Oh, it's ON!

I love Samurai. I love it! I love every aspect about the job and what it can do and am so happy I went ahead and leveled it. I have a few tweaks to go on it till I have it at a point that I'm really happy with but even now in my semi-merited state, I love that I can keep up and even get ahead at times. I loaded up a recommended parser recently which has added a whole new element to a merit party. That element is further enhanced (or is it Augmented now SE? :p) by the inclusion of friends to the party I'm in.

So last night we got a meripo started consisting of Aless (BRD/NIN), Loren (WAR/SAM), Byany (BRD/WHM), myself (SAM/WAR) and 2 really good JP Galka's (WAR/NIN, RDM/WHM) and we were lucky enough to snag the middle bird camp. After the last meripo with these guys, I was very curious to see how my performance had improved against Loren going from 5 GKT merits and no other SAM merits to capped GKT, 1 Overwhelm, 2 STP and 1 Meditate.

Very early on it became apparent to me that I still wasn't quite there yet. The first thing I noticed was the DoT. Each of his swings hitting for around 140-150 to my 90-100 even though I was swinging slightly quicker. Then the WS's started coming. I knew it was going to be a focused party with neither of us really stopping to speak along the way with the exceptions of the odd "hohoho" when tp was tickled away or a WS missed. In the end, while I was very happy with my progress increasing my overall accuracy, WS acc and power, and total damage, it wasn't to be my night as per the snapshot parse results below.


WAR/SAM is certainly THE powerhouse melee in my eyes though SAM/WAR isn't far behind and as I finish off merit categories and tweak my gear, I'm still confident that I will catch up and pass him. One thing I will do differently in a party where I'm TRYING to parse the highest is not wait for others to WS so I can SC off them. I will usually do this as it helps the party with faster kills from the SC damage but I was quite often at 150+ tp by the time a Raging Rush went off. Thats a lot of wasted tp for a job that relies of WS's to keep up in a parse. Keep in mind I'll only be this way in the odd party, not most parties.

Another happy result of the party was my first time to chain 100! I was very focused on the kills and when I finally noticed the chain, we were suddenly at 84, then 96 then BAM! 100.




Finally! lol. The chain ended at 123 as fate conspired to keep us in check. 123 is now my new record. I can't wait to break the 200 cherry now.

Like I said at the beginning, I really love this job and I think my favorite part is doing SC's like the one below after following a Raging Rush. It's all about the epeen!


Earlier in the night I finally got Polearm to cap. Yay! Now to get Impulsive Drive (more for completions sake than anything), a Tomoe (which will be handy for my parry build to cap Parrying skill) and get to work on testing out Penta Spam at bird camp. I'm very interested to see how it stacks up against GKT for myself.


After the party, Byany and I got together to start work on my trials polearm. We got to chatting about the meripo and about how I was curious to see how his NIN that he has been working quite hard on would parse in that type of environment. It would seem my good friend By is very confident...



So now I am gonna look like a total chump and/or Byany is gonna look like a champ. I'm very interested to see. Personally (no offence to NIN's worldwide) I can't see how a NIN can keep up in that type of setting but like I said, I'm very interested to see. I have seen a few NINs in my time pump out some really nice damage and I think By has enough skill and understanding of the job to do the same. Stay tuned for the result!

A quick congrats to Enin on his Nyzul Isle GKT (Windslicer). Rana is a cool WS to have!


Loren and I were working on his Great Axe latent at the Tree one night recently while I was also working on my polearm skill. The venture provided a good a reason why you should never poo poo an NPC for messing with your SC's. You just let them do their thing and go on about your business. They just might save your ass one day!


And lastly, why is it that when I'm around Al, I tend to end up like this? /sigh.


^__^/

Listen to me! I'm usually right!

And its all for your benefit! :p

My latest "discussion" with someone was with Frab this weekend trying to convince him that Great Axe will far out damage Axe/Joy combo (and probably any Axe/Axe combo he could acquire). So he was trying it out in our little meripo we had going for a few rounds and and his 400-800 Rampages turn into 1k+ Raging Rushes. Still unconvinced, we got to this...


In the end though, it came down to him not liking the delay. I guess I can't really change that idea even though DoT goes up and WS average goes up and WARs look cooler wielding a huge Axe. /sigh. To each their own right?

The meripo was a fun one with all people I know except the RDM. 2 BRD parties are always fun as are parties with people you know. Lots of good things came from this party. Al got 75 on BRD making it #4 75 job for her, I got 5 merits which went into Store tp and Meditate, Frab saw that GA was better than Axe (even if he won't admit it >.>), got a new high for Tachi:Rana which made for a sexy self darkness chain and got a new high exp chain even though its still comparatively low to chains I have seen posted elsewhere. Oh and one funny lowlight of the party. Picture spam...GO!





Aless and I also tried our hand at BSTing a ZNM mob. Brass Borer was a prime target since we could easily pull to a spot where lots of pets hang out and just throw the world at it...which we did.





My luck with ZNMs continues to suck ass but I'm on my way to a Cerberus pop set now I guess. I'm confident we can duo some of the ZNMs in Woodlands and Thickets now too. I'm thinking the Puk, Marid and Wivre ones are doable. I'll post as that happens for sure.

And finally today, the regular Campaign highlight of the night moment kinda thingee. Cya! ^^/

100!

Wow. Very exciting night last night! Congratulations to Evolpmal on our first Runic key and access to floor 100. Pretty smooth final climb that gave us Khimaira as the last obstacle in gaining the Runic Key. Khimmy's HP went down 89% in a matter of seconds before Fulmination almost stopped us dead. That para is STRONG!. But we held on and got the win with a couple of minutes still remaining. I feel like a real loot whore but along with my Windslicer, I got this...


Lovin' Goliard chapeau for my MND build. I'll prolly live in this piece for the most part especially in Nyzul Isle. Thank you so much Evolpmal. Really excited to climb us all on Byanys new disc and get everyone up high enough to open Nyzul weapons fast.

Speaking of which, after Nyzul Isle, we had Limbus then Byany and I teamed up to work on our weapon skills. Byany on NIN with this (congrats)...


...and Mercurial kris was a lot of work to keep up with tp wise. Congrats also to Al on WAR GA, By on BRD dagger and Aj on NIN katana (I think that was all >.>). About 30 minutes later, Tachi: Rana showed in my weapon skill list. JOY! A quick trip to Jeuno was required to lock in the WS for any GKT.



I REALLY like the look of this WS. Nowhere near as strong as YGK (well on /DNC anyway) but the ability to 2 step and 3 step Darkness solo is really cool. Sekkanoki Rana <-> Gekko makes Darkness and Kasha > Rana > Gekko > makes Gravitation into Darkness. Here's a couple of action shots.




I am really loving SAM at this point. Everything I have done with it of late is just so much fun and makes the game really fun to log into. I'm even looking forward to spamming WSs to help the others in the group open their WSs sooner. Another couple of pics showing my hang time are needed!!



LOL, the terrored Gekko was cool. Hung there for about 5-10 seconds.

My motivation to merit is also at an all time high and resulted in this.


Sad to drop some of my Axe merits that I have enjoyed so much on BST but I have come to some realizations about BST that while I love the job and what it can do, show me its limitations but the ability to do the job with less buffs to the job speaking as a non-career BST). I'm able to do everything I did before (showing how great BST is) with less CHR gear and less DD gear. And that frees up some more gil to be able to buff the jobs like SAM which need the gear and gil to perform at its peak.

So a really good night last night. Thanks again to my friends in my group. Special thanks to Katie for stepping in for the 100 floor effort in Enin's place.

Stay tuned for more excitement out of Nyzul Isle and from across Vana'diel!

Of Americans diets etc.

Wow, its been too long. 3 weeks for the loss. To my small number of readers, sorry. Hopefully this makes up for it.

As per the title of this post, lets start with one of the many deep and philosophical discussions that we seem to have each week. As a little background to it, it started with me making myself these awesome homemade burgers that I had to tout as the best ever made. Mmmm, even now they make me hungry though that may just be a side effect of starting this experimental two week gluten free diet but doesn't a homemade burger with bacon, camembert cheese, cheddar cheese, tomato, onion, lettuce, ketchup, mustard and mayo just sound awesome??!! Anyway, I digress, on to the conversation...


Sidenote: I don't REALLY hate Americans. Just parts of their culture and habits. Just so wrong.

Apart from having to organize a new person to add to the static every few weeks it seems, the group is going really well. I decided to make a new LS for it and the people who are involved. A way to give info out for the coming week etc and a place to hang out for friends that aren't in my main LS.

With the recent update and changes to Nyzul Isle, I think interest is at an all time high. While I was away last week (right after the changes were implemented), the group did a few low floor runs resulting in weapons dropping. It will be a big focus now to get everyone from 1-100 on their own discs so as they can break the latents on their weapons much faster and gain access to the new WS's on offer. Here's one of the weapons that Loren picked up (the first one I had ever seen in person funnily enough).


Grats to the others who got weapons too. I had a pic of Enin getting Denali hands too but lost it somewhere so grats to you too 9!

Loren, Aless and I also spent a little more time in Onzozo trying to pop Ose for the jerkin. Loren wants one for his one day 67 DRG. Its a fun outing messing with the various NMs down there. 2x BST and a PLD/THF ftw. Its funny how much difference even the first level of Treasure hunter makes as seen here...


In the end, we got Narasimha and LoO to pop. Once again, PLD/THF wins the day even if the amount of work actually done by him is all but nothing >.>


Aless happily loot whored the drop which I hear was very fun on 72 BRD. Whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff, right Al? :p



Campaign continues to be a great time waster for me. After getting SAM to 75, I can now easily solo most if not all normal mobs in any given fight. About the hardest I find are the damn Gnats with their fast attack speed and tp erasing moves. HATE Gnats. Anyway, here was the first time I saw Campaign Fafnir. Very cool to see it fighting for us.


I tried my hand an one of my most hated Campaign bosses, Ga'Dho Softstep. I seriously hate this guy but he was the only one left and I had just been invited to party so it was a quick way home to try him. As I started meleeing him, I noticed his regular hits weren't too bad. Then it happened as normal...


Hate that guy. Seriously.

Can I just say, it's also fun to randomly come across friends and LS mates dead on the battle field. I wasn't taking a dump Big. Just watching the action.


While I'm talking about Big, during our recent spat of ZNMs, I got this pic of Big as 75 BLM nuking Dea with Bubbo on 75 RDM. Big, you shame us lol...


So we have started messing with the ZNM system. I personally haven't tried one since the update where the mobs are supposed to get harder as time goes on but overall, they are fun to do as a small group. I haven't really gotten anything of note yet but grats to Bub, Big and By who have. I really would like Tomoe though. Too bad Armed Gears was an ass on my pop item. Check out my new friend Cheese though.


Limbus is also going well. MeneoCecus does really well in there low manning everything at the moment and succeeding most of the time. Low man runs also allow for lots of ABCs for everyone and more AF upgrades. I got another set for BST gear last night though I'm saving for SAM at the moment. I think I'm done with BLM now after gaining this piece...


Lastly, SAM has been going great. Got 75 recently as mentioned earlier and I just love playing on this job right now. Its everything a damage whore like myself could want. Here are pics of my gear setups for melee, WS and Oshi moments right now.




I am happy with where I am at as far as AH items go now after buying Peacock charm. My current gear goals include upgrading SAM AF hands and legs for WS (Acc is so important to me. Nothing worse than missing that big WS. Selling Alky's = a +13 DEX swing and only a -4 STR swing. I can deal with that), Askar helm (maybe tonight!), Bushinomimi, Justice torque and Black tathlum one day and a few Arhat pieces of Oshi eventually though these don't matter much at this point. My current Oshi gear is more for Campaign when Third Eye is down than anything to be honest.

I've been meriting hard of late too in an effort to get GKT skill capped ASAP. I killed all my sword merits and half my axe ones to achieve this and finished it last night.


Now I'm on to Overwhelm once, then cap STP, Meditate, finish Overwhelm, one into the share tp one and finish off with Blade bash. I'm very excited to see how much difference this is going to make in a meripo with Loren who OWNED me in the parse over the weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts Elf.

Meripo's are generally very fun. I usually end up in pt's with friends who know what they are doing like this one with Enin where the RNG was weilding a Kraken Club and this WS below was about the average. OWNED!


But every once in a while you get into a pt like this one where you get a SAM like this...


BUY ACCOUNTS MUCH?! Yes, he has Kirin's Osode, Cerberus Mantle, PCC, Tiphia Sting accompanied but level 36 DEX ring, Rasetsu +1 gear, and Ohat as melee gear. W...T...F! I like to think I take time and care in my gear to be at least decent in what I do. People like this make me sad. Thankfully he left quite early before I blew a gasket and left myself and we ended up getting another good SAM who had great gear and skill and together we tore up the mobs. Here's a couple of damage pics from that pt. First one is solo Fusion (Gekko > Kasha), second is Light off the other SAM's Distortion (Yuki > Gekko > Kasha). This is why I took up SAM ^__^b



The party even had fun moments like this where the BRD mispulled half the Greater Colibris in the world. Lets just say it was over very quickly.


So that about does it for yet another installment. Hope it made up for the long wait and that you enjoyed it. As always, comments and observations are appreciated.

See you soon!