Escha - Ru'Aun thread

[GilgameshBoshi]

carmine hands +1
path D
rattk20
mattk12
stTP6

[Teryu]

Is it possible to solo Warder or Love on BLU, BLM or SMN?

[Fwahm]

BLUs and BLMs with good enough nuking gear can do it. Have August/Amchuchu tank, Apururu/Yoran-Oran heal, a red mage to refresh/haste/enfeeble, and stand out of charm range while engaged. Whenever he pops adds, AoE them down, and chip away at WoL at range between pops.

I imagine that well geared SMN can probably do it with Astral Conduit zerg, but I don't really know much about SMN's capabilities solo these days.

[Teryu]

Ah ok, I'll try that thanks.

[Tachi]

A well geared SMN can quickly kill Warder of Love with Astral Conduit Flaming Crush yes, usually it takes me 4~6 BPs without buffs. I would advice to Sleepga or kill (with AF or Apogee Thunderspark) the first wave of adds at start.

[Mojo]

Has anybody tried using Threnody II songs on the higher (Kirin/Courage) content? Seems handy (perhaps more than Idris languor) if you could get the to spell to land without ES.

[EjinCaitsith]

You'd need lang/focus in the first place to even have a prayer of landing it, but with focus/lang, BLM shouldn't be resisting, anyways. General resists are actually not an issue on either Kirin or AV with focus/lang: the problem is the 'resist wall' that you'll run into if you have any more than 1 mage nuking per window(generally allows for 2 guaranteed unresisted nukes per MB). Any additional magic accuracy from gear or Frazzle/Threnody/ect seem to have no influence on the wall, with the only thing showing drastic results being Rayke from RUN(way more important for Kirin zerg, not very important at all for AV).

Speaking of AV, we kind of put it on hold due to having issues with getting the right people on at the right time, but we were finally able to try again recently. Surprisingly, we got it around 30% with over 10min remaining, but then it summoned 6 wyverns and used soul voice shortly after, which caused all 6 wyverns to start using charm along with it. We couldn't even DoT it and wait for the 3min soul voice to wear, since, like old AV, if it goes passive it loses all DoT. Honestly, benediction and soul voice(ONLY when wyverns are out) are the only cockblocks/run-ender for the fight itself. Even if a RDM is able to silence it when it uses SV, you'll still be screwed if wyverns are out and benediction will most likely add too much extra time to deal the damage it healed.

[Mojo]

Is it actually a magic resist? I always thought it was more of a flat out damage reduction that quickly decays. It didn't seem to align with the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. resists that you get with actual magic resists. Either way, has there been a serious attempt to land Threnody without Languor (capped JP and a good magic accuracy set)? There's also the option of opening with Languor, getting Frazzle and Threnody on, and then switching to Malaise. I am curious as GEO BRD seems potentially more ideal than GEO GEO in some situations. Even without Marcato, Threnody II is almost twice the resist reduction as Idris Languor. An additional 80-170 magic resist reduction is nothing to shrug off. If Languor floors magic resists, then sure it wouldn't matter in that context, but you would also lose out on other things bard can bring to the table. It's certainly worth considering. The only AV win I've seen has a bard in it. I am skeptical of any anecdotal assertion regarding game mechanics, especially a one with binary implications (i.e. it won't make a difference.) The history of FFXI culture has been plagued with these things. Not trying to be rude or disrespectful, I've just gotten to the point where I don't believe much of anything unless I see good data for it.

[Sechs]

You'd need lang/focus in the first place to even have a prayer of landing it

A good BRD with a good build dualwielding Carnwenhan+Kali can probably land it with SV + NiTro.
If you got Carns and land it with SV+Nitro the effect should last quite a lot of time.
Alternatively you have the ES route, just like we used to do on Khimaira in the old days at 75 lol.
Pretty confident NiTro + Eleseal will allow you to land it.

I have mixed feelings for threnodies. In theory they should provide bigger numbers (single element) than Dunna-Languor, but in reality I always get the impression it's weaker than that, but that's just me I guess.

[EjinCaitsith]

Is it actually a magic resist? I always thought it was more of a flat out damage reduction that quickly decays. It didn't seem to align with the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. resists that you get with actual magic resists. Either way, has there been a serious attempt to land Threnody without Languor (capped JP and a good magic accuracy set)? There's also the option of opening with Languor, getting Frazzle and Threnody on, and then switching to Malaise. I am curious as GEO BRD seems potentially more ideal than GEO GEO in some situations. Even without Marcato, Threnody II is almost twice the resist reduction as Idris Languor. An additional 80-170 magic resist reduction is nothing to shrug off. If Languor floors magic resists, then sure it wouldn't matter in that context, but you would also lose out on other things bard can bring to the table. It's certainly worth considering. The only AV win I've seen has a bard in it. I am skeptical of any anecdotal assertion regarding game mechanics, especially a one with binary implications (i.e. it won't make a difference.) The history of FFXI culture has been plagued with these things. Not trying to be rude or disrespectful, I've just gotten to the point where I don't believe much of anything unless I see good data for it.

The 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 scaling becomes prominent when you have 4+ mages nuking at the same time in a very short window. In a sense, the resist wall could very well just be forced resists and that may as well be considered -MDT since it has the same outcome. It may explain why Rayke seems to impacting it so much, cutting that special -MDT down that the wall gives by a significant amount. With that said, I still notice nukes scaling down even with Rayke, but to a much lesser degree.

As for GEO vs. BRD, I think the people who have tried this would agree, you most certainly do not want to try these without at least 2 GEOs. BRD is certainly optional for AV and I can assure you in the JP win that the only significant thing the BRD did was SV ballads, which are not necessary from our experience with the fight. I could post our MB Death numbers as evidence that Lang/Focus was sufficient and threnody was not required at all(and would even surpass the number they were putting up).

On that note, I've watched at least 3 AV attempts by JPs on Ragnarok and I've noticed that, at the very least, Benediction seems to be extremely rare, most of the time taking over 20min to even use it once. Charm seems to happen at least once every fight, but I've not seen it particularly spammed across our attempts and what I've seen from JP attempts. Still, fact remains, this fight requires more luck than skill to complete.

I have mixed feelings for threnodies. In theory they should provide bigger numbers (single element) than Dunna-Languor, but in reality I always get the impression it's weaker than that, but that's just me I guess.

I'll second this. I specifically remember seeing those threnody numbers being posted and thinking "wow, that seems amazing" then trying it shortly after on Vagary or Escha NMs and being extremely disappointed. Definitely not amazing testing or anything, but it certainly wasn't a groundbreaking difference.

[Tachi]

The "resist wall" seems to be a straight reduction in damage. I did a small test with Apogee Meteor Strike 2 weeks ago.

Target : Ironbeak Inguza
First Meteor Strike : 11495 (normal damage)
Second : 4596 (-60% dmg)

Rayke (1 Rune)
11495
8046 (-30%)

Rayke (3 Runes)
11495
8046 (-30%)

Gambit + Rayke
14943
10460

Rayke seems to either cut the damage reduction by half or to remove a 30% dmg penality... but this is a very small data set, I didn't even check how significant the damage reduction would be with more Meteor Strikes on this NM. I just wanted to get an idea of Rayke's effectiveness.

[Loire]

A good BRD with a good build dualwielding Carnwenhan+Kali can probably land it with SV + NiTro.
If you got Carns and land it with SV+Nitro the effect should last quite a lot of time.
Alternatively you have the ES route, just like we used to do on Khimaira in the old days at 75 lol.
Pretty confident NiTro + Eleseal will allow you to land it.

I have mixed feelings for threnodies. In theory they should provide bigger numbers (single element) than Dunna-Languor, but in reality I always get the impression it's weaker than that, but that's just me I guess.

I currently have no problems landing Threnody II with Myar's bard with only benefiting from langour, crepe and gear since she is usually in the tank party and not mage. Typically since we are burning one hours I will wait and use soul voice for the Kouryu portion but during Kirin it lands just fine without that or NiTro.

[Sechs]

I'll second this. I specifically remember seeing those threnody numbers being posted and thinking "wow, that seems amazing" then trying it shortly after on Vagary or Escha NMs and being extremely disappointed. Definitely not amazing testing or anything, but it certainly wasn't a groundbreaking difference.

Someone (Protey?) did some very accurate tests concerning Threnody and Threnody T2 some time ago. He used the in-game interface for elemental resistance to check it, so the numbers he came up with are absolutely accurate, there's no discussing that.
My point is that if you go by those numbers, the single element magic eva- a T2 threnody gives (with Ghorn) is slightly stronger than a Dunna Languor (all elements). On paper it sounds balanced (all elements one should be weaker than a single element one, no?) but in reality threnodies never seem to make that much of a difference.

I mean, if you use languor you can immediately eyeball a noticeable damage difference in your nukes or stick rate in your debuffs.
With threnodies it's barely noticeable with T1s and... well it IS noticeable on T2, but it never seemed to me as powerful as a Dunna Languor. If on a certain mobs we remove Languor and use a specific threnody for the element my mages are nuking, the final damage output is not the same, or at least that's what they claim from their respective scoreboard, but maybe there are other factors at play, I dunno.

I even hypothized that maybe formulae are a bit more complex and -1 magic eva doesn't correspond 1:1 to -1 elemental resistance. Dunno, maybe it's just a bias of mine, after all I have no solid data to support it but just personal and inconclusive impressions...

[Loire]

Personally I've never looked at elemental resist as = magic evasion. Even in the past before we had access to magic evasion gear it was stated that magic evasion was a hidden stat that was corresponded to your current level.

[Sechs]

I always assumed M.Eva to be the same as elemental resist, but applying to all elements and non-element too. I think a lot of people still believe it to work that way.
But if it really was a simple as that, then Threnody2 should definitely have a much bigger impact than it currently does, imho.

[dasva]

Wont really know until someone sits down and does a decent sample size test. Until then it's more of a doesn't seem that that strong etc

[Mojo]

The "resist wall" seems to be a straight reduction in damage. I did a small test with Apogee Meteor Strike 2 weeks ago.

Target : Ironbeak Inguza
First Meteor Strike : 11495 (normal damage)
Second : 4596 (-60% dmg)

Rayke (1 Rune)
11495
8046 (-30%)

Rayke (3 Runes)
11495
8046 (-30%)

Gambit + Rayke
14943
10460

Rayke seems to either cut the damage reduction by half or to remove a 30% dmg penality... but this is a very small data set, I didn't even check how significant the damage reduction would be with more Meteor Strikes on this NM. I just wanted to get an idea of Rayke's effectiveness.

Was this with with or without Futhark Boots? That seems quite potent.

In regards to magic resistance and elemental evasion, I don't remember any testing to determine whether a 1:1 relationship exists. It's certainly possible it's not 1:1, or that there is some cap or piece wise/non linear behavior. Either way, I remain skeptical that it is or isn't useful or a viable Languor replacement without hard data. I wonder if JPs have done any testing (it's a tall order and I don't think anybody has thoroughly poked that stuff for several years).

[Draylo]

Is AA EV just random or does something trigger Benediction? Seemed to spam it endlessly in the fight we did.

[Tachi]

Was this with with or without Futhark Boots? That seems quite potent.

With but I have already determined that Futhark Boots adds 1 second per merit level.

Is AA EV just random or does something trigger Benediction? Seemed to spam it endlessly in the fight we did.

It's not random, Benediction occurs when someone cure the tank for around 800 HP or more (very surprising behavior).

[Sechs]

Until then it's more of a doesn't seem that that strong etc

True... could be bias.
But then again so many people sharing the thought leads me to think it might not be just bias this time.
But in the end, yes, would need some sample to be sure about it.