Life needs a blist...
Jul. 12th, 2004 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserIn FFXI, you have a blacklist (blist). If you add someone to that list, you won't see anything they say or do. I wish LJ had something like that. I love the few communities I'm in, except that they have two really annoying, sarcastic, bitchy, whiny people in them (ironicly, one of them is a mod!). It'd be nice if you could say "I never want to see a post or comment from X user on my friends page".
When I sat down at my desk at work this morning, I looked at my rip-a-page-off-every-day calender and thought it must have been put together incorrectly. Why was it showing Friday's page when today is Tuesday? Did I forget to rip off a page on Monday? ...today couldn't be Monday, right? Not when "yesterday" was such a day from hell? ...oh, wait, Friday was the bad day. Ugh. Why does it feel like there was no weekend?
At least Friday of this week will be a short day. We're having the annual company picnic, so I'll be scooting home to do laundry instead. I'm at the point of needing to wash everything I own. Uck. Bad me for falling behind.
FFXI: Playing Beastmaster. (FFXI only below this. It's going here instead of the FFXI "IC" journal because it's more about tactics than humor.)
Playing a beastmaster (BST) makes it feel like I'm playing a totally different game. In some ways it's easier (I hit hard and have a high defense, so unlike playing mages, I don't feel like death is waiting for me around every corner), but in other ways it's much, much harder (in a good way).
While I had thought that playing a white mage took skill (you need to watch HPs and balance the need to heal against how much MP you have and how much delay will be created if you lose too much of it, plus other spells needed to be cast on the monster), I was totally wrong. Other jobs' requirements look like a walk in the park now, and I'm loving it.
Timing (and thus experience) are such an important part of playing a BST. You charm a strong monster and make it into your pet, then send it to fight a stronger monster. If all goes well, the pet will be killed by the wild monster when the wild monster has just a sliver of life left. Then I step in and finish it off, claiming all the XP for myself. When that works, I can get 75-100 XP with little risk to myself. When the pet doesn't die, I lose 30%-50% of that XP -- getting 50 XP with little risk is nice (and darned uncommon when playing solo at my level), but 75-100 is much, much nicer.
(Note: This is one of two ways of playing BST. The other is to charm a pet and fight at its side from the beginning. I'm not doing that because the risk of it turning on me mid-fight would be too costly. It's unlikely I could take on the wild monster alone, and so if I had to fight both the wild monster and the pet, I'd die.)
I'm trusting the BST guide less and less. When describing the method I use to fight, it said that after 5-6 hits by your pet, you should be able to cast spells on the wild monster and the pet won't lose aggro. I did not find that at all. Even when the pet had gotten the wild monster down to 9/10th of its life (with me sitting on the sidelines), if I cast one spell (Dia or Paralyze), aggro was lost and it attacked me.
Even though I leveled to 13 yesterday morning, I went back out again in the evening and spent an hour or two getting halfway to 14. (14 is exciting! I can start using the new +CHR items I bought!) I realized that switching my DEF 5 faceguard for my CHR +3 ribbon will lower my defense (duh!). I need to look into armor and see how soon I can upgrade that. (Need to remain 'tough like tank'!)
There's just one thing that bugs me about BST, and that's how much luck is involved. I kill off my pets ASAP (I don't let it live through its first battle, if possible), but the fact that it can turn on me at any time is a big worry. I wonder if CHR helps with just the initial charm attempt or if it also keeps the pet from turning on you? I should make some BST friends so I can ask them, but oddly BST seems like a really rare job. In the last couple of weeks I've only seen two others! Very very odd.
In rereading this post before submitting it, I had to grin at the second to last paragraph. Making it to level 13 easily and quickly! Level 14 being within range to hit tonight! My god, the struggle to get to 14 when playing other jobs (white mage, black mage, thief). It took forever! Hours and hours! And no wonder, since they had to go after EP monsters and thus get 12-18 XP per kill. Getting 100 solo in the teens levels! How cool is that? And in higher levels, BSTs can get 200 XP solo! In one kill! Amazing, just amazing. I have no idea why everyone in the game isn't playing a BST. :)
When I sat down at my desk at work this morning, I looked at my rip-a-page-off-every-day calender and thought it must have been put together incorrectly. Why was it showing Friday's page when today is Tuesday? Did I forget to rip off a page on Monday? ...today couldn't be Monday, right? Not when "yesterday" was such a day from hell? ...oh, wait, Friday was the bad day. Ugh. Why does it feel like there was no weekend?
At least Friday of this week will be a short day. We're having the annual company picnic, so I'll be scooting home to do laundry instead. I'm at the point of needing to wash everything I own. Uck. Bad me for falling behind.
FFXI: Playing Beastmaster. (FFXI only below this. It's going here instead of the FFXI "IC" journal because it's more about tactics than humor.)
Playing a beastmaster (BST) makes it feel like I'm playing a totally different game. In some ways it's easier (I hit hard and have a high defense, so unlike playing mages, I don't feel like death is waiting for me around every corner), but in other ways it's much, much harder (in a good way).
While I had thought that playing a white mage took skill (you need to watch HPs and balance the need to heal against how much MP you have and how much delay will be created if you lose too much of it, plus other spells needed to be cast on the monster), I was totally wrong. Other jobs' requirements look like a walk in the park now, and I'm loving it.
Timing (and thus experience) are such an important part of playing a BST. You charm a strong monster and make it into your pet, then send it to fight a stronger monster. If all goes well, the pet will be killed by the wild monster when the wild monster has just a sliver of life left. Then I step in and finish it off, claiming all the XP for myself. When that works, I can get 75-100 XP with little risk to myself. When the pet doesn't die, I lose 30%-50% of that XP -- getting 50 XP with little risk is nice (and darned uncommon when playing solo at my level), but 75-100 is much, much nicer.
(Note: This is one of two ways of playing BST. The other is to charm a pet and fight at its side from the beginning. I'm not doing that because the risk of it turning on me mid-fight would be too costly. It's unlikely I could take on the wild monster alone, and so if I had to fight both the wild monster and the pet, I'd die.)
I'm trusting the BST guide less and less. When describing the method I use to fight, it said that after 5-6 hits by your pet, you should be able to cast spells on the wild monster and the pet won't lose aggro. I did not find that at all. Even when the pet had gotten the wild monster down to 9/10th of its life (with me sitting on the sidelines), if I cast one spell (Dia or Paralyze), aggro was lost and it attacked me.
Even though I leveled to 13 yesterday morning, I went back out again in the evening and spent an hour or two getting halfway to 14. (14 is exciting! I can start using the new +CHR items I bought!) I realized that switching my DEF 5 faceguard for my CHR +3 ribbon will lower my defense (duh!). I need to look into armor and see how soon I can upgrade that. (Need to remain 'tough like tank'!)
There's just one thing that bugs me about BST, and that's how much luck is involved. I kill off my pets ASAP (I don't let it live through its first battle, if possible), but the fact that it can turn on me at any time is a big worry. I wonder if CHR helps with just the initial charm attempt or if it also keeps the pet from turning on you? I should make some BST friends so I can ask them, but oddly BST seems like a really rare job. In the last couple of weeks I've only seen two others! Very very odd.
In rereading this post before submitting it, I had to grin at the second to last paragraph. Making it to level 13 easily and quickly! Level 14 being within range to hit tonight! My god, the struggle to get to 14 when playing other jobs (white mage, black mage, thief). It took forever! Hours and hours! And no wonder, since they had to go after EP monsters and thus get 12-18 XP per kill. Getting 100 solo in the teens levels! How cool is that? And in higher levels, BSTs can get 200 XP solo! In one kill! Amazing, just amazing. I have no idea why everyone in the game isn't playing a BST. :)
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 11:28 am (UTC)II. BST does sound pretty interesting. You should ask
III. For once, I'm friending someone cool and interesting first. Mwahaha! Don't feel obligated to do so in return, but I definitely didn't want to miss your comments.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 01:38 pm (UTC)If you really are healing mid-combat, you're accumulating Enmity while sitting. So, while the pet is out-damaging you and maintaining aggro on it, you are angering the monster and probably only need a little spike of hate (like a spell) to push yourself to the top of the list.
> I have no idea why everyone in the game isn't playing a BST. :)
Ooh, I know, I know, pick me! :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 01:40 pm (UTC)2) Pick me, pick me! I know why not everyone is playing BST! :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 01:55 pm (UTC)Woo, I'll do that! Thanks!
And eee! I went to friend you and saw that you had friended me back. Eee, someone likes me! ;) Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 01:57 pm (UTC)Ooh, I know, I know, pick me! :)
*snicker* Okay, go ahead. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 02:37 pm (UTC)Heh heh heh.
Try Paladin post 25.
I once counted, looking at backscroll, how many times I hit my macros in a fight. It came out to something like one per two seconds. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 04:41 pm (UTC)On Dark Age of Camelot, I played a void eldritch, an incredible soloing class. Void eldritches are the consummate loner mages. With three to five spells, I could kill the equivalent of an even match or tough (sometimes up to VT) in about 45 seconds. I soloed most of 50 levels -- the level cap being 50. It was great fun to solo. Wonderful, super, efficient, cool, involving no waiting on finding a group or anything.
Then I hit level 50, and I realized I was done. I had a character that was good at soloing, and I'd gotten to the point in the game where there was no more reason to solo. I loved the journey, but the actual destination left me bored. I didn't have people to do the team-requiring content with, I'd blown past all my friends' level and couldn't group with them (until patches fixed that), and in general was kind of at a dead end.
When I looked at FFXI, I saw that BST was the preeminent soloing class, and remembered the fun I'd had on DAOC soloing as an eldritch. I decided that I wasn't really interested in going my own way again, and ending up with a high level character with no connection to anyone else, and no great ability to access high-level group-based play. Instead, I'm playing a WHM, almost as group-requiring as you can be.
So, would I have done it in the first place, knowing what I know now? Hell yes.
Would I do it all over again? I would not.*
*: I might be tempted, actually, if I could do it as a void eldritch in FFXI. I really liked the play style. Pet classes, in comparison, don't do a lot for me. I want my skill to control my success, not the strength of a creature I barely control. This has been true in all the MMO's I've played. I know, though, that there are plenty of people who have very different attitudes on this count!
fyi lj has a ban feature
Date: 2004-07-12 05:41 pm (UTC)There is an FAQ entry on it.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-13 08:56 am (UTC)If I were locked into BST, I might consider some other more "social" job... but even then, I doubt it. How many weeks have I been saying "I need to level damned BLM"?, just two levels, only one (two?) times partying with random strangers, and I'd be done with it.
If you have a static partying, then being a party-required job is fine. To me, not having a static party and being required to party would be worse than "no fun" -- it would likely be enough to make me quit the game.
I'm really, really happy BST exists. It's a way for me to still have fun in FFXI.
Re: fyi lj has a ban feature
Date: 2004-07-13 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-13 09:27 am (UTC)You had multiple character slots for different jobs (four at first, then eight), so it was not quite as flexible as FFXI, but still more flexible than, say, SWG. I don't know how it compares to, say, EQ or UO.
Anyway, my goal isn't to tell you why you shouldn't play BST. It seems like an extremely viable class for soloing to me -- so viable that it has the same zone-use footprint as a party of six, in fact! My goal was to provide my own answer to your question: "Why doesn't everyone play BST?"
You did ask. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-13 09:29 am (UTC)