Why did it take me almost two years to max it out? Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. The main reason has to do with a "lack of Nodeshards". It's not like I don't have a decent budget to purchase Nodestones from other players - I just personally wanted to progress on my own without relying on others. A lot of Nodestones in EMS have been farmed through means that are against the Terms of Use, and I'm never fond of buying items like that simply because it's not worth the risk and involvement. Plus, it feels like those billions of mesos are better spent elsewhere if I'm already going to max out 5th Job skills by finding Nodestones by my own during (daily) grind or questing. If my Potential and Star Force is still far from even decent - why should I invest in something else? One step at a time.
But what probably has been more decisive than that is the fact that back when 4th Job came out in EMS, it took about three years before I maxed out all of my skills. It's a trend I prefer to continue; to progress on a slow but steady pace. It keeps me sharp, and I don't feel happy at all the moment I slack, become lousy or go through shortcuts "just so that I could kill a raid boss quicker than I currently am able to". The amount of gains I receive from maxing out 5th Job is close to none - I already can kill most of the pre-5th Job bosses on my own and I don't have much interest in even doing those. I'm not even going to be concerned about the later Chaos bosses because I know by then I will have enough output to tackle them. Plus, that is not going to be any time soon anyway.
Gains have to be purposeful. Nothing is free y'know. Even having higher damage numbers doesn't mean that something is taken down faster, or that it would change the amount of hits required to defeat an enemy. That said, it doesn't mean that it took me years to find enough Nodeshards to max out Sword of Burning Soul.
If there's one thing that has been made clear by the game, is that it takes a ton of Nodeshards to max out a skill. Crafting a Level 25 skill requires a whopping total of 7700 Nodeshards.
Anyone who has been trying to find Nodestones by themselves on a non-Reboot server knows that it takes forever to gather enough Nodeshards. And if you're like me to prefer the patient and long route, you know that each damn shard you own is valuable and that spending it into the wrong skills could set you back for months. Of course Nodestones are only becoming more common the older 5th Job gets, and that is also exactly why I didn't bother to invest anything into that back then.
However, despite that Nodestones are easier to obtain nowadays still means that it takes a very long while to have 7700 of them. It took me about 1,5 year to gather this much - and we've had events that gave out Nodestones in plenty. So I'm reserving 7700 Nodeshards for a future skill that has yet to surface: Expert Combo Attack. I could write a whole article about why I specifically choose to wait for a theoretical skill like that, but my reasoning should be obvious.
If it takes me 1,5 year to gather 7700 Nodeshards, there's no way that I'll have enough Nodeshards by the time the skill hits EMS after it is revealed in KMST. So being prepared will pay off. This is why I've decided during the Beyond update to park Sobs until I had enough Nodeshards in advance. And if it doesn't pay off, well... all of the shards I've already stockpiled are still there y'know. I can spend them any time whenever I feel like it. At least now that's done, I can focus on maxing out my current skills I own today. That is also why it didn't take long for Sobs to go from Level 18 to 25, by the way. I would've had Sobs maxed out somewhere in 2017 (or early 2018) if I didn't go this route.
So, now that Sword of Burning Soul is done, what is next? As stated in my previous 5th Job-related blogposts, I'm going to invest my next Nodeshards into Aura Weapon. AW's biggest gain with increasing its level is the additional duration. It is currently one of the few 5th Job skills to gain that much duration that it becomes surprisingly reliable in the long run.
Anyway, that's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
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