Salvage Blues

The UltimatesForever has consistently been doing Salvage every Friday evening, with anywhere from 9 to 18 people. We've mostly been doing the Bhaflau Remnants, and have gotten a lot of the level 15 pieces that drop there, but we've only seen one piece for the Ares set (Enyo's Leggings). It dropped with less than a minute to go, and we had a few dead people who couldn't lot or pass, so it was lost when we were booted out of the Remnants. SquareEnix really has to change that aspect of the game - force the treasure to drop just before the alliance gets booted out, based on the lots/passes already done on the loot. No one in the shell has got more than 1 piece towards any of the final pieces, but two of the Usukane lotters have their level 15 body piece in addition to their level 15 hands, so they're "further" along. The body pieces are dropped from an NM Flan in Arrapago Remnants that we used Bhaflau Cards to spawn.

We seem to do a lot better with smaller groups of people, since we all get geared up pretty quickly, but other people seem to think we need to have a full alliance of 18 people to do better at getting gear drops. I feel like when we have more than 12 people we use up so much of our limited time trying to get everyone some of their gear and abilities unlocked that we don't have enough time to fight NMs that drop different gear pieces than the normal mobs do.

Back in May, before they added the starter chest in the June update, we had one run with no MNKs, and it was a dismal dismal failure. I think we killed one of the Bifrons, but had people die, reraise and die again before getting reraise up. With no magic to raise people, no way to do enough damage to any other mob, we had no choice but to give up. Adding the starter chest has made it so much easier to get started. We always get at least a weapon, subjob, and job abilities cell for the main PLD, and magic for the main WHM. Everything just those few things make it a breeze to start in on getting more cells for everyone.

We've gone after the Long Bowed Chariot, the megaboss of Bhaflau Remnants three times now (I missed the second one), and they haven't gone very well. Granted, this is supposed to be the toughest mob in all of Salvage. Albany keeps having us try different strategies and maybe we'll figure it out some day.

We organized our cell distribution so that we get the "main" person in each category get well-equipped before letting the bottom feeders get the leftover scraps. We all /random before the run, and from that have the main PLD, the main WHM, the main RDM, the main BLM, and the main melee.

I hate being the bottom lotter when we have a lot of people. There have been runs where I didn't get a weapon, a subjob, job abilities, magic or much armor until the last 10 minutes of the 100 minute run. Since I have no H2H skill and hit for 0 when I don't actually miss, there's no point being engaged with the mob, where I'm likely to get hit with an AOE and just waste MP that could be used to cure someone who's actually doing damage. Without magic, I can't help cure or flash. Without a subjob, I have no provoke. One run, I had job abilities unlocked, so I'd just run up, use Rampart for a bit of a boost for the main PLD, then run back out of AOE range. It seems so utterly pointless.

I'm getting a bit discouraged with Salvage, and often feel like I should withdraw from the group. I don't feel very useful, even when I win the lot for main tank. Other shells seem to favor MNK tanks, and don't bring along stinky PLDs. The cells I get as main tank could be going to a MNK, who would do more damage, and yes, maybe they'd take a bit more damage than a PLD, but most things in Salvage don't hit that hard, and if they get magic unlocked and sub Ninja, they don't take much damage at all. We'll see how things progress.