Plotting Kisirani's Downfall
The Iron Council was an unbelievably easy fight. It's hard to know exactly what to write about a fight that was less complex than some of Sunwell's trash. So um, yeah, here goes! I tanked Steelbreaker for an instantaneous cleanse after falcon punch, someone tanked the other one who died then the last one flew around the room raping lolis with electricity, or something. I don't know a whole lot about the hard mode with Steelbreaker last but the description of Meltdown and reading a method of cheesing it involve a Hearthstone and a Flask of Petrification is enough to worry me. I don't know what we'll gain from it but I will be pushing for the medium difficulty mode next week if time is on our side.
I really enjoyed Freya. When I was watching a video before the raid, it just looked like six add zergs to deal with before finally moving onto her. I suppose at it's core it's really not much more than that but I loved the combination of having to be considered with how you deal damage yet constricted by having only a minute with which to do it in. It's probably a testament to the hard modes of Ulduar that I can't really comprehend how to deal with it at this junction. Or rather how many damn tanks you'd need for it to keep it comfortable while retaining some sort of DPS standard.
We didn't have long left after Freya so I requested that we go poke Mimiron's infamous trash with some pointy sticks. When we decided enough was enough, Luni and I bolted for the train in the hope of at least making it to him. We made it comfortably but just as Rahla was about to step on, Luni triggered it and he got left behind and squished as we cackled manically. Now that was funny. I'm not sure if it was because we activated the tram or pushed the DO NOT PUSH button or something else entirely but we're able to teleport past all the trash now. Depending on how long Hodir takes us, we may get a chance to utilize that this week but I doubt it. Still good to know for next week.
After a great many hours of raiding in Blue Garter days, my brain would feel like mush at the end of the night. It was a bizarre feeling but a satisfying one. Very few fights have been as trying in that regard but last night we found one in Thorim. To grant that a prelude, the first few hours of attempts were spent with about ten people in the gauntlet while the rest dealt with the onslaught the arena brings. This pushed each attempt up to around the 9-11 minute mark. Tanking that much stuff at that level was extremely stressful. Yuna was convinced we were overcomplicating it somehow but we couldn't see how. Of the fourteen attempts that came before the kill, we actually managed to get to a point where everyone was alive when he jumped down only for him to chain lightning a glob of people and effectively end it.
On the attempt that was to be the kill, we decided to just overload the gauntlet with as many people as we felt comfortable with and have just enough in the arena to hold out and stop the champions from stacking up. Instead of the gauntlet team getting to Thorim when he had 20 seconds until he supercharged us to waste, they got there and had to wait five seconds for Sif to do one. The arena team had everything under control, there was more margin for error and we had to tank for a lot less time. Looking at our WWS report, the times we wiped with him about 20% or so were 8:29 and 9:31; the time we actually killed him was 6:52.
The above is actually a video. Really!
Why the fuck does each person need so many eggs? What does it achieve? How would scaling back the amount each individual requires achieve anything but make it less of a time sink and more fun? They're supposed to be fun and, to a lesser extent, encouraging co-operation so they build a world event around needing, what, 305 eggs if RNG decides to take a shit in your general direction. That's standing still, looking at a wall, not being able to tab out to read something to pass the time, for hours while calling people shitcocks for camping your spawns. Once you've done that you have to run around finding female races to stick bunny ears on with an item that inexplicably has a five minute cooldown and occasionally just doesn't work. To quote James Rolfe, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?? This even makes an annual activity in FFXI seem fun but at least you didn't feel obligated to do those because they weren't a small piece of a large puzzle that rewarded something useful upon completion.
Once upon a time I viewed the Violet Proto Drake as LOLCASUAL and while it'll never reach the difficulty tier of Glory of the Raider, I certainly won't look down at someone riding one. Unless I'm literally above them of course.