lalafell

Hey Folks! Last night I did something… that I have not done since Heavensward. Yesterday was the opening day of the very first raid of Dawntrail, and Ace and I threw ourselves at the content. Sure we watched a few quick videos… for reference, I highly suggest the content from SamsonGrey because they are short and to the point. However, there is a big difference between watching a recap video of strategies and actually doing the fights. However more important was this is the first time I have thrown myself at the grist mill that was raiding with random people… as a Tank also potentially since Heavensward. I love to Tank but I have had this weird hang-up against tanking for strangers and while I have gotten over that for dungeons… effectively going into day-one raids when no one really understands the fights was a whole new pinnacle of experience.

Across the board the fights were phenomenal and I had a lot of fun learning them. The first encounter made me especially nervous because I hate “break the platform” mechanics in fights, but time and time again I wound up as the defacto main tank and managed to navigate us through all of the encounters. Unfortunately, that does not show in the comm department because I did not get a single one all night long. I am hoping they were tipping their healers and not just being jackasses and not throwing out comms period. Like it is okay not to commend someone if they just fucked up massively… I’ve done this before, but this nonsense of not throwing out any commendations is just a jerk move.

We one-shot the first encounter which felt really freaking great. Honey B. Lovely however the second encounter was easily the most difficult. I think we managed to get it on our third attempt. The third and fourth encounters both took two attempts. There was an asshole in the second encounter that was throwing out shade… but honestly… don’t do that shit on the first day a raid is released. Of course, it was a damned reaper and in my experience, they are the edgelords of the party so it isn’t like I was super shocked. Even with needing to take a few attempts per fight on average, the mechanics were super fun to play around with. I am not sure if we will ever find a static of chill folks to run with again, but I think it would be a lot of fun to tackle this content on savage.

My biggest goal for the entire night was to try and snag one of the accessory slot items. I had a level 99 ring because I had not managed to get one to drop from any of the level 100 dungeons. It was bugging me immensely that I had a single slot that was that low item level. For the entire evening, I managed to snag a 710 ring, two of the items that added up to a pair of 710 gloves. Then for my last piece of loot, I rolled on pretty much everything and got one of four items needed to get the 710 chestpiece. The highlight of the night loot-wise though is that I managed to pull the Black Cat Minion which is super adorable. It randomly runs off and pounces things when you are idle. You can see it beside me in the first screenshot of this blog post.

The highlight of the raid however is the addition of an announcer. I have to be honest, I was not sure how I would feel about the Arcadion as a whole. It is very much WWF/WWE-inspired and there is a running commentary as the fight is going on. There is some really cool tech where the commentary is based on actions that are happening in the fight. If you as the tank happen to soak a really big hit, the commentator will say something along the lines of “Oooo that was hard-hitting” or if one or more players die they will comment on that as well. There is another line about holding things together when you manage to stand everyone back up with rezzes. It makes the entire experience feel so dynamic and fun.

All in all, I am very much looking forward to throwing ourselves at this every week. Since I posted a picture of our alternate dare versions over on Kraken, I decided we needed to take a screenshot of our mains. I hopped up on these trashcans and Ace joined me… at which point we noticed there was a corpse sticking out of the open one. Man, it’s a shame when folks throwing away a perfectly good white boy. I’m having a blast still between doing more serious content on Cactuar and our bonanza of nonsense over on Kraken. After not really being wired for MMORPGs for a few years, it feels like I am having a massive resurgence. Did you do the raid last night? What were your thoughts? Drop me a line below. The post The Arcadion Is Fun appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.