I've been attempting this BCNM for awhile and every time we went something bad seemed to happen: Paladin forgetting to use Invincible, party members agroing before we were ready, and in general bad parties. Finally, 2 days ago we got everything right. Our party was a smn/whm, bst/brd, and rdm/whm(me), and this went off without a hitch.
As far as preparing, I took an ether, 2 hi-potions, a meat mithrabob(for strength/attack), and a panama au lait(to counter the poison effect). I didn't even use half the stuff. All I needed was the meat mithrabob and the panama au lait.
Our strategy? All I have to say is RDM/WHM tanking. Yes you heard right. As soon as we entered I casted protectra, everyone ate their food, then I casted aquaviel. This was the signal to my party that they should spread to the side. So I was in the middle with both the smn and bst far to my left. I selected attack, so I would have my sword unsheathed, then I casted diaga. As soon as they approached me, the smn summoned Garuda, and used Aerial Blast as quick as he could, and the bst charmed a flurry first try. I sat there and just kept curing myself. Everytime I lost hate I just diaga'ed it back. First bat dropped and I still had full life, still increasing thanks to the panama au lait, with more than half mp. We knew we had won. Soon after Colo-colo died and we celebrated. We discussed how much better we had done. Then we realized we still had a charmed flurry. All that was needed was a temp log for the bst and we were set. I went to tanking the flurry held off when we got him down to a sliver. Waited to reinvite bst, then finished off Flurry. VICTORY WAS OURS, FINALLY! We got decent drops too. Ganko, platoon dagger, scroll of sneak, and bat fang, and we splitted the prizes evenly.
Did it again last night, once again flawless. We used the same strategy, but I forgot to grab a panama au lait so I had to use my ether (for Cure and Cure 2) then when I was out of mp I had to use my potions. Got much better drops this time around: ASTRAL RING, 2x Platoon Poles, and a scroll of Invisible, and a bat fang. Needless to say the ASTRAL RING might have put a strain on some friendships lol. After some discussion we decided to /random for it. I won. We are psyched to go on a few more matches, I mean we need 5 more astral rings.
I didn't think it was possible, but RDM/WHM tanking is pretty awesome.
Edited, Tue Feb 1 15:51:41 2005