This is a guide to the fight ‘The Minstrel’s Ballad: Sphene’s Burden’ (Sphene Extreme) in Final Fantasy XIV.
There are waaaaaay to many strats going around for this fight. This guide would be an hour long if I showed everything I’m seeing in PF. I tried to show common strats and otherwise teach the mechanic so that people can easily adjust to other strats. Sorry if your favorite strat isn’t shown!
Tip me at: Ko-fi.com/hectorhectorson
00:00 Introduction
01:45 Wind Phase
03:07 Divide and Conquer
04:04 Earth Phase
06:52 Coronation
07:55 Absolute Authority (Blackfire)
08:55 Absolute Authority (Cheese)
09:34 Ice Phase
14:41 The End?
17:35 Special Thanks + Cat
source
Super helpful tip: You don't have to be grounded when dropping your meteors, only when hiding. Thank you to Kreater120, Testtank5198 and others who mentioned this!
And now – every possible difference you might see in PF:
Wind phase – I show NW/SE for stacks, but you may see NE/SW. It's the same thing.
Divide and Conquer – I show THMR, but the order as arbitrary as it's all uptime, no positionals and negligible healing
Earth phase – I show MTTM/RHHR for towers, but every spot is uptime so all orders work
Meteors – I show box, but hiding behind the back meteors so you only move once. L works fine, one line is tight but also works fine. I showed this because its the same spreads as for towers and for final phase; hopefully easy for people to remember.
Coronation – I show ccw, because I've used 1A markers for the whole expansion and which way you rotate is arbitrary. I explain that people should look at the waymarks to see if their group is doing clockwise instead.
Absolute authority – I show a strat I personally used which is done like blackfire trio in UCoB, but I also show the cheese. As someone who healed the fight, I'd rather not throw all my mitigation on this one fairly easy mechanic, but there's nothing wrong with it.
Icicles – I show both N/S prio and fixed bridges (what NA is calling braindead?). I have no horse in this race. This mechanic is hard and late in the fight. People are going to murder each other, regardless of the strat.
Ice 2 – I show MTTT, but also explain TTTT. Groups with low DPS shouldn't do TTTT, as the tankbuster afterwards will murder them if they don't skip.
Finally. The strat has arrived
I'm so happy I day 1 cleared this, Seeing all the different strats some of us made up being essentially here with minor changes feels absolutely wonderful. Great guides as always, can't wait to see some newer faces in the PF.
It was found there is spots to stand for every Radical Shift where it overlaps all three zones. But it is kinda tricky to pick them out quickly.
Otherwise, you pretty much hit the same stuff my group realized when we got our clear. ^-^
GL to everyone out there with your clears, and thanks for another great video, Hector.
The PF strat that most of Aether uses is:
L | CW Coro | stack cheese | MTTT | M/N R/S Ice bridge | fix rotation spots.
L : means L shaped rock pattern. Other strats make players accidentally hit the gravity toggle thing, confuse by which rock to go to, and fail at placing them correctly. The L is unambiguous, front to back, and out of the way of the gravity toggle.
CW coronation: means find the wall your triangle is on, and go to the CW side of that wall. Obvious CW/CCW is just preference, but the advantage of CW is that if you’re doing NW>NE stack cheese. Then the West and South walls furthest start closer to the stack point in the NW corner. If you do CCW then West, South have longer walks, and East is only slightly closer.
Stack cheese : after coronation everyone stacks NW (as mentioned above) and you just walk down the wall to NE. This makes it so no one dies from the KB and the AoE is easy to mitigate.
MTTT : is explained in the video.
M/N R/S: Ice bridge is better than brain dead. You use prepo spots with the supports near the outside and slightly further north (respective to their DPS partners). Tanks and Melees ONLY use the north bridge and Ranged and Healers the south bridge. Seeing the tethers spawn is key, so good pre-positioning in two groups TMMT north and HRRH south is key. If 2 of the same role need to use the same bridge, ie adjacent players, the supports have prior, or who ever is closer to the bridge. So if both healers get the tethered from the first set of tethers comming from the. Left half of the are arena, they both need to go to the right platform using the same South bridge. The H2 goes first since they are closer. Way less logic, to recon with, all you need to know is opposite side, and whether the other role partner is on your side too.
Fixed spot rotation – is Uber brain dead. There is a video on YouTube with the spots, but basically stand in one spot and let the mechanic resolve. All 8 players don’t move.
the little jumps for the keep moving is just great
11:20 Bros not happy with the braindead name lmao.
For meteors, my group developed a Caster Uptime strat that has casters/rangeds floating all the time (our group has two casters) and that allows us to just stand there doing DPS/Healing while only melees and tanks drop meteors on platform
I cleared but wanted to know what pf probably does. I stayed for the cat
Yeah the idiots naming everything braindead is stupid as fuck
It might not even be the best strat like in p7s final mechanic with the harvests
Hector, my man, there's no need to apologize for not showing someone's favorite strat. You're doing a service to everyone in the community by making these guides. We can debate endlessly what's the better strat for this or that mechanic, but no one should be upset about it. So… Just keep doing your best, keep doing the things that you like to do. That's literally all anyone can ask of you.
for the meteor phase, we just have the two ppl who sank the towers drop theirs on the platform and those already in the air drop theirs off platform. Less movement and less chances to mess around that way.
4:05
Is it intended that M1 and R1 are standing on the right side for spread? should'nt they normally spread on the left side with H1 and Mt?
Can u please add macro for markers to your videos? At least starting from this
Demonstrate the cock and ball strat you coward.
Cheers hector
3:15 what the fuck are those spreads?
Swear to god, this shitty "Braindead" Mech is now a must have to even kill this Fight. N/S Prio is so much easier but People out there cant even get this right bc its to much thinking?! Like cmon, its a fix positions too!! 😑
speeen extreeem
starting at the back for meteors and squares for meteors damn you must hate casters lmao
Just cheese absolute authority with mits.. please
Is there a way you can make a mini-guide for meteor drops where the two on the platform drop all four? Two first set, two second set to make a box while the two people already floating stay out; reduces the amount of gravity jank needed.
STOP MAKING GUIDE U FUCKING RETARD. YOUR STRATS R THE WORST EVER AND U R ONE THE WORST EVER FF14 PLAYERS. U R JUST RUINING PF WITH THIS SHIT
People call strats braindead because that's the one they personally use and don't want to learn an easier one, not because it IS the easier one to use. Most of the time, it's not- looking directly at ice phase for this one.
Feedback that you can ignore – I find the out-of-sequence introduction confusing. It makes it difficult to know where the mechanics actually start.
I hate that ice strat so much, another ex I won't be farming cuz PF is gonna be like "hector vid" and will refuse to try anything else even if it's easier.
that groan at "braindead start" seemed a bit immature