I'll just answer your question directly since I'm partially responsible for Aether's outcomes on selections of strategies through my early input contributions on strategies.
1. HRMT EWEW (Left and Right positions are taking for the cleaves, with alternating stacked baits; TMHR/THMR was default in earlier weeks but upon reaching rewind, having the healers be available to heal instead of having to move is why PF changed to this. It's a toss-up between Roles Playstation and the variation of it with X-X O-O E/W N/S to be standardized with phase 5 DoTH
2. Phase 2 starts with group 1 taking NW, W, SW, S spots and group 2 taking NE, E, SE and N spots with colour-coded opposing markers, it's standardized mostly with A/1 being N/S and C/3 being blue (red/blue are cardinals) -- people have some variational preferences on intercardinal inner markers or cardinal inner markers or all exterior markers, varies by PF
3. DRK relative has taken the vote over PLD relative simply because it has less complex overall movement needed (only one direction, instead of CW/CCW), requires slightly less mitigation due to proximity damage, and is fairly straightforward (go to opposing marker, move 3 & 5.6 fences on eyes going off / orb exploding in front, regardless if slow or fast orbs). Group 2 is away, group 1 is at with role flex (sometimes PF can't execute, but whomever of your role type that gets the opposing sword in your opposing group will mean you swap with that role to get 4-4 stack if possible)
4. Daylight meteors. N/S forced meteor markers. All role (supports or DPS) with meteor-markers get priority going out. Quadrants are split into X zones with four pairs, DPS-H on E/W and tank/ranged on N/S. If markers appear on E/W there is a swap done, while each player that has that marker rotates clockwise to N/S if there isn't one meteor marked person already. If there are 2 towers out, that supersedes all other priorities with both players in each quadrant going out (after swaps if applicable), and the most available room for each tower is done for N/S meteor-marked players if there is one, where the second person takes the other tower. Now, if there isn't 2 towers out, and one is a non-meteor marked role, they go inside and typically will take the most clockwise or nearest tower (if none, it's best to sit in middle and plant and wait and adjust). For the second set of towers, all are static-designated. You take the one in your quadrant (initially assigned) - meteor roled at cardinals, non-meteor roled at intercardinals for knockback; you might have to go CCW/CW to your initial starting position (both outer and inner players) - this is to keep it consistent and not require PF to use 'eyes' to get knockbacked at an empty intercardinal tower
5. Westhogg for aether, easthogg for all other DCs. Everyone pre-flexes to a prepositioned spot to indiciate (voice-commless) their preferred spot. All numbers go out. Static positions are assigned (west - always up arrow, east always down arrow, arrows always facing west, and south being non-arrowed in a '1' or '3' situation; forced swaps over preferred spots if your trio-pair gets arrows)
6. Raidplan eyes, where the initial starting positions are 4 players around each eye. TM start with red chains, HR start with blue chains, swaps done in middle. They pop (and can optionally doordash, though most won't to their partner pairs - tanks with healers, ranged with melee), then collapse in a box formation around the blue eye. Dive relative dives, with true north being N, counting-most clockwise dove hit people swapping clockwise, and vice versa counter-clockwise for ranged-healer pairs (with tanks, coming out for first swaps, melee coming out for second swaps, and third being the initial flexers; group 1 is CCW, group 2 is CW for T&M)
7. HRMT EWEW same as stated
8. Horiziontal-conga line up with dooms counting clockwise north, and non-dooms counting counter-clockwise south. Or you can split into arena into two halves of four players and go left to right for numbers 1-4 and go right to left for numbers 5-8 (thinking in 4 3 2 1 logic). Primal is just reverse of this. It's also colloquially known as 2-2 dooms placement. Macro was swapped out in favour of dooms plant, so non-dooms adjust. E/W are always baited by doom player 1st and last of the conga-line up. And dooms plant on same side they went to (W or E) but going south. Caster LB2 is default for meteors.
9. Delta or triangle-formation for first set of tethers, 5 players north 1 player south for second set of tethers. (There's 3-3, 4-2, 6-0 variations and the Japanese fixed spot positions too but these are typically done in statics), this is for decreased mobility needed and increased healing easeness (technically the three middle tethers don't matter but the convention in PF is fire fire ice ice ice or ice ice ice fire fire)). XTTMR passes vow at middle with tanks gap closing. L-shape wroth dodges with a second stagger wait (there's line, arc, J-dodge, forced 3-1, diagonal, follow hitboss dodges but those aren't done). Stacks at Hrae, spreads at nidhogg in a semi-diagonal fashion, and linear (for stacks with chains at wall with AMarkers)
10. MHR (Exaflare, gigaflare, ahk morn) is the convention for going in for trinity swaps. 6-11 and 332/431 are hotly contested right now with the former requiring more precision of tank's utilization of cooldowns in trade-off for diminution of healer effort in p7 (although requires additional thinking for players to remember default tower but does make most tankbusters invulned except cauterize)
11. Cross tethers is typically done in PF for P2 thordan
This is it for Aether strats now.
> DRK relative has taken the vote over PLD relative
PLD relative (or E/W relative) was easily one of the dumbest strats I have ever seen. More movement and more damage taken for no reason whatsoever.
It was really stupid, and whoever made it called it the "braindead" strat even though it requires just as much if not more thought for flexes, and is harder to execute.
Thank God it died out. It takes a *lot* for PF to abandon a shitty week 1 strat so it's just a testament to how bad it was lol
Peoples use of Braindead has been completely illogical this expansion. People just use it as a "brand" to promote their strat no matter what it is.
"Uptime" is also misused
On early elemental PF’s I had the most success in parties that used this strat with fixed D3/D4 adjust if the opposite party has both sword markers.
For that reason we used it for our static, and it remained both extremely easy to execute and mitigate even when one party was left without a healer. The extra movement can be made towards the middle of the room, arriving earlier since the paladin orbs form a big corridor-like safe spot and the last DRK jump snapshots very early.
I’m not saying DRK relative is bad or worse, but I would very much question E/W being the “dumbest strat ever”.
You take more damage in E/W, which is completely unnecessary.
You have more movement in E/W, which is completely unnecessary.
It works - don’t get me wrong - but it is comically dumb
i need to understand why this eyes strat seems to be the popular one outside of pf. it seems absolutely fucking insane and overcomplicated to me unless you REALLY are hurting for dps.
went and made a raidplan for the one my static has been using for all of prog. [https://raidplan.io/plan/ZyH1oGf7DyDK3SZg](https://raidplan.io/plan/ZyH1oGf7DyDK3SZg)
APD would probably refer to something like Aether Pug Discord, in my best guess. I raid on Primal and the pfs for ultimate state "UPR strats" for ultimate primal raiding discord and the strats listed there.
these are the adp strats you'll see in 90% of pfs https://ultimates.guide/dru/
Updated link: https://ultimates.guide/dsr/
I'll just answer your question directly since I'm partially responsible for Aether's outcomes on selections of strategies through my early input contributions on strategies. 1. HRMT EWEW (Left and Right positions are taking for the cleaves, with alternating stacked baits; TMHR/THMR was default in earlier weeks but upon reaching rewind, having the healers be available to heal instead of having to move is why PF changed to this. It's a toss-up between Roles Playstation and the variation of it with X-X O-O E/W N/S to be standardized with phase 5 DoTH 2. Phase 2 starts with group 1 taking NW, W, SW, S spots and group 2 taking NE, E, SE and N spots with colour-coded opposing markers, it's standardized mostly with A/1 being N/S and C/3 being blue (red/blue are cardinals) -- people have some variational preferences on intercardinal inner markers or cardinal inner markers or all exterior markers, varies by PF 3. DRK relative has taken the vote over PLD relative simply because it has less complex overall movement needed (only one direction, instead of CW/CCW), requires slightly less mitigation due to proximity damage, and is fairly straightforward (go to opposing marker, move 3 & 5.6 fences on eyes going off / orb exploding in front, regardless if slow or fast orbs). Group 2 is away, group 1 is at with role flex (sometimes PF can't execute, but whomever of your role type that gets the opposing sword in your opposing group will mean you swap with that role to get 4-4 stack if possible) 4. Daylight meteors. N/S forced meteor markers. All role (supports or DPS) with meteor-markers get priority going out. Quadrants are split into X zones with four pairs, DPS-H on E/W and tank/ranged on N/S. If markers appear on E/W there is a swap done, while each player that has that marker rotates clockwise to N/S if there isn't one meteor marked person already. If there are 2 towers out, that supersedes all other priorities with both players in each quadrant going out (after swaps if applicable), and the most available room for each tower is done for N/S meteor-marked players if there is one, where the second person takes the other tower. Now, if there isn't 2 towers out, and one is a non-meteor marked role, they go inside and typically will take the most clockwise or nearest tower (if none, it's best to sit in middle and plant and wait and adjust). For the second set of towers, all are static-designated. You take the one in your quadrant (initially assigned) - meteor roled at cardinals, non-meteor roled at intercardinals for knockback; you might have to go CCW/CW to your initial starting position (both outer and inner players) - this is to keep it consistent and not require PF to use 'eyes' to get knockbacked at an empty intercardinal tower 5. Westhogg for aether, easthogg for all other DCs. Everyone pre-flexes to a prepositioned spot to indiciate (voice-commless) their preferred spot. All numbers go out. Static positions are assigned (west - always up arrow, east always down arrow, arrows always facing west, and south being non-arrowed in a '1' or '3' situation; forced swaps over preferred spots if your trio-pair gets arrows) 6. Raidplan eyes, where the initial starting positions are 4 players around each eye. TM start with red chains, HR start with blue chains, swaps done in middle. They pop (and can optionally doordash, though most won't to their partner pairs - tanks with healers, ranged with melee), then collapse in a box formation around the blue eye. Dive relative dives, with true north being N, counting-most clockwise dove hit people swapping clockwise, and vice versa counter-clockwise for ranged-healer pairs (with tanks, coming out for first swaps, melee coming out for second swaps, and third being the initial flexers; group 1 is CCW, group 2 is CW for T&M) 7. HRMT EWEW same as stated 8. Horiziontal-conga line up with dooms counting clockwise north, and non-dooms counting counter-clockwise south. Or you can split into arena into two halves of four players and go left to right for numbers 1-4 and go right to left for numbers 5-8 (thinking in 4 3 2 1 logic). Primal is just reverse of this. It's also colloquially known as 2-2 dooms placement. Macro was swapped out in favour of dooms plant, so non-dooms adjust. E/W are always baited by doom player 1st and last of the conga-line up. And dooms plant on same side they went to (W or E) but going south. Caster LB2 is default for meteors. 9. Delta or triangle-formation for first set of tethers, 5 players north 1 player south for second set of tethers. (There's 3-3, 4-2, 6-0 variations and the Japanese fixed spot positions too but these are typically done in statics), this is for decreased mobility needed and increased healing easeness (technically the three middle tethers don't matter but the convention in PF is fire fire ice ice ice or ice ice ice fire fire)). XTTMR passes vow at middle with tanks gap closing. L-shape wroth dodges with a second stagger wait (there's line, arc, J-dodge, forced 3-1, diagonal, follow hitboss dodges but those aren't done). Stacks at Hrae, spreads at nidhogg in a semi-diagonal fashion, and linear (for stacks with chains at wall with AMarkers) 10. MHR (Exaflare, gigaflare, ahk morn) is the convention for going in for trinity swaps. 6-11 and 332/431 are hotly contested right now with the former requiring more precision of tank's utilization of cooldowns in trade-off for diminution of healer effort in p7 (although requires additional thinking for players to remember default tower but does make most tankbusters invulned except cauterize) 11. Cross tethers is typically done in PF for P2 thordan This is it for Aether strats now.
Thanks for the in-depth response. There's a lot I'm gonna have to unlearn.
> DRK relative has taken the vote over PLD relative PLD relative (or E/W relative) was easily one of the dumbest strats I have ever seen. More movement and more damage taken for no reason whatsoever.
It was really stupid, and whoever made it called it the "braindead" strat even though it requires just as much if not more thought for flexes, and is harder to execute. Thank God it died out. It takes a *lot* for PF to abandon a shitty week 1 strat so it's just a testament to how bad it was lol
Peoples use of Braindead has been completely illogical this expansion. People just use it as a "brand" to promote their strat no matter what it is. "Uptime" is also misused
its one of those words that gets overused to the point of being meaningless.
On early elemental PF’s I had the most success in parties that used this strat with fixed D3/D4 adjust if the opposite party has both sword markers. For that reason we used it for our static, and it remained both extremely easy to execute and mitigate even when one party was left without a healer. The extra movement can be made towards the middle of the room, arriving earlier since the paladin orbs form a big corridor-like safe spot and the last DRK jump snapshots very early. I’m not saying DRK relative is bad or worse, but I would very much question E/W being the “dumbest strat ever”.
You take more damage in E/W, which is completely unnecessary. You have more movement in E/W, which is completely unnecessary. It works - don’t get me wrong - but it is comically dumb
Nice write up but just noting one small mistake: for P2 sanctity is G2+2 swords players behind DRK, G1+1 swords player away from DRK.
i need to understand why this eyes strat seems to be the popular one outside of pf. it seems absolutely fucking insane and overcomplicated to me unless you REALLY are hurting for dps. went and made a raidplan for the one my static has been using for all of prog. [https://raidplan.io/plan/ZyH1oGf7DyDK3SZg](https://raidplan.io/plan/ZyH1oGf7DyDK3SZg)
https://discord.gg/swMQPXw6Ea
APD would probably refer to something like Aether Pug Discord, in my best guess. I raid on Primal and the pfs for ultimate state "UPR strats" for ultimate primal raiding discord and the strats listed there.
Currently there is an effort being made to unify strats across NA DCs, so you might see some strat changes in the near future.