Random question: Where would you go to vacation?

Here's a random question for everyone! If you had a 2-3 week, maybe longer vacation period, where would you go? I'm finishing up with grad school next spring and I'm already starting to daydream about what to do after school is out. The last big real vacation I went on was when I went to Japan on a 3 week vacation back in 2005. I also hit France & the UK last year, but part of that was for school, and another part was for my parents, so I don't really count that >.>

So, now I'm looking to take another big vacation, but... I'm coming out blank >.> If I graduated LAST spring, I'd have probably set up a big Beijing Olympics vacation, but I missed that boat. Anyone have any ideas on where to go? Please post in comments! Some random ideas are... Hawaii and do some Scuba diving while I'm out there, or NYC and do the touristy things there!


Side note: I just started PLD last night... went from 1-11 with Zurar's supermule-in-training Yasunami. As usual, the initial levels were boring, but at least they went by quickly with Zurar PLing. One thing that kinda shocked me though, was that starting at level 9 I started getting party invites for the Dunes... in total, I recieved 5 party invites between level 9 and 11, during which I was already in a party. Are tanks really that hard to find? This invite rate is surprising, considering that my SAM and BRD did not recieve invites at all even with seek up.

Would have been funny to show up at a party as PLD/BLU in full Christmas gear though xD

New poll: Jobs

A little something about the new poll to the right.

With this new level-sync thing coming up, and my sudden desire to try a different role made me think that this might be a good opportunity to take another job past sub levels, maybe even to 75. I took a look around and tried to think about what roles I take on already, and what other job I could level up to fill in a different role and get a different experience in the game.

My main jobs are Dancer, and Blue Mage. These are both hybrid jobs (though I realy consider Dancer a pure healing job), and between the two I'm usually taking on either a front-line healing as Dancer, back-line healing/support as Blue Mage, front-line physical magic DD on BLU, or the very rare magical DD on BLU.

So, roles that I currently can't fulfill are: Tanking, pure support, effective magical nuking, or physical (non-MP) DD. The jobs in the poll fill these roles as...

Samurai: Physical DD... I just finished this sub, and it seems really broken to me >.> I've been having a lot of fun leveling it to 37, but I think a good portion of that fun was because I was being asked to tank. I found it a lot of fun to make sure that nobody could pull hate from me no matter what they did (except for one pesky Ranger!) and even though I was using DD gear and not decent def armor xD Had a couple of parties comment that I held hate better than most tanks... Other factors that make this job desirable is that I have a Soboro from the runs that AP did a few months ago, and that from what I've seen, SAM/DNC is a fun hybrid healer too.

Paladin: Well... duh, this job is one of the two main tanks, ya? For some reason I've been tanking a lot recently... First it was campaign on BLU, where I was intentionally holding hate and doing my best to prevent other DDs from taking it so that I could get extra exp from taking damage, and also so that I don't have to run around chasing a mob as the other DDs ran away. I found it quite fun to be playing at the edge of keeping the mob's attention, and staying alive without running completely out of MP. And more recently, just while leveling SAM. Of the two tank jobs, I thought Paladin might be a better choice since... 1. I don't really have a source of income to fund ninjitsu tools, and 2. When leveling NIN from 12-37, I got quite a few headaches while counting shadows >.>

Scholar: New job! That's part of what attracts me to it... that, and the cute AF! Well... not completely... SCH has a few things that I find interesting. The idea of strategems and the fact that it seems to requiring thinking ahead, and being able to switch roles from healer to nuker easily. The few SCHs I partied with seemed to have quite a bit of fun with the jobs, and I think I can see how effective SCH can be at endgame.... Stoneskin-ga the BLM party, Regen-ga a melee party, do a few nukes, heal, etc. I'm hoping to see Dakana & Varg's Scholars come out more often!

Other jobs I considered but rejected for now include:
RDM - Would be a decent healer/support class... rejected because 1. I'm supposed to be staticing RDM on Fridays... though we haven't done that in ages >.> and 2. We already have a ton of RDMs that are better geared and probably better at their jobs compared to me xD
BLM - The classic nuking class... rejected because I can't solo for exp >.> Whenever I try to exp solo, I die... a... lot. I think my record was something like dying 20 times while going from 1-5. I *hate* doing 1-10 of any job because I tend to die more during this period than I do 11-75 @.@ If I tried BLM, I'd never reach 75... Same reasoning goes for BST (someone needs to bring a BST to events! I wanna see it in action xD)
BRD - Don't get me wrong... I love Bards and what they do, especially Ballad and March songs, but... this gameplay mechanic never grew on me. Maybe it's from my experiences playing it so far to level 16 in pl'ed parties, but as far as I can tell, all you do in Bard is run back and forth and play songs? That, and pulling mobs for exp parties... Same reasoning goes for COR, except I also don't have the gil for bullets in COR xD


So... go vote on the poll! Or go post some comments on why I should do one or the other!

WoW vs. FFXI

Alright, so I haven't been doing... well, anything in FFXI for the last week and a half, just Limbus & ZNMs. The main reason for that is... erm... World of Warcraft xD

Two weeks ago, I was bugged by... let's say a friend... to go check out WoW. Sighing up with that new refer-a-friend trial, I decided to check out "the other side" to see how it is different, and why it has 10+ million subscribers, over 20x what FFXI fields. WoW has also been mentioned recently in a few business articles on leadership and management as an interesting place for research on raid & guild leaders.

First impressions
OMG... they have a... Mac client! And it actually runs well, doesn't crash like FFXI does, lets you run and switch between full-screen and window mode with a simple key combination. True, FFXI runs on various consoles, but anyone who has played FFXI on the 360 knows that you can't do Besieged, Campaign, or even a merit party without the 360 locking up or glitching on you. Having a Mac client just made trying WoW out that much easier since I didn't have to reboot or make space available on my Bootcamp XP. Also, their trial version is super-easy to setup... they actually stream the trial to you as you start playing, so more 4-hour install + patches before you get up and running. You're ready to go at once!

Regarding the UI, Blizzard actually actively encourages 3rd party addons. Compare that to FFXI's policy that disregards any 3rd party addon under the threat of banning >.> This means that there are a TON of addons for WoW, many of which are very, very useful and quite powerful. I've barely tried using a few of them myself, but the ones I have used are incredibly useful. For instance, there is one called QuestHelper which marks the locations of key places to visit to complete quests, and even plots a route so that you can easily go to all the necessary locations to gather things for your quests and turns them in. No more looking up information on a website and hoping that you don't forget something along the way!

Gameplay
WoW is significantly faster compared to FFXI in terms of gameplay. FFXI... you sit around, wait, think a little about what you have to do, and you have time to go through the menus to pick out the action and hit it at the right time. WoW is all about hitting your hotkeys fast. Battles in WoW go in for a few seconds, compared to a minute or more in FFXI. It's really a game oriented for twitch gamers... took me a while to get used to the controls and to figure out where everything is. This fast-paced gameplay has lead to many a death where I panic and hit the wrong button, whereas in FFXI I would have enough time to figure out what to do and anticipate what would happen.

No death penalty in WoW is awesome... you're up and running within a few minutes of a death. Compare that to FFXI where you're down for at LEAST 5 minutes just waiting for raise weakness, if not more from waiting for a raise, or HPing.

HP & MP regen is handled much better... Native Refresh & Regen, able to do it while running around instead of having to rest... action just never stops. Travelling is also much faster... No waiting for airships, just get on a bird and fly, and no zoning.

Finally... exp... in FFXI, exp is something you have to go out and get... basically, you're out there doing a job... grinding away for hour after hour, killing mob after mob. Once you have your exp, you can go out and do missions, quests, etc. In WoW, fighting is a side effect of the quests. You get the bulk of your exp from doing quests, and if the quests sends you somewhere where you have to fight, well, that's part of it!

Story
WoW has a bunch of different races, each with their own backstory. Each zone also has a bunch of different questlines that have their own unique story, though from what I've seen so far, the quests are pretty much the same... go here kill X, go there get Y, etc. There's tons of story out there, possibly more than FFXI, but the bad news is that the story is presented entirely in text format. It's a pretty world, but the cutscenes of FFXI, especially the more recent expansions, really makes the world seem more immersive. Trying to get the story of WoW is like reading a book (and actually, in some cases, IS reading a book)

So anyway, that's my impression of the two... I'm still doing FFXI stuff, and I'm not taking WoW *that* seriously. It's a nice distraction for the time being since I'm really bored of repeating the same things over and over again in FFXI, and I'm waiting for new content to be released in FFXI... for now, you'll probably see me playing with my Druid Night Elf for a while longer xD

On SAM & DNC/SAM

Last week I got a sudden urge to finish off my SAM sub and use it on Dancer, mainly cos I was bored of DNC/NIN, and especially realizing that I don't really use the features of /NIN. Utsusemi is neat and all, and definitely useful for merit parties, but I rarely go on merit parties, and for campaign and soloing... well, DNC evasion is high enough to avoid a good portion of hits, and campaign you actually *WANT* to take damage.

So, in the course of a few nights, I went from SAM 21 to 37. Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed the process... For some reason, I was called upon to tank a lot more on SAM compared to when I took WAR to 29, probably cos WAR to 29 was in AP blitz-type parties where nobody cared where hate went. I made a point to try to keep my Great Katana up-to-date, and was consistently surprised at how easy it was to maintain hate while tanking. Just about the only person who could pull hate away from me was Zurar on RNG, or a nuke-happy BLM who would start the fight with nuking. I'm done with SAM as a sub for now, but I'll probably pick it up again for fun later and continue leveling it.

DNC/SAM
One thing I noticed... and I'm a little surprised by this... is that I'm the only DNC/SAM on the server. All other Dancers are using DNC/NIN, with a few lower level ones using DNC/MNK or DNC/WAR. I'm a little surprised by this as DNC/SAM is turning out to be quite a workhorse for events.

For starters, Meditate really lets a Dancer start out strong. At first I thought it would have limited use, just 60 TP every 3 minutes, but I forgot that you can start Meditating as soon as you zone. For events, this pretty much meant that I had at least 120-300% TP to start since it takes time to get places, buff up and prepare. Between Meditate & Reverse Flourish, I never had any issue of not having TP.

With the ability to basically go back to 100% whenever I wanted, I could actually start toying around with using Dancing Edge just for fun without neglecting my healing duties :D Only did it twice so far, and I didn't bother checking damage, but at least it's something different to do.

Third Eye isn't the same as shadows, but at least it's a job ability and cannot be interrupted. For most battles, I'd forget to renew Utsusemi after it wears since most of the time I'm not pulling hate. However, once I get hate, it's a pain to get shadows back up. Third Eye just lets me get it up at once and at least avoid some damage instead of being constantly interrupted.

Store TP probably helps a little. Every swing of my dagger I'm building up 7% TP. This is compared to the 10% TP for two swings with /NIN, so I think it's a decent tradeoff since I'm swinging more frequently. A Dancer really wants to get to 10% TP as soon as possible since that's the minimum required to use steps. Not being able to do so with the first swing is annoying, but Meditate really makes it a moot point. Unfortunately, Store TP gear didn't make much difference. Even after putting on all the Store TP gear I have, I still only get 7% TP per swing xD It probably makes some difference over time, but I'll just stick to my normal accuracy or haste gear.

Overall, I'd use DNC/SAM for events over DNC/NIN. For any event where there are actual tanks to hold hate, DNC/SAM would allow for more flexibility either with WSing, or simply being able to start the fight with TP instead of having to start from scratch!

1st full ZNM run xD

So, after 7 weeks of school, I was finally able to meet in time for a full ZNM run... well, mostly full as I had to take a short break for dinner xD

Let's see... first impressions... wow, talk about a grind. I haven't done long events like this in ages... not since the CoP missions or the ZMs where we were trying to get as many missions done as possible in one afternoon. 4 hours straight of moving from mob to mob, killing mobs really saps strength. I'm impressed with how Varg & Aqqy can do their Monday FFXI marathons, or do their Sunday Salvage/Einhjar/Ashu/Nyzul runs week after week x.x

What else... I came as BLU/WHM for this run, mainly because we were doing Cheese Hoarder and chasing after that silly rat only to have a bomb blow up in my face isn't my idea of fun... That, and running after Armed Gears the last time I came for that really made me dizzy xD Still, I came mostly as support, using Magic Fruit, Diamondhide and all the normal WHM spells. I guess I'm really not a DD-type person... I like to keep everyone alive and let someone else go beat up the mob! Next week, I'll probably come as DNC for a pure support-healing role, though I really want to get my SAM sub up to try using that instead of /NIN.

Finally... Zeni... Boy these pop items take a lot of zeni. I had 17k+ zeni on Sunday, and now I'm down to 11k from picking up various pop items. Just a rough guess, looking at the pop cycle, it takes 22k zeni (assuming you get it at the lowest price) to obtain a tier 4 pop item (1k for the various tier 1's, 2k for the various tier 2's, etc.) I can see why it would be necessary to get a lot of people to farm zeni... being able to pop these items takes a lot of zeni, and hence time.

In the best case scenario, you can get almost 100 zeni per plate. With the NPC only taking 10 plates per hour, it'll take 22 hours of handing in plates in order for one person to obtain enough zeni to pop a tier 4. Of course, you can do other things in between, but that's still a long time!

Worst part... many jobs can't even farm zeni by themselves easily. In order to get the most amount of zeni per plate turned in, you need a high level mob (T or VT) beat up down to nearly 0% Of all the jobs, I think BLM, BLU & RDM are the three jobs which can do this relatively safely. Sleep is a necessary component, and the ability to do enough damage, or have enough stamina to beat down the mob. Other jobs would have to team up to beat up a mob, or be satisfied with less zeni by beating up a weaker mob. It may be necessary to get people together to do "zeni farming" parties where we go out and spam photos on various mobs... We did that once with a Marid. (poor thing was kept alive for almost an hour!)

Personally, I prefer farming Imps myself... easy to beat down (for a BLU), easy to sleep, easy to get to, and at 98 zeni each, best return on the time spent. Heck, I solo merit on them when I'm in the mood! If you see that it's on Imps, LET ME KNOW and we'll go out and take photos! One reason why I have such a high zeni count is that I would go out, spend 15 minutes taking photos, then go afk in Whitegate for the next two hours, only coming back to turn plates in while watching a movie! This way I get "something" done in game while having fun doing something else xD I'm usually doing this on Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday nights, so if you need zeni, give me a buzz!

Meanwhile... where did I put that Great Katana? Time to go back to Qufim ; ;

BLU Relic, schedule and stuff xD

whee... looks like they've announced the BLU relic armor... and it's obtained through Dynamis. Big surprise -.-; I guess that means I'll need to find a Dynamis group to go with if I want to obtain BLU AF... Not too sure when I can slot this in. Aqqy suggested that I talk to Fuuji as to when his group goes (or if they are even recruiting) but I haven't had a chance to catch him.

BLU AF+1 might be more obtainable since I already do Limbus, but.... the model of the AF+1 armor doesn't change, does it? I want something that looks different! ^^; Of course, it'll also depend on what the armor actually does :o

Random schedule update... yaaaaay! I'm done with my last class for the summer... My Mondays are free again! 'course, this means that I can actually start showing up for ZNM runs xD As of last night, I have over 17k zeni built up over the last few weeks. I guess I'm lucky in having a job that can solo zeni easily (heavy DD + self healing + multiple sleeps). Recently, I've been doing almost nothing but taking photos + Limbus. Haven't been in the mood to campaign recently either since you can't afk campaign while doing homework!

What else... now that school is out for at least 5-6 weeks, I want to spend some time to finish off my SAM sub. Now that I think about it, I don't actually use the /NIN subjob capabilities as DNC that much. I don't need the sneak/invis, and I rarely bother with shadows these days since if I do take hate, I can simply use Violent Flourish and wait until some other DD or tank pulls hate back by holding off heals. /SAM would also have Third Eye to help as well, and the benefits of being able to start off a battle with *some* TP might make it worth having. My SAM is at level 21 or so, so if anyone happens to be around that level and wants to party... else I'll try seeking >.>

Finally... where has all the time gone? I remember a time when I could be playing many games over summer, going to school and working at the same time while watching movies and TV... these days it seems like I barely have time for one thing! >.> So many games coming out too, and movies, and... and...