BRING ON THE UPDATE /flex

Month in Review...


Now that May has come and gone, it's time to look at what I actually got done. I had mentioned several times I was going to refocus a lot of time into FFXI during this month as the impending level cap increase meant I had a lot of subjob leveling to do. The relic trials also meant I had a lot of additional grind time to do as well. All of this on top of my day to day responsibilities in real life and linkshell life.

Trial 1039 and Trial 1040

Trial 1039 and Trial 1040 ate up a lot of time. Approximately 60-65 hours between them. End result is Gungnir's base damage is 107. On top of that, it's pretty clear from the gap in numbers that there's likely going to be at least one more trial added to Gungnir. If it follows the theme of SE's announcement, it'll be WS related and not anything that actually modifies the stats of the weapon itself any further.

They've surprised me before, but the only thing I can think of that they'd logically do would be similar to what the elemental sea gorgets do. Just increase the damage and accuracy by a flat rate.

BTW...if it turns out they lower the requirements for these two trials, I'll probably /ragequit. That or I'll procrastinate even longer about getting them done.

Subjobs

This is what I spent most of the Memorial Day weekend focused on. I put an ERonfaure_S party together Friday when I got off work and went to town to finish up Warrior. Saturday after Einherjar, I put another party together and took NIN from 37-50. Sunday, I skipped Dynamis (mostly cause it was full, it was Valk and I'm trying to get the linkshell used to other leaders) and took RDM from 37-50.

By the time Monday rolled around, needless to say, I was burned out of XP'ing, but I got bored pretty quickly, put a party together and took THF from 37-50.

All of the parties I ended up using Airybreeze's account to PL. I can't remember everyone that I brought along, but between Gawayne and myself, we accounted for 100 job levels alone. My current estimate is that I PL'd approximately 350 subjob levels for Obsidian members.

The final subjob level count over the past week looks like this:

WAR: 37-50
THF: 37-50
RDM: 37-50
NIN: 37-50
SAM: 47-50

Only ones left are ones that I consider to be fringe at best. I have BLM at 40, SCH at 11 and DNC at 37. BLM sub for WHM is probably going to go the way of the dodo after the June update. SCH sub is still arguably the better sub for WHM, but I haven't had the inkling to work on it when RDM is about to get a significant boost in subjob standings for WHM. DNC is one of those subs I leveled originally for shits and giggles and will likely remain that way.

I did utilize some rather odd party setups thanks to having a pretty endless supply of MP handy to keep us alive. Some not so uncommon jobs like SAM/WAR to use for tanks. Some rather uncommon jobs like BLU/BRD or SCH/BRD to make sure we at least had madrigal and probably the oddest combination was the use of SCH/COR at one point to boost XP gained.

Not that I'm going to rush back out there to do that any time soon, but things like this definitely are a lot more fun for me amongst friends rather than the random party invites that tend to result in craptastic parties.

Wyrmal Abjuration: Legs: O

I now have fast pants. I started trying to get these about 4 years ago, stopped trying about 3 years ago due to disputes over how loot distribution was handled and finally picked them up Saturday evening.

It pretty much boils down to preferences for looting systems. The system I previously tried to get these in utilized job priorities. The pro for this is rather obvious. You put the gear that's best for the job on the person that's got the job leveled. The cons for it tend to be along the lines of "that person never comes on that job" or "Newb to the linkshell can get minimum points required and trump someone else who has been there for a long time by virtue of job priority."

The system Obsidian has always used has been "If you can use it, have the points to win it via bidding and meet a minimum level (70+), it's yours". The main pro to this is it levels the playing field almost entirely. While some will laugh at a Bard winning Hecatomb Harness, it's not really a leader's place to control every aspect of how someone spends their points. Is a Hecatomb Harness useful to the Bard? Not really no, but SE put the job on there and those are ultimately the rules that apply. The system for distributing loot is as black and white as we believe it can be.

The main con to using a system like this is it opens the door to some butthurt feelings when people don't win a bid or when someone does something shady (like snipe bidding). In the end though, that's easier to deal with than the butthurt feelings people are going to get when leader's change the rule on the fly to favor those who are in favor with them. From a leader perspective, I'll take someone whining about not winning a bid over whining about a rule that was suddenly changed to favor someone else. At least with this perspective, my credibility as a leader is still in tact and that's what being in that position ultimately comes down to, how credible you are. If you have people questioning your intent with decisions and the questions revolve around favoritism, you're going end up with a pretty rude awakening.

Hindsight is always 20/20 though.

At any rate, this isn't really an item I coveted. It was an item I thought I needed to help with pulling in Dynamis, but I adapted by learning movement patterns of certain pulls and by preparing crowd control for pulls I knew I didn't have much time on. Best way I can describe this item is it's that one item you know you want, but it's not really a high enough priority to take the initiative to get it, yet you twinge a bit every time you see someone wearing them.

If Murphy has anything to do with it, I'll likely die more during pulls now that I have these pants.

Mog Bonanza

Finally got around to buying 100 marbles again. Guarantees me a rank 4 money prize at least to cover the 200k expenses and then some. I picked the same numbers that didn't win anything last year, so hopefully the odds roll around to my favor again like they did in 2007 and I pick up something nice.

I do wish SE would streamline the whole marble purchasing process though. I really hate the "one-at-a-time" approach. I probably could have been done in half the time if I had the option to buy 5 or 10 at a time and just enter the numbers successively.

That's just me though...

Anyway, I am now completely ready for the update. I gots my marbles, I gots my subjobs, I gots my Gungnir+1 and I gots my fast pants. Do your worst SE. :)

(Except for whatever plans you have for relic trials...how about cutting us a break for once...)