God the 60's suck

Hit SCH67 today, after spending most of the day LFP and getting in and out of some shitty xp parties. The late 60's are godawful for xp, too high to get good xp from bibiki bay or Mount Zhayolm, too low to brave the imps in the mire. The good news is that I should start to be able to get into burn parties on the high end mobs before too long. Getting into manaburns isn't out of the question either, on the waumora princes in Zhayolm. Once I hit 70, 75 should come damn quick.

Also, I've gotten in on a couple more Tiamat kills, and I'm only 23 Remedy REPS points from meeting the qualification for full membership. I'm fitting in well there, I think, and shouldn't have too much of a problem for full membership.

Remedy pearl and SCH64

After applying to Remedy I was granted a pearl and have been pretty active over the past few days, helping them out at several camps including a Tiamat that we killed this morning and that we probably wouldn't have had I not shown up. It popped at something like 6:30 this morning and we had quite a few people show up, thanks to a network of people who (literally) text and call each other when a wyrm pops, and they were able to fight it down to 20% or so. Unfortunately there were only like 6 people there, 5 of whom were dual boxing, and something like 3 of them had to go, leaving only 8 people or so to hold it. Tiamat regenned back to 28% or so by 9:00, when I woke up and hopped on, to the immediate tune of "get to Tiamat ASAP". I complied, and hopped onto Miori as well. Once we showed up we started damaging again, and a couple of others showed up as well. We took him back down with no real incidents and I felt pretty good about that.

Much better than the Limbus incident Tuesday night, where a group of four of us (three BLMs and a RDM) tried to short-man a KB limbus and wound up running out of time with KB at something like 4%. I think one of the regulars might not be too impressed with me at the moment, which may affect my eventual voting, but there's a lot of time left in my trial so I just have to keep showing up to events and making a contribution.

At the same time, I also need to level SCH, and I've managed to crank it from 61 to 64 in the past week, mostly in the past couple of days. Today I waited about 3 hours for an invite, and eventually got one, a true meleeburn party, but one where one of the NINs wasn't pulling his weight (he was hurting greatly for want of accuracy gear) and the THF, while doing well at damaging, was nevertheless completely retarded and kept TAing the WAR, who then kept having his TP get eaten. I was main healing, and since we were fighting birds I couldn't really nuke much, although I wasn't using much MP at all. Still, the party appreciated the AOE stoneskins I was throwing on and the fact that I didn't let anyone die.

Next time I'm in a meleeburn, particularly one with four people all dual wielding and with shadows, I'm definitely subbing RDM instead of WHM so I can throw on an AOE en-element spell, which I think would have bumped our damage output (and thus xp output) by something like 20%. I lose stoneskin when I do that, and thus lose the ability to rest with Sublimation active, but MP wasn't really an issue so it's a fair enough trade-off.

Plus, now that I'm 64, when I need to I can cast Dispel directly off my RDM sub, and keep Addendum: White up in spots where I need to Erase (or alternately, sub WHM and cast Erase right off my sub without having to pop Addendum: White).

I'm still very much enjoying SCH at the moment and very much appreciative of the powers of the job and the way that it seems constructed with interesting little carrots at vearious levels that keeps the job flowing and dynamic.

Its biggest pain, I think, will be the lack of endgame gear. I think I'm going to go with something like the following:

Body: AF body for Dark Arts (+15 Elemental, enfeebling, dark magic skill), Errant Houppeland for hMP and light arts.

Legs: Mahatma Slops. +8 INT, +8 MND can't really be beat, and the -enmity never hurt.

Hands: Probably stick with my current mix of Wood Gloves and AF gloves for dark and light arts, respectively. Neither sets the world on fire. Eventually want to replace the Wood Gloves with Yigit Gages, for +5 INT and +2 MAB.

Feet: Right now it's 100% Wood Gloves. Yigit Feet give another +3 INT and +2 MAB, though, so that's definitely better.

Head: AF Head for +4 INT and the enhanced sublimation effect. Throw on an Errant Hat for cures, but make sure to throw the AF head back on aftercast.

Earrings: Current set, Moldavite and Morion (eventually to be replaced with a +1).

Rings: Current set, Tamas and Genius Ring (to be replaced with a Snow Ring)

Waist: Penitent's rope, obis.

Back: Prism Cape.

Weapon: Current full HQ elemental staves

Strap: Bugard Leather +1 for the INT.

Ammo: Phantom Tathlum.

Looking at that, there's not much of anything I need to purchase (except for the stuff I already need to buy for BLM), though I will have to get cracking on some Assaults.

SCH61!

Got 2.5 more levels or so today, almost 50k xp. This took about 5 hours, first with a mediocre party that camped the crawlers in Aydeewa Subterranne, then with a much better party camping the same. The first party only lasted an hour: the NIN dc'd and didn't come back, and there were no other tanks seeking, so we disbanded. Got an invite almost immedately after from a group of friends that included a COR, PLD, WAR, and SAM. They grabbed me with the idea of my healing, but a Besieged was finishing and we reasoned that a RDM might pop after it did. Indeed that was the case, and our party started with level 59 x5 and level 57 x1 (the rdm). We proceeded not to miss a single chain 5, and taking only one break in the next four hours.

Everyone in the party was on the ball, although the DD's were a little annoying in that they were being given plenty of opportunities to finish impromptu skillchains and were failing. I broke 700 on an Aero3 MB (windsday, windstorm, ebullience) and impressed the hell out of the party with the fact that I was constantly nuking (along with throwing Regen2 on the PLD) and never ran out of mp. With Sublimation, a COR, and my new pimp hat (bonus to sublimation effect), along with popping Parsimony on all my big nukes, my SCH simply never had to wait to cast what it wanted. It rules :)

SCH59 and LOLDrama

Managed two levels today, cranked out on lesser birds, functioning mostly as a main healer but often using much of my mp on nuking, at least when the parties were going well. Mid-morning I got an amusing invite:

>>Me {Experience Points} {Party} {Do you need it?} DD ^^
Me>> {Yes, Please}
>>Me Can you pull with magic?
Me>> {Um...} Technically I can but i wouldn't be able to rest mp...
>>Me Can't you get sanction w/refresh?
Me>> I can and always do, but that's just 1mp/tick, not exactly a replacement for resting
>>Me We have WHM x2, you won't need to heal.
Me>> ...
(um wtf? whm x2?)

Needless to say, that invite fell through and eventually I got an invite to a better party which rocked the colibris for about an hour and 12kxp, getting me my first ding. Unfortunately another pt camped on top of us, lame on multiple levels as there are a *ton* of camps in that zone, but no way were we dislodging. Unfortunately our nin had connection troubles, and in trying to out pull the other pt we pulled two birds while the SAM was on an unannounced afk and got our nin killed. That pretty much killed our pt.

I spent about 15 minutes while I was lfp explaining to the pt why they were dicks for camping on top of us, noting in particular that the thf that was leading the group was too high level for the area (60, dinged 61 while I was standing there) and had completely gimp gear, including a fungus hat (lol) and a level 14 str ring (double lol). I had a partial success as one person from that pt sent me a tell saying he knew I was right, but that he needed the xp. Good to have at least one soul saved, if only partially.

In any case, I got a 2nd invite, and a party that got good xp for a while, until the NIN has something mysteriously "come up" just as he dinged. Sigh. There were no tanks seeking, but rather than break we decided to go with an atypical setup with no real tank, and it worked surprisingly well. The party stayed together for several hours and I finally managed to ding 59.

Now I suppose I need to get off my ass and go do the BC fight for my AF head, as that's an important piece of gear: mp, +4 INT, and an enhanced Sublimation effect. Can't go wrong w/that!

Then, after I'm done partying, I get a tell from Tomodachi to meet in front of the Whitegate MH. He hands me a pearlsack for "LolOrophinn", a shell made by Kayos, a former member (and co-founder) of Tribe who split with their shellholder, Orophinn, after a long and serious bout of personal drama. So I hung out with some of Asura's finest as Oro had a GM called on Kayos, briefly sent him to GM jail, and had to break the shell. It was remade under a different name. And so now I have a social shell ^^, built out of hatred for Orophinn, who really is a monumental douche.

LOL

As I said a few days ago, skill makes for an incredible difference when it comes to the functionality of an xp party. It's amazing how much it matters when the party acts in unison, quickly doing what it is they need to do, and not missing anything crucial. Just a few cracks make a huge difference.

The party from the screenshot was in The Boyahda Tree, often a garden of eden for xp when you have a camp to yourself and a magic heavy party with a decent skillchain. Our party was PLD, THF, WAR, RDM, BLM, and your humble SCH, who was subbed WHM and asked to function as the main healer.

The PLD was good, and the party had a setup where the WAR would first voke and the THF would open up with a SATA+Viper Bite to staple hate on the PLD, who would then flash, voke, and generally hold hate for the rest of the fight. The PLD was good, and it was a good idea, but the party was like it was in slow motion and would usually take something like 10 seconds for the WAR to voke and the THF to set up his WS. During that time I couldn't nuke or do anything hateful so as to draw hate and screw up the SATA, and so I pretty much needed to throw a Regen on during that time and then sit around scratching my nuts. Once the WS landed I would generally throw an AOE Stoneskin to help out the PLD, and then swap to Dark Arts and throw a Drain, Aspir, and a Thunder II.

Eventually we managed to set up a skillchain between the PLD and WAR, just a simple Liquefaction that we had three potential Fire 2's to burst with. I think we all three actually managed to hit our magic bursts once, and the mob dropped like a rock, expectedly. Problem was, I was the only one reliably hitting my MB's, as the BLM was fucking around with the elemental AOE's (shock, burn, etc) at the expense of doing his big damage, not a good thing. After tossing out a few nukes (with the MB included), I'd swap back to Light Arts and cure for the rest of the fight, although a few times I would have to swap BACK to dark arts to get those final nukes in if the BLM ran out of mp and the mob was still not down.

The RDM in the party was just terrible. Maybe a 50% chance of catching a dispel, and horrible at keeping up with Refresh (absolutely inexcusable as there were only 4 of us to keep refreshed). He also couldn't MB for shit, and wasn't doing any enfeebling. All in all a total fucking waste of a party member. We'd have been much better off with a WHM and letting me nuke full time with the BLM.

I'm pretty sure I was the leading DD in the party, and I was the goddamn main healer.

Still, I dinged 57, so that counts for something. Sabine was chatting with me saying that he and a friend are taking COR and NIN up together, which would be just awesome getting me to nuke. Get that with a BRD and two DD's, double march for the NIN with AOE stoneskin, and I can main heal and nuke like mad, pulling in a ridiculous 10mp/tick (2-3 from the COR, 3 from the BRD, 3 from my Sublimation w/AF head, 1 from sanction, another 1 if I get a vermy cloak). It would be *HARD* for me to run out of mp with that, lol.

Hell yeah

RDM37 baby. I has another subjob!

This has to be record time for me in terms of time from the early dunes levels to full subjob. Having nearly unlimited access to Miori to PL me (and omg is a PL with a BLM75 oh so sexy when unwanted aggro happens) certainly speeded the process up, as did the fact that I pretty much did nothing but level RDM for the past week+. I sold all my RDM only gear on the AH. If there was a command to burn it in ceremonial effigy, I probably would have.

Of course, my gear for RDM was absolute crap, but I was pretty much shameless in my PL pimpage.

And so I sent my application in to Remedy and am waiting to hear back. They're technically only recruiting SCH and COR at the moment, but exceptions tend to be made for RL friends, and I have a ton of endgame experience to lean on. I don't think my making it in should be a problem, and I'm anxious to get back to endgame ^^.

What a difference

Yesterday I languished for hours in Qufim Island with total newbie parties and managed to get two levels in something like 4 hours. Painful as hell, even with my powerlevel courtesy of Miori's character and two monitors hooked up to my laptop. Today didn't start out much better, with a semi-noob party in Qufim that managed to eke my way up to 24, but when I found an opening and ditched for Yuhtunga, things started flowing to the tune of 6.5k/hour. That's crazy good xp for the newbie levels, and before I knew which way was up I had slammed out eight levels and dinged RDM30 (before finally deciding I needed to play at least a little poker tonight).

Fighting mandys can be hit or miss. They're pretty soft, but their AOE sleep can often slow a pt down, even one with a good PL. Not this pt, for most of its length at least. We had a crazy good Japanese DNC and with me on the PL, had our routine down pat. The mandy would bust out dream flower and the PL would immediately heal the DNC, at which point the DNC would immediately fire out his Curaga waltz. Clockwork. It didn't even come close to slowing us down. Our puller, a THF, was way on top of his game as well, chain pulling like a pro. No surprise everyone in the party, with only like 1-2 exceptions throughout the night, was rank 7+.

It seems silly and noobish to be raving about things that really should be expected in any party and that I'm crazy not to want all the time. But it goes to show that even with ideal job distribution, skill counts for most of what goes on in the game, whether it be a newbie xp party (which requires only minimal skill) or a highly coordinated endgame HNM fight. Skill means more than even gear.

Although my platinum nuggets are finally selling and I can start the laborious and expensive process of putting the final ungimping touches on my BLM as I get my RDM sub the rest of the way up to 37. As far as I can tell I still need:

Snow Ring. Cost: 400k. I went for my Tamas Ring after completing my final CoP cutscenes so at least I only need one, but there's no excuse for me to be missint out on that +1 INT.

Prism Cape. Cost: 470k. I'm still on my Black Cape +1, a level 32 item. That's some shameful shit right there. But it's +3 INT, and seriously, I'm plunking down a good chunk of change just to bump that by one.

Morion Earring +1. Cost: 460k. Another +1 INT. The other really shameful piece I'm carrying is my regular Morion Earring. I'm good with my Moldavite's, and eventually want a DM earring to take its place (and down the road, a Novio), but for now a Morion +1 will do.

Uggalepih Pendant. Cost: 430k. I'm good with my elemental torque most of the time, but the +8 MAB from the pendant (latented when your MP after cast takes you below 50%, something I can easily work into my Spellcast xml) is simply invaluable.

Forest Rope. Cost: 370k. One less INT than my Penitent's Rope but +60mp. Maybe I sell my Penitent's, maybe not. I can always work my Penitent's back into my mp maximization in Spellcast, but that's a lot of work for just the +1 INT.

On legs, I just bought Mahatma Slops, which are much less ghetto than my old Druid's Slops, which are now for sale on the AH. I'm also fine on hands (Zenith Mitts/AF1 for high magic resist mobs) and feet (zenith pumps for MP, AF2 for normal usage), body (Weskit, Errant for resting). My Demon Helm +1 is still one of the best headpieces for BLM (+6 INT), although I wouldn't mind a Faerie Hairpin for my Max MP set (right now I'm using my Walahra Turban). For MP gear, I could also use a Blue Cape +1 (20MP, 300k) or an Errant Cape (30MP, 1.5M), but that's low priority.

For rare/ex gear, my primary focus is my obi set; I'm 2 aern organs away from my dark obi and definitely want to get an ice obi right away as well. The ice obi should come very fast, with 7 Xzomit organs (a 100% drop from the big squids) and 3 Phuabo organs (which drop prodigiously from sharks, sometimes 2 at a time). A far cry from the 3 Hpedme organs (which the goldfish are very stingy about) needed for my Rairin or the absolutely painful 7 Aern organs needed for my upcoming Dark obi. Still, dark is probably the most important, due to dynamis (although I could see myself going 8/8 what with getting SCH up). I probably want to get a Relaxing Earring as well, to swap in with MP Resting.

All in all a good day. Once I get RDM up to 37 I can apply to Remedy and hopefully get my ass back into endgame with a real plan.

Can I get a woot woot?

8-4 is COMPLETE ... well, at least the fight of it is, I have to wait until JP Midnight (10AM tomorrow) before I can start the roughly 80,000 cutscenes required for the mission to truly be over, and so I can get my ring!

I think I'm going to go with a Tamas ring, even though the Rajas is demonstrably superior, I don't think I'm going to be spending all that much time on DRK any time soon. As I'm desperately trying to ungimp my BLM, the +5 INT +30 MP is still a very nice bonus.

Once I get RDM up to 37 (15 more levels) it'll be time to apply to Remedy.

What's that? 8-2? Owned?

The same group that I did 8-1 with yesterday gathered together for 8-2 today. Actually, we had a nice sized alliance of 10 people, making the mission easy as could be.

I was actually kind of proud of myself as I managed to take charge and guide us through the mission. It's long, basically the escort quest from hell, and took us close to three hours to complete, but everyone got all the necessary sidetracks for the map and we had exactly one death, not bad at all.

The same group is getting together for 8-3 tomorrow, which might be a much more difficult fight. We'll see ^^

8-1 complete and through the dunes

Went from RDM16 to RDM20 today, thanks to a dunes party that for most of its length had no fewer than three powerlevelers, including my dual-boxed Miori. I only left because I dinged 20 and was gimping xp, and though I'm sure that the others would have wanted me to stay (since by then Mio was the only PL left) the xp had gotten very slow.

I was actually making what I thought was going to be a very brief stop at whitegate to sell off a little gear when I saw someone shouting for 8-1. I joined up, knowing that 8-1 was not at all difficult for a pickup party, to see that I was in a French party with a great setup, three BLMs including myself. Contrary to the usual stereotypes, these guys were nice, accomodating, not the least bit stuck up, and spoke good English, though I conversed with them in French as much as I could as {I can speak a little}. They complimented me on that and we got along great.

With me still dual-boxing Miori, we dusted the NM's with no problem and I am now the proud owner of a Tavnazian Ring. Woot.

That same group was going to do 8-2 tomorrow, and invited me along. {Yes, Please!}

On a down note, though, from my harvest (which was last fucking week!) I have had exactly three stacks of platinum nuggets, sell, and have been undercut yet again. When I harvested they were going for 27k a stack. I was undercut to 25k, which stuck, and had to repost at 25k. Now some asshole has cut it down to 23k. If it stays that low, that's going to cost me a couple 100k of profits from my latest harvest, which in terms of volume was one of my best ever. I'm approaching my second crystal feeding and frankly need to unload these suckers, but it's not looking great so far.

Sea, and back home

I had my first failure of a CoP BCNM fight since 2-5, but I'm still not really counting it, because it wasn't a failure due to a lack of planning or skill, but rather a member that fell asleep at an inopportune moment. I noticed someone shouting for 7-4, the Tenzen fight, in Whitegate, and decided to join up. The party leader was a RNG, and he had already recruited a DRK, as well as a NIN. I got Brian to jump in and help out, on WHM.

Things did not look to be very good initially, as the DRK and I shared the following words as we shouted for a sixth member.

DRK: Shout for a DD. We have a BRD and a WHM.
Me: Actually, shout for a DD, BRD, or WHM.
DRK: No, we need another DD!
Me: I can come as BRD or DRK. Andra can come as WHM or BRD. Between the two of us we have any two of the three slots covered. So we can shout for any job.
DRK: Just shout for a DD...

And so on. Eventually we did get another DD, a WAR, and trudged up to Tavnazia. After going over our strategy, we entered the BC only to see that we were 5/6. The WAR never entered. We shouted at him for about five minutes, but got no response, and so we decided to try a dry run with just the five of us and no 2hrs. Surprisingly, we got him as low as 40%, and I'm pretty sure that had we blown 2hrs we'd have killed him with 5/6. We wiped, and waited for like ten minutes outside the BC until the WAR finally woke up again. We entered with him, blew our 2hrs, and proceeded to leave Tenzen wondering what we'd done to his asshole ^^. Just under a four minute fight.

So, now I have sea, and have actually managed to collect my first obi (thunder). I certainly plan on getting 8/8 obis as SCH will be my next job to 75. I can solo farm any organ I want on BLM, and Brian gave me access to Camille's account (Camille hasn't been playing recently) for me to use whenever he's not needing it for an event. Duoing makes the organ farming go much faster, and I'm not terribly far from a dark obi as well (can you say Dynamis?)

My other goal for the time being is getting RDM up to 37, as having BLM at 75 without a RDM sub is crazy gimped (although, I must say, I think SCH is a worthwhile replacement for it). It has languished at level 11 for forever, but wielding Miori as a PL I hopped into the Dunes today and cranked it up to 16 over the course of a few hours and a very mediocre party, saved only by the fact that we had a PL.

RDM is basically useless in the early levels, but I figure I can make up for that by brute PL force.

omgwtf CoP

In what must be some kind of record, I have officially gone from CoP mission 5-3 to CoP mission 7 in the space of less than 12 hours.

It started this afternoon when Brian and I were looking for something to do. His kids had calmed down, and I wasn't getting any invites on SCH, so he asks if I wanted a merit party. I bleahed, as we've been doing a lot of that recently (I've pumped about 9 merits into Enfeebling Magic in the past week or so). I thought we should do some assaults. He countered with the suggestion that we finally get me through the Tenzen path of 5-3, something I've been procrastinating on for, oh, the past year or so.

Funny story there, actually. When CoP came out I did the Promyvions right away, but languished for months on 2-5, after several pickup parties failed miserably on it. Finally I did 2-5 with Precedence, my old LS, and went on a tear from there to getting 2/3 of 5-3 done (and all of the really hard parts). But we never did 5-3's Tenzen path, the annoying long trek through Pso'Xja, and it just kind of slipped my priorities for many months as I leveled BLM to 75 and focused on camping kings and doing events with Prec.

So he starts shouting for a party and immediately gets a hit, from a full party no less, that was planning on running through it just then but could use extra help. We hop in, me on SCH, him on BRD, and after a rocky start, pound right through it.

It turned out that I didn't have 5-3 quite complete after that, and had to finish up some of Louverance's path in Movapolis. Thankfully I had my gold key and didn't have to do any fighting. I finish up 5-3 (finally) and start running around doing the missions to take me to 6-4. Thats' just cutscenes, with a couple of fights that are duoable (for which I requisitioned Brian's help).

By then it was past ten and Camille had gone to bed. Brian was still up, and I see a guy shouting for 6-4. What the hell. I point out that I'm interesting, at which point he basically gives me the grunt work of shouting in Whitegate for a party. I get a friend, Sabine (formerly Braden) to help out on MNK, and find a random MNK that has a NIN friend. With Brian on WHM, myself on BRD, and the original party starter on BLM, we have a passable group, and head to Tavnazia to make it happen.

Now, I'm intimidated a bit by the airship fight, having heard it described in terms that never use the word "easy". Erecia's guide called it "hands down, the most difficult mission in the game." I heard horror stories of people going 0-15, of it breaking up statics, even killing linkshells. It's supposed to be tough, althouth S/E did kind of nerf it down.

We owned it. It's on a 60 minute timer (formerly 45, as per the nerfing) and we destroyed it in 26. My role was mind-numingly easy (three sets of buffs on the mages, tank, and DD, backup heal), and everyone knew their shit. The NIN tank was quite good, and Sabine knows MNK quite well. No deaths, one close call. Easy peasey.

What's sick is that ever since 2-5 I've had a perfect record on CoP missions, including a 1/1 on the Snoll fight, pre nerf, that had the people that were 0-20 cursing my name (rdm, rdm, rdm, blm, sam, rng rules!)

After the fight, Brian went immediately to bed, but I stayed up to do a few cutscenes. I'm now on 7-3, and have no fights until 7-5, the Tenzen fight. After that one, Sabine says he'll static with me through 8-1, 8-2, 8-3, and 8-4. Sounds good to me ^^

But, I don't feel like any more cutscenes tonight, as it's time for bed.