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).