FFXIV: Tales from the Duty Finder – The Dog Days of WoD
It’s been a while since I’ve had a tale to tell. So sit back and hear my story of World of Darkness woe.
My FC was running the weekly Crystal Tower Sunday trio this weekend. There’s been a number of new folks coming through lately, which has been nice for bonus tomes and second chance points. Now, I’m not going to say a new person was responsible for this feat of amazement, but either someone didn’t know the mechanics, or someone was trolling. Either way, this is how it played out.
The first boss, Angra Mainyu, was kinda rough. We had tanks who lost aggro on the eye and it started pelting everyone with its electric gaze. However, we managed to get through that one. It wasn’t until we hit Cerberus that the truth of this duty finder experience would be felt.
/elevator music on
Basic mechanics for DPs on this boss: He spits a puddle of Gastric Juice on the floor. DPS stand in the juice to get shrunk down. Then they run to the darker purple goo puddle where the boss eats them, and they fight the boss’ stomach walls to damage him from inside. Meanwhile, there are annoying adds within the stomach that beat on the DPS unless routed, and can mean the death of players since healers usually don’t go inside.
/elevator music off
Okay.
So the first round of this, Xaa and I, who was another DPS in our party that fine day, do as expected, and go inside the boss. The only thing is… I noticed there were only 4 or 5 of us inside, which is a death sentence with the adds that target you. Sometimes it takes the other DPS a little time to get in, so I wasn’t panicking at first.
But then I saw the fateful words in Alliance chat as I was destroyed by adds and excreted from boss:
What? Really? Someone killed the gastric juice?
I mean, I know it’s targetable, but it never ever occured to me to…
Well, anyhow. The view from outside the boss wasn’t much better. I guess if you destroy a gastric juice and the phase goes on for too long, he makes more puddles. Because I saw at least two puddles of gastric juice among the bodies of the fallen and the people fleeing from the massive number of wolvesbane swarming the raid.
Wipe #1.
Alright. That didn’t go as planned. So, someone decided to explain mechanics this time. And we actually got through that phase quickly and easily the next turn.
It wasn’t until we got out of the boss again that trouble was had.
This time, someone grabbed a fetter. And just stood there.
Sometimes, people do this, waiting until the last second to latch it on to the boss because that gives the party more time to do damage to him while he’s stunned.
But this was not one of those times.
Nope. He just stood there. My eyes got more and more round. And…
Yep. He never connected the fetter.
Cerberus proceeded to enrage, go on a murderous rampage and one-shot the entire raid.
Wipe #2.
And Alliance chat…
I guess it was an accident because the guy did say he was sorry.
Well, we went at it for a third time and got through the fight, finally. Though I was concerned about the Cloud of Darkness, we had no further shennanigans. But this was certainly one for the books.
My thanks to Xaa who reminded me to take screenshots for this blog post. I was stunned in amazement watching this unfold, and almost lost the wonderful opportunity to turn this experience into a blog post. 😛