So, I've been a little busy lately. First thing first, I decided to merit after getting to level 75. After getting about an 18K exp buffer I switched to merit mode, and plowed away at about 35K exp. My first action once reaching my mog house was to unlock the Chivalry job ability. What Chivalry does is act like a sort of twisted version of Convert, in that your TP is changed into MP. The ratio is about 1: ~1.4 in that if you have say 200tp, you would lose all TP and gain 280mp. I have only used it a handful of times but I must say sometimes getting a full MP bar back is much more useful than one weaponskill, especially when tanking since the move has a huge hatespike, somewhere near Invincible if you have 300tp.
Recently, my dynamis shell Explorer has decided to dive into the CoP versions of Dynamis. Now, most shells only do the "original five dynamis zones", but with the promise of the relic accessories and AF2+1 armor, I guess the shell leaders couldn't resist. Unlike the standard zones, these ones have an additional prereq. for you to fufill, you must have defeated Diabolos in the CoP storyline. (Not the Diabolos battle to summon him, just the level 40 cap one.) That is in addition to the standard level 65 requirement.
Now, we have never done one of these zones before, and there is a twist. You start the run with no subjobs. That's right, I get to enter as a glorious PLD75 / WAR00. However, there are ???s spread throughout the zone, and once someone touches the correct one, everyone's subjobs come back, making the run alot easier. Our beta CoP dynamis run was
Dynamis-Buburimu. The idea is to kill some of the NMs that are running around in order to disable certain moves and 2-hour abilities of the Mega-Boss. Assuming you do nothing, and go straight for the boss, he will have access to every 2-hour in the game, and in addition a few more nasty moves that he will spam. We were able to take out some key moves (like Benediction) and defeat the boss getting the clear!
Now, this zone is weird in that farming comes only after you defeat the boss. New "Nightmare mobs" (as seen above) spawn that can drop the items new to these zones. We farmed for awhile getting some money drops, the BRD Relic Cape, and WAR AF-1 gloves. Decent drops for our first run, but what I found funny was I got the first drop in the new CoP zones in the Explorer shell. Go me!
Now, I have had torn feelings about CoP as of late. I always promised I would not abandon my TrueRune CoP static, but alot of things have changed lately. One of our mages Tumble has pretty much gone AWOL as of late, and my Co-Strat man Tuufless has retired from FFXI. In addition, our SMN / SAM Chummy was away due to home/school issues, and wasn't supposed to return until sometime in September. My fears were that it would be near impossible to beat CoP at this point due to us being short 2-3 people, and me losing half of our strategy team. It doesn't help that information about CoP becomes less and less available the further you go, obviously caused by the fact that fewer and fewer people get that far in the missions.
Now, it was at this point I was approached by my PLD75 buddy Willriker. He knew that I had wanted to complete CoP 8-1 solely to get the Tavnazian Ring so I could get a new warp item. He invited Akanea, Saoirse, and myself to tag along when his static did it so we could get the rings as well. Now, doing this mission doesn't put you too far ahead of anyone else, its just killing 9 mobs and clicking a few doors. Things went bad when one of Will's static people didn't show, and they decided to cancel.
Now, Will explained that they only had 5 people in their static, and were looking for a 6th member. He seemed somewhat upset, because with his 5th member's mysterious absence, and lacking a 6th person, this placed them with a group of 4, and that made doing pretty much anything impossible, especially by their September 4th deadline. Now, I am a loyal dude, but I saw 2 opportunities here: I could help out a friend in a different static, and I could see how they did things, in the hope of gaining some experience for my TrueRune static saving us a great deal of time, exp, and frustration. After talking it over with Akanea, I decided to go ahead with Will's static for the hell of it (while still being a part of the original static, I mean, I like these guys ^^), since they were running out of time, and to be honest curiosity had gotten the better of me.
To be brief, we started CoP 8-1 with a PLD, PLD, RDM, WHM, DRK combo (with some assistance from a BLM for 8-1 to sleep links). Mission 8-1 went without a hitch, and I am convinced a group of 4 people could pull it off, assuming you had a tank, and a BLM for sleep. Once finished, we proceeded to get our Tavnazian Rings and enter the main castle area of Sea called the "Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi", continuing with mission 8-2.
Mission 8-2 is essentially following a very mazelike path consisting of 2 levels with 5 wings each, trying to escort verious NPCs around to open doors for you. Most things agro all levels, when they are in certain phases (usually in their "I'm not wrapped up in a small ball" phase.) It took us awhile, especially since we got lost for the first hour, but after taking a few minutes with a seperate marked map, I was able to make sense of things, and became the new map person. After finishing 8-2 and getting a CS, you are granted access into the center of the tower in a zone called the "Garden of Ru'Hmet" This marks the beginning of CoP 8-3.
Now, CoP 8-3 is essentially very similiar to 8-2, but the one major exception is there is a BC fight at the end. Now, the mission starts by requiring you to climb up to 5 towers depending on what races make up your group. If you are all tarutaru you would only need to climb one certain tower. If you were all Elvaan and Galka, you would have to climb 2 certain towers, etc. Now, we happened to have 5 people, and 2 Elvaan, 1 Tarutatu, 1 Hume, and 1 Mithra. Damn, that means we get to climb 4/5 towers. However, with me at the helm (in a sense since I had the map), it didn't take long since we used the "Sleep and Run" approach. After getting everyone their key items at the top of the towers, we proceeded to have to take an elevator up, and the only way (until you finish the mission) is to run past 4 pots that are almost impossible to run past without tripping the door shut. We decided to run to the door, die, wait until the pots reset (reopening the door), and reraise running quickly through. Once to the elevator, we were able to go up to floor 2 (the basement was not available.......hmmm...) and proceeded to run around getting 2 more key items needed to access floor 3. This went without a single hitch, and before you knew it, we were up to the third floor, where the BC fight would take place.
Now, Willriker had realized we probably stood a Snoll Czar's chance in hell with just the 5 of us, so he had talked to another group and they agreed to help us by splitting up and going as 2 runs making up 2 good parties with what each group had. Some people would go once, some would go twice. Now, I ended up going into the first group which was made up of PLD, NIN, DRK, WHM, BLM, BLM. The idea of the fight is you have to fight 4 pot mosters at the same time. Sleeping them at the start and taking them down one by one was the way to go. The NIN Jokerr (a friend in my dynamis LS) said he would main tank, and that I should DD. Luckily, I had brought along my DD setup including my O. Hat, Haub, and Joyeuse.
We entered, buffed, and Jokerr ran in, got hate, gathered the pots, and the BLMs slept them. We engaged the first pot, and took it down quickly. The second pot went down almost as quickly, but without a RDM, the mages started running out of MP. I used Chivalry and keep things going to where we started killing the third pot. Now, something happened where Jokerr died and I ended up main tanking towards the end of pot #3. Now, pot number 4 woke up, and since I had already Invincibled and used a 300tp Chivalry, I was prime target. Now, in a panic I switched back to my Terra's Staff and did the only thing I could do, kite the thing like no tomorrow. As I was able, I switched back into my tanking gear, and gave the mages time to raise Jokerr and regain MP. It was a nasty kiting situation, since the room was small, and the pot was a quick flying thing. Most of this time I was kiting with under 300hp, but the WHMs cures, my cures, and my Hi-potions from Will kept me alive long enough for the BLMs to nuke it slowly to death. Victory, and a cool CS followed!
Now, things never go this smootly in FFXI, and of course we hit a snag. The second group was plagued with player disconnects, and never got the clear even after three tries. Now, initially I was really upset about this, but it presents an interesting possibility. Now, the original problem was we had two PLDs that eneded the BC, but now since I have the clear, only Will needs to go in. If they can get 2 BLMs to finish the BC with them, they can get the clear on Sunday and everything will be fine. With all the initial 8-3 stuff out of the way getting to the BC takes all of 10 minutes now.
After waiting awhile for the people with connection problems to return, we decided to call it quits. I went and got all the CSs I needed to get to the last CoP mission 8-4. I was even brave enough to enter the final fight just to see what it was like, and it really is the coolest looking fight in the game. I used a warp cudgel to escape before I was in any danger, but it was cool to see anyway. With any luck, I can wrap this all up Sunday and start figuring out how to get TrueRune through all of this as well. (^.^)v
This is one of the last pieces of buyable tanking gear I need. With it, and my other +HP gear, I can get over 1650hp without food and merits. I think thats pretty solid for right now, considering most PLDs don't even have over 1500 even with good gear.
