MithraPride

How do you use food in parties? Do you carry many food items? Do you stick to one or two different kinds?

Here's what I do: I carry 1-2 each of Brain Stew, Mushroom Stew, and/or Mushroom Soup along with a stack of Witch Kabobs and Cookies and Pineapples and Water Crystals in case I don't have a Refresher or a competent COR. No offense, Sugami but there are some godawful COR's out there and when I party with them I am lucky if I get Healer's OR Evoker's Roll. What's really bad is when I get one of those Rolls then have it overwritten because the f***ing COR doesn't understand Roll Range even though they are near the halfway point XP-wise.

So yeah, until I know how the party is going I stick with cheap food. Like tonight, I had a party in Wajoam Woods (Sp?) and the leader is someone I know well. He was a WAR in Keavy's first party and he used a Polearm because he wanted to be a DRG. Well, now he is a DRG and he was leader so not knowing how or if he has matured I decided to not use my expensive food. I stuck with Juice and Cookies and yeah, the party wasn't that great. COR is one of the above mentioned. She was subbing WHM, couldn't keep Healer's OR Evoker's on me, didn't use any Ranged Attacks between rolls, healed over my Regen's, and healed the DRG/WHM thus killing my only reliable backup healer. The party itself was Me(WHM/BLM) COR/WHM, DRG/WHM, 3xMonk/WAR all from level 56-60.

So yeah, the COR was replaced with a RDM/WHM and the Galka Monk who was tanking (And sucking massive amounts of MP from me, the COR or RDM, and DRG/WHM) was replaced with a WAR/NIN. Thanks to the new mobs eating shadows like crazy WAR/NIN died twice before he and the RDM walked out along with a Monk.

So yeah, while we did get OK experience (About 3K an hour) I am happy that I did not waste good food on this party. So what about you? Do you carry different kinds of food just in case you get a sucky party? Because I know for me, no matter how financially well-off I am I still get pissed if I use expensive food in a bad party so I would rather use cheap food that I can get from an NPC shop.

Tell your DRG "friend" to use a DD sub (preferable /WAR), what a gimpy COR he might aswell play BRD.
Dunno how a MNK managed to tank there, and a WAR/NIN can't really tank on his own.

I have no food choice as such, my COR has to use Squid Sushi and luckily it's quite cheap whereas my DRG have to use Sole Sushi (not so cheap). Once I get more accuracy I'll be able to use meat but I require 3 expensive items and 3 assault items
Oh RDM I use melon pies which is very cheap.

Basic food:

Ginger/Wizard cookies, when you get 60+ and gear gives you more then 7/900 MP wou will want to rest it back quick when it gets low.
Ginger gives 5 extra MP back per tick while resting (HMP) and Wizard 7.
This is also my most used food on both jobs.
Advantages: stackable to 99, real good HMP bonus, pretty cheap to get and a stack can last you weeks.
Disadvantages:Last pretty short (Long enough to get an MP pool from 0->1200+), gives nothing useful extra.

Roast Mushroom/Witch Kabob, good food to use for exp also, less of a HMP bonus but gives a 1 - enmity.
I use these in level capped situations like BCNMs/CoP/ENMs.
Advantages: Stackable to 12, a little MND and MP bonus, a little -Enmity.
Disadvantages: More expensive, lower HMP.

Mushroom/Witch stew, without a doubt the best food around for whms.
But unless you are a high level cook and master in gardening for the ingredients very expensive to acquire.
It has a very decent MP bonus, a very nice - Enmity bonus (-4!), very decent HMP (+4) and a little MND Bonus.
This is the food I usually save for the best of the best parties, since it's very expensive I wouldn't want to let this go to waste in parties where I get killed or it disbands after a short while.
Advantages: Lasts 3 hours! (Witch stew even 4!), good HMP/MP/-Enmity/MND Bonuses.
Disadvantages: Not stackable, very expensive to acquire.

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Let's put all the foods together for comparison:

Effects for Ginger Cookie:

* MP Regeneration While Healing +5
* Plantoid Killer
* Resist Slow
Food Duration: 3 minutes
Stackable: 99

Effects for Wizard Cookie:

* MP Regeneration While Healing +7
* Plantoid Killer
* Resist Slow
Food Duration: 5 minutes
Stackable:99

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Effects for Roast Mushroom:

* MP +10
* Strength -1
* Mind +3
* MP Regeneration While Healing +2
* Enmity -1
Food Duration: 30 minutes
Stackable: 12

Effects for Witch Kabob:

* MP +15
* Mind +4
* MP Regeneration While Healing +3
* Enmity -1
Food Duration: 60 minutes
Stackable: 12

_______________________________________________________________________________
Effects for Mushroom Stew:

* MP +40
* Strength -1
* Mind +4
* MP Regeneration While Healing +4
* Enmity -4
Food Duration: 180 minutes
Stackable: Not Stackable

Effects for Witch Stew:

* MP +45
* Strength -1
* Mind +4
* MP Regeneration While Healing +4
* Enmity -4
Food Duration: 240 minutes
Stackable: Not Stackable
_______________________________________________________________________________

o_o jeez Shirai, lol. I'll have to remember all that next time I level WHM. ^^

As PLD, and one that DDs at times, I tend to run kinda varied on food, always changing up depending on the situation. For straight tanking times, when I'm actually using my tank gear to full extent, I use Tavnazian Tacos. I'm the type who puts everything forth from the get-go, but if a pt starts turning into crap, I just stop using my food completely. DD'ing, I stick with typical DD foods, Sole Sushi where my accuracy isn't too great, Coeurl Subs when I'm hitting just fine (<3 havnig 450+ attack w/o Berserk). As NIN the only thing I use is Squid Sushi so far. Same for THF.

Being a RDM I have been eating Sweet Rice cakes since level 20 or so.

Sweet Rice Cake
Duration: 30 mins
* MP +17
* Vitality +2
* Intelligence +3
* Mind +1
* HP Regeneration While Healing +2
* MP Regeneration While Healing +2
* Evasion +5
* Resist Silence

Hard to beat for a RDM, but the next does beat it.

Brain Stew
Duration: 180 minutes
* Dexterity +5
* Intelligence +5
* Mind +5
* HP Regeneration While Healing +3
* MP Regeneration While Healing +3

But it isn't THAT much better and Sweet Rice Cake are ~ 4 - 12K/12 while the Brain Stew is 30 - 50K each..... The HQ Sophic Stew can go to 100K.

Sophic Stew
Duration: 240 minutes
* Dexterity +6
* Intelligence +6
* Mind +6
* HP Regeneration While Healing +3
* MP Regeneration While Healing +3

My melee kitty, SAM in her 50s, carries Rice Dumplings, Sushi, and meat. Starts out on the Dumplings and adjusts according to her hit/miss ratio. As RNG/WAR it is Sushi, the Att aspect is covered by /WAR, and as MNK it is meat with Dumplings for when she misses too much.

COR has to use Squid Sushi and luckily it's quite cheap whereas my DRG have to use Sole Sushi

Try parsing the difference between squid and sole for you DRG. You'll notice that sole really doesn't do much at all. The parse difference if you have a nice stable parse set (like say weapons in sky) will probably be around 1% overall.

IMHO, sole is for special ocasions when you really want to suck every last bit of damage out of your WS's (most melee WS's are STR-based). If you're planning or thinking about using an Icarus Wing, that's the time to be on sole.

My typical food strat is to use food+0 with parties I have doubts about or when people start talking about @ {disbanding party}. I usualy try to use food+1 just so I won't have to carry so much.

Nonstackable food is never an option no matter how nice it is. I don't have space for it.

Yeah STR doesn't mean all that much in standard hits, you really need a lot to make a difference and it's very hard to cap the Attack of a 2-handed weapon BUT both Wheeling Thrust and (g)Impulse Drive have 50% STR modifiers although I usually use Penta Thrust on most things that aren't Beastmen AND you're essentially considered cheap and/or gimp if you don't use Sole for your sushi choice.

I never buy +1 foods, just not worth it for a consumable really. I wanna use meat in exp~ Still need Assault Earring and a 2nd Woodsman and could probably get away with it in the Mire but would need the traffic cone hat to use it in Thickets (until I get my purple assault cap).

Sugami wrote:I never buy +1 foods, just not worth it for a consumable really.

On Garuda, Squid Sushi is a bit over half the price of Squid +1. Now Squid +1 isn't noticably better, but as long as you don't die it is about 2 - 5K LESS per hour of partying.

On Squid vs. Sole, well the melee kitty's main is SAM.... She gets such a varied diet, I have been eating Sweet Rice Cales for over 50 levels. If it wasn't for my sub jobs I would hardly ever eat anything else.

Pardon while I change to BLM so I have an excuse to eat pie.

And to think, I havent ever used food as a Rdm. Except the other day when I used some Wizard Cookies (Curiosity killed the cat) Still ive been doing fine without food, so I still don't think ill be using any.

Ya, I don't use food+1 unless it's close to or less than 2*food+0 for cost. The "gimp" thing I find amusing. I look on folks burning through sole in XP as "gil buyers" or at least foolish lemmings.

On THF, I eat meat and sub nin. Still works much better than /war for overall dps. The thf/war crowd is all about seeing large numbers for their snick+ws. It's actually better in a non-renkei group to circle and do trick, sneak, and ws all seperately. I use sushi on nin out of habbit -- I haven't reparsed meat on nin for a long while. Need to try it again.

Sugami wrote:Tell your DRG "friend" to use a DD sub (preferable /WAR), what a gimpy COR he might aswell play BRD.
Dunno how a MNK managed to tank there, and a WAR/NIN can't really tank on his own.

War/Nin can tank on his own if he or she is good. I know because I've done it. A Smn friend and me staticed all the way from 10 to 70. During lvl's range 35-65 I personally tanked cause we kept having problems finding a tank at the time of day we were both able to play. I kept two sets of armor on me when I was forced to tank, my DD gear and my tanking gear. Used my DD gear to dish out the damage causing hate, when I started getting beat on, switch to Tank gear which I had macro'ed in. If I started to lose hate, swapped back to DD gear and got hate back.

So yeah, depending on how good your War/Nin is, they can tank on their own, just depends if they know what they're doing or not.

Well~ you kinda need the right gear and preferable /MNK (I guess), most WARs only really carry around DD gear so past jungles they can't really tank with great efficiency.