Phase four of Final Fantasy 14's Dragonsong Reprise Ultimate Raid is also known as the "Eye Phase." Players will need to quickly recover from phase three, which was against Nidhogg possessing Estinien. This phase is pretty quick, and some even call it more of an "intermission" than a phase. However, it can easily wipe an unprepared party.
The FFXIV raid group will want to organize a lot for this phase, as it requires soaking orbs that deal damage, switching tethers, and mitigation against some raid-wide attacks. There will be two targetable eyes to attack, and the raid will split into two groups for most of this phase. After this phase comes just two more, so players are beyond the halfway point at this time.
Please follow these links to read how to complete the previous phases in the Dragonsong's Reprise Ultimate Raid:
Tethers And Orbs
Firstly, Estinein will spawn in the middle of the arena and Nidhogg's two eyes will appear on his left and right: one blue and one red. Each tank, along with a light party, needs to split up and fight each eye. Before that though, they should make sure the entire raid is stacked together in order to share a buff before splitting up. This buff is required in order to deal damage to the eyes.
At this time there is a Nidhogg's influence gauge. Players need to make sure this does not fill up to the maximum, otherwise, it is a raid wipe.
As players attack the eyes, there will be a raid-wide attack that gives everyone the Bleed debuff. This will require healing and mitigation. Soon everyone will get tethered to either a blue or red tether. If the blue tethered players, who should be ranged DPS and healers, take any damage, the blue eye will be healed. The red tether should be on tanks and melee DPS. If jobs have the wrong tethers, they can swap them in the middle of the arena.
As this happens, six orbs will also spawn around the arena. Two will be yellow and four will be blue. These orbs will be expanding. Those with red tethers will be the ones to take these orbs because if the blue tethered players do, it will heal the blue eye. The yellow orbs will need to be soaked first and have to be soaked in pairs. If the yellow orbs are soaked by a solo player, they will die.
Tether Swaps And Meteordives
After the yellow orbs are soaked by the red tethered players in pairs, they'll have to switch tethers with the blue team. This can be done by the teams running towards the middle. Once the tethers are switched, the newly red tethered team can individually soak the blue orbs.
After the orbs are soaked, two red tethered players will get Meteordived on. All blue tethered players should stack on the blue eye to avoid taking damage from the dive and the red tethered players should avoid that stack as they take damage. It is best for the red tethered players to stand at inter-cardinals around the blue eye because there will be more tether switching needed. This is because the player will die if they get dived on twice. They will need to switch with the blue tethers after one hit. There will be four sets of Meteordives, so the players will need to coordinate who steps out to tether swap with each of the four pairs.
By now, the eyes should have low health bars. They'll begin to cast a raid-wide attack called Steep in Rage. Players will not want to get hit by two of these attacks. They should melt down the blue eye to zero health so that the raid is only hit by one raid-wide by the red eye. At this point, the Nidhogg Gauge meter is likely almost full. Players will need to kill the red eye before it hits one hundred percent. Once the eye is dead, phase four will end and players can begin to prepare for phase five.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now on PC, PS4, and PS5.