solo'd/duo'd/small group'd some big guys this weekend

[bonovoxpsu]

hey guys - killed a few big monsters this weekend - thought you would like to hear.

ok, i was skillup'ing in boyahada tree on saturday. grouped with a lvl 73 paladin and a lvl 70-something ranger.

all is going well, when we see a water ele. lets kill it, why not. first thing i do is toss silence - RESISTED.

anyway, with it spamming waterga3 and water4's, we didn't last long. i couldn't silence it to save my life. heads up there.

eh hem. on to the successfuls.

was with two lvl 62 bsts, still skilling up. aquarius pops. begin the marathon!

first i was low on mp to begin with. as rdm/nin at 70, gravity resists were non existant. i basically dot'd and ran around gravitying and utsusemi'ing. right now i'm 71, at 70, he was REALLY close to being soloable. i should have tried to bind him, as that would be very important for convert - if bind can stick, i can solo that bad boy. duoing at 70 would definitely be doable. especially with a paladin for provoke. with the bsts, it was on me no matter what they did.

hellion. our bst 2hour'd a torama and that helped a lot. but his acc is pretty bad and he missed me a lot. fight was relatively easy - we had lvl 67ish drg, lvl 67ish pld, me (71/25 rdm/nin), and lvl 62ish bst. got a rare/ex scythe for the bst.

ose. this was nasty. he has en-para basically. IT SUCKS. here's how we killed:

at first we took him on like any normal mob. bad idea. he para'd/silenced the pld (bad news) constantly. so, we went this route:

sleep2. rest. rest. during the resting, paladin provokes. drg just hangs out. bst is on paralyna and silena. utsusemi and stoneskin are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT. as rdm/nin, i'm drawing huge agro. before it wakes, stand up, stone3, stone2, utsusemi, stone3, sleep2. rebuff. rest. rest.

repeat that some 20-30 times. its a terrifying battle. basicaly because the paladin has no chance at getting him off me. sleep never resists at 71. some half resists (once or twice). you NEED a whm or whm subbed job for this. the pld helped too, but really, except for the extra healing, he's not needed. i converted twice during this battle. it took us a good 25-30 minutes. slow and steady.

a note to all you fledgling rdms (1-65):

post 70, rdm gets sooooo powerful. apple pie is spot on - if you thought you were getting powerful 50-65ish, you ain't seen nothing. right now, i just need a little help with some mobs. basically, someone to get status affects or someone to hold agro off me. that's it. so that's what i killed.

*note - we got no drops - no assault jerkin and no cloth ; ;

[sekaran]

You can solo Aquarius at 71 with Fire III and Gravity, it's a close fight, but if you don't get resisted, it's doable.

[bonovoxpsu]

considering that its prime skillup real estate, that is quite tempting.

at 71, how's the resist rate on grav? this seems to be the killer issue - when solo'ing aquarius, ONE resist might mean death (at my lvl).

and sekaran, what are you subbing - /blm or /nin? i have found utsusemi to be LIFE SAVING. like do or die life saving. being taru, i have loads of mp, enough that a pure melee sub doesn't hurt too much...

also, does bind stick on him? could be very helpful.

[sekaran]

I never tried to bind him, I've heard it doesn't work but I haven't tested it. I do know that Shadowbind works though. I know you can't Sleep him either.

I usually go as RDM/BLM. I can see where having Utsusemi would help though since it's always a sure shadow instead of the rather unreliable blink. I usually Stoneskin/Blink, Gravity, nuke, run away, nuke again, reapply Gravity as it wears. Also I try to toss in a few dots so he doesn't regen HP if he ever goes yellow.

I haven't had Gravity become resisted while fighting Aquarius since I hit lv70.. but you will notice it not lasting as long as it first did after the 5th Gravity or so. The tough thing at lv71 is that you only really have 2 nukes to use, Fire III and Aero III, and since Aquarius is a crab, Fire III can be resisted easily.

The way I fight him now, because there are a ton of people who will steal him while you are fighting is Gravity, Chainspell, Stoneskin, Blink, Thunder III over and over while kiting it, Convert, Cure, Thunder III until Chainspell runs out, then just kite and nuke to finish it off.

[Gladesinger]

Bind is possible, but not reliable enough to be more than a stop gap solution to a gravity gone bad.

You can es + bind if you want to be certain of it sticking, doesnt change it being stop gap though.

[Raineer]

Kinda odd Aquarius experience... I fought him in a 65 pt long ago (I was level 61 with capped skills and Wind Staff..) Fight took about 25 minutes but nothing went all too wrong. I stuck gravity something like 12/14 times. No drop, but fun.. Very very easy, and I personally did most of the damage to hold hate until he got to around 5% and then we straight up popped him with SATA's and the whole business.

Contrast that with the experience I had trying to solo him at 67 (yes, I know...but that's what I have Escape for)... I got him about 10% down, but Gravity just flat stopped sticking after 3 casts.

I guess it's possible that the first was on Windsday and the second on Iceday or something like that. Just strange for the first fight (in party) I had seriously kited him for like 20 minutes, it just seemed easier for me to do most of the kiting since he can't outrun a person anyway. Then, I try to solo him (mostly screwing around I guess), and it sticks for about 30 seconds max, and just refuses to stick after awhile.

Now, I'm 69 and have Auster's Staff... I'm not necessarily intending to go solo him, but I'm thinking of maybe a kite-duo/trio or whatever. I'm not really interested in a quick kill, but at capped Enfeeble/+34INT/Auster's Staff I'm hoping I will be able to pretty much keep him grounded... Any opinions?

[Apple Pie]

If you duo him with BST or THF74+/NIN37, you can do it at LV69 without any problem.

Today, I helped two BSTs in my LS to kill him. Basically I didn't do any damage but cast some enfeebling spells. However, I was always aggroed

As a result, I had to cast Gravity to save my life. Although there were some half-resists (= half duration) for Gravity, I was able to run away from him very easily until I was ready to recast it. He (and crabs in general) didn't seem to run faster than we. If there is enough distance, I think we can keep running without being hit.

I didn't try Bind since it wasn't on my macro pallete at that time

By the way, I had chance to solo Phantom Worm today.
http://www5.sppd.ne.jp/grendal/FF11/phantom.wmv

There's an argument about the possibility of soloing it over my favorite JPN RDM forum and I felt like doing that by myself. Anyway, I think it's not good of us to solo it if we want to make some money because it takes more than 10 minutes... If Kuftal Diggers around are linked, we may be killed. Duoing with NIN or RNG is much better.

[Gman]

I saw a RDM and BLM duo Phantom Worm while exp'ing on the raptors there once. Actually, they camped if for a couple hours and killed it several times. Interesting that they also attempted to kill Yowie when it popped. Dont think they were too successful. I know they had it bound and/or slept several times while trying to recover some MP. Not sure if they actually beat it or not.

Pretty sure they were both level 75 (BLM was for sure)

[GASGUL]

ive done ose with me and a rng,

i drag this poor guy along and give up the claim on the whisker, i just want the jerkin,

but i will try to solo ose when i ding my nin to 37,
it seems the "enparalyze" as bono puts it, can be worked with using our bar-bliz/para,

i wont lead anyone astray, the fight is touch and go, full debuffs and full buffs are a must,
+eva is definately the way to go,
darkstaff also, you need to play ose like a steelshell,

i will say though ose is like a rag doll for debuffs, nearly everything will stick to him,

anyway, 7 lvls on nin to go, ill see if i can record it

[sekaran]

Ose is pretty easy imo.. just nuke, sleep, reapply utsusemi, nuke, sleep, reapply utsusemi, and repeat until dead.. Atleast thats how I fought it

[Sadeira]

i like duoing ose with a brd. the brd sleeps help a lot and so does the spare paralyna on the off chance you get paralyzed. ose's paralyze totally owns you. also, i totally recommend ninja sub for ose. blink is cool and all but isn't 100% with the its shadows. gravity and sleep works very well. i usually use sleep after a nuke and then sleep 2 if i need to rebuff or rest. sleep 2 for me lasts long enough for me to get 3 resting ticks in before it wakes up.

[Sepukku]

Good jop Grendal-san on the Phantom Worm, I never knew he was solo-able by a non-RNG. I was wondering if a RDM/BLM can solo Windurst M6-2 at level 75. Its 4 Yagudo NMs, all level 64. It sounds like a cool challenge. By the way, there is no level cap for that fight. No time limit to the best of my rememberance...but my PT didnt survive too long to begin with lol.

[Apple Pie]

There's even a better movie here.
http://mediacat.phbb.ne.jp/mcat/BIma...=1&cnt=5687151

He's already soloed it many times and he knew how to. He just didn't know how to record a movie Anyway, after I posted my movie on JPN RDM forum, I told him to use Fraps and he created a good one.

Look at his gears - Enhancing Sword + Joyeuse for weapons, Scorpion Harness and Duelist's Gloves. Because he spent all his merit points for magic on enhancing magic skills, his skill was 256 + 15 (Warlock's Tights) + 15 (Duelist's Gloves) + 7 (Enhancing Torque) + 8 (Merit Points) = 301 rusulting in his Enaero doing 20 (the ones from his Enhancing Sword doing 25) on average. This is the highest damage possible.

Note: 301 / 20 + 5 = 20.05

He might be a little lucky because he wasn't hit by Gastric Bomb (= attack 40% down) until the last minute but whatever. He killed it in 10 minutes, 8 minutes shorter than I did. I feel like going out with XP PT for merit points now

EDIT: Movie URL corrected