What is on the horizon.

The first thing I want to note today is that an Earth Staff is next to worthless on Kirin. I haven't kited Kirin in a long while, but I used to use an Earth Staff the few times I have done it in the past, but this time right after the mini-god's I switched over to an Ice Staff to deal with Great Whirlwind, and I cut my damage taken by a whole lot. In general, you will get decent resist rates on Kirin anyway, without doing anything in particular to decrease the damage, but with an Ice Staff, resists become pretty common and the damage taken in general is reduced. Since it is a kited fight, and Kirin only uses TP moves, it is very easy to keep shadows up, so the main goal is to decrease the damage that shadows can't stop. Great Sandstorm is bad, but compared to Great Whirlwind it is not as bad. Heat Breath isn't bad enough to worry about, and with a Bomb Queen Ring on, getting resists will be near impossible. I have been using my regular -dmg/HP set up on Kirin but I am definitely going to tweak it in the near future.

Main: Ice Staff/Aquilo's Staff
Ranged: Ungur Boomerang
Head: Genbu's Kabuto
Neck: Evasion Torque (Going to get a Harmonia Torque)
Ear1: Eris' Earring
Ear2: Eris' Earring
Body: Arhat's Gi
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring1: Bomb Queen Ring
Ring2: Mermaid's Ring
Back: High Breath Mantle
Waist: Warwolf Belt
Legs: Koga Hakama
Feet: Suzaku's Sune-ate or Fuma Sune-ate (Ninja Kyahan +1 at night)

The major difference here is that I am basically dumping all of my Haste gear for HP or defense. Haste is a lesser concern in this fight, so the focusing on HP and Enmity is a better idea. I started putting this idea together when I saw Aable show up to the fight with his Koga Hakama on, which made me consider what else could be changed to make things more efficient for a fight that is not straight tanked. The feet slot is something I am still considering because Fuma have a slight HP bonus over Suzaku's but Suzaku's have more defense. I will probably go with Fuma because as noted before, you don't get hit by very much direct physical damage so more HP is never bad. I am definitely not concerned with a wind resist set up because Great Whirlwind is not bad enough to justify it, definitely not going to one-shot me, but since the Earth Staff is near useless, it is definitely an added benefit for direct damage reduction.

Kirin itself was pretty run of the mill, and the drops were horrible. It would be nice to get some decent drops, maybe next week. The best thing we got out of the whole thing was a cute and cuddly pic with Elfaria. ^.^/
Now, on to game related issues. Honestly, I got up this morning and checked the POL site because I still needed to upload the pictures from last night, and none of the new information that was available was up at the time, and lo and behold when I get to work, there are updates! :) Ok, so the version update will happen on Monday, June 4th, which is a lot sooner than I expected. I don't really get what is going on with SE right now... giving players what they want... new events... new ways to get gear we all want... and now this? Confirmation of the new merits and the new weapon/magic merit caps? What is the world coming to?

In the soon-to-be released version update, we plan to introduce "Group 2" abilities for the blue mage, corsair, and puppetmaster jobs. We will also be increasing the maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories for all jobs.

New Merit Point Category for Blue Mage, Corsair, and Puppetmaster

In the upcoming version update, we will be adding the "Group 2" merit point category for blue mages, corsairs, and puppetmasters.
Each of these jobs will gain access to four new job abilities and traits that should prove invaluable in a variety of situations. See the tables below for a description of each ability.

*Convergence will also increase the power of blue magic spells that are originally single target effects.

Maximum Point Allocation for Combat Skills and Magic Skills

The maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories will be increased for all jobs.

"Combat Skills" maximum total ability increases:
12 > 20

"Magic Skills" maximum total ability increases:
8 > 16

*The maximum limit for each of the abilities within these categories will remain unchanged.

Further adjustments will be announced on the day of the version update.

Like the AF for the new jobs, these new merits look a lot more thought out than those for the old jobs. BLU's get an obvious boost with their merits and it will probably be difficult to decide what to merit, because they all have definite benefits for the job. Probably more Blue Magic allocation points being the most obvious one to merit. COR has a wider arrangement of options but still all generally good, and PUP probably have a good set too, but I don't know much about the job to make a definite statement. The more intriguing thing to me though is the new cap to weapon and magic merits. 20 merits will now allow for two fully merited weapons, which I am sure is pleasing the Axe/Ridill WAR's of the world, but hey they were already broken, so its not like it going to break them much more than they already have been. But it will let me put merits into Marksmanship, or Great Katana, or Polearm, or maybe even Axe. I think the 4 left over merits are probably going to go into Evasion. I am still not positive about all that yet, but the opportunity is now available and I am quite pleased with the situation. :) Looking forward to next Monday, that is for sure.

Oh and I forgot to mention that SE is going to be at some anime event at the end of the June into July. Usually, even from these kinds of events we get more information, and at least an interview or two. Hopefully, some more information will trickle out of the event about the new expansion... I am starting to put some thought into this new expansion and their mention of new magic and spells. I will have to read exactly what they said again, and see if they meant new spells for the jobs that already exist or if they mean a new class of magic. The more than I think about it, the more that I think that Time based magic might be a viable option. I think I will go into that more tomorrow.