TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

[Malacite]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

You pull a fly and everyone eats multiple 300 damage Cursed Spheres. You pull a Spider or Eruca and your tank takes massive damage from Sickle Slash and Incinerate, while DDs might even get one-shotted. People care when these mobs use TP moves, even if it's not the end of the world. An Imp could use TP twenty times before dying and the party would carry on.

Thus the reason why I've sworn to never EXP in Bibiki Bay on Goblins and Dhalmels ever again.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

...or they intentionally created low defense, high offense, quick repoping mobs to mimic the fact people were exploiting Weapons, Bones and Dhamel camps...all high offense, low defense mobs...to gain the fastest EXP on. SE *knows* that the mobs in ToAU are weak, hell they even gave Sanction and Exp bonus, refesh and increased meal duration to help people EXP there.

But WotG, which created a system where any job can "solo" 10k an hour from 60+, didn't need to offer those super squishy mobs to burn on. SE wants people to merit and Exp in ToAU zones, on super squishy mobs, and do other stuff in other zones. Yes WotG has "nothing but Campaign" in terms of Exp...but Campaign is a huge benefit to everyone who wants and needs Exp.

CoP didn't offer any real super merit spots, Sky and Krt were still two of the best zones for quick melee Exp. But they were also easily overcrowded with just 2 parties. ToAU brought TP burns to every melee and most support jobs and WotG brough solo Exp to every job. And while WotG currently only has " missions, quests and a light smattering of endgame content", all ToAU had at this point were Assaults, Besieged and Merit camps.

You're really only proving to me that you have no idea what you're talking about. You're drawing more conclusions based on what the community does and not really showing us what SE's intentions were.

If we were going by your logic of what SE "meant" to do, they failed horribly. ToA did not give us a wealth of merit camps, it just added three new ones that are easy to reach and made the fixw old ones (which required patience/brains to get to) obsolete. The major difference is now people are too goddamn lazy to go to the old ones so they just only go to the ToA ones.

You cannot and will never make 10k an hour in Campaign, especially as a mage with no melee skill.

WotG zones do have merit camps, see above situation - people are too fucking lazy to go to them, even though two telepoints put you within spitting distance of them. CoP zones have them, too, though for the life of me I can't get a manaburn PT to happen in Sea or the palace, which are pretty nice manaburn camps, I might add. But no, let's do more puddings because that will get us all our obis faster.

Soloed two subjobs to 37 largely due to WotG zones. I've seen pre-50 PTs trying things in various areas back there, too.

[Karinya]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

Absurdly crappy TP moves + low hp = sitting ducks. (Or toucans.) The annoyingness of amnesia or snatch morsel does not compare to actual THREATS like throat stab, mortal ray or condemnation. Mobs with moves like that get respected (i.e. avoided) because they're dangerous. But in spite of that dangerousness, they're still not worth any more exp than a same-level colibri - so players look for the easy targets.

This wouldn't be so bad if colibri were recognized as easy targets, like tiny mandragora, and only occurred at the lowest levels. There's some argument for having a relatively helpless starter mob, and colibri would be great for that. (Players just starting probably don't even have any food, and for the first couple levels, don't know any WS either.) But colibri are found even at nominally quite high levels where players ought to be able to face off with the likes of coeurls, manticores and ahrimans - and they're still helpless because they're colibri.

This should have been obvious even before ToAU was released - how did SE miss it? Or did they imbalance their own game on purpose? And why, after several years of evidence on how broken colibri are, did they add *more* of them in E.Ron[S]?

Maybe we need to found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Imps and Colibri and petition SE to give these pathetic mob families more effective ways to defend themselves from hordes of adventurers hell-bent on slaughtering them by the dozens to feed their endless craving for sweet, sweet experience points.


We're getting a little away from the subject of WAR awesomeness - and clearly, the message still needs to get out to some of the community. I had a party last night synced to level 29, with a WAR/MNK tank using a Great Axe - and Sturmwind. Close, but no cigar.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

This should have been obvious even before ToAU was released - how did SE miss it? Or did they imbalance their own game on purpose? And why, after several years of evidence on how broken colibri are, did they add *more* of them in E.Ron[s]?

Its hard to get a PT to go out even that far to EXP on them, so its not like it matters terribly much.

What I really blame is the ease of getting to the imps and colibri. If they were placed so far out as sky and had larger requirements to get to, I doubt they'd even be abused as much as they are. Hardly a soul touches the imps in Arrapago Reef and they're same level as the Mire.

But yeah, let's get this moving back in the direction of WAR and how to do it well.

[Celeal]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

/attempt-to-back-to-topic

Once a player knows how to play WAR, that player will know what he/she is doing when playing other melee job.

Basically Armando covers the highlights of a good WAR. (Great job ^o^!)

The rest is how a WAR can fill different roles, like pulling, tanking, DD; Different subjobs, gear swapping, etc.

[Malacite]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

It'd be nice if they boosted campaign XP substantially as yet another alternative actually. Blame ToAU all you want (I blame it for a number of things) but the trends for easy EXP camps aren't gonna go away.

Though it would be nice if people would learn to try the WotG camps. I haven't tried them myself personally, but I do have a group of friends who regularly merit for 10~14k an hour in Castle Oztroja [S]. They sometimes camp Vicious mufflers at the same time :3


I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been many updates to the camp guides to include WotG areas. Sigil is downright broken compared to Signet and Sanction. I chalk it up to the familiarity of ToAU and what seems to be a general lack of interest in WotG.

Let's face it, it's probably the least popular of the 3 expansions. I've yet to see a single overly positive review of it. That's not to say it's stuck that way, but SE has some work to do on the content. They can start by toning down the god damn Moon Fang Pack and Conqueror Bakgodek > _ <;


Getting back on topic, in summary;

- WAR's defensive ratings aren't bad, but piling DEF/VIT has diminishing returns
- WAR could stand to gain at least one form of damage mitigation, via a trait or JA
- Use a god damn Great Axe and Crossbow
- Always carry both a set of axes (maybe a shield) and a Great Axe.
- WAR can't solo for shit due to lack of mitigation and C rated evasion

[Karinya]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

You're only summarizing your own posts, not the thread consensus. That's likely to mislead other readers. Although I do agree with carrying an axe, great axe, shield, crossbow (with ammo), and if you might sub NIN, a second axe, along with both offensive and defensive gear and food. To which I would add keeping a good selection of subjobs available, especially after 37 when people will expect you to take your job seriously and have access to advanced jobs if they're helpful.


As for WotG, it's incomplete; that makes it hard to review. (Many reviews in magazines and things are written right after, or even before, release, making them based on something even more incomplete. How do you review WotG based on maybe a dozen zones, jobs with no AF, the earliest version of Campaign, and no missions at all?) I will say though that the cutscene when you complete the mission in La Vaule is one of the best I've seen in a while. I'm actually interested in the national storylines, too. In fact, what am I doing here when I could be buying fish to feed to <spoiler>?

Also, while the jobs are awesome, they're not *too* awesome; the expansion as a whole lacks the rampant balance problems of RoZ and ToAU. (CoP was also balanced, but had no new jobs, which probably makes it easier.) Overall I think it still has the potential to challenge CoP as the best expansion (of the *4*, were you not counting RoZ because it came out before NA release?), but because of its incompleteness, hasn't done so yet. It seems SE is afraid to repeat CoP's epic mission storyline (even though the main annoyance of level caps would be - hell, is - barely an annoyance at all with today's gear adjustment system).

There's also no indication of what kind of high-level content it will eventually have: Full-scale war with the Hydra Corps? Exploration of the Atomos Realm? Dungeon crawls through Zvahl[S]? Whatever it is, it will have to be taken into account in evaluating the expansion as a whole; despite ToAU's flaws, it does have some interesting and user-friendly high-level content.

[Malacite]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

WotG just felt very rushed/incomplete when it came out and that's the part I Agree with in regards to the 1UP interview. It's gotten a lot better since SE's been giving us updates but the guy makes a point about them just rehashing all the old zones.

Hell, we still can't even access Jeuno. But there's no sense complaining about any of that now


And I'm not wrong. I'm agreeing with Armando in that WAR's defensive capabilities are fine, second only to Paladin really. It just lacks any form of native damage mitigation like Sentinel and it's evasion is just too low to keep it alive even against Easy Prey at 75.

I'm not just speaking out of my ass either, lord knows I've tried to make WAR soloing work with the right gear but it still fails. The job is too reliant on it's SJ (usually NIN and shadows) to keep itself alive as you attempt to kill the enemy before it gets you. The only reason WAR/NIN tanks fine in merits is because the enemies are usually dead before they can do any real damage and lack truly devastating moves (though Peckling Fury can hurt like hell with berserk up)

Defender is an absolute joke and actually makes tanking harder since you're doing less damage and thus generating less hate. I personally only use it when I have Berserk up and am taking unwanted heat so the two cancel each other out.

Don't tell me evasion doesn't matter either. As someone with 75 WAR MNK SAM and THF I can tell you evasion has a huge impact on soloing and sometimes in EXP (not so much against ITs > _ <) Where as my WAR/NIN will get shredded by an EP Lesser Colibri if I don't keep shadows up, my MNK and SAM clip 'em with ease and on THF it's total joke.




Okay, so yeah that's far too much negativity. Umm I'd say this thread's pretty much gotten everything out that needs to be said about WAR? I'm thinking closing it and/or the OP editing their OP to summarize all the positive suggestions? Besides I thought there was a WAR FAQ sticky.

[storm20200]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

Thanks for all this great info I will remember when I start again in January and I'm incredibly curious as to this PM floating around so Armando PM please

[Clever Ninja]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

According to the Dev interview, they apparently think Campaign is TOO MUCH xp. Which is ridiculous, as on BLU the best I've ever done is 4k/hr, and thats if I get to a campaign battle before it starts, it doesn't take forever for the mobs to arrive at the zone, the battle doesn't end immediately, and the zone isn't backed full of npc's/players. Any one or 2 of these things happening nerfs the xp, and while it IS safer since you dont lose xp if you die while your Campaign tag is on, I get far more soloing Imps in Caedarva Mire.

And WoTG zones are awesome. East Ronfaure [S] everyone already knows about, North Gustaberg [S] rocks from 24+ by fighting the worms across the bridge leading to where Palborough Mines is in the present time in a party, and there are TONS of solo spots. I solo to 20+ on melee jobs there, and duoing I can still net 5k+/hr fighting mobs outside of Sandoria [S], which is better/less insane than the average dunes party.

Yet do you know how hard it is to get people to these zones to do anything that's outside 'the norm'? I've been to Bibiki Bay all of ONE time in my entire FFXI career for an xp party after TAoU came out, and it actually went really well(think it was 8k/hr? We were the only ones in the zone and I was on RDM with a PLD tank, so nonstop pulling).

Also, 374 Sturmwind on a mandy at level 26 <_<. No BRD in the party, no 2hr. God I had forgotten how much Great Axe rocked.

[Malacite]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

Our Dev team smokes crack.

I'm at the point where I just don't plain give a shit anymore. After the BS they pulled with the Mythics (as a final insult, Naja gives you 3 imperial silver as your "Refund" vs the 30 100's you get for finishing a Relic) I'll just wait and see what they add.

I'm just gonna enjoy the game however I see fit, tired of griping about how fucking moronic they are (and anyone who argues otherwise is deluding themselves. Yes WoW attracts a lot of retards but given that the game has over 20x FFXI's population, they must be doing something right >->)


To be perfectly honest I'm surprised. Tanaka was a part of so many amazing games before FFXI, and FFXI is his favorite. So why all the suck?

Oh well. I propose this thread get locked already, as there doesn't seem to be much more to add other than maybe the OP summarizing everything nicely (thus avoiding all the bickering we had here) and stopping further necro posts.

[Aksannyi]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

as a final insult, Naja gives you 3 imperial silver as your "Refund" vs the 30 100's you get for finishing a Relic

The responses to that on BG were classic ... holy fucking shit, stupid. They are probably laughing so hard at us since they keep sucking in our money month after month.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

smokes crack.

EDIT: Apparently, crack can be smoked. My mistake, carry on.

I don't think this thread should be locked as any sort of future update could change things, and would render such a locked thread out of date.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

Well since it isn't up to Mal when a thread gets locked, I don't think we really have to worry about that.

[Armando]

Re: TO ALL NEW WARs: How to be awesome

Thread stays open. Doesn't really matter if a sticky gets necrobumped since it's always at the top anyways. Like YM said the OP may need editing in the future, and more importantly, new people may have questions about the guide and it's probably better to post here than make a new thread.