Absolute Virtue Information (OP Updated)

[orson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y_Wu36wIEM

I don't know why but this conversation reminded a lot of Taken.

"You're shitting up my thread for when we use our significant skills to figure out the crazy voodoo magic way of weakening AV and finally win properly."

"Um... ok... Good Luck"

lol

In all honesty I don't think it'll make much of a difference if people post kills in here. If nothing else we'll have a better idea of the % chance of given drops.

[richardd]

http://champloo.org/virtuoussaints.png

TeleTubbies @ Cerb :3

oh wow, lots of good ppl in this SS

Hezzel, Drei... Zhraven and more. i played with them in hades. they remember my subligar'ness and immaturity more than anyone lol. hope all is well! i miss you guys, and grats on your kill/kills!

[Michelob]

If nothing else we'll have a better idea of the % chance of given drops.

The drop %s are all pretty much known. They have been the same since the KC zergs. It would appear as if the Rod, Mars's, Bellona's are all 100% drops now, the sash about 50%, Minerva's and Aureole possibly a little less than 50% (30-40%?) and the Futsuno is around 10%.

[Taint]

hot, another first by tt :3

AV has been killed a few times on Cerb before.

KoN during the AV Hax
KoN during the KC Zerg
EX atleast 3 times this month

Still a nice kill for a great shell.

[Aevis]

first EU shell...unless there is another EU hidding their AV kills. the another part was related to tt beeing the first EU to kill PW too.

[Brutala]

We killed it a week before TT and I'm pretty sure we're not the first EU LS to do it seeing how many bigger ones are out there and how long the strat was out. Noone's hiding anything. It's just that noone cares enough to brag about the ability to put together 25 people and copy the Resonance strat. It's about the buffs and invites. 100% NQ AH gear works. No skilled players needed. To post this stuff in an AV INFO thread you first need to explain how knowing which the first all-French or all-female LS to zerg AV was helps lock meteor or bracelets.

[Aevis]

then i do apologize for not knowing that. all i was doing is to gratulate my old shell (i don't play anymore) for their kill and explaining taint my sentence. guess this thread is now only for those looking for the real SE strat, players with mad skills or w/e.

[Maxwell]

We killed it a week before TT and I'm pretty sure we're not the first EU LS to do it seeing how many bigger ones are out there and how long the strat was out. Noone's hiding anything. It's just that noone cares enough to brag about the ability to put together 25 people and copy the Resonance strat. It's about the buffs and invites. 100% NQ AH gear works. No skilled players needed. To post this stuff in an AV INFO thread you first need to explain how knowing which the first all-French or all-female LS to zerg AV was helps lock meteor or bracelets.

You know I was trying to stay quiet on this topic, but some people really need to get the stick out of their ass. For starters, you're exaggerating. The strat is mostly "being good on timing/invites/buffs", but AH quality DDs are going to be pushing their luck on kill speed (and increasing the chance of loss as they drag the fight out).

Additionally, I'm glad once a shell beats AV they feel the need to tell everyone else it isnt a big deal anymore and insult them for posting about it, but as long as this fight was the "pinnacle" of FFXI, it feels good for a lot of people to finally down it. There is also the fact that it doesn't just take "25 people thrown together", as you need specific job combinations (there is room for variation, but there are jobs you can't do it without). A lot of shells these days have a hard time fielding 25-30 -active- solid members on a regular basis (assuming the 25-30 you have are the exact jobs you even need), so it's still an accomplishment. Resonance merged right before there kills and their larger member size helped greatly to fielding the right jobs on a reliable basis (which is one of the reason they've been able to spam the fight). Not to say they don't have some quality members, or to say they didn't offer some good strat improvements.

The drops are good (for now), the fight is still reasonably challenging (for most of the player base), and 98% of the people still aren't killing AV, so get off your high horses.

[Dazusu]

I disagree with some of the things Brutala said (such as it being a case of throwing 25 people together, NQ AH gear and no skill involved); but the essense of his post still stands. We don't need a fanfare everytime someone manages to kill AV. There's a drops thread for that. Similarly, claiming to be the "first" of any minority/majority group to accomplish something without doing your research could also be construed as waving your penis around on a high horse or looking for unjust glory.

I'm personally interested in finding a way to deal with Meteor that doesn't involve killing half your alliance (no height difference please). The last "big secret"; weakening or locking Meteor.

[Fottiti]

NQ AH gear DDs will be able to do it virtually as fast as top of the line DDs will, gear means far less in this situation since you will cap haste with 18% in gear (perle + swift belt), everyone should have capped accuracy with meat and the amount of attack gained through HQ/better gear is dwarfed by what SV minuets and chaos roll adds (theres a good chance you're capped on attack also).

You really only need 3 "skilled players" to take party leads and invite everyone whilst also performing well on their own job, everyone else can focus on 1 aspect. It takes coordination beyond many groups but you don't need an ls full of decent players to do it.

If you are aguring that better players who WS and engage faster will make a significant difference, then yes.

[Brutala]

Additionally, I'm glad once a shell beats AV they feel the need to tell everyone else it isnt a big deal anymore and insult them for posting about it, but as long as this fight was the "pinnacle" of FFXI, it feels good for a lot of people to finally down it.

My apologies. I didn't mean to insult anyone. I'm just pointing out that this is the wrong thread to be calling "firsts". The only people who deserve any "first" credit here were being humble about it and posting mostly advice. If I followed the dorp thread I wouldn't have commented on any of this there.

The strat is mostly "being good on timing/invites/buffs"

I don't believe there is such a thing as being good with invites or buff timing. One person should state times for each buff phase and people should read chat. Even as slow and clumsy a typist as me can prevent fuckups by spamming a few macros, even in bad lag.

AH quality DDs are going to be pushing their luck on kill speed (and increasing the chance of loss as they drag the fight out).

There is also the fact that it doesn't just take "25 people thrown together", as you need specific job combinations (there is room for variation, but there are jobs you can't do it without). A lot of shells these days have a hard time fielding 25-30 -active- solid members on a regular basis (assuming the 25-30 you have are the exact jobs you even need), so it's still an accomplishment. Resonance merged right before there kills and their larger member size helped greatly to fielding the right jobs on a reliable basis (which is one of the reason they've been able to spam the fight). Not to say they don't have some quality members, or to say they didn't offer some good strat improvements.

NQ AH DDs make the fight long? The required setup is too specific for most LSs?

It's a zerg. att and acc in gear change nothing. With a DNC a 2-hander can wear almost anything while TPing and hit 80% haste. I'll go even further than Fottiti and just say "fuck DNC". Without one WAR can still very cheaply hit 25% in gear, SAM 20% (unless haidate is way too pimp to be considered part of an NQ AH build now), DRK and DRG 19%. We're looking at ~72,3% total haste, at worst. I'll be extremely generous to DNC-using setups from here on and assume that's the average DD's haste. Going from there to 80% is about 38,5% overall damage boost counting just steady cycles of TP > WS. Not using a DNC in a PT robs the PT of about the 2k dmg the DNC would have done and adds one DD instead of boosting 3 DDs' overall output by some % far below 38,5. Seems like a big loss but this will never be nearly as high as 38,5 IRL because people don't always WS the moment they break 100, every DD is starting at 300TP and using 2 Sekkanokis (and Meikyo for SAMs), 2 meditates and an icarus wing, making that 38,5% advantage a lot smaller because of much higher overall time spent in WS and JA delays. Assuming a DNC would normally do about 2k (in a 3 DD 1 DNC setup) while other DDs would normally do about 6k (in a setup without a DNC), the actual benefit of going from 72,3 to 80 haste (counting all the delays I listed and not always WSing at 100, accidentally having melee swings while still in WS gear, lag, etc.) has to be about 27,8% for the 3 theoretical DDs + DNC to be equal to just 4 DDs without a DNC. You just can't say the DD setup here isn't extremely flexible and friendly to poorly geared players. We have 1 DNC total and afaik there are LSs winning consistently with none. Lack of people with DNC leveled only really harms you if the majority of your DD have no 2hander jobs leveled. A few weekend evenings of abyssea can fix either problem.

The only constants are any 3 healers with haste, 3 BRDs, 3 CORs and >3 SMN. If you have that and fail, the problem is either organizational or people completely lagged out or DCd. 6 SMN are recommended but not needed as long as the 1 or 2 spare SMNs are invited to those parties that got their 2Hs reset. If none did, they go to the best 1 or 2 DD parties, obviously. Rest is completely replaceable. Sure, ~everyone hates BRD and COR and is a PLD or SAM "main" these days, but what are the odds of an ls that even cares about AV at all not having 6 SMN after all the time people had to astral burn by now? On top of that, if you lack any of those jobs, there's abyssea. Not like they need any gear beyond a few pieces you can just borrow.

The drops are good (for now), the fight is still reasonably challenging (for most of the player base), and 98% of the people still aren't killing AV, so get off your high horses.

No high horse here. If I were on a high horse I'd be saying that the LSs who aren't killing AV suck. I'm saying most are enjoying the new content too much care, and those that do care tend to not care enough to actually go do it. These days most LSs are of the smallman mentality and getting so many outside friends to help at the same time is total organizational hell for leaders, aside from severely limiting how often you can make attempts, which would in turn be very unfair unless everything was sold+split because it would take years to get everyone involved their AV gear (aside from being complicated because of people outside LS not being in a point system). I'm also saying that having 25 members isn't an accomplishment of being good at playing the game in any way, but it is a big and rare accomplishment in another way. It's an accomplishment of things such as successful advertising of your LS for recruitment and luck with server population-continent distribution favoring your event times. Of course, there is also the matter of actually having many members being horribly inefficient for non-AV/PW events unless there are multiple events being done simultaneously, but this has already been beaten to death.

I may have exaggerated a bit, but I still insist that the ability to imitate this strat is no accomplishment aside from the following: having good organizers (great ones if you're a tiny LS), having 3 people capable of hitting invite macros while glancing at a TP bar, and the rest of the people involved actually having some basic macros for their jobs. Talking about skill, gear that is even remotely rare, or even combat skill category merits here is absurd.

If you are arguing that better players who WS and engage faster will make a significant difference, then yes.

I agree, but after all that grinding for exp, isn't this something you can expect of a random shout dude you picked up for an assault and rarely be disappointed?

[Nightmarelord]

Stuff.

can someone tl;dr that for me prz? >_> its 8 am and i woke up to a grumpy gf...

[Appie]

It's just that noone cares enough to brag about the ability to put together 25 people and copy the Resonance strat.

Mostly don't care that Aevis claims that TT is the first "EU shell" to take it down. Who the flying fuck cares?! That's like me saying back in 2008: look at me, first dutch relic! (which might be true, don't know, don't care) Nobody cares what nation you're from long since the JP dominance ended back in 2004?

[Maxwell]

Brutala you're taking this way to seriously. I didn't have enough enthusiasm about this to actually drag it on for more than a few sentences, so you didn't need to write a novel as a response. I was just pointing out the silliness of someone QQing that another LS posted "yay we did it", especially when you threw in a "but we did it before you" as well.

Why so mayad?

[mdkuser]

have capped accuracy with meat and the amount of attack gained through HQ/better gear is dwarfed by what SV minuets and chaos roll adds (theres a good chance you're capped on attack also).

Explain that to wanabe DDs (locair) eating red curry cos they can lol. Honestly, berserk and chaos are enough with dia3 and angon.

[Brutala]

Brutala you're taking this way to seriously. I didn't have enough enthusiasm about this to actually drag it on for more than a few sentences, so you didn't need to write a novel as a response. I was just pointing out the silliness of someone QQing that another LS posted "yay we did it", especially when you threw in a "but we did it before you" as well.

Why so mayad?

Who's mayad? Almost the whole post was trying to argue that job and gear requirements for AV zerg were a lot more forgiving than you said. I already apologized for QQing if that's what it looked like.

[Maxwell]

Which jobs are you being forgiving about?

Not doing the fight without 3 (minimum) or 6 (optimal) smns.

Not doing the fight without 3 brds.

Going to not bring corsairs for buffs/wildcard?

What about Rdm for Dia3, going to swap him out? Or the whms for the other parties to keep your melees alive? Are they swappable?

Your dragoon for angon?

Your thf for TH?

3 Dancers? This is the area you can start making decisions on "what you have versus what you can kill it with", as you don't "need" a dancer in each party, but it sure as fuck helps, and the point is: The farther you go from optimal damage setup, the longer the fight drags out, the more likely you're going to fail.

So that's 20 specific jobs you need (17 if you decide to not bring dancers for some reason, 14 if you are really ballsy and want to try it with only one PD rotation AND no dancers), plus the standard melees. That's not taking into consideration wyvna pullers or any other aspects.

So let's assume you can supply all the jobs above 100% of the time, I guess you can rearrange your melee based on what you have, but again you don't want your 2nd string people there. Full perle/swift belt may cap haste, but odds are full perle melees aren't that great to begin with. In our AV parses our "standard top tier DDs" are always our top parsers by a long shot. I'm aware skill isn't determined by gear, but 90% of the time there is a close correlation.

No one is saying the strat is hard or swaps are omgwtfbbq challenging. But trying to say it doesn't take a reasonable amount of resources is silly. I was pointing out that you're no more special than the people you were trying to chide for posting their victory, especially when you finished with "but we beat it before them".

If it wasn't special, why post that your LS killed it before them?

AV is like some hot chick that no one could bang, then she started spreading her legs a little bit and everyone started hitting it. That other LS is the guy that comes into the room and high fives his friends saying "finally banged that AV chick", and you're the guy in the corner going "so what, I tapped that last week". Both are silly and obnoxious.

[boo]

AV is like some hot chick that no one could bang

Love your metaphor! Bravo

[Taint]

AV is like some hot chick that no one could bang, then she started spreading her legs a little bit and everyone started hitting it. That other LS is the guy that comes into the room and high fives his friends saying "finally banged that AV chick", and you're the guy in the corner going "so what, I tapped that last week". Both are silly and obnoxious.

Hey! I know that chick!

[Meat]

I knew her last week