Lest you be in any suspense as to the results of my dalliance with beating up the other human players that populate Eorzea, I have not gotten any better.  I appear to possess negative PvP skill, and there is a firm argument that, when I die, the total PvP skill on my team actually increases by a fair amount.

That’s OK, though, because getting the cosmetic PvP armor I want doesn’t take skill or winning or any of that crazy stuff.  Every armor set costs 14,000 “wolf marks”, and a loss in the game’s mass battle “Frontline” mode rewards you 500 or so wolf marks.  Winning, which is a pipe dream, gives 1000.  So it’s better to win, really, but not essential.

In addition to the points for winning or losing a match, you also get 1000 marks for your first frontline of the day, and another 1000 marks for playing seven frontline matches in a week, and another 1000 should you WIN three of those seven.

I… haven’t yet gotten that bonus this week.  I’m at like, 2 for 11.

However, I did get enough currency from my turns as a catgirl punching bag to put together the healer PvP set.

Compared to the heavy armor look of the tanking set, it’s a much softer look.  There’s still a robotic theme to the visible bits, but the poncho sells the “this is a support character” look.

If you want the with-the-blast-shield-down-how-am-I-supposed-to-see-anything look, you can do that too.  It doesn’t light up like the tank set.

The back is basically just a reminder that Square should really do something about clipping tails.  Catpeople are the most popular race in the game, and all of the armor tends to look like this:

Seriously, it would not kill them to model in a notch.

It also has some awesome high-top sneakers.  I’m not sure how battlefield-appropriate these are, but let’s throw matters of a practical nature aside in favor of cool.

When I was masochistically running battleground after battleground in WoW in search of the PvP armor in THAT game, it took me ages because it was doled out completely randomly at the end of each match – there was no saving up currency and simply walking over to a vendor to fill out my virtual closet.  You could knock out the cosmetics in FFXIV in a week or so PER CLASS without doing much more than running a single match every day.

There ARE some super-grindy cosmetics and mounts locked away in the darker depths of the PvP achievements.  Some of them require, like, 300 frontline wins to receive.  For the people who really want to dig into PvP and make it Their Life In Eorzea, it’s good that they have that to look forward to.  For me, I’m comfortable with the super casual rewards.