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Every final fight in a tier for Final Fantasy XIV has always had multiple phases, or at least more modern ones, andFinal Fantasy XIV: Dawntrailis no different. Looking all the way back at Stormblood, the Savage versions of Exdeath, Kafka and Omega all came with their own unique savage variant, and they were all the better for it. The only difference is that Square Enix has gone back to the Shadowbringers whiteboard, and instead of a doorboss, M4S is instead a full thirteen-minute long fight that, if you wipe, you start all the way from the beginning. Thankfully, the second phase only has a couple of challenging mechanics that need to be overcome.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - AAC Light-heavyweight M4 (Savage) Phase 1 Guide
Wicked Thunder is even more of a threat in the savage version of The Arcadion in FFXIV: Dawntrail.
Cross Tail Switch: Wicked Thunder starts things off with a massive nine-hit raidwide. you may mitigate and heal through this, but it’s advised to tank LB instead. The timing is roughly when on the castbar hits the “t” in Switch. You’ll still take the full force of two of the nine hits, but it’s better to get hit early than later.
Wicked Blaze
Parties will need to separate northeast and northwest. There are exaflares going across the arena vertically and horizontally. There will only ever be two safe spots, but the reason why we separate into light parties is that the two healers will receive multi-hit stack markers over their heads that need to be shared. Position yourself between the first and second exaflare that is going east and west and look at the location of other party.
You are looking at the exaflares in the first and second position. You need to identify which of those two is moving away from the middle. So, for example, you are northwest and you look northeast. The first exaflare on the east is moving west while the second is moving east. That means the second row will be safe. When the exaflares start to go off, you will need to move into the safe spot, which in this case would be in the second row. There are only ever three possible safe rows: one, two and three, which is nice for melee.
Wicked Special: After the stacks, Wicked Thunder will begin to cast either an attack that strikes the middle of the arena or the sides.
Mustard Bomb
After Wicked Special, everyone will need to spread while the two tanks will grab the two tethers that spawn from the boss. The two tanks will be hit with a sizable tankbuster while four other players will be randomly hit with a large bomb AOE. If you are not hit with a bomb, you now have a role to play. The two players who were not hit will need to touch one of the two tanks to transfer the Mustard Bomb debuff to themselves. This is a short timer that will explode at the end of the duration, but since everyone but the two have “fire resistance down,” they need to take it. Alternatively, if you don’t want to take the debuff from your blue buddy, the tank can just invuln.
Aetherial Conversion:There are two different attacks Wicked Thunder will begin to cast. Look at her tentacles as one will glow a specific color first, and then the other will glow the same color.
Tail Thrust: If she does fire, you will need to position yourself either all the way north near her, or all the way south. The safest spot with the least amount of movement (for casters) will be halfway into the second tile from east or west. Meaning, she is striking west, halfway into the third tile will be the best place you can stand. If she’s striking east, halfway into the second tile is best. When Wicked Thunder strikes the first half of the room, quickly run into it as she will then immediately run to the opposite side. For movement, you just have to go one tile in length.
If she does water, there’s a very specific location on the map that you need to stand. You may have noticed there are two small bright lights in-between the first and second tiles, along with the third and fourth tiles in the second column. You just need to stand directly next to this to be launched the correct distance to the other side of the arena, in which case you immediately go stand on the other red light for the second hit.
Azure Thunder: A rather powerful raidwide that needs to be mitigated and shielded.
Twilight Sabbath
Wicked Thunder: You will notice that after Azure Thunder goes off, a circle has been formed with the outside now having a death wall. Wicked Thunder will then begin to spawn four clones, that are separated into two pairs and will cleave three-quarters of the platform. You will need to stack directly in the middle of the arena because there will be massive baited AOE puddles beneath everyone’s feet while this is going off. Identify which two of the clones are revealing themselves first and go to the quadrant that they are not cleaving. This can be tricky to spot at first. The best thing you can do is identify one of them first, start moving into that safe half of the room and then try to quickly identify the second half.
After that’s done, the remaining two clones will reveal the next safe spot, which very well could be the same location you are in. You will have a lot more time for this one because there aren’t giant puddles beneath your feet, but at the same time, Wicked Thunder will be casting Wicked Special, which is the out or in mechanic from earlier. Simply position yourself in your quadrant to avoid this.
Midnight Sabbath
This can be a very tricky mechanic because of the amount of precision and quick thinking that’s required. Wicked Thunder will spawn eight different clones around the arena at every cardinal and intercardinal:
At the exact same time, Wicked Thunder will begin to cast one of two spells:
What needs to be done is set quadrants between supports and DPS. So for example, west and southwest would be a healer and ranged DPS, while north and northwest would be for a tank and a melee. The first thing that needs to be done is to identify which four clones are spawning first, identified by the circular objects that manifest these clones. All four will either be all guns or wings. If it spawns, say on a cardinal position, and it’s a gun, you and your partner will move to your assigned intercardinal position.
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While this is happening, look at what Wicked Thunder is casting. You will need to do this on the first safe spot and then do the opposite when the next set of clones spawns. Continuing with the example, you have now moved onto your intercardinal position because cardinals are guns. If it’s Scattered Burst, you will spread in your intercardinal. This can be the trickiest part because of how tight it is, but all you really need to look for are the blue circles that are creating the clones.Near the edge of the circle, you will always be safeand far enough from your partner if it’s a spread.
After the first clone goes off, you’ll have to identify the next clone that’s spawning. Keeping with the example, you are currently on the intercards and have spread for Scattered Burst. The next clone is another gun, an unlucky pattern. This means you will now need to rotate to the cardinal that just went off and stack. If it’s the opposite where you need to spread then it gets a little chaotic, but all we did was have our party members be closest to their assigned clock positions.
With all that said, all of this might still sound confusing. The order of operations is fairly straight forward, it’s just movement that will take some time to get used to:
Wicked Special: After all that chaos, Wicked Thunder will then cast another attack that will either leave the edges of the arena safe or the direct middle, depending on her visual indicator.
Wicked Thunder: To top things off, she will perform a powerful raidwide.
Aetherial Conversion: And finally, she will begin to cast either an AOE attack or knockback on oneside of the arena before following it up on the other side. There is something different though. She will instead be stocking this, saving it for later.
Flame Slash
For the next major mechanic, Wicked Thunder will essentially perform the same attack as Wicked Special, but instead will break the middle of the arena, leaving only the three tiles on the east and west. The goal is to separate you into your light parties and lineup in your Quick March positions, part 1 on the west side and party 2 on the east.
When Wicked Thunder breaks the arena in two, four towers will appear on each side; this is where your Quick March spots come in handy. Soak the towers, one per person, and they will drop large swords in their place.
Chain Lightning: A name some may associate with Eden’s Verse: Fulmination, this acts a little differently. Wicked Thunder will tether all but one sword twice on your given side. This will happen four times. It’s now a memory game as the tethered swords will detonate in order of their tethering. For example, if all but the second sword is tethered, that means the first safe spot will be located in front of the second sword. You will then need to memorize each free sword and quickly move to that sword in time before the rest explodes outward. Be careful of the fourth sword and gap closing, as this is the same as Eden’s Gate: Inudation where the gap closer will send you as close as it can to the center of the boss’ hitbox, which in this case is off the arena.
Tail Thrust: Remember that Aehterial Conversion Wicked Thunder began casting prior to this mechanic? Well, I hope you remember it because it’s now going off.
Mustard Bomb: The same exact mechanic from near the beginning of the second phase.
Aetherial Conversion: Similar to the last Aetherial Conversion, Wicked Thunder will begin casting either its fire AOE or its water knockback, but is stocking it for later.
Azure Thunder: A massive raidwide that needs to be mitigated and healed through.
Ion Cluster
Sunrise Sabbath: Now for arguably the last real mechanic of the fight. Wicked Thunder assigns everyone with the same debuff, but with varying timers. There will always be four short timers (23 seconds), two from the DPS and two from the support and always opposite color in their respective roles. Then there will be four long timers (38 seconds) with the same parameters.
Wicked Thunder will then summon four clones with guns and two with wings. The idea is to cleanse your debuff before it expires, so the short timer DPS and support will need to bait these guns. They are proximity based, so you just need to be the closest near them to get their attention.
The problem is that the winged clones will be jumping to a specific location where a two-person tower must be soaked, which is what the long debuff players will be doing. How to identify where the towers will be is a very subtle tell: where the winged clones are looking. When they spawn, they will look either east, west or north, south. That will indicate where they’re jumping to.
So say the winged clones are jumping north and south. Set a priority, something like DPS is always north and east and support is east and south. The long debuffs of their respective roles will stand in the towers, so DPS is north in this example, and supports south. At the same time, short debuff players will be picking up the gun clones, but similar to the wings, there needs to be a priority system in place.
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You will send all your DPS, say west, and all your support east for baiting the gun clones. But sometimes the same side can have two of the same colored guns. You need to cleanse the debuff as you did at the end of the first phase, so you need the opposite color. To do this, you use the Snake priority from P8S (Pandaemonium floor 8). Basically, DPS would start northwest and moving counterclockwise while tanks and healers would be northeast clockwise.
The first gun you’re able to take you can take, meaning that there will always be a person in the correct role on the north most guns, but the southern ones might have the roles reversed if they’re the same color. It’s really that simple, but you will need to point these guns away from the tower players. So if they’re north and south, you must point them east and west on your side, which can be tight, but so long as you’re very close to the baits and closest to the wall, you shouldn’t overlap the bodies.
Wicked Special: After you complete the first baits, Wicked Thunder will rudely interrupt you with either an attack that cleaves the center of the arena or the sides.
Second Baits: After this, the second pair of debuffs will need to bait their clones. You will notice that the winged clones will be looking east/west or north/south again. This is once again how to identify where the next baits will be. Simply do what was explained above, and you will be cleansed of your debuffs and resolve the towers without any issues.
Tail Thrust: Now that you’re done with arguably the hardest mechanic in the fight, well, remember that Aetherial Conversion that Wicked Thunder cast a little while ago? Well it’s going off. Be sure to either get to the safe spot if it’s fire, or next to the red light if it’s water.
Sword Quiver
Now for the mitigation and healing check. This is the soft enrage for the fight as she will perform Sword Quiver three times before going into her actual enrage sequence. Wicked Thunder will slash the field three times in the exact same spots: north to south, northwest to southeast and northeast to southwest. The final hit will always be east to west, but it can cleave the middle, north or south regions, rendering them unsafe.
The whole idea is that at the end of each Sword Quiver, he will target either all DPS or all support with a shared cone attack. That means DPS and support will need to split off more efficiently with the same partners they had in Midnight Sabbath along with their quadrant. It’s a simple solution: if your quadrant is hit by the final hit, you will move to either east or west. For example, melee 1 and main tank are northwest while melee 2 and off tank are northeast. But if say the final strike of Sword Quiver is in the north, that means melee 1 + main tank will go west and melee 2 + off tank will go east instead. It’s the same with the ranged and healers in the south who just have to adjust to the middle if their region is hit last.
And that’s it. Congratulations on completing AAC Light-heavyweight M4S Wicked Thunder. It’s not that hard of a fight, but it has a lot of overlapping mechanics.
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