Managing JoL's adds.

[Ulysse]

What would be best between a few teams of melees and a party of blms?

I've seen some linkshells using 5blm + 1 brd to GA the adds and i personally believe it must be the most effective way since you only need one party to make the deal.
But my co-leader says that we should use an alliance of melees.

What do you guys think? What are the pros and cons of each kind of setup?


Sorry if that question seems dumb, i've made a bit of search but didn't get a precise answer about that point.

[Tyche]

an alliance of melees is better than a party of BLMs...18 vs 6. That is soooo efficient. -.-

[Ulysse]

Well um, yeah, i was thinking the same, but...
Maybe it's hard to deal with mp management? Maybe you risk to hit some aerns in the process with aoe and wipe? Maybe you can't always one shot them (resist?) and get killed?
I'm really a noob about that fight so i'm asking.

I've seen a ls fighting it with an alliance of melees and it worked well so i was just wondering if using 36ppl has any advantage when it seems you can just do fine with ~25.

[Kiro]

Not using BLMs? This is blasphemy at it's highest.

[Kaylia]

I don't think "provoke" turn pet off the tank, so having melee pick them off might take a while every time they are popped. They would also need to be in range of JoL's AoE spell to hit them, which can create some serious problem if they get petrified before pulling them.
They arent particularly hard (3k hp i think), but with AoE silence, or shock spike, you would end up taking a lot of dmg.


3 good blm can one shot them (3x1000dmg thundaga), but bring at least 5 for safety issue. We tried once with 4 blm, and ended up wiping to add at 10% after a d/c and one death. Holding it with rr hairpin after and starting back from scratch wasn't particularly fun.

Your strongest blm should sub /nin. Utsu:ichi --> utsu:ni works wonder when you pull hate and all 3 phuabo attack you. Definitively better than stoneskin/blink in this case. Mp regen isn't hard at all, JoL summon once every 3minutes or something, so you have plenty of time to rest. You shouldnt hit Aern if pld stand at the right place, but if it happen, just sleep /manaburn it between add.

[Ulysse]

Thanks very much, it seems more clear already.

I don't think "provoke" turn pet off the tank, so having melee pick them off might take a while every time they are popped. They would also need to be in range of JoL's AoE spell to hit them, which can create some serious problem if they get petrified before pulling them.

Don't you have to pull the adds back to the add-party at all when using blms? You just GA them as soon as they pop?
Tell me if i'm wrong but they'll directly agro the tank. It's not dangerous to let them attack him while charging thundaga? It's like 10~sec of tanking 4mobs, and what if JoL use astral flow? ; ;

[Tyche]

Depending on how many people we have and what jobs are available, we've done everything from having a PLD/WHM, to a NIN, to a WHM pull the summons back to the BLMs.

Here, leet paint skills:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/7672/jolog5.jpg

Protip: If Wherever you kill JoL is where AV will pop and where he will "reset" to when he loses aggro. Kill him outside the circular area where the aerns are (like where the BLMs are in my pic) and he won't link with them.

Edit: Everytime ive seen JoL use astralflow, it was right after he summoned, within seconds. So typically, the tank with hate will usually eat the 3 WSs.

[Ddong]

Have BLM ready to start casting -ga with full buffs right when it is summoned.
Then have the puller pull with diaga away from the tanks towards the BLMs.
Diaga will pull pets off tank.

[Kaylia]

Don't you have to pull the adds back to the add-party at all when using blms? You just GA them as soon as they pop?
Tell me if i'm wrong but they'll directly agro the tank. It's not dangerous to let them attack him while charging thundaga? It's like 10~sec of tanking 4mobs, and what if JoL use astral flow? ; ;

Blmx5 -----PLD----JOL
Blm should never get hit by AoE debuff if they stay close to max casting om pld.

You will see the summoning animation, you just need to have everyone ready and they will die fast. After the phuabo are summoned, they shouldnt have time to attack the pld more than once if they were ready. If needed, you could have a rdm cast diaga1, but I don't see point.

It's 3 mobs, and they hit your pld for 80dmg per attack I think (250-300 with astral flow WS). Nothing really deadly, and even if someone die, it's rarely dramatic.

The real ennemy in this fight is boredom. It has to be the most boring fight in the game for everyone, so it's not uncommong that many people stop paying attention after 50minutes.

[Kaylia]

To compete with tyche drawing skill, I draw the map of our fight. We always pull it at the limit (after that, it use draw in). We generally have all 2-3 tank next to each other to give them additional hp to cure after aga (more cure = more hate).

Blm dd are with the healer, and melee DD are humping it from under. A good idea is to rotate your blm inside alliance, since the one nuking add are always full mp, and probaby bored



http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6385/jolaa6.gif

[Eaglestrike]

My LS usually uses 8-12 melee (whoever that's there that doesn't have blm) and have 3 people pull the adds off. One person is main assist, so 2 tanks hold the mob (ninja or thief) and the melee's just tear through them. They go down quick and easy, though without any evasion gear I did take a bit of damage occasionally when I couldn't get Ichi back up. This lets us keep all blm's on JoL for the fight. We've only recently started though so a more advanced strategy and more testing of how melee fare against JoL will be done.

[Avinor]

We typically let a small ally of melee take the adds since, as with others, all our BLMs are being used on JoL itself. We pull it to the edge like Kaylia's group, but only the tanks and healers are on the outside, the DDs and adds pt are both inside the cul-de-sac area. It might be easier to put the add pt behind the tanks outside, if there aren't any UFOs nearby, since then they wouldn't have to pull adds back across JoL. But then they wouldn't be able to get support from the BLM army if they needed it (i.e. after a delayed Astral).

And yeah, this fight is an epic battle against boredom. Maz tanking was nice, it took less button pushing to keep hate at the limit and you could squeeze another pt in the main alliance if you had the numbers. Pity it was nerfed.

[Kaylia]

There is no Yovra anywhere close to JoL site. The reason we keep everyone on pld side is to prevent add from running too far inside (where aern are). No one has to run after phuabo.


Either way, JoL is extremly easy, so it's hard to have a strategy that fail >_>

[Avinor]

I've seen one of the Yorva drift very close to JoL's hideout before, but they're pretty random. Pretty rare to see them that far south but it can happen.

[Suiram]

We position roughly where Kaylia does, 4-5 BLM + RDM. RDM stonega or banishga them as soon as they pop so they get off tank right away before BLM's -gas land. I'd say if you're not worried about d/cs, 4 blms is safe for phuabos, but you might want 5 for the first 20 min cause xzomits and hpemdes typically take a bit more to die (this isn't to say 3 couldn't do it, just what you'd want for safety if you have it available).

Honestly if you have 8-12 melees you're better off putting them on JoL and let BLMs handle adds. With a BRD melee seem to kill faster than BLMs, and SAMs in particular completely demolish him.

[Kaylia]

I've seen one of the Yorva drift very close to JoL's hideout before, but they're pretty random. Pretty rare to see them that far south but it can happen.

The only time I ever seen a Yovra in the large hpemde area before JoL was when another LS trained 3-4 yovra on us.

I'd say if you're not worried about d/cs, 4 blms is safe for phuabos, but you might want 5 for the first 20 min cause xzomits and hpemdes typically take a bit more to die (this isn't to say 3 couldn't do it, just what you'd want for safety if you have it available).

After wiping with 4blm, I would definitively not recommand going with 4. It's "safe", but there is so much shit that can happen in a 2hours fight

[Suiram]

I could see wiping with 4 to xzomits or hpemdes if you get unlucky at the start. But other than that the only thing that should kill enough blms to cause problems is Astral Flow, which I think he only does once per fight anymore, and 5 blms is just likely gonna mean 5 dead blms if the phuabos are at them when it goes off. Other than that, sure occasionally one BLM will die from time to time if his ga was first to land and another blm is slow to nuke, but even then they can still nuke the next set while weakened, and he summons them so slowly he should be unweak again after two sets.

[Kaylia]

Death usually happened when one blm get resisted on one, phuabo are separated and people are slow to react cause they arent paying attention. Astral flow on /nin isnt that blm. Can survive if you have shadow up.

The "screw up" i was talking about is something like: tank get charmed --> petrifyga on someone in alliance --> 2blm get hit. Stuff like this shouldnt happen, but not everyone always pay attention in a long and easy fight. It usually have no consequence, but it could wipe hurt an alliance where 4 blm are the only DD

[BerenTebogo]

Thanks very much, it seems more clear already.

I don't think "provoke" turn pet off the tank, so having melee pick them off might take a while every time they are popped. They would also need to be in range of JoL's AoE spell to hit them, which can create some serious problem if they get petrified before pulling them.

Don't you have to pull the adds back to the add-party at all when using blms? You just GA them as soon as they pop?
Tell me if i'm wrong but they'll directly agro the tank. It's not dangerous to let them attack him while charging thundaga? It's like 10~sec of tanking 4mobs, and what if JoL use astral flow? ; ;

We've killed like 6-7 JoL now and our messy / long fights were when the adds were just -ga'd by BLM right off the bat

First change we made was PLD/NIN + PLD/NIN + NIN/DRK (me) were all sharing hate on JoL (either our first or second JoL I can't remember, we were dumb) and one PLD/NIN just wasn't able to keep up hate with me and the main PLD and our BLMs were getting owned + tanks getting owned by adds.

I dropped after dying to lose all hate, I dropped ally and pt'd up with an extra BRD and pulled with poisonga from /drk sub, was always enough to pull all 3 mobs without claiming them purple to the BLMs (as I was out of ally and our alliance for JoL is gonna be as follows)

Ally:
Pt1
PLD/NIN
PLD/NIN
COR/xxx
BRD/WHM
WHM/xxx

pt2
BLM
BLM
BLM
BRD
RDM
BLM or COR

pt3
BLM
BLM
RDM
BRD
rotating MNK / kraken DRK
RNG (relic bow)

Have a few THF sitting around who pop in from time to time and a few other assorted jobs in case people die / blm needs to go afk or something.

and now have set pull pt of BRD RDM NIN/RDM (diaga) and whoever else they feel like throwing in the 3 slots to chat with inbetween pops

It's very easy once you get the hang of it, but no doubt the first JoL's your LS does will suck and go very very slowly.

And I'm sure somebody is going to comment on it so:

At any given event we usually have 6-7 people who can come 75 BRD yet we live and die by our RDM attendance. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

[Baha]

We do it with a melee alliance,else they'd get bored anyway. ;p
RDM/BLM aga's them for pull, and then melee just kill them, they're not very hard. BLM is probably better if you have them to spare, but we didn't at the time. :3