Lilith HTBF

Opening more slots definitely doesn't mean more average drops per hour. I think it's better to either zerg or solo on easier difficulties.

The minimum time killing all three wardens appears to be at least 10~15 minutes. Between sitting there waiting for the right Gyve to pop, etc, it's not too great on average.

With the following setup:
RUN/NIN
WHM/SCH
GEO/RDM
BRD/NIN
COR/NIN
BLU/WAR

We got the kill pretty consistent on VD + all wardens. The key being to throw shadows while people are killing the gyve/warden to prevent TP feed / extra gyves.

For pure "I want gear", you're better off soloing or doing the 3min kill with a hyper buffed SAM.

To re-iterate, the average amount of drops is 2, leaning towards weapons.

When you get 5/5 Malignance Armor.

Yep except I have 4 rings to bring to that tower...

Not sure if others have noticed this but thought I would point it out. I'm now 82 runs into trying to get the final piece and I've noticed on several runs that when I win I will briefly see a treasure chest icon in the party section. However I am nowhere near full and am solo. I believe this is a Lilith drop loading, then it noticing you have it and dropping it. I don't think I've ever seen this behavior before but I've clearly seen it happen at least 10 times now. Doesn't really help anyone but I did find it interesting... and at least a way for you to possibly know that SOMETHING dropped... even though it was an item you already had.

Wouldn't you see that, anyway? For the single pluton, or chapters you're getting?

Not when your solo no, when your solo the icon never appears it just drops straight into your inventory. The only time it appears and starts to fill solo is when your inventory is full.

I really feel like they adjusted drop rates with one of the wo updates hey did on Lilith (e.g the Sep 18 http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news25732.shtml or the one before), because I got 8 of the 9 drops on MNK/THF soloing E at a rate of 1 every 8 or so fights but since the 18th I got zero drops in over 75 solo wins now, which seems like a drastic change even counting that all the other 8 drops are probably dropping and not showing, but with the original drop rate it seems like I shoul have seen he final pants piece by now.

On the plus side, soloing E on mnk/thf is a very stable win that takes just 5 min, I don't limit TP too much but I use a lot of dark resist so dread spikes only do 1/4th the damage, I did mnk/run the first day or two but that's overkill.
The lines on Siren are 0-1 most times but can get as high as 2 if y really want to do it during peak times here i just do other stuff instead.

You have to factor in luck into the equation. Sometimes you just happen get the drop much faster than anyone else, and its that simple. Confirmation bias tends to get in the way a little too much, where one person may do several hundreds and get only a few drops, but someone else gets them all in <10 runs (see the claims on the first few pages). Doesn't mean the drop went up or down, you just got yours before another. There's really no way to nail down the drop rates unless you are actively dropping every piece of gear and fighting the battle, and then repeating the process and logging the numbers.

I happened to get my first 3 drops rather quickly, but these last 2 pieces took me over 50 to get one, and Im after one more. So while you may get a bunch of drops early on, it evens out in the long run. It's just like getting 3 HMP pouches back to back spamming Aello, but going 0/40 immediately after

That's why we are asking in a forum, to check if it's just confirmation bias, salience bias or if it's an actual change by SE which also seems reasonable to assume is something they might do in the first few days after they introduce new content as part of other fixes without needing to announce it.
I know a lot of people (me included) who got a lot of drops very quickly in the first few days, which fits with people's claims in the first few pages. Is there anybody who got all drops in under 10 fights after September 18? My thinking is that if you compared the aggregate rates of drops in the period before and after that Lilith fix update you would see a much higher average rate for E before than after.

~1/8 droprate

~1/3 chance of main 5 pieces gear (see reports throughout thread indicating the other pieces are more common to a rate of about 2:1)

~1/5 chance it's the piece you want

8 * 3 * 5 = 1/125 at a given piece of malignance

if you're soloing with everything except the legs, 0/75 is not anywhere near statistically significant, come back at 0/600 and you might have something worth using as data

Looking for advice on trust and jobs for soling VE and E.
I tried as THF moderate gear (adhemar, herculean, no AF/RElic+3) and there's clearly something I do wrong or something I don't do.

Are you fighting in hybrid mode ?
How do you keep trust alive ? mine died withing seconds after the 1st gyve popped.

VE on THF is possible, but a good hybrid set goes a long way. It may not be pretty for just any old regular THF, so you might want to consider another job if it's a little challenging. It can get messy. Anyways:

THF/war (can sub drk for absorb tp or rune)
AAEV
Seltheus
Koru
Joachim
Yoran (I don't have Ygnas)

Engage from the opposite end, and run to the center before your first attack. This will make it so that your trusts are not near the edge when the border gyves pop. After first gyve, you will need to disengage and run to another area so that gyves don't kill your trusts (they can hit from melee range). Be mindful that Yoran will run away from wherever you re-engage Lilith, so he may run into a gyve. Best to stay in the center if possible. Bring panacea if you are unfamiliar early on, which will allow you to heal your bind and allow you to move. Re-engage and continue SA+WS/TA+WS (Don't do Rudra > Rudra or any darkness, you will heal her for an insane amount). Pretty straightforward fight, but you should expect a couple of your trusts to possibly die if they are positioned incorrectly. Also, if you don't have enough damage, you may find the fight dragging on, and she will pick off your trusts. For damage, I have found that alternating Rudras + Mandalic guarantees I won't accidentally heal her, and the added Fusion SC damage is helpful (can continue this with Exenterator)

She also has access to Dark Thorn, but in all of my hundreds of VE runs, I have only seen her use this move once, so it appears to be very very rare. She does not have access to Fatal Allure on VE, from my experience.

You can still get wrecked pretty good on VE with THF, and I don't particularly recommend it unless you're pretty adept. Youll need to make good use of Mug and Despoil. Perfect Dodge will do near nothing in there for you except for maybe one move. There are other jobs that can solo this with far less stress (Monk, PUP, SAM, DRK, BLU, probably DNC even). I would just use TH+ gear (or THF sub) and try to whack her down on another job, and then go back to THF when you're more comfortable.

GL

Thanx Buuki for the tips.

I had figured out I should disengage / re-engage in order to reposition trust away from gyves, so you confirm my thoughts.

Also, I think I will then try going on BLU/THF which should be much easier with TH+ gear, although i won't cap it then but w/e.

VE thf is fine for me. Using miso ramen, amchuchu, ygnas, koru, sylvie, ulmia. evisc spam with tauret

Lately though, ive been doing pup/thf with th4 on E just a few times a day (resetting two hour at mmm if I feel like going twice in a row) and it's a lot safer and at least I get pretend piece of mind that I might be getting a better drop rate. pup trusts were amchuchu, ygnas, koru, king of hearts, arciela

edit: and yeah, on VE I always would disengage/move trusts and myself out of the things she spawns, but E pup I don't bother

So someone mentioned something to me the other day, about popped Gyves on E never hitting trusts, and there not being any reason to move. I know on VE, they do attack. I've been doing E for the past few days and have never had a trust die to Gyve on E.

Can anyone confirm if popped gyves (not the arena border ones) attack?

I've only ever soloed on E, never had Gyves attack my puppet, ever. I started to move my puppet away after reading this thread but I don't think there is a reason to, at all.

On E the gyves can hit the trusts especially at the start when you are establishing hate. I engage at the center to avoid trusts accidentally ending up between two of the un-targetable circle ones and casting a cure and getting killed by both sides. Once you established hate and she starts summoning more, those can also hit you and the trusts but often won;t. But they still have an aoe MEVA aura which will make her normal attacks hurt more.
If you have hate and can move, you might as well, if instead you are using a tank trust and things are still going smoothly you can keep them there.

MNK/THF is a good combination to solo E, I remove a lot of my good DD gear to mitigate dread spikes so it should work well even with people with bad gear, you want a good dispeller, I recommend Ajido because he is super fast with dispel. Mantra can help your trusts survive at the start when they are still buffing etc.

I am not looking to prove anything specific with my 0/75 after getting all other pieces before the update a lot more quickly, I am suggesting if we have many people who got all drops quickly before the update and none across all servers after september 18, that's way more statistical significance than 600 samples. If someone had a counterexample like some apparent high drop rate even after that date, that would go to support your idea that the drop rate was not changed, so far all the empirical and anecdotal evidence i've seen seems to point to the opposite, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong, and doing it 600 times is not much of a proof compared to checking across a lot more people and samples.

Going 0/75 on an estimated 1/125 drop is not significant enough to even ask if the droprate was changed, really. This same ***has been mentioned since 2007, when every other patch some shell would pull 2 ridills in a week and go 'omg fafnir droprate changed?'.

So no, it almost certainly didn't change. You just see it that way because you have a poor understanding of statistics and you want to make your boredom seem more meaningful.

it would be easier to take your point seriously if it wasn't now mixed with some weird and totally unnecessary personal attacks. Salvaging the parts of your response that are an actual argument and not ad hominem, I think your argument goes:
1) it's easy to see a new pattern (changed drop rate) where there might not be one (I agree compleely, as I said salience bias, confirmation bias etc)
2) there is no reason to believe the drop rate has changed recently (I disagree on this, I think the 2007 fafnir case is different because this is just brand new content that was just added and the emergency update note specifically says they fixed things about the Lilith battlefield, so it's at least reasonable to ask the question).
3) people have been wrong in the past so you must be wrong now (point taken but doesn't really follow logically)

I think it's reasonable to ask this question especially as that's the prevalent impression of the people I talked to on my server,and see if anybody has actual information, I was mainly looking to see if any high drop rate claim from people just starting after that update resemble the ones before, which would support your claim that the drop rate hasn't changed after Sep 18 more than just talking about who is bored.
I think it's reasonable to ask the question and solicit more anecdotal data paying attention to whether it's pre or post that change so we calibrate our expectations to the right data.

When I first read this I thought it was just because the unstacked items didn't fit right away, which I saw before, but I also just noticed it when I had 17 empty spots and drops were 2 personal rem, and a treasure of 5 items (durium, rem9, rem10, pluton case, pluton case) so I think you might be right.

My advice for VE thief solo is to just spam evisceration. It doesn't chain with itself so you won't make darkness unless you summon trusts that weaponskill accordingly. When I do it my trust setup is just a bunch of healers and a buffer

Koru
Ulima
Mihili
Cheryuki
Apururu


Now granted, I know my thief is well above the average, but I don't think VE should be too challenging if you have a decent gear setup. I'm pretty sure an adhemar build with Kaja knife and a respectable evisceration gear would be able to take her down with that setup pretty easy. You wouldn't even need a finished Tauret, but bonus points if you have one.

When I run the fight I just summon my trusts, eat red curry buns, pop flee and run to the far opposing side of the arena. That way my trusts don't get caught up and die in the outer ring when I engage. Her knockback and bind can be annoying, but tanking her isn't really challenging with that setup. Her damage output isn't that bad and as long as you keep your trusts away from the gyves they should be more than capable of keeping everyone alive. My eviscerations are averaging 18-20k on her with tauret. Usually all it takes is just 6 weaponskills plus the accompanying melee to take her down. The fight takes me no more than 2-3 minutes from the time I engage to the point she runs out of HP. The most annoying thing she does is occasionally knock me out of bounds and bind me there with bio and DoT's, so it can take my healers some time before erase actually clears the bind while I'm busy hitting her for no damage. But other than that it's a pushover of a fight.

And like I said, I know my thief is far from "average", but I'm confident anyone can do VE on thief with the above setup using just Kaja knife and whatever gear they have access to. VE isn't that bad, and no, she definately does NOT use Fatal Allure on VE. You can just engage her and wail away without any fear of getting charmed.

For those having problems spamming Solo on VE with THF... I hope this video helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLs59krTn1E

Tyvm for this video guide, helped alot !

what is the theory on drop spread?
rate - quantity
VD:100% x1~4
D:50% x1~3
N:25% x1~2
E;12.5%
VE:6%

spread:
20% sword
20% staff
20% club
20% earring
20% armor
or something else?
*edit simply because sword and staff may get dropped, but the rest are probably going to be kept if obtained. still has any individual piece of armor at a terrible 4% drop rate.

Looks about right to me. I may say that Armor is more like 20% with each sword and staff being 25%... they really seem very common.

My E with TH9 is around 30%. I haven't charted every run but I have 5 armor, 2 ear, 4 swords, 1 club.

VD is definitely not 100%, and it might not even be 50% with TH8+.

Finally finished getting all 9 drops doing nothing but VE. Everyone's experience will be different but here was mine. All runs were done on VE and with TH10-TH12.

Run 1 - Staff
Run 3 - Legs
Run 7 - Sword
Run 11 - Earring
Run 19 - Club
Run 59 - Hat
Run 81 - Boots
Run 99 - Gloves
Run 239 - Body

I did see many other drops during this period as I started to have ls mates join me for runs at times when they had merits to see if they could get items I already had. In the initial 99 runs I also saw the following drop

Sword x3
Staff x2
Club
Earring x3
Legs
Gloves

Everyone's experiences will be different so you may get yours faster or slower, but figure I'd at least provide a baseline of what it took someone else to do. Good luck everyone!

Are you sure you weren't capped on a drop? We were definitely 85-90% with TH8-10. Hard to get a count after our first ~25 fights, because by then we were capping on weapons and I don't know if anyone dropped anything mid-run. Spread was 6 sword, 6 pole, 5 club, 2-3 earrings, 3 armor (head, hands, feet).

Yeah, I'm sure; people were still going for all the pieces but sword and pole, and they were tossing those.