Random musings

Seems like people like to comment on my controversial posts where I do some math and put up some interesting theories on certain job behavior... Dancer is, of course, where I put most of my effort into thinking about things, especially since Blue Mage and Scholar have already been fully analyzed and experimented with by people much more knowledgeable by myself.

But... this post is more about me and is more random musings and off-topic stuff!

Let's see... what's happening with me...

Personal stuff/Off-topic

Seems like ever since school stopped, I've had a ton more free time, and I've found many more things to do. Of course, last week was spring break, so... technically I haven't actually HAD any more time than I normally would, but my mindset has definitely changed! Since finishing up with school, I've done:

- Cleaned up and totally reorganized my things, especially my closet.

- Cleaned up the junk on my computers and re-optimized them, including playing around with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my little Acer Aspire One.

- Did my taxes >.> Big losses last year offset capital gains so I didn't have to write too big of a cheque.

- Caught up with TV, except for the Sarah Conner Chronicles. I'm mostly up-to-date with the anime on my "must watch" list too, which is good since last season is ending and the new season is almost beginning. I still have the backlog to work on though, and the next season is looking quite good >.<

- Game wise... erm... I've been playing Star Ocean 4, but that's a long RPG, so my backlog of games still remains the same, unfortunately.

Not too bad considering my list from my last post.

Still to do:

- Figure out a real, honest-to-god vacation! I haven't been on a real vacation for nearly 4 years now... all my previous trips in the last few years either had a school class attached to it, or was some sort of responsibility. I think it's time to take a real vacation on my own for once instead of being tied down with someone else. This year, I'm thinking the east coast of the U.S. including New York and Washington. I've done a lot of international traveling, but I haven't really been many places in THIS country xD

- Start up a Roth IRA. Now that school is over, I can finally free up some money to put into retirement instead of having it dumped into tuition and books @.@ At least I'm still in better shape compared to other people who have loans to pay back!

- New job... Now that I have new qualifications, it's really time to go jump jobs and hopefully get a corresponding pay increase. The sucky part is that the economy is so bad right now that I'm not sure it's worth bothering to search at the moment... I'm secure where I currently am, but the pay isn't that good compared to what I should be making >.>

Another thing to consider is that... this is really a good environment to be buying stuff... nobody is buying, so houses and cars are some of the things where there may be good deals to be had. Unfortunately, I don't really want to commit to either a house, or even a new car until I change jobs since I don't know where a new job will be... in this area, another city, another state, or possibly even another country. It's kind of a weird place to be... I really need to sit down and plan out a transition to get out of my current position and into something else, but I'm in no rush to do it because things are so bad out there >.<

What else... I've been fooling around with little $0.99 iPhone games... geoDefender and AirportMania are both fun little games for the iPhone that are surprisingly addictive and easy to get into. I think I've wasted quite a few hours playing those. Been doing more work on my "2nd job" too... gotta see if that can develop from a concept into a real startup in the next couple of months. Getting funding in this environment will be a pain, but... at least it's a possibility... and of course, FFXI.

Musings/FFXI stuffs

Seems like last week was the "everyone running away" week for AP... Nuyu going away, Vanh taking a break, Wu moving, so the shell was virtually deserted. I think only me, Dexie, Fuuji, Utaru and Connie are semi-regulars on AP now, and even that's iffy since we only login for events now and don't do anything else. Ghiren & Zurar are pretty much "login only when Ascy summons for events" people now. Hopefully that'll change a little since we've put noisy Karou in on the shell. Hopefully she can liven things up a little!

ZNMs/Limbus

Event wise... seems like a mixed bag. We've picked up some new blood for ZNMs and Limbus, but attendance is still iffy enough that we can't consistently take on the big ticket items, Tier IV ZNMs and Omega, with consistency. I'm hoping that this was just a reflection on last week being Spring break, but... we'll have to see how things turn out going forward. We're always right on the verge of having the right number of people, then suddenly we'll go waaaaaaaaaay over and have too many people for the event >.>

Nyzul

Nyzul has been nice to me lately, giving me a pair of Denali gloves and a Goliard hat. I've been hoping for the Denali gloves for a while to help with my Dancer's evasion/tanking equipment set. The Goliard hat is nice for completion, but what we really need is a ton of Askar equipment, considering that almost everyone except me wants it.

Nyzul members have also gotten weird lately... With Vanh taking a break, Nuyu being out and Wu being away, both Fuuji and my Nyzul groups have been short of manpower... seems like we're basically merging now in order to have enough people to pull off Nyzul... far cry from when we used to have 2, sometimes 3 groups going at the same time.

Assaults

Weird thing is that a couple of weeks ago I got to do a couple of First Lieutenant assaults with Lyricdylan... this means that I'm only one assault away from Captain rank. Just need to kill that stupid King-on-a-chair mob. >.<>

4th job?

So, looking at my jobs, I'm considering leveling PLD seriously now to have a critical tank job so that I can take on that role when it is necessary... I've pretty much got the other roles covered with my existing jobs, so a tank job would be nice. Plus, more importantly, the AF looks good!

Vanh has lent me his Cassie Earring to help in this, and Zu is supposed to dig through his stuff to find some lowbie stuff to lend me... anyone else wanna level a job together?

Maybe after PLD I'll look into BRD or COR.

Distant Worlds

This is interesting... Nobuo Uematsu's Final Fantasy music will be going on performance with his new show called "Distant Worlds" in the next few months. There is one performance in San Francisco in July that I'm thinking about attending... I attended the "Dear Friends" performance back in 2005, and it was quite an experience. The new show has quite a good lineup, including many songs I think those reading this blog will be familiar with xD

Other locations include Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Singapore, Taipei, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, Seattle.

Well, that's up for this week's update... don't be shy to post comments, especially those of you who lurk :P

Good things come in pairs, DNC math and other fun things

Funny thing about FFXI stuff that it seems to come in twos... When I got my ZNM pumps, I got Goliard feet two weeks later... when I got my ZNM hands for SCH, Goliard hands dropped the very next time we went for Nyzul... Homam hands & Enkidu mittens were literally three days apart, so when I picked up the SCH relic body on Wednesday, I figured that Goliard body would be coming next...

Which makes my Etoile Cape that much nicer to get :D

With more accuracy than anything else, it replaces my Psilos Mantle as a full-time piece, only swapped out if I end up in a tanking position since my Boxer's Mantle does have more evasion skill. That's my 2nd DNC relic piece, and 6th relic armor piece with BMO so far :D

In other news... other drops haven't been quite as nice as Dynamis... Saturday's Omega we got hands and head... again... which is only slightly better than two head pieces... still, would be nice to get some legs, body or feet pieces sometime! Did KS99 last night with Wu since half of my Nyzul group was missing during gather time, and super-late. I didn't realize I won a lot to go, so I ended up using an orb. No Speed Belt drop, but it had a lot of gil drops and more importantly, a Black Belt item that went to Lemmon! Congrats! I nearly doubled my own gil just from this run alone, which does open up some further possibilities down the road.

Dancer Math

The following section might get a little technical, but it's something that I've been curious about TP gain for a while and wanted to see if I could figure out one of a Dancer's best advantages: the ability to keep going where a mage would have ran out of MP a long time ago.

TP vs. MP conversion

The basic question here is... what is the approximate conversion between TP when used by a Dancer to MP when used by a mage for curing. To answer this, let's look at the basic Waltzes.

Let's compare Curing Waltz III to Cure IV.

- Curing Waltz III: Heals 360 HP, 10 second recast time, 50% TP

- Cure IV: Heals 360 HP, 8 second recast, 2.5 second casting time, 88 MP

Since they heal for about the same amount, we could do an approximation of 1TP = 1.76MP in terms of healing potential. If we take a Dancer's TP cap of 300%, we get that a Dancer at max TP is approximately 528MP of "healing potential" if that same Dancer was a mage. Add in 5 Finishing Moves for another 60% TP, that's a cap of 633 MP, a decent amount, but nowhere near the 800-1000+ max MP that any mage typically has.

TP generation

Simple math so far... we've done a link between TP & MP using one simple metric to link the two: amount healed. Now it's time for some more complicated math, figuring out how much TP a Dancer can generate on a regular basis.

For the purposes of this exercise, let's take an "average" DNC/NIN, dual-wielding delay 201 daggers. This is fairly common since Behemoth +1 knives, Jambiyas are all delay 201, with a few daggers having a lower delay (Kard 190) and some higher (Azoth 210). Let's also say that the Dancer has Suppanomimi for a Dual Wield bonus since many people have that piece of equipment.

According to the Wiki article on TP gain, this Dancer 's delay and TP gain would be:

- Combined Delay: 201 + 201 = 402

- Reduced Delay: 402 * (1 - 0.2) = 321.6

- Reduced Delay per hand: 321.6/2 = 160.8 delay

- TP gain per hand: 5.0 + [(160.8-180) * 1.5/180] = 4.84

- TP gain per round = 4.84*2 = 9.68 TP/round

Which pretty much matches up with what I've seen as DNC/NIN. First round would hit for exactly 10TP for a single step, and subsequent rounds would hit for 10 or 9 TP per double hit.

Every 60 delay = 1 Earth second, so a 321.6 delay would be 5.36s per attack round. So, the above Dancer would be gaining Tp at the rate of 1.806TP/sec. Translated into "ticks" where 1 tick = 3 seconds for purposes of Refresh, we get the Dancer getting TP at the rate of 5.42TP/tick from just swinging daggers.

Now this isn't the only way for a Dancer to get TP. Let's throw in Reverse Flourish math for some fun. IMO, a Dancer would use Reverse Flourish whenever the timer is up, every 30 seconds. This is enough time, if perfectly executed, to use two "steps" for a total of 4 Finishing Moves. Each Step costs 10%TP, so, all in all, we get:

- 46% TP return from Reverse Flourish - 20% TP from two Steps = 26% net TP gain every 30 seconds.

OR, 2.6% net TP gain per "tick"

So, on average, a DNC/NIN stepping constantly and using Reverse Flourish gains TP at a net rate of 5.42% + 2.6% = 8.02% /tick

Using the 1TP = 1.76MP conversion we calculated earlier, this means a Dancer generates "healing potential" at the rate of 14.1MP/tick. Let's say that this Dancer isn't perfect and has only a 80% overall accuracy, this only drops the generation down to 11.3MP/tick.

TP vs. Refresh

Now for the fun part... what's the highest rate of MP generation someone can generate without support... by that, I mean without having a 2nd person helping you. A Dancer can generate TP faster with external help. Haste, March are just two examples of how a Dancer can get a lot more TP than normal. The above calculations were done for a single Dancer without support (and much equipment for that matter!)

Currently, the highest MP generation I can generate solo is either:

- BLU: 6MP/tick during Assault (Auto-Refresh job trait, relic body, Sanction, ToAU ring + /SCH)

- SCH: 6MP/tick during Assault (4MP/Sublimation, Sanction, ToAU ring)

Other jobs that can generate MP:

- Bard: 3MP/tick combined Ballad I + II, doubled to 6MP/tick with Soul Voice

- Corsair: Max of 5MP/tick on a roll of 11 with Summoner in the party

- Red Mage... handled separately.

Red Mage is a special case for two reasons... #1: Refresh requires MP to cast, so it isn't as straightforward as taking the statistic from the Wiki, and #2: Convert

- For #1, every 150MP restored costs 40MP to cast, so really Refresh is 110MP restored over 50 ticks. This is a real rate of 2.2MP/tick

- #2, let's take an average RDM with a MP pool of 900MP. Every 10 minutes (200 ticks), the RDM can refill her MP pool using convert. Assuming the RDM uses Convert every 10 minutes, this is equal to a rate of 4.5MP/tick. A higher max MP pool would of course, increase this.

So, a RDM can put out a respectable 6.7MP/tick MP generation rate, making it the highest of all the mages without special gear. Throw in Sanction, Vermy cloak, ToAU reward ring and even /SMN, we can push that up to 10.7MP/tick without external support.

Conclusion

So... RDM is the only job capable of coming close to a DNC's "healing potential generation" under specific circumstances and gear. Good Dancers will be up there at the accuracy cap, and have additional haste gear to help with TP generation, meaning that the 8.02%/tick or 14.1MP/tick approximation would actually be exceeded, explaining why a good Dancer can not only go on forever and never run out of TP no matter the circumstance. This also explains why, for extended events, I'm always at or near TP cap when mages are out of MP. A Dancer's TP accumulation rate outstrips even that of a RDM when it comes to healing potential.

Maybe sometime in the future we'll have alliance events with one Dancer per party...

Other fun stuff

For other fun stuff... let's see... since Nyzul was all cancelled this week, I managed to pick up two more FL assaults with Lyric. Just one more left until Captain rank! Hopefully I can pick that up this week! Would be nice to have 5 assault tags and not have to pay for using the Runic Portal again.

Burning 99 KS for an attempt at a Speed Belt was worth it IMO... It's not like I have any other use for it... but as I was looking at that, I also realized that I have a ton of other things I could use up. I have over 100K IS, as well as CP, and I think over 600K AN. Maybe it's time to spam some ISNMs to raise some gil!

As for gil... the KS99 did bring me up to more gil than I've ever had, and for once, nothing serious to buy. It's my intention to eventually use Limbus to gil farm whenever I completed my Homam set, but that's far in the future... Still, I'm wondering what to get... a Roundel Earring would be nice for my DNC for 5M, or I could use some gil to fund a new job.

Speaking of new jobs... I'm considering picking up PLD again just to have a tank job. Nothing annoys me more than sitting around and waiting or searching for a specific job to come up in order to take on a mission or quest. Seems that we have a need for tanks these days, and it would be nice to be able to switch into whatever role is necessary to get things moving... I have a DD, two/three healers (DNC & SCH, maybe even BLU), two nukers (BLU & SCH), so all that is missing is a real tank, and a support job :)

/shocked: SCH Relic Body & SCH vs. BLU in Nyzul

This is quite a surprise! I didn't expect to get SCH Relic Body on... I think this is only my 2nd time to the glacier :o The first time here I got my BLU Body.

This certainly changes things slightly. I never actually looked at SCH relic armor to see which pieces are good, but I knew this piece looked very elegant... or as Fuupup puts it, now I look like a high school student :P

Let's see... what does this piece have:

DEF: 38 HP +15 MP +15
Enhancing magic skill +7
"Magic Defense Bonus" +5
Enhances "Sublimation" effect

Hmm... HP & MP are always good. Enhancing Magic Skill would be good for Stoneskin... if only I had that skill capped xD Enhancing and Divine are still significantly below cap since there's no real good way to skill it up besides spamming the spells. I guess they'll eventually cap with usage.

Magic Defense Bonus isn't anything special... but Sublimation enhancement is special. Together with the AF hat, this gives my Sublimation a 4MP/tick storage rate. I'm already noticing how much faster I reach a full Sublimation store. A full store for me is about 270MP. It takes just over 3 minutes to get a full store now, compared to 4 1/2 minutes.

Still, the original SCH AF body is still better for nuking due to the "Enhances Dark Arts" effect which adds skill to Dark Magic, Elemental Magic and Enfeebling, but the relic piece is good to keep on whenever I have Sublimation up. It does introduce an interesting question though... which is better? SCH or BLU for Nyzul Isle?

SCH vs. BLU in Nyzul

I switched back to using BLU/SCH full time for Nyzul after I realized that BLU has a higher MP Refresh rate. Consider:

BLU/SCH

- BLU Auto-Refresh Job Trait

- BLU relic body

- /SCH 2mp/tick

- Sanction

Total of 5MP/tick

SCH/RDM

- Sublimation - 4MP/tick

- Sanction

Total of 5MP/tick now, up from 4MP/tick

Both jobs have comparable max MP... but it takes BLU on average almost 7 minutes to get a full Sublimation store due to the slower storage rate. This is actually an advantage due to Sublimation's downtime. Consider every time I use up that stored MP. I have 30 seconds before I can reactivate the store again. That's 10 ticks of MP I'm not regaining. On BLU/SCH, that's 20 MP, but on SCH, that's 40MP. Meanwhile, BLU's passive Refresh traits still continue through Sublimation's downtime.

Other advantages BLU/SCH has over SCH

- Two types of healing -- Blue & White Magic

- Many more sleeps: Soporfic, Sleep Song, Yawn, Pinecone Bomb & Sleep

- Two dispels: Blank Gaze & Dispel

- 5% Haste-ga for the final boss with Diffusion/Refueling

- Defense Down spells with Speedspray

- Additional damage with Sword or careful spellcasting

Disadvantages:

- No Protect/Shell IV

- No Stoneskin-ga -- Unless I set Diamondhide, and even then it's not as effective

- No Stona or Erase

- Must be close range in order to heal effectively. Healing Breeze is AoE centered around me

The last two are actually big disadvantages. Having no Erase means that Bio and other spells have to be endured compared to erasing them all at once. SCH also has a much more efficient status effect removal with Accession.

Still, overall I think that BLU/SCH's advantages over SCH give it a significant edge in Nyzul, especially if you've ever encountered the dreaded "White Magic Restricted" floor :)

Next up... why Dancer can go on forever.

At a crossroad

Whee... FINALLY done with grad school!

Now what?

>.>

My original thinking was that after I graduated that I'd buy a new car, find a new job with my new skills and start on my plan for world domination. Well, with the world in such a mess, I'm not sure i'd want to spend money in buying a new car. Jobs are hard enough to come by with unemployment coming up to 10% that I'd rather not search at the moment since I know that if I were hiring, I'd lowball any possible offer at this time. As for world domination, well, that's on the back burner at the moment since I'd rather take over a world that is in decent shape.

So... I guess the question is... what do I do now? So far, I've been compiling a list of possible things to do with my suddenly large amount of free time:

- Catch up on my huge backlog of games >.>

- Catch up on my even larger backlog of anime @.@;;;

- Start up one of my old hobbies

- Pick up a NEW hobby that I've always wanted to

- Take a much needed vacation

- Reorganize my room

- Start considering serious investments in the market

- Figure out alternate investment strategies

- Investigate other places to live, consider moving to them

- Look into doing more programming, iPhone App development

Quite a list! How about some detail...

Fun stuff

Let's see... game wise, I have the following on my "to be completed list"... that is, I've bought it, but still haven't finished, or in some cases, haven't even started playing!

- Star Ocean 4, Valkyrja Chronicles, LittleBigPlanet, Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5

Anime wise... I don't think I can name the whole list >.> I have a 1TB external drive that is 3/4 full I think... just some of the highlights off the top of my head are:

- Maria-holic, Marimite, Akikan, Skip Beat and tons more

... plus I have this entire season of Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles to catch up on.

Hobby wise... I haven't been scuba diving in over 3 years at this point. I'm definitely out of touch with the latest standards, and my equipment needs servicing before I can get back into the water! Still, might be fun to go out and maybe start teaching again.

On the other hand, we have new hobbies! On the list are... race/driving school, flying lessons, skydiving lessons... all expensive and requiring time. Holding me back is mainly the cost, though for the first one it's also not having a car that can handle a track at this time.

Vacation wise... looks like I might end up being dragged to Asia with my parents. I promised them that I'd go on another trip with them sometime, and now that school is out, I'm running out of ideas... oh well, at least I'd be able to make a stop in Japan too! Personally, I'm considering taking a trip over to the east coast. I've never been to New York before and I'm curious about life in the big city!

Not-so-fun stuff

My room desperately needs a "re-org", as does my closet... Too many old things lying around that need to be tossed out or replaced. My computers need some cleanup too, old programs that I never use, and all my school stuff can go away now!

Investments... or lack thereof. Back when I started school, I figured that I wouldn't have much time to pay attention to investments, so I put everything into relatively safe index funds. Well, the market crash hasn't been too good on things, and luckily I took action early last year when I figured that things would fall apart, so I'm not completely broke. However, right now is a good time to get back into the market, as long as you know the right investments... probably need to spend a few days to figure this out and a re-entry strategy. CDs were a good idea back in August, but CD rates have fallen significantly since then.

Alternate investments... free time = time to investigate other forms of income? I think it's time to execute a few of the ideas for alternate/passive income I had in my previous blog post. Have a few friends and former classmates who also have some interest, so maybe it's time to get a partnership going here!

Other places to live... now, while I love the SF Bay Area, it's a crazy place to live! Housing prices are still through the roof, everything is spread out, there is no public transportation... I dunno... I like driving, but I hate commuting. I actually love cities, but I don't like suburbs... This area seems to have the worst parts of a city (commuting, pollution, high stress) and the worst parts of suburbs (spread out, no USEFUL public transport, have to drive everywhere) at the same time! I don't have any real roots here, so maybe it's time to consider another city, or even another country!

Programming/iPhone development! One of the things about being a "professional" programmer is that I hate working on large projects where you have to collaborate and rely on another programmer... I'd rather do everything myself, so I enjoy writing little self-contained programs and scripts. I've been watching the whole iPhone App Store closely... might be fun to put together something and see how well it sells! Now the bigger question is... what kind of app can I come up with? >.>

So... looks like lots to do even though school is out :) At least my FFXI schedule has pretty much stabilized to only be committed for Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights, with optional excursions on Thursday and Sunday.

Weirdness in FFXI update

A little weird thing... Utty & I went on a few Nyzul runs with Fuupup's group since they needed people and I had tags. They're mostly done with their Nyzul armor, down to just the final few pieces.

Picked up: Askar Body & RDM weapon.

Which... makes me 2/5 for Askar, even though I have no job that can use it at all ^^;
Almost makes me want to level something just to use it >.> It'll join my other random pieces in storage until such a time I can use it... in that list of random gear are:

- Soboro thingie - SAM Great Katana
- Some DRG lance that I found off a fish-man in SSG
- BST, SMN AF2 pieces
- Some level 16 RNG tunic
- COR "latent" weapon from BCNM60

Maybe if I finish off some armor set I'll go level that job :) SAM or BST look tempting actually... SAM mainly just cos I have quite a few nice pieces of gear for it, and BST because it's a fairly unique job.

Oh, and the RDM Nyzul weapon brings me to 19/20 for weapons! Just need the COR one left! Too bad I can't put them up on display in my Mog House...

On BLU endgame roles

Blue Mage is quite a complex job. It's the most complex of the three jobs I have, and the most flexible. Unfortunately, most people do not take full advantage of that flexibility, and there are many BLUs out there who do not do their job justice.



(side note, I don't think BLU is the most complex job in FFXI either... I think Puppetmaster has many more challenges and it a lot more difficult to play well)



Most people (and many BLUs) think of the job as just another DD that should sub NIN and do damage. However, a BLU is much more than another DD. The subjob choice can also change the capabilities of the job significantly. When you think of BLUs, you should consider the following.



Capabilities

- Only job with both dark & light-based Sleeps

- Capable of spike physical damage... that is, no waiting for TP, just spam spells

- Light-based Dispels natively, and with /SCH, dark-based Dispel

- When setup correctly, magical nukes that can match a BLM's Tier IV spells

- Sneak Attack from long range with Cannonball... I guess this might work with Trick Attack too?

- BLU-only enfeebles -- Defense down, Magic defense down, etc.

- BLU-only enhancements -- Magic attack up, magic defense up, AoE Refueling/Cocoon

- Tons of stuns -- 3 physical, 1 magical

- Most MP-efficient cures in the game -- The HP healed/MP spent is significantly better compared to WHMs. With a Scholar sub and Light Arts active, the BLU healing spells are even more efficient as they heal for more.



However, with all these capabilities, there are quite a few things to hold Blue Mages back.

Limitations

- The subjob we choose determines quite a bit about what we can do. If you want a Sneak Attack Cannonball setup, we'll have to come /THF and bring defense food. A healing role requires /WHM or /SCH. Maximum flexibility comes from /SCH. Heavy DDing needs /NIN. Being bait requires /NIN.
- We can't do everything at once. Of course you knew that already :) However, our flexibility does let us change roles as the situation requires... just not as fast as a Scholar can!

- Most of our spells are close range, and many are AoE. This means that in order to Stun, we need to be right next to the mob. 3 out of 4 of our sleep spells are close range AoE, and one is gaze-based. Our magical breath attacks have long cast time and are close range in a cone. We won't be able to nuke a mob being kited.
- We have low endurance. Our spells cost quite a bit of MP to cast, and a good BLU will be casting many spells in order to take on different roles. However, give us too much to do and we will run out of MP without support. We have a few sources of Refresh available to help aleviate this problem.

- Every time we change spells, we have 1 minute of downtime before we can cast any BLU spells again. In reality, it also takes time to actually select the new spells. I have my spells organized more or less by their functionality. Even in the best case, it'll take me 30 seconds to select my spells, and another 60 seconds after that until I'm ready again. Changing tasks in the middle of an event should be communicated to the BLU before hand.

- We CAN do multiple things at once though... while we're limited in the number of spells we can set, we can normally set enough spells to take on multiple roles. I think this is where the BLU job really shines.

- While we're capable of doing multiple tasks, we are not the best at any of them... for example: For DDing, you're better off bringing a SAM. For healing, only a WHM or SCH can handle all the -na spells. For nuking, only a BLM can nuke as hard.



So... one of the big reasons why I rarely use BLU anymore is that the flexibility is rarely needed. BLU in an endgame situation is usually limited to use one role at a time... either DD, another healer, or a nuker. My other jobs can fulfill these dedicated roles better than BLU can and it is generally more satisifying to come as those jobs.



One place where flexibility is needed is Nyzul Isle, and that's the only place I would choose to come BLU over the other two jobs. Dispel, Sleep, Healing & DD all in one job, with the Scholar subjob to help cover -nas, more Sleep, curing and Aspir make BLU/SCH one of the most well equipped jobs for Nyzul.

On SCH endgame roles

Part 2/3 of my opinions on my jobs

Scholar
When Dancer and Scholar were initially released, almost everyone saw the potential and use of Scholars at once. Having 90% of the capabilities of both WHM & BLM in a single job, plus some partial capabilities of RDM with Sublimation and the ability to spread en-spells and Phalanx around, Scholars definitely made many mages feel threaterned.

However, Scholars aren't the end-all for mages... The job has quite a few limitations that I don't think people realize. I'll go over the limitations and weaknesses of the job, then what possible roles a Scholar can fulfill.

Weaknesses
- Light Arts OR Dark Arts -- Almost all Scholars sub RDM due to the extra spells the job gives us over WHM or BLM. This means that in order to switch between the role of a WHM and the role of a BLM, we have to use a strategem charge. We can also only switch into light arts or dark arts once every minute. This means if your SCH was nuking Tier IVs on a mob and you get hit with a status effect, she may not be able to switch over to Addendem: White to remove the status effect for up to another minute. Also, if we try to cast spells from the opposite art, we suffer a MP cost penalty, casting time penalty, and our overall skill level is much lower which can lead to resists. This is why I always ask if my main role will be nuking, or healing when an event starts.
- We pull a lot of hate -- One of the nicest job abilities a Scholar has is Accession. We can give the whole party Stoneskin, Regen II or Phalanx... it also pulls a ton of hate. I think every Scholar has taken many hits from a simple Accession/Enblizzard. Our AoE cure spells also seem to pull more hate. Think of it as casting 6x Cure IV spells at once. Our enmity spikes very high.
- We can't do either job as well as a pure WHM or BLM -- More on this later

Let's do some comparisons between a Scholar and traditional mages
Light Arts/Addendum: White vs. White Mage/Red Mage
- SCH has all the -na spells that a WHM has, has Raise/Reraise/Regen II, but not the III spells. Hence, a SCH can perform most of the tasks a WHM can, but not all of them
- Accession allows SCHs to AoE spells on a whole party. Not just their own party, but any -na spell on any party. This also applies to the Cure spells, so a SCH can effectively Curaga III another party by using Accession Cure IV.
- (Incidentally, this makes SCH one of the most powerful PLing jobs)
- SCH has no access to Cure V. This is significant due to the properties of Cure V which give it less hate compared to Cure IV. A Scholar is a hate magnet, especially if she does something like Rapture/Cure IV to cure more, and get even more hate.
- No Haste/Refresh -- You're getting a pure mage... Scholars do not support :)

Dark Arts/Addendum: Black vs. Black Mage
- Access to Tier IV nukes, BUT at a lower skill level, etc. compared to a BLM. This means nuke for nuke, a SCH will find it difficult to match a BLM. BLMs also have access to ancient magic, which means that a BLM will always be able to outnuke a SCH. A SCH can nuke for about 3/4 of the damage of a BLM using the same spell.
- However, we have access to Parsimony which cuts MP cost by 1/2. Add to this Alacrity which cuts casting and recast time by 1/2, Scholars can effectively cast twice as often for half the MP cost compared to a BLM. For longer battles, SCH efficiency wins out over a BLM who will have to rest earlier.
- Manifestation -- I think this is an underutilized job ability. It's also a lot of fun! Aspir from multiple mobs to get a full bar of MP, Bind or Gravity a group of mobs so that we can escape, and of course, our version of Sleepga.
- No Escape/Warp/Warp II -- Strangely, I haven't seen Escape used in a situation where people are trying to get away from a mob in a long time... I've only ever seen it used to shortcut zones.

Native Scholar abilities
- Sublimation gives us essentially our own personal Refresh. I actually prefer using Sublimation even when I have a RDM in my party because it does not take MP away from the RDM (using 40MP to recover 150MP), plus it lets me start off a battle with even more MP by having a Sublimation store
- Helixes & Weather spells -- Our own unique elemental DoT that no other job has. Weather spells are best used in a manaburn/nuking situation, but can also be difficult to set up since in order to give it to other nukers, we have to switch out of Dark Arts to use Accession.

How to effectively use a Scholar
As expected, most people use Scholars to fill in for a WHM or BLM. While this works for the most part, it really isn't the most effective way to use a Scholar since a WHM or BLM would do better in that role.

- Our AoE buffs tend to be centered around ourselves -- If you want the tank to have Phalanx & Stoneskin, it needs to be safe enough for a SCH to run in and cast the spells.
- If we're merely casting cures from a distance, you're better off with a WHM due to the lower enmity of Cure V.
- Our nukes do not do as much damage compared to a BLM. Hence, for timed-nuke situations, we will not be as effective compared to a BLM since we need to be able to cast more nukes to do the same amount of damage.
- SCHs can be very independent... with Sublimation and our higher MP efficiency, a SCH can last significantly longer without support compared to other mages.

So, the best ways to use a SCH in an endgame situation are:
- Put us in a DD party where we can Regen-ga lots of people at once, and add to their damage with en-spells.
- Put us in a multiple-tank party where we can buff up multiple tanks at the same time with Phalanx & Stoneskin. If there is only one tank to take care of, Accession mostly goes to waste.
- Make sure we can see the HP of other critical parties. In an alliance situation, if a SCH can see the HPs of other parties, we can easily throw them a Accession Cure IV if their own healer is in trouble.
- In a manaburn situation, give the SCH time to cast prep spells... that means for timed nukes, give us a few second warning so that we can put weather spells on all the BLMs and possibly give them Klimaform. It takes a few seconds to switch modes, cast the spells and get ready to nuke ourselves.
- Bring a SCH when the situation calls for both a WHM & BLM. In situations where you're looking for a pure healer, you're better off bringing a WHM or DNC. For pure nuking, you're better off bringing a BLM. However, if you need someone who can handle both jobs, that's when you bring a SCH and let switch between roles as necessary.

So, that's my thoughts on SCH... I've been coming SCH a lot more to events these days in order to experiment, even though compared to my other two jobs, it's the worst equipped. Other people tend to also be more accepting of SCH. It's a hard job to get "wrong", but few people take it to it's full capability.

On DNC endgame roles

I think I'm finally settling into my 3 jobs. I've been figuring out how best to use them and the roles that they best fulfill during endgame events. Here are some of my thoughts from my experiences, and I'm open to comments and suggestions on how to improve or change things.

This post is about Dancer... I was originally going to post everything in one shot, but I realized that it would make for a very long post, so keep your eyes open for opinions on Scholar and Blue mage in the very near future!

Dancer
Probably the hardest to define since very few people have leveled it beyond subjob levels. Also, very few people have done much experimentation with it for endgame events since it was added late in the game, and is probably not someone's first job to 75 which means that people will tend to go with jobs they know rather than experiment.

I think SE defines Dancer as a "front-line healer". It wasn't until last night that I finally realized what that really meant. It doesn't just mean that a DNC goes up and pokes the mob while healing, it also means that the job is designed to be able to survive a mob's attention.

Tools for surviving are:
- High evasion
- Violent Flourish/Desperate Flourish
- Fan Dance
- Subjob choices: /NIN for Utsusemi, or /SAM for Third Eye

Compared to any MP-based, or back-line healer, Dancer has the following advantages:
- Infinite endurance -- Unlike MP-based healers, a properly equipped Dancer can continue to heal forever. This gives Dancers a distinct advantage for fights that go for long periods of time. MP-based jobs need support in order to keep healing over long times. The only job that has a chance of keeping up with a DNC is RDM due to Convert.
- Can continue healing even when pulling hate -- Mage jobs that pull hate need to back off, or log out to shed hate before they can continue their jobs. A DNC that pulls hate just needs to keep at it, survive a few hits with Utsusemi or Fan Dance, then let the tanks continue their job. Since you're already at the front-line, the mob won't even be moving away from the tanks. The only cavert here is that the mob must not be able to do a move that can one-shot the DNC. HP merits & damage reduction gear will greatly help.
- Cures are instant -- No matter how fast a mage job is, casting a spell still takes 1.5-2 second. A tank that just took a 1,000 hit needs a cure instantly. Dancers can restore 800+ of that immediately with Curing Waltz IV.

Compared to MP-based healers, Dancer has the following disadvantages:
- Waltz recast -- The biggest annoyance of a Dancer... all Waltzes being on the same recast timer. A mage can go from Cure IV to Cure III, alternating between spells in order to keep curing a tank. A Dancer has to wait out the timer. That is also the main reason why I generally use only Curing Waltz III and rarely use IV since the timer for III is so much shorter.
- No Stona, cannot erase Bard songs -- The only two things that require WHM, SCH or /WHM.
- Party only -- A Dancer can keep a party very healthy, but she can't help other members of the alliance. This has lead to weird situations when I have a completely party full of DDs which are at near max HP with the rest of my alliance dead or dying.

How to best use a Dancer in endgame situations
Dancers excel in the following situations:
- Long battles where you will be engaged to the same mob, or have a bunch of mobs engaged at the same time. Examples are: any long single-mob battle, large pulls where you have mobs slept around you where a healer will most likely pull hate. Einherjar & Dynamis are two good examples as during a large pull, healers will most likely end up pulling hate from keeping the sleepers alive.
- Put a Dancer in a party where members will take damage -- If a Dancer is put in a DD party that never takes damage, then the Dancer is mostly useless. Put the Dancer in the tank party and have the Dancer do most of the curing.
- Best healer for: Dynamis, Einherjar, Limbus, any NM that takes >10 minutes -- Where you have time limits so you want minimal downtime, and your healer may pull hate from pulling multiple mobs at the same time or from healing tanks against one mob for a long time.

Dancers should not be used in:
- Short battles with significant downtime between waves -- Dancers do best in continous combat... if there is long enough downtime, you may as well bring a traditional healer who can get their MP back. If the battle is too short, the Dancer can't gain TP, and a traditional healer will most likely never get hate.
- Any fight where you can't have melees constantly on the mob -- Heavy spikes damage, mobs where you want to avoid TP moves, or any Bind/Nuke or Sleep/Nuke situation
- Bad for events like: Nyzul Isle (Fights are fast, long downtime during lamp floors, etc.)

My personal opinion on Dancer is... it's the most challenging job to play properly of the 3 jobs I have in an endgame situation. I'm always looking at the recast timers, thinking about which job ability to use next, which step to use, and I have to be on the ball about timing cures, watching hate and being aware on when I need to hit my "panic button" and prepare to tank. Ironically, it also has the least versatility of my 3 jobs and is most focused on doing one thing: curing.