[Lowman] Glavoid And THF Tanking

Should be of note im pretty sure no Empyrean Upgrade item are effected by anything but TH.

Much as I should go to bed I just wanted to throw this out here first...

In terms of simple probability, there are only 2 results for players farming Empy items: 1 item or 2. The NM's never NOT drop the items sought, so post-kill it's 50-50 /joy or /wtfMFcheapassNM upon gazing at the treasure pool.

I know people have argued that it's TH > proc and vice versa. To claim 1 is greater than the other is a fallacy. The outcome is a coin flip. IF I got heads 50x in a row, that does not mean it'll always be heads. In a game where random numbers are random, where the sample size individual people deal with is measured in dozens, not hundreds or thousands... It's just silly to presume your observations are statistically significant.

Having said the above I conclude with these final 3 thoughts:

1) IF you low man and consistently only have THF for TH, awesome! TH of anykind > none.

2) IF you can proc yellow/grellow easily without prolonging the fight, awesome! SE added them for a reason, that being they're supposed to up the drop rate.

While reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom/ efficacy of doing so... it CAN'T hurt. Assuming of course it's a) easily done and b) doesn't unecessarily prolong the fight.

3) IF you can have both TH and proc that's the best outcome because hey let's face it both approaches are in the game to maximize your success. It'd be silly to not take advantage of both or to favor one over the other because of bias.

No matter what approach you take, remember the end result is 50-50... 1 or 2. If you get 1 alot, just bad luck... If you get 2 alot, you're damn lucky... Remember folks, random numbers are random so take it all in stride.

TH > proc is a fact for Empyreans, because there isn't a proc that affects Empy items. Aside from that, your argument is deeply flawed... information can be pooled, resulting in a more accurate sample.

Proc's don't affect drop, huh? When the DEV's affirmatively say it doesn't, your thoughts on the matter are as good as mine. For those that want to bring in their experiences.... Great, because I love being told a justification that begins with, "Well when I did it..."

At worst it took that person 50 kills, at best 25. Truth is it takes most somewhere in between. That's just way too small a sample to generalize from. My POV has always been yellow/ grellow affects seals, stones, coins, jewels and cards... why wouldn't they affect empy items?

What do all 6 of those types of things have in common? They're all items players turn in as part and parcel of participating in Magian trials. Logically the connection is there, and intuitively it makes sense.

Unless you're retared, proc's shouldn't take too long to do. Again if you have them at your disposal use them. There's utterly no reason to play this game with a handicap.

BTW, what's the explanation for 1 drop in pool with no spell proc and TH7 proc or higher? Or how about 2 drop with no TH or no TH and no spell proc. Random numbers are random amigo. We can think we can control the outcome, but only to a small extent.

4/5 average double drops without proc, but with TH on Glav. 3.5/5 average double drops with yellow and TH on Itzpapolotl.

4/5 average double drops on Briareus, no yellow. Working on Sobek atm, but he seems to be quite stingy in comparison. More like 3/5 on double drops with yellow, at 34/50.

When i did my glavoids our MNK tank or THF or NIN whoever was available
would use Atma of the Earth Wyrm +100 Earth resist -10% dmg taken, stack that with barstonra and earth carol 2 disgorge most of the time wasn't a threat. But then again a good nin with migawari and a whm is all you need minus some TH.

if u can handle the disgorge u shouldnt have a problem as long as u dont heal it would be a long kill with just thf tho

TH increases the drop rate of everything in the game, assuming the item slot in question is not already 100%. Therefor TH will increase the drop rate of the second empy item.

Yellow proc does not and has not ever increased the drop rate of items. Yellow proc simply adds more item slots to the drop list of the mob. For example, most +2 NMs have 2 slots for +2 items before yellow proc (100% for single primary item, and ??% for single secondary item). Proccing yellow adds 2 more drop slots (100% primary item, and ??% primary item). As for +1 NMs, before yellow proc they have 2 drop slots (each slot is a ??% chance shared by 4 different types of seals). Proccing yellow adds 3 more of these slots.

As for empy items, there are 2 and only 2 slots for them to drop (100% and ??%). Yellow proc does not add any more slots (unless you can find me a screenshot of 3 dropping at once?).

Your gear looks good, only comment from me, since you're not going all out on EVA, skip Boxer and try Atheling Mantle, Glav has kinda bad accuracy so getting extra ATK and DoubleATK might benefit you more (better killspeed). Decent job with stacking up Subtle Blow.
As for a healer, RDM is too little, you'll need WHM most likely. Glav still does spam agas and TP moves. With RDM you will get into hate issues fast, which is especially dangerous during Blood weapon when youmight not be able to take hate back (all your JAs might be down from TP move JA reset so don't count on accomplice/colaborator). Also, WHM can buff you up with Auspice, and it seems you know already it helps.

Adding to Bladefury's comments (from first page): we did Glav/chloris farms 4-man, we did both AoE burn for gold boxes and KI farming from scratch. From what I can tell, with 4 people it takes almost same time to get full pop set using both methods. I prefer getting KIs from NMs, because you know when you will finish pop set, while with gold boxes it's a lottery and you might end up with 8+ Sticky Bat wings in a row as it happened to us few times :)
I'd go for killing NMs if you can't bring more than 3 people with you. You'll need WAR+NIN for this method to assure 100% success tho.
As for droprate, I've stopped counting (we're getting 100 shells and 100 buds) but usually from every 4 kills we do, we get 2-3 double drops and assume you'll need ~33 Glav kills to get your items (I hear ~30 from other testimonies alot too).
Brewing for duo-trio lowman is definitely a good option, as it can take forever to kill 1 Glav (we take ~15min to kill one with WHM THF WAR MNK (proper gear and atmas); I'm sure some elitists will tell you it takes them 3min tri boxing, I can tell that Kannagi NIN+healer duo takes ~5-7min as I saw that on my own, but none of us has any empy WS yet), so if you can brew 3-5 Glav's with 1 brew it might be worth it.
If you are able to bring 3 people for the fight, ask one person to come /DRK, you can reliably stun Glav, just ask that person to nothing else than stun duty. Even THF/DRK with DD atmas and no Macc gear swaps had no resists from my experience. If you try duo, asking your healer to come /DRK or /BLM is pointless, you'll be caught many times casting cure/buff/debuff and miss the stun.
Don't forget to bring some form of Dispel: fighting Glav that took from you Prot/Shell/Haste/Auspice/Counterstance/Hasso/Retaliation and what not is a funny thing to experience :)
As for atma choices, for duo I'd recommend at least 1 person taking atma of apocalypse, as there are times when Glav decides to be spam happy and you'll eat many -aga3/Gorge/Disgorge/Blood Weapon - it's especially dangerous for your healer when they get hate.
Oh, if you're fighting NMs for KI, Adze can get pretty annoying too, give it a try and see for yourself :)
To end this spamtext: don't get discouraged by the time sink, Glavoid will take you a lot of time, but next stages are MUCH easier and faster. Good Luck!

This a million times. 10 Empyreans completed with 3 done entirely by myself. TH is all you need to worry about.

People are really confused about this, just had to back it up :x

Yep, I'm on Orthrus now, but not actively working on it. Finishing off a Kannagi for a friend and then beginning a Ver for another friend. We'll all get to 85 and then work on the 90 forms. I only have 52 claws left regardless, though.

I'd consider working on a Twashtar if Glavoid weren't such a pain in the ***. Maybe when I'm happy with my WAR's gear I'll start working on it.

sadly no matter how many time people back it up... people are still gonna say your wrong and that procs effect those drops. ><

I find it best to just ignore those people.

Grellow!! opens up additional drop slots for seals and +2 items and stuff like craft mats. There is 0 evidence to support that it works for empyrean items, because two can drop without grellow.

In a nutshell: Grellow proc is NOT TH, you still want TH on the mob to make stuff drop in the slots procing it opens up. Thinking it works for emp. items is sirry

It's kind of HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE when you're still trying to proc yellow for Empyrean items. It's even more HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE saying people are HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE for not doing yellow when infact "yellow is not that hard to trigger". Point is, no matter how you look at it, trying to trigger yellow takes time - and in abyssea time is limited. That extra minute or two you spend trying for yellow, specially when everyone is maxed on +2, adds up.

For the record, I killed Sobek 26 times only for my 50 skins. All but 2 of them dropped double skin and this is only with TH6~8 (infact, the two times he did not drop 2 skins are the times I didn't go with a THF only MNK/THF, WHM, DNC). Didn't even bother doing yellow for any of those 26.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but believe it or not, TH does make a huge difference. People who say TH is a myth at this point in time is seriously in need of dire mental help. D:

There were a total of 4 times where Glavoid dropped 1 shell that I've done out of 20 fights. Itzpapalotl has dropped 2 every fight but twice. Orthrus has always dropped 2.

I always have TH with me, usually TH5, sometimes 6.