You Are Not Your O's Kote

Samurai Part 3 - The Conclusion.

2011-03-11T15:49:00.001-05:00

I have been going on for two days now about how Samurai is complicated and piecing together a 5-hit build with Masamune is quite difficult, but I haven't said what those sets are. So lets finally get down to it.

My current best possible haste/Store TP build:

Main: Masamune
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Thew Bomblet
Head: Unkai Kabuto +2
Neck: Unkai Nodowa
Left Ear: Bushinomimi
Right Ear: Brutal Earring
Body: Unkai Domaru +2
Hands: Ace's Mufflers
Left Ring: Rajas Ring
Right Ring: Hoard Ring
Back: Athling Mantle
Waist: Goading Belt
Legs: Unkai Haidate +2
Feet: Ace's Sabatons

That is a build that will give me a total of 83 Store TP which, if my math is to be trusted, should give me 20.3 TP per hit. This will give me 81.2 TP for the 4 melee hits, and leaving me still needing 18.8 TP on my WS.

And now the sacrifices come... lets take a look my WS build.

Main: Masamune
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Thew Bomblet
Head: Twilight Helm
Neck: Unkai Nodowa
Left Ear: Bushinomimi
Right Ear: Brutal Earring
Body: Usukane Haramaki
Hands: Hachiman Kote +1
Left Ring: Rajas Ring
Right Ring: Flame Ring
Back: Athling Mantle
Waist: Sentry Belt
Legs: Unkai Haidate +2
Feet: Unkai Sune-ate +2

This set-up is going to give me 18.8 TP on my WS with only a few major sacrifices to be able to maintain this set-up.

I have to mention that I have not done the math to exactly prove that getting to a WS one swing faster with slightly weaker gear will do more damage than a stronger WS a little more often. I am going to try a perfect 6-hit build with Masamune (which will make it a lot more "perfect" because you don't have to make any sacrifices in gear because your best gear already has tons of Store TP on it anyway) and see how that parses against the "perfect" 5-hit build.

The problem is that ultimately you can swap around about 10 different pieces to get varies amount of Store TP in your TP and WS sets. I think this is pretty much optimal for me for now, and considering the fact that SE has been handing out Store TP on SAM gear like crazy lately, I am beginning to think that I may not have to worry too much about making sacrifices if there are some new pieces with Store TP, especially on WS gear.

Ok, that is all for SAM for now, I promise. Next week, we will have some discussion on some other jobs, or hopefully some more news about the coming update!

Samurai flexibility.

2011-03-10T15:24:00.003-05:00

First things first, yesterday I was wrong about the amount of Store TP you need for a 5-hit build with a Masamune or Amanomurakumo. I multiplied when I should have added.

When you are putting together your gear for your 5 or 6-hit build, the best place to start is with your WS set. This is because your WS set is almost always going to have less Store TP than your melee set, and it is important to know how much extra Store TP you are going to need to make up for the deficit. Lets take a quick look at my current WS set up. It has not been perfected, and having perfect gear doesn't really matter all the much when it comes to learning how to create your build.

Well, let's not because Photofucket is failing again. Just take my word for it that I have 61 total Store TP on during a WS and that give me 17.8 TP return on a regular WS. That means to get to a 5-hit build I will need at least 20.6 (rounded up, of course) to make sure I get to 100. That means I will need to get a whooping 86 Store TP. Of course, 35 of that Store TP will come from traits and merits, but that still means I will need to come up with 51 Store TP from gear.

A few critical pieces of gear:

Rajas Ring: The goto for SAM's ever since the X-hit builds were created. I would be nice if it continued to scale, but it is still great even though it doesn't.

Rose Strap: Obviously not the best for the slot when it comes to pure damage output, but it is usually critical for getting to that max Store TP build. Take the hit to your damage so that you can WS a lot faster.

Unkai Nodowa: Another piece that is a sacrifice in damage for more Store TP. It doesn't hurt as much if you think of Store TP as Haste. You like haste right? Then just grin and bear it.

Getting these pieces will be critical to any Store TP build for a SAM, but they are not enough. You will need several more pieces of Unkai +2, and you will still need old Usukane gear if you really want that perfect set. If you have any suggestions for more critical pieces, be sure to include them in the comments.

My favorite subject.

2011-03-09T11:50:00.002-05:00

Samurai is still my favorite job. I may have been doing a lot more on MNK, WHM or BLM recent, none of them have the inherent mathematical appeal that SAM has. There are certain considerations that are available to SAM that just aren't as available to other jobs. Sure other jobs need to take Store TP into consideration to make sure they are getting the best TP per swing, but no other job has the flexibility that Samurai does, and no other job can make decisions about haste like SAM does.

Last night, I finally got my level 80 Masamune, and while I am not going to use it yet because I already have a crappy WoE Fudo-stick, I am going to look at the current state of my gear, and the current and future state of my Store TP build.

To start, let me say that while I like the actual design of many of the AF3 sets and I like the concept for the art on the new SAM AF3, I don't like the bulky look of many of the items in the SAM set. The head piece is really big compared to Usukane and the shoulders on the body are freaking huge. I think they may be the only body piece that has shoulders that are that big and separated from the actual body piece. This is the first time I have ever really been concerned with how I look outside of my melee gear, but now that I use spellcast and I have it swap in my Danzo Sune-ate anyway, I have just started sporting a "town" set or really more of a "I prefer the look of Usukane anyway" set.

Now for the fun part! The math behind the Store TP build for a Masamune! The first think to know about the Masamune is that it has a lower delay than most normal Great Katana. 437 is the same as Amanomurakumo and it requires a higher amount of Store TP to maintain the proper 5-hit build that is now an option for most decent SAMs. 437 gives you a standard unmodified TP per hit of 11.1. 11.1 per hit for a SAM with full Store TP merits gives you an adjusted TP per hit of 14.9. This means you will need [i]at least[/i] 35 store TP to get to 20 TP per hit in your melee gear. How much you specifically need is largely dependent on how much Store TP you do your WS's in. Remember, there are now many different competing options for how to get that Store TP.

Photobucket is being a shitbucket today, so I don't have any pictures for this post. Tomorrow, I will have some pictures of different equipment sets so we can go over different options for Store TP gear.

And so it begins...

2011-03-08T15:36:00.003-05:00

The new FFXI and FFXIV forums opened today, and I have to say it is a lot better and worse than I expected.

Better: It is very comprehensive. General discussion forums, update information and even job forums. It should be easy for people to see where they want to post and post the correct information.

Worse: It's going to be a huge cluster fuck. People are going to whine 100% of the time, and beg for stupid shit like forcing people to go back to old XP parties and buffing the hell out of PUP.

On-balance: It is for the good. Even with all the idiots out there that just don't understand that some (most, if not all) people like the game the way it is right now, I believe that the NA community leaders are quite capable of ignoring what they know to be bad for the game.

I don't think it is going replace other forums like BG or even some of the smaller forums, but it is a new place for some people to contribute and some people to whine like children. And since the whiners care about posting most often than the people that want to contribute, the official forums will sometimes be a shit fest. Though, that doesn't mean that their won't be good threads too. While BG is obviously for more advanced players, it can still be rather off putting to even me at times. There are certain players, some thankfully banned, that would posit nearly insane damage calculations and scream down anyone that didn't agree. Hopefully, this situation will be less likely to occur on the official forums.

More stupidity for less negativity? It's a trade off and it is definitely the reason I believe that places like BG will be largely unaffected by the new official forums.

The thing that I really want to see is SE letting Matt Hilton and the guys on the NA community team actually make comments about the state of the game, planned updates and bug fixes. I don't expect them to be as active as say Blizzards moderators, but actually responding to a post instead of just adding a new post to the announcement forum would at least provide the perception that they are actually participating, even if they aren't in reality.

The Effect of Atma on the Balance of Damage Dealing Classes.

2010-11-18T17:01:00.001-05:00

Yadda, yadda, yadda, I'm not dead, etc.

Since the introduction of the Abyssea expansions, Atma have been of increasing interest and importance to all of the damage dealing classes. Perhaps more importantly (and maybe unsettling to some) Atmas may be completely realigning years old beliefs and understanding about the balancing of all the DD classes. Atmas are not the only thing factoring into these changes, of course, there are the new Empyrean weaponskills, the huge step up in the quality of the stats from the AF3 +2 gear, and even all of the new job abilties and spells that all classes have been receiving. Atmas, though, are one of the most obvious examples of the new world order that has appeared after Abyssea was launched.

Throughout much of FFXI's history the DD classes have been split into two camps: the dual-wielders and the two-handers. Dual-wielders have the tendency toward low swings speeds and multi-hit weaponskills (often with critical hit modifiers), while two-handers have leaned toward higher swing speeds matched with lots of Store TP to boost their TP per swing and reduce their number of swings to get to the next weaponskill. Dual-wielders tend to have a larger portion of their damage come from their regular melee swings, while weaponskills tend to make up a proportionally larger part of two-hander damage. This was in the past, though, and times are changing.

There are now several new Atma that have come available that have given a big boost to dual-wielders. This is a boost that dual-wielders have needed ever since the big two-handed buff from several years ago. The reason these new Atma are so good is that they modify what dual-wielders do best, melee damage and critical hit weaponskills. While there are very good Atma to help the damage of two-handers, like Voracious Violet (STR+:Superior, "Double Attack"+:Minor, "Regain":Minor), and two-handers can still use the Atma that the dual-wielders use, comparatively they just don't stand up to the huge buffs gain by dual-wielders. The first and most important Atma for dual-wielders (and it's so good that it is a top tier one for two-handers too) is Razed Ruins (DEX:Superior, Critical Hit Rate:Major, Critical Hit Damage:Major) which is the new main damage boost to dual-wielders. Razed Ruin massively increases the frequency of critical hits and then also increases the damage of those critical hits. Basically, it modifies it's own damage modifiers creating incredible internal synergy (and I am not just using that as a buzz word).

Speaking of synergy, second on the list of great dual-wielder Atmas is the Sanguine Scythe (HP+: Major, Critical Hit Damage+: Major, Enmity+: Minor). This atma has less straight forward damage boosts as it only has a major increase in Critical Hit Damage, but the HP and Enmity are excellent boosts to any dual-wielder that is considering tanking. MNK's could find this very useful, but NIN are really going to shine with this one. NIN with a huge boost to Critical Hit Rate and Damage can easily pull enough hate with damage that they are competitive with PLD. It is important to note though that the cap on the bonus to Critical Hit Damage modification is an additional 50%. Once you get past 50% Critical Hit Damage bonus, you are just wasting it. That means if you are wearing Critical Hit Damage bonus items, and can get to 20% before using Razed Ruin, then it will be better to go with a different Atma than Sanguine Scythe.

Third, is the Gnarled Horn Atma (Counter+: Minor, Critical Hit Rate:Minor, AGI+:Major). The modifications on this is a little different than Sanguine Scythe, and those differences can effect your choice for which to go with for your second Atma. There are still debates on which is better, but it looks like it can get to be pretty job specific when deciding which to use. If you do not need the increase in Critical Hit Damage then this is definite the right Atma to use. There have been reports of up to 80% Critical Hit Rates using this and Razed Ruin. Additionally, the new NIN WS Blade: Hi has a modifier of AGI, and it is a massive damage WS (and looks freaking awesome). The additional counter can also be very good for tanking or melee NIN.

In the end, the boost to dual-wielders has been huge and will likely get even larger after the next update when we likely get access to a third Lunar Abyssite. Of course, these Atmas boost the damage of two-handers but definitely to a lesser extent because a smaller proportion of their damage comes from the melee hits that are most modified by the Critical Hit boosting Atmas. The Critical Hit Rate Atmas in fact will likely be capped on two-handed WS that can Critical Hit. And my poor SAM doesn't even get a Critical Hit WS (though it does get Blade: Fudo which is still incredibly awesome).

Debates have already erupted about who is the new king of DD's. Have dual-wielders passed two-handers already? Does one of the dual-wielders stand above the rest? What about the other non-Atma factors like the new Weaponskills? The honest truth, despite the protests of the screamers and fan boys, is that the jury is still out and the jury will remain hung until things have settled after the last Abyssea expansion is released next month, at the very least. The balance only just started to tip toward Critical Hits after the launch of Scars. Things can and will radically change once we can get a third Atma, and even further once we get to the final level cap. Only once we hit the final level cap and things have stabilized for some time will we really even get a glimpse of what the damage dealing landscape really looks like.

Samurai 5-hit Build: My Gear.

2010-09-03T16:45:00.000-04:00

I think the primer yesterday about SAM 5-hit builds was too vague, so I am going to use my own character as a model to show just how you would create a good 5-hit build with a 464 delay Great Katana and what different options you have available.

These sets use gear I currently have or have relatively easy access to. It may require work for some people, and it may be gimp to other people. The point is that there are many different paths you can choose. Let's take a lot at what I can use right now to get to a 5-hit build.

Cheap and easy:

This is the set-up I could use today without spending anything or doing anything different.

TP
Main: Kokushitsunotachi
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Goblin Cracker
Head: Walahra Turban
Neck: Unkai Nobowa
Earring: Bushinomimi
Earring: Brutal Earring
Body: Usukane Haramaki
Hands: Hachiman Kote
Ring: Rajas Ring
Ring: Adler Ring
Back: Forager's Mantle
Waist: Swift Belt
Legs: Byakko's Haidate
Feet: Usukane Sune-ate

WS
Main: Kokushitsunotachi
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Thew Bomblet
Head: Varangian Helm
Neck: WS Gorget
Earring: Bushinomimi
Earring: Brutal Earring
Body: Usukane Haramaki
Hands: Myochin Kote +1
Ring: Rajas Ring
Ring: Flame Ring
Back: Forager's Mantle
Waist: Sentry Belt
Legs: Usukane Hizayoroi
Feet: Perle Solerets

Under TP build I have +34 Store TP from gear which gives me 20.6 TP per swing, and for WS I have +16 Store TP from gear which is 18.4 TP per swing. That is 100.8 and more than enough for what I need.

Of course this is not optimal. It gives up a bit of haste in the hands for the huge bump in haste from dropping an entire attack round to get to the next WS. There are other ways that this can be approached as well as using the Store TP +5 Keitonotachi. This is just the most simple route for me at this time.

I would actually suggest that people get both the Kokushitsunotachi and the Keitonotachi. The Koku is used for situations in which TP spam is ok, but the Keitonotachi is essentially the new Hagun, the main new go-to GKT. This is simply because while it is lower base damage, it will let you get to 5-hit very easily and it has a high base damage.

My Koku is almost complete and I will be working on my Keitonotachi soon. Next week before the update I will be going over some alternative 5-hit builds and look at some other GKT. And then I will cry as it all changes again after the next update.

Samurai in the New Abyssea Order.

2010-09-01T16:56:00.000-04:00

It has come to my attention that there are several viable options for 5-hit builds with several of the Magian Great Katanas. In general, these are only possible with a few requirements. The Great Katana needs to be of at least 464 delay and you are going to make some new trade offs to get to the Store TP required. Assuming you have all of the necessary merits, you will require an additional 29 in Store TP. The problem for doing this is not that the gear doesn't exist, but that there are a lot of ways to get to the goal of +29 Store TP and almost all of them require giving up additional gear.

Now, I know the knee jerk reaction to this statement is why would I ever want to give up good stats for Store TP? The answer is simple, you don't UNLESS you can save a swing in getting to the next WS. For SAM (and for almost all jobs) a WS is always to going to be the most damaging attack you can do. This means that the more WS you get the more damage you will do. The reason people use Haste is to do the same exact thing. If you swing faster, you will get to the next WS faster. The problem is that people don't think of Store TP as Haste, but they should. It just comes in huge big chunks of Haste, rather than small slivers of Haste. Everyone should know the value of Haste by now. It has a multiplicative effect on your damage, which means that every bit of Haste you can get and use effectively will be of more and more value.

The options that I have found so far the Kokushitsunotachi and the Keitonotachi. There are obviously different approaches for each considering the Keitonotachi has +5 Store TP of it's own, making it easier, but still requiring trade offs. In general, you are going to need to keep your normal Store TP gear that you are currently using. Things like Rajas Ring, Usukane Sune-ate and a Store TP body like Usukane Haramaki or even Askar body are acceptable options. After that the trade off's start coming. Rose Strap is an obvious first pick because it replaces a relatively unimportant slot and has a big chunk of Store TP on it. The new Unkai Nodowa is a good option for the neck piece because the next closest option is Chivalrous Chain and it doesn't give nearly as much. White Tathlum is another option, it makes me cringe because it doesn't do much at all to help out with anything else besides the Store TP. After this point you need to start thinking about big sacrifices. Hachiman gear has a lot of Store TP on it. The hands can be used for TP and the feet can be used for WS. These should be your last resort options, but they may be necessary depending on your gearing.

The one shining light out there is the Goading Belt. While this may not seem like the best possible option compared to the Bullwhip Belt, you need to look at the differences in terms of total Haste. A Bullwhip Belt has 2% more Haste, but if a Goading Belt helps you keep other gear you want to be using like say Dusk Gloves or a good WS piece then you could actually gain more from using the Goading Belt than from the Bullwhip Belt. It's a tough balancing act that requires a complete look at all of your gear and options, but it is worth the effort because the difference between a 6 hit build and a 5 hit build is about 17% haste. There is no piece of gear that gives you that much haste.

SE Gives More But Do We Really Need It?

2010-08-30T16:23:00.000-04:00

Yes, of course they are beautiful new weapon skills. Yes, everyone loves new and shiny stuff. But the question I have to ask is this: Do we really need more WS?

We got new WS in the last update, and for the most part they kind of sucked. Some were interesting but most were complete busts. I am left wondering after years and years of wishing that SE would give us more meaningful updates and just more stuff if we have gotten to the point where we don't need a whole lot more stuff. What we need is refinement, and we got a lot of that in the Job Adjustments update notes, but outside of the absolute beauty of these new weaponskills, is there anything substantial to them? The question boils down to this: Is it going to beat the WS I use right now?

What SE needs to show is a little less flash and a little more finesse. What is compelling about these new WS? After looking at a couple WS worth of butterflies, I haven't used Tachi: Ageha outside of testing and goofing-off. The problem is that the level of commitment in testing and figuring things out just isn't as high as it used to be. If there are any little tricks to these new WS then most people aren't that willing to put a ton of work into finding them out. I would like for SE to look over old WS's to make sure they were all usable, even if just situationally.

So, I guess what I am saying is that we have matured past candy and sweets and what we really want is meat and potatoes level improvements. The move to increase the level cap was a meat and potatoes improvement. New Job Abilities (as long as they are useful) are meat and potatoes improvements. New WS are just sugar and spice and everything nice, but they won't sustain you. At this point, a lot of new WS are all flash and no substance. Keep giving us meat and potatoes improvements. Give better ways to move around, give us more storage, give us more JA's (that don't share timers), don't give us more pretty stuff we are never going to use.

I am getting too used to SE giving us good content. I feel like I am looking a gift horse in the mouth.

SE Drops More Bombs: Job Abilities.

2010-08-27T17:05:00.001-04:00

The update notes on Wednesday were vanilla. I don't know if they rushed something out to make sure we had a decent teaser, or if they enjoy teasing us, but Wednesday left me a little flat.

Friday, gave me a raging hard-on.

Let's get down to business.

Job Abilities:
The quality of new Job Abilities now runs the gamut from interesting to jaw-dropping.

1. Divine Caress - Interesting, but probably of limited usefulness. This is probably only really helpful if it completely prevents the enfeeble from landing. If you use Divine Caress before removing paralyze or slow and it prevents them from landing again, then it is great. If it just increases resistance like a normal job trait then it isn't really useful at all because you will still need to remove the enfeeble. You are not often in a position where you would not remove a enfeeble because you know that it will wear earlier than a full strength one.

2. Saboteur - Jaw-dropping, but dependent on potency. If this ability helps RDM to increase their potency enough then they can use more skill and accuracy to make sure they land. If this ability increases the duration enough then it can be used with Elemental Seal. If this ability increases the potency over current effect caps then it will just be incredibly strong. That is a lot of if's.

3. Spur - Interesting. My guess is that this will be nice, but it will really depend on the strength of the pet's attack and how much the extra TP can benefit it.

4. Tenuto - Standard of Living. Bards will finally be able to give themselves the songs that they want instead of constantly overwriting their own songs. The delay and duration look like they match Pianissimo.

5. Soul Jump - Interesting. Shares a timer with High Jump. Has the same effect as High Jump. Looks like this is just the same thing as Spirit Jump and Jump. This one is kind of vanilla unless the effect provided by the Wyvern is huge.

6. Blood Pact: Ward "Earthen Armor" - Interesting to Jaw-dropping. This really depends on if it is a mini-Perfect Defense, or if it is just a bit of damage reduction. The wording gives me hope that it is used against something like Meteor or 10,000,000 Needles or whatever.

7. Blood Pact: Ward "Tidal Roar" - Interesting. Attack down is something that is handed out left and right by SE. This may have it's uses especially with how well effects seem to scale for Summoners now. Right now, it just sounds like any other attack down effect.

8. Efflux - Who cares. It's a Blue Mage JA. No one cares. At least no one should care. I suppose it is one more thing to stack on before Cannonball. :)

9. Courser's Roll - Jaw-dropping. Increase "Snapshot", which for the uninformed is Ranged Attack haste. Sounds awesome, but also probably the death knell for many a Ranger out there. More speed, more damage, more hate, more death. Thank god for Animus Minuo.

10. Blitzer's Roll - Jaw-dropping... or not. Decreases swing delay. This could be amazing if it doesn't cause a decrease in TP per swing. Hopefully it is like Hasso and Haste Samba and not like Sword Strap.

11. Feather Step - Interesting. This has to be pretty strong to be of interest, especially considering not a lot of people put DNC on high level mobs. DNC already has a lot to do, so I don't know if this is going to be of much interest at all.

That is it for today, more on the spells and traits soon.

On It's Feet!

2010-08-24T16:16:00.002-04:00

This is an illustration of when ingrained learning kicks in. :)

I love Abyssea. It is really fun. There seem to be so many aspects to it. So many things we can't even really explain yet. Like, why did Turul and Ovni start aggroing all of a sudden? Are the "!!" really random? How do all the Abyssite drop? At some point though, all of this information just gets to be overwhelming. Why are there so many questions that remain unanswered? What are we supposed to do to try to figure all of this out? Why can't SE just give us some straight forward content.

I am not saying that there is something wrong with Abyssea itself. As I have already said it is challenge and rewarding content. I am just concerned that instead of content we are getting randomness. One of the reasons that I liked Salvage so much was that it was a riddle but it was one that we could figure out. Sure there was the normal drop rate issue, but it felt like if you did it long enough it would all average out in the end.

I look at Abyssea and I see a huge jumble of events. A little Limbus, a splash of Salvage, the old Sky/Sea combo, finished with a dash of Kings. It's very interesting and fun, but it seems all a bit scatter brained (not like I am one to criticize, my posts can end up rambling on forever). The tiers don't seem symmetrical. It seems more like a hodge-podge of previous end-game content mixed with something all new.

It's not bad at all, it can just get confusing sometimes. Sometimes it's nice to have content with some obvious solution to it. There is some comfort to be found standing on a dragon's feet. It's a whole new world, but that doesn't mean that SE has to steal my security blankie. :)

Words That Have No Meaning.

2010-08-16T16:23:00.001-04:00

Soloing, Low-manning, efficiency. It seems to me that these words have lost all meaning. Soloing doesn't mean soloing anymore. Today it means finding a slow, glitchy or bindable mob, and then casting Poison and Bio II for hours at a time. That's not soloing. That doesn't take skill. It just takes an anti-social personality type and a lot of patience. I respect people that solo things as a test of skill. Soloing Limbus back in the day. Soloing anything where if a spell fails to land you are pretty much dead. That takes skill in my eyes. Boring a mob to death is not skill. Stop acting like it is skill.

If you take longer to kill a mob than it's respawn time, then you suck. There is nothing more to it. You don't suck at playing the game. You suck at soloing. Soloing used to be about efficiency. After the test of skill, the reason people soloed Limbus was to collect coins faster than with a group. That doesn't apply to Chukwa. If you are soloing Chukwa, then you are just wasting time. You don't have proper TH. You don't have friends.

Yes, yes, there are always exceptions. You work nights and don't have any JP friends. You just changed servers (though it does beg the question). You really are testing your skills. These are all fine exceptions. And everyone uses them as an excuse, but I think for the most part these are just covers for two things: Greed and Anti-social behavior.

Here is my real issue with soloing a lot of things now: You aren't just fucking other people (you obviously don't care about them already if you are taking 50 minutes to kill Chukwa), you are fucking yourself over. If you just ask a couple of your friends (if you have any), you can kill most mobs ten times faster, with a much higher drop rate, if you just agree to do the same thing for your friends.

Maybe I am just lucky and have amazing friends. Friends that don't just want to do stuff with our LS, but also want to do things just as a group. Friends that are just as happy when I get gear as they are when they get gear. I do have amazing friends, but I don't think it is a special circumstance. I think many people can have friends if they want them. But greed leads to anti-social behavior, and that is what soloing means to me now (with the previously mentioned exceptions). Soloing is about greed plain and simple.

Anything that can be soloed can be done far more efficiently with a small group. And anything that can be done with a small group can be done more efficiently with a larger group. Yes, there is absolutely a point where having more people becomes less efficient when it comes to gear, but I don't think most people that "solo" are even close to that balance.

Do NM's Cry When You Kill Them?

2010-08-13T16:20:00.001-04:00

I have never really wondered what NM's think when I kill them. They usually have stuff I or my friends want, and we aren't going to let them get in between us and our most desired bling. I still don't really care, but after killing a few Minhocao and Chukwa's to get some gear I started to almost few bad for them. I mean how would you feel if you were tortured by some gimp RDM "soloing" you for hours on end? I would just be wishing for a quick end by an alliance that could actually kill me in a reasonable amount of time. I pictured their feelings would be hurt at the very least. I think there needs to be a new rule, if "soloing" a mob takes longer than the respawn of that mob, then you need to get a new hobby.

A Few Things That I (Still) Don't Understand.

2010-08-05T17:04:00.000-04:00

I might have mentioned that I don't understand some people. Ok, so I talk about it all the time. Some people get so obsessed with some gear that they don't know when to give up on it's pursuit. Some people get so used to doing events that they don't realize when it's time to move on. Some people don't realize that just because they have the gear from an event already doesn't mean that everyone does, and that sometimes you need to do things you don't want to do anymore to get people to help you. These things can even contradict. One person's treasure is another person's trash. But none of this is what I really want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about Magian weapons.

A common topic? Yes, definitely. I have talked a lot about Magian weapons, but I don't think that some people even get the point right now. I think the problem may stem from the lack of difference there really was from level 75 to 80. The problem is that you can't just look at a Magian weapon and say "Well damn, I have to have that or I am gimp" because the increase in damage is just the next step up, it's not a paradign shift in game mechanics. I think most people (myself included) thought that the jump in level from 75 to 80 was going to be accompanied by the same jump up in stats that happens from 1 to 75. That wasn't to be the case. The only really consistent increase came in the form of skill increases (which arguably is even more important than raw stats but that is a discussion for another day). Instead of the exponential increase in damage most people expected to see from a higher damage weapon and 5 additional levels, it instead turned out to be more of a linear increase in damage. Nothing ground breaking, and a lot of time that is the only thing that will get people out of their rut.

I think there are more than a few reasons to move on Magian weapons now, instead of later.

1. With the rare expection, they really are the best weapons in the game. Outside of a very few number of weapons, there is nothing that can beat a Magian weapon. All jobs now have access to weapons that have higher damage or more attacks per round than anything else available. Relics and Mythics generally excepted, I believe that Ridill is the only weapon that still can make a claim to being overpowered. And that is arguable...

2. Outside of Mythics and Relics, Magians will definitively be the best weapons in the game after the next update. While one could argue that we still don't know what is coming for upgrading weapons in the future, we can look at the end-point Empyrean weapons and say that they are obviously not complete. Also, it is undeniable that the base damage has to increase as the level cap increases. All of the old weapons just can't keep up with the march of progress.

3. You are going to have to do more work to upgrade your weapons in the future. If you fall behind now, you just have more work to do in the future. It's not like the trials are going to get easier. SE is just going to add more and more trials onto the end of the ones that already exist. And they are going to make Magian weapons even stronger. When the next update comes, are you going to want to be killing Treants in Grauberg? Or are you going to want to finish off your Indra Staff to get the next step in Lightning Damage Potency?

4. If you aren't working on upgrading your Magian weapons then you really are gimp. This is one of my unapologetically elitist moments, but in the end it's not elitist at all. Up to the penultimate Empyrean stage and up to the final stage of the rest of the weapons they trials just aren't that hard. Sure getting some of the 20 drops for the high damage OAT weapons can be a bit of trouble, but there is nothing that is stopping you from doing it besides yourself. The problem might be that for almost the entirety of FFXI people had to work with other people to get the best gear, but instead of working as a motivating factor this actually just encourages people to be free-riders. But now, when faced with a set of quests that require individual action for the most part, the free-riders are left out in the cold. And they should be.

I might be an elitist dick, but this isn't about criticizing gear because it's hard to get or because it takes a lot of time to get. In this case, I am not the elitist dick, other people are just lazy dicks. And I would much rather be just about any kind of dick than a lazy dick. :)

Old Man Ring Shakes His Cane.

2010-07-26T14:34:00.000-04:00

I am getting cranky. Cranky is a good place for me. I have been dealing with the two-headed beast of camping near irrelevant NM's and a horrible internet connection. I have lost at least two, if not more, Okyupete kills for my second Magian GKT because of my internet connection taking a dump all over itself. You might remember me mentioning how much I love the Magian system because you can do it yourself at your own pace, and it's relatively easy to get an amazing weapon. Yeah, well if you add in a crappy internet connection that all goes out the freaking window.

Ok, so it's not the Magian system's fault that my internet connection is worse that two tin cans and a piece of string, but I am cranky so logic doesn't matter! I will be less cranky once I have killed 6 more Lamprey Lords and then 8 more Chesma's and then collect 50 Carabosse's Gems... wait, what the fuck? Are you fucking with my mind? 50 Gems from a tier 2 Abyssea mob? Now, the kick in the balls that my internet connection has been giving me over the weekend suddenly feels like a gentle cupping compared the giant black dildo that SE has inserted into my rectum. I don't want to hear about how you can farm the pop items for Carabosse in an XP party, and I don't want to hear about the fact that there are a ton of far more difficult drops for other weapons. I just don't want to hear it, I just want this giant black dildo out of my rectum.

Speaking of annoying, I can't wait for people to finish leveling their jobs in Abyssea and realize that there is actual real gear in there. I know people that have spent 16 hours in Abyssea leveling and have somehow not leveled everything they have, merited everything they have, and flipped their XP like the score in an Atari 2600 game. Yeah? You don't know what an Atari 2600 is? Too young you say? Fuck you. Go to a fucking museum and check it out, you can find it right next to the Magna Carta, the Rosetta Stone, and the skeleton of an fucking Allosaurus.

Did I mention I am currently working on something like 5 different Magian weapons right now? I have killed every single moronic NM that SE has ever added to the game. Some of these NM's have to be a freaking joke. Okyupete? Ankabut? Where do they come up with these names? A three-year-old's first illiterate Crayola scrawl? Jolly Green? Killed it, and the fucking thing doesn't even have a last name, and it's not even a fucking giant. Hey, SE, you already have freaking green giants in the game, why don't you call one of them Jolly Green? You know the worst part? I am doing Great Katana and Bow, and they both perfectly overlap, so I have committed genocide against the peace loving Treants of Grauberg, not once, not even twice, but three time, and it's going to happen again because of that Plantoids under weather thing. I make Pol Pot look like Strawberry Shortcake. You don't know Pol Pot, you say? What? You don't know fucking Strawberry Shortcake, either? Get the fuck off my lawn!

And Yilbegan can get the fuck off my lawn too! Fucking shadow-less, but fucking cool looking dragon, that's like the anti-dragon. Tank it on it's rear feet? Only damage it when wings are up? What the fuck? It's like everything is backwards because of some little in-joke at SE headquarters. "Oh, we so funny!" Yeah, fuck you too, buddy! Oh, you dropped a Platinum Ore and a Platinum Ingot? How generous! Let me show my appreciation by jamming a fork in my ear. Oh wow, the fork in my ear does nothing to minimize the pain of the brutal dildo assault...

Internet connection problems make the Old Man Ring pretty cranky. I am sure it's because my roommate is simultaneously uploading and downloading every episode of Top Gear ever created, in every language known to man. My poor GB's and Wifi's don't stand a chance against a full frontal assault from Jeremy Clarkson. You don't know Jeremy Clarkson? Great, you just gave me an aneurysm.

XPing in the New World Order: A Primer.

2010-07-22T14:27:00.000-04:00

Stop XPing. It's not worth it. There is no amount of XP you can get in the real world that justifies doing it anymore. No time investment is worth it. No dual BRD parties can keep up. There is nothing you can do to XP anymore.

You have to go to Abyssea. Abyssea is the best XP in the game, and it is not even close to being a competition. If you are XPing in the "real world" then you are doing it for one of three reasons. 1. You don't have time for a full Abyssea alliance XP run (which can be very time consuming). 2. You don't have enough people for a full Abyssea alliance XP run. 3. You are out of Traverser Stones (though this might never be a problem again for those that are good at XPing in Abyssea).

The History: The last few years has been about the specialization and at the same time marginalization of certain jobs in XP parties. SAM, WAR, DRG and DRK are the main DD, RDM was the main healer. BRD was the buffer and puller. COR was the secondary buffer, and was poor at pulling and DDing. This was moving in the opposite direction of the value of jobs at non-XP events. PLD were the main tank, MNK tanked Salvage, RDM was a healer, but WHM was the go to for the most part. BLM was very valuable, as was SCH. BRD was still very important. Melee DD were either critical or useless.

Abyssea comes along and turns all of that on top of it's head.

The Set-up: Balance is critical. While in the past people wanted to have a high concentration of buffs and DD, this isn't as required now. You still want to have a high rate of damage, but you need a variety of damage. Melee, WS and magic damage are all critical to get the balance in "lights". There are also new roles. Now you will need people that are pretty much dedicated to opening chests. Two people is probably best because you start to get a whole lot of chests after a while and you can't open everything with one person after a while.

The most important thing is to have a variety of kill-shots. Some melee kills, some WS kills, and especially some magic damage kills. This will give you pearlescent, ruby and azure light, respectively. The idea is that you want to build up these lights as quickly as possible, so you want to kill things with your different damage sources. Personally, I think it is a little better to go on streaks. Kill a few with melee and WS, then kill a few with magic, and go back and forth. The point is that you need all three sources of damage to make sure you are getting the most sources of light. While the message will never say anything more than "you gain a feeble amount of X light" you will still be building them up behind the scenes.

The beginning: Some people say to go with all magic kills to get to time first, and some say all melee to increase your drop rate of chest, but I have to say that mixing it up is probably the best. I don't know the exact way the system currently works (no one does) but I have found that going on little streaks seems to be the best for me so far. Kill about 5 with melee to up your pearlescent light, then kill 5 with magic to up your Azure light, and toss in some WS and Elemental WS kills to increase your Ruby and Amber lights. The important thing at the beginning is to just focus on killing, don't worry about chests too much and having a good assist.

The mid-game: Don't freak out! That is the best advice I can give. The XP doesn't start rolling until you are well into the time chests, but the time chests usually don't start rolling until about an hour into the run. The worst thing I have seen done to runs so far is people start freaking out about an hour into the run and over focusing on one type of kill. Remember, balance is the most important for good chest generation. You need high tiers of all the different lights on a good run. If you start freaking out and don't keep things balanced, then you end up ruining the run by not getting enough chests or not getting time chests. Once you start getting time chests it's time to relax and enjoy the run.

The end-game: Put on some music, get used to your assist macro and go to town! You still need to keep a balanced light progression because things can still go out of wack if you are not careful. Additionally, the longer the run goes the more likely people are going to cap out their levels and merits, or get tired and want to go to bed, or shave their cats or AFK banging hot chicks, etc, but the important thing to remember is that lights are saved individually. What does this mean? Normally, if you are there for the whole run you are capped out on lights and will be getting the top tier lights all the time, but if you leave and come back or if you are new to the run then you will have zero light and need to build it up again. It appears that the person that kills the mobs determines what the light level is for the chests. That means if you have someone new get a kill shot the chest, if one even appears, will be at the low level. In general, if you are coming into or back into a run in the middle then you want to avoid getting a kill shot for at least a half hour. Also, if you have to swap around quite a few of your melee or BLM then you need to consider the fact that it could take quite some time to rebuild their lights to the point that they are worth anything.

A final note: Bring Forbidden Keys! You don't want to lose a time chest just because the Random Number Generator doesn't love you (the Random Number Generator doesn't love anyone, everyone is the bitch of the Random Number Generator). Don't forget about Ruby and Amber light! Ruby light comes from WS kills and give you other lights for the most part. This is nice at the beginning to get more Azure, Ruby and Pearlescent lights, but later in runs you need the Ruby lights to boost your XP and Crour per kill. XP caps around 300 per kill without Ebon, Silver and Gold lights, so you will definitely need them toward the mid to end of the run. Amber light gives you more treasure chests with potential pop items in them, so they are worth it if you are doing it as a group of friends, but less important if you are in a pick up group.

My Magian Projects: Kokushitsunotachi

2010-07-09T16:19:00.000-04:00

I have noticed something slightly disturbing since the update; a lot of people are still using their old pre-75 weapons. There are a huge number of new weapons available through the new Magians system, and while the new top-of-the-line weapons will require some time to get them done there are still some people that haven't end gotten the ones from last update done.

Personally, I already have my Kurodachi fully upgraded to the last update. I also am working on my Goshawk for my RNG and staffs for my WHM and BLM. I really like the design of the trial system, so maybe I can help be a good motivation for everyone else!

Right now, I have a Kurodachi with DMG+28, Delay+20 and Occasionally Attacks Twice. To upgrade it to the highest possible level right now, I need to do the following:

Trial 1557: 10 Chasmic Stingers
Trial 1558: 20 Mikey's Silver Nuggets

That will leave me with the horribly named Kokushitsunotachi with the following stats:

The Chasmic Stinger comes from the Chasmic Hornet in Abyssea-La Theine. The Chasmic Hornet is an NM spawn from Great Wasp placeholders. It looks like the stingers are drops like other Magian items and two can drop at a time. The respawn on the Chasmic Hornets is still unclear right now, and there is differing reports from 30-1 hour.

The Mikey's Silver Nuggets come from Megamaw Mikey which is also in Abyssea-La Theine. It also spawns as an NM from placeholders, in this case they are Rock Grinders.

While I am working on my Kokushitsunotachi, I am also working on the high damage Great Katana path that eventually leads to the Masamune. I will go over that tomorrow.

Gone away and come back again! But mainly a short discussion about Abyssea.

2010-07-07T14:19:00.000-04:00

I know the day after an update is not a great time to go away for a couple of weeks, but it had to be done. :) I am back now, and several things have settled in the mean time. I have been trying to keep abreast of all of the changes, but I might have missed quite a bit, so bear with me and please leave comments if I leave anything out!

Lets get started with Abyssea, which may be the coolest thing that SE has added to the game since Salvage. It might even be cooler than Salvage itself! Abyssea is like a great combination of all the fun NM hunting already in the game all mixed up with a few twists thrown in. Essentially, it looks like there are three different kinds of NMs in the zone, but even those distinctions aren't exactly clean cut.

When you first enter your Abyssea zone, you will come across different groupings of mobs. They will all be named similarly, but will come in different sizes and they will con at various strengths, usually between DC to T. In general, these mobs can be killed to get a pop item which will spawn an NM of the same type in the area. The drops from these mobs are pretty good in general, with a little bit of SE's weirdness thrown in. They also can drop another set of pop items or key items depending on the mob that are then used to spawn a new tier of NMs, but that gets a bit weirder. In addition, some of them can drop a key item that gives some permanent benefit while in Abyssea. There are a wide array of key items that give buffs depending on the NM you kill. The second and third tier of NMs come from either several pop items or several key items depending on the NM you are spawning.

Wandering about the zone there are NMs that are already up, and some that spawn just from killing mobs in the area like a regular NM. These are kind of like the popped mobs in that they have there own pretty good drops and they drop key items or pop items that are used to spawn the next tier of NMs. It looks like they have a pretty fast respawn time, so you could get multiple NMs in the time you are in the zone. The mobs that are up and wandering around to begin with look to be pretty tough and have quite a few drops. The mobs that are spawned by killing their respective non-NM mobs aren't quite as hard (but they are not anything to be taken lightly) and it doesn't look like they drop as much loot, but things are still a bit unclear on drops.

Finally, you even have a VNM system in Abyssea. These are spawned just like the ones in the regular world, but at least in Abyssea-Konschtat they are Empty-type monsters. I have only experienced the first two tiers so far, but they didn't appear to be anything that difficult. I expect the third tier to be significantly more difficult though. When we did these we had our Abyssite upgrade on the first kill of both of our kills. I don't know if this means that these have a higher upgrade rate or if it was just dumb luck. We will have to see. It isn't completely clear yet, but it appears that the tier 3 will also drop a key item or pop item for the next tier of NMs in the zone.

Additionally, Abyssea has some interesting characteristics when it comes to what happens when you kill mobs there. Unlike the standard XP chain that exists in our timeline, Abyssea has a different forum of scaling XP. First of all, the amount of XP you get appears to be rigidly standardized. You start at a base amount of XP gained, and then you gain one point of XP per kill based on the way the last mob was killed. If a mob is killed by a melee hit, then you will get an additional point of XP the next time you kill a mob of the same type with a melee hit. If you kill a mob with a weaponskill it adds one point to that category, and the same with magic. The nice thing is that these can't really get that separated because they can only fall behind by about 10 XP points. It gets a lot more interesting as time goes on though. After time goes on, several different things happen. First of all, the mobs that respawn, and they start respawning pretty quickly, will start getting more difficult moving up from their starting difficulty until they are IT++ to level 80 characters. This will not change the amount of XP you get but what will happen is that the various chests that the mobs drop will start to drop more often and they will be more rewarding. There appears to be a tier system of some kind involved, with a bit of variation in the rewards, but the chests are the real key to the whole adventure. You can get temporary items or augmented items, which for the most part aren't incredibly interesting, but you can also get chests that give XP and Cruor in increasingly larger chunks. The most important chest though are the Time extension chests, which usually don't start spawning until you have been killing mobs for about an hour. A time extension chest will grant you 10 extra minutes inside of the zone. The reason that time extensions are so great is that the amount of XP you get increases over time so that at the end of your time in the zone you can get up to 360 XP per kill and 1000 XP per XP chest. That means that your XP per hour rises dramatically at the end of your run, and extending your time means more XP during the high-end XP time. That is not to say that going without getting Time chests is bad XP. Last night we got no time chests at all, and we had to run to camp at the beginning of our run, but in the 90 minutes we were in the zone we got 46k XP and 13k in Cruor. You can do this with basically any set of mobs in the zone, but some are better than others. The main problem is that if you kill a different kind of mob it will break your "chain" and you will go back down to base XP when you start on the mobs you were focusing on. So tell your pullers to be careful. Also, since the amount of XP you get per mob is predetermined, it doesn't matter how many people you bring with you. You can bring a party or an alliance. It's fun for everyone!

Abyssea is a lot to digest. There is a whole lot to do, and I only went over some of the NMs and XPing in the zone. There are still a huge number of quests that are available and monsters that are related to that. This isn't the last time I will be going over these awesome new zones!

I don't even know where to start.

2010-06-21T16:49:00.002-04:00

It is going to take me forever to get through all of this. Don't expect an update until at least tomorrow. Sorry, I don't know what else to say. I am in a state of complete shock.

Ridill Me This Podcast Episode 1 is a Go!

2010-06-19T17:18:00.002-04:00

We completed the first episode of Ridill Me This (yes, we are fully aware that the abbreviation is RMT) last week and it was posted to the LimitBreakRadio site on Friday.

We encourage you to check it out and give us any feedback you may have about it!

Feast and Famine - The New Job Abilities.

2010-06-17T17:35:00.001-04:00

The new update notes have all of the new Job Abilities, Spells and Job Traits that are coming in the update, and there are a ton of them. Way more than I think anyone expected. Some are amazing, some are interesting, some look useless and some leave me wondering what the fuck SE was thinking. So basically it is a standard update from SE. :)

I am going to try to go over everything today, but there is so much that I don't know if that will be possible. If I don't make it to everything then I will finish it up tomorrow. Ok, lets get down to it.

If you need a reference to follow along you can see the update notes here.

Restraint (WAR Lv.77 Ability Delay: 10 min. Effect Duration: 5 min.)
Enhances your weapon skill power with each normal attack you land, but prevents you from dealing critical hits.
Interesting name for a Warrior JA. The real questions for this is how much bonus it gives to WS damage and what effect the prevention of critical hits has. If the critical hit prevention applies to weaponskills then that means that Raging Rush is out and King's Justice is in. This one might initially be hard to judge because you have to consider the critical hit damage lost on regular melee swings, and the stacking effect of the swings before you use a WS. Finally, do the stacks reset when you use a WS or do they stay for the entire 5 min. duration?

Perfect Counter (MNK Lv.79 Ability Delay: 1 min. Effect Duration: 30 sec.)
Allows you to counter the next attack directed at you.
Very interesting but does the utility over come the fact that you have hit a macro and get the job ability delay every minute? Two factors to consider: First, you can use this before a fight when you know you are going to get hit for a bit of a damage boost. Second, can this be used to counter mob WS?

Mana Wall (BLM Lv.76 Ability Delay: 10 min. Effect Duration: 5 min.)
Allows you to take damage with MP.
Earlier today this mistakenly had the duration listed as 5 sec. but it has already been corrected to the appropriate 5 min duration. I know that some people probably have have mixed feelings about this bit I am convinced that this is a benefit to all BLM. The ability to take damage on BLM is very important, this can already be seen in the general adoption of the "standing" set with the goal of decreasing any potential incoming damage. It basically gives a BLM a second HP pool every 10 minutes for 5 minutes. I suspect that Tarus are going to to love this ability while Elvaan and Galka aren't going to care for it. Tarus have the MP to waste to save themselves, and Elvaan and Galka don't worry about HP as much but don't want to waste their precious MP.

Despoil (THF Lv.77 Ability delay: 5 min.)
Steals items from an enemy while inflicting a status ailment upon it.
Honestly, I have no clue how this is going to work. It sounds a lot like a reverse aura steal, but it gives a status ailment instead of stealing a buff. Where does this status ailment come from? Is it random? Given from the debuffs the THF already has on them? The best thing about this is that it is it's own ability and isn't just stacked on every steal like Aura Steal.

Divine Emblem (PLD Lv.78 Ability Delay: 10 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.)
Enhances the accuracy of your next divine magic spell and increases enmity.
Seriously, fuck PLD! LOL. I don't really hate PLD at all but they got good stuff and NIN gets nothing. I can't say that this is an amazing JA or anything but it is just one more boost to PLD enmity at the beginning of a fight or more importantly right after the PLD loses hate. With the number of hate resets and crazy nuking taru BLM, this is going to be a life-saver.

Nether Void (DRK Lv.78 Ability Delay: 5 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.)
Increases the absorption of your next dark magic spell.
LOL DRK. This is one of those JA's that we will have to see how much it adds before we judge it. Or I could just judge it now. :) Unless this modifies Drain 2, this it will probably be marginal. I suppose if Absorb-TP or Absorb-STR get a huge boost then it could be good but it will just add more time spent not swinging and thus not doing damage.

Double Shot (RNG Lv.79 Ability Delay: 3 min. Effect Duration: 90 sec.)
Occasionally uses two units of ammunition to deal double damage.
SE is paying RNG back for all those months of suffering after they nerfed it into the ground. It is almost like a double attack trait for RNG, which should work with my new OAT bow, but it won't give extra TP. The rpoblem it that RNG doesn't really need more damage right now, it need more enmity mitigation. I am not saying that I won't take it, but it just means that /DRG is now completely mandatory. There is no other option.

Sengikori (SAM Lv.77 Ability Delay: 3 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.)
Grants a bonus to skillchains and magic bursts initiated by your next weapon skill.
Skillchains may be a thing of the past but their are times when a SAM is either self-skillchaining with Sekkanoki or really are trying to make a skillchain with someone else. It is just more damage for SAM, and more e-peen for BLM at Fafnir. the recast on it is lower than Sekkanoki, so their might need to be some coordination if you want to use them together multiple times in a fight.

Futae (NIN Lv.77 Ability Delay: 3 min. Effect Duration: 1 min.)
Grants a bonus to your next elemental ninjutsu by expending two ninja tools.
SE hates NIN. There is no other explanation. Unless this turns elemental ninjutsu into a fully merited and geared BLM tier 4 nuke then no one is ever going to use this. NIN has to get another tier of DW in this update at the very least, or it is just going to fade into history.

Spirit Jump (DRG Lv.77 Ability Delay: 90 sec.)
Delivers a short jumping attack on a targeted enemy which suppresses enmity. Effect enhanced when wyvern is present.
My only question with this is if it does damage and if it does, how much does it do? It does say it is an attack so it almost definitely does damage. It is anotehr boost to DRG TP generation, something that they are not really lacking to begin with.

Blood Pact: Rage "Holy Mist" (SMN Lv.76)
Deals light elemental damage to an enemy.
Blood Pact: Rage "Lunar Bay" (SMN Lv.78)
Deals darkness damage to an enemy.
Blood Pact: Rage "Night Terror" (SMN Lv.80)
Deals darkness damage to an enemy. Looks like they are offensive blood pacts for Carby, Fenrir and Diabolos respectively. We can't know how good they are until they are tested.

Bolter's Roll (COR Lv.76)
Increases movement speed for party members within area of effect.
A mazurka roll for COR. Pretty simple.

Caster's Roll (COR Lv.79)
Enhances "Fast Cast" effect for party members within area of effect.
Fast Cast is nice but I can't see many places this would be useful for "casters" that might benefit from it because there are other more powerful rolls for them. The place this would be more useful is for tanks which can benefit from the decreased cast time as well as the decreased recast time on their spells.

Tactical Switch (PUP Lv.79 Ability Delay: 3 min.)
Swaps TP of master and automaton.
Who cares? Really. I don't even know if it is better for the PUP or the Automaton to have more TP.

Presto (DNC Lv.77 Ability Delay: 15 sec. Effect Duration: 30 sec.)
Enhances the effect of your next step and grants you an additional finishing move.
Super low delay and recast, this might help DNC to truly enfeeble end-game mobs. More finishing moves are never bad either because more finishing moves means at least more TP back with Reverse Flourish.

Divine Waltz II (DNC Lv.78 Ability Delay: 20 sec.)
Restores the HP of all party members within a small radius.
A bigger Curaga for DNC. It will probably be pretty weak but cost a ton of TP. Just like all Curaga style cures.

Climactic Flourish (DNC Lv.80 Ability Delay: 90 sec.)
Allows you to deal critical hits. Requires at least one finishing move.
The description of this finisher makes it sound like DNC can't crit without it. My guess is that it will guarantee a crit on the next hit kind of like Sneak Attack, but it won't guarantee that the hit will actually land. Just my guess.

Libra (SCH Lv.76 Ability Delay: 1 min.)
Examines the target's enmity level.
Might as well just call this Kaeko's Spell. Hopefully, it will be pretty accurate, but we have managed to live without any kind of enmity instruction for 8 years, this is not going to be a make or break ability now. If it just tells you the mob's target then you could just get the same information by just using /assist.

And that is everything that we are getting in the form of JA's for this update. Tomorrow we will go over everything else, including new Job Traits, spells, and BST jugs.

Walk of Meh?

2010-06-15T13:20:00.001-04:00

I suppose it makes logical sense to have Walk of Echoes be a Campaign style zone. Logical sense doesn't make me happy though. Unstructured end-game? Random lotting on good gear and crafting items? Is there any incentive at all to do this with my LS? I know they never said it was going to be an end-game area... wait, didn't they say it was supposed to be an end-game area? I think they did. If you squint really hard, maybe you can make yourself believe that this is end-game. I just don't like it because they promised me a better focus on end-game at Vana'fest, and this isn't what I had in mind.

Maybe I thought SE was going to pitch a perfect game on this update? Maybe I was letting my expectations get too high. Maybe they are making end-game content for people that don't do end-game.

Maybe all those people that constantly bitch about not having enough low-man stuff to do are reaping what they have sown. Go find some friends and stop ruining my game. Just so you know, this is your "low-man" content. You get to go to the Walk of Echoes with 50 of your closest friends, and then hope to win lots on actual end-game gear.

I am left a little confused, a little bitter, and a little cold.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, this really doesn't bug me all that much. There is still more content in this update than we have gotten in over a year. There is also the problem of trying to predict what SE is delivering from their update notes. This could be a super-awesome new event and everyone will love it. Or it could be Garrison. While I love to flex my precognitive skills when it comes to FFXI, my powers are not strong.

I think we might be heading to Walk of Echoes one way or the other because the update notes seem to suggest that our new Magian friend is going to be sending us there. Which means we are going to need to get kills or drops from the area. If we just need kills, hey, that's fine, I don't mind that. If we are going to need to win lots from a union type system then I am going to fly to Japan and disembowel myself on Sage Sundi's desk.

Promises Unfulfilled.

2010-06-14T15:36:00.000-04:00

WARNING: This post may bore you, or you may be completely uninterested in the topic. I suggest that you read it to better understand the way games are made and developed, and why developers can never please all players. If you still don't want to read it then piss off, hoser.

There are three kinds of FFXI players, ones that don't follow anything about FFXI and just play the game, ones that follow all information about FFXI but nothing about other MMO's, and ones that follow all information about FFXI and also keep abreast of other MMO's. The first group are pretty insular, so they probably don't even read this blog. The second group might read this blog, and I think this post might still be interesting to them. The third group will love this post. This post is about a recent series of announcements made by Blizzard about WoW. Just let me explain.

Over the past weekend Blizzard made some major announcements regard it's newest expansion (which I might have mentioned before has some striking similarities with Wings of the Goddess), and for the most part these announcements weren't very good. Now, I don't play WoW very much, but I play it enough to be abreast of changes to the game. To a WoW player many of the announcements for this new expansion were orgasmic. To a non-WoW player, the reactions seemed really familiar. There were to be limited expansion areas, but mostly redone but still recycled older areas. The level cap was to be raised again, but no new talents were to be added. There was to be an "alternative advancement" system akin to merits. There was going to be a new crafting system which wasn't a new crafting type just a sub-crafting system (synergy anyone?). There was also to be "Guild leveling" where in your guild gets points for doing guild type events that can then be spent to get bonuses for the entire guild.

As I said, most WoW players were in love with this new expansion, but someone looking from the outside might wonder what they were so excited about compared to what they have gotten in the past. I could go over everything that was to be added but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that over the weekend, they announced that they were scrapping or substantially cutting down a whole lot of what they were planning on doing. They are keeping all of the game world changes, but a majority of the character customization is being cut out or replaced with a much less expansive system. Many of the frills that were supposed to come with the expansion are now gone. This needs to be considered with the fact that outside of the pretty radical reorganization of the game world.

Why does this matter to FFXI? Well, it has a lot to do with the comparison for how Blizzard deals with their players versus how SE deal with FFXI players. SE has definitely made promises to players about content in the past and failed to deliver. The Colosseum is famous as being one of those things that SE wanted to give to players but eventually gave up. The latest round of Summons that took over two years to deliver is a case where they might have promised something far before they were ready to deliver it. The saving grace for SE is that these were marginal goals. The Colosseum was supposed to be a kind of PvP system, which is not all that interesting to most FFXI players. Summons are something that SMNs care about patiently but it doesn't effect over all game content. Blizzard made promises to add several large game systems and has now had to back down on those promises.

Blizzard is famously known for their commitment to quality, often quoted as saying that they will not released content until it is ready to be released. Usually that has meant that it would take longer than expected to get content out the door, but it appears in this case that it means that they are ditching new content. I don't think this speaks well to the planning that is going on at Blizzard. When SE announced the level cap increase for FFXI they also mentioned that a new merit system was going to be coming with it at the end. While this may take some time, I do not believe that it is even an option for SE to cancel this content at anytime. Blizzard currently has very little and limited alternative advancement. Yes, they do have a system that is baked into the game, but that system is very cookie-cutter. There is a "best" allocation, and it has limited flexibility. In SE, for one job the same could be said, but as players can level multiple jobs there can be much more variation in how players choose to allocate merits.

From someone looking from the outside in, I would not appreciate SE dumping their new merit system. I would not like it if SE bagged other major promises. A lot of WoW players don't even know that other MMO's exist, so I have to wonder what they think about these things. Is there a problem with setting your target too high then not delivering? Blizzard used their standard response when talking about dropping their new "merit" system. They didn't want to rush out something that wasn't "fun", they didn't want to have to fix something later just to have it out now, and no they were not cutting it so they had to rush out their new expansion. But I have to ask if the lady doth protest too much... It sounded like everything that was announced this weekend was a scrap or a toning down of previous plans. At least SE didn't lie to us about moving their FFXI people over to FFXIV, but Blizzard assures us that they are not moving people over to their new MMO. How could that even be possible? They have to be moving some people over out of realistic necessity. Even Blizzard doesn't have infinite resources.

With all of Blizzard's chopping and scrapping it seems that they are begging off an awful lot. I have to wonder if this is the first big blunder that Blizzard has made? SE has made a lot of blunders, but right now there isn't as much space for Blizzard to make mistakes. Around the launch of Cataclysm (the new WoW expansion) there will be several other MMO's cropping up. With all these new changes to remove the things that were supposed to be added, I have to wonder what the WoW players think they are getting besides some new versions of things they already have?

Maybe it is just the right time to be playing FFXI. We are getting a real level cap increase, we are getting a whole new end-game, new relic-style weapons, Magians, new HNM, end-game content, and a refocused development team. WoW seems like it is going in the opposite direction.

Tell Me Something I Didn't Know.

2010-06-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

I suppose there is someone out there that didn't know the level cap was going to be raised to 80 in the next update, but I haven't met them. The update notes from today were nothing more than a rehash of everything that we have heard so far. At least it did include some specifics that will clear up a little bit of confusion.

I did find a few things that they said to be interesting not because of the information that was provided, but because of what they didn't say. There is a little bit of reading between the lines necessarily. It is time to bust out the SE-nese to English book of translations to see what they really meant.

What SE says:

Q: What inspired the decision to increase the level cap?
A: With the cap set at level 75 for quite some time now, a wide variety of monsters, equipment, and game content has been introduced over the years for players who had reached this limit. With such content having been fleshed out to the development team's satisfaction, it was deemed that the time was right to usher in the sort of new challenges that could only come with the ability to achieve higher levels.

The English translation:
Q: What took you so damn long to increase the level cap when you said you could never increase the level cap for so long?
A: Ok, we always knew that it was easy to increase the level cap. We got to a good point with level 75 and it was easier to make content for a stable level cap than working on adjusting mobs all the time for an increased level cap. We know that the last year of content sucked Vrtra balls and we decided we really needed to kick it up a notch to satisfy all the people that we pissed off with a year of shitty updates.

What SE says:

Q: What changes can we expect to see after the cap is lifted?
A: Beginning with the upcoming version update, the level cap will be gradually increased to an eventual maximum of 99, with new job abilities, magic spells, weapon skills, and equipment to be made available at these higher levels. These additions, as well as refinements to existing abilities and spells, will focus on preserving and strengthening the unique roles that each main job serves, while increasing the tactical options available to each support job. Needless to say, new game content will also be introduced that will demand every onz of adventurers' newfound might.

The English translation:
Q: Do you have any fucking clue about what you are going to do when you raise the level cap?
A: Hey, if we had a fully staffed development team we would have released this with a real expansion! Give us a break! We are going to give you new toys and since those are going to kick ass you aren't going to notice that it is going to take us a while to get everything adjusted. Sure, we didn't give a fuck about class balance for the last 5 years but we are going to do something about that now. This guy on the staff, Itsuki, just walked into the office one day and said "We are so stupid! Everyone spends their time doing end-game, but we don't really ever do anything about end-game, so lets do something about end-game!" and everyone in the office was like "Well fuck, that's a damn good idea!". But just so you don't get too much confidence in us, we are going to promise to increase the uniqueness of each job while at the same fucking time we are going to promise to give more jobs the ability to fill more roles. Yeah, noodle that one for a while!

What SE says:

Q: What specific changes will be implemented in the coming version update?
A: The level cap will be raised to 80, and new abilities, magic, weapon skills and equipment for players up to this level will be added. Level restrictions placed on certain areas will also be removed, creating additional high-level battlegrounds for players to explore. The level cap increase will also result in a number of existing skills becoming newly available to support jobs, with a few exceptions and adjustments to preserve balance and ensure that main jobs do not see their thunder stolen.

The English translation:
Q: You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?
A: We told you about the CoP zones already didn't we? Sure, they have a whole bunch of mobs that no one is going to want to fight, but they are still going to be there, and you are going to have to go there if you want to level up! Did we mention we are giving you new toys? Look over here! Bright shiny toys! And you will get new stuff from sub jobs, and since that stuff is already in the game we don't have to do anything new there! Score! Oh, but we aren't giving you the really cool stuff...

What SE says:

Unusable by Support Jobs
- The white magic job abilities "Afflatus: Misery" and "Afflatus: Solace", and the ninja job abilities Yonin and Innin will not be available to support jobs.
Usable by Support Jobs, with Altered Effects
- The ranger job ability Shadowbind will be subject to an accuracy check, with a miss generating no effect.
- The scholar job abilities Accession and Manifestation will triple (rather than double) recast time for the spells used.

The English translation:
- We know that the WHM and NIN stances aren't game breaking or anything, but since those are the least unique jobs anymore we have to give them something, right? We know that it won't unbalance anything to give Innin to WARs and THFs, and we know that PLD is already so overpowered that giving them Yonin isn't going to make a difference either. Why don't we take the negative accuracy off of Yonin and give NIN's tanking katanas? Don't ask questions that we don't have answers for!
- Ok, you guys have to admit that this one makes a little bit of sense right? COR can already solo a lot, even if it takes decades, but giving them a free Shadowbind is a bit too much right? It's not like COR has access to a lot of accuracy gear and food, right? Wait... don't answer that question!
- This one was just to kill any hope for mages to sub something besides RDM! We knew you weren't going to sub SCH anyway! HA!

And there you have it, a proper translation of what we heard today! It might have been a smidgen sarcastic and cynical, but I can't be happy go lucky everyday.

In other news:

Congrats Rob! LOL

Learn and Burn: Gear From the .dats.

2010-06-10T17:14:00.002-04:00

Back for more education? Well, like yesterday you are going to get less real edification than the day before. The first part of the June 2010 update was available for download today, and with that comes part of the new .dats for the coming update. It's like finding part of your Christmas present stash two weeks early. There are many pretty things going on in the .dats, new gear, new job abilities, new spells, new... other stuff. Today, lets take a quick look at some of the new gear and make some educated guesses about who might be getting this gear.

My first thought when I saw this, especially now that we can see the Yagudo head used as a necklace, is that a clothcrafter out there some where was doing the doing the nasty with Hoo Madoo the Fornicator. It does look pretty cool with the feathers and all, but it is a little bit creepy to have a Yagudo head on your chest. It's going to look like it's trying to motorboat all those female characters out there. My first thought is that this is going to be THF AF3, just because it looks a little bit like Denali gear. Alternatively, it looks like it could be WAR AF3 because WAR does have that certain barbarian aspect to it, though in FFXI they have mostly been seen as the "master of weapons" kind of figher, even if they do prefer the Great Axe. After I put some thought into it and remembered that I had seen this body piece previously, I have come to the conclusion that this might be BST AF3. I think this shows an obvious break from the previous line of AF gear. Older BST AF looked like it was made out of sheepskin, and had a pretty good look to it. The feathers give it the same kind of look, but I think it does look a little too much like a Yagudo and not enough like some kind of bird that a BST could charm. In the picture that this gear appeared in previously, the character wearing it was using an axe. While axes used to be quite ubiquitous, since the two-handed update they are mostly the sole dominion of BST. Even WAR that still stick with Axes usually do so with an off-hand Sword like a Ridill or Joyeuse. Finally, the base model for this body piece is taken from the Bison set which was also used for the Khimaira. Taking this all together, I am definitely leaning toward BST for this design.

This one is pretty obvious to me, I believe this one is the RNG AF3. One of the things that I love about RNG AF is it's lack of symmetry. Any archer is going to have have an unbalanced look to them because they have to have certain protection against the bow string and freedom to maneuver and to nock an arrow. The RNG has always had a hint of rugged woodsman to it, a master of the wilderness, and I don't know how well the orange of this gear fits with that, but I do like how one arm is much more heavily armored than the other, and the other arm has an enlarged elbow guard. This is actually pretty close to how heavily armored archers would look. I also like the pouch that matches that of the original AF (not just because it made it easier to figure out that this was RNG AF). It does look like the armor on the arm is directly lifted from the graphics on the Shantotto expansion legs. I suppose this could also be for Corsair or even for Thief, but I just don't see it.

This could be a lot of things, and I think most people's initial impression would be that it is BST AF3. Well, that can't be the case because I already said something else was BST AF3. :) And there are other good reasons too. The first and most obvious reason to me is that it is in the togi design, which is the basis of most "Far East" gear so far. You might as about the sheepskin, and I might answer that you should take a very close look at Usukane gear. While Usukane is very elaborate, if you look at the layers of the gear you can actually see some fur underneath part of the designs. I think that is because it is partial designed to be realistic looking and that is the backing that you would get on armor like that. So that leaves us with Samurai, Monk and Ninja. I think that Samurai is going to get something that is more like traditional Domaru, and this is not that. A Ninja may not be really Ninja-like in game, but the design of their gear still generally follows the Ninja-design style. That leaves us with Monk. Monks are supposed to be austere and this gear does have a very basic and unadorned look to it. There are a few other visual clues too. There is a very basic brown belt tied around the waist, another Monkish adornment. Also, it has a waist support that looks a lot like a muscle belt, which just seems to be something that a person that relied on their hands as weapons would use.

This gear screams Dark Knight to me. If it is then of the new AF3 piece this one follows most closely in design to previous AF gear. The dark and steel look to this gear says "I am emo and I need to cut things with a Galka". The design of this gear is based on the pretty much useless Einherjar gear. It has similar shoulders, but it doesn't really have the purple that is found in most of the Dark Knight AF gear. While I think this one is definitely Dark Knight, it is also possible that it could be a number of other jobs, especially Warrior. It would fit in with the heavy armor aspect of the Warrior archetype but the Warrior AF in the past has tended toward showing off a lot of skin, and not actually protecting vital organs. It could also be for PLD or DRG, but there are obvious problems with that. For PLD, this gear is just too dark, and well, we have already seen screenshots of what looks like PLD AF3. As for DRG, it doesn't have anything that really resembles anything Dragon like on it at all. And I think they would probably go for something a little more purple.

This is the one that gave me the most trouble. I originally thought it was going to be the BST AF3 back when I thought the one that I finally picked to be BST AF3 was THF AF3. It has that same rugged look that you would see out of a BST related piece, but it also has more metal protection, which made me think it was for another job. I finally came to the conclusion that it was probably WAR AF3 because I really couldn't think of any other job for it. If SE decided to go with that barbarian look for fighter that I talked about before, then this would probably be what it would look like. It's got the battered hides, with the metal chains for extra protection. I do have to say that I am not sure that all of this gear is actually the AF3 that SE has promised. Of all the body pieces that were in the update today, I would say that this one is the most likely to not actually be AF3. There are also a bunch of other jobs that this could be associated with like MNK, NIN, RNG and THF.

I find this body piece to actually be the best looking for the bunch so far. I also found it pretty hard to make a guess as to who it would belong to. My ultimate conclusion is that it is BLU AF3. It has the design of an Aht Urhgan style body piece, with the cloth under the metal armor and everything tied on. Like the body piece that I guess is going to be WAR AF3, I think there is a good chance that this piece might not actually be AF3. While you might think that BLU don't normally get heavy armor, keep in mind that AF3 will be coming from Abyssea where things are a bit more rough than they are in our version of reality, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that they would get heavier armor. Also, when it comes to game play, improving a classes armor level is not without precedence as DRG was given access to heavier gear after Aht Urhgan was released. The style of the gear just speaks BLU to me, but I could easily be wrong on this one. It could be DRG, it could be WAR, it could be PLD, hell, it could even be THF.

So what do you think of my picks? Did I get the right jobs? Do you even think this is going to be AF3 or do you think it is something completely different? Leave a comment, I would love to hear your interpretations!

Getting Your Learn Off: Abyssea Monsters.

2010-06-09T19:36:00.002-04:00

Yesterdays column took some time to research both for the historical and mythical stories behind the weapons and for the Final Fantasy aspects behind them too. This column will be a little bit less informative than that. While some monsters in FFXI have a deep and storied history, most of them do not. And that is where I come in. I believe that several of these new mobs have in-joke back stories, and if they don't then I will just create them.

The very first thing that should probably be noted is that all of the monsters in this first expansion look like they have gone through the laundry with your brand new purple sheets. While this is going to make Omoi as giddy as the first time that she saw Titinia in campaign, I don't know what most people are going to think of the purplization of all of these mobs. Some of them are new of course, but some of them are not and some are just funny.

Limule

Being an airborne crustacean endemic to Abyssea, endowed with a robust carapace and elongated forelimbs wherefrom razor-sharp pincer reach rapaciously for prey. Bereft of a counterpart in Vana'diel, biologists theorize that these shelled hoverers have undergone evolution in dimensional isolation. They have emerged as a pervasive species following the great cataclysm that befell the land.

This floating Horseshoe Crab is probably the least purple of the new monsters, and the most obvious in naming convention. Limule is French for Horseshoe Crab, and the Latin form is Limulus. The name is not too creative on SE's party, but the mob looks pretty interesting. It also has a shocking familiarity to it. While the description provided by SE indicates that there are no counterparts for this monster in Vana'diel, I believe a deeper look at the evolutionary tree can provide something analogous. What else in Vana'diel has a shell and pincers? That's right, you basic generic crab. The on going joke about crabs is that they were one of the only mobs you ever fought in XP parties back in the day. So much so that people joke that the game could be called Crab Fantasy XI. SE can deliver a good joke sometimes, and we are going to need some new leveling mobs. My prediction: You are going to be seeing quite a few of these things on your way to 99. Oh, there is something else that is a bit familiar about this mob. It is a "sea" creature and the beginning of it's name is reminiscent of the mobs that are found in Sea. Is there some relation between Abys"sea" and Sea? Mobs in sea also have bright but weird colors in general.

Clionid

Being a mollusc of mischievous bearing and ghostly aspect, much given to rollicking in the air in a dance at once graceful and deadly. Alongside the Limule, they have grown to prominence in the wake of the great cataclysm, spreading as a plague across Abyssea. Of the little that is known of these invertebrates, their proclivity for aggression towards mankind is well-documented.

I don't know how anything that has never been seen before can be "well-documented" but apparent we have been out of the loop. I give SE an A on the background research for this mob. A Clionid is basically a sea slug that is called sea angels. These shouldn't be confused with the sponge of a similar name though. They are in fact mollusks, so the description is quite accurate. It is also another sea-related creature, and it has that vaguely Limunian appearance, so maybe there is something to that Sea connection. It also looks vaguely like a ghost but that might not mean anything.

Sibilus

Being and uncommonly large saurian possessed of virulent temperament, it's distinct coloration is a dread warning of lethal venom to all would-be predators. Biologists have called attention to a likely relation in the now-extinct variety of lizards that inhabited the marshlands of Quon in vast numbers until the outbreak of the Great War.

Meet the purple people eater. Obviously a purple reskin of the Peiste, and most likely very venomous. Remember to bring your Antidotes. Again, SE has done their homework with the name for this mob. Sibil- is a latin root meaning "to hiss", and sibilus as a noun is a hissing noise. Quite appropriate for this mob. I don't see much else that that unique about this mob besides the fact that SE's new favorite color is purple. If they still have Grim Glower then people are just going to avoid them, but if they actually have decent attacks, they could be interesting.

Elasmoth

Being a subspecies as that hulking beast known as the Behemoth, albeit of such gargantuan proportions as to render the moniker given its Vanadielian cousin. Warlike markings emblazon their muscular frame, needlessly intensifying their fearsome mien. Claims that their mighty roar can fell stars from the heavens are received with skepticism, though none disputes that it can stop a man's heart in his chest.

Ok, this is the grandpappy of all Behemoth, not just because of the description but also because of it's snowy white beard. Maybe it is just the Santa Claus of the Behemoth world, giving the little Behemoth boys and girls huge spikes and asteroids to fling at people. More purple in this design, but at least it has some cooler markings. This might be the Behemoth that stole the nerd Behemoth's lunch money. Hey, all the chick Behemoth love tattoos. I do find the description interesting because of the reference to Comet and Meteor. The only reference I could find to Elasmoth is in the video game Fossil Fighter... it was probably just a coincidence.

Purbol

Being a mutant strain of that odious breed of carnivorous frond known as the Morbol that has adapted to thrive in the aberrant ecosystem of Abyssea. Fouler of both breath and temperament than its Vanadialian counterpart-if that can be believed-it has been observed gnarling with perverse pleasure as its grossly distended feelers suck clean the lifeblood of its hapless victims.

Seriously SE? Seriously? Purbol? As if the color wasn't enough, you are now naming the mobs after purple? I get the pun, but man, you didn't have to make it that obvious. All this purple is going to make Omoi very happy though so I am OK with it. Sounds like it is going to have all the basic Morbol attacks but a bit beefed up. Even Worse Breath? Worst Breath? Really Stinky Breath? Dog Fart Breath? You already gave one Morbol Death Breath, what are you going to make this one do? Maybe it will inflict Zombie (ST20). It also sounds like it is going to use that draining roots move too.

Adenium

Being a bipedal, sentient vegetable that resembles a Mandragora in every aspect save for its prodigious size and ruddy complexion. Does this curious pigmentation derive from the selfsame phenomenon that has crimsoned the Abyssean sky? Is it merely abashed at having grown to proportions unseemly for one of its species? Further observation is required to unravel these vital questions.

An ashamed Mandy that has turned red in embarrassment? Ok, that was a little bit clever SE. This is like the second mob that they have mentioned as being of huge size, but the other one is that new Behemoth. That said, all of the new tier 3 VNM's are huge versions of standard mobs already. Who wouldn't love fighting a ginormous Mandy? Also, another place where SE has actually spent some time naming the mob, the Adenium is a kind of flower, more commonly called the Desert Rose. I don't know what it's flower move is going to be, but I expect more pain than sleeping powder for some reason.

Iratham

Being of the Caturae, a family of most unnatural lifeforms of utterly indeterminate composition and origin. Said to have been sighted across the realm shortly after the first tremors sundered the Abyssean landscape, their true nature remains shrouded in mystery to this day. Fringe researchers have posited a relationship to a recreational activity of a long-lost civilization, but this theory has yet to draw much support.

That "recreational activity of a long-lost civilization" is Chess. You see Caturanga, Catur for short, is the Indian name for the game that is the basis of modern day Chess. Caturae would be creatures of Catur or more simply living Chess pieces. The game originate on the Indian sub-continent and spread across the world. The mob itself is very unique looking, and the hands and the feet look so familiar but I don't remember where I have seen that design before. It might not even be FFXI, it might be another SE game, which would be an interesting cross-over in design. Iratham is the name of the chariot piece in Caturanga and it behaves exactly the way the modern Rook does. It is also an anagram for "A Mithra" but that is probably just coincidence. In the future, expect to see Kutharei ("Horse" in English) it is the equivalent of the Knight piece and Yaanei ("Elephant") which is a close amalgamation of the modern Bishop. We will see when the next expansions drop.

Getting Your Learn On: Abyssea Weapons.

2010-06-08T17:24:00.006-04:00

Visions of Abyssea has been announced and is available for pre-order. The version update is coming June 21st (Rob won that bet too), and we got a much needed update to the rewards from Abyssea.

I love the nomenclature that SE uses for naming their weapons, especially in FFXI. They don't just create random ass names like WoW (e.g. this or this), SE actually does some research and invests some time in coming up with names for their weapons that have some historical background. Not all of them are historically accurate, but many of them do have some historical underpinnings. Hell, the Nanatsusayanotachi is an actual sword that is currently on display in Korea. The names of the weapons that have been released with the Visions of Abyssea announcement are actually quite amazing. They also have a lot of historical and mythical importance and their stories may give some clue as to their strengths or weaknesses in FFXI.

Sword: Almace
This sword looks simply amazing. It is also freaking huge. Historically, the Almace was a sword given to Charlemagne along with the Durendal and Curtana (other familiar weapons from FFXI and other Final Fantasy games). It is described mostly in Norse mythology though it is mentioned much less than the other two. It is later given to Turpin, the Archbishop of Reims. It might also be confused with or replaced by Joyeuse in some historical records. It was described as an incredibly well-designed and strong sword. In the Song of Roland, Turpin wielded it in the Battle of Roncevaux Pass were he died. Yeah, that is ill portent for those that might get this weapon, but it definitely looks cool enough to use it anyway. Alternative names for the Almace are Almice and Almacia. There is no previous mention of a weapon by this name in the Final Fantasy series.

Marksmanship: Armageddon
Armageddon is a name that is actually more in line with SE's own naming system for guns than it is with some historical or mythical weapon. Names already in FFXI that spring to mind include Annihilator and Death Penalty. The relic and mythic weapons have names in a similar vein if not in historical continuity. SE has preferred the WoW-style naming convention for guns in a lot of Final Fantasy games. The name appears in all sorts of Final Fantasy games but usually as part of an ability or special attack name. Armageddon itself is the Judeo-Christian notion of the end of days. More specifically it is the site of the epic battle at the end of the world. This is your traditional Revelations story with Jesus fighting Satan and fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Great Sword: Caladbolg
Poor Great Sword got completely skipped over in the last round of epic weapons, but SE brought it back this time in impressive fashion. Originally, Caladbolg just generally meant "great sword" and it's original translation was something like "hard sheath" or "hard cleft". In Irish mythology, Caladbolg is the sword of Fergus mac Róich. The sword itself is said to create a rainbow arc when swung and is able to chop the tops of hills. The name of the great sword could be the source of the name of King Arthur's sword, Excalibur. Caladbolg is also a Celestial Weapon from Final Fantasy X belonging to Tidus in the US version, but that could just be a weird translation error.

Axe: Farsha
Found in Hindu mythology, the Farsha is translated to mean "battle axe" and was the favorite weapon of Parashurama, with his own Farsha known as the Parashu. A Farsha was generally double bladed or had a blade and a spike and could be made out of wootz steel (which I just found out isn't just something that SE made up but is a historical-mythical type of steel). The blade itself was as big or bigger than the haft (the part you hold). That means that SE followed the design pretty closely when they designed this new weapon. No prior Final Fantasy references this weapon.

Club: Gambanteinn
Another Norse myth, this club literally translates into "magic wand". This in itself is very interesting because it implies there is a magical component to the item itself and not just another worthless melee club. This is a more generic term than some of the previous weapons and it doesn't refer to a specific magic wand. That said the wands that are mentioned in Norse myth appear to have cursing or charming aspects to them. Interestingly, in the Norse mythos it sounds like you actually have to hit someone with the club to bewitch them. So maybe SE does want you to use it to melee. This club has not be used in any other Final Fantasy games.

Archery: Gandiva
Created by Brahman, the supreme Hindu god, the Gandiva was passed down through Hindu mythology by some pretty big names like Shiva and Indra before making it into the hands of Arjuna. Arjuna then used the bow to kick a major amount of Hindu ass. The bow was covered in gold and the tips of the bow glowed, this might be the tie in for the new Archery WS "Refulgent Arrow". It is also said to sound like a thunderclap when an arrow is shot from it. It has a very nice model compared to all other bows in the game and I hope that SE improves the design of bows like this in the future. With the advent of the Occasionally Attack Twice bow though, SE is going to have to do something really special to make this bow worth it. While a bad ass weapon, it is a name that has not be used before in Final Fantasy history.

Staff: Hvergelmir
SE just loves using unpronounceable names for a lot of there weapons and this is no exception. Like the Armageddon, this weapons name doesn't come from a weapon from the historical record. In Norse mythology, it is actually in reference to a spring that is near the world tree, Yggdrasil. Above Hvergelmir, Nidhogg is chewing away at the roots of Yggdrasil. I have to wonder if this is finally going to be the "Rainbow Staff" that SE mentioned they are thinking about adding to replace the Elemental staffs. The Hvergelmir itself means "bubbling boiling spring" in Norse, and is the source of all cold rivers to the Norse. I don't know if this means it will have any relation to Blizzard or other ice related spells though. As this is not really a specific weapon but more of a reference this name has not appeared in a Final Fantasy game.

Katana: Kannagi
These weapons get more and more interesting. Though I thought for sure that this weapon would be related to Japanese mythology because of the root word "nagi" it actually has nothing to do with that, and it is actually a vengeful woman (shocker) from Tamil (Indian) mythology. Basically, her husband is stupid but tries to make up for it up, gets falsely accused of stealing from the Queen and is beheaded on the spot. Kannagi gets pissed and proves her husband didn't steal, and the King and Queen are so upset that they die. Kannagi is still pissed though, so she tears off one of her own freaking boobs and chucks it at the city of the King and Queen which causes it to burn down. I could be wrong in this, but I searched for a while and couldn't find a direct reference to this as a weapon. It is also an anime and I have no idea about it so it might have the same historical roots that are unknown to me. There is a lot of cross over of Hinduism/Buddhism into Japanese culture over time, so there might be some correlation between this story and the weapon, but I don't know of any better connection. Kannagi has not be used as the name of any weapon in the Final Fantasy series.

Great Katana: Masamune
Ah, Masamune, one of the traditional katanas from SE games. Masamune is actually not a sword in historical context but actually a swordsmith, though the katanas that he made were often called "Masamune Swords". Masamune was revered as the best swordsmith in Japanese history and his blades were considered to represent zen-like aspects in the warrior. Several of Masamune's swords are already in FFXI in the form of the Fudo and the Hocho. As I mentioned above the Masamune has appeared in Final Fantasy games before, and in fact, it has appeared in every Final Fantasy game except FFXI until now. It is also Sephiroth's weapon, which means that it is game-on for fan boys. It has had a Haste effect associated with it in past Final Fantasy games.

Scythe: Redemption
Though this again does not represent a specific weapon in real life or mythology, it does have a very interesting name for a weapon that is used almost exclusively by Dark Knights. Redemption is part of the overall story lines for several DRK related characters within FFXI, Zeid for example. The notion of redemption itself is based around the idea of being absolved or forgiven of sin or evil acts. DRKs aren't really considered to be the most pious people in the game, so giving them a weapon with the name Redemption may indicate that there is some kind of deliverance from their own evil through the weapon. Or it could just be a bad ass name for a weapon because it means that the DRK is going to redeem those that he uses the weapon on by introducing them to their maker, a bit prematurely. It is not used in any other Final Fantasy game.

Polearm: Rhongomiant
This one is pretty simple. Rhongomiant is King Arthur's spear that he used to run-through Sir Thomas of Wolford in rather dubious fashion. King Arthur challenged Sir Thomas to a duel and Sir Thomas accepted. As King Arthur advanced, Sir Thomas tripped and fell stabbing himself through the back of his head with Rhongomiant. It sounds more like a Brittney Spears song than an Arthurian legend. Some say that this weapon just resembles a Cermet Lance that were popular back before even CoP, but there are obvious differences in design and style, and essentially everything in the game is a reskin by now. There is no reference to this weapon in any other Final Fantasy game.

Dagger: Twashtar
I don't like this design at all even though it slightly resembles the Vajra, likely because of their similar origins. Twashtar is wielded by the Hindu god Twashtri, who is known as the "heavenly builder". The Twashtar is an Astra, a weapon that is imbued with the power of the god affiliated with the weapon and only unlocked with a specific spell granted by that god. The Vajra is another Astra weapon. The Twashtar's specific Astra ability was to cause confusion in a group of enemies and cause them to fight each other. This could have some application for FFXI as an additional unlockable effect. The Twashtar doesn't appear in any other Final Fantasy games.

Great Axe: Ukonvasara
This Great Axe may be the most historically accurate representation of a weapon in the entire group. The Ukonvasara is a magical weapon of the Ukko in Finnish mythology. The name of the Great Axe is likely a derivation of the name of the god. Across cultures, this weapon could be equated to Thor's hammer, Mjollnir. Another very interesting aspect of this weapon is that the exact translation is actually "Ukko's Hammer", and the model for the Great Axe actually looks more like a great hammer than it does an axe as it is basically lacking a blade. Clubber suggested something to me; if this is actually a great hammer, and SE recognizes that fact, does that mean that this weapon will do blunt damage? It's a very interesting question, indeed. In Finnish mythos Ukko created lightning by using the Ukonvasara. As with most of these weapons, this name has not yet be used in a Final Fantasy game.

Hand-to-hand: Verethragna
Our final selection actually is the reason that I started looking into all of the names of these weapons. Verethragna is the divine embodiment of victory in Zoroastrianism and it literally translates to "smiting of resistance". Now that is pretty bad ass. Huge horns form the punchy part of these weapons, and have a shocking similarity to Behemoth's horns. Even more interesting, Verethragna is a constant companion of Mithra (the Persian god, not the guy pretending to be a girl). These are probably one of the coolest looking new weapons. This is their first appearance in a Final Fantasy related game.

Gorilla Radio.

2010-06-07T16:28:00.001-04:00

I probably mentioned that a few weeks ago I was on Limit Break Radio. Well, I am going to be on it again. Episode 53 should be coming soon, and it is about the changes to the Chains of Promathia areas for the most part, and a little bit about the upcoming version update. If you like listening to me rant about FFXI, then this is the show to listen to. The structure of this show is definitely different than most of the LBR shows, as it is more of panel discussion. It is the same structure that we have been planning for our new podcast. Oh? I didn't mention that yet? :)

Coming very soon, we will be creating our own podcast. After looking at the big guns in the FFXI podcasting community we noticed that there was a complete lack of a podcast focused on end-game. We also noticed that there is generally a lack of discussion time spent on some of the shows. They are excellent as information sources but at end-game a lot of things are not as cut and dry as just providing information. We will be discussing gear selection, NM strategy, even linkshell management. I think the best way to approach a show like this is to use a discussion panel for every show. The episode I did on LBR this week was a good learning experience for our new show. I don't know if we will follow the same exact format, but it will be something like that. The first show line-up is already set. I will be the moderator for the discussion and the panelist will be Omoikitte, Izman, Blaize and Iceblazek.

The only problem we are having right now is that we don't have a name for the show yet. We could just use this blog as the name, but that seems a little bit redundant and not everyone on the show is going to be from this blog. We could call it the Ringthree FFXI News Hour, but that is a little lame. If you have any good ideas then please leave them in the comments and we will definitely consider them. We are looking to record the first show this weekend, but I don't know how long it is going to take for the show to be fully produced. Hopefully you will be able to listen to it sometime very soon. :)

Dissecting the New Weaponskills.

2010-06-04T17:02:00.001-04:00

It's not very often (ever?) that SE randomly releases videos for new content. It's also pretty rare that SE raises the level cap and gives us new WS's. I decided to watch the video and dissect the animations and the etymology of the titles of the new WS's. Here is my run down:

Tornado Kick - Why does a WS called Tornado have flame animations? Wouldn't Firestorm Kick be a better idea?

Blade: Yu - Ok, seriously, WTF hax? That Mithra is dual wielding Nagi's. SE dupes too! Blade: "Boil" looks about right for the WS. While it does look water based, it also has a geyser look to it, and it has a cloud animation at the top of it. Looks appropriate.

Aeolian Edge - Aeolus is the greek god of wind. Obviously wind based, and it looks AoE. Probably wind-based in line with the Gust Slash and Cyclone WS's.

Numbing Shot - Two-hit, melee ranged WS? Name implies it might be a stun WS.

Sanguine Blade - Obviously referring to blood in this case. Appears to be a one-hit HP drain WS. Like PLD needs more useful WS's. Also, I think that the sword that he PLD is using is a new weapon model.

Bora Axe - The Bora is a wind along the southern to south-eastern coast of Europe on the Mediterranean coast. Derived from Boreas the greek god for the cold North wind. Boreas was one of the Anemoi, the greek gods of wind. The Roman equivalent is Aquilo. I think the WS is an interesting combination of the throwing aspect kind of being derived from the wind as there are small swirl animations, and the main animation is obviously of ice which is why they used the cold North wind.

Herculean Slash - Obvious reference to Hercules, but I don't think there is any specific relation to ice in the name, but the great sword WS line have some ice effects.

Cataclysm - Stolen directly from WoW . Looks Dark based with magic runes and symbols. Cataclysm actually means "wash down" in greek and refers to the Deluge mythos that runs back pretty far throughout history.

Infernal Scythe - Infernal is anything in reference to hell. Probably the most interesting looking WS to be added. It has an initial dark effect effect around the player which is kind of neat, and then two huge blades or perhaps claws reaching up from the ground/hell.

Tachi: Ageha - Ageha being Japanese for Swallowtail Butterfly, the little effects flying off of the animation are indeed butterflies. Looks like a single-hit WS.

Sonic Thrust - Looks pretty standard, though it might be ranged. As sonic means anything about acoustics, perhaps it has a silence effect?

Flash Nova - I find this to be one of the most interesting WS so far. At the end of the animation there are flashing lights over the head of the mob. Add that fact with the name of the WS and we can conclude it probably causes a Flash effect. This WS might be useful for PLD?

Refulgent Arrow - Refulgent means radiant or radiance. The WS has an animation on the player before the shot is fired.

Fell Cleave - This could mean a couple different things. Fell are mountains or a mountainous area. To fell can mean to chop down, but so can cleave. Fell can also be in reference to an animal skin or hide. So, it could mean a lot of things. I am leaning toward mountain cleave or hide cleave though. Outside of the name though, there doesn't appear to be anything that significant about the animation.

Magian Torture Center Now Open for Business.

2010-06-03T16:20:00.001-04:00

I love the concept of the Trials of the Magians (even if my plot to have it called the Trial of the Moogles™ has failed badly). I love the idea of killing stuff to fulfill requirements to improve your weapons and armor. I love the idea of progressive upgrades even if the weapons aren't really progressive upgrades to current levels of gear. Progressive upgrades may be more apparent after the next update and the expansion of the system and the increase in the level cap. Anyway, that is off the subject. The problem I have with the trials of the Magians is the camping of the NM's part of the system. I can deal with everything else, including the farming mobs under certain weather conditions. I just hate camping NMs. I always have hated it from the first time I found out that people camped them.

Now, it is better than competitive camping of NMs because you can always team up with other people to kill the NMs, but that was never my real complaint. The real complaint is the absolute waste of time waiting for an NM to spawn. You have to wait an hour at least, and that is just for the window to open. Then after that you have to hop that it actually spawns. The worst part is that you usually can do anything else in that time. You have to stand around for the 5-15 minutes waiting for the damn thing to spawn if it is going to spawn. We still have no idea what determines the real chance of the NM to spawn. For example if your name is Iceblazek, the chance of Triple Black Stars to spawn is so abysmally small that you might as well just move in with the Crawlers in Rolanberry Fields. He could be like the boy that was raised by wolves, except by Crawlers...

I like the "kill X mobs" even if it is "kill X mobs under X weather" because it can be done at your own leisure. I completed the last couple of trials for my Kurodachi much more quickly than the first couple of trials because I could do them at my own speed. I didn't need to wait for a stupid NM to spawn. I didn't have to leave and come back later because I didn't want to wait at least another hour for a chance for it to spawn. I actually like the fact that you have to get the tier 3 VNM drops to upgrade the Occasionally Attacks Twice weapons. It is hard work, but it is something that everyone can do with relative ease. If I could just skip the stupid NM trials I would be a happy man.

Even with all my complaining, I love the Trial of the Magians. It is something that SE has needed to add to FFXI for a long time. Long term upgrades are very good for the game I think. It's kind of like a more manageable version of Salvage without having to dump 10 million into the body piece. I actually like the idea of them taking this further. They just need to make sure that relics and mythics upgrade as well as the regular weapons upgrade. I have never invested the time in a relic or mythic because I prefer medium term goals in a video game. Relics and mythics are long term hardcore goals, and most other gear are either grinds or short term goals. I think Trial of the Magians weapons manage to split the difference both in terms of effort and reward. If you want to take the short cuts like not getting the VNM items, then you can get the less powerful version of the OAT weapon. I wouldn't suggest that, but I am sure that someone out there can justify it to themselves.

SE, I can't wait to see what you are going to do next with Trials of the Magians just don't make me camp anymore stupid NMs...

The End is Coming... Are You Wearing Clean Underwear?

2010-06-02T17:16:00.000-04:00

I haven't done a list post in a long time, but what should I do a list about? I have already gone over everything that I am looking forward to in the next update. Hell, I have already gone over a lot of things. But there are a lot of things that still need to be completed before the next update. That would make a good list!

10. Finish Kurodachi - DONE - This one was my main focus for the last couple of days. I got all my Krabkatoa shells and turned them in on Monday. I love it so far. I can't say whether the damage is better or worse over time than Hagun, but it is looking good so far.

9. Finish meriting BLM - This should have been done a long time ago. I did just dump 8 more merits into Thunder and Ice potency, but I still need 10 more to top that off. Then I need to do Enfeebling Magic merits. And then I have to see what I want to do with tier 2 merits.

8. Finish Radennotachi - Haven't even started working on this, and it is probably going to be back burner for other Magian weapons I need to get done. My math shows that it is slightly better than Hagun, but not by much. Even with Kurodachi, there are still places for the Radennotachi, like on Salvage bosses or just about any place that you don't want to feed mobs a lot of TP.

7. Finish the Cure Potency Teiwaz - This is probably my next highest priority not only because it is an amazing piece of equipment, but also because Omoi has one and we are close to being on the same stage. She owes me some dead Trents. :)

6. Finish the Thunder Potency Teiwaz - Another hot piece of gear that I need to get done. Especially if the weapons are going to get better as SE extends trial of the Magians. My BLM would love this, especially now that I am getting closer to having a good Elemental set on my BLM.

5. Finish the OAT Goshawk - This weapon is just insanely good, but you have to understand the math to understand why. 600 Delay makes it look really slow, but for a job that can get to a 5-hit build the extra Delay means you have a lot more space to mess around with the Store TP you are wearing. This one is going to kill a whole lot of RNG.

4. Finish the Wings Missions - While this one isn't as important for this update, unless they require the current mission set complete to finish the Wings quests, it is still good to be ready for the end when it does come. I don't want to be locked out of Walk of Echoes when it is opened.

3. Finish the Wings Quests - I am all caught up in Bastok, but I still need to finish the Sandy and Windy quest lines. Iz is almost caught up to me on the Sandy quest line so I will probably do that with him, but Omoi is way past me on the Windy storyline. Maybe she will help me go back and finish them. :)

2. Start really meriting my RNG - While my gear is great on my RNG, my merits for the job are pretty lacking. I will occasionally toss a merit hear or there, but it's really time I knuckle down and get them done, especially because the tier 1's are pretty darn good for RNG.

1. Finish my Morrigan's set - I don't know if I will get this done in time, but it is a pretty big goal for me. I already have two ingots and I should be able to get at least 1 more before the end of the week, but I am only getting about 1 or so a week, and I will never be able to get all 12 before the update. And then I need to get the O. Ingots for the head.

Those are what I wish I could accomplish before the June 2010 Update, but I won't be able to finish them all. What do you wish you could finish before you have to level all your jobs to 80?

No One Cares about MMM... STILL!

2010-06-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

Look guys, give it up. Sure, sure, we know that the JP's love MMM, but us over here on this side of the pacific, we just can't be bothered. It's for shut-in's and soloers. I knew this was coming. They even said they were expanding it again in at VanaFest, so it was a surprise. Then again, everyone knows that death is coming inevitably, but everyone just ignores it because it sucks. I ignore MMM for the same reason. MMM update days are like eating your vegetables so your parents would let you have ice cream. I know that some really amazing stuff is coming in this update, but I also know that the JP's and shut-in's need their MMM.

It doesn't mean that I don't want them to go die in a fire any less.

Ok, I sound like a broken record on MMM? Sure, I do, but I do have a new concern about MMM. What if they turn MMM into a real event? What if they give it drops for jobs that I actually care about? Shudder to think.

The update notes today are not encouraging for me. There are new mobs, hard mobs that are going to be available in the randomness of MMM. New mobs that drop new loot. Hopefully it will be just like the loot from the past MMM updates. Good for jobs like BLU and PUP, but nothing that any real job is going to care about. But I do have a fear that at some point SE is going to add something to MMM and I am going to have to do the event. Collecting marbles or something, maps and map pieces, and now getting my membership card. I swear that MMM has to be the most convoluted contraption ever created in the evil minds at SE.

There are already too many events in FFXI, please for the love of god, don't make me do MMM. I would rather level BLU. Shudder to think.

CoP Uncapped: More Thoughts.

2010-05-26T17:28:00.001-04:00

I did a little pondering on how I thought the old/new/old CoP zones are going to turn out when their level cap is removed.

Starter Promyvions: All are pretty easy to get around in. All have tiers/level that could have mobs of increasing levels. These could be a good place to have some decent leveling areas. They have decreased the numbers of mobs and made navigation easier in these zones, and now they will probably have to undo that. Also, I believe these zones are considered "inside" zones and thus have the generally triple respawn timers which could be a big problem unless you plan on changing floors. Strays have major XP exploit potential.

Promyvion-Vahzl: If the starter promyvions are going to be leveling areas what is Vahzl going to be? Not only that but Vahzl is only accessed through another area that is having it's level cap removed, though the trip to Vahzl is not really far even if there are more mobs and the trip is more difficult. The areas are a bit bigger in Vahzl, and you can get to each level easily from the entrance to the zone. There are more of the mini-NM Empty mobs in this zone, so the going might be a little more rough. This might be one of the merit places at 80, if the other Promyvions are leveling areas. Oh, and remember when the "hall of death" was there, before they moved the mobs around to make it slightly less deathy? I wonder if they will be returning those mobs to their original position? That would be merit central if the levels are right.

Pso'Xja: This one is going to be interesting. This zone is already broken up over a wide area. Most of the zones are decently sized, but some are just fractional areas and probably will still be of limited use. The weird thing is that some of them are already uncapped, so will SE just leave these as they are? While it might be interesting to see what happens, I think these zones will still largely be under-utilized.

Phomiuna Aquaducts and Sacrarium: Here is an illustration of the problems with just opening up these CoP zones. What are we going to do with mobs that cast Doom? People want to XP on pretty pink and ultimately defenseless birds. They don't want to XP on mobs that could kill them if they don't turn away fast enough. Don't get me wrong. I like this zone. The maze is really cool, the rest of the area is great and well designed. Fomors aren't even that bad, but it's going to be hard to put together a bones party again. You just can't go back. Maybe you can if SE completely reinvents the entire zone, but I just don't see that happening.

Riverne - Site #B01 and Riverne - Site #A01: God I love these zones. They are gorgeous, bright and thrilling. You actually get the feeling you are high up in the sky. Problem is that no one wants to XP on Hippogryphs and Wyverns. Nihility Song and Fang Rush over Pecking Flurry and Feather Tickle is never going to cut it. Bombs? Marlboro? Even having to get the Wyvern scales is just going to be too annoying. I want these zones to work. I really, really, really do, but it's going to take some effort on SE's part.

Leaving the Cap Off.

2010-05-25T16:43:00.002-04:00

With SE's new vision of focusing almost exclusively on end-game (took them long enough), opening the CoP zones is a "free" way to add new content without much work. Tweak some mob levels and you get a whole series of zones that people are familiar with but no one ever uses. I think it's a good idea, and an easy way to cut some corners on development time and costs.

But with every good idea comes the complainers and most of the complainers this time are the old players that are bitter that everyone else is going to have it "easy" now. CoP missions were added back in the day, they were challenging, but not difficult. The problem really arouse when some players that did no work, no research and no preparation assumed that they should waltz right through the new content. FFXI was designed to be intensely challenging. It was too challenging for people that just wanted to brute force their way through the fights and not prepare for each fight with the necessary items. These were not fights you could just leech through, everyone had to do their part.

FFXI doesn't have any of the boss fight add-on's you would find in other games (though honestly, it wouldn't be that hard to make one I don't think) so it really punished those that didn't do their homework. People still whine about it to this day, but ultimately every fight had a gimmick item that could be used to nerf the mob you were fighting. A lot of people still believe that you had to have certain job set ups to do the fights, but those are the same people that never researched the fights to find out how easy they really were.

It may be the end of an era, but it is the beginning of a new one at the same time. FFXI was, is and never will be WoW. It is a more challenging game, and that is the reason it will never be as popular as WoW.

Was CoP cool and challenging back when we did it? Yes.

Is CoP now hard to get a group for because it is old content? Yes.

The funny thing is that these statements are not mutually exclusive. The only difference is when people think we should move on from old content. Many people think that SE should obsolete old content, but then complain when SE revives old content to make it relevant again. They don't really know what they want.

Uncapping the CoP zones is basically free new content for SE. No one uses those zones for much of anything now, so why not make them the new leveling areas and give them some use again? Sure, some small fraction of players won't get the challenge that we got years ago when they were harder, and we had worse equipment and fewer jobs leveled, and we walked to school in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways.

The complainers are acting like kids on the last day of high school, saying how much they loved everyone (even though they hated them), how much they will miss everyone (even though they will forget them within days of getting to college), and how this was the best time of their life (even though it sucked for the most part).

They need to sign their freaking year books, cry a little, give a few fist bumps, go to their year-end parties, or do whatever they need to do to move on.

Things are changing and change is good.

So, what did I miss?

2010-05-24T16:50:00.005-04:00

I am back, slightly more tan, slightly more drunk and wishing I was still on vacation. But time marches on, and as it does so comes the version update notes. Let's review what happened last week and toss in a little dash of Ring meta-commentary for some spice!
First, SE gave a little more information about the first Abyssea expansion, Visions of Abyssea. The information provided was not that deep to say the least. I didn't really expect all that much, but all we got was basically a generic blurb about darkness, bleakness, anguish, destruction, and harrowing...ness. Hell, they even used the called the skies sanguine. Hey SE, you are making a game for a bunch of previously teen now sadly older video game nerds that just can't let go. How are they supposed to know what sanguine even means... wait... ok, maybe they are going to be the only people in the word that knows what sanguine means. Alrighty SE, go ahead, what were you saying? Anyway, we get a lot of big, nasty, scary words and not much of anything of substance. I mean honestly, the drawn picture of the new expansion gives us a better impression of what we can expect than the words that you choose to write about the damn thing! I felt like I was reading some kind of spooky-evil-demonic-underworld former baseball player trying to answer direct questions about steroids at a congressional hearing.

That isn't to say that I am not looking forward to the expansion, because I am totally geeking out for the damn things. An entire set of expansions designed around end-game? Where do I sign up? After finally doing some of my Wings missions (my god do those missions get INSANELY good after Lilith is introduced) and getting a better idea of what is going on, I am firmly of the opinion that Abyssea is the memories of the current time in Lilith's time-line that Atomos has already swallowed up. Yeah, those were spoilers there, but seriously something needs to get you guys motivated to do those missions and quests already! If you look at the background painting of the Abyssea website you will also see all sorts of new weapons as well as in the pictures on the Visions of Abyssea page. First and foremost, there is the sword the size of a small elephant in the hand of a particularly white Paladin. The gear is definitely in the .dats already, but that sword is not. That sword would give the bulbous-Nerf-cartoon weapons from WoW penis envy. Sure, sure, the taru is wearing purple Baron's gear, and he has an all new club model, but what is really interesting is the fist full o' giant spikes the MNK is using. Oh, and the nasty, demon Behemoth... that's interesting too.

Well, that was my report on one picture... man I can be long winded. That doesn't mean I am going to stop though. :) Our second pic is interesting in all new and equally long-winded ways! Ok, first of all there is the new mob, which is just the center mob in this picture from the back. But do we really care about non-series-related mobs? No, we don't. We care about big-bladed choppy sticks, the Yagudo-wannabe's that wield them and their... pink "power" Ranger friends? Seriously, ok, white haubs? Weird, but whatever, they do look good. Aqua-marine Baron's gear (and I don't give a fuck what color E. Body is, but I am not stepping into that war either)? That's fine by me. But I swear to god SE, I will fucking fly to Japan and I will piss in all of your fucking sake if put even one decent fucking stat on that pink holocaust. It's Noct gear, a cool design if in somewhat boring colors, but it's been made FABULOUS! Don't you fucking dare! Skadi is already way more pink than it should be... Ranger's are awesome archers with a little wilderness stealth and a whole bunch of shoot-you-in-the-face damage tossed in. This is what SE said about RNG's at VanaFest:

We also plan on adding new equipment designed for both form and function, with attributes and appearance befitting these lethal hunters and huntresses.

If this shit makes it into the game, then we know that SE really has been fucking with us all this time. Form and function? Attributes and appearance? Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... So, the RNG gets tossed into the dressing room at Benetton but the BST beats him up, steals his lunch money, rapes a Yagudo and then wears it's skin like Buffalo Bill and gets a "that's not an axe, THIS is an axe" axe to top it all off. The BST gear in that model-line is notorious for massive suckage, but man there is no way they can put bad stats on a coat made out of a fucking Yagudo. It would be an even bigger crime than making "Rosy the Ranger" gear.

Yeah, that was long-winded, so what? Don't make me stab you. I have been out of the loop for a week. Tomorrow, I might go over the new quests update, or I might just skip it because I don't know if it's worth a whole blog post, and I do need to cover the CoP areas getting uncapped and the money I now owe Iceblazek. Fucking SE!

Sub-Routine: White Mage.

2010-05-14T16:40:00.003-04:00

I should have probably gone back and revised the Ninja sub job post because apparently SE did explicitly state during Vana'fest that they would be keeping the Ninja and White Mage stances exclusive to their main jobs. This means that the information for Ninja might not be correct and that decreases the benefits of subbing Ninja by quite a bit. I thought about ranting about how the jobs that would sub Ninja actually need Yonin and Innin, but I think I am going to save that for a separate post. Also, I am going to include the White Mage "stances" because I think they should be included and available as a sub job, but I will get into the specifics for that below.

My general thought on White Mage is that it is still going to be a core subjob for all mage jobs. Now, you might think that I am retarded because I just made a post praising RDM as the new sub job that all mages are going to use. I still think that is the case for some mage jobs, like BLM and SCH because they either have access to the specific spells that /WHM brings to the table (SCH) or they don't give a fuck about those spells (BLM). The problem is that several mage and support jobs will still be called upon do perform the roll of a WHM main. For example, in Salvage many RDM are required to be able to fill the roll of a main healer also (and there is also the fact that a RDM can't sub RDM, LOL). This requires access to a full compliment of -na spells and Erase which are best available through /WHM. In the end, offensive mages are almost definitely going to want to use /RDM but healing mages are going to want to use /WHM, and support jobs are going to have to pick what they need on a case by case basis.

Afflatus Solace @40 (maybe?).
Of course people are going to say this is the reason that /WHM shouldn't get access to the WHM main stances, but are they really thinking about it that deeply? SE actually put this ability together pretty well when they made it, and that is why I am not really worried about it. The real benefit of Afflatus Solace is the "cureskin" effect, or the bonus Stoneskin that is given to the recipient of the Cure. This would be a problem if everyone was walking around with a full strength "cureskin" effect, but that is not the case. The cap on the amount of "cureskin" you can give is based on the level of your WHM, so subbing it will mean that you will have a lower cap. If the "cureskin" is too strong while subbed then SE may have to do some tweaking down either by decreasing the "cureskin" effect at lower levels, or by nerfing it while subbed. But if you consider the fact that SCH gives their healing and cast bonus at full effect, I don't see why WHM can't give out at least a nerfed "cureskin" to other mages.

"Cureskin" isn't the only benefit to Solace, but the other benefits either have limited use or can't be accessed. Here is a quick run down.
*Sacrifice - Higher than the 49 level-cap.
*Bar-Element Effect - Ok, this one might need to be nerfed a little bit. RDM is already able to hand out a decent Bar-Element but a good WHM is going to have a much higher -ra effect. It's not that big of an effect, but it's definitely something WHM need to do well and RDM don't really need. I would say that this shouldn't be available when subbed or it should only be +1 or +2 MDB at best.
*Holy - Only other job with access to this is PLD, and while they might be able to drop a big Holy because of this, I just don't see it as all that game breaking.

And that is about it. I still can't see why /WHM should get Afflatus Solace.

Afflatus Misery @40 (Maybe?)
If I think that /WHM should get Solace, there is no reason they shouldn't get Misery. Like Solace the amount of damage you can take to increase it's effect is limited by your level, so you would only be getting the subjob level of effect. Unlike Solace though, Misery doesn't really have a permanently beneficial effect, but it all spell specific, so lets look over those.

*Cura - Incredibly efficient but never really used because if you are a good WHM for the most part you aren't going to take much damage. /WHM is going to have access to this anyway, and the level correction on Misery is going to limit the additional potency.
*Esuna - Higher than the 49 level-cap.
*Auspice - Higher than the 49 level-cap.
*Banish - Like Holy this could be used to increase their damage, but again it is limited by the level correction on the damage absorbed effect. And really... who is going to be spamming Banish anyway?

I will say it again, there is no reason /WHM shouldn't get these abilities, there is nothing game breaking. A limited Solace effect is not really that much better than what you can get from /SCH, and come on, /WAR is going to give freaking Aggressor. It's time to throw /WHM a bone.

Now onto the spells. I am only going to go over the critical ones here, I don't think we really need to worry about every little random Bar-spell that /WHM is going to get.

Teleport-Altep and Yhoat @ 38 and Teleport-Vahzl @ 42.
These spells would have meant a whole lot more a couple of years ago, but today those Teleports just aren't that important because there isn't much reason to go to those places. Even if you are leveling in those areas, most parties are going to have at least one WHM main in it that can teleport then change jobs. Besides, there are tons of alternative ways to get around the game anyway, and that cuts into the relevance of these teleports most fundamentally.

Stona @ 39.
This is the last -na spell that WHM had uniquely. Honestly, I am more concerned that SE is giving this up as a subjob spell than I am about the WHM stances. A good spell to have and it will let the WHM not have to worrying about exclusively covering this from now on. I do think that SE should give Amensiana (Amensna?, Amensina?) to WHM above the new sub job cap so WHM has that one last -na spell that no one else gets.

Haste @ 40.
Went over this when discussing RDM already, but man, this is going to be great of a lot of mage subs. BLM will love it (but will probably get it from /RDM), SCH will love it (but will probably get it from /RDM), SMN will love it (but don't they already have it from Garuda?). It will be exclusive to /WHM if the first level cap increase is only to level 80, but after that /RDM is going to have it too, and then it's not really going to matter. It's a good spell, necessary and it's probably time that other jobs get access to it even if it is through there sub job.

Cura @ 40.
See above under Afflatus Misery. Potentially interesting, but probably never going to be used.

Cure IV @ 41.
Finally, the non-RDM and non-SCH mages will get access to a decent cure, even if it is a hate-filled monster. No more Cure 3 spam. But again this is a much greater blow to WHM uniqueness than both of the Afflatus JA's combined. I think SE is going to need to give WHM a new even bigger Cure (Cure VI? I know totally original) to make up for this. If not, you might see WHM quickly pushed to the back burner because most jobs are going to be able to do the basic function of a WHM just by subbing the job. This had almost completely happened before with RDM, and while the Afflatus JA's fixed the situation, it was RDM's access to Cure IV and Haste that caused the situation to begin with.

Regen II @ 44.
I think this one is going to be play style dependent, but some people love their Regens. I don't think it will be much of a factor for most people though.

Flash @ 45.
This one is surprisingly unimportant, I think. While Flash can be nice to help out a tank, I don't know that it is a make or break spell for anyone that would want to sub WHM. That is unless NIN would want to sub WHM, and I am not really kidding here. NIN/WHM would get access to Haste, self-cures and Flash, that is potentially a whole lot of hate. NIN already largely subs DRK just for a couple of hate spells and three 5+ minute job abilities. /WHM has the potential to deliver more hate, more quickly outside of those JA's. I think it is at least worth looking into after the level cap hits 90+.

Protect III and Protectra III @ 47.
A nice additional spell for jobs that don't get access to it a convenient Protectra. Nothing to write home about, but I don't think people are going to be complaining either.

Repose @ 48.
A light-based sleep available to jobs like RDM, BLM and SCH? That is pretty powerful, and it will definitely cut into the utility of the remaining jobs that have exclusive access to light-based sleep. BLM, RDM and SCH are already known for their crowd control skills, getting Repose isn't going to overpower them, but I don't think they are going to be looking down their nose at it either.

Subbing WHM is going to offer some pretty powerful options and even if SE decides that no one else besides WHM should have access to the Afflatus "stances" it is still going to be a great sub job. So if you are a mage main, get out there and level your WHM! And if you are a NIN, at least give the /WHM some thought, because I think it might surprise you!

Two final things. First, that awesome WHM painting at the start of this article was blatantly stolen from Atua on the FFXI AH website. It's a great work! Second, this is my last post for a week as I am going on vacation. I won't be back until May 24th. Maybe if you are lucky and you wish really hard, Omoi might post something on the blog to keep you entertained while I am gone. :)

POL News: June Update Teaser Finally Arrives!

2010-05-14T08:45:00.004-04:00

It's coming! The June 2010 Update has finally been announced and it looks like SE is going to come through with all their major plans. The first stage of the level cap increase and a ton of equipment and weapons to go along with it. The nation quest are finally finishing up, and along with that we will be getting access to the Walk of Echoes. How we get into the Walk of Echoes still remains a mystery, but I am sure we will find out soon enough. Also, more Magian trials are on their way. Are they going to include more weapon upgrades because of the increased level cap? Are we just going to get gear upgrades? How will gear upgrades work? Am I going to have to camp Ho Majoo the Wooblededoo 800 more times again? This is all before we even start talking about job adjustments and the changes that are going to happen to sub jobs. I am guessing we are mostly going to see nerfs for sub jobs but we might see a buff or two here and there.

And all this is great stuff is coming even before you consider that the first Abyssea update hasn't even been mentioned yet! End game galore! I love it!

For SE's full announcement check below the cut!
We are pleased to announce that our development team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the upcoming FINAL FANTASY XI version update, which is currently on track for a mid-June release.

This update promises to be a momentous one, with the first level cap increase in over six and a half years, and a veritable slew of new equipment and weapon skills to accompany it.

But that's not all! Adventurers across Vana'diel can look forward to experiencing the climactic conclusions of the popular Wings of the Goddess nation quest storylines, braving the eerie environs of the new Walk of Echoes area, taking up the gauntlet with new Trial of the Magians trials, and much more! With a host of job adjustments and other refinements on the way as well, this update is sure to offer something for players of all stripes.

As always, detailed previews will be forthcoming right here in the Topics section, so keep watching this space!

Sub-Routine: Corsair

2010-05-13T14:37:00.002-04:00

Fine Rob, I will do Corsair next. I am still right though, it's going to look great on paper, but in function it just isn't going to make a difference. Corsair is much more likely to sub another buffing job like BRD than another job is to use Corsair. For the most part other jobs are expected to bring certain things that one buff from Corsair just won't cover. Also remember that some Corsair buffs are effected by level difference between the caster and the recipient, so it's not like you will get full strength buffs either. You can also get most of the sweet Corsair buffs from other subs like Refresh will be coming from RDM. While Corsair will have some decent buffs, only getting one roll and having it at a decreased potency just undercuts the notion of using it as a sub job a lot.

That said, some people are going to still want to use it, so lets see what Corsair is going to get and you can make your own judgment.

Quick Draw @ 40.
Damage shots, plus a light-based Sleep and a Dispel? How could you go wrong? Well, you can go pretty wrong, actually. The accuracy for Quick Draw is based on your AGI which for a wide variety of jobs this is going to mean that you are going to miss a whole lot. In the end, these shots are not going to be very effective at all for all but one job, Ranger. Ranger on the other hand has access to a huge amount of AGI gear, much better gear than even COR gets. That means that RNG shots have a very good chance of landing the Sleep and Dispel effects. Even for the damage shots a RNG should be able to get shots with at least the accuracy of a COR if not better. This will definitely require a gun-based RNG because you would be losing TP every time you switch weapons to use QD if you were using a bow or cross-bow. COR might actually turn out to be a decent sub for RNG for this reason. They would get the job-enhanced Hunter's Roll (but this will be nerfed because of the level difference between the RNG main and COR sub) and access to these bonus shots. Of course SAM and WAR would still be better DD sub jobs, but in our world in which RNG are increasingly unable to do their max damage because they will get their faces eaten, subbing COR might be an option. Just remember you are going to need cards for this to work.

Evoker's Roll @40.
The reason that Rob thinks that COR is going to be so great as a subjob. It looks good on paper sure, but it doesn't consider that it will be literally the only thing you will be getting out of your sub job. You will be losing the MP pool from a mage subjob, you will be losing all of the associated spells from a mage subjob, you will be losing all of the abilities from other sub jobs. The only job I can think that would even consider it would be RDM, but even with the extra refresh it just isn't going to be equal to losing all of the base MP and you are going to lose Erase, Curagas, and any JA's that SE does end up giving to WHM. And that all assume you are going to get a full strength Evoker's Roll while subbing COR. It is the same notion as subbing BRD, a little bit better but still just a niche for low-manning things.

Rogue's Roll @43.
A boost to Crit hit rate, which is nice if you would ever use it. Maybe a BRD subbing COR would use it if they don't have to do anything else. It's a nice bonus, but probably won't be used over other rolls.

Warlock's Roll @46.
Magic accuracy is always nice, and if you are a BRD stuck in an all BLM party then this could be a nice roll to have. Ok, Rob outside of RNG that is another place that people might sub COR.

Fighter's Roll @49.
Much like Rogue's roll, this is another damage booster for when the situation is going to occur. The extra DA is going to be nice, but again, it's not going to be make or break.

Resist Paralyze III @ 45.
Hey, it's more than DRG gets. LOL

So, subbing Corsair will probably have a few more niche roles than it does now, but it will still suffer from the nerf caused by level difference in buffer and buffee. RNG could see some good use out of it if they are already using a gun, and depending on their role BRD could use it too. RDM? I just don't see it happening Rob, sorry.

The picture for this post? Why it's a F4U Corsair of course! :)

Sub-Routine: Dragoon.

2010-05-12T16:33:00.001-04:00

This is one of the most boring subjobs to discuss because nothing is going to change between level 37 and 49. The next major boost to Dragoon doesn't really come until 50. Still, Dragoon has always been considered to have something to offer even if it is just as a niche sub-job. It offers a lot of potential haste for other two-hander jobs, but it doesn't offer anywhere near as much in terms of defenses for non-SAM mains, and doesn't quite match up with subbing WAR for most SAM's. At peak haste it is probably better than /WAR but the difference is close, and at lower levels of haste WAR still has a distinct advantage. In general when thinking about subbing DRG it should be remembered that you should be using a Wyvern Earring because the entire benefit of subbing DRG is having the haste from it.

Without trying to jump to conclusions, lets talk about what might be coming for /DRG because if we don't this would be a really short post.

New Jump.
At very least SE has said that DRG will be getting another Jump ability. If this was something that was available below the subjob cap then that would be a really big boost to subbing DRG. One of the things about the jumps for non-DRG mains is the nice increase in TP without much delay at all. Jump and High Jump right now eliminate two attack rounds pretty often and another jump, if it is an offensive attack, will just be even more speed for TP building.

Dragoon Main?
Dragoon unlike a most other jobs changes a lot depending on what kind of sub job it is using. Any discussion that didn't include some kind of discussion about changes to the effects of subjobs on DRG would be excluding one of the most unique aspects of the DRG job itself. SE has said that they plan on providing more wyvern abilities available with a wider array of subjobs. Does that mean more offensive breaths for mage sub jobs? Or does that mean more healing for offensive sub jobs? Both?

I am sorry there isn't more to provide for you when it comes to Dragoon as a sub job, but don't blame me! Blame SE! And maybe they will listen and provide us with some more interesting benefits to using DRG as a subjob.

Sub-Routine: Dancer

2010-05-11T16:50:00.001-04:00

For soloing, duoing and low-manning in the future, it looks like Dancer may be the most important job to have leveled. Even if you are thinking about doing events with more people, Dancer may still be an option because of all the self- and party-wide buffs that are going to become available. The one major thing to note first is that even with the increase in the level cap, those that want to sub DNC will still not be able to get to the next major heal, Curing Waltz III. It probably should be noted that if people were able to sub DNC and get Curing Waltz III it might have really bad balance issues. Curing Waltz II already is a pretty big cure, about equal to a Cure III, and it has a pretty low recast time with a decent TP cost. If Curing Waltz III was added to this some jobs like PLD or SAM it might make them just too survivable.

On with the show.

Reverse Flourish @ 40.
This ability is very nice for main-job Dancers as it lets you convert Finishing Moves that you get from using Steps into TP. Dancers often need this for situations where they can't build TP on the mobs they are fighting, or just for a nice TP boost. I don't know how great this will be for those that are subbing DNC though because most people use /DNC while soloing or low-manning and are actually fighting mobs and getting a decent store of TP anyway. The one place it might be quite useful (and Dancer mains may do this too but I don't know that much about Dancer) is to boost your TP back up after you do a WS and are left with very little. Since /DNC doesn't have many uses for their Finishing Moves right now, I can see this being a nice little boost and a better reason to use some of the Steps that currently might be ignored or at least marginalized. Just remember that the amount of TP you get back from Reverse Flourish is based on the number of Finishing Moves you have stored up, and the more you have the better the TP return so you want to make sure you save up those Finishers as long as you can until you get 5 of them.

Stutter Step @ 40.
At first glance this appears to be nothing of interest to most people that would sub DNC, but a deeper look makes it a bit more intriguing. The magic resistance reduction provided by Stutter Step effects other "magical" effects that /DNC can use. The problem is that up until now there hasn't been much of anything that was so great as to demand a reduction in magic resistance to make sure it lands but just wait a moment until we get to...

Violent Flourish @45.
Now that decreased magic resistance is going to make a difference. Violent Flourish by itself is basically a weapon swing with additional effect: stun, but there is a little bit more to it than that. The stun effect of Violent Flourish can miss even if the weapon swing lands, because it has a separate calculation for the stun effect and that is based on magic resistance. So if you want to make sure that your stun is going to land you are going to want to make sure the mob's magic resistance is as low as you can get it. That means you should be building up your Finishing Moves by using Stutter Step. Unlike Reverse Flourish, Violent Flourish only takes one Finishing Move to pull off so you can use it as soon as you get your first Stutter Step on the mob.

Haste Samba @45.
Ahh, the sexiness that Dancer brings to subjobs. Well, it's definitely a little bit of sexiness at 5% weapon delay reduction, but it's not game breaking that is for sure. Any decrease in weapon delay especially without losing TP per swing is a nice bonus, but 5% is still small when you consider that other buffs like Haste and BRD songs give you a much larger bonus. The neat thing about it is that while it does stack with all other forms of Haste it doesn't count toward the Haste cap like almost every other form of Haste. Normally, your "Job Abilty" haste would be capped at 25%, but with Haste Samba you can actually go above this. The problem is that you can't go that much higher if you aren't a DRK with Desperate Blows. Once Haste Samba is available through /DNC it will almost definitely be better to use it than Drain Samba if you don't need all the healing you can get.

Evasion Bonus II and Subtle Blow II @45.
Another nice boost to evasion and a little less TP spam. These traits are never going to be the reason you choose to sub DNC, but they are a bit of an added benefit that you don't get from many other jobs.

Dancer is going to be a strong subjob as the level cap increases even if it is just for the same roles that it is used for now. This is another one of those "must level" jobs, even though leveling it isn't going to be anywhere near as fun as using it as a subjob.

Sub-Routine: Red Mage

2010-05-10T12:58:00.001-04:00

I begrudgingly review Red Mage next not because I don't think that it will be a bad subjob, it will indeed be awesome, but because it is too obviously awesome. I wanted to hit on a couple of the more interesting potential sub jobs before I went too far into the obvious ones. The problem is that I think that most mages really want to know what is coming from RDM and what they are going to expect. And I also think they don't want to hear about another melee sub job. I think that there are actually some other interesting sub jobs for mages, but I do think that RDM is going to be the "go to" sub jobs for a whole lot of jobs once the level cap increases. I will say this, if you have a main mage job and you don't have RDM leveled then you are going to want to do that before anything else. Like right now... why are you still sitting there? Go! NOW!

Convert @ 40.
The quintessential RDM ability... and before Composure was added, the only non-two-hour ability that RDM had. Get an entirely new MP pool for your HP every 10 minutes. It's one of those abilities that had SE claiming they could never raise the level cap for over 5 years, and then one day SE drops the bomb says it's one of the great things about raising the level cap. Of course RDMs the world over are going to whine and complain about losing their signature JA, but that is because after BRD, RDM is the number 1 prima donna job. News flash, everyone else is losing their signature JA's too. And lets get another thing straight, while Convert is a powerful JA, it's not god-like. It's a full MP once every ten minutes. This is probably most beneficial for WHM in the end, because most other jobs have other limitations on how they can use the MP. SMN still have to wait on Bloodpacts, BLM get a few more nukes but nothing game breaking, SCH get to do more of their... well they do everything already. It just isn't that broken to give this to other jobs.

Magic Attack Bonus II @ 40.
I can only think of one job that is going to care about this because any job that it would really matter to already has something like this available. The one job that is going to care is SCH. SCH has no innate Magic Attack Bonus and has to get them from their sub job. While SCH can get MAB II from BLM already most SCH would still prefer to use RDM as a sub because it gives them access to a wider and far more utilitarian selection of spells. Getting MAB II from RDM as a sub job pretty much eliminates any reason to consider using BLM as a subjob altogether (as is MAB II was a reason to use BLM in the first place).

Magic Defense Bonus II @ 45.
While pretty bland at first this might be a nice little bonus for tanking jobs that already like to sub RDM for dealing with more magic damage intensive fights. PLD already sub RDM for fights like JoL because they can pull a lot of hate and don't need to worry about shadows at all. The problem is that Magic Defense Bonus II only provides +2 MDB over MDB I, while MDB I provides +10 MDB, so the upgrade is comparatively very small. It is an added bonus for those that would be subbing RDM anyway, but it definitely isn't enough to justify switching if you weren't going to do so already.

I am not going to go over every possible spell that RDM is going to get as a sub but I will go over the notable ones.

Raise @ 38.
While this is available for those mage jobs that generally sub WHM, this is a nice added boost to BLM that may need to raise a fallen comrade or if someone forgets to put up Reraise. This is nowhere as good Reraise, but it is something that may make life a little easier for people that want to sub RDM anyway.

Refresh @ 41.
This is the great grand-pappy of all the new things that we will be getting through subjobs as the level cap increases. This one is more game changing than anything else, including Convert. Almost all jobs are going to sub RDM because of this spell, as a constant 3MP per tick is just that good. While there will again be complaints from RDM about the loss of the main reason they are being brought to events (if any RDM thinks the only reason they are brought to events is because of Refresh then they must not know how to Enfeeble at all), SE has already hinted that they will be giving RDM a new Refresh II replacement to keep them in the refresh game. My guess is that it will be better than Refresh and it won't stack with Refresh, so all the prima donnas don't go crying home to mommy.

Sleep II @ 46.
While definitely not unique to the RDM sub job, it is just another added benefit when you are going to be subbing RDM anyway for those other bonuses. It gives mages a bit more real crowd control options if they have the enfeebling skill to use it properly.

Protect III @ 47.
Another little perk for those BLM out there that are going to be loving /RDM for other reasons. Take a little more of a physical beating before you die a horrible death because all of your crowd control got resisted.

Cure IV @ 48.
Another spell that you are going to get through a different sub job and much earlier too, but again, you are going to want to be subbing RDM for other reasons and having Cure IV now means that you are basically capable of doing what a RDM does right now. That doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to fill the roll that a RDM does right now because MP and HP pools will definitely be increasing as the level cap increases and Cure IV might not be as good an idea as it is now (more Cure IV casts, more hate gained, more MP spent).

Haste @ 48.
This might sound familiar: A spell you really want, that you could get through another sub job, but you will want more from RDM. Essentially this will give all mages the ability to cast haste at least on themselves, and it may help to relieve the burden that is places on RDM and WHM to cover all of the melees and tanks with Haste. This one is so good that it might even mean that melees start to consider using a mage job as a sub. At very least it will be a major boost to PLD/RDM soloing just about everything, and it could mean that PLD/RDM takes over the "Soloing God" position from RDM.

And that's about it. RDM will get a few other spells, but nothing to write home about. RDM is going to be a really important sub job, not just for mages, but for PLD and a few other jobs as well. This is one of those sub jobs that you should level now before the first increase in the level cap so you are ready to go once the update hits.

Sub-Routine: Ninja

2010-05-07T17:22:00.002-04:00

The level cap increase is coming! Are you prepared? This is the first in a series of articles that are going to look at all the potential sub jobs and the benefits that are going to come out of them as the level cap increases. Now, you might be wondering why I am going to go over sub jobs instead of main jobs, and there are a couple of answers. First, sub jobs have been generally designed around the level 75 cap for about 5 years now. SE has been adding abilities just above the level cap for sub jobs that are now going to become available. Second, we don't really know what is coming for main jobs. We do have SE's traditionally vague pronouncement of changes, but outside of SAM having Sekkanoki being bumped down to be available for sub jobs there really isn't much to go on for direct information. Third, while you know what you are generally getting out of a main job, sub jobs can alter, sometimes radically you play style for that job, so it is a good idea to know what is coming so you can maximize the potential of your main job.

Let's start with Ninja. Why? Well, because I think it is something that everyone is going to level anyway for the shadows so we might as well find out what else we are getting out of it.

1. Tier 2 Elemental Ninjutsu @ 40.
No. Just no. You don't have the skill, you don't have the MAB, you don't have the inventory space. Yes, there is going to be that random BLM out there that is going to try this out on a level 40 crab and they are going to say "it totally works" and then they will be attacked by a hundred psychopathic monkeys with nothing by terrorism and murder by anal rape on their minds... or maybe that is just what I hope happens to them.

2. Yonin/Innin @ 40.
Ok, so I have heard people say that SE is going to change this and move them up out of sub job range, but I have seen absolutely no evidence of this. First of all, if SE doesn't give this at sub job level then there is going to almost no reason to use NIN as a sub (ok, so there really isn't a whole lot of reasons besides shadows right now either). Other jobs are going to be handing out some pretty nice buffs as the level cap increases, why can't NIN? Second, Yonin and Innin aren't god-like abilities. I mean freaking /WAR is going to get Aggressor... I think /NIN is ok giving THF a little more accuracy and crit hit rate (which THF doesn't really need a huge boost in anyway) from behind.

Yonin is going to give more enmity production, save people a few Shihei, improve evasion which isn't going to matter to anyone besides THF and decrease incoming crits which is definitely nice. More specifically Yonin will continue to make PLD the only tanking job in the game. I suppose that maybe some of the concern for giving these abilities through the sub job is that it will just make PLD stronger. NEWS FLASH: PLD is the only tank in the game right now! Everything else is just a DD/NIN. NIN can hold hate really well, but in the end, they are nowhere close to PLD even when they have exclusive access to Yonin. There are only three tanking situations in FFXI; you need a real tank and you bring a PLD, you don't need a real tank and you sub NIN or SAM, you are fighting Tiamat. Tank imbalance in FFXI doesn't really matter because so many people have PLD leveled.

Innin is what I think most people are going to care about because it is an offensive boost for DD jobs. Evasion doesn't mean anything really to jobs that are used to wearing Haubs or pinning hate on someone else. The enmity reduction is going to be very nice for some jobs like RNG, who already have major hate issues and finding it very easy to quickly move up the hate list. It is also pretty good for keeping yourself alive in a Dynamis type situation where you want to share hate more than you keep it. SAM's are still going to hate /NIN because all the real offensive bonuses are going to come from being behind the mob, and that is a no-no for SAM damage production. On the other end of the spectrum THF is going to love Innin, since they already stand behind mobs a good portion of the time. That is going to be a good boost in accuracy for a dual wield job like THF as well as the previously mentioned and perhaps not all that relevant boost to critical hit rate. MNK might also benefit from this boost, but it might take some adjusting to get used to standing behind mobs on MNK.

3. Dual Wield III @ 45.
Here is the make or break for the future of /NIN. THFs are already going to be drooling over subbing NIN but this might cause the return of WAR/NIN if you have the gear to support it. Right now a really well geared and well played WAR/NIN can still beat out a Great Axe WAR/SAM, but it is much easier for the WAR/NIN to go /SAM and do better too. The really important aspect of this is that this is a pretty big step up in swing speed as Dual Wield III is a 10% decrease in weapon delay. The question then becomes is 10% swing speed improvement and Innin enough to beat out /SAM which as I will cover later isn't really getting a whole lot more with the increase in the level cap? I am thinking that it just might be what be needed to see a return of WAR/NIN. And the new Magian weapons might add another factor into the equation. I am not sure, but I am holding out hope.

4. Subtle Blow III @ 45.
Another nice bonus, but I don't think that it is going to be a real consideration for picking a subjob. Less TP given almost always means less damage taken, but that is what we have healers for.

Overall, I give the Ninja sub job at least a B+ when it comes to the improvements the sub job is going to get as the level cap increases. It will still have shadows, but it will finally have the offensive potential that is needed to help it even be considered with /SAM. It has at least two different jobs that might be able to greatly benefit from the improvements (THF and WAR) and there are always hidden benefits that we might not even know about right now. I would say the future looks really bright for Ninja as a sub job.

Cheap Loots: Aesir Gear.

2010-05-06T15:53:00.001-04:00

I think I forgot to mentioned something yesterday, like why this post is called Cheap Loots. Well, to put it simply, this is just to help find places you can save money by replacing relatively expensive gear with cheap or free stuff. The Aesir gear that comes from the Odin fight is pretty much free. Yes, you will need to spend some time collecting the items to do the fight again, but when you compare the items to the equivalent AH prices you are saving a ton. Hopefully this will provide an appendix to the On the Cheap series of articles. Instead of providing a slot by slot analysis for each job, this is more of a gear analysis for all jobs. And most importantly it's about free gear for those jobs!

On to the cheap loot! Remember, you can always get the 10k gil or the Summoner Pact from the fight, but if you are doing that then you shouldn't be reading this anyway! LOL

Aesir Ear Pendent
+7 Attack is pretty decent for MNK, but it has this curious new stat Conserve TP too. What is Conserve TP? Pretty simply, it is a trait much like Conserve MP, but instead of saving MP after casting a spell it saves TP after doing a WS. So this is awesome, right? Well, maybe not. It really depends on how much TP you conserve and more importantly how much TP you are going to end up saving. It is still pretty unclear how much TP you can actually conserve from a WS, but if you are not able to get back enough TP to replace a full attack round then it is pretty much worthless. Keep in mind that it is already pretty worthless for most jobs already because you are generally going to be using a Brutal Earring and a STR earring (SAM especially won't be using this item if they have a Bushinomimi). If there is no chance that you can reduce the number of attacks needed for the next WS then the Conserve TP function is essentially completely useless.

So this sucks, right? Well, maybe not on that count either. MNK's like to use a lot of Attack for Asuran Fists, and the Brutal Earring is completely useless for Asuran Fists, so they tend to use Attack Earrings already and there isn't that great of a supply for them either. So it's already one of the best Attack Earrings for MNK, but the Conserve TP could actually be a great boon for MNK. It really depends on how Conserve TP procs end up working out, but it seems to me that with the lower TP return per swing on a MNK (this applies to NIN too but I don't know if it would be worth it for them to use it just for the rare proc compared to other options) it should be easier to get the Conserve TP proc to cover a whole attack round, or at least one swing of an attack round that might be missed. So far it looks like the proc is pretty low and the amount of TP you can conserve is veritable so I would be hesitant to use this just for the Conserve TP proc, but if you are a MNK and are going to use an Attack earring like the Merman's Earring anyway, then the Aesir Pendant Earring is a slight boost there and the Conserve TP boost just might be pretty cool.

That is all, right? No quite, there is one other job that might actually be interested in the Conserve TP effects, especially if they stack well, that job is Dancer. No other job uses TP like Dancers do. A Dancer is going to have far more opportunities to proc the Conserve TP trait, and they don't have to worry about whether they get enough to replace a whole swing because they can burn their TP whenever they please. This should even apply to jobs that sub Dancer for low man events like Assault or for Campaign where you want to cure yourself as much as possible. Here is where I am going to fail you, because I have no idea what Dancers generally use for the earring slots. While I presume they use the Brutal Earring, I don't know what they use for their other earring (Roundel Earring? Maybe, but that is quite an expensive investment) and I don't know how this would stack up for them, but this might be something that jobs that are subbing Dancer might consider to use for self-curing even if they don't use it for WS's.

Aesir Mantle
I am much more unsure about this item than I am about even the Aesir Pendant Earring. Sure, it looks like it could be great, and while Double Attack is a trait that people like to see on gear, it isn't a trait that people generally go out of their way to pick up unless there isn't anything else that great available (e.g. Brutal Earring) or it has something else on it that makes it important (e.g.... Brutal Earring for the Store TP). 8 Attack just isn't make or break for any job, and it is a big cut from even the cheapest available options like Amemet Mantle +1 which also has more STR on it. For the TP phase, 1% DA just isn't going to over come at the minimum 2 STR and 7 Attack on every hit, and the situation gets even worse for WS's when the 2 STR and 7 Attack are going to mean even more. Sure it is 1% more during Darksday, but even then it just isn't going to cut it. If you are down to choosing between the Aesir Mantle or the 10k, take the 10k.

Aesir Torque
The real gem of the bunch, this torque is the King of Cheap Loots. An Elemental and Dark Torque rolled into one with a little splash of awesomeness on Darksday, and it's free? It doesn't get any better than this. Surprisingly, there isn't much else to say about this. If you are a BLM it is a must have. It lets you sell two expensive torques and saves you one inventory slot. The only drawback is that it is level 75 which is higher than the level 65 requirement of the other torques, but really does that matter at all? Just rent the Elemental Torque from the AH until you hit 75, then use the Aesir Torque. It really is a no-brainer.

It looks like the Odin fight is a great option for Cheap Loots, and it is pretty much mandatory for some jobs. Tomorrow we will go over Alexander and see what kind of fruit that will bear.

Cheap Loots: The Rider Cometh

2010-05-05T16:49:00.000-04:00

In the last update, SE added both Alexander and Odin as new summons. This is pretty common knowledge I suspect, but what is lesser known is that like all of the rest of the quests to obtain summons, there are other rewards besides the summoning pacts. The quests to prep these fights are longer than the tuning fork quests for all of the rest of the summons, but they are not that difficult to complete. Today, I am going to focus on the Odin quest and the gear rewards from the fight that might be enticing for everyone, not just Summoners.

To start the quest to fight Odin you will first need to go to the Walahra Temple in Whitegate. If you have completed the Aht Urhgan storyline, then a cutscene will immediately be triggered and you will be able to begin the quest The Rider Cometh. While you are in Aht Urhgan you might as well take a moment to pick up a Sutlac and a Irmik Helvasi at the tea house NPC, trust me on this one, it will probably save you some money and time as you will need them later.

Next, you are going to head to Nashmau, head all the way North and talk to Yoyoroon. You will get another cutscene and you will be sent out to kill Ephramadian Shades (Fomor type mobs) to get a Timeworn Talisman. Interestingly and I believe quite rightly, Yoyoroon will not talk to you if you on Blue Mage. I believe this is not because of the general Qiqirn distaste for Blue Mages, but because Yoyoroon has a well developed understanding of FFXI end-game and also recognizes the complete uselessness of Blue Mage. LOL *cough* Where was I? Ah yes, I was able to solo the higher level ones in Caedarva Mire relatively easily on SAM/DNC, but I can't vouch for other jobs. Just be careful to pull them someplace safe because everything in that area aggro low HP, and there are true-sight Imps in the area too. Kill two or three of the Shades and even without TH you should get your Talisman in due time.

Head back to Nashmau and trade the Timeworm Talisman, the Sutlac and the Irmik Helvasi to Yoyoroon. The Sutlac is necessary to get Yoyoroon to accept the Timeworn Talisman and the Irmik Helvasi increases the chance that Yoyoroon will accept the Timeworn Talisman. There is always a chance that Yoyoroon will find that your Talisman will be what Yoyoroon is looking for, and you will have to get another Talisman, Sutlac and Irmik Helvasi. Once, Yoyoroon does take your Talisman, you will need to zone, and then come back and talk to the little Qiqirn one more time and he will give you the Talisman of the Rebel Gods which is a key item. Head back to Walahra Temple, and you will get the Talisman Key (another key item) and you will basically be ready to do the Odin fight after a cutscene at the door in Hazhalm Testing Grounds.

I haven't done the fight yet, but as soon as I do I will report back on it. It doesn't appear to be too difficult though and I have haven't heard any bad reports about the fight so far. Once you take down Odin you can take the gil (definitely not worth it), take the summoning pact (not so great if you don't care about your SMN), or you can pick between some pretty decent gear. Tomorrow I will go over the drops, which one is the best, which is the worst, and how many times you are going to need to do this fight to get everything you want.

Soloing: The Good and the Bad.

2010-05-04T15:02:00.000-04:00

Soloing has always been quite a spectacle. With the right gear, the right mob and a mountain of patience there are a huge number of kills that can be had by the right players. The reasons to solo mobs are pretty simple, all the drops go to one person, it is a better test of skill than doing it with more people and some of them can only be done with a certain gear requirement that other people you know may not meet. Additionally, some solo's just can't be done with more than one person because it would mess with the strategy, cause too many TP moves, or risk someone getting too close to a melee attack.

There are also a few reasons why soloing isn't such a great idea. The first issue with soloing is that though you can keep all the drops, you can't usually solo things that have decent drops on THF so you don't get access to TH. While some people consider soloing to be the pinnacle of skill, other people view it as casting DoT's and running with movement speed. While the concentration skills needed may be high, some question the actual player skill involved. This can be further seen with some of the new solo's that are happening with VNM mobs. I find it hard to buy that casting a spell and then moving one pace to abuse bad mob pathing is a real test of skill at all. The other problem with that is that the ToS pretty clearly states that abusing terrain is a no-no, and while I personally don't think anyone is going to get in trouble for it, I also thought that the Salvage dupers weren't going to get punished either. It is obviously not the same circumstance, not even close, but SE does have a penchant for punishing people and has proved they don't mind swinging the banhammer when they feel it is necessary. Finally, there is the issue of cock-blocking. Solo's obviously take a long time, and in some places, they can hold mobs for unreasonably long amounts of time. A good soloer tends to do their soloing in a time that usually doesn't effect most people (for example, I am pretty sure Kaeko avoids trying to do his stuff in any region's prime times), but in the end if you are soloing a mob, especially a mob that could be defeated quickly by a larger group of people and you are making them wait, then you are going to end up looking like a dick. It does beg the question of soloing though. If you are soloing to test things out and for the challenge then I can see that, but if you soloing because you are anti-social or don't have friends to help you, then you may be proving my point.

As you can probably tell, while I am not strictly against soloing difficult NMs, I don't really understand the motivation to do so after the first test of skill. I think the cons far outweigh any kind of benefit in the case of VNMs. If you do it right, then it really isn't a problem, but for every conscientious soloer out there, there are 5 that are willing to take an hour and a half to kill Krabkatoa or 2 hours to do a simple Limbus zone while people are waiting.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Black Mage.

2010-04-29T12:11:00.005-04:00

Recently I made the decision to switch from perfecting my RNG to perfecting my BLM. The problems I have had with RNG are two-fold. First, I was having problems coming to grips with the difficulty involved with getting some of the final pieces of gear that I needed to complete my RNG. The Mekki Shakki was one of these issues with it's low drop rate, it's difficulty in obtaining and being rare/ex (as opposed to something like the Organics). Also, getting a Hope Torque was pretty high on my list but because of scheduling I have been unable to attend events to get it.

Second, RNG is a hard job to control. The problem is that when it is well played you will quickly gain so much hate that it becomes very difficult to play your job properly. I suppose that is part of playing the job well, and I do try to find the break point and then hold it under that, but it is a little bit frustrating that a job that is designed to put out this much damage is more limited by itself than other factors. I had started looking into getting a variety of enmity reduction items that wouldn't effect my damage all that much but in the end, I have put that on hold because I can use those points to be more useful on BLM.

BLM is a ranged DD as much as a RNG is, but it does have an inherent limitation that RNG does not have that works to limit it's hate gain. Simply, that is MP. I can burn through everything I have then I have to rest for MP. Even if I have a ton of refresh, I will inevitably get to a point where resting to full is more efficient than just trying to wait for the next cast. Of course over time you can build enough hate to become the target of an angry dragon's rage, but it doesn't feel like it is going to inevitably happen after the next Sidewinder.

There was a simple breaking point at which I decided to go full-bore BLM and leave my RNG as it is. Not to long ago, I was able to pick up a pair of Herald's Gaiters for my BLM, and I was torn as to whether I should take them or save my points for a Faith Torque I might never see. I mulled this over until we did a Silver Sea Remnants in which I got the last piece for my Morrigan's Slops which I needed to complete my Morrigan's set. This bit of luck locked it up for me. It wasn't like I felt that it was a sign (it totally was, God told me so), but it was going to be a lot easier for me to finish my Morrigan's set (lies, all lies) than it was going to be to get what I really wanted to be able to better commit dragon-assisted-suicide.

All of this is pretext to the real cost benefit analysis for BLM. The question now that I have decided to go with gearing up my BLM is what should I do next. My Morrigan's Slops are already made, but I still need to finish my Coronal and even more expensive my Morrigan's Robe. The most efficient way for me to get my Morrigan's Robe would be to use my points to buy gil packets which are a great deal that my LS offers it's members (we used to get a normal pay out too but our bank got nuked as an RMT bot... yeah, that's a bitch-fest for another day). It will take a while to get all the gil I need, but it will definitely help out to getting this thing done in a reasonable amount of time. The problem with spending points is the opportunity cost involved. I could save the points and get a Novio Earring. Now that is the first real question about BLM I have in the short term.

Oh, and the picture at the top of the post? Yep, I got my Sorcerer's Petasos last night. Does this qualify me as a real BLM now? :)

The Rare Double-headed Internet Troll.

2010-04-23T11:28:00.003-04:00

Everyone loves a good trolling from time to time. Trolling seems to be more of an art than a skill, something that is less trained than passed down through the generations. That perfect combination of poor English, abusive slurs and a complete lack of regard other people. The best part about a troll though is that a large part of the time they behave in a most ironic fashion, and yet can't see it for themselves.

Today, to illustrate I have discovered one of my very own trolls. Quite like a troll he was hanging out in a older post, and very much like any MMO troll, that post was about PvP. This is a very special troll though, one that is so confused and baffled that they can not even figure out which direction they are going. A two-headed troll if you will. One head spitting the abuses and slurs, exclaiming their intent to crush all those around them, and the other head issues a huge list of reasons that they would never even waste their time. The confusion is only apparent to those observing the troll, and never to the troll itself. Apparently, trolls are born with an innate immunity to logic and consistency.

I encourage you to read the comments reposted below, as they are quite enlightening to behaviors of the internet troll, and I think you will enjoy them.

Anonymous said...
Another pvp hating internet troll. why would you even make a topic like this. people like you will ruin ffxiv. Sadly instead of tryin to work with every to work out pvp/pve conflicts, you would rather it be banned from the game completly. your a biased failbot, with no class or sportmanship. Leme guess you dont wana get ganked or you dont want distastfull players around. well the assholes will be there, "you will be there" And people like you deserve to get ganked even tho that can be fixed easily with pvp/pve server seperation. but thats outa the question cuzz havin pvp in a fighting rpg is unheard of by trolls like yourself who who exxcuses like" i hope SE spend more time on pve content". most retarded shit i ever heard. why the fuck do we pay to play a game? so we can get what we pay for not hear excuses to why they not able to do their job.
7:34 PM

Ringthree said...
LOL, this has got to be a joke. :)
9:04 AM

Anonymous said...
this fucking asshole is reason ffxiv will die and proly part of reason ffxi died. not like any1 forcing you to pvp and if you got your ass kicked in pvp its your fault for sucking so bad.Dont get mad get even. all i see on this post is another troll that goes to every1 ffxiv sights and trolls any idea of improving ffxiv with a good pvp system. Just cause you dont want it doesnt meen ALOT of other people do. your and fucktard loser got pwned in pvp to much... I kid i kid ... not truth hurts go fuck yourself, and get ready for all the cassual asshole that will tell you the exact same fucking thing when you try to tell them how they should play the game they pay to play. the developers stated multiple time in different topics that they are taking fans input on how they gona go about makin ffxiv. and if you same fags that have no life would stop sayin the same shit like some1 is soposed to walk you threw every lil detail of how pvp can coexist in a pve game. i dont have time to fix your ignorance nor do i care. just know if you didnt like how ffxi turned out you only got yourselfs to blame. and whn ffxiv flops cuzz lack of interest to the whole mmo comunitees blame asshole like this.
12:38 PM

Ringthree said...
You are the reason that I am glad there will be no PvP in FFXIV. :)
2:28 PM

Anonymous said...
You are the reason im glad i left ffxI. Balista was in it and it will be in ffxiv so you can fuck off to asswipe. dont realy care what the fuck any you forum trolls have to fucking say if SE caters to you. the game will be small and boring. with a population no more than fxi has had for last 4 year, less that 500k. I know most of you used to wasting time and not doin shit when you play the game you pay for but when the other millions of gamers jump on bandwagon they wont be on these forums telling you what they want they will be buying Diablo 3 or catalism for wow. or tryin the next big thing.... I give it 6-12 months with no PVP in it.
5:15 PM

Ringthree said...
First of all, this isn't a forum. This is my blog. Second, you are the kind of mouth breather that makes me glad that WoW exists so you don't ruin my favorite game with your lack of intelligence and your e-thuggery.

As I said, you are the exact reason that I am glad there will be no PvP in FFXIV.
11:05 AM

Anonymous said...
Yea your whole blog is nothing but you bashing PVP like the fag that you are and i will play FFXIV so fuck you guess what maybe its not the pvp mouth breather maybe its just you running your cocksucker.
People like you are good for that then try to pass the buck like you are here. you started the shit with this whole fucking blog.

Like i sayed b4 people like you are reason im glad i quit ffxi and ill be in ffxiv just to make sure i piss all fags like you who think they can put twist on peoples opinions. Your the Ethug wana be unsavory behavor that shouldnt be in ffxiv.
8:25 AM

Anonymous said...
Im gladd assholes like you will get what you deserve in the end. Another broken game with limited options to please your gaming desires. You played ffxi to long with the very little fanbase. if ffxiv turns out like they want it to. im sure you gona realy hate the asshole thats gona tell you what you can do with your mouth breather. When you tell them they should be able to play the game how they wanted to. I bet you was 1 of them fags that wouldnt lets a drk/war group with you just because he didnt have the best subjob. Yay thats reason why millions of people quit cuzz the fanbase ass a whole was bunch losers with to much time on their hand, ruin it for any1 else trying to play the game and have fun. no room in a game for those people only the ones that play the game how you want it to be played.
8:39 AM

Getting to know my BLM: Nuking Gear.

2010-04-12T12:31:00.006-04:00

Ever since we joined up with BBQ, I have been on BLM more and more. It's not my favorite job but it's not my least favorite either. BBQ likes to use BLM for a lot of mobs, and I am fine with that. It has just meant that I have had to move BLM merits up in my priorities, and that I might have to change what I want to get from my points in the LS but that is a discussion for another day.

BLM more than almost any other jobs need more "sets" of gear. Elemental, enfeebling, enhancing, standing, etc. Elemental and nuking sets are by far the most common set of gear and probably get the most focus from most BLM to start with. Mine is mediocre, and could still use a lot of improvement. A nuking set can vary based on the mob that you are fighting at the time but for the most part it tries to get a good combination of Elemental Skill, INT and Magic Attack bonus to ensure the highest damage without getting resisted.

Check below the cut to see how I set up my nuking set for my BLM.

I will not be coy here. I am not the best BLM in the world. I am getting better though, and I am always looking for more information to try to be the best player I can be. While this post doesn't fall into the "On the Cheap" series, I am in general very cheap when it comes to my BLM so you might be able to use it in the same way.

Head: Wizard's Petasos
A good middle of the road and easy item to get. You are going to have it from leveling anyway, may as well use it until you get something substantially better. The Wizard's Petasos +1 is a good standard upgrade if you do Limbus, and the Sorcerer's Petasos is great if Dynamis doesn't hate you.

Neck: Right now I am using my Elemental Torque to good effect. In the last update the Aesir Torque and Lemegeton Medallion were added and are definitely worth looking into in the near future. The Uggalepih Pendant is still your best choice for nuking under 50% MP.

Earrings: I don't find picking Earrings to be too hard or the Earrings themselves to be too helpful. I am sure I will get a lot of suggestions here but I currently use the standard issue Moldavite Earring and then a Cunning Earring because it is cheap. There are a ton of alternatives, some of which can get pretty expensive for a very small upgrade. I also have a Diamond Earring with a +2 Magic Attack Bonus on it from doing one of the mini-expansions. It's filling the hole for now, but once I get the points I am investing them into a Novio Earring.

Body: Igqira Weskit is the trade mark nuking body for BLM. There are lots of other options with small upgrades, and the Morrigan's Robe is probably the best upgrade that you can get even though the cost is still amazingly high.

Hands: I am luckily enough (or have been doing Salvage long enough) to have a set of Morrigan's Cuffs for my BLM. I think this is pretty much the best option available but the Zenith Mitts and the Vicious Mufflers are suitable replacements.

Rings: My rings are pretty gimp. I am using a Diamond Ring and an Omega Ring, neither of which I am too proud of. I really should get Snow Rings but man, at a cool half mil I can't really afford them right now. The Omega Ring definitely has more Magic Accuracy than my Diamond Ring, but it will be relegated if I get Snow Rings or eventually get a Galdr Ring.

Back: Generally considered to be an Elemental Skill slot because of the Merciful Cape I am using it as an INT slot because I don't have that cape yet. The Gleeman's Cape from Einherjar points is my favorite right now. I do think I will prefer the Merciful Cape though because that is a 45 MP turn around from the Gleeman's Cape and my BLM MP is a joke.

Waist: One of my rare high dollar BLM purchases is the Penitent's Rope, hey it was more expensive a while ago! The Witch Sash is definitely better, in fact it is best in slot, but the difference in price just don't meet the different in stats. I have bigger fish to fry.

Legs: In short order I will be getting my Morrigan's Slops completed, which are going to replace my Mahatma Slops. The price trade off for that exchange is going to be quite favorable.

Feet: Ugh, not a lot of good choices for BLM to begin with, but I don't even really have one of the good choices. I am rocking Rostrum Pumps right now, but I still dream of finally getting Yigit Crackows. They are good nuking feet, but with my lower INT (no jokes) and lack of merits right now, I am still hoping to pick up Shrewd Pumps but it may take a while.

And there you have a list of what I have and want. Yeah, it's not comprehensive but I think it's a good starting point. If you have suggestions, I would love to hear them as I am still learning the job and I want to learn as much as I can!

FFXIV: New Famitsu article translated by Elmer.

2010-04-08T09:16:00.002-04:00

Elmer is pretty much my hero. Japanese translator extraordinaire, Elmer provides the low down on all the sweet information that SE gives to the Japanese gaming media but doesn't provide to the American gaming media or at least the American gaming media doesn't have a Japanese correspondent. Now that I think about it, wouldn't it be a good idea for someone like Elmer to work for an American gaming magazine as a Japanese correspondent? I mean half or more of the world's video game are made and consumed in Japan. Elmer I have found your new calling in life!

You can check out Elmer's new translation on Zam's FFXIV page or check it out after the break.

Oh and all of the pictures and information blatant stolen from Elmer, Zam and Famitsu. :)

Character Creation

Famitsu boasts that the character creation system is so deep, you'll be nitpicking your avatar setting all day long trying to get it just right. Even the alpha, while not complete, has a considerable amount of variations available such as face type, skin color, hair style and body size. There are even smaller details, like putting highlights or streaks in your hair, that are customizable. There will be brand new aspects of your character to select as well -- there will even be a number of different voice types.

The character creation process begins with selecting one's race and customizing the avatar. Once your character is complete, you begin the game and set up your Class, birthday and Guardian Diety. What effects one's Guardian Diety will have in game are unknown at this time. Once all those steps are complete, you choose your name, which as we know consists of both a first and last name.

Seamless Fields and Instanced Areas

Leaving a town brings you into the Field Area where you have your adventures. FFXIV will have a seamless transition between areas that requires no loading time. From their experience with the game, Famitsu says this really gives Eorzea the feeling of a wide, expansive world. In addition, the background music transitions naturally between the areas you traverse.

A new addition, familiar to many MMO players, is the Instanced Area. This is where a private copy of an area is created, into which only you and your party can enter. These will be used in FFXIV for special events, an example being when cut scenes take place in order to eliminate outside effects and noise, allowing the player to enjoy their cut scene in peace.

The Menu System

Status & Equip: Opens up the Status & Equip screen (pictured below)

Action: Unknown... may contain commands like Trade, Craft etc?

Physical Bonus: Unknown... a place to allocate points to stats?

Item: Displays your inventory

Journal: Opens up your Guildleve menus

Party: Opens up party-related lists/functions

Map: Displays the full area map

Teleport: Instantly move to any Aetheryte you have visited at least once

Warp: Instantly return to the last Aetheryte you visited

Logout: Leave Eorzea and return to the harsh banality of Earth

Guildleve and the Battle System

Guildleves are like "quests" that you can undertake by visiting an adventurer's guild in a city. The contents of a Guildleve can vary player to player, and you can attempt them alone or with a group. To begin your selected Guildleve, first you must seek out Aetheryte in a Field Area. Players can move instantly to Aetheryte they have visited once before by selecting the "Teleport" command.

The difficulty of a Guildleve changes based on your selected party size. However, the party sizes are not selected directly, but rather through 5 different categories.

Now, as a big kanji nut, something that I found interesting that I'm going to bore you with here is: Judging from what is revealed in Famitsu, the party sizes are described through 四字熟語 (yo-ji-juku-go) or four-character idioms. These are terms constructed of four kanji that together hold a profound meaning. Many of these terms cannot be translated directly, or take entire sentences just to explain -- they are tough for even native Japanese to remember! Often times, you will see them translated as clever puns or a play on words that keeps it snappy while attempting to capture the original meaning.

Here are the party sizes and difficulty levels from ☆(easy) to ☆☆☆☆☆(hard) Party sizes are approximated based on what we know, i.e. recommended parties are 6-8 members, and the max is 15 members.

☆ - 孤軍奮闘 (ko-gun-fun-tou) - A Lone Fighting Force , (solo)

☆☆ - 少数精鋭 (shou-suu-sei-ei) - An Elite Few , (below 6 members)

☆☆☆ - 推奨人数 (sui-shou-nin-zuu) - Recommened Party Size, (6-8 party)

☆☆☆☆ - 千軍万馬 (sen-gun-ban-ba) - A Great Army *lit. 1,000 Units & 10,000 Horses* , (9+ members)

☆☆☆☆☆ - 人海戦術 (jin-kai-sen-jutsu) - A Vertiable Ocean of People *similar in meaning to swarm/zerg* , (~ 15 members)

Many Guildleves involved combat, and the Famitsu team was kind enough to explain the flow of combat below:

1) Target your enemy - Find the enemy you wish to attack and select it. Once selected, the L3 button will initiate Target Lock, keeping you facing the enemy's direction.

2) Ready your weapon - Move your cursor over your weapon of choice and press Circle. Once selected, R1 will take out your weapon and ready your stance. Now you are in "Active Mode" and able to engage the enemy.

3) Select your commands - A list of your commands is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Underneath each icon is a gauge showing how much time remains until they are ready for use.

4) Store up your Action Gauge - Once your Action Gauge is full, you can activate commands. To boost their effect, store up the Effect Gauge.

5) Using the Effect Gauge - You can activate commands immediately, or you can enhance their effects by storing up your Effect Gauge. This gauge is constantly building, so timing is important. Below you can see there are three levels to the Effect Gauge.

Convenience and Travel Time

Aetheryte provides the foundation for adventure for all players. It exists out in Field Areas as well as inside cities. Aetheryte serves as a the launching point for a Guildleve and the destination for Teleport. All players are able to use Teleport right from the start. In addition, once a quest is complete, an Aethereal Node will appear, allowing players to easily warp back to the original Aetheryte they came from. Everything is designed to allow players to move around and enjoy the game with ease.

Freedom of Growth

In FFXIV, what most MMO players know as "levels" will be the character's "Physical Level." Points you accumulate in battle can be freely spent on HP/MP, physical strength, intelligence or a variety of other parameters. In other words, you can focus on one aspect of your character, or aim for balance between all stats. The ultimate decision regarding the direction of the character is completely up to the player.

Alpha Test Hands-On Report

The team from Famitsu were able to create characters and try out the Alpha Version of FFXIV. They put their experiences into two write-ups -- one for Disciples of War and one for Disciples of Magic. Here are the key points of what they had to say.

Kikuo Saji: Roegadyn, Disciple of War, Pugilist

- The Character Creation system is so deep, you'll spend all day tweaking your avatar

- Don't fret too much over Class, you can change at anytime by changing your weapon

- The size difference between Roegadyn and Lalafell is quite massive

- You'll love the variety of new emotes -- Lalefell are especially adorable

- Aetheryte warps you right to where you need to go for Guildleves

- Guildleve difficulty is split into 5 levels, 1 star (easy) 5 stars (hard)

- The locations of target monsters for Guildleve are clearly displayed on your map

- There is a "weakened state" after dying -- HP/MP are lowered and it lasts for 5 minutes

- The game feels incredibly expansive, and it feels like you could walk on forever

- Crabs are back! Apparently Kikuo Saji found a giant one outside town that killed him in one strike!

Opone Kikuchi: Lalafell, Disciple of Magic, Thaumaturge

- There is so much more to do in the alpha compared with the Gamescom version 7 months ago

- Again, feels character creation is like a day's work in and of itself

- Once your MP is spent, you cannot recover it through resting

- Disciples of Magic have a basic magical ranged attack that does not consume MP

- It is possible to move while casting magic, but still important to be aware of the area of effect your spell will cover when cast

- Sheathing your weapon puts you into Passive Mode, which begins to recover HP, making it possible for even magic users to solo effectively

Of everything I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

2010-04-07T10:08:00.004-04:00

There are a lot of things to do in FFXI, and there are a lot of things you can do on the internet when you alt+tab out of the game. I am quite often occupied for almost every moment that I am in the game, so if I don't focus on getting something done, it gets left behind. Most of the stuff that gets left behind is for a reason. The relative level of importance is low, my time is consumed by something else, the time-reward ratio is poor or I am just lazy. Any of those reasons can quickly lead to forgetting about some important pieces of gear, either situational or even a slight upgrade.

It's not like I don't have better things to do. I need about a million merits on several different jobs. Still, there are still many different upgrades for a bunch of jobs I could just get off of the AH. The problem is getting these items to come to mind when I have an opportunity to get them. There is a certain opportunity cost involved with doing things I have missed in the past because I could be working on a new Magian weapon or I could be working on the Wings missions and quests. There are always good excuses. And sometimes the gear that I have skipped over comes from something that is annoying or tedious and I am just putting it off instead of just sucking it up and getting it done.

Check below the break for the top 3 items I have passed over, and should be mocked for not having yet.

Item(s) #3 - AF +1
I am missing so much AF +1 that it is just a joke at this point. Most of the time, this is because I haven't been able to win a lot on something important or for BLM it just doesn't drop that much. I am in need of parts for RNG AF+1 hands and for BLM AF+1 hands and head. As with most things on this list, these aren't game breaking pieces for sure, but they are also good to have and they are things that I should have by now. Maybe if the Limbus gods smile upon me, I might be able to get some of this done soon.

Item #2 - BLM AF2
I do have my BLM AF2 coat, and it serves me well. I use it in my standing gear and I don't have to use a Black Cloak or something more expensive. I still need pretty much the rest of the BLM AF2 gear. Hat, hands and legs I believe are all good for BLM for some reason or other. I would like the hat the most because even with my half done BLM merits, I am still weak on Elemental Skill for a lot of mobs.

Item #1 - You guessed it, Temple Crown
Yeah, there are a lot of MNKs out there that might think I am gimp for not having this yet. It's just an AF quest, and I am not even talking about the AF+1 version (even though I have both of the pieces to get the +1 version made ._.). I have decided that I am going to get it soon. At least when I remember to get it. :)

You got your Rage in my TP! You got your TP in my Rage!

2010-04-05T14:01:00.005-04:00

While I might reference other games like WoW in columns it is not that often that I dedicate a whole column to the issue. But today Blizzard made an announcement that I think is interesting enough to include here.

The best thing about this is that I KNEW it was coming. I almost wrote a column about it before, but decided you might not care.

A bit of background: In WoW, Warriors uses a mechanic called Rage to use abilities. Rage is usually gained through one of two ways, either doing damage or taking damage. This is one of those things that sounds good on paper, but in practice you have to wonder how Blizzard let this mechanic exist through the base game and two expansions. The problem? Well, Warriors can either be melee DD (DPS) or tanks. For melee DD, if you are undergeared, then you are going to be doing less damage, and if you do less damage you get less rage, and if you get less rage you can do less abilities and thus do less damage to get less rage, and on and on. But there is a point at which you get enough gear to do enough damage to always have rage to always do more damage to get more rage, etc. It isn't well balanced at all. Tanks have the opposite problem. They get rage based on the damage they take. When you are fighting something really hard, you take a lot of damage, so you have a lot of rage. But as your gear improves, you take less damage and gain less rage, so you aren't able to hold hate as well because you can't use your abilities. So when you aren't doing high level events, you actually have more trouble holding hate than you would against something that is pounding your face in.

Now, this might seem slightly familiar. FFXI has a mechanic that is similar but applies across all melee DDs. Well it just got a whole lot more similarer.

Check below to see how Blizzard is now changing Rage into TP.

Essentially, Blizzard's new plan for Warrior (and Druid) Rage system is the same as SE's system in FFXI for TP. After their new expansion Warriors will gain rage based on their base swing speed, and that gain will be adjusted for all weapon speeds. Does this remind you of something? That is exactly how TP is determined in FFXI. Blizzard did add a little flair to the system by making Crits gain double the normal Rage and off-hand swings only getting 50% that weapon's normal Rage. Then again FFXI has Store TP to increase your TP per swing. Also, Blizzard is changing the way that tanks will get rage from being hit, so that they will get rage more equally from lower damage mobs. In FFXI, players still get TP from getting hit, but it is not fundamental to their jobs. PLD does get a large benefit from their increased TP gain from being hit, but it is not critical to doing their job.

Blizzard's system is also different in how Rage functions and is used, like Rage caps at 100 and abilities only cost a set amount but those amounts vary depending on the ability. So how a WoW Warrior spends their TP is more like how a Dancer uses their TP, instead of how a normal WS works. WoW Warriors spend little chunks of their Rage at a time, while a melee DD in FFXI spends all of their TP at once.

I have to say right now, that I was thinking this was Blizzard's only real solution to the problems they were having with Rage, and it was my idea and they totally ripped me off! :) The reason that it works in FFXI and the reason that Blizzard needed to use it for WoW is that it is based on something that is external to the gearing of a player. All of the other jobs in WoW just get their "resource", or their "stuff" to use their abilities, for free. Warriors had to take damage or do damage to get their "resource". This wasn't very stable at all to determine if you could use an ability or not. The only stable factor that exists across all jobs (even across both games) is swing speed. The faster weapons get less Rage/TP and the slower weapons get more Rage/TP. It all equals out in the end. SE figured this out pretty early on, and hasn't had to change the system all that much (there was one tweak when they removed the TP floor for low delay weapons).

Blizzard doesn't have a decrease weapon delay function outside of haste, and haste is going to function the same way that it does in FFXI for Rage gain purposes (i.e. it isn't going to effect it at all). They also don't have a "Store TP" function either, but they do have a much larger spread of swing speeds, so I think that even if they don't have a system that allows for an "X-hit build", they might want to consider how much rage they get from a weapon swing. If they can get to a round number faster with a higher delay weapon that might just be beneficial. For example, if one weapon gives 24 Rage per swing, and another weapon give 25 Rage per swing, and one of their abilities takes 25 Rage then it may be better to go with the slower weapon because you will be able to use your 25 Rage ability first. I would not be surprise for Warriors to quickly discover this "trick" in much the same way that melee DD in FFXI try to get to "X-hit builds".

There really aren't that many more differences between how the two systems functions. I think it was a good decision for WoW because it means that how a players chooses to use their abilities and when they use them will be more reflective of their potential damage output than just getting the best gear and having infinite rage. If you know about how things were before the "TP nerf" was implemented in FFXI, then you can imagine it in slightly the same way. The problem is that SE fixed the TP issue (getting full TP from multi-hit weapons) really early in the game, but it took Blizzard two expansions to figure it out.

Of course you are going to have some WoW people complain about it because they had the best gear and could do anything they wanted because they never had to worry about getting Rage because they already had it. But those people are dumb, and don't understand why fixing broken things is good for the game overall.

Well, I finally got hacked.

2010-04-01T14:55:00.004-04:00

I don't know how they managed to do it. It looks like some kind of remote desktop control or something, but it looks like I have been hacked. I left the game on last night, and went to bed. When I woke up this morning I found that my computer had been restarted. I didn't think much of it, I just figured that it was an automatic update or something. I went to log myself back in, and none of my passwords worked. I was a little more concerned but I needed to head to work. I got to work and called SE as soon as I could, and they demanded the normal impossible to keep track of information like original CC number, original address and the registration keys. After a long discussion with the customer service rep that involved a lot of tension on my part, I was finally handed off to a manager. The manager offered to initiate an investigation after I gave them every single bit of information about my account and my personal life. They said that after the investigation I would get my account back, and then I would have to initiate a rollback. So it looks like I am going to be out of the game for a month or more.

The thing that I don't get is how they did this. How did I get a remote desktop virus on my computer? I use ad block, ad aware, no script, Firefox, everything. It looks like the SE token isn't hack-proof, if a hacker has full access to your computer. I am going to have to do a full hard drive wipe and reinstall everything because I am freaking even more paranoid than normal about security now.

This fucking sucks. :(

Vana'fest! It keeps going... and going... and going...

2010-03-30T15:54:00.004-04:00

I don't know how I missed this, but a couple of days ago, SE stealth added even more content to the Vana'fest website. It isn't any amazingly earth-shattering information, but it is at least a better English translation of what we have heard so far. The first thing to check out are the video reviews of Vana'fest. The first two videos are of the NA Community Team doing a review of the event, and the rest of the videos are very high quality versions of the event itself. They are all definitely worth the view time.

The second thing that has been added is a listing of the potential changes that are coming to all 20 jobs in the next year. These are insanely vague, as SE hates making promises before they can deliver, like they did with the whole new Summons debacle. You can't point to anything in the discussion that makes you say, "Oh, we are getting that new ability". In fact, I don't know if any of this is going to equate into specific job abilities themselves. It is more of an explanation of the design philosophy for all of the jobs moving forward.

Honestly, I am at a loss as to how SE is going to handle the level cap increase for everyone. Are we going to get more JA's and spells as the levels rise? I don't think there are any jobs that truly get new JA's at level cap. For the most part JA's are pretty much finished by level 60. So while, I, and probably everyone else, is hoping that we end up getting a huge number of new JA's, I just don't see it happening. That said, if they are going to give us some new JA's, then level 80 would be a nice round number to give us those new abilities. Spells on the other hand are going to need to come more often just because that is how they are designed. Most spell casters get at least one new spell every level, and raising the level cap without more spells just doesn't seem to do very much. At the very least, healers are going to need a new tier of spells because as levels rise so will HP pools, and so will damage from higher level mobs. To deal with this with the current tier of spells would quickly drain almost all healers. But then again, maybe that is why all healers are going to have access to Refresh and Convert.

I don't know if this is how SE is going to feed us information regarding the announcements made at Vana'fest but I will keep an eye out and see if anything new pops up!

Yours truely on LBR? More likely than you might think!

2010-03-29T13:12:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I made a guest appearance on Limit Break Radio. Well, I was on the recording of the show, but the show isn't available yet. You should see it as soon as Aniero gets done with the editing. Be sure to check it out on the Limit Break Radio website. We covered a wide array of topics dealing with Vana'fest and the March update. Sadly, Kallo was not able to make the show, and I think that is probably because is he is huge pussy. He was scared of me coming on the show and crushing his hopes, his dream and his soul. That's right, I am the Kallo Soul Crusher. In reality, he had some personal issues to deal with so he could not make it. Excuses, excuses, excuses. We even discussed the fact that all he is doing right now is having his life controlled by his girlfriend, forcing him to play WoW during one of WoW's most boring content cycles, and during one of FFXI's most exciting content cycles. Talk about whipped.

Aniero even promised to no bleep out Izman's name because Kallo was not on the show. That's what you get Kallo!

The Beginning of All Things to Come.

2010-03-22T15:15:00.002-04:00

I have had mixed feelings about update day over the last year. While you can not help but get hyped up about the coming of anything new, for the most part, the past year of updates has been a great let down.

And while there are many things left to discover about this update, the initial indications are that this update may not be a let down at all. In fact, it may be the beginning of a shift in a new direction.

The gear .dat lists are already out. Missions titles and descriptions are posted. The Trial of the Moogles™ information is becoming more clear. Things are looking pretty damn good at this point.

New (H)NMs are available from a new guy in Ru'Lude Gardens. It's hard to tell what they might drop but there are titles for a number of new NMs, so I suppose by the most strict definition they have to be HNMs. Looks like the pop items are going to cost some gil, but we don't know how much so far.

Some of the goals for the Trial of the Moogles™ have been discovered but they so far there is not much information on what you can get out of them. They are likely already part of the augments listing so we probably can't see which are which until we get in the game. Though it should be noted that Occ. Atk. Twice, Occ. Atk. 2-3 times, and Occ. Atk. 2-4 times, has been added to the list of potential augments.

New NM and the Trials are the most interesting things to me so far, but there are still new missions, and the new Campaign Op for fighting the Shadow Lord.

The .dat mining looks like a good start, but I don't think we are going to get the full picture until we are able to get on the servers late tonight.

Ready or not, here it comes.

2010-03-19T12:51:00.002-04:00

You know it's coming but are you doing anything about it?

SE is going to massively inject life into the leveling aspect of the game as soon as they raise the level cap. There will be tons of people crowding camps everywhere so they can get to level 80 (the assumption for the new level cap after the June update). Since most people already have several jobs at the current level cap they will need to do this several times so there should be quite a few people to make parties with.

The real question is if there will be a large number of people leveling up their sub jobs. Most people hate leveling sub jobs (basically everyone except for Omoi), so some people may delay it until it is an absolute necessity. Some people may do it ahead of time but only on a limited basis, 40 at first, 45 after the first update, and then finally 49 before the last update. Some people (like me and a few friends) have just decided to get in a few levels here and a few levels there to make sure we are ready before it's too late. Right now, my DRK, the first sub I am leveling, is already level 40. I picked DRK first because even though I don't use NIN that much anymore, I figure that one of the most needed jobs after the level cap rise will be a tank so I want to have that ready just in case Iz is the only other person with a tank job that has an appropriate subjob.

What sub jobs are you going to level? Are you going to do it ahead of time?

Eggs for Breakfast, FFXI for bed.

2010-03-18T16:52:00.003-04:00

The time for the March maintenance has been announced and woah is it long. My guess is that it is largely because of the server mergers which will probably require a huge amount of copied data to the new servers. The down time is going to be from 11AM to 11PM EST, and that is the longest planned downtime I have ever seen for FFXI. One of two things is going to happen. Either SE planned for the fact that this is going to take a long time, and the servers are going to be up way early, or SE has way underestimated how long this is going to take and we wont see FFXI until Tuesday sometime.

Here is the official announcement:

At the following time, we will be performing FINAL FANTASY XI maintenance on all worlds to accompany the version update and implementation of a World Merge. Along with this maintenance, we will also be performing maintenance on the FINAL FANTASY XI Linkshell Community beta version.

During this period, both FINAL FANTASY XI and the FINAL FANTASY XI Linkshell Community beta version will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

* This maintenance will be accompanied by a version update. After maintenance is complete, the update will automatically begin after you press the "Play" button. After that, please follow the instructions on the screen.

* You may receive errors such as "POL-1160" or "POL-0010" during the download process due to heavy server traffic. If you are unable to access the update, we ask that you please wait a while and then try again.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding in making this a smooth version update.

* During this maintenance, a World Merge will be implemented.

Source World Destination World

Fairy -> Sylph
Kujata -> Valefor
Remora -> Leviathan
Midgardsormr -> Quetzarcoatl
Hades -> Cerberus
Seraph -> Bismarck
Garuda -> Lakshmi
Pandemonium -> Asura

We ask that all players on any source world retrieve all items stored in the Delivery Box or Auction House.

For more details regarding the World Merge, please refer to "Announcing the World Merge" in the Information section.

* the World Transfer Service, which is currently suspended, will reinstate service after the completion of registration server maintenance, which is scheduled to take place following the FINAL FANTASY XI maintenance. For more details, please refer to "Registration Server Maintenance (Mar. 22)."

* The schedule for the reinstatement of the Character Reactivation Service, which is currently suspended, will be announced at another time.

* Update details will be available on Mar. 22, 2010.

[Date & Time]
Mar. 22, 2010 from 8:00 to 20:00 (PDT)
* Maintenance completion time may be subject to change.

[Affected Services]
FINAL FANTASY XI

FFXIV Alpha News: Dates are Released! Or are they?

2010-03-15T12:49:00.003-04:00

EDIT: It has been noted that this might be a fake message, so take it with a grain of salt until I can get some other confirmation.

SE has finally announced the dates of their Alpha trials for FFXIV, at least in Japanese.

Semi-translation stolen from BG, below.

Alpha tests (assuming this is Japanese time) will be from 19:00 to 24:00 (7PM to Midnight) on March 19 and 20th (this coming Friday and Saturday) and from 18:00 to 22:00 (6PM to 10PM) on March 21st and 25th. Beta tests start on April 1. All characters will be deleted between the Alpha and the Beta.

I will try to get this information in English and other languages as soon as it's available.

Morning in Vana'diel: Dead Game -->

2010-03-09T12:22:00.003-05:00

Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! Is FFXI dead? Yeah, didn't you know? This game died 3 years ago! We are just playing with it's rotting zombie corpse.

Let’s take the worst case scenario: SE has decided that they really are done with FFXI and they are going to shut down the servers as soon as this year is over. This scenario is completely remote, people are still going to play FFXI, and SE is still going to make money off of the game, but just go with me here for a minute.

Say all the quitters and whiners are right, does it even matter? I say no, because even if this is SE’s last hurrah for FFXI it’s a great last hurrah and one that I am going to enjoy.

Even the most ardent FFXI defenders will admit that the last three updates have been pretty poor overall. The storylines in the expansions were great, but they were far from challenging and did not have the epic feel that many other parts of the game have felt. The other content in those updates was of generally casual appeal, and not for the end-gamer. The problem is that end-gamers are what drives a game that is 7+ years old.

While it has taken SE far too many years to realize that this is the case, it doesn’t mean that the coming updates are any less earthshaking in their effect. The raising of the level cap is for end-gamers. It is for the long time fan FFXI that even if they were not experiencing burnout were at least understanding that the current content had gone stale.

Even if SE was shutting down the servers, they are doing it with style. The coming year is a FFXI player’s wet dream. Almost all new end-game content, multiple new advancement paths, new gear, new everything. This is what we have been hoping for. This is what this game needed over the past year. I would say that it is probably a year late, and with SE’s iterative over radical design decisions I can understand the delay.

Finally, the evidence that this game is not going to die anytime soon can actually be found in the “proof” that the nay-sayers provide as evidence of its demise. It is true that the number of players has been gradually dropping off over the past year, to combat this SE took some rather radical steps to please the player base and keep them happy and playing. If, as so many of the negative Nancys claim, SE really wanted to kill off the game, they could have just continued that status quo and let FFXI peter out into nothing. This coming year is an attempt to keep people happy, and to bring back old players. Is it good for new players? Probably not, but after 7+ years I don’t think that is SE’s main concern. To be profitable all they need to do is keep those that like to play happy. And that is exactly what they have done.

YANYOK's FFXIV Beta test NDA policy.

2010-03-03T12:23:00.005-05:00

We at YANYOK needed to clear up our NDA policy in regards to FFXIV's Alpha/Beta.

We will be providing 100% coverage of all things FFXIV Alpha and Beta related. We already have "foreign correspondents" in the field ready, willing and able to provide all of the information that you want to hear about. We will be delivering all of this information to you as soon as we can wipe the drool off of the screenshots.

To be clear, no one at YANYOK have alpha or beta invites, all of the information will be passed along second hand, but you will be getting the information without a filter and without someone trying to ban your forum posts for talking about it.

I actually read on a forum that we shouldn't violate the NDA or SE won't want to communicate with us anymore. I laughed so hard that milk shot out of my nose.

The Breakdown -- Part 1: Missions and Quests.

2010-03-02T14:42:00.005-05:00

I have been thinking about how to approach everything that was announced Sunday and I have decided it's going to take at least a week to cover everything in detail. I have been scouring the Interverse™ to find all of the details I could on everything that is being discussed about everything that was released.

As a general reference for the coming weeks worth of posts here is SE's plan for the next year of FFXI.

The first section that SE talked about was Missions and Quests. Normally for the update notes this would be one of the most boring section. Not because the missions and quests are boring but because there isn't much to talk about the update notes for them. The coming update will give us the second to last set of missions, so things should be ramping up to a good conclusion.

Here is what SE has to say about the missions:

The Story Continues!
New Wings of the Goddess missions will be coming to you in the March version update!

Nerves run high as the embattled Allied Forces march on the enemy's heartland, Valdeaunia, to execute a daring operation to strike down the Shadow Lord. Charged to stand at the helm of this desperate campaign is the celebrated San d'Orian hero, Sir Ragelise B Baloumat of the Knights of the Ironcrest Hawk…

Dauntless soldiers who would dare follow Castle Zvahl's perilous passageways to their end will find themselves standing before the Throne Room. There, they will learn the true identity of the imposing dark figure whose entrance is heralded by a garrulous imp…

The repercussions of Atomos' mindless devouring of memories and time have extended even to the present. The ominous comet has again appeared, this time above the skies of San d'Oria and far closer now than ever before. What could this possibly portend for the future of Vana'diel…?

What will become of the heroes and heroines of the Allied Forces? All will be revealed upon the release of the March version update!

The Wings of the Goddess mission storyline draws ever nearer to its epic finale, with but one more set of episodes to follow those of the March version update.

There is one big difference though between the normal missions and quest update and this one. That is the Trial of the Magians, which I am now official declaring the Trial of the Moogles™. And the Moogles are doing a good job of getting me excited about the update.

In all of SE's normal vagueness, we are left wondering what exactly it is that we are getting out of this new system. Here is what they have said so far:

“Trial of the Magians” is the title given to a new quest series designed especially for level 75 characters.

Quest Structure
The quests will be divided into a number of categories, and progression in each will allow players to earn different rewards. The following quest branches and more are being considered:

- Weapon enhancement.
- Armor enhancement.

Trial of the Magians will be introduced to the game in multiple stages, with the initial set of weapon enhancement quests slated for addition in the March version update.
Enhancing a Weapon

A Trial of the Magians weapon enhancement quest can be initiated by first trading a suitable weapon to a Magian Moogle NPC, at which point a list of corresponding quests will be displayed. Players may choose a quest based on difficulty level and the enhancement they would like added to their weapon, which will be granted upon the fulfillment of the quest objective.

A single weapon can undergo numerous upgrades. By trading an already-enhanced weapon to a Magian Moogle, players can undertake successive quests to have it further improved. Multiple quests can be undertaken simultaneously.

By repeating the quests, up to 80 different features can be added to a single weapon. With figures such as Damage and Delay added to the equation, there exist 500 possible attribute patterns for a single quest branch!

There are also plans to make it possible to enhance Relic and Mythic weapons through Trial of the Magians. While players can expect quest difficulty to far exceed similar quests released thus far, we are confident the rewards will make it more than worth the while!

So what do we know so far?

You can only get the quest(s) at level 75. So this is an end-game thing, not a FoV type thing.
So far we know that you can do Weapon and Equipment Enhancement, but this coming update looks like it will only have Weapon Enhancements available.
You have to trade the weapon to get the quest, which means that the enhancements will likely be based and limited by weapon type. E.g. you won't be able to get the same damage bonuses for a dagger as you do for a Great Katana.
You will be able to pick your difficulty and/or your enhancement before you do the quests.
You can do multiple enhancements, and you can do them simultaneously.
Up to 80 different enhancements can be added and you can effect delay and damage too. By SE's math, this means you can make up to 500 different configurations for a single weapon.

These are the knowns so far, but I want to emphasize those aspects that I believe make this especially noteworthy. First, you can have multiple enhancements and you can get those enhancements at the same time. No pre-farming FoV, no selling off items that get crappy enhancements. Second, you get to pick the enhancements before you do the quests. While I have no hatred of the Random Number Generator (I do still play this game, which is a RNG nightmare) but I do like this very much. You get to plan out what you want and then work for it. Work/Reward ratio? Yes, please! Third, it sounds like this is end-game and difficult. I just hope that challenging means instanced/spawned fights like Fey weapons or something like that. I hope it is not gil-based like Salvage. I want to fight things, not farm crap.

That is it for Missions and Quests. What do you think of the Trials of the Moogles™?

3... 2... 1... BOOM!

2010-03-01T16:16:00.004-05:00

There is too much old context thinking about this whole thing. So much is going to change that you can't even guess at what is going to be the same or different.

To use an analogy: SE just dropped an orbital nuke on your neighborhood, and you are looking for your local McDonalds.

Everything is going to change. This is a whole new game.

The God Emperor of Dune is dead. This is the Golden Path.

I will go over everything soon. Just busy at work today.

Morning in Vana'diel: Fade to Black.

2010-02-25T13:53:00.004-05:00

My BLM has slowly been improving. My half or more resists have gone down a lot as I have increased the merits I have in Elemental Magic. And that has been my highest priority for a while now. Since we have moved over to BBQ, I have been very occupied with some very interesting and new events, but that has left me with less time than I have needed to get the merits that my BLM really needs to fill the proper BLM role. I have gotten my Elemental Magic up to 6 already and I am sitting on enough merits for 7. It is pretty shocking how much the merits make a difference in the quality of my nukes when it comes to damage and resists. I am still pretty far below the requisite level needed to assure a good resist rate on most HNMs but I am definitely working on it.

The problem I have next is which way do I go? Enfeebling or Potency. I thought this was going to be a tough decision, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Enfeebling is a great option for soloing but it is also very good for low-man and other events where I could be kiting or dealing with sleeping masses of mobs. I was thinking primarily of Sea but it is also useful for Einherjar. The problem is that the uses we limited. With Potency though, you know you are going to get a damage boost whenever you drop nukes on things. And in the end that effects everything I do. So it's definitely Potency for me, and then maybe even more into AM2's before I go back to Enfeebling.

Still gonna be a ton of merits that I need, but I will get there.

Good news and bad news.

2010-02-23T11:10:00.002-05:00

The good news first. The new update is a lot closer than I expected it to be. Coming in mid-March will be the Mid-March Version Update! Original name of course, but I am not too concerned. I am not going to do my normal dissection of the sole picture that they provide in the update teaser because I always end up being wrong or creating something random whole cloth. The obvious pictures include Synergy, Missions and Campaign. So we will know we are getting at least that much. You can speculate on exactly what is happening in the picture on the right, but I have done all the eye-squinting I feel compelled to do to figure out what the hell is happening.

The bad news isn't really bad news, it's bad reporting of news. As everyone has probably already heard, there is a rumor floating around that FFXI is shutting down this year. As Omoi would say this is "utter claptrap". The initial report was in reference to a blog that doesn't now and may have never existed from a "high ranking HR SE employee". There are so many problems with this rumor and it's source that it is a joke to start with, never mind the reality of the situation and statements from SE questioning the credibility of the statement. I mean, come on, if you are going to make up a rumor at least have it coming from a more credible source than the HR department.

The point I want to make here is not that the rumor was picked up by the interether, but that it was posted by a semi-credible website and that website didn't even take the 30 seconds to Google the report to see if there was any credibility behind it. Thankfully, our friends at Limit Break Radio posted a list of evidence disputing the claims of that semi-credible website.

I mean it is one thing to post a rumor, but to post it without any research, especially posting AFTER the freaking head of Square Enix had already squashed the rumor just makes you look like a toolbox.

Playing WoW doesn't mean you are qualified to report on the entire MMO industry...

Morning in Vana'diel: Internet has problems; SE to blame.

2010-02-19T11:46:00.004-05:00

So the "Walk of Shame" saved us a Salvage run last night. Both Clubber and I were the fuck ups of the century and didn't get our soap for Limbus (we both checked the NPC before we could get the soap and weren't paying attention when it denied it) and we didn't get our Salvage tags, and while running back to pick them up the server message came up and said that POL was going down. So, while we both did completely ruin our Limbus run, we did manage to save some points by delaying the Salvage run enough to prevent us from going in.

So being a fuck-up can be helpful sometimes... but we won't talk about Limbus though. >.<

I don't know if it was even entirely SE's fault the POL servers were having connection issues. I have been having intermittent internet issues all day and I know other people have been too. This is what you call connecting two completely unrelated things. :)

In another one of my "I just don't get it" moments, I was looking at the thread about the POL connection issue on BG and noticed that some people would declared their hatred of SE and their crappy game for having connection issues to the game that SE makes that they are being denied. Maybe it is a higher form of irony that I don't just get, but I thinking that is the kind of cynicism that goes so far that it comes back around again. If you hate everything about SE, and SE has problems letting you connect, and you hate them for that, then... like... shouldn't you like them? Confusing to me, that's for sure.

So basically yesterday was a complete waste for me. I fucked up and couldn't do Limbus, then I fucked up and saved us from doing a Salvage that we would have missed anyway. I hope that I can actually play FFXI tonight instead of just running around to places and not doing anything of importance.

Also wanted to mention something about my Q & A post. You guys suck. I didn't get one good question. Not one. I suppose that if you read this blog you pretty much know a lot about me anyway, but I thought someone would at least be interested in something different.

I wanted to mention that Izman got a Pachipachio recently and has been letting me borrow it to do some eyeball testing on it. My conclusion is pretty much the same as it is with any other GKT: it's awesome for lower level, low defense mobs, but can't compete with Hagun on anything that matters. I used it in Salvage once and it was an absolute wrecking ball on lower level mobs, but it just couldn't compete with Hagun on boss damage. Once I get my parser working again, I am going to do some comparisons in Salvage and Einherjar to get more of an idea of what I am looking at.

How about that... a real post... first in a long while. :)

Real Life Happens to Other People: Obsidian Above and Beyond!

2010-02-18T06:00:00.003-05:00

Obsidian Linkshell is most likely to be the oldest, consistently performing dynamis ls on the Odin server. It is by far and away the most successful North American dynamis shell, despite having gone through its own amount of internal turmoil it has always managed to hold together with one of the finest points system databases in FFXI.

New horizons are potentially rumbling through as the leadership takes a possible look at expanding the ls to cover a few more end game events outside of just Dynamis. An idea that grew from a small seed, it could be worth watching to see if this becomes a successful transition, Obsidian has a huge memberbase it can draw from for this, even though a large number of its members are from other endgame ls'.

While a largely casual player base, everyone has to start somewhere, most people only need a bit of experience to adapt to endgame and its various rigours. It is definately worth keeping an eye on developments to see if we have a behemoth rise from this!

POL News: Cute stuff abounds.

2010-02-18T05:23:00.003-05:00

Do you ever actually fill in those questionnaires that SE sends around occasionally? Remember the one where they asked "What would you most like to be turned into a purchasable?"

Well, looks like the Tarutaru won. BAH! Totally should have made a plush of the gnat or leech from Zi'Tah! Oh well. The new FFXI trading arts collection features a little pantheon of luminaries from Windurst who play significant roles in the plots and storylines that revolve around Windurst and the Tarutaru race. While Shantotto is probably the one figure out of the lot to transcend beyond her original designated border, its nice to see a few of the others, like Robel-Akbel who I rather like and who is as ruthless as the Little Miss herself.

If you wish to equip yourself with this fine little treat, then swan over to the SE Shop Online to part with your valued money! Sorry $ only, no gil.

POL News: Free range lottery!

2010-02-18T05:10:00.003-05:00

So to celebrate 8 years of FFXI and a way for everyone to enjoy the VanaFest in Japan, SE have released a NOMAD Moogle Bonanza, not just a regular common garden moogle bonanza, this one is loose and roaming free. To be drawn live at their VanaFest.

It all feels a bit random, and it is a good gimick to drum up interest in an event 99%of the non-Japanese player base will not be attending. I have to say, the reward for winning this is pretty darn nice. If you are that one person, you will get to pick your very own mythic or relic weapon.

I am sure there has been some negative backlash against this from those who actually sweated the blood to get theirs the hard way, and there is a good chance that the person who wins one will get sneered at a little for just wafting into a relic, unless the ultimate irony happens and it goes to someone who already has one.

Anyway, if you DO want to enter, get your skates on as you only have till the 21st to sign up for it! To drool over the rewards and provios, check out the POL article about it.

Oh, did I mention there is only 1 winner? ^.^

Q & A w/ R3.

2010-02-17T16:42:00.003-05:00

I get to spout off all the time about what I think about things without people asking or even really caring. So I decided that it would be interesting to find out what you really care about that you would actually like to hear about from me. There are lots of questions that could be asked about my classes, the game in general, VanaFest, or FFXIV. But you don't have to stop there, you can ask me any questions about myself, my interests besides FFXI, what I do in my non-FFXI spare time or even what my favorite foods are.

You can even ask me how old I am and if I really did go to high school with Adam and Eve...

So if you feel interested or compelled to ask a reasonable question feel free, and if you feel the need to ask a silly, insulting, revolting or even age-based question, I will answer those too, in the appropriate manner, as long as you also ask a reasonable question.

This should be fun. :)

Die in a fire.

2010-02-04T13:20:00.002-05:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This blog still exists. Promises about when I will make my full return have gone unfilled. Your heart was broken. Whatever. I am planning on making my full return on Monday. I just have to find all the writers and get them back in the slave pens. It's not like a lot hasn't happened. We joined up with the largest LS on the server, so there are some personal things to go over. There hasn't been much in the way of major game announcements recently, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been mulling things over or haven't made any new discoveries.

I am going to try to get Omoi to let me go NIN to Limbus tonight so that I can tank it which I haven't done in a while. That was a random factoid you can gnaw on until Monday.

There, you got your update. Eat you jackals.

POL News: Is your number up?

2010-01-30T09:53:00.002-05:00

The Mog Bonanza has been, and now the numbers have been drawn. Given that they held it at a peculiar time of December where the majority of us were busy with real life for a change and getting into the spirit of Christmas. So it sort of sneaked and and now is slithering out.

Personally I didn't win anything except my inventory space back, for which I am very grateful as I was definately feeling the pinch of missing those 10 slots. But if you wish to drool over the results and findings be my guest. I am sure there are some very happy campers out there.

Back in Business

2010-01-30T08:17:00.002-05:00

Definately been a little while since we have had any posts in here, sadly it has been insanely busy at work with very little free time to do much at all, however now the tide of booking forms has finally ebbed and things will be on a slightly quieter note for a while, I have the time available to get back into the swing of things!

See you soon with more updates ^.^

FFXIV News: ZOMG SE IS RMT!

2009-12-18T14:31:00.004-05:00

Sarcasm guys, sarcasm.

Anyway, SE's president made this announcement (translated by Elmer the Amazingly Pointy on BG):

“The basic model hasn't changed,” he said. “It's a monthly flat rate service with additional charges for items that users want to buy.
“For FFXI we didn't initially set up the item transaction model that well – although the demand for it was high. We thought that it would be a benefit for users, but that we wouldn't be able to charge.

“We soon learnt that there are a lot of people who want that kind of model, so we would like to introduce more pay-as-you-use items into the game. But there were too few items in FFXI – however we don't want to take it to the other extreme entirely for FFXIV.

Now, of course people like Jaxzer immidiately took this to mean that there will be wholesale RMT for every item in the game, but the more level headed, and even the not-so-level-headed-and-for-the-most-part-generally-apocalyptic Iceblazek stepped in and said this is almost definitely not going to be about game-balance changing gear.

There are lots of way to sell in game items that are no game breaking. WoW does it pretty well, but there are even more ways to do it. WoW does it well with vanity pets now, and their server changing options. SE already has done it with the Tidal Talisman and some would say the Moogle Satchel and the Nexus Cape but I would argue those are slightly different. The former was to provide an incentive to people to improve their security that they couldn't resist and the later was more of a reward for finishing an expansion even if you did get it on the purchase of the last expansion. There are a bunch of other ways to increase profits without wreaking the game, and I have always been a big advocate that as long as it doesn't mess with real game balance (and no, carrying around more stuff doesn't effect real game balance, nor does warping to Tiamat). I can think of a few examples off the top of my head: vanity pets and vanity mounts both from WoW, furnishings, server transfers and other related data transfers, character beautification (changing hair/skin coloring), gear beautification (different colors or even particle effects on gear) and the list goes on and on.

The other thing that I think is important is that this is SE's President talking, not Tanaka. This is Tanaka's game, and he has already mentioned this in passing but seemingly assured players it wouldn't effect balance. I don't think Tanaka would be down with full scale RMT, and the President of SE has said some other things about FFXI and FFXIV that haven't panned out. Tanaka is a game developer, SE's President is a business guy. Business guys tend to say things they think the media wants to hear, game developers say things they think the players want to hear. Remember some of the gaming media still defends RMT on some level to satisfy those with attention spans smaller than a gnat.

I think this will probably be one of those much ballyhoo'd issues that doesn't amount to as much as it first appears. Like the "PS3 exclusive" comments, this will probably get explained again, and again until we get a real picture of the situation.

Morning in Vana'diel: Defending Your Avatar

2009-12-18T10:33:00.005-05:00

Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! The day of reckoning approaches and in the end have we spent our time well? I think so.

With the coming of the FFXIV beta I have done a little bit of reminiscing about the time I have played FFXI, time I have enjoyed. I have also thought about those that didn't enjoy their time playing FFXI apparently, and I don't really get it.

I never really understood the way some people complain after quitting FFXI, or how they will never play FFXIV because "SE sux". I guess it's just the bitter gamer that is projecting their anger onto the game company instead of themselves.

Whether you like it or not, FFXI is a well run and successful game. A few people complaining about AV does not really effect the experience of 99% of the player base even those that want to fight AV.

Another one of those projections is the complaints about customer service. Outside of the few people that really did have to deal with the problems with SE and getting their account stolen, most of these complaints are from people that don't have the experience to make such claims and are just parroting what other people say.

SE's game development for FFXI is actually very good, especially considering the limitations of the game itself, but remember this game started development about 10 years ago and things are much different now than they were then. I think the problem right now is one of internal resources and nothing more.

SE doesn't "hate" their player base. They have learned from their mistakes and there are many examples of this. There are still some other mistakes they haven't or don't want to rectify (AV) but in the end the game experience in FFXI is excellent and enjoyable. It is far more social and it was built to be this way. Grumpy gamer kids may not really appreciate this aspect of the game, but in the end, we are all probably much better off without them.

And of course, if you just want to dismiss everything I just said, go ahead and call me an SE fan boy.

FFXIV News: Beta Sign-ups Begin!

2009-12-17T09:34:00.004-05:00

The beta sign-ups for FFXIV have begun! You can head over to the sign up now, or if you are afraid that I am trying to haxxor your account you can go there directly from the Final Fantasy XIV website. Just click on the big "beta sign-ups" button on the main page. That is only for the NA site, but from that link you can sign up for whatever region you are from or your account is from.

This is pretty surprising news as there was no hint of this before yesterday. It also disproves the idea that people will be picked from the largest HNM LS's, which I thought was crap to begin with.

Critical Break: The Weekly Finale

2009-12-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

Morning in Vana'diel: What's going on here.

2009-12-14T11:01:00.003-05:00

Haven't been around in a while. I have to apologize that I just couldn't find the motivation to write for a couple of weeks because the format change was a bit draining on my writing and after several years of pretty consistent writing, what do you want from me? :)

Anyway, this post isn't to explain why I haven't been writing, it's to write about Evolith, Synergy and all this stuff I still haven't figured out. Now, I am usually on top of things like this but for a while I have just been so busy that it's hard to keep up. The other problem is trying to find a comprehensive collection of real facts about the system that doesn't included 5 random uninformative posts in between every useful post, e.g.

The real problem though is not the information or how the community is dealing with the system, it is with the complexity of the system and superfluous nature of that complexity. I don't know what the minds at SE were thinking but it couldn't have been anyone that plays the game that came up with this. A new crafting system that is dependent on more open-world NM drops. A new point system based on those same NMs, to get items to get the new crafting system to work. Drops from those NM's to make the gear in the new crafting system. Drops from those same NM's to get the Evoliths to put in to the slots (that are added using the new crafting system) using the new crafting system.

The word that comes to my mind is convoluted. Convoluted wouldn't be too bad if it also didn't follow another SE tradition: 99% uselessness. I thought we had finally gotten away from this for the most part. I thought that SE had finally understood that player's will quickly figure out what sucks and ignore it. The initial round of augments had such wonder additions as "Vs. Vermin, Light Magic Enmity -1" and other such nonsense. Ok, so I made that one up but they were in that vein. The best so far have been on individual weapon types, slight increases on their weapon skills.

Don't think I am counting the system out just yet, I think that once people figure out what is best it should be pretty good. I just don't get why it is so complicated for no reasons. You could have done this whole thing without the point system, or you could have had new items with slots built in, or you could have made synergy more focused or you could have had evolith purchasable with these new points or well, you get the point.

Expect more on Synergy, Evoliths and other such things soon.

Critical Break: 60-100 Series: Goldsmithing

2009-12-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Critical Break is our crafting and economics column written by Qtipus. Q is an experienced crafter and also well versed in using the Auction House to turn a decent profit. Enough so that he was able to fund his own relic, Gungnir. Every Tuesday you will find Q's rants, raves and good crafting practices here. This week, Q continues his 60-100 series with the final installment: Goldsmithing. The special guest commentator/contributor is none other than the man who puts the "pooh" into Dutchypoohlicious, Gawayne.

Hooboy. I've had a lot of requests to get this guide published since I started writing this column. Why anyone wants to level this craft is beyond me aside from the fascination behind working with jewelry maybe (even if it is pixellated). Goldsmithing is in serious need of a boost from SE. Something that's an answer to all 3 of my crafting questions would help out greatly. Unfortunately, with FFXIV on the horizon, I'd venture to guess this isn't going to happen. Maybe the new Synergy skill will give it a boost, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Does Goldsmithing have consumables? This almost falls in line with Smithing in the sense that all of the ingots, sheets, jewels, etc will get bought up rather quickly for larger crafts. It doesn't actually have a true consumable that's worth much of anything unless you count goldsmithing-related arrows such as silver arrows or Hiraishin(who lowers earth resistance or uses NIN for anything of important relevance anymore anyway?). Most items like Gold or Platinum ingots suffer greatly from a huge number of sources that have them available. A "consumable" item that has no HQ-related increase that sells for less than it's material cost has a fundamental problem that relates to too many sources for the product itself or too few methods for the ores to show up to sustain demand.

Gawayne Comment: The only often used “consumable” Goldsmithing item is the Reraise Earring. It sells often, but at a minimal profit (if any). Due to that, I would only recommend making them if the demand is high and there are no idiots on the AH undercutting all the earrings.

Does Goldsmithing have in-demand mid-range gear? Rings. That's about it. NQ rings are a huge loss while HQ rings likely aren't going to be enough to make up for it. Compound an already weak market with players re-selling their rings once they reach the next set and there's really not much room at all in this category to make any money.

Gawayne Comment: Most of the rings that can be made with Goldsmithing have been completely outclassed by the rare/ex rings that have become available over the last few years (CoP, ToAU). The HQ rings are still fairly popular for WS/nuke/cure/enfeeble sets, but the return on investment for HQ rings is too low to be profitable, unless you’re extremely lucky.

Does Goldsmithing have in-demand end-game gear? Yes. The Martial Set is the only cursed set worth noting as parts of it are still decent for most Paladins should they get their hands on the abjuration. Unfortunately, there are a lot of alternatives that can be considered better. Goldsmithing's real end-game set are in the level 72 and 74 rings along with a few odds and ends pieces that go into making other cursed items (i.e. O.Sheet in the Shadow set). Since there aren't a lot of people that actually get Goldsmithing this high (lowest craft above 60 by far on the 2009 Census), the market is generally pretty stable once you do hit 100. Unfortunately, w/o a large selection of items to choose from to begin with, this makes the standard "real money is off HQ" option far less likely.

Gawayne Comment: Over the last few years Goldsmithing has been suffering from the lack of consumables in its assortment. Not only are most of the synths quite pricey, but the market for them has become quite satiated too. Finding the niches on your particular server and playing the Auction House are usually the only ways of still making a decent profit. One important thing to keep in mind with Goldsmithing, is that most of the materials cannot be farmed consistently and will need to be bought off the AH. This means that you should always try to have at least 1 million gil reserve to buy crafting materials. Goldsmithing turns gold into more gold, it won’t create gold out of thin air ;-)

Guide after the jump.

Phase 1: This isn't so bad is it?

The first ~12ish levels of this guide aren't horrendous to your wallet and you can actually make a little bit of money here. Save up a ton of it because the next phase will make you cry. The single biggest thing to remember here is that you will not be able to burn-skill for very long stretches at a time. This should give you plenty of time to pick up your Goldsmithing skill+ items. Also try to make sure you catch "Artisan's Advantage" from the moogle powers to minimize your losses.

Pretty much an extension of where my 0-60 Goldsmithing guide left off. Definitely cap on these. They sell for a little bit of money on most servers. Buy the ingots off the AH as it generally costs more to make your own ingots than it does just to buy them.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Platinum Ingot
Cap: Level 64

The ingots for this synth are farmed up from Moblin Ashmen and Goblin Freelances in Oldton Movapolos. Meaning there aren't many to kill for these (3 total between the two). The pace will be excruciatingly slow, but this is here mostly as a filler. You can probably find the ingots themselves in various bazaars for relatively cheap and you should hold onto them for the final part of this phase. Definitely cap on these if you're that patient.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Moblumin Ingot
Cap: Level 69

This would be the burn synth if there was one for this phase. Unfortunately, you're looking at a 5-10k loss/synth. The ingots do sell pretty quickly if you decide to go this route and have the bank roll to back it up. I wouldn't necessarily cap on these, but definitely try to get a couple levels combined out of these and the Moblumin Sheets.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 3x Gold Ore, 1x Fool's Gold Ore
Cap: Level 69

Another that can be classified as a burn synth due to the availability of the ingots. The rings themselves are usually right around the break-even part, so if that holds true on your server, then you're pretty much just going to lose money on breaks themselves. The only real catch to this is that you're going to be investing more money at once. Turn in a Mythril Breastplate for your Artisan rank.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 2x Platinum Ingot
Cap: Level 70

While not exactly the fastest selling item in the world, it is the most cost effective. If you have a number of Moblumin Sheets you've farmed up or bought from bazaars, this would be the only place to use them. You'll need Smithing at 31 and Alch at 45. to make these, but those aren't expensive or difficult to reach and you could possibly even use this synth in the skill up process for those anyway.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Moblin Putty, 1x Moblumin Sheet, 1x Tin Ingot, 1x Beeswax
Cap: Level 73

Gawayne Comment: If you know any people in larger endgame linkshells, see if they’re interested in buying a few of these pop items to get their White Mages their “Haubergeon”. Or just see if you can sell it off to any White Mages directly.

Phase 2: Goldsmithing uses Mug. Goldsmithing steals 999,999,999 million gil from you.

This section is often referred to as "Gold Hell Part Deux: Now With 20x More Hellflames." There is nothing I can say or do here other than to offer my condolences to your wallet.

While you don't have to do the Jadeite Ring specifically, I placed it's picture because it's the one ring here that loses the least gil. Definitely check your server's pricing for the various level 54 rings and most importantly:

DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.

The reason for this is that there are people out there buying these and reselling them constantly. The other reason is that gold prices tend to fluctuate quite a bit, so having the ability to be somewhat flexible on the AH is a must. Make sure you look at the cost of the gold rings themselves against the cost of the mats (2x Gold Ingots) and if you have to make the rings, save the HQ rings for later on or sell them (your choice).

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ring, 1x HQ2 Gem.
Cap: Level 75

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, here you go. You might consider skipping these and moving to the next synth to try to partake in "break-synthing" for skill (some will say they saved money doing this). If you don't want to do that, this is the cheapest way up due to it only needing one gold ingot. Alchemy needs to be at least 54 here unless you're wanting to try to break synth, in which case it needs to be at least 39.

To help ease the cost of these too, you might enlist the help of an Alchemy buddy who's got it at 87 or higher (highest possible HQ tier for this) and farm up a wide variety of items that can be used to make these. Doll Shards, Magic Pot Shards, or Golem Shards will be what you're after. Gloves can be bought from NPC for ~350/ea and Mercury is easily farmed up. Your results will be NPC'd. These things just flat do not sell on the AH due to not even being redeemable for guild points.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ingot, 2x Leather Gloves, 2x Cermet Chunks, 1x Mercury.
Cap: Level 77

Gawayne Comment: If you’re feeling lucky (and have gil to spare), you can try to desynth the gauntlets. The NQ (Sheep Leather x2) is useless, but the Cermet Chunks (HQ1, HQ2) or Gold Ingot (HQ3) can still be useful later on. You still won’t break even however, so most of the time it’s better to just NPC them.

A little less painful than the previous synth cost-wise and AH-wise. Some would opt to just skip to this synth altogether hoping that when it breaks, it'll leave the gold ingot behind and they end up with a skill up. It's your wallet, so you can decide how you want to approach this. If your smithing is ~36, make your own Targes. You'll end up saving 6-8k vs. the NPC price. Mercury is easily farmable. Take the pace slowly here and resell your results on the AH when the time comes for them to be redeemed for guild points. Turn in a Torque for your next rank.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Gold Ingot, 1x Targe, 1x Mercury
Cap: Level 80

Phase 3: Is the hard part over?

For the most part yes. Unfortunately, from here on out, the mats for your skillups aren't cheap. They don't sell for losses in most cases and even sell for a decent amount of profit for a successful synth, but it means you're going to be investing literally millions at a time for maybe 5 or 6 synths.

Seven level gap here means you need to have both of your Goldsmithing skill+ items, the ring, and synthesis support. While starting off won't actually get you to the cap (+5 skill total and +1% success w/o HQ chance), it should get you close enough that a break or two every now and then won't hurt you that much. Compared to years ago when these beads were up in the 600k range per bead, most of the ores being down in the 100-150k range is a godsend for 7 levels of this craft. Try to avoid the temptation of clearing the AH out of ores as that only makes the prices go up on the ores and the prices go down on the beads. It's a good practice to limit how much you have invested at a time (try starting off at 500-600k at a time and move it up or down based on how fast they sell).

You may also be able to cut a deal with some woodworkers trying to HQ staves too.

Recipe: Wind Crystal, Elemental Ore
Cap: Level 87

Gawayne Comment: I would suggest starting out with ice ores as they’re generally the cheapest and available in the highest quantity. Once you have reduced the gap enough, you can skill up on the more expensive ores as well. Resist the urge to undercut the beads, as you will only end up cutting yourself in the fingers in the long run. Also try to keep an eye out for optimal HQ staff synthing conditions (especially New Moon), as that is when woodworkers will buy almost all the available beads up at once. If you time your sessions right, you can actually make a little profit here.

These sell fast and for money. So breaks are the only thing that will kill you here. While the ores aren't always in huge supply, they're definitely not available enough to meet demand. Turn in a Colichemarde when you hit 88 for your final rank item.

You can choose to save the ingots you make for the next synth or you can just buy them off the AH again when you're capped here, or you can just skip this altogether and move to the next, money making synth.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 3x Orichalcum Ore, 1x Platinum Ore
Cap: Level 89

Used in the cursed shadow gear. The implementation of these gave new life to the demand for this item, thus making it a viable skill up. These things sell for nearly 100k above the ingot cost due to the facts that A) not very many people have goldsmithing high enough to make 'em and B) there's a decent demand for them. This is another synth where avoiding the temptation to buy 2-3 stacks of ingots for burn sessions should be avoided as this will only make the ingot costs rise and the resulting competition to cause prices to drop on the sheets.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ingot
Cap: Level 90

Same deal with the level 54 rings. Double check which ring loses the least amount of money (or makes some). Make sure you check the cost of Plat. Ingots vs. the cost of the Plat. Rings. And yet again:

DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Platinum Ring, 1x HQ3 gem.
Cap: Level 95

Gawayne Comment: Creating your own HQ3 gems is usually more about luck than skill, and not considered a viable option for obtaining the gems for these rings. If there isn’t enough supply of them, find alternative ways of acquiring the HQ3 gems, such as the Ruby Quadav NM in Qulun Dome that drops rubies fairly consistently.

Another chance to make some money thank to the demand created by the addition of a gobbie bag. The luminium ore drops from ISNMs, so there might not always be enough on the AH for more than 1-2 ingots at a time. They do sell for a profit on Odin and probably do on other servers as well.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ore, 3x Luminium Ore
Cap: Level 98

Finally the end. While I wish I could tell you that the last synth in this rather excruciating path to 100 was better, it's definitely not as bad as it could be. Some of the rings might make money, but odds are they're a bit of a loss. Mostly the same thing applies here that applied to the level 54 and level 72 rings. Check the cost of the beads against the cost of the results. You're going to be making your own Orichalcum Rings as there's not many people making the rings to put up on the AH since they only have this one good use. The bright side is, these things are now bought a little more frequently due to the augment system that's been put into place. Just for good measure:

DO NOT MAKE HUGE QUANTITIES OF THESE AT A TIME.

Recipe: Fire Crystal, 1x Orichalcum Ring, 1x Elemental Bead
Cap: Level 100

Gawayne Comment: WARNING: If you are making your own orichalcum rings, be SURE to have the Goldsmithing Ring equipped. While not very likely, getting the HQ version of the Orichalcum Ring (Triton Ring) effectively destroys 500k, as the result cannot be used for any synths and has no noteworthy stats at all. Obviously, you will want to create your own beads for these synths at this point as well, saving you about 15k per bead.

Congrats, now you're part of a VERY select group of people to reach this and you'll likely be able to enjoy some profitable times ahead due to the lack of competition for these higher level synths. Goldsmithing is definitely not for the weak of heart.

This concludes my 60-100 series. Please keep in mind that these guides were written as updates to reflect various game changes that have occurred over the past year or so. This means that something better could come along for a certain range at any point in time, so always keep your eyes peeled for other solutions.