TP Burn

[Futan]

Hey, I've been gone for a while and now I keep hearing about 'TP burns'. So by the name, it sounds like you just spam TP. But I'm curious in any party, at any level will melees be doing this? Are there conditionals for when it would be used(jobs in the pt, exp location, etc.)? Thanks.

[Jei]

Most camps in the new ToAU area favour TP burn. You can start seeing it being really efficient after level 55 or so.

Well when I think about it, many low level parties don't do skillchains these days and just solo WS. They are literally TP burning too I guess, just not very efficient...

[Icemage]

Hey, I've been gone for a while and now I keep hearing about 'TP burns'. So by the name, it sounds like you just spam TP. But I'm curious in any party, at any level will melees be doing this? Are there conditionals for when it would be used(jobs in the pt, exp location, etc.)? Thanks.

Usually it's used to describe any melee-heavy party without nuking support. Typically they target enemies that are Tough to Very Tough in an effort to produce very long experience point chains (my current best is XP Chain #124 in a TP-burn).

Most common configuration is 4 melees with NIN/x or x/NIN + Red Mage + Bard. The massave amounts of Utsusemi shadows allow the RDM to main heal while keeping up a Haste cycle and providing Sleep I/II support for the Bard (Tarutaru red mages are REALLY good at this, though any race can pull it off with good gear and playstyle), while the Bard usually subs /NIN (you can use BRD/WHM but it's less efficient and slower unless the Bard knows what they're doing).

Most people do this at level 62+ in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan zones (particularly Wajaom Woodlands, Bhaflau Thickets, and Caedarva Mire), since the monster respawn rates in ToAU zones is much faster than in normal zones (about 3 times faster).


Icemage

[Futan]

Oh, so like a monk party.

[IfritnoItazura]

My recent party on RDM55 was: NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, WAR/NIN, MNK/NIN, BRD/WHM, and RDM/WHM (me). We were in Boyada Tree, exp'ing on crabs mainly.

No real/set skillchain, so it was more or less a TP "burn" party. It worked nicely, except I'm not used to to hasting 4 people, so I think I only managed about 3 people most of the time... >_>;

With every single melee on Utsusemi, healing wasn't a problem, and the JP BRD helped out with Curaga and Cure II when needed. I think I used Convert once the entire party, which was toward the end of the party when I got sleepy and started to mismanaged my MP.

[Raydeus]

Oh, so like a monk party.

That's exactly what it is, the only difference is that Aht Urgan areas have way more mobs and are weak to all melee and not just MNK, but other than that it works exactly the same.

[Loial]

Well, monk PT normally don't sub NIN. They go to KRT as mnk/war and own mobs in a matter of seconds.

The idea is to have all melee "share hate" using shadows. If you pick and choose your exp spots and your targets well, TP burn is the way to go. However, some jobs get left out in the cold since they aren't well suited to TP burn style.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I've personally started referring to TP burn as "tardburn," because it basically boils down to the loss of skillchain and magic burst damage in favor of killing T or VT and hiding behind Utsusemi. It may be "efficient" in the minds of some, but beating on weak mobs is nothing to be proud of.

Worst part is it seems to make people function weakly in high level or just critical situations and that it is also very taxing on the sole mage you invite as main healer. These mobs might be weak and while people may go /NIN to think they're helping not become a MP sink, there are plenty of mob AoE and multi-hit attacks to wipe those shadows and turn them into an MP sponge anyway.

The best setup is still the balanced setup for most mobs, people just refuse to go the traditional route these days out of pure greed, the Sanction buff gives an EXP bonus and with Empress Band or Corsair's Roll factored in, people just look at the bottom line EXP rather than balanced PT mechanics now.

As a result, PLDs, SMNs and BLM suffer for invites when they honestly shouldn't and even with RNG quite un-nerfed, we still seem to go ignored. As RNG I can't even get a good BRD to play Minuet x2, I get March x2 or lolPrelude instead, which does nothing for me. I could have sworn BRD was supposed to play what was best for all melee and not what was best for the /NIN subbers.

People like to post high number chains from TP burn, but the fail to post current numbers now that TP burn is so common and camps are so crowded. Really, you could burn more efficiently on weapons in sky now, but no, we're gonna go Mamool Ja Staging point again with the nine other other PTs because some 75 BRD with a zillion merits never got sky. Thankfully, most MNK burns I get invited to still go to KRT and we usually have the place all to ourselves.

[raidenn]

Suffer?
Melee jobs has been suffering lack of party invites since the beginning of FFXI.
Try being a Drg, Drk or Sam before any of the updates, no warp cudgel, no sushi and camping for days in Lower Jeuno for a party. Now thats real suffering.

[Mog]

SE managed to widen the gap between melees and mages. Way to go!

If this is the case, so be it. I can gain much faster experience from manaburns and jellies from 72-75 than in any common experience points party.

[Taskmage]

Yeah y'know ... I recall a point in FFXI history when manaburn and arrowburn were buzzwords and you couldn't get a rng or blm to accept an invite to a normal party because they could get much better exp in their burn parties. It's no wonder the current ws-spam mentality developed when most parties only had a burster once in a blue moon.

I'm not saying the current burn mentality is any more right, but if you want to make it out to some kind of sob story that blm and rng are now at the bottom of the invite pile where all the melee used to be, you can cry me a river.

The pld and smn problems are beyond the scope of tp-burn, imo.

[Mog]

Well, I guess SE can't appease everybody. Somebody has to ultimately suffer in this game.....so I guess it's black mages turn up. So maybe in a couple of months, they'll enforce something so that Ninjas and tanks are worthless in xp parties. Who knows. x.x

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Suffer?
Melee jobs has been suffering lack of party invites since the beginning of FFXI.
Try being a Drg, Drk or Sam before any of the updates, no warp cudgel, no sushi and camping for days in Lower Jeuno for a party. Now thats real suffering.

I've been a DRG since many of those updates, just post-TP nerf, actually. I haven't thrown in the towel entirely, mind you, but with the expenses i run on COR and RNG and the expenses I plan on with NIN, it stays on the backburner until a time I'm not so focused on jobs with consumables and can spare the gil for gear I want. NIN should serve me to that end in most respects anyway.

But I was never a DRG that sat moaning in Jeuno about their lack of invites, either. I was proactive and soloed a lot. That's not only helped me on the end of beastmen seals, but added prior knowledge so I could solo as BST. So I have no pity for the DRGs of the past that LFGed all the time in Jeuno.

Yeah y'know ... I recall a point in FFXI history when manaburn and arrowburn were buzzwords and you couldn't get a rng or blm to accept an invite to a normal party because they could get much better exp in their burn parties. It's no wonder the current ws-spam mentality developed when most parties only had a burster once in a blue moon.

I'm not saying the current burn mentality is any more right, but if you want to make it out to some kind of sob story that blm and rng are now at the bottom of the invite pile where all the melee used to be, you can cry me a river.

The pld and smn problems are beyond the scope of tp-burn, imo.

Arrowburns at least made sense in function, big EXP returns for low spending... and skillchains still happened, even though they were coincidental. Manaburn was far less obnoxious than Arrow because there was at least some downtime, but with a BRD it was still very effeicient in terms of MP. The core difference is that those were more elitest functions and more self-contained as a result, not every BLM and RNG was a burn-primadonna like some like to think they all were. I knew many who still favored a balanced setup since I myself as a BRD didn't strap myself entirely to a RNG's leg pre-nerf.

I don't crap on BLMs now for what happened in COP because the BLMs coming up now aren't those BLMs. The RNGs coming up now are also not the Arrowburn generation. I personally don't suffer for invites too badly as RNG since I keep my COR evenly levelled with it (I obsess about my marksmanship, lol), my name tends to be remembered when people are inviting again. Some people invite familiar faces, others invite by the "favored" jobs. TP burn amplifies the problem with the latter. Arrow and Manaburn might have been elitiest, but TP burn makes the elitism of "efficiency" rather commonplace now rather than exclusive.

[Ziero]

FYI, not everyone gets those ubar burn, super exp chain, non stop pts. I've been lvling both thf and war in the mid 50s and still haven't seen anything close with either of them. In fact my last two pts, both SC+MB pts in an older, pre-cop/toau zone, on both thf and war, barely broke 1k an hour.

Meanwhile a drg/war friend who was the same lvl as me got an invite to one of them and got over 14k and hour. I don't know about you, but I would rather be doing what he did as opposed to what I've been doing in my last few pts. If some people feel that is a problem, especially when these people play jobs that more or less created the 'burn only' mentality, then oh well. As said before SE can't make everyone happy, no one can, no matter what anyone does.

Btw, my drg friend had both a pld and whm in his pt.

edit: On second thought, I do remember joining one of them 10k+ an hour tp burn pts. In Qufim. Two nin, Brd, Rdm, Sam and another DD, chaining T-VTs in a roaming set up. Went 19-23 in about 2 hours then the next day did it again in Korr Tunnel on crabs/pugs until they go too weak. After that we hit Yuhtunga. In about 5 or so hours of play with a semi static I got my sam from 19-27. What does this mean? It means the concept always worked, but very few people did it because they have the big number syndrome(200 exp for only a 5 minute fight!). All the ToAU areas did was increase the pop rate of the mobs to keep up with the kill rate of pts. The only down time TP burns ever had before was lack of mobs, ToAU changed that.

[raidenn]

There's your answer, while mages are waitng for an invite, they can solo mobs.
With Cure, Sleep, Gravity, Escape, Warp, Refresh, Teleport and various other Bar' spells, they have a better chance on soloing anyway. Cookies to reduce downtime too.