FFXIV T11: Kaliya Strategy Guide (FCoB T2)

How to beat Kaliya! Our strategy guide to beating the boss of Turn 11 (FCoB T2)! Don’t let this chumpy hydra tear you up!

So you’ve beaten Imdugud and well on your way to becoming a Final Witness! Don’t take a rest yet, chump – If you’re reading this, then that means you’re only 25% of the way!!!  Get off your butt and get your free kill on this MFing Hydra! How to beat the T11 boss: Kaliya!!! Luckily Kaliya doesn’t have a ton of mechanics but the fight culminates in a rather stressful final phase.

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T11 Kaliya Phase 1: Pull to adds (60%)

“Okay I’ll MT” – Lisie Quiloud, last words (from our first pull)

Lets discuss some mechanics that happen thru most of the fight (except the P2 Adds phase).

Double frontal cleave – Kaliya does a two-hit wombo combo frontal cleave. This is deadly to non-tanks, if it isn’t obvious by now. This damage is shared by both tanks. While you can solo tank this, it’s recommended to double tank for 99% of groups. We gave this skill(s) a nickname: “HHHAAAAAUNK“.

Nerve Gas – covers 1/3rd of the map with a nasty ground effect. Do not be here when the cast ends. You will take heavy damage and a Vulnerability Down debuff. Nerve Gas always happens in sets of 3. A good reminder for your raid is to keep in mind that “After third, HHHAUNKing”. Drill that into your mind, people dying to haunk after cloud is more common than you think.

Secondary Head – a rather unexciting tank buster.

At 90% Kaliya casts Barofield. This remains up until Kaliya is dead. Barofield just meant you cannot pass THROUGH Kaliya during Nerve Gas. A dangerous field that does heavy damage, a slow and VULN UP if you enter it. Yeah, it’s a bad idea. So get used to dodging Nerve Gas WITHOUT passing inside Kaliya.

After Barofield goes up Kaliya gains two new abilities. They’re some kind of “missile” that Kaliya shoots in the air. We call them “Stack and Split” (sometimes Blue for Stack, Red for Split). After each Nerve Gas rotation Kaliya fires BOTH of these missles – the only question is which one lands first. Stack (as the name implies) means you have to stack to share the damage – 3 guys is enough, 4 recommended. Split (You guessed it) means you have to stay far from each other so you dont get tagged by two. Tips on surviving this:

  1. You can easily hear the sound effect of these missles. Be aware of it!
  2. If you DO NOT see a marking after the sound effect, it’s SPLIT first then STACK.
  3. Inversely if there is a marking after the sound effect, it’s STACK first then SPLIT.
  4. For the sake of consistency, make your splits look the same each time or at least assign a general area to prevent hugs.

Phase 1 is basically a tutorial for the basic mechanics of Kaliya. Phase 3 is pretty much a mirror of phase 1 (with 2 additional mechanics). This goes on until Kaliya reaches 60%. Once Kaliya reaches 60, she finishes whatever skill is happening and then proceeds to walk to the middle. GTFO of the middle because an insta-kill field will come up a few seconds later. Onto Phase 2!!!

 

Kaliya Phase 2: Kindergarten Shapes (Ball, Egg, Cube)

“Animation locked… haha, I wonder how strong this laser is?” – Eirlys Castillo, last words.

At 60% three adds spawn. The Cube, Ball and Egg (Not their in-game names). This phase is time-based, regardless if you complete what you need to do – Kaliya will phase after around 2 minutes 30 seconds (double checking). First of all lets summarize your objectives during this phase:

  1. Kill Ball & Cube at roughly the same time.
  2. Kill egg before phasing (roughly 2:30 duration)
  3. DO NOT have any 2 shapes come near each other.
  4. Prepare for massive AoE during phase transition (Nerve Cloud)

Sounds simple enough, ey? LOLNO! There’s tons of things that can go wrong here! But lets go through it one by one to maximize your chances. The Egg keeps moving around in a circle – again, they ANY ADD MUST NOT BE NEAR EACH OTHER. The main challenge is dealing with the ball.

Ball has a chunky amount of HP. It also greatly reduces magic damage taken. So it’s ideal that you use physical DPS to kill it. It has a strong cleave and good old Repelling Cannons, which is shared damage to all partymembers near the ball. Have all your physical DPS and 1 healer stay near the ball at all times. If thunder happens to go to this pile, simply have the victim move backwards. Most of the fatal damage comes from the Ball, so it’s recommended to throw a random virus on it when you can, and cycle Eye for an Eye on the ball tank. Also, we use WAR to tank the ball so he can be Storms Path’d. It does all magic damage so Halones STR Debuff doesn’t work on it.

Cube greatly reduces physical damage taken. So obviously have your MDPS beat it up. Aside from this, it’s not really special. Again, you should aim to kill ball and cube within 5 seconds of one another. If not, Egg will absorb the other – turning into Voltron and will wipe the floor with your face. Keep in mind the Cube has considerably less HP than the Ball.

Egg doesn’t have many special properties. It can only take damage when you’re near it. Aside from this, it’s main purpose is to punish parties that kill the cube or ball sooner than the other. If you’re struggling with DPS, consider Melee Limit Break on egg after both the Cube and Ball die.

One healer (preferably WHM) should walk around the inner circle following the ball group. This is so Medica II can heal the entire party – theres alot of random damage so keeping it up every 30s is a good idea.

Lastly there’s a few environmental effects while all of this is going on. Triple lasers which are insanely deadly on a long cast time. A periodic random Thunder Debuff(very similar to T9’s Thunderstruck). Also, touching the inner circle results in instant death. Get used to calling out thunder in your VOIP, it’s a common mess-up.

Egg is dead! Now what!? Prepare to resume your position from Phase 1. Nerve Cloud is coming right up. Make sure to soften the damage from Nerve Cloud by: Arcanist Virus, Succor and Sacred Soil. Warrior Storms Path, Monk Dragon Kick. Also, you may want to Stoneskin, Adloq or Apocatastasis those who may have weakness. This nuke is rather strong!!!

This phase may be confusing so lets summarize yet again what you need to do:

  1. Call out Thunders, Avoid Lasers
  2. Reduce damage of ball (Eye for Eye, Storms Path, Virus, Dragon Kick)
  3. Coordinate kill speed of ball and cube.
  4. Kill Egg (consider Melee LB)
  5. Prepare for Nerve Cloud (into Final Phase)

If you’ve survived, it’s on to Kaliyas Final Phase!

Kaliya Phase 3 (Final): Tethers (Nanospore Jet)

“Where does blue stack again?” – Mahiko San, last words.

Welcome to T11 final phase! The most annoying and stressful mechanic rears its ugly head here almost instantly: Nanospore Jet (commonly refered to as Tethers). Before we get into that – Kaliya RETAINS ALL SKILLS from Phase 1. By now, I hope you guys can avoid them well! Because tethers are effin’ annoying.

Nanospore Jet targets 2 sets of 2 people. One couple will be the “Green” tethers and the other will be the “Blue” tethers. From here on we will distinguish the two by calling it Green and Blue. First of all there is no difference between colors – they have the exact same effects. Here are the rules for each tether:

  • You can see the color of your tether from the status bar, or a visual effect.
  • They take some time to “settle in” – position during this settling time.
  • Once tethered you CANNOT GO TOO FAR from your partner.
  • ANY GREEN may not be near ANY BLUE; vice versa.
  • Failing the above results in heavy damage + Vulnerability Up.
  • Any tethered person who dies, instantly kills their partner.
  • Tank + Non-tank is never a tether combination. If one tank is tethered, the other tank will always be it’s partner.

You got that!?!? Drill it into your head! Nanospore Jet doesn’t F around and punishes slackers. As easy as Kaliya is; FOCUS is ultimately important in the final phase. So you’ve survived your first set of tethers? Good job! Now welcome to the real stress – Tethers + Nerve Gas.

How to deal with Tethers + Nerve Gas!? This basically sums up Final Phase. If you can do this well, this is gonna be a walk in the park. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a walk in the shart. Luckily we’ve devised a barbaric way to deal with this, or at least a way with the smallest amount of thought applied. For this we have 2 rulesets to follow: Positioning Rules and Movement Rules.

Positioning Rules determine where green or blue will initially stay (to prevent killing each other due to proximity). If you follow these by order, you shouldn’t have a problem!

  • If Tanks are tethered, other couple must be in complete opposite side.
  • If Melee is tethered, partner must approach melee.
  • No melee or tank tether? (Worst) Blue left, Green right.
  • All non-tethers people stack~ on any tethered couple (for baiting nerve gas, explained below)

These three simple rules will get you past the first hurdle of simply dying once tethers settle in. Once you’ve gotten used to this, here we have the Movement Rules.

  • Dodge to path of least resistance (wherever the clean floor is nearer)
  • Head on nerve gas? Dodge left (Clockwise). Opposite pile adjusts accordingly.
  • Keep in mind – after third Nerve, haunk.

Easy as that. If you followed the positioning rules and movement rules – tethers play out themselves. Of course, this may take a few wipes to get used to! I cannot stress the above mentioned POSITIONING RULES and MOVEMENT RULES. If your group refuses to organize or at least have a set behavioral pattern for tethers – Kaliya will best you 99 times out of 100. If you’re struggling with pugs, feel free to suggest the rules above! It’s better than winging it!

Turn 11 Kaliya Loot List

I really don’t know how to present by-turn loot list nicely so check this out for now: Bahamuts Coil Loot List.

Well, that’s about it! Feel free to comment with any other advice or (hopefully nonviolent) reactions! Best of luck killing Kaliya and getting past Turn 11!!!

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1 thought on “FFXIV T11: Kaliya Strategy Guide (FCoB T2)”

  1. Hey guys! I was reading again the guide and I realized you’re brushing “Secondary Head” off really quickly. Thing is, it’s not that unexciting as you say. It’s a two-step mechanic where the off-tank has to take aggro from the main tank DURING the cast of Secondary Head so that the first and second bites are not on the same target. Else, the MT’s gonna take the world.

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