All in all, I give ACP a big fat "F" in terms of entertainment. In total, we had maybe... 1 1/2 hours of actual gameplay -- fighting the goblin NMs, fighting the waves of mandies, and two BC fights. The rest of the time was wasted farming for stupid random drops, or running all over Fei'Yin and the tower for absolutely no reason. Oh, and we had about 5 minutes of cutscenes, less if you read fast.
My $0.99 iPhone games give more value for money! Even going out to the movies is better.
On the fun side, at least the BC battles were actually pretty fun. The Fei'Yin battle was pretty hectic, with a goblin THF mob that actually DOES Sneak Attack on you... I liked that xD Unsleepable mobs meant that healers and tanks had a lot to do in keeping attention and keeping everyone alive. The final BC wasn't much of a challenge with the right setup and people knowing what they are doing. Even with Talint DCing halfway through the first round, we managed to pull off the win easily.
We used the "Ranged Attack" strategy for these two wins, which was really simple to pull off... Just have a tank keep running away from the Seed Crystal whenever it used "draw in", then have DDs standing outside of AoE range and slowly chip it away. Poor Talint looked like a yoyo, going back and forth between the mages and the Seed Crystal. I think the fights were about 15 minutes each time. No risk of death or losing, fairly reliable. The alternate method I've read about is the simple zerg method with a RDM/DRK chain-stunning... Both methods require very precise combinations of jobs... Ranged Attack, tank, mages, or a bunch of zergable jobs... MNKs, SAMs... which of course, leaves out a good portion of the other player base. I'm hoping there are other ways to beat this, but the moves that this boss uses, mainly charmga, make it difficult to to imagine any other combination.
Reward wise, I actually lucked out compared to other people... got a Sapphire Earring with the augments "Magical Accuracy +2" and "Str+1". Since I do not have any good earrings on my SCH, this will be added to my Dark Arts macro. I also got a Vile Elixer and Hi-Elixer, which I promptly AH'ed for some gil.
So, ACP is done... I'm still hoping to keep "Mission Friday" as an event where AP (and friends) come together to have fun and fool around while helping people get things done. This Friday... well, what do people want to do? Significant options are... get people caught up in WotG missions to the Battle of Jeuno, or start helping with CoP missions for those who need it. Post something in the comments to get the ball rolling!
Dancer Tanking
Right after we finished ACP, I borrowed Conceptx and Karou to go do my MMM Dhamel again. This time, we set things up a little differently. I had Con come as PLD/WAR with the intention of stealing hate from him and holding it at some point of the battle. Karou was to be my "bait" and a way for me gain enmity since I know that Karou likes to pull hate and take lots of damage... I mean, likes to do her job by dealing lots of damage. I asked Con not to hold back on tanking, though I did have a few advantages over him... namely, I was using +enmity food (Dorado Sushi) and a Breath Mantle. Overall, I was going in with +30 enmity vs. his +25, but a PLD has many more hate tools compared to a DNC.
As expected, Con quickly grabbed hate at first with the basic PLD tools... Flash, Provoke, Sentinel, etc. all set a high bar initially. Due to the VE nature of most of these tools, I was able to grab hate briefly about a minute in the fight from my own "provoke" and a few small cures. Karou, as usual, went all out and was able to grab hate for a bit. SAM/NIN really has a lot of tools to prevent damage... Utsusemi, casting it a 2nd time, then when that fails, fall back to Seigan + Third Eye. Still, eventually a few hits get through and I'm able to cure for more hate. Con covering Karou also helped since it didn't matter who took the damage, just that I had some to cure. A couple of cures later, I had hate and could maintain it. Con couldn't regain hate after that mainly because one of his main hate tools, curing for hate, would be pre-empted by my faster Waltzes. Karou still managed to grab hate a few times from WS's, but all that did was give me an opportunity to raise the bar even higher by curing the damage she takes.
Initial testing conclusion: Overall a success... we need a mob that lasts longer to do some real further testing to see how practical this is. I might take off the "weakness" rune or throw on the "mighty" rune to the Dhamel to see how it changes things.
Changes to equipment, macros & tactics:
- Starting from my max evasion setup, I put +enmity gear into every slot that can take it, keeping +evasion everywhere else
- My +evasion setup had a lot of +accuracy in the first place. Dorado Sushi just adds to that high accuracy
- Haste gear is swapped in for casting Utsusemi
- All -enmity gear is removed... this means that I no longer macro in my DNC body or tiara for cures. Also, no Cobra Unit gear at all due to the high levels of -enmity.
- My Animated Flourish macro is changed to also add Spectral Jig to it. Both are on almost the same timer, and in theory, Jigs have a VE component to it which would bring this up to the same level as a Provoke. This looks really strange in practice, but it appears to work.
- Use Animated Flourish every 30 seconds as soon as it is up. I can also use Violent Flourish in it's place, but that's riskier since it has a chance of missing.
- No Foot Rise is used to fill in finishing moves in the case that Animated Flourish is ready without any moves ready.
- Fan Dance is up constantly for the +enmity. I can refresh this prematurely if a few hits get through shadows.
- Gear wise, I spent about 50k gil to pick up some of the cheap +enmity items. I also customized my ACP reward for +5 enmity and +10 evasion, a strange combination that I'm pretty sure nobody else out there is using. The only other idea I had for a DNC with it was +10 accuracy, +3% dual wield. If I really wanted to hit that much faster, I'd just use my Rap harness.
A bit of a change from the normal Dancer routine, and TP gain is noticeably reduced... however, this isn't a problem as in almost all circumstances, I have more than enough TP, enough to WS without worrying about having TP to heal.
Still to do:
- Test out the true enmity properties of Jigs... does it really help? It looks really strange in battle. I need someone with a level 75 with Provoke (either WAR or /WAR) to help me run some experiments
- Try this combination out in a "real" situation. Something like ZNMs, Limbus or a mission fight. The objective would be to grab hate and stay the target for the rest of the battle.
- Figure out the right combination of jobs to be in a Dancer tank party. Most big alliance fights consist of a tank party and other parties consisting of a combination of DDs or BLMs with healers to look after them. A Dancer tanking really requires a different support team. We would actually be the primary healer in all situations. We need the other people in our party to be those who would tend to take damage (other tanks, or DDs who are prone to pull hate, possibly BLMs) Support wise, the main thing we'd need is Haste, no need for Refresh, and possibly a couple of SAMs to give TP.
1 comment:
Some sams can tank. There's gear lists out there to prove it. It's funny because even without you curing or Connie's covering, I'd last about 8 minutes solo tanking. Seigan + Third Eye does help. For example what I do during zeni farming is throw that up right after ni or ichi drops. It buys me time to recast. Tanked solo on sam/nin or sam/dnc in campaign a lot.
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