FFXIV Battle in the Big Keep Guide

FFXIV Battle in the Big Keep Guide by rigsta

I encourage everyone to not read this guide, but to figure the fight out for themselves. It’s not a complex one in terms of mechanics but it’s still satisfying to try things out and find the way that works.

That said, if you’re struggling (and by that I mean more than 3 wipes on phase 1) – read on.

Phase 1:
Gilgamesh + Enkidu

• Don’t bother hitting Gilgamesh, as Enkidu will heal him.
• Gilgamesh will occasionally jump into the middle of the arena and perform an AE knockback. Shields (stoneskin, succor) block the effect if they reduce the damage to 0. SMN & SCH should take care to re-place their pets if they get knocked to the edge of the arena.
• Enkidu’s cone telegraph inflicts a -30% damage/heals debuff if it hits.
• [Unknown ability] inflicts slow+heavy on x players. These should be cleansed. Healers first. I found it affected two players most times and occasionally affected three.
• Two pairs of players will get a link between them. Running towards the linked player cancels it. I think this is what causes “minimum” until cancelled, but couldn’t confirm it.
• If you get a target/crosshair marker, run away from other players so Enkidu’s missile hits only you. It deals 3.5K+ damage.
• 3-4 players will get turned into chickens periodically. They can’t use abilities and have reduced HP while chicken’d.
• Whirlwinds will appear periodically, and explode for extreme (4K+) raid-wide AE damage after a while. To prevent this, a chicken must jump into the whirlwind. A non-chicken can also do this in a pinch but they’ll take ~4K damage.

Phase 2:
Gilgamesh

1. When Gilgamesh says he feels like dancing, he’ll hit the tank with a series of powerful strikes (E: actually a cleave attack). These should be shielded & healed through.
2. Gilgamesh will chain a healer. This player cannot be targetted (ie. healed) and suffers a DoT. All DPS must destroy the chain ASAP. The closer the chained player is to Gilgamesh, the less damage the chain takes. ^Added info from comments.
3. Gilgamesh summons four dragon heads around the edges of the arena. These deal telegraphed AE damage like Ultima’s magitek bits, and should be killed.
4. Gilgamesh will jump to a random(?) player then charge back to the tank, damaging anyone he collides with.
5. Gilgamesh causes telegraphed AE ice damage in a chess-board pattern. Stand in the darker ie. non-telegraph squares to avoid the damage. He follows this with the same ability but the safe areas switch so you have to dodge again.
6. Gilgamesh summons Lighting orbs that deal AE damage after a short delay. Move to away to avoid them, then back to avoid the second set of orbs he summons immediately aferwards. ^{edited w/ new info from comments}
7. Gilgamesh jumps to the middle of the arena and uses Tachi: Kasha causes telegraphed AE damage all over the arena with narrow safe areas.
8. The dragon heads will fly up to the ceiling, and return to strike individual players for heavy damage. I don’t know if this can be avoided eg. by killing the heads faster. It happened, lots of people were at ~1.5K health, me and the other SCH went physick-crazy.

I can’t remember the exact order but he seems to cycle through these abilities. As the fight progresses he uses them with increased frequency, meaning it’s entirely possibly you can be dealing with them back-to-back or even two at once. Our fight lasted long enough that we used a level 3 melee LB and he had ~5% HP left afterwards.

As SCH I placed Selene right in the middle of the arena and found it useful to keep succor up to take the edge off failed dodges. Damage wasn’t consistently high but was very spikey when it did come.

Annoyingly my recording of this fight turned out to be corrupt, so that’s all I got from my single run (2 wipes on phase 1, aced phase 2). Enjoy! /hildy

Trivia: One of our tanks dropped group after the first wipe, offering no explanation before or after the fight started. I can only assume we weren’t carrying him gently enough.

TL;DR

• Phase 1: Chickens jump in whirlwinds, healers cleanse debuffs, focus DPS on Enkidu, guide missiles away from other players.
• Phase 2: Watch out for “dancing” spike damage to the tank, kill all adds ASAP, avoid back-to-back telegraphs.