Kirin Captivator

"I am Kirin, master of the Shijin. The one who stands above all. You, who have risen above your mortal status to contend with the gods... It is time to reap your reward."

"Wait, does that mean we're immortal? ^^"

Earlier this week, Pinpong sent me a /tell asking if I was interested in joining BBQGold (one of the sky LS'es on Odin). I was interested at one point, back when I first got sky access, although now, it seems that I just do not have the interest to commit myself wholeheartedly to a sky linkshell.

For one, setting aside eight hours a week to Dynamis already eats up enough of my time, and working around sky schedules with Equilibrium is just too taxing to the point where I don't even participate in Equilibrium sky activities. Secondly, I do like my social linkshell, TrueRune, although we are now at the point where several members are approaching their late 60s and are moving into the home run stretch that is the 70s, so they'll be looking for an HNM and/or sky LS soon. Personally, I prefer the social aspect to the game, and I don't really like the feel of a committing myself to a "business" LS.

Granted, these LS'es have the best of intentions, to outfit members with their endgame gear, many of which require the RA/EX abjurations, but from what I've seen, such things usually don't happen. Not to mention the politics involved with competing LS'es, I for sure chose to stay as far away from that as possible. Hence, the stance I've been taking is much more of a "I'll pop along for fun" type of ideology. That way, I get to join the fights for the experience whenever a friend of mine invites me, although I decline any form of monetary compensation for it, or at least, anything significant that could later be used to try and press a guilt stamp on me should things sour, like "Why are you leaving when we got you this, that and the other..."

On a side note, I finally got myself an Igqira Weskit. Saw some listed on the AH for 2.2 million each, then randomly decided to bid 50k below the last transacted price just for fun. I didn't think it'd clear. After all, who undercuts by 50k on something like an Igqira Weskit?

You buy the igqira weskit for 2,150,000 gil.

@#$&*#$%!

Oh well, at least now I have one, although I'm looking to sell it back once the price rises again (if it ever does). Worst come to worst, I can take the 40k hit listing the Weskit when things get desperate...



I don't really like the way it looks on me, either. >_<

Anyway, going back to BBQGold. I basically told Pingpong that I'd be happy to tag along for fun, and although I don't think he quite understood me, but I actually meant that in the "I don't want anything out of this" sense. Besides, a lot of my friends are in BBQ, so I figured it'd be nice to join them in on a Kirin run, if at least that. ^^

The night before their scheduled god run, I met up with Pingpong, and he passed me a linkpearl to BBQ, so I popped in to say Hi for a little bit before turning in for the night.

Their run today would consist of two Suzakus, followed by three Kirins. I wasn't particularly interested in Suzaku, since I had already fought him before with Equilibrium, but fighting Kirin would be interesting, at least, since I haven't had the chance to actually go on a Kirin run just yet.

Party dynamics with BBQ was a lot different from what I was used to though. Given my limited sky experience, I am used to fighting with small groups like Equilibrium, or Darya's LS (I think "Unfinished"?), where we take in an alliance at most. When Equilibrium did Suzaku, we were just shy of the full eighteen people, and I fought Genbu with Darya and co. with just seven people. With BBQ, about forty people came down for the fight, although from what I hear, they didn't always use to be like this- the linkshell just grew. ^^

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it makes killing the gods really quite easy from a mage's standpoint since all you do is unload everything you can on the target, then when your MP is out, just drop from the alliance and have a different mage replace you. Suzaku was easy enough such that we didn't have to do any rotating, but I switched out a few times during Kirin.

Actually, I felt Suzaku was a little bit too boring, since with so many people, only eighteen of us were actually engaging Suzaku, with the other twenty-two standing on the sidelines watching. Some have criticised this as being "zerg" (taken from Starcraft), but I guess it all depends on your point of view. If your goal is just to kill the gods, then sure, send everybody against it. If you're in for a challenge, bring less people. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, respectively, so it'd be too pretentious of me to say one is better than the other.

For Kirin, eighteen of us would concentrate on keeping Kirin occupied, while everybody else was standing on the sidelines waiting to be switched in, or waiting to handle Kirin's summons. What would happen was that Kirin would summon one of his 'brothers', a lesser version of the four sky gods, and then someone on the outside would claim it, and then Call for Help. That way, you have everybody beating up on one poor lesser-version of a god, while the main alliance is still keeping Kirin occupied. Okay, there was still the issue with Kirin's Astral Flow, but for some reason, not too many of us died, I think.



On the bright side, I did get to see Stonega IV and Stone V. ^^

I wasn't quite sure how BBQ did things, so I basically asked Starfox what to do. Turns out that we'd just enfeeble with DoT spells until all four gods had been summoned before opening fire with nukes and the works. Kirin's Stone-based, and has very high resistances, so we'd nuke with just Aero spells. Even then, I had more than the occasional Aero IV for 97 damage, although an Elemental Seal-powered Magic Burst'ed Aeroga III caught Kirin for over 700 damage, I think. ^^

I would basically run a little in front of Kirin, nuke him until my mana pool was drained out, disband, run over to a corner and eat a Ginger Cookie while waiting for my mana to return. Once topped up, I'd put up my party flag again, and be brought back in for another round of nuking, and this would go on until Kirin was dead, although I hear the main damage dealer against Kirin are the Rangers. Oh well.

Nuking continuously was a little harder than I thought, mostly because with so many of us there, the lag was horrible. I'd literally hit my macro and not start casting anything until several seconds later, so unless Kirin stopped to cast something, he'd usually move out of range. There was, however, one time when I evidently resolved the nuke, then lagged, so to me, it appeared like I nuked him from across the room (which by the way, is a pretty big room ^^)

Anyway, many many nukes later...



...I am now a Kirin Captivator. ^^

I don't remember what our drops were, other than a shining cloth and a Damascus Ingot. I think a Kirin's Osode dropped off the second Kirin run though.^^ Anyway, it was a nice insight into how other people do things, although I'm still not sold on the idea of joining a sky LS just yet. I still prefer to be content with my social linkshell and going about with what I want to do in this game, like pursuing my crafting, and well, I guess I'll still be a helping hand to the various sky linkshells out there, at least for now.