[Akashimo]

yay for kirin with 800 back to back whirlwind 2 shotting me while straight tanking. ffs every time we try.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Akashimo

yay for kirin with 800 back to back whirlwind 2 shotting me while straight tanking. ffs every time we try.

Baraera?

Stonega is IV slow enough that a fast WHM or RDM can put up Barstonra on demand. I've rarely seen anyone die to Heat Breath outright, so should be enough time for Cure V

Then again, I don't remember 800 damage Great Whirlwind to PLD as the norm, either... Over the last year, though, we did change from Barstonra to Baraera as the primary bar- spell.

[Callisto]

Originally Posted by Akashimo

yay for kirin with 800 back to back whirlwind 2 shotting me while straight tanking. ffs every time we try.

For Kirin I usually use a different macro set than my normal tanking one(on RDM, I generally do the holding during minis then straight tank as long as I can, I haven't tried it on PLD yet) that has me idling in all my magic reduction/MDB gear, then swapping all my FC/Haste into Utsusemi casts. Whirlwind/Sandstorm still hit somewhat hard but with Shell V and my normal reduction set I'm always taking at least 50% less damage with no resists, it goes a long way. I would likely do the same thing on PLD were I to use that to tank him.

Heat Breath caps at 500someodd damage and you can easily step back a bit to take less damage/get the 'too far' proc; and the physical moves shouldn't be hitting you through shadows, so really there's no real benefit to not idling in the magic reduction since that's the only type of real damage you'll be taking in that particular fight.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Callisto

Heat Breath caps at 500someodd damage and you can easily step back a bit to take less damage/get the 'too far' proc; and the physical moves shouldn't be hitting you through shadows, so really there's no real benefit to not idling in the magic reduction since that's the only type of real damage you'll be taking in that particular fight.

He said "straight tanking", though, so no running away from TP moves.

Between Kirin's melee (which can't be slowed) and constant TP moves (plus alliance lag), PLDs will get hit by Great Whirlwind and melee strikes, even on /NIN. Good thing our Iron Ram set has MDB and decent defense.

* * *

I can't afford this: Avalon Breastplate

/sigh

I'm hoping I get to kite/tank Kirin soon for the first time, too.

[Armando]

Sorry to cut in but I don't think stepping back reduces cone damage. At least, it won't work against Wing Cutter, which DOES get its damage reduced from standing at angles. It's a bit harder for me to tell against Manticores since breath damage varies with HP, but I didn't feel like being further back reduced the damage (not that it mattered since I simply run out of its range when soloing.) Any attempts to run around during the move have failed as well; even if I was already running in circles before the move even began, Wing Cutter would still hit dead center.

Carry on.

[Aksannyi]

People still kite Kirin? lol <3 I haven't done a kited fight in like two years, and I like it better that way. Fighting Kirin the long way is exhausting to me. Run back and forth, SHIT SHIT CURE 5, run some more, Haste, just gets tiring. With most HNM fights I don't have to run in circles. I get tired of kiting KV easily too, though usually that's not a very long kite.

[Callisto]

Originally Posted by Aksannyi

People still kite Kirin? lol <3 I haven't done a kited fight in like two years, and I like it better that way. Fighting Kirin the long way is exhausting to me. Run back and forth, SHIT SHIT CURE 5, run some more, Haste, just gets tiring. With most HNM fights I don't have to run in circles. I get tired of kiting KV easily too, though usually that's not a very long kite.

We usually are only doing it with about 14-16~, so yeah we do it the safe way(I do recall screenshots a year or so back of a certain Hades LS*ahem* laying fully wiped on the ground @ Kirin with 17 Relics in attendance due to a botched zerg ). And the kiter(me) is a fully-geared RDM/NIN, at most I have to get tagged with an Erase once or twice per fight if he gets me with Sleepga > Tail Crush, but otherwise I'm fully self-sufficient and it's extremely easy. It also allows me time to build up large amounts of hate, so that when the minis are down the DDs can go straight to work without worrying about getting their heads kicked in.

And @ Armando, I'm not sure myself, I recall breath damage being somewhat distance based for BLUs, but I never looked at it fully, but I do know that when I'm kiting Kirin the few he does get off aren't generally point-blank and they don't do the full 550~(easy to tell as they don't break my 350 Stoneskin) though it's possible that may just be resists. At any rate the move itself has a fairly long windup, allowing you to many times get out of range before it fires and back into his melee range before he wanders too far away from a swinging melee who's about to WS.

---------- Post added at 03:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 PM ----------

Originally Posted by IfritnoItazura

He said "straight tanking", though, so no running away from TP moves.

Between Kirin's melee (which can't be slowed) and constant TP moves (plus alliance lag), PLDs will get hit by Great Whirlwind and melee strikes, even on /NIN. Good thing our Iron Ram set has MDB and decent defense.

* * *

I can't afford this: Avalon Breastplate

/sigh

I'm hoping I get to kite/tank Kirin soon for the first time, too.

I consider 'straight-tanking' to be holding it as still as you can so people can hit it, as I note above stepping out of Heat Breath range can many times be done without moving Kirin's actual position more than a step or two. And you can actually slow Kirin, it's just stupidly freaking hard, I think I've landed it once. Ever.(go fig I saw a SMN/WHM hit a wrong macro and also land it once, but w/e).

[Aksannyi]

Originally Posted by Callisto

I do recall screenshots a year or so back of a certain Hades LS*ahem* laying fully wiped on the ground @ Kirin with 17 Relics in attendance due to a botched zerg

I wasn't there. From what I heard, the new WHMs were at fault, the melees took a small amount of AoE damage, they didn't cure them before the AF went off, and the rest was history. So they were kicked. Kirin can be a tit sometimes. Wipes happen, especially when he's like "OHI TIER 4 GA THEN ASTRAL FLOW LOLZ."

Why you gotta bust balls anyway? Gawd.

I personally just hate kiting. Maybe it's just me. Kited Kirins used to take fucking forever when I was in my first sky linkshell. I hated that shit with a passion.

[Callisto]

Yeah I remember in my first Sky shell when we did a Kirin with little-to-no real DDs, only BLMs, the day after they added the elemental resistance buildup patch and noone knew exactly how it worked. They just kept spamming away with medium Aero spells, built his resistance up to high hell, then we couldn't do any quantifiable damage to it for over an hour before we figured out to let it chill for awhile and another LS lent us some DDs.

Over all it was a 3-hour~ fight, around the 1:45 mark Kirin ran out of MP, his AF timer reset and he hit us with a 2nd one near the end, it was the worst thing I think I've ever experienced outside of maybe a few overly-feist JoFaiths.

And wasn't trying to take shots, just kidding b/c of all the times I see people like "HOLY CRAP YOU DON'T JUST ZERG KIRIN??" as if it's an easy, 100% auto-win method that requires no thought/organization/time to setup and no specific set of jobs/number of people.

Edit: Incidentally I think we have Kirin fights down to about 35-45 minutes assuming AF isn't too nasty and he isn't a total dick when I do try to hold him still and let the DDs go off on him. Considering all the time/preparation that goes into setting up a zerg and the fact that you can only do that once barring some good luck with Wild Card, really it doesn't take that much longer. The 15 minute respawn on the ??? is the brutal part.

[Aksannyi]

We bring like 15 COR mules up to sky with us, along with telling our buyers to come COR for resets too. And really only need the BRDs to two hour, the melees can just hit the fucking thing as long as they have 3 songs on. We only use DRK zerg when we have a bunch of DRKs on, which lately hasn't been the case. A lot of linkshells would be surprised that you don't need Kclub DRKs to zerg stuff. We use Mkris and Ridill DRKs, sure, but for stuff like KV you really only need like 2 DRKs, the rest can just be random melees. At this point I've even been known to throw on my melee gear and Hexa some shit up, because it's fun and it's not really hurting anything.

We don't really do sky that much. Mostly it's just if we get buyers. Which is fine with me, I fucking hate sky. A lot.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Aksannyi

People still kite Kirin? lol <3 I haven't done a kited fight in like two years, and I like it better that way.

Well, it's great if your LS has the people and the jobs for a zerg Kirin fight. Not every LS in Kirin's room is a HNM LS, however.

If not quite zerg ready, can kite, take down the Shijin summons, then melee Kirin. At least, until Astral Flow. After that, may need to go back on kiting until enough people recover.

I've seen a few LS's fully kite the entire fight in the past year or so. Heck, one LS even had PLD/WARs tanking the Shijin. Sucessfully--with lots of WHMs and others cure dumping. ("Huh? Provoke? Did one of their WARs use that? The PLDs are still alive--oh, the PLDs are using Provoke. Wow...")

The one completely zerg'ed fight I saw wasn't pretty; people were dropping dead left and right. That group won, but it seemed a bit dumb to be throwing bodies at it like that and cutting it so close.

[Aksannyi]

Was a joke people! Stop taking me so literally!

[Takelli]

Blu/Nins in Ballista...

I started up Ballista to day, and I play as a Sam/Dnc at 75. at first, I played iw as my whm (lvl 30 cap), so I was able to silence the blu, but he seemed to have a never ending supply of echo drops. All that the silence did, was just be a nusance to him, but it did help me get a few kills.

But when the cap go raised to 75, I had to go to my Sam/Dnc. Now... I'm going through, trying to kill the one blu, and I can not kill him. Not can I kill the ranger. I was able to kill teh Drk once (1/5), and the Bst about 4 times (4/5), but the Blu, and the Rng, where impossbile to kill.

Blus, and Rngs are over powered in ballista IMO. But this was just practice, but wow... How much they rapped my sam. Way to strong lol.

But I will try as Sam/Sch (Dark Arts+ Drain/Aspir/Sleep/Dispal, and Light Arts + Cure III). With sublimation, and Cure III, and drains, I shouldn't have any issues with mp, nor Hp, (I was testing the Drain/Aspir on highr level mobs, and it worked great which I was surprised).

But enough about that...

Ballista Vs a Blu or Rng... Way too strong IMO, but its the game design, and I just gotta find a way around it lol.

[Callisto]

BLU is most definitely unbalanced in PvP, but really PvP is such a small/relatively unutilized part of the game that I wouldn't expect to see any further changes to it. If you really care about winning in Ballista, unfortunately the secret is to level a job that is equally unbalanced(read: RDM).

[Firewind]

Mages, BLUs and ranged attackers are overpowered in PvP in general. To be honest it's only really PLDs that stand much of a chance against them. It sucks though I must admit, taking down SAMs, DRGs and DRKs as a "puny" little WHM/BLM is very satisfying and a lot of fun, especially in uncapped. It might have something to do with Holy doing insane amounts of damage in PvP especially when coupled with MAB or bind sticking often while you hit someone with the full plethora of enfeebs but it's very satisfying especially when people think WHMs are completely helpless in PvP.

Though if you want to be a jerk in Ballista you'll go Mage/BLM or BLM/RDM and Bind+DoT someone to death.