Fingers crossed this one isn't too painful to do weekly! Just a heads up, my work schedule is fairly full on currently, so I'm unlikely to have a guide for the new extreme up any time this week. I will still try to make one on the weekend if time permits, but anyone looking for a guide week one will have to rely on one of the many other excellent guide makers in the community. Edit: My guide makes it a bit unclear how to spread during KotR 3. Make sure to agree with your PF in advance whether you want to spread boss-relative or true north.
Tips for buff/pot alignment with the 2 minute meta on today unreal release day… pot on pull with opener. hold second burst until the 2x adds. Then use 60 seconds on comets/meteor but hold third 120s for when boss comes back with second pots-a full reopener. Then you get a third pot out of buff windows at end after tethered add.
So much nostalgia for this fight. It’s the HW Unreal I’ve been looking forward to the most. I remember clearing this with my FC/static back then. Cheers for the refresher guide Hector! ❤
I feel a lot of nostalgia with this fight, it was my favorite EX in Heavensward. Funny, there weren't any clock positions back then, people were just yoloing it. I mean, the concept of "clock spot" didn't exist yet, and we only had 3 waymarks. [Edit] So I've been told there were clock spots back then but I just didn't use them. My bad. I was more familiar with ice north tether south.
Was probably on a case by case basis; my raid team at the time was definitely using clock positions for this fight. The waymarks were limited as you noted though so someone would just post a macro of "N - (name) NE - (name) E- etc." and people would call in chat which position they'd take. Then the tank would fire off his countdown macro that posted numbers in chat and used for the last five, because there also wasn't an actual countdown action yet. Then after a wipe you'd have to wait a minute for everyone's cooldowns to reset, and we had macros for that too which posted the current time left per key CD. Ahhh, Heavensward.
just started in a new static last night, we did our first attempts at this trial. Didn’t beat him, but got him all the way up to the enrage. This is my first time doing higher-end content like this - this group intends to start doing P9-12S after we beat Thordan. Believe me, as someone brand new to this level of content; this guide is absolutely fantastic. Tysm!
I will try this for the first time…I must try…for the Lunatender mount!!! 😂 I’ve actually been wanting to slowly step into harder content and friends have been helping me ease in. It’s really fun! I can’t wait for the chaos. I also followed your guide for Storm’s Crown EX. I didn’t clear yet but I got most the mechs down and I also learned I can lock my mini map so I don’t get confused on my position LOL thank you for the guide!
Unreal and Extreme are 100% the best way to dip your toe into harder content is FF14. They're not super complicated after a few attempts + a guide under your belt and people won't sweat the time constraint like with Savage.
I got this extreme a few times (and cleared) in mentor roulette, it was quite sporadic due to guiding sprouts and well, duty finder things. I find this fight very fun tbh, and wish everyone good luck with it
If you're reading this comment, Place the markers in a way that each diagonal is a color, this helps to call out some stuffs like the Dash across the arena on the last phase~ ex: (ABCD,1234)
Thank you so much for making this! There are many guides to this fight (as extreme anyway) but I love how clear and clean your videos are and always come back to your guides for strats. Thank you for your hard work!
I heard this was very hard on release, and after this refresher I can see why for the time. Seems straightforward enough now, though. Not really body checks, just quick adjustments and stuff; the thing PF does worst IME is priorities and pairs, so having mostly just clocks on this one feels good lol - good luck to everyone and let's make that gil before the expansion!
you can predict and preposition for kotr4 before the towers spawn: if the untargetable adds that appear right before the towers are positioned in a vertical line, the towers will spawn horizontally vice versa, and if they appear diagonally NW to SE then the towers will be diagonally NE to SW, vice versa. also please do boss relative kotr4, i have never seen a mt move the boss even if half the party is doing true north, so whoever had the clock pos currently at boss now has to panic adjust. pf is kinda struggling
Hector - you may have considered this and decided otherwise, but think the towers in Knights of the Round/P6 are always relative to the Knight on the outer edge of the arena (i.e. if you make Knight on edge of arena "new north", soaks are always the same), not much different, just figured worth mentioning
I hadn't noticed that, but that's actually really helpful! I still think left/right prio is still better being fixed to the boss, as the add spawning can be a bit harder to spot, but doing tower priorities add-relative would be a perfectly viable way of solving the towers.
I like to have all DPS burn the MT's add. If the sword buff lands on that add, the party can kill it before buff swap and the phase is a joke thereafter. If not, then business as usaul. Party can also burn the last 5% of an add if it switches to shield buff. Both of these ideas currently work in the Extreme version with MINE settings. Not sure how it will translate to Unreal.
2:44 Feel it should be stressed that this is not "get to the edge (of the line itself)" but rather "get to the edge (of the arena, using the line as a guide to centre yourself)"
Awesome, can't wait to dive into this one. Oddball question - do you make your slides/presentation files available anywhere (or if not - would you be willing to make them available)? For previous guides, I would take screenshots of your video and make individual mechanic diagrams with notes to share with my team on discord. If not, no worries, I really appreciate the guides you put out to the community. Thanks!
Excited for this. As a freshly minted max level player, and graduate from sprouthood, I plan on making this my first high end clear. Gonna be running this video over and over in the next few days.
Three notes: The KotR numbering is incorrect. The "Spear of the Fury" chapter here is actually Knights of the Round 1. You can confirm this by looking at an enrage log and filtering for enemy "Knights of the Round" casts. For KotR 4 (numbered here as KotR 3) I suggest boss-relative spreads. It's not clear how True North is supposed to work; is the MT supposed to drag the boss all the way North? Doesn't that complicate dodging the gaze? Ser Adelphel and Ser Janlenoux will swap buffs every time they cast Divine Right.
Also, I don't see any evidence that the Knight with the Sword of the Heavens buff actually takes any additional damage relative to when they don't have the buff. So there's no reason to wait to send your 2m unless it's a targeted debuff, like Mug or Chain Strategem.
Fixed the numbering. I somehow missed the KotR cast before the spear of the fury mechanic. Boss-relative and true north both work. For true north, tank pulls the boss to the eye, then runs to true north for chain breaks. The boss will still be at the eye for the gaze cast, which happens as you start to run away and will not move until its finished. Just do whatever your group prefers. Totally correct on the Sword of the Heavens buff. No need to delay 2 minutes.
Whenever spreads are needed in this fight, you either need melees on East/West for them to get uptime at all or it's during downtime so positionals don't matter at all.
@@HectorHectorson would just enforce usual clockspots for melees & tanks as thordan hardlocks cause of the cast. Might be too hard for some, idk about that, healers far out E/W and rangeds far out south E/W
cleared in pf twice but we were very unclear on what to do during kotr 3 (break the chains) we couldn't figure out if you were doing boss relative or true north clockspots because you kept the boss at A, so half the party ended up doing boss relative and the other half did true north, so in both clears it ended up having to use a healer lb3 lol are you able to clarify that since aether pf is doing "hector thordan" only
I’ll add this to my pinned comment. Both true north and boss relative work, it’s just what the group prefers. True north is probably easiest as all other instances of clockspots are true north
I have a question: I recently saw someone in shout chat asking people to queue for this raid. I checked and they didn't have a PF up, so I'm assuming them meant queue...queue. Like, a bunch of randos. Is this doable with randos or is there a higher degree of party communication required to get this done? I always thought they were difficult and should be done through PF so that the group can coordinate prior to going into the raid itself.
Haven't tried this one yet, but Unreal fights in practice parties can wipe many times. Even clear parties disband from time to time. I'd put them somewhere near EX trials in difficulty. Definitely not something you wanna queue for. Most ARR EX trials can be done in duty finder, gotten them in mentor roulettes a couple times. If you've ever experienced Ramuh EX in duty finder though... yeah, I really wouldn't wanna try that out with an Unreal.
ive never seen a main tank move from the boss at its current position during kotr4 so that *should* mean people do it boss relative, but some people seem to forget that if its not their clock pos being affected so maybe worth reminding/clarifying with group
um.. hector.. it’s been 2 days. why haven’t you posted extreme guides for the two new ones in dawntrail? some one is being a baddddd boyyyyy 🤓 *faide voice*
So I joined a learning party as Samurai because the pf had a RDM, MNK, and MCH. We get into the fight and I am a Samurai with a BLM, MNK, and RPR.... Then I get forced into the fake ranged spot and voluntold for R2 tower. I ask if I can take the tower closest to mid as a melee doing fake ranged. No response. And of course every pull 'my' tower is across the entire room where I cannot run fast enough to get to it from melee range. And nobody will answer me about getting a closer tower. But frankly... I never caused a wipe, because EVERY DAMN PULL, the party forgot that there's a knockback with the stack during Knights2. Just pf things.
Got few objections. 1st. Stacking DEAD MIDDLE is wrong for Holy Chain because you don't see with whom you're partnered and this chain is different from all the chains introduced after since it was the first time SE tried it for hard content. You actually need to loosely spread around inner circle of the arena picture. Yo do not run to your "clock spot", you run away from your partner. 2nd. On 2nd set of Knights knockback is more than half arena so unless you're dead middle you will be hit with 99k wall toe dip. So better to go towards the War add to be sure. 3rd. During final phase of Knights MT can join to damage the add since boss have no AOE AA while he tethered.
I tested this again with FC mates just to be certain. 1. The chains only need to be stretched a short distance to break, so stacking dead middle and going out at your clockspots breaks the tethers every time, even if you're tethered to someone in an adjacent clockspot. Spreading slightly in middle will make it harder to break chains and harder to get to clockspots to soak towers. 2. The knight knockback is actually slightly less than half arena, so stacking dead middle still leaves you with ample room to miss the wall. Always better to be nearer the knight than further, but it's unnecessary. 3. This is a great point and strongly recommended, as the DPS check is definitely still a factor.
Nicely done and you also don't learn... Unreal is the same as Extreme. There is no "slight difference". The battle is exactly the same with no exceptions
Fingers crossed this one isn't too painful to do weekly!
Just a heads up, my work schedule is fairly full on currently, so I'm unlikely to have a guide for the new extreme up any time this week. I will still try to make one on the weekend if time permits, but anyone looking for a guide week one will have to rely on one of the many other excellent guide makers in the community.
Edit: My guide makes it a bit unclear how to spread during KotR 3. Make sure to agree with your PF in advance whether you want to spread boss-relative or true north.
I'm just glad it's not Zurvan anymore, I refused to do unreals last time because Zurvan just isn't a fun fight ngl
Personally I found Thordan a lot harder and a lot less smooth than Zurvan. But they're both very fun to me :)
no need honestly, it's painfully easy...
thank u so much for this guide much appreciation :)
Always boss relative....... unless the mechanic forces TN..
Tips for buff/pot alignment with the 2 minute meta on today unreal release day… pot on pull with opener. hold second burst until the 2x adds. Then use 60 seconds on comets/meteor but hold third 120s for when boss comes back with second pots-a full reopener. Then you get a third pot out of buff windows at end after tethered add.
I love how "player icons" turning around for gaze in that guide .... THX Hector great job
So much nostalgia for this fight. It’s the HW Unreal I’ve been looking forward to the most. I remember clearing this with my FC/static back then. Cheers for the refresher guide Hector! ❤
I feel a lot of nostalgia with this fight, it was my favorite EX in Heavensward. Funny, there weren't any clock positions back then, people were just yoloing it. I mean, the concept of "clock spot" didn't exist yet, and we only had 3 waymarks.
[Edit] So I've been told there were clock spots back then but I just didn't use them. My bad. I was more familiar with ice north tether south.
Were you doing this without a job stone back then?
sup dude
hahaha old man!!!!
Was probably on a case by case basis; my raid team at the time was definitely using clock positions for this fight. The waymarks were limited as you noted though so someone would just post a macro of "N - (name) NE - (name) E- etc." and people would call in chat which position they'd take.
Then the tank would fire off his countdown macro that posted numbers in chat and used for the last five, because there also wasn't an actual countdown action yet. Then after a wipe you'd have to wait a minute for everyone's cooldowns to reset, and we had macros for that too which posted the current time left per key CD.
Ahhh, Heavensward.
Looking at guides from back then, people definitely did have clock positions
just started in a new static last night, we did our first attempts at this trial. Didn’t beat him, but got him all the way up to the enrage.
This is my first time doing higher-end content like this - this group intends to start doing P9-12S after we beat Thordan.
Believe me, as someone brand new to this level of content; this guide is absolutely fantastic. Tysm!
I will try this for the first time…I must try…for the Lunatender mount!!! 😂 I’ve actually been wanting to slowly step into harder content and friends have been helping me ease in. It’s really fun! I can’t wait for the chaos.
I also followed your guide for Storm’s Crown EX. I didn’t clear yet but I got most the mechs down and I also learned I can lock my mini map so I don’t get confused on my position LOL thank you for the guide!
Unreal and Extreme are 100% the best way to dip your toe into harder content is FF14. They're not super complicated after a few attempts + a guide under your belt and people won't sweat the time constraint like with Savage.
Good luck! That's how I started too! EX and Unreal are still my favourite things to do. :D
I got this extreme a few times (and cleared) in mentor roulette, it was quite sporadic due to guiding sprouts and well, duty finder things. I find this fight very fun tbh, and wish everyone good luck with it
If you're reading this comment, Place the markers in a way that each diagonal is a color, this helps to call out some stuffs like the Dash across the arena on the last phase~ ex: (ABCD,1234)
Thank you so much for making this! There are many guides to this fight (as extreme anyway) but I love how clear and clean your videos are and always come back to your guides for strats. Thank you for your hard work!
Thank you very much, just got my first kill in a PF party in under 10 tries, which is just crazy.
I heard this was very hard on release, and after this refresher I can see why for the time. Seems straightforward enough now, though. Not really body checks, just quick adjustments and stuff; the thing PF does worst IME is priorities and pairs, so having mostly
just clocks on this one feels good lol - good luck to everyone and let's make that gil before the expansion!
PF is also godawful at spreads that aren't "boss in the middle, facing north". You have to beat people into doing boss-relative positions in stuff.
Could have used this 8 years ago, this guy was a pain in the ass. Hector on the other hand is great, thanks for the guide!
MT can help kill the final add. No boss cleaves during that part and positions MT for the lookaways.
Even a dummy like me understood this guide really well done thanks ❤️
6:58 when i ever play this fight as OT.. i play als PLD and make myself a Haurchefalt Glamour this will work PERFECT!
you can predict and preposition for kotr4 before the towers spawn: if the untargetable adds that appear right before the towers are positioned in a vertical line, the towers will spawn horizontally vice versa, and if they appear diagonally NW to SE then the towers will be diagonally NE to SW, vice versa. also please do boss relative kotr4, i have never seen a mt move the boss even if half the party is doing true north, so whoever had the clock pos currently at boss now has to panic adjust. pf is kinda struggling
Hector - you may have considered this and decided otherwise, but think the towers in Knights of the Round/P6 are always relative to the Knight on the outer edge of the arena (i.e. if you make Knight on edge of arena "new north", soaks are always the same), not much different, just figured worth mentioning
I hadn't noticed that, but that's actually really helpful! I still think left/right prio is still better being fixed to the boss, as the add spawning can be a bit harder to spot, but doing tower priorities add-relative would be a perfectly viable way of solving the towers.
My understanding has been that the towers spawn perpendicular to the knights that show up.
I like to have all DPS burn the MT's add. If the sword buff lands on that add, the party can kill it before buff swap and the phase is a joke thereafter. If not, then business as usaul. Party can also burn the last 5% of an add if it switches to shield buff. Both of these ideas currently work in the Extreme version with MINE settings. Not sure how it will translate to Unreal.
2:44 Feel it should be stressed that this is not "get to the edge (of the line itself)" but rather "get to the edge (of the arena, using the line as a guide to centre yourself)"
Awesome, can't wait to dive into this one. Oddball question - do you make your slides/presentation files available anywhere (or if not - would you be willing to make them available)? For previous guides, I would take screenshots of your video and make individual mechanic diagrams with notes to share with my team on discord.
If not, no worries, I really appreciate the guides you put out to the community. Thanks!
i love your guides, Garrus Vakarian
That cat at the end is rad
thank you ! praying pf handles this one well
HOLY COW what a good video. do you also have one for zeromus extreme. if not, would be one i'd personally love to see
he said he won't be doing one for that fight, mrhappy has a good guide for it though!
Not even actively playing right now but youre the best guide maker for fights not just in ff14, but for all MMO realted content so I always watch.
"a la a particular cutscene" ow hector just punched me 😭
Excited for this. As a freshly minted max level player, and graduate from sprouthood, I plan on making this my first high end clear. Gonna be running this video over and over in the next few days.
Three notes:
The KotR numbering is incorrect. The "Spear of the Fury" chapter here is actually Knights of the Round 1. You can confirm this by looking at an enrage log and filtering for enemy "Knights of the Round" casts.
For KotR 4 (numbered here as KotR 3) I suggest boss-relative spreads. It's not clear how True North is supposed to work; is the MT supposed to drag the boss all the way North? Doesn't that complicate dodging the gaze?
Ser Adelphel and Ser Janlenoux will swap buffs every time they cast Divine Right.
Also, I don't see any evidence that the Knight with the Sword of the Heavens buff actually takes any additional damage relative to when they don't have the buff. So there's no reason to wait to send your 2m unless it's a targeted debuff, like Mug or Chain Strategem.
Fixed the numbering. I somehow missed the KotR cast before the spear of the fury mechanic.
Boss-relative and true north both work. For true north, tank pulls the boss to the eye, then runs to true north for chain breaks. The boss will still be at the eye for the gaze cast, which happens as you start to run away and will not move until its finished. Just do whatever your group prefers.
Totally correct on the Sword of the Heavens buff. No need to delay 2 minutes.
If u read this at night before patch, i wish you all the best man of pf culture :^)
Couldn't do it without you my man!
thanks for the guide but why are these clockspots exactly like that? melee positionals and healer coverage if needed will not be found
Whenever spreads are needed in this fight, you either need melees on East/West for them to get uptime at all or it's during downtime so positionals don't matter at all.
@@HectorHectorson would just enforce usual clockspots for melees & tanks as thordan hardlocks cause of the cast. Might be too hard for some, idk about that, healers far out E/W and rangeds far out south E/W
You can do that...or just do what the video shows. You don't need more spots then necessary. PF always gonna find some way to be extra.
I wish I had this back in heavensward when i had to do this like more than 50+ times.
cleared in pf twice but we were very unclear on what to do during kotr 3 (break the chains)
we couldn't figure out if you were doing boss relative or true north clockspots because you kept the boss at A, so half the party ended up doing boss relative and the other half did true north, so in both clears it ended up having to use a healer lb3 lol
are you able to clarify that since aether pf is doing "hector thordan" only
I’ll add this to my pinned comment. Both true north and boss relative work, it’s just what the group prefers. True north is probably easiest as all other instances of clockspots are true north
So phase 1 is normal. Phase 2 is Eye Ball is north (so relative north not true north)
This worked well enough for a day one pf clear thanks again 🙏👍
Honest question. I’m a newbie. How the do you possibly remember all of these mechanics? Is it merely, time, dedication, and tons of practice ?
I have a question: I recently saw someone in shout chat asking people to queue for this raid. I checked and they didn't have a PF up, so I'm assuming them meant queue...queue. Like, a bunch of randos.
Is this doable with randos or is there a higher degree of party communication required to get this done? I always thought they were difficult and should be done through PF so that the group can coordinate prior to going into the raid itself.
Haven't tried this one yet, but Unreal fights in practice parties can wipe many times. Even clear parties disband from time to time.
I'd put them somewhere near EX trials in difficulty. Definitely not something you wanna queue for. Most ARR EX trials can be done in duty finder, gotten them in mentor roulettes a couple times. If you've ever experienced Ramuh EX in duty finder though... yeah, I really wouldn't wanna try that out with an Unreal.
at 9:30 there's an attack that causes paralysis, how do you dodge that one?
you get paralysis if someone doesn't stand in their tower (or moves out of it too soon)
crazy how i was looking for this 30 mins ago and was shocked that there was no result and right when i was guna leave i see it pop! Thanks!
Great guide as always, just curious as to whether you'll finish off your dsr guide?
Good one 👍 bringing this to my 4/8 premade that we’ll fill the rest with pf tomorrow
Now I can’t wait to be able to play!
is knights of the round 4 true north or boss relative?
ive never seen a main tank move from the boss at its current position during kotr4 so that *should* mean people do it boss relative, but some people seem to forget that if its not their clock pos being affected so maybe worth reminding/clarifying with group
Brilliant as always, Thordan down day 1.,
Sword of the heavens doesn't increase his damage taken
Why are people saying this is super difficult or is it like seph where a mistake can mean you hit enrage?
ooooh, when the servers come back up i'm definitely trying this :D
um.. hector.. it’s been 2 days. why haven’t you posted extreme guides for the two new ones in dawntrail? some one is being a baddddd boyyyyy 🤓 *faide voice*
Thank you ! Thank you! Thank you!
i didnt even know you could clock or prio the mechs in this fight, every time ive done the ex we just yolod it and it was fine lol
Love your work! ❤
So I joined a learning party as Samurai because the pf had a RDM, MNK, and MCH. We get into the fight and I am a Samurai with a BLM, MNK, and RPR....
Then I get forced into the fake ranged spot and voluntold for R2 tower. I ask if I can take the tower closest to mid as a melee doing fake ranged. No response. And of course every pull 'my' tower is across the entire room where I cannot run fast enough to get to it from melee range. And nobody will answer me about getting a closer tower.
But frankly... I never caused a wipe, because EVERY DAMN PULL, the party forgot that there's a knockback with the stack during Knights2.
Just pf things.
Random but you should make a fall guys 14 guide for lols
I'm glad more and more players refer to Hector Guides than MTQ.
10:00 third*
I'm sorry, I'll be pushing for Center strats. A lot less movement and a lot less cluttered for KotR 3
Yeah, center Knights 3 makes way more sense, only the tank needs to deal with the subtle position difference.
why havent you uploaded a guide for the new trial?
check his pinned comment, he said he likely won't be able to do it due to work
The entitlement in some of these comments lol.
@@Tacoguy777 yeah bro im so entitled
perfect timing, just unlocked this on my alt
Can you do a Mount Rokkon Criterion guide? /PrettyPlease
The flashes in this video are kinda roooooooooough
Got few objections.
1st. Stacking DEAD MIDDLE is wrong for Holy Chain because you don't see with whom you're partnered and this chain is different from all the chains introduced after since it was the first time SE tried it for hard content. You actually need to loosely spread around inner circle of the arena picture. Yo do not run to your "clock spot", you run away from your partner.
2nd. On 2nd set of Knights knockback is more than half arena so unless you're dead middle you will be hit with 99k wall toe dip. So better to go towards the War add to be sure.
3rd. During final phase of Knights MT can join to damage the add since boss have no AOE AA while he tethered.
I tested this again with FC mates just to be certain.
1. The chains only need to be stretched a short distance to break, so stacking dead middle and going out at your clockspots breaks the tethers every time, even if you're tethered to someone in an adjacent clockspot. Spreading slightly in middle will make it harder to break chains and harder to get to clockspots to soak towers.
2. The knight knockback is actually slightly less than half arena, so stacking dead middle still leaves you with ample room to miss the wall. Always better to be nearer the knight than further, but it's unnecessary.
3. This is a great point and strongly recommended, as the DPS check is definitely still a factor.
7 year old guides i see xffing
Nicely done and you also don't learn... Unreal is the same as Extreme. There is no "slight difference". The battle is exactly the same with no exceptions
"exactly the same with no exceptions". So I can go in solo and clear it in 30 seconds since it is still level 60? holy shit some people are dumb af.