Big Bomb solo

[BerenTebogo]

Sath being a moron? New and exciting.

Regarding Wivre Ring: You can cap eva rate on big bomb, your damage taken comes from spells and tp moves.. considering you already have native subtle blow and the setup Konda posted totals 39% with native you're going to be removing 5/61 of it's tp moves, or 8.1%. That's a pretty big change, and you really aren't going to convince anyone intelligent an additional 1.5% dodge rate for melee hits will outdo it.

Regarding Optical Hat and Emissary Boots: AGI has been clearly proven to give eva at a 2:1 rate, it's parrying that it doesn't help. 12 eva > 10 eva, hurp. Same goes for the feet, you could make a case for the parrying skill if eva rate was near enough cap you didn't need it all, but since they're seperate checks you'll always be better off buffing your evasion. Emissary boots are still decent eva shoes though.

I'll agree that you need to play defensively on any long solo.

Regarding Konda's setup in general: Ermine's tail is not worth using, your acc with it in that set is going to be absolutely disgusting and might even hurt your ability to use waltzes at timer. Use a Shiranui or a Oninohocho offhand.

Can finally quote to be clear and concise since I'm not on caiti's fucking droid anymore.

I went back and looked and yes, I definitely misread the new AGI info in the shield thread - and since I haven't played NIN in so fucking long I haven't been in a position to think it silly or not. I always have opted for gnole crown myself, I'm sure someone can clarify since I can't back it up with math but the dodge rate increase of 4 EVA over 8 parrying @ capped parrying + merits (the setup my NIN had, as an example) I'd be curious to see which enhances overall EVA rate more.

Capping EVA wont always happen. Like I said in previous post I have no experience with big bomb personally, but for all the situations where TP prevention is the biggest factor obviously rajas will win out, mobs that resist enfeebles more than average, double or triple attack with great frequency or have zanshin traits and hit hard on melee attacks you're going to probably want the EVA, provided you're uncapped.

Ancient Goobbue is a good example. I would eat TP moves all fucking day for the benefit of the added evasion. Likewise with Amikiri and his 50 per tick poison on melee attack. Sure breath and earth pounder are annoying but they're easily handled. A DA shadow -> hit -> poison sting can 1 shot you in the time it takes to blink. Will the EVA always make a difference? No, it'll make a difference 1.5~% of the time, but the TP gained by the mob from hitting you is independent of subtle blow anyways.

tl;dr? Shit changes based on your sj, what you're fighting, and how experienced you are with fighting it. Unless going in off the bat against a Wyvern type, or poroggo, or something else with really lame TP moves, or you're 100% sure that you'll be capped on EVA w/o this piece or that piece - i'd say it's safest to stick to 2x wivre +1 and adjust accordingly from there.

Edit: Disclaimer: I have never had the benefit of using Yonin as NIN so everything I'm saying is from the standpoint of 30 less EVA. Just sayin'

[Konda]

Yonin affects accuracy by 30. Sushi affects accuracy by around 40. Combine the two and you move hit rate by about 35%. Assuming 80% sushi hit rate, you can now expect to miss 55% of the time; to me that's NORMAL and desired for difficult solos.

As I said, this mob only has about 15000 HP. It can zerk up. It has no unusual defense like the ground beastman kings. Even those have over double the HP and don't take 4 hours to melee down. So your 8-hour figure for tacos was pulled straight out of thin air.

In any case, tacos may be totally unnecessary for this mob: It doesn't appear to have a devastating physical move. Carbonara may be a much wiser choice, on further thought.


If you miss half the time, then spikes only hurt half the time, right? And since you're solo and in evasion gear, you won't be swinging very quickly to start. Spikes here are a nuisance, more than countered by drinks.

I'd think a NIN/WHM who has finished general meriting and equipping for this wouldn't have issues taking two consecutive aga 3's. Elvaan and Galka already exceed the 1200 HP of damage these would do. Every 10 minutes you get to double your Cure 3. If push comes to shove, you have room for other meds. An hour's worth of yagudo drinks and persikos au lait takes 26 spaces.

Now, if you showed up as /DNC, an 1100-base-damage spell only goes down to ~825 damage (instead of ~622)... it's not consecutive spell casts that I'm worried about; it's Firaga III followed immediately by one of those shadow ignoring TP moves. You're looking at 1400+ of sudden damage, unless you'd like to volunteer more accurate figures for Vulcanian Impact on a ninja with gear but no buffs?

my 8hr was an obivious exaggeration to get my point across.
/whm is little to no use for this fight. /rdm offers similar magic defence, fastcast, dispel, enfire.
/dnc is close comparison to /rdm, but offers less protection against aga3. the primary benefits of /dnc is the better healing capabilities and an additional +10 eva from eva bonus 1. The Acc bonus doesnt hurt either


You'd need 92mp or 70TP to recover from 1 TP move, 138mp or 135TP to recover from an Aga3.
Yag drinks are 2/tick and sanction refresh is sometimes an additional 1 tick.
You wouldnt be able to keep up on an mp pool of ~100-150.
You could keep up with /dnc TP for TP moves due to subtle blow (at least above 30% hp), aga3 will be cast at random, and you likely wont have enough TP to deal with it.

To win this, you need to drastically reduce the damage taken from aga3. And be able to gain the means to cure yourself from a TP move before he can use another on you.
Sub 30% he gains either TP regain or a large storeTP, as the amount of WS he uses significantly increases.

Edit: 26 invo, how much space do you have? I'm already struggling to carry everything before a barfire set.

[BerenTebogo]

At the risk of sounding like an idiot if I've missed this being disproven somewhere:

Under 25% mobs use TP right at 100TP all the time every time, above 25% HP mobs seldom use TP right at the 100% mark and are more like lazy, pick-up DDs in a pick-up merit pt.

[rog]

Sub 30% he gains either TP regain or a large storeTP, as the amount of WS he uses significantly increases.

Mobs use their tp right away below 25%, instead of only randomly after taking/dealing damage, like they do above 25%.

[Tsuko_Asura]

At the risk of sounding like an idiot if I've missed this being disproven somewhere:

Under 25% mobs use TP right at 100TP all the time every time, above 25% HP mobs seldom use TP right at the 100% mark and are more like lazy, pick-up DDs in a pick-up merit pt.

It still surprises me that we have yet to pin down WS patterns of mobs above 25% yet(or rather, if there is absolutely no pattern whatsoever). It'd be an awfully easy(long motherfucking) thing to test.

[drwaffles]

Was going to mention that there's no way in hell /WHM or /RDM will have enough healing power to keep you alive. If this can be done, it's going to be on /DNC. Whether or not it's doable relies almost entirely on if Waltzes can keep up with the damage done by Firaga III, Blaze Spikes and TP moves. NIN shouldn't be one-shotted by Firaga III considering they can quite comfortably hit -26% MDT (not counting items like Minerva's or Defending), however depending on your race I'm pretty sure Hellstorm can one-shot without Barfira when it's at high HP. On the subject of Subtle Blow, Rajas should be worn over Wivre +1 for sure considering its TP moves are so powerful.

I really don't think it can be done, all things considered, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

[Konda]

25% or 30% it's definatly a notable increase. When I duoing it a lot, we always held above 30% while rdm buddy recovered mp and re-applied buffs.
I can't say for certain, with any sort of testing, but it seemed to be from 30% hp. However, we may have just got a WS between 30% and 25% then another immediatly after due to the changed AI.

[drwaffles]

It's 25% HP. Once a mob you've been soloing hits that point it almost invariably uses a WS right away if it's not used one in quite a while.

[Konda]

Was going to mention that there's no way in hell /WHM or /RDM will have enough healing power to keep you alive. If this can be done, it's going to be on /DNC. Whether or not it's doable relies almost entirely on if Waltzes can keep up with the damage done by Firaga III, Blaze Spikes and TP moves. NIN shouldn't be one-shotted by Firaga III considering they can quite comfortably hit -26% MDT (not counting items like Minerva's or Defending), however depending on your race I'm pretty sure Hellstorm can one-shot without Barfira when it's at high HP. On the subject of Subtle Blow, Rajas should be worn over Wivre +1 for sure considering its TP moves are so powerful.

I really don't think it can be done, all things considered, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

It's been ~6 months since I killed it last, but he definatly doesnt have access to all of his TP moves when he's in the smallest form. 99% sure all he has access to is Berserk and Vulcanian Impact.
This is why you avoid making him grow at all costs. Doing more than ~200 damage (it varies between 200 and 300ish as sometimes a triple'd mandalic stab would make him grow and sometimes it wouldnt, but 200 is a safe margin) will make him grow and unlock the worse TP moves.

[pchan]

I'm not saying they're better or not, but 5% reduction mob's TP moves is pretty significant in a fight like this where you're already going to be stretched on your resources.

If you stack subtle blow it's more like -9-10%. At 45 SB the tp given is multiplied by (1-0.45)=0.55, at 50 SB it's (1-0.50)=0.50. ws frequency reduction is therefore 0.5/0.55=0.909 so about -9%.

[rog]

It still surprises me that we have yet to pin down WS patterns of mobs above 25% yet(or rather, if there is absolutely no pattern whatsoever). It'd be an awfully easy(long motherfucking) thing to test.

As far as i've seen, there's a random chance every time a mob takes/deals damage (0 damage doesn't count, such as from ss/phalanx, shadow mantle, shadows, or regular evades/parry) for them to ws, possibly having a higher chance from higher damage, though i can't say for sure. I can definitely confirm that if they never take >0 damage (enspells, and dot spells don't count either), they will absolutely never ws, even if they have 300 tp.

It actually shouldn't be too hard to test if the amount of damage taken/dealt affects the chance of wsing really. Just feed 100 tp with dia1/stone, then nuke with stone 1, and record the average number of nukes before the mob uses its ws, then repeat using thunder3/4.

[drwaffles]

It's been ~6 months since I killed it last, but he definatly doesnt have access to all of his TP moves when he's in the smallest form. 99% sure all he has access to is Berserk and Vulcanian Impact.
This is why you avoid making him grow at all costs. Doing more than ~200 damage (it varies between 200 and 300ish as sometimes a triple'd mandalic stab would make him grow and sometimes it wouldnt, but 200 is a safe margin) will make him grow and unlock the worse TP moves.

Been about 18 months since I killed him so perhaps I'm wrong about Hellstorm. I know it once one-shotted my Taru NIN friend when we duo'd it, but maybe he'd made it grow somehow.

[Wrish]

my 8hr was an obivious exaggeration to get my point across.

A point that vanishes when the exaggeration is deflated and the kill is revealed to take "less than 45 minutes." I'm serious: Big Bomb parsed about 13,100 HP last time I used a THF with zero DoT. This is not a long fight, especially if you roll a lower level pop. As I'm sure Sath said, the key to this is patience, not "killing it before it kills you."

/whm is little to no use for this fight. /rdm offers similar magic defence, fastcast, dispel, enfire.

The only advantage I could see of /rdm is that dispels could force Big Bomb to recast Blaze Spikes instead of a more damaging spell. If accuracy is not a problem, then this may be a huge advantage. However, why haven't the half dozen main RDMs thought of this?

Failing that, /rdm requires more healing and has a lower maxMP pool. Fast cast is nearly useless with so much evasion, and enfire is going to do laughable damage (e.g., katana hits for 30, plus enspell for 0.5).

/dnc is close comparison to /rdm, but offers less protection against aga3. the primary benefits of /dnc is the better healing capabilities and an additional +10 eva from eva bonus 1. The Acc bonus doesnt hurt either

You know, I was going to say that aga3 protection had to be a primary goal, but if we're considering NIN/DNC, then why aren't we talking about DNC/NIN? The latter has RDM-level magic reduction gear, NIN-level evasion, and by far the most efficient waltzing. I'd bet DNC/NIN would breeze through the last 1/4 unlike NIN.

You wouldnt be able to keep up on an mp pool of ~100-150.

Merits and the little extra you get from gear should place Elvaan past 200 MP. You want recovery, not starting pool.

Edit: 26 invo, how much space do you have? I'm already struggling to carry everything before a barfire set.

80 satchel. You macro /satchel right after /drink and spend that time to move 1-2 drinks over.

[Konda]

DNC has nowhere near NIN level Evasion. not to mention, it has no para/slow/blind.

with /mage i'd be lucky to have 150mp.

/rdm requires more healing and has a lower maxMP pool.

You want recovery, not starting pool.

you contradict yourself here.


Ive just been informed by my duo buddy that dispel is pretty resistant to mainjob RDM, so that factor of /rdm is out.

this leaves fastcast vs divine seal.

If we're talking about a mob that only casts aga3 every so often, then /whm would win. However, you also need to tank it without getting hit much/at all. Shit *does* happen, and there's a chance you'll have to dry cast Ichi. For this reason alone, I'd go /rdm over /whm.

[Kyte]

It's 25% HP. Once a mob you've been soloing hits that point it almost invariably uses a WS right away if it's not used one in quite a while.

My experiences match this. While farming blue magic spells they would always, always use a TP move right at 25% provided I had fed them sufficiently. They also seem to increase the rate at which they use TP at ~50%.

[Nevex]

Assuming there's enough move to move away from it (at least 30"), if you can anticipate when Big Bomb is about to cast something, can't you just try to outrun the incoming nuke? Each mob has a universal recast timer, so once you learn it it's pretty simple.

As far as I know Big Bomb does not possess fast cast, so if you fight it at night AF feet should give you the necessary mov. speed boost to do so.

[ronin sparthos]

Assuming there's enough move to move away from it (at least 30"), if you can anticipate when Big Bomb is about to cast something, can't you just try to outrun the incoming nuke? Each mob has a universal recast timer, so once you learn it it's pretty simple.

As far as I know Big Bomb does not possess fast cast, so if you fight it at night AF feet should give you the necessary mov. speed boost to do so.

IIRC there isn't enough room to outrun -ga3s without risking agro from other mobs.

I could easily be wrong though, its been a while.

[drwaffles]

Big Bomb's area is very like Vivian's room - there's one place you can stand where you can be literally inches away from the nearest mob's aggro range (well, in this case it's magic aggro range rather than sound). Regardless there's no way that running would be an option for getting away from Firaga III. You have to eat it or hope for a lucky Paralyze proc.

[Fottiti]

DNC has nowhere near NIN level Evasion. not to mention, it has no para/slow/blind.

with /mage i'd be lucky to have 150mp.





you contradict yourself here.


Ive just been informed by my duo buddy that dispel is pretty resistant to mainjob RDM, so that factor of /rdm is out.

this leaves fastcast vs divine seal.

If we're talking about a mob that only casts aga3 every so often, then /whm would win. However, you also need to tank it without getting hit much/at all. Shit *does* happen, and there's a chance you'll have to dry cast Ichi. For this reason alone, I'd go /rdm over /whm.

/rdm can easily get 120 enhancing magic, resulting in 10 damage phalanx. This would be an hugely more mp efficient way of reducing/nullifying spikes damage than dispel. The only downside is it wouldn't cause the NM to cast spikes more often.

Neither mage sub will compare to /dnc though, you can't rely on resisting ga3 and the MDB traits + shell 2 are nice but you should be able to survive ga3 regardless with MDT + MDB gear. Seeing as how you can't WS for any worthwhile damage you will have enough tp to turn around after ga3 and cure up to full before feeding it any more tp. Excess tp can be used to try and land steps which will speed up the fight and the accuracy + evasion traits are always welcome.

[Konda]

/rdm can easily get 120 enhancing magic, resulting in 10 damage phalanx. This would be an hugely more mp efficient way of reducing/nullifying spikes damage than dispel. The only downside is it wouldn't cause the NM to cast spikes more often.

Neither mage sub will compare to /dnc though, you can't rely on resisting ga3 and the MDB traits + shell 2 are nice but you should be able to survive ga3 regardless with MDT + MDB gear. Seeing as how you can't WS for any worthwhile damage you will have enough tp to turn around after ga3 and cure up to full before feeding it any more tp. Excess tp can be used to try and land steps which will speed up the fight and the accuracy + evasion traits are always welcome.

I forgot about phalanx tbh, that's a huge benefit for /rdm.

With /rdm and 120 enhancing, you'd be able to push 240-250 fire resist which is enough to sucessfully resist Sarameya most of the time, and I'd assume that Sara has more magic Acc than big bomb.

However, this means you need to swap to neptune's staff, and thus any mp gained from energey drain/steal would be unreliable at best.
all your mp for cures would have to be gained via drinks.