Ramurai and Coils

Tales of the Ramurai

Last night did not end up quite like I had expected it to when I got off work.  Originally I was slotted to do an impromptu podcast recording, so I rushed around and ordered from a pizza place…  scarfed my food and then due to technical difficulties that was cancelled.  After doing my “Wizard Chores” I settled into Final Fantasy XIV as Monday is our habitual raid night there.  Over the last week or so there has been a new event that has started up and I decided to see if I could finish it.  Heavensturn for the most part is a New Years festival where each year you celebrate something relating to the Chinese Zodiac animal of that year.  While technically the Chinese Zodiac doesn’t actually start until February, this coming year is the year of the Ram, and as such everything in this years Heavensturn relates that.  While I spent time for awhile this year being a Bunny samurai…  last night I became a Ramurai…  which admittedly sounds like Scooby Doo.

Final Fantasy holiday events tend to revolve around being unwittingly drawn into the plan of a horrible cartoon villain that by the end of the event is thwarted.  This event is no different really, but the sequences of the holiday involve going around the world and helping people with the power of your ram friend.  When it jumps around it has the power to put people to sleep, and sooth their pain…  which is adorable and funny at the same time.  For completing the sequence of quests you get four different versions of the “Ram Samurai” hat plain, white, red and black as well as your very own pet Ram that will travel with you.  All told given all the running around and cut scenes it maybe took me an hours worth of time.  The quest starts in Limsa Lominsa near the Aftcastle and that is where the event vendor is as well.

Binding the Fifth Coil

We are still in a strange place with our raid, in that Tam has moved across country and doesn’t quite have his stuff yet.  Yesterday he had internet, but still none of his furniture including his computer had arrived on site.  While we managed to limp along with him attempting to raid on his surface tablet…  that is a less than ideal setup.  So instead last night he troddled off to a friends house where they have furniture and such…  and we pulled together a raid with a handful of new people.  Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut is much like the old school raiding was during Vanilla and  Burning Crusade.  You have to defeat it to progress forward into the newer content.  As such any people that we might possibly consider swapping in as we start work on the second coil of bahamut…  must have beaten the first coil to do so.  Alamaria Kilah and Curious Cat have both been ready for raiding for a bit… or at least “geared enough” so we opted last night to swap them in and get them the unlock.

I have to say I have been impressed at how quickly we are teaching the fight now to new folks.  Last night was our third turn five kill, and while each week there are a few attempts where we work out the kinks it all comes together rather quickly.  I have a feeling that we will be doing this semi-regularly as new folks come on board that need keying.  Additionally there are many of us who would love to have a weapon from first coil and so far it has dropped 2 books and a bow.  I did however manage to pick up the helmet to match my Allagan armor set.  So now dressing as “Tiny Sauron” is totally an option.  At some point I would love to finish getting the rest of the pieces of that set because it is pretty damned badass looking.  All in all however it was a really fun raid night that came together a bit slower than normal… but finished just as successfully.  Hopefully next week Tam has his house in order and we can start in on Turn 6 properly.  Cylladora has done a bit of recon work in sorting out how the later turns work, so hopefully we can get through to 8 before hitting a serious road block.

Ko’ragh on Notice

The last two weeks of raiding in World of Warcraft have been a bit of a mixed bag.  While last week we managed to down another heroic boss for the first time…  we also struggled a bit more than we normally do on any of the encounters.  With the holidays we were missing key people during each attempt it felt like, and hopefully this week we will have our full raiding compliment.  Additionally it feels like maybe we have a firm handle on Ko’ragh finally because by god… I want to kill that filthy ogre.  I am so ready to move on to Imperator Mar’gok even though that fight looks like it is going to be a pain in the butt.  Generally speaking we are pretty good at “avoid the stuff” fights and a large portion of that fight feels like it is “avoiding stuff”.  Both Ko’ragh and Mar’gok have some key upgrades for many of our raiders that should allow us to push through the tail end of the Heroic as well.

One of the things I find interesting with raids is how that each one is unique and has unique challenges.  Some people have steamrolled Ko’ragh because apparently the easy way to deal with the adds is to have a Deathknight AOE Deathgrip them into place.  The problem with that is that we do not have a Deathknight tank, nor a Deathknight anything every single week.  As such I think we are going to try to do some Mocking Banner chicanery to get them all gathered up, but we have yet to sort out which version we need of that.  If I glyph my banner it acts like a misdirect, which means I likely need to create a macro to misdirect my focus.  Unglyphed however I get all the hatred and will have to be healed /blow all my defensive cooldowns to survive it.  In any case the banner lasts 30 seconds… which should be more than enough time to gather up all the adds from both waves.  Hoping that this makes the fight go more smoothly because our problem is in dealing with the adds, not in dealing with the other mechanics.