Category Archives: KillerInstinct

Looks like I am playing again – well after I get updated

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | 2 comments

On a side note, photoshop doesn’t appear to be handling my screenshots anymore.  It is really slow when opening anything over 6MPix in size.

Last Saturday while playing on my 14-day trial, I was invited to attend a Dynamis with the group I used to play with on Diabolos, now called LastBoss.  I went as a White Mage and it is the first time I’ve been a White Mage in Dynamis in nearly 2 years.

Not shown -- me letting everyone die

It really was like riding a bike.  I guess since I’ve been playing White Mage since summer of 2005 it was all muscle memory.  It probably also helps that I had a backup copy of my macros from my old computer and was able to get back to what I was used to quickly.

The group is new, and had some trouble.  They also only had about 20 people in the zone, excluding myself.

At least we got to the Angry Tuna…

Pictured -- everyone dead

At least it wasn’t my fault?

Anyways, after this, I was ready to restart the Pyra.

I logged on to Caitsith just in time to go kill Roc.

Its like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, except it isn't.ToD was sometime that doesn’t matter anymore because the server was reset.

I then got to go and do Limbus with my old group.  I missed them.  But lets not tell them that, it makes it harder for me to negotiate for more cookies.

I have to admit, losing my Thief and Monk macros made this tough.  I barely remember what gear I had to switch and when (if I remember right, both had significantly more gear swap macros than my White Mage ever did).  I was casting spells and using JAs and WSs from the menus again like a common noob.  I might be somewhat nooby again, but I’m far from ‘common’ :).  Limbus was really fun, and it was hardly about the items, it was just about having fun with some old friends.

On Sunday night, I went back into Dynamis with KillerInstinct.  We did a Jeuno.  After I’d spent half the day writing new Thief macros, I ended up going as a Monk.  However…

eesI was a little disappointed.  The other one only hit me for 700ish.  My monk has ~1600 HPs in Dynamis gear (and I was /WAR)

I noticed a few things after my extended absence —

  1. I can’t remember what is ‘good’ for damage anymore.  My asurans were hitting for ~450-500, and I was pulling hate, but I thought they should be double that
  2. The economy has gone crazy.  Most ancient currencies have doubled in price while I was away.  I’m sure not complaining though, as I had a bunch on Pyra which I’ve sold to gain some pocket change.
  3. Thief evasion is still as amazing as always.  Because I need inventory space, I went and completed the first two Young Griffons quests.  The second requires you to fight a NM with a high counter rate.  Well, he barely hit me on my Thief (ok so I added about +17 evasion skill and wore some of my normal +eva gear).
  4. I need to completely rewrite my Thief and Monk macros.  They needed it before, but it feels like such a daunting task.

Anyways, enjoy your Moogle Coup of State and update.  I’m going on vacation in a few days, and so won’t be even starting the 2 mini expansions for about a month.

-pyra

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Posted in Caitsith, Diabolos, Dynamis, EternalMemories, FFXI, KillerInstinct, Limbus, Random Thoughts

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The Dynamis Lords Were Smiling This Week

Posted on October 21, 2008 by | 1 comment

Last Thursday, I had an unexpectedly good run in Xarcabard.

First monster.

winning_lot

Wooot!  It was off of a Kindred Thief too.

i_get_gloves

Which completes my set, making me 5/5.

pyra-6-6

Wootness.

Then at the next Xarcabard run, this happened.

shadow_mantle_mine

So now I have a Shadow Mantle too.  Sweet!  (Maybe I should level a Paladin)

I don’t think this is extremely impressive, but on darksday, with the extra 20 VIT, I had 118 VIT.  As a Monk.

gogo-vit

Fortunately (or unfortunately) we had some good luck with Blue Mage hats.

lolblu

Yeah, I know.  It was crazy, and blue mage is now on free lot status.  I believe we got 5 of them in one run.

At least we are getting lots of drops in Xarcabard now.

On a different note, I found this funny (its from limbus).

failure_roll

Haven’t seen a 999 rolled in a long time.

-pyra

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Posted in Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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A Sac-less Pull of Dynamis – Qufim Mega Boss

Posted on July 18, 2008 by | 1 comment

Yes it is possible.

My Dynamis shell — KillerInstinct of Caitsith — has been around for a while, and has been doing Dreamland for over a year or so at this point.

Since we lost our old pullers, and we had to train up some new ones, we decided to try to improve our time to gain more time for relic farming.  Ideally, we would also decrease the number of deaths.

One of our members — Machtaru (he posts here and is a friend of mine) — came up with a crazy idea for Qufim.  It involved 2 parts.

1) Skip the statue NM and melee burn the Mega Boss.

2) Pull the Mega Boss without sacing the goblin statues.  There was a rumor that it was doable.

Since this was a new pull for us, we had 2 backups at the MB pull.

I got to be the primary for this one.  Yes, I was very nervous.

We camped in the South, instead of North near the Thunder Elemental and the Rocs.

To get to the MB, I hugged the tower’s outer wall.  It was on my left.

Before I could see where the entrance to the tower would be, it had aggroed me.

The nearest statue is about 1.5 – 2x the Dynamis link range away.  The one we could see walking was too far away to matter.

As soon as it aggroed, I hit flee, and hugged the wall back South (it was on my right this time).

His AoE throwing ability will take off 3 shadows, or hit for about 700 dmg with an earth staff.  You can only survive 2-3 hits, and I really doubt you can evade one.

By skipping the statue NM, we saved about 15 minutes over our normal time.

For the pull, we had a primary puller (me) as THF/NIN, a secondary puller for if I linked and had to run (Jastor) as THF/NIN, and a tertiary puller/observer to see what really happened (Machtaru) as NIN/THF.

This pull method could not have been simpler.  No links, no extra aggro, no sacing (although we did run through a what-if scenario in the event that I did aggro — I didn’t think I would live through the pull until I did).

Why am I putting this out there?  I want to see if other’s can reproduce the effort, to ensure it was not a fluke.  I’m also curious if this pull can be done from the North side, instead of the South.

I don’t have any pictures right now, and I’m heading out of town for the weekend.  As an anti-spam filter, I hold in moderation all first-time commenters.  So if you are new, and don’t have an approved comment already, it won’t appear until I approve it Sunday or Monday.  Also, no pictures until Sunday or Monday.  If there is interest, I’ll go take some in Qufim and post them.

Another thing we noticed was that the NM Statue (Sottung) is not only magic damage, but also physical damage.  The melee hits were doing noticeably less than normal.  We took about the same number of deaths as normal, and the fight lasted longer than it should have, but we won, and saved 15 extra minutes for farming.

Finally, congratulations to Machtaru for coming up with this crazy idea, especially when we were told that it could not be done.

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Posted in Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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Playing around with Footwork

Posted on June 16, 2008 by | 2 comments

  As many of those who read know, I usually go as a monk to the Dynamis Lord fight.

At the last run, one of the leaders said to try footwork.

footwork2

The first one is at 300% tp, the second around 120% tp.  I’m impressed.  Especially considering that a Soul Eater-ed Dragon Kick only gets me about 650 damage (at full health).

For normal dynamis and limbus, I wouldn’t use footwork much.  The slow delay means I get 1 or maybe 2 hits in per monster.  In city dyanmis, I only get 3-5 hits per normal monster as it is, footwork would lower that too much.  But for a big WS every so often, or the start of a fight like DL (or any HNM for that matter), footwork is a nice boost in damage without soul eater.

I do agree though, stacking footwork with hundred fists would be completely broken.  Footwork kicks do more damage than a normal kick (even with dune boots) by about 40-50%.  It would be so broken it wouldn’t even be funny.

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Posted in Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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More Fun With Dynamis Lord

Posted on April 25, 2008 by | 2 comments

I really love doing Dynamis – Xarcabard for the Dynamis Lord fight.  As a Monk, its one of the few times I get to just go crazy and try to kill as fast as possible.  While my group does do Proto-Omega as a zerg fight, I usually sub warrior for survivability.

Wait, sub warrior to survive?  So what do you sub for Dynamis Lord?

Dark Knight.  Yes the zerg Red Mage’s favorite sub is also the zerg Monk’s favorite sub.  It does, however, require the full attention of a white mage (or two) per monk to work.  Souleater + Hundred Fists gets deadly FAST, especially if the boss gets a lucky tp move off.  Asuran Fists, at full HP, and if all 8 hits connect (which is somewhat rare on Dynamis Lord — 7 of 8 hits is more common for me) takes me from about 1500 to 650 HP instantly.  But, with a subbed souleater, half of that lost health is converted directly into damage (around 425).  [Disclaimer:  All numbers are rounded since my DL zerg gear is a combination of my Chi Blast and melee gear to avoid blinking and causing my white mage to lose target.  You can do the numbers yourself, the math is <total HP> * (.9^8) for what your ending HP will be if all 8 hits connect.  Gear listed at end of post].

As a result of Asuran costing me 67% of my total HP, I tend to prefer Dragon Kick on Dynamis Lord.  This works well since I wear an Osode for the initial Chi Blast, then don’t take it off.  A 300% tp Dragon Kick is a powerhouse, and doesn’t completely kill me (end with 81% of starting HP since its a 2-hit WS).  I also sometimes have to save TP if my white mage is having a little trouble keeping my health up (as was the case at the beginning of the fight last night).

This screenshot shows one of my highest Dragon Kick’s on Dynamis Lord so far, as well as part of the chat lines to show how much curing a Monk needs.

pyra_665_dk

Once that Cure V landed, I was at near full health, and 300% tp.  665 is not too bad, although about 150 of that damage was from my souleater.

Willowdream is almost always my only white mage for this.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, she’s great, and I only died once (and even then it was to an Oblivion Smash) on the Dynamis Lord fight since I’ve started doing Xarcabard for the win.

Even though I didn’t get the kill shot on Dynamis Lord (although I sure tried), this is the second time ever that I’ve seen full drops.

full_drops_again

At this rate, I might even get a shadow ring of my own!

I later had some fun with a skeleton (after the hourglass expired) and some souleater + asuran.  😀  I’m evil.

pyra_666_hp

Well, since the theme of this post is monking and dynamis, please congratulate Miz on his shinny new Melee Crown, which completes his monk AFv2 set.

Miz_mnk_head

-pyra

My Monk Dynamis Lord fight gear is:

Weapons:  Destroyers (duh)
Ranged:  Bibiki Seashell (hush you, I’m lazy)
Head:  Temple Crown +1
Neck:  Chivalrous Chain
Ear1:  Merman’s Earring
Ear2:  Brutal Earring
Body:  Kirin’s Osode
Hands:  Temple Gloves
Ring1:  Ulthalam’s Ring
Ring2:  Raja’s Ring (I know, it doesn’t work in the Ring2 slot, only the Ring1 slot, hush you)
Back:  Melee Cape
Waist:  Brown Belt (if anyone wants to get me a black belt, I’ll happily accept it)
Legs:  Byakko’s Haidate
Feet:  Suzaku’s Sune-Ate

This setup gives me the bonus to boost from AFv1 hands, as well as +38 to MND.  I also like the extra accuracy from Focus with AFv1+1 head on.  I’m sure that this could be improved.  I’ve tried a couple different setups.  Most of the things that require me to switch gear cause trouble to my white mage (although she now has /target Pyra and /ma “Spell” Pyra macros).  Since I have Soul Voiced songs on me, my accuracy isn’t going to get a whole lot better than it is already (souleater has +25 acc too, but I’m not sure if it stacks with focus, which is +30 acc since I use AFv1+1 head).  Also, we always make sure to land Angon and Feint on Dynamis Lord, which helps a LOT.

Sadly, we only have one more run at the guy until June.  No thief gloves at all this month :(.  We had 3 white mage gloves fall this week, I’m hoping for a repeat with thief gloves next run (especially since I’m currently #3 in line for the blue gloves).

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Posted in Caitsith, Diabolos, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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6 for 6 (Finally)

Posted on April 7, 2008 by | 2 comments

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so.  At long last, Pyra is 6/6 on MNK AFv2.

gear

1890 HP without food even.  And just after Pyra hit two years old too (account was started early April 2006).

6for6

I’m actually surprised I got it, as the monk body has not wanted to drop for me for a long time.

Anyways, this is my first full set of AFv2, even though Ata has been 4/5 on white mage AFv2 since May 2006 (when it was still an odd thing to see a white mage with a Cleric’s Body and Pants).

It took three LSs to get this all.

PheonixPinion (Boots)
AmericanIdol (Hands)
KillerInstinct (Pants, Cape, Head, Body)

-pyra

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Posted in Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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Dynamiing

Posted on April 1, 2008 by | 1 comment

My friend Bubbette is working on a self-funded relic lance for his Dragoon.  He is close to stage 4 now

bubs_funds

Only 2 more years until he’ll be ready for stage 5.  Or so.  Maybe he can fund it with fire clusters.

Since we had a different puller than normal for this Jeuno run, and I know he reads this blog, I’m going to embarrass him by showing the final pull of the night.  At least it happened with only about 5 minutes left, although I’ve still got no clue how this link managed to happen.  And yes, this was my first run with my Homam Pants.

no_more_pulling

In the interest of not having too many short entries, here’s a fun game to play.  Its called Real or RMT.  Ebaydotcom, what is your guess?

real_or_rmt

-pyra

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Posted in Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct

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Back with a Vengeance

Posted on March 13, 2008 by | Leave a comment

And I am back!

Its been too long without a real update, so here is a good one.

About 2 weeks ago, KillerInstinct fought Dynamis Lord again.  This time for some good drops.

DL_Drops

Yeah, full drops from a DL, a very rare occurrence.

But the most important part is this–

dk_on_dl

Yeah, 548, one of my highest weapon skills on DL to date.

But the best part is this.

pyra_defeats

That DK was the kill shot.  For full drops.

Which of course has one obvious conclusion.

pyra_4tw

Anytime you want drops, just bring more Monks.

-pyra

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Roc Star

Posted on February 23, 2008 by | Leave a comment

This week, I saw the NM Roc for the first time.  Not only did I see it, but I got the title too.

roc_claimed

Yes, I was there for TH-Whoredom, but they pulled it to the bottom of the cliff so I could hit it once.

While hoping for a D. Ignot to sell, we got a dryad staff instead.  As the only White Mage present, free lot for me!

ata_dryad_staff1

ata_dryad_staff

So its a free 50 MP.  Not too bad for a short run.

But you might say, a short run from where.

Well, I had just outposted to the Merphy Mountains to finish up mission 6-2.  Earlier in the day, I was a bit bored and decided to duo the fight with myself.

The fight is quite easy for a MNK/NIN and a WHM/BLM.  Although it did go bad after the first Yag, the final 3 went very smooth, especially since I managed to get the SAM and WHM to use their 2 hour abilities before I died.

After my trip to Castle-O, I went to see the Star Sibyl and now my signet lasts 1 hour longer than before.  Yay!

pyra_rank_7_woot

Oh, and the 40K is nice too.  Payed for that night’s Limbus run.

I also finished up my 4th Star in Campaign.  Hopefully I’ll be un-lazy and get the first metal this weekend.

star_number_4

Other than that, I’ve only done a Dynamis – Xarcabard.  Thief hands finally fell after a 5 month break.

thf_afv2_finally_fall

1 more person off the list before I will get mine.

Since we always do a Dynamis Lord when we go to Xarcabard, and I always go to Xarcabard as Monk, I got to try a decent Chi blast on him.  I was in mostly melee gear as a MNK/DRK, and I only got 10 boosts, and its Dynamis Lord, so this isn’t horrible.

dy_chi_blast_dmg

Part of this came from my newly acquired Temple Crown +1, and a borrowed Osode.

Speaking of a borrowed Osode, here is what I look like in 4/5 of the Sky Set.

pyra_4_5_god_set

Soon I’ll have one of my own.  Hands are kind of meh for monk, I prefer the Melee Gloves, or the +1 if I can get them.  According to Genome, they help with counter rate, aside from the obvious evasion granted by 15 extra AGI.  But I would put myself at the bottom of the list for Seiryu’s Kote, Rangers, Ninjas, and even Samurai deserve them before a Monk would.

-pyra

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Posted in AnimeFusion, Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct, Missions

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Ranking Up and Finishing Long-Term Projects

Posted on February 11, 2008 by | Leave a comment

As I mentioned previously, I’m working on getting my ranks up in Campaign.

campaigning 

campaign_rank_up

Star #3.  I should get Star #4 at the end of this week depending on how much time I have.  Does anyone actually know that that symbol is on these?

While doing campaigns, I ran across some new, and bazaar, names.

crazy_names

I’m not sure what Instant Love is, nor why she was making some inappropriate emotes towards Xenith.  Maybe I just don’t want to know.

Here was something completely unexpected.  I was asked to join an Assault group, and we did one I’ve never done before.

We did worms, and I did a 1K Darkness o.O !

darkness

And it was just enough for the promotion.

LC_promotion

About time hardly describes it, but I was still happy about this occurrence.

The quest was interesting, you have to run around to 5 lakes around the thickets and woodlands.

rank_up_quest

And I got this screenshot.  If you know my dislike of elves, it makes sense why I liked it so much :).

all_good_elves

That’s right you smelly elf, bow down to the cat!

Oh, and also about time.

astral_leather

I got my astral leather for Ata’s SMN Boots +1.  I got the Temenos half forever and a day ago.  I turned them in right after limbo, so they are ready as soon as I need them.  I also finished a Monk set for Pyra, but have not decided which piece to upgrade yet.  I also will need more coins since I’ve been using them as fast as they come in and only have about 5 left.

Finally from me, I took this picture in my last dynamis run and wanted to post it.  Click for a larger version.

dy_bcd_blog

-pyra

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Posted in Caitsith, Campaign, Dynamis, FFXI, KillerInstinct, Missions

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