Friendly Fire

June 20-22, 2008

I don’t really remember Friday, but I don’t think I got a party. I do remember a lengthy conversation with Stoik while flagged up on NIN. He and I commiserated about girl troubles (Ape, my stories were all before you so put that hammer down please!).

Saturday was a late-night affair in the Dunes on NIN. I had originally gotten an invite from Bigweezy who informed me he was still building the party. Then about 15 minutes later he says he got an invite of his own. He may have tried to get me space but I don’t remember-I was too annoyed at that point.

I had been chatting with Archer who had just gotten his own invite on his PLD but his group didn’t have any space and Bigweezy was not his leader. However, about 30 minutes later, I get an invite from Oghr. I accept and OP warp. On tracking down the party on the Secret Beach, I see Bigweezy.

It turns out Oghr had invited him before me and that’s what had happened to him. It also turns out that they booted him for gimping the XP, opening a slot for me. And for the next neat thing, this was the party Archer had gotten into.

So for about 3 hours we grind away with me as the puller. Archer and I were doing our best to out-voke each other but since nobody set any role expectations, meh. In fact, other than Oghr and his alt Plantice on PL duty, there was very little communication.

I won’t dive into every detail but basically, voke-pulling sucks, I tweaked my macros to alert rhe party to pulls and TP readiness, and I died three times. The first was my fault, falling to 3x Bounty Hunter love while fishing for fish in the far west tree-lined cove thingy. The second was combat-related (pug hit + special IIRC) and the third, well…

Our PL went AFK, which meant Oghr was also AFK. Being about 200 away from 19 I start pulling Snips which the 5 active players can handle easily. Returning from a snip pull, I see Archer fighting off a pug. So now we have two mobs, 5 players and no PL or BLM for Sleep. Archer and I both bite it.

Annoyed, I ask the party who pulled. Annoyed partly because I was dead and partly because the leader had made me the puller and I had announced the pull. Turns out it was Archer! He didn’t know the PL was AFK, or that Oghr and Plantice were one and the same. I may still need to /slap him the next time I see him.

When Oghr returned, he was stunned to see two corpses and a lot of low HP. He asked what happened and I throw Archer under the bus. A couple more Raises and we fight our way to our levels. By now, it’s 4:30 and plans to head to Qufim are abandoned.

Sunday was another non-day. I logged in and flagged up but bailed soon after so I could work on MGS4 and MGO and because we were doing Family Movie Night featuring Temple of Doom.

Reflections: Do not EVER go as WAR or NIN again without arrows or other ranged. Voke-pulling is too short-ranged to do safely and it slows things down.

Other than that, I was ok with my performance. I was able to mostly hold hate but I hit for a lot of zeroes. I unfiltered party combat to see many of the others having the same issues so maybe it was a combat thing.

NIN tanking still kinda bites. I think PLD is where it’s at but if I want to take DNC to 75 I think I have to have /NIN…