HQ Lootwhoring!

Been a while since I've had any fun FFXI news... just not that much happening! This week though, I think I may have finally matched, if not at least come close to Fuuji's legendary lootwhoring week a few months ago when he got both Hachiryu and Novio in two days xD

Monday night ZNMs was pretty normal. Smoothest Tygers we've had so far, with near-perfect stunning of Fulmination (only one got through), me and Rooks pretty much tanking him the whole way through, and an army of Rangers and Summoners doing distance damage to take him down twice with only one sacrificial Bard who kept on dying! (Hi Dolly!) FFXI is really starting to feel less like an RPG, and more like a RTS with the way we do things these days. I mentioned it to Rooks last Thursday during the Odin Einherjar. The way we have people organized, Rangers standing together and firing tons of arrows into a single mob, really reminds me of how RTS units group together and shoot.

(Of course, Rooks also says that he's been playing XI as a RTS for years now xD)

Still... that might be an interesting game mechanic if a guild leader can take a different interface, take a seat back and give people direction from a higher perspective. Move people around, give commands instead of having to type it all out, or talk over vent(which most people don't have in XI). It might make for an interesting game mechanic... someone go implement that? Maybe in some sci-fi MMO where it would make sense? I seem to recall that there was some FPS game which had a "commander" role who could give orders to individual players who were actually playing the FPS.

Anyway... time for the loot!

ZNMs: Antares Magic Atk Bonus +10, Magic Accuracy+10, MP+20

This dropped on the... I think last Tyger we did. It's on my list for two reasons... First, I really don't want to buy all the elemental staves and have them take up tons of inventory. I have the basics... dark staff for /heal, light staff for curing, and the important one is the HQ Ice Staff since a SCH does the most damage with Blizzard due to the way Hailstorm provides +int. I have a NQ Thunder staff just cos Thunder IV is my highest spell, though Blizzard IV consistently outperforms it. Everything else I don't have anything specific... so... Antares would come in! Magic Attack Bonus & Magic Accuracy would help with casting anything else from the other elemental magic, to Dia, Slow or Gravity where I do not have the elemental staff. And the +20MP does push my initial max MP up by another 20 up to 864MP when I add in the shield slot. Of course, that initial MP is only good for stuff like initial buffing as my other equipment quickly brings my "operational MP" down to about 650.

Secondly, having it look like a wand with a star on the end turns me into Sailor Ascule so I must use it to defeat evil!

aaaaaaand... a minor point was that I didn't have any other ideas on things I would have wanted from ZNMs anyway xD

Sea: Jailer of Love

So... erm... ya... I think this is the definition of lootwhoring!

Ya... that's... everything JoL dropped last night xD Sorry DO, this time the Novio earring didn't drop ^^;

After the last three JoLs didn't drop the Novia earring, I was getting fed up with him. Also, over the last few weeks I've been coming up in DRG levels (63 now!) and I'm quite enjoying it, so I decided that the Love Torque would be a really nice piece to have for both DRG & DNC. The Love Halberd of course goes for 1 point to whoever feels like getting it that day. I looked over my points and realized that I actually had enough points to get everything in one shot judging from previous bids on the items, and I'd been winning the Novia bid for the last few runs anyway, just that it wouldn't drop. I gave Rooks some warning that I might be doing something like this last week, but even I didn't think that this would happen. Sooooooo.... last night I went all out, won bids on everything and... surprisingly, JoL actually liked me and dropped it all xD Epic lootwhoring!

Love Halberd - DMG: 60, Delay: 396, Dex+7, Virtue stone equipped: Occasionally attacks twice. Lv. 73 SAM/DRG

Soo... if you look at the stats of the Love Halberd, it really isn't that good for DRG. It's low damage compared to other polearms, which means that Jump will not do as much damage... Low delay as well, so you don't get as much TP per hit. Even with the "occasionally attacks twice" part and the +dex, I'm pretty sure you'd end up coming out low in terms of DD output even by spamming WS since the WS would also be weaker...

The main reason I'm interested in this is... the double attack. Due to level sync, I'm pretty sure that by the time I hit 75 (or even 73), my polearm skill would be quite a bit out of date. Skilling up takes forever, so I'm hoping that using this with the double attack trait, it should go a bit faster. And it helps that I have 15 stacks of virtue stones sitting in storage, so that's up to almost 1500 double attacks xD

Novia Earring - Evasion +7, Enmity -7

I always call this "the evasion earring that JoL drops" because when I first became interested in it, I wanted it for my DNC evasion set. Truthfully, both aspects are very useful.

Dancers have a crazy high amount of evasion, second only the THF. Coupled with Fan Dance, our native healing abilities, and of course, /NIN and Utsusemi, we're crazy hard to kill by anything that doesn't one-shot us. I believe that this is the last piece I needed for my DNC evasion set, and it replaces my Velocity Earring (Evasion +4). The only other evasion piece that I do not have on DNC would be Ermine's Tail (Evasion +8) which would supplement my Adder Jambiya (Evasion+4), but not replace it due to the Beast Affinity aspect of Ermie. I'd be curious to try out DNC/NIN against something that is evasion tanked like Charby sometime... too bad Charby is so heavily camped and that you really don't want to risk losing claim.

I didn't really think too hard about the Enmity-7 in the past. On Dancer, while I was leveling up, I did stack on -enmity gear so that a tank could maintain hate. However, at 75, I strongly believe that DNC stops wanting -enmity and switches over to +enmity simply because it can survive that much better compared to the people we're healing. If I'm in a party with DDs, I want them to be able to do damage, stay alive, and keep Hasso/Berserk up. I can evade hits, have shadows and have Fan Dance to reduce the damage I take, so I'd rather have the mob on me. DNC relic reflects this with +enmity compared to the -enmity on AF, and there have been many times in Einherjar where I'd end up tanking the later half of a large wave simply from building up hate from spamming Divine Waltz (having a BRD in my party that sleeps the mobs pretty much guarantees that I'll become a target in a large enough pull)

It wasn't until Kaeko's post on the use of an Enmity Down set on SCH that I thought about using the -enmity side of things. I've added it to my Light Arts set so I can do more spamming of AoE buffs, Cure IV-gas and more. On the Dark Arts side, I'm considering adding it in, but currently I have two nuking earrings... Moldy for magical attack+, and I got a Sapphire Earring with Magic Accuracy +2 from the ACP chest... lucked out there with one good piece of augmented equipment. I rarely nuke in anything outside of a full BLM party anyway, so not having the -enmity is no big deal since I'm usually outdamaged by BLMs, or I actually *want* to pull hate in order to get the mob off the BLMs so that they can stun/bind/sleep/live.

Love Torque - Dex+5, Dagger & Polearm skill +7, Lv. 73

I already had my eyes on this due to the +dagger skill. This should beat my Peacock Charm for dagger accuracy, and of course, WS damage. It wasn't until I really decided to take DRG to 75 that this became something I really wanted. Poking things should be a lot more effective with this :D

Only question I have... would Love Torque or Chiv Chain be better for TPing/WSing on DRG? On DNC, it's not a question since in the past I was previously full-timing PCC. Plus on DNC I mainly use a Haste setup with minimal consideration to StoreTP. On DRG, StoreTP becomes a consideration to get to 100% TP for the next WS... also, isn't Str a modifier for WSing? so would it be better to WS in Chiv Chain, or Love Torque?

In any case... I think this also makes my Peacock Charm obsolete :o It's my main piece for DNC, but that just got replaced. My DRG is already post-60, so I've been using my Chiv Chain on that already. I've moved my PCC to my mog satchel for now in case I need to use it for some reason (like skilling up staff on hard mobs maybe?) but I'm really considering selling it as it *would* complete my Roundel Earring fund... not that there are any of those for sale at the moment ~.~ Still... I do have a sentimental reason for hanging onto the PCC since it was one that our BCNM40 group that Utaru put together got... and that Ashle let me have first cos I was leveling DNC at the time...

Aaaanyway... lots of macros have been changed to accommodate the new gear! Lots of testing needs to be done to make sure all the macros work properly too...