Monday 5 August 2013

Woah baby!

no time to post a lot but ya got this on des with Aya today (thanks ayaaaaaaaaa)


Monday 29 July 2013

(Taru) Dark Knight Rises? Part 2

Edit: it's up now @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl2CXC6o9-E

OKAY I used that crazy build in hako this morning.  It was a blast to play!!  So much different from normal scythe dark knight.  I went 3W-2L against Kafuka's DRK.  It was a good set.  I should have a video up of some of that later.

Besides the obvious, the most important change is that you aren't going to be doing much sprinting around (you have to be still to shoot bolts and cast spells).  With that said I think it might be worth returning the ballista band for this setup.  I spent a LOT of time quarrying near the rook, just unloading barrels of bolts at people.  My sustain was such that the other team basically gave up trying to kill me in the last 2-3 games (after I got items going).

Silence was a serious problem though, with both WHM silence and guillotine.  Silena is pretty much necessary for this build to get through the initial phase of burning someone down and then setting up camp at the rook.

Swapping between dagger and staff turned out to be tough.  You'd think that little penalty period would be short enough but I gave up trying to make it work later in the set.  So I got revitalizers but they really only gave me... another third eye + weapon bash.

...In fact I kept Terra's staff on for the entirety of games 4 and 5 - even at the pre-hyper beginning to keep me alive long enough to do the usual damage.  You'd think Chatoyant and a scythe have the same property, no damage reduction, but the fact that this build has to be rooted to deal damage leaves it at a severe disadvantage in "avoiding" damage (scythe guy can run around and still deal damage).

Some notable cons that you can see in the video (up tonight or tomorrow):
--I can't really use my TP.  Heavy Swing is butts.  So I'm lugging like 300 TP around and the DRK can absorbTP me for lots.  I should ditch TP on heavy swing every little while just to prevent this.  If only I could DRK/WAR or something that gives Earth Crusher!  Maybe I'll convince them :p
--Revit doesn't do anything really
--MP can run out, and elixirs take time to use (see video)
--Important casts of elemental magic (like finishing someone off) can be interrupted.. even with 5/5 interruption merits and 7/7 elemental magic merits
--Dark resistant enemies (WHM, DRK) are not good targets for bolting
--Anyone can jump into a dark resist set if they have it (see pro below)

And the notable pros:
--Great sustain, and through this, the ability to be a scoring threat
--DRK, especially taru, have enormous enmity (people love to kill them) so you can draw even more fire for your team than usual
--Holy bolts are a step down damage wise and obviously offer no healing, but it's important to note that they could be used as an alternative if the entire opposing team has dark resistance
--When WHM changes to turtle gear, they lose most of the dark resistance and thus become viable targets for bolting
--More time alive and part of the battle gives you a much better look at crippling tactics like poisonga>sleep/repose
--Opponent WHM has to consider casting Shellra 3, wasting more MP throughout the game
--Opponents may switch to dark resistance gear, reducing their other stats

Well that's it for now.  The video will be up soon!

Thursday 25 July 2013

More results, Diorama landscape, god damn potens grip, etc

It's been a few games so here's some more results.


Job played  (vs mirror opponent)  Wins Ties Losses  Comments
DRG  (vs Irvinez)                        2W  4L
DRK  (vs Teska,Sepia,Fuubar)    3W  2L    cycled through dark knights
DRK  (vs Forcecia)                      2W  3L  our WHM dc'd in one of the losses, but them's the breaks. forcecia was nuking.
DRK  (vs Apollonrng)                  3W 2L    
MNK (vs Ryvi)                             4W  2L     salvo rides agaiiin!
DRG (vs Uruz)                             3W  3L     uruz gets a measure of revenge
WAR (vs Banneret)                     5W  0L     =/ sorry banner
SAM (vs Uruz)                            4W  1L      used GK for first few, then spear.  sadly spear was doing way more work.. 


Pretty average for a while there.  WAR has only dropped 1 game in 11 attempts!

I wanted to shed a little light on the current diorama landscape:

Yuzumochiko sets up all the games (thankyouthankyouthankyou) and she only plays WHM so we get a healer-game every time.  The few times she's not around we work together to figure out what we'll play, but there's always at least a PLD in those games.  The JPs used to play with only DDs and that gets a little stale imo.  Ranger is not played often.  Maybe once a week we see a pair of rangers in game.

Usually we only play 1 reservation but a good chunk of the players are looking to play a second on most days.. we just normally don't have the players to make it happen.. yet.


Because I have that bloody DMG+2 Daihannya augment, I've always wanted to be stronger with that GK style even though mithra has like 14 STR.  An obvious improvement was that potens grip (STR+5) but they're worth about 7mil....
With the help of the recently-returned-to-carbuncle Aya and Yozen, I was able to use the metal chip that had been burning a hole in my mog satchel for years and try the actual fight that drops the grip.  yeah, I know, endgame stuff, wtf!

We went in pretty blind as all the wikis out there have limited info on Pyrrha and his cronies.  It ended up being fairly easy, the BLM ghrahs could be pulled off with no links, and they were easily silenced.  Pyrrha himself was super tanky.. Yozen's well equipped MNK slowly chipped away at him while Aya nuked for great damage with her RDM.  My AH-WHM kept Yozen alive.  After like 15minutes of pounding on this guy and several near-death experiences, he went down and dropped... some god damn ancient beastcoins.  Great, thanks, asshole.  Now I have to do this again tomorrow.

I guess I'll update the wikis to tell people how easy it is to do.... well, after we get a few of them and sell them all ;)

(Taru) Dark Knight Rises?

I was playing a match last week as DRK (mithra) against Forcecia's taru DRK, and he was landing some good damage nukes.  I usually keep a keen eye on updates, but this totally caught me off guard.
I thought about how awesome BLM was going to be, but never thought about it in terms of dark knight.  Immediately I got excited and started thinking about builds.  This is the update.

I used to play taru DRK/RDM quite a bit.  Probably more often than any other job combo.  It's exciting.  High enmity job with a shat load of enfeebling power.

So that damage is coming from a non-int build taru with no MAB trait (sam subjob).  From the information on the update page, it seems like dINT is going to play a much bigger part now.  Fire II used to scale up by 1 damage per 1 dINT, and now it's approx double that (assuming it's linear).

I used to rock a serious ranged acc build for taru dark knight, and what I wanted to do was combine them into one as a sort of half-ranger half-black mage...

I've since tried it out in OMs and it's quite powerful.  The gearset is basically ranged acc with INT where I can't get much racc.

Dagger/Staff/Shield     Leo+1  with bolts
Beak helm (racc+4)     Merman gorget      Moldavite earring     Intruder earring
Nuevo(racc+7atk+7)    I.M hands              Marksman ring         Genius ring+1/Scorpion+1
Behe mantle(racc+1)    Precise belt           DRK AF1(int+3)      I.M boots

I swap between using Chatoyant (prehyper, not targetted), Terra's (targetted), and Merc kris/shield (BW is up).  With Chatoyant and this build as DRK/RDM, ~350 Fire2 are possible.  So yeah, no scythe.  Just elemental magic and bloody bolt spam, with merc kris SEBW mixed in when I get freedom to quarry.

Liberal nuking will drain MP pretty quick so it's important to use those bloody bolts as damage over time while you wait for your chance to blitz someone down with nukes.

When I get a chance to play this in diorama, I'll post again with some SAM sj results.  I'll still be rocking the exact same build.  Desu doesn't even have scythe merits.. or STR merits for that matter!  He does have staff merits though.. meditate>heavy swing?






Friday 19 July 2013

PLD video analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkOE3d7MT0


First of all let's talk about weapon choice. 

Here are the general options:

Long delay 1 hand sword (bastard, etc)
Generally for dealing damage, this used to be very common.  Along with a good shield this combo worked wonders.  With the meta the way it is now this has fallen out of popular use.  With the update this may come back into the fore.
Mid-delay bonus stat sword (sanguine, talekeeper, sagasinger)
Used for their bonus stats.  Bonus HP/MP and whatever else can't hurt.  The Sagasinger actually has great delay and plenty of nice stats - maybe the best possible weapon for a hybrid rook guard / stat boosted PLD.
Short delay 1 hand sword (cermet, etc)
Rook guard material.  Standard.
Dagger (Mercurial kris or other)
Not really used at all, although Shadowstitch can be surprisingly effective.  The MP-draining weaponskills aren't worth the TP.  Without heavy parameters for Cyclone it isn't very good either.  I think it's good to keep one on you though for those rare times when all you need to do is stop someone from quarrying.  A sort of set-it-and-forget-it method for shutting down a potential quarry threat.
Staff (Chatoyant)
For healing (bonus healing from the latent) and regenerating MP.  Chatoyant's resistances (20 of each) are icing on the cake.  Spirit Taker can do some good work (100~150) and Earth Crusher is good for doing quick magic damage stacked with Holy.  Lacks rook guard delay but that can be made up for with a fast bow.  Also the damage over time with staff is very weak.
Great sword (AH stuff, Ascalon, hey shut up it's awesome)
Hey.  Shut up, it's awesome.  Seriously though if I was elvaan I would probably rock this..
Polearm (Borian spear, etc)
.. Or this.  Paladin needs merits to use Penta Thrust but it can actually dish some nice damage.  PLD's accuracy is very bad with spear so you need to compensate.  Leg Sweep can come in handy too, but you already have a stun if you're 1-handing.

You want to be using a lamian kaman +1 for rook guarding, regardless of your main weapon.  Lamian kaman +1 beats aureole out now after one of the several, completely unnecessary ranged updates.


As for general equipment everything is pretty standard.  Start with your MP gear and unless the enemy has some serious aspir power, just keep it on so your random elixirs and mana powders recover more MP.  You won't be targeted until later on.

With the update mentioned above, full-on vorpal damage PLD just might make a comeback.

Right.  So I would go with the staff in a bigger game or the short-delay sword when it's just a small 3-3 or 4-4 and the PLD is the only healer.  There will probably be more times during that small match that you need to stall a scoring DD until your front line comes back to the fight.

Okay let's take a look at this video.  Starting off, the PLD can't do too much.  Can't cure because your DD want to die for their hyper.. so basically I try to dedicate my time to interrupting the other team's quarry.  It helps to flash that first weaponskill from the SAM or DRG in this situation when the beatdown is coming on your DRK, but I tend to keep my provokes for quarry interruption.  I try to get a rhythm for the mirror PLD's quarrying.  Lots of back line players tend to spam the crap out of their quarry macro so you can catch them doing it on time.

I guess the most important thing for the first half of the match is to keep your quarrying clean.  Get those petras and get a lot of them.  Do your best to toss your returning DDs a protect III.  Your WHM will be busy, so be a gentleman and take care of this task for her.  In addition to these, keep an eye on people to flash, and do a check of enemy petras on the regular.  Yeah, I didn't do a very good job of checking in this video..

If you choose staff, I find that samurai make the best targets for Taker as they (assuming they're prehyper) are going to be wearing -evasion, low def equipment and will be rocking berserk.  The worst thing is to blow your hard-earned TP into cureskin.. so keep an eye out.

5:40~ Hustle over to the rook to quarry a quick echo drop to fix silence.  You'll almost always get echo drops when silenced .. even more so if you're near the rook.

7:00~ Chose elixir over hi-elixir because I was expecting some shit to break out late game (MP was alright + we were losing at the time) and the hi-elixir could be the difference, NQ elixir maybe not so much (consider yourself scoring with people on you, you want that beefy hi-elixir in your bag)

8:00~ 7 minutes left in game but we went with WHM kill.  Sometimes it's the only way to claw back into a game you're losing

9:15~ Blargggggh forgot to put holy on my new macro sets (remade them all for new pc), this could have been a badass holy kill if I was a bit quicker.

9:55~ It's up to their team now to make up for the change in the game.  Their WHM can't really build petra anymore so the front line need to be getting as many petra as they can while we've got our focus on killing their WHM.  It's also time for any unkilled mages to suit up because the hurt is coming.  Usually.

12:00~ Got a bit crossed up here, really wanted to keep an eye on Sepia but I had time to lethe the PLD for sure..  who knows man.  After watching this a few times, that could have come back to bite me in the ass if they had had enough petra to make it close.

Late game, the PLD or any secondary healer needs to be on WHM-watch and help them weather the storm.

For the rest of the game I basically creep around with a lethe +1 but never use it.  My team managed to shut down their WHM for the most part and we kept them from scoring too much otherwise.  They really seemed to fall apart after the WHM went down and it was plain sailing from there.  Sepia did a good job staying alive for a while when they came for him and nobody bothered with me.  Arabull had some good quarry luck and was on blast most of the game.






Saturday 6 July 2013

Since I've returned: Game records, changes, excitement

Sooo after 6~ months off FFXI (and any other game for that matter, not sure how I survived either) I came back with a hankering for some ballista.  Since returning I've kept records!  Here they are:


Job played  (vs mirror opponent)  Wins Ties Losses  Comments
SAM  (vs Herald)        3W 3L
DRK  (vs Forcecia)     4W 2L      Forcecia is that Leban dude, for those who might remember
WAR  (vs Kumadoli)   5W 1L
DRK  (vs Sepia)          3W  3L      Some of the best games I think I've ever been a part of
MNK  (vs Arabull)       3W  2L     Salvo's debut! (he's my galka)
DRG  (vs Sepia)           3W  2L     Lost first 2, then won 3.  That always feels good
SAM  (vs Teska)        1W 2T 3L     Blargh.  It was my penta to her jinpu, but I think even if I had GK merits I would have lost this time.  Teska was excellent.
DRG  (vs that hume drg.. I forget his name, will edit later)  2W 1T 2L
DRK  (vs Sepia)           3W  2L
DRK  (vs Herald)         3W  2L
----------------------------------------------------took a long break here to build my new PC!
PLD   (vs Kumadoli)    2W  1T  2L
----------------------------------------------------at this point I started recording
PLD   (vs Kumadoli)     3W  1L          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkOE3d7MT0
PLD   (vs Mami)           1W  4L    This was pretty bad.  Props to Mami!  You're too cute, I can't focus!
DRG  (vs Uruz)             3W  2L        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6xoyb4hJXs
DRG  (vs Uruz)             6W  0L    Both DRG vs Uruz were played on the same day.  I changed to haste gear in the second reservation.  Nice to get a pummeling in on Uruz!

Recent dabblings in League of Legends has sparked my competitive side a little.  But, it's important to remember that these wins and losses are a team affair!  

Anyways, the JPs made a very interesting game adjustment while I was gone.  Instead of having teams spawn at their respective camps, both teams spawn at the same camp.  No more complaining about rook games!  Nice.  Too bad for Valvosa though!(jk xP)

Some janky stuff breaks out at camp sometimes, which is extra fun.  WHMs/DRKs get to bind/sleep people if they respawn together.. I once had a little duel with Sepia just after respawning!

I really wish I had my new PC for the matches with Sepia (fourth from the top), 4 of the 6 matches went down to the absolute wire - all coming down to stopping people from scoring at the last second.  2 of those were wins, 2 were losses.  The entire set would have been extremely intense and definitely worth watching, too bad. :(

This is too long already!  I'll post about that PLD vid later! 

Woah man I have no idea how any of this works...

...seems to be something I say a lot lately!  My bro Zirk helped me (literally) step by step through buying a new PC and putting it together by myself.  Pretty sure I got an ulcer trying to put that CPU into the socket thing..  but thanks to him, I've got a shiny new PC to play games with!  Which means I've revived my ancient youtube account [ http://www.youtube.com/user/deshi0 ] and started posting ballista videos again! 

I'll try not to ramble much here, but I'll do a little game analysis and hopefully some have fun doing it.