Zhaylom Remants question...

[Fridell]

"Primary" role? Maybe, but I believe a good THF that's also adding on decent damage can really help speed a run up.

I like THF, we have 2 ppl in our group that have TH4, great gear and knows how to play it.
Usually the THF averge about 16% of total damage dealt the entire run, and for bosses about 11-15% that fight only. I guess we can say that this is "decent".
For us, the THF(s) do okey damage, place TH, pull / sac / port / Feint and steal hate from mages when needed. So I agree with you that THFs primary role isn't just TH for Salvage, they add much to speed runs up in general.

[tymora]

Just full cleared (5,6 + Boss) while equipping everyone with all cells, with about 15 min spare time - Overall 1 charm.

Do note that we have been at this for years, so we are all pretty well-equipped and experienced.

MNK/NIN - Tank/DD
SAM/WAR - DD
BRD/WHM - SV on 5F Frog
RDM/DRK - Stun charms, CS Stun 5F Frog
SCH/RDM - Stona, Phalanxga, En-spellga
THF/NIN - TH, Feint on Boss

Why 2 hour on 5F frog?
1. No better place to - Try it on boss and wipe to Discord spam, if you have a mnk.
2. Place too cramped to kite well on a charm-ga. A fast kill saves time.

Why equip everyone?
The mobs on 2nd floor aren't that strong. It only takes like 10 additional minutes overall to get everything for a 6 man party but this will make your life considerably easier on later floors.

Time milestones (General Guidelines):
85 min - Port 2F
65 min - Port 3F
45 min - Port 4FN
35 min - Port 5FN
25 min - 6F Frog down
15 min - Port 7F

Ultimately it also depends on luck, depending on how many charms you get.
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Remember that frogs are immune to any spell of the element of the day you enter on, so don't enter on lightningsday if you want to stun it.
In light of this, best days to do Zhayolm on are Firesday, Watersday. Slow (Earth), Paralyze (Ice), Bind(Ice), Gravity(Wind), Dia(Light), Sleep(Dark), Stun(Lightning) are all good spells to use on a frog. That said, my group only really avoids Lightningsday.

If you use a BLU, don't just use Head Butt. It works but if you add Temporal Shift and Jettura, it basically just sits there. Make sure you bring echos though. BLU can also stun boss Discord with Shift and Jettura. RDM/DRK's Stun does not land reliably on boss.

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You can also cut a few minutes of time on 6F if you adopt a strategy that pops the gears without saccing - Additional damage from 1 member.
1. Use BRD lullaby
2. Use flee or boots to lose hate.

Powder boots is also good to use to port from 5F to 6F. THF runs ahead to aggro everything. Person following runs straight to porter. No death = Saves time.

[Fridell]

Uh while all you say is good, I don't agree with the "wipe to Discoid spam" if MNKs sue Hundred Fists, now we usually save our SPs for our 2nd run if we have any after a ZR, but a MNK or two can easy use their SP on this boss without wiping to Discoid spam.

[tymora]

Uh while all you say is good, I don't agree with the "wipe to Discoid spam" if MNKs sue Hundred Fists, now we usually save our SPs for our 2nd run if we have any after a ZR, but a MNK or two can easy use their SP on this boss without wiping to Discoid spam.

I have seen 4 back-to-back discord that killed my group with 2 MNK HF. You have been lucky. Either that or your group can reliably stun it or you have a COR + WHM to reduce TP spam, but I think there is a higher chance to die to 5F frog than to the boss so might as well use it there.

[Shassira]

If you use a BLU, don't just use Head Butt. It works but if you add Temporal Shift and Jettura, it basically just sits there. Make sure you bring echos though. BLU can also stun boss Discord with Shift and Jettura. RDM/DRK's Stun does not land reliably on boss.

Yes, i'm bored. Anyway, I agree with this wholeheartedly but I would like to point out that Head Butt will already have a shorter recast than the stun's duration when you are fully geared and have marches + haste, which happens on every frog except 2F. Personaly for frogs I load Head Butt, Frypan and Temporal Shift. Head Butt is used and i switch to fry pan if I mess up with headbutt (by casting before stun wears off). I leave shift in case it's able to use Providence, so that you can be 100% sure your next stun won't miss (from a physical hit miss).

I have seen 4 back-to-back discord that killed my group with 2 MNK HF. You have been lucky. Either that or your group can reliably stun it or you have a COR + WHM to reduce TP spam, but I think there is a higher chance to die to 5F frog than to the boss so might as well use it there.

Hundred Fist at the start so that TP moves are reduced and that should be enough. We wiped once after HFing post 25%. Bad idea, that one was

[Fridell]

I believe it's you who been unlucky, not me.

We almost always have 3 melees on every boss, no COR, and sometimes only 1 MNK (1 maxed Penance only) and only time I can recall we ever wiped to TP spam from boss dusing SP was one LBC that went crazy with Homing Missile.
Yes, everyone knows Chariots can go ape shit at times and suddenly spam TP moves, double attack you after a Discharge or anything else unlucky, but it happens so rarely I wouldn't advice anyone to not use SP on bosses if they wish, especially not the ZR one.

[Julian]

Also, don't have both monks 2h at the same time? >_>

I really want to try bringing a BLU to Zhayolm now

[tymora]

When you have melee who doesn't like to use subtle blow gear, you just have to adapt lol...
Boss still dies in under 10 min without 2 hours - No point risking a wipe for no good reason imo.

Besides, I really really hate that 5FN frog - Responsible for more deaths and exp loss since people figured out how to pop it.

[Lekotas]

"Primary" role? Maybe, but I believe a good THF that's also adding on decent damage can really help speed a run up.

I should have been clearer was posting before bed @ like 4am haha, yeah I meant their primary role is TH, the word purpose indicates a thief's sheer presence is because of that responsibility and i'm not denying its usefulness as a DD. Our THF has mandau =p, but we end up spending time gearing her for no reason other than to use mandau on frogs, which now she doesnt so its really only for mamool/gear floors which does help.

We also try to dupe SJ's whenever we can in zhay, and we split up after first room. After mamool dies, mnk/rdm/cor/thf stay to handle frog, while mnk#2/whm/brd/anotherdd if present go to SE wing to kill 2 lizzies for cells, then NW, while mnk#1 group goes SW then jakko and cor stays @ port.

This cuts down a lot of time since mnk can solo the lizards and wyverns fairly well, and you can do two things at once. We also do the same thing @ begning of run on 1f. mnk#2 group immediately goes to NW wings first room then SW(bard to porter), while mnk #1 group clears first rooms of SE and NE, someitmes we farm an additional cells if necessary then port.

I think our best run we did did 2f frog+jakko +3fn and had over an hour left for 5f+6f+mega, and ended run with 10minutes to spare(btw cor = <3 in salvage mega fights, ours is 9/11 on 2hr resets, both failures came in one run where we gave him a revitalizer haha).

[ringthree]

Side note: Penance and Auspice = No real concern with boss TP moves.

Just out of curiosity, for the boss do most of you use 2 or 3 melee on the boss?

It seems to me that a lot of people use unwieldy job combinations that may have been useful a while ago/may be useful for a new group but aren't really needed for an experienced group.

RDM/DRK is one that stands out to me as being rather unnecessary. If your melees know how to stun Chorus then they are going to stun it, or no one is going to be able to stun it because it is too fast. RDM/WHM provides a lot more support for the entire group in general.

I understand that not everyone has the jobs you need to make a perfect set up, and in that I may be blessed, but sometimes I think that people really make things more complicated than they need to be. Either that or they stick with what worked before because it still works even if it is unwieldy.

My first piece of advice for Salvage is always to do what works for you, but I am definitely interested in how people arrive at what they current use. For example, my group is very, very flexible on melee jobs and any of them can be used interchangeably, but we are pretty strict on our mages as we always use WHM, RDM, BRD. I am curious how other people came up with their set-ups.

[Fridell]

Speaking about boss battles.
We use 2 DD for main damage, but in 95% of all situations we have the THF melee as well, or if we go with 7, we have whatever the other DD is (usually SAM WAR or DRG, depends, we're flexible) we use the 3rd DD for melee, and the THF usually just Feint and melee just a little.

But it all depends on the flow of the battle, I usually dismiss the third DD if we get too heavy TP spam VS Mages MP ratio, or some other unlucky scenario where something cost much MP fast. Doesn't happen often but can happen and I always take that into account.

Also, we tend to change set ups a little, just to make runs more entertaining for everyone, or when we feel we wanna do something new, or test something.
We're often so boring we go with the MNK MNK THF BRD RDM WHM setup though, the people in my group have tons of jobs to choose from, but in the end we do nothing outrageous with job combos.
We never ever use RDM/DRK though, that's for sure.

Came to think about something I usually never hear other groups do, and I wonder why..but we have the RDM nuke as much as possible when it's ok to do so, never for bosses though. RDMs with good nuking set and merits adds a nice tad of damage over all for Salvage, hell, we even have the WHMs nuking with Holy & Banish lol. Imo RDM nuking for stuff like Salvage is underrated, and if the group is solid and everyone knows their stuff the RDM will have no MP problems virtually ever so nuking is welcomed.

[Shassira]

I am curious how other people came up with their set-ups.

Well, people have different "abilities", so to say, so in our case we ended up trying to find out what people were best at and once we found a setup that worked we started doing small changes. Job availability and quality of gear for those jobs also played a factor for us. Let me go through our normal setups and I'll explain why we got there, but before I say anything i guess it would be good to know that none of us have relics and we've never done ground kings. Also, most of our gear came from low maning stuff to the exception of dynamis junk, so you can get an idea of what kind of gearing we are talking about in general.

ZR: MNK, BLU, THF, WHM, RDM, BRD
- This came to be because we couldn't deal with Chorus. Be it connection lag or brain lag, we just couldn't stun chorus with weapon skills most of the time. We then tried different tactics like just eating it and kitting, or having two mnks and rotating melee upon charm, etc, but we settled with this eventualy when I figured I would just chain stun on blu without regards on actualy *waiting* for chorus to happen.
I've always trust my thf as a good DD so putting mnk and thf on boss, albeit obviously not the best combination, was really no problem in the end. Also, getting rid of a number of discoids with jettatura sealed the deal for me. But again, the reason was we just couldn't handle chorus any other way reliably.
Boss: We melee with 2 DDs only (MNK and THF).

SS: MNK, some DD (normaly DRG or whatever we have handy), THF, WHM, RDM, BRD
- Just your common setup, SS has no real mystery really. I kinda like DRG because it's a piercer and that's what we got available, but really any other job is fine. Sometimes we do MNK, MNK, it just depends on the day here. Sometimes the DD is a BST, when we expect doing LAC. We don't do LAC much anymore, but for some reason everyone in my group sucked at kitting so we ended up creating a strategy to handle the boss as BST I'm sure i've talked about this before.
Boss: We melee with all 3 DD.

AR: MNK, MNK, THF, WHM, RDM, BRD
- Having two black belt mnks and a number of the mobs being weak to blunt in 1F added to the fact that THF shows horrible weaknesses here made us decide for this one. But honestly, just your normal setup with any other DD would do for me.
Boss: Just MNK on the chariot. THF normaly doesn't have HP or enough gear to make it worth anyway.

BR: MNK, THF, COR, WHM, RDM, BRD
- This one came as a hybrid group for cases when we mess up nerfing LBC while keeping strong DD power for the rest of the run. Needless to say our COR plays here as a full DD and not some wannabe brd. With this we can easily tear the gears while retaining some good tools for when we don't nerf it (say because we are running out of time due to open doors or a linked warp, etc)
Boss: Two melee on it (MNK + THF) and the COR shooting on the back. It's fun

In the end, when we figured we could do all we wanted and had enough time for it, we stoped worrying about making it more optimal, there was no need. There is no better reward for being more optimal once you reach full clears and in fact the potential reward lowers with time because some drops start not being needed by anyone. For instance, my group is mostly caped on boss drops except for very specific ones. Some other pieces we caped on, for example, are Macha's coat, Usukane head 35, skadi feet 35 and more.
And finaly, the event is god damn annoying now to be worth giving it too much though to improve 0.5% on it. At least that's my view.

[tymora]

My group setup has changed over time due to people coming in and leaving. Sometimes we get 9 people, sometimes we get 5. Nowadays, we commonly use MNK SAM THF BRD RDM SCH. Double SAM/WAR works but can also cause a slowdown because of extra damage taken as compared with a MNK.

I always farm as many cells as possible for everyone, even when I have 9. This can take an extra 10 min on 1F but mobs in general just flip over and die real quick, less charms, less wasted time. You also typically get less deaths on your side and sometimes less need to do sacs.

Over the years, my group has done every zone with every possible decent setup. Some conclusions we have arrived at are:
1. RDM/DRK makes life in Arra (Bhoot) and Zhay (5FN) easier. DD can focus on their E-Peen WS. With some blessing in the lag department, Slow 2 + Fast Cast equips do allow for pretty consistent stuns. Fewer charms, fewer perditions, fewer ga3...etc etc

2. SCH/RDM works great in every zone. Added damage from en-spell should not be neglected.

3. DD can be MNK, WAR, SAM - Doesn't really matter, we never had other jobs so have no clue how they perform.

4. BRD is a necessity. COR can't elegy boss and can't dispel Bhoot/Flayer in Arra! Besides, Slow II + Elegy = *yawn* boss.

5. THF is a necessity, or at least /THF, especially for Zhay and Arra.

6. BLU is god in Zhay but limited usefulness in other zones. Don't need another charm stunner if you use a BLU there.

7. COR is a bonus with subtle blow rolls on boss => *zzZzzzz* boss. Hits slow as fuck and WS once an eternity.

8. SAM uses polearm pretty much full time - My group's SAMs does that and reports better damage overall.

9. RDM and SCH can nuke when there is MP to spare, but we usually try to reserve it for bad situations.

10. Trying to save time by cutting cell farming often bites back at you later by causing more deaths or just takes longer to take down mobs. Conversely, taking some extra time to farm cells on early floors does not necessarily mean time wasting.

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a. Arra boss's MR does damage depending on TP - It is possible to one-shot MNKs at 1600+HP if it gets full tp or so. (Yeah we got that once when 2 MNKs HF)

b. Zhay boss can spam discord back to back such that you can't recover properly. (Yeah we got that again when 2 MNKs HF)

=> As a result, we never have MNKs 2 hour on bosses now. SAM, WAR still good though, but we think 2 hour works best with SV anyway, so might as well have everyone do it at the same time.

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The result? Full clears in all zones (on most good attendance days), though we only do that now when we need specific 25s, otherwise we just exit 20-30 min early.