About damned time?

It was looking to be a nice lazy night off, nothing on my plate and I was still after all this time sitting at +17k tnl 75 so I decided to try my hand at solo exp while seeking on BLM.

The last time I went to solo in this place I died a horrid death on my first pull and swore off solo exp. It should have been very easy exp, fight a rng type mob that wont melee me to death, add little stoneskin and a round of nukes for easy exp, unfortunately I linked a thf mob who stabbed the shit out of me interrupting my attempts to sleep/warp the hell out of there.

This time I packed a RR pin, no point in making potentially negative exp any worse than it needed be.

Arrived at camp, popped my exp ring wandered around till I found something that deserved to die and bam ...

O.o 414 not shabby at all, and I didn't die. It did take my entire mana pool to pull it off but the mobs have a 15 minute spawn time and with three in a room so I should be able to pace this out nicely. I managed to pull a few chain 2's and every other time I cleared the room a chain 1 never once coming close to death. Couple of hours later I was a little over 5k tnl when I got a party invite. I almost didn't take it, its been so long since I used Blm for anything other than friend or LS help, but I did. Traveled to the mire, met up with the party and proceeded to blow things up for a little bit when one member took off ; ;, his replacement arrived killed a few things then the nin and rdm wanted to go without finding replacements, we finished the rdm's {Last} and he warped then nin said it was time for her to go I was sitting at 1k so the nin stayed ....

{/Hurray!}
Nin disbands 2hrs and I look down and lead has been passed to me /sigh. I asked the party (all jp now) {Looking for members.}??{Disband}??{Leader} {Do you need it}?? and pretty much all at the same time "{Yes Please.} {No thank you} {No thank you.} ^^" So after all this time out of the "high level game" I'm no charged with being the leader of a party, what you say that doesn't sound bad? well considering I have been in a lead position few times than I have fingers to count on I wasn't exactly confident. After some begging/harassing/silent treatment and a sneaky nin who agreed to come than changed to sam before I busted him we were back in the game.

I ended up 8k into 75 with no Kirbyprime to spam {job} Thunder IV {You can have this.} to. Not a bad night at all. Ran to the AH to see if there was anything cheap that would show off my new status, a hat or staff etc.., sadly BLM gets the shaft with auctionable goods at 75 ... I was kinda hoping there would be a silly staff that ww's skill on or a crappy cap .. hell anything .. I think all there that I could find were some melee earrings so no sexy new anything /sigh.

Poked around with the merit box, not allot I am really interested in except maybe a Tier 2 AM or something since my career path is still blurry.

With a knick-knack-paddy-wack shooting arrows made of bone.

This hume ranger no longer calls 'Dunes home...

!

Hmm... on my 16th job leveled through the dunes (15 "complete" as drg is 15 and can stay that way) I finaly got a good a.k.a. "Smooth" dunes party.

Yes it had a PL, but not an over zealous PL.
It was not a PL tanks the dunes set up, the nin and war tanked 90%+ losing hate from big cures mostly.

It was however a 5 man dunes wrecking crew ^^.

I almost DB'd from the start, I was actualy trying to solo the last 300 to 16 so I could log out for the night when I got the tell for it.
Him>> Party?
Me>> OK
Did a quick check on him and saw 14 Nin/War
aww crap, maybe the party is 15-16 and well... its the dunes if it sucks I snag my level and head out.
Took invite, checked pt 14, 14, 14, 14, Me 15 200 tnl -> 16 . aww crap the options now are over camping or severly under camping for the tanks.
Checked again 1 blm, no other mage jobs.
aww crap.
PT Lead>> bleh still need a whm.
aww crap. Finger on the DB button I ran to camp, imagine my suprise a high lvl brd was there.
Party sits around for a while in dead silence so I asked if brd was PL? Yes. Cool I said, I'm gonna start pulling.
And pull I did. The lead never bothered to find a sixth once we got rolling, no need for it. It was a smooth pt start to finish, not a zomg 12k per hr pt it was a good old 5k little to no flux party. Nobody begging to over camp, nobody bitching about 50-60exp T's we just killed as fast as I could get mobs to camp and I kept them as "simple" as possible since the nin was dual-boxing the bard and I have (had) almost 0 experience pulling next thing I know 4+ hours had passed and we had every Pt member to 20 (I hit 21!!). I guess the zomg part was not only keeping a party together in the dunes built of random invites but the fact that they came there to exp, not to piss and moan, brag, cry , whine, complain fake DC, drop party and so on.. and we all understood the reward was getting the hell out of there a.s.a.p.

The 3 parts of a Random Invite Smooth Party, from Xylos's Point of View:
1. Does not always mean "Uber" or "Standard" some of the smoothest parties will break the standard set, even spit in the face of party set logic, the exp flow ranges from average to zomg.
2. Does not require the "best" players, it requires the best teamwork. It does not take a Rank 10 multi 75 player to operate smooth, it takes the willingness to work with the strengths and weaknesses of your pt mates, sometimes it seems that the less people are set in their ways the better.
3. Requires a bit of tact. If the party is maintaining good exp per hour the smooth party players dont piss and moan about a few bad moments. (this happens to be my favorite part about JP pt's, not that they dont complain, I'm sure they do.. but that I cant read it so I dont get caught up in someone elses knotted pantyhose.) In my p.o.v. if a party memberticks around but runs their mouth complaining etc... the bad attitude spreads and it seems that sooner or later the majority of the party gets salty also, myself included.


So yeah, 5 crappy parties and a good chunk of solo to get from 11-15 and one good party to make up for all the frustrtation.

mwwwaaa haaaa haaaa rng does sick damage in the dunes, if he can hit anything ^^.

FFXI Prayer

Found this while wandering the alla forums:

From AbbadonX's sig,

Square-Enix which art in Tokyo, hallowed be thy game.
Thy expansion come. Thy patches be done, in NA/EU, as it is in Japan.
Give us this day our daily merits.
And forgive us our undercuts, as we forgive those who undercut us.
And lead us not into elitism, but deliver us from n00bs.
For thine is the MMORPG, and the addiction, and the timesink, for ever and ever.
Loldrk.