars to build on simultaneously.

Pretty sure discoid can't kill an aegis pld even if you let it off.

it's 10k needles reduced by MDT. Aegis MDT caps at 87.5%, which means you'd take a maximum dmg of 1250?

PLD can do enough dmg nowadays with SoA gear. pld + healer can get it done easily. Astral flow do no more than 500 even if pld ate every single element. It didn't even manage to kill my sch with stoneskin and meva gear up .

oh, thanks for the info, didn't know discoid was magic damage.

Yeah PW is an easy 2 man now pld and a mage, easy win.

How to kill PW:

Set-Up:
The best set-up (people/effort ratio) is to use a PLD and a BRD. It's possible to win with only a PLD/DNC but many things can go wrong and it is much slower. More DD's are welcome but you must be aware of the hate mechanisms (that I will describe). Instead of explaining how to do this by telling you "what can go right" about this fight (it's easy etc), I will explain to you what can go wrong because I think that the foundation in the development of strategy depends on making mistakes. As the person that I believe has made the most mistakes on this NM, I will describe and list everything that can go wrong with PW.
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Hate Mechanism:
PW moves from "Illusion form" and "Real Form" many times. Hate resets every time it changes form (Treasure Hunter is also reset every time). The links have hate based on the person who has hate on the previous form. As a result, DPS do not need to attack the intermittent Demon forms when it does Hellsnap etc. This also means, as long as the PLD always vokes the "real form" between illusion forms, the DD's can always go out DPS and never worry about hate from the links except for the last of the beast kings (cerb, khim, hydra). This is because, the moment you kill the last beast king, the final PW form of PW will pop with links that will attack the last person with hate. The links can still kill non Aegis players easily during AF. If your DPS had hate on the last beast king when it dies, he will have hate on PW and all the links. They will likely not survive the onslaught.

Summary: Make sure your PLD vokes the demon form. Make sure DPS does not have hate on the last beast king form when it dies. This strategy must utilize an Aegis PLD.
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NM Analysis:
1. Chariots (4x)
2. Beastman Kings (3x)
3. Beast Kings (3x)

Chariots: First question is: how do you tell the difference? They pop in random order. As a refresher for players who may not be familar:

1. Discoid: 2 Flat Missiles Turrets
2. Homing: 2 Round Missile Turrets
3. Brainjack: Mechanical Arms
4. Mortal Revolution: Big Armor Plates

Summary: You need to worry about Discoid and Brainjack. They will only use these moves under 50%. Deal with Discoid by holding WS off under 50% and be on "Shield Bash" duty (I've only seen it do it once). Deal with Brainjack by Fealty before 50%. All the rest are unremarkable.

Beastman Kings:

1. Gulfurfur - Headsnatch is the only thing you need to worry about. Just be fast with cures if it happens.
2. Medusa- EES can still hurt if you use berserk.
3. Lizard Dude- Mijin at 3% is only an issue for your healers.

Summary: I usually Sentinel at 50% for Medusa but it's superfluous.

Beast Kings:

1. Cerberus - Unremarkable. GoH is crap and Udulation is only annoying.
2. Khimaeria - Stun Fulmination with Shield Bash. It only does it after Tourbillion.
3. Hydra - Only annoyance is Nerve Gas.

Summary: Stun Fulmination. It will only use it once and it will ruin your day. Make sure that your DPS does not have hate on the last one that pops-- make sure PLD with aegis has hate!

Demon Form: Last Form

It will Astral flow after it goes under 75%, 50%, 25% but they can "fizzle" if you kill it fast. The only fear for the PLD is Necrobane/Necropurge which will reduce your PLD HP to <1000. Combined with MDEF, MEva down, many links attacking and an astral flow, 1000 HP makes it extremely risky. This is also considering that Diablos's Astral flow seems to ignore MDT/MEVA/MDB (I think it's true damage.) Luckily, it will only do Necrobane/Purge <50% or even <25%. You can easily counter with Fealty, which should be back up now. If you bring a SAM to help, Yaegesumi will make the SAM invincible to all the astral flows for 45 seconds. /shameless SAM promotion.

My advice to you is to make sure your backliners are well geared in MDT+MDB and be ready with stoneskin. Doing so will give them near 100% survivability. If you're paranoid, we started off these mages with Carbonara as well (+150 HP). Kill time 12 minutes with 1 DPS, 1 PLD, 1 BRD. Kill time with PLD+BRD only, ~20 minutes. PLD/DNC only, 20min+.