Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

[Sabaron]

Thanks for your respond Sabaron ^^

I have a question with what time to make juice in exp. parties.
How often does the synth break for Pineapple Juice at cooking skill 30? Does outdoor/weather have any effect?

I usually reserve about 10-15 slots of inventory for juicing at lower level. I haven't juiced at higher level as I am primarily a RDM and Juice/RDM Refresh are mutually exclusive (you may however use juice with BRD and COR refreshes). If you have say 3 slots reserved for reagents and 2 for juice, you can craft-ahead one juice and adjust speed. I try to have a few more slots than that and hope for someone to need a {Bio} or something at some point. The two rest ticks you lose making an 80mp juice is generally worth it. It becomes more valuable when the juice you make restores more MP (ex. Yagudo). For the break rate, I found I broke less than one per stack of crystals at cap level with most breaks occuring on Darksday and Lightningsday. Water weather is good for this synthesis, but lightning weather is bad. You can't really do anything about the moon so I don't mind it during field-synthesis--for that matter, you can't really do much about the weather or day either since they can last quite a while. Just ignore it and level your cooking to 60. Cooking to 60 costs nothing if done properly (and you can make a profit). It's also very quick and, by the end, you'll end up with several stacks of Mulsum to sell/use and some Yagudo Drinks as well. When you're doing Yagudo Drinks to 60 from Mulsum, you can just sit at the Jeuno AH and make them--they sell so fast on a weekend you'll have AH slots open by the time you finish the next batch. Cooking 60 is probably the most worthwhile craft in the game--here is a list of the best synth-yourself products from the list:

Fishing Baits
Juices (except Vampire)
Ginger Cookies
Jack-o'-Lantern
Boiled Crab
Mithkabobs
Coeurl Subs
Baked Apples
Carbonara & Vongole Rosso (Noodle Kneading required)
Pet Foods: Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Zeta

You can even try to make your own Snoll Gelato if it's too expensive on your server. I wouldn't go for Raw Fish as you can only make Tentacle Sushi with it, which while not bad, is really not optimal in most cases.

[EDIT: Add]
Yagudo Drinks are made with Dark Crystals which can be more pricey than Water crystals. On Asura, they frequently get to the same 1k per stack price and I buy them when they're really cheap and hold on a mule until I need them. Dark crystal synths are less fussy than Water crystal synths since they're only bad on Lightsday or during the hideously infrequent Light Weather--you would really only encounter this if you were XPing in Sky or the exceedingly rare Aurora Borealis on Qufim.

[Icemage]

At level 30, your break rate freezes at 5% for Pineapple Juice (the lowest it will ever be no matter how high your cooking skill gets - I still get a 5% break on low level cooking synths even on my level 98 cooking mule).


Icemage

[Slip]

Edit: Sorry to miss your post Slip, we post about the same time Is 14-20 Yag drinks enough for 2 - 2.5 hr party without any RDM/COR/BRD? I never have 14 ~ 20 free space in my inventory (w/ all Gobbie bags), unless I leave a lot of stuff behind in Mog House and place lot of stuff to Locker

14-20 is what I count on with no outside refresher (usually leaning more towards 20 or a bit higher to be on the safe side). I do have a Bard in my static though and the rare times when he gives me Ballad helps to reduce that number a bit. If your party is taking breaks at the end of the chain to let the mages rest that can be a good time to synth up some juices. In that case holding 4-6 drinks at a time should be fine, with replacement synthing each chain to make up for ones that are used.

Armando's point is an *excellent* one too - if you're overhunting you'll burn through mp much much faster than usual. If you dial it back a few notches in mob level you'll find you can get away with a much lower burn rate and still hold solid hate / not die horribly.

[IfritnoItazura]

I disagree with the idea that Pineapple juice is better than Melon Juice.

With Melon Juice, you simply use it at lower MP than Pineapple--if you're relying on full-time juice, it won't work out anyway. Yagudo drink may be better for PLD with high MP pool--basically, pop one only you're very low on MP.

So far, I like my idea of not over-hunting (which Armando explained better ^_^; ) and Icemage's idea of making people in the party using /BRD and /COR the best. They are simple and easy, and hard to screw up. No stress worrying about using time to craft or rest, either.

I still think that a party without BRD, COR, or RDM means the WHM becomes indispensables for the PLD tank--no one else can bring to the table the combination of buffs, debuffs, and curing efficiency. (Well, ... DRG/mage actually has top cure efficiency, but then you don't get the benefit of Parade Gorget.)

If you don't see BRD, COR, RDM, or WHM seeking, just go to bed instead of trying to force together a party.

[Murphie]

I know that I also preferred melon juice, but to be fair, I don't spend too much time thinking about the mathematics of these things. It seemed to give me the most bang for my buck, so I went with it. At that level, I'd probably make Yagudo drink though, since I have cooking more than high enough to do it.

[Armando]

It's not that Pineapple Juice is better than Melon Juice (note that I said "well-rounded.") Melon Juice gives the same total MP in less time. Given the fact that we cannot realistically carry enough juices to use non-stop in a normal EXP session (we can all agree on two hours nonstop being a pretty common length, right?) you will eventually have to make juices on the spot to keep going. Because Melon Juice gives the same quantity of MP in a smaller ammount of time, then you'd either have to: 1) use them less often to make them last as long as Pineapple juices, which implies going certain lengths of time without using one, which is annoying and distracting, or 2) use them twice as often, which means also making them twice as often and bringing twice as many materials. If Sabaron's numbers are right (too lazy to check but they certainly look right) then you'd need 6 inventory slots for every hour of partying you plan on doing when chugging Melon Juices nonstop. Pineapple Juice is cheaper and requires 3 slots per hour.

If you don't mind that stuff and can chug Melon Juices - or even better, Yagudo Drinks - nonstop, by all means, do so! Also, Itazura makes a very good point in that you can reach a good compromise by simply saving your Melon Juices for when your MP is low.

[IfritnoItazura]

Hmm. According to http://ffxi.somepage.com/itemdb/food.php :

Pineapple Juice: 1 MP/tick, 80 MP total.
Melon Juice: 2 MP/tick, 90 MP total.
Yagudo Drink: 2 MP/tick, 120 MP total.

Besides the better total MP recovery, Melon and Yagudo drink beat out Pineapple for safety, with the higher rate of refresh.

Speaking of safety, can we make Celeal carry a stack or two of Mulsum? I don't think we've yet stressed his inventory space enough with all the juice bottles, ingredients, and extra gear...

[Celeal]

LOL, no wonder it is rare for PLD to carry juice or make juice in xp parties, so much trouble X_X.

I guess I will try to get Parade Gorget first and see how is it

(But hopefully in my future parties would have RDM or COR or BRD.... hehehe XD)

[Karinya]

Why not a hi-ether tank? They drop pretty often in Assault...

Seriously, though: the main thing I would suggest aside from not overhunting is that there should be at least two people in the party, other than you, who can heal when necessary. The secondary healer could be a SMN/WHM, a BLU, a BLM/WHM or even a DRK/WHM or another PLD (don't think of them as taking up a DD slot, think of them as taking up the slot the rdm/brd would normally take), but they need to
1. have some curing ability
2. be able to recognize when they need to take over from/help out the main healer
3. be willing to do so.

If it's just you, a WHM and four 0-mp damage dealers, it's going to be very difficult to make it work no matter what gear you have and whether or not you use juice.


Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the second PLD idea, especially 50+. Two PLD get twice as much Auto-Refresh. If only one of you has a parade gorget, the one without it should be the main tank so the other gets his 2/tick all the time; in addition to alternating flashes (and Shield Bash if fighting goblins, mages, etc.) they can also voke or cover you if the situation gets hairy. The backup PLD doesn't need defense food because they can just activate Defender (or even Sentinel) when they have to tank, so they can use either a damage-boosting food, or use cookies and rest for the first few seconds of fights in addition to between fights, depending on how much damage you're taking. And you still have 3 dedicated DDs, like a normal party, in addition to the PLD's damage.

Theoretically, PLD/BRD with Vermilion Cloak+Parade Gorget gets 4 MP/tick without juice (assuming they keep themselves healed up), 5 with Sanction, while also giving you and the main healer 1 extra MP/tick, but I don't know if that would be worth giving up the emergency voke and some of their damage for (even assuming you can find a PLD with BRD sub leveled and a VC).

[Armando]

Now that you mention it, PLD + PLD + WHM would be really, really awesome. If you coordinate well enough you can keep Flash up practically 24/7 (Hasted Flash recast: 37 seconds; Flash duration: 12-13; three Flashes back-to-back = 36-39 seconds). You'd get hit so little it wouldn't be funny, and you'd have yet another person that can Cure and even take over tanking in emergencies. And a PLD equipped for DD'ing is nothing to laugh at, either (not stellar, but respectable.) Hell, if you could get a consistent three-man Flash cycle you'd probably be able to eat sushi and go DD yourself as well.

PLD/BRD sounds good, but I don't think you'd need to go that far; I assume that with three Flashers, one main healer, and a backup healer that can get a permanent 3 MP/tick in ToAU areas without even using juices you'd have enough damage avoidance/healing power to just go for the extra damage /WAR brings. If anything, maybe WHM/BRD so you don't lose out on so much?

As for Mulsum, how much do those go for these days?

[Sabaron]

I use all three depending upon my mana needs. Most of the time Pineapple or Melon is just fine, but Melon is significantly more expensive.

[Slip]

A stack of Mulsum is going for 15k on the Jeuno Ah on Pandy. That's a decent price given that synthing it would run you at least half that if not more and take 24 synths (which takes a while).

With the popularity of mono-job Burn parties for a while, has anyone tried out a "Flash Burn" party? 6x Pld or 5x Pld + Brd? It'd be so easy to overlap Flashes that way it'd be sad and who need shadows when the mobs can't hit in the first place? Each Pld might not be as good a DD as a War or Mnk but the party would have 6 decent DDs rather than 4 DDs + 2 support jobs.

[Armando]

Hm...I don't know, 15k for 120 MP...a bit expensive, don't you think? They're pretty good for being instant recovery but I think it's too expensive for long-term use. As for Flash Burns, I've been thinking about that for like two years now but I've yet to see someone bother to try D:

[Icemage]

At low levels, I prefer Pineapple Juice to Melon Juice. It's less messy, since if I do 2 partial breaks with Pineapple Juice (i.e. lose 1 pineapple each time) I still have enough materials to make another juice if I have a replacement water crystal. I only have a 50% chance of that happening with Melon Juice.

The faster refresh rate with Melon Juice is nice, but the logstics when you break a synth annoy me.


Icemage

[Slip]

Hm...I don't know, 15k for 120 MP...a bit expensive, don't you think? They're pretty good for being instant recovery but I think it's too expensive for long-term use. As for Flash Burns, I've been thinking about that for like two years now but I've yet to see someone bother to try D:

For regular party use? Oh hell yeah that's too expensive! Sorry got stuck in crafter mode there which goes "How much is it selling for and can I make a profit on it or not?"