New or Returning Players Discussion 2: SoA Homeless Veterans Edition

[mallister]

me and my wife just resubbed, i'm sure i'll be back in here soon pleading for someone to hold my scared little hand.

[Draggy]

me and my wife just resubbed, i'm sure i'll be back in here soon pleading for someone to hold my scared little hand.

MY BADDDDDD.

As for the game itself, logged back in after two years or so and am totally lost. Last time I played I was working on upgrading the +2 Abyssea armours and the Emp weapons/ trial of magians shit. I set foot in Aldouin like once. Where should I start?

[Mojo]

Looking for suggestions on precast gear for BLM. Right now I've got the following.

Nahtirah Hat
Helios Jacket (with FC augment)
Hagondes Cuffs +1/Helios Gloves/Telchine Gloves (with FC augment)
Psycloth Lappa (Path D)
Amarlic Nails (Path A)
Swith Cape +1
Witful Belt
Sapience Orb
Rahab Ring
Prolix Ring
Loquacious Earring
Enchanter Earring +1

Bear in mind this is somewhat optimized towards Death damage (so not gimping MP during precast is important)

[Fwahm]

Could go for an Etiolation Earring if you can pick one up.

[Mojo]

Ah, thanks for the suggestion. Should also note that I don't really like quickening that much, wondering if there is an alternative to Witful Belt.

[Fwahm]

That's the only waist fast cast piece, but if you really wanted to get rid of the quick cast, you could pick up a Shinjutsu-no-obi or Mujin obi for pure MP+.

You can also pick up a Barkarole Earring, too (25 MP, 3% elemental magic cast time down), which is easier to get than Etiolation.

[Draylo]

Why do you dislike Quick Cast? It's a huge dmg boost for BLM with capped 10% quick magic if you get a tier6 > tier6 MB from a proc. Any nuke really assuming you are using GS.

[Mojo]

I like things to be reliable and not random. I also forgot that the recast when quickening occurs is 0, I suppose I should actually be using it.

[Bail]

So I'm going through trying to get older content wins on things for completion purposes. Any chance you can win a Provenance Watcher with just you and trusts? The linkshell i'm in now is a really nice group of returning players, but most of them are 100% starting over so i'm kind of hung there for help.

[Fwahm]

Use five displacers and it'll be a cinch.

[SephYuyX]

Ugh. Came back this week after quitting right around the second set of SoA missions came out, so i'm basically capped on everything beforehand.

So far seems like BLM+Trusts (and just BLM in general)= terrible for the RoV stuff. My DMG has been doing jack. Guess I'll be going on BST a lot.. but even then, the mission with two bosses for example (this is the last caitsith fight), the trusts get murdered fast. So basically I need to get my ilvl up, and get some job points, but man, it's like a whole different world.. Not even sure where to start.

Is it possible to just find a group and grind JP for hours/days on 99? But im guessing i'll be worthless. BLM is my main, but it seems everyone is on BST now, which I dont mind, but that means instead of being able to focus on one job, i'll have to do two unless I abandon BLM. I'd love to just find a group and grind cp for days.

I guess it's just my lvl being terrible.

Whats the logical steps for getting gear? Do I bother with AF1 or AF2, or just do AF3? Are all three worth getting to 119? But I guess I have to get 109? Obviously I guess I cant jump to 225? Anything out there for the "best" BLM and BST gear? Can I get to 119 solo at least?

It's like starting over from scratch almost D;

[dasva]

Blm is fine heck any job with minimal gear should be fine with most of RoV up until the end. But yeah the end is actually tailored to having at least decent amount of ilvl stuff for any job to deal dmg and for trusts to be useful but blm should still be fine once you do that.

Most people only jp for an hour or 2 from what I've seen but some will go longer. idk your server but on mine blm will have an easy time getting into a cp pt. 90% of the cp pt shouts I see are pld + 4-5x nukers with someone that can skillchain usually a sch. But those are groups are generally on the new apex mobs... which are significantly harder than anything in RoV so you probably aren't geared up for those. Really even the easier cp camps aren't friendly to low ilvls. So I'd focus on gear first otherwise well it would be like trying to merit at 65 if that was possible

For blm there are a few good pieces here and there. I'd probably get some sparks gear at least at first. At that point you can easily solo skirmishes which will get you pretty good to best 119 stuff. There are a couple of decent pieces for blm in reforges as well as a couple for bst but definitely not full set type of thing

[Rehn]

Buy eminent staff off spark NPC (i117). Do alluvion yorcia skirmish for helios/telchine set as a book person. Find a basic BLM gearswap. Those make farming CP easier, since it sounds like you may not even be in emiment gear.

Trusts are whatever lvl/ilvl of your mainhand is when you call them. After that, gearswapping shouldn't affect them.... or I could be wrong, idk.

[dasva]

Trusts are whatever lvl/ilvl of your mainhand is when you call them. After that, gearswapping shouldn't affect them.... or I could be wrong, idk.

Trusts are whatever your average ilvl is and it changes as your ilvl changes though I think there is slight delay not sure. Mainhand does play the biggest part of average ilvl though

[SephYuyX]

So many gearsssssssss.
And yeah, I only have 99 stuff atm.
Really is overwhelming with all this new stuff, that and how all of it is "game breaking" compared to old stuff. But yet, the blm magian staff is apparently still better on higher tier spells?

[dasva]

No magians are bad and you should feel bad... jk. Um idk last time I did the math for pure dmg I think they were about even on T5 (though last I bothered mathing it out was a good year ago)... the problem is you will lose a good 200 or macc using them so unless you are just doing pre soa or low ilvl content or are using elemental seal you are going to resist hard with magian staffs. Plus there is a bit of a benefit to using a single staff. 1 frees up invent. 2. Occult acumen + Myrkr = tons of free mp back just from casting

[SephYuyX]

True true, thats what i've kind of slowly been gathering. I would kill for a "good, decent, best" DMG sets so I could work towards something. Trying to sort through all of this gear is starting to get to me.

[SephYuyX]

Posted on Reddit too, gathered that this is about the gist?
I'd like to skip Sparks, but we'll see.

-Do Records of Eminence: Limited-time Challenges for potentially 6 Copper Vouchers daily to turn in to Obsidian Fragments to buy Head/Body/Leg.
-Unlock Yorcia Weald (U) and do Alluvion Skirmishs by making a Simulacrum via a Head/Body/Leg trade-in.
-Get drops, namely Keraunos Staff and Helios Armor, and then endless upgrade them? I guess this is the end game soloable stuff, mostly?

[dasva]

It's soloable but not with fairly mediocre ilvl gear but I highly doubt with 99 gear. Reason whey people suggest sparks is because it is the fastest, cheapest, easiest way to ilvl 117. It's far from great gear but most things that are better that you want to skip too will require more time and gil per piece than this will for a whole set. If you are dead set against sparks gear for whatever reason you can I guess get balyd gear assuming your server even has that coalition still high enough and you are even able to farm balyd effectively. There is also getting some reforged up to 119 but getting the chapters for that will be hard from the bcnms solo at 99 and getting enough for 1 piece from sparks would've gotten you a few sets of sparks gear so.... but you are going to jump straight from 99 or even 109 to 119 gear you get from events solo. ilvl is fairly comparable to lvl in terms of how much easier it makes things and how much people might want it you so you can kind of think of it like trying to farm your lvl 75 endgame gear before you fight maat... not a great idea. While it might be possible to do it with good gear and playing the difference made with even barebones pieces like sparks is huge and greatly increases your odds of success and increase the speed at which you can get up to the final stuff much more than the very small amount of time it takes to get it... especially since you are getting sparks while doing those daily events for vouchers or farming for the parts to make the simulacrum if you don't buy them or really doing just about anything in game. And then when you are done with it you can just trade it in for balyd. Heck even when I started powering up a friends mule I got it sparks gear first even though I had 2 119 characters to carrying it just so it would be more useful and well not die as much because fighting higher lvl stuff without ilvl gear is pretty close to fighting stuff around your lvl completely naked with counterstance defense in terms of survivability.

Anyways yes alluvion and like high tier battlefields can kind of be considered end game of solo though you can solo a bit harder stuff once you really gear up. But you will still be decently better off joining a shout or something once you get enough to be accepted. For example in alluvion yorcia you have to go out and kill stuff for points but then go back your base to use them to summon monsters for your tower defense portion of it... much easier and safer to have someone just stay at base while others farm plus lets you go higher and such so you end up getting more drops per run and costs of runs are often split someway. In the other alluvions you might have a hard time soloing a single floor in time with low ilvl. For high tier battlefields droprates jump sharply with increase in difficulty lvl to the point it might literally take you 100 to get your drop at VE but guaranteed drops on D/VD. There's also original skirmishes which are also soloable but again can be pretty hard at low ilvls. They also have some stuff you might want at the very least the nuking pants.

Also as you begin to get ilvld up able to get into decent cp either solo or in a group you'll want to get all the various +cp gain bonuses

[SephYuyX]

Thanks for the tips mang.

I did end up getting sparks because I didnt realize all those quests were there. For some reason they didnt load up the couple times I checked, but waited longer the last time and capped out sparks in a minute and havent even touched the majority of the missions yet.. this will help with reforging~

My quick and dirty findings: Thunder and Bliz (days changed and didnt want the bonus to kick in) on lvl 0 mobs.
Pre-iLvl Equip: T1 512, B3 1728, T5 3751
Pre-iLvl Equip + iLvl117 Staff: T1 799, B3 1894, T5 3639
iLvl117 Gear + Magian Staff: T1 450, B3 1976, T5 4340
iLvl117 Gear: T1 762, B3 2072, T5 4113

So what I read previously holds mostly true. For Tier 5 and 6 Magian is better (at least over this junky 117 staff), but the ilvl staff does better on Tiers 1, 2, and 3. Tier 4 is a tie.

The immediate benefit of being ilvl117 though is the trust boot. I was able to beat the battle I was having issues with np now.


Also, everyone and their mom has a defending ring now.