#I do not use my leylines that is what triple cast is for

[impossible-rat-babies]

the fact that the xp stuff keeps happening on blm is hilarious like. I Will Not engage in content w others on that job. I will not do fates. I will not do MSQ roulette. I Refuse to subject others to I have no idea how to play this job

[ofdarklands]

level 90 at last!

so! about black mage

i've been thinking how to describe playing black mage, and i think the simile i used this morning in chat works well enough:

black mage feels like trying to run with a pot full of boiling water in my hands. with other jobs i feel light and agile, but black mage plays like how seeing emet selch as solus run would feel. look at that guy go. i didn't know spines could do that! you can hear his knees crunch, also

mechanically, it's really not nearly as bad as i feared it to be, even though i don't think i'd managed to figure out a decent rotation myself on the first or even third try so, thank you internet people for the guides!

anyway, the boiling pot wheezing trot sensation is not unique to it, though it is the most noticeable of all the casting classes i've played. i'd say rdm>summoner>whm>>blm in increasing awkwardness

so, while i acknowledge that blm is an optimizer's paradise to get the Biggest Booms, probably, playing it feels like it's almost fighting against the game instead of flowing with it and due to that it's just not very enjoyable, for me. it's got the same inflexible rotation that makes dragoon my least played class despite it being very canon for mitr'a

and from a physical perspective my fingers are not very precise on the keyboard, so i tend to fuck up the routine by accident quite often and then i have to correct it or start over and eeeehhhhhh. and my can't-remember-to-click-despair situation. dunno what the problem is with that one, to be quite honest. brain said no i guess :( that one's on me

woops this got longer than i thought so have a readmore

the good:

aforementioned big damages, when i manage to keep the rotation on track. sadly not as much of a plus for me, personally, but it's relevant still

against one enemy, getting immersed in the rotation can be pretty fun, until the 5 aoes come, the boss leaves the arena, and i sigh deeply while creakily running around, not casting

lasso spell goes brrr. it's got a very funny sound effect, in my heart

the 'return to leylines' spell is also great. i've used it mostly to instantly dodge when there's more than 2 sequential aoes. you can play around with these two spells

shoutout to the simplified job gauge for letting you actually understand anything about it. sure it's 3.5 things to keep track of, but for 2 of them you get informed about their readiness with convenient sounds and flashing borders so whatever

big staff to hit people with

cone hat funny

big lb meteorites. very good very cackling

the bad:

moving feels heavy, even when using the instant cast abilities. i keep lagging behind the group even in normal content, and sometimes clicking the right person to yeet to can be a bit hard in alliances or wall to walls. this class needs to do some cardio

clicking fire IV 3 times, then 1 fire I then fire IV 3 more times is. very boring. sorry. rotation 40 years long and rigid like the brutalism. the funnest parts are the thunder procs and the ice phase before going back to fire and the occasional instant cast. oh you sneezed and misclicked and dropped your fire badge thingies on the floor? sorry idiot you get to start over from the top, but sadder this time

this one i only noticed here at the end, but i feel it's very important, maybe more than the rotation: the best and biggest animations it has are the ones for the ice spells, which you use the least. xenoglossy, foul and flare are also good. amplifier, manafont and triple cast feel nice and dramatic to use. paradox i just got but it's also nice with the color mix. the rest i don't even remember, had to go cast them on a dummy. it's fireballs and fire columns it's all fireballs! the blm animations have a lot of boom but they need more heft, if that makes sense? more flying shit going from you to the target, shit shrapneling from the target, rings of fire, fiery eldritch runes, anything. if rdm can shoot 50 explosive roses at a guy for some reason and drk can summon shields of runes, blm can do something fancy also. casting a finisher skill called 'despair' should look like i'm sucking their souls out through a straw

also more casting positions. summoner has a lot and they're pretty different! they got floating symbols and shit. blm has 'slightly crouched' and 'staff held high' in variation 1 and 2, and that's about it from what i can tell besides the selfbuff ones. add some evil runes at least. the paradox wide armed one (i think you float a little?) is a good addition though

anyway, final verdict: it's a good class, but it's very rigid and inflexible to get Big Damages, which is not an exciting exchange, for me. i prefer to be nimble and do less damage but have a more varied and forgiving rng based rotation. also more utility skills! i miss peloton or having a group shield or heal, or even rdm's rez; makes me feel actually useful instead of being just a giant cone hat that produces flamethrower on command. i don't think i'll play it too often, i'm afraid, even though it's a perfectly alright class, and i'm sure i'll get better with time

HOWEVER. if dawntrail allows blm to throw meteorites outside of lbs i might reconsider. they can be small! even magical molotov cocktails if we must. but i want physical flamming objects to hit my enemies and i want to see the animations do that with some flair. just ole fire and spite booms and a couple icicles is not enough. i want to flatten them

[kisaell]

In the Scions we Trust

So, I’ve been plucking my way through grinding the scions to 80 for that cute little title; and in hopes that there is some bigger reward waiting down the line…

Anyway, I just wanted to note down some interesting quirks of each of the Scions since … It’s a lot of runs to just get them out of each dungeon. It’s a long post, and has some spoilers in it~

Let’s start with the Disaster Twins (who I love with my whole heart);

Alisaie plays like a Red Mage, naturally. However, she drops the OGDC aether blades in favour of more powerful Vercures; should the healer fall, or the WoL get too low she will not hesitate to yell out, “I’ll handle the healing!” and use Vercure 3 to keep people alive. It’s a decent heal too. We all know how extra she can be, so on the first and second boss of a dungeon, should you have Limit Break ready, she will use it on pull. However, should the Limit Break not be ready, and it dings in the middle of the boss; she tends to wait until after her enhanced melee + Verholy/Verflare combo before popping it, so any melee WoL taking her along can use that time to pop it for yourself.

I personally didn’t encounter her dying to mechanics. She is a little ballsy with her placement, opting to get in a little extra damage if she can, but she performed very well whenever I took her with.

Alphinaud plays like a Scholar, no matter what his job title says. He uses his Moonstone Carbuncle rather than a fairy, which makes sense given he isn’t a Nymian-trained Scholar like the WoL can be. Moonstone Carbuncle provides some DPS as it attacks enemies on its own; it also provides a nice Damage up buff every 2 mins (it lined up with my Dancer burst perfectly, everytime).

As for Alphinaud himself, he offers the standard Scholar kit with Adlo shields and Lustrates when people fall low; he also uses Broil 2 for DPS between heals. He is also a little more cautious than his sister, often making sure to step out of AoEs unless he is caught mid-cast; he is unafraid to shield himself and take an AoE should he need to. 

Now we have the Father-Daughter combo;

Thancred plays like a Gunbreaker, because he is one. When I ran dungeons with him, I had not yet touched Gunbreaker, so I didn’t notice anything too off with his playstyle. He is quick enough to establish enmity and will face groups away from people if he can. One unique skill I’ve found is his Quick Slash, which is an AoE attack that also blinds any enemy it hits; it’s not often he uses it, seems to be a mob count thing given I saw it most often in Dohn Mheg with the Wasps.

Personally, he provided the quintessential tank role to the Scions. He held the enemies still, he bosses to either the middle or towards the exit and held them there. My only issue was found in, again, the 73 dungeon… Where he often tanked the final boss in such a way that poor Alphinaud got frogged more than once.

Baby Ryne plays like a Rogue with extra bits, why did Dadcred let a 12 year old have knives? Aside from Y’sthola, Ryne is perhaps the most unique in her kit; not only does she have a 20 second vulnerability up debuff with her Trick Attack (that she can use on every pull) but her unique version of Dream within a Dream - Called Artful Edge - puts a damage done down debuff on the enemy too. And if that wasn’t enough, she has a ranged attack in the form of the spell Banish 3; she only tends to use this after a close-ranged AoE forces her to step away from enemies and bosses. Something that is also neat, is that her Hide isn’t broken by her auto-attacking.

Ryne is again, second only to Y’sthola in terms of how cautious she is. I have yet to see her get hit needlessly when she can avoid it; double AoEs like the Forgiven Apathy’s Earthshakers confound her (like most Trusts) but she will try to only get hit by one rather than both.

Dungeons with Ryne feel a lot faster given how often she can pop that Trick Attack; she’s even uses the Limit Break once or twice which also speeds things up. Another interesting note is that she carries Phoenix Downs to resurrect fallen party members, should there be no one else that can. She is cute baby with a lot of support 10/10 would take her in more dungeons.

Now for Smart Squad;

Boss Ass Bitch Y’shtola plays like a Black Mage, but she has White Mage elements spells to remind you that she’s better than you in every way.

As mentioned, Y’sthola has one of the most unique kits of the Scions as of this moment; all of her spells are followed by the suffix “-of the seventh dawn” and enjoy such elements as, “Tornado”, “Foul”, “Fire 4” and “Water 4”; which as someone who also plays White Mage from time to time, makes me cry. I’ve not noticed her ever use leylines, but she does seem to have a very short recast Triple Cast - which she also pop swiftcast with and just churns out damage when she wants.

In my runs, I noticed that Y’shtola did very well to avoid unnecessary damage; and as we were told, she does pop Triple Cast to make up for lost damage when she’s dancing around AoEs. However, unlike what we were told; I’ve seen Y’sthola pop the Limit Break about as often as Alisaie does, although she will wait until a lot longer in the fight before she uses it. I think she’s mad at me because I looked at her ass in that one quest; hero, and thus LB, privileges revoked. ;~;

Urianger, he doth provide the support of one well versed in the Sharlayan art of Astromancy. Which ultimately means he plays favorites with the cards and waxes poetically about killing shit. Urianger uses Diurnal Sect, which means regens! However, he never uses Aspected Helios; just the regular one. The loss of sheilds can be felt in dungeons; when tanking for Urianger, the tank busters hit a lot harder than when Alphi had my back; but that’s to be expected. What Urianger brings, however, is two unique spells. Gravity of the Seventh Dawn is an AoE attack that puts slow and heavy on everything hit; very very useful when you have a lot of enemies plucking away at your HP; and… Death of the Seventh Dawn, where he literally just straight up kills something, and to be fair, he mostly uses it at 10% on trash but still that’s really wild that he has that.

As for his performance… Oh boy; if you thought Alisaie got hit by avoidable shit, you’ve never taken Uri into Holminster. Our Man of the Verbose likes to get hit by everything, which is fine because he can just Essential Dignity himself back to full but still! At least we know where Alisaie gets it from, haha…. 

And for the final wrap up;

If anyone is interested in doing the hell grind of getting all the Trusts to 80; I’d HIGHLY recommend you break them into two groups and level on set with a DPS and the other with a Tank. That will get you all of them 80 in only two sweeps of the gauntlet. 

Your rewards for doing so are;

Each Trust at 80 unlocks their old (SB) outfit; with Ryne getting her blonde look back.

And once they’re all 80, you get the Achievement “Bound by Faith” and the title “Trusted Friend”

[sailorportia]

Random numbers for fandom asks: 51 23 14 38 27 46 15 and your fave number :3

Cam! Friendo! Thanks for the ask!

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!a) I hate that fanfiction in general sleeps on f/f. There’s very few active fandoms that are f/f-centric.b) It’s kinda sad that the LWA fandom is so Diakko-centric at the expense of the other ships. I mean, I’m a Diakko fiend, but the other gay witches need some love too!

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.Hanakko October: 31 Days of a Rarepair Nobody Asked For! Not only was I able to write a somewhat coherent fic based off a list of prompts with barely any planning, I also managed to get some people to ship Hannah and Akko! And shout out to the Amanda x Diana subplot that took over for a few chapters xD

14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?For LWA, I like the idea of Akko & Andrew being bros, as well as Amanda & Andrew. I’m not big on Amakko, so I guess Amanda & Akko are bros in most of my fics. It’s the triple-A BroTP.

38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?My fics tend to rely on small casts, which is lucky, cuz LWA doesn’t have characters to spare (unless one uses the background character students). I may one day create some OCs if I ever finish up with my current fics and the ones I have lined up to write

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?Oof. If I’m lucky, I can come up with a clever, punny title for something once I wrap up the writing. I’m less clever with summaries, which are the bane of my existence or some similar exaggeration.

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?I answered this one already, so here’s a remix! I’d recommend Butch Diana, because I love teasing people with my oblivious gay girls. Also, what other fics have references to 19th-century literature and hot takes about its lesbian subtext?

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?*inhales deeply* HANAKKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

And for my fave number:12. Who is your current OT3?ok but like I’ve been having big OT3 feels lately, so you get three answers (it’s my fave number, so I make the rules)

a) Hannah x Barbara x Amanda. Two bisexual soulmates and their rowdy lesbian girlfriend. One day I’ll resolve that whole thing in Butch Diana and everybody’s gonna swoon.

b) Hannah x Barbara x Diana. Like, it’s so believable that Hannah and Barbara are crushing on Diana, right? And the only way to land an unattainable girl like Diana is to team up with your bestie, right?

c) Hannah x Barbara x Akko. I read a short yuri manga about a tsundere “bullying” the girl she likes with barely disguised displays of affection, and that’s such a Hanakko + Barbara mood. Probably. Just imagine H&B acting all high and mighty trying to act like they ain’t crushin’.Hannah: I bet someone of Akko’s station has never tasted gourmet sweets. How sad.Barbara: We should take her to the finest patisserie in the country just to show her what she’s missing out on! Meet us at the leyline at 3 on Saturday.Akko: …did they just ask me out on a date?