Hello everyone. It's been a while. I've wanted to type up a summary of Shadowbringers for a while now. A lot has happened!
I've also built a new keyboard (as per title pic) which I'm eager to try out. So what better way to do so than to type up a long old post!
I won't be mentioning Feast, as I've already covered my thoughts and feelings in a previous post. Not much has changed PvP wise. I still don't enjoy it and I don't play. I just stick around to chill with friends in smaller discords at the moment and try to support the community where and when I can.
So let's get on to the PvE side of things.
Rewinding to the end of Stormblood. My group had pretty much farmed the shit out of Omega and therefore took a break until the release of Shadowbringers. We had agreed to going as hard as possible in week 1 in order to get a full clear for Savage in the first week. This involved raiding every day, with 12 hours each day on the weekend.
I was really hyped for Shadowbringers. I was at Fanfest in Paris when it was revealed and got to see first hand all of the details. I was looking forward to the Nier raids especially.
I've always just rushed to new level cap upon a new expansion and skipped cutscenes. I got DRG to level 80 in about 26 hours (I think I was the first on Phoenix but can't confirm) and went to bed to get some rest.
Eventually, the rest of the group caught up so we decided to get farming some extreme primals. I had also leveled Dancer to 80 by this point and was really enjoying the job. Therefore we agreed to run a triple ranged setup for when savage came out.
Unfortunately, our WHM decided shortly before the tier was released that we weren't the right group for him, and left to join another group. But luckily we managed to get someone as a replacement in time.
I was really determined to get this week 1 clear. Therefore I took the week off work, and did as much crafting as possible. I crafted everyones armor sets, along with a shit load of food and potions. i think I did 30 hours of crafting in total in week 1 which Is the most I've ever done
E1S and E2s went down pretty quickly and easily within the first few days. But we then hit a snag on E3S. We were missing some DPS. To remedy this, I agreed to switch from Dancer back to DRG. We managed to clear it the next day. We found what was going wrong and our GNB switched to WAR as he was more comfortable on this job and our caster went RDM instead of BLM.
We had done fairly well, so now it was time to see it out. Up next was Titan:
This was where the problems began to start. We spent the remainder of Friday just dipping our toes into the fight to see just how bad it is. We were wiping a lot but it was early days so that was to be expected. When we finished on the Friday, Our raid leader found a guide and asked everyone to read it before we started Raid again the next day. I also asked everyone to send me Mats for any food/pots that we needed and also gave away about 10m of my own gil for any materia people needed. I think I stayed up until about 4AM on Saturday morning crafting so many potions and food so I was pretty tired the next day.
Saturday then arrived, after a few hours. We were still wiping consistently at the same point, It was clear that some people had not made any effort to read the guide and were incredibly unprepared. When we did have a clean run, were were still behind on DPS before phase transition. So I decided to check everyones gear.
I noticed that people were not using the best ilvl gear, nor was it fully melded, which is crucial for a week one clear. At this point, I was incredibly pissed off. I had everything melded and crafted and I even did this for 2 sets of gear as I swapped from Dancer to Dragoon. while others clearly didn't give a shit. I was really angry, I was tired from being up for half the night preparing for other people and they repaid this by not reading the guide of preparing their gear.
At this point, I hung up the discord call, and typed a message in our raid chat. I told the rest of the group that I was not happy about how some people were clearly not taking this seriously, I told them that I was going for a nap to catch up on sleep and for people to read the guide as they should have done in the first place, and meld their damn gear.
I woke up and went back a few hours later. Some people had sorted themselves out but a couple hadn't They didn't have the money to buy more materia and the money I gave wasn't enough to cover everybody. I was really annoyed, as we knew pre expansion that this was our objective, and people had plenty of time to farm gil and prepare. I considered just saying fuck it and going to another group. but considering we came this far, I thought it was easier to just continue and see what happens.
At the end of the week, the closest we got to a clear was a 0.4% enrage on a clean pull. If people had prepared properly in the first place, we would have got our clear. We eventually got it at the start of week 2 with a bit more gear from reclears.
Needless to say, things didn't get much better. Reclears were taking ages. I also wanted to do Ultimates this expansion but felt like there was no way that this was going to happen with some of the people that we had. One member didn't want to do it anyway. So I decided to take who I trusted in the group and fill slots later to make my own ultimate group.
A few weeks later, there was an argument over loot. Our system was that you got priority on your main job (obviously) and you could choose a second job as an alt for loot. We also said that you get priority on weapons that match the role that you play. So since I was playing Melee, I should have got priority on MNK, SAM and NIN.
One of our members said that they weren't getting enough loot one day when we weren't raiding, and wanted to roll on the MNK weapon if it dropped. I still hadn't got it so told them that they would have to wait. They then said that our loot system was unfair and so the raid leader changed it so I would have to lot against them instead of what we initially agreed.
This person was part of the problem during prog and this was the breaking point for me. I told the group that I have had enough and that I would be going to look another group that fits my expectations. This upset my raid leader, as he is an IRL friend of mine. but I was fucking miserable at this point and eventually he understood it from my point of view and took a break himself.
I already had my DRG weapon, so helped a couple of friends with some reclears. a friend of mine from 2.0 had come back to the game and had just cleared Titan. I asked him if they were looking for a Melee and luckily for me, they were. He explained to me that it wouldn't be doing hours like I had just done for prog and it would be a bit more casual. I said this was fine, As I never wanted to go through what I just did unless I really trusted the people I was playing with again.
That person was Memento Mori. I didn't really get on with him for most of 2.0 as he annoyed me by poaching a member of my static back then. But we put all of that behind us when we met in person at London Fanfest before Heavensward. I honestly wasn't expecting much. But joining this group would turn out to be one of the best decisions I've made in this game.
I dissolved the Ultimate group I was going to put together, As it would have been awkward doing it with some of my former group, And Memento wanted to do TEA anyway. Therefore we filled the rest of our group and made a start when we had enough gear from reclears.
At first, it did not go very well, we spent many raids wiping to Living Liquid or the start of Cruise Justice. A couple of people were incredibly inconsistent.
We also then started to struggle to find time to raid. There were just too many conflicts. Me working shifts, someone else not being able to do certain days, and someone in our group just not turning up randomly or having to go AFK for long periods during a raid.
Eventually, we came to the conclusion that we weren't going to get anywhere unless we made some changes. Memento said he would be remaking the group, and thankfully, I was one of the people invited to resume prog.
We replaced our caster, white mage, and my co melee for the above reasons. And instead we bought in Konata on caster, who had already cleared TEA, a friend of Mementos as MNK, who was actually fairly new to the game, but Memento assured us he can learn fast and is decent at MNK. and lastly, a new WHM, we we all didn't know, but initially impressed us with how far he learned and that he took notes during a raid.
Thinks improved massively. I honestly can't recall how long it took us to clear the fight, but I don't think it was longer than a month. The group was working really well. everyone was on the same page in terms of dedication and teamwork. Everyone read guides, asked if they were not sure of a mechanic, knew their job and eventually, it died!
I think this was the happiest I have been while playing this game. I had always wanted to clear an ultimate, and tried so hard back in 4.0 to do ucob, but it just didn't happen. This gave me the confidence that I was capable of doing it, TEA is arguably the hardest one out of the current 3 and it gave me the motivation that we could do the other two as well.
Needless to say, I was on top of the world at this point. We recleared until we had all of the TEA weapons:
Saldy, there was a conflict between our WHM and other members of the group personality wise, so we made a mutual agreement for him to leave. A friend of ours was looking for a group so we slotted him in, and quickly made a start on UwU:
Our MNK eventually left, as he pissed off some other people. a couple of other people felt the same way about the person in question, although they went about it a lot more maturely. So we decided to sadly let them go as well.
This was a super fun tier, Especially E12s which is one of my fave fights. and music.
