Waah... stupid low drop rates!

God, drop rates are horrible! Did another Sarameya on Monday... no Hachiryu as usual... and not even an Oracle's Robe! Some weird cap dropped that nobody wanted... so another Tier IV gone without taking things off the wishlist...

Also, Chigre was giving out the wrong ring... at this point, everyone who even has a mage job somewhat leveled has the +magic accuracy ring... even Con picked one on monday, and his BLM isn't anywhere near the right level... not to mention I'm fairly certain that BLM doesn't need magic accuracy, but would benefit more from int rings (I think?)

Then... no Dancer stuff AGAIN in Dynamis... I've lost count of the number of runs we've gone on without DNC drops already... Xarc is just not being my friend... I think tonight is run #5 where I'm hoping for DNC or SCH drops.

aaaaaaaaand... boy, key hunting sucks... no luck getting that Bead key yet for my PLD AF... ~.~ how annoying!

(ok... I think they've stopped watching... /whine off)

Real blog follows...

So Wutangwarrior mentioned that my whining seemed to be working since after my last whiney blog post, I've been getting a surprising amount of relic items... all for SCH. Picked up two -1 pieces (that I can't use yet as I lack the NQ) and the SCH relic legs (good macro piece for Dark magic). I got 2 out of the 3 possible pieces I needed from last Saturday's Dynamis Qufim (the last being the SCH belt... I already have the DNC & BLU pieces that drop in that zone), so that was very nice and I even got the "loot whore" award for the night... which I guess is an honor? :o Let's see if whining works again ;)

Event Updates

So... I've been doing a couple extra events outside of my normal schedule. Last Tuesday, I happened to be home earlier than normal due to an off-site meeting that was on the way home when Utaru sent me a /tell not long after I logged in telling me that there was a plan to do Bahamut v1 coming up with his sea group. I've been wanting to finish up this questline and do Apocolypse Nigh for ages for the Ethereal Earring. However, I was stuck at that alliance BC for Bahamut for ages and couldn't join any shouts for the final fight. Last week I jumped on the opportunity joined Rooks and ThisOrganization to go poke Oryu. That was definitely an interesting fight... I've never seen a BC before that had that many mobs around to fight.

Last night we did Bahamut v1. Interesting fight, but Rooks made it look pretty simple. We just had to stay out of the way. Just before this, I joined in for the fight for Jailer of Prudence... my first "sea" fight. Definitely a weird fight with two mobs being popped, and it teleporting all around whenever hate was lost. I found it funny that it would disappear, reappear, kill a BLM, then disappear again. Turned out that I ended up being targeted as well from generating too much hate from curing people. Luckily, I had some Stoneskin up, and HP merits which kept me alive.

Next week, looks like we're doing Bahamut v2 :O We're doing it "zerg" style and expect a fight of about 60 seconds... which puts me in an interesting position since the *one* job I don't have (and don't really intend to level yet) is a power DD job suitable for zerging... at least, at first glance. BLU would seem to be the obvious choice, simply spam spells... but I came up with an alternative.

DNC/SAM, throw on Saber Dance(50% Double Attack), add in Haste Samba for a party of DDs, plus Box Step every 10 seconds for Defense Down which benefits everyone. No Foot Rise, Reverse Flourish merits plus Meditate should ensure that I can throw out at least 3-4 Dancing Edges in under 60 seconds. It should be interesting to see how this works. I've gone all out on mobs before in Limbus and can put out more WS's per minute compared to most other DDs.

Paladin Update

Paladin leveling has been going just a liiiiiiiiittle crazy... the previous weekend, I went from 35-45 inside Crawlers Nest with Connie's leveling group. This past Memorial Day holiday, we went crazy and did a leveling session that went from 1pm Sunday till 7am Monday morning, with a brief break to help Dexie get her WSNM done. I went from 45-56 (1.2k from 57) in one night without a single piece of AF done >.<>

On Monday, I started up the PLD AF quests together with Ghiren. Ghiren needs to re-do his PLD AF since he upgraded his stuff to AF+1 a long time ago and want to re-store the full set. We also had a few extra coffer keys lying around, so we didn't have to farm too many.

We started with the hands "quest" coffer in Eldieme... I had an early hunch to go check the coffer up by the glacier entrance and lucked out for the first pair of gloves. Thank goodness for Lyco teleports, or else we'd have to have spent at least another 20 minutes just walking there. The 2nd coffer wasn't too hard to find since I could play with the switches and send Ghiren downstairs to check. Ironically, I found the 2nd coffer as well, hiding right next to one of the switches and guarded it until Ghiren could get to it.

Next up was the evil castle Zvahl for the "AF3" quest. We also had to poke Dark Spark to complete the hands quest, so we killed two birds with one stone. I virtually never go to the castle, so wandering around there was an interesting experience. So was tanking 3-4 demons at once on DNC. Ghiren came THF/NIN for TH2 so we could get some key drops. Interesting enough, we managed to get both keys in a reasonable time, as in finishing up both the keys and coffers before dinner!

Last night we continued our AF rampage... first by killing the AF3 NMs in Davoi. DNC/NIN & WAR/NIN for this one. We did the "pop NM, run him to zone to despawn links, then fight at zone" method... which almost worked out. We ended up with a few links anyway from the Orcs near the zoneline. They were giving Ghiren some problems, but once I voked all the links and extra NM off him, it was easy. I'm really liking DNC/NIN for low-man things. High evasion makes it hard for mobs to hit in the first place, and if they do hit, Utsusemi takes care of most things. If Utsusemi is down, or the mob does an AoE, Fan Dance reduces damage to virtually nothing.

We tried for the Beadeaux item next... started key hunting, but we got careless early on next to the Afflictor and got cursed. A badly timed Stonega-III from a linked BLM one-shot us, so we gave up on that area for now... We'll be back later!

Garliage was last on the list. We both had keys, and this is one coffer that you need to be on PLD to do. Between the WotG access and the new Lyco teleports, we're able to get past both Banishing gates. We were too eager to get past Banishing Gate #2, so we missed the first coffer which was behind #3 and I had to go back around for it while I left Ghiren behind #3... Funny thing is, I didn't know Sneak would drop when I popped the coffer, so as soon as I got my AF head piece, the ghost that was standing right next to me aggroed and proceeded to beat me up! Good thing PLD has Invincible... I made a mad dash to zone, pretty much aggroing everything behind the gate. A few spells got through, Bio II, Drown and at least one big -ga spell as I zoned out with only 30HP left and going down. Good thing I had HP merits :O Ghiren got his 5 minutes later when the coffer repopped behind gate #3.

So... only the Beadeaux key & coffer left to get... Probably pick that up later this week, then I can work to get PLD to 60!

Events: Dancer?

So... recently I've been going to events nearly exclusively as Scholar... Part of it is because Scholar is more versatile, being able to Cure-ga other parties, being able to nuke when necessary, and of course, being able to sleep in a pinch. Plus I'm not really expected to handle any of those jobs since there are dedicated BLMs, WHMs or RDMs, so I feel more free to switch tasks around and have some fun. The other major part is... well... playing Dancer at 100% takes a lot of concentration, watching timers for abilities, keeping a closer eye on the party's HP, and always switching mobs quickly to maximize TP gain.

That said... I'm really liking it when I take Dancer out for smaller events. AF coffer key farming is pretty fun and I can go all out DDing for periods... when we did Dexie's WSNM, I want DNC/NIN as well, starting off by main healing, but as the fight wore on, the theory behind enmity kicked in as I built up enough enmity from healing to take over tanking. Again, Utsusemi + Fan Dance = little loss in enmity, so hate ended up staying on me for the rest of the fight.

Now, the bigger question would be... where else would I use Dancer? I'm still not sure on this... I think for ZNMs I should have taken DNC to Nosferatu since in the past it's worked out nicely that I can take over when both PLDs are either down or charmed, but I brought SCH this time because we were doing Chigre as well... We haven't done many different zones in Limbus recently since we've been concentrating on completing pop sets, so I haven't really done DNC there in a while either...

Nuking SCH

So... one of the reasons I picked up SCH was to be able to fill in for BLMs whenever there is a lack. However, I haven't really paid too much attention to the nuking side of things, just picking up random things when they come by (goliard gear, +magic accuracy rings). Pretty much the only things I've picked up intentionally are an Elemental Torque and a Errant pants.

Last Limbus I decided to see how effective SCH nuking would be... we were manaburning it anyway. However, I was a bit surprised by the results. By keeping Hailstorm up, using Cream Puffs and always using Ebullience, I was able to match, and often exceed the BLMs who were nuking the same mob with the same spell. Ebullience is a 20% increase in potency, so it looks like SCH can match BLMs when nuking regular mobs. Stratagems recharge once a minute, but I can store up to 4 at any one time so I could use it for almost every single nuke. Throw in Sublimation, and I almost didn't have to /heal at all. King Behemoth was another story, of course, but I still managed to put out some 600+ Blizzard IVs

Well... long post, but that's the update for the past two weeks!