Page 10 of Looking for Group
Ialdir gave a whoop of laughter. “More DoTs! Throw more DoTs.”
“Get me down, get me down!”
A rather sullen voice said, “I’m in a mouth as well.”
Morag: “Prio Dave.”
“What the fuck, what the fuck, you crazy dwarf lady.”
“We’re at seven percent, we need burst.”
A second or two later, Dave was disgorged onto the floor and started tearing into Kelebos with an implausibly large double-headed axe.
“Me now,” howled Bjorn. “Me now!”
Ialdir whistled, the sound coming sharp and tinny in Drew’s earphones. “My, my, I seem to be top of the meters.”
“Nooooooooo!”
“Okay,” said Morag. “Three percent. Prio the body and bring it home. Full burn.”
“Nooooooooooooooo! You’re doing this on purpose. It’s conspiracy against the Great Nation of Bjorn.”
“The Great Nation of Bjorn should get a better ambassador.”
Drew was laughing as Kelebos whimpered and slumped over, finally spilling Heurodis out of its lolling mouth.
“Right, no loot, no loot for any of you.”
The raid broke into cheers and random dancing, and despite Bjorn’s protestations, there was in fact loot and it was in fact distributed.
Solace broke free of the crowds and jumped into the corpse again.
After a moment’s hesitation, Drew sent Ella over to join her.
He zoomed right in so he could see Solace dancing and the inside of the wire frame.
[Solace] whispers: So what’s a nice orc like you doing in a corpse like this?
Drew tried to think of something witty and flirty to say, but failed dismally.
To [Solace]: i just wanted to see what it looked like
[Solace] whispers: As you can see, it’s a spacious, well-appointed cadaver, with excellent views of not very much really
Shit shit shit. Solace was cute. But Solace was also an imaginary elf on the internet, and it was probably creepy to like her this much.
“Does anybody mind if I skin the boss?” asked Ialdir.
Nobody objected, so Ialdir whipped out a skinning knife and reduced the great hound Kelebos to three scraps of [Uncured Corpse Hide] and a [Patch of Mouldering Leather].
“Well done, guys,” said Morag. “That was pretty clean. I know we’ve done this a lot and we overgear it, but a bit more focus next time early on. If we DPS the heads right, there’s no way anyone should get hit by the Howl.”
“Yeah, good job, guys,” added Bjorn. 4 “Jacob, your DPS was nearly as good as mine. I’d feel threatened if I wasn’t so awesome. Really nice work on the transitions there, tanks. And quality work from the healing team, as ever.”
Drew shifted a bit in his chair. He knew he was a good tank, and he’d done a good job, but in Anni he’d only ever been told when he screwed up, and he wasn’t sure how to handle having someone say he’d done well. Especially if it was Bjorn.
They pressed on through the maze and a few packs of trash mobs to Thornheart.
He was kind of an evil, corrupted Ent rip-off and basically just a gear check.
There was lots of nasty spike damage on the tank and a hard enrage timer, but nothing a halfway decent guild couldn’t handle this late in the expansion.
It was Drew’s least favourite fight because he had literally nothing to do except stand in one place and mash his rotation.
Also, back when he ran with Anni, there’d been an enormous amount of pressure to get your gearscore up to spec and everyone yelling at everyone else for letting the guild down.
The healers always thought the tanks were too squishy, the tanks always thought the healers weren’t gemmed right, and every DPSer thought none of the others were pulling their weight.
And then, after that phase, came months of people doing stupid crap like trying to swap in alts to gear up or do it with only one healer and blaming Drew when he couldn’t stay alive through the Arboreal Frenzy.
There was none of that this time, so it was just a straight tank and spank. And Dave sounded almost happy when the [Bracers of Blackened Oak] dropped.
“Hey guys, can I stone back to Ash to get these gemmed?”
There was a pause. Then Morag said no in a slightly incredulous voice.
“But I’ll do better DPS.”
“I’m not going to keep nine people standing around with their thumbs up their arses while you go shopping for bling.”
“Um,” offered Drew, “I think I’ve got some rubies in my backpack.”
[Raid][Ignatius]: And I guess I can chant them for you.
[Raid][Dave]: woot
“All right,” said Morag. “Take five. But only five. Rebuff, eat fish, but nobody go make coffee, and if you need the loo, you hold it until Arachnia.”
Drew flicked open his professions menu, carved a [Puissant Cataclysmic Ruby] 5 for Dave and handed it over.
[Raid][Dave]: thx
Something had been bugging Drew for a while. “I know I’m new, and this might not be the best time to ask, but why are you called Dave?”
[Raid][Dave]: lol
[Raid][Ialdir]: lol
[Raid][Prospero]: lol
“When I rolled my DK, all the names I could think of were taken, so I typed it in for a joke, and then it went through and the cutscene was really long, so I thought I’d just go with it.”
Bjorn: “If you want, I can report you so you can get a forced name change.”
“But then I’d have to think of a new one and I’d be right back where I started.”
“You make me a sad Viking, David.”
Morag called the raid to order, and Drew was slightly surprised that they had genuinely only taken five minutes.
Everything they’d said about casual guilds back in Anni had made him think that a five-minute raid break would turn into a ten-minute toilet break which would turn into half an hour of amateurish faffing.
The maze darkened around them as they pushed through thorns and cobwebs into the realm of Arachnia the Spider Queen. They passed under an archway onto a wide circle of webbing, and Drew dashed into the centre to pick up the vast tide of enemies that he knew were about to drop onto them.
[Yell][Arachnia the Spider Queen]: FEAST, MY CHILDREN AND brING ME THEIR WITHERED CORPSES.
Tiny spiders began raining from the ceiling, but Drew had Circle of Corruption ready to go.
“I’ve never understood that.” Dave sounded oddly meditative. “Cos if they feast on us, there won’t be any corpses for them to bring to her.”
A long sigh gusted over Mumble. Drew was pretty sure it was Bjorn. “Spiders, Dave, feed by injecting their prey with digestive fluids, which reduce their victim’s innards to the consistency of soup. Then they suck out the soup, leaving only a desiccated husk.”
They AoE-ed the spiderlings in a maelstrom of fire, shadow, holy light, flashing blades, and raining arrows.
“The first time we did this,” said Ialdir, “Jargogle was scouting and the event triggered right on her head. I’ve never seen a kobold die so fast.”
[Raid][Jargogle]: Thank you for bringing that up
[Raid][Jargogle]: Perhaps we should talk instead about the time you pushed the big red button in the Mechanarium
[Raid][Jargogle]: The big red button that says Do Not Push
“I wanted to know what it did.”
[Raid][Jargogle]: What it did was cause you to die horribly in a gigantic explosion
[Raid][Jargogle]: Good times
When the last wave of spiders was vanquished, Arachnia herself began to descend slowly from the ceiling.
She was a bloated red-and-black spider-demon thing, all dripping mandibles and pulsing eyes.
Drew had spent a good amount of time this expansion with his face in her underbelly and it wasn’t pleasant down there.
“Everybody back,” called out Morag. “No pulling the boss until we’re ready.”
The valiant adventurers sprinted back and formed up again in the archway.
“You know the drill,” Morag went on. “DPS the adds, don’t stand on webs, if you get Royal Venom run away from the raid.
When she goes up to the ceiling, we have to get the Sentinels down before she comes back or it’ll be an almighty clusterfuck.
Drew, I’ll mark them up, and we’ll take one each.
You get star, I’ll have the weird purple one that looks like a dildo. ”
Drew nodded, even though nobody could see him. “Got it.”
“Prio star, then dildo. Ranged, you can attack the boss while she’s in the air, but if I see a single potshot before the Sentinels go down, I’m sending you into the naughty corner.”
[Raid][Ignatius]: Anything but the naughty corner!
This was where Drew would find out if he’d signed up with a bunch of noobs or not. They’d done okay up to now, but Arachnia could be tricky if the raid didn’t pull together. When everyone was ready, Ella ran forward, maces whirling, and Arachnia plopped down on top of her.
[Yell][Arachnia the Spider Queen]: Come in to my parlour, little flies.
[Yell][Morag]: That is a rubbish taunt!!!
Drew settled into the rhythm of the fight.
There was much less cross talk than the last two bosses, because with flying webs and adds coming in and poison chaining through the raid, there was a lot going on and lot to keep track of.
Drew focused on the job in front of him, letting instinct and muscle memory take over.
He sort of liked this bit of the game. It was that sense you got when you were doing something you were good at and doing it well and not even having to think about it.
And sharing that feeling with a group of people who were in the same zone.
Mumble was busy with voices, but Drew had stopped worrying about who was who.
Right now, it was all about information processing.
His eyes and ears were full of data, and long experience had taught him how to filter it.