Post-update update

It's been a week since the Sep-2008 update, so I figured I'd dump a few of my impressions out there.

Level Sync
Definitely an interesting idea. I don't think there will be many parties in the future that won't take advantage of level sync. It's too easy to keep a party synced to a low enough level to yield max exp for a specific camp. The only disadvantage I could think of is that if you're always levelnig up in a level sync'ed party, your skills will quickly become out of date, and the first non-sync'ed party you join afterwards, it'll take you a while to recap your skills.

Personally, I've only tried it twice, once on BLU in a dunes party, and another on DNC at a level 45 party. In both cases, the feeling was... nostalgic. I haven't tanked on BLU/WAR since... well, the dunes, and toying with low level DNC is always fun. In both cases, it let me play around with some friends that I would normally not be able to while they were leveling other jobs!

Only annoyances of level sync are... you lose TP when you sync, or whenever the sync'ed person levels up, making it super annoying... plus that for level-capped missions, you still get your armor, so no more "naked dragon fights" ; ;

Campaign
Everyone noticed that the /brd-bot nerf took place, and having the C.A.'s empty of people just afk there is a welcome change. However, I noticed that other aspects have changed as well, making it actually easier to get exp. One thing I noticed is that for some reason, wall-hitting exp has significantly increased.

Previously, no matter how long I went to hit at a wall, I'd get only about 1k exp. This is whether you're hitting the wall for 15 minutes, or 45 minutes. To maximize this, I'd refresh my tags about once every 15 minutes, adding some travel time to wall-hitting. Now, I noticed that even after 15-20 minutes of wall hitting, I was still hitting the time cap. i.e.: I was still getting more than half allied notes compared to exp. This was for doing nothing but hitting the wall. More testing needs to be done here to see how viable this is for afk-exp :)

Oh, and I've changed to doing campaign on DNC/WHM. I can't hold hate as well compared to BLU/WHM since I can't spike damage, but I can last a lot longer when soloing a mob. Actually, I can hold a mob off pretty much indefinitely as DNC compared to BLU where I'd eventually run out of MP and die xD

Nyzul
Started doing Nyzuls... not only doing a group on Thursday, but also random farming groups with other AP members. I've done a total of 6 nyzul runs since the update and I already have all the Nyzul weapons I wanted o.o; Thursday night we did 2 runs, and I got my BLU weapon off a random NM between floor 1-5. Sunday afternoon, did a 95-100 run with Fuuji's group to get Dexie her runic key item and I picked up the SCH staff, and Sunday night, we did some farming runs with half of Varg's group and I got the DNC dagger.

Weapons seem to be pretty common drops. I guess the hard part is having the weapon you want drop. I seem to have lucked out for now, getting 3 of the 2 weapons I wanted. I've activated the quest to unlock the weaponskills for both weapons, but I don't think I'm up for doing 5000 WS points just yet xD

Still, from what I've read, you can do WS points at any time, and if you go up Nyzul enough to clear the # of points necessary for that floor, the WS simply opens up, so I'll be open for any skill-up or WS party out there.

Other Dancer stuff
Merit wise, I'm currently at 4/5 on Haste Samba, and 2/5 on Reverse Flourish merits. Haste Samba I can't really eyeball the difference between 5% haste and 9% haste... I'm assuming it's there, but my attention is usually elsewhere... i.e.: the HP bar. Reverse Flourish merits are immediately noticable since instead of getting 46% TP return on a 4 finishing move Reverse Flourish, I"m getting 52%.

I'm now considering how I want to finish the Dancer category 1 merits. I want Reverse Flourish to be at least 4/5 since that'll give me a 46+12 = 58% return with 4 finishing moves, which lets me do a WS and immediately follow up with a Curing Waltz IV given the TP return on any WS I use. I'm now debating whether I want to use the last two merit increases on finishing off Haste Samba + Reverse Flourish, or to put them into Step Accuracy. 1% more on Haste shouldn't be that noticable, but having an additional +6 accuracy on steps might be more useful on those hard NM fights where I have to go in full accuracy gear in the first place.

I'll put together another post about Dancer soon xD

Blue Mage Stuff
Did two Limbus runs since the update... I haven't seen a single AF+1 item drop for BLU yet, though we did see a single COR the other day. I'm already saving up ancient beastcoins to upgrade my body piece. We'll have to see if it's possible to obtain the actual pieces necessary to unlock it.

Since their schedule matches up with mine for the most part, I've asked to join BMO in Dynamis to hopefully get some AF2. I saw one person running around with the BLU AF2 body so far, and I must say that it does look pretty slick xD. It's been a while since I've done Dynamis at all, and Ascule does not have any northlands dynamis access, so it might be a while before I get any progress in this department.