Random Question Thread VII: I Find Your Lack of Research Disturbing

[arus2001]

This one's pretty much for anyone familiar with Synergy.

Okay, so I resubscribed and got my Synergy skill to 50 over the past few days. That was easy enough, really. I then proceeded to upgrade my Alchemy body and also make the gloves, in part due to the possibility of further augmenting them Magian stuff. Anyway, perhaps it's largely me not having a strong grasp on the system yet, but are these two particular synths supposed to be as hard as they were for me? Took at least 20 attempts each.

The elemental requirements for them are 40 Fire/Water and 25 Lightning/Light. Mainly annoying facet of this is how strong elements would knock 2 off the weaker each time. Getting Light to 25 first was usually what I focused on, as the only real threat to here is a Light Overload or leak. I'd then start with Fire, doing 2-3 before doing 2-3 Water and then 2-3 Lightning, hoping I get Lightning to 25 if I triple up. But by this point, sometimes even before I start on Water, the furnace will start bitching at me about overloads or leaks. If I can't thwack the explosion away, I pretty much have to start over because there's usually not enough time to renegotiate altered/leaked elements and late-synth lightning issues usually screwed me, too.

Now, I'm assuming messing with the Pressure and Impurity would help me here, but the returns for use on Dark elements and time spent using them just don't seem worth it when one attempt I could get a boom 40 onz/ilm in, while another won't get picky until 140. At this point, for future synths of like 3-4 element difficulty, should I really be trying to get someone else to focus on keeping these 2 aspects down? Moreover, how does it work in terms of Fewell use. Do I lose my Dark, or does it consume theirs? Does a helper technically need any synergy skill?

As of now, my Fewell Feeding is 5 as is my Thwacking. Apparently when I got my smock I also unlocked some Alchemist's Expertise ability under Operations that takes 10 Earth, but I have no fucking clue what it does. It seems to last a short while and then wears off.

[drwaffles]

Anyone else feel very uneducated when reading posts about Synergy?

[BerenTebogo]

Please, please, please tell me I'm doing something wrong.

Do anywhere from 9-20 runs per week depending on how many people come.

Somewhere around 80 runs or more in a row without either sword or earring dropping. I'm about to kill myself. Please tell me I'm missing a rune or something and tell me how to fix it.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...304_234249.jpg

[arus2001]

Anyone else feel very uneducated when reading posts about Synergy?

It's definitely a lot to take in at once. Main reason I'm working on it is it seems to be the main direction in which SE is taking crafting. Ultimately, though, I'm looking to do as much as I can on my own since requiring help usually means splitting profits. Being able to HQ my own Fewell has been a godsend to the leveling process, and I have like 40 stacks of orbs of various elements sitting on my mule waiting to either be used or sold after the update.

[Gosyac]

Is there a currently working Latent Checker program out there somewhere? Apnea's site has a broken link to the DL, and the version I have doesn't work anymore. I've got a bunch of weapons I need to start breaking.

[Yugl]

As mentioned, Korroloka tunnel is the best...haha

Can do east ron[s] and keep replacing the syncee, do level sync in qufim, kill goblin spiders in altepa. Personally I'd avoid citadel, because it sucks, and I'd avoid CN because that also sucks.

Colibri are great; I'll have fun with those once I can start finding PTs with access to Wings areas. What's the deal with Qufim? I heard it was related to the book there.

[noodles355]

This is a RE: post, RE: shadow trews vs mahatma in the whats better thread.
My question is now:

Are shadow trews good for any job ever?

[Dramafinderftw]

This is a RE: post, RE: shadow trews vs mahatma in the whats better thread.
My question is now:

Are shadow trews good for any job ever?

BLM? pretty sure these are the best pants

[Shamaya]

Anyone else feel very uneducated when reading posts about Synergy

Shameless plug I know, but my treat -
Synergy/Evolith/Ebon Guide - Part I
Synergy/Evolith/Ebon Guide - Part II
I tried to sum up all of the important and confusing bits in one location. And I feel that at least at the current time, synergy, evolith, and ebon/furia/ebur "aptant armor" are all interrelated.


As for arus' questions. One at a time,
Nah, lot's of fails aren't uncommon. Sometimes you get bad luck. Sometimes it's hard to juggle. Personally I have 2 chars so I dual boxed a lot of my synergizing and I didn't really have much of this problem. But when I've been trying to solo synergize for people recently, I've realized that it is difficult to solo synergy synths with many different elemental requirements. Your problems were:
*leaks
*explosions

People are still a bit confused about leaks. I think maybe it has something to do with pressure. But so far the only connection that people have actually established as far as pressure goes, is that it affects how much damage you take when a furnace explodes. But I wonder too if it increases the probability of a leak. Or if there is some critical point at which a certain level of pressure instigates a leak. If it's either of these, it's probably the former. But it may well not be either at all. The best way to prevent a leak, or so I've heard from others, is to try and not let your elements go too far into the negative. You could try digging through maybe the latter half of the synergy thread or doing search, but I don't really know of any better theories on what causes leaks. One thing is for sure, they're annoying as hell.

Explosions. This one is easy. My general rule is: never let the furnace get above 30% impurity. I pretty much always see it start to explode a lil after 30. I see no point in wasting my time thwacking my furnace, and leaving the stoppage up to chance. I recommend just using the safety lever to move impurity down to 0% every time you see it at 30%.

It's a good idea to bring along a buddy if you're having that much difficulty. Really, anyone will do. They don't need synergy skill. The only problem is that they'll be really confused if they've never done synergy before. But yeah, if you have someone else helping, I recommend just setting them to manage the impurity ratio. If they just make sure it is always close to 0, you can spend your time spamming elements much faster. And even if there is a leak, it won't be a major problem because you'll have plenty of time to continue feeding elemental levels to get it just right. A buddy seriously helps. I failed my friends Ebon Briault 5-6 times the other day, and finally I decided to have him help me and we did that synergy + changing it to Ebur, 2 synergies in a row without fail.

Also, if your person is helping out in doing anything with your synergy, it's you that loses the elements. Rather, the person who claimed/traded the materials, is the person who's going to be losing fewell.

[Shamaya]

Another random question.

Innin. How does it work?

As I've decided I'm not quitting FFXI, it's gonna be real important for me to know precisely how this ability works in the near future. But I find reason to question wiki. And after checking KI, Alla, and BG, I've not found a satisfactory answer.

*It says critical hit rate increase is 30%. But on forums I've seen people talk about much lower boosts on their parsers.
*Wiki says it increases Mijin damage by about 30%. So wait.. is it actually increasing critical hit rate (w/ Mijin just being an exception), or critical hit damage? Or both?
*Accuracy potency? I've seen people quote on forums everything from "it's a pretty meh increase" to "maybe 15%+ increased hit rate"

[Kirschy]

Another random question.

Innin. How does it work?

As I've decided I'm not quitting FFXI, it's gonna be real important for me to know precisely how this ability works in the near future. But I find reason to question wiki. And after checking KI, Alla, and BG, I've not found a satisfactory answer.

*It says critical hit rate increase is 30%. But on forums I've seen people talk about much lower boosts on their parsers.
*Wiki says it increases Mijin damage by about 30%. So wait.. is it actually increasing critical hit rate (w/ Mijin just being an exception), or critical hit damage? Or both?
*Accuracy potency? I've seen people quote on forums everything from "it's a pretty meh increase" to "maybe 15%+ increased hit rate"

I never confirmed it, but I think it's a diminishing effect. It starts at +30 acc and reduces to +10 by the time it wears off. The other effects are supposed to be similar.

[noodles355]

BLM? pretty sure these are the best pants

Any chance you could give me a very quick dummies guide run down as to why they beat mahatma (and morri? do they?) for blm, but not rdm?

I'm assuming it's to do with the native MaB traits (and blm having more of them), but I'm still completely retarded regarding this stuff...

[Eole]

One of my friend says that Usukane Set is not good for MNK for events such as Limbus, Einherjar etc... because he read on some forums that it lacks Attack.

I would like some advices on this because I thought it would just be perfect with Pizza...

It was written that Bandomusha + Shura Togi with Turban+Byakko's would better...

[Thorny]

Please, please, please tell me I'm doing something wrong.

Do anywhere from 9-20 runs per week depending on how many people come.

Somewhere around 80 runs or more in a row without either sword or earring dropping. I'm about to kill myself. Please tell me I'm missing a rune or something and tell me how to fix it.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...304_234249.jpg

You're doing lots wrong. First off, you need to be resonating at least the rune for the item you want, if not the other as well. This means stillness should be over the water icon for earring, or great warrior over the earth icon for koggelmander, or both for unknown effects. Personally, I resonate both and have seen about a 1/6 droprate on both items. Additionally, you aren't using Supreme Might. While it isn't proven, it's widely believed that making your mazes stronger will increase droprate, all drops I've obtained have been with SM and it's clearly the biggest increase to maze strength.

This is the setup I have been using:

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/8...8denofranc.jpg
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7...6denofranc.jpg

[Kirschy]

Any chance you could give me a very quick dummies guide run down as to why they beat mahatma (and morri? do they?) for blm, but not rdm?

I'm assuming it's to do with the native MaB traits (and blm having more of them), but I'm still completely retarded regarding this stuff...

I asked Suiram this question a while ago and he explained that HQ Shadow Legs will only win over Maha on AMII + -ga III.

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showp...&postcount=593

[mdkuser]

One of my friend says that Usukane Set is not good for MNK for events such as Limbus, Einherjar etc... because he read on some forums that it lacks Attack.

I would like some advices on this because I thought it would just be perfect with Pizza...

It was written that Bandomusha + Shura Togi with Turban+Byakko's would better...

he is wrong because usukane also has massive STR and store stp. A full usukane monk will punch for like 10% more than a sky monk in those events: I tested that some time ago, pchan's full usu monk vs my sky monk. the store TP+13 also increase your WS frequency by a decent amount for no melee dot loss.

And before some one says lolSTR, no, a sky monk uses almost no STR gear ( TP in what ? 75 STR at best?), he is not gonna be STR caped on any mob in ein/limbus/salvage. Full usukane is the absolute best for caped or uncaped accuracy.

edit: also, when a full usu monk has to use pizza, a sky monk has to use sushi.

[Amok]

@noodles355

From what I understand of magic accuracy, Mahatma's M.acc will at worst be equal to Shadow Trews and actually beat it under dINT = 10 (or 15, I dunno anymore). Potency-wise: MAB has diminishing returns, but on the other hand the weight of dINT also goes down after an 'inflection point'. So, on potency it's more situational, but I'm guessing the MAB wins most of the time. However, since you're usually working up to that dINT=10(or 15) I'm not sure you'd want to sacrifice such a large INT slot for a tiny potency boost. I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't wear'em on BLM nor RDM.

[Beave]

Colibri are great; I'll have fun with those once I can start finding PTs with access to Wings areas. What's the deal with Qufim? I heard it was related to the book there.

I like qufim because you can OP there easily, and there is a book right next to the OP. Can grab a page and do clippers+a worm. These days, it should be really easy to find someone with a mule to PL/kill wights and banshee so you can build a party of ddx5+brd or cor. Adding a brd or cor to a party at such low levels makes a marked difference in killspeed. I'm also assuming you aren't partying with gimpshit trash players who don't eat food. For all I care in a lowbie exp party wear a weapon and eat food =P

I'd only party there with an outside healer+a brd or cor in the party, unless the party setup was something like 6 heavy DD. I much prefer east ronfaure [s] for parties though, mobs are easy and there's plenty of camps that don't run out of mobs if your pullers don't suck. Sigil refresh/food extension is nice as well. Also with the best levels to sync being 36 and 37, there's always someone willing to exp a subjob or the like.

[nekoshoonen]

I quit over a year and a half ago and came back to game yesterday. and I found myself sitting at level 68 DNC with no clue what gear i need to buy to level up.
Can anyone tell me gear i should buy from AH or (other easily obtained way)to level to 75 . Also what gear is out there for DNC from endgame.
Also I have a Joytoy and Max sword merits should I use it at 70 (main hand or offhand)?
Thank you!

[Dramafinderftw]

I quit over a year and a half ago and came back to game yesterday. and I found myself sitting at level 68 DNC with no clue what gear i need to buy to level up.
Can anyone tell me gear i should buy from AH or (other easily obtained way)to level to 75 . Also what gear is out there for DNC from endgame.
Also I have a Joytoy and Max sword merits should I use it at 70 (main hand or offhand)?
Thank you!

1.yell at yourself for leveling a useless job
2.d-lvl it to 1
3. sell gear
4.??? profit!