Jeanne and Moon Kitty

It seems like forever since I've been training with my Bloodblade, hoping to get the next message (You have become very skilled). Since most of my ranks are earned in the most expensive library, and that is woefully ineffecient compared to hunting it has been longer than it could have been. It will take me about 2 and a half months to go from 100 to 150 Bloodblade ranks.

I do occasionally get to go to the Undine Mine with Super Chicken and there are a lot of vanquishes there which has helped out quite a bit. Geotzou usually goes as well and it's a relaxing hunt which suits me just fine. Most like frantic fast-paced hunts but I find that fighting to get tags which involve pulling to get others out of the way is tiring and not my style. In addition, in order to get every tag possible before everything dies you're forced to switch targets so you can have a bunch of mobs running around at half health killing people left and right with the poor healers struggling to keep up. I used to try to focus on one mob at a time but that just resulted in me missing 90% of all tags so I had to go with the flow because I hate missing tags.

I suppose that's a good thing because there's a snowball's chance in Hell of getting any hunt invitations. I doubt Daimoth will invite me on anything even if I were the last fighter in Puddleby and I'm not terribly upset by that either. His Ash City hunts were an exercise in frustration as a Bloodmage. I need to be on low health to be able to hit anything and practically everything ferals or targets the people lowest on health which means I fell all of the time. If I was lucky I would manage to tag most of the mobs but usually I only got one or two of them so I had the pleasure of seeing everything get killed while I lay on my back. If Lorikeet wasn't there I doubt I would have even attempted to fight on low health since I'm sure I used all of her 1,000+ horus multiple times. The fights were just so chaotic and unpredictable. Every exile running every which way with mobs following them and switch targets at random. It seemed like there was no safe place to stand no matter how hard I tried. Of course it could just be that I'm an awful Bloodmage no matter how many ranks and practice I get and that's crossed my mind several times.

I just think back over Ash City, Metz Island, Pitch Caves, Slate Caves, and all of the other high-level areas currently in the game and I think that unless I'm with a group that supports me there's no way I would feel comfortable fighting on red with my Bloodblade. It would be suicidal really. I have half a mind to just forget about training in the sub-class entirely at least until the debuff system gets revamped. Yes, when I get to 150 Blade I'll switch to Swengus until the 1,000 message as I was doing before I switched to training with the Bloodblade under the deluded impression I'd actually use it on hunts. After that I could get some of the health/regia/troilus Bloodmage trainer for a bit and then get some more Histia directly. Yes, that's exactly what I'll do.

Why did I bother with such a useless subclass again? Oh right, role playing which is why I wasted 50 ranks in the metal bracers and goodness knows how many ranks in languages. If we can switch out of subclasses maybe I should forget about them entirely and become just a fighter again.