Since I had virtually no vacation time left after taking a long vacation this year, I didn't get a chance to go anywhere this x-mas/new years vacation and was home for most of it. I guess that's a good thing since the airports were screwy anyway with the TSA overreacting to terrorists they let through, and the weather generally sucked everywhere.
Anyway, AP was pretty empty last week, so I spent most of my time doing random things with Impact including some assaults with Jurgos/Helo/mday, helping with NMs, and even two merit parties. The two merit parties let me finish my last two HP upgrades, bringing me to 8/8 HP upgrades and completing that merit category.
Which means... well... now I'm at a place where I'm not entirely sure what to merit next. I think all I have left are job-specific merits, or attribute merits. I might throw some merits into a mix of str & dex to round things up since both are useful for DNC, DRG & BLU. For job-specific merits, I guess I could finish up Angon or Stormsurge, though I'm not sure what else I'd actually bother meriting further. I think I have the basics unlocked enough for my jobs.
In other fun news...
I'm 6/6 on Scholar relic now! Picked up the belt on Dynamis - Qufim last Wednesday, and finally the hands piece in Valkurm on Saturday! My head, hands and feet pieces are also the +1 type (well, hands will be come next Sunday). Unfortunately, these two piece are now adding to the complication of my SCH macros, which are already the most complicated out of all of my jobs due to the amount of gear that needs to be swapped in and out based on the situation, spell being cast, and even the weather >.>
(Yes, that IS what it looks like... at least to me! I think SE's choice of colors for SCH relic suck D: This looks a lot more elegant and refined.)
So, that's my 3rd full set of relic gear that I've obtained with BMO. I've been with BMO for just over a year now, and have completed DNC, BLU & SCH in that time, including quite a few +1 pieces. I'm currently... erm... 3/6 on PLD, and 2/6 on DRG as well, so those are coming along nicely.
ASA
Sunday night was ASA mission time again... 5th attempt at it, though 4th actual time we entered the BC. Thanks to doing assaults earlier, I had a Hi-potion tank which... well, was ineffective since the potency was not increased. Healing Breeze did slightly better, with 200ish HP healed, though I didn't see how much Magic Fruit did. I don't think healing skill was boosted at all, and any increases in healing done by mages was only due to to attribute increases, specifically MND being boosted by 150 points. In theory, this would mean that DNC would get a double increase since the formula for Waltzes takes into account the Dancer's Chr, and the target's Vit. A Tranced DNC might be a better choice for keeping the party cured during the "rage" portions of the fight since it lasts a whole minute, and isn't a one-shot heal like a WHM's Benediction. If I had the option, I'd probably bring a WHM & DNC for this fight as healers.
Anyway, FINALLY finished this fight... though it was a close one...
Not *quite* as close as my CoP airship fight where we finished with 3 seconds left on the clock, but pretty close :) I don't think we're doing this again anytime soon... at least, not with this setup or group.
So, another mini-expansion done... probably the last content for FFXI, not counting their overall laziness with WotG. I still haven't decided what leg piece to get, or what augments to get either. Unlike the other two mini-expansion pieces, I can't figure out anything good for DNC. The "Waltz TP Cost -5" isn't really that useful considering that I can generally get TP fast enough to not worry about cost of healing, and "Conserve TP". I'm not sure what else to consider here... movement speed for one of my "slow" jobs? Should I save it for a future job?
Anyway... at least that's over with now! Only missions I have left are the WotG ones, or the Bastok rank missions... The later I'm too lazy to really bother doing at the moment, though I guess at some point I *should* go do them. As for WotG... well, truthfully, the last update only released a couple of minor nation-specific quests, so I'm in no rush to bother going through them. Add to that the fact that my partner in crime for WotG, Vanh, is currently on a multi-month break from FFXI makes it very much more difficult to find people to do the WotG quests since just about everyone else is months out-of-date and are not bothering to do the legwork to setup parties to do them... oh well.
Newly released gear
Styles has been bugging me to "get Fuuji to fight fomors" -- his words -- for the new fomor-type weapons. I guess that the new etchable "synergy" weapons must be good if people are actually going after them... And there are more new things in the game. I saw someone wearing an Ebon Harness at Einherjar and thought that it looked quite stylish, though dark. After reading briefly about it and the methods for upgrading (hunting a NM for a rare/ex drop, then doing some weird synergy stuff to it) and how expensive it is (requires angel skin and other expensive pieces), I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle of researching it, camping NMs and farming gil to bother with.
There are also tons of other bits of gear that are relatively new to the game that might be interesting, but are a pain to go after. For example, the Cinquedea, a DNC-specific dagger that, if released a year ago, I'd be all over and trying my best to get. I mean, I did camp a Kard just for the +chr bonus when I was leveling DNC! However, the general pain in researching where these weapons came from, the hassle of gathering people, researching the fight, looking for the pop, and the questionable difference in performance just drained any desire for it. I guess I got burnt too often with SE's "new" releases with the complete waste of my time in MMM trying to get Ermine's Tail, and in their stupid Augment "fay weapon" system where I ended up with a dagger with -accuracy that I'm no longer interested in the weird new systems that they add to FFXI. It seems that every new system they add throws some weird wrench or has some weird hook in it, and the rewards rarely match the time spent, or are situational pieces or sidegrades from existing items.
At this point, I'm not sure whether it's worth bothering with any of the new "get shiny items" content... I think I'm geared well enough on all my jobs to tackle any situation, and getting another piece of gear isn't going to significantly change my effectiveness or how I play the game. I think right now, the harder thing is finding interesting things to do in FFXI instead of just doing the usual routine and being idle and bored...
2 comments:
SCH belts don't exist, I have to assume you're lying.
Also, DNC vs. Shantotto? ...really?
It's true... dropped from a Weapon in Qufim. I was shocked too.
And... DNC vs. Shantotto... who knows... I doubt it's been tried. All I've heard on this fight is 4x SAM 2x WHM or 3-4x SMN, 1x RDM. The problem in Shantotto is during the rages, she's putting out about 5k damage in about 20 seconds targeted at one person, which tends to kill people even if their WHM has fast reflexes unless you use Benediction since cure casting time is a pain. At least, that's what I always got hit with when I died. That's also probably why the SAM strategy calls for bringing 2x WHMs since spamming Cure V with Solace up is a lot more healed compared to anything a SCH can put out.
DNC's Curing Waltz IV hits Cure V ranges in normal circumstances. Target Vit actually makes a huge difference to the amount cured for waltzes, so it might push it even higher. Trance reduces recast, making it possible to spam Waltzes instead of a one-shot potential miss of Benediction (as we saw). And, Waltzes are instant, so you don't have the window between starting to cast and the HP actually being healed.
If we had any flexibility of jobs, I'd have moved things around. Unfortunately, the fight does call for at least 1 WHM, and we only had 1 WHM, plus one other member only had one usable job, so...
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