Aminon - Absorb TP Question + Bonus Question

I've heard mix feedback on this so I'm hoping someone can clarify!

When using the Absorb TP spell, does magic accuracy effect the potency or amount of actually TP absorbed per cast?

Currently Aminon setup:

MNK/RUN
DRG/SAM
COR/DRK
BRD/DRK
GEO/DRK
RDM/WHM

Pretty much copied Sterk's setup.

Killing normal in about 8 minutes currently with no Aria and Stage 3 Polearm.

We are doing 4 sec Absorb TP's with 12 sec recast timers for the 3 /drk's.

It seems TP stays consistent in the 200 to 350 margin but every so often it spikes to 450+ and a tp move gets off and we wipe.

Cor is using Caster's roll for those casting Absorb TP but they did focus their sets on recast timers over mag acc I believe.

So, does more magic accuracy mean better absorb tp amounts?

Lastly, I'm going /sam as the DRG. I'm debating going /drk for 1 more Absorb TP but not sure how that will effect other 8 bosses with no hasso / meditate but gaining last resort.

Thanks in advance.

IME: Absorb-TP will either completely resist or go through completely.

When you get 450 it's probably a bunch of people stacking up their WS, or a bunch of Absorb-TP going off at the same time, or both.

No, Magic Accuracy only affects land rate.


This is kind of a waste IMO. With SV Dark Threnody and a stewpot, even jobs with zero native Dark Magic skill can land just fine. Having more frequent Absorbs is ok in general, but what's more important is the spacing cadence between Absorbs. With Penance, Aminon should be very manageable if only the MNK is meleeing. A high TP absorb means too much TP is being fed to Aminon, so either have your MNK stop meleeing, or everyone absorb and reset Aminon to get back to a safe baseline. Jumps from DRG don't feed any TP, so something like Fly High during Penance window is probably a great time to get all of the DRG's burst damage off for the least amount of TP feed. It probably doesn't hurt to have your DRG keep a Subtle Blow WS toggle, for safety.

Turn around when Penance is about to fall and reapply when able. Since you're taking 8 minutes, you'll eventually run out of Chi Blasts which means you'll have to take it slow during those windows where Penance is down. When we used to take that long, I'd do a WS, wait for 2 absorbs, then build TP to do another WS, wait for 2 absorbs, repeat until Penance is back up.
I also found it safer to WS on MNK as soon as you get TP rather than waiting until ~1750+ or whatever since that means you're spending more time in WS delay and less time feeding TP which is honestly the preferable method on Normal Mode with Aria since the MNK will still be seeing a lot of 99ks despite firing off at 1k TP. With a good Crooked Cards Samurai Roll, you should be getting 1k TP in 1 auto attack round.

A 300+ absorb means you need to slow down. Should keep it between 200-300.

Actions feed TP. If TP feed is too high.. need to slow down actions.

It would help to add more subtle blow in WS sets, for everyone in the party.

For the absorb-tp question - there is no adjustment in potency.

However, IME absorb-tp can have partial resists as well as full resists, like other magic spells. A partial resist results in less TP absorbed than normal, not sure by what ratio.

Again this is in my experience, it's not been confirmed as far as I know. I have personally observed TP returns from absorb-tp in the 50-90 TP range, followed by Aminon doing a TP move. If those were unresisted full absorbs, he should not have got a move off.

This is just the logic of an enemy meeting the threshold for performing a TP move, but an absorb/TP reset was performed after this check so he will use a move regardless on his next action cycle, always. TP denial strats only work if you deny the monster from reaching the necessary number need to use a move. If it reaches it, no matter what it will use a move always, regardless the amount of TP it has at the time the move is used.

I've seen this same behavior with Mboze and other TP denial boss fights too, where next action absorbed 1500+ tp to the point where he couldn't have possibly had tp to use the move, but he did anyways. This implies monsters reach whatever number that trigger their ability logic, and it was just a matter of time until they use it.

Example:

Say Aminon will use a move only if he reaches 2000 TP
He gets 2000 TP to trigger his ability check.
He's currently mid action
Player A absorbs 450+ TP
Player B absorbs 270 TP
Player C absorbs 100 TP
Aminon uses a move

It seems like he doesn't have the TP to use a move based on absorbs, but that's an unreliable eyeball test. He already met whatever target number (2000) needed to trigger an ability and he'll use it next time his AI cycles through commands since ability use is now flagged to be used.

Tldr-deny him TP before he reaches whatever number

That makes more sense, thanks.

I always had the suspicion mobs can cheat and do a TP move regardless if they should have TP to do it or not, this confirms it.

This makes total sense, it just queues the TP move up for after whatever he's currently doing.

The only mobs that I know that can "cheat" are ones that don't have an ability/tp validation and can TP at any time. Shinryu is an example. Reducing TP does nothing to him. Cloud of Darkness, according Papesse, is another example.

Sounds plausible. If absorbs AND a stun land after the AI decided to fire a TP move on next turn, does that stun reset the AI check and therefor stop the TP move cause the second check would result in not enough TP?

I'm sorry, are you guys saying that Absorb-TP is either full potency or it is resisted completely? That hasn't been my experience at all. I've personally seen it land for 80 and then immediately after for 200+. Is that not an indication of a partial resist?

That just means you absorbed less TP than the person before you, but the person after you absorbed more TP due to how much TP the mob had at the time of absorb. It's all percentage based on when the absorb is used.

If a mob has 1500 tp, and you absorb 300, assuming no actions are performed in between, the next absorb will be less than the first. But if the monster gains additional TP in between this time (say he jumps back up to 1500) you might absorb 300 but the guy before you only absorbed 180. Your absorbs are not resisted, they're returning a percentage of whatever value TP the monster has at the time, which changes on every action. You can tell this very easily by counting the monsters's moves, or TP generating actions against the mob.

You >> absorb 300
Mob doesn't do any TP generating actions
Next absorb >>> 180 (this one is not resisted, it just returns less because mob has less tp)
Mob gains TP from 4 more actions
Next absorb >>>300

It's all relative to mob's current TP. The only resist I've seen is "Absorb-TP fails to take effect". Either it lands or it does not.

Buukki's example happened to us the other night. The log looks like his TP should have been near zero but he still TPed. When I looked further up the log you can see where he hit 1000+, we stopped WSing, Absorbed 3 times and he then TPed. Lines up perfectly with his post.

I'm curious on what helped speed up your runs?

We typically don't have aria for our runs and stage 3 polearm. After this week we will have aria and a few weeks out from stage 4 polearm.

It seems the biggest bottleneck is having to hold damage due to tp. I find myself on DRG sitting idle a lot in fear of spiking tp so I wait for high 100 to low 200 absorb tp.

We do have others that can WS also, but they aren't due to tp concerns.

Is it just more 99k ws's on mnk and perhaps higher diarmuid dmg that speeds it up?

Wondering what a good benchmark is time wise for normal aminon with aria / stage 4.

I understand that, what I'm saying is I have seen multiple times:

BRD >> Absorbs 80 TP
ME >> Absorbs 250 TP

as two consecutive actions within ~1 second of each other. No other actions were taken on the mob within the window etc.

I'd have to see what the log shows. No action was taken on the mob, but did Aminon or the mob use a melee attack that generated TP for himself? That could explain the difference in TP returned, and it's easy to miss if you're not looking at him and the log at the same time, especially if his actions are filtered. Also, did was someone use Erra Pendant? That does affect potency. Also unclear what the (ME) person's job was, but I'm assuming it wasn't DRK main for any potency gear. There's a couple of variables that could have contributed.

The only time I've seen the example you posted is if Aminon used an action simultaneous to the second absorb. The first one is reduced, the second gets the higher percentage absorb. That's not necessarily an indication of a partial resist, but I don't have any hard evidence posted anywhere to support this besides just doing thousands of absorbs over time (which are admittedly not reliable tests either).

Not discounting your experience.

In my experience, on its own, a low 300+ absorb is perfectly safe, provided that it's followed up immediately with another absorb. A stand-alone 300+ absorb is bad. A 400+ absorb under any circumstance is quite bad.

I do not have experience with the MNK setup because we've been doing DNC setup for so long.

Under 10%, Odyssey NMs regularly do TP moves back-to-back.

How do they have enough TP to do TP moves back-to-back if they just used their TP doing a TP move.

It might just be an additional mechanic built into their logic, just like auras, adds, hate ignore top of hate list etc. Just another annoying *** wrench they throw at you, but I never paid attention to this much so I didn't know. Anything to keep you from winning. (That would explain why I always seemed to wipe under 10%).

Are you guys using Dark thernody?

Didn't see that mentioned anywhere in here

Mentioned it in my very first comment, third post:

Make that BRD sweat /SCH or /WHM lol
Have the RDM go /DRK

You can chainspell absorb also

We've found that having more than 3 /DRKs has been beneficial for our runs.

For reference, we've been doing 9-boss HM Aminon with 6-ish minute engage/kill time with Aria. The setup we use is MNK/DRG BRD/DRK COR/DRK GEO/DRK RDM/DRK WHM/DRK. As you can imagine, having 5 Absorb-TPs makes the TP feed very mindless/safe for everyone to WS.

For buffs we run Chaos/Sam for the MNK and Chaos/Tacticians for the support. We don't use Caster's roll but instead optimize our FC/Haste gear on Absorb-TP to get recast down to 12-13s with capped magic haste.

In the rare event that we get unlucky on Chi Blast resets, we cover the gap with Chainspell Absorb-TP.

My optimization suggestion in other thread to Sterk on his comp (he doesn't need my advice, but since it came back up) was to have the GEO instead be the healer, since it is far superior than BRD, and maybe even RDM, at healing, but also much weaker from a DPS/parse perspective during Aminon (BRD will use Savage Blade, and even with walling, outperforms GEO's Judgments). If for some reason GEO needs/wants to contribute damage, a single OA Impact or Thundara/Blizzara III gives you TP that you can sit on and fire away (I wouldn't bother, but an option)


Chainspell is invaluable and probably an easy difference maker if your group is struggling with Aminon kill speed.

Just getting more experience in the setup in general and learning what I can and can't do. My first win on MNK took about 30 mins. Now it's about 2:30 for Normal and 3:30 for Hard. A lot of things overtime improved our speed little by little.
- We used to use 3 minuets because I thought without Box Step we weren't overcapping attack, but turns out we were and adding Aria made a significant difference in kill speed.
- We used to not use Bolster because I felt we needed it for F, but we stopped that and started using Bolster on Aminon to get full benefit out of Aria.
- I always assumed Impact's debuffs would be highly resisted, but I learned it actually lands for full duration so we added that.
- I used to not DD on my COR and BRD. Now I do.
- I was obligated to go with my 'THF only' friend to make my first stage 5 prime, now that he finished I can bring a better DD (DRG).
- Learning I can do 99k at 1k TP instead of having to wait for 1800+ TP for more damage.
- Hoxne Ampulla.

Getting over that fear will go a long way. Our DRG doesn't really hold back. My COR and BRD WS any time they reach 1k TP. You don't really have to worry about TP unless you're absorbing for over 350, but even when I see that I don't stop punching since I've done the fight enough to know that, as long as people are focusing on their Absorbs, I don't really have anything to fear. Our DRG BRD COR don't even use any Subtle Blow in their WS sets beyond the RDM's Auspice. If you wanted you could throw on some Subtle Blow for your WSs and feel 100% safe.

Main problem with that is you wouldn't get an Indi- bubble for Gartell since you don't want your healer getting spammed with Silence or Stun (less of an issue on B since upstairs bosses are easy enough to settle for 1 bubble). Knockback spam on H could make avoiding interruptions on your Cures tricky as well if you're trying to give your DDs an Indi- bubble. But if you can overcome those issues, yeah, GEO healer could probably work.

I would just BOGEA Dematerialize the Fury bubble and Entrust Frailty and stand at range healing, if the GEO wasn't comfortable being in range. The offensive bubble is nerfed anyways and doesn't provide that much of a reduction comparatively. This would result in less overall attack buff, but the trade is you have a much better DD in RDM (or BRD on Savage) being on Black Halo with TemperII/100DA.

It was more of a logistical comp thing of "how little will the group be disadvantaged with whomever is the healer", not a dig at whatever your current comp is. You can make a case for either, but I just picked GEO since it's the weaker of the 3 support spots. And I was mostly talking about for Aminon, since that is where the OP was having an issue. So gaining access to Chainspell Absorb is huge.

One method is to stagger absorbs, so every 2-3 ws wait for an absorb before another ws. And so forth, adjust as necessary depending on returns.

I didn't see it that way in the slightest, no big deal. I've also thought about GEO or BRD healer, but ultimately I decided to stick with RDM.