Chaos Samba

Feeling slightly regretful, as I have neglected my ffxi life almost entirely over the course of the past semester of school.  But as my good friend, Berndherbert, has most eloquently put, “FFXI is dieing.”  Which although it may be true, that we are without a doubt past the prime of FFXI’s career, there is still a lot of life kicking.  Sure the excitement of doing things like dynamis, meritting, and sky has all worn away, what keeps this game alive is the people and the basic things.  For some absurd reason even though I can be on a call literally nonstop with the same five or seven people for the entirety of the summer, I still have this desire to talk to them, maybe not all the time, but quite a lot.  Sometimes there is complete silence, usually not because I have an incessant habit of singing Lady Gaga, “He ate my heart, he a-a-ate my heart,” and even though we have nothing to talk about after a while, we still come back to each other.  Whether just purely out of habit or desire, we are talking whenever the opportunity presents itself.  This is why I feel people I have met through the game can have more meaningful relationships then I have had in real life.  I am constantly refering to Bern, Koukennin, Kenji, Jemini, Nahuatl, Jester, Feofi, Caateryna, Elseadose, Kyon, Wolfknight, Iphigenia, Steak, Opiate, Fusion, Chinchilla, Squigglicious, and a myriad of other people that I am probably forgetting.  Even though I don’t even talk to some of them anymore, they all have made an impact on my life in some way.

I am now a level 75 Corsair with sea access.  That statement is a loaded one, sea is something I dreamed only to obtainable by the most elite, but now that I have it, I am aware, since I am not elite and have sea access that having one does make you the other.  Having now killed a few jailers, I see that it isn’t all that is cracked up to be, the rewards although good, are not as fabulous as they should be.  I still dream of faith torques and w. legs.   I have told my ls leader Whisp this several times, and he keeps reassuring me, that in time, eventually I will get them.  Maybe I should show up more often.  I logged in today after a final, to find out I was late for limbus, which is fine with me, limbus is little to no fun, so instead I helped the ever mentioned Berndherbert with the Snoll fight.  Which we did WHM, RDM, SAM, RNG, and MNK, yes only 5 people and only 1 salt and it went down so fast.  I don’t whether SE nerfed simplified the whole CoP process, but it was nice to win the fight.  When he told me he needed help, my first thought was about my first Snoll, where we all wiped before the time even ran out.  Congratulations on beating three paths Bern!   As Jesterking has pointed out on more than one occasion, CoP is easy as long as you have a dedicated group of competent people.  Which doesn’t sound to hard, but when you are a nooblet in the dunes, I can imagine the fear that you will never complete CoP after your first three failed promy runs.

I have decided to try a new job out, since I have a healer, a support, and a damage dealer puppetmaster, I was thinking maybe it is time to try out a real DD. My eye has always been on a Dark Knight, it always intrigued me as the antithesis to Paladin, a job which I have no desire to play.  So as a now level 12 Dark Knight running around the gustabergs, I began to wonder why in the world DRK even has elemental magic.  Not getting stone until level 5, which probably is the time where the mp vs. damage done is most worth it, to level 72 where you finally cap off the group II spells with Thunder II.  Just what is the point?  Yes, you can magic burst, but even then, no Dark I know has a magic attack bonus build.  The only spells that seem worth a damn are the absorbs, Absorb-AGI was the quickstep before quickstep existed.  Absorb-STR is useful because you can pump up your weapon skills, but aside from that and the Drain and Aspir awesomeness, there are only about 12/35 spells useful even for very specific situations.  I suppose I am being too harsh, when is the last time I casted Barviruna on White Mage, or rolled Gallant’s Roll on Corsair, or even used Valoredge Frame on Puppetmaster.  I suppose all jobs have useless aspects, but it just seems very poignant with my limited spell list on Dark Knight right now.