Job Adjustments (12/03/2010)

[Lyltia]

For the record, 2 Rdms with beyond/MM spamming Bliz 3 are going to do a ton more damage over time than a Blm+Rdm duo, not even gonna get into Rdm having Bliz IV this update.

But, but.... CAN THEY DO IT ON FREE VISITANT THAT THEY FARMED THEMSELVES?????????????

Players who only have or care about a single mage class want their chosen job to be as good as other specialized mages in their specified roles.

I'm RDM BLM SCH 85; SCH retired the moment i got my atmas, RDM gets played occasionally to solo truly intimidating shit, and BLM gets spammed for Trials and Abyssea farming, because it can both kill NMs and solo unlimited time. Really, what's so hard to fucking understand here? If you take a small (or large) army into Abyssea, that's your business. Have fun killing the same +2 mobs over and over and over and over and over again until everybody gets what they want; I'll already be finished with all 4 of my sets and raping the new content.

[Greatguardian]

Yes. If nothing else, I'd love to see Blms cap their pearl lights solo. Farming net positive time extensions is absolutely not hard for any half competent RDM, it just takes longer to build up than a Blm would. My Rdm is shit-tier with practically no R/EX gear (aby-burned it from 37 and don't feel like offloading tons of gil in the current state of the game, though I already have plenty mage shit from WHM) and I still do more than alright in that regard.

[Lyltia]

If nothing else, I'd love to see Blms cap their pearl lights solo. Farming net positive time extensions is absolutely not hard for any half competent RDM, it just takes longer to build up than a Blm would.

Yeah, it's super hard to nuke t1 VNMs down to <5% and DoT kill with BLM's 5 stackable spells. Also, if you wanna spend 4 hours soloing on RDM to build up an hour or two of free visitant, you've got more patience than I, and I can respect that.

[Tsuko_Asura]

BLM+RDM kiting shit around a rock bouncing hate with 3k+ nukes from the BLM and 1.5k-2k nukes from the RDM makes everything dead, fast. Our record on Ulhuadshi, while trying all available grellows from BLM+RDM+BLU dbox, is ~15min. I've watched alliances struggle with it for 30min+, after procs. How is this awful? Explain.

Don't twist my words. Killing Ulhuadshi in 15 minutes with BLM and RDM isn't awful(or maybe it is- I've never seen it manaburned), and I never suggested anything of the sort. I said that If using two or more people to kill something is your only option for success, including BLM is not the optimal choice. It has neither faster damage output nor more reliable survivability than alternatives. Yes, it most certainly broadens your opportunities for triggering grellow, but at the point, its likely that its not being used to increase your success rate, but to increase the rate in which your target drops what you want it to which, subsequently, starts to stray away from my point.

Well, I do, and it's been my entire point all along. What's yours?

I've been very specific about this all along. If time extensions are of no concern to you(in the case of an enter -> kill -> leave instance, which isn't rare), having someone there specifically to elongate your stay serves no relative purpose.

Indeed. You're such a fan of making broad, cryptic statements and expecting everyone to just know, I figured you would too!

By all means, fight what you dislike with a perpetuation of what you dislike.

Again, two mages kiting something around a rock and timing their casts correctly results in never, ever getting hit, making Phalanx/Protect not worthless, but certainly not worth choosing a subjob around, considering there's a subjob available (/SCH) that will result in increased damage. Considering that you have such a problem with BLM's damage output, I am confused at your logic.

Not that I would even consider this an example of "duoing", but its an irrelevant example. There are clearly superior alternatives to killing something like this with a BLM.

It's been pretty basic (/)SCH 101 for years that switching Grimoires for buffs when nuking is retarded; doubly so in Abyssea, as the MP cost penalty is completely irrelevant. The only time it would be worth switching is if the casting time penalty would get you hit/killed, which only ever happens when you're solo. Even then, the only spells that would pose a problem would be SS/Blink, and unless you're casting them more than once a minute (also unlikely), there's no reason not to swap arts to get them up faster.

Increased casting times on already slow spells are detrimental, whether you care to acknowledge it or not.

[Greatguardian]

I'm not sure what Rdms you play with that spend 4 hours doing nothing but racking up visitant, but lol. In a duo situation, Rdm+Rdm can pump out more than enough time to sustain themselves and then some by virtue of farming pops and killing the NMs themselves. Not to mention they'll put out significantly more damage than Rdm+Blm and thus kill NMs and normal mobs faster. If an NM takes 5 minutes to kill, and you only get 1 TE in the 3 minutes you spam kill normal mobs while the ??? resets, you *still* end up with positive time.

Protip: Time over 120 is lost when you exit Abyssea. There's little point in spamming up to 300-400 and then farming NMs when you can farm NMs while sustaining yourself, and not end up SOL if you have to HP/run back due to a shitty instant-death move or bad luck in general. Granted, you could always RR and be functionally deficient for 5 minutes, but that's really a waste of everyone's time when getting back to Abyssea is so easy.

Edit: In case it's not obvious, stopping NMs for 5 minutes to spam some more time because of shit TE luck is a no-brainer and is *still* a more efficient use of time than -ga spamming up 200-300 minutes before NMs.

[Lyltia]

Don't twist my words. Killing Ulhuadshi in 15 minutes with BLM and RDM isn't awful(or maybe it is- I've never seen it manaburned), and I never suggested anything of the sort. I said that If using two or more people to kill something is your only option for success, including BLM is not the optimal choice. It has neither faster damage output nor reliable survivability than alternatives. Yes, it most certain broadens your opportunities for triggering grellow, but at the point, its likely that its not being used to increase your success rate, but to increase the rate in which your target drops what you want it to which, subsequently, starts to stray away from my point.

I don't know what kind of mages you roll with, but survivability is pretty low on our list of concerns; didn't we dispel the glass-cannon myth years ago?

I've been very specific about this all along. If time extensions are of no concern to you(in the case of an enter -> kill -> leave instance, which isn't rare), having someone there specifically to elongate your stay serves no relative purpose.

If I'm entering > killing something > exiting, the only way I choose BLM over RDM is if we need grellow and there isn't another BLM present. This should be beyond obvious..

By all means, fight what you dislike with a perpetuation of what you dislike.

'tis the American way, after all.

Not that I would even consider this an example of "duoing", but its an irrelevant example. There are clearly superior alternatives to killing something like this with a BLM.

Ohhhh semantics, fun! If there's two people fighting one mob, and that mob dies, that's what we call a duo!

Increased casting times on already slow spells are detrimental, whether you care to acknowledge it or not.

Yeah... that extra half second casting a storm every 3 minutes is so detrimental, shit, what was I thinking.

'm not sure what Rdms you play with that spend 4 hours doing nothing but racking up visitant, but lol. In a duo situation, Rdm+Rdm can pump out more than enough time to sustain themselves and then some by virtue of farming pops and killing the NMs themselves. Not to mention they'll put out significantly more damage than Rdm+Blm and thus kill NMs and normal mobs faster. If an NM takes 5 minutes to kill, and you only get 1 TE in the 3 minutes you spam kill normal mobs while the ??? resets, you *still* end up with positive time.

You're the one who even brought up the fucking stupid idea of RDMs farming visitant in the first place, don't look at me. I'm well aware of how fast a RDM or two can stock Visitant; my BLM does it faster, much faster, solo. We're talking factors here, not increments, there's no contest. I can farm the same amount of Visitant as those RDMs can duo in less time, while my RDM solos shit; any argument about RDM+RDM being somehow more efficient is just plain stupid.

Significantly more damage? I'm RDM main as well, and it's extremely well-geared, I'm well aware of the kind of numbers I can put out, and I can tell you that my RDM has to nuke at least twice to match my BLM's per-nuke damage, which is very well-geared, but definitely lower on the scale. BLM nukes once, hate changes, RDM nukes 2-3 times, hate changes. How is this radically slower than 2 RDMs, as seems to be the commonly spouted truism as of late? One person still has to be kiting at any given time.

Also, for all of you that complain about BLM's casting speed being the main impediment to their damage output? Get some Fast Cast gear and +2 hat; my nukes fire around 50% as /NIN, faster on /RDM or /SCH, and in a few short days we get Elemental Celerity or whatever it's called. We'll see how BLM stacks up against RDM then. I'm anticipating a victory for BLM.

Protip: Time over 120 is lost when you exit Abyssea. There's little point in spamming up to 300-400 and then farming NMs when you can farm NMs while sustaining yourself, and not end up SOL if you have to HP/run back due to a shitty instant-death move or bad luck in general. Granted, you could always RR and be functionally deficient for 5 minutes, but that's really a waste of everyone's time when getting back to Abyssea is so easy.

Don't you Protip me with this fucking nonsense. Why wouldn't you want to spend an hour capping your merits (if you still need.. who isn't capped) and as much time as you need for your NM farming session? You're right, it's so much more fun to have to stop killing NMs and farm more time, potentially even having to rebuild lights depending how long you've been in the zone. As for dying? When you lowman mobs like we do, you have to try really hard to get killed; the vast majority of our deaths are from inopportune d/cs, and even then, it's a small number. It's amazing how tame almost all of these NMs become when you are dealing such large amounts of damage:TP; most t1 NMs are lucky if they get more than one TP move off (assuming no gimmicks of course), and if you know how to time your casts and run in a circle, nothing ever hits you either. Yet another benefit of bringing along a BLM.. all this talk about how frail it supposedly is when it dominates every other job in DMG:TP and possesses the single best damage mitigation ability in the game, and is about to get another with Enmity Douse really, really fucking confuses me.

[Deader2818]

Im really confused why there is so much hate on SCH as a main job.

[Lyltia]

Because the lack of Cure V killed Light Arts, and shitty spell progression + Beyond killed Dark Arts.

Nobody's more sad about this than me, it's my favourite job.. ; ;

[Greatguardian]

I brought up Rdm's ability to farm time because your entire pretense that a Blm -ga farming TEs is reason enough to make them a better duo partner to a Rdm than another Rdm is false. If you enter Abyssea at the 120 mark, it doesn't matter if you leave at the 121 mark or the 521 mark. You'll only have 120 minutes when you get back. Recapping lights is shit easy, especially if only one person HPs, allowing the other to get killshots with capped lights(Note: I said instant death moves and shit luck, which includes DCs. I never said shit was hard, or that deaths happen often).

Adding Fast Cast gear to the equation works both ways as well. It's not like RDMs are completely incapable of macro'ing Fast Cast shit into their Precasts. Blms really ought not to be putting any Fast Cast or Haste in their actual nuking sets either. A RDM with self-Haste and natural fast cast is going to be nuking a lot more than a BLM. Sure, a Rdm partner could toss out a haste every 3 minutes, but it's a bit of a pain.

That said, I don't know where you got this idea that I was saying stopping to farm TEs every other NM was good at all. No, it's not good, but it's also generally unnecessary and unlikely to happen. If you have really shitty luck and just don't see any TEs in 3-4 NMs, you may want to take a 5 minute break and spam some up, but it's really not that hard to keep a net neutral time while still farming NMs as fast as the ???s repop. Really.

Edit: for clarification, I haven't said jack shit about BLM survivability so I'm not sure what's directed at me or what's directed at Tsuko at this point. You've been sitting here going on about how BLM is a better/equal duo partner to a Rdm than a second Rdm, and I'm telling you that no, it's not. It will work fine. I'm not saying it won't. But it's not better, and it's not just as good. Superfluous time is superfluous. Lower overall damage, a complete inability to be self-reliant on buffs (Blms will always need someone else hasting them, if nothing else), and the fact that it's a lot harder for a Blm to Bliz IV while kiting than it is for a Rdm to Bliz III while kiting make it inferior. It's not bad enough that it'll prevent you from doing much of anything, but it's inferior.

[Tsuko_Asura]

I don't know what kind of mages you roll with, but survivability is pretty low on our list of concerns; didn't we dispel the glass-cannon myth years ago?

If survivability is a non-issue, why are you duoing? Go change jobs and solo something else.

If I'm entering > killing something > exiting, the only way I choose BLM over RDM is if we need grellow and there isn't another BLM present. This should be beyond obvious..

If its so damned obvious, why are you arguing it? It has, very specifically, been my point this entire time.

Ohhhh semantics, fun! If there's two people fighting one mob, and that mob dies, that's what we call a duo!

And having someone pop JoP only for you to nuke it behind the WoJ is technically a "duo", but not something most people would considering "duoing". Being a twat for the sake of being a twat doesn't make you seem any more right.

Yeah... that extra half second casting a storm every 3 minutes is so detrimental, shit, what was I thinking.

By all means, pick the spell that you'll be casting the least and has the shortest casting time. Completely disregard the defensive spells you'll be casting the most, which happen to have the longest casting time.

Significantly more damage? I'm RDM main as well, and it's extremely well-geared, I'm well aware of the kind of numbers I can put out, and I can tell you that my RDM has to nuke at least twice to match my BLM's per-nuke damage, which is very well-geared, but definitely lower on the scale. BLM nukes once, hate changes, RDM nukes 2-3 times, hate changes. How is this radically slower than 2 RDMs, as seems to be the commonly spouted truism as of late? One person still has to be kiting at any given time.

Also, for all of you that complain about BLM's casting speed being the main impediment to their damage output? Get some Fast Cast gear and +2 hat; my nukes fire around 50% as /NIN, faster on /RDM or /SCH, and in a few short days we get Elemental Celerity or whatever it's called. We'll see how BLM stacks up against RDM then. I'm anticipating a victory for BLM.

With the exception of Elemental Celerity, everything you can do to quicken a BLM's spellcasting can be done to a RDM, in addition to a drastic native edge due to job traits. RDM is better. Period.

[Greatguardian]

Im really confused why there is so much hate on SCH as a main job.

My biggest issue with SCH is the fact that its best sub (and the only one most Schs will ever come on) won't have access to Haste till the cap hits 99, effectively making it a BLM without access to -ja spells or the majority of their Grellow triggers.

[Tsuko_Asura]

Because the lack of Cure V killed Light Arts, and shitty spell progression + Beyond killed Dark Arts.

Nobody's more sad about this than me, it's my favourite job.. ; ;

Don't kid yourself, SCH was always second string.

[Deader2818]

MNK and WHM are the only real jobs in FFXI anymore.

[Lyltia]

No, your entire pretense is false. You assume we leave with more than 120min on the clock; this does not happen. We decide how long we're going to be in the zone, and I farm time accordingly. This is not a difficult concept, nor is it difficult to plan or execute. And who cares how easy it is to recap lights? If you plan ahead and farm all your time at the beginning when they're fresh, you guarantee that you waste zero time recapping lights later. It takes 5 minutes for weakness to wear, we die less than once per run on average, do the math. If one person HPs and comes to Raise me, that's 5min plus the time it takes for them to reenter, get buffs, and find me. Disgustingly inefficient.

Adding Fast Cast gear to the equation works both ways as well. It's not like RDMs are completely incapable of macro'ing Fast Cast shit into their Precasts. Blms really ought not to be putting any Fast Cast or Haste in their actual nuking sets either. A RDM with self-Haste and natural fast cast is going to be nuking a lot more than a BLM. Sure, a Rdm partner could toss out a haste every 3 minutes, but it's a bit of a pain.

On paper, sure. If a BLM and RDM stood toe-to-toe and just free nuked with no danger of getting themselves killed, RDM would pull ahead.. except that, there's this funny thing about monsters; they try to kill the shit out of whoever has hate. In a duo, it doesn't matter one bit how much faster RDM can cast; as soon as they get hate, they're done, start running. Ergo, RDM gets at best 2-3 nukes in, depending how shitty their nuke set is, then hate switches and it's the BLM's turn, who drops enough damage in that one cast to get hate back on them. Try it sometime and total up the damage dealt by each; you'll be surprised how similar the numbers are. If anything, your killspeed is directly tied to how much damage your strongest member can deal in one cast; the higher the number, the faster the NM is going to die. You also avoid the problem of hate becoming too even with two RDMs dealing similar damage per nuke; nothing slows you down more than the mob changing targets every time it swipes a shadow off of somebody. I spent a lot of time duoing stuff with 2 RDMs before i figured out how much more efficient RDM+BLM is, and I can tell you, shit dies a lot faster now. Not to mention, 2 RDMs are feeding more TP which, depending on the mob, is the absolute worst drag on killspeed. (Think Amun and his 6k Catharsis bullshit)

That said, I don't know where you got this idea that I was saying stopping to farm TEs every other NM was good at all. No, it's not good, but it's also generally unnecessary and unlikely to happen. If you have really shitty luck and just don't see any TEs in 3-4 NMs, you may want to take a 5 minute break and spam some up, but it's really not that hard to keep a net neutral time while still farming NMs as fast as the ???s repop. Really.

That said, how does stocking time at the beginning adversely affect what you've proposed? You also assume that we just sit at one ??? and pop NMs... most of our time is actually spent camping the 30-60 spawn NMs for their Key Items, since our main focus is +2 NM pops. Sure, if we have no competition I'll go farm some TE for the hell of it while my RDM camps, but if there is, and there is more often than not, we don't have to waste our time and chances at claim because we need TEs.

[Lyltia]

If survivability is a non-issue, why are you duoing? Go change jobs and solo something else.

Survivability is such a non-issue because we're duoing. Soloing is slower and less efficient, not to mention if you're on RDM, you're burning stones to do it, which in my case is simply not an option.

If its so damned obvious, why are you arguing it? It has, very specifically, been my point this entire time.

No, you're just saying that now so you can claim a victory, however small.

And having someone pop JoP only for you to nuke it behind the WoJ is technically a "duo", but not something most people would considering "duoing". Being a twat for the sake of being a twat doesn't make you seem any more right.

You're absolutely right; being right in the first place is all I need.

By all means, pick the spell that you'll be casting the least and has the shortest casting time. Completely disregard the defensive spells you'll be casting the most, which happen to have the longest casting time.

Actually I picked the only spell I'll likely be casting, at all. As I keep saying, using our strategy completely eliminates the need for defensive measures vs. most targets.

With the exception of Elemental Celerity, everything you can do to quicken a BLM's spellcasting can be done to a RDM, in addition to a drastic native edge due to job traits. RDM is better. Period.

On paper, yes. In practice, BLM casts 1 slightly longer spell to RDM's 2-3 slightly shorter spells; RDM takes longer to deal an equal amount of damage and take hate, therefore, it's slower. 2 RDMs can be faster or slower depending on the circumstances, see above.

Don't kid yourself, SCH was always second string.

My SCH consistently outdamaged our Morrigan BLMs on a per-spell basis at 75, and made AH BLMs look fucking terrible. On HNMs, I'd always win the parses due to Klimaform+Enmity-50 set on things I could maintain some semblance of accuracy on (Read: Not Tiamat). You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[Greatguardian]

I never assumed you absolutely had to leave with more or less than 120 minutes. I postulated that both Rdm+Blm and Rdm+Rdm can enter and leave with 120 minutes, and Rdm+Rdm can do so in a way which is more productive overall. I also postulated that an early surge of time is more risky than a steady flow of time because you preclude your ability to HP and run back to Abyssea if anything should happen. Not a huge risk, but the point is that it's an inferior design, not that it's an impossible one.

Depending on the NM and the area in which I'm running it, I generally don't have many problems nuking while I'm kiting on Rdm either. Between fast cast and half a brain for pathing and timing, getting a Blizzard 3 off on things without massively enhanced movement is not that hard. If you're camping 30-60 minute time NMs, you're in an even easier position to farm steady TEs than if you were spamming ??? repops. When windows are down, you can spam kill whatever the hell is easiest in any particular zone and get as many TEs as you need, camp till shit's dead, then repeat. Once you both have KIs, go spam some ???s and you'll be getting net positive time there too.

Really, I don't see what the point of any of this is. Blm can do some great TE farming, it's nice and can pretty much let you afk in Abyssea whenever you want to without worrying about time. But claiming that RDM+BLM is a *more efficient/effective* duo than RDM+RDM is absolutely asinine.

Edit: Jesus Christ, farming TEs solo/duo is not hard at all on any job, what the hell is with Rdm solo burning stones? The only reason I even add duo in there is the fact that most melee can't solo Azure light. Give pretty much any player worth a damn capped pearl/azure and they'll be able to stay in Abyssea indefinitely.

Edit2: Taking hate does not equate to doing the same amount of damage, especially when kiting things. How have I kept missing that?

[Lyltia]

But claiming that RDM+BLM is a *more efficient/effective* duo than RDM+RDM is absolutely asinine.

We'll have to agree to disagree then, but... I've tried both, and I know which is better.

Taking hate does not equate to doing the same amount of damage, especially when kiting things. How have I kept missing that?

If you are going as fast as absolutely possible, it does. Running shit in a circle for too long without tagging it does decay enmity, though, but that's doing it wrong so it's irrelevant.

[Vegetatheprince]

Why does this discussion now remind me of the 'if you're not gettin 33.5k xp/hr you shouldn't be xping' shouting matches of days gone by.

[Greatguardian]

Enmity caps. Fairly easily, I might add. Though it's not like any further discourse will do any good. You're talking about Rdms running like hell and not casting nukes while they have hate (and yet claiming survivability is a moot point), so there's really no point in arguing with you at all.

Edit: It's not that people shouldn't exp if they can't get 33.5k/hr, they just shouldn't make 28k/hr and claim it's better than 33.5.

[Lyltia]

You seem to misunderstand; the faster/better your duo is, and the stronger your obstacle, the less running you have to do. Plenty of spots that don't involve any running at all, but since I have to spell all this out, I assume running will be necessary. Besides, you wanna straight-tank stuff, then you have to start spamming Utsu, and maintain debuffs, and cast Stoneskin, and cure damage..... awfully lot of time spent doing things other than nuking when you could just run from it for the 5 seconds it takes your partner to nuke it off you.

It's not that people shouldn't exp if they can't get 33.5k/hr, they just shouldn't make 28k/hr and claim it's better than 33.5.

I couldn't possibly agree more.