Blue Mage Raid Guide for Bahamut (T13)

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!

This is the third fight in the Morbol raid series and can either be the easiest or the hardest fight for your group with very little in between. This fight really comes down to having a competent tank and healers, as the DPS check is still nonexistent but there is a ton of incoming damage.

This guide is written assuming you have all Blue Mage spells, appropriate gear, and know how to play your chosen role.

If you prefer video format, there is a full video guide available below. The video itself is older, but the strats are unchanged.

For this fight I would recommend having the standard one tank mimic, two healer mimics, and five DPS mimics.

• Missile
• Diamondback
• Mighty Guard
• Blood Drain
• White Wind to help with healing on Earthshakers if necessary

• Flare Breath: Conal tankbuster.
• Flatten: Brutal tankbuster, Diamondback strongly recommended.
• Megaflare: AOE damage on targets, stack markers on 2-4 random players, and spawns large circle AOEs on the ground.
• Earth Shaker: Targets two players, then hits them with three cone AOEs that leave a puddle underneath the player which applies a Heavy and deals damage.
• Gigaflare: Hard-hitting raidbuster, Mighty Guard strongly recommended.

I recommend tanking Bahamut at the far south of the arena, as it makes some later mechanics a bit easier. Bahamut's first phase lasts until 76% HP and follows this loop for mechanics:

1. Megaflare + Flare Breath
2. Flatten + Flare Breath (x3)
3. Earth Shaker + Flare Breath

To handle Megaflare, assign spread spots around the boss for the party to move to before the cast finishes. Make sure the spot directly behind the boss is available for the stacks. After the initial Megaflare damage, anyone that has a diamond marker over their head needs to stack behind Bahamut for shared damage. Anyone that doesn't have the debuff will die, so only those players should stack. This snapshots much earlier than you expect, so you cannot be slow about it. Additionally, Mega Flare has a ton of outgoing damage on top of the stack damage so things like Addle and extra White Wind can be helpful. Immediately after the stack hit Bahamut will use Flare Breath. If the tank was targeted by the stack they will need to very quickly go back to where they were before to face Bahamut away from the party. This is quite difficult to heal, so again extra White Wind or mitigation such as Dragon Force can be helpful here.

Bahamut's Flatten + Flare Breath combo is easy to handle, the tank just needs to use Diamondback during the Flatten cast bar.

Earth Shaker is probably the most difficult mechanic in the fight, and you might skip it entirely until the last phase depending on how solid your DPS is. To handle this, have the two targeted players go to either side of Bahamut (his left/right) and put up Mighty Guard. Each time they are hit they need to take a step away from Bahamut along the arena's perimeter being extra careful not to hit the party and to avoid the puddle damage. This hits hard and healers will need to focus these players. If the healers are targeted, they can slidecast and heal themselves, but it is helpful to have some DPS assist with healing via White Wind. As if there wasn't enough damage going out at this point, Bahamut will also use a Flare Breath on the tank. I recommend the tank just use Diamondback here to make the healers' lives easier.

Earth Shaker can be slightly trivialized by using Avail. There is a weird interaction where puddles don't drop when the person targeted is using Avail on someone else. If you do this, you need to coordinate which side is going to Avail which party members. I recommend either chaining the Avails (target A uses it on target B who uses it on the tank) and having the tank Diamondback, or having each side use Avail on a particular person (e.g. tank and healer) who will both Diamondback. I personally don't recommend this strategy simply because the cooldown on Avail is too long to be reliable in the last phase if you get targeted multiple times, so you still need to know how to handle the mechanic correctly.

The loop just repeats until Bahamut gets to 76%, at which point he will cast Gigaflare before going into the next phase. Gigaflare hits hard and needs several mitigations to actually survive. The easiest way to handle this is to just toggle Mighty Guard on before the cast and off after the cast. If your DPS is really good you might get caught by surprise with a Gigaflare cast while the party is still in Waning Nocturne from their Moon Flute openers. If this happens, have 1-2 people delay their openers until phase 2 begins.

• Flare Star: Spawns three waves of orbs, adding up to seven total orbs, that will tether to random players and move towards them. On contact the orbs deal mild AOE damage and apply a stacking debuff called Suffocated Will.
• Rage of Bahamut: Moderate raidwide damage amplified by number of Suffocated Will stacks.

Bahamut's second phase lasts until 52% hP and follows this loop for mechanics:

1. Shadow of Meracydia
2. Flare Star
3. Flare Star
4. Flatten
5. Flare Star
6. Megaflare
7. Bahamut's Rage

Bahamut starts the phase by spawning a Shadow of Meracydia add at the far north of the arena. These adds hit hard and are likely to one-shot whoever they target. Everyone should immediately cast Missile on the add to kill it ASAP. It can be useful to have 2 people bring Level 5 Death to be assigned to the first two add spawns (you should not see a third add) to make things faster and safer. If you see a second add spawn, it will spawn in the southwest of the arena (roughly 8 o'clock in the arena).

Flare Star is a pretty straightforward mechanic. We want each orb to be soaked by at most one person so that everyone has at most one stack of Suffocated Will. When they spawn, move towards orbs that have no one near them and pop them if you have not popped one yet. It can happen that people end up with multiple stacks of the debuff, but try to avoid that as much as possible.

Megaflare is the same as in the first phase except now there will be a tower that spawns under a random person. Someone needs to stand in the tower or else it will explode and apply a bleed debuff to the party. The towers should be soaked by someone who does not have the stack marker.

Bahamut's Rage is easy to handle if you handled Flare Star correctly. With only one stack of Suffocated Will it won't hit too hard, but Bad Breath, Gobskin, and Addle can be helpful here. If you have two stacks, you need to use Mighty Guard to survive. Any more than two stacks and you will need Diamondback.

At 52% Bahamut will cast Gigaflare again. Put up Mighty Guard and keep it on until we get to the final phase.

• Megaflare Dive: Divebomb on random target (indicated by red circle) along with Megaflare mechanics from before.
• Divebomb: Same as Divebomb in T5 and T9, random target (indicated by green circle) with big knockback and damage.

During this phase a ton of adds will spawn, but we can kill them all with Missile. The order of mechanics is as follows:

1. Megaflare Dive + Divebomb
2. East Blood + West Pain adds
3. Northwest + Northeast + South Gust adds
4. North + South Sin adds
5. Megaflare Dive + Divebomb
6. Center Storm add
7. North Blood add
8. South Gust adds (x2)
9. East Sin add
10. West Pain add
11. Megaflare Dive
12. Teraflare

In general this phase is pretty straightforward, we're mostly just killing adds and waiting around. Megaflare Dive and Divebomb can be completely cheesed with Diamondback. Hang out around the center of the arena, and when you see the green circle hardcast (no Swiftcast) Diamondback. Another signal for when to cast is about 1/3 of the way through the Megaflare Dive cast, or when the cast bar is just underneath the first "a" in "Megaflare". If you timed it correctly, you will survive all the damage and won't get knocked back.

As adds spawn, kill them with Missile or Level 5 Death. The adds hit pretty hard, so make sure to keep an eye on health and heal accordingly. Be cautious about using White Wind too much since it will generate a ton of threat while under Mighty Guard. As long as the tank is still at the top of the threat list (red circle in the enemy list) it is fine.

When the small Gust adds spawn it can be helpful to mark one to keep alive so players can use Blood Drain to get mana back. There is a lot of Diamondback use here, and if someone dies they will need to get their MP back. Once people are at full mana you can kill it again.

None of the adds are particularly noteworthy. Depending on which invulnerability the Blood add has it may take a few seconds to kill before it switches invulnerability, but it's not threatening otherwise.

After all of the adds are dead and the last Megaflare Dive is finished, Bahamut will start casting Teraflare as he transitions into the final phase. The party should be inside the Neurolink that dropped in the center of the arena, and when the first dialogue disappears ("10 seconds to Teraflare") or the second dialogue appears ("5 seconds to Teraflare") the party can use Diamondback to survive. Once people are out of Diamondback, they should turn off Mighty Guard for the final phase.

• Akh Morn: Multi-hit AOE tankbuster intended to be soaked by multiple players. Tank handles this with Diamondback.
• Tempest Wing: Passable tether on players that deals mild damage to the target and deals a massive knockback to nearby targets.

Bahamut's final phase is similar to the first one but with Akh Morn instead of Flatten and some changes to Megaflare and Earth Shaker. Akh Morn starts as a 2-hit tankbuster, but gains one additional hit each time it is cast. This phase follows the following loop until he is dead:

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

One extremely important thing to mention is that no one should actually use a Moon Flute opener in this final phase. If you are caught in Waning Nocturne when you need to use Mighty Guard or Diamondback you absolutely will die. The only time that you could reasonably get away with it is during Earth Shaker (but not before Gigaflare) if you didn't get targeted. However, it's unlikely you'll have your cooldowns up at that point so it's still not really worth it. It is crucial that you always have mana for Diamondback as we will be using it a lot.

The tank should move to the direct south just like in phase 1. Akh Morn is handled just by using Diamondback, and the party should stay away from the tank.

Megaflare now spawns two towers underneath players as well as targets two players with Tempest Wing. This is a lot of stuff to handle, so we simply just won't handle it. Instead, cast Diamondback during the Megaflare cast and you will survive everything.

Earth Shaker puddles will now last longer such that the first set of puddles will still be on the ground until the next Earth Shaker cast. This is handled by just moving in the same path as before but just alongside the existing puddles. The two Earth Shaker targets will also be targeted with Tempest Wing, so they will need to stay out until that is resolved. They need to be careful to not move directly behind the party, otherwise the tether will be passed to someone in the party and almost certainly cause a wipe.

Gigaflare is still handled the same way as before: toggle Mighty Guard on before the cast and toggle it off after the cast.

Bahamut's Final Sting threshold is 10%. Once he is at 10%, apply Off-guard, then use Moon Flute, any Primal abilities you have, and finish with Whistle and Final Sting. In reality you will do this whenever the raid is "stable" and not dealing with mechanics, and you may not even get a chance to sting at all!