Dynamis Farming

Hey. So I just recently got my bard mule flagged for Dynamis COP zones. I used to farm dynamis on my BST, but now I'm thinking that with Tarutaru sash, I have the same TH on my monk that Faithful Falcor has, and my monk gains a larger benefit from haste + marches than my bst.
A couple quick questions:
1) Would I be able to farm more coins on the DC or EP mobs?

2) Will TH be applied if I just macro in the sash when I use Box Step or Violent Flourish, or do I need to actually hit it with melee swings to apply the TH?

1) Most likely be able to farm more coins on DC.

2) TH is applied when you establish yourself on the hate list. Basically you can engage the mob with the sash on hit it once with a flourish, step, or a punch and TH1 will be applied. You can then remove the sash for the rest of the fight if you wish.

This isn't the first time I've heard DC are better for farming. I'm definitely gonna have to give them a shot.

Ok cool. I changed my step macro to equip the sash so that should work just fine. I guess I should macro it in to chi blast as well come to think of it.

DCs are generally only better for farming if there's too much competition for EPs.

The amount of time it takes to proc a mob is restricted by proc rates, JA timers, and how many people are trying. With JAs, there's a 20% chance of a proc; also means you'll proc 50% of the time within 3 JA attempts, and 90% of the time within 10 JA attempts.

More often than not, you'll proc within 4 attempts (60% of the time), which should only take about 25 seconds. If you're solo, you then have to figure how much time it takes after that point to actually kill the mob, vs how many coins each mob drops.

With TH6/TH7, EPs drop an average of about 2.4 coins and DCs drop an average of 2.8 coins. On time scale, that would equalize if EPs took 60 seconds to kill while DCs took 70 seconds to kill. That definitely won't be the case. In general, DCs take almost twice as much player time (eg: 90 seconds solo, or 45 seconds duo, etc) to kill as EPs.

Things balance out somewhat when you have more people partied up. More people means more proc attempts in less time, so you'll be getting 8-10 proc attempts in the first 30 seconds, which allows you to go full out on offense on DCs more easily, since almost all mobs should be proc'd within a reasonable span of time. However more people means EPs die far faster, putting their death under the proc time barrier, making it more difficult to fight that way.

In general, EPs work best for strong solos or duos, or weaker trios. (This is also due to mob camp limitations; a single strong duo can keep a mob camp 75% clear.) Stronger trios or above will likely do better on DCs due to the balance of proc time vs kill time.

I'm going to have to disagree with EPs being better than DCs for strong soloers/duos.

When I soloed on Blue Mage (I can't speak for other jobs; and sorry, I know the job in question is MNK) I'd only be making about 20 coins less when I switched to DC mobs, but I'd also be making 20-25 forgottens (touches in this case) as opposed to 2-3 on EP, which would end up netting more gil even with the less coin count.

On the subject of whether a duo would do better or worse on DCs as opposed to EPs, you seem to be forgetting about the advantage of opening strong skillchain possibilities from saying Skillchains are probably the biggest advantage to duoing as opposed to soloing, next to faster procs, which will help aid you in killing DCs as fast, or almost as fast as EPs. The increase in number of forgottens if duoing on DCs is huge as well, my partner and I's average being about 60. Touches sell for 14,000g (at least that's the highest I can sell mine for) on our server which is an extra 420,000g each. Our average forgottens on EPs is about 15, which is only approximately 105,000g each. So you would need to make approximately 45-46 coins more than you would at DC mobs to make up for the loss of forgottens by doing EPs (average 6,900g per coin on Odin).

Also, I'm pretty positive DCs actually have a higher proc rate than EPs as well, but this claim is not backed up by anything other than eye-balling. However, there are numerous times in runs on EPs where I/we are unable to proc EPs for a ridiculous amount of time (about 2 minutes). This does happen on DCs as well, but at a much infrequent rate (probably once or twice per run) If this claim is true, it also favors DCs over EPs.

Plus the mobs we do have no competition 80% of the time!

I'm gonna have to agree with Llewelyn. I just ran Qufim on DC mobs. I started on EP at first but then I quickly made the switch. When I do EP with my super hasted monk, they die so fast I only have time to get off like 2 steps and 1-2 flourishes. I ended up spending too much time walking around looking for something to claim.

Giving double march + haste to my verethragna monk, I killed DC just as fast as my BST was killing EP solo. Also, I'm not spending money on pet food or jugs. The only issue is the damage I take from DC mobs when they don't proc before perfect counter comes off. I didn't bother with counterstance. Should I have used it? (My AF2 boots aren't upgraded yet).

As of recently I would have to agree on the DC mobs. Me and my GF used to do EP monsters as NIN+BST. The main downfall of EP monsters is competition, and secondly the unable to proc problem. I tend to agree that DC mobs have a higher proc rate...There's so many times on EP monsters it takes me forever to proc. So recently we started doing DC monsters on NIN+THF. Even with usual 5 or so minute increase on getting the TEs due to no widescan (mainly just random one is the problem) we still make more coins without even talking about the 300% increase on forgotten items.

We pull our own mobs and I always change targets to close skillchains with her to pretty much instant kill from nearly full HP. I have my TH gear on my RA macro so just make sure to tag everything with TH+Def.Down. That and yellow curry buns (too cheap for red) makes for normally pretty speedy killing. Even with all of that there's still something even better...barely anyone in your way pulling all your ***.

How High is Falcors TH exactly?

TH1

Check the price on Bison Jerky. They are pretty much the same thing as yellow curry buns (5 str, 70 atk) except they last for an hour instead of 30 minutes and they are half the price (on my server anyway - 15k vs 30k).

However, if you're doing sheep in valkurm, use yellow curry bun for sure (resist sleep).

Or you can use Bison Steak which will give you 90 atk and 6 str for 3 hours @ only 7-10k

True. I try to keep it in mind, but this will vary greatly from group to group. For the people I usually go with: I have Exenterator on thf, but that won't chain with the other mnk who has Smite, but not Shijin. If I use Mandalic Stab, it really only works well with SA (not so much TA, and unstacked is a waste of time), and does about 70% as much damage as Exenterator would do, so the total skillchain damage is only somewhat better than just using Exenterator alone.

If I'm on nin I have Shun, which would chain with Smite, but if I'm on nin then the other mnk is probably on thf, and he doesn't have Exenterator, so again skillchains are blocked (or reduced; Shun>Evis would be Gravitation). Also, the other (third) person who has nin has Hi, but not Shun, which won't chain with either Smite or Exenterator. Same with Tachi: Shoha if someone's on sam. (way too many Fragmentation weaponskills...)

Etc, etc. Lots of different jobs available (and often changed up depending on what relic+2 people are working on), but then you also have to factor in the strength each player brings to the job. My thf is by far the strongest of the group, so even though I'd do more raw damage as mnk, the group's total damage is highest when I'm on thf, which limits my options for the skillchaining part.

However, for the times we can skillchain and actually manage to coordinate that well, it does indeed help a great deal. Clusters in Tavnazia are a particularly enjoyable target for that.

So how much damage does it add? Using my typical average weaponskill damage of ~2200.. If the mnk is closing the skillchain, that gives a 12% damage bonus to the skillchain. Light from either Shijin or Smite will mirror the damage, so total damage would be in the neighborhood of 2500 damage. If I close on thf, it'll be somewhat less.

Mob HP is typically in the 9500 range for DC mobs (lower for some mobs like clusters in Tavnazia), so an extra 2500 damage is about a 25% reduction in mob HP. Allowing for some variations (efficiency, strength of closing weaponskill, etc), can probably consider it a 20% reduction in net time to kill.

Will come back to this at the bottom.


Sample 1 -- DCs -- 22% (153 procs/160 mobs/706 JA uses)
Sample 2 -- DCs -- 21% (170 procs/179 mobs/826 JA uses)

Sample 3 -- EPs -- 24% (165 procs/169 mobs/691 JA uses)
Sample 4 -- EPs -- 21% (155 procs/164 mobs/734 JA uses)


Only pulled a few samples, but the proc rates don't look much different.

The apparent difference is most likely a psychological one. When you're a minute into a no-proc, an EP mob probably only has a sliver of life left, while a DC probably still has at least half its HP. That makes it more difficult to continue trying to proc the EP mob, and increases your awareness of the frustration. With a DC mob, on the other hand, even if it's taking a while, you're still able to make steady progress on damaging it, so it doesn't feel like you're 'wasting time' on it.



Also a notable consideration, yes. Even with other differences, this will probably put DCs in the lead for net gil gain regardless. For EPs, forgotten item count tends to be around 2%-3% of the coin count, while for DCs the forgotten item count is around 8%-12% of the coin count (few quick parses checked; not exhaustive).

If you consider it roughly equivalent to a ~7% increase in total coin count (1.1 / 1.025), and then adjust for value per item (at least 2x the value of an average coin; moreso for body/head items from Tav), DCs gain a ~15% gil advantage relative to a given number of coins. Given coins per mob is 16.7% higher from DCs (2.8 vs 2.4), net gil per mob is about 34% higher.

So to figure which gives the highest return, you have to work out which gives you more mobs per unit time (including accounting for competition, the proc rate barrier, time spent running between camps, and dealing with optimizing pulling dynamics and such). If you can kill 1/3 more EP mobs than DC mobs, it ends up as about a wash.



While I don't have any parses I can easily grab that give a good comparison of kill rates (I have to extrapolate differences in jobs, how many people were there, which mobs were fought, how much competition, etc), rough estimates put the EP kill rate per person (with 2 people) as significantly higher than the DC kill rate per person (with 3 people). You can see that in the above proc rate samples, where both EP runs had 2 people, while one of the DC runs had 3 people (the other DC run had a significantly different mix of jobs). If we had a good skillchain setup, however, I could see the balance shifting more towards the DC side.


So I will amend my earlier statement. Aside from dealing with too much competition, DC mobs can likely give you a better net return if you have a setup that can take advantage of skillchaining (including blu self-chaining) in order to reduce time spent per mob.

Yeah, I was actually thinking about that possibility after I typed it out. :/ Thanks for the test sample!

You based that statement on the estimate that "net gil per mob is about 34% higher" for decent challenge mobs. However, did you factor in that you will have a certain percentage of EP mobs that are killed without a proc? If you did and I missed it, I'm sorry, but I read your post in segments as I was cooking.
In my experience, when I farm DC, I proc about 95% of the mobs I fight. On EP, I think it was somewhere around 70-80%. I'm not sure. Of course that number on EP will vary based on kill speed.
I just wanted to make the point that if you didn't factor that in, you'd have to kill more than 33% more EP mobs.

A certain percentage of -any- mob will possibly be killed without a proc. For my parse data, we had 95%-97% net proc rates for both EP and DC.

Suppose we have two people, using Violent Flourish + Step (also occasional native JA, but ignoring for this calculation). For one mob, the expected time to proc looks something like:


Cutting off at 97%, as my sample sets capped out at about that. I used 16 seconds as the intervals for Steps, and 21 seconds as the intervals for Violent Flourish, to allow leeway in general imprecision.

Factoring it all out, that leads to an average proc time of 13.265 seconds.

So 95%-97% proc rates means holding the mob for up to one minute. A 70%-80% proc rate would mean killing the mob after the first ~25 seconds.


It's difficult to make direct comparisons, but running through some parses I end up seeing about 30 second average kill time for 2 people on EPs, and about 32 second average killtime with 3 people on DCs. 3 people on EPs pushes average kill time down to near 20 seconds.

Of course 3 people will be able to test procs faster, assuming all three focus on that, rather than having one person more dedicated to pulling. At best you're dropping about 4 seconds from the average time to proc, though.

Looking at the EPs alone, if the first ~14 seconds are the same regardless, average post-proc player-time is 32 seconds with 2 people ((30-14)*2), and 30 seconds with 3 ((20-10)*3), so roughly the same.

If I run the calculations for a single person, average proc time should be 29 seconds (assuming a 97% attempt rate). If another 30 seconds of player-time is needed post-proc, we end up with basically 60 seconds of player-time per mob, which becomes 30 seconds with 2 people and 20 seconds with 3. All pretty evenly lined up.



If you went with an ~80% proc rate level instead (about 25 seconds with 2 players), average time to proc would be about 7 seconds with 2 people, so a drop of 6 seconds off the average fight time (though probably less because you did a bit less damage pre-proc). If you took it as 5 seconds off, you'd have average fight times of 25 seconds instead of 30 seconds, but only 80% proc'd instead of 97%.

That means that going for full proc would be 97 mobs out of 100 at 30 seconds each = 50 minutes, so 1.94 proc'd mobs per minute (or 1.9 at 95% rate).

Going for the faster proc would be 80 mobs out of 100 at 25 seconds each = 41.67 minutes, so 1.92 proc'd mobs per minute.

In other words, no real gain. Thus you might as well try for a proc rate at the same level as DC mobs (~95%+), and your above conditions become moot.



For one minute of player time per EP mob to be ~33% more than the kill rate on DC mobs, the average DC mob fight would have to be 80 seconds or more of player-time. With two players, that would be a 40 second average kill time; with three players, a 28 seconds average kill time.

From my parses, I have ~32-35 seconds for three players on DCs. I'll call it 34 seconds for 20 seconds of post-proc fight time. If 20 seconds accounts for 80% of the mob's HP, and if a skillchain was added in for 20% of the mob's HP (thus 1/4 of the remaining damage), that drops 5 seconds off of the post-proc fight time, putting projected net average kill time in the 27-30 second range. That's right at the level to make it a wash with the EP kill time, give or take.



Caveat: All of that is considering just 2 or 3 melee DDs. Add in mages (such as the OP's brd) and things get trickier to calculate.


In the end, playstyle and competition is likely to have a much larger impact on total net proceeds than choice of EP vs DC mobs. I'm still inclined to think you should only go after DCs if you can skillchain, though.

Well, with my bard I basically have the kill speed of a duo with the proc rate of a solo player. Not *exactly* true but close enough.

I think the biggest factor really is competition, which is a random factor that can't be calculated. Each dynamis zone has a "bottleneck" time period where only one or two camps of mobs are ideal.

Valkurm - bottleneck time: 0800-1600
Cactuar have 4k needles and sheep are a long run away, so hippogryphs get overcamped and thus you end up with down time waiting for respawns. Either that or you have a lot of down time running to and from the sheep.
Also the funguar camp is very popular so if you don't take the time to run to flytraps or flies you can run in to respawn issues there too.

Buburimu - bottleneck time: 0000-0800
Uragnites are stupid so everyone camps crawlers and birds. The crawler camp can only support 1 person without waiting for respawns. I think the bird camp can only support 2 people. I've never been able to farm Buburimu EP mobs without waiting for respawns during this time.

Qufim - bottleneck time: 0000-0800
There are only 3 EP rocs in qufim, so that camp is near worthless. Nobody really likes to do Kraken because of Maelstrom (and I think they have higher defense?) so most people head to the Gayla camp. The major problem with Qufim as a whole is that all the EP camps really only support 1 or 2 players.


From my limited experience in farming DC mobs, I've never had to wait for respawns.