| DRK | PLD | SAM | WAR | RDM |
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| 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 |
| DRG | ||||
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| 75 |
Finally, we've gotten around to using up last year's Fanfest BCNM entry items. Just in time, since Fanfest '08 is rolling around. Too bad none of us this year even got a chance to consider buying tickets because they sold out so fast. At least last year a few of us got to kick it together, and even then, once I had considered to get tickets, those sold out as well. SE needs to learn to cater to their fans more. Anyway, we scored a bunch of BCNM-style orb items for 4 different battles. One was The Gathering Storm, an Assault style fight taking place in Mamool Ja Staging Point where you and fellow marauders plow through endless waves of weak-ass mobs a la the SM Assault Blitzkrieg (in fact, this one is probably easier than the normal Assault). We did this one a while back since it was the quickest battle field to get to. The reward for this one is one of my favorite titles: Bloody Berserker.
The other three fights took place in the Stellar Fulcrum up in Delkfutt's Tower. Since our Sunday nights are no longer occupied with Nyzul farming/climbing, we took a break from our new shift toward Sunday Salvage for a fun night of battles vs. NPCs we've only gotten to know through storyline cutscenes. The titles are pretty much the only rewards for the four Fanfest fights. There was one extra special reward that we were granted after the fight with the four Aht Urgan Serpent Generals Mercenary Camp, which is the screenshot above, along with the title, "The Sixth Serpent;" pretty cool.
This fight was probably my favorite, just because I liked the storyline behind the Serpent Generals a lot (one of my favorite questlines involves a bunch of backstory for all the Generals: "Saga of the Skyserpent"). Each of the Serpent Generals used their unique weapon skills that I rarely see them use in Besieged. General Rughadjeen's Victory Beacon showed one big "V." I wasn't lucky enough to capture any other General's weapon skills myself, but Cybaster took a screen of Mihli's Scouring Bubbles that looks pretty fun:
There were no victory poses after the other fights, but they were still pretty fun. Hero's Combat (title: "Superhero") was a brawl with the lead male figures of the three nations: Trion, Volker, and Ajido-Marujido.
Heroine's Combat looked to be a little tougher than the male equivalent, but I guess just because there are four ladies to fight doesn't mean that they will be stronger than three guys!
Needless to say... we raped em! =X
In recent Einherjar news, we've gone through our second and third Odins now. I'm really hyped about my new body Abjuration. Koenig Cuirass still looks hot after all these years! I guess I'll just have to kiss Dalmatica goodbye though, but oh well. One MP/tick Refresh is really not all that hot. I passed on Valhalla Helm because I'd rather have a Breastplate sometime in the future. Three Odins now, but no weapon drop yet, and only one Valhalla piece. =(
More Samurai raves without the rants. Even with all my new escapades on PLD, my SAM obsession still continues. In my efforts to tweak out maximum performance on this job I've churned out another Relic-demolishing parse! Yay! This was my first time meriting with Spharai MNK. I announced I was parsing so I can only hope these results reflect all participants' top-notch meriting efforts. First name listed is MNK/NIN with Spharai and Shura Togi +1, second is me SAM/DRG, third is SAM/WAR Spear-spam with Engetsuto:
In a small sample size of all my recent SAM/DRG parses on Greater Colibri, I can safely say my WS average has capped out at a crap-tastic 830-840 average with 2x Minuets, spamming Meat Mithkabob. This seems to be as high as I can push it; it's been a small bump up from my old numbers but my new Orc helm and semi-new Usukane Hizayoroi has added some welcoming damage improvement. With a Minuet+Chaos Roll combo, however, I've been consistently pushing 880, granted, all these numbers are taken from numerous Greater Colibri parties and they don't have the highest defense to penetrate. (Current WS build)
I only have one or two large Mamool Ja (Tadjana Islet) parses on SAM/DRG so far, and the numbers are pretty underwhelming--just subtract around 100 dmg from the previous numbers lol ._. Haven't parsed with updated gear on SAM/WAR in a while, so I dunno how that stands currently. I most likely will not bother with /WAR until my Polearm setup gets some much needed improvement. Still, I've found using /DRG with my A+ weapon is so much more fun then Penta Thrust spam on birdies.
Anywho, looking over that parse I'm surprised at the Spharai's low Asuran Fist average. I don't remember if he kept up his food, because I think I've seen Destroyers putting out higher averages, but it might be because of a COR, I really don't recall. I don't merit with MNK companions as much as I used to nowadays so I don't remember a lot of those results. I've also heard that a H2H Relic's improvement over the next strongest weapon in its class is the smallest margin amongst all other weapons' and their correlating Relics. =( This parse isn't a blatant going-all-out MP sponging in order to win, either. I'm still courteous to my other PT members and do still manage to balance my Seigan and Hasso usage 50/50, as well as using a physical damage reduction gear set when needed.
So, the score's in favor of me, as follows: DRK defeats Amano & Apocalypse; SAM defeats Spharai! Yay. I really would like a rematch with that Relic DRK though. A little under 100 mobs might be too small a sample size to properly judge the results, and there was only one BRD in that party, with no COR to boot; weak merit setup to really parse and compare. Too bad I can't make a clone of myself, so I can parse my DRK vs. my SAM. I'm really curious as to which job can out-do the other; especially with some udpated gear additions that put my SAM in a much higher tier than it was before, I really don't know which, between the two, is more powerful in a merit setup. Okay, /endrave and /end e-peen stroke.
A little over three weeks since I came back from my trip to Asia, but the LS and I are zooming through the goals we've set for 2008! I probably am at my peak of having fun with FFXI since I started playing again. I guess I'll start with our Einherjar progression. Dawn has added a new faction, sub-Linkshell if you will, appropriately named Dusk, strictly for Einherjar events. We now include outsiders that join our Einherjar faction, because our regular 21-24 Dawn heads at any given time is just not enough to progress past Wing III. It's working out great so far, and we are now 3/3 Wing II chambers and preparing to tackle the third wing of chambers.
Did I mention how fun this venue is? And it's only 30 minutes... of intense mayhem!! Einherjar being relatively new to me, I plan on improving my WAR (which I have been neglecting a lot) for this.
Originally I was just going to save for 100k Ampoules, but I just couldn't resist. ( RDM posts soon I swear! )
On to another new venue for the LS, ZNM. I guess not too much of it was done while I was away, but now that I'm leading the ZNM branch of LS I hope to get lots of TIV ZNMs murked soon enough.
Well the TIII's that we've done so far since I came back were super fun. The induction of ZNM is one of the best updates I've seen in a while, I have to admit. Although the pop system sucks to work out as an LS, having the chance to kill heavilly-camped ToAU HNM amongst other fun mobs is very refreshing.
On the road to getting all the Avatar pre-requisite fights for "Waking the Beast" Carbuncle fight. I suck because I missed like 4 of the previous Avatar fights while away in VN for summer.
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lol i can has? Who cares about Black Tathlum!
SAMURAI Update:
Finally got to use SAM/DRG to make use of this earring normally used for SoulKraken.. and let me tell you it was ridiculous. I been tryin to do this before Ruke's SAM/DRG post, but my DRG stayed lv. 34 for a very long time. Gear is same as the post below, except Merman's Earring ► Wyvern Earring.
I probably ended up eatting a billion DMG because of trying to utilize full haste+Hasso, but it's okay I had to put our LS's new RDM tryout through a real ordeal. 
Anyway, the results were amazing. Teorem is an Ares DRG (meat) and Peach is Spamwinder (sushi) and I am of course SAM/DRG (Hedgehog Pie), Tadjana Islet Mamool Ja camp:
The above parse (SAM/DRG) I was attempting to see if I can use Askar Korazin, due to the /DRG Accuracy Bonus, but had I full-timed Haubergeon +1 I'm sure the accuracy would reach 90% at least.
The bottom parse shows another PT I had this week vs. Greater Colibri, after finally capping my Polearm and breaking the latent on Gondo-Shizunori. Teorem: DRG/SAM, Tabby: THF/NIN, me: SAM/WAR (Polearm, with 2 merits in it). During this PT we had March x2 and Minuet x2, spamming Mithkabobs. I think I'm satisfied with my Penta Thrust returns for now, but I guess I could work on my TP build for SAM/WAR Polearm vs. Greater Colibri. Using /WAR with a 5x hit WS is very nice for /WAR's innate Double Attack. I opted to add to my Crit % using the Claymore Grip, while still keeping the Brutal Earring for additional DA bonus. I think it worked out nicely:
That about wraps up this post. Here's a nice screen of my most recent goal of my next lv. 75 job. Just hit lv. 47 with Penta Thrust open to me now, too bad my Fellow Balu-Falu hasn't leveled up at all the whole time we were using this camp:
Well all right then! I guess I've been focusing on PLD a lot lately (at least in my blog--HAY it's fun), so let's toss it up a lil'. My Samurai is actually now showcase-worthy, so I'ma dedicate this post to SAM. I got lvl. 75 in late Nov. '07, and I think I've pretty much topped it off this week. Aside from brand new Sarameya dorps (and lolmonopolizedSandworm tathlums) that I'll eventually work toward, my TP set and WS set are now complete! :]
Too bad the Wyvern Helm +1 belongs to the homie Brubion. I have access so I jack his shit all the time, fucking rich bastard (hi2u whitebox-EVERYTHING). Haubergeon +1 build is for pretty much 75% of SAM-play, whereas Askar build will be used in Salvage, Greater Colibri meripo, and other farming instances where mobs will not evade too much. That WS build is pretty solid, sometimes I use an Askar Korazin WS build for the lulz, and it puts up ridiculous digits but not consistent enough to rely on. Set-up on the left is defense macro, for when Third Eye isn't up in time. Could use an HQ Arhat's Jinpachi +1 some day; NIN will definitely be lv. 75 eventually anyway. That lovely Shadow Mantle was incentive for me to level up PLD, recently, too!
I think everyone doing end-game waiting for dorpz, by now, knows about SAM's secretive l00tz tactics, i.e. Tachi: Koki Treasure Hunter +50. Well, if you didn't know, now you know. Please believe it:
The two loot screens on the left are from one Arrapago Remnants run! Got some lv. 35 Hizayorois this run (few months back). Was hella amped, this was only our second Hikazu Hakama out of God-knows-how many Arrapago Archaic Chariots!
Yeah, some people just don't believe! But what now? Even after this and so many other successful TH+50 (probably even MOAR TH than that!) attempts, people still have to be skeptical. No Cybaby, your TH+3 ain't cuttin' it buddy.
You need to believe in the power the Koki gods can grant us humble FFXI denizens! If you merely hop on the Koki-fan bandwagon, the Koki gods will shun yo' ass and you won't get shiet for it! If you truly beleive, Koki gods will make your wildest dreams come true.
Tachi: Koki Treasue Hunter is for real, people! But you have to believe! Believe in Koki! Haha Cyb (~>) really got pissed when I claimed my Koki TH granted us the following Macha's dorp last week instead of his myuun~ TH+3 - ummm who's Thief's Knife is it that you have in your possession again? xD It's okay, maybe the year of the Good-luck Galka will follow up with Tresure-Hunter Taru soon. Or, you know... you can just start doing Dynamis again... Sure could use a couple more relic Armlets in Dawn!
[ In only two weeks since I've been back from Asia all this dropped ] :
Combination of SAM and MNK Galka worshipping 
Aaaand finally, the one to rule them all!
The lvl. 25 Salvage legs piece I've been waiting for!
I have a lot more Koki TH screens, but I'll get to 'em maybe some other time. For now I'll end this entry with a new video the homie Almostbilly made for me. It's a solo 6-WS Darkness skillchain after I finished my SAM WS builds. Billy's also planning to make a Phoenix old-school players video compilation and this'll be part of that one as well (click the link and view the high quality version!):
