Merrit Parties...

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Merrit Parties...

At that point, you take out a DD and add a COR, and use Corsair's Roll to increase exp/hour instead.

Corsairs are DD too.

I regularly Slug Shot between 1-1.3k and have topped out so far at 1661 with less than optimal gear. I agree with your point though on Corsair's Roll.

As to the OP, you don't have to put the effort in to level Ninja as a sub, just don't be surprised when party leaders don't put the effort in to hitting the invite button.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Merrit Parties...

I'm understanding where you're coming from on the strong dislike for NIN. I dislike playing it both inside and outside of merit parties. I think the main reason for that is because when it came time for me to level it I was extremely broke. I made the majority of my gil by farming Elm Logs in Not only that, but my Warrior was extremly broken since I started out leveling Warrior with Sword, then i went Sword ->Great Sword from like 17-40, then I found out that Warrior was better with Axes and Great Axes so I leveled both of those but Axe still suffered and it was greatly undercapped. I figured I'd be able to WAR/MNK til 75 and tank lol, but I was wrong. I got begged once to come to a party super gimped /nin. I went to the party as WAR40/NIN15, and since they expected me to tank and DW Axes I couldn't hit a damn thing. I eventually apologized and left the party because of my shame. It was my own damn fault for not knowing better, but enough of my life story....

At that time I decided that I was going to stop leveling and farm/craft until I could make enough gil to go forward. Eventually I got so wrapped up in crafting that I stopped leveling at all basically, but after I made a few gils I decided to go back and level NIN to 30. It took a few days to do, and it was painful for me since the Elewheel tools were expensive and I didn't have enough space to carry them (I think I had only done maybe 1 or 2 gobbiebags back then.) So I basically went through using only Utsusemi and Kuryami (sp?). This was before level sync came out, otherwise I probably would've went to 37 via qufim .

Utsusemi: Ni - Yeah it is expensive but totally worth it at 75 when you need all the damage mitigation you can get. I mean seriously it is a pretty hard drop at times, we ran about 15 Under Observations in a week and it dropped 2 times total (0 Peacock Charm Drops!!!!) I couldn't get any of the knuckleheads in my linkshell to help me farm it when I needed one, so I ended up buying it.

I think NIN is a automechanism which is the reason it is asked for in parties. Just because somebody comes as a DRK/SAM doesn't mean they they'll use Seigan/3RD eye to mitigate damage, and even if they do, they aren't guaranteed 3 anticipations. Just because somebody comes to a party as /WAR doesn't mean they'll backup tank if the tank or the mages are about to bite the dust. Just because somebody comes as /THF doesn't mean they know how to SATA or who to SATA onto. With that being said if everybody comes as /NIN all you have to consider is that they will keep their shadows up, and even if they don't somebody else can usually pick up the slack for them.(Disclaimer: Dependent on if you can kill the mobs fast enough) (Disclaimer #2: Unless it is a ultraDRK with Double Damage Whopper Chopper Job Ability.)

[Evion]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Ask yourself what a PLD will do in a merit PT. If hes supposed to be a tank, consider this:

1. The kills are way faster than is Flash or Provoke. Therefore, he'll only be able to TRY to get/keep hate every other or maybe every 3 mobs.
2. Even with provoke/flash, there are not too manty PLDs that will be able to get/keep hate from merit PT SAMs/DRKs/ETC.
3. A PLD in a merit PT would HAVE to get refresh, which means you would HAVE to have RDM (pretty much), which are not always available.
4. If the PLD is tanking (and somehow magically kept hate the whole time) he will need to be cured. This is a waste of MP that could be spent on Haste or something else.

IDK, just my thoughts...

[Nuriko]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Now, is this guy right or no? If he is. I should just quit right now because I REALLY EFFING HATE playing as Ninja, or as /ninja as it does NOTHING to help kill faster in a party, and, it will make you go poor VERY quickly as once a tool is used, you cant get it back. (Stack of Shihei goes for 3,300 gil on my server atm, so that is 275/Shihei. Every 30 seconds over the course of 3 hours will add up too.... 99,000 gil if you have to use a Shihei every 30 seconds for a normal 3 hour party.)

You need math help ... 3300/99 is not 275. Were you thinking that shihei were in stacks of 12? Try about 12k for a 3 hour PT...

[Durahansolo]

Re: Merrit Parties...

3300/99 is not 275. Were you thinking that shihei were in stacks of 12? Try about 12k for a 3 hour PT...

I don't think anybody caught that. A stack of Shihei toolbags should cost around 40k (They used to on my server and I haven't bought any since like november of last year.) which would be 12*99=1188 shihei, so your 275k is cut down to about 120k for around 3300 shihei:thumbs up:. Iit also depends on the mobs accuracy, double attack and what not. Mandys eat shihei for breakfast, but their accuracy isn't that great either so sometimes you can skate by.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Honestly, I used to be the biggest advocate of /NIN in merit parties.

Then I joined a merit party where people subbed WAR or SAM.

I never made people sub NIN in merit parties anymore.

HOWEVER. I am a person who always wants to maximize efficiency. That means your gear better not suck, you'd better be swapping, you'd better step up your game. I don't want less than 30k/hr. I don't like meriting, I want to get it done with as quickly as possible. There is no way to really get 30k/hr when your DDs are subbing Ninja. However, most pick up groups can not achieve this.

In fact, some static groups can't even achieve this. (I have a linkshell with a lot of relics/HQ'ed DDs, not many have this.)

HOWEVER. Sometimes it is necessary to sub NIN. I hate it, you hate it, my grandma hates it, your uncle hates it. I'm of the mindset that if you are killing quickly enough, there isn't any time to take any damage. This is often the case. If all your DDs are on par with one another, hate will bounce just fine. If one of your DDs is really amazing and the others are average, be prepared to spend a lot of MP on that one guy. This is why some people are made to /NIN.

Honestly, /WAR /SAM /THF can be harder to keep up with, but really, they're usually not. I only run out of MP on the really bad parties where someone actually tries to tank (yes, this happens ...) and isn't a PLD.

Not that I merit with PLDs.

I guess my point is, so many people talked way highly of subbing NIN here, and I didn't see an argument for the other side. I did skim so if I missed it, my bad. Not subbing NIN will increase your damage output, and in merit parties, shit is going to die quickly. Ridiculously quickly at times. You're not always going to need to have NIN sub for merit parties.

Granted, a LOT of the community thinks you do. I was one of them once. But once you dance outside that safety net, you can and do get amazing amounts of xp/hr. 20k~ is average for a party with all DD/NIN and that's fine, I prefer much higher numbers though. So subbing NIN for merits is perfectly valid and most people are content with 20k/hr ~ish.

So, yes, although some of the best merit parties are those where nobody subs NIN, you'll still need it, because most of the people who play the game are PUSSIES about taking damage, or in the mages' cases, PUSSIES about curing it, so you'll be asked to sub NIN anyway, even though it can and does gimp your performance. You can probably get by without it, but I'd be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't call you gimp for not having it. It's harsh, but it's unfortunately true.

I hated leveling NIN too, I wanted to kill the designers of the horrible job. I finished the last two levels of it for my sub by doing Campaign ops and using XP scrolls from various quests. So you don't have to go out and XP it, if you do your seven ops a week on NIN, you can slowly build up xp that way. It's rather sucky but at least you don't have to go out and level it.

[Elwynn]

Re: Merrit Parties...

And then when I get it to 37, I will be FORCED to get Utsuemi: Ni. That scroll is so damn expensive, and so hard to obtain, its not worth it IMO. You already spent about 1 mil just to get the job to 37, why spend 400k more just to get a scroll, or spend HOURS upon HOURS trying to get it from BCNMs.

Why? Because Ni can be recast in between mob hits, and Ichi can't, even with haste. That means you can cast Ni without interrupts. It's as simple as that. Also, the recast times on both are long enough that you may need both for complete coverage. (maybe with epic maxed haste Ichi could be cast between hits, but then you're probably gimping something else to reach that haste level.)

Seriously, take some time out from xp-ing and farm some shit. Or take all those seals clogging your inventory and do BCs until they're gone. A RDM or WHM/BLM and two DDs can do Royal Jelly, and you might even get a Ni scroll to drop. If you currently have more than 100 seals lying around, you don't have any excuse to whine about BCNMs not dropping shit. (Also, stop "effing up your macros" already.) And if you don't have 100 seals lying around, try seeing what you can solo to get more seals. Just soloing a new job to 20 ought to get you quite a few seals. And keep watching the prices. Just because you have 400K for a Ni scroll doesn't mean you have to buy it the moment your money is greater than the AH price. If you keep a slush fund, you can buy things a week or two in advance if there's a sudden price drop.

While you're whining, I've been farming water crystals to suck gil from idiot RMT last month, harvesting W.Saruta while farming bees and crawlers, camping the clothcraft guild to make silk cloth at 25% of (not off!) the AH price, and selling off my Imperial Standing as silver pieces in front of the warp taru. And lots of other things I can't think of. I took RNG to 20 (and got more seals and silk threads) and am trying to get THF to 45 just for farming purposes, with RDM 40 still on my list for BCNM purposes. I'm about to break 3 million gil once I sell another dozen or so silvers. And that's after leveling BLM took me from 2 million down to about 600k at one point, and I still have most of that gear. (and still only an Aquilo's HQ staff, so there's about 4-5 million more in gear that would be "nice to have", plus another half million for Gobbiebag #10... which would help my farming)

No matter what kind of game you think FFXI is, it's not a game about nothing else but leveling jobs between a few quests/missions so that you can reach "endgame". There's plenty of economic game in there, and you need to play some of that so that you can play the leveling game better. And you need to play the leveling game so that you can play the economic game better, too. Farming water crystals was so much easier after I could one-shot the elementals with a Thunder III.

Really, there's little different from camping a 24-hour or 7-day pop NM vs. watching the warp taru to see when nobody but the perma-idlers are there, or camping a guild and raiding it when the price of something bottoms out, except that maybe it's a bit less boring.

[Malacite]

Re: Merrit Parties...

lol @ /NIN.....

Yeah I got news for the guy the OP was talking about; NIN sub is not the best sub for merit parties and only a few jobs (BRD, THF, WHM) use it in the best merit parties. I'm talking 30-35k an hour parties here where mobs are dieing in 2-10 seconds, so shadows are completely irrelevant.

WAR - SAM

MNK - WAR (counterstance ftw)

THF - NIN (Blau Dolch + X's Knife wooo)

WHM - SCH or NIN (if you have the gear for Mystic Boon spam. You are not meleeing for damage!)

RDM - WHM, maybe /SCH idk haven't seen too many RDM do this.

BRD - NIN, WHM or COR depending on if you're the puller or not.

DRG - SAM, RDM or possibly BLU/SCH (I lean on RDM with sanction refresh)

SAM - DRG and using a polearm if bird camp. Undeniably the best DD in merits bar none. RNG sub if you happen to own a Yoichinoyumi.

COR - RNG, maybe NIN if pulling but typically RNG sub.

DNC - NIN or SAM depending on gear I guess (I still say NIN for dagger + joyeuse)

SCH - RDM sub hands down. AoE buffs ftw.




Please not that the above is not the allmighty standard of YOU MUST MERIT THIS WAY ONRY!!! But rather what I've found to be the most optimal set ups for max EXP/hour, nor do I endorse discrimination against any jobs.

[Tickmeoff]

Re: Merrit Parties...

And then when I get it to 37, I will be FORCED to get Utsuemi: Ni. That scroll is so damn expensive, and so hard to obtain, its not worth it IMO. You already spent about 1 mil just to get the job to 37, why spend 400k more just to get a scroll, or spend HOURS upon HOURS trying to get it from BCNMs.

You are assuming way too much. You are not always going to be tanking (especially before 37) and you are not using one shihei on the dot every 30 seconds. I bought one stack of shihei toolbags for ~20k and barely went through half of it to get NIN to 37, and if you don't plan on playing NIN as a main job you don't even have to worry about getting Utsusemi: Ni until you get another job to 74.

And you already have NIN at 34? You could just gimp it up and join a PL party in Qufim for the last 3 levels and be done with the job in a few hours, probably without even using shihei. Save up your seals and when you do get a job to merit level do some BCNM Royal Jelly with a friend until you get the scroll for Ni.

I agree that NIN is a terribly designed job and Utsusemi should have been nerfed or changed immediately, but it's 7 years too late for any of that. Play the game the way it is or don't play it at all, there's no room for scrub mentality here.

[Nuriko]

Re: Merrit Parties...

I don't think anybody caught that. A stack of Shihei toolbags should cost around 40k (They used to on my server and I haven't bought any since like november of last year.) which would be 12*99=1188 shihei, so your 275k is cut down to about 120k for around 3300 shihei:thumbs up:. Iit also depends on the mobs accuracy, double attack and what not. Mandys eat shihei for breakfast, but their accuracy isn't that great either so sometimes you can skate by.

Actually, I was saying that shihei are about 33 gil each, not the 275 the OP quoted. That puts you down about 12k gil for a 3-hour PT, recasting Ichi as soon as possible for the whole time. Suffice to say, the figures were just off ... and if the OP were to just do campaign ops and nothing else for NIN, they can probably get a level every other week or so (in the mid-30s).

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Merrit Parties...

if the OP were to just do campaign ops and nothing else for NIN, they can probably get a level every other week or so (in the mid-30s).

Isn't the OP already NIN34? Just FoV fighting EPs two or three nights will get him to 37. If he has /DNC high enough to use, he wouldn't even need Shihei. Even without /DNC, crying over the small number of shihei needed to get from 34 to 37 is just silly.

* * *

For those saying DD/NIN isn't the best for merit party, I'd like to say "It depends."

When you have a RDM/WHM as the only source of cure, /WAR and /SAM for DDs often result in the RDM running out of MP or have to cut back on Haste and even Dia. I saw this plenty of times on RDM myself; 4 minutes after Convert and already running below 200 MP because people needed massive curing--and that's on Greater Colibri.

Of course, I've also had the misfortune of seemingly always getting stuck with people who don't know they don't have to use Hasso all the time and that Seigan/Third Eye is a part of /SAM's game.

When there is a second source of cure in the party, usually it's OK if the DDs use /SAM or /WAR. I put together my last merit party, and it was NIN/WAR, WAR/SAM, DRG/SAM, BRD/NIN, DNC/NIN, WHM/SCH--wanted the NIN to change to SAM but couldn't get him to budge. Would've asked for DD/NINs if not for the Dancer and White Mage combo.

* * *

Not that /SAM or /WAR will magically get you 30k exp/hr. Heck, 2,350,000 limit points later, I haven't seen a single one of those mythical 30k/hr merit parties even though I had merited with plenty of /SAM and /WAR DDs.

Did people get those 30k+ figures from parsers? Or just picked a peak value from Windower's exp/hour figure? Manually hand calculated by writing down the exact starting time and limit points/merit points and stopping time and points? Or just went with feelings like "Well, that was like an hour, wasn't it? I got three merits!"

Did they subtract the bonuses from exp bands?

* * *

People were using 22-23k/hr as the benchmark two years ago, and now it's 35k/hr, in the same Aht Urhgan camps. That's a pretty large increase, even given the shift from /NIN to /SAM (and two-handed weapons update) and the switch from BRD x2 to BRD+COR.

I'm just a bit skeptical, I guess; I've been in parties which I think would be capable of 25k with some adjustments, but even 30k base exp/hr seems difficult, nevermind 35k.

("Base exp" in my vocabulary means excluding exp bands--the longer one parties, the lower the exp/hr even given the same usage of exp bands, so that's why I adjust the exp numbers to "base" without bands. Without doing that, it's not possible to compare parties which do not last the same length. This doesn't apply to exp bonus from Sanction or Mamool Ja--those effects do not flexuate due to the length of partying.)

Anyway, those of you who really regularly experience 30k/hr parties, good for you (unless you're deluding yourselves with exp bands, eyeballing instead of parser or real calculation, or hand picking Windower's peak figures). Those of you who are just touting 35k/hr because it's what other people mentioned it, I don't know what to say to you...

[Aksannyi]

Re: Merrit Parties...

For those saying DD/NIN isn't the best for merit party, I'd like to say "It depends."

When you have a RDM/WHM as the only source of cure, /WAR and /SAM for DDs often result in the RDM running out of MP or have to cut back on Haste and even Dia. I saw this plenty of times on RDM myself; 4 minutes after Convert and already running below 200 MP because people needed massive curing--and that's on Greater Colibri.

Of course, I've also had the misfortune of seemingly always getting stuck with people who don't know they don't have to use Hasso all the time and that Seigan/Third Eye is a part of /SAM's game.

When there is a second source of cure in the party, usually it's OK if the DDs use /SAM or /WAR. I put together my last merit party, and it was NIN/WAR, WAR/SAM, DRG/SAM, BRD/NIN, DNC/NIN, WHM/SCH--wanted the NIN to change to SAM but couldn't get him to budge. Would've asked for DD/NINs if not for the Dancer and White Mage combo.

This can be true if you have idiot DDs, which you stated. I've had those, but I just leave the party if they can't handle themselves. I don't have to fuck around if I don't want to.

I've never touched Dia in merit parties, because then I have to erase it, and mobs die quickly enough with out it. I don't usually have trouble on RDM with MP, though. I do my Haste cycle, tossing some Regens in between, then I rest for a few ticks, as long as no one needs cured.

I agree that it does depend. But I haven't merited with anyone /NIN in quite a while, so I can't say when those times would be, since I'm really picky. But yeah, I don't typically knock it, I remember some really bad parties with people who don't know how to handle themselves without shadows.

---------- Post added at 05:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------

Oh, and I use Windower's xp/hr parse, and I reload the plugin after my xp ring wears, if I used one at all. 30k/hr parties are hard to get. Need the camps to be open, need disgustingly geared players. They're not typical. Which is why, like I said, I'd merit with my ls. Relic DDs and Ghorn bards.

[Takelli]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Actually, I was saying that shihei are about 33 gil each, not the 275 the OP quoted. That puts you down about 12k gil for a 3-hour PT, recasting Ichi as soon as possible for the whole time. Suffice to say, the figures were just off ... and if the OP were to just do campaign ops and nothing else for NIN, they can probably get a level every other week or so (in the mid-30s).

Yea, I did mess up the math. I kept redoing it over and over, but I kept forgetting that it was 99/stack, not 12/stack like most items are. So, that is my fault there.

---------- Post added at 05:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------

*snip*

thank you. this is something that I was actually looking for. I just wanted to see someone that doesn't have a /nin /nin /nin mentality. Everyone who I have talked to says I should nin nomatter what. (I was yelled at in the dunes being drk/thf at lvl 17... LOL at them.)

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

*snip*

And there are probably other job combanitions. I have had Cors surprised that I want them to sub Rng instead of Nin, and the party is like "WHAT THE F*CK YOU THINKING!". Then, when they see how fast the party is killing, and the Cor is actually having fun int eh party as well, and the tank is holding hate, they just shut up about me having the Cor sub rng, and just keep going.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Merrit Parties...

Well, NIN sub is situationally useful, so as much as you hate it, there are times you'll need it. You can try to get out of using it whenever possible, but sometimes you're just going to be stuck.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Merrit Parties...

(I was yelled at in the dunes being drk/thf at lvl 17... LOL at them.)

Does thf offer anything except steal at that level? But then too at that level I was subbing BLU for kicks.

What I hate is when I see /nins in the dunes. I mean I used to hate seeing peeps sub nin just to dual wield (20-23) but now that I've been playing a little bit longer I understand that mentality.