T13 (Bahamut Prime)

Restored to his senses in defeat, Louisoix uses his final moments to send your party to the main bridge of the final internment hulk, there to banish Bahamut once and for all. Yet though the end of your arduous journey is in sight, doubt not but that the cornered primal will lash out with his unbridled rage. If you are to overcome this terrible foe, you and yours must be of one purpose. Join now your hearts and minds, and sally forth to bring the Seventh Umbral Era to its true conclusion─for the future of Eorzea!

Overview

This is the third fight in the Morbol raid series and can either be one of the easiest or hardest fights for your group depending on your strengths and weaknesses. This fight is largely dependent on how good your tanks and healers are, as the DPS check is functionally nonexistent but there is quite a bit of raid and tank damage.

Video Guide

Party Setup

For this fight I would recommend having the standard one tank mimic, two healer mimics, and five DPS mimics. Due to how much damage there is throughout the fight I would not recommend solo healing unless the healer is extremely confident.

Utility Spells

• Missile
• Diamondback
• Mighty Guard
• Blood Drain is not strictly required, but is helpful for recovering from a death or if the final phase goes on for a long time
• White Wind to help with healing on Earthshakers if the healers are struggling

Phase 1: Bahamut (Megaflare, Flatten, Earth Shaker)

I recommend pulling Bahamut to the far south of the arena, as it will make some future mechanics simpler. Bahamut’s first phase lasts until 76% HP and will follow this mechanic loop:

• Megaflare → Flare Breath
• Flatten → Flare Breath (x3)
• Earth Shaker → Flare Breath

Bahamut will open up with Megaflare. Megaflare will hit random players with AOEs, put large circles on the ground that deal damage after a few seconds, and handle Megaflare, assign spread spots around the boss for the party to move mark 2-4 players for shared stack damage, indicated by diamonds overhead. To to before the cast actually finishes. After the initial Megaflare damages goes out, anyone with a diamond marker needs to stack behind Bahamut to share the damage. Anyone without the diamonds will die, so only those players should stack. The snapshot for this is extremely early so you need to be quick about it. Megaflare is a ton of damage so mitigating with Addle, Magic Hammer, and Bad Breath can make things a lot easier. Immediately after the stack hit Bahamut will use Flare Breath, a conal tankbuster. If the tank was targeted by the stack damage they need to quickly spin Bahamut back around to face away from the party. This is quite difficult to heal, so extra White Wind usage from the party and mitigation from the tank can be helpful.

Bahamut’s Flatten and Flare Breath combo is easy to handle. These are just tankbuster hits, so the tank can use Diamondback during the Flatten cast bar to mitigate all of the hits.

Earth Shaker is the most difficult mechanic in the whole fight, and you’ll probably skip it entirely.. but it does come up in the final phase, so it can be good to practice it here, anyway! Earth Shaker targets two players and hits them with three cone AOEs that leave behind puddles that apply Heavy and deal damage. To handle this, the two targeted players should split up on Bahamut’s left and right side and put up Mighty Guard. Each time they are hit they need to take a step away from Bahamut along the arena’s perimeter. They need to be careful to not hit the party with the cones and not step in the puddles. This is a ton of damage so healers will really need t ofocus on these players. If the healers are targeted, they can slidecast and heal themselves, but it is easier to have some DPS help heal with White Wind. To make matters worse, Bahamut will also use a Flare Breath on the tank in the middle of this. I recommend the tank just use Diamondback to make things easier on the healers.

Earth Shaker can also be handled easily with Avail. If a person being targeted by an Earth Shaker uses Avail on someone, their target will take the damage and no puddle will drop. Doing it this way will require coordinating who gets targeted so there isn’t too much surprise damage and so both targets don’t try to use it on the same person. This can be extremely helpful, but it cannot be relied on 100% of the time since the cooldown of Avail is longer than the time between Earth Shaker casts.

This loop will repeat until Bahamut gets to 76%. Once he is at 76%, he will finish whatever mechanic is currently ongoing and cast Gigaflare. Gigaflare is a real cheek-clapper of an AOE and requires several mitigations to survive. The easiest way to handle this is by toggling Mighty Guard on before the cast finishes and then off once the cast does finish.

Phase 2: Bahamut (Flare Stare, Flatten, Megaflare, Bahamut’s Rage)

Bahamut’s second phase lasts until 52% HP and will follow this mechanic loop:

• Shadow of Meracydia
• Flare Star
• Flare Star
• Flatten
• Flare Star
• Megaflare
• Bahamut’s Rage

Bahamut will start the phase by spawning a Shadow of Meracydia add at the north side of the arena. These adds hit like a truck and will likely one-shot whoever they target. Everyone should immediately cast Missile on it to kill it. It can be helpful to assign 2 people to bring Level 5 Death and use it on the first two add spawns to make things faster and safer. Depending on your DPS you may only see one add. If you do see a second one laters, it will spawn in the southwest of the arena.

Flare Star is pretty straightforward. There are three waves of orbs that spawn. The number of orbs in each wave is random, but the total number of orbs spawned is always 7. Getting hit by an orb will deal mild AOE damage and apply a stacking debuff called Suffocated Will, which increases the damage taken by Bahamut’s Rage later. When orbs spawn they will be tethered to random players and start moving towards them. Our goal is so make sure that no one has more than one stack of Suffocated Will once all the orbs have been popped. Once the orbs spawn, try to pop them such that the AOE only hits the person popping them. It can be helpful to stand near an orb to signal that you’re going to pop it or to verbally say something to call an orb.

There will be a Flatten between the second and third Flare Star waves, so just mitigate with Diamondback as before.

Megaflare is basically the same as in the first phase except it will now also spawn a tower under a random person. The tower needs to be soaked by someone or it will explode and apply a bleed debuff to the whole party. The towers need to be soaked by someone who does not have the stack marker. This is important to note because a stack marker target can have the tower spawn underneath them, so people will need to use their eyes to see if a tower needs to be soaked.

Bahamut’s Rage is just a moderate raidwide hit that is amplified by the number of Suffocated Will stacks that a player has. If you only have one stack it’s not too scary, but using mitigations can be helpful. If you have two stacks, you need to use Mighty Guard to survive. Any more than two stacks will require Diamondback to survive.

At 52% Bahamut will cast Gigaflare again, so put up Mighty Guard and keep it on for the entirety of the next phase.

Phase 3: Adds and Divebombs

This phase consists of a ton of waves of adds and Divebombs, but all of the adds can be killed with Missile. The order of mechanics is:

1. Megaflare Dive + Divebomb
2. East Blood + West Pain add spawns
3. Northwest + Northeast + South Gust add spawns
4. North + South Sin add spawns
5. Megaflare Dive + Divebomb
6. Center Storm add spawn
7. North Blood add spawn
8. 2x South Gust add spawns
9. East Sin add spawn
10. West Pain add spawn
11. Megaflare Dive
12. Teraflare

This phase is pretty easy since we’re mostly just killing adds and waiting around. Megaflare Dive and Divebomb can be completely cheesed with Diamondback. Megaflare Dive essentially does all of the mechanics of a Megaflare along with Bahamut doing a Divebomb, while the other Divebomb is from a dragon and functions the same as the Twintania Divebomb in T5. Wait in the center of the arena, and when you see the green circle appear hardcast Diamondback (no Swiftcast). Another signal for when to cast is about 1/3 of the way through the cast bar on the enemy list, which is just underneath the first “a” in “Megaflare.” If you did it correctly then you should survive all the damage without being knocked back at all.

As the adds spawn you can just kill them with Missile and Level 5 Death. These adds do hit pretty hard, so make sure to still heal properly during this phase. Be cautious about how much you use White Wind since it generates a ton of aggro. As long as the tank is at the top of Bahamut’s enmity list you are fine.

When the small Gust adds spawn I like to mark one to ignore so that players can use Blood Drain go restore mana. Diamondback is quite expensive to use, and if someone dies they will definitely need to regen their mana. Make sure to also use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown to help with MP.

None of the adds are really worth describing in great detail since we just kill them all with Missile. The Blood add can spawn with an invulnerability at first, but after a few seconds it will swap and become vulnerable so it’s not a big deal either way.

The last Megaflare Dive can still be Diamondbacked, which I recommend, or it can be done “properly” by having everyone stack in the middle, find where Bahamut spawns, spread out left/right relative to Bahamut once the marker appears, and after the dive having the stack markers meet in the middle.

After the last Megaflare Dive resolves, Bahamut will appear and start casting Teraflare. This is lethal raidwide AOE but can be survived by standing in the Neurolink in the center and using Diamondback. Once the second dialogue window (“5 seconds to Teraflare”) the party can cast Diamondback. Remember to turn off Mighty Guard after coming out of Diamondback.

Phase 4: Bahamut (Akh Morn, Megaflare, Earthshaker)

The final phase is similar to the first phase, but Bahamut uses Akh Morn instead of Flatten and there are some slight changes to Megaflare and Earth Shaker. Akh Morn starts as a 2-hit AOE tankbuster but gaines one additional hit each time it is cast. It’s intended to be shared by two tanks, but the tank can just use Diamondback. Megaflare will now spawn two towers as will as two Tempest Wing tethers. These tethers go on two random players and deal mild damage to the target and a massive knockback to nearby targets. Earth Shaker will also have these tethers and they will go on the two players targeted by the Earth Shakers, and the puddles left behind by Earth Shakers will stay on the ground much longer (until well after the subsequent Earth Shaker happens). This phase follows this mechanic loop:

1. Akh Morn
2. Megaflare
3. Earth Shaker
4. Akh Morn
5. Megaflare
6. Earth Shaker
7. Gigaflare

The tank should bring Bahamut to the south again like in phase 1, and the party should stay away from the tank during Akh Morn.

Megaflare sounds spooky in this phase, but we will just ignore everything by using Diamondback. As long as you cast it during the Megaflare cast you will survive everything. It is extremely important that you always have at least 3000 MP for each Megaflare.

Earth Shaker puddles lasting longer is an annoyance but doesn’t dramatically change the mechanic. You can follow the same path for kiting the puddles, but the second set just can’t be right at the edge of the arena and should instead be adjacent to the first puddles. After the third Earth Shaker hit, the targets need to stay out a little bit longer until the Tempest Wing tethers resolve. These tethers can be passed to other players so it’s important to stay out at the edge of the arena and not go directly behind the party.

Gigaflare will be handled the same as with any other time it’s cast: turn Mighty Guard on before the cast and turn it off after the cast.

Final Sting

Bahamut’s Final Sting threshold is about 10%. Once he is at 10%, apply Off-guard, use Moon Flute, any Primal abilities you have, then finish with Whistle and Final Sting. Most of the time you will be waiting for a mechanic to resolve before being able to do this, so you may not even get a chance to sting Bahamut at all.