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If using double vorseals, add hunter's roll and boost dex it's essentially the same level of acc as without bolster. Bolster dex also probably not needed we're going for 2100, so you also have a lot of wiggle room.


I'd do something like this, Frailty and Fury with dia 3 is enough to cap pDIF against almost anything, and Earthen Armor + Schezero and a good WHM solves survivability problems, EA + Scherzo is 90% damage reduction to anything that would deal over 75% of you health, and anything that deals less than that can be cured by a WHM (Try id in VD avatar fights, even with shell up your health barely moves when AF goes off). The one exception is multihit abilities, almost all of which are physical so subbing NIN would solve. Vex and Wilt not necessary I'd do a 10 man setup:
2 Idris GEO: Frailty, Fury, Precision, Torpor. One is off party for Torpor and Frailty while one is in party for Precision + Fury.
1 offparty RDM for dia 3, distract 3, and debuffing mob
1 WHM for DD party with Tank in it
1 Tank
2 DD depending on if you value skillchains or not

These can rotate in as needed, COR rolls can last 9.5 mins now and songs over 9 min and many smn buffs last over 8.5 min now with enough smn skill:
1 BRD For haste cap, and accuracy.
1 COR for hunters and another roll depending (prob wont' need chaos since can cap pdif)
1 SMN for haste 2 for 8 mins, EA for 5 min, 250 TP bonus, long duration warcry, endrain or enfire, etc.

So that leaves:
P1: PLD WHM GEO DD DD <rotate slot free>
P2: RDM GEO COR SMN BRD <could add a 3rd geo for debuffs if you really want>

Or for more DD:

P1: PLD WHM RDM GEO
P2: DD DD WHM GEO COR SMN BRD
P3: DD DD DD WHM GEO <rotate slot>

Honestly I'd prefer the 10-12 people setup but I think both would work.

I know your setup listed above is different, but I put together a Teles win that had this outside of elak:

P1: PUP RUN WHM GEO
P2: BLM BLM SCH GEO SMN COR
P3: BLM BLM SCH GEO <2x rotate slots>

SMN was just so Clarion Call didn't one shot ppl which EA prevents and to help dispel and debuff its INT around -92 with conflag and impact and haste 2 the blm, could also use a BRD though. COR and SMN rotated to do buffs and had 4 BLM. I've seen it done with 2 BLM though. In death setups you often have 2-4 people doing magic burst only, so how is that any diff for DD? The SCH aren't bursting on death setups except for noctohelix 2 and are mostly support for storms and to make skillchains and help heal during dia aura. If you don't use 2 SCH you run out of strats eventually so... Idk just seems to me there's about the same number of damage dealers in both setups. In death setup there is 4 of 14 and in the DD setup was 2 of 10 so at least in this example, the DD setup has a higher ratio of damage dealers vs support.

I agree mana burn is easier to do though and I think your setups that get so much out of support and have so many BLM work great. I'm just used to seeing max 4 BLM used (and cleared many with 2-3), so that's what I'm comparing it to. Anyway, it's an interesting convo but I think this will be my last input on it for now thank you for your courteous reply :)

98.9% sure that was heavy sarcasm from Ladyofhonor.

If you're using an alliance without using either 2 RUN or 1RUN + 1COR to reset gambit rayke and having all blms cast death, you're doing it wrong. Staggering death is mostly only good in low man setups with 3-4 blms where they can either all go staggered, or go in pairs staggered.

For reference on Teles, we used:

BLM BLM BLM BLM GEO GEO
BLM BLM BLM BLM GEO SCH
PLD WHM GEO RUN PUP COR

for a total of Focus/Haste (blm pts), Languor, Malaise, Wilt, Vex. We rotated in GEO to the tank pt for Bolster Malaise/Languor.

Ya I've never seen anyone do it that way lol, I'm not saying it's wrong to. That run for instance was everyone but mine first event we fought Teles and it took some learning but we won with that setup so I'll take it. I've only ever seen death staggered in pairs. That's a buttload of BLM but I can see how it'd work. It's hard to find that many well geared BLM on at one time though. It's interesting you do it with only 1 SCH, I guess non staggered death barrage like that though the fight could be short enough you can get by on a revit and TR. Usually I think people have to deal with the jobs and people they have on and make it work. Just goes to show there's always more than one way to beat something though, thank you for sharing your strat :)

Three or four geomancers is just absurd (@SE, not @anyone here). I know very well how powerful the job is and how potent the buffs are. I also know that GEO is the new BRD and that alliances routinely had 3 bards. "Bard Rotation" was a very common thing.

That said, it's a helluva time in a lot of cases finding 12 appropriately geared people, let alone 12 appropriately geared players on the right jobs. Thanks, truly, to HP scaling, you can't carry jobs very easily.

Even though 18 can still go to most content, I feel like today's FFXI is designed better for 6, and as such, the evasion on this crap is absurdly high, especially since the magic-evasion doesn't seem to be nearly as high.

People could do 18 man vagary np, and yah more can be better for this really hard stuff that's one thing that makes the master trial bcnm so hard and why no one has beat it yet. I've seen the opposite problem you're describing a lot of the time too many people want to go if they know it leads to wins, there's a reason a lot of the successful LS aren't recruiting new people, you get more than 18 people showing up to an event sometimes that tends to taper off that I've seen but I don't think it's a 6 player game, at least not on this server. Finding people appropriately geared is an issue no matter how many slots you have though. There will always be people more dedicated to their job and with more game knowledge and better execution just the way it is. Having two GEO is enough to handle either magic or melee path. Attack up, def down, acc up, evasion down. Can put the word magic in front of each of those for mana burns. The third geo is usually for defensive purpose, to make their most dangerous moves easier to live through. There's also BRD, COR, RUN, RDM, SCH storms & skillchains, SMN, other job abilities and more you an throw on there, I mean it's not supposed to be easy.

These things are level 150+ and you're level 119, you have to throw the book at it to get results doing 6 man won't work or at least be super hard, I'm not saying it will always be that way but as it is right now that's how it is. HP scaling or not, you want more people or you can't even begin to fix all the stats you need to so you can even deal decent damage and live to tell about it. And once you have that support frame work to fix those stats, a better ratio of damage dealer to support in most, not all cases, will give you better results especially for these 30 minute fights. It'd be nice if people quantify the HP scaling some time, rather than leave it as this gooey undefined thing. It seems at most one or two death casts is about as much HP as it adds if you're doing 99k bursts. It's really misunderstood by a lot of people. Yea you don't want to add useless people but if you're doing a good setup it's not a bad thing and in reality, low man strats resist useless people even more than alliance ones do. Support are the only thing that can let damage dealers of any kind do their job on this content so you require them, and tanks and in all cases but pup a healer for that tank. That's your minimum baggage to fight something that hard, the only way to not have that baggage is make DD more independent which ruins support jobs, or make the content easier, which defeats the point of hard content, or do something like a battlefield limited to 6 people which gives you the master trial, which is still undefeated.

Ugh, you all gotta shut up unless there's news from SE. I hate checking this thread expecting to hear something new but finding the same *** discussion found in every other FFXI thread.

It's been talked about before but instead of having one big catch all topic for news and discussion, why not separate them a la blue gartr

discussion is in the title too, last I checked how much us talking annoyed you wasn't a factor in us being allowed to or not, and ya I was gonna say BG has one discussion free if that's what you care about no reason to be rude.

I don't ever check this for info, the BG one is much better because we also get translations from Kincard early and its very clean and free of clutter.

Every once in a great while we get a bit of information that doesn't show up over there. I check both, but not on the reg.

Yes, and 2-3 buffers is "required" for content that is hard for your particular group because SE has the stats set so high. They could easily fix this and would be doing a lot of good to everyone.

(This applies to Bard and Cor too if SE ever fixes these jobs, especially bard).

In a melee setup, there should be nothing wrong with Tank, Healer, Melee, Melee, Support, Support. Either of those support with a little bit of flux from fight to fight.

But there is something really wrong with it. It doesn't work (edit: in a lot of content)

I know Ambuscade is pretty laughable but I had the best ambuscade group ever today and I think it's a great anecdotal example of what's wrong with the game. We were PLD, WHM, Tizona BLU, GEO, GEO, GEO (just because that's the jobs people had). It worked because the BLU was self-SC'ing so fast that there wasn't any room for another melee. With Fury/Frailty/Haste/Dex/Wilt/Refresh, we were ripping through the two NMs in 3 minutes or less.

Putting another melee in there would not have made the kills any faster. He'd've only interfered with the BLU self-lighting. 3 step skillchains sure, but more TP feed and some sitting on TP. This melee would have also been TPing fast enough to self-skillchain as many jobs can with those kidns of buffs.

I was tossing in some MBs, before either the taurus or demon died and they leveled up, but a BLM or SCH wouldn't have been useful in that setup because those things are pretty resisty to magic damage, especially once they level up. Further, the BLU was TPing so fast that I had trouble getting some bursts off before he ws'd for the first CDC of a new Light.


Which 119 are we? Are we Buramenk'Ah and Whirlpool Mask 119 or are we Tizona and Herculean 119?

And regardless of any of that, why is this stuff easier to nuke than it is to hit? I mean I know some of the mechanic reasons (Magic bursting accuracy bonus, being an example), but why such the large disparity?

Not saying the thread is useless but idk its not as reliable for me. I just usually read the discussions but I check on BG for anything Kincard translates or I'll check the actual OF.

Taken from bluegartr forum post from kinkaid

It would only lower the difficulty of the content I don't see how that's good for everyone, it would give some of us a lot less to do.


I think it's fallacious to say that because something doesn't fit what you like to play it means there's something wrong with the game. The game isn't designed with just what you want to play as or like in mind, it has different content which attempts to be diverse. It'd be bland if everything fit this setup it works for easier stuff sure, but even then it's not going to be always optimal. I don't want to start posting time wars because really, I can think of ways to do it faster and it should be enjoyable and it's really contextual. Example, had a 4 man run with 2 trusts today, and it was 1:45. Did I 1 hour on SMN? Why yes I did, but even when I didn't 3-5 min runs is what I'd expect with most setups, no 1 hours used and there's people doing the VD Quadav in 5 min now, so really that isn't good either.

One of the things supports do is fix stats. If you play really hard stuff, you need more support, because when it comes down to it support are the most overpowered jobs in the game. You can not like that, play easier content, or even get SE to try to change it, but not everyone agrees with you that every content should be 6 mannable with a tank, healer, dd, support setup. I'm one of those people. Your "fix" to me is a "break" and we're just gonna disagree I guess. I have nothing against using supports, multiple of them to achieve something awesome. It's just to me, healthy gameplay. There's different content difficulties, with content strategies, and different needs for each level of it and even some specific fights. Old Shuck for example can be beat by a fine tuned mana burn setup and is even a nice trial and right of passage, but it's easier to do with DD or pets and many people clear it that way too. You can clear it with 6, or 12, or even 18. That's just how it is. That's a T2 Reisenjima mob one of the harder mobs in the game. Beyond that though you really have to start using more support, because they are far beyond the reach of most 6 man parties, and after that? Forget it. You need top notch everything and have a heavy load of support often cycling 1 hours to just even function well. Anyway, spending too much time here thanks for the discussions :)

The annoyance of all the time Naga Raja spent flying was what kept me from building up Refresh Vorseals. Time to go ice dragon hunting.

That's a nice change, but I wonder why they built Domain Invasion so bad.
They are built so bad as content compared to similar ones like WKRs.

They probably pulled them off in haste copy-pasting the original monsters and adding adds without thinking too much about the consequences it would've had on the gameplay (i.e. making so it's totally not fun to fight them)

Getting charmed and killing people is pretty fun to me.

Is the Anti-Predator a new one? Reading their help text I don't quite understand what it's going to do, though it almost reads to me that they are not going to despawn.

It's a new one.

There are two possible interpretations.

1) They're not going to spawn at all. I don't know why SE would do this.

2) They're never going to lift off and "prowl the skies". Meaning they will never have those periods where they can't be hit. It'd be pretty neat if this is what SE means.

Yes, it's new.

Basically it will remove the flying mode portions of the Escha zone dragons.
Dunno if that will get people to actually DO them again...
But maybe.

I haven't done any of the wyrms in so long I completely forgot about that nonsense. That would be great if that's what it does.

Considering I have some serious work on refresh vorseal,much appreciated.

I believe it is a new one!

I was confused for a bit myself but I believe it means they'll not take flight at all?

Won't have to wait for it to descend to damage it,etc