Missions: O/U Grounded (CoP 6-4)

We all met in Sealion's Den on Friday night for another try at beating CoP 6-4 (One To Be Feared). We didn't really make any changes to our strategy from our first attempt, other than making sure we would wipe in safe spots if we were going to wipe.

Grymalkyn and I decided to get ambrosia made with the Oblation Abjurations we'd got in a round of BCNMs the previous weekend, but brought other food knowing we would likely die before the end of the fight.

The group decided to do a dry run first, just to get back into the swing of things. The mammets took us a long time to kill, and I had to use up some of my hi-potions just to make it to the next part of the fight. Fortunately hi-potions are nearly free these days with all the hi-potion tanks from Assault missions, so it wasn't really a big deal. We didn't get Omega down as far as we had on our dry run last week either, so we were starting to be a bit less confident.

We got psyched up to do the real run. We headed into the mission, buffed up, ate our food, and went to face the mammets. I gathered them up into my corner, while Splinte grabbed one for everyone else to fight. They scarely touched me, until they all changed to BLM and simultaneously cast tier II -ga spells on me. I was quickly dead, and we had to abort. We had decided any attempt that didn't get past the mammets was cause for starting over, since it just isn't a good way to start. So much for our fancy ambrosia. So we had our second official failure.

I homepointed to the Safehold to save a bit of time and grab my second ambrosia from my moghouse and get a couple yag drinks to replace what I'd used so far. I went back in to get the first cutscene of the mission so it wouldn't waste time when we went back in for our third attempt. Our mood wasn't great, but we were determined, and prepared, so we dusted ourselves off and headed back in after everyone's weakness wore.

This time, the mammets went incredibly smoothly. Elboron's mambos kept me from getting hit much, which really helped. The mammets were dead faster than any of our other runs, dry or real.

We moved on to Omega, and were doing quite well until we had him at about 50%. Grym got hit badly on an AOE, dropping into the red. Wendell thought a Cure IV would take too long and used Benediction to get Grym healed fast. He didn't think it would pull "that much" hate since it was really only Grym who needed it, but it did indeed pull hate. I quickly used Invincible, but couldn't pull hate back. It was the first time in my career as a Paladin that I lost a WHM using Benediction. I've always been able to keep them alive in the past. We hadn't used any of our CCBs, so when Wendell died, we kept fighting, using no items or 2 hours, until we all were dead, safely on our end of the airship.

We had knocked Omega down to 37%, and still had plenty of time on the clock, so we reraised, rested to full, put back up our reraises and other buffs, and started back in on him. He went down fast, with the 3 CCBs keeping him pretty tame, and then it was on to Ultima!

The fight with Ultima is definitely more chaotic than that with Omega, but we kept chipping away at him, starting to use the CCBs at around 50% health. Itera used Hundred Fists and Splinte Mighty Strikes around this point too, quickly taking big chunks out of Ultima's HP. I felt like I was spamming hi-potions on this part of the fight (I went through 25-30 total), but they are faster than casting cures, and I was taking quite a bit of damage throughout the fight. Elegy and slow helped us a lot for this fight, and both Wendell and Elboron were on top of debuffing the rest of us when we got enfeebled. As we got Ultima down to near the end of its HP, things got really wild. Itera got killed, then Splinte. Itera and Splinte reraised just as I got killed and they started fighting again immediately. Grym said to me "this will probably kill Itera" and then activated Trick Attack and unloaded a Dancing Edge from behind Itera for the final killing blow.

We'd actually done it! We'd won! And with only 9 deaths for the fight! We still had 9 or 10 minutes left, so even if we had a full wipe on Ultima, we would have had time to reraise and rest up to finish if we'd had to. Fortunately we didn't have to.

After going through the long cutscenes, I finally found myself lying dead in Lufaise Meadows, a very happy Taru. Wendell got disconnected during the final cutscenes, and we were all concerned that he might not get "credit" for winning the mission, but when he logged back in this morning, he got the cutscenes and his shiny new Ducal Ring.

New titles: Ultima Undertaker, Branded by Lightning