Azure Might in Nyzul Isle
I’ve spent the past few event days battle-testing my new Morrigan’s Robe and some remade macros in a wide variety of fun situations. I tore through the weak mobs in Dynamis, Einherjar, and Limbus and had enough magic accuracy to land debuffs against some of the harder Limbus and Einherjar bosses. The Morrigan’s is incredible. I’m hitting harder and more accurately than I ever had and the auto-refresh in a piece I can keep on full time does amazing things to turn Blue Mage into less spikey damage and more of an overall good DoT job. I guess it’s sort of a longer-sustained spike, but hey, that works too. With Refresh I get 5/tic without sanction or Balhran’s ring or MP Drainkiss or anything and that’s plenty to keep me going indefinitely. It’s really giving me a renewed love of the job.
I haven’t played BLU/THF in a while so I took it to the HNM Limbus. I got this nice Cleave. It’s not the most amazing BLU number you’ve ever seen, but I did it with only SACA at like 50% TP, no attack food, and no bard songs or buffs of any kind. The fact that I can do things like that NOT in the optimized situation is what interests me. Overall respectable numbers through the events of the week make me think that BLU has a serious place in the tougher fights.
I helped Lanilani get Fenrir (she leeched it on a taru mule) with Brim, Wise, and some other LS guys. Our first run was a frustrating wipe at 2% that used up most of 2hours gone but our second was quite a bit smoother. Brimah just straight-up tanked it on PLD like a champ, our sam stunned the 2hour, and Wise and I systematically took it apart with Garuda. 1540 predator claws ftw. A very enjoyable and easy fight. More people should just straight tank Fenrir, seriously. I got the Fenrir’s Stone for DNC soloing, but it’s not important enough to get its own screenshot.
My WAR is now level 62. WAR has a lot of little joys at this level. Using /SAM and anticipating a pecking fury with a single Third Eye. Whipping out a Shield Break at the start of the fight, meditating, and being ready for a Raging Rush mere moments later. Pulling hat off of other jobs that have weaponskilled using only melee attacks. But probably the most outright satisfying is Retaliation. Sure, it’s a vicious cycle of taking more and more hate and getting more TP for even more hate, but if it’s one of those parties where healing is plentiful there’s basically no better way to speed up damage. Every time I retaliated I had to yell out “NO U!!!” but I think it started to annoy the other people in the house.
I haven’t started leveling it yet, but I’m compiling a list of BLM gear and expensive spells to go after. Today’s little project was the moldy earring. I went to Onzozo and found Mysticmaker up but it didn’t drop. Two hours later I went back and found two THFs running around killing cocatrices and a SMN soloing gobs. I realized I didn’t actually pay close attention to where Mysticmaker was standing when it was up and so I was on the wrong side of the room when it popped and a THF got it. But he invited me to the party, saying I could have the earring and he was only after a mug and any gil drops. Sure enough, the earring dropped for me. It’s the little things like this that are slowly restoring my faith in the goodness of humanity. Thanks man.
After getting my computer back I reclaimed control of the Nyzul group, which actually got a few good pieces in my absence, and we did 3 runs on Sunday and four tonight on Friday. We’re up at the higher floors now and, while on the whole we are still quite successful, the weakness of my Nyzul group strategy is starting to show. I built up the group with a strong back line. We’ve never, ever, wiped to anything in Nyzul, no matter how nasty, because we have so much cure and sleep support. However, the stronger back line comes at a cost of speed efficiently. When Nyzul hands us lemons, we slowly make lemonade while fighting Psychflayers. It’s a problem that’s going to get nothing but worse as we tackle the last floors and when Brimah, our strongest DD, switches from SAM to THF for boss runs, a job that should be ready as early as next week. I haven’t fully decided how I’m going to fix this problem, though I am determined not to make any major staffing changes. Nobody’s getting kicked over it.
We aren’t totally hopeless though. Though we timed out on our first attempt to 80 (nasty timesink floors; any group would have been screwed on that one...), we killed Hydra on our second run and got this gem off of Cerbebus on the third. Congratulations to Kisa on Askar Korazin, our first nyzul body piece! More to come! We used our last tag to climb to 85 in like 15 minutes in a freakishly fast and easy run. 3/4 wins and one of the best overall pieces of gear. I'd call that a successful night in nyzul.
Running Nyzul is a bit stressful. I’m sure these guys have some unflattering things to say about how intense I can get when the odds start getting stacked against us. But I don’t think I’ve let them down yet. We’re getting really high up on my disk now and our members are finally starting to get some good gear. It's a pretty good group I've got here and I'm determined to keep it moving. Though I enjoy many aspects of this game; leveling new jobs and kicking ass on my 75s; I have to say that running Nyzul with my friends is my favorite event of the FFXI week.