Diamond Weapon (Ex) | The Cloud Deck (Extreme) Guide

Overview

The climactic midair confrontation with the Diamond Weapon is one you will not soon forget.

Nevertheless, Garlond Ironworks has provided a means by which you can relive those memories.

Though nothing more than a simulation, it will demand every onze of mettle you can muster to overcome this enhanced version of an already formidable foe.

The Cloud Deck (Extreme) is the Extreme Trial for Patch 5.5.

It is unlocked after finishing the Normal mode instance by talking to the Resistance Officer in The Lochs for the quest Duty in the Sky with Diamond.

If you have any suggestions, corrections or feedback for particular phases please let us know at feedback@akhmorning.com.

Loot can be found below.

Video Guide

General Considerations

• Figure out light party (2 DPS + Healer + Tank) groups to assign one groups to their respective platforms.
• The teleporter applies Immobile Suit, a 20s debuff that prevents you from using it again. Time your jumps sensibly.
• Decide whether evens or odds move across for Flood Ray (Limit Cut). We recommend evens (red) to the red platform, odds (blue) to the blue platform.
• Respect the visual cues for mechanics.
• Don’t sac strat for Flood Ray (Limit Cut) or Adamant Sphere (Towers). It’s bad play.

Enrage & Required DPS

• Raid DPS requirement with downtime: 85,047 RDPS
• Downtime adjusted Raid DPS requirement: 95,561 RDPS

DPS Role Considerations

The encounter has many windows of downtime that can throw your rotations off. Holding buffs until after dashes can be the right call.

Arm’s Length and Surecast can be used against Vertical Cleave in Phase 2, but only for one of them.

Addle can be used to mitigate most magical actions in the fight, although some of its better uses are for Diamond Rain and Outrage.

Tanks

Both tanks must be top 2 on the aggro table and be positioned away from others as Diamond Weapon shoots beam cleaves on the top 2 aggro players for its auto attacks.

Party Finder Macro

(Styling on the macro block has a bug. Renders legibly in game, but will be fixed to be more accurate!)

Mechanics

Here we’ll explain the underlying mechanics throughout the encounter.

Timeline

Phase 1

Begin by setting up two light parties. This will help with the flow of the fight as you will be regularly swapping between platforms and unable to swap back for 20 seconds due to the debuff Immobile Suit.

The first mechanic is Diamond Rain. This is a raidwide AoE that gives you a Magic Vulnerability for each player you occupy a platform with. A 4-4 split is recommended to reduce damage for little cost. It can also be mitigated.

Following Diamond Rain, the top two players in aggro will begin getting auto attacked. These attacks are thin line cleaves and should be taken by the tanks as they hit for moderate damage.

Adamant Purge 1

There are three configurations for Adamant Purge and each uses a mechanic from one of the past weapons out of Sapphire, Emerald, or Ruby, in addition to a cleave indicated by a claw forming from one of Diamond Weapon’s hands forcing all 8 players to one side.

During the first Adamant Purge, Diamond Weapon will only access Sapphire Weapon or Emerald Weapon:

• If Sapphire Weapon is accessed, it will grow a canon attachment on its chest and execute Diamond Flash, a party-stack beam AoE.
• If Emerald Weapon is accessed, their shoulders will open up to launch Homing Lasers from its canons which must be resolved by spreading out.

Immediately following Adamant Purge, the light party that crossed to avoid the cleave will remain due to the Immobile Suit debuff preventing them from crossing while the party without the debuff teleports over. This will be a common theme for the remainder of the fight.

Next up is Photon Burst. The 1st and 2nd players in aggro will be marked by a proximity marker that deals heavy damage. Have the tanks stand at the North end of their respective platforms with moderate mitigation while the rest of the party stands at the South end.

You will have to remain on your platforms until Adamant Purge 2 reveals the safe side.

Adamant Purge 2

Adamant Purge 2 is relatively simple as Diamond Weapon will always do a side cleave denoted by a larger danger claw like Ruby Claw.

Have the light party on the danger side teleport across and when the mechanic completes have the other light party without Immobile Suit cross to prepare for Diamond Rain.

Adamant Purge 3

Diamond Weapon will now access the unused Weapon’s power in Adamant Purge 1.

If there was a Diamond Flash (party stack) in Adamant Purge 1, there will now be a Homing Laser (spread) mechanic instead and vice-versa.

Resolve this much the same way you did before, having a light party cross when they see the glowing danger claw and then either stack if Diamond has a chest canon, or spread if their shoulders are preparing to fire.

There is one more Photon Burst proximity buster on the tanks before the phase ends. Only 1 tank needs to change platforms for this if you wish to remain on the same platform.

Phase 2: Code Chi-Xi-Stigma

Phase 2 begins with the completion of the Code Chi-Xi-Stigma cast (or Code 666 for those who are curious as to what the Ancient Greek means). Diamond Weapon will remove its armour, transforming into its true Ifrit-like form while changing up its core mechanics for the phase.

Firstly, Articulated Bits will spawn and tether to players in addition to a massive blue radial knockback that will occur on both platforms. The goal is be far away from your tethered bit by making use of the radial knockback:

• If your tethered Bit is on the same platform that you occupy, get yourself launched to the other platform.
• If your tethered bit is on the opposing platform then simply get knocked from one end of your platform to the other.

You must not use the teleporter here to manipulate your tether as you will need it for the upcoming mechanic. Immediately after the knockback resolves, Diamond Weapon will pick a platform to destroy with Airship’s Bane. Here, you will need to access the teleporters to teleport you to safety if you are on the platform that Diamond chose.

After the platform is destroyed, there will be two Outrage casts for magical raidwide damage.

Auri Arts 1

Diamond Weapon will do a series of dashes in a zig-zag pattern. To find the safe spot, once the boss faces an orb, stand on the edge opposite from the side they face, in front of the middle orb along that wall.

After the zig-zag dashes, Diamond Weapon will then hang upside down from the center and face an the North or South orb. They will dash from that orb creating a danger zone on half the platform.

Following another Outrage, Diamond will cast Auri Doomstead. This is a physical tankbuster that does splash damage and applies a long physical vulnerability. This must be mitigated and is a forced tankswap.

Auri Arts 2

Diamond Weapon will perch itself on an orb along the North or South end of the platform. From this orb, Diamond will jump down doing a large AoE at its point of impact.

If you are struck by this it will apply a vuln stack and knock you back. If there is an orb opposite of Diamond during this mechanic, it will bounce off the orb, return to its starting side and land there.

Therefore:

• If there is no orb opposite Diamond, go towards the boss.
• If there is an orb opposite Diamond, move away from the boss while staying along the sides of the arena to dodge the dash.

Regardless of pattern, there will be an orb floating near the middle of the arena. Position yourself to be knocked to an opposite corner or use your knockback prevention for Vertical Cleave.

Auri Arts 1 + Articulated Bits

Now, we have a repeated of the first Auri Arts, with a change!

This time Articulated Bits will spawn and beam half the arena with Aetherial Bullet, prohibiting us from using that half at the start of this mechanic.

To resolve this:

• If the boss faces away from the safe half, stand in front of the middle orb opposite where the boss is facing just like you did before.
• If the boss faces towards the safe half, stand in front of the orb directly next to the middle orb that is not in the direction of the bosses charge.

These safe spots are lined up with the teleport pads.

After Diamond Weapon finishes its zig-zag dashes, look at where it is facing and dodge the half of the arena being cleaved, get knocked back safely while also avoiding the Articulated Bits that will beam alternating rows.

There will be one last Outrage raidwide before the transition to Phase 3.

Phase 3

Diamond Weapon will revert to its original armoured state and will begin with the first major mechanic Phase 3: Flood Ray.

Flood Ray

Flood Ray will often be referred to by its original mechanic Limit Cut from A11S (Cruise Chaser).

Each player will be assigned a number marker from 1 to 8 for Flood Ray casts, massive magic cone cleaves that apply a Magic Vuln that are consecutively cast on each player according to their number.

This will be handled by splitting the group into light parties. While there are a few ways to do this, we will be utilising the method that covers the most visual tells and allow for the most time to resolve the mechanic.

Since the odd numbers are blue and the even numbers are red, we have them on the blue platform and red platform respectively.

Players 1 and 2 will begin in the north corners closest to the boss while players 3 and 4 will begin in the south corners closest to the boss.

Players 5, 6, 7, and 8 will wait in the middle as it will be safe from both north and south cleaves.

Once your number has been cleaved, swap places with the players waiting at the safe spot as follows:

• 1 swaps with 5
• 2 swaps with 6
• 3 swaps with 7
• 4 swaps with 8

Adamant Purge + Articulated Bits

Articulated Bits will spawn and cleave half of their respective platforms. At the same time, Diamond Weapon will do a stack or spread mechanic.

First, avoid the cleave by jumping to the platform without the glowing claw. Then resolve either the stack or spread while avoiding the bits which will cleave alternating rows. The group that didn’t teleport to avoid the cleave should then move across for Diamond Rain. This leads us to the final big mechanic.

Diamond Shrapnel

Groups on both platforms will do the same movement for Diamond Shrapnel.

All players will be targeted with a chasing AoE marker that they should bait at the far corner of the platform. Articulated Bits will have spawned covering half of their respective platforms with Aetherial Bullets.

Once your first AoE circle is telegraphed, move immediately to the nearest teleporter to go across to the other platform to avoid the half platform Aetherial Bullet cleave. When you are on the other platform, move along the middle of the platform to avoid the chasing AoEs and maintain uptime.

This will be followed by Articulated Bits reconfiguring to cleave in alternating rows, before finally ending with Diamond Weapon casting Adamant Sphere, which are towers that needs to be soaked by a player.

Next, avoid the Articulated Bits in their new configuration while preparing to soak a tower. Once you dodge the Aetherial Bullet beams, quickly move into a tower to resolve the mechanic.

After this point there are no new mechanics to the encounter. Resolve the mechanics safely and defeat the final Weapon in The Sorrow Of Werlyt saga!

A good kill time for a group will be under 9 minutes. Enrage happens at around 11m 58s.

Loot

Totems

2x Diamond Totems per clear.

Weapons

Diamond Weapon drops i525 weapons. They can also be bought for 10 Diamond Totems each with the usual exception of 7 + 3 for PLD.

Job	Weapon	Major Substat	Minor Substat
PLD	Diamond Zeta Bastard Sword	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
PLD	Diamond Zeta Scutum	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
WAR	Diamond Zeta Battleaxe	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
DRK	Diamond Zeta Guillotine	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
GNB	Diamond Zeta Gunblade	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
DRG	Diamond Zeta Partisan	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
MNK	Diamond Zeta Knuckles	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
SAM	Diamond Zeta Blade	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
NIN	Diamond Zeta Cleavers	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
BRD	Diamond Zeta Longbow	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
MCH	Diamond Zeta Pistol	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
DNC	Diamond Zeta Chakrams	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
BLM	Diamond Zeta Rod	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
SMN	Diamond Zeta Index	521 Determination	365 Critical Hit
RDM	Diamond Zeta Hanger	521 Critical Hit	365 Determination
WHM	Diamond Zeta Cane	521 Critical Hit	365 Piety
SCH	Diamond Zeta Codex	521 Critical Hit	365 Piety
AST	Diamond Zeta Planisphere	521 Critical Hit	365 Piety

Mount

• Diamond Gwiber Trumpet

Orchestrion Roll

• Faded Copy of In the Arms of War

Cosmetics

Diamond Plating is a crafted material used to create:

• Diamond Weapon Bust (Housing)
• Diamond Barding (Chocobo Barding)

Triple Triad Card

• Diamond Weapon Card

Change Log

• 20/04/2021: Release of this guide.