Valkurm Dunes: A Guide to Fun and Success In Everyone's Most-Hated Zone

[Haggai]

Re: Valkurm Dunes: A Guide to Fun and Success In Everyone's Most-Hated Zone

Basically, almost any melee can tank at this level. Gear for DEF, sub WAR, and they're a tank. I was in a Dunes party with my THF14/WAR7 and I ended up tanking because I had the highest DEF. I did decently, too.

[Sabaron]

Re: Valkurm Dunes: A Guide to Fun and Success In Everyone's Most-Hated Zone

COR is only a good puller after 15. That's the lowest level gun they can use.

COR can use Darts, which is my recommended Pulling Weapon for non-specialists. It also takes 5 seconds to fire a Bandit's Gun--this has (in my Dunes experience using it) resulted in several "kill-steals" from Dart throwers. Thus, I recommend Dart if one is not skilling up another type of weapon or if the weapon is, generally, worthless. For COR, I usually say... Level up Crossbow as another class and don't worry about Marksmanship with COR until 22nd level when you can use a real bullet.

Double Post Edited:

Cursed Sphere used to be dark element

Recently they changed it to Water element, so might wanna fix that =P

Great guide

I changed Baraera to Barwatera in the text; thank you.

Double Post Edited:

Basically, almost any melee can tank at this level. Gear for DEF, sub WAR, and they're a tank. I was in a Dunes party with my THF14/WAR7 and I ended up tanking because I had the highest DEF. I did decently, too.

Yeah, that's why I refrained from mentioning specific tanks other than NIN and PLD because even though anyone can tank, they're still better--I've been tanking recently as DRK. There are no real "bonus" armors that one can use at this level, so there is little difference between non-PLD, non-NIN melees as far as tanking goes here. They just need Provoke and access to "heavy" armors. A party should prefer it's highest level/highest DEF member as it's tank provided said person has access to Provoke and no "Tanking" job is present in the party. As for THF tanking, he doesn't have as nice of armor as the other melees until 16th level when he gets access to the Bone Harness, so be careful of tanking before that. Brass Harness is not as effective as Scale/Solid mail. The basic problem with tanking is lighter armor is that, especially if you're not doing heavy damage (or even getting outdamaged by the monster) you'll have a tendency to have low hate. That, coupled with the fact that you'll require more cures than someone wearing the heavier armor, you'll need more cures. This situation results frequently in an "uncontrolled" monster running around beating on the RNG/WHM/BLM more often than staying where you want him.

[Sabaron]

Re: Valkurm Dunes: A Guide to Fun and Success In Everyone's Most-Hated Zone

A few minor points: VT are not mediocre targets. They are the best targets at this level (some would say at any level). Kill speed is the key to better exp. If you don't ever start overhunting, you won't have to learn how to stop. ITs should be saved for late in the chain (to make the most of chain bonus), if they are pulled at all.

They should be VT to the highest level member, though. If the puller is down 1 (15 in a 14-16 pt for example), that could be a problem, because even 1 monster level can be quite a noticeable exp value difference.

Changed text to reflect this.