For anyone wondering this is what the new events look like

[Demon6324236]

UPDATE**

Phoenix apparently caught up to the other servers and now it's once an hour zerg fest 30 sec battle, with the opposite problem. Just can't win.

If thats the same junction I think it is, its looked like that most of the time I run through it, albeit with less people at some times, like yesterday morning there was only about 10 people, where as that shows about 25~30 or so.

[Nebo]

I dual box a lot of these reives (on THF no less) during off-peak times just for fun. It's really not that hard, you just need to play differently than we are used to.

PLD isn't required, but gearing defensively is. DT sets, Defense Food, Boost Vit, Bio, Pro V, Phalynx, Defender during Oh-sh*t etc, etc.

You want to low man? Then you need to cater to this situation and find what works. OMG I DIED ON DAY 1 THIS SUCKS!!! Is a pretty shitty attitude to tackling a new event....I mean, If I can supertank an entire reive worth of mobs and whack down at the nest/roots by myself, other DD's can certainly survive lowman. They just can't play like it's soloing in abyssea.

Edit: Also, for the problem of mass groups swarming to kill mobs, I recommend venturing out to other areas, there are countless more reives in zones people rarely go to.

Edit 2: Using AOE WS when you can hit lots of mobs will help if you can't seem to claim any. Standing in the centre root will also allow you to hit the other two on either side. (Just be prepared defensively)

[Luvbunny]

The problem is this, now that we kinda somewhat figure it out, I think, an alliance of 18 can roam the zone and pick clean those reives in 3-5 mnts max, even less than that. These has an hour respawn, so you can see the problem here, not to mention the lag gets really bad with 18 people, let alone some stragglers coming and join. Once you have a good alliance cleaning these, small party will have no chance since all of them are gone in a flash. I suppose if your idea of fun is whacking wasp nest and root over and over running around in corridors, then by all means lol. Even WoTG has a lot more variety of zones than this.... And ToAU has tons more variety on assaults. Let's not mention the 5 seconds timer, the 10 mnts cool down, the AOE knock back, the status ailments that hits you, the small battle areas, the fact that mages get pitiful reward, the big issue with hate!! So their idea of fostering skillful play is a roaming zerg with a paladin or two, the rest of us either heal or whack the roots or nest. Even in abyssea you have to do a little bit more than this...

[Babekeke]

The problem is this, now that we kinda somewhat figure it out, I think, an alliance of 18 can roam the zone and pick clean those reives in 3-5 mnts max, even less than that. These has an hour respawn, so you can see the problem here, not to mention the lag gets really bad with 18 people, let alone some stragglers coming and join. Once you have a good alliance cleaning these, small party will have no chance since all of them are gone in a flash. I suppose if your idea of fun is whacking wasp nest and root over and over running around in corridors, then by all means lol. Even WoTG has a lot more variety of zones than this.... And ToAU has tons more variety on assaults. Let's not mention the 5 seconds timer, the 10 mnts cool down, the AOE knock back, the status ailments that hits you, the small battle areas, the fact that mages get pitiful reward, the big issue with hate!! So their idea of fostering skillful play is a roaming zerg with a paladin or two, the rest of us either heal or whack the roots or nest. Even in abyssea you have to do a little bit more than this...

People killing the roots/nests in 3 mins will soon realise that their strategy is wrong. you will get more bayld by just sticking 1 person on each log and have the rest killing all the adds if you're in a full alliance.

[Jaall]

The problem is this, now that we kinda somewhat figure it out, I think, an alliance of 18 can roam the zone and pick clean those reives in 3-5 mnts max, even less than that. These has an hour respawn, so you can see the problem here, not to mention the lag gets really bad with 18 people, let alone some stragglers coming and join. Once you have a good alliance cleaning these, small party will have no chance since all of them are gone in a flash. I suppose if your idea of fun is whacking wasp nest and root over and over running around in corridors, then by all means lol. Even WoTG has a lot more variety of zones than this.... And ToAU has tons more variety on assaults. Let's not mention the 5 seconds timer, the 10 mnts cool down, the AOE knock back, the status ailments that hits you, the small battle areas, the fact that mages get pitiful reward, the big issue with hate!! So their idea of fostering skillful play is a roaming zerg with a paladin or two, the rest of us either heal or whack the roots or nest. Even in abyssea you have to do a little bit more than this...

Lol I love how every single one of your posts is pretty much exactly the same - 1 sentence of useful SoA hate, rest of your post about how all it is, is hitting roots... Yea we get it, you don't like hitting roots lol, and we get that you absolutely HATE the expansion. But not all of us hate that and actually most people enjoy it. Go have a look around Adoulin, there's a lot more to do and if you don't like Rieves, go do a scout mission or something. There's so much more to do but you're obviously so against it so there's no helping you. It's completely your own fault for buying it when it first came out though cause everyone knows expansions for FFXI are released "half-baked" especially when they clearly say there isn't gonna be a beta!

[Aldersyde]

People killing the roots/nests in 3 mins will soon realise that their strategy is wrong. you will get more bayld by just sticking 1 person on each log and have the rest killing all the adds if you're in a full alliance.

This is pretty much spot on. If you want to farm bayld, you need a tank, whm, brd (or just generic sleeper) and 3 dds (1 per log) to do rieves. If you're just curbstomping stuff in 3-5 mins, you're not getting as much bayld as you could be.

[Areayea]

waa waa waa... this game is too hard this game is too hard...

obviously not as hard as having to do promyvion-holla 5 times since you decided to risk it and go w/o 3 smns... not as hard as making sure you had a good stunner for diabolos... and heaven forbid you have to do airship fight 50 times before you finally succeed...

We are returning to that difficult style of thinking, and I love it, so all the haters on the new exp... the players that played the game pre abyssea then I feel bad for you, just try to remember why you started and continually played this very difficult time consuming game... as for all of you post-abyssea people YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, I understand that most people these days don't get time to study jobs/ect. since the new trend seems to be abyssea 30-99 (that used to take months and even years just to get 1-75), then worry about maybe gearing later if not you always got pearle azure and pink gear... wake up, the game has more job specific equipment that will make you decent enough so work on that first, then get an empy, then go do this "hard" stuff so it's not impossible, not to sound mean or anything (I am a bit tired... so I'll admit I am a little grouchy) but if you played this for expecting a slapped on final fantasy label without requiring good players... and the ability to do whatever you want... you picked the wrong game... lately it's been a lot easier than normal to do anythnig, now it's harder than prime to get that stuff done... and doing that stuff is awesome for making your storybook.

[Caketime]

Holy walls of text, Batman!

There's Pink and Perle geared people everywhere, I'm reminded of the power rangers. So far though, Reives seem like an idiot check. They're rather easy with a PLD tagging along, last night we had several of them holding mobs with a couple of BLU to AoE them down. Unfortunately there were too many people piled on the roots, so it ended after about 15 minutes, but it was still quite fun to swing my hammer and toss cures in a setting that's not Abyssea.

[Luvbunny]

People killing the roots/nests in 3 mins will soon realise that their strategy is wrong. you will get more bayld by just sticking 1 person on each log and have the rest killing all the adds if you're in a full alliance.

Yes I know this, I already post it before and did shout to tell people please dont kill the root too fast and put your weakest DD to hit it while the rest should kill the respawn mob over and over. I am not sure if the goal is to kill these in 3 mnts and move to the next one since you get far more bayld if you keep "farming" the normal mobs. Apparently a lot of people think you should kill these ASAP in zerg mode. SE should give us more detailed explanation on how this works. Otherwise it's roots zerg fest for more logs and crap craft stuffs all over again instead of Logwatch.

[Luvbunny]

Lol I love how every single one of your posts is pretty much exactly the same - 1 sentence of useful SoA hate, rest of your post about how all it is, is hitting roots... Yea we get it, you don't like hitting roots lol, and we get that you absolutely HATE the expansion. But not all of us hate that and actually most people enjoy it. Go have a look around Adoulin, there's a lot more to do and if you don't like Rieves, go do a scout mission or something. There's so much more to do but you're obviously so against it so there's no helping you. It's completely your own fault for buying it when it first came out though cause everyone knows expansions for FFXI are released "half-baked" especially when they clearly say there isn't gonna be a beta!

I actually tried very hard to like it, but there is very little to like. And unlike you, I am being honest albeit very critical on my view about this expansion. Because I know, and you all know, that SE can do better than this. Now please go back and hit the root again and again, certainly that foster a skillful game play. Or perhaps you want to do the "Stone..." mining quest? The one that is just atrociously broken? And yeah I am fully aware of the other non battle mission too. This whole expansion reeks of WoTG, which is forgivable the first time, BUT not the second time around when they have a good 6 years experience under their belts on what works and what does not since WoTG. People complaint that Abyssea is too easy blah blah blah - it was not easy when it was first introduced and level cap was 90. But the expansion has clear objectives and goal. The same goes for Voidwatch, in 2011 you need a good shell for this and a strategy to overcome it. At least those are a bit more well thought of (not the logs and RNG lol). Meeble is also quite well designed for low man group and require teamworks and communication.