May 2025 – MMO Juggler

I own 5 Notable Homes in ESO: 4 came from in-game events or giveaways, and 1 I bought with crowns that I saved up from my ESO+ subscription.

Hall of the Lunar Champion came from doing the Elsweyr zone story, and I also opened up the 3 wings (various in-game achievements). Sword-Singer’s Redoubt came from daily rewards; Doomchar Plateau came from buying items via event tickets; and the most recent Grand Gallery of Tamriel came from Golden Pursuits.

The one I bought with crowns is the Moon-Sugar Meadow, a Khajiit themed outdoor space.

At various points, all of these were my main home (except for the Grand Gallery of Tamriel, because it is so new I haven’t had a chance to move in yet).

I used the Hall of the Lunar Champion for months, but eventually moved because I got tired of the internal zones. The three wings were zone transitions from the central chamber, and I got tired of loading screens inside my house.

Then the Doomchar Plateau was my home, but after a few months I wanted some scenery that wasn’t… a hellscape.

So I bought the Moon-Sugar Meadow which I really liked. It is outdoors, pleasant looking, large and open, a nice lake, no internal zone transitions.

I stayed there until the Sword-Singer’s Redoubt came out. It’s a nice home as well, with an extensive underground cavern and oasis. No zone transitions. It is my current main home, and I have all my crafting tables and other decorations out (music box collection).

Now I’m thinking of moving to the new Gallery, because it is enormous and has an interior space (zone transition, unfortunately) that would be good for displaying various paintings.

Geez my screenshots come out so dark… I’ll have to fiddle with the settings or wait until it is daytime in the game and try again!

Even though LoTRO is (might still be) my favorite MMO overall… I decided to concentrate on ESO and FF14. That’s entirely because both are controller friendly and that’s the situation I’m in… 20% of the time, sometimes more.

Anyway, I decided to start with Monk this time. I remember ages ago doing Pugilist and Lancer, back when taking a job meant leveling 2 classes, one to 30, one to 15. I don’t recall making it to Monk or Dragoon… maybe I did.

Another time I started as Arcanist and then Scholar/Summoner, and I enjoyed the efficiency of leveling one class but getting a second one “for free”. And I dabbled all over that time, trying Rogue/Ninja, Dancer, Samurai, Warrior (didn’t get far enough for Marauder).

This time I’m going to focus – Monk, following the MSQ, and later branch out. I’d like to eventually take a tank job, a healing job, and a caster job.

Doing Arcanist -> (Scholar & Summoner) would get me the healer and caster and the efficiency of the combined leveling – but I remember not liking summoner all that much. Scholar was fun, and I liked wielding a book… I also liked Astrologian even if the tarot card class mechanic felt random and half the time I didn’t bother with it. I see Pictomancer is really hot, which makes sense – I feel like when an expansion rolls out, the newest classes/jobs have to be a little overpowered (e.g. see Arcanist in ESO) which helps sells boxes.

I mean, it’s a game but also a business. Having a class/job show up that does 15% less damage than other existing classes/jobs, would negatively affect sales of an expansion.

As far as tanks, Warrior -> Maurader and Gladiator -> Paladin are up for consideration.

And of course, since Blue Mage is so unique, I’ll probably play around with that again too. Supposedly another limited job is coming as well, the Beastmaster.

Ugh, I’m interested in Monk, Warrior or Paladin, Scholar or Astrologian, Pictomancer, Blue Mage, Beastmaster… well at least that’s only about a third of the available jobs! Some start at a higher level as well (Astrologian, Pictomancer).

But before taking a healer or tank job, I need to sort out targeting with the controller. Up/down and left/right seem to be the way to do it, but that gets me a “soft” focus – at least as a DPS, the focus will shift away after a single ability unless I also select with X beforehand.

I suppose I can just queue for Sastasha over and over (as a healer or tank) until I get comfy – even if I flub half the targeting, the DPS will probably defeat the monsters anyway. 😉

Month: May 2025

ESO – Notable Homes

FF14 – Monk