Category: FFXI

Went to help a friend on King Vinegarroon on DRK. Very short battle, like 10~15 seconds, lol

Hasso: 10%
Desperate Blows: 20%
Soul Voiced March x2: 20~30%? (I asked a few BRD friends but none knew the actual amount)
Haste: 15%
Haste from equip: 7%
Haste from rune chopper: 9%

Total: 80% (cap reached)

I used rune chopper, figured I’d get enough accuracy from the second bard’s soul voice madrigal x2 and needed the extra 9% haste from it to hit cap. I’ll need to work on earning another 5 merit points to finish my desperate blows merits for 25% haste, then I should be able to use scythe instead.

A little late to post about this though, my MNK is at 62 now. But anyways, it’s a strong job but simple playstyle. Most PTs I get into don’t do skillchains anymore. The skillchains I see are just coincidences. Thus, most of the PTs I’m in, I just DD and TP up, then use my WS near the end to avoid dying from grabbing hate.

With /WAR, it’s easy to grab hate even without using provoke or an WS. Even easier if the tank is a NIN. Or maybe I haven’t been with good tanks recently D: . With just a few double attack procs and normal hits at the start of the battle after the NIN vokes, I grabbed hate.

Then after hitting 60, I decided to try /THF. I don’t grab hate as easy as /WAR now with the lack of double attack and berserk. And I can trick attack + WS on the tank at the start of the battle.

On my last PT as MNK/THF, I had a really good PLD tank and an alert THF. After seeing him do Dancing Edge after my Howling Fist for a Distortion SC, I started hitting my “announce TP” macro and so did he. We did lots of skillchains that night.

We were fought colibris and I lost 10 pieces of sushi to it’s “snatch morsel” ability but I was content. It felt like the good old days.

The PLD, even though was doing a good job at holding hate, couldn’t tell that the THF and I were doing skillchain and the THF was SATA-ing on him after so many skillchains. So most of the time, he pulled back hate before the THF could finish his SATA, making the skillchain weaker. Oh well, at least I went 60 to 62 in that PT.

I’m going to reach a level where the Lesser Colibris would check as even match to me before I go skilling up guard again. That would probably be around 66~68.

My Nyzul assault has been pretty rocky. Probably due to bad luck. Out of 4 runs each week, we manage to succeed only 1 or 2 run. Most of us aren’t used to it yet I suppose. Anyway, at the Nyzul portal, there’s a lot of people during JP prime time. It’s starting to get a little irritating spending a lot of time spamming the portal trying to get in.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots more standing behind, lol

That’s all for today. :)

…HOMAM PANTS!

Yup, really. And I woke up feeling disappointed once I realized it was only a dream.

Ever since the Homam set was introduced into the game, I’ve never felt any urge for it even though it is a very good addition to my DRK equipment because during that time, due to various reasons, I wasn’t able to join any Limbus shells.

Then recently, the desire grew once my social shell was able to do Proto-Omega with low numbers. But with 3~5 competitors for that piece, it seems I might have a better chance with the Mog Bonanza. 3!! Just 3 matching numbers on my main character and that’s enough! :D

Anyways, more importantly, we’ve had our first try at Proto-Ultima. Turned out to be a disaster at the final phase as it begins to use Citadel Buster quite frequently. Now I know why the general strategy for the final phase is to zerg it as fast as possible.

With 9 members, we had no problems bringing it down to the final phase. Probably the hardest NM I had to shadow tank in my PLD/NIN career so far.

Out of the 4 Dissipations, only 1 was stunned. It’s supposed to reset hate but somehow it was still attacking me and my co-tank.

Setup:
PT #1: RDM/DRK, SCH, BRD, WHM, NIN/DRK, PLD/NIN
PT #2: SMN, MNK, BLM

My first mistake was dying at the start of the fight, lol. I was told to pull it to the far NW corner and couldn’t put shadows back up in time and as it killed me with hits doing damage as high as 400+.

My next mistake was standing in there with the one and only sub tank trying to survive CB. I thought it only uses CB once but that’s where I’m wrong.

And instead of getting my magic defense setup up and ready, I was spamming Cure4 on myself for hate, thinking I should have enough time later for preparing for CB.

The result? 2 dead tanks and no one left to tank it.

Then everyone fell 1 by 1.

Lesson learned.

Hopefully we can get more members to come next fight!

Recent version update introduced a variety of new equipment but none of it appealed to me for both my jobs. What I liked and hate the most is increasing the limit of the group 2 merits.

Happy because I can now have Chivalry recast down to 10 minutes and Desperate blows giving me 25% haste, giving my average-equipped DRK some hope of reaching the 80% haste cap and have some fun.

Angry because now I have to earn 34 more merit points to cap everything.

Oh well, hopefully SE will release the final Campaign ranks soon so I can earn limit points and get promotion through campaign battles, thus killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

I’ve camped NMs for hours just to see it claimed by others.

I’ve had an Ulli stolen from me (pre-Ulli patch) by RMTs after hours of camping it.

I’ve lost lot of a very good and rare RARE/EX equipment to someone who doesn’t have nor levelling a job that can use it.

I’ve been through Kirin and Byakko wipes with the NM despawning.

I’ve had my fair share of LS drama involving the kicking of members and denying ownership of osodes and I’ve never felt good about it.

I’ve seen many friends return just to quit FFXI again.

But nothing’s more depressing than seeing the character/name of a friend being used by someone else.

To every friend I’ve made in FFXI, if you were to quit FFXI one day, just cancel your content IDs ok? At least you’re not paying anything and the name stays taken on the FFXI servers.

–

Update:

The story behind this entry, I was just finished with setting up my bazaar in Battalia and was about to go to sleep when I saw a familiar name checking my bazaar, a name I haven’t seen in many months.

I immediately did a /t to target this old friend.

The friend I knew had a female hume, but what I saw was a male tarutaru, and a mule character too.

Which led me to believe said friend had deleted her character and left without saying goodbye… *sigh*

While the majority would assume she had quit and gone on with her life, I can’t help but wonder if she had met with something unfortunate IRL. *touch wood*

Update 2:

For Trebla:

:)

Scholar

I had plans to take SCH to 75, so I can finally have my first mage job. But due to sudden events in the game, I’m halting SCH at 60 and continuing MNK, which I left off at 47.

During my SCH days of 10~60, the most boring periods are where I only have access to the first strategem and only have 1 charge.

Things slightly got better when I have 2 charges, but it was still hard to play SCH. In some PTs, I had to do erase and dispel. Having 2 charges with 2 minute recasts and because of SCH mechanics, it was difficult for me to switch between the 2 spells.

When I’ve reached the level for 3 charges and having access to Accession, this is when the job starts to get interesting.

Depending on the PT setup, I would choose between /RDM and /NIN. If we had a lot of melees and a PLD tank, I would opt for /RDM to give party members en-spells. As I already have capped enhancing magic from my PLD, the extra damage from these en-spells are mostly 15. Which is almost as good as having TP-free damage from 1~2 extra melees?

And if we had a NIN tank, I would sub /WHM for Stoneskin-ga to help him put shadows back up. But most NINs I PTed with couldn’t make good use of it. Perhaps I didn’t use enough MND equipment to give stronger Stoneskin or I’ve overestimated it for mid level parties.

1 min 20 sec for the charges to recover also made it a lot easier to switch between the 2 addendums for dispel and erase.

Motivation for Monk

I tend to level certain jobs as a way to show my appreciation towards my friends who’ve left FFXI. So yea, another friend has left. :(

I thought I wouldn’t feel anything this time but because we became quite close, and he is one of the FFXI players whom I’ve met in real life when I visited Japan last year, it was sad to see him go.

So to you, Z, I will level MNK to 75!

Thus for the past few days, I’ve been soloing EP/DC monsters for guard skill ups. It’s slow and I’ve already gained 3 levels, lol. Currently soloing Colibris in East Ronfaure [S], it’s suitable for LV48-51, I believe. My guard is in the 90s now. I don’t know how far my patience can hold before I start seeking for PTs, but for now, I’m just going to try to cap it.

Thoughts on PT setups

I’ve always believed that there shouldn’t be a fixed setup for making PTs. But at least, the basic tank and support job has to be there. Or not? (Healing breath setups, but usually for LV75 merit PTs)

As I levelled SCH in PTs, I’ve been in odd setups that work because the players are skillful and able to adapt. I’ve also been in the standard setup PT that didn’t work out well simply because 1 player really sucked.

Just wanted to let this out because I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about their PT setups the moment they joined the PT. Before they’ve given it a chance, before they’ve tried adjusting their play style a little to suit the odd PT setup.

In odd setups, the first hour is usually the worst. But once every player gets used to it, it may eventually turn out to be a very fun levelling session!

FFXI has 20 different jobs to play, and since I don’t static, I get to level in different PT setups. Different PT setups = different play styles = fun. This is what I’ve always believed in. Well, as long as each player knows their job well enough D: