Talk:Volatile Cluster

No comments here so I'll share my experience, hopefully something of value can be gotten from it.

Fought on Firesday (brilliantly noticed after the fact). Setup was ML20 MNK and ML10 BRD duo. Trusts were Brygid for MDB+D, Koru-moru for Haste2, Kupipi and Apururu (UC) for heals.

Bard sang 2x Fire Carol and Minuet. Definitely recommend Minuet over March, due to spikes being something to worry about. In retrospect, Scherzo would have made a great third song instead. Bard was /WHM for Barfira, too.

MNK had 44MDT available, plus Carrier's Sash and Shukuyu Sune-Ate for +50 more Fire Resist. All buffed, it was 44MDT, 387 Fire Resist, some amount of MDB on top of all that.

My initial plan was to melee in some MDT gear, and swap into FullMDT when I saw Self-Destruct. This is not a good plan. I almost died to 350+ spikes as soon as I engaged. You must full-time your MDT/Fire gear due to undispellable spikes and en-spells, the only exception is if you can proc it. Maybe this is only literally true if you are dumb enough to fight on Firesday, but take the warning seriously nonetheless. RUN and Aegis PLD can surely skip the prior sentence.

Wearing all the MDT/Fire gear made his spikes do < 10 damage, and Self-Destruct anywhere from 0-120 damage. Until it didn't.

The page says proc is "light-based damage and skill chains", but the only procs I ever saw were from my opening Victory Smite, never from the closing skill chain. Small sample size, though, and Victory Smite opens and closes light, so maybe it's on any application of a participating weaponskill. The proc will remove en-spells and spikes. This is huge, immediately shift into your full damage gear and go ham. I saw him stay proc'ed anywhere from 3-10 seconds.

We did 12 in a row like the above, no issues. All were stupidly on Firesday, as mentioned. However, the last one we pulled was noticeably different. His en-spells were doing ~100 each. Spikes were hitting for ~150. The first self-destruct did 1200dmg. The second one did 3200 and ended the fight. No buffs had changed. The only thing I could possibly notice is this was the first one we popped after 18:00. I have no idea why this would change the fight, but it definitely did. Be aware.

For future runs I'll bother checking which day it is, and run Fire Carol I+II and Scherzo. Or just bring my Aegis PLD which I didn't use because it's not as exciting as dying on MNK. --Raineer (talk) 19:01, 23 March 2024 (UTC)