Aggro with a boomerang...

My friend Thazienne, known also as Kitty, is notable for his sponging and his tentacling, his great attitude and generally fantastic disposition. Thaz will help anyone with anything, and everyone has had an experience with him were he has gone far above and beyond the call of duty to help people unnecessarily and without pause. My experience was in SSG, when he dropped party to help a group of people he didn't know to kill Charby. It was funny watching him demand that they allow him to assist when they could have, and probably would have wiped. So, when Thaz needs assistance for something he wants I try to help whenever I can. And Thaz had earlier in the day watched as Kreutzet spawned then despawned in front of his eyes, and he was unable to get any assistance while he was there (most people were at work) but he did have the ToD. So, Omoi told me that we were helping Kitty get his Kukri, and the wait was on. We got some wind weather as soon as we started camping and we even had some competition for the claim, but there no spawn at the time, which ended up actually helping us out, because after another couple of hours without any wind, the other campers left and we were left alone. Well, we stuck around and more and more of Kitty's friends came to help out, and we actually were getting enough skill-ups and XP to completely justify being out there. In fact, Omoi and I managed to get enough Manticore items to make a pretty penny. ^.^ Finally, wind weather and a spawn! The fight was very easy and Kitty was doing great damage and managed to tank most of the fight even while I was trying to take hate from him. I used mostly evasion gear for the fight, and I got a decent amount of misses, but the triple AoE move it did meant my shadows were down alot. Well, Kreutzet went down with relative ease and there it was, Kitty's Sirocco kukri! Congrats Kitty!

In the vain of helping people, Ailee has finally gotten to Sea and needed some assistance traveling through the Garden to get to the NM for CoP 8-2, so I went along with her. It was the normal run through the Garden, trying to avoid aggro, but ending up killing a lot anyway. I wanted to get Ailee in the picture for the NM but she was out of frame. :( Oh well, Omoi and Glacian are good for the shot too :) She got some CS's done after this and is on the big boss fight now. Good ol' Promathia! I love that fight, and will go if Ailee needs me.

Had a really nice Dynamis-Qufim run on Sunday, good drops, and a good win with limited people. We used some more skillchains than normal because of the limited people and I even got to do the solo Darkness skillchain on the boss and didn't even die in that fight and here is my proof: Killshot on the Mega-boss! ^.^/ It was nice having smooth run in Obsidian without extraneous issues decreasing the fun of Dynamis. I prefer these shorter Dynamis runs in general as they are quick and exciting and people tend not to lose focus 5 minutes into the run.

Versus also did a Zhaylom Remnants run, without much luck. The goal was to go in and get a Zhaylom card, and we didn't get jack even considering the fact that the cell drops were good. We are in general far too slow for the first level, and there are a ton of levels in this run, I have no idea how you are supposed to be able to get to the boss. It's just crazy. LOL I think that Salvage needs to be toned down just a bit, maybe have mages something to do on the first floor before they unlock magic, or basically anyone that doesn't have Hand to hand skill. At least give everyone weapons to start, and thats it, then at least everyone can hit the mobs, and it would massively speed up the runs and allow people to at least the win and have time to farm up more complete unlock cells. Anyway, we killed some of the Archiac Ramparts but again, no drops. We then just explored a bit more and got to the fifth floor before we ran out of time. But there were more ramparts on that floor that we could farm in the future. And I think with some careful pulling and sleeping we should be able to farm the second level for the NM there and get some more gear. Also, Gordor and I kind of agreed that we were going to switch off which jobs we are going to come to for Salvage, because both of us coming as NIN isn't that effective, and we need him to come as BLM more often if we are going to go for the win sometimes. Izman wanted to be included into this but he is the only PLD we have and PLD is fantastic for tanking the first two floors. LOL Sorry, Iz! Hahaha.

I also did some heavy xping and meriting this weekend, to assist Omoi to get 75 on DRG. She is only 7k away now! :) And I managed to get a bunch of merits too. Lets see, I capped out MP/HP at 4/4 and then added another merit into Archery. I am going to take Archery to 4, then Katana to 8. As I was up in Bhaflau with the bugards and greater colibri, two things occured to me. First, is that Kifimbo should think about what he says before he says things. You never know who is in your party, what jobs they might have leveled and who they might be friends with. :) Kifimbo is now intensely in favor of DRG's. So much so that he admitted it in party chat for everyone to see, and for all of my blog readers too! Thanks Kif, Pb says he will let you into Soliddynasty now. :) The other thought that I had is that if you take 5 DRG/WHM or /SAM and a BRD you could literally destroy this area. The greater colibri are squishy, and with an A+ weapon that is strong to these mobs and a madrigal and ballad you could probably go forever in this area. I will try this out sometime this week. I already have myself, Omoi and Hellz I can pick up. Maybe we will pick up Pb and force him to be in a party of DRG's ^.^/ Also while I was in this party with the DRG loving Kifimbo I met up with my Power Friend (inside NA/JP joke) Kenichii. LOL We have seen each other quite a bit lately and he is pretty cool. He is always worried about his English and I keep telling him that his English is better than 90% of the NA's that play the game.

Well, thats it for today, I hope it has enough pictures for Aable and I need to add in a little praise for Malasia too. Just because Malasia deserves a lot of praise.

Oh, I forgot to mention this:

Signet Bonuses

The adjustments made to improve player accuracy and attack versus monsters of a higher level, as well as the measures implemented to benefit full parties and prevent unfair pulling practices, have made it difficult for smaller groups to cooperate efficiently against weaker opponents.

In order to address this issue, the following bonuses will be added to the Signet effect in the upcoming version update:
- Increased Healing HP
- No TP loss while resting
- Bonus experience earned in smaller parties
- Increased defense and evasion against attacks from your auto-attack target

- Increased Healing HP
The initial value for Healing HP (based on the character's level), as well as the incremental jumps in Healing HP (based on the character's maximum HP), will be increased.
This change will improve Healing HP in a similar fashion to the bonus granted to Healing MP by the Clear Mind job trait.

- No TP loss while resting
While this bonus is in effect, TP will not be lost while resting.
This will allow players to rest fully for their next battle while still maintaining the store of TP they had built from their previous opponent.

- Bonus experience in small groups
The amount of experience earned while in smaller parties will be increased.
This bonus will be applied on the following scale:*The experience earned for defeating special monsters will remain unaffected.

- Increased defense and evasion against attacks from your auto-attack target
Players will gain a bonus to their defense and evasion against their auto-attack target.
This bonus only applies to attacks from an opponent who you are auto-attacking with a drawn weapon. There is no effect against attacks from other sources, including monsters that unexpectedly join the fray.
*This bonus will only apply to monsters that check as "even match" or weaker to the player.

The bonuses described above will only take effect when a player has received Signet, and is within the usual Signet-specific areas.
These bonuses do not apply during Ballista, or other PvP events.

That is really interesting because it will making it much easier to level up subjobs without having to deal with making a whole party and dealing with people that don't care about leveling up their subjobs. If all of these things are in effect while Signet is on, this will be great for getting my RDM, WHM and BLM all to 37. Omoi needs to get SAM to 37 for her DRG anyway, she can tank for my RDM and my WHM! Woohoo! There were also two pretty good looking DRK spells added, Drain II and Dread Spikes, both with drain effects that increase Max HP. Looks nice for DRK's.