Magician The Tinfoil Hat Guide to Bishop Horntail Micro-Optimizations

Under construction. Only finished talking about Legs/Tail and Def+, in the meantime just watch the video and try to decipher schizo brain decisions :^)

Lately I see an awful lot of truly not based bishops running amuck in Horntail. As Horntail's #1 fan with well over 1,000 HTs completed this bothers me, as they lack the thunderdome spirit and have accepted their own mediocrity. Living through Horntail isn't enough, he must be utterly humiliated by the plays you make on him.

Now this guide isn't for everyone, and you should probably take this simple test to see if it's compatible with you:

https://www.clinical-partners.co.uk/for-adults/autism-and-aspergers/adult-autism-test

You'll probably want to score a 13 or higher to accept this guide as being filled with sane and rational things to do in Horntail.

It's also worth noting that I'm not here to go over the basics, if you don't have a good understanding of Horntail already these micro-optimizations will not help you

Now to begin: I hold one goal in mind when on Horntail bishop - minimize the number of blunders as much as humanly possible in order to maximize your runners DPM

What constitutes a blunder:
1. An attacker kills a wyvern
2. You see the shield icon appear on Horntail's heads
3. An attacker uses an all-cure potion while you are agro target on Right Arm
4. Any part dies without HS

You might think I'm completely unreasonable in what I measure to be a blunder. A single wyvern? Being 2 seconds late on dispel def+? But these can all be managed with techniques and enough experience to understand and feel out exactly what is happening. There won't be blunderless runs, or at least they will be so rare as to be unicorns, but it is very possible to bring down a very good run down to half a dozen blunders.

Now to help explain the micro-optimizations I have a run I recorded, and will include timestamps for the techniques I use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJTa2vsjYZY

You'll likely need to look at the timestamps provided to understand my wacky bishop techniques.

Spoiler: Preheads

Preheads are rather simple, but there are some minor improvements to be had. First and foremost is that bishop is a rather poor attacker, even at 1600 tma you'll be fighting to reach 4mil dpm. It's better to use almost any other class as an attacker.

Right at the beginning of the video I jump down to the bottom right corner of the map. This is the location I leave my bishop when not attacking, as when you are past the prehead's throat, the super knockback attack will push you right instead of left. This means that the bishop will always remain in the corner, ready to wipe any wyvern wave that comes. I keep Genesis on the same button as my Battleship Cannon, so I can simply click the bishop client and quickly click back to clear then out. With Bahamut up you don't need a lot of magic to 1ko everything here, it's probably in the low to mid 1400s to 1ko darks with Bahamut + Gen.

But if you don't have an extra attacker lying around, there are some techniques to utilize to maximize Angel Ray damage.

1: Big Bang Hop Prehead 1 (2:50 3:07 3:14 regular, 1:52 4:33 rope addition)

Being knocked back is a massive loss. So when you see the super knockback coming, you are capable of instead opting for iframes from touching the head itself with a jump into the dragon's maw. If timed right, you are put back into position and are ready to start casting Angel Ray again and don't have to wait for the pseudo-stun to wear off. We combine this jump with Big Bang in order to minimize the amount of dps loss. In one smooth motion it looks really cool and will impress egirls.

Unfortunately, there's a small chance that the head instead opts to miss you, but there's a contingency plan. You simply grab the second rope while falling and hop back to the platform. It's very tight and in most cases it's easier to achieve while holding up as your contingency. Big Bang being castable while on a rope is very helpful for this as well, leaving a wide range of opportunity to cast.

2: Angel Ray Hop (1:46, 10:51)

If you can utilize sticky keys, they are good for weaving in jumps in order to dodge the 1/1 crystals. It also comes in handy later at the end of the fight vs. Left Arm in order to jump a knockback to land on a higher platform. If you don't have a good keyboard or operating system for jump attacking it isn't a big deal either, can replace it with another Big Bang jump instead. Or just eat the damage like a normie.

3: Big Bang Hop Prehead 2 (14:42)

It's very similar to the first Prehead but the goal is different. Your goal isn't to just get hit, your goal is to grab that second rope, as in general, the knockback will fail to send you to the correct spot and you will fall to the ground. The rope is necessary to pull off this jump. It's also a good jump for the washed corsairs as well, from mid-front you can recoil shot into head and yoink rope.

4: Wyvern Kill Positioning Prehead 2 (14:38, 17:34)

Generally, you're standing fairly close to the prehead in order to properly get off the Big Bang Hop and for Bahamut to reach. When wyverns are coming, the preparation is to walk back just far enough that the next attack won't knock you down, but close enough that you will still reach the wyverns. It's a fairly small Goldilocks zone. In general, many parts of HT will follow up a skill(such as a summon, sed, buff) with a damaging move. It's a general assumption you start to make and can position yourself around.

You are also able to tell the difference between summons and seds based off of how long it takes for the prehead to begin reacting again. All heads are unable to act in the time it takes for the summons to appear, so it's a brief reprieve in management. It is because of that concept that it is impossible for there to be more than 3 wyvern spawns in a 4-5 second window, but that's a concept for much later on.

Spoiler: Legs & Tail

24:25 is start of Legs and Tail

The beginning of the true fight. At the start you fire off a shield. If sed target is in party, you fire off the shield when you see the first sed. Generally it's roughly 50/50 on whether it fires off a sed or a def+ first, and more often than not I've noticed Left arm will do all 3 seds before the def+ trigger. Either way at the start you are watching for arm activations and casting genesis on his toe. Once all of his cooldowns are triggered you freely gen cast from toe, and await for def+ after 35 seconds.

It's when shield comes off of cooldown that I go and HS the party for Legs, as well as recast shield.

Legs dead HP Bar, 2 buffs on HD1 client, minimap partial

On Tail there isn't much to it other than to continue tracking def+ and to hop into Wings for iframes from the Tail super-knockback slam. Once Tail dies shield is immediately recasted because Horntail is sometimes weird with its agro mechanics. At 30:40 in the video Tail dies and as runners cross, it is targeting them. It happens rarely but the shield mitigates the potential loss.

Tail dead HP bar, 3 buffs on HD1 client, minimap partial

Spoiler: Defense+ centered gameplay

For the majority of the run, there is 1 timer I choose to keep my main focus on, and that is the Left Arm's defense up buff. In most cases I will tend to wait for the buff rather than greed an extra genesis, as if it takes an additional 2 seconds to dispel, it is a loss of roughly 150k damage on a single well geared attacker, and across the party will add up to be into the 600k-800k damage range per def+ missed. Genesis will rarely outperform the potential losses to the attackers DPM due to both cancels and the shifting hitboxes of the side heads. It also becomes a worse trade as more parts die. When the defense+ buff is off cooldown, you watch the arm and cast gen as it uses any other moves.

The video gives the strategy away - @time is going off every time I press the dispel button. It is a triple macro'd dispel with an @time shout tied in. I see/hear def+, I press dispel, I cast gen, then I manually type out the seconds spot reading.

(24:37)

39 seconds past the minute is my reading. From there I do a bit of mental math and recognize the next time for def+ dispel is at roughly 03:08:14. It's never perfect, but in general def+ fires off every 35-45 seconds, with a couple noticeable outliers going off 2-3 seconds early. In situations where Seduce is up, Horntail will tend towards prioritizing that instead of def+, and in those cases the time between def+ can become a minute or longer.

Going from reacting to circumstances to predictive play is how to become a top tier bishop. Having ungodly amounts of magic and HP are helpful, but to the seekers of perfection sequencing and being able to outwit Horntail are at the center of mastery. Knowing well the timing of def+ and wyverns and anticipating their moves is the beginning of becoming the sort of bishop that runners get their Personal Bests on.

In general, keeping track of a single def+ during legs and tail are rather chill. But it's just the beginning, as soon it is time for wyverns to enter the sequence.

Spoiler: Right Head: The Buildup

With Legs and Tail dead it's time to begin chipping away at Right Head in the most common party compositions. The number of wyverns slowly begin to build up and sequencing becomes the most important aspect of countering Horntail.

One important fact: It takes just over 4 seconds for Wyverns to spawn from the start of the wyvern animation to their fielding. After watching my own video I counted ~130 frames for roughly 4.3 seconds to have a precise measurement.

I'll use the sequence at 41:50 as the example for early sequencing decisions. After dispelling a Wing buff, I note that it has been 29 seconds since the last def+ buff and that mid head is summoning. The wyverns will hit safely before the def+ buff, but it is possible that def+ will apply during a genesis if I choose to use that for wyvern slaying. Instead I opt to use Big Bang to kill the wave of wyverns, as it leaves me open to the next def+ in a timely manner. At 41:57 the timing pays off as the arm immediately casts def+.

 

reserved post I will no doubt never use but want to keep anyways

 

Given most runs function at around 35-50mil total dpm within the party for body, the extra 4mil is worth nearly 10% of body run time. There's also a noticeable difference when it comes to prehead when bishops are at least attempting to use single target. I've noticed far too many just not even try to attack the head, and writing off bishop single target(generally 3-4mil) as irrelevant when it can reduce time taken in preheads by 2 minutes or more. With bad cancels it's especially good mitigation, and in one 12-man run I've actually managed to white a prehead on bishop. The damage is solid, and while this guide leans heavily into the eccentricities of maximizing runner's DPM rather than my own, I still recognize and respect the efforts of bishops to maximize their own damage instead. In practice, I probably sacrifice a good 1.5mil dpm to maximize care in order to increase runner's dpms by maybe 200-300k each. Overall it's probably a worse trade, and very slightly slows down the run, but I aspire to be the sort of bishop that folks reach their personal bests on. I don't think there's a wrong answer in damage vs. care, but overall the more effort attackers put in the more valuable micro-optimizations on bishop become.

In other completely unrelated news I've recently found out that when you're sitting on this rope you do not randomly trigger Right Arm agro at all:

It's good news for Horntail Pendant sellers as after heads are down it's possible to ensure the safety of buyers from mass by placing them here while you are fighting Left Arm. It's the twin spot of the commonly used left rope while fighting Right Arm, though it's worth noting there will still be knockbacks once people cross from right walk mass sed. It should be very difficult to die regardless from here.

For fellow DK sed degenerates this is probably the spot where I'll leave my DK for the whole run after Tail dies, as before I tended to keep him left in order to not randomly trigger arm.

To go off on a final weird tangent, many folks will tend to underestimate the value of inactive arm on knockbacks, it's probably close to a third fewer active hits(and therefore, knockbacks) that an active arm makes, which puts the value of right side on sed DK a good optimization. It's enough of a difference maker that many cleave players ought to rethink their decision to hit Right Arm at all, even accidentally with Dragon Roar, Heaven's Hammer, or any other move, as you will decrease your stance by a healthy margin, fall off, and make the rest of the party use all cures. Cleave ought to rethink many things, and there is even an argument that it is optimal for a cleave centered party to kill Left Head before moving to right side, and completely ignoring Wings/Right Arm in order to optimize for stance. There will be remarkably few attacks hitting anyone, so the MH/RH cleave is much more viable.