Merit Update

Been meriting slowly over the last little while so here is an update on where I'm at...

Black Mage:
Thunder potency: 5/5
Ice potency: 5/5
Freeze II: 3/3
Burst II: 2/2
Tornado II: 1/1

Beastmaster:
Killer effects: 1/5
Sic timer: 1/5
Beast Affinity: 3/3
Feral howl: 1/1
Killer Instinct: 0/2

Red Mage: (Retired)
Ice accuracy: 3/5
Wind accuracy: 2/5
Paralyze II: 1/1
Slow II: 3/3
Bio 3: 0/3

General:
MP: 4/8 - still definitely going 8/8 MP.

Attributes:
STR 0/5 - still definitely going 5/5 STR. Still saving till last as they take so long.

Combat skills:
Axe: 8/8 - new since the last merit update ^^
Sword: 0/8
Evasion 1/1 - will still erase this for 8/8 Sword merits.

Magic skills:
Elemental magic skill: 8/8 - new since the last merit update ^^
Enfeebling magic skill: 3/8 - this will still get 8/8 also.
Dark magic skill: 1/1 - this will get deleted once I get Enfeebling to 7/8 and have 3 merits to finish it to 8/8.

Other skills:
Crit hit up: 3/4 - working on this now
Enemy Crit hit down: 0/4 - this will come after Crit hit up is completed.
____________________________________________________

At this point the order of completion is Crit hit up > Enemy Crit hit down > MP > Enfeebling magic > Sword or BST > STR. By the time I get to MP, I'll probably have WAR specific merits to start on too. It never ends!

Again, your comments are welcome if you have suggestions on another route to take. Keep in mind I'm working on leveling WAR (50 as of this posting) at the moment so some of my merit considerations have that in mind.

Black Mage Productions presents...ANTIPOD.

To be honest, I had never heard of this before but Rinku educated me that it is from a game called Chrono Trigger. Either way, it certainly looks cool...

...it also plays into the resistance lowering provided by Ancient magic's. Using -ga's to Antipod is fun too >.>

New Beastmaster Ability - Snarl

Firstly, thank you SE. /bow. Finally something for us lowly BSTs that isn't pure garbage. Secondly, not to sound like an ingrate but can we please have it for all pets? pleeeeease? >.>

OK, enough groveling and pleading. On to the posting about the new ability already!

As you no doubt guessed from the inital lines, Snarl can only be used with jug pets. I still can't Rampage a VT Dhalmel and transfer all that hate over to my tiny little bunny rabbit pet.....yet (wink, wink, nudge, nudge SE). Also its a level 45 JA so BST main onry!

I decided my first play around with Snarl would be down in the Sea Serpent Grotto while farming for scrolls and just generally messing around with EP/DC (?) mobs. I usually do this on RDM/THF with Raka along to have someone around when the Sahagins use Hydro Shot and reset hate on me. Then I can SA Savage blade them for good fun. ^^ Also, on RDM, I can cure myself unlike on BST/THF.

So off we went to SSG. The plan was me on BST/THF, Raka as the healer if/when needed and Carrie as our tank. Don't we make a fine looking party?

I frikkin LOVE my NPC. Shes so awesome to have along for farming among others things. Raka was doing well at her job this day as usual. I would hit yellow maybe once a pop round and boom, I'm back to full and with no aggro from ele's I'll remind you.

She also drops in her own weapon skills from time to time which I love to chain off of. SE also adjusted skillchains in the last update allowing the resulting skillchain damage to go less resisted. Heres the result....

...and a fine reason to Snarl. Carrie tanks the rest of this fight without the mob turning back to me even if I'm going full on.



SA'd Rampages make for fun numbers and for even funnier hate for Carrie to acquire.

Snarl was also handy for the odd Hydro shot that reset hate when I didn't have tp to drop back on Carrie in the form of hate.

All in all, I LOVE this ability for farming. I really, really hope SE will make it for all BST pets. Exping will be so much more fun being able to WS mid-fight and not worry about the mob wailing on you the rest of the fight. Thats just not possible with jug pets since exp mobs eat them for lunch. Heres hoping...

More BST fun

At the request of certain BST friends (who shall remain annoymous for now >.>), here's some more BST fun!

First off, new BST duo partner! I've known Psykho for a while and much to my surprise, recently saw him running around in Tavnazian Safehold as a 75 BST o.O Well this was a pleasent surprise to say the least. Here I am admiring my most desired item at the moment that he just so happens to own. Oh and apparently, I don't have much of a fondness of dying -.-

On this particular excursion, we'd just finish duoing in Mount Zhayolm and decided to go see if Ancient Goobue was up. He wasn't but poor ol' Aquarius was. For those of you who haven't killed this guy before, he DESTROYS the pets in the area he spawns. It took us about 20 mins to watch him die here. Upstairs takes maybe 10.

On another note, here are some pretty WS numbers.

The first one is a Rampage on a VT Dhalmel while duoing in Bibiki bay.



Second is a fully loaded 300% Sneak attack Spiral Hell on a Gob in Gustav tunnel while camping a Gob NM for a GA I wanted for my WAR. Bubbo was kind enough to let me use her Osode to try it. Pushed the WS up about 80 points over Hauberk.



I got a taste of Osode and I dun wanna give it back but Bubbo made me ; ;



And here is a nice Distortion I made with my friend Pimpndabox again while duoing Dhalmels in Bibiki bay.

Last but certainly not least, I had the chance to finish of the ToAU missions this weekend and after an evening of much fun and hilarity, I got this!

Yay and thanks again to Loren, Bubbo, Nyena, Lexia, Rinku and sadly Bale who couldn't stay around long enough to finish himself. Congrats on the win you guys!

BLM fun

I like making "fun" posts. XD I think they really show off why so many people play this game and play for so long. Well, here is yet another "fun" post showing some of the recent "fun" moments while playing with my BLMness.

OK, next time you are with some BLM friends, try this. It may very well be silly but it really is quite "fun".

Just recently, SE started this new event called the Crystal War Revisited in which you can receive a pair of Matrix looking glasses. Don't I look fly?

As you may very well know, this game has lots of HAX! in it. Here's three such examples of an NPC shaming me with her uber teir 1 elemental magic skill's. With skills like that, who wouldn't be intimidated eh?!

And here's a little of my own elemental magic skills. This was a "fun" magic burst in Temenos that I was proud of as it wasn't Iceday or weather. Just plain BLM powah! I can do bigger in the right conditions but this was just a nice "fun" one out of the blue.

And the result of such power. My 4th or 5th splat/death in our recent first Proto-Ultima win. We were doing great till about 18% to go when I was the first to get Citadel Buster'd, then as I went to rest, the proverbial crap hit the fan when he did a big Armour Buster >> Citadel Buster to wipe out half the alliance. Everyone kept their heads about them though and we prevailed ^^b Go RRB!

More "fun" post to come....

Bahamut v.1

Here is a posting of our recent run in with Bahamut. He was of course the weaker version of himself for this fight. We were doing this for some of our LS members who are still working their way toward the Apocalypse Nigh quest.

He doesn't look so tough >.>


He certainly does cast big though. If you look closely, you'll see Rinku running away like a scared little girl :p

RAWR! BLM powah! Survived lolgigaflare.

You'll be pleased to know Rinku and I secured a Cloud Evoker in one of our recent ENM runs which will soon be used to fight Ouryu. Should we win that fight, we are guaranteed a Monarch's Orb drop which will allow us a shot at Bahamut v.2 and maybe a shot at this. Stay tuned....

HUMP-GA!

If you know anyone in my Linkshell, ask them what the most prolific emote they see is. I'd bet gil that they will tell you it's Rath humping them or someone else nearby.

In honour of this explicit, unavoidable, rampant emote, I give you.....Hump-ga.

If you are on the Carbuncle server, beware. You WILL get humped someday, somewhere, somehow. Good luck to you all. /evade hump on.

Gration

So recently I retired my RDM to only be used for a few things one of them being to takeon the odd NM.....such as Gration.

This is a really fun, frantic fight. You are constantly on the move, being intimidated, keeping DoTs on, and nuking all the while trying to avoid his tp moves and high level Thunder spells.

The preferred method is to go as RDM/NIN to blink out all his melee hits and single target spells such as Thunder IV and Burst. If he starts with Thundaga III, you make a B-line in the straightest direction away from him and pray you get out of range in time. I gotta say though, with Shell IV and a full Stoneskin up, Thundaga III lands for 600~ or so which isn't terrible when you are doing it with a friend or 3 like I do. Solo, thats gonna hurt.

I've done this fight multiple times as a duo, a couple as a trio and this time as a foursome. More RDMs = faster kills but my favourite is as a duo where you have to concentrate that much more but still have the luxury of a partner if/when you get one-shotted by a Thundaga III just as SS wears.

So yesterday, I asked Ny if she wanted to run out and lay the beat down on Gration before our Ultima run 90 mins later. Taking into account that time might be getting slim with just the 2 of us, I also suggested that we get Tulaq and Zitale (fellow LS RDMs) to come along and help us beat him down a little faster. They agreed and off we went to Tavnazian Safehold to meet up.

Tuly was standing around showing off >.>

We headed out to the coast and killed off any potential links in the area after going over the strat with Tuly and Zitale. The pop was just fine and we got Gration up to the shed by the Riverne zone with minimal fuss.



He seemed to like Ny for some reason. Perhaps he wanted a pet kitty? Ny wasn't too impressed by this fact.
















My nukes were landing well. Having maxed elemental magic skill from BLM certainly helped. I was able to land 409 regularly with a high of ~450. The others reported ~350. Good damage all around. My nukes did however result in my fair share of attention from the big guy.
















All in all, a really fun outing with friends. We ended up with a 49 min kill. Good considering we weren't killing ourselves to finish ASAP and we only had one death when Zi got caught. No drop though ; ;

RDMs FTW ^^b

Congratulations Tulaq & Soymilk!

It finally happened! Tulaq and Soymilk have their first Relic weapon!!

After more than 2 years of hard work and persistence, last night Tulaq and friends paid a visit to the Sanctuary of Zitah to trade in his stage 4 dagger and other required pieces to complete his.....MANDAU!

There were fireworks aplenty at the acquiring and after the acquisition of this fine dagger, we HAD to see fireworks of a different kind!

(Hot damn, that is a sexy knife!)

Tulaq recently convinced me to fully merit Freeze II over Burst II as he was close to completing his Mandau and the resulting Mercy Stroke skillchains would induce Darkness. Boy, I'm glad I listened coz this thing puts up some pretty numbers.

I get the feeling there will be lots of "Ooops, sorry guys" from Tulaq to our BLMs drooling over the possibility of the magic burst only to see the mob flop over dead from the Mercy Stroke. Don't worry Tuly, we'll forgive you.

Congratulations!!