Running Amok in FFXI

Game Over

2011-12-10T00:42:00.005+01:00

Yep, I quit, and it's pretty definitive as far as I'm concerned. This won't be a sad goodbye, but sort of a game review that's been over 6 years in the making.

The Visuals
FFXI was my first and is at this point the only MMORPG I've played. Though I've read about and seen a lot of other ones, I was never tempted to pick them up due to the commitment/addiction to FFXI. I picked this game over other based purely on its visuals. To this day I haven't seen an MMO that could match its art-direction. The models are simplistic but look good. The pallette is limited but the colours are so well matched that the game can offer many different moods and atmospheres. The skill of the modellers and designers improved as you can tell by comparing old zones to newer ones. I especially enjoy Porgonorgo Isle and the Shadowrealm zones which showed off some very nice improvements in many aspects, and especially plant/shrub models. Animations aren't amazingly well done, but I haven't seen better special effects for spells and job abilities in other MMO's.

Sound
Not sound effects, which aren't anything special, but the music. Square games have always had great scores, and FFXI is no exception. The fact that there is a group that can tour the world exclusively playing the game's songs says a lot.

Learning Curve
A lot of the game's improvements to low level play came very late in the life of FFXI. Early on I found the Valkurm Dunes to be very unforgiving. There were hardly any high level players around that area. Rarely there'd be one powerleveling a party and you could beg them to run across the zone to raise you at Selbina zone-line, because you got killed by a Goblin Smithy for the 10th time and didn't want to walk back from San d'Oria. Though it gave a sense of adventure, there was a lot of frustration and time spent GETTING to the fun and very little time having the actual fun. Transportation got better and a lot had to do with leveling up past a certain point. So, it was just the first time going up that was really hard, the second time you had an easier time.

As expansions were released teleports were added and slowly traveling was no longer a huge chore. The game became much more enjoyable as these things were introduced, which made you wonder what the point was of not having htem before.

Early End-game
I didn't experience much of this becauss of leveling slowly while also joining the game later than most. Navigating Sky was an important skill, I was told, and I made it a point to get the maps and learn my way around soon after getting access. However, I was one of the few. So what ended up happening was people dying and needing help getting to the rest of the group. This cost a lot of time and when you finally got to the trigger mobs, it was a matter of fighting for claims. Let's just say... it sucked.

Dynamis runs I did early on weren't that good, and later on when I ran them myself I understood why. Too much coordination is needed and very few people take direction well. The system isn't bad, in fact, it's a nice challenge. However, the majority of the player-base wasn't fit for it. It was technical, certain jobs and roles were ESSENTIAL, which meant anyone going afk in the 2+ hours of the event could potentially ruin everything.

Sea had all the navigational issues of Sky (and then some) with worse drop rates and overall less appealing rewards. Limbus on the other hand was a sign of good things to come. Once you knew what to do, a small balanced group could clear any zone and you could get your hands on some very nice drops off Omega/Ultima while having fun trying to clear the zone in record time.

Aht-Urghan and HNM's
AU expansion brought assault which IMHO is one of the best events in the game. The missions were very diverse and not all combat-related. It required teamwork and knowledge without having a ridiculous time-investment. Salvage was a good event after they introduced the starting crates. After that the only reason I didn't do it because of the notoriously bad drop rates, cost of Imperial Wootz, but most importantly: lack of enough skilled friendly players to reliably beat the bosses. The EU playtimes weren't the best and after I finished college I couldn't play with NA's anymore. Also Kujata and later Valefor were pretty crappy servers.

Having camped some Fafnirs (and fought it twice, omg!) I had enough of HNM's in no-time. Camping Aspid was arguably worse, but I didn't do much of that. I didn't get to fight Hydra until I did the tier10 assaults, but my LS did get Cerberus a few times. Being on Stun duty for GoH was pretty exciting, I'll admit. I never fought Tiamat, but... killing Jormungand with Dreamcatchers was a very proud day for me. Somehow that undesirable monster was considered one of the toughest fights after Vrrtra. AV was still considered unkillable at the time.

Wings of the Goddess
Campaign gave me hope of leveling jobs other than THF, RDM and PLD. It was a good event at the time, and made a lot of solo play possible that wasn't before. However, the mistake in that system was its complexity and unpredictability. You had to stay in town to know when battles were going to take place, but then you'd be a half hour early. If you only moved out when you saw battles on your map, you'd often be too late to get a meaningful reward. Ops were unrewarding (not at first, but the nerfed them). The complexity was in how players could affect influence and nation strategy. Nobody cared enough to figure it out. All in all it was a good expansion, but a bit disappointing after ToAU.

Abyssea
I liked it. Let me start by saying that. Fights became about knowing HOW instead of bringing as many people as possible. Bards were no longer "needed". BLM's became super-useful again after a long period of zergs and SAM+WAR-onry exp parties. Moving in the direction of low-manned events was a good thing IMO. The rewards were great. Huge improvements over what was available before, but not only that... everything was attainable. Nothing seemed impossible to get. Even Empyrean weapons became a dime a dozen.

Missions and Story
The best moments in the game were doing and beating missions with friends. I had the best time clearing all assaults, finishing CoP, ToAU and WotG missions. Even clearing all Dynamises was a big achievement to me. Doing them with friends was the biggest reason for enjoying them. I don't regret the hours I spent doing those, as opposed to the many lost hours LFP, camping NM's or walking from place to place.

Why I stopped
So many people quiting and playing less and less tends to make the game less enjoyable. I still had things I wanted to do, but I I'm ok with leaving them undone. It's just a matter of silly principle. It's a good but flawed game. I'm glad I played it, I'm just sad I played it SO MUCH.

I'm not going to say good-bye or thanks, that's too cheesy. I'm still around, I'm just doing other things now. I DO want to say thanks to anyone that read this blog. Keeping this blog was one of the funnest things about FFXI. Going all into theory and actually being asked for advice about equipment and strategy made me feel less guilty about nerding out on the game.

Awesome Music Tip: FINAL

LONGEST WEEKEND Update

2011-10-14T08:42:00.007+02:00

Since I called some of my older entries "weekend update" I thought I'd continue that trend. So I've kept up my almost daily ~2 to 3 hour playtimes and got a couple of old goals done over a longer period of time. For one..

I haven't used it much outside of the initial "omg I need to try the WS out right away" testing. I pulled a bunch of mobs for Shield Mastery to feed me TP and wailed on Cuijatender. The WS didn't do much damage and the light SC was reduced as well. I ondly managed to get it between 60 and 70% before dying. Wanted to give it a go in Attohwa, but couldn't find a free NM to try it on. It's a little bit anti-climactic, but I'm still very happy I have that ridicularge sword. Almace on RDM could be pretty good, but I can't get the most out of it that way. Leveling BLU is such a chore though...

I've been doing WoE off and on since the last version update. I'm up to 66 Devious Die for upgrading my Daka (dagger). I only obtained 6 of them myself, the rest were all bought for 100k or less. They're common from Flux 11, but fewer and fewer people do WoE, which means people rarely have the confidence they'll beat Flux 11. They still do 9 quite frequenbtly, but I've been focussing on 7 to get more coins. I got enough for a g.axe, but I'd really like to make a gun for access to Wildfire.

I leveled DNC to 95 to make better use of this Rudra's Storm and because I wanted to stop complaining about how DNC is a better soloist and DD than THF and just jump on the train instead. The DNC train. It's a smooth ride. Soloing a darkness skillchain with two crit hit Rudra's is a thing of beauty. I now understand much better why people say mobs don't have enough HP for it to be worthwhile, usually. NM's on the other hand, I love stabbing those. I have 3 AF3 pieces left to +2, but other than that I got all other pieces I need for TP and WS. A lot was inherited from THF. I can recommend anyone that enjoys THF to pick up DNC unless their principles won't allow it.

I have to say Ochain still seems years away at the rate I'm going. Competition for VNM's is usually pretty high during my normal playtimes. At the very least SE can make T3's repop in 10 min instead of 20. Once someone's worked their way up to a T3 abyssite, why the hell would you need to limit them AGAIN? Also, the rate at which T2 abyssites convert is low enough that you can go on some pretty bad streaks. I was 0/8 two abyssites ago, of which 5 were Gamayun solos. That's a long enough fight to make you really pissed when it doesn't change color. I found someone to team up with, but that means halving your droprate (due to splitting 50/50) and it's not like being with two people doubles your efficiency.

I'm currently without an LS, but still playing and somewhat enjoying the game thanks to some friends. We did some Dynamis which turns out to be fun!! I hadn't done it since they changed cities and northlands. I read about the changes and never thought it'd be fun, but it kind of is.

Awesome music tip #7

Chione NIN solo

2011-09-13T10:04:00.006+02:00

Chione is a popular mob due to the higher drop rate of Colorless Souls off Ogopogo. It's often camped and due to the random nature of T2 to T3 conversion you could be out there a while camping against multiple people. On Valefor it doesn't seem as bad as other servers, from what I've heard.

I blogged about trying it on THF/DNC before. It went pretty badly. I used a ton of meds but couldn't overcome the frequent nukes at low HP. After that I did it a few more times with other people and I learned more about the mob. Running backwards in first person, for one, was my favorite way of dealing with Ice spikes. When duo it's really not necessary and just slows you down, but it was something I was determined to use in any future solo attempt.

I saw a BLU do this evasion tanking. It was a pretty smart move to rely on spells to damage it when one of its own spells is incoming. You can Head Butt and interrupt its casting early on when the casting time is not as fast (at around 10% HP its spells start reaching the unstunnable). So at low HP a BLU could make a big light SC to avoid stretching out the last bit.

So, yesterday I gave it a shot on NIN/DNC with Razed Ruins, Mounted Champion and Future Fabulous Atmas. Kiting it backwards meant I only got hit by Ice Spikes once or twice due to running into terrain or being locked from Curing Waltz. It took about 3 Waltzes to recover from Heavenly Strike and about two from Blizzaga3. Freeze2 never hit, but it could have happened. later on while recasting. I saved TP for the last 50% of the fight so I could recover more easily, but I sat at 300% TP for quite a bit, so it doesn't seem very necessary. I tried to make one set of shadows last for all melee between its spells. If I recasted more than that I'd spend a lot of time standing still and not damaging it. I needed to melee in an evasion set for that to work most of the time. For future attempts I'll try to mix and match to make a compromise DD/evasion set.

It starts to cast much more frequently at low HP. So it's not just casting time, but also recast time that is shortened. Unless it starts to very heavily favor Blizzaga3, you should be ok. The amount of damage is easily recovered from through Waltzes and you always have meds to back you up. Paralyze from spikes did proc somewhere late on, but I was so busy recasting shadows and maneuvering that by the time I got around to Healing Waltz, it had already worn off.

During backwards kiting I stumbled upon a few possible pinning spots. Unfortunately they were in high traffic areas so I wouldn't attempt to use them. Especially with all the competition. It took about 18 minutes start to finish, which I don't think is all that bad. Since all three T2 Heroes VNM seem soloable (though Koios being by FAR the easiest) I'm a little but more hopeful about gathering Colorless Souls. Since I could get away with only bothering people for the T3 and gather up to 3 different pops on my own. I'd be completely independent with a second account, but that's not happening.

Job Adjustment Wishlist

2011-08-17T09:49:00.007+02:00

Shut up. It's my blog.

THF aka Ranger wannabe
I want:

higher damage bolts for ranged DD'ing
TH upgrades to be able to proc on ranged attacks
Trick Attack to work on ranged attacks
more debuff bolts like stun and paralyze additional effects
better bloody bolts for recovering HP when soloing
critical hit guaranteed from any direction with Sneak Attack sacrificing the DEX modifier when not behind a mob
Mug to work for cruor
Gilfinder to work for cruor
Steal to obtain temporary items (always) instead of regular items, making it no threat to game economy and much more useful.
Despoil to take the place of steal for those few places where getting an item is still preferrable
Perfect Parry/Evasion or something like Third Eye to 100% evade a single physical attack

RDM aka don't hate the player
I want:

Haste II (approx 20% Haste)
an enfeebling spell to lower a mob's Magic Attack
water-based spikes spell (bubble spikes/armor?) with strong attack-down or STR down effect
a Magic Accuracy bonus from Saboteur
native access to drain and aspir
a job ability that mimics accession/manifestation
rebalancing Phalanx II to comensate for above adjustment
enfeebling spell to lower damage resistance (PDT/MDT/DT) kind of like what Tomahawk does
BLINK!!!! Improve the spell by reducing casting time and get more shadows depending on enhancing skill. At least make it somewhat similar to Occulation

SAM aka I want to be invincible!
I want:
Seigan tanking to be somehow improved (perhaps gaining TP from counters or anticipated attacks)
... that's it. Seriously, the job is really strong just not desirable.

PLD aka I don't have an Ochain or Aegis
I want:

not to be made/broken as a viable tank by having/lacking an Empyrean or Relic shield
not to feed mobs way more TP by getting hit than any other job does evading
Flash's effect and accuracy to be improved
damage dealing potential to be improved while single wielding a sword/shield combo (occasional counter when blocking an attack?)
more Shield Mastery
way better Defense Bonus traits. Though this may be broken for normal mobs, NM's usually hit many times harder.
new divine magic nukes
better Magic Attack gear or give us traits for the above item
reduce Divine Emblem recast
Cover to be self targeted and anyone standing behind me gets covered
A shield-block stance. At sacrifice of offense and healing abilities (Slow +100%?) a 100% block rate for a short duration. I'm thinking as a countermeasure for Hundred Fists or a predictable TP attack, filling up the gap between Reprisals and making Tower-size shields more useful.

So there. Now I can go back to being disappointed by the actual adjustments.

Leveling Ninja and Gamayun solo

2011-08-15T15:35:00.011+02:00

Ninja
The journey I took to leveling ninja involved getting it up from 48 leeching. Pulling in an Altepa party at level ~70 (which went surprisingly well with some random evasion gear). Pulling in a BLU burn leech party from lv 85 to 88. That last one was pretty awesome as I got to use Danzo sune-ate and some more THF-inherited evasion gear to pull all the Tauri in Vunkerl comfortably with only 2 regen Atmas. At 88 I took a break and recently I started skilling up my Katana and Ninjutsu which got me enough exp to break 89, which is where I'm still at right now.

I got me Ninja Chainmail, because it's still very good to TP in and got me Iga legs +2 thanks to some stones I had stored up form many Sobeks. I finished off Iga feet thanks to Argonar and soon after the +2 thanks to Cyrille and Kingcem. My TP set is pretty decent with the exception of still missing Iga head. Lots of other pieces are leftover from other jobs. Yesterday I even got me Iga Erimaki (the neck piece) which makes it look like everything is coming along nicely. However, there is a huge gaping hole in my TP gear where a main-hand Katana should be. I'm thinking about an evasion Sekka+2. Other than there's Oriandori and the new Katana from Dynamis Windurst. that I have a Kamome and Hiwa until I ding 90 at which point I have a Kogara. As cool as two black kunai models looks and as awesome as low-delay weapons are, I will still feel really gimp doing Blade: Jin in a 40 DMG weapon.

Speaking of Blade: Jin. That is quite a disappointment coming down from Evisceration. I almost want to main-hand Twilight Knife at this point. With capped dagger merits and no Blade: Hi, it might not be so bad. An amazing piece of gear if you don't have Blade: Hi is Iga Ningi +2. Stats galore for WS, and so much so that it's sometimes better than Ninja Chainmail to TP in, though I'd have to run the numbers to exactly when and by how much. Right now the numbers are very variable and I've WS'd as low as 400 and as high as 1.8k while skilling up (only had RR for damage at the time). The WS set is thrown together like most other stuff, but I wouldn't call it "bad". Some notables: Aias Bonnet, which carries over. I've also been using Rager Leggings cus they seem intuitively better than anything else I have thanks to uncapped Katana skill. Necklace is Asagaya's, though it should be Breeze Gorget, which is in storage. Pants are Tumbler Trunks. Back is Atheling. Belt is Anguinus. Body is (don't laugh) Byrnie+1. It's a crappy piece for Jin, but I'm really looking to save inventory and I don't have anything better at the moment. Ninja Tekko +1 seem really nice for Jin, but no way I'm going to spend time on that! Gimping it up!

The biggest reason for leveling NIN was wishing I could sub NIN and DNC at the same time while playing THF. It sounds strange, but a lot of THF's want to play like DNC and NIN. SE won't really let them, by giving them no (native access to) Stun, reasonable means of recovering HP, debuffs and damage increasing abilities that apply to solo or tanking situations. I honestly think they could all be solved by giving THF exclusive access to a new set of strong X-Bow ammunition, but that's just because I'm nostalgic for the days when X-Bows were a THF staple and very useful. Acid bolts are still very useful when pulling but that hasn't been relevant for me in a long time. A guaranteed critical hit from any direction that also works on WS sounds like something THF should have had a long time ago and now DNC and soon WAR will be able to do this. I'm digressing. My NIN was meant to solo stuff I couldn't on THF and where TH didn't matter as much. To put it plainly: VNM's.

Gamayun Solo
After all this talk about NIN you might expect me to talk about how I used my freshly leveled/geared NIN to take down Gamayun. However, I used THF. I decided that my THF is so much better geared than NIN at this point that it's still the better choice. Assuming debuffs wouldn't land on NIN and that meds would cover damage taken from Aerial Blast I went out last night to give it a shot.

There was no competition for it. It was hanging out around its endpoint among the Sinister Siedels. The first fight I had most filters on so I couldn't count shadows using log messages. I played it safe for the most part. I recast shadows when I hit 1 shadow despite the frequent double attacks. Gamayun seems to have normal old-world attack speed (240 delay) unlike a lot of new NM's. Evasion from two Kila's was enough to seemingly cap evasion and tanking was comfortable. The few times I did take melee damage it was around 250 per hit with a bit of enaero damage on top. Mounted Champion made up for that comfortably.

Gamayun took very low damage from melee. Crits (with only RR for damage) were averaging around 50 and WS around 500. I used some drinks the first fight to speed it up and they made a big difference, but didn't last all that long. I don't know if it's just piercing damage or all physical damage in general, but the defense/resistance seems higher than Koios or Chione.

Aerial Blast did 1609 damage exactly each time. I had Future Fabulous Atma and was fulltiming Twiligh Torque and Defending Ring. Accounting for those the unmodified damage is upwards of 2800. Which was more than my HP pool at the time. Damage taken from AB could have been regenned. However, to be safe you'd have to stop feeding it TP until you could survive a second AB. Instead of doing that I used meds. Both fights it only used AB three times and Whispering Wind once. With bad luck it could really drag out and become an epically long fight.

NIN would be better at this if it was equally skilled/geared, but right now it's not. I'm still assuming that NIN is needed to solo Chione and that THF can't do it reliably. I might have to go out and try again before making up my mind.

Empyreans Ease and Popularity

2011-07-29T11:13:00.014+02:00

The 10th Vana'diel Census confirmed what we all already knew, that Empyrean weapons are far more numerous than Relic weapons and of course the disproportionately difficult Mythic weapons (I hate it when people call them Mystics...). They take so much less time to bring to a usable level than relics and mythics that it's hardly a surprise.

Time
On top of the overall faster acquisition is the fact that Abyssea time was not and certainly is not a limiting factor anymore. That means that you're almost always able to work on your Empyrean for as long as and as frequently as you're able to play FFXI. Technically if you consider farming gil to buy currency equal to working on your relic/mythic then the same could be said for those types. However, one of the most efficient ways of obtaining gil IS farming currency, so it's not exactly in the same league.

Difficulty
The seperate paths of Empyreans have notably differing levels of difficulty. For the weapons the trophy stages are:
Glavoid - Itzpapalotl - Orthrus (Dagger, Great Axe)
Chloris - Ulhuadshi - Dragua (H2H, Polearm, Scythe)
Briareus - Sobek - Apademak (Sword, Katana)
Fistule - Bukhis - Alfard (Axe, Bow, Club)
Carabosse - Cirein Croin - Isgebind (Great Katana, Gun, Great Sword)
Kukulkan - Sedna - Azdaja (Staff)

Since the instrument and shield don't have NM and VNM stages their difficulty is different, but for those:

Iron Plates - Colorless Souls - Azdaja/Apademak (Shield/Harp)

For weapons the La Theine path is generally considered the easiest overall path and Tahrongi the hardest. I agree with that consensus and would add that both Carabosse and Cirein require few people to kill and can both be solo'd. Carabosse would take a long time, but it can be done. For shield/harp I'd consider them overall to be harder despite having fewer trials, because of the VNM system which artificially creates more competition and forces a longer time to completion unless you get a lot of help/extra T3 pops.

Soloing
Yes, you could buy trophies from groups that don't need them, but with the exception of Fistule, Cirein and Briareus there are no easy ways to get Empyreans solo (if that even counts as solo) unless you brew everything. If you have trouble getting help then your best bet is farming the popset yourself and trying to trade upgrade items for help. I don't know if the "[NM] farm. Trophy: X. 1/?" shouts really work. I imagine you'll have a hard time getting competent helpers since most dedicated players will have the majority of their AF3 upgraded.

As for brewing. Cruor farming is pretty fast with 2 or 3 people. Enough that you could get 100k+ in a short evening of play. Some NM's are easier to brew than others, but if you really had to you could manage doing it all completely solo. It'd take you a long time of hardcore cruor and popset farming, but the fact that the Abyssea system makes it possible to be 100% independent if you had to, makes a big difference.

Walk of Echoes changes and FFXI rewards systems

2011-07-27T09:10:00.009+02:00

From the Official Forums:

Q. If you fail to clear the area will you receive any reward at all? Will it be like campaign union where even though time runs out you will still get a treasure chest after you have been evaluated?
A. There will be no reward if you fail to clear the area.

Q. I’d like to know whether the brown treasure casket that everyone can lot on upon clearing an area will be removed or if they will remain.
A. It will be removed. Think of it as all the items up till now will be either added or taken away from each player’s rewards.

As far as I know there currently hasn't been a definitive decision about making WoE a closed area or keep it open like it is now. Initially they wanted to close it off, but due to the amount of feedback on the Official Forums they decided to have a vote. Regardless of that point they will be making it so that NOT clearing an area won't give you any rewards. Forcing people to clear the area will probably mean forcing some type of cooperation/planning/strategy.

I'm all for strategy and planning, but I'm not eager to have to gather people against their will to do this event. There is nothing in it for anyone except a few rare situational pieces of gear and of course coins right now. So you'd think the obvious route would be to make WoE appeal to a larger audience. I think it's only natural that they add new and interesting drops to draw more people to the event than just those after upgrading their knock-off Empyrean. I can only hope that they do a better job at it than Dynamis. Although the new weapons and accessories that drop off the Arch bosses are good. The main draw of Dynamis is still the currency. I'm sure that I am not alone in thinking that the drops are not enough to get someone in there if they don't care about currency/gil.

A personal reward at the end of the battle sounds like voidwatch, and we all know how happy poeple are about THAT system. That was sarcasm. Getting something you don't want isn't so bad. Seeing someone ELSE getting something they don't need and you DO (desperately) want is quite a bit more painful. FFXI and other MMO's have the bad habit of giving you a chance at something after you've completed a challenge. If you win a race/challenge in the real world, you generally know beforehand what the prize is. It might not be why you're competing, but it's not a gamble. The winning team of any sport at the end of the season gets a bonus in their paycheck, not a Powerball lottery ticket (maybe as an extra!). I understand that developer don't want the very best rewards to be too easy to obtain, but they seem to re-forget the lessons they learned in the past.

Remember Assault Points? You had to do a bunch of assaults before having enough points to get your reward with varying prices. Ichor from Einherjar worked the same way. These were great systems because they allowed you to save up points to be spent on the EXACT thing you wanted, not a random thing. Although there are problems with the Empyrean trials (mostly just the large differences in difficulty and the crappy VNM system), they are essentially the same slow progression of saving up trophy items like they were points. Over the course of 50 items the relatively high droprate evens out. If you made each stage a single trophy that had a 1 in 50 chance of dropping, you'd see a much larger variation of streaks in the playerbase. Some people would go 1 for 1, while others could take 100+ turns. Where is the sense/logic in that? That is in essence what a large part of FFXI's reward system STILL is. I got a defending ring recently. Yay me, but what's the point of making such a strong and desirable item so varyingly difficult to obtain? Depending on your "luck" a relic is more attainable. Mog Bonanza rank1 seems to agree. The same varying results applies to the conversion of NQ to HQ pops.

To top it all off, SE's random number generator seems very prone to streaks and "favoratism". I'm not knowledgable enough on statistics to know if you could even prove such a theory, but it does seem like more than just an anecdotal claim. Tiny probability combined with large time investments per iteration do not a good rewards system make. Please developers, let me save up for my rewards. I don't expect it NOT to be a grind, it's an MMORPG after all. I just want some light at the end of these tunnels.

Defending Ring Get!

2011-07-25T10:04:00.008+02:00

Last week Thursday I had planned with 3 other people to do a few KSNM 99 battlefields. I personally did not want to do Turtle or Behemoth because the chance at HQ is so low and the drops off the NQ Kings were of no interest to me. Since I still want a Hecatomb Cap and a Ridill is still a fun toy I wanted to do the Wyrm. However, Korhil needed tongue and egg for Black Belt and a minuscule chance at a Defending Ring is better than no chance at all.

KS99
The setup was WHM (Cyrille), SMN (Korhil), BRD (Jesseblue) and a THF tank (me). Without having used the Scherzo + Earthern Armor before, all I knew about it was how well it worked on the tougher Voidwatch NM's.

I hadn't done this KS99 before at all, so knew very little about it. It casts pretty frequently and so keeping the Scherzo/EA up was pretty important. Sometimes they'd go down just as Meteor hit, but usually at least one of them was up. At just under 1.4k HP I was dropped as low as 200 HP on regular Meteors. I wasn't at max HP at the time as I believe the highest damage for regular Meteors I saw was around 800. Only one of the "final" Meteors killed me and. The others were long gone and EA wore off a second or two before the spell connected and so it was really flukey.

The battlefield clear times were around 11 minutes. I used Red Curry Buns and Aura Stole its warcry for some nice Attack numbers. I was a bit surprised to see a 1.8k Dancing Edge outside Abyssea. I used two evasion Kila's and evasion seemed capped, I don't know how much less I could have done with, but as it stood one cast of Utsu: Ni would almsot always las until the next Meteor hit.

NQ Behemoth
I loved blazing through it at max speed. Everyone joined in and meleed as it was really easy. I tried getting TH upgrades but iirc never ended up with more than TH7. I knew the droprate on HQ pop was low so I was really happy to see one Savory Shank drop.

King Behemoth
It seemed to cast less frequently than the KS99 version and did perhaps a little bit more damage per spell. We fought it the same way as the KSNM version and the results were the same as well. It had a bit more defense and HP and the fight took about 17 minutes (I used Mug timer as an indication).

Then the unexpected happened and a Defending Ring dropped! Since it was Korhil's pop we kind of waited for him to make a decision. We hadn't discussed item distribution at all beforehand since we never expected this. Korhil was the only one there for the BB item so he got it naturally. He suggested we freelot the ring (he's a hero) and I won the lot.

Defending Ring
What it means for my RDM PDT set is that I get up to 50% without using hands, legs (were already obsolete), head and feet slots. My HQ darksteel pieces for those can probably go into storage now as I don't use them on other jobs. That means I get to keep movement speed and two tics of refresh while running away or some melee gear while face tanking. Not to mention I obviously replaced the Dark Ring in my idle set with it, which makes my idle set 41% to 47% PDT (at night) and all I need to do to hit the 50% cap is swap in a Darksteel Harness and augmented Dark Ring. Since I dont'use spellcast I don't think it's worth making a different set for nighttime.

For THF it means 23% MDT (crappy thrown together set) and for PLD it's pretty much fulltime piece. My macros are still pretty incomplete for PLD since 90% of what I use it for is AoE farming.

I don't know if the drop rate was adjusted and you can imagine that at this point I don't really care. I hope it's still rare as hell so that I can feel special! Still: good luck to anyone trying.

Apademak trio

2011-07-11T12:43:00.011+02:00

I finally got the chance to use up the Apademak pop I had been holding on to for months. Since Kingcem has his Kannagi now and could use the horns, we went out there trying to "prove a point". Namely that Apademak is not hard.

The setup was RDM/DRK + NIN/DNC + WHM. Why DRK sub when you can get stun from /BLM? I've cast stun by mistake before, reacting to something I'm not supposed to, so I was thinking of using Weapon Bash from DRK sub in case that happened. The damage from a single NIN took about 15 min to kill it IIRC. However, I'm not sure if evasion gear was used. I should probably find out. Kingcem's NIN is pretty well geared and I'm not sure an average NIN could do the same. Why is that important? Because Apa builds stun resistance and towards the end of the 15 min I would start to see resists. I used both Future Fabulous and some Haste gear to lower my Stun recast. I could have done with less and can switch to something like Ultimate to increase my magic accuracy. The second fight I nuked a bit to help take it down faster. I had my damage filters on so I wouldn't miss Apa's spells in chat spam. Because of that I can't really see how hard my nukes hit. I'd cast Haste and Addle between stuns when needed, other debuffs don't seem to stick to the point that I just gave up.

With only Tenebrous Mist and Dreadstorm (beause it was tanked from the side) the WHM didn't have much to do either. So there's some freedom there for if you want grellow weakness. A second melee kills it faster and so Stun resistance would be even less of an issue. I'm thinking a Duo is very possible but enmity cap might become an issue.

During the last fight I tried letting Thundaga3 go unstunned towards the end to postpone resistance build-up, thinking that AoE's couldn't be self-targetted. To my surprise it was and it DID level up. So even though I expect that you could fiddle around with your chat filters (making only self-targetted spells show up) to make sure you only stun the necessary spells, I'll personally stick to stunning everything and killing faster.

A few weeks later
We did another 5 Apademaks and we had some extra help this time. With the damage from a BLM and THF the fights did seem shorter, but again I didn't time it precisely. On the last one I would estimate it took 8 minutes because when it was at 20% my composure timer (which I used at start) was just reaching zero.

This time I didn't have my own damage filtered and with Ultimate on the Bliz4's were doing a respectable 1.2k damage. Towards the end of one of the fights I pulled hate with a nuke which could be disastrous if you get hit with Dreadstorm and it nukes right after. So I toned it down and limited my nukes to about 4 or 5 per fight.

This time I used Ultimate for the extra magic accuracy, MM because always... and Future Fabulous for recasts again. It seemed to happen at least once per pop that it would start casting before my timer was up. Sometimes as much as 5 seconds were left on the recast. Fortunately with Addle on it takes long enough to cast that no spell got through. I would consider equiping AF2 body and Goading Belt for the recast reduction next time, but all in all a single stunner seems a safe bet. Not a single Stun was resisted this time around.

Briareus solo & Brulo duo

2011-07-06T10:51:00.005+02:00

Briareus
Nothing special about Briareus solo, you say? Give it a minute. At the time of this writing I've solo'd this mob as THF/NIN 4 or 5 times. Each went down without a hitch thanks in great part to temp item meds.

With the huge evasion double EVA daggers give you on top of THF skill + traits, the only challenge in this fight is regaining HP in between Mercurial Strikes enough to be safe from the next one. Since 1111 is the most damage they can do, you'll want at least that much. However, to cover myself from bad luck I always took a wider margin. To do this I didn't use meds exclusively, but also used Mounted Champion (20HP regen) as one of my Atmas. Colossal Slam can only be done outside of Meikyo Shisui when Mercurial hits for 888 and 999 damage. When that happens you can wait a few attack round until it's close to being able to TP and start running backwards while in first person. This means you'll still be able to land melee hits, but will already be moving away when it starts charging the tp move. Unless you encounter an obstacle while running back, you will be out of the AOE range of Colossal Slam when it goes off, just like when you SHOULD be running when it 2hr's after a 1111 damage Mercurial. This means Colossal Slam can be completely neutralized and the regaining HP, as said before, remains the only challenge. Trebuchet and Mercurial damage will add up. You could easily turn around and hold Bria while you let Regen do all the work, but that will really slow you down.

Limiting TP moves in this fight also greatly reduces the need to wait for regen or the number of meds required. This would go for all solos, so using Subtle Blow and AGI where possible is more of a general advice. I have the following sources of Subtle Blow in my gearset: Asagaya's Collar, Nusku's Sash, Heed Ring and Dragon Harness. That's right, I melee in Dragon Harness. The sacrifice in speed, which leads to longer fights, is worth it when it's not a magic casting mob, and longer doesn't necessarily mean riskier. Plus 10 Subtle Blow is pretty rare in a single slot. There is also AGI on it, which since a recent patch also affect TP fed per attack. For this same reason the AGI on the evasion daggers are extra useful. TP feed is severely reduced thanks to all these factors.

Brulo
Having some close calls while trio'ing this it seemed like a tough fight to duo. The hate cap was reached about 3 quarters into the fight the first time around. This lead to a nasty cycle of the tank needing to melee to get hate while at the same time taking considerable damage from spikes that he would require healing and the mages would pull hate again. With this enmity bouncing it wasn't a big surprise that mages got hit with Inferno. We made several mistakes. No reliable way of dealing with spikes. No way for the mages to avoid capping hate. Not enough defense against Inferno. These three problems only needed two solutions. Using Accession Phalanx a large portion of the spikes damage was nullified, leaving Regen2 to take part of almost all the other damage taken (form spikes). This reduces healing needed and enmity cap becomes much less of an issue as long as you don't cast unnecessarily. The second thing we did was using Future Fabulous Atma which made Inferno do about 50% of the tank's HP (don't remember exactly how much it was). FF on top of no other MDB reduces magic damage by 33%, so taking that into account it should be survivable either way with a decent HP pool and an MDT set.

I think Paladin is a pretty cool guy...

2011-06-22T15:33:00.003+02:00

...eh tanks trains of mobs and doesn't afraid of anything. When I took PLD up from 75 to 90 I didn't expect to use it much nor bother to gear it. Someone posted a video of their Ochain PLD tanking a train of Mandragoras while taking 0 damage and I was impressed. I decided to give it a try and it turns out any 'ol PLD can do the exact same thing. I was using Mounted Champion at the time as the only defensive Atma.

I put some more effort into my PDT set and tried different mob types. It works on most melee-oriented mobs as long as their level is below yours. PLD builds TP rather fast through Shield Mastery. Especially when using a small buckler type (size 1) shield with in combination with Reprisal, the TP starts building fast enough to self-SC (requires roughly 10+ mobs). PLD gets access to Aeolian Edge depending on its sub-job. Since I only need Mounted Champion that leaves two Atma slots for boosting AE damage (Gales + Ultimate). I generally stick to RDM sub for the extra MAB and without Ascetic's Tonic I usually do around 1.1k damage per WS. It takes about 5 WS to kill most trains completely.

Easy Prey mobs will often hit for 0 damage when their attacks get blocked, even by a small shield. This means that thanks to Phalanx there is no benefit to a larger shield in this particular application. It's sometimes hard to find a mob family that isn't being killed so you can pull trains uncontested without the mobs leveling up after each wave.

Being able to AoE farm solo has made it possible for me to get my lv90 Masamune done much faster and now work on the La Theine phase of my Almace without bothering other people for help whatsoever. PLD can tank Pantagruel while taking 0 damage on blocks and for some reason I've yet to understand, USUALLY stops its Ice Spikes form showing up when it hits you with Ice Roar. When that happens, the NM doesn't use Moribound Hack. PLD has a decent number of red procs so that's a nice plus. I managed to solo Grandgousier with some meds on PLD, but after changing atmas I found out WAR/NIN can solo Grandgousier just as well (Cloak&Dagger/Siren Shadow/MountedChampion + assorted EVA gear) and with more WS procs available than any other single job. Adamastor is a joke and Briareus is an easy solo on THF/NIN. That takes care of LTP. Thanks to Guku KI form chests my AoE farming on PLD will be useful in the second leg as well.

How was this stuff ever hard

2011-06-17T15:46:00.004+02:00

All the while I wasn't making new entries I was still playing FFXI. I find it hard to think of everything I've done in that time as it's not like I write stuff down, take regular screenshots or parse everything. Also, I may be getting old, because my memory is failing me. Since there have been no more LS events in such a long time I've spent time doing stuff on my own or with very small groups. Revisiting old NM's we had done in larger groups and dispatching them with ease prompts me to ask "How was this stuff ever hard?".

Eccentric Eve wasn't hard when we did it as a group. However, people did fail to Stun the breaths at one point. Loads of people hit the floor because of charm and EBB. Getting pops while farming for Dark Rings (still yet to see 6% anything) is a natural side-effect so it's a very acessible NM. It turned out to be a simple duo NIN+RDM. Relying on Violent Flourish is kinda wonky. Subbing BLM on RDM removes status cures form the arsenal which can be a hassle for the tank, but /DNC will take care of that eventually.

Kukulkan was a bit tougher. The terror gaze attack REALLY slows down what is otherwise a very simple fight. The unremovable poison is painful, but at 90 NIN evades most of it and RDM can cure through it. There are some trees that make it really easy to kite if you have to. I believe we duo'd it 4 times. The last one I nuked through the gazes to speed up the fight. Knowing how to kite around the trees means you can go all out.

Isgebind seemed really rough when we first fought it. While getting hearts for Masamune we trio'd it twice, once using the "healer outside of party" trick (avoiding Spike Flail) and tanking it on its tail.

There's loads of stuff like Ironclad Smiter (3 ppl), Ansherekh (solo), Titlauacan (trio/duo), Lusca (duo), Amhuluk (duo) and many more that really seem easy the 'second' time around. However, the biggest difference in difficulty for me personally was doing Glavoid recently. It's clear now that with a tank a healer and a stunner you can trio it very reliably. Each time you fight something you can learn from it to get better at it, but it feels like you learn MUCH faster when you're either soloing or low-manning things. Probably because it's less chaotic and/or you're more focussed. It's fun to see things get easier as you figure them out. Too bad we have to do a ton more of them for empyreans and it gets less fun each time. However, for me there's still a bunch of things left to try.

Weekend update 17

2011-04-21T08:43:00.019+02:00

This has little to nothing to do with the passed weekend, but I've started naming these entries this way and I am nothing if not committed to naming schemes! This is just a round-up of random things.

I was playing around with MNK sub-job, seeing if I could get any decent counter rate going. Unfortunately with Gnarled Horn and Counterstance I only got up to 60~65%. It's probably a bit higher. I believe I wasn't always facing all targets. This screenshot is to show the difference between damage taken with and without Counterstance. It's worth noting that Phalanx was on and that against mobs with high attack, the difference wouldn't be as pronounced.

Random picture of Chloris. He's a big boy.

This was the EXP alliance I was in when I was taking PLD up. There was no cleaving/aoe'ing so the number of TE's was a bit surprising. Rocking Vorpal Blade was a lot of fun once I was able to equip that Hannibal sword. It's surprising to see how you can go from basically leeching at 75, to leading the pack at 90.

I've had renewed interest in Salvage because of Dark Depths Atma. I'm not very keen on getting any pieces completed, since that would likely mean a bit of a grind despite the improved drop-rates. It also seemed like fun to go back at lv90 and see how the mobs that gave us a hard time would measure up now. I didn't have as strong a DD class as I do now in SAM, so it's not just the levels that are different. I'm aslo convinced that the group we went in with the last two times was more competent/versed than before. You live and you learn...

Here's parse data of Long-bowed Chariot:
Offense
Defense

That was two weeks ago. Last weekend we did Zhayolm Remnants. Made some poor decisions on the way up, because I suck at Salvage and don't even remember doing this zone ever. I ended up fighting Battleclad Chariot wearing just AF3 head and body because we went up on the wrong side on the first floor. A lot of HP, but otherwise a very simple fight. Going by the number of times I got hit and that the Long-bowed parse shows a low evasion rate, I don't see why we couldn't have done it at lv75. At least, that's what I like to tell myself.

Awesome Music Tip #6 (oldie)

Review of NM on Masamune path

2011-04-18T09:00:00.001+02:00

This is perhaps a bit premature, seeing as how I've yet to finish the current set of GK Empyrean trials. However, I can always tag another entry on at the end when I have more experience with Isgebind. Out of the 10 or so times I've killed it I was in a group of at least 6 people. What I've learned about all the previous NM's is that it's easier to notice certain mob patterns/behavior once you've fought it at a slower pace with fewer people.

VNM's
I've posted about soloing Urd on SAM/DNC. If you can't get help this seems like a reasonable option. Thankfully I only needed to do it once. A BST can solo it despite the hate reset. Since Trance is a good warning for its triple WS, any DD+Mage duo should be able to take it out at level 90. The most annoying part is popping Skuld instead and trying to lose her. They fly pretty fast.

Lamprey Lord is a bit annoying. You'll want a "proper" evasion tank for it. Either that or get a bunch of melee to kill it quick. One of the pickup groups I did it with had a DNC and about 3 SAM spamming Violent Flourish, Tachi: Hobaku and Blade Bash. It was a short fight with very little damage taken as it was obviously stun-locked for a large portion of the fights. I'd recommend bringing a bunch of antidotes. They're not expensive at npc's and it's much easier to use it on yourself than to rely on a mage, whose first reaction is probably to cast cure before poisona. Antidotes can make the difference, but tanks should also try and blink tank like it's an HNM. Recast shadows as soon as possible, because evasion is random and it has a very high rate of triple and double attacks.

SAM can probably tank it in a duo due to decent evasion skill rating, but it's more prone to mistakes and bad luck than a NIN or a DNC. The hate reset on the Acid Mist ability is a bit of an issue. I don't recall if everyone hit by Acid Mist gets their hate reset, but it's a good idea to have the mage in range anwyay. Once Acid mist goes off the tank should try and get a spike in enmity to get it off the mage asap or avoid it going after the mage at all. Kiting just prolongs the time it's on the healer. If TP feed can be limited a duo is ok, but at least a trio would be my advice.

Chesma is a step down from Lamprey and can be duo'd without any issues. Losing hate in this fight means very little if the healer is prepared, because its damage output is much less threatening than LL. Just cast stona as soon as you see it charging up. As long as you haven't had to spam cure4 up to this point, the melee should be able to get it off quickly. Chesma and Tammuz were hard to find up when I did them. Japanese groups cycled through them continuously and yet I very rarely saw any shouts for them.

Carabosse
Farming pops for Carabosse solo is very simple if you have something with half-decent evasion and DNC sub or a crit hit WS. I'll tell you why in a sec. Baba Yaga only casts spells and throws arrows. The arrows have very low accuracy, but if they land the Amnesia will slow you down a bit (not dangerous) so some evasion here helps. Since it doesn't attack normally and casts mostly harmless spells like silencega, it doesn't really matter what job you're on. The key is to have some meds to cure if you don't have other sources of healing and a job with a lot of red WS to save time. The fly NM (La Theine Lieje) doesn't do TP abilities unless it successfully casts Aeroga3. In which case it will spam Venom 3 to 7 times in a row. A strong multi-hit crititical WS will interrupt its casting reliably. Moreso than Violent Flourish. However, if you're solo you may not manage 100TP more than once per spellcast. So if you want to try your red WS you need another way to interrupt its casting. Even if it does land the spell, you can outrun the 2nd+ Venom and recover with meds. I did both mobs on THF for the most part. Usually subbing NIN and equiping Mounted Champion Atma.

Carabosse itself has the potential to nuke very hard. However, once you learn that it can only do this under Winter Breeze, then you can forget about it until is changes seasons and then easily swap in some MDT gear if shadows are down or if it's Aeroga3. If you're lagging or not confident you'll be fast enough you can just keep it on until it changes seasons again, which shouldn't take long. You need to do something for each season so just make sure you have your chat-filters off and pay attention.

Winter Breeze: Stun nukes and/or swap in MDT
Spring Breeze: casts aoe debuffs. Remove debuffs and keep on trucking. Can wait to cast shadows until it changes out if you want to.
Summer Breeze: Dispel Regain (or Aura Steal it!!! really nice to have 10 TP/tic). Ride out the the Mute off Torrent and reapply all buffs after Turmoil.
Autumn Breeze: Dispel Regen. I guess you could stun cures as well, but she's fast.

Heqet
Maybe not worth its own section once you know how to do it, but I guess it can't hurt going over it. Bring some meds. I usually made sure to have Lucid potions 1, 2 and 3. You can get potion3 from Bastion Prefect for 50 credits. Occasionally doing some bastion between pops will keep your credits up. Another thing to get off the prefect is a Fool's Powder. It's not NEEDED, but it casts spells in pairs below 25% and it's nice to just kill it asap at low HP and not risk two Waterjas killing you.

Pulling it requires you to deaggro the train unless you get lucky with where it pops. I didn't bother pulling it when there was competition around. However, it IS possible to get it before it deaggro's and still have Squibs deaggro. Either it takes longer for Heqet to deaggro or it has longer detection range. Also, I can recommend engaging, hitting it once then fleeing away (sprinter's/powder boots/job ability). You'll then stop to put away your weapons as you get out of range. This does NOT always make its name go yellow. If someone steals it at this point, you'll still be the first person to act on it since the last time it was idle and so will get the KI if they kill it. After doing this once or twice you'll know how far you need to run before stopping. It's hard to explain the distance so I won't try. Again, I did this on THF because it has evasion and so will take very little damage from anything but spells. Take it down while doing red weakness WS if you have any. Use your meds. If there's no competition you could repeatedly deaggro it, since it stops to cast. I did not do this because I didn't want to risk running out of meds. SMN's, DNC/NIN's and NIN/DNC's have very little trouble soloing this without meds. I believe BST can too, but have no personal experience with it. I'm just trying to show that with meds other jobs can too.

It pays to kill Ephmeral Murexes (potion2) and Jala (potion3 and fool's) for temp items, it'll save you some cruor and credits. All in all soloing Heqet is just a matter of killing it fast and staying alive. With enough meds you could potentially do a lot of red WS. Something with evasion and a lot of weapon skills like NIN/WAR would probably be the best use of your time. Nobody wants to go 0/8 on the KI like I did. It's not a solo you'll tell your friends about, but it makes lv85 Masamune much more attainable, especially since Cep is soloable too.

Cep Camuy
Yea, why not? I think the reason why I want to talk about Cep is because I bought a Frenzy Sallet especially for this NM. Not having to take a 200-300 damage hit to wake yourself up, which could take a long time, and almost instantly continuing the fight is a big plus. It only cost me 400k and I'm not selling it back. Being able to wake up from sleep independantly is just great.

Seaspray and Leeching current are both annoying. So there's a 50/50 chance that its TP ability will be annoying. However, using some subtle blow (or if you're a Ninja) will make things a lot easier. I've come to appreciate Dragon Harness much more, thanks to its +10 Subtle Blow. It also helps me kill Ancient Orobon (decent amount of HP) for cheekmeat without them doing any TP abilities.

Cirein
Does the same annoying TP abilities as all Orobon with the addition of Mayhem Lantern under 50% HP. It uses TP abilities back to back. Always in pairs.

In all the fights I've done it NEVER used Mayhem lantern as the first ability. So under 50% HP you can run away after the first TP ability and avoid Mayhem Lantern's charm. However, while this is worth doing, if the first ability is Hypnic Lamp and you get slept, then it's pretty much impossible to avoid the charm unless you're constantly DoT'ed and can wake up form sleep asap. I suppose you could use pachira fruits for this as long as you start running each time it TP's. In that case, even if you get slept, you'll have already taken a few steps and be far enough away that you COULD outrunt he charm. Having Treasure Hunter is nice, so a THF+mage duo could use this strategy. If the mage can land gravity and/or the THF wears some dusk pieces to slow them down, charm can be dealt with relatively simply. RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM can save Manifestation Gravity/Bind for this purpose. Don't try to sleep charmed people, the charm is accompanied by drown effect (DoT). Just make sure you realise that if the last person who took action on CC gets charmed it may go unclaimed.

I almost forgot, it also does Deathgnash, which could be dangerous if shadows are down. A follow-up hit would kill you. I'd recommend a DD + THF + healer trio, where one of the melee stays out of range to avoid charm. Going in only for a few hits in between TP abilities. This gives you both TH and a decently fast killspeed. A kite+nuke strategy is just as good, but I expect it to be a bit slower.

Isgebind
So far I haven't really started on this one yet. The same Flail tanking technique as used on Azdaja (and perhaps other wyrms as well) can be applied here. A healer outside the party with claim won't get hit with it. However, it can still use the Wing ability, unlike Azdaja. The main benefit of this is that it won't use any Roar abilities (nor Terror), which is a hate reset and would make it hard to duo otherwise.

Fighting it normally (on paws) is a matter of survival. A pair of evasion tanks with some decent magic defense kits (Atma of a Future Fabulous is exactly that... fabulous) will not be in great danger of getting killed. The paralyze effect + aura will make it a longer fight, but that's pretty much it. Heroes NM's generally have a ton of HP, so it's gonna be long anyway.

Tachi: Fudo - day 2

2011-04-14T23:36:00.007+02:00

I had a chance to test drive Fudo some more yesterday. I was sure that given my gear I should be able to crank out some more impressive numbers. So this time I subbed WAR and headed out to Misareaux to assist on some Cirein's and Heqets. I didn't bring food yet gain. I tossed out some kabobs the day before to make room for lanterns and forgot to buy some more.

I only started parsing a bit later on. If I filter out all mobs but Squibs I get the following:

Pretty good average Fudo damage, no? I admit, I cheated a bit by using Atma of the Griffon's Claw. That gives a 20% boost to WS damage, which is something you may use if you're planning on killing mobs with no concern for ruby lights or zerging NM's with 2hr and Sekkanokki. Otherwise RR or A&O will be better choices.

The next one is my latest record for Fudo damage.

The nice thing about this is that it's with Berzerk and Hasso, but not at full TP, without food and without BRD or COR. Guessing my PDIF to be at around 1.4, going to capped PDIF (2.25) would mean a 60% increase in damage. If my estimation of my own PDIF isn't too conservative. A similar Fudo would have the potential to do around 8k damage under more ideal circumstances.

Awesome Music Tip #5

Masamune 85!

2011-04-14T02:41:00.012+02:00

I still can't hardly believe it, but last night I finished my lv85 Masamune. First an foremost I'd like to thank Lordapm, Kaidaa, Alexos, Doks, Appare and Oyasumi for getting me those 35 lanterns. Thanks to Auriban for setting me up. I would be short-changing some good people if I didn't mention those that helped on previous trials. So special thanks to Kingcem, Cyrille, Chaess and Xores for the VNM's and Carabosse.

It was a long night, but getting offered to finish the Masa seemed like a rare, maybe twice-in-a-lifetime offer! Being wednesday evening on Valefor, there wasn't much competition for Heqet. Mostly we just ran over and found it up unclaimed. We spread out and multi-tasked farming cheekmeat, popping Cep and camping Heqet. Doing it this way I can much better understand how people have been finishing Empyrean weapons so fast. Cirein died in about 5 minutes each time, and for whatever reason getting TH upgrades in that time was MUCH easier than a ~15 minute Carabosse fight. Admittedly, we did have two thieves.

So, I immediately go out to test the weapon. I have to say, the damage could have sucked and I'd probably still be happy. However, the damage didn't suck. I've seen what Fudo can do when properly buffed and geared, so if I metally compensate for not having attack buffs or food and BLM sub that I had forgotten to change due to excitement, then I expected to see what I did. This is my gear. Note that it's all the exact same gear I used for Gekko. As far as I know and with the exception of Kirin's Osode and STR ring, my WS set is very strong. Hachiryu Haidate is an upgrade, but the store TP on AF3 is usually necessary.

Ignore the Merman's ring, I didn't notice I had it on when I took the SS. That should obviously be a Rajas. This was the best one I could churn out in about 15 WS

Seeing as how Triple Attack is an important factor in getting big numbers out of SAM weaponskills, I am considering using Alpha and Omega instead of Razed Ruins. Alpha and Omega also has Attack, something that I will want to stack for Fudo. Unlike Gekko Fudo doesn't get a PDIF bonus, which means a big difference between high and low defense/level mobs. I didn't upload a screenshot, but I did manage a 836 damage critical hit.

I'll have to find excuses to play SAM now. Since I have RDM, THF and WAR with all red WS and WSNM's done, it may be difficult. Isgebind is an easy mob to pop and not all that hard to kill. However, for now I will go back and help others get their lv85 Empyereans done and upgrade some +2's.

Weekend update 16

2011-04-06T08:06:00.011+02:00

I've experienced a renewed appreciation for THF recently. I've spent a lot of time on it while killing Carabosse and farming pops, so it seems natural that I'd want to gear it better. One of the three big upgradeable slots for my WS set was the head slot. I took care of that while in Attohwa recently.

Aias is likely better all-round than Hecatomb cap, though I'd still take the latter if some good upgrades become possible in the future. Special thanks to Anthx and Kingcem for tanking and blue'ing Yaanei.

Not wanting to risk bad luck I brewed Yaanei after we got blue weakness. I wasn't near a flux or martello so I lost some brew time. We looked desperately for stuff to kill, but in the end only managed a Whiro and Ironclad.

Before Yaanei we finished my Titlacuan popset which is what I needed to finish this thing:

I'm finally sitting at 24~25.5% Haste in my TP set on SAM.

We did some Misareaux Abyssea and got me 1 lantern (yay...) and some Coins off Amhuluk. That got me Raider's Culottes +2 which is met 5th +2 AF3.

I gave Shinryu another go, but I'm starting to get annoyed with that dragon. Those two bodies are pretty high in demand, so getting people to share loot with while being very greedy is kind of hard. I want to save the cruor for other Abyssea zones where you can kill more mobs with one brew. That'd mean killing Shinryu without brewing. Several stacks of Holy waters, WAR or MNK tank, a THF and at least two healers should be enough to get blue and kill it several times in one sitting. I've got more Traverser Stones than I know what to do with. Cruor on the other hand...

Samurai 4-hit: What you do when you don't have a Masamune

2011-03-15T17:00:00.026+01:00

My Samurai's been steadily getting good gear and it really needs to get Fudo so that all of that gear matters. Until then, however, I'll have to make due with my Kikugosaku. The last bit of gear I got for SAM that's worth noting is Tactical Mantle. It brings me very close to being able to 4-hit the Kiku due to its relatively high 480 delay.

The initial impression of the mantle is one of "Holy hell, I need to sacrifice 35 Attack for that Store TP". The 35 based on the assumption that you'd normally wear an Atheling Mantle in that slot. Although PDIF is more complex than Attack/Defense, like I've said before, it's a fairly good approximation. So assuming something along the lines of 560 Attack, giving up that slot is a pretty big 6.25% of your melee damage and it doesn't end there. I'd have to give up a ring slot for Hoard Ring as well as swapping out Sword Strap for Rose.

This blog entry is me trying to figure out if it's worth the sacrifices. To achieve the needed 58 Store TP in gear (minimum). I can't even get that realistically yet, so all of this is purely academic. I'm missing +2 AF3 body and head pieces before this becomes possible. The following numbers are just meant to be an argument to inform certain gear choices. They're not intended to be precise performance indicators. Enough moping, to the chalkboard!

Going from 5 to 4 hits
This will always be a difficult thing to calculate because of Meditate and other forms of Regain. Your WS rate would theoretically be 1:4 with a 5-hit. That is one WS for every 4 melee hits. This gets lowered by Meditate and Regain, which in turn give you a bigger benefit if you're taking breaks between fights. I've parsed a 4.3 WS rate with a 6-hit build and 3.7 with a 5-hit so it's not an exact science.

Once we assume a certain WS-rate it doesn't say anything about our damage over time yet. To guage the impact over time we need to calculate "WS DPS". I quoted that because the term DPS usually applies to melee hits. Damage over time may be a better term depending on who you ask. The 1 WS hit has a static delay of 2 seconds and the rest of the melee swings have a duration that is affected by Haste and other delay reduction. Only counting gear Haste I'd be at 24% using a 5-hit set and 3% from sword strap. At perfect accuracy that's

120 delay (=2 seconds) + 4 * 480 * 0.76 * 0.97 = 1535 delay (=25.6 seconds)

Using my intended TP set for the 4-hit I'd have the same Haste, but no sword strap:

120 delay (=2 seconds) + 3 * 480 * 0.76 = 1214 delay (=20.2 seconds)

That's a 26.5% increase in WS DPS under one big assumptions that we KNOW is wrong. Namely: equal WS damage. I know that concessions need to be made in a WS set as well as the melee set. Let's forget about that for now and run the same numbers as above for a capped Haste (delay reduction) scenario to see what the difference is.

1/(120+3*480*0.2) / 1/(120+4*480*0.2) = 1.235

So there you see a 23.5% increase in WS DPS. Generalize it by averaging out the two scenarios to 25%.

WS damage sacrifices
Now think about how much weaker your melee hits and WS would have to be to not see a benefit from this. Your melee DPS will be lower from the lowered Attack and the lack of sword strap (unless capped delay reduction). Your WS DPS will be lowered by not being able to swap out the slots dedicated to Store TP: head, body, ring, back and feet. That really adds up. In STR alone it's a difference of 12, 15, 11, 5 and 8 for those slots respectively. For attack it's 24, -24, 0, 35, 15 in those same slots. Totaling 51 STR and 50 attack. The biggest sacrifice in a single slot is likely to be Snow Gorget in favor of Unkai Nodowa. Gekko base damage inside Abyssea would be something along the lines of this:

(Weapon DMG + WSC + fSTR) * fTP * cRatio =
(111 + (~250*0.83) + 19) * 1.66 * 2.25 = 1260
going down to
(111 + (~202*0.83) + 19) * 1.57 * 2.25 = 1044

That's a 17% decrease in WS damage on average (as well as over time). Not factored in is the amount of average WS damage that 3% Double Attack form Atheling adds. Each time DA procs it'll add about 64% to your WS damage, because additional hits of a WS have a PDIF of 1. 64% damage 3% of the time (not taking into account the decreasing returns of Double Attack) is about 2% damage. Lower it a bit and you'll be closer to the truth. It's enough to matter, so let's up the WS damage loss to 18.5%

Melee damage sacrifices
This is pretty straight forward. Atheling, Sword Strap and Ulthalam's ring are the sacrifices which adds up to 39 attack, 4 STR and 3% delay. Last time I checked my attack inside Abyssea was somewhere around 620 attack, though I could be wrong. I can't check since the servers are down. STR is gonna be pretty insignificant. 3% more delay is about 3% less DPS. So less damage 6.4% from attack and 3% less damage over time from extra delay is 0.937 * 0.97 = ~0.91. That's about 9% total loss of melee DPS.

Together
Adding up the two forms of DPS or averaging them (it doesn't matter in this case since we're just multiplying) would be enough to compare the two situations. If I take a damage split of 65:35 for WS:Melee I can use those numbers for "damage".

1.25 * 0.83 * 0.65 + 0.91 * 0.35 = 0.99
= about the same if not weaker
= not worth your trouble
= what a waste of time!

Conclusion
Do we really need a conclusion after that last sentence? I believe so. One thing worth mentioning is that for some odd reason I decided to ignore the regain from VV while doing the WS damage calculations for inside Abyssea where you'd almost certainly use VV for SAM. The Regain isn't as clean as a true 5-hit, but if you drop the Tactical mantle you'll get 97 TP from 4 hits which is definitely enough for 2 tics of VV to put you over the top. That means you already HAVE a 4 hit inside Abyssea without much effort. On the other hand anywhere else you would still want the true 4-hit for which this calculation is a decent guideline. In fact, you can be quite certain that if the 4-hit is not worth it inside Abyssea then it most definitely is not worth it outside (where the sacrifices are more pronounced).

The hidden benefit of a 4-hit build is the possiblity to self-SC each time you get a Triple Attack. With Apocalpyse and Alpha&Omega atmas this can be very frequently. Since using Kiku implies not having Fudo, the best you can do is Gekko > Rana which in turn means that you'd usually need less Store TP after Rana. Food for thought, I suppose.

Awesome Music Tip #4

Solo brewing Shinryu

2011-03-14T16:10:00.006+01:00

People have been brewing Shinryu solo for a while, but for a lack anything better to post about I'll try to convince everyone how easy it is so everyone can get their drops (eventually).

Ingredients
1x Primeval Brew
1x Doom screen
1x Samurai sub-job: Sekkanoki
several HP-recovery meds
equal amounts Atma of Apocalypse, Voracious Violet*, Mounted Champion**
copious amounts of cruor
*possible replacement: Sea Daughter
**possible replacement: anything to deal more damage

Instructions
One of the most important things is to go early to regain enough TP to WS twice at the start of your chosen "Blue" weakness time-frame. I try to get there a bit after midnight game-time and I enter at 7:00 for piercing weakness.

Timing your WS is obviously important here. Don't forget to Sekkanoki. When you engage and run in it'll aggro and swing at you from pretty far away. I tried waiting for it to get to me so I could run back a bit and fight+die outside of its aggro range, but you'll get drawn in and it'll make things last much longer than necessary. Besides, it isn't really needed.

Just run into range and WS after the first swing is over, and another time after the second. If you got no weakness Hint-message for a weapon you can proc on then I just die and try again. The reason why I don't try for a 3rd WS is because you need to use some of the better meds for it. I'd rather save those up for when I really need them. The Shinryu fight's cost is negligable when you have a healthy stock of stones. Also, you can try up to 4 times in one fight. You could probably survive long enough to get enough TP from Meditate and melee swings if you used a Fool's powder/drink. The tier4 AoE spells can really hurt.

If you die within aggro range (very likely), it's important to be able to survive 1 attack from Shinryu. You won't be able to move (annoyingly slow raise animation) until after the first attack. I can imagine that as a Taru on a low-HP job this could be an issue. THF doesn' t have much defense and I usually got hit for a bit over 300 damage. I use a regen Atma so I don't have to spend precious cruor on potions between attempts. If you don't go too often, you'll liekly recover those meds slowly from fighting other NM's and regular mobs in Abyssea.

Of course, when you do get a good hint or actually proc the Blue weakness, use your Brew asap. You could macro it, but I'd like to avoid any "accidents". Way too many times have I said "Crap, used Convert by mistake". Brew then screen and go through your Blue WS. After a proc it stops attacking. It may take you by surprise. Iron Giants and Shinryu have regular attacks that count as "special" attacks, much like TP abilities. That's why Amnesia stops them from attacking.

I've never had much problems healing it for excessive amounts. Unlike Rani, it doesn't heal for more than it takes damage due to damage resistance. Shinryu has none, so it'll take full damage from your WS, which makes it a pretty short fight.

Some final notes
I do this on THF which gives me both Blue and Treasure Hunter. Personally I think this is one of the best jobs to do this on, given the low drop rates. Get used to seeing no gear drops and some Apkallu Eggs. So far, of all the armor drops, I've only gotten a Twilight Helm out of 5 fights. Actually, a Helm dropped twice but the second time it went to someone tagging along for the win.

Cruor is your bottleneck. Nobody cares about merits anymore these days, I'm sure. Farming cruor in an EXP alliance sounds like it makes sense, but I recently found out that cruor drops work the opposite way of EXP chains. For exp you want to keep killing the same family of mob, but for cruor you want to alternate mob families. It may be due to Abyssites, but after about 8 fights I capped out at around 480 cruor per mob, while alternating between Sandsweepers and Fear Dearg in Altepa. Ladybugs and Mandies seem to give the most cruor in that zone. EXP alliances should kill really fast so that it evens out, but let's be honest... they usually don't.

Awesome Music Tip #3

Pantrokrator and Apademak revisited

2011-02-24T09:40:00.009+01:00

I noticed a lot of people ended up on this blog looking for Apademak and Pantokrator info (mostly Apademak) and I'm sure most of them were disappointed at the amount of actually useful advice. For this reason (but mostly because we recently did another pair of these) I'll go over the mobs once more and try to compress some of the info I've found more than just relaying what we did or didn't do.

Apademak
The first thing that comes up when you look for advice on this mob is stopping it from leveling up. Taking lightning damage causes it to level up and supposedly so does it killing someone. I used to think it casting any spell caused the level up, but on our second fight I stuck around more and saw several single target spells going off on the tanks that weren't followed by level-ups. So stunning self-targeted spells is what you want to do. Self targeted spells could be missed if you have certain filters on, so you should check that out beforehand. It's easiest to just Stun all its spells.

Does it build Stun resistance? According to several accounts it does. However, with two BLM's alternating stuns they continued to land long into the fight and the only resist I remember seeing (I wasn't looking at all of them, admittedly) was of a WHM/BLM casting. I'm estimating 20 Stuns in, the BLM's were still able to land it.

Unfortunately we ended up missing a stun and I can't vouch for it not using Fulmination until after it levels up at least once. From what I read, it is a very tame and simple mob before it levels up. Dedicated stunners being as important as they are, it's worth using some haste and fast-cast to reduce the Stun recast timer as much as possible. At maximum reduction you're still looking at a 22 seconds recast. This looks like it would be short enough in for most spells, but it's not a guarantee.

When it levels up it follows up with a TP ability. Usually Fulmination, but also Lithic breath. Lithic breath inflicts a weakness. A second tank should be standing out of breath cone to take hate off the weakened tank. I read something interesting on BG about avoiding the breath attack. Apparently, despite the ability being instant and unstunnable (on reaction), as long as you're strafing around the mob (moving sideways while locked on to the target) you'll avoid the breath attack. Credit to Arthars for figuring that out and posting it. Someone added that the same thing can be done with Tyrannic Tusk on Sobek, which afaik is also conal.

In my personal opinion, gearing for lightning resistance doesn't pay off. Tanks will take too much of a hit with regards to damage output that it'll make the fight noticeably longer. Also, with barspell and lightning resist atma, the tanks still took considerable damage. I can't be exactly sure if they were 1/2 resists or full damage. In any case, the magic accuracy of Fulmination seems rather high.

Its evasion and defense go up very noticeably as it levels up. So if you plan on doing this with a small group and without a brew, then stopping it from leveling up is not only important, it's THE most important aspect of the fight. Evasion tanking it works fine. Both NIN and DNC at the last fight were doing well holding it. Damaging it became the biggest challenge at that point and we ended up brewing it after we got Blue weakness on it. No dagger drop though.

Pantokrator
Pantokrator's 2hr's are the most annoying part about the mob. After learning that (much like the tiger NM in Uleg) the "chance" of it 2hr'ing is influenced by how much you heal it. While it TP's and casts. The 3 or 4 times it 2hr'd this last fight were all triggered by WS'ing during or otherwise doing a lot of damage while it's in "damage absorption" mode. It doesn't "prove" that that's how it worked, but it definitely seems consistent. If you fail to limit 2hr's, Fool's drink is fantastic for neutralizing Chainspell, and Fanatic's for Hundred Fists. If you have neither, throw in some stuns and don't try to kite it is all I can think of.

Towards the end Colossal Blow can make things rough if you currently only have one tank on it. It looks like its defense does go down as its HP goes down. I managed a 'normal' 2.5k Raging Rush on it when it was nearly dead, while early on I couldn't break 1k. DD's should limit their interaction with Panto to WS only. If you're using NIN tanks and its HP isn't below 25% then you have enough room for error to WS after a TP ability has gone off. As long as its magic casting timer isn't up. Tanks can take it down fast enough, so it's not an essential part of the strategy.

Of these two mobs, Panto is the easier one. It fits the pop-pattern of Caturae in Uleguerand (since there's no Caturae in that zone) and with Triturators different class compared to Smiter and Sunderer, you'd expect a much harder fight. However imho, Apademak takes the cake for most annoying mob in Heroes zones. Even Azdaja has become unimpressive since we tried and succeeded (after a shaky start) at tanking it from behind. I'm positive that making Apademak smooth is also a matter of getting the hang of it. The difference is that Apademak's leveling up and its increase in defense and strength are irreversible and so there's no forgiveness for mistakes.

Gearing Thief for Speed (Haste and Dual Wield)

2011-02-18T11:44:00.011+01:00

Raider's Bonnet +2 versus Zelus Tiara
It's not always fair to make a straight comparisson like this without taking into account the context. In this case I'll try to consider the extreme situations. The haste difference is 2% between the two. The benefit of Zelus if you got the full benefit of that 2% at the highest possible Haste values (going from 78% to 80%) you'd see a benefit of 10% to your melee DoT. However, this situation is unrealistic because you have DW that will guarantee that you reach the delay reduction cap before 78% haste. If you assume 33% DW (I'll get back to that later) then you'd cap at 70% haste so we'd need to consider going from 68% to 70%.

(1/0.3) / (1/0.32) = ~1.07

So roughly a 7% melee DoT increase. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not Dboxing my own mage and BRD nor do I have the support to get to that 70% haste. With only haste spell the 2% haste scales down to only 3% DoT increase. So from 10% in an unrealistic situation all the way down to 3% depending on my own personal common situation. That just goes to show how your playstyle and assumptions factor in to how good any one stat is.

AF3's 3% Triple Attack would almost immediately seem like the winner. To be sure, let's assume a very high multi-attack rate with 3% quad attack, 33% triple (traits, Apoc atma, triplus) and 15% double (VV, Brutal). Now adding 3% triple attack to a setup that has an average of 1.9 attacks per swing is

1.96/1.9 = 1.03

So 3% versus 3% in a situation that greatly reduces Triple Attack's value. Outside of Abyssea this would be less of a contest and AF3 seems like the better overall piece.

Nusku's Sash versus Twilight Belt
This question actually has a context for me. I'm namely comparing these two setups.

It's hard to see because Nusku's and Twilight have the same Icon, but the first setup is capped haste using Loki's and Twilight Belt, and the second setup is 23% haste using AF3+2 body With Nusku's Sash.

Now these setups boil down to a rather subtle difference of:
Dagger skill +5 and Dual Wield +5
vs.
DEX+1, Store TP +7, Haste +3, Dbl. Atk +2, Crit hit damage +5%

Time to make some assumptions. Let's scrap 1 DEX. Let's assume Haste spell only. Assuming the 25% haste cap and going from 23% to 26% in gear is a 5% increase in melee DoT. The small extra step need to truly cap haste which you wouldn't with just 25% in gear is explained in Kirschy's post on BG which I linked to in the right side of this Blog's layout. Double attack varies a lot, but I'd like to put it at 1.5% DoT increase to keep things simple.

Now Critical hit-rate will influence Loki's boost to your Crit damage. A critical hit's contribution to your melee damage is greatly influenced by how high your p-dif is. If you were low in atk/def ratio and p-dif was around 0.5 then a critical hit would be a whopping 300% boost to that hit's damage. Again, an assumption is needed. Let's stick to p-dif = 1 because this makes things easy and it's not that far removed from common situations. Given my SAM's p-dif on Abyssea mobs, I think it's fair to say THF's would be a tad lower around 1. With this assumption your boost to melee DoT (without damage boost) would be approximated with 1 + crit-rate * 1. Easy, yes? Add to this damage boost of RR and you're looking at crit-rate * 1.3 . Now the 5% is starting to look a bit "meh". Crit-rate parses around 65% for me usually, so that'd make my 5% damage boost stacked on top of 30% from RR and 5% from job trait (possibly 8%) contribute this much:

(1 + 0.65 * 1.40) / (1 + 0.65 * 1.35) = 1.017

So less than a 2% damage boost. Since they're all seperate and multiplicative, setup with Loki's would be a 1.05 * 1.015 * 1.017 = 1.08 boost to melee DoT. Store TP factors in to WS frequency, but this is dragging out enough already!

Now setup with AF3+2 body has 5 ATK (assuming the skill does nothing for Acc) which would do anywhere from 1.2% to 0.9% extra damage assuming my low ATK on THF.

The big thing is of course "Is Nusku's worth it?". Well, I'm currently at 33% DW before Nusku's from Suppa, Raider's Boomerang and /NIN traits at 90. This means Nusku's alone will boost my damage by 8%. The great thing about this is that the two setups turn out to be very close given my assumptions. When is one better than the other? Well the variables such as which atmas you're using (if any) and how much Haste you're getting from Samba and spells will influence things in too many ways for me to want to redo the calculations.

The Verdict
Go for the 23% haste + Nusku's setup when you're often solo or otherwise low on buffs. Why? Because if you're soloing the Subtle Blow and evasion matter. Not only that, but due to not having a lot of haste, your DoT is also higher with this setup. When you're highly buffed you'll most likley be delay reduction capped anyway while Crit dmg boost as well as Dbl. Atk. will keep their value. In a situation like this, you'll end up getting more out of the Loki's setup.

Awesome music tip #2

Weekend update 15

2011-02-07T11:26:00.007+01:00

Still no pictures. Gotten into the bad habit of not taking screenshots again. I don't turn on Fraps until I need to take an attendance picture. I just hope this entry isn't too boring.

Samurai WS set
I recently got Heafoc Mitts and Unkai Sune-Ate +2 for a nice +6 STR to my WS equipment. I've held back on buying a Pyrosoul Ring, because I don't think (looking at my current funds) 1 STR should cost 800k compared ot the second best option (1.1M vs 300k Vulcan Rings). However, soon it may be the cheapest buyable upgrade, since prices will drop and I doubt I'll save up and buy a Hachiryu Haidate even if I am able to keep a 5-hit with Kikugosaku. Due to Twilight Mail being optimal in more situations than Byrnie +1 for Tachi: Fudo and always better for Gekko, I currently don't have any plans to buy one.

Recently we did a Sky run where I averaged over 1k for Gekko damage. The WS damage outside Abyssea is a lot more predictable since you're not overloaded with DA/TA which can pump out some pretty crazy WS numbers. This is what I've been aiming for and I'm only two items away:

Masamune progress
I've avoided mentioning Masamune on this blog and in genereal, because despite having worked on trials for a while I don't want to give it too much attention in case I give up on it. However, I'm now almost certain that I've gotten beyond that point. I didn't start any prep work on trophy stages so I started pretty much from scratch two/three weeks ago. I've averaged 5 Carabosse gems per weekend since we started, while sharing drops with two LS mates. I estimate I'll be done with La Theine in 7 weeks time.

Farming pops solo has turned out to be very simple. I didn't do much research on Baba Yaga or La Theine Lieje, but both pose no threat to THF/DNC. With TH the trigger items drop consistently and so it's just a matter of spamming them until you get the drop. I've done it as THF/NIN a few times after we did a few Cara, and even then it's easy to stop Lieje's spell by WS'ign through it. It may even be more consistent than Violent Flourish. I hope that getting a few pops solo during the week will speed it up a bit and maybe cut it down 5 or 6 Saturdays of farming.

Miscellaneous
We recently got loads of Bullwhip Belts. We may be done with those for a while. It seems like there's little reason to go back to La Theine as a Linkshell now. Perhaps some Timarli Dastanas and Nusku's Sashes would interest people.

Got Ground Strike and Spiral Hell recently. Still quite a few weapons to go on WAR. In the process I learned Herculean Slash. Damage is constant with TP so it's easy to do some mod testing on it, and yet I didn't work it out precisely. Turns out it has a very strong VIT mod (not posted on Wiki). With Beyond+Ultimate+Mounted Champion and no other VIT from gear or MAB it did 1553 damage. When I swapped out MC for Griffon's Claw it only beat it by about 20 points of damage. So if GC is indeed 20% damage then the VIT mod is considerable. It doesn't have a STR mod at all. I didn't test INT or MND though. Since it's much more consistent than Jinpu it looks like an ideal Amber lights WS. I'm sure that with Ascetic's and proper gear 2k should be easily obtainable.

Awesome music tip #1

Indrik and Empousa

2011-01-27T10:22:00.007+01:00

I had the pleasure of fighting these two NM's twice each yesterday. We started off trying to multitask and kill Ironclad Triturator while part of the group built lights and did Indrik. That didn't end well.

The big hubbub around Triturator seemed very disproportionate the first time we fought it as we took it out easily. However, the first time we had two WHM's in the tank party and overall more people at the fight. Did some holding of the mob, but it powers up (supposedly after each 2hr). We let it regen to 100%, but it didn't seem to get noticeably weaker. The keys to this fight seem to be more healing power, tanks with a lot of HP, reliable stun for after draw-ins and enough DD to make it a short fight.

Indrik
Another fight that you want to end as soon as possiple is the one against Indrik. That white unicorn will power up much like Ironclad Triturator. Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention to notice exactly what triggers it to be healed by melee, but it has a mode where that happens. It's not a huge issue because it doesn't happen often nor does it last very long. The only issue is Scintillant Lance. It starts doing more and more damage as the fight drags out. I opted for the very indelicate approach of throwing bodies at it. Even double weakened my Gekkos were doing a decent chunk of damage so it "worked" in a certain sense. Atma of Apocalypse kind of changes the ballgame.

It seems to Triple Attack a lot, but it doesn't have super accuracy, so it can be evasion tanked. Seigan tanking worked alright, but you still need a lot of cures if you can't evade its attacks or have someone to bounce it off of. Rotating tanks seems to make the most sense, but they should last at least a minute unless you want to bring out a whole army or zombie it like we did on our last attempt. If the goal is to survive Scintillant lance, I'd use a MNK tank with Indrik's own atma. MNK's have a decent selection of MDT/MDB gear (moreso than NIN). Either that or pick a NIN anyway and have him tank backwards with nukes. Limiting TP usage would make it more low-mannable. I don't know if Absorb-TP lands on it. Since it's a light-based mob, I would think so. Big damage nukes and removing TP whenever possible should limit its lance usage to about 4 or 5 per fight and you could kill it before it starts breaking 3k.

If there's a way to predict/stun/avoid Scintillant Lance, I haven't noticed it. Someone suggested strafing. I tried it, but with all the other melee on it, I kept running into people. I want to give it a go with a more defensive strategy. Indrik's lance damage does seem to reset after it goes idle/regens.

Empousa
The flying mode is this NM's only catch. It actually doesn't do any normal attacks in the air and just spams TP ablilty x3 followed by a spell and repeats. Someone said a certain amount of damage done to it while flying will make it drop down, but I think there's something more going on there. Since the damage from melee alone seemed to take much longer to bring it back to earth. Either way, WS and melee during the 3 abilities and turn around for the spell. If it's Dread Spikes have it dispelled/finale'd asap and then turn and hit it some more. Landing a spell on it while it's casting a spell of its own may be a bit tricky unless limit your tries to Apocalypse Atma procs (and interrupting the spell if it's not an instant cast). Doing it the normal way it may take a few tries to get the hang of it, but I'm sure once you do it becomes rather easy and it'll go back to its grounded mode quickly.

Defensively there's not much you need to worry about. Just don't have too many people in range when it starts flying. The AoE abilities don't hurt individually but it adds up fast as he spams them. Dark resist atmas is another route to go, but switching atmas takes time you may not want to spend, unless of course Empousa is the only thing you're doing. It's a quick respawn and requires no pop farming. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for stones and cards of Ardor. It's way easier than Indrik.

Leveling Warrior

2011-01-24T15:25:00.010+01:00

This job has been getting a lot of love in the last year. It's always been one of strongest melee DD jobs in the game and I'm sure in many situations the strongest one. However, since Abyssea introduced the need for versatility in weapon choices to proc weaknesses and popularity of AoE farming, it's gotten some extra attention. These make it more useful than simply "a job to kill things with". I started leveling it mainly for those two reasons.

I leeched my way from 45 to 70, after which I tried closing the skill gap with a Great Axe on my DRK, which was already at 90. I got it up to the mid 190's from ~160 before breaking down and deciding to level the rest while exp'ing. To my great relief at ~190 skill, the use of decent acc gear, Razed Ruin + Cloak and Dagger + Horned Beast, Sushi and Stalwarts spam compensated for all my Accuracy issues. I wasn't capped at the start but I gradually got to that point, slowly outgrowing the need for Stalwart's and Food (I'm a cheap bastard). In the lower 80's I had jumped to 270 Great Axe skill.

Skilling Up
I joined Enigmas and Cyrille for some skillups on WAR when I got the idea of trying to do it solo with a defensive build and regen atmas. After one attempt I was hooked. When I found them the first time the Orapodiums they were EP-T to me. In 22 PDT from gear and Mounted Champion + Stronghold + Impenetrable I was able to hold two Orapodiums for an extended perdiod of time. The beauty of this is that I was getting more than double the attacks from retaliation as I was getting from regular swings. To be clear, you CAN get skillups from a retaliation attack. On a good Retaliation streak I could self-sc. Since the vast majority of attacks were landing for between 20 and 30 damage, you could hold many more mobs if you had a capped Phalanx on you. Enough that you could start as low as ~70 skill. I say this because to my great surprise I was getting a decent amount of skillups on g.sword at around that level with only 2 mobs on me.

Using this method (sans Phalanx) with DNC sub I could hold 3 mobs indefinitely. A few trips to Misareaux coast leveled my Staff up to 290 (Cataclysm) my g.axe to 300 (Fell Cleave) and finished my WS points for Steel Cyclone, King's Justice and Retribution. During this process my parrying went from ~217 to 230. I'll be going back again for skilling and WS points on Sword, Club, Polearm and Great Sword. For Axe and Scythe I only need the WS points, though I'll probably still do them this way.

Fell Cleave
Last saturday was my first chance to use Fell Cleave on a train of mobs. First we had to build Amber lamps. Fortunately with Cataclysm and the right combination of Atmas I could snipe the last 10-15% of Thalassonins, doing 900-1300 damage. After that we started with a small train. Using Voracious Violet + Razed Ruin + Griffon's Claw, my 2hr'd cleaves hit for mostly 3000-4000 damage, occasionally one-shotting a bat. I was very surprised at this, since my WS set wasn't that good and I was using a Perdu Voulge. They were respawning Easy Prey which made for less exp but easier cleaving. I started using Blood Rage as I leveled into it. Using every damage-increasing buff in the book except Berserk. Though I'm sure I could have gotten away with it. I learned several things through the process:

Two WAR's are better than one, but certainly not needed.
Fell Cleave's AoE is centered around the target.
The range of Fell Cleave at 100 TP (first WS when using Sekkanoki) is deceptively small.
Wait for the mobs to 'settle' around the puller and pick a mob that's somewhere in the center before engaging.
Mobs that are on top/inside of you can't be seen, ws'd or retaliated.
Getting out of the clusterf'ck is easiest by unlocking your current target and holding back (first person view) and spamming your WS macro.
PLD sub is not needed and probably works against you.
Pulling using evasion works better than defense/PDT due to how easy it is to cap evasion rate on regular mobs.

Some mobs (possibly due to certain terrain) have a tendency to get on top of you, making them hard to retaliate but easier to hit with AoE. However, you'll get the "unable to see" message when they're on top you. You'll have to back out of the group before being able to WS. If given a choice I'd stick to small ground-based mob types, because my personal experience is that flying mobs bunch up on top of you more often. If you have two WAR's then that's less of an issue. I saw a group Cataclysm'ing raptors in Misareaux and noticed they used the tunnel to funnel the mobs into a narrow space, putting them all on top of eachother but still in front of the WAR. This is the ideal situation if you can manage it.

Without a restore chest I cycled through, revatilizer, fanatic's drink and powder in order to bridge the gap. It never happened that I didn't have any one of these 4 at my disposal for a pull.

In my first post on AoE farming I mentioned PLD sub, but I'm gonna have to almost fully dismiss it in favor of SAM sub now. The simple fact is that two Cleaves with Mighty Strikes up is upwards of 6k damage (and that's with my sub-optimal gear). That's more than enough to kill most regular mobs. There's no need for the whole ordeal to last for more than 10 seconds after the first cleave, and that's being generous. I've read in many places how Retaliation is almost instant TP, which would put SAM and PLD sub in roughly the same league, however this isn't as great as it sounds. Like I said before, unless you use narrow terrain mobs will move around and end up on top of you, making retaliation usless until you can get out of there. I may change my mind again once I get more experience.

Weekend Update 14

2011-01-23T21:17:00.006+01:00

The Facepalm linkshell has been on a good run recently, getting a lot of upgrade items for people. Most of which are going freelot due to a recent DKP change that caused most people to reach 0 points halfway through the month, to the dismay of some. Three Bennu and three Orthrus on our last trip to Altepa meant a bunch of nice Atheling mantles and two Kikugosaku great katanas. Special thanks to Rayearl and Yohko, who both outlotted me but then voluntarily passed for me, because they know how much I heart my SAM.

The two farming runs we did in Visions zones allowed some people to level their subs while we got us some NM triggers. I had leveled WAR to 84 and skilled up staff (Cataclysm) and G.axe (Fell Cleave) for AoE farming (among other things). It took a bit of getting used to but on the Tahrongi run I got the hang of it as well as dinging 90. I think I may do a post on the topic of leveling WAR.

In addition to cleaving loads of bats (upwards of 1500 mobs), we did Iratham twice. One body dropped and I won the freelot food fight. I hope people didn't rage too hard at it going to my relatively gimpy WAR. Until I get Ravager's +1 this is nice for capping haste.

Wings of the Goddess
We finally got around to finishing the WotG missions. It took all of an afternoon and early evening to get through the spitewarden fight, the fetch quest and the final battle. The last fight was epic and tougher than I expected, but it was worth it.

There are only a few WS where I would consider not wearing this piece and that's not just because I lack better options! Maybe a little.

The fight against Lillith's second form tested us to our limits. So much so that we wiped with it DoT'ed and at 2% ticking down to 1%. My reraise attempt was ill-timed and inside aggro range. Thinking we had lost when DoT's wore off, Chaess bravely reraised and high-tailed it out of the center area. With RR1 and Taru HP anything would have killed him and yet... he managed to summon a jug who then took out Lillith in one attack.

We had considered using two BST's instead of a melee tank. Considering how much MP I spent on cures I think that may have been a better option. The AoE Death she can use missed Kingcem because we were running around trying to avoid those summoned contraptions. So we lucked out there, but there's just a lot of damage to recover from with the measly MP pool I had. Abyssea really spoils you. I used a Vile Elixir+1 and Chainspell nuked after the MNK went down. Again, had I had more MP I could have finished it right there with another nuke. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to cast Bio and Poison.

Looking back it was a fun story. The ending is a bit... well... I won't spoil it. All I'll say is that I went from hating the main characters (Sandy missions made me hate the little Griffons) to really wanting to see the conclusion. Perhaps not the most satisfying ending, but how can it ever be? Don't click the below image if you don't want to see snapshots of the mission finale.

Tavnazia win

2011-01-17T07:49:00.005+01:00

Another milestone in my FFXI career! I say that non-ironically, cus it IS like a job at times. I wish I had better screenshots, but I wasn't at the actual fight. Many of us weren't. Of the 15 people in attendance last Sunday, only 5 had the pleasure of facing off against Diabolos Spade.

After a decent haul of AF and Hydra junk we went back down to the Umbral Diabolos gauntlet. The first attempt (two weeks prior) we aggro'd 3, I believe. We killed one but AoE destroyed us pretty fast as we were clustered together. Everyone did a good job of crossing this time, aggroing only 1. Magnumm was on SMN to Perfect Defense the melee party, but after 5 people got across one of the Umbrals decided to come very close to the entrance of the tunnel and chill. With an obstructed view of the rest of the tunnel there was no way of making a calculated decision and timing a run. I decided they'd have to do it without PD. Three melees, a BRD and a WHM ended up winning in what seemed a pretty bumpy fight from their HP bars, which is all I had to go by. Two of the three DD bit the dust, but I got the "too far to gain experience" message only 10 or so seconds after I saw them KO. Total fight time is probably under a minute. I wish I could relate more interesting observations, but this is all I have!

Urd solo on SAM/DNC at 90

2011-01-13T12:57:00.008+01:00

First let me say that I don't consider this to be some grand achievement. It's odd I feel the need to post such a disclaimer/defense before even starting the contents of this post. It's likely been around forever, but to me it feels like recently there's been an increase in the arrogance and belittling of other people's achievements in FFXI. I dare anyone to go into any sizeable linkshell with an average age of 18 or lower and saying something along the lines of "I'm having problems with X mob" and I wager there will be at least one response along the lines of "That NM is easy!".

So yes, Urd.

I failed the first time and beat it the second. I got help for the rest of the kills so there was no need to go back and fight it solo anymore. Two things that tell me a third try would be much easier. Number one, although I had high evasion rate in the fight, I now have better evasion gear and capped skill. In case I wasn't capped, I would be now. Secondly, I didn't realise until after I beat it that Dancer sub-job at 45 has access to Violent Flourish (stun). Although the accuracy of the stun doesn't seem all that high, it would have certainly helped with what I think is the second most annoying part of the solo: Stoneskin.

I'd rather Urd cure itself for more HP than what SS absorbs, because I can't get TP while hitting for 0. I was using Soboro and Urd's magic spell timer would very often be up a second or two after I broke Stoneskin and it would reapply it and in the meantime I'd have done less than 200 damage to it and worse of all, get no TP to cure myself with. The first time I fought it I WS'd whenever I coudl spare the TP, but the second time around I saved it to WS right after Stoneskin finished casting, this way I'd break it immediately and the next few attack rounds would get me that TP back. Needless to say, the speed difference between the first and second attempts was huge.

Trance was not an issue. Somehow Zephyr arrow only hit me twice during both fights. It seems like an inaccurate attack. When you see trance and start running you can easily outrun Cyclonic Turmoil. once the second TP attack (Lethe Arrow) in the series is canceled because of you being out of range you can stop running, wait for it to recover from the shock and outrun the final, and only really annoying ability: Cyclonic Turmoil. It can use it outside of trance, but there's a lot of abilities to choose from so it's not used very often. Turmoil is a full dispell and losing a fresh Seigan can be annoying. Sambas aren't a bare essential in the fight, so that's not as bad. Seigan and Third Eye, however, are very necessary. Without them you'd be hard-pressed to keep up with the damage taken. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I was not at capped evasion. I clearly remember having a few close calls before the end of the fight due to successive hits when Seigan got dispelled.

You can predict Trance, but it's clear as day once you know what the animation looks like. The point where Trance becomes the #1 most annoying thing about this fight is at low HP. You shouldn't have problems overcoming Urd's Cures and Stoneskin even with measly Soboro hits. However, at low HP it can use Trance an unlimited number of times. This was the reason I lost my first attempt. I saw it use trance a second and third time at low HP, but didn't perceive it as a threat when I went for the kill. After I blew my TP trying to self-SC and swapping to Radenotachi for the kill, I took a decent chunk of damage and had to run away from Trance. I'm not sure if Turmoil connected, but I didn't have the TP to cure myself.

On the second attempt I got it to low HP much faster due to WS'ing through Stoneskin. Since I got impatient the first time I waited longer and slowly took down the HP to around 5%-10%. It starts spamming cures pretty frequently now and here also I could have used Violent Flourish had I known about it. Once I reached that low HP I waited for it to use Trance. Assuming it was on some timer I chose to kill it quickly after outrunning Cyclonic Tumroil. I believe I also go lucky with it choosing to use several long casting spells, but I don't think that was required as long as you blow through asap after the first Trance at low HP. How low? I think anything under 10% is doable.

Grauberg the second time around (Alfard, Azdaja)

2011-01-13T07:09:00.008+01:00

Maintenance forced our LS event back a bit, but people logged on pretty fast once servers were up so we still managed to get the NM's we set out for. Those NM's being Amphitrite, Alfard and Azdaja. The triple-A threat! We fought them in that order because it seemed that was the order of difficulty as well.

Zone Boss
Not much to be said about Melo Melo and Amphitrite. It's the same old story of people healing the mob because they're not being careful. This time we DID go for the Atma, because I thought it'd help people do weaponskills for weaknesses without needing a TP mob. It's still a risk, since if you end up doing anything OTHER than proc'ing weaknesses, it'll only get in your way. Melo Melo's atma actually sounds good, but I suspect a very low proc rate. Also, I'm secretly hoping that the damage you absorb is unadjusted by PDT and Phalanx, but that's probably too much to ask for. Some upgrade stuff dropped as well as the RDM sword.

Ningishzida + Alfard
Nothing good dropped! Ok, now that that's out of the way... The info on wiki was right. Tanking from the back guarantees that it will only use Serpentine Tail. While spectating it seemed like it would turn to face tanks everytime after Serpentine Tail. At first I thought this was built-in AI, but then when Nerve Gas went off 3 times and tanks died. I ended up tanking and another reason why it may have turned became apparent. The tail attack has a knockback which will send it running after you and in so doing turn around. So, next time we should try to position it so that tanks can back themselves into a corner while still in range and exactly behind Alfard. If turning around is indeed only caused by it running after you, then this should mean that as long as nobody else pulls hate, the risk of Nerve Gas will be minimized.

Deelgeed + Azdaja
Deelgeed has an Atma! I did not know that going in. Superior Accuracy+ will be nice when I level up WAR with my gimp G.axe skill. Azdaja lived up to its promise of being a tough sob. The plan was to have 3 lines of players like we should have had during Uleguerand fights (Pantokrator+Apademak). The front line consisted of a NIN and a MNK tank. With hate reset two tanks is the minimum. The second line consisted of a WHM, RDM and a BRD support. The final backline consisted of people to wake the second line up from Sleep + everyone else. The role of waking mages was important and it went ok-ish, but with better execution it would probably have meant the tanks survived longer. However, as it was the tanks went down due to a combination of slept support players and Doom. The Wyrm was only down to about 80%-90%. That's when two other DD's and I stepped up and attempted to tank it for the remainder.

Not too long ago I made a decent evasion setup for my Samurai. The motivation was the Urd solo, where my evasion rate was high. Followed by Lamprey Lord fights, where it was not high at all. I realised my evasion skill rating on SAM wasn't so bad, but it needed complimenting. The increasing returns of evasion support this line of thinking. This was the reason why I "for shits and giggles" decided to stack Cloak and Dagger and Siren Shadow atmas. Both have Major Evasion+. Stacked and combined with my evasion gear Azdaja missed... a LOT. I was very surprised at what I was seeing. I was subbing WAR for weaponskills, but with Third Eye I hardly took any regular hits. Of course such a thing can't be relied upon while killing Azdaja because it can dispel the Atmas. It dispelled Atmas on the tanks, but for w/e reason it never did so again.

The three melee tanked it with brave support from weakened mages all the way down to ~20% at which point I died. I HP'd and came back to find it at ~10%. At this point, despite having decent success holding it before, I decided to take it down asap. There were quite a few weakened people around and a single voke got its attention, meaning there hadn't been anyone alive on it for very long. Fanatic's drink, 2hr x2 thanks to a revitalizer did a good chunk of damage. Together with some damage from someone else (I don't recall) it died pretty fast. In the end only 3 or 4 people missed out on the kill and Atma.

The Atma off this seems off-putting at first, due to its innate self-inflicted DoT. However, looking back at the Azdaja fight itself, it seems like it could be useful here for waking people up. The major Damge taken-% is an obvious treat for its big AoE wing attack. Since all its attacks appear to be darkness based and the Dispel magic spell is also dark based, you COULD assume that the dispel effect of its baleful Roar is darkness based. If so, there are two Darkness resist Atmas available that could be stacked to resist its wing, the dispel, the sleep and doom. Before we even bother to try this we need the T3 VNM in Grauberg though.

Pantokrator, Apademak and more

2011-01-10T11:17:00.012+01:00

A lot of stuff went down that I haven't posted about. Last La Theine we did 5 Ovni's and got 3 Bullwhip Belts of which I got one (yay). Did a few Cirein-croin, an ICP, Amhuluk and finally Sobek. Gukumatz is rough getting claim on. We got a bunch of Abyssites and I'm now 3/3 on Reaper, and Kismet and go the last Sojourn I needed.

Instead of going into details of fights in Visions and Scars zones on which there is already a lot of info available, I'm going to look back on our recent encounters in Uleguerand range.

Ironclad Triturator
Reports made this thing sound very hard. I must admit I was a bit disappointed. The thing only used draw-in twice and I failed to stun the follow-up TP ability both times. I was lagging pretty bad, because, as I later found out, I had a file download on that I forgot to turn off. Anywho, I dont' know if it's reliably stunnable, but it did seem fast with the lag. The rest of the fight seemed easier than the usual Iron Giants. Maybe we could straight tank them all as easily as this or maybe this one didn't hit as hard, I can't say. Having two WHM's was nice, not in small part due to the bad streak of disconnects we've had recently.

Pantokrator
This turned out to be a pretty tough fight. I honestly had skimped on my homework on this mob and knew very little about it. We soon figured out it absorbed damage during WS and magic casting. The first Chainspell made me nervous but curespamming the tanks worked just fine. Hundred Fists was equally overcomable with curespam. I tried helping out the WHM's from outside the tank party, but it didn't feel like it was necessary. It used Colossal Blow twice and since it resets hate a second tank is highly recommended.

So assuming your tanks can hold hate through Hundred Fists and Chainspell and your healers can keep up then what's left is its shield move. I'm afraid I don't recall the name of the ability but it's a large radius paralyze that you can't avoid by standing at maximum casting range. If you can't get paralyze off healers and tanks fast enough there will be trouble. I suppose you can have someone dedicated to paralyna on healers outside of the AoE range. This is something I'd suggest for Apademak as well. Finally, nobody should be standing in conal range of Laser Shower. It's a good chunk of damage and it knocked out a few mages twice or so. It seemed to gain high magic resistance during the shield ability. Stuns were resisted then while they would land normally later on during the fight.

Despite proc'ing blue we didn't get a Zelus Tiara. The Atma is situationally good and the Torero Torque is a nice piece for DNC and NIN looking for an evasion tanking neckpiece that surpasses Evasion Torque. I don't know who got the horn because it went freelot. Seems we have a shortage of 'willing' bards. It's a really nice instrument regardless; upping Lullaby duration by 30% of its base.

Apademak
We failed to stun its spells pretty early on. The third spell went off and it went south from there. Let's just say we made good use of Apocalypse atma. The level-up doesn't go away after it going idle. This meant even after the tank party recovered we had to deal with Fulmination spam which we weren't ready for at any point. After the sac-fest and an attempt to straight tank it again we got red weakness. The tanks did go down and we proceeded to hold it. I eventually hp'd, got a brew and nuked it down.

Khimaira mobs are usually killed asap with as few stuns as possible so Fulmination can be taken care of when the time comes. Another way of dealing with this is having someone stand out of Fulmination range to paralyna the healer so they can reliably cure the tanks. Fulmination shouldn't kill a tank outright, which gives you time to pull this off as long as the 'outside' mage is told/warned when Fulmination is incoming to speed things up and increase survivability. In the case of Apademak simply eating the Fulmination could become very intensive as it appears to have a decent amount of regain. So much so that it would build enough TP for it between 2 sacs, whcih would be roughly 30 seconds. Maybe it can use it several times in a row or it got tp from other sources while sac'ing that I didn't notice. [I later read that it possibly gets TP or otherwise instantly uses a TP ability after it completes casting on a spell]. Someone mentioned that the height difference at the ramp was enough to nullify Fulmination. We'll try and do this the next time out.

Shinryu and more

2010-12-31T09:09:00.009+01:00

After getting access to the Shinryu fight it took a day before I got to fight the actual thing. With a group of 6 we rotated using brews attempting for red and then blue weaknesses. We got the Atma during the second fight and a blue proc only once for the only 'big' pool. Several belts dropped, a dagger, a few capes and a scythe. I ended up with the scythe which I couldn't equip yet.

Twilight Scythe
On saturday evening I leveled DRK for the sole purpose of trying out Twilight Scythe. The last time I played DRK was in the exp alliance that took me to 85. Now I played around with endark and I was parsing equally to a NIN for the top DD's in the group using Magnus Scythe. I still had a stack of magnus stones left when I hit 90, but of course I immediately switch to Twilight. It took me a while of trying, but apparently Death can not proc with Endark up. That alone was a big disappointment. Without endark it would fire off rarely and although it's eyeballing, it certainly doesn't look like it's anywhere near 10% which was previously reported. If I had to guess, I'd say it would fire every 5th mob. That doesn't say much about the actual proc-rate though.

It's going to be very hard to determine the contribution of Death procs on an alliance's performance. That's why I'm not going to bother saying how good I think it is compared to other options, but I will say it's a good weapon for farming and EXP. However, since AoE farming is more efficient whenever it's applicable, the niche seems pretty small. A thread on FFXIAH forums showed Twilight Scythe bypassing the PDT on elementals as well as going through a PLD mob's Invincible, leading some to believe it hits like Formless Strikes. I can't imagine this being a glitch, so as a hidden effect it seems very useful. Someone else claimed it never proc'd during a Dynamis run, which seems a bit odd.

SAM progress
I've set up some goals for gearing my Samurai. There's a lot left to do, but I'll slowly get there. For example, last week Thursday I got this:

As you can see the STR text on still hasn't been fixed. Truly a glorious day, as it was the same day I got the Twilight Scythe and Apocalypse Atma. A special thanks to Kingcem and Cyrille for helping me out. I've seen it drop once out of 6 fights, but 1/1 with blue proc. Immediately after we killed Chukwa and of course PLD AF3 neck drops without any weakness proc.

With the recently finished Unkai Haidate +2, Unkai Sugemino and Ace's Sabatons, I've made some decent strides in the last two weeks. My WS set is missing 5 key pieces and a few lesser upgrades that I didn't list in this image:

Everything is what it looks like. The Moonshade earring will have Attack and TP Bonus augments, of course. The TP set looks like it'll be harder to finish although it could be done in a short time with some dedicated farming.

The cape in there is Atheling Mantle, which has double attack on it. I didn't put Hoard ring in there (because it's buyable and cheap), but it will be needed for a 5-hit at 437 delay. My progress on Masamune is still stuck at VNM's (Lamprey Lord), but I hope to get those done soon. In the process I found out a SAM can solo Urd at 90. I will make a dedicated post about that soon, as it was a fun and interesting fight.

6/6 Caturae

2010-12-30T09:24:00.009+01:00

Ever since people found out how to access the Shinryu fight, we've focussed on getting people access. Some got it on their own by joining pickup groups, but many others (including myself) waited for us to do the fights as an LS. Yesterday we "finished" the needed fights, though not everyone was present for all events, so some are still missing a few kills. Overall they were pretty easy and we got Atma off most. All of them do something unique at lower health that range from annoying to deadly.

Yaanei
We had a previous encounter with this one that didn't end well. It's specialty is an attack that inflicts super curse. Not knowing what to expect the first time (read: unprepared) it ripped tanks and DD's to shreds one by one. This was before Heroes was released. Several abyssites and atmas later, the fight seemed a breeze. It wasn't just the brute force, but also acknowledging the danger of the last phase and using fanatic's powders on DD's to zerg it down the last phase.

Raja
This one turned out to be pretty simple. The key to winning was positioning. It did knock tanks around a bit, so you have to reposition regularly, which not everyone was doing. On a related note: a big pet peeve of mine is tanks that don't stand between the mob and mages or even to the side. Rather they love to stand on the far side of mobs, forcing healers to move into a mob's AoE range in order to buff and cure them. Especially on large mobs the difference in positioning is huge. For the love of god, don't make me have to cut through or run in a large circle around a mob's AoE area to the back side just so I can safely cure you. So yea, Royal Decree is not big deal with a NIN tank, so that worked out well combined with 3 BST's and 2 SMN's for damage. There's some more details about the fight in my previous entry.

Kutharei
The day before our Misareaux run we farmed pops with a small group and checked for Kutharei before calling it quits. It was up and we killed it using the same strategy as Yaanei, which was zerging the last 25%. We got red that time for Atma, which we didn't manage to do during the actual LS event. It's a pitty because the regen is pretty crazy on it.

Sippoy
I honestly don't know what this one's "special" ability is at low HP, because it was over before I knew what happened. It seemed to take a long time to spawn, a problem we didn't have with any other of the freespawn Caturae. I would classify this one as being the easiest one we did, based on that single experience.

Iratham
This thing was actually camped when we got to Tahrongi. None of the other ones were when we did them, so it was a bit of a surprise. We hade wide-scanners, but it ended up popping in my field of vision and I got claim. Both tanks died to a 1.9k Shadow Wreck which I thought was a bit of a disappointment. By now we should know how important it is to keep tank HP high and using a HP+ Atma on things with strong attacks. When both tanks hit the floor DD's engaged and we soon proc'd Red weakness which made things pretty smooth for the last phase and got os the Atma. Not particularly useful, but could be fun once our mages can get a hold of the Twilight Cloak and Impact.

Rani
Our last Altepa run had us losing a Rani pop. We had wasted a lot of time trying to fight it around the dolls and getting magic aggro. By the time we could put tanks on it full-time, the PDT had built up considerably and we just gave up on it.

This time around the plan was a bit different. We used pets like we did on Raja. We proc'd red and blue by the time it was reaching 50% HP. It was a bit bumpy since it wasn't exactly clear who was doing which WS. However, 3 BST's and a single SMN took it to 50% in about 15 to 20 minutes. At that point we had two people to use Primeval Brew. Vashs took it from 50% to 10% before getting charmed and Magi took it down the rest of the way. It does seem like we could have done it without brews if we deaggro'd it to reset the PDT at 50%. Since it uses meteor at that point 2 or 3 more pet jobs may have been necessary. At this point there's no real reason to worry about it. Soon we'll either have people with cheap brews to kill it from 100% or auto-reraise from Apocalypse Atma to hold it while people zone out to reset PDT. Not that we couldn't already do that now. You could reset PDT as many times as needed to take it down with the same amount of BST's/SMN's. The risk of somebody stealing it is present, but it's cheaper than using two brews per kill.

While we were there, we also killed this:

9/9 Abyssea wins + Raja

2010-12-19T21:34:00.004+01:00

No battle screenshots, because fraps was being stupid and all the while I wasn't taking pictures while I thought I was. It's a shame cus Cutarae mobs look pretty cool. The Uragnite zone boss was a pain and I don't know exactly why tanks died so easily, because it didn't seem to hit all that hard at all. I'll chalk it down to rustyness and too few BLM.

We went in with 3 BST's and 2 SMN's intended for Raja. I got a zone boss pop while doing Dominion ops outside of LS while Rayearl got the Ironclad key-item outside of LS as well. In the end that meant quick pops and very little running around. Assailer Chariot gave us Sojourn Abyssite from proc'ing red, so that was nice. After the chariot we re-upped our visitant time to be safe. However, Raja "only" took 40 minutes to down, which I think is pretty decent.

Royal Decree took out the WHM's several times. The NM moved too much and the tanks where being knocked back a lot as well so keeping ideal distance was not always easy. However, it shouldn't hit mages in theory, because at max casting distance from the mob you don't get hit. I had to kite it a few times, but with Allure atma and some -enmity in gear pets were able to get it off me quite easily. Usually helped along by the hate reduction from eating a tier4 -aga. NIN tank works well on this, since subjob removal doesn't affect its hate maintaining skill or its defense. BST pets were rotated so they didn't all die to AoE simultaneously. All in all a good showing from our side. While knowing that Rani is harder, it does give me a bit more confidence that we can manage it with a repeat performance of last Saturday.

Heroes and more

2010-12-17T16:14:00.007+01:00

Heroes came out and soon everyone wanted to know where the 3rd Lunar Abyssite came from. It turned out to be from the 7th zone quest boss win, so that instantly became top priority. We pulled off several kills of the Tier1 NM Diremite followed by a rather simple kill of Resheph.

Tarsal Slam (?) sets your HP to 1 and sheds a great deal of hate. Thinking two tanks would be enough to make sure no mages/support got any unwanted attention, we had them stand on opposite sides and take it down after going for Red and Yellow weaknesses. Perhaps it was the excessive TP feeding, but two back to back Meikyo Shisui's made hate unstable but it was near death, and the last bit wasn't all that difficult to cut off.

The next Abyssea LS event was in Altepa. Here we tried to down Rani for quick access to the coveted Shinryu fight. The trigger fights up to that point were smooth and so I was optimistic. However, we soon had to give up on Rani since we were unable to put a dent in it. We went in unprepared and paid the price. We did manage to proc Red weakness which just made it worse. I'm considering a pet burn next time or perhaps having someone use a brew. Fortunately the Ironclad Smiter has a pretty nice atma, so it wasn't all in vain.

We let Rani depoop and went for the zone boss Bennu. We already had a trigger but we got a second one while we were there. Hands and AF3 bodies seem less of a problem to get to +2 than the other pieces, considering how easy it is to get Tier2 pops. Bennu numer1 was a bit of a pain after the AoE hit a few too many people and the dark elemetnal I pulled for TP slept a few others. The second one convinced me it was just bad luck as it was much simpler.

The Sunday before Abyssea Altepa we killed Dynamis Lord. It was a very bumpy fight and I have to ask forgiveness for my noobness in there. I should have known it could cast sleepga and that its AoE knockback + Gravity could spell the end of a zerg. Fortunately we bounced back and had enough lv90 DD to take it down. Not before it resummoned Ying and Yang and killed a few ppl. It was close, but a win is a win. Now I can cross that one off my bucket list.

December Version Update

2010-12-07T23:49:00.007+01:00

It's been less than 48 hours after the update and I can't honestly say that I've explored much. I haven't been able to get much playtime in yet, which is regretful. However, that won't stop me from posting my first impressions!

The first thing I did when I finally managed to complete the file-check was try to finish my 5 merits (I had 2). To my great disappointment, Bastion just wouldn't happen. Misareaux was empty except for me and 2 other people. Also, Ephmerals weren't up anywhere. Giving up on that I decided to look at my STR Great Katana trials, which requires 15 Fire Geodes. They're not common without weather effects, combined with the rarity of fire weather they're going to be harder to come by than the rest. However, they're auctionable, which should make it less of a pain... I hope. While at the Magian moogle I decided to get some job emotes! I completed the DRK and THF emotes after a short trip to Tahrongi.

The next thing I did was get my Mog Sack. Not having a token/satchel made this my first big 'inventory' increase. The free daily Instant Warp is a very nice bonus. After that I stored some Assault, Dynamis and Limbus gear. All in all it's a huge imporvement in what I can and cannot carry with me. That was the end of day1.

Day2 involved me getting the 3 new maws and finishing the limit break quest. While inside the new areas I got the new Abyssites, maps and synthetic atmas. I took screenshots of them:

So far the "Atma of the Ultimate" seems the most promising. I'm not sure how big the MP penalty is, but as someone pointed out, it's good for NIN's experimenting with their new and improved nuking power. I'm very disappointed that I don't have "Atma of the Master Crafter" because it has movement speed, and I don't have Atma of Ambition either. Apparently having a craft at 100 is NOT the trigger, not that I have anything above 94 cooking, but people have reported not having it while being at 100 on a skill. Moglification key-item may have something to do with it. A lot of these are either conditional, have a negative stat or have low values of several spread-out different types of stats. So all-in-all Synthetic atmas still lag behind the regular ones. All except the movement speed ones, neither of which I have. I supposed atma of Dread (MKD) is worth it too, since it's been shown to stack with other Treasure Hunter stats now that we have a text message announcing TH levels.

That TH change is really amazing. It means a lot for THF's that have been wondering for ages how or when their TH gear is applied. We now know that you don't need to keep your TH gear equiped for it to have effect. This means being able to swap them out for better DD options without fear/supersticion of losing TH. The ability to increase your TH "modification" also makes THF's more valuable now. It's unfortunate that this means letting them melee. On the up side, AGI lowers the amount of TP fed to mobs now. How exactly this is calculated isn't completely known, but I read a report on BG of it being 1% of TP fed per 2 points of AGI. A good buff for THF and RNG alike.

Weekend update 13

2010-12-06T11:51:00.009+01:00

It's been a while since my last update, so I haven't posted about a very sweet achievement yet. Namely...

6/6 Abyssea wins
Now, of course some people missed out on a few wins, but for a handfull of us that have shown up for all the zone bosses the zone quests are finished. Just in time for the Heroes of Abyssea add-on too. Cirein-croin was the last one we needed and it was accompanied by a second Cirein-croin and two Amhuluks. We got yellow weakness on all 4 of them which lead to a ton of upgrade items as well as the faux relic axe (Cleofun) and club (Molva).

Cirein is a pretty simple kited fight, though that makes getting weaponskills off a bit of a problem. We still managed blue and red, but it was chaotic. Especially when Cyclone tagged some flytraps. As some people may or may not know, when you attack a mob for the first time (it was idle before) it detects alliance members by its normal means (sights, sound) and puts them on its hate list. So that meant we had to kill the adds, since they wouldn't go idle after killing the person that attacked them with AoE.

Amhuluk is a pretty fun fight. AoE Tornados look very cool and it's got a bunch of other really flashy abilities. Using height difference to avoid the AoE's made it very straight-forward. It's still a high level mob that will hit very hard when given the chance, so you still have to top up your tanks asap. The need/desire to get more upgrade items by proc'ing yellow !! is the only thing that makes this fight drag out. If that was not an issue you could have 4+ melee all whacking it (as long as you have the healing power to back it up) and take it down in under 10 minutes.

Cleaving
Having gotten some experience with AoE farming in La Theine, our Vunkerl farming run was going to be our first 'real' try at Cleave burning. I subbed BLU this time for safer pulling. We used bats, which are IMO the best cleave targets in Vunkerl. Harlecin was on WAR/PLD and we had a single WHM to curebomb. With Mighty Strikes two Fell Cleaves took out a large percentage of the train. That was fast enough to wipe 20-some mobs before Sentinel was low enough for there to be any real danger. However, without Mighty Strikes it takes up to 4 Cleaves before you start seeing any greyed out names of "felled" mobs (pun intended). We found out that a single WHM is not enough to keep the WAR alive during this. We got a second WHM later on, but most of the pulls we had at least 1 restore box or revitalizer in chests. The three people cleaving were seperated from the rest after we built up pearl lights. The rest of the group started getting quite a few ruby kills which noticably lowered the efficiency of our cleaving endeavors. I don't really see a way around that other than more discipline on kills. Although Fell Cleave takes mobs out much faster and requires fewer people, I like the added survivability of BLU's and the azure kills they get too.

At the end of the Vunkerl Farming run we didn't manage to get key items off all the NM's we claimed, so it was a bit disappointing. However, we did get a Pluviale to drop.

Farming Abyssea: Blue Mages

2010-11-29T00:07:00.007+01:00

After the last entry about abyssea farming I was anxious to try it out. Last Saturday I got my chance and it turned into a very good farming run. Building lights on VNM didn't work out so well. We couldn't find enough of them up, so we just built them the old fashioned way. We had two BLU's and two BLM's to start with. I pulled on RDM then did Accession Phalanx when mobs were slept at camp. I had the BLU's both sub PLD for Sentinel. It did help but later on when Cyrille was the only BLU left, we managed to keep him alive with curespam in between sleepgas after Sentinel wore off. Even though it's not necessary, I'm not sure what other sub would have helped more.

BLM's occasionally threw in nukes, but since we were on frogs they did measly damage. Whirl of rage was the big winner doing some very impressive numbers when buffed with drinks and the like. Tail Slap, despite its description of "area attack", turned out to be a conal attack. So it should be ignored in my previous post on the subject. I wonder how Battle Dance would have done. Some magic AoE BLU spells could work in other situations when your target doesn't resist them as much.

Pulling on RDM I used a setup of 43% physical damage reduction (daytime) with Phalanx and Stoneskin. Had I subbed BLU and left the Accession Phalanx to someone else it would have been much more comfortable. Still, due to them not pathing efficiently around the lake or when the train is large, I didn't have to constantly take hits, which ranged roughly from 10-50 on non-critical hits during daytime (when Umbra Cape's hidden effect was not up). It could have been the frogs themselves being weak, but is seems like any number of jobs could manage pulling the train. Even if you're lacking some gear you could send a healer along for building the train. Since only the initial claimed mob has the puller on hate list, the puller can supertank the rest of the train while being curebombed.

I'm afraid I don't have the parse with me right now, but I'm convinced we were killing mobs faster than any other 'traditional' EXP alliance I've been part of so far. Now maybe that doesn't say much about our speed and more about the general gimpness of pick-up alliances, I still think this can be a much better way to EXP when you're providing it for a bunch of low level jobs that can't contribute beyond opening chests. Especially because we essentially never needed more than 4 people and could lower that number further with some optimizations.

Trouble at the Inlet

2010-11-25T08:28:00.006+01:00

"What's that girl? There's a tuarus wreaking havoc at the inlet? Scythes for hands, you say? Eep!"

Popped two of these babies yesterday for a total of 6 stones as we proc'd yellow weakness on both. The second pool actually look like a full drop. Having tanks HP and come back was a good idea. Both fights tanks did go down, despite having Earthern Armor up and huge HP. The max HP down debuff, the cruor buffs dispel combined with the occasionally missed stun meant we couldn't guarantee tanks' survival. However, BST and SMN pets as well as Harl on DRK and Till on THF managed to keep it occupied until the tanks got back. Mages did well with removing paralyze, petrify and doooooom! Magi died to doom about a second after Bukhis went down and got exp but no Atma. Pretty silly that something like that is not instantaneous.

Right, we also did Lacovie and Glavoid. Personally I'm now 5/6 on zone wins and still missing Misareaux.

It took the first 80% of Glavoid before we REALLY buckled down and had melee only WS while it was casting long/slow spells. The fear of messing up a second pop is what pulled us through, I think.

Farming Abyssea

2010-11-22T11:08:00.010+01:00

By now most people must have heard about Fell Cleave burn parties. It was only a matter of time, really. Like Cyclone, Aeolian Edge, Earth Crusher and other AoE weaponskills, the damage or accuracy of Fell Cleave does not scale depending on the number of mobs affected. This is similar to how Astral Burns worked, because Astral Flow bloodpacts share this property. In fact, it seems like BLM AoE nukes are more of an exception than the rule. So, looking at how popular Astral Burns were before Abyssea came along and the similar underlying principles, it seems less surprising that such a method would arise after SE introduced the strongest physical AoE weaponskill yet.

It's not just Fell Cleave itself that makes Cleave Burning efficient. There's the surviving all the mobs hitting you as well as being able to kill them within a reasonable time. Retaliation makes it so that getting TP for more weaponskills is a non-issue. Restore boxes allow you to have Mighty Strikes up for many if not all of the pulls, making the time actually fighting the mobs very short. With 2hr up, a pair of good Atmas and a decent WS build 2.000 damage is quite achievable and would kill the majority of mobs in 3 weaponskills. The more mobs hitting the warrior, the quicker he'll get TP from retaliation procs. However, the more mobs the more defensive measures are needed.

For defense I've heard mention of Perfect Defense. I don't have any experience with the buff, so I can't say how effective it actually is. Apparently it gives a lot of breathing room, but there's still a small chance of not getting a restore chest and having to farm for one (or Revitalizer). Albeit a small chance with large enough pulls and only capped Amber and Azure lights, it's something to consider.

Cleave burning without a SMN
What are the alternatives for surviving the train? A "solution" that requires you to sacrifice some efficiency would be to do smaller pulls and cure-bomb the warrior. There is some room for the WAR to use some defensive gear while not requiring a larger number of WS to kill. However, with a smaller number of mobs per pull, you'll have slightly more down time per killed mob and less of a guarantee at restore chests. Without Mighty Strikes up the pull takes longer and that means a greater risk of failure.

Something I haven't seen mentioned before, but seems like a strong alternative: WAR/PLD using Sentinel. If three to four weaponskills is enough to kill the train of mobs and getting 100% TP almost instantly, the effect of Sentinel could be less than half-way over by the time all mobs are dead.

Accessioned Phalanx and Phalanx2, food and other buffs all help you along and there are a lot of options available. At this time I think the most minimalist way of doing a Cleave Burn without depending on restore boxes or meds is a duo of a WAR/PLD and a RDM/SCH.

Targets
The mob you're targeting obviously influences your efficiency. The ideal Cleave mob:

Aggros sound and/or links
Has weak or no TP abilities at all
Does not cast magic spells
Has low HP
Has weak normal attacks
Does not give ruby lights

Non-Cleave methods
BLM's have Stoneja and Waterja with the promise of stronger AoE spells come next update. Combine this with one whopper of a defensive ability in Mana Wall, BLM's can down large pulls as easily, though slightly slower than warriors. Mana Wall has an innate 50% PDT. When casting Stoneja the BLM's can be wearing Terra's Staff which boosts their damage while at the same time keeping them alive longer. A RDM puller can sleepga the train in between spells and it shouldn't take more than 6 unresisted nukes to down the train. With two BLM's that's 3 casts a piece. With Phalanx and Stoneskin BLM's can tank extremely well for the duration of Mana Wall and its MP pool. A big benefit of using BLM's is not risking Ruby lights.

With a fantastic selection of PDT gear as well an assortment of defensive spells, BLU can pull and kill its own train. They also have a good assortment of AoE spells like Body Slam, Tail Slap, Frypan and Whirl of Rage. They all cast quickly (1 second) and have a normal recast of approximately 30 seconds. There are some slower casting spells you can use to bridge the gap between these 4. With full TP and Atmas these all deal a good chunk of damage while 3 of them inflict Stun. As with Black magic, Blue magic doesn't risk ruby lights when this is undesirable. At this point my lack of personal experience makes this hearsay and theory. That means I can't give any specifics about subjob, gear choices and buffs needed for the BLU to survive without sleepga and still getting its spells off. Not without it being called into question, anyway.

If you're not necessarily looking to minimize the number of players needed to farm, the more people you have that are able to AoE while surviving the onslaught of angry mobs the more workable combinations you can make. Aeolian Edge by a THF that's using Perfect Dodge fullfills the basic requirements, but needs MANY repetitions to kill a train. Unless you have a way to feed the THF(s) for 10+ Weaponskills this isn't going to work. SAM can do 6 weaponskills in a row with 2hr, Meditate and Sekkanoki, but Sonic Thrust is directional and missing mobs is not really an option. Also, it's not as strong as Fell Cleave.

I've personally tested using RDM/BLM solo and using Fanatic's Drink + Ascetic's Tonic + Chainspell + Stonega2 to down a train of 9 Chigoes with success. With some Bastion Credits in reserve and a Scars' zone you can repeat this as many times as your credits and restore boxes allow. During the three repetitions I did I got a restore everytime and left with more time than when I started even though there's a short walk between confluxes and the Chigoe camp. Physical Shield lasts about as long as Chainspell and I had 5 to 7 seconds left on both after the train died. With Waterga2 incoming after next level raise, many possible imporvements to my nuking setup and better nuking Atmas there's always room for improvement.

Weekend Update 12

2010-11-17T09:15:00.008+01:00

Lot of stuff to talk about, but not much to say about them individually. One of the things on my FFXI bucket list was doing Odin. We killed it without all that much time to spare and the tanks going down made it a bit wonky. Kiting the fomor proved a bit challenging and keeping people alive was very MP intensive. Me and Magnumm ran low on MP towards 40%. Having to cure a SAM/THF that tanked after the tanks went down sponged a lot of it. When I got hate, Odin didn't seem to hit all that hard at all. Eating the Blizzaga in my MDT set made me think I could have easily tanked on RDM if I had some way to hold hate.

This was supposed to be a fun and positive achievement for me, but some problems with item distribution kinda blemished the whole thing.

Sunday we had a good Dynamis Jeuno run where we cleared everything before the boss. Post-boss we could have done at least 2 pulls if it wasn't for the fact that people left. I hope we can either start earlier or keep going longer. Monday finished a Glavoid set and popped it. Seemed to go very well with proc'ing red and blue weaknesses. Then around 20% people got reckless and healed it up to 60%. Had been fighting for an hour. It raged and we gave up on it. I hope we all learned a lesson, cus it was quite a waste of a pop and time.

Afterwards we did Briareus which put many of us at 4/6 Abyssea zone quest boss wins. After the fight, which was a total breeze compaired to Glavoid, we called it a night.

Tuesday I logged on to some people holding Sandworm. Killed KA for the first time. I had only ever fought sandworm's doomvoid mob once before (Serket) so it was kind of exciting. Took it out rather easily with 7 people. No drop though. On anything. Zero items.

Refresh prince

2010-11-11T00:03:00.004+01:00

Abyssea Vunkerl smells of feet. Camping Div-e Sepid while killing some skulls for Dvalinn pop items turned out to take much longer than I had wanted. We popped two Dvalinn and were missing the imp's key item. Not only did an ugly galka (is there any other kind) just barely beat me on claim (because an aggro'd imp decided to cast Stun of all spells), but we were unable to proc the red weakness on the second pop. Still, we got lucky and got the key item anyway. Before the Imp we also did Lord Varney to finish a second Bukhis pop set and Iktomi who dropped Destiny Abyssite without proc'ing red weakness.

Then came Durinn himself. He was truly non-threatening until way later down the line. Spent a lot of time trying to get the elemental WS done. We need to start keeping better track because we didn't know how many times each one was attempted. It turned out to be Sunburst. Once that was done with we got yellow really fast and had very few blunt weaponskills available to try for blue. So we didn't get that, but it was still a good fight. This mob's Atma is amazing and we are now pretty much set for the mages. Sure, you could use Hadal Satiator's Atma or Baying moon on BLM, but -30 enmity on Allure let's you nuke more before pulling hate. Durinn became a bit of a a-hole at low HP. Thundris Shriek is bad when DD's pull hate and run around with it. Also, its nuke hit unbuffed DD's pretty hard. I left the DD's pretty unprotected choosing to focus on the tank's survival. The tanking wasn't hard, which left us with some surplus healing in the main party. It was partly geared towards killing Bukhis.

We didn't get to Bukhis because of time constraints and our overall performance didn't inspire much confidence that we'd pull it off. Now that we have two pop sets, it's slightly less worrying to potentially lose one. Other than Bukhis this week's goals were achieved without too much hassle. Many of us have the VV/RR and Allure/MM combos, which means we may not have to spend so much time on atma farming anymore and we could focus on getting AF3 upgrade items instead. However, shouldn't forget that the visions zones still offer great rewards and we should aim to balance it out between the areas.

Abyyyysseaaaaa... F*CK YEA!

2010-11-08T23:56:00.005+01:00

Another successful Abyssea run ended in the killing of Ironclad Pulverizer and obtaining of its atma. We started out with BLM's killing Ephmeral mobs and a DD party killing colibri for TE's while the third party farmed spheroid plates. After getting a pair of plates I saw Abyssic Cluster up and we got a second "blazing cluster soul" key item. We killed Ironclad Severer for some JSE. Other than a massive DC that saw 6-7 people red dotting, it was a pretty boring fight. Proc'ing blue!! didn't work out and I started dreading our chances at proc'ing red!! on Pulverizer. Heqet and Asanbosam dropped triggers too, which gives us a Cirein-croin and Amhuluk pop set.

It started getting late and so we took out Ironclad Observer. Poc'ing red never took more than 10 minutes on each mob, but with ICP's swings blocking the weakness procs there was no guarantee that we'd pull it off. All my worries about not getting the weakness and having it depop (which multiple groups have had issues with) were unnecessary as we it all went very smoothly. ICP has an ability that weakens everyone within a certain AoE radius. It brought me down to about 350 HP. It lasts about a minute and isn't that huge of an issue as long as it doesn't hit too many people. There were some problems with firegate birds (the area we kited it in), but everyone did a good job sleeping and killing them one by one. It was pretty funny to see ICP fall down and dismantel while its head flew off high into the air. It went through changes between body and head forms before it finally dying and giving us our hard earned reward.

Abyssea is really popular now and I hope we don't have to stop people from joining because of a full alliance. Good job to everyone for a speedy light build-up, gettingt 3-5 TE's, proc'ing weaknesses and general badassery.

La Theine Picnic

2010-11-04T07:45:00.008+01:00

Before we got to any serious mobs we needed to finish our pop sets by killing Adamastor and La Theine Liege. Even the pop items for said mobs needed farming as there werent' any on AH at the time. Fortunately neither took long to drop and using the Red!! weakness we got the key item triggers without needing any extra pops. At this point I have yet to see a key item trigger not drop after exploiting the elemental WS weakness. However, I've heard that triggers and atma are not guaranteed after the weakness. Still, the chances are much better WITH weakness, so it's always worth going for.

Carabosse
After the fly we had a Carabosse pop. The fight itself took longer than I expected. It did benediction around 70%. Even with three people on it, it took about 20 minutes. Some deaths caused by Tornado2, but other than that it wasn't hard with the heigh difference taking care of the AoE's. I dropped the ball on dispelling Regain and so we had a rough patch near 30%. After it was dispelled and re-enfeebled it went back to being timid. We proc'd Red!! and got Atma + trigger.

Dozing Dorian
After Carabosse, the Hadhayosh pop was complete. However, I wanted Ebon Hoof atma to make that fight easier. Tanks would have much less trouble surviving its abilities with 30% extra HP. It took 2 pops to find the Red!! weakness. It had a tendency to do Sheep Charge several times in a row and people TP'ing on it made it hard to proc. There is a distance where you can WS but are still out of melee range. I hope people start using that range or start waiting for mob tp abilities/spells before WS'ing. We're kind of wasting time trying to reproc all the WS.

Hadhayosh
We popped it and pulled it near a wall to the east to try and get some height difference. It worked a few times but the mob kept moving around and maintaining the position wasn't possible. Quite some time went by before it was decided to move it towards the valley north of the pop area. We fought it on the cliff there. In the future we should move it closer to the ramp that players can take to go back up. We got the Red!! pretty early on and the rest of the fight was a bit slow. The Accursed Armor was a bit scary, dropping tanks down to 600 HP with its curse. The rest of the abilities weren't a big deal, including the meteor TP ability. The paralyze on it wasn't even that strong. Using the height difference really takes the punch out of its most annoying TP abilities: Thunderbolt. Since it can't be outrun and people were reporting getting hit even beyond 30 yalms (34 reported), which is the range of that ability on other behemoth mobs. Some mistakes were made and a tank did go down. Each of them once, I believe. We had a MNK and PLD. When Lordapm gets more merit abyssites his Galka MNK should be able to withstand a lot more damage. Combined with Atma of Allure, it lets mages spam cures more frequently without getting hate and the majority of fights should become easier.

Ovni
I had intended to do Briarieus after the behemoth, but there was a lot of interest in the LS to do Ovni, so we did that instead. Nothing notable happened and nothing notable dropped. Aside from the Atma and Abyssite! Both of which help our LS as a whole.

Pictures!
Here's a summary of the rewards.

And here is a fashion shot of my new gloves.

Looking at my DRK's melee gear it's missing some big things like a better Haste belt and AF3. Timarli does boost me up a bit over NQ Dusk, but I have a ways to go. Unfortunately, I was back down to 0 stones last night and spamming quests for seals will eat into some valuable visitant time.

Joyful joyful!

2010-11-02T07:42:00.005+01:00

Christmas came early this year. Yesterday's Abyssea raid went better than expected. Admittedly my expectations are generally low. The Konschtat key item farming I mentioned in another post netted us a Kukulkan pop set and missing that same NM's key item for an Eve set. Going in I knew there was no guarantee that we'd get an Eve set. My fallback plan was to take out Bloodeye Vileberry and Turul. However, we managed to get the key item, kill Eve AND Bloodeye. The reason why this entry is titled the way it is should be obvious. If it's not, here's a hint:

The nicest one is obviously Eve's Atma. It's considered one of the best melee DD Atma's in the game. I wasn't the only one that was excited. Most people immediately equiped it and marveled at the regain even before engaging anything.

Kukulkan
This fight was not very eventful. When kited it really doesn't do much of anything. Our obstacle was the big rock at the north encampment. Where Helga hangs out. Because the rock is so huge. It was sometimes hard to cure tanks and DD's who ran out of range while kiting. Some Wivre's aggro'd, but other than that it was straightforward. Explaining how to time the elemental WS while we're actually fighting doesn't work very well. I thought it'd be clear once we moved on to Eve, but it was the same story.

Eccentric Eve
It actually deaggrod during the long pull. I had used powder boots. Luckily it was in visual range and the tanks got it right away. Paralyze stuck and prc'd often. I was very surprised. It's VERY timid with paralyze on it. Stunners did a very good job on this fight. Not a single Tainted Breath or Extremely Bad Breath got through. It only started using them at lower HP, but Shyara was focussed on stun for the whole fight and did a really well. I was a slight bit worried about stun resist building up, but it wasn't an issue. I understand that if you're at an LS event you WANT to contribute and standing around while two tanks and a melee kill a NM is boring and difficult, but if it works better that way people should be able to deal with it. Everyone listened to instructions, which I'm very pleased with. I think I may come across as bossy and/or pushy when shouting commands (one time in caps) and repeating it multiple times so nobody misses it. I appologize to my LS if that's how it seems, but I believe it's partly necessary.

Lieje and Bloodeye Vileberry
Lieje was very straightforward and barely worth a mention. It's probably duoable by a melee and a mage. I don't see a reason atm why a SMN couldn't solo it either.

Vileberry, on the other hand, was a huge pain. I stressed limiting TP to it. People did seem to hold back but with avatars hitting it at times and it getting melee hits on the tanks it eventaully pulled a rancor and killed each of them several times. The trick to not letting things get out of hand was the avatars and multiple "bodies" to throat stab. With enough people present it just bounces and teleports around and only "nearly" kills people unless they get hit by an -aga3 while weakened or after just having eaten a throat stab. Since it moves around so much, does a lot of TP abilities AND casts, it's hard to get a clean WS on it. Eventually we DID manage to proc the red weakness after some debate over who was doing which. Then we tried to take it down asap cus Harlecin was timing out soon. Made use of Chainspell, revitalizer and mega elixir. Harl didn't make it and Magi was dead when it went down. Other than that it was a good fight. Exciting and challenging, but we still ended it successfully.

What about drops? Here's the summary:

What's next?
Tomorrow is La Theine Plateau time. Hoping to get Carabosse and Dozing Dorian plus their atmas. There's a chance at Hadhayosh and/or Briarieus, but I still have to consider which of those we need most since time is the limiting factor here. There's always a chance we'll do Ovni.

Hey! Itzawamoura!

2010-10-26T08:55:00.004+02:00

Popped this beauty last night. First mob Atma for myself. Until I get Baying Moon, I'll use this on RDM together with Heavens Atma. Seraph blade terrorized it and made the Atma drop. Boots went to Rayearl. Ray has a ton of weapons skilled up on his WAR which makes it great for trying to proc Red!!. No luck on Blue!! or Yellow!!.

The fight was pretty simple. We started out straight tanking it. I intended to have it kited from the start, but I suppose this made doing weaponskills easier for people that don't know how to range them. The kiting area was a large rock south of the chigoes. Once we started kiting nobody was ever really in danger of dying except the DD's that weren't being cured properly. The tank party was more than capable of kiting/holding it indefinitely. Had Sedna been closer to a rock like this it would have been a lot less chaotic. However, Sedna actually runs faster than normal player running speed. This Wamoura does not.

We killed Tunga and Warbler after Itza[tab], but no luck on key item trigger or abyssite. We should start having someone check Yanei when we next do something in Attohwa.

Weekend update 11

2010-10-25T08:11:00.009+02:00

Duelist's Chapeau +1 in the making. I hope I remember to trade the items and coins in on Sunday before JP midnight. Got Valkurm Dynamis win for some folks and fairly decent number of AF drops. It's almost like Treasure Hunter has a level correction! I'm kidding, of course. So that was a good Sunday after a GREAT Saturday. Why great?

First of all, after getting 10 merits in an AF3 farming alliance (that ended in 2 pieces only) I decided to get some people from LS to farm gold boxes in Konschat Highlands. We started out with 4 and a got a fifth for about an hour before he had to leave. Kingcem and I on DD's made short work of bugards. Jinpu is a piece of crap, but it still didn't take too long to cap amber lamps. At one point I managed a 800+ Jinpu, but this was obviously an outlier. The only negative of that farming session was that I wasted 44k EXP from being capped after getting another 10 merits. Aside from that, it was all win. We managed 4/5 on an Eve pop and 3/3 on Kukulkan, which is the only other key item I need for the full Eve set. It's a shame we only managed to get 4 people out there. We could have gotten a lot more pops with two or three more parties. I think people have more confidence in our ability to get things done as a group now that we've merged with another shell. After finally popping a zone boss last week, finishing a pop set for the Attohwa and now this I'm pretty confident myself.

On the last mega gold pyxis Kingcem won the /random for a 5% PDT Dark Ring that obviously should have been mine! After the farming I begged the guys to go check if Khalamari was up and help me kill it if it was. I still needed the helm. Unfortunately it was claimed and nearly dead. I asked if the people killing it if they needed the helm or were going for the necklace (they were 2 DNC's). I didn't get an answer right away, but then this happened:

Now my WS set is a little more awesome. The helm is not hard to get, so it's not an "OMG DROP" item, but I didn't get Abyssea add-ons until Scars came out. There's quite a few more items/mobs I need to "catch up" with.

Einherjar Zweiherjar...

2010-10-21T23:42:00.007+02:00

First of what I hope will be many Einherjar runs. I'm hopeful about getting to do Odin again. I've never had the chance to fight it and I would consider it a milestone if we managed to take it down.

It started out with a very long wait. I did a headcount of potential feather mules and we have 3 of them. This is very good if the people they belong to keep showing up. Looking at who has the most feathers, two people now have 6. I'm assuming we'll need to go through all tiers to get everyone access to the Odin fight. I believe we could (in theory) get everyone access plus finish a 9 feather set in 5 runs. After that with the feather mules it will hopefully be faster.

The event itself was smooth. No deaths and an easy boss (Psycheflayer). We cut it close towards the end because the second wave was bats and slimes. Slimes took a bit longer to kill and there were a lot of them. I made the mistake of running deep into the center of the zone after the first wave died. All mobs popped on top of me, but fortunately the regular mobs can't aggro you right away. They have the same passive period that mobs outside of Einherjar have. The boss, however, does not have that passive timeframe which meant it immediately aggro'd and we had to kill it before taking out the second wave. This is similar to how mobs in Dynamis and Walk of Echoes behave.

After Einherjar I helped Pezerton do the final CoP mission. It was nice to fight in Empyreal Paradox again, as that zone is gorgeous. I'm sorry to say it took us 3 tries to get it right with 4 people. The long lasting Mute and Amnesia combined with the physical shield took us by surprise as it seemed none of us read up on the fight beforehand. We all probably thought "at 85 this should be a breeze". Once we started kiting when WHM was silenced or it had physcal shield up, it was notably easier.

Abyssea to-do list

2010-10-19T13:24:00.009+02:00

Obviously there's a TON of things to do inside Abyssea zones. I was a bit late to the party and had some catching up to do.

Celerity
My first priority was to get Celerity abyssites. The first one was achieved by dragging 3-4 people to tonberries after a long LS EXP Alliance. It took us about 20 pulls each to get the Abyssite. Since these are soloable it's not really that big a deal to get these as long as you have the time. So a Konschat EXP Alliance may not be as common as the newer zones, but people still want the key item triggers so I'm sure you can find one. Or... start your own. It's a real pain making a decent alliance.

Second Celerity comes from a quest in Vunkerl. Getting fame high enough for this quest took me 15 trades in the "A ward to end all wards" quest. The pop items that work became cheaper after about 2 weeks of people buying them all up. The supplies quest works too, but takes longer. This is by far the easiest one to get. Since repeating is so fast, you don't need a lot of time to get it done. It'll cost you a bit of gil, but it's worth it.

Merit
Second priority is getting Abyssites of Merit. I've only gotten one so far, but this will become a huge help. NM fights are a lot simpler when they simply CANNOT one/two-shot you. Getting all Merit Abyssites and Black Merino Atma will boost your HP by 90%, almost doubling it. Yaanei and Bukhis Atma are a bit harder to and I wonder if the HP boost is capped.

I got the one from "Wanted: Medical Supplies", a quest in Misareaux. I got it without conciously trying. A blue pyxis dropped off the iron giant and I opened it manually because I didn't happen to have any keys on me. It was a pyxis with 400 EXP in it, but it was apparently enough to qualify for the quest.

The Merit from "Playing Paparazzi" will take an evening of work. There is a decently long series prerequisite quests and you need max fame to flag it. However, I'm motivated to get it done now, so I'll give it a go.

Bhumi should be an easy kill. Finding them may be the tricky part. I don't know if subbing RNG on RDM is going to cut it for the fight. It's supposedly very weak so I may as well try.

Warbler is probably the toughest one to get. I hate that it's not 100% because I don't want to fight that thing too often. Since it benefits the whole alliance and it also drops seals, we may as well camp out the Gnats durign an LS event.

Furtherance
This will raise your stats by 10 on top of the nominal Cruor boost. I don't think I need to explain why this is good.

Atmas
Probably THE most game-changing element of Abyssea. The strong Atmas turn melees into destroyers of worlds. The difference between a melee with Voracious Violet and Razed Ruin Atmas and one that has neither is night and day. The focus has been on the melee orientated Atmas, however there are a pair of Superior INT atmas as well as one with Refresh+10. Something for everyone. Getting the Atmas may prove a bit more difficult than Abyssites, but with the number of players we have now, we should have a good shot at covering the majority of elemental WS.

Sedna #1

2010-10-19T08:52:00.007+02:00

Optimistically titled, suggesting we'll be doing many more of these, this entry is all about yesterday's Abyssea Vunkerl. WoA and FcUK teamed up to form a new shell called Facepalm. After a relatively successful Dynamis Buburimu on Sunday I have no regrets about the collaboration. Shyara had the Sea Monk key item and so we only needed the pugil to pop the zone quest boss.

After I saw a lone RDM inching towards Hrosshvalur, I decided to do an emergency sac pull. Total chaos ensued. DD tanks were not able to hold hate off healers and aoe damage started taking people out. It took a second try to get it right, but at least we didn't lose the claim to another group. Key item drops and we get ready for Sedna.

The fight would be similar. Both spam water based attack. Barspell and Carol helped a lot. Not having Carol2 was disappointing. Both have knockback attacks. For the pugil it's his normal attack, while it's a TP ability for the ruszor. However it spams it enough that it doesn't matter. It has potent regain and at low HP would hardly ever melee and just back to back aqua blast. It has silence aura and is immune to magic when it has the bubbles animation up, which is almost full-time at low HP. Magic damage doesn't seem too helpful and melees did well. Due to knockback the whole tank party would regularly have to eat a Waterja, which wasn't too dangerous, but the curing needed did let healers overtake tanks in hate at some point. Better positioning and more plentiful and faster cures would make a world of difference in both this and the pugil fight. The tanks should never have to go down. With high HP and keeping them topped up (and not dwindling at 90%) only the most unlucky sequence of events should be able to take them out. I think I'll bring more healing power next time and assign one to each tank. Drops were not as important to me as getting my first zone quest win and second Lunar Abyssite.

Afterwards we did another Hrosshvalur, Iktomi and Lord Varney. Varney dropped key item which completed Shyara's Bukhis pop set. Since all accounts of Bukhis make it sound like an absolute beast, I've decided to let it wait until this new group gets more comfortable/confident. I need to remember to take pictures of the fights themselves and not just the drops/kills.

Walk of Echoes: chamber 2 wins

2010-10-14T22:32:00.015+02:00

After attempting chambers 1 and 3 before the last version update and losing, yesterday's two runs at chamber 2 (which was already the easiest of the first 3) seemed like a walk in the park. The WoE adjustments made mobs easier, as did the 5 extra levels. Also, the longer 45 min time limit makes it much more forgiving. The slimes are the most popular area because they require the least number of mobs to be killed. Also, the mobs themselves don't have any quircky or annoying abilities. Nothing like a hate reset, stripga or extreme poison to deal with.

During the first run we used the vast majority of the 45 minutes we got. I got about 8k EXP and ranked 3rd doing quite a bit of curing and nuking. Our group consisted of a tank party (MNK,WAR,COR,RDM,SMN,WHM) and some assorted DD's (SMN,BLM,DRK). Tillaert and Tipira took care of the sac pulling of bosses. Lordapm (MNK) and Rayearl (WAR) did the vast majority of the damage according to the parse. Second loot pool looked like this:

It's too bad the prices of the items are dropping fast, now that the zone is being cleared regularly.

The strategy was to have the WHM focus on cures while the SMN and RDM took care of erasing slow and hasting one of the DD's each. With meds and refresh2 on the WHM, durability was not an issue. Slow and Paralyze landed easily and Paralyze proc'd regularly. Damage was steady, except for the very first boss where hate was being pulled off melee. People held back longer during the rest of the run and it became more stable. Only melee stand within range, as bosses cast sleepga and also, you don't want to get hit by the AoE abilities. The bosses seemed a bit spammy with their TP abilities.

Runner behavior
The mobs in the crab and antlion areas used to run towards the spot where one of their buddies died at. I haven't been in either area 1 or 3 since the update, but a video I've seen of 3 seems to suggest they still do that. However, the slimes didn't do this. Not exactly, anway. When a mob dies another random mob or two start moving to another random location in the zone. So it COULD come across someone and aggro, but it could also just end up at its destination where it will hang out. In the same way as runners in the Crab zone (pre-patch anyway) they'll stay at their destination until the aggro someone. If that person dies, they will move back to their original starting position.

During our second run, after killing the first boss, a second boss came running towards our location. No other mob was with him, and so it was a clean pull and it sped things up nicely. I'm assuming it was headed for the starting plateau and just happened to find us on the way there. At the end of the first run I went to the SW corner looking for the final boss, but it wasn't there, while 2 of it's little helpers (Grenade Syrups) were. It had moved around and ended up way down at the bottom on the north side of the map, where we had already pulled the third boss from. So, it seems their destination is random and it is just one giant shuffle that can cause you to aggro if you're not camped together with a sac'er watching your back.

Deaggro
I somehow managed to deaggro one of the Morbid Molasses while pulling it off the SMN sac'er. I'm not sure how that's possible since they're supposed to have alliance-wide aggro. I would expect it to at least have one more target after deaggroing me. The fact that it can deaggro at all is also surprising. The explanation I think is most likely is that upon initial aggro, it will 'detect' alliance members in the zone, but if pulled off the sac'er without it going idle/passive it won't do this 'detect' mechanism again. I can't think of a useful application of the deaggro at the moment, but it's semi-interesting. Compared it to regular mob behaviour, it's very similar. The biggest difference is that regular mobs don't detect across an entire zone. The 'detect' range for Dynamis mobs is bigger than regular mobs', but still limited to a certain distance.

Weekend update 10

2010-10-12T19:38:00.009+02:00

I was home sick the last two days, which made it a particularly long weekend. I thought I'd use my time to do all kinds of things on FFXI, but I ended up watching movies while chocobo digging and doing the regular LS events. It was relaxing.

I made it a point to finally put together a magic defense set. I had several pieces already, but not an actual macro. I sacrificed my Cure3 macro for it, which is no big deal since I use Cure4 almost exclusively nowadays anyway. It's still unfinished but it's already enough to survive Citadel Buster, which I found out during last night's Ultima. I died anyway, because after the second one I got hit with a Holy2. I was riding out the hate assuming a PLD would pull it off me. They did, but only a fraction of a second too late. Below is what the set looks like now. It carries over my PDT pieces in slots where I haven't got any magic defense pieces yet.

I know Limbus mobs are now DC with the level 85 cap and that any damage on them isn't going to 'wow' or impress most people. However, it was still a shock to me to break 4000 on a Weaponskill. The blobs in SE Appolyon are weak to piercing and so Penta Thrust was always going to do well [Correction: They're not weak to piercing. The crabs are though]. Be that as it may, it was the highest damage I've ever done in a single action on any mob on any job ever. Also, I beat Kingcem's MNK! Hahahaha, I know you're reading this! Woo!

The Gekko damage was also quite pleasing. I sacrificed 2 haste and tp'd in Perle hands and feet. I believe these are pretty reasonable trade-offs with only Haste spell backing you up, but I could be wrong.

On that topic, I recently thought of how Haste often doesn't produce ANY extra benefit. Take the 2% Haste trade-off I was talking about. Let's say in pushed me from 35% down to 33% Haste, which is about a 3% DoT increase. That means that in 97% of fights I will NOT see an extra attack. If you have a single long fight, the 3% means that I'll get an extra swing every 33 hits which is guaranteed. In contrast, the STR and Attack that I gain from wearing Perle hands and feet affect my damage on EVERY melee hit. It's guaranteed benefit versus benefit in the long run. When I look at it that way I'm more willing to sacrifice small amounts of haste when we're not swimming in it. Some would call such a situation suboptimal and that it shouldn't be considered anyway. I think it's me being realistic. Yes, that does mean that Ace's helm does not universally suck.

Enmity Kings

2010-10-06T13:37:00.004+02:00

So, if you could choose any job to build hate on something without beating up on it which would you choose? Forget about gear for a second and only look at what enmity generators each job has. Spells that generate hate are usually rated by how much enmity they generate per MP and what type of enmity it is. What I hardly ever see is a comparisson of how much enmity they generate per second.

The recast of magic spells can be halved with enough haste which doubles the enmity generation per second. Paladin, the classic tank, has very limited choice when it comes to enmity spells. We can talk about how enmity gear is more plentiful for Paladins than say Blue mages, and how Sentinel affects enmity over time, but to keep it simple I'll ignore those for the time-being.

Flash and Stun are very similar and rate extremely high in both MP efficiency and Enmity over time. They are the main enmity spells. Compared to Utsusemi, which will be used frequently when blink tanking, as a baseline some spells are very lackluster. They're still used as enmity generators because of the rarity of CE in spells. Much CE is generated through damage dealt to a mob. Absorb spells when spammed (since you have 8 of them) will close the gap between Stun casts. Assuming floored recast times on DRK and PLD, you'll have about 23 seconds to bridge after Stun/Flash. Let's say you cast each Utsusemi once during that gap. That leaves about 15 seconds for other spells. Assume you idle 1/3rd of your time away and you got 10 seconds to build hate some other way. Occasionally that means Job abilities and Weaponskills, but in the case of DRK you have Absorb spells to close the gap. They are not huge enmity generators, nor are they very MP efficient, but use 3 of them and all of a sudden it's like you had a second Stun worth of enmity during that cycle.

BLU is not as easily compared to DRK and PLD, because it has so many different enmity generators. The spell cycles are a bit longer and more complex, but it can still be split up into groups. Put Jettatura, Actinic Burst and Temporal Shift together and you have a "big" enmity spell every 30 seconds (before reductions). The total enmity of these "big" spells and their efficiency are below that of Stun/Flash, but at a lower recast. The big benefit of BLU's gap-filling spells is that the majority of those are beneficial buffs. Things like Battery Charge and Regeneration are useful while tanking, so it's a dual function. The casting time influences how many you can use to fill the gap. Since the gap is smaller it could look something like BIG>BUFF>UTSU>BUFF>BIG. BLU tanks have said they require more support since they run through their MP faster than normal tanks, but looking at the Enmity per MP column it looks like it's worth it.

All these tank classes work with damage: PLD has Atonement, DRK has regular melee and WS, BLU has big damage spells and self SC's. All these classes also have abilities that complement their tanking. PLD has the mother of all enmity abilities in Sentinel as well as Shield Bash. DRK has Souleater, Last Resort and Weapon Bash. BLU has Diffusion which can make them take a gigantic leap in enmity when combined with Exuviation. With some enmity gear and a full party they can nearly reach half of the enmity cap in one spell. It may defeat the purpose of having a second tank, but when that's not a problem, it's an excellent tool.

Quantifying all of this is kind of hard, but to be completely honest, I think BLU wins the contest. It not only has better diversity and choices of enmity spells that have positive effects, they also have a tendency to have better CE generating potential. When a DD tank is appropriate, I personally believe that MNK, SAM and WAR may be better choices. On the topic of durability, BLU has an excellent choice of PDT gear and access to Cocoon and Saline Coat to cover both physical and magical damage. However, that's just my personal opinion, don't take it too seriously.

Weekend update 9

2010-09-28T13:37:00.005+02:00

Homam Gambieras: ○
No screenshot with me, but there's no need, is there? Did Omega with 9 people. New toys like Saboteur and level 85 make it even easier than it was before. I'm confident we can take it out with 6, but I guess there's no harm in being cautious. My magic accuracy while Chainspell nuking the last phase was pretty good. I think once my elemental skill is capped I should be able to out-damage the BLM's in the final stretch. I'm not sure that I don't already, because I didn't parse.

Last saturday it was my intention to farm mega Gold Pyxis for key items in Abyssea Konschat highlands. However, there were two groups at bugards and I didn't know any other mobs that dropped all lights that we could exp on. Since I was kind of stressing with building the alliance in the first place, I had no energy left to look for an alternative and we just defaulted to Shadow Lizards. To my surprise we got a single mega Gold Pyxis despite never having had more than 6 Amber lights built up. It contained the Fistule key item which I suppose we accomplished PART of what we set out to do. In the end it was just a simple EXP party, which isn't a bad thing. I got my DRK to 85. Still have scythe and magic skills to cap and merits to sort out, but I'm getting there. Monday I got this in a Misareaux Colibri EXP group:

Didn't know Dark Magic skill was a possible augment on these. During the rest of the session we got and acc+8 version, but no other ones with dark magic on them. So it's probably rare. The DPS on the scythe isn't horrible. It's higher than Perdu Sickle with latent effect triggered 11.25 vs 11.14. The base damage is low, but so is the delay. While I lack any better scythe options I'm going to be using this. The accuracy is nice until I cap and get merits and the dark skill is a cute little boost. I really want something I can tank with that will enhance the effectiveness of Absorbs, Drains and Aspirs without having to swap out for Pluto's Staff. Until I've figured out what I want, I'm going to use this. It's probably going to end up being one of the elemental Magian scythe paths. The nice thing about the 480 delay on the Zaghnal is that a 6-hit without SAM sub is so far out of reach that I don't have to worry about it and a 7-hit comes rather easily.

The session where I got that scythe also netted me some nice EXP on my THF that jumped from halfway into 75 to 80. I learned Aeolian Edge at 290 dagger skill. No use in trying it out on Colibri, but this morning I did this on Red mage:

That 800 damage was done at 300 TP and at 104 TP I managed 570 damage. Around 100 TP it's much stronger than Cyclone which did 249 with the same gear. Around 200 TP Aeolian did 705 damage which isn't much less than at the full 300. It's better than Cyclone all around, but it gets less of a boost from extra TP than Cyclone does. Martial Knife would be a good option if you were trying to max Aeolian on a regular basis. While NOWHERE near the damage Fell Cleave is able to do, it's still unscaled AOE damage that you can use to mow down large groups of mobs. If you recall my PDT tanking test on mandies in Boyahda Tree, this could even be done solo without support if you find a target worth farming in large enough numbers. Ok fine, I'll admit I can't think of a good application yet, but it's not a worthless WS for RDM's. For a THF... it's pretty crappy.

Popular ways to fight NM's

2010-09-27T13:00:00.009+02:00

I remember seeing a decision-tree once that detailed different ways you could fight NM's in FFXI depending on what properties they posessed. All the way at the bottom of the tree, given a certain sequence of answers to the questions posed in the chart, was the ominous conclusion that "You're fighting AV, run!". It was funny, but also a useful reminder of what parameters you need to take into consideration when devising a strategy.

I asked myself the same type of question: In which situation will you use what strategy to fight an NM? There are several types of fights when I consider all the info I've read over the years. I believe the following list covers most (if not all) of these.

Zergs
Unengaged tank
Kited
Straight tank
Pet burn

Zergs
Named after the Starcraft race popular for an early mass-numbers attack called the "Zergling rush", the idea is simple: Kill it before it kills you. That means do as much damage as you can as fast as you can before the NM is able to take you out. The typical way is to have a full alliance of melee damage dealers and some support, rotate bards/corsairs/summoners to buff them with offensive and defensive status effects and engage simultaneously while weakening the target mob (Feint, Angon, Dia etc.) and trying to immobilize it with stuns if possible.

So when is this a good idea? As with any other strategy: whenever it works. Still, there's more things to consider when making a strategic decision. Sometimes you want to be optimal, other times you need to fight multiple targets and you want to be flexible. The positives things about a zerg that I can think of are:

It's relatively simple to execute
The fights are quick
It's fun (for the DD's anyway)

Down sides:

It's all or nothing (it's usually hard to recover from a failure)
Not always repeatable (if 2-hour abilities are needed)
High numbers requirement

Obviously it's only attractive when you "know" you can pull it off. However, what if you don't know if it can be done? What if there's little to no info about an NM you're about to fight or if nobody's zerged it before? Ask yourself:

Is Mob_HP / #Players * Average_DPS less than Maximum_fight_time? If you really want to know if it's doable to the second, you need to have an idea of how much HP an NM has and how much damage you can do to it per second. It'd require some research and estimates, I reckon. Parses help.
Can it wipe the alliance? With AoE magic and TP abilities, the typical melee is usually in danger of dying to an NM when left unbuffed. Can you prevent the deaths for the duration of the fight? Defensive options include things like: Stun-locking the NM, Chainspell Curaga, Benediction, Perfect Defense and the new Earthern Armor and PDT bard song.

Unengaged tank
You could say this is the polar opposite of a zerg. The idea is to have one or more tanks building hate without feeding a mob TP through melee and using high damage single attacks to get an NM down slowly. This limits the number of offensive abilities a mob will be able to use during the fight. This defensive type of fight is particularly useful when you're not in a hurry and could risk healers running out of MP or stealing hate if you damaged it any faster. Limiting TP to a mob can be achieved by:

Not meleeing
Using only high-damage low-TP attacks (Nukes, SATA+Cannonball/WS, Rangers)
Absorb-TP, Feather Tickle (?)
Not getting hit (Utsusemi, Evasion tanking, bouncing hate, Slow/Elegy/Paralyze)

With Absorb-TP in the mix you can not just limit TP feed, but also remove TP. This leads to some extreme situations where a mob without strong Regain will not use a single TP ability. This is the main reason I think DRK is a strong tank and why I first started leveling it. When will this strategy work out?

When enmity can be maintained by tanks. If an Enmity reset can occur, then it's a question of having enough tanks to keep at least one of them above the mages on the hate-list. If the enmity reset is a TP ability and you can prevent it, then you shouldn't need more than two.
When a mob doesn't have a strong regain. Low regain is manageable most of the time, especially if TP reduction is being used. However, as with the last phase of the Proto-Omega fight, a quick kill may be necessary once the mob reaches low HP. As far as I know, all mobs start using their TP as soon as they reach 100% once their HP falls below ~25%.
When a mob is dangerous regardless of TP. Magic casting mobs that can't be stunned and those that use abilities regardless of TP (HP% or post draw-in) are going to give you trouble if fought this way.

It's a safe way of fighting if you have the proper tank classes. I praise DRK in being ideal for this, but NIN's, PLD's, BLU's, WHM's and even RDM's (still) can achieve this using Cure cheats and other hate building tools. With some help from Trick Attack almost any class with Utsusemi can pull this off.

Kited
This includes normal kites and pinning. The idea is to limit the amount of damage a mob is able to do by outrunning it. This limits its damage output (barring mistakes) to:

Magic spells
Long range TP abilities
Moments where it changes targets

Some popular kite fights used to be Kirin and Vrrtra. They were considered too dangerous to straight tank. After it was shown that they were zergable, that became the preferred method of dealing with them. However, mobs like Meteor casting Behemoths have some anti-zerg TP abilities and a high resistance/imunity to Stun. These are still kited for the most part. It's all a matter of being able to outrun the enemy. Which depends on things like how fast they move, Gravity and Bind landing, having movement speed enhancing gear, whether the mob can hinder your movement and whether or not the mob casts magic spells. Spellcasting mobs are generally easy to kite. Still, even when it can be outrun, certain things can put an end to your kited efforts:

Draw-in
Unfavourable terrain/environment

While kiting you can deal damage through ranged attacks, magic spells, pets and avatars. If anyone is able to outrun the mob, then you don't need any specialized jobs and could just bounce hate around the damage dealers.

Straight tank
This is almost a catch-all category. It's, from my experience, the most used "strategy" in FFXI. It's a simple matter of: toss people on it that can keep hate of mages and keep them alive, a.k.a. put some tanks on it and deal with damage and debuffs as they come along. It's different from a zerg, because you're not intending to make the fight as short as possible. It's not like an unengaged tank, because you're still feeding it a reasonable amount of TP by hitting it. It's obviously not like kiting. It's a middle of the road strategy where success isn't based on some unique advantage you're exploiting, but on a simple heavy-weight slugfest. It's a compromise between safety and a fast kill and for that reason it's effective on the vast majority of NM's in the game.

I don't see a strategic difference between using a Paladin and a DD tank, so I lump it all together. The traditional tank may have more survivability and hate tools that don't depend as much on level difference, but I don't consider the difference in means to maintain hate as something very fundamental. Your defense lies primarily in not having too many people feeding TP and taking damage as well as keeping your healers' MP pool sufficiently full.

When using DD tanks, I assume the target is easily meleed. In that case you don't necessarily need additional sources of damage. However, if you're using Paladins or another class that doesn't deal lot of damage, the fight could drag out. Hitting the enmity cap could make things a bit sticky and a healer could get pummeled. It shouldn't make the fight impossible, but adding BLM's, SMN's or RNG's would help speed it up.

Pet burn
Not very popular due to the jobs required to pull it off, pet burning can be a very effective strategy. When death of a tank is part of the plan, a mob's offense suddenly becomes less threatning. The greatest risks involved in pet burning lies in the speed at which pets can be replenished and the balance of hate between pets and masters. The replenishment can be compensated by enhancing the pets' durability (through gear) adding more players and mixing up BST's (timer based) and SMN's (MP based). The balance of hate can be compensated by layering the pets so that they don't all die at once. The short periods where a mob doesn't have the attention of a pet form the only real risk. Even so, when weakened Beastmasters can employ the same strategy as their pets are not affected by their master's weakness.

What's best?
It depends on the mob, but also on what's available to you. A fact that is frequently overlooked by people fortunate enough to have a Linkshell with a huge job selection. I think if you CAN zerg, you should zerg. It's fast, easy and a fun pissing contest for the DD's. If you can't, you should just straight tank it. It's still reasonably fast and it's exciting because there's still danger. If your mob is too dangerous to go head-to-head with and additional defensive measures can't compensate, then my third option is to kite it. Kiting is easy when it works and a very strong tactic. It makes certain solos possible that wouldn't be possible if the mob couldn't be outrun. SE recognises this as is evidenced by a lot of new mobs posessing extremely fast movement speed. If you can't kite it then a very safe unengaged fight is an option. This order is just my personal preference based on safety, speed and fun.

Abyssea: Scars

2010-09-21T10:42:00.006+02:00

Dual meaning! Last night we tried to get the Doffled Poroggo hat key-item so we could pop Misareaux's zone boss (quest boss). That thing is highly sought-after. the first time I pulled it, it didn't even aggro or come after me, the second time I ran into some big river rocks and died in a hasty pull trying to beat someone else going after it. Still, it wasn't a bad run.

Black Rabbit
Npfundlwa dropped Fortune Abyssite that increases the rate at which Pyxis appear. It's nothing conclusive but based on the rest of the run it seemed powerful. Seal drops where "meh". Though it did help get Magnumm his WHM pants along with another WHM seal drop later on. Rabbit's dust cloud TP ability does very little damage and it only uses that one. It's probably soloable.

Some Bad Pot
Tuskertrap went badly. I popped when I saw there was room, but didn't see someone engage one of the boartraps trying to clear the way for a pull. So, in essence it only left 1 DD tank. It was clearly not enough as it attacks fast and for decently high numbers. I was unweakened but again left to tank solo, after another DD got up they were trying to solo tank again. So we couldn't recover after a bad start and lost the pop. Some people said we needed a real tank, but honestly I think 3 DD/NIN tanks is enough as long as they're all up at the same time bouncing hate. We had a bad start, and that's why it seemed hard.

Horny
Minax Bugard has either weird hate or the BLM's were just blasting too much. If there's weird hate at all and it's a hate reset ability then it's probably Heavy Bellow. If it's not, then it's just fast decay or nothing at all. Either way, he's very non-threatening.

I spit on you
Gukumatz didn't seem to cause as much of a problem with hate reset as I expected. 3 DD tanks were able to keep it off mages. I suppose it didn't live long enough to really spam the eyes move that resets hate.

Snowballing
Sirrush spams snowball which means no stun move, no petrification and nothing dangerous at all as it doesn't do a lot of damage. So, again, tier1 NM's prove to be simple.

Shocking
Nehebkau uses a breath move that stuns for a long time and it gets Shock Spikes, but because we have 3 people bouncing hate, most of its hits still hit shadows. This one put out a SAM legs seal which put me at 3/8. We raced to Heqet (frog) after this fight only to lose claim due to a crappy puller (me).

Weaknesses
I don't believe we caught any of the mobs' weaknesses. I asked Tipira to cast all his spells to try and find them, and I'm not sure it worked on any. However, I'm inclined to believe we did get a weakness on Gukumatz because it dropped more than 1 item, which was the tendency the rest of the mobs had that day.

Heqet RNG solo?
I found out that if you do a ranged attack to Heqet from maximum range, it doesn't aggro. The name goes red then yellow after a couple of seconds. If it doesn't move in between shots due to the deaggro cooldown, a RNG could probably make this the easiest solo ever. [Edit: this doesn't work, obviously. It just takes two actions to aggro it. Amun has the same problem.]

Coming Soon
Unable to get zone boss pop set is disappointing, but I believe it should be easier to do this in Attohwa Chasm. Misareaux is probably the most accessible and most popular Scars of Abyssea zone. I hope Attohwa will have little to no competition for the Chigoe NM, which is the only free-spawn NM needed for the quest boss trigger set. We'll also try and get Sojourn Abyssite from the treant NM. Loading up on Abyssites will help us as a group so trying to side-track from gear-dropping NM's for these is worth the time.

The world after "AF3": Samurai

2010-09-13T16:14:00.009+02:00

Version update came around 5 days ago and introduced the Empyrean Armor which everyone is referring to as AF3 (as that is what someone from the dev team called it in an interview). The moment DAT miners found the stats on these people's minds have been continually blown. I'm trying to make sense of the implications as it's now pretty clear how attainable these new pieces of armor are.

Like many people I've been spamming the Cookbook quest in Abyssea Misareaux for seals. I've gotten the base armor pieces from the Bastion (Legs) and Cruor (Head) NPC's and started the Magian trials on both. Feet base pieces come from Gold Pyxis in the zones where those jobs' other pieces are purchasable, meaning SAM feet base armor comes from Vunkerl. After about 12 or 13 repetitions of the cookbook quest (can be repeated in 3 to 4 minutes) I ended up with 3 WHM, 3 THF, 2 BST and 1 SAM. People seemed to think there are patterns, but I believe it's completely random. As a result I think SAM legs +1 are just a matter of time and perseverance. I have yet to see SAM head seals reported from a quest in Attohwa, but at least we know that's where they come form. Seals from quests are grouped into 4 jobs per quest regardless of zone and one equipment slot per Scars zone (Misa: legs, Atto: head, Vunk: feet). Killing NM's is going to give better results when doing it in a group. Jewels and such come from higher tier NM's in Scars areas, which means there's little chance of doing them solo.

Double Rainbow. What does it mean?
Well, the Unkai+1 (Samurai) pieces are good enough as is that they make new and more optimal setups possible. Both Store TP and Haste on head and leg armor pieces is something we clearly haven't had before and it makes for great TP pieces. Together with a 5 Store TP jump on the Magian weapon makes a 5-hit trivial to attain. So far I've been rocking Hachiman body and gloves, which is pretty good in low buff situations where accuracy isn't an issue.

At 464 delay you need a total of 64 Store TP to get 20 TP per hit. You can use this tool I made for other situations. Twenty is needed every swing to get 100 in 5 hits. You can check the math! Now any SAM that cares about strengthening their job will have or be working on maxing Store TP merits, which will put them at 35 Store TP from the Job Trait alone. Add a Rajas, which is almost standard issue nowadays and you're left with 24 Store TP to make up. Store TP Magian weapon now gives 10 Store TP and the head and legs Unkai+1 add up to another 10 and Brutal (which is both a good WS and TP piece) give 1 Store TP. This leaves 3 Store TP to complete the 5-hit. If you are aiming for the Unkai+2 (and don't care about the meantime) or have Usukane feet, you can skip the next part.

Completing the 5-hit
The easiest and simplest way to finish the 5-hit would be a Rose Strap, but there are other options like a Goading Belt, a pair of Ace's Sabatons, Askar Korazin, Hachiman Domaru, Hachiman Sun-ate. Some of these aren't very good at all, but I'm trying make a point. My point is that there are a lot of possible 5-hit builds depending on what's available to you. Also, don't forget to factor in how much Store TP you want to WS in. You can drop below 64 Store TP as long as you make up the difference in the 4 TP swings.

If NO gear is out of the question
When you're counting Store TP of your gear and are easily surpassing 64 because you are 1337 and have amazing gear, then I hate you! Your options to 5-hit are not limited to the Store TP Magian weapon. With Unkai+2 head/legs and Usukane body/feet you're looking at 28 Store TP from those slots alone. With another 11 you can even 5-hit a 450 delay weapon. However, if you're this decked out you would likely be interested in 5-hitting the "Occasionally Attacks Twice" Magian weapon, which is now so easy you don't even need Rajas.

How about a 437 GK? Masamune's low delay is amazing for it's melee DPS. It would be unfortunate to give up WS DPS by taking longer to build 100 TP. The same thing goes for the STR Great Katana. The crazy thing is that with the proper gear and possibly Carbonara the 81 Store TP needed to 5-hit it is actually already available. I'm going to refrain from doing the math on this extreme situation since it's likely to be refined in future updates and involves too many changes in stats which is likely to mess up the accuracy of my calculation.

Weapsonskill Damage Keitonotachi+1
A 5-hit is all well and good, but there ARE sacrifices in WS damage and accuracy and haste during the TP phase. Add to that the fact that the WS damage counterpart of Keitonotachi now has a generic boost of 10% to ALL weaponskills, then the 5-hit option for the average Samurai loses much of its shine. When fighting tough mobs the sacrifice of accuracy in giving up is costly. When fighting tough mobs while hasted by magic spells, sambas and Hasso the sacrifice of Haste on gear is even more costly. The Weaponskill damage +10% option is trivial to 6-hit, leaving room for as much accuracy and haste as you can find including the use of Pole Grip. When fighting tough mobs this weapon seems to take the lead.

Fire/STR Hyogugusarinotachi+1
It's considered the second best non-"relic" option after OAT Great Katana. I recently parsed it and it lost to a 5-hit Keito build in a capped acc low-buff situation. However, that comparisson doesn't really do it justice. A 6-hit build with this weapon (437 delay) should come at little sacrifice with the new Unkai+1 pieces.

That's all fine, but what should I pick?
Backed up with my trusty Damage Calculation spreadsheet and a hypothetical situation and guesstimations of pdif and gear stats I'd rank the easily obtainable weapons as follows:

6-hit STR Hyogugu+1 and 6-hit WS+10% Keito+1 are too close to call
Both allow for the same amount of Haste while the higher accuracy of the Keito build can let it outparse the STR weapon when you're uncapped. When your accuracy IS capped, the STR GK wins on paper.

The 5-hit Store TP Keito is the clear loser in any uncapped and buffed situation
Its sacrifice in Haste and accuracy are what do it in. Why then did my last entry said it won a parse. The short answer is: "I'm not entirely sure". The long answer is that the increased Meditate efficiency is very strong, but when plugging in my adjusted WS-Rates into my spreadsheet the difference is small but STILL in favor of the STR Great Katana. So, something in practice is different than my assumptions and estimations in the spreadsheet. I have yet to figure out exactly which factors are causing this relatively large discrepancy. I say "large" because even when messing around with my fSTR and pdif numbers the STR GK should never lose according to my own calculations. Perhaps the increased Meditate efficiency when I "discovered" it made me pay better attention to the timer as well as my gear swaps and general playstyle. This could have skewed it enough to make the GK win. I'm starting to see why people disapprove of parses as "evidence", but it's still worth confirming your hunches.

This is what the numbers vaguely look like. I'd like to add that I find any difference smaller than 2% to be too-close-to-call.

Magian Katanas in practice

2010-09-05T18:01:00.014+02:00

I believe it's been two weeks since I finished the Lv80 STR Great Katana. Since then I haven't had the chance to go out and compare it to the Store TP Keitonotach until last friday. My expectations going into this were that the STR GK would win by a small margin. The reason for this were the broad conclusions I made after calculating DoT in my blog post a while back. There the STR GK won the contest over a 5-hit Keito because of its higher melee DoT and ability to wear Dusk Gloves while maintining a 6-hit.

The conditions were as follows. I went out to Boyahda to help Kingcem with his trial. I started with the STR GK (Hyogugusarinotachi) wearing Hachiman Domaru and Haste in all the regular places (W.Turban, Swift, Byakko's, Dusk, Fuma). After about 30 kills (4 of which I removed from the parse below) I switched to Store TP Keito and swapped out Dusk Gloves for Hachiman Kote. Target mobs were Elder Goobbues. These were the results for the STR GK:

And this was for the sTP GK:

As you can tell, the Store TP Keito won the comparisson. There are some interfering factors like the Paralyze gaze attack slowing down Kingcem or me, but I believe it's overall a fair comparisson. So why did the sTP GK win? The first thing I noticed going from 6-hit to a 5-hit was how efficiently I could use Meditate. Since there is no room for lowered Store TP in this setup, I WS in the same (albeit it slightly higher) Store TP as I melee in. Each Meditate tic is 20 TP and each swing is 20 TP. When I'm 1 Tic or Swing away from 100 TP I spam my WS macro and WS at the first possible instant. "Wouldn't this mean you could get a slower swing if you do a melee swing while wearing your WS gear?". Good point! However, think about it this way. The extra 20 TP you have left over now that you didn't wait for a visual confirmation of 100% TP is worth one swing, which takes much longer than the bit of time you may or may not have sacrificed by swapping in your WS gear before reaching 100% TP. So, it's a net gain as far as I'm concerned. In addition to the increased Meditate efficiency, there is also the benefit of higher WS rate. Look at the Kparser performance tabs and you'll see the balance of Melee and WS DPS is shifted in favor of WS on the 5-hit build by "a lot". This is pretty obvious considering you need 1 less swing to WS.

This farming level of mobs is not the typical scenario where you'll find yourself worrying about DoT. We lacked any magic haste and I didnt' use Hasso at all since we were both tanking so much and had no healer. The sacrifice in Haste would weigh much heavier if we had other forms of Haste. This is another reason why the 5-hit build gets a boost. Since my average attack damage was around 111, one can not argue that my pdif was capped and that the STR GK's DoT suffered because of it.

The most important thing this experiment taught me was that I completely underestimated the effect of a 5-hit on WS rate. It's not just one less swing, it's also a considerable boost in Meditate efficiency. The most important question this experiment raises is: At what point is the 3% Haste sacrifice enough to make the STR GK take the lead.

An interesting thing I discovered was that Store TP affected my Double Attack procs on WS. Apparently this has been known for a long time, but I just never realised it. With 68 Store TP during WS I got a 22 TP return after a WS where Double Attack proc'd. With 68 Store TP my WS return is 20.4. Add to that an extra attack at 68 TP it's 1.6 added for a total of exactly 22.0 TP after WS.

Now if you were able to play perfectly, you could swap out gear pieces so that you are left with 60 Store TP total and still maintain a 5-hit, unfortunately it's not enough to simply remove Hachiman Kote, as you only have room to remove 4 sTP total, because

(100 - 22.0)/4 = 19.5

for which you still need 60 Store TP to achieve. Considering the relative infrequency of DA procs I'm not going to try and make such a situational gear-set. WS rate is THE determining factor for a SAM DoT calculation. Since Meditate influences this and its effect on WS rate is also dependant on what your WS rate was like BEFORE considering it, it's a difficult thing to account for. I'd like to repeat this comparisson in a situation with less down time and more buffs to see if the STR GK does indeed catch up and/or beat the 5-hit build.

Achievement Unlocked

2010-08-23T07:32:00.006+02:00

One of the things on my "long-term unlikely but hope to get items list" was RDM relic headgear: Duelist's Chapeau. I can now scrap that item off the list because as of last night I'm the owner of my very own "Relic Pimp Hat". As if that weren't enough, I get me pair of these:

That's two highly sought-after Dynamis drops in one run. Needless to say I was and AM very happy. In both cases I was mentally preparing myself to NOT get the item. I'm usually not at the very top of the attendance list, especially not lately with Abyssea runs which I don't attend. I was taken aback by all the congratulations I received from fellow LS members. I feel like many people were genuinely happy for me for getting the drop(s) which was very touching. It's going to sound corny and/or cheesy, but that was probably more meaningful than the item itself.

As for practicality, up until now I've been using Nashira Turban for my enfeebles. It has the same amount of magic accuracy as the RDM JSE Wise Cap, but with the added benefit of -5 Enmity, 2% haste. I suppose the -10% Spell Interruption does account for something as well. Compared to Nashira, Chapeau has +10% accuracy rate on almost anything (where your base accuracy is above 50%). Read this for a better and more complete description of how magic accuracy works.

Aside from making my Idle set look less bright (I shall miss you, V.Cloak), D.Chap increases my enfeebling magic accuracy by 10% on a very large number of NM's... until capped. So right now I don't know how far from capped accuracy I would be on a random NM like Faust. I have a very decent set for enfeebling magic already as well as capped enfeebling merits and 4 Ice Accuracy. In theory, when casting Bind on Faust while soloing (a solo I have never done) the 2% Haste on Nashira would outperform D.Chapeau if my accuracy was capped. Does that mean I'll keep using Nashira for Bind on NM's? The answer is "No". Bind is a pretty essential spell when solo'ing. If having it resisted is not an option, then assuming you're at capped accuracy is too big of a risk in my personal opinion. Nashira still has a place in Dark magic macro's and as such won't be put into storage. My Vermillion Cloak however, porbably won't see any action unless I decide to level BLM or SMN any further. It's time I reworked my macros.

WoE attempts 1 and 2

2010-08-13T08:19:00.008+02:00

Last Thursday we gave WoE our first attempt as a linkshell. Based on info from wiki and BG I devised a rather straightforward strategy. Killing the first crab and running away seemed simple enough. However, not accounting for random DC's got the better of us. One person in alliance DC'd while the runners got close and we weren't able to dissolve and disband before they aggro'd. I tried to salvage it by getting melees to kill the new 3 crabs simultaneously. If we managed to do that we could avoid aggro from the next wave of runners by getting out of the way. It was a bit too chaotic to explain this at the time so it didn't happen. After one crab died a boss came in the wave of runners and I told everyone to wipe asap.

After getting back up we proceeded with the rest of the plan. Tillaert and Muze did an excellent job of sac pulling the Caldera Crabs. Muze, on PLD had to survive with 8+ crabs beating on her while we got a Caldera Crab off the train. The Caldera stopped to cast a spell on the person pulling off the train and so it wasn't entirely foolproof. If the sac'er dies before that time, they're able to re-link immediately according to what I've read.

We started off with a pair of MNK DD tanks on the boss but the BLM's pulled hate pretty much immediately and one of the MNK's went down pretty fast. Not sure what it was though I suspect it was Mega Scissors. I should have recorded it. Anyway, Argonar said he was hitting for 0's. Probably the result of the 1k Stoneskin it can get from the Metallic Body ability. Again, I really should have recorded it... The BLM's went down and Argo couldn't keep hate while not doing any reasonable damage so the attempt ended prematurely.

I treated it a bit like the VNM Krabkatoa, but these seem tougher to deal with to a certain extent. We brought PLD's for the second attempt. The first crab kill went according to plan this time. I suppose in the future we could do this while everyone is solo and form alliance while the sac'ers take up position. This, just in case someone's too late running away from deathspot. They can then die without it requiring a full wipe. The Caldera was pulled in the same way and we started off well. Hate was much more stable after asking BLM's to hold back for a while. However, the hate reduction from Mega Scissors is very strong. Even with PLD's, the BLM's pulled hate off them even after letting them build up hate beforehand. I realise a BLM could do this regardless, but it happened sooner than expected. Argonar mentioned it did Mega Scissors several times in a row at one point. Man... I really should have recorded it...

Around 50% the tank party took some casualties (RDM + WHM) due to the Caldera being out of position and taking damage from Mega Scissors as a result. We weren't able to recover and lost. In addition to hate not being manageable, it has a lot of HP and takes reduced damage from melee. BLM's seemed to do well, but they're very fragile.

Several people have suggested to me that using a skillchain and magic bursting would let us take it down faster. I agree the damage would be much better and there's the chance we could expose a weakness and make it easier. The second alternative is to take it down with melee, but with a lot more power and numbers. You could treat it like a zerg that you have to repeat 3 times. The challenge for both is staying alive long enough to kill it. A stun rotation would help but a Venom Shower is sure to get through. If you rotate bards like it were Einherjar you can buff melee with Carol, Barwater and Paeon, and still get some damage enhancing songs. Water resist seems to work well even without any additional resist from gear. The accuracy of Venom Shower isn't floored, but it's enough not to worry about it and focus on damage taken from Mega Scissors. There are bound to be deaths, which would cut it pretty close if you take more than 3 mintues to kill a Caldera Crab.

Weekend update 8

2010-08-09T11:00:00.003+02:00

Magian trials can be really tedious. I'm now halfway through the last trial for my Store TP Keito and it's taking a long time. Efunotachi is stuck on the very first Opo-opo trial due to the non-existance of fire weather in Jungles/Cauldron. I regularly tele out to Kazham to see what's coming up, but even in the "summer" months of FFXI fire weather would mostly show up unannounced. I only need 7 more kills.

Besides some work on trials I got two levels on DRK. It's been awful really. Not a lot of people seeking outside of the subjob level range and 75+. I got an invite for an EXP party in Crawler's Nest. I took it cus I was desperate. It was about the same rate of EXP I get doing campaign. So afterwards I opted for the latter. Campaign is still popular outside of Northlands on Valefor. We haven't even controlled Beacedine for at least two weeks. The restof the zones are usually full of people, especially Windust zones. After a while I get an invite for an MMM party around level 27. It took a while to get started, but the setup was pretty much perfect and I got a nice bump from the two runs I joined. I couldn't stay for the rest, which was very disappointing. I had Nyzul to do.

Goliard Saio and Askar Zuchetto dropped from the 4 runs. Really want that Askar Korazin. Since I have more tags than the rest, I could probably get away with doing some pickup parties during the week. Using SCH sub in Nyzul has been fun. I can toss everyone a Protect5 and Shell4 at the start without using half my MP and still have RR spell and most status removal spells. Accession Stoneskin is a nice bonus. The only thing that's missing is Accession working on Haste. I still don't understand why they stopped that from happening. Erasega was nice when we got Flayers.

Sunday we got revenge for the Valkurm loss. Other than Miasmic Breath at the start that went off, I don't think it did anything threatening. That poison is pretty ridiculous though. No time to cure myself while stunning I was anxious to see it go down fast, which fortunately it did. In contrast to previous Valkurm runs we killed fast enough to kill all Hippogryphs, Manticores on south-east beach as well as the Sabotenders near oasis.

Windower advantages

2010-08-06T14:21:00.005+02:00

Avesta solo'd Byakko recently. There's a link to the video in that thread. What you'll also find in that thread is a heated argument (if you can call it that) about whether or not using Windower gives you an advantage and if it's an unfair advantage as well as whether or not Avesta's solos take more skill than if he used Windower and Spellcast.

Well, first off I can tell you that I have no personal experience with Spellcast. I've seen snippets of scripts that give me a broad idea of what it's capable of. I've used Windower a long time ago. At the time it was so I could dualbox and see my EXP/hr in parties. I haven't used it since SE made their own windowed mode. I don't use it, because

I'm paranoid about being banned for it, despite all the evidence that it won't happen.
I believe, in the majority of cases, the game should be played with the means the developers provided and nothing else.

Given the Byakko solo as well as similar fights I can think of the following things third party tools could have done to make it easier:

More efficient gear swaps
Distance plugin
On-screen recasts
More distance gained from JA0Wait (not windower related, but still 3rd party)

Avesta did not seem to use multi-layered macros that span multiple sets. I personally do this because I don't want to limit the number of slots I swap out. This introduces new problems though. First of all, to be efficient you have to start on the same set everytime. I use a macro to send me back to the first set in every spot that I don't use. As long as you control your button presses and you don't panic, you can do the same things with regular macros as you can with Windower macros. If, for example, I have my Bind macros across two sets, then I can use Fastcast in one and swap back the magic accuracy/skill gear after the magic cast line in the second. The benefit is mostly in being able to put more precisely timed pauses as well as eliminating the chance that you start your macro on the wrong set.

A secondary benefit is the small time gained by only having to press a button once. Some people make this point laughable by claiming that pressing a button 3 times doesn't take more skill than pressing it once. The point is that it takes more time and, as mentioned before, is more prone to error. You can not spam the macro presses. From someone who has always relied on intricate in-game macros, I can tell you that pressing the macro buttons too fast in sequence can cause some equipment swap lines to be ignored/skipped. Recently my idle-set macros have gone from two sets to three. I now have to press ctrl+1 three times to go back to my neutral gear after taking an action. I admit that I get sloppy when doing this and often don't go back to my idle set between actions because I want to be able to do things in quick sequence. This is a non-issue when using spellcast gearswaps, which are more powerful than Windower macros.

Against any mob whose magic or abilities can be avoided by standing at the correct range, the distance plug-in allows you to do this with a lot more precision. Sometimes there is a small band you can stand in where you're both safe from an attack and able to cast on the mob and/or tanks. I personally find this simple to figure out when fighting something in a group. I just take a few seconds to find the maximum casting range and I try to stay there. In certain solo's however, exact positioning can be a big benefit. Seconds are lost when you try to cast a spell on a bound or otherwise immobile mob, only to find out you need to take a few steps back to reach. Will this be the determining factor in the solo? Unlikely, but as I learned from my attempts at the Requiem of Sin battle, it does certainly matter.

Knowing whether or not a spell or ability is up, or knowing how much time is left on a buff before it wears off makes any battle more efficient. Since SE added the recast command I try to use it as much as I can. However, I often end up removing it simply because it takes up macro line space I'd rather use for something else. More ofte it's because I find it impractical to put a recast line in a macro of the spell I'm trying to cast (barring Refresh and Haste). In practice I would try to cast something, find out I can't yet, then go back to my idle set before I try again, find out I'm 1 second too early and I cycle through the macros sets again until the spell comes out. Blinking aside, it also introduces wasted keypresses which could have been used for something else. Why not use a specialized recast macro? Valid question. My answer to this is that the macro I would make would have at least 3 recasts in it. Visually parsing this moving list of numbers takes time. Also, the chat log updates slowly. By the time I've figured out what the actual recast is I may have pressed the macro three times due to chat-log spam from other things going on. In the end I find it not to be worth the precious macro real-estate and live/deal with sometimes pressing a macro too early. It's not as big a problem for my personal style of play. In cases where it could be, I use the recast macro command.

Though the distance gained from blink casting is not extreme, there are some clear examples of where this small difference is essential. One of them is Kaeko's impressive Bhaflau Remnants Solo where a single hit form Long-bowed Chariot could have ended the attempt. It also made his Kaizer Behemoth solo go notably faster. The argument that this can be done manually is somewhat invalidated by the fact that lag and response time as well as computer speed make this hard to do reliably. Windower macros can be helpful here too due to its more precise delay mechanism. I came up with a way to blink out Blizzard3 about 75% of the time using a sequence of 3 different /wait commands which made it so I could delay for a fraction longer than the sum of all the waits. Once I started doing this soloing Iriz Ima went much faster. It didn't make me take less damage, since, even with the spell-completion freeze, it's too slow to catch up as long as I start moving right before the spell completes. What it DID do was allow me to spam spells much more frequently as I could widen the gap between me and the NM much more quickly.

For all the benefits of these 3rd party tools, each can be argued to be only a marginal improvement. I believe that with proper planning, preparations, strategy and player skill, the difference these tools make is LESS essential to success than the race of the character. Galka vs Taru MP pool for example. However, be they marginal or essential (in certain specific situations) they add up and improve efficiency and as a consequence, the overall chance of success. I can't think of a solo right now that REQUIRES these tools to achieve. So, as far as I know, right now any solo done with them can be done without them. However, to me, claiming that these do not improve the odds of success sounds like a defensive reaction from people that do use them, rather than a balanced well evaluated opinion.

Great Katana options

2010-08-04T10:36:00.010+02:00

Some people in the FFXI community have put a lot of work in trying to figure out all the math behind damage calculations. Some of it is over my head, so I keep to my own simplified logic which I then try to rhyme with what others are saying. Looking for the most ideal Great Katana to replace Hagun for my SAM, I tried to rely on my own formula.

DoT =
(WS_Rate * Average_Melee_Damage + ACC_Adjusted_Average_WS_Damage) /
(Actual_Delay * WS_Rate/Melee_ACC) + 2

Where WS_Rate is how many melee attacks are performed for each WS. This, is basically the make or break factor in my calculations. Although I'm confident that my estimation fits my personal situation (frequency of meditate usage and efficiency of TP usage), it may require some adjusting as I'll discuss later.

The idea behind the above formula is adding the melee damage and WS damage together in proportion to the WS_Rate and divide it by the time it takes per WS in seconds. You may notice the constant number 2 in there. From recording multiple WS and counting melee swings and the time it took, I've concluded that WS and ability delays are both approximately 120 delay or 2 seconds long.

The ACC_Adjusted_Average_WS_Damage may also require some explanation. Basically, in my formula I calculate the expected average WS damage for when all hits connect. Multiplying this value by your WS accuracy rate accounts for missed hits, or in case of single hit weaponskills, a complete miss. This way the formula also applies to other weapon types and weaponskills. The WS accuracy rate is also modified by an accuracy bonus which applies to Kasha, Gekko and other weaponskills. In this case I added 50% acc rate and capped the total value at 95%. This is based on info from this BG thread.

Using the WS_Rate and dividing it by the melee accuracy rate I come up with the average number of attack rounds needed per WS (not rounded). The Actual_Delay is the weapon's delay adjusted with the Haste stat.

To come up with Average_Melee_Damage I used the following.

(Base_damage + fSTR) * (Average_PDIF + MIN(1, 3 - Average_PDIF) * Crit_rate)

The contribution of critical hits to your average damage is dependant on your average PDIF. Normally you'd add 1 to your PDIF for a critical hit, but when your PDIF is 2 or higher the actual contribution is reduced since PDIF is capped at about 3. That explains the MIN function. The question of the origin of my fSTR and PDIF numbers can be answered by: I used estimates from parsed fights on Seaboard Vultures. So, it's not precise like some other people would prefer, but it's good enough for my own ends.

For average WS damage.

(WS_Base_Damage * fTP + WS_Base_Damage * (Additional_WS_hits + Multi_Attack_Rate)) * (Actual_WS_PDIF + MIN(1, 3-Actual_WS_PDIF) * WS_Crit_Rate) * WS_Damage_Bonus

Where

WS_Base_Damage = Base_damage + WS_fSTR + WSC

and

Actual_WS_PDIF = MIN(2.7, PDIF_During_WS * WS_PDIF_Bonus)

Since Gekko can't crit naturally (i.e. without Sneak Attack) the WS_Crit_Rate is going to be 0 in all my comparissons. I added it for sake of completeness. I split up the formula to make it more readable, but I fear it may still be a bit confusing. I multiply the base WS damage by fTP for the first hit and add it again for all expected additional hits, which also includes Double and Triple Attack procs. The WS_PDIF_Bonus is the 2x multiplier for Tachi Gekko and 1.5 for Kasha. Other weaponskills also have this property.

WS_Damage_Bonus represents the boost from Overwhelm and other gear like the AMK hat. One has to take into consideration whether or not the bonus from the Kasha weapon, Overwhelm and other gear is in fact the same stat. If they are not, then the effects would be compounded. However, I assumed for this example that they are in fact all the same stat and so can be added up respectively.

Even though I got PDIF, accuracy and fSTR estimates from parses, I still needed to estimate the different values for the same variables for when I change gear in between the different setups I want to compare. For accuracy this is not much of an issue, but for PDIF and fSTR I used some creative estimates.

Haste is based on 50% Hasso usage and Haste spell. The more Haste present, the heavier any haste sacrifice from gear will weigh.

Last, but certainly not least. Calculating WS_Rate for different setups and weapons. I had a baseline of 4.4 WS_Rate from my parses. This obviously includes Meditate usage. I needed a way to calculate new values for WS_Rate for the different weapons and gearsets. This is probably the most questionable part of my DoT formula.

WS_Rate = Hits_to_WS / Avg_Attacks_per_round - 0.4

This approximates my measured WS_Rate given my 6-hit Hagun setup. Hits_to_WS for a 6-hit is 5, because you get TP from your WS. Subtracting 0.4 to account for Meditate is going to be skewed if your WS frequency goes very high or very low. The higher it is the less Meditate contributes and vice versa.

Avg_Attacks_per_round is what the name implies. However, care needs to be taken when dealing with both double, triple and "Occasionally attacks" weapon properties. I didn't automate this in the spreadsheet I used and did it by hand for the OAT Magian weapon.

And now for what you've all been waiting for!

The percentage score at the bottom of each column is the DoT relative to the DoT of teh Hagun 6-hit build I'm currently using. All the variable names on the left should be easy to pair up with the names I used in this post.

Notice how both the Keitonotachi weapon options perform worse than Hagun with my gear selection. The Kasha damage obviously loses quite badly given the low PDIF I had on birds. Level correction plays a big role here. On low level mobs where my PDIF could easily be above the 1.35 needed to cap it during WS, the Kasha damage weapon would outperform the Hagun build.

The 5-hit build's sacrifice in Haste and accuracy weakens it considerably. Since this is just for myself I didn't bother doing the numbers for a build including Usukane. It's worth noting here that this setup too will beat Hagun when accuracy is capped. When considering zergs, then the Haste sacrifice become more costly and would make this an unattractive option.

Keeping Hauby and Dusk Gloves on, the 5 Store TP on the Keito can make for a 6-hit build with the same gear as my current Hagun build, but with a Sword Strap. This plus the Strength+Attack Magian G.Katana seem very close. This is the reason why I'm trying to do both of them.

If you have Usukane body and feet pieces and managed to get your hands on 5 more Store TP from Goading belt or something else, then you could 5-hit the OAT weapon and it would become much stronger than all the other options.

I realise this formula isn't mechanical enough to be completely accurate. I honestly don't know how to factor in Zanshin or if I should at all. I chose not to, because that's what makes the most sense to me right now. Another unknown is how Double Attack acts during weaponskills (some claim it can only proc on the first two hits). Having narrowed down my choice to two weapons and generally knowing which is better in which situation, I'm not bothered with being more precise than this. Still, if you see any mistakes or errors in logic, please let me know.

Very New Monsters (to me)

2010-08-02T22:53:00.005+02:00

When VNM's were first introduced I was not interested. When they figured out strategies and all drops were discovered, I did not care. When I first heard drops from it were needed for OAT weapons, I was annoyed. The VNM system did and does not appeal to me as a hierarchical NM system at all. However, recently I was asked to help someone with Urd. I realised as little as I care for the system or its rewards, the fights themselves could be fun. So last week WoA popped Orcus.

Orcus
All accounts recommended turtle/blood tanks as attack speed and frequency made shadows useless. Immune to slow elegy and paralyze it's pretty clear why there's little alternative. So, I read about its TP abilities. One is a hate reset. However, it's stunnable. I made the mistake of relying on the latter and brought only a single tank. Argonar has a pretty nice blood tanking set with PDT and defense. Muze was there on SCH to Accession Stoneskin and Phalanx. I could have subbed SCH and done the same, but Muze was able to put up Aquaveil as well and have time left over for more. We brought it to a cliff to avoid aoe effects through height differences. It worked but wasn't really necessary. Hate reset ability wasn't very common. None of the "special" abilities of Tier3 VNM's that require special measures are very common. Perhaps HP% dependant, but because of the lack of a visible HP bar I can't tell.

Anyway, having only one tank and Orcus becoming immune to Stun as we reached 20% meant Argonar couldn't recover hate at the end and as much as we tried stretching it, a wipe and depop was unavoidable. I did not expect TP abilities to be so frequent. I thought if we stunned each charge animation we'd get all the unique abilities. For the next time limiting stuns to a single stunner on only the big unique abilities should make it much simpler. Also, a second tank will give us room for error. I believe Orcus can be the easiest of all tier3 VNM's if we can get tanks spec'd the way we did on this attempt.

Blobdignag
Today we popped the big slime. Fought it against a wall to avoid knockback. The first 3 Cytokineses weren't handled very well. I was late to pull them and BLM's were slow to nuke and at some point they were pulled on top of a resting Rcake who then got hate and died. BLM's also bit the dust in the first few leading to double weakness and some nerve wracking minutes. After recovering everyone focused more and it went much smoother. Towards the end we started blowing through it trying to cut the fight as short as possible. Dissolve lengthens the fight considerably. Its high resistance to Slow meant I took BLM sub to land it. A second ES slow woudl have helped, but it didn't occur to me to ask one of the BLM's to go for it. We were missing some people to Erase the slow from Mucus Spread. It went down and I think future runs would benefit from someone who can deal with the erasing exclusively.

If we handle adds like we did towards the end, it shouldn't be a problem. However, the tanking could be made much more bearable if we had one mage dedicated only to erase>haste and refreshing tanks. I tried to debuff NM, pull babies and buff tanks and backup heal, but it became too chaotic so if we split those tasks among two people it should be much better.

Lord Ruthven
Supposedly easy (and looking back I can see how) this fight we lost as well. Firstly, I won't ever pop it in Beaucedine again. Walking around that place takes too long. I asked Muze to come as DRK/NIN. It didn't work out very well as she complained about not being able to keep hate. Dirty Breath was taking a lot of Rcake's time and it draining buffs from tanks was slowing us down as well. However, DRK/NIN should be able to contribute very well and trump a PLD in enmity so I'm not sure why it wasn't balanced. Probably a combination of experience and macros with an enmity gear setup. Damage was slow coming from two SMN's and later a RNG. It would probably have gone down before rage from the pace alone, however it wasn't fast enough to avoid the enmity cap to be hit by Rcake. Nightly on RNG got hate several times as well, but that was no concern as it wasn't for very long stretches and he took no serious damage until the tanks went down.

Lessons to be learned were more Finale spam (Dispel heavily resisted), dedicated backup healer (as WHM will eventually start running low on MP) and more damage. ES Slow would be nice too. Wiki didn't mention its highly resistant and also claimed that 'Super Curse' was removable by Cursna, which given the "no effect" instead of "fails to take effect" message is very doubtful.

1/3 on Tier3 VNM's for me. Not happy about that record, obviously. However, it was my first time fighting any of them. So, I have an excuse! On numbers we were OK. They're definitely all downable comfortably with about 10 people. Even lower if you're familiar with the fights and focused enough. Now I know more about the fights than before and I suppose it's only natural that these things start out like this. All in the process. Still haven't seen Krabkatoa, Verthandi or Dawon yet. Ruthven really made me want to finish DRK so I can try tanking on it. A disengaged tank works well on Yilgeban too, but I have an idea how we can work that out.

Weekend update 7

2010-08-02T08:06:00.011+02:00

Three summary posts in a row. I'll post something with a bit more depth soon. In the meantime, however, Magian trials!

A bunch of pickup groups got me through Kuftal Sabotenders and Lizards. Now, I thought, comes the hard part of killing 250 Rafflesias. Luckily for me, this trial is the same for a lot of the PDT weapons. There were plenty of people to team up with both times. That's right, it only took 2 earthdays. The first one got me 145 kills. A DRG was there to Sonic Thrust the crap out of the train the rest of us gathered up. It looked a bit like this.

That Weaponskill is perfect for this situation. The second group I got went at a slightly slower pace, but more than fast enough to finish the trial. We also killed the Rafflesia NM that saw me tanking all the charmed group members with my PDT gear. That was a lot of fun. So, PDT sword achieved! Maybe I'll go melee solo Lil Apkallu to try it out.

I also started on Great Katana trials. I'm doing both the Store TP Keitonotachi and the STR+Attack Efunotachi. Why two? Because I honestly think for most of my playstyle they are very close in damage and I want to see if my calculations match up to the real world.

In a previous post I said I was going for the Kasha+10% damage Keito. However, I made a little spreadsheet to come up with the overal DoT and that weapon lost to Hagun in most realistic situations where I wouldn't use Tomoe. I'll post the sheet and some more thoughts on it in the near future.

Dynamis - Tavnazia
Yesterday we had the best Tavnazia run to date. We were an alliance of 15 people. We dropped the NM's without any trouble and got to farming. Ground level mobs dropped very little, but Xarca mobs dropped a bunch. I got myself a Duelist's Tabard because Helly was kind enough to pass on it. Thank Helly! Duelist's Chapeau still eludes me.

Weekend update 6

2010-07-26T07:58:00.010+02:00

Had time to level SAM to 80 this past weekend. Got a half decent party in Misareaux Coast to finish it off. However, this camp, as good as it is, still falls behind Greater Colibri. How so? Well, the party I had in Thickets (before the one that got me 80) netted more than double the exp per hour. Granted, the setup was better and pulls were faster. What makes it that much better is the EXP bonus from Sanction and the lower HP of the target mobs. The Colibri party broke my previous record of EXP Chain 101 with...

I didn't want to post results of a parse that I won because that would seem like bragging. Trust me though, it's not hard to beat the majority of DD's on Valefor. This can be seen in the following damage graph where a DRG/SAM performed terribly. In this graph you can see me being out-damaged by a polearm WAR/SAM. After a break (the horizontal middle part of the graph) I switched to polearm (Tomoe) and was able to catch up somewhat. Towards the end you can see my damage taking a dive. This was because I ran out of Crab Sushi.

My WS damage is pretty good, but I've seen much higher WS damage in screenshots on the internet, so I'm going to curb my enthusiasm.

With level 80 comes the chance to work on the WS Magian weapon path. I'm going for the 10% Kasha damage one. Without Usukane I don't feel a 5-hit is worth the sacrifice in accuracy, haste and STR during WS. Instead I'm going for a 6-hit Keitonotachi with a Pole Grip and two accuracy rings. Still not capped on accuracy in Misareaux Coast at 76 I feel like I can definitely use some more.

Einherjar
The second Einherjar run with WoA went better than the first. We beat it relatively comfortably. The boss was the Marid with the Djiggas (chigoes) popping and pretty much impossible to recover from. The first run we wiped because I didn't know it had exceptional aggro range and despite regular mobs having normal hate mechanics, the boss had zone/alliance aggro. I pulled on RDM/BLU both times, but the mobs are actually pretty weak so I'll go RDM/DRK in future runs for extra utility. Holding them is no big deal and gaining hate on the group isn't an issue either. With two BLM's -aga2'ing the chigoes they were left at 5-10% HP. This was annoying enough to take a BLM out and it would have been a problem if the boss was up for much longer. Fortunately the zerg was relatively short (perhaps 2 minutes). It pops them three at a time iirc, and was able to pop 3 or 4 sets before it died.

Valkurm loss
Sunday was Dynamis - Valkurm time. We relied on double CS Stunners, but guess what... a charm still got through. The timing of the stun exchange started out well, but quickly got out of sync and at about the first simultaneous casting a charm went off. That was extremely unlucky and despite the charm we got it down to 20% before Extremely Bad Breath went off. The fact that I got poisoned and took some damage meant that I was slowly ticking away to death while trying to keep the boss stunlocked. As soon as the stunners were down people went down very fast, as would be expected. We were a bit short on people and some healing power to keep stunners and DD's alive a tad bit longer could have made the difference. Even so I'm looking forward to the time we DO beat this with ~16 people.

Magian progress
I used this weekend to get closer to my oh-so-precious PDT sword. I finished the Sabotender trials thanks to two Japanese groups in Kuftal Tunnel. Both times we killed 3 or 4 pop cycles on an earthday. The rest of it was done solo on Sabotender Bailaor in Quicksand Caves. There are a lot of Bailaor in the caves, however only the ones found after dropping through quicksand holes con as Easy Prey. I found this to be the best spot for them.

There are 5 of them there and using BST subjob (Beetle pet) and my Fellow NPC 1000 needles was not a problem. You have quite some time in between repops so even when weather comes along, it's a race against time.

I got another pair of groups in Kuftal Tunnel for trial No. 1228 (200 Lizards during earth day/weather). 60+ kills during both which puts me further along than I could have hoped for. I've seen people zoom through Kuftal on those same trials and I hope some of them will still be on Rafflesia's by the time I'm done. Teaming up really makes life easier.

Tanking Omega
As my previous attempt at tanking Proto-Omega with my current Limbus group ended in a loss, I was a bit nervous. Not because I don't think my tanking skills are sufficient (I believe they are), it's because I was afraid that without me on RDM to buff tanks, nuke pods and debuff Omega the backline would suffer. I was partly right. Pods tooke a bit longer to die and without refresh on me I soon ran out of MP and had to use Chivalry and eat a Devotion in order to keep up. Not sure about debuffs, but attack speed wasn't an issue. I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but it is so painfully obvious that if you don't finish the fight quickly after the last pod/form change you have got to kite it. No sense of urgency whatsoever after the last shape change. Just sitting there going at the same pace 4 Colossal Blows went off and things got messy. I used invincible after I ate the first and was able to regain hate after Stellina ate the second CB. After I ate a third I said "no more hate left, kite and stun". Stellina regained hate only to get another CB thrown at her I spammed cures on alliance members and was actually able to get hate after only a short time. This leads me to think the hate reset isn't complete or perhaps it's only a CE hate reset. I don't know. All I know is we won and I'm glad. Got 2 legs and 1 body. Been getting a lot of legs and no hands or feet, which are the two pieces I want the most. I'll eventually want to get the body piece too, but the bidding system makes it so you only get to pick the items you want the most, or risk getting outbid on everything.

Respect the stubbornness
I thought it was funny someone said they respected me for getting exp the old-fashioned way. It's hard to go back to regular EXP once you've exped in Abyssea, they said. No shit. However, there's no respecting my stubbornness. The reason I didn't buy Abyssea was because they finally got the EXP effort/reward ratio in order, but put it in the add-on. I don't buy add-on's because they shouldn't be essential to your playstyle. That's what an expansion is. Abyssea does not seem optional when you consider the large number of game-changing elements (both equipment and EXP). It's not expensive and the money has nothign to do with it. I don't like being forced to do anything, even if I'll enjoy it. I'm just weird like that.

Weekend update 5

2010-07-19T07:39:00.006+02:00

This past weekend was mostly Friday Limbus and Sunday Dynamis. Saturday I spent playing Street Fighter because I had very little motivation to log on to FFXI. I did however solo the Kraken Club BCNM which I covered in the previous entry and I also joined for 4 Nyzul Isle runs.

Limbus was a canceled Omega run which turned into a Temenos farming run. We'll eventually have to learn to do Omega with fewer people because I know at least two people won't be around for much longer. Without the confidence that we can manage a solo tank or that I could go any other job than RDM I'm a little worried about it. Might as well give it a go, I'm a known pessimist and I might be pleasantly surprised. Still, even with our current successes there's a lot of room for improvement. I regularly miss debuffs wearing off because I'm busy keeping refresh+haste on tanks, backup healing and nuking pods. I'm not sure how well Elegy is kept on it, but I recall seeing some resists. Two BLM's and a DRK are our only damage sources, so I think we may need a bit more killing power to blast through the final phase.

Nyzul was relatively generous (given our track record) and we got Goliard Cuffs and Askar Korazin. Grats on the drops guys. Also Roc's item appraised to Dryad Staff which I suppose is noteworthy due to the rarity of HQ appraisals.

Also, Sunday morning I saw earthday approaching and decided to get some Sabotender kills for my sword trial 200. I was surprised to find a group of people with Soulsabers equipped. I didn't need to check them to know what they were there for. We teamed up and cleared Sabotender Sediendo really quickly.
Afterwards I got a few more kills in Quicksand Caves during sand storm weather before I had to go prep for Dyna.

Dynamis Buburimu got us some capes and junk I don't really recall. I decided not to put anything on my /seacom since the only thing I wanted would be Valor Cape (for PLD which I never play) and Abyss Cape (for a DRK that can't even equip it yet). So I'd rather not grab those over people that will get more and better use out of them. Lessons learned from the previous run were applied well. I asked THF scouter to keep tabs on AB for when we killed Tarasca. Tarasca itself played hide-and-seek for a short while but all-in-all we got the win pretty fast. While pulling Aivtaras Gravity got resisted. I don't know if it's immune, but either way, not wearing any pdt gear I got one-shotted with a 1k+ critical hit. Not a problem really, didn't slow us down. It did make me a bit anxious for the next sac pull of the WHM Quadav, which I did weakened. Still, there's plenty of time between the mobs popping and them starting to run or cast for me to get away. The extra time was noticable as we had time to kill all rabbits after cockatrice as well as the Orcs in front of Outpost. A bit chaotic towards the end, but we managed. Jens did an excellent job sleeping, overwriting sleepga with sleepga2 keeping mobs out of the running for long stretches. I did some enmity generation to get mobs on me after waking up, but noticed Jens had perfect timing on sleeps on several occasions. Resleeping them within a second of them waking up.

Making this post a I realise I did quite a few things, which is surprising for a game I'm seriously considering quiting soon.

Soloing Up in Arms

2010-07-17T14:31:00.006+02:00

One of the things I've always wanted to try before I quit this game is to solo this BCNM. I hadn't considered doing this before because I don't enjoy the travel time and preparation time it takes just for a single attempt. I just love to procrastinate. Not only that, but in order to practice so I don't throw away any Beastmen Seals I wanted to do a few runs with assistance. Due to me feeling increasingly bored by FFXI and my refusal to purchase the Abyssea add-on I was looking for something to keep me active and interested.

Thankfully I succeeded on my first attempt, but only just. I cut it close, REALLY close.

I pop the chest and get the message that time has run out. Also, I get teleported to the Waughroon Shrine entrance, which is what happens when you fail a BCNM. So technically I did fail the run but I ended up with the rewards anyway. A total of 50k in NPC'able stuffs and an Altepa Ring and Black Pearl which I'll toss on auction. Now for the meat of this blog entry.

I went RDM/SCH into this 60 cap BCNM. The increased MP efficiency made this solo a success. Every little bit helped, considering the 15 minute time limit. I went in, popped Light Arts and buffed, ate food and reste 2 tics. After this preparation the opening sequence was

Chainspell
Gravity and run towards entrance
Thunder II several times
Bind
Convert
Drain several times
Bind at entrance and run around it
Drain one more time before Chainspell ran out

Soon after this I had to reapply Gravity. I nuked a few more times before I ran out of MP and then used Sleep2. I was able to rest to over 200 MP before it woke up. Looking back I could have just re-slept and rested some more. Instead I used Gravity again and didn't manage much damage before I had to rest again. After the second rest I had only a little time left before convert so I nuked twice, drained and slept it again so I could ride out the 10 seconds to convert. I used Alacrity randomly to lower recasts, but I should have limited it to Drain usage since it was very effective and efficient. Not that my nukes were doing badly. They were doing quite well actually.

I didn't have a macro for light arts and Cure with Light Staff so I had to do it manually. That cost some unnecessary time. I had brought a Vile Elixir +1 jsut in case, but didn't see the urgency of using it even though I was somewhat aware of how much, or how LITTLE time I had left. In the end I had to resort to Bio2 for the last bit of damage. I was unsure whether opening with Bio2 would be smart. I was afraid I'd mess up and try to sleep it while forgetting that it was still on.

There are several obvious improvements like more macros, including Cure and Dispel (for Regeneration). Also, there was a sequence of 3 spell interruptions due to not waiting enough after moving. So, that's something to watch out for too. Save Alacrity for Drain.

For anyone else wanting to try this I can't give you any special or new advice as I'm not sure what the minimum requirements are to do this successfully. All I can say is what I personally used. I had a Glamor Jupon, mostly HQ staves (except wind and light) 8 enfeebling skill upgrades and 6 in elemental skill. Hands and feet slots were level synched Yigit pieces. Also, I ate a Cream Puff and have a Moldavite Earring.

Grinding the new level cap

2010-07-11T17:40:00.004+02:00

I'm now a happy lv. 80 Redmage. I'm not sure how many parties it took, but regardless it wasn't as bad as I expected. I think RDM gets a lot from hitting 80 as SCH sub becomes interesting and also the added Enhancing Magic Skill makes Phalanx stronger. I haven't played around much with Stone and Water4 nukes, but I'm looking forward to finally breaking 1.000 damage with a nuke on RDM.

Also, I leveled my SAM up to 77 and was glad to do very well in all parties I joined. I'm using a regular 6-hit build with Hagun and it was amazing to see me leading so many of the parses. I don't know if it's players skill or knowledge, but never seeing myself as a DD player I was pleasantly surprised. The last party on SAM was a record setter. Previously the highest chain I ever got in an EXP pt was ~83. That party had a single Ridill Warrior doing almost all the damage. I was on RDM at the time. All other parties just didn't kill fast enough or sponged up so much MP that the healer had to rest and the chain broke. In this party we had 3 DD's all doing their fair share of damage. We also had a Dancer with fully meritted Haste Samba which made for some pretty fast swinging stacked with Hasso and Marches. A Scholar and a Bard rounded out the party. I can only imagine the speed at which we'd be killing if we had Haste spell on us. I'm sure the Monks would have torn things up even more. And of course, I would have too. I lead that parse of that party with 31% of total damage with the only other DD that was there for the same duration (a MNK) doing 24%.

I noticed I'm still approximately 5% below accuracy cap while fighting birds in Misareaux at level 76 eating Marinara Pizza. The true acc gap is larger due to Zanshin. I bought a Fowling Earring and am considering other pieces to make up for this. However, the most obvious improvements would be a HQ Haubergeon and Usukane feet. I'm gonna postpone both of those things for the time being as I don't see myself playing SAM a lot despite really enjoying it.

An interesting bit from the parser was my WS rate. I did a WS for every 4,37 melee hits. The usage of Meditate is what puts this number below the 5 you would expect from a 6-hit build. The two gear pieces that enhance Meditate have been a great improvement in my opinion. I can usually get 2 weaponskills off before Meditate wears off which results in 3 weaponskills in quick succession. Samurai is a very strong job. I realise this more and more the more I play it.

My first Astral Burn

2010-07-05T22:13:00.000+02:00

It would feel a bit silly posting this if all I wanted to say was that I finally got to Astral Burn successfully. It'd be especially silly because I was the puller and so got no exp and some guy Diaga'd our pull for no apparent reason. I had two things I wanted to find out and it was those two things that really made me want to pull for some WoA members to Astral Flow on.

Is lowered framerate the key to overcoming immobility due to lag and clipping.
Do the number of mobs in the train affect /heal aggro.

The answer to the first question is "yes". From forum posts on the topic of Astral Burning I learned that if you shake the FFXI window you can stand up from /heal and in so doing avoid dying due to lag. Shaking the window sounded as arcane as whacking a television that's on static, but apparently it worked. Some things like blink-casting are helped by lowering your game's frame rate. There are tools to raise your CPU load which will lower your frame rate, but these slow everything else down as well. One day, completely by accident, I discovered that if you open the context menu on FFXI's taskbar item (in windowed-mode obviously) by right-clicking it, you'll severely lower your game's frame rate. I used this during the pull to great effect. Even in the camp when all mobs were gathered in a tiny circle around me, I was able to stand up and reapply Phalanx and then continue resting. It also reduces the amount of clipping checks done while running "through" mobs and players which means you can move around faster. This only works because opening the context menu doesn't stop your keyboard input from being sent to the game. I don't know if this method works for the unofficial Windower, because I don't use that myself. Also, I'm not sure if this method depends on things like your OS version, CPU type/speed and graphics card/drivers.

As for the second question. It arose when discussion of Astral Burning in MMM took place in a BG-forum thread. Some suggested that putting distance between you and the train would solve the problem of some mobs simply not aggroing the puller. This seemed to suggest that too many mobs in close vicinity would hamper eachothers detecting and aggro abilities. They definitely path much much worse with all their buddies around, but as far as I could tell last night, the /heal aggro kept working on jellies which I pulled when I already had a large train. So I don't know why those mobs in MMM would refuse to aggro sometimes or if being far from the rest of the train actually helps.

On Aggro
One thing I accuse people of often is not knowing how aggro and enmity work. While fighting a ZNM I suggested people log off and let the kiter die to reset the rage timer. They then proceeded to log back on immediately before the kiter could die and were taken aback by the fact that they still had hate on the mob. Gaining and losing aggro are not very complex mechanics, but even the basics about it haven't become common knowledge quite yet. I have to admit there are still a few things I need to figure out myself. I've written down some things I'd like to test so that I can better understand some of the seemingly abnormal occurrances.

A long time ago (January 2008) I did some testing solo and in party with Cyrille and Stellina (special thanks to those two) and found out some things for myself. I made a thread about it on BG forum, but it didn't get much attention and only started a discussion about Darters in Dragon's Aery. Here is a link to that thread. Most of what I wrote is still accurate. However, the deaggro timer seems to reset not when an action is taken on you, but when they are able to detect you. I had mentioned both as if they were both a requirement, but it seems only detection plays a part. Also, it seems that water triggering deaggro may still be tied to the timer unlike what I said in that thread. Also, since detection plays a role, the deaggro timer is probably a bit shorter than the 25 seconds I first assumed. You should definitely ignore some of my early replies as I apparently can't read and it's painful to look back on (except that one pwnage post where I disputed what Rena said with proof). I can't truly take credit for discovering anything, but as far as I can tell I was the first person to do such testing and I don't believe the party aggro mechanic was known or understood. I hope I'll be able to continue this line of testing after postponing it for so long.

Xarcabard: Dynamis review

2010-06-28T10:44:00.001+02:00

I went into last night's Dynamis run expecting to do better that we ended up doing. Because of that I left with a feeling of disappointment which apprently the rest of the Linkshell shared.

We started with what has become our standard Dynamis setup of two Melee DD parties with a healer and a Bard each in addition to a BLM party with a Red mage and a Bard or (in this case) a Corsair. The last Xarcabard run we did was actually the first one I lead. It's been quite a few weeks since that run and looking back you could have seen this as a sort of test to see how far the group and I as raid leader have come. I'm glad I didn't see it that way going in...

Strategically it was different than last time. First off we had a Ranger one-shot the first time extension. I asked Skinwalker to come Ranger for this purpose, but Argonar ended up doing it, as he too was on Ranger. The second time extension requires you to kill two eyes at the first tower. The last time this pull was messed up because the eyes don't immediately link because they are actually too far apart. The person pulling the far eye got the whole group (original + 3 pops) as a result. I've found multiple groups seem to opt for one-shotting each eye with synched nukes and so decided we would do it that way. Sync AM2 one eye, then the next then the statue from behind the tower, that was the idea. However, what I did not know is that the eye on the left pops 3 eyes on the right, and the eye on the right pops 3 eyes on the left. So, if you nuke the left one first you can't reach the right eye for synched nukes without getting aggro. At least, not when you try to nuke it from the south. It may be possible to nuke it from the north, but you'd be inside aggro range of the eyes that pop after it dies. There was a pretty bad call on my side and I made BLM's nuke the wrong eye. Even though they didn't all nuke the same eye, it wouldn't have changed much as I had them nuking the wrong one. So BLM's eat it and so do I. I believe it's possible to nuke the south eye from behind the tower. Possbily all three of them. The testemonies I read had people nuking from the front, so I just did what they did. What ended up happening was an attempted sac pull. However, I stuck grav on the eye and it was casting a long spell which meant it didn't get very close to the waiting BLM's. They didn't manage to take it out before the other eyes returned, but Argonar killed it off.

So about 15 minutes in we hadn't even pulled a set of mobs yet. The main ally was waiting behind the RDM NM tower. Though they only had Bard sleepers, the three eyes behind the tower that lead to the third time extension can all be pulled seperately. So I asked the main ally to take care of those as we still had to take care of the second time extension, or so I thought. The unsung hero of last night's raid was Argonar who took out the second eye needed for the TE statue with Eagle Eye Shot where the BLM's didn't manage. Afterwards he one-shotted it with barrage after recovering. Me and the BLM's rejoined the main alliance who at this time were killing the last statue and third TE.

We were left with a reasonable amount of time to farm. I asked Requia on THF to pull the 4 eyes SE of the RDM NM tower. From then on he became the puller on his own volition and even started moving the ally around. I willingly took the back seat and let him decide the pull order. We decided to kill the eye wall (the one leading to castle Zvahl) for an extra time extension. Another strategic tip from the interwebs was synch nuking the eyes in two sets making the pull smuch easier. They seem far apart, but a Thundaga3 will actually hit the eyes on the sides if you aim for the second eye from the top. Unfortunately 4 BLM's took the eyes down to 10%. A 5th BLM or perhaps a Wizard's Roll could have made the difference there. I slept a group of demons away form the rest while the BLM's and I all bit the dust. Those demons could have been pulled as they were far away from the rest of the mobs when they woke up, but weren't. In the end it maye have been for the best.

After this initial failure Requia decided to sac pull the wall while 4 other people pulled eyes and demons off the train. The first time this went wrong because of how the pull was executed. However, I learned something from this. Normally when you pull a mob with an attack, it detects party and alliance members that are within its detection range and puts them on its hate list. When that happens, even if the original puller dies, the mobs will not go passive but target the next player on the hate list. This is something I've tested personally and though not widely known I can attest to it working this way. What I learned from that pull was that the detection range of Vanguard Eyes is larger than their aggro range and that it does not matter whether or not the puller is in a party or alliance. This is the strange linking behavior that I've been seeing over the course of the Dynamis runs I've pulled. I can explain all the 'strange' things I've seen so far with this new knowledge. Previously I found aggro pulling to be the most reliable way of sac pulling as well as having the benefit of not giving healers hate when they cure you after a messy pull. So, Requia pulled a second time with aggro only and things went much smoother.

Up to this point the BLM's died 3 times and the rest of the alliance once. Soon after we pulled another 5-8 demon train which caused a second wipe. We recover and I sac pull it. However, I soon realize they will path across where the main ally was fighting instead of what I thought was the logical path. This didn't turn out to be a problem as the alliance had killed most mobs before the rest of the group returned. Sleepers did a great job handling the incoming group. With not much time left we took one more pull which unfortunately lead to a similar situation only with less time before the returning group and more mobs overall.

So, all in all it wasn't a very good raid. Thief relic hands dropped which I suppose is one of the better drops, but still we could have killed a lot more if we hadn't screwed up several pulls and probably gotten more than the two pieces of relic armor we got. I clearly remember my conclusion about sac pulling in Xarcabard after the previous run and how it makes things much simpler if done correctly. This was the whole reason for me to level WHM to 70 and yet I seem to have forgotten the lessons I learned.

Weapon of choice

2010-06-25T08:40:00.000+02:00

The recent 'epic' update that raised the level cap also introduced new weapons up to level 80. My first impression after parsing the list of new items is that armor pieces aren't being eclipsed as much as weapons are. I like the idea of working for a strong weapon through the Magian trials. SE tried to make half-decent craftable alternatives through Synergy as well as numerous RA/EX weapons with unique stats. We don't know where all these come from yet, so only time will tell how realistic obtaining them is.

I personally am still only persuing one Magian trial path. That of the PDT sword. Some of the requirements were lowered and the path itself extends all the way up to a 8% PDT Samshir at level 80. Since PDT is a stat that scales so well I'll keep at it. Thanks to an extremely long sandstorm a pair of friendly Monks that I could level synch to, I managed to make some good progress after putting the trial on the backburner for a while.

However, this sword is purely for my own personal obsession with PDT. It probably won't see much application outside of unimportant melee solos. What about Samurai? People say Hagun at level 80 compared to other weapons comes up short. By how much? It's hard to quantify these things without making certain assumptions about your stats and the mob you're fighting. I wanted to compare Hagun to Masamune to see how big the gap was. When I reached the important component of weaponskill damage I made the following equation:


Hagun WS = Masamune WS
75+fSTR+WSC * 1.875 * P-Dif = 97+fSTR+WSC * 1.5625 * P-Dif

So basically asking: "when are the WS damages of Hagun and Masamune equal?"

p-dif is the same on both sides and the difference in fTP can be represented simpler. So you get:


75+fSTR+WSC * 1.2 = 97+fSTR+WSC
becomes
90 + 1.2 fSTR + 1.2 WSC = 97+fSTR+WSC
0.2 fSTR + 0.2 WSC = 7
fSTR+WSC = 35

Masamune and Hagun WS damage will be the same when fSTR together with secondary modifiers add up to 35. The moment it adds up to MORE than 35, hagun actually wins. So, when stacking fSTR you're always going to have at least +4 fSTR when you're at the same STR as mob VIT. So in a worst case scenario you need WSC to add up to 31.

With level correction you get 0.83 x mods = 31 => mods = 37.3 STR

With a 75% STR mod, you only need around 50 STR to reach this goal. Considering you can do a Sneak Attack+Gekko to a Sky god for over 1K damage, that means that even on high level mobs (assuming p-dif of 3) fSTR+WSC can add up to more than 100. Base damage on a weapon seems to play a much smaller part in a Samurai's weaponskill damage than I expected.

Yesterday I obtained this beauty:

Its effect on fTP makes Hagun's WS boost slightly smaller relative to that of any other weapon at 100 TP (18.7% instead of 20%), but still puts Hagun's WS damage higher than that of Masamune's when you can stack a lot of STR. In turn Masamune's damage on regular melee hits as well as its lower delay makes up for its 'likely' lower WS damage.

Hagun will eventually be fully eclipsed, but until the next update it's still a strong competitor.

Secret technique to multiple 2hrs

2010-06-22T15:46:00.001+02:00

Did that title grab your attention? If it didn't: I wasn't kidding. Interested now? No? Damn, what's with kids these days? The truth of the matter is that a few months ago I found a way to use Chainspell twice within the 30 minutes given to me to try and solo the Requiem of Sin battlefield. I never got around to actually try the 'trick' because it requires me to invest time that I didn't have or WANT to spend. My playtimes aren't what they used to be and my interest in trying to solo that battlefield has waned. I post this now because I thought it was an interesting trick and thought other people might come up with interesting ways of applying it.

So, how is it done? I'm sure many players know that cutscenes and dialogues can be used to your advantage. It used to be that a player stuck in a cutscene could still be on a mob's hate list, but that the mob could not damage the player essentially making them an invincible tank. This trick worked for the Goblin Footprint dialogue as well as the Mammet CoP mission until they patched it. Probably as a consequence of that patch, you could use dialogues to make mobs lose aggro. This could be used in Double Agent Assault mission and is useful when examining lamps in Nyzul Isle investigation.

What also happens during most dialogues and cutscenes is that the in-game time related to status effects is frozen. If you're afflicted with Bio, you can enter a cutscene or dialogue and the DoT effect will stop. Leave that dialogue and the DoT effect will resume for the unchanged duration. The astute reader will already see where I'm going with this. The 2hour ability of many jobs is nothing more than a status effect, which can be frozen by entering certain types of dialogues as well as the battlefield choice dialogues at BC's like Boneyard Gully. Stay in that dialogue for two hours and your 2hour ability timer (which was not frozen) will be up again to use as soon as the previous 2hour status wears off. I tested this with Elemental Seal on the battlefield dialogue and with Chainspell in the Temple Knight Signet dialogue in south sandy.

For battlefields like Requiem of Sin this would require you to fully buff and pop a Hermes' Quencher, Elemental Seal, then Chainspell and enter the dialogue as soon as possible. After the 1:30-2:00 wait you can enter and zip towards the mobs and still have more than 30 seconds of Chainspell effect left to take down the first mithra. A second Chainspell after killing the Wyvern (and dying and recovering again) would take care of a second mithra leaving only one to be kited and DoT'ed. This only works because this battlefield allows you to keep your buffs from outside.

This is useful for ANY ability that has a reasonably long status effect duration and a long recast timer. As in the previous example, it makes two consecutive Elemental Seals possible and that only requires a 10 minute preparation period. The applications depend on whether or not you can get into a cutscene or dialogue and to your target quickly enough for your ability status to still be useful/active. Hundred Fists, Blood Weapon and Mighty Strikes are short enough that it'd only really be worth it if you could immidiately engage your mob after exiting the dialogue. Mage 2 hours tend to be longer (1 minute for many of them) and can be more easily abused. Ranger can use two Barrages. Dragoon, 6 Spirit Surged Jumps. Samurai with 300 TP and two Sekanokki's can do 7 weaponskills along with their 2hr and takes much less preparation time than 'freezing' their 2hr. Thief can use multiple Feints in a single Zerg. A more far-fetched but very funny application would be a Monk freezing Boost recasts and in so-doing stack more of them on top of eachother. More practical would be formless strikes. I'm sure there a lot of good applications that I haven't thought of. However,...

This is probably considered cheating even though it stays inside the FFXI engine. I wouldn't have posted this technique if I thought anyone could get banned or jailed for it. However, that doesn't preclude it from happening. Only SE's GMs opinions matter.

P.S. Sorry if you thought this was a secret to killing AV type thing.

How weak is "Too Weak"?

2010-06-21T13:53:00.000+02:00

In my never-ending quest to test the limits of my character... I'm only kidding. I hardly ever do anything solo or exciting low-man stuff. I kind of wish I did, but I don't like failing. Maybe that's why I did this middle of the road thing I'm about to tell you about.

In the past year, but especially in the last few months, Astral Burn parties have risen in popularity. On some servers Korolloka Tunnel is apparently as competitive as Dragon's Aery back in the day. These are the main reasons why AB parties work:

A high level character can pull mobs without affecting exp and hold them indefinitely.
Damage and accuracy of AoE bloodpacts is not affected by the number of mobs hit.

Add to that the number of mobs that die in a short amount of time producing a high EXP chain and it's easy to see how AB can be a fast/efficient way of gaining EXP. So far AB is limited to the number of zones where you can effectively pull a large number of mobs. In Korroloka a lot of mob families link and are agressive (and thus aggro a healing character regardless of level). The latter is essential. If SE changed that aggro mechanic and made mobs not link if the target is high level (which is the case in Moblin Maze Mongers) AB's would be ruined as pulling would become very risky and time-consuming.

Picking the right zone matters for numbers, how low the mobs' HP is (if it takes too many Bloodpacts it might become too inefficient) but also how safely the assisting player can hold all the mobs. This is where defensive measures come into play. A topic which, if you've read previous entries of my blog, you know interests me a lot. I secretly also wanted to see if I could hold a train of EXP yielding mobs indefinitely, because there is another ability that I can use on RDM whose damage and accuracy is not affected by the number of mobs: AoE weaponskills.

This means things like Earth Crusher and Cyclone. Circle Blade is notriously weak, but it would also work. The magical versions benefit from RDM's Magic Attack Bonus trait and the lack of native staff skill leaves Cyclone as the best option. I purchased a Martial Knife for this as well. The fTP modifier at 200 TP (which Martial Knife accomplishes) is more than twice the value at 100 TP, more than doubling the damage I would do with another knife. In my actual attempt I could do about 395 damage with Cyclone while wearing some extra MAB and INT gear. The total actual damage scales up with the number of mobs in the train.

I decided to go with WAR subjob for the single defense job trait and Defender. I picked this over Blue Mage because I was afraid I would not be able to put Cocoon back up after it wore off. In the end spell interruption is an issue and with too many mobs you will die if you need to recast something in order to survive. I ate a taco and wore all the defensive gear I had while using a dagger (-40 PDT during the day and -45% at night). I chose The Boyahda Tree for its large supply of mandragoras. Mandies were my target mob because they're monks and thus have a lower damage rating per hit. This increases the effectiveness of Phalanx. The Mourioche in Boyahda range from level 62 to 68. Quite a bit higher than the minimum needed to get EXP from them (mobs as low as level 56 still give EXP). Also, these actually link, making pulling easier. The most annoying TP ability they possess is Wild Oats (VIT down effect).

The initial train was 10 mobs strong and regen under Composure effect was all I needed to recoup the damage I took. I started out with Ice Spikes, but soon realized the Paralyze wasn't necessary so switched to Blaze Spikes for the slightly higher damage. It took about 6 or 7 Cyclones to kill the train. The next train was similar but this time I left some time in between reapplying Defender. The difference was notable as I took a crit for 12 damage and even regular hits started surpassing Phalanx. My Phalanx was at 271 skill which translates to 25 damage absorbed. However, I saw a risk in trying to reapply Phalanx mid fight. If I have to unequip my leg slot to apply Phalanx (only an equal or stronger Phalanx effect will overwrite) I have a bigger chance of being interrupted so I settled for a 23 damage Phalanx instead.

The final train was 18 mobs strong. Things soon started to look grim as I saw my HP going down steadily. I managed to get cures off, surprisingly. Also Ice Spikes which seemed necessary this time around. I soon realized the difference was the time of day. The hidden effect of +5% PDT on my Cheviot Cape was dearly missed. Even with Ice Spikes my HP kept dropping slowly. After many attempts to put Stoneskin on I decided it wasn't worth it and I should build TP to kill the train as quickly as possible. I was pretty nervous, I'll admit, but in the end took them down for a over 1500 EXP in under 10 minutes. The parser I had running showed over 7k EXP per hour.

I'm not promoting this as a way to solo EXP. The time it takes to gather the train an the down-time in between pulls as well as the risks involved make equally or less efficient than simply doing Campaign Battle. The fun part is that it's actually possible to hold a train of level 68 mobs. This means you could easily Astral Burn at higher levels if you had to, as long as the mob holder/tank is geared and buffed well enough. With minne's and a more potent phalanx and regen, the level and job/strength of mobs can be scaled up further. Other improvements I could make if I did this again solo:

Bring my capped Spell Interruption set for reapplying a higher tier Phalanx, Stoneskin and possibly Cocoon.
Buy an Umbra Cape (HQ Cheviot)

Improving Buburimu runs

2010-06-17T07:56:00.000+02:00

Last night we had another very smooth Dynamis raid in the same vein as Beaucedine, Valkurm and a less smooth but still very successful San d'Oria. Most of it comes from experience of having done them before, but I believe it's also a matter being more patient with pulls.

Pre-boss we took our time (40 minutes more or less) getting Aivtaras, WHM quad, Stollenworm, and finally Tarasca. Tarasca pull was interesting as I used Powder Boots and was a bit scared its pathing would cause links. Fortunately it ended up sticking to the wall past Goblins. After Tarasca I asked 3 people to help me look for Apocalyptic Beast. Only after we found it did I remember "Oh yea, I want bards to buff both DD pt's. I asked Lacrima to set it up. In the meantime we watched AB get further away from camp which would make the pull longer and cost more time. About 10 seconds before SV rotation started (only 2 bards this time, 1 was AFK for most of the raid) I had Nis (THF) pull AB. It was a fairly good estimate of pull length as both pt's were fully buffed by the time we got to camp. It was a faster kill than last time. Improvements for next time:

Setup BRD rotation sooner
Have someone stick to AB the moment we find it
Have a WHM know where I'm sac'ing Quadav train to so I can get to Aivtaras faster while Stollenworm is killed. Either that or just have someone else pull it.

The farming period was filled by Crabs, Ravens, Dhalmel, Efts and finally Cockatrice. I believe we killed almost all pops of the listed families/groups. That's up to 112 mobs, but we probably missed 1 crab set, 1 raven set and 2 dhalmels sets making 100 mobs a better estimate. To kill 100 mobs in about 70 minutes means on average 42 seconds per kill. Considering the time it took moving between camps and the initial waiting before we started on Efts, that means we killed extremely fast. Not only that, it means there was hardly any down time between pulls. I made an extra effort to pull without or with small links. This is the patience I was talking about before. I decided rushing things at the cost of deaths and the following downtime would, in the end, cost more time than simply waiting for better pulling oppertunities. With the exception of a single crab pull, I believe there were always mobs ready to be killed. This means the patient pulling came at no extra cost. Some nifty drops rewarded our teamwork. Notably Valor and Abyss Capes, both of which I hope to someday own myself. Improvements on farming phase:

...I can't think of any. We did pretty awesome. I'd like to commend everyone on doing a great job.

Muze did a great job sleeping.
BLM's and BRD's helped out when needed.
PLD's kept mobs off mages.
DD's killed things really well!
Amoklauf pulled his ass off!

Good job, everyone.

The sky's the limit

2010-06-16T08:35:00.000+02:00

As you can see from the image, I've upgraded from Byakko pants to actually wearing Byakko AS pants. We did some sky gods with WoA and I got myself a pair of Suzy Sune-ate and Seiryu's Kote, but more importantly W.hands. I've been wanting these for drains and a new tier of Bio damage since I haven't bothered getting any dark skill gear other than Glamor Jupon. For when I finally finish DRK these will be part of a relatively strong dark magic build along with a torque, AF head and relic legs.

I got to go SAM/THF to sky. Along with 3 other melee DD's of which 2 others were SAM we did the vast majority of damage with BLM's not coming very close at all. Of all the pops there were only two fights where I was competitive. One fight I died and on one Byakko I was paralyzed for quite some time. The fights were very short and I believe none lasted more than 5 minutes. It was a race to fire off as many WS's as we could before the damned NM's were dead. I think the most I got off on any fight was 4 and that's WITH sekkanoki opening and a fresh meditate. With a melee accuracy of usually 70%+ that should give you a good indication of how fast they were dying. Here's a parse of a Seiryu.

I was quite annoyed at my WS damage being low. Since the fights were mostly around 4 minutes I could have waited for the SA timer to be up for about 3 WS. I didn't do this since the mob's were turning to and fro leaving a lot of chances for screwing up. Instead I split TA and SA and even Solo WS'd a few. I think it would have improved my overall damage if I had waited for SA timer more often. In this fight Fuurinpuu got pretty high with his damage on BLM, but most of the other parses show BLM's at around 5-7% total damage. I was using Kasha for the Paralyze, but looking back that may not have been the best decision. According to some testing Gekko gets a higher Attack boost than Kasha.

I still have some things to finish on SAM to improve my WS damage:

Snow Gorget
Alky's for Great Katana
Triumph Earring
Kirin's Osode
Balm Sachet
Smilodon+1 for Great Katana
Overwhelm upgrade 4 and 5

I expect a HQ Haubergeon will benefit me more overall, so I'm not sure about all of these yet. I don't own any of the add-ons so I don't have the augmented gear pieces. If I did I would probably make a nice WS headpiece to add to the above list of upgrades.

Paladin: the truth is out there

2010-06-15T10:10:00.000+02:00

A recent 'heated' argument in LS and now this post on Bluegartr forum prompted me to make this entry. There are always debates about gear sets on any job, but somehow playstyle and gear on Paladin is a much more touchy subject. It might be because there are more factors determining how well a Paladin performs than there would be for other jobs/roles. Perhaps there are also more ways to achieve their goals than for other jobs. Or maybe it's because players that choose tank classes are generally more arrogant, stubborn and/or egotistical than the average player. I can't decide which it is and it's probably a bit of everything.

So why post about the debate? Am I going to weigh in on the views expressed in the BG thread? No you. "Yes" there is such a thing as being optimal, but also "Yes" there are usually trade-offs made and more than one way of doing something. I think these two points of view are often on the clashing ends of Paladin debates. Both sides make valid points. If you want to discuss Blue Mage subjob versus Red Mage subjob on Khimaira you're going to factor in stuff like MDB traits, Phalanx, hate from Blind and Sleep spells and of course physical defense. You leave out things like different playstyles because you're assuming your own playstyle. Whether you think you're optimal or not doesn't change that if you put two players in the exact same situation their actions will quickly diverge. How would you compare the performance of two setups if you can't compare them under the exact same circumstances? You fall back to calculations or parses/data of situations that you deem close enough to compare. More often than not players rely on their gut feeling and support it with data/math instead of using data/math to form their opinion. So, what's the point I'm trying to make? I guess it's "Stop being en evangelist on Paladin matters". Whatever happened to reason?

Step back a bit and look at the big picture. Ask yourself how fast can your group kill something and how safe/reliable is your method. That's all that matters in the end. If you consider it from this level, increasing kill speed as well as reliability turns into macro management and low level discussions like I.R. Hauberk versus Avalon Breastplate, while still relevant, lose a lot of their significance. So, to reiterate: Yes, gear and sj choices matter, just not as much as people think they do. Both the ignorant as well as the well-informed hold on to their opinions with way too much ferver.

While on the subject. When I leveled Paladin I bought DD gear pieces once I hit mid 50's. Exped mostly on birds until I moved to the mire. Due to Feather Tickle I didn't often have TP, however I felt like the party was doing better than if I didn't attempt to deal damage. Unfortunately, the average DD player is of low enough quality that my damage output actually mattered. In the mire I felt like my utility went through the roof as I was able to eat food while WS'ing as frequently if not MORE frequently than the rest of my party. The idea behind DD'ing on Paladin was "if you can't hold hate against your DD's in such short fights, help the party in a different way". It turned out that with my DD numbers I was actually able to hold hate better than a pure turtle setup. Looking back it makes a lot of sense. In such a short fight, with nobody holding back, the rate of increase of everyone's volatile enmity is going to be very high. Considering for each point of damage dealt provides more VE than CE the largest part of your enmity is going to be VE for the duration of the fight. If you tried to turtle tank with Paladin you'd have pretty much only VE with the exception of cures. With gear swaps you can still max out enmity on Flashes, Provokes and cures. While you take more damage and thus lose more CE than a turtle tank, you also produce more CE beacause of your damage output. So CE may be somewhat similar in the two situations but more likely still in favor of the DD setup. VE on the other hand will be much higher when you attempt to DD. Since VE is the largest part of your total enmity in short fights against mobs with low HP, the setup with the highest total enmity is the DD setup. With more damage taken comes higher stress on the healer. However, being able to kill faster balances this out to a certain extent. Not to mention the more kills and thus more EXP you'll be able to get during the course of the party.

Weekend update 4

2010-06-14T10:45:00.000+02:00

Get ready for another image-less recounting of FFXI related things. Since the last entry we've done some Sea with WoA. We popped 3 Jailers of Justice and 1 torque dropped. From what I understand we have several Love pops now. It will be interesting to see how that fight goes. I was in BLM party pulling the summons off the main alliance. I noticed on very annoying fact. Claim block! I hardly ever camp anything where I need to outclaim people. One time at Charybdis I had my ranged attack canceled because I was apparently too fast. It works on all mob pops and apparently JoJ's summons as well. I had to purposefully delay casting on them or risk getting blocked and suffer a cooldown period before being able to act again. On the up side, I got good exp and refilled my buffer.

Friday was time for Ultima and it was again a very smooth fight. The final bit of the fight is always a bit chaotic. This time it went Energy Screen crazy, but fortunately we had a large enough group with both melee and magic damage. I don't care much for the two Ultima pieces that I don't yet have. The body piece would be great for drains, but I hardly get to use those.

After Ultima I went back to help WoA with Jailer of Prudence. We took it down easy after a shakey start. Afterwards it was a bit late to do JoL, so LS raid time was ended. I quickly asked if anyone wanted to kill Yovra before the BLM's warped. Several people still need those organs so I started looking for an Om'Yovra near JoP spawn. I found one and got 4 or 5 BLM's to come kill it. It took way too long and its sleep resistance was beyond my Magic Accuracy by the time it hit 50%. So, it got a bit rough with sync nukes no longer being realistic. I 2hrd to take it down and was surprised to see that only 1 of my 5 nukes was resisted. Three people lotted and I won. Now I still need 4 Aern organs for a Snow Gorget. Got my eyes set on Snow because it covers Gekko and Rana and Guillotine for my future DRK. Speaking of which, I better finish that soon. I'm still in doubt, because of how well Penta Thrust has been doing on SAM recently. However, Shadow Gorget for Penta requires 2 Yovra organs and that's just silly.

Saturday Kingcem and I went out to FoV in Valley of Sorrows after a MMM experience party disbanded prematurely leaving me with an Allied Ring charge to blow. Started out with Soboro with /DNC. The TP overflow makes it easy to spam Waltzes on yourself. Switched to Hagun for a while and according to Kingcem my dps went up noticably. However, when I switched to Tomoe because of the Perytons I noticed that even on Manticores and Raptors my WS damage was outclassing Kasha/Gekko by a lot. Those mobs are all DC at level 75 and my accuracy and attack ratio were high enough for polearm to be the better weapon. We also popped some FoV turtle NM's. After a close call when it popped with enpetrify and barely killing it, I am now the proud owner of an Errant Houppelande with +2 water resist.

After FoV my Nyzul group raided floor 20 for the zillion Goliard Clogs we need and went 0 for 3 on ANY gear drops. We went in with 5 people and even when we wasted some time on a lamp floor I think we did pretty well. Didn't join for Salvage, cus... well... I didn't feel like it.

Sunday morning Kingcem and I tried to help take over Northlands but after a while of making very little progress in Xarcabard I decided to abandon it. The few Frozen Flame ops I did made up for the death caused by someone else's bad pull. That op is effective at dropping the fortification rating which unfortunately keeps going back up. In the end we didn't even retain Beaucedine Glacier. It's been quite some time since we had Fiat Lux and I think it's going to stay that way unless SE introduces some changes in the next update to raise the incentive.

The weekend ended with Dynamis - San d'Oria which was meant to fatten the LS bank for a better payout at the end of the month. Since we'll have some off time after the update and several Dreamlands Dynamis at the end of this month it was one of our last chances to get some cash revenue. We started out slow, and a bad pull of East Gate which I tried to sac got slept and caused a pretty bad situation. Everything went fine and even West gate was no problem. I didn't get a Raise3 after the sac which was fairly annoying since I had already eaten too many R1's for my liking recently. After west gate we got a pretty massive link and since I was still weakened from the sac pull I couldn't do my usual crowd control routine. So more deaths there and I was actually pretty pissed off at the time. Not directed towards anyone, just a general "omg, I can't stand this crap" type of emotional state. I almost handed the raid over, but I came to my senses and kept going. Pulled the NIN NM to stables. Unfortunately, the otherwise smooth handling of NIN mobs was set aside for this pull and there were no stuns towards the last percentages of HP allowing pretty much each of the NIN mobs get a Mijin Gakure off. Needless to say, people died again. We press on and clear Watchdog Alley and rode out the timer on some left-over statues in Pikeman's Way. It wasn't til after the NIN NM was killed that we saw a Montiont Silver Piece drop. Somewhere during Watchdog Alley a second one dropped making this a pretty decent run. Gear drops... meh who even cares? Nothing's going to compare to city drops in dreamlands.

Dynamis - Valkurm: "Moar Stuns!"

2010-06-10T08:42:00.000+02:00

Cirrate Christelle, or whatever its name is, downed the good old fashioned zerg way. After 2 losses due to TP abilities getting through CS Stun, I can say this boss handed our asses to us twice since WoA was revived. This being our third attempt and the first one I lead, I can say "third time's the charm".

It was obvious from what I was told and what I've seen that our kill speed was high enough. The issue was people dying. Having gone to many an event as RDM/DRK I know from experience that CS stunning is not perfect. There are two ways you can approach it:

balls to the wall
measured dosage

If you spam stuns you are guaranteed to overlap with the previous one most of the time. However, you'll be covered those times that Stun wears off early or gets resisted. If you slow down your casting you're estimating the Stun duration and trying to get as few overlaps while keeping the Stun holes small. The second method takes some experience. You can't rely on the chat log AT ALL. It's way too slow and delayed to use as a cue for casting the next Stun. That being said, when Stun wears off early you're screwed since you don't have time to react.

In the case of a single TP ability being able to KO the vast majority of your alliance (like Valkurm megaboss), you have got to maximize the Stun "coverage". Add a second CS Stunner and you're half way there. Now all you need to do is make sure the Stunners are casting in the gap of the other Stunner's casts. Now you're all the way there. The delay between casts is about 2 seconds if you're spamming. On average, once the rhythm is set, there's a stun landing every 1 second. You won't delay perfectly, but almost all TP charge times will be too long to get through if you're even remotely good at alternating your Stuns.

We did this on Qufim megaboss too, only I wasn't a RDM/DRK for that run, but Argonar and Darkflare did very well. When we did Bahamut recently I wasn't leading the raid and Ewenn was told to start CS Stun when Bahamut was at 50%. Once he popped his CS I adjusted my timing to cast in the gaps of his. Last night in Valkurm I told Darkflare to start at the same time as me and just spam the spell. I also told him that I'd be the one to adjust to his rhythm. I noticed that it took 2 or 3 stuns before we were alternating properly. Now, add that to the fact that I didn't call a start time and just started stunning arbitrarily. You may see that there was still the potential for a loss there. So yes, we improved our odds greatly, but there is still room for improvement. The next time I want to call a time on the game-clock to start the zerg and give one Stunner the instruction to go first. That way we can pop CS at the exact same time as the melee's engage and in so doing optimize the overlap of 2hr's, damage and stun-lock phase.

In addition to the win, which some needed for Tavnazia access, we got quite a few drops. Including, but not limited to: BLU cape, WHM belt x2, WHM hat -1 x2, SAM belt, SCH hat -1. Grats all on drops and win.