Salvage, Ode to Life Bestowing and Vacations

Rather typical Thursday evening for me. I got another couple sub-craft levels and cleaned out a lot of junk that had accumulated in my storage space. Not sure how it happened, but my damn mog satchel is already 50/80...

While crafting, I was invited by Mexican to do the final BC for A Crystalline Prophecy, "Ode to Life Bestowing." Dragging Kay along, we formed a party set up of WHM, SMN, BLM, PLD, RNG and DRG.

We didn't win.

That BC isn't ridiculously difficult, but it's another example of SE's inability to create multiple ways to defeat something of that nature. Unless you're loaded with ranged damage (SMN, COR, RNG, etc), a win looks rather unlikely.

On top of that...Seed Thrall Qtipus needs to be KO'd asap.

The Seed Thrall hits Treaugue for 420 points of damage.
Additional Effect: Defense Down.

Yeah...apparently it mirrors and utilizes all of Gungnir and poor Treaugue (who was our PLD wearing a lot of -damage gear...) got the worst of it. I have WHM leveled, so it's not like I don't have the option of going in there as something that's apparently a lot more useful than my DRG is, but creating a BC where ranged damage is really your only "safe" source of damage just eliminates a lot of the potential fun of a fight like this. Aside from the standard "tank/support/dd" party set up, people shouldn't have to crawl all over the place looking for very specific pieces to win a BC. The fun in a fight like this is pick up and go with a challenge presented to the group you take in. Not to worry about having to crawl back through Delkfutt for key items if you lose and having to worry about finding multiple people that ensure a safe win.

And the Delkfutt level 30 re-crawl if you lose shows us that SE apparently hasn't learned the lessons of CoP's failures. CoP is a great expansion with a great end-game area and a lot of new/innovative additions to the game, but it was made entirely obvious that the playerbase was very unhappy with anything that's level capped as it relates to progressing a story in a game, yet here we are staring at a level-capped asshattery all over again.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of examples throughout the game where SE had a great boss with very few absolute necessities in regards to job set ups. The Alexander fight at the end of ToAU comes to mind along with the Zilart Brothers fight at the "end" of CoP. Every time SE puts a fight like this in the game, I want to find the developers, make them sit in whitegate for hours on end searching for people to do the fight with them, rig the BC so they lose and have to do that f***ing stupid dungeon crawl again, then watch them have to shout for more people when their existing party gets disenchanted with the time invested in having to crawl up again.

And yeah...I'll be doing the fight again at some point in the near future. Onto happier subjects!

Salvage

Did Zhayolm Remnants last night. Skillchaining is starting to be used a lot between Inbred and myself. Mostly we just unload King's Justice - Drakesbane or vice versa depending if Warrior's Charge and some of the other job abilities are up for a very solid light chain.

I'm not sure if this is something that's broken or not, but during the course of our fights with the 5th and 6th floor Poroggo Madame, Leg Sweep's stun duration was lasting an insanely long time. Usually if the stun lands, it lasts about 5-10 seconds or so tops (if even that sometimes). I had at least 3 leg sweeps last night where the stun lasted upwards of 15-20 seconds. I didn't have 300 TP for any of them (barely over 100 every time I used it since I generally spam the WS instead of watching for moves), but the only difference I noticed is that it seemed like the duration was effected by how much damage I did with the WS itself as opposed to the amount of TP I had when I used it. Normally my leg sweep damage is in the 150-250 range, but last night I was consistently over 400 and even topped out at 750+ for one of them (crit presumably...didn't see TP return). I may run out and do some testing somewhere at some point to verify it.

Run was very smooth. Knocked out 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th floor frogs along with Jakko and the Battleclad Chariot. I believe we only got Frog Chorus'd twice the entire run. All of us were on top of our stuns. This run also marked the first time Izman and I spammed skillchains instead of just spamming our WS. We were generally at the same TP level the entire fight (which speaks volumes to how improved DRG is compared to the way it was years ago when it was considered an lol job as well as volumes about the effectiveness of 2H weapons in general now). We ended up dropping the boss in about 6-7 minutes with just Izman and I has the sources of damage and our THF dumping a WS on from time to time. Only 35 drop we got for our trouble was a pair of Macha's Pigaches that were free lot and I didn't notice who won them.

Vacation

Starting tomorrow, I'll be on the road until Sunday evening and I'll be spending the week at The Girlfriend's place for her b-day. Driving from KY to CT is a long haul punctuated by some very boring highway time in PA. (Seriously....can't you guys put some fake roadkill or something along the side of I-80 every few miles?). All of you in my cell phone book are now being put on blast...expect lots of quality phone time with Q on Sunday. :)

Blog may or may not get updated while I'm up there.