Friday, December 19, 2008
Week in Review.
It's been generally a good week for me. I have gotten some merits, defeated Odin, got Iz and Q their Ares's Hands and done some other things. Iz and Q are now at 3 and 4 out of 5 on Ares's respectively. Iz as already mentioned got his money metal head. 
But you may also note that he finally got his Homam legs, which took almost as long as it took for him to get his Crimson legs. LOL So in just a couple of days his PLD gear got a large boost. While he will be the first to admit that the Valhalla Helm isn't that great of a piece because of the slow on it, it is a very good kiting piece and decent /WAR piece or a swap in piece for reducing spell damage. Remember it is -5% to all damage not just physical so there are definitely cases where it is very beneficial. It was a good Omega for Iz and for Versus in general, 
and on the very next one, the one we did last night for Celestria to try to get her Homam legs, Omoi got her Homam hands! That basically finishes up Omoi's DRG except for an Askar head which will likely come with a little bit of time.
So already talked about Odin a little bit but here are the pictures to go with the description and these weren't even stolen from Omoi! Sure, Omoi may have gotten better shots but that was because she was on BRD while I had to stand at a distance with the RNGs. I would like to thank Obsidian for trusting in me enough to put me in charge of the RNGs. It really didn't make a difference at all because I just stood out of range of the AoE and had the RNGs stand behind me and a rock on the ground could have don't just about as much as I did for "leading" the RNGs, but it was nice to feel they could rely on me for some kind of leadership role considering how often I am able to attend Dynamis. Hey, I am actually showing up more often now that I have a little bit of time! 
Odin is huge, has to be one of the more large mobs in the game, and he also has great WS animations. For example, this is his spear throw move: 
I really like this fight a lot. It's 30 minutes, well 25ish when you consider the time it takes to get into the fight and make sure that everyone is in. It requires a good balance of jobs, with many different people, jobs and roles needing to be filled to make sure that things go well. There is enough unpredictability in the fight to make it so that each fight will not be exactly like the last fight. Now, you might say that it really isn't predictable because we know when Odin will use all of his abilities, but the variation in when the Valkyries arrive and the double effect of some of his TP moves combined with his timed moves can really make you have to deal with crisis quickly. For example, on our run right before Odin hit 9% he used his Terror move, so far more people were killed by Deathga than you would normally expect. 
I wish more fights in this game were like this and like Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima, large but instanced or at least sequestered fights. Similar to Salvage but with more people, even like with the ways that old Sky gods were set up.
Even though I should, I don't have Ares's hands drop shots. :( I was just too happy at the time that we got them both to drop that I didn't even think about taking screenshots of them. LOL I do have a little bit more news though. I finally got my Ethereal Earring fight done! And we even did it with just five and didn't even have a RDM/DRK. 
Ninjafox was coming with us and on the way decided to change earrings and erased his memories, unfortunately this moved him back in the storyline and thus couldn't come into the fight with us. We gave it a shot anyway, and we handled it pretty well. Still killed the kid pretty quickly but Iz did get beaten up pretty bad because it took longer than we had planned. After that Kam was pretty easy to take down outside of his occasionally strong hits. 
Now I just need to finish my cutscenes and get my earring. >.> Oh, Iz and Omoi may kill me now. :)
Finally, I got my wedding suit! I look like a god-damn pimp! :) 
Iz looks scary to me with his new hat though. o.O; Though I can still take care of business if needed! 
Two final thoughts, first, Iceyb if you want more mentions on this blog, then you need to be on more and you need to come to Nyzul with us! Second, Ninjafox is completely gross. LOL 
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Below the waist, Iz is still fucked.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Nyzul Isle: The struggles of a mad man.
Nyzul Isle has always taken a back seat to Salvage for me. Salvage is more of a challenge to me. It requires teamwork, a good working knowledge of every zone, practice and a huge amount of luck. But there is only so much Salvage you can do before losing your mind. Well, not for me exactly, but with the need for new weaponskills especially King's Justice and Drakesbane for Iz and Omoi because they are excellent WS's. Omoi already has her weapon for the Drakesbane, but Iz still needs the Great Axe, and we all still need to get to floor 100 because that is a lot of skillchain points to do without having a floor 100 disc. Also, there is some gear that we are missing because of Nyzul. Like Omoi and Iz could both use an Askar head and Askar body, while I could probably use a few Goliard pieces, and maybe some Denali pieces too. I still need a Windslicer for Tachi: Rana but it is not on the same level of King's Justice or Drakesbane for damage or usefulness.
So we have started doing a little bit of Nyzul Isle now, especially since we have a nice settled Salvage rotation now. Omoi, Iz and I do Salvage 5 days a week usually, some times a little less depending on who is on. That leaves 2-3 tags a week for Nyzul. So we can't do it all that often, but we are on a nice rotation right now. The only problem is that we do it pick up and it can be hard to find people to fill the last slots on runs without rewards. We will get it done, it will just take a little while.
In other news, going to bed early means you get to miss 50k XP in 2 hours. :(
Monday, December 15, 2008
Miscellaneous, et cetera.
You don't really want a Ranger On the Cheap post do you? I don't know shit about Ranger, I don't know how to make a decent Ranger TP set for HNMs, I don't know how to make a decent Ranger TP set for XP. I don't even know how not to die on Ranger. It seems like all I do is die on Ranger. :( I pull hate on everything, and I don't feel like I do anymore damage than any of my other jobs. It sucks. And I don't even have my Crimson Finger Gauntlets made yet. I might be over stating the case here, because I am using Ranger far more right now, and I am actually liking it a lot. There is a lot to learn for it though because it's accuracy is a lot more wonky than for SAM, MNK or NIN. It is gradually moving into the third spot for us after SAM and MNK. I still use NIN to tank a few things but I don't use it for anything at all outside of that anymore. I may have mentioned this all before, but I mention it again because I don't know if I have the general knowledge to do another On the Cheap series for RNG. Give me a couple of weeks to get more comfortable and I will work on it.
So yeah, no dice for you Kallo.
Iceblazek is quitting again. LOL
That was just so Ice could do a Ctrl+F for his name in this post.
I guess I could go over some of my Ranger gear for now, then do a little bit of a recap from the weekend.
Main: Kriegsbeil
Sub: Fransisca
Ranged: Eurytos' Bow
Ammo: Demon Arrow
Head: Wyvern Helm
Neck: Qiqirn Collar
Earring 1: Bushinomimi
Earring 2: Triumph Earring
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring 1: Rajas Ring
Ring 2: Behemoth Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Buccaneer's Belt
Legs: Scout's Braccae
Feet: Scout's Socks
And my Sidewinder gear: 
Main: Kriegsbeil
Sub: Fransisca
Ranged: Eurytos' Bow
Ammo: Kabura Arrow
Head: Optical Hat
Neck: Breeze Gorget
Earring 1: Bushinomimi
Earring 2: Triumph Earring
Body: Kirin's Osode
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring 1: Behemoth Ring
Ring 2: Behemoth Ring
Back: Amemet Mantle +1
Waist: Buccaneer's Belt
Legs: Pahluwan Serawells
Feet: Skadi's Jambeaux
Ok, so there we have a start to RNG, look at that as a partial guide and I will think about doing an On the Cheap.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
On the road to Odin.
So Versus has teamed up with Obsidian to do Einherjar, and we have been very successful. The problem for Versus was that we just didn't have the people to do well in Einherjar, and for Obsidian though they have very many skilled people, they are much more used to Dynamis which requires much less precision than Einherjar. The members of Versus fit very well into this because we already had the training we needed and fell right into Obsidian's group and there was success almost instantly. Within a couple of weeks we had our Tier 3 wins and next Tuesday will be our first Odin run. The funny thing is that we came in to work with Obsidian to get Tier 3 wins but we were not able to get our Tier 2 wins before that because we couldn't field much more than an alliance for most Einherjar runs. So we have gone back and gotten at least one Tier 2 win for our members to be able to go to Odin. 
Tier 2's are generally just as easy as Tier 1's if you have more people. At some point there is a requirement for a certain number of people for Einherjar, meaning it can be low-manned to a point, but the higher the Tier the more people you need just to get out the necessary damage to kill all of the mobs in the time provided. If it was not timed it could be done with far fewer people, but it's not, so you do need more people than normal. So now that we have enough people, we can do Odin. I am really looking forward to it.
Speaking of Obsidian, I did a little Dynamis-San d'Oria yesterday to get my Scout's legs which is one of the last pieces I want for my RNG outside of Salvage pieces. 
I also want to get a Scout's Belt but my recent acquisition of my new Buccaneer's Belt makes that a much lower priority. 
I am really pretty happy about my RNG right now outside of merits, and I don't have to wear those silly purple pants for TP anymore. :)
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Trying hard and trying harder.
So, I am back from the Fan Fest. It was definitely great, and I had much more fun than last year, but I do have to say it was much smaller and had much less information. A quick run down on the events.
1. The Swarm - This was fun, and it could even be turned into a decent in game event, if they wanted to. There were 6 characters, WAR/NIN with Conqueror, MNK/WAR with Glanzfaust, THF/NIN with Vajra and Kraken Club, RDM/BLM (I think BLM was the sub, didn't get to use RDM) with Murgleis, BLM/WHM with Laevateinn and WHM/NIN with Yagrush and Kraken Club. I got to play both the MNK and WHM, and I did some Aftermath testing with Glanzfaust (I couldn't do much testing with Yagrush because with off-hand Kraken it would have no discernible increase in attacks because of the eight attack per round limit). With a few tests at 100-300 TP with Glanzfaust, it looks like even the Occasionally Attacks Twice amount was TP dependent also. MNK was subbing WAR so it's hard to say exactly, and I don't want to speculate too much, but at 100TP it seemed pretty low though noticeable, but at 300TP it seemed that I would get a extra attack almost every round. 300TP Ascetic's Fury usually let me get off 2-3 more WS before it the aftermath wore. Couldn't exactly figure out what the addition effect on Focus or Dodge was, and I didn't check on accuracy or attack because I was more concerned about the attacks twice procs. Though I have to say that I didn't ever notice a fourth hand-to-hand round, meaning, I don't know if it automatically limits the additional attack to 1, making it different than the Faith Bags.
I also used WHM, but it was subbing NIN with a Kraken so no results from the occ. attacks twice could be determined from this.
The mobs we fought varied wildly in defense, evasion, etc. But my personal impression with no other factual basis is that after the mythic WS these are really strong weapons, even at 100TP. They are amazing after 300TP, and Ascetic's Fury itself was always 1500+ at 300TP.
Well, that spiraled out of control. LOL The event itself is very fun and you are required to kill all sorts of mobs to get points, some mobs are worth more or less dependent on their type. The largest being a Genbu style mob, and worth the most points. Both times I went as MNK I was the highest scorer, but we never even got close to the total high score.
2. Moblin Maze Mongers - I don't know how borked this was at the time it was available at the Fan Fest, but even the demonstration was having difficulty, and the only time we did it, there was only one mob when we zoned in. I do know that the eye-patch is one of the rewards available from the event. You do get XP from kills and you also get Moblin marbles which can be used to purchase the eye-patch and presumably other items. Also the mobs can appear as NM's because we got a rabbit named Nimble Nathan, and they also drop chests at the end of the event. Other neat things include the ability to adjust the music and the huge number of variables that can be introduced. I don't really know what the final form of this event is going to look like because I think they still had some work they need to finish, because they were rather obtuse about answering questions like "What are the rewards for this?" and "Why was there only one mob to fight?". I think it was probably a good idea to hold off on this, it looked like it needed some polishing.
3. Dev Panel - Mostly just repeats of things we already heard about from Japan, with the addition of a few interesting things. The merits were explained for Dancer and I think that Dancer definitely got the better set of merits. The new AF+1 and AF2 looks pretty good for both jobs, stat-wise. There was mention of new missions and Jeuno flag being available at the end of the Wings storyline, several of the cut scenes were teased and they looked pretty interesting. Other odds and ends of little relevence were also mentioned, but the most important thing to me was that they mentioned that the drop rate for Bhaflau and SSR were going to be increased, but they mentioned that as a future update not the current one. Which means that Iz and NF might have to wait for March for the increased drop rate. :(
4. The concert - I liked it but not really game related.
The disappointment for me was that there were pretty much nothing new in real information, no surprises, nothing for me to drool over. It's sad because the last couple of updates since the Wings expansion have left me kind of very meh. Maybe it is the fact that they are tipping their hand too much in the preview notes, but I feel more like it is because there are more and more things being added to fix the game than to add to new content. Like still no outlands access in the past, still no Walk of Echoes, still no use of those very HNM looking areas in the new zones of the Wings areas. It's not like the game isn't a ton better now, but I just think that these improvements should go hand in hand with more end-game content.
Also, it's time for them to give up on Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden. They are just ridiculous riddles that no one is ever going to figure out. At this point they are not something to take pride in as a developer, they are something to shame a developer. The problem is that they are not difficult monsters to defeat, it is that in their current form without some new direction from the development staff, they will never be defeated without some kind of gimmick or glitch. This is not good game design, it is in fact quite the opposite. It is very poor game design. The mob is not just difficult, and it is not just a gimmick fight, it is both at the same time. Straight up, without multiple two-hours, Absolute Virtue would be a total bitch to fight. The way it is now it is just retarded.
So how did I feel after the Fan Fest? I had a great time, and got to see friends in real life. I got to drink a lot on SE's dime and I got all sorts of neat trinkets. And I was left feeling pretty disappointed in the event and in the update and in the game. :(
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