On a completely unrelated note, the next person who tells me using Windower's extended macros isn't cheating because "it's only an extra one to two keystrokes" is getting punched right in the baby-maker.
But you all didn't come here to listen to me drone on about the onset of Carpal Tunnel syndrome. No, you came here to listen to tales of adventure and excitement. Since I haven't any new tales, I shall have to revisit an old one. I've made mention of it before, but I once had a Wonder Party. It took place months ago, but it made such an impression that I did a short write-up of it that's been floating around so I figure I may as well post it:
Does having the best party ever count as an accomplishment? Of course it does.
I finally got back to leveling Red Mage and tonight's trip to 45 was quite satisfying. My friend showed up tonight after a month long hiatus and since we were both bored with no real goals for the night we decided to go leveling somewhere. We decide to head for Western Altepa Desert to fight some Beetles. Along the way I managed to stumble across an entire party full of people who know what the hell they're doing. I was utterly dumbfounded. Our party looked something like this:
Red Mage - Me. I do an ok job of things.
Monk - My friend, he punches things until they fall down. He's a very intimidating Taru.
Paladin - Tarus can't be Paladins, right? Wrong! Seriously some of the best hate generation I've seen. The mobs looked at me once, maybe twice, during the four hours we partied. He also managed to not bleed all over the carpet, which was impressive.
Thief - Why are the Galka Thieves always the best ones? He was a seasoned puller and probably the first thief I've run across who asked for a SATA setup. He also managed to not pull when my MP was empty, something not many accomplish.
Dark Knight - For all the crap people give Dark Knights, this guy just disproved all of it. I made damn sure to keep refresh on him, because he made it worthwhile. Such spell slinging never have I seen before from a Dark Knight. Hell, he was helping me sleep links and Bind stuff to help keep the party from wiping at one point. Who knew?
Dancer - Holy Bajesus, Dancer makes everything better. Why they aren't in demand the way Corsairs and Bards are for exp parties, I'll never know. Ours was a Japanese player, so communication was limited but he stuck around for the whole thing even when we had a few mishaps and downtime. So damn many steps and sambas, this guy was a maniac. My only regret is that I couldn't properly tell him how awesome he was, and instead had to make an attempt using the Auto-translator.
So we made our way to Western Altepa Desert and set up wiping out beetles. It's a bit hectic, what with links and repops sneaking up on us, but we're at the tail end of the level range so we're handling it just fine. I'm relying on converts to keep on my feet, but there's enough support that the few times I did run empty it didn't even come close to a wipe.
All too soon I leveled up and the exp started to dry up, so we took a short break to figure out what to do next. I would have been content to end the night there. It had already been a fantastic run, but I didn't know where to go next. Thankfully my party did. We broke sync and headed for the Quicksand Caves.
We made our way to one end of the zone and started pulling in some beetles. They were tougher and a bit more taxing on the mp pool, but otherwise fine.
Unfortunately we were stuck with the less than ideal camp, which meant there were some ants to clear out if we wanted to get to the rest of the beetles. Damn were those some challenging fights. Every time we had to pull one of those, it ended up with me burning convert and still having next to no mp by the end of the fight.
One of the ants almost did us in. Our thief pulled one when my mp was already a little weathered, and somehow everything went wrong. I think our Paladin ran out of mp or something because he was suddenly in the red and I was fumbling for convert so I could cure him. Then he was down. This was the "Oh shit" moment. I flipped on Chainspell and raised him only to see another Taru, our monk, bite the dust. At this point we all had the sense to both call for a retreat as well as the sense to act on it. Some of our party was still under the Gravity effect from one of the TP moves. I tossed out a Gravity on the ant while the party retreated. Covering our not so swift-footed thief, the Dark Knight and I both cast Bind on the ant which stuck long enough for our party to make it to the zone line.
Alas, our Taru monk lay dead inside. Shortly after he recovered our Thief let us know that he would have to leave us soon. After about 15 minutes and someone leveling up it was time for him to depart, unless someone else was close to a level up. Turns out I only had 75 exp to go, so we tore through one last Beetle, declared victory and all celebrated having experienced a pretty rad party.
I do hope I'll get to see some of those folks again. I really had a lot of fun tonight.
Looking back this is still the party experience I hope to recreate every time I join a party. Everyone was on the ball that night and there was just enough challenge to make it interesting without turning it into a headache. This party is the standard of excellence and fun that I will probably spend the rest of my FFXI career chasing after.
Mohan is still out there punching things and as far as I can tell he's still a top notch Monk. Nothing stays alive very long when he's around.
Mrvile, our Paladin, is still one of the best tanks I've run into. He puts a lot of Paladins to shame.
Spitbreak is still the only Thief I've encountered who does a good job of juddging mage mp while pulling and still managing to keep things at a good flow.
Rydak played the role of Dark Knight masterfully and it pains me to see how poorly everyone else peforms the job after seeing him work.
Haine will clog your chatlog with all of his Dancer moves, but I'll be damned if it doesn't make everything work out just right. I've seen a lot of Dancers since him, but only one other could match him.
This party truly was too awesome for a mere blog entry to do it justice. It was one of those things that comes along precisely once, but I'm going to keep chasing the idea of having it again.
Now if only my fingers would stop aching...
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| From Mediocre Mage |
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