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.