Missions: Head Wind, Round 1 (CoP 5-3U2)

Our CoP static failed our first attempt with the Mithran Trackers in Boneyard Gully on Friday night. We made a few mistakes, but are confident our strategy will work when we head back again this week. We had a total of 10 Blackened Muddy Siredons to give to the Mithras, which would keep them from building TP for about 30 seconds. Since they spam weaponskills otherwise, and skillchain with each other, keeping them from building TP is a very good thing. For this fight, you have to defeat Shikaree X (BST/NIN with rabbit pet), Shikaree Y (DRK/MNK), and Shikaree Z (DRG/WHM with a wyvern).

We did the fight as PLD, THF, WAR, MNK, BRD, WHM. Our plan was (is) to kill Z, the DRG as fast as possible, with Itera and Splinte using their two hours, since her wyvern spams Healing Breath on her. The key thing here is to make sure she's dead before wiping. We fought them far enough away from their resting spot so that we could reraise and rest to full without aggro after they wander away from our dead bodies. The Mithras regen while we're resting, so any damage done before wiping would be negated. The BST goes second, and finally the DRK.

Mistake number one: I pulled. My theory was that I'd body aggro them, and they'd fight me for a bit before other people got hate. The first problem with that was I got beat up really badly on the way to where we were fighting, partly because I got hung up on a rock. Second problem was that Elboron was planning to sleep them immediately. The Mithras do sleep, but they talk to each other and wake each other up. I can't remember if Elbo or I was dead first, but both of us were down pretty fast.

Mistake number two: Splinte accidently was hitting one of the other Mithra when he used his two hour. He quickly realized it and switched targets, but that hit or two would have been better on the right one. When we wiped, the DRG was at a sliver. With better execution, we would have been able to do this as planned.

We reraised and rested to full. We all had enough reraise items for a second wipe, so we used them. This time, Grym pulled. With no two hours, we managed to kill the DRG, which had regen'd back to full health, before our second wipe. After our second reraise, we realized that the DRG's wyvern despawned when we wiped, which meant we only had 3 enemies to fight. We were doing very well at staying alive and getting the remaining 2 Mithra killed, and we ran out of time. I thought we had another two minutes, based on the timer on my High Breath Mantle, but I guess that wasn't a good way to keep track of time. Next week I should set up a timer.

We definitely can do this if we get the DRG dead right away, before wiping. We just have to be better than we were the first time through. In the future, it might be worth doing dry runs with no items and no two hours, just to get rid of the jitters, and see the lay of the land before the "real" fight. I used to be opposed to dry runs, but we've been failing things too much lately, and I'm just not used to that. If our fight Friday had been a dry run, we would have been able to do it again right away, with two hours and items intact, rather than having to wait another week.

Using the fish definitely helped (and the Mithras were pretty funny about it), but we can't figure out why some times they will refuse a second fish ("I won't fall for that again!") and some times they would take it ("Another fish for me? Thank you Adventurer!"). We'll have to head to Phanauet Channel again this week to get more of them.

After the mission failure, we ended up heading to Crawlers Nest to do the escort quest with Olavia, so at least we did something successfully that evening. :-)