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From Go-Quiz.com
Heehee, I suppose that's true, huh?
Anyway, hi everyone! Yay four day week! Yay vacation next week! Yay losing blood this morning! ...no, wait, not yay. Well, yay for getting the June bloodtest out of the way now! Yay!
I'm in a highly perky mood, and I suspect it's from a serious lack of sleep. On FFXI, my LS went out and partied last night, and we ran a little late. (But it was way fun and we all leveled up! Some people twice! Woo!) I was exhausted when I logged off, so I went straight to bed... and was suddenly wide awake. It made no sense at all! While at my desk I was too tired to walk to the bed, but once I was in it I suddenly wanted to get back up and log on and play more! I only got a couple hours of sleep, but I feel bouncy! Bouncy! Bouncy!
It's so much fun to party with people you know! People you can trust. People who won't do something stupid and get you killed or curse you out for making a mistake. Plus, the headsets/talking real-time is extra spiffy and fun.
I ended up with two new levels in black mage, just four more to go until I can get Warp! Woo! Black mage is sort of a funny job. I like it better than white when I'm soloing, but as part of a party it makes me highly twitchy not to do white mage stuff. Instead of nuking things last night, I kept watching everyone's HP and healing! Part of it was that I thought I was over-nuking and getting too much hate (orcs kept coming after me), but part of it was WHM instinct. Hee. . o O ( My party! They won't die on MY watch! I'll take care of them! )
---End FFXI stuff---
Oh, this wasn't supposed to be a FFXI post. Hee. I just sort of fall back into that by default. So yeah, I got my blood drawn again today. While it's not painful or anything, I hate it. They have to take it out of my hand instead of my elbow, but more than that, I always get a crick in my neck because I look as far away from the blood-drawing as I can. Heh. I don't want to see /any/ blood, let alone my own!
The anime con is this weekend, and I have no idea what it'll be like. I'm going to pick up my tickets on Thursday night after work, then I'll probably wander over sometime on Friday to check things out. While I have tickets for Friday through Monday, I doubt I'll go more than one or two days. Probably one, but maybe two. We'll see.
After eating no sugar for a few months, and after last month's "intense no sugar" (not even things like juice or peanut butter), now I can go back to them... but oddly, I don't feel like it. I did drink some juice this morning (since it came with my breakfast sandwich), but while I thought I was going to dive head-first into a pool of chocolate, I'm not craving candy/sugar/chocolate at all... Very strange. I'm of two minds on what to do next:
1) I can have sweets now (though in limited amounts, since I still want to lose weight), so I should! Have some! Have a little every day! Chocolate makes life good!
2) Since I'm apparently adjusted to no sugar/chocolate/whatever, don't ruin it! Don't have a little and regain the taste for them! Stick with a good thing and avoid them!
Sometimes I get depressed at how little joy there is in eating (no meat, no sweets, no fried stuff... what's left? Graze on grass clippings?), but usually I'm not and it is better for me, so...
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 10:12 am (UTC)Oh, there's plenty of joy in eating... if you don't mind looking like a bloated elephant. Mph. Eat bad stuff and be happy. Eat healthy stuff and eating sucks. There's no way to win.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 11:14 am (UTC)Agreed!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 02:17 pm (UTC)Backup combat healing is fine, and as you get higher level, curing status effects is usually appreciated... but don't get distracted by it, especially when there are other healers performing that as their primary duty. It's generally what I do either when I see somebody RED or I'm cooling my heels waiting for aggro to be controlled and I see a melee-er injured, or the WHM/healer herself isn't topped off. As BLM, your primary task is to do timely damage, and to burst on skillchains (though it occurred to me last night that, not having been a BLM in a group before, you might need a primer on when and how to do that... if so just speak up).
Remember, the faster the monster dies, the less damage everybody takes, the less healing is needed, and so forth. Damage you do is pre-emptive healing. :-)
One of the things I found fun to do in the teens was carefully manage the necessary damage:mana spent. Sometimes dropping Stone twice is better than dropping Aero. BLM spells use ridiculous amounts of MP.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 02:29 pm (UTC)As BLM, your primary task is to do timely damage, and to burst on skillchains (though it occurred to me last night that, not having been a BLM in a group before, you might need a primer on when and how to do that... if so just speak up).
I've never been part of a skillchain as any job, though I've seen them done. Is there a time delay involved? Or you want to do it as fast as you can after the move before yours? (Hm, I guess casting time needs to be considered? So you might have to start casting before the move before yours?) I take it they're just a matter of doing the right attacks in the right order?
Damage you do is pre-emptive healing. :-)
Hee! I love that idea! :)
BLM spells use ridiculous amounts of MP.
I thought that was what I was seeing last night! I never lost MP so quickly as WHM...
Thanks for all the info!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 02:48 pm (UTC)Some weaponskills have effects built into them that you can't see. Those effects come out when a second weaponskill is used within 3 seconds of the first one landing. There's a fairly complicated chart that describes which weaponskills will trigger which effects; Verity has a nice presentation of that chart somewhere, possibly on the LS site.
These effects have elemental affinities; last night you saw Liquefaction and Scission. Liquefaction is Fire, and Scission is Earth; we'll generally try to do one that has an element the target is weak to.
A BLM (or any spellcaster, actually; Fusion is Fire/Light, so Banish will work on it) can cast a spell at just the right moment for additional damage when a skillchain effect lands.
So a good skillchain looks like this:
Marten: Power Slash lands, effect plays
Russet: Wait 3 seconds
Russet: Viper Bite
Button: Begin casting Water2 or Blizzard
Russet: Viper Bite lands, resulting in skillchain Distortion (Water/Ice)
Button: Spell lands, resulting in Magic Burst
The amount of extra damage from the burst depends a lot on how much damage the skillchain itself does, which depends a lot of how much damage the last person in the chain does. We like Russet closing our chains because thieves can use Sneak Attack for lots and lots of damage on the final move -- which turns into lots of skillchain damage, and thus lots of magic burst damage.
To get a magic burst to happen, you want your spell to *land* in the 5 seconds after the effect plays. This means, for bigger spells, you have to start casting before the effect actually happens. In fact, for 'ancient magic' with its 19 second casting time, you have to start casting before the meleers even begin their chain!
At 20th or so, skillchains/magic bursts are still not very effective; we do them as much for the practice as for the effect. Eventually, they become The Way You Kill Mobs, and every fight will include a skillchain and multiple bursts off the final effect.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 02:58 pm (UTC)If we had a 3-step chain, you can also burst inbetween steps, but there's a smaller period of time to do that in: 3 seconds instead of 5. It takes practice and coordination, or Fastcast. Mmm Fastcast.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 03:16 pm (UTC)Skillchain Chart!
Date: 2004-05-24 03:52 pm (UTC)http://bitsy.sub-atomic.com/~fianna/ffxi/skillchain.jpg
Each weaponskill has one or more elements (listed on the lower half of the image). Start a weaponskill, find its element in the rows of the top table, crossreference it with the element of the second weaponskill, and see if there's something other than 'No' in the intersection. If there is, that's the element of the spells that can be used to create a Magic Burst.
Last night, we were doing:
Power Slash (Greatsword) -> Fast Blade (Sword) = Distortion
Fast Blade (Sword) -> Burning Blade (Sword) = Liquefaction
Burning Blade (Sword) -> Fast Blade (Sword) = Scission
As a test, see if you can find those on the chart and see what elements of spells can be Magic Bursted with those effects.
Re: Skillchain Chart!
Date: 2004-05-24 04:18 pm (UTC)Light -> Earth, Water or Ice will be the burst.
Fast Blade (Sword) -> Burning Blade (Sword) = Liquefaction
Light -> Fire, no magic burst.
Burning Blade (Sword) -> Fast Blade (Sword) = Scission
Fire -> Fire, no burst.
Looking them up seems easier than pulling them off at the right times... unless my answers were wrong, in which case you can laugh at me. :)
Re: Skillchain Chart!
Date: 2004-05-24 04:43 pm (UTC)Light -> Earth, Water or Ice will be the burst.
Perfect!
Fast Blade (Sword) -> Burning Blade (Sword) = Liquefaction
Light -> Fire, no magic burst.
Close! Fast Blade is Earth, so this chain is Earth -> Fire, and Fire is the burst.
Burning Blade (Sword) -> Fast Blade (Sword) = Scission
Fire -> Fire, no burst.
Fire -> Earth, with Earth as the burst.
Re: Skillchain Chart!
Date: 2004-05-25 09:01 am (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 03:16 pm (UTC)The composition of our group was a little odd in that we didn't have a whm. What we had were a smn/whm, a blm/whm, a pld/war, and a higher level pld healing from outside the group. Inside the group, none of us had cure II. The only person with cure II was Marten.
So in one sense, I appreciated the extra healing that you were doing because it's sometimes hard to keep up with large damage output when you're only healing for 27 at a time. On the other hand, Marten was there and could take people from yellow to almost fully healed in one shot.
I do think that with the party/extra-party composition that we had last night, it's almost always going to be more important for you to do damage than it is for you to heal. A blm's role in dishing out damage is very important.
That could change if we were to play with that same party again, but without Marten helping.
I never like to see anyone's hitpoints go red. (I feel ill when I think about you suddenly being at 2 hitpoints last night!) So throwing a cure in the low yellow zone before things get to that dire a pass would be appreciated.
Does that make any sense?
As far as post-fight cleanup - at the point that the regen spell shows up cleanup almost takes care of itself. Until that time, look at my hitpoints and look at your hitpoints. The goal is to minimize downtime for everyone, which means it's nice when we have a roughly equal amount of resting to do. So if you're low on hitpoints and I have a lot, you can just let me take care of post-fight cleanup. If the opposite is true, it would be nice if you offered to take over and let me start resting, etc.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 03:33 pm (UTC)I was thinking about that, yeah. Even if all three of us did a Cure, it didn't look like it took anyone (usually Verity) up to full HP, so it didn't look like the Cures were being wasted.
I never like to see anyone's hitpoints go red. (I feel ill when I think about you suddenly being at 2 hitpoints last night!) So throwing a cure in the low yellow zone before things get to that dire a pass would be appreciated.
It's funny how much I've changed; when I first started playing, I would have crawled under my desk after getting down to 2 HP, but last night (after yelling "Crap!") I giggled to myself. 2 HP! And I lived! How cool is that? Dying isn't good, but it's going to happen sometimes. And I lived! So don't feel sick about it. :)
Since the parties will be different for the next while (with the Quest For 28 thing), I'll probably be back to the main healer, but if we party with me as BLM I'll focus more on damage!
As far as post-fight cleanup
That's a good point and something I've fallen down on thus far. Usually at the end of the battle I just sat without doing anything else (unless someone was poisoned or asleep), but yeah, balancing our HPs/MPs would be better. If I miss it again, feel totally free to poke me!
Thanks for all the info!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 03:19 pm (UTC)I was also casting Blind on things before they reached us (at whatever the max distance of the spell was). Belatedly I decided that wasn't as good of an idea as it at first seemed.
It's really enjoyable how much of a learning situation parties turn out to be!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-24 07:00 pm (UTC)I also tell them to start their serious casting -- heals and nukes -- after the second provoke. At that point, I've healed myself once, probably shield-bashed once, and provoked twice; I have enough aggro to hold through a large damage spell, and I'm ready to concentrate on fighting and not self-healing.
The biggest damage spell you have, whatever that currently is, should happen after at *least* the third provoke, and it's best if you just hold it till the monster is below half hits. At that point the tank should have totally secured the aggro, and the mob won't wander whatever you do.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 08:58 am (UTC)I picked up a good trick last night though: I think I'll try to keep Blink up all the time. It's darned slow to cast, but if it means the mob will always miss me, it'll be worth it.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-26 08:25 am (UTC)Don't do it!!
Date: 2004-05-25 04:09 am (UTC)Re: Don't do it!!
Date: 2004-05-25 07:34 am (UTC)Re: Don't do it!!
Date: 2004-05-25 12:32 pm (UTC)