Soloing + Epicness

[Brill Weave]

Not that it's extremely hardcore or anything but I remember soloing Novv the Whitehearted as Pld/Nin back in the day. /shamed

[Xavierus]

SMN can also solo a fair number of NMs. It may not be as action packed as some, but avoiding links/agro while conserving MP and hoping to god that mob doesnt reach between casts adds a certain degree of fun to it.

[Kaeko]

NIN/PUP Automaton cures don't count as magic aggro so you can get yourself cured without magic aggroing bombs. This is why Gold could truly solo it and someone like Avesta had to have someone watch for bombs for him on RDM/NIN.

I dunno if you could do this NIN/DNC - he did this solo before WotG.

[ninjafox]

I'd heard of a war, I think it was Butcher who solo'd Bonnacon b4

[Tsuko_Asura]

NIN/PUP Automaton cures don't count as magic aggro so you can get yourself cured without magic aggroing bombs. This is why Gold could truly solo it and someone like Avesta had to have someone watch for bombs for him on RDM/NIN.

I dunno if you could do this NIN/DNC - he did this solo before WotG.

Which is, subsequently, why I'll never have an Ash Dragon under my belt. I don't know anyone who likes me enough to kill my adds for hours. >_>

[The Stig]

Even so, aren't Ash Dragon's TP moves deadly? And will probably one shot the automaton (Body Slam...?)

I suppose with full subtle blow + evasion it shouldn't be too bad, but I am really really interested all of a sudden. How long would a NIN/PUP take ... ?

[ferigor]

I'd heard of a war, I think it was Butcher who solo'd Bonnacon b4

I've soloed bonnacon a few times as nin/thf and sam/nin. He's not that hard, I think he's only like, 64? Snort can be rough to deal with, but I'd just use the Milk that drops off the buffaloes and turn around until you recover.

[Avé]

While I haven't done anything major, my most epic solo was as a 50RDM/BLM doing the quest "A Bitter Past". It took me nearly 45 minutes to kill both those orcs in melee mode. I remember the fellow npc's had just came out and I needed to put my indomitable rdm to the test. That was probably one of the most exhilarating moments in my FFXI history.

[Maliciousmisery]

I've soloed the Blade: Ku WSNM on DNC/NIN; It took around 35 mins. to kill.
I have soloed countless amounts of NMs on SMN, but they are never epic fights; just very boring.

[Lordwafik]

The topic is "Epic solo" not "What have you solod that is quite mediocre and nobody cares about"

[Aurara]

soloing Bionic Bug as blm/rdm. Seems pretty difficult.

[stewie]

My GUBA is all of Gold's NIN solos I believe.

[Metah]

Everyone I told thought it was pretty epic when I soloed both Miser Murphy and Guardian Statue as RDM59 and RDM62 respectively back some 4 years ago? Maybe even 5 now I guess, its gonna be 2009 pretty quick. Guardian Statue was some of the most intense shit ever for me, I remember getting down to 11 HP at one point with only enough MP left for Poison 1 and Convert was down. What actually saved my life was Poison 1 and spamming Mulsum, a ton of Mulsum.

Spoiler: show

My subjob was also White Mage, I didn't have Black Mage fully leveled at the time and I didn't want to wait, so I didn't have elemental debuffs or Elemental Seal.

[CelinaAlexander]

My GUBA is all of Gold's NIN solos I believe.

When I say epic, that's what I'm talking about, that Fenrir solo was epic. RDMs need to stop getting so offended, I didn't say sleep/grav/terrain/pathing/whatever else and nuking isn't impressive in some cases (Seiryu comes to mind) but it's not very fun to do. I have a level 75 RDM that I use for a lot of things that I simply can't do on other jobs, but it's not fun for me, and editing a video with some rock in the background just makes it look even more boring unless you speed it up by like 50x.

If RDMs didn't have their signature hat, style would be completely lost on them.

[Kaeko]

It's really opinion.

You seem to preferentially prefer solos that involve meleeing and straight tanking. Those can certainly be difficult but the kiting/nuke variety can be equally and sometimes more challenging than the ones you seem to deem 'epic'.

Almost all the most difficult solos involve some sort of special planning in addition to near mistake free play. If you study how some of them (of any job) macro and use their moves, you'll see how fast they react to things as well. I'm not saying doing ultra hard FFXI solos is rocket science, but I would say there's nothing inherently more 'epic' about melee solos than mage solos.

Also, by your logic, I have a hard time seeing how someone using straight tank melee solos is cooler than say someone doing kiting half the fight then nuking half the fight - like the 2 Avesta ones I pointed out. One of them is even level capped and he only gets Utsu:Ichi...

[Tsuko_Asura]

I'm not entirely sure if it meets your standards for 'epic', but I have yet to see anyone recreate my Gessho or Diabolos kills. Though, the former was done as RDM/NIN, so I suppose it doesn't count.

[CelinaAlexander]

I'm not entirely sure if it meets your standards for 'epic', but I have yet to see anyone recreate my Gessho or Diabolos kills. Though, the former was done as RDM/NIN, so I suppose it doesn't count.

Well, Gessho is pretty epic, how did you do it?

[Thorny]

Spam bind and gravity with DoTs most likely, I duoed it like that and it wasn't the least bit difficult(annoying though, stupid ninja traits).. however, plenty of RDM fights are toe-to-toe:
3 examples of ones I've done personally are Vulpangue, Observant Zekka, and Cactrot Rapido. I've also done Voluptuous Vivian, Ancient Goobbue, Fenrir, Charybdis etc on Ninja, and I'd say the RDM ones are much more involved fights. They're longer, have more risk to have something go wrong, and require more 'skill'.. I don't see how they're less epic.

[ZhanAsura]

If you think RDM solos are boreing, and you have a RDM that you can go solo on, go solo VV or Rapido, then come back here and tell us how boreing and unepic it was.

[drwaffles]

Or Big Bomb straight-tanked, now that is damn hard. Obviously Suzaku is the baddest of the bad, but Big Bomb is a nasty bastard as well. Those are two examples of fights where you need to be constantly switching between magical and physical damage reduction in addition to keeping yourself buffed, the mob debuffed and dealing with double-attacks from mobs that really fucking hurt.

I don't see how being engaged with something that isn't a Ceremonial Dagger can suddenly cause a fight to be deemed "epic", but then again that is the state of the game right now. Melee jobs are revered and discussed ad nauseum whilst mage jobs are generally left on the sidelines (unless Avesta/Kaeko updates their blogs, and even then the hype dies down before it's begun).