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February 2008
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29Feb

Beastmaster charm guide

As previously mentioned, my static is currently leveling Beastmaster. One of the primary tricks to playing Beastmaster is to charm a pet that is elementally stronger to your prey.

The effect of properly executing this is the possibility of the pet intimidating the prey. Intimidation causes the prey to loose an action - most likely resulting in a lost attack. Intimidation is just like paralysis, and stacks with any other paralysis effect (the Paralysis spell, for example).

The Vana’diel ecosystem is broken in five distinct beast categories, each with their own groups exhibiting a strenght over the other. Each category is distinct, so flora/fauna from Category 2 have no effect over flora/fauna from Category 1 and vice-versa.

Category 1:

loop >> Beasts → Lizards → Vermin → Plantoids >> loop

This means, that Beasts can intimidate Lizards. Lizards can intimidate Vermin. Vermin can intimidate Plantoids. Plantoids can intimidate Beasts. This is a linked list, not a stack, so Beasts do not intimidate Vermin, and Plantoids are not intimidated by Lizards.

Beasts are considered anything Animal. Rabbits, Coeurls, Sheep, etc. It’s interesting to note that Cerebus is considered part of the Beasts family.

Lizards are considered anything reptilian, that isn’t a Dragon, Wyvern, or Wyrm. These include Lizards, Bugards, Raptors, and Efts.

Vermin are the insect category and include monsters such as Bees, Chigoes, Crawlers, Flies, Scorpions, and Beetles.

Plantoids represent the plant system and include Mandragora, Sapling, Treant, and Funguar types of monsters.

Category 2:

loop >> Aquans → Amorpha → Birds >> loop

Like category 1, this is a linked list, not a stack. Aquans do not intimidate Birds. Aquans intimidate Amorpha, which in turn can intimidate Birds.

The group Aquans includes Pugil, Orobon, Crab, and Sea Monk monsters.

Amorpha contains Slimes, Flans, Worms, and Hecteyes. One interesting thing to note is that Leeches are considered part of the A morpha, and not an Aquan.

Birds include Birds, Rocs, Bats, and Cockatrice.

Categories 3-5 contain mostly monsters that cannot be charmed.

Category 3:

Undead ↔ Arcana

Category 4:

Dragon ↔ Demon

Category 5:

Lumorian ↔ Luminion

25Feb

The internet imates life — almost

Since I played FFXI as Gentoo, plenty has changed. Not just minor things in game, with me pursuing play styles that are outside my comfort zone, but also in my real life.  I’ve gotten older, I’ve changed jobs, I moved almost a full state away.
Behind me I leave the drama, the willingness to put up with other people’s crap, and the desire surround myself with people who are “cool,” or the “movers-n’-shakers.” Now I look for people I can relate to and whose company I truly enjoy. I call people out when they start to fling crap or stir up drama.
Trends manifest themselves in the game as much as real life.  In Final Fantasy, like real life, I find the number of people I really enjoy to be sm all, and the number of people I attempt to ignore to be larger crowd.  Unfortunately, one of the trends in FFXI that doesn’t track with real life is the number of people I butt heads with.

In real life, making it clear that you’re unwilling to put up with someone else’s crap usually brings a conflict to a screeching halt.  Both parties usually decide to be civil, or move away from one another. In almost all virtual settings, drawing a line in the sand means little, because the consequences aren’t real enough.
The past couple of days in FFXI have been full of conflict, as I find myself defending the people I hold close in FFXI.  Almost every time it ends up escalating far beyond the point it should.

11Feb

When playing with fire, don’t be suprised if you get burned.

In FFXI, any group prior to Melee/Magic burn levels depends on two key positions.The tank — the position that holds the monsters attention, and makes the trade off of offensive power for defensive fortifications.  This job is able to absorb the damage dished out by [real] monsters. If the tank holds the monsters attention, the drain on the healer’s magic pool is is reduced, and the amount of XP is increased.  If the tank doesn’t do their job (or there is no tank), hate bounces and everyone starts taking heavy damage (unless everyone decides to gimp their damage output and be a mini-tank; like you see in melee-burn parites). When this happens the healers magic pool get drained faster (too fast, and players begin to be KO’ed).

The healer — This position keeps everyone alive.  Period.  If there is no healer, or they don’t do their job, everyone takes damage until they expire.

Without these positions covered, things go to hell in a handbasket.  In short, these are the anchor positions of any party.  Like their real life nautical counterparts, toying with them in the middle of the a storm isn’t the brightest idea.

So imagine my surprise when a Samurai in my last party kept provoking monsters off me.  His explanation to this [when I asked] was “I like to keep a tanks job interesting.”  Between the Warrior/thief doing SA+Sturmwind immediately before or after th [other] Samurai/thief doing SA+Tachi:Empi, and a chain-nuking Black mage, I didn’t need things to be made more interesting; and I said as much.

So next time this Samurai decided to make thing interesting for me, I decided to return the favor.  I didn’t use Sentinel, I didn’t Provoke, I didn’t use Shield Bash — and since the monster wasn’t facing me, I didn’t need to Cure myself.  (although I still managed to take a few hits from damage, and early hate building).

The Warrior either got what I was doing, or didn’t realize what was happening, because they didn’t bother to provoke either.

I imagine the player got a little anxious as his HP dropped below 100, then below 50, then below 20 — as the White mage tried to keep him alive chain curing  (truth be told, I got a little anxious too, because I hadn’t planned on letting his HP get that low, but a couple crits and double attacks will do that).  I dropped a Cure III on the player, Provoked, took hate back and sent a /tell “I thought I’d make things interesting for you.”

I got no response back, but everything wen’t smoothly for the next several scores of fights.