April 2019 Version Update

25ish? You should have been moving to Qufim by 20, and can go as early as 18/19.

/WHM was in no way a common sub unless this was pre-Zilart or something.

No that was fail ... complete fail, yet through this we begin to understand you.

The way the earlier cure formula worked was that something like THF/WHM would have really REALLY shitty cures and the way MP worked from sub would have that THF having like 3 of those cures. Instead you had a WHM or RDM be the "healer" at those low levels, neither a BLM or SMN could do it. Much later, like around the mid 20's to early 30's, BLM and SMN could actually heal if they wore a ton of +MND gear. Would be rough but was possible. Nowadays the heal formula is far more forgiving for potency.

That aforementioned THF would be much better off going /MNK with H2H and Combo until level 20 when they could go /NIN and use Fast Blade on swords. Killing the crab/fish/worm faster means it'll do less damage and your healer's MP will last longer. Or better yet get a WAR or DRK with a Great Axe for Shield Break which was a massive DPS boost for those early levels.

He's speaking out of the early Brady Guide, the thing that people used until they got to the dunes then realized it was a dumpster fire of fail.

Sneak/Invis were a big deal too.

Too broke to buy meds, had to sub WHM. Especially when a group took 3 hours to form and single death on the 45min trek to some camps would result in a disband or 3 more hours of shouting.

Doesnt matter how shitty the cures were, it was less downtime. Refresh wasnt really a thing, and resting removed TP and restored hp/mp slowly. /Whm was, by default, the best sub for getting exp.

this takes me back to getting yelled at for going WAR/MNK in Yuhtunga (Boost had a not-insubstantial CE component!) instead of WAR/NIN so I could get shadows stripped by attacks that did 20 damage

man, those were the days

Um you should've moved from dunes before 25 even solo. ***I'd hit up Korroloka Tunnel by 14-15 solo.

This wasn't meta (not that there was much of one back then) this was a bunch of people reading brady guides convincing themselves it was better while the rest of the pt rolled their eyes

early ffxi was fun because rather than basing a metagame around what actually worked it was determined by observing japanese players (who also had no idea what they were doing) and filtering that through the brain of a 16-year-old with infinite time and no real-world agency

Look at all these fancy pants people who had the time to level a second job!

I was like 15 and didnt even have my sub job unlocked in dunes. Lv 18 Mnk/--- with my flag up in selbina.

Talking about subbing whm, first you gotta find someone willing to help you farm your magicked skull up!

Yep WAR/MNK with a Great Axe doing Shield Break and / or Sturm Wind. Axe's would of been kinda bad since there isn't a good Axe WS in those levels, Sword with Fast Blade would of been better.

Polearm WAR was where it was at.

serious talk though if you were a DD that could /drg for jump that was godly for crowded camping areas and not terrible for dmg

I got pretty good at voke-claiming while running past the mob so I wouldn't get hit on the way back to the camp. It was like, my one skill.

I realize this got buried a couple pages back and is not really the point of the copious PLD discussion, but it bugged me a little bit to not say something...

NIN *does* /WAR in 2019, for basically everything - including tanking.

Saevel made an offhand (and not incorrect) comment about NIN/DRK tanking, but that's really about 75 cap stuff back when NIN was a much more frequent tank, and before NIN got MUCH improved native enmity tools with Yonin affecting Utsusemi hate generation (and more shadows).

Current NIN generates hate like mad with Yonin up and spamming Utsu: San and Ni, especially with a mainhand C path Fudo Masamune for enmity+ per shadow AND reduced ninjutsu recasts (though Nagi isn't bad for hate either). With Yonin up: Utsu generates ~160 CE/~450 VE before Yonin's enmity+ modifier (recent testing, thanks Alexcennah!)


As for other subjobs:

/BLU:
- Kind of obnoxious given that NIN has no native MP pool, and also kind of unnecessary from a hate generation standpoint.
- Gets comparatively less out of Cocoon than PLD or RUN, since NIN should be relying on shadows and taking far fewer hits.
- Plus, NIN doesn't really have a ton of time to be spamming /BLU spells, since you're going to be busy enough just casting Utsu and tossing in the occasional Provoke (or WS or whatever).

/DRK:
- Not bad for hate for the same reasons RUN/DRK works well (get enmity on multiple mobs with Poisonga, then use stuff that generates enmity on all mobs - i.e., Utsusemi - to hold hate). However, NIN tanking doesn't really lend itself well to supertanking multiple mobs in the first place - when you're NIN tanking, the point tends to be using shadows for survival, so holding multiple mobs that will rip through your shadows is generally a bad idea.
- Unnecessary for enmity generation. At 75 cap, a key point of /DRK was to use Stun to generate lots of hate, but NIN doesn't need to do that any more since it now has good native enmity tools.
- Adds some offense for when you aren't as focused on tanking (mainly an additional tier of Attack Bonus and Damage Limit+ versus NIN/WAR, but /WAR Double Attack is more useful)

That leaves /WAR:
- Tanking oriented JAs: Voke isn't great, but it's something. Defender is sometimes useful when you don't care about your offense (I tend to keep it up when tanking stuff like Halphas).
- Most importantly, /WAR is very good for OFFENSE, when you switch away from tanking to playing as a DPS - as you might do for the majority of a longer event such as Dynamis, but still having the ability to swap to a tanking role on the fly when needed.

That's actually kinda lowish base enmity, especially the VE portion (CE is fine). You would need to spam utsusemi spells non-stop to hit hate cap. If you were purely tanking, then /DRK stun would be much better. That being said, you put it in the correct context by pointing out how good /WAR is offensively for when your "not tanking". Basically your giving up some enmity generation in exchange for better DPS, which is the same trade off RUN does when they go /SAM.


This is very true, /WAR is one of the best offensive subs for people who can cap their own delay and has been for years.

Provoke is all about the VE and it benefits from all the extra Enmity, so perhaps it kinda makes up for the low VE on shadows. Especially since it doesn't slow down your DPS as much as regular Flashing/Stunning would.

Honestly though, Fudo+Nagi is a pretty crazy amount of Enmity just in your weapon slots. A REMA NIN can reach the +200 Enmity gear cap without issues using Gekka, with some upper room in case you don't have the full 7 shadows for Fudo.

It's really a shame that AoE tanking is such a fundamental part of modern endgame. NIN tanks were such a unique thing in FFXI's history and developer game design vs. player resourcefulness that it's quite sad they have become obsolete.

wouldn't /nin work better than /drk for tanking single targets in that you don't lose enmity when shadows are lost? Also, you have 2 spells with ichi and ni instead of 1 spell with stun for enmity generation.

.... because Utsusemi doesn't generate ***for hate on non-NIN's. Innin / Yonin don't work from sub and Yonin is what makes Utsusemi generate decent enmity.

That and one Stun alone generates more VE than both Yonin Utsusemi: Ichi and Ni together. That's not even taking extra hate tools like Poisonga, Last Resort and Souleater into account.

I remember having to solo SMN all the way to 75. Damn that took months of non-stop grinding to do, got a little easier/profitable when I hit 55 so I could solo bombs in Ifrit's Cauldron.

Each death sucked *** cause it cost like 3-4 hours of soloing. Luckily you learn really quick how far you can summon and how far away from magic aggro you can summon.

If I remember correctly (this was back in 2006 or so) I didn't die at all from 59-75. Highest chain I got was chain 4, but that's only because the bombs were nice and blew up on first TP move.

Sure, I could have been a horrible healer in parties and got to 75 a lot quicker, but *** all that. I'm a SMN damn it! I let others fight for me and {Run Away!}

Sounds like the ghetto beastmaster experience.

At least BST can solo EM and some types of Ts.

Until you got to bombs, almost all of the mobs I could fight were EM or lower. Worms, most likely Ts, but only if they were at the right spot and other worms didn't link to them, and sneak didn't wear, and there weren't any mobs that aggro'd to sight. Couldn't even dare to use a BP and lose sneak.

And even then, that was all 100% carby. Cause carby mitts allowed a 1 mp/tic cost, unless you happen to get that sweet spot and got free carby with gear and stuff. Carby at the time was never that great at attacking.

I solo'd BST to 75 also, but it was closer to the Abyssea era and things were a lot different then compared to SMN.

1. you do lost hate from losing shadows.

2. You can't use Yonin /nin so utsesmi spells give little hate.

Losing hate when a shadow was consumed was a big nerf to ninja tanking in like 2006. They basically couldn't tank without a THF.

Those were the days, man. Summon Carby, run about 55-60 yalms away, and wait...

What's a blood pact, again? Oh yeah, those things that consume MP I can't afford to lose and generate enmity I can't afford to have...