CoP: A RetrospectiveFollow

All I can tell you is the MNKs in my LS use them for certain applications. Yes, they chew up virtue stones. It takes very little time to farm for stones, because you can turn in your junk drops from sea for the stones.


Why does it suddenly not count if you're not in an XP party?


Because DA from the sea weapons can activate during weaponskills, making a WAR/THF DA Steel Cyclone massive.

Again, I told you only some of the items from Sea that are extremely good. It just seems like your rebuttal is "those don't count" for whatever reason.

They do count, and there is some amazing stuff from sea, especially since the addition of Limbus.

"Added percentage" meaning "almost certainly will double attack". Anyway, yeah, Sea has some of the best gear in the game.

What do you want out of Sky for your MNK, Subzero? Shura Togi, Osode for Chi Blast, Byakko's Haidate, and Suzaku Sune-ate for Chi Blast. Maybe a Shura Head, although that's pretty much a lateral movement from an Optical Hat if you eat meat (and you definetely should).

And what about Sea? Faith Torque, Brutal Earring (probably the best piece of DD gear in the entire game), Temple Hose +1 and Temple Crown +1 for Chi Blast. Temple Gaiters +1 and Boxer's Mantle for soloing. And of couse the mythical Mars Ring.

Sea's drops are just as nice as Sky's for MNKs, Subzero.

Still, my initial post stands: Who the **** wants to hear a random story about getting Sea? Should I start typing up my story now?

I want what every monk wants. I want an Osode and Byakko Haidate. They would augment my play style in beneficial ways that would be substantial and useful.

Faith Torque.. My h2h is capped with merits already at 292. I'm not sure what 7 more points will do. Ooh, a little more damage.. Ooh, a little more accuracy.. According to someone who parsed us in a party recently, I had something like a 95% accuracy rate. What's 7 h2h going to do for that? I don't know.

Brutal Earring is not something I am going for right away. I've never been big on pieces that don't offer much but "might do a particular thing more often/better".. Dune boots and the like were never on my wanted list. I prefer cold hard numbers and stat boosts I can see numerically. It's just my personal choice.

Chi boosting AF+1 pieces.. tempting. But these boil down to how much you REALLY want to spend to get a few points on chi blast. I already got the Temple Cyclas+1, which I was kind of forced to get because my LS leader doesn't seem to think monks need Osode, and I needed more STR. At this point in time I don't feel my LS is worth spending more coins on chi gear.

That again is just an opinion based on how you play your monk. I have a differing style, which means I may be interested in different pieces. The pieces I am interested in just happen to be nowhere near Al'Taieu.

I'd like to hear about someone running through all of CoP as a Dragoon or some other job that typically gets pushed aside in favor of manaburns or FAQ jobs. Black Mages in Sea are a dime a dozen. I want to see someone who ran like THF from Promys to Promathia. That story would be great.

Hmm... please tell me where I specifically say all other jobs suck? The only missions where manaburn was a nice was 4-2 and Snoll. And that's just my own experiences. I'm not going to make the mistake a lot of people make by saying my way is the only way.

And since your a monk, you might be paticularly interested in hearing that monk does really good in the later CoP missions (most notably the Z'dei BCNM and Promathia BCNM). But I suppose that's of no concern to you since you already seem to be in the "I want an easy fight and if I can't get it I'll quit" camp.

And that's ok... you gotta know when enough is enough and be willing to stop when that point is reached. I just hate the fact that your so anti-BLM that your willing to spew your vitriol around to whoever will listen.

But let me tell you... MNK is a great asset in CoP. Hundred Fists is one of my personal favorite 2-hours in the game. When I did Snoll our MNK was doing around 2000 damage with Hundred Fists. Anyone who says that's bad is a fool.

And where did I say I was doing CoP casually? I think your only reading what you want to read and skipping everything else. There was nothing casual about my journey through CoP. I drove myself to burnout point two times because of CoP. That's not something that would have occured if I only did a run or two a month (which is my definition of casual). No... I was doing an average of two runs a week for most of CoP. For the Promy's I was doing a run a day. Please tell me what's casual about that.. because I'd certainly be interested in hearing it.

Ultimately, I made this retrospective because I felt it would be an interesting read for the FFXI community. Obviously my choice of forums leaves a lot to be desired... but I've been visiting Allakhazam for years and this retrospective is probably the best thing I've ever contributed to the community. Again though, hindsight is always 20/20 and in hindsight maybe I should have dropped this retrospective on my LS website forum and posted a link to it.

I really do pity those of you who have become so jaded and bitter that you can't even enjoy a story of a fellow player's journey in a game we all play. And judging from the bickering that's going on in this thread, I'm inclined to believe that the Allakhazam FFXI community has indeed finally reached the seventh circle of Hell. There was a time when people here shared their experiences with others for entertainment or enlightenment. I am beginning to think that time has long since passed...

That is a really nice story, and it sort of puts my expirence into prespective. CoP is hard, I know I just finished Prommy Vazal(SP?) last night and it was a hard fight but really enjoyable when we one after having to retry it about 5 times for various reasons (Stupid Impalement).

I agree with you to a certain extent on the Oruyu(SP?) 4-2 fight. This is an annoying fight, that stupid dragon AOE's everyone, alot, he goes into the air where melee can not hit him, and after he finally does land he just goes right back up in almost no time at all. So unless you can convince your party to farm mistmelts... (took forever to do that for mine) you will need jobs that can attack from a distance, that means BLM, RNG, or any melee that can equip a ranged weapon that does decent dmg. I really do applude anyone who does this with a melee heavy setup, its hard.

As for MNK in CoP the only fight I can say I would choes another job over mnk just because of the job is 4-2 because the damn mob wont land long enough to pummel it for anything substantial. Prommy's, have you done Hundred Fists on the bosses? It owns them and having mnk as a second voke is always nice just incase the mob goes after your mage line when it decides to spam hate reset moves. Phomiumna Aquaducts can take any job really, THF is so nice for this one because of that stupid door, but really any job is good for this, the boss is a jerk with doom and all but you just need to turn away and your good. Mammets need to be killed quickly or them will swarm you, if you MNK 2hr on the first one you can kill it fast enough to avoid any deaths, go onto the next one. Diabolos the only job really needed for this one is DRK, stun makes this so much nicer, without it I don't know how we would have won (didn't have a blm for this, they don't get stun anyway at this level but I just didnt have one when I beat it). But lets not mention Sacrarium where most of the mobs are undead. The mob that drops coral key is hurt more from H2H.

But I can't comment on the further CoP missions as I am not there yet, but I do see where MNK and other of the so called less desirable jobs would help out alot for the fights.

Again thank you for your storyon how you did CoP, I hope that it inspired more people (like myself) then it pissed off!

A) Subzero, he said, for 4-2 only, that blm's are the best way to go. You even quoted it. It's later balanced out by his reference to the Z'Dei bcnm, where he says that MELEE is the best way to go. You need to look at both, you ditz.

B) Everyone else should really stop arguing with him. He would -never- have leveled his whm sub for chi blast except for these missions. He'd sub pld instead because he couldn't be bothered to lvl the best sub for it. For those who know about this sort of thing, it really is pathetic, and telling.

My journey through all of the CoP missions relied heavily on melee. Snoll Tzar was the only fight we had real problems on, but still managed the win after a few goes.

Beat Ouryu without a blm, beat mithras without a smn, etc.

Though I do feel for those who have a melee job as their main and have trouble getting through these missions. Finding/organizing a group can be extremely difficult because of the mindset of your average player. Because word gets out on the "easy" way to do these missions, players think its the only way to do it.

Please, he manaburned a single (of the very many and varied bcs) as a blm, and the jealous bigots pop up and decree blashpemy.

Guess what, I have both black mage and ninja to 75. Do you want to know what jobs I used for 75% of the missions? Ninja... and I'm a freaking taru... why don't you mnks and drks go start a thread complaining about 'zomg ninjas are overpow0red for cop'.

Let's stick to the facts, ok. Honestly, as I stated above, cop is an extremely varied set of missions. Every job does well in various situations. Just off the top of my head...

DRK: You want this job for diablos bc, if you can. A lot of the missions are based around 'do lots of damage fast'. DRK can do quite decent damage.
MNK: A monk saved our parties butt during snoll tzar BC. My black mage tossing out it's puny firaga IIs and fire IIs wasn't coming anywhere close to our mnks rapid hundred fists.
RDM: Even a black mage can't outnuke a rdm in damage/second vs a rdm with chainspell, at least in certain capped missions. Couple that with the fact that RDM is a lot more sturdy and that survivability adds a lot to some of the more dangerous missions. Greater curing and buffing ability, a lot of the things BLM is weak in. RDM can kite quite nicely too, and their fast cast bonus means a lot of their necessary spells are more readily available. Oh yeah, and in case the job hasn't proved themselves yet.... RDM/DRK {Do you need it?}. Need I say any more...
PLD: Invincible. Nice in various missions to give a higher margin of safety to DD jobs when a large damage/second ratio is required. Tenzen, snoll tzar, carmine dobsonfly (although that's not really a mission it's still cop related).
NIN: Great kiter, when paired up with a 2nd nin great for tanking hard nms that strip shadows (thinking of 6-4 here) and providing backup tanking for multiple mobs. For airship we had 2 ninjas tanking 2 mamets each, and for riverne A01 I kited on ninja pretty successfully (compared to our smn kiter who had some issues, but I'm sure that was just bad luck).
SAM: Not every mob is super-weak to magic and is easily manaburned. For straight up 'ok-this-thing-must-die-now' damage pop a meiko and make a couple of skillchains at once. And what better job to pair up with a melee that can pop out skillchains from nowhere? black mage to magic burst (zomg a black mage rely on another job? oh noes... lol).

I'm going to say one thing about SMN, and any summoner is free to contradict me on this and I'll happily retract my statement (since I haven't really experienced playing SMN myself).

As summoner, in the later missions you stop shining so much. You will always remain a great job, but beyond the first few chapters you are no longer the 'easy ride' to the top.

Feel free to rip my points to shreds to try to prove some self-convinced point, but me statement still stands.

My point is, in cop, there is NO EASY RIDE TO THE TOP. Not black mage. Not summoner. If you level 1 job only past 37 then you deal with the limitations of that job. Levelling more than 1 job to 60, or even 50, will add leaps and bounds to your ability to beat these missions. Sucking up to blm will not. ******** about how crap so and so a job is won't.

So stop acting jealous about how this guy made it easy. He freaking worked hard, from what I can tell. He lost 6-4 TWELVE times. he organised SEVENTEEN promy runs. He did his research and the fact he beat many of the missions before other NA proved himself. By the way, it was an interesting story. I wonder if any of the people telling you it was unsuitable for a FFXI forum even know what this place is for...


One thing about the jailor torques, a lot of them aren't merely useful for the stats they add. Although, yes... in some cases they do. _ONLY_ 2 more strength from justice torque? over something thats 20k? A lot of people would go through that effort just to play their jobs the best they can. You don't seem to realise that for certain jobs (DRK and SAM) this torque also effectively adds 7acc and 7att. The difference between this and spike necklace is the difference between shura haidate and going naked.

Edited, Sun Mar 5 19:39:27 2006 by TractorCow

Well, congratulations on getting CoP done, as for me i'm just glad somebody else posted on another thread some "spoilers" on the CoP story line, well, at least now i know what happened, because reading some of the guides there and how much time and gil it takes to complete all the missions, i'm now more than sure that i'm never going to see the end of that damn expansion, an expansion i got since it was released :/

I consider Limbus to be encompassed in the "items that drop from Sea."

I also didn't speak to the droprate or time involved with any of it. The contention was that there's no good gear in Sea, which just isn't true (even if you don't consider Limbus to be Sea, there's *still* good gear from the Jailers).

Yes, the droprates and time consumption with Jailers is pretty rough. However, there's still quite a bit of excellent gear to be had from the areas accessible from Al'Teaiu.

If every single person created their own party for every single thing in the entire game, you'd have 500,000 people looking for party members. One of the life lessons that reflects well in FFXI is the concept of "too many chiefs, not enough indians." FFXI does not permit everyone to be their own boss, and watching an alliance stumble because it has nine people who think they are the leader is frustrating to say the least.

That thread was a loooong time ago. Don't worry, ninjas got a thorough lashing from frustrated paladins who were upset at the FAQs that kept saying to use ninjas in various missions and paladins were useless.

One problem with happily posting it here is that alot of people on here are very impressionable. It seems when anyone says "I used this party setup and I won easily" then online party leaders ONLY look for those jobs since they know those jobs work. This is why soooo many people are absolutely annoyed with CoP, the job favoritism makes CoP missions very exclusive. It's great that job XYZ is great in one mission. It's not great that job XYZ isn't even considered for most others. By even saying "it was just one mission" you risk creating a choke point that many people get stuck at.

My feelings about manaburning aren't new, and aren't original. You don't have to look far on here to find plenty of other threads about nerfing BLM's and overpowered BLM's. I think posting "yet another successful manaburn" is not the best way to go. It's an increasingly unpopular game mechanic.

When people complain about Sea items, they don;t mean Limbus. Almost everyone agrees that Limbus offers some quite nice stuff.

Yes, *some* good gear drops from jailers, maybe two good items for every job, three if you count AV. As a PLD and NIN 75, I can think of three items I would quite like from Sea, and maybe two more I'd take but am not excited about. In Sky, there are more than twice as many items for me to go for, and they are better items. +7 katana skill from a Hope Torque is nice, but it doesn't compare to +15 DEX and 5% haste from Byakko's Haidate, for example. Sea weapon drops are "eh," capes are nice but not astounding, and the Torques are only amazing for a few jobs. And, until AV, that's *it*. And those few rewards take considerably longer to get.

Obviously, people who say there's "no" good gear in Sea are exaggerating. They just mean that there's not enough to bother with.