[Vyuru]

WWWOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I'm loving this update more and more!

So last night I was able to grab some people and traded in my Erlking Blade to Callisto. Then after some (I.E, much) debate we decided to try the Grauberg [s] NM. Wivre were easy to sleep, although woke up quickly, or quicker than I am used to seeing at anyrate. The NM had insane amounts of damage and magic resistance, so the melee were hitting for 0s and 1s quite often unless Angon or Frightful Roar was on it, or our Dnc had the time to get it's defense down with steps. When not in Invincible mode and spamming Skull Bash, which we kited to avoid and it took 30 seconds for Invincible to wear off since we heard it can do 2,000+ damage, he uses standard past quadav TP moves. The NM also seems to build up a little bit of resistance to melee and magic after each use of Invincible, making him much harder to damage when he gets below 25% health. While it's hard to damage him, the good news is he doesn't have alot of health. Poison from Disseverment and whatever level of Dia our Whm were tossing on him stuck and helped in the fight. Wivre from outside the fight to not link with the Quadav's Wivre that spawn with him. Wivre have about, oh I'd estimate about 5,000 health. My Vorpal Blade > CA Hysteric Barrage > Detonation was doing a total of in the 1,200+ damage range, which was around 1/4 of the wivre's health I think.

Oh, and the NM was at a 5 star difficulty rating. Callisto does say that you get better augments the more stars there are.

Party setup was: Pld/Nin, Blm/something, Blu/Nin, Drg/Sam, Whm/Sch, Dnc/Nin

A little bit of a rocky start, but some of the most fun I've had in awhile.

And again a big thank you to everyone who wanted to help but needed sleep and the people who helped. You guys rock and you made my day in a big, big way.

Since I can't take a screenshot showing it, the Erlking Blade's base stats:



My Augments:

Damage +4 Magical Accuracy +3
Additional Effect: Wind damage +9

Absofrickinglutely loving it, it's exactly what I wanted. Not even that, but it gets better.

After getting it, I went and tried it out on one of the War Lizards. The added effect proc'd 5 out of the 15 hits it took to kill the lizard, dealing between 6-8 damage each time. The day was lightday and there was wind weather, not sure if that affected things or not.

Now to just get a Perdu Hanger to offhand, or mainhand when fighting something that I don't want the wind damage going off on, and I'm set!

The best has to be Xarc_S, what with the regularly appearing UFO dragon mobs that don't depop when kited, because they're NMs. Get one of those dragged over to a campaign battle and it's comedy gold, Jerry.

Honestly though and all joking aside, the area isn't that bad, it's the people who make it bad. They don't look up to see if there is a monster there. When they do get aggro, they go running like a chicken with it's head cut off and get more aggro. Realising that they are up the creek without a paddle, they run back to where everyone is for help. It's like any other dangerous zone, the more people you have in it the more likely that even a good player will do something foolish or without thinking and the effect snowballs. Saw it all the time when doing the Promy climb back in the day when alliances where common for that, and all the time in the Aqueducts and the Sacrarium when you used to go in with alliances to those places too. Thing is, we were capped at 18 people back then in those places, in Xarcabard [s] there were 60+ people in the zone. Shit is gonna happen and it's going to hit the fan. Now granted, I have been there twice, and in those two times I have not seen anything that will aggro you when you warp in, or when you try to warp out. What I have seen is people pull aggro to these two places and die, leaving the mob there for people who warp in or try to warp out. So I'm not quite prepared to blame SE for this yet.

As for fighting forts, they'll stop when they realize that it does nothing for them union-wise because of the previous update's XP nerf.

It may not do much for them exp wise, but I believe it does end the fight faster if you drop the level of the fort, and I assumed that was what they were doing.

The appeal to campaign will wear in less than a month, more than likely.

I think that unlikely what with reports of pieces of 100 dynamis currency dropping, O Ingots and other highly priced goods. I think now people will use this as a farming alternative, much like BCNMs. Oh I expect some people to lose interest, but for there to be more Campaign activity than there was before the update. I fully expect SE to increase mob difficulty though, although I'm not unhappy about it like Aksannyi sounds. If there are this many people in Campaign now, and it stays this way with us holding the areas long enough, I would fully support buffing Campaign mobs to make it so that they have a chance of taking a zone. As it is they have no chance at all. I'd also recommend people save up and get ready for the markets to be flooded with those items from the Campaign Ops NMs that require you to hold all the zones. Witch Sashes and the like are about to become a bit more common I think.

From what I've read, battles are ending ridiculously quickly, so quickly that people don't even have a chance to build up points.

It's not that bad, most are ending at the 1,000-1,300 exp mark for me.

[Ketaru]

Healing and raises don't get you decent points, though it was okay to get me to 65 or so. After that I needed melee and uncapped fort bashing to get to 75. My XP per battle went way up once I was able to hold my own in melee.

So you're agreeing with me?

The spells WHM has to cast to keep from dying (like Stoneskin) take so long to cast that the real DDs not only get more hits in, they get to build more hate. Of course campaign XP is heavily weighted toward taking hate. And while WHM can stand up to a bit of hate, in the long run, if someone doesn't take it back from you, you're dead. Then you get five minutes of weakened, during which WHM is damn sure not going to stand up to much damage, especially a taru.

And if you're a melee job who grabs hate and nobody heals you (or you are not wearing a "proper" subjob) you're just dead as fast, if not faster, than a comparable WHM. Speaking of subjobs, what's wrong with the blurb on subjob availability? You have to level them to use them? Meleers have to level DNC to use it. DRGs have to level /mage to use it. Apparently, an overwhelming amount of people have decided to use this opportunity SE has given them as a subjob and just leveled it, rather than complain about having to level it. As for the ones that don't, believe it or not, I do actually care about MP. And somebody is requiring healing faster than you can get MP back, they're obviously not doing their share to control the damage they take. Just stop healing them. I heal others in Campaign even if I'm not tanking, which usually happens if I clearly cannot outtank them, such as in the case of a PLD or MNK. A Berserked WAR/NIN who won't rely on shadows because he wants to watch Retaliation go, go go? Nope, don't even feel an iota of responsibility towards them.

The main problem is that WHM (like RDM) is a slow DD job, and takes way too long to do the kind of melee damage that gives decent points in campaign (especially with the current flood of players), and unions only make it more obvious. Also, the points are limited by the number of enemies (now that forts give esentially nothing), and once the fast DDs (or NPCs) kill them all, that's it, now you have to run around and find a new battle.

Mobs are only dying fast now because Unions (or rather, remote possibility of getting dynamis currency) is the hot new thing. When things settle down again and go back to the way they were before, it will not be unsual to once again have no more than 10 or so people at a Battle. And once they do again, you're often going to find yourself among a bunch of people who have some degree of self-survivabliity. Or worse, you might find that you're one of the only two or three people there sometimes, which actually was not all that uncommon before Unions. And when that happens, somebody who has had a variety of their skills leveled will make a much more significant contribution than somebody who did not (which by the way also entails having a variety of gear on you. Just because you're swinging your hammer doesn't actually mean you're doing it well if you're not wearing Haste or +Acc)

Many avenues in this game often require you to do things you don't want to in order to be prepared for them. Why should this be any different? Maybe we could've said "Because Campaign is a small, and largely isolated, part of the game that doesn't really have applicability to the rest of the game". Now that it takes place in about 1/4 of the zones in the game, and many players have made it part of their daily or weekly routine, and it now has some rewards that people actually want, maybe it is something that is worth taking time out to making sure you (that is not to say "you", since it sounds like you did take the time to level skills) are prepared for it? I mean, they added a -damage% taken ring that works only in Campaign.

But since we're listing hurdles that we've had to go overcome in order to be functional, here's some of what I had to do, things that will largely go unappreciated in the party setting:
- Take weeks out to get a few pieces of Pahluwan from Assault Points for my RDM (and let me assure you, I didn't enjoy spamming Lamia No 13 for 2 weeks, or 4 weeks of that Qiqurn Spy Assault in Mamool ja Staging Point cause right after Pahluwan Seraweels, I had to get Yigit Gages)
- Level /PLD subjob
- And if I want to do well for Campaign, I don't charm local Too Weak pets. I use Jug Pets and Pet Food, which starts bringing us into the realm of using consumables to improve performance, which I admit would be a pretty excessive thing to do if I didn't actually enjoy it.
- Skilled up Sword (and got Joyeuse, a good sword while we're at it, not some dingy I bought off the AH)

But if you still don't believe in WHM's ability to survive regardless of subjob, there is a WHM on our server who goes WHM/WAR and she regularly and consistently outtanks people, even "real" DDs. Maybe she's an exception that proves the rule because she has things like Perdu Wand (but she doesn't even have Mystic Boon. Imagine if she did.) The only great irony in all this is, despite having things like Reverend Mail, Perdu Wand, and all that jazz, she doesn't even like Campaign all that much unless other LS members are doing it. I've even seen WHM/SAMs and WHM/RDMs solo down mobs all on their own without help. The talk on subjob availability is because WHM is so versatile, they have a wide range of subjobs they can use to approach the situation. Want to take a more tanklike approach? Go /WAR or /PLD (/PLD might even be better cause you have Autorefresh). Want to be more solo oriented? Try /DNC or /RDM. Want to support other players? /SCH it up. Many other jobs, like THF or WAR have exactly one option if they ever found themselves in a small Campaign. Some jobs, like RNG, probably couldn't do it no matter what they subbed.

[Firewind]

Originally Posted by Ketaru

I'm sure it has to do with how you envision WHM and your preferred playstyle with it. But to that end, I'm sure I could come up with a big bag of questions for why I'm not allowed to do certain things in parties.

To be honest the biggest complaint that I have isn't that WHM is a weak job in campaign. It's that I can't play like a White Mage in campaign if I want any real EXP. I have to play more like a Paladin and only heal damage done to myself to get more EXP and well...That sort of beats the whole point on me going to campaign on WHM instead of PLD...

SE is basically thanking me for maining one of the more selfless jobs in the game buy expecting me to behave like a selfish, sociopathic asshole to maximise my XP...I am not understanding the logic there at all.

[Ketaru]

Originally Posted by Firewind

To be honest the biggest complaint that I have isn't that WHM is a weak job in campaign. It's that I can't play like a White Mage in campaign if I want any real EXP. I have to play more like a Paladin and only heal damage done to myself to get more EXP and well...That sort of beats the whole point on me going to campaign on WHM instead of PLD...

SE is basically thanking me for maining one of the more selfless jobs in the game buy expecting me to behave like a selfish, sociopathic asshole to maximise my XP...I am not understanding the logic there at all.

Well if that's how you view Paladins...I am merely one to believe that certain skills were given to certain jobs for a reason. For WHM to have high club skill as well as singular access to the most brutal Club weaponskill in the game, and that they were not meant to use it, well, that is really what the logic that I'm not understanding. You even have things that other jobs are jealous that they don't have. Heavy armor scorpion harness? Haste on your JSE?

EDIT: My God, I didn't know, but you even have higher Shield skill than RDM. And infinitely higher Shield skill than BLU (because BLU, the melee"est" mage in the game has no Shield skill at all)

[hexx]

1. I'm not at all impressed by that sword Vyuru, theres plenty more that have better DMG ratings and better stats. I main hand a Demon Slayer and a Perdu, nothin beats that, short of Mythic.

2. Firewind, WHM, a weak Campaign job? Ive seen WHMs hold their own better than some PLD's and other jobs that I have seen in Campaign.

3. I aggrod one of those UFO dragons just to see if they were actually true sight. Me and another BLU buddy of mine at first thought it wasn't, since it didnt aggro him when he walked under it. Then I gave it a try and next thing I know im being chased by the ugly thing XD.

[Vyuru]

1. I'm not at all impressed by that sword Vyuru, theres plenty more that have better DMG ratings and better stats. I main hand a Demon Slayer and a Perdu, nothin beats that, short of Mythic.

Explain to me how main handing a Demon Slayer, Dmg 41 Delay: 236 MP +15 Dex +2 Vit +2 beats main handing an Erlking Blade with Dmg 43 Delay 236 Macc +3 Wind Damage +9?

Main handing a Koggelmander or Fragarach would also be better than a Demon Slayer in the main hand. Myself personally I would main hand whichever was stronger, in which case I'd go with the Perdu Hanger, and offhand any other sword, unless it was a Fragarach, since that has the same damage rating as a latent activated Perdu Hanger.

The Erlking Blade however is the exception. I only lose 1 point of Dmg in comparison to main handing a Perdu, and the Perdu works just as well in the offhand. The Erlking however takes a damage penalty in the offhand, making it a better main hand weapon. Making it the exception to the above rule.

[hexx]

Originally Posted by Vyuru

Explain to me how main handing a Demon Slayer, Dmg 41 Delay: 236 MP +15 Dex +2 Vit +2 beats main handing an Erlking Blade with Dmg 43 Delay 236 Macc +3 Wind Damage +9?

Main handing a Koggelmander or Fragarach would also be better than a Demon Slayer in the main hand. Myself personally I would main hand whichever was stronger, in which case I'd go with the Perdu Hanger, and offhand any other sword, unless it was a Fragarach, since that has the same damage rating as a latent activated Perdu Hanger.

The Erlking Blade however is the exception. I only lose 1 point of Dmg in comparison to main handing a Perdu, and the Perdu works just as well in the offhand. The Erlking however takes a damage penalty in the offhand, making it a better main hand weapon. Making it the exception to the above rule.

Well for one, I dont have a Koggelmander (working on it though) and the Fragarach is just beyond my financial means atm =P As for the Erlking Blade, 2 more points of Dmg is nice, so is the Macc +3 but I already get plenty of Macc from other pieces, plus full Blue Magic Skill merits, yeah I'd rather get some ACTUAL stat boosts over more macc to be honest. But hey, dont let me change your mind, BLU is meant to be flexible, play it as you wish