Generic update

My brain is all melty so it's generic rambling today.

It's been a month since I updated last. Mostly it's because I've been trying to keep busy.

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on Dragoon. It's quite a fun job and offers a stark contrast to Red Mage. It took me some time but I finally got it to cap. Looking back I feel a tad silly for buying top of the line gear for it on the way up rather than just slumming it since it always got stuck in some god-awful sync. Then again, it's a lot of fun to do roughly 40% of a party's damage, and the thought of my wyvern outdamaging people is both hilarious and depressing at the same time.

I feel like leveling Dragoon has opened a few doors to me. Before all I had to offer at events or pickup groups was Red Mage. What with the metagame being the way it is, Red Mage doesn't bring much to the table unless there aren't other options available. Sad but true. Now I can at least offer up the other half of the job spectrum (Magic vs Stabbing) so things are a tad more flexible now. Unfortunately I still feel like my Dragoon is woefully unprepared for prime-time. I've done what I can to start gearing it properly, but it's still miles behind my Red Mage. Just means I have more shinies to chase I suppose.

Mmmm...

How to put it.

The Linkshell I came to Valefor to join has since broken. The leader burned out and I can't really blame him. The guy worked weird hours and was putting in a lot of effort running the shell and trying to keep it accessible for everyone. Just too much stress I suppose. It's a shame, because I think it was honestly the best shell I've been in.

So when he stepped down from being the leader the shell split and people went in different directions. Some folks built a new shell designed for continuing to support new players while other folks drifted off into another social shell that was a bit more geared toward veteran players. I ended up following the folks to the social shell. It didn't have quite the same feel, but at least it had some friendly faces...I guess.

Something about it just didn't feel right. The atmosphere was a tad less friendly and jovial. The leader, who had done some events with the DiV shell previously, was a lot more talkative in their own shell.

How do I put this?

She was a bit cold, and sometimes her sarcasm bordered on just being mean to other shell members. The other night a few of us voiced some concerns. She did not take well to being told to stop repeatedly abusing a specific shell member. People got told off in an extremely aggressive and hurtful manner.

You want to run your shell that way? Fine.
I want nothing to do with a leader who thinks it's funny to pick on people and just generally be a raging bitch. It's such a shame too, I liked some of the other folks in the shell, but I just can't be happy in a situation where the management is like that.

So now I return to my eternal quest to find a good linkshell. Until then, I'll be aimlessly floating through Vanadiel.

Dear Black Mages

Stop opening with Sleepga II.

It's like wearing a neon flashing sign that says "I am terrible at my job."

Why can't I have nice Dynamis runs?

Dear Mages...

Cast Haste.

I'm tired of being the only competent mage in Abyssea pickup parties. Don't make me Haste the entire alliance by myself, stop slacking.

Even Quadavs know how to cast Haste. Why don't you?

Things I have learned from Dynamis

1. A disproportionate number of mages are incompetent

It's very discouraging to be a Red Mage helping with Sleeping large hordes of mobs only to see one of the Black Mages open with Sleepga II, thoroughly preventing us from keeping the horde in check. We are not going to be able to maul everything in 90 seconds. You're just making it harder to stagger the influx of assailants, so cut it out.

Another horrendous choice I saw made: White Mages not using Sublimation when we're encountering mobs that are continually sleeping the whole alliance. Yes that Refresh II is appealing, but you know what's more appealing? Being able to wake up the alliance so we don't risk a wipe and lose more time.

My own failures in all this boil down to not being on the ball enough. I've done a shamefully poor job of keeping up Refresh and Haste cycles with people running all over the place while simultaneously trying to make sure everything is slept. I feel some of this could be alleviated if the alliance was a little more coordinated, but I also know that I need to step up my own game, or maybe just mess with my chat filters some more.

2. Communication is the most important thing ever

Our shell leader insists on using Vent when doing Dynamis. I was reluctant at first, but I'm warming up to the idea. The problem however, is that this leads to there being almost no communication in-game. This coupled with the fact that the vast majority of the shell is not on Vent means that the whole thing is very poorly coordinated, which leads to all sorts of frustrations. We really need to take some time before the next run to just sit down and make sure everyone is at least listening in on Vent even if they don't own a mic. It would make it easier to issue instructions and keep everyone on the same page rather than having half the alliance left in the dark for most of the run.

3. Not everyone is suited to lead a Linkshell

Without going into too much detail, our shell leader had IRL issues last night that forced him to abandon the run early, and those issues are likely to do so again. If your situation outside the game is such that you cannot consistently be there during the event, then maybe you shouldn't be leading a shell. I'll stick with the shell for now, but last night raised a number of red flags for me.

I am sick of your goddamn pinball machine

When you bring a PL to a party, figure out whether you want the mob wailing on the PL or a tank. I am sick of having to chase the mob back and forth between the party and the PL.

Tonight it got so bad that I was very close to losing it and just tanking on Dragoon until I got myself booted. Very tempted, but then it was Linkshell party so I didn't want to be a complete dick to everyone there. Just to some of the people there.

I want to party with these guys next time. They seem liked they've got their act together.

You're not allowed to use the Auction House anymore

I know I'm about eight years late to the beating of this dead horse, but people need to learn how to use the Auction House without being complete idiots.

I found a completely untapped market for something which was averaging less than one sale each day and was consistently absent from the Auction House. Over the course of a week I slowly managed to creep the price up a few thousand gil by putting one stack on sale each day. This is of course the cue for some idiot to come along when I was taking a break from supplying the item and set the price right back to where it was before I started.

Why would you do this? These things were flying off the AH as soon as they were listed. People were willing to pay the premium to get them. There was no competition when you listed your items that week. Why on earth would you choose to lower the price? It's not like you needed to drive others out of the market because they were muscling in on your market and making your sales slow.

So yeah, after a week or so away from the market I return and find some idiot has decided that lowering prices is a good thing when you have zero competition for your product.

There's enough demand and speed of sales that this person isn't going to affect my profits, but damn. If the demand and lack of supply accommodates higher prices then why would you consciously choose to not take advantage of that?




I need to go fishing in Purgonorgo Isle sometime. The scenery is just so vivid there.

So you thought removing the level caps on CoP was a good thing...

Well you were fucking wrong.

My linkshell did some CoP tonight.

We did the Mammet fight.

I didn't even get to finish watching the cutscene before they had cleared the battlefield.

Minotaur was similarly trivial.

This is not making things more accessible, this is blatantly removing content by making it trivially easy.

I'm so angry I don't even have a screenshot for you. God damn!

Genkai 2

*sigh*

"Underwhelming" is the only description that springs to mind.

Tonight my Linkshell took it upon themselves to run me through my second Limit Break quest. This one involved defeating some Notorious Monsters in the frozen northlands of Xarcabard.

I had wandered up to one earlier in the week just to see how hard it hits and it floored me in less than a minute. It wouldn't even be worth attempting to solo, unlike Dark Spark where I could see a glimmer of hope poking up just beyond the horizon.

Stomping on them with three higher level players helping just didn't bring me any satisfaction. It made the whole ordeal trivial, a chore, a minor inconvenience. I knew this was going to happen too. Hell I didn't even have to properly research the NMs, we just wandered up there and slaughtered them.

This was not an adventure.

I really need to make a point of exploring the Shadowreign era. It turns up cool stuff like this.

Front line melee...

I just got out of a party and I'm damn near frothing at the mouth with rage.

Let me back up a minute before I injure myself with all this concentrated hatred.

Last week my friend and I were working on unlocking Samurai and we damn near had it but had to logout before the NPC finished smithing our swords. Figuring it'd be a fun class to tag team with my friend I decided to get off my ass and level a subjob for it, namely Warrior. This is all part of my back-burner plan to level Dragoon some day.

After bouncing past the Dunes levels I spent some time skilling up in the Dunes(oh irony, you slay me). After some time with my flag up I get a party invite to the oddest of places. Rolanberry Fields in the past. Well I haven't been there before so I venture out and it takes freaking forever without chocobos or teleporty goodness or even maps. After burning through a full stack of powders and oils getting to camp I find the party. The setup makes more sense once I learn there's someone Power Leveling the party, but that's irrelevant.

The point being that this was my first party as a Damage Dealer(DD).

After two hours...I have complete and utter contempt for all DDs. It's the fucking lazy man's job, no two ways about it. The difference between playing a front line melee and playing a mage job is like night and day.

The DD does this:

1. Hit things with pointed sticks
2. Use one, maybe two Job Abilities
3. Execute a Weaponskill
4. Repeat

I swear to god, that's all that's required of them and they get a pat on the head and a cookie.

Whereas on Red Mage I get to take care of all this and more:

• Keep everyone alive
• Cure status ailments
• Dispel enemy buffs
• Keep folks Refreshed
• Keep folks Hasted
• Apply Enfeebling magic
• Renew Enfeebling magic
• Sleep links
• Try not to draw hate
• Nuke
• Manage MP while accomplishing all of the above

This is absolutely bananas!

For the entire party on Warrior I was able to play with a PS2 controller in hand.

I can't get away with that on Red Mage. No, on Red Mage I'm hammering macros so frantically I need the keyboard just to jump through 5 macro pages in a timely manner. Don't even get me started on how I have to take in the scope of the battle and give the party the kick in the ass it needs when it comes time to retreat; Setting down the controller and picking up the keyboard to type a message takes way too damn long.

This...this just makes me angry. I don't have the proper words to convey it, just a boiling sensation of rage that the majority of the party workload is getting dumped on the mage. I suspect whatever's left is given to the tank, because the role of Damage Dealer requires no accountability whatsoever.

This...


...turns into this mess.


Shooting bunnies with axes.

On Summoner Burns

Being the sync for Astral Flow burns is boring as hell.

I was leveling Warrior in Gustaberg today and got an invite to one. Let me tell you, standing around twiddling your thumbs for over an hour as folks do the pull is not fun. The exp was great, I guess, but I still have to go skill up now so it's not like I skipped the grind. Jumping into a party is out of the question until I grind up my skills to the point where I can hit things again.

Yeah, not doing that again. A total waste of my time.


None of that...ever again.

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.

...And I'm out of gil again

That's not hyperbole. Tonight I signed off with a grand total of zero gil. I'm just that talented.

This seems to be how all of my gil-making schemes go. Get a great idea for making tons of gil without the headache of abusive 4 to 6 hour farming sessions just to pull in a pittance. Great idea requires some investment capital to get it under way. I throw all my gil at the startup investment.

???

Profit?

My current gil-making scheme involves gardening.

There is surprisingly little reliable information about it, given just how well documented the entire rest of the game is. Hell, there are still people who swear by the 'run around your mog 3 times on a quarter moon during water's day between 12:00 and 14:00 if you want X result instead of Y' kind of mumo-jumbo. It seems the FFXI community has managed to breed that superstition out of crafters, but since gardeners are a secretive bunch they've been left to develop on their own.

I might be speaking from ignorance here, but from my limited experience all this day, moon cycle stuff is total superstition. Nothing more and nothing less. It didn't affect drop rates or crafting results, I see no reason why it would affect gardening.

You know what I do believe in?

Pots, Crystals, Seeds and the almighty Random Number Generator gods. Anything else is players experiencing a coincidence and subsequently convincing themselves of a correlation that doesn't exist. SE adores their RNGs in all other aspects of the game (drop rates, hit rate and crafting success capping at less than 100%), why should gardening be any different.

Sort of got off track there, sorry. It's just really frustrating to deal with a bunch of superstitious nonsense thrown in with the lack of documentation when trying to research something.

Now where was I? Ah yes, I have no gil. I have no gil because I threw all of it into purchasing new flowerpots.

This had damn well better work.

Worst Design Choice

There's been a lot of new stuff that came with the update. Some of it good, some of it bad and some of it easily ignorable.

However, I think I've managed to pin down the worst design choice of the entire update:

They put a Cavernous Maw right at the zone line for Konschtat Highlands!

I'm sorry, but this is worse than any mechanics tinkering or quest line nonsense. This utterly kills the aesthetic appeal of the game. This thing looks like a big ugly monster and you stick right at the spot where new adventurers from Bastok are going to zone in? What were you thinking? This is a gateway to endgame content, the least you could do is hide it out of the way like you did with the original Maws so players have to go out of their way to get to it. To me this screams "We are ignoring the possibility of new players", not to mention it utterly ruins the immersive atmosphere that I've come to love in this game.

I know the game is fairly old at this point, but there's no excuse for these shenanigans.

Obligatory Update Entry

So Red Mage tanking got axed today.

I'm pretty pissed about it. I was nowhere near being able to even attempt it, but it was always something I was looking forward to eventually trying.

Now I can't have that to look forward to.

Weekend Wipe

That Blue Mage thing is still happening, but I'd like to steer the blog away from focusing on that for a while.

One of my friend's has been getting back into the game lately, so I've been spending some time giving him a hand with some of the nation missions. The most recent one we tackled took us to the Gusgen Mines where he had to fight a Pugil. I came along on Red Mage as backup so he didn't have much to worry about, aside from his sporadic connection. We've been perplexed by this phenomenon in which his connection takes a nose dive around the same time every night before stabilizing an hour later. The weirdest part is that it seems to just boot him off FFXI, because he doesn't get kicked off his XBox Live thingy. We're pretty much stumped at the moment, but at least it beats the satellite internet connection he had at his old place.

The other big thing to overcome when making a return to the game is making gil. I did what I could to spot my friend some gil to get him back on his feet, but the need for income is a constant problem for all of us. However, a few coincidences coincided to make it clear what my course of action ought to be.

Many moons ago I had spent a lot of time running around in Rolanberry with a Corsair while searching for my Rambler's Gaiters. At the time we had devised a scheme to see if there were any money making schemes we could tag-team. We had decided to attempt a Burning Circle Notorious Monster(BCNM) fight. In preparation I had saved up and spent 30 Beastman Seals to acquire the requisite Sky Orb. Unfortunately before we had a chance to make the attempt the fight, the Corsair vanished. I still haven't heard from him since.

The other half of the equation is that my friend just recently reached level 30, the level this particular BCNM fight is capped at.

So what the hell, I thought. This thing's been collecting dust for months and we could both use the gil so why not make an attempt? The original plan was to attempt to duo Creeping Doom, but I decided to see if anyone in my Linkshell was interested. My old pal Mohan decided to tag along. Awesome, the more punching power the better.

We all met up in Giddeus, two Monks and a Red Mage. After discussing some strategy we entered the arena.

Oh my god was I unprepared. I'd done my homework on this fight and figured subbing White Mage to help deal with paralysis would be a good idea. What I hadn't counted on was just how durable the crawler was with the ability to spam Cure III on itself. I ended up wasting a lot of MP trying to silence the darn thing. Even with level appropriate gear for the fight, it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe I should have subbed Black Mage for Elemental Seal after all.

However, I feel that my choice of sub-job wasn't really the issue here. I felt really rusty and flustered during this fight. I had planned to join in the melee after dropping the initial enfeebles, but when the time came I ended up fumbling with my gear a bit while trying to make sure my friends were on their feet and not paralyzed. Between that and trying to land Silence I wasn't really as quick on my feet as I needed to be. The chatlog flew by me and I wasn't even watching for enfeebles wearing. It was just a shameful performance on my part. Because of my indecisiveness I also managed to completely ignore the need to rest for mp. I placed too much faith in my Yagudo drinks. We lasted a good while, but the constant Cure III spam from the monster outlasted us. One by one we all hit the dirt.

Nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

I'm not so sure. My friends didn't seem to think too much of it, but the more I turn the scenario over in my head, the more convinced I am that this loss lies squarely on my shoulders. I wasn't on high alert, I didn't read the situation and adapt to it the way I needed to. Worst of all, I panicked and froze up often enough to disrupt the flow of things and eventually that got us killed.

Makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for this Red Mage business.

The "Fun Pile" after our wipe. Good effort guys, we'll have to try again sometime.

I picked up some cool shades from a Bazaar and I've taken to wearing them everywhere.

Carpenter's Landing makes for an interesting and photogenic environment.

{/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.

From Mediocre Mage

Fireworks help pass the time on the long airship rides.

From Mediocre Mage

I've spent a lot of time just idling in the jungle lately. It just seems peaceful there.

From Mediocre Mage

Use your MP!

Dark Knights frustrate me.

No, that's not entirely true. People who do a poor job of playing Dark Knight frustrate me.

The job has a lot to offer and I've seen a notable improvement in party performance when I get a Dark Knight who knows what he's doing. However, more often than not I'll get stuck with someone who refuses to tap into the full potential of the job. There's this nice juicey MP pool for them to draw on all night long and they won't even look at it.

I don't understand it at all. You've been given an awesome toolbox full of goodies, but all you want to do is hit auto-attack? For shame.

You wouldn't believe how often I've seen a Dark Knight sit there on a full MP pool who won't bother to Drain back some HP after they get hit. The option to sustain yourself is there, so why would you not make use of it? Why take the chance that your healer might run out of MP or not get to you in time before you wind up on the receiving end of a particularly nasty attack and bite the dust.

Let's not forget Stun. Stun is such an awesome tool to have at your disposal. Most Damage Dealers have little to offer in the way of supporting their party, but Dark Knights are blessed with the ability to do more than just kill the enemy. Is the Ninja tank having trouble putting Utsusemi shadows back up because he's taking a few too many blows to the face? Stun it to give him some breathing room so he can recast with ease. Is the mob about to perform a devasting move that's going to wipe out half of everyone's HP? You can stun that if you've got good timing. Just make an effort, that's all I'm asking. I don't expect Dark Knights to be single-handedly fixing everything that goes wrong on the front line, I just want to see them make an effort to use Stun when it can help the party.

What really gets under my skin, as a Red Mage, is watching those full MP pools. Fairly often I'll see that a Dark Knight has been making use of his spells, as evidenced by a less than full MP pool. Thinking that I've finally found one who will be making good use of his spells I cast Refresh on him, so as to slowly replenish his MP.

This is quickly followed by me beating my head against a wall repeatedly.

After applying Refresh, all spellcasting from the Dark Knight immediately halts. You were down ~50 MP so I thought I'd help you maintain your spellcasting and how do you reward me? By wasting my MP! If I give you Refresh it is because I expect you to continue continue casting spells. You're not doing me any favors by stockpiling MP and you're certainly not helping by letting me waste Refresh on you so you can watch it sit on your buff list while providing not benefit at full MP.

I try to help Dark Knights and it just screws with my own efficiency. To date, I've only met one Dark Knight who's made it worth my while to supply him with Refresh. He also happens to consider Red Mage as his main job, go figure.

I have no problem with Refreshing Dark Knights, I'd just like to see a little return on my investment is all. Is that really such a bad thing?

From Mediocre Mage

Ok, that was a lot of complaining, so here's a pretty picture to make up for it.