Someone brought up an interesting thought today.
Namely, the questions being
- Can Fairy Ring, Nan'tina, and Sctemqestcint be killed with 12 people each?
- If not, how about 18?
Here's the map I have, and while it doesn't show all the statues blocking the NMs, it's fairly accurate with regards to actual NM locations and flies.
http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~ffxi/ff_valkurm_01.jpg
A couple of things make me more inclined to give thought to these questions:
1) The 3 Nightmare Flies are positioned almost eerily "on the way" to the above 3 NMs.
2) There are no serious obstacles such as huge groups of statues that would prevent a group of 12 from reaching the NMs. Only the strength of the NMs themselves would be called into question.
3) Experience has shown that groups are more efficient in small numbers, even though they obviously put out less damage per second.
I had a couple of ideas when pondering over this question about if it's possible to do the NMs with 12 people each. For starters, everyone always puts a BRD in the tank party. While this is nice for giving Ballad to a PLD (cue cliched and jokealreadyslain People still use Paladins? response), and Haste for a NIN, these BRDs could be used in melee parties as well, almost doubling their damage output. If you want NINs tanking, put them in a melee party and they can still get haste. If PLD is your main tank, they don't need Ballad in Dynamis - Valkurm because fights are extremely spread out, and when fights do happen they are fairly short.
So, I think if this is doable, I think it would require a revamp of the traditional dynamis party configurations. In particular, parties should be modelled more after how melee burn parties are organized, a lot of focus should be given to buffing the melees, and there should not be the notion of a "tank party" at all. If PLD is tanking he can be in a melee PT and doesn't need Ballad since Sub Boss fights will be short, if NIN is tanking he can be in a melee PT and get Minuet/March just like all the other melees. So I think something like
Typical Melee Party
Melee
Melee
Melee
Melee
WHM, RDM, or SMN
BRD
Black mage Party
Black Mage
Black Mage
Black Mage
Black Mage
Black Mage
Black Mage
for Fairy Ring, and 2 "Traditional Melee Party" configurations for the other 2 NMs. The strategy, then, would be to immediately split up into 3 strike teams upon entrance, each team kill 1 Nightmare Fly, then proceed to the corresponding NM that you are already "on the way" to. Kill those, gather together back at the Mega Boss, and kill it.
Thoughts? I think it's kind of lame that people are still using the same strategy that was discovered about a week after Dynamis - Valkurm was even introduced into the game, and since then nobody has given an ounce of thought to making it more efficient.