Level 70 Limit break woes

[Varlan]

So I finally got a character to 50 and then I found out that every 5 levels we have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to move on in the game. Okay. I guess I can live with this, but these quests are serious pains in the butt. I survived them all, but now I'm at the fight with a guy named Maat and I can't get past it. It's getting to be extremely annoying. The last two times I never even got a hit on him. It's extremely frustrating, and it wouldn't even be that bad if we didn't have to go to some far away place to get a damn testimony (with a group no less) so we can fight him again. The event doesn't even take the old testimony out of your inventory which lead me to believe that I could simply fight him again.

There should be a certain level of tedium involved in a game, I'll admit that, but this is a whole new level of tedium. I'm not really sure what I hope to accomplish with this post, but I'm so damn frustrated I'm seriously considering giving the game up. I guess I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow, but right now I'm just not happy about this situation.

That fight is just cheap. I can't even take the hits because he's pounding on me for almost 120 points of damage per shot. Ugh. Too frustrated right now.

[FrankReynolds]

Go to www.ffxiclopedia.com and look up maat. People have posted a walk through for beating him on each job.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Build a better PDT set.

[Yukichibi]

The RDM genkai is well known to be the most difficult of all jobs of the game.
Go look on the wiki or on youtube, you ll find strategies and videos to help you.

[Dmer]

Sounds to me by your wording that you are trying to melee him as RDM. That's not gonna work. That fight is a magic based one. Make sure all your magic skills (except divine which is useless on a RDM) are maxed. Enter the fight at the start of darksday (this increases the accuracy of your Sleep spells). Use all your buffs and enfeebs (except DoTs). Alternate sleeping and nuking. Try to keep him silenced and paralyzed. Use Bind and Gravity and run away from him when sleep recasts are down.

RDM is one of the toughest Maat fights.

[Olor]

yeah, and if that doesn't work, level bst to 66 buy a decent jug, set it on him, stand back and win.

[Neisan_Quetz]

You could melee him on rdm and still kill him, it's just generally faster to CS Aero IV.

[Seriha]

As others have noted, RDM Maat is one of the harder incarnations. I've always felt just running in and CS nuking him a bit on the risky side, but some swear by it. The alternative to that is to sleep nuke, maintaining distance after each one to keep getting hit to a minimum. This also carries its own risks, like Sleep and Sleep II being resisted.

The melee side is definitely the hardest way at 70. There's not much in terms of PDT gear to choose from, RDMs evade like big red barns, and it doesn't help Maat's more like a 70 MNK and RDM rolled into one instead of just a RDM. Even going toe-to-toe, you may occasionally want to pause and sleep him to reapply buffs or halt his Chainspell. And no matter how good you think you're doing, he may just decide it's time to spam Asuran Fists and kill you.

Either way, your frustration isn't uncommon for a first-timer. Just keep at it, and if you have questions, ask.

[Feynman]

Maat is from a time when the level cap of the game was 75. The Maat fight was the last test of you ability to play your job. Most people die many times the first time they take on Maat, regardless of the job. I haven't fought Maat on RDM so no real advice.

I feel like the way the game has change doesn't give much chance to learn your job the way you used to so Maat has become even more difficult for new players I'd imagine. The only recommendation I'd have is what some more knowledgeable people have already pointed out. RDM's strength is in their enfeebles. Keep him slept and hit him hard with magic. Don't get discouraged; the Maat fight was designed to test you to your limits. Now the new limit breaks that come after Maat....those are just insulting. You essentially just buy your break using merits. I'd rather do something challenging.

[Olor]

Honestly from what I hear about rdm Maat it would probably be easier to just burn BST to 66, buy a couple panzergalahads a dawn mulsim or two (just in case), and win. I went 1/2 on BST Maat, lost at 61, but really was dumb and engaged and got hit by asuran fists. If you call bst, wait on timer, and set pet on Maat it is ridiculously easy. My pet didn't even get to 40%

[Hexacore]

If all you do in this game is level, then what else is there left to do? Without quests (which is what the periodic level cap challenges are) where is the substance to this game?

Now people are asking for a game where you don't even need to earn or learn your place in the world?

It's already bad enough that I can join a book burn, fall asleep, and wake up 11 levels higher without pushing a single button...but now, there are actually people on this forum advocating we remove the last few obstacles that require someone actually know how to play the game?(or want to)

When I first plotted my return to FFXI it was because I read an article in mid-2008 about the hardest boss fight of all time lasting over 18 hours and causing gamers to pass out from exhaustion. I wanted to play the game because it was hard.

I solo'd BST the entire way to 75 and would never think twice about the opportunity to do it again.

But, what is motivating people to join this game now? The cooperative element has all but dried up. The people that invite you to groups aren't potential friends or acquaintances, you are just the next piece of fresh meat for them to suck the life out of.

Most people pass these level caps the same way they acquire many of the hard to get atmas: sit around on the sideline and watch the real players do the work.

What is the point of even "playing" a game like this?

I can't speak to the OPs problems, but in the general sense, you lose Maat fights due to lack of preparation.

Although Red Mage is a difficult fight, you lose it for 3 main reasons:

1. Lack of skill-maxing...You need maxed Swords and maxed Elemental Magic at the least.

It takes about 4 - 7 days for a new player to reach level 70 in the current game...if you have friends or an alt to pass through the limit breaks for you, this can be done in half the time.

0 to over 300 swords could take the same amount of time under non-ideal conditions.

0 to 250+ elemental takes a literal 4 days of doing nothing but casting and resting with signet on. I don't mean 4 days either, I mean a literal 4x24 hour period of time.

2. Lack of gear preparation - this includes appropriate expendable items.

3. Lack of macro preparation.

These 3 are all the most basic steps necessary to being remotely viable at a job in this game.

Beating Maat fights are not all that hard. Beating them at 70 though...with the above 3 steps taken, I'm not sure how you lose.

Say whatever you want about the developers of this game, but I don't really think they made the things that matter most in this game that much easier.

What they did do is make getting EXP easier. In fact, they made getting EXP easy. Mindless, brainless, and operator-less (see afk comment above).

The hardest part of this game is finding a competent and reliable group of people you want to spend your time online with. If anything, recent changes have made doing so even more difficult.

Why people think sitting in a book burn fighting monsters 15 levels lower than them could or would prepare them for a fight designed for a player that actually invested time and energy into their character is beyond me.

At the point where you've leveled 70 times and can't defeat a fight that has been documented so many times over with strategies, videos, and more comments on the wiki talk section than any other page combined, you really need to draw one conclusion:

I'm not very good at this game, and I probably never will be. But if I hope at all to even have a chance, I'll need to accept that this is only the beginning of a VERY long road, not the end of one as the game's dialogue would suggest.

Or yeah, it took me 3 nights to burn PLD to 70 on my newb BLU and it's a guaranteed win for all but the truly worst players.

Good luck.

[svengalis]

If your fighting maat as rdm I'd suggest leveling another job one that's easy to win like nin or whm. I heard rdm maat has been nerfed since I last fought him in 03/04 but yeah I almost gave up and quit to because I couldn't beat him on rdm either. But that was back when it took more then a few days to reach cap. It took me 1 year to get my first 75. Luckily I found a Japanese rdm that beat maat for me :).

[svengalis]

I got to go watch YouTube and see if I can find a melee rdm maat win. I would love to see that. I don't know how you do it with the way he spams asuran fists sometimes. There was one time I came close to beating maat but after 20+ times you loose all hope. It wasn't the maat fight that discouraged me it was the solo farming of a testimony from a NM where the testimony wasn't 100 percent drop.

[svengalis]

Honestly from what I hear about rdm Maat it would probably be easier to just burn BST to 66, buy a couple panzergalahads a dawn mulsim or two (just in case), and win. I went 1/2 on BST Maat, lost at 61, but really was dumb and engaged and got hit by asuran fists. If you call bst, wait on timer, and set pet on Maat it is ridiculously easy. My pet didn't even get to 40%

I second this. Maat rdm fight comes down to luck. You just hope that sleep lands.

[Eurell]

I've heard of people going in at 69. Fighting till they almost die, using an EXP scroll and having all HP/MP restored from getting lvl 70. Could always try that, just make sure you are close to lvl 70 when you go in.

[Ophannus]

Should be easy. Just load up your inventory with Hi-Elixers and Sleep>Nuke him to death. Elixers are like 5k now and restore 75% of your HP/MP.

[Mirage]

75%? I thought they were just like 25%. That still helps a bit though. I guess as long as you have MP, you probably won't die as long as you play your cards right.

[Olor]

Here is a rdm maat win: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFPD1Dojwi0&feature=related

[Varlan]

Thanks for some of the replies. I am trying it on RDM. It's the only class I have at the cap and I never really played anything else except to build up a sub job. I didn't know the game was going to roadblock me like this. Don't get me wrong, I heard about this Maat fight from people in the game, but nothing can really prepare you for it. I did not melee Maat. I followed some of the instructions on how to beat him, but most of the time my sleep lands only to wear off in two or three seconds.

I'm not against fights like this, but having to go far out of the way to get a testimony every time you lose is ridiculous. If the goal is to prove that you can get a testimony, then that should be done with only one. After that, a player should be able to fight him as much as they want. Or maybe just a limit of once per game day or something. Having to travel all the way to the jungle and fight through that maze of a zone and then go through the Temple of Ugh to maybe find a pot so that maybe it'll drop a testimony is a sign that the devs really hate the players. There is no challenge to this. It's just tedium and tedium for no reason.

There's just a whole lot of luck involved and the pace of the fight is so much faster than anything else you run up against in the game. It's a cheap fight, but I can handle cheap as long as we get a reasonable chance to try again if we lose. My wife is already telling me that she's going to stop playing the game at 70 because she doesn't want to fight Maat because she doesn't believe she can win. Considering she's not really a gamer like I am, I can already see the frustration.

Don't even get me started on skill building....

[Neisan_Quetz]

you can farm testimonies Qulun Dome as well.

Skilling up is less painful since they upped the rate per skillup, it used to be like 0.1-0.3 max for enhancing skill... now I rarely see .1 skillups anymore and see more .2-.5.

[Olor]

I really feel for you bro. Fights are unbalanced. Is your wife a rdm too?

Here is a video of BST Maat fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIPfFkLotz0

frigging easy sauce.

[cidbahamut]

RDM Maat is not the boogieman people make him out to be.

Cap your skills.
Gear yourself intelligently.
Eat Creampuffs.
???
Profit.