Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

[Celeal]

I have a fair amount of pick up parties without rdm or brd or cor (none LFG). I understand/expect that the xp won't be as good, I am okay with less xp (better than no xp) and as long as it is fun.

At least each time I learn something new and gain some improvement under these kind of parties (stress).

I am just wondering what methods/tactics would our fellow PLD use in this situation?

Usually I try to ask party to stay in ToAU for Sanction Refresh. I also have Dark Staff swap in between pulls (if the puller is smart enough to give me one tick of /heal ....). Is there any camp/mob okay with this condition?

I don't have Parade Gorget yet, don't have cooking for making juice in the field. I am wondering how effective is Parade Gorget (latent HP > 85% Refresh), or making juice in between battles compare to Dark Staff + /heal? The pullers usually tries to beat the clock for exp chain (cannot blame them, it is their job), and how often my HP is above 85% varies from one healer to another.

Without RDM or BRD or COR, who is going to take over Dispel or Sleep?

If there is a BLU in party then there is some form of "Dispel." Maybe RNG can use Acid Bolt too, I am not sure (very rare to have RNG in my party after the range weapon adjustment).

Is Sleep Bolt effective for crowd/link control? How many crossbow users try it in xp parties? I am wondering how many BLM or WHM/BLM or BLU or DRK out there have their Sleep spell functional in xp parties?

I have party with BLU prepared for "Dispel" duty. I have partied with WHM/BRD for Ballad, which is pushing the limit, but it works in a certain extend.

Recently, I have rarely partied with any BLM or WHM/BLM that can promptly sleep the mob. Most seems to forgot Elemental Seal + Sleep? I am wondering how effective is BLU's 2hr + Blue magic form of Sleep? Never seen any BLU do that during emengency (actually, for all BLU that I partied, I only see one and only one BLU use his 2hr once for WS). I don't expect DRK to try to land Sleep. I am not sure if Sleep Bolt is practical of not, never seen it used for link control in xp parties.

Any opinion? Or is it not worthed to bother (just decline any party wihout RDM or BRD or COR)?

[Murphie]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Well, it's not ideal, and it won't be very good exp/hour, but it's certainly still doable. That said, having juice available will help a lot with MP issues. If you can level cooking a bit, you can certainly get to the point where you can make yourself Melon Juice at least.

What mobs are you fighting that BLMs can't sleep?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Acid Bolts do wonders for Defense Boost mobs. Sleep Bolts are OK on IT, but not quite as good as Lullaby, Light Shot or Sleep II. VT and lower sleep bolt effects are considerably better. Any good THF or RNG would have either at the ready in macro as those two bolt types, in addition to bloody bolts, are essential to any soloing they do.

A PLD without a Parade Gorget is like a RNG who doesn't camp Wyvernpoacher for O-Bow - they're passing up on an essential item. With Sanction Refresh you can have 2 MP a tick.

You can make orange juice with level 1 cooking. Juices (along with the occastional BST jug pet) can pretty much take you all the way to level 50 cooking. Very, very easy to level on Juice. I skilled it alongside my BLM until 40. And keep in mind that Juice effects WILL stack with Ballad and Evoker's Roll, but not RDM Refresh.

There shouldn't be a question of Dark Staff + /heal vs. any refresh or juice, you can use a combination of them all if you want to really be MP efficient.

Its funny that the best PLDs I PT with happen to be Taru. They don't forget their mage roots, they keep that dark staff, make the juice and do anything to keep that MP up, even working with a BRD or COR instead of against them.

PLD can do just fine without a refresh job to back them, its all a matter of you playing it to do so rather than relying on the ability of any of those jobs to cover you. And when you do have BRD or COR, it is important to work with him, not against them. I had a great Hume PLD recently in the new thickets camp. Never once did he move his back from the WHM, I got Evoker's Roll on him every time. Had a P Gorget too. It was beautiful.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

(Disclaimer: I'm a spoiled PLD with BRD and RDM in static party; everything I write here is from observation on other jobs watching MP-addicted PLD's or just pure guesses.)

MP recovery:
Given that PLD were able to function before the Auto-Refresh update, today's PLD with Parade Gorget + Sanction Refresh should do OK on MP, especially with Dark Staff ready to use between battles.

Your priority should be a Parade Gorget--it shouldn't be not that hard with a few friends to help out.

If I were to have no refresher but have a Parade Gorget, I would let my HP drop until just around second Provoke--then put in a big cure or two to secure the monster in place, and maintain my HP above 85% until 1/3 of the way into the battle. Then, leave most of the healing to the WHM and backup healers for the rest of the battle, and save MP outside of Flash. Make sure the WHM knows when and how much he is supposed to cure.

Damage Mitigation:
You need a WHM.

Most important is to make sure the WHM keeps up using Regen II or III. (Yes, it's obvious. No, not all WHM use their highest Regen on PLD--or even use any regen. Why? I've no idea.)

Next, is to set up a Flash order with the WHM; put a /tell <WHM> in your Flash macro, so your WHM knows when you've used it. Train him to follow it up 10-15 seconds later with another.

Keep an eye on the enfeebs as well; if you don't see something which should be used, send /tell's. Also, you probably have to resign to full-time Defender.

Shorten Battles:
Get good DD's. Targeting birds or other flying critters? Try to grab DRG's and THF's--even the ones not seeking. Know someone has gimped gear--don't invite out of pity. Don't have anything particularly strong against the mob? Set up skillchain, get BLM for MB. Every single BLM I've meet after Lv.40 loved to MB, and even most melees enjoy SC after they get used to it--you'll kill fast and have happy people.

You're an experienced player; put all that knowledge to use and set up a party which can kill stuff fast for you. ^_-

[Icemage]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Things you can do:

(1) Have a mage sub /BRD if at level 50/25+ for Mage's Ballad.

(2) Have any player who does not have a critical subjob to use /COR for Healer's Roll (+hMP).

(3) If you have a DRG in your party, ask if they have a /RDM subjob available as emergency backup healing. Yes, it hurts their damage output, but damage output doesn't mean anything if you're dead.

(4) If there is a Dark Knight in your party at a level high enough to use Parade Gorget, ask them if they have a /WHM subjob available. Again, a loss in damage, but healing is your absolute number one priority in a traditional party.


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

healing is your absolute number one priority in a traditional party.

Healer's bias. >_>

Making sure the party's healing potential is greater than the party's damage liability is essential, but you can achieve that either by increasing the healing potential, or by reducing the damage liablity--or both.

In my last PLD party in Boyada Tree against some very hard hitting Robber Crabs (yes, slight over-hunting), I managed to parry (far from capped) and evade (capped) in total 29% of all crabby attacks, thanks in large part to the liberal use of Flash between me and the WHM.

Imagine if we actually managed to stick Blind, Slow and Paralyze consistently...

Adding damage mitigation is equivalent to adding healing power, once you have enough base healing.


* * *

I left out the most important tip: Don't over-hunt!

[Icemage]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Healer bias has to be priority number one when you are lacking in support jobs. You can deal all the damage you want, but without the ability to maintain HP levels all the kill speed in the world won't save your XP chains when you don't have the HP left to continue fighting, and it won't save you when a monster decides to do WS + double attack + critical hit or other short burst high-damage scenario. Downtime from not killing things fast is infinitely preferable to downtime because someone got KO'd.


Icemage

[Murphie]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Agreed. Not that you shouldn't focus on your damage output as well, but honestly, you need to make the best of your back line, especially since you're missing a key job.

[Celeal]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Thanks for your input everyone ^^

I have a few question after reading the replies:

1. Parade Gorget. If there is Refresh/Ballard/Evoker's Roll, I have no issue with MP management, unless the DD is very gimp and the battle drags on for a long time. Can you imagine after I use a Defender at the beginning of the battle, and the same mob still alive after Defender wears off?

If there is no Refresh/Ballard/Evoker's Roll, eventually the healer need to Dark Staff + /heal in the middle of battle. From my observation/experience, since healer need to /heal and stop Curing during the battle for a length of time, my HP only remains above 85% for a very short period of time.

I like the idea of Parade Gorget + Flash cycle between PLD and WHM (if WHM is available in party). I never think about that before. However, is Hate going to be an issue? Does the WHM have time to /heal during the battle while keeping up Flash cycle, on top of curing, status removal (Erase, etc), buffs (Barspell, Haste)?

Note: Remember, party without RDM or BRD or COR.

I would like to know the details of timing, casting sequence, casting priority, tactic, etc, so that I can inform my WHM about Flash Cycle in the future. Or maybe we can post the detail on WHM forum too ^^

I will give Parade Gorget a try =)

2. Juice. Since it involves cooking, I would like to know the cost and its result for making juice in battle at my party level, like how often I need to pop juice, and how much inventory space is needed for material in 2 hours party? 3 hours party? How much time is involved for making a bottle of juice? Would the time of making juice in the field break the exp. chain?

Sorry for asking so much question for making juice in the field. I only seen one and only one PLD make juice in xp party at level 40 long time ago (before Auto-Refresh, before Shield adjustment...). Compare to the Tool Bags for Ninja Tools, errr... to me it is just not practical.

If making juice for my PLD cannot achieve the same or above the performance of my NIN tank (my NIN is at same level as my PLD at this moment), I would not skill up cooking.

P.S: How about Staff + Spirit Taker? If there is any successful stories for PLD using Staff + Spirit Taker as a remedy of party without RDM/BRD/COR, I would like to know the detail too ^^

[Sabaron]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Orange Juice is space-consumptive and not that useful for high-level PLD. If you're going to use a juice there are 3 that are good at that level:

Pineapple [3 slots per 12 pack, 48 minutes per 12-pack, 1mp/tick, 960mp]
Melon [3 slots per 12 pack, 27 minutes per 12-pack, 2mp/tick, 1080mp]
Yagudo [5 slots per 12 pack, 36 minutes per 12-pack, 2mp/tick, 1440mp]

Pineapple is 320mp/slot, Melon is 360mp/slot, Yagudo is only 120, so the king of conservation as far as inventory/mp is Melon. The only problem with it is that you'll be making a lot of them whereas your synthing with pineapple or yagudo is significantly less. I'm pretty firm on my stance that the best field-synthed juice is Pineapple. It's cheap, long-lasting, and is a good source of extra mp. It is not fast though, unfortunately. The Yagudo, if you have the space for it, will be significantly less of a headache than melon and it's also cheap depending on Dark crystal prices on your server. Of course, it requires Cooking 60 to make. Pineapple only requires 30, and Melon 40. I'll mention Grape [50] briefly because I have found it useful. If you have around 50-60mp (which a BRD of 15-24 will have going /WHM, you can refill your entire mp bar really cheap using grape juice without wasting any. I don't recall ever thinking of a use for Tomato Juice and Orange is a waste unless you're really low-level. You'll spend so much time making it that could've otherwise been spent sitting to get a tick of mp. Apple is ok if your skill is only 20, with a duration of 2.25 minutes it's just shy of a Yagudo with half the freshness. If you take cooking to 30 though, you'll seriously enjoy Pineapple Juice at just about any level. One synth every 4 minutes for 80mp is soo worth it.

[Slip]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

For a 2 - 2.5 hr party I've found around 14-20 Yag drinks is enough to keep from getting into serious mp trouble. Usually I'll only need to pop 1 or 2 per chain.

I opt for Yag drinks because I pre-synth them. Synthing in the field just takes forever and with Gobbie Bag 6 done it's possible, though occasionally painful, to keep 20+ spaces free for them.

For synthing costs you're looking at:

Pineapple Juice:
Kazham Pineapple x 2 @ 51-66gil/ = 102-132
Water crystal x1 @ 100 gil
Total: 232 gil per juice x 20 = 4,640 gil per session (worst case synthed)
AH: 800-1,000 (on Pandy Jeuno AH today) x20 = 20k/session (worst case AH)

Melon Juice:
Watermelon x1 @ 180-220
Thundermelon x1 @ 292-357
Water crystal x 1 @ 100
Total: 657 gil per juice x 20 = 13,140 gil per session (worse case synthed)
AH: 990-1,000 (on Pandy Jeuno AH today) x20 = 20k/session (worst case AH)

Yagudo Drink
Yagudo Cherry x1 @ 39-48
Buburimu Grape x3 @ 180-220 each / 660
Dark crystal @ 200
Total: 908 gil per juice x 20 = 18,160 gil per session (worse case synthed)
AH: 2,000 (on Pandy Jeuno AH today) x20 = 40k/session

It seems like a lot of gil to be tossing away but consider how much 5x Tavnazian Tacos will run you for the same time.

[Celeal]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Thanks for your respond Sabaron ^^

I have a question with what time to make juice in exp. parties. At the process of making Juice, I am not going to /heal at that time. During the time for /heal, I cannot make juice at the same time. The only time I can /heal or make juice is between battles, but I cannot do both at the same time, or I don't have time to make one bottle of juice, then /heal afterwards (because timer for exp. chain is an issue).

It looks like Pineapple Juice (4 minutes per bottle) is very good. It gives me a chance to /heal + Dark Staff + a few hMP from tanking food when Juice effect is active. Just craft after the battle is over when Juice wears off.

How often does the synth break for Pineapple Juice at cooking skill 30? Does outdoor/weather have any effect?

Edit: Sorry to miss your post Slip, we post about the same time Is 14-20 Yag drinks enough for 2 - 2.5 hr party without any RDM/COR/BRD? I never have 14 ~ 20 free space in my inventory (w/ all Gobbie bags), unless I leave a lot of stuff behind in Mog House and place lot of stuff to Locker

[Armando]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

Hate isn't an issue with Flash for WHMs. They shouldn't pull hate with it, and even if they do, 1) the mob will most likely miss, and 2) it'll most likely last more than enough for you to do something about it without having to panic or blow resources (JAs or MP) excessively.

As for the timing, Flash lasts somewhere between 12 and 13 seconds unresisted. Just tell them WHM to cast his/her Flash around 15 secs later, or if he prefers three (mob) attack rounds later. You could also set up a macro that sends him/her a short /tell along the lines of "Flash wore" in case he/she forgets about it, or it wears early. Although I don't speak from experience, I'd say the WHM should get enough time to rest, considering a two-Flash rotation is totally bad-ass as far as damage mitigation goes and you shouldn't need as much healing. (I've always wanted to be in a three-Flash rotation, It'd practically be blink tanking.)

Parade Gorget is kinda iffy at times but with a two-man Flash rotation and liberal use of Sentinel it should be working often enough. Make sure your healer knows that it triggers at HP>85%, though - it's not like it's critical, but it's still something that's useful to be aware of. In any case it's still something you should definetely have, and it's pretty easy to obtain. (Ah, if only all lesser NMs were popped and with 15-minutes-on-the-dot timers.)

On the matter of juices, I also consider Pineapple to be the most well-rounded juice - it may be slower than Melon but it's still more time-efficient/inventory-efficient and also costs less (you can buy 'em at Lower Jeuno for 400 G each if you have a lot of inventory space to start with.) How juices stack up against Dark Staff and resting depends a lot on whether or not you can use juices 24/7 and how much time the puller gives you to rest, but it's sort of a moot point; without a real Refresher, you can never have too much MP, so you should aim to take advantage of both things as much as possible.

It may be helpful to tell the puller to give you about 2 ticks of rest (30 secs) after the first mob, and 1 tick of rest after the second. It's been a while since I do a standard no-Refresh party but I believe you can also afford to squeeze in one tick of rest after the third mob (Chain 2, going for 3.) My numbers may be a little off, but basically the point is that there's plenty of room for making the chain on Chains 0, 1, and 2, so if your puller is keeping up a constantly quick pace it wouldn't hurt to politely ask him/her to give you some leeway in the early chains.

Finally, overhunting - this is, by far, your biggest enemy. Nothing else will screw you over as much. Every time you head out take a quick look at the EXP tables and the levels of the mobs you're fighting. Be very mindful of the difference between the party and mobs' average levels and be outspoken if you feel you need to aim for something slightly lower. You're really hard-pressed for MP (at least when compared to having a Refresher in the party), so you need to be proactive about this aspect; like I said, it's practically THE factor to take into account.

[Chveya]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

How often does the synth break for Pineapple Juice at cooking skill 30? Does outdoor/weather have any effect?

In taking my PLD from 10-25, I've probably synthed a half-dozen or so stacks of Pineapple Juice. I started at cooking skill 29 (now at 30), and I would guess I had one synth break per stack of juice made, maybe less. I crafted the juice without regard to weather or direction I was facing- speed is what matters here.

I'm aware that exping 10-25 is much different than the lvls you are talking about (post-Refresh at the very least it seems). For what it's worth, though, I tried to make sure that I always had at least one juice synthed and ready in my inventory. I'd craft two juices if the puller was on a long pull, and if my MP was at a reasonable lvl to forgo resting.

[Lmnop]

Re: Party without RDM or BRD or COR, what to do?

First, I seem to remember lots of Paladins-of-old swapping to high dmg staves for Spirit Taker. I think the ideal method is probably something like using Staff on chain #0 or #1 (after having already done past chains, not the start of a party), then use Spirit Taker on chain #1 or #2 and swap to sword/shield. Earth Staff can keep up with Shield for Damage Reduction, but you're gonna want a lot of damage on that SW so... who knows.

About the juice comparisons...

Am I missing something? It looks like you guys are saying that Pineapple juice is better because it lasts longer, even though it actually gives less mp/juice. It seems to me that you could use Melon, get more mp in the long-run, and just be refresh-less more often. In 27 minutes, Melon recovers more mp than 48 minutes of Pineapple so... that's 21 minutes that you're not refreshed but you're not gonna be full on MP anyway.

Auto-Refresh + Sanction Refresh + Parade Gorget = oldschool 3/tic. I think if you had a stack of very cheap juice to pop every 3 chains or so, it'd make up the difference lost by not having PG active all the time. And I don't understand why every party doesn't line up flash orders. It's so incredible.

Too bad Parade Gorget's not WAR equipable... war/pld hitting 3/tic would power my Rune Chopper very nicely. :O Dark Knights could do it though.