Thaumaturge

[neptunet]

I'm not too sure about conj, but from my understanding int does nothing for THM which was why I posted the article

Maybe I misunderstood, but could you take another look at that article and explain why INT does nothing?

[OWS_Tonx]

Yeah, maybe I'm thinking of a different article. I'll be home soon so I'll give it another read through

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

-THMs main dmg is dots(and shock spikes is sick!). Pie affects dot dmg. Theres a link that shows the difference in dmg using pie. Not to mention siphon MP is insane with high pie, I think I hit 244 off a mob the other day.
- We don't cast any nukes so int is irrelevant.
-I alloted 150 vit, 34 mnd, and 152 pie; after gear and traits I have 154 vit, 34 mnd, 161 pie. With some dark pretzels I'm sitting at 1572 hp so the extra vit is pointless to me. I'd rather grab an extra tic of dmg for my dots. If I somehow grind lancer(so boring) to 30 I'd pick up the trait for 10 vit -> 10 pie to yet again increase my dot dmg by 1/tic.

[neptunet]

How come nobody cares about Conjurer? 10 posts back in the Conjurer thread is talking about sp procs. lol

[Grey Jorildyn]

Cuz Conjurer sucks.

[Kaeko]

Sorry for the late replies. Long post, but hopefully readable.

Regarding blog:
It's the same blog I use in XI. It's linked in my signature but I'll repost it. I also do a lot of minor posts in the official SE lodestone blog as well:
Livejournal
Lodestone Blog

Regarding soloing NMs:
The best build is to go for around 1400ish HP then go for high PIE. The reason you ignore INT for a solo NM build is because INT is really only going to affect the damage of your spells and normal attacks - neither of which you really use for damage in these fights outside of Shadowsear. PIE affects DoTs (research I did on it is here), which is by far your best source of damage. These NMs have 32,000ish HP, and you'll probably be doing at least 80% of it with DoT. My LJ has a couple posts on how some of the solos work.

If you are starting out trying to solo, I'd recommend having at least 50THM and 20CON (48CON much preferred for cure III). You won't get much further than Gob and maybe Dodore without at least THM50/CON48. Next most important things are to level is ARC48 for Bloodletter and Quickstride, and GLA36 for Sentinel. Individual solos in order of difficulty:

Tarbh Uisge
Haughtpox Bloatbilly
Dodore
Great Buffalo
Elder Mosshorn
Uraeus

Tarbh is the easiest and just requires cycling cures and some minor MP management. Good starter NM just to get a feel for how soloing NMs on THM works in terms of cycling cures and maintaining DoTs. Next 3 (gob, dodore, GB) are your emulate abuse solos. Gob is by far the easiest and really can be done without emulate. GB takes a lot more MP management as well as has a good 1-shot ability you need to strafe to avoid. Dodore used to be much, much harder with 6 minions, but should be fairly doable now. My video is with the original 6 adds. Current version has 3. 2x Sear will still kill you, but much rarer with fewer adds. Finally the last 2 require "return to territory" abuse, of which there's a whole post on LJ about. These require a lot of 'kiting' and MP/DoT management.

More on Stat Distribution for THM:
I'm a big proponent of high VIT/PIE builds right now if you're an NM soloer. But there is some merit in putting points in INT. Shadowsear damage definitely increases with INT, as does your dart damage. I would not recommend putting more than 80 points in it though just because of diminishing returns (requires more stat points to get +1 increase). I don't have any definitive testing for INT, but conceptually I can give an explanation as to why I don't personally focus on it:

One of many issues in XIV right now is dLVL affecting all damage formulas to crazy extents. Try hitting a level 65 NM like GB and you'll find that no matter what you do stat-wise you won't break more than 25 damage on it with dart. This is because your difference in level is +15 (high) and all the effects your stats have on affecting damage are blunted by this level difference. Because of this, the powerful moves in the game are moves that ignore this level difference. THM has 3 big ones - Punishing Barbs, Shadowsear, and DoTs. Sear is effected by INT, but has high timer. DoTs are the reason I prefer raising PIE. The reason I recommend Bloodletter for THM is also because it ignores level difference (static 450 shed damage). Until the dLVL system is fixed, there is little reason to focus highly on INT because most all the moves INT affects are blunted by dLVL. You'll wreck low level mobs because dLVL will amplify the gains, but who cares if you can do 1000 more damage to a level 10 rat?

Shield Skills for THM:
I use Aegis Boon II and Deflection with Shield of the Savage + GLA trait. Aegis Boon is broken and as long as you successfully block the attack, you not only take 0 damage, but are healed. It's bugged in that the animation doesn't even occur. Deflection makes you take 0 damage if it blocks as well I think. With the setup I use, they are both 18 seconds. Sentinel is 13, so that's 49 out of 60 second cycles where I have an incredibly powerful defense buff on. Makes you near invincible to physical attacks. There are a number of videos I suggest watching if you want to get a feel for the strength of these shield skills on truly difficult mobs (not NMs, but 70+ level mobs). There's a guy named Roi Beoulve (Figaro) I follow for his high level solos on GLA. He's got some very cool solos on GLA using shield skill abuse.

Soloing Rank 70 Mossy Goobbue
Soloing Rank 75 Widowmaker
Soloing Rank 80 Goblin Bushwacker

The Widowmaker solo is the most impressive. If you watch, he actually kills it by getting struck with a 2000+ damage/tick Poison from Deadly Thrust then immediately uses the THM50 move Contagion to throw the poison back at it. Anyways, I would try to analyze these if you want to see how strong shield skills are at mitigating damage, especially on HIGH END damage mobs. These mobs would likely 2 shot, if not 1 shot my THM used for NM solos and he handles them for 10+ minutes.

Why Nobody likes CON?:
CON and THM are essentially the same in terms of build and available spells due to the armory system in XIV. The big differences are that CON (1) does not have Shadowsear, which is incredibly strong due to avoiding dLVL, (2) has a much weaker AoE range (small circle vs. large conal), and (3) has longer recast on Punishing Barbs. There is essentially no reason in my mind to use CON as a main if you also have THM. I highly suggest leveling both, but only because you want Cure III for THM.

[OWS_Tonx]

Gave Haughtplox a few go's tonight, to no success yet. I keep getting spammed with that stun move and die. try some more tomorrow.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I didn't think gladiator solos were that big of a deal. I've killed some stuff high level on gladiator... never a Widowmaker though, that shit's just scary. Good use of Contagion there, that's an ability worth making accessible for a number of reasons. Guess I never really thought about it since they're not "desirable" mobs.

[neptunet]

Wow, that widowmaker solo was amazing. That was some quick thinking on his part. I guess he had no other option, even with 89 HP. He turned that around real quick.

[Elcura]

I didn't think gladiator solos were that big of a deal. I've killed some stuff high level on gladiator... never a Widowmaker though, that shit's just scary. Good use of Contagion there, that's an ability worth making accessible for a number of reasons. Guess I never really thought about it since they're not "desirable" mobs.

Now that I'm taking GLD up to 50, I can really see how helpful THM skills are for tanking jobs. The only thing about Contagion is that it can fail, which is a kick in the teeth.

[Celeras]

I enjoyed those videos solely on the basis that he was actually using the action bar and playing correctly instead of casting everything via macro. Mostly useless in this game, and all the other solo videos seem to use nothing but for no reason.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Kaeko has probably the most formal and well written posts I've ever seen on this forum. SE should hire that now! Thanks for the bit about aegis boon. I was using it for two gob fights, then switched it out for featherfoot and saw I was taking a lot more damage. Now just to grind some gla for self preservation...

[OWS_Tonx]

Did a little fucking around with int to see how much of a difference it made with shadow sear. I didn't document anything since it wasn't formal testing or super accurate, but holy does it make an impact. With 14 or 18 (whatever the default int is for thm) I was doing 400-600. With 80 I was doing 800-1000. I guess its not that much better considereding how man points you have to allot into it, but I was pretty impressed it made that much of a difference.

As far as soloing goes, I tried goblin 1 more time and died when I had the 2 braggadacio(sp). That stun is a bitch move. Dodore solo was much easier imo.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Did a little fucking around with int to see how much of a difference it made with shadow sear. I didn't document anything since it wasn't formal testing or super accurate, but holy does it make an impact. With 14 or 18 (whatever the default int is for thm) I was doing 400-600. With 80 I was doing 800-1000. I guess its not that much better considereding how man points you have to allot into it, but I was pretty impressed it made that much of a difference.

As far as soloing goes, I tried goblin 1 more time and died when I had the 2 braggadacio(sp). That stun is a bitch move. Dodore solo was much easier imo.

Just some quick math...

Shadowsear on a 3minute cooldown: 1000dmg.
Bio II, Dia II, Poison II with decent pie build we'll say 150dmg/tic(easily hit that dmg), so over 3 minutes: 9000dmg.

Not factoring resists or anything, or a high pie build which you could hit 200dmg/tic pretty easy, OR factor in tier 2 conj dots which increase your dmg even more. Also with high pie you get a huge return on siphon MP. If your shadowsear gets resisted it's 3 minutes until your next cast which blows(multi resists on dots happen too but the shorter cd isn't as painful). With the above it's easy to see there's no reason to really go for int but it is cool to see it at least makes a difference.

As for your gob solo's I'd recommend always keeping shockspikes up and rotating deflection and aegis boon II(sentinel too if you have it). Buff, run into the gob pack almost on top of them then pop emulate. If you pull from afar you'll get hit with their ranged attacks which are not reduced with emulate and pretty much will kill you with one volley. After emulate pop deflection and cast sac 3. Pop punishing barbs and apply dots, once barbs wears off just rotate slow/para with your deflection and aegis boon II, also tossing in sear when it's up. A big thing that helps is try to stay in the same spot the whole fight. Let your mp drop to 200-300 or so before you siphon mp(it'll go to full if you hit all the mobs). When bloatbelly is left stop casting debuffs(slow/para) and just let him take dmg from shock spikes. An extra 40 dmg per hit really adds up over time(even moreso if you have spikes II).

I find dodore to be harder simply because it seems like luck until all the minions are down. A dodore sear + scourge can pretty much kill you.

[OWS_Tonx]

I'm not arguing that an int build is better by any means. Was just shocked that it boosted sear dmg that much. I've kept my PIE at about 151 or so since reading stuff earlier. I was messing with my stats a lil yesterday (the whole int thing), so it's at about 120 or so right now

[Alok]

bravo on the videos kaeko, been a long time since i been on bg, but that was worth the watch :D

[Criosist]

Kool vids Kaeko, is there any chance you could post your gear set or link to your XIVPads gear set please ?

[Mav]

THM pov for both Darkhold fights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw3Z36EafY Deepvoid Slave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_vWaj5aWzo Batraal

[Caina Malebolge]

Nice!

We need to get some two-handed THM weapons, or better DoM shields. Seeing r50 THM walk around with that r20 shield for the +3 Magic ACC is pretty silly.

[Jojimbo]

Both THM and CON have r50 shields, CON from points and THM from chest drop in the r45 raid. Admittedly they aren't that great, but they have uses as both are best for curing due to mnd on them, and the thm shield is good for 'nuking'.