a crystal-clear river

How charming!!

On our last pull of last weekend, we legitimately cleared the add phase and reached the river. “Proof of concept,” said numbers. “The concept is being skilled.” This weekend we took the concept even further. We made it past adds twice on Saturday, and on Sunday we even made it to the FIRE PHASE (!!).

“It’s a river,” [redacted] once said. “There are two shores. If this ends well, you’ll find that out.” But in this case, there are three shores and three islands. We have logically named the islands 1, 2, and C. The bridges between them are A, 3, and 4. Well, that part is fine. What I’m working on mentally is how the spreads work during the thunder phase. The party stands on the bridge across from the thundercloud. The cloud rotates, and the party rotates with it. If I get a spread, I take it to the island counterclockwise of where the party will end up (not where they are now). So if the party is moving clockwise, I also move clockwise, just less (they go all the way to the next bridge, I stop on the island ccw of them).

This seems obvious in retrospect. During raid, in the heat of the moment, I was straight up walking into the thundercloud and dying. But I’ve got it sorted now, except for knowing which way counterclockwise is (a perennial issue). HGR has suggested meta-practicing in real life. Like, I’m going about my day and see an object and just start walking counterclockwise around it for practice. I’ll have a lot of time to practice because we’re off for three weeks: two weeks due to my Ireland trip, and Tiro has something the weekend after.

We’re thinking reclears will be Not That Bad (tm). Now that we have the add phase down, we clear it the majority of the time. We actually had more trouble with the opening phase and the desert today…people randomly wingmarking into the walls, dps spread forgetting to spread in time, stuff like that. We’re also hoping there won’t be much of a dps check for the fight as a whole. The adds were the dps check, right?

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newbie’s observation: in our static, someone saying “FUCK MY ASS” probably means they made a rotation error for a minor dps loss, while “Ah, hm” means a major mechanic failure that’s about to wipe the party.