For those with BeneficusFollow

It's been a few months, but when I fought it, we had a lot of bodies. If you're going to try and tank the ??? needles damage, you'll need almost a full alliance in range to be safe, just to take damage. After you have the bodies to tank the ??? needles, it's pretty straight forward. Keep people alive, get blue (and red if you want atma), then kill it fast after that.

I haven't tried this, but I did think of an alternate strategy for low-manning that doesn't involve brewing, but does require everyone to have a fanatics powder temp item. You could try with a party of 6, something like mnk, thf, whm, then 2 other DDs and a brd (or a 3rd DD). Make a fanatics powder rotation, each one lasts a minute, so you'd have 6 minutes to get procs and take it down.

I did mine with about 12 people. Most of his needles aren't too bad if you have adequate buffs up. We used Shellra V + Scherzo + Earthen Armor. Since the damage can be absurdly high, rather than having everyone in range, we just had a couple of people in range at a time. Usually the needles would only take them down to about 25-50% HP. The times where it one-shotted them, even having all 12 people in range plus avatars probably wouldn't have saved them. People will die, nothing you can really do about it. Just have to plan around it.

NIN+BRD, used Migawari.

Also, after brewing Rani, if you have enough brew left over, have a party member bring it over.

You can duo it in like 25 minutes with 2 mages (we did Blm + Blm) bring a mnk for blue and its easy. Its very easy to kite if you go near the castle w/ the dolls and you can range needles. Nin + whm duo take forever compared to this and is much less safe.

That's how I got mine as well... leftover Rani brew haha

I agree with the "wait till you brew rani and use the leftover on Cuijatender" strategy.