Impressions.
The new WAR,is, AWESOME! There is absolutely zero incentive for you to hold onto your stacks now, so if you need some extra Mit, use Inner Beast, are you in a DPS race and trying to help out? Inner Beast is helpful for that too, 600-700 damage that's off the GCD after all. Need to buff aggro heavily on a lot of enemies are once, Steel Cyclone works incredibly well for that. Or, if you've got to switch to DPS mode real fast, fire off Unchained and you're good to go. Basically, between the Mit effects on Storms Path, the reduced TP usage, and the increased emnity generation on certain rotations, it feels like the game it rewarding you for being as aggressive as possible. This isn't to say that you can play dumb, you still have to time when you use each skill to get the most out of them. The margin for error is tremendously reduced however.
Garuda EX so far seems like a fun fight, but it's definitely unforgiving. I still think it'll end up being fairly close to a week before I take it down. In part though, this is because there's so much else I want to do. If most of the BB Coil Group got together and logged into Mumble, we could probably take her down fairly quickly.
The new Holiday event has a ton of charm to it so far. Can't wait to see Treants dressed like Christmas trees. XD
Oh, BTW, I've yet to check out Gridania's housing, but between Limsa and Uldah, I'm definitely favoring the later. Mist is nice, but I dunno, something about the layout bothers me. The Goblet, has a ton of character, it feels like a half suspended castle beneath your feet. There's a darn good view almost everywhere, the windmills and water wheel are really neat, and there are eagles flying around. My own vote is for Plot 13 of Goblets 1st Ward, and I'm definitely going to donate more to make it happen. (Disclaimer, no this isn't bribery, I'll be happy wherever, I'm just trying to make housing happen.)
Finally, I actually had quite a bit of fun with the PvP. Haven't encountered Black Mages yet, but every White Mage has tried sleep, and the mostly GAF group I was running with came up with a workable countermeasure to WHM Sleep.
It basically amounted to, "Spam Tomo until you're within six yards, then use Holmgang." Seems to work, so long are you're charging straight into enemy territory and you're forcing them to react to you. Worst case scenario is that the WHM will usually try Sleep on the Tank out of reflex. That's bad news, but it seems to be survivable. Not sure what the success ratio is yet, and like I said, a different strategy would be necessary for Black Mages.
They still need to balance out the PVP, but I can probably have fun with it occasionally.
