This will be my biggest entry ever. 40+ full sized JPEG pics. GO AT OWN RISK!
hmm, i haven't made a REAL post since before the AV update, lol. In case you guys were wondering, I'm now a God, and demand to be worshiped because the end of the world is coming in 2012... or was 2013... but meh. That movie looks kinda interesting. The Ancient Mayans were pretty accurate as far as their predicitions go on our solar system but maybe they didnt have time to finish and it just ended in 2013 :( Maybe they just got drunk and partied and forgot to finish! I think it's silly how people are treating it like some sort of Revelation though. I grew up christian in a Hindu Family, but im about as christian as Jay and Silent Bob from Dogma (one of my fav movies btw) and really dont think i have anything to worry about. If the end of the world is coming, just dont have any babies and spend whatever time you have left doing whatever you want!I went out with some of my friends to a car show during Christmas and hung out with my family alot the 1st couple days. The carshow itself was great, i even got to drive in a Ferrari Enzo which is an extremely rare car. I never thought a car could offer so much adrenaline in a human being, but gawd. And i also got to see my neices and nephews. Im so happy to see them so happy. They were flooded with presents which made me so relieved because i dont want them to grow up the way my brothers and sisters and i grew up, especially on holidays. So im so proud of everyone in my family. This was one of the craziest vacations ever, which is a good thing nowadays! well, thats everything as far as RL goes, nothing else happening too except im running again and im eating more trying to gain more body fat in my upper body area so i can max out on my freeweight benching a little more. but FFXI is FFXI, even after all that RL nonesense, idc how geeky it sounds, it felt great to go back to FFXI.
But onto other things. 1st.. i dedicate this update to my #1 fan. (Sorry Cyde!) she got you beat dewd!
NIN STILL TANKS?!
These days Ninja tanking is more empty than it was on my previous entry. Despite the situations and updates since than, PLD and RDM tanking has just gotten stronger while NIN tanking stays the same. But despite that, Im still a main tank. I been a main tank for SA for over a year now with Jackyl, and i still love/take so much pride in it. I dont think i will ever stop. The spark that ruke put it in me is so godamn strong, it sucks to see how fast ppl forget how useful a nin tank was... no IS. Even if we cant block hits for 50 dmg or cast ichi almost as fast as ni like a rdm can, we can still do all the things that the PLD and RDM are strong for. EVERYTHING even if its not as 100% good lol. This is coming straight from my eyes and what i seen from my own cotanks and experiance. Im not saying RDM> PLD or whatever either, im just a bit more open minded to tanking nowadays, (especially DRK tanking which ill get to later).
For small man easy things like ZNM's or lesser HNM's like Fafnir, i always prefer a pld over a nin because it requires less support to make it work due to the natural gear selections/traits plds have like autorefresh. Nin tanking dont really go to its full potential unless you have a bard and rdm. Can you get it done? sure, i 6 manned a Fafnir solo tanking as a NIN/DRK and gave my blms all the freedom of the world that you wouldnt have with a pld. But i never made any mistakes. Pld is alot more forgiving than a ninja ever will be, so .. in the end. I still prefer a shield over arhats for smaller lesser things.
For bigger things, i love a nin and pld combo. Jackyl will even admit on vent (despite how much he used to hate ninja at 1st lol) "a pld and nin are the perfect tank combo because of the way they compliment eachother on their strengths and weaknesses" which is true.. A ninja will typically get more hate than a pld, and if the nin gets rocked, the pld can always cure for hate and keep up. Its a bit harder to tank w/me because i take alot lesser dmg than ninjas had a reputation for. But my main concern is to let the blms go nuts and have fun.
My tanking gear hasnt changed since much, but i love /rdm now. The only weakness of /rdm that compares to /drk is there isnt as much spike hate in those "ohshit" moments like Roars etc. that i can stun and use LR, SE etc with. And you have a lesser HP pool. I like to tank with at least 1400 HP in all my tanking builds, even if you only need 1200, because NO tank gets 1 shotted these days, idc who you are. But since looking at Kaeko's testing, having maximum HP is a good thing from the dmg you take. So i would rather take 150 dmg from Khim with 1600 HP than take 130 dmg with 1400. Because you hold more enmity. And what i love most about rdm is you can keep your enmity so stable with that broken... broken spell... DISPEL!
here are some of my builds, obviously all with no food
This is my idle set. I used to wear a mermaid's ring, but replaced it with shadow ring for things that are too fast for me to switch out for instant AOE's and magic def gear. I also have a sep macro for a hades sainti, and i idle in this for most mobs, and switch the staff depending on the mob. For Cerb/Tia ill use a Neptune's staff, for Jailers ill use a terra, and for Odin/Ultima ill use a Pluto's staff. I macro this in for /drk stun, and ni recasts. And after about 5-7 min of building hate, ill use this to spam as well. If i have good support with me, ill aslo use a trance belt instead of velocious since ill be capped on recast timers as well, with 2 marches and haste.
oooooh boy, how i love this set~ I Dispel in this alot and by default i have a terra staff equipped in case i get hit at the wrong moment, but with my hades sainti macro, its all good. Btw that pic is wrong, i use a trance belt now, so its +43 enmity and +47 enmity with merits. Its EXTREMELY handy to have around when having to start back up from scratch again. Its pretty damn fast. As a rdm, i catch myself idle'ing in this w/o even paying attention. You have to be careful on hate though, if you dont have the support of buffs to back you up, i switch back to haste and go alot easier on hate to share. Im the least selfish person when it comes to tanking. As long as DD's and blms are chillin, im chillin too~
my under-rated set! And the pic is wrong, i use a Lamia bow now.
here is the actual gear set, since i didnt put it up:
input /equip main "Pluto's Staff";
input /equip sub "Raptor Strap +1";
input /equip ranged "Lamian Kaman +1";
input /equip head "Black Ribbon";
input /equip neck "Jeweled Collar";
input /equip ear1 "Merman's Earring";
input /equip ear2 "Merman's Earring";
input /equip body "Kirin's Osode";
input /equip hands "Seiryu's Kote";
input /equip ring1 "Minerva's Ring";
input /equip ring2 "Merman's Ring";
input /equip back "Resentment Cape";
input /equip waist "Lieutenant's Sash";
input /equip legs "Yasha Hakama +1";
input /equip feet "Nin. Kyahan +1";
I macro this in before i take any magic dmg, and with denali hands, id be a walking aegis. its only -23% atm but magic sets are the HARDEST sets to work on for nin, unlike pld and rdm who can shit out MDB and -MDT items lol. one question i get alot is:
how come you dont wear shadowring on this set?
well here's why:
(100 - total MDT)/(100 + total MDB)
after using this actual formula, i found out how potent the MDT actually becomes with the more you stack it. If its Darksdays ill use a ring, but the procs arent enough to save more MP on a cure 3 than a cure 4. At least for me, my shadowring proc sucks :(
The 1st place i ever tired out /rdm was our Medusa fight, that jack needed for his burtang. (title)
this is where i fell in love, and saw how much more hate /rdm can get than /drk.
one of the easier HNM fights, obviously but it was still fun. I ate its EES for 900 because i got lazy!
the highlight of the /rdm sub is the natural MDB trait. I had hate on CB and put on my MND version of magic def gear i had available and casted SS, and this was a 1/2 resist with full magic dmg taken. Def my record on CB as a nin. (not counting shadowring)
just a sidenote: If you ever recruite WHMs to your HNMLS. MAKE SURE THEY HAVE SHELLRA V maxed out. It helps TREMENDOUSLY as seen here
now despite all the good things about rdm sub... i still rather go /drk to things that can stun/dont build resistance to stun. You can save alot more MP stunning a wing that goes off, by accident and establishing hate than anything else lol. Even this!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH! Me and Jack share hate really good. I used to breeze through him np, but he's improved so much and gives me a run for my money a lot nowadays. I feel safest with him as my cotank. He's always paying attention.
Im going to be extremely blunt when i say this. There is not another tank in the game that can tank Tiamat as good as a nin/drk can. I can solo tank this with the right support and blm DD's EASILY due to the natural nature of a nin tank. Tia hits hard as hell, that will make a pld lose hate on a none-shield proc which happens. No one ever block 100% of the time, i dont give a damn who you are lol. I will always take full unblocked dmg, but with the ohshit macro its never a big deal, even with MS.
and of course thanks to Ruke/kisada, the dmg in air is always laughable, I wasnt /rdm for this and had no smn in the pty for Stoneskin.
sometimes we even had good drops!
other times the drops were fail, mostly cuz i didnt have TH mijin amirite?
as far as Tiamat goes. Im going to be a hypocite and say: DD on tia isnt really so much needed at times. We make the fight go by faster by maybe a couple more min than a blm normally would on a chain nuke and blms cause less MP and less stress to a tank. Whenever a tank gets roared, the DD's have a bad habit of ignoring it and keeps hitting it which drives me insane. If they trigger another roar it makes me wanna strangle them because we only use 2 tanks here and if that happens you gonna have drawn in blms and its gonna be messy. We dont need more than 2 tanks for any mob ever because we can CONTROL it. but if the DD's are reckless and cause too much mp/tp to the mob more than they are dmging it, whats the point? BUTTTTT, we have monsterous DD's so its all good for the most part. We now have ppl who pull antilions for them to gain TP off of, WS Tia and than go back out, which is 10x better. I did get a kick watching Jukoss die in 2s because he got an invisible counter. I was DYING laughing. he was right behind jack, TA'ing him in his full TP gain gear in full hp hitting it and having a blast, and than 2s later he drops dead with 0 hp LOL. i love you man! but cmon that was funny!
but back on subject:
i go like /drk for alot of things
but i will always prefer /rdm for the new shit. easy or not
one mob that gave me alot of trouble was Ixion. My LS leader didnt think it was possible for a nin to solo tank this, but i did it just the other day for about 45 min. Special thanks to Veyronn for giving me tips on this, because it went 10x smoother. I had rdms send me a /t saying it was easier on MP for me solo tanking it than it was for the aegis duo tanking lol. But vey showed me how to dodge the moves and the gearsets to have ready. So for Ixion, i just idle in my def set. It makes his rampart stance a joke and always ready for it and when he charges and runs, he seems to hit you for alot more... like instead of the usual 80's-120's unblocked, itll hit for like 300-400 lmao. And than change into my Magic def ONLY after i see a charge from from out of his horn. Where ill just run to the side. I know i can out of range the Zeus but meh, the dmg isnt anything big so why bother? its easy now but i do out of range the lightning spears because those are a bit easier lol. Thanks vey! I ended up having to mijin because we had ZERO dmg. But eh, its all gewd. Me and Jack got to relax on DD jobs!
but the only new area i hated /rdm was SW Guivre. OMG it was a nightmare. I wouldve just went /war and DD gear and held hate that way if i knew it was going to be like that lol. It likes to run away at a certain% and you gotta start over on hate over and over. And /rdm can offer the most hate but only after you spam it for a while.
but like i said before, i still like going /drk alot because it makes things easier for my other co-tank even in easy places. If i want to rip hate from you really bad, ill go /rdm. But i find /drk is the better team player
WAR 75!!!
i love this job! I used to tell myself, i would never lvl war unless i had a Ridill/Ebody. But now in 2009, the only people that really need ridills are DRKs w/o KC! soooo im happy atm, and i like having a job besides same with voke/seigan on it! I sneak this job into everywhere!
And most of all i like breaking 2k dmg on command :D! My other jobs come close tho! OH! that Tachi gekko was a Futsuno 300 TP with absolutely no buffs including Dia, songs rolls etc, and i had a sub on! 17 TP return obviously
i been happy with polearm sam. 5 hit is pretty nice even with 240 skill (247 w/torque)
this was 2 min, 1 chaos and no dia
but yeah... im loving war
such a sexy job, even when im dead!
my DRK is pretty sexy too tho D: (ya ya i got a Wbody! i only got it to look sexier than Spotless. It compliments my nice butt, amirite?)
Veyronn is always looking out for me, such a good friend. He took me on his group to get 100 nyzul which is cool w/me because now i can actually get ppl to go on 60 w/me for denali hands!!! But if you know me, i HATE asking ppl for help! So meh!!!! I have been busy unlocking WS's i have mnk and thf left i think...
Taush always has my back on those things, shes the best. I been trying to help her rank up in assult so she can do these RVBs. I love spamming these for salvage. 3 min of meditate for crazy pts, yes prz. The blm doesnt even do anything!
we also got a great new money system in SA now, so we been spamming BR2's. im hoping to do Vrtra, my personal fav, this was one of out better records. and dont let the gear fool you, i have a seperate macro for my drain II's lol.
this zerg is fun, but the best zergs are the ones you get to use all your BW! this one lasts like 10s ;;
i think they increased the drop rate on Torques, they drop like candy now, but hay! who's gonna complain about that?!?!
i tanked this on sam/drg, np at all. Keep pushing for the harpe oro! (even tho x knife is better, gawd!)
me looking sexy!
rai trying to be sexy:
i like tanking with drk lately. I been using it with a /nin sub too and its not nearly as bad as ppl made it out to be. I been using it in alot of places! But i still stick w/sam for the most part. Special shoutout to Skidmarkx for making me more openminded to DRK tanks in general.
this wasnt really a big deal,no DA but this mob has DEF like a mamool Blusterer, but Zilrat HNMs are easy to tank with DRK since dread spikes hardly ever get resisted and your'e doing so much dmg to keep hate. What i like about DRK is the ability to do everything kind of like a nin can. They have plenty of spells to spam with while having more magic def gear than i have on my nin lol. And their Spike Hate can be so nice with capped LR merits and Dread spikes. Ton of dmg with little loss on MP. It just requires more support to make it work imo than you really need, and alot more builds than most ppl's inv can handle. But.. it can work. Even w/o an Apoc. Skidmarkx tanked Cerb np with with his DRK/NIN. And i helped a friend with her Tinnin with my Drk/nin. DRK tanks is like anything else in the game. It's only as good as much as the player wants to take it.
DRK has awesome evasions too!!!!! (i died from being too sexy)
and i love bringing war to salvage for any place that gets unlocked fast. AKA BHAFLAOWWWWW!
This was pretty cool, Jack woke me up and got us all to come out on a free KB. Well it kinda was, someone grabbed and lost it so we took it with little ppl but my buddy Speak and me were pro kiters/DD's hahaha! no Dring, but fun fight lol
Ok! Let's talk salvage. I used to have a group with one of my best buddies in the game. We called it Team Jewstice League. We had a really strong start and end. I did good myself, i finished off with 5/5 usu 3/5 ares and 3/5 on Skadi. And we all of fun. Well.. we ended up taking a break and finally after a while we decided to call it off for a bit. Well... we were happy for a moment. But we noticed other groups getting drops like crazy... and than i thought to myself... wtf 3 SSR drops in 3 days? Is that possible?
I had a friend on MSN tell me about something that he learned in a JP pickup group. Since the JP didnt know he could speak english as well, he filled me in with some info and only me. Apparently there was a glitch that can triple the drop rate in salvage. At 1st, i really wasnt interested. I already got my 5/5 usu and ares and skadi werent that big of deal to me so meh. But i got a few messages from my friends who wanted to start up Team jew again. I REALLY didnt want to... but id do anything for these guys, since they bended their backs for me, so what the hell.
I told them if we do a group, we had to pick a group of 6-7 ppl of legit/trustworthy LS members. We ended up starting from scratch, but it was really cool. Lowman salvage is the way its supposed to be done imo. If its more than 6 ppl going to a zone, i get emo and spoiled. So we picked 6 ppl that we trusted completely. I called up Jukoss because he was the only one w/o salvage experiance, but the dude knows how to keep his mouth shut and he's a very good player. We were going to try to ride it out as long as we can. The only female in the group was Taush, but she's mad cool and never causes drama and is down-2-eartch chill.
So this was it. I got them all on vent. We were 6-8 highly skilled players who knew how to take the initiative w/o having to be told what to do, and i explained the risk we were going to take. We will NEVER at ANY point mention this in pty chat. all on vent. And the drops were self explanatory. We are all selfless ppl. No lootwhores. whatever someone wanted, we gave it to them. And i took charge as the leader again, which was cool. I always feel like the main tank should be the leader anyways. I had experiance. i came from solo tanking LBC unweakened (which high HP and DA rate mind you, i didnt know about the chariot in the gear before hand weakining it :( ) So this was going to be a breeze. Everything was going to be 10x easier. And we were going to split the alex
the next 2-3 months was sex. We had over 600+ alex on one run in Bhaf' Rhemnants. We had a Rampart on and got the pouch from LBC. So multply what that would normally be x3. As far as drop rate goes, we got every drop you can think of except machas slops, ares/morrigan heads and skadi/ares legs. But than again, who cares about those, because we spammed SSR WAYYYY too much. 75% of our runs was SSR lol. But everyone was happy and if they were happy, i was happy. We also had buyers for 35 peices. I would make them come in with us and log out asap and go on their fishing mules. Whenever their drop dropped, i would send a /t and have them log back on, lot and than log out. We made money, had fun, got drops and it was a good time lol. The only person who didnt get drops was me! but meh whatever. I only wanted to finish up ares anyway. I stole this from Bagel on BG
But There are times when ppl on BG/KI can really get the best of you. They try to hard to be accepted in a forum community that they feel they have to ruin it for lower population by spreading the secret like they are the inventors of it. From what i understand, this has been happening for years. Ppl were able to do this with any instanced zone like SW so.. in the end who really cares? I heard stories of ppl in Valefor trying to sell the secret for gil and /sh it because they needed a few extra members for their salvage run. That to me is downright dumb. But whatever. We knew from the start that this wasnt going to last long, which is why we spammed SSR. But hey it payed off.
So in the end, it wasnt about how "leet" we were or anything like that. I can give a fuck about those kinds of things. In fact i hate those "gimp/confused players" thread because not only do 75% of the ppl that post there are no better, but the fact that EVERYONE starts off somewhere. So dont judge me because i dont judge you, i used this to make our friends happy. The whole point of this exploit was to not have friends lot against friends. We never needed it to have good salvage runs. The day after the exploit got patched we did SSR with 5 ppl (1 dual box) and got this 2 days in a row. We gott hese drops right after the patch:
3 SSR drops in 3 days? i guess it is possible ~ But the closest i ever came to it, was 2.
The only bad thing about small man salvage, is that if one person cant show up. you cant go the whole night. So we ended up merging with jack's group and things have been working out ok since. But i consider that month the prime of my salvage time, even if i didnt get anything. We had a really good run, and even if we do suffer the consequences of their mistakes, i really dont regret it too much. I loved spending every minute with you guys, even if most of it was at 2 am.
ok random stuff again
i looooove how this pic came out. I normally hate mithras, they make the gayest noises when they fight, they run so akward and imo their entire wardrobe looks terrible, but she's golly cool!!! lol. shes is my best friend. I was talking to her on the phone when i took this SS too, and she thinks im not as sexy. She needs to cast blindna on herself or something. Im the definition of sexy, amirite?
SAM tanking 101! i love to tank on sam! I was actually in tank pty for this Odin. Special shoutout to Rukenshin who converted to WoW. :(
you still are my greatest inspiration in FFXI. I wouldnt be 1/10 of the player if it wasnt for you. I still strive to catch up to you, and still cant come close even if you did take a break a couple months ago. But its ok, where i fail, i make up for having the nicer ass~
omg. i been camping this for over a year. i missed COUNTLESS hours of sleep from this asshole. I called off work and used up sickdays for this, and i finally got it. Special thank you to Grimey and Walshy and all of my social LS friends in MahuLahu. THANKS SO MUCH! I only WISH KA looked like this everyday lol. Im so happy to finally get it. Thanks again guys! and for putting up with me :)
I love Taush. She speaks her mind and is not afraid to tell you the god honest truth. I find that attractive in a woman even if most guys hate it. She has nothing to lose and everything to offer. She is one of my good friends and i know shell always have my back. And she's fucking hilarious too lol. but thats why not why we all love her so much. SHE SO OGGUTEEEE
leif aka Laeta dancing! DANCE PUPPET DANCE !
me beating up Kristin
we ENM alot even tho we both can solo, but we love eachother's company! Even if shes delusional :o We did manage to get a few haguns~
i made this pic because its so true
Byrth and me helping eachother with our ZNM's. This beats out asking 5 blms to pop a red dragon!
and last but not least, i like how this pic came out lol
