Before the Fall

A Good Night

While tensions were at times a little high, and a handful of people were on edge… I have to say last night in Highmaul was as close to a perfect night as we have seen.  Everyone just did the things they needed to do and we started knocking down one boss after another.  All told last night we cleared 6/7 normal mode bosses and 2/7 heroic bosses with some end of the night tries on heroic butcher.  We still need to work on the specifics of that fight but I feel like we made more progress last night than we have in previous attempts on him.  I also managed to have a decent night loot wise finally picking up some piece with Bonus Armor on them.  Brackenspore dropped a significantly upgraded neckpiece, Tectus a significantly upgraded ring, and through the course of the night I picked up a trash drop cloak.  So while I only actually gained a single ilevel gear wise… I gained significantly better itemization across the board.

The other thing that felt better last night was my dps as a whole.  A few raids ago I switched to using Weak Auras, and it has honestly taken some getting used to in order to rely on them rather than watching my hotbar.  Last night felt like I reached a point where I was mostly watching the auras and their timers.  As such I did a much better job of making sure I kept Shield Charge up without overlapping it into the territory of a previous one.  Additionally after some reading I started prioritizing Revenge over Shield Slam if both were up at the same time.  The end result was a significant boost in damage output.  On most fights last week I was doing between 18k and 19k depending on the circumstances.  This week I was doing more in the range of 20k to 22k with cleave heavy fights of course giving me a damage boost.  Essentially this gives me hope for the viability of Gladiator dps in the long run, since with some “proper” gear I am competitive.

Before the Fall

The other cool thing that happened yesterday was that in the morning Square Enix dropped the trailer for the “Before the Fall” patch in Final Fantasy XIV.  In truth it looks like the patch is going to be a combination of three parts 2.5, 2.51 and 2.55 with various features coming in phases.  The trailer was another one of their infamous ten minute long tours of all the content being placed in the game.  First off in 2.5 we are getting three new dungeons including Hard Mode Wanderers Palace… where form the looks of it we might just be helping out the Tonberries.  We are also getting a Hard Mode version of Amdapor Keep which looks like it is going to have more than a few rough spots.  Finally we are getting a completely new location called he Keeper of the Lake as we fight what appears to be a ruined Magitek facility with some sort of god sleeping in it.  The big bad boss at the end looks something like Leviathan, but crawling through my Final Fantasy ancestral memory I am really not sure who it might be.  The only “snake” boss that is not Leviathan popping into my head is Midgar Zolom but I doubt that is it.

[Edit] upon posting this I just saw a post talking about who this boss is likely.  Supposedly “The Keeper of the Lake” refers to the remains of Midgardsormr aka the god of the Dravinians from what I understand.  So with the upcoming expansion set in Ishgard, and focusing on the war between that nation and the Dravinians, then it totally makes sense that we the players will unwittingly wake Midgardsormr.

Probably the portion of the video I am most looking forward to is the opening of the World of Darkness raid.  For those not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV raiding, there are essentially two basic paths.  You have the serious raiding core that is the “Coil of Bahamut” instances which are strict 8 man battles, and then you have the casual raids that are the “Crystal Tower” instances.  I have it under the authority of Ashgar that all of these fights so far have been based on events, places and bosses found in Final Fantasy 3.  As a result he hinted at the “World of Darkness” raid some time before they actually announced it.  Right now Labyrinth of the Ancients, and Syrcus Tower are fun…  but with World of Darkness we see a greatly improved ilevel available for casual 24 man raiding.  The only hard part will be getting used to only being able to snag a single item per week.  The other big bonus is that more than likely these will drop the items needed to “un-weather” the level 120 gear and turn it into level 130 gear.  The hope is that they do in fact let us loot a single upgrade item and a single actual item per run like has been hinted at.

Enkidu Arrives

It is impossible to talk about this next section without at least dropping some spoilers about the Hildebrand quest storyline.  If you have not done it and care about being surprised when people show up…  you maybe shouldn’t read forward.  Granted the Hildebrand quest storyline as a whole will only really make sense to folks who have played a lot of different Final Fantasy games.  One of the characters you meet fairly early on in the Hildebrand storyline is Gilgamesh who is a fairly storied comedic character in the Final Fantasy universe.  Generally speaking he is accompanied by his imp friend Enkidu.  My personal first encounter with Gilgamesh was in the game Final Fantasy V but I am uncertain if that was his actual first appearance.  In that game he plays the role of a major bad guy, but at the same time…  comedic relief often times as inept as he is deadly.  Enkidu often feels like the “straight man” in their act, the one that keeps Gilgamesh in line.

As you encounter Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy XIV he is alone which is explained when he first introduces himself to the character. But where are my manners? I have yet to properly introduce myself. I am Gilgamesh, and that is my companion, Enkidu! …Well, not really. It has been many moons since last I saw him, so to ease the burden of loneliness, I tamed a rooster and painted it green.  So at this point we know Enkidu does exist in the universe, we just have yet to meet him.  Now we zoom forward to this patch, sure enough when they are doing the Hildebrand quest line they show a character that looks very much in every way like the traditional image of Enkidu.  So this likely means that we are going to see Gilgamesh in the storyline again, but more important than that… that hopefully we have yet another awesome boss battle to look forward to.  While I have actually only done the Ultros fight once… it was extremely fun and serves for a nice diversion from our progression through Binding Coil.