Page 28 of Looking for Group
“Any game worth playing, David.” Bjorn took a deep breath.
“So these powers—thank you, Magda—include massively increasing the spawn rate of briars, massively reducing the healing output of the party, massively increasingly the damage dealt by everything, and sticking Heartsblood on the whole raid every few seconds until we all die. If an attendant starts channelling, it must be interrupted and then the tanks should pick them up and pull them away from the pillars. During this phase, ranged DPS will be expected to switch between Lady Bloodrose, the briars, and whatever else needs killing. The phase will end when her health drops to seventy percent. There is a lot that can go wrong in this phase, but I get very depressed when we don’t make it out of it. ”
[High Theurgist Venric] says: Aaaaagh!
[Lady Bloodrose] says: So trusting, Venric. A pity to come all this way and then to fall so easily.
[Raid][Ialdir]: Baldur’s Gate 1
[High Theurgist Venric] says: You…are…no…longer…Anthariel.
[Lady Bloodrose] says: Not for many years, but do not worry, my love, I will not let you die…yet.
[Raid][Ialdir]: There’s an enhanced edition out. You should definitely play it.
[High Theurgist Venric] says: Strike now my friends, while I still have strength to aid you!
[Raid][Ialdir]: In a minute, dude, we’re still doing the tacs.
[Raid][Morag]: That’s what you get for pulling without the tank.
“In phase two,” Bjorn went on, “Lady Bloodrose will come down from the ceiling and start to activate the pillars herself. There is nothing we can do about that except DPS her to make her switch. We want her travelling for as much of the fight as possible. There will still be briars, but if we have not cocked everything up, the Veiled Attendants should all be dead. Instead, she will open Nether Portals—”
There was a snigger across Mumble.
“David, I am doing the tacs. You can laugh at the word nether in your own time. The Nether Portals will spit out adds, and expand until they fill the entire room and kill everybody. Our portal team, consisting of Magda, Morag, Prospero, and Dave—”
“Woo. Nether Duty.”
“—will dive through the portal and destroy the Realm Heart. The rest of us will be dealing with the adds and DPSing our hearts out. At thirty percent she will go into the final phase, where she explodes into this enormous plant-monster thing and sits in the middle of the room. Then we burn her down really, really fast before we get completely overwhelmed by the buffs from the pillars, which will all be active at this point. Remember, if you are having trouble controlling your Heartsblood stacks, stand near the high theurgist when he puts golden light on the ground, and it will reduce your debuff by twenty. Of course, this will also lose you precious DPS time, so it is better to just do things right to begin with.”
A readycheck popped up, and when the signal was given, Ella ran towards the middle of the room, triggering the fight.
[Lady Bloodrose] says: Come, pierce yourself upon me.
“Oh man,” sighed Dave. “That just sounds so wrong.”
“You know what else is wrong,” said Bjorn, fifty seconds later, “how quickly we screwed that up.”
It had not been a good attempt. There’d been so much going on, and the chamber was sufficiently large and full of particle effects, that the raid just hadn’t coordinated properly. Nothing had gone down fast enough, and they’d been overwhelmed by briars.
[Solace] whispers: You okay?
To [Solace]: yeah that was faster than i expected
[Solace] whispers: ?
[Solace] whispers: Honestly, we’ve only beaten this fight once and that was with a different comp
To [Solace]: oh
[Solace] whispers: But we didn’t have the best geared tank on the server
The second run was only marginally better.
For Drew, this was where you really saw the difference between a casual guild and a hardcore one.
Anni had flailed around like this the first time they’d done the fight, but they’d got over it quickly.
Lady Bloodrose was complicated enough that they never really had her on farm, but they could pretty much guarantee that if they wiped, it was because something specific had gone wrong rather than because nothing had gone right.
To [Solace]: ffs
[Solace] whispers: This is really bugging you, isn’t it?
To [Solace]: kinda
To [Solace]: i don’t mind wiping but i like to feel we’re making progress
[Solace] whispers: We are. It just takes a little to see it.
To [Solace]: there you go being zen again
[Solace] whispers: You like that, though
To [Solace]: i guess i do ?
[Solace] whispers: Seriously, we’ll get it. We kind of go through a flailing stage, then a learning stage, and then it comes together.
To [Solace]: kk
To [Solace]: sorry i didn’t mean to be an elitist dick
[Solace] whispers: No, it’s cool. I suppose you’re used to things being different.
Kit was right, and pissing on other people’s learning curves wasn’t going to help anybody. So Drew got himself a second can of Dr Pepper and settled down for a long evening of wiping.
“Okay guys,” came Morag’s voice. “This isn’t really coming together for us. I know it’s the end of the night and the final boss, but we need to stay focused and work together, or we’re just going to be banging our heads against a brick wall.”
Of course, the other difference between SCDD and Anni was they had none of the recriminations and bullshit. After two wipes like this, Anni would have dissolved into finger-pointing and epeening.
“I don’t think we’re doing anything particularly wrong, I just think we need to be a little bit sharper and a little bit more responsive.
Ranged, I think you’re spending too much time on Bloodrose and not enough helping the melee.
Melee, I know you’ve got a lot of running around to do, but you need to keep on your toes and get where you need to be when you need to be there.
This is a control fight, not a DPS race, so it’s better to do it right than to do it quickly. Let’s fish up, and try again.”
This time round they got to phase two, but the portal team was slow off the mark, so the area filled up with purple death fire and swarming minions.
In Anni, they’d sent a seriously tooled-up assassin into the portals solo, and relied on stuns, invisibility, and smoke clouds to keep the portal guardians at bay while he destroyed the Realm Heart.
Drew thought about suggesting it, but while he thought Jargogle knew her stuff, she probably wasn’t quite geared enough.
It was sort of the weird paradox of hardcore guilds, that if you were good enough at the game it allowed you to do things the easy way.
Which, in turn, sort of took the fun out of it after a little while.
Although, for Anni, first had been more important than fun.
[Solace] whispers: You’re not hating this too much, are you?
To [Solace]: i’m honestly good now
[Solace] whispers: Think of it as more time spent with me
To [Solace]: kit i really like raiding but if i had to pick a way to spend time with you it wouldn’t include bjorn yelling in my ears
[Solace] whispers: ?
[Solace] whispers: Maybe we can talk about that later
Attempt four, they lost too many people to Heartsblood, so they didn’t have the DPS to get through the final phase.
The mood in the raid was better than Drew would have expected it to be.
Every try had been better than the last, so there was a real “we’ll do it this time” vibe, even though it was getting on for half ten, or half eleven for Ialdir, Magda, and Bjorn.
As they were rebuffing, Bjorn took control of Mumble.
“All right, you noobs, it is time for Uncle Bjorn’s Awesome Pep Talk.
This will be our last attempt. If we fail because we suck, I will be putting a poll on the forum to see if people want to come back and try this on Friday instead of going to Greyhallow Hall to do the opera event.
But by far the best scenario here is that we kick butt now and go to the opera on Friday. ”
[Raid][Mordant]: is that it?
“Do not question the glory of the pep talk.”
Nobody else questioned the glory of the pep talk, so Ella pulled out her axes and charged Lady Bloodrose for the fifth time.
Phase one went pretty smoothly. Ella basically spent her time jogging round the central pit, picking up Veiled Attendants before they could activate the ritual pillars.
She was occasionally grabbed by an Entangling Briar, but the DPS got her out of them pretty sharpish.
Morag: “Careful, attendant wave in five, don’t push her over yet.”
[Lady Bloodrose] says: Enough of this. Fall before the legions of the Netherworld.
“Well, crap,” sighed Morag. “Next time, less DoTs.”
“I’m on it. Slow DPS on the adds please.” Drew picked up the first attendant and sprinted back across the chamber towards the Pillar of Death, where the second one was channelling a beam of purple energy that would give every enemy in the room a massive damage boost.
“Portal team in. Rest of you, on the attendants.”
“Shit shit shit.” That sounded like Bjorn.
They managed to burn the two attendants down fairly quickly, but while Drew was maintaining aggro, Netherworld Minions were swarming out of the still-open portal.
“Adds in the ranged.”
Ella scuttled backwards round the pit, throwing a taunt at the armour-plated insect demon thing that was presently chewing on Small Mangy Owl.
“Pet tanking for the win,” said Ialdir as Drew began whaling on the monster with his axes.
[Lady Bloodrose] says: Blood of my blood.
That was bad.
“Pillar of blood up,” called Bjorn. “All deeps on the boss. Watch your stacks, and get in the light if you need it.”
Drew was doing okay for Heartsblood, and he didn’t want to a drag a pile of enemies over to where the raid was stacking to rid itself of the fallen elf’s malicious influence.