Random Question Thread XV: This Is Not The Sticky You're Looking For

[rog]

Does atmas have chances to drop even if you don't process red !!?

Yes, but it's stupidly rare.

[EternalSnow]

Not sure if this is suppose to go here, but is anyone else having connection problems?

[Plow]

I see a lot in the Abyssea threads "Empyreans are easy to get, except Tahrongi" - is this because of the need for 4 pop items to get Chloris/Glavoid?

Yes. Chloris himself is a complete joke, but it takes like 7 nm's or some shit to build his set.

[Neisan]

Best bet on Chloris is to grab friends/leeches and farm boxes for key items, you can get all his pops from chests. It's still time consuming, but better than running around looking for the Nms.

[Byrthnoth]

Saber Dance isn't any 40%, but it isn't a total joke either. If I had to guess, I'd say it caps out at a static +DA value after a certain number of hits (maybe 10%?). My plan was to take it to the tree and skill up H2H with it, but I haven't had much time to play lately. I'm 5/5, so I figure for functional purposes it'll be enough for me to just figure out what my DA% is if I spam it as fast as possible.

And yeah, Dancer is useful if you aren't cleaving monsters for time, but I always have to go switch jobs to WAR or BLM for Grellow/Blue/Red procs after we build time and burn stones for the night when I take it to Abyssea. Thief covers dagger, and we bring one of those along anyway because we're there for drops.

[Dooom]

Ninja merits. Capped subtle blow, capped ninja tool expert, and now I have little idea which choices are the least lol-worthy. Drop one upgrade from tool expert and unlock each san on the off chance I end up having to nuke something or want stronger -elements? For tier1, I guess I should cap one of the effect bonuses, but which? Torn between ice and thunder. All my active jobs except ninja are capped, and merits are cheap with so much time in abyssea otherwise I'd spend them on something more worthwhile, but this is all I have left. Any advice?

[Thorny]

Order of increasing difficulty:

Carabosse - 2 items, trigger NMs, just farm pop item from wandering mobs and kill NM
Briareus - 3 items, trigger NMs, just farm pop item from wandering mobs and kill NM
Kukulkan - 3 items, trigger NMs, just farm pop item from wandering mobs and kill NM

Glavoid:
Muscaliet - 1 trigger NM's item, 1 pop item from wandering mobs. A bit over double anything in another zone.
Alectron - 1 trigger NM's item, 1 pop item from wandering mobs. A bit over double anything in another zone.
Adze - Timed spawn. Puts a limit on efficiency, no matter how many people you bring to kill the others.
Minhocao - Timed spawn. Puts a limit on efficiency, no matter how many people you bring to kill the others.

Chloris:
Treble Noctules - 1 trigger NM's item, 1 pop item from wandering mobs. A bit over double anything in another zone.
Hedetet - 1 trigger NM's item, 1 pop item from wandering mobs. A bit over double anything in another zone.
Ophanim - TWO trigger NM's items, 1 pop item from wandering mobs. Triple.
Chukwa - Timed spawn. Puts a limit on efficiency, no matter how many people you bring to kill the others.

Since you're waiting on the timed spawn either way, Chloris requires a bit more effort to finish pops for, but glavoid is a more difficult NM. Either way, it's pretty clear Tahrongi is head and shoulders above the rest, requiring well over twice the work(about 4x as much as Carabosse.. lol). As an added bonus, it's the only base zone that doesn't have an easy amber mob.. though farming gold chests is still typically preferred to the alternative there(and gets you both glavoid and chloris done at once).

[Byrthnoth]

Tahrongi does have two large, easy populations of non-ruby monsters next to each other though, while La Theine and Konschtat don't really.

If someone was going to make the argument that the paths were equivalent, here's the argument to use:
1) Because the Tahrongi paths suck, the most efficient way to complete sets is to farm them out of gold chests.
2) Because (when you farm out of gold chests) you can't control which key items you get, you'll complete Glavoid, Chloris, and Lacovie sets.
3) Because you're completing Glavoid, Chloris, and Lacovie sets, but only want Glavoid or Chloris, you have extra pops.
4) You can use these extra pops to team up with someone doing a complimentary Empyreal (so if you want Chloris, they'd want Glavoid), with similar firepower and mule access.
5) Because you're getting a lot of Lacovies too, you can get friends to help for free-lot Goading Belts, Brisk masks, Regurgitated Wings, and so on.
6) You can use this mass of people to camp at mandies, pull them all, and pull all the (linking) bats onto one spot and -aga/Cleave them down at once (with capped azure/amber/pearl light), and still only get gold/blue chests. Eliminating ruby chests substantially increases your efficiency. Having so many people makes both the pulling and farming faster, and gives you larger groups to do the NMs with/hold random key items.
7) In other zones, instead you lowman farm time and then do pop NMs, taking breaks when you need more time. I'd guess groups that do that average about 1 key item every 10 minutes tops, considering they'd need to also get 1 TE every 10 minutes to stay in zone.
8 ) In Tahrongi, TEs flow with the Key items. If you have a large, reliable group of people dedicated to getting Goading belts/whichever NM you don't need then Key items generally won't be wasted because you have so many people to take them. I'd really hope you could average out to better than one Key item every cleave pull (~10 minutes?) with capped Amber/Azure and no Ruby at all. Your excess time would definitely cover killing Glavoid/Chloris/Lacovie.

[Eldelphia]

Where do you change back to Abyssea titles?

[Neisan]

New Brd npc in Port Jeuno.

EDIT: Zuah Lepahnyu (Near Airship to Kazham) Port Jeuno ( J-8 )

[shepardG]

Bit of confusion in my LS currently, so ALL required key items to pop chloris/glavoid can come out of gold chests? Otherwiki only has a few listed, but from discussion's in this thread seem to imply all of them can come from chests, just trying to get a" yes, shepardg, you are sexy and smart and also can farm all your chloris/glavoid/lacovie key iems completely from chests"

[Tribe]

What non-ruby mobs to people cleave for TE in new zones? besides the frogs in miseroux that is.

[reaper1228]

Pretty sure you can get all the key items from gold chests in the 3 original abyssea zones.

Chigoes in attohwa and bats in vunkerl are the mobs we do.

[Byrthnoth]

What non-ruby mobs to people cleave for TE in new zones? besides the frogs in miseroux that is.

Misa - Frogs, Colibri
Attohwa - Chigoes
Vunkerl - Triple Bats

[Tribe]

Chigoes reallly? I felt like they were hitting pretty hard but I almost slaughtered them all when I didnt know they agro'ed will go try them with a proper setup.

[Byrthnoth]

They hit softer than normal mobs in my experience. I was getting hit for 60-80 in non-PDT gear on WAR with Phalanx II, I think? Hit fast, of course, but either with a larger delay than regular chigoes or they don't have DA/TA while normal chigs do. Bad news is, they don't link. You're best off camping in a crack about half way up the group and having people agro-pull.

Also, because you're camping in a narrow area Sonic thrust does pretty well on them too, in case someone wants to bring DRG or SAM.

[Tribe]

How well does sonic thrust preform on Samurai compared to Drg? or even compared to Cleave? I can get a better PDT set for Sam and 5ws vs 3~ ( i know retaliates is going to make this probably many more then sam could pump out but the mobs might not even live that long anyways ) I think Sam would be better job to have endless time on in the zone I feel more confident tanking on it lowman.

[Byrthnoth]

With Sonic Thrust, if the monster is behind you then you're fucked. I don't know what kind of damage it does, as I've never bothered to use it and always filter damage. Still, that chigoe camp is a big series of narrow passages. If you're willing to run around doing a lot of positioning between WSs then I'm sure Sonic would work.

Fell Cleave Warrior is a better option than SAM/WAR (you'd need to sub WAR and use Love Torque or 3 merit levels to get Sonic access). Retaliation pretty much gets you 100TP instantly again on Chigoes.

[Yugl]

Yes. Chloris himself is a complete joke, but it takes like 7 nm's or some shit to build his set.

Which really leads to the main problem: Why the fuck does SE keep screwing DRG over in the weapons department? Oh I get it, lances.

Seriously though, Valk Fork was lame to get from Einherjar (Drop rate wise and the fact that it was member intensive). OAT comes off arguably one of the worst TIII VNMs to L-man. Chloris for Empyrean weapon. Moreover, our "legendary" weapons (Relic/Mythic/Empyrean) turn out to be complete jokes as far as defining features. Shock spikes + AGI MOD WS? Really? Ryunohige was a nice exception to this trend (When Critical hitting jumps meant something), but even now it's a total joke. The Empyrean weapon uses a VIT mod and only serves as Wheeling+1. What the hell SE.

Edit: To the above posters, Sonic thrust is a line-directed "AOE." It doesn't even have the dignity of being called conal. In other words, it's garbage for the purposes you would want to use it for (Oh look, preposition!).

[Cream Soda]

They should give you a relic wyvern, which would be like a lv 99 skoffin