Quote Originally Posted by iamnoob View Post
Also wtf is with the event difficulty spike from standard to expert. I can auto no ability win standard but expert 1 hit KOs my entire party....
That happens for pretty much everything, not just advent events actually. I think they calibrate the difficulties according to you upgrading your himes, weapons and eidolons simultaneously. Because raw stats, abilities and assault/elemental are all multiplicative - the difficulty spikes non-linearly as well.

AB-ing (no ability) is hard for experts and above, because abilities can make a huge difference in your dmg output, and the game is calibrated accordingly. Note that AAB (with ability) can do really stupid things like healing when everyone is at full health and cast ability dmg up AFTER casting all the abilities etc. My general rule of thumb is that if I can manually beat a certain level comfortably (no one dies except for freak accidents), then I can AAB one level BELOW with the same team. In your case, see if you can manually beat ultimate, if so, then try expert on AAB. Being able to AB on standard is not a good indicator that you can AAB on expert.

The current Python event actually makes it really hard to AAB for low damage and/or low hp teams because of how her triggers work - you need to cast all your debuffs after the nullifies are up but before the first OD to avoid party wipe. I play multiple accounts ranging from rank 30-80+, and while my 80+ account can AAB anything including ragnarok Python because she dies in 2-3 turns, my lower-ranked accounts can not AAB expert even though I can manually clear ultimate with them. What I did was manually clear the trash mobs, hit Python once so her nullifies are up, then AAB after that with all the debuffs ready to fire. When all her nullifies are down, she is actually a below average boss.

Python is almost over though. You will see similar difficulty spikes in the other events. However, since the next one is a raid, if you aren't aiming for MVP and stuff, you can AAB everything including rag and just let someone else clear the battle for you.