Last week I was spending 5 hours of my life getting a party for Diablos Prime for 2 LS mates I got home from work @ 9 pm. 2am in the morning we were ready to go. No we did not have a Chain Stunner and an Army of 4 Black Mages. But we did have a pretty good pld(complete AFv2, joytoy, Sattva ring, etc.). We wipe after 2 dry runs. We work out a plan, and go again. Paladin dies 2 seconds before I can get benediction off, and Diabolos knocks me into a hole. After 4 of us are dead an Diabolos has 50% of his hp left. Monk, an LS mate 2hrs and wipes. I get on(politely) her about it and she says she just wants the win. After 4th attempt I go back to Whitegate and grab more meds, etc. Next time I get there a party member DCs and does not come back. So we go in with 5, we wipe again and LS mates HP, cursing me out all the while about my /thf support job, telling me I can't critize anyone about becasue I don't have /blm or /smn. And then they curse me in LS chat, and kick me, like it's my fault the Blue Mages Head Butt gets resisted, and then refuse to wake me up after i get Nightmared. 6 hours and up half the night, with 80k on meds flushed down the drain.
Last night: I hear a shout asking for help with promyvion mea and need a healer. I volunteer to help, and get my anima, refresh drinks, etc. I tell people over and over to get pain and fear anima, and after 3 hours for constandt afks, spacing out, and me almost dying with no reraise when it wore suddenly, we were at the spire, and blm announcies she only has one anima. I get on her about it, and she gets defensive and nasty. After the dust settles, we go in and people just throw the anima at totally random intervals, and wipe @ 5%, and then more insults at my /thf. Our setup involved 4 war/nins, one of which changed to a rdm for support.
This mornig my LS has it's weekly CoP run this time also Promyvion-Mea. Three people show up, so we have to cancel it. Thing is, one guy is in Australia, so the rest of us have to get up at 5:00 in the morning. So after my long night, you can imagine how that must feel. That morning I get a tell from a pal asking to help someone with a Promyvion-Vazhl run. I say ok, I get my anima and level 50 gear. And I tell everyone in thh group I have to be work in 6 hours. We climb to the 4th floor, and out party's Monk says out of the blue he has to leave for work, and that he didn't realize it was going to take hours to climb up, as if his RL time was more important than everyone else's. Like it was only going to take him 2 hours or something.
I would like to take the time now at this point, that our party setup had 2 Blms, and Ninja. Our Monk was replaced by a paladin. Our party's leader, one of the blms(/whm), kept going on and on about how 2 blms would rock the BC(and got said information from alla, believe it or not). Anyway, the other blm(/rdm) was one of the most completely retarded mages i've seen... I mean people make mistakes, but let's see... during 4th floor during the Solictor fight. Continuously spammed Bind... went afk about 6-7 bathroom brakes, followed by a smoke, then during BC, lets see, wasted anima, wasted 2hr.... then I had to run and get more anima form the AH and come back... only to have my poison pots bazzared by another party who happened to be there, who refused to give them back(i would trade but ppl i try to trade seem to take forever, and it's not like Promyvion-Vazhl is a happenin' place for all the cool kids to hang out).
We killed the Mea boss and everyone did nothing but argue weather to wipe to the Dem boss or to kill it. Paladin wasted 2 hr to "save" me after Divine Seal + Curaga 2. Ninja 2hrs about 3 minutes later after everyone else wipes... etc. etc. Everone's got RR on except for the Blm, who I have to raise, I tell him and everyone else stay on your knees so the bonuses you get for cumulative resting even the melee(read: Signet bonus). He was the last one to unweaken and immediately gets up walks 3 feet and rests again. We have to continue the fight w/o him. Needless to say, we run out of time with the Holla boss @ 5% health and party leader flips out bigtime. I don't say anything to him and let him vent, we worked for 7 hours and had every right too. Anyway blm/rdm goes beserk and blames the whole failure on the 50 or so mp I would have had with /blm, and I quite frankly had it disbanded and left.
I know that many people to not agree with whm/thf and thf/whm, and if people say up front they don't want to party with me, it pisses me off, but I usually get over it. But when a person accepts me into a party, and I bust my balls and trying to help total strangers with a mission I don't need, I don't want any flack from anyone, becasue no support job or amount of Mp is going to do any good if something does somethign completely retarded.
What good is it to level X amount of jobs to 37 or 75, if people are just going to ***** around? I mean I'm not going to proclaim i'm the greatest Exp machine in the world, but at least I've taken the time to do things, liek farm anima and have cutscenes and do all the relevant reasearch ahead of time, so I don't slow down or inconvience the RL time of other people. Exp grinds come and go, and don't take a 1 million gil hourglass, 20-80k on meds, rare/ex items, or 3-4 hour dungeon crawls, and if someone d/c, it's not too hard to find a replacement, and we can still get SOME exp even if our party sucks. I mean you raise josb to 75 for endgame, but if you can't do endgame if you can't finish the story missions. I mean, come on, i had and army of warrior/ninjas, and black mages fail at the hands of now nerfed Empty monsters with now easily purchasable anima, and a friggin' PUPPETMASTER comes in and 1/1s the thing. A PUPPETMASTER, the most lol'd job in final fantasy, can outperform all the melee or mage burn out there. You constantly preach that you have better things to do in Real Life so you want your exp grinds to go faster, but when you do a mission, you shove your head so far up your behinds it takes a tractor pull to get them out, and waste people's real life time and in game money(which takesreal life time to get) by not paying attention thats going on around you.
People, you need to get your sh*t together. You need to read up on missions, you need to find out what the heck is going on. Don't shout or awnser a shout for a mission if you don't know the stipulations involved. If you dont prepare yourselves, no army of warrior/ninjas, black mages, or summoners is going to save you. Stop using these guides as a crutch, dedicate some actual time and skill to these missions. I can do these missions, and I'm a whm/thf. I know for sure this isn't beyond your skill, and no matter how fast you get your exp, or whether you get your exp off a colibri or torama, no how hard the grind, how easy the grind, doing missions and quests is where it truly counts.
I will tell you why: Most quests in FFXI require assistance of RL players. When you need their help you need to know what to do, where to go, which maps you need, what coffer mobs you need to kill, what gate crystals you need to teleport you to where you need to go. Take the 2-3 dragon fight as a classic exaple. Everytime i offer my help on that mission, someone always forgets a cutscene, or a certian key item, or forgets they haven't finished the other nation entirely. There are lots of information on the interent boards, and it you don't have the net access, ask around. Communication and cooperation is the key not your party setup(waits for wisea$$ comment about 6 white mages). It's an MMORPG, its a community, not just a game.
Okay, i;ve said my peace. You may now sub-default this thread with your flames and rants about how much of a hypocrite I am. Have a nice day.