Still not feeling well...

Ugh, I hate being sick and having extraneous health issues, but at least I am at work to do this update, unfortunately I didn't download my pictures for this entry. Oh well, I have been rather busy so lets start with jobs I have been leveling.

For some reason I am still finding it difficult to get XP on my WAR. The first party I had I died twice because the mobs were fighting were too hard, then it disbanded, down 4k XP. The next party I had, I died twice because the RDM wouldn't stand out of the way of AoE sleep from the Fly traps, I would Rampage, get hate then the mob would AoE sleep and I would die because the RDM was asleep, another 4k XP wasted. Then finally I got a decent party where I got two levels, Kirameki has to be so far ahead of me in XP by now, LOL. In this party we met a nice Taru NIN that also has a 75 WHM, that wanted to join Versus. So that was a definite bonus.

I also got my BRD to level 23, it is moving quickly along with Omoi's SAM and Izman's THF. We usually have a PL for most of our forays into random killing of stuff. Last time Glacian and Aable came along, and Glacian brought his pocket BRD, a friend old character, to kill aggroing mobs and to keep us alive. :) In other news, I got my RDM to level 5! Wootz! LOL And I did some xping on my RNG, which was nice, and I think I will be using that in Dynamis until I can get some more xp on my SAM, because that has been hurting a bit since I hardly ever xp it and I use it in Dynamis all the time. I have also been working on some Merits, I have 4 right now and I am unsure how I want to use them.

More in a bit. Alright where was I, what did we do this weekend. Ahh, well, I got a Bomb Queen Ring. :) We only had about 11 people for the last run, but it was pretty easy. Aable spent most of the time just counter-tanking it anyway, but it is nice to have the BQ Ring, instead of using the Jelly Ring which isn't always beneficial. Also, we did sky and got another Despot, but no MG or Faust, looks like we are going to have to have people waiting at the spawn points to alert us when we need to head down because the RMT are all over these things now that they can't have Ullikummi, same with Curtana. It kind of sucks, they just shifted from one thing to another, but still its way better than Ullikummi was before.

Now before I get to my evasion set up, I should mention that SE has announced the next update and it looks pretty good from just the small blurb we have gotten so far.

The next version update for FINAL FANTASY XI is scheduled to take place in early June. Players can look forward to a new, large-scale battle system, as well as additional Assault Missions, Aht Urhgan missions, quests, monsters, merit point abilities, and more!

Now, the first picture has been speculated to be Hades, or maybe an unmasked Dark Rider. The middle is of course Aphmau and one of her automatons, and the most interesting is the picture on the right, of Hazhalm Testing Grounds which has already been alluded to in the story line, but not openned as of yet. It appears it will be a new form of battle, like Dynamis or Salvage, but I hope that they tweak it in a way that is more open to larger LS events than something like Salvage or Limbus. Maybe 36 people instead of 18 or 64. And hopefully rewarding like Limbus and not like Salvage.

As, I don't have pictures of my Evasion set up I think I am going to skip that today and talk about my potential Merit Point abilities. I had a nice xp party last night with Izman, Omoi, Bg and two JP players, one WHM and a RDM named Turbo and the guy was stacked with good gear, even had Morrigan's Robe. o.o; It was pretty sweet, in that party without a BRD we managed 15k in one hour. Two merits for me, bringing my total to 4 and the need to spend them soon, without letting them rot. So this is what I am looking at:
RNG:
* Snapshot: Reduces delay for ranged attacks, -2% delay per point.
SAM:
* Shikikoyo: Share TP above 100 with a party member.
* Overwhelm: Grants a damage bonus with weapon skills perfomed face-to-face with an enemy. Increased damage bonus 5% per level.

I think that I am favoring Snapshot and Overwhelm first, just because they mean more damage over time, and free 6% haste on ranged attacks is pretty neat considering there is no other way to haste them.

Thats about it for today, sorry about the lack of pictures but once I am feeling better things will get back to normal.