Dyna Question

Calipso, I appreciate the parse.

For some background, my duo also has pretty maxed gear, short of a few better augments on my hecatomb. My partner has Twash99. Our stuff isn't bad. I routinely have to take a piss for over 30mins and hold it in to get a higher total, so I get that every second counts. But saying that you average 15% over our record is very impressive.

We've been going 5 days a week for the last 7 months with only a few interruptions. We also saw our total increase gradually, though it appears to have more or less palteaud for now, apparently due to proc speed, occasional competition, and respawn timers. When we started, we felt like 120 each was a lower end threshold. Gradually that moved up to 150, and then later 180, then 200. Now if we don't come away with at least 225 each, it feels like a gimpy run. I can definitely relate to your experience that more practice and improved gear has increased your yield.

For us, mobs dying instantly isn't a problem either. In fact, I rarely have to even use SA or TA to finish a mob off once it's proc'd since our DoT from Mandau95 and Twash99 is already really high. ie, it's faster to just kill something with Evisceration (+ SC damage) if it's already very low from DoT than incurring the JA delay of using SA or TA. If we manage to get a quick proc, we can also skillchain them to 0% (Rudra->Mercy) in one go.

I'm interested in your thoughts on controlling TP feed since that's definitely not something that we bother with very much. We are typically throttled by proc speed far more than kill speed. In fact, part of my bewilderment in you saying that you can average 610 is that it must be getting close to the upper limit of someone continuously spamming /DNC moves for the entire duration of the run. If we are unable to proc a mob, we just change to the next mob, Flourish the new mob and continue to use Steps on the old. In this way, we never have to do the ever-so-frustrating backtank and can continuously be doing damage, so that when procs finally catch up with our kills, we take them all out fast.

We're also pretty close to the limit on Funguar respawn-- usually there's only one or two respawned by the time we've killed them all, but again, it's heavily throttled by proc speed. Like you said, one gimp duo or a fast soloer can cause contention, but we find that the non-regulars don't go for the Yagudos in the tunnel so that helps us smooth things over, and the previous regulars have apparently learned to avoid our timeslot. :p

Oh, and our total also went up by 50~60 average once I completed Mandau, so that's consistent, at least. It was probably another 30 or so average when my partner completed his Twash to 99.

Anyway, we will try out your loop sometime soon and see how it goes. I'm still dubious that controlling TP is providing you a significant advantage since, if you're going to be backtanking, you might as well just be weakening another mob, but I'm interested in hearing more of your analysis on that topic.

FYI, my DNC partner subs war for the extra proc (Provoke) and the increased DPS. We don't like the white!! gamble.

Sorry for the discontinuous replies to your vary posts!

I usually solo 3 dynas per day, on 3 very different BSTs. It goes from the basic full perle, almost full AH BST, to a AF3+2 and other better gear choice BST, though not optimal.

The minimum I get is obviously with the Perle one and it doesn't go below 150. I only farm CoP areas but as advised above, I avoid competition like plague.
I get between 180-240 on my main, depending on competition and other luck factors, but 200-220 is the norm. As a duo, BST THF, I usually got 400 to 520~ currency, none of us having relics. We started to break 500 every run as soon as I upgraded my BST and it was still climbing.

I only ever do EPs, whether it's solo or duo.

I would advise to use Violent Flourish for proc purpose and Animated for the outclaim purpose. It can miss, but the low recast outweight this.

As for the killing part, I usually go for anything in the 3 basic CoP areas. I don't have any setup circuit though I do avoid a few camps 100% as they are a waste of time (EP only).

Hippos in Valkurm, Crawlers in Buburimu, Gaylas/Bombs in Qufim. These camps are way too small and people like to crowd them because they are close to the rest. You might lose 1h30-2h by running to Sheeps in Valkurm, for example, but the advantage of having a HUGE camp that can't be killed by 4 people is really nice.

Now if you want extra free camps, you can go for Cactuars and Uragnites (easier than expected, both), but it's still a gamble and most of the time isn't needed.

What is your actual fighting strategy when you duo with the thf? Does the thf just tag with th and move on to proc another? are you on same mob as pet?

3 dynas every day?....
You sir, deserve a patience medal.

In terms of controlling tp, like I said, we only ever do that on Cactuar and Flytraps. If it's not procced by like 80-75%, we just turn and stop meleeing until it's procced. If we have a link/add, we'll switch off to that one and try to proc it instead.

With the high proc rate on DC mobs it's not actually that common an occurrence (to have to stop dd completely) aside from the few stubborn mobs that just won't proc. If my sam partner has Blade Bash up, sometimes we'll be a little more careless. A lot of the time it just ends up being me turning and not my partner, because thf is a tp feeding machine >_>

Anything that doesn't have a devastating tp move (which is really just limited to shell mobs in our current rotation), we just pull a few at a time, and switch to another if one gets low without proccing.

I'm not sure if we'd do better off just killing the hell out of everything, but deaths are a huge coin loss, and fighting 'easier' mobs causes a lot of stress/frustration with us with the constant competition and mob sniping that goes on.

We haven't actually done a good run with my blm mule since I finished my Mandau. The one run we did with him, we got 620 coins and and 50 something forgottens (parse is incomplete because I started it late =() and that was with a death and a 10min afk.

Trying DCs as vlu with my thf friend in Valk, wish me luck! WIll post results after.

I usually play the same as I would do solo. If there is 0 competition, I grab 1-3 monsters, proc then leave when the last/2 last are at 10%~ to get more, usually 1-3 more. If there is competition, I stick to 1-2 at a time, acting like a hollywood star creating fake links and such.

The THF just tags them all then go pulls monsters on his side, if no competition. If competition, he simply helps me kill faster (Ruinator > Extenterator is pretty cute). THF never solo monsters, Falcorr always helps here and there, or I do myself. The reason for this is, well, they can't/isn't efficient, so given a properly geared THF, I would say this can be enhanced by quite a lot.

Indeed! That's probably the best thing I got from HNMs and Salvage, patience. That's the only way for me to swallow not having cleared a F100 in Nyzul yet. And well, making relics/money *cough*

Well I actually do my dynas at work so... win/win?

I tried to do 2x dyna a day, on my mule. Maybe it's just cause my mule was a pretty gimp, and had no th, but it was just toooooooooo much work for too little reward. I have a lot of fun doing it on thf daily, though.

There was someone on odin that was doing dyna on all their chars on a daily basis (5x a day).

Hmm, we only made 170~ currency, but we ended up leaving with 40min remaining, so we would have likely made 220-250. Apart from getting about double the forgotten touches, I'm not sure there was much improvement. Will confirm on next run though. Oh yeah also in reference to the food comments, we both use RCBs.

We average 600 with THF BLU combo. I have SAM as well but I would never use it over BLU in dynamis; delta thrust is too good. We always stick to flytraps and cactuars since nobody fights them. Easy peasy.

Try to gear the crap out of blu and get an almace on your freetime. And try to get your friend thf gear if possible(TH gear). Idk what your gearsets look like, but it seems obvious that you two need improvement and better teamwork. Try to focus on skillchaining and working together. You could pull in serious numbers.

Didn't notice your name, I saw you when I entered earlier :o

Going with EPs (the dyna was rather empty today), alone, I got 211 currency and 1 Touch.

Basically the idea is that a duo will at least double whatever you earn alone (given someone "equal"), and add a good chunk on top of that based on the synergy. DCs are another story imo, as I wouldn't touch them with less than 3, but they do drop a shitload of forgotten/currency once you get the thing going.

Try qufim island to get used to eachother. Blu and thf should do well there. Cycles are really close to eachother and barely any risk of death. Snoll would be your only issue being blu(magic aggro). I just wouldn't recommend bringing bst for anything that isn't solo.

That being said, BLU should know the aggro range for Snolls when casting magic near them, I always go to EP snolls when soloing in Qufim bc they are SO squishy its ridiculous. If you happen to get in a sticky situation and aggro too many to handle, you can just fall back on dream flower.

The thf has assassins armlets +2 but does not have the empy feet yet. As for weapons, I believe he uses Aluah Jamibiya (idk how to spell it) and offhands triplus dagger. My blu gear is far from optimal but I am working on it. I currently use isador and offhand mageblade (working on a Str and attack shikargar atm). As for my tp gear I use ocelomeh head and body and dusk +1 feet and hands, Af3 +2 legs, atheling mantle, goading belt (no shin access yet lol I dont like aby). We had no competition on the DCs and went treants funguars hippos (not sure if funguars were a good idea). We do that same path on EPs but there is usually a lot of competition esp. on hippos. As for the teamwork aspect, when CA is up I solo sc if I have tp otherwise we do evisc>quad for darkeness. I don't know of any good sc's between sword and dagger for when CA is down.

ps. I don't think we earn double what we would each solo, as that would be about ~300 altogether.

What cycle would you suggest? Also, What SC's do you do?

Thanks for all the help so far guys =)

The issue with Qufim is that it's the area that can hold the least people. The camps are small and on our server if you have 6-9 people inside, it usually mean that everything is taken already. I wouldn't advise it unless you can figure out the time frame when there are <5 people inside.

That's excludinc DCs. Though, I wouldn't try Krakens DC with 2 unless you can down them really fast.

I usually do Gaylas > Snolls > Tiger/Raptors

Besides magic aggro you just need to stun hypothermal combustion, it can be nasty at times.

One last question regarding pulling, who should be pulling the mobs? As blu I like to avoid pulling because its a waste of mana, but the thf cant pull when he has hate on the mob. Is there any good solution to this that I'm oblivious to?

I use Aureole to pull for lolz, but when youre duoing I have the thf pull the mobs, step+flourish, then the blu takes over and destroys it as soon as it's proc'd. Shouldnt be hard taking hate off the THF

You can just join a couple of Pil /shout when you have time, that Chakram has pretty high drop rate.

Also THF can Trick attack too.

I find my self running out of mana when I spend more than 80ish mana per mob, and particularly with DCs, they have too much health for me to nuke down when CA isn't up. As for EPs, I can see this stratt working well apart from potential mana issues. Our general problem on EPs is proccing and competition.


Ahaha you think I get real items from LogWatch... All joking aside. I've never seen anything out of VW other than logs and the occasional heavy metal, given I've only done pil 50ish times. On the other hand my thf friend got the chakram last night and he's only done pil 5-10 times rofl.

I dont bother with DC in Qufim unless there is heavy competition, it's better just to smash EP mobs. If competition is a problem i wouldn't be at Qufim in the first place, it's def a downside to that zone being so small. MP is never an issue for me, but i can relate to the not procing problem lol it just happens sometimes..

I didn't see anyone answer this directly yet, so...

If you're doing 2002 pulling while the other player waits at a designated camp, that's not good and will be hurting your totals significantly. You should be roaming for the most part and just pulling here and there to where ever you happen to be at the time..

In general, if you're roaming, you can usually "/ra <stnpc>" the next mob while you're still fighting the current one, and it will be there or on the way when the current one dies. There's also a decent number of times where you can just walk up and aggro stuff or intentionally link/pull a bunch to line up your next few mobs so you can proc a new one while killing an old one.

If you're doing the above, I think you'll find that there isn't much burden on the BLU's MP pool, and then whomever can pull the mob the fastest would be ideal.

Any combo that can make light or dark can take them down. We do 90 average as a drg thf combo(whm just mainly hastes)

For decent challenge, do Snoll 8-16 RAPTOR 16-24(watch out not to link too many raptor or have dream flower ready), then kraken 24-8. Basically since I heard your setup I would suggest you two fight together to skillchain and take mobs down faster. Try to work on some trial of magians swords, or Almace/+2. As for pulling, your thf should go get a raider's boomerang. Easy NM, and it's a great option for thf. Almace will basically be gamechanging, but str magian work well too. If you really want to take blu seriously, check out this thread http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/30626/the-beast-within-a-guide-to-blue-mage/ . It is quite amazing. I'd say if you do that cycle and work together well, you should be able to pull about 350. Good luck!

Thanks a lot for this post, it was quite helpful, but I'm curious if we should be bothering with DCs, particularly in Qufim. As for weapons, I'm working on a str shikargar, but flans are a pain lol. I'm looking to start an almace in the future, but I'm also starting 4 trial axes and an apoc, so I doubt it will be done soon :(. The tha had raiders as well as the one from pil. And yeah I have been referring to the guide often, it's great. Thanks for the advice