- Yukiri
- Jun 17, 2022
- 26 min read
Updated: Jun 18, 2022
I personally don't like reading long and lengthy guides, let's just skip the heart of the meal when it comes to raiding. 150 pages for something only requires 25 is stupid.
Phase 1 :
have your waymarkers set up like this. if you don't want markers, you can use the diamond reference tiles and directly go there (will lose a gcd, but works anyways) arena is symmetrical. this is for the 4 people need to spread and bait orbs that explode too close to each other vicinity mechanic, and 4 people need to stack together mechanic. dont kill any boss first b/c going to cast enrage, just balance HP back and forth bursting
first mech is raidwide, mit pre-shield. after top up. tank take tether north, party stack close to boss (but don't sit on boss, makes it difficult to grab tether). tank invuln. party take damage. prepare for pre-fan.
ok now prepare to pre-fan when you get marker on head. you need to burst heal twice before raidwide. four protean aoe go on one side of map, four stack, and alternate vice versa for all four players. diamond strat, go to mid point of the referenced diamonds. marker strat, just go to centre of marker.
this dude is going to spawn at random cardinal. and the axeguy in the middle will knock back party. everyone go to opposite side of dude and knockback immune. theres a chance that you will get hit by the orb that you baited (during proteans) otherwise if you don't kb immune and you weren't aligned with boss to be kb at a cardinal. also he does raidwide so top up before hand.
ok now he will dash to one side at end of cast bar, and hes going to explode orbs in ccw or cw fashion. all that is relevant is you go to side where he dashes at point of triangle tip because there will be orbs exploding around you and if you are too close to side of map a protean orb will tether a member and kill them, or damage down if tank.
after reaching to side, the other tank needs to remember to be away from party to bait the paladin dive that will knock everyone away if within vicinity of party... paladin going to clemency other guy, you will enrage if he gets cast off so just interrupt him.
after this get ready for chain knockback
align true north and use role playstation macro, theres some fixed rules for how shapes are given out for ranged/healer/tank, not relevant to know why, just know you only need to align with your partner and be on correct side and only two variation of movements for most roles.
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be inside circle of the axe dude, hes one that kb. if you are too far the chains won't break and that's auto death. also heal everyone after kb going to do another raidwide and clemency cast. all strats should make use of cardinal direction, gonna be silly to only use intercard b/c tighter spacing. and tank align boss bosses on each other.
full dimension is delayed out, empty dimension is delayed in. axe dude casts it.
ok role order is typically hrmt so healer can heal team while raidwides/pulsating dmg is happening. two cleaves come out from charibert guy. just bait them by proximity. they both induce a timer debuff that spawn puddle underneath them on hit people. after each set of cleavered people get cleave, next set go out. choose to drop them (puddle) together on same side. after see skybind debuff go off, return to party and next set of cleavers bait their puddle. ewew is most common. 1 and 2 would go w. next set bait their puddle e. alternate.
example.
huge raidwide go off after 8 people finish their cleave.. full mitigate and heal. only need boss under 30% hp to seal same aoe dmg to everyone. someone just needs to hit boss once in p2 to save checkpoint. easy peasy lemon squeasy.
Phase 2 :
Setup your waymarkers like this, similar to star/shuriken/trinity triangles on outer arena. These are good for all phases actually. You can do numbers on one side, and letters on other side, it's not really relevant. Just make sure it's consistent. Colour-coded is good (opposing sides) and splitting numbers and letters is good. (just note different groups may have them on inner circle or doesn't bissect arena at cardinal but at intercard)
Assign light party 1 and 2, four people each. next do a loose lightning spread position. Also assign meteor spots.
Ok tank faces north, party south. At end of cast bar, sidestep the baited proteans. If someone moves too early you will be clipped, and if you are too far back you need to travel more arc distance. sometimes you have a blm on E or W side, so don't dodge to that side. sometimes melees get cleave to get damage buffs, ignore them. after this is three heavy slash hits on tank. tank can invuln or just pop mits with healer externals/ogcds. vacate the area north btw.
go to your appropriate side of arena. scan your eyes quickly clockwise while rotating(moving your character) and opposing, whatever is free (is non-dashed side) is safe. colour-coded for clarity.
ok. now go to your set positions for lightning. the cue is the triangle/trinity/shuriken/star at edge of arena plus 4.5 fences over for left/right. and middle back is just there. front is one step ahead of tip parallel to edge of floor engraving
next thing to note is the earthquake dodge types, the most common for person in front is a 2-1 or 3-1 dodge, while for the back it's usually a 2-1, 3-1 and possibly a 4-1.
a protean cleave needs to be baited right after as a party after moving in. in the image of ahri, they simply see earthquake once then move in. mala would go slightly forward left, mist slightly forward, golden slightly forward right or just collapse center, wait for earthquake once, then second, then go in (these would be called 3-1 dodges). and the cleave would be 2 seconds later. if you are in the very back and try to do a 4-1 dodge without sprint, you are going to have a bad time as you need to make an L-shape arc otherwise you will get clip by cleave. It's always recommended to do a 3-1 dodge, or 2-1 (if front). If you try to do a 2-1 and the earthquake is very far, any hesitation means you will get clipped.
use the cast bar to move (100%) if you don't have the muscle memory timing down. it's around 4-5 seconds for 2-1 dodge, and 2-3 seconds for 3-1 dodge for cleaves. also healer burst heal, gcd, swift cast, etc.
black puddles grow. only 4 safe spots. 3 will be filled by blue marker people which have huge aoes around them. thordan spawns. the other 3 non-tank non-marked players go to that side and stack tightly in centre of edge of thordan side. knights spawn in middle or so, and tethers come out, tanks grab them and go to edge of safe hitbox and invuln. if they don't want to invuln, they need to cross tethers b/c of proximity based damage and pop cooldowns. now if someone is slow getting to a spot they can steal a tether, so if you are blue be cognizant of a blue near you and just run away to south corner relative to thordan and pop sprint. also the tank tethers have a splash shield bash. an alternative strat is just have tanks go to sides so tethers never can be stolen, however the blue needs to be on opposing side of the waymarker/shuriken/star of the east/west cardinal side (but not too far) or it will clip north relative thordan party. likewise if one chooses a cross tether strategy, the blue marker people need to be slightly closer to south of the cardinal waymarker but not too close to south. this depends on pan-camera movement speed and fast processing. another tip is put pre-regens on people and usually healer is always mid tower, preposition while in the waymarker left/right facing towards the centre of arena near thordan to determine where you will soak your towers next.
If a non-tank player dies, it is still recoverable with swiftcast raise if they came back with immunity at right time and soak a tower or a tank invulns inside a tower, or if they are non-marker with immunity, is immediately rescued. note that if they got blue it's over (markers can appear on dead bodies), also move towards your tower from thordan side the moment dragon's rage goes off/explosion to not be bashed.
huge raidwide then a vuln up tank swap then three cleaves after. heal, mits.
after three cleaves, its prepare with pre-regen and shields for slash dives on light parties.
optional to move out parties to make it easier for flexers to see which party has what. most common strat is guy with two swords go towards knight, one sword away, in chance that both sword in same light party it will be 3-5 split so you can either, pre-mit and intermeditary heal, tank lb2 or have a flexer to make it 4-4 based on either roles or dedicated flexer. anyways light party groups just need to find knight and go to appropriate colour marker side, 1 away, 2 same. then identify two knights in middle. looking out toward arena is ccw movement, toward each other is cw movement.
mental list of operation is, do swap with dedi flexer if needed or pre-shield+10% mit if no flex w/ full hp, go to marker/star/shuriken/trinity triangle. look away from gaze, eye dodge go off (move 3 fenceposts, then 5.5 or 3 away from next shuriken/star once the orb in front of you explodes) there's depth knowledge of orb speeds and whatnot but that's irrelevant. just focus on seeing if the orb in front you spawned and exploded yet before moving.
Next, heal everyone and go to your designated waymarker.
Each quadrant will have a pair of individuals, and two (of same role, support or DPS) will be marked randomly as a meteor dropper. For the purposes of simplification, all meteor droppers will be forced north and south, there's other strategies like east/west non-adjust but and tower flex, ccw/cw but those are rare. If a meteor dropper drops two meteors within 4.99 yalms or less of each other, they will wipe the raid, so you want them on opposite sides of cardinals.
If you are melee and east, and you see north has a marker already (ranged), you just rotate clockwise south. If you are melee and east, and you see a marker on west (other melee), also rotate south as east. If you are melee and you see south (ranged) has it, you just go north. Basically, north/south meteor people never have to adjust, east/west must rotate whichever north/side did not have a meteor marked person.
The second caveat is each cardinal side needs two people to share a stack ice puddle that is placed shortly after, so if you swapped from east to south or east to north, the tank has to fill for your position. Standing too long in an ice puddle will give a strong dot and require healer attention, so be sure to take a straight path out or towards centre only.
Now once you reach your final destination (if you needed to swap as arrow-marked healer/dps or non-arrowed tank, or no swap ranged/healer/tank)- look at party list to see whether DPS or support is a meteor-role.
Follow this logic :
If 2 towers are in your quadrant, go out. Meteor person always take the cardinal, or ccw if cardinal isn't available. Non-meteor person takes the intercardinal in the quadrant (clockwise) if available, else just take ccw intercard if meteor-person is a cardinal on a cardinal tower. Then adjust cw to next intercard in the same quadrant (do not leave your quadrant) for second set of towers. If there is no meteor-marked person in the quadrant, but still 2 towers, the meteor-roled will follow the same logic as meteor-person in priority. If there is only 1 tower outside, the meteor-marked person takes priority in going out. If there is no meteor-marked person, then the meteor-roled person takes priority in going out. They will also rotate ccw back to their cardinal position for second set of towers in the quadrant if only an intercardinal was available for first set. Second set of towers are always fixed, cardinals meteor roled, intercardinals non-meteor roled, in same quadrant as your starting pair (except meteor-marked people who have to rotate 120, 150 or 180 degrees).
An alternative (with exception of meteor-marked person always taking cardinal) is pre-facing or pre-walking before ice puddles drop to indicate wanted direction of taking tower (if it's 2 towers outside) to the complex rule above.
If you got an arrow on your head, you must immediately swap (to N/S), clockwise preference first or opposing side if other side has arrow person already. Next, angle your camera opposite to see how much space you have and take the appropriate tower to maximize space for movement for both sides.
In the case you had one tower, and you are a non-meteor role, you will typically take the most clockwise or closest tower to you (when going inside towards the centre). However, if there's none, it's best to wait in middle and adjust after everyone takes their towers or scan your eyes to see where people are arriving. Also do not be baited by the towers, ice puddles will spawn overlapping them. Always take the direction towards the centre, then go towards a tower.
For 150 degree patterns, you want to zig-zag around the circumference of the fire and ice puddles, for 120 degree patterns you want to hear the 'meteor' drop sound, then move and stop at repeated intervals along the edge of arena, or simply use the meteor macro and angle your character correctly. This is also known as the cursed pattern and you have to exaggerate your curves to maximize the distance between each meteor placement.
/mlock
/merror off
/automove on <wait.1>
/automove off
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
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/echo
Around 50% of cast bar, or the fifth meteor drop for the people outside, they need to knockback immune to prevent being knocked back into the wall. For the people inside, they need to go to their appropriate intercardinal clockwise in their quadrant to be knocked back at a static tower.
All non-meteor roled people must take the most clockwise intercardinal in their quadrant (for outer), and inner (being knocked back). Soak the tower. Some statics do the eyes-adjust strat, but this is unnecessary in party finder. Static towers makes everyone's life easier.
Shield and mits for raidwide. Dodge into cleave twice. He swings three times in a Y-shape 90-degree fan or so.
Stand behind him. Pop raid buffs when vuln up appears after transition. Hold if DPS is too high for mitigation checks later if needed.
Phase 3 :
Mitigate and heals.
Loosely pre-spread in any fashion and get ready for numbers to appear on your head.
Numbers will appear on your head soon. Here are some general principles. A tower operation is always done before an in/out movement regardless of what set of number at any particular point in time. Everytime a tower is soaked, they must be baited outwards away from the party and centre of boss hit boss to not cleave anyone. Two sets of numbers will always get arrows. Towers are constructed on you if you have no arrow and will kb anyone near you while you are constructing, if you have an arrow it will be constructed a boss' length away depending on which way you are facing, and your arrow's orientation and it will also kb anyone that is not in the same set of numbers for that particular mechanic flow operation. In theory you don't need to go to static positions for arrows and just face correct position/be correct distance but this strategy is more common(fixed positions for arrows) because it's consistent.
The order of operations for "1". Find a side to pre-flank if your side already has a 1, split into a east, west and south relative of boss on the circle. In 2 GCDs or so, check if your set of numbers has arrows. If it has arrows, adjust if necessary. True west is down, true east is up, everyone faces west, south is no arrow. Else, if no adjust, just proceed as usual. Look at the cast bar for in/out. Gnash (go out, then in). Lash (go in, then out). Construct your tower, then perform the in/out operation, while making your way north. Construct > in / out > towards north > out / in > soak '2's and bait them out, then stack. If no soak, curve around the boss hitbox (if out then in) for the south tower constructed by the 2s.
The order of operations for '2' is also pre-flank, adjust to side without the other '2', check if arrows, force-adjust if necessary, stack, perform in/out operation, perform in/out operation, immediately go to the film strip and face correct direction if arrow, if not just relax on the west/east side whichever side you pre-flanked initially on the film strip, go back to stack, take stack damage, soak the east/west tower corresponding to your side, perform the in/out operation, then perform it again and bait the towers out.
For the '3' operations, it's pre-flank, adjust if necessary, stack, move to soak towers, do in/out twice, then bait it out, read cast bar, construct tower.
After this, the boss will cleave the tank twice in a slim cone and do a drakenlance (large cone) in a random direction, vacate the area and prepare to orient yourself in the right area as four enumeration towers will spawn that need to be soaked by an appropriate amount of people.
There is mainly three strategies for dealing with this, and flexers can be any role but are typically support (tank/healer), but some prefer (tank/melee). Regardless, two roles (melee, ranged, healer or tank) will be anchors and two will be flexers. Popping sprint, being near the centre of map and turning on raid buffs is recommended during this time.
Strategy 1 : Heavensfall
Recommended, very clean and unambiguous.
Strategy 2 : Meteor Pairs + CW, CCW, Across Algo
Also pretty clean, but not as elegant.
Strategy 3 : Meteor CW
A bit messy, sometimes people might overtake one another or react too slowly. All towers that are soaked must be baited out, usually the anchor role does it (DPS).
After that, the boss will spawn two tethers on random people. They should take them to a cardinal so the tank can grab it off and either pop an invuln or have all mits up with an external to survive it.
One tank can be designated to take it middle, the other away from party. Or if both are invulning, just stack centre.
After that nidhogg will pierce four times the tank and cast a drakenlance south. Vacate wherever nidhogg is piercing, the tank should do it at a rear cardinal away from the party.
The boss will do an enrage cast, and it should be under 8% HP for a clean kill at the end of drakenlance.
Phase 4 :
Stack middle for buffs to damage the eyes. The main principles here are as follows. Blue chains that take damage heal the eye, red chains that take damage, damage the eye. The eyes do periodic raidwides. Orbs spawn that need to be soaked after growing twice or they explode the raid and do damage down. Yellow orbs require two people. Blue requires one person. Once you swap chains by touching a person, you are immune from swapping for 4-5 seconds. Red chains get vuln up (when dove on), and 2 random ones get hit later at a time for up to four times. Swaps happen so the same red doesn't get dove on. Orbs need to grow so they deal enough damage to the eye when soaked. The middle lane in between the eyes is free as a highway, and so is the rear. The most common strategies involves three swaps for eye dives and one swap at beginning for role chains.
After mist appears in the air from the middle, three gcds later a raidwide happens.
For aether most people follow the raidplan.
Healers/ranged take blue chains, tanks and melees take red chains, they swap in the middle, it's imperative to stay still to be able to swap to the appropriate chain that you need.
Roughly 3 gcds later they need to pop the orbs and swap chains again. You can have the tanks go to the healer or vice versa, likewise with the melee and ranged on other side. Two gcds or so after that the blue orbs have to be popped.
So, to recap. Take buff, swap chains in middle. Yellow orb eaters move to side. Mitigate and eat. Secondary set of roles (healer/ranged) get ready to move in and swap chains. Pop orbs. Collapse in a box formation around the eye (whichever set that was soaking orbs) with tanks provoking/mitigating on each respective eye while collapsing to the centre of the eye.
Realistically any set of roles work, though for dotting purposes ranged are better at attacking farther side and you want the left eye dead first, since it's doing the raidwides.
There is also a clockspot strat. Anyways the strategies are mostly whether reds go in to swap with blues, and blues move out, or blue moves out to touch reds, and reds go in. It's recommended to stay stationary for the swap event so the hitboxes can touch each other. In this strat (raidplan), there are three primary ways to execute the chain swaps for tether dives where four sets of two individuals will be dove (whomever has red chains) and gets vuln up.
Dive relative
Heavensfall Roles
Whomever was positioned most clockwise and took the most clockwise hit will be the person to swap clockwise for third set of chain swaps, likewise most counter-clockwise will take most counter-clockwise swaps for third set. This is exclusively for the first set of chains that got dove on. 4 will always be CCW, 1 will always be CW. If 4 and 3 were dove, 4 takes CCW, 3 takes CCW in relation to true north of the eye. If 1 and 2 were dove, 2 takes CCW and 1 takes CW. So supposing 1 and 2 were dove, and on third set person 3 and 4 were dove, #1 would take 3 (because it's most cw) and #2 would take 4 (because it's most ccw).
In heavensfall flex, it's the same thing, whether you have ranged or healers take L1, R1, L2 or R2 with CCW/CW priorities. In the role scenario, healers would always take CW and ranged take CCW. You can also divide the arena north/south, regardless. Tanks go out first, then melee (and those would be assigned ccw/cw based on left/right sides too).
Heal up before last raidwide if you don't have the DPS, kill the left eye, then right eye and go east to get ready for rewind.
Rewind / L1 :
This time the tank needs to LB3 at 97% of the castbar for spear of the fury or when Haucherfont so the NPC doesn't die. He has a heal down and party takes more damage. The raidwide at the end takes about 70% of the HP and also has residual tick boom damage so heals need to be prioritized above all else. The raidwide does not change in AoE damage if the boss is at 29% HP or lower anyways. Mitigate and heals as needed before the raidwide, benediction can also be used if left unutilized. And you need to burst down the NPC that is piercing Haucherfont to proceed to the next phase.
Face south and prepare for phase 5.
Phase 5 :
The first thing the boss will do is smack the tank a few times then disappear.
Two random people will get tethers, they need to bissect the arena or be roughly 3 polar-coordinate tiles away from the intercardinal sides. Because dragons will dive on them, and whoever is in their vicinity also needs to clear their area to not get residual clip damage or dove on. A person with blue marker needs to go relative west (if we treat the origination of tethers as relative north) and be a few fences away from the northwest intercardinal marker to not clip the southern tethers or anyone else. Pre-regens and shields need to be put on people so they don't die if they get fire bait circles later.
After splitting the arena, and having the blue go to one side and everyone else on other side; the cue to start moving clockwise (for tether/blue people) and sides (outer flanks) for the non-blue side is 1.5 seconds after the halbard/mage drop with white effects underneath their feet or when the divebombs go off with blue cyclones across the arena, because twisters will spawn behind you. The person with green divebomb marker needs to make their way to the mage (with staff/non-UFO hat, red shading clothing). Everyone should press the W key and move in the appropriate direction until all twisters are seen then move closer back to the wall dodging the twisters. Anyone can be hit with lightning and they will get a magic vuln up, they will die if they get hit by puddles so they need to sprint their way south and they must make their way towards the halbard guy while being in an appropriate location. Before that though, after dodging twisters and moving to the correct side people need to stand still to take the protean cleaves, people need to be at least 2.01 polar tiles away from each other.
Anyone that got tether/blue markered has a chance to get large eruption pools(4 times, they are delayed) that exploded, if they are near north they can start the first 2 near the wall and curve south, otherwise if they are more southwest, they should do the first 3 near the wall and U turn from the north direction into the safe zone. Anyone on the right side has a chance to get 5 flaming puddles that snapshot quickly and they also need to do a U turn into the safe zone without putting the puddles in the party.
After this, he does a raidwide, heal up and shields.
Clear the tank as he will cleave hard a few times.
Either invuln it or tank swap.
There's a lot of strategies for the next mechanic - death of the heavens. Generally they are the same. You have four people getting doomed and four people that are non-doomed that will be responsible for dropping the cleanse puddles. The dooms in theory can congregate in a small zone together(3) but that is risky.
There will be six safe spots on the arena with a cardinal side being dove (it's the warrior) and the intercards will also be dove (so you just be on the edge of the intercard and move towards the center cardinal).
For this mechanic everyone will have lightning splashes on them after they get to their respective spots. You can choose to do a 2-2 or rectangular doom cleanse puddle configuration or a T-doom cleanse puddle configuration. The reason it must be done this way is because there is playstation markers after with two dooms being marked, one non-doom and doom pair being marked and another pair.
There are multiple algorithms for dealing with this so I'll just list them here in terms of splitting up the people on sides. They are all variations of quick march, pairs and/or conga line.
Some variations are invariant/symmetrical sides, forced sides, warrior relative, puddle relative macros, cw/ccw, or line-up splits, fixed triangle/square positions based on markers or static positionals based on markers, dooms plant (regardless of macro) or all-adjust (on basis of macro), some have advantages in being intuitive in logic, others have more movement but you should pick the one best for your group.
For dodging earthquakes, the tell is the lightning strike to move away to dodge the twister, then one can move in if they are near, or stay in the peripheral and wait for an earthquake to arrive then dodge in. The closer individuals to the earthquake can always move in instantly.
However during dooms, one can take notice of where the eyes are before hand to do playstation without finicking about where to face. Or even before earthquake/right after/before symbols appear. Regardless, circle dooms can always be baited farthest/closest to the mage casting the chains. You want to align yourself with respect to the puddle so that you can cleanse your doom if you have it, and both people will need to be within the outer perimeter of the inner ring or near there so that the chain can break. If one is too close within the inner ring, you will be angled at a weird peripheral angle and not be knocked back to the right side, if too far the chains won't break. Also always press W or strafe left/right to ensure the chain is broken and if you are a doom to cover the entire area of the marker to make sure you touch the cleanse puddle otherwise it might not register while being knocked back as you only have 2 seconds to cleanse yourself. Also everyone needs to be topped off.
After this I recommend caster LB2ing the meteors to secure a victory, and the DPS check is fairly lenient in P6 with another LB3 ready to be used in phase 7 either way. If you have a dancer it might not be necessary, resources might need to be saved to burst down the meteors.
Thordan will do an AoE afterwards and finish up. He will also cleave the tank with a vuln up and then cleave three times, so a tank swap might be needed.
Thordan needs to be spared at 3% HP or so so you can defeat him later.
Phase 6 :
After he jumps in the air (Thordan), 3 gcds later you can start potting. The two dragons need to be balanced in HP for a few times within 3% of each other for certain sections of this fight during light party stacks taking damage or the party will wipe. So ensure that the DPS you are doing to each dragon is relatively equalized with respect to the party members, some dragons will disappear or be untargetable for sections of the fight so you will need to be cognizant to burst them down, though the HP check is not persistent.
Four gcds after the dragons appear, tethers appear on six non-tank players. They need to extend their tethers enough to not take heavy proximity damage while not being clipped by other cones. Tanks also either need to share a tankbuster (if no glowing head) or go to an intercardinal and take their own tankbuster, with middle of arena being cleaved (if glowing head). The two primary ways to deal with this mechanic is the delta/triangle formation and/or
line-up formation. The latter has slightly stricter positioning, both have to be in middle and in 3 and 2 up and below the fancy ice tile for first and second positions with one step or so pass the other partner's pair tether, while the delta/triangle is slightly more lenient anchoring next to the fancy icy tile in the back and adjacent to the film strip tiles, while the front is 2 tiles in front of the fancy tile in the middle while parallel to the midpoint of the arena. You can anchor 3 people and have just 2 people adjust in the delta/triangle formation, while in the line-up you can have MMHHRR preposition in a conga line to easily identify the # in their tether line and match to the appropriate tile. Choose whichever strat suits your group.
Right after, you need to separate in light groups and top everyone off for two group stack raidwides. Make sure to split up into parties so you don't die to taking two stacks. The boss' hp need to be balanced within 3% of eachother, communicate and play safely if necessary with just AoEs. Tab target if needed. If the tether is purple, attack nidhogg more; if it's light blue, then attack Hrae but don't push too hard unless the HP discrepancy is high as you might overshoot the 3% threshold.
The dragon will also apply a random vow pass debuff on a DPS player that needs to be passed, it passes upon the expiration of the 34 second timer, if it's not passed by standing near someone, the dragons will enrage. Usually passes are done at the middle or at the boss. MTTR or RTTR is recommended as gap closers make it convenient (i.e. aetherial manipulation) in terms of the order of vow passes. It also applies a healing down debuff and should never be passed to healers. Clipping someone with it (more than 1) will cause suppuration or 50% max hp reduction.
The next mechanic Hrae will cleave half the arena with a glowing wing and move his head up or down which indicates either the party needs to be close, or far and vice versa for tanks. Be aware tanks do need to spread out as they have a huge circle AoE, so the boss' hitbox is a good gauge/measure of positioning to be in/out in relative closeness. Nidhogg will also cleave half the arena, either near Hrae or far from Hrae so only 1/4 of the arena will be safe. The tankbusters need to be dealt with mitigation and the autos subsequently after too.
Now Hrae will cut approximately slightly more than 1/3 of the arena and he can appear either north or south, left, middle or right. All you need to know is that you will typically look at nidhogg (left) to maintain uptime, and will only be forced to Hrae side if Hrae was diving through left and the left side had 2-1 orbs or you did not do a forced 3-1 dodge and third set spawned left with Hrae diving through it. The middle orbs always spawn first, and the second set of orbs will spawn either north or south, on either left or right side. And the last set of orbs spawn opposing (to the second set of orbs). The orbs explode in a '+' fashion. There are three main types of dodges; 2-1 opposite, 3-1 and forced 3-1.
In the 2-1 opposite scenario, you simply take the opposite side of the second set of orbs and continue towards the centre of arena. In the 3-1 scenario, you simply go to the corner and move towards the centre of arena. In the forced 3-1 scenario, you have to be on the other side of the midpoint of arena and at 99 cast bar(cauterize), dodge into the zone where Hrae is cleaving then traverse upwards toward the centre of arena.
Now that the initialization type of dodges are set, there are several types of movement patterns you can do with various advantages and disadvantages. The party needs to be stacked tightly together so they take shared damage, and about 33%+ mitigation or so should be applied with ogcd heals along the way/movement heals, someone being too far ahead/too far behind will take a bleed and/or take orb damage / get damage die and die from subsequent stack damage which will enrage the dragons if they had a white debuff. L-dodges require you to stagger on the second puddle before moving in because the first orb set will explode and you don't want to get clipped but it's easy to execute, the checkmark requires you to start a little closer to the side and closer relative northwise, the extra diagonal distance means you don't need to spend as much time staggering can go one continuous movement, the diagonal movement will reduce the amount of room you have available but John Lennon's static prefers this for unambigious stacker/spreaders being in the same zone, it has a higher execution floor though. J-dodge is the alternative dodge to L-dodge which follows the boss hit-box slightly and has a chance of being clip by the orbs on left side. A perpendicular-dodge is needed if you are doing a forced 3-1 dodge since you are moving from the middle of arena into the corner.
Before all this happens though, during the spawning of first set of orbs, party debuffs will come out. White debuffs need to stack together (2 pairs of 2 with non-debuffs) and those with the dark purple debuff need to spread out to not overlap each other. The explosion radius is 5 tiles wide, so being diagonally positioned helps to maximize the distance amongst each other but a compact domino or 6-crystal formation is possible with thorough practice. The idea here is you maximize the space if you get hot wings (the sides will be unsafe). At the fourth puddle dropped, Nidhogg will cast hot wings (sides unsafe, middle safe) or hot tails (sides safe, middle unsafe) in which case the party must immediately decide where to go and do their stack/spreading resolution.
There's various strategies about how to go about this :
Spreaders to the right, stackers to the left or vice versa, regardless of direction
Whites to Hrae, Purples to Nidhogg or True East Stackers, True West Spreaders; boss relative/marker relative
Whichever side started with puddles, that is stacker side, vice versa for spreaders; continuation relative - also mandatory if you are dropping puddles into the middle with a diagonal dodge
The second does require the party to look at the boss/be aware of the boss' direction, the first can be executed without much thought, the third likewise. Immediately after, a vow pass needs to be done in 3-4 seconds or so. Most people just pass at middle and vacate the area, a tank can gapclose to other side and pick up the mortal vow. If one is doing MTTR (pass to tank), then this is quite easy (also the previous person is immune for 2 minutes).
After that, get ready for light parties again and balance the boss' HP asap. You probably had lots of uptime on either nidhogg or Hrae (if you got the 2-1 or 3-1 pattern with Hrae cleaving left side of arena and not doing forced 3-1 on nidd side).
Hrae will bissect the arena again, and require tanks to be near/far, vice versa with party while Nidhogg is casting hot tails/hot wings. Be on the safe side, and also pop mits for tanks.
Another vow-pass happens here, third pass. MTTR (third tank) can just stack on each other. Then prepare for the second set of tethers, there's several variations you can do.
3-3 tethers, 4-2, 5-1 or 6-0.
3-3 requires the most movement, makes it most difficult to heal, and requires everyone to adjust. 4-2 just requires one melee to adjust if the tethers aren't extended and another person at other side. 5-1 is comfy enough where most people can just sit north and 2 people adjust at maximum to opposite side with 3 of a particular tether and 2 of another being extended, it's pretty easy to heal. The sole 1 can gapclose or get rescued, do aetherial manipulate, icarus, dance dash, etc. 6-0 requires more precision and some more adjustments, but is easy to heal and convenient.
Note the inner intersection of boss with the intercardinal, the tile adjacent to the film strip, the midpoint of arena are all critical points for 4-2, 3-3 and 5-1 spots. 6-0 requires one to be two tiles away from the edge of midpoint, outer intersection of boss hitbox ring, and closer of the inner intersection of boss with the intercardinal. The arena is symmetrical so all points are the same equidistantly.
and here's an image from nashira for 3-3
After this, just heal the tank up, everyone to north to get ready for touchdown (or hint hint, already there with 5-1 and 6-0 tethers). Regen up. I forgot to mention you only have 4 seconds to step left or right, so align with middle. Tanks invuln or if they want to... full mit with externals to do 611 in phase 7, tanks be in front wild charge (they can also do the.. grab tether and debuff to take cauterize but thats unnecessary). Party stand behind, ice with fire, fire with ice. Did I forgot to tell you? If you have fire debuff you need to stop still at 1.5 seconds or before timer runs out, because the timer snapshots early. You also can't start casting at 3.1 seconds because your GCD ending will still count as animation lock + server tick transfer time delay, so just sit still and relax. This is why it's important to pre-regen the tanks, and everyone with the damage ticks afterwards from the DoTs. Wrong side also means your debuff won't be cleansed, if tank isn't in front, party will be dead.
A touchdown of around 20k damage or so will happen so make sure people are healed up. The minimum distance before minimum damage taken is 16 yalms or so. Right after is the last MTTR vow pass so vacate the area of north after touchdown and just DPS the dragons doing enrage pass.
Note trying to kill a dragon before hand is impossible as it will be at 1 HP before the cauterize divings.
