Long time no post, been busy

It's been a long time since my last post... I'm not sure anyone still reads this, but here goes :P

I've been pretty busy for the last few months with a lot of personal/work stuff. I've changed jobs, bought a house, did a lot of traveling and more over the last few months and haven't been playing FFXI much, if at all. I've picked up the bad habit again a couple of weeks ago so... I guess I'm back into it!

Meanwhile, it looks like I've missed out on a lot of content... I think almost everyone now has an Empyrean Weapon or two and it looks like everyone has leveled almost every single job to 90! People are coming out of the woodworks with jobs I never thought they'd have leveled... (Fuuji with BLU, Mendhall with DRG and more) There's new content that I don't quite understand yet, higher merit caps and more. Add to that a new level cap of 95 with today's update and even newer content... well, I guess I'm pretty far behind.

Personally, I really don't know how people can juggle so many jobs... I've pretty much given up on most of my jobs as it takes too much organization to gear them up properly, update all the macros and... "macros". Plus all that gear was overwhelming in terms of space, so I've pretty much put most of my jobs into the new (old?) Porter Moogles and focused only on three jobs. The three jobs are DNC, SCH and... THF! Well, THF was cheating since it overlapped so much with DNC anyway. For everything else... well, let's face it, I'm pretty badly equipped in DRG, COR, BLU & WHM, and don't even have all the spells for BLU or WHM. My PLD is really out of date(though it's decent for level 75!) and unlike most people in the linkshell, I still don't have most of the Empyrean Armor for my other jobs. There are other people out there who can do the job better!

So anyway, since I've been back I've been trying to play catch up... I've been working on the Twashtar trials and made surprisingly fast progress through the NM trials. Thanks to Kelhor(Rooks) who helped me through the evil Black Triple Stars trial! I also ran into a ton of people camping NMs... I guess Empyrean Weapons are now farmed easily? /shrug. I also lucked our on Saturday with a group doing the VNMs and we managed to hammer all our requirements out in an extended morning/afternoon play session. I'm up to the item collection section now and getting discouraged from the huge requirements and... well, inability to really progress. I guess everyone has a supermule these days :(

Meanwhile, I've also started taking THF seriously and am trying to gear it up properly... which mainly consisted of making sure I got the Raider's Poulaines +2 so that I could have the max possible treasure hunter stat. I lucked out with the very last dynamis Xarcabard run and got a pair of Assassin's Armlets before we gave that event up for good!. Well, big thanks to Fuuji & Vanh as they helped me finish off the seals for the feet as well as the +2 items, so now my THF is actually ungimped and fully usable (who cares about the other gear or doing damage! TH, right?)

So... ya, that kinda catches things up to the world of FFXI.

Next up: A few completely random pic from a Walk of Echos run we did for fun.

Only one mob, somehow we managed to win after lots of kiting and I somehow got first place even though I was on DNC and running all over the place. Weird event... not sure if we did any more of it, but I liked it!

Oh ya... I guess this is old news but I finished my DNC +2 armor some time ago xD

Leave a comment if you still read this! Otherwise... this might be the last post!

End of 2010 pics!

Wow, has it been a month already since my last post? Lots happening in FFXI, most of it fun. I figure this update would mainly be for those who stopped playing so that they can get an idea of how things have changed.

The main changes would be... the level cap is now 90 and that the Abyssea content is now finished. The level 90 cap pretty much makes any old-world content a joke and everything significant/fun is in Abyssea now, including almost all the gear. About the only thing that isn't purely Abyssea that is 80+ are the magian weapons, and a good number of their trials do require items from Abyssea.

So... anyway, I've been working on my magian dagger, the "occasionally attacks twice" high damage version. The good news is that since finishing the initial VNM step, and the two "get drops from NMs" piece, the dagger has become fairly easy to maintain, just using points from various new battle systems that popped up (bastion & Dominion)

The armor everyone is after now is what people have been calling "AF3", the job-specific armor. The base pieces are fairly easy to get, with some work needed to get the +1 pieces which is where they start to become useful. The +2 pieces are where the job specific armor really shines, and we've just barely started to work on getting those pieces for everyone. Here's a pic of my DNC +1 set

New armor & weapons mean newer mobs to fight, right? Exactly! Bigger, meaner battles including this one!

Raja is one of the more fun tanking fights I've done on DNC. Lots of large AoEs, gives silence, amnesia and more. Basically I'm the only one engaging it/tanking it with the rest of the alliance spread out to support me and come in to do damage when possible. Abyssea NM fighting also requires more attention compared to fights in the past. Now we have to perform specific weaponskills at specific times, cast certain BweaponsLM/BRD/BLU spells or even turn away from the mob when it does certain moves. Many NMs now absorb physical or magical damage depending on the situation or move that they make. A single person not paying attention could end up healing the NM for thousands of HP.

One new game mechanic that was added with Abyssea was the concept of "atmas", buffs that you can get inside of Abyssea. These include things like more HP, regain, additions to attributes and more. There are some funny ones like Auto-Reraise III, and significantly increase the damage of everyone, especially 1-handed jobs like THF, NIN and DNC, which leads to funny weaponskill damage like this:

All three Abyssea expansions have been released now. These mini-expansions have a plot of sorts, though the story itself is much shorter and more straightforward compared to even the previous mini-expansions like the moogle and Shantotto ones. At the end of it, you get to fight this:

and meet some old friends:

After everything is done, one of the things you get is the ability to buy the Primevel Brew, an item that gives you +999 stats, +9999 HP/MP, crazy amounts of regain, regen, refresh, etc. for 3 minutes for 200k cruor. It's basically the cheat code for FFXI and lets you solo anything inside Abyssea. You can WS constantly, and with Chainspell, RDMs can nuke down anything in the time.

I'm still figuring out the optimum way to use the brew myself... my weak DRG managed to do this:

but this is really weak compared to what other people have done, or what my DNC can do xD I still have to figure out how to best use the brew.

Finally, some more random pics! Seems like this is the new DNC uniform as I'm seeing tons of us running around like this!

Kelhor(Rooks) & I went to do more WotG quests... Interest for WoTG is at an all-time low even though they.. i think they actually finished releasing it all? Anyway, it's been so long since the last time anyone did anything in WotG that I've forgotten most of the details of the storyline. There isn't any significant rewards at the end, and the way they split the questlines up makes it nearly impossible for people to cooperate in WotG. I consider this expansion to be the most well done story & cutscene wise, and the biggest failure of FFXI simply due to the game mechanics and how long they took to release it.

Anyway, here is a pic that I'm calling "attack of the clones"

That's it for now! Happy New Year!

Long time no post

Been a while since my last post... mainly because of RL stuff. I've taken a new job with more responsibility and better opportunity. It also takes up more of my time so I don't have time to put together blog posts at work. FFXI itself hasn't really been that exciting either, just the usual gear acquisition with minimal challenge except for the randomness of drops or claim competition. Abyssea is the only "real" thing going on now, with the magian trials for those who have multi-hours during the day to spend their time.

At this point, I'm not quite sure how much longer I'll keep playing myself. It seems that there are people who want to step up FFXI activities to the point where events are held for multi-hours for most days of the week... Kinda weird for nearly 9 year old MMO game, and... well, I'm not sure if I want to commit that kind of time. I don't mind spending a few hours every other night playing, but nearly every night, and during the day on weekends? A certain South Park episode comes to mind...

Anyway, for those who don't play anymore, here's a little pic of my latest WS gear for DNC!

Dancer upgrade, new update

New update, new stuff, new opinions about what I think might be behind SE's thinking when they planned the new events.

Before that though, news on Dancer upgrades!

About a month ago, Fuuji moved up the ZNM start time to 6:00pm Pacific in order to make time after ZNMs to do VNMs. Interest in VNMs have picked up recently, with many SAMs (and one RNG) going after their Empyrean weapons, while Vanh, Ghiren & I were working on the "occasionally attacks" daggers.

Well, the first significant result from that has come in as:

This is probably the most significant upgrade to my DNC since.. erm... maybe when I got my Joytoy with Tasya? Using this together with the Joytoy is essentially equal to using a fresh Saber Dance full time. In fact, I can't tell the difference when Saber Dance is on or off anymore. The only way to potentially improve this would be to add a 2nd "occasionally attacks twice/three times" dagger to take the lower sword skill out of the equation. 

I'm still planning on upgrading this further if at all possible. The next two upgrades are at least easier since the items can be purchased relatively cheaply from bazaars. If I go crazy sometime in the future, I might end up working on the other dagger to complete my DNC. 

As it is right now, I feel like my DNC is sturdier than my PLD for tanking things /NIN (with /THF support of course) and stronger than my DRG due to the musth faster TP accumulation rate and fairly competitive WSs.

Next up on the VNM list is to move the SAMs further along their paths, and to complete Vanh's dagger next.

Sept 2010 Update

Here are some of my early thoughts about the Sept 2010 update.

• Kindred's crests and the limit break quest
• Very annoying to introduce a rare drop into the game and have it be required for the limit break quest at the same time. What this means, of course, is hours and hours of people out there camping various mobs trying to get these to drop. At least there are plenty of zones to choose from, but the drop rate is crazy low
• It took me, Valharin, Beelz & Zyn 4 hours to complete just my 5 crests needed to break the quest... and that's only because the three of them conspired to pass me the last one I needed so that we'd have at least one person done! Big thanks you three!
• So many better ways that this could have been done... a little foresight or planning would have helped. Like, they could have introduced Kindred's crests in the previous release, maybe even let them be stored by Shami and use them for whatever other thing they have planned... BCNMs or something. That way, at least people would have already had these ready to go.
• Abyssea & magian trial armors
• It appears that the future of FFXI is going to be locked up entirely in Abyssea. I don't see any real 80+ content being added in non-abyssea zones... (not counting the random high level mobs that are clearly for exp or skilling up in various zones)
• Seems like there is a new "campaign in abyssea" event now called Bastion... Haven't tried this yet, but it sounds interesting. If it is anything like how campaign used to be, it might be fun. I just hope they don't make it tedious to keep doing. I liked campaign until I wanted to take a break and found out that taking a break means to lose your medal unless you abstain from it completely after doing a ton of work. (That's the #1 reason why I simply don't campaign anymore)
• Further more, the new Abyssea job-specific armors (or AF3 as people have been calling them) very clearly outclass everything that has come before, effectively eliminating and shutting down events like Dynamis, Einherjar, Limbus, Salvage, Nyzul Isle, etc. as being out of date and useless. You might be able to argue for some very niche things like sea gorgets/torques/obis, but I wouldn't be surprised if more stuff comes out soon until all slots are filled with job-specific items
• Atma purchasing
• I'm not quite sure how this works yet. In the new abyssea zones, I talked to an Atma Synthesizer who let me buy 6 different Atma. The dialog basically says that you qualify to buy different Atmas from the battles that you've endured, and that different mobs will give you different Atmas.
• Well... it sounds to me like they are trying to encourage people to go exp on different variety of mobs. 6 Atmas feels like the right amount for the mobs that I've exp'ed or farmed on in Abyssea - Bugards, Frogs, Limues, Mandies, Gnoles
• DNC upgrades, BLU nerfs & upgrades, COR nerfs
• DNC - Presto is finally useful! Now that it is on a separate timer, it actually makes sense to use Presto! If only I could figure a way to macro this so that it fires automatically whenever it is up when I use a Step
• BLU - Weird state for BLU... Battery Charge was awesome at 4MP/tick, even more compared to RDM Refresh. Unfortunately, they reduced this down to 3MP/tick, though they increased the duration so that you end up restoring more MP per cast. However, I've always had an emphasis on MP recovery rate and I think of this as a nerf. On the other hand though, BLU picked up another series of spells including one supposedly powerful Goblin Rush
• COR nerf - This is a funny one... the 10 minute duration of a 11 Phantom Roll was a little weird to manage around. You really had to think about what rolls would actually benefit from a 11 roll, and whether to force an 11 using Snake Eyes. I've actually had to use Fold a few times to remove 11s which needed to be replaced. Still, it was fun while it lasted

So... we have all this new content, but it almost entirely tied up in Abyssea. Abyssea also has the stone limitation. Even if you have the Abyssite to speed up how quickly you get a new stone, the most non-exp time you can spend in Abyssea is about 5-6 hours per week.

Essentially you have these 5 hours to do everything in Abyssea. This include NM hunts, exploring, quests, Bastion. Since Abyssea has essentially become THE place to go to for things like exp, armor, weapons and items, doing anything else would be pretty silly. I mean, why go camp NMs when the gear in Abyssea is better? In fact, if you go away from FFXI and take a break, you're rewarded by having tons of stones available for more time to do what you want in Abyssea. About the only thing still worth doing outside of Abyssea is possibly the tedious "kill XXX mobs" weapon trials which you can actually do without entering Abyssea.

In effect, SE has successfully implemented the FFXIV "7 hour limitation" to FFXI. I believe that these changes are done to encourage people to keep their FFXI accounts active and play for about 5-6 hours per week, then play for another 7ish hours in FFXIV, reducing the load on their servers while still collecting money.

More update impressions, glitches

Update has been out for a while... here are some randomish pictures and impressions.

One of the new job traits that came out of this release is "skillchain bonus" which is given to DNC & SAM. This happens when one of the jobs close a skillchain, and the resulting extra damage shows up. Here is an example of me closing a darkness skillchain for more than what my weaponskill did. In this case, it was a 16% increase in damage compared to normal.

Abyssea is buggy! If you level sync inside abyssea, you'll get some additional exp compared to spreading the levels out, but the difference isn't that much. We're talking about a 10-15% difference between a level 80 person and a level 75. However, the funny thing is that if you do level sync, for some reason whenever you kill a mob, you might get the level up animation completely at random. In this case, none of us were actually leveling up to level 76. I think I was actually level 77 at this point and we were synced to 76.

This one is funny... I R0'ed and DC'ed right in the middle of a MMM session. It was enough of an R0 to kick me out of FFXI, but I managed to get right back in from POL instead of having to quit the game. However, once I was in, my auto-translate was completely screwed up and everything that was in auto-translate came out with the same Japanese phrase

Now this is a fun one...  inside Abyssea, you can sometimes get chests that will appear after you kill mobs. Some of these chests are huge, such as this one over here that is much, much bigger than a taru! It can probably hold 3-4 tarutaru bodies!

This is what I call cutting it close :)


Other Impressions
So far, I'm finding that I'm liking the Abyssea aspect of this update a lot... I guess we're kinda getting what we paid for here. The time/stone constraints aren't that big of a deal really. 1 1/2 hours for an event is a significant time, enough to make progress, but not enough to really burn out on doing it like Dynamis. The rewards from this event are interesting too, making it a possible exp area, as well as a good point system that allows you to buy armor like Einherjar instead of hoping for lucky drops.

The level cap raise to 80 hasn't been quite as painful as I feared. Managed to get DNC up to 80 fairly quickly, and of my other jobs, I've gotten PLD to 78 and COR to 77. Allied Rings help a lot, and the new potential places for exp have helped, plus of course, MMM.

What is kinda annoying, however, is how the new equipment is basically making a lot of older gear obsolete. The Enkidu armor set that I got through ZNMs is basically going to be completely replaced by the Aurore Doublet Set. The Perle Hauberk set would be good for DDs, and replaces Askar as a much easier to get set of armor. With the level caps going higher up in the near future, I'm wondering if it is even worth doing events for the generically good pieces of armor?

I mean, there are certain situational pieces that will always be good... for example, I don't see them making a replacement for the RDM hat or THF gloves, nor do I see them putting "enhances jig effect" on a generic piece of armor... (though wasn't there talk about an "AF3" line in the higher levels?) However, multi-job pieces that have the usual suspects... accuracy, str, haste, MP, cure potency, recast time, etc. such as Hachiryu, Homam, Nashira, Enkidu, Askar, Goliard... I wouldn't be surprised if there would be an easy to obtain level 88 piece that blows them away, making it pointless to do those events.

Another interesting thing is the "trial of the magians" developments. As expected, they expanded the paths even further. However, what disturbed me was how they changed. If I had actually spent more time on this, I would have been aiming for the Athame with "occasionally attacks twice" through the VNM route. However, the "solo" route which "merely" involves killing thousands of mobs develops into a dagger that "occassionally attacks 2-3 times" which is a much better dagger for DNC. Given that these daggers are only at level 80, would this mean that the future weapons will change even more? Could someone spend weeks, months on one of these trials only to end up with the wrong weapon?

Surprisingly, FFXI has gone from a fairly static place where you know what you'll be getting to... well... having a lot of uncertainty and... to an extent, excitement. Definitely a strange time to be playing XI, and who knows what the future brings.

Weird weekend

Well, this has certainly been a weird weekend... or at least, a weird Sunday. Lots of unusual things happened yesterday, most of which are good :o

MMM

After our usual Sunday afternoon ENM/ISNM runs (which we have down to virtually a science now), Fuuji managed to convince me to gather up some AP people to go /poke MMM again. I'm in the high double-digits for the drop for this event already, having soloed the weakened version of the NM more times than I want to remember, even back when Utaru was playing (expensive solo too since I need every bit of TP to WS it and use a lot of Echo Drops), to doing it many times in a single day with people copying my maze to go against it. Purushamriga is a pain to fight because it can one-shot most people with Stomp, has regular hits for 300-400, is highly accurate and can spam Healing Breeze for over 4000 HP per use. Soloing the weakened version on DNC/NIN is a very careful balance of counting shadows, using Fan Dance and using TP as much as possible to deal damage. Even then, luck plays a large part in the win since if he decides to use Healing Breeze, there's not much you can do to kill it.

This time, I took a look at the mazes that could be purchased by the goblin and found one combination that popped Purushamriga, but had more runes compared to mine and was very popular. Specifically, it had the Elemental Magic and Enfeebling Magic runes, which let the dhamel cast spells in addition to being a pain to kill. Took a small group of AP people, me on PLD/NIN, Fuuji on RDM/WHM, Teia on DRG/SAM and Yasu on SCH/RDM. Initially, it looked like we would not be able to kill it as Healing Breeze was keeping it at 100% HP for almost 10 minutes, then it used Berserk and managed to one-shot Teia xD Still, once it used Berserk, killing it wasn't too hard, especially when it stops to try to cast long spells like Flare.

First attempt dropped just some crafting runes, but the 2nd run FINALLY dropped it:

Whee... more evasion for DNC! Usable by DRG, COR, PLD and even PUP too, so it might have some amusing uses xD Compared to my Adder Jambiya, this is an additional +4 evasion, and higher damage and DOT. The minuses are that it does not have the HP+15, nor the evasion down effect, but the bigger problem is that it has a hidden "Beast Affinity" effect that means that plantoid-type mobs can possibly intimidate me. I'm not sure how often that has an effect, but it would make fighting mobs like Cactuars more dangerous.

Still, this is a very much wanted and welcome dagger! Big thank you to Fuuji for encouraging me to try again long after I'd given up, and thanks to Teia and Zu for helping with the fight! I'm currently debating whether I should sell my Adder Jambiya, or if I should keep it around for the... erm... occasions that I need my high evasion against plant-type enemies. I guess... that the specific scenario would be rare enough that it should not come up except against one specific cactus :o

Now I'm considering pushing my evasion build to an even higher level. In my full evasion setup, the only slots which I do not have any evasion gear in are the ring slots, so I'm considering picking up a pair of Wivre rings to get another +4 evasion(and +30 HP). This should push me up to an evasion level that can avoid 90% of Sabotender Corrido's attacks without using my Hydra Spats or relying on the nighttime evasion effect of Fenrir's stone.

Oh, and for those who might be interested in any of the MMM rewards... I'd say go look at the popular mazes that you can buy instead of trying to build your own. Chances are that someone else has already made the maze that pops the NM that you need to get your drop already so you can just buy it and use it. I'm holding onto my Ermine's Tail maze for now, and I might go back to try for a Koggelmander at some time in the future.

Odin

Sunday's Einherjar was an Odin run! This time, I asked to come as PLD instead of my usual support on SCH/RDM. Fuuji was the one who suggested this again xD I don't normally ask for specific jobs, though I had been wanting to fully tank Odin at some point. It's also been a while since I've tanked a serious fight, and Odin is about as serious as it gets considering that two tanks are holding down the fort for nearly 36 people! I think this was also the first time I've tanked with Fuuji as my partner. Previously, I've duo-tanked with many others, including Rooks, Weaponx, Talint, and even Wutangwarrior.

This is a PLD/NIN type fight, against a highly accurate boss that will definitely strip your shadows, and has lots of fun AOE moves that can give terror, curse, silence, as well as summon lots of fomors to come beat you up! With Fuuji and our support team, I'd say that this was a near-perfect tanking experience, trading off hate at perfect times when all shadows were down, keeping each other healed up, and even specific times when the alliance would hold off on doing damage so that mages could recover their MP.

I say "near-perfect" because of one little thing. At 10%, Odin can do a "death" move which kills anyone in range. The only way to avoid the move is to be out of range, or be in the /heal position. Of course, this is a little hard to do when you're being beat up, so the general idea is to disengage, use Invincible, then /heal and hope for the best. Well, we tried to do that, but... we were just a split second too late xD

I found it kind of funny that our macros came up next to each other, considering the battle spam xD Oh well... one second too late! The only drop of significance to me was the Hecatomb Cap abjuration. I considered spending points on it, but decided that if I were to get something from the Einherjar drops, I would want it to be something that only came from Odin like the Valkyrie's fork.

Gil draining activities (Part 1)

Late last night, Fuuji went to poke the silly cactus one last time before he went to sleep. Strangely, this was the time it dropped:

This is the piece that turns an Ebon Harness into the THF/NIN/DNC usable piece, the Ebon Vest with Synergy. This is a surprisingly revealing "vest" piece that Fuuji found one person wearing in Lower Jeuno. I managed to find a pic on Google of the full set:

The fun part about this system is that you can actually customize it somewhat... to add specific effects using Evolith, and more importantly, change the color to either a red, or white version! The vest itself is... well, it's okay, Dex+6, Accuracy & Evasion +7, Critical Hit Rate +2%. I'll probably get it and change it to the DNC specific piece just to have a unique look, though it would clash with the rest of my gear unless I try to get the full set! That unfortunately means that I do need to unlock Synergy now xD

The Evolith customizations are... well, complicated. To get evolith, you have to use the Hunt Registries, then go out and kill specific NMs. Some are always up, others are popped NMs, and yet more others have different requirements. I think the evolith system is nowhere near fully explored, and there are probably other types of evolith that have yet to be discovered, or have not yet been added to the game since, well, face it, there are even fewer people doing Synergy/Evolith compared to MMM when that first launched. Who knows, there may be a hidden +Haste or +Accuracy evolith that nobody has found yet. For now though, I can't figure out any interesting evoliths that would be useful on the Ebon Vest to fit in one of my DNC gear sets (on DNC, I'm mainly interested in either haste, accuracy or evasion).

In fact, the only evolith I've picked up so far is:

Unfortunately, not very useful for me since I do not have NIN leveled up. I've tossed it, and the +2 version that I also got. Each different NM that you can hunt seems to have their own specific evoliths. The only randomness is in the amount it enhances.

On the other hand, the PLD version of this gear might have some interesting applications in PLD/RDM... I have the Aptant for that (as does Fuuji), so we need to get it crafted and see what we can do with it :)

Gil draining activities (Part 2) - RNG & COR

Looks like AP's regular exp activities have started back up again. I've decided to go the COR route for a few reasons... the main ones being that it is a rare job, and that it exposes me to two new aspects of FFXI: buffer/support job and ranged attacks. Plus, there are tons of Bards out there, even mule-bards xD

Buuut... I ran into one little complication as soon as I tried to prepare to level COR. The NPC that sells the various dice in Al Zabi was kidnapped xD I've been checking since Saturday, but so far he has not yet been rescued, so I can't even buy the most basic of my dice x.x I'm not sure if he'll even BE rescued really, but... well, worst case I'll have to get some friends together and go on a rescue mission if I can't find a secret stash of dice x.x

Meanwhile, I've been leveling RNG. May as well get that to level 37 for subbing. Since AP is pretty much full of mules, a lot of PLing goes on so the more damage we bring out, the faster our exp flows and a COR/RNG would be more useful compared to anything else. I'm finding a couple of things interesting and amusing about leveling RNG:

• I have no idea what good gear is xD I *think* I'm making the correct decision on bow/arrow & crossbow/bolts, but the rest of my gear is... well... pretty much non-existant
• Constantly having to hit the "Ranged Attack" macro is annoying. There should be a way to automate this >.>
• Inventory management is surprisingly painful. Between keeping both bow & arrow, as well as crossbow & bolts on me, I have to keep on unquivering stuff to keep shooting and making sure I have room. I think right now I'm at 10 slots free in total among all my storage thanks to the extra gear from RNG & COR sitting around

At this point, I want to get RNG up to 37 as soon as possible so that I can get rid of the archery/marksmanship gear. At least with COR, it's only one type of ranged attack xD I have a feeling I'm going to have to go through my storage options carefully and sell pretty much everything that isn't immediately useful (like some random weapons, or my Scorpion Harness set) to make room for this new job x.x

Fun challenges on DNC

It's been a while since I've really used DNC for much since I finished both PLD & DRG. DNC excels in really small groups, party or less, and has basically infinite endurance. Recently, Fuuji has been dragging me around Vana'diel to hunt various NMs that drop stuff for the new armor that can be enhanced with Synergy. Fuuji really knows how to push my buttons since he told me that DNC/NIN would be optimal and that I'd be tanking.

After getting a few rounds of duoing the NMs for a feel of them, I decided to take poke at a few of

them solo today since I knew Fuuji wouldn't be around. Tegmine is a simple crab that is simple to kill, so I won't talk about him. Instead, a more fun challenge is Sabotender Corrido.

This is a little cactuar mob in Eastern Altepa Desert. 2-hour pop, and likes to link with one of his bigger friends:

So, it turns out that Mr. Rapido does not like it when you bully his friends, so he gave me a very quick lesson of eating sand! Of course, he just HAD to run by right after I provoked his little brother too! Smart cactus! A quick homepoint later and a better pull to the edge of the desert and I was ready for round 2.

Corrido is a surprisingly fun NM to play with. He's a MNK/WAR with constant double-attack,so yes, he does attack four times per round. He hits for about 100 each hit well, and he's fairly accurate. His attacks have an additional effect of slow that takes effect fairly often. Oh, and he does Hundred Fists 25%. With 4 hits per round, you can't really blink tank this conventionally, especially since slow would also do a number on your Utsusemi timers.

So, DNC/NIN, full evasion setup, Fan Dance up 100% of the time gives the following results during Hundred Fists xD

This isn't typical. I had to use my Hydra Spats to bump my evasion up 10 more points than normal, which is why all my "/equip feet" macros are /echo'ed out. Without the extra +10 evasion from Hydra Spats (compared ot my Dancer's Shoes +1), I get hit about once every 5-7 attacks. Even then, he can still hit once in a while since there's no such thing as 100% evasion (I think?), so shadows do come in somewhat useful. However, the recast timers on Utsusemi is much too long for 100 fists, so that's where Fan Dance and Trance come in.

You can see what happens when Fan Dance goes up, damage goes from 73 down to 9 due to the damage reduction nature of Fan Dance. Trance also allows me to spam Curing Waltz IV for the entire duration of 100 fists, so there's really no danger as long as I'm paying attention :)

DRG nearly complete, lack of DNC, Limbus over

Let's see... been over a week since my last post, so... here's a brief update:

Dragoon

DRG73 now, just 2 more levels, or about 77k exp left to go till 75. I'll probably get a buffer before switching to merit mode, though this time around, I'll probably stop at 10-15k instead of my normal 25k buffer.

DRG/SAM at 70+ is a lot more fun with the ability to switch between Hasso and Seigan. In last night's party, I was intentionally WSing early and using Third Eye to try to avoid damage as much as I could and rarely used Super Jump. I'm guessing that this is what the job really is like at 75, plus the occasional Angon for big fights. I'm generally liking it as there are enough "buttons to push", though tactically wise, it's pretty brainless... Either do as much damage as possible with appropriate job abilities and jumps, or survive and jump out of the way.

I've considered taking DRG out to events... 73 is almost there... but truthfully, the main reason I don't want to yet is that... my gear right now looks super-ugly xD At least at 75 I'll get some better armor to use... too bad it's all 75-only!

Big thanks to everyone who replied to my DRG gear post, whether through the comments or privately with /tells... so, based on talking to everyone, I've picked up the following

Weapon: Thal is good, try for a Fey Lance for something cheaper that would match Thal's performance. Would need to setup a group to do this... anyone wanna try for more fey weapons?

WS gear/Str: Bring in as much STR as possible for this. Ruby Ring (Str+4) for 45k is reasonable. Flame Ring for 700k is not xD. Pick up a Millefleurs sachet for another Str+1, macro in Warwolf Belt, etc. Grab some Hecatomb gear. Grab some sea gorgets x.x

WS-gear/accuracy: Weap points out that Penta and other multi-hit WS would benefit more from accuracy gear depending on the situation. Definitely something that needs some experimentation. May want to swap in the Potent Belt instead for Penta

Healing Breath: I haven't done any soloing since the 30s, so these macros desperately need updating... Teia and Weap both point out that the effectiveness of Healing Breath depend on Wyvern HP, as well as my HP. I knew about the trigger HP levels for myself, but I had not considered macroing in +HP gear to get to that level artifically. I didn't even know that how much healed depended on the Wyvern's HP level either. Once I hit 75, I'll have to play with these macros and start experimenting.

Lack of Dancer

Not sure if anyone's noticed, but I haven't been on Dancer for the last few weeks... mainly out of laziness since for most events, people prefer that I come on PLD or SCH, so I don't bother changing jobs too much. The other main reason is that DNC really excels in low-man events or small groups, neither of which I've done much of lately.

The other sad part about DNC is that I think I've figured out what happened to Roundel Earrings. The last Roundel Earring sold on the Hades AH was at the end of September. Prior to this it was selling at a decent rate, about 2-3 sold every month, then suddenly it stopped completely. My guess is that SE succeeded in banning enough of the RMT that the ones that previous did importing of the Roundel Earring from other servers to sell at a higher price were all banned, preventing this from being brought in.

And... since Hades sucks at campaign (can't blame us... even I don't do campaign anymore since it's so boring), there's no chance of us getting the earring natively since the campaign op that drops it is never available. Soooo... chances are close to nil that I'd get a Roundel Earring unless I somehow managed to convince someone from another server to transfer one over... somehow...

Which means I can probably take my gil and spend it elsewhere... Hecatomb stuff is expensive, so... maybe there ~.~

Limbus Over

Last Saturday was the last meeting for Shinjiku, the Limbus LS that... I don't know who founded, but it was my first "endgame" event ever. I had just reached sea on my "not quite 75" BLU as my first job when I joined in to take a look and get a Brutal Earring. Well, 1 1/2 years later, full homam and seeing at least 5, maybe 6 full homam sets completed, as well as numerous other people getting random pieces, the LS finally disbanded.

Pity really... we had the low-man Omega down to an art... 2x tanks, 1x RDM/DRK, 1x healer, 1x BRD, 3x BLM and maybe 1 random melee damager was enough to take Omega down consistently. Any extra people beyond that would simply ensure that we could kill it without taking any deaths.

Sad part is that it died rather suddenly. I was hoping to have some of the newcomers take over the basic farming portion, with the old-timers popping in to help with hard zones and for Omega. It only takes 5 people to effectively farm the chips necessary from all the zones. Fuuji had already gone on the "semi-retired" state for a while, Vanh was taking a break from FFXI for his house stuff, and we were able to farm the chips until recently. What suddenly changed was in November, we had two members take "take a month off" -- aka "quit". We knew about that, and it wasn't too big of a deal since we had enough people and mules to carry on. What ended up killing things was that two other regular members suddenly disappeared without warning and stopped logging into FFXI. Down to 3 regular members and two semi-regular, there was no way to continue. After trying for 2 straight weeks, we called it and decided to disband amiably (for the most part... though one of the newer members was "pissed at saving points").

So, that makes for the 2nd FFXI event that I used to do that has been successfully shut down. Nyzul was the first, though we do have the option of starting that up again if people are interested. Still, getting more free time back is always good! Especially since I'm heavy into other non-FFXI games now xD

For other events I'm semi-running... I doubt ZNMs will go away anytime soon! That's still going strong, and unfortunately drop rates are low enough that we'll be plugging away at that for a long time before people start to be satisfied. And... that's it! Everything else I go to is run pretty much by Rooks :)

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!

Shantotto mini-expansion augments announced

So, the gear for the next SE RMT... I mean, mini-expansion has been announced. Leg gear, but it comes all the way down to the ankles, covering boots, so you could in theory wear one full set and it would be somewhat consistent. However, each piece does look horrendously ugly this time, a major step down from the ACP armor which I thought looked pretty decent. Macro pieces for sure... I don't think anyone would want to be caught dead wearing these pieces due to how ugly they look!

Details on the gear + augments are available at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/addon/index.html#shantotto

For the previous two mini-expansions, I've always been looking into creating something unique for my Dancer. For ACP, I put together a +enmity & evasion body for the rare occasion where I want to evasion tank something. For AMK, it was a +enmity & -waltz timer piece, mainly macroed in to get those Waltzes out faster. (Yes, I use this over my Etoile Tiara +1 in all Waltzes except for IV) This expansion might be a little different as it has a few interesting augments from my perspective.

- "Waltz" TP cost -5

Definitely an improvement for Dancers. This isn't just a 5% increase in efficiency (unless they really meant -5%), but it goes up the lower level waltz you use. Curing Waltz III goes from 50% TP to 45%, a 10% reduction in TP used. Curing Waltz II goes from 35% to 30%, a 14% reduction, so overall this reduces the amount of TP used by quite a significant amount. It might even be worth it for people who sub-DNC simply to save TP!

- "Conserve TP" +5

Now... this is a weird augment. We've never had a "Conserve TP" trait before. What does this mean? Does it mean that when you WS, you might have a chance of not using all the TP you had? Or is it something for Dancers so that when you use any ability, it may not take the full cost? If so, Dancers are going to blink even more as this would get macroed in for everything from Waltzes, to Sambas and even Steps!

Or... did SE just have a typo and mean to say Conserve MP :P

- HP+25, Enmity +4

This was the first thing to catch my eye mainly because the previous two pieces I created both had +enmity on it...

- Movement Speed +8%

Now this is an interesting augment. It isn't the +12% that other pieces of gear have, but it is movement speed+, and it can go on basically whichever job you choose. I'm quite used to +movement speed on SCH & DNC, and this might have the potential of making it easier to kite things around on PLD without having to go do sky stuff

- Accuracy +7 / Evasion +7

Now this is interesting mainly because I've never seen this high accuracy on a leg piece before. My current "weird... I need accuracy but it's not worth using food" equipment, the Cobra Unit Subligar only gives +5 accuracy. Similarly for the evasion. That's high for a piece in this slot

- Physical damage taken -4%

I haven't really toyed much with -damage equipment... one of these days I might go try for a Jelly Ring again, but this does provide an unusual benefit to a slot that doesn't normally have it.

Mmmm... decisions, decisions... what to get? Well, if I look at it from a Dancer's perspective, the "Waltz TP Cost-5" augment is a definite must have. The 2nd augment would depend a lot on whether "Conserve TP" is worth it or not... I'll let someone else do the testing for that. +8% movement speed would be very nice since it would stack with Chocobo Jig for even faster moving around, as well as work on BLU. +enmity would be the last fallback... However, I really don't get to use my DNC tanking setup all that often, so I have a feeling that +movement would win out just for sheer convenience.

If I were to change over to a PLD's look, I'd probably also look at +movement speed, and possibly the -physical damage... Unlikely I'd look this way though since I like getting gear for DNC xD

Any further opinions from others?

HQ Lootwhoring!

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

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

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

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

Anyway... time for the loot!

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

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

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

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

Sea: Jailer of Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

Novia Earring - Evasion +7, Enmity -7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Routine week, trouble with relic +1

So, last week was fairly routine with nothing too special to write about. No fun pictures from the last week either since everything was routine. Only variation from the normal stuff is that I did the Brothers ENM with Tasya, the Antlion(Hagun) ENM with Zurar & Fuuji, and some ISNMs. Got SOME drops, which did help increase my gil supply to a point where I'm slightly more comfortable. Before this, I was running at near empty and could almost not afford to buy food xD

Some EPIC FAILs during the week in Dynamis(so I hear, I missed Wed's run) and Limbus (shortest limbus evar with 2 minutes 15 seconds in zone!) However, we made it for it on Saturday with a successful Dynamis-Tavnasia, followed by a routine, successful Omega (congrats Tassy & Kasan for their new pieces!)

Sunday night, we went back to Nyzul for some farming... been a while since the last one, so I'm pretty happy that we managed to finish all 4 runs successfully. Even better that we got 2 drops out of the 4, even though they weren't exactly the pieces we were hoping for. Still, getting some armor is better compared to none!

Dragoon

Dragoon is proceeding slowly but nicely. Level 26(almost 27) now, so I have access to Spirit Link. I think I'll be one of those annoying DRGs that make healers go crazy from using that ability to keep Lumiere alive xD

I'm still amused by this job... I've gone out soloing a few times as DRG/BLU, but I'm not very good at it. The low HP trigger (33% of max HP) needed to trigger healing breath is low enough that I can tackle one EM and a couple EP at the same time, but if a Tough or 2nd EM aggros, I tend to die... so far, I've died about 4 times from just aggroing extra mobs either by not seeing them, or HP aggro. Pretty sure soloing isn't for me for now. Maybe I'll try it again after I get my AF helm which raises the healing breath trigger up to 50%.

In a party situation, DRG is just too simple... Jump, Double Thrust. I guess it gets a little more complicated later when I get High Jump, which would change the routine to Jump, Jump, Double Thrust. Still, it's a nice, relaxing change from the busier jobs that I've been playing. I'm still debating which DD job to take to 75, DRG or SAM. DRK is currently out of the running just cos... I... don't... want to... slowly... kill 100 mobs one at a time with a super-slow Great Sword.

Comparing DRG to SAM:

- DRG is less work. SAM I had to tank all the way to 37 as SAM/WAR. DRGs aren't expected to tank

- DRG cannot pull since we don't have any Ranged Attack

- DRG comes with a cute pet!

- DRG is cheaper and easier to gear compared to SAM! At least for me that is... I think I already have most of the needed DRG gear for a decent DD-type DRG at level 75. The only thing I'd need to pick up is a good polearm, which can be had for under half a mil gil.

- DRG/SAM gets most of the benefits of SAM anyway. The only things that SAM main would get are sekkinoki and the full 100% TP of Meditate

- I don't have to level extra subs for DRG xD /WAR, /SAM, /NIN and /mage are all that are needed

- There is only one weapon to skillup xD

Looking a little ahead to if I finish DRG, besides AF & relic, I was trying to put together a list of gear that I might want from various events... So far, I've only come up with:

- Dragoon Earring (T1 ZNM mob Chamrosh)

- Love Torque (JoL drop... on my list anyway since it's used by DNC)

- Love Halberd (JoL guaranteed drop... nobody wants anyway xD)

- Valkyrie's Fork (Odin drop... probably a long line for this, but whatever xD)

- Some expensive polearm that I need some gil for... still, no matter what this won't be as bad as the Hagun xD

Gear wise... I'm still kinda wondering if my current PLD "DD" set is the right combination. Right now, I'm using Askar Head & Body, Homam hands, legs and feet while I go DDing in campaign, or during boss fights where there is no chance of me holding hate on PLD anyway. Any comments on that? I'll probably end up with the same combination on DRG for TP.

Trouble with relic +1

During Saturday's Dynamis-Tavnasia, I became the owner of a pair of badly damaged Etoile Tights -1. So, this goes into the queue for the many +1 pieces I have to ask Sagheera to upgrade. However, I ran into a critical snag with this piece. It turns out that the material needed to craft this item is a square of Smooth Velvet, which according to the AH, is *never* sold ~.~

Even worse, the items needed to craft it(Wind Anima and Light Anima) are also virtually never sold, so I'd have to find someone to craft them in the first place. Aaaand... the materials to craft these two anima are RARELY sold... not never, just... very rare since they are stupid Promy drops -.-;

So... right now I'm looking for:

1. Someone to sell 4x "Remnants of a Fleeting Memory"on the AH. I managed to snag 4x Radiant Memories from the AH so at least I'm ready to craft Light Anima

2. A level 75 or higher Alchemist

3. A level 47 or higher Clothcrafter with Cloth Purification

All that... before I can craft the material needed for these tights ~.~ I took a look at the other materials for the other Etoile +1 pieces and none of them are as much of a hassle as this x.x

Anyone out there on Hades who can help me? xD

Random items, merits, next job?!

No pictures this week since I didn't actually do too much that was picture worthy last week. I have a few smaller shots that I might combine with a post next week.

Instead, this is a more text-heavy post xD

Random items

Seems like last week was the week where I picked up various random items. First was Valor Gauntlets -1 from Dynamis... basically since I already had the NQ hands, I picked this up last Wed. Seems like not many people are going for the +1s anyway as they want to be able to store their relic.

So... obviously since I already had one item for Sagheera to upgrade, I'd pick up a few more xD Later that Wed night, I picked up both the PLD & DNC AF+1 upgrade pieces from Temenos, finishing those sets -.-; I wasn't able to find the DNC material for upgrading, so this week I upgraded the PLD AF feet piece for some extra shield skill. Next week will be DNC AF+1 feet for extra evasion, and the week after that I'll FINALLY be able to upgrade my Valor Gauntlets x.x

On Sunday, Tasya took me to go... basically manaburning all day in sea. We went hunting for all types of mobs, even Yorva(UFOs) for organs. In the process, I completed both my Korin Obi(light weather) and Soil Gorget (Weaponskills). The improvements from the Korin Obi were easy to see, especially with Aurorastorm forcing light weather. I managed to push Cure IV up to around 650HP cured together with Rapture. The Soil Gorget, on the other hand, I couldn't tell the difference in Dancing Edge or Vorpal Blade between using it and my Peacock Charm or Chiv Chain. It's in my macros for DNC WSing, but it might take some time before i see how good it is.

Ironically, all these random items are depleting what little gil I have in my Roundel Earring fund x.x Between the chips, gorget, obi and the AF+1 materials, I think I'm down almost 100k, and no source of income to replenish it. My only source of income, ancient beastcoins, is also being used up for the AF+1 upgrades, so I'm very definitely poor again x.x

Merits

Since picking up my Joyeuse, I've been highly focused on getting merits through any means possible and dumping them into sword. This has meant a lot of campaigning since none of my jobs really fit in a merit party. I'm currently 5/8, with 9 merits left to go before I finish sword. Like most things, this benefits mainly Dancer as it should help overcome the D rating on sword, and hopefully put that "occasionally attacks twice" function to good use. In theory, this should make DNC/NIN even better compared to DNC/SAM for TP gain if I can hit enough with the Joyeuse on my off-hand.

Oh... PLD & BLU just happen to benefit from sword merits too :)

After this... need to finish my HP merits. I'm 6/8 right now, so just two more upgrades left at 5 merits each. So... basically, 19 more merits to go in the short-term, or 190,000 limit points to get x.x Only other category I can consider meriting would be Dex, which is sitting at 1/8 at the moment, and looking like it won't be going any further x.x;

Next job?!

Fuuji, and some others, have been /poking me to go level another job... like... a "real" DD or something for a zerg. I guess people don't consider BLU a "real DD", which I don't blame them since BLU has the problem of stamina. It's good for shorter things, and highly flexible, but not for longer battles and does not gain much benefit from Soul Voice Bard songs.

The job that I've been taking to "zerg" fights so far has been DNC. With Saber Dance, a full Reverse Flourish and if I'm /SAM with Meditate up, I can usually get off at least 2, sometimes 3-4 Dancing Edges off before the mob dies. I'm also using at least one Box Step for some defense down on the mob (reportedly 5% for the first level). Of course, this pales in comparison to the 5-6 that a SAM can pull off using their job abilities, but I think most mobs that are handled through zergs do not last through a full 2-hr. The downside is that daggers are simply a weak weapon to begin with so damage output isn't that high.

Anyway, now that summer is coming to an end, Fuuji has been talking about bringing back the "Sunday static exp" time that we used to do some time ago. It was pretty fun, and supermules + level sync makes it a lot easier to actually pull off. Hence, I'm sorta considering leveling a 5th job. However, merits and gil making are still a higher priority so I really want to do those first xD

Still... it makes for a fun exercise to consider what jobs I'd level up... figure that I'd post my thoughts behind this and let people make their own comments.

Now, in no particular order, the jobs!

Ranger

- Expensive... see gil problem where I don't have any gil... I doubt I'll level this just for that reason. Also, I haven't unlocked it yet xD

Dark Knight

- Emo... ok, that's not a good reason. I haven't unlocked DRK either

- Leveling it might make for some interesting applications as SCH/DRK with Stunga. Plus SCH can shorten recast timers, so SCH/DRK might make for an interesting stunner

- Can think of nothing significant against DRK, but nothing for it either

Monk

- So Rooks, Weap & Rizon took me out UFO hunting using a MNK with a Subtle Blow setup to demonstrate what the job is capable of. I never considered the implications of Subtle Blow before and was quite impressed at how using just one MNK it was possible to do a significant amount of damage to a mob over time, plus keep the mob under control, preventing it from using too many TP moves since you're just not giving it that much TP

- 100-Fists is also a really good zerg-type move

- However, the annoyance/difficulty of obtaining a Black Belt would turn me off from this job, considering how many people out there who have been playing this for years longer compared to me do not have this piece of equipment xD Also... MNK1

Warrior

- Haven't seen anything for or against this job... I never really thought too hard about WAR, just considering it as a good backup Provoke, and just another damage dealer

- WAR37, but only 1H axes skilled up. I never considered taking it past sub so skilling up other things would be painful D:

Dragoon

- Come to think of it, this is really a hybrid class given your subjob choices... Probably not a good choice just cos I already have too many hybrids

- DRG1, unlocked, but never played

Samurai

- Seems like the obvious choice given how many job abilities SE has dumped on the job. I also picked up a Soboro a long time ago that Aqqy made me get when AP was getting them for real SAMs, so at least I'm setup for that

- SAM37, but no polearm or archery skill... plus if I were to level this, I'd have to go unlock and level RNG as a sub, so that would get expensive. Skilling up polearm would be annoying, but at least doable on PLD

- No gil for a Hagun, or for that matter, any other good gear... Considering how popular SAM is as a job, most good SAM gear is relatively expensive

Thief

- Weird choice for a DD... not really a strict DD, but I have a lot of equipment that overlaps with this job, homam armor, daggers from DNC

- Job abilities make this job more interesting, controlling the hate and flow of a party

- However, the main reason people bring THF to events is mainly as Treasure Hunter, so... while I have the gear for it, it doesn't seem like something I'd want to do x.x

Alternate choices... well, for job #5, I might be considering a DD, but I'm also considering:

Bard

- What makes a "zerg" fight possible...

- Be able to pull for merit parties. I actually like pulling ^^;

- BRD16 at the moment... unfortunately, Bard songs can get expensive, as can BRD gear... at least I have 20k Assault points in nearly every zone for that weird armor that BRDs like

Corsair

- Expensive x.x Dice are expensive, as are the bullets and everything... even if I do have a Coffinmaker, the cost of this job would be too much for me

- COR5 now xD

So... looks like SAM & BRD are currently the top contenders. The other bad news for any DD job I choose is that my combat merits will be capped at 8/8 sword & dagger, and 4/4 on evasion, so there isn't really any space to put into a weapon the job would use. Since my fun job is still Dancer, I'm unwilling to reduce merits in any of those categories, making only THF & BRD the two jobs that would benefit from the combat merits.

Thoughts? Of course, this is all speculation/random thinking since I still want to finish my 19 merits first... plus any job I level up will require gil, which is something I currently have very little of x.x Need to get some people together and do some gil gaining activities :(