Busy Weekend Is Busy

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet in any of my blog posts, but my schedule each week pretty much goes like this:

Monday: Nothing
Tuesday: Einherjar (8:30PM start time)
Wednesday: Dynamis (6:30PM start time)
Thursday: Salvage (approx 8:30-9PM start time)
Friday: Salvage (approx 8PM start time)
Saturday: Einherjar (10AM start time)
Sunday: Dynamis (Noon Start time), Salvage (8:30-9PM start time)

When you take into account that I'm usually working up until 5-6PM during the weekdays, more often times than not, it's hard for me to do anything that commits a huge chunk of my time without skipping one or more of the events listed above. Sometimes the work I pick up over the course of a couple days will bleed heavily into the night and I'll end up working until 11PM or later.

I usually look forward to Mondays since I have the ability to do something there that will advance my character or to just fuck off entirely if I wanted. Saturday afternoons are usually spent napping and then filling in various events like ENMs (more on that in a bit), Splitting Heirs, ANNMs, etc. That's not to say I don't have free time at all, just not as much as one would initially suspect.

This past weekend was busier than most. I still got my naps in, so it wasn't completely flooded, but Project: Catch Up saw a good chunk of the people involved finish up their mini-expansions.

A Crystalline Prophecy

When I did this mini-expansion originally, I did not have PLD at 75. My options for the end fight at the time were DRG (LOL right?) and WHM. With the returns of Mr. and Mrs. Pun, Suraph and Lectrikelion, I found myself involved in this scenario again. Both the Fei'Yin fight and the Stellar Fulcrum fights were needed for all 4 of them obviously and to no one's surprise...

...this mini expansion still sucks. It's story still makes no sense and the fights are ridculously stupid. The Fei'Yin fight, for example, you have very little ability to control anything. Hate is shared (theory at the moment is with whatever target has the most hate on anything...), the crowd can't be controlled/slept, so basically when you enter, it's a crapshoot on how many Seed Beastmen you'll kill before you have to wipe. These Seed Beastmen don't hit ridiculously hard, but if you have 4 of them dogpiling you, your HP isn't going to last too long. Some might see this sort of chaotic fight as fun, but without a way to establish some sort of order/control other than which critters to kill first, I didn't find it much fun at all. At least we don't lose XP...



Still the same gripes about the final fight in this mini-expansion as well. Doing this as PLD pretty much just reinforced my initial thoughts on it. Generally speaking, if you're not some form of a healer, tank or ranged attacker, good luck finishing this thing. You may get lucky in a zerg attempt, but a couple Seed of Judgements or Seed of Deferences in a row and so much for that.

All in all, the fights went as smooth as could be expected. With the help of Kay, Milie and Rifu, we saw Lectrikelion and Suraph finish up this mini-expansion Saturday night. Then on Sunday with the help of Yoteo, Milie and Rifu, we saw Kaelis and Erimentha finish this up.

A Moogle Kupo d'Etat



Lect gets a pre-fight {ball}{bag}{money} shot.

Friday night saw me skipping Salvage in order to help some people finish this up as well. First we needed to get Milie and Rifu through the Roar! BC. While Milie and Rifu aren't categorized as "returning players" for Project: Catch Up purposes, Rifu did loan us his time when I initially went through this. Anyone who's read my blog knows that if someone's commiting themselves to help me with something, I'm obligated to return the favor and it was time to do so.

That fight gets easier and easier everytime I do it. After it's trashed, it's off to fight Riko Kupenreich with Kay, Milie, Rifu, Kauna and Suraph. We followed the same standard set up that we had before. Suraph and Kay on BLM, Milie on RDM, Rifu and Kauna as DD (SAM and DRK respectively) and myself on WHM. Unfortunately, we lost due to a little bit of bad positioning and timing during the third phase. The BLMs were going to have their hands full having nuked Riko down from 100-50%, so Milie was primary sleeper for when the henchmen popped and I was back up sleeper. We both got stunned and then the henchmen made short work of us. We died in some rather bad positions due to being unable to move thanks to that stun.

Tip: Dying on the stairs is still too close to reraise. Need to be on the platform itself or against the door.

The next day though saw us clear Milie, Rifu, Kay and Suraph. We still need to get clears for Kauna and Erimentha though. Shouldn't be too difficult now that most of us completely understand how that fight shakes out. Essentially in a 4 day period, we cleared MKE for 10 people and ACP for 4.

Salvage

Mentioned before that I've had to skip a couple Salvage runs while Project: Catch Up is still going on. Managed to get in some fantastic Silver Sea Remnants and Zhaylom Remnants runs. Eight-manned, start to finish SSR killing Hammerblow, Dekka, Gyroscopic Gear, Gyroscopic Gears, Citadel Turtle AND boss. Also Eight-manned ZR killing 4 frogs and the boss...even entering on lightning day. Nothing noteworthy dropped that I can remember. So to keep you excited, here's a redneck-esque photo of me standing over a 4-point wyvern that I killed in SSR:



Now I just need to figure out how to stuff it and mount it on my wall.

Einherjar

I've probably griped about this somewhere else in this blog before, but Saturday's Einherjar run saw a 13 man shift in signups. This irritates me to no end. Why?

For starters, it's irresponsible. I get it when people have last minute stuff that comes up and they sincerely can't help but miss. This rant isn't directed at them in any way. I may not like that they have to miss, but no one will ever hear me complain or gripe about them having to miss. Certain people I know are more prone to being dragged away from the PC than others. Likewise, certain people who occupy roster spots on the signup sheet have a tendency to oversleep thanks to late night xp sessions or whatever or they have a tendency to no-show due to something better coming along.

These are the people this rant is directed at.

Einherjar can become rather mundane. It's odd that the one event in this game that offers the most variety can have that said about it, but it's true. I say this because it lends itself to the thought process behind the people I'm targeting. While it's entirely possible to have success with lower numbers, and Obsidian has had success with lower numbers, the odds of succeeding increase drastically the more people you have (as long as they follow the order). My job as a sack is to put our group in the best possible position to win. When I see people being irresponsible, it irritates me. Late night drinking binges are fine (in Mrbooboo's case), just don't be signed up for the run. If someone is bored with Einherjar, so be it, don't occupy a roster spot then turn off your alarm when it's time to get up to do it. If you think you're not going to feel like going to Einherjar, don't occupy a roster spot. Instead check to see if there's a spot available on the day of. It's a relatively simple concept to follow.

You see, when the wait list gets to a certain length, people have a tendency not to sign up. If you're occupying a roster spot and there's a good chance you're not going to come? You probably just cost someone else a spot since they figured they wouldn't get in anyway. I've gone out of my way to make sure people needing wins on certain tiers got into the run. Often times, this meant that I would go 7-8 deep on the wait list and likely could have gone further if necessary, but out of those 7-8 people, 4 or so would usually be because someone no-showed the run altogether.

Saturdays seem to be the worst about this. I know it's early by west coast standards and it may sound like I'm being an old man in saying this, but it's certainly not early by east coast standards. It is if you work 2nd or 3rd shift somewhere, but for the vast majority of us in the Eastern and Central time zones, an 11AM eastern start time is not early. Einherjar is positioned here on Saturdays for a reason. That reason is that the vast majority of Obsidian members have other commitments to take care of usually starting around Noon. I know the gamer crowd is generally nocturnal to begin with, but sometimes this just gets ridiculous. I shouldn't have to ask 2-3 people every Saturday run to call a certain 2-3 people to wake them up because they went out and got shitfaced the night before or stayed up doing God knows what when they know they're prone to oversleeping.

As much as I hate to even think about it, especially considering the success Obsidian has had thusfar, the trend of Saturday holes is starting to become an issue. Moving the start time elsewhere will pretty much eliminate the whole "shit i overslept" excuse, but what ends up being the resulting damage in terms of who can't make it then? If we move it to 2:00, for example, who do we lose and who do we gain? Core members? Fringe members? There's a lot to take into account. At this time, I'd say it's very unlikely the starting time would be moved, but it is something I would consider getting feedback about within the next couple weeks if the trend continues. I shouldn't be catering to this sort of behavior by considering this to begin with, but there are a number of other people as well who are usually busy in the morning time-frame that this event takes place.

We'll see...

Seriously makes me feel as crazy as I look in this picture:



Dynamis

Did our 5th Windurst in a month and a half on Sunday. Why so many Windursts lately? Well for starters, Oniken was sponsoring (Gjallarhorn) and we try to cater to that as best we can. Secondly, other members upgrading relic need Jades as well and they're easily the most in-demand coin we need. Lastly, one of the runs we ended up getting run-jacked and had to switch.

Dynamis-Windurst is probably the second hardest Zilart dynamis there is behind Xarc. Combine some mega-spread out extensions with very few places to spread out along with crows that love to spam silencega and the only zone with statues that like to cast some rather stupid AoEs (Manifest Icons and slowga, paralyga, dispelga, etc...) and you end up with a lot of nonsense.

The Yagudo themselves are not much harder than their Orc, Quadav or Goblin counterparts (with the exception of Sweep spam), but the added element of statue douchebaggery always means you're at greater risk to wipe than normal. During the course of a run, there are usually 2 main trouble spots. The first is the SMN House. A SMN NM + 4 SMNs + BLMs + WHMs (think 2-3 of each) means the likelihood of a wipe is huge due to Astral Flow. BLMs will already be taxed due to a ton of statues running around. This is a spot that almost always wipes us, but this past Sunday, the team of 30 we went in with plowed right through it.

That wasn't the part that was shocking though.

What got me is that usually before we pull this house, we give some instructions. They aren't difficult to follow. They consist of:

"RDMs and BLMs use single target sleeps, do not Sleepga."
"Let the kiter haul the statues away while everyone else deals with the SMNs."

And inevitably, someone will say they didn't see the instructions and sleepga anyway, then proceed to start trying to nuke down statues.

This time, we didn't say anything. We just completely "SURPRISE COCKFAGS"-d everyone. They handled that better than nearly any group I've ever seen. I've seen 60+ man groups wipe to that area multiple times. Same thing with the other danger-house, the BLM house. We just pulled it right on top of everyone and let them have at it.

The other thing that was odd about this run too was that I was on PLD instead of my typical DRG. PLDs were in short order at the start, so I asked Yoteo if he wanted me to do that. He says yes, then I ask Geddoe and Callistra if they minded if I main-tanked the run to get more experience in doing so. They didn't, so main-tanking I went. I had a great support team for this run. I didn't die at all even though I came close on a couple of occasions where I mis-timed sentinel and ended up eating 6-10/100 fists at full strength from a couple monks.

BLMs are becoming a bit more of an issue. I blame rat-leveling for it. We may need to send some of them back to BLM school for how to deal with statues and the correct mentality to use while in dynamis.

Sleep first - nuke second.

Then while nuking a statue...you don't have to dump AM2 into it. A T4 followed by a T3 and possibly a drain will be more than enough. Three T3s will be plenty. Remembering you can aspir the statues etc. I see them die way too much for it to be any form of fun to come to dynamis. It really seems a lot of them simply fail to understand the concept of:

Nuke - run - Nuke/aspir - run - nuke/drain - run etc.

Note the "run" part that's in there after every other action. This is the part they seem to forget preferring instead to just nuke nuke nuke and pray the statue doesn't break stoneskin or blink while they get that second nuke off. Because of this, I opted to actually melee a few statues. Looks dumb on the surface, but in the end, it kept our BLMs more alive than normal. We had enough melee that the statues never really had a chance to get any TP moves off, so it might be something we consider doing in the future as well...at least until some of the BLMs show they're capable of staying alive/unweaked for more than 3 pulls.

The other part they don't seem to pick up on especially is that when they die, it puts more of a strain on the other BLMs. This pretty much leads to their death as well. Statues are generally slow and stupid. It's easy to get out of their spell casting range or cast stun if you know you can't. Kiting isn't difficult, but it seems like the concept of actually running around escapes them.

Not from the Windurst run, but from some Sandy run that I can't remember when. Here is a picture of my favorite past time.

ENM

Ran across this picture the other day:



Made me think that I need to get Kay and Canuck and start doing these things again. We had a rotation of these down to a science. We would essentially spend our "free" time getting the items, then sometime between Saturday and Monday, go do the ENMs themselves. The cycle went from Brothers - Pulling the Plug - Sheep in Antlion's Clothing - Bionic Bug. Not necessarily in that order, but those were the 4 we did. We got extremely lucky the first 2 times we did this nabbing a Toreador's Ring both times, but other than that, not a whole lot of luck. Was a nice way to rebuffer a job or pick up a little spending money though.

Plus I get to see scenery like this:



Project: Catch Up

Now that the vast majority of us have finished the mini-expansions, the next part of Project: Catch Up will likely focus around the WotG missions. There are still some ToAU and CoP missions to do for a few of them, but from a vast majority standpoint, everyone involved in this project is nowhere near current on WotG. On top of that, getting current means they're 3/4 of the way to finishing up their Gobbiebags. Having a bunch of inventory space should prove to be a lot more helpful as we go through the CoP and ToAU stuff again.

Return of Mighty Midget

After a 4-5 month hiatus, my favorite midget healer returned: Ruheibenbai. I had a feeling he would as he tends to leave FFXI and switch to another MMO when he's pissed off about something. This time he apparently got pissed off at his ability to heal competently in WoW and came back to FFXI. Given my experiences with Ruh, I have no idea how he could have ever come to that conclusion, but he did and thus he is back.

As usual though...his timing is impeccable. Good thing the BCs for MKE is generally easy to party up for, but ACP will likely find him having to wait a bit if a couple ranged DDs aren't around. I'm not sure if this is something he particularly wants to focus on at all and I'm certainly not going to force it down his throat, just saying he has a knack for showing up right after we've finished something he could have taken part in. :)

In honor of his return, here's a picture of me scrubbin' my teabag on Izman's hat for future Mighty Midget teabaggings:



Welcome back Ruh!~