Thalen Speaks

Posts from Thalen on Thalen Speaks site.

Raid Kills Bugs Dead #Blaugust2016

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Last night was our regular raid night once again in Final Fantasy XIV. We had made some attempts on Ravana last week, but didn't quite take him down. It's a fairly complicated and movement intensive fights with a number of mechanics where you have to get hit once and only once by a particular attack. There are two different attacks Ravana has where he flys around diving on members of the raid. The attack is unavoidable when he's targeting you, but it applies a debuff that makes you extremely vulnerable to damage so you have to move quickly after being hit so that you aren't struck when he dives at the next person. Even being overgeared a bit for this content, the damage that does will kill anybody easily.

After a few tries we managed to get the dancing mostly figured out and made it all the way to the enrage mechanic. Our next try we took him down, though it was a close thing. Belghast managed to fall off the platform with Ravana at about 7% health, leaving us with only one tank in a fight that requires tank swapping. Ravana started charging one of his liberation maneuvers, and we knew we knew that we had to take him down before he finished or we would quickly lose our remaining tank and wipe. The cast bar was over 90% full when the achievement for a successful kill popped up.

Raid Kills Bugs Dead #Blaugust2016
Tamrielo got a book that looks like a butterfly

After that we headed off to the Final Coil of Bahamut since two of our raid members hadn't been with us when we beat it shortly after Heavensward launched (no, we never completed the Final Coil when it was current content. We're neither that good or that crazy.) It's been over a year since we'd been in there and I didn't remember the first couple of fights at all. The mechanics came back to us once we engaged though, and thanks to severely outgearing and outleveling the fights, we made it through. It still took a few wipes though. Mechanics in FFXIV are serious business.

Apart from that, I've played a little more Diablo 3, finishing up the Slayer portion of the season journey. The next stage, Champion, will require a good bit of grinding as it asks you to level up multiple Legendary gems. I'm successfully soloing level 40 Greater Rifts at this point, which is better than I made it up to last season on a Crusader, so I don't feel like that should be much of a trouble. What would really help would be to get lucky and find some Ancient legendaries. Last season I found three pretty early on and they made a big difference. Failing that, I need to push up my gems, find a better quiver and ring, and get to where I can comfortably handle Torment X. Should be doable.

Raid Kills Bugs Dead #Blaugust2016

by
Last night was our regular raid night once again in Final Fantasy XIV. We had made some attempts on Ravana last week, but didn't quite take him down. It's a fairly complicated and movement intensive fights with a number of mechanics where you have to get hit once and only once by a particular attack. There are two different attacks Ravana has where he flys around diving on members of the raid. The attack is unavoidable when he's targeting you, but it applies a debuff that makes you extremely vulnerable to damage so you have to move quickly after being hit so that you aren't struck when he dives at the next person. Even being overgeared a bit for this content, the damage that does will kill anybody easily.

After a few tries we managed to get the dancing mostly figured out and made it all the way to the enrage mechanic. Our next try we took him down, though it was a close thing. Belghast managed to fall off the platform with Ravana at about 7% health, leaving us with only one tank in a fight that requires tank swapping. Ravana started charging one of his liberation maneuvers, and we knew we knew that we had to take him down before he finished or we would quickly lose our remaining tank and wipe. The cast bar was over 90% full when the achievement for a successful kill popped up.

Tamrielo got a book that looks like a butterfly

After that we headed off to the Final Coil of Bahamut since two of our raid members hadn't been with us when we beat it shortly after Heavensward launched (no, we never completed the Final Coil when it was current content. We're neither that good or that crazy.) It's been over a year since we'd been in there and I didn't remember the first couple of fights at all. The mechanics came back to us once we engaged though, and thanks to severely outgearing and outleveling the fights, we made it through. It still took a few wipes though. Mechanics in FFXIV are serious business.

Apart from that, I've played a little more Diablo 3, finishing up the Slayer portion of the season journey. The next stage, Champion, will require a good bit of grinding as it asks you to level up multiple Legendary gems. I'm successfully soloing level 40 Greater Rifts at this point, which is better than I made it up to last season on a Crusader, so I don't feel like that should be much of a trouble. What would really help would be to get lucky and find some Ancient legendaries. Last season I found three pretty early on and they made a big difference. Failing that, I need to push up my gems, find a better quiver and ring, and get to where I can comfortably handle Torment X. Should be doable.

Extra Spicy #Blaugust 2016

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I'm intending to start my examination of my D&D collection up again for Mondays, but that requires some research and such that I haven't been able to do yet for the upcoming item. So instead, a little more talk about Diablo 3.

I've wrapped up the 4th chapter of the season now, so I've got all 6 pieces of the free set. The 6 piece bonus gives a very large bonus to Multi-shot (which I've already been using) and Vengeance based on how much Discipline you currently have. I also came across a crossbow that reduces the cooldown on Vengeance by a whole lot, so I threw that in the Kanai Cube and replaced the Rapid Fire buff I had been using. Rapid Fire didn't seem to be scaling very well in any case, and I was already mostly using Evading Shot and Multi-shot as my main damaging abilities in any case.

Such lovely crits

With just that boost from my set and those couple of new legendaries my damage output went up by more than a factor of 10. I went from running at Torment IV straight to Torment VIII without stopping in between, and I might have been able to go to IX and still be okay. Now it's time to get down to the business of running more Greater Rifts to level my legendary gems and continuing on through the next stage of the journey.

Extra Spicy #Blaugust 2016

by
I'm intending to start my examination of my D&D collection up again for Mondays, but that requires some research and such that I haven't been able to do yet for the upcoming item. So instead, a little more talk about Diablo 3.

I've wrapped up the 4th chapter of the season now, so I've got all 6 pieces of the free set. The 6 piece bonus gives a very large bonus to Multi-shot (which I've already been using) and Vengeance based on how much Discipline you currently have. I also came across a crossbow that reduces the cooldown on Vengeance by a whole lot, so I threw that in the Kanai Cube and replaced the Rapid Fire buff I had been using. Rapid Fire didn't seem to be scaling very well in any case, and I was already mostly using Evading Shot and Multi-shot as my main damaging abilities in any case.

Such lovely crits

With just that boost from my set and those couple of new legendaries my damage output went up by more than a factor of 10. I went from running at Torment IV straight to Torment VIII without stopping in between, and I might have been able to go to IX and still be okay. Now it's time to get down to the business of running more Greater Rifts to level my legendary gems and continuing on through the next stage of the journey.