from the heart of a mountain, I rise

HGR, the great encourager, gave some sage advice: "Let's beat Titan this week, so if anyone dies, we can say we beat Titan."

Thanks to weekly Eden loot, I'm at item level 475, which means I'm slightly overgeared for the fight. (Back when Titan was current content, the max was 470.) HGR saw my gear and frowned. "Are you raiding in that?" he said.

"Yeah?" I said. "It's not that far above 470. It's almost like having a normal machinist on your team."

"Probably worse, actually."

"Well, there you go."

At the appointed raid time, everyone showed up except for Silver and numbers. "I hope they're not in the hospital from coronavirus," said HGR. We passed the time by watching an Age of Empires II stream while Dante puttered around in Eureka.

An hour later, numbers stumbled in, saying, "Fuck, hi, I'm awake." We informed him that he was not the limiting factor on our raid. Thankfully, Silver showed up a few minutes after, and we were ready to go.

(Sort of. To be more exact, right when Silver showed up, a RARE FATE ("Foxy Lady") spawned, and Luis was like WE MUST DO IT, so we did. HGR was displeased. But after that, we really were ready to go.)

Things were a lot smoother this time. (Though I still keep dying to the first Evil Earth—how does this keep happening?! I attribute it to two factors: First, Silver puts down Sacred Soil, which I appreciate because I love being healed, but it's blue and it obscures the aoe, which is also blue. Second, I get distracted searching for Tactician on my bar. How can I get distracted by something that I do every single time? This kind of thing is why I'm in the bottom tenth percentile of machinists.)

Mid-raid, newbie stepped out to get a drink of water. He was gone a long time. Over his mic, we could hear loud clanging and banging noises. "Is that a gun?" numbers said.

newbie returned some time later with his water. "Okay," he said. "I was not ready."

"He's got some real life repairs to make after that," numbers said.

Anyway, prog! We reached Phase 3 for the first time, and on the last pull of the day, we hit enrage when Titan was at 6% health. It was a messy run with lots of deaths, so I think we should make it through if we just clean things up a bit (and I quit dying to Evil Earth lmao). That also means it's time to start thinking about exciting things like DEX POTIONS and HEAT GAUGE.

===

Some great times to use heat:

[phase 1]

1. opener [barrel stabilizer + wildfire] [POTION]
2. immediately after the first Evil Earth
3. gauntlets after his opener & before landslide (IF gauntlets is the second mode)

[phase 2]

1. at the start [time is tight, so: tac + Q5674 + wildfire -> hypercharge]
2. uplift 1: after everything resolves, when centered for healing [POTION]
3. after granite gaols
4. uplift 2: after everything resolves, when centered for healing

[phase 3]

1. after merry-go-round 1 AND blue knockback [POTION]
2. after merry-go-round 2 AND left/right fists
3. after merry-go-round 3 AND left/right fists