Thanksgiving has come and gone and now my mini-vacation is over, no more time off til Christmas week. :(
While I only got to spend three of my five days off playing FFXI (man I sound like such a loser), I did get some things accomplished, but I still have one irritating thing on my to do list.
Wings of the Goddess
We finished up the new Bastok and Windurst quests on Saturday (Sandy was finished the weekend before). We tried to finish Bastok when we did Sandy, but it turned out to be too difficult for me to tank. The constant double-attacking left me spending too much time trying to get shadows up instead of hitting her to keep hate, the end result was our mages had to heal the DDs and eventually hate turned to them, then the DDs, and then finally to me. Our second go-around with Klara went better, we had 6 people as we added a PLD to tank, the end result was a pretty easy win (though the mages were still pulling hate from healing), our setup was PLD, NIN, MNK, SAM, SCH and WHM. Funny thing happened at the beginning of this fight, when we zoned in I did something I do with almost any NM, I /slap emoted Klara (I have a habit of doing this or /wave). Much to everyone's surprise she apparently did NOT take this transgression lightly because she attacked me right after I did it. Now I don't know if maybe I got too close (I had only took a few steps forward from where we zoned in at) or if she really did aggro from the /slap, but we were all caught off guard when she began attacking me.
Windurst was the fight we were least worried about and as you can probably guess it ended up being the one we should have been the most concerned with. While we are all good players, to tackle that fight with five people is just nuts, you'd have to be l33t to have any chance at a win. Our first attempt was BLM x4 and SAM, we figured we'd just nuke em down and let the SAM clean up, it was a disaster, we didn't survive the first wave. Our second attempt was a little more traditional with NIN, SAM, MNK, RDM (kite) and WHM, but once again things went badly. The problem on the second attempt was the waves are just too fast and we were quickly overwhelmed when the second wave came in. So after two failed attempts we sent out a distress call and ended up getting 8 more people to help us (this fight is out in the open so anyone with access to the past can help), the end result was...well we kicked the shit out of the mobs. It was a perfect example of strength in numbers, thanks again to everyone that helped us with that.
The storyline in WotG has been pretty solid, Windy's storyline has been fantastic (with some outstanding cutscenes to go along with it), Bastok has also been pretty good (the seeds for the rise of the Shadow Lord are slowly being sown), but Sandy is dragging things down. The other two nations are dealing directly with the established histories that have been in the game since its inception, whereas Sandy only teased us with the destruction of Tavnazia. The last few quests have had nothing to do with the ramifications of that event, it's just been about a bunch of bratty ten year olds trying to act like grown ups. At this point I've given up hope Sandy will offer up anything interesting, so I'm happy the other two nations are living up to their billing.
Omega
At this point I think it's safe to say we own Omega, he poses little challenge these days. On Friday we fought him again and none of the tanks died (a first) and we decided based on the last few fights that we'd farm the pods. We knocked out five pods, but it could have gone smoother once we started kiting him. Speaking for myself I have never kited him and was out of position and generally confused about what exactly we were supposed to be doing. I'd imagine (well I know for a fact) that others had never seen this either. But as far as taking baby steps, we were able to keep walking and this will probably be nothing more than a footnote in a few months.
Project: Shantottofication
What can I say, we tried this fight twice, once on Saturday and again on Sunday. I was hoping we'd complete it because I'd really like to get to the cutscenes everyone keeps saying are so amazing. Our first fight with her was NIN, SAM x2, RNG, WHM x2, and as far as first fights go I'd say we did well, we got the BLM version down to around 35% before wiping. I was holding the WHM version (and actually kited her before the first rage), she didn't pose much trouble. After the first rage she was still easy to hold, I just voked and cast ninjutsu occasionally until the second rage. The second rage is where we ended up wiping, too much damage was taken to recover from. Ultimately though we were not able to get far enough on our first attempt.
The second attempt we changed things up a bit with NIN, MNK x2, WHM x2, SCH. This time I decided I was going to engage the WHM version instead of just standing around, I must admit I underestimated what I was going to be able to do and ended up getting her down to 80% before the first rage. At this point I had to disengage as we weren't sure what would happen if they raged at the same time, but the speculation was we wouldn't like the outcome. Our lessons learned from the first fight we got the BLM version down to 11% before wiping to the third rage. Thinking that we were good to go from that point we healed up and the MNKs again took to killing the BLM version, unfortunately this is were we made a few miscalculations. The first was something I wasn't ready for and that was when I went in to grab the WHM, I took a bunch of damage from the BLM. This led to the second mistake and that was assuming the WHM would be easy to deal with, she was not, she was much stronger at this point and it was a struggle to keep things together at first. Because I was having so much trouble, our healers were healing me to keep me alive, which led to the third mistake and that was healing me. Because they were healing me as well as healing the MNKs they were moving up the hate list faster than me and eventually I lost hate altogether, the WHM started picking off our healers and we ended up wiping with the BLM at around 15%.
This is a pretty challenging fight, but I think we are on the right track with our setup, it's just a matter of getting our timing right, minimizing mistakes and just plain getting lucky. Part of me, though, wants to see what would happen if they were both raging at the same time. A betting man would say they flatten us, but maybe the key to the fight is to fight them at the same time...
Stating the Obvious
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
So Scandelous
The New Social
It's been a little over a week since I closed my Nightmare Syndicate shell and moved into Kimi's Purple Taru Eater (Scandelous) shell, and while I've managed to move most people over, I feel like there is some resentment. A lot of the members were given a Sky/Social shell that seems to be their new shiny, which, meh, fuck it, go play with your new shiny, cause I got my own shiny to play with. :D So far I'm liking Kimi's shell, lots of people I know (and who make me look like a noob) are in it and it's nice not to be in the de facto in charge person.
The Old Social
I remain bummed that Nightmare Syndicate had to be closed, but it was rather depressing that there were only 2-3 people in it most of the time, despite the fact there was something in the neighborhood of 15-20 members. I think a few people are holding it against me that I didn't do more to keep it active, but this was my third go-around leading a social and I think maybe the tenth or so I've seen dwindle to a few people so I've got a pretty good handle on when a shell is dying. As such, I decided to take a different approach than I've taken in the past, this time I talked to the people on my friendlist about their socials and ultimately decided Kimi's would be the best fit for my shell to merge into. I'm sorry that folks may be little upset by this, but fact of the matter, there isn't much socializing with less than a handful of people around, something had to be done.
Dynymbus
Limbus has been going great, we have 29 active members and have had little trouble making split runs. In fact, things have been so well we've only lost one run since the middle of July, I think we're something like 45-1 during that stretch. We also have a new website, which, after dealing with our previous website, is fucking awesome. I'm able to take the data straight from my database and update points, runs, members, etc. in seconds, it's made managing things infinitely easier. There are going to be two new sackholders on Friday, I can't say who yet, though. They are being promoted because we felt if we're going to be doing split runs then having raid leaders would be very helpful and two of our most knowledgeable members will be stepping into these roles. Right now the only negative we are experiencing is a distinct lack of white mages and scholars, we only have a few of each, and really need a couple more to make things easier during the splits.
Obsidian
All I can say is the BLMs are getting slammed lately, whether it's inexperience (which I feel is my biggest problem), folks being lazy, or just a lack of general direction. The black mages have taken the brunt of the blame for recent losses, which in most cases the criticisms are legit and true, but damn I really don't like having fingers pointed at me for fucking things up. Ah well, maybe this is an opportunity to improve things in the BLM group that have been building up over the last year, at any rate, shit needs to be corrected so we can start blaming things on other people :)
It's been a little over a week since I closed my Nightmare Syndicate shell and moved into Kimi's Purple Taru Eater (Scandelous) shell, and while I've managed to move most people over, I feel like there is some resentment. A lot of the members were given a Sky/Social shell that seems to be their new shiny, which, meh, fuck it, go play with your new shiny, cause I got my own shiny to play with. :D So far I'm liking Kimi's shell, lots of people I know (and who make me look like a noob) are in it and it's nice not to be in the de facto in charge person.
The Old Social
I remain bummed that Nightmare Syndicate had to be closed, but it was rather depressing that there were only 2-3 people in it most of the time, despite the fact there was something in the neighborhood of 15-20 members. I think a few people are holding it against me that I didn't do more to keep it active, but this was my third go-around leading a social and I think maybe the tenth or so I've seen dwindle to a few people so I've got a pretty good handle on when a shell is dying. As such, I decided to take a different approach than I've taken in the past, this time I talked to the people on my friendlist about their socials and ultimately decided Kimi's would be the best fit for my shell to merge into. I'm sorry that folks may be little upset by this, but fact of the matter, there isn't much socializing with less than a handful of people around, something had to be done.
Dynymbus
Limbus has been going great, we have 29 active members and have had little trouble making split runs. In fact, things have been so well we've only lost one run since the middle of July, I think we're something like 45-1 during that stretch. We also have a new website, which, after dealing with our previous website, is fucking awesome. I'm able to take the data straight from my database and update points, runs, members, etc. in seconds, it's made managing things infinitely easier. There are going to be two new sackholders on Friday, I can't say who yet, though. They are being promoted because we felt if we're going to be doing split runs then having raid leaders would be very helpful and two of our most knowledgeable members will be stepping into these roles. Right now the only negative we are experiencing is a distinct lack of white mages and scholars, we only have a few of each, and really need a couple more to make things easier during the splits.
Obsidian
All I can say is the BLMs are getting slammed lately, whether it's inexperience (which I feel is my biggest problem), folks being lazy, or just a lack of general direction. The black mages have taken the brunt of the blame for recent losses, which in most cases the criticisms are legit and true, but damn I really don't like having fingers pointed at me for fucking things up. Ah well, maybe this is an opportunity to improve things in the BLM group that have been building up over the last year, at any rate, shit needs to be corrected so we can start blaming things on other people :)
Monday, November 2, 2009
Xarcarbard (S)
San d'Oria laid claim to this zone this week and I went there on both BLM and NIN to see if it was as much fun as the Glacier is. In short, no, it sucked, but not for the reasons you might think. The main reason it sucked was due to the other players in the zone, of which there seemed to be three kinds.
1. The Serious Ones - These guys were actually trying to defend the zone, which is noble, but if the Glacier has taught us anything, even with 100 people there 24/7 the beastmen are gonna get it back. The thing that really pissed me off about these guys, though, was they expected the rest of us to forgo maximizing our jobs in Campaign, as a BLM I was expected to stay in the back, provide heals, enfeeble and the occasional nuke, in support of the PLD (we'll call him Mr. Superstar) who is calling the shots. To this, all I can say is fuck you Mr. Superstar, you're gonna cap your XP, while I'm gonna hit limits on healing, nuking and enfeebling and for an hour's work end up with 1k XP (meanwhile Mr. Superstar is talking about getting 5k XP, jackass motherfucker). I put up with this shit for one battle, then broke out the NIN and tanked the damn mobs myself.
2. The Curious Players (with a clue) - This is where I'd say I fell in, I was curious about the mobs and the coffers. I've been to Xarc plenty of times on BLM and the place is great if you have a small group of people pulling a mob at a time, it's excellent XP. I figured with the zone under friendly control the place would be teeming with people and one could move from one mob to the next (kinda like the Glacier when it's under Allied control). I'll get to how things went in a moment, but I'm not done bitching about my fellow players.
3. The Curious Players (who don't have a motherfucking clue about how anything in fucking Campaign works) - These dumb motherfuckers (and sadly there were quite a few), were CONSTANTLY getting people MPK'd, over and over and over. Seemed like about every three minutes one of these dumbshits would get hate and then run right at people either resting or fighting other mobs. At one point I was triple-weakened from these dumbasses! I'm trying to kill mobs and get XP you stupid motherfuckers, not spend the whole the whole battle staying out of AOE range because one blast with my shadows down will kill me. Sure this happens all the time in Campaign, but it's maybe once or twice a battle, not continuously all night long.
As for the actual battles themselves, my first one out there was a nightmare. I was on BLM as five waves showed up a few minutes apart, the fourth wave caught me off guard when Shadowsoul snuck up on me. Death came in two hits, guess he didn't like my Optical Hat. Two waves of NPCs came out, but they were quickly wiped out by the mobs, and I don't think either wave lasted more than a few minutes. Interestingly enough all the NPCs that showed were from Windurst, no one from Sandy or Bastok showed the whole day.
The second battle went better, we had mantelets and this was Mr. Superstar's first battle, he tanked and didn't try to coral everyone into fighting it his "way". This was my most productive battle, and we did quite well beating up on Yags, trouble didn't start until the dragons in Shadowsoul's group showed up.
The third battle was the ultimate, "why the fuck am I even bothering" battle. For starters Mr. Superstar decided to "take the reigns" and try to get us to work as a unit and defend the fort. Not a bad idea, but he also played it as his way or the highway and since he was the only tank, we kinda had to play along. He did provide a tidbit of info about a safe place to fight here. Right in front of the fort there is a valley, no mobs trek here, not even that damn flying dragon. That was the only thing he got right, the rest of the time it was about keeping his (and only his) character alive and to hell with everyone else. This was also the battle the afore mentioned dumbasses came out in full force and kept MPKing us. From watching their movements I'm confident in saying what they were doing wasn't on purpose, but rather just poorly made choices about what direction to run. In the end I barely cleared 1k and the fight was 45-50 minutes long, just pathetic.
At this point I went back to Bastok and got out the NIN gear, not that BLM was a bad choice, especially with all the AOE's being thrown around, but the other people out there were making it impossible to be productive on BLM. Once again Mr. Superstar was trying to get everyone to work together, but I wasn't taking the bait this time. My first order of business was to take the hate off the mob he was fighting, which as anyone who has campaigned with me can tell you is not hard to do (NIN/RDM > PLD/DNC in terms of hate generation), I then held it until an MPK took me out (the valley is safe from mobs, but not other players). When I got up, I got hit with an AOE and was dropped again, this was entirely my fault. On my third life I was out of the way and healing when another one of the "special" people brought three dragons to my location. I waited for the dragons to get out of range, but the dumbass not far from didn't and they came running back. I stayed down for about 15 minutes this time, sometimes one just has to admit defeat.
The last battle of the night I was once again NIN, but I decided the best tactic would be to risk aggros and fight off to the side. This worked out well, a few other people joined me and we took out three Yags and were working on a fourth when the fight ended. I did well 1900+XP/1200+AN. Convinced I had things figured out I waited around for an hour, but no battles sprung up, so I eventually headed back to town.
All told I spent 6 hours out there and got around 8k XP, with the bulk of that coming in fights 2 and 5. The coffers didn't contain anything all that special, but I don't think we defeated a single beastmen general, nor did we clear any waves, so I'm not surprised they were kinda bland.
1. The Serious Ones - These guys were actually trying to defend the zone, which is noble, but if the Glacier has taught us anything, even with 100 people there 24/7 the beastmen are gonna get it back. The thing that really pissed me off about these guys, though, was they expected the rest of us to forgo maximizing our jobs in Campaign, as a BLM I was expected to stay in the back, provide heals, enfeeble and the occasional nuke, in support of the PLD (we'll call him Mr. Superstar) who is calling the shots. To this, all I can say is fuck you Mr. Superstar, you're gonna cap your XP, while I'm gonna hit limits on healing, nuking and enfeebling and for an hour's work end up with 1k XP (meanwhile Mr. Superstar is talking about getting 5k XP, jackass motherfucker). I put up with this shit for one battle, then broke out the NIN and tanked the damn mobs myself.
2. The Curious Players (with a clue) - This is where I'd say I fell in, I was curious about the mobs and the coffers. I've been to Xarc plenty of times on BLM and the place is great if you have a small group of people pulling a mob at a time, it's excellent XP. I figured with the zone under friendly control the place would be teeming with people and one could move from one mob to the next (kinda like the Glacier when it's under Allied control). I'll get to how things went in a moment, but I'm not done bitching about my fellow players.
3. The Curious Players (who don't have a motherfucking clue about how anything in fucking Campaign works) - These dumb motherfuckers (and sadly there were quite a few), were CONSTANTLY getting people MPK'd, over and over and over. Seemed like about every three minutes one of these dumbshits would get hate and then run right at people either resting or fighting other mobs. At one point I was triple-weakened from these dumbasses! I'm trying to kill mobs and get XP you stupid motherfuckers, not spend the whole the whole battle staying out of AOE range because one blast with my shadows down will kill me. Sure this happens all the time in Campaign, but it's maybe once or twice a battle, not continuously all night long.
As for the actual battles themselves, my first one out there was a nightmare. I was on BLM as five waves showed up a few minutes apart, the fourth wave caught me off guard when Shadowsoul snuck up on me. Death came in two hits, guess he didn't like my Optical Hat. Two waves of NPCs came out, but they were quickly wiped out by the mobs, and I don't think either wave lasted more than a few minutes. Interestingly enough all the NPCs that showed were from Windurst, no one from Sandy or Bastok showed the whole day.
The second battle went better, we had mantelets and this was Mr. Superstar's first battle, he tanked and didn't try to coral everyone into fighting it his "way". This was my most productive battle, and we did quite well beating up on Yags, trouble didn't start until the dragons in Shadowsoul's group showed up.
The third battle was the ultimate, "why the fuck am I even bothering" battle. For starters Mr. Superstar decided to "take the reigns" and try to get us to work as a unit and defend the fort. Not a bad idea, but he also played it as his way or the highway and since he was the only tank, we kinda had to play along. He did provide a tidbit of info about a safe place to fight here. Right in front of the fort there is a valley, no mobs trek here, not even that damn flying dragon. That was the only thing he got right, the rest of the time it was about keeping his (and only his) character alive and to hell with everyone else. This was also the battle the afore mentioned dumbasses came out in full force and kept MPKing us. From watching their movements I'm confident in saying what they were doing wasn't on purpose, but rather just poorly made choices about what direction to run. In the end I barely cleared 1k and the fight was 45-50 minutes long, just pathetic.
At this point I went back to Bastok and got out the NIN gear, not that BLM was a bad choice, especially with all the AOE's being thrown around, but the other people out there were making it impossible to be productive on BLM. Once again Mr. Superstar was trying to get everyone to work together, but I wasn't taking the bait this time. My first order of business was to take the hate off the mob he was fighting, which as anyone who has campaigned with me can tell you is not hard to do (NIN/RDM > PLD/DNC in terms of hate generation), I then held it until an MPK took me out (the valley is safe from mobs, but not other players). When I got up, I got hit with an AOE and was dropped again, this was entirely my fault. On my third life I was out of the way and healing when another one of the "special" people brought three dragons to my location. I waited for the dragons to get out of range, but the dumbass not far from didn't and they came running back. I stayed down for about 15 minutes this time, sometimes one just has to admit defeat.
The last battle of the night I was once again NIN, but I decided the best tactic would be to risk aggros and fight off to the side. This worked out well, a few other people joined me and we took out three Yags and were working on a fourth when the fight ended. I did well 1900+XP/1200+AN. Convinced I had things figured out I waited around for an hour, but no battles sprung up, so I eventually headed back to town.
All told I spent 6 hours out there and got around 8k XP, with the bulk of that coming in fights 2 and 5. The coffers didn't contain anything all that special, but I don't think we defeated a single beastmen general, nor did we clear any waves, so I'm not surprised they were kinda bland.
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