Back to partying for a night

Gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear gear!

Ok, now that I have that out of my system I can move on to discussing something someone might actually care to read.

I've been having a pretty dry spell as far as parties are concerned. When you're trying to be at the top of your game on the first job you level, you tend to take a lot of time off to get everything just the way you want it before carrying on. Sure I could zoom to 75 if I whored myself out and did a bunch of bird parties naked, but where's the satisfaction in that? So yeah, side projects of leveling sub jobs and getting awesome gear has kept me away from the party scene for a few months.

Tonight I wanted to hit 55 so I could start picking up some gear for my Dark Spark fight. A bit of an exp buffer would be nice too so I can make multiple suicide runs at this thing. So rather than waste time soloing I decided to flag up since I was fairly close and even if the party was horrible I could still get the exp I needed.

Well off to East Altepa Desert I went. I arrived at the outpost to find a frantic scuffle between the party and a goblin. Someone threw me a party invite and we were off like a rocket powered bobsled! I think it was about four goblins before I got enough of a breather to take a look and see who was playing what job combinations. This may be petty, but it really pisses me off to have to come into a party and have absolutely no adjustment period at all. I'm going to be joining your party but you can't be bothered giving me two minutes to look over everyone and sort out which mage is in charge of what? Oh well, at least we didn't wipe.

We had a Summoner, and a dancer, a Paladin, a Ninja, and a Monk. Weird setup but I'm not complaining, it seemed to be working. I must have blinked because the Tarutaru Summoner up and vanished at some point. Now here comes the crazy part: They brought me a White Mage!

I know, I couldn't believe it either. It was like a dream come true. Truth be told I much prefer to play back-up healer instead of main healer. It means I don't have to deal with status ailments and can be a little bit more focused on handling shit hitting the fan rather than the endless whack-a-mole that is the HP bar.

Things got even weirder when I received a /tell from the White Mage. Apparently I am a "damn good RDM". At the time I got this I was just standing around picking my nose as the party was doing its thing and the goblin was curled on the ground twitching feebly, so I couldn't tell if they were being sarcastic or not. Nope, turns out they meant it. I had done the unthinkable and actually bothered to toss them a Refresh.

0_0

>_<

O_O

For real guys? Are the rest of the Red Mages on my server so inept that they can't figure out how to Refresh the wondrous gift that is another healer in the party? I'm sorry, I'm not that good of a Red Mage but if I'm setting the high mark then I need to make a point of pimp slapping some pretenders to the title of Red Mage.

Gah, it makes me so angry!

There were so many things wrong with this party:

• The lack of adjustment period
• The Paladin cockblocking my Refresh with his tab-Refresh
• 3 people running off to tackle a new mob while while the healers remained stationary
• The Dancer learning that one of his Weapon Skills hits everything in an area leading to a partial wipe
• I forgot to change subs and came /BLU

However, by far the worst part of tonight was the misconception that I am somehow a talented and accomplished Red Mage. This means there are some truly horrendous Red Mages running around out there and that makes me shiver in fear.

Here we are...before things went haywire.