Prime WS Information, Testing, Discussion

Other fights being interesting does not make Bumba and Aminon interesting.

This might come as a shock, but not everyone on Asura merc clears all content.

Like, we get it, Asura is the New Jersey of Vana'diel.

Not really. Many people are getting clear with not all prior V25s cleared.

Of T1+T2 only really Marmorkrebs is hard and very high DPS check and coordination I would say.  Aristaeus can be hard without optimal set up.

Ngai and Kalunga on 1 KI runs are very luck based on aura and TP moves used. Can't say much for the others but it depends on how many KIs you use and there are still huge luck variables like aura and wild card success.

Ongo is a great fight that is well balanced if you are high ml and gear. So is Arebati. Henwen and Gigelorum are great because they are kited and you get to use MNK!

AV came up in an interview years ago and apparently the design idea was something that could be beaten in theory, but not in practice. Why they would add that to a game is beyond me.


AFAIK they haven't addressed the PW situation despite it being over 15 years ago. Would be a good question if they ever do another AMA.

Typically, when I read or find some really stupid design decision, I find that I often realize later there were other factors to it being that way and it wasn't as stupid when you consider the context. In other words, it's easy to label something stupid and then find other reasoning that makes it less dumb. I really really have a hard time figuring out who thought PW is a good idea in any circumstance and what kind of insane thought process went behind it. Even after 15 years, I can't figure out what they were thinking.

I can kindof understand the t3/t4 v25s, they don't want people stomping new content right away. Even if I think that's a poor design decision, I can see where they come from. I just can't find any reason or logic behind adding PW and AV the way they were.

Idk, may have just been the groups i was in but prior to melee burn kirin was just run him around some pillars while an off pt gets the god pops and everyone else just either uses pets or follows his *** and WS on casts. It's not what id consider a great fight

Cant even imagine the old horror stories of trying to aspir away all his MP adn then fighting him, or chi blast strats

Limbus was the best content we've ever gotten and Apollyon was the best part of that. And Proto-Omega was a fair fight with great drops.

I was there for the chi blast days, and using SMN to kill adds etc. But even the method you propose was great content imo. I even like Gigelorum and Henwen because of the kiting.

I wish mboze was a kite and rng burn fight tbh

It's similar to what were complaining about though, instead of just denying TP so a move wont go off, we're just making sure to be as far away as to make it not go off because the stray Stone V/Stonega IV could 1 shot a tank, as could the Deadly hold move which ate many a DD that pulled hate on a WS.

Felt like sea was where the "challenge" started, and even for things like faith or fort we just kited around for the same reason, were just running circles instead of spamming a spell/s and monitoring how much we feed which while im not a fan of either the latter feels more involved

On one hand, RNGesus is strong these days in a bad way that isn't loot. On the other hand, pooping in a sock is not. I think I can live with that.

Congrats BTW~

I think kiting takes skill and needs focus. More than cycling absorb tp.

Exactly. And Patience! :s

It's patience/perseverance more than anything imo, 45mins to 2 hrs or even longer just running in a circle/square/figure eight. Justice was the most involved from memory cause you didnt get as much room for error due to mov speed, everything else you do your laps, throw a flash/cure cheat in when you round a turn/during a spell if its not threatening or something like quake and go back to the track

I have made a video to demonstrate this. Mpu Gandring is nice, sure, but it's absolutely not required for full clear runs. I'd like to clear up any misconceptions that arose from the original strategy my team developed. The biggest difference by far between our old 7 NM runs with the prime, and this 9 NM run without it, is simply this: we got better at the content. I would like to encourage people to experiment with other strategies and come up with approaches we never thought of. Maybe as a community we'll eventually develop a 100k galli route.

Really nice run. Very smooth. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah I've never kitted on tank but kiting ongo pet on BRD is fun.

Can't see the chat log well as its probably 6px tall; what buffs/debuffs here? Songs and rolls look the same but we're not getting anywhere near these WS numbers for COR/RDM/GEO. It's hard mode, right?

This video is normal mode. The one I posted last week was hard mode.

Firstly, thank you for providing the videos. They are amazing to watch.

What did you change from when Velner posted his 30 min Aminon guide video to this? Obviously, DNC instead of DRK and more box step which I accept is better main dps.

But is SV stage 5 horn giving everyone something like 20% more damage from the PDL even to the support jobs when you compare the two videos? Is there something else I am missing because I know you are attack capped in both. Is the difference with a stage 3/4 vs 5 horn that huge?

Velner's old video is what our support jobs dps looks like now. Your recent ones are on another planet. 68k Black Halos and 57k Savages is crazy high.... There is a huge dmg boost across all jobs. How are you getting these results?

I was seeing 70-80k black halos and 65-80k savage blades in the video positron just posted. Keep in mind this is NQ Aminon though. There is a notable difference in damage between upper floor bosses and basement bosses, as well as the amount of HP the mobs have. How much damage do your dd's do on Leshonn versus Gartell? How about Skomora versus Triboulex? I'm pretty sure you're gonna notice the kill speed difference between the lower tier and the higher tier boss. NQ aminon versus HQ aminon is the same deal. Higher stats, more max HP.


It's more than just box step. Dancer caps out step potency with just two uses of presto, so each step maxes out every 15-30 seconds. I maintain box step, quickstep, and stutter step simultaneously. HQ Aminon has a pretty high evasion, enough so that you need at least a madrigal to handle him. Adding evasion and magic evasion down alongside box step just makes everyones life easier.

There are a few parts to the answer here. I would say that stage 5 horn is not really a huge increase over stage 4 for max damage, though it does indirectly speed up the run by making song cycles much faster. Even with stage 4, SV Aria is hugely impactful and we always design our routes (depending on starting pops) to have it up not only on Aminon but also on Aita and ideally also Gartell, if we can route them back-to-back either early or late enough in the run.

I believe our DRK runs were before we cleared V25 Bumba, so you're also seeing the difference between R25 and R30 Nyame in there. I don't think we had Box Step at all for the DRK-main Aminon runs (Correction: we had the BRD doing Box Steps, which were unreliable and cost a lot of TP, and meant no Absorb-TP, which both slowed down his own WS ability and slowed everyone else down to avoid the WS wall), and you certainly need all the pDIF you can get against him when not using Chaos Roll. Even today I notice the difference between a Dia enhanced by Light Shot and one that isn't in the damage numbers, so it's very borderline and the Defense Down effects help a lot.

Having everyone keeping WS going consistently is a very big deal, especially with DNC's Reverse Flourish. The WS wall will eat away at damage output really fast, and the DNC should be getting TP about 60-80% faster than everyone else (aside from maybe the RDM) depending on rolls. Having everyone else keeping their WS usage well-spaced is one of the biggest places for improvement I've noticed on the strategy discussions I've had with others outside this forum.

Nowadays we use a Marine Stewpot on each run. Previously, everyone other than the DNC needed to tweak their WS gear for extra physical accuracy since magic accuracy food is pretty much non-negotiable for the BRD and COR. The acc+macc on the Stewpot allows everyone to gear for damage on their WS.

Finally, when we did the DRK runs, I was the RDM. I'm the only person in the group who's nowhere close to ML50, and DNC is much less sensitive to the loss of accuracy and base stats than RDM (and COR and BRD) is. Going from ML50 DRK and ML32 RDM to ML34 DNC and ML50 RDM was a really good trade on stats alone.


Presto timing is a major contributor to overall run speed. I always try to pre-pop Presto (along with Haste Samba, and if I managed my FMs properly, Building Flourish) as the last person is entering each boss room. Presto has a 30-second duration but only a 15-second recast, so if I pop it anywhere between 10 and 29 seconds before the pull, I can have level 10 Box Step up in just 5 seconds from the start of the fight. That's huge, since it will also capture the first volley of everyone else's WSes, before there's any WS wall, cumulative DT, Dispel, Bio, etc. On Gartell with lightning hands I will often instead do one Box Step and one Quickstep in the first 5 seconds, since he has tons of evasion and can't be Distracted in that mode without Stymie.

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One more thought... with regards to Aminon specifically, DNC is a better primary damage dealer than DRK simply because of Climactic and Reverse Flourish. As a bonus it also feeds a lot less TP. This is not at all the case for the rest of the run. A DRK, especially one with Foenaria, is far more consistent with high damage WS than DNC is against the basement bosses and doesn't have nearly the same falloff as the fight drags on. DNC just brings so many other tools to the run that it ends up being an acceptable substitute anyway. I've been known to say that DNC is a support job masquerading as a DD job. The cumulative effect throughout the run of using Chocobo Jig II to skip collecting metals in C and G, Box Step, Haste Samba, Contradance-Healing Waltz at the end of fights, Reverse Flourish and No Foot Rise while running between fights, being able to do solo SCs while completely devoid of buffs, being able to two-shot mini NMs upstairs... DNC's toolkit is so stacked for a raid with so many disparate objectives that it more than makes up for the fact that it blows its load in the first 2-3 WS cycles of a fight. The fact that the one fight in the zone that's not almost over by then is the one where you can't swing for TP, further exacerbating DNC's lead on TP generation and eliminating Climactic Flourish's greatest weakness, is just icing on the cake.

But again, I don't want this to be taken as some kind of decree that only DNC is valid if you want to full clear. Realistically, I think the biggest thing stopping us from full clearing with DRK is just that we're not that efficient at farming pop items. It takes us much longer than it should to get the C and even G Metals (too many people stunning every move instead of only the dangerous ones, not enough SC coordination), and fixing that would give us significantly faster kill speed across the whole basement and a lower chance of running into trouble with movement speed buffs if we get an unlucky Bitzer location in G. I would say that if your party is better at doing procs and/or splitting up and/or getting out of the basement without aggroing everything than my group is, which isn't a particularly high bar, you'd probably see less benefit than we did from dropping the DRK for a DNC.

In a 10+ minute long fight, I don't think the extra 30 seconds it takes a BRD to get steps up is a significant difference. I kept 5 box 5 quick up for the entirety of every Aminon with DRK strat, so the real difference is 5 more box, 5 more quick, and the stutters.

I think the 10% Def down is much more significant than the 20 eva down, but I'm sure both help somewhat I doubt 20 eva down is going to change damage by 10s of thousands, unless you're missing quite a bit. With SV songs and entrust up for half or more of the fight, depending on RD/WC usage, you shouldn't have accuracy issues at all. Stutter should help somewhat with abs-tp accuracy, though when compared to 400 meva down from Threnody and 100~130 meva down from Frazzle, 30 from Stutter step is not going to be game-changing. I really think box step and WS avg/frequency are where DNC shines, not the quick/stutter, though they're a nice bonus.

Speaking only about the Aminon fight. The rest of the run benefits from DNC in various other ways.

With a good impact and acumen set Drk can spam WS just as quickly as Dnc, faster even if they have the impact recact time for it. Plus stronger absorbs.

The bigger difference is 10% more def down from box step, which means can switch chaos roll to misers and have 300-400tp back with every WS.

Means more WSs for everyone overall while still near or at attack cap.

Accuracy may not be an issue for most jobs, but for Geo it is an issue whenever SV runs out.

Miser's roll is a huge deal though. The biggest increase in my groups dps on HQ aminon was miser's roll by far. It nearly doubles the weaponskill frequency. When we swapped from tact/chaos to tact/misers it cut around 4+ minutes off our kill speed. You lower the average damage per weaponskill a bit, but the increased frequency really speeds up kill time. It's particularly helpful for the corsair, who otherwise has a much harder time getting tp since they don't absorb as well as the geo or red mage.

Great write-up, Positron, thanks for sharing.

Haven't watched the video, but how many groups are actually doing this legitimately and not using ws when disengaged?

It has timestamps, you can just skip ahead to the Aminon battle and answer your own question.

To answer for this group: All of them are WSing while disengaged (except DNC, he's standing out of range to just step/WS).

That doesn't really answer the question "how many groups" because...how would it? But I think we all know the answer, since this is FFXI. There are almost 0 groups in existence made of 6 non-gearswap users, maybe some JP groups? I doubt any of them are doing 9 boss kills, if they exist.

At the 4:13 mark of their old video, they post the wait macro they use to do it legitimately. Whether you believe them or not is another story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oMXwrfy5pY&t=253s