So this weekend was a fairly busy one, and from a personal standpoint I seemed to have accomplished a lot more than I had set out to.
Friday
Friday began with me taking off early from work, my plan was to get some time in on WHM as it was halfway to 39, my hope was to get close to 40 before I had to head out for Sea and Limbus at 6:30PM. What ended up happening was I got within 1k of 40 at about 6:15PM and I decided to forgo Sea and finish getting WHM to 40 and adding a buffer. WHM is just slow going and one has to constantly watch HP and MP to effectively solo, even on EP mobs, there ends up being more downtime than other jobs as a result. Nevertheless, I managed to get WHM to 40 with a 1k buffer in about 30-35 minutes. Since I wasn't doing Sea and had some time before Limbus I decided to get the WHM AF Weapon Blessed Hammer, (this is something that my WHM will be using to melee with up to 49, though I can't equip it til 41). The quest was easy, but I got stuck waiting for nighttime to pop the NM, gotta love SE and their ability to add time wasters to everything we do. So Goal 1 for the weekend accomplished.
After I put the WHM away it was time for Limbus and I wasn't quite sure how our turnout would be since Hoodini's account got banned (I haven't heard anything from him since he told the shell), Monday was low and I had a feeling Friday would be too. My gut feeling was right, we had 15 people show up (down from 21) and I was forced to decide on a split run or a full run. Since we seemed to be lacking folks for the last two runs and both Rues and Liela would be gone this upcoming Friday I decided to go ahead and split with the hopes we could get both chips for Omega tonight.
With Hoodini down for the count, we decided to promote Rues and Liela to sackholder positions, in part because they seem to get a long with everyone, work well as a tandem, show up to almost every run and have got a ton of low-man experience in Limbus (for example, they can duo NW). Because of their expertise in NW I decided to let them take a team there for their first run as leads, and from all accounts they seemed to do a fine job and we got the win. I'm hopeful the two of them will be able to pick up the nuances of Limbus fairly quickly so I don't have to do all the work (Seif and Arnor are not always available to do runs).
With six people taking NW, my group was down to nine folks, and SE (weaknesses) was our target. Now typically I hate doing any Apollyon run with less than 10 people, sure it can be done, but I like to guarantee wins instead of hoping for everyone to be at the top of their game. We were right on the line of what I consider a guaranteed win and folks needing to bring their A Game. The first floor went well and I got the impression we were going to have an easy go at it (cue ominous music). The second floor ended up showing signs of trouble as our only sleeper (RDM) had to be told to sleep the links, I found this annoying, but it was not an issue that was slowing us down. The third floor is where the shit hit the fan, this is the floor with skeletons and this is where I discovered our RDM doesn't really like to multitask. What we needed from her was Dispel the skeletons as they came in, heal and provide paralynas for the tank party (which was just my NIN and Shilo as BLU). While she seemed to handle the first two ok, getting paralynas proved to be problematic and I had to ask the DDs WHM to cover the entire alliance with paralyna. On our last skeleton I got hit with Slow, and anyone who has tried to NIN tank with Slow can attest, it's not a good idea to cast shadows in this condition (in fact it turned out to be Slow II as Haste didn't override it). I asked to have it removed, waited a few and asked again, waited some more (at this point Tammyrose tried to Haste me to no effect). I asked again and nothing, so I finally started spamming for the RDM to Erase me, at which point she tried to Haste me and then ran away, I had to call her back and get her to Erase me THEN Haste me. All this fucking about knocked off 2-3 minutes from what was looking to be a down to the wire run. Once we were finally able to move forward we had about 10 minutes to kill Grave Digger (a Corse NM) and the Weapons on the 4th Floor. My team had to push it hard and a bad pull with the Weapons ended up getting Tammyrose killed and left us with the RDM as our only healer (which wouldn't have happened if the RDM had tried to Sleep the fucking links). So we had to finish the run with one healer and six mobs to go, which we did for the win. At the end of the day I really wish I had kept Shilo as RDM, he does a good job and knows what he has to do keep the run moving smoothly. You may be asking yourself why I even let the RDM come RDM, well therein lies the problem, I have to keep her on RDM because if I let her come NIN she goes all Leroy Jenkins on us and creates mass chaos (last time she started voking and pulling mobs, despite the fact she was neither the tank nor the puller).
At any rate, we have all four chips for Omega and will tackle him tonight, so Goal 2 for the weekend was accomplished.
Saturday
I got up early Saturday because I wanted some McDonalds for breakfast and I figured I could get some Trial of the Magians work accomplished while I waited on Einherjar to start. As such I had about an hour before Einherjar to kill birds. I thought I was in for some fun when I zoned and weather was up, I killed my first bird and during the second bird the weather went away and stayed away. I ended up talking shit in the shell the rest of the hour while waiting for nothing to happen. So technically Goal 3 was accomplished, but it was disappointing.
So up next was Einherjar and you could get a sense from the mood we might be in for a bit of trouble, can't quite put my finger on what it was, but something was off. As it turns out, I was right, as a team we were just a bit off and hate wasn't being handled well (a theme that would bite us in the ass later in the day), BUT, in the end Odin was defeated and we got a bunch of good drops. However, once again, I was shut out of the BLM gear, which bums me out, especially now that Kaeko is also targeting this gear (it's not the competition I have a problem with, it's feeling like an ass when I raise the bid knowing Kaeko can't go higher). I'm sure we'll both get it eventually, but it's fucking annoying seeing gear that we can get from Einherjar OR Sky drop all the time while the gear that only drops in Einherjar never seems to fall. Goal 4 of the weekend (for me) was fail.
After Einherjar we had about two hours before we started on VNMs, I spent this time waiting for more weather that never came. I don't care what anyone says about the other Trials, waiting for weather has to be about the most fucking boring thing possible in the game. I'm already tired of the Trials and I'm only on the second trial on the first of four expected paths. About a half hour prior to starting the VNMs I gave up and changed to BLM for the remainder of the day.
On the VNMs the goal, once again, was Krabkatoa. Now, I'll admit I wouldn't mind the MND ring, but I am getting tired of this particular path, I'd like to see the other VNMs at some point. At any rate, I digress, we had a Blue Abyssite from last weekend so our first target of the day was to be the crab. We pulled him to a fence area in East Ronfaure with the intent of two PLDs holding him while the BLMs nuked him down. What ended up happening was more hate chaos that made us all look like a bunch of fucking noobs. Qtipus may be willing to put it off as we don't typically worry about hate management in Obsidian so people are a bit rusty or misguided. I won't be so kind (especially when the BLMs take all kinds of shit for minor things), simply put, folks should be ashamed by the sheer lack of knowledge about their jobs that they are pulling hate where none should be necessary. Since hate was never established we basically ran Krabkatoa around the fence for 30% of its health, nuking when we could, eventually we all ended up wiping. To be honest this strategy might be doable, but there were too many people pulling hate, and even more just standing around in the kite paths doing nothing. It was an embarrassing display and I'm still annoyed by it two days later.
Not so willing to admit defeat, we decided to take another crack at Krabkatoa and this meant getting more Blue Abyssite, we eventually got two before heading back to E. Ron for Round 2. This time we went a different route and went with a strategy that called for two MNKs to tank him. Once again we failed miserably to get hate established and ended up with one long 30 minute fuckfest that led to another wipe. Despite all the chaos we did get him down to 35%, but damnit if people don't need to get their shit together and work as a team, especially when it comes to hate generating actions (Cure IV = bad, Thunder IV = bad, etc, etc, etc). After the second wipe we called it a day on the VNMs, next week we will try Krabkatoa…again.
After the VNMs we had about two hours to kill before Sky, not sure what other people did, but I just chilled out until it was time to head out. For Sky we had a ton of God pop items to burn through and when it was all said and done we killed three Byakkos, three Suzakus, two Seiryus, and two Genbus. The bullshit from Einherjar and VNMs seemed to have dissipated and we had a fairly solid event to cap Saturday off. From a personal standpoint I took in a big haul from Sky as I FINALLY got my hands on Byakko's Haidate (Goal 6) as well as Susaku's Sune-Ate (Goal 7) and Zenith Mitts (not a goal, but an opportunity). Once I got the pants all the frustration from Friday and early in the day went away, getting them means I can now sit back and enjoy Sky.
After Sky I had to test out my new threads, so I set my gear macros (using my database, naturally) and geared up for Campaign. I only went to two battles (it was pretty late), but I was pretty happy to see my Jins all landing for 500+ damage (a couple came close to 1k). And I got a Merit Point from being there, so that was nice.
Sunday
I only had two things on my plate for Sunday (well three, I had to make Mother's Day phonecalls also), one was Dynamis and the other was to start on SCH. Dynamis was in the Glacier and we had a smaller group than usual, but it turned out to be a pretty good run. Everyone was on their game, and we burned through all the timers we usually get with an hour to spare for farming.
With SCH, for the longest time I have treated SCH like a WHM-Lite, both jobs were sharing gear and no one invited me to parties to nuke things, so when it came to soloing I found that SCH was going to be the worst of the lot…by far. You see, SCH can't equip hammers and paddles don't do a lot of damage so using Clubs was out. Staffs aren't practical either as the delay is pretty high and for a job with paper defense, spending extended time in front of mobs is a bad idea. All SCH has left is Daggers, and with a D rating, I was looking at Sushi over Mithkabobs, which wasn't that ideal either. Thankfully Arnor saw just how foolish my thinking on this was and suggested I look at SCH like a BLM-Lite if I'm going to solo it. This was an outstanding idea and I feel stupid for not thinking of it myself, and thankfully I still had all the gear I was going to need since I used it all on BLM.
So off I went to Yhoator Jungle to pick on Tonberry Elementals, my goal for the day was to get at least to level 38 and if time permitted. level 39. My first pull ended up being a mess, I was a bit rustier than I expected to be, the Elemental killed me and I deleveled. Not to be deterred I got back up and shook off the cobwebs, getting my level back and making short work of the next Elemental. After that I spent 20 minutes running around trying to get in a good position to pull another one. I had one Tonberry guarding my safe fight zones and I was about to start fighting out in the open when I got a /tell from Meesha about doing a manaburn in the Sanctuary of Zi-Tah. It's been some time since I manaburned at the Zi'Tah OP, but I figured it had to be better than trying to get the Tonberries to cooperate so I quickly accepted.
When I got there I was surprised to see my party consisted of a WAR (Meesha), a RDM, a BLM, and my SCH. We had two more SCH on the way and we were going to sync to level 27. This was a rather large departure from my days of BLM soloing/duoing/trioing here, back in my time (this was before Moses parted the Red Sea) you had to be nuts to try this camp below 30 and everyone was a BLM. As it turned out, this set up was awesome, we were averaging 9-10k an hour with Meesha pulling leeches almost nonstop and we kept it up for some time. When we finally called it, my SCH had gone from level 37 to level 42, Goal 8 accomplished and then some!
So for me this weekend was a win over all, I got my Kitty Pants and all of my subjobs are ready for the June update. I hope the good fortune continues and we have the folks for Omega tonight.
Stating the Obvious
