Solo'ing Briareus Help

Hey everyone.

So all my friends that I once played with have moved on pretty much (I've been playing for 11 years and they played for almost 6 but got sick of all the hard work they put in for stuff only to have SE come in and wipe it out with new ***, etc.).

I'm 9/50 on Briar's helms and realizing that I may need to solo the rest of them as blu. What I need to know is:

1.) is this possible without any major problems.
2.) Strat's and crap that I need know.

I can tell you that 1. It is very possible 2. I suck at blu and have only watched people solo it on blu, all I know is stun is good!

be sure to stun him ANY time he uses a TP move,

Any ideas on the atma's to absolutely have?

I'd expect, Minikin Monstrosity, Razed Ruins and a third of your choice - however, I wasn't a BLU and I never attempted to solo Bri.

Never tried it on BLU, always went NIN for higher evasion and shadows. I could assume that's possible, Sudden Lunge's stun is insane, and with a good fast cast set your spell timer will be up before Briareus can even act again. Atma's would probably be MM, RR and I would use Cloak and Dagger to shove Evasion higher. If you already have a boss evasion set and are confident in your ability to dodge most of his attacks, go with something a little more punchy, VV, SA, GH, w/e.

Its briarus, BLU/WAR, set defensive traits and use a mild evasion build. Stun all his TP moves, delta thrust and heavy stike make it a fairly quick fight even without CDC. If he does manage to get off a mercurial strike for 1111 dmg, turn and kite him through the stones. Not much else to it. Set TH if you can afford the set points and TH+1 Tarutaru sash if you have it macrod to tag him to TH2, should get 2 helms more often than not.

MM, RR, Apoc (Triple Attack and "***Happens" Prevention)

You can set two stuns for added insurance as well. Sanguine Blade is excellent for a fast cure. Stun Colossal Slam as that zombie is a *** and beware the 1111 damage Mercurial Strike. Other than that, early grats on your Almace.

Not sure about blu stuns but bri starts to resist violent flourish after enough uses so to be cautious only stun tp moves. You will be surprised how easy of a solo he is if u can stun tp moves effectively.

Dancer solo on Briar is easy, just have to stun Merc Strike

Mostly just used Evasion Daggers and AF3 for DNC set, using RR/VV/Apoc Atmas

Sanguine Scythe , Razed Ruin , Apoc atmas as u need DD , also SS will boost ur HP. Allways take meds (Scars of Aby ones also for bastion points) , i prefer /NIN sub on this . No stuns (exept spell) but since Bria can't cast magic at all , if u goes low on MP or HP you can pull shadows up & turn , Bria have no that high acc . When he 2h if u got hitted u get cursed , just kite & shadows up when can then wait till curse gone , get hp up - turn to bria again , continue .

@Chrisstreb ....I said I was blu...not dnc lol. so it wouldn't matter if dnc can solo it easily because of eva.

For everyone else. I'll have to test it out and see how it goes. I was reading that I shouldn't do any WS's/SC's until after he attempts his so that I don't miss stuns. But I hate having to do all of this on my own.

It is an easy blu solo. Stun TP moves and its no hard at all. I do it Blu/rdm Occ for shadows then set HB and sudden lunge and the fight is a joke. I use MM RR and GH for atmas.

It seems intimidating, but assuming you have sudden lunge and headbutt accessibly macro'd and save TP for after a stun, you're in good shape. He doesn't have that much HP or defense, and asside from his 2hr (meiko shisui which is triggered by an 1111 mercurial strike) there isn't anything to really worry about.

He is probably the easiest empyrean mob to solo, even if it hits the fan hard, you just kite him around the stones because his pathing is horrid and he's slow as can be. He doesn't have great accuracy and exploiting that with actnic burst and an evasion build you'll hardly ever get hit. The added effect of plague on delta thrust and the slow from heavy strike are invaluable on him as well, he's already a slow attacking mob. He's probably one of the best mobs to practice soloing on.

I can't remember a single time I got a stun resisted on him, I've missed, but thats going to happen occasionally regardless of his resistance building.

I soloed it as Aegis PLD, which can pretty much ignore anything he can do to you. But since you probably don't have one, The only real problem I can foresee for you is proccing to get KIs (unless you have another job to do that on) and when he hits a 1111, when he does that he'll use meikyo, and hit you 3 times with that annoying zombie move, you can either kite him until he uses all 3 or try to stun all 3. Either way, that's his only really annoying move.

Really as long as you have access to some form of reliable stun he is easy. 1111 Mercurial Strike, and Colossal Slam are the only issues.

I've seen BLUs solo him easily, since I don't have BLU I can't tell ya what they were using Atma wise.

I never had any problems when fighting him as NIN/DNC, DNC or THF. Everyone once in a while I'd miss a stun but nothing major. If he gets a 1111 Mercurial Strike, run away until he does all 3 Colossal Slams.

apoc, minikin, razed ruins is probably the best for solo dps if you aren't good at conserving your MP or expect to miss some stuns and will need to heal much. after a few kills when you're comfortable with the mob, you can probably switch to a more aggressive setup.

I done all mine blu/war so i didn't have to change after farming KIs.

MM/RR/whatever you like to start, then you can switch out MM once you are comfortable.

Just melee > stun tp move > WS (self SC whenever CA is up) > repeat.
Keep occultation up and if you drop to around 1500hp, turn around, and cure up/recover. He has no regain, so you can back tank him forever with occultation and even a half assed evasion set.
Use and abuse sub-zero smash and filamented hold.

I'm in an almost identical situation as you. I've soloed a little over half my helms so far pre-Adoulin. And I'm a shitty soloer, so if I can do it you'll have no problem!

I go BLU/DNC. I run an almost-full-damage spell traits, swapping out two tiers of Dual Wield for the Treasure Hunter trait. (Using Prothescar's "The Beast Within" guide for spell sets.)
Pre-Briareus fights consist of keeping Occultation up, swapping weapons, and trying for Red stagger. Keep steps up all the time, and stun their TP moves, particularly Pantagruel - the spikes are just annoying to deal with, and I've been one-shotted by Pantagruel's Moribund Hack several times before.
Of note: I use Violent Flourish to stun because I get pretty laggy in Abyssea, and my Sudden Lunge usually doesn't even start casting until they've finished the move. If you aren't as laggy as me, then feel free to Lunge to your heart's content, it's much more accurate.
For the Briareus fight itself, make sure you enter with finishing moves saved up. Unless you have lightning reflexes, I'm not sure it's possible to land Sudden Lunge to stun his TP moves (again, could be a lag problem, but his are even faster than his underlings). Keep plague on him to slow down his TP usage (he's a SAM so it won't make a HUGE difference, but it's something), and only cast damaging spells/WS's just after you've stunned a Mercurial Strike, and for a couple seconds afterwards. I might just have bad luck but if I'm not careful he always tends to use TP moves right as I'm in the middle of a casting or WS animation. Use your damaging spells as you see fit, self SC as available, keep Occultation up, use Sanguine Blade and Bloodrake to heal yourself when necessary, and be ready when you think he's gonna pull a WS. Don't forget the 50%-25% health rules for TP: mobs are guaranteed to use TP moves at 200% TP below 50%, and at 100% TP below 25%. If a TP move does get off, keep an eye on what it's going to be, and be ready to stun it and/or eat it, depending. If it's a 1111 hit, immediately Sudden Lunge stun him and get away, because if you're a taru like me with shittacular HP then he's already going to have hacked most of your HP off with that move alone.

Bit lengthy and train-of-thought-y but you get the point. It's scary at first but once you get used to it he's not bad at all.

Something one of my LS mates noticed while he tanked Briareus was that right before the animation for Mecurial Strike started, Bria would raise his left hand a bit. If you tilt your camera angle to where it's pointing down from above his head and can see his left hand you should have about a one second advanced warning to his TP move starting.

1 second isn't much, but when trying to stun his TP move we took all the advantages we could get. We did 4 almaces in a row and only had the 1111 TP move hit 3 times total in all runs.

Solo'ing Briareus isn't the problem, getting the KIs for him solo - in a timely manner - is another issue altogether...

The Ice-gigas can still be kind of annoying solo and takes "forever" just to kill if you want to both proc and be safe :<
The ranger-*** is annoying to proc -_-
Briareus himself is pretty easy, yeah.
If you stun every tp-move he does (which should be very possible with just one person on him) he's more or less harmless.
If he does get a tp-move off, just be prepared to run around for a bit.

I have'nt fought this guy in a long long time, but I imagine with the gear that is out now, it should be very easy.

Well I attempted Briar solo today for the first time. (only had my thf alt there to land TH and that was it for 2 briar helms).

It was actually relatively easy. I was able to stun him 97% of the time with sushi. He did off a few Merc strikes that did some damage...highest one was 999.

Thanks for all the advice people.

Grats! Happy future hunting.

Don't need sushi your in Abysea ACC won't be a issue. eat meat if anything RCB or YCB for more dps. otherwise keep doin what you doin ^. Really don't even need food at all.

There are 2 components to landing stun, the physical accuracy of your main hand (if your sword skill is capped, you're basically capped in abby) and Macc, which is harder to quantify. I cast stun spells in a hybrid skill/macc set and VERY rarely had issues with it landing. Save the food, a stalwarts will overcap your acc and att and should last the whole fight anyway.

I've been soloing the KI NMs on WAR/dnc, with MC for Regen then Apoc for the extra hits and RR for some more crits. It works.

I never ever thought of doing BLU/war for the procs. I definitely gotta try it! I can't wait for lunch break at work to give it a shot!

I'm now at 28/50 helms and can't wait to try it out!

Sobek sounds much easier, not from a solo perspective, but because of the smaller KI farm camp and the huge ammount of +2s that drop from the bugger. This will make it much easier to find a random group with a couple of shouts.

A lot of people really overestimate how hard Briareus is solo, so don't worry. RR/Apoc/Mounted Champion, keep steps up and stun as many TP moves as you can. If he hits you for 1111, kite him around the huge open circle or just run all the way back down to the pixie camp. If his curse move goes off, you can just turn to avoid feeding him TP until it wears off (I did this NIN/DNC though, much easier to put shadows up and just chill while Regen atma gets your health back up). Very straight forward and easy fight.

Yesterday I tried BLU/war and it wasn't as easy as I'd expected. Even with full EVA set Pantagruel hit me with every Moribund Hack. He's a tough nut with that TP move and the damn ice spikes.

I finally managed to get to Briareus and I wasn't able to stun one single TP move, resulting in a very painful and quick death.

Mind you that I'm playing on a super laggy satellite connection and even though it sometimes makes it complicated to deal with certain situations, I'm generally able to stun as WAR/dnc (plus my evasion is also much better with that combination).

I'm gonna try it again on BLU/dnc and forget about stunning with spells. I'll focus on Violent Flourish. I'll lose the 2 staff procs, but if I manage to get a cooking or leathercrafting knife, which are lvl 1 all jobs, I'll gain access to Cyclone and Energy Drain.

I gotta give this a try again once I'm home with a proper internet connection. I'll also throw in Warm-Up to the twist, as it greatly improves my Evasion on difficult NMs

Ive done it a few times on blu but not soloing but TP moves are very easy to stun with sudden lunge/head butt. I have solod it on pld/dnc again stunning every tp move. It does sound like the lag you are getting from the dodge connection is whats making it hard to stun them.