Mediocre Mage: {/Lurk} off

Alternate title: A Return to Adventure, Despite my Better Judgement

Well it was bound to happen eventually. No physical injury has ever kept me away from gaming and I wasn't about to let it start now.

That's right, DrJones is returning to Vanadiel, and not just to work over the Jeuno Auction House this time.

While I won't be returning in full capacity, I've managed to alter my computer setup substantially to the point where I can at least go on the occasional adventure now.

It's going to be an uphill battle, but last night I managed to participate in my first exp party in months. Fatigue set in fairly early on but at least it didn't feel like my hands were going to fall off.

But enough of my blathering, you all came to hear tales of adventure, excitement and complaining about the quirks of dealing with the rest of the playerbase.

Last night's party was a bit of an odd one to come back to, that's for sure. I'm not a huge fan of level sync, but I've had good parties in Altepa before so I was willing to take the invite. The party configuration sent up a few red flags right as I showed up. For starters we didn't really have a tank job. I've had frontline jobs try to tank in parties before and it isn't pretty. So yeah, no tank, but at least there was going to be another mage in the back with me so I wouldn't be healing alone. Our lineup went something like this:
Red Mage
Scholar
Thief
Samurai
Dragoon
Puppetmaster

I've had parties that are a lot worse than that. However the lack of a tank is always worrisome, so when I asked who was going to be tanking I was shocked to hear that the PUP would be. Puppetmasters confuse me greatly. It's not that I have anything against them, but I just never know what to expect from them. Are they in charge of dealing damage? Or perhaps healing? Oh, they're tanks, now it all makes sense. What!?

To his credit the PUP managed to not bleed all over the floor for the first half of the night. Maybe it was because he was letting his puppet take the hits, or we just had enough healing between his puppet, myself and the scholar. Whatever it was, it was working out well enough.

Speaking of scholars, there's something I need to put out in the open: Working with other mages frustrates me. There, I said it. It's not that I dislike having other mages in the party, it's just that most of the time there's a severe lack of coordination and we end up stepping on each other's toes and wasting mp. Last night was a particularly bad case of it.

It started with the Scholar deciding to use Sublimation instead of taking Refresh, but whatever I can roll with that. Then we started casting redundant enfeebles, which really irked me. I'm the Red Mage for crying out loud. Your enfeebles tend to either not stick, have a shorter duration, or are simply less potent than mine. Taking care of the full cycle of them really isn't an issue for me, it's what I signed up for. You can let me do my job and we'll all be better off for it. It got really bad when they started pulling with enfeebles and kept changing it up so I didn't know what the mob had on it when it arrived.

The other thing we kept overlapping was Regen. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I absolutely love Regen. It is a simply fantastic spell and I wish more healers would use it. That being said, when you have two mages in the party who love regen and one has a more potent variety of it, there tend to be redundant castings of it. I try to watch for it in the chat log and watch the hp bars to make sure I wasn't casting it on someone who already had it, but some slip ups are inevitable.

Now it may sound like I absolutely hate this Scholar I partied with, but honestly it wasn't as bad as I make it sound. They were pretty good at keeping things under control and it was a relatively relaxing night. Also they were friendlier than most party leaders I come across. The things I complain about are more conceptual than specific to any individual. Besides, it's hard to hate someone who loves casting Regen just as much as I do.

My next goal is to get my Warlock's Gloves, but that's a ways off. So until then stare at these pretty pictures.

Me hanging out in Altepa with an awesome Tarutaru Dancer.