A Real Monk

Being Sickly Sucks

My life story is pretty simple, and can be pretty much summed up by my body repeatedly betraying me.  I was born with a primary immune system issue, which is far from “boy in the bubble” territory, but mostly means I have a “lazy” immune system.  Essentially all of my antibodies and defense mechanisms hang out saying “these guys aren’t so bad” until finally one of these foreign actors torches the place, and forces them to fight back and repel whatever bad things invaded my body.  Throwing a sucker punch into the works I have some pretty severe asthma and allergies.  More often than not what starts as allergies or an undefended against cold ends up triggering the asthma and locking me down.

Right now my lungs are betraying me and since yesterday afternoon have been struggling to breathe.  I am doing the normal “take breathing treatments every few hours” thing, which is helping but just considerably slower than I would like it to.  By the time I went to bed last night I was actually feeling almost human.  Waking up this morning however my body seems to have rebelled against me once more.  At this point I am uncertain if this is just a cold or something deeper, but in any case the initial treatment is the same, rest and medication.  I am so ready for nanites to exist, I will gladly embrace our robot overlords if they bring with them the ability to fix my dumb malfunctioning body.  Maybe I can have like cool cybernetic parts too…  in the future I will totally be Adam Jensen.

Nightmare Tides

rift 2014-10-23 06-28-58-988 I was reminded yesterday by my friend RowanBlaze that it was the launch day for Nightmare Tides.  I managed to get in for a bit but didn’t stick around terribly long for a number of reasons.  The first was that the servers were really populated, like can’t engage a single mob without having a swarm of players on it with you.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means that the expansion as a whole seems to be pretty well received.  The second was that after spending about thirty minutes doing “bag maintenance” and removing all of the old Storm Legion quests from my log, I honestly just felt drained.  I was afterall not feeling amazing in the first place, and when you combine this with the fact that the once awesome build that Pkudude helped me find in the first place isn’t quite as awesome as it once was…  I just lacked the oomph to go out onto the forums and find whatever it is that the latest leveling build happens to be.

rift 2014-10-23 06-30-17-828 The thing I did mess around with however is the new Minions system.  So far I am a fan, other than I have no clue how to actually earn adventurine.  The idea is that Minions are mini-pets with a purpose.  My biggest disappoint is that not all mini-pets are minions… and not all minions are mini-pets.  This aspect of the system is deeply confusing and they would have been far better serviced if they had simply done what Blizzard did and assign attributes to ALL existing mini-pets.  That aside it is a fun little mini-game where you send your pet out on missions.  The more missions you run the better xp it gains… and I would assume at some point you start to unlock more dangerous missions as a result.  I got a nice jellyfish minion as part of my preorder (that also happens to double as an in game companion) but there are a number of basic mini-pets that you can pick up for 1 plat each.  The other way you can obtain them is either by buying randomized packs… or by spending the Nightmare Tides zone currency on individual ones.

rift 2014-10-23 06-30-33-676 Admittedly I have been doing a pretty poor job of keeping track on the progress of this expansion.  An awesome reader of mine hooked me up early on with beta access, and I spent quite a bit of time poking around the first zone.  I did not however delve too deep into the systems because I wanted to spoil the experience as little as possible.  Mostly I was trying to decide if I wanted to pre-order or not, and I enjoyed myself enough to throw some more money Trion’s way.  Now I am trying to figure out all the things I happened to miss.  If nothing else Minions are an interesting diversion to the leveling process as the user interface has made it super simple to hop in and out of the Minion screen, notifying you when your current missions is complete in the same place the dungeon finder tools show up.  Since I am essentially done with Destiny for the time being, I might end up streaming some Nightmare Tides leveling this weekend during the Extra-Life marathon.

A Real Monk

ffxiv 2014-10-23 06-54-15-200 The bulk of my evening I spent watching television and working on leveling my Pugilist in Final Fantasy XIV.  I have this crazy goal of reaching 50 on all combat and crafting classes by the Spring 2015 release of Heavensward, and for some reason of late I have hung on working on the pugilist.  I think in part because this is my last Disciple of War class to level…  at least until next week when the Rogue/Ninja is released.  For the longest time I just could not get into the pugilist, but lately I feel like I have finally gotten into the “rhythm” of playing it… or what everyone refers to as “the dance”.  When I was working up my guide I declared Monk being less positional dependant than the Dragoon… and in a way this is absolutely true.  Monk attacks will still land and qualify for the next step in a combo regardless of where you are in relation to the target.  Dragoons on the other hand, the combo will not continue unless the attack was performed from the right position.

Saying that however leaves out the fact that a monk that is NOT doing positional attacks… is a monk that is completely ineffective and might as well just be auto attacking.  There seems to be a massive damage output difference between keeping up all of your stacks and dancing around the target to just standing there and beating on it from one place.  The thing I like the most about the monk so far is that the position attacks seem to be eaiser to land that for the dragoon.  The Dragoon attacks have a lot of lead up time to the attack, and notoriously your tank is going to twitch the target at exactly the wrong moment… making it so that Heavy Thrust for example doesn’t land.  With a monk this never seems to happen… or at the very least it is not as crippling of an event as you can still continue going to your next attack.  If you miss a Heavy Thrust… you have to Heavy Thrust again… until finally one lands.

So I am happy to finally get what people like about playing the Monk.  Last night I ran a really horrible Halatali for my daily roulette.  If you are a Gladiator tank out there, please for the love of god do not use Riot Blade.  We tried to explain to this tank three for four times exactly what he needed to do to hold aggro.  However he almost willfully ignored us.  At one point I actually voted to abandon the party after one of our dps bailed on us.  Unfortunately the NEW dps didn’t understand why we were trying to abandon party and voted it down.  After that I ran a few instances of Totorak and a few of Haukke after I graduated up into that dungeon.  Finally near the end of the night I dinged 30 and was able to complete my monk quest.  Now I am no longer a pugilist but a proper monk, and finally have some decent AOE capabilities.  Actually looking forward to finishing leveling this job and getting it geared out.

#FFXIV #Rift #NightmareTides

5 thoughts on “A Real Monk”

  1. The Granpa’s build for rogue has been nerfed? Dang! Not that I’ve played Rift in… um… long time. For all I know it got nerfed when the new souls were released.

  2. Riot Blade has its uses, but I feel like beginning gladiators just see that it does more damage than Savage Blade and use it incorrectly.

    Tam did prove that you can tank a low-level instance as a Gladiator (even the bosses) without using Savage Blade. You just have to Flash a lot more.

  3. Really sorry to hear about the immune system issue and that you’re not feeling well lately. I hope that you feel better soon. I know how it sucks to feel sick for me normally, but I probably can’t image dealing with what you do. 🙁

    On a happier note: Good luck on your leveling goal in FFXIV! I’m cheering for you! 😀

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