Ain't No Holla Back Boy!

I returned home from my vacation to Notts today, and decided to make the most of my time off work by doing something I don't normally do - play FFXI for a change. Teila and I tried the Charming Trio BCNM again, only to decide that after various tactics, it would be easy to just stop wasting our Beastmen's Seals by asking a third SMN to join us. We could only think of one friend who had Shiva, which was Kellie, and she kindly agreed to help us tomorrow.

After failing miserably at the leeches, we returned to Whitegate for a couple of runs at the Trolls in Assault as Teila only needed two more victories for her Yigit Crackows. It took us forever to get a party, so in the end we gave up and went as a five. Our NIN tank could not stop taking damage. No matter how hard I cured him, he just dropped and dropped. During the first fight, he then DC'd. We waited for him to come back and he did, so we pegged it as fast as we could onwards, but he DC'd twice more within the next couple of minutes.

Eventually he came back for a longer period of time, and I noticed he was still getting pummelled and my MP just wasn't lasting. I decided to pop the question: did he have tools? After a little silence he said that he had "lost his tools whilst DCing". My rear end he did! Just to finish the Assault, I threw him all I had on me (for which I got no thanks) and he soon DC'd for good. We tried valiantly as a four, but lost fighting the second to last Troll.

Funny isn't it? The one time Teila just needed a couple more wins and we lose for the first time. We then changed to SMNs and joined the Linkshell for Promyvion-Holla. I was a little hypocritical as I believe people should be punctual to agreed events, but I took a little longer than usual getting ready as it had been so long since I'd done Prommies properly myself that I'd forgotten my Reraise Hairpin so had to buy a new one along with some meds I had just found out we needed. We met up with Akashea in La Thiene, and went in as a seven, making it nicely to the second floor, where yet again we struggled to find the exit. The thin paths through the Graveyard posed a time-consumer too as we had to keep fighting off the aggro.

On the final floor we got stuck in a thin bottleneck and wiped to a triple aggro from two Weepers and a Seether. I managed to break away from the others and die in a safe area, so I Reraised up, rested to full, then aggroed them all away from the group so they could get up. Lost too much XP on SMN lately! 2k since I last partied with it! We made it to safety and Teila got her final Key Item from the Memory Flux and we entered the Spire of Holla. Inside, we popped Poison Potions, and headed into the fray to fight the Wrecker.

I swear it was a Wind-based NM, as it's eyes were green, but it took a real beating from Teila's and my Shiva. In fact across the whole of the fight, six Diamond Dusts didn't finish it, although I found out afterwards my Shiva had been put to sleep for the first one. We had even used all our Anima on it, and I thought that we were going to wipe again when it had no HP left. Unlike the Mea boss that spammed Carousel, this one chose to spam Shadow Spread, so we were fortunate in that it wasn't a damaging move. Shadow Spread inflicts Curse and Sleep, so as long as we were awake we could keep fighting. Poison Potions began to run out, MP was drained and I didn't think we'd do it, but somehow we all stayed alive. Then Kellie hit Manafont and began nuking the hell out of it. Two Aerogas and it went down! Just Mea left to do now!

Afterwards I swapped to COR and got L28 and a little buffer with Teila.