Ambuscade Volume 1 - December 2018

no, you are the one thats out of touch on whats really going on.

dps matters this month more so than every other month. in other months, 1 to 2 min faster is the matter saving time, this month its the matter of winning and losing.

there are only ONE move that shadow has very minor advantage of, which is dispel assuming what people said about 5 shadows blocking dispel is correct.

there are one million reasons that a group can wipe, especially in PUG. from tank *** up to silencer *** up to drain move(which shadows doesnt save you) *** up. shadows doesnt save any of the *** ups, just dispel move.

more so in PUG. do you know how many fail PUG that Ive seen happened because tank *** up on something? entirely way too many. 7 shadows cant save any of that, 2 min faster can.

the faster you end a run the less *** up can happen, period.

finally, in the scenerio that I talked about, I had friends who I can trust on dd slot, it wasnt some random person. and yet people insist it isnt doable unless its ninjas. I think the job discrimination is going overboard.

if there are any reason why PUG fails with 3 shadows, its because they claim to have a FC set then it turns out to be a FC set with less than 40% fc. in that case, maybe its more feasible to have a 7 shadow DD act as main tank because ichi casting speed is horrible without close to 80 fc. many people seems to rely on ni, which isnt a good idea as it has long recast and ichi doesnt overwrite it.

I personally dont think dd/nin or support/nin should even attempt without close to capped fc. its just too risky. Some people even try to join party with 0 fc....this is the entire reason why PUG DD die to endeath. They care too much about having 7 shadows on an NM with shadow wipe move, but doesn't care about having cast/recast time capped. So their solution is to toss more shadows at it.

otherwise the most consistent run is to have highest dps and kill it before it kills you. and 7 shadows for dispel isnt changing anything at all. and I personally think 5k dps AND trust from friends is big thing to sacrifice for 7 shadows.

7>3, sure it does. but it only happens if nothing is sacrificed by kicking skilled empyrean DD friend out of pt for a random nin.

you want to play nin, I get it. however if you over emphasis 7 shadows over everything other dd can bring to the table you are probably biased, lol. They are great but not make or break.

Not getting dispelled, stunned and possibly death from additional effect is not "very minor advantage". And it's not an assumption, that's how it behaves. If your argument is "1-2 minutes matter more here because more things can go wrong", then the risk of what I listed is very salient and not minor. Can't cherry pick a bunch of scenarios that involve screw ups from the tank and silence (unrelated to the DPS in question entirely) and then say "HEY TWO MINUTES FASTER COULD HAVE PREVENTED THAT WIPE". The same ***can happen on pull. Everyone has to be on top of their job regardless.

The reason I say you are out of touch with PUGs in general is because you think your average group is going to shout for an

Empyrean DD with 80% FC to possibly do more DPS, but possibly get killed in return.

They don't think like that. I understand your point, and it makes sense. But not for a "I want to win without having to worry about main DPS dying" groups. They pick the easiest, least error-prone job and go with that. What happens when you get dispelled and you're no longer haste capped and you have to rely on ichi and ni? Nope, grab a ninja and they can ride their 7 shadows. Your suggestion is to go as far up the totem pole and search for an empyrean wielding, 80 fast cast, skilled DPS in the arts of properly timing shadows between TP animation. Gnarly. Their thinking is: get a ninja because 7>3 and I don't want to take a chance on your ninjutsu skills for a possible DPS increase, riskier kill. I want to win before this group breaks.

And for your problem with your friend only wanting a ninja... This is rich. Weren't you the one saying that on small servers building CONNECTIONS trumps big server population PUG meta because friends will let you come whatever they want as long as your a valuable contribution to the group? Your friend probably wanted a ninja because IT'S. EASIER.

not job discrimination. Not bias. Just win ratio improved

Nobody ever said anything about matons tanking the boss. Matons would either hold adds while PUP/NIN DDs or matons DD themselves.

Also regarding DD vs. NIN debate: Afania is right that a well-geared DD/NIN would be better than NIN in general, but if you're a top tier DD you're almost never gonna join shout groups like that. Means PUGs are stuck with mediocre players who can't save you time no matter what.

A dead DD deals no damage, so NIN wins by default.

How are DPS getting to 80% FC? DM augments?

Best I could come up with is about 73-75% (if you can wear Kishar Ring) FC for Light DDs such as MNK, like this set:

ItemSet 364068

COR, BLU, DRK, DRG can also/instead wear Carmine+1 head/feet.

While that's decent enough, I don't see how any DDs could get 80% without FC traits. I personally have never seen any DM augments that go beyond the 6% FC you can get on Herc with regular augments.

They don't exist in large numbers, if at all. Not enough to support a consistent workable strategy among a pug population. You can get -10% utsusemi casting reduction from bead necklace and -13% reduction from passion jacket for the jobs that can use it. You'd have to dig deep into the recesses of RNGesus to even sniff 80% fast cast on say, warrior. Waist is a huge problem for all DD jobs. Dark Knight has less issues with some handy mage based gear (relic body, Carmine feet and head). Ody gets a free nods but I would imagine in general near nobody who is going to be doing pug ambuscade had 80% utsusemi casting set.

Aerix: for this set you should be using anything that speeds up utsusemi casting. So beads and jacket. Also, weatherspoon ring/+1 is 5/6?

Oh derp, totally forgot about the Magoraga beads. Fixed.

Passion Jacket is only -10% though, so it doesn't beat Adhemar body+1's 10% FC which is also a recast reduction. You probably confused it with the +13% Waltz potency received.

And I doubt anybody who plays non-RNG DD jobs seriously would have picked Weatherspoon Ring, even if it is an option. But you have a point that it would help.

I did thanks. But hey, ninja can hit 80% much easier thanks to relic+3 body. Not that it even needs it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Correction: I picked the ring as primary DD because of ranger and I liked the fast cast. But I'm weird so take from that what you will

Easier alternative venturing into HQ adjusting gear is taeon body for fast cast. For the jobs that can use it of course.

I edited in "non-RNG DD jobs" like 1 minute after you pointed out Weatherspoon Ring, but I guess you didn't refresh in between to be able to see that.

But yeah, Weatherspoon is rather nice for RNG, so there's nothing weird about it.

I'M ON MY PHONE DUDE I CAN'T REFRESH OR I LOSE EVERYTHING I TYPED

Lol, it wasn't meant to be criticism, just an observation.

No, what you described isn't what's happening, lol. Im not going all out trying to search for such DD when my friends are such DD already. You just assume too much. And you missed all my points too.

For cor, here you go.
ItemSet 364067

Head has 14, you can get 6 from legs. For this particular fight, since your ws always cap at 99999 it makes double degen viable for another 6% total, since you are not really losing much dps with degens. This set actually has 82%, so the ring can be Lebeche Ring for instant cast. I just keep rahab in case people want to settle for 76% and use a different weapon.

And yeah there's always DM augments too, especially leg slot.

Many pug people doesn't even have fc, or they have one but it has less 40%. They ended up dying more easily and it got harder to recover because they can't hold the NM solo. I think that's the only logical explanation to ninja fanatics. Or people that just want to play nin.

It nice not really taking any damage except below 30% obv. and not losing buffs from that one move. thats why nin is favorited

But that set is for Corsair, not any empyrean DD. Corsair parses significantly below ninja this month, so that job is moot. And it wasn't your initial argument.

Exactly. Bolded is the point of what I'm saying. I'm showing that your viewpoint is that of "geared friends", not PUG mindset. You're speaking of the very few players who can do it that way, to great success. Which is fine, but just understand where your argument doesn't really reflect your average PUG mindset. It's not "Wrong" at all, just what's easier for them. For you it may be "wrong" to pick an average DD over a near-80% FC empyrean DD perfectly timing shadows between TP move animations. That is perfectly fine. For your caliber of player. But you are speaking from a different mindset than what PUG norm will look for. I already agreed at least 3 pages ago that every DD can work, and works just fine. Even better. You're all about min-maxing seconds, but that strat doesn't always fit what is available in a shout group.

Haven't pt with empyrean nin yet, so idk how strong they are. But I'm pretty sure empyrean cor > aeonic nin this month. And cor can actually use empyrean with degen x2 to cap fc too. So nothing is lost, besides accuracy in VD if going without SMN nor rdm.

There are 15 DD jobs so I'm not going to to out and dig for fc set for every single job and post here lol.

My initial point is any DD work, and its more important to go with people that you trust rather than being super focus on dd job type. you agreed with point 1 and I doubt you disagree with point 2. So why are you still here arguing again?

generic FC looks pretty much like that for light armor jobs, replace carmine head with herc helm+FC aug, foot slots a bit of a problem since theres not a whole lot of FC there, +2 FC ammo for those not using the ranged slot.

heavy armor FC can pretty much take from DRKs guide FC set and just remove the JSE, but most jobs can hit at minimum these days around 60% not accounting for weapon/ammo slot

honestly think the job that has the hardest time with FC gear wise is probably SAM

Was messing around Solo on E and VE and observed the following AI behavior:

With adds present at 30% it will only use AoE Drain : Son whatever it’s called.

Without adds present at 30% it would only use the single hit massive damage move: Genku Bakken

Obviously at Normal and above Triple Reversal is a thing.

Is it possible to make tank/smn in this setup? If yes then tank + cor sub smn frees up 1 extra pt slot for 3rd pup.

Yes, one of the pages back used that setup.

PLD/SMN and RDM/SMN

Pup's own this Ambu. Auto's are immune to the boss's en-death.

When 3 adds are close togeather, they will do triple reversal.

On D or VD, have pups hold 2 adds each but never three. The rest of the party can go on the main mob.

That's how I got most of my wins. Auto on astro(s) or kill astro(s). run/pld/auto on darks (kite or hold).

A few were we just killed all the adds, slow, but effective. Tried mew once unsuccessfully, combo of pld not a good enough phalanx set and slow mews, easily fixed.

Did manage to find one person capable of kiting in the 60~ runs but he was doin 30% runspeed at least.

I will see if i can get my pup ready before update but how are you doing to hold 1+ mob on auto? Deploying one at a time or using ventriloquy?

I haven't done any PUP runs this month but (echoing other posts) NIN NIN BRD/NIN (RDM or GEO with enfeebling gear) SMN PLD with Ochain holding 80-0 is a very high rate of success even for PUGs. Can swap a NIN out with a DD/NIN (MNK is great for that second slot) but at least one NIN is a huge advantage due to less Utsusemi casting, higher TP gain, Subtle Blow, and essentially being immune to boss dispel. Also only takes 5-8 minutes depending on what weapon ninjas are using so it's quite fast.

Of all the groups I've joined with kiting strat at D and above, only one rune fencer was very successful at it, and he was using JA0 at a minimum.

anyone know what causes hatereset? spammed a bunch that didn't use it, and today it used it almost every run.

Santaku Kyoyo is full reset, it never doesn't use it.

Yeah, thats why 2 people /smn instead of 1 so they can rotate.