Blue Mage Raid Guide for Shiva (E8S)

The discovery of a second crystal within Eden's core leads to more questions than answers, and yet again, your mind is assaulted with terrifying visions upon gazing inside. You see foes previously vanquished reborn, more brutal and unrelenting than even your wildest imagination, yet your unwavering resolve forbids you from tearing your eyes away...

This is the second fight in the Eden Blue raid series and is a large step up in difficulty from Titan. The DPS check is pretty lenient if the run is clean, but it depends heavily on abusing extremely long Revenge Blast windows. That being said, this fight is still an extremely long one and requires a lot of mechanical consistency, so it's no pushover.

This guide is written assuming you have all Blue Mage spells, appropriate gear, and know how to play your chosen role.

If you prefer video format, there is a full video guide available below.

For this fight I would recommend having one tank mimic, one healer mimic, and six DPS mimics. This can be solo healed quite easily as the damage is very predictable, and it makes skipping Icelit Dragonsong significantly easier if it is solo healed. It is important to note that the healer brings a ton of utility to this fight and will not be doing very much damage themselves, so there is actually quite a bit of freedom in spell slots in terms of things that can be dropped.

• Diamondback
• Wild Rage and Revenge Blast on all DPS.
• Mighty Guard
• Frog Legs on the off-tank (healer recommended).
• Magic Hammer on at least one person.
• Exuviation on the healer.
• A Stun spell, like Faze, on one person per add platform.
• An interrupt spell, like Flying Sardine, on one person per add platform.
• Condensed Libra on the tank. Fishing for Physical Libra during Revenge Blast windows has immense value.

• Absolute Zero: Massive raidwide AoE damage.
• Mirror, Mirror: Spawns mirrors around the arena that reflect Shiva's spellcasts. Blue mirrors reflect at the same time as Shiva's cast, green mirrors reflect after a short delay, and red mirrors reflect after a slightly longer delay.
• Driving Frost: 90 degree cleave behind Shiva.
• Biting Frost: 270 degree cleave in front of Shiva.
• Diamond Frost: Moderate raidwide AoE damage that applies a Freezing debuff to two players, AoE markers that apply Heavy and cause a delayed "star" AoE pattern, "Shiva icicle" AoEs around the outside, a knockback (Heavenly Strike), two proximity-based (flare) AoEs, and chaser AoEs (Frigid Eruption).
• Double Slap: Heavy-hitting tankbuster that applies a Physical Vulnerability Up debuff.
• Shining Armor: Applies a stun to anyone looking at Shiva when the cast finishes.
• Axe Kick: Circle AoE around Shiva.
• Scythe Kick: Donut AoE around Shiva.
• Light Rampant: Raidwide AoE that applies chain debuffs to four players, spawns four orbs tethered to players that shrink after a delay and detonate when coming into contact with someone, and various towers requiring one, two, or four players to soak properly.
• Banish III: Spread or stack AoEs indicated by spheres above her head. Four small spheres means spread, one big sphere means stack.

The first ability that Shiva uses is Absolute Zero, which should be mitigated with Magic Hammer and Addle. With two 10% mitigations (and no Gobskin) everyone will just barely live, which will allow them to use Revenge Blast once they're out of Waning Nocturne.

Shiva will then cast Mirror, Mirror. It is important that she is in the center of the arena facing north for this, as the mirrors will spawn on the east, west, and north. Next she will cast either Driving Frost or Biting Frost. If it is Driving Frost, we will move to the north of the arena on the side opposite the red mirror. If it is Biting Frost, we will move to the south of the arena on the same side as the red mirror. The way I remember this is you drive forward, and biting starts with "b" so you go backward. There's probably a better mnemonic, but this one works for me. First she will cleave, then the green mirrors will cleave, then the red mirror will cleave. Once we're at the north or south on the appropriate side, we just need to wait for the green mirrors to cleave and then we will cross to the other side. Don't waste any time or try to greed too much here, as the snapshotting is significantly earlier than you might expect.

After the red mirror does its cast we will have our first major raid mechanic. Shiva will teleport to the center and cast Diamond Frost. Stack up in the center and have the tank heal everyone up to full with White Wind. This is a good opportunity for DPS to use Cold Fog. This is also the ideal time for the off-tank to use Frog Legs as they will have a substantial lead over everyone else, but it will give plenty of time for the main tank to build a substantial lead over the off-tank again. There is seemingly a lot to unpack with this whole mechanic, but there are some things to note:

• The same people will get targeted by the Freezing debuff every time (assuming no deaths).
• The tank always gets targeted by a flare, the other flare is random.
• Getting hit by both flares directly is survivable with Mighty Guard.

The mechanic basically has two solutions for us: everyone goes to the same side, or everyone goes to the same side except the tank. The flow of the mechanic from start to finish looks like this:

1. Cleanse the Freezing debuff with Exuviation.
2. Identify the safe knockback side (wherever first AoEs appear on the outside of the arena).
3. Bring baited AoEs to intercardinal markers on the arena's inner circle.
4. Have everyone go to the same side for knockback (with Mighty Guard) or have the tank go to one side and everyone else go to the other side (without Mighty Guard).
5. Heal up after knockback and flare damage.
6. Dodge ground-targeted AoEs.

Immediately after this, Shiva will use whichever of Driving Frost or Biting Frost she didn't use earlier. The tank should change her direction such that the party doesn't need to dodge. If it will be Driving Frost, face her in to the center. If it will be Biting Frost, face her directly away from the center. While this is going on, the DPS should cast Wild Rage twice to reduce themselves to 1 HP and then go back to casting Revenge Blast.

Shiva will then use Double Slap, which can be mitigated with Diamondback. If Diamondback is applied just before the Double Slap hit, then it will also mitigate the auto-attacks afterwards and no swapping or Avail tech is needed.

Next Shiva will cast Shining Armor, so look away when the cast bar finishes. She will follow up with either Axe Kick or Scythe Kick, so dodge accordingly. Once this is done Shiva will then begin one of the most notorious mechanics in FFXIV raiding.

Shiva will teleport to the center and start casting Light Rampant. One thing that makes this mechanic interesting, but also actually slightly easier, is that the orbs get tethered to the same players that receive the chain debuffs. One way this can be handled is to just have everyone use Mighty Guard, Diamondback, and stack near the center. With Angel's Snack ticking everyone should survive all of the damage. This will require two Diamondback casts to mitigate all of the damage. My group preferred a slightly different method that let us squeeze in a bit more damage, reduce the duration on damage downs after the mechanic, and still live pretty comfortably. Our method can be found in the raidplan here, and it works like this:

1. Everyone spreads to an initial clock position.
2. When chains get applied, those players move to the intercardinal markers on the inside circle.
3. The remaining four players split into two groups of two in the north and south just outside of the inner circle.
4. When the Path of Light cast starts, everyone casts Diamondback.
5. Orbs pop, chains break, everyone should survive.
6. After the second Path of Light cleaves, the north and south players step into the center tower.

With this method, all of the towers get resolved properly so the overall damage is reduced, meaning we don't need to Mighty Guard and we only need to Diamondback once. There is another method where the chain players move opposite where the orbs spawn and then kite their orbs out and pop them, so the mechanic is solvable without any damage downs. This doesn't feel 100% consistent each time and there isn't a ton gained since you'd be in Waning Nocturne for a bit anyway, but it's something your group could consider. The start of Light Rampant lines up with our Moon Flute windows, so one thing you can do is start your Moon Flute such that you terminate it with Diamondback during the Path of Light cast. This does mean you drop some spells at the end of the window, but you can use them afterwards without losing any actual uses (due to adds phase functionally resetting our cooldowns).

After Light Rampant, Shiva will cast Mirror, Mirror again and this time use Axe or Scythe Kick, whichever she didn't use before Light Rampant. There will be four green mirrors on either the cardinals or intercardinals. Everyone should have a pre-assigned clock position and partner for these mirrors, as we will want two people going to each mirror. If she casts Axe Kick, everyone starts on the outside and then moves to the inside, and then to their clock positions. If she casts Scythe Kick, everyone starts on the inside and then moves out to their mirrors, and then to their clock positions. Shiva casts Banish III which will either be a spread or a stack, but we treat it as a spread every single time. If it is a stack, the targets are completely random, so there is no consistent way to solve it. We can make it consistent by putting up Mighty Guard and treating it as a spread every time. If we do see it is a spread, we can turn off Mighty Guard early, but the movements will always be the same.

Finally, Shiva will return to the center and cast Shattered World which signals the transition into the adds phase. Separate into light parties on the east and west half of the arena, and make sure to have a stun and an interrupt on each side.

Shiva will spawn four waves of enemies throughout this phase that do the following:

• Earthen Aether will cast Stoneskin on itself which will make it significantly harder to kill. This is interruptible and should be interrupted. This buff can also be removed with Eerie Soundwave, but this is pretty useless information since it's easier to just interrupt it and not waste a spell slot on the chance that you might otherwise fail.
• Lightning Aether will reflect damage back at the attackers.
• Aqueous Aether has a lot more health than other adds but can be stunned and slowed.
• Crystalline Snowflake cannot be attacked, but has a tether to the center crystal that must be intercepted and deals heavy damage.

If any adds make it to the center, or a tether is not intercepted, points will be added to the Flood of Light gauge. If this gauge reaches 100 it is a wipe. If we finish the phase with 0, we get a small damage buff in the beginning of the next phase. Each side will have the same waves of adds, but they appear in a slightly different order.

The west side adds appear in this order:

1. Aqueous Aether, two Lightning Aethers, and Crystalline Snowflake.
2. Earthen Aether and Crystalline Snowflake.
3. Aqueous Aether, Earthen Aether, and Crystalline Snowflake.
4. Two Lightning Aethers and Crystalline Snowflake.

The east side adds appear in this order:

1. Aqueous Aether, Earthen Aether, and Crystalline Snowflake.
2. Two Lightning Aethers and Crystalline Snowflake.
3. Aqueous Aether, two Lightning Aethers, and Crystalline Snowflake.
4. Earthen Aether and Crystalline Snowflake.

When each wave spawns each player will take damage from Heart Asunder equal to half of their maximum HP, so it's important that players get healed up quickly and are cautious when attacking the Lightning Aethers. Each player can soak a Crystalline Snowflake once, so an order needs to be established on each side. Cold Fog is extremely helpful here as the adds can be a bit beefy. Short cooldowns (less than 60 seconds) can also be used here since there is a long cutscene afterwards before going into the next phase.

If all the adds have died and the gauge didn't reach 100, Shiva will go through a long cutscene of summoning Hraesvelgr before going into the next phase.

• Akh Morn: Multi-hit stack damage on the top two enmity targets that also applies Hated of the Wyrm or Hated of the Frost debuffs, which basically means you cannot get hit by the other group's stack or you die.
• Morn Afah: Massive stack damage AoE.
• Hallowed Wings (single): Cleaves her left or right, indicated by whichever wing is glowing.
• Hallowed Wings (double): Frontal cleave and knockback.
• Wyrm's Lament: Spawns a dragon head that moves around the perimeter of the arena and applies debuffs to players which are cleansed by either touching the dragon head (red debuff) or standing in a white circle that gets dropped when someone touches the dragon head (blue debuff).
• Twin Stillness: Biting Frost followed by Driving Frost.
• Twin Silence: Driving Frost followed by Biting Frost.
• Akh Rhai: Multi-hit AoE on all players wherever they were standing when the cast finishes.
• Holy: Proximity-based AoE damage.
• Embittered Dance: Scythe Kick followed by Axe Kick.
• Spiteful Dance: Axe Kick followed by Scythe Kick.
• Icelit Dragonsong: Heavy raidwide AoE damage followed by Light Rampant and Diamond Frost combined.

Throughout this entire phase it is important that the off-tank (healer) keeps Mighty Guard on, remains second on threat, and that the threat stays consistent the entire time. Mighty Guard is really only needed when Hraesvelgr is out, but the healer will be doing very little damage this entire fight so it's fine to just keep it on the whole time. Unexpected threat swaps can cause immediate wipes if you're not careful. If the off-tank used Frog Legs during Diamond Frost then there should be no issues.

Shiva opens up with Akh Morn, so simply stack up in your light parties on the southwest/southeast of her with one tank in each stack. Immediately after she will use Morn Afah. You can either have the tank take this solo with Diamondback, or share it as a group. If you take this with two 10% mitigations and nothing else you will be in Revenge Blast range. What we did instead was fully heal and mitigate for safety, and then just use Wild Rage afterwards to put ourselves into Revenge Blast range.

Shiva will cast Mirror, Mirror again and will spawn a blue, green, and red mirror on the north, west, and south. Green will always be north, but the sides on which red and blue appear are random. Shiva will then cast Hallowed Wings, and we need to dodge her and the blue mirror. Next we need to dodge the green mirror, and then the red mirror while also avoiding Hallowed Wings on the side that she didn't cast initially. An easy way to solve this is to just start in whichever quadrant is safe from the initial Hallowed Wings cast from her and the blue mirror, and then rotate one quadrant per cast in the direction of the green and then red mirrors. If the blue mirror is on the east, that means moving counter-clockwise. If it's on the west, that means moving clockwise. Since we take no damage during this mechanic, we can Revenge Blast the entire time.

Next Shiva will use Wyrm's Lament, so fully heal up for the cast. The dragon head will spawn at the north and then start moving clockwise or counter-clockwise around the arena. Shiva will cleave the half the dragon head is on twice, and then swap sides to continue cleaving the dragon head twice. Players need to check the durations of their debuffs, as there will be four different durations for each debuff. When a player's debuff is 10 seconds or shorter it will be their turn to resolve the mechanic. The way we handle this is by staying on the safe side from the cleaves, and once a cleave goes off the player currently handling the mechanic either goes to the dragon head and gets hit by it (red debuff) or goes to the puddle that was dropped by the previous red player (blue debuff). The first red player should immediately go north before the dragon head even appears. The party needs to swap to the other side of Shiva after her second cleave, as she begins cleaving the other side.

With no mitigations at all, you can have the red debuff players Wild Rage one time and the blue debuff players Wild Rage two times. When the red players hit the dragon head they will be in Revenge Blast range and the blue players will be in Revenge Blast right away. You will be able to Revenge Blast until you regen too high, at which point you can just heal up.

As soon as you are done resolving Wyrm's Lament, you should move to Shiva's southwest or southeast. Shiva will make the entire floor slippery ice that sends you absolutely flying if you move, so stand still. She will then use Twin Stillness or Twin Silence, so dodge accordingly as soon as the ice disappears. Once this is done she will use Double Slap again, and we will have our second Moon Flute window of this phase.

At this point the party should all be stacking immediately south of Shiva for the upcoming Akh Rhai cast. Shiva will spawn Hraesvelgr and then use Akh Rhai on everyone. As soon as you see the wings spread, run directly through her to the north side.

Next up we have "knockback mirrors". For traditional parties this has some nuance about positioning and mitigation, but we will just avoid the entire mechanic with Diamondback. Shiva will spawn mirrors and then jump to either the north or south and start casting Hallowed Wings. Simply run behind her, wait about one second after the cast finishes, and then hardcast (no Swiftcast) Diamondback. If we timed this correctly, then no one will get knocked off and we will all be alive. Once this is done, heal up to full, drop down to 1 HP again with Wild Rage, and get back to using Revenge Blast.

We will have to deal with "lookaway mirrors" next, but we shouldn't be taking any damage so we will be safe to continue blasting. Shiva will cast Mirror, Mirror and spawn two blue, four green, and two red mirrors. The tank should immediately bring Shiva next to one of the blue mirrors. She will then cast Shining Armor so look away from her and from the blue mirrors (this would be directly relative east/west from the blue mirror). Next we move between her and the center of the arena, but still right next to her, and look directly outwards to where the blue mirror was in order to dodge the green mirrors. She will then start casting Holy which will either be one big proximity AoE in the center or a bunch of proximity AoEs on the perimeter, so heal up now. It always shows in the center first, but look above her head to determine which it actually is. One big sphere means it will be in the center, so move towards the outside of the arena and look outwards away from the red mirrors. Four small spheres means it will be on the perimeter, so move wards the center of the arena and look directly outwards away from the red mirrors. This is also a good Cold Fog opportunity as it will allow us to move freely for the next mechanic. Shiva will use either Embittered Dance or Spiteful Dance so dodge accordingly, but both can be avoided by just moving way away from her.

Shiva will then use Akh Rhai again but this time there will be a red mirror. We handle this the same way as before by stacking in the south and then running to the north. Once we're there, we just look at the mirror's castbar in the enemy list and move to our Akh Morn stacks once it finishes. There will be an Akh Morn followed by a Morn Afah just like before, so handle it the same way. However, there will not be time for using Revenge Blast after so it's best to just fully mitigate. This is also a Moon Flute window for us, so make sure you are able to do the little bit of movement required while executing this! It's important to not be in Waning Nocturne when the next mechanic starts.

Icelit Dragonsong is the last major mechanic for us, but it is quite comfortably skippable now with optimized DPS. In general, your group will probably find it easier to do more damage than to actually do Icelit Dragonsong, but the mechanic isn't actually that bad for us. A raidplan for this mechanic can be found here, but the process is this:

1. Assign light parties to two different intercardinal directions, and within each light party divide players into left/right "pairs." Each person also needs an assigned clock spread position.
2. Stack in the center and have everyone put up Mighty Guard.
3. Cleanse Freezing with Exuviation ASAP, then apply Angel's Snack and all other available mitigations.
4. Move to your light party's side, inside her hitbox, and use Diamondback.
5. After the knockback move to your assigned left/right side and then Swiftcast Diamondback.
6. Immediately after Diamondback ends, J Kick in and move to your spread position.

The overall timing for this is pretty tight, but if done correctly everyone should survive. Shiva will spawn a red mirror at the north half of the arena, make the whole arena slippery, and then cast Akh Rhai along with making the arena slippery again. As soon as the arena becomes slippery a second time, slide directly south to avoid the Akh Rhai.

The last mechanic before Shiva's hard enrage is Wyrm's Lament 2, but we're going to treat this as her actual hard enrage. This is basically Wyrm's Lament 1 except there are two dragon heads and there is an Akh Morn and Morn Afah between some of the dragon head mechanics. There is a ton of adjusting here and it really requires deep understanding of the full mechanic, and it really is quite easy to skip now so that should really be the goal.

Shiva's Final Sting threshold is about 7%. Once she is at 7%, apply Off-guard, then use Moon Flute, any Primal abilities you have, and finish with Whistle and Final Sting.