The Sh*tlist

Talk about a weekend! Actually, thinking about things, not that much happened, but I certainly have more things than normal to write about, so I might as well get cracking.

First order of the day, one of my major goals is now complete. After a long day's work grinding out 20k over the course of two parties, I hit WHM69, and was within striing distance of my main goal with White Mage: WHM70 and Raise III. As it turned out, I got into a pretty decent party down in Bibiki Bay on my White Mage, and sure enough, after a while...



It felt good to finally pick up what is probably the last really important spell in my White Mage career, although a case can be made that Reraise III warrants enough importance, if only to my own benefit at that. It also felt good to finally use that scroll of Raise III that I had picked up nearly a year ago, (and probably should've sold then, too ^^;). The T.E.R.T. (Tarutaru Emergency Response Team) now has an upgrade!

Unfortunately, my interest in leveling White Mage seems to have completely disappeared upon hitting WHM70, and I don't really know why. What's stranger is that this is in spite of the money that I've put into White Mage, particularly recently. In the last month, I've bought a Noble's Tunic, and the whole Blessed JSE set (minus the Blessed Briault), all with a hefty price tag of about 21 million gil. That's a lot of gil to put into a job you're not very interested in anymore! >_<

Of course, the price of the Noble's Tunic has fallen 2.5 million gil since my purchase, which only makes me upset to think about it. /sulk

On another note though, the party in Bibiki Bay really opened my eyes to just how poor in terms of player skill people in the higher levels are, especially in the jobs that have easy invites. In particular, Black Mages, Red Mages, and Bards.

See, while I don't have anybody on my blacklist, I do keep a sh*tlist of people who, well, royally sucked in one of my parties, and I make a note never to party with them again, at least, not if I can help it. So far, I have one PLD, one THF, and the rest are all Black and Red Mages. I think after my abovementioned Bibiki Bay party though, I can add a Bard, although what's scary is that the party was still very decent.

So, what was wrong with the Bard? At first, nothing. Yes, I didn't notice anything was wrong for the first hour of the party. Slowly though, I started to feel that something was amiss, I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I noticed that something wasn't quite right with the Bard. Maybe it was something to do with the Bard never moving from his spot in between the melee and mages. Maybe it was something to do with the Samurai getting Ballad.

Only after I took it upon myself to actually watch the Bard in action, did I realise what was going on.

The Bard was standing in the same spot, casting only Ballad and Ballad II.

Yep, just Ballad. Well, not quite. I saw the occasional (resisted) Elegy, Threnody and Requiem, but the scary part is that this Bard didn't make my sh*tlist until I noticed the lack of any melee-enhancing spells (ala lazy Bard), or even acknowledgement of what was going on (Our BLM's Waterga III MBs were getting resisted, so I told the BLM to stick with Blizzard III for the Ice Staff's +Elemental Skill effect. Suffice to say, the Bard was still trying to land Water Threnody on the mob).

Kinda scary how dependant we are on Refresh that such a player could reach Level 70. /sigh.

My second example was a Black Mage in another party today. My good friend Maelstormstrom put together a party that was PLD WAR SAM BLM RDM WHM. I was RDM, Mael was WHM. For some reason, with the exception of Mael, myself, and the Japanese WAR, the other three members, well, weren't quite up to scratch. The Samurai was very slow in closing the skillchain with a SATA'ed Tachi: Yukikaze, to the point where quite a few skillchains were actually lost because of that. However, that wasn't the worst of it.

The PLD contributed a great addition to "Things you never want to hear in an xp party". To protect the innocent (or out of sheer kindness), I've taken out their names.

(PLD) sorry this isnt PLD
(PLD) is away
(PLD) my name is XYZ i just never play pld before w

Great, so not only is the PLD gone and has gotten his friend who has never played PLD before tanking for us, but his friend was simultaneously partying on another computer on his own character, so it's now half of a person who has never played PLD before. Great.

To make matters worse, he decides to go back to his own party (on his character), letting us know in party chat after the mob is pulled, and goes AFK regardless. So now we're without a tank with only a stand-in WAR/NIN. If it weren't for a rather rash decision on my part to Chainspell and nuke the bejeezus out of that Dhalmel, we would've probably gotten a few casualties, although I think I must've given poor Mael a heart attack trying to keep a Red Mage alive with a very angry Catoblepas after a Convert. Fun times indeed.

But the big kicker was the Black Mage.

See, the problem with having a Warrior and Samurai in the party is that they do not make a Level 3 skillchain. They do, on the other hand make Fusion, but who wants Fusion when your BLM is Level 67, and can cast Aeroga III, not to mention that Dhalmel are weak to Wind?

And so, {Rampage} to {Tachi: Yukikaze} for Detonation it is.

Unfortunately, something soon came amiss when, after we arrive in Bibiki Bay and get started with a skillchain, the BLM doesn't cast Aeroga III. Wondering what was up, Mael gave a quick {Aeroga}{Yes, please} only to find that the BLM didn't even have Aeroga III.

/slap #1 for the BLM.

No matter, we managed to drag out a whining Nappycat who was kind enough to do some postal work all the way down to Bibiki, and with a newly learnt Aeroga III in hand (or in memory), we continued.

Rampage goes. The Samurai readies his SATA, and uses Tachi: Yukikaze. I hit my Aero II macro for the magic burst, and then I see the BLM start casting Aeroga III after the Detonation animation has gone off. Of course, she missed the magic burst. -_-

I thought it was a fluke, maybe a freak accident. But four missed Magic Bursts later, I realised that this Black Mage couldn't land a Magic Burst to save her life.

/slap #2 for the BLM.

Nappy actually identified her as one of the BLMs on one of his manaburn parties, to which I kinda got the idea of where her skills (or lack thereof) came from. Seriously, it felt odd me teaching a BLM67 the timing for a Magic Burst. One would at least hope that you've had a chance to MB a Waterga III on a Distortion skillchain, but even without such experience, you would be able to deduce for yourself that, if you started casting after the closing skillchain, you would miss. Evidently, that wasn't the case, and I had to tell her to start casting as the Samurai readies Sneak Attack, only to have her cast her next Aeroga III after the Detonation.

/slap #3 for the BLM.

Then, a Magic Burst!

For a massive 400 damage! (/end sarcasm) Fine, so it got resisted. But wait! Aren't Dhalmels weak to Aero spells? What's going on here? To be honest, I couldn't figure it out for myself, but after watching resisted Aeroga after resisted Aeroga (on the times she actually landed the Magic Burst), something was definitely not right. Maybe she has severely underleveled Elemental Magic, but even that takes a supreme amount of incompetance that I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Then I saw something interesting, which I verified by watching her next Aeroga III nuke.

That's right, she didn't have a Wind Staff. She was nuking AEROGA with an ICE STAFF.

See, to an outsider, this makes sense. The Ice Staff has give +10 to one's Elemental Magic skill, thus reducing resists, so it'd make sense to equip it. However, what most people forget is that while the corresponding staves also add 10% damage to nukes of the correct type, equipping a staff of the dominating element reduces one's damage output by 10%. In this case, Wind is weak to Ice, so equipping an Ice staff lowers the potency of all Aero nukes by 10%. Also given current speculation on the elemental staves effect on magic accuracy, it's no surprise that all her Magic Bursts (with the exception of one) were all resisted.

Resisted Magic Bursts! On a mob that is supposed to be weak to the element, too!

/slap #4 for the BLM.

Seriously, I don't know how someone this bad makes it this far other than sheer ignorance and blind perseverance, but boy, I was literally pulling my hair out and slamming her quite vocally in the linkshell, or at least enough to get Tumble's attention,



In particular,

(Tumble) Geez Tuuf, it would be hard to level with you, for fear of not pleasing your high standards.
(Tuufless) Heh, I don't know- am I too demanding? >_<

In all seriousness, I don't think I expect too much out of people. All I want them to do is a simple task, and that is all. As Akanea (and others) have pointed out, I can get very bossy in a party, especially when things aren't quite working out as they should be, but a party is like a machine with six cogs- if one cog is faulty, the whole workings is less efficient as a whole. It's not about gear either (well, to a degree), it's just sheer player skill.

I think I am fairly forgiving of players at the lower level, but once things start picking up, I will assume that you know certain things about party dynamics.

For example, I do not believe that knowing how to land a Magic Burst consistently is too much to ask for. This is something that should really be assumed waaay back in Level 20, maybe 25.

But a Black Mage Sixty-seven who can't land a Magic Burst? Pathetic.

Whatever happened to pride at your job? Ever wonder why most people seem to prefer Japanese parties better when it comes to crunch time and cranking down the numbers on the tnl bar? Granted, I've had my fair share of bad Japanese players, but compared to the number of bad English speaking players, I'd go with Japanese if I had the choice.

/fume