Lost In The Crowd

Sandoria manage to take over La Vaule (S) and all of its front area last week on Bismarck so Splitting Heirs is available for Sandorian people, this effectively cause me to switch my nation. I have an idea of changing my nation in the past to Sandoria floating around for awhile because I want Iron Ram Sallet Set for my MDB built on PLD, just don’t have right time to do so (AKA I’m not lazy)

Splitting Heirs is one of the funniest and challenging BC I ever did as well as potential of making money, just about perfect! I did it on 2 different occasion with 3 and 4 run each, first 3 run didn’t drop any Witch Sash or Cuchulain’s Mantle but other 4 we manage to get 3 Witch Sashes but still zero Cuchulain’s Mantle.

First run, our party consist of PLD/NIN, THF/NIN, RDM/WHM, RDM/WHM and BLU/NIN (for first attempt and change to BLM/WHM for 2nd and 3rd attempt. This is my first attempt on Splitting Heirs so I was kind of nervous since I have heard many bad things about it from my friend such like, boss can one shot PLD with 1400HP easy using his normal WS, hate was all over the place etc. and we do it with 5 people not help me with the feeling at all. I get to BC and realize I forget to pick up Reraise Gorget, when I ask if I need Reraise in the BC it was like all of them say I will need it. Hooray, I’m fucked. Lucky one of my friend didn’t leave the town yet so I ask him to get Reraise Gorget for me and I’ll pay him later.

I’m briefly told about our strategy and what I need to do, seem not that hard! I just need to pull Darkheir Grradhod then tank him and his minions at the entrance while they deal with adds and join me on NM after. I went to pull NM and his adds cast Bio 2 and Flash on me, there goes 2 images not a very good start I suppose. I get to entrance and have a little time just enough to recast Utsusemi: Ichi on me before NM and adds get to me, they wipe all of my Utsusemi images upon arrive. I cast Utsusemi: Ni and notice all of its images are gone just about after I finish casting, Okay now it is officially old school blood tanking time. I pop Sentinel and bitch slap Darkheir Grradhod with my shield to show him who is the boss here but sadly couldn’t stun him for long but is enough for others to tag left over add off me.

Darkheir Grradhod is indeed hardcore. It can and will double attacks a lot, able to use normal Orc special move including Orcish Deathstance (my friend term for Orcish Counterstance) and 2 hardcore moves called Shoulder Charge and Tornado Edge. Shoulder Charge is weird as it requires 1-3 shadow images to successfully block, it does 400-1400 damages and inflicts defense down status which need to be erased immediately. Tornado Edge requires 2-3 shadow images to successfully block (perhaps 1 shadow image can block it as well just like Shoulder Charge but that never happen to me) it does 400-500 damages and inflicts Max HP Down, Max MP Down and Max TP Down.

Max HP Down will decrease my max HP to around 1,000 so usually means Tornado Edge not dealing any damage after all.I didn’t notice how much Max MP down does but I never sitting at 80-100% MP anyway so this has little effect to me, Max TP down will capped TP at 100% These 3 status given by Tornado Edge need to be erase immediately as well, mainly for Max HP down but the thing is if you has a lot of negative status from this left over and get hit by stuff like Shoulder Charge you won’t be able to remove Defense Down status in time, not to mention Battle Dance that gives DEX Down effect that might get in line for erasing as well. To be short, just spam erase on whoever that get hit by Tornado Edge and Shoulder Charge.

While those 2 special move does suck but good thing is both of them are blockable using shield, blocked Shoulder Charge deal around 200-300 damages and blocked Tornado Edge deal around 100-200 damages. Both moves don’t inflict any negative status if they are blocked, however Shoulder Charge still knock you back if I remember correct (not 100% positive about this one) Also damage dealt is reduced when Sentinel is activated. Other thing that need to be careful with is tank might as well disengage when he uses Orcish Counterstance or he rapes your face good.

I notice that I was unable to hold hate well after 6-7 minutes into fight even with our THF constantly TA+Mercy Stroke on me, probably because both of us reach hate cap so hate bouncing is something to be expected. I think it is good to have someone to co-tank because a lot of time I have 4-5 second gap which both Utsusemi are down and I have to blood tank the NM, have someone with shadow to bounce hate with helps a lot. On the bad side Darkheir Grradhod one shot him 2 times when he was tanking and another time I think he get hate when Orcish Counterstance is activated so counter and normal hit rape him good -_-

We end up winning in 14-18 minutes and get a lot of junk, I win only 1 dark steel ingot from free lotting lol. I did another run 3 days later, this run, on the other hand is very successful.