Herald's Gaiters

[Hakamaru]

The single best use I've made of my gaiters was my only Fafhogg claim. Some LS claimed a Nidhogg that went sour on them for one reason or another. It ended up in a CFH flail-fest. I escaped my party a minute or two before that happened and started booking my ass back to DA. The only people keeping up with me were W. Leg PLDs from other shells. When we go to the pit they were waiting for some support while I didn't studder... hit ES, jumped in the pit and slept me a Nidhogg.

Aside from that, they basically save me exp in dynamis, help me in stupid assaults, make "like the wind" more soloable on SMN and help me run down kirin after I summon diabolos. I give them out to WHMs at Vrtra and sometimes our Dynamis puller (he was MNK for a while, now he levelled WHM).

Really the key isn't giving them out to the person with the perfect job. Rather, give them to someone who will put them in the hands of the right person at any given raid.

[Maximilianbob]

You don't understand a god damn thing at all... the whole point is that BLMs DO NOT need Gaiters to kite. Well if you are a complete moron and happen to nuke Fortitude when its standing right next to you then maybe you will need em to survive, but if you have the sense to cancel your nuke if the NM comes close while you are casting then you won't have to worry and can just recast from a safe distance. I guess its fun to play w/ no sense and just nuke and run whenever you feel like it, but the whole argument is that gaiters are not needed if you happen to pull hate and need to kite.

edit:

In this case it did, and Andrinne is too far away.

You don't need gaiters to outrun a vorpal blade... lol

As you can tell from the screenshot things were pretty confused, but you know apparently the tanks are complete morons or something and were confused - they even lost hate to a blm, heaven forbid amirite?

I mean seriously...you guys have this much trouble believing running faster can actually save you hp?

Anyway aurik, as far as this discussion is concerned with it ended the moment you seriously think soloing is DOT only - have you seriously soloed ANYTHING? lol. hint: speed enhancement helps red mages and black mages do something that speeds up the soloing process and makes it far safer and enjoyable. Duoing anything serious is absolutely the same way - more speed makes for better nuking and faster positioning. But then maybe you're stuck in 2005...

Wait a key part of avesta's soloing was, in fact, nuking in order to supplement DOT, where he could effective land unresisted nukes. Drat.

[Suiram]

Ix'drk can be done solo by using the zoneline, but it's not time-efficient to pop him with 1 person so rarely is done that way.

Ix'drk lowest I've ever done is duo (took forever because 9 or so reraises lol) but I have no doubt it could be done solo. However, rather than using the zoneline, better just to use zone to seperate him from the Qn's, then train him to a tower room and kill him there. Same method as MNK but easier cause he only does one swing per attack round and stops every 20 seconds to cast. Just watch out for Glacial Splitter.

Also not really hard to pop him solo. In fact on our full-LS sea farming days I consider it a waste of resources to have everyone there, and just put 3-4 BLMs on popping him and send everyone else to farm M chips or pop DRG.

[aurik]

@maximillian

Nothing you can cast while kiting gravity-immune mobs will rival your DOT damage, to the point where those spells are pretty much irrelevant.

Or are you gonna tell me that when you solo ix', you do more nuke damage than slip damage because you can outrun him slightly? Not likely rofl.

@Suiram

Yea the impracticality of popping drk or drg solo means that it's a moot point as to "minimum" player counts. You can kill them easily with the pop group, as long as you have one person with a dot spell.

[Kaeko]

Actually Aurik, when I solo MNK I usually do more damage with Drain than DoTs. With extremely high Dark Magic Skill you can get a consistant 200-300 on it every 50 seconds. Speed up actually will help damage considerably on some things - not on big nukes, but on small things like drain. When you solo, the mob is always after you so it's hard to get off 4 spells etc. w/o gravity/bind (which cant be used on some things). However, things like drain cast fast enough that you can almost avoid getting hit.

The biggest argument is usually you cannot run while nuking so they won't help you, but actually this isn't 100% true. As most BLMs know, you can start running just moments before you cast and it will still land (gaining 2-3 steps). Even better, you can bypass that stop/casting animation if you 'blink' your toon by gear switch timing and actually run DURING the casting phase. Using this trick, you can gain distance on mobs while casting - incredibly useful for harder solos. Because of this, gaiters play a larger roll in DD as well - because they give more leeway on when you get hit while casting, they can enhance your DD when pushing limits. I'm not saying every BLM does this but I am saying some do and it's just ridiculously strong.

[Seditedi]

um... i'm not saying they don't help, I'm just saying they make the shitty BLM half decent because they aren't getting killed due to the movement speed increase... but I am saying they aren't necessary to kite something like Fortitude or Ix'aerns.