Retalliation for Skillups / Latent Breaking Madness

[Mojo]

Counterstance is only useful for other jobs that don't have retaliation. You're actually hurting yourself quite a bit by using it on WAR (for skilling up purposes, that is to say.) If you have a healer that allows you to go WAR/MNK, 50% Retaliation + 10% Counter rate => 55% chance of striking back at the mob. If you activate Counterstance, your Counter rate goes up to 50% which will produce an overall 75% chance of striking back. However, flooring your defense means you can only pull about half or less of the mobs that you were before. So while your chance of striking back may have risen by a marginal 35%~, the occurrences for this to occur has dropped by at least a factor of 2. It's not worth it. You can literally fight every single Fear Dearg in the zone with Phalanx + PDT, so if you have a healer to assist you then you should be doing that.

Also, for those who might have trouble recasting Phalanx if you're WAR/RDM. There is a trick to it. You need to get yourself up against a wall and then move back a little bit (hugging the wall.) This will actually cause all of the mandies to gather at almost the exact same spot right in front of you (which is good for Retaliation anyways.) Then, when you need to recast, run backwards a bunch and begin casting. Their pathfinding gets really jacked up and it takes them about 10 seconds to start hitting you again.

[Greever]

Counterstance is only useful for other jobs that don't have retaliation. You're actually hurting yourself quite a bit by using it on WAR (for skilling up purposes, that is to say.) If you have a healer that allows you to go WAR/MNK, 50% Retaliation + 10% Counter rate => 55% chance of striking back at the mob. If you activate Counterstance, your Counter rate goes up to 50% which will produce an overall 75% chance of striking back. However, flooring your defense means you can only pull about half or less of the mobs that you were before. So while your chance of striking back may have risen by a marginal 35%~, the occurrences for this to occur has dropped by at least a factor of 2. It's not worth it. You can literally fight every single Fear Dearg in the zone with Phalanx + PDT, so if you have a healer to assist you then you should be doing that.

Also, for those who might have trouble recasting Phalanx if you're WAR/RDM. There is a trick to it. You need to get yourself up against a wall and then move back a little bit (hugging the wall.) This will actually cause all of the mandies to gather at almost the exact same spot right in front of you (which is good for Retaliation anyways.) Then, when you need to recast, run backwards a bunch and begin casting. Their pathfinding gets really jacked up and it takes them about 10 seconds to start hitting you again.

Oh i wasent saying go war/mnk for both ja's lol. was just stating that counterstance is also another really easy JA to gain skill ups from >.>.

[Babekeke]

Going for Maat's Cap and I levelled war first of the remaining 11 jobs I needed to get to 66+ purely for the fact of retalliation. Other notes on skilling up, I took many of my gimp weapons to 175+ from 93 (was the lowest) in The Tree using the lower tier mandies. I use /DNC for acc steps and cures, along with a xbow and bloody bolts. My Marksmanship is ~270 now so I can afford to use tacos for the mandies and pull 7-10 at a time for insanely fast skillups. Just remember to keep swapping your target mob to keep your max amount of mobs targeting you for retalliation.

[Yandaime]

This thread is actually what gave me a "Smack My Head" moment lol because it was so obvious. But yea, I used this strategy to cap all of my weapons and get every WS quest done within a week I did something slightly different that I think is more effective or is at least very damn effective lol, Ill explain. And yes, I have a pocket RDM, having Phalanx 2 is just so nice for this lol.

Instead of full Regen Atmas, I use 1 Regen and 2 -PDT Atmas: Mounted Champion, Lion, Earth Wyrm
Just need any combination of -20% Damage and some Regen and your all set honestly.
Use full -PDT Gear and Accuracy where you cant fit any -PDT (because Retalliation is Acc based)
Eat a Sushi if your Accuracy/Skill is really low, its not vital but it helps a great deal
And I highly recommend bringing the weakest possible weapon if you can just to make sure you are sitting on the mobs for a long time

All that said, I HIGHLY recommend Attowah Chasm for skillups. Why? Korrigans! The Korrigan mobs are all MNK types so they hit very weak and always twice and they aggro and Link making it super easy to gather them. And with all the defensive measures, these things will hit for 0 every time and will only occasionally Critical Hit you for 8-12 Damage tops which will be easily Regen'd with Mounted Champ. What I do is have the Pocket RDM sit off to the side and cast Phalanx on me, I run around and Aggro EVERY SINGLE KORRIGAN I CAN FIND (Dont get trapped by the Miasma, Caution) and pull them over to the RDM just outside of AoE Sleep Range and get to work I Like Attowah because the little Cracks in the floor cause the Korrigans to all line up single file for some weird reason which makes it beautiful for Retalliation, but you can do Altep as well just wont be as easy to group the mandies. When the Miasma is down, you can grab anywhere from 20-I think 30 Korrigans for skillups and when its up, 10-15 or more, never really counted lol.

The only thing Ill say is DO NOT AoE WS ever because Retalliation does damage but has 0 Emnity so if you do something to actually aggro the Mandies, your RDM will get owned when its time to recast Phalanx II. And WAR/RDM does work but omg its a severe uphill fight trying to recast Phalanx... Maybe with 3-5 mobs but after doing this with 20something mobs? Im never going back lol

[Arcon]

I Like Attowah because the little Cracks in the floor cause the Korrigans to all line up single file for some weird reason which makes it beautiful for Retalliation, but you can do Altep as well just wont be as easy to group the mandies.

Actually, the cracks aren't what causes them to line up, it's the walls. If you run to a wall, and move alongside it to the ride, the mandies will all line up (works with any other mob and any other wall as well). So you can do this in Altepa too. Altepa and Attohwa are nice, because the mandies aggro and are a lot easier to pull than, say, Misareaux or Tahrongi (not to mention people abuse Tahrongi mandies for Chloris 24/7).

The only thing Ill say is DO NOT AoE WS ever because Retalliation does damage but has 0 Emnity so if you do something to actually aggro the Mandies, your RDM will get owned when its time to recast Phalanx II. And WAR/RDM does work but omg its a severe uphill fight trying to recast Phalanx... Maybe with 3-5 mobs but after doing this with 20something mobs? Im never going back lol

There's actually some gear to make it more powerful, but I agree, it's not as good as people make it out to be. Anyway, you shouldn't WS regardless, since it will only kill your mobs faster, unless, of course, you need WS points. Apart from that though, just wait till you melee them all down, which will take ages. You can cap a weapon from 0 in about two hours, not exaggerating. If you're after WS points, try picking WS that will do chains, possibly even multistep ones, if available. You'll be able to spam WS back to back, and self-SC constantly, you'll be finished with WS points in half an hour, if even that.

[Yandaime]

Oh, no Walls do indeed help but Im not joking, its something about the cracks in the floor that make the Korrigans line up single file and even all of them standing inside eachother. You can use the walls, just like you said, to help line them up, but with larger enemy groups, I always tend to get a few stragglers that keep going behind me but it'll pretty much take alot of tweeking and back stepping to get them into a nice fan-shape. But those cracks? they just do it automatically lol