[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Armando

As for the crossbow bolt thing: a 14.3% (1/0.875 = 1.1428) boost to everyone's Attack/Defense ratio is well worth gimping your damage at the beginning of the fight. Shield Break and some gear swaps will help a lot. If there's a THF or RNG, by all means let them take care of it, but if there isn't, the WAR should at least try 2-3 shots. As long as there's an attempt I don't mind if the person gives up after missing 3 times in a row.

I much rather the meating WAR's get TP instead getting in three tries at bolts, unless the player is completely decked out in R.Acc gear. The damage lost from no Acid Bolt can be made up with the great axe swings and an occasional Sturmwind.

It's a personal preference, I guess, rather than a suggestion from some mathematical insight of the game mechanism.

* * *

Of course, any Great Axe WAR shooting Acid Bolt still looks a whole lot smarter than those Axe x2 WAR's skilling up Archery during exp party... I certainly wouldn't complain if I get one of the former...

[Armando]

To each his own

By the way, forgot to mention that Defender + Meat food actually leaves you with 93.75% of your original attack instead of 100% since they don't stack by addition.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Exp pt tanks tend to share the following pattern for holding hate: Provoke + something else.

PLD/WAR: Provoke + self healing and Flash.
NIN/WAR: Provoke + damage mitigation through Utsusemi and evasion.
WAR/whatever: Provoke + dealing damage.

In my view, PLD/WAR + DD = NIN/WAR + THF = WAR + healer. Beyond those 2 slots, you can fill the remaining 4 slots in the party pretty much the same way (e.g. the other 4 slots could be main healer + debuffer + 2 DD).

[Lmnop]

The good conversations always happen while I'm away =( I'll just add:

If you're using Acid bolts, you're either pulling or you're shooting the pull. Either way, you'll have your first shot before anyone actually swings. Your 2nd shot will put you behind an attack round. I think if you're not pulling and don't care about wasted money, that engaging while the mob is still far far away and shooting when it gets to an appreciable range is nice. After the first shot I'd close to melee 'til after Shield Break, then try a shot #2. You'll miss a lot, no way around it. 2 bolts/mob and landing it even on half the mobs is quite an improvement.

It should, however, be noted that the mobs that you'll be exping off of in the level ranges we're discussing (i.e. SJ level) typically have rank 1 defense boosts. I'm looking at you, crawlers/crabs. While it's true that you can Dispel-with-benefits when your bolts land, it's also true that they erase your acid bolt effect as they buff themselves. Additionally, Pugils (I think) and Beetles will erase your Shield Break but I've always held that if each of your melees swing twice in the time between your Shield Break and their Evasion Boost, you've probably increased their damage more than Sturmwind would've upped yours.

And wtf, why isn't "Melee" a recognized word in Firefox 2?

[emeraldpearl]

eek ill try and answer fast and short

WAR as your main and sub MNK to lvl 30, to tank all you need is a 2h weapon or a 1 h weapon + shield, also you MUST voke every 30 secs to keep hate once 30 is achieved get PLD and sub WAR, once again voke voke voke lol also cure yourself to gain more hate

[Lmnop]

I may as well beat someone else to the punch...

My, emeraldpearl, that is one heck of a signature.

and of course... "2h weapon or a 1 h weapon + shield" really means "Greataxe or an axe + shield."

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Originally Posted by Lmnop

My, emeraldpearl, that is one heck of a signature.

I... I think the sig just mutated in front of my eyes. While I was looking at the sig, it went from one row with 2 swords to 3 rows with bajillions of swords.
I was thinking "Well, at least it fills out the post instead of leaving 95% of the box empty due to having an unusually long avatar." But that thought was quickly put out of its misery by the mutating sig.

It's like the opposite of raidenn's posts. They tend to be one very short sentence with no sig at all, and the rest of the post is a ton of whitespace due mostly to his avatar. It's like his posts are just begging to be filled out with some kind of sig.

[emeraldpearl]

Originally Posted by LyonheartLakshmi

I... I think the sig just mutated in front of my eyes. While I was looking at the sig, it went from one row with 2 swords to 3 rows with bajillions of swords.
I was thinking "Well, at least it fills out the post instead of leaving 95% of the box empty due to having an unusually long avatar." But that thought was quickly put out of its misery by the mutating sig.

It's like the opposite of raidenn's posts. They tend to be one very short sentence with no sig at all, and the rest of the post is a ton of whitespace due mostly to his avatar. It's like his posts are just begging to be filled out with some kind of sig.

you dont like my signature?

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Originally Posted by emeraldpearl

you dont like my signature?

I don't like having to scroll down a page just to get past a signature.

If I maximize FireFox to take up all 1152x864 pixels on my desktop, your sig basically fills up the whole browser. If I don't have it maximized (so I can actually keep an eye on other stuff on my desktop), the sig gets broken out into 3 lines of graphics (instead of the 2 I saw when maximized), which increases the size of your sig by 50%.

I shudder to think what it does to people who are still running at 800x600 resolution.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by emeraldpearl

you dont like my signature?

No, I hate it. It's taller than the browser window on my small laptop. I. Can't. See.

Chop it down!

[Lmnop]

I think it's lovely. Here's my suggestion: Choose an avatar. Post just that picture. Every week, rotate what avatar you have displayed. This will lead to many social anecdotes wherein people will talk about it being "Titan week" or whatnot.

[dani1977]

I have a couple of questions along these lines ...

1. Can you eat both defense and attack foods at same time?
2. If you use Shield Break right away to lower the mobs eva, will using it again lower it further? What if you use Shield break at 300 tp? Does the eva get reduced even more?
3. Does Boost draw hate?

[Ellipses]

1. No. You can only have one food effect active at a time.
2. Not sure if Shield Break stacks with itself. But more TP = longer duration, not more evasion down. Don't wait til 300 TP. It's not worth it.
3. Yes. Every action/ability/spell you use draws some amount of enmity. Boost in particular draws about 1/6th the (volatile) enmity of Provoke.

[Armando]

No, Shield Break doesn't stack with itself. The enemy can't have multiples of the same buff or debuff. Using Shield Break again will only do damage.

[IfritnoItazura]

Exact numerical values of enmity for different job abilities and spells can be found on Kaeko's Enmity Table.