Ascy's solution to the F'ed up randomness of FFXI

Here's my solution to the completely F'ed up randomness of drops in FFXI and to dealing with buggers out there.

With such a weapon, no need for any more Salvage, Einherjar, ZNMs, Nyzul or Assault, right? :)

ACP & Missions, Dancer tanking testing

Well, we finished ACP last night... late last night @.@

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.

Enfeebling nerf, more math, DNC gear

So, apparently during the last FFXI update, there was a significant nerf to enfeebling magic. Enfeebles are resisted a lot more, and do not last as long as they used to. This probably contributed to our Omega failure in Limbus last Saturday, though it was not the only cause.

It took a while before details of this change came to light... basics are simple... any type of enfeeble (RDM, BLM, BRD, BLU) has a much higher resist rate, and lasts only a fraction as long as it used to. This is even with a fully merited RDM with good gear, so Flayer didn't even have a chance with RDM74. This makes basically any type of low-man situation where enfeebles are used a large issue. This also explains why Rooks had so much problems Silencing scorpions in Dynamis-Bastok... it just didn't last as long as it used to.

There is some community backlash to this... Here's an editorial from one of the FFXI "Premier sites" which are supposed to have good two-way communication with SE. It's clear from this piece that there is no such thing, that SE is giving them as much of the cold shoulder as everyone else... you know, the whole lack of customer service thing I talked about in a previous rant. Just business as usual from a crappy company. :) This also made BLM soloing much more difficult, if not impossible.

Now the question is... is this an intentional nerf, or simply a bug? Why was the code changed in the first place?

1. It's a bug

If so... then at some point in the (near) future we should be seeing another emergency maintenance. There will be no need to adjust battle tactics and life will resume as per the past.

2. It's intentional

If this is the case, then let's consider why they would have done such a thing. Looking at the last update, they did add one little thing that could have an effect on resist rates: RDM Tier II en-spells.

So far, I haven't seen a single RDM use these spells yet. I've heard of RDMs going out to farm them, maybe some people buying them, but I've never seen a single RDM casting it and going out to melee. What if they changed resist rates so that it would force people to use RDMs on the front-line? Since RDMs are the #1 enfeebler out there, chances are if you want to enfeeble a mob, you'd have a RDM around, so having them use their en-spell IIs would make sense. The tier II en-spells lower the mob's resistance to the opposite element.

So... in theory, if you're fighting a NM and need to land Slow on it, have a RDM cast Enthunder II, run up and poke the mob and enfeeble it. The resistance lowering effect of Enthunder II should allow Slow and Elegy to reach their former lengths and strengths. The RDM would have to keep meleeing in order to keep the resistance lowered... and the RDM would actually have to HIT the mob, which is what Composure is for.

By the same token, this might also end up making Stutter Step more useful. While Stutter Step lowers magical resistance of a mob, in practice I've never actually needed to use it. Most mages are properly equipped with magical accuracy gear, so there really was no reason to use Stutter Step. By increasing mob resistance to a point where you'd actually NEED either a RDM or DNC in order to properly enfeeble it would be just what a sadistic developer who wants to influence player behavior would do.

Of course, this is simply a theory... it's more likely that it's #1, and they're not going to fix it since the devs probably do not play the game and aren't bothered at all by having their customers be angry at them.

Tanking Math

Last night, Fuuji was telling the BLMs that "nuking every 30 seconds keeps you safe" during Tinnin. He also said to give the PLDs a minute to get hate before starting to attack. With all the enmity math I did, I wanted to figure out how tightly you could nuke and still be "safe", and how long would it take for a tank to build enough hate before you could start nuking.

Let's make a few assumptions... we're fighting some sort of large NM, like a Tier IV ZNM or Proto-Omega. I'm using a level 85 mob for the purposes of the calculation. Let's also assume that we have a nice BLM that can cast a spell that does 1k damage. Merits and partial resists would make that go up or down of course, but 1k is a nice round number to play with.

For damage dealt enmity against a level 85 mob doing 1k damage, we have:

CE = 1.379 x 1000 = 1,379

VE = 4.14 x 1000 = 4,140

Very high amounts. That's a total of 5,519 enmity done in one spell. VE decays at a rate of 60/second, so to bleed off all VE would take 92 seconds. Taken another way, a BLM who wants to stay VE neutral can do up to 870 damage/minute. Your CE will cap at 10,000 after 8 minutes, but that is expected in any long fight. It's the tank's job to maintain CE + VE at higher than 15,000 total in order to hold hate against a prudent BLM.

So... looking at these numbers, nuking every 30 seconds isn't really that safe. You'd have to about 435 damage per nuke if you want to stay under the radar. Nuking for over this every 30 seconds would result in a net VE gain and you'd eventually be smacked... as proven by Fuuji himself last night :)

Summary so far:

- A BLM(or any DD) will generate about 5,500 total enmity for every 1k damage done

- Hence, before any serious attacks can take place, the tank has to generate at least 5,500 enmity

- DDs can do damage at a rate of 870 damage/minute and stay VE neutral, that is, they will not pull the hate of the mob no matter what if the tank is doing their job. If you do damage higher than this rate, you will eventually pull hate.

- For reference, any healer can cure at a rate of 826HP/minute and stay VE neutral according to the same 60VE/second bleed-off rate. Of course, this does not count the lower enmity effect of gear and Cure V

Alright, so now we have some numbers to work with... how cast can a typical endgame tank reach the initial 5,500 total enmity number, and can they keep it up?

PLD/NIN

This job has surprisingly the least number of hate gaining tools. The big ones are Flash (180 CE, 1280 VE), Sentinel (1800 VE) and Shield Bash (900 VE). The rest of the hate must be obtained through curing, either themselves, or other people, and doing damage.

So... spiking initial hate gain using Sentinel and all abilities, we get:

- Sentinel (1,800) + Shield Bash (2x 900) + Flash (2x 180CE + 2x 1280VE) = 6,520 total enmity

Now, the danger here is that most of this is VE and only 360 is VE. This means that if a PLD goes all out in the beginning, chances are they will be able to hold hate through a trigger-happy BLM. However, a PLD's recast timers are such that just through job abilities alone, they cannot maintain their developed VE. Even Flash has a 45 second recast... with Haste and Fast Cast gear, they can reduce the VE loss rate, but they'd have to make up the remaining VE through damage dealt.

- Side note: Having a PLD start off a fight with a 300% TP Spirits Within is definitely a good way to start the fight. This would throw up about 3,300 enmity from the start, giving the PLD a head start in establishing hate.

Of course, the biggest advantage of this combination is that with Utsusemi, you're reducing the rate you lose CE by simply not taking damage. In theory, this means that a good PLD/NIN tank that is conscious of their shadows while doing damage and curing OTHER people should be able to build up to the 20k total enmity cap over time. I'd wait at least a few minutes before seriously attacking the enemy with a PLD/NIN tank

PLD/WAR

This combination is almost never used for tanking anything big simply due to the enmity loss from taking damage. You need to reduce the CE loss as much as possible. As my last post pointed out, you can't hold hate even if you're curing all the damage you take. There is a net CE loss from taking damage then curing it again.

Still, PLD/WAR has one advantage: Provoke. This gives an extra 1,800 VE over PLD/NIN. Combine that with Sentinel, that's another 3,600, almost reaching the 10k from the get go. Since this is mostly VE, damage taken would not reduce it. The PLD/WAR would also be able to maintain their VE at a high level since the recast and enmity gain of Provoke is equal to the loss rate. A PLD/WAR could reach the VE cap of 10,000 and pretty much stay there as soon as the fight begins. This would allow all DDs to do damage immediately after the fight begins.

The disadvantage is that a PLD/WAR would never be able to build CE. Damage taken would wipe out any CE gains, even if the PLD cures herself. Hence, in any long fight, other members of the party or alliance would pull hate no matter how long they wait between actions simply because they build up CE to the point where they hit the 10,000 cap, matching the PLD/WAR's VE cap. Any action that generates VE would get the mob's attention.

So, this is a good tank for only short fights where you want to do as much damage up front as possible.

PLD/RDM

This is an interesting combination... you're still blood tanking, but you are using two things to obtain a net gain in CE.

- Reduction of damage via Phalanx

- Increase in CE generation tools

A RDM sub has a few interesting hate generation tools, specifically:

- Dispel: 320 CE, 320 VE, recast time 10s

- Sleep: 320 CE, 320 VE, recast time 30s

- Blind: 640 VE, recast time 10s

- Bind: 640 VE, recast time 40s

So, if you spam just these 4 spells, you can gain CE at a rate of 2,560/minute, and VE at a rate of 7,040/minute. A single minute of this brings you to about 6k total enmity, and 4 minutes would cap both CE & VE. Starting to attack at the 1 minute mark is about right.

This assumes that you are not suffering so much damage that it negates the CE gain. Your CE loss would need to be less than 2,560/minute, which means (assuming a PLD with 1200HP):

2,560 CE loss = 1800 x [Damage taken] / [Target Max HP]

Damage taken = 2560 * 1200 / 1800 = 1,706 HP/minute, or 85 HP/tick

This is about 2-3 Cure Vs in 1 minute... for any mob that does more damage than this in a minute, the PLD/RDM tank will not have any net CE gain (and probably run all mages out of MP)

Hence, PLD/RDM is good for long battles where the mobs do not do much damage. The time it takes to cast spells, spell interruption, etc. would make PLD/WAR a better choice for shorter battles.

NIN & /NIN

Overall, there are two ways to maintain a high hate line:

- Cap VE and have a method of maintaining it at the high level. WAR and /WAR have this capability simply through Provoke. PLDs need to do damage + cure in order to maintain and gain VE.

- Cap CE and do not let it go down. You need a way to avoid or reduce damage taken. NIN or /NIN is the best way to do this.

Of course, the danger with relying on Utsusemi to keep CE up is that if a hit does get through, you end up losing a ton of CE due to damage taken. The best way to guard against this is to have a 2nd layer of defense so that even if a hit gets past Utsusemi, you take minimal damage.

Now, instead of going through the math, I'll just talk briefly about a few other jobs

NIN/DRK:

Lots of high CE (Sleep, Aspir, Stun) and VE (Bind, Absorb-spells, Last Resort, Souleater) spells job abilities. Ninjitsu spells generate a decent amount of enmity as well, though you trade off VE for CE. Can hit CE cap easily and much faster compared to a PLD/NIN, though maintaining VE would be difficult. Would need to spam Absorb spells, Bind and Ninjitsu to maintain a high VE. You can probably start attacking about a minute into battle if the tank starts by spamming job abilities. Would also lose hate much easier compared to a PLD/NIN simply due to taking more damage.

NIN/RDM:

Now... this is interesting... I don't think I've seen anyone talk about this combination before. It would essentially be similar to both NIN/DRK and PLD/RDM. You'd lose the high enmity from Stun, but you'd gain Stoneskin, Phalanx and better be able to reduce CE loss if you take hits. You'd use the same casting cycle as PLD/RDM, Dispel, Sleep, Bind, Blind, etc. Might be a better choice compared to NIN/DRK simply due to Stoneskin.

RDM/NIN:

This is a very similar scenario to PLD/RDM, except with more damage mitigation tools to stop CE loss. Utsusemi, Stoneskin would cut down CE loss to almost 0, assuming you're not fighting something that hits too fast. It would require a good RDM who can both track shadows, and keep track of how much Stoneskin is left and when to recast it. Properly played, RDM/NIN should be able to hit both the VE & CE cap and keep it there, allowing all damage dealers to go all out.

NIN/WAR & WAR/NIN:

The WAR side of things basically gives you Provoke as the VE tool, assuming you provoke every 30 seconds. After that, hate gain is entirely through damage (and to an extent, ninjitsu in the case of NIN/WAR)

The disadvantage of these combinations is that if a hit gets through shadows, you'll lose CE very fast simply by taking a lot of damage.

DNC/NIN:

The main disadvantage of DNC/NIN is that the job is slow to build up enmity. We can maintain VE using our job abilities, but any net VE or CE gain needs to come from either damage dealt, or damage cured. A Dancer attempting to tank needs to strike a balance between keeping TP to cure, keeping Finishing Moves to use Animated Flourish, and using TP to do damage.

The advantage is that besides Utsusemi, we have Fan Dance that can help reduce damage taken and slow down the CE loss, giving us an advantage over NIN/WAR or WAR/NIN.

Overall Conclusion

Basically... RDM/NIN and NIN/DRK are your best bets for tanks that can get up to a high level of hate quickly and maintain it. PLD/NIN is probably the next best bet only because it takes a longer time to generate hate compared to the first two jobs. However, PLD/NIN has the advantage of being able to cut down on CE loss due to taking less damage. Throw in a Scholar or Blue Mage for some Stoneskin and you'd really help out in that department.

NIN/RDM is a combination that I think has a high possibility of being a more reliable tank compared to NIN/DRK. You'd lose access to Stun, but you'd gain more safety with Stoneskin and Phalanx and hence, lose less CE over the long-term.

WAR/NIN and NIN/WAR can maintain VE, but they do not have enough hate tools to really compete with the other three tank combinations, and would lose hate too easily from simply taking hits.

DNC/NIN is a combination that has yet to be tested out. From the theory, I can already tell that it would be harder to get going in a solo tank situation as it requires someone *other* than the Dancer to take damage in order to generate hate, and it takes a longer time compared to NIN/DRK or RDM/NIN to generate both CE & VE. This could lead to risky situations if the other party members are not jobs that can take the beating. In a co-tank situation, we'll have to see if a DNC can grab hate from the other tank and hold onto it.

Overall, it is safe to start attacking after about 2 minutes of the tanks engaging. After 4 minutes, all tanks should be at their respective hate caps. As long as you stay under 870 damage dealt per minute, or 826 HP healed/minute (individually, not alliance total), you'll be fine and not have to log out to clear hate.

DNC Gear

I picked up some +enmity gear last night to experiment with Dancer tanking... Grabbed a Harmonia's Torque and Eris Earring for now... I already have the Etoile's Bangles, and a Warwolf Belt from BLU. I also have a regular Breath Mantle from my brief period leveling PLD that I'll experiment with before investing any more into this theory. Connie pointed out that Dorado Sushi has +enmity on it, so I'll try some of that out.

I'm planning on customizing my ACP armor (assuming we actually finish this) with +5 enmity and +10 evasion... a very strange combination compared to what I'm sure other people are doing. However, I really do not have any use for this armor. On BLU, I'm set with AF+1 & Relic. SCH I'm set with relic + AF. On DNC, I'm set for a Haste body set, and I'll *eventually* pick up a better accuracy/attack body piece, either the Enkidu's harness or the Etoile body. Meanwhile a +enmity piece be interesting to experiment with, and +evasion would help shadow recasts.

Oh, and congrats to Zu for his pink harness... now he'd better get on more often and use it or else I might lose one of my daggers... in his back!

ACP review, weekend of fail, tanking

Came across this little review on ACP:

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3173796&p=1

Love it... "F" rating.

Only other thing I have to say: Good trick asking us to pre-order this expansion. It worked. Not only did you get money one billing period before you released the content, you also successfully tricked people into buying something they would never have bought had they read the reviews.

Weekend of fail

So, weekend of fail continues with a Limbus failure... 2nd failure in a row... or is it 3rd? I'm losing count. I do remember that the last time we succeeded we got crappy drops that almost went to the floor. Of course we get another chip drop from a pod bringing us to 3/4 for another attempt, though I'm wondering what's the point if we can't win.

I'm *hoping* that this failure was due to the whole enfeebling nerf that SE introduced with the last patch... From what I'm reading, enfeebles(Para, slow, sleep) aren't lasting as long as they used to... I'm guessing that they're half as effective too?

Up to the Fei'Yin BS run-around and fight for ACP, so... who knows, maybe that will get done eventually.

Tonight is supposed to be the Tinnin ZNM... I'm predicting one of the following will occur:

1. Enough people do not have 500 zeni so we can't do the event

2. Wipe to Tinnin

3. Tinnin's drops consist of Shusui and nothing of value

Would be an appropriate way to continue the week of fail.

Tanking

So I've pretty much decided to abandon PLD again due to the huge amount of idiots out there, as well as the annoyances and frustrations of FFXI taking the toll on me. My chainmail armor is in storage, but I'm still holding onto my PLD27 gear since I have a ton of storage now with that Mog Satchel in case someone decides to put together a lowbie party. I'm sure there's someone else out there who will tank if necessary on PLD :P Instead, I'm looking again at the possibility of Dancer as a tank from a different angle. Also, this might be a good enough distraction from the annoyances that are pissing me off to keep at least some interest in FFXI.

The main reason the idea of a DNC tank came about due to the group 2 merit "Fan Dance" that had a description of "increases enmity". Also, the Etoile Bangles have +2 enmity, very strange compared to the -5 total from the Dancer's attire set. Add to that a Dancer's naturally high evasion and high amount of hate from curing, there is a possibility that suitably equipped and played, a Dancer could tank.

Previous testing has lead to some success... I know I can solo a large number of mobs that most jobs would simply run away from. Now the question is can I maintain the attention of a mob in anything other than a solo/low-man situation? I've gotten a lot of practice with soloing and using the full abilities of a Dancer since the last time I tried this. I already know that Dancers aren't suitable for mobs that have magical attacks that can one-shot me (use a PLD)

Most people know about the enmity research done by someone else banned from the game about Cumulative Enmity (CE) and Volatile Enmity (VE). The research pretty much quantifies how NIN/DRK and RDM/NIN tanks work, and why PLD/NIN is better compared to PLD/WAR. Let's see how this research can be applied to a potential Dancer tank.

Curing enmity gain

The #1 reason any Dancer gets hate in the first place is through curing. That's one reason why most Dancers sub NIN in the first place... we can and do cure that much.

So, let's take a simple example of a DNC 75 curing 400 damage (either to herself or someone else). Using the formulas at http://kanican.livejournal.com/30142.html, we get:

CE = [CE modifier] x [HP cured]

VE = [VE modifier] x [HP cured]

At level 75, the modifiers are 0.727 & 4.36 respectively, so:

CE = [0.727] x [400] = 290

VE = [4.36] x [400] = 1745

Damage taken enmity loss

At some point, a tank will take damage, even subbing NIN. Let's see how badly that affects the amount of enmity you have. Now we're using the damage taken formula from http://kanican.livejournal.com/31613.html

For comparison to the curing section above, I'm using the same 400 damage taken

CE Loss = 1800 x [Damage taken] / [Max HP]

Right now, I have about 1200 HP on Dancer, depending on sub, so we have:

CE Loss = 1800 x 400 / 1200 = 600 CE lost

Cumulative Enmity

The Dancer enmity table at http://kanican.livejournal.com/20722.html shows that the only way a Dancer can obtain CE is through curing. The other way would be through damage, but I'm not going to argue that a Dancer can keep up with a dedicated DD, especially when the focus is curing and holding the attention of a mob. A Dancer with no gear, no merits attempting to tank and cure herself will quickly lose out to other people in terms CE generation since you end up with a net loss of CE over time.

CE Conclusion: The difference in enmity lost vs. gained in curing is too great to be overcome. 290 vs. 600. The most enmity gain through equipment and abilities is +100, which would double the CE gained which is still 20 CE short of the amount lost for curing the same amount. Simply put, pure CE tanking will not work. Getting hit means a net loss of CE. We have to avoid being hit in order to maintain CE at a high level.

However, it is good to know that a single Curing Waltz III is approximately equal to a Provoke in terms of VE.

Volatile Enmity

Now that we've determined that the only way to accumulate CE to hold hate is basically not be hit, let's take a look at VE instead. Just like CE, VE has a cap of 10,000 units. The main difference is that VE decays over time at a rate of -60 VE/sec, or 1,800 VE/30 seconds. This is also the total enmity, and the recast time for Provoke...

Tests have shown that taking damage only affects CE and not VE. The only way to reduce VE is to wait for it to decay (I think?). Still the loss rate of -60VE/sec is quite high and difficult to overcome.

Taking another look at the Dancer enmity table, we can see that the Flourish I category all have the same spike VE at 1,500 VE. These abilities are on the same timer, between 20-30 seconds. Desperate Flourish & Violent Flourish both have 20 second timers, but have a possibility of missing, while Animated Flourish has a 30 second timer, just like Provoke.

One thing that is amusing is that Spectral Jig has 300 VE. This has a recast time of 30s, which means combined with Violent Flourish, we can match the 1,800 VE/30 seconds to counter the decay. Job Abilities are instant, so there isn't really any time lost... Still, it would be amusing to watch your tank disappear every 30 seconds!

Now add on the VE from any cures and we have a high rate of VE gain. If you figure a Dancer using Animated Flourish + Jigs to maintain their VE floor, any form of curing done would be increasing the Dancer's VE. At about 1,800 per Curing Waltz III, a Dancer can get to the 10,000 VE cap in about 5-6 casts. Divine Waltz would do this just even faster, taking only 4 Waltzes hitting 6 people for about 100 HP each to hit the cap.

(This also explains why in Dynamis and Einherjar, I'm always the one who ends up being targeted by mobs when they wake up. I spam Divine Waltz to keep the HP of my party near full, and that generates a ton of VE compared to the 180 CE of Sleepga II, or even the 1,800 VE of a Provoke)

The problem with using Cures to gain VE is that the Dancer has to have someone to cure for it to work. This means that someone, possibly the Dancer or another tank, has to be hit. The best case scenario is fighting a mob with a lot of non-crippling AoE attacks that hit everyone in the party. Spamming Divine Waltz on a lightly damaged party would easily get to cap VE.

VE Conclusion: Keeping VE up is pretty much the only possible way a Dancer can really tank. First, we need to constantly use Animated Flourish (and Spectral Jig) to counter the VE decay rate, then we need to basically cure to increase VE to cap. Once we're at VE cap, we can actually back off from curing as long as we keep "provoking" every 30 seconds to maintain VE. Almost no Dancer that I know of (including me) has attempted to maintain hate in this way... Perhaps it's time to try it out?

Merits + Gear

This entire exercise started due to Fan Dance and it's enmity attributes. So far, when I've been attempting to tank, I've been using Haste Samba, Curing and only switching on Fan Dance when trouble starts. This is not the right approach for a tanking Dancer.

From testing, Fan Dance gives +15 enmity. This means that the 1,500 VE Animated Flourish is bumped up to 1,725, almost matching the VE decay rate. Throw in some extra gear and a Dancer can probably get up to the VE cap significantly faster with Fan Dance up. While Enmity gear that is usable by a Dancer is rare, this is what I've found so far:

- Etoile Bangles - +2

- Warwolf Belt - +3

- Harmonia's Torque OR Ritter Gorget - +3

- Heroic boots - +1

- Eris Earring - +2

- Mermaid's Ring - +2

- High Breath Mantle - +5

For a total of +18 equipment-based +enmity. Add that to Fan Dance and we have a total of 33%. If you customize a Mirke Wardecors for +5 enmity, this bring is to a total of +38%. This would be a significant increase for enmity gain. So, keeping Fan Dance up at all times when a Dancer is trying to tank would help significantly for keeping hate.

Plus, there's the side effect that Fan Dance significantly reduces physical damage (90% reduction, going down by 10% per hit the mob gets) which helps reduce the amount of CE lost :)

Subjob Choice

Not much to talk about here. Subbing NIN means that you can slow down CE decay simply by not taking many hits (-25 CE per shadow compared to the -600 CE for a 400HP hit). SAM sub is really just about having Meditate around for extra TP, but the 60 extra TP every 3 minutes does not counter the CE loss from taking more hits.

WAR sub would be an interesting choice. This would throw in a few extra VE abilities (mainly Provoke & Warcry) making it a lot easier to reach the VE cap. It would also add in the Defender ability to reduce damage taken, though I'm not sure how effective it would be. For shorter fights where spike VE is needed up front, DNC/WAR might be necessary to grab hate during the first few seconds of the fight.

Overall Dancer tank conclusion

So, the best tank that you really want is one that can keep both CE & VE at the capped amounts. If you start a Dancer off as a tank from the beginning, you can end up with a high VE tank, but damage to the Dancer would prevent CE from building too high unless you had other party members in range to take damage and be cured by the Dancer. A co-tank situation might be best, where a Dancer starts off by accumulating CE by being the main healer of the alternate tank. Once enough CE is built up (which from my experience, already happens easily in long fights), the Dancer can actually take over tanking simply by throwing in Animated Flourish + Spectral Jig to stop VE decay. A couple of Waltzes should hit the VE cap and let the Dancer take over.

What next? Well... for starters, I'm going to pick up the +enmity equipment I described above. Except for the Ritter Gorget, all items are available on the AH for fairly reasonable prices. I'll probably hold off on the Mermaid's Ring until I determine that this actually works. Next, I'd have to find a mob to tank with on an experimental basis... For starters, I'm thinking of the Ermine's Tail NM. Connie, Utty and Karou have all helped me for this fight, and for the most part, I'm already the tank for this, but it requires them holding back (or subbing THF to plant hate on me) I'd like to see how different it would be constantly using Animated Flourish (or Violent Flourish)

After that... well, time to take my Dancer to some big fight and play with it there. Preferably a non-critical situation where having me intentionally pulling hate will not result in a wipe. I'm thinking either another Tier III ZNM fight, or possibly a mission somewhere...

Had enough of SE "probability" BS

ok, that's the last straw. I was originally going to put together a post about AP having fun, doing things together with mission friday and tease Vanh about coming back. Instead, mission friday turned out to be a complete disaster.

What I had in mind was that we'd get together, go out and farm items together, fool around a little and make some progress and at least complete the Fei-Yin fight.

What happened was that everyone ended up basically on their own at different stages, and were either waiting for others to catch up, or trying to catch up. People went afk, logged out and came back later, or were struggling to stay awake in a 5 hour ordeal. What made things worse was the completely fucked up random probability of items dropping, turning what should have been an evening of fun to people getting bored, frustrated and going to sleep without a single thing accomplished.

I just spent Friday evening running around alone in a bunch of zones one-shotting low level mobs for 5 hours straight. This expansion is complete BULLSHIT. This isn't a game. It isn't even work. Work is productive, you get things done. This is some idiot's fucked up excuse to put a completely fucked up, unnecessary grind instead of actually using their imagination, or stealing someone else's idea to put together a challenge. This is nothing but a time waster, just like the original Genkai 1, just like the collecting of items for WotG missions. There is no challenge. There is no intelligence. There is no gameplay.

This sorry excuse for "gameplay" is evident in everything that FFXI offers. Sure, there's an initial challenge in figuring things out for Nyzul Isle, Salvage, Dynamis, etc., but once the challenge is overcome, any possibility of a reward is all based on "luck" or "probability" instead of actually giving solid rewards for figuring things out. It's all just a scam to draw out more subscription dollars instead of creating real content.

It's bad enough that this sort of random reward system is present throughout FFXI endgame... but this is simply a MISSION that players are trying to do. It isn't some crazy, powerful weapon... it's content that we actually paid for. Paid a high price in real money. I already covered what a rip-off I think this expansion is, but I was already suckered by SE in their whole "preorder the expansion" bullshit. I'm not falling for that again. Next time you go to the movies... just think... they could have also asked you to mop the floor and clean the toilets for the price you pay for your tickets. Actually, cleaning the toilets would at least have been a better use of time compared to this.

Sure, at SOME point in the future, they will put an update together that says "adjusted drop rate for X item" in order to appease people, but by then, 99% of their subscription base would have gone through it anyway, and this would be an empty gesture to show that they "care for the community."

I'm sorry... I have better things to do with my time... for example, watch CSPAN, read the tax code, watch paint dry.

I think at the end of this month I have some serious thinking to do, along the lines of a certain Vanh taru.

Random Friday updates

It's Friday afternoon... I try to do as little work as possible on Fridays so that I don't screw things up and have to work and fix it over the weekend. Hence, here I am blogging!

Random stuff...

Picked up some new equipment for my computer. I'm upgrading from my old 20" LCD to a new 24" widescreen LCD, adding 320 pixels of horizontal width to my screen. The FFXi chat box looks kinda silly at 1920x1200, with the longest chat line only coming halfway across the screen.

I also picked up a new set of 5.1 speakers to replace an older set of 4.1 that I could never hook up properly. The change in sound is significant! I didn't realize that there was so many subtle tones in FFXI's music. Lots of little extra sound effects too. That's why I was asking last night during Salvage if the music was the same as Nyzul Isle... to me it actually sounded different, a lot more detail xD

What else... picked up a new optical audio cable since one of my older ones wasn't letting enough light through. Strange that the most expensive cable I had bought in the past (simply cos there was nothing else around) was the only one to stop working. It's kinda annoying how optical cables vary in price so much... I managed to find one for $9.99, but it was much longer than I need... oh well!

Anime

Spring 2009 season starto! I'm just finishing up last season's series right now... Finished up Marimite, Gundam 00 S2 so far. Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo is still going on since that's a longer series, and some series have fallen off the plate.

For this season, I'm downloading the first episode of everything again and trying it out before deciding what to watch... so far, on my "will watch" list is:

- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood - A retelling of the original series! Who hasn't heard of FMA? xD This time around it seems like they're doing a lot more emphasis on the comedy of what will end up a dark series.

- K-On! - Slice of life high school comedy/drama. Four girls in high school putting together a band. Episode 1 looks pretty fun so far, so this series has lots of potential

- Eden of the East (Higashi no Eden) - So... just imagine that you're a girl on vacation from Japan... you're in front of the Whitehouse, admiring it when the scary police start to question you. Suddenly, a naked man comes streaking by and into your life, then a terrorist bomb goes off in Tokyo just before your flight back takes off.... yes, it's another crazy series xD

- Valkyria Chronicles - Based on the PS3 game, this anime is actually doing a really good job of replicating the art style of pencil-shading that was used in the game. I'm playing the game while watching the anime, and so far, the anime version tells a much more interesting story with little cute details that aren't in the game.

- Shangri-La - Global warming gone wild. Carbon credits have taken off and become a weird trading market identical to stocks. The world is flooded with heavy-handed government/military organizations vs. refugees who are... erm... against reforestation. Oh, and a girl who has a boomerang that can cut through tanks. Another weird series!

FFXI

Random FFXI update... MMM is giving me an annoying time. That stupid Dhamel NM doesn't want to go down sometimes, with fights that either end in 10-15 minutes, or don't end at all as it spams Healing Breeze... I'm getting really annoyed with this. Big thanks to Connie who comes along to help, but even with his help we don't always win >.<

Salvage last night... another interesting system with lots of possible high-level strategies and on-hand tactics. Last night was the first time I was actually paying attention to what had to be done and what we were doing... we actually got a Marduke level 15 body piece (congrats Dexie) so it wasn't a completely wasted run. DNC works really well for Salvage since I'm nearly fully effective with just Job Abilities unlocked.

Soooo... supposed to be mission Friday tonight... we'll see how this goes. From what I'm hearing, we may be stalled since the stupid ACP missions require dumb luck just based on drop rates. Since we can't control that, there's a possibility that we'll end up stuck farming all night... we'll see what happens... (and who shows up)

Next few weeks... probably wanna do some WotG stuff for people, get people caught up, then look at helping people hammer out Zilart of CoP missions. Post a comment if you have missions you wanna do :P

[Taking a break] [Short time]

Last night I logged out completely exhausted from an entire night of ZNMs... I think I'm overextended at this point. Too many events going on, too many conversations, too much in /tell and too much trying to think about everyone to get them all up-to-date and involved. I'm making too many mistakes, which leads to failures (hi Limbus), people getting killed(baibai DD party vs. Armed Gears), or people feeling like they are being left out.

So... I need a break... time to cut back a little and not do as much. Good thing is that for most events where I'm heavily involved, there are other people who do a much better job of leading things.

Events I'll definitely continue doing:
- Dynamis - Simple, just come, contribute, try to get killed.
- Limbus - Utty is really the one who knows everything about Limbus and calls the shots.
- ZNMs - Fuuji is da man for this one. I just shuffle papers.

Events I may show up to:
- Einherjar - Scheduled time is really inconvenient... I'll probably stop going to this unless I happen to be completely free during that time for some reason.
- Salvage - Want to at least try it out a few times just for the challenge... Not sure if I'll do this event for the long-term though. The only thing I'd want out of it is the Mythic Weapon for Dancer, and I'm pretty sure that it's not worth the time investment.
- Exp - This will depend more on my mood... sometimes I want to just grind mindlessly for a few hours if I get into the mood for it, but that mood seems to come randomly. Same for leveling a lowbie job... sometimes the mood strikes me, but that's pretty rare.

Events that need someone to take over:
- Nyzul Isle - After leading the group around for this long, I'm getting tired of having to gather people, remind people to login (/stare Zurar) and finding replacements for no-shows to get a group together. Need someone to take over for the setting up of the event, as in getting people logged in, setup a party so that we can start. Nyzul is 7:30pm PST on Sunday. I can still lead the actual charge during the event and giving instructions what to do... anyone want to step up for this?
- Mission Friday - Yes, I know we haven't really started this... but I'd really appreciate it if someone wouldn't mind stepping up to help me get people organized... First mission Friday starts 7:30pm PST with item farming for ACP.

So, anyone out there who can give me a hand? If I don't respond to your tells during events, that probably means that I either missed it entirely, or your comment/question is something that needs to be addressed with everyone that I'll bring up in party chat.