Zerging Bahamut

One of the most challenging tanking experiences I’ve had in the game is The Wyrmking Descends, also known as Bahamut Version 2, or Bv2 for short.Part of the challenge is simply because we would use a solo PLD on Bv2, with a second for grabbing the summoned wyrm buddies, and stepping in should the main PLD get toasted by Megaflare (see Astonishing Wyrms from last year).

As fun as this fight can be with a manaburn style, it can be very risky if things go sour, and if you wipe, there really isn’t any way to recover, so the Monarch Orb, and all the work that went into acquiring it, is completely wasted.

So, after much urging from linkshell members, and one failed manaburn too many, Ali agreed to try a zerg strategy. For this, we had 3 DD parties, each with 4 Dds, a BRD, one with a WHM, and two with RDM/DRKs. Any DRKs would go into the party with the WHM, and the DDs would include DRKs, WAR/SAM, SAM/WAR, DRG, MNK, and a token THF. This also let people who didn’t have a PLD, BRD, WHM, RDM or BLM levelled to participate in the fight, getting them new shiny titles.

The goal in a zerg is to basically kill the monster as fast as possible, before it gets a chance to kill the team. To help accomplish this, we would all use our two hours, and take advantage of 6 soul-voiced Bard songs on each party in the alliance. First thing we do upon entering the battlefield is to have all the damage dealers either use Meditate or an Opo-opo Necklace and Sleeping Potions to build up over 100% TP. Once that’s done, the bards all use Soul Voice, and we quickly rotate them through each party, with one bard using Madrigal (accuracy), one using Minuet (attack), and the third using March (haste).

Then the damage dealers use all their job abilities and rush in behind the lead RDM/DRK, who starts the fight with Chainspell-Stun. The DDs do as much damage as they can in as short a time as possible, and within 30 seconds, Bahamut falls to the ground, defeated. No muss, no fuss, just a whole lot of damage in a very short time.

After our first attempt at this was an easy success, we haven’t gone back to our old methods. Some of us lament the lack of skill required to zerg this, but understand that there are times when taking the easy way out makes the most sense.

Plus I get to see things like this:

Sundering and Subjugating

Eminence took on the three ToAU Beastmen "Kings" this summer. I wrote about Gulool Ja Ja earlier, but haven't posted about the fights with Medusa and Gurfurlur the Menacing. We fought Medusa the first Saturday of August, and Gurfurlur on the first Saturday of September. (Screenshots courtesy Alibeemac!)

Medusa was definitely the easiest of the three, but the most difficult to get to. The Arrapago Reef is just not a fun place to travel through. We had more than a full alliance for the fight, and when the door to Medusa's chamber was opened, the lag was so bad that I couldn't get through the door before it closed. Sayoran was also left behind with me. So we dragged one of the nearby Lamia up to the door and had it kill us. The group tractored us through the door, raised us, and we started the fight when we were back to full health.

We split the group into the main fighting alliance, with extra tanks and DD on the side to replace people when they got knocked out, plus a separate party to hold Medusa's 4 companions - a bard, whm, and 3 nins and a rdm/nin. Tanta and I were the co-tanks to start the fight, but 20 minutes later, Medusa was dead and the only casualty had been Goldfish. It was a fun fight, and while we did have some moments where it didn't look like Tanta or I would make it through the whole battle, our support crew kept us safe. The most annoying move she has is a petrification move. It's hard to defend oneself when turned to stone.

Gurfurlur the Menacing lives in the depths of Halvung, and it takes awhile to reach his chamber. The trolls were preparing for Beseiged as we made our way there, and we were worried that he'd start marching to Al Zahbi for Beseiged while we were fighting him. They were at Level 6 when we started the fight. Unlike the chambers for Gulool Ja Ja and Medusa, Gurfurlur's was full of regular trolls patrolling the area. We killed these before we started the fight, but our spare damage dealers were kept busy with the repops during the battle. I guess it was good for their TP at least.

As with the other two Leaders, we had a separate party to hold the 4 companions of Gurfurlur, with 4xNIN, BRD and WHM. Cauge and I were the first co-tanks. Gurfurlur has some pretty nasty attacks, and we did have to rotate the tanks out as we were killed.

Infi and I were the two tanks in for the final part of the fight. People were concerned that we wouldn't make it through his Hundred Fists, but we did, with the help of Invincible. Another fear was his "bad breath" type attack when he got under 20%. The WHMs were planning to Bene-cide to clear the tanks of our status effects, and would rotate in new ones. He only did that attack once, and Jeny ran in, used Benediction, and was walloped by Gurfurlur for her troubles.

I was lucky and managed to be in for the kill on all three of the beastmen kings, getting me three of the titles I need to work on my Burtgang (more about that in a later post), so I'm pretty excited about that. Eminence is planning to do more of these fights to get the titles for more people, especially those who had been in the holding parties. Hopefully I'll be able to be part of the holding party as a PLD/NIN, and let other people in on the main fight.

New titles: Gorgonstone Sunderer, Troll Subjugator

Astonishing Wyrms

Rather than clear my backlog on all the exciting things I've done with Eminence, I'm skipping ahead to the most recent adventures. I intend to go back and cover what I've missed, but I'm too excited about the lastest to let it sit. Thanks to Alibeemac for her wonderful screenshots. They sure put my PS2 ones to shame!

The second Bahamut fight, as the BCNM The Wyrmking Descends, takes a bit of work to get to the point where you can do it. Everyone needs to have completed the Chains of Promathia missions, won the first Bahamut fight (The Storms of Fate), and then gathered Cloud Evokers, which are a rare drop from various ENMs. The Cloud Evokers are used to fight the BCNM Ouryu Cometh, where you face Ouryu. From winning this fight, you get a Monarch Orb, which allows a group to enter The Wyrmking Descends. I originally did Storms of Fate as a tag-along with Eminence back in January '07, so I had that part out of the way.

Eminence hadn't faced Bahamut V2 for quite awhile, and we finally had enough Cloud Evokers to plan the runs. For our Thursday event on August 21st, we had 3 Ouryu battles lined up. We headed out to the proper spot in Riverne Site #A-01 with more than an alliance, planning to rotate people in so we all got to fight at least one of the BCs. Naramaska wanted the PLDs to try with /RDM subbed, so most of us did that. It works so well with the Jailer of Love, I was curious to see how it worked with Ouryu. The basic strategy we were following was to sleep Ouryu when he was on the ground, and nuke him while he was in the air.

I sat out the first fight, but co-tanked the second with Sanjiyan's PLD/NIN. Kachiko was in the tank party with her relic horn, and the fight went really great. I had endless mp, despite spamming flash, bind, blind, gravity, dispel, and my cure-kit, and it was really a lot of fun. Sanjiyan couldn't keep up hate-wise without the extra spells, but did what she could to keep Ouryu under control along with me.

For the third fight, Tanta and I were co-tanks, both of us as PLD/RDM. Kachiko had to leave, so we just had a "normal" bard. The fight was so very different from the first. I had a lot of MP issues, getting devotion from Alibeemac twice, in addition to my chivalry. Hate was a lot looser. Ouryu also seemed to use more of his most annoying moves, making it that much more of a struggle. We still won, but I don't think we'll be using PLD/RDM on it again, at least not on both tanks.

With three Monarch Orbs available, we had The Wyrmking Descends on the schedule this past Saturday. A lot of shells melee-zerg this fight now, but we needed to use an army of black mages. Again, we had more than a full alliance available, so we rotated people in for the different runs.

Tanta went over strategy with the PLDs, and stressed that this is the hardest fight to tank in the game, since the main tank is solo on Bahamut, and doesn't have the safety of a co-tank. We went as PLD/NIN, with two per fight: one on Bahamut, one waiting for the wyrms he summons, as well as being ready to step in if the main tank was killed. For the first fight, Tanta was main tank, and I was on summons duty. I helped cure Tanta while waiting for the other wyrms to appear, then would flash the wyrm and bring it near the BLMs for them to quickly get rid of it. On our second summons, we got Vrtra, and he charmga'd all of the BLMs when he was at about 5%. They quickly killed me and ran around killing everyone else. It was a wipe, a wasted orb, and a sad loss.

For the second fight, I was main tank, with Infi on summons duty. I felt I did horribly on the fight. It started out poorly, with me taking so much damage trying to get Bahamut into position that Muffins pulled hate keeping me alive.

Over the course of the fight, I used up too much mp for healing and didn't have much left for hate. I always seemed to get my shadows wiped just before being terrorized, wasting the support crews' mp healing me. I had a hard time keeping Bahamut lined up properly as well, partially because I was having camera issues with my character being right up against a small wall to reduce knockbacks. Overall, it was a frustrating fight, but fortunately we won, with only 5 minutes to spare. And I learned a lot from it and hope to do better, given the chance. We won a Bahamut's Mask, which went to a happy Ragnorok.

On the third fight, Infi main tanked, with Karupt on summons duty. I sat outside the unstable displacment, going over my problems with Bahamut with Tanta, and got some good advice. As long as I can learn how to improve my tanking, having imperfect fights isn't bad. The third fight was also a win, and I was very surprised to see Ali say "kiki and karupt lot the mask". I really didn't expect to be able to obtain a Bahamut's Mask so soon. I was invited to the alliance, and out-lotted Karupt, winning one of my "dream" items for my little Tarudin.

I really thought I was further down the list for this, but with Solarus on a bit of a break from the game due to real-life circumstances, a couple other PLDs not there for the event, and Infi feeling the PLDs without an Aegishjalmr should get it first, I got really lucky. Karupt and I were within 10 points of each other in DKP - he's been with Eminence for years, but hasn't played a lot recently, and has spent a bunch of points in the past, so I actually had a few more than him.

I love my new mask! I still can't believe it's mine.



New titles: Ouryu Overwhelmer, Wyrm Astonisher

Invasion of Mamook

The Eminence linkshell event a week ago Saturday was a fight with one of the Beastmen Kings of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion: Gulool Ja Ja. The throne room for this two-headed Mamool Ja is deep within Mamook, and requires one person to have 3 rare/ex Mamook keys (Tanscale, Blackscale and Silverscale) to open the door to let everyone in for the fight.

We had around 30 people there for the fight, with 18 in the main alliance, and a party with 4 NINs, a WHM and a BRD assigned to hold Gulool Ja Ja's 4 minions off in a room to the side of the throne room. The extra people sat outside the fighting alliance, ready to be swapped in as soon as someone in the fighting group got killed. The tank party had 2 WHMs, 2 BRDs, and 2 PLDs. I was one of 4 PLDs for the fight (Solarus, Sasu, and Infi were the others), and being the untested newbie, I was the last one swapped in. (Put me in Coach! Put me in!) I didn't last too long my first round -- after a bunch of Cure IVs I got Gulool's full attention and was back on the sidelines in a flash.

I got to go back into the fighting group when Galool was around 20%, and this time stayed alive, thanks to everyone healing me, so I was part of the group that got the title for the defeat. I was pretty excited! It was a fun fight, and I'm looking forward to more in the future.


New Title: Shining Scale Rifler