Leveling: Pet Static (Yuhtunga Jungle 25-28)

Itera recently started a static with his Puppetmaster and Rovont's Dragoon. They added in Goto's Summoner, which led me to call it the Pet Static, since the three all have pets. It's not pet-only, as they added in Rovont's friend Varghoss (aka Bubba) on Dark Knight. I joined them two weeks ago with my Thief, at level 25.

We met up in Kazham, but couldn't find a tank, so I volunteered my NPC Balu-Falu's service as a Stalwart Shield. It worked out relatively well, though it was more difficult for Goto to keep an eye on him, and it was odd to have the tank following the puller around everywhere.

We were camped near the gate - I really hate pulling there, especially when there are a couple of other parties there. Sometimes you have to go really far to get a mandy, and then run into trouble with the goblins in the narrow path back to camp. We tried fighting goblins, sometimes with great ease, and other times with deaths, but with the town right there it was easy for one of us to change jobs and raise the dead.

Eventually we found a Ninja to tank for us. She died a lot though, so we ended up having Goto switch to his WHM75 and PL us through a few goblins to get her a level before we disbanded for the day.

This weekend, we met back in Kazham, most of us at 26, and Goto at 27. We picked up a Monk to be our nominal tank, but with everyone but Goto and I subbing Warrior, the plan was to have us bounce hate around. We started out near the gate, but the first goblin killed half of us. The area was too busy to get enough mandies, plus with Goto and Kikishi, the MNK, at level 27, the exp wouldn't be worthwhile unless we had an endless supply.

I forced us to go beat up Goblin Furriers near the outpost, which is a bit tricky without barfira and curaga, but the furriers are so soft and squishy, I was hoping we'd do ok. Other than Itera dying once (and was quickly raised by a WHM that happened to walk by), it did go pretty well, and more importantly, it was kind of fun.

I really like fighting there - it's fairly easy to avoid aggro and links, since you stay away from the malboros, and the goblins are spread out enough. There's no one else around, so there's no competition for the pulls. Playing THF in a party where everyone shares hate can be a bit frustrating. More times than not, someone would pull hate and turn the mob just as I activated sneak attack, causing it to miss. But I got in some really good smacks, especially combined with a Fast Blade. It will be fun to see what I can do with SATA Viper Bites in a few levels. I pulled my share of hate, but at least with shadows and high evasion it wasn't too painful.

I think I might start offhanding an archers knife and switch to squid sushi before level 30, just to get my bolts to land more regularly. It's frustrating to have capped marksmanship and only hit what seems like one out of three bolts. Some Noct +1 gear at 30 should help too.

We finished up the day with most of us at 28, I believe, and Goto hit 29 on our last kill. Next week, we can either try weapons in Sauromugue or by the waterfall in Yuhtunga. Bubba's talking about switching to Paladin since it's hard to find tanks, so he unlocked that Saturday and hopes to get it caught up to us before next weekend. This would also allow us to look for a WHM or RDM to main heal and let Goto be a Summoner instead of a half-level White Mage.