the good and the bad

Well, its no secret how hard it is to find an endgame exp party to recap experience losses and gain a few merit points as Paladin. Its tough on us. Public perception is not something you can change by yourself. It needs a movement bigger than the sum of its parts to amount to any significant change when it comes to those sorts of things.

So, i basicaly have givin up on assymbling 6 people to grab exp. Its such a pain nowadays. More and more people simply say PLD/NIN?! lollmaowftnothanks.

But thats fine. They can keep there 10+an hour exp parties, i dont care anymore. There are much more enjoyable ways to gain exp out in the new areas than having to beg to be in an exp party; only to have your other party members make you feal gimp by focusing on the 300-400 less damage per mob you bring rather than what you add to the party in other respects.

There are better ways.

There must be better ways.

I have found a Better way.

I grabbed up 2 other PLD friends. Seraphpdh, and Donavan. And we went out to trio some Imps in the Mire. The party line up was:

Willriker: PLD75/NIN37 Company Sword/Joyeuse
Seraphpdh: PLD75/NIN24 Drainslaif/Joyeuse
Donavan: PLD74/NIN37 Company Sword/Joyeuse

As you can see, we had no refresher, one person didnt have the upgrade to dual wield let alone Ni, we had no main heal. All we had was 3 PLD/NIN and sanction refresh.

We rocked house. I cant tell you how easy the kills were. There is no doubt in my mind that we can chain 6+ on imps in the Mire. We all watched each others backs, and just slaughtered every imp we could find. There was a ton of competition though. By a ton i mean a TON. I have never see so many exp parties in the Mire before. It was insain. There was about 5-7 parties in the Mire including us.

So we obviously had to wander around in search of imps. Infact we spend well more than the time looking for imps than we did killing imps, and still came out at 5k/h. Now thats nice. 5k/h is what many people complain about as exp from a normal party. But let me put this 5k/h into perspective for you.

People complain about 5k/h with 6 people in the party. We were making 5k/h with 3 people, 3 PLD.

People complain about 5k/h when they have no competition (at 75). We were pulling down 5k/h with 5-6 other parties camped on top of each other.

With how much down time we had searching for enemies, i have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we could pull down 8k/h if there was only 2-3 parties in the area. No doubt what so ever. Absolutely positive.

That is a hell of alot better than i had even dreamed. And it was fun to boot!

Suuuure we had to wander and outclaim our imps from other exp parties. But, if 3 PLD are chewing up all your imps to the point where you need to complain about it.... you have bigger problems than the PLD party.

And i finaly made it to level 4 sword skill enhancement. Which put me in an ecelent mood, im pretty much half way to maxing out my second merit catagory. The first one maxed would be my Shield Skill.

So, here comes Sunday. The Schedule was packed. Gods > KirinX2 > Limbus > Cerberus > King Behemoth > Apsi. It was going to be a long day. Little did i know how long a day it would be.

I was late to log on, but when i did BBQ was in sky, and about to start Kirin. Well, they were waiting for RMT to finish with their Kirin. Then we were to TP-burn Kirin down.

The plan was simple. Kill Kirin before he had a chance to spawn a mini. We hammered him down to 50% HP in 54 seconds. When Kirin decided to summon Bakkyo. O.o Bakkyo!?

As soon as i realized that noone was dealing with bakkyo, i provoked and ran. I knew that Bakkyo was faster than me. But, something needed to be done, before he ate our Melee. I was simply hoping to buy us time to kill Kirin. And once i went down, our other tanks followed suit. But on every trip back to Kirin, Bakkyo would tear appart another couple melee.

Eventualy all 4 summons were out, and we whiped with Kirin at 24%. All in all id say it was impressive. It took a hole lot of sack pulling, and help from Ringthree's LS with some sack pulling.

But we recovered from that mess. I have never seen how you recover from a Kirin with all 4 summons out at the same time before, and it was very interesting. It will definately be something ill keep stored upstairs.

Since the Kirin took so long we decided to prospone Limbus until Monday. And focus on HNM for the duration of Sunday.

First on the List was Cerberus. But that turned into a Mess. Almost as big of a fiasco as Kirin. We kept bringing it down to 20% and our stunners would mess up. After about 1 hour and a half of whiping to Cerberus, we made our way to Apsi and KB.

I was sent to KB, part of the holding team. While the other group went to Apsi. Because Aspi had a much larger chance at popping than KB. But woulnd you know it, KB popped right behind me, as per usual. i swear i have NEVER seen KB spawn infront of me EVER. TK, got the KB i believe.

So we the KB party rushed towards Aspi. Half way there it's NQ popped.

Dejected, we went back to Cerberus; and whiped to him another 2 times before calling it a night.

All Told:
A Super long Kirin
Awesome time whiping at Cerberus
Wonderful Claiming job at Aspi and KB (by other LS's)
More Fantastic Whiping at Cerberus
11k exp lost total
60k gill flushed down the tubes in meds and foods

So, the next day I convince Namicat to come with me and Duo some Imps. For a bit. I ended up getting with in 500exp of capped exp again, before we made a very noob mistake and pulled diferent Imps. lol.

Namicat: PLD75/NIN37 Dual Company Swords? (i forget but i do know he had crimson gear on and was constantly being intimidated.)

But the whipe was ok by us. It realy helped the exp buffers (net). And i convinced another person that dual PLD's is actualy pretty impressive.

Honestly, we were just trying to grab my additional 500 exp then head out to fafhog. We had already JUST missed the first window. We just HPed and made haste to the Aery.

After waiting till the last window, and having 1:3 people in the aery... we didnt claim. And Fafnir dropped a Ridell. ; ; Oh well. There will be another. Just a little dissapointing losing out on so many claims in a row.

On the bright side, We did the limbus that Monday. And i now have 9/12 points needed for my first peice of Homam. Honestly, Id love any peice i can get my grubby mitts on. But if id have to choose id want the head hands or legs before the feet or body.


The ranks of BBQ are starting to buldge. And I am getting the fealing that recuiting may be closed or at the very least tightly restricted soon. I just hope i can get Slickdarula into the LS before that happens.

She wants to finish getting her 7th job to 75 (BLM) so she wouldnt have to worry about exping during LS events. Which i think is admirable at the very least. But she was level 69 last i checked and needs to get her butt in gear to get in!

i hope she makes it, i miss havin her in the LS shes such a good player. Hell, I realy dont think i couldve made it through CoP without her.

Slickdarula Rulz All! There i said it! lmao i hope your happy Slick