Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

Some Trusts try, no matter what. See Qultada with Dark Shot.

Though I have seen the behavior you describe with Koru-moru. On lower tier Apex he will try to debuff and use a ton of MP every battle. On Ghost Locus Crabs he skips straight to Dia III because nothing else he has will land, and he doesn't/can't dispel scissorguard nor bubble curtain and doesn't try.

Of course, for either debuff you can apply a higher or same tier defense/evade down, and the monster either can't reapply and wastes TP or can reapply but you can just break it again.

At this point though, since I don't like KRT, if I'm not feeling Dho Gates or it's feeling slow, I got to Rakaznar Inner Court by way of the Morimar Basalt Fields strange device entrance or whatever, and go to Apex Poxhounds.
Poxhounds are the undead dogs like you find in Gusgen Mines, and they're weak to slashing, earth, fire, and light. Water too, iirc. Their TP moves are mostly banal too. It's a like a plague and weak poison breath. An AOE paralyze 1 that paid Monberaux can instantly remove from your entire party, and then Dirty Claw that inflicts a fairly potent blind, but is easily solved via Blindna or Eyedrops from Monbie or yourself.

If Poxhounds are taken or I just can't be assed to run out that far for one of the coolest exp camps of all time, I instead just go to Bibiki Bay. I know I harp on doing Ghost Crabs a lot, but there are other options there. Chiefly, Dhalmels. Dhalmels do link and do heal, but they're squishy and become squishier when they berserk. As long as you're careful to not aoe at all and get rabbits caught up in with them, dhalmels linking can even save you time. These dhalmels being the Locus Catoblebpas of course.

There's also rabbits and efts. Rabbits heal and deal AOE damage though so bad targets imo. Efts do have an AOE single buff dispel in Geist Wail but aren't too bad, though I think they also link. Also have cyclotail, but I don't think its aoe is as strong as whirl claws. But these are easy options that don't buff themselves with evasion or defense in a big way.

I admire your passion and interest in exploding different camps and figuring out the intricacies.

I think it might be wasted on a lot of people who are mostly concerned with finding a mob that won't make their bots have problems after a few hours AFK at the wheel.

If you're actually not AFK, there are lots of solutions to common problems, like re-summoning your trust if it dies or runs out of mp, swapping to a higher accuracy set/weapon, changing weapon skills, provoking, etc. If you get a link when you're at your keyboard, it's not hard to deal with and can be a blessing. If you're asleep, your bot will have more problems with it.

If you're a bot, you need something that's going to consistently stay alive for 9 hour nonstop sessions without human intervention.

Dhalmel are great but always over camped. Rabbits kill trusts too much.

Does picking chests with Skeleton Keys in Sheol A/B/C make them less likely to spawn coffers than spending izzat? Specifically aiming to level up my Moogle Mastery, so I'd like to optimize spending the izzat I get.

Lockpicking chests have like a 5~10% chance of upgrading to the next box. It's possible that the quality of the key determines the rate of upgrade. I only ever use Living Keys, but I typically see an upgrade once every 10 chests or so. Opening chests with Izzat has like an absurdly high rate of upgrade, like 90%. It's always more efficient to upgrade boxes with Izzat than with Keys.

My general strategy years ago for upgrading this Moogle Mastery tier is to build around 13-20 Izzat by killing fodder, then spend the rest of the run picking chests. If you get a Chest > Coffer upgrade from a key, use the Izzat on the Coffer to have a high chance to see an Aurum, then pick the Aurum. Depending on the zone you do this in, you might be able to see 2 Aurums per run if you're lucky. You could also just near guarantee an Aurum if you cap Chests/Coffer discount, kill 1 group of Nostos+Halo + 5 extra Nostos for 13 total. Then open Chest > Coffer with Izzat, pick the aurum. But this method requires 26 izzat to see 2 Aurums, while the former requires less Izzat (but requires more luck getting Chest > Coffer upgrade).

So, I know that Zanshin became all the rage for SAM at some point after Hasso allowed it to happen as a variety of multi-attack, when originally zanshins only used to happen if you missed your first swing...

So my question is, is Zanshin kind of overblown for TP gain? I mean, I have SAM leveled and a decent amount of JP on it, and I've seen what merited Zanshin attacks do for TP, but with regards to that it often feels like my TP overflows by a ton anyway, so I wanted to know if there's a sweet spot for SAM with regards to Zanshin vs. D/T/Q attack and/or if there are builds that actually don't encourage Zanshin at all that are competitive?

I need to take SAM to master, as that is the mythic I am slowly but surely working towards completing, and I know that by itself is another whole stack of, "Don't get double attack" but I just wanted to hear some opinions/gain some recondite knowledge on modern SAM.

Gotcha, thanks! I certainly did feel like it was worse but I wanted to be relatively more certain than just "my tiny sample size".

I'm not really clear what you mean by TP overflowing by a ton, are you talking about getting over 1k, but less than 3k? That's great for SAM because their WS have very strong FTP generally speaking. The goal isn't to hit 1k TP and avoid going over before WSing. Keep in mind SAM doesn't have savagery, fencer, or a TP bonus sword/dagger/gun. If they WS at 2k they aren't wasting a bunch of TP, unless they have a WAR in their party and currently have warcry on.

To answer your other question: you can use a build with more MA and less focus on hitting zanshins, but it just ends up with less TP per attack round on average.

The key is that Zahshin procs with Ikishoten merits are worth dramatically more than regular hits/multi-attacks, because the ikishoten TP comes before STP.

Ultimately it comes down to: your goal is to do damage. The primary way melee do damage in ffxi is through weaponskills. The best way to get more/stronger weaponskills is to get TP faster. The best way to get TP fast on SAM is to get zanhasso procs.

FYI because of the multi-attack priority, mythic AM3 absolutely shits all over zanhasso rates. This makes the AM3 much, much weaker than it would be on other jobs. I'm not gonna say it's an active detriment because I haven't tried to calculate or test it, but it is nowhere near as good (for the TP phase) as it is for other mythics. It could still provide some benefit to some WS, since it can proc on weaponskills. I've heard this is true for hybrids especially, though again I haven't tested it myself.

SAM Mythic is still a nice lockstyle

By overflow I meant getting more TP than I need to hit cap. Every job gets Moonshade and SAM in particular does get TP bonus on some other pieces of gear. Notably Mpaca head has +200. That along with, you always have to weigh WS Frequency vs. Weaponskill damage. According to BG gearset guide, most SAM WS should executed between 1500 to 1900TP, and I'm pretty sure you can't go much farther beyond that for self SCs anyway.

I guess it's always more damage if you do overflow anyway, but I was just wondering since there's a lot of multi attack on SAM gear if there's some threshold or build that competes with/has similar output to Zanhasso builds since you'll always have a chance for Zanhasso hits to happen anyway, since outside of the lolAmbu Great Katana, SAM can't 100% datk or triple attack anyway.

I guess to phrase my stupid question another way:

Is a Zanshin build always the best DPS for SAM outright?

Yes. Unless you need accuracy, meva, or have some other priority. For pure DPS, zanhasso is better than putting MA in the relevant slots.

Let's say you have 0% DA, your zanhasso proc rate would be (in relevant gear, with JP) roughly 35%.

If you add 10% DA to this you get 10 more hits per 100, but you lose 3~4 hits with a massive boost to their TP. and this also assumes you're getting that 10 DA for free. If the DA is competing with 10 STP, you're losing those zanhasso hits PLUS losing the STP you would otherwise have on every hit you ever do, including QA, zanshin, zanhasso, and any other swing. Oh, and DA can't proc if you got a QA or TA. TA can't proc if you got a QA.

Multi-attack is just generally not worth much on SAM, far less than other jobs.