Took a half-day of work yesterday, and wanted to go LFG on FFXI as DRK, what with the new Absorb-TP that I was so geeked about last week. I wasn't getting any invites, though, and eventually agreed to join a pt as BRD that an LS mate was throwing together. Unfortunately the party was pretty ass, and we went to Bhaflau Thickets, which was crowded as balls. We weren't getting much xp, and when the PLD LS mate that had made the party DC'd, while another pt member went afk with no explanation and just stayed there, the party broke. I went back and decided to LFG as Bard. This worked much better than as DRK, and I had an invite within five minutes to a double-BRD burn with 2 NINs, a WAR, and a WHM.

We went back to Bhaflau and chose a spot that was kind of in the middle of everything, including many of the dragon pops. Amazingly, the xp was tight just on chain 5, as the DD's were all top notch and I was out-pulling most of the other BRDs in the zone (this poor RNG was pulling for his party and never had a prayer. We hit chain 5 consistently, and it was usually on dragons for 250+. With the xp coming in in a nice steady flow we managed over 10k/hr, not bad at all in a crowded zone. Even more amazingly, we kept it up for over five hours.

So now I'm sitting on seven unspent merit points and have no idea how to spend them. The BRD abilities are all kind of ass, but I hardly ever play as DRK anymore.

I suppose I could always crank them into more elemental magic, and continue getting my BLM up, lol.