Info Source For Noobs?

In an effort to educate myself so I no longer look like an idiot about game mechanics, is there a good source of information out there? I search the wiki alot and some things are somewhat vague. I am not trolling here, I am an ignoramous and I want to fix that.

It would seem alot of things I was told or read are not completely accurate or are situational at best.

Example:
Emnity...I was told very early in my playing carrer that hate was something you did not want unless you were the tank and were geared or had a particular skill set to deal with damage mitigation...ie a pld with high def and vitality or a nin with shadows and hi eva.

So, I was somewhat surprised to be told that I was wrong. I thought the last thing a DD in DD gear wanted was to pull hate as theoretically he is not going to be able to mitigate the damage as well as a tank can. I think most of you know what thread I am referring to.

Based on the misinformation of my pitiful education, I assumed that if you were a DD and you could build a gear set that, if nothing else, minimally increased emnity...that was a good thing. Imagine my awkward surprise to be flamed and kicked in the head for what, up till now, appeared to be sound logic. So...along with a source of information about overall game mechanics, I really would appreciate having this explained so that I can understand the advantages/disadvantages of it.

Thanks again

Well, it depends on the kind of party, in a burn type with no dedicated tank, enmity can be beneficial to keep hate off the mages and support.

A good "Entry level" information source is wiki, but I highly recomend you don't take anything off that site as more than a Jumping off point for basic education. Wiki, being an RPG as well, is subject to flame and edit wars as egos corrupt what could be a great tool for community Knowledge. And as a rule of thumb, if it's signed by Charitwo, ignore it.


After you familiarize yourself in the basics, try to think logically about how to evolve your own jobs, and experiment with what works best for you, contrary the popular belief there is actually very few "One size fits all" solutions in gear, and it's up to you to decide what fits in where.

This is one of the many reasons why I like FFXI over WoW :3

If you are in a linkshell ask them..or if you know some good players that have that same job lvl'd just buddy up with them and ask.

There is alot of bad information on Wiki but there is also a crap ton of very good info on wiki..if you think of a question search wiki as best as you can..ask ppl that you may know or that may know the answer..and if that doesn't work start a thread here.

Before you post anything here tho..think it thru get your info straight on what you wanna ask. Do as much research as you can and then post. There are alot of helpful ppl that will try to answer questions..if they hound you just remeber they are trying to get the whole picture before they give you advice..don't get me wrong there are a lot of retards out there to, just ingnore them.

Oyeah: don't forget about the forum search feature here..alot of good info is talked about here and it can be found but you might have to dig for it.

Oyeah#2: if you ask for advice be open minded and willing to try what ppl tell you to do..nothing more irritating that asking for help but then refuse to even try it.

~That is all.

You have to gradually work your way up as a good DD.

Most DDs start off avoiding enmity and such. They do this by sucking. As you progress you'll find you are able to pull hate and this is where we branch off.

Half the DDs will be sissies and gimp themselves to avoid pulling it by overlooking those super sweet DD items that have enmity. The other half will say *** it I'm John Wayne.

On a serious note if you have an extensive problem with hate go all out DD and just sub thief. Then find one of those before mentioned sissies and tag them with hate.

I learned basic info from my shell (although some of it was kind of wrong... go for atk only on mnk for example >.>) but the majority of info I learned from gear guides on wiki and lurking here.

Never be scared to make a topic asking for help.

You follow the advice on those two posts alone and you'll learn way easier and faster. Good luck to ya, not sure what thread it happened in but I have a pretty decent idea what happened.

As a DD your TP set should in theory have little to no Emnity+ gears attached, there are a few pieces that are an exception however as the DD stats are too good not to use, IE: Usukane Sune-ate & Goading Belt which Both have +5 Emnity, and Warwolf Belt during WS as that was unrivaled.

The general rule of thumb was to aim for 400 base accuracy before applying food (Marinara Pizza/+1 being the best IMO), which reaching this numbers gets easier as you merit your said weapons combat skill. After that number is reached you put as much Haste+ gear as possible which is capped @26% but GL trying to reach that on some DD's.

Some situations you may need to have a Emnity set where you may become the designated tank, and therefore need a solid damage reduction set to compliment it, but I only use Emnity+ gear for JA's as using it in TP can jeopardize your overall DMG as you could be missing the mob and therefore losing hate.


Basically, ***is situational as always and the best advice is to know your enemy first.

www.ffxicalculator.com is a great tool to use to figure the pros and cons of your set. It does a lot and I find it very useful.

Thanks folks, i really do appreciate the info.

Not long ago, someone asked about "what do you dd in as bst" and like a dumbass i said what I used...not implying it was right, it was just what I used...man was I schooled.

At first I tried to argue my logic but then it occurred to me that "hey these guys are alot smarter and alot more experienced than me"...so I shut up and listened...I now have 3 full sets for beast...and thanks to this forum...i was able to write macros to switch them out properly...(thanks again for that one).

Like I said, when i first started out, I was apparently given partial bits of info...not completely wrong, but not ideal either...and for several years now I have been playing for average status at best...I don't really like that.

I'm gonna try to just shut up and listen and occasionally I will probably chime in with a really stupid question...thanks for helping...

Also as a side note,I had just asked a question about campaigning as rdm on the RDM thread topic...I think I'm gonna pause on that one and lvl something else. From my own limited experience and knowledge, rdm is one of the most technically intensive jobs in the game and I prob have no business pursuing it right now. But I will pick it up eventually. I'll scratch my head and figure one out..

Your positive attitude on this and willingness to accept your own boundaries is definitely what's going to make you be on the upper tier of players one day. If you ever have a question about any of the mage jobs, feel free to send me a PM! I'm not too much help on the DDs, however :X

Verify your account. Anon accounts most of the time have something to hide. Make a real account and I'll actually tell you info on ***.

something to hide=not understanding how to link your account.
most of the people I know that don't have it like that fall into the not knowing how to do it category.
but then again they don't post on forums either.

Actually does have a linked account, though it's to old character on Remora, they just didn't feel like redoing it.

Can PM me any questions you may have, I know a fair amount of the game and anything I don't know I usually will look into.

I know how you feel. For the first year I played this game, I really didn't have "all" the information that I could have. I didn't know about Wiki, or this site...I just kind of pieced together what I could, and as a result, I was rather sub-par in my playing. Now that I've learned more, I'm enjoying it more. I hope you do, as well. 8)

Yay!...there I re-verified...so I was lazy!

I will forgive your insolence.

Enmity isn't something you gear for on a DD but having the enmity that comes on the best DD gear doesn't hurt. If you pull hate(while not trying) to it's usually from a weapon skill, and that +3-8 or so enmity wouldn't have made you not pull it.

You have the perfect attitude, but how much effort and common sense you have will also factor in how good you can become.

PM for MNK/SAM/DRK/PLD/WAR/BLM/THF/DRG questions, or ask on here.

Thanks, I will def keep that in mind.

All *** aside, I am a bst at heart...I really love this job...however I also understand it's not the most popular job for end game activities and I'm cool with that.

Where I am right now is trying to figure out what job to rise up beside my Bst that is welcome in EG ...so I can get the shiz for my Bst that I want...>.> yeah I know, kinda assbackward thinking...

Ideally I wanted a popular mage and a popular DD...that's prob not going to work out...I'm thinking war or drk...not sure tho

and for the record...

Bst80, rdm65, war40, nin40, whm40, thf38, blu37, blm34, rng20, sam15, drk13, mnk9 (?)...I have smn and sch unlocked but prob never go there...no interst in pld, cor or brd but I might unlock dnc, drg and pup for shits and giggles...

That's what everyone does. I've got a *** Ebody drk but it's not welcome at any events. It's just not the standard sam pld rdm blm or gtfo. That being said, those are the 4 jobs to aim for if you want endgame easy.

PLD is a joke, if you can count shadows you can do it. Over simplifying it but I do it with my eyes closed.

SAM is a joke, you get tp and then ws in a sc. The end.

RDM is annoying, you have to be able to keep up buffs and heal as well, if you don't use windower I would skip it.

BLM is easy, but you need to understand you hate and how to not pull it unless you have a full -PDT set and know how to kite proper. Assuming the mob is kitable.

I like BST, their pets are underrated, but no they don't get welcomed with open arms. If you are actually a good BST that can solo hard mobs for BST to solo, then i'd say you should have no problem with other jobs, you just need to learn them.

Nah, I'm just an average Bst, but I like it. I can go pretty much anywhere in the world that has charmable fauna and kill the locals...Not really a hard job, I soloed up as Bst/whm and the only trick is knowing when to release a pet so it doesn't die (in case you need it again) and charm another one...being prepared to take a couple smacks during the swap and knowing how to NOT pull hate off pet. Bst is a whole lot about patience too. That's pretty much all I did as a solo/charming bst. Yeah there is +chr gear and food and what not but...

In a pt or group you use jugs based on what you're fighting and can "snarl" away hate, but this is where my gear and mechanics ignorance rises up... but I am trying to learn.

I have a charm set, a fight set, and a ws set. My charm set gives me +47 chr and some +charm, my "fight" set is a pitiful conglomeration of +acc, +haste and +stp and my ws set is a little +acc and alot of +str. I normally just fight in charm set if i'm soloing and swap in ws gear for killshot.

Hardest thing for me is the next path to get the stuff I want for my Bst. I am working a TotM axe...slowly and not in a hurry. I need to finish my CoP for Raja, need to move my RoZ along...I want my Beastly earring and Kitty pants...( i bought a K. Osode a while back for charm set)...

That's pretty much it. I have experimented with alot of the jobs, but none of them have appealed to me as this one has...but I know I need to work something else to arrive at my goals...we'll see and thanks for the input folks

Get a -dmg set. I have got one for almost all my jobs because of what I learned on blm. You will pull hate and having -dmg will save you a lot. For bst this works great when you mischarm to swap to -dmg till charm is ready if tame is down, or if you pull hate and need to hold the mob a few secs for pet to get hate back.

There's a glyph axe in abyssea-la theine, or was it highlands... its an imp that can be triod with 3 bst using jugs. 57DMG axe with pet tp regen.

ok. let's break this down methodically.

it's a pretty basic if/then series of steps.

First. if the job is 75 or lower, you might try an alla gear guide on their job forum. alla may be the butt of a lot of jokes, but the gear guides i've seen there were pretty good, and they do have several people around(milich and lolgaxe for example) that do indeed know their ***. check the posts after the guide to make sure it isn't outdated.

Ok. if that doesn't solve the problem, make a bg account, and ask your question on the random question thread. you'll probably get flamed, but you'll also likely get an answer.

if you'd really rather not ask your question on a random question thread, you might try pming one of the knowledgeable people on this site, like vegetto, reanryong, or nyghtfire.

for general knowledge, browse all three sites. pay close attention to what reanryong, thorny, nyghtfire, milich, and vegetto, and sathfenrir have to say. there are others, but that's who comes to mind off the top of my head.

also, one of the things that helped me the very most was going to windower.net, and looking at other people's spellcast xml. i would look at what they used for each situation, try to understand why they were using it, and then when i understood why they were using it, figuring out the closest approximation that i could get my hands on.

hope this helps

Def, vit, eva, enmity etc ... All this is never going to do a noticable difference on anything. If you don't have hate already, a +10 enmity ( which is +10% enmity) is going to do nothing for you.

For def and vit, it's mostly useless has all this doesn't beat utsusemi. PLD/WAR is rarely used anywhere, but if you use it ( for exemple in sea), stack -physical damage taken gear, and then try def and vit.

Forums. Wiki information is generally well-intended but it's often out of date and occasionally downright misguided. You want information, this is a good place to ask - but do your homework first.
There's several things to keep in mind here:

1) Hate caps. Thus, anybody who can outpace their VE decay rate (not that hard for a DD) will eventually cap hate. A good DD with buffs will cap in only a few minutes; a bit of enmity gear isn't going to have a huge effect here.

2) The best physical damage mitigation (after shadows) is generally PDT and most DD jobs have access to at least some amount of PDT, generally a mix of Darksteel, Arhat's, and Gavial/Hydra. Defense and VIT are generally pretty weak stats for a tank. Given these two facts, the difference in survivability between a good DD/NIN tank and a PLD/NIN tank (endgame NIN tanking is pretty much dead right now) is minimal to nonexistent simply because shield blocks mean *** all when facing one-shot moves and anything less is sufficiently mitigated by good gear and a good backline. In the case of MNK/NIN vs PLD/NIN, it could even be argued that MNK has an advantage in resisting one-shot death due to their significantly larger HP pool.

3) Given the two statements above, it follows that DD/NIN make great tanks on quite a few enemies in this game and thus you may want hate, rendering the +enmity on what few good DD pieces have it desirable.
This. Even for non-solo non-tank players, PDT and MDT sets should be standard equip. My all jobs PDT/MDT pieces never leave my inventory.
Bakka; it's in Konschtat.

EDIT:
Isladar watches the stickies like they're her firstborn child. Flaming generally does not go over well there, though you will potentially get abused a little for particularly stupid questions.
This is really good advice if you're at all able to read xml files. Even if you don't use Windower/Spellcast, it might give you some insight into not only what to wear, but how and when to wear it. I did it the hard way for lack of such a resource; you don't have to and shouldn't. FFXIAH item search and item sets complement the spellcast pastebin nicely when trying to make and compare builds of your own.

The problem with that is that while this could be effective, and probably leads to a better depth of understanding of the game, its a VERY SLOW process. As mature as this game is, just about everything has probably been figured out.

While I'm not a fan of cookie cutter strategies, knowing whats in the cookie dough is something that should be fairly common knowlege. At least make it as simple as opening a cook book. When I played wow there were a plethora of guides and information sources about the nuts and bolts of the game without strategy (and other bias) getting in the way. Not to say strategy has no place, but can lead to players thinking in terms of right and wrong, instead of better and worse. Gospel is no good, but information is for the masses.

Well maybe the fact I was able to nut up and be honest and say "Hey I been playing this for a couple years and I'm just not satisfied with my performance" will help other ppl not be afraid to ask questions. For me, the more I read, the more I realize I don't know shiz. It's kinda hard sometimes to put your ego back in your pants, humble yourself and ask for help. I will look into the - Phys and - mag damage gear and see what I can get. Guess I need to do that last couple gobbiebag quests that I've been too cheap to do. All this stuff takes up alot of room!

Thank you!

I scanned through and didn't see anyone mention it but if you want a lot of information about game mechanics, particularly in the enmity area, your best bet is kaeko's blog.

http://kanican.livejournal.com/

I made the item sets I am currently using, it's pretty much lame to average stuff. The charm set I feel is pretty tight cause it rarely fails me and it's built to be swapped out quickly anyway. I was hoping for some advice on the other two sets, mainly "have I assembled them for max results?" or should I put them together in a different way? Bear in mind this is what I have and they are "works in progress". I still don't have sea/sky or HNM LS so most (all) of this is what I could solo or farm and buy.

I have another question concerning TotM weapons. I started the physical damage path for a Punisher and the icon for it says "Aug-Rare-Ex" Is the Augments for these thru FoV Elite training or are they Synergy/evolith augments? Tried searching for "Augments and Augmentation" on the wiki and didn't really find alot of info connecting to TotM stuff.

Thanks for the info!

For your TP set I'd use full Perle if you don't have Byakko's Haidate, will give you 2% more haste than you already have and for your WS set I'd put a little more accuracy in.