Growing pains, strangely apropos term...
SE keeps adding additional content. I honestly think it isn't just to keep players interested; instead I think the designers feel it's a challenge to make sure no one ever accomplishes everything! Fair enough, I'm certainly never going to beat them.
The last time I wrote I was contemplating the coming level cap and trying to get my thief to cap before the increase. I came close. I had to spend alot of time solo due to the lack of any need for thieves-at least compared to the number seeking-in Abyssea or any other XP activity for that matter. Obviously, I spent some of that time farming (I like solvency), but I spent a good bit in Campaign. Too bad campaign is largely abandoned these days. Being a thief I don't have reraise so I would frequently be waiting for a random raise from either a pixie/sprite or from the rare passing player. I did get pretty good at knowing the flight paths of the local faeries...
That being said I did get some Abyssea love and a little help from my friends. My friends in LS did keep an eye out for spots in XP partys they got where my 67 thief (yes, I soloed 64-67) was not a complete liability. Generally these parties would get me 1-2 levels-when an Abyssea party starts having to replace people it's usually a sign that the end is coming (but not always), pulling about half the time and melee DD the rest. Too bad the skill-up rate (at least for me) is so low in Abyssea, my ranged skills are now severely lacking and even my melee skills are a bit behind. I understand that I can probably cap all that while farming so I'm not too concerned about it. As I rose in level I was more and more a puller; thief is what you call a spike DD in that we do very little damage until we WS and/or SATA when we put out some of the highest damage in game, instead of just a steady diet of hard hits. Some people refer to it as "just feeding the mob TP" and without a tank (hate control is pretty scarce in all Abyssea areas) to transfer the hate to it can be very dangerous to do.
I got extremely lucky with the level cap increase. Having jobs already at 85 and switching back to them I was able to get both beast and bard to 90 within 1 week, and I managed to get thief there in about 1 week more (82-90), all via Abyssea parties. I'm now back to working the dancer up. However, there are a couple significant changes to the game that bear mention. The 1st is the mog sack, a new storage area exclusive to the player (and equal in size to the safe) which gave me another 80 inventory slots-accessible in the field-so I can keep more gear on Glam making job changes (and available space when farming) much easier on me. The 2nd change is that AF3 seals now drop from Bastion/Dominion Ops too, instead of just quests and NMs. Granted they never drop a seal I can use...
Per my last post, my dancer was 50. I got it to 52 via a short party and some solo work as dnc/bst. 52-56 I got via an Aby party we did in lieu of a scheduled Dynamis run (more on that later) where I was key whore. Annoying, but easy. 56-57 were mostly gotten via FoV, and the last little bit to 58 I got mooching off Fashnek while he solo'd some dominion ops (Abyssea's version of FoV, but with no downtime). Extremely quick XP that way and again my combat skills are capped for a good bit yet, so no worries about skilling up. I'll be seeking as much Aby XP as I can get, but once I hit 75 I'll have another motive, my trial weapons. The only other job that uses dagger much (besides my bard, thief and dancer) is ranger, and that is mostly because of the ranged bonuses on daggers-they uses axes too for the same reason. Because a ranger's melee weapons are mostly for show, I'll have no reason not to finish my daggers (which should also top off my dagger, parry and evasion skills).
Ok, I promised you a Dynamis update and as you can guess it's not that great. We have had to cancel many runs due to no-shows. This sucks for me since I depend on relic as bridge gear until I can get my AF3 upgraded-the base gear is not particularly good. The biggest problem-besides the no-shows-are the people trying to show off. When they try to solo or low-man a mob it leaves all the rest of us vulnerable to AoE and other problems. We are wiping almost as much as we did at 75 when we shouldn't be wiping at all! Ok, XP is easy to regain now, but why lose it for no reason? If we can win easy we can farm the zone after the win but instead we have to accommodate the wipes and are left with no time just as we used to be. I know people in shells getting almost 50 relics a run, we are lucky to see 20 because we lose so much time. What can you do when no one is listening tho?
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
I said I was the cops, your husband’s in jail, the state looks down on sodomy…
Blink182, we miss ya!
When last we spoke I was thrashing around on random activities in game in multiple jobs, I’ve been continuing to thrash. 1st off, I’ve finished red mage to 49, courtesy of going key bitch in an Abyssea party. 44-49 in I think 2 hours. Those 1000 XP chests add up in a hurry, once you can get them to start dropping anyway. The party was just started however…
I went back to town and saddled up the bard/ninja and came back to the party. Eventually ended up being the puller, and in maybe another 2.5 hours I went from 6k to 81 all the way to the 85 cap! I could have kept on going and gotten some merits but my ass was asleep and I needed to go.
With all my subs now leveled it was time to do stuff with my main jobs. I did some work on my dagger trials using bard/dancer for the most part and knocked out several of them. However, I did look further down the trial path and found that the level to use my trial weapons will be going up and I'll be needing them at 75 and 80 respectively for my thief and dancer jobs, so I stopped so they will be useable when I get them there. That left my beast and his axes.
Now beast was still 80 as of my last post. I did all of my beast leveling 80-85 and several merit points (each merit is equivalent to 10,000 XP, and even match critters give 100/kill to give you an idea), each level requiring close to 50,000 XP. Now as I mentioned before, for those who don't know a trial is performing a specific action with the weapon equipped. There are also armor trials (courtesy of the last update) but I haven't started those so I'll discuss them some other time. Some trials are easy, some hard and some are just tedious. For the most part I soloed my trials, but I got a lot of help from Doncado and/or Woochekitty on 2 of them specifically. I was doing an elemental axe on light element and light weather is almost non-existent in the game. Well, 2 of my trials were in sea, an area with no light weather ever, 100 pet kills on sharks and later 125 pet kills on flowers. The good news is it didn't have to be MY pet, just a pet in the party. So Woochekitty brought her puppetmaster out and Doncado his dragoon (he also needed the XP, being significantly lower level than Woo and I on his pet job) when they were on during light and we went to town. Generally we got about 18-20 per lightsday (which only happens every 8 real-life hours). For those wondering why I'm bitching about the weather kills under weather count as 5 kills while those on the element's day only count as 1. Basically, all of October was spent getting my beast and both of my axes to 85, but they are all spiffy now, excepting the new AF3 armor which needs a lot of hard work.
As some of you may have figured out, I like to combine items on my “to-do list” whenever possible, it's generally more efficient that way. Well, one of the items I combined is my axe trial on vermin with getting my materials to make my Dancer AF1 gear. Unlike the original jobs those that were introduced with the Treasures of Aht Urgan or Wings of the Goddess expansions do not get all there AF from fights and coffers ( a kind of treasure chest) but instead generally require 3 of the 5 pieces to be made by an NPC... with the player furnishing the materials. The materials are generally quite expensive and also fairly rare to find for sale and for the most part require crafting by someone with a skill level above level 70, maybe even above 90. Since I needed wamoura silk in large quantities and the items are kind of a rare drop (and my thief didn't stand a chance of farming it at 61) I used my beast, and some help from Peenut and others to help farm the stuff. Actually, the drop rate is so low I had to keep killing for a bit even after my vermin trial was done. Obijam from my Dynamis LS had the clothcraft skills to make the stuff and was kind enough to do so.
Once I had finished all of the beast trials and leveling I wanted to get to thief. I mentioned in an earlier post that thief has a tendency to really fill-up your inventory in a hurry. Yes, gear reshuffling time again. All my red mage gear went to mules (I can use most of it when I get around to leveling my other MP-using jobs), some craftables were used up, my beast and bard relic gear went to the storage NPC when not in use and I sold a bunch of crap. I still needed room however so I leveled my dancer form 49 to 50 so I could do my AF quests and store the results as well as using up the materials I had stored on Glamdring. I could actually still use some room.
The last several days have been spent-for the most part-leveling my thief. Parties are generally non-existant outside of Abyssea or occasionally a low-level affair so I haven't been making that much progress. Mostly I've been hanging with Peenut (on her 85 dancer) doing her trial weapons. The XP sucks (10-20/kill generally) but I've been taking advantage of it to cap my ranged skills-my melee skills already being capped from leveling bard and beast, excepting parry and shield which are VERY hard to skill-to approximately the level 78 skill cap for thief. Thief has gone from barely 61 almost to 64. It is to be hoped that I can get an Abyssea XP party soon to cruise to 85, we'll see how my luck goes.
Lots more to come...
When last we spoke I was thrashing around on random activities in game in multiple jobs, I’ve been continuing to thrash. 1st off, I’ve finished red mage to 49, courtesy of going key bitch in an Abyssea party. 44-49 in I think 2 hours. Those 1000 XP chests add up in a hurry, once you can get them to start dropping anyway. The party was just started however…
I went back to town and saddled up the bard/ninja and came back to the party. Eventually ended up being the puller, and in maybe another 2.5 hours I went from 6k to 81 all the way to the 85 cap! I could have kept on going and gotten some merits but my ass was asleep and I needed to go.
With all my subs now leveled it was time to do stuff with my main jobs. I did some work on my dagger trials using bard/dancer for the most part and knocked out several of them. However, I did look further down the trial path and found that the level to use my trial weapons will be going up and I'll be needing them at 75 and 80 respectively for my thief and dancer jobs, so I stopped so they will be useable when I get them there. That left my beast and his axes.
Now beast was still 80 as of my last post. I did all of my beast leveling 80-85 and several merit points (each merit is equivalent to 10,000 XP, and even match critters give 100/kill to give you an idea), each level requiring close to 50,000 XP. Now as I mentioned before, for those who don't know a trial is performing a specific action with the weapon equipped. There are also armor trials (courtesy of the last update) but I haven't started those so I'll discuss them some other time. Some trials are easy, some hard and some are just tedious. For the most part I soloed my trials, but I got a lot of help from Doncado and/or Woochekitty on 2 of them specifically. I was doing an elemental axe on light element and light weather is almost non-existent in the game. Well, 2 of my trials were in sea, an area with no light weather ever, 100 pet kills on sharks and later 125 pet kills on flowers. The good news is it didn't have to be MY pet, just a pet in the party. So Woochekitty brought her puppetmaster out and Doncado his dragoon (he also needed the XP, being significantly lower level than Woo and I on his pet job) when they were on during light and we went to town. Generally we got about 18-20 per lightsday (which only happens every 8 real-life hours). For those wondering why I'm bitching about the weather kills under weather count as 5 kills while those on the element's day only count as 1. Basically, all of October was spent getting my beast and both of my axes to 85, but they are all spiffy now, excepting the new AF3 armor which needs a lot of hard work.
As some of you may have figured out, I like to combine items on my “to-do list” whenever possible, it's generally more efficient that way. Well, one of the items I combined is my axe trial on vermin with getting my materials to make my Dancer AF1 gear. Unlike the original jobs those that were introduced with the Treasures of Aht Urgan or Wings of the Goddess expansions do not get all there AF from fights and coffers ( a kind of treasure chest) but instead generally require 3 of the 5 pieces to be made by an NPC... with the player furnishing the materials. The materials are generally quite expensive and also fairly rare to find for sale and for the most part require crafting by someone with a skill level above level 70, maybe even above 90. Since I needed wamoura silk in large quantities and the items are kind of a rare drop (and my thief didn't stand a chance of farming it at 61) I used my beast, and some help from Peenut and others to help farm the stuff. Actually, the drop rate is so low I had to keep killing for a bit even after my vermin trial was done. Obijam from my Dynamis LS had the clothcraft skills to make the stuff and was kind enough to do so.
Once I had finished all of the beast trials and leveling I wanted to get to thief. I mentioned in an earlier post that thief has a tendency to really fill-up your inventory in a hurry. Yes, gear reshuffling time again. All my red mage gear went to mules (I can use most of it when I get around to leveling my other MP-using jobs), some craftables were used up, my beast and bard relic gear went to the storage NPC when not in use and I sold a bunch of crap. I still needed room however so I leveled my dancer form 49 to 50 so I could do my AF quests and store the results as well as using up the materials I had stored on Glamdring. I could actually still use some room.
The last several days have been spent-for the most part-leveling my thief. Parties are generally non-existant outside of Abyssea or occasionally a low-level affair so I haven't been making that much progress. Mostly I've been hanging with Peenut (on her 85 dancer) doing her trial weapons. The XP sucks (10-20/kill generally) but I've been taking advantage of it to cap my ranged skills-my melee skills already being capped from leveling bard and beast, excepting parry and shield which are VERY hard to skill-to approximately the level 78 skill cap for thief. Thief has gone from barely 61 almost to 64. It is to be hoped that I can get an Abyssea XP party soon to cruise to 85, we'll see how my luck goes.
Lots more to come...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
What’s goin’ on (what’s goin’ on)…
Glammy been a busy boy lately. I’ve been doing a lot of leveling, a lot of shopping, some missions, trials and even farming! Or to put it another way “you’ve been slacking off on your fucking blog!!!” True.
Red mage has gotten a lot of work, but it is not finished. I’ve been leveling through a multitude of means actually. I got a couple of Power levels, I have trio’d in a level-sync on East Ronafure birds (actually level appropriate), I did a conventional party sync on beetles in West Altep, I solo’d a bunch of FoV pages-mostly in Behemoth’s Dominion- for a little XP, I ran around floor 9 of Delfkutt’s speed killing giants for XP and gil, I’ve even been a level 43 key bitch in an Abyssea party (where chests were not dropping particularily well). I made it to a whopping level 44. Keep an eye out for me if you see anything around that level, I really DO want to finish it off.
About the Abyssea pt, I came to the conclusion that I am the weak point in my social and dynamis shells; not from lack of skill, but lack of power. I went to Abyssea hoping to just get through red mage but the party was low-man and so our XP left a lot to be desired. With few chests dropping about all I really did is keep refresh on my party and some weak curing. Had I brought one of my level 80s might I have contributed more? Not sure, but I can’t try if I won’t use them. Consequentally…
I got an offer from an LS mate who wanted to work on some assaults. I need progress too, so I broke out my beast and my brand new Superior Private rank and joined them. Don, Woo, KT (from our defunct Nyzul group) and myself worked on several assaults. After that was done, as I didn’t see a new group I could do anything with I decided to do some ToAU missions and a couple quests that have been hanging for awhile (3 years or so?). Solo’d 9 missions and 2 quests (including getting my Caedarva Mire map finally). Got a tell from Usul wanting to do something. We tried to just pound out some treants, and it was easy until we got Emergent elm but Duo we weren’t QUITE enough to finish him off. So I was introduced to the Campaign-style battles in Abyssea. The XP is just ridiculous it is so fast. I’ll definitely be returning, but I stayed long enough to get the merit I needed and the beast and bard armor bits obtainable through resistance points. I had purchased the bard piece that you get from cruor already, but ran out without enough to buy the beast piece as well. Went to Jeuno and unlocked my 81 cap, so I’m free to level now.
Woke up Sunday and decided to get ready for bard leveling, bought 5 songs for about 300k, so I’m poor again. Well, I’m already on beast, might as well farm and work my trial weapons. Headed to Pso’xja to kill lizards, but that was a bad idea, poorly laid out for cycling and slow repops so I left when lightsday ended without a lot of progress. Then I went to Davoi to at least work my level 80 weapon skill axe. Took about 200 off when Don and Woo logged on and we decided to continue ToAU content. Did the mission I stopped at, 10 fomor in 5 man waves, went pretty smoothly. Then we switched to assaults. 1st one went quite well, Sagelord elimination. Ran into a bit of trouble however on Troll Refugees with links, and had to bail after several deaths.
At this point we are coming up on Lightsday again and I ask if they want to work on trial weapons with me. Wouldn’t you know it? Don needs lizards on Firesday, I need on light. So we go to the Den of Rancor, MUCH better place for cycling lizards. In our approximately 3 hours there I manage to finish my Lizard trial AND my WS trial, and Don finishes his lizard trial as well. So I go and get my new trials, not as compatible for working with Don, but maybe I should check with Woo…? I don’t know because I’ve switched to bard since it is needed more often and I can generally solo on the beast.
We’ve done a couple Dynamis since I last wrote, last week getting our long-awaited win in the Dunes (yay!) getting Tavnazia access for MOST of our newer people. The answer seemed to be just a couple more bodies-which we got-courtesy of Peenut, our resident brit cheese fiend. That last little bit of damage goes a long way. Unfortunately, we didn’t have those extra bodies for Monday’s Xarcaband for-the-win attempt. We did ok… a bit sloppy early and it cost a bit of time, but with the power we have we are able to recover THAT fairly easily. However, Dynamis Lord is a different kettle of fish. He has to be taken down FAST or he just spams AoE 1 or 2 shotting everything around. In the time where he just stands there we took off about 70% of his HP, after that the death began, but even dying we took off maybe 10% more. I think 2 more level 85 DD or nukers and we would have had zone, and to be honest we WERE light on nukers. The rule used to be for a real chance to win you wanted 5 black mages, but I think with the cap increase 3 85’s could get it done, our 2 did fairly well on time nukes, but they often ended up dead because they couldn’t take out ALL of the group. We are working on revising our strats, but we are heavily dependent on who decides to show up on any given night.
Which leads me into last night and my temper melt-down (directed at me, so no worries people). I need money and some crafting materials and I also need to work the bard to 85, so I decide to combine all that farming as bard/dancer while working on my 80 trial dagger and my Nyzul dagger-note the order I listed there. I went to Onozco to work on torama , but it is VERY difficult without a 2nd, preferably with paralyna, to farm coeurl meat for pet food zeta (I’m almost out). Unfortunately, an 85 summoner was there farming so my 80 bard really didn’t stand a chance. I moved to Davoi to harass Orcs since at least they drop cash. Well, I was getting off about 3 WS/orc, 4 on the monks taking a nice bite out of my 80 trial dagger. What about my Nyzul dagger you may ask? I know I did… well if you remember the order listed above you’ve probably figured it out already; yes, it’s been in my off-hand. I’ve probably wasted 450 WS points-200 more than I need to unlock-using the thing in my off-hand. I reequipped my weapons in the proper hands and finished off the approximately 60 Viper Bites needed to finish my 80 trial. Went to Jeuno and triggered the next trial, dumped some inventory and I’ll be back at it tonight, most likely a bunny hunt in Ulegeurand Range, 300 AoE Weapon Skills, that doesn’t sound like a pain in the ass at all…
Talk at you soon I hope ;)
Red mage has gotten a lot of work, but it is not finished. I’ve been leveling through a multitude of means actually. I got a couple of Power levels, I have trio’d in a level-sync on East Ronafure birds (actually level appropriate), I did a conventional party sync on beetles in West Altep, I solo’d a bunch of FoV pages-mostly in Behemoth’s Dominion- for a little XP, I ran around floor 9 of Delfkutt’s speed killing giants for XP and gil, I’ve even been a level 43 key bitch in an Abyssea party (where chests were not dropping particularily well). I made it to a whopping level 44. Keep an eye out for me if you see anything around that level, I really DO want to finish it off.
About the Abyssea pt, I came to the conclusion that I am the weak point in my social and dynamis shells; not from lack of skill, but lack of power. I went to Abyssea hoping to just get through red mage but the party was low-man and so our XP left a lot to be desired. With few chests dropping about all I really did is keep refresh on my party and some weak curing. Had I brought one of my level 80s might I have contributed more? Not sure, but I can’t try if I won’t use them. Consequentally…
I got an offer from an LS mate who wanted to work on some assaults. I need progress too, so I broke out my beast and my brand new Superior Private rank and joined them. Don, Woo, KT (from our defunct Nyzul group) and myself worked on several assaults. After that was done, as I didn’t see a new group I could do anything with I decided to do some ToAU missions and a couple quests that have been hanging for awhile (3 years or so?). Solo’d 9 missions and 2 quests (including getting my Caedarva Mire map finally). Got a tell from Usul wanting to do something. We tried to just pound out some treants, and it was easy until we got Emergent elm but Duo we weren’t QUITE enough to finish him off. So I was introduced to the Campaign-style battles in Abyssea. The XP is just ridiculous it is so fast. I’ll definitely be returning, but I stayed long enough to get the merit I needed and the beast and bard armor bits obtainable through resistance points. I had purchased the bard piece that you get from cruor already, but ran out without enough to buy the beast piece as well. Went to Jeuno and unlocked my 81 cap, so I’m free to level now.
Woke up Sunday and decided to get ready for bard leveling, bought 5 songs for about 300k, so I’m poor again. Well, I’m already on beast, might as well farm and work my trial weapons. Headed to Pso’xja to kill lizards, but that was a bad idea, poorly laid out for cycling and slow repops so I left when lightsday ended without a lot of progress. Then I went to Davoi to at least work my level 80 weapon skill axe. Took about 200 off when Don and Woo logged on and we decided to continue ToAU content. Did the mission I stopped at, 10 fomor in 5 man waves, went pretty smoothly. Then we switched to assaults. 1st one went quite well, Sagelord elimination. Ran into a bit of trouble however on Troll Refugees with links, and had to bail after several deaths.
At this point we are coming up on Lightsday again and I ask if they want to work on trial weapons with me. Wouldn’t you know it? Don needs lizards on Firesday, I need on light. So we go to the Den of Rancor, MUCH better place for cycling lizards. In our approximately 3 hours there I manage to finish my Lizard trial AND my WS trial, and Don finishes his lizard trial as well. So I go and get my new trials, not as compatible for working with Don, but maybe I should check with Woo…? I don’t know because I’ve switched to bard since it is needed more often and I can generally solo on the beast.
We’ve done a couple Dynamis since I last wrote, last week getting our long-awaited win in the Dunes (yay!) getting Tavnazia access for MOST of our newer people. The answer seemed to be just a couple more bodies-which we got-courtesy of Peenut, our resident brit cheese fiend. That last little bit of damage goes a long way. Unfortunately, we didn’t have those extra bodies for Monday’s Xarcaband for-the-win attempt. We did ok… a bit sloppy early and it cost a bit of time, but with the power we have we are able to recover THAT fairly easily. However, Dynamis Lord is a different kettle of fish. He has to be taken down FAST or he just spams AoE 1 or 2 shotting everything around. In the time where he just stands there we took off about 70% of his HP, after that the death began, but even dying we took off maybe 10% more. I think 2 more level 85 DD or nukers and we would have had zone, and to be honest we WERE light on nukers. The rule used to be for a real chance to win you wanted 5 black mages, but I think with the cap increase 3 85’s could get it done, our 2 did fairly well on time nukes, but they often ended up dead because they couldn’t take out ALL of the group. We are working on revising our strats, but we are heavily dependent on who decides to show up on any given night.
Which leads me into last night and my temper melt-down (directed at me, so no worries people). I need money and some crafting materials and I also need to work the bard to 85, so I decide to combine all that farming as bard/dancer while working on my 80 trial dagger and my Nyzul dagger-note the order I listed there. I went to Onozco to work on torama , but it is VERY difficult without a 2nd, preferably with paralyna, to farm coeurl meat for pet food zeta (I’m almost out). Unfortunately, an 85 summoner was there farming so my 80 bard really didn’t stand a chance. I moved to Davoi to harass Orcs since at least they drop cash. Well, I was getting off about 3 WS/orc, 4 on the monks taking a nice bite out of my 80 trial dagger. What about my Nyzul dagger you may ask? I know I did… well if you remember the order listed above you’ve probably figured it out already; yes, it’s been in my off-hand. I’ve probably wasted 450 WS points-200 more than I need to unlock-using the thing in my off-hand. I reequipped my weapons in the proper hands and finished off the approximately 60 Viper Bites needed to finish my 80 trial. Went to Jeuno and triggered the next trial, dumped some inventory and I’ll be back at it tonight, most likely a bunny hunt in Ulegeurand Range, 300 AoE Weapon Skills, that doesn’t sound like a pain in the ass at all…
Talk at you soon I hope ;)
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Over under sideways down...
SE updates, poorly managed, super-congested and just plain past capacity. It took me an hour to get a connection to the server to download the update that wouldn’t “bump” me. Yes, that was just to connect. The download took a bit over 9 hours, and I have a hi-speed cable business connection at my house. I think that SE just hires like 3 people to work a telegraph to load people up with the updates. I mean really? You just took half your servers off-line a couple months ago. Retask them and daisy-chain to the servers that are left to accommodate the load from the update. SE even had the nerve to post (after the fact) that there was a problem logging in to get the update, but that it was all good now. Yes, after 98% of your player base has made their download one WOULD expect that the update would be easier to get for those still needing. Jack-asses…
As mentioned in my last post, it is my intention to finish red mage to 49 before doing beast or bard to 85, that still holds true. Thursday I soloed the remainder of the way to 30, but mostly I spent my time reading up on the new content as the information became available (there is still a lot to get posted). I really didn’t accomplish much.
Friday was Dynamis, we ended up in Bastok getting a needed win for a member. I also got a repeated invite to GreatBigSea, another social LS that one of my Dynamis buddies is in and this time I accepted it. SK has been hard to get things happening in lately because there really haven’t been that many on so despite my loyalty to SK I have to accommodate MY to-do list too, and more bodies make that easier to do. For example, finding a party to level my red mage with, Abyssea (on a more regular basis), missions and the like; I know my friend is one of the more accomplished players you will encounter. Just don’t get between her and a pile of cheese…
In any event, as has become usual lately very few of us showed up on time. There actually are penalties for tardiness and no-shows but we haven’t been keeping things up to date on the eligibility board so noone is aware they have BEEN penalized. Maybe leaders are handling that stuff privately, I just don’t know. Well, despite it only being 2 days after update we had several people already at level 85. As you might imagine, the run got much easier. Good thing, since we fucked up the timed nuke and could have all died easy. We ended up getting win fairly easy. Wasn’t a great night for the LS in terms of NEEDED relic, think 11 pieces dropped and 9 got floored.
Started my Saturday on bard. SK had an Abyssea run planned but it was in a zone I haven’t done before. I decided to go in early that morning to get my time capped and to get all the confluxes. Luckily, it doesn’t take much time to get the cruor for maps and the like so I’m able to use the map (in comparison with the map on wiki) to get around and get all confluxes. Had some close shaves running past the agro mobs and their respective NMs but I have both skill andthat day luck and managed to avoid getting any agro. Did have one very tense moment though at the last turning to the last conflux as a group was fighting the boss NM right in the bottleneck I needed to sneak through. I wasn’t part of their group in any way but the boss was able to do an AoE attack that damn near killed me (about 1200 of my 1305 HP went up in smoke). Didn’t realize Abyssea was like the old days where AoE could affect anyone so I took absolutely no precautions there. I wonder… if I had just dropped in a finale or requiem, could I have gotten my win?
Saturday-despite my words above-I managed to get a duo with my bud Chrispy with a power level at level 19 on my red mage. Well, we both picked up 3 levels (think Chrispy was almost 3) before we had to split for Abyssea. I thought this was either an XP run or a crest farming run (needed item for the 81 limit break quest is 5 kindred quests) but I was wrong. We were actually farming “azure abyssite of celerity” which are a bit weird. The idea is to get more time in abyssea by getting stones quicker. There are other boost items too. In any event, only the person who pulls the item is eligible to get it (presumably if the puller dies in the fight the 2nd and so on person is eligible but I’m not sure). Well even the tougher mobs are only a 7% drop rate. Still, in I think 150 minutes or so we got the item for 7 of us? We’re going back for the few who missed it soon and no doubt for the people who couldn’t be bothered to come unless there was something in it for them.
Sunday I started out clearing out a bunch of inventory (mostly level 25-ish gear as I was now level 33 and in full RSE [race-specific equipment] or other level 30-ish stuff). After that it was time to go shopping and raiding mules. I sent all the gear and spells I’m going to need until 49 that I had from my mules and then ran around buying the rest, took about 75 minutes since I had to go to Selbina and Jeuno. After my running, I switched back to red mage and managed to get a party. That took me to 35 on my red mage. I was told the whereabouts of the Warhorse Hoofprint and that's been dangling for some time so I finally went and got it; I'm now a "Superior Private". I logged to watch some football at that point (Go Pack!) and didn’t come back for hours. When I did, I found that I’d finally uncapped sword and so I need now to XP off EM to 35. I had no luck however, so I think I’m going to have to do Toughs with my NPC once I get the chance. However, soloing took too long so I logged leading me to…
Monday, Dynamis day, and a pile of no-shows, again! We had 12, that’s it. Well, that killed off any real chance at a Dynamis zone so we ended up in Abyssea, doing the same key item I did Saturday, but with more level 85’s in the mix. Only 11 of us ended up going, and 4 of us had the item, we just went to help. I think we picked up 4 or 5 of them in the time I was there. I started out as escort for the newer people who didn’t have the fluxes necessary to warp closer to camp since it was fresh in my mind from doing it on Saturday morning. Poor Creaper, it was his very 1st time in Abyssea so he wasn’t able to do much of anything before he ran out of time. I did manage to get the last of my crests for 81 limit break, and 2 of the 3 merits I need (I already have 1, so 1 more will do it). I finally called it a night as I was starving. Tonight should be back to the red mage…
As mentioned in my last post, it is my intention to finish red mage to 49 before doing beast or bard to 85, that still holds true. Thursday I soloed the remainder of the way to 30, but mostly I spent my time reading up on the new content as the information became available (there is still a lot to get posted). I really didn’t accomplish much.
Friday was Dynamis, we ended up in Bastok getting a needed win for a member. I also got a repeated invite to GreatBigSea, another social LS that one of my Dynamis buddies is in and this time I accepted it. SK has been hard to get things happening in lately because there really haven’t been that many on so despite my loyalty to SK I have to accommodate MY to-do list too, and more bodies make that easier to do. For example, finding a party to level my red mage with, Abyssea (on a more regular basis), missions and the like; I know my friend is one of the more accomplished players you will encounter. Just don’t get between her and a pile of cheese…
In any event, as has become usual lately very few of us showed up on time. There actually are penalties for tardiness and no-shows but we haven’t been keeping things up to date on the eligibility board so noone is aware they have BEEN penalized. Maybe leaders are handling that stuff privately, I just don’t know. Well, despite it only being 2 days after update we had several people already at level 85. As you might imagine, the run got much easier. Good thing, since we fucked up the timed nuke and could have all died easy. We ended up getting win fairly easy. Wasn’t a great night for the LS in terms of NEEDED relic, think 11 pieces dropped and 9 got floored.
Started my Saturday on bard. SK had an Abyssea run planned but it was in a zone I haven’t done before. I decided to go in early that morning to get my time capped and to get all the confluxes. Luckily, it doesn’t take much time to get the cruor for maps and the like so I’m able to use the map (in comparison with the map on wiki) to get around and get all confluxes. Had some close shaves running past the agro mobs and their respective NMs but I have both skill andthat day luck and managed to avoid getting any agro. Did have one very tense moment though at the last turning to the last conflux as a group was fighting the boss NM right in the bottleneck I needed to sneak through. I wasn’t part of their group in any way but the boss was able to do an AoE attack that damn near killed me (about 1200 of my 1305 HP went up in smoke). Didn’t realize Abyssea was like the old days where AoE could affect anyone so I took absolutely no precautions there. I wonder… if I had just dropped in a finale or requiem, could I have gotten my win?
Saturday-despite my words above-I managed to get a duo with my bud Chrispy with a power level at level 19 on my red mage. Well, we both picked up 3 levels (think Chrispy was almost 3) before we had to split for Abyssea. I thought this was either an XP run or a crest farming run (needed item for the 81 limit break quest is 5 kindred quests) but I was wrong. We were actually farming “azure abyssite of celerity” which are a bit weird. The idea is to get more time in abyssea by getting stones quicker. There are other boost items too. In any event, only the person who pulls the item is eligible to get it (presumably if the puller dies in the fight the 2nd and so on person is eligible but I’m not sure). Well even the tougher mobs are only a 7% drop rate. Still, in I think 150 minutes or so we got the item for 7 of us? We’re going back for the few who missed it soon and no doubt for the people who couldn’t be bothered to come unless there was something in it for them.
Sunday I started out clearing out a bunch of inventory (mostly level 25-ish gear as I was now level 33 and in full RSE [race-specific equipment] or other level 30-ish stuff). After that it was time to go shopping and raiding mules. I sent all the gear and spells I’m going to need until 49 that I had from my mules and then ran around buying the rest, took about 75 minutes since I had to go to Selbina and Jeuno. After my running, I switched back to red mage and managed to get a party. That took me to 35 on my red mage. I was told the whereabouts of the Warhorse Hoofprint and that's been dangling for some time so I finally went and got it; I'm now a "Superior Private". I logged to watch some football at that point (Go Pack!) and didn’t come back for hours. When I did, I found that I’d finally uncapped sword and so I need now to XP off EM to 35. I had no luck however, so I think I’m going to have to do Toughs with my NPC once I get the chance. However, soloing took too long so I logged leading me to…
Monday, Dynamis day, and a pile of no-shows, again! We had 12, that’s it. Well, that killed off any real chance at a Dynamis zone so we ended up in Abyssea, doing the same key item I did Saturday, but with more level 85’s in the mix. Only 11 of us ended up going, and 4 of us had the item, we just went to help. I think we picked up 4 or 5 of them in the time I was there. I started out as escort for the newer people who didn’t have the fluxes necessary to warp closer to camp since it was fresh in my mind from doing it on Saturday morning. Poor Creaper, it was his very 1st time in Abyssea so he wasn’t able to do much of anything before he ran out of time. I did manage to get the last of my crests for 81 limit break, and 2 of the 3 merits I need (I already have 1, so 1 more will do it). I finally called it a night as I was starving. Tonight should be back to the red mage…
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
a-looey looway o-o we gotta go now
Confused? You should be…
When last we “spoke” I was leveling ninja. Leveling ninja was a bit like having a high colonic—painful and degrading but strangely cleansing when all was said and done for something that’s completely full of shit. Also a total pain in the ass when you get the final bill. Don’t tempt me, I can keep this up all week. Well, I’m done with all that crap, after flushing about 1,000 tools…
Started out by doing the quest for my AF weapons (ninja used to be the only people with dual-wield, consequently they were the only job with 2 AF weapons). Unlike my dancer AF, I could use a different job for the fight, so I solo’d the fight in about 2 minutes with my beast. Yes, ninja AF weapons suck, but since the whole job sucks I was damned if I was gonna spend any $$$ on it or any time I didn’t have to. They were free, that’s why I used them.
Although I did do a bit of ninja/dancer solo, about 90% of my time was spent in East Ronafure (S) tanking synced birds parties. Apparently I missed something the last time I read the Terms of Service; the only permissible places to level in a party are the dunes or against birds, I’ll have to read them again, whatever. There were several times when they actually synced below 37. Advice to any ninja invited to one of those parties: think VERY carefully before accepting. Having only 1 Utsusemi spell means you’ll be doing most of your tanking without shadows and ninja are almost as bad as black mage taking hits without shadows. Not to mention problems holding hate since ninja mostly hit like a pillow fight. Personally, I was spamming ninja spells for all I was worth, fuck the red mage enfeebling. I also got pretty voke-happy.
It took awhile (roughly 18 hours all told), but I finally finished off LEVELING ninja. Now I needed to deal with my 9 level skill gap. I went /anon at this point to keep down the rudely irate “requests” to come tank more birds parties. This is a very important thing to do if you need to do something other than XP if you’re on a needed job (tank, maybe healer) unless you like being harassed by people desperate for a tank. Seriously, what part of “sorry, I’m done” is so hard to understand? I looked into it carefully and decided my best bet was to go to Misreaux Coast and kill molboro and flytraps (which cap at tough to me at 49) with my NPC set to tank. Martial master was up, so I had that going for me too. It took about 25 kills to get me to caps on ninjitsu and katana, so hopefully I’m done with this job forever now.
This left me with 1 more important sub-job to level, red mage. I checked my spell list and luckily I had almost all the spells I would need already between my 49 white and 25 black mages plus a few scrolls I’ve managed to pick up through the years and pitched on to mules or my other characters. Still needed were Bio II, a couple bar spells, water II and phalanx. All but phalanx are fairly reasonable, but phalanx is currently going for 300k on my server. That’s bullshit! I have 1650 seals and I refuse to spend that kind of $$$ on 1 scroll. The problem is getting a group together to do the BCNM (Royal Jelly, highest drop % of the BCNMs that have it according to wiki) even if it is only a 3-man event. I looked (in LS and friend list only as pick-up groups are kinda hit-or-miss) for about 3 hours the 1st time, then I logged. Came back on about 5 hours later and was able to get a group together for 5 cracks at it. Won all 5, set the record every attempt but no luck on phalanx. Incidentally, 2 beast/dancer and 1 ranger/ninja rock on that BCNM.
The next day I get lucky as 2 guys are looking to do it when I get on. This doesn’t go quite as well. We wiped on the 1st attempt, and I think it was because I had autotarget on since one of the guys is /assisting me (apparently the zone is too dark for him to target). The job mix was different too. I was still beast, but my partners are pup/healer now and the damage was simply not as fast in coming from us. The other runs we won, but I think the queen jelly formed on every run and no records on any of the wins. Phalanx finally dropped on the 4th (and final) run. This is where shit got weird. We had lotted/passed with no difficulty on any of the other runs. For some reason that didn’t work this run; I lotted, Samonosuke passed but Darthstoner said he was unable to lot since I already had everything (about 20 seconds after he said that I got the system messages saying that all had dropped to me). In the total 8 other runs, as well as the probably 40 other times I have done BCNMs this has never happened that someone was not “allowed” to lot. I even confirmed that quartermaster was off (although if it weren’t then treasure drops would have been affected on all the other runs too, wouldn’t they? The back-door implication that I was cheating in some way bothers me.
As you may have guessed, I’ve been trying to level red mage since I got ninja finished. We started with another gear reshuffle to get rid of ninja stuff and replace it with level 25-ish mage gear. So, after about an hour I’m done shuffling shit and decide to solo FoV pages while I seek. I got good at the pages. All my skills are currently capped for red mage, so there is no need to fight EM and up, just kill and XP fast. Red mage/ninja may be a good soloer, but it is not a FAST soloer, at least at 25 it isn’t.
You may recall above I said you might want to /anon “and maybe healer” if you don’t want to be pestered? The “maybe” is in there because between the 1.5 days I spent 9 hours seeking before I got my 1st party. Yes, I am on red mage, and yes, I had turned /anon off. I think the reason I got invite is because I had just called up NPC with my tactical earring. Of course the invite comes just in time to completely waste the charge. However, the party was excellent. I had only partied once in the past with one of them, Midniter, but the mix was right. We had a dancer, a scholar, a paladin, a warrior (who ended up pulling since the dancer forgot her throwing weapon), a beastmaster (later replaced by a dragoon after he left) and yours truly on red mage. We were a level 22 sync in qufim and got the sync to 25 without a single non-tank death (and that was on a 291 screwdriver). In fact, we had so much surplus healing (with 4 of us having curing ability) that about all I did was enfeeble prey. After we moved to jungle (which is when the beast left and the dragoon joined us) we had a couple of hiccups, both resulting in the puller’s death. Luckily, the dragoon must have been leveling another job since she ran back to town and came back to raise 3 the puller. When she got back, I took over pulling until the warrior lost weakness). Poor guy, smithy agro is an ugly thing, especially at level 25. Well, unfortunately it was the last day of the holiday weekend and it was getting kinda late. We got the sync to level 26 and then we broke the party. Happily, I’m almost level 30 on red mage and expect I’ll be moving right along.
The cap increase and the next Abyssea expansion come out tomorrow and that might take awhile to download, so I’m not sure how soon I’ll be able to finish red mage. I’ve decided however that I will finish it before I work beast and bard to 85. I’m so close to finishing my primary subjobs that I don’t want to leave this hanging out there on my to-do list if you get my meaning.
When last we “spoke” I was leveling ninja. Leveling ninja was a bit like having a high colonic—painful and degrading but strangely cleansing when all was said and done for something that’s completely full of shit. Also a total pain in the ass when you get the final bill. Don’t tempt me, I can keep this up all week. Well, I’m done with all that crap, after flushing about 1,000 tools…
Started out by doing the quest for my AF weapons (ninja used to be the only people with dual-wield, consequently they were the only job with 2 AF weapons). Unlike my dancer AF, I could use a different job for the fight, so I solo’d the fight in about 2 minutes with my beast. Yes, ninja AF weapons suck, but since the whole job sucks I was damned if I was gonna spend any $$$ on it or any time I didn’t have to. They were free, that’s why I used them.
Although I did do a bit of ninja/dancer solo, about 90% of my time was spent in East Ronafure (S) tanking synced birds parties. Apparently I missed something the last time I read the Terms of Service; the only permissible places to level in a party are the dunes or against birds, I’ll have to read them again, whatever. There were several times when they actually synced below 37. Advice to any ninja invited to one of those parties: think VERY carefully before accepting. Having only 1 Utsusemi spell means you’ll be doing most of your tanking without shadows and ninja are almost as bad as black mage taking hits without shadows. Not to mention problems holding hate since ninja mostly hit like a pillow fight. Personally, I was spamming ninja spells for all I was worth, fuck the red mage enfeebling. I also got pretty voke-happy.
It took awhile (roughly 18 hours all told), but I finally finished off LEVELING ninja. Now I needed to deal with my 9 level skill gap. I went /anon at this point to keep down the rudely irate “requests” to come tank more birds parties. This is a very important thing to do if you need to do something other than XP if you’re on a needed job (tank, maybe healer) unless you like being harassed by people desperate for a tank. Seriously, what part of “sorry, I’m done” is so hard to understand? I looked into it carefully and decided my best bet was to go to Misreaux Coast and kill molboro and flytraps (which cap at tough to me at 49) with my NPC set to tank. Martial master was up, so I had that going for me too. It took about 25 kills to get me to caps on ninjitsu and katana, so hopefully I’m done with this job forever now.
This left me with 1 more important sub-job to level, red mage. I checked my spell list and luckily I had almost all the spells I would need already between my 49 white and 25 black mages plus a few scrolls I’ve managed to pick up through the years and pitched on to mules or my other characters. Still needed were Bio II, a couple bar spells, water II and phalanx. All but phalanx are fairly reasonable, but phalanx is currently going for 300k on my server. That’s bullshit! I have 1650 seals and I refuse to spend that kind of $$$ on 1 scroll. The problem is getting a group together to do the BCNM (Royal Jelly, highest drop % of the BCNMs that have it according to wiki) even if it is only a 3-man event. I looked (in LS and friend list only as pick-up groups are kinda hit-or-miss) for about 3 hours the 1st time, then I logged. Came back on about 5 hours later and was able to get a group together for 5 cracks at it. Won all 5, set the record every attempt but no luck on phalanx. Incidentally, 2 beast/dancer and 1 ranger/ninja rock on that BCNM.
The next day I get lucky as 2 guys are looking to do it when I get on. This doesn’t go quite as well. We wiped on the 1st attempt, and I think it was because I had autotarget on since one of the guys is /assisting me (apparently the zone is too dark for him to target). The job mix was different too. I was still beast, but my partners are pup/healer now and the damage was simply not as fast in coming from us. The other runs we won, but I think the queen jelly formed on every run and no records on any of the wins. Phalanx finally dropped on the 4th (and final) run. This is where shit got weird. We had lotted/passed with no difficulty on any of the other runs. For some reason that didn’t work this run; I lotted, Samonosuke passed but Darthstoner said he was unable to lot since I already had everything (about 20 seconds after he said that I got the system messages saying that all had dropped to me). In the total 8 other runs, as well as the probably 40 other times I have done BCNMs this has never happened that someone was not “allowed” to lot. I even confirmed that quartermaster was off (although if it weren’t then treasure drops would have been affected on all the other runs too, wouldn’t they? The back-door implication that I was cheating in some way bothers me.
As you may have guessed, I’ve been trying to level red mage since I got ninja finished. We started with another gear reshuffle to get rid of ninja stuff and replace it with level 25-ish mage gear. So, after about an hour I’m done shuffling shit and decide to solo FoV pages while I seek. I got good at the pages. All my skills are currently capped for red mage, so there is no need to fight EM and up, just kill and XP fast. Red mage/ninja may be a good soloer, but it is not a FAST soloer, at least at 25 it isn’t.
You may recall above I said you might want to /anon “and maybe healer” if you don’t want to be pestered? The “maybe” is in there because between the 1.5 days I spent 9 hours seeking before I got my 1st party. Yes, I am on red mage, and yes, I had turned /anon off. I think the reason I got invite is because I had just called up NPC with my tactical earring. Of course the invite comes just in time to completely waste the charge. However, the party was excellent. I had only partied once in the past with one of them, Midniter, but the mix was right. We had a dancer, a scholar, a paladin, a warrior (who ended up pulling since the dancer forgot her throwing weapon), a beastmaster (later replaced by a dragoon after he left) and yours truly on red mage. We were a level 22 sync in qufim and got the sync to 25 without a single non-tank death (and that was on a 291 screwdriver). In fact, we had so much surplus healing (with 4 of us having curing ability) that about all I did was enfeeble prey. After we moved to jungle (which is when the beast left and the dragoon joined us) we had a couple of hiccups, both resulting in the puller’s death. Luckily, the dragoon must have been leveling another job since she ran back to town and came back to raise 3 the puller. When she got back, I took over pulling until the warrior lost weakness). Poor guy, smithy agro is an ugly thing, especially at level 25. Well, unfortunately it was the last day of the holiday weekend and it was getting kinda late. We got the sync to level 26 and then we broke the party. Happily, I’m almost level 30 on red mage and expect I’ll be moving right along.
The cap increase and the next Abyssea expansion come out tomorrow and that might take awhile to download, so I’m not sure how soon I’ll be able to finish red mage. I’ve decided however that I will finish it before I work beast and bard to 85. I’m so close to finishing my primary subjobs that I don’t want to leave this hanging out there on my to-do list if you get my meaning.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Please allow me to introduce myself,..
Time for another update I guess.
1st off, I finally finished off my dancer subjob to 49. Luckily, all that time leveling thief and bard has kept my skills capped on dancer, so really all I needed was XP and practice. It shows in no uncertain terms however that a fully skilled character is MUCH more effective than those with a skill lag.
The next level cap increase is set for early September and it will be 85, not 90 as I was suspecting. New content is being announced every couple days, but already I’m excited for my beast and bard. Beast is getting a TP ability for pets, important since my meriting has me trying to pop special attacks faster than the pet has been getting TP; there’s also an axe I want from Abyssea that will help that. For my bard the biggies are a Phalanx type song and the long-awaited Mage’s Ballad III. Bard/red mage may end up becoming my permanent job combo for missions and groups. Lots of good stuff for most of the other jobs too, but check another forum for those as I don’t have them. There is also going to be new augmentable job-specific armor coming out, no details I’ve seen as yet, but the clear implication is that it will be the new end-game armor of choice as it is customized to your style of play over and above some base stats good for your specific job. We’ll see.
I spoke before about my trial weapons and such. There’s not much happening on those as I’m currently working almost exclusively on my subjobs. Outside Nyzul Isle and Abyssea I’m not fighting any XP monsters, so I’m not able to make any real progress on them. IF I manage go get subs finished before the update I’ll end up working on them a bit, but taking my thief main to 80 will be my priority at that point so we’ll have to see.
Once I finished my dancer sub I had a big project shuffling gear to mules. My current job is ninja, that means 11 stack of toolbags as well as 11 tags of tools plus all the wearable gear I needed had to get to Glamdring. To make space for all that, I sent all my non rare/exclusive mage gear to mules (excepting the bits I use brd/whm) as well as all the bolts and quivers I use on thief. I also crafted a few consumables to use them up. However, I’m going to need to make a few more tools as I’m keeping my ninjitsu up this time and due to how I use ninja.
I hate blink tanking; I’m not even fond of partying with a blink tank. Unfortunately, I happen to be a GREAT tank. I just happen to believe ninja is more effective as a puller and melee DD, using the wheel as a DD tool while a paladin (or a warrior to a lesser extent) is better as a tank. As a matter of fact, I would like to do party builds with a pld/war, thf/rng or /nin, nin/dnc, healer, and 2 whatever, using the nin/dnc as a drain source, back-up healer, DD using the wheel and the thief’s SATA buddy, unless the nin is taking hate from the tank in which case the thf can SATA the tank when that happens which is who you want the thf to SATA in the 1st place.
Unfortunately, the only place I can consistently get parties is East Ronafure (s) on birds as the tank. This leaves me with weapons and ninjitsu that are highly skill-gapped. Unlike dancer, the only way I can skill up ninjitsu or katana is by playing my ninja, and since I hate the job, once I hit 49 it is done until almost every other job is at 99 and capped and fully merited as well (the only job I hate more being scholar). I do however want my ninjitsu capped as things I’ve read lead me to believe that skill also helps with interrupt on casting and I do need to /ninja situationally on my beast, bard and will need to on dancer and thief eventually.
Enough about my squishy tank, let’s talk Dynamis Dunes. NOT our lucky zone by any stretch. We’ve tried it now the last 2 Mondays and it has not treated us well. Subjobs are a pain in the ass to start as you are not seeking a ???, you need to actually pull a fly that is buried in group of other mobs. The fly itself is an easy kill, but the critters it is with are not. Just to add to the fun, the little fuckers move around too. As you start with 1 hour and the only time extender IS the Mega-Boss you really need to knock them out quick so you can get to work on the NMs you need to weaken the Mega Boss to a manageable level.
The only NM I can actually discuss is Fairy ring as we haven’t gotten past him. He’s a funguar, one of the toughest regular critters in the game. He hits like a truck, moves VERY fast and hides behind a pile of yagudo. I’m not sure why (as the guides are mute about it), but the normal way to pull him is to sacrifice pull the yags away, shadowbind him in place, voke and run back to camp, presumably so he can link as many yags as possible when they return once Shadowbind wears. Well, OUR 1st attempt we kind of expected to fail, we were light on people and hadn’t been there in at least a year so not many (including yours truly) were particularly up on the strategy. Our pullers couldn’t even find the NM.
Last night we did find him. Once shadowbind wore he proceeded to come for us, linking a Yag bard on the way. I luckily saw the bard and was able to sleep it. However, we didn’t do so good of a job on the NM. Melees did not all engage at once, and we could not keep hate off the nukers. Consequently, the NM was running all over the place one-shotting everyone and generally making life miserable for all. I ended up as the last one left (not from skill, just wasn’t doing enough to put a lot of hate on me) and we had mabe taken off 40-45% of its HP. At this point, the yag woke up and between the 2 of them they managed to off me as I was sleeping them (actually died with 1% left on casting time before lullaby would have gotten the yag, think the NM is immune). With 2 of our players dying where they could not be raised, requiring another sac pull, we simply ran out of time to have a realistic chance at win. We’re looking at other strategies since the most likely to work (the LS showing up) isn’t really likely to happen unless we start offering real-life cash payments to people as near as I can tell.
1st off, I finally finished off my dancer subjob to 49. Luckily, all that time leveling thief and bard has kept my skills capped on dancer, so really all I needed was XP and practice. It shows in no uncertain terms however that a fully skilled character is MUCH more effective than those with a skill lag.
The next level cap increase is set for early September and it will be 85, not 90 as I was suspecting. New content is being announced every couple days, but already I’m excited for my beast and bard. Beast is getting a TP ability for pets, important since my meriting has me trying to pop special attacks faster than the pet has been getting TP; there’s also an axe I want from Abyssea that will help that. For my bard the biggies are a Phalanx type song and the long-awaited Mage’s Ballad III. Bard/red mage may end up becoming my permanent job combo for missions and groups. Lots of good stuff for most of the other jobs too, but check another forum for those as I don’t have them. There is also going to be new augmentable job-specific armor coming out, no details I’ve seen as yet, but the clear implication is that it will be the new end-game armor of choice as it is customized to your style of play over and above some base stats good for your specific job. We’ll see.
I spoke before about my trial weapons and such. There’s not much happening on those as I’m currently working almost exclusively on my subjobs. Outside Nyzul Isle and Abyssea I’m not fighting any XP monsters, so I’m not able to make any real progress on them. IF I manage go get subs finished before the update I’ll end up working on them a bit, but taking my thief main to 80 will be my priority at that point so we’ll have to see.
Once I finished my dancer sub I had a big project shuffling gear to mules. My current job is ninja, that means 11 stack of toolbags as well as 11 tags of tools plus all the wearable gear I needed had to get to Glamdring. To make space for all that, I sent all my non rare/exclusive mage gear to mules (excepting the bits I use brd/whm) as well as all the bolts and quivers I use on thief. I also crafted a few consumables to use them up. However, I’m going to need to make a few more tools as I’m keeping my ninjitsu up this time and due to how I use ninja.
I hate blink tanking; I’m not even fond of partying with a blink tank. Unfortunately, I happen to be a GREAT tank. I just happen to believe ninja is more effective as a puller and melee DD, using the wheel as a DD tool while a paladin (or a warrior to a lesser extent) is better as a tank. As a matter of fact, I would like to do party builds with a pld/war, thf/rng or /nin, nin/dnc, healer, and 2 whatever, using the nin/dnc as a drain source, back-up healer, DD using the wheel and the thief’s SATA buddy, unless the nin is taking hate from the tank in which case the thf can SATA the tank when that happens which is who you want the thf to SATA in the 1st place.
Unfortunately, the only place I can consistently get parties is East Ronafure (s) on birds as the tank. This leaves me with weapons and ninjitsu that are highly skill-gapped. Unlike dancer, the only way I can skill up ninjitsu or katana is by playing my ninja, and since I hate the job, once I hit 49 it is done until almost every other job is at 99 and capped and fully merited as well (the only job I hate more being scholar). I do however want my ninjitsu capped as things I’ve read lead me to believe that skill also helps with interrupt on casting and I do need to /ninja situationally on my beast, bard and will need to on dancer and thief eventually.
Enough about my squishy tank, let’s talk Dynamis Dunes. NOT our lucky zone by any stretch. We’ve tried it now the last 2 Mondays and it has not treated us well. Subjobs are a pain in the ass to start as you are not seeking a ???, you need to actually pull a fly that is buried in group of other mobs. The fly itself is an easy kill, but the critters it is with are not. Just to add to the fun, the little fuckers move around too. As you start with 1 hour and the only time extender IS the Mega-Boss you really need to knock them out quick so you can get to work on the NMs you need to weaken the Mega Boss to a manageable level.
The only NM I can actually discuss is Fairy ring as we haven’t gotten past him. He’s a funguar, one of the toughest regular critters in the game. He hits like a truck, moves VERY fast and hides behind a pile of yagudo. I’m not sure why (as the guides are mute about it), but the normal way to pull him is to sacrifice pull the yags away, shadowbind him in place, voke and run back to camp, presumably so he can link as many yags as possible when they return once Shadowbind wears. Well, OUR 1st attempt we kind of expected to fail, we were light on people and hadn’t been there in at least a year so not many (including yours truly) were particularly up on the strategy. Our pullers couldn’t even find the NM.
Last night we did find him. Once shadowbind wore he proceeded to come for us, linking a Yag bard on the way. I luckily saw the bard and was able to sleep it. However, we didn’t do so good of a job on the NM. Melees did not all engage at once, and we could not keep hate off the nukers. Consequently, the NM was running all over the place one-shotting everyone and generally making life miserable for all. I ended up as the last one left (not from skill, just wasn’t doing enough to put a lot of hate on me) and we had mabe taken off 40-45% of its HP. At this point, the yag woke up and between the 2 of them they managed to off me as I was sleeping them (actually died with 1% left on casting time before lullaby would have gotten the yag, think the NM is immune). With 2 of our players dying where they could not be raised, requiring another sac pull, we simply ran out of time to have a realistic chance at win. We’re looking at other strategies since the most likely to work (the LS showing up) isn’t really likely to happen unless we start offering real-life cash payments to people as near as I can tell.
Monday, August 23, 2010
I can see for miles and miles…
Big weekend in Glam-land gaming-wise.
Friday ended up as Dynamis Xarc. We did fairly well, but we had a problem on job mix. We lost a healer due to a disconnect so one of our thieves had to change to a healer. Good on the healing front, but bad for pulling. I was asked to step in. Now bard is a good puller most places… Dynamis is NOT one of those places. The problem is I come /whm to help on healing and to save a bundle on Reraise (hairpins ain’t cheap). If I knew I was pulling I would /nin or /thf; I think thief would be better to help with sacrifice pulls, but ninja for overall pulling. I’m not on the raise+ priority list but I don’t worry too much about that as I always bring a XP buffer to the game. I think I’ll just /nin in the future.
It turns out the best way for me to pull is NOT to use a song on a statue, it’s to run in and get agro while under Mazurka and then run like hell. Using a song costs me my Mazurka while simply being detected does not; I can keep it until I get hit with something. All that being said, I had issues on Friday with pulling. Where else? The Eye wall, everybody’s favorite place. 1st pull went well, surprising considering I’ve never done it and did not come in my pulling configuration, and that it wasn’t a double-sacrifice (there is a point to a puller having a group sleep ability). It was the 2nd that caused problems. I tried to pull the next set of stuff but died too quick to make it back to camp. Next I tried to just pull the time extension around the solid wall of mobs; for experienced pullers the distance LOOKS ok for a clean pull but it turns out its link range is HUGE. Nonetheless, we did manage to get the extension. We may want to try an alternate strategy, holding a ranged attacker in reserve when we do the 1st pull to attack the TE and bring it in the 1st wave as the conventional strategy only brings the bottom 1/3 of the wall to camp and the TE is in the middle. That way we don’t have to fuck with the rest of the wall on farming nights unless we want to.
Saturday was a leveling sub-jobs day. I started the day at level 45 on my white mage. I was able to FoV to 46, then I got an invite to a Dunes party which I decided to take. It lived up to my misgivings. The party was level 13 and I expected they were by the lizards (as no one would answer my position question) so I did a Tele-Dem and ran in to grab FoV Refresh and Reraise on the way to party. Well, they are on the far side of the tunnel and say to grab page 2, which I do. I fight my way through the bats in the tunnel with the help of a pixie that took up residence there and eventually get to the party. We kill the crabs easy enough but instead of pulling lizards from where we are, we run back to Lizzyville, changing sync to 10 on the way. We barely make it to camp and I lose my FoV buffs in the process. We I renew those and rejoin the party, which is very bad at partying normally. The low guy eventually levels and in 2 hours I made about 4k in XP.
So I decide to go back to FoV, but I got an invite to a synced party in East Ronafure (S) through an LS buddy, Chrispy. I take him up on it (I had been checking for a level-appropriate party for me at 46 all day but there were never enough people). This goes much better as the noobs were not involved. I do make it to 49 in this party in about 2 hours, moving smoothly because I had healing help from the dancer main that was our sync. However, no skill points at all. I logged for the night.
In the middle of Saturday however was Abyssea. I geared up the bard/dancer in hopes of another recapping of XP and 10 merit point day. It was not meant to be however. We had bad luck on light and were just not getting our XP anywhere near cap. Not sure why, maybe just luck of the draw. In the almost 2 hours we were there I think we got about 20k. I’m going to need to go again soon as it’s the best place to merit. I might want to set-up a run in Konschtadt though in hopes of getting the pop item for the NM that drops the beast axe. I’d love to use that when I’m not able to work on trial weapons.
Sunday comes and I had some RL obligations, so my playtime was cut shorter than usual. I 1st did a gear shuffling with my mules to stow my mage gear and get my level 40 dancer stuff. I also maxed out my Abyssea time and triggered the quest for my dancer AF weapon. When I got back from my RL things I was ready to do the quest which unfortunately requires me to stay dancer throughout. I call for help on the LS and Loraa and Orague show up. 2 level 80 samurai is a bit of overkill for this NM so I got my War Hoop easily. Now it’s time to level my dancer.
I had already decided to dancer/beast when solo to make life easy. Strangely enough dancer main doesn’t seem to be too popular with parties, no idea why. Well the job is ridiculously easy if you pick the right camp (although the fact that I have all my skills capped at this level certainly isn’t hurting me either). Pretty much you just charm, make 3 kills, zone to get rid of (and heal via repop) the pet, zone right back and repeat ad nauseum. I didn’t get a level, but only because I ran out of time before Nyzul.
I changed to beast/dancer 80 for Nyzul as it seems to be a bit more useful than my bard, unless we don’t have a blue in which case bard is needed for light-based dispel. We did ok, 2 runs went very smooth (in fact, our 1st run we did 6 floors because our pole person didn’t know to choose exit). The last run we ran into time issues. We had multiple kill all floors and one was packed with undead. 2 of the kill all floors also had the “do not destroy gears” thing as well which just sucks. We ended up running out of time on the 15th floor while fighting the leader who was hard to find.
Friday ended up as Dynamis Xarc. We did fairly well, but we had a problem on job mix. We lost a healer due to a disconnect so one of our thieves had to change to a healer. Good on the healing front, but bad for pulling. I was asked to step in. Now bard is a good puller most places… Dynamis is NOT one of those places. The problem is I come /whm to help on healing and to save a bundle on Reraise (hairpins ain’t cheap). If I knew I was pulling I would /nin or /thf; I think thief would be better to help with sacrifice pulls, but ninja for overall pulling. I’m not on the raise+ priority list but I don’t worry too much about that as I always bring a XP buffer to the game. I think I’ll just /nin in the future.
It turns out the best way for me to pull is NOT to use a song on a statue, it’s to run in and get agro while under Mazurka and then run like hell. Using a song costs me my Mazurka while simply being detected does not; I can keep it until I get hit with something. All that being said, I had issues on Friday with pulling. Where else? The Eye wall, everybody’s favorite place. 1st pull went well, surprising considering I’ve never done it and did not come in my pulling configuration, and that it wasn’t a double-sacrifice (there is a point to a puller having a group sleep ability). It was the 2nd that caused problems. I tried to pull the next set of stuff but died too quick to make it back to camp. Next I tried to just pull the time extension around the solid wall of mobs; for experienced pullers the distance LOOKS ok for a clean pull but it turns out its link range is HUGE. Nonetheless, we did manage to get the extension. We may want to try an alternate strategy, holding a ranged attacker in reserve when we do the 1st pull to attack the TE and bring it in the 1st wave as the conventional strategy only brings the bottom 1/3 of the wall to camp and the TE is in the middle. That way we don’t have to fuck with the rest of the wall on farming nights unless we want to.
Saturday was a leveling sub-jobs day. I started the day at level 45 on my white mage. I was able to FoV to 46, then I got an invite to a Dunes party which I decided to take. It lived up to my misgivings. The party was level 13 and I expected they were by the lizards (as no one would answer my position question) so I did a Tele-Dem and ran in to grab FoV Refresh and Reraise on the way to party. Well, they are on the far side of the tunnel and say to grab page 2, which I do. I fight my way through the bats in the tunnel with the help of a pixie that took up residence there and eventually get to the party. We kill the crabs easy enough but instead of pulling lizards from where we are, we run back to Lizzyville, changing sync to 10 on the way. We barely make it to camp and I lose my FoV buffs in the process. We I renew those and rejoin the party, which is very bad at partying normally. The low guy eventually levels and in 2 hours I made about 4k in XP.
So I decide to go back to FoV, but I got an invite to a synced party in East Ronafure (S) through an LS buddy, Chrispy. I take him up on it (I had been checking for a level-appropriate party for me at 46 all day but there were never enough people). This goes much better as the noobs were not involved. I do make it to 49 in this party in about 2 hours, moving smoothly because I had healing help from the dancer main that was our sync. However, no skill points at all. I logged for the night.
In the middle of Saturday however was Abyssea. I geared up the bard/dancer in hopes of another recapping of XP and 10 merit point day. It was not meant to be however. We had bad luck on light and were just not getting our XP anywhere near cap. Not sure why, maybe just luck of the draw. In the almost 2 hours we were there I think we got about 20k. I’m going to need to go again soon as it’s the best place to merit. I might want to set-up a run in Konschtadt though in hopes of getting the pop item for the NM that drops the beast axe. I’d love to use that when I’m not able to work on trial weapons.
Sunday comes and I had some RL obligations, so my playtime was cut shorter than usual. I 1st did a gear shuffling with my mules to stow my mage gear and get my level 40 dancer stuff. I also maxed out my Abyssea time and triggered the quest for my dancer AF weapon. When I got back from my RL things I was ready to do the quest which unfortunately requires me to stay dancer throughout. I call for help on the LS and Loraa and Orague show up. 2 level 80 samurai is a bit of overkill for this NM so I got my War Hoop easily. Now it’s time to level my dancer.
I had already decided to dancer/beast when solo to make life easy. Strangely enough dancer main doesn’t seem to be too popular with parties, no idea why. Well the job is ridiculously easy if you pick the right camp (although the fact that I have all my skills capped at this level certainly isn’t hurting me either). Pretty much you just charm, make 3 kills, zone to get rid of (and heal via repop) the pet, zone right back and repeat ad nauseum. I didn’t get a level, but only because I ran out of time before Nyzul.
I changed to beast/dancer 80 for Nyzul as it seems to be a bit more useful than my bard, unless we don’t have a blue in which case bard is needed for light-based dispel. We did ok, 2 runs went very smooth (in fact, our 1st run we did 6 floors because our pole person didn’t know to choose exit). The last run we ran into time issues. We had multiple kill all floors and one was packed with undead. 2 of the kill all floors also had the “do not destroy gears” thing as well which just sucks. We ended up running out of time on the 15th floor while fighting the leader who was hard to find.
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