Leveling: Maybe Bibiki Bay isn't so bad after all (72)

I lobbied hard to not return to Bibiki Bay on Sunday night. It looked pretty crowded for one thing, and it has been just so disappointing exp-wise since we hit 72. Yobun doesn't really like fighting Weapons without a RDM (their Dispel can be used more often than a BRD's Finale, and the RDM-type Weapons will spam their buff spells), so we headed to Lufaise Meadows and found the first camp empty. Yobun recommended avoiding the Tavnazian Rams (they have a max-HP down move that left his Galka PLD with less than 200 HP at level 74, which makes it pretty dangerous), but they were intermingled with the Abraxas (giant birds), so Grymalkyn wasn't too happy about how hard it was going to be to pull.

We had a tough fight with the first bird. I think it must have used a defense boost move, since we were not doing much damage to it, and since we're so used to fighting low ITs, it felt like we were all missing more than we should. The birds also hit really hard. I was in my full-defense gear, with +48 VIT including my food (when we're fighting VTs and low ITs, I usually have more like +30 VIT), and had Defender on full-time. Even with all that, I was getting hit for 150 on normal hits. I'm happier when normal hits are under 100. The second bird we fought was hitting me hard, then hit me with a Triple Attack for over 500 damage, which came right after a hard hit and was followed up with another two in quick succession, killing me. Fortunately they managed to kill it just fine without me (Itera use Hundred Fists), but we decided maybe we weren't yet ready for this camp.

So a quick teleport to Mea, and back to Bibiki Bay, where we camped to fight mostly Efts with a Goblin in the chain. The exp was low, but it was fast. We stopped doing our skillchains, and just weaponskilled as soon as we had TP, which seemed to speed things up for these particular fights. It was actually kind of fun for me, since I got to play around with my different weaponskills. I threw on as much of my so-called damage-dealer gear as made sense (ended up taking around 90 damage from the efts, which could have been under 50 if I'd been wearing more tankish gear), and tried out Vorpal Blade and Swift Blade. It seems that Swift Blade averages higher, probably because Vorpal Blade has more hits, and if you miss any of them, the damage is reduced quite a bit. My favorite was a 568 damage Swift Blade on an IT Catoblepas. Sure it was a low IT, but still, it was an IT. Pretty exciting for a little Taru PLD who's best damage is usually a 500 damage Spirits Within with 300% TP and full health, and never gets to see that any more now she's part of the static's skillchain. Most of my Swift Blades were closer to 200, which is still higher damage than I'm used to delivering.

We did have one disaster. Efts supposedly link by sight, and Grym pulled one with another near it, but its back was turned - I saw it on his screen. It certainly looked safe to me. Whatever, it ended up linking, and Elboron and Wendell thought Grym would use Hide, not realizing it doesn't work on them. I tried curing Grym, but got interrupted, and by the time I had fumbled for Flash in my spell menu (my flash macro is for t, not stnpc), Grym was down. We had a hectic fight with the two efts, but they were soon dead. I have to change my habits for this. My first instinct is to try to heal the person getting hit, but when I'm getting hit myself by another mob, it's likely I'm going to get interrupted, since it's a panic cure and I'm not paying attention to the timing. I really have to Flash first, to get the link's attention.

We had got a late start, and then with changing camps, ended up fighting for a bit less than 2 hours. With my death (and R3), plus using an Empress Band, I think I ended up with around 8k. We weren't able to go out Monday night this week, so it feels like we've slowed down again, especially when I add in the Ouryu-induced EXP losses.