I found it's best to try him on cw as FT8 doesn't have enough room for a thousand hams calling at once.
Working him on 20 cw last week was a breeze either long path or short path.
Actually he is almost Antipod from me so long or short works the same for me but FT8 is crazy these days with insufficient room for all the hams calling him and as a result my only FT8WW success is with CW.
I found CW easier to work him if you use a spectrum scope and a couple of the online sdr receivers to see where other hams are calling and set up several memory channels to avoid the mess and try and get in between the Chaos to a clear frequency to avoid the mess of callers.
That's the interesting thing about FT8 -- It can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it's entirely possible to bust a huge FT8 pileup in minutes regardless of if you are the loudest or the weakest signal on the DX's waterfall if the operator just so happens to select your callsign soon after you started calling. On the other hand, you could be calling for hours with a good signal that is getting decoded by the DX every pass, but they just don't end up selecting your call out of the long list of callers.
On FT8, as long as you are being heard, everyone pretty much has an equal shot of getting called by the DX (as long as you aren't getting stepped on). Like I said... this can be both good and bad. On CW, it is much more skill and signal-based. Can you find where the DX is listening, determine which direction he is moving, select a clear slot in the pileup, and time your call right?
When I worked FT8WW on 30m FT8, it took quite some time, but I did make it through despite it being the very first time he was QRV. I believe my QSO was much faster on 20m CW. All it took was to realize he was slowing moving up on the upper end of the pileup, place my TX just above where he was currently working stations, and boom -- in the log despite the fact he was very weak.
73
Mason - KM4SII