Noob defined.

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.