Eye of the Tiger/Strategies

Setup I regularly use is: PLD/WAR, a RDM/BLM, and a DD (usually a WAR or MNK).

Strategy: Before the fight, everyone uses food and gets protect. I recommend sushi for melees. RDM needs to debuff this guy. He's a fast attacker so use blind and paralyze. He has good evasion so use elemental seal+slow (Slow does nothing at all to reduce evasion; you should be using Frost in order to lower evasion) and then gravity. If you keep him debuffed all you need to do is let the PLD keep his full attention and whack away. Red lotus blade followed by raging fists makes a mean fusion. Red lotus followed by raging axe works well also.

This fight can be done with a ninja tank but he rips through shadows at fairly fast rate and resists most ninja spells making hate control much harder.

Strategy Pros:

• Gerjis is weak to fire. Fusion will hurt him good.
• Paladins have the Hit points defense and vitality (and shield blocking) to survive the damage Gerjis can dish out.

Strategy Cons:

• If the fight drags out too long and enfeebling magic gets resisted too long, you may find yourself out of time before Gerjis is out of HP.

Setup : NIN/WAR, another NIN/WAR or any DD/NIN and a RDM/BLM.

Strategy Same as the above strategy, but with this option you can swap between your two utsusemi users if needed. Use spining axe followed by Blade: chi will make that same fusion as the in preceding strategy. A skillchain is not absolutely necessary however.

Strategy Pros:

• Gerjis is weak to fire. Fusion will hurt him good. Blade: chi and Spinning axe seem to do quite a bit more damage and make a more damaging skillchain than the preceding strategy's Red lotus blade and Raging axe.
• The ninja's elemental wheel spells can make landing the red mage enfeebles easier.

Strategy Cons:

• Experience to know where the invisible line is on hate control is a must.
• Ninja enfeebles are often resisted.

This is a simple solo PUP strategy. Regarding gear, what you wear will not matter as much as the attachments you've got on your automaton. There is definitely more than one way an automaton can be configured for this fight. Still, this strategy uses the Valoredge head and frame with the following active attachments:

• Tension spring IV (fire)
• Magniplug & Magniplug II (fire)
• Armor plate IV (earth)
• Barrier module II (earth)
• Auto-repair kit III (light)
• Optic fiber (light)

The following passive attachments are also used:

• Stabilizer V (lightning)
• Accelerator IV (wind)
• Resister (water)
• Heatsink (water)
• Steam jacket (water)

Clarification: The term "active attachments" refers to the attachments amplified with the same three maneuvers in this strategy, which, as you can see, are fire, earth, and light. The term "passive attachments" refers to the attachments that will not be amplified with maneuvers in this strategy. Using these particular attachments is probably overkill as this strategy may work with smaller versions of these attachments or completely different ones. By all means, experiment and tell us how it went. (~.^)

You may also want to bring some automaton oil. On my first time through, I got away with using a couple of basic automaton oil flasks (the level 15 stuff).

Strategy: Head up the hill, and you'll see Gerjis is waiting in the middle of the circle. Stay on the circle's perimeter, and don't get too close to Gerjis before the fight starts, or you'll take aggro. Before you start the battle, you may want to eat some food that will buff your automaton, like Kusamochi. Use Fire, Light, and Earth maneuvers, deploy your automaton, and run about 10 paces to the left or right of the circle to get out of Gerjis' crossthrash area of effect.

Keep your automaton functioning and healthy as it fights. When Gerjis' HP looks like it's on its last 20%, it should be safe to join your automaton in the fight if you want. You've got 15 minutes to win this battle, which should be plenty of time.

Strategy Pros:

• If you've soloed "Up In Arms" as a PUP, there is no learning curve here because you're doing the same thing. Just sit back and work your automaton. If you haven't soloed "Up in Arms," consider this a practice run for that BCNM.

Strategy Cons:

• If this is your first time soloing this fight as a PUP, it may take a while, and some may find staying in the back while the automaton is upfront with the action boring. /shrug