The Road to Noblesse

I personally have never been so acutely aware until recently of exactly how lonely the life of a solo class like an archer might be. One of the things that was appealing to me about being a hawkeye(archer) is that there was a significant difference in gameplay from being a bladedancer. After being in so many archer groups in TOI and DVC as a bladedancer, this seemed to be a worthy path to explore. Although this is not groundbreaking in any way since many other bladedancers have gone the same route (as well as archer classes subbing a bladedancer or swordsinger). And also you can do really cool stuff as an archer lik 7k of damage per hit!

However as of late I have begun to see that this is more a solo class than a party class, although there are still TOI/DVC parties they seem to be fewer and more far between than anticipated. It is an adjustment that I am still making because that aspect of the gameplay is very different than before. As a support class (bladedancer) I was able to fit in to pretty much any party wether it be a duo or a full party. I try chatting with my buffbot every now and then, but I think he gets tired of hearing my voice.

Anyhow, I continue forward on my path to noblesse! After reaching level 65 I attempted to go back and do the Noblesse quests, I left off on the first quest at the Stakatos since at level 50 when you start the quest it really is not a reasonable expectation that you can finish this part until you're higher. I also was unable to acquire the quest item from this quest on my main class for some reason. The drop rate is also horrendous, so keep that in mind that even on my archer it took abotu 45 minutes of plowing before I got the 5 quest items. With that said, the next hardest part was getting the 500 moonstone shards- too which I owe my clanmate, Abarai Renji, a huge debt of gratitude. Without his help on the last few hundred reagent pouches I would've had to kill those 500+ shamans alone (just getting the 370 or so shards on my own was painful).

The second quest at level 60 was pretty easy, mostly just run around and deliver stuff and maybe kill an easy quest mob or two. For the third noblesse quest at level 65 I am required to take part in a raid, I am also required to be in the party that does the most damage and gets last hit. A huge thanks goes out to my clan, The Damned, for helping out on this. Duff, Anakbhaal, Wicked, Shield of Rognvald, Dieslick, Ferrion and a ton of other people in the clan in a list too long to name here were able to mobilize in incredibly short order to come to my aid to help me complete the most difficult part of the noblesse quest.

Since I got everyone into the raid mood, we went on to raid about 7 other bosses. One thing of note, is that the right buffs always mean everything! While we were raiding Queen Shayeed (I was allowed the rare priviledge of remaining on my archer), I was able to land at least 10 crits in a row, a personal record. It might have been even more but I did not have time to scroll through it all.

Lastly, this past weekend in a free for all The Damned has taken Dion Castle. I was unable to attend the siege since my wife was throwing our annual christmas/tree trimming party that day and we had guests over. However, in a moment when the throne was unoccupied I could not resist getting a screenshot.