I'm a procrastinator...
Well, after 10 pages of this I didn't have much of a choice but to try to make some time for an update! Honestly I didn't think I'd be able to just because this weekend was pretty packed with work, and this entire semester is going to be really busy. But, I made a little bit of free time each day of the week to get some of the screen shot stuff out of the way, and now I just need to hope this doesn't take more than 4 -6 hours so I can submit a test in time.^^;
But, anyway... Same stuff as usual, I've got a good deal of requests through e-mails/PMs/IMs/etc asking for info/opinions on specific subjects, so now I'm just going to post it all here as a reference! Mostly those topics involve Bahamut V2 strategies, GK results, and parse results, so those will probably be the bigger parts of this update. I'm also posting a lot of older events that took place over the fall/summer that I never got around to posting, since my last all-encompassing update was in June.
And just as a side note, a lot have asked me if I'd be willing to post RNG, WAR, and DRK updates similar to the SAM and NIN ones I've done. Just to answer that question here for anyone else wondering I do plan to do it eventually, but exactly when I do it is unknown. Feel free post/IM/email to recommend or ask anything though, I don't mind and will always get around to it eventually.
All that aside! I'll start off with the usual format, and just as a warning this is going to be another one of those crazy long updates. Possibly the longest!
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The sea farming craze we had in early fall was put to an end. :(
Triggers
For a good part of fall we would farm sea just about every single day of the week, in an attempt to get as many AV kills under our belt as possible before sea turned into another sky. We just about mastered killing and popping all of the different triggers... Most of them done in small teams, and usually we'd be able to pop several on a good night. Temperance was always the biggest problem for most linkshells, but even for that NM we'd pop as many as 4-5 in a night. His PH is just a trigger that moves around to all the different towers, and as long as you can split up and cover a few of them you'll eventually get it to pop assuming you're not horribly unlucky.
We also moved from kiting a few triggers to just stationary tanking when we had the right people. A lot of the trouble from the triggers came from AoE/TP/magic attacks hitting the wrong people, and containing it on one side of the room got rid of that problem. It also made it easier for people to kite and avoid TP attacks since they could damage it (BLMs, RNGs) from far away and not have to be close to it at any time.
Initially our biggest concern with straight tanking was the damage taken by the tanks, but that hasn't really been a problem me or the others now. :D
I was so happy when I landed that Rampage, I took off all my gear just for the hell of it to see how low my damage could get after getting frustrated with how shitty it was in the first place... And, that was just the number I was shooting for!
Anyway, Fortitude is one of the triggers I'm talking about. His AoE isn't a problem, but kiting him and a BLM pulling hate as it's running by, followed right away by a Vorpal Blade, usually means they're a dead BLM. So, containing him on one side gave BLMs a head start to run away if they pulled hate. Damage taken also wasn't a problem, and I believe all these sea shots are without phalanx II as well (or at least capped phalanx II).
Then, the same story applies for Temperance.
I had to get some Rampage revenge on him after Fortitude!
Temperance more than any other trigger has pain in the ass AoE, so it helped quite a bit to be able to just concentrate the AoE damage on 1-2 people rather than it potentially hitting anyone/everyone. Melees would normally be /NIN, and if the spam was bad they would back off to avoid sponging up MP. When it changed to blunt mode we would always kite regardless, and since we'd only have to use Gravity tin that mode it normally wouldn't build resistance. It all worked out pretty well.
Then, Ix'MNK is just plain fun. Me and all the other tanks would always fight and end up having to take turns on who gets to tank him, because he's such a weakling it's fun to take next to nothing for damage as this big bad aern is trying his best to kill you.
The same is no different for any of the higher tier jailers.
Prudence in particular is usually the biggest pain in the ass, but he tends to focus hate strongly on one person until they're dead... And if you get enough attention on one of them, you usually have the other attacking you full force. As long as that person is the tank, you're golden! I've had a few really weird fights where it literally just stayed glued to me the entire time despite BLMs zerging it, and as a NIN/WAR I couldn't have had _that_ much hate. Damage results stay just about the same for those guys though:
And yeah, that just about finishes up a summary of all the triggers we've played with. For the most part our luck with the drops have been on the good side.
I also earned the title as the torque master! In so many kills with so few people I ended up being the only person that'd put a given torque to use in a lot of situations, especially since we're a mage heavy LS. So now I have Justice Torque, Fortitude Torque, Faith Torque, Hope Torque, and Temperance Torque... And got all of them basically from it being a free lot since we're so few on melees, including the Justice Torque. :) I'm thinking a lot of unlucky people in other melee heavy shells must hate me for that. D:
Jailer of Love
But! Now on to JoL.
Not much to say about this guy, it's really one of the easiest fights in the game once you know what to expect... And on that note, it's also one of the most boring. It's long and uneventful for the most part, it just sits there casting over and over and over again. But, with tanks like NIN/BRD and RDM/NIN and PLD/NIN and such, the tank PT just about never loses hate. Really as long as you have a stable tank PT and a stable PT to take care of his summons, this thing could be held forever.
Drops have been on the good side here as well.
For nearly all of our kills lately I go as a Kraken DRK though, and it speeds up kills substantially. I believe our fastest kill was about 38 minutes with around 25 people, and all things considered that's pretty damn fast, especially since most people take 2-5 hours to kill this thing with almost twice as many. The parse results basically speak for themselves in this case: http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/406/jolparsejt0.jpg
In each of those fights we had around 2-3 kraken DRKs, one going every 3 minutes or so. As long as you have the extra healing the damage is really worth it. I was kind of sad my Souleater merits weren't useful though, I have the recast capped but most of the time I won't use it until 2-3 minutes after its ready to allow the others keeping us alive to rest MP. Highest round of damage I've done though in one Souleater run was 16k, all in a 60 second period, and I think that says enough to how much damage can be dished out.
Also as a side note, THFs alternating Feint on JoL for each DRK does really well to speed up the damage, highly recommended.
Another side note, I just found this amusing... He's usually rather difficult to debuff, but I ended up landing all these in a row lol: http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/648/loljolbx0.jpg
Absolute Virtue
Well now for the bad news... I don't know what the hell SE is thinking with this NM, but as far as I've seen it is now 100% impossible to kill until people figure out how to somehow lock something. We tried everything and spent hours and hours on it, losing countless exp, all to no avail. I've heard of many linkshells doing the same and still getting results no different from ours. We even tried to kill it regardless of being unable to lock TP/magic, and at 79% it goes into a 'mode' where it spams Meteor/Comet along with its normal spells, completely ending our attempt.
Damage taken wise, while the buffs and gear me and the other tanks have bring it down a lot... It's still very hard to stay alive. The damage in that screen for those spells are all normal base damage and not resists. Typically those spells do 1800-2500 depending on buffs, but they can be brought down a lot. However, the physical damage you take on top of that from his melee/TP spam is too hard to counter, he still hits for a good 200-500 on tanks. Even with my gear I'm usually taking 190-220, and with his attack speed it's just too much.
Regardless, as shown above we were able to still take it down to 79% with all of us working together properly, but after that it spammed Meteor/Comet basically finishing off the attempt. In the end we had to let him depop after repeated failure, and the same applied for future attempts.
I got my little cheap shot in before it depopped at least! But yeah, it's really disappointing to have this go back to 'wtf' status. We had high aspirations of getting everyone in the LS gear from JoL and AV, but those were all crashed by SE. Thanks a lot.
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About DRK and ToA.
DRK Finished!
I realize by now everyone would have to know this already (or at least I hope), but all my other jobs included a small LJ section update for when I hit 75 on them, involving the final levels and some results/summaries... So, now that I have some time I'll have to do that now!
I actually hit 75 on DRK a while ago, and have since obtained just about all the possible gear I could want for it aside from a few misc. things. For the most part all I have left are some minor upgrades to my Dark Magic and Kraken DRK gear. But, other than that I'm pretty much all done. Overall I had a lot of fun leveling it! I really enjoyed and spammed the hell out of the dark magic spells, all while doing much better damage than I thought I could. Originally my goal with leveling DRK, as it was with SAM, was to try to unlock the potential in it and prove the stereotypes wrong about their damage output. I actually succeeded beyond my expectations, making it all more than worth it. I have around 20-30 parses or so encompassing almost every PT on DRK on my journey to 75, and in a large amount of them I was at the top for damage (most PTs were with well equipped WARs and MNKs as well, getting 10k+/h).
To start I'll repeat what I said in previous entries; as a general recommendation I really encourage using GA from 25 to at least 50. I don't think any damage output compares to spamming Sturmwind in that level range (plus there are some really good GAs), and as shown in older posts the damage from it is just about as high as it gets at those levels. I continued to use GA to 56, and then changed to rampage for a short time. It was fun at first, but my results with /NIN and two axes were much weaker overall. From 59 on I was mostly /NIN with Scythe until about 75, and at 75 for the most part I'm /WAR in PTs when I have confidence in the tank/healers. The damage output is still good at 75, and while I'm sure I won't surpass really well-equiped MNKs and WARs in endgame exp, I do hold my own much better than I thought, and can easily out-damage the average DDs. Some misc. screens:
WS damage on DRK is normally very high, even without a BRD I typically average close to 1k. With a BRD it's normally over that, and while I never had a 2 BRD PT on DRK I'd imagine that my WS average would be around 1.2-1.3k. /SAM is very appealing for this reason, but unfortunately despite how much fun I have exping on DRK I rarely get to do it. :(
Assault & Salvage
For a little while Assault was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it, but that really ended up fading away fast. It became one of those necessary things that you would have to do, and spamming the same missions over and over again that often would strongly rely on luck rather than skill got aggravating fast. I stopped for a while, and the only reason I'm doing it again now is for Salvage. But, I'll say at least this, the assault maps are usually more interesting than the missions! I have a bunch of screens of the areas, but I'm just going to post one.
Now, as for Salvage... I've really enjoyed it so far. My LS has formed teams since doing high number runs end up being more difficult than low number runs, and the team I'm on usually goes about 2 times a week (sometimes 3). At first I'll admit I found the idea of Salvage to be ridiculous, and being gimped horribly at the start wasn't appealing to me at all... But, so far I'm having more fun in Salvage than anything else in the game. Doing these runs with a good group of friends is great!
This was our first run, and it went pretty good overall. Normally we assign priorities for every drop to each person based on who utilizes it the best to help the group, and this has worked out the best. Everything involving Salvage mostly handled by Lhexh! And he does a great job with it! /cheer
Since then we've progressed really fast, and we have a lot of equipment drops tallied up including many 2/3s (even a Morrigan body is 2/3, good luck Syl!). Typically we enter a run with 8 to 10 people, and at least one person (normally two) is two boxed to play that necessary roll that doesn't help on the boss. Which, ends up being a THF for the TH and MNK for the beginning. Most recently our focus has been on the Bhaflau boss until more information is released about the other areas. We've killed it 3 times now.
We normally kite this boss since with our low numbers we don't have the support to straight tank it, and with some form of movement speed you can usually get distance pretty easy. Overall though it's a difficult fight, and while we never had problems with wiping, we do occasionally run out of time. Time is our biggest enemy in this fight, we've lost a few attempts to time outs at 7% and 10%, etc. It mostly depends on the number of DDs we have and how well-equiped they are, but it can take anywhere from 20-40m depending on that and your numbers.
Our DDs usually consist of BLM/NIN and RNG/NIN, and them along with 1-2 tanks attempt to bounce hate back and forth through the BC. This thing hits like a house on wheels, so if you pull hate for too long you'll most likely end up dead. It also does a throat stab like hate reset move named Homing Missle, which can be your enemy or your friend. In many cases it'll save you from dieing, but then in other cases when it hits too many people (the AoE range is huge on that TP attack) it can be very big trouble. He also uses smaller AoE attacks that do 300-500 and Bind or Paralyze, which is annoying but not as bad. Usually as long as you have over 500 HP you can continue trying to damage it without dieing.
RNG also does really good here, Kraken RNG for farming those weak mobs is WAY overpowered. I usually don't have songs, but last run I did... And with kraken & Culverin+1 I was taking off 50%+ of a troll/scorpion/wamouras life with each WS (even on higher floors). Doing like 1.5 to 3k damage. I even self SCed a few times which just kills any mob lol... It's great, and helps a greatly in farming a lot of equipment fast.
Then, it goes without saying that RNG does really well on the boss too. I haven't had much luck with parse results going through, but this is one of the only that did: http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2577/parsezd6.jpg
It is believed to have about 50k HP, and that reinforces it for me. The white boxes are BLMs and the green is another RNG (that RNG's damage is missing at least 1-2k, I had PT chat filtered for the first 20% or so). I also fully recommend attack food as it makes a considerable difference on your damage, and with the right gear I was still able to maintain 90-95% accuracy as shown with meat. Also as shown by the parse, the large majority of your damage comes from WS+Barrage, so it's important to keep that in mind. As a RNG you want to spam WS and Barrage any time it's up to maximize your damage output, because overall the ranged damage total is very small.
But yeah, I don't know how long it will last but so far Salvage is really a lot of fun for me. Looking forward to more!
The one thing I don't like though is the very beginning... I'm all for promoting the use of different jobs and such, but the beginning is just too reliant on MNKs IMO. Kill speed is horrible without one, and on the boss MNK damage is cut in half for both melee and Chi-Blast, so we can't afford to have many. Then, in addition to that trouble, the beginning mobs don't even at least drop 1 weapon most of the time. We've gone as many as 3 mobs into the run with TH, and still have absolutely nothing drop. It's the one thing I find to be really flawed with this IMO, and I hope they adjust it somehow so it's a little more friendly to small numbered groups and time/job contraints.
Cerberus & Hydra
Meh, the popularity of these NMs has been falling pretty fast... Hydra is self-explanatory, seeing as it probably has the worst drops in the game. Cerberus is following the same pattern though, since his synth materials are kind of meh and there are more Algols dropping than most linkshells have DRKs. A lot of people getting Algols now just do it for the looks lol.
But, regardless we've still racked up several more kills in that department. I've also had the opportunity to go as SAM, making it a lot more fun... Overall I enjoy the fight when everyone does there job correctly regardless of the job I'm on, but it can be really frustrating when Stuns are missed and people are going nuts and such. But most of the fights lately have been going good.
SAM/WAR did really well on it too, and I'll post parse results from this later in the update. And, of course, I had a nice Tachi:Kaiten that managed to break through his stoneskin by 1 damage. Kaiten on him normally did about 300-550, about 200-300 less than a 300% TP Gekko/Kasha/Yuki. I'll go more into those averages later.
Hydra on the other hand, while much more fun has drops that are just about worthless. :(
We WAR/NIN burned it one run for a 10 minute kill (http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/905/parse1dn8.jpg red = WARs), and that was probably the last time we killed him. I think the total number of kills comes out to around 5 or so, and we haven't touched it in months now. It's a fun kill but it just has like, no purpose at all.
That torque is just plain ridiculous too... I ended up getting stuck with one because no one would accept it, and these are basically the results:
Yep, 1525 HP worth of damage done to myself, for a whole 30 TP. If you didn't know already the latent effect is some crazy HP/tick poison as your TP regens, it's like 1 TP for 30 HP or something. Biggest waste of an item ever put into this game.
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Other topics with no real relation to each other!
Kirin
This dates back to the early summer, but this is mostly just about our melee-burning of Kirin. Now I know we definitely weren't the first to straight tank him, but I think we were the first (if not among the first) to just plain kill it at an insane speed. Our first time started off as a 15 minute fight, and the rest of the runs that night were something like 5-12 minutes. I remember people outside our LS hearing about it and advertising it on forums and such, and suddenly there was a huge spring of "omg how" and other linkshells trying it and publisizing it based off of our strategy. I saw at least five posts alone on different forums all linking our youtube video. I never saw anything about that strat on Kirin until after there were people going crazy over our results, which is why I think we were among the first if not the first.
But, regardless, that doesn't really matter at all anyway. On the topic of the fight, the first time we did it everyone was going crazy and just laughing because they never heard of anything like it before. Killing an HNM that has taken anywhere from 1-4 hours by other linkshells (even today some do) in 5 minutes was just amazing. Since then our record was brought down to something like <2 minutes without the use of Kraken DRKs, but we do Kirin very rarely so it's been a long time now.
Typically we have all our best DDs thrown into the main ally and just melee away, most spells end up interrupted and Astral usually isn't a problem as long as curing is fast. Melees help with adds if a god spawns along with a BLM out PT, but usually Kirin doesn't even have time to summon any. The melees usually have a BRD, and the main PT with our best equiped WAR/NINs have 2 BRDs. Everything else from there is pretty self-explanatory, then we just bury him. An out PT of WHMs and RDMs also helps with additional curing, all in all we had <30 people still though so it really doesn't require as many numbers as it may sound.
These are typically what the results look like, blue is SAM, red is WAR, orange is MNK, grey is NIN, black is always misc other jobs/DDs.
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/8467/parse3vk3.jpg
In the top one I used Jugg/Rid, middle one I tried out Horrent/Man which was fun for WS damage but really low on DoT. True strike damage does really great on it, especially in comparison to Rampage, but the loss in accuracy hurts too much on something as difficult as him. The bottom one I used Jugg/Man.
We're sitting on a lot of god sets, so it's likely we'll be able to take more attempts at him sometime this spring. Only have gone on about 9 runs so far with this strategy, so I'm betting we can do much better. I kind of want to see how SAM does too lol..
KS99s... Again!
This is the what, 10th time now? I'm not going to go much into details here lol... We've done well over 100 of these runs now, and only so much can be said.
We did a group of Wyrm KS runs before moving to KB, and those went pretty smooth. No losses as usual, and haven't lost one in like 2 years or so. I was RNG as always for the BC runs, was fun and the drops were good overall! I also got my third black belt item. :)
One last part about it I found amusing was this: http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/5862/55537959db6.jpg
Stinky taru.
Dynamis
Not much has changed here! But more than ever over recent months we've spammed the CoP Dynamis runs, and overall I enjoy them much more than normal dynamis. It's so much less repetitive and the results are usually much better, in addition to the runs being a lot shorter. We almost always beat the boss for the extension so the frustration that we originally had from these runs is mostly lost. Our luck with AF+1 and accessories have been good too! Misc. screens of bosses/farming and such that look perty:
First Melee Cape to drop in who knows how many runs (first one ever I think), and was passed to Ala while she was afk! Since she had been waiting for so long. /cheer
These mobs suck... Never did those again after that.
And here's Lhexh MPKing us with like 40 birds... Alfred Hitchcock movie in the making.
Normal runs aside, we've also done a few Safehold runs. All in all the drops were a real disappointment... We caught onto it quick and were able to get all the extensions without much trouble, but despite all that and all the farming, we got just about nothing to drop. The single only good drop was the Hydra Haubert that Blackice got, which does make it more than worth it (well deserved and grats again!)... But, on the other hand it's just annoying to go for like 3-4 runs and get just about nothing.
We haven't done a run here in a while now because of that; our motivation to do it was just lost. But, we have a few more coming up soon, so maybe we can have some better luck.
On a side not slightly involving dynamis, True Strike is really insane on Xarcabard mobs and the like. Normally my Rampage average there is something like 300-500 once past the easier mobs, and I'm comfortable with saying I have almost the best possible Rampage gear you can get... But regardless nearly all multi-hit WS there blow. Sure I'll get some 600-1k rampages on occasion, but for the most part they just suck, especially on the NMs. This is where I've started using True Strike more often just for the sake of WS damage, and the results are nuts for what I used to think was a weak WS. Again this is probably old news for most since I took like five months to post this from when I first tried it.
Those of course are the highs, and you won't do that damage on average. Each hit of True Strike will typically do 280 to 330 damage, and dual wielding that puts you at a 500-700 damage average for each WS you land both hits. DAs will usually push it up to 800 to 1.1k, and two DAs push it up to 1.2k to 1.4k. I tend to DA rather often though, so seeing the numbers like above aren't all too rare. DoT wise using a Horrent Mace in main does kind of suck (and the latent is ridiculous and never in effect), but WS damage wise it's far superior on mobs like those. I haven't actually bothered to see which combo would parse better, but I'm having fun with True Strike so I'm sticking with that for now anyway! Side note done.
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/cheer
This happened quite a while ago now, but originally I promised I would take/post pictures from the wedding! So here they are, this wedding is between Heatherj and Elrondel, as seen in the pictures below. I'll let those do the talking:
Tis it, grats again you two! :)
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Ouryu/Bahamut perspectives.
So at this point we basically have both of these BCs down to a science... The last time I remember losing an Ouryu BC was on one of our first tries, and for the most part the same applies for Bahamut V2. A lot of the questions I've been getting lately revolve around these fights, especially the tank strategy, and while I've touched lightly on details in past updates I'll go over again in more detail here!
Ouryu
This is more of a light subject because lately there have been a lot of ways of doing this BC, so I'm not going to go into many details here... In the end I think the way you decide to do it depends largely on the strengths of your LS and what everyone is most comfortable doing (as with most other fights, but BCs in particular). One specific strategy won't necessarily work the best for everyone. But, again, just about everything I say on this LJ is based on my own experiences with my LS and other experiences I've read of... There's a great deal of information out there that can be found on any of these subjects, whether on a forum or a wiki page or whichever !
That aside, currently we've found the best strategy to be almost exactly like what we normally do for Tiamat with a few changes here and there... And we had to have done somewhere over 50 of these BCs by now. Basically though, starting from the tank PT we'll have two tanks (sometimes 3) along with a WHM, BRD, and a misc third job (often a SMN doing DD and/or support). I think the major reason for our success in these BCs would have to be the stability of this PT overall... Really when it comes down to it, having a stable tank PT is just about the most important aspect of any fight. MP won't be a problem, and DDs pulling hate won't be either.
So yeah, our tank PT basically turns Ouryu into a little baby. Hate is almost perfectly balanced, and never lost aside from Horrid Roars interfering which usually isn't common enough to cause a problem. In addition, the damage we take is laughable at best, our support is really top notch and does just as great of a job as the tanks :)... But I never did get around to making an earth resist set for multiple reasons concerning stuff like inventory and the utility of it, plus we're long past the problems we used to have in these fights, and I'm comfortable with the damage I take in the air anyway. As shown above, typically I take about 79 damage in the air, and other tanks for that BC aren't much higher. Physical damage isn't much different either, usually in the 70-110 damage range.
We all have the normal tank PT buffs, and a WHM (out of AoE range) in another PT is there for backup cures in case of a bad Petrifyga or Terrorga. Tank PT stuff aside, the other two PTs are mostly dedicated for damage as misc DDs (mostly BLMs). We normally have 2-4 melees in addition that kill worms for TP and then SC Ouryu 2-3 times each landing for MBs, and then at least one RDM dedicated to sleeping Elementals. The rest are usually BLMs... A majority of their nuking is during flight since the TP attacks aren't as severe, and then they also kill Elementals every 10 minutes since they build a resistance to sleep. We almost never sleep Ouryu though aside from emergencies, some groups ES sleep it on landings and only damage it in the air since in the air he's much less of a threat. Either way works, again it depends a lot on your LS!
A lot of additional info can be found on other sites and such, this thread in particular has more details: http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14082&highlight=ouryu
Bahamut
Now this is what most of the questions revolve around...
(Note about the screen: For this fight we usually have 2 tanks, but in the screen above we had 3 since it would've otherwise been an empty spot... We were short on people that run. Otherwise, it's one tank for Bahamut, and one tank for Wyrms/backup)
As draining this BC can be I still really like it, despite the fact we've had to have done at least around 30-40 of these BCs. I talked about this fight quite a lot in older updates, but I'm going to just kind of summarize.
First, just a review on some of his attacks that you'll need to be familiar with.
Magic Based Attacks
Graviga
Simple, this will clear shadows and reduce your evasion and movement speed. I recommend asking for Erase after this attack, it makes it difficult to move position if you have to, as well as reducing the chances to Evade.
Silencga
Self-explanatory, should bring Echo Drops in preparation for this move.
Firaga IV
This is the only spell/attack that we stunned, and I really recommend that any other LS should do the same. If you stick to stunning that, and don't spam stun too much outside of it, Bahamut won't develop a complete resistance to Stun. Firaga itself doesn't hit for too much damage, but it's unnecessary trouble that can be prevented.
Flare II
Relatively fast casting time, so don't sit back thinking it will take a while. Damage isn't very high, similar to Firaga.
Fire V
About the same damage as Firaga IV if you don't have shadows up, not a major threat.
Flares
There's plenty of information out there on when he'll use each of these flares, so I'll leave that topic alone. Just always always always, make sure the tank and the tank party is ready before taking Bahamut past the given percent that will make him flare. If they're not ready, then you could easily wipe them and end the BC. A tank should be at full HP with fresh shadows and Shell IV, with the hate stable, and at least one mage ready to Cure.
Megaflare
He'll only use this attack like 2-3 times at the start, it's through shadows and does about 900 base damage.
Gigaflare
He uses this for a majority of the BC, same properties as Megaflare. Except this one will do about 1200-1400 base damage.
Teraflare
Past 10% it will spam this attack until it's dead. It's very easy to finish off and avoid those though. Based on what I've seen on other posts, this will do about 1600-1800 damage.
TP Attacks
Tempest Wing
AoE attack through shadows (but doesn't take shadows) that will deal a small amount of wind damage for ~200, and knock you back.
Sweeping Flail
AoE attack that takes 1-3 shadows, and deals pretty heavy damage if you don't have shadows. It will knock you back and also bind you if I remember correctly.
Terrorga
AoE attack that takes 1-4 shadows, the strength of the terror varies on how many shadows it has to take to hit you. Overall it's usually a pretty weak terror and more annoying than anything.
Horrid Roar
His worst TP attack, it's AoE and takes 4 of your buffs away. It doesn't reset hate, but it can be the most dangerous TP move he uses, and especially when he uses it back to back. I've had him spam it on me as many as 5 times in a row in some instances, and all in all it tends to be a rather common attack. It can take any buff save signet, and I went through as many as 2 full stacks of food with no deaths (all horrid roar) in one of our winning runs. After this move it's best to give the tank Shell and Haste for NIN or /NIN ASAP. This is by far the hardest TP attack to deal with at times.
Impulsion
AoE knock back that will deal 300-500 damage and Petrify/Blind you, get Stona ASAP. Probably the second most annoying TP attack.
Those are all of the most important TP/magic/flare attacks that I remember off of my head. That part aside, as a tank I really recommend regardless of the job to have at least a good deal of enmity gear, physical defense gear, magic defense gear, and haste if you have shadows. I think most of the details as to why are self-explantory by now, but I'll review them anyway.
Enmity is always important, because losing hate at the wrong times in this BC can mean a loss, a Gigaflare gone off stray will wipe just about everyone. Typically I use close to +40, and in the last ~10 BC fights that amount of enmity combined with the speed of our fights and the low damage I take I haven't lost hate. Then, over the course of the BC you'll most likely take more physical damage than anything else, since Bahamut hits pretty damn hard. A good set of defense gear can often save you, and will also help reduce MP loss. Haste is just plain because your timers will be really low at times if you're unlucky, and every second matters... Of course magic defense goes without saying.
And, with those TP attacks in mind, it works really well to position yourself in a corner like I am here. This way even if you get hit by a knock-back attack you can still finish casting Utsusemi, because technically you're not moving at all. It's also just easier to have the tank in one place.
My gear/support has come a long way though since I first started this BC.
All the damage on that screen shot are typical results for that set of gear, and the best part is those top two Megaflares are the full damage ones. I still don't agree with going all out on fire resistance, but there's no harm in using it in slots where I can't get -magic taken or magic defense bonus. I end up having something like 120 fire resistance from gear along with a lot of magic defense.reduction, and this set of gear has given the best results for me. As I said before though, going all out on fire resist leaves you open to taking full damage Gigaflares that could potentially one-shot you. No matter how much resistance you have you can't resist 100% of the time, and with the gear above I resist often and still take very low damage as it is... And I think that's far better than the risk.
Again though, as before I really want to stress that keeping those buffs on to get that much resistance is far from necessary, and in the event that MP is getting low it should be completely forfeited. A major cause for tank PT instability in this BC is the tank PT WHMs and BRD getting way too close to Bahamut in attempt to give buffs to the tank. In the end between dispelga and horrid roar your buffs will get dispelled very often at times, and with all the AoE attacks/spells Bahamut has mages will more often than not get caught up in it... Often even getting killed.
The MP wasted between constantly refreshing buffs, constantly running in instead of resting, and the unnecessary curing from extra people taking damage... All add up to make a big difference on how well the MP supply is doing. Normally we'll use buffs as long as MP is fine, but as soon as it gets shaky I call just about everything off and only ask for Shell IV and Haste (and maybe P1!). Those spells can be done from a distance without endangering anyone and I can still do my job without trouble.
Overall if anything, fights usually go smoother when doing just that vs giving the tank 500 buffs and refreshing them constantly, for the most part just gear alone is enough to keep a tank alive with just Haste, occasional cures, and Shell IV. I also often ask for P1 just because sometimes shit happens and even I'll cancel protect, and I'd rather cancel protect than shell. Protect's roll in the BC is important too but Shell IV will be much more likely to keep you alive in a bad situation.
That stuff aside, a tank just needs to have lots of food and echo drops ready (I use tacos). Everyone else should have plenty of RR, poison pots for Vrtra, and that's about it. As long as you can maintain a stable tank PT and be able to kill the Wyrms ASAP, you're fine. On the topic of Wyrms though, I believe Vrtra is the most dangerous, just because he can charm just about all of your DDs in less than a minute and cause havoc... As illustrated here, with all the BLMs attacking me, along with Vrtra and Bahamut V2... http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/474/vrtracharmui5.jpg We still pulled off a win in that run, but the Vrtra incident almost cost us.
The other Wyrms aren't as bad, the main concern with Jorgy is just BW because he can get HP back faster than he's damaged if you leave him alive too long. However this usually isn't a problem thanks to stuff like Blink/Stoneskin/Utsusemi as long as hate is balanced and it's killed quickly. Ouryu is probably the easiest as far as his offenses go, and Tiamat's main danger is just one hitting DDs, but again that's countered by the above buffs. Overall just being able to kill each wyrm fast is the most important, along with being able to hold it all together without panicking. In addition, one important aspect that is often forgotten, is BLMs need to make sure to use the right nukes on the right Wyrms... IE, starting off with a volley of Thundagas on Ouryu could waste enough time/MP to cause a wipe.
As far as damage on Bahamut, we've moved from using just BLMs to use BLMs along with 2 SMN and even some melee DDs. Just about anything works really, and as long as you have a RDM with good gear and a lot of -enmity (Dispel will pull hate by the end of the BC if no -enmity is on) to spam Dispel, damage isn't much of a problem at all. But yeah, SMNs have been good to allow BLMs to rest to full for each Wyrm, and their hate-less damage is always a plus. Bahamut's HP is very low, so it doesn't take much damage to cut him fast. My parses have shown him to have about 23-28k HP total when counting Cure Vs it uses (http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9265/parsefy3.jpg
), and combined with his somewhat weak defense you can cut him fast as long as the tank PT is stable.
I've also read of other linkshells just killing Bahamut in a volley of nukes once close to 20%, so they skip the last Wyrm. We haven't actually tried this yet, but it seems like a good idea as long as you can time stun right if necessary. I think we may try it out next time depending, could probably get our record to around 15 minutes that way too. :o
I'm being really general and leaving out some details, but yeah, those are most of the specifics I've been asked from a tanking perspective. A good amont of other info can be found in another BG thread here: http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15467
On a final note for this topic, if you don't know already make sure to bring TH! The amount of synthesis material drops you will get with and without TH are significantly noticeable. On average you'll get twice as many drops with TH, these are typically what our drops look like: http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9484/dropshu6.jpg
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Most recent months with Amanomurakumo.
Ya know, originally I thought I'd still end up using my other jobs pretty often for HNMs, exp, and other stuff. I never thought of a relic weapon as a "doomed to that job forever" type of item despite what other people said, but that couldn't be more true for the last few months. I do have a lot of info and screens here with me on other jobs, but for the most part those are all before I got the GK. Since getting it, I've been almost SAM exclusively for just about 95% of the activities I've taken part of in this game. Not that I'm complaining about it, and I've really enjoyed it, but I just didn't expect to almost exclusively be a SAM after hovering around my jobs almost evenly for most of my time in FF. Even just today, halfway through a Limbus run, a few LS members were like "OMG RUKES ON NIN!" all thinking I was on SAM (this is like 10m into the run too). It probably was my first time on NIN for something casual since before getting the GK, and honestly I was just too lazy to change then since I was farming beforehand and planned to after. D:
But yeah, so over all that time I've managed to get a lot of different results, including some on HNMs.
In Exp/Misc
I've already covered the exp aspects last time so I'm going to be more brief here, but I'm still holding strong in regards to believing it's gotta be close to unmatched in exp. I actually got into a PT with a fully equiped/merited Spharai MNK/WAR not long after my last update, and even for that situation I ended up leading the parse by a considerable percent, the parse is seen here: http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/9956/samvsphariamnkexcalpld2vv6.jpg
The PT for that was a PLD/NIN with Excal above me, and the MNK/WAR I mentioned is below me. We started off in Mamook killing a mix of Wyverns/Crabs/Puks/Mamool, and then afterwards moved to the north camp in Thickets killing just about the same mix of mobs minus the crabs. The other PT members were a WHM, RDM, and BRD, so despite how much me and the MNK were tanking/sponging MP usually held up fine. No one died or went afk at any point.
Aside from that PT, I haven't had much time to merit. And when I have, for the most part they were just pickup PTs, and results in those types of PTs always look the same... http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9438/samgkvninwarwarce2.jpg Those are two PTs, the top one has two WARs (red) and a NIN (grey) and the bottom one I don't remember lol... But yeah, pretty much as I said.
Overall though WS damage wise, Kaiten reins supreme over 300% TP Gekko/etc so far on all the exp/farmable mobs I've fought, both in averages and in the high/low department. The same doesn't apply for HNMs however, but I'll get into that later. On the exp mobs Kaiten damage is very consistent, and even when comparing high defense mobs to low defense the differences aren't all too big. Misc. numbers taken at random to illustrate the point:
I also added some spice with killing Simo (Baud was while I was charmed, unintentional!). Simo asked for it though! Around a year ago from now he set out to kill me, and I just finally got revenge. >:D
Oh, and the Gekko on Tiamat was actually not supposed to be in that screen shot, I put that in the wrong place (oops) and too lazy to fix it. The orc in that shot was also TW, just there to show that from IT to TW the difference in damage is relatively small.
Also, I just liked this shot because it looks like I'm going to bat the Puk in the face with my GK. I also included getting 5/5 AF2 for SAM (just recently!) and also 3/5 AF+1 lol... And that HP is just awesome.
Kaiten Fun
One thing I've mastered lately though is self-SCing without the use of a 2h or /DRG or anything special. Basically it just requires the right timing, and as long as that's correct I can self-SC around 90% of the time. I have to time it so I swing soon after my first WS, the mob swings at me soon after as well (taking damage = 3 TP), and Meditate has to have just started ticking. With all the timing right, it looks like this:
More often than not, instead of missing the swing or something (which is the major thing that can prevent it) either the mob will die or someone else will WS in between. But, otherwise I can do it pretty reliably assuming no outside interference. I have quite a few screens of this on other things as well, here's a couple:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9433/selfsc2fu5.jpg
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9940/selfsvgl5.jpg
And, I actually think that with the right timing I could potentially do my own kaiten > kasha > kaiten chain without a 2h or anything. I've never been able to test this though, because any mob I could try it on will die before I finish as seen here. :(
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/3425/selfsc3ns3.jpg
Also, I just couldn't help myself in trying this... The damage is low since I have no attack buffs and was using sushi to ensure I don't miss a WS and die (like I did once D:), but it was fun!
On the topic of Kaiten though.. I did promise to take at least one screen shot of the WS animation last update! And, I actually went and did DOUBLE the amount, with TWO pictures! Yeah, I'm working overtime.
This is the starting animation:
Annnd the ending:
Tanking
I've been doing a lot of this lately for obvious reasons, and for the most part it's been working really well! I'm not talking on the scale of HNMs of course (although that possibility isn't all too unlikely) but in exp/dynamis and misc. other events I end up tanking really often. With all the gear I can use on my NIN and higher HP, it works very well. A lot of people fault Seigan for not being very useful, but timed right I have to disagree... It starts off as a very high chance to anticipate/counter from the second it's initially activated, and the chance to anticipate/counter fades over time. By my observations lately, I estimate the first 5 seconds to be around 95%, the next 5 seconds around 80%, the 10-20 second range to average out to 50%, and the 20-30 second range to average out to about 20%. All and all using it at the right time you can absorb a good deal of attacks, and for the most part it's been very reliable for me now. Backed up by good defense gear, it makes tanking pretty easy.
My results only encompass dynamis and exp so far, and I hope to maybe expand it to some HNMs.. As it stands I get hate pretty often over even our best tanks on the few times I've had the opportunity to use SAM as a DD on an HNM, but for the most part it's while I'm playing offensively rather than defensively (using Hasso almost full time instead of Seigan). Paying more attention to defense like I do in dynamis/exp always using Seigan, I think it could be fun. Anyway, these are those results I meant.
The Yagudo one was in Beaucidine, and I used Terra's Staff... The Skoffin one was just my defense gear with GK still equiped. In neither case did I have defense food or Phalanx, just gear and defender.
This also helps speak to support that though... Just recently killed Proteus as a SAM+RDM duo. If you don't know what Proteus is, it's basically a weaker version of Charybdis. It attacks just like him and hits pretty damn hard, but has less HP and is a slightly lower level. It was a lot of fun!
On that topic though, I also actually tanked the real Charybdis, which ended up being easier since it was with more people: http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8894/charyek0.jpg
On HNMs
Now, much to my disbelief back then, I actually had quite a few opportunities to go as SAM to HNMs. Which, ended up in the discovery of both good news and bad news.
First of all, the bad news is Kaiten's WS damage falls severely on HNMs without the proper attack to back it up... And by that I mean, attack food, berserk, and songs, AKA the situation that almost never will happen. Gekko/etc damage is much more consistent and has better highs/lows when it comes to the harder mobs. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's just the way it is basically.
For example, on Tiamat my SA Kaitens would cap out at about 800-950 without DA. On the other hand, my SA for the other weapon skills would cap out at about 1100 to 1300 damage. With SA the difference seems smaller, but on the hand for frontal WS a difference if ~200-300 damage ends up almost being double. On Cerberus Kaiten would typically average 300-550, while a 300% would average 600 to 850.
Of course, spamming Kaiten at 100% TP will still far surpass the damage of saving to 200-300% TP, but it's just odd how the rolls reversed.
The good news though, is that SAM ends up being almost as heavy of a DD on HNMs as it is in exp. In my results so far just spamming Kaiten all the time through an HNM fight ends up being a _lot_ of damage, and in most situations I'm doing this without songs. I'll just let the results show what I mean:
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/6025/fafparsenh3.jpg
That parse is just awesome for the sake of the 13337 damage total lol, but that is also the first and only Fafnir fight I've had as a GK SAM so far (no songs or specials upport). The green blocks are THFs and the white ones are BLMs, black blocks are misc other jobs. I'm really looking forward to more fights, but no luck on pulling. :(
But, I've also had quite a few Cerb fights.
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4690/cerbparye3.jpg
Red blocks are WARs (both parses have at least one adaberk/ridill WAR), green block THF, and blue block SAM.
I've since changed my defense gear around a little on SAM to include some lolhydra gear. I'm hoping to reduce the damage I take more just for the sake of HNM fights like these where I pull hate pretty often... I'm really want to try it more, but no clue when it'll actually happen! I'll be sure to post results from that when it does though.
I'll end this section at that, I really need to get this update finished lol..
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Final group of NMs.
I'm going to be quick here! It's 5 AM now and I've spent a good majority of the day in this update in between trying to get a few tests/projects assigned this weekend done.
Mostly just going to be screens and captions!
First, Omega/Ultima runs... Same old same old for the most part, we alternate them in groups of 2-3 runs each. Overall I'm happy with how fast we're able to pump out sets, and drops have been improving.
Omega of course is the easiest and most commonly killed.
And then there's Ultima.. Whom I've managed to KS with Mijin every single time of the last 8 fights on NIN! Citadel Buster isn't a problem for any of our tanks anymore either, but BLMs still have some trouble as Tenbatsu demonstrates in taking almost 3k damage lol.
Still killing Tiamat whenever the opportunity arises, both with low numbers...
And slightly higher numbers... Although typically we almost never get more than 18.
And of course, the damage taken by me and the other tanks is always amusing.
As well as the occasional parses that go through! Suggesting 70-100k HP when taking the regen into account: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/6918/tiamatparsede5.jpg (we keep DoT on it full time too)
Honestly I don't even remember this kill, but just goes to show how long it's been since a full update.. So yeah, I guess we killed Vrtra some time too! And uh, I was there apparently lol...
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The other random stuff without a category!
Misc. screen shots with captions time.
Astral BC, we ended up being the only LS doing this for quite a while initially... But now a lot of people do it, which is great! The BC itself is a pain and takes forever to get to and get the items for, I don't think I'll be doing it again anytime soon. I wish the rewards were better.
I don't think I ever mentioned this here before, but Noy is a friend of Me/Syl that quit for good to tend to RL matters a while ago... But, instead of deleting his character, he wanted to give it to the LS for the gear/time put into him, so me and Syl basically take care of it. And, with that, we finished up the Woodworking (he was at like 78 originally)! But, my synth luck stinks overall, that kabuto is just about the only good HQ I've made in ~20m worth of spending. :(
My attempts at leveling Parrying... I had I think 23 of these at one point sometime later, it was pretty fun! I ended up getting a crowd, but sadly not one skill up in about 30 minutes of that. I forgot what level I was but I was probably too high, I'm currently at 250 though.
This is the lolice screen shot that I'm just obligated to post. <3 You laughed at me for my barfira gear, BUT WHO IS LAUGHING NOW!?
This was a weird glitch that happened after a Teleport-Mea, keep in mind she is a 75 BRD... It was fixed when she zoned again though. I was tempted to try to MPK her!
With the implementation of Salvage I had to do a lot of ToA missions to catch up, and this scene in particular just came out pretty cool with the GK.
Obligatory random WS damage shots.. And I thought the 1 damage Mijin would go nicely with the 1 damage Rampage and 1 damage Kaiten earlier in this update.
These are just plain funny... We agroed the Wyrm in NW Limbus by accident and couldn't sleep it, and the fight was going so slow we decided to wipe. So it turned into a 'who can make it flail first!' contest! I won, but Tenbatsu won the survival award as the taru!
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2551/flail1ra2.jpg
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7328/flail2ta8.jpg
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/5180/flail3fl9.jpg
And last but not least, a few screens that came out looking really nice.
That's it! I'm going to bed now, it's like 7:30 AM and I have my first class at 11. D:
I'll revise it for typos and most likely add some small stuff later in the week, but yeah... I put myself behind on work with this update so my next few days are going to be really busy. Better enjoy this update for a while!
But, anyway... Same stuff as usual, I've got a good deal of requests through e-mails/PMs/IMs/etc asking for info/opinions on specific subjects, so now I'm just going to post it all here as a reference! Mostly those topics involve Bahamut V2 strategies, GK results, and parse results, so those will probably be the bigger parts of this update. I'm also posting a lot of older events that took place over the fall/summer that I never got around to posting, since my last all-encompassing update was in June.
And just as a side note, a lot have asked me if I'd be willing to post RNG, WAR, and DRK updates similar to the SAM and NIN ones I've done. Just to answer that question here for anyone else wondering I do plan to do it eventually, but exactly when I do it is unknown. Feel free post/IM/email to recommend or ask anything though, I don't mind and will always get around to it eventually.
All that aside! I'll start off with the usual format, and just as a warning this is going to be another one of those crazy long updates. Possibly the longest!
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The sea farming craze we had in early fall was put to an end. :(
Triggers
For a good part of fall we would farm sea just about every single day of the week, in an attempt to get as many AV kills under our belt as possible before sea turned into another sky. We just about mastered killing and popping all of the different triggers... Most of them done in small teams, and usually we'd be able to pop several on a good night. Temperance was always the biggest problem for most linkshells, but even for that NM we'd pop as many as 4-5 in a night. His PH is just a trigger that moves around to all the different towers, and as long as you can split up and cover a few of them you'll eventually get it to pop assuming you're not horribly unlucky.
We also moved from kiting a few triggers to just stationary tanking when we had the right people. A lot of the trouble from the triggers came from AoE/TP/magic attacks hitting the wrong people, and containing it on one side of the room got rid of that problem. It also made it easier for people to kite and avoid TP attacks since they could damage it (BLMs, RNGs) from far away and not have to be close to it at any time.
Initially our biggest concern with straight tanking was the damage taken by the tanks, but that hasn't really been a problem me or the others now. :D
I was so happy when I landed that Rampage, I took off all my gear just for the hell of it to see how low my damage could get after getting frustrated with how shitty it was in the first place... And, that was just the number I was shooting for!
Anyway, Fortitude is one of the triggers I'm talking about. His AoE isn't a problem, but kiting him and a BLM pulling hate as it's running by, followed right away by a Vorpal Blade, usually means they're a dead BLM. So, containing him on one side gave BLMs a head start to run away if they pulled hate. Damage taken also wasn't a problem, and I believe all these sea shots are without phalanx II as well (or at least capped phalanx II).
Then, the same story applies for Temperance.
I had to get some Rampage revenge on him after Fortitude!
Temperance more than any other trigger has pain in the ass AoE, so it helped quite a bit to be able to just concentrate the AoE damage on 1-2 people rather than it potentially hitting anyone/everyone. Melees would normally be /NIN, and if the spam was bad they would back off to avoid sponging up MP. When it changed to blunt mode we would always kite regardless, and since we'd only have to use Gravity tin that mode it normally wouldn't build resistance. It all worked out pretty well.
Then, Ix'MNK is just plain fun. Me and all the other tanks would always fight and end up having to take turns on who gets to tank him, because he's such a weakling it's fun to take next to nothing for damage as this big bad aern is trying his best to kill you.
The same is no different for any of the higher tier jailers.
Prudence in particular is usually the biggest pain in the ass, but he tends to focus hate strongly on one person until they're dead... And if you get enough attention on one of them, you usually have the other attacking you full force. As long as that person is the tank, you're golden! I've had a few really weird fights where it literally just stayed glued to me the entire time despite BLMs zerging it, and as a NIN/WAR I couldn't have had _that_ much hate. Damage results stay just about the same for those guys though:
And yeah, that just about finishes up a summary of all the triggers we've played with. For the most part our luck with the drops have been on the good side.
I also earned the title as the torque master! In so many kills with so few people I ended up being the only person that'd put a given torque to use in a lot of situations, especially since we're a mage heavy LS. So now I have Justice Torque, Fortitude Torque, Faith Torque, Hope Torque, and Temperance Torque... And got all of them basically from it being a free lot since we're so few on melees, including the Justice Torque. :) I'm thinking a lot of unlucky people in other melee heavy shells must hate me for that. D:
Jailer of Love
But! Now on to JoL.
Not much to say about this guy, it's really one of the easiest fights in the game once you know what to expect... And on that note, it's also one of the most boring. It's long and uneventful for the most part, it just sits there casting over and over and over again. But, with tanks like NIN/BRD and RDM/NIN and PLD/NIN and such, the tank PT just about never loses hate. Really as long as you have a stable tank PT and a stable PT to take care of his summons, this thing could be held forever.
Drops have been on the good side here as well.
For nearly all of our kills lately I go as a Kraken DRK though, and it speeds up kills substantially. I believe our fastest kill was about 38 minutes with around 25 people, and all things considered that's pretty damn fast, especially since most people take 2-5 hours to kill this thing with almost twice as many. The parse results basically speak for themselves in this case: http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/406/jolparsejt0.jpg
In each of those fights we had around 2-3 kraken DRKs, one going every 3 minutes or so. As long as you have the extra healing the damage is really worth it. I was kind of sad my Souleater merits weren't useful though, I have the recast capped but most of the time I won't use it until 2-3 minutes after its ready to allow the others keeping us alive to rest MP. Highest round of damage I've done though in one Souleater run was 16k, all in a 60 second period, and I think that says enough to how much damage can be dished out.
Also as a side note, THFs alternating Feint on JoL for each DRK does really well to speed up the damage, highly recommended.
Another side note, I just found this amusing... He's usually rather difficult to debuff, but I ended up landing all these in a row lol: http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/648/loljolbx0.jpg
Absolute Virtue
Well now for the bad news... I don't know what the hell SE is thinking with this NM, but as far as I've seen it is now 100% impossible to kill until people figure out how to somehow lock something. We tried everything and spent hours and hours on it, losing countless exp, all to no avail. I've heard of many linkshells doing the same and still getting results no different from ours. We even tried to kill it regardless of being unable to lock TP/magic, and at 79% it goes into a 'mode' where it spams Meteor/Comet along with its normal spells, completely ending our attempt.
Damage taken wise, while the buffs and gear me and the other tanks have bring it down a lot... It's still very hard to stay alive. The damage in that screen for those spells are all normal base damage and not resists. Typically those spells do 1800-2500 depending on buffs, but they can be brought down a lot. However, the physical damage you take on top of that from his melee/TP spam is too hard to counter, he still hits for a good 200-500 on tanks. Even with my gear I'm usually taking 190-220, and with his attack speed it's just too much.
Regardless, as shown above we were able to still take it down to 79% with all of us working together properly, but after that it spammed Meteor/Comet basically finishing off the attempt. In the end we had to let him depop after repeated failure, and the same applied for future attempts.
I got my little cheap shot in before it depopped at least! But yeah, it's really disappointing to have this go back to 'wtf' status. We had high aspirations of getting everyone in the LS gear from JoL and AV, but those were all crashed by SE. Thanks a lot.
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About DRK and ToA.
DRK Finished!
I realize by now everyone would have to know this already (or at least I hope), but all my other jobs included a small LJ section update for when I hit 75 on them, involving the final levels and some results/summaries... So, now that I have some time I'll have to do that now!
I actually hit 75 on DRK a while ago, and have since obtained just about all the possible gear I could want for it aside from a few misc. things. For the most part all I have left are some minor upgrades to my Dark Magic and Kraken DRK gear. But, other than that I'm pretty much all done. Overall I had a lot of fun leveling it! I really enjoyed and spammed the hell out of the dark magic spells, all while doing much better damage than I thought I could. Originally my goal with leveling DRK, as it was with SAM, was to try to unlock the potential in it and prove the stereotypes wrong about their damage output. I actually succeeded beyond my expectations, making it all more than worth it. I have around 20-30 parses or so encompassing almost every PT on DRK on my journey to 75, and in a large amount of them I was at the top for damage (most PTs were with well equipped WARs and MNKs as well, getting 10k+/h).
To start I'll repeat what I said in previous entries; as a general recommendation I really encourage using GA from 25 to at least 50. I don't think any damage output compares to spamming Sturmwind in that level range (plus there are some really good GAs), and as shown in older posts the damage from it is just about as high as it gets at those levels. I continued to use GA to 56, and then changed to rampage for a short time. It was fun at first, but my results with /NIN and two axes were much weaker overall. From 59 on I was mostly /NIN with Scythe until about 75, and at 75 for the most part I'm /WAR in PTs when I have confidence in the tank/healers. The damage output is still good at 75, and while I'm sure I won't surpass really well-equiped MNKs and WARs in endgame exp, I do hold my own much better than I thought, and can easily out-damage the average DDs. Some misc. screens:
WS damage on DRK is normally very high, even without a BRD I typically average close to 1k. With a BRD it's normally over that, and while I never had a 2 BRD PT on DRK I'd imagine that my WS average would be around 1.2-1.3k. /SAM is very appealing for this reason, but unfortunately despite how much fun I have exping on DRK I rarely get to do it. :(
Assault & Salvage
For a little while Assault was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it, but that really ended up fading away fast. It became one of those necessary things that you would have to do, and spamming the same missions over and over again that often would strongly rely on luck rather than skill got aggravating fast. I stopped for a while, and the only reason I'm doing it again now is for Salvage. But, I'll say at least this, the assault maps are usually more interesting than the missions! I have a bunch of screens of the areas, but I'm just going to post one.
Now, as for Salvage... I've really enjoyed it so far. My LS has formed teams since doing high number runs end up being more difficult than low number runs, and the team I'm on usually goes about 2 times a week (sometimes 3). At first I'll admit I found the idea of Salvage to be ridiculous, and being gimped horribly at the start wasn't appealing to me at all... But, so far I'm having more fun in Salvage than anything else in the game. Doing these runs with a good group of friends is great!
This was our first run, and it went pretty good overall. Normally we assign priorities for every drop to each person based on who utilizes it the best to help the group, and this has worked out the best. Everything involving Salvage mostly handled by Lhexh! And he does a great job with it! /cheer
Since then we've progressed really fast, and we have a lot of equipment drops tallied up including many 2/3s (even a Morrigan body is 2/3, good luck Syl!). Typically we enter a run with 8 to 10 people, and at least one person (normally two) is two boxed to play that necessary roll that doesn't help on the boss. Which, ends up being a THF for the TH and MNK for the beginning. Most recently our focus has been on the Bhaflau boss until more information is released about the other areas. We've killed it 3 times now.
We normally kite this boss since with our low numbers we don't have the support to straight tank it, and with some form of movement speed you can usually get distance pretty easy. Overall though it's a difficult fight, and while we never had problems with wiping, we do occasionally run out of time. Time is our biggest enemy in this fight, we've lost a few attempts to time outs at 7% and 10%, etc. It mostly depends on the number of DDs we have and how well-equiped they are, but it can take anywhere from 20-40m depending on that and your numbers.
Our DDs usually consist of BLM/NIN and RNG/NIN, and them along with 1-2 tanks attempt to bounce hate back and forth through the BC. This thing hits like a house on wheels, so if you pull hate for too long you'll most likely end up dead. It also does a throat stab like hate reset move named Homing Missle, which can be your enemy or your friend. In many cases it'll save you from dieing, but then in other cases when it hits too many people (the AoE range is huge on that TP attack) it can be very big trouble. He also uses smaller AoE attacks that do 300-500 and Bind or Paralyze, which is annoying but not as bad. Usually as long as you have over 500 HP you can continue trying to damage it without dieing.
RNG also does really good here, Kraken RNG for farming those weak mobs is WAY overpowered. I usually don't have songs, but last run I did... And with kraken & Culverin+1 I was taking off 50%+ of a troll/scorpion/wamouras life with each WS (even on higher floors). Doing like 1.5 to 3k damage. I even self SCed a few times which just kills any mob lol... It's great, and helps a greatly in farming a lot of equipment fast.
Then, it goes without saying that RNG does really well on the boss too. I haven't had much luck with parse results going through, but this is one of the only that did: http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2577/parsezd6.jpg
It is believed to have about 50k HP, and that reinforces it for me. The white boxes are BLMs and the green is another RNG (that RNG's damage is missing at least 1-2k, I had PT chat filtered for the first 20% or so). I also fully recommend attack food as it makes a considerable difference on your damage, and with the right gear I was still able to maintain 90-95% accuracy as shown with meat. Also as shown by the parse, the large majority of your damage comes from WS+Barrage, so it's important to keep that in mind. As a RNG you want to spam WS and Barrage any time it's up to maximize your damage output, because overall the ranged damage total is very small.
But yeah, I don't know how long it will last but so far Salvage is really a lot of fun for me. Looking forward to more!
The one thing I don't like though is the very beginning... I'm all for promoting the use of different jobs and such, but the beginning is just too reliant on MNKs IMO. Kill speed is horrible without one, and on the boss MNK damage is cut in half for both melee and Chi-Blast, so we can't afford to have many. Then, in addition to that trouble, the beginning mobs don't even at least drop 1 weapon most of the time. We've gone as many as 3 mobs into the run with TH, and still have absolutely nothing drop. It's the one thing I find to be really flawed with this IMO, and I hope they adjust it somehow so it's a little more friendly to small numbered groups and time/job contraints.
Cerberus & Hydra
Meh, the popularity of these NMs has been falling pretty fast... Hydra is self-explanatory, seeing as it probably has the worst drops in the game. Cerberus is following the same pattern though, since his synth materials are kind of meh and there are more Algols dropping than most linkshells have DRKs. A lot of people getting Algols now just do it for the looks lol.
But, regardless we've still racked up several more kills in that department. I've also had the opportunity to go as SAM, making it a lot more fun... Overall I enjoy the fight when everyone does there job correctly regardless of the job I'm on, but it can be really frustrating when Stuns are missed and people are going nuts and such. But most of the fights lately have been going good.
SAM/WAR did really well on it too, and I'll post parse results from this later in the update. And, of course, I had a nice Tachi:Kaiten that managed to break through his stoneskin by 1 damage. Kaiten on him normally did about 300-550, about 200-300 less than a 300% TP Gekko/Kasha/Yuki. I'll go more into those averages later.
Hydra on the other hand, while much more fun has drops that are just about worthless. :(
We WAR/NIN burned it one run for a 10 minute kill (http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/905/parse1dn8.jpg red = WARs), and that was probably the last time we killed him. I think the total number of kills comes out to around 5 or so, and we haven't touched it in months now. It's a fun kill but it just has like, no purpose at all.
That torque is just plain ridiculous too... I ended up getting stuck with one because no one would accept it, and these are basically the results:
Yep, 1525 HP worth of damage done to myself, for a whole 30 TP. If you didn't know already the latent effect is some crazy HP/tick poison as your TP regens, it's like 1 TP for 30 HP or something. Biggest waste of an item ever put into this game.
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Other topics with no real relation to each other!
Kirin
This dates back to the early summer, but this is mostly just about our melee-burning of Kirin. Now I know we definitely weren't the first to straight tank him, but I think we were the first (if not among the first) to just plain kill it at an insane speed. Our first time started off as a 15 minute fight, and the rest of the runs that night were something like 5-12 minutes. I remember people outside our LS hearing about it and advertising it on forums and such, and suddenly there was a huge spring of "omg how" and other linkshells trying it and publisizing it based off of our strategy. I saw at least five posts alone on different forums all linking our youtube video. I never saw anything about that strat on Kirin until after there were people going crazy over our results, which is why I think we were among the first if not the first.
But, regardless, that doesn't really matter at all anyway. On the topic of the fight, the first time we did it everyone was going crazy and just laughing because they never heard of anything like it before. Killing an HNM that has taken anywhere from 1-4 hours by other linkshells (even today some do) in 5 minutes was just amazing. Since then our record was brought down to something like <2 minutes without the use of Kraken DRKs, but we do Kirin very rarely so it's been a long time now.
Typically we have all our best DDs thrown into the main ally and just melee away, most spells end up interrupted and Astral usually isn't a problem as long as curing is fast. Melees help with adds if a god spawns along with a BLM out PT, but usually Kirin doesn't even have time to summon any. The melees usually have a BRD, and the main PT with our best equiped WAR/NINs have 2 BRDs. Everything else from there is pretty self-explanatory, then we just bury him. An out PT of WHMs and RDMs also helps with additional curing, all in all we had <30 people still though so it really doesn't require as many numbers as it may sound.
These are typically what the results look like, blue is SAM, red is WAR, orange is MNK, grey is NIN, black is always misc other jobs/DDs.
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/8467/parse3vk3.jpg
In the top one I used Jugg/Rid, middle one I tried out Horrent/Man which was fun for WS damage but really low on DoT. True strike damage does really great on it, especially in comparison to Rampage, but the loss in accuracy hurts too much on something as difficult as him. The bottom one I used Jugg/Man.
We're sitting on a lot of god sets, so it's likely we'll be able to take more attempts at him sometime this spring. Only have gone on about 9 runs so far with this strategy, so I'm betting we can do much better. I kind of want to see how SAM does too lol..
KS99s... Again!
This is the what, 10th time now? I'm not going to go much into details here lol... We've done well over 100 of these runs now, and only so much can be said.
We did a group of Wyrm KS runs before moving to KB, and those went pretty smooth. No losses as usual, and haven't lost one in like 2 years or so. I was RNG as always for the BC runs, was fun and the drops were good overall! I also got my third black belt item. :)
One last part about it I found amusing was this: http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/5862/55537959db6.jpg
Stinky taru.
Dynamis
Not much has changed here! But more than ever over recent months we've spammed the CoP Dynamis runs, and overall I enjoy them much more than normal dynamis. It's so much less repetitive and the results are usually much better, in addition to the runs being a lot shorter. We almost always beat the boss for the extension so the frustration that we originally had from these runs is mostly lost. Our luck with AF+1 and accessories have been good too! Misc. screens of bosses/farming and such that look perty:
First Melee Cape to drop in who knows how many runs (first one ever I think), and was passed to Ala while she was afk! Since she had been waiting for so long. /cheer
These mobs suck... Never did those again after that.
And here's Lhexh MPKing us with like 40 birds... Alfred Hitchcock movie in the making.
Normal runs aside, we've also done a few Safehold runs. All in all the drops were a real disappointment... We caught onto it quick and were able to get all the extensions without much trouble, but despite all that and all the farming, we got just about nothing to drop. The single only good drop was the Hydra Haubert that Blackice got, which does make it more than worth it (well deserved and grats again!)... But, on the other hand it's just annoying to go for like 3-4 runs and get just about nothing.
We haven't done a run here in a while now because of that; our motivation to do it was just lost. But, we have a few more coming up soon, so maybe we can have some better luck.
On a side not slightly involving dynamis, True Strike is really insane on Xarcabard mobs and the like. Normally my Rampage average there is something like 300-500 once past the easier mobs, and I'm comfortable with saying I have almost the best possible Rampage gear you can get... But regardless nearly all multi-hit WS there blow. Sure I'll get some 600-1k rampages on occasion, but for the most part they just suck, especially on the NMs. This is where I've started using True Strike more often just for the sake of WS damage, and the results are nuts for what I used to think was a weak WS. Again this is probably old news for most since I took like five months to post this from when I first tried it.
Those of course are the highs, and you won't do that damage on average. Each hit of True Strike will typically do 280 to 330 damage, and dual wielding that puts you at a 500-700 damage average for each WS you land both hits. DAs will usually push it up to 800 to 1.1k, and two DAs push it up to 1.2k to 1.4k. I tend to DA rather often though, so seeing the numbers like above aren't all too rare. DoT wise using a Horrent Mace in main does kind of suck (and the latent is ridiculous and never in effect), but WS damage wise it's far superior on mobs like those. I haven't actually bothered to see which combo would parse better, but I'm having fun with True Strike so I'm sticking with that for now anyway! Side note done.
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/cheer
This happened quite a while ago now, but originally I promised I would take/post pictures from the wedding! So here they are, this wedding is between Heatherj and Elrondel, as seen in the pictures below. I'll let those do the talking:
Tis it, grats again you two! :)
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Ouryu/Bahamut perspectives.
So at this point we basically have both of these BCs down to a science... The last time I remember losing an Ouryu BC was on one of our first tries, and for the most part the same applies for Bahamut V2. A lot of the questions I've been getting lately revolve around these fights, especially the tank strategy, and while I've touched lightly on details in past updates I'll go over again in more detail here!
Ouryu
This is more of a light subject because lately there have been a lot of ways of doing this BC, so I'm not going to go into many details here... In the end I think the way you decide to do it depends largely on the strengths of your LS and what everyone is most comfortable doing (as with most other fights, but BCs in particular). One specific strategy won't necessarily work the best for everyone. But, again, just about everything I say on this LJ is based on my own experiences with my LS and other experiences I've read of... There's a great deal of information out there that can be found on any of these subjects, whether on a forum or a wiki page or whichever !
That aside, currently we've found the best strategy to be almost exactly like what we normally do for Tiamat with a few changes here and there... And we had to have done somewhere over 50 of these BCs by now. Basically though, starting from the tank PT we'll have two tanks (sometimes 3) along with a WHM, BRD, and a misc third job (often a SMN doing DD and/or support). I think the major reason for our success in these BCs would have to be the stability of this PT overall... Really when it comes down to it, having a stable tank PT is just about the most important aspect of any fight. MP won't be a problem, and DDs pulling hate won't be either.
So yeah, our tank PT basically turns Ouryu into a little baby. Hate is almost perfectly balanced, and never lost aside from Horrid Roars interfering which usually isn't common enough to cause a problem. In addition, the damage we take is laughable at best, our support is really top notch and does just as great of a job as the tanks :)... But I never did get around to making an earth resist set for multiple reasons concerning stuff like inventory and the utility of it, plus we're long past the problems we used to have in these fights, and I'm comfortable with the damage I take in the air anyway. As shown above, typically I take about 79 damage in the air, and other tanks for that BC aren't much higher. Physical damage isn't much different either, usually in the 70-110 damage range.
We all have the normal tank PT buffs, and a WHM (out of AoE range) in another PT is there for backup cures in case of a bad Petrifyga or Terrorga. Tank PT stuff aside, the other two PTs are mostly dedicated for damage as misc DDs (mostly BLMs). We normally have 2-4 melees in addition that kill worms for TP and then SC Ouryu 2-3 times each landing for MBs, and then at least one RDM dedicated to sleeping Elementals. The rest are usually BLMs... A majority of their nuking is during flight since the TP attacks aren't as severe, and then they also kill Elementals every 10 minutes since they build a resistance to sleep. We almost never sleep Ouryu though aside from emergencies, some groups ES sleep it on landings and only damage it in the air since in the air he's much less of a threat. Either way works, again it depends a lot on your LS!
A lot of additional info can be found on other sites and such, this thread in particular has more details: http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14082&highlight=ouryu
Bahamut
Now this is what most of the questions revolve around...
(Note about the screen: For this fight we usually have 2 tanks, but in the screen above we had 3 since it would've otherwise been an empty spot... We were short on people that run. Otherwise, it's one tank for Bahamut, and one tank for Wyrms/backup)
As draining this BC can be I still really like it, despite the fact we've had to have done at least around 30-40 of these BCs. I talked about this fight quite a lot in older updates, but I'm going to just kind of summarize.
First, just a review on some of his attacks that you'll need to be familiar with.
Magic Based Attacks
Graviga
Simple, this will clear shadows and reduce your evasion and movement speed. I recommend asking for Erase after this attack, it makes it difficult to move position if you have to, as well as reducing the chances to Evade.
Silencga
Self-explanatory, should bring Echo Drops in preparation for this move.
Firaga IV
This is the only spell/attack that we stunned, and I really recommend that any other LS should do the same. If you stick to stunning that, and don't spam stun too much outside of it, Bahamut won't develop a complete resistance to Stun. Firaga itself doesn't hit for too much damage, but it's unnecessary trouble that can be prevented.
Flare II
Relatively fast casting time, so don't sit back thinking it will take a while. Damage isn't very high, similar to Firaga.
Fire V
About the same damage as Firaga IV if you don't have shadows up, not a major threat.
Flares
There's plenty of information out there on when he'll use each of these flares, so I'll leave that topic alone. Just always always always, make sure the tank and the tank party is ready before taking Bahamut past the given percent that will make him flare. If they're not ready, then you could easily wipe them and end the BC. A tank should be at full HP with fresh shadows and Shell IV, with the hate stable, and at least one mage ready to Cure.
Megaflare
He'll only use this attack like 2-3 times at the start, it's through shadows and does about 900 base damage.
Gigaflare
He uses this for a majority of the BC, same properties as Megaflare. Except this one will do about 1200-1400 base damage.
Teraflare
Past 10% it will spam this attack until it's dead. It's very easy to finish off and avoid those though. Based on what I've seen on other posts, this will do about 1600-1800 damage.
TP Attacks
Tempest Wing
AoE attack through shadows (but doesn't take shadows) that will deal a small amount of wind damage for ~200, and knock you back.
Sweeping Flail
AoE attack that takes 1-3 shadows, and deals pretty heavy damage if you don't have shadows. It will knock you back and also bind you if I remember correctly.
Terrorga
AoE attack that takes 1-4 shadows, the strength of the terror varies on how many shadows it has to take to hit you. Overall it's usually a pretty weak terror and more annoying than anything.
Horrid Roar
His worst TP attack, it's AoE and takes 4 of your buffs away. It doesn't reset hate, but it can be the most dangerous TP move he uses, and especially when he uses it back to back. I've had him spam it on me as many as 5 times in a row in some instances, and all in all it tends to be a rather common attack. It can take any buff save signet, and I went through as many as 2 full stacks of food with no deaths (all horrid roar) in one of our winning runs. After this move it's best to give the tank Shell and Haste for NIN or /NIN ASAP. This is by far the hardest TP attack to deal with at times.
Impulsion
AoE knock back that will deal 300-500 damage and Petrify/Blind you, get Stona ASAP. Probably the second most annoying TP attack.
Those are all of the most important TP/magic/flare attacks that I remember off of my head. That part aside, as a tank I really recommend regardless of the job to have at least a good deal of enmity gear, physical defense gear, magic defense gear, and haste if you have shadows. I think most of the details as to why are self-explantory by now, but I'll review them anyway.
Enmity is always important, because losing hate at the wrong times in this BC can mean a loss, a Gigaflare gone off stray will wipe just about everyone. Typically I use close to +40, and in the last ~10 BC fights that amount of enmity combined with the speed of our fights and the low damage I take I haven't lost hate. Then, over the course of the BC you'll most likely take more physical damage than anything else, since Bahamut hits pretty damn hard. A good set of defense gear can often save you, and will also help reduce MP loss. Haste is just plain because your timers will be really low at times if you're unlucky, and every second matters... Of course magic defense goes without saying.
And, with those TP attacks in mind, it works really well to position yourself in a corner like I am here. This way even if you get hit by a knock-back attack you can still finish casting Utsusemi, because technically you're not moving at all. It's also just easier to have the tank in one place.
My gear/support has come a long way though since I first started this BC.
All the damage on that screen shot are typical results for that set of gear, and the best part is those top two Megaflares are the full damage ones. I still don't agree with going all out on fire resistance, but there's no harm in using it in slots where I can't get -magic taken or magic defense bonus. I end up having something like 120 fire resistance from gear along with a lot of magic defense.reduction, and this set of gear has given the best results for me. As I said before though, going all out on fire resist leaves you open to taking full damage Gigaflares that could potentially one-shot you. No matter how much resistance you have you can't resist 100% of the time, and with the gear above I resist often and still take very low damage as it is... And I think that's far better than the risk.
Again though, as before I really want to stress that keeping those buffs on to get that much resistance is far from necessary, and in the event that MP is getting low it should be completely forfeited. A major cause for tank PT instability in this BC is the tank PT WHMs and BRD getting way too close to Bahamut in attempt to give buffs to the tank. In the end between dispelga and horrid roar your buffs will get dispelled very often at times, and with all the AoE attacks/spells Bahamut has mages will more often than not get caught up in it... Often even getting killed.
The MP wasted between constantly refreshing buffs, constantly running in instead of resting, and the unnecessary curing from extra people taking damage... All add up to make a big difference on how well the MP supply is doing. Normally we'll use buffs as long as MP is fine, but as soon as it gets shaky I call just about everything off and only ask for Shell IV and Haste (and maybe P1!). Those spells can be done from a distance without endangering anyone and I can still do my job without trouble.
Overall if anything, fights usually go smoother when doing just that vs giving the tank 500 buffs and refreshing them constantly, for the most part just gear alone is enough to keep a tank alive with just Haste, occasional cures, and Shell IV. I also often ask for P1 just because sometimes shit happens and even I'll cancel protect, and I'd rather cancel protect than shell. Protect's roll in the BC is important too but Shell IV will be much more likely to keep you alive in a bad situation.
That stuff aside, a tank just needs to have lots of food and echo drops ready (I use tacos). Everyone else should have plenty of RR, poison pots for Vrtra, and that's about it. As long as you can maintain a stable tank PT and be able to kill the Wyrms ASAP, you're fine. On the topic of Wyrms though, I believe Vrtra is the most dangerous, just because he can charm just about all of your DDs in less than a minute and cause havoc... As illustrated here, with all the BLMs attacking me, along with Vrtra and Bahamut V2... http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/474/vrtracharmui5.jpg We still pulled off a win in that run, but the Vrtra incident almost cost us.
The other Wyrms aren't as bad, the main concern with Jorgy is just BW because he can get HP back faster than he's damaged if you leave him alive too long. However this usually isn't a problem thanks to stuff like Blink/Stoneskin/Utsusemi as long as hate is balanced and it's killed quickly. Ouryu is probably the easiest as far as his offenses go, and Tiamat's main danger is just one hitting DDs, but again that's countered by the above buffs. Overall just being able to kill each wyrm fast is the most important, along with being able to hold it all together without panicking. In addition, one important aspect that is often forgotten, is BLMs need to make sure to use the right nukes on the right Wyrms... IE, starting off with a volley of Thundagas on Ouryu could waste enough time/MP to cause a wipe.
As far as damage on Bahamut, we've moved from using just BLMs to use BLMs along with 2 SMN and even some melee DDs. Just about anything works really, and as long as you have a RDM with good gear and a lot of -enmity (Dispel will pull hate by the end of the BC if no -enmity is on) to spam Dispel, damage isn't much of a problem at all. But yeah, SMNs have been good to allow BLMs to rest to full for each Wyrm, and their hate-less damage is always a plus. Bahamut's HP is very low, so it doesn't take much damage to cut him fast. My parses have shown him to have about 23-28k HP total when counting Cure Vs it uses (http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9265/parsefy3.jpg
), and combined with his somewhat weak defense you can cut him fast as long as the tank PT is stable.
I've also read of other linkshells just killing Bahamut in a volley of nukes once close to 20%, so they skip the last Wyrm. We haven't actually tried this yet, but it seems like a good idea as long as you can time stun right if necessary. I think we may try it out next time depending, could probably get our record to around 15 minutes that way too. :o
I'm being really general and leaving out some details, but yeah, those are most of the specifics I've been asked from a tanking perspective. A good amont of other info can be found in another BG thread here: http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15467
On a final note for this topic, if you don't know already make sure to bring TH! The amount of synthesis material drops you will get with and without TH are significantly noticeable. On average you'll get twice as many drops with TH, these are typically what our drops look like: http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9484/dropshu6.jpg
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Most recent months with Amanomurakumo.
Ya know, originally I thought I'd still end up using my other jobs pretty often for HNMs, exp, and other stuff. I never thought of a relic weapon as a "doomed to that job forever" type of item despite what other people said, but that couldn't be more true for the last few months. I do have a lot of info and screens here with me on other jobs, but for the most part those are all before I got the GK. Since getting it, I've been almost SAM exclusively for just about 95% of the activities I've taken part of in this game. Not that I'm complaining about it, and I've really enjoyed it, but I just didn't expect to almost exclusively be a SAM after hovering around my jobs almost evenly for most of my time in FF. Even just today, halfway through a Limbus run, a few LS members were like "OMG RUKES ON NIN!" all thinking I was on SAM (this is like 10m into the run too). It probably was my first time on NIN for something casual since before getting the GK, and honestly I was just too lazy to change then since I was farming beforehand and planned to after. D:
But yeah, so over all that time I've managed to get a lot of different results, including some on HNMs.
In Exp/Misc
I've already covered the exp aspects last time so I'm going to be more brief here, but I'm still holding strong in regards to believing it's gotta be close to unmatched in exp. I actually got into a PT with a fully equiped/merited Spharai MNK/WAR not long after my last update, and even for that situation I ended up leading the parse by a considerable percent, the parse is seen here: http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/9956/samvsphariamnkexcalpld2vv6.jpg
The PT for that was a PLD/NIN with Excal above me, and the MNK/WAR I mentioned is below me. We started off in Mamook killing a mix of Wyverns/Crabs/Puks/Mamool, and then afterwards moved to the north camp in Thickets killing just about the same mix of mobs minus the crabs. The other PT members were a WHM, RDM, and BRD, so despite how much me and the MNK were tanking/sponging MP usually held up fine. No one died or went afk at any point.
Aside from that PT, I haven't had much time to merit. And when I have, for the most part they were just pickup PTs, and results in those types of PTs always look the same... http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9438/samgkvninwarwarce2.jpg Those are two PTs, the top one has two WARs (red) and a NIN (grey) and the bottom one I don't remember lol... But yeah, pretty much as I said.
Overall though WS damage wise, Kaiten reins supreme over 300% TP Gekko/etc so far on all the exp/farmable mobs I've fought, both in averages and in the high/low department. The same doesn't apply for HNMs however, but I'll get into that later. On the exp mobs Kaiten damage is very consistent, and even when comparing high defense mobs to low defense the differences aren't all too big. Misc. numbers taken at random to illustrate the point:
I also added some spice with killing Simo (Baud was while I was charmed, unintentional!). Simo asked for it though! Around a year ago from now he set out to kill me, and I just finally got revenge. >:D
Oh, and the Gekko on Tiamat was actually not supposed to be in that screen shot, I put that in the wrong place (oops) and too lazy to fix it. The orc in that shot was also TW, just there to show that from IT to TW the difference in damage is relatively small.
Also, I just liked this shot because it looks like I'm going to bat the Puk in the face with my GK. I also included getting 5/5 AF2 for SAM (just recently!) and also 3/5 AF+1 lol... And that HP is just awesome.
Kaiten Fun
One thing I've mastered lately though is self-SCing without the use of a 2h or /DRG or anything special. Basically it just requires the right timing, and as long as that's correct I can self-SC around 90% of the time. I have to time it so I swing soon after my first WS, the mob swings at me soon after as well (taking damage = 3 TP), and Meditate has to have just started ticking. With all the timing right, it looks like this:
More often than not, instead of missing the swing or something (which is the major thing that can prevent it) either the mob will die or someone else will WS in between. But, otherwise I can do it pretty reliably assuming no outside interference. I have quite a few screens of this on other things as well, here's a couple:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9433/selfsc2fu5.jpg
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9940/selfsvgl5.jpg
And, I actually think that with the right timing I could potentially do my own kaiten > kasha > kaiten chain without a 2h or anything. I've never been able to test this though, because any mob I could try it on will die before I finish as seen here. :(
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/3425/selfsc3ns3.jpg
Also, I just couldn't help myself in trying this... The damage is low since I have no attack buffs and was using sushi to ensure I don't miss a WS and die (like I did once D:), but it was fun!
On the topic of Kaiten though.. I did promise to take at least one screen shot of the WS animation last update! And, I actually went and did DOUBLE the amount, with TWO pictures! Yeah, I'm working overtime.
This is the starting animation:
Annnd the ending:
Tanking
I've been doing a lot of this lately for obvious reasons, and for the most part it's been working really well! I'm not talking on the scale of HNMs of course (although that possibility isn't all too unlikely) but in exp/dynamis and misc. other events I end up tanking really often. With all the gear I can use on my NIN and higher HP, it works very well. A lot of people fault Seigan for not being very useful, but timed right I have to disagree... It starts off as a very high chance to anticipate/counter from the second it's initially activated, and the chance to anticipate/counter fades over time. By my observations lately, I estimate the first 5 seconds to be around 95%, the next 5 seconds around 80%, the 10-20 second range to average out to 50%, and the 20-30 second range to average out to about 20%. All and all using it at the right time you can absorb a good deal of attacks, and for the most part it's been very reliable for me now. Backed up by good defense gear, it makes tanking pretty easy.
My results only encompass dynamis and exp so far, and I hope to maybe expand it to some HNMs.. As it stands I get hate pretty often over even our best tanks on the few times I've had the opportunity to use SAM as a DD on an HNM, but for the most part it's while I'm playing offensively rather than defensively (using Hasso almost full time instead of Seigan). Paying more attention to defense like I do in dynamis/exp always using Seigan, I think it could be fun. Anyway, these are those results I meant.
The Yagudo one was in Beaucidine, and I used Terra's Staff... The Skoffin one was just my defense gear with GK still equiped. In neither case did I have defense food or Phalanx, just gear and defender.
This also helps speak to support that though... Just recently killed Proteus as a SAM+RDM duo. If you don't know what Proteus is, it's basically a weaker version of Charybdis. It attacks just like him and hits pretty damn hard, but has less HP and is a slightly lower level. It was a lot of fun!
On that topic though, I also actually tanked the real Charybdis, which ended up being easier since it was with more people: http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8894/charyek0.jpg
On HNMs
Now, much to my disbelief back then, I actually had quite a few opportunities to go as SAM to HNMs. Which, ended up in the discovery of both good news and bad news.
First of all, the bad news is Kaiten's WS damage falls severely on HNMs without the proper attack to back it up... And by that I mean, attack food, berserk, and songs, AKA the situation that almost never will happen. Gekko/etc damage is much more consistent and has better highs/lows when it comes to the harder mobs. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's just the way it is basically.
For example, on Tiamat my SA Kaitens would cap out at about 800-950 without DA. On the other hand, my SA for the other weapon skills would cap out at about 1100 to 1300 damage. With SA the difference seems smaller, but on the hand for frontal WS a difference if ~200-300 damage ends up almost being double. On Cerberus Kaiten would typically average 300-550, while a 300% would average 600 to 850.
Of course, spamming Kaiten at 100% TP will still far surpass the damage of saving to 200-300% TP, but it's just odd how the rolls reversed.
The good news though, is that SAM ends up being almost as heavy of a DD on HNMs as it is in exp. In my results so far just spamming Kaiten all the time through an HNM fight ends up being a _lot_ of damage, and in most situations I'm doing this without songs. I'll just let the results show what I mean:
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/6025/fafparsenh3.jpg
That parse is just awesome for the sake of the 13337 damage total lol, but that is also the first and only Fafnir fight I've had as a GK SAM so far (no songs or specials upport). The green blocks are THFs and the white ones are BLMs, black blocks are misc other jobs. I'm really looking forward to more fights, but no luck on pulling. :(
But, I've also had quite a few Cerb fights.
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4690/cerbparye3.jpg
Red blocks are WARs (both parses have at least one adaberk/ridill WAR), green block THF, and blue block SAM.
I've since changed my defense gear around a little on SAM to include some lolhydra gear. I'm hoping to reduce the damage I take more just for the sake of HNM fights like these where I pull hate pretty often... I'm really want to try it more, but no clue when it'll actually happen! I'll be sure to post results from that when it does though.
I'll end this section at that, I really need to get this update finished lol..
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Final group of NMs.
I'm going to be quick here! It's 5 AM now and I've spent a good majority of the day in this update in between trying to get a few tests/projects assigned this weekend done.
Mostly just going to be screens and captions!
First, Omega/Ultima runs... Same old same old for the most part, we alternate them in groups of 2-3 runs each. Overall I'm happy with how fast we're able to pump out sets, and drops have been improving.
Omega of course is the easiest and most commonly killed.
And then there's Ultima.. Whom I've managed to KS with Mijin every single time of the last 8 fights on NIN! Citadel Buster isn't a problem for any of our tanks anymore either, but BLMs still have some trouble as Tenbatsu demonstrates in taking almost 3k damage lol.
Still killing Tiamat whenever the opportunity arises, both with low numbers...
And slightly higher numbers... Although typically we almost never get more than 18.
And of course, the damage taken by me and the other tanks is always amusing.
As well as the occasional parses that go through! Suggesting 70-100k HP when taking the regen into account: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/6918/tiamatparsede5.jpg (we keep DoT on it full time too)
Honestly I don't even remember this kill, but just goes to show how long it's been since a full update.. So yeah, I guess we killed Vrtra some time too! And uh, I was there apparently lol...
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The other random stuff without a category!
Misc. screen shots with captions time.
Astral BC, we ended up being the only LS doing this for quite a while initially... But now a lot of people do it, which is great! The BC itself is a pain and takes forever to get to and get the items for, I don't think I'll be doing it again anytime soon. I wish the rewards were better.
I don't think I ever mentioned this here before, but Noy is a friend of Me/Syl that quit for good to tend to RL matters a while ago... But, instead of deleting his character, he wanted to give it to the LS for the gear/time put into him, so me and Syl basically take care of it. And, with that, we finished up the Woodworking (he was at like 78 originally)! But, my synth luck stinks overall, that kabuto is just about the only good HQ I've made in ~20m worth of spending. :(
My attempts at leveling Parrying... I had I think 23 of these at one point sometime later, it was pretty fun! I ended up getting a crowd, but sadly not one skill up in about 30 minutes of that. I forgot what level I was but I was probably too high, I'm currently at 250 though.
This is the lolice screen shot that I'm just obligated to post. <3 You laughed at me for my barfira gear, BUT WHO IS LAUGHING NOW!?
This was a weird glitch that happened after a Teleport-Mea, keep in mind she is a 75 BRD... It was fixed when she zoned again though. I was tempted to try to MPK her!
With the implementation of Salvage I had to do a lot of ToA missions to catch up, and this scene in particular just came out pretty cool with the GK.
Obligatory random WS damage shots.. And I thought the 1 damage Mijin would go nicely with the 1 damage Rampage and 1 damage Kaiten earlier in this update.
These are just plain funny... We agroed the Wyrm in NW Limbus by accident and couldn't sleep it, and the fight was going so slow we decided to wipe. So it turned into a 'who can make it flail first!' contest! I won, but Tenbatsu won the survival award as the taru!
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2551/flail1ra2.jpg
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7328/flail2ta8.jpg
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/5180/flail3fl9.jpg
And last but not least, a few screens that came out looking really nice.
That's it! I'm going to bed now, it's like 7:30 AM and I have my first class at 11. D:
I'll revise it for typos and most likely add some small stuff later in the week, but yeah... I put myself behind on work with this update so my next few days are going to be really busy. Better enjoy this update for a while!