Victory @ Ro'Maeve

After having vamp get her YY Robe I knew Berm really wanted one too so we continued to gather people together at the window each day to try our chance at claiming. Now from what I hear, the past few days we've actually gotten the claim each time, but due to mpk attempts and wiping we never got to the point where we can kill it.

This time around was different, we had plans of going to the window after ZM4 was done, ZM4 taking longer than usual due to incidents on the way there but we just barely made the 3:00pm window (which I'm convinced didn't start right at 3). Of the ZM pt, berm and I were the first to arrive with jean and pal already waiting in another pt. We had daeana, chriseh, and ari enroute from chocobos and ron came along too to help out so when we were all there we had 8 people.

Berm announced it popped to the east right as the rest of the ZM pt was zoning in, clearly other pts in the area knew too as everyone was heading over east where I and a few other mages were standing. Now with a lot of magic-aggroing statues in the way no one dared to cast magic at the time so one of the other linkshells voked a statue to try and link shiki out of hiding. It worked and once it was up I threw out a quick stun and berm threw out a charm and Shiki was ours! Since there was really none of us in the area at the time I ended up taking enough hits and died before anyone could get it off me.

Chaos.

The fight was crazy, not only did we have at least 40 people in that small little path watching us but many of them at the beginning were fighting statues right on top of us in a mpk attempt which created a ton of lag. I ended up being more of a backup healer than a blm that fight since I had died and couldn't do a lot in the way of nuking, ended up dying again later on in the battle and losing my level permanently. We ended up getting a link which of course no one outside our alliance bothered to take but jean rose to the challenge and tanked/kited that thing till he almost died as a rdm/nin allowing us to continue focusing on shiki.

It took us a good 10 minutes but we killed off the NM (with an overdramatic thunder III at 1%) and Berm got his robe!.. which he can't use for another 5 levels. We were criticized by the end game shells for the length of time it took to kill and how many people we brought but who really cares. We walked in for the 4th time, got the claim (all 4 times), and walked out with the drop. Being nothing more than a chat LS not pimped out with an arsenal of lvl 75's with uber gear, I was very proud of MA, this was an awesome accomplishment.

The pt trying to fight in the middle of 40 people with Jean soloing a link in the background.

Bst Adventures lvl 36-37

Lets talk about food, before 35 I used meat, in pts, and solo, just cause it was cheap, gave me a boost in str (among other things), and it was something to eat. Now that I'm more into my stats and soloing, I've been looking into other things. Now the first thing that popped into my head was sushi since accuracy imo is the most important melee stat a BST should have to worry about (more on that later), but sushi was expensive, and I'm only lvl 36 so I'm not quite ready for that. Then by use of the somepage food guide, I discovered Rice Dumplings. They added +5 to accuracy which was acceptable to me as well as +17HP, +3str, +2 vit, +1agi, +20% attack (caps at 45), and +2 to HHP and HMP. I really liked the hp and mp regen while resting, the accuracy, and the str/hp/vit was always helpful. And at roughly 7-9k per stack I figured they'd be a good bridge between meat and sushi.

Level 36:

Seeing too many DC's in Bibiki I decided to make the move to Sea Serpent Grotto. This zone is a BST paradise! I stayed by the zone within the first "loop" on the map running circles around it charming EM leeches and fighting tough bats and sahagins. Now this camp isn't the safest since sahagins aggro sound but at this point in your BST career, avoiding aggro should be second nature to you, or if you do get aggro you can sic a pet on it, charm bind it, and zone. This camp goes untouched most of the time, lots of high levels running through the area since it's by the zone entrance, some even tossed a cure or stuck around to watch.


I stayed for till about halfway to 37 then got called away to help Chriseh do his Savage Blade WSNM followed by a Rostrum Pumps run with SotL.

Level 36-37:

Later that night Jean had a spot in his party after Bermont left with a few LS PLs so I took the opportunity to go into PT BST mode. The PT had jean as nin, 2 wars, a rdm and blm and me as BST. We were in Crawlers Nest and the XP was great for a pt this level. Not only did I finish my level and get to 37, but stayed for another full level and hit 38. Now as I stated in my last BST post, we're by no means a gimp pt job just because we can solo. While alone I wasn't the top DD, but combined with my pet, I greatly outparsed the top warrior.


Combined with my Funguar pet I did 25,573 damage total, over 7,000 more than the top melee DD. And my pet wasn't fighting 100% of the time, sometimes I had to use Leave to shed aggro then wait for the Call Beast recast so there were 2-3 battles where it wasn't participating. Bringing a BST to your pt at this level is like bringing 2 DDs, don't underestimate a BST with its flag up. I'll continue to solo of course, but I'll always be open to pting.

New End Game Shell

So with my first experience as an actual member of an end game shell that I applied to now at an end, I'm happy to say I came out with my first end game item. The NM was Alastor Antlion (AA), a tricky little NM. It's a popped spawn by trading an antlion trap to a ??? in Attowha Chasm. However the NM doesn't just appear, instead another NM appears named Feeler Antlion that you have to keep alive until it spawns the main NM, Alastor. Feeler has a random chance of spawning AA everytime it uses a tp move, if it doesn't spawn AA, it will spawn another NM called Executioner Antlion (EA), which the alliance has to quickly kill off. It will keep spawning EA's even after AA spawns so you have to kill off the Feeler Antlion quickly after it spawns AA or you'll have a whole mess of Antlions to deal with.

The runs varied with our random luck, sometimes AA popped on the first tp move used by Feeler, other times we had to kill off 5-10 EA's until we saw AA. In either case, everyone got their Rostrum Pumps who went that day with only 1 wipe.


The shell I joined, Sanctuary of the Lost, is full of great people. They kept me laughing and made me feel very welcome and useful. Got several compliments, including one from the leader which made the event even more enjoyable for me. I think what made it better is how they let me get my Rostrum Pumps when it was my very first event with them. Having vamp there and watching her get her pumps was also nice to see. I look forward to doing more events with them in the future.

Bst Adventures lvl 35

I dinged level 35 in a Garlaige pt, I was the top DD pt between me and my jug pet. My tiger jug pet did the most damage in the party and combined with mine just shot me up even there even further. This was the case for a few reasons: First off, melee DD jobs don't have access to the best gear at this level, meaning they hit for less and a lot less often. This makes my tiger look awesome in terms of its accuracy and damage compared to the average melee DD. In later levels the pt BST doesn't shine as much but in this range, there is absolutely no reason why anyone wouldn't want a BST for their pt.

So now that I have Leave, a most awesome ability, I chose Bibiki Bay to test this ability. For those that don't know Leave is the defining ability of a BST.. well I suppose you could say Charm is the defining ability of a BST since without Charm, a BST is just a bad warrior. But in any case Leave gives us the ability to solo the most effectively from 35 to 75 than any other job in the game. When you kill a monster with a charmed pet, you take a 30% xp penalty so the goal here in every battle is to end the battle alone with no pet, finishing off the monster yourself. What Leave lets us do is dismiss a pet with no aggro at any point in the battle, most often used when the monster has between 3-10% HP left, then the BST simply has to finish off the monster and get the full xp. At 35 and beyond your pet not only acts as a great DD but also a tank so you can melee alongside your pet and hardly ever have to worry about taking hits. Leave has other great uses to avoid links and shed aggro but this is the primary use, anyway more on BST tactics in later posts.

Level 35:

Bibiki Bay was a wonderful experience, by the zone to Buburimu you had Dhamels, Ravens, Efts, Rarabs all between DC and Tough with an adequate number of Even Matches to charm. The XP, while still not as good as a standard xp pt, was consistent getting around 150 per kill no ring. I was able to hit chain 4 once due to the plentiful number of good pets and prey around. There was some competition at times, I had at least 3 blu's show up trying to learn Wild Carrot off rarabs with some high level friends, but they just stuck to rarabs, also had other bsts show up but there were more than enough monsters to share the camp. Then the last thing was when high levels wanted to camp that NM by the docks which can be annoying but it was a big area so it wasn't too bad. I stayed here alittle over 36 then there were too many DC's around so I decided to make the move.

Me soloing in Bibiki, sporting kat's sexy taru RSE.

Black Mage

I need a place to get my thoughts down and seeing as how neither Jean or I has posted on this in well over a month, might as well write something.

Black Mages, like many DD jobs are currently suffering from a lack of invites into what you could consider the normal XP pt setup these days. However for BLM it's different because there are several factors affecting this.

1. The traditional XP pt is mostly dead post-Aht Urghan. Yes the good old xp pt where you make skill chains and magic bursts do not really exist once you hit Aht Urghan content. This is where BLMs shine pre-60 and now that's no longer the case. People realize it's much faster to just spam your best WS for spike damage than to coordinate TP and weapon skills and magic bursts.

2. Colibri. Yes these birds that give excellent xp in the low to mid 60 range reflect magic. Since these are what almost everyone wants to pt on this range, BLMs take a hit in invites here. This is the starting stage that contributes to their lack of invites in pts.

3. TP Burn. The truth is mp is just plain inefficient. In a TP Burn post-70 the melee jobs can just burn through a monster fast, then move onto the next. A BLM, while able to keep up damagewise with Rampages and Asuran Fists, have to rest back that mp when they're done. This creates downtime and is extremely hindering to the TPBurn pt style. The bards and main healers don't expend as much MP per battle as a BLM and due to the high refresh (sanction, items, subjobs, refresh whores) they can typically keep up with their role in a roaming TPBurn.

However what many people don't realize and as I've been pting (making all my pts) I do see people pointing this out a lot, BLMs don't just stop xping at 75. It's true you don't see them in Caedarva Mire and Bhaflau Thickets because those are both TPBurn areas. They have adapted to the Aht Urghan changes to pting and as a result can get just as much xp as a TPBurn can in their own areas. Unfortunately the BLM has to actually make it to 75 before they can join these nice areas.

Currently 68 and slowly making my way to 75, still very rare that someone wants me but pting with LS members and making pts is making the process go somewhat faster.