Tuesday, January 6, 2009

La Vaule soloing + usual stuff

I was bored recently, so I decided to try and solo most of the La Vaule NMs to complete my set. Really want the hat for town gear/blu big 3 setup too!

A lot of them were actually kind of boring. Run around the river>dot>run>dot. Some took forever also, like over 1hour of just running back and forth. Anyway, here they are:

Agrios

This one was a little interesting. I tried kiting it, but it didn't seem like I was getting ahead of it, even with W legs. I think it has some kind of increased movement speed, it also doesn't spam any kind of TP moves/spells that would pause it to allow you get some space between it. So I ended up straight tanking it.

It's easy enough to slow. I only had 1 resist the entire fight. Paralyze doesn't work, so that's kind of lame, but it isn't really needed. It DOES have double attack, but it didn't go off that much. With slow and some haste gear you should really have no problem tanking it. It also doesn't really hit too hard; without any food or damage- gear of any kind of, it took 2-3hits to break SS.

(I thought this pic was kind of cool)

It only has 2 TP moves: Grand Slam and Power Attack. It seems that once it gets 100TP, or whenever it decides to WS, it would spam both moves like 4 times in a row. Grand Slam takes 2-3 shadows, but only does about 200 damage if you don't have shadows up. Power Attack takes 1 shadow, and does about 500damage if you don't have any up. Basically what I did was as soon as it did 1 TP move, I ran from it, and this locked it up, while I got "No target in range" message. It only did these TP moves like 3-4 times the entire fight.


All-Seeing Onyx Eye


This one was one of longer ones. You don't need to sac it anywhere since it's already in the river, which is nice. It's a SCH NM that likes to spam Cure IV on itself when it's below 33%. It doesn't have a lot of HP, but since it's an eye, has strong magic defense bonus /resistant to nukes. My blizzard 3 only did 295~. Starts off without any kind of fast cast, but the % of it's hp is how fast it casts. So at 100% it's nukes will cast at normal speed, at 50% it's nukes will go off twice as fast, and once you get to like 20-30% it's pretty much instant cast, and impossible to out run them. It doesn't naturally have any -ga spells, but it can Manifestation any nuke, which will make it a -ga spell and wipe shadows. It didn't do this very often, maybe like twice the entire fight. It also constantly spams charm, but you can avoid it by having your back turned. In the event you do get charmed, it wears off within 15seconds.

Fight got pretty tough once it was below 33%. Near instant cast spells+ cure 4 spam made it challenging to keep a balance of nuking it to make sure you're actually dealing damage to overcome the cure spam, while keeping MP to yourself alive.
Cogtooth Skagnogg



This one actually really sucks. Unlike the other solos here, you will be RDM/WHM instead of /NIN. You should also bring a stack (or 2) of echo drops. You have to drag it to the river, but it's definately the simplest pull in the entire zone. Just cast on it, then run off the nearby bridge. You will lose all aggro except for Cogtooth as soon as you hit the water. There's 2 BLM orcs that will link that will try and get a spell off, but at worst it was Poisonga 2, any deadly ga3 you wil be able to outrun with ease.

It doesn't physically melee you at all, but instead spams TP moves:

Scattershot: fancy name for 1000 needles. Acts the same way, shell and magic defense bonus reduce damage. Range for it is about 17'
Tear Grenade: Blind and silence. This is why you needed the echos. Range is about 17'.
Sticky Grenade: Gravity. Range is about 17'. If you're hit with this, erase as fast as possible.
Blastbomb: Just like the blu spell, bind+ small damage. Range is about 17'.
Fountain: Deals about 50-200~ damage. Range is about 20'.
Firebomb: Deals fire(I think...) damage. Does about 50-200. Huge range, about 30'.
Burst: Deals 100-250damage. Range is about 25'. Can be blinked.

Out of all it's moves, the obvious worst one is Scattershot. With shell4, and 0 magic defense bonus gear, it did about 781 damage. With capped stoneskin on, you could get it down to 400ish. If you have a a magic defense bonus set it would be really helpful for this, but since I have crazy inventory problems, I don't.

Tear grenade should be countered quickly with echos. The biggest problem I'd have with it is when it would do sticky or blastbomb (grav or bind), and then silence me while I was casting erase. All of it's straight damage moves aren't too bad with phalanx+ stoneskin on.

Here's some pics showing the crazy range on firebomb compared to the others:



Fountain/Burst damage:


Scattershot damage:



Basic strat is to obviously run back and forth while keeping poison/bio on and outrunning it's TP moves. When you reach the end of the river, and need to turn around is the hard part, since you can get hit it with Scattershot. I'd try and double back a little before I was at the end of the river usually. Like I'd stop, run towards it, if it did a good TP move I'd keep running, and if it did a bad one (sticky/blastbomb/scattershot), I'd run the other way to run out of range. Like this kind of:

I did end up getting hit with grav in this one, but managed to get out before it hit me with another scattershot. I waited till I got it to do tear grenade(silence) before I doubled back.

Occasionally it will deaggro. I used that time to rebuff myself if necessary, and get in a free nuke. It also has some delay in which after you claim it from a deaggro, it won't do anything for about 20seconds.

Try and refresh your stoneskin even before it wears off after you've taken a couple firebombs/burst/fountains. So in case you get hit with scattershot, you have a nice fresh stoneskin to soak up the damage.

It's really not that bad as long as you play safe, just very, very annoying. Definately the hardest solo in La Vaule though.

Coinbiter Cjaknokk



Wasn't too bad. A bit of a pain to get to the river. What I ended up doing was claiming then running south to the river to lose all the adds, then back towards the NM, which would've lost aggro further from it's original spawn. Pull it again, and it'd be at the river.

The fight itself isn't too bad. It's a DRK mob that casts Absorb-TP and Dread Spikes occasionally, so it's easy to gain distance on it. It has auto-regain and will spam Shoulder Charge if you're close it. It can be absorbed by 2-4 shadows though, and you can run out of range from it too.

When it does hit, and if you lack shadows, it can do a decent amount of damage though:

It'll deaggro here and there so you can get a free nuke off it too. Probably one of the easier fights.

Draketrader Zlodgodd

Apparently I didn't take any pics of this at all or something, but it's a really easy fight. Once again, pull it to the nearby river. You shouldn't have any problems losing aggro on the NM, though sometimes the tigers won't be so easy to lose aggro on.

It pretty much only spams Jump, and does a quick melee attack between Jumps. Jump does 400-1000 damage, but can be absorbed by 1 shadow. However, it's really easy to avoid it by just letting it get close to you, then immediately running away. You'll get the "XYZ is out of range", and it'll lock up for about 5 seconds, making it easy to kite even without w legs. You can play this really safe and just dot kite. Takes aboue 50mins with just dot.

Falsespinner Bhudbrodd



The pull is definately harder than the actual fight for this one. It doesn't pop extremely close to a river, and loses aggro very easily since it'll spam dances/counterstance on itself, allowing you to run very far ahead of it.

I ended up just chainspell sleep IIing the mobs around it, then claiming it while allowing it to stay fairly close to me, and stopping when it did the dances so that I didn't run too far ahead.

Once you get it to the river, it's probably the easiest NM in the zone. It'll do Berserker Dance/counterstance on itself, which stops it in its place, allowing you to get a nuke off, or run ahead and buff yourself.


It also takes bonus damage to nukes while under counterstance or something. I got some nice thunder3s on it:

The only damaging TP move it did was Battle Dance, which can be absorbed by 3 shadows. And even if you have less shadows, it doesn't do too much damage.

Rugaroo

This one felt like it took forever for some reason. It seemed to have much higher HP than the other NMs in the zone. Took like 90minutes almost, and unlike the eye, it doesn't heal itself.

Anyway, like the last couple, the pull is probably harder than the fight itself. Similar to Coinbiter, I basically claimed it, then ran and fell down the bridge, while racing back to its spawn. After every pull/deaggro attempt, it would wind up closer and closer to the bridge.

It doesn't really do anything too dangerous. It'll decide to spam Call of the Moon randomly, which basically stops it in its place for like 20seconds, giving you time to rebuff and stuff. Call of the Moon basically is there to intimidate you. It also seems to give it 100TP to use Asuran Claws on you. You can usually out run Asuran Claws though.

The intimidation is really annoying. Something to really be careful for is it will deaggro after doing Call of the Moon occasionally. When it does that, if you try to reclaim it, you might get intimidated and be unable to reclaim it. If you get super unlucky and have it deaggro under the bridge, it'll fly up there and run back to it's spawn. So pretty much if it does Call of the Moon> deaggro, instead of claiming it with a spell, run up to it and aggro it normally.

I got lazy near the end and Asuran Claws hit me, it does hurt quite a bit:


So that's how you can solo 7/8 NMs you need! The last NM, the BLM orc is really tough solo, if not impossible. It summons stupid vial things that will poison/bound/silence/para you constantly. It might be soloable, but it'd be really tough/annoying. I'd just get a melee friend/dnc to kill the vials, and maybe another mage to help speed up the kill.

In other non-La Vaule news, Alttab did valkrum today, and it went really well. We entered at 8:40, far better than our normal cop 9:30 times. Run started out run off when we were clearing flies for our SJ:


Arc somehow managed to die twice doing this, despite never actually engaging anything.

The boss also went really well, compared to Apocalyptic Beast in bubu. I don't think anybody died.

So weird that Alttab has success in the harder zone (valkrum) than the much easier bubu.

We had to clear a couple of normal mobs to get to the NMs too. Nobody listened to me last week when I said how awesome the drop rates on normal AF is.

We actually went and had a 6th mob straight drop AF, though I can't remember what it was at all.

Some people even ended up "accidently" aggroing normal monsters for us to kill.

I lost lot on SCH, and someone actually main lotted PUP so I couldn't get that.

I was really hoping for some RDM hat-1 to drop, but it sadly didn't. Alttab doesn't allow anyone to main lot AF-1 either, so pretty much everyone with rdm af2 hat( which is A LOT of people) can lot. I don't really understand the purpose of this rule, but whatever.

I won the COR-1 originally, but decided to pass since it dropped very early in the run(and another Alttab rule!: 1 af-1 per run!), and even with the HQ, it's still a Phantom Roll macro piece only.

Clown continued to hax and got the belt too:

That was the only accessory that dropped in the run. He also got the only accessory that dropped last week, the RNG belt. At least it's just 1 more COR in my way till I get mine!

Nyzul has continued to be lame. Askar bodies and Goliard hats. Needs to be reversed :(

I was shouting and ended up getting a tell from this Abra person. His name sounded really familiar but I couldn't quite remember from where. It wasn't until 30seconds after I told him yes that I remember Arc had told me he did LAC with him recently, and Abra cfh'd on it. He also didn't seem to understand that RDM could heal better than BLU, and said that if he came RDM that I would have to go SAM(? I don't even have SAM..). Ended up telling him no 30seconds after I said yes to him, but that was apparently enough time for his limbus group to head to Apollyon and enter or something.

Anyway, enemy #1 made:


I have no idea what LS he's in, or how he's going to burn me with everyone on levi, but could be fun I guess?

Thano decided to bring FT to the internet and made us a site/forums. In the 3 days it's been up, it's died like.. twice, been deleted, revived, died, and revived again. It's nice that we can communicate slightly easier though so hopefully everyone in LS uses it!

Link to FT site


She also made a funny banner for us at the top!

Super long post, but can't sleep+ bored!

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