Relatively eventful weekend for me outside of the usual event stuff. Started playing catch-up on WoTG quests (since it's the only thing I can do solo) namely
The Price of Valor, which requires you to kill some random BLM orc.
You just need to kite him around the lake you pop him by, although there are some sound-aggressive mobs (and one HP aggro ghost at night) around the lake, it's a big enough area to avoid them and even if they do aggro you can just keep running until you lose them. Alternatively, you can just cast sneak and plough straight through them if they are being obnoxious with positioning. Which reminds me, aggressive mobs seem to follow me EVERYWHERE even before they've detected me, they ALWAYS move into the worst possible place, or just fucking run straight at me from across a zone. Game hates me.
Anyway, the orc took me two attempts because he has a fairly potent en-curse that I didn't think much of at first, so wasn't very careful to avoid melee hits. After it did inevitably curse me, I remembered curse reduces movement speed, which didn't go down too well because I had to stop and use a holy water while he broke my stoneskin with melee attacks before I could run away. So when I get curse off, he decides to hit me with an -aga 3 as I'm stood right next to him and can't outrun it. Annoyingly, it only just did enough damage to kill me (thanks to the -50% HP from curse), so if I'd spent 100~200k more on my MDT set I'd have survived. Figures.
SCHOLARAWRI quested an all jobs lvl 1 great axe because it looks silly on other jobs. I mainly used staff for actual fights. Soloing is painfully slow.
I've since realised I might be better off trying to follow a BLM solo guide rather than grinding like a melee. But I got a party later, and naturally got thrown into the main healing role cause Scholar has cures so must be good.
Actually, that's false. SCH doesn't have
cures. It has
cure. And that's it until level 17. People joke about RDM casting one spell (refresh) over and over in a fight well, this LITERALLY was casting cure 1 repeatedly over and over until the mob was dead. It was agonising.
Even more so when goblins used bomb toss, and I'm the only healer. I suggested the leader get another job for support when we started, so I didn't have 5 useless front line jobs to heal (NOBODY had a dancer support job, despite it being the only useful DD sub at this level). So, we got a DRG/PLD to help cure. I find that in low-level parties, it's better for your sanity if you just roll with it. If you repeatedly wipe and lose exp, then sure, make an excuse and go, but 90% of the time your party will be just plain bad so there's no point in getting worked up over it. Even if your backline support is a character that can cast a 20HP cure 1 twice before running out of MP. Level 15-17 in two hours is abysmal, even back in the day before level sync and fields of valor. But hey, at least I have cure 2 now.
Ballista!Or Diorama-Abjhalalalis Ghelsba (however it's spelt) as it is better known. Nem organised a pretty big Diorama get-together for his LS anniversary, as with previous years. And it's freakin' fun.
I actually prefer chaotic big games to 1 vs 1 crap, probably because as RDM there are few (if any) jobs that can stand a fair chance against you solo, and I love those great moments chasing people around a corner, only to find 8 or more of their buddies waiting for you, or letting a small group of DDs whack away at you with phalanx and ice spikes on, and then take them all down one by one, or stall half their team whilst yours gathers or takes out a squishier target than you. RDM is stupidly overpowered in much of ballista, and I love it. Especially when you drop invisible behind a group of 2-3 people, and they start to run because there's no point even trying to fight.
