Cinder Drift Extreme Guide

So? You Want To Fight The Ruby Weapon?

Guides and Helpful Tips

 

      You may have noticed in my last post, when I went over the new content added in patch 5.2, I failed to mention the new trial that was added as well. I decided I wanted to make that it's own separate post, due to the sheer surprise and enjoyment I had from this fight. So, today I will be presenting to you the guide to fighting and beating Cinder Drift Extreme aka the Ruby Weapon.
(Warning! There are potential spoilers ahead, so view at your own risk.)  

For this guide I will be going over each mechanic individually and try to mention them the order in which they appear. Some mechanics will occur multiple times through out the fight, so I suggest paying attention.

Phase 1

At the start of the pull Ruby Weapon will start the fight by casting Optimized Ultima. This is a raid wide aoe (area of effect) so healers make sure you shield and heal the party. This move will appear multiple times through out the fight so make sure you response to it appropriately.
Next is Magitek Bit, which will spawn a number of small robot bits on the outside of the arena. These bits will target players randomly with line aoes 4 times.  These aoes will give players vulnerability stacks is they are hit by one, so avoid them before they go off.
After the first Magitek Bit Ruby weapon will start to cast Flexiclaw, which will single the start of the 1st "mini phase". Ruby Weapon will then start to use Helicoclaw, which will spawn 3 large circle aoes inside the boss's hit box and 3 long yellow lines which will show the path the 3 large circle aoes will travel in, their is a safe spot in between 2 of the circles so try to be in it before the cast. As this is going off Magitek Bit is still occurring so make sure you doge and bait those line aoes beofre going into the safe spot.

After Helicoclaw and Magitek Bit are finished, the boss will cast Stamp, which is a tank buster that will give the tank a blunt resit down de-buff, so tanks should swap as the cast for stamp is occurring. After that the boss will cast another Flexiclaw, indicating another mini phase. In this mini phase the boss will use RavensClaw, which will cause cracks underneath the grown to form in all cardinal positions. Make sure you are a good distance away from them since aoes will spawn at the tips of the cracks after the cracks finish forming. The cracks will from as short line in cardinal positions and long line in inter cardinal positions or vise versa.
After RavensClaw, the boss will perform one of two moves Liquefaction or Undermine. If the boss used Liquefaction it will turn the whole arena into quicksand that will kill if you stay in it for to long. You can avoid this by standing on the cracks that were formed. If the boss uses Undermine, all the cracks will explode and form and X shaped lingering marker.
As the boss is using either Liquefaction or Undermine, the boss will start to use Ruby Sphere, which will target all players with red aoe markers for 3 hits and leaves behind mines that explode on contact after each hit. To avoid this during Liquefaction, all players must choose a crack to stay on and guide the Ruby Sphere, as they land on you, i recommend that all melee players go on the short cracks while ranged players go on the longer cracks to be the most sufficient during that attack. For Undermine, use the same positions as Liquefaction but make sure your not standing on the X shaped aoe and place the spheres neatly.

Once that is done, the boss will target one player cast Ruby Ray, a large line aoe that you should avoid as soon as it starts targeting a player. Immediately after that the boss will start another Flexiclaw mini phase, the boss will cast Liquefaction but this time around will only turn the surrounding area into quicksand leaving a small circle safe spot on the middle that the party should go to. After that the boss will start to do RavensFlight, which cause him to dash across the filed with arrow marks indicating his flight path so doge appropriately.
After the boss does its first set of dashes, it will pause at the claw marker and start to use Ravensflight Claw which has the boss extend one of its claws and start to glow this shows the unsafe side of the boss for the last 3 dashes. To doge appropriately, first go to the safe side for the first dash. After that first dash immediately sprint opposite side of the arena to the last 2 dashes.

After that the boss will return to the platform and the party will have to be ready for another Optimized Ultima and a Stamp tank buster. Once that is over the boss will cast Ruby Dynamics, which is a room wide aoe with the only safe spot being inside the boss's hit box. At the same time stack marker will appear on both healers, so I suggest splitting up your party into groups before hand to help prepare for this attack. Once both Ruby Dynamics and the stack markers go off, the same groups need to split between the left or right side of the arena since they will be targeted by tracking aoe markers.
 At the same time as that the boss will use Cut and Run, causing it to dash in the middle of the arena doing massive damage as it runs across. Once that finishes move into the bosees hit box to avoid another arean wide aoe.
Once this is done the boss will repeat the same mechanics over, but with slight differences. Do this until the boss does it phase 1 enrage, make sure to have killed it by then. After that you will move on to pahse 2.

Phases 2

With phase 2 your in for a surprise. The Ruby weapon will change into a potentially familiar looking form. This serves as a checkpoint within the fight, so if you wipe you will automatically start from phase 2. I suggest resting after phase 2 starts to have your party be completely refreshed for the start if this phase.

At the start of phase 2 the boss will cast Meteor Project. This begins a timer for a massive aoe blast that will be counting down as other mechanics play out. Get familiar with this move since it will appear multiple times throughout this phase. 
Next the boss will cast Negative Personae, which will make the boss invulnerable and party members either a blue or red de buff. At the same time 2 adds will spawn with their own versions of this same color de-buff, both adds should be attacked by party members with the opposite color to the add.
During this add phase the move Meteor Stream will target all the DPS with circle aoes, so avoid overlapping them. Both adds will then cast Greater memory which gives them a damage buff. The adds the will then either cast Iron Chariot, a circle aoe surrounding the add's hit-box, or Lunar Dynamo, a large doughnut attack that you you need to get in the add's hit-box for. At the same time the boss will cast negative effect, which will spawn 2 floating head add that will be tether to another player.

The goal of this is for the people tethered to the heads to guide them to their respective color adds in order to get rid of the add's damage buff. Make sure that other players don't touch the heads or they will explode causing the party to wipe.  Meteor stream will occur again while this happens.
After the heads have been hit by their respective targets the adds will cast Ruby Claw which is a multi hitting tank buster, so tanks should use cool-downs effectively. The boss will then cast Change of Heart, which will switch the color de-buff of the adds making all players swap targets. The add's mechanic will repeat until they are dead.
Once the adds are down you can resume attacking the boss. As this occurs the boss will cast Negative Aura which you will need to look away from the boss to avoid get confused and potentially walking off the edge. Once that is done by then the background timer will reach zero and Dalamud's Fall will occur causing massive raid wide damage, so make sure to heal and cool down effectively.

After Dalamud's Fall, the boss will start Magitek Mine, which will mark players with numbered markers that will drop placements of meteors in numerical order. To handle this use the same positions as in phase 1 and have meteors 1-7 be placed on the outer edge of the arena. As for who is marked with number 8 should position their meteor right outside the boss's hitbox so it can be used for the next upcoming mechanic.
 As the meteors are falling down one large meteor is slowly falling from the middle and will instantly wipe you if you get caught. As the meteors fall into place, the party should stand right under the boss until 8th meteor lands down.
 Once the 8th meteor lands the boss will use Screech, which will have the party be hit by a huge knock-back from the boss. You want to either use knock back immunity or have the knock-back launch you behind the meteor to avoid death. Once that is done the boss will use Mark II Magitek Meteor, which will having moving circle telegraphs which tanks will have to follow and eventually stand in to intercept meteors.
 Once the meteors are intercepted the rest of the party will have to destroy the intercepted meteors quickly or risk wiping.
Around the same time the move Bradamante will mark players will line aoes, so try to angle it away from others. Once this is done the boss will start it's soft enrage by using the move Outrage, this move will be casted repeatedly until the end of the fight. At the same time Meteor stream will target either the DPS players first or the tanks and healers in either order, so try to avoid each other.
 After that the boss will cast its final Dalamud's Fall, so you will have beaten the Ruby weapon by then.
Do that and congratulations you have destroyed the Ruby Weapon and have beaten Cinder Drift Extreme. I hope this guide was helpful to you. Please comment your Cinder Drift EX experiences in the comments below.