The Cult Of Tea And Dice

This week I have been mostly trying to get my main class (Black Mage) geared up for Coil. This involves me running a lot of the Expert Roulettes and farming what I have titled “The Lost City of Haliflox” (a contraction of Lost City of Amdapor, Halitali Hard Mode, and Brayflox Longstop Hard mode). For a DPS having as high an Item Level as you can achieve is somewhat important, especially as it means that you may survive a bit longer when giant dragons, snakes, and fireballs land on you.

As such my levelling for my gladiator slowed down a bit. While waiting for the roulette to pop up I did a few Leves, and remembered to go back and finish up my level 5 Class quest. Typically however the roulette only seems to pop when I can’t change back to my black mage class by swapping my clothing, and as a DPS class its usually a 20 minute wait each time so that’s very frustrating.

What it did mean was that I did a whole load of Leves then got sucked into the Lost City to do some high level stuff. This is one of the many benefits of the Armoury Chest system, you can set up your equipment lists very nicely and (usually) swap between them fast. Allowing you to queue up your high level end game progression stuff, while at the same time still levelling up your lower class.

When I got back from Lost City, where I experienced some frankly awful healing, I realised I was only about 200 experience points off levelling to 10, but I also had a stack of 4 leves that needed handing in. Off I trotted to hand them in, and halfway there I got mugged by a giant toad.

This is a surprisingly common occurance in Eorzea, and I really didn’t think much of it. Unlike in games like WOW, standing in a field of critters and murdering them in quick succession is a terrible way to level up. Creatures themselves don’t give very much experience, and even if you chain the kills together, which gives you a bonus, its still not a lot.

However, I also make sure I log off near to an Aetheryte (respawn point) or in an inn. If you make sure you are doing this then you will start to accrue rested bonus, exactly like you would in most other MMO’S. With the chain bonus however it can make the most pointless of creatures worth actually stabbing to death with a gladius! Given the frog started the fight I finished him off with no feeling of remorse, and DING became level ten.

Level ten brought me a nice new skill called Convalescence which makes it easier for people to heal me.

Which is the point I remembered about cross class skills and went to check them. As you level up you get “slots” that allow you to take a skill from a different class and use it in a different class. Sometimes this is absolutely necessary, for example for Black Mage Raging strikes from Archer is a must (as is it turns out Quelling Strikes). On the Gladiator however I noticed that I could take Cure from the Conjurer, and promptly did. My Gladiators Healing stats (Mind and Piety) are in no way very good, but if I tag Convalescence first I can heal myself for a good chunk of my own hit points. I also finally remembered to actually spend the attribute points I had been earning as a gladiator levelling up.

I dropped these into my Vitality stat, to increase my hit point pool. However as I level up I will be putting them more equally into my Strength and Vitality on the advice of my Free Company Leader, as the Paladin (which the gladiator turns into) has less need for high hit points than the other tanking class, on the basis that they actually carry a shield, and so parry a fair number of hits! At this low level though… Vitality is well worth it as it makes not dying easier.

Then I handed in the Leves I’d been heading to hand in and immediately levelled up again.

Which was nice.

Having reached the heady heights of level 10 I could now take part in Guildhests, which is exactly what I did. Guildhests are intended to teach you how to fight in the dungeons that will turn up later, allowing you to learn skills which will prove helpful later on.

I’ve done these hests before of course, however you get a big bonus for completing them as a new class, and there is also a “Hest Roulette” that will, much like the Low Level Dungeon roulette which I have mentioned in other blog posts, give you a big bonus in Experience and Money the first time you do it each day. It’s well worth doing them therefore and will break up the monotony of the leves a little at least.

This was however the first time that I had done the hests as a tanking class, so I expected that it would be up to me to tank.

The first hest, which deals with pulling groups of mobs, started well. I took the aggro on the right group and started fighting.

Of course the DPS started killing the left group instead, meaning I had to rush over and flash the mobs to try and get those monsters too. I was mostly successful, although the healer decided that I didn’t need healing as the DPS was wounded. Luckily I have tanking cooldowns, and popping my damage mitigation ones kept me alive. The second group of mobs (which contains a big boss mob) went much the same way, I got aggro with flash, and then the dps pulled like wild things ending up with up to three of the mobs on each of them. The Boss stayed on me the entire time, but no matter how much flashing I did, the other mobs just would not leave the DPS alone. Luckily we managed to kill them quickly.

The Second Guildhest however went much better, The boss here is a huge armoured man in the middle of a room, who given he has a frontal aoe cone needs to be tanked without facing the rest of the group. However as the fight goes on a number of additional mobs appear behind the tank, and usually rush the dps and healers. Luckily some clever positioning and judicious use of Flash usually redirected them onto me. I had to run after them a couple of times, but usually one or two Flashes were enough to keep them interested, while my attacks kept the boss on me. This was a good thing as this let the DPS kill the boss pretty quickly, and the exp and money was a great help to my levelling.

Another difference between running these Guildhests as DPS and as a Tank is that as a tank it is difficult not to pick up at least one Player Commendation. DPS hardly ever receive these as you really have to be incredibly impressive to make an impression as say a Black Mage, I did manage to get three once in a Haukke manor run when I main healed one of the bosses our healer having been mistakenly locked out of the fight, but this is very much a one off occurrence. As a tank however, just doing your job will normally net you at least one, assuming you are not complete crap. So far in each hest I have done, and I’ve done the first two quite a bit now as the bonus exp and gil reward is regularly for Tank classes, I usually get a couple. I haven’t used any yet however.

Getting to Level 15 took a combination of Hests and Leves, once I made it however the next step was obvious… Into the Dungeons!

This entry was posted on 19 August 2014 at 11:58 and is filed under Actual Play, The Witterings of Mawdrigen with tags ffxiv: arr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.