CubsWoo said:
All that travel time plus the fact that you'd need six drops for the entire group? You're telling me you can get 54 Recollections for all three Promyvions before 6 seperate people can farm up ~75k for meds/food for each Promyvion? If you're a first-job level 30, I believe you. If you have a job over 60 (or hell, 50) you should be able to get 75k before you get all 3 Recollections for yourself.
Weepers have like a 25%-30% drop rate on recollections. They take under a minute to kill and there are plenty around. Wanderers are worse, they're under 10%, but they're *really* fast to kill and there are tons of them. Obviously, this is assuming you're doing it in a party (this topic *is* about forming a CoP Promyvion static, and that includes doing the farming as a group rather than individually), but WHM + WAR can easily duo them (more slowly).
Travel time? Well, ok, I'll take back one thing I said on specific jobs - it *is* handy to bring a WHM along. Teleports to get to different crags, and it's the only job that can use Raise in Promyvion itself. (37+ RDM, 50+ PLD, and any 50+ job subbing WHM can use Raise in the Spire after you get kicked out of the BC so that's a bit less of an issue.) So I'll back off a bit on that point and say "ok, bring a WHM". (But still you only need to make a balanced party out of the other five.) There's your travel time. Unless you think it takes a long time to walk a quarter of the way around a crag, step inside Promyvion, and there you are farming enemies on the first floor again. XD
You can skip Terroanimas too (they make the boss self-marathon around the room - handy, but the other two are better). 2 recollections per person times 6 people is 12 recollections. And if you use 2-hours, it's also something productive to do while waiting for their timer to recharge. Incidentally, if you want to skip Terroanimas and you *really* don't want to travel, go farm in Promyvion-Holla. Wanderers there drop one of the two useful Recollections, Weepers there drop the other. Done.
And considering the drop rates are quite high, yes, I do believe I could farm up 2 recollections for myself, and 2 recollections for a duo partner, in well under an hour. Party will get faster kills but it'll need more, and those basically cancel out. You're looking at maybe an hour, possibly hour and a half, at the most (if the enemies are stingy with drops), for your entire party to get 2 recollections each. Include a THF for better results.
Last I checked I can't farm 75K in an hour (barring getting lucky on an NM). If you can, kudos to you. I'm giving advice for normal people and not uber farmers, of how to make the boss easiest for the least amount of farming time for the whole group.
Using animas before ~50% NM HP is a waste of time, because aside from Trinity Absorption they're all pussycats. Especially after the November patch - I did them pre-patch and they were still easy enough without animas (note the only loss was to the Holla boss that Trinity Absorptioned ~15 times during the fight and did the AoE Sleep move during my last Astral Flow. We went back in, it only did Trinity twice and we beat it with 0 2hrs.) And getting them for the mages is a waste, too, because you shouldn't be letting them get close to the mob in the first place. RNGs too. I can see having 2 Psycho and Hystero if you don't trust your party, but a 'balanced' group (Read: WAR MNK RNG RDM WHM SMN) can do them just fine.
If Animas weren't rare/ex I'd have no problem buying them for the fights - much like I don't mind buying Yellow Liquid and such. If you need each person to pack 2 animas each for the crag bosses, you must be trying to go 6x WHM and Banish spam the dude to death or something, I dunno.
The strategy I gave was, I admit, overkill on animas to make the boss *painfully* easy. However, an hour (or so) of farming (per Promyvion) to make the fight painfully easy and beatable by anyone (even somewhat unbalanced parties, even parties which lack strategy otherwise) is not at all unreasonable. If you think it's unreasonable, you'll hate the time commitments you'll need for the later missions. An hour of prep work is nothing.
If you prefer to farm fewer animas, beat the boss down to 50% normally (which, again, requires neither RNG nor SMN nor WAR/NIN ... I don't deny that these make it easier but they're a far cry from a necessity) and then use 2-3 sets of animas on it at that point.
When I say balanced group, I'm talking 2 support + 1 tank + 3 damage. And one of those supports is a WHM for Promyvion Raise and teleports. When you say balanced group, you're talking WAR (likely subbing NIN) and RNG and SMN and WHM (though I'm not arguing the WHM bit) and two others. While balanced, it's still "get the specific jobs and fill in the rest".
When I say balanced, I mean *any* balanced party (the one exception I make is a WHM, and that's not an absolute necessity either, if you don't mind lack of teleports - or you have a 72+ job subbing WHM - and you're confident you won't die on the way up), and *not* any BS about you must have XYZ jobs. Take an exp party there if you want.
If your balanced party just *happened* to end up with those jobs, that's one thing, and I apologize for reading into the coincidence. But the fact that it includes all of them makes me very suspicious that it was looking for them specifically.
Also, last I checked, if the mob's not physically attacking and the mob's not using specials, it's perfectly safe for a mage to go in and use an anima. Use the no-physical one first, and the no-special one 5 seconds later (via /wait in macro is good). They last exactly 30 seconds, so the next person in line can go and get into position at around the 25-28 second mark, and when they see the mob actually start whacking the tank again (no-physical has worn off), hit their macro.
For the record on who drops what recollection which turns into what anima and what it does ...
Psychoanima (no physical): Recollection of Fear
Drops from Holla Wanderers.
Drops from Mea Weepers.
Drops from Dem Seethers.
Hysteroanima (no special): Recollection of Pain
Drops from Dem Wanderers.
Drops from Holla Weepers.
Drops from Mea Seethers.
Terroanima (marathons itself around the room): Recollection of Guilt
Drops from Mea Wanderers.
Drops from Dem Weepers.
Drops from Holla Seethers.
And by Promyvion (mainly because you don't want to "farm" anything other than first-floor Wanderers/Weepers):
Promyvion-Dem:
Wanderers -> Pain -> Hysteroanima (no special)
Weepers -> Guilt -> Terroanima (marathon)
Seethers -> Fear -> Psychoanima (no physical)
Promyvion-Holla:
Wanderers -> Fear -> Psychoanima (no physical)
Weepers -> Pain -> Hysteroanima (no special)
Seethers -> Guilt -> Terroanima (marathon)
Promyvion-Mea:
Wanderers -> Guilt -> Terroanima (marathon)
Weepers -> Fear -> Psychoanima (no physical)
Seethers -> Pain -> Hysteroanima (no special)
sounds like fun.
