nine cones, nine circles, nine lines

(2/18/2020 1:05:59 AM) numbers: i have some good news and some bad news

(1:06:20 AM) numbers: the good news is, my vacation was approved so i have both weekend days off AND friday

(1:06:41 AM) numbers: the bad news is i got a paint chip stuck so far under my fingernail i can't get it out and it hurts like a m o t h e r f u c k e r

(4:30:57 AM) HGR1: that's gonna hurt your parse

New patch has hit, which means new gear, and also means Eden 1-4 is technically no longer current content. newbie suggested hopping straight to Eden 5 once we clear Voidwalker, but HGR vetoed the idea. He doesn't want us to make the early fights too easy by outgearing them.

"Got my ruby gunblade," Kan announced on Thursday. "First pull of the day!"

HGR scowled. "I'm going to nerf my weapon," he said.

* * *

Saturday was a glorious day to beat Voidwalker. The skies were bright blue; Community Day Rhyhorns were frolicking in the melting snow; and nobody was parsing anything because ACT hasn't been updated for the new patch. (I hope someone in the future looks at my profile and is like "huh, guess he never managed to beat Voidwalker Savage.")

(out of curiosity, I went to check my profile and discovered I have a 4% parse on Voidwalker Normal from last September. l m a o)

Anyway, we beat Voidwalker on the third pull. gg. It was still close—Voidwalker was in the middle of his final Quietus casts—but we all got through the cycles cleanly, including me. HGR was right, it was satisfying.

Then it was on to the main course of the day: Leviathan.

Before our first pull, as is custom, Kan launched into Exposition Mode to tell us about the mechanics of the fight. (Kan is the only one who's seen all of Eden's Gate Savage; he completed the set before joining our static.) As is also custom, numbers and I told him that we didn't want to hear about the mechanics, we wanted to experience it for ourselves first. Then Kan was like "Okay, but just one thing—" and numbers hurled himself off the platform in protest.

We're getting less Kanzaris Exposition Mode with every new raid, so I consider our efforts a success. Kan's a good dude, he just wants to be helpful and loves explaining things.

Leviathan is a precision fight, all about positioning and insta-death. He loves destroying parts of the platform, sending people plummeting to their deaths. He also loves to spam Temporary Current, a massive one-shot aoe that pops near-instantly and covers like 90% of the screen. Gotta know the fight and position yourself correctly in advance. I've never been happier that I gave up black mage.

We got him down to around 46% and a complicated mechanic where everyone gets various debuffs and has to do different things with them so as not to wipe the party. Kan re-launched Exposition Mode after a couple of wipes here, but I think he doesn't recall the exact mechanics, so it came out garbled. (The guy with the RHOMBUS stands in front of the group, and may or may not need to face the group. Then the guy with the LINE stands either in front or the back of the group, but we don't know which. Then, uh, a tank does something?*) I guess we can look forward to figuring it out next time.

[4:21 PM] numbers: 9 cones 9 circles 9 lines: zero escape (from leviathan)

* to be fair, this is my reaction when a tank does anything ever. but HGR also doesn't know the tank thing, which means nobody knows