Well, I can't believe that that last post was in 2007. Seems like no time,  but yet forever ago at the same time.
 

I've moved house, got a new job, quit FFXI, come back, all fairly big changes, some bigger than others, of course.

I might start updating this again, when I've got interesting stuff to put up. But it's back in my thoughts again.

Las.

OK. Time for another update. Now, I've tried to keep this LJ fairly light-hearted and straight so far, but things haven't been so great these past few days.

I'm not sure if it's just a general lack of drive, or a symptom of being in endgame for so long, but I'm not feeling the same motivation to play as I used to.
Finale does have a pretty packed schedule most of the time, and we don't get as much time to do our own thing as I'd like.

I guess when linkshells get to a point where a lot of their members have a lot of their gear, there's a general drop-off in drive to carry on with some of the more routine things and we're seeing that at the moment.

We're having to cancel some events due to lack of people, and I'm becoming more frustrated with the way things are going.
There seems to be a core of people who are willing to put in the time for events such as sky/sea farming, but when it actually comes to the NM fights, we get a lot more attendance.

I'm just tired of putting in work for things where I get no reward, and other people who don't put the effort in profit. I'm not going to sit here and pick names, since that's not a good way to go about things, but these kinds of things are becoming more common.
With the way our lotting policy works, there's no real benefit to putting the effort in, in terms of farming, since that isn't taken into account when lotting is decided, and I guess some people are willing to exploit that.

We haven't been able to do much of the new Einherjar content, since people don't seem to be motivated. This is just frustrating for me, since it's something new and challenging but yet we're not able to make any progress. We seem to have missed the boat as an LS as far as Salvage is concerned, and I'm thinking this is going to go the same way.

Finale is kind of mixed in a way, since we do both Dynamis and normal HNM events. It's difficult to have a roster which is large enough to cope with some challenges in Dynamis, yet is small enough so people aren't constantly left out at 3 Kings or other HNM. I'm not sure there is an answer to this. We've had some attrition recently, and we also have some members who are more, let's say, event orientated than others. I treat Finale as my HNM/social so I'm mostly on the shell at all times, but some others simply appear for events and then leave.

This post is mostly me thinking about things, and to be honest, I'm not sure what I want out of this anymore. I used to be proud to be a member of Finale, we achieved some great things in the past year, but I'm not seeing that same level of commitment anymore. I guess we all need to ask ourselves what we want. Do you just want to level some other jobs and do old content? Or do you want to push on and face the new challenges?

As for me, I'm not sure. Maybe I need a fresh challenge, new job, or perhaps a complete change of scenery. Server shift? Quit endgame? I guess we'll see.

Next update should be some more fun stuff, I promise!

Current Mood: blah

Hello, and welcome back to another exciting LJ update.

Stuff I've been doing:

Finished up all of my subs for DD jobs, (except NIN) so I now have WAR THF SAM and DRK 37.
I sold a few things to make some money, so now I have a little chunk to gear up my next job.
I also spent about a week camping Argus... 2 Leech Kings, saw Argus twice, but no claim. Euch.

I've also been chatting to some of my old friends, and trying to get more into the swing of doing regular non ls event things.

I guess if you've been reading this LJ, you'll have got a sense of what it's like to be in a FFXI endgame LS. We go places, kill stuff and get loot.

That's kinda it.

But what else is there to do?

Well, over the last few weeks, I've been looking around for other things to do. Since getting all my sj to 37 that I wanted to, next thing is to get one of them to 75. I've been debating a lot about which one to choose.

The lack of a PCC is kinda bugging me still on the DD front. I know I can get by without one, but it would be nice. That explains the Argus camping, but after a week of staring at walls in the Maze, I'm kind of losing interest in it.
I did try to go for meat use in exp without it, but tbh, my acc was so low, it was cringeworthy..
I've resigned myself to trying the BCNM for the item occasionally, as I couldn't afford it without selling some of my other gear, and I don't want to start gimping my main jobs for the sake of e-penis massaging at lvl 40.

The other choices I've got is to level RDM or PLD. I have RDM at 37 already, and some of the gear I probably have lying around.
PLD would be a complete change, both in playstyle, and I guess merits, to some degree. So still undecided.

We've also been doing a ENM weekly, which has been fun. Nothing major from it so far, but it's nice to go out and do something else with LS members.

Something that I do want to get into doing properly is Assault/Salvage. You really need a static group for Assaults, I think, and the LS doesn't do a Salvage run at the moment. Not sure if there are any non-LS groups going, or if one would accept non LS members. Some more digging to do on that one, I guess.

Well, until next time!

Current Music: Rage Against The Machine - [Rage Against The Machine #03] Take The Power Back

OK, hoping this update will work. After an hour of writing an update last night, I had a browser crash, and lost the content >:3
Moving on, we've had quite a busy week in Finale, but it always is when the 3 Kings are in EU timezone.

We managed to grab ourselves a Behemoth, Aspidchelone and a Fafnir.
Aspid had the last laugh by double feeting us, and we only managed to get an Aquarian Abj. Hands from Fafnir, those went to Hidden.

We also did a Dynamis Beaucidine, and a Xarcabard, some reasonable drops and some that were more lolworthy:

Beau:











Xarc:









Drops went to various people, Aldaron had a good week, getting MNK and BLM bodies, along with THF hands from Xarc.

We also bagged ourselves a Cerberus:



Fight was very smooth, NIN/DRK tanking allowed the melees to go a bit heavier on the damage, and we took it down pretty easily.

In other things, not had much time to level other jobs, have put the first 2 merits into Enfeebling Magic skill, which will hopefully make my solo work easier.

I've also been helping some of my friends out on Chains of Promathia missions, doing a Promyvion: Mea and the 2:5 Mammet mission this week.
It's been fun to do some of this content again, especially with no pressure on you. I'd like to see both the people I helped get Al'Taieu access, but I think it will probably be easier for one than the other.

That's all for now, but hopefully more updates soon.

Tags: 3 kings, hnm
Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: 427 - U2 - New Year's Day

Yeah. I know, every maint means 3 Kings camping. As we're an EU LS, this means that the resets put kings mostly into our timezone.

We managed to grab ourselves a Fafnir today. So great to do this fight without lag!

Pics below:



We took him down nice and easily. Some nice SC + MB, a lot easier to do without being surrounded by 50 other people. Also, I managed to out-damage the other BLM who had Novio, so was nice from a personal perspective. :D



Drops were ok, as in pic.

That's all for now. Update again soon!

Las.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Joni Mitchell - [The Hissing of the Summer Lawns #04] Don't Interrupt the Sorrow

Just a quick update, not many screenies, since was quite a busy time.

Today I managed to fit in some more exp on DRK, up to 34 now. As per the suggestion of a couple of the DRKs in Finale, Zeratu and Ucantstopme, I decided to try using Great Axe for this session.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting that much from it, since my skill was a little low and I did notice some low damage numbers on normal melee when the party started, guessing due to lack of attack from the skill deficit. I managed to pull off some decent WS though, Sturmwind is probably the best WS in the low levels, and it maintained a steady average, only dropping when 1 of the 2 hits was missed. The occasional Souleater WS helped also! I was also using the Shield Break WS to lower the enemy eva, and this worked fairly well, the pt was PLD, NIN, RDM, RDM, WHM and myself on DRK. I think the eva - helped the NIN to put up a bit more melee damage, and I definitely noticed a change in the fight durations, but wasn't running a parser to back this up, however.

Also managed to solo some buffer and merit on BLM, running out at about 20k exp. Was fun, but also kind of tiring, I'm not a massive fan of soloing, but I think with BLM invites being how they have been, I might need to do this more in order to work on merits.

I then went over to Jeuno for our Tuesday Limbus run. We decided to split up into two groups, 3x BLM, RDM BRD for the NW Apollyon area, and the rest of the alliance did SW Apollyon.

We romped through the zone fairly easily, garnering some decent AF +1 items along the way.


 
I think we ended up with BLM SMN PLD SAM WHM NIN and just under 50 ancient beastcoins, which was a good run all around.
We were going smoothly until the last floor until the puller grabbed the HQ Behemoth (KB clone) with 2 of the NQ still up.
This led to us frantically trying to kill off the two smaller ones, while keeping the HQ occupied.
Bomex managed to keep the HQ kited safely, and helped out me and Geli with the smaller ones. Unfortunately, some badly timed meteors and confusion led to some deaths, and we were struggling slightly towards the end. We'd managed to kill both of the NQ behes, but with 2-3 deaths apiece for Geli, Kamehamena, Lapin and I, we were facing 15 mins to go with 40% still on the HQ. 
Some crafty kiting by Bomex bought us some time, and I think his experience of doing this zone solo really helped us with the win.
I lucked out with BLM and SMN drops, so hopefully I can snag another piece of AF+1 soon. Has been a long time since I did BLM hat, and it would be nice to have another piece.

More stuff when there's more to write... and yes, I'll try and remember to take some pics next time :3

Tags: limbus
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Al Green

Well, time for another update. This one will probably be a bit more text and a few less pretty pictures than the previous entries....

What?

Oh, come on, don't leave.... I promise it'll be interesting, ok?

There we go. Anyway, in normal things, I've been tinkering around on DRK some more. The job actually seems pretty fun, but I'm not sure if it's the parties I've been getting, but things seem quite slow. I'm more convinced than ever that the advent to ToAU has dumbed down the playerbase somewhat, and people don't seem to be building parties in what I would consider a 'good' format.

The problem with TP burns are that they rely on 2 main things: Heavy hitting weapon skills, and Bards. Protip: If you're lvl 30, 5 DDs and 1 WHM does not make a successful exp party. Unfortunately, this fact seems to be passing people by.
I've also been bugged by the fact that the only way to get good results seems to be by using dual wield axes, past mid 50s. If I wanted to use Rampage, I would have levelled WAR, along with the thousand other bandwagon WARs. WAR is just the new RNG, people do it to get quick merits, and that's fine, but I'd rather play a job that's a little more involved than simply hitting one macro whenever I see a three digit number.

Now I'm sure some of you will be seething with rage at my apparent dismissal of your beloved WAR job, readying some scathing reply about BLM being an easy job to play, and in some ways, you're right. I know that it's a lot more involved than just that, and I am smart enough to understand that isn't the real case. The difference is, I don't want to be just another bandwagon WAR. I wanted to level something else, simply for the reason it was something else. Sadly though, it seems that problems with 2-H weapons are still very evident, and I'm not looking forward to higher levels as much as I was a week ago. Maybe I can sort things out with some Scythe merits, but I guess we'll have to see.

In Finale-related activity, LS did a Omega run on Saturday (I was otherwise engaged, so no screenies) but it netted Homam Corazza for Ulicia, Homam feets for Pohe, and I think legs for Hiragi, but don't quote me on the last one.
We also did a Dynamis-Windhurst, which netted us some good AFs, PLD, SMN, DRK, THF, WHM, BLM i think was the count. Unfortunately, the run was cut short by some confusion of pulls, but we did ok for the time and number of people, managing to clear out the SMN/WHM house with just over 20 in attendance.

I've been thinking about doing little pen-pics of friends, or people in Finale so you get to know some of the people that I do. If anyone's reading this and doesn't mind, or is interested in seeing what I'll come up with, let me know.

Tags: dynamis
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Tom Waits

Hello, and welcome back to this now slightly more sporadically updated LJ.

It's been an interesting week for me and the rest of Finale, Limbus, KS99, and a trip back to the depths of King Ranperre's Tomb to try our hand with Vrtra.

Vrtra is normally considered the most difficult of the three Chains of Promathia Wyrms, not because of the HNM itself, but the amount of adds that have to be handled.
The room contains 4-5 mobs which have to be cleared, and Vrtra itself summons additional enemies relatively often also. It's this summoning which is one of the major problems, not only in the extra adds, but also with the way FFXI handles mob collisions.
Two mobs can't occupy the same space, and this means that when Vrtra summons, it moves to acommodate the new mob. Unfortunately, this also means that Vrtra can move out of range of the tank, and this can trigger a Spike Flail move. 
This leads to a common strategy of kiting Vrtra, while using periodic SMN damage to kill.

We'd attempted Vrtra a couple of times before, once wiping due to sheer volume of adds and once to a inspired accidental CfH by yours truly.
I think we've grown considerably as a group since those attempts, and I was feeling relatively confident as we gathered in KRT.

I was asked to come BLM, to assist in handling Vrtra's summons, and we started off the fight with 34 people. This is basically our entire roster, give or take a few.



I know that 34 does seem a lot, and I'm sure the fight could be handled with less people, Kraken DRKs not withstanding. I'm sure if we go back again, we can probably carry it off with less, but for a first win, this is reasonable.

I was asked to come as BLM, which was a little surprising, as I was expecting to be SMN. I barely use SMN for any event apart from Tiamat, and was looking forward in a way to putting it to use. Nevertheless, we saddled up and got ready to engage.

The first part of the fight went relatively smoothly, we coped with the adds quite well. We did have some issues with SMN's avatars claiming Vrtra's summons, but this was dealt with fairly well, and this only got better as the fight went on.
About 50% or so, a badly timed Sleepga II and Cyclone Wing left us in slightly bad shape, with 3 summons up, and hate a little shaky. However, a quick Manafont from our bearded BLM Darkmessenger, and some good work from the rest of the BLM parties got the summons back under control. Vrtra wasn't going to go down easy though, and managed to Spike Flail our Summoner party, only the tanks managing to get away in time. This was one of the things that I think before could have led to us wiping, but people have become comfortable with dealing with things when they go a little sideways, and we recovered smoothly.

A steady level of DD brought the Wyrm's HP down, and we finished it off in a little over two and a quarter hours.



I was relieved when we dropped this mob, as it makes me feel a little better for our previous CfH aborted attempt, and it also means Finale have downed everything there is to on the current HNM scene, apart from Absolute Virtue, which frankly, is a broken joke at the moment.

In other things, a quick Limbus run followed a unsuccessful Fafnir camp:





That's been about it for this week, I'll try and put another update in when some more interesting stuff's happened.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: vrtra
Current Location: Home
Current Music: John Martyn

After an exciting (read dull and time-consuming) time moving house, I finally got my internet access back on Saturday; which is why I haven't updated for a while.

Unfortunately for me, I seem to have picked the worst few weeks to have gone missing from FFXI, as Finale took on 2 Jailer of Love pops and also the Bahamut 2 BCNM.
Both, I'm happy to say, were successful, and crossed fingers for more of these in the future.

Today was really about feeling my way back in after a little break. Some BLM merits, DRK exp and a Dynamis-Buburimbu summed up my Sunday.

BLM meriting with the advent of ToAU falls mainly into three kinds of merit party:

1. Puddings. These are squishy mobs, normally yield a decent exp/hr, but often can be taken up by lower level parties (70-74) or by the occasional solo BLM.
2. Wamoura/Wamoura Princes. These mobs can be pulled in 3s or 4s and picked off with -aga spells for fast high chains. Can be very good exp, but often either the party leader isn't experienced enough to execute the plan, or the BLMs aren't merited/geared enough to make it work.
3. Godawful parties that invite BLM for something to make up the numbers.

The party was one of the type 2, and sadly, the ones that couldn't make it work. A lot of downtime didn't help, and only made one merit out of the party. Still, I was back into the swing relatively quickly, and it was just nice to be able to play.

Picked up DRK for a quick session and got it to 31. Slightly random party put together by someone quite new to the game, but managed to pull some decent exp out of the session. I'd love to pick up a static with people, but very little free time because of LS events.

Dynamis-Buburimbu was pretty successful. SJ were back within a minute of zoning in, and we dropped the boss with not many problems.
Farmed Crabs, Dhamel, Crawler and Scorpions; with the drops below.




This was the 2nd drop of these in as many runs, and I was the only main job BLM there with the NQ version; so grats to me!
This will be the 2nd piece of AF2 +1 I have to upgrade, more shiny whiteboxes.



We also got another one of these, this went to BLM who didn't have the NQ.. the other main job BLM passed, so it went to Hidden.

Back to back drops gave us a MNK -1 and a RDM belt, grats to Zeratu on the MNK AF2 +1 and Iriis on the RDM accessory.





We also got a WAR accessory, this dropped just before the 2nd BLM -1, so no, we didn't get 3 drops! Congrats to Hidden on this item. I think we have 3 of these belts so far, seems to drop fairly often.

We farmed the Crabs initially, these seemed quite easy and fun; took basically full magic damage and aspirable so BLMs enjoyed themselves. Moved onto Birds, Dhamels and Crawlers, finishing up with the scorpions.

This run was very smooth, no wipes and great crowd control. Having 3x RDM and 2 Bards really was much better than relying on BLM to sleep a lof of the mobs, since even wearing a lot of +enfeebling skill, I still get the occasional resist, and when you're dealing with the numbers that a CoP dynamis link brings, you can't afford to have resisted sleeps. Also it allowed the BLM to focus on nuking down the mobs, allowing us to clear them quickly from 50% or so HP.

Finale is fortunate in having 4 very skilled and equipped main job BLM, with a hell of a lot of people having the job at 75 if extra are needed. The LS is getting to the stage where most if not all members have multiple 75s, and that gives us a lot of flexibility in how we approach things. There's also the temptation with having such a heavy arsenal, to overuse it, and I did see mobs sometimes running for the BLM because of them pulling hate. This can be frustrating for the melee, since lost WS and damage, and for the healers and tanks who are often forced to drop cures onto the BLM, and to have to use JA and other means to regain hate, slowing the overall progress.

I try to limit myself in Dynamis as to what I'll cast and when. Below 50% is normally time to start dealing damage, since the tank will often have enough hate to hold off any attacking spells, and the mob will likely die if the spells are timed right. Personally, if I take hate with a spell, I consider that a failure on my part. I want to be controlling my hate, without stepping over the line.

Tags: dynamis
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Cold War Kids

Today brought another bit of DRK levelling, getting it to 30. At 30, DRK gets access to Souleater, which is one of the 'signature' JA's of the job.
As I found out first-hand, it has things in common with other DRK JA, in that it also produces a large amount of hate on use. Overall, the party was fun, we were being PL by a 75BRD which added to the exp/hr dramatically, although I still managed to miss...

As I was heading back to Jeuno, one of our members spotted Roc up on widescan. We rounded up a small 4 man team, and quickly ran over to see what was going on. We came out of Garlaige to see it unclaimed.
We managed to take it down fairly smoothly, although the encounter brought home to me how rusty I was at playing WHM. Unfortunately no drops of any note were had, but was fun to take on one of these smaller HNM again, after they'd been monopolised by RMT for so long.



In the evening, Finale headed up to Al'Taieu to take on the tier II jailers; Prudence, Hope and Justice.

We went to Hope first for 2 pops. This NM seems to be relatively easy in comparison to some of the other encounters in Al'Taieu. It is certainly capable of dealing some damage, but it's rendered relatively harmless by a decent strategy and some co-ordination.



We got the same drops twice;



Hope Staffs went to Donnah and.. me!

We then moved on to Jailer of Justice. This NM is kind of fun for the BLM party, as we just sit outside of the alliance and oneshot it's pets as it summons them. No drop shots, I'm afraid, but just Justice Swords and Virtues; Swords to Donnah, Lapinpsykopathe and Pimpdaddy.

Last on the list for the night was Jailer of Prudence. This NM had given us some trouble in the past, and we had tried varying strategies, with varying success. The first pop, we attempted to split the copies, hold one and use 2x SAM to SC and have the BLMs in alliance MB. Unfortunately, SAMs were taking a lot of AoE damage, and a unlucky WS and triple attack downed the PLD who was tanking our copy. From there, was chaotic. Hate was flying around, and I was worried that we'd face a wipe. We managed to recover through good work from the whole alliance, and Ulicia (our resident BLU) managed to kite the other copy away to give us some time to recover. I was worried that it might depop, but DoT was kept on, and we managed to pull out the win from what had been a very bad situation. I think that Aegis was a big factor in this, since it seemed that Pimpdaddy took a lot less damage than our other PLD from JoP once in it's open-mouth phase, making it manageable to recover.
The second pop went very smoothly, we decided to simply time nuke the copies and this worked well, taking off chunks of HP while keeping hate on the tanks.
We were rewarded with the drops:



Prudence Torque went to... me!  ..since I was the only one with it on wishlist. Anyway, a nice piece for BLM, most INT on a neckpiece if I'm correct. Prudence Rods went to Yimenon and Nyssa.

This now means that Finale have 2x Jailer of Love pop sets and I'm genuinely excited about seeing more loot from this mob in the linkshell. Novio and Novia earring and the Love Torque are great items, and I hope we see more of them in the weeks to come.