Salvage DD selection

[Odog]

My salvage group is 8-12 people depending who shows up.

The question I have been asking myself is how can I get the most DD out of our setup on runs where we are farming 35 pieces (not boss runs)

3 people that always show up for DD slots are:
person 1) Ridill war, Blu, Nin
person 2) Ridill war, Mnk/nin (no relic knuckles but well geared and merited)
person 3) Ridill war, Relic G. Axe war

Currently I have been having then come
Person 1) Nin (mistake and I am changing him to Ridill War for the future)
Person 2) Mnk/Nin (would ridill war be better?)
Person 3) Relic G. Axe War (Is this really better than a Ridill?)


Due to our member setup we are usually mage based and have 2-4 Blms, 1-2Whms, 1-2 Rdms, and 1 Brd to fill out the group.

Obviously we are are a mage heavy group and rely on blm damage heavily on later floors and have been very successful but I am wanting to make sure we are getting the most bang for our buck on the 3 mele that we take.

Thanks for your thoughts

anticipating the first comment, yes we have been doing Fafnir/NH for 4years+ pretty much religously and work our schedule around that for the other events

[Lordwafik]

If you're just going for NM then you can ridill rape everything. It's not a big deal anymore in regards to mnk because the first chest made it way too easy for anything to matter really.

[Odog]

thanks^^

Yeah, to be honest we did very little salvage before the update (lazy slobs I know...)

yours and auriks as well as some others LJ's have been most helpful in our salvaging thus far... You guys as well as all the people posting useful info on here speed the learning curve tremendously i'm sure compared to learning most things the hard way. Thanks again!

Any thoughts on if relic G axe really >>> Ridill? I'm guessing not alot out there to compare with and since it isnt my relic i guess just let the user decide lol

[Max™]

Well, on the one hand, Relic Gaxe takes 1 slot to unlock, Main weapon.

Ridill takes Main Weapon, sub job, sub weapon, since I'd assume you'd be Rid/Joy or Man/Rid.

Mnk just punches stuff happily with whatever you give them.

Everything unlocked, no, I don't think Bravura is going to beat out Man/Rid, the sword is just retarded.

Bravura would be fun, and I recall hearing about 2h weapons being very nice since they're generally A+ skill, and while all your junk is locked up, its a bit easier to kick ass with them.

[Wizerd]

Bring Ridill WAR x2, MNK for Arrapago, simply because of Qutrubs and Bones. MNK won't need subjob since you'll probably be giving the first 3 SJs to WARs and a RDM at least.

Any other area, I'd say just do 3 Ridill WAR. Great Axe might be fun but Ridill will probably outdamage it even without subjob unlocked. I've never seen Relic Great Axe in action though.

Edit: you have no THFs in your group?

[Amele]

only issue with a mostly naked ridill is the accuracy and attack gap between it and an A+ weapon. (edit: which may not be significant, since we've had success with ~200-230 skill h2h users supplementing our monks pre-patch with no obvious accuracy problems)

If the guy wants to use his Bravura I say go for it: it's not like it's going to be obviously worse than a ridill in the sorts of situations you end up in in salvage.

that said: monks = not mandatory now? I'm putting a group together since my ls has stopped running it (a week before the patch? gg my ls -.- ) and I'm having issues locating interested monks.. so if I can go without now, I may just do that.

[Amastacia]

The skill gap would be a problem...

if the first floor mobs didn't have basically zero Def and nearly no Eva.

Additionally, when you get a poor start (1 mage with magic, no MP cell) it can be really stressful to keep up healing on multiple DDs. Bravura will cause a lot more hate shifting due to large damage spikes. Ridill is smaller, more frequent hits that still provide a ton of damage over time, but are less prone to pulling hate.

One of the things that keeps life so smooth for us is that Aurik gets weapons early on and he's the only one who generally gets Haste/Phalanx. Most of the damage ends up focused on him and it's really easy to manage both the damage he takes and the stray bits others take. A counter-tanking MNK with Phalanx turns the first floor of any zone into a joke, and provides a much sturdier tank than a naked WAR.

The one time we gave our Ridill WAR weapons + subjob right off the bat he turned into a massive MP sink (brick-wall Eva, no Counter, etc.) and it was really stressful keeping everyone alive.

Frankly, I don't see why it's worth hurrying to throw subjob cells at Ridill WARs until either they have magic cells, or enough mages have magic cells to keep up with the damage they'll take.

That said, I'd still take MNK/NIN and 2x Ridill WAR. Give the MNK and 1 WAR initial weapon unlocks so the MNK can tank, next weapon to the other WAR (if one WAR has h2h capped, they can wait since WAR has enough h2h skill to work with). With just Ridill and Vorpal Blade, a good MNK should still be doing most of the tanking (especially if they get the first Opacus for Counterstance/Asuran) until you have enough support and cells on hand to make full-blast Ridill WARs survivable.

[Odog]

Edit: you have no THFs in your group?

I forgot to mention that the guy with ridill war and relic GAxe also is usually forced to come as Th2,3,4 for us.

We have one other taru thf that when he comes will play TH4 spot and allow the other guy to stay on war. Interesting that the taru we use for thf whevever he comes also has a ridill to use.

I got to thinking and out of the 12 people that do salvage or have done salvage with us 6 have a ridill (crazy blue sword fever i guess)

[Chupunpupun]

DD
DD
MNK
THF
RNG - 1 or 2
BLM - 1 or 2: depends if you are doing bhoot or not
RDM
WHM
BRD

You don't want too many mages in Arrapago or else you're wasting time getting magic cells. But Generally, BLM doesn't fair so good in salvage in terms of survivability.

[Odog]

Getting 7-9 Magic cells on Arrapago is easy and fast for us since we all carry sneak/invis items for the floor and pick the Lamia apart before leaving the floor. Then on 3rd Floor the Mele party works on bones/HP cells while the 3-4Blms Go start off with AM2 on QQTH and send him back to the mele who will Dot him and send him ba ck to us. Works very well for us and gets us off the 3rd floor at about the 35min mark. Blms also make quick work of the gears on the 5th floor from my experience. Easy to stun all restoral with this many too. I guess when it all comes down to it there is not one cookie cut out way to do a salvage zone and this has been a nice set-up for us.

Thanks for all the advice. I think our 3 DD's will be Mnk, War, War and Thf of course. With the rest of the setup able to be very flexable depending on who we have.

[Kaslo]

Well, on the one hand, Relic Gaxe takes 1 slot to unlock, Main weapon.

Ridill takes Main Weapon, sub job, sub weapon, since I'd assume you'd be Rid/Joy or Man/Rid.

Mnk just punches stuff happily with whatever you give them.

Everything unlocked, no, I don't think Bravura is going to beat out Man/Rid, the sword is just retarded.

Bravura would be fun, and I recall hearing about 2h weapons being very nice since they're generally A+ skill, and while all your junk is locked up, its a bit easier to kick ass with them.

durrr weapon and sub both come from weapons cell, so just need weapons and SJ, and the level of the mobs are early in a war just using ridill mainhand without a sub weapon from SJ will still vorpal the hell out of things.

[Terrifyingstorm]

Bring Ridill WAR x2, MNK for Arrapago, simply because of Qutrubs and Bones.

You mean to tell me, ppl still farm Qutrubs??? lol...




talk about wasting time... valuable time at that. You can sufficently mass farm every NM in Arrapago with 2MNKs and a WAR, in your case... use a MNK, and 2 ridill wars lol. You don't need to farm Qutrub ever, they suck, there drops are pure, shit, so why waste the time, when you know incus cells drop later... and with the patch.. your chances of this, just went up 70%... get to crackin, Arrapago is a cake walk now, 35s are a joke;

[Almalexia]

35s are a joke

THEN HOW COME I'M NOT LAUGHING?

[Wizerd]

Bring Ridill WAR x2, MNK for Arrapago, simply because of Qutrubs and Bones.

You mean to tell me, ppl still farm Qutrubs??? lol...




talk about wasting time... valuable time at that. You can sufficently mass farm every NM in Arrapago with 2MNKs and a WAR, in your case... use a MNK, and 2 ridill wars lol. You don't need to farm Qutrub ever, they suck, there drops are pure, shit, so why waste the time, when you know incus cells drop later... and with the patch.. your chances of this, just went up 70%... get to crackin, Arrapago is a cake walk now, 35s are a joke;

The hell are you talking about? You gimp your melees that much? Walahra Turban makes a difference. Also, if you go with 3 melees, are you telling me you make one of the MNKs go without weapons until after the QQTHs? We always go north path on 3F so we don't kill any Qutrubs past 1F. Also,

"talk about wasting time... valuable time at that."

Valuable time... to do what? We already kill all 6 NMs with 6-7 people the way we do it. The hell more is there to do? Can't kill the boss with that little if you gimp yourself on the first floors.

Guess what, we kill Skeletons on 1F until our MNKs get their Black Belts also, even if we get 10 HP cells. The run goes so much smoother if you spend time gearing up and then breeze through the NMs.

[Max™]

durrr weapon and sub both come from weapons cell, so just need weapons and SJ, and the level of the mobs are early in a war just using ridill mainhand without a sub weapon from SJ will still vorpal the hell out of things.

Dur, guess how much salvage I've done personally (been leveling subs/a couple new jobs/on break since it came out) and figured since SE likes to be dicks, they'd require an unlock for Main AND Sub weapon, wonder why I'd think that huh?

[Amele]

durrr weapon and sub both come from weapons cell, so just need weapons and SJ, and the level of the mobs are early in a war just using ridill mainhand without a sub weapon from SJ will still vorpal the hell out of things.

Dur, guess how much salvage I've done personally (been leveling subs/a couple new jobs/on break since it came out) and figured since SE likes to be dicks, they'd require an unlock for Main AND Sub weapon, wonder why I'd think that huh?

actually, I think without exception (watch there be one just to screw with this comment ) the equipment unlocks are all 2 slots.

what's funny is, you got the cell count right (3) even if you got the slots wrong, so I don't know why Kaslo jumped you so hard (weapon, subjob, magic - I am *not* curing a mostly naked, shadowless, ridill war who probably only has 500 HP if you expect me to have any MP left over after 2minutes, thanks much)

[nivlakian]

(watch there be one just to screw with this comment )

Hands and body ;x

[Kaslo]

durrr weapon and sub both come from weapons cell, so just need weapons and SJ, and the level of the mobs are early in a war just using ridill mainhand without a sub weapon from SJ will still vorpal the hell out of things.

Dur, guess how much salvage I've done personally (been leveling subs/a couple new jobs/on break since it came out) and figured since SE likes to be dicks, they'd require an unlock for Main AND Sub weapon, wonder why I'd think that huh?

Well I'm sorry but I expect people who are gonna give information to at least know what they are talking about.

And yeah they can be somewhat of an MP sink without magic but a phalnax and regen and it's not so bad. Any DD is going to be getting hit for awhile until they get shadows, I have learned to deal with it.

[Ferien]

With regards to Ridill vs Bravura, wouldn't you be best off having the WAR start the fight off with Metatron Torment for the Def- (and possible -Eva proc from Bravura's standard hits) and then switch to Ridill?

[Acturus]

35s are a joke

THEN HOW COME I'M NOT LAUGHING?

It's not funny "ha-ha," but more like funny... sad.