Pulling vs. Roaming

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Had one of "those" merit PTs last night. You get to a nice camp, no competition for an hour and then some PT crashes it by parking near your PT. There was an age in this game where camps were respected, believe it or not, it just died with the introduction of ToA. OK, there was some camp disrespect prior, but far less than now.

I was there as COR, don't usually consider NIN, MNK and WAR great for this camp, but I seemed to have some really good ones last night.

Dunno why people would even consider bringing a BRD to the Nyzul Thickets camp, much less tard pull with provoke. Seems like a recipe for disaster because if you did get more links than you could handle, Horde Lullaby would be reflected, wipe your PTs shadows and sleep your entire PT.

This is not a good thing. Only real way around it is two BRD/NINs to use Foe Lullaby to sleep multiples, yet somehow they were surviving anyway.

So I just said "F--- it, let's roam."

I think the flaw in my inital approach was that I was just purely pulling with the gun. I loathe using Light Shot for instant-claim purposes, as I typically go for two successive pulls and a buff per minute. Two pulls since this will afford me a full charge on my Quick Draw and time to buff my PT. Works very well.

Wasn't working here, so I dropped my <stnpc> macro for Light Shot and just ran out and directly slept mobs with Light Shot. Beauty of Light Shot while it is magical, its also a job ability, colibri can't mimic a job ability

I turned my approach backwards, I'd still pull two, just sandwich the buff between the pulls, pull the next one and blink tank it until they were ready to claim, then I'd go claim the next one with Light Shot. PT would roam over when they were done, I'd buff, grab the next one to blink it.

Wasn't entirely perfect, but it managed to drive our invaders away. Their BRD didn't seem to happy with me. Who could be when you have manteele, march and haste gear?

Thing about merit PTs is many of them just camp and I don't know if that should really be. Seems where BRD and COR are concerned, roaming would be the best, though I do prefer doing two successive pulls if I still can and probably could when there's no competition.

Curious how other people approach this.

[Karinya]

There was an age in this game where camps were respected, believe it or not, it just died with the introduction of ToA. OK, there was some camp disrespect prior, but far less than now.

We used to have 500 high level players and 6-8 viable high level camps. Now we have 1000 high level players and 2-3 viable high level camps (because they're so much better that *all* the old camps are no longer considered "viable").

Increase in the merit caps led more people to spend more time exping at 75, at the same time that introduction of new camps *reduced* the number of camps people actually use. The increase in overcrowding is an obvious result (even though the new camps are actually far harder to overcrowd because of their ultra-short repops).

Thing about merit PTs is many of them just camp and I don't know if that should really be. Seems where BRD and COR are concerned, roaming would be the best, though I do prefer doing two successive pulls if I still can and probably could when there's no competition.
Curious how other people approach this.

I think some people are wary of roaming in an area with such short repops because you might not have moved past where your previous mob spawns before it repops on you. Although with good crowd control that's less of an issue, I guess.

I have seen roaming parties in mire; they don't seem to do particularly better or worse than, say, camping parties at Mamool Ja Staging Point (although I admit I'm not in the habit of clocking exp at every party I go to, so it's mostly just a subjective impression that the party is succeeding or failing).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Well, I personally don't think a sky camp is any more or less viable that it was before. Roaming PTs always worked there and still would now, there's just a little less exp per kill and people still moronically look at EXP per kill rather than EXP over time. I don't really even look at either, I got 3 merits in two and a half hours last night - good enough for me.

Lufaise still works, sky still works, Ule Range scares the hell out of people, but it still works. And you can actually merit in level capped zones. None of the camps are hard to get to if you bothered to get access to most of them and do your outpost warps.

Problem with the ToA camps is they're filled with mobs that are too easy. If they weren't too easy, I think people would branch out a bit more.

[Amele]

I noticed that myself, the first time my ls ever tried mire for merit. it was like the game was suddenly on easy mode.

used to be that to get truly indefinite chains you had to run in uleg and risk actual death.. now you just have to get a quiet night in caerdavra or thickets and invite almost any combination of brd or cor, 1 healer, and melee.

[Solymir]

Dunno why people would even consider bringing a BRD to the Nyzul Thickets camp, much less tard pull with provoke. Seems like a recipe for disaster because if you did get more links than you could handle, Horde Lullaby would be reflected, wipe your PTs shadows and sleep your entire PT.

I know I am picking one statement out of the post, and it's not what the OP question is completely about, but I wanted to share an awesome party I had in the Nyzul-Thickets.

The party was rdm/whm, brd/whm, and war/nin x4 (one of which was me). The bard was the puller, and did an excellent job. Mobs were Colibri and Bugard on the lowest tier of the zone. I don't remember any of the lullabys being reflected onto the warriors, though it is possible they were cured quickly, or knocked awake by the colibri.

Most of the chains were in the 20-30 range, though we did have one that went 50+, and our exp/hr was approximately 20k. Occasionally we had links, but they were handled either by the bard using lullaby and/or one of us warriors tanking it. The only negative was the party lasted about 1 1/2 hrs, and my total exp was a little over 30k.

Anyways, just wanted to share an experience. Please don't pick on me for kind of going off topic.

/duck

*edit* We had a camp and the bard pulled to us, even though there was competition from another party on that lower tier.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I know I am picking one statement out of the post, and it's not what the OP question is completely about, but I wanted to share an awesome party I had in the Nyzul-Thickets.

The party was rdm/whm, brd/whm, and war/nin x4 (one of which was me). The bard was the puller, and did an excellent job. Mobs were Colibri and Bugard on the lowest tier of the zone. I don't remember any of the lullabys being reflected onto the warriors, though it is possible they were cured quickly, or knocked awake by the colibri.

I was kinda just spelling out the worst case scenario, there's a lot of BRDs that refuse to go to this camp because they can't adapt to the differences or refuse to submit to a back line role. A good BRD can work around it but...

My whole problem with BRDs pulling is quite a few don't perform the core function of their job - buffing. There are quite a few CORs that can't hack it at buffing either, they lose focus and concentrate too much on the melee element, but the job is built in such a way that the potential to pull and keep buffs up is more practical than it is with BRD at merit level. We're talking about a five minute duration vs. Two minutes, so it baffles me when a COR can't keep up or refuses to drop DD to do this, in addtion to BRDs not buffing and just pulling.

[little ninja]

I dunno about you, but i remember the days when i had 4 pts in a small little tunnel. Imagine how bad that scked..

[Achaicus]

I like that 'leap frog' idea of pulling and buffing. I enjoy being a puller, in general. But, it cuts into my buffing a little while playing as a BRD.

I plan to become a 'Bard tank' once I get to 75 - think that'll be ok while roaming?

Thx!

[IfritnoItazura]

I plan to become a 'Bard tank' once I get to 75 - think that'll be ok while roaming?

How do you plan to tank on Bard, in this post Mazurka enmity reduction era? >_>;

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I like that 'leap frog' idea of pulling and buffing. I enjoy being a puller, in general. But, it cuts into my buffing a little while playing as a BRD.

I plan to become a 'Bard tank' once I get to 75 - think that'll be ok while roaming?

Thx!

BRD tanking got nerfed hard. Mazurka produced such a large hate spike in HNMs that people were using it to steal claim and MPK rivals.

First it started as "We'll only use it against RMT."
Then it ended up "Let's use it against X HNMLS."
And then RMT used it, too.
Went downhill from there.

One bad apple and all that.

[Sabaron]

There is only one rule for the BRD puller: They can not use Horde Lullaby. Bard pulls with Elegy and then follows up with Foe Lullaby and if that fails, they Blink. COR is much better at pulling here because of the reflection, but there are like 3 of them on all of Asura, so it's kind of hard to find one.

I like Nyzul Isle because with a good setup, I can also melee and eat sushi as RDM only running back for a Ballad if I need to stretch MP for Convert which, with a good PT I usually don't because no one takes any damage. Before you say RDM needs to be sitting--we were at continuous chain until we ran out of birds, and my sword attacks do as much as a NIN or PLD tank (avg 50-60ish per hit but obviously slower than a NIN and less accurate than a PLD)... We typically got Chain #11/#12 before we had no more left.

I was thinking we might try the rhinos... has anyone done rhinos in high-chain? Does it work?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Wivres have a load of HP, not burnable at all.

I know BRDs don't pull with Horde But in the old days when people knew what sky was and meritted in it, we slept mobs in roaming PTs as a BRD came upon them. That or they elegy pulled first. We had no need for ninja subjobs back then and we liked it that way. Kids these days, they wouldn't know Minuet if it bit them in the rear.

[Achaicus]

Well, at least I wasn't ignored, lol. Of course, I asked because I do not know much about (maximum) high level partying.
As far as pulling, I start with a lullaby, then do a few more songs that do not wake up the monster (sorry, I forget which ones they were - been awhile).
In a exp party situation, I have used horde lullably before to pull directly probably once. More to say on that, but I do break the rules sometimes, lol.
Greg W.