Testing.

A quick note to my lunch time readers, I had to scrap a good portion of the blog today because I just didn't like the direction of it, so not a lot but I will update the blog frequently today.

Wednesday is Dynamis day, and Dynamis is really long. Someday, I am going to go over some ideas to help Dynamis be more interesting and less of a drag, but for now let me just say that a good Dynamis run in general gets people motivated and a bad run just kind of piles up and slows everyone down, and I would like to give some general guidelines on how to make a Dynamis run lean to the good rather than the bad. But outside of that, I do have a bit of a commentary on NIN in Dynamis today and I will explain this fully. In my opinion, NIN is not a good job for Dynamis. I see more and more people that go to our Dynamis events as NIN when they have other much better jobs available. Now, this isn't always true, and I am not saying that NIN are worthless for Dynamis, but if you have almost any alternative job then it is better to use that. In starter cities NIN's are just fine at DDing and in outlands they can do a good job of voking slept mobs, but I doubt how many people actually think to do that. I mean I know I off-voke slept mobs when I am on SAM, and I wish I saw other people doing it more often.

There is a distinction here that needs to be drawn between starter cities and outlands and why NIN is not the optimal choice in either of these situations. These considerations are for a relatively advanced Dynamis LS, as I can see cases where a newer LS would need to have as many back up tanks as possible. For starter cities, mobs tend to die very quickly unless the mobs are broken down very far into party killing situations (which I have heard can be a very effective strategy, and I have been in an attempt to use this strategy but it generally fails because of a multitude of factors, including but not limited to: people fighting the wrong mobs, people going AFK and most importantly, lag issues, where finding mobs, acting on them and generally supporting a regular party are near impossible), outside of this rare case the main benefits of NIN, that being speed of attacks, is wiped from consideration. Blade: Jin is not that potent of a WS in general, it can definitely have very good damage spikes, but it is not on par with many single-hit WS's in terms of consistently high damage on mobs in Dynamis. The real benefit from Blade: Jin is the ability to use it more often than other people use other WS. If mobs are dying too fast, then the ability to gain TP in a rapid fashion is diminished greatly, and the great benefit of Blade: Jin and NINs in general, is lost. So in starter cities, NINs become more like THF's in that they hit lightly (but still decently) and struggle to build TP, but they do not have the ability of SA and TA to make for guaranteed larger WS damage. This presents an interesting consideration of NIN/THF in Dynamis but I will not cover that here.

Strangely enough, the opposite effect occurs in outlands. The mobs are much more difficult and especially in Xarcabard, and even more especially on the NMs in Xarcabard, NINs will tend to hit for very little, often for zero. This again diminishes a NIN's most important capability, hitting fast for damage and TP. Further, it has another draw back, that of giving the NMs much more TP while doing minimal damage. Sure NINs have Subtle Blow, but honestly, hitting for under 10 while speeding up TP build by enemies is not beneficial at all for the group in general. Let me again state that if there is no alternative then a NIN is just fine as is any other job in Dynamis, but if the choice is between some other job, especially important Dynamis jobs like healing mages or more effective DD's, then NIN should be left behind and the player should come as another job. The consistency of other jobs, even often mocked jobs such as DRK and DRG, in dealing damage to Dynamis mobs is a clear advantage over NIN in this case.

And I am not just fabricating my opinion here, as I have tested NIN, DRG, RNG and SAM in Dynamis. The difference is obvious to me and while I prefer to not force people to change jobs for Dynamis and let reason try to dictate what jobs people should come as to Dynamis, I believe that many people have something to learn from these statements. Sadly, NIN seems to be one of the ultimate e-peen jobs, so I doubt this overabundance of NIN's will disappear anytime soon. At least take it into consideration the next time you are choosing your Dynamis job.

Specifically about yesterdays run, it was much more successful than the last Jeuno run that I was on. Not so much that the Jeuno run wasn't a success, in fact it was a tight and well executed run, being that we had very low numbers and still cleared everything and killed the boss, but we had only one drop the whole run. This Sandy run on the other hand had something like 11-12 AF pieces drop, and nice ones too, like MNK. I am slightly interested in the Scout's Braccae from Sandy but honestly I would have limited use of them, because I generally use Holy Bolt's and a slight MND set up, forcing me to use Hunter's Braccae for the additional +5 MND. I could see having the benefit of Scout's Braccae if I am needed to come as RNG for gods or Salvage, but I don't see that coming anytime soon.

Now, after Dynamis, I was luckily able to prove the benefit of doing a "skillchain burn™" party with some friends. Even better to prove the worth of this party, it wasn't even the optimal set-up. It ended up being Omoi as NIN, Izman as PLD/NIN (Swift Blade has the same skillchain position as Blade: Ku which is what Omoi was using), Gordor as BLM, Sholo as WHM and I went as the SAM/THF. We picked up a nice and understanding BLM named Octa who wasn't thrown off by the idea. Since I was using this as proof and justification of this party set up, having an non-optimal party set up should further assuage any fears of its credibility. Further to prove its validity of this party configuration, we targeted the hardest XP mobs available, Trolls. Most people don't even try to xp on Trolls without a BRD to assist in speeding up their damage. This is the point at which TP burn parties tend to break down, they need to have a BRD to be able to get to higher chains, and BRDs are not as available as everyone would hope they were. So an alternative is always good for this. Trolls have very high defense, very high HP and use Diamond Hide with regularity so it is necessary to have a large amount of damage delivered in a very short amount of time to be able to achieve above chain 5 on them. Even in a radically advantaged TP burn party (for example NIN, NIN, NIN, BRD, BRD, RDM) it is difficult to get above chain 6 on trolls, generally because Troll PLDs have to be mixed in, and they tend to kill chains and Trolls in Mount Zhaylom tend to be too spread out. This is where the magic bursted skillchains come in, they deliver a huge amount of damage in a very short amount of time, allowing a party with no external buffs to achieve a huge amount of damage even on Troll PLDs. Even in this non-optimal set up, Chain 6 becomes a regularity. Now, consider how this party would work in other places where higher chains are possible, for example at the entrance to the Jade Sepulcher. The real chain breaker for that camp is the one Mamool Ja Lurker that has to be pulled to maintain the chain while waiting for other mobs to respawn closer to the entrance to the Jade Sepulcher. The skillchain burn party can easily overcome this mob with incredibly high evasion very easily, the NINs would use Blade: Ku, as it is multihit and at least some of the hits will land for the skillchain and of course the SAM/THF will be able to land their Tachi: Gekko with the assistance of Sneak Attack. In this case, this party set-up becomes less of an alternative to a normal TP burn party but actually advantageous over a normal TP burn party.

I know what I speak is blasphemy, but I speak it proudly. It is like telling a well-built WAR that they are being out-parsed by a DRG at the Greater Colibri camps. Most would rather refuse to believe or make excuses but, even a decent DRG with Wyvern is going to have no problem out-parsing many people on Greater Colibri, and by a wide margin, and again I have actually tested these results with different parsers run at the same time by different people. Ahh, but this is a discussion for another day. I have no intention of breaking the mold here, as I still believe that a TP burn party is the most efficient xp gaining mechanism if the jobs are limited to a selection of NIN, WAR, MNK, BRD and RDM, but these other party selections are nothing more than just a tick beneath the perfect burn party and don't require waiting for hours to be able to that perfect party.

The last point of the day is pointing out that some people have all the fun! While I was still two hours into my Dynamis-San d'Oria run, Izman and others were out having fun with Gration. Izman only got to use an NQ shield, because when making them for him and another person, he HQ'd for the other person and NQ'd for himself. Izman is definitely pretty cool for letting someone else have the HQ, and taking the NQ for himself, and he was divinely rewarded with his Tatami Shield. So, two Tatami shields yesterday to two very lucky people.