Slow Learner

(One less Dunes job)

June 25-27, 2008

This weekend was all about Scholar. I went from 16 to 20 over two nights. Friday wasn't going to be productive party-wise because of Date Night and getting home late from the movies (Step Brothers). I think all I squeezed in was a Ruins run and a set of elemental Ninjutsu scrolls for the Jeuno customers.

Saturday was long, owing to Ape babysitting much of the evening. Valcrowe invited me and the five of us under his command learned that he was pretty new. At the behest of one of the more experienced, I gave Val a very quick but very effective summary of NIN tanking:

NIN casts shadows > Puller brings mob > NIN vokes > Off-tank vokes when shadows fall > NIN recasts and revokes > lather, rinse and repeat last 2 until mob is dead.

He got the hang of it very quickly and we carried on for awhile. Then he had to go and we also had some DC issues. I asked for lead and rebuilt the party and we stuck around for a while longer. But I only managed 1 level, to 17.

I logged off soon after Ape's return home but promised the Brigaders that I'd come back in a couple hours. When I made it back on, only Fhox and Isa were still on, at about 2:30am. Fhox needed a raise in Battalia Downs [S] and so I started there on foot. He and Isa were working Gnoles over for a claw he said went for 10k on the AH. After misreading my map ("Amateur") I found them and got Fhox fixed up.

I accepted his invite to kill Gnoles for a bit. On the second one Isa got a little too muck loving from a smilodon and Fhox called for zone-out. But I refused to go and we actually succeeded in killing both the gnole and smilodon. I think we took on 3 more but no drops on any. The kills offered a good skillup opportunity but took quite awhile per beast. At 4:30 I took off, as did they.


Sunday would be much better for Scholarly endeavors. Glorf responded to my flag and I outposted to the Dunes. (Note: "tnl?" is a bit abrupt, dont'cha think?) This party covered some beach pulling and a relocation to Qufim and quite a bit of worm XP. Other than an odd bit of aggro running from the OP warp spot to the lake, in which I wound up with a mob train (Trapper, its Leech and Bats), things went pretty well.

Glorf had asked me to come /BLM for nuking since he had a PL. I decided to stick with /WHM because the last time I checked /BLM at 17, the gains in black magic were obliterated value-wise by the losses in white. At 20 it might be a different story, so I need to check again.

Some notes: I'm feeling a lot better about my SCH macro setup. I have the Light and Dark Arts separated nicely and some recast lines. Also, all spells are loaded as auto-trans entities. But sometimes I found myself searching for my C2 macro in emergencies. That said, on Light or Dark my Cure power seems to be very good so I might put C2 on each bar.

I don't have nearly enough MP to nuke. I had to sit out several fights to rest up MP. When I did nuke, I usually did pretty good damage, and I used Parsimony to cut Fire's cost in half. I still kept running dry.