A whole lot to do.

Ok, three seperate sections to this post. A review of the information about the June update, a review of a very easy/difficult Limbus run and suggestions to make it easier, a review of the weekend and yesterday. And I have 70 minutes to get as much done before the lunch post. Might as well just start at the beginning, information about the June update.

This may seem out of order but it just is a reporting of answers from a question and answer session from the SE Party. BST are getting some kind of buff in the next update, SE recognizes the problem (which as much as BST's will want to hunt me down and kill me for this, but I didn't think it was much of a problem, rather a balancing of the BST job. I don't really feel sympathy for BST's that were getting Chain 5 for insane XP just because they could hold 3 pets in the same spot and could rotate through them, but I am not a BST so I will probably be mentality stabbed by all the BST's out there. :P) and are planning on doing something about it in June. They didn't mention the specific nature of what they were doing at all, just that they were doing something. At this point some not to bright person asked if they were going to add more RDM spells, yeah, because RDM's need more spells, :/ but at least we got something interesting out of the developers when they were dealing with this question; the developers said that in the expansion that RDM's and other jobs would be getting more spells, add this onto what they said about the expansion having a whole new form of magic, this appears to be something worth remembering. Next, they mentioned the PUP's will be getting a BLM and WHM head for the mage frame, I really don't know anything about PUP at all but I hope this is significant for them. From here I am just going to tick off the bits of information that have been provided because it doesn't really follow any order, and I will just add my comments as I list them.

*There will not be AF2 for the new jobs yet.
Comment: I don't think they have a good idea on how to implement this yet, so they are struggling with a place to put them into the game, same with AF +1.

*People complained about CoP missions so they are adding more items to weaken the BCNM's and allowing people to gain XP in CoP mission fights.
Huh? CoP is easy if you take the time to find out how to do the fights properly and would take a lot less time to do if, instead of wasting time doing fights over and over, people just properly prepared for the fights.

*They are addressing Salvage and Nyzul by adding more cells to Salvage, and more rewards for Nyzul. This I think is needed for Salvage, when it is very hard for people to get to the bosses to begin with, you either need to give some leeway to have more people by having more cells, or make the enemies easier. More cells allows people to bring more people without being time pressed to equip everyone. The reason people do Salvage so short-manned is just to save time, if more cells are available earlier then more people can come and more can be accomplished in that amount of time. As for Nyzul, I am interested to see what the new rewards are going to be, as we have been having fun doing Nyzul but haven't seen much of a reward out of it. I am eagerly watching the development of both of these event areas.

*Divine Might will be opened for reactivation for new earrings, and they mentioned that other things related to this are on the way. This isn't a bad thing or a good thing per se, I don't mind that people can redo Divine Might to get their items changed, Divine Might is no joke to begin with, but their is something lost by making it repeatable, the uniqueness of the fight and the reward is gone. This will be something, I will mention in one of my "back in the day" posts. LOL

*They are adding an additional (and annoying LOL) way to get abjurations in the June update. The obvious answer is that it will be added to the new battlefield area, but I get ahead of myself. I will say that if people think that getting M. Body, E. Body or any of the other incredibly hard to get abjurations then they are just deluding themselves, it just means that instead of waiting weeks and months in Dragon's Aery, you are going to be farming weeks and months in another place. Lets be serious here for a moment OK? E. Body is game-breaking, they are NOT going to just hand it out or make the alternative easier to get, I mean how often does an E. Body drop on a server? Once a month? Don't expect E. Body to come more than once a month for everyone on the Server from this new event. You can't have everyone, and you still wont be able to get a Ridill or the other items from the HNM's (which they might want to consider beefing up to make sure people still camp those mobs instead of the alternative).

*Worthy of mentioning even if it is not coming in June, is that they are planning on adding something for two-handed weapon users in the Sub slot, likely some kind of enhancement to balance two-handed weapon users with dual-wielders. I really like this as two of my jobs are two-handed weapon users.

*The Pit will be opening in June. You use monsters to fight other monsters. It sounds like Chocobo Racing and Ballista to me; stuff that other people do. LOL

*Now for the big bad meat of the next update. The coming of Einherjar! (This shot was shameless stolen from people that shamelessly stole it from other people.) Taking place in Hazhalm Testing Grounds, this new battle appears to be something like Dynamis, in that there will be multiple high-level enemies you have to deal with, but the spawn locations will change every time and you will have to think on your feet with how to deal with all of the mobs. I would like to try this with Versus sometime, and if it really is an alternative to getting abjurations that only drop from HNM's then this would basically be the last thing that Versus members would have to worry about because we do not do HNM's, I suppose the Ridill and Defending Ring would still be out of reach, but for some LS's this is still out of reach for people in HNM's. Anyway, the description given was that Einherjar will be an "unpredictable multi-player battlefield." The area will hold from 6-36 people, my guess with the discription that the more the better and since you get no detriments to start that need to be ungimped with cells there should be no limitations based on time besides being able to kill as many mobs as possible as fast as possible. Apparently, you get to choose the room you wish to clear in the depths of Hazhalm and you have 30 minutes to clear the room. Obviously, this is were the new Vampire mobs will first appear, and I am very interested in getting more information on these mobs, I will have my filters off when we fight them to figure out what their TP moves they use and their general strength. It appears that there is equipment that comes from the zone and equipment that you can get from points from the zone. I am very intrigued.
Here is another shot of the entrance to Hazhalm just to give you an idea of the size of the smaller entrance rooms, its even larger than the rooms in Den of Rancor that it resembles.

*June will also see the merit cap for weapons and magic increased in general, no specific information has been presented yet, but I am thinking it could be up to 16 total points at least, if not more, and hopefully they will split offensive and defensive merits into different categories. That would make me very happy.

*In June, we will also see the Tier 2 merit abilities added for the new jobs. I will just present what Elmer the Pointy has already translated since I don't have any of these jobs, so I find it had to comment on them. Some are obviously good, and some of them are very interesting, but none of them appear to be as bad as say Aggressive Aim. LOL

# Blue Mage
- For magical Blue Magic, forego the AoE effect for a Power Up of the spell (ABILITY)
- Make a self-target support spell, such as Cocoon, into AoE (ABILITY) (Proper wording confirmed!)
- Add a TP Bonus to Chain Affinity (TRAIT)
- Raise the cap on magic set points (TRAIT)

# Corsair
- Make the next roll a 1 (ABILITY)
- Erase a roll cast on yourself, works on a BUST (ABILITY)
- Extend the duration of Phantom Roll (TRAIT)
- Percentage of success for Random Deal UP. Will prioritize commands that are used. (TRAIT)

# Puppetmaster
- (Kuroko Change) Exchange HP between the Master and Automaton (ABILITY)
- (Ventriloquism) Exchange enmity from target monster between the Master and Automaton (ABILITY)
- (Fine Tuning) Automaton Accuracy (+ Ranged), Evasion, Magic Defense UP (TRAIT)
- (Optimization) Automaton Attack (+ Ranged), Defense, Magic Attack UP (TRAIT)

Very neat I must say and good balancing for the ToA expansion jobs.

*World Migration is coming, it appears sometime soon after the June update. I have my reservations about World Migration, and I highly doubt that Versus will be accepting anyone that server transfers, just because there are basically two people that server transfer. People that actually have friends on another server which wouldn't effect us because they would be joining their friends LS's and then people that I would say are having the "Gorokai effect" meaning they have burned all possible bridges on the server they are on and have to switch servers to get a fresh start to burn bridges on different server. The limitations are decent, $25 per switch and you can only switch once every 90 days. Sure, this means that Feiwong is going to buy characters on other servers then transfer them around, but he manages to get banned in less than 90 days away so the limitations wouldn't even matter to him anyway.

*Reduction in Outpost Teleport and Limbus cost and other gil related issues. This is great and greatly needed. With the direction the economy has turned it is of dire need to reduce the static costs of Limbus, because it is something that people do with regularity. The cost was introduced when the game was in massive inflation, now that it is in massive deflation and it is more and more difficult to create income because of RMT crafters it is time that it was adjusted. They also stated that they are looking for more static ways to increase gil for players, but I dont know how they would do this without making an opportunity for RMT to cash in. We will see.

And I think that is all there was worth mentioning, it was incredibly insightful and I think SE in the last couple of updates has done more to improve and fix the game than any time in the past. They have stopped trying to get the players to play the game they want it played and are focusing on giving the players a game they will enjoy even if they don't give the players everything they want immidiately.

Interestingly, Iceblazek said something very interesting in yesterday's comments. He is not as interested in new jobs or other content, but the storyline and as a player he has grown to the point where he can appreciate it over other bells and whistles. I think that is a good perspective that he is developing, and is the reason that I love the CoP storyline over just about anything else. Even the ToA storyline is amazing but the missions are just too easy and don't even take much planning to do them correctly. I wish that the ToA missions were something that I needed to plan to do, instead of just going and doing. Even the RoZ mission required more planning than these new missions. It looks like the content for the new expansion is much more story-based even if just by default as they will have to explain time travel and all. :)

Now, onto last night's Limbus run, which I thought would have more information provided on FFXIclopedia but it is rather limited outside of the matching pairs. Yes, we did Temenos Central Floor 1, or the matched pairs runs. This involves pulling pairs of mobs together and killing them as close together as possible if not exactly at the same time. Usually it is better to have something like 3-4 BLM's for this run, because you will want to -ga spell the mobs to get them to die together, in our experience as long as the pot doesn't have Magic Barrier up you can usually wipe both of the mobs at the same time even if they have about 20% of their HP left. Now, the reason I wanted to mention this one is because there are some very specific notes that should be regarded to do this the most efficiently. Obviously getting the pairs correct is the most important, but the easiest to mess up (as I have learned to my our regret LOL), and since pulling the pairs to a common place where mages can stand unharmed by AoE's the mobs use, by using the level difference of the large ramps. As illustrated here, this is the best place to camp for the entire run, besides preventing people from moving around a lot and potentially aggroing something, it provides defense from Body Slam which could wreck some mages. The important thing to remember for each pair of mobs is that they need to be kept alive, and although we often say to hold them at 5%, we usually don't try to risk it and actually just hold them at 10-15%. The bad thing about this is their potential regen which seems to be upbalanced in certain pairs, but I digress. Lets focus on the first pull. The first mob that should be pulled is the Enhanced Dragon, its probably the toughest non-super mob, so its easiest to deal with it first. It is also relatively easy to sleep and all mages will have ES ready to stack with Sleepga. Now the reason that I suggest pulling to the room closest to the Dragon even though the Enhanced Ahriman is farther away, it is also farther away from aggroing other people in the party, caution is the better part of valor. After the Dragon is held at 10%, pull the eye and knock it down also, then just time nuke them both with -ga spells when the Eye is at 10%. My suggestion is that when the Eye is at 10% the spells should start, then the melee should switch to the Dragon because it will have Regened to something like 20% or higher, and the extra damage will help to keep it below the max damage -ga needs to do to kill them both. This we did perfectly last night, both dying at the same exact time. Next, I would pull the ghost and the pot. Now, this might sound strange but I would suggest pulling the Pot first. I know you might have issues if it puts up magic barrier but honestly there is a reason for this, and that is because the ghost (Airi) has a huge amount of regen, the highest for any mob in the zone. When we fought the ghost we took it down to 11% and by the time we had the Pot down to 10% the ghost was already back up to 61%. This basically made us have to refight the ghost all the way back down 10% before nuking. Conversely, the pot has almost no Regen, so even if it does get Magic Barrier up at some point it will be down by the time it needs to be nuked because there will be no need to reengage it to knock down some of its HP for the timed nuke. Finally, pull the skeleton and the weapon. But of which are annoying but appear to have balanced Regen, and can be held decently with Sleep. These are the least difficult mobs to fight. Ultimately, this can be the easiest and the hardest Temenos runs at the same time. The mobs when their opposite is killed are just insane to fight, but when killed at the same time are very easy.

And now, for yesterday's update. LOL God, I am doing a lot today and getting it done pretty quickly. :) Ok, lets go over my ToA mission update, because I got some really cool cut scenes while I was helping Kirameki get her last two staging points. Aphmau and the automatons now appear to be on the Ashu Talif. A small amount of information is disclosed regarding the Dark Rider and Alzadaal Undersea Ruins, regarding the mystery painting that we have all been wondering about. Enter stage left Captain Lazuf and his conjecture regarding the explosion of the Gordius in a time that may even predate the creation of the Mother Crystal. Lazuf appears to have plans within plans but the machinations are still shrouded in conspiracy. And since Aphmau was not the focus of the abuduction but one of the automatons, she isn't even the considerations of Lazuf. It is all very interesting, I just wish there was a bit more conflict in between these very good storylines. :) Along the way to Arrapaggo Reef, we saw the loneliest NM in the world, poor little Peallaidh, the sheep no one loves.
It literally is not worth the time to even kill this NM. It is pretty tough, spawns Chigoes and drops a pretty much completely worthless item. It is usually up for days at a time.

And now for some rapid fire things that happened this weekend. Well, I definitely got my Anniversary Ring, which is just sex on wheels. Huge XP bonus and I can use it Anniversary Ring, Empress Band, Anniversary Ring. LOL I caught up to and past Kirameki using this to finally get to WAR 66 this weekend. I will likely be using this mostly on WAR because Kirameki has one and only really has BRD to worry about for now, and maybe that last level on WHM ^.^/ It should allow us to get to 70 pretty quickly when we will be able to move to a burn camp like the Mire and just burn our way to 75. :)

Also this weekend, a couple of us helped Lilkathy, Crlmsonking and Ashhhhh to beat Diabolos. Sadly I don't have any screenshots of this even though I thought I did take one of the Diabolos BC which is actually very cool looking on the inside. But before the fight we had to run up the mountain and I got to have Lilkathy follow me because it is very difficult to get up the mountain on a keyboard, believe me I have done it, and its not that fun. Cool scenery shot from up there for sure. Anyway, after this we did the fight and it was easy-peasy, even with two landed Nightmares, because the mages were placed outside of its AoE. And now LK, CK and Ashhhhh are on Ouryu, another pretty easy fight and the first of the 50 capped fights.

Finally, from this week, turn out was a little low in Sky because of Mother's Day, only about 18 people available, and it was a straight farming day since we needed Diorite and Water more than anything else, but we did fight a Genbu and in the middle of the fight we got light weather and in Sky that causes the Borealis to appear, and I was able to get this pretty cool screenshot in the middle of a Genbu fight. Its just one of those shots that makes your appreciate the grandeur of the game.

Now that I have the weekend finished, I can now go onto yesterday which was also very hectic. LOL I have already discribed the Limbus run that we did in great detail, and we only got a WAR upgrade item for that, so it's not that anything else was worth mentioning, so onto Sea. The main goal today was to pop Jailer of Faith, and we were quite successful with that. Izman had to spawn it even though I was supposed to be the spawner because I had gotten owned moments before by a Ghrah Blizzaga III when I was checking the room for the ??? LOL. Oh well, Izman did a great job in this fight, way better than me. He never died and almost always had hate. Izman is totally a beast. Faith is basically a kited fight for us, I have heard that it can be easier if you just hold Faith in one place and use big WS's to interrupt Stonega III, but we didn't want to risk it. We just simple kited it around the room and dealt with things as they came. Most of the time you can easily get out of range of all of the AoE spells like Breakga and Stonega. Our melee and mages were pretty balanced on damage, and next time we will definitely be making skillchains on it like we do with Fortitude, it will make the fight even faster than it already was, definitely faster than the Fortitude fight. LOL The drops were the Third Virtue and the Faith Baghnakhs which went to Aable because Glacian didn't choose to lot, still no Torque drops in Sea. We already have a full set to pop Jailer of Hope and getting close to multiple half sets for popping the other outside Jailers. We can easily do the pop Sea Gods, now we just have to camp the spawn ones like Jailer of Temperance, Ix'Drk and Ix'Drg. I can't wait to start moving to the outside spawned Sea Gods, the fights look very interesting and fun. :) Immidiately after doing Faith, Pb and Hellz came with Izman, Omoikitte, Aable and I to finish CoP 8-2, the four pot fight. Before we did this though, we went outside to test and make sure that our three tier skillchain was going to work for the fight, but while we were doing this Izman managed to get hate, but no one was really paying much attention and he ended up getting killed by the test mob. LOL And it was only at 4% left, XD all either of would have had to do is voke or WS or Jump or LOL anything, but Izman died and we molested the body. We were then off to fight the pots. ^.^/ This fight isn't as hard as people make it out to be (much like a lot of CoP), basically two BLM pots and two RDM pots. Kill the BLM pots first, then the RDM pots, usually wiping after first two BLM pots are dead, getting the first RDM pot down as much as you can before just wiping. Then you just get up, kill the last two pots and its over before it even began. Now they just have to do the Promathia fight and a bunch of CS's for their CoP Rings. :)

After this mission, we went and xped for a while, and even though I was doing good damage, it was just one of those nights where I was going to die no matter what. I do have to apologize to Gawayne and Qtipus who were xping in the same area we were because we were running about claiming just about anything we could find but this was because we had a camp then another party just came and camped directly on top of us, and we were just attempting to get mobs as the spawned from the party that so rudely camped on us. Aable got to test out his brand new Faith Baghnahks which he said would be much better with WAR as sub because it would help to make up for the lower damage and the double attack which stacks with the Sea weapon's proc. Also in this party I got what I believe is my highest Jin ever, but several people said I was wrong and there may have been higher ones. I don't really check on my damage all that often so I might miss better ones. It was a fun and silly party, but I didn't even get a merit in it because I died like three times. LOL Finally, I wanted to mention that Elfaria got the BLM AF2 belt recently! It looks really cool, and the additional HP is great for the tiny Tarutaru HP base. LOL Congratulations Elfie! And see everyone tomorrow. Sorry if this was a bit long. LOL