Tanking: in which I poke things I shouldn't

So here's a thing.

Tonight my linkshell event got canceled, leaving me at loose ends for the night.

Here's another thing.

Now being the whimsical and somewhat haphazard Red Mage that I am, I figured tonight would be a perfect opportunity to attempt to copy someone else's success. I headed out to Abyssea Attohwa and began climbing Parradamo Tor.

Parradamo Tor is a particularly obnoxious mountain with ledges two feet wide and obstacles littered all across the path to the summit. I've only climbed it twice before and heartily detest it. Seriously, it's one of the more obnoxious level designs in FFXI, which is saying something.

When I finally dragged myself up to the top of the mountain I could see Yaanei drifting along in the distance. I quickly buffed myself and crossed the plateau in search of Yaanei. After some running back and forth I managed to locate the aberration.

As I fought, I found it interesting that this creature which is essentially a second zone boss was susceptible to all of the standard enfeebles. These days most NMs are immune to a bunch if not all of our enfeebling magic. Being able to use my enfeebling magic unhindered makes just about any fight go a lot smoother.

The beginning of the fight was fairly simple. Yaanei swings a little faster than most big monsters, but it's not enough to make shadows useless. The only concerning threat is the tier IV AoE spells he casts, but with Addle and their native cast time you should have plenty of time to switch into a MDT(magic damage taken -%) set even if you aren't able to run out of range. I found my nukes were either getting horribly resisted or that Yaanei is packing some mad magic defenses. My tier IV nukes weren't even breaking 1,000 damage and my nuking set isn't exactly terrible. So this was looking to be a long and drawn out fight.

As I was shaving off the first quarter of Yaanei's health I almost tripped over something low to the ground and a tad beligerent. There was a Tarutaru Black Mage who had scaled the mountain as well and we was offering to assist me. Somewhat disheartened by my uninspiring damage output and the ticking clock, I agreed to accept his offer. For the most part my play didn't change. I had built up a ton of hate and Yaanei was very intent on trying to clobber me and didn't care too much about the Tarutaru that was dropping stuns and additional nukes. Kill speed had gone up considerably, though it was still a slow and arduous process to be sure. At some point the Tarutaru asked for me to pass him party lead. Turns out he had two friends on the way to help as well.

When the White Mage and Warrior Tarutarus finally arrived, a curious thing happened. I found myself receiving Hastes and -na spells for the nasty status effects Yaanei was now doling out. It seemed that no one really wanted to pry the beast's attention away from me so I was going to be allowed to tank. No one actually said it, but there's an old saying that still holds true: "Actions speak louder than words", and the party's actions spoke volumes. I'm sure both the Black Mage and the Warrior could have taken hate if they'd cared to, but with our rag-tag band I was best suited to holding the monster's attention while simultaneously Not Dying. It was fun, it was amazing, it was something I thought I'd never get to do after the update that nerfed all of Red Mage's enmity tools. But hey, if I can cap hate early and not fall over it's all good, right?

As the Caturae was on its last legs, they asked me to slow down on killing it as they were still trying to proc red for the atma. An odd request given our slow and steady approach thus far, but ok. I slowed nuking almost to a halt. Spellcasting became slower as I mainly cycled shadows and tried to recall which spells in my arsenal still gave me cumulative enmity, because I knew the shadows were slowly eroding my hold on hate. I knew enspells gave some CE, and renewing enfeebles seemed to provide enough volatile enmity to hold out long enough to proc red. Afterwards, at about 10% health, Yaanei decided to get really mean and began unleashing nasty AoEs that inflicted horrible status effects like terror and also swatted some of the Tarutarus after hate reset. There were enough targets that we were able to survive while the monster induldged a serious case of ADD. Eventually I regained hate and was able to hold Yaanei as the rest of the party tore down the last few shreds of its HP.

We won. I got a spiffy new cape. Congratulations and fireworks were had by all.

And people say Red Mage tanking is dead...Ha!

Soloing.


Celebrating our victory.


This is what happens when my linkshell is waiting on people to get to Voidwatch.


I've been having an absolute blast in Nyzul Isle lately.


Ah bunny punching, it never gets old.

Look Pimpin'

Oh this has been a long time coming. I can finally wear my pimp hat in my idle set again and it goes well with my new pimp coat. Life is good and I am stylish once again.

Failure is a good thing

The more you fail, the more opportunities you have to improve yourself. It is only when a player refuses to learn from their mistakes that we ought to ruthlessly and shamelessly make fun of them.

Today I had a wonderful failure in Abyssea, Vunkerl Inlet to be precise.

One of our Linkshell members had expressed interest in obtaining a Pluviale during today's scheduled romp through Abyssea. Due to some attendance issues the event was postponed a bit.

Being the reckless Red Mage that I am, I figured I would make use of the down time to scout out the Notorious Monster that dropped the frilly prize we'd be after. Turns out we'd be fighting a hulking behemoth made up of scrap metal and spare garbage cans.

I found the beast wandering around when I got there and decided I may as well poke it and see how hard it hits. The verdict: not as bad as I feared, but still enough that I'm not keen to stay within punching distance. Quickly I turned on my heel and ran, trying to dodge some tigers along the way. Sadly they were far more alert than I gave them credit for and one of them followed me out of the valley, joining the Executioner's quest to pound me flat. The tag-teaming worked and I found myself face down in the dirt.

After dusting myself off and resting up I realized I needed a new approach, or at least a different escape route. There's another valley to the south that proved to be much more suited to my task, even if it meant dragging the Ironclad Executioner on top of all those Bastion combatants. It was fairly empty, but had plenty of rocks and trees to put between me and the overgrown dumpster. I tried kiting to the end of the valley and back to the initial spawn area, and that worked for a while but ultimately it ended up being a little too risky. The spawn area isn't really suited to kiting and a number of times I ended up within punching range over there. Eventually that proved to be my undoing as I got caught in a stun-lock and was beaten into a fine paste while a Tarutaru watched on the sidelines cheering me on.

This time around I had managed to wear down the beast's hp to well under 50% so one more try wasn't so unrealistic. However, before continuing I decided to take some time off. If you tackle NMs too fast and too often you end up burning yourself out. Sometimes it's good to just take a break and reflect on what you've learned. In this case, I'd learned that the goal of soloing the NM was well within sight and that the southern valley had proven to be a safer location for pulling it off. In particular, there is one tree at the end of the valley that works well as a pivot point, letting you slingshot yourself back north while the NM crawls around after you (instead of making a bee line straight for you). It's not a lot, but it slows him down enough that you can put a little distance between you. On the northen end of the valley, there's a couple of rock formations that can provide a similar reaction, although they seemed to be less reliable.

It's not just during downtime that you learn though. During my next attempt I began to pick up on other things that were important, such as how dropping a tier IV nuke always seemed to leave me open to swatting due to the slow cast time. Actually a lot of spells were long enough that I had to time it just so, or I'd end up getting swiped at. Luckily the wonderfulness that is /SCH offers a solution: Alacrity and Celerity. When your primary concern is keeping yourself out of harm's way, mp efficiency becomes secondary to getting your spells off fast enough to let you get back to running. When stratagems are down your options tend to shift a bit. Instead of dropping high tier nukes you drop lower tier nukes. With buffs you end up having to just pull far enough ahead of the mob that you can hopefully finish casting before it catches up with you. Poison II and Bio II cast fast enough that you don't really need to waste stratagems on them.

In case I was being too subtle, /SCH is really what makes the whole operation work, but not just because of the stratagems.

No, what makes /SCH work so damn well is Sandstorm and Desert Boots.

For those of us who aren't fortunate enough to have spent years in a Sky linkshell getting Crimson Cuisses, /SCH offers the unparalleled boon of increased movement speed at a very affordable price. It's not as noticeable as the boost given by bard songs or the super Kupowers, but it's enough that you can realistically outrun the NM without applying Gravity. You just need a long enough corridor in which to do it.

So yes, on my third attempt I managed to take what I'd learned along the way and annoy the iron giant to death. Failure is a good thing kids, it's how we learn to kick more ass.

Soloing in a Broom Closet

While it's not exactly a noteworthy accomplishment to solo a level 70 Notorious Monster when you're level 80, today's adventure feels noteworthy all the same.

I've been meaning to get to Sky and I've started the legwork on the missions. Today I've been going around to the Cermet headstones and collecting fragments. But enough with the exposition.

I wandered into Cape Terrigan and tackled Axesarion the Wanderer. He's a Shadow and takes reduced damage from magic, so my nukes weren't exactly melting his face. The tricky thing though, was that he's located at the end of a tunnel that's constantly patrolled by goblins, meaning I couldn't exactly kite him over long distances. In fact I couldn't really kite him more than a few feet. The room was incredibly tiny and the goblins were all breathing down my neck the whole fight, but I somehow managed to keep enough distance between me and the NM that he couldn't swing at me while bound.

This is sort of the problem I've always had with the concept of kiting NMs, there's always an entire zone full of aggro waiting to ruin your attempt if the NM doesn't. Today I started learning some basics of how to get around this. You really don't need much space at all if there's a clear spot that doesn't have aggro. Just enough space that the monster can't swing at you. It kind of blew my mind when I realized what can be done with just a broom closet of aggro free space.

It got pretty hairy when I got caught with Convert down.

That room is so tiny.

He really is just an old man

For years and years it has been commonly accepted that Red Mages have the toughest time fighting a certain snarky old man in Jeuno. I've heard from just about everyone I've talked to how this guy is the biggest badest fighter around and how he'll turn you inside out at the drop of a hat.

Well tonight I threw my own pimp hat in the ring against this trouncer of intrepid travelers and there's something I need to set straight once and for all.

The Maat fight for Red Mage is not difficult.

Yeah, you heard me.

The only people Maat is going to break in half are those folks who are utterly unsuited for the job. You know the kind, the ones who like to pull out their wand and beat on gobbies during a party. The ones who are better off leveling a less complex job.

It really irks me how there's been this aura of fear cultivated for this one specific fight and it has totally failed to deliver. I was really looking forward to having Maat wipe the floor with me and force me to rethink my strategies. You know, something to challenge me to be a better Red Mage. Instead, I got a mewling kitten of an opponent who did not teach me anything.

The fight itself was really quite simple.

Once I got in the arena I regained my Composure and proceeded to apply most of my normal buffs. Then, mindful of the importance of recast timers in a fight like this, I dropped Composure and ran in to find Maat casting some buffs of his own. Well we certainly couldn't have any of that, so I hit him with Sleep and proceeded to strip him of all his buffs. It took a fair chunk of mp, so afterwards I dropped Sleep II over top of the original sleep and grabbed a few ticks of mp for myself.

Brimming with mp, it was now time to knuckle down and start smacking the elderly around. Maat didn't take kindly to Gravity the first time around, but it hardly mattered. If you drop an Aero III from far enough back then he won't even make it through Blink before you've slept him again. Scoot back, nuke again, Sleep II and grab mp, repeat.

Heck, even when the old man let loose a Chainspell it didn't matter, he slept right through that too. When I readied my own Chainspell he called for a time out after the first nuke. It was quite sad really.

This guy has been built up as some sort of monster in the guise of a little old man and it just isn't the case. I'm sorry, but this was not a challenging fight.

The silver lining to all this was learning about Maat's past. The fact that he was a fisherman, and therefore absolutely crazy, makes everything fit into place for me somehow.

Still searching for a worthy adversary.

Krakens off the port bow!

Tonight I spent some time reaffirming my suspicions that soloing isn't always easy.

I've been sitting on a sizeable stockpile of Beastmen's Seals for quite some time now but I never bother to actually round up people for BCNM fights to actually spend them on.

Tonight I decided to fix that somewhat and took it upon myself to try soloing Up in Arms.

This seemed like the logical choice for me. I had heard that a Red Mage could solo the fight earlier in the week. I've also become considerably averse to syncing down past level 51 if I don't have to or if it isn't for friends, so a level 60 fight was right up my alley. Lastly, this fight was against a lone Sea Monk, which was the logical progression of what I'd been fighting recently.

See, I've spent the last week or two hanging out in the Sea Serpent Grotto soloing Sea Monks in the room Charybdis spawns in, keeping tabs on the NM for the rest of my shell so we can all get Joyeuse.

So a fight against the type of mob I've been practicing on seemed like a good choice.

I proceeded to do my homework on the fight and learned that the Sea Monk would gradually build up a resistance to Sleep spells, so I would have to modify my usual tactics somewhat and use Bind and Gravity more heavily than I had been. Also there was a time limit. Some nasty special moves as well.

So I spent my evening gearing up and heading over to Waughroon Shrine. I got into the arena and buffed up. The fight went pretty much how I expected it would, Gravity sticking and nuking down the long hallway and then throwing Bind in the end rooms to hold the monster in place while I doubled back into the hallway again. It was actually pretty easy once I got into the Rhythm of it, basically using Bind where I would have used Sleep before and saving the Sleep spells for times when I needed to recover some mp by resting. There were a few iffy moments where Stoneskin went down and I had some tentacles reaching into places they shouldn't, but overall it went pretty smooth. Sailing along nicely I had wittled the monstrosity down to about 2/5 of his health left, maybe a little less, but then something awful happened.

The time limit was up.

I felt foolish. There had been little to no danger of me actually dying. Instead I lost simply because I hadn't been nuking fast enough. What a frustrating turn of events.

I'm hesitant to try again right away because the problem seems to be more than just slipping up. This is more along the lines of forcing myself to unlearn bad habits I've picked up soloing in a dark, damp cave.

Or maybe I should have just used chainspell to nuke at the start of the fight and kited the rest of it.

Port Bastok is Beautiful.

Staff chucking?

Life is good in Vana'diel.

After getting my pimp hat and hitting level 60 I spent some time in Crawler's Nest finally learning the basics of soloing without using my sword. It's a very different sensation than I'm used to and it seems a whole lot slower than just pulling out my sword and beating a mob to death. On the other hand I was badly in need of some magical skillups and with some shiny few Fast Cast on my hat it seemed like a good idea.

The basic theory behind spell slinging soloing is to nuke a whole lot and keep the mob from getting close enough to chew on my face. Between Sleep, Sleep II, Gravity and Bind this can be done fairly easily provided you can get your spells to land without too many resists. Unfortunately relying on Sleep means I can't speed up kills using Poison or Bio, and the kills are already long enough to start wearing on my patience. Sure it's safer, but it doesn't silence the little voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I'd be getting better exp by sword-chucking.

I think the thing that throws me the most about this whole kiting/sleep-nuking method is the awkwardness that comes from running away to keep your distance from the monster. Dodging aggro might be an refined art, but I'm starting to suspect picking an appropriate battleground is just as important. Being unable to see in 360 degrees, I'm either losing sight of the mob I'm trying to kill, or I'm running blind straight into walls, rocks, shrubbery and disgruntled goblins. Usually I'll opt to keep an eye out for goblins, but that makes it hard to tell how far away the pursuing mob is and with the camera rotation being slow as it is, this either necessitates guesswork or stopping long enough to turn around and discover that yes indeed the mob was close enough to begin preparing an adventurer sandwich.

As with most things, I suspect more practice will make this easier as time goes on.

If nothing else I'll eventually develop nervous ticks for when all the spell timers are ready.

We've been doing some Avatar runs lately.

I've taken to stealing all the killshots.

Tony Stark's got nothing on me

It really is just that awesome.

The game has become that much more enjoyable at level 60.

Pimp Suit: Complete

It's been a busy weekend, but by far the best thing that's happened is the acquisition of the supremely stylish Warlock's Chapeau. This has been a long time coming as the pinnacle of spiffy hats is one of my long term goals for this game.

The problem I face now that I have it, is that I cannot yet equip it. Back to the exp grind I suppose.

That aside, the acquiring of the hat was more pleasant than a few of my other adventures involving higher level folk. The Guardian Statue in particular felt like a brutal battle. He's spawned in a rather small room in Garlaige Citadel and is rather large. The monster then proceeds to use spinning attacks that clobber everyone in the room for a few hundred points of damage and ripped through my Stoneskin relatively easily. I was glad to have my Linkshell there to support me tonight.

All in all I'd say this weekend marks a turning point in my FFXI career. Things are finally starting to pick up the pace and take off into something even more enjoyable than before. It's like the Red Mage AF suit has granted me rocket propulsion powers akin to that of Ironman. Now I just need someone to photoshop that image together...

I am a Spacetime Mage!

Exciting times are upon us!

By which I mean I spent the weekend collecting some spiffy RDM Artifact armor.

I blame my linkshell for this entirely. One of the other members was complaining about how I mismatch my gear and threatened to purchase the whole Crow Jupon set for me just so I'd have something that matched. Jokingly I retorted that we could do that or I could get off my ass and actually finish hunting down the rest of my AF. Well wouldn't you know it, he decided that we both needed to drop everything we were doing and go find it right then and there.

If you've been following along at home you probably know so far I only have two pieces of Artifact Armor so far. They generally require some dungeon crawling and this was no exception. First I needed to find my RDM Pants. I've been meaning to get them if for no other reason than to be able to find an excuse to say "I guess it's time to put on my RDM pants".

We headed East to Garlaige Citadel and promptly fell down some holes in the floor.

Turns out that was part of the plan since I needed some coffer keys and they could be farmed down there. Farming was rather uneventful, but one thing that I did notice and confused the hell out of me was the presence of Lightning elementals down there. That just doesn't make any sense. There's no weather indoors, much less in a basement. Yeah, explain that one to me again.

After finding a key we made our escape back to the entrance and borrowed a few players to open the Banishing Gate. At that point I was told to sit in the corner while my friend found the coffer.

I don't like that. I don't like it at all. This is a great opportunity for high risks adventure with a worthwhile prize at the end, but instead it seems to keep getting turned into just another item to check off the To-Do List. *grumble grumble I'm a purist grumble grumble*

Turns out the coffer was behind another gate which was best accessed by romping through the past. On our way there we bumped into a rather impudent Mandragora and decided to give it a good thrashing. That'll teach the vegetation to get uppity with us adventurers.

Once we got through the Maw and back to the present we descended once more into the Citadel to find the coffer conveniently waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Quickly I swiped the sweet threads and we hightailed it out of there. Complete and total success.

The second half of our odyssey took us to Castle Oztroja. I'm not sure I like Castle Oztroja. It's very confusing to navigate and I tend to get lost rather easily even with a map so I probably wouldn't have even found my way through if not for my friend who has spent time there. Also I tend to pull the wrong levers and land us in punji traps.

While finding some pants in the Citadel was a relatively quick outing, finding a good shirt takes considerably more time. I blame Windurst personally.

We ended up teaming up with some Japanese players who were demolishing everything in the same area we were(which was conveniently close to the coffer oddly enough). My friend was convinced that by the end of the night they were making fun of us, but darned if I could tell. They let me have the key once it finally dropped and that's really all I could ask for in that situation.

Once again I grabbed the stylish clothing while my friend fended off a small nest of enemies, waiting for me to Escape us.

Upon our return to the surface I put on all my Red Mage AF armor. I've seen plenty of people running around in it and I know all the stats already, but damn if it isn't a thousand times sexier once it's equipped. I mean really, you can't look at that and tell me it isn't the most stylish set of armor in the game:

Sexy sexy Red Mage outfit.

I am a Spacetime Mage!

Moldy old NM

Tonight my Linkshell helped me camp Mysticmaker Profblix and we went 1/1 on Moldavite earring. They're kind of awesome like that. Now stick with me, there's more to this than "Oh look at my gear". Seriously if I wanted to put gear on exhibition I'd just ramble about my fishing goggles.

Anyway...

What I'm really concerned with tonight is just how completely and totally screwed I would have been trying to tackle this Notorious Monster on my own. The entire room was full of Cockatrices that were quite happy to aggro me and stomp around the room in patterns that would make it difficult to hide from them if I wanted to grab the goblin. Now there are reports of folks soloing this guy at about my level and I cannot for the life of me figure out how they would do this. There's simply so much aggro at that level range that it seems improbable at best.

This is something about the whole soloing NM thing that I've never understood. How do you deal with kiting stuff when you have a whole room full of aggro to deal with on top of the Notorious Monster? It seems impractical to sleep all the mobs that would aggro you along the way. Likewise I can't figure out how some folks manage to dodge all that aggro. There must be some trick to it or these people who can do it have a downright terrifying mastery of the terrain and mob movement patterns. Thinking about this too much gives me that sinking feeling that I'm just not cut out to be a Red Mage that solos stuff. I have mixed feelings about that. I'd like to be that competent, but at the same time I'm fairly sure what it entails is not something I would find enjoyable.

Bah, less thinking and more drooling over shiny new earring.

I really should get around to finishing my AF. Maybe I'll start that project again.

We tried fighting Vouivre for fun during a skillup party.

Rocket Chocobos away!

A mage through and through

I feel tonight marks my undeniable descent into madness.

I purchased my first HQ Elemental Staff.

There is no turning back now.

God help us all.

Aquilo's Staff. I guess I'm a career mage now.

Dark Spark: Round 2...FIGHT!

I've learned two things from my fights with Dark Spark:

• Blood tanking is horribly inefficient

• I might not be cut out for soloing

The other week I decided to do a dry run against Dark Spark as a level 55 RDM/BLU and hit the dirt so fast it wasn't even worth writing home about.

After spending some time lollygagging about on Warrior, Samurai and hunting the odd Notorious Monster, I decided it might be time to make another go at it.

The basic strategy was to bank on Cocoon, Phalanx and Stoneskin providing enough damage mitigation for me to simply outlast Dark Spark. Sadly this was not to be.

Dark Spark delighted in tearing through my Stoneskin with remarkable speed and once that was down, even my formidable defenses weren't enough to keep him from devouring my face. I held out longer than I expected though. I think I managed to knock off a good 20-25% of his health before I died.

As I said before, blood tanking just wasn't efficient. I burned through my MP way too fast. Even if I had been a bit more calm during the whole thing I would have simply run out of MP at some point and that would be the end of it. I can certainly see how using Utsusemi shadows would be a lot more efficient, but I just don't have the gil for it and there's a few other things that bug me about it, like the prospect of having to manually turn off shadows when recasting Utsusemi:Ichi. I'm fairly certain that alone would be enough to get me panicking and screwing up everything else. While I'm used to killing things really slowly on Red Mage, NMs seem to be on a different scale altogether. Usually I'm fine with killing things so slowly because they hardly ever manage to land a hit. Dark Spark was pretty much the other end of the spectrum, and that adds a lot of stress to the ordeal.

So my Linkshell found out what I was doing and decided to come out and help me kick Dark Spark's ass properly. Afterwards we had some fun just goofing off and beating up demons. All too soon it was time to return to Jeuno.

How long has it been? A few months now I've been trying to get these gloves? While many would say I wasted my time fooling around leveling Blue Mage and even attempting this solo, I think I'm better off for it. I've learned a bit about gearing for melee combat, I've learned the fear and stress associated with trying to solo a monster that you have no chance against, and I've also found what could very well be my favorite subjob for Red Mage. For me this entire ordeal has been an absolute success.



Dark Spark:1
DrJones: 0


The cavalry arrives.


Stlyish gloves!

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.

Melee RDM at Level 55: a Headache

Today's post is about gear choices. If that's not your cup of tea just scroll down to the pretty pictures at the bottom.


Well I've finished up leveling Blue Mage for the time being and it's time to start getting ready for my fight with Dark Spark. This means I'll be needing to overhaul my sword and shield gear so that I can have a chance at actually winning the fight.

For the most part I've been neglecting my melee gear because it's not welcome in parties and what I had was always "good enough" for soloing on my own time. However I'm pretty sure this fight's going to be a bit more demanding so it's time to start the painful process of figuring out what I need to update. Unfortunately it looks like I need to overhaul just about everything, as my current melee setup is pretty sad:

Sword: Knight's Sword
Shield: Hard Shield
Head: Crow Beret
Neck: Black Silk Neckerchief
Earring: Morion Earring x2
Body: Brigandine Armor
Hands: Guerilla Gloves
Ring: Knowledge Rings and Saintly Rings...+INT/+MND respectively
Back: Red Cape +1
Belt: Mercenary Captain's Belt
Legs: Magic Cuisses
Feet: Warlock's Boots or Rambler's Gaiters

The good news is that just about any upgrade I make should considerably improve my performance so I won't have to worry so much about minuscule increases in performance or sidegrades. When you're at rock bottom the only place to go is up.

On the other hand, I'm relatively inexperienced when it comes to gearing for melee so I'm a bit lost as to how to prioritize stats. Oh and then we throw evasion into the equation and it all becomes a mess. Is that few points of evasion enough to help me survive longer or do I forgo it to make with the pointed sticks that make the enemies fall down faster?

Preliminary research has revealed a lot of options...and a lot of stuff that's simply out of reach for now.

Headgear options
Valkyrie's Mask
Walkure Mask
Shock Mask
Precision Bandana

Personally I'm leaning towards the Shock Mask just for the balance it offers. Valkyrie's Mask would be nice, but it'll break the bank for me.


Body options
Jaridah Peti

There's only the one option for me here but I gotta say, it looks pretty good.

Hands
Battle Gloves
Combat Mittens +1
Combat Caster's Mitts
Jaridah Bazubands

I have no idea what to pick here to be honest. They all look like decent options so I might just go with whatever is cheapest.

Pants
Republic Subligar
War Hose

My fashion sense won't let me pick up the subligar when there are such stylish pants to be had.

Neck
Tiger Stole

I don't know of anything else to put in here.


Waist
Swordbelt
Life Belt
Headlong Belt

These are all good. I guess this one will depend on what the rest of my setup looks like. I am decidedly undecided.


Earring
Beetle Earring +1
Tortoise Earring +1

It appears I'll be taking a hit to evasion regardless of how I gear here.


Ring
Assailant's Ring
Venerer Ring
Woodsman Ring
Ecphoria Ring

Ecphoria Ring looks like a good bet, and I guess I'll pick up one of the others as well as gil permits.


Back
Jaguar Mantle
Bellicose Mantle

Again I'd opt for the defensiveness that Jaguar Mantle offers. Maybe I'm over-thinking this whole thing.

Wait, no I'm not.

Swords
Wise Wizard's Anelace
Royal Guard's Fleuret

They're both stylish and offer awesome stats. I don't know what to pick. I want both of them.

There's clearly enough there to give me a huge boost in performance, but it's all so foreign that I'm struggling with the indecision.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to just start picking up gear for each slot and sort out the min/maxing later. It can only improve my performance so it's not like I can go wrong, right?

Yeah, I'm definitely overthinking this.






San d'Orian sunsets just aren't as nice as Bastok's.



It's the subtlety of the atmosphere that really brings this game to life for me. This isn't a cartoon, it's a living, breathing world.

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.

Hey, that's not a Red Mage

So I'd like to tell you all a tale.

Red Mage is a versatile job to be sure, but a lot of that versatility can be derived from its subjob. Back when I was a young and naive adventurer I suffered from the delusion that I could choose one subjob and get away with using it for all situations. My friend and I spent some time trying to figure out which subjob would be best for our Red Mage and Monk duo. He felt I ought to try Paladin to enhance my defensive capabilities. I wasn't too keen on the idea, something about it just didn't really appeal. What I did find appealing was Blue Mage. Blue Magic has always fascinated me in every final fantasy game I've encountered it, although especially so in FFVII in the form of the Enemy Skill materia. Yeah, I actually played that when it came out on PC back in the day unlike all you whippersnappers who just fawn over Sephiroth, but I'm getting off subject here. Anyway, we both agreed that Blue Mage was definitely worth looking into. Unfortunately, as we began our adventure it was a very distant goal.

With no immediate access to Blue Mage it ended up being put on the back burner. Instead both my friend and I ended up leveling Thief independently. We were young and financially in ruins. Farming stacks of beehive chips and honey was awesome money for us and increased drop rates were very appealing. So for a while I was running around as RDM/THF because it was the only job I had sufficiently leveled to serve as a subjob. It worked well enough when we were duoing things, and soloing later when my friend went on hiatus. Once I started joining EXP parties however, it started to get funny looks. I specifically remember one party in Qufim Island during which someone asked me why I was subbing Thief. I told them it was that or come with a level 1 subjob and they stopped hassling me. That party was a learning experience however. After about a half hour I came to the conclusion that I wasn't pulling my weight. These folks needed someone who was properly equipped to handle this situation, and so I told them. I wasn't pulling my weight, they needed someone who would, I left the party.

Consulting the infinite fathomless void of the internet and the FFXI community I discovered that there were some standard subjob options that both worked and wouldn't end with people giving me funny looks all the time. The first of these was Black Mage. Black Mage was very appealing to me because it signified a more offensive role in the party and promised to offer the Elemental debuffs which fueled the whole "turn the enemy into a pile of gibbering status ailments" theme I do so enjoy. Black Mage was a fun job to level. It involved lots of mayhem and destruction, but at the same time allowed me to develop a stronger understanding of the enmity system. There's only so much you can nuke before the mob decides it wants to eat you, and knowing where that line is can be very important. Despite the perpetuated myth that Black Mages don't get invited to parties anymore, I managed to bring my Black Mage all the way up to 40 almost entirely on party invites. Some of them were to mana burn parties, but Sleep-nuking just wasn't my cup of tea. My biggest dissapointment in taking up Black Mage was that no one would ever give me a Skill Chain on which to practice Magic Bursting. This frustrated me no end, because I had a lot of fun Skill Chaining and Magic Bursting while duoing with this one Corsair I knew while playing Red Mage. All in all though it was a fun job to level. My most interesting party was definitely one in Qufim which ended up with me becoming in charge of healing at one point. This was subsequently followed by our puller bringing back a large angry fish intent on eating everyone. I couldn't keep up and quickly emptied my MP pool. This resulted in me turning on Mana Font for unlimited MP. I'm still not convinced that spending it all on Cures instead of nuking and getting eaten was all that bad. As a Red Mage I think I've developed a nervous tick about low HP bars that overrides everyting else regardless of what job I'm on.

For a time running around as RDM/BLM fulfilled my needs. However, somewhere along the way I realized I was going to be getting invited as the sole healer, no back up. This meant that leveling White Mage was quickly becoming a necessity. I had no desire to level White Mage. None whatsoever. This can be easily summarized with a single phrase: Status cures. I knew damn well going in that having to watch for status cures on top of everything else I was already responsible for was going to drive me insane, and I was right. The ones that don't show up in the log are the worst. Somehow I managed to get through it and drag White Mage to level 37. There are a few things I really enjoyed about White Mage though, specifically the party-wide buffs. Bar spells, Curagas and Benediction were all particularly useful in my experience. The whole experience convinced me that White Mage should still be the healer of choice in all situations, but no healer should ever have to operate without a backup healer. Ideally a party would have a White Mage with a Red Mage to support them. Alas, I've not been so lucky. More often than not I'll end up as RDM/WHM and have to put up with little to no support these days. People treat RDM as having an infinite MP pool, but that's a post for another day.

Having successfully taken both of the basic subjobs up as high as I needed them I returned to adventuring proper as a Red Mage. However, lately I've hit a bit of a wall while soloing. White Mage and Black Mage just don't offer much utility when exchanging blows with monsters face-to-face. The go-to subjob for Red Mage soloing is Ninja, but that's a more financially draining option than I can afford at the moment. There is however another option. And so we have come full circle. My initial instinct on which subjob to choose appears to nicely fit my current playstyle.

That's right children, I'm leveling Blue Mage!

It was slow going at first, but once I got the first spell everything picked up. Most importantly: I now have Foot Kick. I think the real appeal of it at the moment is the really cool casting animation Blue Magic has.

Hopefully by the time I'm done leveling this I'll be able to make a solid attempt at Dark Spark. I'm banking on Coccoon being more awesome than it is. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Our hero set out, intent on devouring the souls of all the monsters in Gustaberg before breakfast.

After a few grueling levels, the first soul was eaten. All subsequent courses went down with considerable ease.

Oh, I also unlocked Scholar. The more I learn about Bastok the more I love being a Bastokan.

Scholar also subscribes to the "hit things with sticks" school of combat. Ash Club +1 has quickly become my low level weapon of choice.