Warrior Party!

In what seems to be a rarity nowadays, I actually went xp'ing. :D Given conflicting schedules between myself and Aka, it doesn't look like our pseudo static between Aka, Sao, and myself will work out. >_< And so, I took it upon myself to level up my RDM once again, although to be honest, I've been reconsidering all sorts of other jobs, including leveling up BST given my current state of affairs.

Parties nowadays have become...somewhat bleh, to be honest. Last night was spent in a horrendous party (with a chinese (presumably) gilseller BLM) in the Monastic Cavern where the members just seemed unable to create anything past a Chain #2. This afternoon, I was in a decent party in Bibiki, although a few things got to me. In the end, I had some ruffled feathers and didn't really think it was worth it in the end.

However, once in a while, you get an invite from that gem of a party that's well worth remembering. Basically, I had pretty much just come from my Bibiki Bay party when Eunhye sent me a /tell asking if I wanted to join his group up in the Uleguerand Range. When he told me that the setup would be WAR WAR WAR BLM RDM BRD, my interest was piqued. ^^

And so, I went. ^^

I have to admit, Warrior parties work out a lot better than I expected. Sure, there may be no real "tank", but if you're all DD, there's no need for a tank- besides, you can easily bounce the hate all over the place with three Warriors. Should something go wrong, help is but a Provoke away to get Utsusemi back up, although Provoke was something that wasn't really used all that often.

Sure, there may not be any decent skillchain between the members, but who needs a skillchain when you have {Rampage} -> {Rampage} -> {Rampage}? Hey, if the mob's dead, what's there to complain about? ^^



Our style of play was very reminiscent of sky parties at 75. Basically, let the melee DD go nuts on the mob with a BLM's damage-on-demand helping out when needed. Myself and a Bard are there to provide mana refresh support, as well as the buffs/debuffs needed to keep everything going. Oh, and the Bard pulls. Usually before the first mob's even dead.

I timed one of our fights- we downed a Nival Raptor in about 48 seconds. That's pretty impressive, and if it weren't for long(ish) pulls, we could've gotten some pretty insane chains.

Speaking of insane chains, how's this on for size for a 61-63 party? ^^



Oh. Yeah. ^^

It's a good thing we were the only party up there- it would've been rather annoying if we had to split the place with another party simply because we were just obliterating everything there. Thank goodness the Nival Raptors in the Uleguerand Range are on a 5-minute repop timer, but even then, we had to pull the occasional Polar Hare or bomb to keep things going. >_<

In any case, this is something I'd definitely like to try out again someday. Not only was it a welcome change from the usual party setup, it was actually a very intense, and fun party!

(Oh yeah, and as the screenshot shows, I'm finally at the stage where I have to skillup my Magic Skills again. ; ; Hopefully all the Refreshes will keep things up to scratch. ^^)

In other news, I decided to help out Slautman on some Operation Desert Swarm runs of his, except this time with a normal party setup as opposed to BLMs. After doing this four times, we didn't get any good drops, although I'm rather surprised just how easy the battle actually is- all you need are two sleepers and some good DD to take out the scorpions in an efficient manner. I'm kinda curious why people just don't get their own groups and do the BC themselves, really. The amount of time I've heard people had to wait for their turn in a BLM's queue could've easily sent six people through the BC six times, and then some more for good measure.

Anyway, as we were about to finish, I got a /tell from Xmode asking if I wanted to xp with him on my BLM. Recently, I haven't been xp'ing my BLM, although the few times I do, it is with Xmode and Sakurato, and I've gotten to like them quite a lot. ^^ The atmosphere is friendly, the xp is fast, the party is fun. Unfortunately, at this point, it was also approaching midnight, and I wanted to go to sleep. >_<

Despite this, my typical party invite from Xmode looks something like this:



As promised, Saku was very-wery /angry that I didn't really want to go xp with them, and so sent me a very threatening tell!

My typical party invite from Sakurato:



Little did she know that I was the wrong taru to messy-wess with!



Hee...<3 Saku. ^^