Automaton preferences for soloing?Follow

Im just returning after a six month (Skyrim) break, and had a few questions about how the different 'matons are used these days while soloing.

Before the patch on most low tier NM's and under i would use the SS while subbing /dnc so i could light SC VS and AS, this was somewhat dangerous but everything i fought normally melted before it got two bad. Then fighting harder tier NM's i would normally use the WHM bot with /nin sub and just grind the heck out of whatever i was fighting.

After the update im curious how people have been going about setting up their pets, i know everything is situational, but have the valoredge/RDM pet become more useful for solo play?

Basically i just want to know how to best maximize DD output without too much a risk of completely wiping. Your thoughts?

Thanks,
Fantus

While I agree with you in most of the cases, an evasion set is in my opinion pretty important still. Against 1-3 mobs (in Dyna), there's no need to use anything other than the pure DD gear, but an evasion set is extremely useful in case of a bad pull that ends up linking 4-5+ mobs. It's the difference between ending with a bunch of currency and kissing the floor mid-run, with the subsequent weakness etc.

Personally I have been revamping my evasion build to keep what anza is saying in mind and come up with a build that keeps me at haste cap while giving me the boost I need in evasion to survive. Ignoring accessories for now cause I haven't decided if they are worth it(it's worth swapping out, my rings since my tp rings need some work. Darn you for eluding me epona's)

head: Ocolemeh +1
Body:Alcd. Harness +1
Hands: Cirque +2
Legs:Ocelot
Feet: Athos
Waist: Twilight
Neck: Tierecel

ACC: 22
Eva: 26
Sb 8
AGI: 29
haste 26
Dex:21

Leaving back rings and earrings open for whatever. Coming in with 40ish eva with a nice boost to Subtle blow(Don't forget agi boosts that now too) while maintaining yourself at haste cap with 32 acc and some double attack from twlight. Your DPS will go down but it won't take a swan dive. Giving what I believe to be a proper balance between defensive and offensive when needed.

Evasion sets are not nearly as useful as you make them out to be, because Evasion caps at 80% (and by the same extent, accuracy floors at 20%, which is why level -1 and 0 bunnies in ronf can still hit you at 99. It's physically impossible for anything in the game to have a hit rate worse than 1/5, regardless of shadows, since if utsusemi procs, it means you got hit), and it's not hard for us to hit that cap most of the time, with only a few pieces of gear. The only time a full blown evasion set is useful is if you're fighting an NM with stupidly high accuracy, or that has like, 10 levels on you. You shouldn't need more than 1-2 pieces of Eva gear to have an acceptable dodge rate on DC mobs in dynamis, for example, and that same gear will do you the same amount of good vs 1 or 10 mobs if they're all the same level range, the only thing that will make a difference is the eva bonus you get from signet, if you even get that in dynamis. AGI claws, Pink Doublet, and any of the thousand 2% haste 5 eva shoes we have is plenty for damn near everything, without sacrificing much at all in the way of damage (though pink doublet vs farsetto +2 is a bit of a loss, depending on how much haste you have and what you're doing.) I haven't done neo-dynamis, personally, so I can't really speak for anything other than estimates, but I would assume that the level difference between the low end and high end mobs isn't extreme enough to warrent needing more than 1-2 extra pieces. the +60 eva we get from Eva bonus IV is pretty huge.

As for which frame I use solo, it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm soloing an NM, or soloing exp, probably soulsoother, unless SS'll be -na spammy, and even that's not to bad now with the split recast timers. If I'm grinding EP sh*t trials, either Stormwaker or valoredge, depending on what the mob in question is, what level it is, and how easy/hard they are to kill. Haste and Cure VI won't speed up my kills as fast as Valoredge or Haste and T4 Nukes will

Lately in Abyssea I find myself /DNC and using Comedie on soulsouther set outside the AOE. Many of the NMs I have soloed (Fauth, Amuluk,Carabosse,Dvalinn,Durinn etc) like to spam -aga spells making /NIN less than useful. As Jinte mentions, our evasion is high enough to avoid most of their attacks. Most of their melee attacks are weak(how much attack does your BLM have?)

Being able to Healing Waltz some of the status effects away quickly gets us back in business and allows the auto to focus more on tasty cures and enfeebles which are needed. In the case of Cackle and Bilgestorm this gives us 3 "Erases" (combined with Eraser) as removing the magic defense down quickly is key to beating the Dvergers. Lastly, while not a guaranteed proc, Violent Flourish still lands well enough to mention and preventing any damage in the first place is still prime.

When soloing casters I use unconventional atma (well, at least from a DD view). Mainly I use MM(INT for me, fresh for Comedie), Future Fabulous(MDB) and usually Kirin's(more tasty INT, AGI and MACC for enfeebs). This is all about mitigating damage from the nukes by raising INT and MDB to the point that the nukes land for substantially less(remember trying to nuke Kirin?), allowing me to live through the battle and stay ahead of the curing. An occasional Curing Waltz III is there if I need it as well. When I WS (usually only after the NM uses a TP move and I see I can make TP before I need it again), I use Shijin Spiral exclusively as the plague that can and does proc helps to reduce tp gain of the NM reducing those special attacks.

For these, it's not about killing fast, it's all about being the last one standing, and a win is a win.

Extra erase/stun/claim are all pretty damn useful (see my rant below as to why I don't include sneak/invis), though depending on the situation, having tools for the :ni wheel works just as well for a ranged claim. It's not instant, no, but you don't need to have FMs to use it, so you can use it right off the bat if you get there and it pops, and you have competition. Acc Bonus II isn't really that helpful, most of the time, unless your skill isn't capped, in which case it's really helpful for capping your h2h skill because that's the only sh*t you better @#%^ing be working on if it's not at or near cap. On a side tangent; I'm always going to loathe /dnc, if only because spectral jig pisses me the @#%^ off. The duration is just too @#%^ing short. That's the one thing I'll always love about /nin, monomi and tonko have set durations that don't change, and aren't random.

I'm still a pretty huge advocate for /sch, though, especially if you're rocking minikin anyway, because it's just as situationally useful as dnc. Cure III and Waltz III should be roughly the same potency now, with the healing buff, though I'm not 100% on that, and Cure III isn't instant, but /sch has the added benefit of not totally murdering your damage output the way /dnc does, and adds the eternally useful sleep and dispel (separate from disruptor, and depending on the situation, a lot less disruptive to your own flow to use), as well as the most MP efficient nuke in the game, Drain. Also stoneskin, which is stupidly easy to hit the hardcap for if you have light arts up, and when stacked with celerity acts as a sort of poor-man's utsusemi. It also adds the benefit of being able to -na/erase yourself, without also removing your ability to cure yourself temporarily, and depending on the situation, can be combined with stormwaker to make a far more efficient combo than /dnc or /nin and soulsoother. Oh, and sublimation helps on fights where the mob likes to spam sleep/ga, since it's basically a JA poison pot. It does help to have gear for /sch though, and it takes a bit of getting used to the play style, because it's a bit different than /dnc or /nin, but realistically, /sch is usually more of a "doing everything else" sub. I usually go /nin for NMs, unless they make shadows worthless, in which case I defer to /dnc, but I've pulled off nearly every fight I've done /dnc as /sch as well, baring ones that involve silence or MP nerfing, and there are a few where /sch is my preferred sub due to sublimation making it easy to keep myself awake.

As to the value of haste samba, it depends pretty heavily on what you're doing and how much haste you have otherwise, since haste gives increasing returns outside of hitting a category cap. I'll math it out, though, because I'm kind of curious myself, and I haven't done it in ages...

Assuming: 300 base delay (320 from traits, -20 from gear, since you're not going to be using rancor collar while you solo, go go cirque necklace/pantaloni +2), +61 delay from weapon (Magians end result), 25% gear haste, 15% magic haste, approx. 10% double attack (since you obviously can't /dnc and /war at the same time), 12 store TP (since cirque guanti +2 beat pantin +2 if your puppet isn't valoredge/sharpshot; unless there's more Store TP on our newer better pieces that I'm just not aware of, in which case it would only really serve to increase the net gain from haste samba);

Since we're talking about a situation where you're focusing more on survival than damage, I'll focus more on net TP gain than net damage. Additionally, I'll assume that we're talking an NM fight here, so I'll give it a longer fight length than I would otherwise, and just assume 5 minutes. I'm not going to account for JA delay, because we're at mid-haste, and our difference between attack rounds is long enough to mostly negate it, and I can't predict how frequent JA usage would be aside from reapplying haste samba, so these numbers will range from slightly to moderately higher than they would be in practice, since everything is situational, and some fights you'll be more JA spammy than others. I'm not going to account for atma, either, though, because atma set up will be as variable as JA usage, and a lot of atmas wouldn't impact the results in any way, so accounting for them would skew the result towards only fights where you can get away with using DD atmas; thus the difference between atma set up and JA usage should negate each other, though that's mostly a guess on my part.

Hasted Delay: 216, TP/hit: 5.6 (with stp), 3.6 seconds/attack round, over 5 minutes, total attack rounds: 83, total attacks: 182, total hits after acc check: 172, net TP gain: 963.2 TP
Hasted Delay: 198, TP/hit: 5.6, 3.3 seconds/attack round, total attack rounds: 90, total attacks: 198, total hits: 188, net TP gain: 1052.8 TP; Difference: 89.6 TP
Haste samba usage over 5 minutes: 105-140 TP (depending on whether you have HS up from before the 5 minutes, or apply it fresh at the start)

Nope; in terms of over all TP gain, it doesn't look like HS is worth using. Keep in mind that for HS, this also was a best-case scenario, and didn't account for hit rate mucking up haste (if you miss all hits on a HS round, you don't get the extra haste, so it slows you down a bit, but that's a real @#%^ing pain to account for with h2h's multi-hit per round nature, so I was just being lazy), and additionally, the 15.4/50.4 TP difference is only relevant if you're accounting for TP usage outside of WS, in terms of pure damage, haste samba will typically make up the small loss in TP over time with a slightly larger gain in damage over time due to extra hits; the 16 hit difference here would be a gain of 1500~2000 damage based on my memory of my average per fist damage from abyssea and accounting for at least some crits. Add to that the extra WS (though that depends on your acc, you get the extra at some %s, like 95% cap, but not at others, like say 90% hit rate, it basically varies by the net difference total hits after the acc check) and you get a pretty sizeable increase to your damage.

It's also worth noting that by not accounting for atmas, I'm also not accounting for the easily accessed ways of completely negating the loss of TP/time. The core difference is that Haste samba gives you, on average, just slightly over 1 extra attack round per minute (7 attack rounds in 5 minutes, for example, so ~1.4-1.5, but it'll be reduced depending on acc. You should still average at least 1 extra per minute though, unless your accuracy is garbage, in which case you have more pressing issues), so 14 raw attacks with which QA/TA/DA/OAX (kenkonken onry, OAX magian h2h is sh*t, and the last time I did the numbers, OAT h2h wasn't much better off) may potentially proc and should have a noticeable effect on net TP gain, though I'm to lazy to math that out to be 100% certain of it, because highly situational.

tl;dr: as /dnc, Haste Samba's 5% Haste will increase damage over time a little, but decrease TP over time a little as well. More damage, less utility TP for waltzes/steps/etc


I want to comment, but I really have nothing to say . Shijin is totally competitive with SP, provided equal ws set quality, though SP can average slightly higher over time depending on your crit rate, though I realize as I'm typing this that that doesn't account for the crit damage bonus you can get in abyssea, in which case SP stomps all over shijin . Random nitpick for the sake of clarity, though; I assume you know INT is only relevant vs black magic, but people who don't should keep in mind that an int-heavy set up won't do you sh*t against a mob that uses banish/holy/white magic enfeebles (paralyze and slow being the most relevant, but also silence, addle, dia, flash, repose etc). For those, you want MND.

Also, alternatively, for casters, specifically if I know I'm going up against a certain NM a few times in a row, and said NM sticks to a single element, I prefer the elemental resistance atmas you can get from Heroes as my third atma (I also usually opt for Gnarled Horn/Minikin/3rd as my survival-solo set, regardless of what I'm fighting, except when gnarled horn is made useless in favor of something else), or at least the ones I have (@#%^ you, dragua, red proc'd the @#%^er 3 different times and still haven't seen it drop. Would have made Sharabha grinding so much easier...)



Soulsoother has several huge advantages over Stormwaker, in terms of solo, and are in a few cases, the same reason why stormwaker is more or less unusable for certain fights. Firstly; infinite Cure VI's, and Cure V as well, Erase (separate from eraser, not maneuver consuming, and with less than half the recast depending on your set up) and -na's, the ability to use a more support-oriented attachment set up, since you'd want some offensive attachments for stormwaker, to make your nukes hit harder, and limiting the casting pool somewhat by removing nukes, making it much easier to force certain enfeebles, and less likely that your puppet derps and casts the wrong spell when you need a cure, as well as much easier hate control with much less effort due to cure V/VI's reduced enmity nature and the fact that your puppet isn't dropping nukes whenever it feels like it. the Trade off in damage, and Stoneskin/Phalanx, is more than worth it for anything that has any possesses difficulty, as well as in abyssea, where Cure V/VI are just more useful than Cure IV, even with the healing buffs.

Outside of abyssea, where you don't have access to minikin for heavy refresh, stormwaker is a lot stronger, since cure IV is a sh*tton more MP efficient, given that your max HP doesn't warrant a cure V until you're under 50% HP (how far under depends on your race; as a galka, Cure V without vivi-valve is just slightly less than half of my max HP, vivi-valve pushes it over half a bit; I can't speak for other races, though), and stoneskin/phalanx have a huge boost in efficiency when stoneskin isn't getting 2-shotted like it can in abyssea.

Keep in mind though, that the reason a lot of pups default to soulsoother is more habit than anything else, since stormwaker's only been useful since... december? ish? I don't remember which update fixed it. Prior to that, Stormwaker was mostly garbage, so those of us who've been playing pup for a few years will take a while to adjust to having it as an option.

I always forget that SE gave us Regen IV finally.... and that the puppet can cast regen.
I have no idea why I forget, though

Rate up. Why do I keep forgetting about that, in particular for dyna .
Soloing pup/thf in dyna pricing /ws mobs has worked out very well for me so far. Expect to see a red head following me in there from here on out.

How many coins you guys get /thf? On let's say, valk? And would you say tarutaru sash with th would be good also? I'm just curious because I typically go /war and kill dcs and was wondering if it'd be worth the trade off?

It was the stoneskin and phalanx that I was thinking of in my warped mind when I saw regen. Don't ask me why I think that way I still can't figure it out myself.

On a Dyna-Dunes run I solo 100-130 coins on EP mobs and average half dozen forbidden touches. I leave maybe 3-5 mobs a run that I just can't seem to proc. Understand that I am not hard core blasting like I could be. Dyna is a bit of down time for me, and while I am saving for relic (stage 4 atm), I am not working hard at it. If I do DC mobs I end up with about 100 coins and twice the touches. What I do like is having my pick of mobs as everyone else in there clamors over the /ja mobs.

Just macro the sash in for the first hit, and swap back twilight for the rest of the mob.

Any TH you have applies on the first hit. The only thing that has a chance associated is increasing the TH from the initial value, and that can only done by THF mains and RNG with Bounty Shot.