Well, that's a new one.

Ah, Maws of Toto-Rak, you never cease to disappoint me.

Today I got a tank who, to be fair, did not walk face-first into the Fleshy Pods. No, no. Instead, he would try to use his ranged attack to kill them, but he stood too close to them and got poisoned anyway. This is understandable once or twice while you figure out what's going on, but not a bunch of times.

I also ran into a couple tanks today who appear to subscribe to the idea of "you get enmity, you tank it."
Even when the person that grabs enmity is the healer, and they grab enmity from an enemy that you didn't bother to try and tank and instead just assumed that the healer wouldn't grab enmity on even though you pulled it and aren't tanking it, and the healer is just trying to keep you alive. Sorry for the run-on sentence there.
I hate, hate, hate healing the tank when they haven't grabbed enmity on enemies. Like, when the enemy names show up as orange on my screen rather than whatever-color-they-usually are (but I know orange means I'll pull it if I heal!). I try to hold off healing for as long as I can, but when the tank, say, has two stacks of poison from running into Fleshy Pods and is losing health fast, sometimes you need to throw out a heal. And then, if I do get enmity, I pop Luminiferous Aether if available, and run to the tank. Who then proceeds to ignore me. Which leads me to end up having to heal myself to stay alive. Which then solidifies my enmity.
I've even had tanks then continue to ignore the enemy attacking me after they kill the ones they were working on, and just go on to the next set of mobs while I'm still dying.

Fun.

If I were a more bold and assertive person I would have stopped healing myself and just let myself die to make a point. I'm too afraid of being yelled at to do that though ^^;



I do not like The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, in case that isn't clear by now.

That said, it is significantly less painful as an Astrologian, purely because of Luminiferous Aether, and also Lightspeed for the second boss fight (insta-cleanse Slow off of self!). No fun on Scholar because no Leeches, and no fun on White Mage because that second boss is rough because of Slow.


Oh, and I changed back to Au Ra. Remind me never to try and recustomize my character ever again.

Frustrating

I decided to go back to FFXIV today, for many reasons. 1) I can progress further in the game without needing to interact with people so much due to the party finder and 2) Patch day, yay!

In particular, I was most excited for the Novice Hall. As some of you may know, I attempted tanking in FFXIV precisely once. In fact, that was the first time I ever tried tanking in any game ever. It went horribly, because I had not a clue what I was doing.

Well, I studied in the Novice Hall for a few hours today! Read some guides online, and then kept redoing the Novice Hall missions over and over until I could reliably keep enmity. So I went into my first dungeon (Sastasha)  as a newbie Gladiator, expecting it to go fine.

And, on my end at least, I think it did! I was holding onto enmity fine; a couple mishaps here and there, which was to be expected since it was my first time. I did a Shield Lob > 2 Flashes > and then started comboing. Marked targets. Initiated ready checks before bosses. The whole deal.

It got a little stressful at the last boss there with the adds since no one bothered to block the bubbles, so we got ALL THE ADDS. Which I was not prepared for, and I don't know how to tank yet, so that was difficult, and I admit that I resorted to Flash spam at one point when about 5 Baleen Guards spawned all at once and were after the healer. Didn't ultimately matter though, for reasons I'll explain.

But, the most frustrating part of all of this? I was dead 50% of the time. Why, you ask?
The healer only used Medica. Yup, just Medica. I don't know if this is typical in dungeons or not; I main a healer and therefore have never had to see a healer in a dungeon before besides myself (plus the couple of raids I've done, but the healers there were spectacular!). Oh, and they were also in Cleric's Stance the whole time.

It did not feel good to die on nearly every pull. The pulls were otherwise going well. I used all my cooldowns as much as I could to try and live, and I'd pop potions whenever they were available too, but I don't think I ever saw my health above 30%. And these were on just normal trash pulls. I found myself needing to use Foresight and Rampart whenever they were available, Fight or Flight + Bloodbath whenever they were available, and I'd pop Convalescence every now and again in hopes of living, but it was to no avail.

I guess I should have been a little more suspicious when I was placed in an in-progress party, but I just assumed that the tank had been bad or had left for other reasons. I try to assume the best of my party.

It was literally, I'd pull, get enmity on all mobs, combo combo combo to keep enmity, see my health rapidly dropping, pop anything I could that was available, and boom, dead. And then the party would proceed to somehow finish off the enemies without me, which made me feel quite bad about myself.

If any new healers are reading this, please, please, please, do not just spam Medica. I know they give it to you later, and it's AoE, so you'd assume it's more powerful / useful, but please realize that it is situational. Please know that Cure does more healing than Medica does, and that Medica has less range. Also, please note that Medica costs waaay more MP and wastes your MP. And please, please, please, do not be in Cleric Stance when healing. If my HP is fine then you're free to enter Cleric Stance and DPS, but if my HP is low you should be out of Cleric Stance and healing me. Cleric Stance reduces the potency of your healing spells by a considerable amount, so that on top of only using Medica makes for not very much healing.

But, regardless, after wipes every other pull and at least 5 wipes on the final boss, we did finally clear it. Well, everyone but me, basically. I was dead on the floor. I lasted about half the final boss's HP though...! I successfully held onto the enmity for the Baleen Guards and the DPS hit the bubbles. I died halfway through due to lack of healing, but the DPS somehow miraculously kited the boss around and killed it. So, yay...?

Thank you c:

Oh...

So, I was playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2: Sisters Generation, and let's just get it straight here that I knew very little about the plot of the game before going into it. I played Re;Birth 1, so I was familiar with the CPUs and CPU Candidates, and that's about it. Oh, and I knew this one was primarily about the CPU Candidates.

And silly me, looking up an ending guide (it was a non-spoilers one), and I read a recommendation that you do the "Conquest" ending first so you can get a good weapon. And, being that it was a spoiler-free ending guide, I innocently met all the requirements.

Nope nope nope nope. That was not expected by me at all.

I won't spoil what happens just in case someone else wants to go through it blind (story-wise at least). But I really was not expecting that. At all.

But hey, I beat the game...

Completely irrelevant but I am really bored today. Would anyone be interested if I made another separate blog and compiled a big list of roleplay spots in WoW? Just as something to do when I'm bored? I'm thinking at the most basic level I could do a little post about each Inn and just some basic information for roleplayers for it, like where it is, how many chairs there are, how many rooms there are, etc. Kind of like a list of venues for events and such. I don't know, it's just an idea that popped into my head.

I think I'm going to do it, actually. I don't care if anyone reads it, but I want to do it just for fun :)

EDIT: It's happening: http://innsofwow.blogspot.com/

Well then

Well, I was considering playing Wildstar, but I guess not.

Kind of hard to play a game that you get perma-banned for logging into. Or, at least, it looks like a perma-ban considering that it says "NC Account <email> has been permanently blocked."

I'll contact support at some point, but basically it told me that my computer needed to be verified, so I went to my email and put in the verification code, and then it banned me!

But Guild Wars 2 still works.

I'm wondering if maybe I put in my password wrong? But then it wouldn't have gone through and asked for email verification, right?
Or maybe I had to manually type in the verification code rather than copy/pasting it from the email?

I just wanted to try the free trial, but now it seems like way too much effort T_T

EDIT: Yay! I sent in a ticket yesterday, and they got back to me today with a password reset. Thank you thank you :)

PDP Guide Part 21: Makai

Part 20 can be found here.

Well, welcome to Makai. This is the final area of the main game (not including post-game, of course). In other words, this is pretty much the toughest challenge you are going to face. I hope you're ready for it.

As a terribly underleveled benchmark, here is my team for this:
Speed Momiji level 97
Power Lily level 82
Power Shou level 70
Power Koishi level 69
Power Iku level 67
Power Kanako level 67

Let's hope this is enough to complete Makai, shall we?

Upon exiting the weird white room, head down and you'll see that you're in a rather nice town (albeit a little strange. I never played the PC98 games, but why are there signs with random words on them?

Anyway, head up past the fountain and to the left. You'll see a Stall with a Demon Shopkeeper. She'll sell you healing items such as Paste of the Fog, Ecstasy Sets, Moriya Sinshu, etc. Head right past her and up. There's some grass here where you can capture Yumeko, Alice, Sara, Shinki, Yuki, and I'm assuming that since Yuki is here then Mai is too, and I just haven't run into her yet. [Thank you to anonymous commenter for letting me know Shinki can be caught here]
More importantly, however, keep heading up, up some stairs, and then right. Talk to Luize/Louise (I never know what the proper spelling is for her?), and she will heal you. Thank goodness. I love you Luize. I don't know anything about you, including how to spell your name, but I love you.
If you head back down to where the grass was and go right there is another Demon Merchant Kiosk-ey thing, this one selling Skill Card and Oath Thread.

When you're ready, head up the stairs near Luize/Louise. This will bring you to an area with a LOT of stairs. Which if I'm not mistaken is Pandaemonium? Or perhaps not. It's not all crystally, and I thought Pandaemonium was crystally?

Oh well, either way, go in and talk to the woman at the counter to gain access to the door on the left. Head on in. Oh, but first, need I remind you to stock up on supplies, heal, and save? Because I really shouldn't need to remind you.

Oh, and standard Elite Four procedures of save and heal after every fight applies. You can always Gap out if you need to. Just remember that Gapping means restarting your challenge against these guys. Even if you do get knocked out, you don't lose any money in this game, and you still gained Exp from fighting them.

First up, Yuki! She uses a level 68 Orin, level 68 Futo, level 70 Suika, level 70 Marisa (with an ability that lets her steal Held Items. She took my Food Rations TT_TT), and a level 72 Yuki.

Second, we have Mai! She uses a level 70 Patchouli, level 72 Satori, level 72 Iku, level 70 Seiga, and a level 74 Mai.

Third, we have Yumeko! She uses a level 72 Miko, level 72 Yumemi, level 74 Sakuya, level 74 Kokoro, and a level 76 Yumeko.

Finally, we have Shinki (who if I knew was next I would have fully healed my entire party rather than just keeping Kanako at half health because she's my sacrifice if I need to revive someone, and I would have unlearned/relearned Momiji's moves).

Well, here we go. Final boss. Shinki uses a level 76, level 78 Mima, level 76 Byakuren, level 78 Yumeko, level 80 Sariel, and a level 85 Shinki.

If you have defeated Shinki, then congratulations, you just completed a feat to be proud of. You know who else has level 80s? Red from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. So yeah, you just basically beat him, in case you never have before. I know I haven't.

Okay, so! After defeating her, you will get to talk to Yukari once more. Watch the credits roll, and wallow in your achievement.

I'll see you in the next part to begin the post-game!