How To Form and Function a Proper Party - Basics of Partying.

[AKosygin]

There is a common theme in Final Fantasy XI, and while it may not be very apparent in the beginning, it is very obvious that SquareEnix is telling us that "Teamwork" is good. It will be very difficult to solo at higher levels, and hence you will need to party up with your fellow players. And as more of us rise to a higher level in our jobs, we find that we need to join up together and work together. So how do you make a relatively effective party?

You can go through these guides links below here to go through the different chapters of suggestions on how to make for an effective party:
-- How to flag yourself to "Seek Party".
-- How to make it easier for others to find you.
-- Do's and Dont's of "Party Seeking"
-- How to find others and see if they fit in your party.
-- I am in a Party, now what?
-- Are we leveling or getting items or completing a quest/mission?
-- Weaponskill Sucession Techniques (AKA: Renkei, Combos)
-- Party positions, party roles.
-- Macros and their use.
-- Useful alerts and messages with your Macros.
-- How to end a party gracefully.

Hope you find this useful.

[NOTE: I will be updating these slowly, if anyone has any suggestions or things to include on these guides, please feel free to reply.]

WARNING: There SHALL BE NO FLAMMING on this thread, and this thread is NOT for job class discussions. Please start another thread if you want to discuss job classes. This thread is mainly for what to do in a party. Any posts discussing job classes not explicitly and immediately directly related to partying WILL BE DELETED. This is about Partying, not job classes. Please refer classes in general terms: Healer, Nuker, Tank, etc.

Furthermore, any suggestions that a certain class do a particular role are suggestions, nothing more. No requirements, no forcing. If you do not heed advice, you don't have to.

[Gackti]

I think its about time the NA players reachs to a state where a proper party should be form for them to get efficient and decent exps.

Party formation can have different variaties. However, its all basically the same in a certain ways. Below are some pointers on how to form a party in "general".

1) A party should consist of 3 melee and 3 casters.

Example: WAR/MNK/THF and BLM/WHM/RDM

2) The party members should ALL be 3 levels within each other.

Example: 15/16/17/15/15/16

3) Each person understand their duty in the party

Tankers/Melee players should constently taunt the monster and protect the casters. Casters should stay behind and cast spells.

Some tips for the melee players.

i)Set macro for taunt.
Eg: /party xxxxxxxxxxxxx
/ja taunt <t>
/wait 15
/p 15sec before i can taunt again
/wait15
/p taunt is ready
this way, you can notify both urself and ur party member that when can you, and when you can taunt.

ii)Know how to do renkai (combo).
each weapon have its own weapon skill which contens differnt kind of elemental effect. For example: Burning blade is fire.
Here's a renkai chart Ancient Magic & PT's

Example on how to do a renkai:
Assuming a party is formed with WAR1/WAR2/MNK

WAR1 is going first with Raging Axe
WAR2 is going second with Burning Blade
MNK is going last with Tackle

when all 3 players' TP are at or above 100%. WAR1 will do he's WS, then after 2-3 seconds after the WS animation, WAR2 will do he's WS, at this point, the players should see a special effect which is call Dissolution. After the animation of Dissolution, player 3 should do he's WS, and at this point, the renkai will be complete with a Nucleate Heat Effect.

Example on how to set a renkai macro:
Each player should set a macro on how much TP they have
WAR1- /party Renkai first attack. Currently I have TP <tp>
WAR2- /party Renkai second attack. TP <tp>
MNK- /party Last attack <tp>

WAR1 is the most important in the whole renkail process because WAR1 have to see if other players' TP are at 100 or above and initiate the start. Example on how to set WAR1's macro

/p Renkai first attack <tp>. GO! <call3>
/ws Raging Axe <t>

iii) Assigne ONE specific player to go and lure the monster.

ix) KEEP THE MOBS AWAY FROM THE CASTERS
This is done by leting the mobs "hate" you more by using taunt and induce dmg to them.

Some tips for the casters

i) Stay back, don't go up and fight the mobs unless the mob is extremely easy.

ii) Know how to control your MP.
This is very important because if your MP is deplite, the whole party will have to wait for you to sit and recover your MP. So during the fight, just cast the useful spells and the spells that are ment for you to cast. Example: If there's WHM/BLM/RED in the pt, WHM just focusing on curing, blm focuse on dark magic and attack magic and red mage focuse on weakness and strenght magic. Try to keep the MP above half all the time. If you have time to sit and recover, sit and recover.

A note to the BLM: don't just blast it away because the monsters will just turn and attack you and the tankers will not be able to pull the monster back. Save them for MB.

iii) MB
MB is designe for extra dmg after the renkai. Like what I've said before, each renkai have its own elemental effect. So you will have to cast that specific elemental magic for MB to happen. When will the casters cast the magic will depends on the actual casting time of that specific magic. Just time the magic so that it will hit the monster 1-2 second after the special renkai animation have finished. Example: Dissolution and Nucleate Heat is Fire so any fire magic will give MB.

ix) DO NOT GO LURE THE MONSTER! LET THE MELEE PLAYERS DO IT

ok now, a PT a formed, now you got to find a place to level. After you reach to the place, find a safe area and STAY there. Let the desinated player to go lure the monster back. The strength of the monster should be todemo todemo strong w/ low defence.

That will be it for now. I might miss something @@ but its 4:30 in da morning... =P anwaz, gl to all the new players and enjoy the game.

Gackti

PS: Mods, if we don't have one of this topic on sticky, please have it stick, I think it will help out a lot of the new players. Thank you very much.

[davidmmmm9]

renkei (-_-)

[Cedric-Archaon]

Originally posted by Gackti
Set macro for taunt.
Eg: /party xxxxxxxxxxxxx
/ja taunt <t>
/wait 15
/p 15sec before i can taunt again
/wait15
/p taunt is ready
this way, you can notify both urself and ur party member that when can you, and when you can taunt.

I myself would rather not see the shitload of spam that goes on in a pt, so I set my paladin's taunt macro to /echo so that only I see the 15 sec/taunt ready warnings. There is already enough useless "OMGZOR IM CASTING MAGIC" crap going on in pt chat, more isn't needed.

[Cedric-Archaon]

Please please pleaseeeeeeeeee include somewhere in there for people to have up-to-date subs.

[Jonnyram]

I often get the impression most players don't know /echo exists. It's so useful though, because it has a separate colour to the usual party crap too.

[John Doe III]

A great PT can also be made from 4 melee and 2 mages or bard as the mage.

[Gackti]

how to set macro is up to every indeviduals...
the macro i typed out is just an example...
each player prefer different way of setting up the macros
some like to be infromed some don't
some care some don't
i am just giving out in general how a party and macro should be set... as a template or something~~

[Ayako]

since it's kind of on the same topic....

If you are flagging for a party...PLEASE, PLEASE use the search comments. These should at least include amount of exp until next level, weapos you use if multiple, whether you have gate crystals, etc. For example....

@1300 to lvl 26, Support Jobs: WAR, WHM
No Kazham Pass, Dem, Holla, Mea GC
1H Sword, Spear, Grapple

or something along those lines. This helps us immensely while putting parties together.

Leaders...please take the time to look at the entire package a player brings to the team. For example, there is a lvl 25 Galka WHM with NO SUB JOB floating around Jeuno lately. His max MP is 134, so needless to say he will hinder you more than help, even in desperation it's better to wait for another to pop than to bring in someone who will just make the party suck. So be careful of grievously underleveled subs, useless main/sub combos, etc. Not saying be a nazi, just take it all into consideration. Also, the general rule is if there is going to be a level difference, the mages should be the low ones, but that is flexible, I suppose.

[Razz]

The best PT I have ever been in:

Ninja, Dragoon, Ranger, Thief, Dark knight and Red Mage. It was a slaughter house :D

[Yuna]

sure we can all get a good pt and get good exp and the same thing over and over but if you have interesting party combinations and people lacking then it's fun to see how skilled you are to make up for their shortcoming... most players including myself have forgot the advantage of being able to communicate with other players and being able to play with people you can talk to

just have fun and play and not worry toooo much about what is best or whatever. it is just a game in the end

[bunta]

My party consist of:

Level 12 MNK
Level 12 WAR
Level 10 WHM
Level 11 BLM

We were able to chain Wild Dhamels with this party, up to like 3-4 and i think that's hella good

[membernametaken]

Ok... here's a situation I face quite a bit.

I'm a Galkan WAR so i'm always playing the role of lead tank. Let's say there's another WAR or MNK in my party that attacks right after I go in. We also have WHM healing us the entire time.

Now... sometimes we end up getting into a fight with two enemies at the same time and if one of them decides to go attack our WHM while i'm attacking the other target, how can I quickly switch targets and use provoke on the damned beast?

Doing it manually consists of me hitting "*" on the numeric keypad to take my sights off the current target, hitting "Enter" on the Switch Target option, then hitting "0" on the numeric keypad to switch the purple target indicator over to the other target, then hitting "Enter" again to lock on to the beast going to attack our white mage. THEN, I go down to abilities and use provoke... but I set a "Provoke" macro making that slightly easier to get executed...

That's a long process and there IS delay after you hit "Enter" to target the other beast... is there some kind of macro I could set to quickly switch between targets? I find that people usually don't like it when I can't effectively keep the mobs off the caster... leading to death and the break-up of the PT... so any help would be appreciated.

At this point, i'm a lvl 11 WAR and now that i've learned the basics, i'm trying to learn about how to use macro and renkei effectively... so any help is appreciated. :sweat:

edit: I found this thread helpful for macros but my above question still remains. Info on Macros

[Gackti]

First, you shouldn't get ur PT fighting 2 monsters at the same time... but things always happen...

When I am in ur situation, I basically do the same as you do except that i don't unlock the 1st target, instead of just using switch target option and select the mob that's attacking the casters and use taunt macro. That's how i do it, and i don't really think there's a quicker way... i might be wrong... but i am pretty sure there's isn't.

[xRei]

What i find quicker than switch target is...

alt+a (disengage from primary mob)
target secondary mob with F8/tab/click
alt+1 (Provoke macro)
target primary mob with F8/tab/click
alt+a (resume hitting on primary mob while secondary beats on me)