Neo Dynamis - Beaucedine

[Yinnyth]

Let me start off by saying that I would be lying if I said there is nothing about the Dynamis changes that I like. However, the things I dislike about the changes far outweigh the things that I do like. Beaucedine is by far the epitome of everything I hate about neo Dynamis. Keep in mind that many of the things I am about to list actually apply to all of the neo zones, but in general this post is regarding Beaucedine specifically.

Let's see, where to start... ah yes, let's start with the reason people do events in the first place:

Rewards:
For the most part, Dynamis rewards suck. Sell price on the NPC-able stuff was nerfed by 90%. Currency drop rates were nerfed. AF2 drop rates seem higher than ever, but we were maxed out on that stuff a year before these changes even happened. The vast majority of the new equipment sucks, and the stuff that doesn't suck is ridiculously hard to obtain. The exp was a nice touch, but the amount earned is laughable (which I suppose is fitting seeing how bad the exp papers from Dynamis have always been). My LS members sometimes ask me "Why are we still doing this?" and I honestly don't have a very good answer. It's a crapton of work for very little reward.

Zone enormity:
This is one of the biggest "wtf" things in Beauc. It's a sprawling zone and it takes over 10 minutes to run from the rearguard eye to the orc timestone. After that pleasant run, you get to run all the way back up to farm hydra corps for pop items. After you get the pop items and kill the 4 neo NMs, you get to run ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN to pop Arch Angra Mainyu. In the original Beauc, I could at least plot efficient courses where we wouldn't spend longer than 3 minutes without fighting something. Now we wind up spending almost half of the 2 hours permitted in the zone running around with sneak and invis on.

Pop items:
I'm grateful for all the extra pack space we've gotten recently, but holding pop items for Dynamis is not really what I was thinking I'd be using it for. Aside from being completely contrary to what Dynamis has been before the update, it takes up space and adds a new level of frustration to dynamis. My LS has spent the last 2 runs farming the higher level Hydra Corps and we have yet to get a single Odious Mirror pop item. We've killed the other 3 neo NMs, but we just can't get the freaking mirror to drop. Everyone in the LS has tossed an Odious Talisman at least twice now, but we have gotten ZERO mirrors. That is infuriating.

Enemy difficulty:
Hydra corps are harder than any other dynamis mob. They're sight/sound aggro/link mobs who don't sleep and hit harder than the kindreds in Xarc. Hitaume (the neo RNG NM) one-shot our mnk/nin with EES. That might seem normal until you consider that this mnk/nin had scherzo from a bard that had +4 to scherzo and 386 singing, 375 wind skill. Also didn't have counterstance on. Also had a fresh cure V with afflatus solace on. Also had protectra V with 4 merits into it. In general the hydra corps hit harder and take a beating much better than any other family of mobs in dynamis, plus they can't be pulled en masse because they can't be slept.

!! Yinnyth's attack staggers the fiend!
Really? Proccing in Dynamis? Because holding the enemy and spamming weak stuff until you see "!!" when you could have had them dead an hour ago was just so much fun in Abyssea that you had to move it to Dynamis? Granted, it helps to balance out the fact that Dynamis mobs are harder than they used to be, and I'm glad it doesn't require you to proc while the enemy isn't casting, WSing, or stunned, but this was a bad idea in general. Worse still was linking the procs to the timestones, especially for Beauc. If we want to farm pop items, we're going to need to be able to proc. In order to proc, we need timestones. Timestones and the stuff we need to farm are on opposite ends of the zone, so at least 1 person gets to run down to all the timestones, and all the way back up. Fun stuff.

Timestone glitch:
The gobbie timestone sometimes spawns down near the yagudo timestone. Why?


TL;DR:
Neo Dynamis sucks, Neo Beaucedine ssssuuuuuUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSS!
(it sucks)

Edit: I don't really think this came across very well the first time I wrote this, so I'd like to give a better summary of what I'm trying to say. My dislike of the dynamis changes aside, it is my opinion that Beaucedine is particularly harder in nearly every way than any other area of the neo-dynamis. As such, I would like to see Beaucedine rebalanced to make it faster for groups to hit the timestones, and hydra corps scaled down in difficulty in one or many ways (make them sleepable, for example). Taking both of those steps would go a long way in addressing the majority of my complaints about the zone.