Failure Mode

June 13-15, 2008

Father’s Day weekend started with dinner and a movie with Carrie & Ray. After eating at Renna’s we went to see The Happening – it’s like Final Destination but with suicides instead of accidents and plants instead of Death. After returning and putting Ape to bed I logged in around 2am and was able to get a party on Dancer, led by Evildog.

While things went well enough in the jungles outside Kazham, let me just say it was not my finest night. I had planned to be on until about 5:30 but at four-ish I just got crushed by sleepy-waves. I dropped the controller three times and nearly fell out of the chair. Between pulls I walked around and did the cold-water-splash thing. I never saw any HP issues and only missed healing dances a few times, but I stuck with since we were nearing the scheduled end of the party. I feel really bad but believe there was no harm done. I got most of the way to 29.

Saturday the fam got up, piled into Mom’s van and we all went to Orlando. Mom and Dad had a RL dancing event and the Bradlees were staying at a Hilton resort and planning on some shopping and possibly Universal time. Once we saw our room, we pretty much stayed on resort property – 5 stars! We even did a poolside movie, Enchanted, and hung out. I didn’t log in until about 1am and quickly abandoned party plans. Yalto needed a Raise in the Dunes and I knew I’d just exhaust myself starting a party this late.

So I tell Yalto I’m on the way and zoom out to meet his corpse outside Selbina. Just as I zone in, he tells me apologetically he got a random raise. It was OK, because I was going to PL him a bit anyway. While he’s recovering and I’m chatting in the dark, he gets killed again. I couldn’t see because I was straining to see the keyboard in the dark hotel room and was looking down ><

I raise him, we head inside, and I mention my PL plans if he’s still up for it. Almost immediately he runs out and tells me to follow him to the outpost. So we run up the hill, I buff him, and I wonder just how it is a nearby bard’s songs are buffing him and not me. Then I realize he got into a party. On being quizzed, he points to Nava and says she’s his RL girlfriend’s sister. I hadn’t planned on party-PLing but what the hey. I warn him about my time constraints and we set off.

The initial fly pulls soon gave way to pugs on the beach due to poor XP and once there, we had a lot of excitement from Gob Ambusher aggro. No deaths, and I didn’t have to crowd-control – they just took the links in stride. Things went well and everyone dinged IIRC. I logged off at 2:30 am and the whole party was very gracious.

Sunday was Father’s Day in Universal to see the new Disaster show/ride and to eat at Margaritaville. Both things went really well (note: find out how they do the walkin’ Walken holo) and we leave Orlando at 5pm. Once returning home and getting settled, I log in close to 10 with plans to party on Dancer again. After about 15 minutes with no invite, I’m in my MH on the Change Jobs menu when Rodicus sends me an invite.

It takes me about 10 minutes to reach them in the southern Outpost area in Yuhtunga. As I’m a rep, I get to hang about for 5-10 minutes until the slot opens. As DNC/NIN, I can’t do anything helpful until I actually join the party.

We have a slow start on some rough gob pulls since the PL left with my predecessor. But we soon get a rhythm worked out and not only are the Goblin Furriers going down easy, I’m hitting hard and often, for once. So I have tons of TP for heals. In fact, I may have annoyed the WHM Shadowmane and RDM Tathlun since I was healing a lot. And since dances are pretty much insta-cast I was beating them to the punch before they could interrupt their casts. I even apologized to Shadow for possibly wrecking his groove but he seemed fine.

Honestly, I think I was trying so hard to make amends for Friday’s dismal performance. I may be imagining things, but near the end, it really seemed like neither of the mages were casting heals much at all. Which worked because it helped keep aggro off the back-line and let them focus on nukes and enfeebs.

Speaking of enfeebs, it must’ve been 45 minutes in before I remembered I was a Dancer and not a Ninja… I fessed up in chat and began Quickstepping as well, with a very high success rate.

The party came to an early end when Rodicus wanted to move us down the cliff towards Sea Serpent Grotto. I’m not sure if this was in response to Brim’s apparent AFK during battle or because of XP concerns. In any case, we hit the wrong hole and someone got aggroed by a Gob Robber. I thought we were fighting in earnest and started in. However, it was obvious this guy was WAY beyond us – he still had full HP after a minute of party attacking and I wasn’t hitting anything.

I tried the PLD-wannabe-hero thing and voked the Gob and ran, but wound up dead in a dead end. I warned the rest that he was headed back… Two more deaths later, I homepoint in order to Raise, outpost and medicate. However, being close to 12:30, and with Matt’s first day of early-morning Space Camp ahead of me, I know I’m done. As I’m making my way back, I realize Shadow is still alive, asking pointlessly in party chat if he survived. He can raise too, duh… It’s been awhile since I partied with a WHM when at these levels… Lately I’m either co-healing with non-WHM mages or the main healer is a Scholar.

Turns out I needed to go as WHM to clear the room and allow Rodicus to wake up. After a wrong turn and long trek back up the cliff, I find him, with a Robber sitting right on him. I go into WHM Badass mode and nuke the gob with all the offensive white magic I have. Aigisu joined in the melee confusing me until I remembered I never left the party and the target was up for grabs among us. I escort Rod and Aigisu back to the original camp and have to leave.
I don’t know what Rod did after I left, but I know Brim had exited as well, and I thought one other partier did too.

For once I really felt “right” on Dancer. I was doing good damage, I kept hate front-line with my heals, enfeebs and occasional vokes, and I even tried tanking by opening with a voke. THIS time, hate was squarely at my feet and I nearly died. Eventually, Rod was able to voke off me and I recast shadows and healed and made a note not to do that again. But I really had a blast! /NIN really seems to work well, although it seems Bomb Tosses are not blocked by shadows.

I want to get Dancer to the early 30’s for the new abilities, and then I’ll be back on PLD, WAR and NIN for a bit. I may also go ahead and sink some gil into the Beetle +1 set. It’s basically the Bone +1 set with Eva +5, but with more Def. Also, need to really sort out accessories to boost Def, Atk, Eva or Agi. I did better this time, but still not as good as I could have.

Random RDB Update: No static whatsoever this weekend, and aside from general chat, Fhox had an interesting reaction to my sleep-spell: he DCs. And he seemed concerned about whether I had my pearl on (I did). I couldn’t tell how serious he was… I’ve only fallen asleep twice controller-in-hand, and the other time was playing Gran Turismo.