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.