We interrupt our normally scheduled Dragoon lesson for...

...nothing really.

I was going to continue my Dragoon series this morning, but I figured I would just update what I did over the weekend instead.

Einherjar

Relatively easy T3 run this past Saturday. Normally when we do T3, we run into Behemoth, Cerberus, Hydra or Vampyr for our boss. We got Khimaira for this run. I decided to tweak our boss fighting strat out a bit for this run based on a conversation with Cdgreg a couple days prior to that. Greg's group apparently has similar luck in regards to which bosses show up. In the midst of their run, I was asked about how we handle Khimaira and I really didn't have much of an answer. I knew he was considered one of the easier T3 bosses, but I couldn't recall if he was Chainspell-stunnable (since he's thunder based) and I knew Fulmination and Tenebrous Mist could make for some bad situations. So after not really suggesting anything at all to him...he came to the conclusion to whittle it down slowly to 40-50%, then CS-Stun/zerg him down the rest of the way.

This caused a light bulb to come on for a subject that had been bothering me for a while in regards to Einherjar, but not enough to make me go and research it extensively. I've said before in my various musings about Obsidian's membership that we're made up of the casual player. From a damage dumping standpoint, we've got maybe...10-15 people that can dump out some very high numbers in a very short period of time. Catching all 10-15 of these guys in the same run is rare and you can usually tell if they're there by how fast a boss drops down. The rest of our member base is generally average.

There's nothing wrong with average btw. Sitting in my position, I have to be aware of these things so I can build strats around it. I don't judge membership status to any shell I've been part of by how 1337 your gear is. Again...if I'm not willing to teach, I have no room to bitch. If I see a number of people in a run that I know or aren't sure if they're capable of dumping out the super high numbers, I'll often times put in an extra healer to extend our MP pool while they do what damage they can.

The last T3 we did prior to this one we ended up losing with Cerberus at 1%. We had plenty of time to take him down, but status effects removal killed us. This also showed a similar pattern that we find ourselves in. Normally when we fight a boss on any tier, we have no issues getting it down to 10-20% HP in a hurry. It's that last push that usually drags on for ages as our two hours start to wear off. This HP% is also the most dangerous part of a boss...especially the T3 ones. So after that conversation with Greg and then remembering this pattern that happens, I decided to change when our RDM/DRKs started the CS stun process. I felt like we didn't need to wait until 40% to start it as we generally go in with a full load of people. I had our RDM/DRKs start the stunning process on Khimaira at 50-60%. For the most part, it seemed like it paid off well for us. Boss was downed in less than 2 minutes and only one Tenebrous Mist got off. I know most bosses aren't CS stunnable, but keeping this in mind for the ones that are, I may be able to get around that sludgey part of our boss fights.

Dynamis

I haven't been to dynamis in a while due to work and vacation. Yesterday marked my return after missing about a month's worth. This also marked the debut of my Paladin in dynamis.

For those of you that don't know...I won Hauteclaire in Mog Bonanza last year. Apparently, it suffers from the same shape-shifting disorder that Gungnir does. Note how insanely huge it looks at the apex of /hurray. Anyway, I haven't bothered to research gear for this job yet as most of the stuff I have is probably better than average. Few pieces like back, waist, ranged and probably rings/earrings need to be picked up, but other than that, I think it's mostly done. Tanking is generally something that's usually an issue with Dynamis. I'm not sure how to go about training someone in a more efficient way other than just beating the kill orders into their heads. To me, tanking in dynamis is more about pointing your alliance in the direction it needs to go than it is about taking a beating and holding hate. This entails knowing the kill order and the strats like the back of your hand.

I found tanking to be relatively easy in Windurst. I need to work on my timing when I switch from beast to beast though. I found I was often way ahead of my original target's death and often soloing monsters. Not that they did anything super strong to me that put me even in the most remote bit of danger, but it makes it hard on mages if multiple targets are being fought and one of 'em happens to be an over-zealous Dragoon in a Paladin's body trying to solo one. I also need to figure out Atonement timing along with a good enmity build.

This is from one of two wipes we had, both of which occurred from some slighty over-zealous Kimille pulling. I know membership pays for the whole training thing, but aside from very few moments like this, Kimille has worked out very nicely as a sackholder. Pulling mistakes are not all that uncommon as it seems like the game's linking system is hit or miss. Terrieberrie paid the price for this one though. This is probably karma paying Terrieberrie back for making me miss a teabag attempt on him a couple days prior to this. YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE THE TEABAGS.

Obsidian's sack system has been kind of weak as of late as well. We've got 2-3 sacks that are generally there at every run and available with enough time before a run starts to do some of the admin stuff. We've got 3-4 that are generally there at every run, but aren't able to do any of the admin stuff for various reasons that range from other committments (i.e. work or in-game) to no website access while FFXI is running. Then we have a couple who are barely around at all due to some heavy real life committments.

I know part of my judgement of these guys goes hand in hand with what I prefer to do when preparing for a run. I prefer for parties to be posted at least an hour before the run starts to give enough of a heads up to people who might have to change jobs. I prefer for bidding to be taken care of 20-30 minutes before the start of a run as I view being able to bid on open items as a privilege for early arrivers. I prefer for a run to be "finished" as soon as it ends with results posted shortly afterwards. I prefer for every sack to be able to do any admin task from building parties to pulling.

Most of those preferences are born of my dealings with our memberbase over the years. I know the other sacks are not me, but there has to be a large degree of consistency in the crew of sackholders in order for the member base to be consistent as well and this is something I'm simply not seeing. I'm not unhappy at all with the crew we have as we currently have some of the most patient and understanding people we've ever had in the sackholder crew, but the lack of consistency lately is frustrating at times. Lack of consistency = /tells I don't want to get.

I hate coming off as being the main guy in Obsidian more than anything else though. I'm certainly known for having no fear in expressing my opinions and expressing them frequently in long-winded manners. That adds to the perception I'm the "figurehead" of the linkshell. I'm also one of maybe...8 people(?) left from the linkshell's origins. Long tenure + vocal opinions = figurehead perception. It couldn't be further from the truth. I've always considered myself equal to anyone else that was promoted to a sack and often times defer questions related to various admin duties performed to the sacks that performed them so that I don't give the impression of stepping on toes.

Sarameya

This was something I was invited to help kill by Omoikitte. Apprently they needed a rusty ass White Mage that just happened to have AF2 britches, Blessed Body and a fully merited Shellra V and Regen. I hadn't done anything serious on White Mage probably since I started up Einherjar with Obsidian last August, so needless to say...

...I needed the rust to come off quick.

The general strat used here was the one Kaeko had detailed here. Kaeko's strat outlines using a PLD/DRK, SAM/WAR, WHM/BLM, SCH/RDM, BRD/WHM and RDM/WHM. Both the PLD and the SAM had fire resist sets. Our set up was:

Party 1

PLD/RDM (Inbred)
SAM/WAR (Old Man)
SAM/WAR (Ingot Hoarder Smithiroon)
BRD/WHM (Tentacle)
RDM/WHM ({Nice to meet you} :)™)
WHM/BLM (Me)

Party 2

SMN/WHM (Acacia)
THF/NIN (TH-100)

This was definitely a learning experience. We didn't win and there are several reasons being floated as to why. Blaize probably has the most solid reasoning as to why we weren't winning in that he believes a third melee subbing SAM (namely Izman as WAR/SAM) with a fire resist set will help tremendously for bouncing hate and keeping hate under control when it's reset. The vast majority of our issues came along when he was in Gates of Hades mode.

There's also the thought process that instead of another melee, we should have had another healer. Having Iz go as WAR/SAM and Ring come as WHM/BLM probably would have went a long way as well.

Both thought processes lead to one conclusion though:

Need to extend our MP Pool.

There's part of me that blames my rusty White Mage skills, but as the fights wore on, that got knocked off and it came down more to what I felt was our inability to control hate. Aside from this, a few other bullet point observations:

• Sarameya's hate is not party or alliance shared. You can sac this easily to buy time w/o having to worry about disbanding from your party.
• Kaeko's strat outlines the SAM's having a defense down set for those moments when Third Eye goes to shit. We were missing said set on our SAMs.
• Kaeko's strat also outlines the SAM swapping weapons quite a bit as he moves from set to set.
• I wasn't as impressed with Seigan/Third Eye as Kaeko was. If hate is constantly bouncing and you get the 2-3 anticipates per Third Eye that Blaize suspects we'd get, it'll be fine, but you need more than 2 Third Eye tanks due to the speed of the attacks.
• Atonement wasn't very strong against him.
• Blood tanking sucked the MP right out of our collective MP pool. Kaeko's party set up allowed for 2 main healers essentially whereas we had one main healer, one main dispeller, a bard and 2 make-shift healers in the form of a SMN and a PLD.
• The actual timing of when hate resets after the howling sequence left us a little confused. This was the biggest reason we had hate issues. There doesn't appear to be a set part where the hate actually resets. It seems like it can do it anywhere from the time Magma Hoplon finishes to the time the howl animation finishes.
• Regen III fully merited and AF2 body negated most of the poison effect. Only problem is that Regen III only lasts 60 seconds, takes 20 seconds to recast and 5 seconds to cast. Having a secondary healer would definitely free up a WHM to do this. Spamming Poisona is almost pointless given the frequency our tanks were getting hit.

After 4 hours of trying to get it down and Kallo losing about 20k XP sac'ing it, we finally gave up. Not too much else to detail here other than I'm sure failure won't happen next time and if this is what is at the end of the ZNM system, I may be inclined to start taking it up.