Petrifying Pair

I've reached level 30 on my RDM in Final Fantasy XI which means I can now fill an important role in some of the level 30 restricted boss fights. The ones that drop an item worth a million gil. Big bucks! There's one in particular that seems particularly well suited to the small group we have now: Petrifying Pair.

The basic idea behind the fight is there are 2 lizards in the middle of the arena. They attack faster than a lizard normally would but are otherwise pretty much just 2 highish level lizards. They're immune to sleep but can otherwise be hit with crowd control effects. Lizards in general are weak to wind and ice and it just so happens that gravity is a wind spell and bind is an ice spell. This means you have a pretty decent chance of landing these debuffs on the lizards despite them being high level. Gravity is a movement speed reducer and bind is a complete root so it's pretty reasonable for someone capable of casting both of those spells to take one of the two lizards completely out of the equation. Then you just need the other two people to be able to kill the other lizard with only a little outside help.

Gravity is a level 21 RDM spell so the only people who can cast it are red mages or anyone who is level 42 with a RDM sub job. This fight is capped at level 30, so the only people who can do it at all are red mages. Hence, having leveled RDM I can now fill this role. But what about the other two people?

Well, in order to kill the lizard those two people either need to avoid all the hits, or be able to heal through them, or do such outrageous damage that they can burn the lizard out first. Ninjas or beastmasters are needed for the first option. Dancers, paladins, and blue mages are good for the second. Monks are needed for the third (and even then they can only do it once every 2 hours). The other two people I know who are leveled up to 30? Tmiv who has a bunch of jobs but particularly a dancer and Aidan who is a monk. So we'd have a great shot at winning at least once and probably can win with a little practice over and over. The one trick? The lizards have an AE petrify that hits anyone looking at them so you need to be quick about turning around when they start to cast it in order to avoid the spell entirely. (Unlock your camera and then just hit the back button supposedly works.)

The remaining question, assuming we can actually win, is what to do with the drops? The two methods people typically use to split drops from BCNMs are "your orb, your loot" which means whoever spent the 30 beastman seals for the run gets all the treasure and "pool it all, sell it, and split the loot" which works a lot better should you not win every time but has the added hassle of having to track who was in the group to split the proceeds with and also prevents anyone from actually getting stuff they want. On the other hand "your orb, your loot" means people with tons of seals can run the event more often and get more stuff as a result.

I like the idea of selling what drops and splitting the cash, possibly with some sort of rider about letting someone pay something like 20-30% of market value to the other two people to use the drop themselves. But then, I have enough money to buy what I might want from the drops and like the idea of a 333k windfall from selling Utsusemi:Ni. If I actually wanted that spell maybe I'd prefer another method though. (Though with this way you'd be certain to get the third one as long as you saved the 66% profit from selling the first 2, so it would work out in the long run assuming we did the fight over and over and over again.) Your orb, your loot is certainly the simplest but it sucks to have your run be the one that fails (or even to have your run be the one that drops the Absorb:Agi spell which is worth .1% of the Utsusemi:Ni scroll.

Why not run need before greed like in WoW? Well, the scarcity of beastman seals coupled with the fact the items aren't BoP. In WoW if we don't roll need before greed on the great gear that drops we simply can't have it. You can't get Nef loot any way other than by killing Nef and you can always kill Nef once a week. Here you can get a pair of Leaping Boots simply by building up enough cash to buy them from someone else, and you may not have a source of beastman seals to run all the bosses you need loot for. By always liquidating the drops you let people use their seals in the most economical fashion for them and everyone can always build up for the drops they do want by accumulating cash.