It was pretty quiet when I logged on, so I was bored enough to go and attempt to solo something. ZNMs are great for this, since you don't need to stand around waiting for a pop/claim. There's several 'paths' of ZNMs that ultimately let you fight different higher-tier mobs as you advance (look it up yourself if you want a better explanation) - and the muse tariqah I'm after is on the third path, meaning I had a choice of three monsters to fight - Chigre (a Chigoe which has a variety of unpleasant additional effects on its attacks), Lil' Apkallu (an Apkallu that does alot of running around and TP-move spam) and Velionis (a BLM/RDM Skeleton that has an incredibly powerful damage spikes effect, and can use Chainspell). My main objective was to just kill one in order to get the key item to pop the Tier II monster, Verdelet, that drops the shield. I picked Chigre because it seemed easier than the others - Velionis seemed like he could be dangerous, and Lil' Apkallu was reported to have more HP and resisted Poison alot, so would make for a much slower fight.
The ??? to pop him is located at the red dot in (E-8), the red path was the way he was pulled to the green kiting area at (E/F-7) the only thing that could go wrong during the pull is if you aggro one of the Malboro mobs that are in the large room, but one was right next to the cave exit and I managed to just get past hugging the wall. Chigre does move pretty fast (it seemed quicker than normal running speed) but it was possible to gain ground on him (albeit slowly) while kiting, so I'd say he might be around +10% movement speed, I doubt it's possible to solo for a rdm without Crimson Cuisses. I was only hit by him a couple of times: once during the pull (and got hit by poison, which is very stong, it's a good thing I had antidotes on me) and once again later on when I tried to nuke. A refresh piece may come in handy, as there isn't always enough distance to keep refresh up but I was hardly hurting for MP the whole fight, so it's far from necessary.
However, a few laps of the square and you should have got enough distance on him to cast refresh or even stoneskin before he can catch up. The Qiqirn in the area don't aggro but don't think that makes them your friends - they get in the way alot, so be ready to change course slightly to run around them, or swap equipment and 'blink' past them, as running into them at a bad time is enough to let the flea catch you.
The fight took just about an hour in total, with my only damage being from Bio II, Poison II and a single Blizzard I (any higher tier nukes would take too long to cast; he'd have time to catch up, strip shadows and interrupt you before the spell went off). I never tried Bind or Gravity, I'd read that it was highly resistant/immune so I didn't bother (I should have tried in hindsight, I did have some opportunity). Bio III would certainly speed this fight up, I was nuking with Bio towards the end just for the initial damage (~68, but Bio III is alot higher from what I've heard) as it was faster than elemental nukes. My dark magic gear is pretty lacking as it is, so I encountered a fair few resists on the damage, but only one full resist on poison for the entire duration of the fight.
I don't think /nin is definately needed for this fight, as long as you can stay ahead. The pull might be a challenge, but during kiting, it only hit me once and that was after utsusemi wore before I got chance to recast it. Perhaps if a duo, a second RDM/BLM or BLM for elemental DOT spells would be handy, although they would also need movement speed+ gear in case it came after them (apparantly hate decays fast, but I think it could be down to tanks being hit frequently).
No comments:
Post a Comment