Fun screenies!

A fun post without any rantings, or reflections! Here are some of the fun screenshots that I've accumulated recently, for your enjoyment!

First off... I think Utaru has... some unhealthy tendencies...

I'm glad we haven't gone back to THAT Assault in a while.

If you haven't seen him before, this is what Kagetora looks like in campaign. Too bad Utsusemi doesn't really do this!All of us ganging up on Varg! Ribbit! Salvage can be really fun, and funny, especially the first few times you're turned into a frog and you're chasing after the poor taru!

Big scary dog... too bad he had to be put down. This was during floor 80 Nyzul :D

Galka vs. Chocobo Chicks! So cuuuuuuuuuuuuute! Part of the 2nd Lt. promotion quest ^^

And finally, the #1 reason why elvaan should never, EVER level Dancer...

That's it for this round!

Dancer@75, taking a step back

Dancer & Merit parties
Managed to get to level 75 Dancer on Sunday night... late Sunday night in a merit-type party. Since Dancer has no job-specific merits yet, I kept on exping until I got a 20k buffer on Dancer and later dumped one merit into dagger. 2nd job at 75, one more then I had originally figured I'd do, but after Dancer was announced, I just *had* to play with this job! It's a great change from mage jobs, but it's still a support-type job. I had originally debated between playing WHM & BLU, and I'm glad that I chose BLU as DNC really fills my desire to be a healer.

I think this is my... 5th merit-type, continous pull exp party where you don't take any breaks, just kill the next mob lined up... I had three others, once on BLU in the late 50s with a 4x BLU, BRD & token NIN party that got to chain #17 before the BRD overdid it and died... Did one merit party on BLU with Aqqy , Utty and others, and of course the two other partieson DNC with Varg, Aqqy, Fuuji, Nain & Dexie. I realized that I really... really don't like merit parties at all. Doing it on Dancer is a lot nicer compared to BLU where I'm sitting at 100~200MP since DNC has the endurance to go on forever as long as you can hit. However, the monotony of continously going fron one mob to the next, killing, healing, next... for hours on end is just... boring. Not my idea of fun, and I'd probably never actively seek it out to do. And it can be even stressful if you're doing the pulling and trying to keep the chain going. Definitely not leveling BRD given that chain pulling is a bard's job, and that's just not my idea of fun.

Taking a step back
So, with Dancer basically done, I think I'm going to take a step back from FFXI and take it easy for a while. Summer is almost here, lots of other games are coming out, plus I really, really want to spend some time search for a new RL, non-sucky job now that I actually *can* take on a new job. You know all that talk about the H-1B visas taking jobs away from Americans thing? Well, all the stories out there for, and against legal immigration totally have it wrong. There's a different reason why companies prefer to hire from abroad, but that's a rant for another time.

FFXI content wise... let's see... I'm two fights away from finishing the ToAU missions, and about 3 weeks of assaults left before finishing that as well. That's 3 nights of events that should be going away soon. Nyzul Isle... well, I'm not sure how much of that I'd want to do. Part of me wants the challenge of coordinating a group well enough to climb up to floor 100, and kill off the NMs in between, but I don't want to spend two nights a week doing it. I'm also not sure how much more Limbus I want to do... It has become much too routine and boring now, even though we've finally got our Omega strategy down. I'm just not really up for... doing this for months and months on end. I'll probably at least do enough runs to get coins to pay Toku back for the Dusk Gloves he pre-sold me, and definitely to try out Dancer in Limbus a few times as a change from going as Blue Mage. That would just leave the Friday SPT on RDM left as a commitment.

Other content wise... Let's see... WoG missions still haven't seriously been released yet, though I do need to catch up a little on those mission-quests... Bastok Rank missions have been in the background, and unlike the CoP or ToAU missions, I don't really feel an urgency to complete them as the story so far seems pretty boring. I'm Rank 7 Bastok right now. I suppose that sometime I should get some people together and finish that off. This past weekend, I tried Salvage out with Varg's group. It was actually quite fun, and quite a change from the usual routine. I'll blog about it some other time once I get my screenshots off my computer. Still, I doubt that I'd have the patience or desire to repeat it for months on end to get items. I'd rather do it a few times just for the fun of it!

No, this doesn't mean that you've gotten rid of me. I'll still be around, probably afk-campaigning here and there, though more afk going forward. I *want* to go do some events... like the Swift Belt & Soboro runs that we did before, or if Zuzu gets off his butt, help out with some missions.
I'd also like to grab some people and go merit/exp in the [S] beastmen strongholds instead of sticking to the normal routines. I don't want to go merit in ToAU areas, but I'd love to explore & exp in the deserted [S] areas just to see what's around there. Nobody ever goes there at all.

Interestingly, this feels very similar to the last time I quit FFXI. I was bored with the endgame routine, sky, dynamis, etc. I'd finished leveling the jobs I wanted to, some of my friends planning to transfer servers, and the people who were left were too busy doing endgame stuff to do anything outside of the usual windows/schedule. I had only found one person among my friends who wanted to explore the "new" CoP areas with me (which I now recognize as Attowa Chasm & Bibiki Bay) Unlike the last time though, I recognize that I do enjoy certain aspects of FFXI and that it is possible to be a casual player, as long as I don't get drawn too deeply into the time-sink activities. When I started up Ascy, I promised myself that I wouldn't do any soul-sucking endgame stuff, and I'd like to keep that promise :)

Dancer revisited

So, with Dancer at 73 and closing in rapidly to 75 thanks to near-continous campaigns in Rolanberry Fields, I'm closing in on finishing up this job. The last time I wrote specifically about how Dancer played, I was in my 40s, so things are a little different now.

DDing
After getting Dancing Edge, it becomes possible for DNC to actually do some decent damage... we're not talking anywhere near a regular DD's level of damage, or a THF, but at least it contributes. Together with Reverse Flourish, a Dancer can heal a party and still WS, as long as you plan things out right (i.e. get 4 finishing moves before doing a WS, making sure Sambas will not wear right after you WS) Staying at 300% is not necessary at all, and is in fact, quite wasteful. Using Reverse Flourish and the TP return from Dancing Edge, I can pretty much spam Curing Waltz IV as soon as the timer is up, even including WSing.

Timers >.<
The ability for DNC to cure continously is what makes it such a good job for long-term fights. Red Mage is about the only other job that has native curing abilities that can keep up with Dancer for super-long fights due to Refresh & Convert. However, the biggest limitation in Dancer is the Waltz timers. This really doesn't show up until Curing Waltz IV at level 70.

For any mage, you can spam cures pretty much at will, as long as you have MP. The cure timers don't affect you because you can switch between casting Cure IV & Cure III to keep someone's HP up in the event that you're taking a pounding. For Dancer, the recast timer on Curing Waltz IV is 17 seconds -.-;; This is almost double the 10 second recast of Curing Waltz III, making it very annoying when you're being beat up by a campaign mob and when you could really use another boost of HP to stay alive. Nothing like getting mobbed to death at 200%+ TP just cos you're waiting for a timer. It's nearly as effective to just spam Curing Waltz III instead, even though you end up using more TP/HP cured.

Usability in events
So far, my experience is Dancer trives on long, low-man events where you're dealing with a long fight where a mage may run out of MP. If the battle is short, then a Dancer won't be able to build up TP in the first couple of minutes to be effective. If it requires more than a party, then not only will a Dancer not be able to heal others, but having that many people around would virtually ensure that there will be enough mage healers around... RDMs, WHMs, etc.

I'd like to use Dancer on more mission battles, but right now, the stun capabilities of my Blue Mage, and the flexibility of switching roles is too valuable to give up, especially in the ToAU battles we're coming up on.
(Side note... Nain & I, together with Ashle, Utaru, Flayer & Calix are scheduled to finish the last two ToAU fights this Friday night after the Static PT... we might want to cut that night a little short ^^;)

Hopefully SE will add some improvements to high level DNC to make it more viable for other events in the future. Right now, I'd say... merit parties and various farming activities (testimonies, coffer key drops?) are where I'd take Dancer of Blue Mage...

SAM/DNC - Overpowered?
Thanks to Zurar, I'm also noticing something interesting about SAM/DNC. This job combination has a higher TP gain compared to DNC main, especially with a Soboro, and you get most of the key Dancer job abilities... You get Healing Waltz, and Curing Waltz II which can pretty much be spammed. Add in the job ability to ensure that you always have TP, and SAM's native damage mitigation abilities, I'm thinking that this may be the next super job combination! Great for DDing, backup, maybe even main healing!

Maybe I'll have to level SAM up next and put that Soboro to good use! :)

Big weekend - Missions, Assault, leveling up + more

Wow, busy weekend just went by... With the hot weather in NorCal, I made a conscious decision to just stay home and watch TV/play games instead of braving the outside weather this weekend... I didn't think I'd end up playing FFXI for all of it though! Let's see what happened... in chronologcal order...

Leveling Up
Met up with Aqqy, Vargie, Nain, Fuupup and Dexie on Friday to level DNC in the mire. Went from 71-72 easily, though we went a little later then expected, pushing back the ToAU mission run slightly ^^; I got DNC from 72-73 as of this morning from another pickup party on Sunday morning, and from a bit of campaign... Just two more levels to 75. Once I hit 75, I intend to take DNC to as many missions and events as possible to experiment with it to see what it can do.

As we were finishing up on Friday, Aqqy mentioned the idea of starting a new Friday night exp static with the six of us. Starting this Friday at level 10, I'd be doing RDM, Nain PLD, and other people... well, other jobs, but with the healer/refresh & tank covered, pretty much anything goes, especially with supermule backup xD. I never actually thought that I'd level RDM again since I did it all before in another life, but now I'm starting to look forward to it again. The main difference is that this time, I'll be doing it as RDM/WHM. I was RDM/BLM exclusively the last time I played RDM, so it'll be a little different. I'm probably completely out of practice and out of touch on how to play a modern RDM xD

On Saturday afternoon, I took out RDM1 in Christmas gear to get to level 10. Zurar joined me with PUP for fun, and we dragged along a PL. Took about... I think just over 2 hours to get to level 10 while using only one charge of an Emperor's Band. I need to pick up the RDM specific spells at some point, and get some actual real gear xD

Missions
Kinda weird how things work out... on Friday night, we did yet another ToAU mission, the Gessho fight this time. Calix, Utaru, Ashle & I needed the fight, with Nain & Flayer helping us out... we failed twice, but on the 3rd time, we nailed the fight down easily. We're just two fights away from finishing this storyline now, and I must say that the ToAU storyline has me just as captivated as the CoP story! I'm just annoyed at these stupid "JP Midnight" cutscenes that force us to spread the missions out over days (weeks in our case).

On Saturday, an old friend sent me a /tell right when I was watching some TV to do the Bastok rank 6 missions. Since the missions were relatively easy, I decided to just go as DNC for fun. The fights were a joke, and we hammered both missions out in about 2 hours. Rank 7 Bastok now, and we might end up going for the rest of the Bastok missions next Saturday xD. Maybe once I hit Rank 10 Bastok, I'll switch over to Sandy and join Aqqy in finishing those missions up!

Assault
Ranked up to Chief Sergeant this Friday. Only 16 unique assaults left before reaching captain. That's about 4 weeks worth of Assaults, since we're only about to do 5 unique assaults each week due to the schedule and rank-up mission requirements. Along with that, we have 4 repeats to do for Zurar in order for him to complete all the unique assaults as well, so it all kinda works out :)

On Sunday evening, I went for a Nyzul Isle run with Aqqy & Varg's group, taking Nain's spot since he was completely exhausted from work all day. They really, REALLY have Nyzul down to a routine... we went through 5 floors without a hitch in just 15 minutes (Yes, I have a clock with a timer that I hit whenever I start these Assaults now xD) Picked up a few useful things too in handling Assaults, such as...
- For Eliminate Specific Enemies - Leave one person by the Rune so that you can move up to the next floor as soon as the "Objective Achieved" message shows up
- Once you complete an objective, all mages should /heal while a melee (Preferably the THF) can run back and move to the next floor
- Pairing up and moving around is good to cover each other... but if you come across one group fighting, help them finish off the mob and move on
So, yeah, that's a very smooth, well-rehearsed Nyzul run, much different from the confused, nobody knows what to do runs that I've tried on my own. Now to get our Nyzul group to be as polished as theirs :)

Blue Mage - Equipment update

I've been concentrating a lot on Dancer lately, from exping on it, to saving gil and buying gear specially for Dancer. Blue Mage has suffered a little from neglect as I've been a little lazy in swapping equipment whenever I change jobs. I've also been using some new equipment that, while good on DNC, isn't exactly playing to BLU's strengths.

So, now I'm going back to examine my available Blue Mage equipment and I'm grabbing anything that's reasonable off of the Auction House to try to get the best possible performance instead of this weird melee/spellcasting mix I've been using recently. I actually have most of the gear that I need, but I haven't set up the macros to take full advantage of the gear yet. Equipment sets are split into:

Physical Magic Set
Emphesis on Str & Dex, with Vit close behind for Cannonball. This is the set of gear I'm casting in 90% of the time. Looks like I'll be macroing in:
- Voyager Sallet (Str+3, Dex+4)
- Light Gauntlets (Str+3, Vit+3)
- Marine F Boots (Str+3, Dex+3, Vit+2)
- Spike Necklace (Str+3, Dex+3) or Chiv Chain (Str+3, Accuracy +5)
Also considering picking up:
- Warwolf Belt (Str+5, Dex+5, Vit+5) - Almost definitely getting this since it's pretty cheap
- Smilodon Mantle +1 (Str+5) - Around 30k on the AH... it's 3 higher strength over Amenet +1
- Ruby Ring (Str+4) - Another 30k on AH... I'm not sure this is necessary, and I'd be giving up even more accuracy for this... probably not worth it
I'll be picking up the Warwolf Belt and giving this setup a try in Assault tonight. Hopefully I'm not giving up too much accuracy with such a heavy strength build.

TP set
I only switch to this equipment when either MP is low, or we're dealing with such weak mobs that using physical magic won't be worth it... main differences from the physical magic spells above is an emphesis on haste & accuracy. Equipment is:
- Walahla Turban
- Cobra Mittens
- Dusk Ledelsens
- Swift Belt
- Peacock Charm

MP Set
Not much to be said about the equipment here... This is just gear to give me extra MP I can spam out in the first fight. Right now, I get about 200 extra MP, pushing me up to around 830MP before I start a fight. This gear gets macroed out as soon as fighting starts and I've spammed a few spells, and doesn't get macroed back in unless I have to /heal for MP

Mind / Charisma Set
I haven't even started to work on this set yet... the idea behind it is to pile up as much mnd as possible in order to maximize Magic Fruit for main healing, or to maximize the damage of Mind Blast & Magic Hammer, the later of which also means that I'll get that much more MP back. Charisma would be for an "Eyes On Me" magical attack build. Possible equipment would be:
- Errant Houppelande (Mnd+10, Chr+10) - 50-70k on AH
- Yigit Turban (Mnd+4, Magic Attack Bonus +2)
- Yigit Gages (Mnd+5, MAB+2)
- Yigit Crackows (Mnd+3, MAB+3)
- Sapphire Ring x2 (Mnd+4) - 40k each on AH
- Angel's Ring x2 (Chr+4) - 80k each on AH
Now I'm not entirely sure if having a Mnd or Chr set is really worth it. There are situations where I do have to main heal, and I guess it would be interesting to see if Magic Hammer can be used to keep MP up... for magical nukes though, it might be better to just stick to breath spells

Breath Set
Frost Breath, Fire Breath, Poison Breath... the simple modifier to these magical attacks is HP. The only problem with equipment swapping for these breath attacks is that after swapping equipment in, I'd have to cure myself to full HP for the equipment swap to have full effect. Again, like the mnd set, I'm not sure if it's worth getting gear and carrying it around for the possibility of using Breath attacks, especially given how much MP these attacks require and how long they take to cast. It might end up being better to tell a RDM to nuke while I take over healing the party.
I haven't thought much about gear for this set... Mainly HP+ gear >.<

So... that's it for Blue Mage... at least until I start getting some Homam or Denali gear! The very least I'm going to do is set up my Physical Magic set, then investigate how effective a Mnd set is for healing. If you have any suggestions on possible gear, do tell!

Missions - Assault, Nyzul, Zilart

Phew... sorry for the lack of updates... Been a busy couple of weeks. As usual, my blogging only occurs when there is something else I should be doing, but don't really feel like doing, so I end up writing up a post instead! In today's case, I should really be studying for my Sales Management midterm that is coming up tomorrow evening ^^;;

Somehow, last week was almost entirely about missions! Let's see...

Assault
Got the rank-up quest for Sergeant Major... hopefully we can complete the Chief Sergeant assault missions this week. That means that maybe by this weekend, I'll finally have my Perdu Hanger! That would put my Dissector into retirement unless it's for a mission that needs an enhanced critical hit rate.

We're well on the way to working everyone up towards the Captain rank. So far, we've completed every single Assault mission along the way instead of farming any one mission. My only concern is Zurar, since he only comes for the Thursday assaults and has probably missed a few missions on his way up. Hopefully once we finish off with the final assaults, we'll be able to go back and fill in his holes so that he can get captain!

Nyzul Isle
We had an extra tag available last Thursday. Instead of simply farming a zone for points like we normally did, I dragged our usual assault team to go try one floor of Nyzul. This was both to get a feel of Nyzul Isle and to get the "clear" so that everyone would be qualified for Captain rank. Not everyone wants to move on to do Nyzul after we complete all the assaults.

We basically took our time doing Nyzul, looking around, poking the chests, killing even a NM. (Some Diremite NM that's normally found in Pso'Xja... didn't get the ??? item appraised to the right item). We had an "Eliminate specific enemies" mission, and the type of mob was a rat. It wasn't too hard, but most of us had missed the "Objective Achieved" message and more time was spent running around searching for the last, non-existant mob xD I think we finished the objective in only 10 minutes, including time running around, /poking the entrance chest, and killing the NM. Definitely not good enough to actually do Nyzul seriously, but at least it is a good experience.

Once we finish the regular Assault missions, I'd like to start leading a group to do Nyzul, mainly for the relic weapons xD It'll take some time to figure it out, but I think we have the right people. Just need to make sure we get the right jobs >.<

Zilart Missions
I've had a bazaar message that has been listing the missions I needed to complete (Bastok Rank missions, ZM16) and the Blue Magic spells I still need to get (the hardest 3 + Asuran Claws) for the last few months. Looks like that message paid off! I ran into someone while exping Dancer who commented that he was on the same ZM, needing only the last fight. Yesterday afternoon, while watching TV & campaigning, I got a /tell asking if I still needed the fight. Didn't take too long to change jobs, gear up and head to sky!

I did this fight a long time ago in another life and I remembered it as being hard... this time around, it seemed like a piece of cake! Ironically, we wiped the first time we did it because... well, we overdid it. The "plate" shield uses this massive AoE attack called "Phase Shift" at every 1/3 of the life. It does about 800 damage, but is absorbed by 2 shadows. During our first round, we went all out and it did "Phase Shift" virtually twice in a row, killing our PLD and DRK instantly and leaving the rest of us weakened. The 3rd Phase Shift was before we could get shadows up, and we were Easy Prey for a Sleepga + Blizzardga attack xD

2nd round went much better and we held back damage until we got people's health, and shadows back up. Broke the record without breaking a sweat! xD Now I'm done with ZMs... Need to kill Bahamut and maybe, eventually do Apocolypse Nigh >.<


Other stuff...
DNC 71 now. I picked up my Dagger of Trials, and I still need to break the latent. 100 self-SC for Fragmentation should do it. I just need to find time to go do it. Working towards 72, though I've been slowing down cos I really want to party with Varg, Aqqy, Fuuji and Nain this coming Friday instead of grabbing a party with strangers!

Meanwhile, I've started playing around with Magic Hammer on BLU... It does damage, restores MP, and it has a funny animation, so I'm hoping to use it more! I really should start working on different equipment sets for my BLU... Need to figure out the right equipment for the relevant slots to put together a couple of builds:
- Str build for spellcasting (regular spells, but especially for Sneak Attack Vertical Cleave)
- Mnd build for Magic Hammer
- HP build for breath spells
- Chr build for Eyes on Me
- Def build for Cannonball
I guess this is one of the big reasons why I liked the idea of maining Dancer... it's a lot simpler job compared to Blue Mage, and you only really need two sets of good equipment to be a fully effective Dancer. However, I'm anticipating that I'll probably be BLU for most of the events I'm currently doing... Limbus and Assaults, due to the versatility needed for both events, so I'll be looking into gearing BLU up again >.<

Update on the car situation xD

Looks like the voting is tired between the BMW 335i and the Infiniti G37 with two votes each! This weekend, I went to the BMW dealership to take a look at both the 335i & 135i... boy, the 135i is ugly. Plus it's tiny and the interior and exterior look like a throwback to the old BMW 3-series from the early 2000s.

The BMW 3-series is still in the running... though two things are holding me back. 1. It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too common in this area -.- I think there are more 3's on the road than Honda Civics!2. I'm not that impressed with BMW quality... seen a few new BMWs fall apart (interior roof came loose and fell in, the kidney "grill" falling out"

So, today I went to take a quick peek at the Audi A5 and the Infiniti G37 during lunch hour... impressions are:
Audi A5:
- Well designed interior layout... I like the fact that the controls are all near the shifter instead of having to reach out towards the center console. Overall felt like a nice fit for interior design
- Exterior is quite subdued... You wouldn't think of this as a high performance vehicle... actually, after doing a little digging, I figured that it was the Audi S5 that really competed with the BMW 335i & Infiniti G37... that car is another $10k!- Heaviest vehicle of the lot, with less horsepower... probably due to the AWD system

Infiniti G37
- Interior is nice, but not as nicely designed compared to the A5. Infiniti is still using a surprising amount of plastic for the interior- It has a lot of gadgets! From the iPod/iPhone connector, to touchscreen, voice recognition, rear camera and more
- Exterior is a little more aggressive, but it's a very slight evolution from the G35. You wouldnt' be able to tell the difference from a distance.
- Least expensive of the lot... about $5k difference >.< That's over 10%, plus it has the largest gas tank (surprisingly, range is a factor since I hate having to stop for gas ^^;;;)

Looks like the G37 is the current winner... I'll be going this Friday to go test drive all the vehicles, but I'll be preparing to negotiate for a G37, assuming the test drive goes well...