And There... It... Went!

Yep. There go the last three weeks! Since then, most of us paid our taxes, realized what horrible, terrible things we're doing to the Earth, had a nice cup of tea, and had a large fluffy rodent break into our houses and leave small, round, brown chocolates.

If you happen to remember where exactly I was in the game 3 weeks ago, you get a bonus point! Because I sure don't. Huh? Oh. No I don't exactly know what you're going to do with that bonus point. It's kind of like having a spy satellite over Switzerland, not very useful.

There are a few things I remember. Lots of close calls. ACP11 was the biggest heart-break. I just start shouting in WG. End up forming a party of: PLD PUP(me) SMN SMN BRD BLM. All of these people were pro's at their job. Most of them were decked out in some kind of combination of Abjuration, Relic, Salvage, or Nyzul armors. PLD tanked beautifully. BLM didn't miss a single Stun against -ga's. My Spiritreaver automaton continuously 1-shot nuked clones. The SMN's did their thing great too. It went perfectly, for 90% of the battle. Damn crystal uses Seed of Judgement twice within 10sec. Total wipe. Sooo close.

CP6-4. 1/6. 4 Runs one week. The first three we didn't get past Omega, and the 4th, we just weren't ready for Ultima. Second run, we actually got Omega to 1%, we wiped. Our guest WHM popped up, and instead of Raise the RDM or the PLD, decided to cast Holy. To jog your memory, <20% HP, Omega uses a Magic Shield move, making him 100% invulnerable to Magic Spells. WHM wasn't invited back the next week for 2 more attempts.

The next week, first run went smoothly, got Ultima to 13% with 3min to spare and we wiped. Last ditch effort and the SMN's Astral Flow doesn't work for some reason, and we time out. >.< The last attempt, however, went beautifully. One wipe. Only ended up using 2 CCB on Omega, used 4 on Ultima. Solid timing of Stun and Bash moves with Omega and Ultima in low HP% helped to prevent TP moves between CCB's.

Now, onto the CoP 7-4 NM's. Cryptoberry in Carpenter's Landing went down smoothly after one failed attempt where I wasn't able to outrun Mijin Gakure, but 2nd run went off without a hitch. Sea Monk in Bibiki Bay went smoothly until I was Hundred Fisted with 9% to go. Just couldn't keep up with the damage taken, despite all my Eva gear and merits. Bugard in Misareaux Coast went OK. Although wiki let me down: apparently his special TP move erases TP. Bad thing for PUP/DNC. 1st attempt left me face up with 12% remaining. The last 2 NM's I got help from a BST friend, it went nicely after that.

The biggest winner these past few weeks?
Puppetmasters!
If you thought that watching BST take down Haku was full of hax, then you haven't seen PUP burn party pwn Diabolos in the Avatar battle (not mission). PUPx5: 4 Reavers and 1 Soother. We cut the record from 17min to 9min and never once got hit. Definitely going to be doing this again, and frequently at that.

The biggest loser in these past few weeks?
My Wallet!
That's right, I got hit right where it hurts. Taxes aside, somehow I managed to burn through over 200k worth of RR earrings, Tavnazian Tacos, Persikos au Lait, Hi-Potion Tanks, etc., etc., etc. for CoP 6-4 alone. Now? I can't even afford bolt heads to synth my way out of this. Maybe I'll lobby my congressman to bailout the PUP industry. On the bright side, I am out of the long tunnel that are the capped fights for CoP. I'm also done with stuff like animas and CCB's for battles too. Nothing left to buy but the regular stuff I keep in MH anyways!

OK. There's the last few weeks in a nutshell. For those of you keeping score at home, I'm down to 10 more battles until all major storylines are complete, and I can get back to the quiet life of an adventurer. I've been working a little on BLM in down time. When I've knocked out a couple more storylines, I'll start leveling RDM before I work on endgame events for all that armor I didn't need to beat the stories >.<

OK I'm becoming bitter. I'm going to bed before I get myself in trouble. Stay tuned, maybe I'll increase my post rate to something a little more frequent than 1 post per month :P

A Night Full of Missions is like...

... hosting a kegger: you have to spend the whole next day trying to figure out what the hell happened to all that stuff you had in your house >.<

I may not remember what happened to a full stack of silent oils, a hi-potion tank, and my mythril platemail set, but I know one thing: most of 5-3 is toast! ... I think. Didn't sleep much after the party and before I had to get up for work, so I'm a little hazy today. I remember nearly escaping death after a throat stab in Pso'Xja. I got 1-shot by a snowball. And I totally tanked 3 mithra at one time...

Don't worry! PLD's always use protection!

After all that though, I woke up today weakened in the back of an empty cave in Uleguerand Range. I made sure to wear my Ice Trousers before logging off to be on the safe side. Though I forgot to take my Gallant Leggings off beforehand >.>

ANYHOW

I severely underestimated the amount of legwork involved with Tenzen's Path. There was nothing terribly challenging about the battles, but the running around sucked. Next we did Ulmia's Path. I think someone had those mithra declawed. I ran in, Sleepga goes off without a hitch, Provoke one, Flash another, while WAR provoked the third. They went down one by one. Then we hit the northlands. BLM had a bit of a problem missing the hole, took aggro and died twice. He was nice enough to HP to save the trouble of a rescue operation amidst true sight mobs and elementals. Once we got into the Snoll battle, we unloaded on him.
Inferno
Chainspell Fire 2
Flare
Souleater + Last Resort + SATA + Guillotine
Warcry + Berserk + Mighty Strikes + Aggressor + Raging Rush.
I was pretty useless lol. I think I got off one Flash before eating Hiemal Storm. I got up, Provoke, Sentinel, Shield Bash... and no hate.

At this point a lot of us were pooped, BLM had to log, I needed sleep before work, so we elected to save Louverance for next week.

Never got to try WotG 10, friend never responded to /tell >.>

Attempted AU42, 0/6. Supertank strategy failed >.< Will try this week if not doing CoP, elect to sleep BLU and solo a gear this time.

ZM16: 1/2. That's right! ZM = DONE! Party was: PLD DRK SAM RDM BLM PUP. I pulled Pamama out to start first attempt, and he got 1-shotted by phase shift. Second attempt I saved Pamama until after Exoplates went down, activated, overdrived, and nuked away. First attempt we also had a problem with deaths during exoplates. Also, in 2nd form, damn boss kept moving out of our BLM's casting range. 10% left when we failed >.<

All in all, this week had rocky preparation, but everyone was cool and professional when it counted, even if it didn't work out. That makes me optimistic for coming weeks. At this rate, we will be done CoP by Memorial Day! At which point, I'm gonna get myself a beer and a burger and chill for a moment before starting the path for Apocalypse Nigh. Nothing but madness for the next few weeks!

And here... we... go!