Merrit Parties...

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Merrit Parties...

In merit, you won't cast anything anyway. Colibri cast back whatever you cast.

Which is why DRK/NIN works well as "first provoke" on Greater Colibri--potentially better than WAR/NIN. Can also Drain, Aspir, and Absorb-TP without problem if everyone up front is on /NIN.

[Malacite]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Well, NIN sub is situationally useful, so as much as you hate it, there are times you'll need it. You can try to get out of using it whenever possible, but sometimes you're just going to be stuck.

And mobs dieing in 2-10 seconds is not one of those times =3

@. @ you know, I'm seriously starting to wonder if it would be a bad thing to just change ranged attacks back to the way they were pre-nerf in light of how absurdly powerful stacking haste is on melee...

---------- Post added at 10:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 PM ----------

In merit, you won't cast anything anyway. Colibri cast back whatever you cast.

This is why DRG/RDM. DRG/BLU is nice, but power attack & foot kick are still technically feeding the mob tp, and with 6 barspells + fast cast 2 you can heal people awfully god damned fast. Get sanction Refresh if MP is an issue >_>

[Icemage]

Re: Merrit Parties...

If the party kills fast enough as what everyone says it does, then you wont need to use any shadows to avaid any hits as kill wtill be so fast, you wont be hit.

A lot of the peole are saying about... 10-15 seconds a fight. Your going to get hit what... 3 times max with out ninja?

Thats not that much damage to be taking. If theres a War/Sam, or Sam/War, and a Pld. They can share provoking, and have it so that no one but they take damage. But if done correclty, they should take very little damage at all.

15 seconds is plenty of time for a Greater Colibri to kill you dead without some way of avoiding its attacks. They have a very fast attack cycle. 3 hits + 1 Pecking Flurry = you're probably dead. And that's assuming you started at full HP (not guaranteed in a fast moving merit party).

Anything tougher than a Colibri can kill you dead even faster (Rushing Drub, any -ga III, etc.).

Even without KOs though, every point of damage you take = MP out of your ONE spellcaster's magic pool (likely a RDM). A good RDM with smart gears and gameplay can keep up indefinitely with a moderate amount of damage, but if you expect one spellcaster to keep up with 3x Haste + keep Bards/Corsairs alive + emergency crowd control + necessary debuffs (i.e. Silence on Mamool Ja spellcasters) and still spare you enough MP to heal hundreds to a thousand+ points of damage every 15 seconds, then you've got a very rude awakening headed your way.

Plus you have to worry about what happens if you get an unexpected link or pop in the middle of the party formation.


Icemage

[Kimani]

Re: Merrit Parties...

I understand that NIN sucks ass to level, and i am so not looking forward to leveling it, but i don't understand. You have it at 34. Thats 3 more levels. I think you should man up, its 3 levels and then you can leave it and pretend those horrid 37 levels never happened. In the end, you have a helpful subjob.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Takelli is suffering some sort of delusion that once a player hits Lv.75, the Greater Colibri will respect that not hit the player if the party can kill them in about 15 seconds for each.

* * *

Looking at the parser data from one of the best parties I've had on BRD, the average fight lasts about 32.5 second (WAR/NIN x2, DRK/NIN, BRD/NIN, COR/WHM, RDM/WHM). A more recent party which earned less exp/hour (no COR) had fights averaging 31.7 seconds in length (NIN/WAR, WAR/SAM, DRG/SAM, DNC/NIN, BRD/NIN, WHM/SCH).

Pretty darn sure never had a party with anywhere close to ~15 second average fight time. I can believe a ~28 sec, and maybe even a ~24 sec average, if the party has extraordinary DDs.

But, ~15 second? Until someone have a parse result with that, I'll call it BS.

* * *

How safe you are isn't really determined by how fast you can kill--the odds are against a party that at the start of the fight, all DDs will always have TP to smack the critter to 0 HP in a blink of an eye. Melees will have to spend time to build TP, and give the monsters TP and time to do their WS.

Took about four years for people to catch on how fast you get exp is NOT about how much experience points per kill, but rather about earning experience points per hour. Now, it's about time people get through their heads that when it comes to sustained partying, the better way to look at recovery is to focus on:

1. How much damage/minute the party is taking.
2. Would anyone be taking huge amount of damage in a very short amount of time that he would be KO'ed (or at great risk of being KO'ed)?

#1 should be obvious to people with working brains; as for #2, all I can say is I've seen melee with Berserk up eating Pecking Flurry -> hit -> hit -> Pecking Flurry enough times to give up pickup merit parties on RDM.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Merrit Parties...

If that Cor had subbed Nin/Rng/War your exp gain would have been even better. Cor/Whm has no place in merit parties.

[Evion]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Grizzle: In a merit pt not all /NIN in a effort to to kill faster, a little more healing might be needed. (Although, apparently not the case in his example above). My best merit PT was at the mamool ja camp with the perfect setup, and I got to go DRK/SAM. I cracked two emperor bands and almost got 30/k the first hour. Me and the SAM/WAR were doing nearly two sc on each mob.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Grizzle: In a merit pt not all /NIN in a effort to to kill faster, a little more healing might be needed. (Although, apparently not the case in his example above). My best merit PT was at the mamool ja camp with the perfect setup, and I got to go DRK/SAM. I cracked two emperor bands and almost got 30/k the first hour. Me and the SAM/WAR were doing nearly two sc on each mob.

Other than Brd most members of my merit parties never sub nin, stuff dies too fast to worry about heavy healing. Cor/Whm brings nothing to a merit party. They can't main heal, and if your healer is struggling with their MP then you have other issues. If anything, Cor/Whm is detrimental to your exp gain. While they stand around with a Light Staff on their back waiting to toss out one or two heals before exhausting their MP a real Cor is meleeing/shooting for TP and smashing out Slug Shots to make the mobs die faster.

[Nuriko]

Re: Merrit Parties...

You were /SAM and likely making effective use of Seigan/3rd Eye. I think Takelli sees the mob dying fast as a reason why you don't need damage mitigation ... but add up taking maybe 3 hits at 150 damage per, every minute, you're looking at at least a Cure IV every minute or a Cure V every two (IF you can afford to wait that long). Honestly, this is lowballing things badly: assuming all melee are following your example and you're not just riding on their coattails for mitigation, you can expect 7-8 hits, possibly more damage, and various TP moves. Even WITH only 3 hits, you're looking at an extra 80-odd MP per minute, less rest, and broken rest. In a PT that's not taking too much damage, I can (as WHM) cast a Regen somewhere within the haste cycle to deal with damage, but that's not nearly enough to handle this.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Merrit Parties...

The mobs do die fast but Pecking Flurry sucks balls for everyone involved. Usually, that's one set of hits on a player, and it's not always the same player getting it, so I can toss them a Cure III, then a Regen, and let them just live off that for a while. After it Flurries someone else, I do the same thing. And once everyone's taken a few hits, a nice Curaga cleans it back up for me.

I think a lot of healers try too hard to cure every little point of damage the DDs take, and that's never really necessary. Gonna say that again. I think a lot of healers try too hard to cure every little point of damage the DDs take, and that's never really necessary. Some RDMs are terrified to let someone have any HP missing, and that's how they run out of MP. I never overcure in merit. What's the point? You're wasting MP and causing needless downtime. If anything, I cure conservatively. I don't touch Cure IV except after Convert because if I pull hate and get hit I have to worry about curing myself up in time for my next Convert, and I don't bother with SS in meripo because ... why? 29 MP every 5 minutes to never even need it ... I've never died in a merit party. Colibri don't hit that hard, except when you get Pecking Flurry. I also idle in some DMG reduction pieces (which every mage should have! A good idle set, or at least some idle set consisting of at the very least an Earth staff) and MP Refresh pieces. I have AF2 hat and I have Dalmatica but I will sit right here and say that it makes no difference in my merit playstyle. It only helped me have to rest perhaps a few ticks less. That's it.

Overcuring though is probably the biggest problem people have in merit. If one DD is at yellow, and the other two (or 3, if you've only got one support job in the party) are barely even hit, don't waste a Curaga. It's 60 MP. Cure III for the single DD is 46. Don't waste that 14 MP. It doesn't seem like much but it adds up if you keep using your MP wastefully. Now if you've got a few players missing 200 HP each, that Curaga is going to do you some good. And I'm a big believer in Regen. And curing over Regen seems stupid (and it annoys me when RDMs cure someone to full over my Regen III - STOP IT!) but if someone gets hit really hard and they have Regen up, if you Cure II or III them and as long as they're still not full, Regen will keep ticking. It's the best reason for me to use Yarnball, it helps me remember who has Regen on them.

It honestly comes down to MP management. Even when people take some big damage, which does happen, (Pecking Flurry really does suck!) I cure them up and we move on. But typically healers panic and drop two big Cure IVs on someone, which also puts them pretty highly on the hate list. Cure conservatively. Know how much your cures will do and cure accordingly. This is all part of MP management, and it's something everyone needs to learn. The biggest fear people have about running out of MP in single healer parties is that they don't realize that you don't have to keep everyone at 100% full health and you don't have to drop a Cure IV after every hit. And you really don't. Keep everyone above like 85-90% and you're good for the whole merit party, and you'll have plenty of MP. If you have a ton of MP left and your Convert is ready, spend it all, top everyone off, then fire off that JA.

It's not hard, people just make it hard because they're terrified that keeping someone at 95% will mean that they'll die in two hits. With DDs that have well over 1300 HP, that's going to be pretty damn uncommon.

[Nuriko]

Re: Merrit Parties...

True enough, but it's really not the issue here. You're talking about PTs where a fair number of the hits are blinked away, I'm sure. What I was talking about is everybody following the OP's lead, and the OP doesn't want to touch /NIN, it seems. Granted that fast kills are good, but people would be taking more damage than you could sustainably cure...

[Takelli]

Re: Merrit Parties...

A Lot of people here think that the only monster to merit off is Colibri. There are other monsters besides those, that probbly don't hit as hard, and don't have pecking Flurry. They might have a higher def, but that can be handled by a DiaII, or a higher Attack. BioIII that shit. But everyone is saying Colibri, Colibri, Colibri. There are PLENTY of other monsters that can work just as fine if they have teh right Enfeebles on them. Everyone here has mentioned only Colibri. No one has yet to mention anothe monster that can work just as well, or almost as well as Colibri.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Merrit Parties...

True enough, but it's really not the issue here. You're talking about PTs where a fair number of the hits are blinked away, I'm sure. What I was talking about is everybody following the OP's lead, and the OP doesn't want to touch /NIN, it seems. Granted that fast kills are good, but people would be taking more damage than you could sustainably cure...

That's the thing. I'm not. I don't do the /NIN merit thing anymore, I haven't for quite some time. People are terrified to heal damage and run out of MP, when they don't even realize that they don't have to full heal everyone every single time they get hit.

[Malacite]

Re: Merrit Parties...

But, ~15 second? Until someone have a parse result with that, I'll call it BS.

3 SAM using Polearm spamming 2k+ Penta Thrusts = dead bird in 2-10 seconds. I don't have FRAPs or I'd show you some of the insanity I've seen from the really pimped out SAM on Seraph.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Merrit Parties...

A Lot of people here think that the only monster to merit off is Colibri. There are other monsters besides those, that probbly don't hit as hard, and don't have pecking Flurry. They might have a higher def, but that can be handled by a DiaII, or a higher Attack. BioIII that shit. But everyone is saying Colibri, Colibri, Colibri. There are PLENTY of other monsters that can work just as fine if they have teh right Enfeebles on them. Everyone here has mentioned only Colibri. No one has yet to mention anothe monster that can work just as well, or almost as well as Colibri.

Okay, name me an alternative merit camp where you'll obtain 30-35k hour.