This post wouldn't exist if Yoshi P didn't give out the free login days. Originally my sub should run out on the 3rd Jan, and I wouldn't see any of the savage raid
On the patch day, the queue was still very long in the light DC. It took me a few hours to get in. I managed to join a blind party on P1S late at night. We wiped on intemperance for a while, because people were coming out weird idea on how we need to move to different square from where we started. We had no idea what was going on in the four chains, but we sort of get lucky couple time and get passed it.
Then the next day comes, there was already guide on this encounter. I went into a very strange situation where the caster spot were all full in PF. This is something I find annoying. Originally I gear up for SMN, done with the meld and sell all the materia when it still worth something. Then now I have to change job. Fortunately I have tome to buy i570 gear. At least I can make the min ilv requirement to join a party.
Intempance and the 4 chains were the major issues. It is easy for one person to wipe the party. Although it was only day 2, but people already get impatient on PF. So party disbanded quite quickly. Eventually I was lucky enough to join a party made with 4 member from the same static and we got on discord. The pull was very bad initially, and we wiped on almost every silly thing you can think of, but we talked about it and try to fixed it. I didn't think this party will manage to kill it. Even on the last pull, I died in weird places, people got hit by damage down. But guess what the boss was dead. I guess the dps requirement wasn't too high.
The next day I popped into a P2S training party. Again, somehow there was no caster spot left anywhere I go, so I continue to play MCH. P2S was clearly harder than P1S for a rather simple issue: there are higher demand for heal. Some of the raidwide AoE requires group mitigation effort, or else it will one shot the healers and caster at min ilv. I find it quite heart warming to see reprisal, flint, addle, tactian all went up to prepare for the Sewage Deluge. Really, mitigation is a group effort.
The limit cut mechanics caused a lot of wipes on PF. I have to admit that I was panic and wasn't always on the right spot myself. On the second day on this fight, I got a good PF party. Although we were not on discord, but we were discussing issue on chat to help each other. The tank suggested me to use anti-kb on that part, then hit sprint to get to my spot. It worked. We hit enrage with this group. The problem was we had three range dps. I wasn't sure what is the state of the dps in 6.0, but the BRD was doing the same dps as the tanks. Well, I shouldn't point fingers since my dps wasn't good in any measure. We hit enrage at 5% with no death, but it was quite late at night. The BRD started ranting at the NIN on the LB timing so I decided to stop.
The PF journey was rocky. There are a few places people die to, but the last set of arrow was particularly messy. I think it was meant to be a heal check. If I get a short arrow, I will get about 13k damage. Then the tank tether splash damage took about 10k. We stack for laser and it hit 35k. After that there is small aoe that hit maybe 15k. So we need quite a lot of heal but often I just don't see it coming. We were often a bit too low on the HP to survive the stack.
Eventually I cleared the fight during the weekend. On that PF, it took two pull. There were no death.
Then I ran into a problem. Both my SMN and MCH was at i575 at that time, and it was below the min ilv require for P3S. I can't join a practice party. My FC mate offered to make gear for me. I didn't want to waste his time, so I narrowed down to one job I will play and have him craft the gear to get me get to ilv580.
And that job was, DRK.
The choice was, well, originally I set out to tank in this expansion. Not to mention that the tenacity materia was cheap on MB. I suppose, some people wonder why I am so cheap with gears. I just don't think it worth investing in it when my sub is running out.
For P3S, it took me a few tries to pick up tether consistently. It helps if people can just stack up. I often run into people standing in strange location. We have accident where the other tank took my tether and the other tether explodes and wipe the party. I find it easier to pick up tether as OT than MT, because the boss is not blocking my view.
Because the tether is magic damage, I use Dark Mind on the tether and save other CD for the add phase. I often stack Dark Mind, TBN and Oblation. Obviously I should be dpsing, weaving the CD while picking the tether. I feel it is a bit hectic. Often I really need to do one thing at a time to make sure I do it right. When I have problem picking up the tether, my CD may delay. Later in the prog, I ran into my co-tank who often reprisal the aoe, so reprisal the TB. In that case, I have 4 defensive CD to hit.
Most P3S parties seem to struggle on the add phase. Even if you progress further, a lot of the FoF, tornado or even kill parties, they often wipe at the add phase. I am not sure if it was a dps was low, or people greed and did not move to their correct position. The mechanics is not that hard here. You may lose uptime when getting into position, but there are plenty of time to hit the add once you are there. I usually saved all the defensive CD on this phase and more or less spend all of them here.
Even when we made it pass the add phase, people often die of low HP. After the Dead Rebirth, both MT and OT got hit by auto, which took about 14k HP per GCD. If you leave the tank alone, they die in 5-6 GCD. So often our HP were very low when we get to the gloryplum, and the next auto kills us. The healer fountain hit over 50k when it explode, I wonder if the healers didn't have enough HP to survive, or they just forget to heal themselves. Then, people greed on uptime and got double hit by bird. No one stack up for the tank tether after the fountain. For the tornados, in week 1 people trying all sort of strat, but most group seem to like tank takes up the boss cleave, tornados, tethers and invuln in the south. My problem was everything looks orange, so it is not clear what went wrong if something goes wrong. The picture people like to share is often very deceiving, because it shows the group stack at NW. In reality, melee may greed and not at NW corner. Tanks need to be touching the boss hit box to be the closest. Very often I was a bit south to be closer to the tornado and the strat fails. I didn't know about it and no one in PF can explain. I have got kicked out from a party because of this.
The worst part of the P3S prog was a lot of parties had no chance to make it to the end. Add phase wipe occurred often in kill parties, and these parties disbanded after a few pull. The situation seems to get worse in week 2, because people got very impatient. I suppose it is very annoying that you did the mechanics right, but you are being punished because someone mess up and the party got trapped in the same spot.
In P3S, unless my co-tank is a WAR, the other tanks often refuse to MT. I am not sure if DRK is a good MT, but I just went along. So I often have to switch between MT and OT and the position can get confusing. I learnt the uptime positioning, but initially my position was a bit off here and there.
While the trap parties were everywhere, but I did get into some good parties to work on the fountain phase. Because the strat involves tank invuln, we have a problem with Living Dead. One would think the answer to LD is Benediction. But the problem is no one seems to have a plan B when Benediction is on CD. I often died there because there was not enough heal. I notice that if the healer is an AST, often the other healer will volunteer to help, or the AST asks for help to heal me during LD. While when healer is a WHM, they don't ask for help, and the co-healer never offer to help. I suppose the assumption is if you are a WHM, you can deal with this on your own. I actually die more often on LD when the healer is a WHM than an AST.
Personally I feel bad about this. Everytime when I use LD, I just become a liability. I have zero self heal and can do nothing to help out. If I died, the boss will auto the person who is 2nd in aggro which is not going to be pretty. I enjoy having the extra CD like Dark Mind and TBN for this fight because the TB are magic based. However, every time we get into the fountain, I feel that I should play a different job. I can say the same about that Life's Agony. When the healer is WHM, we stack in mid and he just have spam Cure 3 to get us to full. Again, as DRK, I can't contribute to anything. I am not sure if someone wasn't doing the mechanics right or the heal was slow. That Life's Agony can hit 99 million HP. It was a real agony. Actually, I still want to find out how AST's mircocosmo can basically cancel that skill.
Eventually couple of my FC mates and I teamed up and prog on Sunday and Monday. I think it was the high point of the fight. We still got into trap parties but we were together. We cleared the fight quite late on the second week. I am very thankful that the people were very patient in this party. Three people got their clear already just came by and help out. Personally I really enjoy P3S. I probably don't enjoy the amount of trap parties I need to go through before getting the clear, as well as the fountain strat centre on tank invuln. However, I think the fight is very interesting and there are rarely a dull moment. Oh, I got a loot drop. It is first and only loot drop I got in this raid tier so far.
I think this is the end of my adventure with this tier of savage raid. The remaining few days of my sub, I prefer doing anything else than trying to prog P4S.
