Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Post-update thoughts

First off, my character is now named "Amoklauf" as "Amok" was taken on Valefor. Not entirely surprised about that, but it is moderately annoying that I have to be extra careful about sending stuff to my main from mules.

Trial of the Magians is probably the change that interests me most. Many useful stats and additional effects can be added to rival and surpass many of the previous in-game options. Swords can be made to have -5% physical damage taken. This puts it in the same category of use as Hauteclaire but with significantly less DoT. For daggers I was especially interested in the Evasion+10 daggers of which you could make two of to dual wield. Perhaps more interesting is the "Lowers Accuracy" additional effect weapon.

Evasion tanking is under-used IMO because of the trouble it takes to make it work and the simpler alternatives. Other melee jobs subbing NIN only need their support to slow the mob's attacks down and Haste them. They rely on their main job's abilities for hate, damage and additional damage reduction. Since slow and elegy land on most things it isn't necessary to evasion tank. However, if you're going to fight something with minimal support evasion tanking becomes incredibly effective... but I digress.

The full damage upgrade routes are all NM kills based trials from what I've seen. The results are weapons which come close to or surpass the base damage of un-augmented relic weapons like a 38-DMG dagger or a 105-DMG scythe. Last night and this morning I scanned Inner Horutoro Ruins for the NM hunters and in both cases I found a full alliance. Needless to say, I would have to wait my turn to get into the group for the kills, which could take a long time. Time I don't really have or want to spend on such a monotonous activity. Perhaps when I've leveld DRK the number of people killing the NM's will have declined and I will upgrade an Ultimatum.

What are now referred to as Voidwalker NM's (VNM's) bring the stat +6 rings to the table combined with some other situationally useful gear. They also play a part in the Magian Trials as some of the drops or kills are needed to complete certain trials. It's quite unique how they are popped. You /heal in a zone and either the mob pops or you get directions to where the mob pops and /heal again. It works in tiers and the 3rd tier HNM's appear to require at least 1 party to kill. The super-cool looking black dragon 4th tier requires a full alliance at this point. I'm sure people will understand the fight better and take it down with fewer and fewer people, but I doubt it will ever become doable with a single party of 75's considering the damage people have been reporting. For a force-popped ZNM inspired system, that is quite a let-down. I was hoping to low-man this type of system. Who knows, I may be proven wrong soon enough. Being pessimistic about these things often leads to pleasant surprises.

Synergy recipes has some very nice magic-skill torques added. Time to get my crucible? Also, I'm hoping the teleport earrings to Kazham and Bastok become common. I'm not in Bastok often, but when I have to be there it's a long journey.

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