P12S - The Classical Concepts 1

Athena will start this mechanic off by immediately casting The Classical Concepts. This mechanic will generate a 3x4 grid of orbs over the arena while simultaneously inflicting debuffs that splits the party in pairs. Your partner can be easily identified by the same playstation marker and the green tether that appears shortly after.

Debuff	Description
	Shackled TogetherShackles two players together with a green tether, forcing the pair to be close to each other. Moving too far from each other will break the tether, killing both players.
	Alpha Target and Beta TargetAll pairs are assigned one Alpha and one Beta. These debuffs do nothing, but they are used in strategies to determine who takes which orbs during this mechanic. Contrary to popular belief, having Alpha does not prevent you from taking yellow cube orbs. Similarly, Beta can take red triangle orbs instead if they want to.

The Classical Concepts

Once The Classical Concepts is cast, a 3x4 grid of orbs will spawn. The mechanic is straightforward: after the orbs have spawned in, the yellow and the red orbs will try to tether to either a blue orb or a player, whoever is closer. If any orb succeeds in tethering to a blue orb, the orbs will then fuse and cause a big explosion, killing everyone. Your goal as a party is thus to prevent the red and yellow orbs from tethering to the blue orbs. This can be achieved by standing in between them, which causes the orbs to tether to you instead. There are exactly four blue orbs, four red orbs and four yellow orbs once they spawn in. Each person can only intercept one orb, so everyone in the party needs to coordinate in order to stop all 8 orbs from ever touching the blue orbs.

The orbs that spawn in are random, but they do follow certain rules:

• There's only ever one blue orb in every column.
• Each blue orb always has at least one adjecent yellow orb and red orb.

Below are two examples as to how the orb layout could look like.

In order to resolve this mechanic in a coordinated way, each pair must go to each column and locate the blue orb first. Which pair goes to which column is dependent on which playstation marker you get.

OX▽▢ (JP)

The preferred Playstation assignment in Elemental and Mana.

BPOG (Aether)

BPOG is an acronym which means Blue, Purple, Orange and Green. The O has been repurposed to being the circle, as there's no orange in Playstation markers.

Once the blue orb has been located, the player with Alpha must intercept an adjecent red orb while the player with Beta must intercept a yellow orb. Due to how the orbs are generated, it is very possible that there are multiple red orbs or yellow orbs next to a blue orb. There is only ever one correct solution, so double check whether you are intercepting the correct orb.

The player has a Beta debuff. There are two yellow orbs next to the blue orb, but there is only one correct answer.	The left orb has two blue orbs next to it. This means that intercepting the left orb is wrong.

If everything was done correctly, then each rogue orb will tether to a player instead of a blue orb. The orbs are resolved once the purple tether attaches to you, but do not move out yet! You might accidentally break the green tether, which will kill you and your partner as a result.

The players will take damage when the orbs tether to them, so healers be wary. Once all the tethers disappears, stay away from the orbs as they will all explode in a small AoE.

Palladian Ray

The mechanic is not over yet! Athena will now cast Palladian Ray, which signals her next mechanic. Athena will stab the arena with her two tentacles, one at the west and one at the east. Each tentacle will fire an unavoidable aimed conal AoE at the four closest players. The AoE will inflict vulnerability upon hit and the AoE will linger, meaning that you have to get out of it as soon as you can. Getting hit by two of these AoE or staying too long inside the AoE is fatal. In order to resolve this mechanic properly, each player must position themselves in a way that ensures that the AoE cone does not hit anyone else.

Alpha north & Beta south (JP)

Elemental and Mana prefers resolving this mechanic in a coordinated manner. First, the party pre-positions themselves per column based on where their assigned blue orb was from the Playstation priority. Alphas bait the cone northwards, while the Betas bait the cone southwards. Parties can decide whether they bait in a K-shape or an X-shape, but as a general rule, don't aim the cone at anyone and the shape shouldn't matter.

Relative spread (Aether)

Aether deals with the spread more pragmatically by following a few simple rules:

• Each tentacle is baited by four people and which tentacle you bait is dependent on which side your assigned blue orb was.
• Don't stand in the middle, aim it outwards and don't hit anyone.
• There's no priority between Alpha or Beta, you take a spot and hope that the others dont run towards you when baiting.

Generally, this mechanic is easily resolved as long as there aren't two people stacking on top of each other and if the ray isn't baited towards the middle of the arena.

Once the party has successfully dealt with Palladian Ray, Athena will wrap this mechanic up by casting Ultima. Heal up from the damage taken during the previous mechanics and mitigate the incoming raidwide.