binding coil of bahamut Archives - Page 3 of 3

Melusine Down

February 10, 2015 by Belghast

I’m an Adjective?

There are just some days that it hits me how surreal my life can be. I seem to be having one of those days. I talked a bit about being called a “Cult Leader” last night, but apparently somewhere along the line I have become an adjective as well? If I would say I am most known for anything it would be that I blog each and every morning regardless if I have anything of any real gravity to talk about. If you follow Jaedia and Simcha you would have found out that this is apparently now termed the “Bel Method” because both of them have been dabbling with it of late. I didn’t even know I had a method to be honest… I just do this thing that involves blogging before I am actually awake. I am pretty sure people were rambling aimlessly long before I showed up, and will continue to do it long after I am gone. Though I do admit I got a great chuckle when I read that I have transcended humanity and now have become a “thing”.

@fynralyl that's the server the #BelEffect is happening on anyway. @belghast

— Sig (@Sigtric) February 7, 2015

Which makes it all the more humorous when the other day, I was mentioned in a conversation I was not really even participating in yet. My good friend Fynralyl mentioned on twitter that she was downloading Final Fantasy XIV, and before I even had a chance another friend… who is not even playing the game chimed in with our server information. To make it even more humorous Sigtric said the above quote, that the “#BelEffect” was going on. I am now an effect? I mean I realize my penchant for gathering people up and trying to get them all in the same place is rather notorious… but has it really become an effect to be monitored? Like I said before… it is really surreal to be referred to in adjective form. I am attempting to take it all in stride, as a sign of affection… but it is supremely strange. Now I am oddly cautious to see what other characteristic I have becomes a “thing”, is my traditional “Hey Folks” greeting now going to become canonized as well?

Melusine Down

Last night was of course our regularly scheduled raid night in Final Fantasy XIV. We unfortunately are starting to have a good problem happen… that quite often on Monday nights we have more than enough people to do our eight man. As a result since Paragon missed the last one, Cav offered to sit out and with that we zoned into Turn 7 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut. This was our second week of attempts on this encounter, and last week we managed to figure out most of the bits so it was just down to refinement and polish. We were teaching Paragon the fight from scratch, but he was a pretty quick study and before long we were back to where we left off last week. This fight is largely about managing adds, either in the form of the Renauds that need to be frozen with cursed voice or the Lamias that need to be burned down as soon as possible to lower overall raid damage. On top of all of these things… there is just a phenomenal amount of damage going out. There were so many times I was praying for my next cooldown so that I could survive just a little bit longer.

The turning point in our fight was honestly when we wiped because all of the Renaud that were frozen woke up at the same time. Prior to that the attempt was extremely smooth, and then we watched as the giants ran around wiping the raid. From that point on we started trying to manage just how many of them we had up at a once, and I started trying to do a better job of centering myself with the wall of them. These two tweaks lead to me getting frozen significantly less, and the wall of adds being more manageable as a whole. It was I believe one attempt after we started this strategy that we managed to get her down, and clear Turn 7 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut. Once again Ashgar remembered to tell folks to pose before we opened the chests, and I am super glad that he did… because this really is the best kill shot yet. I remembered to be centered in the photo rather than on one of the edges. We went into Turn 8 shortly after and only stayed long enough to get an idea of how the room works. Hopefully we can all watch some videos this week and make a good solid attempt next.

I Hate Oregorger

Yesterday I stumbled onto a blog post over on AskMrRobot showing how wipes on Oregorger compare to the raids average ilevel. I know we are still fairly low ilevel wise as a raid, I personally am only around 660 because we jumped straight from 7/7 normal and 5/7 heroic to doing normal mode Blackrock Foundry. I am wondering if that is the answer to dealing with the bullshit randomness of his hunger phase is to simply out gear it. Last Thursday when we were doing attempts on Oregorger we were following the exact pattern that everyone agrees upon is the best way to beat the fight. In fact multiple times during the night we stopped, rewatched videos to double check that we were not doing anything wrong… and still we kept dying to the damage of the phase. Either we were not fast enough on killing the crates, or simply lacked the gear to soak the damage. In any case the charge above would seem to agree that maybe Oregorger is simply a “gearing” thing. Had we entered Blackrock wearing full heroic gear… maybe it just would not have even been an issue.

In any case my hope is that by some sheer miracle of luck that we can down him because I want so bad to have this fight on farm status. I feel like both Gruul and the Hans’gar/Franzor encounter are likely on farm status after last week. I am wondering if there is something else that is low hanging fruit we can pick up while waiting on our gear level to raise before wrecking Oregorger. From what I understand the other boss we can try is Beastlord Darmac since Blackrock Foundry employs a “wing” strategy to its layout. Whatever we end up doing, I am looking forward to getting in tonight and smashing more Iron Horde faces. While much of the shiny of this expansion has faded for me, I am finding that the raiding is keeping me engaged and interested. While I may only be logging in to fiddle with my Garrison on nights other than the raid… I am still very much enjoying each and every boss fight.

Angriest Red Ball Revisited

November 25, 2014 by Belghast

Bridge Refresher Course

With all my recent posts about World of Warcraft, you would think that I had switched allegiance entirely, but this is not the truth by any means. Right now it is new and shiny and I am attempting to claw my way to a reasonable foothold of raid preparedness. That said I am still very much playing Final Fantasy XIV, and for the last few weeks we have been pulling together “raid” content on Monday nights. We really want to see the new Ultros fight, but unfortunately Thalen still had yet to do Battle at Big Bridge, so last night we started the evening off knocking that out of the way. It made a rather nice high point to start the evening on since that fight is so amazing. The majority of us are Final Fantasy V fans, so seeing the fight is like watching the bridge fight play out in that game.

The strange thing is that as many times as we had run it, I had never actually tanked it. Not that there is actually anything to tanking the fight. For the tank at least it is as tank and spank as they really come in Final Fantasy XIV. The only challenge was the various adds between the two phases of the boss, and even then it is was only because we have some extremely overgeared dps for the fight that just melted them. While I attempted to hold aggro it was pretty much futile. In any case it knocked that out of the way so that hopefully this week the folks that needed it can catch up on the Hildebrand storyline and get ready for Ultros. I would really rather do that fight for the first time as a guild, so we can have the experience of figuring out the content on the fly.

Angriest Red Ball Revisited

Turn Five of Binding Coil of Bahamut has been looming over our group for some time. I have to admit there has been a sense of fear about it, because in truth it has been content than killed many a static raid team on our server. It is the notorious gatekeeper to turn 2, and there are many folks that have cleared one through four never to actually manage to get in a turn five kill. The fight itself just has this insane array of mechanics that are almost impossible to memorize before going into the fight. Since it had been months for us clearing the first four turns we opted to start with those as a fresher course. Overall it went nice and smooth and we burned through the first few coil instances getting the folks who had not been there realm exploration achievements. I managed to get the Heavy Allagan chestpiece to go with my other two pieces of Allagan gear.

When we downed turn four after a few baubles here and there we decided to use that momentum and push us forward into a couple of attempts at Twintainia the boss of turn five. There is a lot of stuff to focus on during this fight. However we did manage to get to roughly the halfway point in the fight after a couple of attempts. I mark this as pretty damned good progress, and a pretty good night overall for us to down Big Bridge, four turns of coil and make that much progress on five. I feel like as a whole we have way more confidence in regards to our success chances at turn five. It is no longer this looming and scary target that we have not actually experienced. Folks talk about it with so much frustration and reverence, but I feel like we can totally down this. Now after seeing the fight I also feel like I have a far better point of reference for doing my own research in the coming week.

Up Too Late

After our evening of raiding in Final Fantasy XIV, I popped out and got into World of Warcraft in an attempt to find a group to run Auchindoun with. Much like there was a legendary cloak chain in Pandaria, there is a legendary ring one in Warlords. The first phase is actually relatively simple and only actually requires that you run Skyreach and loot and item off the final boss. This nets the player a really nice ilevel 640 ring for there troubles, which is a much needed gear level boost for getting into content. The next steps require you to clear four heroic dungeons, gather up a silly amount of apexis crystals and then complete a solo event of sorts. Last night I was up to the final step in this sequence which requires a trip into Auchindoun to loot an item off the final boss. However there was another player that required one more “core” the step before Auchindoun, so I agreed to run that heroic first before we ran the one I actually needed so that both of us knocked out the final step at the same time.

The end result was that I ran two heroics back to back and did not actually make it to bed until almost 1 am. The other result however is that other than 100 apexis crystals and a solo event, I am really super close to the next step in the ring quest chain. As a result in theory I should be able to knock out the 680 ring before we step foot into Molten Core as a guild tonight. I am really looking at venturing forth into Molten Core, it has been years since I last experienced the raid “for real”. I remember there was a time where a “good clear” took about three hours of my life. I am hoping we can manage to do it in a far shorter time. That said I have prepared myself for the potential of it taking that long if not longer. I know we are going to try and go into it with as many tanks and healers as we can so that we can potentially control the pace of the run. If everyone other than a handful of dps are with us on voice chat… hopefully things will go more smoothly. In any case hopefully at the end of the night I will have a spiffy mount.

Furry Children

I’ve always had a soft spot for animals. In this age of global strife and suffering, I’ve become rather accustomed to it… but the moment that Sarah MacLachlan animal charity video plays on the television… and it is like a sucker punch to the gut. There has never been a time when we have not had several furry children, and each of them is unique and special. This morning I am thankful for all of them that have shared our life. Presently we have four cats, which I think officially qualifies us for “crazy cat lady” status. Our eldest came home with me years ago on a Thanksgiving day, so this time of year is all the more important to me. She is getting up there in age and has many issues but I am so thankful for each year we have with her. In addition to our cats we also have two amazing ferrets, that are both as sweet as can be and are always clamoring for our attention. They both know exactly what it takes to get daddy to play with them, and they are the source of many delays while getting ready in the morning. Animals enrich our lives in ways that I cannot fully account for, and this morning and every morning I am thankful to have them.

Angry Red Ball

September 10, 2014 by Belghast

Starting Coil

For some time now after coming back to the game, we have been in a process of getting enough level 50 characters up to be able to tackle the official 8 man raid in the game. Now there is a 24 man raid, but to some extent I equate that to the LFR system in World of Warcraft. Both Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower are tuned in such a way as to allow complete strangers to be able to complete them. They are however an excellent source of gear, and all of us have been doing them pretty much on a weekly basis on a shot of getting some ilevel 100 gear. The Binding Coil of Bahamut however is serious mode raiding, or at least it was when the game was released. It takes eight players through a series of separate “turns” as they call them… or floors as I think of them as we traverse one big raid.

Last night we took a friend of the guild in with us to get to our eight players, and she and another guildie had a sizeable amount of experience in the dungeon. For the most part we were trying to figure out the fight on the fly, however after a few wipes Spiral started giving us tips. Thanks in part to these tips we made adjustments and progressed pretty quickly through Turn One. Since we had not been there terribly long we opted to continue on to turn two. The First half of Binding Coil of Bahamut consists of five turns in total, with an extremely large boss encounter waiting at the end of it. In order to progress to the next turn, your group has to have defeated the previous one. I can see this becoming a bit of a pain later on as we bring new folks in that have not been keyed for the one we are actually working on.

Angry Red Ball

When we reached the second turn, I feel like the bottom dropped out from under us. The first turn once we adjusted a bit was rather manageable. So I had this fear that we would simply blow out the entire first half of the raid due to the fact that we way over geared the level that the encounters were designed for. This was pushed aside however as we started the second ADS encounter. ADS is a angry red ball defense system that you encounter as the first boss in turn one, however this time around it brings friends. The entire encounter is somewhat of a gauntlet in that you are trying to get to the boss before it enrages, which the process starts the moment you encounter the first mini-boss. You proceed down towards ADS by taking a series of optional bosses out, Each time you take a specific boss out, it removes a negative effect from the final encounter, but at the same time adds some form of a buff.

On our first turn we tried to take as many mini-bosses out as we could, and I think we only actually left one alive. The end result was absolutely brutal as we fought a severely buffed and hasted final boss. After that we more ploddingly identified which orbs removed which buff and gave which buff to figure out the path we could afford to take. Spiral had told us that every group she had been with went left, but we wanted to know WHY they went left. As a result we ended up going right, and for a period of time this seemed like the correct answer. The mini-boss before ADS removed this frustrating mechanic known as Rot that causes a debuff to be passed around the raid like a baton. If the debuff is NOT passed, everyone in the raid takes a significant amount of damage. We thought this would make the ADS encounter more manageable, however after a few tries we noticed that it was giving ADS an insane haste buff, causing it to absolutely wreck us.

The Left Path

So at this point we figured out why exactly every group went left, and by trial and error decided that this would be the best course of action. It is at this point that I should explain that we knew a supposed easy way to defeat the boss from the moment we walked in. The thing is while we can totally cheese out the Binding Coil of Bahamut, we will not in any fashion be able to cheese the Second Coil of Bahamut that features turns 6 through 10. I figure that if we learn these fights now, we will have an easier time learning the fights in Second Coil, because we will have some insight into the way that the designers of the raid content think. So throughout all of these tries we had a guaranteed win condition in our pocket, but we chose not to use it for as long as was feasible as to learn the fight for real.

Admittedly our biggest issue with this content was the fact that we lacked a Bard. I can already tell that group composition is going to be a pretty critical thing for certain fights. Normally we would have had Warenwolf on his Bard, but he was not available tonight. We could have shifted players around to get a bard, however we were not really prepared for that and didn’t see that zoning back out and back in was really worth it. As a result we struggled through and came within a sliver of defeating the boss a few times before taking not of just how late it was getting. Finally when we were just about to call it, we opted to take the easy route. Apparently ADS is one of the few bosses that is actually significantly easier to defeat after it enrages. Instead of having to deal with mechanics like Rot, you have to deal with constant AOE pulse damage through the raid. It literally becomes a burn phase and an endurance match for the healers to keep the raid up long enough to dps the encounter down.

Post Apocalyptic Halo

After we had finished the second turn we all dispersed, and I filtered off into playing some Destiny. I really did not want to get too terribly involved in anything, so I opted to just poke around in the level two mission that I had already defeated. One of the cool things about the way the world is laid out, is that you can just wander around off the main course allowing you to explore new areas that are not necessarily involved with the current task at hand. I had not unlocked the completely open world version of the zone yet, so this was the next best thing. Funny thing is a little bit into me poking around I had someone from my friends list join my fire team. I have to say I am not quite used to this concept yet of someone just randomly dropping down into your game. I sent him a message warning him that I was kind of just poking around aimlessly and went on about my business.

Interesting thing of note is that apparently if your friend zones into one of the “darkness” areas that are instanced… it also pulls you into the area as well. So one moment I am wandering about killing level 7 mobs that I had stumbled onto, and then the next I am being sucked into the battle with the Archon at the end of the level 2 mission. This was all fine and good as it is a pretty fun encounter, and since there were two of us the game scaled up the difficulty a bit. The problem is… moments into the encounter my partner in crime disconnected from the mission leaving me there to deal with all of the mobs alone. It turns out he was trying to upload a video clip and it disconnected him, which for future reference might not be the best thing to do in the middle of a fire fight. I managed to finish off the encounter solo and got a nice helm as a reward for doing so. On that note I shut things down for the night and tried to figure out why exactly my Vanguard Armory was not showing up. Thanks to Ashgar I went in and did some “renew licenses” function within the PS4 settings, and that seemed to clear it up immediately.

#FFXIV #BindingCoil #Destiny