May 2016 Version Update

Looking at the content list on bg-wiki, I see roughly 6 NMs(woc, zerde, schah, vinipata, teles, albumen) that has absolutely 0 testimonials nor winning record using none blm sch setup.

Among those 6 NMs someone out there may already beat it with alternative setups, just didn't post testimonials. Or alternative setups exist just that we haven't figure out.

Considering 6 NM isn't a lot and only 10% of the playerbase regularly do them anyways, I don't think it's that bad. If you do every other content, other jobs are still viable.

So what you're saying is... That content does exist where you're forced into a very specific set-up and other jobs definitely aren't viable at all, correct?

This was never an issue with any other period of job dominance.

And if you actually hate playing all the jobs that are necessary, you're literally *** out of doing content.

11/10 game design and balance.

actually, what he was saying is that there are nms that have only been beaten with one setup so far(which was the case for just about everything, until it wasn't)

The hardest content in this game has been pretty exclusive though, it's not something new afaik.

I recall when delve 1 was just out, Ceizak can only be cleared with RNG because no other job could reach required acc to hit the mega boss. People only start to use melee jobs post ilv.

It's been years since pre ilv delve though, so I may miss some testimonials of pre ilv ceizak being cleared on other jobs.

wat?
Every event has had specific requirements

Nyzul required a 500 (or was it 550?) enhancing sch, and 4 top tier DD's and a brd
Salvage required MNK MNK WHM RDM BRD THF and a buttload of hi pots...those restrictions got relaxed with the starter chest
VW forced you to bring certain jobs just for procs, certain shitty jobs
Abyssea pretty much became NIN+WHM
Legion required god tier jobs with perfect stunners and multiple SMN's for PD

There was no "pre ilvl" delve. People did it with rng and then relic sam because it was the easy ticket due to piercing and safety, that is all.

Pre ilv delve= delve before gears with item level. There was a brief period of time that endgame players had to do delve without any combat skill+ on weapons, so it was extremely hard to hit stuff in ceizak.

Pretty sure namas SAM could only do that zone post ilv unless I miss some testimonials. It's been years though, so I may be completely wrong with pt setup at that time.

Huh...

There was pre-ilevel Delve, I know because I did it as DRK using a loaned Senbaak Nagan and there was no iLevel skill on it, just a big accuracy / attack number.



That is what it originally looked like, notice the complete lack of iLevel references.

There was no HP scaling and you usually brought 12~18 people to the event. One party was just the tanks, stunners and associated GEO's while the other two parties were three melee with WHM, BRD and COR. The BRD's and COR's did party swaps to give each melee four to eight songs and four rolls. That was the level of buffing required to actually damage the final boss's. We used this method on all three original delve zones but instead of DRK I went BLU on Shark / Bee because Requiescat allowed me to bypass some of those zones damage mechanics and do full damage.

We only started using RNG's after Delve 2.0 was released and only because it allowed for a smaller party with lower gear level. Yorcia you had to bring slashing due to the MB's practical immunity to piercing. So people brought SAM because that's what they saw on the youtube videos and bgwiki. During that time I was able to kill Yorcia using the same method but with WAR doing a multi-step SC instead. Later I adapted that method to do it on BLU and DRK.

Carby is one of the more "empty" servers, and I've been spamming at AAMR trying to get in for the past 9 min now..so yeah, no thanks to merges.

Yep, definitely was a world before item level and Delve was a part of it. My LS only managed to beat Daquwaka and Tojil before the "nerf" (aka, adding 200+ accuracy and attack to everyone's weapons, you can see evidence to this easily: look on my profile and you'll see I equipped a pair of Oatixur on July 7, 2013. Ilvl wasn't added to weapons until August 13, 2013.), so can't speak much on Muyingwa, but I really don't see it as having been possible to clear Ceizak without a heavy set of relic RNGs and bow SAMs to combat the ridiculous DT- and hate resets, not to mention a majority of the NMs in that zone (all 3, really) still had enigmatic gimmicks at the time. I'm not even 100% certain if anyone beat Ceizak prior to iLvl, it has been so long. I'm sure someone did, just don't remember at all.

Pre-ilvl Delve was easily the most restricted and noninclusive event in SoA just due to its ballbusting difficulty and stringent setup requirements due to NM gimmicks (most of which still weren't understood).

Yeah.

I miss it too.

That first Tojil kill was literally the last time I ever felt any kind of excitement from this game.

Same. To be honest everything after the original Delve just took more and more people away from the game for me. After the difficult stuff stopped a lot of people lost interest until eventually it was just a few of us left, and by the time t2 skirmishes started coming out it was just 4 of us and some mules. Really *** sad that in the span of less than a year my LS went from being able to field alliances capable of taking down Legion bosses, ADL, Delve, etc. to a glorified social.

But that's not the purpose of this thread I guess, same ***different day.

Ceizak was beaten pre-ilv, but I forgot the setup they use since my group only did the other 2 zones pre ilevel
I only vaguely remember it was beaten with RNG setup. Ceizaks accuracy requirement was way higher than the other 2 zones though. While it's possible to MNK DRK DRG
RUN on tojil and shark, i highly doubt archery SAM is usable in Ceizak with their C+ skill in archery.

idk, I know Apex Arrow SAMs were used if Namas ones weren't available at some point, don't remember where on the timeline that was nor do I remember how effective they were. I know that my first clear on Muyingwa post-ilvl had a couple apex SAMs though.\

only other delve related things I remember are massacring yorcia boss with BLU and COR burning the lion. don't even remember fighting the bird. anything further back than that aside from the eventual victory nights are distant blurs. don't think I'll ever forget the first wins though.

Muyingwa was clearable pre-ilvl without RNGs. Our LS did it with MNKs/DRG/BLU. You had to gear for like... 900 accuracy iirc. Definitely really annoying, but not impossible

Yes, post ilevel namas or apex sam became the main stream DD in that zone just because they parse high on all 6 NMs. I believe it's post relic adjustment? I took a break for FFXIV shortly after item level so I had no clue what did they use from September to November 2013. My first clear which happened after item level was done with thf, sam, blu, drg.

If that's the case, then I can't think of any content in ffxi that is only clearable with 1 setup then. Legion was clearable with rng OR melee, all 3 delve zones were clearable with rng OR melee. Still no clear record on 5 escha NM on none blm focused setup as of now.

Legion was a pain in the *** without a bunch of rangers or yoichi SAMs but yea, clearable without. You weren't going to farm very efficiently though, so there was clear favor towards certain setups. Very few hard lockouts outside of very specific instances.

It is still worth observing, however, that the setup and maintenance cost of a melee setup vs. a mage setup is so unfavorable for melee that the only reason to bring a melee setup is out of pure love, boredom, or want for additional layers of challenge. While I don't doubt that it's possible to clear most current content with melee setups (I don't know for sure since I ahven't played most of it), I find that most people tend to gravitate toward the path of less resistance, i.e. SCHs and BLMs.

Ceizak was super easy as long as the group didn't brought BLU's, DRG's, DNC's and THF's. Requiescat bypassed the damage mechanics and did full damage on everything. With typical buffs I would be doing 5~6K Req's on Bee even when my melee hits were doing 24 damage, turned BLU into one of the best DD's in that zone. But if a group stuck to using MNKs' they were going to have a very rough time. The Bee was one of the easier NM's, it only had 750K HP compared to Shark and Tojils 1200K. It's gimmick was that it got a stacking -DT every 25% HP, starting at 75%, if you hit it with the wrong damage type. 100~75% was blunt, meaning if you hit it over a certain amount (a few thousand I think) of blunt during that time it gained -50% DT at 75% HP when it did Droning. Then it was piercing or slashing from 50~75, the other from 25~50 and the magic under 25. So bringing MNK's meant -50% PDT at 75% HP, -75% PDT at 50% HP, -87.5% at 25% and -93.75% after that where it capped. So yeah really low damage unless using Requiescat, Formless or that SAM magic GKT. Piercing was still effected but since they gained a substantial bonus against the bee the total reduction wasn't nearly as bad for them.


That would be an extremely slow Legion then. The "secret" was just having very good stunners and the DD's being super buffed WAR / DRKs with hybrid sets. Other DD's would work two but WAR / DRK have relics that aid tremendously in this regard along with access to amazing hybrid DT gear. I specifically made Bravura just from Legion, spamming MT for it's AM and wearing two or three -DT items allowed me to go full tilt without worrying about getting splattered. It was one of the few places where Bravura really shined.

It was the HP scaling and not the iLevel stats that did that. Adding the iLevel made it so you could kill them without needing two BRD's, two CORs and four to six extremely well geared melee's with spare GEO's and two stunners. You could still bring that to kill it faster, but it wasn't required to full clear. The HP scaling on the other hand actively penalized groups for bringing more people. Tojil / Sharks' 1,200,000 HP suddenly become 400,000 HP with only six people which made the run really fast. Bringing the big alliance bumped it back up to 1,200,000 while only increasing DPS output by ~2x which means your actually killing it slower. So to do the event groups splintered off into little low man cliques that eventually ruined the community. There was no longer a need for large groups of people to work together and in fact it actually hurt you to do so. The HP scaling should of never been under 50~75% HP, Tojil should of had 600~900K HP at six players.

the hp scaling wouldn't have removed the need for more people if they hadn't already done ilevel, good luck managing all the needs of any of the original delves with 6

ilevel on the other hand, i 9boxed tojil 2 days after the ilevel stat boosts were added(note that they added item level with no benefit then later amended it to include the massive skill).. did dakuwaqa a week after that, and muyingwa a week after

there's no pretending it didn't take the 'large' requirement out of the prior 'large coordinated group' requirement

hp scaling just took off the coordinated requirement too

All the +skill did was take away the requirement for BRD and COR swapping with GEO's doing Torpor. The only "difficulty" about delve was the massive amount of buffing needed to even hit those NM's (sound familiar). So by raising everyone's innate acc / attack you removed that need. Even still it was the HP scaling that caused groups to splinter into cliques that did stuff separately which caused the massive population die off. Some shells tried to hang on (I was in one) but with them being actively penalized for helping lessor members it was no longer worth the effort.

The ridiculous HP scaling is what causes everyone to pack as much into every slot as possible and cut out as many people as they can. MMO's and other social games need to be about inclusion, providing incentives to include people in groups, rather then penalizing people for doing this.

So yeah, there was no "pre-ilevel" delve (saveface mode on). It is just that the equipment didn't have the tag. Then came the stat vomit, which, maybe, wasn't planned by devs at first. I guess they found it easier to vomit stats on equipment instead of nerfing all the mobs, NMs, battle content that either came with release or ones they were already too far into finalizing.

that's not true either, there were 3 iterations of the gear

no item level
item level w/ minimal stat changes
item level w/ massive weapon skill

and delve existed during all of them

You have just said yourself that at first they stuck item level tags on SoA gears without any extra stats. Basically, the gears might as well had the item level tag from the very beginning. Can we stop looking at it too literally for a second please? They were technically "item level" gear without them saying it outright. We knew they would go with vertical gear progression. It wouldn't make any sense if they planned to stick to level 99 gear. They didn't change their mind so that they would stick item level on them later, it was their design plan to begin with.

Original Delve was some of the most fun I've ever had in the game tbh, I miss that.

It doesn't matter, when we used the term "pre-ilevel" delve, it means delve era without item level tags on weapons.

It doesn't matter how you look at it or define it, you can keep saying "there's no pre ilv delve" all day long but it doesn't change the fact that it's a term used by playerbase for a very long time.

No.

You were wrong, and that's ok. Trying to argue yourself right by changing definitions and then retconing the past just makes you look really bad.

Delve 1.0 was before item level / content level existed. The gear didn't have stat vommit and resembled level 99 gear but with higher then normal amounts of acc / atk. Later when SE created "content level tiers" they added the massive amounts of STR/DEX/AGI/VIT/MND/INT/CHR to everything, raised it's defense / HP and adding more Acc / Atk. Then they added +skill to weapons and removed the large acc / atk bonus's they had previously given them.

So you are saying they said they would go with vertical progression before release but changed their minds at the last moment to keep the new gear at level 99 power and then changed their minds again to bump them up a few months later. That doesn't sound right to me. Those gears were supposed to be item level gear all along. We aren't speaking of different gear. Delve came with that gear and we already had bayld gear too, right? You don't need to write "apple" on an apple to make people see it as an apple... I may not be good at analogy but hopefully I made my point. Anyway, /saveface mode off, you guys are no fun :(

Are you brain damaged?