Ok, this has gone too far. Everyone wants their picture on the blog. Now, some people make the blog for accomplishments, or gear, or infamy. Some people just try to get into my level up shots. At some point, all I am doing is taking picture of myself... getting MNK to 69 over, and over, and over... 
Or just taking pictures of people that are absolutely losing their mind just to get a picture on the blog. 
LOL I have signed up for Dynamis tonight, but I don't think I will be able to go, work demands are driving me out of Wednesday nights, and Sunday overlaps with Sky, and with work I am already always late for that. I like Dynamis but four hours is a lot of time to spend doing it, and it is hard with all the work I need to do now. I have clashed with a lot of the leadership of my Dynamis LS because I believe some of the rule changes over the years have not been for the good of the LS, but recently a few rule changes have been made that I approve of, including preventing people from bidding on items less than 90 minutes before a run if they had not bid on an item previously for that run. It prevents people from coming out of nowhere and bidding on stuff.
Sorry guys, I am feeling like crap and heading home early. This is it for today.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Recycling.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Evaluation.
You aren't going to get much today until after lunch, I am going to lunch with some friends so I will be leaving a bit early.
Did Assault and Salvage last night. Assault was fine, mostly for points for items for people, and Omoi finally got here Yigit Gomlek 
Salvage was fine, no drops, and limited healing so we weren't able to kill the Archaic Chariot this time, it was a bit frustrating, but we had a bad bones link on the third floor that delayed us a little bit and had to pull a couple extra skeletons to get some HP cells. The first floor was very efficient, and if we didn't need weapons and HP we would spend even less time there. I still think we kill too many Qutrubs on the first floor, so I think we may skip even more of them in the future, just killing the first room of them and sneaking to the Lamia. Then on the second floor zoning up to a skeleton room to get some HP. We are rather balanced toward melee, when I think we could go with more mages and be better off. Still, with the lack of drops I love Salvage, its just that Arrapago is the hardest zone for drops, but after Arrapago the other drops are very easy to get. I wish I could go to Salvage far more often than 2 times a week, but the other people I go with want it limited (they still need Assault point items so that makes sense), hopefully after they get more of their gear they will be ready to expand Salvage operations. I think aiming to go to Salvage 3 times a week would be what I like to do, but since I can't solo Salvage I kind of have to accept that. LOL And besides during Salvage I get a bit grumpy at times, so sorry Achi and Sholo for being snippy last night. LOL You guys do a great job and it makes everything move very smoothly, and if we had a RDM on that run last night we would have easily done the Chariot and the Astrologer too. The main problem that I have with Salvage is that it is hard for me to find a group of good, consistent people to go, ah well, I will give it some time.
In other news, I managed to not only to get no XP on my MNK, but to actually delevel, twice. It wasn't a good day for my MNK. More after lunch. Well, as I am typing this there is no internet connection, so I can't get directions to lunch so I am still stuck at work typing this up. I have to say that I was rather disappointed in my tanking last night, I sometimes get distracted by everything that is going on during the run especially when you are running it. So, I think from now on, I am just going to have Sholo pull and Omoi worry about lots so that I can focus on doing my job for the run. Everyone else is doing a very good job, so I need to be doing my very best too. I have always had a problem with distraction, I just wish I had a better way to focus. I think I am going to change my filters so that I don't see my damage, that will make it so that less lines are running through my chat log. I don't need to see it anymore, I don't really need to see my e-peen damage. Also, I was having really bad lag issues last night, even in Salvage where things usually run very smoothly, and no one else was experiencing them so it was likely just my connection. So that contributed to me taking more damage than normal on the Chariot which ended up hurting us later in the fight. Yes, I am rambling on and on, because I didn't exactly do much exciting last night and I am mentally focused on two different things, Salvage and getting a Black Belt. And that leads me back to my MNK, which had a rough day yesterday. It is back to 68 for me, but I am only 40 XP to 69, tonight I will probably be able to get to 70 which will be sweet.
There was a new RMT report by SE yesterday, but there isn't much new just that they are going after crafters and hack fishers. It's actually relatively quiet on Odin right now, I think its the quiet before the storm of the new expansion. And since I covered pretty much all of the stuff I want to cover yesterday, I don't have much more for today. See you tomorrow!
Monday, September 24, 2007
I wanna be a hot dancer.
I doubt anyone will get the reference the title of this entry is making, and no of course it isn't just to the new job, Dancer. Anyway, if you do figure it out, post a comment.
So, I was out of town for a lot of the big announcements over the weekend, but I want to do that later. First, my recap. Thursday night, we did a second tier Limbus. It was really simple and we only had to deal with two of the two hours from the Mystic Avatars. Only Ifrit and Carbuncle, and I think only one person died the whole time, just Potpressure, who with something like 117 HP normally isn't much for taking AoE damage. LOL 
Here he is scurrying any from Carbuncle to make sure he didn't die again. :) Two more runs and we will have another Ultima set, also next week we are going to do another Omega, but luckily this week we have a week off from Versus, so I will get to have some time to level my MNK a little more and maybe head out to an HNM camp or two and see if I can finagle some Black Belt items. :) Speaking of my MNK, it is now 69 
and I finally get a new hat at level 70! King has started stalking me just so that he can get into my level up pics. Its a little creepy... actually it is a lot creepy. But we have been doing well in parties and I got 68 and 69 yesterday while XPing after I got back from my trip. This is what I found interesting, I got 250 in Hand to Hand while I was still level 67, 
which is 4 levels before when I should be able to get it, and thus be able to unlock Asuran Fist. I am finally getting closer to the end-game fun of MNK! New gear, new abilities, new WS. It all starts at level 70. :) While we were XPing, a group of RMT came in an camped on top of us again. They are just horrible, all level 75, just killing Imps, and since they don't care how fast they get XP they just stay there forever and screw it up for normal people. I did get a GM to show up to try to scare them, but they already know that GM's wont do anything to them, so they just keep going. 
The lack of ability of GM's to do anything is just horrendous and really is a failure by SE in supporting the real player base. Oh well. I also got some decent XP on my MNK in Besieged, and I was surprised because I was still 67, I thought for sure I wouldn't have gotten very much XP at all, but it looked like I got the maximum amount for that Besieged. In addition to XP I got to spend some time as a frog. :) 
Now, onto the expansion information! First, Jess's observation on the temporal paradox that is going to happen. 
Now is lunch time, but here are some more pictures for you.
So what do we have here? Three examples of the new beastmen mobs including Yagudo, 
Orcs, 
and Quadavs. 
These are much more detailed than the old design more akin to the level of detail you find on NM's or beastmen in the new areas. Then we have new mobs including but not limited to Gnats, 
Pixies, 
and Sandworms. 
The former two are actually pretty small models, while the last on is huge. Its not clear whether it is an HNM or just a very large regular mob. If it is a regular mob, it may be the largest of all the regular mobs. All these pictures have been up for a couple of days now and speculation has been rampant. There are some other notes that should be presented, like the video that is now up on the POL website. This video is awesome, especially in HD. Some notes from the video that should be mentioned include the new WS that appear. There are for from what I can count. First, a RDM is doing a Tachi: Kasha like weapon skill which instead of a Lotus appears to be a Chrysthanthemum with thorned vines surrounding it. The second is a PLD doing a WS on a Pixie, this weapon skill appears to start with some kind of ball of light that is then shattered by a swing of the PLD's sword through the ball then white light shooting up from the ground. The third is a PUP that appears to charge up for a moment then follow with a straight punch that impacts with a ball of fire. Finally, there is a WAR that is using Great Axe, that when swung makes two overlapping effects, one is a triple loop that almost forms a star, then overlapping it is a blue implosion. None of these are current weapon skills. Interestingly enough prior to this is a few scenes of a Dancer using weapon skills, and I believe that the one that the Dancer uses on the Sandworm may be new. Watch the video, in HD if you can, it is astounding.
Finally, there are some other shots that are worth mentioning also. 
In this shot behind the Dancer you can see what appears to be a gate blocking a passage in Windurst, which has a striking resemblance to the entrances to Assault. That means that the new instanced areas will likely be in the past versions of the starter cities. I hope they are more expansive that the Assaults that currently exist and that they have less restrictions than Salvage has. A good old dungeon crawl would be awesome. The last thing worth mentioning is the Cavernous Maw: 
This appears to be the entrance to the past and almost identical to past variations of Atomos in previous Final Fantasy games. I hope you like all this information as much as I do. :)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Things forgotten.
I really didn't do much besides level MNK last night, which I got to 67. I had a nice picture with Piperz, Jess and Kingscissom which I forgot to upload last night. So you get nothing really today. But in the steed of more MNK talk and how I can't wait to finally get to a level with decent gear, I bring you news from Japan. This picture: 
Now let the two days of rampant speculation begin. The first obvious guess is that the job is Dancer, but honestly it is nondescript enough to be a myriad of jobs, but the prancing pose seems to give the biggest indicator that the job is indeed Dancer. We won't know for sure until late tomorrow night, which will be relatively early Saturday in the JP zone. If you hadn't guessed, this weekend is the Tokyo Game Show, which I conjecture will be when the first wave of information about the expansion will be released. Additionally, there was some information released in a couple of JP gaming magazines. The first indication is that the new avatar could be Atomos. 
Now this is one of the illustrations from Yoshitaka Amano who for FFXI has been notorious for creating vague and ambiguous drawings, but I think this time we can draw a little more from this artwork. I, at first, thought it was Castle Zvahl, there are some resemblances between the Castle and the huge thing behind the chocobo rider. The spires are of similar design and the picture is now black liek the castle instead of the previous purple/pink/brown versions in previous iterations of Final Fantasy. Here, for example is a previous rendering by Yoshitaka Amano of Atomos: 
After further inspection though and after reading other suggestions as to the nature of the beast I began to reconsider my initial conclusion and figured that Atomos could be the only possible option. But now I think both options could be right. I see no reason why an avatar like Atomos couldn't ALSO be Castle Zvahl. It would be pretty similar to the whole Alexander thing, which put some doubt in my mind, but the whole dimensional portal/Shadow Lord/Dynamis/Time travel/big nasty castle-Atomos looking thing gives some credence to it. Hopefully, I will have more answers when I get home on Monday, which leads me to telling everyone that I will be gone this weekend, so no entry tomorrow, and no real game play information on Monday, but hopefully there will be more information than there was for today because this entry is kind of short, but I am not feeling well and I really don't have much more to say.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Names.
Everyone has a name and a character and gear. This is universal, you can identify people by their name, or by their character or by their gear. We do this with friends, enemies and well known people. E-body and Ridill, Salvage gear, white boxes, relics, these are good indicators, there are bad indicators also. 
Brass caps, Leather and Lizard gear, level 10 Conquest gear. These indicate that you are RMT, and they also indicate that it is very funny when you can't handle an imp in the mire at level 70. The funny thing was watching these RMT's lose level 70 3 times while we were camping on top of them. The RMT are losing money because their gear is usually horrible for their mages but its now their melee too. This group is also just horrible, pretty obviously botting stun and the whole group was being played by two people. Anyway, I hope those people in real life die in a train wreck.
As you can also see in that picture I have gotten my MNK to 66. I am going to only level MNK until it is 75. Once I get to 67 I can readily XP in the Mire where the XP is ridiculously good for how fast you can kill things, and hopefully I will at least get to 67 today. I will be away this weekend which is going to suck, because I was really looking forward to this weekends events, Assault, Sky, 3 or 4 Jailers of Fortitude, then Salvage, all missed. >.< Anyway, I would like to get some Dune Boots soon, so that will mean some time in Quicksand Caves. I am not exactly clear on the spawn conditions for Sabotender Bailarina so I will just be killing some cactuars in the near future. MNK is very plain jane right now, with little gear swapping and little differences between the levels, the next update in ability, gear or WS will not be until 70 and then the good bulk of it will not be until 71. Then there is a ton of difference from there to 75. Now is also a good time for me to start focusing on Black Belt items, including doing some KSNMs like Horns of War and heading to HNM camps to see if any of the LS's are willing to let me lot on the items.
More names. Lets talk about gear defining a name next. Jess and Blaize, both with new gear, and both are for their feet. Jess got Homam feet from our Omega. 
Blaize got Skadi feet from Salvage. 
I am proud of the accomplishments of my friends. :)
Finally, some people are not defined by their gear or their name or some other material thing, instead then are defined by something different, something more abstract, something... cute. :) 
Anyway, I think thats it for today. Yesterday was rather mundane, Sky and a very unlucky Salvage run. Still got a level 15 WHM item for Omoi, which is a drop from the gears on the fifth floor so they are nice to have but not that important in the grand scheme of things. I can't wait until my MNK is 75 and I can take that to Salvage.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Close call.
Instead of a long rambling diatribe with little relevance and even less coherence, lets instead focus today on in game happenings. Last night we did an Omega, and I have to admit it was ugly. We were a little light on healing and we tried out a semi-new strategy that worked to strain that mp, so we had to run all the way to the end to get the win, but the win we did get. 
I, sadly, wasn't able to get a screen shot of Jess who got Omega's Tail for the Homam feet, or Sholo who got Omega's Hind Leg for Homam Legs, but I did get a shot of Tco's new Homam Body! 
We have gotten 2 two Homam bodies in about 6 Omega's, but I hope more drop soon for those that need them. We have a good number of THF, DRG, DRK, PLD and BLU that need the gear so the more often that get to do Omega the better.
In other news, I managed to get 65 on MNK. 
I did part of this soloish before Limbus on Puks (I got something like 615 on one of them) when a nice string of mobs came strolling through. 
At first I saw several Scout Puks coming at me, and I thought to myself, "OH MY GOD! THOSE SHOULDN'T LINK!" and then I realized that I was fine and went back to killing a few of the Puks, then after Limbus I was in a 65-67 party when I was still 64 but I was doing OK damage when I wasn't in a constant start of not being able to WS from Abrasive Tantra. I have heard several people suggest that it is a elemental based ability, because some summons resist it greatly, which means that it is based on some kind of skill and being level 64 in the mire my defensive skill had to be much lower than their offensive skill, and I was left in a state of constantly punching the mob, which actually isn't that bad for a MNK, but it was annoying when almost every time I was using my string of MNK buffs, which actually is pretty important to me and let me explain that after going to grab my lunch.
Ok, now the way that I use my buffs on MNK is to use them all at one time. Now, people might think that is inefficient but I do it for a particular reason, and that is that I usually am pretty bad at noticing when I should put up buffs when I am XPing because I am usually much more engaged in looking at the HP of the current mob, looking for the next mob and what other people are doing. So to fix this with my other jobs, I just put the buffs in between my equipment switch for WS and the WS macros, which means that I will always put up my buffs before the WS if they are up. The problem with MNK is that there are more buffs than would be reasonable to use between the equipment switch and the WS macro, so instead I use Counterstance as the way to know when my buffs are ready again. When Counterstance goes down, I use all of my buffs again, which means that I am using them pretty efficiently. The problem comes when I am hit with Amnesia in the middle of doing my buffs, which totally screws up my buff cycle. Ahh well, the best laid plans... anyway, if anyone has a better suggestion for how to do these buffs I would love to here them. Right now I have all of these buffs on independent macros, but I am thinking that I might put them together into offensive and defensive macros. Offensive would put up Focus and Berserk while Defensive would put up Counterstance and Dodge. Once I get to a level where I am going to be doing enough damage to pull hate consistantly and I have to use sub NIN all the time the Offensive macro wont matter as much, but I have noticed that when you use a macro on an ability that isn't up it can prevent you from starting a new macro, so I made cancel the extra macro lines on Berserk with an extra "/" on the wait and Berserk line. Once I get a chance to burn on my MNK I will put some more thought into it.
If you remember from Monday and my little encounter with the normal players XPing with those RMT's, well here is another one of them in a normal party, proving that they are just a jerkbone that didn't care about what they were doing and was willing to XP with RMT. 
I hate people like that, they are the kind of people that buy gil and the kind of people that ruin the game because they don't care about how their actions effect other people. You can see these kind of people all the time in real life too (and to me these are the kind of no-brained people that ruin other people's real lives also), and they just suck down my will to live at times.
Second update, still more MNK talk to come.
Now I have said that MNK is a rather easy job to equip and I have yet to do a review of my MNK gear as it stands right now. Lets just say that its pretty standard right now, with very little variation between TP build and WS equipment sets. Here is the run down:
Main: Tactician Magician Hooks +1 (I would love Cross Counters, and I may consider getting them for end-game even with other options because of the solo use they will have.)
Ranged: Tiphia Sting
Head: Emperor Hairpin
Neck: Chivalrous Chain
Earring1: Mermaids Earring
Earring2: Coral Earring
Body: Scorpion Harness
Hands: Ochiudo's Kote
Ring1: Ulthalam's Ring
Ring2: Rajas Ring (WS: Sniper's Ring)
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Brown Belt (WS: Life Belt)
Legs: Temple Hose
Feet: Windurstian Kyahan
There are some gimpy things in there, like the head, legs and feet, but honestly what better is there for MNK for head and legs? For feet yes there are better, like Kung-Fu Shoes, etc., but I really can't be bothered to get items for a job that I am leveling that aren't very cheap or very useful. I don't level jobs like other people. I can't stand around with my flag up and worry about how I parse at level 65. I am always looking forward, and considering what comes next and what I will need for end-game. Lets look at the progression for gear for each of those slots.
Main: Tactician Magician's Hooks +1 >> Wagh Baghnakhs >> Destroyers. Alternatives that I don't have and probably wont get any time soon are Avengers and Hades Santi. Avengers because we probably wont be doing another Bomb Queen run any time soon, and Hades Santi because the cost is prohibitive.
Ranged: Tiphia Sting, no change.
Head: Emperor Hairpin >> Optical Hat >> Walahra Turban. Alternatives are much more expansive for the head slot but also underwhelming, including Pahluwan Qalansuwa, Panther Mask (and it looks cool!), Rasetsu Jinpachi, and Brigand's Mask. For WS's I will use Shura Zunari Kabuto when I can equip it.
Neck: Chivalrous Chain for TP and also for WS until Soil Gorget.
Earrings: Merman's and Coral seem fine. I might also use Minuet for the Accuracy.
Body: Scorpion Harness >> Pahluwan Khazagand >> Shura Togi than at 75 Kirin's Osode becomes an option depending on the event.
Hands: Ochiudo's Kote >> Melee Gloves which I don't have yet, but I am start Dynamis again so I might be able to get them.
Ring1: Ulthalam's Ring
Ring2: Rajas Ring (WS: Sniper's Ring)
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Brown Belt (WS: Life Belt)
Legs: Temple Hose >> Pahluwan Seraweels >> Shura Haidate >> Byakko's Haidate, with Shura Haidate for WS.
Feet: Windurstian Kyahan >> Dune Boots and then maybe Fuma Sune-ate depending on the situation. For WS the discussion is more difficult because there are so few options, I guess I could get a pair of Pahluwan Crackows for the Accuracy or maybe some Rasetsu Sune-Ate for the Attack. Some Denali Gamashes would be great but with my focus on Assault and Salvage at this point I don't think Nyzul Isle is much of an option.
Now of course if we could ever get something to drop from Salvage that would change up some of the ideas that I have for TP and WS options but I am not going to worry about that until it happens.
That really is it for today, see you tomorrow.
Monday, September 17, 2007
A piece of the action.
Everyone wants their piece of the action. They want to be involved on get on the bandwagon. They want their picture on the blog. They want to be able to Cntl+F to find their name. But what is worthy to get on the blog? Worthy to be put on the blog is someone that would have reminded me today to grab my credit card which I left on my desk causing to me to not be able to get breakfast. I was looking forward to fine biscuits and hash browns, these are the things that fill me until lunch or even dinner. These small moments of joyful bliss provide me with more joy than any amount of typing up the accomplishments of others. Help me, help you. This is hunger rambling at this point. The divine warbling of the famished blogger. How can I type about what has happened, what people have gotten, where we are going and where we have been if I am denied succulent biscuits topped with eggs, cheese and sausage? In the persistent pursuit of perennial participation in the posting of prodigious pictures some fall victim to a loss of focus on the important, the needs, not the wants. Food for my belly.
Yeah...
Anyway, I got some things from this weekend, but I was indeed utter crushed this morning when I wasn't able to get food because I left my god damn credit card at home. Frustration. I had to go out of town this weekend, but I did make some events. My MNK is still not 64 but it is still doing some decent damage with Dragon Kick. 
This is the hardest part for me, this is the time when you can't get more than a level a day because parties generally can't kill fast enough to get more than 10k an hour, and you now need 20K+ to level. At least at level 65 I will get my last Hand-to-hand merit but then its just forcing my way to 71. The only thing so far that I don't like about MNK is the limitation in gear. Don't get me wrong, MNK has some very good gear available at end-game but there is very little variation in styles. With NIN and WAR and even DRG and SAM there are wide variations in style. My NIN has many different sets of gear depending on the situation, while the only real difference I can see for end-game MNK is whether I am going to use Kirin's Osode or Shura Togi. I suppose there is some variation for solo Counter tanking but outside of the that, its not much. Doesn't mean that I don't want to level my MNK, especially because of our success in Salvage last night. One of the hardest things I have noticed on MNK is getting guard skill ups, I am already level 64 with a good amount of soloing and being powerleveled so that I can get guard skill ups and this was my best skill up session yet: 
Maybe I need to take more Pecking Flurries to the face. The hardest thing about Guard skill ups is that they check after everything else, including but not limited to counters and shadows. This on top of really low rate of Guard skill ups makes even breaking 100 pretty difficult. I think that once MNK is done, I will spend some time on NIN and MNK trying to skill up Parrying and Guard. I will just have to find mobs that of the same relative level as my skill. Some nice crabs or colibri should help greatly. But who am I kidding, once I have leveled a job to 75 and gotten a few merits on it, its onto another job to 75. Sometimes, I am very good at knowing my own weaknesses.
In a reference to my earlier statement about my different set ups for different jobs, I have finally completed my evasion set up for my NIN to my satisfaction, because last night, after a long time Mother Globe finally dropped the Shiranui and I won the lot. 
In addition to that I finally got 75 coins for my Boxer's Mantle. These were the last two pieces that I really wanted for my Evasion set up, which I got to test out in Salvage last night. 
Salvage is going better and better since we changed how we deal with tanks getting cells. This makes things so much easier and more productive, letting us kill more mobs for more cells faster. The problem I am still having is that I am a bit obsessed with getting as many magic cells as possible on the first floor. For the next run on Tuesday night I am going to set a hard limit of 30 minutes on the first floor. We will clear the northwest wing and as much of the northeast wing as we can but once that first attack food runs out, we will be zoning up immediately. The point is that I think we can gradually increase our capabilities as we move up the zone, rather than worrying about what we need before zoning up. Having to rely on the Bhoots on the third floor to get magic eased up a lot of my concerns and also kind of expanded my understanding as we moved up the floors. I feel a lot better about moving up earlier now. Killing the Archaic Chariot last night was miles easier than it was last time. No deaths, and this is were I wanted to mention the greatness of MNK as a tank for Salvage. Normally, we have Borin and I as the tanks for run with Rygar are more of a DD, but last night Rygar was fantastic when we he was needed to tank. In fact, too good maybe, in that after about 50% on the Archaic Chariot I was struggling to keep hate off of Rygar. Now Rygar is a well built MNK to say the least, but if that were balanced we would be doing very well for tanking this. We still have not seen a single piece of 35 gear drop, but with the ability to kill the Archaic Rampart regularly and the increase of runs to twice a week should net us something, at least something in the coming weeks.
In the few spare moments that I had yesterday, I managed to complete the first part of the Rank 10 quest, which involved a bit of Qiqirn searching. 
This quest was a little more difficult than I anticipated. LOL I am not great at these kind of puzzles. I am going to try to get Rank 10 today maybe, either way it doesn't matter too much. Just need to finish up Lebros Supplies then some Rank 8's then all the Rank 9's and 10's. I am getting close to 13k+ in almost all of the Assault areas and I next to nothing to actual get points instead of clears. At some point, some point soon, we are going to have a bunch of people at Rank 10 and we will be able to just do some of the easier high level ones for more points for Salvage. :) The new Rank 10 assault give you 1500 AP no matter how many people go, so if you get three successful clears you get enough AP to do three Salvage runs. :)
Finally, Iceblazek has been wanting to get on the blog for a long time. He finally got his Assassin Armlets, so here is his chance! TH4 for him! 
Thats it for today, see you tomorrow.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.
So, I feel bad. I feel like I have cheapened the blog. Besides the obvious issue with having a pic of Pidion to open this post, I feel that using a lame 80's rock opera as the title pic is questionable at best. It seemed all so brilliant when I was posting the pictures. A picture of a character stuck in a weird pose, one that was not entirely dissimilar from someone doing "the Robot" or some alternative break dance move. And then I realized that it is all so cliché and that is the last thing I want my blog to fall into... the blog cliché. The blog cliché is my greatest fear, that I will fall into a spiral of trite quotes coupled with obscure cultural references, this is when my blog will become nothing more than words. I mean its not really that easy to write a blog entry everyday. I guess I never really thought about it but this blog is like a daily diary entry, and I like that. I like thinking about what I do, what I want to do, and what I have done. Most importantly, I try not to just regurgitate what happened the day previously, and instead provide some perspective for the events that occur in game. The day that my blog becomes a cliché, when it is nothing more than an attempt to get hits to pay the rent, at that point I will stop writing the blog and drink poison potions in the middle of Lower Jeuno. So, let the title and picture of Pidion in an admittedly funny position serve as a reminder to you and to myself to never let myself replace content with fluff even if it means that I need to get into a rut and just present you my boring day to day activities. Just say no to clichés! ARGH! The irony.
So yesterday was eventful, a Kirin that dropped an Osode and a N. Body. The Osode went to Elfaria and the N. Body went to Pb. Here is Pb in all his midget glory: 
It was a pretty standard Kirin but fighting it on Windsday is a bit annoying for straight tanking. The key to straight tanking Kirin is high HP, high Enmity and Wind damage reduction and resistance. The problem is that most of the time those trade off, so I just have to hope to get my Wind resist high enough to not get one shotted or two shotted. On almost any day that is very easy to do, except for Windsday. I can't wait to get my Lieutenant's Sash and Lieutenant's Cape, the only problem with them is that I end up giving up a good bit of my +enmity gear for survivability. Luckily, with the two handed update we have more of our DD's coming as THF sub because building TP is not difficult at all. With this assistance for holding hate, I am looking at some good damage reduction and HP gains. I will probably make some macros just for kiting and tanking Kirin. Kirin is interesting because several of his moves do a very specific amount of damage, like Heat Breath and others, and I can see the immediate effect of using these items. Not to mention the boost in HP and also MP for subbing DRK. Now, I think I approach /DRK differently than most because of the nature of the fights that I use it for, which are generally not as long as others. I generally prefer to have a nice MP buffer than most would give up for enmity. This confuses me a bit because the reason that people use /DRK is because it is very easy to quickly build up a large amount of hate, and if this is the case there is less need to use additional enmity gear.
After Kirin, we did a pro-bono Omega run for Shake and Bake. They needed some with defeating Omega, and Versus was glad to help. :) The run went really smoothly and quickly, and we ended up with two Omega hind legs, which netted Vespasian and Thazienne are new set of Homam Legs each! I am really glad that after the struggles they have had that we were able to help them beat Omega. It made me feel really good to be able to help them. I really wanted to get pictures of Kitty and Vesp in their new pants but I got a party very quickly on my MNK. The party was actually pretty darn good, I went from just over 63 to just over 64. 
Our silly PLD decide to step right in front of my level up beauty shot! ; ; I am liking my MNK again, and honestly I can't wait until I can start soloing mobs in the Aht Urhgan areas, and it would be nice to finally get to a level where I can use some of my end-game stuff. LOL Hopefully tonight I can get to 65 and another Subtle Blow trait. :) Maybe 66 or 67 by the end of this weekend.
On a total side note, we were xping near another party last night, with what appeared to be half RMT and half normal players. 
The obvious RMT's are Looksky, Luckaway and Redwife, the others actually appeared to be real players. Now, being the person that I am I had to mention it. 
Also, being the person that I am I had to be my subtle-jerk-self to anyone that, after being told that they are XPing with people that are obviously RMT, would continue to stay and XP for some time with those self same RMT. And the excuses are just horrible. Apparently, getting XP is now more important than anything else in the game and thus it is justifiable to do anything to get that XP. Maybe this is what the RMT are doing now, offering leveling services for incompetent players? Its like one of those fake safaris where they supply you the animals to hunt in a pre-planned sick and perverse adventure to make up for the complete lack of feeling of personal worth. I hope that his "(g)ood rep" is preserved in this blog entry for time infinitum.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
After the beginning.
I like research. I like understanding and taking the time to understand the nature of any activity I do. This may be why I have spend a large amount of my academic and professional career focused on research or it may be that my focus in my academic and professional career has led me to a love of research. Either way, I love delving into the minutiae of anything that I decide to become involved with, and this usually leads me down the road of obsessing over everything I decided to do, for good or ill. Sometimes, I can recognize when I am in over my theoretical head, for example, I have a rudimentary knowledge of damage calculations, but I could not simply look at a series of damage indicators and find the potential pDIF of the weapon. I am glad that other people have determined the formulas already and I can just plug in what I need to know to come up with an answer. Honestly, I don't know how people can not become obsessed with these numbers and it may explain why I see so many people that are strangely equipped. I mean, I know that not everyone else wants to understand formulas or even try to crunch the numbers, but how can they not follow the advice of those that do. I see people running around in gear that I would be embarrassed to wear, not just for other people to see me but for my own pride. The reality of all this is that I probably take things far too seriously, but I am also obsessed, I just think that the balance of people would want to know something about what they are doing. I mean even when I was leveling my DRG, I knew at some point I wanted to get better gear and end-game gear even when I knew that the selection for DRG was limited.
Anyway, I think my point is that the more that people pay attention to the game the more they get obsessed and obsessed players are usually good players (unless they are intentionally lasy, but if they were then they wouldn't really be obsessed anymore just jaded) but they also lose focus and get angry and grumpy a lot too, if a normal person who is not as obsessed as they are doesn't have the same goals and desires. While the normal player may think that the obsessed player is, well, obsessed and needs to take a step back. Either way, there is a gap in understanding. Well, that is the game as it is in life.
So, I have been considering how we are going to approach Kirin today after the update to the two-handers and I think it will almost definitely improve our kill time. I think that most two-handers should consider going /THF and just eating Sushi and there will be little risk that they won't be able to build TP normally. The first mini-god might be a little more difficult because they wont have TP stored up for the initial skillchain but with the increase in damage output and the general weakness of the mini's it shouldn't be much of a concern. I am hoping that we will be able to down Kirin in under 45 minutes even without skillchains. With Iz gone, we should be looking at 1 if not 2 W. Legs dropping, honestly, if 2 W. Legs drop I would even consider logging him in so that we could get them. LOL I would seriously cry if two legs dropped tonight even if it would be a very good thing. :)
I think I finally have a little bit of support for doing another Salvage run on Tuesday nights after Sky, hehehe. This is going to just be another farming Arrapago run, and I might start using Sunday as our bigger day and starting to do Bhaflau to expand our operations. Well, all I know right now is that Borin, Omoi and I are in for the run. LOL I got home last night and not very many people were on, so I still need to check with the others, but I am definitely not going to require people to come on this run, but after the last run, I am so much more confident in our ability to farm Arrapago even with fewer people. Also, learning to do a run with fewer people will make the larger run even more effective. Achi has told me that Exolo should be back on relatively soon because he finally got his internet at school all set up. Ultimately, I just think that with the incredibly low drop rates in Arrapago we will need to farm it as much as possible.
Working toward improving our Salvage run, I have been continuing to level my MNK, and after some soloing with help from Omoi, 
then I got a party with a pretty bad set up that resulted in one of our two WHM's dying on the 5th mob, then back to soloing for a bit and finally a decent party that was a little too high for the area that we were xping in so the leveling went pretty slow. On top of that the BLM leader of the party feel asleep about halfway through and the JP RDM decided they had to leave and immidiately DC in the middle of a fight, so the last three mobs we had to do with 4 people, but all turned out well and I got 63 on my MNK. 
Lately it has been near impossible to find a tank or healer after about 6PM EST. Does no one do late night XP sessions anymore? ; ; Ailee and I were waiting around almost an hour and we got exactly zero people to join a party. :( I think I am going to try again Friday night after Assault, but that may be all I get for the weekend because I will be gone all Saturday into Sunday morning.
Thats it for today, I liked this blog, I didn't have much to go over but I got a little theory/personal philosophy in there and I think that is what I am best at writing in general. To close, this is what you get from Omoi and her obsession with her alter ego. 
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Drama? Note late addition, RE: Drama on the internet.
Some people love it, and some people even live it, and I just don't get it. The internet is a tool of the weak. It allows people to say things that they think that they would never say in real life because they are afraid of repercussions. Honestly, its despicable. How people could lie, cheat and steal just for their own enjoyment, ruin the fun of others, tweak up any little chance they get because they revel in the discomfort and upset of others. It makes me sad at times, it really does. And as long as their friends are laughing along with them, it doesn't matter if its right or wrong. Too many people have lost touch with reality and morals, the anonymity of the internet has created the perfect laissez-faire world, not just in economics, but in moral and social bindings. Many good people try to rebind those moorings, but just like a laissez-faire world those that wish not to participate are rewarded rather than punished. Until such time as the greater number punish those that break from those bindings we will be trapped in an internet world were the drama queens will win.
What is the best way to beat a drama queen? Don't particiapte. I just don't understand in such a laissez-faire world where we are all out for ourselves how people could be so interested in other people's business, and how people derive such pleasure in screwing over other people intentionally without any other form of gain.
I do need to remember that I am older than a good 90% of the games population, and this is the way that children tend to act. Still, it saddens me that our society has failed in bringing up several generations of children. Mine included. The worst part is that the more reasonable you are about things that other people consider drama, the more they will despise you for attempt to end their drama. Often times, being right plants you firmly in Camp Unwelcome, because for most drama is more important than everything else, no matter how bad that makes people. The mob rules with an iron fist. Its a sad, immature cycle.
It should be noted that a more innocuous parallel to the drama queen exists, the attention whore. This is a person that demands, with increasing ferocity to be featured for all to see, more specifically in this blog. LOL This person is Iceblazek. And today he is mentioned. :) I believe that right now Bigmak is leveling his WHM for him. He came with us on the very successful Salvage run. And thus the entirety of the rest of this post is dedicated to him. :)
Yesterday was a simple Sky run, good drops from Gods, but we are trying to get a couple Diorites to drop so that on Sunday we can do a good number of Byakko's, but only managed one with parties in Ullikummi's room and in the Celestial Nexus, but we were able to quickly move to get Faust and MG on a crowded sky day. After Sky, Izman, Hellz, Omoi and I did the Antlion ENM again and got some pretty meh drops. 
I got to keep the Harmonia's Torque because I can use it on my NIN for tanking. 
Afterward, Izman decided to do a stripe tease. 
Iz is going to be gone for a couple of days to weeks, and he will be missed by everyone in Versus. Get back as soon as you can Iz. :) So what if I am gay for Izman? SO WHAT? ; ;
Anyway, thats it for today, the rant was a bit draining and I can't really emphasize exactly how much people like that annoy me. They are close to RMT in my level of disgust. Morality is dead. It is a sad world.
Internet debates:
[14:14] ringthreetheicp: The internet needs impartial judging like debate, or at least semi-impartial like in debate. If you are having an internet debate after a certain number of pages an intelligent person from another forum will come in judge the debate declare a winner and the losers have to STFU.
[14:15] mdmoks1: lol
[14:15] mdmoks1: i think it just needs a filter
[14:15] mdmoks1: a stupid filter
[14:15] mdmoks1: im sorry, youre too dumb for the internet
[14:15] ringthreetheicp: That would work too.
[14:16] ringthreetheicp: Congratulations you just made the blog.
[14:16] mdmoks1: please sit extremely close to something radioactive for the next few years, thxbye
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Too early?
My MNK is level 62 and I have Dragon Kick. 
Thats three levels before I am supposed to have it. I can already make a Light Skillchain. I like this, but I have to wonder if its a little early. Its funny because after I got to 225 skill in Hand-to-hand I actually had to zone to get the game to register that I had Dragon Kick and was then able to use it. Dragon Kick is generally better than Howling Fist, so I plan on using that and Raging Fists depending on the mob and my accuracy. I still feel that I can't get my MNK to 75 fast enough, now that I feel like we have begun to get Arrapago Remnants down with a good plan and pattern, I would like to speed our progression through the first two levels. Also, I can see what people like MNK's so much for tanking things in Salvage. The extra HP and the consistant damage makes for a very good tank. Setting initial hate has to suck, but with the cells we are able to get from the floors on the way up make it viable, but they make NIN just as viable though. And since our NIN's are good tanks there really isn't a reason to worry to much about MNK vs. NIN except for the extra damage and speed a MNK helps with on the first floors. You have to adapt your runs to the jobs you have available, and I think we have finally found a very nice balance for our runs. In the past, we have tried to spread out cells so that we could do more damage on the first two floors but that honestly just slowed us down, now we are equipping both of the tanks as fast as possible, this cuts down on healing, resting and allows us to focus on damage. Once we changed to that set up our runs have become much more smooth, and thus our success. Borin is usually the main tank on our runs and I pull then back up tank when I can/need to. I think that I may have Sholo pull on future runs, and that will allow me to focus further on damage, and would make it easier to distribute cells, which itself is getting easier because people know the order in which they are distributed, but we are still being flexible on this. I am just pleased after about a month of frustration on how well we are doing. Something that I think is getting a bit annoying about Salvage is that because of the nature of many of the attacks, it is more important than anything else to keep the amount of TP the mob is receiving as low as possible. This is kind of annoying because it ends up limiting the amount of people we can have on a mob and extending the times of non-Qiqirn NM fights. This is probably one of the reasons that MNK is so good, as they can pump out incredible amounts of damage all with relatively low TP gain by the mob and they have the ability to take a hit or two.
Enough rambling about Salvage, but I do want to say that I really like the options I have for doing things in the game right now. Honestly, the only thing that I don't do or couldn't do if I wanted to is Kings. Now, I would like to do Kings, don't get me wrong, but I am a realist about my time, and it just doesn't seem like a reasonable time investment for the rewards for me. I would like to start doing a little bit of Dynamis again, I kind of miss it, but my time has been so limited lately that it just hasn't been possible.
In conjunction with Salvage is our focus on Assault, which is going swimmingly, lately the real concern has been getting Apkallu Seizure done, and that has really turned around. On our first two runs, we got a total of one Apkallu to the Professor per run, but on the last run we got five, this turns this run from a crappy points run to one with real potential. 1200 for five Apkallu with four people. I know that Izman started his Rank 7 level up mission and I believe that Rygar should have it unlocked too. Borin missed the run last night ; ; but should be close to Rank 6 soon. The higher everyone goes the better we all are off because we can do the higher rank missions that have better potential for reward. We will need to go back and do Lebros Supplies so that we can get everyone a complete in all of the missions, and the Captain rank. I also got the Rank 10 level up quest last night, but I didn't attempt it. 
I will probably do that today sometime.
Today, my goal is to do well in Sky, get some Diorite, then maybe level my MNK. Other ideas have been tossed about, but those are my main goals. I would be well served to complete those goals.
This is yesterday, now about the update. (Late lunch post here, if you don't like how late the posts are then you can come do my work and I will write the blog! LOL)
Ok, now they have fixed the update with a new update and the very initial findings are that SAM/WAR is the big winner, now being able to keep up with WAR/NIN. I have yet to see how this all works out between jobs and such, but the change to the damage calculation has been larger than just for 2 handers. It appears that Duel Wielders are now able to hit harder than before the old update. These are my other conclusions: Initially, there appears some real balance between the jobs now with the way damage is done. Favoring better geared players over certain job types or certain weapon set-ups. Second, MNK's after all of their whining appear to have actually gotten a boost because the new pDIF cap is higher than it was before the original update. I mentioned that the update was a mistake but all I got from some people were more tears (and horrible justifications for how buffing a DRG's wyvern could create a balance between dual wielders and 2 handers in the old systems, or how MNK's had a divine right to XP parties, because that is where they excel and everyone else was just filler for MNK's when you couldn't find one). It appears that this is the case for dual wielders also, but the caps and the formula are still being worked out by those with better understanding for algebra than me. Finally, this raising of the pDIF cap appears to have helped all jobs in increasing the higher tiers of damage they can achieve. So an unequal but equalizing buff for all (except maybe RNG, we will see).
Monday, September 10, 2007
Blog-worthy; for better or for worse.
Argh, lost this blog entry after working on it for hours, and how I have 43 minutes to redo the whole thing.
It was an awesome post too. It was about what it takes to get on the blog, good and bad. I even made fun of Hellz. >.< ARGH! Ahh, well, let me see what I can get done, then I will finish the rest tomorrow. Ok, first, Sholo, who has made the blog for three separate things today. The first two, are not things to be proud of. :) Supposedly there is this NM in Sly that spawns from the Detectors you can find there. This NM, some call it Steam Cleaner, is kind of hard to pop when you kill the Detectors. 
It only gets better for us, and worse for Sholo, because apparently someone forgot to inform him that you can't get XP from a mob that has been CFH'd. 
Now here is where losing your post really sucks because I had a nice, eloquent monologue about how Sholo is awesome but sometimes people make mistakes, and blah, blah, blah, Hellz mockery, blah, blah, blah, and on to his accomplishment for this weekend. Sholo got a X's Knife! 
This knife is the best knife for Dual Wielding outside of a Mandau. Pared with the Blau Dolch, this combo has gotten Sholo some of his highest WS's on THF. Too bad for Achikasama, as she was quite shocked that this new knife was going to replace the Sirocco Kukri that she spent so much time camping with Sholo. LOL
In general, this weekend had much the same flow as Sholo's ups and downs, laughable downs, and very good highs. Another high that I would like to mention is Rhyis, who I finally saw since he got his Duelist Chapeau after a very long time, and missing several drops just because of bad luck. 
Congratulations to Rhyis and his new awesome hat, and good bye to all of those points that he spent! LOL
The Versus event this weekend was a Gration run where everyone except for Pb who had to leave early, ended up with a Tatami Shield. The first couple of runs were not fruitful, but after a while it turned around. 
Izman even made a bunch of extra shields for people so they could spawn and get a Tatami Shield. Sadly, Izman himself had to go out that day so Omoikitte had to bring him out to Tavnazia, and as she said, he was all fuzzy. LOL 
Well, the Tatami Shields were nice for everyone, and I really hope that people really use them instead of just selling them. 
On the way out to Gration I saw an excellent night sky shot and I just thought it would be great for the blog. 
Only two other really important things to go over in this rushed entry. First is Salvage, which went swimmingly, and I think our balanced set up was definitely part of it. We still didn't get any level 35 drops though, but everyone was impressed with how well the run went and we killed the Archaic Chariot for the first time on a run. I think we are going to focus more on bringing a few more mages for the later floors than worrying about more melee for the first couple of floors. 
Now if something would just drop we would be doing great. LOL Arrapago is the bane of my existance, once we get one drop we will then shift over to Bhaflau Remnants to fight the boss there, then just fill in the missing pieces with level 15 gear.
Finally, last night dispite Sholo CFHing our XP mobs, I managed to get 62 on MNK, and its now a race to determine if Hellz or I will be the first to 75. I think Hellz is now 73. LOL 
And sadly for Hellz, he doesn't have a blog for which he can retort, but he wishes that he did. 
The funny thing is that Hellz's comment was in response to something that I did that was blog worthy in a bad way. Writing a blog has its privileges.
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
Teabags and KY Jelly
The Bloggaru!
