Show & Tell

Whee… been a while since a show & tell post. Since Zu was saying that I’d be posting pics about this, may as well put them up sooner rather than later!

Last night, I took my new DRG75 up to part 1 of sea and was… well… mostly disappointed. I just wasn’t doing that much damage to the regular Aern mobs we were fighting in the palace… 200ish WS damage. I guess this is partly due to my slightly low polearm skill, which was 7 under cap when we started, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad. I guess this is part of the “new 75” job syndrome where I spend a few events tweaking my macros and gear choices until I figure out a combination that works for me. Sea mobs are pretty evasive, so I ended up with a new WS macro that pretty much stacks accuracy to get every single hit in, bringing my WS damage up to 500… Not that good… I’m still trying to figure out what the right balance should be for WS gear. Probably should look into getting sea gorgets for at least Drakesbane and Penta… UFO hunting time~

Last night also was my first merit party on DRG… I haven’t actually been in a merit party for a long time, not since I first finished DNC. I don’t remember the composition of the party, but I remember that I was main healing and pulling on DNC, which is pretty rough due to the delay on throwing weapons. I think I only managed to get up to chain 24 before the chain would break.

Well, this was a completely different beast. Party setup was 2x RNG, DRG, SAM, RDM & BRD. We had Fuuji & Ghiren on RNG/NIN, with Fuuji going from 74-75 for this party, Weaponx on SAM/WAR tanking and taking the bulk of the damage, Caoihme on RDM/WHM saving all of us, Zurar on BRD/NIN annoying the party on the middle floor by pulling some of their birds, and me on DRG/SAM, doing my best to keep up @.@

Let’s see… what was fun…

First big milestone was chain #100, which Fuuji dramatically got us to with an Eagle Eye shot

During the first 100 mobs or so, I was adjusting my gear and macros and experimenting with Drakesbane and Pentathrust… I’m still trying to figure out the right balance between accuracy gear, str gear and various other pieces for using weaponskills. Drakesbane’s damage appears to be really weird, with damage ranging from as low as 500 to 1100 even when I manage to get all 4 hits in, with an eyeballed average of 700-800 or so. I guess this has to do with the critical hit capability on Drakesbane. I have 4/4 crit merits, but since that is still random, the damage will vary from WS to WS. Penta was a little more consistent, doing around 800 if I get all 5 hits in, sometimes spiking at 1000 or so. Still, after so many levels of Penta, I really wanted to see a different WS. Besides Weap was using Penta and doing about twice my damage xD

I think this was about the highest Drakesbane I pulled off:

Only buffs were Hasso and one Minuet… Other had just wore before the WS. I’m guessing this was being lucky with a few critical hits, as well as double attack from my Brutal Earring and Pole Grip kicking in. Still have some tweaking to do on my gear macros I think, and I don’t even know what is normal damage for DRGs in merit parties… I guess I need to spend some time observing other DRGs.

Anyway, the party went on for about 3 hours before we decided to wrap things up. Big thanks to Caoihme who managed to keep us alive and keep up a Haste cycle.This also marks the record of the longest chain I’ve had yet x.x

In total, I got 6 1/2 merits in that party. I already had 2 merits before we started. I spent them on unlocking Deep Breathing, putting another upgrade into Angon to bring the duration to 45 seconds, and put one into Polearm. I’m debating whether I want to lower my sword merits (currently 7/8) and put some merits into Polearm. I’m also debating whether I want to put some extra merits into a mixture of Str & Dex. At the moment though, I’m more focused on putting up another Angon upgrade (5 merits) to bring the duration to 1 minute, and finishing off my last two HP upgrades (10 merits)

Now for the rest of show & tell! First up… largest number of relics I’ve seen inside a Dynamis treasure pool. Looks like this was on November 18th, Dynamis-Valkrum run:

And finally… I’m not entirely certain, but I think this NPC just insulted me ~.~ Click through for the full version. The blog design cuts it off.

And… that’s it for this post!