Strangeness afoot.

I think there is alot more content in this update than I knew about. I am hearing interesting stories about the cutscenes after the Black Coffin BC, which I have yet to do. I have heard that it is not very hard, so I just need to round up some people to do it. Alot of that new equipment, like the Barbarosa gear, is supposed to be available through the new BCNM on the Black Coffin that is suppose to be like an Assault that is supposed to be openned after getting through some of the new missions. Thats alot of "supposed to" in one sentenace. I really need to get on top of alot of this new stuff. SE looks like they dont have any real interest in fixing Ulli anytime soon, if not at all, so they are introducing some gear to replace it. Looks like you have to be in an LS that is willing to buy gems from RMT to actually get Byakko's Haidate anymore. Giving up and letting the RMT control sections of the game is going to be horrible for the game over all. SE needs to stop hiding its head in the sand and change their rules to prevent RMT behavior. I was recently sacrastically questioned by a GM if they thought they should "profile" players and ban them because of that, and I responded that it was EXACTLY what they need to do. Oops, sorry another RMT rant.

Anyway, back to the strangeness, it seems that the current set of missions for Aht Urhgan is a little more light-hearted than the very intense CoP storyline, but it does have a nice sense of foreboding also. I am wondering if the new end-game area will have more undead in it because that seems to be the direction that SE is heading with the storyline. Then again you couldn't really anticipate the kind of mobs that would appear in Lumoria when you first arrived.

And then there is this picture that I stole from Nivaud which it appears he stole from someone else: WTF Mate?

I did some more Assaults last night, I am very close to getting my Superior Private promotion. I should be able to get it after one more set of Assaults runs. I have yet to do any level 2 Assaults so that should make getting to Lance Corporal and beyond that much easier, because I will have two tiers to draw on to get the points necessary for the next promotion. In addition I am building a nice amount of Assault points for the items in these zones. I have been doing alot of the Leujaoam Sanctum tier 1 assault because some of the people that have been going with dont have very many of the staging points, to which I remind them that the expansion came out in April, and Ailee was bitching about me not having my staging points in May.

I probably should start helping people to get to Sea again, I have been kinda delaying because Reikoyi has been out of town and will be out of town until the end of the month. I am still torn on the issue because I dont want to hold people back, but I dont want to have to do the runs twice. Speaking of which, it looks like Versus has a good plan to get back to doing Sea events quite soon, and it is with someone that a trust as being capable and knowledgable with what to do in Sea. I think it is going to work out, and I hope that the scheduling can be worked out pretty quick. I would really like to start doing Sea again.

I have something for you to ponder... Oh, how you love the subligar, dont you? <3 That is my new Corsair, I wanted to get it started even though my RNG is not high enough to sub yet. I really should be leveling RNG first, but if I level COR I can share gear for a while which will be really nice. ^.^ Ok, ok, I will finish off RNG first. At least I can solo on my RNG for a while, or have Omoi powerlevel me while I wait for a party. Partying in the first part of the jungles is annoying, you have to have people almost the same exact level or you wont be able to kill anything or you will have horrible xp.

I did manage to get three rolls for my COR so far, Corsair's Roll, Ninja Roll and Hunter's Roll. With Hunter's Roll and Ninja Roll I can solo pretty effectively on DC's in the Highlands while I am waiting for a party, but I think that parties will come pretty often when I have my Chaos Roll. But of course that will be after I level my RNG. >.<

Yesterday, I had to go to Sky as NIN for the first time. Omoi said that I should go as that, even though I would much prefer to go as DRG. It was basically the only time that I was able to use DRG anymore. Maybe its time to put DRG into semi-retirement, I dont know, I am really hesistant to do that, as I have a really nice set up for my DRG now, and I have wanted to test out /SAM in sky. We will see how things go I suppose. Here, I am right after tanking Genbu, which was my second ever god fight on NIN in sky, the first being Kirin o.O;

I have a bunch of things to do today, so I think this is the end of today's entry, but I really really want to talk about some of the new gear that is in the update and more about how to get to the new Assault area, where some of the Barbarossa's is supposed to be available. Maybe a weekend update? That would be nice.

I do have some added commentaries that I have made on the DRG forums about subbing SAM. Alot of people have been poo-pooing SAM as a sub after testing it with one WS or in one party without a parser. Fundamentally they are ignoreing the fact that you CAN'T SUB WAR IN A BURN PARTY. >.< Its NIN or now SAM, SAM > NIN, therefore SAM is the best. Here is what I posted on KI:

Ultimately here is the problem. If you are subbing war in a burn party, you are gimping the party. You have next to no damage mitigation, and you are going to be an MP sink.

If you sub sam, you have damage mitigation and are not as much of an MP sink, thus not gimping the party. You also are not gimping yourself as much as subbing nin.

If you sub nin, you have alot of damage mitigation are no more an MP sink, than anyone else, but you gimping your own damage badly.

The discussion of which is better war or sam is largely irrelevent because if you are going to a burn party as war sub you have much bigger issues than trying to maximize e-peen numbers.

Even if you were to compare war and sam straight up, you would see that sam is pretty damn impressive.

For TP build:
Haste + Store TP + Zanshin + Meditate + 10 Acc + 10 Str > Double Attack + Berserk

For WS:
10 Acc + 10 Str + Not dying > Double Attack + Berserk

But remember this is not a discussion of war vs. sam in a burn party, if you are using war as a sub in a burn party you are probably gimping everyones xp by wasting mp.

Think of DoT from doing more WS over time, and stop thinking about the single WS e-peen number.

I am definitely going to get a parser on this one. The idea of subbing WAR in a burn party when you have no other damage mitigation is down right stupid.