Salvage II - Slavage Harder

[Obsidian]

yea no backwards tanking for hydra then, completely forgot about breaking the heads and the regen., i'll tell him about hybrid pdt/haste set and have him do one up. My group isn't on hydra yet we're zerging that silly cerb so no worries on that for a bit.

I feel sorry for the other group, all 4 of them want skadi from hydra.

thanks for the tips, they were raging a bit about hydra so this info will help them a lot

I have yet to experience a need for hybrid gear sets on MNK in Neo Salvage. What job is your friend on?

[Cairthenn]

I don't use counterstance on the bosses at all. Counterstance tanking has only ever been worth it on targets with low attack rates* or ones that have Elegy and/or Slow II on them (or sub NIN).

[Fake]

How is it not worth it? If you have virtually no risk of dying then the only thing it can do is speed up the fight. Also surely the logic would be targets with low base damage since you are pretty much flooring your defense against everything anyway.

[pooter01]

I don't use counterstance on the bosses at all. Counterstance tanking has only ever been worth it on targets with low attack or ones that have Elegy and/or Slow II on them (or sub NIN).

I think by this you mean low base damage? Enemies with low attack will get the largest boost in damage against you if you put counterstance up(think about going from a .5pdif to capped pdif). As far as enemy attack goes, you're best using it against enemies that already cap attack against you, so the damage you take won't go up. That's part of why counterstance against these bosses "can" be dangerous. They have a low attack comparatively, so flooring your defense really increases the dmg you take if you don't counter.

[Cairthenn]

Meant to say low attack rates, not like Hydra having a normal delay and an obscure triple attack rate.

I appear to be failing at the English language on this particular day, so I'll just clarify: while you may be taking less damage over a long period of time using Counterstance, many of these bosses' ability to do high damage bursts within a short period of time makes it fairly foolish to use (especially if your only healers are mules, which seems to be the case for many).

[Cairthenn]

How is it not worth it? If you have virtually no risk of dying then the only thing it can do is speed up the fight.

I'm not sure if you've been reading at all, but people have been whining fairly frequently about dying, many whilst using Counterstance.

[Darkmagi]

The only boss I would be hesitant to use counterstance on would be HQ hydra, and even then I would likely have more issues dualboxing due to the sheer amount of curing you would be required to do.

[Cairthenn]

I suppose there's a chance it's a bit safer if your only manner of healing is a WHM, but then you'd probably want to be in hybrid builds anyways. I generally have a dualboxed SCH alongside my WHM mule, and with Regen V covering a good bit of the damage taken, I'd rather not put myself at the risk of spike damage to increase my damage output and long-term mitigation slightly.

Edit: Also, post below is another reason. I'm mainly doing Arrapago anyways.

[Vyvian]

Hit rate was 94.75% against nq. and yes I use gaiters. counterstance just took a shit on me that day, on everything.

edit: oh, and that counter rate was including using perfect counter throughout the fight.

I know that feeling...

Khim may be showing lower counter due to use of TP move that inflict status. You can't counter when Terrored, Stunned or Petrified, and Khimera can do all 3. My first fight on MNK I just breezed the first 50% or so when I was solo on it, then for speed the THF started hitting and there comes the tp spam.

[Fake]

I'm not sure if you've been reading at all, but people have been whining fairly frequently about dying, many whilst using Counterstance.

Nope, perfectly capable of reading everything thats been said in this thread. Maybe you just didn't see that there are plenty of people also using CS on the bosses and not dying either.

As Darkmagi said, the only boss hard enough to warrant any real thought is Hydra. None of the other NMs are capable of putting out lethal damage that fast unless you do stupid shit like not erase cackle fast.

[Cairthenn]

I'm not going to argue that you're not allowed to put yourself at higher risk with minimal/low benefit. If you're not having trouble, that's fine. If you are, you should probably change what you're doing. I'm not, so I'll stick with what I'm doing.

[Obsidian]

Can't speak for the rest of you, but all the bosses start out hitting me for ~200 and they only hit harder as the fight goes on (Hydra hits get up to 600-700 by the time it dies). I don't see how you guys are pushing them down to 150 a hit without TPing in hybrid gear, and why would you do that instead of just putting up Counterstance?

[macross]

took 5 min each to kill both hydra last night, they still parsed around sameish hps. 60k for nq and 79k for hq. So they prob just have high hps instead of mega regen. Both spammed bulwark last night so no sub 3 min kills this time hehe.

I just drain2 with dreadspikes up and souleater riding fulltime seigan/third eye on pull, usually breaks a head or two long as I'm not in full DT gear. Add elegy and saboture slow2 and para and blind and he's pretty tame. Still can die though, he does get lukcy big hits in.

[Asymptotic]

Can't speak for the rest of you, but all the bosses start out hitting me for ~200 and they only hit harder as the fight goes on (Hydra hits get up to 600-700 by the time it dies). I don't see how you guys are pushing them down to 150 a hit without TPing in hybrid gear, and why would you do that instead of just putting up Counterstance?

Nothing has hit me that hard on DNC. TP moves generally don't even hit me for 600-700.

[Fake]

I'm not going to argue that you're not allowed to put yourself at higher risk with minimal/low benefit. If you're not having trouble, that's fine. If you are, you should probably change what you're doing. I'm not, so I'll stick with what I'm doing.

Except that aside from the first NQ hydra I fought I haven't had a death in 19 runs, the benefit may not be huge (shorter fight) but the risk isn't really anything to take note of either. I feel like cerb would be more likely to kill me due to attrition if I didn't use CS than the chance of getting killed with it up

[pooter01]

Can't speak for the rest of you, but all the bosses start out hitting me for ~200 and they only hit harder as the fight goes on (Hydra hits get up to 600-700 by the time it dies). I don't see how you guys are pushing them down to 150 a hit without TPing in hybrid gear, and why would you do that instead of just putting up Counterstance?

How hard they hit is exactly why people are concerned about putting counterstance up. Tourbilion can easily do over 1k, sulferous spit can easily do over 1k(with counterstance up), combine either of those moves with unlucky attack rounds and you're looking at a lot of potential hp loss. NQ khim nearly one-shotted my mnk the other day when it popped behind me with counterstance up and triple attacked each for 300+ damage, and the rampart got past counters with a hit as well. That khim fight barely lasted over 2 minutes, and the thf didn't even engage till the last 20 seconds. During that time it only did two tp moves, one of which did 1k+ and knocked me out of sight of the healer(behind a pillar). I was dead before i got back in position again. that was just over 10k damage i took in 2 minutes. as opposed to the HQ where I took 16k dmg in over 5 minutes without counterstance. In that case, counterstance didn't lower the damage I took over time at all.

I do realize that i got incredibly unlucky with my counters that fight, having a rate under 50% when it should have been 70+, but that is just the reason why counterstance can be a risk. I'm thinking of going sam next time instead since I won't be counterstancing the bosses anyway.

[Byrthnoth]

I'm pretty sure all of these boss monsters have enhanced crit rates compared to normal monsters, just for the record.

[Jem]

Except that aside from the first NQ hydra I fought I haven't had a death in 19 runs, the benefit may not be huge (shorter fight) but the risk isn't really anything to take note of either. I feel like cerb would be more likely to kill me due to attrition if I didn't use CS than the chance of getting killed with it up

I agree with Cairthenn here.

I have just as hard a time seeing how people are dying as you do but it's pretty clear from posts in this thread that they are. You personally are not dying so carrying on doing whatever you want. However, some people are dying and for those people Cair is saying that changing to a lower risk strategy is probably required.

It's like I never use PDT or Hybrid gear in Salvage because I've never needed it and have never died as a result of not using it. However there are other people in this thread (and my LS) who swear by it because they die without it. Just by me going 'But I don't use PDT/Hybrid and never die!' doesn't magically mean they now don't die without too.

[Obsidian]

I parsed both Khims today, NQ without counterstance, HQ with. I have no idea how to properly format parser data here so I'll just transcribe the relevant bits. The THF was engaged on the NQ, only ran in to SA the HQ.

Khimaira

Damage taken: 9728
Ability damge taken: 1440 (Dreadstorm for a combined 801, Tourbillion for 639)
Evasion rate: 0
Counter rate: 18.97% (11 counters)
Counter damage: 2019
Fight length: 3:34


Khimaira Prideleader

Damage taken: 8485
Ability damage taken: 2202 (4 Thunderstrikes for 1214, 2 Dreadstorms for 988)
Evasion rate: 4.35% (4 evades)
Counter rate: 67.07% (55 counters)
Counter damage: 8804
Fight length: 5:34

I took less damage overall with Counterstance and did 6k more damage in counters. The only time PDT went on in either fight was during stun/terror, which happened more often on the HQ than the NQ, and because I was being pummelled on the NQ I had cureskin up more frequently which decreased the damage I took by an appreciable amount, and I still took 2000 less melee damage on the HQ than the NQ. Highest single hit I took on the HQ was 431, average was 232. Highest single melee hit I took on the NQ was 356, average hit was 176.

Take that information for what you will.

Edit: Interestingly enough, neither of them landed a crit on me.

[Darkmagi]

It's also not like everyone has a pocket sch on top of a WHM either. I will never take a SCH over a WHM to BR due to the simple fact of floor1. Had about 10+ mins wasted once and almost wiped because I took a sch and didn't have access to stona. That additional damage over time taken without counterstance could be a lot more dangerous to people without an excellent mule or meds.
Edit: I guess /whm would solve the stona issue, but that defeats a large amount of the bonus gained from even bringing a SCH in the first place.