misfortune hangs heavy on the prideful

newbie set up his game to replace Athena 2’s music with Return to Oblivion, which he says has improved his quality of life considerably.

“Same except for White Stone Black,” said quof.

“You’re a sick, disgusting person,” said numbers.

(I’m just glad people are finally appreciating White Stone Black. unironically good song)

* * *

Last weekend, we reached an exciting new Athena 2 mechanic: caloric stacks. At the beginning of the mechanic, four people get fire debuffs and four people get wind debuffs. The fire debuffs go off first, and require a buddy stack; so we pair one fire + one wind. After that, two of the ex-fires get a new fire debuff. This new debuff will go off at the same time as the wind debuffs, which cause knockback in a moderate AoE. That means we need to pair one fire + one non-fire, and either they need to get knocked back to the same location (without getting yeeted off the edge) or they need to be out of the wind AoEs to avoid the knockback altogether.

The catch: During this entire mechanic, everyone gets a caloric count debuff which ticks up as you move, and if you move too much you explode and wipe the raid. So all this must be done with as little movement as possible.

quof said, “This is definitely a middle school mechanic at the very least.”

There are essentially two problems to be solved. The first is geometry: given the movement constraints, where can the fire stacks and the wind AoEs position themselves? The second is coordination: say you get a fire debuff. Which wind are you pairing with? There are no takebacks on this one. If two fires go to the same spot, it’s over, because the additional movement required to correct course will wipe the raid.

numbers figured out the geometry. Essentially, the wind + fire stacks are on cardinals fairly close to the center. After the initial fire debuffs go off, the winds move out along their cardinals, while the fires come inside (and avoid getting knocked back at all). Apparently, this is completely different from the GGG strat, which was born of HGR and windy discussing the mechanic for 20 hours. “If the Lord had a book of perfect strats, our caloric strat would be in there,” HGR said.

“That may be true if your lord is Baal,” newbie said.

* * *

What about the coordination, though? Well:

•  Priority for dps goes B > C > A.
• Before the mechanic starts, two winds (one support, one dps) are designated by markers over their heads. These are the Prime Winds. The dps Prime Wind always goes to B, and the support Prime Wind always goes to D.
• I am the last priority dps. I always go back as far as possible. So if I am fire:
• I am the only dps fire = go to B
• 2 dps fires = go to C
• 3 dps fires = go to A
• Wind works the same way, except of course if I am the Prime Wind I will be on B. (Prime Winds have the easiest life possible. You go to your designated spot, you wait, you move horizontally, you wait, either everyone else does the mechanic correctly or they don’t.)

See? Easy!

(It actually is fairly easy from my position. The complicated positions are the mid flexers, newbie and Luis, because they have to take into account exactly who has what debuff. Luis’ strat has been to wait mid until everyone else goes to their spot, and then head to the remaining spot, which is unironically a great way to do things.)