Last night we spent a third of the raid time killing Ifrit which took us about 4 tries to get past all the pitfalls, and then the rest of the time was back into turn 9.
Turn 9 has taken a weird progression. Every individual phase is this giant monumental task and when you finally get past it you hope “can we now just kill this stupid boss?” We took about a month before we finally got the boss into phase 4, and the hope was very much “can we now just kill this stupid boss?”
Phase 4 is by far the most demanding thing I’ve ever been asked to do in a raid. I have the job of marking dive bombs, which means in addition to doing an incredibly intricate dance around the arena to deal with boss mechanics, I am also expected to place the ground markers for dive bombs. Dive bombs can take 3 different configurations and based on which one it is in, I have to mark different areas.
Last night we had one attempt where I had marked both locations in enough time and we had enough people up. All we needed to do was get past dive bombs and everything was rinse and repeat.
We did not get past dive bombs, but what I did glimpse was the possibility of us beating this fight. I saw the light at the end of this tunnel.
We’ve been working on Turn 9 for almost three months now, and the fact that we are still playing this game and don’t hate each other is a testament to both the game, our leader, and our group’s resilience.
On Wednesday I get to dive right back in with a pretty green group, so I look forward to learning the fight all over again.
Wish me luck!