Welcome to the second Savage raid of the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker patch cycle! After breaking the chains of Erichthonios for a second time, you head to the sewers to face the mutated Hippokampos. Make sure your head is on the right way round and you’ll pass right through this encounter. As before, you fight within a square arena and should be warned that the edges are instant death.
Be warned that raid guides contain spoilers. We need to tell you what you’ll face, after all. If you prefer to preserve the surprise of raids for yourself, give them a try first before referring to a guide. Then come back here for some help if you have trouble!
How to Defeat Hippokampos Savage – Phase One – Sewage Deluge
We’re once again just easing on the throttle until Phase Two, where the boss really starts to take off.
- Murky Depths: This is a soft-to-medium raid-wide AOE. Simply heal through it.
- Doubled Impact: This action is the dual-target tankbuster, requiring both tanks to stack together to share the damage. Use your cooldowns as well, tanks.
- Sewage Deluge: This is a heavy-hitting raid-wide AOE that you need to heal through, but it’s also the marker for Phase Two.
After Sewage Deluge, the arena will be flooded. The only safe spots are the four raised platforms and the sluice gates between them. The fight during this phase will take place here. Stepping in the flooded parts of the arena will hit you with DOT debuff that does a ton of damage in the Savage iteration.
Another change in this version of the fight is that one raised platform will become covered in poisonous sewage, making it inaccessible to the raid. Given this, it’s best to have the raid stack on the opposite platform, allowing everyone the ability to adjust to boss mechanics.
- Winged/Spoken Cataract: Some players may remember a version of this from the normal fight. The boss’ head and body will face in different directions. The body will do a wide line AOE in whatever direction it winds up facing (yellow arrow), while the head does a full side cleave based on the direction the red arrow is facing and the name of the attack. Winged Cataract will do the cleave behind the head, while Spoken Cataract will do the cleave in front, like the normal iteration.
- Coherence: This is a tether that will start on a random raid member. This attack does more damage the closer the tethered target is to the rest of the raid. One of the tanks needs to pick this up and run next to the covered platform. The rest of the raid should shield up for the second hit, where the boss will fire a powerful beam in its direction. The second tank should stand in front of the raid, because the first person hit by the second Coherence hit soaks extra damage. Essentially, the tanks should treat both of these hits like tankbusters and use cooldowns.
- Ominous Bubbling: Following another cast of Murky Depths, the boss will mark both healers with a stack marker. Three other players will need to stack with the healer to share the damage. Before this resolves the boss will further cast…
- Shockwave: Hippokampos will target one of the safe platforms, jumping onto it to deal a little damage but also knocking back the group.
There are two ways to handle this combination. The first is to position on either side of the targeted platform in two tight groups. Everyone will be knocked back in position together to soak Ominous Bubbling. It’s similar to the way Shockwave works in the normal fight. A better option is to have every raid member use their knockback defense: Arm’s Length or Surecast. This way, no one has to stop attacking the boss or worry about being pushed out of the stack at all.
- Predatory Avarice: This will mark a healer with a debuff called Mark of the Depths, as well as one random tank and DPS with another called Mark of the Tides. Mark of the Depths is another soak mechanic. The debuffed healers need the rest of the raid to stack on them. Mark of the Tides will deal damage in a wide circle AOE and knock back anyone near the debuffed players. The boss will first cast Winged/Spoken Cataract before this mechanic resolves. The healer should stay with the rest of the raid, while the Tides debuffed players should each run to one of the safe platforms.
After this, the water drains and we move to the next phase.
Phase Two – Channeling Flow
This is the phase that will absolutely wreck uncoordinated groups. It’s all down to the first attack the boss casts in this section.
- Channeling Flow: The boss will mark every player with a large purple arrow, with a Mark of the Tides debuff that faces in one of the cardinal directions. A few seconds later, a non-telegraphed attack called Great Typhoon will push everyone in the direction their arrow is facing. The idea is to match up with a player who has an opposing arrow, so when you push, you run into each other and stop your movement. This Crash also deals damage based on how close colliding players are to one another, so you need to be far enough away to minimize the damage.
The sluice gates are one marker that some players use to gauge the distance, while others use the platforms. However you do it is up to your raid (make sure to communicate) but we have diagrams for both iterations above.
Heal up your tanks at this stage, because the boss will finally cast Double Impact, then Murky Depths, both followed by Sewage Deluge. Let’s put all this nonsense together.
Phase Three – Kampeos Harma
Once the arena floods a second time, the boss will do a Shockwave on one of the safe platforms. You don’t need to use your knockback mitigation, but you can if you so choose. Right after this, the boss will cast…
- Kampeos Harma: When the boss starts casting this spell, it will mark four players with purple triangles or blue cubes in a sequence from one to four. Once the cast is done, Hippokampos will do two series of attacks at the same time. Blue Cubes get hit by the body, which will charge between targets in numbered order. The Purple Triangles get attacked by the head, which swoops down in numbered order as well.
The players marked with the blue cubes want to stand on the safe platforms on either side of the covered platform. Players marked one and three should stand on one while players two and four move to the other. This position is so that you can switch for the charge. The player with the one marker takes the first hit — both should be standing on the outside corner of the platform, with the one marker closer to the inside — while the boss charges back toward the second marker, the three-marked player rotates into the front position. Likewise for the fourth marked player.
At the same time, the purple triangle-marked players go to the middle of the sluice gates. Clockwise order from the covered platform is one way to array yourselves. Another option is to mark the gates ahead of time. Once in position, those purple-marked players should edge out of their spots just a little bit — away from the blue-marked players. They won’t have to move again, unlike their rotating blue counterparts.
If you survive this, heal up and be prepared for another Double Impact followed by Murky Depths.
At this point, Hippokampos will cast Channeling Overflow.
- Channeling Overflow: This works like Channeling Flow, but you have far less space in which to position yourselves. There are also timers. Getting knocked back into the water is instant death, so positioning is key. The Mark of the Tides arrow debuffs will be set to either 15 or 25 seconds. At the same time, the boss will cast…
- Tainted Flood: A circle AOE marker that will force players to spread out to minimize damage.
The boss will cast Tainted Flood on the players with the longer debuffs. These players need to position themselves to avoid sharing the damage with one another or the other marked players. Two can position themselves to the sides of the covered platform, while the other two stand on the platforms adjacent to the covered platforms, hugging the inner corners.
The short debuff players need to position themselves on the safe platforms to collide with their partners. Once the Crash happens, you have a little time to heal up and repeat the positioning vice versa, with the long debuff players preparing to Crash into each other, all while the other group positions for their Tainted Flood.
Hippokampos will then cast Winged/Spoken Cataract again. Then the water recedes again!
Phase Four – Predatory Avarice and Dissociation
This time around, the boss will cast Predatory Avarice (again). Two players need to position themselves away from the raid while the rest stack up. The twist here is the boss will also cast…
- Dissociation: Like the normal encounter, the boss’ head will fly to a spot on the outside of the platform and cast a huge line AOE in the direction it faces. This will halve the safe space on the platform.
The boss will also cast Winged/Spoken Cataract. Combined with the previous attack, this gives the raid only a single safe quarter to resolve Predatory Avarice. The rest of the raid should stack on the inner corner of the grate on the raised platform in the safe quarter. The two debuffed players should hug the outside edges of the arena away from one another.
Hippokampos will cast Dissociation again, halving the arena one last time. It then casts Sewage Eruption, creating three increasingly large circle AOEs under the raid. You need to stack and move together to preserve your safe space. Start in the area that will be attacked by Dissociation. After that, the boss will cast Tainted Flood, forcing the raid to spread out on half of the arena. The gauntlet isn’t over yet, though, as the boss follows with Coherence. The main tank grabs the tether and mitigates, while the rest of the raid stacks up with the off tank in front.
Heal up, because there’s another Sewage Deluge filling up the arena.
Phase Five – Coherence and Channeling Overflow
Whew! Almost done. This time, the boss performs Channeling Overflow, but mixed with Coherence. Whichever tank has the longer debuff timer needs to pick up the Coherence tether and move close to the covered platform. The short debuff players should position themselves to safely Crash. The rest of the long debuff players should stack on the safe platform opposite the covered platform.
After the short Overflow/Crash happens, the rest of the raid should stack, heal, and mitigate for the second hit of Coherence. The lone tank with the tether takes the first hit, the rest of the raid takes the second, and then you all need to scramble to get the long debuff players in position for the crash. The players with the short debuff just need to stay out of the way of the long debuff players. This is to prevent them from being Crashed into.
Finally, the boss will use Dissociation and Sewage Eruption, working like the same combination in Phase Four — just with less movement space. Once again, stick together and bait the first circle AOEs in the space where Dissociation is going to attack.
Then Hippokampos will cast Ominous Bubbling, applying the same stack markers on the healers as before, as well as Shockwave. Take care of this the same way you did in Phase One. The boss will then throw out Double Impact and Murky Depths. If you get to the Sewage Deluge, this is the enrage. Hope that you don’t.
If you make it through all that, congratulations! You’ve finished the Savage version of the second circle of Pandaemonium Asphodelos. Hopefully this guide helped. If you wound up in the wrong guide, here are links to our guides for the normal versions of the Asphodelos fights.
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The First Circle
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The Second Circle
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The Third Circle
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The Fourth Circle
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The First Circle (Savage)
- FFXIV Raid Guide – Pandaemonium Asphodelos: The Third Circle (Savage)
If you need help getting prepared for the Pandaemonium raids, be sure to check out our Tomestone of Aphorism and endgame gear guide. And if you want to get different Jobs to level 90 and raid-ready, you can use our fast leveling guide for alternate Jobs. Pandaemonium isn’t the only endgame content available in Endwalker, make sure you’ve unlocked and played through the optional level 90 dungeons Smileton and The Stigma Dreamscape.
