Izman's Iron Will.

Everyone makes mistakes, it just happens. Nothing to regret. Getting an Abyssal Earring for your DRK before realizing that everyone levels NIN eventually. Claiming that you should get 8 MP merits even if you will never level a mage job. Accidentally dropping something important, the list is basically endless. We all make mistakes.

Now let me tell you about Iron Will. Iron Will is a tier 2 PLD merit ability, requiring 3 merit points to acquire, no small investment even for the most prolific XPer. Here is the discription of Iron Will:

* Adds a spell interruption down effect to Rampart
* +19% per merit

Quite impressive, no? This was Izman's choice. Or, should I say mistake. LOL You know there is a confirmation button for a reason there Iz? LOL Ok, ok, I will stop now, no more Iron Will jokes. Yes, Izman made a mistake and accidentally merited this ability when he meant to merit something else. I think Iz will be sure to read the description from now on.

Anyway, Izman is a very funny man, and does funny things when we are XPing. Here is one of them. I don't remember what exactly brought this on but I am guessing since it involved Spice Girls and Tom Hanks references it was in retaliation for more Iron Will jokes. Anyway, this is the conversation post-hoc, and the responses were universal and unanimous. These are the days that make me pleased. I have ended my grumpy streak this week, I think and this did much to end the bad streak.

Here is another thing that helped end the streak, finally a NIN drop from Temenos. I had a NIN drop from Apollyon from the very first day that I did Limbus with ShutUpandDance. So it was nice to finally get the pair. There are two obvious choices here: This would be used for WS's during the day, when my Koga Tekko are basically useless. I currently do not own Dusk Gloves and I don't know if I would spend the gil on them right now. I think that I would pair them with my O's Kote during the day. This wouldn't be as good as Dusk Gloves for the obvious reasons but still very good. I am more looking at purchasing an Arhat's Gi +1 and a Arhat's Jinpachi +1 to finish out my tanking gear. I know that Dusk Gloves would be very good for my day time set up and also tanking on /DRK, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. The second option would be these: Now, you might ask, hey what are you thinking? But this is more a question of inventory space than anything else. Since I am always leveling jobs and like to keep the gear on me instead of muling everything, I rarely have space for a full set of AF on me just to have movement speed at night. So doing this would allow me to complete again the NIN AF feet quest then pretty much permanently toss them into storage. As it is right now I do not use my NIN AF feet with any regularity, and I really should. Finally there is a Dark Horse consideration: This is the best Evasion head piece that a NIN can use, and I am seriously considering moving back to keeping an Evasion set up around just in case for emergency, it basically has +12 Evasion and then +8 AGI for other defensive procs like Parry.

Well, after a successful sky run, more Diorite and a Despot, and another very successful Limbus run, even with multiple SMN mobs trying to get everyone killed, actually they only killed Hellz, EP and Pb in all, even when we had to basically kill two of them and eat two Astral Flows. Ah well, BLM, NIN, WHM, DRG and a few others that were lost because of a lack of interest. After Limbus we were off to XP somemore, and got several more merits, for which I have put three more into Katana for level 7. I have one left over at this point, so only two more before I cap Katana, which leads me to a new predicament. I need to think more clearly about what I am doing with my SAM and my RNG. I initially put one merit into Archery, thinking that it would benefit both my RNG, and my SAM/RNG... but then I came to a stunning realization... why do I need SAM/RNG when I have a 75 RNG. That lead me to another consideration, Eurytos' Bow is very expensive and I have better spending priorities, so that being the case, why not just use Othinus' Bow for XP parties where I believe my DoT is much higher than my Selene's Bow, and then just pick up a very cheap Hellfire and use bullets for when I need to be a heavy hitter DD, like against Salvage bosses, God's, etc. So, I am thinking of switching over to Marksmanship for my other 4 merits, but I am not committed on it yet, as I mostly come to most events as NIN now. But before I even consider that, I am going to merit the heck out of SAM and RNG. Overthrow and a couple of others for RNG for sure.

Well, thats about it, see you on Monday.