DD in the Promies

[Sasaki]

I'm about to finally start doing my Promy runs, and I'm looking for one piece of information.

Everytime I've heard people talking about Promies, it's been all SMN, RNG, and WAR/NIN. I've virtually never heard of anything else taken. Will I flat out never get Promies done if I want to do them DRK/NIN? Or is there some reason I'm not getting as to why WAR is a must.

[Jei]

Not that other jobs can't go, but war/nin covers a little more ground than other jobs. They can both tank and DD extremely well.

War/nin main tank with better armors and more HP than nin/war.
Sharing Utsusemi between 2 war/nin is also what people prefer over PLD tank.
Their damage is also decent with 2 centurian sword. At 300 TP with mighty strike, I've seen war/nin fast blade brought down the boss from over 50%HP in a single hit before. (in combination with astral flow, fast blade doing more damage)

[LyonheartLakshmi]

I'm about to finally start doing my Promy runs, and I'm looking for one piece of information.

Everytime I've heard people talking about Promies, it's been all SMN, RNG, and WAR/NIN. I've virtually never heard of anything else taken. Will I flat out never get Promies done if I want to do them DRK/NIN? Or is there some reason I'm not getting as to why WAR is a must.

The main reason for job selection pickiness is the boss NM at the top of the spire. The trip up to the spire is mostly avoiding aggro and fighting Memory Recepticles. DRK/NIN will probably be fine for mop up duty on Strays while taking down Recepticles.

For the boss fight, SMN, RNG and WAR tend to be sought after due to their ability to deal a high amount of damage in a quick burst through their 2 hours. When I did Promyvions, the WARs waited until about 60% health to unload 2 hours, followed up shortly by the RNGs and SMNs. As a DRK, you might be able to fit that role by stacking up all of your big damage buffs since you already have access to Soul Eater at level 30. Great Sword and Scythe weapon skills are still rather weak at that level, so you might want to opt for Great Axe and use Sturmwind.

As a DRK, you'll probably want to have WAR leveled as a subjob. You could opt to wait until you have WAR up to level 30, and do the first 3 Promyvions as WAR/NIN. One advantage of WAR/NIN over DRK/NIN is that you can help tank. Two WAR/NINs for Promyvion is nice, but 3 of them (as opposed to 2 WAR/NINs and one DRK/NIN) is even better.

[Mhurron]

Unless you're relying on a specific 2h ability, any DD is about as good as any other. If you have good people, the promyvions aren't as bad as some people make them out to be.

[Reij]

SMN is extremely overrated vs promy bosses. sure they can do a lot of damage with astral flow but they do it once every minute. RNG, SAM and MNK can outdamage SMN vs promy bosses with their 2 hour. the only advantage SMN has is on the top floor where they can sic carbuncle to aggroing mobs.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

SMN is extremely overrated vs promy bosses. sure they can do a lot of damage with astral flow but they do it once every minute. RNG, SAM and MNK can outdamage SMN vs promy bosses with their 2 hour. the only advantage SMN has is on the top floor where they can sic carbuncle to aggroing mobs.

I thought about MNK 2 hour earlier. The party would have to be organized in the way they use animas to not waste it though. Nothing will kill a MNKs 2 hour like the Prommy boss running all around the arena like a chicken with its head cut off.

[Vyuru]

Well, what they said above covers alot of it. Myself personally, I really liked war because I could grab a good +1 crossbow with some +racc/ratt on it and a mix of bloody/holy/acid bolts.

Holy bolts will either take out a Stray with one hit or leave it with like, 5 hp, so that is nice. I had a hard time getting Acid Bolts to proc on the Boss on the top floor, but that could have been due to bad luck, underleveled Marksmanship, or any number of things since I don't know exactly how the proc rate works on those.

DD jobs that I went into the Promies as were:

Blm/rdm
Drg/thf/rdm/war
War/nin/thf/mnk

My rundown of them:

Blm/rdm, even equiped with all the +int gear I could get, and all the other best gear I could get, I had a ton of resists as a mithra blm, most of my Tier II spells hit for about 50%-75% effectivness. On the other hand, Tier I spells seemed to be in the 75%-100% effectivness category, and yes, all magic skills were capped. End result, not that impressed by my blm performance, might have been just bad luck though since I've seen other blm do better than I did. And while I did research everything I could about blm and spell damage, I am primarily a melee player, there may have been some detrimenting factor to my spells that I was not aware of.

Drg/whatever I liked alot. This is what I won all the Promies as, the bad side was that for whatever reason, every time I went as dragoon I got swarmed by all the Strays at the Memory Receptacles, I swear the damn things have like Drg Enmity +99 built in or something.

Drg/war was nice for eating sushi and poping Berserk for fairly hi consistant damage.

Drg/thf was nice for using Spirit Surge + SA + Jump to land a big Def down on the boss before the other melees let go with their major attacks.

Drg/rdm was useful for healing many times, on the way up, during the fight, and so on. We had a pld tank for all of our fights, Brain Spike normally left her with about 8 hp left, so yeah, Healing Breath was nice there, as well for that one boss that spawns the little mini mobs.

War/mnk/nin/thf I liked to use Gaxes + bolts for damage. I really liked those bolts, so if I had to do it again as warrior I'd probably try war/rng on the boss for Sharpshot.

War/mnk I actually found to be really nice. It was probably just a fluke, but whenever I used Dodge there, my counter and parry and evasion rate shot through the roof. Keep in mind, my parry skill is at like 141 and evasion is capped for a lvl 69 drg, so those were capped at a lvl 30 restriction, and I had on almost full Eisen armor which should account for some of it. But one time I had to tank the boss as war/mnk, poped Dodge, evaded 3 hits, countered 4, and parried 2-3 hits all in a row. I've had a few, very few, similar instances while fighting mobs on the second and third floors as war/mnk, so I would NOT go in expecting this as a common occurance, but this is the only place that I have ever seen anything like this to occur.

War/nin has already been covered by others, so I won't go there.

War/thf is really nice for SA + WS, especially if it's one of the enfeebling Gaxe WS.

Weapon wise, if dual wielding I'd go for Axe+Merc Cpt Kukri, or Bastok Dagger or even an Archer's Knife if you are going to be using a longbow/crossbow. Swords are nice, but an axe/dagger combo will provide you with better +stats IMO, and have less delay and allow you to deal more damage with your axe.

Two handed weapons, I'd be inclined to go the Gaxe route and hit the boss with an enfeebling Gaxe WS, although if you plan to to go the, what is it you drks do, Blood Weapon + Last Resort/Souleater? Lower delay weapons will greatly benefit you more then.



A few tips on the Promies:

I would HIGHLY recommend only doing them with a LS static, I've had people purposfully kill off the party for whatever stupid reason (Sole Sushi +1, Berserk, some other buff, and then provoke the boss so that it would take all of his buffs for itself)

I've also had random people decide to see how many mobs they can link while running to the next Receptacle.

When you do these, have every party member have all 3 anima. You really only need two, one to stop TP moves and one to stop normal attacks, but I forget what they are called and it's still better to have all 3.

Have a strict order of anima useage, it's best to have one player assigned to tell the others when to go, and make a macro with a,

/p using anima X on <t>
/item "Anima X" <t>

so that the others can see that, 1) yes you are there and 2) yes you just used your anima.

I can't think of too much else.... Good luck, take your time and be careful, and be sure to either come as mage or /mage or bring some silence/invis items with you to the last Promy unless your job is lvl 50+.

[Neomage]

As long as you don't have imcompitent morons in your party, Promyvions are easy comparted to other CoP missions. The reason everyone thinks they're hard is promyvions are the first set of missions that weed the morons out from the players. Get some smart people to come along with you and you;ll be fine as DRK/WAR. /NIN is rather useless for DRK at that level though... Unless you NEED survival.

[Jei]

I don't think SMN's 2hr is over rated. The ability to use it 3 times instead of 1 is really huge.

[IfritnoItazura]

SMN is extremely overrated vs promy bosses. sure they can do a lot of damage with astral flow but they do it once every minute. RNG, SAM and MNK can outdamage SMN vs promy bosses with their 2 hour.

I've done many, many Promyvion runs, and had people brought just about every pre-ToAU job; BST, DRG, NIN, SMN, SAM, RNG, WAR, BLM, THF, and more--you name it, I've probably had one in at least one of the runs.

I've also parsed many of those runs, and the only time a SMN is out-damaged during a boss fight, is by another SMN. (SMN x3 make any spire fight a total joke, BTW.) Just make sure to use an avatar strong against the element of the boss NM being fought, and watch it die fast.

[Feba]

The reason everyone thinks they're hard is promyvions are the first set of missions that weed the morons out from the players.

Couple corrections, reason everyone thinks they're hard is because when they came out, they were hard as fuck. When they were released, I stalked a group up to the top, their BLM had to go so they invited me on. VERY competent group, only person who didn't have items to spend was myself. We did very well for a long while, until Dem started spewing out babies at a rate we couldn't handle, and we died, because as we all know, babies love soft squishy things such as mages.

other main reason is like the above, but less so. Bad shit has a tendancy to happen with those bosses. So one bad Carosel, your tank dies, your mage dies, and then shit just hits the fan. As an example, I beat holla first try. My group started using anima at 70%, the thing didn't even BLINK at us, it just stood there and took a pounding. I've had friends who've used anima, and the thing didn't even blink at THAT. It's some parts skill, but there's also a fair chunk of luck involved.

EDIT: Unless there's a group of SMNs involved. SMNs make promy so damn easy if they aren't retards. I've always wanted to try an all SMN promy... Six summons, send in avatars, melee to 70%, 2Hr, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Boss probably dies here, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, I'm impressed if the boss isn't dead yet. 30 seconds after all the AFs are finished... Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, if the boss isn't dead by now, you're casting his damn element, etc.

[IfritnoItazura]

've always wanted to try an all SMN promy... Six summons, send in avatars, melee to 70%, 2Hr, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Boss probably dies here, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, I'm impressed if the boss isn't dead yet. 30 seconds after all the AFs are finished... Astral Flow, Astral Flow, Astral Flow, if the boss isn't dead by now, you're casting his damn element, etc.

Don't bother with avatar melee; just start the fights with Astral Flow blood pacts.

I've done a few with SMN x3--the rest of us (non-SMN's) were there for looks, basically.

[Necropolis]

I've done all the promies multiple times with just about every job. I use to think they were hard, but really, its the people.

I lost every promy every imaginable way until I got lucky. I've seen 3 smns lose, I've seen war/nins die, I've seen it all.

But I've also won with no war/nin, no smn, no rng. It's the people and the amount of effort they put into it. It can be largly luck based, but a lot of pick up parties fail when thing go bad because they are too cheap/lazy to buy meds/farm anima.

My first win was with a JP pickup party. I died (as the whm and only healer) 15 seconds into the fight. They started poping potions left and right, and we ended up winning. I was truely amazed.

It helps to have a static where you know each other, and everyone comes prepared. And DON'T skimp on the meds. There is a healer for the party, but remember at level 30, MP can be scarce. Healers also have to watch out for hate. Hate reset moves that put your tank at 1%, is almost certain death for the healer, unless you are dual tanking and have someone higher on that hate list.

The problem with every pick up party I go with that I don't take control of, is people either can't afford gear/meds or just want an easiy win and won't invest in it.

Smns, war/nins, rngs make the the fights easier, but if you can find you a good group of people, almost any balanced party can win.

[Feba]

Don't bother with avatar melee; just start the fights with Astral Flow blood pacts.

This is probably easily possible, but i'd rather err on the side of caution.

[Jei]

๊Usually from 100% to 60% prommy bosses are very easy with SMN helping with heals. I don't think it really worth astral flowing there :O