New party type: BLM party

[locus]

They're getting pretty popular these days (seen a lot in Bohyada and the Den). If you want to try something new and different, give this a go (got this info from the leader of a BLM party I was in a while ago):

Black mage party:
- 5 black mages
- 1 "other" (SMN is good, Brd/Smn works best (with +mp to cast Aerial Armor). Brd is preferred over Red Mage, reason: Refresh on 6 people is too slow! Therenody is also very very good.) As this is hard to find at times, try to level as a "set" team with the same people.

Level requirements: At least 45 (Stun). May work at lower levels but I have not seen this.

There is a lot of freedom in subs for the blms. One can sub bard for ballad since this is a mp-intensive party. Others can do summoner (for extra shield+autorefresh) but the overall best is Red Mage. (Magic attack bonus + Fast cast + Stoneskin). White mage is unfortunately not such a hot idea, but one should be kept around for na spells. Generally, this depends on who the 6th person is.

Pros: Why play a black mage party?

-Does crazy amounts of damage, more than any other party.
-IT monsters die in 30 seconds, tops. (Not kidding)
-Wipes out almost everything in the area that other parties your level are too scared to touch.
-I've just seen Chain #8 (manafont) and it was very pretty.
-Very very fun. Renkei? Provoke? What's that?

Cons:

-Black mages are fragile, to say the least. Not for the undaring.
-Somewhat annoying downtime between chains (not really worse than a conventional party)
-requires somewhat skilled players that aren't afraid to try something new and go anywhere without a tank. (Tank? What tank?)
-Higher level black magic spells take up to 8 seconds to cast.

Tactics (how to play):
1)All black mages should boost INT and elemental magic (with torques + ice staff if possible). Before battle, aerial armor, stoneskin(this usually saves more mp than healing), aquaveil.

2)Assign orders of Stun. Stun lasts for a very short time, has a 30 second recharge and while an enemy is stunned, it may not be stunned again. You will have to take turns casting stun in a set order as soon as the monster is about to attack. (Flash can help as it lasts for 2 hits)

3)Pull monster with summon (6th person), go absolutely crazy with elemental spells. Black mages take turns stunning, Monster's hp bar moves down faster than a veryfastthing and then it dies. Next enemy please.

Notes:
- Hate is not an issue. If a monster hits a black mage, his hate will reduce + every other black mage in the party will hit the monster with a spell and get more hate. Result: Black mage that got hit will have the lowest hate. For this reason Aerial armor is absolutely essential as you will be taking advantage of almost all the blinks. If you are in danger, stand still and don't do anything - let the 6th person cure you. As soon as the next wave of spells hit, it should be safe for you to start nuking again.

-Boost boost boost: Elemental skill over Int. Skill is much more important.

- If you're worried about things like Jet Stream and Silence gas and whatnot, don't be too concerned. Monsters will never get enough TP to pull anything off twice and most die before doing a WS even once. And half of the time they get stunned. Due to a bug/feature in the game, using an effect on a target for the first time sometimes "locks up" the target, making it unable to move or act. This may help too.

- Avoid anything that can cast Shell unless you can Dispel it. They take too much mp to kill.

- If you accidentally link monsters, you can either do the risky thing (go all out with Ga spells) or abuse the fact you have 5 people with sleepga and sleep, 5 people with escape... Also if a monster won't get off you and try to hit the other black mages, reset it's hate with Sleep. High magic skill is a must. Debuffs should be done by the 6th member, if at all. Burn can help things as it makes spells do more damage.

Try it - you'll make all those DRK and RNG damage queens turn green with envy. (sure, they can do large damage but only once every minute or so ;p)

[666]

EQ Wizard tactics used in FFXI O_O ohmy

[Synbios]

[Striopach]

Sleep doesn't reset hate last I checked. For Flash, you'll need a WHM or PLD.

Interesting nonetheless. Not that I'd be inclined to even attempt this, as xp loss is the suck.

[wyzat]

Try it - you'll make all those DRK and RNG damage queens turn green with envy. (sure, they can do large damage but only once every minute or so ;p)

dont both do pretty consitant damage then hella nice damage every 1minutes especially rangers they own everything at damage over all

[Tomoh]

Very interesting. The last time I was in a near all BLM PT was when I was in Valkrum. We had LV15~16 5 BLMs and 1 WHM. BLMs would form a circular formation around the crab and just nuke the hell out of it. We leveled fairly quickly. Aggro was not a problem since the crab was busy trying to go from 1 mage to another. Wide circle helped to take minimal damage. Battles were very quick and it was fun. It would be very difficult to form this PT now with mages in such demand there.

[Stormwalker]

Originally posted by Tomoh
Very interesting. The last time I was in a near all BLM PT was when I was in Valkrum. We had LV15~16 5 BLMs and 1 WHM. BLMs would form a circular formation around the crab and just nuke the hell out of it. We leveled fairly quickly. Aggro was not a problem since the crab was busy trying to go from 1 mage to another. Wide circle helped to take minimal damage. Battles were very quick and it was fun. It would be very difficult to form this PT now with mages in such demand there.

Not so difficult. I was in a 4xBLM 1xRNG 1xWHM party this weekend that worked very much like this. We didn't start to get into trouble until one of us hit 20 and the experience really started to suck. Then someone got the bright idea of trying this with pugils, and it only takes one Screwdriver to kill a BLM.

Worked very well on crabs and reasonably well on gobbies, though. It was amazing how quickly things died.

What I'd like to see is this tactic tried with 4xBLM 1xRDM 1xWHM to add Gravity to the mix.

[wyzat]

one question.....


wouldnt a prty of all melee work as fast aside from the getting hit part....

wouldnt ssomething like 6 rangers kill even faster?....i heard rangers do the most damage out of all the classes they are just expensive

[Trimpton]

Lol this reminds me of EQ AE Parties so much.

EQ AE parties would be so good they would have day waits to join, theyd AE Sleep basically then AE nuke to hell, then AE sleep till they kill like 10 monsters at 1 time.

Course this idea is for killing 1 mob, iam sure its just as effective basically same idea but killing less mobs at one time.

And no I dont do mass dmg once every minutes - its constant 100 dmg arrows on IT then burst dmg.

I like the idea of new party ideas for ffxi forming.

[Faluzure]

I did this combo about a month back (looking at the topic starter's level, I assume he was around my level at the same time).

I have a video of this and a video of us attacking a Water Elemental (very VERY dangerous in Bohyada).

[locus]

Rangers do consistent 100+ damage only assuming you're fighting the right enemies (no skeletons/ghosts/slimes!). I won't argue that Sidewinder does huge damage (that BLM can only rival once they get Blizzaga 3), but you have to charge to 100 tp first (this takes longer than it sounds) and then it has a nasty habit of missing a lot.

Black mage parties are more like anywhere from 200-400 damage per spell every 6 seconds. That means every 6 seconds the monster is taking around 1500 damage. In 30 seconds, that would be level 7500 damage (and no monsters in the Dragon's Aery have that kind of HP.) The speed at which the monster's life bar moves down is simply jaw-dropping.

As I said, this works best only once blm can blink+stoneskin and you have Aerial Armor. I'm not sure it would work for lower levels because blm really are very fragile without blink. It is very safe once you hit higher levels (just don't wear errant gear!).

Sleep does the following: It resets monster hate (perhaps a set amount) and puts a large amount of hate on the caster of the spell. If you don't believe me, have someone provoke any monster two times, then sleep it. The monster should come running to you the instant it wakes up. Any bard could confirm this, actually.

Also - BLM party works wonders in Dynamis, where Cross Reaper does an amazing 30 damage (WHEEE) to statues and Sidewinder does just over 100 damage (normal attacks are all single digit).

And the black mages will still be doing 200-300 damage per level 3 spell... (400+ for IV spells)

edit: Wyzat, this prolly doesn't work so well for melee since there are miss chances - even if elemental spells get resisted, they still do damage (and elemental spells for BLM really don't get resisted very often with Burn on at high levels). Melee also does nowhere near the same amount of damage per spell at the level. I was thinking about 5 rangers - maybe that would work, but I have not tried it. (I've only had a 2 ranger party, but in that party we used a tank, rangers got tp, monster dies).

6 Melee also gives the monster a lot of time to build tp. A very important perk of this party is that the monster almost never gets TP to use it's horrible WS (or dies before it can use it). This is why you are killing things like leeches that no other party in the area wants to touch (Acid mist is just plain horrible to melees)

If you want to go 6 rangers, I suggest one paladin, a red mage and 4 rangers so the rangers can charge TP.

Melee also has the problem of renkeis... generally, you don't "go" with WS until the proper time and that holds up the damage. BLM party is a lot better at hate control. Imagine this:

Ranger 1 uses sidewinder: Enemy takes 1200 damage, attacks him.
Ranger 2 uses sidewinder: Miss! Enemy continues hitting Ranger 1, Ranger 1 dies.

Black mage 1 casts Blizzard 4: Enemy takes ~900 damage, aggros him.
Black mage 2 casts Blizzard 4: Enemy takes ~900 damage, stops hitting Black mage 1 and starts hitting black mage 2.

BLM party is also just plain fun. For our last battle, we even did a onecast kill. Sleep2>Flare>Flood>Burst>Quake>Tornado = dead fly.

[Trimpton]

Blm underestimate Rng Dmg =p

Thats not the point, I was interested in if you have tried it fighting more than one mob. Like try 2, maybe 3 at a time.. 2 sleepga 2 3 nuke and do it over and over till all 3 die.

[Heavyswordz]

The blm pt is a cool idea..

About sleep.. If you slept a mob and nothing happens to it while it is asleep, the second it wakes up the monster will go running toward the caster that slept it. If you provoke it while it is aslept it will run to the provoker once it is awake. I did that in bcnm 60..

[Karinya]

Originally posted by Heavyswordz
About sleep.. If you slept a mob and nothing happens to it while it is asleep, the second it wakes up the monster will go running toward the caster that slept it. If you provoke it while it is aslept it will run to the provoker once it is awake. I did that in bcnm 60..

This is not true, or at least not reliably. The other day I cast sleep on a monster that was about to add on my party, and someone from another party provoked it while it was asleep (but didn't wake it up). When it woke up it came after me - and I couldn't fight back or try to put it back to sleep because the provoke claimed it for the other party (which had already moved away in the meantime).

Why does sleep, which actually does something to the monster, not claim it, while provoke, which does nothing other than change its hate, claims it? And how is it fair for a monster claimed by one party to attack someone in another party who is prevented by the game from fighting back because it's not "their" monster?

BTW, after 4 or 5 attacks it lost interest in me and ran off to find the person who provoked it. It didn't actually kill me - but that's mostly because we had another RDM that could heal me (I couldn't cast because I was being hit, and the tank couldn't provoke it off me because it was claimed).

[locus]

Karinya:

As I said, although Sleep resets a large amount of hate, it actually puts quite a lot of hate on the caster - one provoke isn't enough to do the trick sometimes - provoke doesn't seem to work as effectively on a sleeping target. That person should have stayed behind to make sure the monster was following him.

Every player in a party can only "claim" ONE enemy target at a time. If you cast sleep on monster #2 and then do something to monster #1, monster #2 becomes "unclaimed", meaning it is free game for any other parties around. To see what I mean, try playing BST or SMN and send your pet to attack one enemy while you hit another. Look at how the names change rapidly from red to yellow.

I agree that that kind of situation you described is pretty dangerous - but luckily it doesn't occur very often. What I suggest is that when you sleep a monster, try not to do anything other than cure your party members. That keeps the enemy target claimed.