POL NEWS : June Version Update (04/27/2007)

[Romper]

That would suck.

Agree too many people would be like zmg! instant 300 tp! /SAM here I come!

 

[Uzor]

I'd still hafto disagree...some things are incredibly limited, i.e. Chariots, and expecting them to drop the proper item (at a what, 5% drop rate? 2%?) is beyond laughable. Even worse is the fact that if your group is small, you won't be able to kill the stronger NMs, thus won't be able to complete sets. If the group is large, odds are someones gonna win lot on a piece of you and everyone winds up waiting a disgustingly long time even if they're 2/3 on one piece. There is the small chance your group goes by priority/attendance...and if you can manage that with a ~18 person group, I'm truly envious of you. =/

The very best set up is with a core of 10 people. Hell, my own shell have a good core of 10 people, and we've been killing the Qiqirn Treasure Hunter and lots of other things.

My motto for Salvage is "Less is more, more or less". Having 18 people in Arrapago Remenants, will usually result in lots of people only having a few things unlocked. And if you're unlucky, only 1 or 2 melees will have weapons unlocked. With a smaller group, though, you'll kill at pretty much the same speed in the begining, but people will be more unlocked. You can argue that with more firepower, you'll kill faster. But firepower doesn't mean much if they don't have weapons to shoot with.

While yes, a group of 18 would be easier, assuming everyone gets unlocked. But you'll spend more time unlocking then, and might not get to unlock some of them at all. If you have a good group of around 12 people, you'll be able to kill everything. Hell, our very first bhaflau boss attempt with, what? 7 people? we got the boss to 80% in less then 5 min. We could have gotten it further, had our RDM not died in the begining xD

All the same, when there's only 1-4 of certain mobs (even worse when some of them have outlandish pop requirements, or even warp out after [x] time), their droprate shouldn't be some bullsh-!t like 5%. It leaves you fighting for eternity. And frankly, very few of the pieces are worth even half of the effort needed to get them.

The Chariot in Bhaflau doesn't drop anything. The only non-boss chariot that drops anything is the one in Arrapago. He have 3 possible lvl 35 items he can drop, and drops them at a roughly 25% chance for each item, so the drop rate isn't really that low. The Qiqirn Treasure Hunter drops items at a roughly 10% chance, but there's several of them in the zone, and the Qiqirn Astrologer at a slightly higher chance, as it tends to warp away, making it harder then the Treasure Hunter.

The only ones that truely suck are the Bhaflau NM's. Especially Mad Bomber. 50% chance that it'll appear on your route, 1% chance that the NM will pop, and like a 10% chance that it'll drop the item you need. I'm 2/500 on Door Widow, with 0/2 on drop, and 0/500 on Skirmish Pephedro ; ; Then I gave up and started to farm other zones untill we need something from them <.<

The second shell I'm in often go with 18 people, and they do well too. So it can be done with both small and large groups, it just requires a slight strategy change. And that's why I like Salvage, it pretty much balances itself due to cell drops. Admitedly, though, they've had better luck on Salvage equipment then my group xD

 

[Bajaratt]

Agree too many people would be like zmg! instant 300 tp! /SAM here I come!

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of you couldn't use meditate as effectively to skill chain with two people anymore. With meditate as it is now, you can pop it to fill up whatever TP you still need to do a weapon skill and use the extra to feed your next weapon skill. With an instant TP charge, you'd have to wait until you already had 100% to be able to use meditate. Plus, you'd no longer be able to self-light(without your two hour) anymore.

 

[Mai Ikari]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of you couldn't use meditate as effectively to skill chain with two people anymore. With meditate as it is now, you can pop it to fill up whatever TP you still need to do a weapon skill and use the extra to feed your next weapon skill. With an instant TP charge, you'd have to wait until you already had 100% to be able to use meditate. Plus, you'd no longer be able to self-light(without your two hour) anymore.

Nevermind that the original argument of bruised epeen from BLU self-Light is rather silly, since BLUs sacrifice a good bit of damage to do it. (Vorpal does better than Savage, and there's all sorts of spells that do better than Cannonball, and Light just gets resisted to nonexistance most of the time)

 

[K. Ishitar]

Nevermind that the original argument of bruised epeen from BLU self-Light is rather silly, since BLUs sacrifice a good bit of damage to do it. (Vorpal does better than Savage, and there's all sorts of spells that do better than Cannonball, and Light just gets resisted to nonexistance most of the time)

Question: On Endgame mobs only certain jobs can damage Kirin(right?) wouldnt blu be needed to pop a light sc for the blms to magic burst more from and kill him quicker?

 

[Mai Ikari]

Question: On Endgame mobs only certain jobs can damage Kirin(right?) wouldnt blu be needed to pop a light sc for the blms to magic burst more from and kill him quicker?

Certainly, along with the 6-12 other melee doing skillchains.

 

[Bajaratt]

Question: On Endgame mobs only certain jobs can damage Kirin(right?) wouldnt blu be needed to pop a light sc for the blms to magic burst more from and kill him quicker?

All jobs can damage Kirin, he's not immune to anything; it's just the damage:tp given ratio is really low for most forms of damage and his high level/defense would mean you wouldn't do as much damage per hit as an exp mob. A lot of melee also sub sam to build their own tp, use opo necklace and sleep for tp, or even melee Kirin for tp and then back off once they have enough to weapon skill. So no, blu isn't necessary to skillchain for the black mages.

 

[Lenneth]

I'm thinking what they wont add a new ToAH endgame because they already have Salvage, Assualts and Nyzul Isle.

ToAU* lawl

 

[hellstorm]

can't wait see full details

 

[Celvantes]

The very best set up is with a core of 10 people. Hell, my own shell have a good core of 10 people, and we've been killing the Qiqirn Treasure Hunter and lots of other things.

My motto for Salvage is "Less is more, more or less". Having 18 people in Arrapago Remenants, will usually result in lots of people only having a few things unlocked. And if you're unlucky, only 1 or 2 melees will have weapons unlocked. With a smaller group, though, you'll kill at pretty much the same speed in the begining, but people will be more unlocked. You can argue that with more firepower, you'll kill faster. But firepower doesn't mean much if they don't have weapons to shoot with.

While yes, a group of 18 would be easier, assuming everyone gets unlocked. But you'll spend more time unlocking then, and might not get to unlock some of them at all. If you have a good group of around 12 people, you'll be able to kill everything. Hell, our very first bhaflau boss attempt with, what? 7 people? we got the boss to 80% in less then 5 min. We could have gotten it further, had our RDM not died in the begining xD
The Chariot in Bhaflau doesn't drop anything. The only non-boss chariot that drops anything is the one in Arrapago. He have 3 possible lvl 35 items he can drop, and drops them at a roughly 25% chance for each item, so the drop rate isn't really that low. The Qiqirn Treasure Hunter drops items at a roughly 10% chance, but there's several of them in the zone, and the Qiqirn Astrologer at a slightly higher chance, as it tends to warp away, making it harder then the Treasure Hunter.

The only ones that truely suck are the Bhaflau NM's. Especially Mad Bomber. 50% chance that it'll appear on your route, 1% chance that the NM will pop, and like a 10% chance that it'll drop the item you need. I'm 2/500 on Door Widow, with 0/2 on drop, and 0/500 on Skirmish Pephedro ; ; Then I gave up and started to farm other zones untill we need something from them <.<

The second shell I'm in often go with 18 people, and they do well too. So it can be done with both small and large groups, it just requires a slight strategy change. And that's why I like Salvage, it pretty much balances itself due to cell drops. Admitedly, though, they've had better luck on Salvage equipment then my group xD

Tagging onto that (leading the other group, lol), cells are the great equalizer. The whole concept makes Salvage strategy orders of magnitude harder than Dynamis or Limbus. Dynamis can be boiled down to making good pulls, having good sleeps, then killing as fast as you possibly can. Dreamlands enters a bit into the unlocking strategy but the way you unlock is no different than the NMs you'd normally take out to pop the boss in a regular zone. The only real strategy comes in the suicide pulls. Limbus enters a large aspect of time management, and in some cases kill order (each zone has a kind of a trick to it).

Salvage, on the other hand, is time management from square one AND dealing with unlocking strategies. Getting more cells enables you to kill faster (saving time) but requires you to spend time to get those cells. Quite frankly, it's a kick in the nuts. As you start to do zones more and more, a "best fit" strategy becomes self-evident, but it doesn't make executing it any easier. Bad luck in cell drops can kill a run just as easily as several mistakes. Furthermore, it makes it nearly impossilbe to "farm" zones save for maybe Bhaflau (and only the weakest parts of Bhaflau at that). Otherwise, getting one piece or *maybe* two pieces per run on a non-Bhaflau run is the most one can expect.

Dynamis = 3 hours of work x up to 64 people with maybe 3-7 getting gear.
Limbus = .5-1.5 hours of worx x up to 18 people with maybe 2-4 getting gear.
Salvage = 1.6 hours of work x up to 18 people with maybe 1-2 getting gear with a strong chance of getting nothing.


That said, I do believe SE made it *too* hard. Given the insane pop conditions of some NMs, I think that once you *get* to the NM and kill him, the drop should be 100%. But, in SE's infinite wisdom, we have insane pop conditions and insane drop rates. Yes, I know the gear is godly, but there are some items that make Dynamis Xarcabard look like a cakewalk.

 

[Rappa]

Salvage gear is way too good to have everyone in the world running around in it. I think S-E did the right thing by making Salvage a royal pain in the ass and I wish they would do it more often. So many amazing pieces of gear are way too easy to get and everyone ends up being a mindless drone (sup w.turban).

 

[Dayner]

So many amazing pieces of gear are way too easy to get and everyone ends up being a mindless drone (sup w.turban).

i dont mind seeing more and more ppl wear it

they all want to be arabs ;p

 

[chrono fantasy]

Dynamis = 3 hours of work x up to 64 people with maybe 3-7 getting gear.
Limbus = .5-1.5 hours of worx x up to 18 people with maybe 2-4 getting gear.
Salvage = 1.6 hours of work x up to 18 people with maybe 1-2 getting gear with a strong chance of getting nothing.


That said, I do believe SE made it *too* hard. Given the insane pop conditions of some NMs, I think that once you *get* to the NM and kill him, the drop should be 100%. But, in SE's infinite wisdom, we have insane pop conditions and insane drop rates. Yes, I know the gear is godly, but there are some items that make Dynamis Xarcabard look like a cakewalk.

Well... SE had to make something in ToAU difficult, because many things in ToAU are pretty simple, at least if you think about the ToAU missions compared to missions in CoP and even RoZ a bit, but especially in CoP which is far more challenging.

The armor most wanted has to be the most challenging too, and SE knows people will try to do these anyways if they really want a specific item. But if Salvage isn't "The End game" for ToAU, I wonder how much challenging they would make the actual End game event in ToAU... Even Nyzul Isle seems a little challenging at times too.

Out of Dynamis, Limbus, and Salvage though, I like Limbus the best because at least in Limbus almost every run you at least get 1 or more coin, unless you're shell has a different kind of rule on coin drops for Limbus.

 

[mdkuser]

They need to stop adding new "battle systems" and just fix the old ones. Salvage is quite possibly the largest good-idea-gone-wrong in the history of FFXI with it's droprates and bogus pop conditions of some NMs. I'd really like to see people actually have completed Salvage pieces...I think I've seen maybe two complete Footwear and nothing else.

The red mage called Fresa has the morrigan body. I saw it today after dynamis.

 

[mdkuser]

Well... SE had to make something in ToAU difficult, because many things in ToAU are pretty simple, at least if you think about the ToAU missions compared to missions in CoP and even RoZ a bit, but especially in CoP which is far more challenging.

The armor most wanted has to be the most challenging too, and SE knows people will try to do these anyways if they really want a specific item. But if Salvage isn't "The End game" for ToAU, I wonder how much challenging they would make the actual End game event in ToAU... Even Nyzul Isle seems a little challenging at times too.

Out of Dynamis, Limbus, and Salvage though, I like Limbus the best because at least in Limbus almost every run you at least get 1 or more coin, unless you're shell has a different kind of rule on coin drops for Limbus.

limbus is boring, except Proto-Omega/ultima. Blizzard 4> thunder 4 rest repeat. /yawn

 

[pakomen]

limbus is boring, except Proto-Omega/ultima. Blizzard 4> thunder 4 rest repeat. /yawn

Yeah, it's hella boring as blm. But what isn't (Except Dynamis)? It's a shame my ls doesn't let me come as blu. Well, they did once...

 

[Uzor]

And that is exactly why I like salvage What ruins Limbus, is that its just too friggin' east. I enjoy Dynamis, because you can always evolve the strategy you're using, and its never straight.forward. Limbus, is almost always straight forward, and you always use the same strategy.

Salvage, is both east, hard and challanging at the same time. Its never exactly the same, and you can always evolve the strategy you're using. Due to being pretty much 100% noobs at the begining, it gives you great oppertunities to learn to work as a group in way syou never thought was possible, and assign assignments to people who are not used to doing that particular assignment. Like a DRK tanking. It gives people an oppertunity to evolve in ways they wouldn't normally evolve, which is why I love Salvage,

 

[pakomen]

Salvage is gay for one reason: You have to do more stupid-ass assaults just to enter.

Which is why you won't find me anywhere near Salvage. I just don't have time for that shit. The only way I'd start attending Salvage is if they made it possible for you to trade imperial coins in exchange for assault points, which they won't, but one can dream.

 

[Charcoip]

Salvage is gay for one reason: You have to do more stupid-ass assaults just to enter.

Which is why you won't find me anywhere near Salvage. I just don't have time for that shit. The only way I'd start attending Salvage is if they made it possible for you to trade imperial coins in exchange for assault points, which they won't, but one can dream.

would you rather pay 1M gil everytime you want to enter Salvage?

 

[Myrrh]

Or make it so you can trade in Nyzul isle tokens to do it too. I have 14k tokens and nothing to spent it on.