Missions: Promyvion-Holla

I haven't helped out with a Promyvion for months, and the linkshell has several people trying to get through them now, so I decided to help out with Promyvion-Holla last Friday night. I had done Holla three times, all successfully, with a variety of teams, but always with a PLD tank. For Mea and Dem, I prefer tanking as WAR/MNK, since it's easier to hold hate at level 30 by swinging a Great Axe, but for Holla, PLD just seems better. (I remembered one reason why when the boss put everyone to sleep when they didn't think they needed their posion potions yet. Cure the WHM to wake her up, and get back to tanking. I'd like to see a NIN do that. :-) )

We all met up at the crag, and I got in a fight (in /tell) with Splinte over my choice of job for the fight, since he felt "PLD isn't useful". I reminded him that I was the one who was 9/9 on Promyvions while he had only completed 2 successfully, and had had multiple failures. I've been irritable lately, and sniped that if he felt I was so useless I could find something better to do with my time, but I didn't abandon them, since they did need my help, as they had two WARs and neither wanted to tank.

Our party consisted of:

Richelle WHM/BLM
Ryken WAR/MNK
Splinte WAR/NIN
Lalandra SMN/WHM
Itera MNK/WAR
Kiki PLD/WAR

Ryken, Richelle, and Splinte all needed Holla, and the rest of us were there to help them complete it. We had to make two attempts to the spire, as our first time through we got trapped between two clumps of Empty on the third level and couldn't get away. 4 of us died, and since Richelle didn't have reraise up, we had to home point and regroup. I picked up another 5 hi-potions while I was in town (they're 7k each now, Grym and I have to go farm so she can make a supply for us), and headed back to Holla.

Our second ascent was smoother, though we had three "dud" Memory Recepticles along the way. On the final floor, we just made a mad dash for the Spire, with little aggro. It was a bit crazy, but it worked.

For the boss fight, we had 5 complete sets of anima, and set up the order for using them. We wanted to use the psychoanima first, since it intimidates the boss and saves the tank a lot of hits. Then when it starts using its special attacks, it was time to switch to hysteroanimas, which keeps the boss from being able to use special attacks. Terroanimas are held in reserve for a crisis. People always say the bosses don't use their specials until 50% health, but they do indeed use them earlier.

Since the Holla boss has an attack that strips buffs and food from its target, I was eating ginger cookies as "fake" food. I also had melon juice, selbina milk, and poison potion active. The poison potion was to wake me up when the Boss uses its AOE curse/sleep move. I had holy water for curse, and hi-potions to get some health back fast.

The fight went very well, with Lalandra using Astral Flow at half life, and Itera using Hundred Fists as well. It was kind of fun, as such things can be, and Splinte ended up in Lufaise Meadows. I chocobo'd from the Crag to the Vortex in the Dunes and showed him the way to Tavnazian Safehold. He was very excited to have finally made it through the Promys, and hopefully move forward through the rest of CoP.

Splinte keeps making comments about hurrying to get past 2-5, and since I've been on that mission since March, I find I get a bit huffy about such comments. Hopefully we'll get everything in place to finally try that soon with Grym and Kiki kiting as BST/NINs, Elbo as BRD, Itera as MNK, Splinte as WAR, and someone as WHM. I've had all these Yellow Liquids taking up mog space since September...