Shattering Stars- WHM

I decided to quit WHM, this time for good. Not that I have anything against WHM- after all, it was my first serious job, and I took it all the way to WHM62 before switching over to BLM. It's just that with three mage jobs, one of them was bound to eventually get the boot, and in this case, it just so happened to be WHM.

Literally everything I get called for calls for me to come on either my RDM or BLM. My WHM? Maybe the occasional Raise III here and there. Either way, I have very rarely used my WHM for anything since I actually hit WHM75.

Quitting WHM and selling off all my gear would free up a lot of the money that I have stored in gear, but also free up my Mog Locker which I need if I am to pursue other jobs (seeing as how I'm very pressed for space at this time). Just today, I went on a merit party with my WHM, and I was so out of practice, I made up my mind there and then that it was time to move on.

However, before I go ahead and quit WHM for good, there was one last thing I wanted to do:



Beat Maat. Again.

See, in the very, very, very rare instance that I actually level up all my jobs to 66+ and am able to obtain Maat's Cap (yeah, right!), the last thing I'd want to have to do is to revisit all my jobs again, repurchase gear, etc. just to fight Maat.

The WHM Maat fight is primarily won through endurance. I wasn't quite sure what exactly the alternate win conditions were, although supposedly it hovers around just being able to survive five minutes, or healing yourself for a certain amount. In either case, after farming Goblin Alchemists up in Cape Terrigan for about half an hour, my first attempt was a flop, mostly because I had no idea what to expect. Maat was hitting me quite hard (about 100 damage/hit), and the jig was up when he Combo'ed me for the kill.

Some more extra reading into the fight gave me the idea of damage mitigation instead. Thankfully, such items for WHM are very cheap, and so, armed with this extra knowledge, I went to the AH and picked up a few items, giving me the following gear setup:



Food: Shallops Tropicale

Main: Terra's Staff
Ammo: Fortune Egg
Head: Healer's Cap
Neck: Memento Muffler
Ear1: Insomnia Earring
Ear2: Medicine Earring
Body: Noble's Tunic
Hand: Blessed Mitts
Ring: Phalanx Ring
Ring: Medicine Ring
Back: Aurora Mantle
Waist: Hierarch Belt
Legs: Healer's Pantaloons
Feet: Healer's Duckbills

The rationale was to maximise VIT, DEF and damage reduction, which explains most of the choices I made. Of particular note is the Medicine Earring, whose -30% damage reduction triggers upon <50% hp. Combined with the Terra's Staff, it's a straight 50% damage reduced.

Note that I kept this setup even when casting Cure spells (i.e. with a Terra's Staff). I figured that the extra +Cure potency from the Medicine Ring and Noble's Tunic would make up for the loss from not equipping my Apollo's Staff.



This particular setup worked very well for me. I only needed to use one Yagudo Drink to last the entire fight, and although it was cutting things close, I still had Benediction available should the need arise. Essentially, all I did was tank Maat and lasted him out with a combination of enfeebles (Slow and Paralyze are very important!), Regen IIIs, cures and Flashes.

For the record, my battle log says I cured myself for a grand total of exactly 3000hp. I'm not sure how accurate this is as far as alternate win conditions go, although admittedly the number is strangely, well, round.

With that, I finally drew my WHM career to a close. I promptly sold off my gear, and am waiting to decide what my next move will be. Chances are, it might involve that Red mage's testimony that's been sitting in my Mog Safe for some time now...

More sea farming...

It's been about 5-6 weeks since my last entry. As promised, I haven't quit the game (obviously), but to those still active in-game, you would have noticed that my playtime has been drastically cut. ; ;

What little time I've been able to squeeze out of my playtime thus far has been towards upgrading my Black Mage some more, for reasons I briefly detailed out in my last entry.

To be quite frank, my BLM gear leaves quite a bit to be desired, particularly for someone slowly gearing up for (light) endgame activities such as myself. Last time around, I worked on getting my Rairin and Hyorin Obis, as well as my Relaxing Earring. Now, I decided to work on another Obi- Anrin.



The Anrin (Dark) Obi requires seven Aern Organs, which proved to be even more of a pain than say, ten Phaubo organs. Part of this is because of the low drop rate, part of it is because the damn Aerns reraise, part of it is because the damn Aerns link with one another. -_-

Admittedly, I could have farmed the Aerns outside in Al'Taieu, but I figured I might as well get some xp for my troubles, so I decided to take on the Eo'Aerns inside the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi instead. The advantage is that all the Aerns here are VT, reaping 240-300 base xp/kill, but all the Aerns here also have a chance of dropping the HQ organs, needed to pop Ix'MNK.

I camped in the western room from the entrance- the start point of the escourt for CoP 8-2. Frankly speaking, either the western or eastern rooms would work, but I preferred the western one, since the Aerns that spawn in the western room are either WHM, BLM, DRK, RNG or WAR. Three of the jobs are Aspirable, while the RNG has (noticeably) lower HP, which is a lot easier for me to handle solo, than say, DRGs.

Things get tricky when links occur, although a quick Sleepga followed by a dash back to the entrance of the Grand Palace easily fixes that. The problem is that because all four Aerns roam across the entire hall, it can be quite trying to safely kill an Aern without any of the other three linking. Especially when it Reraises.

Reraises are more of a time sink than anything since although you get xp for the first kill, nothing will drop. The problem is, you're out of mana so ou finish it off with a dance of Sleep II, resting and nukes while you can. All while trying to avoid links again. However, the main problem I had with Reraises was that it threw off the respawn timer making it difficult to predict when to expect the next Aern to pop. A solo BLM can just about clear all four Aerns within the respawn timeframe, but with Reraises thrown into the mix, it gets difficult to anticipate.

In any case, as I mentioned, the droprate is terrible. In the time it took me to get my seven Aern organs, I had racked up some 40,000 limit points. -_-



Of course, in a rare occurance, stuff like the above happens, but I only saw a double drop like that occur once. >_< Fortunately, I have three HQ Aern organs for my troubles. My next step would be to get the squid organs and tissues (I only got one T_T) and see if I can find people to help me out with Ix'MNK. ^^