Friday, September 29, 2006

Pee your greaves good.

Posted by Ringthree at 10:14 AM

Ok, this was going to be a really boring recap post. It really was. I mean yesterday was Kirin then Sacrarium then bed. I have pictures and stuff, and I will show them first, but man, the info giving out by SE in the last two days is enough to cause a grown man wet themselves with joy.

But first, your regularly scheduled Kirin. Or maybe not. Now, you would think that when you are doing Kirin you would pay attention. Well, sometimes that doesn't happen. Kirin was popped, Seiryu was summoned, and Seiryu was slaughtered. He is a big wimp with two invincibled PLDs. Then came Suzaku, and things went all crazy. Apparently, my Wheeling Thrust to open Light was enough to make him two hour at 80%. This was bad, because right after he got bound, he got hit with the spells that were supposed to be the magic bursts, breaking the bind. So with Suzaku running around Kirin decided it was a good time to pop Byakko. And the fun began. The funny thing was that we actually got an ES Bind to stick on Byakko and finish off Suzaku. Then we had like one tank, two dragoons and a thief on Byakko. Rei tanked it for about 75% health then Solidsnake finished tanking it with Perfect Dodge. Genbu was out and running around at this time, but he was just pinging around and no one really paid the turtle much attention. This is the alliance after a short recovery:
After Genbu was put down, we regrouped and fought Kirin like normal. Light skillchains and straight tanking after the two hour.
Mirra actually got a stun to land for a split second on Kirin. Pretty decent feat for a Drk.
Now apparently the RDM's were having a pretty decent time enfeebling Kirin, in fact, Iceblazek managed to land a couple of gravities. To which Tamarisk was very impressed. ^.^ (Hi, Ice!)

Kirin dropped S. Cloth and an Osode which went to Charlet.

After Kirin, we went to do Sacrarium for Reikoyi, Azeryus, Iceblazek and Lucella. Before this though, I wanted to finally get my Lvl 50 SAM JSE made. I have had the subligar for a little while and I figured that it would be way better than my NQ Brigandine. So I head over to Brygid in Bastok to get it made. I walk up in my Iron Scale Mail and my Wool Hose ready to trade my subligar when I find out she actually want plain old Hose. So I have someone check the AH and I come to find that their are none available in the Jeuno AH >.< Then I run to check the Bastok AH, none their either. >.< x2!

So what does a resourceful adventurer with level 30 clothcraft do? Thats right, I crafted up my own set! (Not something you will see very often from me.)
So with my new Hose wrought from my own blood, sweat and tears, I head over to Brygid again. After she approved of my outfit, I happy traded over my Cancer Subligar. To which she approved of the look, the feel... and the smell. What a little perv.

I was happy to get my Shinimusha Hara-Ate and get the heck out of there.

The stats on the Shinimusha dont appear to be that great, but when compared to Brigandine, and the fact that you get .9 more TP per swing with a 450 Great Katana, it is pretty impressive. I have been thinking about picking up the Shinimusha Haidate, but I can't see paying for 300k price tag even thought the total TP bonus would be 1.5 per swing for both. I just wouldn't be using them enough.

And so we headed out to the Sacrarium. Now, we are doing a Swift Belt run this weekend after Sky, so no one really wanted to get rid of their Fomor hate, as you need a ton of it to spawn the Swift Belt NM. I already had a Sealion Crest Key, and a Coral Crest Key, which wasn't that helpful because I wouldn't be able to trade both keys (which actually now that I think about it, I might have been able to do because there would be time to trade both if I was quick), but Luce had one on her already so they got the first cutscene. Since we didnt want to wait for another key to drop, we were going to let Glacian stay behind the door until we were able to kill the ghost NM for the last key item key.

As luck would have it someone *coughOmoicough* got aggro from a Fomor on the way out of the room and it dropped a key immidiately, so Glacian was able to come and help. We went and started clearing the rooms of Fomors, and we were able to get the ghost to pop on the second room. Took him down pretty quick, then headed back to the Reliqium to get the CS.
And that was my evening, relatively uneventful.

Now onto the pee your greaves good stuff. Now yesterday I did mention that SE had announced changes to a couple of different jobs. I was excited when I read what they said they will be doing to the Dragoon merit ability Empathy (see yesterday's late post), but that was nothing compared to what I saw this morning.

From: The POL Development Page

The uber SAM buff. And when I say uber, I mean UBER. If these changes are half as good as they appear to be they will be amazing.

· Hasso (Level 25; Recast: 1 minute; Duration: 5 minutes)
Grants a bonus to attack speed, accuracy, and Strength when using two-handed weapons.

· Seigan (Level 35; Recast: 1 minute; Duration: 5 minutes)
Grants a bonus to Third Eye when using two-handed weapons.

Seigan and Third Eye
While Seigan is in effect, the recast time for the Third Eye job ability will be decreased by half. In accordance, the duration for "Third Eye" will be adjusted.


This makes SAM a ton stronger, and probably makes SAM a viable sub for my Dragoon over War. They have also changed Zanshin to a level 20 ability which will partially make up for the fact that we will lose Double Attack from subbing WAR.

Here are the real questions though,

1. How much of a difference is this going to be for a SAM main? Will a SAM be able to sub WAR now without missing every third WS?

2. Does this make SAM a viable sub for two handed weapon wielders (DRK, DRG and GA WARs)?

3. Can SAMs tank now?

Gonna have to wait for the update to see for sure.

I am thinking that they truely want people to stop having to sub WAR, so the changes are going to be impressive. And for SAM mains, the merit abilities are going to make a ton of difference now. Third eye recast just became much more important, as well as Ikishoten, because if they are giving Zanshin at level 20, then it is probably going to be a tiered ability like dual wield with an increased chance to proc at higher levels.

This may make SAM strong enough to the point where they are the new uber job, even over WAR's. We will have to see, but damage denial ability make SAM's able to go nuts in merit parties where they had to sub NIN or THF to prevent themselves from being slaughered.

1 comments

Thursday, September 28, 2006

This has to be a mistranslation.

Posted by Ringthree at 1:29 PM

I dont normally post two blog entries on one day, but this is too much to pass up.

From: Vanafesta 2006 Talk Session.

1. Super Jump recast will be reduced to 3 minutes.
2. Empathy ability will provide both dragoon and wyvern with stoneskin effect.
3. Spirit Surge will have an added effect with the ability to reset the recast time of all jump abilities.

Hold the presses. That has to be a mistranslation. I have read other translations of that and it said that Empathy will allow the transposition of stoneskin to the wyvern (which I thought was weird because I was pretty sure it already did that), but this pretty clearly officially stats that Dragoon AND Wyvern get stoneskin from using that ability!

I could solo God with free instant cast stoneskin every 3 minutes.

Poor God. ; ;

I am just piecing together my thoughts on this from IM conversations right now.

Random thought 1: That is AWESOME for keeping your wyvern alive. Dragoon damage is based on Wyvern life. In the mire dragoons suck, even though they have a damage bonus, because they have no wyvern (AoE death too fast).

Random thought 2: Recast on Spirit Link can be merited down, so you get free stoneskin in less than 3 minutes.

Wow.

On the other issues:

For the Super Jump recast: Duh, this should have happened a long time ago.

For the reset of Jump timers on Spirit Surge: Super duh, I have been saying this was the case from the day the ability was changed.

0 comments

Unintentionally short.

Posted by Ringthree at 11:04 AM

4 hours, no drops. This is a reasonable statement if you camping Thief's Knife, or maybe Profblix Rottendrops, or just about any non-100% drop mob in the game. This is not a reasonable statement for Dynamis-Beaucidine. Yep, not a single drop in Beaucidine. And do you want to know the most wonderful thing about that experience? It isn't the first time I have seen that happen. That's right, I have been on two, TWO freaking Beaucidine runs now where there have been zero drops. No AF, no coins, nothing. What a freaking waste of four hours.

This is the point where I will mention that I am jinxed because I had high bid on Koga Chainmail, and I was tied for high bid on Wyrm Mail. I mean come on, that is bad luck on the level of Kirin dropping just one crystal. How can you go through that many mobs and that many NM's and not get a single piece of AF? And more importantly, how can it happen two times now?

We even did four pulls of Hydra's. Aren't they supposed to have a better drop rate? I mean come on, those things are tough. I know they were plotting against me. Apparently they have high-speed internet access in the Pso'Xja towers and they checked my bids on Obsidian and they said, no drops for you!

Speaking of bids, I was kinda bothered by the fact that one of the leaders of Obsidian doesn't know their own rules. We all know and love Gorokai (/wave Nivaud) and their was a rule created because of him that if you drop a run after running up the bid, the points are reset. Now, this was a rule in place before I even joined Obsidian months and months ago. Well, someone had (quite stupidly, if I might add) run up the bid on Koda Chainmail, even though they couldn't beat me and I already have all the Koga gear I want besides Chainmail. Then they didn't show up for the run. Now, my points should have been dropped down to the next highest bid (which was 5 points ^.^) but the run leader said bids were final. I laughed when I saw the rest of the leaders saying "No, the Gorokai rule," at him, I mean come on. Time to get with the program.

Anyway, enough with the bitching.

The run itself was easy. We did 4 hydra pulls and still managed have time to get to angry Angra Mainyu. Poor Azy got killed by the mean old eye. >.<

We took him down pretty quick as usual getting a couple more people the win (which I know is important, but it would be nice to do some more farming runs, especially when we are getting zero drops on a normal win run):

Got a new title to replace Kirin Captivator: Not like I haven't had this title already.

Anyway, after that depressing run, I grabbed Omoi and we went to work off some more point on the latent on my Tachi of Trials. It was really uneventful, except for the fact that after camping in the same spot for about 30 minutes, two different people started camping on top of us. Its like now that people think they can xp burn in the new areas by camping on top of other people, that its ok to do it anywhere. Oh well, still have about 100 points to work off the latent.


Versus has Kirin today, which wont take long. But we are doing Sacrarium afterward which is going to take forever. Also probably farming for subligar and might be doing Swift Belts. We will see how it goes. I never seem to get any time for myself, but that is because I am always promising to help other people. No one to blame but myself. ^.^

0 comments

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Noob defined.

Posted by Ringthree at 11:02 AM

I have a point to this post, but first I need to go over a few things to get to it.

Yesterday was entertaining to say the least. Sky went pretty well considering the fact that not many NM's were up. We popped a Seiryu for a decent set of drops and then we popped Genbu. Poor little Genbu, dying to a dragoon. The turtle didn't stand a chance. ^.^

Anyway, after sky Omoi, Eji and I were supposed to help Reikoyi, Azeryus and Iceblazek to beat Ouryu. This is just about the start of my rant but something funny happened on the way to Bastok. You see, I needed to pick up my AF great katana because its a pretty good weapon for the level 50 capped Riverne Site B01. So I headed over to my trusty ole' "pay for a warp" taru. Now, let me say this. If you are using the free warp taru, you are just plain wrong. The 100 ISP it takes to get the imperial silver piece for the warp to Jeuno or your home nation is totally worth it. Anyway, enough of that tangent, I traded my piece and was shocked when I noticed that the great and wise Kaduru-Haiduru isn't much for spelling. It's pretty hard to appear all mighty when you can't spell "republic."

So we were off to Riverne Site B01. We started with 5 Hippogriff Tailfeathers and no Giant Scales, so we were going to need to farm some up. This was fortunate as Omoi had to deal with some RL stuff apparently (which ended up taking for-freaking-ever). We farmed up five more tailfeathers and a Giant Scale. Normally, you will only need 4 Mistmelts to beat Ouryu but if you dont do enough damage it can end up being more, so it was nice to have 10 tailfeathers. I headed back to the Safehold to get the Mistmelts made and we were finally on our way through the beautiful Riverne Site B01.
The trip was short and relatively uneventful. Our set-up for the fight was Nin, Sam, Sam, Rdm, Whm, Blm. Now, this is were my discussion of noobs begins. I have been told over and over that the best way to beat Ouryu is to take a bunch of BLM's and AM it to death. If you ask me, this is like trying to beat the Promy's with a bunch of SMN's. Its the noob way to do things. Now I need to talk about what I mean by a noob.

To other people, a noob is someone that doesn't know what they are doing. This is wrong. A person that doesn't know what they are doing is just ignorant. Although people have assigned value to the word (incorrectly or not), to be ignorant just means that one does not have enough information to make correct decisions, and when provided with enough information, one would be able to discern the proper course of action. There is nothing inherently wrong with being ignorant, though there is something wrong with not wanting to become less ignorant, which leads us to the true noob.

A noob is someone that has been provided with the correct information but still refuses to accept it. 90% of the time, a noob is not a new player, but a player that has become so set in their ways that they do not see any other way to beat things. Usually, they are arrogant, elistist players. The CoP missions are the perfect way to prove that someone is a noob. The CoP missions are very much finesse fights. The Promy's for example are easily beaten with a normal xp party if people have the proper anima's. But this defies conventional wisdom that only the 1337est players and most uber jobs can beat them. The truth is that the CoP missions (except for two, Snoll Czar because it is completely random, and the Airship fight which is truly a difficult fight) are just plain easy. It's the noobs that make them hard.

Ouryu is another shining example of this noobishness. Everyone claims about how they have only beaten Ouryu with BLM's and that its not possible to do it any other way. I have now beaten Ouryu for my LS at least 6 or 7 times, all with normal party set ups. All you have to do is fight it like normal, when it flies you mistmelt it, then you sleep it. Let the mages get MP back, then fight it again until it flies. Rinse and repeat for pretty much a guranteed win. 4 of those times, no one even used two hours, as was the case last night. What is really funny is that most HNMLS's deal with wyrms in a similiar fashion (obviously not the same as Ouryu because you can't use mistmelts) in that the sleep the wyrm when they are in trouble.

I heard a long time ago that its basically a trickle down effect. The 1337 players use their tactics from endgame mobs to beat these missions, which can eventually be effective. This gets bad when they tell other people that the only way to beat the missions is by the way that they did them. And then normal players become depressed when they can not beat the missions because they are not as 1337 as their friends. Luckily, the smart people can figure out the tricks to the CoP missions, and do them just like anyone else if they dont also act like a noob.

That brings us back to our Ouryu fight. We had one slight hickup at the beginning, because I was unclear in explaining what to do when Ouryu took off the first time, but after that it was smooth sailing. We took him down slowly but surely, in fact I was being a little conservative on damage because I wanted to make things went well and after the third time we slept him I told Eji and Iceblazek to lay down some more damage. They did so, Ouryu flew one last time, then we took him down. I don't even think there were any sleep resists, which can happen toward the end of the fight. Every time he woke up was because of one of Eji's Aeroga spells. One of the easist fights I have had against Ouryu.

A nice little picture of us kicking Ouryu's ass:

And the aftermath:


After the fight, Reikoyi said something that only reinforced my thoughts about noobs and about how people play the game. Rei said that he had lost the Ouryu fight 10 times because was going with noobs. Now, Rei wasn't saying that the people he was going with were not good players, but that the way they were doing the fight was wrong, and when the fight was done correctly, it was easy. That made me all happy on the inside and Skur even said that I didn't need something else to boost my ego. LOL

Anyway, that was fun, and I was very happy to get it done for Rei, Az and Ice. Now, onto Sacrarium.

After the Ouryu victory, I wanted to get started on unlocking Tachi: Kasha. Kasha is a big weaponskill for SAM's because it makes Light. On DRG, I didn't get Impulse Drive until 74 because I didn't really need it, because you dont make Darkness all that often. In Versus, we make Darkness more now because its a more efficient way to take down 3 of the 4 gods (Genbu being the left over), but outside of that Impulse Drive isn't that helpful. I still need 4 more levels on SAM (and capped xp) so getting Kasha as soon as possible is a big goal for me. So, Omoi and I headed out to Norg so I could hit up Jaucribaix for my Tachi of Trials.
Jaucribaix informed me of my skills and offered up the Tachi happily.
Here is the sad bit... my Tachi of Trials is just as good as my Kazaridachi in damage and delay, and the +20 HP from the Tachi is definitely going to out do the +2 CHR on Kaz. Here are the stats on the Tachi of Trials:
Omoi and I grabbed Ice and headed out to Kuftal Tunnel to wack some crabs and burn some points off of the latent. Now the benefit of being a SAM is that I can out TP pretty much everyone. I was doing Retribution to Tachi: Gekko for Darkness with Omoi and Burning Blade to Tachi: Koki LOL for Fusion. Usually got off two skillchains per crab. I managed to work off over 100 points in less than an hour doing this.

I did manage to break my Tachi: Gekko record and got the unresisted Darkness for 2000+ but it was on an EP Crab. I still want to do that on an IT+ xp mob so that it will feel legitimate.

I wanted to also say thanks to all the people that are reading my blog. I got my first random tell in game from someone that is reading my blog. I am just glad that I am able to relieve some of the boredom of people at work, LOL. After all that is why I am doing this for myself.

3 comments

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

/blacklist, You can have this.

Posted by Ringthree at 9:53 AM

So I knew this day was coming. This day is the day that I use an auto-translate phrase in the title of a post... LOL. No, really this day is the day that I just rant like crazy. And today, I have a very good reason to rant. Some people have no ability to work with other people, and if you are one of these people, I have a piece of advice for you. Do not play Final Fantasy XI. If you have not noticed, this game generally requires cooperating with other people. If you are incapable of communication, cooperation and generally the ability to be in the presence of other human beings, then perhaps its time to go back to Diablo II so you can dupe hack your way to glory.

I have this to say about the blacklist function. I never use it. I don't hide from people that are annoying. I have to deal with enough debaters on a day-to-day basis that I have the ability to abstract myself from someone that can't help but act like a jerk. So no one has ever been on my blacklist, even the most stupid people, the most ignorant people and the meanest people. My thought is that people change and I will never deny them the opportunity to fix the past. I just recently had a person apologize to me for acting like an idiot during a Promyvion run about a year ago, this is a person that deserved to be blacklisted just for sheer stupidity, but they changed and I wouldn't know it if I had them blacklisted. Also as a DRG, I didn't want to ever miss a chance at an invite LOL. Last night was the closest I have ever come to putting someone on my blacklist.

The scenario: Omoi/Kira and I were supposed to level WAR and BRD but she was busy with some RL stuff so I started to put together a party for my SAM. I pick up two NIN's, a WAR, a WHM, and a BLM. Now for this party to work, you need two Darkness skillchains from the NIN's and the SAM and the BLM bursting off of them both. You also have to fight mobs that dont really have any buffs or require healing for AoE damage. The best options for this are trolls and dhalmals. Both hit hard but swing very slow, so very easy to blink tank, they dont really have buffs you have to dispel (Whistle AGI Boost, LOL). So, after the party was full I asked if anyone had a preference for trolls or dhalmels. After a couple of minutes, finally one of the NIN's peeps up and says that he doesn't like Trolls because of Diamondhide. So I said thats a good enough reason to go fight dhalmels. So I said, we will head to fight dhalmels. And this is where things get good.

The Blm responds in a form of broken english and autotranslate (you know the kind, this is not someone that doesn't know how to speak english, this is the kind of child that doesn't have the time to be bothered with typing in a comprehensible fashion) that he only wishes to XP in an Imperial Standing area (in a quite rude manner), then immidiately disbands. I was in shock. When I asked the party what they wanted to camp against, the BLM did not say a word. Immidiately after the BLM disbanded the WAR and one of the NIN's said that the guy was a jerk, that they were not surprised that he did that, and that they were glad he was gone.

I then had this wonderful conversation with our benevolent BLM:

As you can see, I was dealing with one of the brightest minds of their generation. The amount of irony that was lost on this poor soul was truely mind boggling.

The funniest thing that you can see in the middle of the conversation that I had already replaced the BLM with another one that wasn't even seeking. But I am sure that our friend Krashport made a huge amount soloing that night. It was kinda funny, because he was still seeking when I went to bed several hours later. If soloing was so good, why was he searching? Hmmm?

Oh well, what a wonderful way to start a party. Well, after that fiasco I managed to pick up that new BLM, but our second NIN DC'ed, so I hunted around and found a nice JP RDM. The RDM didn't say much besides "Hello," and "Thank you, Party" at the beginning and end of the party, respectively. But you know that is the best kind of RDM, one that you dont even notice because they are doing their job so well. This party got about 10k in about an hour and a half before a couple of people had to leave. So we headed back to Whitegate, and I started making another party. I didn't mind disbanding this party because the WAR wasn't really paying attention and it made lining up SATA a pain in the ass.

It seemed that it was going to be the night of interesting parties, because as soon as I got back to Whitegate I managed to pick up a NIN and two WAR's, a WHM and a RDM soon followed and we were off to Bibiki Bay again because everywhere else was packed. I was a little worried about TP burning on Dhalmels because of Healing Breeze, but I was surprised how well it went. We were doing really good xp, and always got chain 5. This was going pretty well until the RDM said they had to go about 30 minutes after we arrived >.< Well, the only other job that was searching was a WHM, but no one seemed to care, so with two WHM's we managed to get the same xp, if not better.

Now, Vesp and I have been fighting about what the coolest looking weaponskill in the game. And he is just wrong on this one. Tachi: Gekko is totally badass looking. I mean, you jump into the air with a freaking moon! And its got ancient text and everything! He claims its Asuran Fists, because its an 8-hit weaponskill and thus it hits 8 times. To wit I say: BAH! I got the freaking moon in my weaponskill. And here is the photo evidence for my claim. What do you have, Vesp? WHAT DO YOU HAVE?

Jumping to the moon in one hit:

Landing with my blade behind my back, like a total badass:


While I was in this nice little party I managed to break my Tachi: Gekko 100 TP record.That is pretty good for the level, but I am still trying to get that nice unresisted Darkness skillchain to go with that for the 2000+ total WS damage.

The party went long enough to get me to see this: I changed equipment right before the level-up animation, so it didn't go off >.< Oh well. I finally hit 71, so I can get my Tachi of Trials and start working off the latent to get Tachi: Kasha. Finally I will be able to make a Light skillchain. Then its basically a straight shot to 75, leeching off of burn parties, woot!

Now that I have hit 71, I can finally equip these:and I wont be wearing my gimpy level 25 Windurstan Kyahan any longer. I can't believe their aren't any better feet options between the two. LOL, I just now realized that I could have also been wearing my Warwolf Belt last night after I got to 71, and that I even had it on me, but I forgot to put it on or put it into my macro. >.<

Well, now to my meta-commentary on my DRG and NIN gear (see the previous post for the list of my gear for each).

For my DRG, I am pretty set on TP gear. I think an Amemet Mantle +1 is a good place to start, also I am interested in picking up a Potent Belt, which will probably be better for my WAR than for my DRG because I would still be swapping it back to Warwolf Belt for WS. For my WS gear, the first thing is of course getting Hecatomb Mittens. I have the money to pick those up today. I just need to get the abjuration, and with the bans that are happening more frequently its probably going to get easier. But they still need to drop, LOL. I could also do with some better hands for both TP and WS. For non-god situations my Wyrm Finger Gauntlets are too much accuracy (unless of course I am eating meat dishes), but I hardly ever xp on my DRG anymore, so I dont have a pressing need to replace them. But on my WS I am using Barone Manopolas and the bonuses are not that impressive. I am thinking about getting a set of Tarasque Mitts, or investing in a set of Gigas Bracelets. I need to just convince myself that the Gigas Bracelets are necessary (even though I hate the stats on them).

For my NIN, I am pretty set and I am more happy with my gear here than I am with my DRG. For my Evasion set up, I think a new evasion earring (a Ethereal Earring would be very nice, and I am very close to being able to get it) and a Corse Cape would be nice, but outside of that I am fine. Maybe some Koga Kyahan to improve Ninjitsu resists on Blind and Slow. For Tanking gear, I am not well set up but I dont really tank heavy duty things on my Ninja very often, but this gear seems to be good enough.

Now onto the brass tacks. My TP build gear on my Ninja is surprisingly good. Outside of the obvious need for Byakko's Haidate, everything else is pretty much square. I also could have Shura Togi or Koga Chainmail, which are very nice, and I assume would be better than my Haub, but the Haub is a good place to start. On WS's, I would like the have the Shura Kabuto and now I have the abjuration for it, just saving up some money for it.

In general, I could use some much better earrings, including a Minuet Earring and a Fowling Earring. Also I am dying for a Suppanomimi and a Brutal Earring. I could also use a Flame Ring for all of my jobs. If anyone has any other suggestions, I am all ears.

Thats about it for today, how was it for you?

2 comments

Monday, September 25, 2006

You think pictures are worth a thousand words? Then this post is gonna be really long.

Posted by Ringthree at 11:26 AM

Alright, I was away this weekend. I dont generally post on weekends, I dont have time and especially this weekend, because I was out of town. I am also sick, and I am on Dayquil and Nyquil 'round the clock, if this post is a little... off... then you will know why.

Lets just say that even though I was away this weekend, I still got a ton done between now and the last post. Thursday started with sky. We finally got an Ullikummi, even though we had to steal it from the gilsellers. Fought Byakko and got another set of Haidate (which went to Borin) but no Neptunal Hands, which I have been waiting on for over 9 months now >.< And I am going to get them before I get Byakko's Haidate, so every time they dont drop is another Byakko I have to wait to get a chance to lot on Haidate.

That being said, it was still a very good day in Sky. We did Byakko and the "Turtle that Fails," Genbu. Now, Genbu was generous with his equipment also, even though its not half as good as Byakko's equipment. Now, generally when it comes to equipment I do not lot on items that I dont immidiately need if anyone else wants the item. Now, if no one wants the item (even after it is free lotted) I will take anything I can get my hands on ^.^ I have a full set of God weapons, except for Genbu's Shield, even though I dont have any jobs that can use them. I have been waiting on a Genbu's Kabuto, because I do occasionally use my Ninja for tanking. I have been called to kite Kirin once and I have tanked Promathia also. I have been using a Arhat's Jinpachi, but I was finally able to get my hands on this because no one else wanted to lot on it:

At least I believe that I will have a much better use for the Kabuto than I have for Suzaku's Sune-ate, which are just pretty much inventory +1. If I am missing a use for the Sune-ate besides for Holy Bolts for rangers and tanking fire wyrms, then please tell me because I am very interested to find out how to make them more useful.

I should also mention that I had to pull MG on Thursday... as Dragoon. Now that was fun! I just needed to get it close enough to the room to get a voke from one of the tanks, and Fuzz was the only really puller available at the time (as Ranger) but we needed his damage and didn't want to risk him dying in the pull. We knew that the RMT and another LS were on the way, so we couldn't wait for another puller to show up. (The LS is usually split to do two different things at once and we were waiting on the others to come to MG). So when MG got close enough I just voked it, and ran like a little girl back to the room. I did get slaughtered but the pull worked and we had a nice clean opening for MG.

After Sky, Omoi logged over to Kira and we got a party together relatively quickly. We have been leveling with Rygar alot lately, and I have to say again that PUP is pretty neat, definitely not capable of massive damage, but they can hold their own and the external abilities of the puppet make it much more useful than people give it credit for.

After the party was full we headed to the Citadel. We had to fight bats for a while because the beetles took far too long to kill at first. After a short amount of time Kira reached level 46 and I got to level 47. I was able to use my Jaguar Mantle at 47 which replaced the pretty much worthless Nomad's Mantle, but I was really looking forward to hit level 48. 48 is Life Belt and Viking Axes, that is a whooping +25 Acc. Let me say that again. +25 ACC! Meat dishes, yes please. It was getting pretty late, and I had to get up at the crack of dawn to leave for my trip, but I was not going to give up. So I toughed it out until I finally saw this:

Here is my equipment for my WAR now:

Main: Viking Axe
Off: Viking Axe
Ranged: Power Crossbow
Ammo: Acid Bolts
Head: Walkure's Mask
Neck: Spike Necklace
Earring: Beetle Earring x2
Body: Brigandine
Hands: Royal Squire's Mufflers
Rings: Sniper's Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Jaguar Mantle
Waist: Life Belt
Legs: Royal Squire's Breeches
Feet: Leaping Boots

I think I am pretty well set up, despite the lack of decent gear available to WAR at this level. I am definitely using Meat Mithkabobs now, as I am probably overaccurate even without Sushi. The next milestone for WAR is Rampage at level 55. These levels are quick but we are usually not able to level that early, so a level or two a night isn't bad. Hopefully we will get to level for a while tonight.

After this party, I went to bed and then left for the weekend. I was able to get onto the game while I was away (laptop FTW) but I wasn't able to do much. I mostly just leveled up my Great Axe in Rolanberry Fields. I got it from 50 to 77, and yes I know this makes me a gimpy, trendy WAR, but I haven't really ever made the claim that I was doing anything else. WAR is another job that I have to level, thats about it. I want to dual wield axes, because they are cool, and look uber. Yes, even I have my elitest moments :) But at least I am skilling up my Great Axe, so it looks like I am trying.

I got back pretty early on Sunday. So I headed up to Sky. On my way up, Ullikummi popped but we didn't get the claim. Apparently, during this time Fuzz got a random weird tell from someone in the LS that got claim, that could be easily construed as being rude, arrogant and just plain stupid. We weren't too worried about it, sometimes you just can't do anything about stupid people, but we have never had a problem with this person or this LS, so it was pretty weird because it was unprovoked. Ehh, some people and their ego's, what are you supposed to do? LOL

We did pretty well on gems on Sunday. No major money drops from Gods, I think we got one Damascene Cloth, even with three thieves and two with TH3. We did Seiryu first, and Kalgar and I were to lot on the Dryadic Head. Neither of us have the money to make the item right now (well, I do, but I dont want to bankrupt myself) so we both offered to have the other lot, and decided that we both should lot. I would have felt a little upset about taking it from him, but I know that he is currently saving for a Cursed Togi, so he wouldn't have the money for it for a while. So I ended up with this nice abjuration:

I am going to get this made as soon as I get paid from the huge amount of gil we made last week. It will be replacing my O Hat on my NIN WS macro, and it will be wearing it full time on my SAM.

We then headed over to Suzaku. Another smooth fight, and another connundrum. The Earthen Head dropped. It was free lot, because no one had the job to use it, or even want it. I asked around to see if anyone else at all wanted it, and I started to get yelled at again about not lotting on it. So I lotted, then Azeryus said that she could use it for her war >.< I was going to ask her to lot and I was going to pass when, for like the first time ever, everyone passed in a timely fashion, and the item got sent to me. I didn't feel too bad because Azeryus didn't really want them anyway. So I ended up with:

I have really had a nice little turn around on getting gear from Sky. I have gotten almost all of my God gear within a week, I have gotten several abjurations I have been hoping to get for a while. I think it might have something to do with karma. For the longest time, I was just holding onto my Neptunal Abjuration for the cursed leggings, but lately I have been saving for them to finally get them made. I decided to finally them made after sky on Sunday, so I headed over to the AH to pick up a pair. They were WAY cheaper than they were the week before. Down to 1.1 million, which was really sweet for me. They cost half of what I expected. I then headed to San d'Oria to get them uncursed.

Headed into the cathedral and up to everyone's friend, Alphollon C Meriard.
Traded him my cursed gear and the abjuration.
Did a little magery. (Look at the raised hand! I can TOTALLY cast spells!)
And nice little Alphollon C Meriard told me all this about my new Hecatomb Leggings.
And here are my new WS leggings:

The pictures tell a nice little story of a man, his cursed leggings and the abjuration that has been sitting in his MH for over 6 months.

After evaluating my gear from last week, I have found that I am was sorely lacking in a couple of different slots. Areas that I could easily fix if I just put my mind to it. One of these areas is the Brutal Earring, and I am thinking about asking Skur if I can tag along on some of his runs so that I can pick up some coinage. Another area that I am lacking in is the Element Gorgets from the "In the Name of Science" quest. Most of the time that I mention going to farm for the organs, people usually have something going on. But last night I was able to round up a bunch of people to start farming for the hardest organs to get, the Yovra.
The first one we took down with no problems at all really. Two tanks and two whms made it really easy. I won the lot on the first Yovra organ. This was one of the easier/lower level Yovra's closer to the entrace to the Capital. We then moved onto one of the harder ones, it was only tougher because its regen was crazy. Like 1% per tick crazy. A skillchain though, took it down like 20%, but it managed to get off a boosted hit for 900+ damage when I had shadows down (it didn't help that it was hard to concentrate because I was guzzling Nyquil) then one of its short-range AoE's. I went down then Borin went down soon there after. We could have done it with the same group if I was on my game. So after we recovered Borin needed to leave, so we needed to go back to fighting the lower-level Yovra's because they didn't require two tanks like the higher-level ones usually do.

Before we did that though we headed to one of the towers (the east one) to try to get some more Aern organs for everyone. We fought about 6 and only got one organ so we figured this wasn't the good area for the drops on Aern's.It appears that the mobs each have an area where they drop their organs with a better chance. Like the high-level Yovra's have a 100% drop rate, while the lower-level ones have about a 50% chance. The goldfish and sharks around the east and west towers seem to have a much higher drop rate, while the Aern's obviously do not. The BST Xzomit's near the entrance will drop an organ everytime, but its pets wont.

The party at this point was Vesp as WMM (even though we insisted that he come as Monk >.<), Tama as RDM, Omoi as WHM, Glacian as SAM, Eji as BLM and I came as NIN. This was easily more than enough to take a lower-level Yovra, and Solidsnake even showed up at the end of the second low-level Yovra and his TH helped out a ton.

Glacian and I lining up for a skillchain:

Here comes Solidsnake to save the day!

These things have amazing regen, these pictures were taken with some time in between and you can see that its HP barely moves at all.

So thankfully Solidsnake showed up with his TH, because we managed to get this from the Yovra which Vespasian won the lot for:

What I wont show you in pictures is that pretty soon after Solidsnake showed up, I died ^.^; He has to step in and tank while I recovered. I was having a bit of trouble keep shadows up because once I got interrupted I wouldn't just wait for the next hit and get shadows up after that, no I just kept mashing my Ni macro and got interrupted over and over until I died. This wasn't very effective. LOL But Solidsnake tanked like a champ while I was down, and after I was unweakened, we were able to take it down pretty quick.

Solidsnake is one of Glacian's JP friends, and he needed some organs too, and since Glacian had to go, Solidsnake just replaced him. Solidsnake already had his Yovra organ and Vesp and I already had ours so we headed back over to the entrance to get some of the Xzomit's for Vesp's Kiran Obi. Vesp and Solidsnake were doing Sharkbite to Hexastrike for some pretty impressive Light damage. Solidsnake was actually confused for a minute because he didn't get at first that Vesp was a WHM because Vesp's WHM DD gear is so good that it looks like he is a DD.

We got all of Vesp's Xzomit organs, and farmed some Sharks and Goldfish for Solidsnake. We only managed to get one Goldfish organ for Solidsnake though because we were in the wrong area to try to get them to drop. I think we will be heading back to do this again soon.

This has been a really long post so far, but I do have a few more things to talk about, my DRG and NIN gear. And here they are:

Dragoon first, TP build:

Main: Mezraq
Ammo: Tiphia Sting
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Earring: Assault Earring/Coral Earring
Body: Assault Jerkin
Hands: Wyrm Finger Gauntlets
Rings: Sniper's Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle
Waist: Life Belt
Legs: Barone Cosciales
Feet: Barone Gambieras

And my brand new WS gear:

Main: Mezraq
Ammo: Tiphia Sting
Head: Wyvern Helm
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Earring: Assault Earring/Coral Earring
Body: Hecatomb Harness
Hands: Barone Manopolas
Rings: Ruby Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle
Waist: Warwolf Belt
Legs: Barone Cosciales
Feet: Hecatomb Leggings

Ninja has several different set ups.
Evasion:

Main: Senjuinrikio
Off: Fudo
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Evasion Torque
Earring: Eris' Earring/Dodge Earring
Body: Scorpion Harness
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Rings: Sniper's Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Bat Cape
Waist: Life Belt
Legs: Koga Hakama
Feet: Fuma Sune-ate

Heavy Tanking:

Main: Earth Staff
Head: Genbu's Kabuto
Neck: Evasion Torque
Earring: Eris' Earring/Dodge Earring
Body: Arhat's Gi
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Rings: Mermaid's Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: High Breath Mantle
Waist: Warwolf Belt
Legs: Yasha Hakama
Feet: Fuma Sune-ate

XP party/BURNZOR!:

Main: Senjuinrikio
Off: Fudo
Head: Walahra Turban
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Earring: Spike Earring/Coral Earring
Body: Haubergeon
Hands: Ochuido's Kote (Day)/Koga Tekko (Night)
Rings: Sniper's Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Amemet Cape
Waist: Life Belt
Legs: Koga Hakama
Feet: Fuma Sune-ate

WS gear:

Main: Senjuinrikio
Off: Fudo
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Earring: Spike Earring/Coral Earring
Body: Haubergeon
Hands: Ochuido's Kote (Day)/Koga Tekko (Night)
Rings: Ruby Ring/Rajas Ring
Back: Amemet Cape
Waist: Warwolf Belt
Legs: Royal Squire's Breeches
Feet: Rutter Sabatons

And those are all of my builds. I will go over what I think I need and what I think I am missing tomorrow. I hope that I start feeling better soon, I am still light headed and now I feel all hot. >.<

The meta-commentary for this will come tomorrow, but I wanted to at least get it up today.

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