New Feature Has FFXI Synching to New Lows
It’s time for nobody’s everyone’s favorite type of EreBlog… Post-Version Update Review!
Level Synch
I sort of had a feeling this was going to be awesome, and it is. Oh sure, your gear gets nerfed totally to hell, but yet, for some strange reason, this doesn’t really seem to stop people from kicking ass. Since the update I’ve had a party in Yuhtunga jungle, Qufim island, and the Crawler’s nest all on my BLM. I’ve also been able to party with some good friends and great players that I just never had the right levels to party with like Dank, Kailani, and her boyfriend Lycas.
I’m not going to get into the mechanics of how it works, as I suspect anyone reading this already read the update notes and stuff, but I’m pleased with how simplistic it all is. When the target levels up, we all level up. EXP is exactly how it should be, and you can get exp or merits on a 75. In one party someone leveled to 37, another to 27, myself to 49, and two people got merit points. Sure, lower level exp is never going to be as fast or amazing as merit party levels, but being able to hang with your friends and level any job you like at lower levels makes parties so much easier to form and a lot more fun.
There’s something a little sacrilegious about me dinging level BLM 50 in Qufim island, but it seems this is going to be the norm from now on. Kids these days have it so easy. Why, in my day… blah blah blah… snore… BLM is 51 now and I plan to level synch the hell out of it instead of soloing.
Dancer Merits
Dancer got 4 tier 1 merits, and only two are actually any good, but the two that are any good actually are really good. Haste Samba potency and Reverse Flourish effect, baby! Capped haste Samba merits get it from 5% to 10%, double the power! Reverse Flourish merits add +15 to any Reverse Flourish with useful applications soloing, meriting, or doing anything really. It takes 30 total merits to cap 2 tier-1 categories so my 10 stocked up merits got me 1/3 done in a hurry.
Dynamis Drop Updates
We were planning on doing Dynamis - Beaucedine but had to change to Dynamis - Buburimu due to a schedule conflict. I’ve heard some pretty wild things about drop rates in the past few days and so we were expecting relic accessories to drop from the skies. They didn’t. We got one, the DRG belt, whoo. But we DID get like 8 -1 hands items, probably a record for us, so that’s some sort of evidence of drop rate changes.
Yer damn right I killed it. I’m getting more used to how BLU works in these types of zerg fights. It’s something like a sustained stream of small spikes of damage. I watch melees pop out 1000 damage weaponskills and barrages while dutifully doing my 200-400 damage spells, but after their TP is gone I still have enough MP to keep going for most of the fight. I don’t have any allusions about winning the parse but I can do halfway decent damage for a pretty long time. Zerg fights aren't a BLU's strong point so making a sizable contribution of any sort is okay. I more than make it up by shreading the little things.
I snagged the BLU -1 hands, probably the first on the server, but that’s sort of a lawl thing to make a claim at. No, I don’t have the real relic hands yet; obviously nobody does, since they drop from Sandy and we couldn’t have done two dynamis runs since the update. This actually caused a little bit of minor drama since our normal rule is that you can only lot -1 items if you have the normal relic first, but since everyone knew that nobody had the hands they said you can set the -1 hands for new jobs as your -1 lot anyway. A lot of people didn’t though and set -1 hands for different jobs as their lot, so when these dropped and only I and Lehant could lot (Lehant having left dynamis to go to work), they protested feebly against not being able to lot them. But it did them absolutely no good and I won with a 45. Should have paid attention during the pre-dynamis lotting debates!
BLU AF+1 and Relic
… is sort of subpar. I’ll Limbus upgrade the body to body+1 since it’s clearly the best body piece for pretty much any spellcasting, but none of the AF got substantially better stats to make upgrading any others worthwhile. The relic is okay-ish. Some of the pieces would make good macro-swappy pieces for certain spells. The only full-time piece would be the acc+10 refresh body, but that’s like a Morrigan’s-1 (-3?) and so I’d never use it. What’s disappointing is the lack of “special” stats. Where’s the “enhances chain affinity” piece? The “BLU points +5” piece? The only piece with blue magic skill is the freaking head with an insulting FIVE more skill. None of the pieces are of the “omg I HAVE to have that!” type. I mean, yeah, I’ll lot it and probably be able to fit it into my macros, but the dreams of a head with refresh or hands with +15 blue magic skill went down in flames in a hurry for no adequately explained reason.
Blue Mage’s Tizona
Where the relic armor fails, the mythic weapon succeeds. Okay, sure, Terpsichore is a pretty decent mythic weapon. But check THIS out…
Tizona
(Sword) All Races
DMG: 42 Delay: 236
Magic Accuracy +10
Occasionally converts damage dealt to MP
"Expiacion"
Aftermath: Increases Accuracy/Magic Accuracy
Occasionally attacks twice
Lv. 75 BLU
Yeah. Magic accuracy for spellcasting without a staff and freaking converting damage dealt to MP. Useful Aftermaths too for fighting those hard mobs that BLU has trouble with. It’s also the ONLY BLU weapon in the game that can double attack. Sorry dancer, you’re a fun job, but THIS is a relic weapon.
So yeah, consider the goal changed. I’m going to go through and change all my terpischore tags to mythic_weapon tags.
Nyzul Adjustments (and a few Nyzul runs)
So. While it’s pretty obvious that mythic weapons dropping from random NMs on any floor quashes my dreams of making millions by having a strangehold on the supply, the fact that having a high level disc lowers the pain of unlocking them is a consolation prize. I gathered most of the usual crew (plus Kailani herself) to make an attempt to climb from 86 to 100. It, hum, could have gone better.
Our first run we lost by seconds due to bad luck. That happens. Our second run got us up to 90 in like 20 minutes due to good luck, which also happens. Our third run, well, let’s just call it a disaster. A few mistakes were made, and once they started getting made, we kind of fell apart. It didn’t help that Brim and my internet went out for about 5 minutes either right in the middle of the run. We didn’t wipe (we NEVER wipe) but a lot of time was lost and confusion reigned and I had to exit on floor 94 to avoid failing entirely and losing a lot of tokens.
Quoteth V for Vendetta: “How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”
It’s a poor leader that can’t take responsibility for mistakes on their watch, and so I must. Kailani being totally fresh off the boat was a pretty big concern on my mind - she’s an amazing player, but Nyzul is very demanding and so am I, so I can hardly blame her for being a bit over her head with trying to keep up. Other mistakes from the veterans disturb me a little more, not because I’m worried about them screwing up but because of the exact opposite reason; because we’re such a closely-nit team that we can usually recover easily from any sort of mistakes. Perhaps we’re beginning to take that a bit for granted. I think, before next run, I’m going to clarify our general strategies in certain situations in Nyzul so it’s clear to everyone what their roles are and what to do in certain emergency situations.
I also think that when we start climbing other people’s discs I’m going to turn over leadership of the runs to them. Not as some sort of “yeah this is hard, see how YOU like it!” nonsense, but simply to get them more involved and see if the group can benefit from other people being in charge from different perspectives. I’m not going to lie that it will put less stress on me and I think I could use that every now and then.
It wasn’t a total loss. We did get a climb out of the way, Brim got a MNK mythic weapon, and Stray Mary actually dropped Mary’s Horn. Normal procedure is for me to sell gil items worth more than like 50k or so, but it doesn’t seem to sell that well or for that much these days, so I might end up asking the group to give it to Cribe. In any event, we have our four scheduled runs on Friday. Barring any really terrible luck I’ll have a BLU weapon and a runic key then and maybe someone will have a cool hat. My desk is totally made of wood; you can bet I’m knocking on it like crazy right now.