Hellz 3, Iz 1, Ring -3.

So there appears to be a bit of competition; a rivalry in fact. Three people stand opposed. Hellzfury, the man, the dragoon. Izman, Joyeuse paladin. Ringthree, the guy that aggros UFO's. And well... I don't know what we are competing for, or about, but yesterday, I can tell you, I was the loser. And apparently by unilateral declaration Hellz was the winner. It appears that Hellz won because he appears in more pictures in today's blog than Iz, and I declare myself the loser because of my death to just about everything and anything last night. LOL But I am ahead of myself. I has something specific I wanted to talk about today, and that is the comparison of two pieces of gear for my NIN/DRK. A very small comparison, but something I am very interested in.

Anyway, in general on NIN/DRK, instead of using two Eris' Earrings, I use one and a Loquacious Earring. Now, I am going to spend the next few paragraphs justifying the slimmest of all differences and the likely the most placebo effect in the game. So, lets take a look at the two options. Eris' Earring: For obvious reasons this is a good earring for NIN/DRK, most obviously for the additional enmity. But here is a question I have been asking myself: How much is too much enemity? In general, when I am tanking with Izman (PLD/NIN) or Aable (NIN/DRK) the main cause of me losing hate is when I take damage. Also, when I have hate I can maintain it until I take damage or the other tank does something besides hate maintenance to get hate back in the middle of fights and vice versa. I have noticed that later into God fights though, with a PLD/NIN or a NIN/DRK that it feel like it is very easy to balance hate and that hate will switch almost automatically between the two tanks. This is a great condition to be in, but usually fights end shortly after that. :( But I think that this would happen whether I had more enmity or not. Perhaps more enmity would help me to get to that leveling out point faster, but it just seems that with the people I am tanking with that I have already achieved this balance. I don't see the point in loading up on more enmity at this point, why unbalance something that is already in balance. So that left me wondering what I could do to benefit myself, and it seemed that the ear slot was one of the better slots to work with. Even before I got my Loquacious Earring; I was actually using an MP earring because I did not have MP merits at the time. As it stands now, I have about 160+ MP on NIN/DRK, with 4 MP merits, the Loquacious Earring and Walahra Turban. I actually like this much MP even though its been suggested that I can go with less. So, I can justify using it just for the extra MP (it is a lot of MP for the ear slot) but... it also has Fast Cast. Now, you can laugh at me, yes, go ahead, get it out of your system. The "Enhances Fast Cast Effect" is only Spellcasting time -2% and Spell recast time -1%. But this is my point about it being something more than placebo, think about what is available for the slot! Its a straight +2 enmity (or even +3 enmity for the HQ, which of course I don't have) with the Eris Earring, and in my approach I have found that this really isn't that much considering I could get a bit more max MP to make me feel more comfortable while I am tanking, and ultimately isn't that what we are all trying to do? Being about to tank efficiently in a manor that makes the tank the most comfortable, maybe the tiny amount of Fast Cast is just that; so small as to not make a difference, but you know, it makes me feel more comfortable and sometimes the smallest fractions are what makes the difference between a win and a loss. And I will repeat that as mantra, until I can drown out all of the laughter. LOL

As with almost everything in this game there are a metric ton of other factors that can also be considered. Like SATA, which we use a lot, because we actually *gasp* use skillchains and magic burst on Gods and such. So this will automatically create a hate gap and can explain things like what happened yesterday, when at the beginning of a Byakko, Izman got an early SATA and I had to work hard to catch up, then I got SATA and we were balanced again. This is just one example of there being imbalances natural in the progress to that hate cap, but at the hate cap, anything can happen and the mob will just keep swapping back and forth, making tanking almost too easy, and even more difficult for a PLD where they can't heal themselves to get more hate. As much as we all want to make Iron (Will) Laws about how the game deals with hate; and damage; and magic; and everything, we are still dealing with a system that has a certain amount of randomness and has a huge amount of inputs that alter how the game is processed.

Ahh, so, there we are, me, justifying a placebo effect. I will stick by it too. Perhaps if I have a situation where we have no SATA at all and I need to get to the hate cap as fasts as possible I would change this set up, but as I don't see that coming anytime soon I am happy with what I have.

Shall we return to the little competition? Lets.

Let us start with Despot, perhaps I should have listened to Aable and tanked in evasion down and HP down gear. LOL Ahh, well, lots of double attacks and not enough time to get shadows back up means a dead Ringthree, but at least no UFO aggro. Death 1.
Now, I will proceed to go over the rest of Sky, because it is necessary to congratulate Glacian on his new Byakko's Haidate! ^.^/ The fight was very easy, it must have been a lower level Byakko because Elegy and Hojo landed at the beginning of the fight, making for a very slow Byakko, literally with all the stuns and slow I don't think I was even hit by it until it was at about 30% health. And being a generous kitty it give up it's Haidate for Glacian! Nice to have three now, but we still need a ton more for all the people that were locked out by the RMT take-over. Luckily, we have a good group of people that show up for each other all the time to help them get the gear that we have all wanted for so long! :)

After sky, we headed out to Nyzul Isle and with about as much luck as we have had in the past. I think we need to think about a RDM or BRD for this, because even though we do a great job tearing things apart it is the inevitable low run on MP that gets to us. Also some more debuffs might be help for this. I am even considering bringing some Ninjutsu skill items to help Blind and Slow land. On our fight run we got to the Ginger Custard again on the fourth floor and it was a lot harder than it was last time, many more -ga spells and much more Sleepga II. Death 2.
We were able to take it down though, and rushed to the next floor but it was a lamp floor and we weren't even able to get to the lamps before our time was up. But at least we learned our lesson from that on the next run, where we got the "eliminate enemy leader" on the first floor and it was a frog, and it just loved poisoning us then turning us into frogs. Death 3.
Again we were able to beat it but not without wasting a huge amount of time. So we left after the Fourth floor so we finally have some tokens to show for our last couple of runs and we are definitely getting faster at doing the floors but it is a bit frustrating not being able to get by the first set of floors. I really want to at least get to level 20 soon, to see how we do against the bosses there.

Finally, after Nyzul Isle, Omoi, Hellz and I got a little bit of xp in before bed. Being a WAR, MNK and BRD helps to get people that are not seeking to come and xp. :) We picked up a JP NIN and RDM; and a SAM/THF to set hate and we were set for the evening.
I did end up pulling hate once and then eating an Incinerate and dying, but outside of that it was a great party. Rampage will end up killing you as much as it kills the mob sometimes. I would really like to get more than just an hour of xp on WAR though, as at this rate I will get a level once every three parties. o.o; I would really like to use that Anniversary Ring for my WAR :) Should get some information about that pretty soon :)

Thats it for today, enjoy.