Who the Heck is Kurt Cobain?

And did I even spell his name right?

 

That's right, I don't know who he is.  Okay, I know who he IS.  He's the lead singer for Nirvana, right?  Even I've heard of Nirvana but if he were to mysteriousy come back as a ghost and bump into me (or through, rather) I wouldn't know him from Justin Timberlake. 

 

A lot of people think this is sad.  A couple weeks back I was talking to a couple of my coworkers about it.  They were saying how everyone remember what they were doing when they heard that Cobain had killed himself.  Wait, he did, right?  I think I know more than I think I do.  Anyway, they were saying how everyone remembered the event, like how they remembered what they were doing when Kennedy was shot and during 9/11.  Now I'm too young for Kennedy, but I do remember 9/11.  But I don't remember Kurt Cobain.  When he died, I had no idea who he is, or where I was, nevermind what I was doing.  So my coworkers were like, you don't know Cobain?  And I'm like, no, I don't.  Not really.  They're like, you must know a few of his songs, right?  Nope, I said.  One of them starts singing Smells Like Teen Spirit and I had to stop her after a few bars.  No, never heard it.  She said that it's probably a song I've heard before, but don't know where it's from and that's most likely true.  But I'm pretty sure if a Nirvana song were to play right now, I wouldn't know it.  Or if I did, I wouldn't know it's Nirvana.

 

Bottom line:  I don't know Mr. Cobain.  End of story.  Now what does this have to do with videogames?  A whole lot, actually.  Because the reason why I don't know Cobain (and a whole bunch of other 'popular' artists) is because I was too busy playing games than listening to music.  Since I happen to LIKE the tunes coming from my consoles, I never listen to any outside music when I play games.  Still don't.  Even if the game doesn't have music I don't go around adding some from an MP3 player or whatever.  When I play games, I PLAY games. 

 

It's been like this for me since elementary school and I've been lucky.  Noone's ever teased me or bullied me for not knowing my music.  For the most part, I managed to get away totally scott free.  Well, except for that one time, in media studies.  See, in that class, we had a school group assignment.  It has to be the toughest assignment ever.  We were to build our own magazine and one of the sections we wanted to include in our little publication was a music column.  Guess who was in charge of that?  Yes, me.  It was totally brutal because I had to do a top 10 list, and back then, we didn't have HD or internet radio and people who've lived during that time know how bad the radio DJs are.  They'd play a song, then say the name of the song and the artist out so damn fast that a music illiterate such as myself stand no chance of deciphering what was said.  And, being a music neophyte, I didn't know where to look it up either. 

 

In the end, I didn't know how I completed that assignment and to be honest, I don't want to remember.  The only thing I can recall was that Michael Jackson's song, Black or White, was number one at the time.  I think I only remembered that because I already knew Michael Jackson and the name of the song is…. well… black or white.  It's easy to remember.

 

I try to have a theme in my blog.  Some kind of point.  This one doesn't but if I had to pick one, I'd say it shows how old I am.  If I was in a media studies class today, making a faux magazine, there'd totally be a gaming section.  And I'd be in charge of it.  And the top ten games?  Oh please.  Like I don't know (or don't know how to make one up, given that top 10 games don't really exist these days).  I'd be able to write articles for it too as easily as I'm writing a blog about it now.

 

Dammit.  Why didn't I think of this back then…

 

P.S.  The coworkers I spoke of earlier also said the song Smells Like Teen Spirit defined a generation.  I personally find that a little offensive.  Defined by popular music.  No way, not me.  That said, it would have been very nice if there WAS a game… any game… that everyone has played and that everyone loves and so everyone can talk about it.  There's something to be said for something… anything… that can unite a generation.  I still wouldn't want to be defined by it, though.

Tales from a Damage Dealer

It's been a while since my last blog, but things haven't been the same in Final Fantasy land.  Specifically, I haven't touched my Paladin class for, like, over a month now.  Instead, I'm mostly playing the opposite.  With my goal of getting all the advanced jobs, I've had to put aside my high lever classes in favor of finally starting to build up some of the others.  Amongst them is the archer, the thaumaturge and the arcanist.  Yes, all three are damage dealing classes!  So I've basically gone from tanking to it's polar opposite.  And I've learned a lot of lessons as a result.

 

No, these aren't the only damage classes I've had experience with.  My Dragoon and Monk are both DPSers at quite high levels, but playing as these three other classes are totally different.  For one, all three do damage from range.  Maybe I'm just playing Monks and Dragoons wrong.  It’s possible.  But I've never really done so much damage with them that I grab aggro from the tank.  But with the thau and the archer, it's a whole different story.  And I've seen yet another level of 'bad tanking' never experienced before. 

 

See, while Monks, Dragoons and Arcanists do damage, they mostly do damage to a single target at at time.  If you hit the same target the tank is currently attacking, the chance of pulling aggro is practically nil.  But not so for archers and thaumaturges, for they have abilities that hits whole groups of enemies, and hit them fast and hard.  I've lost count of how many times I used a single fire attack, hit three enemies, and immediately find myself beset by two of them.  Now I know why some tanks hate mages/archers who use area of effect attacks.  As a tank, I hated it too, until I managed to compensate for it.  But now, I finally know WHY it happens, and it's very simple to explain.

 

It's POWER.

 

You see, archers and thaus hit as hard as anyone else but being ranged attackers give them unprecedented consistancy in their damage dealing.  For one, they don't have to chase their enemies, they just stand and shoot.  Therefore, they are in the position to exert maximum force for maximum duration.  Blasting fools with fire or turning them into pincushions is a power trip.  It's positively intoxicating!  And their ability to hit multiple target only make abusing their power all the easier.  That is why they often pull aggro from tanks, or hit things they shouldn't.  Because they just can't help themselves!  If they are in the group to do damage, then by god that's exactly what they'll do.  No holding back.  Mwahahahahaha.  Now that I've experienced this power for myself, it's easy to understand why so many damage dealers find it difficult to let go and hold back.  And that's why a great tank is a godsend to these people.  Because they don't have to!

 

Alas, that's not always the case.  Focusing on my DPS classes, I've been disappointed many times.  Twice now, I've see tanks that didn't even bother tanking.  They just hit one enemy till it dies, regardless if there are any other enemies.  Even against just one foe a competent DPSer can easily strip aggro from these tanks.  The arcanist in one dungeon had to pull out gold Carbunkle to tank, and in another instance the healer tanked the trash mobs.  Other tanks are not so bad.  I was doing a dungeon with a friend of mine… I'll call her Rosana… with a tank that knew what to do, but just couldn't do it.  In other words, he knew that a tank is supposed to hold all the aggro but just didn't know quite how.  I don't actually hold anything against this guy.  I was once like that, so no judgements.  But, in a prime example from what I wrote about in my last Tales from a Tank entry, we had to compensate for him.  Basically, Rosana and I held back.  We COULD have gone nuts with a thousand arrorws of death raining from the sky and rings of fire but we didn't.  Well, mostly.  After we realize he couldn't handle it we just stopped.  It was sad.  Trigger finger was very itchy.  in the end, we successfully completed the dungeon anyway.

 

Now that I've had experience with all eight playable classes, my understanding of FF14's game mechanics have increased 10 fold.  It's really, really fun walking a mile in the shoes of some of these classes because at first glance it's easy to dismiss some of them as annoying.  I know a lot of tanks don't like archers and thaumaturges for their perceived recklessness but now, at the very least, I understand where that recklessness comes from and it's not always a bad thing.  Remember those two bad tanks I mentioned earlier?  Well, we ended up beating the dungeons but that's only because of the skill exhibited by the damage dealers.  If we weren't there, doing all that we can, no holds bared and no holding back, we might not have made it.