HP down -> HP up -> CureFollow

So this is a fairly easy concept and it's been around for a while now I believe. For the people that haven't heard of it, while /nin (You're not taking much damage while shadows are up so you can't cure for hate like /war) you drop your HP+ gear and put it all back on with more HP+ gear. This creates a gap between current and max HP that you can cure. After you've cured you change back to your normal idle gear. Easy enough.

Personally, I haven't made one yet as I'm seriously lacking in the HP+ gear dept. Some of the idle pieces I use have HP and MP so dropping them to cure might be more detrimental than helpful. (Turban, homam, etc.) Another thing to think about would be trying to keep as much enmity as possible while creating a large enough gap for a full cure 3 or 4. Inventory space will also be a limiting factor as PLD seems to be a job that carries around a bunch of sh*t already...

What I'd like to see are some more specifics about the pieces of gear people use for this and how much they're getting to cure total. (Screenshots are always nice) Obviously, this will vary greatly from person to person but it would give people some examples to go by when making their own setups.

I've never used HP- gear myself, I just add enough HP+ gear to get a good cure III /IV in and then let it drop (cure III macro is invisible gear only, IV is visible too).

Gear used (+HP is over what I normally wear, actual +HP in []):

Head: W.turban (+10) [30]
RSE2 hands/belt (+40 and +25 HP respectively) [60, 45]
BQR: [75]
Neck: Tempered Chain (+13 if I've swapped into it from shield torque) [20]
Back: Gigant [80]
Ear1: Cassie [50]
Legs: AF [15]
Feet: root sabots, +15 [35]

Total: +343 [410]

There's a lot of improvements I could make, if I had more gear, but it works well enough. I could also unequip and re-equip my ethereal and sattva (and other +HP pieces I wear generally), which I don't currently do.

I just go Cerberus Mantle, Warwolf Belt, and Sattva + Hercules, and swap on Gigant Mantle, RSE belt, and BQ ring over the Hercules. Thats +215 HP, Cure 3, then swap back to Cerb, Warwolf, and Hercules.

You lose 9 enmity during the cure 3, but you don't blink and with the way sentinel works, you can cap CE and VE in 2-3 minutes anyway, so its not bad.

Our serious tanks swap on Morgana Choker, Serket ring, Ether Ring, Settler Cape, and then swap to Ritter Gorget, Sattva, BQ Ring, and Gigant Mantle for a Cure IV with a net gain of 6 enmity on the Cure IV, then swap back to Parade Gorget, Sattva + shadow, and Cerb Mantle for flash and Idling gear.

Edited, Jun 6th 2008 9:49pm by Asdrabael

I tried to go the mage-friendly non-blinking route. Take off neck, ears, rings, back and waist in 1 macro. re-equip them in a 2nd macro. I'm 1200 ampoules short of a Ritter Gorget atm, and still no Bomb Queen Ring. but I'm i'm done it would look like:

/Equip
Neck Ritter Gorget (+25)
Ear1 Ethereal Earring (+15)
Ring1 Sattva Ring (+30)
Ring2 Bomb Queen Ring (+75)
Back Valor Cape (+40)
Waist Trance Belt (+14)

Making for a perfect non-blink Cure III. A Cure IV would require a bit more work. NCCoda hit the nail on the head for the most part. Morgana's Choker (15k Einherjar Ampoules) also gives another 40 HP to MP. If you're lucky enough to own some Hydra gear, each piece has a decent amount of -HP and +MP also

What did i miss? is there a bonus for banish/sential?

His statement was referring to initial CE/VE capping. Since you have to either act directly on the mob or on someone on the mob's hate list to get on the hate list, if you cast banish before using sentinel, you'll be on the hate list when you use sentinel, meaning you get the initial hate from the JA, as well as the bonus.

Banish "Hate listing":

> banish + negligible hate, but now on hate list
> sentinel + hate
> flash + x2 hate
> cures + x2 hate
etc

Normal "Hate listing":

> sentinel +0 hate
> flash x2 hate, now on hate list
> cures, x2 hate
etc

Nice info, I've been looking for some advise on this too. Nice post of all the items btw :)

Go for it; it's not complete, I left out some stuff I considered either hard to get(aka not worth the time to camp/quest) or not worth carrying (some items with just +/- 5-15 hp if there was a cheap alternative). Ffxiah's search function for gear is quite functional, if anyone wanted to look for EVERY item under a list.

That's Good. How often does lag mess that up?

Mogana's Choker(-40) --> Ritter Gorget(+25) = 65
Astral Earring(-25) --> Ethereal Earring(+15) = 40 + 65 = 105
Serket Ring(-50) --> Sattva Ring(+30) = 80 + 105 = 185
Swift Belt(0) --> Trance Belt(+14) = 14 + 185 = 199 (Cure III)

Ether Ring(-30) --> BQ Ring(+75) = 105 + 199 = 304
Cerb Mantle(0) --> Gigant Mantle(+80) = 80 + 304 = 384 (Cure IV)

Thats my cure macros, my C4 tops out at 386 so im only 2hp short. Plus i can keep the majority of my +enmity gear in aswell.

Edited, Feb 27th 2009 1:29pm by Kygents

ive been using these for a while but i dont macro hp down gear. As a taru lowering my max hp is just asking to get one shotted and tarus have access to a crazy amount of hp gear. i just macro in a lot of hp+ gear.

Competely agree. I have maybe less than 100 hp more than that tops and Im elvaan and I can say idling in low HP isnt very dangerous. As ive said before anything that can kill you with that amount of HP, most likely could of done it with 1700 and more. Not very many moves in this game that can 1 shot you. And most of them can be either avoided or reduced in damate.

And yea thats about the only thing that has 1 shotted me as well, 2hour tiamat, double attack crit for 900+ both hits.

As far as cure sets, my cure III has me starting with
r1 - ether ring
r2 - serket ring
back - settlers cape
waist - astral rope

macro in -
r1 - hercules
r2 - BQR
back - Cerb mantle
waist - Trance belt

This gives my cure3 a 200+ range(194 is my cap atm w/o hosp earring) without blinking and only sacrificing 2 enmity for it.

Whenever I can get morgana+ritter combo, I can drop the BQR for another emnity ring. I still use BQR for my Cure IVs though.



Edited, Feb 28th 2009 12:38am by hitoseijuro

So basicly, when you fight Byakko, you run a very minor risk of a triple attack after diaga, and you somehow just get amazingly unlucky and none of the hits are blocked AND all land crit, and your healers are all asleep or out of MP and you're out of shihei so because you swapped out 150 hp, you get killed?

I don't know about when you fight Byakko, but last time I fought it in my usual tank gear plus food, byakko only hit me for like 200 a swing. Thats hardly enough to 1 shot me, or even 1 round me, even assuming none are blocked. This is a mob that people used to normally blood-tank with pld/war because he hits so weak, and you're worried about an aoe + triple attack 1 shotting you?

There is no conventional mobs in this game, outside of 1-2, who can legit 1 shot you if you don't prepare. Theres Ultima, which proper gear that every tank who fights Ultima should have which makes you not die. Theres Bahamut, which likewise proper gear, or just tp burning it prevents its special attack. Theres Fairy Ring, and he dies in 20 seconds, and even hes not even a real 1 shot. He just hits 1000 a hit. Other mobs can freak kill you with special circumstances, but those same freak kills also usually do so much damage than they would have killed you whether you had full hp or not, like when I tanked serket inside sandworm the other day and I was recasting Ichi, he double attacked, took my last shadow, then did Venom Sting for 2300 damage to me and 1 shot me.

What it comes down to, is with the monster setup in FFXI, in 99.9% of situations you'll ever encounter, swapping off a couple hundred hp for a macro swap won't kill you unless you literally have no idea what you're doing.

Edited, Feb 28th 2009 8:41pm by Asdrabael

well the fact remains i dont need to macro in hp down gear to cure myself. i can just stick to hp+ gear and drop a good cure iv on myself. no sences arguing it since its a moot point anyways.

He was obviously referring to his 1-shot move. And he stated if your arent prepared you will get one shoted by it. He is just illistrating how easy it can be to avoid being 1 shoted by mobs with proper gear/preparation.

While on his other circumstances he stated how there are somethings you cant prevent getting 1shoted having an additional 100-300 hp in gear.

And what hank said, only limiting your cheat cures to +HP is just limiting the amount of enmity you can stack for a greater gain.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2009 7:21am by hitoseijuro