Monday, April 12, 2010

Requiem of Sin solo pt.4

All in all this will be quite a disappointing entry. I've come to a tentative conclusion that this BCNM is extremely difficult to solo without movement speed GEAR. Difficult enough that unless I discover a way to substantially increase the effectiveness of my kiting path, I'm going to give up trying until I get my hands on a pair of Crimson Cuisses (which might be a very long time). Let me explain how I came to this conclusion and some possible alternatives to try before definitively putting this attempt on hold.

My last attempt was very controlled and I was hardly nervous at all, which was something I couldn't have said about my first try. Shikaree X cast Utsu this time after the first nuke which it hadn't the previous two times. No problems, as I was calm and reacted appropriately. I had redone my macros somewhat to allow for more nuking power but I was unable to get even close to the magic 780 damage. I'm sure a Novio, Morrigan's Coat or some combination of Thunder3 instead of Blizzard would push me close enough. I call it the 'magic 780' because reaching that means you can:
  1. Kill a Mithra in 5 nukes (instead of 6) which,
  2. gives you time to convert and attempt to kill the Wyvern during CS, which
  3. will only take 3 nukes with 780 damage (as opposed to 4).
So, killing the Wyvern before the going down means you can start nuking Y right away from the 2nd ES Sleepga. This means you shorten the amount of time you have to kite two mobs, which makes things a bit simpler.

Other things of note were: Wyvern used Healing Breath as I was killing it, which made me have to nuke it one extra time. I guess it was just bad luck that it had enough TP to do so. Bind didn't last long at all this time, which would have been a problem if I was going to try and convert. However, since I was going for a 6 nuke kill, I knew I didn't have enough time to try and kill the Wyvern during CS. I might try Thunder3 next time, but not having the skill on staff or the Ice Accuracy I have from group1 merits will probably put my above resist floor.

I kited a bit differently than last time. There are some bushes and bones back to the right of where the mithra spawn. I tried using it, but even though it DID fuck up their pathing, it screwed up mine as well. There are some bones to the left which I might try to use next time. I kited in full damage reduction gear. My set is pretty decent and I noticed a big difference in the damage I took and how long my stoneskin lasted while kiting. I recorded the attempt this time and it made it very obvious that I got hit way too often. Since I can't put distance between me and the mobs until they decide to WS or cast, I get hit as many as 5 times in a row. Once they stop I'm in desperate need of a cure and don't have enough time for a stoneskin, so when is there time for a Bio or a Poison? The second thing that bothered me is not having a mob radar. I have no idea how far they are unless I do finger gymnastics to turn the camera around. I did do this, but it's not always possible due to how the camera works and it makes your own kiting path very unoptimal due to either relying on autorun or making jagged turns. So I found myself trying to cast on them when I saw they were both busy, only to find out they were also both out of casting range. I don't use windower, so no distance plug-in. After kiting for about 8 minutes I was out of MP (had already converted once) and near to death. I decided to die somewhere safe so I didn't have to HP.

Getting hit as often as I did and getting so few chances to cast offensive spells is what makes this phase the hardest of the whole attempt. Both can be ascribed to the fact that I can't put enough distance between me and the mobs. Solutions?

Kiting better
Find a way to mess up their pathing enough using a patch of terrain that you can reliably run away and get hit once at the most. The problem with this is I will have to experiment a lot to find something that might not even exist.

Hermes Quencher/Powder Boots
For 60 seconds kiting becomes a non-issue. Problems with this are
  1. 60 seconds is nothing compared to the whole duration and translates to 3 nukes if you even manage to get them off. Unless you use many powder boots, which has its own problems...
  2. I need to find time to use the item, which is relatively long (for boots), as well as deal with the cooldown period before you can cast.
Don't stop running ever
What? I considered it might be possible to just go for survival. I managed to kite for 8 to 9 minutes while trying to attack the mobs. If I didn't bother with that (for the most part) and just tried to live, I could survive unil ES was up again. I could then attempt to kill one of the mithra with gravity on. Since I know it takes 6 optimized nukes, I know I can't kill it with less that 7 or 8 non-optimal different elemental nukes. That's not going to happen with my previously stated limited MP pool unless I do manage to somehow safely land some dot's. Also, I'd have less than 10 minutes to kill Z and X's rabbit.

Before I make this epicly long, let me conclude by just saying this: I believe this is possible without movement boost from gear. I also believe that to do it, I'd need one or more of the above changes to my strategy. The first costs a lot of time for trying things out, the second costs gil (which I disapprove of since I want to make this easily repeatable) and the third puts me very close to the time limit of the BC.

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