Mirupo/Millefeuille posts videos of Hako almost every day, check them out if you're interested!
Friday, 29 January 2016
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Ballista never dies
In November of last year, I was chatting with some old Japanese ballista crew members on twitter, and someone mentioned getting some games going again (let's be real, it was probably me). They said Quetz server already had some players there and they were maintaining a small ballista LS.
Fast forward to January, and we're running a huge linkshell that plays hako every day. Some days, there are too many players. Ballista never dies.
Some things have changed though. At some point after I stopped playing, SE decided it would be a good idea to make changes to some weaponskills. And these aren't some small adjustments. They're completely game-changing for ballista.
First, the most ridiculous.. hey, do you remember that axe weaponskill "Calamity"? No, of course you don't. Because it was terrible, and nobody ever used it. Well, say hello to the new king of damage. Yeah, it's better than Sidewinder. Yeah, it's.. well, it's more consistent than Jinpu, anyway. A base 100TP Calamity is going to be at minimum 450 damage, up to something like 600. You saved up 200TP? 800, easy. 300TP? 1000+ damage, not exaggerating. I have dealt over 1500 personally (<300TP, +MightyStrikes), and I've taken a 2200 Calamity to the face (I have to assume 300TP, +MightyStrikes)!!! Seriously. Calamity, guys.
Vorpal Blade, the cool looking Paladin staple, now deals what must be at least double damage compared to before this change. In our regular hako games, Dark Knights sub ninja, and play the super weenie style of sword/Mercurial Kris. I've seen ~800 damage from DRKs with this setup (no souleater) and plenty of 650~ damage Vorpals from PLDs. It's interesting seeing Paladins be a bit of a threat.
Howling Fist does a bit more damage from what I've seen. Raging Fists, Blade: Jin, Dancing Edge, and Rampage have all benefitted from the update as well. I think it was a 1-handed weaponskills buff patch, or something along those lines. The hako staples like Penta Thrust, Guillotine, and Raging Rush have become overshadowed by these other weaponskills. Penta, of course, stays alive by virtue of Dragoon not having any other choice. Skewer is still bad.
Elemental weaponskills deal much more damage, but are only truly useful above 200TP, and especially intense at 300TP. For example, a Raiden Thrust at 300TP deals around 750 damage. And that passes through physical shields!
And hey, remember the janky Dark Knight build? With the addition of some lv99 synced equipment, it hits even harder than before. Leban runs this build while dual wielding swords that have MAB+10 and INT+5, and he drops 350~ tier2 nukes. It's awesome, and broken, and we try to avoid having him on DRK (mostly because nobody else has that equipment - I'm trying to get it myself).
These things aside, it's still really fun. The group is very relaxed and doesn't mind me taking over job assignment (well, more like they're all too shy/lazy.. ). Leban usually runs the show though, and he's very good at it. When he's not around, it defaults to me. I haven't been taking records down this time, maybe I'll start doing that soon.
For those from the NA LS around 2010, remember our small hako games where we included some Japanese players? Remember Fuuring? Well, he's a beast. Easily one of the best players in the group. Just like Teska, we saw them at their learning phase and then, oh - shit - beastmode enabled. I love it.
New videos will be coming soon.
PS; if you image search "ffxi ballista" on google, my face is on like, the 4th row. LOLLLL
Guess I shouldn't have my real pic on my youtube account? Hahaha
Fast forward to January, and we're running a huge linkshell that plays hako every day. Some days, there are too many players. Ballista never dies.
Some things have changed though. At some point after I stopped playing, SE decided it would be a good idea to make changes to some weaponskills. And these aren't some small adjustments. They're completely game-changing for ballista.
First, the most ridiculous.. hey, do you remember that axe weaponskill "Calamity"? No, of course you don't. Because it was terrible, and nobody ever used it. Well, say hello to the new king of damage. Yeah, it's better than Sidewinder. Yeah, it's.. well, it's more consistent than Jinpu, anyway. A base 100TP Calamity is going to be at minimum 450 damage, up to something like 600. You saved up 200TP? 800, easy. 300TP? 1000+ damage, not exaggerating. I have dealt over 1500 personally (<300TP, +MightyStrikes), and I've taken a 2200 Calamity to the face (I have to assume 300TP, +MightyStrikes)!!! Seriously. Calamity, guys.
Vorpal Blade, the cool looking Paladin staple, now deals what must be at least double damage compared to before this change. In our regular hako games, Dark Knights sub ninja, and play the super weenie style of sword/Mercurial Kris. I've seen ~800 damage from DRKs with this setup (no souleater) and plenty of 650~ damage Vorpals from PLDs. It's interesting seeing Paladins be a bit of a threat.
Howling Fist does a bit more damage from what I've seen. Raging Fists, Blade: Jin, Dancing Edge, and Rampage have all benefitted from the update as well. I think it was a 1-handed weaponskills buff patch, or something along those lines. The hako staples like Penta Thrust, Guillotine, and Raging Rush have become overshadowed by these other weaponskills. Penta, of course, stays alive by virtue of Dragoon not having any other choice. Skewer is still bad.
Elemental weaponskills deal much more damage, but are only truly useful above 200TP, and especially intense at 300TP. For example, a Raiden Thrust at 300TP deals around 750 damage. And that passes through physical shields!
And hey, remember the janky Dark Knight build? With the addition of some lv99 synced equipment, it hits even harder than before. Leban runs this build while dual wielding swords that have MAB+10 and INT+5, and he drops 350~ tier2 nukes. It's awesome, and broken, and we try to avoid having him on DRK (mostly because nobody else has that equipment - I'm trying to get it myself).
These things aside, it's still really fun. The group is very relaxed and doesn't mind me taking over job assignment (well, more like they're all too shy/lazy.. ). Leban usually runs the show though, and he's very good at it. When he's not around, it defaults to me. I haven't been taking records down this time, maybe I'll start doing that soon.
For those from the NA LS around 2010, remember our small hako games where we included some Japanese players? Remember Fuuring? Well, he's a beast. Easily one of the best players in the group. Just like Teska, we saw them at their learning phase and then, oh - shit - beastmode enabled. I love it.
New videos will be coming soon.
PS; if you image search "ffxi ballista" on google, my face is on like, the 4th row. LOLLLL
Guess I shouldn't have my real pic on my youtube account? Hahaha
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Returner
So I've been away about 6 months, taking care of school/work stuff. Since I've been gone it looks like the Carbuncle hako scene has died out. I've spoken with Yuzu and it seems she and the rest of the core crew are playing another game together as a group right now. Blargh.
However.. there have been rumblings from Quetzamadoodle server.. Our old buddy Yayokichi has rallied some people and started a new group there. He's posted a few videos, and while the skill level doesn't look terribly high, they've come up with some revolutionary new "rules" for their games.
There are two rules.
1) Only one 2H (I guess it's 1H now..) ability per game
This is really interesting, and obviously a dream situation for me personally if you know me at all. Enforcing it in hako might be easy, but OMs.. there will definitely be people who show up there solely to blast off their eaglest of eye shots.
2) No elemental black magic/elemental ninjutsu
While I love rule 1, this one is tougher to swallow. I love black mage, but I admit it is very very strong after the recent(ish) elemental magic update. The cool caster dark knight thing I had going before I took a break goes out the window. Tonnin (caster ninja) was always a part of the game before, and I don't think it's broken.
They don't appear to be addressing another major issue that comes with hyper, though. Jobs that rely on MP will still be able to chug elixirs at an alarming rate. They haven't placed any rules about that. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they think that it's not worth dying for hyper if you can't spam your 2h on white mage, for example. The most industrious hyper users would still just suicide through venom potions and reraise for the elixirs I'd expect.
The whole idea is very ambitious. Controlling people in hako is easy, but in OM it's nearly impossible. Regardless, they seem to have their hearts in the right place. All that along with the fact that world transfers will now cost less and have a ridiculously short recast time - means I've got to go and show my support. I'll likely be playing there after April 1st.
edit: I made some aesthetic changes to my youtube page, woot
Monday, 5 August 2013
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
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!
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.
I'll try not to ramble much here, but I'll do a little game analysis and hopefully some have fun doing it.
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