Futures Rewritten (Ultimate) Guide for the Fatebreaker Phase
This page contains detailed information and strategy about the high-end Duty "Futures Rewritten (Ultimate)", commonly abbreviated as FRU, specifically for the portion of the fight dealing with Fatebreaker.
Phase 1: Fatebreaker
Pre-fight preparation:
- Assign each person to a modified clock spot, with Melee DPS southwest and southeast, Ranged and Caster DPS northwest and northeast, Healers west and south, and Tanks north and east.
- Assign light parties made of one Tank, Healer, Melee, and Ranged/Caster DPS each. Assign position priories for each light party. We recommend Group 1 southeast to north, and Group 2 northeast to south.
- Assign a support and DPS pair for fire stack mechanics during Cyclonic Breaks. This should be a Tank & Ranged/Caster and a Melee & Healer to allow for melee uptime in case lightning pattern (explained later).
- Assign a conga line order for Fall of Faith. This order will include Tanks.
- Assign a north, middle, and south anchor for the Healers and Caster. Assign north to south "fill order" priority for the remaining DPS players. Tanks are excluded in this priority.
Recurring Mechanics
- Lightning/Fire Imbument
- Fatebreaker, or a clone of him that is performing a specific mechanic, will be surrounded by red fire or blue lightning, which determines how the mechanic is resolved.
- Cyclonic Break
- A series of protean style cleaves with partner stacks or spread AoEs.
- Powder Mark Trail
- A tankbuster which puts a debuff on the Tank which causes the debuffed player and the player closest to them to explode dealing tankbuster damage in an AoE around them.
Fatebreaker Fight Strategies
Once pulled, Fatebreaker will use a few auto attacks and then immediately start casting Cyclonic Break, the first major mechanic of the fight. This mechanic repeats twice.
Cyclonic Break
There are two major parts to this mechanic: partner stacks or spread AoEs, and protean style cleaves. For a visual for this mechanic, please reference this Raidplan.
- Separate into your assigned modified clock positions. This ensures that there is one Melee & Tank and one Ranged/Caster & Healer in each pair. Do not have pairs of two DPS or two support players.
- While channeling, the boss will have red fire or blue lightning surrounding him. This determines if he will do partner stacks or point blank AoE spreads.
- At the end of the channel, all eight players will be hit with a conal AoE cleave coming from the boss.
- If the boss had fire around him during the channel:
- Rotate between the first cleaves into a safe spot with your assigned partner. Each pair will be hit with a two-person stack fire AoE.
- A second cleave AoE will strike the same place as the first cleave AoEs. After your partner stack AoE, rotate back into where this second cleave AoE hit.
- A third cleave AoE will strike between where the second cleave AoEs struck. Rotate into the third cleave after it hits.
- A final fourth cleave AoE will strike where the second cleave AoEs struck.
- If done correctly, each player will be rotating into each cleave AoE after it strikes to avoid the next set of cleaves.
- If the boss had lightning around him during the channel:
- Rotate between the first cleaves into a safe spot. All eight players will be targeted with a large point-blank spread AoE. It is recommended for ranged/casters/healers to go toward the wall of the arena at this point. To avoid overlapping, it is also recommended that all players rotate clockwise from their starting clock position.
- A second cleave AoE will strike the same place as the first cleave AoEs. After your spread AoE, rotate back into where this second cleave AoE hit.
- A third cleave AoE will strike between where the second cleave AoEs struck. Rotate into the third cleave after it hits.
- A final fourth cleave AoE will strike where the second cleave AoEs struck.
- If done correctly, each player will be rotating into each cleave AoE after it strikes to avoid the next set of cleaves.
Note: The cleaves rotate the pattern made by the the initial spreads clockwise every time, with the rotation starting after the second cleaves. This makes it very important to be in the correct position because it could cause deaths if someone gets cleaved by a rotated AoE that was angled poorly.
Powder Mark Trail
Fatebreaker will cast Powder Mark Trail on the player currently with aggro. This buster will apply heavy damage as well as apply two debuffs to the target. The first is a physical damage vulnerability, requiring a tank swap or the next auto will instantly kill the player. The second is Powder Mark Trail. This debuff will cause the tank with it, as well as the nearest person to them, to explode in a fairly large point-blank AoE that deals tankbuster levels of damage to the players hit, including the source. Powder Mark Trail occurs twice in the phase, and each time the debuff is resolved while doing an additional mechanic.
Utopian Sky
This mechanic is a series of downtime mechanics happening in sequence while the boss is untargetable. It combines two variations of mechanics from E11S, Prismatic Deception and Shifting Sky, as well as repeats Cyclonic Break from earlier in the phase. For a visual of this mechanic, please reference this Raidplan.. For ease of discussion, this mechanic will be discussed as a Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Utopian Sky Part 1
Part 1 is a variation of Prismatic Deception from E11S. See slides 1-7 in the linked toolbox for a visual walkthrough. To resolve this mechanic:
- Pay attention to the element the boss is channeling during the cast. This will be important later.
- Separate into your assigned clock spots. NOTE! The Ranged player at northeast and the tank at east must swap positions to resolve the tankbuster debuff from Powder Mark Trail correctly. Tanks should stand slightly closer to each other to avoid the buster accidentally going to a non-tank player instead, as it is based on proximity to the player with the debuff.
- Each player should go out to the wall, and check if the clone at your position has his weapon raised into the air.
- Players whose clone's weapon is raised should run toward the middle of the room, indicating that their position is not safe.
- Because the clone with his weapon raised will do a line AoE across the room, the person directly opposite is also not safe and should run toward the middle as well.
- Identify the remaining two players who have not moved into the middle of the room. They will be directly opposite of each other. Their positions are the safe spot.
- Each light party goes to the safe spot at their respective position priority. Using the priority listed at the beginning of this guide, Group 1 would go southwest to north, and Group 2 would go northeast to south.
- Recall if the boss was channeling fire or lightning while casting Utopian Sky.
- If he channeled fire, each light party will be targeted by a four-person fire stack, and should group up in their respective safe areas.
- If he channeled lightning, each player will be targeted with a point-blank spread AoE, and each light party should spread out as much as possible using a T-shaped pattern similar to the first part of Strength of the Ward in Dragonsong's Reprise. Please see the raidplan for a visual of the spread positions.
- Return to the center of the room and spread out into clock positions again to prepare for Part 2 of the mechanic.
Utopian Sky Part 2
Part 2 of the mechanic is another Cyclonic Break. Handle this exactly as the first one was handled, but this time while dodging the cleaves, make your way to the north or south side of the arena based on your light party priority. Players in Group 1 should make their way north, while players in Group 2 should make their way south. This will ensure that it is easy to see who gets the tethers that will appear during Part 3 of Utopian Sky.
Utopian Sky Part 3
Part 3 is a variation of Shifting Sky from E11S. See Slides 9-17 in the raidplan for a visual walkthrough. To resolve this mechanic:
- A clone will spawn on the middle-north side of the arena and will channel lightning or fire. This will determine the upcoming safe areas, so take note.
- Four fire discs and four lightning discs will appear around the edges of the arena. Go toward the discs that are the opposite element that the clone was channeling. These discs mark the safe area at the end of the mechanic.
- A clone will appear on the west of the arena and cast a lightning line AoE. This line AoE will expand once after the hit, hitting a second time.
- During the lightning cleave, two players will be marked with an orange tether. There
must be one tether in each party, and there cannot be less than four people in each party.
- If one tether spawned in each group, no further action is needed.
- If two tethers spawned in one group, a flex is required. We recommend a role
pair system with a flex priority of tank, melee, ranged/caster.
- In this system, healers will never flex.
- Only the tether player higher in the priority, and their role partner will flex.
- For example, if a ranged/caster and a tank in the same party are tethered, both tanks will swap groups because tanks are highest on the flex priority.
- A second clone will appear at the north of the arena and cast a fire line AoE. This line AoE will cause a knockback effect after the initial hit.
- Each party should step into the fire line AoE after it hits in order to be knocked back between discs of the opposite element of the initial channel that you were told to take note of. NOTE! All discs explode, regardless of their element. Ensure that you are between the safe discs, not under them.
- The tethers will resolve as four player stacks, signifying the end of the mechanic.
Burnished Glory
This is a heavy hitting raidwide AoE that puts a very powerful bleed DoT on each player. Use the appropriate healing and mitigation tools on this attack because the bleed will last through the cast of the next mechanic.
Fall of Faith
For a visual of this mechanic,please reference this Raidplan. To resolve this mechanic:
- Line up in a conga line. While the order of the line does not truly matter, the standard for party finder is currently Ranged, Healer, Melee, Tank, Tank, Melee, Healer, Ranged.
- During the cast bar of the mechanic, three clones will spawn on the north of the arena. Each clone and the boss will tether one person each with either a fire or lightning tether.
- Pay attention to the order of the tethers spawning. The first and third tether will go to the west of the boss, and the second and fourth tethers will go to the east.
- The remaining four players will use the conga line priority to determine who goes where. Each side needs a total of four players, including the tethered people. The west most players will go to the west group, and the east most players will go to the east group.
- Pay attention to which player was the outermost and innermost left in the conga line going to each group.
- If the tether currently resolving is lightning, the other tether player on that side will position so the current tether player is between them and the boss. The two players filling from the conga line will go north or south of the tethered person based on their position in the line. The outermost player will take the north position, and the innermost player will take the south position.
- If the tether currently resolving is fire, the three remaining players will position stacked together with the tethered player between them and the boss. Like the fire tethers during Utopian, if the correct number of players are not in the stack, a damage down will be applied. These tethers are a fire conal stack AoE instead of a circle point blank stack, so make sure to position correctly still.
- Resolve each tether appropriately. Each side will be responsible for a total of two tethers. This is a very high amount of damage going out, so plan to mitigate and heal as needed.
Burnished Glory 2
Exactly the same as the first time. Heal and mitigate accordingly.
Powder Mark Trail 2
Exactly the same as the first time. The debuff from the buster will resolve during the upcoming mechanic.
Burnt Strike Towers
This is the final mechanic of the phase before enrage. Before the fight you should have assigned a north, middle, and south anchor among the healers and caster. This will typically be G1 healer north, G2 healer south, and the caster in the middle. You should have also assigned a fill order for the remaining dps players. Tanks are excluded from this. Typically the fill order from north to south will be G1 melee, G2 melee, physical ranged. For a visual of this mechanic,please reference this Raidplan. To resolve this mechanic:
- Take note if the boss is channeling fire or lightning while casting Burnt Strike.
- If fire, the boss will do a line AoE from north to south, and then after that AoE hits, there will be a knockback from the AoE. This is the same as the knockback during Utopian Sky.
- If lightning, the boss will do a line AoE from north to south, and then the line AoE will expand and strike again. This is the same as the expanding AoE during Utopian Sky, but this one north to south instead.
- Use the anchor and fill order mentioned above to decide which tower you are responsible for. Position so that you finish the Burnt Strike in the appropriate tower. Towers will explode shortly after Burnt Strike resolves.
- Tanks will go to the opposite side of the room from the towers and resolve Burnt Strike so that they are separated. As Burnt Strike resolves, the Powder Mark Trail will explode with a large AoE, the same as at the beginning of Utopian Sky.
Enrage
If the boss has not hit 1 HP yet, he will channel another Burnished Glory. This time, it is the enrage cast which will instantly kill everyone if it finishes. If you have gotten him to 1 HP during or before this cast, congratulations, you've now made it to Phase 2: The Usurper of Frost!
Changelog
- 28 Nov. 2024: Guide added.
Phase Guides for Futures Rewritten
Torael Valdis, or Tor for short, is an experienced raider in FFXIV who has been playing the game since the tail end of the Heavensward expansion. His experience includes multiple Week 1 Savage Tier kills as well as completion of each Ultimate Raid in the patch they were released. You can find him in The Balance Discord where he currently is active as a melee DPS mentor. He also occasionally streams early prog on his Twitch.
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