I don't have proof that the person in the screenshot is buying Genbu items from the RMT they are standing next to... 
but it doesn't take much to put 2 and 2 together. In the past month I have seen at least 3 different people obviously buying God drop items from RMT in Sky. And all three were JP people. I don't doubt that NA's also buy gil and items, but I don't think they are as brazen as these three JP players. This is a disturbing trend I believe, in that these people are being more open about their gilbuying. I am sure they would have prefered to not be seen by us, but its not like they ran off when we showed up, and its not like they didn't mind being seen next to an RMT, with no one else that could have been legitimate around besides my LS. I think NA's like the presumption that most people think that most other people aren't buying gil, but honestly, we all know. We use plausible deniability to allow it to happen and not have to say anything about, and they use it to not have to deal with the consequences of their actions. I know people that buy gil, and I am sure that they think they aren't hurting anyone, and honestly, its much harder for someone in an LS like mine to notice it as much as before Ullikummi was changed. But losing a Despot to RMT is more than any legitimate player should have to suffer. SE has actually done a great job dealing with RMT, but they still get many different monsters that we don't see and the people that buy gil directly support them. Just because you can't see it directly as much as you used to does not mean that it isn't just as bad. We used to be able to make money as a general player, at least even to get by on, at least enough from LS events to get the occasional big ticket item. Now, farming is need to just do Limbus, and the LS event gil is just enough to buy consumables. Honestly, this kind of economy is not sustainable, even gil buyers wont buy gil just so they can have sushi to xp with, so at some point this has to hit the bottom, and once the bottom has been hit then things will stabilize. RMT in their mad rush to get gil for money will inevitably shot themselves in the foot, bottoming out the market to a point where they will not be able to make anymore money than the common player. When will we hit this point? I don't know. And the worst part is they are doing this in the most undetectable way. RMT in Sky and at HNM and other places will get banned quite quickly, but crafting RMT actually can go without detection for quite some time, and are pretty easy to replace.
So, for everyone that buys gil or buys items from RMT and think they are doing no wrong: Screw you. You are ruining it for the rest of us. And thanks to SE for taking the problem seriously. Legitimate players do appreciate it.
Yesterday was pretty boring too, thus the RMT rant, but hey, we all need a good RMT rant every once in a while. I did get pretty close to 72 on WAR, and I can't wait for that and all the yummy gear that I get to wear at that time. Tonight we are doing more Assaults, and hopefully I will be able to get another rank up mission tonight. The faster I can rank up the faster I can get to my Perdu Blade. ^.^/
On an interesting side note, hopefully we will hear some news about the expansion this weekend from the Anime Expo that SE will be attending. My guess is that we will because they have made a big deal about this expo and we have heard nothing in over a month of the expansion, and man am I itching for more information. Honestly, the trailer for the expansion, after watching it about 10,000 times is that it sucks. Not that it is bad in absolute terms, just that it offered so little information that it was just a tease. Even the interviews about the expansion basically stated what the expansion was not rather than what it was. Here is my issue, SE has been teasing us for so long with the Far East, more and more of the storyline has revolved around characters from the Far East, that they better really deliver in this expansion if they are not going to do the Far East. This is especially true if they are not going to expand the current areas and are just going to replay old areas in a new time. So, its definitely time for more information from them, not just this little trailer. I am definitely waiting for more.
Friday, June 29, 2007
At some point you have to use logic...
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Blah... or how to fill blog space on a boring day.
Lets see, I helped Izman and Doyah with a Sandy mission and congrats to Izman on getting Rank 10 in Sandy, and then I leveled MNK to 30. Thats about it for yesterday, which leaves me quite a but of blog space to fill, and with what shall I fill it?
How about a nice little list of goals that I would like to achieve in the short term, that would be nice, but I don't know how much space it will fill.
Lets see, short term list:
1. Get WAR to 75. I have not had a job that has floundered on its way to 75 as much as my WAR. All the gear is purchased, everything is ready to go, I just need to level it. Kira needs to beat Maat first, which is the newest stumbling block. Maybe today after Sky we can go and skill up her Sword skill.
2. Get a level 35 drop from Salvage. I think this should have been our goal from the beginning, instead of level 15 gear, being that level 15 gear from SSR is 100% we can just get that later. So on Sunday we will start Arrapago to get the 35, then head to Bhaflau to kill the boss for 25 gear after we have a few 35 pieces, which may take a while.
3. Monky, Monk, Monk. I am liking my now level 30 MNK quite a bit, also its fun tanking with it. :) Don't really have to do much besides Provoke and punch. Lots of JA's to play with and fun stuff, can't wait to get Raging Fists and Counterstance. And at 31 I get another Martial Arts trait for quicker swings. :)
Further on my MNK, I am going to have to spend some time in Beaucidine. I am looking to pick up a pair of Boreas Cesti 
from Kirata and then a Nue Fang from well... Nue. 
And then its just Deadly Dodo to finish up my Brown Belt. I want to get this stuff done before the levels that I need them, but I don't think I am going to get Cross Counters, just can't see spending the money on gear that I am not going to use for endgame. Call me cheap, but I have a bunch of endgame jobs and I don't need the highest quality gear in between anymore, I can work with what I already have.
I think thats good for today, hopefully tomorrows blog wont be as bad.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Ok, head to MG, and ignore the dead bodies... o.o;
So, what happens when you pull a detector and on the way back to your party of 5 people it spawns Steam Cleaner and the tank accidentally vokes a Dust Buster? LOL You get a mad-cap dash to the zone line, while the rest of the LS heads back to get it and the original party dies. :)
That was a fun little adventure, and while the rest of the LS was killing Steam Cleaner, Mother Globe had spawned, so they had to run off to get it while we were left for dead. LOL It was a good day in sky though, more money from the Gods, even though the abjuration drops from the Gods weren't that great. In fact, they haven't been dropping good abjurations or God gear for a long while. Oh and if anyone is interested Refrain purchased what I would guess to be W. Hands from RMT, as they are a RDM and were with the RMT while they were doing a Seiryu, and immidiately got warped out while the rest of the RMT stayed. So it is my conclusion that Refrain is an RMT item buyer and should banished to the Second circle of Hell and forced to lie in the mud under continual cold rain and hail whilst being forced to consume their own excrement. Graphic sure, but Dante was dead on in great punishments. LOL Anyway, we are definitely in a deficit when it concerns good Abjurations and God Gear. N. Feet, D, Head, Sune-ate and Kote are all no where to be found, and I don't even want to mention the lack of decent drops from the kitty.
Anyway, after Sky we headed to xp for a while. NIN, NIN, WAR, WAR, BRD, WHM with Daraut changing to DRK about halfway through. It was pretty decent XP for a 70-75 party, and we were in the Mire so chaining was more important than base XP anyway. I got a little more than half way to 72, where I finally get to change up some of my gear, I actually get quite a lot at 72 and then even more at 73. Right now I am using a borrowed Juggernaut and my Acha d'Armas, I think I will skip the Woodville's Axe for now and just wait for the Maneater at 73. I need to get my Soil Gorget made up so that I can use it at level 72. And I will also get my Suppanomimi at 72, along with my borrowed Dusk Gloves and feet. Then at 73 I will have access to my Hecatomb gear, I will definitely use my Hecatomb feet for WS's but I don't know if I will use the body, as it probably isn't as good as a Haubergeon +1. So the faster I get to 73 the better. Now Kira still has to fight Maat, and she needs to skill up her Sword to be able to do Spirits Within, but I think and quick night of skilling up in Kuftal Tunnel should fix that right up. She is getting close to the cap on 70 so that means that we wont be XPing until she beats Maat.
Now for the topic I wanted to cover yesterday but didn't have time for, and that is the utility of two BRD's in a party. The obvious assumption is that two BRD's with the proper DD jobs is better than one but under what circumstances is this true? Obviously the 1337 DD jobs are the best focus on this, ones that can have their performance most optimized by having more songs. The obvious answer is WAR, NIN and MNK whereas WAR benefits from the Minuets and then the Haste, the NIN the Haste then the Minuets and the MNK pretty much both equally. There are camps that definitely have the benefit of having two BRD's maximized also, like the Great Colibri camp were two Minuets, a March and a Madrigal are a boon to all DD's because of the lack of food. But really what is most important about using two BRD's is to actually use them, with two BRD's you have to make up for a missing DD. Now with all the buffs going on this is not that difficult if the people in your party are paying attention. The need to engage quickly and efficiently use WS's to kill mobs but not waste TP is much more important in this case than it would be in a normal party. The essential basis of any "burn" party is to get to 100 TP as fast as possible and use that TP so that it takes out as much of the mobs HP as possible. This means that delays in engaging a mob can actually slow down your damage over time and this factor is multiplied in a two BRD party for two reasons. 1) Just as the buffs make you more efficient for doing damage to the mob while you are engaged, the corollary is also true in that the time that you speed not engaged is has waste effect multiplied. 2) You have to make up for that fourth DD, this means you are always fighting a battle of time, to keep the three people's efficiency up to and over the point of the imaginary fourth member with lessened buffs. Ultimately, it is very difficult to test whether two BRD's is more efficient than one, but I think the evidence is available for this in XP/hour claims (yes, claims, because we all know how accurate some of these claims really are). So basically, if you aren't going to do your job in the party as a DD with two BRD's you are probably actually going to get less than you would if you had 1 BRD and another DD that would be picking up the slack for you. Two BRD parties don't even necessarily have to work just with 1337 jobs like WAR, NIN and MNK again if all three of the DD's are paying attention. If they are not paying attention, or if they are slacking or if they are not paying attention when to WS, then you are just wasting the benefit of a second BRD.
And that is my rant. :) I hope you enjoyed it.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Utility
I had a good topic for today and everything but I got up late and now I have training at work, so its just going to be a quick run down today and I will go over what I wanted to talk about tomorrow.
Now this is going to be really short because I only have 20 minutes before I have to go back to training.
First, we did Kings in Apollyon yesterday 
Very easy, netting 4 coins a piece and another complete Omega set. We are going to do Omega again on Thursday, so hopefully some more Homam gear for the LS.
After Limbus a group of us did some Assault runs, which went very well, both groups winning all three runs, earning a good bit of AP for Salvage and completed some more new missions for people that wanted to rank up. 
I believe that everyone in the group now has at very least Rank 2, so that is a new set of runs that we can do even though we wont be doing the Lebros Caverns run because it is horribly difficult to do, so its more efficient to just get points elsewhere.
Finally, after Assaults, Illius wanted to work off some points on his Senj so we went out to Kuftal Tunnel to kill some crabs, but on the way out there we saw this. 
I have NEVER seen this tree before... its just outside of Rabao on the way from East Altepa Desert... it is so weird to see a random new tree just standing in a zone.
Thats it for today, sorry about the length maybe more later depending on my meeting.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Finally II: The Haidatenation!
Lets start with the obvious, we finally got Izman's Haidate. Took freaking forever, I believe we were something like 0/6-7 on Byakko before yesterday, and it wasn't like it was dropping anything good anyway. >.< We have gotten a ton of N. Hands, but zippy D. Legs, and zippy Haidate. Oh and if you want to free lot E. Feet, Versus is the place to be. LOL Anyway, our first Kitty on Sunday dropped, another N. Hands... these are almost free lot now. So we did a second Kitty, because, you know, at some point the Byakko's Haidate HAS TO DROP! And finally... finally it did! 
Izman quickly lotted them and everyone passed and Iz put them on... wait, he didn't because he was on PLD. LOL Anyway, it was the end of the run anyway so we went back and Iz switched over to WAR and put them on... 
Congrats, Iz! Our Byakko's were a bit funny today... on the first one Iz and I did a fine job tanking it, but for some reason about 3/4 of the way through the fight Hellz got hit with a random Razor Fang. I don't know how a DRG got hate that late in a fight with a PLD/NIN and a NIN/DRK. It was really weird and it happened twice, and it didn't happen to anyone else in the whole fight. Then on the second Byakko again about 3/4 of the way through the fight Byakko randomly went after the WHM that when they Devotioned each other, then it went straight back to Iz and I. It's not like hate was loose at all outside of that, just that Byakko decided that it wanted to attack a random person then go back to the tanks. And I just don't know how they got that high on the hate list. In general, Iz can hold hate better than I, so even if I am not holding hate, then Izman will. It didn't matter too much to be though because on the last 15% of Byakko, it triple attacked me AND Razor Fanged me at the same time when I was casting Ni. That fixed me real good, but Akanea stepped in and finished the fight like a champ. It was a good day for Versus, we got a bunch of people to get the Ouryu CoP fight done, Sky was great, Faust, Ullikummi, Water, MG, Zip in that order, then the Haidate. Good day indeed.
Outside of Versus events, I have still been quite busy. On Friday, a bunch of us helped Epiphany to finish the Airship fight, it was pretty easy like normal, but a bit slower. Only finished with like a minute and a half left, but we didn't have a perfect set up. NIN, WAR, MNK, DRG, WHM, BLM, kept Omoi on he toes with having to deal with all of the status effects and keeping me healed. 
And we finished up Tenzen last night, and now Pip has Sea access and will be attending Limbus tonight. Speaking of Limbus, it looks like, with Achikasama at the lead, Versus is going to have about 10 new people in Sea in about two weeks. LOL She has been working really hard to get everyone to Sea. This coming weekend it looks like a Sacrarium run and a Promyvion-Vahzl run. This puts a large group of people at the Three Paths, which now that the Snoll Tzar has been severely nerf, should be no problem at all. RNG/SAM for me for those fights. LOL Hasso/Seigen/Meditate makes this thing a joke and my accuracy is great on him, I can probably eat meat. :) That is all without having to use EES. In related news of helping people, I also went on a very late night Swift Belt with Akanea, Thazienne, Saorise, Tamarisk and a few others. Akanea and Thazienne managed to get their Swift Belts! 
Poor Tamarisk's didn't drops though. >.< That is the second time she hasn't had hers drop. Its too bad that she doesn't get a better chance at one, I think this is only the second try she has made at getting a belt. It's too bad she isn't getting more help with it, and I will definitely help her again whenever she wants to try to get one!
In a last bit of a weekend review, Kira got to level 70 on BRD and I got to 71 on WAR. ^.^/ 
We have both been dying a lot recently. LOL But the parties are getting better, and the higher we get the better the XP. Another thing is that we have a bunch of friends that need to finish off jobs like Glacian, Kira and I, and people that need a bunch of merits or ISP like Izman and Hellz, so I think we are going to focus on a little late night XPing to get us all sorted out. And after I level WAR, I am going to need merits too, but then there is my MNK... Man, do I love MNK! LOL With getting the D. Body last week at Kirin, I am going to focus on leveling my MNK. BRD is going on the back burner, because honestly, it doesn't punch things. LOL Nah, really because I already basically have all the gear I need for my MNK. I mean honestly, lets take a peek at end-game gear for MNK and see what I already have.
TP Build:
Main: I actually don't have Destroyers yet, but I can get them pretty easily I think. :)
Head: Walahra Turban (Maybe something different here, not sure yet)
Neck: Chivalrous Chain (I know I can do better than this, but this is what I use on everything)
Ear1: Brutal Earring
Ear2: I would like to finally get my Ethereal Earring, but I still don't have one. Probably just use Spike until I get it.
Body: Shura Togi
Hands: O's Kote of course
Ring1: Sniper's Ring
Ring2: Raja's Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Well, I don't have a Brown Belt yet, but I do have the Marbolger Vine, so the other two will just take a bit of camping. I am definitely not going to level without the Brown Belt, but I can camp the NM's as NIN/THF and it should be easy.
Legs: Byakko's Haidate
Feet: I don't have Dune Boots yet, but I can get them relatively easily too.
WS Build:
Main: Destroyers
Head: Shura Kabuto
Neck: Soil Gorget (I know I can do better than this, but this is what I use on everything)
Ear1: Brutal Earring
Ear2: Maybe my Minuet Earring for this? I don't know.
Body: Shura Togi (Maybe Kirin's Osode? I dont know, I will have to look into Accuracy versus Stats for Asuran Fists, but I think the Togi will probably get better. And I don't even have Osode yet, and there is a long list in front of me for it.)
Hands: O's Kote
Ring1: Sniper's Ring
Ring2: Raja's Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Well, I don't have a Brown Belt yet, but I do have the Marbolger Vine, so the other two will just take a bit of camping. I am definitely not going to level without the Brown Belt, but I can camp the NM's as NIN/THF and it should be easy.
Legs: Shura Haidate? Still need this, haven't seen it drop from Byakko in a while.
Feet: I really have no idea what MNK's where in the feet for WS's. LOL
See? I don't really need that much more, except for to get a Black Belt, which is going to be a toughie. Looking to leach items off of KS99 runs and HNM LS's now, so if anyone is interested in selling them, I am interested in buying. :)
Oh and my MNK is now 27. LOL
Friday, June 22, 2007
Whats with the drops?
So we did another Kirin last night, and only got a D. Ingot and a D. Body. That means in the last couple of weeks we have basically gotten nothing from Byakko or Kirin. This is just crazy. No D. Legs, no Haidate, no W. Legs, no N. Body, no Osode. I got the D. Body just because I was lotting on something that very few people wanted. 
D. Body will be great one day for my MNK, and I can use it right now for my NIN and especially my SAM, but I have alternative gear for those jobs. And honestly, I would rather see other people getting other gear that they need. Like poor Izman, he has been waiting on Haidate and W. Legs for neigh forever now. I am going to look into our record on Haidate since SE fixed Sky and figure out exactly just how bad our drop rate is on them. My guess is that we have to be at least 3/20 on Haidate if not more, and one of those Haidate accidentally went to someone that then promptly left the LS, which is really disappointing considering the number of people that want them and deserve them.
Anyway, we are sitting on a ton of Kirin sets, so we will get what we need eventually, but its just frustrating at times. We are also doing Kirin a lot faster than we have in the past. Essentially, we just kite it until it does all of its summons then hold it until it casts Sleepga, Stonega IV or the healing mages run out of MP. This make things so much faster, as we can usually get off multiple skillchains with magic bursts knocking it down 10-20% until we have to kite it again. Greatly shortens the amount of time spent on Kirin. In fact we are getting to the point where getting ready for Kirin is taking almost as long as fighting it. LOL Sure we are not TP burning it down in five minutes, but we are doing what works best for us. Maybe next time if we can start earlier, we can get two of them done instead of just one. Should have some Byakko's coming up soon too so hopefully some more Haidate for the LS.
Now, on to my new obsession, Salvage. We had a pretty successful test run in SSR last time, as we learned that the pacing for the zone was actually a lot slower than we expected. My new thought is that we should actually be doing SSR last as it is the Level 15 100% drop rate zone, no reason to start doing that until we have some other gear to show for it. That means that we need to focus on Bhaflau for level 25 drops or Arrapago for level 35. As we are still building, I would like to do level 35 in Arrapago first, even though I think we might be able to take Bhaflau with the group we have right now. The schedule we are looking at right now are Assaults on Monday after Limbus, Assaults on Friday at about 7PM EST, then Salvage will be Sunday night after Sky. I think this works for everyone. Lets go over our plan for Arrapago for the next run. Now I haven't done Arrapago zone before, but since this is going to be our focus for a while, I figure that I better get a good idea of what we are going to be doing. The cell drops from this zone are supposed to be very bad, so its better to follow those with experience in general in this zone. I have an idea of the first floor that I plan on following but, I am not sure where exactly we are going until we actually do it. I don't want to make a map for this zone until we have done our first run, but here is to hoping we get at least one level 35 piece. :)
I have a bunch of things I am supposed to do in the game tonight, I hope I can get to them all.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Start of Salvage
Turns out that Izman's crisis wasn't much of a crisis (good thing for him) and he was able to get on last night. That meant that we could do Salvage. We did have one problem though, and that is that Lilkathy had just started doing Assault so didn't have enough points to go to Salvage yet. It was a going to be our first test run anyway so not much to worry about anyway. It also started way late and LK was already tired so not much lost for her in terms of sleep. LOL We had seven in our party, and it went relatively smoothly considering the number of people. I do know that we will be skipping some parts in the future as they are not needed or because they take so much time. My first thought is that the crate at the beginning has two effects on Salvage. First, it makes things so much faster. I have to say that spending the time needed to collect initial cells in Salvage was really the problem that we were having when we were doing Salvage. Its not that it was difficult to just hand-to-hand mobs to get the needed cells, but it was that it was just massively time consuming for no reason, and it forced people to bring certain jobs and tons of hi-potions that shouldn't be so necessary. Hi-potions are still great, but when you have a healer from the start it is so much faster. The second effect that the starter crate had was to make things not so boring for everyone. We got two magic cells to start and with the first mob dropping a magic cell we were able to have all of our casters actually doing something after the first room, making it more exciting for everyone.
Now, specifically for this run we did Silver Sea Remnants, and this was the first time that any of us had done this zone and I have to say that the mobs seemed a bit more difficult than the other zones that we had done, especially on the first floor. Bhaflau and Zhaylom Remnants mobs on the first floor were a joke, but by the end of the first floor in SSR we had to actually take some time to kill each mob. The room that had 6 Fomor that needed to be killed to spawn Hammerblow Majanun was actually quite difficult with 7 people on the first time we did it. It was day time so no NIN boot kiting. Honestly, we would have been fine if it wasn't for Foxfire or whatever that conical AoE they used. There were a few deaths, but people were able to get up fast and we actually cleared the room pretty quickly considering the circumstances. Afterward we fought Hammerblow Majanun 
but got no drop. After double checking this was actually a level 35 drop and we aren't aiming for that so from now on we are going to skip that mob, its a pain in the butt anyway to get him to spawn even if the mob itself is not too strong. The same can be said about the NM on the second floor, 
not very difficult but spawning it takes forever with only 7 people. 
Still, we did it and we got the 100% drop level 15 Usukane legs which I got because Glacian didn't seem interested in them. 
Next time, we will be skipping these two NM's and heading straight for the Gyroscopic Gears on the third floor. We did get to the gears last night, but we weren't able to get more than about 4 of them killed before time ran out, and we have to kill 8 gear/s and their linking Ramparts to get it to spawn. That should be easier to do than killing 16 Fomor and 4 Devilets. >.<
Next time, I think we are going to do Arrapago Remnants to try to get some of the level 35 which is probably the hardest gear to get. Basically, my goal is to get 11-12 people (capping at 12) so that we have two groups to do Assaults to get the points for Salvage. We will see how this all works out, but I think we have a good initial set up, but a BRD and THF would be nice and maybe another tank and DD.
That was yesterday, and for today I give you bad news. SE has finally announced that they are going to allow server transfers. Such a bad idea, I mean I know that there are some people that want to play with friends but how many people is that compared to the number of people that want to escape from their servers because they have stolen, cheated and burned every bridge imaginable. It just means that Feiwong gets to buy characters from any server then promptly move them over to our server, or people like Drone can now escape their horrible reputations, and in all likelihood change their names on their new server. It is a sad day that we are going to have to ask people for references when they apply to Versus now. On balance this is a bad idea, and shouldn't have been implemented, because the people that were most vocal in favor of it are also the people that should not be allowed to use it. I don't think it will unbalance the game or economies, but I do think it will allow people that have screwed people in the past to find a who new group of people to screw. Ah well, most servers have established LS's that are most likely not going to break just because some new idiot shows up, but its just an annoyance that good and decent players shouldn't have to deal with. Bad people should reap the consequences of what they have sown, not just hop to a new server and get a whole new reputation.
Thats it for today. :)
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Can I burn yet?
My WAR has really been going pretty slow for a while, but I finally managed to get to 70 on it. 
The funny thing here is that I am the person that usually makes the XP party for my friends and myself. Sometimes people come willingly, sometimes they come kicking and screaming but they do come, usually its the BRD's that come kicking and screaming but hey, thats the way the cookie crumbles, right? LOL Anyway, I am of the belief that if a person that is level 68 or higher wants to come to one of these parties there is no real reason not to let them come. I know that people want their 20k/hour xp parties, but honestly how often is that going to happen? I mean if I can get 2 BRD's to come xp with my NIN, then sure, I am going to grab Izman's WAR and we are going to rock it for as much xp as we can, but in reality that doesn't happen that often and since we usually XP during the prime time, camps are usually overrun and you just can't get as much xp as you want even if you have the perfect party. I suppose if you don't XP as much as we generally do, then you will only be looking for the perfect party and can pass on things you don't want. But wanting to XP and being picky about your parties is going to get you nowhere fast. So, since 90% of your XP parties are not going to be perfect there is no real reason to not let someone into a party if they are a little under level when the factor most likely to limit your XP is not the ability to kill quickly, but the number of mobs available to kill. And so I have justified leveling my 70 WAR in parties that I start with my friends. ^.^b Once I get to 72 things should ease up a little: Suppanomimi, Woodville's Axe (still need to buy it), borrowed Dusk gear, and things should only get easier from there. And for 73 I got my Maneater from the ENM Like the Wind. Thank you to Omoi and Iz for helping me with this fight, and we got the Maneater on only the second try! 
That solves the main hand axe issue, now I only need to buy a Woodville's Axe which, although still pricey, is about 1/3 less than the Maneater. Now, the question is do you main hand the Maneater or off hand it? If you know, please tell me, so that I don't look like a fool. LOL
Yesterday was a pretty easy day, just a little Sky, and then a quick Ashu Talif fight to get Lilkathy access to Salvage, which we are going to try to do today. My plan is to start small, with 100% Level 15 drops in the Silver Sea Remnants. This is going to be our path (oh and I snatched these pics off of the wiki and just modified them a little, the notes are not mine except for on the fourth floor map): Floor 1 will be for gathering cells and getting things started, but will be doing the NM Hammerblow Majanun which has a chance to drop the Hikazu Kabuto but this is just to be able to get through the first floor quickly. 
For the second floor we will start aiming for our level 15 gear. We will clear the South East room to get Powderkeg Yanadahn to pop which will net us a Hoshikazu Hakama, and a path to get to the NM on the third floor. 
Then on the third floor we will be aiming for the Gyroscopic Gears NM to get an Enyo's Mask and a chance at the Deimos's Cuisses. I am thinking that the going will be fine until this point, nothing too bad to deal with if we can keep the pulls manageable and can get decent cells along the way. 
On the fourth floor we will be aiming for something a bit more difficult because we will be trying to kill an Archaic Rampart which can be pretty easy to pretty terrible depending the gear we have gotten so far and the TP moves that it uses. The main goal will be to get the Citadel Chelonian to spawn from the Archaic Rampart that spawns after the original Archaic Ramparts are defeated. 
This will be Path 1 through the Silver Sea Remnants, Path 2 we will do once we get a Zhaylom Card to spawn the slot NM. All that being said, it looks like Izman is not going to be on for a while, so it may be a while before we do this. :( I hope everything is OK Iz...
To turn from that sour note, I wanted to mention a few neat things that have happened in the last couple of days. First is to note that Versus has gotten to be quite big as of late, with the line to get gil from the bank getting to be rather large. 
I definitely thought a line that long was worth the screenshot, LOL. The second neat thing that we ran into was Zikko an NM in Caedarva Mire near the Dvucca Isle staging point. Its actually not that hard of an NM outside of the fact that its Tantras did AoE damage and we also got a link while we were fighting it. LOL So with a little bit of heroics from EP we took it and the link down and netted an Immortal's Sash. 
Which would be pretty darn good for a BLM but Lilkathy and EP already had better pieces so no one lotted it, and it ended up going to LK anyway. ^.^b So congrats to her, and the nice bit of money she is going to get from selling it.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
No time.
I haven't done a leveling recap in a while, and I think I will do that today. Goals and such, not just equipment rehashes. But before that lets go over what happened yesterday. Well, I started leveling my MNK again, and I am thinking that is what I am going to level independently for a while. Interestingly enough, my MNK has been level 16 for a very long time. It was the second job that I leveled after unlocking my subjob, and I haven't touched it since. This was back when I would use Berserk and Defender at the same time on my WAR, which I was only leveling to get to 30 so that I could open DRG. Anyway, I already have the end-game gear for it mostly, or I will be able to get it when I need it and I already have a Morbolger Vine for the Brown Belt. 
Outside of that, I don't see the expense of MNK being that high compared to most jobs. I might start hanging around some HNM camps to see if I can glean some Black Belt items, so if anyone reads this and is interested in trying to help me out, I am definitely interested. I do have to say that I am getting ahead of myself here just a little bit as my MNK is only level 19, but it is something that I know I will take to 75 pretty easily, so planning ahead is never a bad thing. I guess, I will be looking over what is good for MNK soon, but I am not too worried about it, because I am having less and less free time in the game. I have found that I can very easily solo EM mobs and the occasional Tough, the problem with Toughs is that I could destroy one Tough and the next Tough could destroy me. This should get a little easier to determine the higher level I am, but for now can mean the difference between life and death. I am almost to level 20, I will start looking for parties at that point, but for now soloing or even better having a PL and killing Toughs is the way to go.
After I leveled MNK for a while, we had a very successful Limbus run. Moving closer to completing Izman's Omega set and netting over 5 coins per person on a 12 person run was really good. We just did the simple NE Apollyon run, and finished with something more than 25 minutes left. Honestly, we probably should farm it more, but the mobs we skip are usually to ensure time for the win (the pots on the third floor) or just really annoying and potential hazards (usually one of the Greater Birds on the second floor and the monkeys on the fourth floor) and when you get all of the potential treasure chests and time extensions, there really is no need to kill them for a potential of one or two more coins total. Anyway, we managed to get a ton of AF upgrade pieces, and I believe that Jess is now at a total of 4/5 of upgraded DRK pieces, which is just pretty cool. Eternalpain even came as his BLU because he wanted to test out his new Homam Corazza and it was pretty sweet.
After Limbus, we did three Assault runs to help get Lilkathy to the next Assault Rank, and we were successful in all three missions, ones that Lilkathy had never done before so she was able to rank up quickly so we will be able to do rank 2 Assaults the next go around. We are not really aiming to get any items in particular, we are just going to rank up and get a bunch of new Assaults done. I think on Fridays we are going to try to get 4 Assaults done, then on Mondays the other 3. I don't know how well that rotation works out or when the tags refresh, we will see how it works but on Friday we are going to do Preemptive Strike in Mamool Ja, Requiem in Dvucca Isle Staging Point and Lamia No.13 in Ilrusi Atoll Staging Point. I have already done two of these runs so only 7 rank up points for me, but I think that most of the other people with us, have only done one of these runs and I am sure that Lilkathy hasn't done any so that is 15 points for her, that means by next Monday she should be able to rank up again. We are going to skip Lebros Supplies because that is supposed to be ridiculously difficult to complete, so we will have to go back and do the Rank 1 Mamool Ja assault Imperial Agent Rescue and Orichalcum Survey to make sure that she actually gets the points to get to the third Rank. All this ranking up will also let us build up some points for Salvage.
Thats it for yesterday and the weekend, I got some other things done, but I have pictures for them that I have not yet uploaded so I will go over them tomorrow. Instead today, I want to go over some other things. How do you schedule events when there are do many events to do now? There are the obvious things people do like Sky and Sea, but these are not set amounts of time. It is even worse with the old HNMs, you know when the window is but it can change day to day, and even worse than that are the new HNM's with a 3-7 day window, I don't even understand how people can really camp these mobs. Then there are events like Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage and now Einherjar that can be planned and are limited in length. How are all of these events scheduled by an LS? How can you do everything? I don't even know anymore. I am beginning to think that it just isn't possible to do it anymore, and the true HNM LS may have its life shortened more and more as the number of events SE introduces or even as SE introduces more and more HNMs. The best idea, as I have mentioned to other people, is to decide what you want and aim for that. As an LS develops it moves in certain directions based upon the needs of its members, but an LS that wants to do everything in this day and age is going to get spread too thin, with too many divergent interests. So an LS needs to adapt or die. I think I have mentioned this before, but it is even more relevant as we get more and more events. At least we wont be getting anymore events before the next expansion but then the gates are wide open.
Friday, June 15, 2007
A story, almost (intentionally) forgotten, shall be retold.
So... we were helping Bubbly to get to Sky, doing ZM4, with the Tonberry's and I have never cleared my Tonberry hate. Can you say 10K+ damage? LOL In tribute, Achikasama and few others collaborated to make this little gem! I can't believe I forgot to post this today. 
You have a sexy body... and legs... and feet.
Sky kind of sucked yesterday, RMT managed to clean house before we got together, but we did a Seiryu and Suzaku and got decent drops. A sub-par day in sky but that makes up for the good Sunday that we had, it all balances out really. But this all is just a prelude for the good stuff that happened yesterday. Versus is getting to be pretty darn big right now, Sky is always packed, and we have no problem splitting up and covering a large about of NM's while we are there, but we still have a limited number of people that have Sea access, enough that we can do Limbus and first tier Sea gods with no problem. We beat the first Omega that we tried, but lost to the second, and I thought it was because of numbers, but honestly the real issue was not because we lost with only 12 people (and we got it to 12% with 12 people and just ran out of time) it was the set up we used. Generally, we don't force people to come to events as any job, people can come as what they want, but sometimes we do make people change, and we did that last night to great reward. I would like to thank Pb and Ice for both changing at the last minute to help us out on the run. The first time we won, it was messy like a first run usually is, but we got it done. The second time, when we lost, was because of set-up, not numbers, and honestly I should have known that. Last night we had 15, and it was easy as pie, well, not easy, nothing is easy, but nothing like it was before, and we could have taken it with 12 with the set up we used. Only one person died from an actually hit from Omega (Ibarahs after back to back Colossal Blows) and we only had three total deaths (Linkstrife and Hellz from being in AoE range while resting). The first was way smoother than any we had done before, and I have to say that NIN/DRK or PLD/NIN would be perfect for tanking this because even after a hate reset they can very quickly move up the hate list to balance out the other tank. Souleater, Last Resort and Weapon Bash along with standard hate tools are just fantastic for this, and honestly a full haste set up is much better for tanking than a defense set up for a mob that hits for 500 a pop. Anyway, the fight was clean and we didn't farm for Gunpods, but did get a bunch of coins from one and a THF AF upgrade from another. But more importantly, the drops, oh the drops. 
Yep, good drops, Legs, Feet and Body! :) The Legs went to Iceblazek, probably the best legs for THF in the game, the Feet went to Hellzfury, again another good piece for the appropriate job, Dragoon in the case, and the Body when to Eternalpain for his BLU, again a great piece for that job and couldn't have gone to a more deserving person. After the fight and the items were sorted, a bunch of us headed to Mhaura to get the items traded in for their Homam pieces. And here is the collective screenshot. 
Everyone looking quite pleased. As well they should be.
That makes for one Omega with a set of crappy set of head drops, and one Omega with an amazing set of legs, feet and body. We just need hands now to get a full set for the LS, and I can see us doing another Omega run relatively soon and I think we are already working on another set. We do have a full Ultima set also, but I think we want to get Omega down to the point where we know exactly what will happen and how to handle it to make sure before we do an Ultima, but even that should be coming soon enough.
In game related news, there was an announcement from the Special Task Force on RMT. It looks like they are doing a good job even though the RMT are still around messing with everyone and camping Sky mobs, but definitely not as bad as it used to be. I think they are doing a good job and making themselves more accessible to the players, which is never bad.
Oh, one thing I wanted to respond to was a comment by Qtipus on the blog a couple of days about planning after the win on Dynamis runs. I thought Q was a bit over-defensive, it was only a problem on one run, and although the puller did have a bad day, it wasn't the problem to which I was refering. He did present a good defense that if people know what mobs we were going after that they wont show up because certain mobs drop certain items, but that was kind of the point of my post, but I did not say it explicitly. I was interested in switching up the mobs we kill to get to different drops and when we do that we should have a plan of attack. The best way to do that is for the leaders to have the plan and not tell the members. This is not bad, and you can still tell the members after the run starts, because then people can't just leave if they don't like the mobs we are killing. Either way, I still think after after-win planning is important whether open or closed until the run starts. It was a good comment from Q and you can check it out in the comments.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Ninja Talk.
Another not so good day yesterday. Couldn't keep a connection for very long and I was tired, so just XPed my WAR a little bit then just went to bed. Didn't even get a level on my poor neglected WAR. That is literally all I did yesterday, I know it sucks, but what is a man to do.
Anyway, I need something to talk about today so I did a bit of forum perusing and I found this interesting post about Unji/Unsho NIN's versus Senjuinrikio/Perdu Blade. I found their conclusions to be woefully inadequate. Here is the post and the information that they provided:
Originally posted by LinktheDeme on Blue Gartr:
Before this is derailed I'm copying and pasting what I posted in advance section.These are my parse results after about 170 mobs. Redline has U+U and I am using Senj+ Perdu. we parsed about the same exact total damage except he had higher ws total.
Higher WS total was my concern with senj + perdu to begin with because I thought that Senj + Perdus total ws dmg would outweight the delay loss. This parse proves that since U+U ws dmg came so close that Unji + Perdu wouldn't vary too much from U +U meaning higher total ws dmg faster tp results.
Also I personally consider my choice of WS gear trumping his which is why im concerned that his ws dmg is doing more total than mine.
Both 8/8 katana 5/5 str he's elf though and i'm hume
Anyways to sum it all up Unji+Perdu (Unji main hand) should be better than Senj + Perdu. (BUY UNJIS WHILE THEY DROP IN PRICE GOGOGO)
edit: Also i'm Carus not the war
Anyway, I have more than a few problems not just with the conclusion but the testing itself. I am going to lift some of the objections that were pointed out in the test from other people in this thread first then move on to the more obvious problems with the conclusion. The first objection that was made concerned the equipment that was used for the test. I must say that I am not a big fan of Ninja Chainmail for TP build. I understand that many people like the Ninja Chainmail for the 5% reducation in weapon delay, but it requires giving up a whole lot in return. I can't see it generally being more effective than a Haub, Haub +1, or even Koga Chainmail. Now, I use Koga Chainmail for my own personal reasons, as it is close to a Haub, without all that reduction in evasion. This is a personal safety preference, probably not a maximizing decision, but I am ok with that and will accept that criticism if issued, but the point here is that it was suggested that U/U can justify the loss from a Haub because of the already low delay will be boosted even more by the Ninja Chainmail, while a Senj user should favor a Haub. This was not the case in this test as LinktheDeme pointed out later the difference in TP build gear.
RedlineAgain, after see this, others had issues, as did I. It is not that they had bad gear, not at all, just that some of the gear selections were a bit weird. I am not one to general criticize others gear, but I will definitely point out flaws when people attempt to make conclusions without setting the proper perimeters for a test. There were definite flaws in the testing that is for sure, but more importantly lets look at the conclusion.
U+U
Fire bomblet
Walhara Head
Nin chainmail + 1
dusk gloves
sniper
woodsman
Foragors
Swift belt
Haidate
Fumas
Suppanomimi
Magnetic earing?(which ever gives acc+3)
Peacock
Mine
Senj + Perdu
Walhara head
Nin chainmail
amemet +1
Spectacles
Dusk Gloves
Swift belt
Fire bomblet
Suppa
Brutal
Rajas
jager
Byakko's pants
Fumas
Camp was nyzule isle mamools.
The conclusion that U/P is better than S/P because U/U "won" in this test is questionable at best just by looking at the total damage output, which is a difference of .02%. .02% is something I would say that should be considered negligible. I don't know the margin of error for this test, or how you would even calculate the margin of error for this test. For that matter I don't even remember how to calculate a margin of error ^.^/ but the point is, I think its pretty safe to say that it is not a significant difference. So lets look a little farther into the parse and see what else is going on. The U/U user is definitely getting more damage in WS, likely from the higher number of WS being used, but remember the delay difference between these two set-ups is not that large any more with the Perdu Blade in play; U/U (201+201) = 402 vs. S/P (227+190) = 417, which is a grand total difference of 15 delay. Yeah, thats not that much at all, and to say that 15 delay makes up for a difference in WS damage is again rather questionable, this difference would definitely increase if the set up was U/P but again is 26 delay that much difference? Yes, it is beginning to be a bit more of a difference, and the gap would definitely widen in this case, but is the difference in weapons really the cause of the unbalanced WS damage or is there another factor lurking?
Lets check the accuracy differences, and we might see what could be the real culprit. U/U's accuracy was 88.86% vs. S/P's accuracy of 84.59%, and now we have something a bit more concrete when it comes to differences. Considering the accuracy differences here, it is very hard to draw any conclusion at all. In a perfect test, you would want equal amounts of accuracy for each player, and actually you would want the same exact gear too, but that is unlikely to happen. But a greater that 4% difference in accuracy is going to have an effect on the results, and that will be amplified in when considering WS damage because each hit has the potential to count for more damage, so each miss in a WS is going to have a larger effect on the results there.
Ultimately, what does LinktheDeme's test tell us? Not much. Considering the variations in damage, accuracy and equipment, this is definitely not conclusive. But more importantly, the thing to remember is that you shouldn't always take parsers, especially parsers your didn't do yourself, with a grain of salt. And one parse is never conclusive. This is the reason that scientists test other scientists theories rather than just accept them. That is the purpose of scientific theory, to reinforce and substantiate claims based on testing, not to draw conclusions after one test without considering all of the variables.
This whole discussion has a corollary that has to do with how people make gear selections and how they come up with the gear that they use. I have an objection to the current belief that the perfect set up is the standard set up, meaning making claims about what people should do and what gear they should use based upon a perfect party set up is not a good thing to do. We should aim to give advice to those in the middle of the road and then learn to make adjustments based upon the changing environment of each unique party. This was also pointed out by Rykoshen on the BG forums in another thread when after many different people were making claims that people should not be using STR on WS's, and instead be using accuracy because each hit counts. I found this odd for two reasons. One, the person making the claim was a MNK, and they definitely need the accuracy for their 8 hit WS, while it may not be as important for a NIN on their 4 hit WS (this presents another issue of universalizing the specific, but that is a discussion for another day), not to mention the modifiers for Asuran Fists is incredibly low compared to Blade: Jin. Two, the assumption was that people would be using meat. Now for a MNK this is an option, but for a NIN to maintain a good haste build there are many different sacrifices that need to be made including giving up some accuracy. To me, and many other people, this makes too large of a cut into our accuracy to get to the point where meat is an option. And this brings us back to the point about perfection being the standard for evaluating common practice. As Rykoshen pointed out, we all do not have the ability carry about two bards for every party, we can't always have a perfect party set up, and in those all the more common cases, the ability to support meat for NIN's is not assured. Thus, many people use Sushi so that they can maintain a high rate of accuracy within the standard party set up. In these cases, many NIN are over-accurate and thus can give up that accuracy on WS's for more STR for WS modifiers. What is good for the MNK is not always good for the NIN, and vice versa.
My conclusion from those parses? I will be looking forward to my Perdu Blade and I will be using S/P. But to each their own, do what you like, because ultimately that is all you really need.
Well, I thought that was a good post today. Hopefully, I will have some more excitement for tomorrow, and some more pictures to post from what we have done for the day, and finally congrats to Kira for getting 68 on BRD finally, and keeping for at least a day. :)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Bonus Update?
No, not from me, you just get the standard daily update today. But SE gave us a bonus update yesterday. I mean I was expecting the fixes for the broken things and the new Assaults and Assault ranks, but I was not expecting the completion of the Einherjar this quickly. It makes me further believe that we may only in fact have 1 update left before the expansion is released. There may be two, but with the spread of the current updates I don't know where they would fit it in. Then again there is supposed to be another update in July for the SE-approved windowed mode, and there have been other rumblings of issues they want to handle soon, but I don't know why they would have to have two updates for it. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the issue.
Yesterday, we did two more crappy Byakko's yesterday, I mean really crappy. We haven't seen a Byakko's Haidate in weeks. Its just getting crazy at this point. We have gotten so many random crap drops, not even a D. Legs. In fact, on the last drop we got only E. Feet, yes, only E. Feet, a seal and a wind. This is just crazy. Incomprehensible, really. We have only gotten three Haidate's since SE fixed Ullikummi, with no real problem getting Despot at all. I know this is luck, but damn it, its just frustrating at this point. I mean at some point we will get like 4-5 Byakko's Haidate in a row, but that doesn't make me happy now. Ah, well.
After Sky, the sub-job group (Hellz, Izman, Omoi, and I) managed to get to 37 on our jobs along with March and Takune. Now, I have to switch over to taking BRD seriously because it is no longer a subjob, but I am going to now level WHM to sub for now, and I think that Izman and Omoi have something else they need to level, like Izman needs to level SAM for WAR sub. What I hate about BRD right now is that I look like a super-hero in 1980's tights. I can't wait till I at least get to AF level, but the AF isn't that much more grand. LOL At least I can wear a MP hairpin because of my low Elvaan MP, and I don't have to wear that retarded hat. I have to say, I like BRD, I really do, because its not the mage job that I thought it was. It is more "magish" or "magey" than really mage. I get to run around and buff and be active almost the entire time. I am thinking of adding
Now, the most important part of the update, the Perdu weapons. They appear to all have +5 acc, +10 att as the latent, which is ok, I didn't expect much more from the Blade, but it seems a little weak for the Great Axe for a bonus, but that is made up by the very high base DMG and decent delay. I am still drooling over the Perdu Blade though, such awesomely low delay. I mean the damage is great for such a low delay, and even more interestingly the base AP for the new Assaults is 1440. o.o; This would make Salvage all the more viable, because you would only need to do one or so Assault to get the new lower 1500 point entrance costs for Salvage. That combined with the new chest at the start of Salvage has much improved the fun and chance at doing well in one run. So, I have been thinking about doing Salvage again, but much more focused this time, only doing the easiest route to get the easiest gear to get which also happens to be some of the best gear that is available from Salvage. These routes are all well documented and we can do them relatively easily, I think. I might be putting together another group of people, about 12 or so to do this, but we will have to see and I need to build up a AP before we can do this.
Thats about it for today. I haven't had very many good pictures or ideas for entries as of late, but it happens sometimes, and I have some other pressing things to deal with, maybe tomorrow things will be better.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Planning beyond the plan.
Sometimes success can be overwhelming. But that does not mean that forethought should not be put into what happens after a win. This doesn't mean just knowing who gets what lots, or how many points an item should be worth, but it can also mean, what you plan on doing after a win, in places like Dynamis. Here is my example, last week, amid everything that was going on I managed to squeeze in a nice Dynamis-Qufim run. Now, this is not an attempt to bash my Dynamis LS, because the run up to the boss was near flawless. Each pull was done accurately and effectively, and each necessary sub-boss was taken down quickly with little to no death. Even the boss was handled perfectly, with the only death being me ^.^/ because I did 5 Tachi: Gekkos in a row and the boss didn't like it too much, hammering me with a 1600~ Power Attack. 5 Weapon skills! Do you know how many Weapons skills that is? 5! (Inside joke). Anyway, the problem was not getting to the boss, or killing the boss with absolute efficiency, it was what happened after the boss that was the major problem. Now, in their own defense, the puller for that day said they were having a bad day, but importantly that is not what I am talking about either. The problem was that we had no plan for what to do AFTER the boss was dead. We didn't really have an idea for what route to take through the zone, or even what sets of mobs that we wanted to kill for the drops we were interested in. And that lack of forethought lead to this: 
I called it the Qufim problem, because most specifically in Dynamis-Qufim after you get the win you are close to stuck on where to go and what to fight, trapped by Snolls and Weapons. But that doesn't mean that we should lose our head and just pull anything. There was a distinct lack of coordination on everyone's part when we first started fighting those Weapons, and eventually we were fighting on top of where they wander about so a wipe to 20 something Weapons was near inevitable. So I believe that the leaders of the LS should have an idea of what we want to pull after the boss is down. The reason this is the "Qufim problem" is because these issues don't occur in other zones because the area is much more open after the boss is killed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't know what we want to pull after the boss is dead. In fact, in older CoP Dynamis runs the leaders had indicated the initial mobs that would be pulled after the boss was killed. This allows the puller to know what to pull and especially if they have to clear a path to where we are heading, then they will know what to pull and where to pull it to prevent wipes and the such.
As for my day yesterday, well, it was pretty standard. We did another Apollyon, some OK AF +1 items but nothing worth screenshotting, and only 3 coins per person. I would like to do another Omega soon, but we had some people not show up yesterday so the plan was put on hold. After that was Nyzul Island, still having a bit of trouble, as we just can't get a good combo of levels to make it far enough to level up. We should have won all three runs, but only ended up winning one run because one time I moved us up a floor when we didn't have enough time for it when we should have exited, and the other time, we wanted to give the last level a try to move on to a new save point but it was kill all enemies or something like that so we couldn't get it done in time. Ah, well, try again another day.
Thats it for today, Wyred is working on a neat project for FFXI bloggers. I don't know if he wants it mentioned yet, but its pretty neat and I am pretty excited to see what he does with it.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Where was I?
Ahh, yes, I post I am never going to finish. Well, I just solved that problem, I am just not going to finish it, it was too much to go over so I am just going to go over the things that I want to talk about. I had the worst weekend of my life so I didn't really play at all, so not much to go over currently. Though sometime late on Sunday night I did get my BRD to 35, which was nice, but since I didn't feel like staying up and dealing with my crappy connection I just went to bed relatively early. I like playing BRD, I am just having problems setting my font colors so that I can see when I need to debuff. I would like to get to a point where I can do this naturally but I am not always facing the mob, so it is more difficult than I anticipated.
Let us talk about something I have wanted to talk about for days, and that is the Perdu Blade. 
I am just going to go ahead and say it, and I have been rather cautious on this one, asking about on different forums and trying to get a feeling for what other people have to say, but what I knew from the start is still what I know now. This is the new best off-hand katana for NIN. Period. This is a 190 delay katana, designed for the off-hand obviously, with relatively high damage and a great +5 accuracy and +15 attack (assumed to be around there could be a little more or a little less) it appears to be unstoppable. Sadly, it is not available yet. The item is in the game, you can purchase it from the gate guards in Aht Urhgan, that is if you have the ISP for it, and you were the proper rank, which I am not, and neither is anyone else, because they have yet to release the new rank up quest or the new missions that will follow them. And this makes me pull my hair out. Sorry, spent all morning looking for new jobs, so this is all you get before lunch, but I really do have more coming. After lunch of course.
So, seeing that, what else stood out to me? Your friendly, neighborhood NIN, DRG, SAM, RNG took a peek around and this is what appealed to him. 
Now, this is quite a fine piece. It completely replaces the Harmonia's Torque for tanking on my NIN. +3 Enmity is alone to put it on that platform but additional HP and evasion can never be a bad thing. It seems this is the first piece of equipment for the neck that a NIN can wear that is actually dedicated to NIN's actually tanking. The only bad thing about it is that it is only from Einherjar, and I dont know when we will be doing that.
Here is another head turner, the Buccaneer's Belt: 
Man, this would be fantastic for my RNG. The ranged accuracy is better than my Precise Belt and the STR is always appreciated on my RNG. I doubt the -enmity will have much benefit because, a big Slug Shot is always going to pull hate, but over time it will definitely be useful. There are a bunch of other nifty gadgets that they have added to the update, but others have covered those by now.
I finally got my Scarlet Odoshi for my Myochin Kote +1, which is really nice, more and more STR for my SAM. :) 
I will pick them up tonight if I have time to do Limbus, which I am not really sure about right now.
I think that is it for today, still a ton of things going on, and I barely have time to write this, see you tomorrow.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Longest post ever. Phase 3.
Ok, because of work and other circumstances this is going to be a later post. Also, because of the update and everything involved, it is going to be the longest post I have ever done. Ok, lets start with the update. The update was in a word, mediocre. I expected more, but with the quality of the last two updates, its hard to not be let down because they did such a good job fixing a ton of things in the last update. It just felt to me like this update wasn't a full update, like there were a couple of things left off, to make sure this update met a certain window. Now, looking at it, it kind of makes sense, there is probably a very strict time frame for when the updates have to be done because there are only 2-3 more updates left before the new expansion comes out. There have only been two updates so far this year, so maybe August for the next then, November/December for the expansion. I am hoping for 2 between that time, but the storyline for ToA is wrapping up, the last end-game area has been released, the items for the 9th Assault Rank are released even if they are not yet available, as those Assaults haven't been added but they will be added shortly. So, now that I have thought about it, there is probably only one more update before the expansion is released, which will give us the last Assault Rank, and... I don't know what. So what happened in this update? Let us review. First, a couple new missions. 
Sadly, it appears that Aphmau loves Lazuf more that Taj, /comfort Taj XD. Anyway, the storyline is again awesome, but the fights... meh. Head to the Black Coffin, for another cutscene. 
And then catch a glimpse of what is in story in the future for Lazuf. Making pacts with the underworld is never a good idea, even if you are dead. 
I have tried the fight, and lost with 4 people, but four people can easily do the fight, only reason we lost is because we ran out of time with the mob at 30%. We started without kiting, but if we had started with it we would have easily won. That was a bit garbled so let me explain, we went Nin, Nin, Smn, Whm. Straight fought it OK until it summoned a bunch of duplicates, at which point a NIN got owned and we had to kite the duplicates until they despawned, then we switched over to kiting while weakened and let the SMN do the damage. Aable and I just bounced it around for a while and just kept at it, but alas time expired and we were booted, but that was fine because we had to make it to an Einherjar run, the next major part of the update.
More tomorrow, its just not getting done today. Too many meetings.
6/7 continued...
OK, so Einherhar. Its pretty rough. To start you need to buy a lamp from a new NPC in Nashmau for 180k, 
you only need one lamp per run and then you can split it between everyone going, making this event very cheap comparitively. There are usually three different kinds of mobs to start. There are two groups of mobs, and a boss. Apparently, there is also another mob named after one of Odin's pets that spawns about mid-way through and if killed weakens the boss. Our experience was not that great. Krakens and undead and we had a horribly unbalanced alliance. All NIN's and WAR's and out of 23 people, 1 RDM and 1 WHM. We were doomed to lose from the start, but I think next time we go it will be better, but honestly we are going to wait a week or two, so that information can be collected. 
This is one of the xp scrolls that drops from the mobs in the zone. I don't know if we have the people right now to head in to test things out, although it is incredibly cheap to do this event. There might be some collaboration between Lineage and Versus to do this, but we will see. Things we know so far about the event: if you pull one mob of a type, they all will link. I believe they aggro normally but we didn't check. We haven't figured out yet if kiting or sleeping is the best route, but the problem we had was that it was cramped and the BLM's were destroyed when the mobs started waking up. We tried sac pulling the boss but it didn't go over that well, getting some links and it did an AoE knock-back that destroyed almost everyone. 
Ahh, well, live and learn.
God, I am not getting a moment to myself the last couple of days. >.< Lunch Update.
I am back to say this is too big, I will have to do it over a couple of days, and considering the amount of RL stuff going on, it wont be much more than this for today.
Ok, onto the rewards for Einherjar. There are several new pieces of gear which can be purchased from the NPC that gives you the lamp to do Einherjar, and there are two new sets of abjurations that come from the zone as well as some of the old abjuration sets. So far from the zones that are open we have only seen hands and feet of the old and new abjurations.
By the way, I am not feeling good today, its been a lousy week, so if this is late, deal.
I don't have any substantial data on the new sets of abjurations yet, but I do have screenshots of the new gear that can be purchased with the points/ampules you get from winning an Einherjar zone. Lets start at the end, there two sets of rubber items and nether chains which are used to craft the new cursed gear for the new abjurations, these I believe cost 5000 ampules to purchase. Everything else costs 15000 ampules to purchase, and some of the gear is very good. This is not the order they appear on the list from the NPC but this is all of the gear. 
A very interesting piece for PUP but it is going to be rather difficult to come by. Consider the fact that it is so good for only one job I wonder why they put it here.
Its not been a good week here. No more for today. I am going home.
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