Killing giants for fun and profit!

I wonder if everyone sees my butt like this at the end of a dungeon, or if they're looking at their own character in some sort of heroic pose. It's okay if it's me they're seeing, because I'm friggin Brienne of Tarth here. I look like a warrior. I love MMOs where it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl, if you're a warrior, you look badass.

This, by the way, is the real reason I moved into tanking. Tanks get the best looking gear. Well, that, and my job is the same in every MMO: get and keep aggro on the monsters. DPS folks have to make the parse; healers have to keep everyone alive. All I have to do is pretend to be an annoying brick.

So, you've probably heard, I abandoned my efforts to pretend to be playing FFXIV on the XBox and went to the keyboard. Kasul kept urging me to join him in a dungeon just after I swapped, but I was unsure. So many new things at one. Like, how do you move? Do we move? Is moving a thing? Turning seemed a little weird. There's key bindings for that — 'F' faces you at your target, for instance, and it all worked out.

Once in the dungeon, it was a lot like any other game. I missed the leap forward and aggro enemies ability I came to rely upon in Neverwinter. Inevitably, some Lala would be running ahead to prove what aggromeisters they were. Lalancers and Larogues, I'm looking at you.

Kasul and I have done a couple dungeon runs now, the two starter ones. I logged in this morning for a quick random guildhest, but because, as usual, I have only a vague connection with reality at the best of times, jumped into a random dungeon instead.

The Copperbell Mines were, long ago, infested by giants invading from far beneath Eorzea. Ul'dah was forced to drop a hundred thousand tons of rock on them, burying them forever. Or so they thought. When miners delved a little too deep, they woke the giants.

I dunno. (A) The giants live in the underground. (B) They are apparently immune to being buried by rock for centuries, but they are alarmingly weak toward a group of four low level adventurers. (C) The giants, who were just living out their own giant lives as giants are wont to do, have their home invaded by miners. And the GIANTS are in the wrong here? I don't see why we surface-worlders should interfere… Oh, you say there is loot? Well, then. You should have opened with that.

In the three dungeon runs I've tanked, I've gotten almost an entire set of green gear and a piece of orange gear. I forget what the in game terms are. Ethereal and something else. Decent stuff that puts my efforts at armor crafting to shame.

Kasul and I both got level 20 and finished our level 15 and 20 quests. I guess we'd both missed the level 15 class quests when we were actually 15. My crafting and gathering professions — armorcrafting and mining — are doing okay, both around level 15. I'm still not able to make any upgrades for myself. At this point, I think I'm really leveling up crafting for my NEXT jobs, whatever they turn out to be.

Paladin is just the post-30 career of a Gladiator, and my Conjurer (required for Paladin) is already 15, so I'm not sure what job I'll level from scratch next. I'm reluctant to play any other class in a dungeon, because I want to get the tank commands in my muscle memory.

I just got a new taunt, too, a real taunt. 40s recast, though, so I better think before I use it.

That said, Kasul looked cute with his Carbuncle last night. Might have to try FFXIV's pet class 🙂 Sure seems to take aggro pretty well in dungeons… better than me a lot of the time.