The Last Dance: Gearing Paradigms For A New Age

To me, it just means I can safely erase myself, while not screwing myself out of a cure while tanking. There are times when I'm tanking and can't afford to Curing Waltz, unless I have a fresh Fan Dance ready, because being without a cure for X seconds, could result in death.

As far as end game now, it's just AA/DM and I actually think Dnc can co-tank the AA's on the D/VD levels if done properly.

Dnc worked just fine in delve/AA/DM already pre adjustment,
SE breaking the divine and single target waltzes to separate timers will make it even easier to keep myself and others fully healed in AA/DM.

I think SE adding Divine Waltz III would have been amazing, but potentially overpowered considering full waltz potency'd divine II is a nice chunk of healed aoe hp during TT+EV fights

Hopefully this is the best place to ask.

I haven't played the game in over half a year, just coming back and wondering what I should be doing to get caught up in gear.

These were my sets when I quit.
Normal Set: ItemSet 319353
Marches Set: ItemSet 319354

I quit shortly after Adoulin was released, before Item Levels were introduced. I have literally never done anything in Adoulin outside of Reives and some quests.

From what I've gathered I can probably just replace my daggers with Eminent Dagger + Camaraderie Dagger and be better off without much effort? Overall Sparks don't seem difficult to obtain and anything that's simply bought with Bayld couldn't be too difficult.

I'm 11k Alex into a Mythic, but that's still a long ways away.

What are some immediate upgrades I could get, what should I be doing, etc?
I have about 3 or 4 other people rejoining with me with similarly outdated gear.

Especially if you have a group restarting with you, you guys should spam some Skirmish Yorcia. It's terribly boring, but the gear from there has a lot of uses, good offensive tp stats, amazing defensive ones, easy to obtain.
You guys will want some of the Delve gear, too (and weapons of course) for ACC builds but honestly, I wouldn't dump too much plasm into anything atm (esp if you don't have a stockpile yet). With new plasm gear coming out this update, you never know what SE will shove down our throats.
The new artifact ilvl 109 pieces are insanely easy to get (75.k sparks per chapter or even easier through SKCNM (3:1 exchange ratio at Shami)) and ilvl 119 isn't much harder, just lots more expansive. Something to work on, too. If you guys spam any of the SKC, basially if everyone brings a pop then you're guaranteed 1-2 complete pieces per 5 runs. good ilvl gear, some great macro pieces.
That's where I'd start.
With ilvl gear, soloing/duoing Salvage is a joke, so you can also work on your alex still. Might even want to consider farming Forgotten items as there's a good chance those will skyrocket for a bit come update.
Just my 2 cents. Welcome back ^^

I was already soloing salvage prior to all of this, so yeah, being able to enter alone and have all of this new gear definitely sounds nice.

Thanks for the advice, really appreciate it.

Yes unlock records of eminence and get Eminent dagger+Camaraderie dagger as your new set.
Make sure you stop by WoE in Xarc[S] and unlock rudras off your 90 twashtar so you have that to play with.

For armor, consider the Espial set pieces from Records of Eminence sparks to fill in your (hands/head/legs/feet) with decent short term upgrades.
Equipment (Lv.99): http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Sparks_Of_Eminence#Equipment_.28Lv.99.29
This is the new starting gear for just about anyone trying to come back and catch up. From there you can branch out and get Wildkeeper/delve/Reforge AF pieces

The target gearsets back on page 106 of this thread by Sylow+Byrth are still the best in slot goals for us right now. Once the 6 man delve patch hits, you and your friends should be able to get stuff like the bladeborn+steelflash and dudgeon/heartseeker delve earrings to bring your earrings up to date.

As for the mythic, its totally in your reach with the new gear and the ease of being able to solo Arrapago Remnants II on dancer now. I did dyna+salvage for 3 months to get all my alex done for my terpsi im making. In my opinion its way easier to get 30k alex for a mythic from scratch than it is to get 1500 metal and 60 dross to finish a twashtar.

All of you are great.


You would think they would have made more things drop plates. Voidwatch isn't exactly an event that people would want to keep doing after it's super old, outside of getting plates which...is really slow without tons of people doing it.


Also, best remnants for Alex yield? Both solo and low man are fine.

Most people like to do AR2 because you just ignore the NMs and get to the 5th floor where the alexandrite is (from the ramparts that summon 8 gears) very fast.

For the 5th floor, if you are slightly undergeared you just pop sabredance w/ haste samba on the rampart and have 5 finishing moves built up so you can ws/self skillchain kill the rampart after it pops all the gears out. Then just run away before the gears wake up and pull/pick them off from a distance.

Without /thf sub the 5th floor averages 35 alex singles and you get the guaranteed linen from the HQ boss so you can get roughly ~110 alex a day on your own. When soloing just make sure you side bodytank the Khim bosses, and bring always bring remedys and a backup vile elixir if things get dire.
This all assumes you upgrade to iLevel daggers and fill out your gear slots with things like espial gear pieces at a minimum to make things go smoothly, especially on the bosses.

The other zones are soloable, but they are harder and not nearly as easy to speedrun.

Another piece of advice for AR2- get a scroll of Shell with bayld from the Peacekeepers Coalition. It will make your life easier on the HQ boss if you are going DNC solo.

Hrm. Wonder if you could sub DNC in for WHM. Let bard worry about most of the erase and -na spells.

Sorry it's half derailing but for those farming AR2 solo DNC, how to you handle the "under 3min kill" Chariot on 6th floor?

I've tried yesterday, my DNC is decently geared (Shark 119 and eminent dagger) but it seems I was too slow. Used Grand pas but was not enough to kill in time it seems.

Should I switch to /war (I went /thf)? Any advice is appreciated.

My evisceration WS (I usually make a dark SC with pyrrhic) set looks like this:
Head: Iuitl
Neck: Rancor
Ear1: Bladeborn
Ear2: Steelflash
Body: Maxixi
Hands: Iuitl
Ring1: Rajas
Ring2: Epona's
Back: Atheling
Waist: Windbuffet
Legs: Quiahuiz
Feet: Manibozho

Body not 119 yet.

What would be ideal set for Exen? Spreedsheet won't work on my computer.

I saw Windbuffet as waist but correct me if i'm wrong, DA/TA/QA doesn't proc on multi-hit ws?

Here what I'm wearing. Toss on whatever I had in my inventory.

http://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/319388

Thank You.

Are you eating DD food? I use hedgehog pie/bison steak to last me the whole run, ramparts/chariot do have significantly more defense than the alex gears so good food does help.

What is your tp phase set?, TP phase damage is a considerable portion of your damage dealt on that timed fight.
Charis+2 body, dw earrings, charis neck and patentia/nusku's are extremely important for boosting your tp phase damage solo.

Regardless of your subjob, if you by chance are using thaumas body instead of charis+2, you are hurting your dps significantly.

I use /whm sub and stoneskin/blink/aquaveil/haste +Dia2 the chariot with this tp phase set with haste samba and sabredance up.
ItemSet 319395
/whm +selfhaste+Dia2 will do at least ~20% more dps over /thf on the Armored chariot with this set.
This much dual wield delay gear and haste makes you attack insanely fast with sabredance up.
I average 1min 40 seconds on Armored Chariot with /whm sub, no 1hrs used.

I've spreadsheet'd /war and it just looks terrible compared to /whm. You'd have to berserk with sabredance to get comparable dps (leaving yourself open to taking critical damage and having to drop out of sabredance and heal yourself).
/whm with stoneskin/blink gives you enough of a damage buffer you can usually kill it off without dropping sabredance/waltz, (or you can divine seal->cureIV to heal ~1k hp) safely if your aquaveil is still up or sneak it in between attack rounds without dropping sabredance.

Solo dnc/whm +haste soundly spanks dnc/war on fodder (alex gears on 5F)

As for ws'ing/sc, I have 5/5 Exenterator so I use Exenterator->Phyrric and found that works better for me.
I only use my 1hrs on the HQ boss and usually do exenterator->phyrric->evisceration


Edit Note: when I spreadsheet compare subs I use the 'Pil' Target to simulate the chariot since its damage taken dps roughly matches my past parses.
There is no /whm option in the spreadsheet so I use /thf with magic haste buff enabled which is pretty close to the numbers i get in practice on boss and fodder targets.

What about /rdm instead of /whm? I used to play around with soloing with /rdm and found it really efficient. You get the same buffs /whm offers but with Fastcast and Refresh. It also offers more DPS should you have to turtle in Fan Dance with enspells. Not sure on the base stat differences between the two subs but I would imagine /rdm offering a little more offensively than /whm.

Thx for all the advices. /whm sounds like a far better job indeed. As for my tp set I use this one:
Head: Iuitl
Neck: Charis
Ear1: Dudgeon
Ear2: Heartseeker
Body: Charis +2
Hands: Iuitl
Ring1: Rajas
Ring2: Epona's
Back: Atheling
Waist: Cetl
Legs: Quiahuiz
Feet: Manibozho

I use RCB with double duration food from sanction. I only have 1 lv in Exenterator due to too many WS to merit >.<

Did you time your fight with /thf? I'm curious how much over time limit you went and how far into the fight you got before you had to drop sabredance to heal yourself.
Also make sure you don't skip the VIT unlock which does make a difference in your ability to take hits. You should be completely unlocked of all pathos before you engage the armored chariot.

If you /whm , just redo prot/shell/stoneskin/blink/aquaveil before you floor warp up to the 5th/6th/7th floors so you get a free mp refill which will cover your haste mp needs for the next floor.

At a minimum Haste yourself before each rampart, and before the armored chariot/bosses to get the most use of the subjob.
I use refresh sanction instead of the food duration one since i'm using longer duration food that lasts the whole run.

Also spam use remedy med for paralyze instead of casting paralyna since it can't be interrupted by getting hit if aquaveil is gone.

The only time I really ever fandance is on HQ boss if he dreadstorms me down to 500ish hp and I just finished spamming remedy to get the paralyze off while i'm standing there in my -dt set. Fandance->Heal back to full, click off fandance and go right back into haste samba.

You do much higher damage with haste samba going than enpell damage active turtled in fandance. Phalanx doesn't buy you anything significant since bosses hit slow but very hard so its not mitigating much. Also you dont really cast that often to make the fastcast trait worthwhile.

I've stoneskin/blink spell tanked the bosses and reapplied stoneskin/blink during the fight as an alternate strategy when I was first learning the zone, but it adds another 1-2minutes onto each boss fight and just gives them more time to tp move spam since they appear to have a certain amount of regain.
If you prebuff haste/stoneskin/blink/aquaveil and ride haste samba/sabredance as long as possible the bosses take 3-4mins each with /whm.

Also Phalanx + Dispel. I mostly use /whm when I do stuff like WKR and want unlimited rr. /whm of course offers erase and like Sapphire said, Remedy is your friend over paralyna/blindna/poisona.

Off the top of my head, that's it, isn't it?
Erase + Paralyna vs Refresh (not that this matters for ARII at all), Dispel, Phalanx.

Casting in wayfarer set +sanction refresh +balrahn ring will put you at 5mp/tick in salvage and is a bit overkill but it easily covers all the mp needs you will have as /whm, so refresh from /rdm isn't that huge a boost.

This is my lazy catchall cure+waltz potency set, stacked with divine seal from /whm cureIV heals like 1200hp to myself. Its rare I curebomb myself but sometimes you get tenebrous mist'd and have no tp on hand to waltz so its another reason why I like /whm over /rdm.
ItemSet 318855

To stack up the differences (they share the same for other traits/spells):

WHM:
Divine Seal
Auto-Regen
-na's
Erase
Flash
Reraise
Cura
Curaga I+II
Banish/ga I+II
Teleports

139 Enhancing Magic @49

RDM:
Convert
Resist Petrify II
Fast Cast II
Enspells
Dispel
Phalanx
T1 Nukes
T2 Aero/Water/Stone
Bio I+II
Gravity
Blind
Bind
Blaze/Ice Spikes

144 Enhancing Magic @49 (1 more resistance for bar-element)

So maybe it just falls to /rdm for being more on the defensive (mobs that can actually land hits on you to make use of fan dance+enspells, paralyze from ice spikes, bio II atk reduction and phalanx) and /whm for being more on the offensive (ignoring waltz more due to auto-regen, divine seal and erase so you can saber dance more).

If i was getting mobbed by an army of something like abyssea mandies (lots of trash that hits fast that will hit you with regularity) then yeah I opt for /rdm because phalanx+icespikes+haste does become a better option over /whm in terms of damage mitigation (passive paralyze on enemies from spikes can be significant)

For salvage farming though, /rdm or /whm will both work and they both are much better than /thf if you are self hasted when it matters (vs. rampart/chariot/boss).

I didn't time it but I'm pretty sure it was close. I forgot to get my remedies out of satchel before engaging so I lost precious time looking for them and para procced a lot. Well it was my first attempt and I see all the improvements I can do now. So thx a lot! And yeah I was fully unlocked by this time (got STR and VIT on first lamp lol).

I'll try tonight and see if I get better results! :D

Question for those more experienced with Rudra's Storm (I just unlocked this 2 days ago)
If i'm aiming for max standalone Rudra's damage, is this the best way to go about it?

Starting with 3-5 Finishing moves:
1)Swap to Rudra's WS set
2)Climactic
3)Presto
4)Featherstep (because box step is probably capped, and I want 3 FM's)
5)Building Flourish (consumes the 3 finishing moves I just got)
6)Rudra's Storm

It does just under 8k on twitheryms (lolpiercing weak), kinda neat for insta spike damage when JAs+FMs are free to pull it off.

Is it that close for you guys on the chariot that you need to sub RDM or WHM? I usually am able to get him down with 30-45 seconds to spare just by opening with Pyrrhic > Evisceration, keeping Sabre Dance and Haste Samba up. I'd hate to give up TH just for that one fight.

TH doesnt help with linens after trying it for a couple weeks, and the use of a mage sub is a more defensive play option that benefits undergeared players attempting to do this that will boost their dps.

With top end gear you can burn it down in time with /thf, but i'd rather finish it in 1min 45secs easily with /whm, as opposed to killing chariot ~30 seconds slower with /thf *and* be at a defensive disadvantage when it comes to the bosses.

Ignoring any skillchains or Wild Flourish use, start with 4+ Finishing moves, use Building Flourish first (uses a max of 3 FMs), then Climactic+Rudra's.

Alternatively, starting with 2+ Finishing Moves: Building Flourish, Step (with optional Presto), then Climactic+Rudra's.

If you want to add Wild Flourish in there, just prep Building Flourish 10+ seconds before you're ready to weaponskill, and use Wild Flourish in place of Building Flourish in the above setups (2 FMs used instead of 3, so the first setup only needs 3 to be ready).

DO you think its a good idea to made pyrrhic set like that :

ItemSet 319538

Where i added a lot of skillchain bonus because i always use it after Exenterator.

on PK:
You'll probably get better results with Whirlpool Mask, Justicar's Torque

However, instead of making distortion, going from PK to Evis will get you Darkness (Darkness>Dist) and ending on a stronger WS (Evis>PK) ought to net you make overall damage.

ItemSet 287555
This is close to optimal Phyrric set, maxixi+1 stuff works too, I believe for harder targets iuitl with Acc/DA augments are good. If you need the acc, mani r15 body. 30% of the mod on phyrric is dex, and maxixi legs have no dex, so mani r15 kinda win there.

Personally I prefer Letalis Mantle and Anguinus belt for very hard to hit targets like AA MR when ws'ing, every bit of acc helps on her.

Sea torques are pretty much dead now, I use justicar's and pretty happy with it for phyrric/exenterator, before that I was just ws'ing with my asperity neck.

The main issue with skillchain bonus gear is you now give up a ton of stats sacrificing your ring (could be an epona ring instead) +hand slot. Noone has ever done exhaustive testing to see if charis+2 hands +Mujin band are worthwhile in a skillchain closing ws set anymore.


While on the subject of ws/ws sets, for hardmode content like AA/DM, i've found Rudra's Storm far more reliable damage than phyrric/exent/evisceration, even with near capped accuracy multihit ws's perform terribly (700-1500) compared to a climactic'd rudra's storm (3500-4k).
Critical attack bonus IV trait + Climactic Rudras seems to be our trick for bypassing their insane def/evasion that makes all our other ws's somewhat bad on hard stuff.
Now if we could only get SE to reduce the Climactic Flourish timer...