Aerinravage's GamerCard

Monday, January 28, 2008

Provocative Dancing

I logged in close to 11:30 and wasn’t flagged up very long before giving up. While flagged for about 30 minutes, I soloed my way back to 20 and set up macros for my new moves, the dancer’s provoke called Animated Flourish and my first dancing enfeeb – Quickstep. I worked out the kinks of this system on a couple of chump mobs and then headed back to Windy knowing if I did get an invite it would likely be for Qufim, not the Dunes.

However, by midnight I had no takers and took my flag down. I wasn’t bored for long because about 5 minutes later I got a blind tell from Avalen asking if I wanted to party. I told him I would but that I had to go at 1am, not really all that long when travel to Qufim is factored in. He says it’s cool because he has a Monk waiting in the wings.

I opt for the OP warp to Qufim rather than the boat in the interest of time. However, I screw up Rotatta’s selection of destinations and wind up back in Valkurm. /grrr I tell ya, this OP warping is costing me a fair amount of my loot proceeds! I really need to do the T-T thing again for a day or two…

Once in Qufim I sneak my way to the zone entrance, avoiding the nighttime Wights and soon meet up with two of our party. There’s only 4 on the list and Avalen is almost to us. With 4, we opt to try our luck with worms and despite me having to 2-hour to save our bacon when the BLU Vonn stayed AFK the whole fight, we did OK, pulling in close to max XP per kill. Soon, we were joined by another Japanese WAR and a WHM called Molecules.

So, off to the lake we go and we grind away worms, Bounty Hunters and Snips. As with the other recent parties, Avalen is pulling non-stop, and at first, Molecules was having difficulty casting on the right targets. He also seemed slow to the punch when people dipped into the orange/yellow zone. After awhile, he started to fall into the rhythm, but I wound up doing the bulk of the healing. Which was a lot considering the pull rate ^^

But as I said before, I don’t care. I’m a WHM at heart and I picked Dancer because I get to be the melee-“mage” I can’t be on White. I also used my enfeeb and voke a few times for fun, and once or twice to pull hate off one of the WARs who had gone red.

We had three deaths, once when I lagged out and wasn’t able to heal Avalen, and Vonn died once somehow. Avalen had died earlier on trying to zone hate or something when the rest of us were still at the lake. Fortunately, Miketaru was nearby and helped us out with 2 raises and some Banshee crowd control.

I stayed on until 1:20, dinged 21, and was replaced by a COR19 I had recommended earlier. All in all, a much better night than before. Oh, Fhox didn’t know who Chubby was but agreed it was a nice gesture on Chubby’s part. And Alamiriyah joined RDB.

Now, some notes:

The Dancer’s voke doesn’t seem as strong as the Warrior’s, or I’m not delivering enough damage in the meantime to hold the hate. I know I won’t likely ever weaponskill again, so pure melee is all I have. Now that I’m 20, it’s time to toss the Cestis and upgrade to twin daggers.

I haven’t figured out what party leaders and White Mages think of Dancers or how we fit in. I don’t know if my hyperactive healing reflexes are putting off the WHMs or lulling them into a sense of complacency, but I try to wait a bit before casting and lately in these level 15-20 groups the WHMs really seem gun-shy. I’m wondering if I should clarify in advance whether or not I should main-heal while the WHM buffs, enfeebs and panic-heals or what.

Voke works on any enemy but enfeeb will only work on an engaged target. Also, it might be time to switch my macros to <bt> and <stnpc> targeting.

I screwed up my ranged purchase. I dropped 15k on a level 28 chakram. The level 20 item costs 120k and is a NM drop. I have that much gil and I’m wondering if after I upgrade armor and weapons (assuming enough is left) I should go for it, level throwing, then sell the expensive one back at level 28.

I’m almost out of cash – test answers are dead dead dead. Not one sale since the last STF sweep. There is no doubt in my mind these were tied to RMT, but how?

No comments: