The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

[Ziero]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

And may I ask, WHAT THE HELL were they doing killing other mobs when everyone's fighting to win the battle, isn't that kind of parasitic?

I only ever saw melee killing things outside of Campaign mobs and only when there were no mobs attacking. I always assumed it was a good way to build TP. I know that's why I killed stray mobs before a fight.

[Balfree]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

Meh, mobs in CBs are easy to hit... this coming from a 70BST with hardly any acc gear other than haubergeon... :p

[Ziero]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

Never hurts to start off with a free WS

...unless you pull hate and die

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

If you're both getting the majority of your exp from buffs, then you're doing it wrong. Meleeing, tanking, healing and all those other things you have to actually be near the fight to do will take at least 15 minutes to cap out. Especially for Plds and Rdms. If you're doing damage, taking damage, throwing out cures and enfeebles and all that stuff, exp from buff spells will be a drop in the bucket compared to all the other exp you'll gain in actual combat.

If the goal is to hit the cap on every possible category, then maybe you need at least 15 minutes. However, you don't always have the opportunity to cap out everything. There's only so many actions you can take in a minute, and you have to choose.

I think you're looking at the approach to campaign exp wrong. It isn't about trying to hit a cap on a category. It's about sustaining your per-minute cap based on your medal. At the current highest medal, the limit is 90 exp per minute. If I'm playing BLM, and it takes 20 minutes to cap out healing, enfeebling, buffing others and buffing myself for a total of 1250 exp, I missed out on a potential 550 exp. If try to bolster those number with melee, I may take even longer to hit the caps on magic related actions, since I won't have the time to rest for MP.

[Celeal]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

For /DNC, it is good to build some TP from weak mobs before the beast-men attacks, assuming the player arrives the battlefield early.

For some zones that have aggro-able mobs wander near the battlefield, I usually clear those out if I arrive early.

/side-track-a-little:

Have anyone fight the Beast-men siege weapons yet? Last night I finally saw one attacking Pass. field [S] (sorry, forgot how to spell that name). The group of Quadav Shieldwarrior rush in and build/summon this siege weapon in front of fortification. It is a huge tank that fires cannon ball at the fortification, and unload raptors (with wings) one at a time. While we (the players) tried to take down the siege weapon, Quadav Shieldwarrior would rush in to repair it.

Forgot to take any screen-shot T_T

Hopefully this coming campaign adjustment increase the appearance of siege weapons too.

[Skoal]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

I see the orc siege weapons every now and then. They suck. I try to kill the mobs that summon them but we are usually too slow.

[Balfree]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

How do they summon the siege weapons? Cant it be stunned somehow?

[Ziero]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

If the goal is to hit the cap on every possible category, then maybe you need at least 15 minutes. However, you don't always have the opportunity to cap out everything. There's only so many actions you can take in a minute, and you have to choose.

I think you're looking at the approach to campaign exp wrong. It isn't about trying to hit a cap on a category. It's about sustaining your per-minute cap based on your medal. At the current highest medal, the limit is 90 exp per minute. If I'm playing BLM, and it takes 20 minutes to cap out healing, enfeebling, buffing others and buffing myself for a total of 1250 exp, I missed out on a potential 550 exp. If try to bolster those number with melee, I may take even longer to hit the caps on magic related actions, since I won't have the time to rest for MP.

To be honest, I never campaigned to "maximize exp gained" myself, but no matter how you cut it, exp gained from buffs is minimal at best. And if you can't get a decent amount of EXP from other things and need to constantly change tags every few minutes to gain more EXP from buffs then something is definately wrong. 15 minutes is a LOT of time to do a lot of things before EXP caps. While buffs and cures may be easy to cap in less then 15, other things won't be and will still give more EXP total. So for a normal player, doing stuff for 15 minutes wouldn't be that detrimental, but for brd-bots it would break them.

But let me ask this, how long does it take you to refresh tags to keep at maximum exp gained?

Have anyone fight the Beast-men siege weapons yet? Last night I finally saw one attacking Pass. field [S] (sorry, forgot how to spell that name). The group of Quadav Shieldwarrior rush in and build/summon this siege weapon in front of fortification. It is a huge tank that fires cannon ball at the fortification, and unload raptors (with wings) one at a time. While we (the players) tried to take down the siege weapon, Quadav Shieldwarrior would rush in to repair it.

Forgot to take any screen-shot T_T

Hopefully this coming campaign adjustment increase the appearance of siege weapons too.

Siege weapons only appear when Beastmen are on the offensive and have a high technology rating. however since Cerby hasn't help many zones outside of the cities for, well, months, I have yet to see one myself. But once people take over zones again, we should see more.

However, what I personally want to know is when the hell will the PCs be able to use those damn Cannons and Ballistas that are all over the place. Hell, Bastok is known for it's proficiancy in fire arms, we even have a gun tower in Grauberg. Why the hell can't we use them! It's bad enough the defensive layout in Gustaberg is down right retarded, the least we could get is some NPC artillery.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

But let me ask this, how long does it take you to refresh tags to keep at maximum exp gained?

As a 75 BST, I can refresh every 15 minutes and get max exp based on my per minute cap. If I'm lucky, I might be able to go 18 to 20 minutes, but that's pushing it. Courier Carrie can soak up a lot of damage for me at least once every 5 minutes, which helps quite a bit.

As 70 NIN with WHM sub, I need to refresh every 12 minutes. I recently got DNC up to 30+, so I might be able to lengthen that a bit by letting the mob hit me rather than trying to blink every attack for dear life.

As 75 BLM with WHM sub, I need to refresh every 10 minutes. I very rarely get more than 1000 exp on one set of tags. And that's with me casting Frost/Rasp/Choke on a regular basis. I try to cast more useful enfeebles, but I often run into cases where someone else has already cast those debuffs, and I simply get no effect. Healing isn't terribly efficient, given that I can only cast Cure III. Doing the math, it turns out to yield about as much exp-per-MP as my Tier IV nukes though.

[Telera]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

I can see wanting to do something to quell the problem with the bots (though that hasn't stopped me from doing Campaign upon my return to the world of Vana'diel) but I do hope they don't nerf it so hard that my battlefield medic routine ends up utterly destroyed.

Only Summoner 63 (dinged today thanks to Campaign :D) so I can't do that much damage to those idiot mobs, though I do toss a Double Slap or Meteorite at them as I can. Mostly I prefer to keep people Haste-d/Stoneskin-d/Random Fenny Buffed so that they can do *their* jobs better, and I keep them alive or raised when that fails.

If it weren't for being able to solo (albeit slowly) due to Campaign (bombs and I don't get along) I don't think I would've bothered to come back at all, so I do so dearly hope they don't go a bit overboard.

[Vyuru]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

Mostly I prefer to keep people Haste-d/Stoneskin-d/Random Fenny Buffed so that they can do *their* jobs better, and I keep them alive or raised when that fails.

Wooo! Someone who doesn't toss out Aerial Armor vs ninja mobs! FYI, Spring Water is really awesome if you're in the middle of a bunch of people.

On topic, all I really want for SE to do is to reduce the mobs defense and evasion a tad, and maybe give them a proportional boost in hp to compensate. This should be an activity that say a level 50 could do, yet from what I hear they have a hard time hitting the mobs.

Tweaking the healing exp cap might be nice as well, because then alot of jobs that are perhaps under lvl 50 could sub /whm or something and help heal for semi decent exp.

[Nuriko]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

For WHM75, it's really easy to cap out healing XP ... I routinely waste (from an XP standpoint) a LOT of MP tossing cures once I'm capped. Oh well, it keeps others alive...

And yes, I'm the one who goes as WHM/THF and gets all Spirit Taker-happy on most mobs.

[Ziero]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

As a 75 BST, I can refresh every 15 minutes and get max exp based on my per minute cap. If I'm lucky, I might be able to go 18 to 20 minutes, but that's pushing it. Courier Carrie can soak up a lot of damage for me at least once every 5 minutes, which helps quite a bit.

As 70 NIN with WHM sub, I need to refresh every 12 minutes. I recently got DNC up to 30+, so I might be able to lengthen that a bit by letting the mob hit me rather than trying to blink every attack for dear life.

As 75 BLM with WHM sub, I need to refresh every 10 minutes. I very rarely get more than 1000 exp on one set of tags. And that's with me casting Frost/Rasp/Choke on a regular basis. I try to cast more useful enfeebles, but I often run into cases where someone else has already cast those debuffs, and I simply get no effect. Healing isn't terribly efficient, given that I can only cast Cure III. Doing the math, it turns out to yield about as much exp-per-MP as my Tier IV nukes though.

So then if the tag refresh rate was a maximum of 10 minutes, by your own admission, it wouldn't have any negative affect on you. Hell it could even be 5 minutes and would still be enough to kill botters. Personally though, I'd prefer it to be 10-15 with magic related caps raised a bit. There's no reason magic dmg cap exp should be less then melee dmg cap exp.

Only Summoner 63 (dinged today thanks to Campaign :D) so I can't do that much damage to those idiot mobs, though I do toss a Double Slap or Meteorite at them as I can. Mostly I prefer to keep people Haste-d/Stoneskin-d/Random Fenny Buffed so that they can do *their* jobs better, and I keep them alive or raised when that fails.

I you ; ;

On topic, all I really want for SE to do is to reduce the mobs defense and evasion a tad, and maybe give them a proportional boost in hp to compensate. This should be an activity that say a level 50 could do, yet from what I hear they have a hard time hitting the mobs.

Tweaking the healing exp cap might be nice as well, because then alot of jobs that are perhaps under lvl 50 could sub /whm or something and help heal for semi decent exp.

From everything I know, it's possible to participate in this at 50 as these mobs are at most lvl 65ish, but if you do you'll be getting reduced EXP. And it's not due to lack of player input but the numbers themself get reduced when people below a certain level participate in campaign. I don't think SE meant this to be something people lower then 60 would use as their main source of exp as the system itself works against people that low.

But I agree on the healing cap bit, it discourages healing which is something we need heavily in these types of battles.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

So then if the tag refresh rate was a maximum of 10 minutes, by your own admission, it wouldn't have any negative affect on you. Hell it could even be 5 minutes and would still be enough to kill botters.

I'm an advocate of a 5 minute refresh timer, with the timer starting the moment you receive your tags, rather than when you turn it in. I've seen so many posts saying, "Stopping /BRD bots is an easy fix, just make the tag timer 15+ minutes." And I get the feeling that people who post that have only been campaigning on one of the easier jobs when it comes to getting campaign exp. Either that, or they're not paying close attention to their actual exp gain in campaign relative to the amount of time they've spent to get it.

[Telera]

Re: The Campaign Continues! (08/15/2008)

FYI, Spring Water is really awesome if you're in the middle of a bunch of people.

I use that too, though more often than not after Sleepga. Or a mob that spams AoEs, though I've been annihilated trying to get in there to do that more than once. :p Those big Orcish Rollie-carts do not like me. Aerial Armor I pretty much avoid, as its of no use to any nin or /nin, and I can Blink myself.

On a side note: No one seems to love Bastok on Ifrit. It has no territories. I hope the adjustments to flipping zones will help them out. I'm with Sandy, but I find myself hanging in Bastok more. Windy seems to be in a similar situation, while Sandy has 4 zones 'turned'.

Is that just because people are too lazy to walk to the others? I didn't think it was any farther to get to those than it was to get to Sandy.