Overcamping

After waiting nearly two weeks to go leveling on Dancer, trying to figure out a schedule to match up with the two friends I've been trying to go leveling with, finally gave up on trying to match with two schedules and just put up party flag last night with Zurar...

... which of course, means that it takes over an hour before we get any invite since everyone who wants to party has already formed their parties two hours ago. It's nearing sleep time by the time someone invites us both... let's see... unconventional party, 2x DNC, DRG, BLU/NIN, COR/BRD and rank 1 WAR/NIN with underleveled sub. Hmmm... warning flags start to go up.

• Rank 1 WAR51/NIN20... alright, maybe the benefit of the doubt... still, an underleveled sub... at least she was using a Great Axe
• BLU/NIN... no, does not work for exp parties. I used BLU/NIN for exactly one exp party in all my time leveling up Blue Mage... there are tons of better subs out there! WAR gives you double attack, beserk, etc., THF gives you sneak attack, hell, even WHM gives you the ability to help out with status cures... NIN gives you... shadows, which you should never need, and the ability to hold another weapon? For all you Blue Mages out there, learn to ride the hate line and use your MP effectively instead of spamming it out!
• COR/BRD... now this is interesting. This is someone who took the COR as a support job role and took it all the way

So anyway, let' s see what happens... Mmm... Kuftal Tunnel. Never actually exp'ed there, just went there for skillups and latent removals on crabs. Well, WAR gets aggro even before camp, then the BLU aggros a crab while AT camp, leading to a party wipe even before we get started. -.- Good thing the party leader had a 75 WHM friend handy to raise and stuff.

So, getting started... mmm... this is really slow... at least nobody is dying yet. WAR can't hold hate, which I can't blame her since Bubble Shower is doing a ton of damage AOE and us Dancers are basically spamming Divine Waltz. As expected, the BLU/NIN runs low on MP pretty fast and has to /heal about... maybe 1 out of every 4 battles. He's trying to use Blank Gaze, but with hate all over the place, it rarely hits. He ends up asking the COR/BRD for Ballad to keep MP up. Truthfully, if he had used /THF, he'd be able to save a ton of MP, throwing off one, maybe two high-hitting spells per battle instead of spamming spells, pulling hate and running out of MP.

Individual battles are taking forever... we're talking 3, 4 minutes each crab. Of course, this is the sort of battle the Dancers excel at since we have basically unlimited healing potential, so nobody dies and there's no real time limit onwhen the battle needs to end. Then I realize that we're hitting for very low numbers... 0.. 1... 2... 16... 0. Some of that is due to Metallic Body, but also due to the defense boost. Good thing the COR was on the ball with the Dispel Quickdraw. However, she also starts pulling the next mob when the current mob is at maybe 10-20%, sleeping it at camp... alright, first off, we have a TON of crabs around us. This isn't a situation where we're competing for pulls. In fact, we have to crowd around a small area so as not to get aggro from the 10 other crabs within ranged attack range! Second... 10-20% for this party is probably another minute or more of fighting! Plus the party is half dead by the time the crab is over. Pulling another crab does nothing except get the Dancers hate even before engaging since we have to cure everyone up by the time the first crab is over!

What else... mmm... COR/BRD was really playing like a support job role... two rolls, one song, some meleeing, and good quickdraws. Unfortunately, I don't think I saw any actual DD going on... I've seen COR/RNGs at work, and they were putting out numbers that made me jealous... playing COR on the cheap side? Mmm... oh yeah, the other DNC (party leader) somehow managed to sit on nearly 300% TP during the battles... Weird... considering I was spamming Divine Waltz, pulling hate and tanking through half the battles. I haven't used this much shihei to get one level before, not even on NIN/WAR!

So we're struggling, barely keeping alive and getting capped exp every battle until the COR fails her sleep shot one too many times and gets killed. We're barely breaking chain #2, with the rare #3 since it takes so long to kill, and we're barely hitting 3k/hour exp. Good time for a break, change of camp. We get replaced when I'm @3k to 54 after Zurar mentions that he's sleepy and the replacement RDM does the smart thing and outposts over instead of teleporting & walking like the party leader thought he would.

This morning, I'm thinking... unconventional party, but it shouldn't be *that* bad... you have dedicated support, two healers, two heavy damage dealers (3 if you count the WAR) What went wrong?

... Robber Crabs are level 60-62... level 51-52 can barely touch them -.-