Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

That actually reduces the odds you get Victory March, weirdly. I don't know why it messes with Joachims AI, but I noticed I had Victory March up even less often if I summon Ulmia.


Joachim prioritizes cures over songs, so if I start taking damage and Im not getting cured, Joachim just spends all his time cure bombing me and I almost never get victory march.


... And no bard songs? And no Haste? And no ultimate gun? Cuz if they have bard songs, your answer is obviously "thats how" lol. And I can see this being a billion times easier if you have Mythic or Empy gun too.

Otherwise if they are actually soloing this without haste/flurry/songs, I would love to see a video of how they are doing that.


/NIN, my odds of solo SCing as /dnc would be even worse and Id take a big dps loss.

I'm not so sure about this...while haste samba can be a bit annoying to keep up, DPS is as high (or higher) with /DNC and haste samba. You could also use steps into reverse flourish for another quick WS.

I'd say king of hearts, ulmia, Joachim, healer, and whatever you feel like. If you're only dealing with elementals then the conal from KOH isn't likely to be an issue even if he uses it and frankly, he very rarely does in my experience.

Between triple shot, reverse flourish, quick draw, and regular melee I think this should be quite trivial.

Which rolls are you using? If WS damage is good and your problem is getting TP, miser/Samurai should also make this much easier.

Honestly, with all due respect, I think you're running into a gear/skill issue. I normally try to give advice based on what I know is possible, so when you say the above, I think you haven't actually tried it out fully. I didn't say you would be doing it without songs, just that you didn't need much support to pull this off, nor do you need a healer imo. You definitely don't need a REMA gun, TP Bonus weapon is busted.


Burned a tag to go try it out. COR/dnc, not using any REMA weapon or bullets, and visual addon equipviewer confirms this (Anarchy +2, so Molybdosis/Doomsday should more than destroy these). King Of Hearts always uses Haste 2 on me (not flurry, Arciela/II did not work btw), never used AOE move (it was actually me who aggro additional adds with AE, can be solved with Wasp Sting instead if you don't want the extra links). Joachim/Ulmia never competed with each other for songs, and I had at least a March. Start of video I have 4 rolls, because I prebuffed with CHAOS/SAM from Qultada and dismissed him, but realized it was way overkill and not needed.

My VERY sloppy Shard B attempt (because I play COR maybe once every 2-3 weeks and I forget where macros are and am rusty ; ;)



Crooked Tact+Sam's rolls and you just get TP fast, Triple Shot was overkill and I flubbed the execution because I was rusty with my macro placement. I also didn't upkeep Haste Samba after the initial use, nor did I stack steps for a free Reverse Flourish, but I used Quick Draw for fast TP linking SC.

The video was much longer (I killed the entire room and then an Earth Elemental in an adjacent room), but you get the point. It's really not as hard to pull off without REMA gun.

Fire elementals looks to be the big difference, everyone was recommending Leaden > AE > Leaden > Wildfire, which indicated Wildfire was the largest source of damage being the closer.

So I wasn't attempting fire elementals, as of course wildfire would be bad vs them.

However, it looks like just Leaden > AE > Leaden was more than enough damage for you to rip through them, and only doing a three step SC is substantially more viable than a four step, and greatly shifts priorities, I'll try that next time.

I tried wind/earth/lightning elementals, all of which had their respective issues (wind has shadows, earth has stoneskin, and lightning stun spikes)

Fire elementals definitely will be way easier to TP on, and if I can just 3 step them then I prolly dont need triple shot at all, because I can waaay easier pull off the three step.

I was finding I could get Wind and Lightning elementals down to about 20% off the three step reliably. Sometimes trusts interrupted it but tbh it wasnt a huge issue. The fourth step though was way more iffy to pull off.

Always did wind just because its right next to the porter. Long as its not a dark ele it should be alright

It's the fastest set of elementals to get to(well maybe it's not, but its what I go to since sometimes Porxie is there and its faster to kill both), B > run up ramp and there's a room full of them. I just assumed this is where everyone goes for Shard B. The Wildfire at the end shouldn't even matter anyways, it's a failsafe; like I said before, in a 9-boss as COR that has no offhand weapon nor aeolian edge, they can clear this 3-step with Leaden > Wasp Sting > Leaden using the methods I've described like a half dozen times now, and they have no greater buffs for this objective than you'd have solo with trusts. Having access to Aeolian Edge and an offhand weapon is a massive factor, since Wasp Sting is so weak comparably and you don't get AE as /drk.

In any case, the type of elements you try this on kind of matters less, unless you pick Dark Elementals (where Leaden won't work). I didn't show this in the video, but after i cleared the fire elementals room, I went East then Southeast to Dark Elementals + Earth Elemental room. Was able to kill an earth elemental in 22 seconds or so, same damage spread. Whatever stoneskin they have is insignificant compared to leaden, they all die the same.

I've also mentioned using blurred knife +1 offhand to give yourself haste1.

With that, and a decent DW set, you don't even need extra haste or marches.

Just practice it a bit and improve your sets incrementally. TP bonus gun is fine as Buukki showed.

When the feedback is "not even going to attempt that it sounds hard" there's not much advice anyone can give.

Props to you for taking the time to record a video, both to back up your claim and to give him a visual of what it looks like.

I'd still suggest Anarchy+2 is a whole lot stronger than Doomsday or Molybdosis though, since it's a target that isn't resisting your WS. It's nearly +50% to a.edge and over +40% to leaden when compared to either of those guns. Of course, it's also easy to get and all but necessary for a strong cor.

Do you think you'll have enough acc with anarchy +2? I know the elementals aren't particularly evasive enemies but that's a pretty big acc loss if you use anarchy. I'll give it a try though!

I don't know what you mean by accuracy.

The elementals aren't magically evasive, as thorny said, so they aren't resisting your damage in any way unless you use the same element vs them. Aeolian Edge would do poor damage vs Wind elementals, Wildfire is crap vs Fire elementals etc. As long as you avoid that, you should deal full damage on them, assuming you have a reasonably well built set for WS. I linked it on the previous pages and you can see the gear I'm using with equipviewer.

If you mean physical accuracy, /DNC provides a tier, Joachim or Ulmia provides madrigal, and maybe a prelude. I'm assuming you mean ranged accuracy though for triple shot? Should have more than enough to land hits with the right set, but you could eat sushi if you're not confident. Triple shot is just a bonus to speed it up, by no means required to clear the objective. As you can see in the video, I landed my shots with Anarchy, so it's not hard to do

Ranged accuracy, to land triple shots, since thats the proposed way to build tp.

You're taking like a 200+ racc hit or whatever using Doomsday or Moly, but maybe thats still okay on elementals if you're triple shot midshot set has racc out the whazzoo, but you'll really assumedly be wanting to also stack as much store tp on every other slot as you can. I just noticed when I initially was trying out melee SCing on eles, my ranged attacks to pull were missing sometimes, looked like around 75%? 80%? accuracy, eyeballing it.

Which was with Anarchy +2, not Doomsday/Moly, so I wasnt surprised the ~200 acc loss was causing that.

It just comes back to gear, again. He is using triple shot in his video, you can see that it's landing. He's between ML25 and ML29 based on his sub level, and you can see what gear he has on midshot, which appears to be:

Tauret/Naegling/Anarchy/??
Oshosi+1/Iskur/Crep/Telos
Emp+3/relic+3/crep/ilabrat(?)
jse/tellen(?)/oshosi+1/oshosi+1

This setup isn't some insane amount of r.acc or BiS gear. Slapping on a path A Lanun Knife will make up 40 while giving you 20 more STP(which should offset any loss in ws mods). If you have NQ oshosi and some worse accessories, that's covered by the knife alone. He didn't say what food he had, so may be more room there.

Not really sure why you're so argumentative about it. You could also work on improving your gear, if you're thoroughly convinced you can't manage it as is.

With all due respect... wat?

If I gave this impression, I apologize, but I have genuinely no idea what you are angling at on this one.

Am I not using enough exclamation marks or something to indicate positivity? I thought we were all having a chill convo, where did this sudden aggro come from?

Isnt blurred knife only 15% haste? You'd need +35 DW in gear, right?

I guess with:

Ambu Cap: +10
Adhemar Body: +6
Reiki Yotai: +7
Eabani earing: +4
Suppa: +5

That puts us at +32/35, which is pretty dang close, I suppose it is viable! That's definitely a path I could consider going, hmm...

But if I wore gear like that, I'd just be able to rely on Haste I from trusts, thats pretty easy to have uptime on, and then I could use a better offhand.

Actually hold on isnt Blurred+1 dead on arrival anyways, considering it has no magic dmg on it?

I have to assume Naegling is going to be my only valid offhand, for the fat magic dmg boost, right? I'd be losing quite a lot of damage if I used anything else!

Or if I didnt have it (I do have it tho), even Kaja Sword would be good.

magic dmg doesnt do all that much when the base dmg on the nuke is already stupid high. its just a flat +230 or 250 or whatever dmg that, thisll go up slightly due to mab and other % increases but its not a whole lot

You don't need 30+ DW, or to cap delay. Just around 15 or so, enough to SC with.

Whatever you have access to basically. And it's fine if offhand has no magic dmg.

Haste1 + brds march is also an easy option.

The problem seems that every single suggestion people give you on this, you have a counter rebuttal as to why it either won't work, you "might" try it (but actually never do, so you can't validate whether it really does work), or how you did it and it didn't work.

You had an entire list of things that you explicitly said wasn't working, so I went out and did everything you said wasn't working and was able to clear the objective in one attempt.

You said dancer sub would be harder to self SC, it wasn't
You questioned being able to clear this without rema, incorrect
You questioning anarchy ranged accuracy, but there's no issue with racc from the video
You said KoH was using AOE and linking adds, but this isn't the case normally, especially if you avoid fusion/light
You mentioned needing a healer to survive, but that's not necessary from the video
Also in a part of the video I didn't show where I dismissed ygnas, Joachim didn't bother prioritizing heals, he sang first then sat there. His logic doesn't heal at all unless you're in yellow, long after he sings his two songs
Using Ulmia didn't mess with song logic at all, despite your claims. They complimented each other
You started deflecting into the type of element you were fishing for the objective as to why you weren't getting it killed in time
You also stated in one of your last posts that if you can 3 step you won't need triple shot at all. Then in your very next post you question ranged accuracy from anarchy for triple shot, the same ability you said you wouldn't need
Now you're debating how blurred offhand isn't viable because it's lacking magic damage, despite me stating multiple times that cors in 9b clear this objective without an offhand.

So all of these excuses/rebuttals that you've been giving that have spanned across several pages imply you're really not interested in clearing this objective, but rather debate efficiency, and your responses appear to be in bad faith. Otherwise, by now you would have acknowledged you have a clear gear/skill issue (which is fine) and that's the reason for your failure.

I see, I think I understand then.

I witness this often, especially in online discussions, where people really are so used to a toxic environment where everyone is constantly trying to pick a fight with everyone else, that confirmation questions are interpreted as some kind of "debate" or "rebuttal" or "argument"

At no point here in the entire discussion have I aimed to discredit, attack, rebuttal, debate, or argue with anyone.

I suggest you take a look again at my posts and read them literally as is, because nothing about stuff like this:


Is in any way, shape, or form, something a person should interpret as a "rebuttal" or "argument" or "debate" or whatever else you wanna frame it as.

No one is here to pick a fight, I'm just trying to have a chill chat with people about their experiences and understand what the differences is in theirs versus mine.

When I post "Ive experienced this, which is different from yours", I'd really recommend not jumping to the conclusion that this is somehow an attack or argument or rebuttal or debate or whatever, cause its not. I'm actively acknowledging our experiences differ, and I'm trying to root out the various variables that cause us to experience different things so I can fix that.

Not every discussion on the internet is an argument. Which I know, I know, thats a super hot take, but sometimes its true! Or damn I sure at least try and make it true, lol!

Everything I have posted is the truth, it's what I have experienced, it's what I have seen, and I acknowledge its different from ya'll, but set aside the assumption it's somehow a discredit to you and instead think about "okay well, assuming Soralin isn't just going on the internet to lie for fun, maybe his experience is just different from an additional reason..."

I think we can have a much more productive convo that way. I certainly believe you are telling the truth in every one of your posts, and assuming you have no reason to lie to me!

And when I post "Do you find that X?" or "Do you not find that Y?" thats also not any kind of personal attack or argument, thats just me trying to further drill into specifics of your experience, because I value your experience!

I can clarify

COR is ML25

I just noticed my midshot set does use a Chrono Bullet, which is in fact a "REMA" ammo. I forgot that was in there for ranged shooting. So there is a +20 racc bonus in the ranged slot I didn't realize, my mistake. However, I don't have DP, so when I mentioned this, I was moreso talking about Leaden damage being increased based on the bullet, and I am using Orichalcum bullets in my Leaden set (or Chrono if it's low-ammo). The Chrono Bullet is a small ranged accuracy bonus, but it's necessary to mention it.

Food - OK out of habit, I likely popped a Grape Daifuku +1, since that's what I have in my inventory.

This is all besides the point, but it should be mentioned since I opened the door by saying you could triple shot using Anarchy +2 and a fair follow-up to that would be "how much ranged accuracy do you need for that".

Yeah 100% all good, I mean corsair bullets also have Racc+25 or whatever on them, I assume those are valid TPing bullet options if you're just trying to use triple shot as a vector for SCing.

An interesting thing I was thinking:

Is there a good target I can practice against that lets me sort this all out with my gear and etc, that should be a very close comparison to both aggro behavior (or lack thereof), resistances, health pool, etc, so I can practice outside of sortie.

The #1 reason Im stuck in "Ill try that next" mode (and that list is very long now of things to try, haha), is because I get like... 20(?) minutes to practice inside sortie, once a day at best. And thats if I even play that day and have time for a sortie run.

So you can understand how Im not getting much chance to actually try different approaches out haha

If there was a good comparable target to practice on outside sortie, that I could work at til I go "Okay I can kill these in 30s, I should be able to now do elementals in sortie the same way", sorting out approach, gear, trusts used, food, all those variables, that'd help a tonne!

How do Vagary elementals compare to the sortie ones? I assume sortie ones are higher level?

Basically any low-mid apex(like sih or dho probably is where eles would be) mob will give you a near identical scenerio to doing a elemental so long as they dont have some kind of evasion up or something. So far as im aware we havent seen anything as far as have you been able to do a 3 step on them, what was your dmg, how much HP was left, etc.

Is there another way to obtain Tinctures besides the quest "Healing Herbs?"

There is, but the answer is no. Seems it can come from the SP dial gobbie box.

i mean it couldn't have possibly been worse but at least i'm done now - it's pretty unfortunate there are no plans to adjust Atonement cos man it sucks balls

It's really effective at what it does, just a shame the dmg was never scaled up to even remotely match what's normal today

Yeah, it is very nice having it - did normal sortie 8boss today and used 119 Burtgang over Sakpata's I had been using and it was much easier to keep things stable hate-wise.

to keep on topic; is there anywhere with the CE/VE values for Intervene documented? couldn't find anything on a basic search - if these don't exist and aren't awful to test I'll have to take a crack at it

So, having two characters that have PLD, I a few sets of tests.

So, first two tests. One for CE and one for VE. All actions performed in +0 enmity gear. All mobs were aggro'd first to prevent the 200 CE pull bonus.

Test #1, CE test: Phalanx'd up, Aggro'd mob, hit it with Intervene. Waited 2 minutes for any VE to drain away(this would be enough to clear 7200 VE). Used Atonement on the mob. Resulting in 0 dmg. This result means that Intervene yielded less than 7 CE, as it takes at least 7 CE for Atonement to deal 1 point of damage. We need at least 7 CE rather than 6 due to the -1 in the formula, and the rounding UP of any decimals after the division. So, we don't know with absolute certainty that Intervene is 0 CE. It could be anywhere from 0~6. Could also fairly reasonably be 1 CE.

Intervene not being damage based enmity(Cause no way a 5k+ hit on a alvl100 mob got me 0~6 CE if this were using damage enmity calcs) makes this much simpler, don't have to worry about how hard it hit, or mob level, etc.

Test #2, VE test. Phalanx'd, aggro'd mob. Used a simple macro

/ja Intervene <t><wait 1>
/ws Atonement <t>

Yielded a 138 dmg Atonement. Reversing the Atonement formula, 138*6+1=829 VE, +/-5. Now, we had to wait 1 after Intervene use to be able to Atonement so we lost 60 VE in that time. So, 829+60=889 VE.

But.. there's pretty much no chance that SE set a static enmity action's VE value to a number like 890. They just don't do that. SE tends to use numbers like, 20,40,60, 180, 320, etc. Now, Here's where things get imprecise. The actual value could very easily be 900, and network latency just cost us the few tenths of a second worth of VE it'd take to drop the dmg down a couple of points. Hypothesized 900ve base - 60 for the wait 1, /6-1=139.

Typing this up took me so long that I repeated the test, and got a 139 this time. Anyway, hitting this value leaves me pretty confident that the VE is 900.

I decided to do another set of tests to pin down if this was 1 CE or 0. To do this you just cast 1 CE spells, along with the enmity action your testing, and see when you hit a break point in Atonement dmg. Since we need 7 CE to hit a 1 dmg Atonement, I'll cast 6 1 CE actions and do Intervene. Wait 15+ seconds for the 900 VE to drain away, then Atonement. If I get a 1 DMG Atonement, then Intervene is at least 1 CE(and possibly up to 6CE.) If I get a 0, then it's 0 CE.

Intervene + blind x6, 1 dmg Atonement.
Intervene + Blind x5, 0 dmg Atonement.

So, that solidly puts Intervene at 1 CE, 900 VE.

Edit: Updated BGwiki Intervene page.

900 VE is very good

900 VE is very good

PLD doesn't have much trouble with VE generation, does it? It's too bad it isn't 900 CE or something.