Well then. I’ve been meaning to upload my pic of my HoH WAR clear...
...but it turns out that I also now have to upload my HoH MCH clear, as I got the clear about an hour ago.
Both of these clears were within a week of each other. Needless to say I feel pretty satisfied.
Personally, I didn’t enjoy WAR very much. While Internal Release is a wonderful ability, when it’s on cool down, the dps from WAR is very, very low. DRK felt similarly, but with DRK at least, you had several more defensive cool downs that would allow you to get away with much more stuff. Also, getting storm’s eye up is a major pain when you’re trying to mass pull, whereas with DRK, you an just use something like Flood of Darkness and you’re good to go. You wouldn’t think these things make a difference, but they do. On 91-100, you might be able to get away with not using steel on enemies like Jakis on DRK. That’s not really the case on WAR. Holmgang might be nice, though in all of my runs, I’ve only used it once.
Not to say that WAR is bad in HoH. Being a tank, it’s very viable, and it’s certainly much more comfortable in terms of damage taken 81+. However, between the three tanks I’ve cleared on, WAR was my least favorite.
It took me several tries to get WAR. I made it to 99 twice before my clear, and one of those attempts, I was one or two kills away from clearing (I killed 9 enemies on 99 and I couldn’t clear). On my actual clear, I only had 45 seconds left on the clock. It was by far my closest run in with the timer. My heart was literally pounding in my chest.
MCH, on the other hand, I enjoyed greatly. I tend to lean on ranged DPS classes, but I was a bit nervous to take a ranged DPS into HoH. While I solo cleared Palace on MCH, HoH is a bit different in terms of enemies. Enemies hit way harder, and you don’t have as much space to kite. On MCH, it only took two attempts to get the clear. My first being a 91 wipe because I had no steel and couldn’t fight anything. With MCH, on the lower floors, I felt like I could run and gun and kill everything without ever having to worry about the timer. I could easily do each set up to 50, kill most things, and clear in under 30. Can’t say the same on WAR, or any other tank job for that matter.
The only bad thing about MCH is the need for steel 91+. Kiting can’t save you from everything, and it won’t take much for enemies to kill you. One double auto is all it takes. For the clear, I went a good 10-15 minutes without steel, which is terrifying. Thankfully, I went into 91 with 2 magicites and a petrify, so that helped me greatly. I managed to get a steel at the right place at the right time. And with a flight and frailty for 99, I was able to get the clear with about 8 minutes left.
So next on the agenda, I am thinking of my next HoH to be on BRD, then on DNC. I’ve been wanting to do BRD for a while now, so I’m looking forward to it. I also want to do PLD, SMN, RDM, and NIN as well. And if I somehow get all those clears then maybe I’ll even think about the others, like DRG, SAM, and maybe even WHM and BLM. I have quite a lot to go, but I’m getting there, one job at a time.
