DRG relic completed, Abyssea exp, job stuffs, FFXIV

I guess Dynamis probabilities worked in my favor last week!

6/6 on DRG relic armor. That's the 5th complete set of relic so far with BMO/CTR and more importantly, +4 inventory spaces! Currently missing the PLD body and back pieces for my last job. I'm also missing only a couple of pieces for WHM, BST & PUP, all jobs that I would have considered leveling if not for the level cap increase.

I'm not too hopeful of being able to complete the PLD set given the stupidly low drop rates of these items, especially considering that we've been going after these items in every Dynamis for as long as I can remember.  I'm also not very hopeful of completing my DNC relic +1 pieces. Funny thing is that I'm only missing the relic -1 feet & hands which are not the super-rare Tav pieces.

In any case, Dynamis seems to be wrapping up as an event. With almost everyone at level 80 now, the event itself is becoming a joke at how quickly we plow through the mobs. Unfortunately the drop rate for the things we need is also a joke since we're barely getting any drops at all now (yes, with TH4) and rarely anything people actually want. With new events and new items popping up now with Abyssea and Walk of Echos, I wouldn't be surprised if interest in Dynamis started to taper off. Unfortunately, there are still lots of items in Dynamis that have attributes that can only be obtained via Dynamis. Many of the newer jobs like SCH & COR for example, have job-specific buffs that can only be found on relic armor.

Abyssea exp
Nice part about Abyssea exp is how quickly you can finish a job... The bad part is that it really requires a dedicated amount of time to do.

This past Saturday, we did yet another Abyssea exp alliance... 9am - 3pm Pacific time. I managed to take SCH from 17k into 75 to capped at 80 plus two merits in that time. This was the 3rd job I took to 80 (or near 80) using Abyssea, and 2nd last job that I have to complete. My COR is my last sub-80 job at level 77 and will likely be completed next weekend during another Abyssea exp session.

The draining part about Abyssea is simply the time it takes to do. Even in a properly executed Abyssea exp alliance, you're still looking at spending at least the first two hours getting into a proper chaining position where you can expect chest drops and time extensions, as well as the exp rate to increase to a reasonable amount. It really makes it tiring to actually do one of these sessions, but the alternative -- spending many more days exping in various parties in different locations -- is even more painful to get a job to 80.

Still... I can't imagine doing this all over again for all 6 jobs for the next level cap increase.

Job Stuffs
Since getting more jobs to 80, my perception on my jobs has changed somewhat.

* Dancer
Still overall my favorite in terms of soloing and healing capability. The ability to do heal people outside my party has made this job even more powerful, though I am disappointed that Healing Waltz does not work. The changes to the job itself haven't been really that useful -- I rarely use Presto and Climatic Flourish is amusing, but overall not something I would really use for damage. The biggest change has really been Sekkinoki since that gives DNC/SAM a lot more damage dealing potential. DNC/NIN still wins for overall survivability and damage reduction in nearly all situations.

* Paladin
Native Phalanx and that new Divine Emblem job ability have really enhanced the ability of a PLD/NIN to tank. However, the nerfing of the RDM enmity spells has also severely crippled a PLD/RDM's ability to hold hate. PLD is no longer my #2 favorite job simply due to this, though I still like tanking in PLD/NIN situations.

* Blue Mage
BLU was my first job due to the flexibility and capability of the job, going from anywhere from heavy DD to magical nuker, debuffer or even a full-time support job. The main reason why I avoided playing BLU was due to the support that it required in terms of Refresh. This update gave the spell Battery Charge, a 4MP/tick Refresh that lasts for 150 seconds. Yes, that is higher compared to the RDM Refresh spell, and pretty much means that I almost never run out of MP on BLU anymore.

BLU also got some other interesting spells, including a new full-strength Haste spell that lasts almost twice as long as the normal Haste spell, a new healing spell that also increases attack & magical attack, a regen spell and some more magical nuking spells. Furthermore, BLU/RDM gains the ability to Convert, meaning that a BLU could effectively go on forever. However, I haven't dared to actually use BLU/RDM for anything yet given the amount of hate BLU already pulls simply from doing damage and casting healing spells

Since the update, I've actually been pumping my merits into BLU. Just one more upgrade to Assimilation, then I can move on to completing Enchainment, Chain Affinity Recast and Physical Potency. BLU may end up being the 2nd job I actually finish meriting!

* Dragoon, Scholar
Both of these jobs are now 80. Neither has really gained much from the update. The most I can say is that DRG/SAM can now WS a little more often, and SCH/RDM can now Convert and never run out of MP.

FFXIV
The Final Fantasy XIV beta has started up, and I popped in for a quick look. Pretty much nothing has changed. It's still just as laggy and slow as before. It's also just as pretty as before, graphics looking like they are taken out of a CG movie. However, gameplay is pretty horrible and boring still, with no direction for plot, no guidance and... well, considering this is the second time I played through the opening sequence and it *still* took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of the very beginning area... (it's not obvious and there's a gate preventing you from running directly out) You should see the shouts of people asking basic things like how to fight or form parties! (actually, how do you form parties? I still don't know how to properly do this)

Except for the opening cutscene, there really hasn't been any real NPC dialog, with everyone I talk to so far giving very generic, forgettable statements. It's as though someone turned off the storytelling element that SE used to be good at? Also, I thought that SE added a "new player" tutorial/set of quests in FFXI recently... years after the game launched... You'd think that they would be applying the lessons they learnt to their new game? I haven't seen anything resembling a tutorial or anything to teach you how to do anything in XIV. Keep in mind that this game is supposed to launch in less than 2 months.

Still.. it's amusing to see hundreds of people camping rats like NMs :)

If I were a good...

If I were a good Blue Mage...

- I'd probably have some +str gear for physical spells

- I'd probably have a +HP set for Breath spells

- I might even have a +def set for Cannonball!

- Crazily enough, I might even have a +chr build for Eyes on Me

- ... and a +dex build for specific spells

- ... and a magical nuking build that includes +int

- and macro in accuracy gear for Head Butt

If I were a good Scholar...

- I'd have a lot more -enmity gear

- I'd have some +cure potency stuff

- I'd get a Refresh body and macro it in for when Sublimation is down or fully charged

- I'd have some +int gear for nuking

- ... and more HQ staves

If I were a good Paladin...

- I'd have a lot more -damage stuff

- My shield skill would be capped, and I'd have more +shield gear

- I'd have some sort of +movement speed gear

- ... and would macro in +cure gear for curing

- ... and a ton more +HP gear

If I were a good Dragoon...

- I'd definitely have more +str gear

- I'd have macros to put in +HP gear for healing breath

- I'd macro in my AF helm for offensive nukes somehow

- ... and wouldn't be using level 25 armor at 65!

annnnnnnnd... if I were a good any of the above, I'd have more merits in each job instead of just the basics!

If I were a good Dancer...

- I'd have a Roundel Earring... if only...

Well, truthfully, I think I'm okay at Dancing, so that's what you get!

Fashion show!

So… here’s a little fashion show :) I’m only putting up full sets… so… one set in particular is not yet complete. I never picked up the Cobra Unit Harness, so I don’t have a pic of that

First up, SCH & PLD stuffs!

Here we have the actual SCH AF… the SCH AF with relic body and hat, PLD AF and the Iron Ram set from Sandy [S]. While the SCH relic set is not complete, it does match well with the AF set so I included it xD The SCH relic body has a small dat mod to change the skirt from the dull brown color to a much nicer red :D There’s another dat mod in there that I’m not saying!

Now for some swimsuits… I screwed up the 2nd pic slightly xD

In keeping with the theme… we have some festival outfits!

Full x-mas gear… Mumor’s Sunbreeze Festival outfit (complete with heart rod) and the latest yukata!

Can’t forget the base AF for my first two jobs… another couple of dat mods on my DNC AF, including Lilisette’s hairpin xD Now… does anyone know what the armor set on the right is? I really doubt anyone else has this full set xD

And to finish off the fashion show… Dancer relic!

I really don’t like the way the Azoth looks so I replaced it’s dat file with another Jambiya… so now I actually look like I have matching daggers!

And… bonus pic from Sunday’s Einherjar xD

That’s it for pics from last week!

BLU Fashion Show!

First up, big THANK YOU to Rooks, Dade, Rizon, and Weaponx for helping me get my last BLU spell: Asuran Claws… While this isn’t one of the critical spells a BLU needs, it is a very nice feeling to be completely done with all BLU spells (at least until the next big update).

Furthermore, on Saturday’s Limbus I lucked out with the drop and actually got my last Homam piece from Omega… It’s been 1 1/2 years since I started doing Limbus, Back then I was a newly leveled BLU, not even 75 on my first job yet, and the roster was significantly different. Vanh & Fuuji are the only other two left from that period who are still with us.

We’re definitely at a point where we can continue to pull off Omega consistently if membership remains as it is… I’m hoping it does, since Toku & I had set up the point system such that people would still have incentive to stay even after completing homam since Ancient Beastcoins are a decent source of gil and items.

Anyway, on with the fashion show! First up… all my BLU outfits. I think at this point my Blue Mage is complete… I can’t think of any other outfits that would significantly impact my performance. (click for bigger image)

Ok, now time for some other fun pics from the past few weeks~

A long time ago in an early Dynamis Jeuno, I successfully took an Eagle Eye Shot straight to the head on Dancer by pulling hate for the split second it took for the mob to do the move… Of course, since I go to Dynamis as DNC/SAM…
Now on PLD:

 

Here’s an example of Ebullience at work… or as Vanh/Fuuji call it, SCH hax!

Later that same run… overconfident BLMs? xD

This is the reason why I like to come as SCH for the AMK final fight… need to bring SAMs next time. 5 Henchmen pop, but before I could get off the Aspir, Zurar had killed one with a self-darkness SC for almost 10k

Seems like PLDs everywhere dress pretty similarly xD Iron Ram body looks pretty similar to hydra body :)

Here’s Teia with a completely inappropriate dying position ~.~

And here’s Altima who somehow managed to fall under the ice… silly DRK

I’m still amused that I can put together Mumor’s entire outfit xD I can look like an NPC!

The new yukatas look really light compared to the old ones… here’s the new & old side by side

That’s it for now!

BLU spells +

So, biiiiiiiiiiiig thanks to Vanh last night for helping me get the two new BLU spells. Surprisingly, I went 1/1 for both spells once we saw the mobs do them. The first Walrus we killed did Sub-Zero Smash and I got it on the first kill. We had a little accident with the gargoyle-like mobs where we had 3 beating down on us and we wiped. Seems like they have a long aggro range >.<>

Unusual... but... I guess having the upgraded AF+1 body, relic hat and using the AF hands all helped. I'm now only missing Asuran Claws on BLU.

Quick review on the two spells:

Sub-Zero Smash

* The additional effect: Paralysis actually turned out to be fairly effective, probably on the order of a regular RDM Paralyze spell

* Damage done was fairly decent too, about 200-300+ damage on VTs. This puts it on the order of Seedspray for a damage + enfeebling spell

* Unfortunately, the high Blue Magic Point cost (4 points) does mean that I'd have to sacrifice quite a few spells to put this in. Under most circumstances, I'd have a WHM or RDM around to cast Paralyze, so the high MP cost (44MP) for this compared to a regular Paralyze makes it more situational than anything

* However, having Para around in a solo situation would help, so... probably a solo-only spell?

* The Fast Cast trait is nice, but BLU spells cast so quickly anyway that I doubt this will make a big difference. Having to set Bad Breath in order to get the trait just makes it that much harder to justify using

* The +3 Vit attribute helps towards Cannonball damage

Triumphant Roar

* Simple self-targetted buff that increases attack by 15% for 60 seconds

* MP cost is fairly high at 36MP. Recast time is 90 seconds, so... while it is possible to keep the attack buff up 2/3 of the time, the high MP cost probably means that it's not worth it

* However, +3 Str for 3 Blue Magic Points isn't too bad...

* Only use I can think of for this spell is to combine it with Diffusion for a zerg fight. +15% attack from yet another source besides BRDs would help in taking down a mob quickly

So... decent spells, nothing game changing, opens up some new options and possibilities for BLU

[Looking for party]

So last night I was trying to figure out what of the new content to tackle first... then I realized that getting people together for any of the new content is going to be a huge PITA simply cos of the way stupid SE split up the nation quests! You can't even help someone with some of the nation quests -.-

So... in an attempt to try to get through the WotG missions, and soon the Moogle missions, I'm looking for 5 good people who want to get together on a regular basis to work through the missions & quests! Chances are this will mean going back to help people with a few fights, and some small groups of farming and stuff... with the group getting together at a scheduled time for specific fights.

Anyone want to join me?

/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.

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.

Holiday Update + MMM spamage

This is going to be a big post since I haven't been blogging much over the holidays, but I've been doing a looooooooooot of things :)

Scholar 74!

I think it was the week before Christmas that Vanh said to go get Scholar 75... After I had pushed Scholar past level 40, the job became even more fun and broken than before with Accession. The Monday before Christmas, Zurar Kurai & I went to do the final SCH AF fight (with a little trouble from Zu DCing right as the fight started, but that's a story for another time). That pretty much started my crazy attempt to get SCH 75 before the normal "work/school" schedule started up again. I knew that once the holidays were over, I'd pretty much abandon leveling up since I'd be too busy with RL stuff, or FFXI events to even change jobs into SCH.

Luckily, SCH gets invited to parties at a very good rate. A few of my objectives for the holidays was to 1. Catch up on TV/movies/anime and 2. Catch up on various OTHER games I've neglected. Well, I was barely able to completely #1 since I'd get 15 minutes into a show when I'd get an invite on SCH. Contrast that to other jobs like Dancer or Thief where I was able to finish playing Mass Effect while seeking xD

After Sunday's normal "static level-sync" party with Vanh, Fuuji and the usual crew (normally Zurar & Kurai), I was able to get to level 74. Just 40k left until level 75, which is either 1-2 decent parties, or one good merit party. I'll probably get my usual 20k buffer and leave SCH as that. The good news is that my Elemental, Enfeebling and Dark magic skills are actually almost capped, just 4-5 below cap right now thanks to a few well-timed Besieges. So, unlike other mages (many new RDMs out there), I'm actually able to Sleep, Enfeeble and nuke effectively. The Sunday static still needs a healer, especially as they go through the 60s and near 75. I'll continue coming as SCH (unless they'd rather have me on DNC) both to get some more merits, and to get some skillups in Enhancing & Healing magic. By the exp chart, There's about 500k worth of experience between level 56-75. I still need 21 more merits to finish Dancer merits, and I'll probably want some extra merits to work on other things, such as attributes, HP/MP or possibly Scholar or Blue Mage specific merits.

Scholar@75(ish)

So, what's interesting from leveling Scholar was that even before I finished the job I was asked to come as SCH73 to two events so far, Dynamis and Limbus. This was surprising since 1. the job wasn't finished, 2. my SCH isn't geared to be good at anything at all, and 3. I haven't finished learning or experimenting with it yet. I still don't know a Scholar's limits and capabilities and I'm not quite comfortable taking it out yet.

Dynamis: This was a low-man Dynamis-Sandy... we started with barely 19 people and we were going for the win. As far as I counted, we had 2x WHM and 2x SCH for this zone and I was coming to basically mainly heal, which was "ok" for a SCH, but I really felt that I could have done better on DNC. A few times I had run out of MP and many times Wuwu came close to dying, especially when he became the /assist when people started to fall. On DNC, healing would never have been a problem. I'm almost never without TP in Dynamis, and unlike a mage healer job, I pretty much have unlimited stamina for healing people. Dancer really excels in low-man situations, and a low-man Dynamis would have been one of them.

On the other hand, when it came time to nuke the bosses, I didn't have to just stand around idle and was actually able to do some nukes. Unfortunately, since my level, skill level, and gear were totally not prepared for nuking, I barely did any damage at all, even with helixes. Overall not very satisfying. If I'm coming to Dynamis as a healer, I'd rather come as DNC instead and do an overall much better job keeping people alive.

Limbus: Similar to Dynamis, we had a low-man run due to the low turnout from the holidays. Normally, this would have meant that Nain would be on RDM, and I'd be on either BLU or DNC to either back him up, or main heal. Nain wanted to try him on BRD and me on SCH instead, and this turned out to work fairly well.

A few advantages from this setup: We had 2x AoE sleepers (BRD + SCH Manifestation) instead of just one close-range AoE sleeper (BLU using melee-range spells) Instead of having to always heal up damage one person at a time, I could Stoneskin-ga people and use Regen-ga. Instead of Nain having to keep up a busy Refresh/Haste cycle, he could use March, then Ballads on me, so it was overall less stressful for Nain. Final advantage was that we would have Raise II in case of emergencies. Blew through the floors easily with no downtime. I even had MP to throw out a few nukes here and there.

Other SCH endgame: So... when I first started leveling SCH, I had a few things in mind... first was the cute AF! It's one of the jobs that I wanted to level mainly for the AF. Other jobs that fall into this category are... PLD(pretty), RNG(girl scout) & BST(stuffed animal) ^^; The other reasons was to take up a different back-line role for certain events.

For some events where I go as BLU/WHM (or BLU/SCH), I usually end up as a back-line job throwing out heals, casting Diamondhide or trying to use Breath spells as a magical attack. The reasons behind taking up a back-line BLU are normally to avoid feeding a mob too much TP (our big hitting spells can easily push a mob up to 100% TP in a few seconds), or for mobs that are taken down purely by magical damage. As Scholar, I can do the back-line job much better than coming as BLU. The SCH Stoneskin costs much less MP and can be repeated more often. Throw in Phalanx for even more damage mitigation. Switch to Dark Arts and a SCH can throw out more nukes, at a further range instead of having to be within AoE range of the mob like BLU or risk having the mob move out of position.

So, basically, any event where I have to "stand back" instead of being up there in front of the mob, I'll probably break out SCH. This is mainly Omega for Limbus, but may include certain ZNMs. (like Cheesehoarder, or that Gears one that keeps running around and makes me dizzy if I try to melee it) If healing is needed, I'd rather take Dancer out since Dancer has not only unlimited stamina for long fights, but can also switch over to become a tank in the event of pulling hate instead of having to constantly log out to get rid of hate. BLU would be used for cases where flexibility is needed (mainly Nyzul), or in the event that simple DD is all that is needed (unlikely since so many people prefer to DD than to heal).

What next? Well, SCH is my "mage/nuking" job for at least the foreseeable future. BLU is my DD job, and DNC is my tanking/healing job... I'm considering if my next job should be a "support" class, either BRD, COR or RDM. That would probably depend on how SCH is taken... if I'm asked to constantly come SCH where my DNC would do just as well, or a better job as a healer, then I'll probably *not* level one of those "4life" jobs.

Furthermore, I really need to gear up my SCH sometime. The gear I'm using right now is simply AF and my +MP gear from BLU and a couple of magical accuracy rings I had lying around. No Moldy earring, no int/mnd gear from the AH at all. The only Scholar-specific items I've bought (besides spells) are a Light Staff and Ice staff, so it may be a while before my SCH is fully geared up to handle nuking. Finally, I'm also still fully concentrated on Dancer as my main job, so I'm still much better at Dancer in terms of ability, merits and gear!

Meanwhile... I might go back to toying with PUP. A lot of my Dancer/Blue Mage gear can also be used on PUP, and with Fields of Valor, I think it might be fun to bring this pet job up through the levels solo!

Lots of lewt!

Let's see... I've gotten a lot of loot since the last big post. What do we have...

- Etoile's Toe shoes -- aka Dancer AF2 Feet from Dynamis Jeuno. Good accuracy piece and Dancing Edge WS piece

- Mirage.. erm... gloves -- BLU AF2 gloves from Dynamis San d'Oria. I was a little surprised when I actually got to lot on these, but... I guess we didn't have that many people with us that night ^^; These aren't really *that* useful for a BLU given that I have Enkidu's gloves as well as Homam gloves, but the +Dex, +Mnd & +evasion are nice... and of course, this brings me that much closer to finishing the AF2 set :)

- Enkidu's Leggings -- Excellent haste & attack piece. Goes on full time for both Dancer and Blue Mage for almost all situations. The only times I'd swap them out is if I need more accuracy, or if I'm going heavy on the nukes on BLU. This replaces my dusk feet. Thank you to Teia who agreed to swap my Vargie-signed boots for her normal ones. She now has a pair of signed Dusk feet, and I have a bit more gil ^^

- Askar Head -- Picked this up helping Fuuji's group with a floor 100 run. Since they all already had all the Nyzul head gear, any head gear that dropped would go to me... and this happened to drop ^^; Unfortunately, I don't have any jobs that can use it yet... I guess I should look into leveling SAM at some point. I didn't know that floor 100 used to be a 100% drop >.<

- Denali Kecks -- This is an interesting piece... For BLU, it adds Magical Accuracy & Attack. For DNC, it mainly adds the +3 evasion. They look like PJs, so chances are I won't be putting them on much, but this piece brings me that much closer to finishing my evasion setup on Dancer. The main thing I need now is just the Boxer's Mantle, and I'm only 10 Ancient Beastcoins away from finishing that. Also picked this up with Fuuji's group... they really seem to have more luck with drops than we do.

And... not sure if I mentioned these... I got both of these in the previous week before the holidays
- Mirage Jubah -- BLU AF2 body. The +accuracy and Refresh effect make this a full-time body piece. The only time I'd swap out to my AF+1 body would be if I *really* need the Blue Magic skill, which would mean I'm doing magical attacks

- Delta Earring -- The 15k Einherjar piece! FINALLY got it just before the holidays... Good thing too! This is a good piece for Dancer due to the +dex, +chr & -enmity. Since I usually /SAM, I don't always use my Suppanomi earring and this makes a really good replacement.

Phew... lots of loot there. Boxer's Mantle will probably come this week after another Limbus run. I still need a few pieces more to complete what I consider to be my "ideal dancer setup", most of which is the DNC AF2, but I just discovered another piece that I'll cover later... I still haven't figure out what I'd want/need for Scholar yet. So far, I've got Goliard armor on the list once we finish Kurai's set, and probably SCH AF2...

Speaking of Goliard and armor...

Nyzul Isle Issues

So in the past, we've been inviting some people to come along with us for Nyzul runs, normally when we've been 5/6 or occasionally, 4/6 people. While we'd like to help some of our friends, we've had a few cases of people grabbing items and... disappearing after getting gear, going away without even a thank you, or even worse, afking during Nyzul itself and risking losing the whole event, or losing other item drops. The purpose of a static is to make sure everyone knows what to do, and to get gear for everyone in the static, not to have people hop in, get gear and disappear.

Going forward, we'll be taking on a policy similar to other groups: Gear that nobody in the static needs can be lotted on by "guest" people who come along. Our static group is very friendly and won't lot on something that we "might use in the future". We don't even lot on gear that our secondary jobs can use if the job is retired.

So, if you'd like to tag along with our group with the hope of armor, please be aware of this restriction. This includes all notable gear. Currently, since we're still relatively early in the farming stages, the only piece of armor that isn't spoken for is Askar Body since all of our heavy melees already have it. We've almost finished one set of Goliard, so I'm expecting Goliard drops will soon become available too.

If you're interested in joining in on runs with the understanding that you'll only be able to lot if and only if nobody in the static needs the item, please let me know. Of course, we'll do our best to accommodate the chance of you getting an armor drop (i.e. scheduling a floor 80 for a chance at Askar body). We run at 8:00pm PST on Sundays (2-3 runs), and 9:45pm on Thursdays (3-4 runs). Sunday runs are when we'll most likely have 1 slot open for a guest. The more runs you come on, the higher on the list of invitees you'll be, and of course, as we complete our armor, the more other drops will be available.

Finally... if the above doesn't interest you, I'd just like to say that it is not *that* hard to find a group of 5 other people and climb Nyzul for yourself. I know at least 7-8 people who are still at the beginning and want to climb. The hardest part is the first few runs when you're still learning what things mean and figuring out how to best work as a group. If you stick together, you can climb through the levels very fast once you get over the initial learning curve. It took our group 5 weeks to get from floor 0-100 once the Nyzul weapons were released, and we even had a few farming runs too. We didn't start off perfect, and our first run failed at floor 1!

Moblin Maze Mongers -- Loot revealed!

So... after getting back to... ahem... "work", I was digging around a few forums and came across something interesting. Apparently some people have figured out the combinations of mazes to finally get MMM to give out some significant items! What caught my eye was this:

Ermine's Tail - DMG: 34 Delay: 194, Evasion +8, "Lizard Killer" effect, +7% crit rate vs. lizards

And... most importantly, this is usable by Dancers! Low delay, high damage and most importantly, a significant boost to evasion! This dagger is almost as good as the Azoth for Dancers. The only thing Azoth has over this is the +accuracy. Ermine's Tail actually does more damage due to the lower delay. This is the ideal off-hand weapon for a DNC/NIN, and possibly a main-hand dagger for situations where accuracy isn't as crucial, and evasion is needed. Plus from the picture, I'm guessing that it has a pretty Jambiya-type model instead of the Azoth's weird sickle-shape.

Sooooooooooo.... that means... I want one of these xD According to what I've seen, this has a chance of being in the Hoardbox for a specific configuration of maze, specifically:

007 Liquidation Team (100 Marbles) -- This is the "single NM" maze

004 Beast Rune (200 Marbles)

094 Lost & Found (500 Marbles)

Total of 800 marbles. The mob popped is a Dhalmel-type mob called Purushamirga. From our single try with Kurai vs. an elemental-type NM, these fights are fairly easy, but do require you to be on your toes. The level of the mob is based on the highest level in your party, so no cheating by bringing along a level 1 mule.

I'm currently at around 300-400 marbles, so as soon as I get enough, I'll be reconfiguring my maze to pop this mob exclusively. I'm pretty sure Kurai will be doing the same :)

Anyone wanna run some mazes?

Back and doing crazy stuff already!

My DSL came back sometime on Saturday, and since then I've somehow managed to get pretty busy pretty quickly again.

Let's see... what did I do...

- Managed to get killed twice in Einherjar!
Ok, so one of those times was basically the boss looking at me, and everyone else that the boss looked at went down as well, so that part wasn't too surprising. What did catch me by surprise was being targetted during the one giant pull. This happened before during Dynamis where near the end of a big pull, I end up being targetted by mobs as soon as they wake up. As far as I can tell, this is just based on the face that curing generates hate either doesn't dissapate, or does so very slowly. As a Dancer, I usually end up spamming Divine Waltz to keep my party healthy. Doing so cures a lot of HP over time, but mobs do not pay attention to this compared to Provoke and flash until someone on their hate list has been cured by a lot. I think I had a BLM in my party, so that explains that.

- Promy as WHM/SCH
This is kinda weird... I don't know why I felt like it, but i brought out my WHM after... over a full year of not playing the job. I just felt like playing it when Connie mentioned needing help for Promies. WHM was my initial job that I took up to 30 in order to unlock BLU. I had a good mix of equipment from leveling SCH to 37, sO i was actually decently equipped. WHM/SCH was a good combination too, with Light Arts helping a little for MP efficiency.

The promies themselves were fairly easy once we got the necessary items to actually win. Anima for both promies, and poison pots to prevent Sleepga. Ironically, between the exp from the missions themselves, and the one ENM we did, my WHM hit level 38 and now I need to go do two more teleport quests!

- ZNMs - Enkidu's Cap
We did 2x Tygers this week. Quite a few people did not have the 500 zeni necessary to enter the area for Tyger... There really is no excuse for this since we have the schedule up at least a week before the event, plus reminders in party chat, and finally, if you're doing ZNMs, you should be farming zeni in the first place! 500 zeni isn't even enough for a Tier I pop item. For every mob we fight, someone has to go out there to farm anywhere from 1-4k zeni. Newcomers are forgiven, of course, but everyone should have some zeni on them and help share the load

Unfortunately, Tyger didn't drop much of consequence... first pop we nearly lost when both Frodo and Wuwu went down, but Connie stepped up and did great in blood tanking the doggie while everyone basically kept him alive for almost 10 minutes before Fro & Wu were able to take over again. 2nd Tyger was very smooth, but the only interesting drop was Enkidu's Cap, which went to me since... well, nobody else had it on their list ^^;; Personally, I put it up there just cos I hate having incomplete armor and I wanted a full Enkidu's Harness set! (I even have a full Scorpion Harness set... probably the only full set across all servers!)

Enkidu's Cap is pretty decent... DEX+3, AGI+3, Accuracy+8, Ranged Accuracy+8 and Subtle Blow +2. Overall, it replaces my O-hate permanently so I don't have to look at it anymore! I still find it kinda funny that my "endgame" armor seems to come in on specific slots. So far, I have 3 head pieces (Enkidu, Homam and Denali) and two hand pieces (Enkidu and Homam), but no other slots.

- Crazy party for Nyzul Isle
After a super-long 14 hour day, I felt like doing some Nyzul... plus I promised to take Connie sometime to give him a taste. We also grabbed our new LS member... (forgot how to spell the name) and put together a pretty crazy party. We had BLU/SCH, DRG/RDM, SAM/DNC, WAR/NIN, PLD/WAR and THF/NIN. Three non-traditional hybrid job combinations, and three "traditional" jobs. The basic idea is that I was to main heal + support with both Teia on DRG/RDM and Zuzu on SAM/DNC backing me up.

We ran into a few big problems... first is that people were careless and ended up aggroing a bunch of mobs unnecessarily (Mousse anyone?) With me as the only sleeper, it's really hard to keep a party alive while sleeping 3+ mobs ^^; Not going to name names, but people should know better ;) Second problem is that we ran into a series of crazy hard floors. Chariots are hard enough on their own, but we got Chariots + Gears. Got a series of Eliminate Enemy Leader floors which prematurely ended both climbs. Connie did great for his first time through, and we introduced our new people to the AP tradition of wiping for no good reason. :D

I still think that crazy job combinations can handle Nyzul. Just need more experimentation to figure it out :)

Scholar - 1st impressions

Hey! That's weird... results show a sudden influx of votes for RDM and BRD, but no supporting evidence in the comments of the last post! Someone's stuffing the ballot box!

Anyway, this post is about Scholar and my initial impressions for the lowbie levels.

Magic
First up... the magic side of things. Having access to both black magic & white magic at essentially the same time feels very much like playing RDM. Basic play seems to be the same in a party... throw out some enfeebles, regen the tank, maybe throw out some nukes. Unlike RDM, I didn't really feel like meleeing with the weak staff or club, so after taking care of the party, I'd end up /healing once I'm comfortable that the party has enough health to last till the end of the mob.

After getting Light Arts & Dark Arts, it took a little more thinking and planning as to when I was going to cast spells. Due to the 1 minute recast on switching arts, I'd throw out all the White Magic enfeebles and cast regen before switching to Dark Arts and finishing off with Black Magic enfeebles and nukes. Regen really makes main healing easy, and SCH getting it earlier than WHM makes me a happy schoolgirl!

As expected, I'm enjoying the healer side of the job a lot more than the nuker side...Nuking just isn't that fun, and level sync is making it even worse since my elemental magic skill is lagging behind what it should be. While level sync has made it a lot easier to put parties together, I'm finding it a little annoying cos my skills are lagging behind, and the satisfaction of leveling up is taken away when I realize that I can't use the new skills or spells I just obtained until the sync'ed person levels >.>

Strategems
So, I found that the fun part on SCH came with the various strategems... saving half MP cost when casting a big nuke makes for very efficient nuking, and being able to regen a couple of melees back to back helps a lot when you're trying to get through a cycle. Basically, it feels a lot like forcing Conserve MP & Fast Cast to come on whenever you want!

Tabula Rasa really shines with these active... It kinda feels like a miniture version of Chainspell or Manafont. I tried Tabula Rasa out twice in parties, once for an emergency situation where we needed some Cures fast among many people, and another to nuke the last mob in an exp party down. Being able to regen a whole party without waiting for that recast timer is quite effective, and doing a ton of nukes for half MP cost almost made it feel like a manafont nuke!

Sublimation
Sublimation is niiiiiiiiice! Being able to pool up a bunch of MP and taking it out when you need it is just too cool. It effectively expands my MP pool by 25%. Since I don't have Stoneskin yet, it's necessary to turn Sublimation on when getting up from /heal, then switching it out before /healing again. I've taken to essentially using up my MP while Sublimation is up, then taking out the store before /healing, or using it as necessary.

Subjob choice
I didn't realize what a difference the various subs would do for SCH. I had originally figured on just going SCH/WHM until level 40, then switching to SCH/RDM for en-ga spells. Turns out, there are good reasons for choosing one sub over another.

SCH/WHM: Gains access to White Magic enfeebles (Dia, Paralyze, Slow), the Bar-ra spells. Especially important when you need to Bar-ra groups of people. In the Jungle, I went as SCH/BLM once, and regretted it as I lost access to Barsleepra
SCH/BLM: Gets the Black Magic Enfeebles (Bio, Blind, Bind), and the other ones like Choke, etc. and of course, Elemental Seal. My last party had me coming as a nuker, but I showed up as SCH/RDM... could probably have done a little more damage if I came as SCH/BLM
SCH/RDM: Gets all the enfeebles from both schools of magic, but loses the -ra spells and elemental debuffs... probably still the best overall choice for versatility, but there are some situations that call for the other two subs.

Soooo... looks like I'll have to finish leveling /BLM & /RDM at some point so I can switch between all 3 as necessary. Both BLM & RDM are at level 18, so that's another 19 levels to finish them up as subjobs. I'd really want to get RDM up before leveling SCH past 40 since I still think Ascension & En-ga is nice and broken!

Scholar as a Sub
This will be quite interesting... the obvious benefit is of course, Sublimation. Other benefits include:
- Job traits: /SCH gets Clear Mind II, Conserve MP and Max MP boost. This means I no longer have to set my Conserve MP spells
- Light Arts: Since this boosts healing skill... supposedly it actually helps with BLU heals like Magic Fruit & Healing Breeze
- Strategems: Being able to cast Raise faster, or for less MP should be useful in various situations
- Addendems: Access to Dispel, and Aspir... this still needs some testing to see how effective it will be subbed.

The main place I'll be trying this out is Nyzul Isle since in Nyzul, just having Sublimation would be a huge upgrade as we do not have a RDM or BRD in our group!

Unfortunately, SCH will have to be put on hiatas for the time being... I want to level up at least the RDM sub, possibly both subjobs before going further, and I actually need to raise some gil! SCH spells are starting to get expensive, especially those that can only be purchased from vendors, and I do need some gil before taking it further!

Nyzul - Completed floor 100, future farming

First up, good job in completing the 1-100 run in record time! Looking back at my blog posts, we started on 9/11, so we basically climbed up to floor 100 in about 5 weeks. We still have to finish Ashle's 91-100 disc, but that shouldn't be a problem this coming week.

Nyzul Farming
Going forward, we'll be doing Nyzul for the express purpose of farming armor. The schedule will be Thursdays only, gathering at Whitegate at 9:30pm Pacific. We're starting as soon as Ashle gets on, and we'll be doing 4 runs. Ge in Whitegate on time so that as soon as Ashles gets on, we can start our first run and people can get to sleep at a semi-reasonable hour. We won't be scheduling any more Sunday runs, freeing up assault tags so that people can do other assaults. Of course, if you actually want to do more farming runs on Sunday, just bring it up to people and if we have free tags available, we can do up to another 3 farming runs and pick up some friends to fill in for people who aren't around. Just be sure to pick up your 4th assault tag so that we can do 4 runs on Thursdays.

Farming schedule will generally be: 1-2 high floors (80/100), and the remaining lower floors. I'm not sure how bad token usage will be, but we'll continue to spread the floor picker around so that everyone has more or less the same number of tokens.

Farming Strategy
Strategy will be slightly different since we can't just spam 2-hrs on every single run! Basically, 2-hr at your discretion. If we hit the boss floor with only 5 minutes left, chances are everyone will have to use your 2-hr to try to get the win. If we have more than 5 minutes left, then it would be best to hold off and save your 2-hr for another run. I'm leaving it up to you all to use your best judgment on whether to 2-hr or not.

Item strategy remains the same. Melees might want to pick up additional damage drinks (like Soldier's Drink, Champion's, etc.) Jobs remain the same, though if you want to switch things around a little, let me know. I think we can have some flexibility in job choices.

Loot Lot Rotation - Round Robin
Simple round robin rotation... basically, everyone will lot on the pieces that they can and will wear. Once you have 1 piece of armor, you're out of the lotting pool until everyone has at least one piece, then we open up lotting again for the 2nd piece, 3rd, etc. This way, hopefully we can spread out armor to everyone so that we all finish up our sets at the same time.

Current armor pieces so far:
Denali: 1x Hands (Utaru)
Askar: 1x Feet(Zurar), 1x body (Utaru), 1x Head (Lazymashi)
Goliard: None

From a previous blog post, we have the following priorities for pieces:
Kurai: All except head for Goliard
Ascy: Denali feet & head
Ghiren: Askar body & feet
Zurar: Askar body & head
So... that probably means we'll be doing floor 20 the most since we have demand for all 3 armor pieces there, followed by 80 & 100. We'll catch up on 40 & 60 later once we get everyone a few pieces that they really want.

For weapons, I think almost everyone has already obtained the weapon for their main jobs, right? The only one I can think of that we haven't obtained is DRG for Zurar. Don't worry though, we'll get that easily... all Zu needs to do is get DRG to 75, then we'll have him start a 96-100 run. The floor 100 boss always drops two weapons, one random one, and the other will be for the job of the person who selected the floor. (Which is why Wightslayer dropped last night. I picked the floor after Utty DC'ed) If you have any other weapon desires, let me know, otherwise all weapons are free lot.

Nyzul Weaponskills - Pyrrhic Kleos & Expiacion
Very... very flashy! Both weaponskills put out a lot of light and are very flashy! Of course, I've seen Expiacion before since Varg demonstrated it to me right after the updated, but I've never seen Pyrrhic Kleos before, not even on youtube.

4 hits, flashy... my initial impressions of Pyrrhic Kleos was that it looked like a tiger slashing claws, similar to Claw Cyclone, just with a lot of light. I need to figure out a way to make videos in FFXI and upload it xD Or... at the very least, remember to take some screenshots :o I'll try to put some up soon.

Damage wise, Expiacion was what I expected, not as good as Vorpal Blade and more of a setup for a Darkness skillchain with Vertical Cleave. Pyrrhic Kleos on the other hand, was fairly decent... about 280-500+, depending. I need to experiment with it a little more to see if Building Flourish affects it, and if the damage can exceed Dancing Edge consistently, maybe try it with more accuracy in case I'm missing hits.

Big thanks to Ghiren who helped me with the points for this! My turn to return the favor now :)

Yet another random update

Whee... some randomish updates on my adventures.

New toys
Let's see... surprisingly, my Blue Mage has been getting quite a few upgrades recently. Besides the recent rash of gloves that I've picked up over the last few weeks, just last night I managed to (finally) learn Mind Blast and picked up a new shield from ZNMs. It was free lotted and I happened to win the lot xD

Legion scutum DEF: 16 MP +20 Enmity -2MP recovered while healing +5Lv. 71 All Jobs

Pretty good shield... It's weird to actually see myself running around with a shield since none of my jobs actually have any shield skill. I might try wearing it on DNC/SAM just for the -enmity. It should really help when I take on support roles on BLU. I've put together a enmity down equipment macro that throws on all of my cobra unit gear as well for use during heavy healing events.

Merit parties
Kurai has been trying to level SCH up to 75, so I've been tagging along for a couple of meritish parties on Dancer. We seem to also grab more or less the same people... Dexie, Zurar, and he's grabbed Ghiren, Savage and Styles in the past. I've been coming as DNC/SAM for these, and overall exp isn't too bad, about 12-13k/hour without band.

DNC/SAM allows me a little more freedom in using TP to basically main heal the party while I'm pulling. I think I'm a little rusty now since it's been a while since I've actually pulled for a merit party. Couldn't break chain #16, partly because our party wasn't full of 75s, but mainly because I still don't have the right timing down on when to go out to get another mob in order to keep the chain going without bringing a mob back too early and getting us all killed. ^^;

4 merits stored up right now... I might just keep storing merits for use when level 2 merits come out for Dancer... or I might put a few merits into sword for Blue Mage. I do need just a little more accuracy on Blue Mage to throw out those 7-800+ Disseverments more consistently xD

Nyzul
Floor 75 now! 3/4 of the way there. Just 5 more successful climbs before we hit floor 100 and finish climbing. Hopefully we should be done with that by the end of this week, and we can switch over to a lighter farming schedule. We had our first Denali piece drop on floor 60, the gloves. Good tanking piece for NINs I think, so it went to Utaru.

Coming up though, I think we may have a scheduling problem. Originally, I'd figured that we would simply switch to a 4-run Friday-only schedule for farming, but this poses a problem for people who want to sleep (relatively) early on Friday for work on Saturday, as well as for people who want to do other Assaults on Sunday since using up all tag on Friday would mean that you only have 1, maaaaaaaaybe a 2nd tag late at night on Sunday.

Right now, proposals are:
- Do 4 runs on Thursday night - Can't be done since we start too late for people with work on Fri
- Do 4 runs on Friday night - Samish problem as above, plus lack of tags on Sunday
- Do a split of 2 runs each night, allowing for 2-3 tags on Sunday for other Assaults

Nyzul people, let me know what you think.


ZNMs
Mild fiasco last night when the Experimental Lamia basically had her way with the whole alliance. We had a problem when the tank party was getting one-shot one at a time, leaving the Experimental Lamia to aggro the rest of the alliance and start taking us down. Didn't help that the pets spawned and immediately started attacking the tank party as well and tanks weren't able to grab them in time.

Next week we should have a better strategy that involves a very foolish Blue Mage getting the attention of a bunch of lamia at the same time... mmm... that sounds almost like the plot of a h-dojin o.o;

Meanwhile, since Aqqy has basically abandoned us for the evil World of Warcraft, I've put together a ZNM site to take over tracking of what's going on, wishlist items, etc. It's available at http://znms.blogspot.com. Right now, it is quite out of date as I need to get information about what has happened over the last few weeks, what items people have obtained, what pop items are available, etc. If you know of anything, let me know in game, in the comments, or even email at (my char name) at GMail.

More random updates

Phew... caught up a little on my life, enough that I can actually watch some TV tonight instead of rushing from thing to thing... I had a few minutes, so I figured I'd put up another random blog post! Let's see...

Blue Mage - New Gloves
Seems that I need to throw a few merits into BLU... with my "physical nuking gear", I'm at over +30 Str & Dex with my new Enkidu's Mittens. However, that seems to be at the expense of accuracy as I seem to be doing more damage with my regular melee gear on. My nuking gear takes some accuracy off in favor of putting on more Str & Dex, so to get the best results, I'll need to raise my accuracy a little... probably through some sword merits since physical Blue Magic is dependent on main weapon accuracy. I might throw some into Blue Magic skill as well. I haven't touched either of these merits since... well, since I hit BLU75

Nyzul - floor 55
I was experimenting with gear in Nyzul. Of course, it didn't help that I was targetting high evasive rats, and I wasn't using Sushi since I'm very much a hybrid role in Nyzul, switching between healer to full-on DD to sleeper all during the same battle.
Still, we're just over the halfway point for Nyzul! Pretty good for 3 weeks of work. We have 9 more successful climbs to reach floor 100, then we can switch over to a slightly more relaxed farming schedule. We have 5 runs scheduled between tomorrow & Friday, so... with a ton of luck, we may actually hit floor 100 by the end of next week!

Other topics
People around me have probably noticed that I've been a lot more testy recently. I haven't been on as much, and may have been snapping at people ^^; Sorry for my behavior... it's just been a trying few weeks. Besides the crap going on with the stupid economy, I've also been really busy at school with basically taking the lead with my final project, which is going to be larger than any project that we've ever done.

About the economy... this is going to be bad. I think we're still at the beginning of what will be at best, a 1-2 year recession, and at worst, a 4-5 year depression. I've already taken measures to protect my investments, but it really does suck that I'm going to be graduating in the beginning of next year. If you're in school, try to delay graduation for at least another 2-3 years... by then we should be out of, if not climbing out of this mess >.<

Gloves come in pairs!

This is kinda funny... I just got two new pieces of armor over the past couple of days from Limbus & ZNMs. What's funny is that both pieces are gloves!

First: Homam manopolas for my Blue Mage. Great stats on this for a BLU:
DEF: 20 HP +20 MP +20 Accuracy +4Enmity +3 Haste +3%
These are basically max MP + melee gloves for BLU. Haste & Accuracy, plus the extra MP basically means I can retire my Cobra Mittens, BLU AF gloves and Dusk Gloves on BLU. The Haste + Accuracy traits would actually make it really good for Dancer as well, but so far, Dancer & Scholar have not yet been added to the Homam/Narshima sets.

I'm surprised by how far I've come with Limbus. 2/5 so far on the armor set. When I first started it about 6 months ago, I figured I'd just try it out for a brief period of time and get bored of it. I never thought that I'd use Limbus to fund armor purchases and even end up with some pieces of Homam armor for myself!

Next: Enkidu's mittens for both Blue Mage & Dancer.
DEF: 24 STR +4 DEX +4Accuracy +5 Ranged Accuracy +5"Subtle Blow" +2
For Dancer, these are the most accurate gloves possible, replacing my Cobra Mittens. Unfortunately, they're bright red that clashes with my normal dark purple look, but at least they'll match my Scorpion harness! I'm not certain, but they may actually be better for Step Accuracy compared to my Dancer's Bangles. Dancer's Bangles only says "Increases Step Accuracy" and does not actually say how much it increases it by. Much testing is required!

For Blue Mage, the Str, Dex and Accuracy bonuses make these the best gloves to cast physical BLU spells. With Disserverment & Frenetic Rip with both Str & Dex modifiers, and Hysteric Barrage having Dex as a modifier, I'm expecting that the increase in damage should be quite noticable. This also means that the Light Gauntlets that I've been using since I hit 75 are going back onto the AH after months of use!

Other gloves I'll still carry with me are my Cobra Mittens for the -Enmity, and my Dusk Gloves for when I'm on DNC and I can actually use that extra bit of haste. Chances are that for both jobs, I'll be mainly in these two new... bright red gloves xD


Thanks again to everyone in Limbus & ZNMs for helping to get this gear! Still lots more mobs out there for us to kill to get everyone what they want! ^_^

Post-update update

It's been a week since the Sep-2008 update, so I figured I'd dump a few of my impressions out there.

Level Sync
Definitely an interesting idea. I don't think there will be many parties in the future that won't take advantage of level sync. It's too easy to keep a party synced to a low enough level to yield max exp for a specific camp. The only disadvantage I could think of is that if you're always levelnig up in a level sync'ed party, your skills will quickly become out of date, and the first non-sync'ed party you join afterwards, it'll take you a while to recap your skills.

Personally, I've only tried it twice, once on BLU in a dunes party, and another on DNC at a level 45 party. In both cases, the feeling was... nostalgic. I haven't tanked on BLU/WAR since... well, the dunes, and toying with low level DNC is always fun. In both cases, it let me play around with some friends that I would normally not be able to while they were leveling other jobs!

Only annoyances of level sync are... you lose TP when you sync, or whenever the sync'ed person levels up, making it super annoying... plus that for level-capped missions, you still get your armor, so no more "naked dragon fights" ; ;

Campaign
Everyone noticed that the /brd-bot nerf took place, and having the C.A.'s empty of people just afk there is a welcome change. However, I noticed that other aspects have changed as well, making it actually easier to get exp. One thing I noticed is that for some reason, wall-hitting exp has significantly increased.

Previously, no matter how long I went to hit at a wall, I'd get only about 1k exp. This is whether you're hitting the wall for 15 minutes, or 45 minutes. To maximize this, I'd refresh my tags about once every 15 minutes, adding some travel time to wall-hitting. Now, I noticed that even after 15-20 minutes of wall hitting, I was still hitting the time cap. i.e.: I was still getting more than half allied notes compared to exp. This was for doing nothing but hitting the wall. More testing needs to be done here to see how viable this is for afk-exp :)

Oh, and I've changed to doing campaign on DNC/WHM. I can't hold hate as well compared to BLU/WHM since I can't spike damage, but I can last a lot longer when soloing a mob. Actually, I can hold a mob off pretty much indefinitely as DNC compared to BLU where I'd eventually run out of MP and die xD

Nyzul
Started doing Nyzuls... not only doing a group on Thursday, but also random farming groups with other AP members. I've done a total of 6 nyzul runs since the update and I already have all the Nyzul weapons I wanted o.o; Thursday night we did 2 runs, and I got my BLU weapon off a random NM between floor 1-5. Sunday afternoon, did a 95-100 run with Fuuji's group to get Dexie her runic key item and I picked up the SCH staff, and Sunday night, we did some farming runs with half of Varg's group and I got the DNC dagger.

Weapons seem to be pretty common drops. I guess the hard part is having the weapon you want drop. I seem to have lucked out for now, getting 3 of the 2 weapons I wanted. I've activated the quest to unlock the weaponskills for both weapons, but I don't think I'm up for doing 5000 WS points just yet xD

Still, from what I've read, you can do WS points at any time, and if you go up Nyzul enough to clear the # of points necessary for that floor, the WS simply opens up, so I'll be open for any skill-up or WS party out there.

Other Dancer stuff
Merit wise, I'm currently at 4/5 on Haste Samba, and 2/5 on Reverse Flourish merits. Haste Samba I can't really eyeball the difference between 5% haste and 9% haste... I'm assuming it's there, but my attention is usually elsewhere... i.e.: the HP bar. Reverse Flourish merits are immediately noticable since instead of getting 46% TP return on a 4 finishing move Reverse Flourish, I"m getting 52%.

I'm now considering how I want to finish the Dancer category 1 merits. I want Reverse Flourish to be at least 4/5 since that'll give me a 46+12 = 58% return with 4 finishing moves, which lets me do a WS and immediately follow up with a Curing Waltz IV given the TP return on any WS I use. I'm now debating whether I want to use the last two merit increases on finishing off Haste Samba + Reverse Flourish, or to put them into Step Accuracy. 1% more on Haste shouldn't be that noticable, but having an additional +6 accuracy on steps might be more useful on those hard NM fights where I have to go in full accuracy gear in the first place.

I'll put together another post about Dancer soon xD

Blue Mage Stuff
Did two Limbus runs since the update... I haven't seen a single AF+1 item drop for BLU yet, though we did see a single COR the other day. I'm already saving up ancient beastcoins to upgrade my body piece. We'll have to see if it's possible to obtain the actual pieces necessary to unlock it.

Since their schedule matches up with mine for the most part, I've asked to join BMO in Dynamis to hopefully get some AF2. I saw one person running around with the BLU AF2 body so far, and I must say that it does look pretty slick xD. It's been a while since I've done Dynamis at all, and Ascule does not have any northlands dynamis access, so it might be a while before I get any progress in this department.

Septmeber 2008 FFXI pre-update

Whee... September update! Lots of fun stuff... biggest ones for me are the Dancer merits, Blue Mage AF2 & AF+1, and Limbus cost down! <3 the last... my wallet thanks you SE!

As for the rest... well, I'm just looking at the announcement and dat-mined stuff and posting my opinion based on that information right now. We'll see how things change once the update is out.

Dancer Merits
I'm not too impressed with these merits... what do we have:

Step Accuracy: Most Dancers are going to have a crazy high accuracy build to begin with and will rarely miss steps. I think I'm at over +60 accuracy from equipment alone before the accuracy bonus job trait and merits. I think the only time that I've missed steps is on either a highly evasibe NM-type mob, or something big like Kaiser Behemoth, and that's nothing that some Sushi can't fix
Haste Samba Effect: This has some potential to be good. Haste Samba is pretty much the main Samba that Dancers use under almost all circumstances. The only time I switch Sambas is either when the party is heavy with melee mages (BLU, PLD, DRK) for Aspir Samba, or when things are looking bad and I think that the party could use with some HP. Increasing the effectiveness of Haste Samba will probably be significant when fully merited
Reverse Flourish Effect: I normally reverse flourish every two steps for a return of 46% TP every 30 seconds instead of wasting half a step for 60% TP return. One of my original guesses for a Dancer merit was that we'd get the ability to increase the number of steps we store. I guess enhancing Reverse Flourish for more TP return would be just as good! Depending on how "enhanced" it gets, full merits on this might be pretty good. I think I'm already comfortable WSing with 5 finishing moves stored up + meditate... Getting more TP back would just make it that much easier to do more as DNC
Building Flourish Effect: Ugh... No idea where this came from... Building flourish enhances the effectiveness of the Dancer's own weaponskills... However, under *most* circumstances, Dancers should not really be weaponskilling unless TP is flowing and things are under control. I think I've only WS'ed maybe once or at most twice per party I've been in, and I almost never use Building Flourish as I want to save the finishing move for Reverse Flourish. The damage increase is barely noticable in the first place >.<

Likely candidates for meriting are: Haste Samba & Reverse Flourish. If it was "enhances step effectiveness" or "Wild Flourish Effect", the other two might be worth considering... I really think SE dropped the ball on Dancer merits compared to Scholar merits. What Dancer really needs is: Waltz Recast down & Divine Waltz II. The way Dancer is now, main healing any large event still requires a decent backup healer because the timer for Curing Waltz IV is too long to cover things in an "oh crap" situation. Divine Waltz also needs an upgrade. At 75, Dancer doesn't cure enough in a AOE situation.

Scholar on the other hand, has definite winners for group 1 merits... Max sublimation is a definite fully merited ability. As for the others, I'm guessing Grimore recast down or helix attack up are contenders.


Blue Mage AF2 & AF+1
This is an interesting section for me... while I consider Dancer to be my "primary" job, I still go to many events as BLU because it's a more flexible and can adjust as necessary to handle different situations. That... and going as BLU is cheaper instead of popping sushi on DNC with my haste equipment xD

As such, my BLU is only averagely equipped. I've been mainly gearing up for physical magic and sword damage since that shares a ton of gear with Dancer (Dusk gear, Cobra, etc.). I've only *just* started getting magical gear in the form of homam head, insect ring and that ToAU magic ring and while I've seen improvements to MP Drainkiss with this gear, my breath attacks still aren't worth using compared to just supporting the party.

Anyway, now that AF2 & AF+1 gear has been dat-mined... time for a quick look at the various gear to see if any of it is worth getting!

Head piece
AF+1 - DEF:24, MP+25, INT+5, MND+5, Increases Monster Correlation Effects
AF2 - DEF:24, HP+15, VIT+3, Blue Magic Skill+5, Increase Breath Damage
Neither of these are very interesting. I don't even use my regular AF head piece as the "Increases Monster Correlation Effects" feature is too much of a pain to use. For AF2, "Increases Breath Damage" would be interesting, but still has limited usage... Voyager Sallet & Homam Head would probably get better usage compared to either of these two, Voyager for physical magic, while Homam for magical.. erm... magic

Body Piece
AF+1 - DEF:45 HP+17 MP+15 STR+5 DEX+5 Blue Magic Skill+15, HP & MP recovered while healing +1
AF2 - DEF:45, MP+20 Accuracy+10 Enmity-2, Adds "Refresh" effect
These two are both killer pieces. AF+1 is awesome when casting any spell. The +5 Str & Dex, and the Magic Skill +15 is good for both physical & magical attacks. The AF2 is a great replacement for the Scorpion Harness for meleeing since it has the same Accuracy+10, but it also has Refresh, so you can not only be meleeing, but also regaining MP. I'm definitely going to go for the AF+1... however, is the AF2 worth going to Dynamis for? >.<

Hands
AF+1 - DEF:17 MP+20 STR+3 INT+3 Parrying+10, Increases learning >.>
AF2 - DEF:17 HP+12 MP+12 DEX+5 MND+5 Evasion+5
Neither of these are really worth writing home about... Str+3 is nice, as is Dex+5 for various blue mage spells, but when Light Gauntlets also give Str+3 for 8k on the AH... >.>
And at level 74, why do you still need gloves that increase chance of learning?

Legs
AF+1 - DEF:34 HP+25 DEX+5 VIT+5 AGI+5, Interruption down 12%
AF2 - DEF:31 HP+10 MP+10 STR+3 Acc+5 Magic Acc+3
Mmm... both are decent pieces, but nothing really stands out... A few extra strength or dex is always good. I currently use the Cobra Unit Subligar which already gives Acc+5. If anything, I think the AF2 piece is comparitively better just cos it gives strength, accuracy and magical accuracy

Feet
AF+1 - DEF:14 HP+18 MP+18 Acc+3 Evasion+10 Enmity-5
AF2 - DEF:16 MP+15 AGI+3 INT+3 Attack+5 Enmity-3
Neither of these are much of anything... nothing stands out on either of these. Dusk Feet + Cobra Feet both have accuracy & attack, so...

Overall, only the body pieces seem worth getting. The AF+1 body piece is a definite upgrade over the AF body. Since I still use the AF body for casting spells in, it's a no-brainer to consider upgrading to AF+1
For AF2, the body piece is the only piece really worth getting as a melee piece. The other pieces are also decent, but I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble of doing Dynamis to get these pieces >.>

What do you all think? Is there a Dynamis shell out there that matches my schedule that's willing to take someone who only wants BLU armor? >.>

BLU Relic, schedule and stuff xD

whee... looks like they've announced the BLU relic armor... and it's obtained through Dynamis. Big surprise -.-; I guess that means I'll need to find a Dynamis group to go with if I want to obtain BLU AF... Not too sure when I can slot this in. Aqqy suggested that I talk to Fuuji as to when his group goes (or if they are even recruiting) but I haven't had a chance to catch him.

BLU AF+1 might be more obtainable since I already do Limbus, but.... the model of the AF+1 armor doesn't change, does it? I want something that looks different! ^^; Of course, it'll also depend on what the armor actually does :o

Random schedule update... yaaaaay! I'm done with my last class for the summer... My Mondays are free again! 'course, this means that I can actually start showing up for ZNM runs xD As of last night, I have over 17k zeni built up over the last few weeks. I guess I'm lucky in having a job that can solo zeni easily (heavy DD + self healing + multiple sleeps). Recently, I've been doing almost nothing but taking photos + Limbus. Haven't been in the mood to campaign recently either since you can't afk campaign while doing homework!

What else... now that school is out for at least 5-6 weeks, I want to spend some time to finish off my SAM sub. Now that I think about it, I don't actually use the /NIN subjob capabilities as DNC that much. I don't need the sneak/invis, and I rarely bother with shadows these days since if I do take hate, I can simply use Violent Flourish and wait until some other DD or tank pulls hate back by holding off heals. /SAM would also have Third Eye to help as well, and the benefits of being able to start off a battle with *some* TP might make it worth having. My SAM is at level 21 or so, so if anyone happens to be around that level and wants to party... else I'll try seeking >.>

Finally... where has all the time gone? I remember a time when I could be playing many games over summer, going to school and working at the same time while watching movies and TV... these days it seems like I barely have time for one thing! >.> So many games coming out too, and movies, and... and...

Randomish Update

Here's a semi-random update of some interesting random things that I've done in the last week or so...

Random Farming

I've been doing almost nothing but campaigning for the past week or so... and I think I'm finally sick of campaign xD It's gotten to the point where there are just too many people doing campaign in Windy that the lag is just like Besieged. Maybe it's time to go out to the beastmen held areas instead...

Anyway, I was sick of campaign so when Nain said that we should go farm this poppable NM in Ifrit's Cauldron, I jumped at the chance to do something new for a change. He'd always said that we should go farming as DNC & THF sometime. Our objective was a NM popped from a Rattling Egg dropped by Ash Lizards. It drops a skin that goes on the AH for 60k, and there isn't any competition, though the skin takes a while to sell.

Still, it was a little scary... I don't go to Ifrit's Cauldron very often... so I don't know that area well at all. We had a couple of deaths from bad pulls and links, but overall exp was positive and we came out with one skin each. The good news is that this also gave me a chance to cap my evasion skill, and get quite a few skillups on throwing! This also gave me some practice using Utsusemi Ni & Ichi to tank. I normally don't bother keeping Utsusemi up all the time on DNC since I can heal up any damage taken nearly instantly, but this NM hits really hard ^^;

Ashu Talif

Yay! I can't believe we actually won this round o.o I guess going up the stairs and pulling the mobs up, instead of staying on the bottom and fighting them as they pop works a lot better. We still nearly wiped to a couple of imps casting -ga spells on us, but at least with us on the upper deck, we were able to raise and recover.

One more fight before the main event! Everyone wants Barbarossa's Zereh's, so I have a feeling we'll be doing this for quite some time... Kinda ironically, I was watching Pirates of the Carribean this last weekend, so I finally get the connection between Barbarossa and pirates xD

Charby

I'm not sure what went through my mind when I /poke'd Ashle and asked him to go to the SSG to camp Charby. I guess I was looking for something different to do again. I arrived there first and found one AFK WHM standing there, so I was using the Devil Mantra to continue skilling up Throwing (189 skill level xD) when Ashle arrived and needed to be let into the gold door. On the way back, we killed a fish-person NM that dropped a high level DRG lance xD Since Ashle didn't want it, I just grabbed it and put it into my storage are ^^;; Seems like it's a lance for DRG/MAGE use since it gives bonuses to healing breath. Chances that I'll use it? Pretty low... but my storage is filled with random junk like this, and the AF+1 drops xD

Anyway, after killing the fishie NM, we went into Charby's room, and to our surprise, Charby popped at once. A RDM had showed up while we were busy fighting the fish and was killing placeholders. Before we could react, the RDM cast Bind on Charby, ran across the room and promptly died o.o;; Since Ashle had thought that the two of us could duo it with him in full evasion gear, we engaged... and lasted just a little longer than the RDM ^^; Ashle couldn't get Blind Bolts to hit Charby, so he didn't last long against him. Since he couldn't get hate, a couple of heals was all that it took to get me killed, and he fell soon after.

After HPing and coming back, we managed to beg a few other AP people to come along despite the late hour... Nuyu, Fuuji, Vanh, Utaru all showed up in SSG. Unfortunately, another group had moved faster and had grabbed Charby. Still, thanks for coming out on such short notice everyone! Especially since many of you had to change jobs and come out here... and thanks Conceptx for sending Fuuji a gold beastcoin!

I'm not sure if I'll go back again... I really do hate camping NMs, especially contested ones and NM camping makes me grouchy and annoying to be around. >.>

ZNMs
Last night, I actually made it home in time to catch the last couple of ZNM fights. I managed to zone into the ruins in time to lot up the BLU-only "Beast Slayer" sword that dropped from Cheese Hoarder. I wasn't present for the fight, but the group let me lot it anyway! Thanks everyone ^_^ I actually didn't even notice this sword when I was looking through the ZNM stuff... It has a high damage rating, and it has +20 MP, so it's pretty good for BLU. Between this, the Perdu Hanger and Ifrit's Blade, I'm not sure which blades to use full-time xD I'm thinking that Perdu Hanger is still probably best for 1H situations, but when dual-wielding, Perdu & Beast Slayer might be overall better for the Dex modifier, higher base damage and extra MP compared to Ifrit's Blade.

I managed to join in for two last NM fights, one weird... I think it's called an Acrolith(?)-type mob that was supposed to do something funny for us, but disappointed us by not doing anything special except die xD We also went to fight a funny set of triple gears that had us melees running laps around a room xD Is it time for the Olympics already? I'm not sure how, but I managed to grab hate during this fight and get myself killed ^^;

DNC seems decent enough for healing/supporting a melee party for these fights. The Acrolith fight was fairly straightforward for DNC, though Zurar still managed to get himself killed somehow. The gear fight was rougher as all that running around made it hard to keep TP up high enough to keep everyone fully healed. Hopefully I can start making more of these fights. In another 4 weeks, my Monday schedule should open up again so I can meet up with everyone when we start, not just come in when we're almost done xD

Titan
On LS chat, Conceptx was raving about how he finally unlocked the Summoner job, so I volunteered to take him and go solo Titan xD Soloing the avatars was something that I wanted to do with DNC75, but I just never got around to doing it. (DNC G5 is another thing that I wanted to do... need to go get a testimony!) After finishing with ZNMs, I dragged Con & Zurar to Quicksand Caves to be witnesses to my folly!

Well, the beginning of the fight was very... anticlimatic. With my evasion skill capped from farming, max evasion merits, plus my Scorpion Harness & O-hat, Titan could barely hit my shadows ^^;; About the only thing that got through was when he cast Stone IV which ignores shadows, but I can cure that up with a single Curing Waltz IV :D

Fun part was when he 2-hr'ed... unfortunately, I'd forgotten to pull him down to the entrance, so the astral flow move did 1.6k damage... out of 1.2k HP ^^; It also did 1.8k on poor Con who happened to be within range. Zurar immediately engaged, and I reraised and healed him even while weakened. The rest of the fight went by pretty quickly and we defeated him easily.

So... lesson learnt... pull the avatar to the entrance before fighting... Ashle suggested using /WHM to have barspells. I'm starting to think that this might be a good idea. With how infrequently Titan was hitting me in the first place, using /WHM with Blink, Stoneskin, Barspells, and Aspir Samba, it might make avatar fights go even most smoothly compared to using Utsusemi.

I'll have to try the other avatars sometime... I still don't have them all yet since it was never a priority for me. It'll be fun to go through them all, collect the avatars and maybe prepare for a Fenrir run!

Schedule
Aqqy mentioned that she would put up a blog post about her busy schedule... so I figured that I'd do the same! Let's see... my current schedule looks like:

Monday: Work, class at night, don't get home until 10pm, join in ZNMss... 14 hour day @.@
Tuesday: Work, relax at night/recovery from Monday... supposed to be doing Assault again
Wed: Work, usually a school meeting in the evening, Limbus late night
Thurs: Work, usually more school stuff in the evening, reading, etc. Assault again?
Fri: Work, SPT... if we ever get this started again
Sat: 2nd job ^^;;; School stuff in the afternoon, Limbus at night @.@
Sun: 2nd job stuff in the morning, adding in Einhjar if I wake up for it, Ashu Talif in the afternoon, as well as more homework/reading for school

What I call "2nd job" is basically work/ideas for various startup concepts that I've encountered. So far, none of these startup ideas have actually panned out into anything real yet, usually aborting after enough experimentation/research has been done to rule the idea out as unfeasible. Still, it's a lot of fun to work towards something big!

My day usually starts at 8:30am no matter what... simply cos that's when the sun rises high enough to wake me up in my room >.> I'm a light sleeper, and I like my 8 hours of sleep a day, so if I'm awake much past midnight, I get really grouchy the next day ;p

Dancer
Well, as of this weekend, I've "fully merited" Dancer... that is... I have max dagger merits, max evasion merits and max crit hit merits ^^; Since there aren't any Dancer-specific merits yet, I don't think there's anything else I can do to improve Dancer besides gear. Still, I've died a lot on DNC this past weekend just fooling around, so I do need to buffer up again. Unlike BLU, DNC really isn't suited for Campaign Battle, so hopefully I can grab a few people and go merit instead. Maybe it's time to put some more merits into BLU for a while until SE comes out with DNC merits!

Finally, regarding weapons on DNC... I still haven't decided if I'm going to get rid of my two Behemoth Knife +1's xD I picked up a pair of Jambiyas just cos they look good, and I'm using them nearly full time now. I'm starting to wonder if I should sell my Behemoth +1's and use the gil to buy a Vermy for my BLU instead... I'd be giving up +20 attack (total) on the Behemoths for the +1 damage on the Jambiyas. I'm still not sure which set of weapons is better ^^; Anyone have any opinions?