More Potent Cures

I snagged the last few light geodes that I needed from the AH and upgraded my Surya's Staff to +3.
It adds a single point of cure potency (from 22% to 23%), but it's got a nice yellow box around it.  I can't wear it on BRD yet, but I can use it for the rest of my mage jobs.

Also picked up a nice little piece of back cure potency goodness that I can wear on all of my mage jobs:
 

Unfortunately, it is even better than the Orison cape that I spent so much time trying to acquire:




I guess I'll put the Orison cape in storage since the 1% cure potency of Oretania's means more to me than the -4 Enmity on the Orison.

For WHM, this puts my cure potency @ 46%.  For all other jobs, my cure potency is 29%.  I could still make some improvements by getting the +1 fylgja torque (+1% cure pot over NQ), the Roundel Earring (+5% Cure/Waltz potency, if it ever drops down below 2-3 million), and the Serpentes set:


 (which I really want to have anyways, 'cause I'm a gear refresh whore)

Now, adding all of these to WHM would be overkill, but I could then sell my Noble's tunic and use Orison +1 body instead for the extra healing skill while still being @ the 50% cure cap.

For my other mage jobs, adding the +1 torque, earring, and serpentes gear would bring my cure potency up to 40% which is pretty darn good for non-WHMs (imho).

Maybe I'll focus on getting those Serpentes pieces this week.  They really are nice pieces! The Cuffs drop from Mictlantecuhtli in Tahrongi, and the Sabots drop from a T2 VNM Brooder in La Theine.

In other news, I spent a few hours farming for feet in Vunkerl last night.  I have the seals ready, I just need the DNC boots.  While I was there we got DRG and BLU.  Some day, those boots will be mine!

LOL BRD

It's funny how the game changes so much.  Rather, how the people who play the game change.

While going through all my old posts last week I remembered my decision to work on BRD.  The level cap was still 75 and I had WHM RDM and WAR @ cap.  I wanted to level BRD for merits and so that I could fill another role in the ever-popular (at the time) Puk ISNM.

Ia couldn't believe my decision since I told her after messing around on her character a few times that I would never level BRD.  It just wasn't something that appealed to me.  But, people change.

So I went at it.  Of course, invites aren't that great at the low levels, but I managed to get something like 40 levels in a couple of weeks.  I imagine that I could have actually made it to 75 in a month, but I took time off to do LS stuff.

Those were the days of BRDx2 or BRD+COR onry.  For me, it was a toss up if I was going to come on a healing job or BRD, but I enjoyed them all equally (well, except for RDM, but that was a gear/macro issue).  Those were the days where if I was on BRD and not /anon, I would receive invites for parties.

And then: Abyssea happened.  The days after the level cap went to 80, I still had lots of invites.  The community still hadn't figured out how abyssea lights and xp chains worked, so they found other xp party alternatives (xp pt in promy?!?).  Eventually the lights and xp chains in Abyssea became common knowledge and people figured out how to make the epic xp rates.  They also realized that with the cruor buffs and atmas that BRD songs weren't really necessary.  All of the auto-refresh that is available for mages makes the extra 5mp/tic from ballads seem pathetic.  Mobs generally die so fast that doing marches for the melees also seems like a waste.  Madrigals?  Melees don't even eat food. Minuets?  Most heavy DDs have capped (or almost capped) attack.  Why get a BRD when that spot would be better filled by another DD, healer, or nuker?

And so it was this weekend that I was casually seeking on BRD, hoping for an XP alliance in abyssea, for a total of 10 hours.  The only invite I got was from a group going out to farm Sedna (or was it Sobek?) that wanted me for yellow stagger. 

I knew that getting a party on BRD would be difficult, which is why I was planning on piggy-backing it onto a more desirable job.  Seek on WHM, RDM, BLM, SCH, WAR, or MNK, then go in and cap xp/merits and job change to BRD to finish it up.  It kind of worked.  I took MNK into an alliance and capped xp.  I came back on BRD but the alliance ended up wiping when all of our healers were AFK simultaneously (no joke) and nobody felt like recovering.  I had just dinged 93 as that happened. 

Maybe I'll find myself with some spare time this week.  I still need to get WAR, DNC, and BRD to cap.  It is easy enough to get invites on WAR, and it shouldn't take too much longer to at least get BRD to 95. 

DNC is a job that I enjoy playing so much that I won't mind taking it to cap a little more slowly.  Maybe work on doing some F/GoV and try to farm at the same time.  I'm going to need a lot of gil if I'm going to be able to afford all of the scrolls between 91-95!

DD Weapons

I want to go out and LFP for WAR and MNK, but while my gear is generally OK,  my weapon choices for those jobs are embarrassing.

I'm using Elephas(sp) axe on WAR (or a couple of Dominion-augmented hand axes). 

For MNK, I love to use Destroyers just for the extra crit potential on top of Razed Ruins atma.  I also have some augmented Savate Fists with Crit rate +2% and evasion +4.

But these weapons just don't feel good enough.  Whenever I'm in town on those jobs, I unequip my weapons even.

It feels like AH weapons aren't good enough any longer. 

What am I supposed to do?!

Six Months Later

It has been more than 6 months since my last post, so a lot has happened.

I have finished all Abyssea zone and caturae clears. I beat Shinryu for his atma and some of his loot (Belt, Cape, Torque) but I still want the big 3: Helm/Mail/Knife.

I have made a lot of progress on much of my empyrean armor. I have completed WAR and BRD sets (+1 onry). I have 4/5 for BLM RDM WHM MNK and 3/5 DNC SCH. I need DNC feet (8/8 seals), 3x WHM and RDM feet seals (have the boots already). I need BLM MNK SCH and DNC body seals. I haven't really focused on acquiring those seals though because the NMs that drop them are such a PITA. I need to just suck it up and run the quest in Ule. Range for MNK/NIN/SCH seals, but it is a soul-draining prospect.

Oh yeah, and I took SCH and DNC to cap. DNC is uber fun!

Here are some notable drops that I've received:
- Loki's Kaftan (nice for DNC and MNK WS, eventually NIN and THF)
- Bullwhip Belt
- Orison Earring
- Orison Cape (FINALLY!!!)
- Twilight Belt

Recently, I've been spending time farming in Castle O. I have made a few million gil n the last couple of weeks farming scrolls up there.

Ia came back to the game so that we could spend time doing something together, although she doesn't have a whole lot of time to play with her homework and classes. We're working on getting her WHM to cap so that we can more easily duo stuff for gear/seals/etc. I'd also like to get her through CoP and into sea, but I don't think that's a big priority for her.

Braego is thinking about coming back, too. That would be pretty nice as it would allow more flexibility in jobs for stuff that we all want/need to do.

Level cap just went up to 95 a couple of days ago. I was pretty lucky and managed to get my limit break done pretty quickly (I had 21/20 merits waiting). After, I went out and got BLM, SCH, WHM and RDM to 95 (although not all are capped XP-wise).

I'm looking forward to capping the rest of the jobs so I can focus on doing other stuff. I don't know why but I feel like I have to have all my jobs at cap ASAP, even if I never play them (I'm looking at you WAR and MNK!).

Not looking forward to buying all of the remaining spells that I need. So far, it seems that all the 91-95 scrolls are drops from BCs, which means they are going to be quite expensive for awhile.

Things that I want to accomplish:
- Skill up Staff (I need more staff skills so that I can proc stuff)
- Level NIN to cap
- Level THF to cap
- Finish +1 armor and start working on +2
- Work on VNM route for G.Axe
- Work on ToM Thunder-staff
- Maybe do a ToM dagger for DNC/THF?

As far as ToM goes, there are a ton of trials that I could work on, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It always feels like I could be doing something better with my time or I have another piece of gear that is good enough to make me not want to bother working so hard for such a small improvement.

For now, I'll focus on getting my jobs capped and getting Ia capped and just hopefully continue to have fun playing the game!

Posted 46 minutes ago