For some reason, I’ve finally caught the meripo bug again. I’ve had two excellent merit parties in the past few days, both of which were in excess of 15k/hr, enabling me to finally cap Enfeebling Magic merits last night. I plan to cap Shield merits before Friday if I can, then I’ll need to work on my Group 1 merits for Red Mage and Paladin and continue from there. Sadly due to gaining the last few levels on Paladin via Level Sync, both Sword and Shield skill suffered. Fortunately for me, PLD/DNC is completely broken and enables me to skill up very easily. Which brings me to the next point…
My Red Mage has had capped Sword skill since early 2006, so I didn’t fret leveling Paladin via Campaign or Level Sync with regards to Sword skill; Shield, on the other hand, was not capped on Red Mage, but it was fairly high so I was able not to worry much too about it. But being a Level 75 Paladin without the magic 276 number in both A+ skills was somewhat distressing, so I switched to PLD/DNC and headed out to pound on my old friends the Steelshells in Boyahda. I managed to grab a couple of other people who needed skill as well to keep me company, so it was a fun time had by all. After that session ended due to it being late, I went back the next day to cap it out, which I did easily, though the last 3 levels came quite slowly due to not many EM or T crabs popping for me.
After capping Sword, I figured I’d see if I could get a little bit on Club, so I whipped out my Warp Cudgel and proceeded to beat on a DC Steelshell for the better part of 40 minutes without risking death a single time. While my exploits in Campaign as PLD/DNC cemented in my mind that that job combo is broken, this further reinforced it. Shield Mastery combined with normal TP gain from auto-attacking equals a very large wealth of TP to pull from for Sambas, Waltzes, and Steps.
Last night I decided to unleash my capped Sword upon Maat himself! As I never did hang on to a Paladin’s Testimony, I headed down to Monastic Cavern to take on the PLD Orcs to acquire one. Once again, /DNC came through, and I had a testimony within killing 5 or 6 of them. I used the Outpost to return to San d’Oria then headed up to Fei’Yin to and the Qu’Bia Arena. Maat went down in just over 3 minutes, netting me the record. So that puts me 2/15 towards Maat’s Cap! …as if I’d ever get that item.
Tonight is Dynamis-Tavnazia, so I hope I don’t die too much. But it’s a shot at Valor Surcoat, so I look forward to it!