The thing that should never be…

As I mentioned in last post, I’m now 80 on both beast (my main job) and bard (my “works well with others” job). The intention was to work on the thief as you may recall. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the heist… SE announced the next version update for early September and the level cap is going with it (we don’t know how much, but I’m guessing 90). So, it’s time to break out the subjobs again. Those I have to get to 49-50 are white mage (currently 44), ninja (40), red mage (25) and a special case, dancer (40, but it will follow thief as my next job to cap).

I’m doing white mage 1st as I sub it in Dynamis and a lot of missions. I will break to do dancer as it is my primary beast sub. Then back to ninja as I need it to sub when pulling on bard. Finally, red mage which was always a good bard sub and the only other job that can consistently recharge people’s MP. I think bard/red mage is going to replace bard/white mage because it gives another sleep option, MP refresh, another dispel and a few other goodies, especially fast cast and convert. The minuses are I lose reraise (but that’s just my XP that gets hurt so why would anyone else care) and my feeble elf MP will be even feebler. Look for me to enspell and melee just to piss people off if they get too demanding.

I think I’ll need to break in the middle there to work on my funds as all those red mage spells are going to get expensive. I have most of the ninja spells already. I’m also going to need to do some BCNM for my phalanx scroll. I’ve got the seals, but finding the beasts to help might be a problem, at least beasts I know. We’ll talk about that as I get around to it.

Leveling the white mage is harder than it used to be. We already lost out to red mage after 41 because of refresh. Now with everyone in end game I need people to sync down to get a party. White mage can solo (slowly), a bit better with a decent NPC. As mentioned before however my NPC was not built along tanking lines, but healing—now healing is my job. It’s definitely kind of makeshift.

I’ve been concentrating on FoV as the missions give me an XP bonus and you can do 1-2 per hour. To get any speed out of it I can’t let the mobs past EM to me so skill-ups suffer a bit. Another player is a great help, while NPCs use abilities other players generally use theirs intelligently. With my crap MP I’m forced to wear gear that helps with that, leaving me squishier than I really like to be when I get hate.

I did get lucky with a duo and a power level over the weekend. Made it to 43 without much trouble and got some nice skill-ups in the process. Last night I did a besieged for the first time in ages (XP was ok, skill-ups sucked), then got the ubiquitous birds party in East Ron. Again, skill sucked but I did get 44. Looking forward to trying out Regen 2 going forward.

Monday we had to cancel Dynamis. For the most part only the vets showed up. We probably could have low-manned a zone and farmed but we mostly don’t need anything, we generally do Dynamis to help other people, hang out with friends, build our points for gear we may eventually want and good karma. So giving away perfectly good XP seemed stupid and we cancelled for the night. I was supposed to look for leveling help after I finished supper, but I got a call from a friend and spent hours talking to her instead.

That does it for now folks, more later…