Anyone who has followed this blog knows that I wasn't a big fan of the first expansion scenario, A Crystalline Prophecy. I, like most everyone else, rushed to buy it the second they could. I was rather let down by the fact that SE continues to think that level-capped missions are fun as well as the fact that SE believes creating scenarios that create huge amounts of competition to simply get a quest finished is fun too.
In the same manner as the previous announcement for these add-on scenarios followed, we got the end-rewards for completing it shown to us today. SE may have just outdone themselves a bit. It irritates me to no end though. I want to dig my heels in the sand and give the middle finger to the expansion scenario until I see what the missions involve, but seeing some of the stats on these hats that are available has me wanting to just eat crow over all my previous musings about these things and get it today.
This hat has a number of nice augments that have the potential to be useful in pretty much any scenario. For starters, a WHM can dump the "MND+4, Cure Potency +3%" augment onto it in combination with some Fast Cast or whatever else comes to mind and get that Cure Potency rounded out to +30% with Roundel Earring, Aristocrat's Coat and a Templar Mace/Light Staff/Druid Staff. The only downside I see to this is...there's only so much HP that a person has. Boosting this stat even more just means unnecessary HP healing (i.e. Cure V for 800HP when target was missing 650...). In a situation like that, you could load up on Haste augments, but even then, you'll still end up with a pointy Wal-mart turban as far as WHM is concerned. The other augments like "Magical Critical Hit Rate+10%" may prove to be far more useful to the other jobs that can wear it.
I don't have any jobs that can wear this hat leveled, but...I can see some of the augments being rather useful. I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what's available in a head slot for these jobs, but for the pet-based jobs listed like PUP and BST, adding haste to a pet is something you can't go wrong with. Leveling PUP or BST is just wrong to begin with though, but that's another story for another day.
And since I'm the career Dragoon, here's the hat that obviously got my attention first. This is not a hat that I would replace an Askar Helm, Wal-Mart Turban or Ace's Helm in a TP build set, but the combination of "STR+4 Weapon Skill Accuracy +15" and either the "AGI+4 Increases Weapon Skill damage (+2%) or "Accuracy +10 Attack +5" got my attention for a WS build. A Dragoon's two main WS (Penta Thrust and Drakesbane) need all the Accuracy help they can get when you consider that even at accuracy cap, the remaining hits in each WS have a cumulative lower chance of hitting. (95% first hit, 90% second hit, 86% third hit, 81% fourth hit, etc). If those augments actually increase the chance of those rear hits landing, you can't argue with it at all, even for Anwig hat. I'll definitely include this hat when I get ready to do my WS head slot comparison.
Here are all the augments for the hat in case you missed it. They also make a point of saying that the stats are cumulative, so if you choose two haste augments, you end up with the total of the haste.SE definitely put some really attractive augments here and I know I'll get the expansion eventually, but I'm not going to sit around competing for level 20-30 mobs to kill for key items and I'm not going to sit around trying to trade or initiate said key items to broken/poorly troubleshot ???s all in the name of a hat that looks like they ripped it straight off the head of Marvin the Martian.
Seriously.Kaelis had the awesome idea of making it an entry requirement to Obsidian for Tarutaru to have this hat and run around searching for the Eludium Explosive Space Modulator. They just need to equip this hat, a Wonder Kaftan and some Tarutaru Braccae.
Look for the jokes to commence the second you see a Taru wearing said getup.
Einherjar
I'm at a bit of a crossroads concerning this event. I can tell a lot of our guys are getting bored with showing up as the same thing to most of the runs, but the success really can't be denied (with the exception of the two most recent Odin stumbles, one of which I take full responsibility for). So some members go out and level new jobs and obviously want to come try 'em out in Einherjar.
The problem with this is that Einherjar requires the best of what you've got. I want people to have a lot of fun participating in this event, but it's hard to tell someone "change to this" cause I know "this" is stronger for what we're trying to accomplish. I've almost run out of ways to explain how it's detrimental to the team for someone to show up as their newly minted 75 DRK when they've got a fully merited 75 SAM.
On Tier 1, I don't give a shit. It's so hard to lose Tier 1 that we could seriously show up with 36 people on level 65 jobs and probably still win. Tier 2 I care about more since it can still throw out the randomly horrible monster sets to deal with (*cough*Dahak Boss*cough*) and Tier 3 is obviously a whole other ball game.
I don't want to say "don't come as X job if you got another job that's merited". It's a rather consistent formula that I use for our party set ups, so it's not like there's huge surprises there in how I'm going to arrange things, but at the same time, you want people to have fun and the idea of "fun" is about as subjective as what someone wants to eat from the McDonald's drive-thru. Unfortunately, it's also a lot less fun if we're losing.
It's been a long time since we've lost a room due to some fundamental mistake and I know we have wiggle room at times to do some experimentation with various set ups or to allow some members to come as something they don't normally come as. We still have a lot to learn about various things like...where WHMs are supposed to stand now that they have these new super powers. I just have a problem finding that balance where a few members can show up as a more 'fun' job instead of the 'critical' job from time to time.
On top of that, there's the perception by a few that wanting to come as a new job is considered detrimental to the team or outright lazy/not caring. In some cases, that would be correct.
Trying to show up as DRG/DRK for example while hoping that a sack fails to notice would be one of those instances. Sucking up an MP Pool all in the name of boosting your e-peen (or e-cooch in this case...) just kills the chance the rest of the members of your party potentially stay alive. Kudos for breaking 2.5k on that Drakesbane. Fuck you for sucking up half the party healer's MP Pool while the rest of the party members can't get healed. (For reference, there is no game-breaking usefulness in this, just 100% selfishness).
However, showing up as a new 75 job w/o any merits would not be one of those instances depending on the job. It's not lazy or a lack of caring about teammates. There are pros and cons to each and every job. Obviously a job like BST or PUP has a far longer list of cons than they do pros, but nitpicking a parse result because someone showed up as a DRG instead of a SAM isn't going to make a huge difference. There are a ton of other factors that go into that result. Some players play on crap connections and end up seeing a dead monster before they have a chance to engage. Others have similar results by playing on crap hardware (PS2, XBox360...celeron-based PCs). We can't make it an entry requirement that everyone be playing on a top of the line PC or PS3. Some people don't have 4-8 hours to invest every night into their characters for that top of the line gear. The list goes on. These aren't excuses, these are simple facts of MMO Life.
If I see people w/o meds ('specially if they're asking for said -na), then this argument holds water as generally not giving a shit, but getting outparsed because they didn't come as a fully merited 75 SAM isn't always a reason to blanket-bitch-bomb the linkshell. I'm willing to bet that a fully merited 75SAM on a crap connection or crap hardware will get trounced by nearly anyone in a parse.
The bigger point is...it's 100% necessary to know the story before starting to bitch and as I've stated throughout this blog...if you're unwilling to teach, you have no room to bitch. There comes a point where it is just making excuses, but it's never that at the start.
Dynamis
I really need to get those strats redone for Obsidian. We're in a bit of a transitional phase looking for a couple new sackholders as a couple of us have stepped down due to real life issues. I gave them a shout out on the forums, but I still feel it's necessary to do it here too.
Brizzy and Ludaca, no matter what anyone thinks of their leading abilities, have both given far more time than the average player can fathom in helping to lead and organize a linkshell over the past 3.5 years.
I've always maintained that a linkshell starts and stays the course by having a sackholder crew that's consistent and by having a membership crew that buys into what they're selling. It's almost unheard of for a sackholder crew to have as many people as Obsidian has stay together for as long as they have. The past 3.5 years, we've had Kaylea, Gawayne, Geddoe, Brizzy, Ludaca, Yoteo and myself present with some rather long term time investments from guys like Kreoss, Suraph, Glacian, Kittkatt, etc.
It started becoming rather obvious to me that the the burden of running the shell was being put on 3 of us. It's always the elephant in the room to ask this, but as a sack, you always want to know what the other sacks are up to if you're having to shoulder more of the burden. In my case, it's not that I mind, but a heads up or an idea of how long I'll have to shoulder more of the burden is always nice to know. Unfortunately the answers I got weren't good in terms of how long and I already knew I wasn't going to be able to take care of a larger burden for a very long time, so the quest began to replace a couple of sacks.
That's not to say Brizzy and Ludaca were bad at what they did. They were awesome, especially in the most important area of being a sackholder. They always gave their opinions. Opinions are what make decisions complete. We didn't always see eye to eye on various things, but the fact we didn't and expressed we didn't went a long way towards what the end results showed and that was a lot of stability and fair decisions for the memberbase.
So with that said, I have to say thank you again to these two and the door is left wide open for them to be a sackholder again once they get their real lives sorted out.
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