That image you see is the kill shot from a DRG/SAM on Armored Chariot on a six-man Arrapago Remnants run. The party set up was MNK, DRG, THF, RDM, WHM, BRD. Hehehe, I got to co-tank on DRG/SAM for an Arrapago Remnants run, and we killed every NM except for the Bhoot/Soulflayer, that includes the 2 QQTH on the sixth floor. I have to admit that I didn't know if we could have spawned the QQTH when we zoned up but we were definitely going to try. And I wasn't timing but I don't even think we got that close. I think there is a simple reason behind this, and that is a DRG that is going all out can do amazing damage in Salvage and in general. Things have changed for DRG now, and I think that they are now a top-tier DD and when I say top-tier I don't mean they are on par with the other top DD jobs, I am saying that they are on the top-tier. I think that SAM is probably the strongest straight DD in the game right now, but right after then is DRG. Of course people will disagree, but I think this has to do with over-long hubris that some jobs have had because DRG was so weak for so long. Omoikitte is very well merited, but definitely does not have a complete DD set-up for her DRG yet because of her natural tendency to pass on literally every piece of gear that comes our way. She only has one piece of Homam, still TP's in Barone pants and an Assault Jerkin, and even with this I was still able to co-tank the run and co-tank the boss even with a messy pull in which the BRD and RDM both accidentally died. I do think that hate was mostly on our MNK for at least some part of the run because I did Super Jump to save my ass once. I did end up dying twice on the run, the first time was my fault because on the third floor QQTH I used Hasso and switched over to Seigan too slowly and then only found out that my Third Eye macro had a problem right before I was Triple Attacked to death. The second death was just because I was Fazed on the fifth floor QQA and then got to eat a nice Blizzard 4 right before the QQA died. Even with these deaths we still ran the whole zone and all the NM's and we didn't even get one head gear cell. :)
So, I think it may be time to reevaluate DRG completely. Attack traits, Accuracy traits, 6 hit build or at least able to cheat to a 6 hit build, much better equipment recently, evasion and defense down procs. I am not saying that DRG will win out in every case, but I am saying that its versatility, quick TP gain and overall damage output place it much higher than it once was and it is even taking me by surprise. I had no idea that DRG would be capable of doing so well, but it does. And there you have it.
In other Salvage notes, I don't think that we will be going into Silver Sea Remnants on Windsday or Iceday again. I don't know what was up with the zone but all of the Fomor seemed to be hitting harder but more importantly then had massive TP regain of some kind. I don't know if it had to do with going in on Windsday (I doubt) or the fact that we were fighting them on Iceday (more likely) but I suspect that the Fomor in the Aht Urhgan areas have the same effects on Iceday as the fire-based Eruca have on Firesday or the Puks have on Windsday. It is a land that is very much dictated by the weather. Well, the run was ok, but we were taking tons of damage and the Fomor were using TP moves on the pull, which is problematic for pulling in general. With Rakuen, we did a 6 man SSR run for which I got to go on Omoi as WHM. I don't think I have let anyone die yet while going as Omoi, so I hope I am doing ok. 
We got Skadi 35 hands to drop from that run which were pretty amazingly almost free lot for them, we also got to do Long-Armed Chariot with 6 people which was pretty silly when it managed to charm everyone and we just sat there and stared at it for a while. Also, I got charmed pretty early in one of its Brainjacks and got to chase around Blaize for a while. 
Finally, on our most recent Zhayolm run, we finally got a frog to drop something nice! Ares's 35 feet, which was won by Jess, again. :) Jess has been winning quite a few lots on gear from Salvage lately so sadly I am going to have to move him to the back of the line for gear as there are others the have been waiting just as long or longer and come to every run. But for now, Jess gets a huge congrats on his new Demios's Leggings! 
I finally got to put some time into leveling WHM even though it made Izman want to stab me! :) 
Up to 55 and a little less than half way to 56, but I am at that stupid wall again where I can't go any farther because my BLM is gimp and I can't level SCH until Omoi gets back. I think the next time I get out the BLM it will be to get it to 37 and never look back, then I will start leveling RDM to 37 around the same time that I am going to be leveling SCH with Izman and Omoi. BRD has to fit in there somewhere but I have hope that my WHM will be able to get to 75 fast enough that my own internal pressure to level it more quickly over takes me. As for the reason that Izman wanted to stab me? Well, I got that nice party invite right as I was finally starting my WHM AF quests and he was going to help me with it. 
So as he got all ready to do so, I ditched him. Yeah, I probably deserve any face stabbing that I get. ^.^
Well, last night a couple of us got together to get Ninjafox some panties from the Sacrarium. He had a whole list of panties that he wanted and we did manage to get his THF ones which were the highest priority, and then we got another set or two, but I don't remember exactly which ones they were. While we were doing this Iz got a Fomor Codex from a Taurus and we popped Balor in hopes of getting Skur a Swift Belt because he previous luck on the drop was pretty bad. 
And we finally got some luck for him! 
Congrats to Skur on finally getting a Swift Belt and rounding out his THF and his almost 75 NIN. :)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Everything you know is wrong.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Vague yet interesting.
So what is my motivation to start farming and leveling a craft all of a sudden? Well, it could be that I really have no source of income in general and barely able to come up with the gil to buy the food I need to XP and do events. It could be that I am looking forward to buying those last few pieces of gear that I need to round out myself out. It could be that I need the gil to outfit the other jobs that I have been neglecting like my WAR and my DRG, which have become much more powerful considering the two-handed update. It could be that it is always nice to have a fall back plan for when you might run into a good deal on something you have always wanted. Or it could be something else...
Wet the appetite? Intrigued? Well, thats all you get for now, because I don't know how well our little plan is going to do, or how far it may travel, but so far so good. As a side note, I am quite surprised how easy it is to make gil relatively quickly. I think that most people hope for the big score or the gold mine when they are thinking of making gil, but if you aim a little lower and consider time invested versus gil reward you can make a lot more gil doing something consistent rather than trying to get lucky. A lot of the things that people used to do to farm for gil are available again because of the destruction of the RMT. I really think that the economy is rebalanced but people are acting like it is still falling. Once people start to act like the economy is improving then we will all start to make more gil. SE can really help this by creating new recipes for items that are potential side grades of current gil that utilize current crafting materials not new materials. Or have new recipes that integrate new and old materials. The best way to do side grades is to do things like Askar and Ares' where they do not have certain things that other gear does, like accuracy, but have more of something that is beneficial like attack and STR on Ares or Double Attack and Store TP on Askar. There are a bunch of slots that more could be done with also, like ranged and the grip slot. Also perhaps its time for something for MNKs grip slot. :)
Anyway, this weekend should be pretty lax, I am going to spend some time working on WHM and BRD, and cleaning out my mog house. Things I can't do on normal days when I am very busy with events and such. I need to use time very efficiently this weekend to get done everything I want to get done, but we will see how well I actually use the time.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Learning by doing.
So we tend to do a few pick-up Salvages each week, and in general I have found that they are easier to deal with in general than the actual planned Salvage runs. I haven't figured out except to say that the more practice you get in Salvage the better that the run will turn out to be. It really is a place where you can learn a whole lot just by going over and over. I can't tell you exactly what we are doing to go faster from run to run, but watching other people do it also helps to make us move faster. I think part of the people that most people have when doing Salvage is that you really need to move quickly and you need to be a self-starter. I usually have to tone myself down while doing events so that I not do something that could be bad while everyone else is getting ready, but in Salvage it is better if people adjust to the speed of the events. Not just lotting cells and passing but also pulling faster, dealing with multiple mobs at once, especially ones that can't sleep.
Last night we had a perfect example of what not to do, and we were still able to handle things pretty well. In general we need to speed up pulls a little bit, and having multiple people willing to pull AND being able to handle those pulls makes things about a thousand times faster. I also got some really good recommendations from Celestria (who almost definitely runs the best NA Salvage LS on the server) who came as a guest on our run last night. We did a really good Zhayolm run, which of course had no drops, but we did kill both the 5th and 6th Madames and we got the boss down to about ~40% before timing out. We really only needed a few more minutes to take it down because we took it to 40% in about 5 minutes. We really need to focus on getting more 35's so the added benefit of killing the boss is just that, an added benefit. An example of succeeding despite trying to fail was our really bad pull of the Archaic Chariot on the second to last floor last night. Now the Chariot often comes with gears, but instead of focusing on the gears first, I thought it would be bright to have different people do different things, instead of focusing on one things at a time. This almost wiped us but actually no one ended up dying at all. Still it would have been much more efficient to kill the linking gears while kiting the Chariot instead of doing both at once. Another lesson for the next run!
One more thing that will benefit us is helping people know what exactly they need for cells and distinguishing that from the cells people want. Like last night, both Skur and I boned it because we didn't realize that we had forgotten to allocate a magic cell to him as he was the THF for the run and on the 5th floor there are necessary sacs to get to the Madame and then to get to the 6th floor. This meant that we had to do some interesting twists to do both of these but in the end it wasn't too bad. But we shouldn't have to come up with quick solutions, we should just remember to do the important things at the start so there aren't problems later on. So because of this, I am going to make a check list for each zone that should help me plan ahead for every run instead of doing it all ad hoc. Here is what the list for Zhayolm will probably look like:
Pre-run:
Day of entrance/4th floor Rampart:
3 Full unlocks:
Silver Seas Card:
Invis:
Starter cell distribution:
Weapons:
Magic:
Abilities:
Sub:
General equipment/stat lotting order:
Exceptions (Refresh items, movement speed items):
First floor:
Extra cell in box:
Puk:
Ziz:
Lindwurm:
Bugard:
Person that isn't using any cells:
Zone up wing and person:
Second floor (clear clock-wise):
Pop cell for Socket:
Zone up person:
Third floor (Go west at start, Clear South, Port North.):
Zone up person:
Fourth floor (Go west at start, Port east)
Rampart:
Zone up person:
Fifth floor:
Sac:
Followers:
Sixth floor:
Kiter:
Puller:
Boss:
Healer assignments:
That I believe covers a lot of things for Zhayolm but I am sure I will add to the list. I will also add lists for the other zones too, which I believe will help in planning for me, and also for not forgetting things that are important for runs to help everyone feel more comfortable.
More farming tonight, and I am either going to break out the BRD or WHM to level it tonight too a little. Maybe some pictures for tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Fuck, no pictures and playing end-game WHM for melee.
Yeah, forgot the pictures today. Not like there was anything that amazing, but I had some decent ones for practical application of how to be a WHM for melees. I don't think I am in any position to tell a mage how to play a mage job, but I can tell the melee about a thing or two about how they can sub in for a mage if necessary. I did my second run of Salvage as WHM, and I still have some issues with sharing responsibilities with the other mage, but I think I am doing pretty well with making sure my melee aren't dying. There were a couple of close calls but for the second run no one (well no one that I was directly responsible for) died. I could have saved our BRD on the first floor with a little faster action but I am not too concerned about that because it wasn't really my responsibility at the time and I need to focus a lot to make sure I am not forgetting my main role.
So here are my three main rules for melee that are subbing in for mage jobs:
1. Keep everyone Hasted.
2. Generous usage of Regen.
3. Don't be afraid to overcure.
I have had very few issues with MP using these three rules because the first two rules make is so that when I need to cure it wont happen as often and therefore wont be as much of an XP drain. This isn't everything that is important for being a WHM or any other mage in an XP situation but it will keep you going in a pinch. I have used it to at least some success in my recent runs as WHM.
Yesterday, I got to try out and parse MNK/WAR in an XP party, the party set up was WAR/SAM (full time Hasso), MNK/WAR (full time Counterstance and Berserk when up), THF/NIN, BRD, BRD, WHM/SCH. This is completely doable if you have a good healer that can manage the damage that you will be taking. The parse ended up being something like 40% for me, 31% for the THF/NIN and 29% for the WAR/SAM. I definitely wouldn't try this set up without two BRDs and a healer that I can trust, but if I can get that and I can get a bird camp there is very little risk. We were getting Madrigal, Minuet, and dual Marches which definitely favored me in this situation. But it just goes to show how much more a MNK can do when subbing WAR instead of NIN. I will post the results tomorrow probably. I got another 4 merits yesterday after capping my Enemy Critical Hit. It was fun.
I guess I will go over my thoughts on some of these dual-boxing soloing JPs I have seen recently. I am a bit concerned about this overall. It definitely appears that some JPs have a different play still that NAs or EUs. In general if an NA dual-boxes it is so that they can do something with someone else or they can solo something one time. The JPs have been doing something different, they have been creating pairs of characters that are always together and they basically duo to 75. I do not know if they do this to support themselves or just to have an alternative character but I believe it is the former. I do not really understand the mentality here, and I am not thinking of it as negatively as I am just confused by it. Why make two characters? What is the purpose that it serves? I think that there is a bit of a loner characteristic to some JP players. And this may be a similar drive to those that solicit for LSs to spawn gods for them. I don't really know what causes the isolation and why they don't just join a LS to get the gear that they want. I would be interested in knowing the reasoning and not just assuming the worst in people. Ah, well.
Another lame post because I don't have any screen shots, but this is what you get today. I need to get some work done anyway.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Return of Ringmo!
Ringmo made his triumphant return this weekend when I took Omoi to a Rakuen Salvage run. 
I thought I did pretty badly but I didn't let anyone die and I keep everyone hasted as much as I could. I as tried to do some of the things that I think that a lot of WHM forget about doing like putting a Banish II or III on any undead mobs that we were fighting for the additional defense down effect.
I am definitely moving in divergent directions right now in game. I have started focusing on leveling a craft and one I believe that is in general very profitable even while skilling up if I do it carefully. I have never been one to focus on crafting for more than a day at a time but recently the idea of actually having a bit of a gil cushion to fall back on has been a better and better idea. Also as I get more and more Usukane pieces the need for more money to pay for the head and body becomes important. Finally, at this point the need for HQ to replace NQ piece is also pressing as my gear for MNK and SAM has started to stall. Yes, that ever elusive Ace's Helm still... eludes me but the conundrum still exists. Either I need a rare/ex piece or I need an HQ piece to replace what I have so far. There is nothing that I can point at and say "Hey, I need to get this item off the AH." Everything is going to require some sort of effort, or the real problem, it is going to require some sort of effort with a tiny chance of it even dropping.
Anyway, there was a weekend and a sick day for me, not really a good weekend over all for me. I just did some crafting and slept a lot. I did some meriting too, and capped out Enemy Critical Hit rate, which means that now I have to start focusing on jobs I don't play that often. LOL I think I will finish up DRG then do WAR. I really need to crank up my Imperial Standing because I want to get a Perdu Voulge for my WAR. That combined with a six hit set up and I will be ready to rock on my WAR. My DRG will still require a little bit of work because I need to get some Homam gear there. Anyway, the focus is still on getting some 35's from Salvage and we did a couple of good runs in SSR to try to get this to happen, but of course we got nothing. LOL 
SSR is supposed to have the absolute worst drop rates, but it just seems that all of Salvage sucks when it could to drops. LOL The way to get gear from Salvage is just to go as often as you can because at some point the gear is going to drop and you are going to get what you are looking for. I am hoping pretty much equally for head, hands or body at this point, but I obviously don't have the money for the body yet, but I am actually making a way for myself to get to a good place to make money. For Usukane gear and for other reasons.
Tomorrow I want to talk about a new phenomenon I have been noticing as of late 
The JP dual-boxed character. More things I don't get about the JP's, trying to make an MMO into a single player game. Isolation over integration doesn't seem to work very well and is probably one of the things that causes the RMT mentality that the JP's have. Ahh, well, thats for tomorrow. I am leaving a little early today, so a short post until tomorrow.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Help wanted.
So, it's time to pick up another job. Yeah, I just finished MNK and it is very well rounded, but I have noticed a rather large gap we have for most events and that is having a BRD in NA times. Our BRDs are generally Achikasama who can't play as much as we need and Ashhhhh who is on EU time and also likes to play on BLU (where his bad ass gear lies). This sometimes leaves us without a BRD for some events. Here is something else that I have noticed, we don't need me as NIN as much as we used to. Izman, Samuraisoldier, Raikoh and Croce all are amazing tanks and can do better than I can in all situations. We don't need another SAM for most events, because well, we have about 8 million of them. We do need a consistent BRD that doesn't pull away one of our best DD and SC players. Since I have no aversion to leveling jobs, I am seriously thinking about doing this. Where does that put my WHM? Probably back to the place that it has always been, on the back burner. LOL Another thing I really want to accomplish is getting a lot of my mage subjobs taken care of sooner rather than later. Thats another 10 levels on BLM and another 15 on SCH, but SCH is going to have to wait until Omoi gets back.
The nice thing about this situation is that my BRD is already at 37 and that means its about about 15 levels until Aht Urhgan areas and being about to burn through the rest of the levels. I don't want to neglect my WHM along the way, but I do want to get my BRD done soon. It will take a little bit of balancing and I will need to get an HQ staff or two instead of sending money to Dizz, but that is acceptable in my opinion. I think I will really like BRD because I am pretty annoying when it comes to pulling honestly, when people don't pull fast enough I just end up pulling myself and that can cause real problems if people aren't ready for it. If I am on BRD then I can pull and can control the pace of XP. Now, I obviously wont be using this in Salvage, but it might be situationally useful in Assaults, and even more so in Sky and Sea and especially in Limbus.
Anyway, yesterday was Sea for Versus, and although we had little luck with Temperance (didn't try very hard) we did get Ix'DRK to pop relatively early on. 
And for the first time from Ix'DRK we managed to get a Vice instead of a Dead. 
Croce ended up winning the lot on the Vice for his RDM. This alone made it a good day in Sea. Our Limbus run was a bit split, but we made out with a good amount of coins and we were able to get another chip toward an Omega set. Also in Sea was Jess, in his fully completed DRK TP gear. Pretty bad ass in general. 
I think the only thing he is missing at this point is an Ace's Helm.
Versus is in a good place right now even though Omoi is gone for about two weeks. We are going to limit major spawning and focus on building up a good number of pop sets for Sea and Limbus so that when Omoi returns we will be able to collect a huge number of new items for people.
I think thats it for today, I am not really feeling well enough to focus on something new so you will have to deal with this until Monday.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The waiting begins.
Well, Omoi left today to go to her parents. That sucks because as much as I like assisting her to run Versus, running it without her is a pain. She always handles it with grace and style and I feel like I am bumbling around blind. Anyway, she is back in 10 days (crosses fingers) and the sooner she gets back the better.
I don't have a lot today, I am sick, was late and had an old friend's retirement party to go to, so you get a little bit of Bastok cut scene action. 
This is just from one of the missions for each city. I am trying to get the items to do the gobbie-bag upgrade quest. Most of them come from these missions or can easily be found in the new zones. I did a little Campaign last night and I got this really cool screenshot. 
You really should click on it to get a little more detail.
Anyway, nothing major today, just doing Sea and then Limbus. Building up toward another Omega set so we can get some more Homam gear for the LS. Outside of that I might just head to bed early so I can start trying to feel better.
Might go over DRG gear tomorrow. Depends on what I go to Limbus as. I think it's time to level a new melee job. Maybe DRK or THF...
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Kings are dead! Long live Kings!
There is an undeniable truth about FFXI. No matter how much someone complains about a system to get gear, unless it is amazingly less time and effort than the previous way then people will reject it out of hand. People have been complaining about Kings for years now, but if you look around there is very little left from Kings that is unique enough to justify the disturbing obsession that many players have for them. Now, let me say this, I do not do Kings. So this is an "outsiders" perspective, and that is always the first line of defense for the "If you don't do Kings, you aren't doing end-game" people. The problem is that the "insiders" that actually believe this are the same people that complain about Kings but don't look at the alternatives. An "outsiders" perspective is necessary to view Kings through an unbiased lens. Einherjar presents an alternative that drops significantly the need for the almost religious camping of Kings. Now Einherjar does not drop Ridills or Defending Rings, so those are still legitimate reason to camp Kings, and I also have no problem with people pursuing multiple paths for gear. The problem that I do have is when people say that Kings suck and they hate doing it, but then reject Einherjar out of hand. The real problem is that they complain that Einherjar takes more time and effort than camping Kings which is ridiculous.
Lets take a look at the effort scale. Einherjar is a 30 minute event twice a week, and sure it has prep time but so do all events, and lets be realistic here, prep time is at least busy time, not standing around for 15 minutes between windows. Now, I know that Einherjar won't get you a Ridill as I have said, so I am not saying don't camp them, but it can get you the Nidhogg abjurations, which is one of the reasons that it was implemented. Lets say you have 4 competitive HNM LS on your server, and you get a Nidhogg spawn say every 5 days. With the largely farcical assumption that there are no bots, or at least with a little more realistic one that all of the bots that those 4 LS's have are about the same, you should get a Nidhogg about once every 20 days. In that same time, assuming wins in all of your chambers, which now appears to be relatively doable with a largish LS, you can clear 6 chambers of Einherjar. Getting to an Odin fight should take about 5 weeks or 35 days. Then it comes down to drops, and that is anyone's guess. Now, assuming even a very generous hour of prep for Einherjar and again another very generous, though in the opposite direction, 90 minute average of window watching, then the average daily time spent for these events is about the same. But you camp Kings daily while you only do Einherjar once a week. Now the counter to this is of course that you get other things from Fafnir when you are waiting for Nidhogg, but you get other things from Einherjar too. Arguably better things, in some cases.
My point here is not that people should stop camping Kings, or even that Einherjar is a replacement for Kings. My point is that there is an alternative, and if you hate camping Kings so much, then do the alternative. But in the end since people "know" Kings it will take a long time to adopt an alternative especially if that alternative takes any kind of work. Again, there is another problem here. The unspoken corollary to the "fix Kings" line of thought is that the gear you get from Kings should be easier to get from the alternative. But this borders on vapidity. One would have to be brain dead to think that SE would just toss something out that would completely replace Kings. This is the WoW mentality that some FFXI players have. They love the idea of progression, until it really happens. Meaning, they want gear improvements that makes everything in the game obsolete until they realize that by doing so, they have just "wasted" all of their time getting other gear up to that point. As I have stated in previous posts, I am not opposed to well planned progression. Some short sighted people believe that Salvage gear in general is a side-grade from current gear, but that is only if you do individual piece comparisons. If you take a look at how the different pieces work together then it is clear that different groups of the gear can replace other groups. For example on my MNK, my Usukane Hirayoroi and Sune-ate replaced my Byakko's Haidate and Dune Boots, but alone I could not justify replacing Byakko's Haidate for my Usukane Hirayoroi in most circumstances.
It is the old "We fear change!" thought-process played out in a video-game. Those that don't embrace change or new events get left behind, and even if they lament their time wasted camping Kings, they fear doing something new more. Familiarity is comfort, and doing something new may expose themselves to personal flaws in ability, and that fear is much more likely to cause a vocal negative response to new events. It is the same as the people that stand behind PLD/WAR, they do not want to do something new, it is just a different example. They might make changes if they see the reason to improve, but in the end it has to be a rather strong shove to overcome their own personal inertia.
So stop blaming the game, and start blaming yourself.
Anyway, on with the show. Time for some math. I was talking to Qtipus last night about the difference between the Mezraq 
and the Thalassocrat. 
I believe there is next to no difference in the real damage done that you would see on a parse, but since that has never really stopped me from engaging in the useless and esoteric I see no reason to stop now. We need a test subject, how about Elvaan DRG75/SAM37 with 5 STR merits and 8 Polearm merits and the following gear:
Merzaq or Thalassocrat
Pole Strap
Tiphia Sting
Walahra Turban
Chivalrous Chain
Brutal Earring
Assault Earring
Assault Jerkin
Dusk Gloves
Rajas Ring
Ulthalam's Ring
Amemet Mantle +1
Swift Belt
Barone Cosciales
Homam Gambieras
This is Omoikitte's current TP build gear, which does still need some work obviously [wouldn't be so bad if she didn't pass on just about everything and we have to make her lot] but was still enough to cause this little comment: 
Anyway...
Lets look at the regular damage from a normal melee swing. Back to equations!
Damage = Base Damage x pDIFNow I am not going to go back over all of this, but if you need a reference just read the February blog posts. Ok, so Base Damage is just Weapon Base Damage + fSTR. In the Omoikitte example, we start with 75 base STR and add 5 for Merits, then for TP build gear we have +12 not counting the Mezraq and +14 with the Mezraq, for a total of 92 and 94 base strength. So using our Greater Colibri example from before (VIT: 67 and Def: 322) we have a fSTR of 7 from both weapons, and a Base Damage of 100 for Mezraq and 101 for Thalassocrat. It should be noted that if Omoi used one more STR for this set up it would raise her fSTR to 8 and would make for equal Base Damage of 101, but we will go with the unequal Base Damage for now. Now, for the pDIF side I am just going to give you the numbers because it's the side with the mind melting math, for the Merzaq the multiplier is 1.242 and the Thalassocrat is 1.238. Taking this all together, the highest damage you can hit is 124 with the Merzaq and the highest damage you can hit with the Thalassocrat is 125. But remember this is just max damage, and would be slightly balanced by the fact that the increase in Attack would increase your median damage, so even if the peak damage is higher with Thalassocrat it doesn't necessarily mean that it's damage over a parse will be higher. Also the minimum damage 74 will be the same for both weapons. The real problem is that for two-handed weapons the pDIF has changed and this is based on the old calculation, so take it with a grain of salt.
Now, just to show how close they are lets add one imaginary STR to Omoi's set up. That will make the Weapon Damage both 101 and it will make the pDIF for Merzaq 1.245 and the Thalassocrat 1.238, equaling out their max damage at 125. Adding more fSTR will continue to improve the Merzaq's advantage if fSTR is the same and even if it is not, then the Merzaq will behind by less.
There is a graph of what the damages look like as STR increases. I was wrong that the Mezraq will catch up, but it will remain infinitesimally behind Thalassocrat for normal melee and for Penta thrust. For all other WS's the better weapon is the Mezraq, because they do not have equal DEX modifiers.Anyway, the ultimate point is that they are so close as to be irrelevant. Debating between them is ultimately useless, because the difference is so small you will never notice.
I got home late from my meeting yesterday, but I did get to tank Genbu on SAM/WAR with no defense down gear. :) I lasted until it was to about 60% and it was fun. After that Omoi and I did a Bhaflau Remnants run with Rakuen, which was ok but Mad Bomber wasn't up and wind weather was up on the fourth floor, and poor Blaize aggroed one from 19 away. It really sucked because we were going to do the Rampart for his Skadi body. Well, since we aggroed one, we just ran to the middle of the floor and killed the Archaic Chariot there. These chariots are known to have some nerfing effect on Low-Bowed Chariot, and in this case it appeared to be a reduction in defense and evasion because I was eating Coeurl Sub and had no accuracy problems at all and I was hitting for 60-80 on a normal 1 Minuet punch. The dance around LBC was fun, and it only got one Homing Missile off at 4%, then promptly died without killing anyone.
I believe when Versus goes again we will take the time to pull the fourth floor Chariot, because it massive reduces the kill time for LBC. While Omoi and I were in Salvage, Izman and Potpressure went to spawn the Bloodlicker again and after the second kill the got the drop! 
So Potty now has some nice new DD gloves for his Scholar! Finally, we all got together and did the Brother ENM. 
Crappy drops as usual. :( Ahh well.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Rantology
Annoyances really bother me more than anything. A real legitimate problem is something that I can face head on. You deal with a problem or you adapt to the situation, but it is much more clear cut than an annoyance. An annoyance is something that obviously gets on your nerves, but for some reason or another there is no clear cut solution to the issue at hand. Whether it be social convention, impractically in resolution, or a resource limitation, there is something that elevates a problem to an annoyance. Now you may think that a problem, by definition, is worse than an annoyance but I disagree. Problems are existential within all parts of life, and as such should not necessarily be considered with negative connotations. C'est la vie, as the French would say (probably before surrendering something or other). The point is that just because there is a road block in your way do not mean that it is something bad. It is what stems from problems that creates the negativity around the idea. Frustration, panic, despair, annoyance, these are all the real negative emotions that stem from problems. Problems are the horse for the psychological baggage cart. Since the problems are only the catalyst for some other feeling they in and of themselves should carry no value. Here is a game related example. You want a Ridill. Problem: Ridill drops from Fafnir, which you must claim and kill and have the Ridill drop and win lot. The problem may be the instigation for the negative feelings of frustration, annoyance and despair, all of which could stem from any level of the problem. The thing is, do you think Fafnir cares? Is there an intention to cause these emotions? Of course not, this is an emotionless scenario whose value is only prescribed by those that have trouble dealing with the problem. Now you might think that I am splitting hairs here, but I am not. Because that same problem can cause other emotions too, it can cause happiness, joy, satisfaction and fulfillment when the problem is finally overcome, or in this example, the Ridill finally drops and you win the lot. The problem hasn't changed. Fafnir was still there, you still had to get claim, kill it, have Ridill drop and win the lot. The only difference is that one of the potential scenarios led to a different set of emotional responses. In this way, it is easy to differentiate between the problem and annoyance.
This isn't to say that problems don't cause frustration, anger and annoyance in myself. I am in no way better or worse than anyone else in this respect. I can just recognize the crux of my negative emotions better than most I think.
As I said, the emotion that I have the most problem with is annoyance, because it is caused by the kind of problem that is small enough to not merit immediate solution or a solution requires more annoyance than just accepting the initial annoyance. The reason that annoyance get me more than anything else is because of their inherently irresolvable nature. I prefer to deal with issues rather than let them linger. In this way, annoyance is the emotion that is most likely to cause a negative emotional state in me. So what annoys me? Glad you asked.
I don't know if this really is going to be a list, or just a long diatribe. Lets see where it goes, shall we?
Server transfers. That is a good start. Now, I don't necessarily mind everyone that server transfers, some have legitimate reasons. They have real life friends on another server is a good one, and well, I can't really come up with much else. To me, server transfers are the best way for the most douchebaggiest of players to be granted tabula rosa to preform the same actions that caused them to have to switch servers in the first place. At best, it just buys them time and maybe a few more sheep to slaughter before they have forced themselves to move on yet again. Here is the rub: There are no greener pastures. If you are going to fuck yourself over on one server, you are just going to do it again on another server. If you are a server transfer, here is a good place to start, do not think that because you were big and bad on another server that anyone will give a flying fuck about you on another server. They already have their big and bad players there, and by this time in the game people know that just wearing uber gear won't put you over with the natives. My point here is that if you think you can come to Odin and either try to take over or become the new bad ass or that you think that your douchebaggery will go unnoticed you are sorely mistake. There is a reason that Odin has a reputation for being so cordial, and that is because there is a rather rigid social order here. Even the worst people on Odin operate on a literally years-old end-game structure. There are 4 major NA Kings LS's, and this has been the case for a long time. There is little flux between them, and this order has worked to establish an understanding of the positioning of these LS's. This familiarity and tradition operates to prevent a disruption of this order. There are those that operate on the fringes, as well they should as everything is always in flux, but the stability of these LS's actually works to stabilize the entire server. So, if you are looking to come to Odin to make a name for yourself you are insanely naive and your hubris will likely come back to bite you in the ass.
Selling Characters. This is another one of those things that annoys the fuck out of me. Seriously, if you are planning to ever sell your character, just fucking die in a fire. The idea that since you have quit you have no obligation to those people that helped you to build your character is utterly ridiculous, disrespectful and speaks to the self-absorbed nature of any twat-bag that would do such a thing. How about this, when you sell your character that will likely be used to fuck those people that helped you to get all the gear that you are now using as an advertisement to sell your character, you send them their cut! You didn't do all that shit on your own, and in fact, the people that are most likely to sell their accounts are the same people that begged to get all the gear whether they needed it or not. Only people so fucking self-centered as to think that they should be rewarded for other people's work would think of selling their accounts. These people are the worst people in the world.
Fucking RMT. I don't even hate the actual gil-sellers as much as the gil-buyers anymore. Get a fucking clue. When you are paying millions for the new shiny gear that comes out with the new expansion just because it's new, it pretty much puts up a bright red flag to signal that you are a gil-buyer. The evidence can be seen in the radical price drop of the Merzaq with the introduction of the Thalassocrat. Umm, what? They are almost identical, with the Mezraq having one less damage but two more STR. And at this point I am pretty convinced that although almost impossible to parse the difference for these polearms, the Mezraq is better just based upon the calculations behind it. 1 more weapon damage does not make up for a good chance to bump up fSTR and increase pDIF, maybe it does but it's already late and I may take this up tomorrow, but let me be clear. The Thalassocrat is NOT I repeat NOT a clear cut choice for a better weapon. If you are dumping millions on it (the price has already come down on it) then you are just buying gil. No other explanation. I hate NA gil-buyers because they are sneaky about it, and I hate JP gil-buyers because they are so brazen.
People that let their mothers equip them. I have no problem with the idea that many people do not access to some gear. I do not have many pieces that I want for my ultimate gear selection, but what I do have is the next best thing that is available to me. Sure, sure there are exceptions and you can make arguments for something else, but ultimately you are doing it wrong. This annoyance is multiplied 10 fold when those that make the wrong choices try to defend them. Ignorance is fine, but if they know that there is a better alternative with proof, then they are embracing their ignorance, and this drives me literally insane. It's one of those "I want to play the game my way" things that makes me crazy because you play the game with OTHER PEOPLE TOO! And other people have to rely on you, and if they are making 100% effort and you are not then you are screwing your friends because of your ignorance or stubbornness or whatever the reason. It is rude and disrespectful to all of the people that work together to help achieve your goals and theirs. Another example of this is people that are unwilling to adapt to change. You know that PLD that still comes /WAR to burn parties? Yeah, that guy. They say that it is because people don't know how to tank anymore and that /WAR is the real way to tank. It was the "real" way to tank in 2005 because no one knew any better, not because it was better! Again the point here is that it is not about personal preference. This is a game of calculations, and the calculation carry weight, as we gain a greater understanding of the game you have to adapt to this knowledge. If you choose not to adapt it just means that you are a bad player, not that you are defending some righteous tradition. There is justice and honor is doing your best and not clinging to things that have been proven to be inferior. Last night, in an angry moment, I declared that PLD's shouldn't be allow to XP on birds. Of course I did not mean that I do not think that PLD's should be allowed to XP, what I should have said is that stupid people should not be allowed to XP, ever. :) A PLD/NIN with DD gear is not a top-notch DD but they can hold their own and they can help to save MP for the party to get more Haste and debuffs, etc. So they can actually help to improve the performance of the party, if they try to make an effort to actually do their best in that situation. /WAR has it's places for PLD, but honestly, PLD/NIN is the BETTER choice for tanking most end-game stuff anymore. Great PLD's like Izman, Ailee and Bgalvin adapt to this and make adjustments to be the best in EVERY situation. If you choose not to do that, you are choosing to be left behind.
Camps. This is my most recent annoyance. Ok, in general I have no problem respecting people's camps, but I see this respect as a continuum. I do not have perfect respect for camps and I do not have perfect disrespect for people that try to steal my camps. Here is the thing, there are limited good camps in FFXI. The best camp is the Nyzul Isle Colibri camp. Here are some simple runs to the camp: PLD's subbing WAR and using defense gear in this camp is like a MNK subbing BLM. Completely useless, it's a waste of time and a waste of mobs that other people could be killing much more efficiently. This is especially true when YOU JUST FUCKING BARGE INTO A CAMP THAT PEOPLE ALREADY USING! Literally, you are going to pull 1 bird for their 5-10 mobs, and you are ONLY going to break their chain. Your xp is going to suck balls, but since you don't give a shit about anyone else it doesn't matter to you. But here is the other end of the spectrum, if you are in a party and it is filled with level 72-74's and probably that PLD/WAR in defense gear too, don't go to the bird camps. This is just as disrespectful as trying to steal a camp, and you should expect to have it stolen from you. This is not a contradiction, this is a compromise. Don't waste mobs. Everyone can agree to that. Their is a minimum level of ability that is needed to be able to hold a camp, and if you are just going to ruin it for everyone else then you are just a douche. This is especially true because there are other BETTER camps where you could XP. The island with Greater Colibri should have a level restriction of 75 at a freaking minimum. I am not saying you have to kill every single bird up at the same time, but if you are "pulling" to an actual "camp" then you are doing it wrong.
In the end, just stop doing it wrong and I will be happy. And stop acting like you are the only person playing the game.
Catharsis. :)
Last night was a good night. We have made a deal with a couple of friends in Rakuen to help them kill some Omega's for a cut of the loot. 
Last night we did an Omega for Blaize. As usual it was quite easy, with Izman for the win with the Shield Bash! 
Amazing drops! Izman is TH5! LOL The feet went to Blaize, the legs went to Jess, and the body! FINALLY THE BODY! Ash finally got something! Hahaha! That is awesome! Poor Ash has been waiting for SO long to get Homam Corazza, now not only does he get the Homam Corazza but he also gets to lot on other gear that he needs for his BLU! So we were off to Mhaura! Jess had Salvage so we didn't get a picture of him in his new pants yet, but I did get Ash and Blaize! 
. The rest of the day was rather normal, but I was pleased as punch with the drops, and that really made my day even if some rude camp stealing defense wearing PLD asshole tried to ruin it! Haha! Can't keep me down. :)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Frogs are always cool.
I like to post pictures in my blog, but in doing so I worry that people will get board of the same kind of pictures over and over again. Do you really want to see my level up pics for every WHM level from 51 to 75? Didn't think so, the only universal exception to this is any thing having to do or relating to frogs. 
Frogs are always cool. They are still total pains in the ass, though. 
Evil could be a good description of what they are, too. But the best shot I have is this: 
It looks like a murder scene, something out of "E's True Hollywood Stories: Poroggo Madame." Iz slowly putting away his axe. LOL Our frogs still haven't dropped anything, but we are getting faster and faster at Zhayolm. We would have had time to kill the boss if we had a RDM last night, or if we had skipped one of the 35 frogs. Either way, we had a really good strategy for the run. The second party stayed and killed Puks while the main party went on to get more from the first rooms on the first floor. We did something similar on the second floor, after the door was open in the first room after you zone up, we sent the second party to the next room to start clearing with the first party stayed to kill the Madame. Saves a lot of time. We did waste a lot of time coordinating this because it was the first time we did it, and we kind of accidentally cleared a room of the second floor which was a waste of time. Outside of that our run was pretty quick, and we got to spend a lot of Ninjafox's XP. He is excellent with sac'ing on the fifth floor and even pulled the Chariot without any links on the 6th floor. Great run in general.
Back before I left for the weekend we did a quick pickup in Zhayolm for the 4th floor frog and the 15 to complete my Usukane Sune-ate. It was a mess of a run and we didn't even have the right job combinations, but we still got the 15 that I needed! WOOT! 
The rest of the run was a waste because it took so long to kill the frog (frogged us like 6 times ;_;) that we couldn't even try the boss. Anyway, once I got back to town I rounded up the items that I needed, handed them in and got to wait until the next morning when I got my brand-new sexy feetsies! 
(Another artificial epic shot) Anyway, it still feels great to have these, and it feels different than a lot of other gear I have gotten. It's not just that these feet are so good, it is also that it actually allowed me to change a bunch of other slots. My MNK now wears Usukane Legs and Feet full time, while my SAM can maintain a 6-hit build without making any sacrifices in gear at all. In other Salvage related news over the weekend, Omoi lead Versus in a couple of runs. No 35's but we did get Jess his 15 to complete his Ares's Cuirass. 
That is our first body that we have completed so far, but we still need to get a bunch more. We need to get a bunch of things, LOL.
After the update a couple of things have become clear about the new gear for the new jobs. First of all, Potty got his AF done pretty quickly for his SCH, and it is especially strong in buffing all of the right areas for them. 
The added effects seem like some kind of joke over-buffed AF gear thread from BG. Seriously, every piece enhances some effects that SCH has, and it does it to rather strong effect. Feet give Fast Cast essentially always, Pants and Body add 15 levels to the Dark and Light Arts skill level enhancement, and the Head adds an extra tick to Scholars personal refresh effect. Further, Potty was already farming for Gnat Pellets for a set of Zenith Mitts -1 for his Scholar. The mob is supposed to be a little tough but really isn't that bad. 
Two SAMs, two WHM and a THF were able to destroy it pretty quickly. No drop though sadly. :(
Of final note, Blaize recently completed his Morrigan's feet... he was pretty happy about it. 
Hopefully tomorrow the post wont be a recap place holder like today's. LOL.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Take what you can get.
So after two angry blog posts, I get more comments. Honestly, I don't know what is up with you people. I spend over a year writing a happy-go-lucky blog, with interesting tid-bits on the game, my adventures, advice on proper gearing, I even spent a week explaining out the damage system works. Then I make one angry blog post and I am the hero of the world. I see what you people like. You are like the spectators at the Colosseum, waiting on the lions to eat the Christians. You want your blood and you want it now. Well, eat, eat, you fucking jackals! (And if you know where that line is from then you get your own feature on the blog next week, and Googling it doesn't count!) I will take what I can get. :)
Anyway, I really need to do a gear review and I need to do it soon, I have a bunch of changes that have been made to my gear recently after being stable for quite some time. Usukane will do that to a man. But I will have to hold off on that for some screenshots because I don't like posting gear comments without the screenshots because it just seems so unfulfilling. I also wanted to mention that I going to add a new segment to the blog every once in a whole. It's going to be "Ring's person that he thinks is so cool that he may potentially want to have gay relations with at some point, well, maybe not, but you get the picture, not that there is anything wrong with that!" segment. I am going to do Izman first, and when I say "do" I mean I am going to cover him first, not like bang him, and when I say "cover him" I mean talk about him not like bang him again as another euphemism. God, you guys are totally sick fucks! NOT THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT!
Anyway...
"My gay love for Izman" - by Ring<3three.
Look he even dressed in all pink for me! 
Ok, whatever maybe I am gay. But at least he is the one in pink. OK, THATS IT NO MORE GAY JOKES! And I am not making jokes about gay people! I am making jokes about me being gay, so my string of non-offensive posts continues, well, except for that rant yesterday about JP gil-buyers being worse than NA gil-buyers. And well, my implicit hope that every Chinese RMT die by porcupine ass-raping. Maybe I hate Asian people? :( Nah, that can't be it because I love XPing with good JP players. :) I think I just hate people that suck. That is better. Wait, I know you are twisting the meaning of suck in your minds right now, you sick twisted bastards. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, my love for Izman... let me count the ways. Nah, but seriously Izman is the damn coolest person I know in the universe. Shit that drives me crazy doesn't even bug Iz, and when Iz is around, that shit that normally makes me crazy, well it just gets toned down so much that I don't even notice it. He is a totally calming influence on every one and just having him around instills a ton of confidence not only in me but in the whole LS. He tanks like a champ, and he is one of those people (like Bgalvin was) where gear only improved his play, it never defined what he could do. This is something that is forgotten on new PLDs who think gear really matters all that much. Iz could tank literally everything we do naked (<3! What? Too gay? LOL, alright, I was just kidding) except for sword and shield and some shadows. He just hardly ever dies on PLD outside of crazy situations and then its mostly just funny. And the funny thing is that he knows this but never flaunts it, he only uses it for humor. I have two perfect examples of this, both in Campaign. The first, his favorite, was when he some how managed to link all of the Orc's at Jugner and proceded to run the entire group from one end of the area to the other with the entire zone of players chasing after him trying to catch up to the mobs. The other was my favorite time, essentially he did the same thing and linked all of the Orc's onto himself, but this time he ran around the Campaign tower and managed to MPK something like 80% of the people there. Hilarious! Iz is the kind of person that will do anything for anyone and will never complain about it one bit. He hardly ever gets upset, and just takes things as they come without trying to force solutions that won't work. Calm, cool, collected is a perfect description. Iz is takes all of the hardships in game and in real life in stride. I couldn't have a better friend in the world.
Ok, now I just feel dirty. Anyway, that screenshot you see of Iz being all pink is actually him using Retaliation which as it turns out is pretty neat, but has a pretty low proc rate. I don't understand why they would give them this ability such a low proc rate if it doesn't reduce damage. I mean I know the swings you get from it count as full swings and you get full TP from them, but still it just seems a little weird. I would really like to try this out in Salvage on the first floor of all the runs. You are going to take damage anyway, so may as well give some back in the process. The only problem will be the decreased movement speed, but if you have multiple tank-like jobs (MNK, SAM, well, just about any DD in Salvage) they can support in the few second it will take someone to get there, or you can just click it off when you have to move any real distance. With a 3 minute duration and a 3 minute recast you can have it up when you need it and click it off when you don't without having to wait very long for it to be up again.
Omoi and I did a little exploring of the newly opened Beastmen Strongholds, and again I am left wondering; what the fuck are we supposed to do with this? Man, it feels so much like CoP all over again. "Here are some huge wide open areas, we don't really have a use for them, we don't really have a motivation for you to go explore, we don't really have an incentive for you do anything here, but we are are scary smart and cool that we know you will love it!" W... T... F? The only suggestion I have heard for using those areas is for XP there at 75, but it still has the same problem that every other XP area that isn't under Sanction. Let me be clear here for a moment, let me get out my singing voice... MI, MI, MI, MI... *cough* Ok, here we go. PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO XP IN A PLACE THAT DOES NOT HAVE A 15% XP BONUS! No, Ninjafox, that dirge was not pointed at you at all. At least you are trying to come up with something to do in those areas, which is about a thousand times better than what the developers are doing right now. I want to emphasize a point here (like I haven't already) but even Campaign doesn't make a load of sense in and of itself. There are no direct instructions, there are no guidelines, there are no explanations. Like why the fuck can't I one of the Campaign Ops but not another? Why is the dialogue so incredibly vague on what you are supposed to do? What fucking incentive do I have to do anything outside of Campaign Battle? Why give 7 tags for Campaign Ops for shit you are never going to do? Why make the Campaign Ops completely unrewarding? It's just crazy. I don't get it. Here is my ultimate question, do they actually believe that people are going to put together an alliance to go into the Beastmen Strongholds and take them over? People are barely motivated enough to go get the Astral Candescence back, why the fuck would they go into the Beastmen Strongholds and try to take them over, and I want to be clear here again, WHEN THERE IS NO FUCKING REWARD TO DO SO! Is this group of SE's developers really so fucking full of themselves that they believe we will play their content for the sake of it? It's a mountain, it must be conquered kind of crap. Yeah, that works when you are bored, but not when you already have the choice to do 10,000 other, BETTER things to do in the game. Kings, Sky, Sea, Assault, Salvage, Nyzul Isle, Limbus, Dynamis. No matter what you think about those things, guess what they all have in common. That's right, YOU GET SOMETHING OUT OF THEM. Why fucking invade Beadeaux when you can just stay in Jugner and get more XP and AN. It just doesn't make sense.
Now that rant may seem similar to other people's complaints about Wings, but it is not. I don't think there is a problem with the amount of content. There is huge amount of content in this expansion, and its all interesting in some form or another. There are two major problems with it and the first is that it is undirected, and by that I don't mean that it needs to be quest-line after quest-line, I mean that it doesn't make any fucking sense. No matter how complicated something is, if you give us time and direction we can figure it out. But this shit is complicated to the point of complete insanity, and it has no directions at all. It's like trying to put together a flux capacitor with instructions that are written in fucking Gaelic. How does the recruitment function work? How much effect do our decisions really have on the NPC's? Why can the NPC's die, retreat and just disappear all of a sudden? Where the fuck are the gigantic machines they promised? I want to get crushed under the wheels of the huge-like-X-box warmachines! The second issues is that there are no fucking rewards. Ok, so the Rare/Ex gear at Emblem rank doesn't completely suck, but man, give me a week and I can have it from all three nations! Rewards should always be Time x Risk x Effort. Now instead of looking at the gear and going, "wow, that is situationally good gear how much time do I need to put in to get it", we say "wow, I have all the new gear from the update, that didn't feel very rewarding." And come on guys, give us gear that is relevant to the game we are playing NOW not the game we were playing 2 years ago. Evasion + STR = why would I use that at 75? Sure its good, maybe great gear from 68 to 75, but how long are you at those levels anymore? Maybe a week, maybe two? My mother always said think before you speak, SE needs to learn to think before you implement.
That was another tangential rant, and I wasn't even expecting it. LOL Anyway, so Omoi and I went to Castle Oztroja and its pretty cool inside. You have to sneak around for sure, which I really like. The idea of running through the Beastman Stronghold in the present without getting mauled by like 8 million mobs was kind of weird, but its like it should be in the past. The Yagudo are pretty bad ass too. 
This Samurai for example was getting Zanshin procs all the time and was pretty damn accurate even with my evasion/haste set up. Zanshin is a bitch. He also hit decently hard, but was relatively easy to enfeeble and that toned him down a lot, but it was literally double attacking 2 out of every 3 swings. It was fun getting up to the top of the castle, but again, outside of three new NM's in that area, I really have no idea why I would go back.
Yesterday we did some Barbarian Mittens fights for the LS, and man, WTF, that dude is hard. 
Now, the description for this mob is basically all wrong. It doesn't reset hate with every hit, because it would stick on people for a while then change. It is more like it just doesn't have any hate rules at all. And it hits for a ton, so you are usually dead if it hits you straight up. It also has what I would think is its two-hour which is a really high damage 4 hit Frypan. My shadows were down when it used it the first time and it hit me for like 1900 damage on NIN. We didn't get a drop either time we spawned it, and we ended up just zerging it after we got the second one to 30%. It was annoying and as there is better gear on the Auction House for less than it costs to synth the pop item, we will likely never be doing this one again.
Finally, back to Salvage. Had a run with Rakuen last night, pretty straight forward Zhayolm run. Celestria offered to kill the frog that drops my Usukane Feet 15's but I told her not to change for me because I wanted to do it with Versus. So we did the normal routine of 1, 2, 2, 3, 6 and the boss. The 6th floor Madame dropped Morrigan's Feet 35 which went to Blaize for his BLM. Surprisingly only the first floor Madame got off a Frog Chorus, the rest were stunned by Butcher or I and honestly the Madames didn't even try to use them that much. We went onto the boss, Battleclad Chariot and because I was in the main party this time, I actually got to tank, yay! 
With MNKs that have full Penance tanking, this guy is really easy. Limited TP moves prevent any real harm from Discoid. The last time we did BCC we got an Usukane Head 25 and Usukane Body 25, this time it was another Usukane Head 25 which I won the lot on!
^.^ Omoi won the lot Ares's Legs 25, so it was very rewarding for both of us! :)
Anyway, thats it, I have Dynamis tonight so tomorrow I will get to rant without having a whole bunch of pictures to interrupt it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Angry Blogger.
So, in the last two posts, I made a totally emo post that was pretty much non-committal about taking people back that have done really bad things because they know they shouldn't have done it, and that you shouldn't take douchebags, and I made a post that was incredibly cynical about the last update, when I am generally a positive person about the game and updates and SE in general.
And these two posts have probably gotten more comments than my last week worth of posts (and definitely more comments than the week of math).
So, in an attempt to up my comments and get more hits on my blogs, I am instituting the following new policy:
Fuck the game, fuck the players, fuck SE, and fuck you.
Ok, I can't do that, I am just not that much of a dick. LOL But maybe up the cynicism a bit and tweak the happy-go-lucky humor into something a bit more biting. Or maybe, just maybe, you fuckers could leave more comments without me having to be a dick and just make me a happy and well-loved blogger. Calling my readers "fuckers" probably isn't a great start. I have already fallen into the cycle of cynicism and nasty comments. Eh, who cares? You were going to leave a comment either way, so might as well pile on now. Your ugly too.
Ok, done with that little charade, lets move onto more important things like the fact that my download took SEVEN FUCKING HOURS. Now, I have to admit I was playing Peggle for a large portion of that time and I don't think that SE's downloader likes to be in the background. For some reason if the POL window is not on top it appears to really slow down, but honestly, when I left it on top, I didn't see enough improvement to justify not playing Peggle and reading the worthless whining of Rune Chopper DRK's everywhere. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick people, it's not the fucking end of the world that you can't Rune Chopper zerg two freaking mobs in the game that you probably shouldn't be able to Rune Chopper zerg. The fact that Bahamut 2 and Vrtra could basically be solo'ed (well obviously not solo'ed but its hyperbole and you should be getting this by now) by any ole' DRK with a Rune Chopper wasn't really that great for game balance. 20k damage in 30 seconds is not good for game balance.
Let me repeat that for the whiners.
20k damage in 30 second is not good for game balance.
It's not a "nerf" you morons, its a "lets not let this fucking ridiculous scenario continue." Still not getting it?
20k damage in 30 second is not good f0r game balance.
The responses to this have been as bad as the fucking whining. First of all, you can still zerg just not with a panache for destroying the penultimate mobs in the game with nary a blink. Second, with a Rune Chopper, you just needed a couple of pieces of Homam to make this work, it wasn't skill or money or whatever people used to justify this absolutely ridiculous amount of damage. Anyone that says that it was hard to make a Rune Chopper zerg build is getting stabbed in face. With REGULAR FREAKING GEAR you could get 27% Haste with a Rune Chopper. For fucks sake I was thinking about leveling DRK to be able to zerg, it was so easy. There were twists and stuff but once you hit 25% haste in gear the rest is just subjob, merits and BRD. Finally, the "Wah, my Apocalypse is worthless now!" people can all go dine on razorblades. Can you get anymore emo? Someone literally said "It literally makes Apocalypse worthless and a waste of coins." All the fucking relics are devastating. They are not "slight" improvements over what people have already. This is what the people without the relics tell you to make themselves feel better about not having relics. Relics are a huge improvement over regular weapons, they all have huge additional effects, huge stat bonuses, and huge additional damage bonuses. They parse better than everything. And I am just going to stab the next person that says without DRK zerging that DRK is worthless. So freaking retarded.
The only semi-legitimate complaint about it was from someone I respect when talking about the game, but even then I find it to not really hold much water, and that is they should have done it sooner. The problem is that phenomena like DRK zerging is a gradual process and it's pretty obvious that they were OK with some zerging like with a Kraken Club, but when any
Tom, Dick or Harry could come along and do it, it ended up diluting the game by a huge portion. This all didn't come on one day, with everyone waking up and saying "LOLZ, lets Rune Chopper shit to death," there was a huge learning curve, and since the players were making this situation, SE was naturally behind. Could they have moved faster on this? Maybe, does that mean it is bad that they did it now or even that there is any kind of moral culpability place on them for limiting it? Hell no.
Other shit we learned yesterday: Potty got to test some but not all of the new SCH stuff. Sublimation looks really cool. Since I didn't even get onto the fucking game until 1AM EST these are only second hand references from Pot over vent so take it with a grain of salt. Essentially, it creates a side pool of mana that isn't even listed under your MP and that gets used first when you cast spells. This pool stays through zoning and even logging out or DCing. The recast time on it is something like 20 seconds so you can always be using it for more MP. The thing I want to know about it is if you are using it and casting at the same time, what doees it replenish? The side pool or the main pool? Not sure how strong it is so far but I am sure we will find out today. Also the Addendums are pretty fucking powerful, and they open up a huge new list of spells for SCH including Dispel, Stoneskin, Blink, Sleep II, Raise II and Reraise II. Didn't get the new time for the Storm spells or what the new SCH spells effect was, but Pot seemed pretty damn happy.
Ok, so where was I? Spent half the day actually doing work at work and the other half yelling at people on BG for whining about the 80% haste cap. Oh, and by the way I CALLED THAT! I said it would have to be really high or it was going to fuck up a lot of people, and I think that 80% is just fine.
Now that I have gone over some of the new stuff, lets go over some of the stuff that I missed from over the weekend. But one final note on the update: It still doesn't give people a good damn reason to go to the past to do anything besides do Campaign. Sure, there are a few new NM's, but none of the gear stands out as "ZOMG, must camp!" and the HNM there doesn't even have any freaking drops. The expansion itself is great with Campaign, don't get me wrong, but man, this update was a thin gruel. It was a bunch of things that needed to be done, and very little new. My guess is that this should have been the actual release of the expansion, and that the next update will start to toss the new things at us, but that doesn't really fix this feeling that I want the Treasures team working on this expansion instead of the suckers that are tossing this crap together. Anyway, on with the show.
Let's get those things of minor importance out of the way first. As I have mentioned, I have been gradually leveling my WHM, which has finally resulted in level 51. I have had a very nice upgrade in gear recently even if my outward appearance doesn't show it. Light Staff, Dark Staff, Serket Ring and my nice new Antivenom Earring. 
I am actually glad I asked about this because I some how became fixated on the Insomnia Earring, which is strange since I have been constantly extolling the virtues of Resting MP gear. Anyway, it's time to start actually doing my AF quests for WHM now, and since the gear is half decent I will be using that more and more. Not the head though, never the head, the head can blow me. Out of context that last statement is quite ironic. Anyway, I got 51 in Campaign so I couldn't even get a nice screenshot of it for the blog. :( One morning I got up super early because I had a horrible sinus headache so I wondered about and got my Tele-Yhoat scroll. 
Very weird guy... a little obsessed with converting the savages. o.o;
For Versus we have been pretty busy, we did another Ultima. This one went a little faster to get to 19% but a little more slowly to get to 0%. I don't think that many people died, but it was still taking a bit of time to finish it off. 
We ended up with a Nashira Turban for Omoi (in classic Omoi-fashion she only lotted on it because no one else did) and Ninjafox got a set of Nashira pants. We have generally been pretty lucky on Nashira pants, at least we are lucky with that even if we can't seem to get a freaking Homam body to drop for Ashhhhh. On a run prior to the Ultima run we were randoming off coins and this was the result: 
LOL Kinda crazy to get triple tie on high roll.
We had a double Kirin over the weekend, and we finally got another pair of W. legs. The lot was won by Elfie, 
and the neat thing is that earlier in the day Elfie also won lot on this new toy: 
That was a lucky day for Elfie but he had been waiting on W. legs for a loooooooong time! He has had the +1 Cursed legs for like over a year. Finally, at some point we tossed in two more Jailer of Fortitudes 
but of course, they dropped nothing. Still completely torqueless in Sea.
Now it's time for Salvage news! Woot! Ok, so it wasn't the greatest weekend for Versus Salvage... I could let it go, but instead I will make fun of both of the people that screwed up! Mwhahahahaha! Now on LBC runs we take limited mages because we don't need them as much when LBC is nerfed, the problem is that those mages really need to make it through the whole zone for this strategy to work. Heck, making it off the first floor would be awesome! LOL Potpressure accidentally homepointed when after he died from an AoE from the Wamoura. We still ended up killing all ten gears, but with only a RDM healing on LBC with a BRD/WHM and DRG/WHM that had to dodge in and out of range of AoE to keep their wyvern alive, we ended up wiping at 4%. FUCK YOU FUCKING BLOGGER SOFTWARE! I WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN! *cough* Anyway, on Saturday we had a run where everything was going nice and smooth and we zoned up to the last floor, where I told everyone to rebuff first, I think that Ninjafox may have missed this, and the fact that no one else was around him because he pulled the first Archaic Gear and no one was there to kill it. LOL We did get it down to 10% after the long pull that three fucking Restorals, but after that we killed the rest of the gear no problem and went up to the boss to fight it like normal and we did get it to 23% until a Homing Missile blanket my hate and we couldn't get it back under control. Finally, on Sunday night we got a good run at it, killed all 10 of the gears and took on a fully nerfed LBC with a full complement of healers. But before we could drop it, it of course had to drop me. 
But drop what we needed it did! Well, at least one piece, hehehe. We needed just about everything really from LBC, even if it was just a first 25 piece, but we finally got an Phobos's Cuirass which Jess won the lot on, and now we just need to get him the 15 for it. And I know he is pretty close to having the gil for it as he has been mining for the ores for a long time now. 
The Bodb's Crown went to Skurlover so we have another goal in Arrapago now. We did get to farm the second and fourth floor but saw no NM's in the time that we allowed for the NM to pop.
I also got to go on the Saturday run with Rakuen, which is my other Salvage LS. They were just doing a small Bhaflau run farming the second and fourth floor also, but this time we actually saw some NM's and those stupid bee's actually dropped something! 
That wasn't even the best part, because I got to lot on them! I had to recheck my inventory to make sure that I actually got them, I was so completely ecstatic! 
So after doing Salvage for 9 months without so much as a 25, I have two completed pieces in less than a week! Or so I thought, because I don't have the 15 Usukane feet, which I actually thought I did have (because I have almost every other 15 piece) but I do have the 25 piece which really matter. So we will do a Zhayolm pick up sometime this week and kill us some frogs. I haven't decided if we are going to do a frog run or a boss run yet, I think I will base it on who shows up. Anyway, back to our run, we only had 6 people but we were still able to kill all of the gears on the fourth floor to pop the Rampart for the Tragopans. We had 2 MNKs, 1 SAM/DNC, 1 THF, 1 BRD and 1 WHM, and there were a couple of gears that were pretty close but we ended up killing them all and into the Rampart we went. I don't know how because with our run earlier in the day we had no NM pops, but on this run we had 3 or 4 Skirmish Pephredo and 1 Peryton before we timed out. 
It didn't drop though. I fucking hate blogger! It tried to eat my post again! Anyway, Blaize was without his Skadi Body 35 again. :(
On top the lighter fare, I got to do a little Campaign and saw these cute and cuddly defenders of Truth, Justice and the Altana Way! 
The best part was listening to Omoi call to the Faeries on vent. "Oh look, the Faaaaaaaaaeries! The Faaaaaaaaaaaaaeries! The Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaeries!" Hehehe. Since this very last thing left me baffled, I am going to leave it to baffle you. 
Ok, this guy has a Speed Belt, a Kraken Club, and a Sniper's Ring +1, and yet has a NQ Haub and a Chivalrous Chain? WTF is with that? This is just a random JP guy that I saw at Campaign. I have no idea why they are wearing the Trump Crown either, but they have it too. Anyway, the point is I am going to go ahead and suspect this guy of being one of those couldn't care less gil-buying JP's, and honestly I have seen more and more of them lately. Sure the JP's play in different times than us but you still see the more famous ones around here and there, but how do random JP's end up with Kraken Clubs and Speed Belts? I sure don't know. Maybe this guy is famous and I just don't know them, but I would suspect that any capable JP would know that having a Speed Belt and a Kraken Club but an NQ Haub and a Chiv. Chain is a might ridiculous. I hate NA gil-buyers, but at least they try to hide it. JP gil-buyers seem to flaunt it, when they know that they are incapable of achieving those results on their own. Of course there are differing moral standards but the nature of gil-buying anywhere is plain bad. Maybe they have a 75 DRK with a Justice Torque and E. Body, and maybe I am completely falsely accusing this person. If that is the case, then I will completely admit I am wrong in this case. But my case about JP's soliciting for people to spawn god's for them and paying them to do it remains. Different cultures, different types of gil-buying, but it all sucks.
Good night and good luck. :)
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